Special Board Meeting - October 7, 2025

001All right, good morning everyone. Let's call this meeting to order at 9:00. >> Good morning and welcome to the Elkrove Unified School District special board meeting. Live streaming of full in-person board meetings is available to the public by using the link located on the district's website. Today's meeting is being video recorded and will be available on the district's YouTube channel. During special board meetings, the public may make public comment on items that are on the agenda. Individuals with comments on general school district issues may address those at the next reg regularly scheduled board meeting. Couple quick notes on public comment. Requests for to make public comment will be accepted for an item up until the board president introduces the item. Generally, members of the public will be given three minutes to address the board. If

002there are 15 or more comments on a specific item, the board will reduce individual comment times to two minutes each. If there are 30 or more comments on a specific item, the board will reduce individual comments to one minute each. Individuals may not defer their time to another individual speaker to increase their total speaking time. Please be mindful that district students may be watching. You are encouraged to address the board and the public in a respectful manner such that all those observing from children to adults are made to feel welcome, safe, and valued. The board shall not permit any disturbance or willful interruption of board meetings. Persistent disruption by an individual or group shall be grounds for the board president to provide a warning and then to terminate the individual's privilege of addressing the board.

003All right. For our land acknowledgement, uh, Miss Alviani. Okay. We acknowledge that the Elkrove Unified School District administrative facilities and schools occupy the unsucceeded territory of the Miwok, the original people of the skies, land, and waters where we work and learn. The Miwok have cared for these lands since time immemorial. They continue to teach their traditional knowledge that comes from and responds to the needs of the land and the people who share it. May our daily lives and work, teaching, learning, leadership, and community engagement support the evolving vision of the Miwok for their community and these lands. May we strive to acknowledge the past for the betterment of our future generations. May we look to our tribal partners, the Wilton Rancheria, the descendants of the original people of this land, to assist with the successful

004education of our community. >> Thank you very much. And to lead us in the pledge, Mr. Yang. Thank you very much. All right. Uh Mr. Superintendent, over to you for an overview of the day. >> Thank you. Uh so excited for the day. Um two really important uh presentations that we'll share with the board um in the community today. Uh the first one is an update on multi-tered systems of support. This will actually be one of three presentations that we'll be doing the board and kind of an upcoming series. uh really want to make sure as the as the new board is coming together uh that we have a collective understanding of the work that is uh that makes up MTSS and then also to be able to make sure the board um as as

005they get questions and those kinds of things from the community that we we uh have provided you with the information you need uh to be able to address questions as those as those come up. So looking forward to that presentation. Uh the next one will be uh the next step in the board priority process. Um, so this will be an opportunity again as we bring together the board moving forward for the new work. Um, making sure everyone understands how we've gotten to the point where we are today. Um, it's been about a three-year process of getting to today. Uh, we will fold in the information from last spring's perspective survey and be able to see how that uh helps inform the work moving forward. And then as the board walks away today, we want to

006make sure that you um have the information that you need in a format that is usable to you um and and useful to you um as we now work through the next steps of the board priority process which um we'll be uh dealing with uh in earnest in uh in November coming up. So we want to make sure you have the information you need to be able to do that work. So looking forward to a great day. Thank you. >> Excellent. Thank you very much. Then let's dive right into the multi-tiered system of support. Uh Mr. Riley. >> Hey, good morning, President Margarus, members of the board, M. Superintendent Hoffman and Miss Aalos. Excuse me. It's it's quite a privilege here to represent the educational uh services and schools executive team also known as Esset

007uh comprised of the members here of of cabinet that lead ed services and schools. Um the the purpose is superintendent Hoffman mentioned this is the first in a three-part series uh that is spotlighting multi-tered systems of supports. Uh the reason for the three presentations is that it is it is quite an extensive framework and we found it necessary to sort of peacemeal it in in its presentation. uh I have the privilege of doing the introductory piece where you'll get an overview of the entire framework that'll set the stage for subsequent uh presentations that will dive more in detail uh as to what how the framework functions the processes and protocols uh and its composition. Okay. So starting with our learning vision and I'm going to reference this slide in in subsequent slides uh particularly our

008our learning vision every student learning in every classroom in every subject every day to prepare college career and life ready graduates um that is our vision and you can see the emphasis obviously on on every in that uh I want to emphasize that this multi-tiered system of supports serves all students. So there has been questions in terms of where do multilingual learners fit into the MTSS framework? Where do students with disabilities fit in in the framework? Every student is designed to be serviced in in the framework as you'll see in just a moment. But you see the different parts of our learning vision. Uh highquality curriculum instruction and assessment. It's part of the academic um part of of the framework. targeted supports and interventions, wellness and family and community engagement, they are all touched in

009in in our framework. So, the objectives of this three-part spotlight series, um, calling it a spotlight on MTSS, pretty pretty catchy. Don't get too excited. uh to foster an understanding of why MTSS is necessary uh what MTSS is the components of a multi-tered system of supports and how MTSS works the processes and protocols embedded in a multi-tered system of supports. So we're starting with this series with with the board obviously but we are going to use versions of this presentation with parent groups with advocacy groups because it it is essential that everyone understands uh what MTSS is and what MTSS isn't. We want to dispel some misconceptions or misunderstandings of what MTSS u is and and isn't. You know, for example, in my, you know, personal extensive work with special education advocates and such and

010parents over the last several years, MTSS is not designed to be a set of obstacles to keep students from services. uh quite the opposite is the special education services the related services are an integral part of the MTSS pyramid and as are interventions and instructional strategies for multi-ingual learners uh and they benefit all students so it's all part of the same system it's not a separate thing it is the thing and so hopefully we'll see that a little bit later demonstrated so MTSS is a culturally responsive comprehensive framework. It provides universal access of evidence-based practices for all students. It identifies student needs based on data. It organizes and implements necessary supports and interventions for the purpose of achieving academic, social, and emotional and behavioral success for all students. And it emphasizes early intervention. Uh so

011before we would jump to an assessment for say services uh for special education or for pulling students out of class, we want to exercise intervention at its earliest stage which is tier one in the classroom in real time with the objective keep students exposed to first instruction. Um so the origins of MTSS um actually were were burdened out of the IDA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act as it was updated in 2004. You may be familiar with the term response to inter uh response to intervention RTI and it was originally sought to identify students who would benefit from more intensive supports. And then from these beginnings as a tool to help improve educational outcomes for students with disabilities, MTSS evolved to support all students. So again, MTSS is a framework that helps educators provide academic,

012behavioral, and social emotional. So I'm going to repeat those academic, behavioral, and social emotional. Those are sort of the three we call them legs of the stool um in in some contexts that com comprise the MTSS framework and they embody the strategies that support students with a variety of different needs. And again, MTSS grew out of the integration of the RTI model and also PBIS, which I know many of you are familiar with. So, wanted to kind of differentiate two different means of thinking that are at play in in MTSS. Uh, one is mechanistic and one is systems. Um, both types of thinking are necessary. Mechanistic thinking focuses on individual parts of a system. So if you think of for example an automobile engine, the engine as you open the hood and look at it

013is a system but it can be broken down into different components that each have to function uh effectively and efficiently in order for the whole system to break down. Any one of those parts break down the system breaks down. So we have to do both here. We have to look at our system mechanistically and from a systems perspective as well. And systems focuses on the interconnections amongst the individual parts of the system. So special education services is part of the system. Uh multilingual strategies, instructional strategies for for English learners, part of the system. Uh restorative practices part of the system. And and if any one of those things breaks down or is having difficulty in operating in the most efficient way, the system sputters a bit and doesn't function optimally. So just to spend a

014little bit more time on on system, you can see the origins the Greek origins of system um the the Greek term um systemma organized as a whole a whole made of several parts. That's exactly what the framework is, the MTSS framework stemming from um the sense of placing together or organizing. Um but really the root means to to stand or to cause to stand. So if we think of the academic supports, the social emotional supports and the behavioral supports as three legs of a stool. It's what what is it helping to stand up? It's helping to stand up our learning vision. So if you look at the seat of the stool in this demographic which is just an alternative way of looking at the pyramid by no means replacing the pyramid but just for visual

015purposes of the system really supports our learning vision. Every student learning in every classroom in every subject every day to prepare college career and life ready graduates. Again every student and you can see the three legs of of the stool there. So MTSS supports the learning vision. The learning vision applies to every student and MTSS encompasses supports for all students including students with disabilities, multilingual learners and targeted subgroups identified in the EGUSD strategic plan. So mechanistically we function as distinct departments. We have a special education department, multilingual education, educational services, schools. But systematically we have to foster the interconnections and interdependence of these district departments. That's why the essay group exists. Coming together once a week on Wednesday afternoons for three or four hours at a time. That's when we're putting the system together. We're

016fine-tuning the engine each from our different standpoints. And so one of our statements here is members of site MTSS teams. And we'll get into that in a subsequent presentation. Who at the site comprises the MTSS team at the sites. Each member of that site or even if you take Esset, each member has to stand from their mechanistic areas of expertise and work together to adopt a holistic systematic view of individual student needs. I know in special education there's a great emphasis on individual educational plans, very individualized. We say that quite a bit. But when you look at it, every single child in our system, all 64,000, they're individuals. Not no two students, you line them up, have the same exact needs. there there um so in a way you know the fact that MCSS was

017born from special education RTI is no mistake it's the same approach that we have to apply to every student so when MTSS site teams come together whether it's school psychologist a behaviorist general education teacher a resource teacher they're all coming from their mechanistic stance and adding their expertise to to look at the child and see what what does this child need at this time. So why is a system approached to support necessary? For example, some behaviors manifested by children with learning disabilities are also typical characteristics of children who are learning a second language. So spending time with the school psychologist over the several years, we have engaged in a number of trainings and conferences where the school psychologist is the primary matrician of our assessments has to discern uh why is the child struggling? Is

018it because of language acquisition challenges, number of years in the country, exposure primary language at home, or is it a true learning disability and and a deficit? That is not an easy task to discern, as you can imagine. So when making decisions regarding placement support and interventions for students, the MTS team has to consider multiple data points uh factors to consider language acquisition processes uh and the complex interaction between linguistic development, cognitive abilities, age, learning styles, literacy skills in the primary language, cultural perspectives, experiences with formal schooling, length of time in the country, immigration experience, stages of assimilation, and overall academic growth. Also, what the child is going through personally. Are they a child in the foster care system? Um, are they part of a family experiencing homelessness? There's so many permutations of what can

019be going on with a child. So, unless we all come together, uh, again from our mechanistic stances and look at the child from a systems perspective, we're not going to get it right. We have to work together. That's the trick. So just to demonstrate what we're up against, our students are highly diverse. We have 123 language languages in the district. It fluctuates between 118 129. At the time this presentation went to print was 123. Uh just this month we hit 11,000 students receiving special education services. 11,000. That's large. That's more than than many school districts in the state. 2,256 students with 504 plans, 3,892 students with health plans, 1,947 students dually identified, both special education and multilingual, 189 students in foster youth. uh uh 345 students experiencing homelessness and 38,457 social socially economic disadvantaged uh

020students in 2425. Um we're using that last year's number because that that is that data point is complete. We're still in the process in our ED benefits process identifying those students for this year. But you can look at this and just think about all the different permutations that could exist as a child presents themselves in our system. They could be an English learner with a disability on a health plan in the foster system. So imagine how complex where do we start in providing services and supports for that student. The only way we're going to have a chance of helping that students is if all the adults in the room come together again from their mechanistic standpoint, their areas of expertise and come together to synthesize a plan for the child. And that plan doesn't necessarily

021need to be it may involve certainly if the child has disabilities it will involve an IEP but to bolster the system at the site level to response in real to respond in real time and offer real-time supports. That's what MTSS is about. So what are the components of MTSS? As I mentioned before academic, social emotional and and behavior it's a framework. It's a foundation for cohesive teaching and learning. And each of the three components are interconnected. And I want to stress that academic, social, emotional, and behavior, they're all interconnected. And MTSS as a process, it identifies, interprets, and measures the collective needs of all students individually as they present themselves. So the MTSS process tier one universal all students. So this is in the classroom. These are this is exposure to all students touches all

022students and it includes communicating schoolwide expectations in the classroom. Teaching and modeling appropriate behaviors establishing routines and procedures. Providing instruction that is culturally linguistically relevant based on the instructional framework. Fostering the five competencies of social emotional learning and integrating restorative practices, strategies and interventions into daily instruction. Um so for example restorative practices really touches on all three legs of the stool academic, social uh and uh behavior. Um restorative practices can be interwoven into into a lesson for all students in terms of um maybe the class comes together and develops its own class rules. I know many teachers do that at the beginning of the year. Uh they do a collaborative learning exercise. students in small groups. They come up, they brainstorm, they work together, they they contemplate consequences for for actions, how to be proactive

023in terms of preventing uh undesirable behaviors in the classroom, unproductive behaviors. The examples are are endless, but restorative practices really underlies um you know, all three stools and and tier one uh interventions. And um again when we introduce restorative practices some people might say oh here's another thing it's not another thing it's the thing it's part of the thing we do which is MTSS it's just a different component tier one academic our first instruction highquality instruction involves lesson planning learning targets and success criteria active participation from students engagement formative assessment and feedback and student talk again emphasizing that engagement. And then the phases of instruction can include focused instruction, guided instruction, collaborative learning, independent learning, and students in any in a classroom may be ready for independent learning before others. And so the guided instruction

024might last longer for for some students as some students graduate to more independent uh work within the classroom. Just in the for example the special education context um we are continuing our piloting of co-eing where in the classroom as part of first instruction we have a general education teacher working handinhand with a education specialist special education teacher that allows great flexibility and allows for great differentiation within the classroom keeps students for example with students students with disabilities in in the classroom term exposed to first instruction. And you could have a situation where some of the class graduates to independent practice after a guided instruction um and allows one of the teachers to stay and work with a small group who needs more guided practice or a collaborative learning environment to master that skill before they

025go home and practice independently. Um so it allows for uh more differentiation, keeps students in the classroom and exposed to first instruction. As an example, tier one social emotional learning. So, the five core competencies, self-awareness, self-management, um oh, we got a a duplicate there. Two self-awarenesses. Uh relationship skills and responsible decision-making. Um I have a teenager at home right now, 16-year-old, and we spend a lot of time on the five core competencies. um I could think of this morning in in particular uh self-management, self-awareness, relationship, decision. Yeah, pretty much all five. We hit all five this morning. Um so, uh these are embedded in every lesson. So, as we engage students in academic exercises or assignments, many assignments require long-term planning. Um, as you get to the higher grades, you might have an assignment that's

026due in two weeks. Well, again, reflecting on my own teen danger at home, um, the Sunday night after two weeks isn't the time to get serious or say to mom, uh, can we go to CVS? Uh, I need some poster board and stuff and it's 9:45 on a Sunday night. Um, all of these things are skills that we use forever. Um, all of us are using them on a daily basis. So, we're inculcating these these competencies in our in our students with tier one behavior. Um, some of you more familiar than others with PBIS, positive behavior interventions and supports. Wasn't too long ago where we had a presentation just on that and we will have additional presentations that focus on each of these areas, but I'm just giving you a brief overview here today. Um

027but consistent pra uh processes and procedures for managing misbehavior. Proactive supports to teach appropriate and replacement behaviors. Promotion of positive behavior. What what is the desired behavior and let's celebrate it when we see it? Identification of desired behavior in a specific context. So positive reinforcement in the classroom that other students can see and model. um that those things are all um inner in play on a tier one classroom level every day. So that is a a pretty quick uh universal overview of what the framework comprises. As I said earlier in spotlight number two, we're going to take a deeper dive. We're going to give a little bit more specific descriptions of our instructional framework PBIS and social emotional learning. Each of these have been their own distinctive presentations to the board. They probably will continue

028to do so because each each of these is a framework in of itself embedded in this grander pro um framework. We're going to give an overview of the tier 2 and tier three supports. So again, we try to keep students in our tier one, keep them exposed to first instruction, keep them in the classroom, whether from an exclusionary discipline standpoint, but also academic instruction exposure standpoint. But there are times where students have to be into smaller groups. They may need to be removed from the classroom. And I'm not just talking about students with disabilities for specialized academic instruction or such. These could be, you know, students who may need some mental health supports or some behavior interventions. Um, so we'll get we'll take a deeper dive and look at tier two and tier three, which

029tends to be more of our one-on-one most intensive interventions. So, give you an overview of that. We'll delineate what are the compositions of the respective site teams at our uh 69 schools out there, who are the core members, and then who are some of the additional members that are brought on based on the needs or the specific individual needs of the student in question. And then we're going to give an introduction to the processes and protocols. How does it work? How does the referral system how do we identify students who need this this system to come together? Um how does that work? Uh we're also going to do so by illustrating we're going to do some case studies and we're going to give you some examples of students obviously you know anonymous um situations where

030we'll we'll provide a profile of a student and we will demonstrate how the team came together what they ident what they identified the interventions that were in place how did we measure improvement and the ultimate trajectory of that of that student's success. So, at this point, happy to take questions. Um, interested in your questions because they will definitely inform future presentations. We'll be sure to uh um touch on any areas that you want to learn more about and um I'll open it up. >> Excellent. Thank you very much. Uh Mr. Yang, do we have any blue cards on this item? >> President Well, I guess we do have a couple blue cards on the debts item. First off, I just want to say good morning. All right. Calling on Dr. E, followed by Robert Brewer.

031To the right, please. Good morning. My name is Dr. Sereni and I am proud to be one of the curriculum and instructional coaches focused on educational equity. Um I just want to start off by saying that our work in educational equity is foundational in carrying out EGUSD's learning vision and we are an integral part of MTSS which you just heard from the prior presentation. Some of you may not know some of the work that we do, which is why I'm here to give a snapshot today of how we tie into core skills related to academics, social emotional, and behavioral issues. But first, I wanted to start with um something that you might already be familiar with. It is the EGUSD's school, staff, and students perspective surveys. So I just wanted to point out one piece

032of data um today that we didn't create this survey our department but whoever created it was great in thinking about the first question that they would ask and the first question is what do you feel school connectedness and a sense of belonging? So they asked that of staff and they asked that of students and they saw the value in that because research shows that when staff and when staff have school connectedness and a sense of belonging, they're less likely to face burnout and they're more vested in school and district missions. Research also shows that students who have school connectedness and a sense of belonging, they're less likely to face anxiety and depression. They typically have higher academic learning, lower disciplinary problems, and a lower risk of dropping out of school. Across Elkrove, staff's school connectedness

033and sense of belonging is 80%. For students, it is 68%. The educational equity department understands the gap. the ones who are have yet to feel connectedness and a sense of belonging. Last year, we delivered over 140 restorative practices workshops to all 68 schools in our district. These supported workshops um focused on nurturing meaningful relationships and creating a sense of belonging. These are some of the takeaways of the people who participated in our um workshops. Someone said, 'I felt I remember the reason why I became a teacher. The need for belonging that people shared their vulnerable stories and were able to make connections with one another. Awareness of feelings on campus. This helped me to uh see what other people's feelings were. The need to build community circles is vital. Spending quality time communicating in a

034safe environment is very important. It helps to share struggles. Before this, I thought I was alone. [Music] I'm sorry. I'm not sure what that means. Although I think it means I need to move faster. >> Sorry, your time is up. >> Okay. Is it okay if I close with something? Please finish your thought. >> Thank you. I want to go back to um that same statistic. When we have 80% of staff saying that they feel connectedness, that also means that 560 staff report that they are feeling alone. When we think of students who are not report not being connected, that's 11,000 students. 11,000 is more than all the students in the Franklin region. All five elementary schools, including Toby Johnson and Franklin Elementary, which is 7,600 students. >> Okay, sorry, your time's up. >> Thank

035you. Next, Robert Burough. >> Greeting board members. Uh, I'm off today, so you know, this must be really important to me. Uh, 23 years in Elkrove, 28 years in education, 15 years as a teacher educator at SAK State, and we just heard that our MTSS system is using culturally responsive practices to respond to the diverse needs of our students that we are up against in quotes. So, um, I'd ask that you think about some information and as you receive information about these things, I just want you to be critical consumers of that information. So on the 26th of June, the SAC observer put out an article that said SAK city schools black students are suspension rates remain high despite all of the promises. In the article, it states that EGUSD and um SCUSD continue to

036suspend black students at some of the highest rates in California, rates that actually increased for 2223. At the same time, we have schools in our district who are earning platinum status for PBIS. Platinum status. these pieces of information are contradictory, right? They how do they exist in the same district at the same time with the same students and I think when we think about this right um PBIS has been the bedrock of our system for a very long time. I was a PBS coordinator in the late 200 910ish right it's been around a long time and during that time we were the worst district in the state for suspending and expelling black students. I think we have to be very critical of the things we see as the bedrocks of our MTSS system of what

037we actually believe we're doing for students. Now what Dr. what uh Lisa Lavasser said in the article in response was that restorative practices specifically empathic listening building relationships restorative dialogue affective communication and community building. All the things that your eight equity coaches have provided for every single teacher in the district over the past two years are the things that are actually working. she cited them as actually lowering the number of suspensions and other things. So, what I'm going to ask is that um the things that at Equity is doing, the things that your equity coaches are actually doing, we're building RP into the induction program so that every new teacher that arrives in Elkrove from now on is going to learn these core skills that seem to be the base of the table that we're

038resting all of our MTSS on. Right? And I would also say that um restorative practices is not some colorblind tool, right? It's about educational justice and every tool is only as good as a user. If our users from administrators to teachers to students do not believe in educational justice as their mission, we should give up now. Right? We're about changing hearts and minds and helping students to truly succeed. And if that's what we're all about, that has to be at the core of our mission. And educational equity safeguards that mission, right? Our very few people, I think our 14 staff members and three or four program specialists and directors, we are the ones who are trying to safeguard this mission, right? And I think it's important for you to understand that. You'll hear from me

039again later. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. That ends our blue car and this item. Turn it back to you, Mr. President. >> Thank you very much. Uh we'll have board member comments now. So I'll start with Miss Baldwin. >> Thank you. Um just have a few questions. Um can you share with us um and if it's something that needs to come to us later, that's fine. Um, but I'd like to hear a little bit about the resources we are leveraging through community partnerships to support what we hope to achieve in the social emotional skills and um, high quality instruction that we're providing our students. um community uh organizations that come to mind are EG speaks that helps our special education community, BYP, Black Youth Leadership Project that helps our black students and families,

040programs like Pente, um that supports Latino and Latinx families, um and I'm sure there's lots more. So, is there any I I'm particularly wanting to know like what does our collaborative effort look like? Well, I think you delineated a number of the partnerships in the community. Uh I could speak personally to the partnership with one of them, EG speaks. I know Jenty Ferraro is here. Meet with them regularly. Um that's a I'll use that as an example in meeting with them regularly with the special education leadership. Just hearing that perspective because they are out there communicating with with families, advocating for families, and so they're sharing their perspectives and bringing the questions. In fact, one of the the impetus uh for this presentation is to foster a greater understanding of MTSS to emphasize the fact

041that special education is not separate from from MTSS. But in terms of the other community, you know, it gives us um you know, ideas for future spotlight um emphasis in terms of our um our face department and our in our partnerships with with parents. um the cafes that we do the you know we want to take this presentation on the road so to speak so that everyone understands and they see um you know improve your tomorrow for example how that is part of the MTSS framework that is a direct support for our our students our our our black students who are in the as referenced in the in the presentation called out in our um strategic plan as one of our targeted groups. Um so you know to foster those again it's not a separate

042thing it is the thing it's all part of the MTSS framework um an intervention like improve your tomorrow could be considered a tier 2 uh intervention when they come in small groups it could also be in the mentor context that could be that falls within a tier three a one-on-one mentor relationship that's a tier three type of intervention so short answer is all of those things are part of the intervention. And a lot of times when you think about intervention, you think about staff and certainly we have an abundance of interventionalists, so to speak, who are staff members, but our interventions are also our community partners. Um, EG speaks is a type of intervention. Improve your tomorrow is a is a type of intervention. They're our partners. So we want to look at that lens

043and assess you know who would make great partners and and how do they fit into the thing >> that one if I could just add it's a great question we can't do it alone um another what I would consider community partner um is our community partners one is our uh county office of education they're invaluable um we are part of a um ll MLE multilingual education consortium. Dr. Lily heavily involved with that. Um there's a math uh group that's that's pulled together. Um there's there's a variety of of opportunities. Um Erin Cypes, our director of expanded learning. She is um Wednesday, tomorrow, she is at uh Folsam Cordova at the school district and we're exchanging information and ideas on a on a very regular basis. So, I know we can think of and rightfully so

044community-based organizations, but we're heavily involved with our districts around us and the county county office of ed is an invaluable partner as well. >> Thank you. Uh I think um or my next question I feel like it's we've done a really great job at the tier one which makes the most sense because it's the foundation, right? Um but I have heard um in in site visits and such that um tier two and three like what is the district doing to commit the resources and the supports that adequately that adequately support the students that are needing those level of supports um and not just putting the burden on you know our our school sites that are limited in their resources or their staff. um like what kinds of um what are we doing to make sure

045that that they're able to go between the tiers adequately uh to support the students? Mhm. >> Well, we have there's combination. There's through our site LCAP process, you know, sites are given, you know, with their concentration supplemental concentration fund, they are given the ability to identify specific needs at the site and uh know our school sites are are looking at again the framework and how can we bolster tier 2, tier three supports. Uh from a district level, we're offering supports. We offer our mental health support surf uh services. Our social workers are in our schools. Our MHTS are in our schools. Um our behaviorists are are working with various classes um and teachers and doing an abundance of coaching. Um you you heard from members of the equity department out there um doing the restorative

046practices training and such. um even within restorative uh you know I emphasized the sort of um ubiquitousness of restorative practices amongst the three stools um but it also it goes vertical as well um that restorative practices goes tier one tier 2 tier three um so through our coaching our itinerance staff and the supports services um that's you know you look at our budget we we'll be focusing on budget priorities later this afternoon I mean those were needs that were identified side um you know in our return from from the pandemic where our needs kind of spiked. Um so it's it's a confluence of all these some are sight specific and we allow sites some autonomy in terms of what they identify they know best because it's a local decision that's the whole point of the

047LCAP right but also from a systemic uh district piece we have these different coaching and and programs that are that are going to school sites and helping. So that work just needs to continue. I think as Mr. Serudi, members of the ESSA team have stated numerous times, we know what to do. It's clear what we need to do. We just need to get better at doing it and sustain the resources that allow us to do the work. >> Thank you. I appreciate that. And I did have a final question, but I'm not going to ask it because I think it kind of became relevant um through our meeting here. But I do just want to uh comment that um I had the opportunity to participate in restorative practices um workshop with the Lagona Creek area.

048Uh and it was the community circles was really um a great opportunity where we it was funny because they all managed to do the not me and I got to lead the the conversation. So uh or not lead but facilitate. Um, and I could tell that in that those specific training, that specific training, we're just like facilitating a how you can go from a casual conversation about things that are really like you can relate to, anybody could relate to to a deeper discussion um through tangible tools that I think was really really great in in clear. our group had, you know, a teacher that taught psychology, taught science, economics. Um, and then me, I think they thought I was worked at the district. Um, and it was just really interesting because in that diverse dynamic,

049we were able to see common ground with each other, have a really thoughtful conversation, and I felt like we all we didn't know each other, but we walked away feeling like, oh, if I see that person again, I would love to have a a deeper conversation. So, um I do believe that that is a great way to bring in cultural perspectives um and that um it allows a very modern approach to um something that we're working to um increase in in social emotional skills and academic instruction as well. So, just leave that there. >> Thank you very much, Miss Moore. >> Thank you for the presentation today. I appreciate learning the um the roots or the background of um MTSS. Um I did want to make a couple comments and have um some questions on

050page two. Um we mentioned that as part of our vision, we want to provide high high quality curriculum instruction and assessment um to all of our students. Um and then on page four um we talk about how um this these practices are evidencebased and um and then on page nine um is it correct to say that there are three legs or three parts of um the MTSS? I know this was just a visual, but >> yes. Yeah, that that would be correct. Um the academic, social, emotional, and behavior. Um that would be correct to say there's three parts or three legs, three aspects of it, but they are all integrated. >> Yeah. Okay. I just um so I what what I would like to see since this is one the first of three presentations is

051I would love to see um a timeline for when each of these legs or portions of the MTSS was um instituted in our um in our district. And I would love to see evidence um or data to see how it has benefited our students academically um and any other data we have because I think if we're going to say that um that our goal is to provide high quality curriculum instruction and assessment and then also that it um that it's evidencebased practices for all students. I would love to see evidence that we are benefiting our students. So, that's something I would really appreciate. Um, and then I was just wondering what specifically um, can you give some examples of, um, resources that are available for teachers when restorative practices are not successful in their classroom

052for instances of misbehavior or otherwise maybe. >> Sure. And I think in subsequent uh presentations when we show you how the process works um we will give you some examples of how a student moves from tier one and let's say the teacher has implemented various strategies and interventions with the child in the classroom and there becomes a need where we do need to remove the the child from the classroom. They would get a tier 2 type of intervention. Um and that's when you know again that whole mechanistic systematic that's when the team sort of comes together um to look at the child to see okay what what do we think are the root causes of of the behavior for some it might be uh emotional supports or interventions are needed there might be some um

053counseling or group sessions that are necessary uh parent contact I mean that's certainly uh bringing the parents in and intervening there getting them involved learning more about the child, inviting them into the team. Um it could be more um you know emotions and behaviors are connected. So looking at you know what are the causal uh elements of of the behaviors. Um it could be that the could be any number of things. Um it could be the child doesn't feel um someone u gentleman earlier before mentioned a sense of belonging. Child doesn't feel a sense of belonging. Doesn't feel connection to the school. I can hearken back to to my sight days as a vice principal principal. Sometimes it was um you know providing the student with a with a sweatshirt of of the school um

054and and helping them that way and the felt and getting connected to one of their interests, a club or a sport um fostering that. So it could be a number of different things. It can be counseling. It can be connecting them getting them engaged with an activity, a club, an afterchool program. Um, it could be that when you look at it, the situation with the child could be that the family is is going through some things and they need support and and that's where our face department might come in. That's where we might access the services of a social worker to help connect the family with community resources. So, really depends. It's it goes back to that individual and this this system and this construct allows us to look at the child individually to see

055what what's happening. Thank you. The reason I ask is I've just heard some examples from students, staff, and parents where um maybe misbehaviors are es escalating. And I just want to make sure that those supports are provided sooner than later. Not only for those students who need it, obviously um who need those supports, but also so that the other students in the classroom can continue to have the high quality instruction without interruption. Um so um that's why I ask is I just think that these supports are important not only for the the individual students who need the supports but we have to also continue to support all students so that they can all learn without disruption. And so I hope that that we do address those issues um so that all students can truly learn

056and have a high quality instruction. So thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Thank you Miss Berini. Good morning everyone. Um, this is is a lot to take in and I'm glad we're dividing it into three parts. Um, >> me too. >> It it just it really is and it's um interesting to me now that we're starting earlier and earlier now we've got TK kids in there, some three and four year olds. I know earlier intervention is very important. Um what is the process in identifying needs for kids for outside help in the classroom? Like um is do the parents come to the teachers and say I'm having troubles with this and do you have some kind of help at school that I can get or is it more um the teacher saying whoa this kid

057threw a chair today in class something's up. Or is it both? How how does it work? >> Yeah, it it's it's everything you said. Yeah, it it can be any source. The source of of the request for help can come from a parent. It can come from a teacher. Uh come from parent educator. It it could come from from anywhere. And in spotlight number two, which we we're targeting November, December with spotlight number three for about February, um we will give you examples of and show you how the referral process works and uh the different stages of the teams coming together and and who's involved. So um today's purpose is kind of lay down the foundation um to sort of generate that those questions uh and then in spotlight number two we'll we'll demonstrate that

058through our case studies exactly how that works but it is a referral system to you know short answer um a referral system that brings people together to look at the student and and the source of that request for intervention can come from a variety of different staff parents etc. And is it a fairly quick response if if there really gregarious issues out there? Um or is it something that takes quite a bit of time? >> Both probably. >> And ideally, it's as it's as uh in real time as possible. Right. Um I like that term gregarious uh circumstance. That's that's a good one. Um but ideally yes it's it's it's responsive in in real time as much as possible. >> Um and that depends on you know the strength of the MT the team and

059the composition how quickly people can can come together. >> Um so we can we can kind of demonstrate that and work in you know timelines for interventions as well in our future presentation. >> Okay. All right. Um, you answered a lot of other questions for me the other day, so that really helps. Um, I'm going to be the I'll be the classified person at this time that's that's asking are do we have this kind of training for the PAR educators and other staff on campus? Because I've heard Susan say it before, but I'm going to beat her to it because it started at this end today. Um, we when if they get sent sent out of class, they get sent to where? The office. The office is dealing with office things, but they also have

060to know how to help the kids that are there and and what they can do. And I I really want to see more training for for the other staff on campus, not just the teachers. So I I know we're working on that and I I just want to make sure we >> this for sure takes training. Yes, absolutely. Um and and you know all of these are sort of individual frameworks if you look at them mechanistically and they all require training and as we've said before um inclusion in all different types of perspectives takes everyone in the system whether we're talking cultural inclusion uh disability inclusion multilingual incl you know whatever that may be. Um, so yes, it's it's continuing with our training efforts and training all staff uh because our classified staff is absolutely

061integral to to these efforts. >> Okay, that's it. Thank you so much. >> Thank you very much, Mr. Yang. >> Good morning, David. >> Good morning. >> Thank you for the well presentation you presented. I want to start by saying I'm a parent in the school district for 10 years uh with my oldest just recently graduated from Outgrove High School and still have a uh junior second grade and first grade. So I know uh one or two things about our MTSS multi-ter um system of support for all students and at the at its core um it's about the academic uh behavior and social emotional which really involve everything about the students and um how I see it is that We as a school district has a lot of uh staff have a lot of uh

062stakeholders that are part of this uh journey and it's really to um develop and make progress to provide our students to have the best chance to be successful in life and live their best life at the end of it. And I just want to say thank you. Um, our school district is not perfect, but we had done a lot of great work and uh I'm one of the um parents that benefit from it from this school district. So, with that said, I I like what we have here on the presentation. Um, the way I identified is we need to be uh intentional about our strategy, our process, our program and that is starting with uh identifying the issues have action plan and of course resolution right and we have a lot of here um what

063I also like to see is being intentional about our data you mentioned about collecting datas in a varieties of uh areas which I agree with it 100%. However, um me as a board member um and I believe you know other board member would like to see as well so that we could use those data to put into our thought process where we could provide more adequate and reent uh feedback to make this uh journey uh even more effective as it is. So, what I also like to see is um what type of training do we do our um staff or stakeholders that are in the process of helping out the students? How many students will we helping out if possible? That's a big number. Of course, it's not easy to get, but uh be intentional

064about it and and get it as much as you can um as each day goes forward, each year go forward. And I think we'll come to um some sort of number >> and um really have a clear um action plan or clear of a plan of actions I should say and and just you know provide some solutions um going forward when you present it next time so that we will have a clear um visuals and have transparency where we could reflect on especially you know somewhere else besides you on the dice, you know, in a group meeting like this so that we could process our thoughts and our strategy to uh help out any way we can. So, you know, uh overall, I I really appreciate the work that we do here, I think, is

065phenomenal for our kids. The number of languages spoken in this school district. Um the number what 38,000 plus students that are uh socially economically disadvantaged. Um that's that's a big big number and for our um you know 6,500 staff and and other uh shareholder as well to to um to help out any way we can. I I think this is a phenomenal work and I just want to applause everybody that have uh helped out in this journey. So uh thank you and that's my recommendation that's my comment. Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you Miss Albiani. Thank you for the presentation. I think um it does stir a lot of um thoughtful questions and deep questions from the from the dis and some you haven't heard ahead of time to have a a adequate response

066which kind of puts you on the spot there. So I just want to recognize that. Um and I think they're really good questions though and I appreciate this introduction that allows us to have time to think to ask those and get very complete question answers in the future. So I I applaud that. Um I think one of the challenges we always have is time. Like we never have enough time to train our teachers. We never have enough time to train our staff. We there's so few days that we get them and they're there's so many days they are in front of students and then there's so much stuff that needs to happen outside that. So I just want to recognize that rub um between their what we would like to teach everybody and I believe

067what they would like to learn and then the personal need for for their lives. So that's that's really hard I think. Um I appreciate Mr. Brewer coming and speaking always and um and I think it's exciting that he's pointing out um a new piece we've put in place and the success he's seen with it and the success we're having with that. And I think we run with those things very well in this district. Um we've searched for a good engine to to help a good part to help with that. And um and I'm excited because I know as speaking to people in our district how committed we are to restorative practices. And I really it's very encouraging to hear from people in that are forward- facing, student facing that this is the they believe this

068is the right work and um it is the right work according to um evidence-based information all those things but it's it's I don't know I I just appreciate hearing it's the right work here and I appreciate Deia has gone to something with that. I have not been trained on that. I've been trained on many of these things but not that. Um, so I just really really appreciate that feedback and um, we'll look forward to the next ones and I just want to encourage our board members as you think about these things, get your questions ahead of time because we do so much amazing stuff and they'll come up with five things to tell you at the DICE, but we're really doing 15 and and so let's get a chance to show off. Um, this is

069a it's a shot it's a highlight part. Um, and it really is so everybody knows there's a diversity of things available. >> Thank you, Mr. Jang, did you have something to add? >> I I just wanted to add that um in this process of being one of uh the person that provide solution um as a board member, I encourage everyone including my board member to you know visit um departments um so that you could talk to the representative in those departments so you have a better understanding of what they go through. I I have done that many many times in a different department and I'm really proud of the fact that I did that because that gives me a better understanding of what can I do to add into this uh resolution journey. Thank you.

070>> Thank you, Miss Davis. >> Thank you for the presentation and I appreciate the time yesterday that you gave us in um the deeper dive. Um, I want to thank Miss Balerini for picking up on the classified piece. That's one that I keep hammering. They're part of the team and they need the tools to be able to be a part of that. Being at a school site, I was lucky to see this work in action and to see the kids grow under that first tier of learning how to be self-aware, self-regulation, um, responsible decision- making and working on relationships. Um, it it's amazing to watch and I would recommend any of our board members to go out and talk to some of our kids. They're learning tools that we as adults never learned um until

071we got older. Um listening to second graders hash out a problem and come up with a resolution is just amazing to watch. Um you did say that the supplemental concentration funds were designed to support the MTSS plan at the school sites. What oversight is there to ensure that those monies are being used to support the MTSS? Because also working at we know we got to pull monies from all different places for different things. Do do we >> watch? >> Yeah, if I could clarify, you know, it's it's really the the site LCAP process identify school need. Uh but because the framework encompasses you know our our learning m uh vision and mission um they are identifying elements that that need um specific support at that site uh because of the particular demographic they serve or

072um the students that they're that they're um serving. So that that now in terms of oversight uh Mr. Seri and his department lead that LCAP process. Um um I can allow Mr. Sudi to speak specifically, but each site submits their plan and each site plan is reviewed. Um and that's an extremely I don't want to speak for Mr. Sudi, but informative because that's where we at the district see trends in need and that informs you know from a systematic perspective you know what we may need to support centrally. uh if we see most of the schools are looking at this, it's very very informative. Uh but at the same time, it allows for that autonomy which I think is how the LCAP was designed to to address local need. Uh but each site develops their

073own LCAP plan and submits that to to us. I don't know if you want to add anything, Mr. Sudi. >> Thank you, David, and I appreciate the I appreciate the question. Um, our our LCAP, as folks know, is set up so every action that's identified in our LCAP. There are some that have a Y and some that have an N. And I won't turn this into an LCAP. Been doing it for so long. If I hear the word LCAP, I'm like a dog that chases chases a car down the street. Um, but uh the Y means that it's contributing. So we consider that it's principally directed toward the unduplicated student subgroups and that but that isn't the only thing that we include in the LCAP or else people may look at that and say so

074is this all you do? Um so we have some that have an N meaning no it's not principally directed um toward those unduplicated subgroups. So our LCAP itself is set up and aligned to our four strategic goals. So in that sense, everything that we're doing comes back and those strategic goals line up directly with MTSS. Your question regarding our schools, we do push money out to our schools and it's done formulaically based on the percentage of kids that unduplicated students that they uh that they have in their schools. And we do track all of that. And so in a site we refer to a site LCAP. really um it's a single school plan state um according to the state but we've designed it to align to our LCAP and so we have oversight at the

075site level our administrators are writing those goals using those monies and then tracking whether or not progress is being made but so do our directors of elementary and secondary education so do our program directors all of those folks are reviewing those goals and research and evaluation is heavily involved in that And so that's specifically the what you're referring to, Miss Davis, that specific action that's identified, one for elementary and one for secondary is referring to those monies that we do give. And it's discretionary, meaning they can use it in the way that they feel is best, but it has to be principally directed toward those student subgroups. And then we're looking at the outcome of those actions every single year and determining whether they should be continued, continued and expanded or actually discontinued if they

076aren't showing the progress that were was designed to do. >> Thank you. I I just wanted to bring that out so that people understood the level of um data that is being used in in these cases. So, thank you. Right. Uh thank you very much for the presentation. Um always always appreciate getting the constant refresher every year about uh the work that we do. I think it's incredibly important. Um I I also wanted to say I appreciate the emphasis uh on on how MTSS supports our central mission uh supports student learning. I think I've been harping on that for a year. Uh I think you know talking about how all these things are interconnected and how they support each other is incredibly important um since we are an educational institution. So I appreciate it. I

077have no questions beyond that. So thank you very much. >> Thank you. We appreciate the support. >> All right. Next up uh let's talk 202425 LCAP needs analysis results and budget priorities. Mr. Let's take a five minute break. Thank you. We'll be right back. All right, folks. Let's start moving back towards our seats so we can get started again. All right, I think we're ready to get started again. Mr. Sherudi, to you. Well, thank you, President Vargas, and uh officially good morning uh members of the board, Superintendent Hoffman and Miss Avalos. Um appreciate being able to pair these two presentations up. Um lots of crossover between uh the work with MTSS um and the results and what we'll be talking about here. So this presentation, if if you notice, it's two things. Um, and this

078is in many ways similar to what we did, and I realize some uh board members uh are were not here at the time, but there's portions of this presentation that are directly aligned to what we did last December because uh about this time every year, I'm joined by um Jeremy and Caitlyn, my friends and colleagues from the Department of Research and Evaluation. And this is where we share our perspective survey results. In just a minute or two, I'm going to turn it over to to uh Caitlyn. And uh then Jeremy will take over because what we're doing is we're going to provide the results of the perspective survey. And then what we'll be doing is we'll be talking uh about information related to the to the board priorities because we're looking at um alignment between

079those budget priority positions and the needs that have been identified by our educational partners. Just as a reminder um the work that was done I appreciate the comment um earlier um acknowledging the first question of the survey that survey we've been working on for um many years now um and it came into play with respect to the LCAP which began in 2014 and it was soon after that that we began to work uh on the survey itself and I use these numbers Because the first time we administered the survey, Jeremy may be able to go back and dig up the number, but it was less than 2,000 respondents that we had the first time we did it. And you'll see the numbers because it's tens of thousands that we receive now. But the construction of

080this has it hasn't changed so distinctly that we can't compare results from one year to the next but it has continued to evolve and we've identified 34 priority areas and you'll see those in just a second and those those emerged based on the feedback. It was professional perspective, but it was also the feedback that we received from our educational partners. And where we really focus heavily are those areas where our respondents have said, "We feel this is really important, but we're dissatisfied or we're very dissatisfied. We zero in heavily." And you'll see that in just a little in just a little bit. But this is the basic structure. Um, it aligns to our strategic goals. Um and we note that it's updated annually. Uh priority areas originally developed in collaboration with Westad. So that's part

081of how we constructed this and then it's updated annually as it indicates if we have lowrated areas or we add emerging concerns. So that's how we we do this that we take uh the the feedback that we are receiving to tweak and continue to adapt uh the instrument itself. Not going to read through all of these, but this is where you can see priority areas for academic success. And you will see some of these when you see some of the top priorities that have been identified by the either our students, staff or our parents. These are the priority areas for safety and wellness. or family involvement. It aligns with strategic goal three. So, just want to make a couple of comments and then I'm going to turn this over uh to Caitlyn. Um, one of

082the things we've been focusing on because you'll see the numbers, um, is improving our ability to capture the parent perspective. You'll see the numbers. They're they're fairly significant, um, in terms of, uh, parent participation with the with the survey itself. We view our staff and our students as captive audiences. So, the expectation was 100% of our kids and 100% of our staff. And with parents, the expectation for our schools because that's really where the the source of this comes from is we wanted our schools each school to increase the number of parents at at each school. And so with that, I'm going to turn it over and let Caitlyn walk you through uh some of the data. Before I do, one one uh I want to note and she'll reference this. Uh a change that

083we did make is this last year was the first year that we went 5 through 12th grades. Prior to that it was 3 through 12. And after analyzing for a number of years the questions and determining whether or not they were developmentally appropriate and getting feedback from classroom teachers, uh we we adapted this to grades 5 through 12. And you'll see that you would think that the numbers would decline. And actually our numbers are very similar to what we had in the past. So it indicates that we actually have increased the numbers of our fifth through 12th graders particip 5 fifth through 12th grade participation uh in that survey. With that Caitlyn hey good morning and just to recap a little bit here. So this chart shows the number of responses we've received for the

084LCAP needs survey for the past eight years. Um for 202425 we received 43,49 survey responses reflecting a 9.9% decrease from the prior year. This decline as Mr. mentioned is due to fewer student responses as the student perspective survey is now administered beginning in grade 5 rather than grade three. In 2023 24 the district contracted with the institute for social research at Sacramento State to conduct cognitive interviews with third and fourth grade students regarding our survey questions. Their findings consistent with research and evaluations prior work showed that these younger students had difficulty understanding the items making the instrument invalid for those grade levels. In addition, concerns had been raised previously within the district about the reliability of survey data from lower grade levels. Based on this evidence, the district made the decision to discontinue administration of

085the student perspective survey in grades three and 4 beginning in 202425. If we had continued serving third and fourth graders and their response rates had matched those from prior years, we would have received about 8,500 additional responses in 2012425, bringing the total to nearly 52,000. Parent responses increased by 20.6% 6% and staff responses by 5.3% from the previous year, reflecting the focused efforts of district leaders to encourage participation. This past year, 75% of students in grades 5 through 12 submitted a response. Among parents, we received responses from 27% of the households in the district. And for staff, we showed a 73% response rate. Across all groups, response rates were highest in elementary and lowest at high schools. As we look at the variation in response rates by ethnicity, we see that student response rates ranged

086from 65% for American Indian students to 81% for Asian students. Among parents, response rates ranged from 13% for parents of Hispanic students to 66% for parents of American Indian students. Staff participation ranged from 17% for white staff to 70% for Filipino staff. I should mention that we are unable to report staff response rates for the two or more category because of how the district collects employee demographic data during the hiring process. Staff who declined to report their ethnicity and those identifying with two or more ethnicities are grouped into a single category. Among programmatic groups, participation was lower for foster youth, students experiencing homelessness, and students with disabilities compared with all students generally. For parents of students in programmatic groups, participation was much lower than all parents generally, except for parents of foster youth. We received

087168 survey responses from parents and guardians who self-identified as having a foster youth compared to 100 households identified in district records. This overcount likely reflects multiple responses from the same household or differences between um self-identified data and district records. We are unable to report out participation for parents of socioeconomically disadvantaged students as we don't ask parents on the survey about their socioeconomic status. And finally, we look at survey participation by region. Among the comprehensive regions, student participation ranged from 69% in the Elkrove and Lagona Creek regions to 84% in the Floren and Monterey Trail regions. Among parents, participation was lowest in the Floren region at 17% and highest in the Pleasant Grove region at 34%. And among school staff, participation ranged from 83% in the Monterey Trail region to 101% in the Elkrove region. Staff

088surveys are anonymous and theoretically staff can submit more than one response and that is how we reached over 100% in the Elkrove region. And now on to the actual survey results. This table shows the top 15 priority areas for students in terms of importance. When we look at the ranks of the top 15 priorities for students um in 2024 25 and compare them to the ranks in 2023 24, we see there is consistency over time. All of the top 15 priorities in 2024-25 were also within the top 15 in the previous year either with no change in rank or a slight shift. This table only displays two years of data but the trends in ranks have been consistent across multiple years. And on this table in ter instead of showing the rank by importance we

089show the percentage of students who rated these priority areas as very important or most important. This scatter plot shows the relative importance and satisfaction for each priority area among students. Um, just to orient briefly to this chart, each dot represents a priority area. Horizontally or on the x-axis, importance increases from left to right. So things on the right hand side of the graph were more important to students than things on the left hand side. Satisfaction is shown vertically or on the y ais. Students expressed higher satisfaction for things on the top than for things on the bottom. The idea is that we place each priority area here according to its importance and satisfaction ratings in order to get a broad picture of what we're doing well and what is a priority for improvement. We've divided

090these priorities into four regions separated by the dashed light blue lines placed at 75% to denote areas of high and low importance and high and low satisfaction. The logic behind using 75% as the threshold for high importance and satisfaction is that it constitutes three out of four people who consider a priority area to be important and three out of four people who are satisfied with current service. Students were highly satisfied with the current level of service provided in 23 out of the 25 priority areas we asked them about. On the bottom right, the orange region indicates high importance and low satisfaction, which would be areas critical for improvement. In this region, we see cleaner, updated bathrooms. Open-ended responses indicated that students would like bathrooms that are restocked and cleaned more frequently during the day and

091that vaping be reduced while ensuring all restrooms remain open and accessible. We also see nutritious high-quality meals here. Um, open-ended responses indicated that students would like a greater variety of options that are both nutritious and tasty. We do want to point out here that although we have two priority areas that could be improved for students, the satisfaction for both areas was um still greater than 50%. 56% of students were satisfied with the bathrooms and 67% were satisfied with the food. Um, we intentionally set the bar fairly high for ourselves in using the 75% threshold to denote high satisfaction. Um, moving on to results for parents. Um, like students, a safe school and good teachers were the top priorities. And like students again when we compare the ranks across two years we see that there is

092consistency over time. 14 of the top 15 priorities in 202425 were also within the top 15 in the prior year. The one priority area from 2023 24 that fell off the list was frequent gradebook updates. And here we show the percentage of parents who rated these priority areas as very important or most important. Now looking at importance and satisfaction for priority among parents, parents were highly satisfied with the current level of service provided in 23 out of the 27 priority areas we asked them about. On the bottom right area for the most important priorities with low satisfaction, we see bathrooms and food which um was the same as for students and then also traffic control. Comments indicated that parents would like more traffic management by school staff to help improve safety and traffic flow. And

093again, we would like to highlight that parent satisfaction for all three of these areas was still above 70%. And finally, moving on to staff feedback. Like students and parents, good teachers and a safe school were the most important for staff as well. And like students and parents, again, when we compare the ranks across two years, we see there is consistency in that all of the top 15 priorities in 2024-25 were also within the top 15 in the previous year. And here we have the percentage of staff who rated these priority areas as very important or most important. Staff were highly satisfied with the current level of service provided in 19 of the 28 priority areas we asked them about. There were three high importance, low priority are excuse me, high importance, low satisfaction priority areas

094for staff. Uh one was small class sizes. Um, in the comments, staff suggested hiring more teachers to reduce class sizes. Another was clean, well-maintained, inviting schools. Comments mentioned ants, ants, cockroaches, trash on the ground, and general needing more custodial staff. And lastly, collaboration and planning time for teachers. Um, staff indicated needing more time to meet. And with that, I will turn it back over to Mr. Seruti. Thank you very much, Caitlyn. And again, I referenced this. I'll be I'll be very brief and turn it right back over to Jeremy, but our budget priorities um for the board and and those that may be watching or view this later, budget priorities, that's not something that that's new to Elkrove. Um it was uh it's it's been for um more than a decade in terms of what

095we see as budget priorities and then when we have a dollar to spend, how are how are we spending that money and what are we spending it on and why and so that's what uh we've been doing and we have been working with um you'll be getting information in just just shortly from Jeremy, but we have been um the budget priority process this here is unlike anything that we've experienced previously because um I can't recall a time if ever we had an infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars into an educational system following a pandemic. And so that's what we're um addressing. We won't be addressing that specifically here, but what this is doing is this is providing you further information um about that will be thinking alignment between what Caitlyn just said and these

096budget priority positions that we have. And um the other thing that we'll be doing is uh we're meeting with the LCAP collaborative group on Thursday. the LCAP collaborative group that's uh two to four representatives from each of our labor groups and uh cabinet and we've been working with that group for years in terms of uh both the development of the LCAP and the budget priority process. So um the board is very familiar with this. I just came up and wanted to make that statement for folks that may be viewing this later on in terms of u how to budget priorities align to um the perspective survey. That perspective survey isn't the only source of information that we use when we're making decisions, but it is a major um data source that we use when we

097are making making decisions. And ultimately what we want to do, and that's in November, is bring um the cabinet's recommendation to the board in terms of uh what we should do moving forward. So, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Jeremy. Jeremy reminded me I have one or two more slides remaining and I don't want to do that. Um and these are very very important. This is what we put out and thank you Jeremy. Um these five uh priority foundations have been in place. Uh superintendent Hoffman established these with the um with the LCAP collaborative group and cabinet. And so maintaining fis fiscal solveny and they are in order of operation. um maintaining fiscal solveny, maintain and evaluate what we've built over the over the past years. We want to remain competitive. We

098want to build upon what we've already started. And after all of those, if we had uh money to spend, after we had all those considerations, we'd comp we contemplate new programs and initiatives. the budget priorities themselves. I won't go through these um item by item, but um they're all listed on the next couple of slides, so I'll just uh pause for just a moment. And the board has seen all of these previously. And as folks are looking over these, I just want to also call out um there's a strong partnership there always is among all cabinet members, but in particular um with uh Dr. Coats and Amari um because there's two elements, actually several elements to this, right? There's um the positions themselves. There's the inputs, outputs, and outcomes um of what those positions are

099doing. there's the money that's associated with it and then there's monitoring the FTE as well and so they're integral partners in this work and I appreciate that very much. Here are the remaining budget priority positions and this is true as of late last week that dollar amount and that FTE and the difference between that 235.44 442 and the original is about 140 positions. So there are about 140 positions that are no longer here. I don't want to freak anyone out like we just eliminated positions. That's not what we did. There were some positions that we couldn't secure um we couldn't get people into those positions. And people may ask why and it's because people knew that these were on soft money and so it can be challenging. So for example, we were um ideally we

100would have uh an elementary counselor in every one of our schools and we were unable to do that. So we shifted our model to a one to two school model. So that's just an example of that. And if we had positions where people left the position, we didn't backfill those positions and we rarely do um on one-time funded positions. With that, I'm going to turn over to Jeremy. This is still mine. Chris is talking about the budget priorities. These are these are the goods and services that are associated with those people. So these two slides, these are the people and there are goods and services that are associated with this. It's 10 approximately $10 million a year and these are also under consideration the history of what we've done. So this shows the activities we've

101done, the groups we've met with and this leads up to November 4th. Okay, I guarantee this is Jeremy. >> Thank you, Mark. So, as you saw in the process history slide, we've tried to be thoughtful in developing a process for soliciting input from various educational partners that efficiently utilize participant time, solicited data that's meaningful to the process and was was responsive to participant needs. We started this journey in winter 2024 with two groups that were uniquely positioned in terms of their exposure to all the work that these positions have been involved in either due to their positions of leadership within our schools or via their leadership in the district's LCAP collaborative. These were our school principles and our labor leaders. We piloted a two-stage rating and ranking process with the primary goal of soliciting their

102feedback on the process and how we could improve it so that they felt empowered to provide the most meaningful data related to priority among these positions. Building on our learnings from the pilot ranking process, we developed a cluster ranking process with our principles and labor group leaders to set their input on how to prioritize prioritize these positions and services for future funding. Through that process, we asked our principles to rate each of the priorities that pertain to their segment of schools as a one, two, or three, with one as the highest priority and three as the lowest. We asked them to use an equal number of ones, twos, and threes within each section to ensure that we'd be able to discern higher priorities from lower priorities. This table shows the average cluster ratings of the

103various positions and services that are housed at our elementary and secondary schools. Green cluster ratings indicate higher priority and yellow cluster rankings indicate lower priority. And on this table you can see the average cluster ratings of the various centralized positions and services that support our programs and schools. In addition to the valuable perspectives of our school and labor leaders, there's been a desire to get a sense of how these various positions have impacted student outcomes. For a great many reasons, it was not feasible to conduct impact evaluations um true outcome evaluations on all of these individual positions that would be useful for high stakes purposes like determination of future funding. So while we can't easily draw a through line from individual positions or people to student outcomes, we do know what these positions do and

104how they support various programs through their outputs. When we think about the school level factors that influence student outcomes, we generally think of them as a component of an educational program. And when I say an educational program, I don't necessarily mean a branded initiative or project, but rather the key facets or aspects of the educational program that schools deliver. Teaching and learning, establishing and maintaining emotional and physical safety, seeding motivation, engagement, and incentivizing positive behavior. For instance, we know that both elementary and uh elementary campus supervisors and elementary vice principles both contribute to implementation of the PBIS program through their work at their schools. And we can do an impact evaluation for a program like PBIS because we have the counterfactual leverage to do so. We can deconstruct how the program is implemented into various

105measurable outputs. And then we can do the measurement work to tease apart variation in quantity and quality of those outputs at schools. Um and then we look at how uh the continuum of implementation our schools is associated with variation in student outcomes. And in fact, external research shows in our local impact evaluations have validated that well-implemented schoolwide PBIS programs are associated with lower suspension rates and better school climate. However, these programs are never the sole responsibility of a single person or position. Once again, using the example of PBIS, that program has many well- definfined aspects of implementation and all of them involve multiple people uh varying positions working together to make sure the program is working. Implementation program is always a schoolwide team sport. For PBIS, teachers can teach positive behavior expectations, but if the

106entire staff isn't also modeling and reinforcing those positive behaviors, our students will sense that adults don't practice what they preach. We also know that outcomes are never the product of a single program. Sure, PBIS is associated with lower suspension rates, but so is the instructional framework. Use of the six instructional principles improves student learning and when kids feel successful in their learning u they experience self-efficacy which leads to fewer disruptive behaviors and thus fewer suspensions. In summation, our approach uh towards assessing impact of these positions is assessing the counterfactual of the outputs. We know what these positions do and what they support. We know what would happen if these positions went away. our schools would not receive the outputs that they're currently providing which may negatively impact various educational programs. We believe there's better value

107in centering uh decisions on future program impact via anticipated outputs rather than focusing on the tenuous theoretical impact of these positions on outcomes in the past. So, what we've been working towards is compiling a comprehensive data set for each position that sums up as much of the relevant information as possible to help inform your decision. For each position, we've created a pair of slides which will be distributed to the board in an upcoming board communication that outlines all the information that we've collected. We have included an example slide here to walk through how to read these. Generally on the front of these slides, we detail the total number of full-time equivalent or FTE, which roughly correspond to the number of full-time employees in each position, the total cost for that FTE in terms of total

108compensation, the types of schools to which they correspond, and their alignment with our district strategic goals. Additionally, we report the cluster ranking data that we solicited from our principles in the LCAP Collaborative, which is highlighted in red in the upper right hand corner. The way to read these cluster rankings is that one is considered the highest rank and three would be the lowest. While we only asked our principles and labor leaders to rank these positions, we did want to include the perspectives of all of our educational partners as they relate to these positions as well. To that end, program leaders have identified the relevant LCAP needs areas that are most supported by the position, which are bolded, indicated by the green arrows on the left hand side of the slide. To the right of each

109of these bolded LCAP needs areas, we include the percentages of students, parents, and staff who indicated the area as most or very important on the most recent perspective survey. One example of which is highlighted in yellow. On the page that follows for each position, on the left hand side, we delineate the types of work that these positions are engaged in and how they support our students and schools, which we refer to as outputs. On the right hand side of the slide, we include supporting data which attempt to capture the magnitude or volume of service that are provided aligned to the various outputs described on the lefth hand side of the slide. Taken together, this set of slides tells the story of the resources expended, how they align with the broader context of the district's work,

110how our educational partners have experienced them over the last four years, and describes what they do and how much they've done. And with that, I will turn the microphone back over to Mark to talk about the next steps in the process. Thank you very much, Caitlyn and Jeremy. And just to wrap up, I mentioned this previously, uh, November 4 is the target date where we will bring a recommendation to the board for consideration. It's wrapped up into all the work we're doing. And this is exactly why we wanted to compare or or combine our uh perspective survey information with the budget priority work because it's directly supporting decision- making and our job is to bring you a recommendation that uh you feel good about and that's supported by a process. Um you will be receiving

111this Friday um these slides right here um the example of campus supervisors. There's currently 29 different positions, different from FTE, right? But 29 different positions. So, you will be getting um this information for each of those budget priority positions and that'll be coming out on Friday. With that, we're happy to respond to any questions or take any comments you have. >> Thank you very much, Mr. Yang. Do we have any blue cards on this item? Yeah, President Vgas, we do have uh few uh blue cars on this item. Calling on U Diane Kel Campbell. Okay. Didn't see uh is C A U E. >> Oh no, different. C A M PB E L L. >> What is it? C A M PB L. >> Okay. Yeah, that looks good you to me. So, okay. Go

112ahead. >> Hi, my name is Diane Campbell. I'm the president of Ask Me Local 258, one of the bargaining units here. Um, once again, I am advocating for those ask me positions up there. You'll see the safety and security um is a concern on campuses. So that is with the elementary campus supervisors that are part of the Esser positions that have been um created as well as the S SOA2s at the elementary uh school campus as we continue to grow bigger and have a um higher student population. I think the extra support staff in the office has also been beneficial. So I want to advocate for those positions. I think they're worthwhile. They're useful. you're seeing it in the surveys also that you want a clean um campus that is a priority of the of

113the students as well as the parents and once again I would like to be forward thinking. I know that LCAP has really been focused on our ESSER funds for the past few years once we got that that block of money. However, we are the fourth largest district. We have four or four campuses in the next sixish years. We need to maintain what we have built, which is one of the budget priorities. I understand we're talking probably more about maintaining the programs that we've developed over the ESR funds. But we need need to maintain what we have already built as a school district, which are these wonderful campuses for our students. We need to make sure there are clean. They are safe. If you look at the facilities master plan, it also talks about wanting safe

114campuses, more trees for shade, but yet we need the sidewalks clean because there's branches and um sap that drips down onto the campuses. So, I'm advocating for support staff, more custodial. The custodians usually are appointed when we build these new schools, but again we are not increasing the number of maintenance and operation workers. Um we have three locksmiths for the entire district and they do everything in house. We have um I think eight HVAC people. Only six of them are during the daytime. And once again, we want our classrooms uh safe and proper climate for our students and our teachers. And we only have six people to do 63 sites within the campus and going to be up to 66 sites. We need the infrastructure. We have 16 payroll uh personnel for almost over 6,000

115employees. We need the infrastructure. We need um computer programs, you know, to help uh get off of paper and get into digital formats. So, you hear me every time at the schoolboard meetings. I appreciate it. But I would like to be forward thinking. I know LCAP we're focused on one part of the money, but we need to be moving forward because we are going to have these positions coming up as well that we're going to need to provide safe, secure campuses. So, thank you. >> Thank you. All right. Up next is Robert Brewer, followed by Gina Moslin. Uh, sure. Come on up. Good morning. My name is China Moslin. I'm a prek12 instructional coach in the educational equity department. First time on the microphone. and I stand before you today to urge you to make

116the educational equity department a board priority. Our department was built on hope. Um, seven years ago, our community spoke at a town hall after a painful racist incident at one of our high schools. They demanded mandatory diversity training, restorative practices, more educators of color, and dedicated support for our most vulnerable students. Since then, I have seen ed equity evolve in a way that gave me real hope. As someone who has spent almost 40 years of my life as a student and employee of this district, my colleagues and I have been on the ground at sites planting and cultivating these seeds of change through student programs, educator coaching, and on-site collaboration. The past three years, our department has been the epicenter of the district-wide implementation of restorative practices. And um my region, the region I support

117was the um res was the pilot for restorative practices. So we finished the the workshops um in the first year while everybody is now in workshop 4. As the coach for the pilot region, um I've been working in classrooms in every content from special education to electives from kinder through high school. Um I've been able to see firsthand how essential it'll be to continue supporting sites after the training modules are completed. I've done demo lessons. I've modeled circles for students and adults. Um, I've collaborated with site admin to develop systemic changes to sustain tier one RP at the site level. And what I have found is that slow, deliberate, and supported change is starting to root. Um, for me personally, I want nothing more than for every student to believe that they can be free

118to be exactly who they are, that they belong, and their voice matters. And I know that my colleagues, they believe it too. And to be honest with you, we are too valuable to let go of in uncertain times. We are trained in arbinger, epic, compassionate dialogue, ri transformative seal and restorative practices. of the eight remaining instructional coaches, we are highly trained teachers um with over a hundred years of combined classroom and site experience. And three of us were EGUSD teachers of the year. Um let us honor the community's call and continue to invest in lasting changes for our community. Let us build on this progress, not abandon it. Please prioritize the educational equity department. Thank you. >> Thank you. All right. Up next, Robert Moore, followed by Rosa Rela. >> Hello again. Um, I think

119it's important to say that um, I left my dream job as a teacher to become an equity coach because I wanted to make a real impact and a real change um, for our most marginalized students. And I wanted to highlight some of the ways that the equity department has made real change or what we believe is real change. And the equity department that I'm speaking of is eight coaches, four program educators, and three and a half program specialists. So, we had we've done four restorative practice workshops for every school in the district and over 2,400 people have responded to our surveys. And on a one to five for this was a good use of my time for hostages, mind you, people that have to be there and don't have a choice on a Friday afternoon

120where they would rather be teaching students than be in some horrible meeting. We got a four out of five average on 2,000 plus responses. Right? This is landing and because we have amazing people doing the work. Here are some of the other things we're providing. We've done grading for equity workshops at more schools than we can name. We have timely workshops including the Royal Chico Air Force PD that's currently being offered. A Dia del Dos Muertos PD that's incredible. A Ruby Bridges blocked a school day um PD that if you haven't seen you should go. We have one on disrupting dehumanization in education, right? Affirming the humanization of boys and young men of color. We have developing behavior through a cultural lens which we've actually delivered to pair professionals at various schools, right? We have

121confronting your own bias and privilege. We have the problem with punishment, right? Which it directly addresses the school to prison pipeline and discretionary spaces, the consequences of responding in the moment. Both of which are going to be delivered to all of our reach candidates, right? We did an interpersonal RIIR practice for every single person in the district. A effect of communication for HR among other spaces, right? and we did um our castle, our person who does um the student equity councils is currently working with the castle organization to do youth participatory action research for an entire school. This is incredible work. But I want to remind you that every tool is only as good as the user. There is no such thing as a user proof tool and we can't have culturally responsive practices without

122culturally responsive practitioners. And that's been our district's problem. We have done a lot of things in a color-blind way and we haven't taken seriously the need to actually create the cultural responsiveness in every single person that touches our students and that the equity coaches and the program educators and our program specialists have become trusted members of our communities and we're trying to truly create the culturally responsive practitioners that are actually going to help RP land, MTS land. all of the classroom inclusive practices that we're talking about will only work if the people mean it and are trained to do it and actually act on educational justice. Otherwise, it just won't land. And I think we have a department of dedicated humans that are working incredibly hard to make this land. True believers that actually think

123that all of our kids deserve the best. And I think that we're a worthy priority. We're roundoff error. You know what I mean? Like we're worth the money. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. All right. Last blue car in this item. Rosa Ruella, come on up. >> Hello. Good morning. I am the program educator for the student equity council that I have the wonderful opportunity and good morning um members of the of the board. I am pleased to share the important work our student equity program is doing. tremendously opportunity it provides our students. This program is centered to ensure that all students regardless of background or circumstances have equitable access to leadership, representation, and a voice with our school community. Through participation, students engage in meaningful dialogue. They develop leadership and advocacy skills. They

124also activate contribute to building an inclusive and supportive school culture. And the program not only addresses issues, it really is an equitable and a way to prepare our students to be thoughtful leaders uh that value collaboration, empathy, and civil civic responsibility. The equity um program reflects our district's commitment to foster and sense of belonging for every student and we are proud to provide this opportunity and I am so proud to be that face for these students and to help them advocate for themselves and be proud for themselves and provide the opportunity to be part of an ongoing effort to support both academically the success and their personal growth as an individual. I want to thank you for your continued support and hope that you continue supporting us and initiate the uplifting and empowering program that

125student equity is for our students. >> Thank you. That ends our blue card on this item. Board President, >> thank you very much. We'll move to board questions. Uh we'll start on the other end this time. Miss Davis. >> Um, thank you for the presentation. On slide 8, the great increase for staff participation. That was that was great to see that more. I imagine that's that they're seeing and trusting the process more and seeing results. Um, on the parents part of that slide though, is this all parents or is this just 5 through 12 parents? That's okay. I'm just confirming. >> Yeah, it is. It's Thank you. It It is all >> all Okay. And then on slide 12, are we working on improving the parent participation in the flooring area? >> We'll continue to

126do that. Really, our point people, I'm not putting all, you know, compliment or blame on on our site administrators. They they work very hard at this, but um >> uh Miss Ay and u Mr. Schwitzer do a really good job early on when this um when this comes out. So early in the spring, they're meeting with their principles. Principles who have higher rates than others are sharing best practices and things like that. So the the way that we set it up, as I mentioned earlier, our expectation is we should be able to get 100% of our kids fifth through 12th grade. We should be able to get 100% of our staff. And then what we're trying to do with our with our parents is whatever your number was, if you had 2,000 parents, get more

127the following year. >> Okay? >> And we're always open to suggestions because we try, as we indicated, we tried we we partner with closely with uh Lisa and the FACE department in terms of what strategies can we use and how can we make it easy on parents to be able to uh to provide us their perspectives. >> Okay. Thank you. Um on slide 15, when they were talking uh bathrooms came up on everybody's. Um, is there any way to get more feedback on that concerning what the actual concern is? Because no, working at a school site, being the wife of a custodians, I know bathrooms are cleaned hourly. They're stocked hourly. There's they have to document that that it's being done. I I don't know how much more cleaning and stocking could be done. So

128it'd be interesting to find out what the actual concern is there. >> Well, and we've got, you know, we've got various student groups that we have at our schools. Um, and so the idea of not just getting feedback from the kids of how can we make it um well, in addition to what's what specifically is is having them if they have a concern, what is it? But then the other thing is what might solutions be. our kids have valuable feedback in terms of the conditions that they're they're in and what may be causing those conditions, good, bad or indifferent. >> Okay. Yeah, it was just surprising was the the staff also and >> it's a great great suggestion and we're always trying to take another step to find out a bit more information. One one

129example on that. I know we're doing a lot of work with regards to the restrooms, but dividers dividers between urinals. Um kind of a simple simple concept, but it is something that actually came through um our student board member um a couple of years back. And as I'm going to school sites, I'm they're starting to show up. And so so there there's things we continue to to listen to um you know, perspectives and as Mark spoke to ideas that would make things better. And that's a simple one. And the adult piece is they're just going to get knocked over. They're just going to get vandalized. So, it's always been the reason you don't do it. But, you know what? They're there and um and they're they're sturdier than they used to be and and I

130haven't seen any that have been um vandalized in in my experience. So, those just one example of ways we're trying to make things better. >> Okay. Thank you. Because just bathrooms in general is just such an open question there. Um, on slide 28, could you tell me the difference between an AIT TK6 and an elementary AIT? Because you had one at the top of the slide and you had one at the bottom. >> The academic intervention teachers um in in general, they're supporting um predominantly the literacy needs uh of the kids. And so that's what's taking place at our elementary schools. And similarly at our secondary level when we have kids that are um showing gaps in their learning that's what they're there to do. And they're there to do a couple of things. One

131is they can be working directly with students and they can also be working directly with staff in terms of providing um some ideas about what they can be doing in their classroom. But the academic intervention teachers um particularly at the elementary level I be careful the term I use but it's fairly prescriptive um meaning certainly it doesn't take the creativity that a teacher could bring to the learning experience but it it's it's very formulaic in in the approach that we're taking. And the other thing that we're trying to be very careful about is uh if we're removing students from the f from first instruction from the classroom that they are in for their reading or mathematics for example um and then they're working with any intervention the success will not be as great as if

132those it's coupled with the regular classroom instruction and then they're provided the alternative. So, and Susan, specific to the question on um 28 um the the one that's at the top is um our um intervention teachers that are at our regular um sites and the work that they're doing. The one that's ranked lower is a is a position specific to foster youth. And that's what you see in the parenthesis. So, the and the site folks probably don't see the foster youth person as often as they see their academic intervention teacher on a daily basis. So from a priority of those two things, it's probably how that that happened. >> Okay. Thank you. That answered my question. So thank you. That's all my questions. >> Thank you. Thank you, Miss Alani. >> Um well, we all

133knew this day was coming. So uh first I'm going to start with the the surveys. Um I've sat on the board since as far back as these survey samples go and so we're killing it. Like we are headed in the right direction. Thank you for all the hard work. I feel like people now understand. Hopefully, they see at board meetings. We see what their answers are. They trust that we're listening to them. So, I I think you made that point. I think it's a it's a trust that's built up through the process that says it's worth my time to fill out because I they do put it they do look at it. So, thank you to everyone who's filling them out and please continue to do so. And congratulations to staff. It's it's great the

134growth that's happening there. Um, budget priorities have never been easy. And we ended up with this once-in-a-lifetime amount of money to do everything we've ever wanted. Like, I mean, it was really amazing how many things we were able to try and do. I can recall having a presentation about what they wanted to do for summer and going home and thinking, "Oh my gosh, that would be amazing. We're never going to be able to afford it." Well, a pandemic hit and the next summer we did that camp and my girls worked that camp as high school students. They went to that camp and worked it and saw the joy in children and the way we've changed what summer school looks like and becomes summer camp and becomes a positive experience. So, it's really it's very hard

135to think we're we're finally at this point where the money is running out, but I appreciate all the work that's been done to give us good information to make these decisions on. And I just um encourage everyone to be very thoughtful about the whole picture of what is the best for some of our students need more things. I it's just a very difficult process and and any ability you've done to be able to put a numerical number on that or a ranking on that and for our partners um in education to help us make those decisions because they are the people at the front line. I I just appreciate the time that's going into this and the incredibly thoughtful and thorough process we're going to partake in this. and um and it's not it's not

136easy and it's not taken lightly by any by any means. >> Thank you, Mr. Yang. >> Good morning, Steel. >> Good morning, sir. >> Just want to say thank you to all the presenters. Um I just want to say um great job on the presentation. Um, I love the data um that uh show us number of students and staff and parents and folks that uh actually took the survey. Um I thought that's well done and very transparent. Um great job on that. Uh it definitely could be challenging to uh get more participations on these sort of things. Um but uh yeah miss uh mention um it's a it's a progress that we have seen uh over the years. I've been here 5 years and she has been here longer than I have and uh yeah

137so I'm very pleased with this um as you present it. So with that said, um I also um think that the budget and you know the LCAP it it's it's pretty much the cornerstone of um our institution um because without the budget um really we we can't run this uh institution, right? So uh but we got to go with the data uh for the most part and it is true that we cannot uh measure a program success by the data itself. I think it's very difficult to do that 100% of the time. I do agree to that. uh but to a certain extension or certain extent I should say data does play a role of it because it's what we could uh rely on as far as feedback from our students, parents, staff and uh

138I'm sure a little bit from the board too member but even though it didn't show on this uh presentation but I know we uh we have a voice um and it it does matter as well. So with that said, um I just want to make a recommendation or two. Um with all the positive thing that I said, I think there's always room for improvement and that is um make sure that we provide feedback to our participants that take these surveys. Um I see some low numbers. Um the staff is one of them that it's pretty low. Um so I think uh it's important for us to really deep dive and say why is it low than any other groups right um is it because of this or that you know let's find out right and

139maybe maybe we lack of um showing them um what their survey or their their their opinions or their feedbacks um really gives us a direction to make a correction or or actually strategize to make things better. Let's give that feedback to them so that they they know that their voice matters and that kind of uh trigle down to the rest of the uh participants. Um same thing just make sure that they know that hey your voice matter and this is what we have done and going to do. So any type of communication I think is very helpful. So, um, but you know, I for one, uh, will definitely, um, going to have to make a decision with, uh, the rest of the board members to pick and choose what, uh, is going to continue and

140what's going to discontinue. And I know that uh, not everyone's going to be happy, but we going to um, rely heavily on feedbacks. uh rather is through um talking to folks or relying on these uh survey. So we'll do our best. With that said, thank you and I look forward to more to come. >> Thank you very much. Thank you, Miss Ballerini. >> Okay, it's a lot to go through. I have a I have couple notes on pages 24 and 25 as I'm looking at numbers. Um, let's just start at the top. Academic intervention teachers at TK6 site. It says 42. Don't Don't we have 43 elementary schools? So, okay. So, I guess I'm trying to figure out if we're looking at the budget realistically, shouldn't we figure that we have 43 and put the

141number in there? I don't know. That's just my thought. It's it's kind of hard because I also see that for campus supervisors and you know each person adds up that that's my thought about those. Um I just want to make sure that we are going to have one at those schools. Well, in next year it looks like we'll need um 44. Yay. Um let's see the next thing on here. Um, so counselors PPS credential at all TK6 sites. It says all TK6 sites and then I see the number 15 and they've spoken to us before. Um, they're obviously not at all of the school sites and maybe part of I'm not saying today necessarily, but I know you're going to give us the sheets with all the information on them. Is there a way to

142know how we choose where those counselors are? Is it title one schools? Is it something on their LCAP that they're wishing for? Or when maybe when the schools do their LCAPS, if they thought that was an important thing to have at their school site, maybe they put some money to it, too. Is that I don't know if that's something we can do >> to the the we originally we were looking to have one counselor at every elementary site. We couldn't we couldn't find the people to do that. So now we have the way it's currently set up is one for every two sites. So that's why you see the reduction in numbers. And then we don't have all the positions filled at any one given time. We're just showing what the the actual number of

143FTE that currently exist. But but we're not at a place. We we tried to go 1% but we tried for a year and a half two years and we just couldn't couldn't find the folks to do it. Um so we changed the model. >> Okay. And since there are 15 if we kept 15 on um I know a lot of them are shared between two school sites. I'm worried about equity out there with all of the sites and I hate to say this to them. Give them more work. No. What I'm saying is um is there a way to divide them equitably so that maybe they have three sites they work within? I don't know. It just seems like I feel like if we don't have one for every site, how can we make it

144equitable for all the sites to have the access? >> That'll be that'll be part of the recommendation. So, we're we're looking at um you know what currently what was currently put in place and then um conversations around okay so just I'm not going to use counselors but if we had 16 positions of some kind in place um and moving forward um what type of service have we been able to get done with the 16 you're going to get that information uh we're also asking um staff to look at so if we had 10 instead of 16 what would that what would that model um look like so that that's all part of the convers conversation that we're working our way through um as we bring a recommendation to the board. >> So we can look

145at implementation as well, not just the number that's there. >> Sure. >> Okay. Okay, that helps. Um I do have a question. Curriculum specialist is on here. I know we have more than two curriculum specialists. Do we know what two subjects that these two relate to? >> Uh that's the visual arts and performing arts. Oh, okay. That helps. Okay. And that's not out of the other funds, the the Prop 28. It's >> not currently. >> It's out of here. Ah, I like the word currently. That tells me something. Okay. Okay. Good. All right. Um, and the health assistants that are on here 3.875. Do we know are why they're 3.875 and is it elementary and high school? I mean all across the board. >> Yeah, I could give you where they are. We have we

146originally had uh I think four or five health assistants but as the health assistants have either resigned or moved on from that position we have not backfilled it but the health assistance we have more health assistants in the district. Right. Right. We have don't ask me but I think we have like 25 or 28 health assistant ones in our district in total. Only 3.8 Eight of them are currently financed uh or funded through the learning block grant. And they are usually serving kids at school sites. Some of them are at elementary, some of them are at middle, primarily at elementary uh where the kid has a medical need and that's their primary service. >> Okay. And I I know that special ed isn't entirely funded. We we understand that. So if something were to happen

147and we didn't have money for these, we obviously still have to provide the services. So that means we have to cut somewhere else. Correct. >> That will be part of the process. Yes, ma'am. >> Okay. I'm just I know a lot of this is just out there. I'm just voicing it. Let me just put it that way. Um >> just just to that point I think would be helpful for everybody is um as as we're doing um this analysis we have uh people's perceptions of um of the value of the work but there's also things that are required by law and so that's another piece another factor that we'll be considering so some people say well I would prefer us do this instead of that but the reality is by law we have to do

148this um so so there that that will be part of the process as we bring recommendations to the board Okay, perfect. Um, again on here you were talking secondary academic intervention teacher foster youth. So it says two of them are they since it's secondary do they cover all nine schools or are there additional ones funded already from other monies? >> No. what what those um positions um what what what they're doing is their itinerate and because of the fluidity of the foster uh program. >> Okay, that helps. Okay. Um oh, vice principles at various TK6 schools. Um it and it doesn't say elementary, high school. Oh, yeah, it does. There we go. TK6. Um is that for just the large schools like over a certain it a thousand or whatever is that how that works?

149>> Yeah, originally so we've reduced that number over time just through attrition and so those are sites where uh like at Herman Limebach they have the funds to do matching funds to pay for half of it and then the esser funds former former esser funds lbg pay for the other half of it. So the five up there are actual.5 positions spread out at 10 different sites. >> Oh, so it's actually 10. Got it. >> Okay, that makes sense. All right, that's all my questions about those two. And then um when I looked at it from home, I made some other notes. Uh slide 26, we're looking at the different um where are we? Here we go. Uh goods and services. Um, one of the things um that uh I know has come up quite a

150few times, student Chromebooks and connectivity. Um, I know I I was speaking with um Mr. Hoffman last last week, the week before, whatever about Chromebooks specifically about whether or not um we actually need Chromebooks at all the grade levels that they're being provided for at this point in time. Um and I I know that that's a possibility. We we may not be covering T we don't cover TK right now anyway. Um we did K during the pandemic and I don't believe we're covering kindergarten at this point, are we? with Chromebooks we are. Okay. So, kindergarten, first, second, and all the way up. Um, is that something we're looking at too as a possibility to save a little bit of money is maybe not give Chromebooks out to every student till maybe third grade or something

151like that? >> Yeah, we um we have carts um for our kindergarten classrooms and for our prek or TK classrooms. So, those devices don't go home. to clarify your questions on that. But at grade level 1 through 12, we do have a onetoone take-home program. One of the things that we need to consider that I just was reminded of last week is our instructional continuity plan, which is mandated by CDE. Um the instructional continuity plan requires that we have the ability to shift to distance learning. Um, we have a basically a 10day window at maximum just shifted to to distance learning which would predicate us having an inventory of devices for all of our students um to be able to shift to that model. Um, so we'd have to have them on hand um regardless

152of whether or not they were in the hands of students. we might be able to shift our focus in terms of um putting some lower grade classroom uh carts in perhaps um which would just kind of change the way we're doing things but it wouldn't u change the need for those devices um based on that instructional continuity plan. >> Thank you for that. I didn't I didn't know those words. Okay, perfect. And are we looking at possibly charging finally for kids that say misuse um Chromebooks? >> Um we are working with two vendors right now. We have a vendor that provides um our asset management and inventory for our Chromebook devices. We also have in the district a vendor that we utilize for things like um textbook damage payments and after school school dances, those

153kinds of things. Um a company called MSB or my schoolbox. Um, the company that creates the asset management tool is building an integration into their product that would allow us to potentially um, provide a mechanism whereby school sites could leverage charges against damaged Chromebooks. As far as implementing that program, there needs to be a lot of thought put into that, a communications plan, and a lot of decisions as to how um we might bring that um into production. >> Okay, that's that. Yeah, I've worked in libraries. I know there's a lot involved in all of that. Definitely. Oh, and one thing I was telling um Mr. Hoffman about too is um since I'm retired, I I can watch the news, etc. And I saw a program in Rockland where they actually have one of their

154CTE classes talks about repairing Chromebooks, etc. And by being able to do that inhouse, it saves them $100 to $200,000 a year. And he also reminded me that we might be able to do that um if um if it is not um work that is being done by employees in the district currently and it's not we do outsource that work. So I understand all of those come into play and >> hope hopefully um maybe we can look at that. That would be a a great thing. The kids I know would enjoy learning how to fix them and, you know, gives them money as as time goes on, something for them to do afterwards. So, that'd be great. >> Um, uh, that's all about Chromebooks. The other one on that same page, thank you, Mr. B,

155Mr. Barber. We had Brewer earlier. um social and emotional learning recess support is part of the goods and services as well. Now, is that the people to support the recess or is that like the prizes they get for the tickets? >> It's contracted services. Ms. Ay can share that information. >> It's contracted services that come into all of our school sites. >> People, >> they're people. Yeah. Not hired by the district, just through contract, but not our own employees. >> Okay. kind of the way we do. >> They do games at recess time. They teach the rules. They supervise. They work with kids on, you know, dealing with their frustrations with getting out or losing something. So, it's the combination of social emotional learning for like self-awareness, self-responsibility, >> and do we have group >>

156those at all of our schools or we do >> a few. Okay. >> Good to know. All right. Um, I think that's it. Thank you. >> Thank you, ma'am. >> Thank you very much, Miss Moore. >> Uh, thank you. This was definitely helpful to see the the survey results from our various stakeholders, and I think that's really important. Um, I I would also like to see that we um continue to look at how we can get more parent input because I think that's really important. Um, so I would love to see um more participation um as we continue to do those surveys. Um, one thing that I just want to mention is that um I've been advocating for for restrooms um for our students for many months. And I think these survey results um are

157indicative of that we need to improve our bathrooms for our students. And um I I tried to quickly write down um as during the presentation, but am I correct to say that the issues um mentioned by students were vaping um they wanted cleaner restrooms, restocked restrooms, and open restrooms. Is that am I correct or did I Okay. Yeah. And those are the issues that I have heard um from from our students and parents um on behalf of their students. And you know that is certainly represented here. And so I want to um to make sure we're addressing that and um it was mentioned in a comment we need to be forward thinking and we need to make sure that we have the staff to address these issues whether that's custodial or campus supervisors to supervise

158the bathrooms. um if we're having the issues like vaping that were mentioned um and then you know if they're not clean, if they're not open, I know many times that they're not open because of vaping or vandalism and if we don't have the supervision, we just close the bathrooms. Um and you know that's not acceptable and um so we need to address that. I don't know how um best to address it. I know specifically we're talking about different positions right now, but clearly that needs to be addressed. And so we do need to be forward thinking with that issue and we can't ignore it because our students deserve to have clean open bathrooms. They deserve to have bathrooms where there's not vaping going on. Um and so we, you know, we can't ignore that anymore.

159Um and then um the safe schools were number two for our students, number two for our staff, number one for our parents. And also our parents mentioned that they want security staff on campus. That was number five priority. And so um I think that's important to note because we look at these positions that we are discussing today. And yes, we have the the campus supervisors for elementary schools, but we also have um secondary schools that are lacking in safety staff. And again, that is feedback I've heard from staff, students, and parents that they want to see um more safety staff on campus. Um they want to have more campus supervisors. Um and um Something that was brought to my attention as well is that we did get rid of a ninth SRO position. We used

160to have an SRO for every for every region and now we only have eight. And so there are two regions that share an SRO. And um and again um we need more campus supervisors at our secondary sites. And that addresses two of the issues um safety and also the the restrooms. So, I I think as we look forward and think about where our staffing needs, you know, um and as especially as we grow, because we are growing, we need to consider those things. Um every every parent wants to know that their child is safe when they drop them off at school every day. Um, and then, um, I did have a question about the the ethnic studies specialist. Um, just to clarify for everyone, did the state did we receive ethnic studies funding from the

161state? >> No. So that that's going if we fund that position, we will not have um specific funding for that. Correct. >> Well, to be correct, they they did fund us originally with a with a one-time um um funding source, and we're still using um that funding source to train teachers and be ready to implement. So, we did have some onetime funding, but the ongoing funding that was that was potentially in this year's budget was not there. So if we fund that position, it will have to come the funding will come from elsewhere, right? >> Yes. >> Okay. I just wanted to make that clear for everyone. Um and for for everyone that might listen. Um and I appreciate the clarification about the curriculum specialists um that Miss Ballerini asked. Um, and I also appreciated

162learning about the Chromebooks um, that they're required by the CDE because I was also questioning if that's a way we could cut back for our younger students. Um, especially because some parents don't feel that that's um, a priority for their young students, but I understand if that is required by the CD. Um and then on page 26 um I just wanted to um to say that you know our reading skills to support our our our children. I believe it was um our t our kindergarten and first grade. Is that correct? >> Yes. >> Yeah. that I I certainly think that is an important priority um that we support continue to support um make that a priority and our special education um the special education digital and physical curricula and assessments. I think that is um

163really important. Um and then it was also mentioned I just want to mention one more thing. The staff mentioned that um that clean they also mentioned restrooms but they als it um clean schools was a low satisfaction for our staff and they mentioned ants and cockroaches. Again, that's another thing that I've heard and um again, we just need to consider that um yes, we have many priorities, but a clean campus and a safe campus and a campus where kids can access restrooms and those types of things are really important to the environment that our students um learn in and our and our teachers teach in. So, we need to be considerate of those things and and um figure, you know, look at how we can address those needs so that that our schools all are

164a welcoming place because that's part of having a welcoming um environment for everyone that goes to school. So >> one one note there just I I appreciate the comments and I'm agree and it did show up in the high importance low satisfaction grid but um more than 70% of staff um was were satisfied. So I just want to make sure for the public that it wasn't a 30% rating. Um it was relatively low but still above 70%. Um so work to do but a lot of good work being done. >> Yeah. I just wanted to point out though that it was one of the if I'm correct it was one of the lower satisfaction items for the staff. Is that correct? >> It was above 70% and our threshold of 75%. So it was below

165the 75% threshold. >> Okay. Yeah. But I just I mean when we're having staff tell us that there are cockroaches in their classroom and things, you know, that's not a welcoming environment. So obviously there's a lot of things um to improve, but I would like to point out that those are things that maybe we can do better and that may not necessarily be addressed in these priorities today. So thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you, Miss Baldwin. >> Thank you uh for the presentation and I just wanted to ask a couple clarifying questions. you kind of touched on one of them um for the FTE. Can you kind of just elaborate a little bit of what is meant by like a a point 875 or a 0.567 when we're talking about full-time employees? >> Yeah.

166So those numbers um so to make it easier um so if you're a full-time person in a position you're 1.0. Um, some of these also, Miss Ay hit on it, so it could say six and it actually could be 12 people who are halftime. So it's it simply means and so some of those fractions that may look odd, you want to keep in mind the number of periods in a given day and in some cases it's not just a clean, well, why isn't it just half? Um, so that's that's the number that we look at. and it's the time that they're spending in an individual school. But that that's what that is. In some cases, they can be if it's 10 FTE, it could be 10 people. But um there's it's always important to ask

167the story behind it of how many people actually is that. >> And to make it more complicated, Miss Bowen, um we have multiple schedules. So if you're on a traditional schedule, um a period is equal to a 0.2. But if you're in a block schedule for a 4x4, it's equal to a 33. So um so it it does get complicated. So the numbers the numbers get a little bit odd sometimes depending on the the schedule that the person may be working within. >> Thank you. And then um on slide I think it's the slide nine where there was the note mentioned about um the research was done and it was demonstrated that it was not a good idea to be giving kids um third grade and below the survey because it just wasn't um developmentally

168appropriate. Is there maybe an effort to try and um like uh engage parents of those age groups, those grade levels to capture their uh perspective on the survey? Um and if so, it would be interesting to see how many parents of those grades um are able to complete the survey so that we just have a voice there. Um it'd be also interesting maybe to if we if we were to share that um piece with the elementary schools that your kids that are K through third, this isn't really an appropriate, you know, survey for them to do, but if the parents do it, it really allows us to see more into um that input. So I was just curious, do we have we considered that or do we do something similar to that? Well, we're always

169looking to increase the number of parent participation, but you this is the first year we've done done it this way and your point is a good one. And so we don't want those kids necessarily their their experiences to be silent. Um so how might we uh how might we do that? And it could be done both through the classroom teacher but also the parent. So it's a good idea. >> I think that's all. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Michael, could I just one more thing? >> Yes, please. >> In response to Bis Moore's um working at a school, uh the I just want to clarify that we don't have cockroachinfested schools. Um a large portion our staff created by bringing food and things into the classrooms that they are instructed not to on

170a regular basis. But almost every ant or pest is the result of of food being brought into the classrooms and left in the classrooms. Um, and the cockroaches are generally the outside cockroaches that everybody gets in that come up from the sewer systems. They're removed, but I I I don't believe we have cockroachinfested classrooms out there. And our M does an amazing job responding with pest control anytime we call. >> Yeah. My response was just and to based on the survey and then feedback I've heard from individuals, but I appreciate your feedback. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you everyone. Um, and thank you for the presentation. Uh, I have a couple of quick clarifications. Um, I think, uh, Mr. Superintendent, you mentioned a little bit about what the recommendation is going to look like

171from staff, but could you give us a little bit more information about is it going to be ranking the different things and saying, "Hey, this is how we would prioritize them, or is it going to be specific to each uh each position? Yeah, we're still working through the the um the the exact format of how it's going to, but uh we are working through um based on the information that we've received and and the work that that we do on a daily basis, we're going to bring you what we see as the um as the top priority positions. We'll probably break those down into um three different levels um and and be able to give the board um information along those lines. We may also be able to provide some options, you know, with relation

172to, you know, if we were to keep, you know, 16 of these positions, this would be the cost and the the services that we think we would be able to provide if we were able to do if we did the board funded 10 positions instead of 16. Uh, we would still be able to do X, but we wouldn't be able to do Y. Uh but we're going to our our initial piece will be to bring the board what we see as the top three levels um of um positions. We won't it it's going to be challenging to be able to bring you the the timing of this and matching up funding that's available. Um so that that is that is going to be a challenge. Bless you. Um we will be able to bring um

173examples of dollars that we know about. So, learning recovery block grant, we know there's going to be some dollars left over from that that we'll be able to use moving forward exactly what that number is. Um, we won't know um just yet. The other piece is we'll be um at the same time we'll be doing our first interim budget report which will be um which will do an update for the board to show impacts of um enrollment um ADA um accurately identifying our unduplicated students. uh but those will all be estimates guard regarding dollars that would be available. So the first blush we're going to bring you for sure is the staff recommendation with regards to which positions we think need to be prioritized and what the cost would be associated with that. U we

174will also show these are some funding sources that are available. Um and that initial conversation will be for the board to see potential funding available um recommended um priority positions and then it really be a conversation um that will be a more open dialogue on the on the fourth to be able to get u the board's perspectives um on those two things. We'll listen, answer questions, participate in the conversation, and then based on that, we'll bring back a a final recommendation um to the board. So the November 4th will be a will be a conversation based on everything we've done to this point, what we see as the priorities and and what we see as really important things that we just don't see a way to fund. Um and so that that's going to become

175uh more clear from the staff recommendation on November 4th. And so, um, that's that's going to be a that's going to be a challenging day because, um, while we identify what we see as the the ultimate priorities, um, it's also going to identify what we don't see as as important even though they're all very important. >> And, um, looking at the goods and services, are you going to make suggestions around that as well or are we assuming that some or all of these will sunset? >> Uh, we'll have recommendations for them as well because, you know, some of them, the special ed assessments are requirements. So again, same same kind of concept. Some of these things are required, some are not. Um I don't want to put it, but you know, the recess piece may

176be something that individual sites make some decisions out with with dollars that are allocated to. So So there's there's a variety of ways, but we're not we wanted to make sure we included the services piece as well, not just the people, because that is part of what we need to take into consideration. >> Right. And I wanted to follow up on one thing that uh Miss Moore had mentioned around the ethnic studies uh FTE. So are we we're still planning to roll out e ethnic studies regardless of whether it is required by the state or not? >> We are. >> Okay. So that will that position be required in order to do that or is the position here something where it's training in order to get people ready to to do it so that the

177position itself that is contemplated here can eventually be sunsetted. The purpose of the position was to ramp us up and get ready to do implementation. Um it's going to be a conversation about priorities of that that position versus the VAPA positions, you know, versus, you know, other um um other content specific positions that we that we have in place. you know, in some cases um we have um specialists that do more than one content area, you know, and so so there there those are those are all conversations we're going to have to uh work through is and not not making a decision so nobody fall out of their chair, but could the history social science uh person cover ethnic studies as a uh one of the classes taught within the the social science history social

178science curriculum just like they do US and world and um and government econom does it just become another subject area within that area or does it require more um um more attention to that? Those are those are conversations we'll need to have as we kind of move forward. >> Yeah. Yeah. And I would anticipate there's going to be an interesting conversation around like, you know, is there there's a certain level of risk involved. If we were to keep that one, it might we might eventually get funding for it, right? And so, you know, it could be like we get rid of the position and then we want to bring it back two years, but we lose that person, right? Or we keep the position. There's a little bit of risk involved for us and we

179have to pay for it for a little while, but we keep a good person uh in the position, keep them with us. So, interesting. That'll be interesting conversation. Um okay. Uh um on page 29, 28 and 29. Um just doing those. So um uh do we anticipate that we are going to continue that all of these positions are going to be part of the recommendation? All of the positions on 28 and 29 are going to be part of the recommendation or are there any additional positions in here that you anticipate? um sort of falling off the list either because we don't need them anymore or because we find funding somewhere else or we have identified funding somewhere else. >> Well, we will we will identify the ones that we um believe are top priority. There

180will be some that will be um that are here that will be that will not be on that list. Um so so they will um they will we won't have a recommended funding source um for them. Um there we are continuously working through um opportunities to find um alternative funding sources. Um and department leaders are also currently looking through their existing budgets. And one of the conversations is there a position on this list um that is actually providing a service now that's a priority over something that I'm currently doing within my department. and I have a vacancy um in X position. So I'm not going to rehire X position because I because I think the position here is a prior. So that that same conversation is is going on. So if managers within their um

181allocated budgets um rep prioritize um their funding to to pick up one of these positions, uh they have the authority to do that just like we do on a regular basis. If if the department has a couple of openings, u I always ask people when you when you have the openings, you should ask yourself, do I need to replace that exact position again or is there another position that would better service moving forward? So, our manager are always in that mode. And so they there will be positions there won't be a lot of them but there'll be a few positions along the way where the managers of the of those um specific departments will identify funding sources for um and then we're also um we do have a couple of grants we one we've recently

182received and there's always a a grant line in the uh you know in the water uh waiting to see if we so there may be some opportunities where um things that are being funded grant-wise line up with one of these positions which u would would be an opportunity as well. >> Yeah. And I think that that would be useful information because there are going to be edge cases as as we're working through this. There's going to be some positions that we that we kind of universally agree we want to continue funding and there's going to be some positions that are on the edge, right? Uh and I think, you know, knowing or anticipating that those might get picked up somewhere else or some other way would be useful for us in in making those decisions.

183Um >> just want I do want to just cl you know those will be few and far between. So, I just know that there's not there's no magic grant out there that's going to pick up, you know, dozens of positions. It's it's a it's a a small number, but but there may be some of those around the edges, >> right? But even if it's just one or two, right, it's it's useful u as we're making these what will probably be somewhat nuanced decisions. Um okay. Uh the other big thing was, um I know this is going to shock everybody, but I'm a data nerd. Um, and so I was looking at the survey results and I thought, you know, the the ranking is interesting, but the trends were really interesting in some of these uh

184in for students, parents, and staff. Um, and so I pulled out ones where I thought the trend from one year to the next was relatively meaningful. I did go back and try and get data from previous years, but the questions we asked were different. And so the data was different. Um but the the the priorities here that where the trends really uh jumped out at me were clean and welcoming schools, um classes uh where students felt they were welcome to ask questions, bullying, counselors, food, traffic, and security. That's pretty consistent with what we get every day when we're talking with people. So that did not surprise me at all. Um but a couple all of those showed or had a trend where the percentage of importance increased by more than one and a half percent.

185And uh so I thought that was interesting in terms of sort of digging down and figuring out okay what are the areas that people really care about and where that attention is growing um for whatever reason. And uh one of the ones that jumped out at me was stu for students bullying was up 3%. And what really caught my attention was when I looked back at previous years. Um it is the one area where the importance is going up but the satisfaction is going down. And that jumped out at me for a variety of reasons but most of all it's that I think that means students are trying to tell us something. Um, and because every other area where we had where the importance was going up, the satisfaction was going up too. And I

186appreciate that because it means we're responding to a need right there. There was there's clearly a need in the community um among parents, teachers, and students that we focus on certain things. But the fact that the satisfaction with those things is going up, it means that we're doing a good job. It's just continuing to get more important to people. Um, and so I appreciate that because it means we're meeting the needs of our community, but the bullying one was the one area where uh satisfaction was going down. And so I do think that's going to be something that, you know, we need to think about just in general, but also when we're making priorities uh in terms of staffing um is if we want to we're go that we should take that seriously. If we

187want to take it seriously, we need to put our money where our mouth is. Um, so some of some of the other ones that I thought were really interesting. Um, >> Mr. Vargas, if I could just for a second on the bullying component. Um, surprise I don't have a solution. Um, but we do take it very seriously, but um, I am not saying that bullying, face-to-face bullying doesn't take place in our schools. It does. Um but it is safe to say that the vast majority of the situations that we are dealing with are originating with an electronic device in their hand and it's actually not taking place in our schools but they come and meet in our schools. And so again, not saying that we have a solution, but we do take it very very

188seriously and are continuing to look at, you know, trying to educate our kids on appropriate appropriateness both in face-to-face situations, but it's electronic devices have exacerbated bullying to a large degree. >> Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, one of the challenges we face is that we are the nexus for a lot of these things, right? You know it's not that students are bullying each other or you know being mean face to face. I mean you look at you know interactions that we have with each other right we are very rarely mean to each other face to face right but then the minute you get a screen in between people they feel like all bets are off and they can beat and say all these terrible things that they want to anytime there's a distance

189between people. Um so I get it but we are still a nexus for you know these students in their day-to-day lives and so we have to address it when it does come onto campus. Great. Um, some of the other areas, security was a big one. Um, you know, it it's always been high for uh for parents, but I it did tick up for both staff and students. And I thought I was that was meaningful because we've been having this conversation for so long. And you know, it's not surprising given the world we live in right now that that is an anxiety that continues to be real for people. So um you know as we're making decisions uh about these positions I think you know and that's consistent with what we're seeing in the desire around

190these positions or the priorities uh around the positions right you see um uh you always see campus supervisors pretty much at the top of the list and so that that makes a lot of sense to me um there's the same thing with counselors right we see counselors at the top of the list in terms of principles and LCAP uh collaborative their priorities it's also a priority for students and parents uh you know from this data. So um there's a lot you know I think there's going to be uh as I was saying before I think there's going to be a tier of these positions that are just going to be clear from the feedback we're getting. Um and it's the the harder ones are going to be you know how do we figure out those

191sort of edge cases around like how and how do these things fit in with our priorities as a district. Um, okay. Uh, the last thing I I I wanted to say is one thing that I have actually really appreciated. Um, and they, you know, our our equity folks just uh just left. Um, but one of the things I've really appreciated over the past couple of meetings, it's made our meetings longer. Um, but we have been getting people coming and talking about their actual experiences. Um, and I think that that is, uh, remarkably valuable because we get the data here and we've gotten tons of the data and I, you know, I did a lot of, uh, when I was in graduate school, I did qualitative research and so, you know, getting the stories, uh, and

192the feedback directly from people about their experiences and what they're actually doing, I think is incredibly important and valuable in what we're doing. So, um, I would encourage my colleagues, you know, take that, you know, as as a valuable data point. uh in our conversations because I think that feedback is important and it provides context to the data we're getting as well. Um and I think that you know seeing who shows up and you know the the things that they're saying about their experiences um not just provides context for the data but explains a lot of the data that we're seeing around why these things are important to people. Um so uh otherwise I think that is it for me. Um but I appreciate it and thank you. >> Thank you very much. And one

193final um just mentioning it again which is Friday the BC is coming out and um 60 or so pages worth of of information and uh certainly questions as you've done it previously. You share those questions with our superintendent who then routes them through us. Um, but if you have any of those questions, um, by all means, we're happy to both provide responses in writing and always happy to sit down, uh, and meet with folks, uh, virtually or in person and pull a team together as needed. We want the board to feel as comfortable as possible with the information and the forthcoming decisions despite the fact it's going to be a challenge. We appreciate it and uh even though you clearly don't want me to have a weekend, uh I appreciate it anyway. So, thank you

194very much. >> My apologies for the weekend interruption. >> All right. Uh next up is our consent agenda. Are there any blue cards on the consent agenda? >> Board President, there's no blue card in this item. >> All right. Then I will entertain a motion to approve item number one on the consent agenda. >> Moved by Mr. Yang. >> Seconded by Miss Bowwin. All those in favor, please say I. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. You everyone. All right. With that, we are into lunch and close session. Before we go, um we'll have a short lunch break and then the board will meet in close session to address items one and two on the closed uh session portion of the agenda. Uh Mr. Yang or or Mr. Superintendent, are there any blue cards on this item?

195>> No, there are not. >> Excellent. Um then I will close public comment and recess into close session at 12:04. All right. I'd like to return this meeting to order at 10:02 p.m. and announce that the board met in close session and no action was taken. With that, we will adjourn at 10:02 p.m.