001all right welcome everybody i'd like to call the regular meeting of the los altos school district board of trustees to order a recording and our broadcast of this meeting is being made at the direction of the board and the recording and our broadcast may capture images and sounds of those attending the meeting we'll now take roll vladimir ivanovic yeah jessica spicer here ryan johnson here steve taplio here i wish i listened to him here also let's all rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right we'll move on to agenda approval would any board members like to write comment on the agenda okay they may
002please have a motion to to approve tonight's agenda as presented try some move thank you jessica may have a second thank you brian um approval to uh to approve tonight's agenda as presented motion was made by jessica and seconded by bryant role call vote vladimir yes jessica yes ryan yes steve yes yes motion passes unanimously closed session not to the school available i know it's been a couple of weeks since we have met that was just prior to the school year starting it has been a fantastic opening students happy to be back on campus staff as well so i've been around to all the schools sandra has as well been able to walk through the classrooms and we are doing well likewise we've reported to you about the check back together program that we are
003implementing that has started as well in our upper grades four through eight um that is going well also um kids are participating eagerly in that and um jack has been a great support uh there so um we are um getting all of what i would say are our typical more typical events moving again to various events at school sites various committee meetings and so forth that go on as well doing those safely following protocols set forth by the state and the county um but it has uh overall been a great start for the school year so appreciate your support in making that happen senator anything else to add about that thank you jeff all right let's move on to the consent challenges would any board members like to provide comment on the consent calendar for
004tonight okay they may please have a motion to approve the consent calendar as presented right so move thank you jessica have a second thank you brian to approve tonight's consent calendar as presented was made by jessica and seconded by brian will now take a roll call vladimir yes jessica yes brian yes steve yes i to vote yes motion passes unanimous on to employee requests to address the board from the los altos teachers association we have kate schermerhorn hi good evening hi nice to see everybody tonight um as i was getting ready for class this morning it struck me that we are already entering our second full week of school so this year is up it is moving it's grooving um kids are happy teachers are also happy to have their kids and are working hard
005right now our elementary teachers are preparing for their virtual back to school night i know our middle schools block and eagan had theirs last week and our elementary teachers are gearing up for theirs right around the corner this week we are super excited to connect with our families about the upcoming year together and over the past week and a half that we have had together so far i know teachers across the district have been really getting to know their students as people and individuals and also as learners and starting to gather that beginning of the year assessment data so that we know how to better support them so we are all in this we are diving into our work and also that social connection i just heard jeff mention that check back together program and
006while i didn't get to observe everybody's i was able to observe my own class and they loved it they were just so into the art and the talking and the sharing so um from my perspective on that at least my students really enjoyed that and it is nice to be back together so that is it and thank you for the opportunity to address the board thank you kate it's really nice to hear about the track program um i don't think we have anyone from the california school employees association tonight no okay all right now for public comment to provide public comment on an agenda item members of the public should use the raise hand button if using the zoom app or press star 9 if using your phone your name will be announced when it
007is your turn to speak prior to providing your comment please be sure your microphone is on requests received after public comment begins will not be accepted we'll take uh community comments uh this time is reserved for citizens and employees to address the board of items that are not on the agenda the board is not permitted to discuss or take action on non-agenda items except to instruct the superintendent to review the matter further report back to the board at a subsequent meeting or place the matter on a future agenda the board may make a brief comment or ask clarifying questions let's see do we have anyone for um nearly comments i don't see any okay on to action and discussion items first one opening of the 2021-22 school year staff will present an overview of the
008start of the school year and a preview of increased protocols yeah yes so um thank you wanted to walk you through um the start of the school year uh as you remember when we uh we left off last meeting the board had directed uh staff to implement masking outdoors so we have done that um staff and students are are doing well with that i'd say the one area that we're working through right now is after school sports um working with the other districts in our league to make sure that we have similar uh expectations so um i'll be able to report back to you on that coming meeting but as an example cross country was one that was um out of the gate fast um no pun intended and so for that particular sport the
009students are required to wear masks when they're in in a meeting gathering around the coach talking strategy things like that when they're actually running on the trail their masks can be different so we're working through the various sports uh to understand that it'll get more complicated as we as we move some to some of the closer contact indoor uh sports but um i'll report that back or report back on that to you all right so um you probably remember this from last year this is a count of the number of cases we have had this is a running count so you will see um those numbers i am guessing uh in all probability and degrees throughout the uh throughout the school year um not saying that in an alarming way but we are living um
010with pilbid right now uh so you can see that there are uh three cases identified from the start of the school year which we're terming august august 1. um three cases at allman one at covington one of loyola so those are accounts uh this year we are following the modified quarantining protocol as outlander states we'll talk a little bit more about that as um we get into this agenda item monica syndra our lead district nurse is also at the meeting here so we'll allow her to uh chime in when it comes to that students students and staff this is students and staff here what i can tell you is we have had no outbreak no spread as a result of these cases uh on campus um to this point we it's what we expected uh
011it's similar to what we experienced last year and we are implementing the necessary uh global protocols to ensure that doesn't happen as best we can this is just a look at where we are in the county i thought it would be good to see um we're at a rolling average of about uh 350 cases right now in the county i think it's important to look at that in comparison to where we were um about six months ago uh also this is new data that the states that the county started putting up um this summer this shows the um case rates per 100 000 for various groups right and so i'll point out that the the the highest line is the case rate for unvaccinated residents uh the middle line is the case rate for the
012overall county and then the teal line at the bottom or the aqua line is for fully vaccinated uh individuals so you can you can really see the difference there they are also breaking out uh one more group and this is pertinent to us because the purple line that's added there is uh the case rate for um people aged 11 and younger right so currently that's about 17.9 18 per 100 000 so still well below the uh the unvaccinated uh case rate the overall user just thought that that would be of interest to you to us i want to talk a little bit about the in-person learning for 2122 this school year um as you know we are back in full force all grade levels all schools this includes after school programs which are slated to
013begin after labor day uh this year we sometimes we or historically i think we have started them prior to that but we just wanted to make sure that we had our program in place before we added that to our um our full program uh hot lunch is also in operation we are having volunteers on campus they are having to show proof of full vaccination and when we say full vaccination it means second shot two weeks after right so full vaccination school sites are actually gathering that information of themselves for the volunteers on campus because they have the greatest knowledge of the people so they are collecting it at each individual school site and tracking it on a a google document um we are i know some of you have been at i have as well
014um running our community and all school events uh those have taken place this year again following all of the santa clara county public health and california department of public health safety protocols and junior high sports as i just mentioned are starting up as well we do have independent study available as you know for students who cannot safely attend school in person our number is about 20 20 students right now so it's a it's a small number um i think that is in you know you know in part as i've said before um evidence where that we are doing this well making sure that everyone is uh safe and then we're following health protocols so good news on that front the number remains low uh in terms of community building we know this is one of
015the really important things coming out of last year where we had so many people in and out of distance learning some all year but making sure we're building community through pta through laef through our ambassadors program really rebuilding those communities uh both in school sites and across the district we held orientations for our kindergartners and transitional kindergartners back in august prior to their first day of school different schools have different events lemonade parties whatever they may be just to get to know the students at the school schedule day occurred at our junior high schools um great success getting those kids back on campus they were very uh charged up um also as you know during the typical year we have principal-led events uh principal coffees assemblies all school meetings those are either in place or
016are starting up at our schools um [Music] and then teacher-led activities in the classrooms to really build connections build relationships with families at our schools we know that those were stretched last year so we want to make sure that we are focusing and um giving great effort to to making sure that we have those relationships it is the strength of who we are as a school district and as we talked about uh our chat partnership for the mental health program so in terms of safety i think it's good to remember what we are doing and that we do not take it lightly by any means facial coverings our requirement indoors and outdoors on our campuses right now we are checking ventilation ensuring that there is adequate ventilation in in our classrooms in our various spaces
017on campus not just classrooms we do have a monitor in each room that that measures airflow within the classrooms to understand what type of ventilation we have there's no right here on the counter behind jessica um symptom tracking is not a requirement but we are still doing that uh we know one of the um really important ways that we can mitigate the spread is to make sure people are staying home when they have some hoops right when they're not feeling well so we're still each morning requiring staff and students to complete um okay to reopen is the tool we use and get a report of that every morning in our school offices on our school nurses look at that as well and intervene where necessary um we're also prepared to isolate um people who are
018symptomatic uh we have we have quarantine rooms on each of our campuses um that we can utilize should that happen we're focused on hand hygiene cleaning disinfecting as appropriate um as you recall back on august 11th effective august 12th the the governor required all staff at schools need to either be vaccinated or submit to testing so we have that in place we've checked vaccination on all our employees and we have a subset that's required to test two times a week um and we're at about 95 percent i would say our number is of um vaccinated individuals um and so the balance of them there's about 30 people that have to test twice a week and that is up and running now and then we are following uh california department of public health k-12 guidance um
019the the main order came out august 2nd so we are adhering to that that really covers most of everything on the uh above it on that list um i wanted to talk a bit about something new since the last time we met and that is pool testing last year for our sixth seventh and eighth graders we conducted pooled testing in each of our classrooms so each group of students would once a week self swab and then put their swabs in a single vial and that would be tested and it would be if data would be returned to us on whether it was positive or negative we did not have a positive last year um if there was a positive though in that file it would require that entire cohort to test right because identifying who
020the positive is is important in that situation so we have opened it up to all grades this year tk8 and consent emails have been sent out to all families at our schools and those are due back on the 9th of september uh this again the whole idea behind this it gives us early identification of positives right and asymptomatic positives specifically um monica do you want to talk a little bit about modified quarantine and how that's a little bit different this year monica sidder is our lead district nurse and expert in this particular area thank you jeff so modified quarantine applies for students only who are exposed in the school setting and what it allows for is asymptomatic students to continue to attend school as long as they test twice within their 10-day quarantine period um
021anybody who is symptomatic needs to remain at home and be tested um you know either through their provider or through one of the county-based programs for testing but we really want to keep asymptomatic students present at school as long as they test and provide test results twice within that modified quarantine period the other thing that applies in a mod quarantine is students can only attend school who are in a modified quarantine so they are not able to participate in extracurriculars until they have completed their modified quarantine period so they can only belong to a single group and that would be their classroom right and that we really want to highlight that last piece because it is a change that we will be conducting testing of all of our students on a weekly basis thank you
022jeff are there any clarifying questions from the board okay um i do see that we have some requests for public comment i i see six we have six requests for public comment tonight each speaker will be given three minutes thank you superintendent bayer and board of trustees for your continued hard work i was not able to make public comment on the mandatory outdoor masking which was approved after only two parents proposed it at the last board meeting as my son's school had a meeting at the same time as of august 4th the cdc k-12 guidance states people do not need to wear masks when outdoors for example participating in outdoor play recess and pe emails to parents state lasd is required too and will continue to follow all cdph guidelines for school reopening however the
023latest guidance says masks are optional outdoors for all in k-12 school settings if lasd is following cdph guidance how can masks be mandatory outside when the public health guidance for the nation state and county does not require outdoor masks then mandating them without providing scientific evidence seems to be getting ahead of the data i appreciated that superintendent bayer mentioned at the last meeting that the board should be cautious of using its own science versus expert science where is the data that addresses the importance of masking outside what metrics were used to come to the decision of mandatory outdoor masking we should be making evidence-based decisions based on the unbiased assessment of the potential risks versus benefits of masking healthy children outdoors in a recent article from the atlantic titled i tell my patients not to
024mask their kids outside dr lucy mcbride wrote viral particles disperse effectively outside in a recent analysis of more than 232 000 infections in ireland only one case of coven 19 in every 1000 was traced to outdoor transmission which equals 0.1 of cases david leonhardt of the new york times wrote that multiple epidemiologists told him that the share of transmission that has occurred outdoors seems to be below one percent and may be below 0.1 percent unmasking outdoors has many clear benefits students get to see each other's smiles and facial expressions to learn social skills overall better mental health due to lack of barrier students get fresh air to breathe students are better able to communicate because their voices are not muffled students are less likely to overheat and experience dizziness and headaches from running around in
025masks in 80 degree weather during pe and recess of course if people aren't comfortable outside in lasd they can put their masks on or wear stronger protection like double masks or an n95 due to the lack of science lack of stricter guidance from the county and state lowered risk of outdoor transmission and benefits of unmasking outdoors i urge the board to rescind the mandatory outdoor mass policy thank you for your consideration thank you melissa all right we have irena stepanova um hi uh thank you for uh listening to me i fully support what melisa just said i just wanted to add that if masks actually prevented covert transmissions and the epidemic would have been over in march 2020 okay in april we are a year and a half into musk wearing and we still hope
026that we will prevent the epidemic spread due to mask wearing and we are masking our children it's a shame to see children in los altos in the heart of silicon valley the most educated and probably one of the richest regions of the country in the of the world masking their children outside thank you right next we have elena mel guerrero hello i am amy from ammon school last year i obeyed all the rules about wearing masks but nobody asked me if i was okay about it i am tired i swear a lot i feel short breath when i play i want to ask to let my parents choose what is the best for me thank you thank you amy um jeff before you call the next speaker i see that two more people raised their
027hands after i cut off public comments i believe genie sized yes all right lori sue good afternoon i um i just want to support melissa's opinion saying that i want my child to be able to breathe fresh air at a school wearing a mask while she is playing outdoors that means that she forced my daughter to constantly touch her face and adjust her mask thus causing her to come into more contact with germs on her hands while she's supposed to free play so please allow each pattern to decide whether their child wearing a mask outdoor at a school is the best interest of their child free their smiles and allow them to love and learn again in the environment they are happy to be in a safety space thank you right next is trevor marshall
028hello you hear me yeah so i guess i'm just sort of commenting on the same thing um i was wondering you guys never sort of explained where you have a legal right to come up with public health policy that differs from the california department of public health um and also point out there yeah was it the world health organization does not recommend mass for kids five and under so and there's you know a lot of evidence that masking outdoors for children elementary school children there's whole countries where they don't do it and they don't have higher rates and you guys didn't address any of that but in general i think the board should just say we follow the california department of public health or and the county guidelines and not come up with their own
029ones i'm wondering is there a limiting factor on this but can you require you know extra measles vaccines or tetanus boosters every two years or something is just some part of an emergency uh you know powers that you that the los altos school board has gotten i guess that's it for me thank you all right and finally we have uh hi i just wanted to say thank you guys for bringing back the pool testing and implementing it for all grades um i was really happy to see that i hope all families will participate so we can get a pretty good snapshot of where we are um i was wondering and i don't know if it came across clearly in my email to you all i was wondering if our district would consider offering daily on-site
030pcr testing like mvla for those families who are exposed to positive cases or if they their kids need to get tested because they have copy-like symptoms as i mentioned in my email i have personal experience with this last week due to my freshman having a sore throat um i'm asking for on-site pcr testing because right now it actually is quite hard to get it can be hard to get symptomatic testing done um i am a stay-at-home mom as you guys know so i can you know drive to the fairgrounds at a moment's notice but not every family can do that um as a test last week last tuesday i tried to get a symptomatic appointment done just you know just go through the process and see if i can book anything so that was tuesday
031at that time i couldn't find anything outside of the fairgrounds um at pan for el camino hospital i couldn't get anything until friday so given we're asking all families to keep their kids at home if they have any coco like symptoms uh i was running if the district could consider making the onsite testing more accessible so that families who you know they might be more willing to keep their kids at home because they know that they can easily get it done say at black or eagan or maybe we could consider partnering up with mbla and mountain v whispering to have it done at either of the high schools thank you very much thank you all right that's it for public comment board members would any of you like to provide comments um where where do
032we have the authority with our uh yeah so the california education code does give broad authority to board of trustees to take actions that they deem necessary to protect students and staff i don't have the uh the encode [Music] section right in front of me but that's that's where we get it that is it for now we may have more of a question yeah this is just some follow-up questions on study um you said that we have roughly 20 or uh students right is there any commonality in those students is there anything that distinguishes them as a group or is it just uh san bernardino no i would say up to 20 we actually have one family of five children some of you think of that is it's kind of a subset but no it's
033across grade levels from kindergarten through eighth grade uh really where the family has determined that their child cannot be a person um and uh a long start of the same line have we gotten in touch with all the students that we think ought to be in school are there any ones that we have because last year they were a small percentage that we were not able to get in touch um how does how do we stand this year do you mean from independent study from just not showing school i believe you know the first few days of school is all about contacting families who don't show up and so bridgette and school secretaries are calling families to see are you out sick have you moved what is that status and so i do believe we've
034gone through we've accounted for all the first yeah okay all right cool yeah yeah um we got an email shortly before the meeting i thought had a good question about notification of cases on campus yeah i know for example that the high school obviously they do direct notification of close contacts but then they'll also do a general notification to the community that there was a case um i got that email today so the request was basically can we at least consider sending out a broader notification so that families who are particularly concerned at a particular school for example could choose then to do a standpoint do an at-home test one of the rapid tests just given that we're not maintaining cohorts on campus this year and so contact tracing is good it's not always perfect
035i think there's a set of parents may be looking for just a broader awareness that there's been a case on campus so that they can pursue whatever extra measures in terms of testing or caution so we're updating our our track tracker so that's where they should work if they're going up that day okay so i mean that's a first thing just to think about foreign it may be different for different populations there's been cases that you and i have not received any notifications that that's new maybe just less outside i did i didn't get a notice i will i will say that their on-site uh testing seems to be a little overwhelmed because there's so many kids who need to test um i could not get an appointment for my daughter in the community or
036could she get it on site at her high school that's awesome so i think it's kind of this big logistical thing we need to figure out uh as part of the pool testing we're getting other testing two correct jeff yeah we will get the pool testing itself and then any associated um response testing that comes as a result of the [Music] right so that would basically get done on campus the next day yes but it would be which i want to ask this question so if there's a positive then literally somebody in that class is positive correct but the class is the class not come in for a day or do we go forward you know we tap we we test immediately to identify this right [Music] has to stay home regardless no close contacts
037you're not explaining symptoms get to come in right you're positive you have to stay home absolutely but for the pool testing we don't know no i know oh jeff can you just confirm that the testing that we do on site pool testing it's only for lasd staff and students it is not for the community that's correct okay because i got asked that question any anything else on this topic before we move on uh yeah are we going to discuss masking issues or does that have to break from the board um the divorce to discuss it it was part of what was presented here um i just wanted to say that from my point of view um it seems to me that imposing a masculine apartment on kids outdoors is a very small word and i
038noticed that all the people not all people some of the people who commented talked about parents making decisions for their child the problem is that whether or not you're ass or not affects other people and that's the issue so i i don't think you could just look at it from the point of view what's good for my uh my childhood i don't think it's much for learning so i personally don't think it's a big issue but for some people it apparently is maybe it's a few slides here um that the case rate for the under 11 population is still higher than the case rate for than for vaccinated fully vaccinated individuals right and i also appreciate that you have found it in the ed code that we do have the authority to protect our student
039population and our teachers for that matter and staff yeah i was just echoing what a little bit of what vladimir was saying is you know i think we went down this path um really out of preponderance of caution as we're opening the doors of the school we weren't sure what our our covert rates would be as we saw people coming in and we wanted to make sure we were not a spreading organization so we went very i think we were opened with a very um cautious approach to what interaction would be and i think that idea that masking is the current stand but i think it was always alright at least mine and i'm gonna embrace it from my point of view is um there was a hope that once we understood where we were
040as a community once we had the kids interacting we could revisit this on an ongoing basis it wasn't going to stand for the entire school year so please um i want to make sure everyone understands that too that this was done to make sure we didn't end up having a spike in in um cases with children who couldn't currently access vaccines or other ways of preventing so i at least from my point of view that's the logic i used i hear everyone saying yes spread the possibility of spreading outdoors is low um i understand all that um but i think we really were walking into this trying to encourage families to come back to school who hadn't been in school for 18 plus months and wanted to make sure everyone felt comfortable being there and
041so we wanted to ramp into this slowly and i think this will be an evolving conversation at least from my point of view i'd like to see it as an evolving conversation that we have as a board and and when do we feel that we can do we think it's appropriate to move or not move on this topic so that's you know the other thought i had on this as well thanks steve i agree with everything you said yeah i was gonna say i completely agree it is evolving situation when our kid these kids can be the big thing the big reason is these kids cannot be vaccinated we have a huge population of unvaccinated individuals and uh one of the things i think we left out in the conversation tonight is that also as
042it relates to the quarantine problems it's different for masked or unmasked kids so that was part of our authorities like we were worried about you know making sure these kids can't come to school if they were adhesive to mathematic if they were unmasked and their contact was outside they would have to stay home yes for what two weeks into the school year barely so i think we need let's go through a few more weeks and see how we're doing any other comments on this before i leave this one all right thanks everyone let's move on to our next agenda item curriculum and instruction update this is mcgonagall to provide an update on the summer work completed in the curriculum and instruction office and the professional learning opportunities for lasd teachers take it away working her
043magic well thank you i'm glad to be back and here to share some of the great work that's been happening around the curriculum and instruction office throughout summer um i'll talk a little bit about welcoming new teachers and staff the teacher training that we were able to provide and offer for our for our teachers and staff and a little bit about our multi-tiered system as support of support as we i don't i feel like saying coming off the pandemic but we're still in the midst of the pandemic but after last year so we'll start a little bit with welcoming new teachers so this summer we were able to add some additional positions to our staffing which is outstanding and some real needed specialized folks so we have been lucky enough to hire two tremendous and
044experienced academic school counselors one for each of our junior high schools and these gals really bridge the general education of all students supporting families and students help with transition from elementary into junior high from transition to junior high into high school can help around social and emotional needs of students and in addition really support that whole advisory concept where students are learning great skills and habits of being a strong student as we're preparing them for high school if you talk to any of our junior high staff they would tell you that this has been a missing piece in our staff and each of the people within the office and within the broader staff have been taking up portions of this type of job but to have one person who's really experienced in doing this work
045is outstanding so we're really excited to welcome them um we were also able able to hire two reading interventionists one for almond school and one for standard grade of school where we typically see the higher need around reading intervention we worked this summer to train both of those folks and are working really closely they are experienced lasc teachers so we have alina lynn working over at santa rita she moved from i want to say a first grade classroom last year into this reading intervention position and just so excited to be working at her staff and then we have joanne martinez over at almond who's a long time allman teacher worked in virtual school last year but is back at allman in this reading intervention position so we've been doing some deep training with them around
046reading early interventions and our systematic interventions and we'll talk about in a moment that they'll be working with students with our big goal of getting up and running quickly um in early september and then the last position we're really excited that we were able to hire our family engagement facilitator and this actually came out of a big conversation we've been having through our d-lab our district english language advisory group um and a need for us as a district to be able to better engage are some of our families who are traditionally less engaged so lola who we've hired has been a long-term classified person within our district for several years she's bilingual in spanish she has a social working background in her past and she's already helped us to your point vladimir connect with families
047who we felt a little bit disconnected with during the pandemic she's made house visits she went to all of the kinder uh welcome events to make sure that our families feel really connected and engaged don't you reach for the testing right now absolutely so she will be a great asset to our team and it's working predominantly with our almond santa rita and eagan schools but is available to support families in our schools across the district so we're really excited about that in charge of my own thing here um early in august i know some of you were able to come to our new teacher luncheon to welcome our new teachers but we were so excited to be able to spend three days learning together with our 35 or so new teachers and specialists we really
048each year we get feedback from our new teacher pool and some of our coaches around like what what should these three days really be about how do we want to induct people into our organization so this year we switched it up a little bit and actually our whole first day was having all of our folks understand and experience what we want learning to look like what learning does look like in lasd so they had a reading workshop they had a really amazing math lesson rachel phelps one of our instructional support teachers guided the whole group through a really engaging math inquiry that was very exciting they participated in a stem design challenge um trying to remember the other components but had a real full day of experiencing what learning looks and feels like in lesd
049and then the remainder of their time over those three days we're really making sure they understood what resources and supports were available who's who um and getting trained on the poor curriculum so they're ready to teach um on day one and as jeff said we've been around to all of our schools and in our all of our classrooms we really have an amazing group of new teachers from the get-go day one there is something special about this group of teachers which is really terrific we are happy that they're here uh so that was about our new folks but of course we always like to offer professional opportunities for our existing folks and many of the new folks were invited as well um teachers college the reading and writing project the folks who develop our english
050language arts curriculum we brought them in one of their staff developers for a four day what they call a homegrown institute so we had 25 of our k2 teachers join for a four-day online training just for us around improved uh reading and phonics interventions the feedback from the group was terrific this is one of one of our staff developers from teachers college that several of our teachers have seen before and so they were super excited to have her really leading the charge there we also provided greg drummond that you all know has made it his summer mission to get deep into um teaching reading and so he learned an incredible amount and led a reading intervention training for our three five teachers and the interesting thing about teaching students to read as a former sixth
051grade teacher our upper grade teachers they are heavy into supporting comprehension of reading but are less skilled many of them if not most of them in how you teach someone to read like decoding and all the different pieces of how you build reading so this training was terrific we will have round two in september for folks but it really helped our upper grade teachers understand when they're seeing an older child with some reading difficulty or they're not quite on grade level yet that they have a whole toolkit now of strategies assessments how to really pinpoint exactly what it is you might be missing out on and all the tools that i need to get it done and strategies and ways to make it easy and impactful so that's been a really great training and then
052we had our big lunch as you remember last spring it feels like ages ago but it was just last spring we adopted the san francisco map curriculum so we had our big launch day we had cecilio dimas from the silicon valley math initiative came out we split it up over two days a k two and a three five he gave a great keynote and then our coaches work closely with svmi to launch into the first round of curriculum which is terrific we want to make sure that this launch goes really smoothly that teachers feel well supported our coaches have been doing a lot of learning with svmi which is great and we want to make sure that all of our teachers have that sense of how they can support students who need it and how
053they can stretch students who need that stretch as well and we had in all of these pieces really great participation i mean you should know and i know you know but our teachers love to learn and we're really thankful that we can provide good opportunities for them just before school starts so they feel like they have a little something extra in their tool about before the new year begins and our last area to talk about is mtss multi-tiered systems of support i don't remember if i talked about this in spring but we had in the cni office knowing that we were wrapping up this crazy year last year we brought in principles into the curriculum and instruction office and teams of two to really talk about what do we need to put in place to
054make sure from the get-go that we're going to be ready for what we're receiving for some kids who have never been in person we've had all sorts of of things to consider so we really worked hard with them in the spring and then throughout summer and it was really fun to launch that with principals when they came back in um early august so you may remember this from a very old lpap this is one of the tiered systems of support graphics that i made for an old lpap but it's really grounded in this idea that students need academic behavioral social emotional supports and that they're all along the spectrum right when we think about that center most kids will do just fine with the traditional high quality core program we have across all of those
055academic social emotional and behavioral but we have some kids who need a little bit more on either end we might have a small group of kids who need some extension or a small group of kids who need some intervention and then out on we call that tier two then out on the far fringes um right and left we have students who have more intensive aids uh top and bottom so it doesn't sound right right and left but students who really need much greater acceleration or enrichment and much greater support so this is really what our multi-multi-tiered system of support is rooted in this philosophy and so coming from our principal meetings we really identified all the components of what we needed to put together to have this aligned system so we know everything begins with
056high quality tier one instruction we have to make sure that every single classroom teacher has a strong foundation of what they're teaching that they're using the right strategies um and that they're uh meeting the needs of the students within their classroom getting to know kids and creating that safe environment all of those great things in addition to that i'm going to kind of go up and over we after hearing from principles one of the biggest challenges for our principal groups and our school teams is this concept of progress monitoring well we know when we have a student who might need some additional support um but it's so hard to keep on top of well how are they doing now and who's collecting what data they're doing the interventions that they have a general sense of
057kids are doing better or worse but it's a little less precise than we would like it to be so we worked with our principals and our team to really develop a progress monitoring process and an early identification process we wanted to make sure that students coming into this school year that our school teams know who's way out here on the right hand side and what are we going to do for them from the get-go and who might be way out here on the left-hand side and let's get started and supporting and intervening there so we've been working on that all sorts of data involved and each of our school principals has a little what we call a data concierge out of the cni office so they have a person with them the next one really
058talks about system-wide interventions jeff said this really well i think maybe at our closing at the end of last year that we have done so much great work in um intervening for students in little pockets but we still continue to have that gap of students 12 where we're not moving the needle as a whole individual kids were moving the needle so what we hadn't really tried is a much more consistent system-wide approach um so we have uh this summer purchased with a lot of our elo grant money around learning loss plans school-wide interventions across in reading in mathematics and phonics so all of our schools will have access to the same intervention research-based evidence-based intervention um materials we're systematically training folks centrally for that so we have a little more control over over who's doing
059the intervention who's being intervened on um and all of those pieces so we're really excited about that and i know our schools are really eager to get started in those different pieces and then i have two more slides but uh professional learning communities we know plays a big role in this as do things called the care teams which i'll talk about but we'll start with professional learning communities um last year was a year where many of us were just trying to stay afloat and make sure that kids got what they needed in the moment um and i would say one of our practices that we let slide because we were in the midst of a pandemic and being more responsive and proactive uh is really our professional learning community so we've dedicated it this year
060to make sure that we get back to this concept of really looking at using this time to go through a cycle of inquiry and that we're looking at student data as school teams grade levels departments that were really looking closely at our instructional practices and what's making an impact and then how can we spread what we know is working um so we're really excited about that getting back to that good work on our thursday afternoons when students leave early and our teens have 75 minutes to work together and then the last piece of our multi-tiered system of support really is focused at the school tech school site around the care team and the care team is a group of teachers and principals and maybe some specialists at the site that really are the ones looking
061closely at the data so they might be looking closely right now we're just in the process of doing our k3 universal screener on dibbles you might remember our reading screener so that team will look closely at the data and really determine who needs what and um in the past with a less systematic approach teachers would go to the care team and say you know what i'm i i my toolbox is empty when it comes to randy and i need some help and sorry brandi um but teachers which is fantastic right they work with their colleagues they use every trick they know but sometimes they they need more so they would go to the care team and present a student and the care team would go through a process of trying to find that support well
062with our early identification and using our universal screeners we really have care teams now managing that data and saying hey vladimir you have three students in your class we think they need xyz you've been to greg's training we want you to start this and really more systematically push out but of course teachers can always come to the care team as well with concerns that they're seeing in the classroom but it's a nice partnership to see how we're doing and we're really hoping to make a big difference for students this year what is next uh we just launched last friday which is so exciting um karen the great karen wilson who walked by not too long ago um is leading what we're called uh calling a train the trainers cohort she has seven seven or eight
063junior high school teachers we've done so much work with our k-5 and k-6 group around training and this came from the brilliant keith rocha who really said instead of the district just training us because we're all specialized let's really bring together a group of teachers let's look at what are some impactful strategies that we want to see happening in every single junior high school classroom across both campuses so this group just came on friday solidified their first two practices on our september pd day on the 24th i want to say 27th 24th um all of our junior high teachers will be trained in those two practices those train the trainers will then be going out and collecting some data as to what what they're seeing and how it's working and we'll collect feedback from the
064rest of the junior high teachers and we're just really excited about this and on that september p day pd day all of our teachers will come together preschool through eighth grade and really focus on extending their learning um in all areas i think that might be my last slide so happy to answer any questions board members do you have any clarified questions for sandra okay let's see do we have any takers for a public moment um melissa silva's hand has been up for quite a while i don't know if she actually wants to make a comment or not i don't see any answers for public comments so i'm going to post public comment on this agenda item um board members don't provide comments um great stuff i i don't know i don't have any it
065questions like it's really coming together i think you're doing a lot of good things the only thing is my daughter just left junior high school so congratulations i think you're on the right track if more along the lines of reiterating the way vladimir had to say i i'm glad to see like everything seems to speak not only for our students things are going back to normal it's going back to normal for our teachers we are doing what we used to do we had to really build a plane while flying it last year this year it's like okay we knew that these practices work but we couldn't do all that because it was just too much but to be able to do this again and to really focus on the data and and really move forward
066like this is amazing i did have some some families a family come up to me during the farmers market this summer and asking what's going to happen they were worried about learning loss i said well my understanding and it was like we're going to be back to normal and so i basically said what you said i figured that's what you were doing up i thought i was right i wasn't just making it up my intuition was correct but it's exciting for everybody involved for the kids to get the resultant teaching from this and for the teachers to learn about different ways to improve their meaning in their teaching that's it right yeah um so i echo what vladimir and jessica said my question is so the care teams it sounds like we've got a great
067and continuously improving program around tier two and tier three helping the kids who need extra help and i'm wondering if we have something similar if there's something similar we could do for the tier two and tier three kids who are you know a bit above and ahead of of their peers just because i wanna make sure that you know we are addressing both of those both ends of the spectrum exactly i would say that that tier three we learn about pretty quickly of kids who are far out of the norm within their classroom and we do all sorts of different things for that i don't know that we hear about kind of the tier 2 kids who might need but that's a great question but in the same way i mean the care team is
068sort of an extra layer on top of plc's right and so we don't i don't think have anything structured um you know sort of equivalent to the other end of the spectrum so maybe just something to think about as an extra resource as we continue to improve the program yeah absolutely thanks brian um steve anything yeah the only comment i i'm pleased to see that you're putting the systematic piece in place we have had that 10 of children who the needle wasn't moving for for the whole time i've been on the board i'm glad that you were trying to take a different approach to addressing those needs and and thank you for taking the time to make that happen because i think that that's been the one stumbling block that we've not conquered i'm glad
069to see we're trying to figure out a different way to make that make that work so thanks i'm really excited about what you've presented it's just i think steve just said it it's a really lovely systematic way of looking at things i'm really jazzed about the care teams yeah because i feel like what they're kind of doing is connecting the thoughts with all the different last resources which is really fabulous i just had a quick question about tier three are we including like family supporters involving the family and the intervention side of it yeah so part of the um i can't speak necessarily what has happened in the past but i will tell you this year part of the requirements around using the elo money for students who need a tier 3 intervention is parent
070notification not consent but notification that your child seems to be underperforming in a particular area so we're working through those details around our dibbles assessment that's coming up now and we're really happy that we have the fabulous lola our family engagement person to really because we've also talked about parent education and when we have a student who might be struggling in literacy how can we do what we need to do at school but also how can we help support families at home and some of those good actual literacy practices as well so yes we want to absolutely include the family awesome thank you sandra that's wonderful and typically to go back to your question ryan when we get a tier 3 on the other end we always bring the family in and talk about the
071area of need kind of the options for families and for students and what that looks like thank you any other questions for sandra all right thanks so much i'm going to move on to our next agenda item board policy updates csva periodically advises districts of recommended changes in board policies administrative regulations and board bylaws as a means to assist boards in keeping their policies current and reflecting all recent changes in laws and regulations the board of trustees will review the updated wording for the following policies yes so uh as i reviewed with you last week we do have some catch-up to do in terms of policy updates you'll see these each week through the fall and this week we have 11 policies for updating and um they're they're heavier on randy's randy's department this week
072but we are here to answer any questions you may have about any uh any particular policies or um any evidence well since we have so many i'm just gonna go through the list and see if anyone has comments on each one so let's start with a uh bp3110 transfer of funds and anybody else questions okay b grant funds anybody have questions or comments c sale lease rental of district of the property i actually have some questions about that one so um look well two things um first of all on page four the first paragraph and this is just to clarify something for me so maybe i didn't read it correctly uh the first paragraph there's a sentence that says the resolution shall fix the time blah blah blah not less than three weeks thereafter for
073a public meeting and then later on it read in red it says at least 60 days prior to the public meeting should those two the three weeks in the 60 days should they match up or am i reading it wrong [Music] um page four first paragraph i don't know if it's page four of the policy or page four of the packet on the dip the other ones would be easy the second paragraph would say within 10 days the first paragraph the resolution shall fix the time blah blah blah not less than three weeks thereafter for a public meeting so it's a minimum of three weeks so you could do it four weeks but or i don't know so then it says at least 60 days prior to the public meeting so should it say not
074less than 60 days like what if the public meeting is scheduled four weeks away which is 30 days so which search don't you miss what's the header section let me um this language is all basically prescribed by statute i'm assuming so it is yeah it's not our language it's not it's not our language that's right right this is what the law requires as long as it but i don't know that this is up to us the words but yeah i just felt like my eyes were going cross-eyed trying to figure out what i was trying to say and just to double check the policy does not dictate when we need to sell property correct correct okay that's that's okay within the boards okay and that's it for me um d please leave that contract any
075comments e design build contracts f student activity funds okay i kind of had a comment on this one um i was wondering um in the first paragraph oh see i don't have it in front of me i'll have to pull it up i was just wondering if we should include some language that says blah blah blah in keeping with or in accordance with the district's um diversity equity and inclusion policy since we did update that yeah let me look up here i'm not sure the first paragraph [Music] i mean do you think that it's i was just wondering if we should leave that through our policy is this also standard language and we can't add it no it doesn't mean you can't add it my thing is i don't i don't want there to be
076things that are funded that are exclusionary in nature sure right it's like everybody plays or nobody plays that's what i was thinking of so it says first oh the numbered page one of the policy right first paragraph can we include the words in accordance with the district's dei policy maybe it's the last after the word activities probably in the second line yeah and we should call it equity policy because that's what ours is called okay so let's do that dei is what everybody else calls it okay we can even call it out which is it's like four four something one five [Music] sure but it's not just only and then the other thing on page three of the numbered pages or page four of the packet the last line of the second paragraph in red
077equitable opportunities for males and females is there any way we can change males and females to something more inclusive yeah assuming that's not required all gender expressions for all students also they all students and i think that'll just cover everything that's my life for female athletes etc i don't disagree shall we but we just have to make sure that okay perhaps it's a parenthetical about about that gender expression whatever they're so choosing or something i i think we're not coming up with something on the slide but i just like the all students i just thought we i know yeah but i with the title nine it is girl generally the policies are updated in terms of things like this issue and equity and whatnot we'll look at it yeah actually i agree with charlotte and
078if it's not boilerplate if we can't change it otherwise um tell me who wrote the boilerplate on the glasses there there's there's more stuff in here i've got like two pages worth of something like this is regressive i think in this case it's us actually just being better than that but yeah so i don't if we are not outside of our ability on this yeah okay yeah i will look at it see where it's uh where it's pulling that because i mean randy makes a legitimate point that these are all being scrubbed and put forward so that they align with current language and we have had plenty of policies we've seen and approved that have uh had broader language around gender expression this one doesn't so it does make me wonder why yeah there could
079very well be a reason for it but i'll find out yeah i guess we would have to just i don't know if we should have the discussion now if we have we're going to have the discussion yeah yeah possibly right that's why fine okay well i'll i'll skip a few of these so like i can move us along so we'll put them in an email um but yeah like like under um oh we're not up today nope sorry i'm not up to that one yet um g personal leads does anyone have comments oops i lost my z i don't know okay well i can put this in an email but there's a page four on the policy or page five of the packet the section in red that says blah blah blah that caused mental
080injury with the threat of physical injury um i was wondering if we can just take out the threat of physical injury because we can't this is where i play and i need to talk to someone because i feel like you can be you can have mental injury period and that's that's valid but okay extracted from labor code and is page 8 the policy about uh religious leave is that also extracted from labor code yes citation age eight yeah page eight of the policy or page nine of them religious yeah so yeah because um the thing that kind of that i didn't understand is why do we deduct the cost of hiring a substitute from the wages of the employee who's asking for a religious leave when it didn't look like we did that for any
081other league this is our current policy right okay so i'm not a lawyer and talking at the top of my head but given that it's religion and we're a governmental body i'm not sure that we can grant religiously out of our own pockets oh got it that makes sense okay shoot you guys have a whole bunch more i don't want to take up everybody's time should move on the letter h anybody on family care and medical so family care and medical leave is this like language we can't change like anywhere in it well i think that's too broad uh assumption i think it depends on what it is well i on page two of the policy bullet point two it refers to morning sickness and quotes that's probably a defined term well they didn't define
082it anymore because the it says you have to get your health care provider to sign off on it so medically morning sickness is and i look this up nausea and vomiting or pregnancy nausea gravidarum premises gravidarum severe morning sickness hyperemesis gravidarum look there's names for it instead of putting it in quotes it just seemed a little i don't know she's got warning sickness wing points like that that's how i took it the lawyer in me reads it as a defined term that they may have messed up not well i just think it's you know i think to me that just reflects i'm not saying shouldn't advocate for taking the quotes off but i mean you know morning sickness i think it's a global strategy they don't say high blood pressure due to pregnancy yeah okay
083i'm for the quotes yeah let's just remove the quotes if i can do something as easy as that okay good yeah not just you charlie thank you um as i was reading this and started getting into the administrative regulations and it's the top of the page says addressing truancy and then we'll go into one initial currency anywhere where i start seeing for example b2 uh the parent guardian may be guilty of an infraction of the law and subject first prosecution anywhere where i see any sort of prosecution or criminal it i don't like that for our students we should not be criminalizing them not going to school so i totally back you up on that and on that same page yeah under address and truancy it's why do we have the word arrested remove a
084arrest in line two of the first paragraph and it's also in line four and then on page nine vote point five subject to arrest yeah no like pretty much a lot of this i mean this is head code right like under the laws of the state of california that's what it says it does make you subject to events yeah well i don't believe that we have ever asked los altos police department to arrest any of our students or families but you know like this is a required policy and i mean as i read this policy closely it's about protecting people protecting people by making aware that they are at risk of this right so it says any person arresting which we would never do shall uh you know do the following thing there's a lead
085up to it right but but if this is code right and it's education it's not the penal code or whatever then in the first seven bullet points under initial truancy it just looks at how we're going to punish the truancy but it doesn't look at what is the reason behind the children is it truly this kid doesn't want to come to school or is it like school refusal like we're not really looking at them so there's a lot that happens before we ever get to this level right there's a there's a great deal that occurs i mean this have we ever gotten to this level um well we've had students who are certainly not arrested sure a student who's true has been i mean if you look on page eight when a student has been
086identified as screwing as defined above the following steps shall be taken right the student shall be reported to superintendent attendance supervisor or designee sure that's happened not frequent but it has happened we notify the parent absolutely they are obligated to have their child attend school sure hold number four that there's solutions right i mean we have strongly encouraged some families to attend parenting classes that are run used to be run by king krauss our old school resource officer um because there is a dynamic that happens in some of our homes around attendance i just traumatize him to have a police officer show up at your house to a rescue or you're like just the you know people what is this in an email in the message can scare people pretty heavily and i just so
087we do let parents know it is their legal responsibility what you're doing is criminal and i uh i worry uh i worry in two ways about the parents and just like they're trying their hardest or it's uh the parent may not be trying their hardest and somehow this comes out badly on a child right so i and i guess it is it's more of me and charlie having a problem with the law right now and perhaps touchdown advocating yeah uh but i also just want to emphasize that uh practice of telling them that they're they're um doing criminal behavior is not a good practice for us and that's why we don't do it and i just but that's why the word we're hurting at documents it says yeah and that's what's troubling me well and
088i i will point out that it has always said that yeah i know right but we have thousands of pages of things yeah this stuff and and i did try to read these when i started as a board member and i didn't i couldn't get them and that is why on page 8 the students parent guardian shall be notified by the most cost effective method possible which may include email or phone call that and then there's this this list and it's it's not always everything on that list right we have some latitude here well i'm glad that we have staff in the district now who are compassionate and think about our kids but i'm just thinking if we're approving this i don't know when we're going to revisit this again um criminalizing this kind of
089behavior could really set the child up negatively i mean for the rest of their lives so i'd like to keep them out of the juvenile justice system as much as possible i don't want them to touch that system if we can help it so that's that's where i'm coming from yes i think just the amount of advocacy well i i think what's more important than that that us here is knowing who we hire yeah in this district yes that's you for sure for sure okay so we do have the obviously work on thank you for coming along on this ride does this mean i don't have to send an email but you know what it does say something about having to change the language that is not progressive and in keeping with the times really
090[Music] oh sheep i think i was supposed to have asked for public comment before we had our discussion sorry it's right anyway you can still offer it there's no there's no requirement that that could be offered okay well anyone for public comments okay public comment oh lori lori is our one taker for public comment laura you have three minutes item hi um i already sent an email to you guys um asking for the bus transportation for students my daughter goes to almond school so is there any any way that we can facilitate or rent a bus since all the district my service has to be on this item so i'm really sorry to cut you off but it has to be on this agenda item only but it sounds like you sent us an email
091so we will definitely look at it thank you okay board members any other comments on this okay uh next board policy deletions csva deletes board policies administrative regulations and board bylaws when either the policy language is added to a different policy or when a policy becomes irrelevant due to changes in laws the board of trustees will review the recommended deletions approval of the donations will take place at the next regular meeting right as i mentioned last meeting that there are periodical deletions and these are the three deletions up in front of the board this round transfer of funds to birth maintenance funding crime data reporting and so i'll just give an example of crime data reporting uh that the state's collection of this data has been suspended indefinitely so therefore the policy does not need
092to be there um if it gets reenacted then we'll bring a policy thank you any clarifying questions for jeff any public comment on this agenda item all right seeing no public comment no takers public comment is now closed um any board members any of you would you like to provide a comment on this agenda item no that was very different okay all right uh moving along then board and administration comments this time is for the board and administration to report on non-agenda items such as committee reports school activities legislation and future agendas would you like to start us off sure just too quick i wanted to let you know that our our special classes at elementary are back in session which is so exciting so our pe which we had started in the spring but
093pe is back our music started on i think it was thursday or friday outdoors coming to the fifth and sixth graders were in the quad learning how to play their instrument that was really fun to listen to the pictures [Music] yeah exactly and our computer science program started today across our elementary schools which is great and then both our special programs our justice and living classroom are really looking for docent volunteers they're holding their info sessions and training so we can get those great programs up and running as well so all good news i have nothing to do tonight i don't either [Music] i went to the claudia rossi event um which was great uh she's running for supervisor um and so that was a wonderful event so i went to covington's the first day
094back to school it was great to see a full and open campus it was really emotionally just glad to see some all the normalcy is been great so thank you that's it crying um i was at santa's first day it really was even when we were back in the spring it was only you know a fraction of the kids so it was really something to see everybody's back um and i just want to clarify that our next schedule meeting is september 20th but i believe we're going to have a special meeting on the 13th correct is that right okay so just turn these away and i also went to the playa rossi event she's a wonderful person i think she'll do well as a supervisor for the county i went to alma's first day of
095school and my heart was just bursting because as you all know that's the school my daughter went to and so many parents that i talked to were so excited that we were back on campus um and everybody was masked and they knew the importance of staying mass so we didn't keep the campuses open it was really great oh almost i got very emotional but that's it for me i'd like to adjourn this meeting tonight