001i 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'll be another and final opportunity for additional public comment so if you do not get to speak at the beginning of the meeting you can stay and speak at the end to participate in public comment please raise your hand now by clicking on the particip participants button at the bottom of your screen and selecting raise your hand to comment by phone you'll be prompted to raise your hand by pressing star 9 if you wait to raise your hand until public comment period starts you will not get to speak and you will have to wait until next public comment period when called upon you'll be
002promoted to panelists this means that you will appear on screen if you do not wish to appear on camera please be sure to disable your camera on your end the board president will usually call on our students first so if you are a student who wishes to speak please write student at the end of your name the board president will determine whether to set tonight's speaking time at one two or three minutes per speaker on an individual basis he also has a discretion to allow for extra time for those who need translation or have other speech needs when your time has elapsed you'll see vice president brown holding a sign letting letting you know you have 15 seconds left if you're still speaking you are allowed to finish your sentence but please try not please
003um don't speak beyond your time thank you um thank you so much ms marias welcome everybody to the december 8th meeting of the berkeley school board um for the record we um open the meeting at 5 30 p.m and recess to close session and it is 705 pm right now miss barrios can you please call the roll okay um director annabel director laura babbitt here director julie sinai here vice president khadijah brown president thai albert president thank you um um now um it is my honor to turn it over to vice president brown for her um report on closed session thank you president alpera i'm so excited to give my final report out from closed session uh for item 3.1 it was moved by president albert and seconded by myself vice president brown and the
004motion passed five to zero for item 3.2 the board heard an update for item 3.3 the board heard an update and provided direction this is the reading from closed session um thank you so much vice president brown um next is item 7.1 which is the approval of the school meeting calendar for 2022. um i'm going to move to approve the school calendar the school board meeting counter for 2022 is there a second a second segment my director rosie dev uh ms barris can you please call the roll for that one director uh yes director babbitt yes director sinai yes vice president brown yes president elper all right so we have our board meeting calendar for 2022. um now we're moving to item 7.2 um and give me one second here all right um all right
005now now's the the moment where um i get to make a motion um that i've been looking forward to making for a long time so um if i'm a little giddy you have to forgive me um i was going i i said to director vice president brown earlier today that i've been looking forward to this since i was a little boy which is only a little bit of an exaggeration i've been looking forward to it since november of 2014 when khadijah brown became the first actual practicing teacher currently teaching in a classroom elected to the berkeley school board as well as i think the youngest board member ever elected to the board um and this past year and a half it's definitely aged all of us um but i believe she will be the youngest
006president of the berkeley school board that we've ever had i mean the first first president who is also currently a classroom teacher so those are two big milestones for our district but um i i want to say it's not her age or or the fact that she's a teacher or even the fact that she's a proud graduate of the berkeley public schools herself as i am she was just one or two years behind me at berkeley high um the don't laugh director babbitt um the reason the reason i'm so excited for for um director brown vice president brown to become president of the board is because in the four years that i've known her since we began campaigning for school board right up until um today i've come not only to appreciate her judgment her
007brilliance her dedication but i've really come to rely on it and i really mean that her instincts about educational policy about budgets about legal issues about our role as board members they're so sound so rooted in in empathy and compassion but also vision and purpose she's always thinking about kids um she thinks about them all day in her classroom and i've visited her classroom and i've seen what her master teacher she is but she thinks about them when she's up on the dice too um and in meetings with her meetings with me and the superintendent she she is constantly thinking about kids all kids and especially kids for whom the playing field does not start out level um i've learned so much from khadijah and i'm very grateful to her for her service on this
008board and for the year that she's about to serve as president being president does require one to take on a fair amount of criticism um and i'm sure this will happen with khadijah although i'm i'm sure that president brown will make a lot fewer mistakes than i did that said i did want to make sure everyone knew her email address um it's khadijah brown at berkeley.net that's k a d i j a h brown at berkeley.net make sure you write that down um and i'll stop there enough fanfare them this is the motion that i want to make now so i'm going to move to nominate khadija brown as board president laura babbitt as our vice president and anavasadev as our board clerk these are three extraordinary dedicated board members and colleagues and i'm really
009proud to nominate them for these positions and i would like to enthusiastically second your motion thank you director sinai um miss barius can you call the role director vasudev yes director babbitt director of cyanide absolutely i don't know if i should say president brown or vice president brown well it hasn't the vote hasn't happened yet so she's still vice president vice president brown yes and president alper yes all right um congratulations to all our new officers um i don't know ms varus if you have the ability to change our names change our titles oh no we can change our change them ourselves yeah i can do that as well um i'm just changing mine as quickly as i can okay um congratulations president brown i will turn it over to you thank you so much
010outgoing president alper good evening everyone i am so delighted to greet you in this official capacity i would first like to say thank you to everyone for coming out tonight and i'd like to take this moment of personal privilege to thank my parents my mom my dad my family my friends and my village for your support and your presence at this meeting tonight i am here uh because of you because of the sacrifices that you made and for the because of the ways that you've prepared me for this very moment as i stand as the youngest president of the berkeley school board in our district's 85-year history to outgoing president ty albert i was going to make a million jokes but you were so sweet um in your remarks so i figured i'll keep it
011professional and say thank you thank you thank you you've made my life and my career on this board so easy for many reasons i'm on this board because of your help and your assistance to get me here and i'm thankful that that support and assistance continued um as a member on the school board you are oftentimes a thought partner and a sounding board and so i am incredibly appreciative of you um additionally you do not get enough credit for the ways that you have led us through one of the most challenging times not just in education but in our history and so thank you um for everything that you did for our district 2020 was definitely a challenge but you brought us through and we are all better because of your leadership and your dedication
012to our students and to the district and so i know that i have some pretty big shoes to fill but i promise you i will walk in my very own pumps thank you president alpher to my board colleagues director vasudev director sinai director albert again and vice president babbitt thank you for entrusting me with this precious role and for your confidence in me to lead our efforts as the president of the board it is a privilege to work with you and to partner with you in the success of our strong and mighty district alongside our illustrious superintendent brother stevens the word team stands for together everyone achieves more as a board and as a team we have achieved so much in this last year and a half as a board and as a team we've
013passed incredible resolutions like the climate literacy resolution as well as the black lives matter aapi and latinx resolutions affirming supporting uplifting celebrating the lives of our black and african americans and systemic racism we committed to renaming schools that bear the names of enslavers we have approved and managed three local tax measures that led to increases in teachers salaries ongoing support for school maintenance and new school construction some of which is already begun we successfully managed the single largest budget reduction since the great recession with no reductions in staff positions or cuts to the classroom we created and approved a new lcap and if that wasn't enough we managed to get through a global pandemic creating an entire business looking learning program working hand in hand with our city union partners and district stakeholders our boots
014on the ground but busd we are ready for more and as a school board we will stand as a team to achieve more this year more for our students more of our staff more for our faculty and more for our families as the president of the board i am excited to share my vision for busd this vision is rooted in a commitment to academic excellence and the holistic success of all of our students in berkeley unified school district my firm belief as president alper said is that education levels the playing field provided that all students are afforded a quality education that is both equitable and accessible equity can't just be a buzzword that is paired with diversity and inclusion equity however must be an action word and we as a board intend to put this
015into action we are going into this year mission-minded and equity focused and this year we will do more work to support all of bird learners because we know that there is no cookie cutter one-size-fits-all approach to educating our students and we recognize that and will continue to do the work to support all of our students but specifically our black and african american students our english language learners are sped learners our early learners and our most critical learners we are committed to making our schools safe and accessible for all i am excited to introduce the expansion of our new committees to be voted on by the board during the december 15th board meeting these committees will help us to make our district's vision of enrichment engagement equity and excellence a reality additionally i am excited to
016announce that starting in 2022 we will bring back our school snapshots during school board meetings with a special focus on equity and excellence highlighting how we level the playing field for all of our students so that everyone who is enrolled in busd will leave our academic program achieving academic excellence and ultimately making positive contributions to our world berkeley this year we are committed to doing war more i am honored and thankful to be your board president thank you for the opportunity and let's get to work we have now reached thank you president alpha for turning the meeting over to me we have now reached the point in our agenda for public comment now is the time to raise your hand if you wish to speak for public comment you can raise your hand by using
017the zoom raise hand icon located on the bottom panel once we begin the public comment period anyone who raises their hand after we've begun will only be permitted to speak at the second public comment opportunity and that will be at the end of the meeting as ms barrios told us in the beginning if you are a student and you wish to speak please put s or student behind your name so that you may be given priority to speak first based on how many people raise their hands this evening let's see hands we will give each person three minutes to speak so i've rambled enough so that folks could raise their hands i'll give you just one more second to raise your hand if you need to speak this is going to be the last opportunity
018we have eight hands up so i will call on those eight people while you were speaking during public comment vice president babbitt will hold up signs to let you know when you have 15 seconds left to speak and while she will also hold up another sign indicating when your time is up once your time is up you will be given permission to finish your last sentence and then you will be politely asked to give space for the next commenter to speak we will begin our public comment period right now beginning with a gladyson campbell stout followed by pat riley miss barrios can you please put a gladys and pat on the dice hello um good evening i'm before i start my statement i just want to thank director ty albert for all the work that
019you put in this was a horrific year for many reasons but really glad that you were heading up the the board um during this time and thank you so much president brown for that very uplifting speech um it really it made me very happy right now and very optimistic so thank you um so i want to say good meaning to everybody to all the school board members and superintendent stevens um my name is gladys ocampo stout and i am a parent of two children in the district i'm here representing latinos unidos of berkeley we would like to thank the board members who spoke up against the proposal of budget cuts to the ofi position specifically the bilingual specialist part-time position we learned yesterday that the district has taken the position off the proposed budget cuts
020and we are grateful to the superintendent and the district for removing it we would like to emphasize the importance and the need of this position by giving examples of two current issues that are happening right now due to the lack of outreach to our latinx community currently the district is working on the english language learner's master plan and is also working with cabe to host a series of trainings for latinx families there are workshops that started yesterday and dlac was presented with this information for the first time last week with literature that was only provided in english before the email the superintendent sent out four days ago latinx parents at multiple sites had mentioned to us that they did not know anything about any parent workshops we have also been told by many families that
021they have heard nothing about the english language learners master plan planning meetings which are supposed to have a parent and community engagement component we have been told by the district that there are various targeted interventions for latin next students including puentes stem steps the master plan latino literacy pike but if outreach is not intentional thought out and done properly it's a waste of funds and staff time and does nothing for the latinx community we are concerned that this may be happening with other programs in the district and it and and has said would be that would be targeted interventions to help bridge the opportunity gap this is especially hard to hear when the gap has grown wider for so many latinx students due to the impacts of the pandemic latinx families make up 23 percent
022of the district and we have zero district-wide engagement support we look forward to the part-time span spanish bilingual position at the central office of the of uh of of being filled to be able to help fill this gap but we hope that in the meantime there is more intentional and deliberate process when conducting outreach for these programs we know hard decisions are being made regarding the budget and we need to make sure that we are making the most of the resources we do have thank you mr campbell stout um pat riley are you ready yes i am thank you go right ahead thank you and thank you director alper and congratulations director brown on your appointment um i'm i'm calling in tonight to request that the board consider communicating with parents about a plan to
023improve the school climate in our middle schools and our high schools you may be aware that there was a kqed story yesterday for example that talked about where a busd senior talked about the chaos at berkeley high the surgeon general just released a report nationally talking about the mental health crisis among our kids we know because i've presented in front of this board and many parents here have talked about the crisis that our teens are experiencing in terms of the prolonged school closures and as a parent it would be so helpful to understand what the master plan is for berkeley to address this crisis here in our community and one step beyond that what can parents do to help address that i know that i receive many fundraising appeals to from the booster club from
024my middle school from berkeley high but i've never once received a request asking whether i wanted to be a sub whether there was a way that i could somehow address some of the shortages that i know bus do is busd is experiencing that are making the school climate even worse and i i request that the board consider prioritizing the health and wellness of our kids prioritizing communicating with parents about what the master plan will be for restoring and improving the school climate i also request since i have an incoming high school student that when the school opens up for full vaccinations that we reschedule an opportunity for incoming high school students to get a real tour of the high school rather than just a virtual one i did participate in the virtual uh tour of
025berkeley high and what i can say is it was it was really shaky uh because we didn't have a good internet connection so i think having virtual events is not the same as having live events and when we think about our school community and improving it i think opening it up so that parents and students can enjoy non-academic activities that are filled with joy we'll do a long way towards that so thank you very much thank you so much next we will have rodney brown followed by a nate wallace rodney better not be shy uh aloha everybody how's it going great great uh i'd like to say good evening and such a wonderful delight to even be here with you all in this uh momentous occasion uh i'm so proud of miss khadijah brown that
026i don't know what to do i'm really over here shaking like a leaf on the tree uh trying to conjure the words to say about this wonderful young lady uh to have those accolades mentioned uh before in the earlier statement about her being the youngest human being in the history of berkeley's 85-year uh tradition of being in the school district is such a wonderful thing to hear but not just the the age thing but i think just her uh acumen of adding such prestige and such wisdom uh to the diets is such a wonderful thing i remember when khadija came and got me one afternoon and she was going to sign these papers to become a member of the school board and i was being literally kidnapped because i didn't know really where we were
027going until we arrived upon the school board premises that we say are the city of berkeley premises to sign the papers and so i was so ecstatic and i just really didn't know what to think at the time except for to say a prayer and actually god guide her in her in her footsteps in the proper direction and so even doing the victory campaign party was such a tremendous thing to see uh up live and personal i had never been associated with a thing of that caliber before so that was such a wonderful delight to even partake in those festivities the queen and i one day had went out on the campaign trail and we were over uh in west berkeley passing out flyers and what not having such a wonderful time and we would
028go door to door and folk would say hey i know her i'm going to vote for her thank you so much that some people had already voted uh for her which was a wonderful thing to hear uh i don't think this is gonna settle in until probably tomorrow maybe a couple days down the road when we realized that hey the young lady is now the president of the berkeley school board and so we're just so delighted to just even hear her speak so eloquently earlier about uh what she planned to do in the year 2022 and i want to thank all of you for serving on the dice as well and being great mentors to her and allowing her growth to take place and i'm pretty sure it's an endearing task for all of you
029especially doing the precedence of what we dealt with uh concerning uh covet 19 and everything that's been associated with that so i want to say to all of you guys you know keep on doing what you're doing and i'm extremely proud of all of you in that regard uh i've met a lot of famous people in my life i've met warren buffett i've met elaine brown i've met bobby seals but the most famous person i've ever met is khadijah brown and so i'm so delighted to say that and salute to you young lady god bless you we love you continue on peace thanks daddy love you uh next way to make me all nervous next we will have nate wallace followed by dr darlene willis nate wallace whenever you're ready yes good evening um yes
030i'm a father of a student at berkeley high school nariah wallace and uh we're currently in this college brown program that they're providing these kids information and a little education on what they can do after high school and i think this is the best program i have seen thus far and it's in existence right now and i don't want it to go away so i have my daughter here we're going to share the same time frame hi i'm nariah and i'm a part of the college bound program and i think that it's really beneficial for students of color i know that it's helped me so far and uh congratulations president brown and um thank you this evening for giving me this time thank you so much nate and mariah for your comments this evening uh
031next we will have dr darlene willis followed by miss paula phillips hello excuse me and good evening i'm dr darlene v willis and i am the proud executive director and co-founder of concerned parents alliance college bound academy programs and how wonderful to follow mr wallace and nariah our college-bound scholar and parent first i want to just recognize president brown congratulations uh also to vice president babbitt congratulations it's inspiring to witness this history tonight and i'm excited to be a partner with um berkeley unified school district for the college bound academy programs i wanted to personally invite all of you to an open invite to everyone to attend a college bound academy program we do meet this saturday uh december 11th from 11 to two starting in january and uh superintendent can get you that schedule
032um where we meet once a month for three hours and we really inspire the scholars and their families but most importantly tonight i wanted to thank you the entire board thank you for believing in college bound academy programs for partnering with us for just accepting that hey we have we have a challenge and this program you know we were in lcap uh thanks to dr fisher and her african-american success framework we were mentioning that so we are delighted to be invited to be in this district and i just wanted to sort of say our commitment to to this program to the scholars what makes our program different than others is that we work with the scholars and their parents guardians caregivers etc we focus on academic excellence and self-esteem building racial equity and inclusion college
033customized college tours uc berkeley was at our last meeting the decision maker one of the decision makers for uc berkeley our senior that was present literally got one-on-one assistance with her application it was just amazing so i wanted to thank you again to personally invite you and to ask we got off to a little slow start but i wanted to give kudos to the superintendent and associate superintendent aurelio that literally came the very first meeting and and director well now i guess vice president babbitt uh came to the meeting and literally was were on the ground with us trying to get speakers and make sure the powerpoint was done kudos to the three of them as well um and a special kudos to miss parker who has just been amazing in recruiting our scholars into
034this program and their families and i am just so excited i am on board with the equity and excellence and i thank you so much on behalf of the college-bound berkeley scholars and their parents god bless you all happy holidays and stay safe thank you so much dr willis paula phillips good evening um to our listening public and to the school board uh-oh i think i don't know if you all can see me but i can't see you we can see you here you go okay oh here you go okay i just want to say thank you and congratulations to um director brown i mean president brown uh vice president babbitt and to director of osibeo this is an historic moment for all of us especially for the three of you being the first three
035women of color to hold such prestigious positions with the school board and i want to congratulate you both i know you all will be doing big things in the near future i also want to say thank you to director alper as the former board president um and i also want to say i don't know what it is um i can remember the moment or the day that you and i director alfred met um to to me to talk about bcc's endorsement on the way in i stepped in a pothole and broke my foot earlier this week or last week i slipped down the stairs and twisted my ankle so two momentous two memorial two very memorable moments is going to meet with director alpher as a candidate and with khadijah brown i don't know what
036it is about my feet and the presidency positions but i will always remember the two and tie the two together so i just want to say congratulations and i look forward to working with all of you in the future thank you so much and keep your feet on the ground don't put them up in the air flying and thank you for being here tonight um our last public comment tonight i will go to the person who raised their hand during the public comment period and that will be uh daryl bartlow any other public comments i see some other commenters hands will have to be given during the second opportunity for public comment which will be at the end of the meeting um ms barrios if you haven't already please promote darryl bartlow as our last
037comment for this uh close this open session for public comment uh good good good evening i appreciate the opportunity to uh speak uh i also want to uh acknowledge all the people that are in the little boxes i'm i'm daryl bartlow i'm a parent of a ninth grader i went to berkeley high i finished in 1965 i was a all-american in track and field i met a member of their athletic hall of fame i uh was blessed to have a counselor who uh advocated for me with the college of my choice as well as another counselor palmer with it who uh was instrumental in me getting a full scholarship to texas southern university that's just to highlight the value of people associated with the busd and their positive effect on an individual student as he
038furthers his journey past high school the other thing i want to say is the college bound academy is in good hands with miss willis and miss parker i i i wholeheartedly endorse it uh uh and and and and humbly request that you you support and back that program up uh to the fullest um my careers ended with a 30-year tenure with the alameda county probation department i started as a counselor at juvenile hall and um i i um i completed as a uh i finished as a deputy probation officer now here's the point i'm trying to make i have seen firsthand children who failed through the cracks of the school system and i see where they end up and it's unfortunate that they end up there because oftentimes it's a string board to the prison
039industrial complex in america i can't emphasize by experience of myself and observation of other kids the value of a program like the college brown academy it is greatly needed and at this time very needed um so with with that i uh uh uh thank you for letting me talk and i have my uh ninth grader uh lilia uh bartlow who who has a comment or two also and hopefully i'm underneath my three-minute limit thank you again um hi my name is lilia this college-bound program gives black students opportunities to enter great colleges they also help us keep our grades up so we can enter higher grade universities i am very proud to be a part of this college bound academy thank you so much lilia and thank you so much mr bartlow it was a
040joy to have a living legend online with us this evening so thank you very much thank you all right this ends our public comment opportunity as i said before if your hand is still up and you wish to speak you will have a second opportunity to do that at the end of this meeting you can also uh send your comments to us directly at the board of ed berkeley.net or you can contact us individually all of our information is posted online but please first send it to ty alper at berkeley.net if you want all of your comments to get to the rest of the board all right i'm going to call this email out there one more time like you put my email no but please in all honesty uh you're more than welcome to
041email your comments to us individually and to us as a school board if you do not have our information it is posted at www.berkeley.net school board we will now have the opportunity to hear from our unions our unions include bcce bft yuba and local 21. um if there are any comments tonight for commenters from those unions please raise your hand to speak miss barius i believe we have a video from matt meyer the berkeley federation of teachers president is that correct that is correct okay we are ready to receive the video whenever you are hello dr stevens and the busd board of directors i am matt meyer president of the berkeley federation of teachers today you will become begin discussion of potential budget cuts even though the true vote will not happen until february it
042is important to understand the impact some of these reductions now as a member of the superintendent's budget advisory committee i am not speaking for the group but just as a participant bft believes that there are many places where the district is overspending on contractors the budget document you will see today brings many of these services in-house this is a positive development these employees would have contracts be full members of their school sites and be treated just like other employees doing the same work i want to caution us on making any immediate decisions regarding teachers on special assignment and the u9 program at berkeley high school the superintendent's budget advisory committee did not vote yet on these items because so much is still unknown the district has not been able to say how much of the
043tsa proposed cut is vacant a cut to tsas and is in fact a teacher layoff as that person takes a classroom position pushing someone else out the job of the tsas still needs to get done oftentimes dealing with federal compliance planning for professional development supporting our programming at school sites writing special education assessments and so much more without more information sbac cannot weigh in although on paper the leap classes in the u9 are underenrolled in practice consolidating them will have unintended consequences on the program as a whole teachers will be split between the ninth grade and another school community at the high school the support that currently exists will drop off and what makes the ninth grade program successful will be lost more work needs to be done investigating some of these unintended consequences before
044members of the sbac can weigh in on this item in general bft believes in reducing vacant positions before we start laying off actual employees to continue to budget for a vacant position means that a person could be laid off if the budget target remains the same we also believe alternatives like retirement incentives need to be fully investigated before our new teachers start receiving pink slips we are glad all of these conversations have begun now so that any cuts that are made are deliberate and well intentioned as well as fully thought out i also want to remind the board that all four unions have expiring contracts this year and the district needs to plan ahead to get ready for this year's negotiations thank you thank you so much mr meyer are there any committee comments this
045evening seeing none we will now move to board member and superintendent comments i'm going to ask director vasudev would you mind going first sure thank you so much president brown it was really lovely to hear your father give comments so thank you everyone for coming tonight i'm especially grateful to hear all the community members and all the students that came to speak about the kind of support they they would like to see in our district and to speak of the college bound program it was really lovely to hear from our students tonight i also wanted to thank matt meyer and the berkeley federation of teachers for just the really specific feedback on the budgeting process i think that's really important and hopefully um the but the public can get a sense of some of the
046difficult choices that we have to make in the dilemmas that we have before us congratulations to my colleagues president khadijah brown and vice president babbitt i'm very proud to serve with both of you as well as with director alper and director sinai last week was the california school boards association conference i don't know how many members of the public know about that but that's a really important conference for us school board directors i was able to attend along with vice president babbitt and director sinai and we attended panel discussions focused on the fiscal outlook of school districts in 2022 and how and other panels focused on how districts are dealing with covet 19. it was a great time to meet other school board directors throughout the state and to share best practices with one another
047i also attended various events for the california latino school boards association another board which i serve on it was wonderful to be in the company of other latinx school board directors throughout the state that are working diligently to close the opportunity gaps for our most vulnerable students i also met many districts just like ours that are making budget reduction recommendations and we all discussed how difficult yet necessary this process is to make sure that our schools are in a stable financial state i'm looking forward to tonight's discussion regarding updates about important equity initiatives the updates on the community engagement process for our middle school assignment and a look at the general fund budget reduction proposals i'm grateful to all the educators and community members who have taken part in the various budget related meetings to
048help us get up to this point i've been able to attend some of those meetings like our dlac meeting and it was great to hear the feedback directly from the community about how these reductions are going to impact some of the services that they need for their students lastly i just want to remind everyone that i will be having office hours this sunday december 12th from 9 to 10 am at lavender bakery on solano i hope to see you there i hope um to hear just how the fall has been going for everybody and also to answer any questions that the public may continue to have about our proposed budget reductions and some of our priorities for the upcoming year thank you director vasudev director sinai would you like to know next oh i would
049love to and i love the level of direction you're providing um thank you i just want to start off by really congratulating president brown and vice president babbitt for um stepping up to lead us through this next year we are still going to have a very challenging year and i appreciate um the commitment that you two are making to help us guide help guide us through this i i too want to remember the first time i met president brown when she you know came to speak at the mlk breakfast in 2017 and a number of us were like we've got to get her to run for the school board deeply rooted in the community deeply passionate about the lives of all of our students and particularly our brown and black students who um you know
050you've experienced it firsthand as going through from this district and so um i have loved campaigning with you i have valued serving with you and i look forward to the coming year and director babbitt of our vice president babbitt you know we've known each other for a really long time and i knew you would be here on the school board at some point in time and i really appreciate how you have championed um all of our students and our students of color and our parent advisory committee and accountability accountability accountability so i look forward to really elevating those issues um in the coming year and and and uh clerk vasudev um i i really am happy to pass the baton on to you to sign all these various resolutions that represent the the heart of
051what this school board really stands for so congratulations to all of you and i'm i'm really honored and thrilled to serve with you and you know um director alper i am really sad to see you off of the presidential dice um and the jokes that you constantly make as we try to maneuver through this um but i really want to thank you for your leadership through probably i would say more than any other year and a half or almost two years that this district has experienced whether it's been budget cuts whether it's been strikes whether it's been whatever nobody in the history of this district has ever had to deal with a pandemic and deal with the hard and difficult decisions and you know not all of our decisions might have been the best ones
052or the right ones but they were the best ones at the time for us to make and you shepherded us through that and i really appreciate it um so i'm excited for the next year and we've got a lot of work to do um i too would like to kind of echo director vasudev's comments about the california school board association i was honored to be able to present on an educator housing panel on the first day of the conference a lot of interest in the state around providing housing i started off the panel with a show of hands of how many people in the audience um are having challenges recruiting or retaining their teachers and staff due to the high cost of housing and universally everybody raised their hand so we're not in this alone
053there's been some amazing research that's been led by ucla and uc berkeley um some of our own parents who are um researchers at the city uh the center for city and schools at uc berkeley who've done a uh a study on educator housing and a toolkit so that lessons we've all learned can get passed on to our colleagues and lessons other folks have learned can get passed on to us so i brought extra copies for all of my board colleagues and we can share as we continue down this path of providing educator housing in the coming years also at the csba conference i was thrilled that the keynote speaker was dr victor rios a berkeley high grad alum who through his lived experience has just made a phenomenal impact on students throughout the state in
054providing leadership and guidance and training to districts and he pays tremendous um honor and homage to flora russ a teacher that we all know you know from berkeley high who've failed to look at him or his you know fellow students as at risk and more of at promise and um to really look at um kind of um you know when we think about growth mindset that our mindset is our students can achieve and our students have the ability and the potential to achieve you know post-secondary education the careers and vision of their life as long as we all support them in their growth and we provide the platform and the and the and the lift so that um all of our expectations are that our kids will will succeed and so it was exciting to
055see dr rios on that statewide stage and for him to be honoring berkeley high teachers um and the work that were that we you know did while he was there and lastly i want to thank mayor adeguin and council member terry taplin who's the representative for district 2. for their leadership in making sure that science technology education engineering arts and math education and career technical training and career pathways remained in the 30-year extension of the bayer agreement they voted on the first reading last week and there was universal support for close to 50 percent of the community benefit agreement in the 30-year extension goes to steam education and that gets divided up among k-8 high school and community college in order to ensure robust pathways it's a continuation of the work that bayer and the
056city with the school district started in 1992 to offer opportunities to our black and brown students primarily from south and west berkeley to go through a biotech academy that's at berkeley high and see high paying jobs right here in the bay area so that program will continue for another 30 years and i want to give a shout out to director vasudev who helped shepherd that through with the school district and big shout out to um wyn skills our program director for cte he not only helped manage the education and information of our council colleagues about what our cte programs he brought them to our sites to show them our programs the videos he really represented what we do well and help to pave the way for continuation and recently he just secured i think with
057in partnership with other district staff another two million dollars for our cte program so huge shout out to wind scales um you know when we started to revitalize our cte programs we were really you know not not not the poster child district in cte and now five years later six years later we are really at the cutting edge of cte and you know win skills um and his team with barrett and stephanie allen have really just done an amazing job with all of our cte teachers and the program so i just want to end with like thank you win and um you know onward oh whoop sorry one more thing i have to cancel my open office hours this friday uh this sunday do i do a family issue i will resume them in january
058thank you director cyanide uh director alper i believe almost called your president and albert director oblaire i believe you gave your your comments already i did a quick i just wanted to say one thing that um director sign i remember reminded me of which is um about wynn and cte um and just what you said um director sinai just made me think about our former colleague um karen hemphill who i'm sure is not watching tonight but she was also one of the you know early um supporters and leaders in in our cte efforts and um and it really is pretty amazing to think about how far we've come and um so i wanted to um thank her and then also as you said thank gwyn and and the other members of our staff who who
059secured those grants just recently to continue to improve that program that we really are uh leaders and so thank you director albert and vice president director basic are you ready yes all right thank you so good evening everyone i like to make a couple of announcements and then i'd like to address my thoughts on becoming the vice president of the board so my first announcement is for a film screening tomorrow night at 6 30 pm at the new way parkway theater in oakland california called on these grounds it was produced by a rosa parks parent and the subject is as a video goes viral showing a white police officer in south carolina pull a black teenager from her school desk and throw her across the floor healer activist vivian anderson uproots her life in new
060york city to support the student and dismantle the system behind the assault at spring valley including facing the police officer this invitation is especially hopes to reach parents students educators administrators and school board members policy makers and organizers the film is not rated but they consider it pg-13 based on language and violence it will also have a panel discussion post the screening which will also feature one of our parent advocates for equity casey robinson so again that is tomorrow december 9th at 6 30 pm tickets are 15 and at the new way parkway theater in oakland secondly as we approach the holidays i want to thank the berkeley public schools funds for all of their work and their continued partnership with the office of family engagement and equity to collaborate to raise funds for holiday
061gift cards for our families they're working to provide 700 busd families 50 gift cards to be delivered between now and december 17th and we know last year they gave and gave and gave so much to our families during the pandemic and i just want to remind everyone that so many families are still struggling and still recovering so please continue to give and to support these efforts to spread some love and holiday cheer to students and families there's a tiny url 3wmb ck in which you can give and i'm sure you can find more information on the berkeley public schools funds website next i'd like to thank my board colleagues for entrusting me with the role of vice president as it is my honor to support our new board president khadijah brown and the vision she
062so eloquently described this evening i would also like to thank our passport president alper for leading busd through such a difficult time at the california school board conference i met so many people who had been on school boards for 20 plus years every time i was shocked when i told them i joined during covet they said oh that's why you can't imagine being on the board so long so thank you to former vice president brown and president alper for all of the hard times you felt personally as our board leaders during this tenure as i was reflecting upon the transition to vice president and where we currently are in bosd i also looked back at my campaign promises help busd safely reopen schools check but still work to do parents and guardians especially those of
063color need to be more involved with what is happening on the school grounds looking back at my older two bosd alums it was my ability to volunteer observe and learn in the ways in which they are learning now that helped me to be able to properly support them teachers need those classroom volunteers who so tangibly support the work they do from grading papers to helping students grow and learn students need overnight camp experiences families need to be more involved as a community in person i look forward to continuing the progress to fully reopen our schools and even to return to in-person school board meetings help usd address climate change funded climate literacy resolution check on its way help busd cut red tape new hr and financial system integration upgrades in process check on its way
064implement programs and services through the lens of equity well you will hear more about those ongoing efforts tonight check on its way with all that is on his plate i must say that i am still glad to be able to serve this community you the family staff and students of busd community make me thankful through ups and downs we still have each other and with each one supporting one we can continue the goals of our city that our city has continuously supported in each election i look forward to leading with that continued spirit of my ancestors s strength p perseverance i imagination our responsibility and t talent thank you so much thank you vice president babbitt and finally our superintendent superintendent stevens are you ready for your comments i'd better be head tonight [Music] i
065can feel the new regiment already so i i want to join all of the board members and congratulating both you president brown and vice president babbitt congratulations i'm very much looking forward to working with you over the course of these 12 months and know that your leadership is going to be really instrumental over these this year in navigating a number of challenges that we can already see on the horizon um khadijah a special word for you you know i have known now during the time that i have had a chance to work with you that you're a very special individual it's a little haunting sometimes to be 20 years your senior and be so frequently learning from you to be touched by your wisdom and to see all of the insights you truly are a
066remarkable person and so i know that the board is in very good hands as i think the district is as well so congratulations to you and please know that you've got a hundred percent of my support as we move through this together um i i wanted to as well thank um outgoing president alper i know lots of people have said it but this last 12-month period has been indescribably difficult i just cannot list the sheer number of challenges and the complexity of the challenges that we've had to go through together as a community i know that tai it was i think an active service for you and i think that you really felt that you had both an obligation and an ability to hold a lot of the emotional challenge some of that electrical charge
067that has built up in this community for such a long time like it has across the country and i think you did an outstanding job of that of listening of acknowledging of holding all of that energy and then translating it into action for all of us so for that i'm very grateful and i know that all of the staff feels that way as well so thank you to you don't disappear too fast though still need you around there he goes i would love to introduce to the board a new colleague this is equally for our community and i'm going to ask her now to actually turn on her camera as director alper turns his off i'm really happy to welcome our incoming coordinator of title ix uh ms yasmina kitsch i hope i've said your
068name right you'll correct me if i haven't um now in the middle of her second week here in berkeley unified and she's been very very busy over the last um what eight days getting to know our community and i think much to her credit uh focusing her effort on getting to know our young people at berkeley high school i think you've been on campus now multiple times you've had meetings with multiple student advocacy groups and i'm really impressed that that has been your top priority to get over to the high school and to make yourself known to young people so i'd just like to turn the mic over to you give you an opportunity to introduce yourself to our board and to our community and again to say welcome to you thank you dr stevens
069and thank you to all the directors congratulations president brown and vice president babbitt i'm very excited to be here on this very big night for both of you like it is for me um so we're all starting together um it has been a very incredible and dynamic week for me the last eight days at berkeley high mostly but also some of the middle schools have been very rewarding because i got to meet some of the most incredible intelligent very vibrant and um empathetic students and i think that our student body is definitely the biggest asset of our community um that's on one hand and then on the other hand we have very dedicated and hard working administrators that are really trying hard to have this expertise in this very complex title ix world and so
070i also want to give them as much support as possible like dr stephen said i will be focusing most of my time in the beginning just speaking to students and really hearing them and what their needs and concerns are so that we can make the title ix office more accessible for them i feel that i'm here for them and they are my number one priority so i am very excited about next year and i think that we are in a very good place right now so and with you and your sport i think it's going to be great so thank you so much for having me welcome aboard yasmina you're um and please know you have our full support i'd also like to call out your two colleagues as well miss mary keating who is
071our title ix investigator just celebrating her one year anniversary with the district uh and megan farrell who will continue on with us she's been serving as interim title ix coordinator for a number of months but will stay on board as a support for all of us welcome thank you a few more special announcements a couple of colleague announcements that feel important to me so i'm going to ask her just to give us a little smile today is pauline fallinsby's birthday happy birthday to you uh we planned this board meeting on your birthday especially for you pauline you're welcome we also want to say happy birthday to reuben's wife it's her birthday she's going to they'll be having blackberry pie at home after this meeting is over sometime about 1am and then finally sean mansiger is
072also in our participant list right now his birthday is tomorrow we've got a stack of sagittarius is among us so happy birthday to every single one of you sorry to interrupt but i also heard someone else has a birthday uh on monday i think that's uh you superintendent stevens that may be true i'm not sure it's a fine month i'll say that so a couple of community announcements that i'd love to be able to share um uh january 3rd when we come back from winter break will be the first day that we are enacting the board of education's policy that requires all of our students 12 and older either to be vaccinated or to take a test once per week we've already begun a campaign of communicating with families about that requirement making sure that
073we get information out to those communities about how to become vaccinated or how to register to take a free easy test on our campuses we'll continue that communication that will include more direct mailings just families once the january date arrives and we'll be reaching out as well to guide families toward resources that can help them comply with that policy i'd also love for members of the community to be aware that in addition to the vaccination or testing requirement for students who are 12 and older there's also a number of additional requirements or rather activities for which vaccination will be required they include things like overnight field trips at the point that we can permit them senior prom and other school dances school-sponsored student gatherings providing off-campus mentoring and tutoring to younger busd students one-time events
074to take place later in the school year and a number of different activities as well we'll be sharing information with the community about that list of activities but we encourage all folks to get vaccinated if they're intending to participate in those activities for students who are 5 through 11 please know that we've got lots and lots of opportunities still to be vaccinated this effort to offer vaccine clinics through the our partnership with city of berkeley i think has been very successful to date and we will continue it we have a brand new web page on our busd website that is dedicated exclusively to vaccination resources we'll get that link out to the community over and over again but really hope that folks will check there that's a great repository of information about where you can
075find vaccines here locally we're also very happy that we're going to be sending covet 19 test kits home with all of our students for next week we just took possession of about 12 000 kits we'll be distributing those to our school sites over the next several days and those kits are for peace of mind we're sending our students home with those kits so that they can be used when needed or use that final weekend of the break just to be sure that your child is safe as he or she returns back onto campus like we did after thanksgiving break we're also going to be offering expanded testing clinics on january 3rd and january 4th over at berkeley adult school you'll find that we'll have a testing kiosk open to families during the entirety of the
076day that's for folks who may have traveled folks who have some concern about potential cobit 19 risk you know you can know that there will be clinic staff there at berkeley adult school on the 3rd and 4th all day long even during the school day and you can stop by for either a rapid test or a lab-based pcr test as well and then finally i'm happy to get onto a number of different presentations including very excitingly an update on our african-american success initiative very happy to have dr robin fisher with us we'll introduce her in just a few minutes we'll be describing as well work taking place on our multilingual master plan as well as very specific efforts to engage el and spanish-speaking families we've got an update on a number of months of community
077engagement related to the middle school student assignment policy and as well we'll be looking at sort of a preview preliminary list of potential reductions that will be led by assistant superintendent pauline follansbee she'll also walk us through the first interim report for the year so this is an engaging and action-packed meeting i'm very happy that we have the chance to share all this information with that president brown i'm going to turn it right back to you thank you so much dr stevens you are right this is going to be an engaging and impactful meeting so we are going to go get straight to it um but thank you superintendent for your comments and i'd also like to say happy birthday to superintendent associate superintendent follensbee uh miss aurelio and also to you brent on monday
078and give a uh welcome to our new coordinator mr test kitch welcome to berkeley unified school district at this time we need to now approve the consent calendar is there a motion to approve the consent calendar um director sinai yes director vasudeva yes director alper yes vice president babbitt yes and president brown yes thank you so much we will now move on to our discussion items as he will introduce us to dr fisher as well as give us a brief summary on our presentation on the update on african american success initiative community engagement efforts dr stevens great thanks so much president brown um i am uh co-presenting with a number of folks this evening i'll introduce them um uh ruben first i wonder would you be willing to uh share your screen uh sure let
079me pull that up make sure i'm in presenter mode okay one sec and thumbs up if you all can see perfect perfect thank you so before we jump in i'd love to introduce a few folks both to the board and members of the community and i left just checking my zoom screen to make sure that they have appeared now so first i'd love to introduce dr robin fisher dr fisher you there you are so welcome to you really appreciate you being here with us and the partnership over the course now of more than a year of work together and then as well we have our manager of the african-american success project that is mr kumar ogun and we'll invite him to appear from from the shrouds of zoom welcome to you kamar glad to have
080you here tonight so what we'll do together the four of us is um provide an update on work specific to one component of a larger initiative we have been uh in the midst of work over the course of the last year under sometimes difficult conditions to sort of further define and launch a project to support african american students and families here in the district we are building from many years of work lots and lots of insight from many smart people who have been working before us on this very on this very task and trying to take those learnings put them into a new framework and come up with an initiative that will be long-standing that will be thoughtful and that will be impactful so we'd love to bring you up to speed on all of
081this work together i'll do a little bit of the introduction and then i'm going to turn it over to my colleagues so tonight we hope to talk a little bit about why we are sort of developing a framework for african-american success so we will refer over and over again to an african-american success framework we hope to be able to place that framework in the context of a larger initiative an initiative that includes sort of multiple aspects that are intended to impact classroom performance that are impacting interventions and enrichment programs as well as family engagement and other aspects of our district work we'll talk a little bit about how we're both creating a framework and designing programming at the same time something that we're going to call design and build and then we welcome a discussion
082with board members as we conclude so let me talk a little bit about why this work is so important and reuben and dr fisher and kamar if you can sort of help me remember what we agreed on in advance about who is speaking when um i i admit i don't have my notes in front of me at the moment i think you are on until slide five and then i will take thank you very much let's talk a little bit about why this work is important this is you dr stevens yeah thank you very much um so we have been aware for many years and again many smart people have put their heart and soul into conversations about supporting african-american students and their families here in berkeley and those efforts have brought successes they've brought
083some heartaches they brought some frustrations but those efforts are not to be ignored there have been many smart people including direct now vice president babbitt and others who have brought their intellect who have brought their rigor and passion to this very project we know despite many successes like an increased graduation rate up now into the low 90 percent percentage points for african-american students that we continue to have many discrepancies in our data those discrepancies affect a disciplinary outcomes like suspension and expulsion they affect referrals to special education and they also affect academic outcomes we know very well that these are systemic issues these have to do with our district and we know that they're solvable this is a belief that we all have and hold fervently that we can make a difference can and will
084make a difference so this moment right now stepping into new board leadership is a moment i think of reinvigorating the stream as well as sort of applying the lens of accountability and rigor to the way we go about our work thank you dr stevens i will take it from here so the next few slides i'm going to be sharing um just information about the african american success framework um i will have to i do want to say that back in july when i came on board this is one of the initiatives that was really appealing um in joining berkeley and seeing that the efforts that were being put um to really change the outcomes for african-american students just to make sure that we're using the right terms i've heard dr stevens mention the greater initiative
085which is the african-american success initiative that includes the framework um the framework is really the written document that really shares um the district's community's view on african-american students strengths opportunities and challenges and also will be the development of a theory of change and how we do things in berkeley so the african-american success framework really is an ongoing investment in the improvement for african-american students and the community here in berkeley it can it consists of a three-year strategic plan with recommendations and her partner in this work is robin fisher and her team that includes the review of internal data document reviews listening circles some of this work occurred over the past year and is continuing into this year and then the increased stakeholder engagement further analysis of what we do here in berkeley what we're doing
086right what we need to improve and then coming up with a written written plan for that this slide is really exciting for me because i'd like to see things sort of really actionable and this slide starts to show us now the greater initiative and how the framework is supporting these sort of what i like to call these five buckets of major work we know we need to improve our tier one instruction for african-american students and that's really key and important so we are tackling that with you'll see later in the presentations professional development where teachers really reaching our teachers at that level we also know that coupled with the tier one instruction we have to have really powerful tier 2 interventions in place for our students so we are looking at those features that some
087of that at work is also included in our our c6 plan and working for our five vision schools we'll share some of that information in addition to those two tiers we have to ensure that we're providing these affinity-based programs you heard um earlier in public comments one of those programs college bound which we've started this year working with their ninth to twelfth graders really focused on providing college going resources for our students we need to increase our family engagement college got another example of really blending the student and family component and then of course a data dashboard which is the lens or the flashlight that shows us how we're really doing and i know we're in the process with robin fisher's team and our director breath really developed this dashboard finally it's always great when
088we're talking about student groups to really look at the numbers and what we're actually facing and this slide here shows us our actual enrollment of african-american students in berkeley unified you can see by grade level how many students we're talking about at one special note this is strictly our african-american student population this these numbers don't on this slide include students that are mixed race um who characterize themselves with two or more races so that's we know that when we are targeting our students that we have to factor that into the work that we do i'd like to turn it over items there we go sorry about that it jumped three slides to head there we go there we go i would like to introduce kamar ogun thank you good evening again kamara gwen manager of
089the african american success project um so how does this become the a reality how are we going to bring this framework uh together next slide please so we know that there's a african tradition of sankofa meaning that we have to literally go back and get it and with that said is is that we know that there has been historical efforts to right the ship and remedy the wrongs that have happened for our students in this district and we wanted to go back and make sure that we highlighted some of those past efforts for two reasons first and foremost there are learning opportunities there right there's a lot has been done since 1968 when berkeley high school developed the first black studies department in the country leading up all the way to the vision 2020 a
090citywide effort to help address root causes and do the analysis and the deep work that needs to happen on behalf of our students and families and then more contemporary looking at the beacon of light that has come from our school board uh with the black lives matter resolution uh etc and so we literally have to go back learn from the past because that's going to inform how we move forward in the future next slide please and with that uh president brown mentioned that we have to be uh mission minded i like that term that we have to be mission minded in order to stay on mission and stay on task we have to have a foundation and so this slide represents some strategic pillars that we want to conduct create develop and build so we
091want to conduct stakeholder engagement opportunities this work began last year with dr fisher and team through our principal learning circles our african-american affinity-based town halls but we know that any process that is going to be put forward to benefit african-american students and our district has to be done with community and so we're going to conduct strategic opportunities for stakeholder engagement from that community input and stakeholder engagement we then are going to be able to build and create our strategic actions and with those strategic actions we can then identify our partners who can provide and direct services that are uplifted in that narratives and those trends that we see in that data um super associate associate superintendent aurelia has already mentioned college bound and we've heard some of the great things that have happened that is
092some of the early work that has happened throughout this process already and you see us making some actions towards that so this is a process that has been building over the course of the last school year into this school year as well and from there in order to be mission minded we have to have a compass we have to have a gps so that we know that as we're traveling on this mission whether or not we're going in the right direction and so by that we must develop impact-oriented metrics to make sure that the system that we're developing is really having an impact that we wanted to have and we'll do that by being inquiry based as well as developing frameworks dashboards etc to help us accelerate improvement and when we find that we are
093doing well we want to capitalize and build on those processes and procedures and so long-term practices to sustain and scale best practices when we achieve desired results next slide please okay and so we talked a little bit about stakeholder engagement i won't belay this point here but we'll see that we're talking about this here this evening at the at the board meeting but come january we will be in the community with a series of events leading from january until the end of the school year to engage stakeholders and this is not an exhaustive list of stakeholders to be engaged but it's a representative list i do want to uplift and i know that dear to dr fisher's heart is really getting towards the high school we had an opportunity to engage a lot of folks
094last year but we will be heavily involved at the high school to get input and feedback through the stakeholder engagement process as well as some of our internal stakeholders that we didn't get a chance last year to be able to interact and to engage and with that said i'll pass it over to superintendent stevens uh who will be talking a little bit about our design and build process thanks so much mr oguin um so so important message here is that we are not waiting to start building um we do have work to be able to sort of review research to go through all of this past these past efforts and to build a new framework we want a solid intellectual foundation for the work that we want to lay for the coming years but we're
095not waiting we're actually beginning programs as we do all this work so let's take a look at what we've got going on now so we're guided by recommendations from dr robin fisher who's been with us for a little bit more than a year i'm going to turn it over to dr fisher so that she can describe a little bit of what she recommended at the end of last year based on her review of past busd efforts and her review of the data we collected from various community engagement efforts so over to you dr fisher thank you superintendent stevens and all that are here i want to definitely give a congratulations to president brown and vice president babbitt for your new positions and the work that you're going to be doing in the leadership uh that
096you will continue to provide to the board thank you so much now with respect to the recommendations it's really important that one of my team members really gave a great analogy that last spring we really started to plant the seeds of this framework and what we're seeing this academic year is our harvest we're really beginning to see all of that hard work of tilling the cultivating the soil for this work to begin to really take shape and that's what i think you hear my colleagues talk about beforehand and these recommendations were really built from doing a deep dive really trying to understand the past initiatives that mr ogun had mentioned and really looking at all of the initiatives that are already taking place in the district and how can we build upon them and so
097these four recommendations are built from the lcap goals and taking the lcap goals in mind looking at your with because we are coming and are still in a pandemic your lcp strategies looking at the black lives matter resolution which again is um one of the only in the state of california really being very intentional about the needs of black students scholars their families especially within um the dis you know the upheaval that has been in our community most recently in the last couple of years and then some high priority budget items as well as how to phase this thin over time and when we really looked at those four or those five or six kinds of accountability reports we came up with four recommendations initially to put our arms around the first being that we
098utilize approved culturally and linguistically that's really important responsive and relevant we call that clear in our line of work social emotional academic development interventions to really address the academic performance of african-american students and that was mentioned with associate superintendent mentioned the second first the tier one and the tier two kinds of resources what's happening in the classroom this particular recommendation is going to focus on how do we address what students are receiving in the classroom and what that looks like and means we're going to be using research-based evidence that says these are the best practices and what that looks like it means so that we are ensuring professionals that they're using the resources that are used throughout the country recommendation number two really is focused on ensuring that school personnel are in place and are
099appropriately trained supported and held accountable for the successful implementation of culturally relevant professional development and pedagogical practices again we saw that earlier that this framework is leading to professional development that's already taking place how do we build upon what currently exists and how much deeper can we go to ensure that again black scholars are their needs are being met in a very intentional way our third recommendation after looking at the accountable reports that exist is really reviewing and updating the district-wide behavioral policies and practices we heard in some of our public comment we've seen across the state in the country what's happening in our school districts and we want to be thoughtful about whether or not what's happening is going to negatively impact students of color specifically black scholars in our schools and if that's
100the case this recommendation is being very thoughtful about what that looks like and means and then finally our recommendation number four is really focused on how do we ensure that we promote parent and community partnerships and alliances with our local school sites last year we spent a lot of time in our k-8 schools i mentioned the last time that i met with you in the spring that i've never seen the kind of engagement from principals the way that i've seen in berkeley unified school district and we're hoping to get that same type of uh engagement with principals with families as we did k-8 with our high schools and that's going to be our focus in the spring to ensure that we really get a robust set of resources to continue to see how we implement
101these recommendations dr stevens thanks so much dr fisher um so this is a uh not meant to be an exhaustive representation of the work that's going on earlier in this presentation um reuben aurelio showed a slide that talked about the elements of a african-american success framework tier one instruction tier two interventions affinity-based programs family engagement and that data dashboard and here's sort of where we are now this is not meant to be the finishing point but as we build this framework and look to invest further this is sort of an array of the programming that we have this is design and build uh it includes work now for the second year with goldie mohammed who's been working with our k-8 educators as well as anti-racism work at berkeley high school on the literacy action plan
102that very specifically looks to improve core instruction in the area of literacy our seas vision schools umoja stem steps college bound ygb our work with dr mary bacon who is in the district again this week as well as our principals learning circles that we're reinstituting for this year and then the the data dashboard which is now underway draft and development so as we sort of talk about design build we're writing a framework we're building out a set of programs and bringing them together over time this is a very deliberate design decision we just didn't want to wait for a year or two to get the writing correct before we launch in so we know that we'll update this we know that we've got lots of work in front of us but it's exciting to be
103doing both at once and then finally if i can turn it back over i think to you ruben and you can talk yes a little bit about it and this in two with two parts yeah yeah this is two of our partners here you can see side by side um to robin fisher who is with us here presenting and of course we heard from dr willis earlier in public comment with cpa and college bound it just shows the timelines of where we're going um for this year with those two partners and you can see that the you know the stem steps works which provides direct services to students and that's being provided by our by robin fisher's group and partnership they're also working closely with their five vision schools ensuring that we are doing some
104significant changes in our instruction and ensuring that we are not over identifying our students for special education um and then the college bound program which has launched it launched in october with informational meetings we have our next session which are our 9th to 12th grade families especially our families our american families are invited to attend that's this saturday um the location is 2020 bonar it is the theater right here at our district office um it is from 11 to 2 o'clock and i really encourage our families if they're listening please attend bring come with your child your high schooler it is a program intended for both student and family um it's also important for us to note that this work that we're doing here for african-american students is really a model that we are trying
105to replicate um for some of our other targeted student groups our latinx students and families we do have a latinx resolution that calls for some similar processes to be developed we are doing significant work we're going to hear about this actually in the next presentation around our english learners students and families the work we are doing around our vision school is really focused on special education we're also going to hear a little bit more about some plans when we talk about our budget a little later around special education and of course i see in dr stevens uh background here we you know we really are working with our asian asian american pacific islander community and families as well to make sure that we're focused on those students too and with that dr stevens i think
106we've come to the end we have uh thanks very much to the three of you for your help with this presentation and we look forward to our discussion thank you so much for that phenomenal presentation loaded with so much information as time permits we will ask our super directors to engage in this discussion by asking questions school board directors if you have questions this is the appropriate time to raise your hand to be called on at director albert thanks president brown um thank you so much for this presentation all of you um it's it's impressive and exciting and i had a very sort of specific question which was um well how does how does our bridge program fit into this and and um i guess the like slightly larger version of that is how do
107our um how do our sort of in in-house programs you know um fit into the framework and how do we decide when we need to go you know outside the district um or you know or build up scale up a program that we're you know that our employees are are running it's it's a great question director helper thanks um so so the framework itself is sort of in development we've got a lot of elements of that framework now completed for example um dr fisher's completed a review of all those past plans and offered us her analysis we've got a lot of information now from almost a year of community engagement but we still have work in front of us to plug into all of our existing programs for example probably conspicuously absent from the list
108was our own black studies department referenced in one slide but not in the framework and we know in this next semester that we've got to pull together these multiple pieces so that we're both incorporating existing programming but thinking critically about what's the what missing pieces we've got to fill in over in this sort of next iteration of effort what we hope will be many years sort of a sustained effort to impact the achievement of african american students thank you vice president babbin thank you so much and just to um further uh answer your question director alper um we are trying to connect most of these programs with the framework that we already have for example we've had discussions with the bridge program leaders and the college bound academy we learned that for example the bridge
109program has a wait list of 60 so this is where we can provide additional services to people off of that wait list and we also learned that the bridge program provides tutoring which and the college bound program provides parent services like parent education workshops so these are ways in which if we can work together we can really bring a real collaborative model to enhance what we're doing and provide additional specific culturally relevant services to these families but my questions were actually around the family engagement listening circles um i was like so i have two um i don't know if i have time for two right now but um those circles um those listening circles last year were really great and i attended every one of them and i was actually called out by one of
110the principals to make sure that we kept that work going and that we were able to really take it from the district-wide level and implement it at the local levels at each school site and we did in the last listening circle with templates that we gave to our principals and so i'm just curious dr stevens or ruben if you've heard of any use of those templates of any more localized parent and family engagement workshops at the various schools in which we could continue to build that model even outside of the district-wide listening circle plan that's a great question vice president thank you um i'm not aware specifically of the template being used in schools although it's a great question and we can go back and find that out for sure i do know that right
111now we have a mix of our schools that have their own versions of african-american advisory councils they're called different things right now they're not under the sort of same umbrella and we have work to do to sort of build out that that network of school-based structures that builds into a district structure i'm excited to take on that work i think that what we've learned through the circles is going to inform us and we've got a great partner in dr fisher who over the course of this semester is going to help us get closer to that vision awesome thank you so much and then i will look for that follow-up um i also want to know the outcomes of the engagement you gave us a list of the framework development process and i guess i could
112draw the conclusion that um this is to support the outcomes for recommendations two and three but it wasn't explicitly clear what outcomes we are trying to get from these various community engagement meetings i might um also welcome dr fisher into this conversation because i know you have a real sense as well of what's missing in this framework um generally i'll start but i welcome you in on this too generally what we're looking to do is uh make sure that as we go through both our own review of the research that we want to include the insights and perspectives of our community members as we build out this framework and that those insights and perspectives should be relevant to tier 1 for instruction to tier 2 interventions as well as enrichment programming that we may have
113or need and then finally to commute family engagement efforts as well while we have a lot in each of those categories i think there's better questions we could ask over the course of the semester about each one of them dr fisher could i could i welcome you into this because i know you're thinking deeply about this sure absolutely we're thinking and again where sometimes the the two kind of terms get conflated one a listing or learning circle and a focus group and what that looks like it means and so we want to kind of differentiate between the two the listening sessions and what we really learned from the k8 was really the big ideas from the principals and the families how what were their experiences uh with at their school sites for their children and
114their families and then an action plan that would be implemented per the template that you mentioned the outcomes for more like the focus groups where we have and you saw the list of folks that we're going to be speaking to um in the in the coming weeks coming months is really to have them reflect upon what we're noticing in the recommendations so they will the outcome is this is what we're thinking this is what we see from your experience where you sit from your lens what does that look like and mean so when we're speaking with teachers that might be in the vision schools and what that looks like what's your experience with students that may be over identified and how would one through four recommendation be impacted or implemented as you see it so
115we've been we're being very intentional the outcomes will be different depending on who we're speaking to and for what purpose and we will without a doubt provide for every single session what that agenda looks like what the intended outcomes are and then provide a summary of what we've heard and how that then will apply to the the implementation or the recommendation furthering that recommendation so i would say that those outcomes are coming vice president babbitt once we have confirmed that these sessions are going to take place the next piece that you'll see from us is just that these meetings what the agendas are what the intended outcomes are and then what you can expect as far as a summary of what we heard and what that looks like it needs okay great and one more
116question i know that we're working on a website tool um or some kind of communications tool so that african-american families can actually go to one place find out all this information because you know as my colleague director vasadev noted oftentimes parents don't hear about this and then they say well how come i didn't know or you know so can you talk to us a little bit about how we plan on expanding our outreach and access and availability to these opportunities particularly as we also engage in this um involved outreach and focus group meetings as well thank you dr stevens would you like me yeah this is such a good question and i think it's relevant to nearly every presentation um that we're we're giving this evening that's both relevant i think to this discussion about
117engaging families in the framework uh as well as it is for um families to engage in the development of the el master plan or in any of the para workshops we have it's also in fact relevant to the middle school student assignment policies discussion that we'll have soon we we know that we've sort of learned a lot in the last i would say especially 12 months about effective family engagement and we have steps that we still need to take um so we have like a number of events that we've launched over the course of this last year where we've been able to simultaneously do broad communications through emails and use more targeted tools like remind and use our our network of offi family liaisons now not all of our cylinders are firing sort of as
118well as they need to at the moment we've got a transition taking place in our ofi team that i think we're feeling and we've also had to try out some transition taking place in ed services with respect to el support services so generally the plan is to use many modes to use broad emails to use remind text-based messages um to and to use phone outreach as well we also know that as we start this next semester of engagement work whether it's any of these topics that getting back in person is going to be really critical to sort of engaging community members for whom zoom simply doesn't work we saw that i think really well in the context of this last round of middle school engagement where we we did well but we still have extra
119steps to take and going back to in-person meetings i think is the way forward and also dr stevens under your leadership we have started to build out a page that would will be connected to um the general berkeley unified school district web page that will have just that vice president babbitt it'll have a calendar that any member can go community member can go and see what's happening at school sites as it relates to black and african american student and family engagement what's happening district-wide what's happening with the framework so we are framing that as we speak and that is to be as launched as we're hoping as early as uh we come back from the um holiday break and that will be you know updated as often as folks are able to update it but
120we'll have the frame for sure uh with what we've talked about thus far and it includes the kinds of things that you were speaking about and dr stevens was speaking about at each school site you know what are those groups that already exist and when do they meet and what does that look like and mean when are opportunities like bridge and cte and avid and college bound and the black studies department what are their efforts and what that looks like it'll be all in one place so that we can begin to really see uh what's happening in the district under this initiative umbrella so that we're working on that as we speak and again hope to launch it very soon after the holiday break beautiful thank you dr fisher you answered my question too so
121i will uh give it over to director sinai for a question thank you um and thanks for the presentation it's got a lot of good good information in it and i really want to extend appreciation to dr fisher and mr nguyen for the your you know tenacity persistence and continuing on with us you know and keeping this work moving um i have a couple questions one is a quick data question well data connected to outreach and the other is an observational question like what you're seeing the data question is um associated superintendent aurelio you mentioned that um the one slide did not include um students who identified as two or more races and i know from various focus groups over the years that there's a lot of students who identify as black who are two
122or more racists so when we're doing outreach to families and to the engagement are we looking at families that have students who have identified as two or more races and yes black being one of one of the one of the two correct that's i know that slide didn't indicate it that was strictly the way the data was pulled but yes when we do the outreach we are pulling for that as well okay and updated data dashboards will include that data as well great right right so i'm i'm curious um with the tier one you know the the slide around the t you don't pull it up but just like the different tiers we've all been talking about and you know it is on the top of everybody's mind nationally locally etc about the social emotional
123health of our students and with a lot of our african-american students who who families really felt the brunt of covet in ways that we know the data shows is disproportionate with health outcomes and socioeconomic outcomes and the like i'm curious as you're doing work as as we're designing and building um i didn't see like in tier one um social emotional support and i'm curious to what you're observing in in in schools right now about how our african-american students are doing with their social emotional well-being and if you're looking at um at ways to approach and address that that might that might be a little different than what you might have been thinking of before given the circumstances have changed i'm curious to what you're seeing and experiencing i i can definitely speak to the data
124that i've seen most recently which is around uh student suspensions and what we've seen is a an uptick on african-american females actually having a real high the highest numbers i think of our student suspensions at this point has come across the african-american females that's middle and high school um i don't know dr stevens if you observe similar as far as some of those sort of high higher needs that we're seeing yeah i think you're describing something accurately there there is um among a relatively small number of students and we're talking about a dozen or so at the high school six or so at our middle schools who are in intense crisis there's just no other way to put it and for whom really sort of in more intensive intervention is necessary but a lot of
125support is necessary and that's different from i think the more generalized trauma that almost every student is feeling but i think that concentrated in particular ways in the african-american community over the course of this pandemic and for which i will be honest you know we don't have an adequate response yet not to let ourselves off the hook in any way but i would not feel comfortable saying to the board this evening that we feel like we've got the right mix in our schools to support students as they're coming out of this pandemic you know uh mr aguin works daily with our students and i wonder if i could welcome him in this because i think you've probably got some some insights that a number of us may lack i certainly think that i'm still in
126a pandemic but returning back to school we see that there's needs i think the broader question is is how do we begin to develop systems to support those needs as director sinai says in terms of tier one and what i perceive by that is is that how do we embed those things in a school day opposed to something separate have to happen for students who quote unquote might be in crisis et cetera at longfellow there's a number of things of course you know you have the mojo program that is there every every single day but because they have moved towards an extended school day and have national schedule space in their school day they're able to weave in more support systems there right there's a tanisha watson is there doing work with african-american girls in
127partnership with iran lachuga there but the system and structure of the school side and master day schedule has allows them space to be able to breathe and space to be able to weave those things in to their tier one school day and part of that could be tier one instruction and support through their advisory curriculum etc and so i think that that is models and beacons that we can look into in some of our stakeholder engagement sessions to learn how effective how has those things been and other learning opportunities to be able to say perhaps this is something that can be mapped or considered at other school sites but i think it's a very intuitive question to say not only is it needed but where's the space and time within the tier one structure of
128the school day that these things happen and i'd be committed to coming back and sharing any insights that i have from longfellow which is the site that i spend the most time at and maybe um i mean i i totally hear dr stevens what you're saying around the group of uh young women who are in crisis um and chances are the crisis doesn't just erupt you know all of a sudden that there are things that build so if there are again kind of in the concept of design build that we're trying to do this all at once you know if there's ways and dr fisher i don't know you know what relationships or connections you have but if there are ways that um there's resources that we can bring in that are you know focused
129around the african-american community or connect people who can make connections um whether it be around mental health supports or family supports or things um because i think that um while there may be whatever you know handful of folks that you said are in major crisis there's a lot brewing um and just what we can do with the resources we've dedicated to our interventions that are covet related that we can see if there's ways to kind of make sure we're addressing uh the african-american experience in our schools i appreciate that offer of support thank you um it's something we're thinking a lot about right now and it's it's really top of mind and notice that that we definitely will as we're gathering and gleaning resources that are available in the community will absolutely address uh the
130social emotional well-being of of students and what that looks like and have a list of resources you have such an amazing community of folks that can support berkeley unified school district that we will want to make sure that those are identified and you know where they are and what they are able to do that will absolutely be part of the framework especially within the context of your third recommendation when we're starting to look at you know is it really are disciplinary practices really taking into consideration when there is crisis and what that looks like and means and what systems and supports are in place if that's not the case so we are definitely going to be focused on that and might i add i'd be remiss not to mention this that uh dr philip shelly
131our director of student services led a small thinking group in partnership with the city of berkeley to actually seek additional funding for mental health services to come to the district and so that is potentially a place of not only action for thinking about this but as well as actual real dollars behind it to be able to invest in some of those services and so perhaps if that is coming down the pipeline we can come back with an update for some of the things that we've been thinking about about how to approach it so i'll be remiss and not to mention that this evening great that's great thanks so much for bringing that up hi yes i just wanted to thank everyone for your great work on this presentation and um mr gwyn now that you
132mentioned it dr shelley's work it was that at the high school level it um but we had a working group so there was constituents throughout so there were several principles there were folks from the high school counseling team et cetera who were there represented were given ideas about should we approach the funding what are some of the things that we might want to try to include in the request for proposal yeah that's great and the reason i asked is because i recently toured berkeley high and i had the opportunity to talk to our safety officers and our um you know um just like what they told me is we definitely need more restorative justice support at the high school level and so it would be great if we've already started you know that that high
133school level research to see what that could look like what exactly do they need supporting and the sro had also mentioned that too officer mitchell had said that he would also welcome that um i just wanted to thank everyone for the presentation i think director babbitt nailed it i was going to ask about outreach and so i'm really happy to hear that there's going to be a dedicated website because i think that's something that we can also mirror for our other equity work i think it's so important because when you have multiple initiatives it can feel overwhelming for families not to know you know who's the point of contact how old will my child you know kind of all the requirements for the different initiatives so that's really exciting and i'm really glad mrs fisher
134that you're working on that thank you so much for your leadership on that my question is and i know that um you know when i was in middle school i went through a program i went to public middle school in san francisco called the early academic outreach program and it was geared for both you know latino and african-american students at our school and it was really empowering for me just to go through this experience together with my classmates i um i know that the superintendent has mentioned this and we've heard this in public comment but there's a couple of interventions that have been mentioned also for a lot of nx students so college bound has been mentioned uh stem steps the seas work and i was wondering uh and i don't know if mr gwen
135would know or who or perhaps you associate superintendent audelio how is that outreach being conducted also to a lot of next students and are they part of those programs as well i can jump in if you'd like me to that's so we have been um as we've been working on outreach for all of these programs we've been interfacing with a number of different staff members that includes all of our academic counselors at the high school we've been working with folks like jesse luxford with the bridge program and our recruitment has been targeting african-american students but we're also being very explicit that what we're really looking to do is support the success of first generation college goers including latinx students as well if you attend a college bound meeting you will see that there's a diverse
136group of students participating and as darlene willis who spoke earlier said you know the program is really trying to appeal to and build off the strengths of african american culture uh and so we're trying to do both of those things at once and i think that everybody is right now experiencing that as a powerful one um and and so that that's sort of the approach right now is to make sure that everybody knows they're welcome and to think about these programs as targeting particular populations that's great and i guess my question is how are you communicating to families in spanish about these opportunities as well like if we do a mirror website will some programs live on both for both populations we'd actually just uh mr aurelia and i just had this conversation a parallel
137web page um yes that would list a set of resources for spanish speaking families and in which the the link to that page would appear in spanish on our home page that's wonderful and so i would say that also if there are programs like blended that we're also mirroring that information for afro-latina that might want to participate as well right and so to make sure that we're building off of all of these programs and supporting each other yeah and i would add it's kind of been said from the beginning of starting the framework is that the benefit of a framework is is that once it's developed and once we learn um right how we can make that work for the district then it can be used as a model to develop programming et cetera for
138for other groups as well so i think that that's always been the intent is to you know take that framework and then be able to see uh how might we best utilize it across the district and so um very much intended to be in partnership there thank you and i think also it's really important director to note that what we're trying to do is with the dashboard specifically is for those programs that already exist like when they like avid like ealp because it still exists right it's still in berkeley unified school district it still is part of what needs to happen and there's been outreach that says and we really need to do outreach to groups of students who are not represented as well as they could be and in that instance what we're trying
139to say is across the district yes there are some new partners that have come to the table but across the district there are our amazing program we just heard about bridge ealp avid our ap courses where are black children and are they taking advantage of are they being outreached too are they able to take advantage of what already exists above and beyond what some of these new initiatives look like and what they mean and these new initiatives too are able to be uh role uh models if you could say as far as what outreach looks like and means so that it can be used across the district and that's really what the african-american initiative is really about is how can we ensure that all of the resources that are available to all of our students
140really get to those that really deserve to have it and what that looks like and needs so we don't want to focus just on the new partners we really want to look at how can we ensure that all that berkeley has to offer is really being reached out to right not just outreach but reached into the these programs so that families know that they exist and they can participate that's even goes with our school site councils we're also saying yes there should be and could be some specific equity-based initiatives at school sites but our black families participating in school site councils how do we ensure that there are resources available so that families know that that is a viable pathway and that we encourage african-american families to participate in those structures that already exist so
141in our mind with respect to the initiative it's a both and with targeted focus on outreach to black families that aren't or haven't traditionally participated in some of these programs so we really do see it as a both end and we will be cataloging that and providing data throughout this process so that you really can see what that looks like and means oh i love that mrs fisher thank you so much i think that's so important because sometimes in our cte programs right like our you know our families of color might not feel that that's for them and so the fact that we could have stem steps and highlight our cte offerings at the same time so important so thank you for highlighting that thank you so much dr fisher you know often times the
142experience of our black children and the needs of our black african-american children in the school district are often times or sometimes rather put to the side or sometimes watered down through conversations about inclusive and so i appreciate tonight's presentation and all of the attention that went into uh taking a holistic approach to educating our black and african american students uh within the district and the focus that continues to remain on that programming and that's intentional and impactful i wanted to ask questions because i wanted to ask two questions um one around uh efforts especially in our community engagement um what what efforts are there around attendance and addressing attendance for black and african american students we've heard time and time again that you know students cannot learn if they are not in the sea and
143so we talked about a lot of our programming and what we can do and offer to students a part of tier one instruction or a part of the the normal school day and so uh and and i'm so excited and happy about that how do we address students we're not there to receive those services how do we engage with community members who um who are also not there so um that's question number one and then my other question maybe we should not answer that one first and i'll go into my other question i know dr shelley is heavily involved obviously with the department of student services and he um yeah i know aisha is doing um sorry i'm blanking on naisha's last name help me dr stevens i'm still working on all the names how
144do you lock it yes thank you miss lockett um conducts home visits as well so i know that there definitely do need the outreach and monitoring of attendance um kind of these started the start and start process as well really trying to connect resources to families um specifically around attendance it's beyond those resources at this point i'm not sure which other resources are being put forth um doctor students are anything i'm not aware of potentially or anyone else yeah the the sort of i guess i'll sort of bring it back to the framework development we do have lots of people who work on attendance that's true in the high school that's true across all of our schools and yet we see the data we do and we know that there needs to be thoughtful additions
145to our current system of intervening in attendance so that's i think part of that sort of tier two component of the study process what more do we need what's what's working but what's not and we want to draw from the insights of families and educators as we think both about what goes into that framework and ultimately what we might propose as additions to our attendance support systems thank you thank you both um and then my last question kind of falls on the heels of what a director vasudev brought up and also dr fisher's response and about making this program available or the framework rather available to a lot of different subgroups that we have in busd and i wanted to ask questions about intersectionality and so we have the office of language and accusation um
146gives a wonderful like synopsis of a movement around um english learners who are black and um and the language of acquisition in their synopsis identifies them as native born and foreign-born english speakers and so i wanted to ask what efforts are being done to support our black and african-american students or to identify our black and african american students who will also who could potentially also fall in this english learner subgroup and um you know what efforts are being done to first identify them to engage the community around them and to include them in the framework if you all don't mind responding dr fisher would you be willing to lead us off on this conversation this this is itself i think an entire an entire topic on linguistic responsive curriculum and thinking about sort of standard
147english language um i i know you are something of an expert in this area would you be willing to lead us off on this well thank you i don't know about being an expert but i definitely know that when we talk about being clear and that's the acronym that we use in the work that we do and that when you look at usually folks are looking at something being culturally relevant and not necessarily linguistically relevant to at the same time that's really important and so in this work when we start talking about tier one or tier two interventions and we talk about what that looks like it means for black children the continuum all black children right and where they rely on this continuum of intervention from needy remediation to acceleration and what that looks
148like we don't usually include language development and what that looks like in that conversation and so with this dashboard that's being developed on behalf of the district we would be able to identify what that looks like it means from a linguistic perspective and we would be able to see because when we talk about language development or multilingual students which they are superheroes right they have more than one language they they they're superheroes uh who who can do that they do and they can and we know that there are multiple languages that fall with under uh this idea of english language learners and what that looks like and means and so again when we identify very similar to what this associate superintendent said with respect to who is identifying as black or african-american what does that
149look like within the context of the languages that they speak and what that means and how that impacts what happens in the classroom and outside of the classroom that's what we're hoping this framework will be able to give us more information about and to be able to speak about it as you're asking you know i don't know yet but we're gathering that data and the dashboard will able to be able to give us information hopefully uh pretty quickly to identify well who's in the space what do they need how best do we support them what does that look like right now we don't have that fluency to be able to do that and that's what we're hoping with the framework under the initiative to be able to do so that is very much part of
150the research that's going into when dr stevens wants to know what are those research-based practices what is the evidence what does the research tell us we're at that stage now where we're starting to gather that and be able to make recommendations based on that intersectionality that you're mentioning so not an expert but we're definitely uh have that in our wheelhouse as far as thinking about what that looks like it means president brown thank you so much dr fisher thank you for your work thank you mr gwen for your work and your presentation this evening as well as associate superintendent um ruben and superintendent stevens thank you all so much for this phenomenal presentation and for being here this late into the evening we will now move on your ear except for you superintendent students and
151associate superintendent president brown come on but maybe next time thank you dr fisher thank you uh now uh superintendent stephens you have one more thing to do actually three four more things to do so the next thing you'll do is help us with the presentation on the update the multi-lingual learner master plan and the english learner family engagement yes thank you very much i'm actually going to pass the the baton right over to our associate superintendent ruben aurelio and shortly after that i will be introducing and passing baton to our directed lisa stupid who's been waiting in the wings to do this presentation we do have an update for you all on our multilingual master plan this is a partnership with cabe and you'll be hearing about that as well as our partnership with pk
152and a few other opportunities so director is stupid the floor of yours thank you everyone good evening um again for those of you that don't know me my name is lisa estepan and i'm the director of the categorical and special projects department um so tonight i would like to provide you with an update um on the multilingual master plan project to inspire and pk which is the parent institute for quality education perfect next slide all right so the first thing that i'd like to talk about is the kabe work that we're doing on the multi-lingual multilingual master plan development um so as you can see on the slide the first pd work session occurred yesterday from 8 30 to 2 30 in the afternoon um feedback from cabe staff and members of the multi-lingual leadership
153team were all positive it was a long day but a lot of the work that was put into that day was really really meaningful some of the feedback that i received from the members of the leadership team as well as kabhi staff so members of the team stated like every minute spent was beneficial and much needed i'm thankful to be part of this team doing the work for our english learners i'm glad this is finally happening and one ask was that in addition to the pd um work that kabe was doing they were asking for additional work time so that the team could collaborate and really dive into the multilingual plan um after meeting with kabe kabe did agree to that and moving forward that time was also going to be built into these sessions
154that are going to be occurring i also met with cabe staff today and they stated to me the reflection about what happened yesterday they stated that every single member was super engaged and just super knowledgeable and and really well-versed about english learners um they stated to me that with all the breakout sessions that we had um when they popped into the breakout rooms all of the conversations were super rich and everybody was engaged so very positive day yesterday in regards to the work behind the multilingual master plan moving forward there are already four additional dates scheduled two in january and two in february um so so for now that's the update on the multilingual master plan we will be continuing to meet the team collaboratively collaboratively is going to decide whether we will continue meeting
155twice a month after february we all believe that that's what's going to happen but collectively that's what's going to happen the team together will decide that but at minimum it will be once a month could i could i jump in and and maybe for folks who just aren't familiar with that acronym cabe could you help us know what that means and who who those folks are of course so kobe stands for california association for bilingual education so so truly cabe is an organization that really truly supports the engagement the learning um you know professional development for teachers for all kinds of staff not just teachers on supporting our english learners as they navigate through our school system um thanks and then moving on in regards to the data survey meeting um i met today with
156cabe staff in addition to including our bread director ruth steele in regards to some um survey that a survey that we want to put forth in regards to the multilingual master plan um today at the meeting we kind of went over the why what is the why of the survey and what was established is that we really want to focus on the area of needs for our english learners as well as the level of satisfaction that our students our parents our staff are are feeling toward el programs already in place so that's kind of the base of where the survey is going to kind of go to we also finalized the plan in a timeline for the rollout um what's going to happen is i'm i'm going to be working with the breathing to create
157a draft survey we will then again meet with kabe so that they can look at the survey um you know and kind of give us their feedback um after that we are going to bring the survey to the multilingual leadership team in one of our january meetings for their feedback as well as to finalize the survey and the plan is to roll out the survey to parents staff students community members in february and march and the reason for the surveys obviously again we want to address the areas of need and then figure out like what everyone's thought is about what is occurring for our english learners in the district now um the last thing i want to talk about in regards to the multilingual master plan is um kabe will be presenting updates at two
158dlac meetings the plan is obviously to invite the dlac members but in addition we want to do outreach and invite a broader audience that would like to gain information ask questions about the multilingual plan ask questions um from kobe if they they need additional information um and so those two um dlac meetings that we've planned for um kobe to present um will be february 22nd 2022 and then april 19 2022. um so next slide um the next thing i want to talk about again in conjunction with kobe um they also have a parent engagement portion which is titled project to inspire um so the first session was yesterday evening and just to go over on the outreach the outreach for the initial meeting which was yesterday um i'm kind of working on a skeleton staff
159typically i have a staff member that is really really tight into our yell families and and but luckily i've been able to tap into our eld teachers who do have many positive relationships with um el families on site and so the request was for principals and eld teachers to make personal um invitations for family for parents to come and join the first project to inspire session which was last night from six to seven thirty um and so that was the outreach for this initial meeting um prior to that um kabe and myself and um some eld staff met and we tried to come up with a plan of how we're going to engage our parents to come to this first meeting and so kabe said okay let's let's let's do personal outreach this way and
160and then from there we'll we'll obviously broaden our outreach and see what happens um last night so with that moving forward um what we've kind of talked about is for the outreach for the um meetings because they will be occurring every week between now and the end of may um we're going to continue the personal invitations from principals and eld teachers um we also now um are going to include ofi staff to support the parent outreach um and then on top of that we will continue to solicit at dlac and then on and then from dlac we would ask staff members as well as um dlac members to go back and solicit for parents to come and join our project to inspire um through our elac as well um what else do i want to
161add about project to inspire um some things that i really want to talk about is being part of that um project to inspire session last night i personally was moved um the parents that were actually there last night um they they really were inspiring um they shared many personal experiences about like not wanting their child to to receive el services because of misinformation or some kind of stigma that they were feeling but through last night's meeting we were able to you know utilize the presentation that that kabe was presenting to our families and then truly talk about and have positive conversations and i feel really then in turn empower our families to kind of understand more that you know the services that we're providing are to help our students to support our families and then
162i think the one moving part for me was last night at the end of the um meeting the facilitator asked all the parents there you know just kind of state one word after tonight how you are feeling and some of the words that some of the parents shared were community support very emotional and so to me it just really made me feel empowered that these parents took the time it was a long night you know we ended close to eight o'clock last night and they were still there hanging on and the positivity that i felt um that came from that meeting last night really just kind of made me wake up this morning and say hey this is this is this is great and we can only do better from here so it was yesterday
163was a long day with the um you know the cab a master plan work and then the evening but it was overall i feel just a very powerful engaging day um in support of our english learners um so next slide just to add uh director stupid stupid we are still seeking families to join absolutely right okay yes absolutely um and that's where i kind of talked about the outreach that you know we're still going to continue with the um you know the eld teachers doing personal invites as well as the principles and then we're infusing of staff obviously dlac you know outreach through emails all of that we're still going to continue to do do we have a date for the next meeting yes it's next week it's every week so the 14th will be
164the next one and then we'll come back in january so yes perfect and i do want to add um the plus of that we did have some staff attend last night too and they're they're the the sessions are presented in spanish but then the zoom channel is being utilized so that the presentation is also provided in english so that was very beneficial last night as well okay switching gears now we're going to talk about pk which is parent institute for quality education so what we've established is now we are going to have two cohorts the first cohort is set to begin february 2022 which includes the school sites of sylvia mendes thousand oaks and then longfellow and mlk so um as you see on the slide their sessions are set to begin on february 16th
165um the second cohort is set to begin on march 22nd and includes the sites of rosa parks malcolm x and then berkeley high and berkeley tech and that they're like i said beginning on march 10th all sessions are eight weeks long and then at the end they do have a graduation celebration that that um that pkm infuses for them um so what has been done since i've already made the introductions with pk staff that's supporting the district with all of this site administrators um within the two cohorts um what is really beneficial is many of the um principles for these um sites that we're infusing pk into uh have had experience with pk and have provided me as well as with pk um very positive feedback um some of them have also shared already um
166thoughts on how to outreach families um to be a part to participate in pk via their ofi staff parent meetings committees so that feedback right there also made me feel very hopeful about what's to come in the new year in addition to that i've also been meeting with pk um and they have advocated they've stated to me that they advocate for their staff to make personal outreach calls to all of the latinx families at the cohort sites and the reason why they share that and they like to they like to do so is because they feel that making those personal phone calls they're able to answer any questions as well as um you know present what pk genuinely is from their perspective since they are the presenters but in addition to that um you know
167we're still gonna obviously as a district and as school sites still do outreach to parents via you know meetings via personal invitation so that on top of the personal phone calls that pk is going to make i'm really really excited about what's to come in here and i believe that is all of my updates for now thank you so much director stephen for your fabulous presentation we are going to take questions now from board directors and we will start with director about today well thank you so much director stephen for your presentation i am yeah i know that cave is extremely well respected while i was at csba i got to meet um other board director colleagues from different districts that have been working with cave kava representatives were there at csba last week so
168it was really wonderful to meet them and i know that many districts have expressed what wonderful work they do and i know that this is a huge investment just from my board colleagues 100 000 that we're investing in this work and for that and because it's so much right i'm very passionate about us doing it right and making sure that the families that need this work have access to it and so i with that spirit i hope you'll take my comments um first off i'm excited by what's happening in the personal in the pd sessions for the master plan i think that work's been going really well my concerns are that there's no external report back to our el community about what's happening internally a lot of those meetings are during the day and parents
169need to meet at night right and so um there's a there's not a match there with our educators needing to meet during the day and the families you know being available at night and so i know that um my first question is going to be about how are we reporting out to the community what's happening in those pd sessions that are so important and i agree with the structure and i agree that our educators need that time to work out very specific um things right and so i but the report back to the community so that's my comment on the pd my the pd sessions with regard to should i take them my part or should i just go for all of them what do you want me [Laughter] no worries no worries no worries
170at all so just to address that part um you know i did meet with copy and let them know that there was a little bit of there was disconnect with what you know the positive work that's going on with our staff although you know dlac members are and there's actually two dlac members that are part of the leadership team and an additional two two parents that are there but then again the difficulty because it's such a long time during the day they oftentimes just pop in for a quick moment and then they obviously have to leave because they have other other um responsibilities so what what i did is i actually you know talked with the kaabe staff and i said you know there's a disconnect you know the work that's going on in these
171pd sessions are amazing for the staff because we see what's happening in the movement it's happening but of course our families want to know what's happening and you know as i have learned our dlac families especially that are there they're so engaged and you were their um director vasudeva at the last meeting you know that they're they're there for our our students and um with that being said um i i tried to ask how can we bridge this gap you know and so they have presented at our our dlac meetings but we do know that we have to have a larger audience and that's why in the presentation i i shared that um we would like to do two presentations at dlac and invite a larger population not just the dlac members but really open
172up those two meetings to whomever would like to attend and that is where kaabe is going to do presentations as to the work that's being done and the reason why they that they chose february and april is because by then more work would have been done on the master plan by february and then by april we'll be kind of nearing the end where you know we'll be heading toward the board presentation in the final final project product of the multilingual master plan so that is the hope that you know in those two sessions and if needed if there's more needed presentations or you know any kind of platform they're willing to support us because we're partnering in this work and so those are the two because obviously we know how engaged dlac is and then
173dla can also in turn invite their elac members and then they can all come to the meeting and whoever community members whoever else would like to come yes mrs stupid i'm i'm not so much concerned about the number of sessions i'm really concerned about the outreach because that's what i'm hearing from families we don't know this is happening i'm hearing from community groups a sense of frustration that they don't know that this work is happening and so might i suggest i like the website idea that director uh vice president bevit had i had um you know mentioned in the previous presentation i think that that's important but also paper copies paper copies to our multilingual families paper copies to our newcomer program paper copies to every single elac group flyers i mean old school outreach
174i think that's what's going to work for this and i think um that would go a long way so i would like to see flyers for these two sessions i don't necessarily think you need to add a whole lot of sessions i just think the outreach needs to be much better and i acknowledge what and i hear you loud and clear that you're missing staff i know that and i know the role that our tsa played in this work it was so vital and i know uh what she meant to our families and so i acknowledge that but i think that that the outreach has to be a lot stronger and a lot better i don't necessarily think you need to add an additional number of sessions and then my concerns about project to inspire
175is that last night you know they were what i the report back that i got was that there were five people at the meeting and one educator i don't know if your numbers are a little different but where it said on the presentation was the presentation could be for 25 or 40 parents correct again we're seeing that you know like the outreach could be a lot better so that those families know and if we have a presentation happening next week that flyer's got to be ready stat and so that's something that's really concerning to me or else we postpone it right like if we can't get the outreach right then postpone it so that the meeting is fruitful so for me that's that's what's producing a sense of urgency and i think i'm really excited
176about bk i'm very excited that we and i don't know if the rest of my board colleagues know this but spka wanted to just work at one site and in the original proposal and our wonderful busd staff got them to combine into two sites so i'm very appreciative of the work of your work director stupid and your work associate superintendent already and superintendent to make that happen but i'm also concerned i'm telling you guys i'm really concerned about the outreach for that too and i think i would love to see the targeted outreach and i think for all of these different interventions that we're spending a lot of money on right it's it's very sad and disheartening for me when you know 23 percent of our district is a lot in x when a lot
177of families don't know about it and they come to me looking for information so i think the beginning of the year would be great to have a website and paper copies to all our targeted group with flyers about these different events that are happening but i think a website delineating what's happening key dates calendar would be great and go a long way thank you no worries and i want to add though that what's really funny not funny but ironic is that um ruth the director of ray and i just talked about the website on the flip side in regards to the latinx stuff so we just literally met about it today and she and i were going over what i wanted on it and um next steps for that so then now here we are
178talking about it and i appreciate your comments and i i i i'm on board with you yeah know that they come from a good place and that i know of course you know your staffing constraints um but because it's such a large investment that the board made that our district made i want it to be done right so obviously i agree with you thank you director uh basta dev for those comments vice president uh director vice president director babbitt it's 9 30 and i'm filling all the 9 30. vice president uh thank you so much and thank you uh eliza stoopin for that wonderful presentation and for all of the hard work that you're really putting into making this program a success in busd we do appreciate the hard works and the efforts and as
179someone who's done parent outreach work i know it is extremely difficult um and so i appreciate that you put in there having multiple opportunities with the every week i think that's great so people can know when to plan and they can drop in and they have they don't feel like they missed their one shot so i really appreciate that recognition my questions were around the pk program as well i was able to attend pk when my middle daughter was at rosa parks and she's now a freshman in college so i do know the value of those sessions and it was you know clearly engaged around creating parent leaders and so my question is how are we going to engage our ofi staff in those sessions so that they can actually learn from that work and
180build from that work and and i will say that our ofi staff has done phenomenal presentations on their own outside of pk at even kind of greater levels so i feel like it could help um refine the work that they're doing help establish and help grow but the long-term plan should be in our investment in our family engagement and equity office that we are able to do these things in-house um so can you tell me what that looks like in as you plan this out and how we're going to incorporate that and then lastly um as someone who helped uh with our lcap plan you know some of those funds are brought into the district specifically for our english language learners and we were very intentional many years ago about making sure that we got
181down to the 30 minutes a day guaranteed service to our english language learner families and sorry i'm tapping and in the first few years when that happened um we saw the data like we saw the reclassifications we saw the improvements we saw the conversation begin to focus on how we make sure we're supporting more after reclassification and so i just really don't want to lose sight of the things in our past master plan and the things that we've invested in that we already know work and so are we able in our current programming now that we're back in person to to really return to that 30 minute a day goal sure so i'm going to try to address the first one about the ofi staff i'm going to be very transparent with you you know
182we're still in the you know we we just finished scheduling everything out and connecting with our principals so for myself you know infusing offie stuff in there is something that i think is an amazing idea something that i personally hadn't thought about but i think that that's an amazing idea and something that we can post to the offi stop moving forward so thank you for that and then maybe know i want to add that one of the cohorts for pk the initial cohorts is mendez and thousand oaks that's a two schools that have been without their of liaison um but we just at least fingers crossed i'm gonna look at my my colleague tobias espinoza paperwork that we've selected our hire for that position so we're really hoping we that that person starts soon um
183so those schools will be with their liaison who's spanish bilingual will be able to do a lot of that outreach um and you know i think we've talked about some of these other opi positions as well as we have plans for that too um so we definitely it's it's a department that is a bit depleted as well um we're still waiting to land our director of offi and bring her on board and that would be phenomenal to include them all in this work agree and then in regards to like the work in regards to the classification and monitoring our students again um as director vasweto stated i am a little bit short staff but what has been really amazing is we have got some eld teacher leader teacher teachers that have been really stepping up
184to the plate we've been able to continue to have um i think it's twice a month we meet with our eld teachers and so i have one of the tsas in brea that's actually used to be an eld teacher that has been so integral because she's stepped up and has been helping me a lot with this work so we we've been continuing to have the meetings with our eld teachers to continue the work in regards to reclassification so right now we are reclassifying students based on you know some assessments that we were able to conduct at the end of last year of course we didn't we weren't because of the pandemic we weren't able to do it rigorously but we have been able to reclassify students and i know that for a fact because i've
185been signing the sheets and looking over those so we have been reclassifying our students and then on top of that yes um the eld teachers have been pulling out the kids to do you know not i don't have been implementing the 30 minutes a day to support the students so i know that that's been happening continuing to do the work always and i think that the meetings that are occurring are really helping our eld teachers kind of like guide them on what to do in regards to compliance in regards to the support that they need to provide the students so the work is happening director simon thank you and director estupin thank you for all your work it sounds like you've got quite your hands full uh given your your staffing challenges that's why i
186appreciate that um i have a couple of questions one kind of following a little bit on vice president babbitt with the master plan when i when i saw the schedule of the sequence from the first meeting to the surveys i was curious whether there is an analysis of the existing plan and what's working because it i mean it's one thing that here's what's in the plan and then to to just do surveys to get you know kind of general feedback is there going to be a data a data driven approach to what exists and what improvements need to be made so that was my first question sure so we did actually discuss that as well and so part of what if you look at the um the the mou that we have with kobe there's
187also an interview portion in there and so we discussed like how have you done this in other districts and so the interview process is is really important in regards to the work behind the master plan so if we were to just go into a meeting and say or go into a parent meeting right and part of what they were thinking of using as a platform is the project to inspire later a few you know a few more sessions down the line when we have a more robust group as well as going into the school sites whether it's an elac whether it's a d-loc whether it's another parent meeting and then first obviously you know making sure whoever's there is educated prior to like what is in the current older master plan right and then and
188then asking in an interview because doing a survey for parents like that i know another feedback that i received is some of our parents are feeling fatigued in regards to you know surveys and questions and that stuff so maybe an interview process might be a better place to approach and allowing them to speak and and and share their thoughts so that's the approach we want to take in regards to that is first step would be to educate our families what's in this plan you know it's very hefty it's a thick document and so really pulling apart the pieces that directly impact the students and then educating them on that and then interviewing them and saying do you see this happening do you see this working you know what what do you need instead of just
189a simple survey but really educating them and allowing them to to share you know what what they're thinking about what's happening right so doing an interview or doing a survey you're going to get qualitative information about how they feel about something and how they perceive something is brea or anyone doing baseline data analysis of what actual results we got from the different interventions or programs that we did that because that i mean we dealt with this a lot in the pack it's like you start new each time without evaluating what programs have we been doing for the last five or ten years and have they had any impact so i'm that's what i'm asking is like i get the survey and the interviewing part i want to know what the data foundation is that we're
190going to springboard from director sen those are great questions and definitely we will put that on the to-do list with this work we want to make sure we're examining the data and past practice to see if those results were were coming true or not okay so so it's not in there now but you'll look at incorporating that okay thanks i'd love to hear back you know like definitely the information i think also so my second question has to do with the project to inspire um one is a clarifying question because i'm not sure i understand the weekly sessions on are you trying to get to a stable group or is it like open session that anybody can come in and come out they want a really they want a stable group of up to 40
191parents to continuously come every week because basically it complements the work that's happening in the um leadership team for the multilingual master plan so for example like in one of the sessions in the um leadership team where they're presenting on the el road map so that's a pretty you know intense session that we're going to be exposed to and then we want to also mirror that and also teach our parents what is the el roadmap in a way that they can understand so it complements each other and and the plan is to have the same same parents come as often as possible so it's weekly though it is that's a lot it is so that leads to my next question um and there might be a variety of you who can answer this what's the
192difference or what's the value-add difference between and the academic and what's the difference in the sense of the target population meaning the parent group right yeah yeah because i think we're recruiting a lot of and i think we talked about this when we allocated the money as well it's like we're we're recruiting a lot of parent engagement activities and i just i'm wondering are does does the kabe and the pk overlap in time period are they similar people who were you know part of it is just the time it takes to recruit and so but i also i just don't understand the objectives of the cabe one and the objectives of the pk and are they significantly different so pk really i'll go ahead ruben well my understanding and correct me if i'm wrong is
193that pk the targeted group for pks is was under the guise of the latinx resolution that we're really focused on max not just el um and the way pk works and uh director of us that mentioned this earlier about the getting two schools versus one they really try to tailor it to the school and the vision of school and really partnering with the school so it's very tailored versus the project as far as district-wide that's a district-wide project that focus more predominantly more on the e-l learners so that's the distinction i make at least between the two um can i i'd like to also add pk really what their drive is is to empower um our parents to support their kids to getting to college or you know that that route and whereas the el
194master plan work with project to inspire is is trying to get parent leaders to understand how they can be better supportive of the school district um put the you know um and and what's the word i'm looking for be part active participants in their children's education and to to really understand the intricacies of what um the compliance for example the compliance over els the testing um the reclassification the monitoring that's really what they focus on like um assistance associate superintendent already said the overall like we're not focusing on just latinx it's all of the els whether it doesn't matter what language you know and there are principles so if part of the recruitment is being done at the site level do principals understand who they're recruiting for what that's a good question um you know
195i i have you know tried to communicate as well they ask questions um debbie dean is also you know a big advocate so maybe a little bit more clarification may be needed um so i i agree with you and i hear you but yes i i really wasn't making a judgment it really wasn't i know that's not enough i'm confused i wonder thank you thank you so much no worries there is a lot going on director vasudev sorry i just had really quickly i agree with uh director cyanide that's why i think the website would be so clear to so that people understand what's the objective behind the two different forms of engagement and also we want to make sure that when we're recruiting our families for el work that we're also recruiting our arabic
196speaking families you know that information is multilingual for the broader el population and so um i want to make sure that that's happening too then when we're doing community engagement we're really being intentional focused that those flyers are translating i know it's a lot of upfront work but when you do it right you get the right people in the room and i think that's that's so much more rewarding and i i will say it's i i envision a series of venn diagrams because there's so much overlap in a lot of these different groups right that there's pieces in the middle that you can hit all the different groups are there any other questions from school board directors now seeing that there aren't any thank you so much directors to them for um your wonderful presentation
197and especially for that last part um the attention that you gave to us in regards to the difference between pk and also the project to inspire so thank you so much for being here late in this evening you make a home uh and and thank you for your presentation and for your ongoing work we know that you do a lot of work in the district and this is just a portion of it so thank you for your commitment to to our school district thank you congratulations anger president alford never let people go home well he's not the president anymore not just kidding i do want a girlfriend she's a trooper if you notice her hand there she just broke her hand this weekend so she is a choker she is working with a broken hand
198oh no we'll get some rest and thank you congratulations again everybody thank you thank you so much uh we will move on to item 13.3 and update on community engagement about the middle school a student assignment uh policy and as we oh ms smith is already here uh uh director steven dr stevens do you want to introduce mr miss smith i'd be happy to thank so much president brown and welcome to you stacy smith um uh the theme of this evening's presentations is most certainly community engagement and the value of drawing input from our families here in berkeley we've been engaged in a sort of sustained conversation with the berkeley community for better than a year now about our middle school student assignment policy in order to sustain that engagement make sure that it's deep
199and robust we've solicited the help of stacy smith a local consultant who has been helping us both design an engagement process and run that engagement process we're just finishing what we think of as a second phase of that engagement a first phase that took place in the last academic year the second phase just wrapping up as we sort of complete this semester and then we imagine designing additional phases as well as we sort of march towards a potential decision in november of 2022 about the the middle school student assignment policy so uh ms smith welcome to you i'm glad you're here this evening thank you thank you thank you directors for having me back um to speak with you this evening i know it's been a long evening already and you have more to cover
200tonight so if anybody wants to get up move around turn off your camera and dance around a little that's fine i will not be offended at all um and i will um try to keep this as concise as possible um as director stephen said the middle school enrollment policy review is expected to run through november 2022 and for those who are watching just a reminder that at that time the board may decide to keep the current policy or make it adopt an alternative if there is a new alternative that will not take place until 2023 and this year's fourth graders would be the first cohort to enroll in middle school under that new policy this fall we had the opportunity to speak with families principals and other administrators educators school staff the school secretaries in
201a variety of settings both large and small in both spanish and english we had two surveys in november and in addition to the presentation this evening there will be a more detailed report to the superintendent before the end of this month we promoted our activities through multiple channels um some were targeted specifically but some were community-wide like the um uh a plus news um we took advantage of partner partnership with pta council to get the word out to families um social media and also targeted uh for example the remind system was used exclusively for spanish um speaking families to both alert them to uh to opportunities to engage and also send links and remind them that something is happening i want to thank all the partners who helped us with all of this and i
202especially want to call out um admissions manager francisco martinez who partnered with me and attended all of these events and lent his expertise um on enrollment and the alternatives and also uh communications director trish mcdermott and jessica lopez excuse me the um executive assistant to the superintendent both of whom really made all this outreach possible what i hope that you gain from this slide is both the variety of ways that folks engage with us this fall but also the magnitude of the level of engagement um some folks came to events um some folks watched for example the town halls on youtube after the fact um the uh we had almost 1700 visitors to the dedicated web page that we have on the busd website and on that page we have been i'm keeping that current
203with uh dates and links to meetings there were links to the surveys uh slides from the meetings have been up there links to the youtube videos of the town halls have been up there um and we're trying to keep that um keep that uh updated regularly for folks so as a resource to the community um we engage we spoke with a lot of families we did not ask all of our families to share information about their students but we did ask folks who attended the town hall super to uh to let us know um you know a little bit about them and their students here's an overview of what we heard from folks who shared we heard from families of ell students special education students and families with students of every race ethnicity except for
204native hawaiian and pacific islander our families that attended the town hall also primarily spoke english but also spanish and arabic at home we did also ask folks who took the family survey that went out to tk through eighth grade families to share information about their students and um the first thing i'd like to say is the survey was um uh there were a lot of responses we had a 25 response rate it was an excellent response to the survey um we did not hear looking at these demographics let me tell you what you're looking at the number of families who responded then the corresponding number of students they represented the yellow uh the yellow column is the proportion of students of easter each race ethnicity for the survey and then the final column is for
205tk through eighth grade family excuse me for the district overall um you can see that we we would have liked to hear from more uh families of students who are black or african-american and latinx and hispanic um one of the things i would like to also highlight though is we heard from many more families of multiracial students who um identified their student as two or more races twice um what we expected and also 18 of families just chose not to share that information with us we also asked other questions about language whether or not a student was ell again we would have liked to have heard some more from these families which is why i'm just thrilled that we were able to attend the most recent dlac meeting and i'm excited about the engagement initiatives
206that were being discussed this evening as well the great news about the survey in particular is that we had a very high response rate from elementary school tk through fifth grade families particularly second third and fourth grade families who will be the first cohorts to experience any change in policy if there is a change in policy 46 of fourth graders uh 46 of all fourth graders in the district were represented in the survey um so what did we find out um the first thing that we found out was that the majority of folks that we spoke with and heard from favored the three zone um enrollment policy alternative uh the feeder school policy alternative uh is uh was a close second for most groups uh and as a reminder the three-zone policy creates a separate
207zone for each middle school the feeder school policy takes a group of elementary schools and feeds it into a specific middle school um this is very similar to what we heard from the community in spring and it just reinforces the community's uh wish to move away from the current policy and adopt something that uh provides more integrated and diverse schools just a few examples of what that looked like these are cumulative results of the um town hall excuse me the town hall results what you're looking at is the blue is folks who voted to keep the current policy the red is folks who voted to expand to the three zone policy and the green is the feeder school model here we have the busd staff survey results is very close here overall there were more
208pronounced differences when we looked at things like middle school teachers school staff but these patterns where there's that preference for the three zone is pretty consistent what we're seeing a lot across many population groups all the folks who responded to the survey in spanish the majority of those folks preferred the three zone um here we have all the tk through eighth grade family respondents here and then also because it is that first cohort these are the responses the survey responses of families of second through fourth graders um the other thing this data tells us is that folks really know a lot really have a preference for um for the policy um that they they have chosen very few people are not sure or you know really prefer something else one of the questions that we
209asked in the survey was trying to gauge at exactly how much support different alternatives had and here i think you can see the strength of the support for the three zone compared to the other two alternatives um their 60 percent folks very strongly or uh strongly agreed or agreed that they would be supporting this um and a few many fewer folks uh opposed it um with uh with more um folks neutral so excuse me dry throat so um just i know that we need to move quickly through this but i did want to elevate some of the voices that we heard this fall um the current policy works well for some families um for a lot of different reasons and i just want to honor the voices of the families at longfellow who chose that
210school um they loved the school because of the community the sense of community their affinity programs at longfellow um and then we heard from folks at um who you know felt that this model perpetuated segregation um it was resource intensive to support it um it created inequities and resources across the school some comments from folks about king having a much higher student populations than the others and then there were perceptions of schools um and i raised this because it's something for us to consider moving forward um you know folks thinking some schools were better than others folks thinking that maybe this was just a long fellow issue um you know people's understanding of the issue is something that we need to continue to um to communicate about and understand and um and and speak about
211the current policy goes without saying folks really really like this policy excuse me my clicker is not working the three zone policy excuse me is um is seen by many as a very simple alternative it's familiar it mirrors the um the three zones of the elementary school enrollment process um folks even folks who like this policy had some concerns about uh academic and non-academic program comparability across the middle schools um their resources and and wanting to see if any change was made that there would be resources at all three schools to support a change um transportation came up here really mostly in terms of folks who wanted to have uh schools within walking distance or to be able to ride and bike to their schools uh and then a couple of comments about how the
212um how the borders were there uh for one example of the um wish to have see programming um more consistently across the school a lot of families spoke about and educators spoke about the importance programs like moja and wanting to expand that to the other three middle schools the feeder school model very simple to understand very appealing um keeps communities of students together and actually you know and some parents commented parents and guardians commented that they also wanted to stay together um very appealing to folks because uh students will be transitioning together into middle school um the social emotional um support and aspect that was that was being discussed earlier certainly is on a lot of people's minds people thinking you know it'll help the transition to middle school but at the other on the
213other hand there were also comments from folks who felt that it was important that as students entered middle school developmentally that they should expand their friends their cohort their communities um and um and that will lead to growth this particular um this particular alternative had i would say the strongest opinions about transportation um a lot of folks didn't like that this model had students traveling across the district to middle school there were also a number of comments throughout the fall from folks who felt that the model would not truly solve the issue of segregated middle schools some folks pointed out that king's demographic makeup would remain the same in many ways there were a few comments similar to that about longfellow um and then in the uh in the survey i just want to highlight
214a number of comments from families who were concerned that adopting this model would provide increased pressure on the elementary school enrollment process because where you go to middle school excuse me elementary school would lock you into middle school um so overall uh what you know what in summary what uh what we heard this fall is that um you know the community would like to move on would like to adopt a model that does have more integrated and diverse schools but they would like some questions and concerns answered first people wanted just a clearer picture of what it would look like to make these changes people would like to know what kind of support there would be for students who are starting off um you know in that first year of a cohort under a changed
215policy and then finally i just want to highlight equity access and inclusion issues separately um and i really want to highlight um the concerns about racial isolation um and how that would affect students under different models and i want to call that out separately because it is so important and also a reminder from some folks but i feel like this one person really um eloquently said it a reminder to all of us that diversity does not equal integration and inclusion and the work to continue to make students feel truly included and their families feel truly included is ongoing and i really feel like in some ways that was sort of the theme of this evening as i was listening in so the implications for us for the future are to continue to have multimodal um
216multimodal opportunities for engagement to try to understand you know what times what days what places what formats work for families especially those we haven't heard from as much to continue to work with partners if and when possible just to try to be in person as superintendent stevens was saying and to remain flexible and i thank you all for allowing me to share that with you thank you so much miss smith for your presentation and we are not going to have questions from our school board directors directors if you have questions you may raise your hand and if i might president brown i noticed that francisco martinez who is our admissions manager is also here this evening he's been an integral part of all of this community engagement i want to thank him for the many
217many hours he's put into this process he's been really i think such a key resource in explaining to the community how our school enrollment process works thank you so much for the recognition mr martinez welcome and school board direct directors please feel free to um ask any questions to ms smith and as well as mr martinez as he's joined us on the panel director sinai good evening um thank you for the great presentation miss smith and thanks for being here mr martinez um i have a request um given the the narrow margin between the the first two options being the three zones or the theater program um and i think people know that i i kind of lean toward the feeder program but i'm totally open to what we evolve into the dialogue but what
218i'd like to do is to make sure that if there's any research or evidence or outcomes that we can find um in in in a body of research that's out there around assignment processes um and if there is experience or even um getting some interviews with some of our neighboring districts that do it in different ways and find out from them like what they feel the impact is on their students and families like i know west contra costa made this shift a few years ago into the theater programs that went from elementary middle and they have multiple high schools so it goes so you really are you and and associate superintendent aurelio probably is very intimate understanding of that but um kind of in the questions that that the families and the surveys asked i
219would just add to that if there's any body of research that has looked at these kinds of issues i think it would be helpful so that it's not just kind of anecdotal and subjective but that we also have some some data that shows us some impact i don't know if that kind of data exists but i'd appreciate it if it does similar to the conversations we have with berkeley high around block scheduling is like we we wanted to do some you know scan of any research that might be available so i'm just going to ask it if it's out there it would be helpful for our decision making and and thanks for the multitude or what you call the multimodal engagement i guess the other thing i was wondering i don't know if the sample
220would be too small but it would be interesting to see a disaggregated data of the the elementary age that like the second you had that highlighted band of second third and fourth graders because they are the ones who are going to be kind of the ones first impacted it would be interesting to see if we got a broader swath within that that group i don't know if that's easy to pull we'd pull pull all the elementary school families elementary school students overall disaggregated by race ah yeah and i can yeah uh i'm i need to look at that sample size i can tell you for the tk through eighth grade population um i did do the analysis by race ethnicity and all of all of the um families who responded um favored the three zone
221and sometimes it was a little bit more um by a wider margin um for example uh the latinx or hispanic students uh families of latinx or hispanic students um favored the three zone 43 compared to 18 for the feeder zone so but i will look into that thank you director alper thank you president brown um thank you miss smith thanks mr martinez um director martinez um i guess i'm looking at i'm looking at the slide that has the um you have to put it up and just looking at it on my screen of the the timeline and i guess this is maybe for dr stevens um the it's i mean so the engagement um efforts seem really robust and then i know there's more going on to try to to make sure that we reach
222um as many people who we haven't reached so far yeah that one okay um and i guess but so like so this slide like so much of it is community engagement in the very end the board decides and obviously there's like there's board presentations in the middle there but um i guess to the root why i personally you know appreciate the community engagement and so i have a you know a good sense of what the community wants and as director sign i said you know disaggregated is super helpful um but but it's not a vote so i'm and i know you know you were sort of using that loosely miss smith like that the you know a vote but we're the ones who are voting and you know i say that as someone you know
223on the other side from director sinai i lean towards not the feeder model but but the fact that it has like slightly more people um who support it in what we've seen so far um really the numbers don't mean all that much to me especially when we know that you know we it's under our black families are underrepresented and um so it's like a snapshot to me that's really useful as a snapshot and it's really helpful for the community to know what's going on and to know what the different options are um that's what i see the engagement as being useful for but but but then i think we need to make for us to actually make the decision is that data what is the community what do different segments of the community want and
224and that's one piece of data but then um the answers to a lot of the good questions that they've raised you know how is transportation gonna work you know what is there research um that supports one policy or the other um you know what what are the different options with the maps and all things that i know director martinez is thinking about and you all are thinking about but um so i guess that's a long a long preamble to a question of um dr stevens what do you see as the next i see these four things but where where do we fit into this um so that it's not just at the end it's not i'd say one i think it's not like the school renaming where even it is our decision at the end
225but but there's a really robust process at the school and at least in with the ruth acti um for example we gave you a great deference to that process and they can we know it wasn't an official vote but they presented to us one one name and and we approved it here you know that doesn't seem like the right model and so i'll stop talking i think you maybe get my question like where do we go from here as a board yep yeah i think it's a really good question um what what i sort of feel we have in hand now is as you sort of described it it's a good snapshot of sort of concerns questions preferences in our community where we know we've got certain communities we've got to engage more deeply but
226i think we're starting to hear surface to the questions coming from representatives of those communities which i think we're going to hear amplified as we do a different kind of engagement um we are also hearing the sort of where they where our community wants more information so it's specifically around academic programming and affinity-based programming at the three schools specifically around transportation how would that work and then there's sort of more generally the sort of question about the quality of the inclusion experience in all of our schools independent of the assignment model and those things feel now as if there are enough sort of questions for us to begin to develop draft answers and that the next round of communication the next round of engagement should really be around those sort of draft answers to these
227much more specific questions we also have work as staff to to sort of understand if we were going to move in the direction sort of indicated in the preferences of the community how much would that cost if we're thinking about expanded programming across multiple middle schools we've got to cost that out expanded transportation we've got to cost that out so i imagine that this next round this next phase third phase of engagement is going to be much more specific in nature having understood the broad preferences of the community where i also think that we might sort of have work to do is to identify what might be called a finalist model and solicit from the board direction or a vote sort of depending on decisions made by board leadership about a potential finalist model and
228that that might come even at the end of the school year even if we plan to engage further through the summer and the next fall leading towards a final vote and i think that the sort of narrowing down to a finalist model may bring out additional concerns from the community may bring out new people from the community but also that enables us to sort of to have a final run of time six eight months where we're looking just narrowly at a single option and not trying to compare broadly across multiple options so that's my best thinking to date we've got some now now having received the report from stacy smith about this last phase we want to pull away and sort of redesign phase three on the basis of what we now understand okay that's
229that's super helpful and i appreciate it and i guess i'll just reiterate the point i made that at least from my one board member's perspective unless there's like an overwhelming preference of you know a wide swath of the community if it's pretty close um then i think that's just one data point and the staff's views and then the board's views you know ultimately are just as important and that's not yeah it's not to denigrate like the importance of engagement it's i guess i'm seeing the purpose of the engagement as as gathering the good questions and providing information and i'm less interested in the sort of straw polling of the community i i appreciate that thought director alfred what i have been saying to folks as we've been meeting with them is that we're taking a
230snapshot of a picture in time um you know and certainly another question is you know how do we measure who we're speaking with even more we did not collect demographic student demographic information from everyone and that's another piece you know that we need to think about moving forward how do we do that more effectively as well so thank you yeah thank you director vasudev and then director bevin thank you president brown i um i just have a question i guess for the superintendent i liked when you talked about you know figuring out the nuts and bolts and having now hearing like the main themes from the community of like what are their concerns how important that is but again who do we define as the community right like we're doing this because we want equity
231in mind and you know with equity in mind we really want to diversify our schools but the percentage of black and brown parents that participated in these sessions has been pretty small right and so if we're really planning with you know our families of color in mind then i really want costs for the affinity-based programs for transportation like i think at one of the meetings that we had i think it was the one with the el group i was listening to i think um they asked ms smith uh about transportation and what was described was there's a bus from the hills that will take kids to to longfellow or something like that and the parents were like well what about us like i don't i don't live in the hills so how am i gonna
232get to king right and so i think if we're when we think of all these different categories that have been highlighted as key categories right and we start pricing out things let's price out starting with what our most vulnerable families need let's start off with their needs in mind first and so that's what i would say would be really helpful to me and i think before we go i don't think you have you know everything is kind of so close that you don't have a clear winner right like these numbers as director albert said you know the numbers are kind of you know like everything's kind of so close and the number of undecided and all you know looking at that you're like well there's some folks that are there's a large proportion of folks
233are still making up their mind about what they like i feel like it would be helpful for us to start to answer some of those tangible questions for both models right because we may see some some data points that you're like well the transfer what is the transportation cost for you know the feeder school model is it really astronomically high and what does it mean for us to pay versus partnering with ac transit like there's some key questions that we need to answer about these two models before we funnel to one model i feel like we there's an intermediate step where we need to look at the broad strokes and the broad stroke prices for both models but i would say before that make sure that we're pricing out what what we heard from our
234black and brown families first and foremost thank you for that uh vice president abbott thank you so much and thank you for this presentation and i also want to say thank you for taking the time to to really meet with all of us as board directors one-on-one to really um explain i know that was a lot of additional personal time we even met on like a friday evening late at night right before break so i just want to acknowledge the um the depth of the work that you all are doing to really make sure that we can engage the community in a way in which we are all on the same page fully understanding and getting our questions and concerns met and definitely want to echo the comments of all of my board colleagues thus
235far my question was going to be exactly to the superintendent around how we're going to budget this expansion and inclusion so thank you for already exhibiting that for thought and thank you also for your presentation for really highlighting even though there were a few communities of color who participated that was the major theme from those participants at least in the african-american town hall and in the discussions i've had with just long fellow families that diversity is one thing but inclusion and belonging is where we need to go and so even as we build out our budget considerations how are we going to once again impact tier level 1 instruction how are we going to impact welcoming school environments how are we going to impact climate so that there is no other inc so that they
236we create a belonging no matter what environment that our students are in and i think that is the very important work that we need to do more than anything as we try and um balance biodiversity you know we're berkeley we we started this in as you said in the presentation when 50 over 50 years ago with integrating our schools but yet we're still not um at the point where people who are of color don't feel racial isolation where we don't have disciplinary data which you know it's disproportionate where we don't have special ed reclassifications they're also still disproportionate so to me the the greater work is in that belonging as we answer these questions right as we talk about transportation that's creating the belonging as we talk about funding and expanding all of our direct
237programs that's also the belonging and if we can't really do that if we can't afford that given the budget considerations that we have i think that is one of the stronger implementation implications that we need to consider in a finalist model because those middle school years are extremely formative for a student's identity in the future a student's thought process about life right and we know that again so many families specifically chose longfellow uh because of the racial isolation and so that's the thing we definitely want to avoid replicating that k through five experience if we're not able to improve it and address it so those will be my comments and my appreciations so thank you so much thank you for your comments and for your appreciations um miss smith and mr martinez thank you all
238for your presentation um this night and for the extensive amount of work that has gone into um the outreach for our community members and thoughtfulness um that has gone into this work so thank you so much for being here you are also free to leave um unless you want to leave us with another comment before you depart i just want to say actually one of the things that really struck me about this process and listening to folks throughout this year is is how important community is um you know we speak about the berkeley community but there are so many different types of community and i just i just want to express my gratitude for being able to hear from so many folks about what community means to them and also gratitude to all of those
239who helped us through this process there's no way we could have reached who we did reach without the help of principals um you know and and and offi and so many other folks so i just wanted to to end with uh gratitude um i just want to say that i was really extremely happy i understand that um there were some specific groups that i would have liked to see more of them like african-american and latinx communities but i have to say that some of the communications and some of the um the meetings that we have that were rich and and because it was a little bit fewer families that we were able to have a conversation with them and where they were able to honestly express um how they were feeling and and what they
240what they view us as what a middle school should be and and so i appreciated that thank you both so so much and thank you again for being here um we will now move on to item 13.4 discussion of the alameda county office of education required reductions to the 2022-2023 um general fund budget and i'm going to ask superintendent stevens to introduce um assistant superintendent vollinsby as well as give us a bit of information around this exercise highlighting the intention and purpose of this exercise this evening thank you very much president brown um so we learned over the summer from the alameda county office of education uh that they felt concerned like we do about the drop in enrollment that's taken place here in berkeley unified over the last two years it's been well covered
241in berkeley side and other media that we've lost about 600 students in that two-year period about 400 students in the first year of the pandemic and about 200 additional students in this academic year most of this year's academic uh sorry enrollment loss has been experienced in the k-5 level now when acoe came to us to express this concern they asked us to engage in an effort to begin a preliminary identification of potential reductions to our general fund spending for the 22-23 school year they wanted us to engage in this exercise to take it seriously to do our very best early on to identify potential cuts essentially as a hedge against difficulties we might experience in the spring semester as we face difficult decisions essentially it's a little bit of a down payment we are now
242sort of in possession of a list it's far from perfect we know that we're getting very thoughtful feedback from committees including the s back committee just last night that we don't yet have the list um that contains a sort of that is composed entirely of ideas that are acceptable yet we'd like to share that list with you so you get a sense of where we are after a round of committee engagement uh we'll be back in a week on december 15th to ask for the board's approval of that list so that we can comply with acoe's requirement and then we now we're right back into the budget discussions come january and that we'll be in that mode through the entirety of the spring semester so with that i'm going to turn it over to our
243sleepy birthday girl uh not only did we schedule a board meeting on your birthday we wanted you to be the headliner pauline so that you could go on at 10 30. exactly with two items right so that's it so assistant superintendent following is going to walk us through the list as it exists this evening um we do welcome comments on keeping in mind that this really is a draft uh and then we'll jump into a discussion about the the internal report that's the following presentation so over over to you okay thank you everyone um so i'm going to share my screen i'm going to make sure i can do that and um as superintendent stevens mentioned um this is a draft of ideas um of us actually uh meeting acle's um requirement that we come
244up with a list of budget reductions that actually tie into um budget reductions in the first interim and let me see if i can go in present mode actually it's not a presentation so it's not going to go into present phone so um so you would be familiar with this list of um of ideas and there are some significant changes uh when we first came to the board we had a list of six over six million dollars um in budget reductions this list tonight and i'll take you just walk you through the total um we're looking at a total of um 4.6 million dollars and the significant change is um we had a contribution to our nutrition services of um seven hundred thousand dollars for year one and an additional seven hundred thousand dollars for
245year two which is one point four million dollars those two um contribution changes in contribution are actually included in our first interim and as such we've taken it off of this list of budget balancing solutions and in addition um we had at least uh um ophilisa on position on the position that was split between the district and the spanish bilingual um position it's the same position i guess um but we've removed that that is no longer into consideration so the list that we're looking at is um totals 4.7 million and um i know budget reduction target is now 4.6 million dollars which i'll be taking you through when we when we look at the first interim so in terms of feedback we had a very um very robust meeting last night um with s back
246and a lot of the discussions centered around our educational programs in particular the u9 we had five speakers and a lot of feedback um very positive and informative feedback and also some the concern about our tsas so um we have noticed notes here and i know the the board has received several comments and um and um and um information on the u9 program so the concern is um even though um the u9 program we're actually looking at small stuff small class sizes the impact of changing the um the leap classes as well as the u9 will have an impact on changes um on other students and um and the overall u9 structure so brent or you reuben may have um additional comments but the thinking was um that it would be far we there have
247far-reaching effects if we were to um change a u9 program and i'm not sure if i summarize that correctly dr steven i think you did a great job of it um where we are in our process we we knew just in this sort of quick fall semester dash towards a preliminary list that we would engage three of our committees pack dlac and s back um a couple of acronyms we've tried to represent comments from those committees alongside each of the lines of this list and you can see that there are comments sort of interspersed across the three categories which tells us both that we have sort of some additional responsibility to provide more detail and that we're encountering some concern from our committee members about these these lists part of this has to do with
248the dilemma of timing we for example did not want to get too specific in any idea about reducing tsa services because we don't yet have revenue information from the state of california it feels very premature to start naming particular positions um so we're going to sit with this tension for a little while um we're still we hope planning to submit the list on the 15th to acoe and as i said before we'll go right back into deliberations in january and i think in a much more sort of measured way begin to fill in some of these these blank spots for our committees correct thank you and um there was also discussion around um our ia positions um or contracted ia positions and there was a concern that hiring ies is difficult as it as as
249is and um it's difficult to fill those positions and the recommendation to grow our internal program was um accepted uh well accepted so um so these these um a lot of our discussion was around the educational programs you can see pax input and deluxe input as well and um and as dr stephen says this this is a preliminary list we are going to be bringing it for approval um but we're also going to be using this the jumpstart more um more serious discussions um in the following year when we know what the revenue is from the um from the governor um in our operations um this item for targeted reductions in operational expenses has um includes laying off or or not filling positions that are currently vacant and there was a discussion um in terms
250of one of our positions or dsa position in terms of um what would be the impact if we reduced um the we currently have two positions if we reduced one what would that impact be and we explained um that the service hours would be aligned um with the hours um that the district office is opened an additional task will be reassigned so i think that was an um an acceptable explanation um the um there was general agreement that the second administrative position um for ofy um was not needed um and i'm not sure um the deluxe villa can pack um their their opinions on old fees listed here um and they are they it's the the request to keep the position um for the both spanish language and for targeting black and brown students we
251actually removed that one from the list so i think there's an alignment problem there but um just suffice to say um we didn't get um to the point where we would actually get a rating from our s back they needed additional information and we did this together rather quickly um along with our budget leadership team and s back and i think it's a good beginning point in terms of um opening these discussions and coming up with a list for um acl but um it also we also need a lot more work next year when we have the information from the governor's budget um um the the in route 29 readjusting class size it was expressed that that was a staffing formula not really a budget reduction so that isn't um it's a budget balancing solution
252but it's not a reduction so again these are balancing budget solutions not necessarily budget cuts so so that's um the list we had presented before um if there are specific details about the list i'll be happy to answer it but just overall um still have a lot of work to do um but it's a very um productive um discussion and um i look forward to continuing the discussion next year with sbac and our budget partners so with that i will take questions or comments um superintendent fallen speech if you don't mind share it oh actually no i can see the questions from the side sorry i didn't think i could see people's hands um director vasudeva all right thank you so much associate superintendent following me my questions were around the tsa positions is there
253a list of which tsas would be impacted by that cut and the reason i asked and i know associate superintendent aurelia was at that meeting too dlac was really you know expressed a lot of concerns about which tsas we were talking about and they wanted more details and um so i just wanted to see if there was a list of those any more information about the tsa positions that you're thinking about in cutting in this budget and then i would also just like to learn a little bit more about the logic for the eight to one ratio for the u9 program for the leap program if you're okay all right i think i'll take both those questions um so with the tsas we did begin to narrow in our focus on centralized tsas or district
254level tsas um when you look at the budget principles principle one was to sort of stay furthest away from the direct services to students so instead of looking at directly at their site-based tsas like lit coaches el eldtl tsas um rti tsas those that were working directly with students we focused our attention more on the centralized tsas so the ad services team is right now going under an analysis of those centralized tsa positions um we're working with both business services and human resources to get it sort of a cleaner version of our position control um that was brought to attention last night in s back that it is still a little challenging to um understand exactly we see some things in position control that show vacancies or open positions but really accounting for those and
255making sure those are truly open so we're doing some cleanup work that needs to happen um before we really land on a position i did mention to the dlac group that any title three funded tsas obviously would not be impacted because that's not a reduction in the general fund um and so really letting them know that that's you know the eldt tsas that are site-based would not be touched in these reductions as far as the u9 and the leap sections of eight to one just a bit of data we know we we are looking at the data around leap um specifically because that is a sort of intervention that we offer our students in the u9 we know it's a very important part of the structure of the whole cohorting of students and currently that
256those numbers are really low in enrollment we have 81 students across 20 sections it boils down to a four to one ratio for class sizes for sections so that that's a hefty cost for the number of students are being served in that structure we know that it's greater than that because it's part of a complete structure of u9 and we did hear that feedback from our teachers and our vice principal so we really are examining the impact it would make if we reduced some of those sections if if we double the class size or we could still serve an eight to one ratio with half those sections if you're just doing simple straight math right however we know that that's it's not a simple reduction that way that when you eliminate 10 sections of the
25720 you now have teachers who went from having a 1.0 fte to a 0.8 ft and they have to pick up a class outside of the u9 structure and that complicates things it complicates things for the structure of the program and it complicates things for scheduling around the high school so it's definitely something we're taking into consideration we're not going to make a blanket decision around this program um but we are looking at you know i i want to look at the data i want to you know really ensure that the program is doing what the program's intended to do are we really impacting our some of our neediest students with this leap section and the cohorting so um i that that was budget principle i think number three which is data-driven decisions around the
258world and can you share that data with us if it if it is ready by next week or um any more details around the tsa analysis if if that is ready by next week and i also just want to say that i really appreciate based on the discussion we previously had previously had on the budget um the removal of the bilingual central office position from from the list so thank you so much for your work director signer thank you um for the presentation again i i just um i want to share um my continued um disappointment with acoe and putting us in the position of having to create budget cuts when we don't know what the next year's budget is going to be it's clear that we don't really have a choice in the matter
259but um i'm i'm i'm not happy about it um and in that mode of this being kind of an exercise a good exercise to kind of chew on things um and i know we're not voting on it tonight and you know i'm i'm i'll probably vote on whatever we decide to come up with but i want to be really clear that it is not binding and it is not well informed in all honesty because 25 to 30 percent of those cuts are in special ed special ed are disproportionately our african-american students special ed the reason we're contracting out is because we can't hire we've never run an adult program inside berkeley unified we've contracted with this nonprofit for a long time they're very connected so the the leap of faith that we're going to be
260able to cut a million and a half dollars out of our special ed program i know maybe we'll be forced to do it and we have to figure it out but i'm extremely uncomfortable with 25 to 30 percent of those cuts coming out of special ed now with the understanding it's an exercise and it's not binding and maybe it'll push us to do some evaluation and assessment that we didn't have that was good but i just want to be really clear that that it will not be a sign of what my vote will be when we're doing real budget deliberations in january and february and i appreciate all the work you're doing for the exercise yeah and thanks for being so clear in in previewing your thinking with us that's that's super helpful to us
261uh director vice president of babbitt sorry i i promise i won't do that again tonight that's okay president um well i echo director cyanide's comments um we are completely aligned with what she's saying and i am hoping that um if we can come out of this with creating some efficiencies that we will take our time and do it thoughtfully um but in no ways would i think we would actually be ready to do that kind of in-house things you know as quickly as the next school year um and i want to thank pauline following assistant superintendent barlinsvi for her work and for the audit committee meeting where we went through uh this and other things in much detail i was able to ask a lot of my questions there so um i will just take
262this time to say happy birthday to you happy birthday thanks vice president david and from that was beautiful thank you thank you thank you vice president and happy birthday thank you president congrats welcome thank you thank you all right there aren't any more questions in regards to item 13.4 so i'm superintendent associate assistant superintendent following we will pass it right back over to you for item 14.1 for the proof of the 2021-2022 first interim report okay so i'm going to be presenting with director karum so i need her to be um promoted to a panelist if we could do that and then i'm going to share my screen again and hopefully i can find i hold on thank you so much miss barrios for um promoting director karen she's here with us welcome director graham
263no problem thank you very much so good night again um so liz and myself will be presenting the first interim and i'll take you through this pretty quickly and um and then we'll take questions at the end so um again our goal we do we need the board um formal approval of our first interim budget um the agenda we're going to look at the undistricted general fund the highlights the variance report and the multi-year projections and then we're going to spend just a very brief minute on our budget priorities and the impact that the governor's budget may have on these priorities as well as um our next steps so um again we're looking at the first interim um and that goes for transactions through october which project our operations for the entire year um so
264we do have a positive certification and that's only after implementing 4.6 million dollars in budget reductions which we spoke about earlier and that will be brought back to the board for approval on december 15th um at the first interim deficit spending by 1.6 million dollars and we have an undesignated fund balance of 1.7 million dollars um what's also notable is that we have 2.3 million dollars of board approved expenditures in september we came to the board with a list of expenditures that should would be paid for by fund 20 um and that those expenses are now reflected in the first interim um a bit of good news um we did have an increase in our unduplicated pupil count by 171 students and there's a link to our unduplicated pupil count and if we open that
265link you will see that um a lot of increases happened at the high schools both high schools and um at the middle school so um we did a concentrated drive aura um a very um intense drive to try and increase our unduplicated pupil count based on the um the meal they the meal what was it called the um alternative meal form and i think it was successful because we did in fact see an increase of 171 students and that in that in turn um um caused an increase in our supplemental funding and now i'm going to turn it over to director karem for her to take us through the variance report hi everyone um [Music] we're going to talk about the changes between the adopt the budget that we adopted back in june and the
266first interim in the first interim budget so the first thing that um really comes up is as um uh associate superintendent follows me was talking about but we we increased our supplemental revenue so the 171 student additional unduplicated pupil count created about 270 000 in additional revenue so that was very helpful um in the on the expenditure side you can see that total expenditures went up by almost 2. 2.9 million dollars but of that the increase was for covert related and other expenditures funded by a transfer transfer from fund 20 which as pauline mentioned isn't was approved by the board on september 8th so that's 2.3 million dollars of that increase expense then there were other ongoing and one-time expenditures of 1.2 million dollars uh the largest of which was um on an ongoing increase
267in special education transportation that's about 200 467 000 so those additional expenses totaled 1.2 million dollars however um there's an offset to that those increases because of about 11 million dollars in additional spending in restricted resources the general fund receives direct support and indirect costs cost from those resources of almost 700 thousand dollars so that 700 000 offset the additional expenses um that were incurred um so the uh the next thing just really to look at the transfers in a of funds in an intervent transfers in and out so as um was mentioned the there was a we had originally um budgeted a contribution to the cafeteria fund of 728 000 because of a change in cafeteria fund funding our nutrition services funding um that contribution is not needed any longer so there's a savings
268there of 728 000 um it transfers in there you can see at the the transfer in is the 2.3 million dollars from fund 20. um contribution so then the contributions uh other contributions in is an additional is additional um funding from um visa the uh contribution increased because of a negotiated increase in salaries um for contracts ratified after the uh since or during first interim so that's about 147 000 more going into the general fund um and then the the contribution out decreased that special education contribution um for uh transfer to special education transportation but that's really just a really a correction in how the budget was originally recorded so um if we sort of move down the list um you can see that there's uh the ending fund balance is 3.4 million dollars which
269is an increase of about 765 and that's approximately equal to the reduction in the contribution to the um cafeteria fund so we ended up with we're ending up with a little bit more and then finally if you look at the components of the ending fund balance you can see at the economic uncertainties three percent economic uncertainties because we're spending more money um that much more money the three percent reserve has increased so it increased from 213 thousand dollars to almost 600 000 and that increases contributor attributable to the additional expense so about 385 000 um is attributable to um the increased spending that has been added was added between the adopted budget and the first interim okay and um and then the other page these other pages just show the um lizard already explained this
270but the explanation is also attached to the veterans report the letters are explained on the third page so all right thank you liz that was great thank you so i'll take us back um to the um to the first interim so um we can then look at our multi-year projections and this is where we look at the current year and two subsequent years and determine um we've removed the one-time expenses so that 2.3 million dollars that liz mentioned in the variance report those expenses are not flowing forward and then uh um the impact of the ada um which is our fiscal cliff which we've been talking about and um resulted in the 4.6 million dollars in budget reductions in 2223 which we have discussed earlier and of course we don't know what the state is
271um if we're going to be getting any more funding from the state or the federal government so that may mitigate the um or eliminate the need for budget reductions um in the out year so this is our multi-year at the first interim um no change in our cola or ada are funded ada um because of the hold harmless were funded at 19 um 1920 levels um and of course in 22 23 and 23 24 we're using the assumptions based on projections from um that francisco gave us so um we were looking uh when we're coming up with budget reductions or the impact on our budget we actually did our teacher template um to this to to determine how much vsep was going to be giving us as well as um the cost overall cost um
272for teachers and so on but we took this ada funded and built our um our multi-year projections on that and the unduplicated pupil count reflects the increase that we talked about um in 21 22. so um in terms of revenue um not not um we can see that we got the mega cooler in 21 22 um the 5.07 um percent and um we're not we have we have no change in the assumption as yet we'll see what the governor's budget actually provides there is talk about us getting uh another a cola of probably about five percent and that would mean a significant increase in our revenue and in looking at our expenses this is where we are look um the budget adjustment comes in to interplay the 4.6 million dollars this is ongoing um budget
273reductions in 20-23 it's not an additional amount it's just one ongoing rate and it scored twice because this is just a snapshot so as you can see with these budget reductions we're actually um we have a balanced budget we have a positive ending fund balance and we are able to meet to meet our three percent so um so these budget reductions are necessary for us to maintain our positive certification and as such we'll be providing the list of budget reductions to alameda county office of ed as requested this is our contribution in and the significant thing on this slide is that our contribution um that we got board approval for to um back in september the 2.3 million that dollars that we've mentioned that's one time so it doesn't um continue all the way across
274and everything else is business as usual until we have additional information to build um of these are some to change these assumptions in the out here so um in terms of our budget priorities um when we when we came up with a list um of budget reductions we're focusing on the impact on our budget for the for the loss of ada we have not talked started to talk about our one-time expenses and we have about three million dollars in one time in ongoing potentially ongoing expenses funded with one-time revenue so that's going to be um the incorporated in our budget priorities when we start our traditional budget cycle after the governor has released his um release this budget in january so we have a lot of um a lot of work ahead of us because
275now we have to take into con into account not only the impact of our ada but also our ongoing expenses paid for by one-time funding but as i mentioned earlier there is promising outlook for state revenue and there's a discussion of us getting um a caller of five percent and i think those of you who went to the csba conference i know that that um cola was actually discussed at that conference i think president brownies are you there i think we're gonna have to move to extend the meeting okay um i'll take a motion to extend the meeting to 15 as associate superintendent following you have about two more two or three more slides right um this is my last slide actually so okay this is your last one so i'm going to i'll move
276to extend the meeting to 11 30 is there a second or i'll ask for a motion to extend the meeting to 11 30. do we need 11 we need 30 minutes can we do 11 10 or 11 15. so to extend the meeting to 11 30 means that we have until 11 30 if we need it we don't need it we won't use the time okay so the pressure is on to not need it i'm with you i wouldn't get direct vice president but i'll make all the second emotions okay so i'll wrap this up really quickly so i gotta vote we gotta vote oh miss marios can you please call the roll yes director of us yes director's high nah enthusiastically director alper reluctantly what was that director albert yes he said yes vice
277president babbitt yes president brown yes you may continue with your presentation i'm sorry about the introduction really quickly so um so we'll be bringing back the second interim um in march um so we'll have a little bit more information at that time and of course um our budget cycle will begin in january so um we'll be um working on our budget priorities as well as um balancing our budget based on the governor's budget um the budget calendar has already been approved um which is you know it's a little early this year and of course we have continued um we've already convened and started meeting with our budget advisory committees and we'll continue to work on the adopted budget um in the upcoming year that's it i am done and i can take we can take
278questions at this point um okay thank you so much uh director albert your hand is up do you have a question um yes i won't take 30 minutes though um um thank you for that associate superintendent philosophy am i right that um nothing in what you just presented um takes into account um the collective bargaining that we're gonna need to engage in with all four of our unions is that right that's correct so i just want to um i i think um president meyer mentioned it in his comments but but i think it's something that we need to keep in mind but that we're going to be negotiating with all of all four of our unions in the spring um and and to highlight the last thing that you mentioned um associated superintendent follows me
279about how much of what we have started and talked a lot about tonight um is being paid for by one-time funds and so those two things combined um have made me feel less like um what would what acoe is making us do is sort of this academic exercise like i agree with what you said director sinai about the specifics of it and that what we're you know we're not locking ourselves into anything specifically when we you know approve what we need to approve next next week but um but i think we're sort of fooling ourselves if we think that just because the state budget pictures you know looks pretty good and we will be getting more money that we're not still going to have to make some painful cuts so i just wanted to say
280that because i think that's that's still coming down the road it may not be as much as we're having to make having to you know approve next week tentatively but i think it i think it's still gonna be um some painful cuts that wasn't a question that's just a comment okay thank you uh director out for your uh question but comment are there any other comments or questions from other members of the board no okay hearing that you want me to just read like the newspaper out loud for the next half hour you can do that if you want to or we can sing happy birthday again thank you so much um assistant superintendent following me for your presentation and for the hard work that went into this um wait wait wait wait wait we
281gotta we gotta approve we gotta i'm not oh sorry i'm sorry and we will see you again for the next part of um next part of this but right now we do need to approve um the recommendation that you have given us this evening so is there a motion i think president alfred is eager to do it uh yeah i'm sorry i'm just having trouble giving up the power are you missing this already thank you for calling me president alfred um just for nostalgia for nostalgia um i will move to approve the first interim thank you i appreciate the opportunity is there a second oh second thank you has been moved and seconded uh miss barius can you please call the role director of us yes director sinai yes director alper yes vice president babbitt
282yes president brown yes all right thank you we will now move on to um the second opportunity for public comment if you're here for public comment this is the perfect time to raise your hand wow seeing no hands we will move to the second opportunity for board member comments are there any board member comments seeing none we will now adjourn for this evening thank you all for a wonderful evening and yeah we have 29 more minutes wow what are we going to do a meeting adjourned good job great great job president brown thank you thank you paul and rosalina barrios you got all our titles right yes thank you pleasure to do it thank you good night goodbye