001hi Liz can you hear us J yes I can hear you hi Jasmin there is an echo yeah I'm noticing that okay can you hear me what can you hear me well she she can only hear you now talk through here yeah you need to always leave that that mic turned off you for the children invol children I know I don't know different things yeah did you say hi it's okay yeah thanks so much for doing all this of course [Music] have idea about how long I have to speak um while depending on the amount of Parts good night there l I know right I know and so that's not thing and our next project yeah and I think big old time I told um and then okay and then we'll re on Monday okay
002he's coming on Monday sounds good okay also little this is your rare opportunity the heart it suits till Wednesday Thursday Friday go Den says once a year in October the first meeting in October you'll see back he hates us right can I I keep telling I get the I turned this Vol all the way down have to move are you sit over there te yeah good evening and welcome to the October 4th school board meeting of the berkele Unified School District I would like to provide a brief overview of tonight's meeting after a few procedural items the board will hear 30 minutes of public comment at the end of the meeting there will be a second and final opportunity to provide public comments so if you do not get to do so during the first
003call we encourage you to stay to the end to participate in public comment click on oh this is the wrong script um uh this Thee the president will determined one two or three minutes per speaker this evening depending on the amount of cards please keep in mind that if there are many cards submitted you may not be able to speak during the first call so we encourage you once again to stay um to the end in order to do in order to participate just a second if your name is called and you wish to seat your time to another speaker you may do so by standing up stating your name and the name of the person to whom you you wish to seat your time please note you may may only seat your time to
004a speaker who is addressing the same topic you have written down on your card by seating your time you give up your opportunity to speak and uh no one else can later seat their time to you to speak on that same topic while you are speaking please note that the light of the lecturn will turn yellow when there is one minute left when you your time has elapsed the light will turn red and you will hear a beeping noise if you are still speaking you're allowed to finish your sentence but please try not to go beyond your time we want to be fair to all speakers so that we can hear from as many of you as possible I want to also remind all speakers that there may be children listening or watching at home
005so please keep that in mind as you speak and if you uh lastly if you have complains about specific District employees we encourage you to take advantage of our formal complaint process rather than using the public comment period for that purpose for good evening everyone and thank you for attending our board meeting this evening it is a pleasure to see all of you who have taken the time to come here personally and we also want to welcome those who are joining us online if you can promote me to a panelist online that appreciate it um if you are online and would like to be here for public comment can you please raise your hand that will help me um in my determination of how much time to give each speaker and I do want to
006just reiterate um what our board secretary highlighted this evening around mentioning staff members during your public comment um it is a one-sided conversation and that's why we do ask that you not actually um mention staff memb name but really just address the issues that is your concern uh Miss chrus I am officially calling the meeting to order at 7:07 pm. um let the record reflect that all members are present excluding director Chang who has an excused absence and we expect to see President Brown later this I mean director Brown later this uh evening okay um we will I have a motion to approve the agenda so moved second all in favor I I I I thank you it has been approved unanimously now we will have our report out of Clos session yes Clos session
007started at 5:40 PM president babbett vice president vasev and director shinoski were present for item 3.1 uh there was a motion to approve the settlement agreement made by vice president vasudev seconded by director shinoski uh there was a request from the board for additional information and all directors voted in favor for item 3.1.2 there was a motion to approve the settlement agreement made by vice president vasev seconded by director shinoski and all directors uh president voted in favor item 3.1.3 has been moved to the next board meeting item 3.2 the a first motion to uphold the statement uh that section 12.4 of the CBA between bu USD in uba was violated with a remedy to be determined was made by director shinoski seconded by director vasudev all directors voted um in favor for um item
0083.2 there was a second motion that was made to honor the language of the contract and it was made by director shinoski seconded by President babot all directors voted in favor for item 3.3 the board discussed and provided Direction and that concludes a report from close session thank you so much and now we will have our superintendent comments good evening everyone um than thank you uh so today if you did not know today was International Walk and Roll to school day and we had a lot of fun um all around our school district Berkeley students and families came to school in their bikes uh on skateboards and their rollerblades I want to personally thank uh the father and daughter who helped me cross the street at Emerson I do not roller skate like I used
009to uh the students at VHS worked in shift some beginning as early as 7 AM to provide prizes to students um we have members of our PTA and staff out to celebrate students for the various ways that they came to school enthusiastically I wanted to let you know that in October We are continuing to celebrate and recognize latinx heritage month and we are kicking off filipin XO American History Month as well as LBGTQ plus history month we honor and upb students staff and families from these communities and recognize the many contributions they make in our schools and our city please look out for a message from me um that will sent on Monday with links to family guides reading lists and other resources to uplift recognize and honor um the lgbtq plus Community as well
010as the Filipina XO communities um our mission here in Berkeley we should all say together is to enable and Inspire our diverse student body to achieve academic excellence and make positive contributions to the world and we know that in order for our students to move towards their academic excellence and full potential that our school communities need to have conditions that are physically emotionally and mentally or intellectually safe we've been having conversations ongoing and we had some this week as we should about student and staff safety heightened by some recent concerning incidents last night I met with several members of BHS Community specifically those on the bhhs Safety Committee and that was one opportunity to participate in these ongoing conversations during that meeting I was able to share our efforts and that when we think about
011safety here in bu USD we want to make sure that we are both preventative and proactive as well as responsive and restorative the BHS Safety Committee um is one of many groups in our district that convenes around safety and we hope to bring these groups together in the near future as we have um safety committees and other groups that discuss safety across many of our school sites as well as um staff Safety Committee as well as different safety committees from our various labor Partners so we're looking for the opportunity to bring all of those bright Minds to come together to continue to think how we can improve um our student safety and sense of belonging and well-being at scale um our staff recently reviewed safety recommendations um that went all the way back to 2011
012I wasn't even born yet were you born okay um and I can share that many of them were implemented there was U recommendations to improve bu USD school security program um these recommendations were fully implemented um there were uh recommendations to require visible specific School identification cards and all of our students at both of our schools our secondary schools have ID cards there was also a call to increase attention and support to our highest risk students and we continue to do so and definitely implemented and strengthen our cost team meetings um we've added some additional staff to both BTA and bft B ta and BHS in support of those efforts um we are going to be updating our District web page as well as the BHS web page to make sure that you all are
013aware of the various recommendations and how the district has responded across the many years as well as specifically over the last year and this year how we've made um a point to hear and make sure that we're continuing to address the um recommendations that were made from community members staff and students alike there's actually a contract coming before the board this evening that will allow us to update State and repair all of our cameras in the district as well as provide us the access control for main entries to every school site and that work is to be completed by the end of the school year if approved another one of our um moves towards recommendations made and another one of our steps to improve and increase safety across our district additionally we have our board
014policy subcommittee that continues to work on policies that further set conditions for student safety for example the recent resolution that was passed around the interactions with law enforcement on campus and school sits have had s safety plans that continue to be iterated on and improved more regularly and that they make sure they review them with staff tonight the board will also hear an update on the work being done to place BP renewal on the ballot in March 2024 BP also supports student safety and wellness and well-being um through funding additional councils for middle school students and schools um use their BP funds to provide additional counseling and mental health supports at BHS in particular particular BP funds a student welfare and attendance specialist a BHS activities director to support student engagement and climate and culture
015activities and the dean of attendance and consent Ed TSA finally I don't know if you all know Rodney's over there in the corner we appreciate Rodney every day for all of his amazing but Monday was actually School Stu a school custodian appreciation day and so there we go um and so I just want to personally thank all of our B USD uh custodians uh for the ways that they keep our schools clean and safe and for ways that they are part of the community in ways that some folks never even recognize so you happen to be here Rodney so I want to say thank you to you we also have Gustavo who keeps the offices together next door and again many amazing custodians across our district so if you see one thank them for me
016and on behalf of our board and of course you and the students and families finally next week in observance of the importance of educational leadership at our schools we acknowledge the week of school administrators and show our recognition of the many contributions that school administrators make to successful student achievement and the best news yet for the students at least is we do not have school on October 9th um as our educators will be engaged in full day professional development thank you madam president that's the end of my comments thank you if you are online and you would like to make public comment please raise your hand before I um finalize the time you got five more seconds to find that button three two one okay we have 1 two 3 four five six seven eight
017nine 10 people online and three people present and 30 minutes for public comment so we're already over um so I will give each speaker a minute and 30 seconds I do apologize but I we want to give everyone the most opportune time that we can um so I'm going to start with the amazing teacher Forest Bor that's what it says here I'm not making that up meeting um I think the mic needs to be [Music] on okay and now we see you at the yeah thank you uh last week I spoke at this meeting and it didn't get put the the first speakers it didn't get recorded so um I want to just encourage everybody at home to please read B usd's climate literacy resolution I read a lot of excerpts from that um so
018a few weeks ago so I'm a Long Fellow Middle School teacher uh a few weeks ago we had a a meeting with the facilities online in which they opened up by saying that the Longfellow Middle School Grass was like to be not spoken of really right now because it's still being decided but we don't know how it's being decided I don't know if it's just who raises their voice the most if it's a money thing like who's making the decision it's so non-transparent so gosh um and then when he asked Eduardo r to please translate edara started giving reasons why artificial turf is better which were totally false such as it's healthier for students that's not at all true please Google artificial turf heat cancer chemicals what just investigate it please he also uh then
019Kalise called um emoa an affinity group and said they worked closely with him I happen to know that Mr Oak's what what Mr Oaks really wanted for the renovations was largely ignored and he became disillusioned with this process um that's not actually worked with the community I in in these these years I've been at Longfellow we've I've never got to meet Mr kaliss once he's unapproachable um he's not public facing and can I finish my sentence thank you uh we deserve to be heard out like we deserve one meeting with with him in person and it because this is just a really frustrating process um to be G this is my opportunity um thank you all I hope that like King and Willard Long Fellow can also have a grass field and that there can
020be like a flowchart for how Renovations are done and there's full transparency every step of the way so he could say no look at the people wanted this and here and here it is and we have this record and the people voted for this and that but we don't get to see that it's not there and so we're just supposed to all take a word thank you so much for coming to our school today for Walk and Roll to school today um and you all got a lot of shout outs in our Berkeley unified uh Federation of teachers meeting today thank you thank you um I do want to just highlight that um on the consent calendar today um when we talk about the Longfellow modernization project that does not mean we are approving uh
021the AstroTurf ground at this point and I have um referred this issue back to the facility subcommittee to take up in in depth around the astro turf so I would encourage people to look for those subcommittee meetings and you'll have a time to really talk and engage with the board directors who are on the subcommittee as well as with the facilities Personnel around that issue there and it'll be much more authentic than here um but I do appreciate and thank you all for your advocacy and just wanted to highlight that so that when we get to the consent calendar we don't get a bunch of emails like what are you doing you're we're not we're not it is still being to be determined okay thank you so much so now I will um hear from
022namot abina hi guys um honorable board superintendent um I'm here to talk about the Longfellow remodelation um project I've done some research since I was here two weeks ago um about the process because everyone was saying how much um Community input and everything there was so I was able to find a video from um 62321 where it was being brought up and you um the board approved it and money was coming from career and Technology stem Outdoor Learning um solar and sustainability so to me it's a little ironic that we're moving to put artificial turf at Longfellow um in light of that another thing at that meeting that was brought up my time's about to run out was communicating to Third at that time third fourth and fifth grade families who were going to be
023part of the desegregating middle schools and um and that was um brought up by director siai and seconded by um director vasu about just the communication and I would just like to ask that you guys do that for future families for incoming um yeah thank you thank you so much now we will hear from James who's here to speak on Ginger neutral restrooms at Berkeley High School hello uh my name is James I'm a senior at Berkeley High I'm transgender and I do not have reliable access to bathrooms at my school you already know the issues that trans students at Berkeley High face with bathrooms none of these issues have changed since last time I was here speaking at this Podium uh even if all three gender neutral restrooms at my school were consistently in
024working condition it would be insufficient but with the single stall bathrooms regularly being locked for days at a time or unusable due to Broken facilities trans students often cannot use the restrooms at school at all on multiple occasions I've walked off campus to the public library or to Pete's Coffee to use the restroom because I can't at my school uh this Monday I was out of class for 15 minutes waiting in line for the only usable gender neutral restroom uh the light in the most consistently usable restroom is broken it's dim and it kind of flickers on and off while you're in there the two restrooms that are unlocked more than half the time are both in one section of Campus leading to more time out of class when you have to walk to a
025different building just to use the bathroom and this struggle doesn't just affect our uh education by physically having us out of class but it affects our mental health and our Focus I've spent so much time worrying about how to find a bathroom um how to find one that I can use strategizing on it and working towards change that should not be my responsibility as a student to work towards BSD claims to be welcoming but how can I feel welcomed home I supposed to feel welcomed when basic resources like usable sufficient bathrooms aren't provided how can trans students like me and all of the rest of us have the same opportunities at academic Excellence as our CIS peers when we don't have even as much class time as they have because we can't use the restrooms
026thank you thank you so much so now we will move towards our um speakers online I just want to uh remind people again please do not say um staff names but you can feel free to talk about your um particular issue um our first person is Mr Mark Joseph Ria you have one minute and 30 seconds when I say uh your time is up please respect the time so that we can hear from other people that means you need to finish your sentence um because we are falling Gravely behind so Mark Joseph Ria thank you followed by miam Al shamal can you hear me yes Mark Ramy here Berkeley High School special education instructional assistant Lynette Robinson asked a question in her resignation letter quote being forced out of a system that could have actually
027been the spearhead for change is an atrocious atrocious act I could go on for there were many instances this should have been discussed but I'm remembering why I'm writing this to begin with retaliation abuse of power and an a of ignorance has brought this one thriving District into this world of the toilet end quote those words are being spoken repeatedly in some version or other on our campus we need to ask ourselves as a whole what do we want for our students thank you thank you um Miss Mariam we will receive you now hi um I just wanted to talk briefly about um actually my name is miam El showof I'm a teacher um and RTI coordinator at King Middle School this is my fifth year there um and I'm a new mom I just
028started back from maternity leave in August and I just I wanted to talk briefly about um reinstating the coid leave from um a new mom perspective um part of what's been really difficult about not having the coid leave is the realization of how much sick leave I'm going to end up be using this year Alone um my whole family got coid we had to take the P the five days of leave um and of course I'm happy to do that I I want to recover from coid and if I have to use my own leave for that I'm going to do that um but what is what I'm seeing in the future is going to be a little bit difficult is if I get coid again I'm going to need to take another five days
029of leave off to stay home and to take care of my baby who also might get sick from coid in addition to the fact that she's a small baby and she's going to get sick all Year from all kinds of things because she's a small baby which I'm prepared for and I saved all of those days I didn't use them all during my maternity leave I saved them this year because I thought I'm going to need some of these days um for when the baby gets sick to take care of her so it just seems like it's going to be really difficult it's going to be difficult for everybody but I'm just wanted to talk from my own perspective as a new mom and for other um parents at my school who are also kind
030of dealing with this of how are we going to have enough leave to be able to take coid leave and then to take leave to take care of our our small children who are going to get sick a lot this year thank you thank you Miss Margaret prining no okay alimini hamal followed by Alex day aimi hamay we will receive you now you can unmute okay great can you hear me yes great hi my name is aemi hamay I'm a middle school teacher um at along with Mariam and I want to speak on the same thing um about restoring the coid leave pay um I'm a veteran teacher so I have lots of six days um sort of banked but I know for our new teachers you know you only get 10 and we are
031required to miss five days if we get coid even if we feel fine um and so that's half of what they get and along with like if they get the flu or they have kids to take care of um or they have doctor's appointments or whatever it cuts into it very very quickly and you know they can't really afford to miss school and not be paid um and it puts us in a really precarious situation where we're exposed quite a bit because there are no sort of mitigation rules um around masking or anything like that um and so then you know we get exposed and we get sick and then we have to take our own time um so I feel like if you're going to force folks to take a required five days then
032you should give us those five days that's it thanks excellent Alex Day followed by Crystal Pelle we can receive you now Mr D hello sorry it took a minute to get loaded on there hi my name is Alex day and I teach ethnic studies and social living at Berkeley High School um I'm also speaking tonight to urge the board and District to go back to giving workers five days of sick leave if they test positive for coid uh as I'm sure we all know coid is not going away as these last few months really underscore and it's not even winter yet when rates have tended to rise these last few years indeed the state of California continues to require to people to isolate for five days after a positive test as they should however starting
033this year Educators and BD have to now use our own sick days for this state mandated isolation policy we current get currently get 11 days of sick leave a year already some of my colleagues have used half that allotment because of one positive test even within the first week they get another positive test they'll be out for this year's sick days especially if they have needed to take sick days for anything not coid which is a virtual certainty beyond that people with families could be even more impacted as we're just hearing from um my colleague from king um as they would likely need to use sick leave for a child who has coid or other illness same with people who hope to save up for sick leave to use for child rearing leave in the
034future as we only get 25% of pay when we're on child rearing leave and we are ineligible for state disability insurance um so we're asking that the 5-day period uh that the 5-day period that we are being required to stay home for be covered under coid leave which does not deduct from our own sick leave this does not cost a district money as a sub is required regardless of the leave reason also many of our sites have site substitutes who are there every day it'll be a small reprieve to what is a stressful situation so please help uh maintain public health and prevent our Educators from running out of sick days thank you very much for your consideration thank you Miss Pas you can unmute we can receive you now there we go hello thank
035you board and superintendent for the time my name is Crystal pasel I'm a Longfellow math teacher RTI coordinator and bft union rep um I just want to share a little personal account because some people do have to miss more than five days when they have coid lead so I want to talk about that um I have several chronic illnesses and because of a particular one lupus nefritis which is essentially kidney disease I couldn't take p loit and go back to work in five days so I was told by my doctors that I had to go in and have infusions but the closest Center for Kaiser was sanleandro so it was like an hour to drive there and to get back and then you're talking about an IV drip and then doing the infusion for a
036few hours and then you're super tired so I actually had my daughter drive me home with her permit um because I was so tired I didn't want to drive home so the doctor put me off for more days and I end up missing double the days that I thought I was going to miss so because of my chronic illness I need to save up my sick days of course in case I have a loopus flare so I was really grateful for the days that I got off last year and I just want to say that like Co is not gone I'm still sitting in my classroom there are kids going over and over and over Co is on my attendance when I take attendance it's still here and so I you I'm scared I'm going
037to get it again have to use all those precious six days which is like like um Alex said it's one day short of my entire year for me if I have to do 10 days to do those infusions to get back to work so I don't want to use our preure sck days for that so I really really encourage you to restore them and thank you again um for giving us the time and hearing our personal story thank you thank you next we will hear from Jonas Lamer brono followed by mahogany Gilman okay thank you good evening good evening everyone um Jonas lry Brownell BD's heric Hospital teacher serving Psy iatric hospitalized adolescent students so I was just wearing my n95 respirator a moment ago to highlight one thing that I personally keep doing at
038work every day to help protect my students myself and everyone especially the most coid vulnerable Among Us um we all need to be do what we can and there are districtwide things that we absolutely can do like having restoring the paid coid leave that was rescinded earlier this year um here's a headline a recent headline Bay Area healthcare workers ordered to wear masks as triped demic concerns rise that was from an SF Chronicle article a few weeks ago and it's referring to coid flu and RSV cases that are again straining Health Care Systems expected to happen from November through April 2024 so um I uh gave you earlier today a petition that over 500 of us bft and BCC members have signed um calling on you to uh please restore immediately ASAP we need it
039right away to restore the paid coid leave um Don't Force employees to lose pay to care for a sick child or lose pay to avoid working with transmissible coid um we need to do coid mitigation in all the ways that we can and this is a very important tool thank you your time is up appreciate it mahogany Gilman followed byette farara and then last but not least it will be Vanessa morero you can unmute now mahogany we can receive you I was just going sorry everybody please forgive me um I do want to address the board and um honorably um just say thank you for your services um I want to bring up an issue um regarding the BHS students during their lunchtime um which recently gave me great concern um when my daughter was
040in the physical tication um downtown um during her lunch hour um during our conversation of me speaking um well having a meeting um let me respect the rules um I was told that the students can be suspended but they could not be protected um once they cross the line um and that didn't make sense to me um we have had some some chronic um violent situations happened downtown um we've had suicides um we I suggested in the meeting that if we can get some stakeholders like parents since the security officers um of the school cannot be uh where the kids are having their lunch hour during that time if they can't um be down there maybe hire some parents or some volunteers that can be there to provide safety um with so much that is
041going on um that's my time and thank you thank you you thata followed by miss morero you can promote them both so we can receive them faster hi good evening um my name is Evette farara I'm a teacher at Berkeley independent studies and a co-site rep there also with the Equal Opportunity Now by any means necessary caucus um I'm calling on the school board and the superintendent to agree to the unanimous vote of the bft executive board and hundreds of bft and bcce members to restore paid coid leave in Berkeley so much Co transmission is happening in the schools all the time every day whatever the dashboard says we all know it and Co continues to be a leading cause of death and serious illness for adults but also for children as well without other
042mandates to protect us like masks or vaccines or even the option for online education we have no other protections than to stay home and isolate when we're infected even if teachers and staff um weren't mandated to stay home for five days I think that's a good thing and I think that should happen but even if that wasn't a mandate bosd should still pay teachers to stay home and keep ourselves safe and our students safe that should be a given please restore paid coid leave and Berkeley unified thank you Miss Moreno we can receive you now sorry your last name got cut off a little bit no problem thank you president my name is Vanessa morero and I'm the executive director for parents of public schools of San Francisco and we are an advocacy National organization
043that promotes the fundamental value of public schools I'm here today on a number of items one is to support bft teachers if teachers are sick they should be covered by sickly Point Blank the other is that we have a group of parents who have reached out to us about concerns related to their transgendered students and non-binary students and we would like to meet with you to discuss these concerns to make sure that we can get to a solution and the last thing is I really want to support um the work that is happening across the district all of our teachers educators are working super hard and I would love for the central office to spend more time at school sites and really kind of talk to Educators and see what their experiences are are being
044like I appreciate your time president have a good night thank you um I don't remember calling a Aaron home okay we will receive you now thank you I jumped in at the end there thank you for taking my comment um are you able to hear me yes thank you um my name is Aon I'm uh work with um Vanessa at parents for public schools of San Francisco um I'm uh berkly adjacent resident and care deeply about that district and our students and um I wanted to speak on the topic of the um transgender bathrooms being available um I myself and am a woman with uh multiple disabilities and have needed that um needing needed a handicap accessible bathroom often and um I know what that's like to not only need that extra space but actually
045it's also promoted on the door um labeled you know if I go in there it's obvious um why I'm going in that bathroom um so my concern is is um for all people um regardless of how uh their gender identity or disabilities or any other um you know you're very uh students are vulnerable at different ages um to bullying and all different things I just would love to see more single use bathrooms and have them labeled is that not here's a bathroom for transgender people here's a bathroom for people with disabilities but single use will clear up you know um not having bullying in the bathrooms or um I just think it would be uh much safer for everybody and to have everybody on an inal playing field without having to have their identity labeled
046on the door thank you thank you that concludes our public comment at this time there is a second opportunity at the end of this meeting um now we will move towards committee comments if there's anyone here online from a committee please raise your hand or in the room I don't see anyone in the room and I don't believe this hand raised from a committee it came in after recalled names um so now we will use this we will move for Union comments is there anyone here from a union to speak to us she's like everybody's looking at me now okay board member coming H who would like to start ready hello everybody I'm Janai I represent Berkeley Technology Academy I just want to say hello to everybody hope everybody's doing well and yeah I'm happy
047to be here I'm happy to be here thank you for that positive energy he's happier we are I think how about you student director L hi everyone um I'm Caitlyn Le the school board representative for Berkeley High and thank you all for joining us tonight um as a Berkeley High student I would like to take this opportunity to address the incident involving guns last week that took place at our school I want to let you all know that I fully understand that situation situations like these are shocking and can make students and families feel nervous as my own parents and and I did gun violence is an issue that's very prominent in our nation right now and it's scary to think about how it could happen in our own community in my time at Berkeley
048High there have been very few gun incidents that have occurred but it obviously still stands as a problem that I would like to seek better precautions for on the other hand I would like to highlight the improvements that Berkeley High has made with security this school year I've seen a huge difference in the number of school safety officers walking around on campus at all times s every time I walk through the halls or outside to use the bathroom I always spot safety officers patrolling the campus and when I arrive late to school there's always either an officer at the entrance or that entrance is locked and I have to go to the main office and use my ID after speaking to many of my peers they've all shared similar thoughts stating that they feel safe
049walking around the Berkeley High campus and they've also noticed these same improvements I'm also looking forward to um the update about vote 16 later this evening even as I shared in our last meeting I've been working with the Cal vote coalition to bring more Civic engagement to our school districts so I'm excited for the steps in youth engagement that this measure will bring to our community thank you thank you D shasi don't get mad at me I have a lot to say today oh God put the timer timer on okay so a couple of things on the consent calendar that I'm really excited about I'm really excited that we're going to get started on the Long Fellow modernization it is overdue I know everyone is really um anxiously awaiting um the new school so um
050I'm really excited about that I do want to say that I am a member of the facility subcommittee and I also encourage you know folks to show up um we're looking to schedule a meeting in the near future and so as soon as that's ready um I'll I'll do my best to let you know um and my understanding about the turf is that there there was Community engagement before and there's been a huge shift in the feelings of the community around what the turf is going to look like we've all heard it we all um appreciate the feedback and want to honor you know the school community and the kids and the families and the teachers and the staff um and we'll really you have my commitment that I will do the best I can
051on that and I and I think that it's safe to speak for the rest of the board and District staff that they're committed to that as well I'm also really excited about the car camera and server replacement um we did have a robust conversation about the Berkeley High specifically cameras in the spring and so um I'm really glad that we're taking such a holistic approach to updating those systems um so that they'll be in place um well into the future uh the last couple weeks I've had a number of meetings with teachers staff students um and parents um about a couple of big issues at Berkeley High specifically so um Universal ninth grade which I know we're all really proud of and advanced uh Math and how it fits into the universal 9th grade program
052and also um the topic of block scheduling so I'm just trying to learn and get some feedback so if anybody's interested in talking about that with me um I would love to do that I also participated in the rent board 2 by two meeting um that was unfortunately cancelled because we didn't have Quorum but I look forward to engaging with the rent board more especially around issues associated with families in our district that have U more precarious housing and sometimes don't always know their rights which are um plentiful in Berkeley for renters um I also attended the P meeting um last week and I won't belabor all that I learned and the the robust discussions that were had there because um I know we're getting an update today but I I do really want to
053honor the members of P um I see one of our chairs co-chairs in the audience today um and you know those conversations are just really really indepth they're really robust they're really thoughtful and I'm so grateful to be um the board liaison for that committee I also met with some of the gender inclusive schools uh families um and want to again reiterate um my commitment to um to to them and their kids I appreciate all the advocacy that's gone in especially to bathrooms um new law was signed just last week um mandating that there are um gender neutral bathrooms um in each School site so making sure that all schools in California offer what Berkeley offers which is at least one gender neutral bathroom per site and we can do better we all want to
054do better and we're working on that so I'm excited to work with those families on some Statewide advocacy around how maybe we can change some of the um codes and laws that limit the work that we can do there I told you it was a lot I'm almost done I also attended I was busy I also attended the reparations meeting last week and I just was so impressed by the um just the diversity and breadth of thought um just how seriously folks on that task force are taking their work and How Deeply they're really thinking about um how to make some meaningful recommendations so I I'm grateful to those community members um I want to acknowledge the co the requests for additional coid sick leave um as a single parent um not well I guess
055I was a single parent during coid but my kids were a little older than um are a little older now I I really empathize with a lot of the needs and I think it's an important discussion to have I really think that it's problematic that the state of California is mandating sick leave and not also um you know supplying the resources to ensure that we can uh pay workers for that sick leave this morning I got up early I left early um to join longfellow's Walk and Roll so I really want to thank Longfellow Community for welcoming there and all the kids who walked and rolled and carped to school and finally I'm really excited about vote 16 I think it's going to be great um I'm excited to um I know that there was
056a voter registration event at Berkeley High just a couple weeks ago and I'm excited to really activate kids get them involved in the political process and the electoral process and last thing is my office hours are next week last time nobody showed up so now mark your calendars um next Thursday 3 to 5 Casa Latina not you Forest I'm just kidding um I was just kidding I was just kidding you can come visit me anytime I was just kidding um so come and visit me next uh Thursday and um we can talk about these and other issues thank you vice president vades thank you president fabbot um thanks everyone for your public comments tonight I appreciate hearing from everyone in particular our transgender BHS student who's no longer in the audience but hopefully they're watching
057um just wanted to thank them uh for bringing up the continual issues with our gender neutral bathrooms I'm heartbroken that meeting after meeting we keep hearing from this group of students and um no it doesn't seem like we've provided the appropriate solution that you're looking for so that you don't have to miss 15 minutes of class I do hope that all of us on this board continue to push uh you know for better support and and better facilities for a transgender Community I also want to thank our Educators for speaking about the need for coid leave especially in light of the uptick that we're seeing right now and I also Echo the comments of my fellow directors just with deep appreciation for the safety improvements that we see at BHS I know I received a
058number of emails from BHS families as I'm sure all my colleagues did um in light of the recent incidents at the school and so I also at the same time that I express deep gratitude to our staff know that we can do more to make all of our campuses safer as our superintendent mentioned and some of my board colleagues as well I want to wish everyone a Happy International Walk and Roll to school day I enjoyed uh checking out the Willard travel tallies this morning where the highest mode shift appeared to be The Pedestrian student pool so many thanks to all our Willard Walkers um Walkin roll is a very special day for me and I don't a lot of people may know but I'm a transportation planner um and you know for me this
059is not just like a perform fortive day it's not like a one- day thing I think uh students continue to be among the most vulnerable pedestrians on our streets it's a day to remind our community of the importance of Traffic Safety near all our school sites so we can do our part to prevent traffic fatalities and collisions with that spirit in mind I wanted to thank the Alam County safe roots to school team for finishing a much awaited report for kmon elementary on safety assessments and I see one of our crossing guards in the audience I know we've been waiting a year there's a select few people who have been waiting a year for this report but I'm thrilled that it was released recently and I had a wonderful conversation with council member Susan wrath
060that represents district 6 uh to talk about how you know we can put some of those safety improvements in place uh for the kont community I attended a press conference on Monday with fellow Schoolboard colleagues in Oakland and assembly member Mia B to ask the CPU not to drastically reduce the value of solar credits for public schools the California Public Utilities Commission has proposed rules that will erably hurt the ability of schools colleges renters property owners and small farmers and health centers to save money on their utility bills through rooftop solar the cpuc is scheduled to make a final decision on this issue on October 12th and the item will be placed on the agenda tomorrow October 5th an increase in energy expenditures for schools directly reduces the funding for educ ational services for our
061students so that's what I was fighting for um along with the rest of uh the ousd board members that were in attendance to make sure that this doesn't happen and that we don't hurt our already overburdened Public School System our district has passed a resolution support of solar savings through our resolution number 24-5 in support of net energy metering for all schools so I wanted to thank my board colleagues for our leadership at least on the advocacy front lastly I hope to see many families at Adelante celebrating Latin families this Saturday October 7th at 9:30 a.m. I'll be there with our wonderful superintendent to welcome our I'm also having office hours this weekend October 8th at lavender bakery at 9:00 a.m. make sure that that information is placed on the website and hope to see
062folks there thanks a lot excellent thank you I will um stand in agreement with the subsi of comments of my colleagues and thank you so much for um taking the time and for all of your work to uh represent our district and shared goals um so well and I also like to say that um in addition to all the months that we're celebrating it is also dyslexia awareness month so um let's take the time to also make sure we do um celebrate and honor dyslexia awareness month now we will move towards approving our consent calendar is there a motion to approve so moved second second it's been moved by vice president vasad Dev seconded by director chanowski all in favor say I I I I I it's been approved unanimously so now we can move
063towards our first discussion item which is an update on measure y1 vote 16 we are all looking forward to this update um do I need to bring her forward online hi good evening can you see and hear me yes we can good evening everyone my name is Margaret prinzing I'm an attorney with the law firm Olsen run show and I've been retained by the district to help um the process of trying to get uh Berkeley measure y1 imp implemented um for youth voting in the city of Berkeley so let me give you some background on um what's been happening um and and and what comes next um so on November 8th 2016 Berkeley voters approved measure y1 to allow 16 and 17 year olds to vote for members of the Berkeley Unified School District School
064Board and that made history um Berkeley became the first city in California to authorize youth voting but it also became one of the first cities in the United States to do so after Tacoma Park in hyattville Maryland and it did so with very strong support More than 70% of Berkeley voters voted yes on y one so that was a landmark moment for youth voting but it was only the first step because measure y1 um what it did was to amend the Berkeley City Charter to allow the city council to adopt an ordinance allowing 16 and 17 year-old the ability to vote for members of the school board however the city council can only adopt that ordinance if four different conditions are met first city elections must still be able to be Consolidated with County elections
065second youth voting cannot increase the cost the election cost of the city third no City funds can be used for any related expenses and that's significant because it means the Berkeley Unified School District has to fully fund youth voting in Berkeley and fourth all systems and procedures must be technically ready to accommodate youth voting and that last one has proved to be a very large hurdle um way back in August 2018 a group of interested parties including student leaders um and then School Board uh member Josh Daniels met with the Alama County registar of Voters to begin discussions about implementing measur measure y1 this was 2018 um and at that first meeting the registar identified a long list of issues that would have to be work through and that's basically what we've been doing ever
066since the challenge here one of the challenges is that however exciting it can be to make change and to try something new it can also be difficult um and here there are no precedents for what we're trying to do and that has required um a lot of work by those involved um there are basically a remarkable number of details involved in an election and youth voting requires the registar to figure out more or less how to run two different kinds of elections in the same city um or more actually actually be a little more accurate than that it's the same election um but it's two different ballots traditional voters and by traditional voters I mean those over 18 um will receive one ballot with all the candidates and all the ballot measures um in you
067know in the state and in the city while youth voters will receive a different ballot with only School District elections and we've had to figure out how to do this in a way that doesn't overload the system that complies with all the laws that safeguards the Privacy um of identifying information for youth voters and that doesn't create election security problems and we have to do all this in a way that isn't exorbitantly complex or expensive um because it's public School funds that are at stake here um so to cite just one example of the kinds of challenges that we face this one's a very technical challenge um for quite a while we were grappling with the question of whether the company that provides the software that the registar uses to manage its voting system the
068company is called runbeck um whether they could make the software changes necessary to allow youth voting in Alam County without somehow encroaching um or creating problems um with how our County system interacts with the software used by the Secretary of State's office in connection with Statewide elections so that's just one example that's been managed that's been figured out um but there's been many many others um and then of course we've had other cies of challenges the registar has had to run a number of Elections since we began this process in 2018 it's had to deal with a global pandemic and this has periodically hindered his office's ability to focus on youth V voting basically whenever an election starts to come up these um issues get put on the back burner because they don't have the
069capacity to to implement some to work on this implementation while also running elections um but we've also had a lot of good moments and again just to site one example in 2022 Oakland voters passed measure QQ um authorizing youth voting in Oakland Unified School District elections and we have been partnering with them um ever since with this effort um so that is the background that brings me to the present where are we today and I am very happy to report that we are closer than we have ever been and there is a real chance that Alam County will be ready for youth voting in November 2024 the goal here is to make the youth voting experience as much like the traditional voting experience as possible um and we should be able to realize that goal
070um most traditional youth uh excuse me most traditional voters vote by mail but have the option to vote in person at at at voting centers um youth voters will only be able to vote by mail but that experience will be almost exactly what the experience is for traditional voters um youth voters will have their ballots sent to their homes they will get a a ballot pamplet with information about school district elections they can drop their ballots off in the mail or at voting centers etc etc it's going going to be a very similar experience to what traditional voters um go through um so now I want to just walk us through the next steps and the challenges so starting with next steps um the registar vendor is now working on all the software upgrades to
071ensure that the registar system can technically accommodate and handle youth voting that's happening now um as they start rolling those updates out the registar will will begin testing the software to make sure it works in the real world and the goal is to finish that by February of next year when once again the registar office is going to have to start ramping up to get ready for the election the registar and the school district will have to enter into an agreement a memorandum of understanding addressing all the relevant implementation issues and that will also likely involve the city of Berkeley Oakland Unified School District and the City of Oakland um and then uh the city would have to enact that ordinance that would actually authorize youth voting and that can only happen once we demonstrate
072that those four conditions that I mentioned at the very beginning of this presentation once those conditions have been met um now that we also still have some challenges ahead some you know hurdles that we have to clear and I I I want to be very clear that that while we are close we are not there yet and it's still possible that we won't get there by next November so I am optimistic but I do want to be realistic we still do have these hurdles so um the first hurdle as you probably inferred from what I've said um is that we could still run into problems with the software development itself or with the testing um because if we do run into significant problems um we may not have time to correct course in time for
073November 2024 um but again there's been so much groundwork laid we are optimistic but again we'll have to see what happens um and the second hle is costs um we are still waiting for final estimates from from the software company runback and from the register our voters about how much this will cost the school district um and it is possible that those costs will be deemed to be too high um however the initial estimates that we've received are encouraged um the estimated cost for the software update which is expected to be a one-time cost um is $77,000 now that is just an estimate um and it doesn't include training costs there are still some unknowns in there that could that could change that number um but we can expect since it doesn't include training cost
074that that number will go up to some extent um but but one helpful aspect ECT of this is that software cost will likely be shared with Oakland so that will not be borne by Berkeley Alone um in addition the registr has provided what he characterizes as a rough estimate of the per election cost and so this would be the cost um each time there is an election that involves youth voters and that estimated cost is 7 to9 per potential um voter now I need to get some clarity on what is considered to be a potential voter but um an early estimate that I received in this process is that there's a proximately 3,216 and 17 year olds in Berkeley if that's accurate and if the registar is going to count all of those and not
075just those who are registered um that means that a single election could cost a district approximately 22,400 to 28,800 again we'll have to see you know how that pencils out what the actual number of potential voters are whether there are any changes that might influence that cost such as labor costs printing costs um but but that's that's an estimate um and and and frankly I find that encouraging um it's not as much as I I thought it would be um but and and I should say this is an amount just that amount the per election C cost is just for Berkeley um it would not be split with Oakland because Oakland would also have to pay at $79 per potential voter in in in its jurisdiction um so that concludes my prepared remarks but I'm
076happy to respond to any questions that you may have about this thank you thank you so much for that um very informative update you answered uh many of my questions especially around sharing the C C with um ousd which is encouraging um I'm concerned or curious if you are a student in Berkeley but not a resident in Berkeley will you be able to vote for your um Berkeley Schoolboard directors I don't believe so no okay so if you're in Oakland but you go to school in Berkeley you'll still vote for Oakland board of directors yes okay that's understanding that was my clarifying question other directors you have questions vice president yeah um thank you so much for that presentation and that's exactly what I wanted to know is what what what are the costs for
077implementing this my question is I know you mentioned there would be some training costs potentially um and who would who would need to be trained are you talking about District staff or register staff or both like what would um training entail to be able to to actually do the election great question and there's two different buckets of training cost and I think I I I think I kind of referred to training being an unknown with both of those line items so when it comes to runback software update once they have um actually finished the process when they once they know what the software is and how it's going to operate they need to figure out what training they need to do with the registar staff so um they they don't have a sense right now
078of how much training is going to be required how many hours of their time will be needed and that will be um the component of training that gets rolled into the software cost that one-time cost then there's a um uh sort of an educational component from the registar perspective so Berkeley Unified School District can decide for itself Oakland can decide for itself how it wants to train its youth voters just education Outreach um efforts that's something that can be done with private organizations it's something that can be done with the registrar's office itself um and once we get further down the line um we can have meetings with with the registar office and lay out a plan and get some cost estimates there as well thank you uh thank you while we're on that topic
079um just to keep in mind that we approve our budget for the 2024 2025 school year by the end of June so we as a board would need to know what line items to make sure are allocated for this in June which kind of should plan your target dates for making sure is this real is this possible we could also encumber um a set aside for it um but we I just want to flag that that we will need that information in order to meet Our obligation thank you that's helpful and I I think that's very doable Target date awesome thank you director shinoski oh okay anybody else students you gotta be excited right no all right well then I just like to acknowledge uh director Brown even in her absence who has been working
080very closely with um Miss prinzing on this issue and thank her also for her work thank you thank you very much um let's see what time is it is it break time no it's not break time it's only 8 o'cl so we will move towards vep um item 13.2 our measure renewal update we will receive you miss fliming thank you so much okay good evening thank you president babot and good evening board of directors my name is Kathy Fleming and I'm I am the director of local resources and my job entails uh managing uh BP and Bara and I'm here tonight to present to you the update on the betet renewal which we know is on the ballot uh coming up in March of 20124 so not that far away okay so thank you and
081as always we ground ourselves in our mission which is to enable and and inspire our diverse student body to achieve academic excellence and to make positive contributions to our world and we do this by focusing on our four e Excellence engagement enrichment and excellence and we're going to look at the many ways that BP supports the four e tonight next and for tonight our objective is to share uh the updated information with you board members and to receive your feedback as we finalize this measure for your approval later this uh this month and um we're going to go over uh betep review we're going to look at all the many great things at BP funds uh the approval timeline for the measure and give you a little update on uh how we're work doing on
082our BP awareness and we're going to go over some tax rate scenarios that we've been working very hard on with the pno and internally with our leadership and we're going to share some good news with you our polling results which continue to show support not only for buusd but for BP as well and uh then we're going to review the accountability Provisions in the measure and a potential um addition to increase accountability and then we'll turn it over to you for discussion and next slide will be coming in a few seconds and here's the timeline uh so we are in October 4th the Schoolboard meeting this is the last of the updates that we've been providing for you since uh last year on the BP measure renewal uh we've already met with the p twice
083this fall and we have one more meeting with the pno on October 10th and I just want to give a a shout out to our co-chairs Nicole shabbo who is here tonight wo that's a shout out and Wen Brad street who's not here tonight for and I want to thank them for their leadership and namoda thanks for being here if you're still here woo okay great and um I also want to commend the pno members because we're working with last year's members and we usually don't start meeting until after the new members are elected and seated in November and so not only are members showing up but we're actually having quarum and we're have having these really substantial uh conversations about the renewal so thanks to pno folks for that and I appreciate your continued
084partnership um okay and oh and then we'll be coming back to we'll be going to the pno to provide this information we're providing to you tonight to gather their feedback and then we'll go back to our leadership teams the cabinet and our budget leadership team to finalize a measure to bring to you for first reading on October 18th followed by a public hearing second reading and approval of the resolution on November 1st and that will uh set us up for meeting the deadline to qualify for the March ballot and the deadline is uh December 6th next okay so a review of our uh BP awareness campaign uh we are trying to um have create a buzz at school sites and school communities about BP about the wonderful things that BP does we have our most
085recent uh material is our BP renewal fact sheet uh which we have in English and Spanish and we've dist distributed those to sites of announced to principles that uh we can have these at school events such as math nights literacy nights music nights Etc uh we had some good have some good partnership in getting the word out on BP also in uh messages to families and uh We additionally we were at the salano stroll on September I forgot the date already 10th I think it was and we had uh a great showing of our um music teachers and Librarians and we had a great uh Library section set up where we had our Librarians reading to kids in the shade and it was a very popular event so it was a great uh time to
086have BP exposure and talk to folks about BP and all the great things that BP does and you can see the other materials that uh We've shared with you before our BP supports videos highlighting uh certain programs and initiatives in b BP as well as our uh Community mailers coming out in the next couple weeks that will be going to every home uh and every parent of students in buusd so that will be a good opportunity to share some more bp info thank you and now we move on to talking about all the many ways that uh and many things critical programs and activities that BP supports um BP has centralized uh programs Staffing and supports as well as site program funds and this slide represents um a number of Investments uh that we uh
087make and B set first of all smaller class size we have smaller class size than the uh other districts in the state and um up to one-third of our teachers are funded by BP that's a big uh part of the BP funding it comes out to almost half of the BP funding is for for small class size and then we have support for a curriculum instruction Department uh instructional coaching and professional learning around our literacy action plan and around our other uh instructional initiatives we also have um well we have instructional coaches we have ethnic studies many PD offerings we also have special ed positions to assist with sites that have a a large case load so uh that can support uh the instruction of special ed students at those sites and um we have
088our expanded course offerings which uh provides before and after school courses that aren't typically available during the instructional day and their enrichment and academic support um such as uh chemistry and science labs as well as um Credit Recovery class and other academic Support classes and additionally sites use their program funds and the programs uh funds for schools uh represent 10 and a qu% of the BP allocation so this is about 3.6 million this year going directly to school sites on a per pupil basis and uh schools determine their budgets uh with their ssc's and many of these funds are used for other instructional supports like tutors instructional coaches uh uh academic interventions and professional development and additionally at BHS through site and Central they have academic counselors we have a 504 coordinator and support for
089the uh IB Program um academic support for athletes and we have an instructional technology TSA and next slide please in addition to all the academic supports we have in betet we also have uh student support programs including counseling at uh counselors at middle school and and we have uh site funds as superintendent pointed out in her comments we also have site funds that are dedicated to me mental health supports and we have the other uh oh can you go back a slide yes minina I mean U sorry playing musical chairs on me um and we have uh other supports at BHS um as well as support for our Affinity based programming uh including ethnic studies TSA and program support black studies at ba s to expand course offerings in that department support for pente the
090African-American success framework rise support at BHS and also a bilingual home school liaison at BS BHS and all the things on this slide are a combination of site funds and Central funds next slide please and now we come to our Essentials for excellence where we have our music vapa program Library instructional technology and again the site program funds and I included the site program funds on this slide as well because there's so many enrichment activities and uh other student support kind of programs that are funded through those funds field trips Material supplies PE dance uh additional Arts and Music and um and uh standout we have for our music vapper program is our our Universal 4 five music program every child has an instrument and every child learns to play instrument which is unique in
091the state and our library program a fully functioning library to every school with assigned uh Librarians and uh funds for materials books technology also we have the author visits which are very popular and the battle of the books I was going to say bands but it's not it's books and our instructional technology is really important important for access to uh instructional technology tools software and uh training for all the all teach teachers and students across the district next slide please so now we're going to segue into how are we going to keep all of these programs going um one of the challenges we have had in BP is that uh you may know that we have a cola built into the measure while the cola uh can be enacted each year it fluctuates in any
092one year it could be zero it could be one it could be 2.5 it could be 4.9 as it was this year so trying to predict what's going to happen with the cola over the next eight years is not uh something that we can do accurately um so that's one factor we need to take into consideration when we're looking at uh the fiscal models that we've developed and we've been working on over time um so we looked at various tax rates since last spring we looked at uh tax rates uh with the pno this spring and early this fall and uh there are other factors that we need to consider consider such as inflation and Andor recession um we don't know what costs will will be What will what will be driving costs to go
093up or stay flat um but we can do a projection based on some assumptions and we do know that the cola over the years of this measure measure E1 has not kept up with program costs which has uh has made it so that we need to have a higher tax rate for the next measure or we'll have to reduce programming as it currently stands um so we also um take into account uh the voter support for tax rates and the ongoing um support uh feedback and um recommendations from the oversight committee so that's ongoing and since last spring we've been working internally and externally on these models they've become refined and more accurate in terms of Revenue and expenses and uh what we've built in is a um little bit lower than average Cola over
094the 10 years uh because we don't want to count on an average we're not sure that that will come into fruition and also we've applied average program costs increases over the that have happened over the life of measure E1 to this next measure model so we're trying to continue uh on on average what we've been seeing so um and uh so in any uh what we've seen in past measures is that we can have a years where the cola is low and the revenue is also low as a result and but High program costs and um we've also seen when coal is high and costs are Level so it's hard to predict uh we're trying to be good Steward stewards of fund and it's a year-by-year process um but it is important at this time
095while we're setting the tax rate to make sure next next slide please to make sure that we have enough Revenue to continue our on to our programs into the next measure and also to have enough um enough Revenue to offset any increasing costs and potential slowed Revenue growth so we're trying to carry forward our programs at the current level and we're also want to protect ourselves in in the event of rising program costs or low Revenue so um as I mentioned the cola has not kept up so we've we we've have a little bit of a below col that's one of the reasons why we have to raise the rate um and we've reviewed two rates with the pno to date we reviewed 57 cents and more recently we reviewed 53.5 cents and as I
096said the frame the um models have been refined and we've been able to recognize a little bit more Revenue so to put in our models so we're able to bring the rate down a little bit but we do understand the feedback that we've received to have minimal impact on the tax rate and um okay so now we're going to look at the um impact on a quote unquote average house um we just used a size a house with 1450 square foot for this illustration so the current rate this year is 45.4 C so that size house would pay $658 this year if we and next year we have we're currently in our seventh year of this measure next year is the eighth and final year of the measure and a cola will be applied for
097this exercise we use the 2.5 as an estimate again this year was uh 4.5 and um so it looks like it's going to go down a bit so for a 2.5 Cola that would mean the same siiz house would pay 675 next year so that doesn't really have a bearing on the first year of the next measure because we have to establish the exact tax rate we can't have a cola in year one because we have to specify what the tax rate will be and what the anticipated Revenue will be and the impact on the taxpayer so therefore if we had a tax rate in year one starting the measure a onetime increase to 53.5 cents that homeowner would pay $776 and for 55 cents that uh that would come out to $797 so you
098can see the difference with a little bit of change in the cents the little bit of increase and uh when we go over the poll you'll see the results for what we tested this fall we tested 53 cents and 5 cents and um let's go forward please all right now we come to the model so I hope you're looking at it on your screen um I'm going to orient you to the model so basically we're looking at two rates we're looking at the orange rate is 53.5 and the blue is 55 and the what's consistent in this model is the fact that for both of these the we're looking at total revenue over the life of the measure this is not any one year this is when we put all eight years together under the
099assumptions I just described we're looking at the revenue so that's applying a 2% Cola so uh the expenses is what's going to be different so the expenses for 50 uh or no the revenue is what's going to be different sorry the expenses will be consistent regardless of the rate and what other change you'll see is the ending fund balance projection so you can see we have it broken down by program and when you look at each program you can see the revenue for each rate the expenses and the anticipated ending fund balance and if you go through each program you'll see that there's a few where the margin is a little slim between uh revenue and expenses and that's evidenced in a small fund balance and those programs are music and vapa instructional Tech and
100student achievement strategies so um there's a very minimum small margin and you can see that there's a very small fund balance but when you see when the tax rate goes up to 55 that margin does increase so if you look at the bottom row you see the total revenue total expenses and total estimated fund ending fund balance so that figure is um accumulation of over the eight years so we have the percentage there I can't see the percentage from here I have two glasses let's see if but neither of them will work for this so next time I come I'll have three glasses but um but you can see while it feels like it's a large fund balance in both scenarios it's a small percentage of the overall revenue and I will note for you
101any 1% increase over all expenses in this model will result in about a $3.5 million increase um uh impact to the fund balance so 1% change can make a big difference on the ending fund balance so there's you make a tiny change in these models and it has a big a big difference so again the costs in these models are based on the average cost increase across Staffing program costs Services supplies materials over the life of measure E1 for seven years and so this year would be an estimate because we haven't seen actual okay so it's based on budgets uh let's see if I have anything to add to that one um I think that's it uh let's move to the next slide please okay now we're moving on to polling yay next slide there's
102not much on that slide okay so uh polling uh just very simply this fall we tested um the different tax rates on the voter support for the renewal of the measure the BP measure and then we also confirmed the priorities what's important to these voters in this poll and we're trying to track the attitudes toward the bu USD and support for BP over time next slide please and just FYI polling is a statistically reliable way to collect in feedback from Berkeley voters and the polling was conducted as it has for the last I believe over 10 years since 2004 by uh Goodwin Simon strategic research which is great because then we can look over time have the same polls and the same analysis and have similar questions or the same questions so here we are
103uh comparing tax rates we have we tested 53 and 55 and you can see those responding definitely or probably yes would vote for BP there's not much of a difference between the two um and they're relatively consistent and they exceed the 2third necessary to approve the measure next slide please this is a great slide and this is this is a great slide a because it goes all the way back to 2004 and B um you can see that we continue to enjoy a good job rating it's steady and strong over the years even through coid and that's something that the the polling uh the pollster commented on that they have not seen this across other districts so I think this is a really positive uh outcome for us from this poll not only in May
104but September as well and um so that's some good news for us next slide please and uh re and confirming support for BP Investments scoring high of uh extremely important or um very import or important fours and fives support for struggling students librar school counselors small class before and after school programs teacher training and music so again we just uh have confirmed that they're supporting the things that we have in Bap next slide and this uh this this question uh is asking uh that taxes do you agree or disagree taxes in Berkeley are just too high uh with what with the school taxes we already have we just can't afford to to pay anymore so not much change since March of 2010 um except that fewer fewer percentage lower percentage agreeing with that statement so
105that's that's good and next next slide please and in general the extra money we pay in Berkeley for our schools has been worthwhile since it's resulted in better schools relatively consistent since March of 2010 with almost two-thirds agreeing uh this past this September and past May next slide please that we pay extra taxes to support our schools in Berkeley is something to be proud of last slide please back sorry other way yeah and this uh question uh since is pretty consistent since February of 2010 80% to 76% largely agreeing with that statement so on to accountability right running out so uh and we've seen the slide before this is just a summary of what we have in place with the current measure and plan to continue is that we have staff uh for oversight and
106management of this of the BP funding it's kept separate in its own fund fund four for tracking purposes and Reporting purposes uh so our funds don't get co-mingled with any other funds we have uh broad Community oversight the plan an oversight committee our School site councils play a role in determining their site school budget use funds use and our Board of Education and I've said this before our planning and oversight committee is very involved very knowledgeable and meets very frequently comparatively speaking to other parel tax uh oversight committees and I do appreciate that and it uh it helps us with our great stewardship of these funds and of course we have our independent audits next and here's just a summary of the planning oversight committee how often they meet what their role is uh what
107the board of EDS role is and of you've seen the slide before just wanted to keep it in there in this presentation to remind us next slide please and now I would like to highlight the very many uh Provisions we have for accountability already in the measure and we intend to continue um a section 8A is for specific purposes um where uh we can only use the funds for what's specified in the measure B is the planning and oversight committee and there are um as I said many uh many meetings and uh many many documents to review we we spend a lot of time on annual reports annual plans annual audits interim reports uh multiple reports ongoing and our School site councils that's something unique to us and that School site councils play a part
108in in uh reviewing preparing and approving their site budgets and uh next slide to financial oversight this you can't see the Highlight on the projection but maybe you can see it on your screen but I've highlighted certain areas of this um of these sections that I think are of importance um you'll notice that we have the requirement to report expenditures and revenue annually four times which is what we do through our interim reports annual reports and annual plans um and what we're what we've what we've heard from the pno is we want to ensure that we we can have program metrics included in the reports we already have in here that we report will include St the status of projects so um we're proposing to add this phrase including project metrics and as you know
109from last spring this year we started adding performance measure tables to each uh program and presenting them and to the pno uh while we don't have measures for every program in every area it's something that we're working on improving and uh aligning with our district um practices and uh work around uh data governance and um what we see is that the p uh excuse me the pl the um the annual plans and the annual reports will be able to align with what we're doing districtwide um so we can Report with the same metrics in some cases in some cases we'll have program metrics but I wanted to point that out to show that we um want to add that to the language and then e is again independent Auditors uh reports so that will continue
110as well so uh next slide which is the final slide and thank you for your time and I'll turn it over to you all for discussion and or questions thank you and thank you so much for that uh wonderful detailed presentation thank you um to the voters thus far who have um supported beep and as a parent who's had three daughters go through Berkeley schools my children have directly benefited from your generous support with small classes with music with libraries with support for mental health services so we don't want to um not take this time to also thank you all for your previous support um and um acknowledge that it has made a direct impact on the lives of our students and in our Berkeley Community I also want to thank the pno committee I
111remember sitting in those meetings it's twice a month for two hours it's like it's no joke and it's continent three hours now three hours and I remember when I first signed up I'm like oh sure and I was like wait what time do we get out of this meeting we're still here we're still here but it's very rewarding because you learn so much about um what we're doing and I do see the um feedback from the pno members being reflected here especially when it comes to Pro project metrics because so often we have um funded things year after year but we haven't seen the The data- Driven results or the governance around the outcomes that we've wanted to see as uh committee members as representatives of the community and as board members so I do
112appreciate adding that um project metrics in and I have um two questions one I noticed that we're talking about 8 years uh in previous uh betet renewals we did 10 years at one point so just wondering why we decided from a 8 to a 10 perspective and also um in next steps do we plan to poll again and um will that poll create be more around definitive language u in the proposed measure thank you for those questions okay uh number uh one yes we are preparing an 8-year measure and we have had uh past measures that have been 10 and even 12 and what we're uh moving forward with eight for two reasons one eight years is um is short enough to be able to have some predictability and to be able to make adjustments
113annually it was found that 10 years and 12 years was a little bit hard to project and uh set the tax rate and also ensure that we had enough revenue for the funds one measure for example needed to have a bridge measure because the revenue ran out so eight years is seen as more manageable and more predictable um we also don't want to go sooner because you can have voter fatigue and we don't want to go to the voters too often but another reason for eight years that it aligns with barah which is our uh partial tax to support uh to recruit and retain our Educators and that expires in 2032 so should we have this one for eight years that will um expire also uh in in 20 32 and we can look at
114them together in terms of aligning uh purpose and looking at the funding uh at that time so it kind of makes sense to do them together um so that's the reason for the eight and then uh the second question is a good question we did have two uh polls and in terms of testing measure language we did craft the uh 70w uh ballot um wording uh for wording for the ballot in both measures and so that was kind of a testing of the language it wasn't uh a testing of the measure itself but we tested um support for programs and support for the measure overall and awareness for the measure overall so we don't plan on going back for another Poll for that for that purpose great thank you and um one follow-up question around
115um metrics is there a a time or um a a method for when the metrics don't prove out that we will go a different direction well certainly if we have annual annual metrics about uh that show outputs and and outcomes we can see if what we're doing is making uh progress so we would either look at the program level and look at changes at the program level in order to achieve our goals which is not only would be happening in B set but that's happening across District so that's one thing we can do is Alter our course and our actions and our activities and what we're investing in in those programs so that's something to to that level of detail that's something that's highlighted in the annual reports and the annual plans to the Pano
116when the managers come in they talk about what their goals for the year were what worked what the challenges were how they've shifted and pivoted so that's one way we can address um not seeing the outcomes that we want to see another way we can address it is not just at the program level or pno uh but more districtwide level with leadership through ed services when we look at what what resources we have in place what they're funding and what goals they're aligned with such as a strategic plan um that will enable us to to be able to tell are our investments working to reach our goals so that would be you know a larger district-wide conversation so certainly my answer is that it is it is possible to uh change what's happening in the
117programs we will have to align with the measure language and what we fund but I do believe that the measures uh specific enough for that to make sure we're spending on what is supposed to be spent on but flexible enough to have changes within the programs excellent thank you so much uh any other directors have questions vice president vasad Dev and then director chowski and then I'd like to welcome director Brown thank you hi thank you very much for your presentation and for the materials that the board received about um the measure I just wanted to go back to that slide on um which programs like the voters highly valued and just wanted to know if for like our public facing website and our public facing materials if we're going to refocus on those topics
118based on how they pulled and so um just wondering kind of what's the messaging plan for that and my second question is how we're engaging our Affinity groups just because I know a lot of the equity work that's funded by BP uh seem to pull really well with the voters and so how are we engaging our aapi families our African-American families or Latin families um so that they also uh know what the measure is funding thanks okay so I answer the second question first and um we're working on rolling out information through the Committees uh for those groups so I'm um uh that's the next step after the site so aligning with or working with the district liaison to the Committees in order to find out uh what events are coming up and how we
119can get materials and also do some electronic information out to uh the members of committees and then hopefully Beyond so working on that thank you for that and then the messaging plan is pretty tightly aligned already um we already knew that these uh priorities were pulling well in the spring and we tried to have our materials reflect that in terms of focusing on support for struggling students our libraries and music and instructional support in small class size so you will see in the materials that that is the focus but I I appreciate the the um question and I will go back with another uh eye on that through the website and the materials uh moving forward so thank you for that yeah I have a couple of comments and and a couple of questions um
120so first I also want to Echo the Gratitude to Berkeley voters uh you know since Prop 13 our schools are woefully underfunded so public education in this country and in this state um It suffers because of a lack of funding and so this measure um really helps support many of the things that this board has asked for to support students um including things like mental health uh counselors in our middle schools a TSA for ethnic studies and so many other things that you had outlined on your slides so I I really I have two kids in Berkeley public schools and um I'm so grateful so thank you um I wanted to also um just talk about the increases in rates and sort of the modeling that we're looking at um I have a couple of
121things that i' would like to request I'd like to understand how uh funding will be augmented and in which categories it will be augmented um with the potential increase so you showed on slide 11 um what the revenues would be and then what the expenditures would be but I think it would be interesting and just um not necessarily right now but maybe next time to just understand where we are putting additional resources is it a flat increase to everything and the percentages stay the same or will there be some adjustments so I would just like to know that maybe for the next time it comes back to us that would I can give you a brief response well in the model we're not planning on increasing anything that's in the plans right now great so
122these models represent a continuation of the current level of Staffing and services and supplies and materials and just to note that M BP is majority FTE it's about 85 to 90% people so that's really what driving cost is uh is is Staffing great um and also on slide 11 something that just jumped out at me was your comment about a 1% increase in costs being $3.5 million I think that's really important to highlight because when I just as a lay person look at some of those numbers it seems like the smaller tax increase is plenty right you have a fun balance at the end so that seems like it's fine but my understanding from a Pano and just sort of engaging in the um in the numbers really tells me you know when we talk
123about Cola I think sometimes people think it's an actual cost of living adjustment but it is always in my experience below inflation so our labor costs our costs for materials Services Goods everything exceeds Cola so if we don't build in things like that extra cushion we will will almost certainly um be left with a deficit in the end and then have to cut some of these very um important and prior prioritized programs is that an accurate summation of it yes I would say I Concur and um as I stated earlier the cola has not kept up with program costs over the life of measure E1 so um that's one reason we have higher costs at the end of this measure okay and last question is um in year one I understand there's some special consideration
124sort of given to um like funding year one versus the other years of the measure can you explain that a little bit uh are you referring to um revenue for expenditures and the growing fund balance and um uh well we I it can in this measure that we have currently in measure E1 the fund balance grew at a faster rate than I think was planned so in the beginning the idea was to say not spend at a fast rate and to in order to build this fund balance to have that cushion toward the middle and the end of the measure so um uh what happened in the middle of the this measure is that the fund balance grew a lot and then coid happened and we had a lot of savings uh and expenditures from
125coid so the fund balance grew so we try to each year impact the size of the fund balance by spending it down or slowing the spending so the answer to the question is anyone year can be different based on those factors um year one in this model will have more Revenue than what is projected as expenditures and there'll be a greater margin in year one and as you get to the middle midle that kind of diminishes and at the end it it it goes into deficit spending a little bit um not as much as this current measure but that's kind of the pattern and so trying to be good stewards of the fund and the measure over eight years we're trying to kind of like direct this ship each year so that we can end
126with a positive fund balance but not a big fund balance so I mean that's the goal and that's what we try to do uh with the rate of spending but there you know as I said there's so many things out of our control with Staffing costs infl what is the cola so we're constantly monitoring it multi multiple times throughout the year first inter room second year and closing on the actuals and then we're looking at the use of fund balance in the next coming year Etc but it takes a couple years to catch up because when we approve plans in the spring they're based on the assumptions from that year and those books haven't closed yet so any unexpended funds in any one year roll into the next year so the fund balance will increase
127if the budgets aren't fully EXP expended and rarely are the budgets fully expended as well so that's you know that's something we keep our eye on annually and through the interims in the different reporting periods to try to manage it okay can I make one last comment okay well now I have two now now I know why I was placed on pno for the long meetings so I see how it is um the last thing I just want to say is I also really appreciate the comments from members of p and the board about metrics and really understanding I think it's been a theme for the entire time I've been on the board and it makes me really happy that we're really trying to understand how we use our limited resources to really Target the
128specific issues that we see in front of us so I hope we can expand that we can have those discussions in more spaces um with more of our revenue streams and have more like cross uh discussions on what those those goals are and how all these different things are playing into them so thank you I'm done director Brown yes good evening governance team and Community thank you for the excuse tardiness uh president babit and good evening to you director Fleming it's so great to see you and thank you for all of the hard work that you are doing um and have been doing uh in in a service of BP and to get this thing passed uh for our community and for our schools I do have a couple of questions the first question that
129I have is around um what we know and what we're preparing for in terms of um competing measures or other measures that may be on the same ballot um and our plan of action around uh ensuring that this is something that the entire Community rallies around as they have years for years and years in the past to ensure that this um this passes so I'll I'll start there and then continue the rest of my questions okay so as you know once the ballot is once the measure is approved to be placed on the ballot we go into campaign mode and when I say we I mean the world I don't mean us specifically I mean the B set measure goes into campaign mode so at that point we transition to not campaigning as District entity
130but more around providing information so uh I said earlier about how we're kind of saturating school sites and programs uh with BP materials our new fact sheets for Renewal we have the mailers going out to to the homes um uh in the next two weeks that's going out and uh we're going to continue to provide information and go to events and uh have electronic dissemination of information throughout that time period um while at the same time there'll be a campaign going on that uh we won't be directly involved in so we'll be doing our best to keep uh the BP Buzz alive um in regards to competing measures I don't have that information right now but uh I can look look that up and get a report back to you on that thank you and
131if I can be a specific I don't mean comp competing uh coming from the school district or or competing measures that will also serve the school district I don't mean that I mean maybe things that the city is interested in bringing forth during that time I'd love to learn more um about that if we we have that information or when we have that information I'm also interested in knowing um how we will partner uh with the city I know that there's going to be a lot of leg work for um members of our district and those who cares care about our schools to do um but the votes will mainly come from all of those here uh in the the city of Berkeley so I'm interested to know what our plan of action is in
132the future um to to work with the city to ensure that this passes and how they will also show their commitment to our schools in that way right and I retract the word competing then thank you thank you thank you um in addition to that I wanted to ask a little bit um you know I was able to listen to your presentation on the drive over on Zoom uh but I wanted to ask and I heard you mention around um not a a huge amount of changes in terms of the information uh that you're giving us tonight and what we will vote on and support uh in BP but I am interested to know um about the effective student support which covers about 7% of the net revenue from um from BP and specifically around
133the counseling and Behavioral Health portion of it knowing um what our students are dealing with knowing um the plight of um what just what what all is happening with mental health for our students um was why wasn't there can you tell me more about with P about the prioritization of um mental health or counseling and Behavioral Health and why it is staying the the same uh when you say staying the same do you mean the dollar amount okay so um as we discussed earlier uh mental health uh did pull high it's an important to the voters right um and we have had it in B set for quite some time and we have funds dedicated to middle school counselors and as I mentioned before we do have site funds being used for mental Health supports
134for students over and above what's provided centrally by the district um we are restricted to 7% of the allocation uh overall allocation to be used for the two programs that we have in that section right now which is student uh achievement strategies which is where we have our pente African-American success framework our black studies be a scientist we have our RTI uh partial FTE for sites there and the rest of the literacy coaches in that bucket and that uh that one bucket is a little bit tight if you look at the model um the margin is very small uh between expenditures and revenue with a projected just $100,000 rounded uh at the end of the measure so if we were to increase Counseling in any way we would have to be taking from this bucket
135another way that any of these buckets could be increased would be with the that and what I just reviewed was at the 53.5 C you can see that changes it goes up to6 million with the 55 model but point is is um the revenue drives the available funding for programming so unless we remove what's already there and reallocate it we're not going to be able to increase however if you do look at the counseling budget um we we do have a larger cushion and it is possible looking out projecting out to add another uh FTE or some other type of uh mental health support uh maybe it's not an FTE but form and of a provider um but we would look at multip multiple years through through the measure to see if we could sustain
136it but um you know it's it's likely that there's some room to do that so again we're constrained by the um the percentages in the measure but we have flexibility within those buckets and revenue is also a flexible uh potential good to hear thank you so much um director chanowski yeah I just wanted to comment on your question about about competing measures or other measures on the spring ballot I think there were a lot of conversations that were had around very deliberately putting this on the ballot at this time in order to avoid you know having that um potentially cause a problem for the measure yes I am um fully aware of that but I've also uh heard news that that may not have or that may not necessarily be the only thing that may
137come up on the March ballot I know that originally we were thinking about this and the November ballot as we've done um historically and moved it to the March ballot so that it wouldn't be with competing things but I am also hearing that there may be something else on the March ballot and so I'm uh excited about our advocacy um in the community to ensure that this is the only thing um and excited about the commitment from the city um to to see what they can do to support our schools in this way and I'd like to say that publicly thank you understood and noted all right if there are no more questions or concerns uh thank you again for your time and all your hard work and dedication thank you everyone appreciate the time
138all right nine o'clock break time we made oh we have a public hearing that's supposed to start at 9: well we might as well do that in case anyone is here um well can we move to item 14.1 is there anyone here for this public hearing well since we've already adopted the agenda okay since no one is here then uh we will close the public hearing time at this moment and we will move for a break uh can you put seven minutes on the clock B break motion I move to approve the break or the public hearing the resolution attached to the public hearing for the public he I move to approve the resolution attached to the public hearing I'll second that motion thank you it's been moved and seconded all in favor okay so
139we will now have a break for seven minutes can you put seven minutes on the clock I was trying to be Liz are you still there yes I was trying to call you oh sorry try calling me again okay all right we will uh resume at this time moving towards our final discussion item of the evening um compliance and Improvement monitoring cim is that acronym for comprehensive coordinated early intervention services cace is that acronym 2023 plan development update thank you Mr Espinosa we will receive you at this time esposa Castro we receive you at this time uh good evening members of the board uh this is Jill hok andik associate superintendent joining you virtually at Dr Espinosa Castro is our director of our department of equity achievement and belonging and we're also joined here virtually
140by Carla gayon who is our coordinator for our cace plan and Dr Mildred Brown who is our technical advisor um we are going to be sharing with you this evening the work um that has gone on over the last uh couple of months um for the comprehensive coordinated early intervening Services compliance Improvement monitoring 2023 plan you may recall that the board voted on a 20 22 plan for cace in April so just last spring um but we have been identified for a 2023 plan and we're going to talk with you a little bit about that process and the work that has gone into um the development of that plan so far um the next slide you will once again see our district Mission um and just want to enforce here Liz if you could turn
141the next slide thank you um that Equity is really at the center of the cace plan as we work to disrupt the current patterns of disproportionality in the representation of our African-American students in special education and so with that I'm going to turn it over to Carla gadon our coordinator thank you so much associate superintendent Hogan DJ Liz I will ask for the next could you advance us to one more slide thank you yes one more awesome so we are here tonight to give you um just a brief review of the overview of the process of SIM for Cay there are a few updates that we wanted to bring to your attention and then we will focus specifically uh Dr Espinosa Castro will look at the plan review that we're presenting before you in terms
142of some of the input that we use to uh finalize the plan and then we'll close with discussion of course next slide please all right so not much has changed in terms of CA being a four uh phase programmatic improvement process we still have those four steps that we are following uh through the plan cycle a couple of things that you'll notice uh that are new would be Sim which we have described as the compliance and Improvement monitoring essentially this is just the monitoring framework that CDE has is using for the 2023 year uh it's just really another monitoring tier and then abbreviated you will note is that um because as associate superintendent hok and Nik said we did a very comprehensive deep dive for our 2022 plan that was approved in April of 2023
143um we have been uh selected by CDE our California Department of Ed to do an abbreviated plan and essentially that just means that we're using the framework and the structures from the 2022 plan to draw and develop our 2023 plan which gives us the opportunity to really focus on implementation and operationalize some of the activities and some of the measures and priorities that we've put forth um in our 2022 plan for our 2023 plan next slide please uh just a recap we know that we have presented cace to you before just wanting to highlight that it is still a general education plan that is designed to interrupt the over representation and disproportionality in special education with some targeted um and meaningful interventions that are essentially addressing the root causes that are un underlying you know
144why we're significantly disproportionate so those are that's the Crux of what cace is and then on the next slide we still note that um this is still a plan that's monitoring for disproportionality at the federal and state level when the district gets a budget to special education 15% of that budget must be towards Cay initiatives if we are to be significantly disproportionate and so the state then monitors our compliance plan so what we say that we're going to do all of the activities to support the uh measurable outcomes and the root causes that have been derived from our stakeholders so essentially we're looking at federal and state monitoring of disproportionality and when we talk about significant disproportionality we're talking specifically in Berkeley about African-American students and Berkeley being three times more like ly than other
145groups to experience um being identified in certain indicators for special education so for our 2023 plan that is specific learning disability sld or intellectual disability ID um specifically in our 2022 plan you will know that we were significantly disproportionate for other health impairment or Ohi and not so for our 2023 plan uh we are still going to be implementing our 2022 plan activities with a few adjustments so we will be looking at Ohi as a part of the 2022 plan when we carry over the 2023 plan thank you um not much has changed in terms of timeline of these plans we have a number of plans that have happened in the past and then some that are running continuously so just noting here that cace plans still SIM for cace plans still are 27 month
146cycle plans and that they're ongoing um and that we just closed out our 2021 plan a few days ago on the 30th of September and we are currently implementing our 2022 plan and with your approval and with cde's approval we will con currently be working on the 2023 SIM for seay plan with our 2022 plan and then before I pass it over to Dr Espinosa Castro we just thought that we'd highlight and give a a few updates on some of the implementation activities um from the 2022 plan that will also inform the 2023 plan that you have uh been provided with this evening uh just of course wanting to really highlight that we are integrating edge of climber um with our work and just really being able to hone in on Data so that we
147can look at our Target population which we call our vision Scholars and how they're progressing in academics how they're progressing with our attendance and behavior and social emotional learning goals so Edge Climer has been something that we have really uh been proud of and how we're using it to look at what we call individual learning plans which are essentially goals that we set for each and every Vision scholar um and being able to use edge of climber to progress monitor those students so that's a new initiative that we're launching for um the 2023 2024 school year and when I say new initiative with educ climber specifically All Vision Scholars have already had um individualized learning plans and then another highlight that we're proud of is the Leadership Retreat that we held to kick off with
148our vision School principles and vision school program coordinators who have FTE from the C budget um and so we got a chance to come together and look at our plan and priorities and make some goals for the 2023 2024 year within our cace plan our 2022 plan and then some upcoming things that you see on the other side of the slide uh one thing that I'll call out is that we are really looking to um for to launching our survey which will have um some implementation and impact data of specifically around like sense of belonging and cultural affirmation for our staff students and families so these are just a few highlights we can't name them all but um if we could we if we could if we have more time but with that I'll hand
149it over to Dr espanosa Castro who is going to to continue on talking about the actual plan and some of the feedback that we've received from some of our partners that you see listed here on the slide to inform our work with the actual plan that we are uh proposing to you tonight thank you so much Carla um good evening illustrious members of our school board it's really important for us to collect um information and and feedback um in order to inform any revisions as mentioned because of the process that we went through last year we weren't required to go through the detailed uh what they call the data drill down um because we did that at the end of last school year but the idea is that most of our activities are going to
150continue because we're just barely starting to implement them at this point um but then we have an opportunity to uh add revisions and um uh and additions based on the feedback from our partners and so we'll share a little bit about some of the feedback we collected um next slide specifically with our partners we started by reviewing um our uh success Gap data uh and statements that we highlighted from our um Equity Summit last year um and the root causes and getting um confirmation to continue those um then uh we looked at how the vision Scholars specifically did at the end of the year based on their measurable outcomes and looked at some data for that and then um the recommendations from our external reviewer and policies practices and procedures and then collected some of
151the um recommendations from our community um to make any revisions or additions next Slide the uh here you can see the success Gap statements and the lead to the root causes and um our partners were able to vote and confirm that they think that that's still relevant um and these are still important data points to reconsider by the end of the school year uh as a matter of fact one of the new activities that was added um even though we we're not required to do the data drill down or the Deep data dive that we did in the spring is that it's a worthwhile activity and we actually added it into the plan to do um that work um as we have a new activity uh new data coming in for this school year but
152also we have new data tools that we didn't even have when we did that data dive in the early part of the spring semester um so we're excited about that so these are our measurable outcomes and a couple of the feedback uh pieces of feedback that we got um from you all and the board um was around whether the 10% minimal growth um for our academics is a a strong um accelerated measure um and uh we'll talk a little bit more about that and we how we built that into that um activity around the data uh drill down to really determine now once we have two years of our Benchmark data exactly what is the most effective Trends um that we would want to see accelerated growth for these students many of whom are below
153grade level um in order to revise that um Benchmark um for each uh measurable outcome we looked at the end of year data so for example the first measurable outcome is asking for at least 10% growth for our vision Scholars over the course of the year in literacy um this in one one data point our Dibbles data showed that they were actually making 38% growth from uh on average from the across the year um which is good you can even see in terms of the the uh expected dibles composite scores um that would mean that they went from um red level intervention level to yellow or green depending on their grade level which is good growth again if you go to the next slide one of the conversations that that prompted for partners and Leadership
154teams was is that actually still sufficient is that so should we um is 38% what we actually should set as a goal and that's part of the activity that we wrote out to do that data uh uh drill down now using the new tools that we have in educ climber to figure out how best to determine and accurate data and actually incorporating it in this case with our literacy action plan and our work with Dr Kim Gibbons to do that analysis together and set some really um important uh realistic yet ambitious goals for our students um there were also um recommendations or questions that were arose around section 504s and whether those were being utilized to support our students um prior to being identified for special education so we've built out an activity specifically to
155do a file review um of somea and some case studies of some students that have been identified for either Ohi um or for sld and um look at whether or not they received a 504 plan prior to their identification if they would have qualified what other interventions they received and that is going to be a collaborative effort with our general Ed and special education staff um the other feedback from our leadership team was to align our our focus on literacy in particular um while we're still be we'll still be reporting out and um and doing work around math especially since it's written into our 2022 plan which all of these are overlapping and just as you saw that timeline um the state recognizes that those overlapping plans can create some um confusion um if you
156have to start from scratch which is why we've been granted this abbreviated plan to allow us to really try to implement what we wrote out last year with minor um additions or revisions um and so we're our Focus for this year is going to be on literacy um we uh called out um tier one in direct instruction in the plan um we're we recognize the concern about overreliance on consultants in particular that's something that um uh uh we have a required consultant which is our technical assistance provider and we write we in some cases we write those Consultants into the plan because we to take advantage of their expertise as they're working across District but one of our big um considerations is that we want to um build capacity of our own staff to do
157the work so for example instead of having an external consultant do the file review and find some analysis and trends of um some of the issues that have come up or gaps in our implementation in identifying our special education student uh students for special education um by themselves and then reporting that back to us um we they will be leading us through a process that we could replicate um as a a source of um data inquiry just to improve our practice over time so those are some of the things that we're working on shifting um and the next slide some of the feedback to uh we looked at attendance data as well um and one of the Highlight uh notes um that we had was that um in terms of addressing chronic absenteeism we're M
158um we're maintaining an average uh above that 90% threshold um however the there's a huge gap that the Ed Partners notice between what is our state reported um sis attendance data um versus our full day attendance rate which is um kids that were there the entire day so if they if a kid was there at any point in the day they count as being present in our District but we know that even if we improve that rates um if they're missing any you know periods or parts of the day they're still missing learning and so there's an interest in um addressing that as well so that was one of the feedback pieces of feedback there's also an uh interest in addressing for example uh campaign uh one of the new activities is to have formalized
159or specific campaigns targeted in December and may where we see the biggest dips in attendance and so that's um a new activity that was added into the 2023 plan um uh one of the things that everyone was calling out is we looked at this attendance data and rates in all these different forms and Fashions but what's not pre present in the data is why you know why these kids are missing so much and so part of the work that we're doing and implementing from the 2022 plan this everyday Pro um platform is going to allow us to log um barriers that are contributing to attendance and chronic AB or absences and chronic AB ISM in order for us to better understand the the things that are getting in the way of attendance as well as
160to match those strategically with uh interventions um if you go to the next slide um so uh when we did our analysis at the end of the year for Progress um for a vision Scholars we saw that attendance um we were meeting our measurable outcomes and literacy we're meeting our measurable outcomes but if you look at the next slide um one thing we noticed in terms of behavior um both for referrals and here you see for suspensions going from this is the same cohort of students the number of times that cohort our vision Scholars were um suspended in this case in 2021 2022 school year versus the 2022 2023 school year we saw an increase and so that raised a lot of questions amongst our leadership and and Ed partners team about what might be
161contributing to that what are we going to do this year in terms of implementation to address that so if you look at the next slide um uh one of the things that um was called out less so for a suspension but but for referral is how are we going to make sure that we're actually monitoring um because there there are very few suspensions in our district um for vision Scholars or for any student um however um are we uh we want to work on tracking um our referral system and there was a really intensive work done at Longfellow to improve um practices of logging both minor major referrals under our PBIS system and expanding that to the full set of our vision schools to really see how that um shift and practice impacts um both
162our data but also um what we can do and how it informs our work is important and the other new uh activity that was added so that was all stuff that was planned for this school year anyways from the 2022 plan the new piece that was added is this um ability or this need for an early warning system and so that was called out from our art Partners um and we were able to work with our Brea team and with our educ climber Partners to identify um a tool called thresholds within educ climbers that's going to help us meet that um early warning need that's going to allow us to flag students that are um um receiving multiple referrals before they get suspended or anything else to make sure that they're getting some sort of
163interventions and supports in our system uh and I just want to call out one of the things from the pr the policies practice and procedures review is that there is a a major lag between board policies being approved by you all and then actually being present in gamut on the board and and open to the public and so um so that's C that's something we actually wrote into our plan to make sure that we attend to because there's a lot of the policies that we had to um revise for CA purposes have been revised but are still not present on our on our website so the external reviewer couldn't find them um the last thing I wanted to call out was a focus on relational trust was called uh across the board and and thinking
164about how does our um approach to cultureal affirmation belonging both with students and with families attend to relational trust so for example one of the new activities that was built in was um um having um positive U preventative Outreach to families um prior to the first um um parent teacher conference or or ILP meeting um being built into our practices um is um uh as well as um something that was already in our practice um for 2022 which is to really highlight the partnership approach to working with our families so that way we're not pre-writing a plan and a goals and telling the families what their kids need but instead it's the using the IOP opportunity as a chance to look at data together talk about progress collect strengths collect interests and also um and
165co-construct a goal as well as invite both the families to think about what supports um they would need at home or can provide to meet that goal um as well as other individual groups so part of the revision style P includes um uh interventions that can be provided at home as well as in the general Egg classroom as well as by any specialists in the school and then any external providers which could be after school program it could be um extracurricular activities or School sponsored programs um or it could even be a church or some other group where um by connecting them into the plan and into this community everyone can wrap around the kid um towards the same common goals so those are those are some of the big shifts that we've had um
166you can see on the next slide um kind of a summary um uh this is what the um CD has asked us to do for our plan is to basically cut and paste the 2022 plan and then highlight anything that was revised the vast majority of the revisions are either additions of new people that we added or revisions or deeper more detailed explanations of the activities that we had before but there are some um if you go to the next slide um that I've mentioned throughout the presentation that are brand new activities that we've added in um that are um natural kind of iterations of the plan that we started in 2022 um and I I do want to mention the uh 4.4 f um which is the equity Symposium was um a specific um
167activity that we built into our plan to um push our uh Community to really think as designers to redesign the experiences in our system um we're partnering with the national Equity project to go through some design thinking activities to Think Through how to get break through implementation barriers and to to gather different perspectives to inform how we make these changes that seem so easy on a piece of paper but are really hard in practice and that Equity Symposium is going to be the opportunity for everyone um all of our vision schools as well as different District leaders and other programs to highlight their Journeys as designers and what they've learned for everyone to benefit from so we invite the community to that opportunity on May 14th all right so um our our budget is based
168Bas on our budget from the special education funds 15% of those resources are built out um as our uh General uh funds are coming um are being limited um over with the budget the last couple years that also means our C budget is actually smaller than it has been um um in the last couple of iterations um the majority if you go to the next Slide the majority of our funds are um working towards our staffing so making sure that both um Carla gayon and our C coordinator position is available as well as um Point people what we call Vision scholar program coordinators at each of our vision schools are available to coordinate um services at the site for those Vision Scholars and um to close us out I'll hand it over to Dr Mildred
169Brown she is our um State um um designated a technical assistance provider and she's been an incredible advocate for um for Berkeley as well as a great connection Point um and for us um to the BR broader State policies uh good evening um I appreciate having the opportunity to be here tonight I really want to add on to what both um Carla as well as Matt indicated in regards to the district being um placed in a very opportune position to be able to build from the 2022 plan um and really focus on implementation uh as well as to have an opportunity in this abbreviated uh process to be able to elevate some activities that we hope will be um able to interrupt the district from moving into other areas of disproportionality uh I think that
170only a few districts uh over the state were allowed this opportunity um whereas some districts who were continuing to be significant disproportionate had to do a complete plan even though as uh we talked tonight their plans were only approved in the spring and that was because of the um intensive work that happened in the spring in regards to the data dive so uh this is an annual notification as you know you could see in the slide deck that the years are layered but this is the first time that we've had an opportunity to build and continue to do the work for the 22 Seas plan which is 27 months and even though the reporting may be challenging as far as reporting on two plans at the same time it means that the district will have
171extra time as far as implementation so uh we appreciate the board's interest in regards to this important work and um you know you let us know if there are any additional questions um we know will know again in February if the district is continuing uh in regards to their significant disproportionality as far as the need to write yet a new plan thank you thank you Dr Brown um we invite the community to attend our next Ed Partners meeting on December 5th that's where we'll actually be um presenting some of the implementation data um and updates on how things are going with trying to implement this uh 2022 now 2023 plan and um we'll take any questions from the board excellent thank you so much um we appreciate all of you um for your time and
172your hard work on this uh important Endeavor um I have a couple questions I'd like to start with um first as we think about um our using educ climber I'm very appreciative of us um being data focused and and and really taking hold of that tool um and our governance around that when we talk about absenteeism um and a half a day versus a full day um we also need to track when parents are asked to pick up their children but it's not formally noted as a suspension um because I'm very aware that that happens and it happens often and technically that's the suspension but it's not being recorded it's not being marked so we need to find out especially as you do student surveys and you're reaching out from parents we need to gather
173that data as well how many people are being sent home but is not being logged as a suspension that's still the same problem that we're trying to overcome and it doesn't help us with our school connectedness or reaching our our goals and objectives when we know that's happening and we the district don't adequately or um proactively address that um so I would like a plan around how we're going to gather that information secondly um there are a lot of simple things that other districts do and I learned this at black to school day for example there's a district who they just picked um a lot of their targeted students and they ask teachers when you see them in the hallway make sure you say hi to that student say hello to that that student ask
174that student how they're doing and they saw those students start improving they saw those students start feeling more connected they saw those students start building relationships with those teachers who were just starting off with high and I know director Brown and I were talking about that that that is culturally relevant to a lot of students of color um when people walk down my block and they're walking their dog and they don't even say hi I'm like hello right like why don't people speak you know so speaking is kind of important and it it's it's a first staff of saying I see you it's a first step of saying I see you you matter we're glad you're here hi how you doing you know so it doesn't always have to be this big event to create
175connectedness right um and we also need to be encouraging our parents in my mind to make sure that they know who their child's um identified person is at school that is their support person that is their person that they trust that is like my daughter she knows that's she has a school mom she calls her right my oldest daughter had a school mom so they should know who we should know and be active about knowing if these if our students actually have identified a car one caring adult at the school that they can be connected to um so I would like to see kind of a list of what we're going to do around school connectedness right like what professional development is great but what are the tangible things that we're going to do that
176are going to to Really show that you've given someone a specific instruction on how to address this and not this Grand idea of school connectedness but the actual Todo like how do I Implement that so I think that would be um very helpful for everyone involved to just say oh and and again it can be simple it doesn't have to be expensive so those were my comments not necessarily questions I guess director asking I just have one question so that 38% growth in the literacy scores is pretty phenomenal and I'm wondering if we know what specific actions led to such growth and if those are things we can expand and replicate in other areas well I would say that there's really been intentional work last year in foundational literacy skills and um direct instruction of
177foundational literacy skills so we we're seeing the impact of that in our students from the beginning of school the school year to the end of the school year FastTrack phonics and other types of um instructional design um uh being really intentional the idea is that um at least for example that that was the dible score but it's it's reflected in our star uh literacy data as well the similar growth rates um that uh foundational literacy skills are not that different from the beginning beginning of the year to the end of the year those are the Bas Baseline skill sets that our students need to learn and so the more that they have opportunities to practice and develop we're seeing growth over time and so I think that intentional work is important and also our vision
178Scholars often are receiving um tier 2 literacy interventions so even more targeted work beyond the regular classroom days so again I think we've we've had interventions for a long time but when what we see is when our tier one's work is really uh aligned with and supporting our tier 2 work uh and their they're working hand inand we see a bigger growth rate than if um uh there's a disconnect there and everything is being relied Upon A A intervention specialist or something to really attend to um so um I think that's hopeful that's why we want to see one more year of data to really figure out what are our um best kind of metrics um going to be for setting growth rates especially knowing that there's a need for acceleration not even just annual
179regular growth that we would expect for any student across the full year of instruction some of these students need to make up one or two or three years of of growth yes and Dr schanowski I just would also want to add that um one of the the the the specific Focus areas in that work is to utilize the assess the benchmark assessments both star and Dibbles and Dibbles is giving us a lot of specific information about the um strengths and GAP areas that need to be addressed in um in that tier two tier one instruction first and then tier two um it's all a component of our continuous improvement process our lcap goal number four has really called on us to use state and local measures to better understand um what is happening both in
180our system um and for students and then how to apply that continuous Improvement lens um to make those improvements and Target those strategies for specific students that answer your question director Brown yes uh good evening thank you so much um Dr Espinosa um to assistant uh superintendent Hogan Dyke to coordinator um gay and also to Dr Brown thank you for your presentation tonight and I was excited to hear even though isn't the first time I heard it but I was excited to hear again um about all of the ways that you all have aligned um through with many various teams throughout the district um we know that we've been identified by the state which is why we've had to you know come up with the CFE plan and um come up with all the action
181steps behind it but um it's great to hear that but we know that overidentification is not just the work of c and we know that it is not just the responsibility of you all as a group so it's great to hear the places in which you're aligning throughout the district because everyone is responsible uh for this work so thank you uh for for sharing and for highlighting that especially on the last page um I wanted to ask a couple of questions as well um so during the um 920 meeting the board gave um some feedback which some of which you've highlighted and talked about um tonight but I wanted to ask about a specific um place of feedback that we gave under um under um making uh learning more fun and more engaging for students
182um we know all about the role that uh students being present in school and attendance plays in school and so I was happy to hear that update because we know kids can't learn if they aren't in the seats but also um sometimes when students are in the seats what information is being presented to them that's capturing them that's keeping them engaged keeping them to want to be uh in the classroom and so I didn't quite hear an update um on that so I'm interested to know that and then I'll go with my other questions yeah thank you very much um the for in terms of our um approach to the literacy work there is um two areas that that connects to one is through the vision stories um um activity which is to actually connect
183with students and make sure that we're collecting from them the sense the things that are most engaging most fruitful um um where they feel the most connected um where they feel the most empowered and that they're learning um in order for them to um uh to reflect those stories back to the sites um and so that we have a um uh again um we're building out a process for um both collecting and then reflecting those um uh stories um to the sites so that they can learn from and reflect on what that means for um their instruction the other piece is that for um uh improving engagement part of the um survey for cultural affirmation and belonging it's focused on students having a voice and choice in their class as well as students being able
184to uh fill the full to be their full selves in class um and students feeling safe supported and connected to other students uh and their teachers in the class and feeling like their teachers care so those are the four big um uh buckets um that we'll collect data on from the student to then bring back to the staff and um there's a set of different practices and tools that are connected to it that are part of our um cultur linguistically responsive and inclusive practice um PDS that then are part of the follow-up work um some of which like um um director babot mentioned um are simple things ways to show an ethic of care through knowing people's names and um greeting Folks at the door um and some of which are more technical in terms
185of thinking about how we can um collect um how well uh students learn not just through like a written test but also through more um authentic or um varied forms of assessment um and I I appreciate hearing that and I know that you know we doing our best in so many different Avenues to create welcoming and safe schools which is important but I'm I'm so happy about the last part that you said because what creating welcoming in safe schools is only half of the job right and so we do have many classrooms where our students students feel safe where they feel empowered where they feel welcome um however grasping the con the content that they're supposed to learn doesn't always happen and engagement is really really um important especially if we want to see our
186students um do well and so I'm happy to hear that that's being done around assessments but what else can be done and so are we partnering with um UC Berkeley I know UC Davis um has a c stem program that they're introducing to schools right now utilizing um uh Ai and how that can be incorporated into schools um and help students to get excited about you know AI that the thing that they're really excited about right now but also bringing it in to the classroom and so I think that we have um a powerful group of students that we have in front of us and so it is um our responsibility to engage them at the level that they're at and so I'm interested to hear more about maybe how you all can um support
187help lead this work even through professional development and something on an ongoing um basis uh and knowing again that it is not your sole responsibility I know that there are a lot of us uh working on that but I'm interested to hear how we can just one thing that we can report out once we complete those Equity walks um we can have a reflection of the report of the learning and some of the things that we've seen in the schools um that will be informing our instruction and and um that's something that and sharing out best practices exactly that's the goal yeah I'm happy to hear that thank you um I I did want to ask another question about um the section that you shared around um mo3 which is the behavioral um seal portion
188um thank you president babbett for the questions that you asked um and I was interested in knowing um the feedback from the Ed Partners talked about the questions around the validity of the data um and so I was wondering if you can unpack that uh just a little bit more and I also wanted to know in that section um the positive behavior Matrix I know that we have it I know that it is utilized but also knowing that it isn't really a one-size fits-all um approach and so how are we encouraging schools to um do what is best for their school community and to also deal with their students on a student to- student basis and providing um whether it be Behavior Support plans or bips um to students who need them and how how
189are we utilizing that and how are we partnering with our schools to elevate um some autonomy around that yeah so that um the the the beauty of the cay plan is actually because we have these focal sites we have a really intensive opportunity to do some focal work and some deep dive and to get feedback from the sites as well as to um uh try to align practices and so um last year we began with a work around with our Long Fellow team to um really unpack like what's getting in the way what's being tracked or not tracked in terms of um some of the um semi unofficial referrals that were just not being you know kids being sent out um or outside in the hallways and like there's a lot of things that were
190not being logged um um and so refining some of those pieces because they're really important pre precursor data points before a kid gets sent for something much more major um um to be able to provide opportunities for intervening early um and building out Behavior plans and so that um um work um uh was really successful at Longfellow and now um uh Dr Shelly and his team are working with the rest of the vision schools as well as with all of our V uh Vice principles on a regular basis to engage in reflection um uh so part of the 2022 plan that's still present in the 2023 plan is to actually audit how um those um administrators are using the um positive behavior Matrix and to what extent it's helpful or or not helpful um to
191also um collect feedback from the community about how aware they are and how what their experiences have been meeting our vision Scholars and their families and then um to create additional resources as needed that would couple and support the implementation of um that work and so um so that's that's how it was built into the current plan and it's um been launched this last month okay thank you and um finally I just wanted to um to to share something and to ask a a question in that um so this a challenge with the over identification of students of color specifically black students and special education isn't you know as you know isn't a new a challenge and it also isn't something that's specific to Berkeley Unified School District um in fact the National Association of
192black school Educators um looked at this issue at a at a super high level and Across the Nation um and came up with Focus groups that were comprised of um researchers and also um practitioners and Educators and folks who are deep in the work of special education as well as in the work of serving students of color well um and what they found from those focus groups were a range of information and so um it may have been mentioned before not at this presentation but at the last one um the idea of engaging the community um and so we have we thought about uh the role that Focus groups could play in a a in maybe in this current plan or in future plans um to support this work and to hear um because the
193data that we're grabbing is great but to also hear the maybe anecdotal data from our students from our families from um our Community Partners about what it is that's working what we could be doing better um have we thought about that yeah thank you very much the um I uh activity number 1.4 is the VIS stories piece but there's actually multiple pieces to that there's the collection of individual stories of students and and families but also there are focal group work that's TI tied into that including um working with uh families specifically black or African-American families and students that have experienced success and and learning from them what what's contributed to that as well as those that have struggled um and our and our current Vision Scholars and what that what has contributed to that
194as well um the other way that that's being attended to is the new addition thanks to Dr Brown of um doing a file review of the to get the stories of some of the students that have already been some of our black students that have already been identified for special education especially in um for specific learning disability and other health impairment and making sure we can lift up their Journeys um and where many of them might be in high school or middle school now about how where are all the attempts to do interventions and maybe where were there are some gaps that we could learn from to attend to so we don't um of course there's certainly some students that are going to benefit from the from an IP so the goal of C is
195not to prevent all students and or all of our black students from getting an IP um but to ensure that we've done all of the work that we can in advance to um um prior to make that identification as um sound and reasonable as possible and so we know that there's likely to be some gaps there and that's part of the U kind of um uh that's a new process that we're going to develop as a form of inquiry that's part of this underlying design work and design thinking is to think about um how we make improvements through that lens like part of understanding it is not just looking at a bunch of data like quantitative data but actually understanding the stories at a deep level to build some empathy uh to try then try
196to design something and then bring that design back to those groups to get some feedback and then try to revise and iterate on that and so that's that's kind of a new approach that we're providing through the uh work with the national Equity project and liberatory design but also through our file review and our vision stories to lift up those um those perspectives thank you that's awesome and fin finally sorry president B but she's going to cut me off soon but um I I also uh was happy to hear in that section uh that the leadership team make made recommendations around um anti-racist um training and professional development uh for our teach I think that that's great and it's not you know something that we've been doing for a while so I I know that
197we've so I appreciate the commitment to continuing to do that um however how do we uh respond to teachers who maybe have the mindset that they are they are not racist and so they are not um engaging in racist practices however um the environment that the student may be may still be harmful to them right and so what um are we doing to address that um is it a focus on cultural competency um that may not necessarily be labeled as races like what is our our plan to address that yeah so um that's a great question in partnership with um RT Fisher and some of the work that they're doing as well as the work that um that I've been doing with our Equity teacher leaders around culture linguistically responsive and um and inclusive practice
198the shift is to really um as you mentioned some folks um um uh practice doesn't always match what our beliefs are right that's the root of some bias and why bias can be implicit like I didn't mean to harm somebody but just naturally for whatever reason my practice might have um and so the focus of that work is twofold the our vision schools um receive uh some foundational kind of conceptual understanding of just to be about being open to and understanding the impact of implicit bias but those are paired with trainings that are specific to the practice meaning things that are observable so as I mentioned a practice of uh demonstrating an ethic of care is observable through a a set of different types of actual things you might look for in a class and
199one of the things that our Equity teacher leaders are doing is taking a general practice like demonstrating an ethic of care partnering with a bunch of examples of what that would actually look like if I walked into a classroom and then also including some examples of what it might look like if I'm not doing an ethic of because sometimes you need to see the non-example as well so the the push for our all of our training is to embed it in things that could then be observable in a classroom um and so that's um that's all part of it and then part of the intent of the equity walks that we added for this year are then for us to actually go out as um um that those those will be collaboratives where one of
200our vision schools will host all the other Vision School leaders to be able to walk classrooms to engage in some conversations to um reflect on on what we're actually observing happening towards those um broader goals because we know that sometimes the anti-racist work can be left at the Ethereal kind of level um and not get to like this is what it would actually look like in practice and that's what we want to focus on um this year thank you all right board members so uh next week we will have to approve this plan so if there are anything things that you want add it now is their time to talk about it because we're hoping that this can go on consent for next year I've kind of given my request for some tangible connectedness um
201actions to be included simple things and then um I also want to know how often in general are Equity walks going to happen I know you said the one but our understanding was that Equity walks would be a recurring activity so this year there are two Equity walks planned for all of the vision schools joining together so it's a joint learning experience um one for the fall and one for the spring with the idea that in in the interim um our um site leaders would lead their own Equity walks at their schools if they're not hosting the whole districts or um so that way it becomes just a part of the practice um where they can gather their own staff members and and engage in those Reflections um over time that data being able to
202inform um the coaching that we do as well as um um the planning for next school year and do our site leaders have a a template or a report up requirement so that we ensure that our site leaders are actually um carrying out those Equity walks so there'll be a common template that um that we'll all do um in practice in that first equity walk as a group um in November and then they will be able to complete that same template um in their own um site based Equity walks great um and so I just want to know about monitoring the implementation of the site leaders doing that um is there a basis for or what's the minimum requirement that we're asking them to do and who's reviewing the results of those would it be
203their specific leader K3 R director a services like how are we going to roll that out yeah so uh certainly with their k38 or their their supervisor would be one of the people but we would also the ideas that we bring it as we meet monthly um as a cace leadership team with the principles as part of their conversation and growth um that they'll it'll impact what they share at the equity Symposium for example as they're talking about um what they've learned over the course of the Year that'll be important data point for them and then it because it's built into our plan um it is something that we would gather and collect as um our artifacts for CDE reporting okay great thank you um superintendent I just like to say and hopefully my board
204colleagues also will support this that it's great to do this so we have the information for CDE reporting but I'm really interested in the equity walks so that our Educators have the support they need to actually um Drive the results that we're looking for and so that's why I'm kind of looking for the frequency of those Equity walks the actual attention to coaching because I know so often our Educators say yeah we had this great professional development but then after that I didn't get any real support in trying to implement those practices right and I also want to make sure that we're not just focusing I know we're focusing on our vision schools but when it comes to equity walks if if Equity is our initiative that needs to be um rolled out across all
205of our schools um so that's something I'd be interested in knowing how we're going to make sure that that that's just a normal standard practice for our administrators who it really has been always been my expectation that they would be leading the um instructional charge at their schools as the instructional leader through these Equity walks and I know that it happens with some principles who choose to do it but I'm not sure but if we don't systematize it and and ensure that we get that feedback back then it's one offs don't have one it's fine no I can I can just make a quick comment to that um president babot um I think that there are a lot of routines that we are trying to initiate as you are well aware we have a number
206of District plans and resolutions that have over 200 some actions um and we're really trying to consolidate and focus efforts on a smaller number of those actions in order order for us to be be able to build those foundational systems and routines and do them consistently I think what's really important about the cace work and the identification of focal schools is that it gives us an opportunity to test out some of these things understand what works what doesn't work what could make it better um before we look at spreading and scaling which is any part of a continuous improvement process is really understanding what it is that you're trying to improve what are the specific actions that you're taking and why are you taking them and then what are the ways that you look for
207measurements um to to director Brown's point that they're not just quantitative but qualitative too and so there are there are a number of initiatives you heard I mentioned in in this report in particular and I'm hoping that you're seeing there are some Conn in points that we have been making in the cace work with our literacy action plan work and alongside of our attendance initiatives which is part of what we are required to do by virtue of our status as a district and differentiated assistance particularly for attendance um really trying to align those efforts um and then focus on some signature practices and then understand how we can spread and scale them that's exactly what I was going to say um and real talk it was um but I would also just double down on
208what uh Hogan m Joe Hogan DIY said in terms of continuous Improvement um because that is a term that we use often that folks might not really be familiar with but it is very similar to a pdsa cycle which is plan do study act and what research tells us is that often times organizations like ours do a lot of planning we do a lot of acting we don't do a lot of studying and actually learning from um our our implementation our efforts Etc to the question that director Dr shoski asked earlier um to ask do you know what you did to get those gains what happens is oftentimes folks want to fly fast and so you don't know what you have done to get those gains and so you cannot replicate them or scale them
209and so a lot of what you all hear from us um is is a little bit of a go slow to go fast but it's really rooted in best practices and research where we take the time to look at a smaller group of uh a smaller body of work or more specific actions or a smaller group who's implementing to actually study and learn learn so that when we do scale because the plan is always to scale that it is actually a successful scale and that it's a scaling that can then sustain beyond the folks who are in this room right now thank you I appreciate that and I don't want to simplify um but the request is just about Equity walks happening at every school and getting a metric like that's not a go slow
210to go fat I mean that's a basic administrative kind of instructional leadership best practice that we can Implement right and so what we want to do is build folks capacity to do that practice and do it well and do it right to get the impact that we want again there there are many ways and many examples where folks are compliant and they will check a box I did an equity walk Etc we're really trying to move from compliance to commitments but we're also trying to make sure that our folks really understand the why and the how to do it in ways that do not cause additional harm so your urgency around it we Echo and the expectation just like you said is that everyone is engaged and not just Equity walks but a number of
211different strategies and behaviors that really Center our babies and have a focus and a lens towards equity and what we're saying is that we're wanting to build folks capacities and equity walk is one of the ways to do that um to do those and do those well but definitely noted what you said and we hear it great thank you so much and I also want to just give some um closing gratitude to you all because this I think is one of the first presentations where I've really seen we've documented and noted what you said board at this meeting and what you said at that meeting and this is how we're going to address it and I really appreciate that as well as appreciate um all of the highlights of the um ways in which we're
212going to um improve and address those root causes and um new concerns and responses to the feedback that youve received not just from us as board directors but also from the community so thank you all so much you have another question I do okay now we have another question sorry I know you thought it was over but it's not you know there is something that is just kind of um it's not sitting so well with me so I figured I better ask the question now instead of waiting until later and give also another suggestion um so the early warning system um I am happy to hear that um we are going to help support and monitor students uh who need support and I'm wondering um how we will be able to turn how we can
213minimize that becoming a tracking system uh for students I'm really uh nervous about that and so um I I don't want this time to pass without asking that question um and if we are interested in tracking um not students but maybe we should I I would like to put in there some recommendation about our tracking how much we communicate with our families and with our parents and um ensuring that we have data points on how we how how we communicate with them um because there's a range of information that we can get from our parents from uh cultural uh best ways of Engagement with their students uh to what is the best form of communication with parents how do we get our parents to show up and show out show up for their students not
214trying to say that this is a parent issue because it is absolutely not um but knowing that partnering with our parents will help us to be in better service of our stud students and so two questions in one yeah no thank you and I I will we're actually meeting tomorrow to um explore that because it's a new feature that most of us are are going to um be exposed to for the first time to think about how we um might leverage it um for that purpose but it's really important to bring that um perspective into the room and so thank you for highlighting that I think one of the um most important things that our families um have brought up throughout the Ed Partners work um as well as our staff is the need for
215um connecting with families as partners and that's really the heart of coordinated a comprehensive coordinated early intervening Services is that we're coordinating um all of these folks so minimally for vision Scholars thinking of our families as as part of the solution as well as our general Ed teachers so it's not like just the the counselor or the interventionist that's sent off like they have they're a part of the solution as well as any of those Specialists that are connected and as I mentioned all any other external partner that is an important part of that students's live that can contribute to that um program and so um the ways that um we'll still be exploring like exactly what that early warning system or as it's called in educ climber thresholds um are set up um to
216talk about like at what point um with what data um people would get a notification to say like hey check out this kid or you should you should check in on this kit um uh with the lens of like how do we make sure that that doesn't turn into a stigmatizing experience for them so it's really the intent um and the way it was raised in our Ed Partners meeting from our community was really to make sure that students are um that if there are any changes in their experience either like a major dip and decline in their U literacy scores their grades their behav uh increase in Behavior increase in absenteeism um that it's caught immediately so that way somebody can um start engaging and intervening in those um in those moments instead of
217waiting till you know certain established cut points throughout the year that might be months away um and too late for um actually interacting um with the students and so that's that's the intent um but I think as you mentioned sometimes that can be used to stigmatize or to track students and and um that'll be part of the conversation that we have to have right thank you so much um thank you all so I just want to highlight the information item around our admissions update as well as our um school size um school class size report um there is a time now for extended public comment um is there anyone online or in the audience who would like to have comment raise your hand at this time all right uh we will receive you and we
218will give um each speaker uh two minutes I have four people who've raised their hands online and one person in the audience just say your name and uh go forth oh hi hello everyone my name is Ral larel I'm a teacher at Berkeley Technology Academy and I just wanted to commend you all for continuing this work and I do want to State for the record that there are a lot of students in the in the district who speak a home languages other than English and some of those home languages that are other than English are not fully uh serviced and I just wanted to put that out there especially for those students who speak African homeless languages thank you thank you we have uh Lisa fredman followed by Mark Joseph Ria followed by Daniel F
219followed by Whitney Smith hi thank you can you hear me yes okay wonderful thank you I appreciate the opportunity to comment I wanted to comment on the real alarm that I have as a parent about the discovery of two students in Berkeley High with guns on campus last week and thank God that nothing happened that nobody got hurt and we have no idea on any given day how many students may be on Berkeley High campus with guns and anytime that happens it can have a lethal result as we all know way too well from so many stories around the country um I'm glad those who students were detected and that whatever measures were in place led to them being detected but I'm extremely alarmed that they were on campus with guns putting all of our
220students at risk um I would like to really request as a parent that whatever measures are in place that we have real transparency around what those are and what the district is doing to keep our students safe and to keep students safe at Berkeley High I'd frankly like to request a town hall as soon as possible that the principal and the superintendent put together with parents to talk deeply about this issue rather than just a few minutes of coverage on it it's way too serious to just be a few minutes given the potential risks and really to understand you know there's there's a lot of efforts that's been put in place some more successful than others in different parts of the country and what are we looking at to do this has been a long-standing
221issue unfortunately it's not the first time and unfortunately it's not new at Berkeley High and so what are some good practices that we can know from other parts of the country that can be put in place it's way way way too important to um just have a message go out saying we detected the students and we're keeping everybody safe and we take it seriously I'd like to request that at that meeting we have presence of Berkeley Police to also talk to us about their recommendations their involvement um and want to know it what what can be done even in terms of really really simple things like every single teacher in the school talking in their class to their students about something like if you see something say something and how we're all responsible for keeping
222each other safe even that kind of regular message on a regular basis which is super simple can be very important to getting information and to making a difference thank you is up thank you we will receive you now Mr Mia okay Mark Ram of Berkeley High School wanted to continue from earlier my supervisor told me last year not email teachers are asked to meet with teachers one of our six one of our six IIA supervisors says meetings with teachers takes away time takes away from class time so suggests that suggest that IAS not meet with teachers but instead write emails to teachers IIA job description includes the phrase confer with instructional staff and our other service providers concerning adapting lessons plan and materials to meet student needs eyes do better when we meet outside of
223class with teachers to discuss how the class has run in students IEPs in a confidential setting I IAS do much better when they know how many supervisors they have when there is only one person giving directives of accountability it's easier it's better than when we are multiple we have multiple supervisors when they don't communicate and the IIA gets held accountable for an unknown reason this is the first year I've had six people deal with me as a supervisor or in a supervisor manner a teacher asked me if I knew the name of a specific administrator today I responded that I have six people over me which includes four case manager teachers and two special education administrators the teacher responded with a statement reflecting that the situation must be confusing one place on the BD website
224shows B BHS IAS have two special ed program managers yet in another place on the B USD website it states that one of them is actually our program supervisor things should be updated as changes happen happens and happen and the public also counts on information being correct we BHS actually needed time to meet with teachers to go over classroom procedures and IEPs and confidentiality however both this year and last year I I experienced teachers who claim that when I arrived in a classroom for the first time that they didn't know who I was that I was coming that they and they asked what I was there for and asked which students I would be working with that means the supervisor didn't do very much email work that they recommended that I do and insisted that
225that I would do for communication and if there were a followed Education Code we would be meeting before the students started school to make sure that the I thank you bye bye thank you Daniel F we can receive you now followed by Whitney Smith yeah hi can you hear me yes thank you okay thank you for the time and thank you for this opportunity to address the board I have a few comments on Wednesday September 27th two guns were found on BHS that same day I emailed every member of this board other than Jennifer shinoski not a single member of this board replied Miss shinoski replied to say she was unable to answer my questions as this board has overwhelmingly chosen to remain silent in the threat of deadly weapons on the BD campus I
226have a few comments please this sport is charged with adopting policies for B USD which includes safety as the current po demonstrate policy demonstrated a massive Gap in allowing two guns on BHS a request this board create a public mechanism to address parent concerns and clarify what specific measures the board has already discussed and what measures should the public expect be employed to improve the safety of BHS and BD as a whole number two why does this board refuse to publicly share comprehensive data on the presence of deadly weapons on B usd's many campuses the investigations the district undertakes when deadly weapons are brought to campus and the outcomes of those investigations do parents have a right to be informed about the ongoing safety of their children number three superintendent Ford mentioned the 2011 plan
227outlined by the Berkeley Police Department to improve the safety of BHS this plan this plan was publicly shared 12 years ago and includes many partial or unimplemented measures including closing the BHS campus to a minimum Juniors and seniors this has not happened improving the BD school security program while new uniforms are being issued as budget allows an increase in training for safety personnel from 24 to 40 hours per year has not been reported on so it is unknown if this has been Implement implemented yet or not and if not why not additional SRO this also has not been reported on so it is unknown if this has been implemented yet or not why not the requirement of visible school ID cards while students do have ID cards it is not required that they be visible
228as is demonstrated on all BD campuses daily and finally an increase in attention to highest risk students this board approved millions in dollars in funding for comprehensive dat your your time is up I I allowed everyone to go over so hopefully I gave you enough overage as much as I can manage um but I do appreciate your comments and um we have received your email as well any extended board member comments yes do do I get to talk this is Whitney Smith oh I'm sorry I forgot okay Miss Smith um I'm a Craigmont parent um I'm the the PTA Treasurer and um I'm asking help for Expediting getting our art teacher um back for all grades um the PTA has proved money um to pay for her um and because the prop 28 money hasn't
229come through and if there's any way you guys could expedite um getting her back in so that um all students could be have art again I would really appreciate it the whole school would appreciate it thank you thank you for your comments student Director D um I would like to speak on the gun situation at Bley high as a student I personally think that not only is it Berkeley High's responsibility to ensure the safety of the students but it's also your job as a parent to make sure your child's not coming to school with any weapons or causing any danger themselves so that's just my opinion as a student thank you we appreciate that and also like to call people's attention to the safety resolution that has been passed by this board uh to our
230call for a safety task force and uh do appreciate the superintendent and all of those staff members who did go to the Berkeley High School Safety Committee meeting which was just Monday um to really take a deep dive into this and again want to thank all of those who made sure that the protocols that we do have in place were enforced and um we were able to um to address that situation timely and effectively so thank you again and have a good evening everyone