001thank you and uh good evening everyone thank you for coming out to our board meeting this evening do want to remind everyone of specific decorum um in case this is your first time here and I want to thank those who are returning for all of your um Community leadership and actually modeling these behaviors we do appreciate keeping this uh very welcoming environment in our boardroom so for decorum uh no person shall disrupt the orderly conduct of the meeting prohibited disruptive behavior includes but is not limited to making disruptive noises noises such as booze or hisses creating or participating in a physical disturbance speaking out of turn in violation of the applicable rules preventing or attempting to prevent others who have the floor from speaking preventing others from observing the meeting entering into or remain remaining
002in the area of the meeting room that is not open to the public or approaching the Das without permission I also want to uh thank all of you for remembering that yes this is a Schoolboard meeting and so there are people watching from home with their children there and so just want to remind everyone to please use um appropriate language during your public comment period I'd like to officially call the meeting to order at 7:15 uh Miss shus can you call the r student director Janai Dale student director Caitlyn Le director Jennifer shinoski here director Mike Shen here director kadia Brown present vice president Anna vasudev present president Laura babbit here thank you now I need a motion to approve the agenda under understanding that item eight has been removed from the agenda but uh
003we will be hearing from students in a more of a public comment field um can I have a motion to approve the agenda so moved is there a second seconded it's been moved and seconded all in favor say I I I I all right um so now we will have our report out from close session from November 1st followed by the report out of close session from November M 15th just for uh Clarity president babett are we only reporting when we recess to the back yeah got it uh the board of education on November 1st heard item 3.4 collective bargaining the board uh heard an update and provide a direction and that concludes the report back from close session on November 1st do you want me to report today's close session all right um for
004today's close session close session was called to order at 5:43 p.m. all directors were present except for director Brown who joined the meeting at 5:46 p.m. the board heard item 3.1.1 there was a motion to approve the settlement agreement that was made by vice president basev seconded by director shinoski all directors voted in favor except for director Brown who is an Absentia item 3.1.2 there was a motion to approve the amended agreement made by vice president vasev seconded by director shinoski all directors voted in favor for item 3.2 consideration of student expulsion there was a motion to approve the stipulated agreement made by vice president vasev seconded by director shinoski all directors voted in favor director shinoski asked for additional contextual contextual information for item 3.3 collective bargaining the Board of Education heard in update
005and that concludes the report out from close session thank you now we will have our superintendent's comments good evening B USD family uh this week BD joined not in our town the California civil rights department the city of Berkeley the mayor's office and LA versus hate along with community and government government Partners from across the state to kick off United against hate weak a collaborative effort to Galvanize a movement to stop the hate that threatens our multiple communities the week began with a press conference where among other things participants learned about a Statewide hotline for reporting hate incidents and receiving support after such incidents California versus hate is a non-emergency hate incident and hate crime reporting system to support individuals and communities targeted for hate California versus hate has developed a resource line and a
006network hate crimes report can be made online at any time in 15 languages people also can report an incident by calling 833 866 4283 or 8338 no hate Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and can talk to a trained civil rights um agent in over 200 languages I also want to remind the public that our at our last board meeting we did share an email with you to be able to share incidents of hate that happens on our campus as well um what I can say about uh the event this week the events this week is that it has been such an inspiration to see our School Community come together in kindness support and love uh among the many things that happened across our school communities this week Long Fellow Middle School
007joined a number of our schools and uniting against Hate by hosting a daily kindness kindness Challenge and I have the opportunity to moderate a panel of BHS students after a film screaming from not in our town at the UC theater on Monday the four senior panelists that I got to interview were a bit nervous but they spoke really boldly about their efforts as advocates for peace in their school communities and Beyond and discuss complex issues while taking into account the diversity of our beliefs in our community I was inspired by the courage of these students the ways in which they modeled a true appreciation for the many differences that make up our city and schools difference of thought perspective experience appearance Etc and moreover how they called out that it is our Humanity that binds
008us together as family I was honored to Center and highlight student perspectives in conversations and spaces are too often adult heavy these babies challenged me and everyone in the audience in the audience and they challenged each of us to do better and more with our Collective responsibility to not just stand against hate but to be examples of peace love and life at all the events this week there are resources oh somebody wants to call me sorry uh at all of these events that's my daughter I apologize um at all of these events this week there were resources shared and highlighting a programs that exist on campus and in the larger community and we are working to get this information um available on our website as well if you are not able to attend keeping with
009the theme of community collaboration and critical conversations I along with members of the district team and board directors participated in a safety form uh about two weeks ago hosted by the BHS Berkeley High School Safety Committee the event that also included the police department B USD administrators and staff BHS administrators and staff as well as safety officers parents caregivers community members and of course most importantly students um was a great opportunity for us to engage in some initial dialogue about the ways that together we can work to keep our students safe we discussed a number of topics um many of these discussions are to be continued um including elements of school safety plans recommendations from committee members and a thoughtful Q&A session and public comments with a wide range of feedback and suggestions to the
010group including finding EXE um effective ways to address student vaping weapons student safety and communicating during critical incidents that happened both on campus and around our campuses keeping with the theme of safety and wellness I want to remind you all that our Berkeley High School Wellness Center's grand opening is on Saturday December 2nd from 11: am to 2 PM at Berkeley High School that should be that should be an Applause because this has been a long time coming um we talk about safety and well-being and having a c and space for our babies to to come and be and breathe um is really important so that Wellness Center is being opened again on Saturday December 2nd um those who attend will see student performances hear from speakers uh sample some of the mental well-being programs
011that are available to our students at Berkley High and visit tables with various Mental Health Resources and there will be food trucks too um we've made many strides as the community around safety wellness and student belonging and our Collective effort to make sure our schools are welcoming inclusive and safe in the various ways defined I want to point out that there are two information items on this evening's agenda we've both updated our procedures to provide more clarity and transparency so if you look in the information items you will see a couple of policies and these include policies that are aimed at campus security visitor and um Outsider procedures disruptions and civility on campus these policies and the ones that are coming up at the next meeting um which will be focusing more on our complaint
012procedures are in line with the safety recommendations made from various community convenings over the past several years still that said with the progress made we know that we still have a lot of work to do to create safe inclusive and positive School communities and I say thank you in advance for the ways that you will continue to push us to do more and better and moreover how you will engage with us as critical partners and collaborators towards this end I'm almost done uh creating a safe and welcoming Community really requires us to be we've heard it before requires us to be preventive preventative and proactive responsive and restorative prevention and proactivity for educators takes many forms including Stu teaching students about differences and inclusion creating welcoming and humanizing spaces for all of our students and
013providing them an opportunity to interact across difference participate in critical conversations and have practice expressing their own ideas and challenging the ideas of others in a safe environment as a district we support and encourage teachers to emphasize the importance of empathy and open-mindedness to cultivate a generation of students who can engage critically with diverse perspectives we support the integration of diverse perspectives in the curriculum including narratives cross diversity different people's stories different perspectives of those stories histories as well as um major events we also encourage our students to question sources analyze biases and consider multiple viewpoints we believe this is important to create spaces for respect respectful and inclusive dialogue our teachers engage in professional development on pedagogy and practice they have coaching they share resources and they themselves have space and we continue to
014make more spaces for them to participate in critical conversations as well and learn how to create those spaces for our students all of this is grounded in our four EAS Equity Excellence enrichment and engagement BD not only supports but we believe that it is important that our educators are allowed to have and to teach controversial issues respectively and responsibly in fact we believe by presenting multiple perspectives presenting factual information and providing multiple opportunities for students to express ideas share their personal stories and feelings we give our students opportunities to really develop essential skills that are about thinking developing tolerance and understanding conflicting points of view in our diverse student body we think that it's important to teach these STS that instill values of Tolerance cooperation empathy and non-violent problem solving in diverse School communities like
015our own I am so glad to see so many of our Educators in the room this evening and I am super excited to see some of our students here and cannot wait to hear what they're going to share with us and with you this afternoon last thing I want to do is highlight that we have some more items on tonight's board agenda um that I want you to make sure to pay attention to we're are going to hear a presentation from our multilingual learner L our multilingual learner master plan and it's a plan that strategically outlines how we'll make sure that our English language Learners are really able to access and engage in that rich learning experience that I just mentioned earlier um staff we're going to review the goals of this plan as well
016as share some of the progress we've made in that area um we also have an information item that has the initial timeline for the development of our 242 2024 2027 lcap and finally Friday is the last day of school before we we go into fall break that sigh is a sigh that is probably a collective sigh um we are excited about the break we all need the break and we know how important um and how rest itself is a form of resilience so we do appreciate you all for being here but we do hope that you are not here next week that you really take advantage of the week off um to be in community to be with family and to rest and rejuvenate um I and and staff are really grateful for the opportunity
017to be in service of you and the babies of BU USD and that is the end of my comments president thank you and thank you so much now we will move towards our public comment period which is only 30 minutes and we do try and save at least 10 minutes for our uh Zoom callers if you are on zoom and would like to speak please raise your hand so that I can gauge time he not too many hands online that's pretty good and so that means we can take uh 25 minutes for um in person and save the last five for online callers um starting with our CTE program our students from the CTE program if you can come forward now you will have um seven minutes oh seven minutes as a collective group yes
018oh can you use those time starting now hi Miriam Klein stall uh I'm one of the co-founders of the Arts and Humanities Academy and it's my 28th year at Berkeley High as a visual arts teacher thank you and um and we're here to talk about our interdisciplinary projects um the one that we're going to show you right that that you're looking at is a quilt project made between world history or US History um us lit chemistry and visual arts um everye semester we do integrated projects that are that have uh academic classes in a science class and and their Arts integrated and they culminate in an exhibition or a performance so for this project uh students interviewed uh somebody that immigrated to Berkeley and I'm gonna bring up Gigi one of our seniors who worked
019on this project last year to tell you about about this project good evening um our main focus in this project was trying to highlight stories Untold Stories the stories you wouldn't normally hear about and these stories about people immigrating to Berkeley one of the things we wanted to know was something you don't really think about what's a smell that reminded you of home and through your interview you would ask them this they would be like oh my person the smell that reminded them of home was Maple and maple leaves they're Canadian so our next step was to go and research in our chemistry classes what was the chemical composition of that smell and we researched it and we made presentations about it and we really learned the makeup of that smell and as you can
020see we all embroidered um chemical compositions on all of our quilt pieces and those are the smells that relate them back to their home back to where they came from and I thought it was an amazing project and I think it was probably the best um midterm I ever took um and it was beautiful to see all of this come together and our next speaker is Malia hi so something that's different from the quilt was that we got to make our own paint in our chemistry class and use it in our art class to make um um well paint anything and yeah I think that was really cool it was really interesting to learn about like the chemical part of making paint and it was really interesting and really fun to be able to make
021your own paint and make your own materials that you would use for yourself to make you know your own artwork and um we also learned about the preservation of artwork and what people have done to preserve artwork that has been found in the 1500s we saw manuscripts from the 1500s and old paintings and carvings that were carved in rock and wood and that was really cool um hi I'm Violet I'm also a senior in Aha and I wanted to talk about can you hear me sorry um I wanted to talk about one of our newer Technologies and that's the rorra printer that we were just able to access um and so Raph printing is well it's more of a complicated kind of printing but it creates these really high quality Works where you can play
022with different colors and printing on different materials um with different fonts and all of that kind of thing and so for me I've always been a writer I've worked at like I've been published in the jacket um I have a website yada yada like but one thing that this Raph printer has done has given me the ability to self-publish I've been releasing Zen and it's really cool to have the access to kind of see what it looks like if I were to have a career in the Arts I've been able to combine my love of art with my love of writing which I haven't really been able to do before so it's been cool to have that and it's kind of helping me get an idea of what I want to do yeah um a
023a project coming up is also going to be publishing ahas starting our own Publishing House and our 10th grade anatomy class this spring will be interviewing fifth graders about what they want to know about their bodies so they're going to make an anatomy workbook that we will publish and distribute to fifth grade classes and it'll be our 10th graders will be illustrating them and writing them um based on themes that students want to know about their bodies um I want to introduce Chris hondros our chemistry teacher who um has done these awesome projects with our last minute here uh I think the students said everything I wanted to say but just having the opportunity to integrate steam principles into the chemistry classroom we don't really always think about that um and having the opportunity to
024we took a field trip out to to C's do library where they saw the preservation department the conservation department and see what is open to them in the ter in the realm of both Art and Science together um and and really just combining that and and opening the mind to to the students and having the students explore it for themselves I think is a really powerful thing and with the quilts I mean I'm still floored by the quilt from last year because it does bring voices to those who tell their stories and it's imprinted and when you go to an art exhibit and you see your story being told um I I can only imagine that's that's really powerful um One Last Thing Before we um open it up to all these lovely people is
025that we recently got a a sponsorship with Bayer and that's allowed us to really expand what we do in integration um we were really good at the humanities and art together and now we're really working on bringing in science and math because we see that as an equity issue where our students often struggle and so I think by integrating science and math into our curriculum in this way we're seeing students um success in math and science increase um so I just want to mention that sponsorship we're really happy to partner with Bayer and um we have $360,000 over five years through that sponsorship first round of the artist team Grant yeah thank you thank you now I have some students here I believe may all be from the Jewish Student Union I'm not sure if
026they're all from the Student Union but uh leor Stander Benjamin Ross and Simone hard are you all here to present together okay um you'll have one minute each leor Benjamin followed by Simon yeah my name is Ben Ross I'm co-president of the Berkeley High School Jewish student union and I speak on behalf of some Jews and non-jews at my club who are Disturbed um by how teachers have dealt with the war in Israel many Jews have personal ties to Israel VI their friends family or religious beliefs verbal attacks on Israel affect them personally talking about Israel in classrooms has often led to um the fear that students have for their love or to teachers trying to Discount the fear that students have for their loved ones health or trivialize students religious beliefs in my club
027I've heard of teachers passing out flyers and putting up posters for political group boycott divestment and sanctions whose goals would deeply affect um these students loved ones um and they have also advertised their personal social media accounts and have downplayed the importance of Zionism for Jews uh Berkeley High announced a zero tolerance policy for anti-Semitism and islamophobia thank you I'm sorry we your time is at one the B ring hi my name is Simon Hera I am a seventh grader at Martin Luther King Middle School here in BD you don't have to agree with what I'm about to say but I hope you will lend me your ears I'm a Jewish kid recently I heard that Judaism is not meant to be taught or talked about at all in the Berkeley School District why I
028thought in Berkeley all our voices were meant to be heard all our culture is taught but I guess that that excludes some people like me at school we are not allowed to have any political beliefs being hung in our classrooms yet I know teachers who wear anti-jewish pins or hang political paraphernalia about this war in their classrooms and truly it makes me sad seeing some of my favorite teachers here today against me shame on you not making an attempt to help every one of your students feel safe on the daily I have my peers comment on my features badly just because I am Jewish you have a big nose because you're a stupid Jew they say it's just a joke kids speaking to me in German and following it with I don't like your people
029they say it's just a joke joke they say my traditions are dumbb and not welcome they say it's just a joke but really it isn't funny wake up Berkeley your kids don't feel safe thank you Benjamin Ross um hi my name is leor Stander and I'm an Israeli Jewish 9th grade student at Berkeley High School I moved to Berkeley from Israel this past summer recently all you n students had to give a presentation about their culture as part of an ethnic of the ethnic studies curriculum some of my friends and classmates were scared to present about their Jewish culture worrying what classmates or teachers might say however it should not be like this in a school that is supposed to be a safe space for children I have heard stories about ethnic studies teachers being
030racist against Jews or saying things against Israel and for me that is unacceptable a teacher that is TE teaching a class such as ethnic studies of which the whole purpose of the course is to make students feel safe in their school and included in the curriculum should not make their students feel like a Target in that class even though it seems like the norm is for every teacher to make their students feel safe in their class no matter the race or ethnicity that is unfortunately not the reality I would like to talk about my ethnic my ethnic studies teacher Mr Pedra who makes sure I feel safe in class and I think all teachers should be like him thank you we have um Amelia and Eva Eva levenson on the green New Deal followed by
031aaria followed by October if you could come and line up so we could take advantage of more time so that you can immediately be at the mic so um October ber herenstein and Amelia if you could not Amelia Azaria if you could line up behind them oh can you give them a minute and um 30 seconds together all right um good evening uh school board and superintendent my name is Eva levenson and I'm a sophomore at Berkeley High um I'm also a leader of the sunrise club I'm here to ask you to pass the green New Deal for schools we're here as a uh as a follow-up to our previous meeting um to the previous meeting when our members asked you to sign the resolution for the green New Deal um our demands are as
032follows free and healthy um free and healthy lunches safe and clean buildings um climate disaster plans and climate curriculums and finally clear Pathways to Green jobs our school district has already shown its commitment um to the environment and its Community we have accomplished several of the demands on this list wouldn't it be amazing if BD was was a catalyst for change um near the beginning of the green new deals for schools movement to spread the message and show your support Nationwide um right now students are woefully undereducated about career paths After High School especially in regards to Green jobs I think this should change hi um my name is ailia mono olon and I'm a senior at Berkeley High also part of the sunrise Club um I'm here today because of the devastating impacts of
033the climate crisis around the country and the world people have lost their homes their health their loved ones and their lives it's overwhelming learning about all these tragedies but not knowing what to do about them uh but the thing is we're not powerless we need to think globally and act locally by implementing the demands of the green New Deal for schools we can start by protecting our community we can be part of the national Sunrise move movement demanding uh attention and demanding change we can provide more Pathways to Green jobs and make our schools safe spaces in the event of climate disasters um thank you for listening we hope you uh take our request of considering this uh Green New Deal for school resolution thank you thank you and I'm not sure we actually have
034a copy of it so you can make sure you email us the resolution at board ofed berkeley.net thank you so much um next okay I'll give you three minutes total because I have to move forward you give it to the board secretary and she will uh hello um my name is James I'm a transgender student at Berkley High and you've all seen me up here before um I'd like to start my speech by saying that I am here for another topic but first I need to acknowledge what most of the room is here for I can't speak for my whole group but I as a Jew along with many other trans students um here stand with Palestine and we stand against the genocide that Israel is committing um I um I've been up here before
035um and I don't come here because I enjoy coming board meetings I don't come here because I enjoy telling you all stories that I would rather keep private I'm 17 I should be working on College apps not asking you for basic resources like bathrooms but I like many other trans students don't have reliable access to bathrooms at my school multiple times this week I've waited over 15 minutes for a bathroom to change my pad in worried that I would bleed through my pants um none of the BSD schools have enough bathrooms and the ones we do have are in repair our school has spent the money countless times to uh like regularly repaint over generally harmless refi in the bathrooms but they haven't fixed the toilet seat in the GH bathroom for months and they
036haven't replaced the sink Handles in C2 we have a pencil working as a handle in the C2 bathroom because students have been replacing the handle with a pencil because they have not replaced it um BD is seen as an inclusive District but we cannot call ourselves that if all students are not provided Equitable access to resources a school is not welcoming or supportive when students can't even use the bathroom all right we on behalf of the trans students of Berkeley High have compiled the list of requests towards equal treatment of transgender youth at our school we request that before school resumes after Thanksgiving break all dinner neutral bathrooms remain unlocked throughout the school day from 0 to 7th period we request that the gender neutral bathroom in the health center be accessible to all students
037who will fill out a request slip we request that all bathrooms including gender neutral bathrooms will consistently have working sinks soap dispensers functioning toilets minstral product dispensers soap and operable stall doors all Berkeley High students Des deserve safe and functional restrooms it will be clearly conveyed to everyone involved that students should have the freedom to enter buildings not corresponding to their hall passes which would enable them to use gender neutral bathrooms while gender neutral bathrooms are inaccessible teachers will be allowed to lend student keys to gender neutral faculty restrooms especially in buildings lacking gender neutral bathrooms additionally additionally goals that we know are not easy to implement we would like two gender neutral bathrooms in each two gendered bathrooms in each building to be converted to gender neutral bathrooms and a mandatory curricula for all
038students to be created which addresses bathroom culture at Berkeley High School covering graffiti vaping and smoking and more including people who have sex in our two functioning and reliably unlocked gender neutral bathrooms thank you thank you thank you for coming and we do have your demands I have to move to the next topic now but thank you we have it here we can read it thank you I'm Alex Day followed by Julio Gonzalez I have one minute each all right yeah my colleague here is just standing with me um so welcome everybody or hello everybody um come to unight to speak about the need to teach for Palestine and the need for the board to vocally and fully support that right and need need of Educators in B USD um sorry you have to forgive
039me usually I'm more prepared but I'm just kind of going off the top here um so we're really in a time of great repression in our district now what we need to do in order to make all students feel welcome is to really lean into controversial topics following the board policy but to do that need to teach about Palestine because what do we do if I'm in a history classroom talking about colonialism and a student says does this apply to my family in Palestine am I to lie to them it's racist against Arabs and Palestinians to deny their reality just as it's anti-semitic to deny anti-Semitism thank you um next after Julio if we could have Miss um Angela gagos Castillo to be ready uh my name is Julio um Julio Gonzalez I'm from uh
040Berkeley High School um I'm here to stand in solidarity with the hundreds of students who came out in support of Palestine when who are against genocide I stand with them all I'm here to ask you to pleas pleas support a resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza thank you free Palestine hi good evening um good evening school board members um my name is Dr Angelos Castillo Berkeley resident parent of two young adults that went through the school district and I'm here representing Latino sunos at Berkeley and friends um talking about the ethnic studies advisory committee um thanks to the efforts and commitment of students staff teachers community members and groups as well as the financial support and commitment of the district the dream of having the stories and voices of all marginalized uh people uh most
041impacted by racism um being told as part of our District's wide curriculum is actually coming to fruition let's not drop the ball let's continue doing it this is long overdue these are challenging times which Elevate the urgency and the importance of this curriculum I'm going to give my rest of it I don't know um hi my name is Janice ton and I'm representing the community group bosd aapi we're here to express our enthusiasm and support for the progress that the school district has made towards implementing its commitment to TK through 12th grade ethnic studies curriculum the the work that the district has done this year is truly impressive and commendable thank you that is the time I think do I get one more minute I called one name so that person had one minute um
042so thank you um I have several other subjects here I'm going to make room for one more which is uh around g chat there are six or seven people here around Gchat g g chat issues at B if I could give you um three minutes for this subject yes so when you have the same points if a couple people can speak it there there's a lot of different things but well then like one minute each for three people I'm gonna speak I'll speak we're good I'm just gonna talk real fast just do one minute and then they can switch speakers after one minute I'm only given three minutes for this topic total speak for three minutes please thank you I think she wanted to speak so you can speak for one minute it's not enough
043time to talk what talk about what we have to talk about all right all right all right so Berkeley High special day class home base is where we teach our most medically fragile and high need students in the past two years since the current program manager has joined the high school team the room has also started to be used to Warehouse students with histories of violent outbursts many students as well as staff have been physically assaulted myself included and occasionally hospitalized multiple incident reports have been fired filed this semester alone but we believe that sped Administration has mostly sat on them as the classroom has continued to grow more and more unsafe for both students and staff there is an additional pattern that started when uh the current program manager came into the department a
044pattern of retaliation against employees uh firings and involuntary transfers against people who do things like uh legally mandated CPS reports um our current uh program supervisor also created a private group chat for case managers this year to inform them about absences to new teachers use the uh their official district emails to smear some of the people you see here by name uh our uh program Supervisor was present on that chat um she uh did not correct the participants at any point even as other certificated teachers began to voice their concerns the program manager was also present on the chat thread and allowed this hostile and unprofessional behavior to continue the principal recently met with us as a classified team we asked for a restorative justice meeting which she promptly scheduled for us thank you Tanya
045on Monday morning when it was set to take place the current program supervisor canell it and instead in invited us to a group meeting for the whole department having us in the same room with the people we filed hostile work complaints against two weeks earlier we as a team have no faith in the current sped Administration we are asking for the immediate resignation of the program manager the program supervisor and we are asking for the teacher who Ed the group group chat to smear employees by name to be removed from classrooms at BHS immediately and for victims of retaliation to be reinstated uh and we stand with the students on the bathro to miss you just to say really quickly we had a couple of people in here who had specific experiences with this g
046chat we passed out the g chat I know very many of you have actually read it but like we have a lot to say about this for future events thank you thank you there is an opportunity for a second public comment at the uh at the end if you're able to come back you can even do second C comic from online I'm sorry Sarah I don't I have not called your name we're moving to our online speakers now I have um I can call two the first two up there even though we had three but I think that third person who had raised our hand dropped off so we're going to with uh Becky villagr followed by yeet ferara hi can you guys hear me you're on mute can you hear me now it says
047I'm not is our audio on mute can you keep talking so we can just do like test hi my name is Becky Von I'm sorry we don't hear her um I'm not I'm not on mute can we try that fora and maybe come back I don't know if it's her audio or our audio hi can people hear me yeah no we're not able to hear our online callers um I apologize we will try and get this fixed in the meantime I will move towards our next um committee comments is there anyone from one of our board appointed committees here all righty we receive you from I believe the P committee and they have five minutes good evening president babbit School Board directors and to our district leadership as well uh my name is Welden Brad
048street I am one of the co-chairpersons of the BP and Bara planning and oversight committee and this may be the shortest committee comment that BP has ever made last night the planning and ight committee convened its first meeting of the school year with our newly newly elected School represent resentatives in place and we're already working on matters important to our students tonight I have the pleasure to deliver the planning and oversight committee's unanimous endorsement of the Berkeley Public Schools educational Excellence Act of 2024 I'm also happy to report that many members of our committee have already expressed interest in supporting the campaign to get this new BP measure passed by the voters of Berkeley in March 2024 we're building a team already and thank you for your time and attention to thank you um now
049we will move towards Union comments I see Matt Meyers here our president of bft and then we followed by Jocelyn yay BCC is also in the house any other unions in the house tonight okay five minutes I I'll time you I'm just watching the time is not reset oh hello superintendent Ford marel in the Berkeley School Board I am Matt Meyer president of the Berkeley Federation of teachers I am here today to speak to the importance of what we do in the classroom and what brings us to this work each and every educator cares deeply about their students wants their students to succeed and works to create a classroom environment where our students learn to engage in the world around them whether it is providing social emotional tools collaborative cre tasks CTIC seminars or learning
050to code our students are curious and want to learn they want to know how to write an effective persuasive essay how to balance a budget and how to make sense of a fast changing world the common core standards speak to this as well we are tasked to teach analysis skills point of view research evidence historical interpretation and context we have shifted our practice over the decades from memorizing facts and figures to helping our students make meaningful connections and think critically about their world we've been encouraged no matter our subject area in an age appropriate manner to meet the students where they are to connect with their interests and questions and to have hard conversations we bring our authentic selves into this space just as we expect our students to as professionals we help our students
051build their skills through demonstration practice engagement and challenge our school board policies reaffirm this I would like to quote from BD board policy the governing board believes that students should have opportunities to discuss controversial issues which have political religious social historical or economic significance in which students are mature enough to investigate and address the study of controversial issues should help students learn how to gather and organize pertinent facts discriminate between fact and fiction draw intelligent conclusions and respect the opinions of others instructional policy on controversial issues is hereby stated by the board in order to protect teachers and school administrators from unwarranted attack by pressure groups and to ensure youth a well-balanced education thus this is not po now it is 100% for teachers appropriate for teachers to be discussing Global events in their classroom
052the debates that are going on in our country are going on in our schools we provide historical context data perspectives and questions so our students can deliberate and draw conclusions we even share our own beliefs as well as beliefs we don't hold to help our students think critically this is our work in these last few weeks our professionalism and profession have been under attack our teachers are nervous to talk about the conflict between Israel and Palestine they are worried someone will put in a complaint or will try to get them in trouble for activism they're doing on their own time in their personal lives they've been even told to take down signs or that their administrator will judge them for trying to live up to BU Bud's own board policy all these things are happening
053we should expect that engaging in conversations where there's not 100% agreement will be uncomfortable in the past few years many conversations about race and racism have been difficult but necessary there will be disagreement there will be debate some of us have signs and messages in our classrooms about all kinds of political topics whether it be police brutality the rights of lgbtq students the failure to pass meaningful gun regulations climate change regulations abortion rights supporting Ukraine and yes opinions on the war going on between Israel and Palestine none of this political speech stifles conversations and in fact oftentimes invites them having opinions is not hate speech we must respect the diversity of opinions our students and staff have would not be afraid to have opinions the pressure being put on by outside groups the stifle protected
054speech and authentic learning experiences must stop and we must be allowed to do our jobs and support our students in their educational Journey Mario savob someone who holds an important role in this community specifically said in 1964 to me freedom of speech is something that represents the very Dignity of what a human being is that's what marks us off from the stones and the Stars you can speak freely it is almost impossible for me to describe it is the thing that marks us as just below the Angels thank you thank you good evening Board of Education after a year of listening engaging in communication it has come to my attention that communication in this District continues to be poor as well as the as well as the lack of relational trust it has caused our
055members a great disease stress and a lack of faith in administration and management as a union we have great concerns for our members we have begun doing safety walks at schools to ensure that schools are safe and that employees have uh good working conditions these walks are done at about six schools thus far while we are doing these walks we have had to keep going back to BHS this prompted us to look deeper into the issues at BHS what we found were that I sped 2os were working out of class many in the role of Behavioral intervention specialist B for short there were multiple cases of student on staff assaults uh where we found that the reports were taken from the IAS and given to program managers who sat on those reports some of those
056reports resulted in worker comp claims we also found that students in need of bis support were shuffled into the homebased programs and remov from the general population these kids are in need of bis support and they are rotating IA Spar twos in and out of that program IA Spar twos are working out of class to this day due to the district saying that BS are no longer needed this was further confirmed in the LMC when the personnel commission supervisor stated that she was given a directive not to feel the bis positions we also found challenges with the scheduling and the lack of clarity of who the supervisors of the IAS are further conversations uncovered more complaints and the complaints range from Under reporting to Pure disrespect the oppressive language that is currently being used towards
057this staff in the face of the student body was both undermined and created safety issues as well what is the message that we're sending to students if teachers don't respect us then why should they in most cases the work is reduced to sitting in the back of the classroom with students who are difficult to manage and if a bcce member could not manage it then a contractor would however what we recently found out is that the contractors are as dis dis exposable as we are it wasn't until the infamous Gchat gang the Gchat gang is a group of 21 teachers whose roles and responsibilities vary in special education three teachers were vocal in disparaging remarks towards classified which led to a flood of title n complaints this Gchat left the ia's feeling devalued invisible and
058disrespected this again is the way that we are being treated from the top down to add insult to injury you then have a case manager and a program manager cancel the restorative justice and call a private meeting where they put the IAS in the room with teachers who made these disparaging remarks in addition the case manager and the program manager are included in this g chat If This Were A classified on certificated issue we would be on administrative leave with pay lack of relational trust makes me want to push back on the current the current class and comp study in the very beginning stages I made a public comment as it related to glender getting a 5% increase my comments were respectfully this class encompassed to relieve classified it is not it it is to
059bring us to a living wage it is to relieve the Working Poor it is not to reclass from the top down it is our firm belief that there is a conflict of interest all the way around we have to engage the we have had to engage the commission around our concerns and the commission agreed that we need to look at this closely as it will impact the livelihood of all of our members thank you thank you have we been able to rectify the online okay but are we able to hear from our online okay uh Miss vagram can you speak now yeah can you guys hear me I don't think it's working still we still can't hear her on the zoom we can hear each other it's just I think they can hear online but
060we can't hear here in the boardroom um um so we do have one committee who submitted comments via video I've just learned so we will hear from them now and um I guess I I apologize to our online callers it doesn't look like we're going to be able to hear from you this evening um but to everyone you can email us your comments we've probably received a lot of them already but B of bed at berkeley.net I'm sorry I'm not able to screen share for some reason we we should move on I'm not able to screen share on this uh computer either the audio no it doesn't sound like the audio is working either okay well we tried um can you Pro uh demote our public commenters we won't be hearing from um so that
061they're no longer on the screen for everyone and now we will move towards our board comments who would like to go first board members okay director Chang stepping up all right stepping it up um so uh thank you all for coming um uh so so full again and so appreciative of everybody's voices here um thank you superintendent U Ford Morel for your reminders of poting safe but also Brave spaces I know this is a challenge for everybody and for anyone um what does safe mean what does brave mean uh those are the things that with uh a place like Berkeley um we have had Decades of experience I'm totally going off script now hopefully doesn't hopefully make sense here um we have had Decades of ethnic studies here we're literally 25 years ahead of the
062state mandate for ethnic studies in high schools um I very strongly believe that the acceptance that there will always be viewpoints different from our own is critical to the development of our kids self-confidence self-awareness and critical analytical skills that doesn't mean that we have to agree on things but we can agree to disagree and have a space that is not only safe for all students and all persons involved but also that is brave um this means to me from a governance perspective trusting the pedagogical practices of the subject Professionals in our district namely our great teachers and of course again from a Berkeley values based pedagogy uh that means uh information that is grounded in all facts and histories in this regard I want to give a shout out again to BC's long serving decades
063long ethnic studies program um as a reminder however if anyone feels that they have been harassed or discriminated against on the basis of shared ancestry in violation of title six of the federal civil rights act please reach out to the district civil rights compliance office It is Well staffed and its purpose is exactly to respond to such concerns uh you have processed there um in the past two weeks I'm supposed to tell you what I have done uh so you don't think I'm just sitting on my Laurels um I visited Longfellow Middle School for an on-site it was pretty exciting um I'm not like a construction dude and not particularly Burly so when I saw the two on-site construction managers and impressive work they were doing is wow they're there on site and they're engaged
064fully with the principal and the vice principal I was very impressed with the communications that they have they have each other's text messages um I was there when an electrical outage occurred and immediately the principal um engaged with the site manager who was there and he spun around and went right to the site and helped the um the teacher uh resolve that issue um I also have attended the BHS Safety Committee and I also saw and learned that our Administration and parents are engaged in conversation uh the superintendent was there as well as her her team um on important safety issues ranging from security cameras and door locks which have come up before here in this forum um to title six Title 9 protections um I attended the construction bonds committee as well uh with
065director schanowski and was also impressed by the vast range of modernization construction projects that are occurring across this District to ensure accessibility but also inspirational spaces so that type of Engagement with um the outcome and the shaping of design Etc is again uh closely aligned with the type of expression of speech that we see here with folks coming to public comment and com to committee meetings um please again continue to reach out to me by email um to set Zoom office hours I've had number of those such engagements and in the future um I will have actual physical office hours I did hear some folks asking about that I just haven't scheduled them out yet thanks a lot right director shinoski guess I'm going next um so a couple things first um I just want
066to thank especially the presentation uh with that quilt as a chemist um and somebody that has a lot of crafty Hobbies I just that was so great um and I know through my own teaching of chemistry how important it is to really bring disciplines in to make it seem less daunting and more accessible so I just really loved it um I also want to um emphasize the uh first read of a couple of board policies tonight um I'm grateful to our uh policy committee for bringing these to us um we have a first read of the uniform complaint procedure uh board policy and I really hope that this helps to streamline the process um I know that we've been receiving a lot of complaints lately and so I just want to give a shout out
067to all the staff that is working really hard to um work through those in a fair um and fast way um and I ask for everyone that has submitted a complaint to please be patient and know that our staff are working really hard um to you know do their due diligence and research complaints and make sure that they um can provide a timely response um I want to thank pno once again for coming again tonight and voicing their support for the BP renewal um I just really appreciate that committee and all the work they've done I also um want to give a shout out to the IAS that are here um today um I spent some time over the last couple of weeks trying to learn more about the special ed program especially at Berkeley
068High School um and so I want to thank the teachers the staff and the administrators that um spoke with me to help to for me to learn more and thanks for all the work that you do at the schools I also had a chance to visit rise in the last couple of weeks and I um talked with Miss Betty about how um she's expanding the program and how that's going so that was really wonderful to see and I've also been having some conversations about our ninth grade math and how we really um can work towards a true Universal ninth grade for our kids that avoids um any tracking at all in our schools uh I attended the Berkeley High safety meeting um with some of my colleagues that's already mentioned a few times and I've
069had a number of meetings in the last couple of weeks with concerned parents so there's a lot that's going on in the district and a lot that we need to tackle um I know parents are concerned about issues of anti-Semitism islamophobia um inadequate supports for our trans kids uh sexual harassment and consent education and harm um so I've met with parents about all of those issues um I do want to have one final comment um I just want to say once again that I stand with teachers in support of their academic freedom um I've gotten a few questions questioning whether academic freedom applies to K through 12 it is in our bft contract so our teachers do have that academic freedom and I fully support that and I really um want to lift up some
070of the comments that have been made earlier um that we need to consider our teachers to be professionals and experts at their craft and so I thank the teachers for doing the work that they do every single day for our kids thanks thank you vice president V yeah I'm going to keep my comments pretty brief tonight but I just wanted to thank everyone who came out to the board meeting I especially wanted to thank our students it was really wonderful just to see so many different um diverse issues that our students were flagging for us so keep coming uh we're here to serve you that's why we stay up late that's why we you know make these hard decisions it's really to make sure that we're doing what's in your best interest so thank you
071to our students for coming out um wanted to thank our labor partners for flagging very important issues including uh the importance of protecting academic freedom and so uh thank you very much for being here I know it's a very hard job and you're very tired and so really appreciate you being with us tonight um I also uh just wanted to thank our trans students that keep coming it's very heartbreaking for me that we're not able to address their issues I appreciate um them writing our requests and want to make sure that we you know as a board take the time to read this and to really respond to all the bullet points that they laid out for us um see oh for our I also want to thank our CTE students that came out and
072and presented both you know on on the merits of the subject matter because I thought it was great that their project was focused on immigration and creating a sense of belonging for all of our diverse communities but also um because they all come from diff from diverse backgrounds too and so what's beautiful about our CTE program is that students from all sorts of different academic backgrounds um can be attracted can feel a part of this important program so I just wanted to to thank our students that came out tonight I also just wanted to update the community on what's been going on on Monday evening I wanted to thank uh director Chang District staff and parents from Latinos zos de Berkeley for getting together to discuss uh you know how we're doing on our elll
073master plan I know that's going to be one of the topics of presentation tonight but for the community just to know that this is something that advocacy groups like Leos Ona Berkeley really flag for the district on a regular basis and so although I haven't seen the you know the presentation tonight I I have gotten some of the the questions that constituents um really want us to focus on so thank you director Chang for attending that meeting with me and I also want to thank all of my board colleagues and for attending the Berkeley High safety committee meeting I think you know there's that we hear about safety from a lot of different places definitely from our elementary school parents from the Moss Group which I know the superintendent has has mentioned before that make
074our school safe group and also from our high school and these things are very much related I think that something that's a very common thread that's coming out of these safety meetings is the need for improved coordination with BPD and so I hope that they these meetings keep happening and I know that we'll be strengthened in the future and the superintendent has wonderful plans on how to do that but I think that that's been a Common Thread in both of those groups is that we really need to be talking more often to our city partners and coordinating more closely and so I'm really happy that those conversations are happening and also one of the things that really stood out to me at that at that Berkeley High meeting was just how we Define safety in
075such a diverse way what the students consider safety and versus what the parents consider safety and some and having that transparency with the STA staff I think was really important too um I think it was a it felt very much like a safe space where we could talk about okay these are some things that we're doing and some things that we can do better and have that open dialogue and so I appreciate all of the parents that were there facilitating the meeting because I know that was that took a lot of work and I also um really appreciated the staff for being able to be vulnerable especially the high school staff on you know what what we're doing to improve what are our growth areas but that transparency and conversation I think also helps parents
076feel safer sending their their children to their schools to our schools as they should so thank you again for coming tonight looking forward to the presentation on the master plan and transportation too I saw someone from AC Transit out there Ryan so very excited uh to follow up there's a lot that happens in the background on Transportation issues and so um I'm really excited that we're able to to have this conversation tonight my last comment was going to be about the deac uh the the deac committee comments I know we weren't able to see them but in addition to sharing them with the board of directors superintendent it would be great if we could put them publicly somewhere on the website so that members of the public that weren't able to hear them can hear
077them and that can listen to the concerns from our English language Learners thank you thank you student dere D hi everyone thank you all for being here with us tonight I was very excited to walk into the meeting today and see so many of my fellow peers here to speak and support causes that they're passionate and affected by I truly believe that in the state of our world youth voices are both powerful and essential so I commend all of you for taking the time to come here and speak to us tonight I agree that our schools can and should continue to improve and ensuring our students feel safe and supported in and out of the classroom something that's been repeated heavily as a part of the youth and government program which I'm a part of
078is that we debate ideas and not people which I think is really a crucial message at this time especially when conversations are being held in our classrooms and I would also like to encourage you all to um please feel free to reach out to me for any support you might need um especially for students if you'd like to meet for lunch or after school I'm holding office hours this Thursday at lunch in the sea Gallery so please come visit me because I don't want to eat lunch alone and then next I want to talk about g- Shack our District's gender equity and sexual harassment committee this is a topic that I deeply care about and have acted upon myself as co-president of B to stop harassing and a member of the sexual harassment advisory Committee
079of Berkeley High I'd like to highlight that the first meeting is Monday November 27th from 5: to 6:30 on Zoom the details can be found on the VC website and if you're interested in being a member of this committee the applications are still available and due this Friday November 17th and I hope that parents and staff who are interested will consider applying in being a part of this important committee that serves our students thank you thank you um let the record reflect that I excuse director Brown at approximately 8:10 p.m. she was trying to make it but she really wasn't feeling well so um she is now excused but she did want everyone to know that this Saturday she will be having office hours on Zoom so please check the uh BSD website for that
080link for her Zoom link and it will be at 9:30 a.m this coming Saturday also want to give an update on uh the Committees that I've been working on so one has been the 2 by two committee that's a committee in which two board members meets with two City Council Members um a very important update that I think our teachers will be happy to hear about relates to the Mia street parking permits um in lie of spending $27 million on a parking garage we have been advocating with the city to offer us more parking permits so that you all won't have to continue to move your cars around around Berkeley High every uh two hours I believe it is um leaving our classrooms and and and rushing and hustling to get back on time during
081breaks so that is supposed to go before the city council on December 12th and so as many of you come to speak to us about it that our advocacy goes as far as it goes but I'm sure hearing from you all directly will definitely move the needle so uh keep that in mind for December 12 um and Advocate appropriately we also talked about uh our zero waste efforts those who have been in the reusable um advocacy method or mode for years we have about four schools now that are actively using reusables all the time so that is appraise and we are saving a lot on disposals and we are also saving our community that's going to come before the board in January um as a part of our climate update so you will hear more
082of the details on that and the plans for the next schools that we're going to roll that out so I'm very glad that we are uh making progress with our reusables we also talked about bright streets um making sure that our signs are clear and um adequate to keep our school safe and we talked about the 2020 Vision which is now called yep and there's a lot of swag now our students put together this logo I don't know if you could see it there's water bottles there's notebooks um but it really celebrates our diversity and inclusion uh through the art of hair and Hair Designs uh lifted up by a book of reading and we know that books includes all of our cultures in many ways so I want to thank the students for that
083project and I want to thank the students for working on uh the RFP those who apply to review the um the proposals for that spending um and we look forward to see seeing how yep is going to continue to support Berkeley Public Schools lastly as she alluded to I'm also on the um policy committee and we are bringing forward several policies several of you always talk about our policies and you wonder about our policies uh director Brown and I work very hard on trying to update most of these policies we actually have another meeting tomorrow to to keep the chain going so um the first readings of several of these policies are um on the agenda uh today and um want to definitely point out the civility disruptions uniform complaint procedure and complaints concerning the
084school when you see resend on there that's because we've learned that some of them have been on there twice or we're updating it so it's not as if it's it's going away and that concludes my comments next we will go towards asking for an approval of our consent calendar is there a motion to approve I move to approve is there a second second all in favor I I I I okay consent calendar has been approved um do want to say one more thing though if you are coming if you are going to do public comment again at the end and you've already filled out a card I'm going to put the cards out so you can resubmit that card otherwise there'll be no way I can uh know or call you again at the end
085of the meeting uh yeah so if you could just put that on the back table for them uh and again there's no guarantee that I will still be able to hear from all of you at the end of the meeting uh let's move towards our first presentation um which is multilingual master plan but 30 uh we have 30 minutes for this item uh good evening uh Board of Education superintendent members of the public um before we get started I do have um Hilda Valencia com from deac and we think it would be important to be able to hear from the deac and before we present this presentation we want to extend appreciation to members of the deac they our our parents and staff members um they are committed Partners to this work um and we
086appreciate that uh commitment and partnership that they deliver to us when we have a chance to meet and engage with them so these are the comments from the deac representative um I will read them as she wrote them my name is Hilda Valencia I am the chair of the district English learner advisory committee I'm providing comments on behalf of the deac to the board of education on the implementation of Berkeley unified's multilingual learner master plan since the plan was approved on December 14th 2022 we held one deac meeting each month January to April and two meetings in May during every meeting the deac site reps collaborated with District leaders staff and other educational Partners on the needs assessment of the multilingual learner master plan next steps for implementation and or the local control accountability plan
087the daac parent and family members have been engaged in discussions sharing their experience and input on topics such as testing reclassification instruction curriculum and funding one of the main comments in regards to testing that the daac members shared is the need for their children to have time to practice taking the summative elpac during the deac meeting in January parents were shown how to help their child take a practice summative elpac test at home and were given time to share any questions they had this empowers parents to support their children and demonstrating their English language proficiency to the best of their ability in May the daac agenda included how to understand the summit of elpac scores in February the deac members contributed to EXC me excuse me U I appreciate it I just want to ask
088the audience if you could respect that we are in presentation mode we do need to be able to hear what's happening thank you in February the daac members contributed to the implementation of the mlmp by participating And discussing the needs assessment survey the results of this survey have been critical to BD's partnership with parents in the implementation of the plan for example one parent wrote I am wondering how current ELD teachers really have the time to be both ELD teachers and ELD site coordinators looking forward to the district to implement the mlmp in terms of the FTE allocation to site to be able to implement the insights of the parent that the insights the parents provided in the survey are critical to the development of next steps for instruction and programming the daac committee learned
089about and gave input on the local control accountability plan goals that pertain to our multilingual Learners during five meetings last year 20 committee members worked together to to create and vote on nine recommendations to adjust the goals for this year the recommendations included providing more support for our long-term English Learners at the high school expanding the constructing meaning PD to include the elementary schools and increasing Outreach and support to our latinx families the Dak committee meetings have been informative productive and collaborative we are looking forward to continuing to partner with the district to ensure that the master plan is fully realized and that our multilingual Learners achieve academic excellence and reach their full potential that concludes the comment and we will include the video in the in the board communication this week um okay I'm
090gonna have to project from my computer okay I've got my computer up oh you got it okay Al all right with that I'm G to turn it over to director Chris albeck to make introductions um for this presentation thank you good evening BSD board directors in BD Community my name is Christopher albeck and I am the director of the curriculum instruction Department here in BD it is a pleasure to be with you here this evening as my colleagues and I present to you an update on bsd's multilingual language learner master plan as you recall from last fall the approved master plan was the byproduct of a collaborative effort between educational Partners this plan built on BD's 2013 master plan and aligned BSD with California Department of Education guidelines and the California English learner road map
091before we begin we'll take a minute to introduce ourselves and our role in the BD Community hi I'm Kathleen Marte I am the lead TSA for ELD k K through 12th grade and I'm Matthew espinos Castro I'm the director for Equity achievement and belonging Department an appreciation for the team being here together this evening as always BD is committed to our common purpose of enabling and inspiring our diverse student body to achieve academic excellence and make positive contributions to the world in tonight's presentation we'll be making reference to several tenants of the cni Department's cause also of note is the interdepartmental nature of this presentation and this work we recognize that disrupting patterns of predictability for communities that have been underserved or under responded to do not happen solely within a single Department's work next
092slide please in tonight's presentation my colleagues and I will present an update on our current master plan although there are many components and subcomponents of this plan tonight will'll be focusing on the six goals identified on the slide that you see before you we will discuss each of the plan goals with an update aspiration and integration framework as an update we'll share what has been accomplished so far this year as an aspiration we'll identify what our next steps are towards reaching that goal for integration we will recognize and pinpoint how our master plan goals intersect with the elements established in Bud's Laten X resolution next slide please as you can see on the slide before you the usd's Laten X resolution has nine elements and through this presentation we will share the connections between the
093master plan goals and the ltin X resolution's Essential Elements next slide please the first goal of the master plan is around English language proficiency the goal states that our multilingual Learners will develop full receptive and productive proficiencies in English within 5 to seven years of receiving ELD Services as measured by the summative English language proficiency assessment known as the elpac to identify the progress that b has made towards this goal we will now take a look at the 2223 elpac achievement data as you can see on the slide before you each student receives one of four lpac performance uh levels back one list please the four lpac performance levels are then divided into six progress indicator levels as this goal States our work is to ensure that Bud's multilingual Learners who have yet to reclassify
094are more moving towards language proficiency as you can see before you currently 58.1% of all BD multilingual Learners are making Prof making progress towards English language proficiency this rate is 8% higher than the current state of California average important to note one of our Latin X resolution elements is reporting on the progress and prioritizing of Latin X success goals as you can see before you the next few graphs next slide please it illustrate how our non-spanish-speaking multilingual Learners are progressing as compared to bsd's Spanish-speaking multilingual Learners at the primary level 77% of our non-spanish multilingual Learners are making progress towards language proficiency as compared to 70% of our Spanish speaking multilingual Learners as we transition to secondary next slide please we see that the growth declines that and 43% of our non-spanish-speaking multilingual Learners are
095making progress towards language Prof efficiency as compared to 51% of our Spanish-speaking multilingual lers at this point we do not have the year-over-year progress data to determine if this progress is higher or layer than previous years however this data does lift up the fact that our Spanish-speaking multilingual Learners are making Advanced progress in the secondary levels as is the intention of our Twi program next slide please one component of our multilingual learner progress that we would like to highlight is the work around supporting our multi multi lingual Learners who are duly identified as being a multilingual learner and having an individual education plan or a Section 504 plan during this school year we have trained our primary and middle school spical education case managers on supporting our multilingual Learners and the reclassification process next month
096we'll be doing the same thing with our sped as primary sped case managers lastly and moving forward in support of advancing our multilingual learner progress towards language proficiency B educators will be using and families will have access to the state's newly released elpac interim assessment system different from the summit of lpac which occurs at the end of each year the interim assessments are versatile and can be administered to students in either a benchmark or a formative manner providing teachers and administrators with data they can use to support teaching and learning throughout the school year goal goal number two is academic success quote English Learners are taught highly rigorous academic content that enables them to meet performance standards in all content areas consistent with those for all students this goal intersects with latinx resolution component design
097culturally and linguistically responsive instruction so with the work of the new curriculum instruction department and the multi-tiered systems of support team BD is making significant strides towards um ensuring that our we have a rigorous curriculum in line with the Common Core State Standards and with collaboration with the different departments we are working on improving our curriculum and pedagogy to make sure that it it affirms and builds upon the diverse backgrounds of our students and at the same time holding high expectations so how do we ensure that our multilingual Learners have access to this rigorous curriculum well as oh go back please we're still on that slide as um how do they have access to this rigorous curriculum as identified by the California Ela ELD States framework well the key is uh integrated ELD which in
098essence in BD is our constructing meaning program and through the constructing meaning PD our secondary general education teachers are learning how to uh provide access to the curriculum so the multilingual Learners are participating in the same tasks without lower the rigor of the activities um so I want to give some examples so for example um they're using a multitude of strategies and one for example is close reading so on the left you see the image the students who have participated in in close reading they have to the teacher provides scaffolds and structures so they can learn how to skillfully chunk annotate site and summarize what they read and then on the right is a image it's not too clear but that's of the science um notebook of a student at King a multi multilingual learner
099at King who after annotating a text with a partner they wrote a summary on magnetic force next slide all right well goal three is focused on uh family engagement and um strong intersection with our latinx community and of course we want to call out that we recognize not all our multilingual Learners are identify as latinx and not all latinx uh students or families are multilingual learners but we see a strong uh overlap and um in common goals there um creating a safe welcoming inclusive uh climate um is not just for our students but also for our families um in partnership with Latinos de Berkeley and we have worked uh and in the office of family engagement and Equity we work to identify several different topics and areas of particular interest in family learning workshops um
100specifically around uh and that turned into under this broader umbrella of alante or um latinx uh latine success um these goal or these themes of SE soy or celebrations of who uh Latin latinx culture and who they are um SEO or building out capacity um to get families into uh or to support their students uh academic success and Excellence as well as to um find Pathways to college uh and Career Success and then uh SEO um which is navigating our system and um to College and Career Success so um those have uh um included uh work with Pro cave a project to inspire um workshops provided by Latinos Burkley and the office of family engagement and Equity explicitly a partnership with Daybreak health for mental health specific uh family workshops virtually and a wellness series
101at um Berkeley High School um in addition to that uh we've been implementing new Pro policies for translation interpretation uh and accessing that and expanding access to that um at their sites which includes ASL interpretation as well as um uh interpretation across multiple languages our Equity teacher leaders have also done an investigation using the English learner roadmap um and using and leveraging tools to do a safe and welcoming assessment which includes um uh um analyzing evidence at the each School site of multilingual um access and um welcoming multilingual Learners and families into the space and then um we've put a particular emphasis around um developing the leadership skills through elac and daac which includes uh of course our daac is providing input on our elcap which is really critical in our elcap development year this
102year in particular as well as our elac working um in particular with our ELD coordinators and our site leaders to inform programs at the school sites but we've also joined them together in joint meetings um with other uh advisory committees um for everyone to partner together and and to share voice and advocacy uh and looking at data and developing leadership skills um and so we really believe that is the next generation of our leaders in the district next slide please goal four around the master plan is to prepare all our multilingual Learners to be College and Career ready the first part of golf the P first part of goal four is to monitor the progress of our multilingual Learners in an unbiased approach as a district we continue to roll out elevation not to be
103confused with educ climber elevation is a web PA web-based platform that allows our Educators access to specific multilingual learner data progress monitoring protocols and the reclassification system as a former site administrator I can speak to the improvements that this tool has made on site team's ability to review student progress identify student needs and collaborate next steps to support our multilingual Learners the second part of goal four is to identify students in need of extra support this component of the goal is aligned with the Latin X resolution elements of understanding Equity gaps and identifying students for tiered interventions US USD has rolled out a standardized academic mtss system whereby all of our students are being assessed and monitored for academic performance in the system we are using standardized benchmark assessments to identify students who need additional
104support and intervention upon this identification our educators are matching students with the tailored academic intervention needed to fill the gaps in their unfinished learning once this intervention is provided we are monitoring progress in a systematized and unbiased manner to ensure that the interventions are efficacious and students are progressing towards identified Target learning goals the last part of this goal includes the use of evidence-based classroom strategies as the first priority to improve learning BD has continue to invest in the building of our teachers capacity by ensuring that all of our TK to5 Educators engage in the 5-day core reading Academy the goal of this professional learning series is to cultivate a shared language and foundational understanding among all of our Educators around the essential research-based tenants of reading instruction by mon monitoring our student academic progress
105identifying students in need of additional support and using evidence-based instruction we are working to ensure that all of our multilingual Learners are College and Career ready moving forward we'll be working to identify specific needs of our newcomer and long-term multilingual Learners we'll be investigating curriculum supplements and training needs to ensure that these two multilingual learner subgroups continue to make progress towards their language proficiency next slide please goal number five of our master plan is the implementation of instructional programs for multilingual Learners with Fidelity and quote the primary goal of the monitoring is to ensure that every school in the district has effective and compliant programs for all multilingual Learners this goal intersects with the latinx resolution component of um culturally designing culturally and responsive curriculum so um since the adopt the approval of the multilingual
106learning master plan BSD is making significant strides towards the school um the main two components of the services for ELD are federally mandated programs of integrated and designated ELD and E the image in the middle is of e achieves blueprint for success for serving our English Learners and it explains how these two components are while they're different that their interrelated purposes so um I'd like to touch on a few different uh areas what we've actions we've taken since the approval of the plan first I'd like to talk about testing and we're we're uh working to ensure that testing doesn't take away from too much instructional time and so one of the ways we do that is we test all new BD students who uh are have the home language survey of other language in English
107we test them over the summer so that we can determine their English language status and uh ensure proper PL program placement before the school year starts and not delay ELD instruction in addition to that the district will be sending test examiners to the sites to help with the summit of elpac testing in the spring so we can complete it in a timely manner and then in terms of professional development in addition to the constructing meaning PD that I talked about we have the systematic ELD this is the first time in a decade that all of the ELD teachers are being trained in systematic ELD and um uh there's been a lot of really positive responses to the PD and I just want to uh quote what one teacher said I have shared I have been
108teaching ELD at John Mir for four years and I'm currently being trained in our adopted curriculum systematic ELD this training has been enlightening despite having used it for the past four years not only am I gaining access to many resources which has up Has Lifted my teaching but I'm also being immersed in the why this training has clarified so many questions and has given me the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues practice language protocols and analyze assessments and student work and then uh last spring as you may know we purchased uh more systematic e units to make sure that each School site has a complete set of the curriculum and uh these units have Hands-On materials that are you can see in the picture they have vocabulary cards posters and other Hands-On materials um that really
109uh are critical to teaching ELD and um now that the El teachers are able to deliver the entire scope and sequence of the language and forms and functions at the specific proficiency level of their students so this is really great looking ahead we are working on identifying and purchasing a supplementary curriculum to better meet the needs of our newcomers lastly I just wanted to mention that the district approved of an increase in lcap funding for ELD FTE uh with this increase in FTE ELD teachers have more time for doing their um duties related to coordinating such as monitoring students who have been reclassified as flent English proficient and then furthermore as a quote from an ELD teacher the increase in te has a direct impact on our students our multilingual Learners are receiving more designated
110ELD which translates to more practice using English language functions which are embedded in academic and social interactions this designated instruction time is critical for the success of for our multilingual Learners and so they're very grateful for that increase in FTE all right and then finally our goal number six is focus on building out multilingualism and a multilingual community Community here in Berkeley um we recognize that our students uh come to us some of which Speaking um only Lang L one language or more that are not English some of us only speaking English and other students that are bilingual or multilingual um at the start of their Journey our goal is to produce as many students by the time they graduate that are multilingual um from any of those three categories dep regardless of how they
111enter one way that we're doing that of course is investing in our our two-way immersion program at Sylvia Mendes and at Longfellow uh really critical and important program for us uh and um we want to um continue to support that in particular um Sylvia Mendes has engaged in a partnership with the Center for Applied Linguistics over the past year um which resulted in um uh a lot of professional development and learning and integration around effective um strategies for multilingual and two-way immersion programs um and a report and um that was actually just released this last week um and um and further work to come um certainly to support that beyond that though uh we do have bilingual pathway awards that are awarded at the end of uh fifth grade as well as eth grade for
112students that uh to encourage them to continue along the path to uh multilingualism or bilingualism that eventually will lead to uh the Seal of biliteracy and so you can see our data as we've begun a small group uh uh last year or two years ago U doubled that this uh last year and we hope to continue that uh exponential growth um and again this is not just for Spanish the we're this is encouraging all of our students to engage and um and provide um evidence and celebrate their multilingualism across and any of their languages which might be a Heritage language or one that they're learning as a world language in our um by our amazing world language teachers in our high school and that that concludes our presentation on to questions thank you thank you
113so much for that presentation uh we will start with vice president badev and we have five minutes remaining great well thank you so much I just have a couple of questions about the elpac because I know this is a common issue that comes up with families and just the preparation and in the development of the master plan we talked about how important to it was to to prepare families and their students for that test it sounds like and correct me if I'm understanding this wrong that there are two touch points right one in the spring for the summative test and the other one for the interim assessment so how does the office of family engagement and equity in particular with our you our our Spanish speaking staff support family engagement for those two touch points
114of the Alpac test so that's one question and then I have two other questions you want to speak to the process so um the interim lpac is primarily for uh teachers so um I have been training the ELD teachers at the collaboration meetings how to uh administer the lpac the interim lpac and it's really exciting because there's two ways they can admin Min there's the standard way which the student can experience a test-like setting and get practice and build confidence and then there's also the non-standard way where you could do whole group Let's uh practice the speaking section turn and talk to a partner or we can look at the rubrics together and have discussions and so there's going to be a lot of uh learning and helping to make sure the students understand what's
115being asked to them on the test so they can show truly show what they're capable of because there's times when students come to the test and they don't know what they're supposed to do and and it doesn't reflect really what they're able to do so that's the interim elpac and then we have um practice tests which are available to families that we will just like we did last year during the daac and elac we will show the the parents how to give their children a practice test at home if they'd like and it's optional and um the family engagement Specialists work with the ELD teachers to support the elac in terms of communication yeah as mentioned earlier um our elac and DS have been trained uh one of the uh um specific uh trainings that
116was provided was understanding what the um lpac is and what it means which is a critical component and the fact that we have interim assessments now allows us to uh better communicate throughout um throughout the school year instead of waiting until the next school year or the end of the school year um what progress is being made as well as where there's areas of need which of course is really critical for informing instruction for the teachers but also is really critical for motivating our students and our families um to continue um to work towards those goals um and so uh in partnership with the curriculum instruction Department our family engagement team both at the site level as well as uh supporting U resource development and collection and curation at the district level to make sure
117that um we can make uh uh have access to that information for all of our multilingual leer families that's great and then my second question and I have one about college and career Readiness my second question has to do with Staffing because I remember last year I you know after we approved the master plan there was a big advocacy push both from deac and from Latinos Anda Berkeley to increase uh ELD Staffing and I think teachers also came and and spoke about the importance of increasing Staffing so that they're able to implement the plan with Fidelity how are we doing this year are there any gaps in Staffing either at the secondary or Elementary School level how is um Staffing uh going for ELD teachers I think in regards to what Miss Marte referenced we
118are seeing a lot more opportunity with the increased FTE and overall uh a lot of appreciation towards the Board of Education and then thinking about our L Cup this year thinking about what is still missing um right now we are sort of in the needs anal analysis stage of of thinking about this as we engage our stakeholders as we um hit the midyear part of this year so um we feel good about where we're at with the increases and we're very appreciative of it and then we can get back to you with next steps on what is still missing great thank you um other directors goad um just so from my understanding um students can test out of the multilingual program if they like is that true so I was just wondering cuz I actually
119do have a couple um classmates in front friends that did do that and I was wondering if there are any support mechanisms for students who would like to do that um like once they've transferred out in um like kind trying to adjust into the like native speaker classrooms um are there support mechanisms for that um to make sure I understand your question you're wondering if what kind of support there are for students who have exited the ELD program well um students who have exited their ELD program they're classified as uh uh reclassified fluent English proficient students and um we have to we monitor them for four years and so we look at their data right now there uh the ELD teachers are working with uh other staff to look at the data and see if
120they're meeting State benchmarks and then if they are not meeting state state benchmarks they look at close detailed data see okay well why not and what type of intervention they might need and then they're offered interventions great thankk you I have a question on your slide where you said that you are monitoring progress in an unbiased approach what does that mean specifically it would mean that the assessments that we're using are normed either on a national scale or a state scale and it would not be an assessment that um our educators are necessarily just coming up with um so it's something that has been research backed and and has been proven that this is a assessment that can be used across subgroups and given a a result that we think is valid and can be
121used as a judgment on where students are in their proficiency great thank you for that clarification my second question was around um reclassification I learned at the Town Hall town hall meeting last year uh around the Latino around the latinx resolution that our students unless they are reclassed it keeps many of them from um taking the traditional a through G classes and impacts their ability to uh be accepted into college and so I'm wondering are there any advocacy efforts to um to change that because we know that that exam while it may be important uh it may not mean that they can't actually U meet the challenges of our regular a through G English classes and so I'm really concerned about that and wondering why that is and if there are any advocacy issues we
122could do to Cen and keep that as a barrier from them reaching those a through G goals I can speak to some of the advocacy efforts and I think that's why we purposely highlighted the work that we are trying to think about as it pertains to our students who have IEPs or Section 504 plans because very often um students who are duly identified are the ones that get stuck in in El Services right um and despite being in um maybe being in Berkeley since since kindergarten uh thinking about what what what additional services or what advocacy needs to be provided to ensure that these students when they once they get to high school that they have all the options available and these students are certainly ones that sometimes those options become limited so that's why
123we're trying to work with our case managers and our Section 504 coordinators on ensuring that they understand the supports that our multilangual language Learners need but also what are the reclassification processes through the IEP or through the 504 and then also mentioned in the presentation just thinking a little bit about more about our long-term English language Learners and we also see you saw in the data when it gets to the secondary level Sometimes some of our students stop making that progress and with that you know they're potentially prevented I don't know the specifics of like what classes they are allowed to take and what classes they they can't take when they're still receiving El at the high school if anybody wants to jump in on that but I do think that's something that we are
124continuing to think about specifically for these groups that seem to stop making progress at that point um I'm not aware of uh any restriction from taking any classes because you're an ELD I think that it might be a matter of if there's um room in their schedule so I know for example the students who are in the they call it the MLP program these are usually uh newcomers they have two classes of ELD a day and so um one is focused on the improving the English language proficiency at their level and then the other is more of sort of an integrated approach but because of those two classes they might have uh less flexibility but there isn't that I know I'm going to I made a note of it and I'm going to ask the
125MLP coordinator to get more information and we could get back to you great thank you uh Dr Jan did you have a question um no just a a followup firstly thank you for all the efforts here uh it's really important of course um was I miss hearing I thought that um the elevator program is in place that helps can you explain that a little bit elevation um elevation in terms of um what role that plays in in the in the multilingual learner process thanks sureck okay so um you could think of are you familiar with SA or so it's it's kind of like a One-Stop shop uh so say for those of you who don't know is the platform for data and IEPs for students with IEPs well elevation is like a One-Stop shop for
126data for students who are um are multilingual Learners and so it has all the data there and it's very userfriendly and we can view everything um in including you know how long they've been in the country and um and then there's uh meetings that are in the platform so instead of um the Old Brick and mortar format for doing process like reclassification or off front modering where we're you know sending papers back and forth through the site and the district it's all online now everything the forms are online and everything it's so it streamlines everything does that help answer your question great thank you uh parents have I'm sorry uh I would also say a big part of it that I think is beneficial is the collaboration that it builds between the Educators at the
127site and also Educators at the district office so for example when a student has reached reclassification criteria they're meeting the standards either on their grades their star assessment um their SBA assessment and their lpac assessment and the site educators are coming together to have those conversations and really looking at all those assessments and all those data points and then once those are signed they head off to Kathleen and myself and then we have another set of eyes on looking over everything making sure that the students benchmarks are being cleared um to the to that level and then you know after that thinking about how do we celebrate our students um for this accomplishment that is a really big deal so it's a it's it's much more than a platform right it's a it's a way
128of building collaboration and and many other things and I'm assuming it's an internal program is there there's no parental access to the the system elevated system okay thank you thank you and we will wrap up with by preson OFA I just have one uh last question I know we talked about College and Career ready us and so at the high school level do we know which programs or extracurricular activities our ELD students are taking part in that are that are helping them get into college have we surveyed the parents or how do we evaluate success for those kind of activities that are geared towards helping them uh get get into [Music] college you know I don't we don't have the data right now to share but I think it's really important to investig at uh
129certainly there we know that there are a w wide range of programs um we actually have been tagging our students in our education or educ climber platform to understand which which different types of um programs including rise and Bridge and fente um that folks are taking and we can disaggregate that by language status um so it's something that we can certainly investigate um more about to see where what patterns come up and also know just with our CTE program there's been an increase in students who uh particularly our African-American and latinx students who are taking um uh stem pathway programs and uh wind skills has a lot of that data so we can share that with you to thank you thank you so much for this update I'm sure this is giving us all a
130lot of Pride uh we are grateful that not only have we passed this plan but now we see progress towards implementing it so thank you all so much for your hard work next we will have our um AC Transit discussion item thank you all so much for for coming for being here and for the many ways in which when we raise issues for um our students and families around public transportation that you sol it president bit and um board of directors and the folks who are still left here in our audience um I am happy to uh introduce this presentation to you all um an example of one of the many Partnerships we have um with our uh cbos and particularly of the city we're going to hear a presentation um from AC Transit and
131we are exclusively hearing from AC Transit because we understand uh the AC Transit is a means of transportation for many of our students and families we know that b USD has a campaign around attendance and if our babies are not in school they're not able to engage in the rich discussion and conversations and instruction that's happening in our classrooms we also know that we've heard from um several students and families that there is um questions concerns and some times confusion around bus routes and what bus to take and what time and so we know this partnership is critical and so we were excited to start a conversation um with Mr Ryan and his team uh just to kind of start to brainstorm and think about it and coincidently they're also in the process of rethinking
132and realigning the services they provide not just to our Berkeley students and families but to the larger city of Berkeley un sorry the city of Berkeley in fact the larger city of Berkeley and so this evening uh they're here to share with you all and most importantly to sh share with our community their work around realignment as well as to share some of their engagement efforts to really get input from students and families about future bus routes and so again this is for for your benefit but definitely to the benefit of folks who are in the audience and listening as well and we hope that you will partake in the um engagement events that are going to be shared in the future so with that Mr Ryan there you go thank you superintendent uh good
133evening uh president babit uh vice president vuo uh board members uh superintendent Ford Morel uh staff and members of the public my name is Ryan La external Affairs representative at AC Transit joined here with my planning colleague samama itani um here to talk about realign which is uh basically AC transits efforts to redesign uh the service around uh the wake of the um and today I will provide a high level overview and then I'll turn it over to um Sama to to sort of do a deeper dive next slide please so just for reference uh AC Transit is the largest public buson transit system in the state of California providing Lifeline service to essential workers students um teachers as well I'm sure low-income uh individuals seniors commuters individuals with disabilities and anyone wishing to reduce
134their carbon footprint uh we operate in the East Bay from uh Richmond San Pablo um all the way down to Newark and Fremont uh we uh our writers rather are 65% low income 75% people of color 43% do not have access to a working vehicle meaning they use our service to um access work school go to the grocery store and just generally conduct their day-to-day activities next slide please so this you probably can't read at all but it's the current service that exists as uh at at this time today um in the city of Berkeley red lines are most frequent uh running every 20 minutes or better along s Pablo salano Avenue University Avenue College Telegraph Martin Luther King and around campus routes in blue are every 30 minutes or better um and then finally
135the ones in Gray uh vary in frequency in frequency those are our trans Bay uh routes early bird service which which is basically our service that helps Bart uh do early morning uh uh rail maintenance and then overnight L service next slide please and so what is real line real line is uh our evaluation of how our service network um works and uh where it goes how often it's running uh days of the week it's running and and the times of the day it's running next slide please why are we doing this uh primarily because Transportation patterns in the region have changed pretty dramatically in the wake of the pandemic our wrers ships back up to 75% of pre-pandemic levels um but we are facing some pretty serious challenges um one big one is hiring
136and retention of our bus operators which are drivers um as well and you probably heard this in the news all the time uh funding and revenue going forward next next slide please so we are in phase three of our real line um in August uh we showed the board and the the public um all of the information the feedback that we've gotten in the uh first few phases of this um project and so that has fed into uh phase three which is uh a a draft um Network proposals um that we want you to uh take a look at and provide Fe feedback today um and we will be gathering additional feedback all the way through um Mid April which will uh finally adopt a final plan and then um in summer of 2024 we'll
137be developing new service standards and then we have a go live date with implementation in August 2024 next slide please and so as I mentioned uh we had two phases before this where we developed um guidance principles that that informed the way that we um drafted these proposals um Equity reliability frequency Equity um is ensuring that our service uh meets the needs of equity priority communities reliability is pretty self self-explanatory it means the buses come when they're supposed to and then frequency uh meaning that our buses are coming uh often next slide please and oh sorry and it is important to note that those are not mutually exclusive the The Guiding principles and so I'll hand it off to samama to do a deeper dive thank you Ryan you see can you hear me all
138right so we have we have three draft scenarios uh two of these scenarios are cost neutral and one is a Visionary scenario uh next slide please so first up is the balanced coverage scenario this scenario seeks to keep coverage everywhere in the service area it exists today and expand in a few places next slide please this is the frequent cost neutral scenario it seeks to provide a fast frequent network with no line running less often than every 30 minutes uh next slide please this is the unconstrained scenario uh General summary of the scenario is more of everything everywhere this is a Visionary scenario while AC Transit does not have the resources in terms of buses operators or funding to acheve achieve this Vision today it can be used to advocate for more resources and represents
139our vision of what's possible when funding for public transit is a priority next slide please now let's get to some of the key lines that serve Berkeley we'll dig into a few highlights here but please note there's much more detail on the website at actransit.org reine including profiles of each line maps and in interactive tool that allows you to make comments on specific lines next slide please one of the most significant changes to the system is how line six and 51 work together currently line 51a and 51b meet each other at Rockridge and c and customers riding through need to transfer we are proposing to extend line 51a the hway along college and terminate it where line six currently ends in downtown Berkeley covering half of current line 51b we propose extending line six along
140University Avenue to Berkeley Amtrak this will allow for more one seat rides between Berkeley and Oakland these lines would run every 12 minutes in the balance cover scenario and every 10 minutes in the frequent scenario next slide please line 72 72m and 72r currently run along San Pablo Avenue from Downtown Oakland to the city of San Pablo one of the key things we've heard is that having three separate lines on this Corridor can be confusing in response we are proposing to have two routes on San Pablo line 72 and 7 2 m instead of line 72r we are proposing that it be combined with line 72 and 72m this means that line 72 and 72m will now come every 15 minutes or a s 7 and a half minute combined frequency instead of every 30
141minutes we're also going to space out bus stops out more so that buses can come in on time and be within comfortable walking distance instead of Rapid think reliable we're planning this Corridor with ACTC San Pablo corridor project in mind and our goal isn't to remove service but rather increase frequency and reliability next slide please line 7 currently operates every 30 minutes and serves Arlington North shadic and Emeryville Amtrak via Ashby Avenue we are proposing serving Emoryville Amtrak via Stanford Avenue line F currently also runs along much of this routing every 30 minutes for a combined combined 15minute service you can see where both line F and line 7 run parallel to each other by the orange and blue lines Ashby service will be provided by new line 27 next slide please line 52 is
142proposed to run every 15 minutes and starts at Albany Village then travels Via San Pablo Avenue to Cedar Street and makes a loop around UC Berkeley The Proposal is to extend line 52 straight down Cedar Street to provide direct cross town service from Albany Village to UC Berkeley campus and North North shadic this is shown in the green line on the map that runs through North Berkeley next slide please the new line 27 replaces current line 79 service along kaloa Avenue line 27 is proposed to run every 30 minutes from elero Plaza BART station along kaloa to downtown Berkeley Ashby Avenue Emille Amtrak taking over the Ashby section from current line 7 in addition line 36 would be extended to cover the southern portion of current line 79 next slide please line 29 currently serves
143Lake Meritt Downtown Oakland West Oakland and M revil every 20 minutes we are proposing to reduce it its frequency to every 30 minutes and use those resources to extend the line along alcatra to provide new service where we don't have any today this will fill in a cross town Gap in this part of the service area next slide please line 18 currently starts at Albany Village and travels via salano Avenue MLK way and Market Street to Lake mer at BART station The Proposal is to extend the line 18 up to Montclair as shown by the purple line on the map with service every 15 minutes their Sprout will continue to serve Alban Village and Solano Avenue in addition line 88 will be extended to pedmont together lines 18 and 88 will replace line 33 next
144slide please line 12 is proposed to run every 20 minutes most of the route will stay the same but we are proposing to extend service from Gilman down 6 Street to Berkeley Marina as shown by the red line on the map this is to provide access to Fourth Street business district and the Berkeley Marina Waterfront next slide please line 65 and 67 provide service to Berkeley Hills every 40 and 30 minutes respectively they will remain as is in the bound scenario but in the frequent scen scenario they are Consolidated and some coverage is lost to free up resources for a systemwide 30 minute standard next slide please in the cost constraint scenarios we are proposing to lengthen some lines to allow for increased frequency and to preserve coverage in addition we are proposing adding service
145on Alcatraz and part of Stanford Avenue finally we are providing a consistent one-seat ride to Oakland on line 6 and 51 the additional frequency in the frequent service scenario is made possible by reducing coverage in the Berkeley Hills next slide please here's what the scenarios look like in terms of the number of lines in each frequency category this is a broad overview of some of the changes in Berkeley um but again there are more details on our website actransit.org Reign and now I'd like to hand it off to my colleague um Ryan to talk about phase three engagement thank you so that was a lot um I think it's important to to note that um it's not all B bance or all uh frequency it it's like a buffet you can sort of mix and
146match so um if there's something in there that you don't like let us know we'll we'll evaluate that figure out what the M what makes the most sense um but so we do want you to provide your feedback um let us know what you think are we serving all the markets that you think that we should are we missing anything um but above that um you guys might all ride the the buses but your SCH communities are really um the people that we want to focus on because those are the people that are going to be most deeply impacted by these changes um and I forgot to say next slide um one more please um and so we we have a variety of different digital and inperson um uh opportunities for feedback um I was
147here just yesterday at the Berkeley Council I'm going to be at the transportation and infrastructure commit committee tomorrow uh and and then I get to skip a week and then I'm back in Berkeley all over again for the entire following week um but uh as you can see we have 20 uh plus popups we have 30 plus uh City Council meetings and Schoolboard meetings uh we're working with cbos um one thing that I did want to flag for you is we have a community virtual Workshop coming up uh on dece December 7th um you can definitely find more about that on our website we plugged in enough but actransit.org reine um we also because we want to make sure that it's um accessible to everybody and not just the people that are comfortable with um
148like the digital format um we have 20 libraries throughout the service area that are hosting um a big basically a booklet of all of our um route profiles that that we're um promoting or we're we're proposing rather um in three languages English Spanish and Chinese we also have an opportunity to provide um written feedback we're going to be collecting those routinely and feeding that into the rest of the the input that we're getting um I also have uh take ones so if you have constituents that you know you're out at the school sites and you want to pass them out for us please do um and happy to answer any questions uh next slide please and um that's not what I was looking for but uh this is um a list of all the different
149tactics that we're utilizing um that I already mentioned and next slide there we go um so Uh sama is pitch hitting today um we so I I cover this geography and chrisa Lee is our service planner that um covers this area so if you have any questions um feel free to contact us directly and now I can take questions thank you thank you so much I I appreciate these details and um that you came to us so that our community can be well informed ahead of time um definitely like your uh Visionary statement more of everything everywhere I'm trying to get my superintendent to adopt that instead of we can do anything but can't do everything can we switch but seriously um I did notice around the the 72r and the 72 72m so my
150experience of the 72r is that it didn't stop as many times as just the blanket 72 or because it was 72 rapid are we still going to have that Rapid or will it take will it come more frequently but actually take longer because it's stopping in more stops so actually for the that's actually a great question um so for the 72s it will be the 72 and the 72m um and so it's kind of it's gonna kind of take on like a hybrid of the 72s and the 72r so our hope is to reduce the amount of stops um like how 72r now stops um less frequently but it is more frequent so the combination of the 72 and 72m uh will create a seven and a half minute so every seven and a half
151minutes there will be a bus um so it's going to be more a little more frequent um than we'd expect but uh we're still working on what stops those would be but um it's in the hopes that there will be more frequency um even without the 72r and and I will just jump in um I think the other thing that we accomplish um in this scenario is uh more regular spacing so more reliable service so you're not getting a a five minute frequency one time and then a 10-minute frequency the next time you get a seven and a half minute all the time um and then with respect to um the ACTC s Pablo project um if they do end up delivering a Transit only lane um it's going to make it's going to make
152an uh 7 to are a little bit challenging because that would mean if you're passing bus stops then you're having to move around the the buses that are in the transit Lane and so it just it becomes a little bit crazy that makes sense um one other question um not sure if our our schools or the map of our schools have been provided to you or if it's something that you already looked up but I'm hoping that um in an offline conversation with our uh transportation department we can ensure that these changes still line up with um our school start and end times um so that those changes on our routes that we're aware of and we're able to either frontload our community as well as uh frontload you all with information which may um
153improve that goal yes I I think definitely um it's top of mind to maintain um the buses that do service the schools to maintain being there um during school hours like in the morning and um in the afternoons for pickup and drop off great thank you director shinoski and then vice president BV yeah just one thing really quickly um so I wrote AC Transit when I lived in Oakland for the entire time I was in grad school and it was great um and I stopped because I had a couple of kids and it became really cumbersome and really hard and also irregular and I really do think that um public transportation is one of the keys to the climate crisis and I'm wondering so my question now those are all comments my question now is
154um what can we do to help support you because I think um we need more ridership we need to bring it back up and make uh AC Transit you know more robust and more frequently used so I know we can hand out your Flyers is there anything else we can do to support uh the system and the changes um so this this kind of feedback is going to be useful so as I mentioned um transportation patterns have changed dramatically and so we are used to providing service in the AM Peak the PM Peak five days a week and so that's not how people move around anymore and so the feedback that you all give us and your school communities give us is going to be critical to Prov the service that's useful to them and
155so I think that's one of the the the big pieces that we need um to consider is how people are using using the service today thank you so much for your presentation I definitely have ideas on how to increase ridership I think it's uh critical that we engage with our Transit dependent population which includes our middle school and high school students and so two lines that I'm particularly concerned about that I hear about already and so it concerns me to reduce service is the line 65 and line 67 which serves a lot of uh students from the hills coming to Berkeley High we as a district have also had to cut back service in the hills and so I know that families particularly at when students are making Transit decisions on their own right Middle
156School and High School really rely on on the 65 and 67 so I would encourage you to engage with our ptas definitely email the district and I can talk to the superintendent about creative ways that we can reach out to our own communities but I think student survey could be really important too particularly at the high school and I know that in other cities like in San Francisco the MTA has launched an event called Transit week where they're working really closely with the schools on increasing ridership so I think there's a lot of potential for us to better partner before U making calls particularly on the 65 and 67 I think um you know putting in those changes without engaging our high school Community I think will probably result in a lot of community blowback
157so just wanted to flag that thanks yeah thanks so much for that feedback we're definitely going to share that back with the team and sorry um you said engage with and then use it used an acronym that I'm unfamiliar with I say parent teacher associ the parent teacher asso it's the PTSA right yes and um vice president BF we also have shared this information and the presentation with all of our site Leaders with the hope that they're going to put that in their school Communications as well so that you can get a big turnout at those various engagement sessions but the survey idea is another great idea as well and the PTA Council too I'd say like we could share with our sites but really the parents are the parents are going to be on
158this like they really care about how their kids are going to you know get to school and so I think um we can find creative ways to also share with our constituents as board members thank you thank you so much we appreciate you coming thank you and I will just highlight so these um events are great ways to sort of highlight what we're doing but because it's such dense material I think um doing it sort of offline is really the way to to be able to really digest all of this information and provide some really thoughtful feedback so just wanted to mention that thank you thank you so much and again I do appreciate that every time I've reached out you've come back with the solution so I thank you so much for your hard
159work thank you let's give them a round of applause people all right so now it's time for extended public comment but so that the board can be fresh and hear you well if you will just give us five minutes to have a bathroom break and and reshift um I would greatly appreciate it so we're going to take a six minute break um thank you so much okay spe yeah no spe for yeah the oh spe okay ch I was thinking that too go get it's a can no more thank you IND think be that you're all right if you could take your seats we will begin I'm going to try and do 20 minutes um and hopefully I can get through most of you if you honor the one minute and if you honor lining
160up so you're right behind the other um that always helps to move us along um um and I'm just not going to try this online thing we'll just deal with those who are here I'm sorry if you're online please just email us your comments okay so we're gonna do one minute we're gonna start with Christina harb followed by Kevin H followed by Julie surley can I ask for an extra 10 seconds because I'd like to also have a moment of silence we've lost a lot of people in the last month I I appreciate that but I have to be fair with everyone so you gave a moment of silence a month ago and I think that we've lost a lot of people in the last month and I would really like to do it you
161can do that as a part of your minute you can do that as a part of your minute okay I'm GNA take note of that um let's do a quick moment of silence we have lost 12,000 almost 12,000 Palestinians in Gaza 4,500 of them are kids and we just many people in the community have just spent a month seeing on their Instagram feeds that mutilation every day and we need to acknowledge that and humanize Palestinians there's nothing controversial about doing that thank you um I'm going to quickly just say that your silence on this topic is complicity it is violent against Arab Americans and Muslim Americans uh as voters as taxpayers all of us are complicit in political decisions that our government is making and supporting a genocide and it is a genocide it is
162ethnic cleansing this has been determined by the United Nations it's hypocritical that you have United United against hate weak you have resolutions about everyone you hang these flags up behind you and you can't say even a single word about Palestinians and their suffering anti-Semitism is not anti-zionism and I want to make that extremely clear that you cannot fall and believe political pressure that anti-zionism is anti-Semitism because this is false thank is not anti-semitic thank you thank you I would like for everyone to honor the same decorum that we asked in the beginning of the meeting you may go forward uh good evening members of the school board my name is Kevin I currently live and work in Berkeley my demands tonight are simple and clear One support and protect teachers we talk about Palestine to
163include Palestine and ethnic study three support and protect Arab and Muslim youth yes people are mourning the 1400 Israeli citizens who were brutally murdered on October 7th yes anti-Semitism is a real growing threat the members of our community are facing but anti Zionism is not anti-Semitism and what are we going to Simply ignore the 10,000 plus children that have been mared over the past 39 days who have nowhere to go or 75 years of military occupation how does that make any sense sense the road to peace and prosperity in the Middle East will take time that's for sure but B USD must break its silence you can take real tangible steps right here right now you can decide to teach the full history and use your position of power to call for a ceasefire act
164now and free Palestine thank you thank you um after her we will hear from Hillary kilmun Kilik sorry if I said that incorrectly followed by um Shirley Litman followed by offer Grim grimbeek I'm Julie surl I'm reading a statement from Berkeley High teacher Aaron Smith who had to leave Aaron wrs I am the adviser for the Muslim Student Union at Berkeley High and I teach in the multilingual program as you likely know the multilingual program supports newcomer students who have recently arrived in the United States many of our students are refugees and have fled from political Strife Wars and Trauma they are an amazing group of students and make our community so much better and are genuinely excited to get to know their American peers these students come to our school with many strengths hopes
165and dreams it breaks my heart that I have heard stories from some of my students about Arab anti-arab and anti-muslim hate speech they've experienced at school and in the city of Berkeley at large my students have been have reported being called terrorists in the hallways students have reported their peers yelling and justest at them in the Halls mocking their religion they report feeling apprehensive about wearing cultural and religious dress like a bias to school take a strong and vocal stand you can email us those comments and I just want to remind everyone when you hear the buzzer that means finish your sentence thank you charlee's not here I'm taking her time oh oh you want [Music] sorry this is part of why I'm asking you all to line up when I call your name Hillary
166followed by Shirley followed by offer it's just one minute I'm asking you to stand to be ready my name is Hillary kick I'm a Berkeley resident parent to three BD Jewish students currently attending King and BHS given that we're in unity week I feel I must call out what is happening I'm deep troubled by the misinformation and hateful rhetoric that is being perpetuated in VHS both by teachers and students in the name of justice and Free Speech my kids have to hear their teachers and classmates calling for a free Palestine from The River To The Sea that's not a call for justice nor is it a call for peace it is a genocidal call to do away with the Jewish people is this in the spirit of unity Justice will not come by teaching kids
167to blindly point a finger at Israel for all of godes ills Justice will not come to Palestinians if facts such as Hamas being an oppressive Terror organization committed to Jewish genocide are swept under the carpet so as not to muddy the Israel as oppressor false narrative when classroom discussions are based on a lie that Israel's an apartheid state our children are being done a disservice roughly 20% of Israeli citizens are Arab and they enjoy the same freedoms as every other Israeli citizen this is not apartheid students thank you hi I'm Shirley I have three kids in bu elementary middle and high school all right uh I prepared something but I'm going to respond to things I heard tonight I've heard a lot about academic freedom and disagreement in class but there has to be a
168distinction between academic freedom and presenting posters or chanting slogans that justify violently violently targeting persons on the basis of their ethnicity or national background pictures of Palestinians throwing stones hung on the doors of classrooms justify violence towards Israelis because that is who these tones are targeted at regardless of who that person is chanting from The River To The Sea Palestine will be freeze calling for the abolition of Israel because that is the geography of the region and yet School District leaders continuously speak of academic freedom but do not openly condemn Expressions that are acts of Acts that are hateful and are not aligned with a nonviolent discourse lastly discussing the Israel Palestinian conflict when all blame is turned towards one side cannot present a balanced conversation within the classroom and while your support for your
169teachers is admirable this support cannot be unequivocal with no room for to monitor the thank you after offer we will hear from Emma kin Bart oh thank you he wrote or they wrote the pronunciation kich shika Emma and Then followed by ARA good evening board members my name is Emma please line Sorry my name is aler grebeck I have three children and I'm abused the parent I want to talk about about how recent events have made it harder for my kids to access the curriculum at B USD on October 7th the world became a worst place an organized group of thousands of well armed Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and violently murdered over 14400 people and kidnapped over 230 more two things have happened since the first is an attempt to dismiss and discount these vile
170actions the claim is that these actions are in response to Decades of occupation I'm not blind to the suffering of the Palestinian people their pain is real but any attempt to erase the horrific acts of October 7 is disturbing and should be met with skepticism the second thing that is happening is the offensive course of action taken by some groups they're using the genuine of the Palestinian people in a way to land and inflict pain on Jewish and Israeli students right here right now they're doing it by coming into the schools and spreading a false one-sided narrative the Jews and Israelis are the sole source of Palestinian suffering thank you thank you ARA after Emma please come forward n Nita please come forward um okay first off I'm Jewish and I'm anti-zionist that's a thing
171that exists uh this is a poem I wrote everywhere with bombs like I could write it anyway a poem that it cleave your souls just enough for a word to climb out your gasping chests the word genocide I think you feel it there that thing with Jagged Knuckles tearing at the Box you put your soul in when you pick up the news genocide behind bomb bomb bomb and warn them to evacuate to Nowhere genocide because you don't know what neck bay means and murder genocide because it's the least violent word to describe like I could write it any way to describe occupation squirming like smoke out of dead children's lungs 5,000 children's lungs about 10,000 parents mourning less than not because they're dead bomb bomb bomb Escape rots bombed dreams bombed like hospitals and genocide
172still makes you itchy my great uncle aunts and cousins dream on settlements my uncle's a patroller to shoot for double stolen land I need to honor the time like everyone else and audience members I appreciate your support but that's actually not helpful hello thank you guys for hearing our comments a two-sides approach to teaching any topic especially Palestine is reductive it reduces Palestinians to a party in a dispute with Israel and it erases everything else about them their long beautiful and Rich history that predates the Israeli occupation their contributions to society in countries around the world and the diversity of their human facets and just like we can't teach black history as the history of slavery Palestinians are much more than their relationship with Israel the two sides approach is reductive because it collapses all
173the differences amongst Palestinians into one and all the differences amongst Israelis into one and often wrongly lumped into Jews into the Israeli side which is not true Jews do not stand with Israel free Palestine thank you Nita oh sorry did did I miss uh ARA then a r a is what it says na do something I'm sorry I okay maybe they're not here uh mati followed by Mel followed by Rona much to say I appreciate the last teacher's uh comments because it just showed True Colors there is no intent to show or teach a true open two-sided comprehensive narrative this is a intent to do political indoctrination following a personal political bias opinion of these teachers I mean she just said it I couldn't have said it better um another hypocrisy U Matt Maya read
174the the opening paragraph of your um policy 6144 he stopped talking about academic freedom Etc let me just finish finish the sentence he stopped before the following sentence the in public schools policy on controversial issues is defined in the terms of the rights of students rather than in the terms of Rights of teachers that's where he stopped he didn't write this he hypocrisy thank you thank you good evening board thank you for this opportunity to speak my name is Mel Emanuel sha i g and Berkeley and a endent King and Berkeley High I currently live and work in Berkeley and I'm a dual American and Israeli Citizen and so is my husband and my and our children I plan to send my children to Berkeley Public Schools but in light of the recent rise of
175anti-Semitism within B USD I'm seriously having second thoughts I'm continuing to hear about very disturbing situations that are happening in classrooms and on campus by students and even worse by teachers who are pushing their political beliefs in anti-semitic and anti-israel agendas into the classroom and on campus I will not put my children into an environment where their mental and physical safety and well-being is not prioritized and that anti-Semitism and anti-israel rhetoric is not called out immediately and dealt with and I'm confident that I speak for others who are unfortunately too scared to be here by allowing an unapproved curriculum thank you I have an eighth grader a king and a Berkeley High grad and we have a loved one being held hostage by Hamas we are praying for him and for all innocent citizens in
176Israel and in Gaza there is Indescribable grief on both sides this is Unity week at Berkeley schools it does not create Unity to deny either side's pain teachers who address the conflict should present a balanced history of both peoples Israelis and palestin who have both lived in the Holy Land since ancient times this is not colonization or other simplistic narratives words like genocide and ethnic cleansing are Hamas propaganda repeated by people who learn their history from tiktock and leads to anti-Semitism that we see across this country calling for intifa is hate speech I lived in Israel during the last intifa when suicide bombers and other terrorists attacks massacred scores of civilians student student should not have to see antio posters hear their teachers demonize Israel or present a one-sided history than thank you Rona followed
177by rafie followed by Leela and then the last one is Russell evening my name's uh rafy esterson um uh one of my children at Berkeley High who asked for their name not to be mentioned but uh principal Coleman knows of the the event uh made a presentation during their ethnic studies class uh about Jewish contributions to uh American Christmas music and following the presentation they uh uh noticed on uh one of the desks um someone had written the title of their presentation and then someone else had uh crossed out the word Jewish and WR free free Palestine on it um I have no objection to students making political comments in fact I encourage it when it's in in the correct Place uh but this is problematic for two reasons one there is um the attribution
178of events going on in Israel and Palestine to uh Jews um which sorry you can email us at bard ofed berkeley.net graffy followed by Leela oh okay so Leela yep I am that's me there's a Lea and Lea thank you my name is Leila I'm a former educator turned PhD candidate where I study this history and I reive death threats for it on the regular I have firsthand experienced dealing with bias education surrounding the Middle East and it has fostered a concern for our safety and internalized beliefs that come from the questioning of whether or not we are human it is my hope that the experiences that I had and that my students had is finally put to an end in a mass genocide that uses religion as a weapon apoliticism is anything but apolitical
179schools should not be catering to making oppressors comfortable at the cost of those most marginalized you have the opportunity to to make these students feel seen in a world that has villainized and invisibilized them and I urge you to rectify this and by doing so signal to your community that your mission matches your practice thank you just for clarity sake did did Rona go okay all right okay all right uh Russell B here uh although anti-zionism is not anti- semitism Zionism has turned into modern-day Nazism what is going on against the people of Palestine right now I I saw an example of the hate crime in June 8th 1967 five months after I enlisted in the Navy when the Zionist entity bombed the USS Liberty killing 30 plus American Sailors and Marines wounding 170 plus
180Sailors and Marines the same kind of hate crime that's going on against the people of Gaza right now that's a hate crime 5,000 kids killed they can't Beyond Zoom watching these meetings they've been killed they've been murdered by American bombs dropped by American planes flown by American trained Israeli Pilots it's not right you need to do something about that you need to introduce educating people about Palestine in the public schools thankks thank you uh Russell is our last speaker is there a Russell still here okay I guess we're done then he submitted a card I don't have [Music] it um I promised my board colle colleagues I would go till 10 o'clock um so we are now at 10 o'clock okay one more minute thank you thank you for this time um my name is
181Daniel I have two kids in the BD and I just wanted to address just a moment the labeling of a parthe is both unfairly and inaccurately libling Israel in an attempt to delegitimize it to teach it in a class as an ethnic studies BHS teacher recently did writing on their whiteboard to what extent should Israel be considered an aparte State along with an attempt to personalize genocidal chance from the river to the sea is an expressly violation it expressly violates this board's own policy on controversial issues in so far as promotion of a political agenda to be clear Arab Israelis make up 20% of Israel's population vote have political parties and representatives in the knesset and occupy positions of a claim including on the Supreme Court Arab patients along lie alongside Jewish patients in Israeli
182hospitals receiving identical treatment none of this was possible under South African apartheid all of these interest instances were expressly and prohibited under apartheid thank you thank you any extended board member comments okay I want to make a quick correction to just there's academic and there are also our board policies so those things can exist at the same time we have complaint procedures if you believe that something does not comply with B USD policies and we can have academic freedom at the same time thanks okay meeting adjourned thank you all