Board of Education Meeting — April 28, 2026

001Okay, I'm going to call the April 24th, 2026 Board meeting per government code section 54950 at sequitur and education code section 35140 at sequitur at the District Education Center 1301 East Orangethorpe Avenue, Placentia at 5:03 p.m. >> Mrs. Blades, will you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, please? >> Okay, our roll call tonight, um Todd Fraser is absent, but the rest of our board members are in attendance. And that will move us to the approval of the agenda. If I could get a motion and a second, please. >> I'll second. >> Okay, motion by Mrs. Blades, second by Mrs. Anderson. Any comments? All those in favor? >> I. >> Motion carries 4-0. That brings us to public comment. We have public comment cards available in the foyer. Cards must be turned in prior to

002the designated time for public comment. We'll provide a maximum of 3 minutes, and if translation is needed, another 3 minutes. We have civility policy education code 220 that prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability, gender, gender identity, gender expression, nationality, race, or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic that is contained in the the definition of hate crime set forth in section 422.55 of the penal code, including immigration status. Additionally, if there are any disruptions or interference with the board's ability to protect the meeting, the disruptive parties will be given one warning. If the disruption continues, you'll be informed that the board president has found you in disruption in violation of penal code section 403, ed code section 32210, and the board president will order you removed from the meeting. Under uh ed government

003code 54957.9 and 54957.95. If removing one or several disruptive parties does not restore order, the board president will exercise authority to clear the room in accordance with government code section 55 54957. Okay. That brings us to public comment. Do we have any public comments? No? Okay, all of that And we have none. So. Maybe I should have asked first. Okay. Good note. Um Okay, so we're going to build in a working dinner, this says. >> We are. >> Okay. That about 6:00. Okay, so whenever we get to about 6:00 and everybody starts to rumble, we'll take a little break and go back and have dinner. Okay. So, that brings us now to our LCAP and Dr. Kim. >> Okay, thank you, President Buck. Um board members and um members of the exec- executive and extended

004cabinet. Um to get us started this evening, I want to start with a little bit of context. Um as I've gone back and looked at board meetings, as I've gone back and looked at LCAPs, um as we've talked about the LCAP as it exists, one of the things that I asked our team tonight to do was to rethink how we approach looking at the LCAP and getting feedback. So, what I one of the things I promised Dr. Gray was that I would say, "If you hate this process, blame me, not him." Um because I did ask him to change it. Um, I really tried to focus on and and Dr. President, I worked with with he and our extended cabinet to really focus on the right level of altitude. Looking at what are all of

005the larger priorities and what data do we have to have conversations about and what do you want to know? If there's a level that you care deeply about as we go into some specifics of that, absolutely, you can ask that question. We will gladly set up a time to sit down one-on-one and go through that. But I want to also respect that as we look at this and and build an overarching plan, this is coming very quickly to the conclusion of year two and as we are going to begin to dovetail into our strategic plan, um, I want to look at how are we doing and what do we know about the students that we serve, especially our students who are typically, um, underrepresented and or students who experience some form of poverty in their

006life, speak a language other than English or experience a disability as that is the primary focus of an LCAP, um, really want to spend the energy looking at how are those students doing and what are we doing looking forward to ensure that the things we do in schools every day are going to make a difference for those kids. So, just know we raised up the level of altitude just a bit and how we're focused. What we also did was if you look at one through nine, no disrespect whatsoever, but one feels a whole lot like world peace. It is a huge overarching like we're going to do all of these things and the reality is as we begin to dig into that as an organization, we spend 90% of our time on that number one

007and then we speed through the rest of them because we realize how much time we spent. And so, one of the things that we asked our team and specifically Dr. Gregoire to do was to change the order up a little bit to really look at the students that we're talking about, the achievement levels of those students, and the work we're doing in that space. So, it if you're a linear person, we might make you a little bit crazy tonight because we took it out of order, but we did it intentionally. So, with that said, I'm going to hand it over to Dr. Gray to take us through the LCAP presentation for the evening. >> Thank you, Dr. Kim. Um good afternoon evening. It's still a little sunny for me to say evening. Um President Buck,

008members of the board, and the executive cabinet, it's my pleasure to be the facilitator for our LCAP session today. Uh before we begin, I would like to thank the directors who own these actions, and certainly the fiscal team, uh who helped out with the financial components of this work. So, as you will see, we'll be using a different format today, similar to the station rotation model we use with our community input meetings to help us move through our LCAP in a structured manner. To begin, I'd like to provide background information on the LCAP itself. This legislation is about 13 years old, and so this particular LCAP is a three-year district-level plan that describes our goals, actions, services, and expenditures in order to support positive student outcomes that address state and local priorities. We are in

009year two of our plan, and are in the process of making revisions to actions for year three based on the effectiveness of each action as measured by the progress toward the metrics. And now, Dr. John Pappalardo will briefly review the budget overview for us, and I will be his clicker. >> Thank you very much, Dr. Gray. So, as we look at the budget, we're talking about the 26-27 budget estimates, which is next year. These estimates are derived from the second interim report that we did at our March meeting. So, they have not changed. We are in the process currently of developing the budget for next year based on uh the staffing we have and the people in place and the projections for next year. So with that $280 $281 million is LCFF funding within that

010is $24.5 million for supplemental grant funding for all of our unduplicated pupils. Our other state revenues total about $78.5 million federal funds just over $10 million projected for next year based on what's coming out of Washington now which is changes regularly right now. They're talking about flat funding for next year. They're now talking about the following year. So we do follow that closely cuz it is $10 million. Then all local sources about $11.5 million for a total of about $394 million. On the and that's the revenues. On the next page what we see is that in a percentage basis and the pie shows that our LCFF base at 67% of our total funding with supplemental grant funding from the LCFF at about 6.5% those two numbers together make up about 3/4 of all of our

011dollars we get into the district. It's mostly students coming to school is the way the majority of our funds work. Going down the line state funding a little over 20% of our budget local sources about 3% and then lastly and least 2.6% from the federal government. While it's not a large percentage $10 million is a lot of money to most people. So with that that's the funding we're looking at that makes up the entire budget. The supplemental grant funding, supplemental dollars in there you see at 6.4% is about 10% of our total funding on LCFF. And that makes sense because our unduplicated rate is just under 50%. And for each unduplicated student, we get a 20% bump in the base funding for our supplemental dollars. So, half of our students get 20%. So, it should

012be about 10% and the numbers all make sense. So, we just wanted to go quickly through how we're funded and what we're looking at for next year. Thank you very much. We are in the midst of our development timeline and appreciate the time to gather input from our governing board as we work to finalize our LCAPs. The intent for this session is for everyone to have a clear understanding of the why behind our goals and planned actions and our hopes for how we can improve our use of data as a district. So, we will use the input from this session to finalize our LCAPs for OCDE to review with the LCAP and district budget adoption scheduled for the meetings in June you see on the screen. We will ground our discussion in the essential question

013for this evening, which is to what extent are the planned actions aligned with the demonstrated needs of students within our district and are they likely to produce the intended outcome? Our district LCAP is divided into nine goals with the first two focusing on actions provided for all students in order for them to succeed and enjoy their time in our district. The next five goals are focused on closing the achievement gaps for all unduplicated students, which are English learners, long-term English learners, socioeconomically disadvantaged students, and foster youth. These groups were picked by the state as the focus groups for the LCAP process because of data gaps and historical historic underperformance for these student groups across the state. And we initially explored this during the December data presentation that used Frontline Analytics. Goal eight provides focused actions

014to address the lowest performing groups at particular school sites. And goal nine is included because El Camino Real Continuation High School receives equity multiplier funds each year, and so they need to be named in our district LCAP. The goals and actions for the OCSCS LCAP are largely the same as the PYUSD LCAP with the omission of the last two school site specific goals. The draft OCSCS LCAP has three funded actions in alignment with last year's LCAP, one for their staffing, one that captures their supplemental funds that will be a part of their SIPSA action plan, and one for the cost of their Singapore math curriculum. And because of this similarity, we are able to have one input session for both documents. So, the notes from today will be used to inform both LCAPs. So, here's

015where we get new. To ensure that we ground our discussion in the intent of the LCAP legislation to focus on student group outcomes, we will use an instructional strategy called center spiraling analysis, where we will start with goal seven, which is at the center of this document and contains the bulk of our actions, and then spiral out to the other goals developed for specific student focus groups that are highlighted in gold. Then we will discuss the light blue goals for our students at specific sites. And then we will finish by gathering input on the goals that capture experiences that all students enjoy district-wide, highlighted in white. To help us work our way through this input session in an organized manner, everyone has a note catcher packet on your at your seat seat that is printed

016in the order in which we will discuss these goals. Please use it to capture your thoughts and wonderings and we can collect these at the end of our session today. So, we're going to jump into it. So, we will start with goal seven, close the achievement gaps for all unduplicated pupils through district-wide and school-wide actions. On the screen are the California dashboard data points that we work to improve our unduplicated pupil goal. There are several other metrics that are tracked on a manual basis, but many of them are what are called lagging indicators that produce results after the student experience has finished. As we move forward as a district in alignment with our new strategic plan, we would like to create and leverage a data dashboard that gives us information during the student experience so

017that we can adjust our actions to support achievement. Examples of this data would include things such as the transition to middle school student profile that captures attendance, grades, and behavior in the first 2 months of middle school, results from standardized tests to give an indication of ELA and math mastery throughout the year prior to the CASP assessments, and a monitoring tool for on-track college and career readiness. Also on the screen is a word cloud that captures a 10,000-ft view of our intentions with the action for this goal. The major actions for this goal are continued investment in the time for professional learning communities for our teachers, wellness specialists at sites across the district, and continuing to fund our career technical education program. So, with that framing and acknowledgement of our data needs, I'd like to

018open it up for some wonderings or questions that we have for this goal that our directors can help clarify. >> One of the questions that I had as I was reading through the Lcap. And it comes through like pretty much it's on every goal. Um but there's no analysis of the effectiveness of any of these goals listed. And um so that's that would be my question almost for every goal. Is to know how how effective these goals are and um if this is something, you know, worth continuing or switching. Um if we're really seeing, you know, the progress that we anticipated. Um there's lots of I guess gaps especially with writing and math across the board in all of our focus areas. Um So something like that. If anyone wants to address that. >> I

019would concur with you. There are gaps. Um and currently, um as the district exists coming in, one of the things that was interesting and perplexing is that we don't have um a data dashboarding system and a data culture that allows us to track that. And so what we have is at the level of altitude that you see the color uh the California dashboard, um which is sort of a speedometer-ish type of a of a system. Part of my discussion with you all, I think, last month in some of your planning meetings was around tools like Panorama that will help us set up that dashboard where we can do a much better job to create actionable periodic goals that can be measured. Um because until we get those kind of tools, it's going to be really

020difficult. Because the only thing you have is beginning, middle, and end. Um, and many of those tools that are beginning, middle, middle, and end are even tools that are at an altitude that are not diagnostic. They don't tell us how are they doing? Are they on track? What do we do next? And those tools do exist. They're out there. We We have the capability of bringing them in. We just have to do so. >> Is that something, um, that we're going to implement for next year? Like I guess I'm calling them progress reports cuz they're not and they're not really the uh >> Yeah. No, I that that is the intention. Right now, part of what we've begun to discuss as a as a cabinet team is as we've started to build out what we

021expect will transition from this to a strategic plan. As we identify what those priorities are, developing a data dashboarding system that will allow us to monitor. We're not putting anything in the plan that we can't measure. And then from there, creating a monitoring report system that allows us to come back and report to you, whether it's quarterly, whether that's twice a year, whether that's annually, however way it makes sense based on the data source. But yes, I intend for that to be a normal part of our operations next year. >> Okay, thank you. So, clearly chronic absenteeism is an ongoing challenge that we have. Can you talk more about goals, um, beyond what we're doing now to reach these students? And some of these I had that I read through, it was transportation issues. Um,

022what are things that we can do? And if they're not coming in, how do we go to them and and bring them in? So, can you maybe share a little bit about that? Whoever wants to take that. >> Yeah, one of the things I will ask is I'll ask our student support team to really outline for you all in like an upcoming Friday update, here are all the major strategies that the group is working through that have shown results because what I can say is coming from a state that is in the top five with the highest percentages of chronic absenteeism, I will say that the amount of energy that has to be put into that, you can't teach kids who aren't there, right? Um, I think that some of the in innovative ways that

023PYEL has approached it has actually resulted in um, improved outcomes. That said, um, we can create systems at a district-wide level. We also have to dig down into finding out school by school um, where we see in pockets that are being more successful than others and what's happening there, looking at various populations. There's there's a deeper level of analysis that needs to be done, but I can I can certainly hand it over um, Ms. Gray, if you want to speak to some of the strategies you guys used, I'm certainly open to having you have that conversation and we can follow up in writing. >> Sure, absolutely and I'll also pass it off to Baldwin. I do know, we do have some data um, prior to this year, we were at I think it was 12%

024chronic absenteeism in 2024-25 and right now we're hovering at around 10. So, with all the efforts and I'm going to give Jason Pike a shout-out cuz he's been doing a lot in terms of um, providing reinforcers um, to the school sites, working individually with different school sites, um, making sure that we are meeting um, specific student groups' needs based on regionally where the needs are. Um, and so, not only our chronic absenteeism rate, but our um, attendance data is has really made improvements and we set a goal at the beginning of this year for 1% improvement and it looks like we're going to meet it, so it's pretty exciting. And so, what we want to do is we want to look at the data now to see are we seeing differences in learning? Cuz that's

025the whole goal. I mean, we want students to be here, obviously, and connect. But, what we've been doing with these efforts is not just saying look at the amount that we get because students are coming. We're saying you can now engage more. Socially, it's more beneficial for you. Academically, it's more beneficial for you when you're here. And so, we've been really pushing. We have a uh uh What do you call it? Like a It's not a logo. A attend to achieve. Yeah, attend to achieve is our and Lorelei helped us with that. So, we've been pushing that out this year. And I think the school sites are really excited about it. And they know that this is definitely a priority for us. But, we've also done individual things based on the region of the district.

026And Baldwin, do you want to add anything? >> Yeah, just to just to piggyback on that. Yeah, it started last spring with attend to achieve our campaign and it kind of spearheaded and kicked off our year. And so, just keeping attendance at the forefront. Every time that we're meeting you whether at principal meetings or even through just constant reminders. While like Dr. Kim had mentioned about us looking at some ways that we can build a dashboard. We worked to put together an attendance dashboard kind of on our own to help keep that information in front of our our school staff. And then really letting our principals own that piece at their school sites as well to to push, you know, for attendance. And so, again, I can't thank enough Jason Pike has done a lot

027you know, helping do a home visits as well. And some of that data we've actually are looking at breaking it down. So, disaggregating like Dr. Kim had said, let's look at some of our subgroups because attendance is really just a symptom, right? So, it's really gets down to kind of looking at what are some of the reasons why maybe our foster youth might be experiencing some some attendance issues or some of our McKinney-Vento or our students with disabilities. So, each of those factors, whether they're school or home related, we we need to talk to families. We need to talk to school sites and try to find out what those are so that we can address those those barriers. So, that's where we're kind of at right now. >> How did specifically transportation um what are

028some of the barriers beyond you know, I don't have a car to get in here. What are part of our requirements are to make sure kids are getting in here. So, um how are we addressing it? Do we need to spend more money on making sure that that there's transportation available? What do we do now? I mean, I know we have bus passes and things like that, but um we are required to get them here. So, do do we offer that? Does everybody know at the front offices that that's available? Is it a communication issue? When you hear that transportation is one of the the gaps for families, what are the next steps for them? >> So, part of the education and letting, you know, our staff know about, you know, the rights and, you

029know, whether they're McKinney-Vento foster youth, um especially with our McKinney-Vento students that, you know, transportation is something that we can help and support with. So, on a case-by-case basis, we have um allocated resources to help and support families that might need transportation, whether they be foster youth or or uh students experiencing homelessness, but through bus passes or even district transportation. So, on a case-by-case basis, you know, we'll we'll utilize those resources, but our schools are aware to reach out to us to to let us know if barriers such as transportation um happens to be one of the factors, then we want to look at that and see how we can best support that. >> I'd add to that. One of the things that I've I've seen happening, obviously I've only been here for what, close

030to 7 months now, but as I've observed the team, the the uh when when there's a family that's struggling, they sit down, have a conversation, ask the question. What is it what is Yeah, what is what are the obstacles and how can we problem solve and help you? Cuz that's step number one, right? Is to figure out and define the problem. From there, figure out what resources do we have that we can bridge that gap for them. So, part of it is building that personal connection cuz one of the things I know from national data and I see our district doing really well is that kids who have a sense of belonging and feel that connection and families that have that connection are much more likely to come to school. So, having those personal connections

031matters. And so, I I definitely see the team lending into that space and and having those conversations with families. I think the next piece that I see is that they make it fun. And when I say by making it fun, one of the things that I've seen Jason do over and over again is try to kind of gamify attendance. Um they recently had you know, he played on the World Cup. The World Cup's coming. Everybody's been talking about it. It's all over the media. All of a sudden, he creates a World Cup of attendance and you got schools that are competing with one another to you know, in pairs to see who can come to and kids are kids are working together and grade levels are working together. And so, I mean, there's there's a

032combination. It's not one thing. It's really sort of a recipe of things that get us there. >> Thank you. >> Yeah, and I do want to highlight cuz since I have Gina next to me, El Camino has done great this year making some great strides with their attendance as well, too. So, kudos to to Gina and her team. >> Thank you. >> It's a heavy lift and it's a case I it really is all about building relationships and convincing families and those students to come to school cuz it's a good place to be. So, thank you for that. >> I just have one more question. Um in action item 7. 2.20, it talks about multi-tier systems of support. Where it addresses um that we have more kids now passing their classes. But yet there's still

033a gap. It doesn't It's not translating over to the standardized testing. And um especially in mathematics. And I was wondering um why we why there might be that is or especially in secondary schools. >> I can give you my hypothesis, but certainly I'm going to I'm going to ask Dr. Price to tell lean into this too because as a as a curriculum instruction person, certainly there there are strong opinions as well as experiences. When when you look at grades and you look at passing classes, there's a component of that that is do you play school well? I I don't care what you do. There's a component of that is do you play school well? Do you do what's being asked of you? And that is a component of how we create a transcript of whether

034a student successful. When you're looking at assessments to determine whether a student is proficient, it is purely based on can you show that you have mastered the content? And so there has to be a recognition of are we setting kids up to be able to demonstrate that they have the knowledge and skills that they need in order to be proficient in the standards that we in the state of California says is really important for that they know how to do. And those are two you hope that those are well connected to one another, but they are not completely overlapped 100%. They're just not. You want to add? >> Yes, I think it's a a great observation and wondering and I would echo what Dr. Kim shared and also a lot of work that we have

035to do when we think about standards-based instruction is how we assess that learning and that it is not performative or based off of compliance indicators, which is historically how I went to school, how you went to school. And so, as we reimagine high school experiences and secondary experiences, it's really thinking about student mastery in a different way. So, as we redesign that, you'll see a closer alignment between the achievement and the grades. Dr. Gray, anything you would add? Or Mr. Director Young. >> Not at this point. You put it very succinctly. Thank you. >> Thank you, guys. So, um in section, I hope I'm in the right section. I like the fact that we're doing it in the opposite way, but it does throw me off a little bit. So, goal number seven, 7.3, the

036reduction of class size in TK K. I would like us to look at expanding that to first and second grades as well. As we're building out and what we do, how can we expand that because the younger we're looking at prevention, interventions, all of that. If we can put all that focus into prior to third grade when we're learning to read, I would love to see us really put some effort and energy into that. It would be unprofessional of me, but I have to say my initial thought was amen, sister. Um we we really do need to do this work. Um teaching children to read is absolutely one of, if not the most important thing we do in K3. And it is the building block to students being successful with the rest of their academic

037career. And it is incredibly hard to ask our educators to work with six and seven-year-olds, 30 of them, 32 of them at a time and teach them that very, very essential foundational skills. So, I would say we've had that conversation. I know for a fact that Liz is probably having the same reaction I did, which is yes, please. That is work we really, really need to think about and we need to prioritize, especially within our strategic plan work that we're going to bring you in June. >> So, I was at a few schools this week and I feel like this is so far away, I'm leaving it. Um and got to see some of the amazing preschool and TK and kindergarten and all the other grades. Um but it was really uh we talk about

038full inclusion and having full inclusion preschools and it takes a lot more time, but if we invest the time now, it's going to pay off. The just going back to um the number of and student count. So, and we have 800 more unhoused students this year than we did the year before. That is incredible. And it's just growing by leaps and bounds and the the economy the way it is and in Orange County the way the cost of living is, it's only going to increase. So, we need to be way more strategic and put more effort into it and if we could do more to grow the brains and get them to that point, then we're going to have fewer people that are unhoused because they um be because they need to be in school

039and we see that that they're not graduating at the same rates. Their scores are low. Um this is the key moment in time and age. So, thank you. >> Just um two things on the beginning of uh goals and actions for seven, the second paragraph, it says 181% and um Liz Dr. Leon just told me it was 18%, so I was like, "Wow." And then I would write. >> It's Yeah. And just another thing to piggyback off of what Carrie said about lowering class sizes I would even go on further to say K to 6. We think we need to lower class sizes as well because >> I agree. >> those yeah those um those students that you know especially now hopefully in years to come will have less and less in the upper grades

040that have catch up work to do but I think right now especially we need to really focus in and hone on in making those classes smaller so they can get more individual attention and then as we beef up the you know our first um quality first instruction hopefully that'll help as well so >> All right we are on to goals three and four. So goals three and four are goals that are designed to support the achievement of our English learners and our long-term English learners comprising about 2,500 students across our district. Again we have the dashboard data for these students and the other metrics that are listed in the LCAP. So the leading indicators that we hope to monitor in the future for this student group include engagement and school connectedness metrics information related to

041language mastery across the four domains of speaking listening reading and writing and systemic ways of monitoring students that are at risk of being designated as long-term English learners. Major actions for these goals include our bridging and emerging English language development courses at our high school high schools ELD academic support teachers at at elementary sites and providing guided language acquisition design training for teachers. So with that being said I'd like to open it up for questions and wonderings. >> My first question is a around um the district writing prompt and that that coming up soon. This Last year it seemed like a significant drop. Um, can you maybe share a little bit information on that? And are the district writing prompts similar to how they have been in the past where you train for, you know,

042different types of writing prompts and you get what you get and you sometimes get ones that are better and easier and sometimes are harder. Can Maybe more explanation on what you think happened. >> Okay. So, you'll see that, um, you have on page 28 the district writing prompt data. And so, what it shows there is the baseline, what what we had in year 1, 2, and 3. And so, um, to your question, we're actually in a really pivotal time right now with the writing prompts because we've gotten some input. So, we've done things a certain way to have a genre was presented in a certain sequence because that's what we came into. Um, that is no longer aligned to the district adopted curriculum, meaning Wonders. And so, typically, we have students start with narrative writing

043in all of my previous experience because they can talk from the I. Like where students start. The goal of the writing prompts as they were first created was to try to find a connection with other content areas, meaning science and social studies. So, the themes came out of that. So, informational writing was first, then narrative, then opinion, then expository. But we're seeing if we want to right now align with our new Wonders adoption, it's something we absolutely have to revisit. So, that what we're doing and we're writing across the curriculum is there's an alignment with what you're reading about is what you're writing about, what you're writing about is what you're reading about. And so, that, um, is we're going to bring together our teachers because there was a group in a cohort 5 years

044ago. We brought them together and said, "Do these Do these writing prompts still fit the needs?" And the idea obviously was to replicate what students are going to get in state testing so that we can prepare them and not have them be surprised by what they have to in the in the way that they have to write in order to show um achievement. And so we're we're at that point where we're going to be revisiting the sequence of our writing prompts, the content of our writing prompts, whether we still want them to align to history social science to create importance to that, um and where it logically developmentally makes sense for students. If they have a greater skill set to pull from because they have life experiences to write about my trip to Disneyland, then

045maybe we start there and build on their existing assets, move them into how you take that skill set over to expository writing, how you take that to non-fiction. So we're we're in the works to improve these results as well. >> I appreciate Oops. I appreciate that and I I have seen wonders in action in the last uh week or so and the teachers are loving it and this the kids love it. So I think it's better than benchmarks. So thank you for um the info. This will be interesting to watch. Yeah. >> Thank you for bringing that up. I had it on here and I I wrote concern. So uh since I had a concern, I'll give a nice job on 3.5 doing more of our career um expanding our career in education out to

046our English learners. Um we're up at what? 20% When we started this, uh we were at 11%. So really nice job um making sure everyone gets opportunities for career and learning. But now, I like to transition to action 3.2. Um And again, I want to know how this is working in our secondary schools because that um that specific integrated instruction designated and integrated into our middle schools and and high schools so far English learners so they can move forward um to not being an English language learner so they can transition. And we just And my biggest concern is our L tells is which is in the next goal that we have so many long-term English language learners and um that have been in our district all their years and they haven't transitioned. So I just

047I'm just really concerned how we're doing there in that area. If someone would like to address that. >> Yeah, thank you. That's a great wondering and question and I would say a lot of the work that we are starting to think about in our strategic plan includes how we support bilingualism, what we know about students and identity and culture and language and how those are intertwined. And when we try and just teach English historically and we don't provide asset attribute the assets the students are bringing and we're not gathering the home language and we're not providing literacy in the native language, we often see our L tells stall at a three or four and they don't progress past that. And so a lot of our exploration right now is around how do we infuse and

048think about language acquisition in a different and long-term manner. Also, as we do our glad work, we're really thinking about content and literacy within that. So, just not just acquiring English for the sake of English, but how are you going to perform and understand the academic language in chemistry, in a science class, right? In your social studies classes, because that's really where the richness comes and they become transferable language skills for the students. So, as we start to develop all of our strategic action plans around that, look for those indicators, because that's where the shift is going to be from our current practice to how we get to overcoming that and increasing our number of students who are progressing through to acquire proficiency in English. Anything our team would add? Director Young or Dr. Gray?

049>> Just very briefly. >> Well. >> I will add that, in secondary, having worked in that space and worked with our principals in that space, our designated ELD program, we're looking really closely at that. One of the things that we contribute to via the ALCAP is um essentially providing a little bit more staffing in the spaces where it's needed most, so that our designated ELD sections can run at lower numbers and that students get more direct support. Um and so that was kind of my out of 3.2, that that what that's what that line represents, is that schools with high incidence of EL learners and a large number of EL tells are kind of offered more support and staffing, so that they can, you know, run a master schedule that is highly influenced by the

050support model for our ELs. So, they're getting more individualized one-on-one support from their teachers. >> How many different languages are part of our EL or L Tel population? >> Our Jose Cabrera would know that off the top of his head. He's enjoying uh perhaps strategically planned vacation. Um but it is in in in the dozens. I will commit to in the dozens of home languages that are spoken. And we'll provide an update. >> And the support, I agree with, needed more support. It's like any language that you know, you learn that the more you practice, the better you do you better do you um progress. And if that's a huge class and they're only getting 2 minutes a period to speak or practice speaking, um that really limits their progress. So yeah, having smaller class

051sizes and more support, smaller groups, um would really help especially in high school. >> I would add to that. Um you know, still very much in my learning phase of how we are serving kids and in what learning models. Um I would tell you that, you know, we're going to continue to dig in and learn a bit more about this, but I have a number of questions in that space. And part of it, I'm going to say goes back to some previous experiences that I've had. Um you know, I have a wondering because when we have class sizes like we have, the amount of time that our students have an opportunity to use their academic language is a question for me. Um I will tell you that one of the experiments that I've done now

052in every district I've served in the last 20 years has been to have leaders from our team go shadow a student all day, start to finish. Go to their home, transport with them, go to every class they have. Um and pay attention to what the learning experience is. And the reason for that is to think about are we giving students the opportunity to experience what they need to experience in order to be able to perform in the ways we want them to. And the reason why that was so profound is I'll still go back to uh a leader that I worked with about 12 years ago who said, "I followed an English language learner in middle school because the the professional was a middle school teacher." And he got pretty emotional about it and he

053said, "My student spoke eight times in the day. And I didn't realize that the eight times they spoke was were all sitting at lunch with their friends. And we don't do it intentionally. By no means do we do it intentionally, but it happens. And I don't know if that's our experience, but until we all go and try to shadow some of our kids and spend that time really getting a sense of of what is their day-to-day experience, I don't know that we're going to be able to answer it in quite the way that I want us to. So, that I I part of my commitment is to say we have a responsibility to get a true understanding of the student experience so that we can be confident that any and all things we invest in

054are absolutely going to result in student learning. Um, because right now we're using things that are aligned to best practice, we're aligned to research, but the reality is even that without giving kids that experience isn't going to get us there. And so, I think um I look forward to that work next year and having the opportunity for us to have those conversations. >> I think that would be amazing. That would be really eye-opening, too. >> Are we giving um training on ELD at the secondary language to like the art teacher, the PE teacher, the >> content >> the all the content teachers so that they can incorporate best practices in their classroom. >> Director Young, Dr. Gray. >> Uh the GLAD uh trainings that we spoke of a little bit earlier have been primarily focused

055on our core content teachers, but we have been at our pre-service this year we actually invited um GLAD trained teachers and GLAD to come out and actually offer that across the board for all teachers, including our elective and arts teachers. Um and that has been a focus of our ongoing like PD that we've offered after school and sub pullout days. So, we're trying to weave it in wherever we can. Uh so that the uh saturation point is high. Um and you can't ignore that the strategy or strategies are effective in use. Um I would love to be able to dig a little bit deeper in that and say out of all secondary teachers who has been exposed and at what depth with GLAD this year and last year. We will follow up with that. >>

056I was going to say, have you seen examples of that in some of the classes in secondary? >> I have um as I visited each of the different schools and toured around, I have seen uh teachers using the strategies. They're very much aligned with AVID and building thinking classrooms and a lot of the other instructional initiatives. Um but I'll dig deeper into that and show some kind of evidence back to you guys. >> And >> Thank you. >> I've you know, I've been around at this point to every school at least twice now um in various capacities, but when I have walked classrooms, it has there have been specific cases where teachers have said, "Come here. I want you to see this." and they have talked about the strategies that they're using with their students

057to try to gain access to academic language. So, I do know that the people who are trained are feeling very strong about, you know, that training and feel like it's it's helpful to them and cuz they want to demonstrate it. >> Mhm. >> And I think with GLAD as well, it meshes into what you're doing already so nicely. It's not something else you're doing. It's already incorporating with what you have already. And um I think once teachers realize that and see that in person and experience it, it's really eye-opening. And um I can see it going very well, like I said, at the schools I visited as well. But um I think that's the one I think epiphany that most people get when they do the GLAD training is like, oh, oh, I can do

058this. It's not something extra. So, that's the great part about it. >> I've seen lots of it happening recently and the teachers are very excited about it and and show me as well when it's coming up. >> All right, we are on to goal >> Oh, wait. I turned off goal four. Um Here's a wondering. Um in 4.7, it talks about how we're going to be doing student focus groups and um and I was just wondering to engage our L cells. And I was wondering what kind of feedback have we received on that. >> Uh Jose Cabrera led that. Um they piloted it at Valdez Middle School Academy. He's also part of the community engagement work that they've engaged in. Um I don't want to provide the wrong information or too broad of a picture,

059so I'll ask Jose to provide a pretty detailed update. I do know that they had quite a good turnout once they conducted those interviews and were listening to families. Um Dr. Pedroza, were you part of those conversations? I don't I don't you on the spot, but phone a friend. >> Uh yes, I did have an opportunity to attend uh the L Tel night uh and listen and sit in on actually a section a input session from parents interviews and and hear some of the some of the feedback from parents. And one of the big things I'll just highlight was uh communication was a big thing for our parents wanting to ensure multiple modes of of communication, not just one mode. Um we also took a look at asking, you know, families, you know, if we're

060going to offer professional or education for parents, you know, what type you know, what time of the day, you know, was most conducive, morning, evening, um uh in person, you know, Zoom, you know, so I looked at different ways that we can explore, you know, how our families, you know, want to be communicated with. So, um we got to glean some some great, you know, input from our families and um I don't have that information for you, but I know Jose and what maybe we can share is have put together, you know, maybe some highlights of what some of that input was uh that we gleaned from our parents. >> But Ms. Anderson, I think you were asking specifically about students, right? >> Right, students right. >> So, I yeah, I think that we can

061certainly ask Jose to uh create a follow-up sort of a synopsis for you guys and put it in Friday update if that works. >> If that That would be great. And then also to probably um this is also Jose. >> Mhm. >> Um it to 4.12 talks about um L Tel's taking ownership of their academic goals and progress. And I'm just curious about that as well. >> Mhm. >> Want to know how that's going. Oh, you Dr. >> Oh, I know something about this. Um so, we have our students across the grade spans engage in um taking a look and goal setting. So, they get um a summary of where they're at in their language acquisition and then they get to set goals along with their teacher. So this is a monitoring that happens. So

062they get to establish like okay, so if I am seeing that I'm not where I want to be with speaking then I'm going to have more opportunities to ensure that when we do group work, I'm the one who's leading that group. And so those are the kind of goals that students can set up with their with their teachers. And so then they cuz I have actually seen it in classrooms. Um they do like little bar graphs. And so even at the elementary level they do little bar graphs of like where am I with the goal that I have set out for myself. The teacher gets together with them and they have like a sheet with a profile and the teacher signs off on it, the student signs off on it. So um it helps to

063build that self-directed learning um for students. I've also seen it with the TOSAs um them going over even practicing strategies to take the ELPAC test and going over their results and they are setting goals as well with them or like hey, what can we change on this and really going over their um answers and preparing them for the test. So I think that's a huge part of it, too. And like I said, it's both the student and the TOSA working together to like say, "Okay, you know, I need two more questions right or I need one more question right." So it's really nice to see it that conferencing going on. That's great. Thank you guys for sharing. Going back to what Dr. Pedraza said, um parent engagement is so critical at this point and we

064used to do parent university. I don't know how much of other classes we still provide, but using some of what we learned at the L Tel night and to provide some additional resources and and maybe school for for the parents so that they can understand what the language is. We want those kids to use. I know we've done it in the past and we still might be doing that, but maybe we and we spend a little bit more effort into targeting that because if we get the parents involved and um they're just going to champion it with us. >> Our parents in our strategic planning sessions have given us some of that feedback as well and talked about what parts of that were really, really helpful to them and what they what they would put

065their energy into coming to if we offered in what doesn't speak to them. So, it's been helpful to hear that from our parents. >> All right. My apologies for skipping past that. Um, so now we're on to uh goal five. This focuses on our socioeconomically disadvantaged students, which is our biggest subgroup at around 10,000 students within the district. The leading indicators that we hope to monitor in the future to add to our California data dashboard is um, monitoring student mastery of content standards prior to the CASP assessments, student engagement data, and a proactive attendance monitoring system that uh Dr. Pedraza alluded to earlier. The major actions for this goal include the funding of counselors and site leaders at high-need schools, transportation routes to high-impact sites, and our avid programs. So, with that framing and acknowledgement

066of our data needs, I'd like to open it up for questions and wonderings. >> A bit of semantics and it might be because the state is requiring it, but if we could reframe the homeless students to unhoused students, that would it's a better way to to to describe them. And then just pointing out the 40 4,200 up from 3,425 the year before. Um, I know that we don't have the data specifically here yet, but on the California um, on at CDE, that stuff is that number is submitted back in October. So, we might have 2025 2026 already. And I don't know what it is off the top of my head, but I'm curious is it if it's gone up or down from 24-25 to 25-26. Another one that I noticed in here is that the

067district-wide mentoring program we're not renewing due to lack of participation. I think there's some value in it for some really small sub-populations like foster youth maybe and um even our homeless youth, which that's a lot of. Um but looking at what we could maybe continue doing some of that because there is some value to it. I'm assuming that maybe the participation was that an adult or a child side? >> I've heard both. Talking to different people, that sometimes you have the person, the adult willing to, but then the student because of chronic absence isn't showing up. And then vice versa, you have the students and then some, you know, you don't have staff to to fill it. >> One of the things I might suggest, um part of what we've begun to set up is

068a structure of sort of student leadership opportunities and like advisory groups to myself and our our cabinet leaders um to really empower our students to build those leadership skills that we talk about from the durable skills. To me, engaging those students in conversation around what could that look like and what do students need, especially in light of, you know, we spoke to over 350 students in grade 6 through 12 within this strategic planning process. And our students have given us lots of context of what they feel like they don't know, and it makes me wonder cuz so much of it has to do with life skills. So much of it has to do with things like financial literacy. Um kids talked about I don't know how to cook. Kids talked about I don't know how

069to do practical things that I'm going to need to know when I no longer live with my parents. Um last night parents talked about my kids are doing homework and and I want them engaging in academic stuff, but I don't get to teach them some of the life skills that you're talking about that they need. And so I think there's an opportunity for us to maybe think about mentoring through that lens. If classes are really all encompassing in terms of what environment they want to immerse themselves in so that they feel academically prepared, mentoring might be an avenue for some of those life skills that we talk about. So I'd love to engage with kids and hear their perspective on that. >> I love that. Thank you. >> I was wondering how 5.11 um the

070math fellows for elementary is going. >> This is one of my joys. So um we're really excited because um the we have invested and poured into our teachers to turn around and help support other teachers. So it's teachers supporting teachers. We have 12 of them who have and we this was a part of a three-year plan. So we started out by um equipping our teachers with the professional development that they needed working with UCLA. We transferred over to UC Irvine and even uh included Orange County Department of Ed. So we really poured into helping um to support a cohort of teachers that was absolutely interested, totally voluntary. Um and this is in year three. They are actively working with 30 teachers who have said come and uh team teach with me. Or um now there

071are even some of them have even said like yeah, if you want to come and record me because we like to I'd like to debrief you know with you about like what went right, what can I do better? And so we're at the point where they're so interested we're moving into year four. And so they're saying and we're really trying to consolidate our efforts because initially we were like who wants to be a part of this and across the 21 schools we got some group of teachers and then we said okay, well how can we concentrate our efforts at a title one site and so we had one of our title one sites that the teachers were open to like can we try it in a fifth grade and so the math fellows went to

072the fifth grade class and then fourth grade is like well what about us? And so then okay, well we'll help support so we've got more and so we're releasing teachers to support each other in building that capacity and so we're now out of their own interest and they're actually part of our math steering committee too. So they're fully invested in helping to promote math literacy and foundational skills across the district and with our colleagues and that's the sustainability model that happens when you have teachers teaching teachers and they are sharing their own interest so it's going well. Love to grow that and we've actually started with ELA fellows too. So >> Next baby we'll get a write up about that. And the results. >> Just to highlight it's in here and just call it out

073the elementary school counselors at high impact sites. I think that's critical and making sure that we're doing it equitably across schools meaning that if some schools have higher numbers and lower numbers and so the higher number school might need some more time versus just everybody gets, you know, a certain amount of time. >> Yeah, having the equitable services, I think is a big thing as well, because like you said, it's not every school is not equal, and there are going to be some higher need schools, and between the counseling, I mean, everything listed on this are just essential programs that we need for our district and for our students, and especially with the the um SED group. And I'm just thinking about what she had said earlier about shadowing a student, like this would be

074amazing too for that, being not just language-wise, but just circumstance-wise. >> In fact, I'm going to share with you all on Friday. Uh there's an article that just came out today in Chalkbeat, which is a national education publication, that they the uh um a research group out of one of the universities, I think it's Maryland, that studied sort of the impacts of poverty on a student's experience all the way through, and they were able to sort of quantify like what is that in relation to a student who doesn't experience poverty in terms of sort of the value that can be added to their experience, and what does that mean for education? What is that What do we do to level that playing field? The positive is it talked about federal funds um really making a

075big difference, but it also talked about the student experience really um being sort of that fulcrum point of if they're getting their needs met, cuz the money is there, are we using it well? >> I'm just going to throw this out for you all to watch. Um I recently was working with um doing something for work, and we did a movie screening. It's a documentary called Possible Selves, and it is about foster youth, and it and it follows two foster youth over a period of time, and where they go and what happens to them and their experience. It's incredibly well done and um the two um subjects in the documentary are doing great. Um and I can share after you watch it, I'll tell you where they are and what they're doing. But I highly

076encourage it because it really shines a light on what foster youth experience. >> Mhm. And I think it's another thing to go to like almost breaking the cycle, you know, it's you need to give them the tools and the success so that they're not just repeating what they've learned or seen. It's basically something that they can achieve and know that they can and know that someone actually believes that they can too as well. That's where our obviously our staff comes in. So. >> So it's 6:07, do you want to go move through this one and then grab dinner or grab dinner and then move on? >> Why don't Why don't we do this one and then we'll take a 15-minute break and let people get some food. >> Perfect. >> All right. Um goal six

077is targeted at foster youth. Um so they're our smallest of the student groups in our LCAP 24-25 data indicate we have about 100 students that are designated this way. Um could be higher this year. And so given that this student group is fluid, our hope is for our foster youth liaison to have their own master data dashboard that will help them keep a pulse on all of these students across the district to ensure that resources are provided on a proactive manner to support their social and emotional needs in the years ahead. Major actions for this goal include the foster youth mentoring program, student group specific training for school staff, and tutoring services that can be directly provided to foster youth students. And so with that being said, I'll open it up for questions and clarifications.

078>> I feel like I jump around a little bit, so apologies. Um for foster youth, I just put in here a note out of these students need personal math skills way um personal math and personal um finance uh skills way earlier, and a lot of times they're getting it before their parents even get it. So, just a consideration, we could even do a joint class um as we're building parent universities. Maybe we do targeted classes specifically for them and their caregivers. >> My question is how long on average does a foster youth stay in our district? Is it I'm just curious. Are they staying long-term? Because I know the county tries to even if you're not living in our district, they try to keep you at your school. But I want to know is it

079just a couple years, are we getting them through longer periods of time? And I'm just just curious. Because I noticed there's a lot of fluctuation in those numbers, and um and we might not have that answer tonight. >> I would say we probably don't, but Baldwin, if you want to >> Yeah, we can work to see if we can pull some uh some information together to gather that. Um but just to say, you know, it is our foster youth fluid such a fluid situation in a case-by-case whether they're with foster parents, whether they're with extended family, whether they're in a group home. So, the various living conditions, we've had some in Orangewood as well, too. So, with those fluid situations, um it is dependent, but we can work to get some information, see if we

080can find out for you. >> I just think that will help us understand and better serve them. And we know how long they're staying here. And then that just dovetails into point 6.5 with engaging with families and caregivers of foster youth. Um so that we know how to deal with their needs. Um how has that been working out? How effective has that been? >> Karina Luna is our foster youth liaison, so she does a great job at maintaining consistent communication with caregivers, those that are charged with with the care of our foster youth. She works very closely with community agencies as well, social services as well in determining, you know, educational rights, you know, certain circumstances, situations that the kids are in. But I love the idea building on that expanding, you know, the support

081for the caregivers in such things as as you mentioned President Buck, you know, opportunities to help maybe bridge some of those opportunities for with with the kids as well too with some workshops or you know, something around those things. So I I actually love like that idea like to to work on that piece for sure. >> speak a little bit about the family wellness event that had the breakouts and what you plan on doing there. >> Yeah, yeah, we and that is a shameless plug, but if you remember Marilyn from last year we had our wellness event at Melrose in which we're replicating again May 8th as well to at Valadez. So that information's is coming out. But we're looking Karina's going to put together a very specific workshop for our caregivers as well our

082foster youth caregivers. So just for cuz a lot of our some of our caregivers are new as well too. And so we've actually reached out to Orange County Department of Ed as well too to see if they'd like to help and participate as well. But to you know, help them understand the rights of our foster youth, their rights as caregivers as well too. So you know, maybe that's a step in that direction and we want to build upon that for sure. >> Do you know what time that is at Valadez? >> Yes, it's going to be at 5:00, 5:00 to 8:00. >> I I know being a foster parent is a huge undertaking and so all the supports that we can do would be great. Um my niece is an expert at this by now.

083She's had many many children in her home, but um I just watch her and and I you know, when she first started and I and how she's grown over the last 14 years of doing this and I think anything we can do to help support because it just pays dividends on the kids. >> We almost need a support group for the parents. >> I was thinking that to get them together. >> And it's hard. It's really really hard. So the more we can do to support them, encourage them keep them doing what they're doing, it's going to it's we should. >> I think I would want to ask them what would be helpful. Um as a foster parent who adopted their foster child, I've lived this life and um I would say, you know, it

084in an effort to be helpful often times um it's not exactly what people need and I think that one of the things that we've really committed to as a leadership team is asking people what they need from us before we jump right in and so I do think that um Baldwin's point is a good one, which is, you know, let's engage with folks, find out what they need and then let's bridge those gaps and find ways to offer it to them. >> If I could just say something really quickly um because we have quite a few foster youth at El Camino um and I can't think of one who didn't come to us from the group home. So I think one area of growth too I see is um strengthening strengthening the partnerships with our

085two feeder group homes, our Voice Home and our Girls Home. Um it's a different experience for our those students and it's a different experience educationally for the people who are running those homes. And so I think um there's a gap in them understanding and us understanding what they need from us and what we need from them as well. So I don't necessarily know that they'd show up to it at a event, but maybe we tap them on the shoulder and invite them and let them know that there's value in them participating as well. >> Or even if we can go to them somehow. >> Yes, go to them, but also include them in our events, too. I think they will show up. >> I just had a question regarding the trauma-informed practices. I just wanted

086to know how um how that progress was going and how that training was going. >> So last year we did a uh district-wide initiative trainings um and we called it, you know, building community within your classroom uh positive environment. So we did that and that went well. It was a kind of a roadshow throughout the year. This year we've also expanded um offering uh restorative practices training as well, too. So that's helping in building community and recognizing, you know, um that safe space in the classroom. Um we also have our crisis counselor who's just been recently trained to be a trainer of trainers for mental health first aid. And so that's going to also be something that we look at in helping and supporting, you know, building an awareness. And that's just not for teachers,

087that's for any any anybody, you know, that all of our classified staff and certificated staff, especially non-mental health professionals um who can uh learn about some of those things in regards to what to look for, how to support students as well. So we'll look forward to branching out that as well. Mhm. >> Okay, um at 6:16 we're going to take a break for dinner and we will come back shortly. Okay, I'm going to bring us back at 6:39. And we're moving on to goal eight. Dr. Gray, take it away. >> Thank you. Uh so goal eight lists focused actions to address academic achievement, engagement, and school climate for specific student groups at specific sites. We don't have a data snapshot because it's simply a list of any site where one of our measured student groups

088has fallen into the red performance level. So as part of our new data culture, our site principals are eager to have access to live information that will help them see and respond to student needs as they emerge during the school year regarding the importance of monitoring academics, behavior, and course performance in alignment with current tiered intervention research. Major actions for this goal include funding staffing for behavior and social emotional needs at sites across the district, offering co-taught math classes at our high schools, and encouraging schools to use the PBIS framework or other framework to foster a positive school climate. So with that being said, I'd like to open it up for wonderings and questions about goal eight. >> I'll just call out and highlight some of the pluses on these like times up 13 points,

089Van Buren up 10, Tephra up 22. There's a lot of work that goes in Esperanza 24. There's a lot of work that goes into these and congratulations to the increases we're making and I'm looking forward to seeing more. I just wanted to address the RBTs. Um Do all schools have elementary schools, it says here that have RBTs? Is that current cuz I've heard that there's a hard time with RBTs right now currently. >> Um all schools have a position, an RBT position, but not all are filled. Three openings, exactly. >> Are we sharing sites or how are we supporting the schools without an RBT? And and maybe this is a Chad question, how are we going to get RBTs? >> The nice thing is is we are talking with the unions and looking at reclassification

090and identifying what our next steps are with the RBTs and Candace has been involved in the process as well and our next meeting is tomorrow, so to be determined. Or I should say to be continued. >> Are we sharing between sites so that at least they have a part-time? Or as needed? >> Yeah, I know we're doing some of it, but I don't know exactly. I don't want to give you inaccurate information. I don't know if you know, Baldwin, if they're I know that that has happened, but I can't tell you currently whether, you know, the site that hasn't had it, whether they're getting exactly their two days that they should. So I'd rather we get back to you on that. >> Thanks. And I'll just echo what Mrs. Buck said. There was a lot

091of great progress done in a lot of those individual schools. And so, thank you to everybody for that. Um Let's see. I think that was it. >> All right. We are on to goal nine. Speaking of great work done at individual school sites, goal nine is for El Camino Real High School. Um it receives approximately $250,000 a year in equity multiplier funds because of its student non-stability rate. So, that is a way of capturing students enrolling and dis-enrolling. And the socioeconomically disadvantaged pupil percentage that El Camino serves. The leading indicators that we hope to monitor in the future are on-track rates for graduation indicators, student access and participation offered support programs, and college and career readiness for all students. Uh major actions for this goal include maintaining smaller class sizes, additional counseling support, and the

092use of avid to improve student outcomes. And since Principal Gina Aguilar's here, I'd like to turn over the floor if she'd like to give any context before we open up for wonderings. >> Um thank you. Uh we have uh looked at all of our data and are starting to dive deeper into some of the areas where we need um the most growth. And our first um measure was attendance. And we really that's where we put in a lot of our energy because as as you've heard tonight, if they're not there, they can't learn. And so, we feel um we're really excited about uh our growth in attendance. And um through that, we've built also a lot of connections to the school for students and I think that's why we're seeing a lot of success. I

093mean, you you guys have touched on those themes um and we really seen those come to life at El Camino. So, I'd say what we're most proud of and you know, through our allocation of funds we've been able to do some of that with having additional staff. So, the additional mental health support with the counselor position um with the we were fortunate to get some wellness support this year. Those have just allowed us to kind of expand our initiatives um build teams like attendance teams. With a small staff, it's really hard to put together we're we're on every team. So, we really been able to build some specialized teams to put more of a focus on some of those areas. So, I would say um you know, we're going to continue to grow in our

094initiatives that relate to attendance and building connections to the school and really looking at our academic data, but all of that, you know, blends together to get kids there and we're finding that they're more successful now that they're coming to school more and we um we have done a good job with the with sweeping some of these attendance challenges to the services has put on. So, that's all thanks to the team of of people at El Camino who have made this a number one priority. >> Could you elaborate on the some of the things you've done? >> Yes. For attendance purposes, so we do we do have an attendance team and so every other week we're meeting and we're looking we're running a list of all of our students and where they are attendance wise

095and then we really we have the benefit of having a small student population. So, we really can give that individualized support. So, as a team we're talking about okay, what interventions have we tried? Where are we at with that student? We have our mental health professionals in the room and then all of our interventions are targeted. So, we do a lot of home visits. Home visits have a high return on um investment in terms of getting families and kids to understand the importance of coming to school. There's something about being at their house that um really re-engages families and so just being able to dedicate staff toward that has been huge. Um we actually redid our whole credit earning system this year and we tied attendance into credit earning at cuz that was something when

096I uh um you know, checked in with all of the teachers what their biggest concern was was that um there was there was no kind of teeth in our attendance policy and so by building some of that um accountability into credit earning and that's really what motivates students at El Camino is to earn their credits and graduate from high school. Um, we've seen huge like in in some of those contests we've been in and we've seen a a growth of like 12% from where we were last year during that same month. So, we're averaging around, you know, 4 to 6% growth in some of those competitions we've been doing but as many as 12% increase from one year to the next and so I think it's that accountability for them earning their credits um has

097a big impact and then we really try to build up school culture at El Camino. Um, what I heard when I got there was that students wanted it to feel more like a they would say a regular high school. And so I felt like that was an area where we were um we were missing the boat in terms of building connections to the school. I have a wonderful staff who, you know, like I said, they're on every committee. They're, you know, they they wear a lot of different hats there because there's so few of them but we've started um competition athletics against other continuation high schools in the county and that really motivates kids to be there and to show up. I went to our first flag football game today actually against Gilbert High School.

098Um, we have after school clubs now like we have a culinary arts club where kids are staying after school and cooking. Um, that's um they come to school just because they're excited about that and then when they're there they're learning. Um, we have uh increased our parent engagement significantly through having um parent nights and really bringing the families to our school. So, we added two um events. We have a fall uh festival for families and then we have a spring um family night and so we make it family friendly. There's activities for all the siblings. We're getting four generations of families coming to experience They get, you know, we cook them dinner and they get to go meet the teachers and and, you know, do some hands-on learning with their students. So, I could go

099on and on. There's a lot of a lot of things the staff have really committed to doing to get kids excited about coming to El Camino and so, I attribute the growth to to their commitment to um a lot of these initiatives that that we've kind of developed as a staff as we've re- re-imagine what our kind of our vision and mission of El Camino is. >> Thank you. I was just um going back to the L tells and when they're in comprehensive high school, it's they're not able to access those electives as um other students are and I think that sometimes discourages them from coming to school cuz a lot of students they get excited for the electives, you know, they that's the reason they come to school in the morning. So, being able

100to expose them to that there at El Camino is a great way to do that and get them, like you said, back engaged into school. >> Yes. >> Yeah, it's been it's um it's been a huge uh blessing to have some of those extracurriculars, but even inside the classroom, just you guys talked earlier about the GLAD training and I want to give a shout out to Jose, too. Just the district-wide initiative EL roadmap training that we've had at the school sites. Although not a lot of my teachers have been GLAD trained yet besides my language arts teachers, just that brief exposure in those professional development sessions with the whole staff has shifted the mindset to English teaching these students um their language acquisition skills is not just for the language arts teachers and so, it's

101developed a buy-in where we are all teachers of English to our students and so, just the brief exposure to some of that content has already made a significant impact and I think as we get more teachers fully trained in GLAD, you'll see that grow more. >> I love all this progress on side. It's um and the results it just shows how hard you guys have been working and it's a testament to your leadership and to the entire staff there, how much they care. Um but I did have a question about your avid program. Um how are you guys doing on your implementation? Where do you guys stand? >> So when we were initially tapped to become an avid school, it was with the understanding that it would be an avid school wide culture where we

102would train all of our teachers in avid strategies. You would see those implemented in the classroom. Um and we now have I think all but one teacher at our school site who's gone to the full avid training. So you're starting to see more of those instructional practices in the classroom. Um we're having a hard time. What I'm trying to do is connect with another continuation high school who has a similar model and we're we've worked closely with Terry, our rep for the county to find someone and we they still haven't been able to pair us with someone cuz I'd like to see how they've successful successfully implemented the avid elective. Um in the meantime though, we do have a teacher who's taught the avid elective at a continuation high school before and so she's going

103to be going to training again this summer as a refresher and we're going to give it a go next year. Um we find that we have a lot of students coming from our conference of high schools who have been exposed to avid and I think it would be um something we could put in place to help that transition to continuation high school and still keep reinforcing um what they're doing in in the school. So it's probably going to be a slow transition. It's not going to look exactly like it looks like at a conference of high school, but we're going to take step one in in bringing the elective to our school next year. So >> Thank you. I'm glad to hear that almost everyone's been trained. Just that is a huge step. >> Yes.

104>> Thank you. >> All right, our last slide with any goals on it is um for goals one and two. So, we're back to the the front of the binder. Um our last discussion topic will be goals one and two that capture the educational experience offered to all students across the district. The leading indicators we hope to monitor in the future are the previously mentioned assessments of mastery throughout the year, data regarding the implementation of new curricular resources and student engagement and participation data at the student group level. The major actions for these goals include our staffing across the district, our instructional materials purchases, our professional development program, and our beloved middle school sports program. So, with that framing and acknowledgement, what are some wonderings or questions that we can contextualize for this goal? >>

105I had a a wondering about um the IB diplomas earned and exams. Um it's 1.13. Um it seems like we have been decreasing. Is And I was just wondering is that because of declining enrollment? We just don't have the student population in those programs or >> Uh we can check with Principal Hirschfeld and give a comprehensive update in terms of the needs assessment and what that shows. >> rate is going up, but the amount of um diplomas and not that it's huge decrease, but it is a decrease and I'm just curious. >> Mhm. >> Yeah, we'll have to ask um what kind of monitoring they're doing there. I mean, it could be everything from we're offering more options to people and so therefore they're taking advantage of other options. It could be like you said

106the Cambridge program speaks. Uh you know, IB as a parent of an IB graduate, um uh you know, I IB is all inclusive and um it takes a level of commitment certainly um for a student and then it's it's not easy to balance that with many other interests and um areas that they want to excel in. So, I I think it would be worth leaning in and talking to Kristen and the staff and we'll let you know. >> Okay, thank you. And then um is there an update on action item 1. 4 that um provided district-wide K-12 computer science pathway? >> So, that's a K-12 questions. I'll take the first swing at it and then um ask Mike and Liz to chime in. So, we've uh provided a systematized list of the computer science options

107to make sure that there's awareness at each level because one of the benefits of PYP is you can request different high schools so students can find the relevancy. We have everything from cybersecurity and cyber networking at Valencia to the more um the previously offered selections such as AP Comp Sci A and so on and so forth. So, that is part of the options that are happening in terms of students to make sure that there's awareness and then also we have our CIS team members that are doing work at the elementary level to build some of the skills and I know Liz has bumped up um some of the offerings and support that those staff members have for our students. >> Um so, in talking to our computer instructionals um support staff, we have created already

108like a continuum of skills and we actually asked for their input to say what is it that you're seeing are the needs of students. And so, we're really trying to move beyond the, um, technical pieces of computer science more into because we know our students are exposed to AI right now and we just need to keep up with their level of engagement and so, um, we did offer professional development and we noticed that it wasn't very well attended because, um, it was after school and our CIS's, um, chose to pick up other jobs. And so that was a barrier that we are now going to adjust for next year in, um, trying to provide the trainings during their work day but where it's not impacting so that we can continue this conversation of, "Okay, we

109got your input into the skills that our students need. How can we make it relevant right now to the, um, exposure that kids are already getting that is beyond, you know, how do you, um, turn on a computer and do those things. And so we have that, um, we act There are actually computer science standards and so how can we align the practices to the standards to align with existing experiences students are having and then bring our CIS's together at a time where they can attend. >> I I want to add I have pretty strong opinions in this space. Um, and after talking to a It's shocking, right? After talking to a thousand people in this community about what they believe our students need to know and be able to do, um, when we think

110about it's not just AI. It's It's the It's the necessity to understand how to navigate technology in our world. And it's not just turning on a computer, it's not just how to do basic computing, it's how to do coding. It's how to learn, unlearn, and relearn the languages. It's learning how to navigate within, you know, AI structures to to serve in whatever industry kids are going to navigate into. There's so much for us to consider doing in this space, and it's going to be bringing educators together and really looking at what does all the research say? What does the World Economic Forum say? What does, you know, what are the durable skills? All of this is going to really have a strong vein throughout our strategic plan because the world our kids are going to

111live in is going to require them to have a skill set that none of us even have our heads wrapped around at this point. >> It was nice to see when I visited Sierra Vista and Linda Vista yesterday that they turned their computer labs, which used to be the old school rows of computers, into steam labs, which now they have like the Indy cars and they're, you know, coding with the iPads, and so it's nice to see that transition going on there that they've done, and I think that's one of the things that we can tap into and maybe add to their repertoire starting in elementary school. >> And on the alternative of that, I hear a lot about students having writing paper and pencil and too many screens and walking around the schools, especially

112in the younger grades, I was pleased to see all of them writing and using pencils and so people are afraid of that change, but we're still to what our students need and doing it at an age-appropriate level. >> Agree completely. Um, you know, when we look at what is developmentally appropriate for our kids and how do they learn the communication skills that they need? How do they learn to play? How do they learn to collaborate and and and think critically and and, you know, be able to navigate working with another human being. All those are real-world people skills that our kids need and we can't substitute that for machines in any reality. And at the same time, I think that we have to find balance where we give kids the opportunity to build those skills

113and still be really great human beings. >> So, yesterday we had our first AI task force meeting and we had representation from all 10 secondary schools. And a lot of the first step in our work was looking at age-appropriate screen time, looking at how does that align with durable skills, looking at how do we want to build this, right? Where we go from literacy to fluency. And at what pace and at what speed. So, it was really um I'm really appreciative of all of the educators that attended yesterday's first AI task force session. They had actually previously completed an online certificate, so they've all actually earned certification in AI and Google Gemini and other spaces through Coursera and things like that. So, I'm really excited we have the right team of people uh to start

114that work um I'm building that out for our district. >> If I could add on to what you're saying, um I would love it if you all would also look at homework as you're looking at what we're doing in the school sites. Um we also need to be considerate of homework and how much screen time and pencil to paper and reading time, all of those to balance in as we're sending kids home, too. >> I'll just um highlight because it's the right section. We have a lot of new curriculum. We have a shortened summer. We have new adoptions. Lots of things that are happening and so I just want to say shout out to our teachers who do this work. These numbers are as a result of all the work that they're putting in and

115we want to be supportive of them and thank them. So, thank you to all of the teachers out there that are doing the work for us. And um we will be very um cognizant of the work that it takes and the time that you put in and all of the extra things that we're asking. Oh, and all of our classified staff too and managers all of that as well. >> But yeah, all the support staff is >> Yes, it's a huge I don't want to exclude anyone. >> That's right. >> It's a team effort and we see it and we're grateful. >> Yeah, takes a village. Yeah. >> I just wanted to um action 1.10 innovative programs. It's just was kind of vague and I'm just curious um what innovative programs we're talking about or

116is that more of like um what Mrs. Aguilar did at El Camino um and we just This is kind of like a miscellaneous >> Yeah. >> As as President Buck pointed out, it given the dollar figure, I'm not exactly sure what that can be pointing to, but um we'll find out more. I don't know. >> Yeah, I don't know what you can do with $9,000 district-wide. >> the filler line item. >> I'm like this looks like miscellaneous not so much as innovative. >> Not sure. I just thought it was weird. >> I had a question regarding our preschool program and the um co-teach model. Um I was asked yesterday if I guess parents are asking as well if there's I know we have a preschool and TK. Is there any um interest in expanding to

117kindergarten? I know we're hoping that those students can you know, obviously, but those other students who maybe didn't go to preschool and join the program in TK and maybe need that extra year. Is that something we're looking into? >> I think maybe if Jamie wants to step in and answer this is her area of expertise for sure. >> So that's definitely something we're looking into. And so now we're looking at what are the needs as those students matriculate and that'll help us determine what type of programming we'll need at the next site. So we're in that process right now, but it's definitely something we're hopeful that we'll continue as students matriculate. >> All right. I I I feel like I should start auctioning like Chad did at the going once, going twice. I can't. All

118right. Uh so I want to close by thanking everyone in the room um for their input. And as was mentioned, thanking all the staff members at the district office and the school site that actually make this binder come to life. Um a well-intentioned binder gathers dust and it doesn't come actualized until people commit to what's in there and do the work for our students. So um if you'd like to leave your note catcher packet for us to to have that just to make sure that nothing slips through the cracks. Um we're going to take this input and the input provided by our other educational partners into account as we work to finalize our LCAP um starting with a work session tomorrow um where we may finesse some of the cookies into that conference room to

119fuel the work. So thank you all very much for your work tonight. >> before Will closes, I just want to take a moment and say thank you to Dr. Gray for facilitating this as well as so many other stakeholder groups. I we many of us sitting around the table have um been a part of meetings that he has facilitated so many different stakeholders to make sure that this is comprehensive and we really hear people's feedback. So, thank you for for leading that. It's a big effort, so we appreciate you. >> Applause for everyone. So, thank you all for being here tonight. This was um great session to go through all of the great work that we're doing. So, I look forward to more to come and I'll take a motion in a second to adjourn.

120>> I'd like to make a motion to adjourn. >> I'll second. >> And all those in favor? >> I. >> Motion carries 3-0 and we adjourn at 7:07.