001Okay, we're going to get started. Good evening everyone and thank you for your patience. Ready? Okay. Hey, good even good evening everyone. Thank you for your patience. Um, welcome to O open session of the regularly scheduled April 26, 2025 meeting of the West Contraosta Unified School District School Board. The board is returning from closed session and I'm calling open session to order at 7:03 p.m. To access translation in Zoom, please click on the globe icon at the bottom of the screen. If you are here in the auditorium and need translation, you may pick up a headset in the back corner of the auditorium. In a few minutes, we are going to begin public comment and members of the public are invited to speak to the board on any matter that is not otherwise on the
002agenda, but is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the West Contraosta Unified School District. Please prepare now for public comment. And if you are here in the auditorium and you'd like to make public comment, please fill out and submit a WCCUSD public comment card. You can find them on the table in the entryway. And if you're participating via Zoom, please raise your Zoom your hand in the Zoom app prior to the beginning of the item on the agenda. Once the item starts, we will not be accepting any more raised hands. If you're participating by phone, press star nine. After your comment card has been turned in, the cards are placed in the order received and we call on speakers one at a time alternating between public comment here in Dejon and then one on Zoom.
003Public comment generally lasts for one hour. The time allotted to each speaker is two minutes and in um and may be extended uh by a motion of the board. In in the meantime, we will move on to the rest of our opening procedures. Okay, we're moving to B2, which is the pledge of allegiance. If you are able or willing, please rise. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which we stand, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. B3 land, labor and body acknowledgement. We recognize that we are presently on the lands of the Chicheno Moikma Karkin Aloney peoples and acknowledge them as the first inhabitants of the land we currently occupy. Labor and body recognition acknowledgement. I acknowledge that the burden
004of environmental exploitation and systemic injustice falls upon the labor of black and brown bodies in the building of this country and its institutions. I remember that black and brown people were born and died working this land against their will for generations. I also acknowledge the continued contribution of the labor of survivors over the centuries to today of all immigrant labor including voluntary, involuntary, trafficked, forced, and undocumented peoples in the building of what we refer to as the United States. Author Dr. Relle Dr. Michelle Rogers Ard, excuse me. B4 West Contraosta Unified School District Board Anti-Racism Statement. The West Contraosta Unified District Board of Education is committed to the work of anti-racism. The conscious and active effort to identify, challenge, and correct racial inequities in the systems, institutions within our schools and community. Racism, explicit or
005implicit, stands in direct conflict to the fundamental principles of WCCUSD education. To carry WC education into the future, we recognize that we must continually renew and reflect on the roots of racism and develop new ideas to meet the times. Unjust ideas and policies and the racial inequities they produce have shaped us, our schools, and our society. We strive to uncover unconscious biases and practice anti-racism as indiv individuals and as board members. We challenge ourselves to persist through the discomfort necessary for growing and learning, to deepen our listening and our examination of racism and oppression, and to develop a strong understanding of how our personal experiences and feelings fit into a larger picture of continual oppression. Each member of our school board individually and collectively is responsible for creating and nurturing an anti-racist learning environment. for
006each student, staff member, and community partner is a respected and valued member of the WCCUSD community. We are uniquely positioned, and it is our responsibility to identify and dismantle racist ideas and inequitable policies in ourselves and across the district. Therefore, we commit to supporting anti-racist policies, programs, and practices for our children's education and well-being while building strong and inclusive school communities. We commit to holding each board member accountable towards these goals and moving the work of anti-racism forward. We also commit to holding West Contraosta Unified School District staff, students, and community to living these standards of anti-racism in our schools. Board approved March 20th, 2024. B5 roll call. Dr. Johnson. Thank you, President Reckler. Would you please take role? I will. Thank you. Um, clerk Anyana, good evening everyone. Present. Trustee Gonzalez Voy. Good evening.
007Present. Trusty Hernandez. Good evening. Present. President Reckler. Good evening. I'm present. Trustee Smith FS. Good evening everyone. Present. Student trustee Baron. Good evening. Present. and student trustee Espinosa Jr. Good evening, President. Thank you. We are all present and accounted for. B6, report ratification of close session. Dr. Johnson, is there anything to report out from close session? Yes, President Reckler. Thank you. In closed session, the board took action to terminate classified employee 121203 for failing to request a hearing following receipt of a statement of charges that there exists cause to immediately suspend without pay to dismiss a permanent classified employee and directed the superintendent or designate to send out appropriate legal notices. The roll call was by unanimous vote. Thank you. Moving to B7, student performance, Madera Elementary School. President Reckler, please forgive me. That is
008not taking place this evening. Is there anything that's not happening tonight? Yes. Good evening, President Reckler, Clerk Lana, trustees, community members. Unfortunately, the students from Madera are not able to perform this evening and Principal David Ranch extends his sincerest regrets. Okay. Well, we look forward to hosting them again soon. Thank you so much for letting me know. Moving on to B8 WCC public comment. Okay, we are up to public comment. Members of the public are invited to speak to the board on any matter that is not otherwise on the agenda but is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the West Contraosta Unified School District. Public comment will last approximately 1 hour. The time allotted to each speaker is 2 minutes and should additional speakers remain at the conclusion of one hour. Public comment may be
009extended. The time allotted per speaker beyond the first hour is generally one minute. Individuals wishing to speak, please submit a WCCUSD public comment card or if you're participating via Zoom, individuals will need to raise their hand in Zoom prior to the beginning of the item. If you're calling by phone, press star 9. Speaking time shall not be transferred from one person to another, and there is no substitution of speakers. Speakers can also make public comment again for each discussion and action item on the agenda after staff presentations. The public will have 10 minutes per item and one minute per speaker. The same protocols recited above apply. The public comment period is a safe space where diverse viewpoints may be expressed civily without interruption or intimidation. Please listen attentively to each speaker's comment and respect their
010time at the podium as if it were your own. Be open to a different point of view if one is offered. Due to the Brown Act, board members cannot discuss items that are not on the agenda and do not usually respond to items presented in public comment. Is there any public comment? Yes. Our first public comment is Patricia Agora. Hello. I'm going to read from a prepared statement since I wanted to get my thoughts clear. Many of you already know me. I retired in December after 25 years in public education, the last 23 in special education, teaching a medically fragile classroom in our district. I was the district teacher of the year in 2023 24 and I'm national board certified. I had um I'm sorry, I thought somebody was saying something. I'm honored to have
011served as teacher and advocate for my students and their families. And even though I had a stellar professional history, my career ended on administrative leave, an action that was taken by our district human resources in response to an undisclosed complaint filed by anonymous employees. This was a devastating blow, and I was blindsided, as were the families of my students. They were not informed of my absence for approximately six weeks and then misled into thinking I was out on an illness. For several years, I had routinely reported aids who had arrived late or not at all to our site administration. All reports were done by email as there is no district format that I know of for reporting fraud and this was certainly time fraud for which the district is paying greatly. Nothing was ever done
012to address this time theft. Um I also struggled with some defiant staff who did not support the program and spent most of every day on their cell phones or sleeping. I have photographs to show that there's a history of unprofessional conduct, inappropriate conversations, and suggestions that I was quote old and white, therefore perceived as a culturally insensitive and having a poor memory. I was even referred to as having CRS for those of you who know lingo of kids. The expectations delineated in the paraprofessional handbook were always ignored and I was always reporting. I was just doing my job. Some of the aids were wonderful. I don't want to belittle that. Your comment. Oh, it's too many. Okay. I will email these comments to the board. Our next public comment is Ethan Sorcerer. Please unmute yourself.
013Hello. Thank you. My name is Ethan Sorcerer and I teach fifth grade at Montalban Manor K8. No curriculum is a one-sizefits-all approach for every student and every teacher, but Eureka Math Squared provides a very strong foundation for teachers to modify to best meet the needs of their students. As you know, the way we teach math has changed since we were students. Eureka Math Squared makes it easy for teachers to provide opportunities for collaborative student discourse that shifts the lift for thinking and explaining onto students, helping them to construct their own conceptual understanding and procedural fluency and apply their math skills in real world culturally relevant situations. The family math sections of apply books and materials published in Spanish make it easier for teachers to give families the tools to support their students at home. Eureka
014Math Squared is also an improvement over our current Eureka Math curriculum in terms of content sequencing, lesson structure, and ease of use. I've seen the impact on my students. During the pilot, I compared the data from formative and summitive assessments from Eureka Math and Eureka Math Squared and saw a significant improvement both in overall understanding and formative assessments correlation with mastery on summitive assessments when students used Eureka Math Squared. Black and Hispanic professionals are underrepresented in STEM careers, and we can work to change that. Helping students to fall in love with math and see themselves as mathematicians in elementary school encourages them academically to pursue highpaying careers in STEM fields. One of my students who used Eureka Math Squared told me, "I used to be bad at math, but I'm good at math now." Humans
015are born with the innate ability to do math, and Eureka Math Squared helped to shift her own perception of herself to someone who is a math person. In order to make that happen, we need to honor our commitment to anti-racism and provide a highquality education to all students, especially those from historically marginalized groups. To do that, we need highquality curriculum. It's not something we want or would like. It's essential. Please vote tonight to approve the high-quality curriculum we invested thousands of dollars to review and pilot so that our teachers can support our students to prepare for their careers to come. Our next public comment is Sarah Kley. Hello. I'm a teacher, parent, and um community activist in Hercules. And the reason that I'm coming here is to talk about cruelty to teachers and cruelty to
016students. Patricia Agura was a teacher that was a teacher of the year. She started this amazing sensory garden at the Hercules High School. She's the only class in our district for medically fragile students. And she was forced out of her job because of a toxic situation that people were notified at the end of the last school year and no one chose to do anything about it. No investigation, nothing. There were situations that were untenable for those students. But unfortunately, no one went and asked because not all of the people who were working in that classroom were mean and not caring, not following IEP guidelines, not listening and doing what they were asked to do, leaving early, taking them to the bus early because they don't want to do, changing, like just so many awful things.
017And here's the thing. When you pull out an incredible, dedicated teacher like Patricia Agura, you're hurting the students, you're hurting the families because the people who were acting uncaring are still there, but she's not. And I helped her move out of her classroom, which was what made me aware of this whole situation. I used to be a special ed teacher. I used to create things. Patricia's classroom was like a haven, and you guys ripped her out of there, and it was so unnecessary. But beyond that, you need to talk to the parents. You need to investigate and talk to all the instructional aids in that classroom, which has not happened in this toxic situation. You've done nothing. And those kids are at risk because you guys have ignored it. And it's shocking and it's unacceptable.
018And that classroom needs to be investigated. There's a reason she's not there anymore. And she should be. And I am just so disappointed in all of you. Our next public comment is healthy contraosta. Please unmute yourself. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, great. Um, so as the board deliberates on the interim superintendent's proposed budget, we ask for a financial analysis of why school periods need to be cut. The district staff needs to connect with principles and key staff running the programs that would be most affected by these period cuts to understand how these cuts will impact students. This rationale needs to be transparently shared at the board meetings. We also continue to support the strategies named in the 2020 positive school climate resolution which aimed to reduce the disproportionate number of students
019of color who were suspended and expelled. Healthy Contracasta advocated for the LCAP to resource the positive school climate staff resources based on the positive school climate resolution which passed back in 2017. This resolution was not aspirational. It was actionoriented. It focused on the establishment of a comprehensive school climate policy. Through this resolution, the district formally acknowledged that black, latinex, and special education students were being suspended and expelled at disproportionately high rates and resolved to address and reduce these inequitable practices. This resolution provided a detailed plan for full implementation of restorative practices and schoolwide positive behavior interventions and supports at all WCCCUSD schools focused on deepening and extending positive tiered interventions and alternatives to suspension. We are concerned that the proposed budget cuts include staff pivotal to the positive school climate work including social workers and
020a coordinator. This is not the time to cut these positions. Uh then additionally we also want to speak about the projected cuts for the district data department. Having an effective and responsive data department is crucial to any district as this team provides crucial information that informs practices, helps with goal setting, informs the creation and spending of budgets and ultimately drives instructional practices toward improvement. That's all. Thank you. Our next public comment is Ariana Morales. Hello, my name is Ariana Morales and I'm a parent at Lincoln Elementary and I'm a delegate for the district's dual language immersion parent advisory committee. My committee's co-chair will give a brief report on our pack shortly. So, my comments here are to share my own note reinforcing the importance of our district supporting the bilingual education program today. Many of
021you have heard in the news about the case of Kilma Garcia, a father from Maryland who was wrongfully deported to the Secott prison in El Salvador. And our administration now refuses to facilitate his release. Kilmar is a parent like many of the parents and fathers of the children in my child's school and others who are here in this district. Many of our families at Lincoln are afraid to come here to these meetings. They are afraid to come to our school to a school events and support their children because they don't want to be another Kilma VGO Garcia. This is why I'm even more fiercely advocating to continue the support for our dual language immersion programs in our schools. Why I'm a delegate on this committee. It is about equipping our children to be able to
022defend themselves, prepare our children to be bicultural, bilingual, and be able to create a world where we are not deporting their fathers, where they are the lawyers, teachers, doctors, the politicians, the district leaders who have an understanding of our collective humanity. This is why we need a bilingual education system in our district. And now more than ever, our now more than ever, our recommendations from our pack will be coming to the board very soon. and I do hope you will consider them seriously. Strengthening the DLI across our schools is about our children's rights to protect themselves, but also about building a more just and humane world for all of us. Thank you. Our next public comment is Lewis Freedberg. Please unmute yourself. Please unmute yourself. Our next public comment is Joyce Sat. Hi, my name
023is Joyce. I'm one of two community school managers with BACR. We support coordinators in 18 district schools. The community school strategy is a mean means of guiding school improvement and transformation by flipping the script on how public schools work. When implemented well, power and decision-making are not top down, but shared by students, families, staff, and community partners. When implemented well, schools will understand and respond to the true needs of the community, will build on their assets, and become places where students thrive. Our coordinators are not add-ons or service providers. They are in lock step with admin teams. They are strategists who build relationships, coordinate teams and systems at school sites, and monitor data. We share both responsibility and accountability with you. Djon is one excellent example of the community school stra school school strategy. It
024is implemented with fidelity here and it makes a positive impact. At Djon they have focused on student voice and on truly authentic engagement. As a result they have drastically decreased the number of lunchtime office referrals. They have used attendance data to identify and support students in crisis and they have increased the number of families attending open house this year from 7 to 52%. They have student leaders who meet every two weeks and have pizza with other students to learn what they want. And though that voices is that voice is raised and they've and the school is responding right away. We believe there is much potential for this strategy to uplift and transform WCCUSD schools. You'll be hearing more about community schools in a future board meeting because for maximum effectiveness, there are conditions we need
025your help with. The strategy shouldn't be an afterthought. It should be the a way we all work and the language we all speak. It can serve as a means of achieving the very important goals we all share of educational equity and of our next public comment is Jasmine Landers. Good evening. My name is Jasmine Landers. I'm the site director at Richmond Charter Academy with a Method Public Schools. In September, I was recently diagnosed with one of the most aggressive forms of breast cancer. Most people would have stepped away from the role and rightfully so. I didn't because I knew what this year would mean for our students and their families and they deserve strong and consistent leadership. So, I chose to stay and keep showing up for our students. This year, Go Public Schools released
026a report um for families with West Contraosta Unified School District. And RCA ranked top three for reducing suspensions, first in English language learner progress, and top three for English language arts growth. all reflected on the California dashboard. Our students are thriving and consistently outperforming nearby schools within the charter term. If RCA is closed, our students will be sent to schools that haven't shown similar progress. On April 30th, we're asking that you vote yes to renew RCA's charter. I understand all of the concerns and they are valid and so we're asking to add the conditions, but don't displace our families when what's happening inside our school and when that within our classrooms are actually working. Thank you. That concludes public comment. Thank you so much. We are moving now to B9 standing reports. Are there standing
027reports this evening? Oh, wait. Maybe I can find it. Hold on. Okay. We have uh African-American site advisory team, the CBOC, Council of Elders, DLI, and United Teachers of Richmond. Would we like to start with ASAP? Salon Harrison, I imagine. Miss Zon Harrison, can you unmute yourself, please? Yes, I'm here. Okay. Thank you. Good evening, board. I don't have a long report. I just want to thank you all for holding this space for um parents to bring this work to you. We're wrapping up another school year still with a lot of challenges um trying to um work in partnership with um our district, but we're making some gain. We we definitely would like to still schedule with our lison and with our uh superintendent regular meetings that um we can communicate what the community is
028saying and what parents need and what we want for our students, visions we want for our students. We would also like to see more of our resources um that the district has um communicated um sooner so we won't find out later. Um we we know that there is going to be summer programs. So just I heard that they are on parent square but all parents aren't getting them especially our most neediest parents. So, if we can think of other ways to um ASAT is available to distribute the information also to parents, but we just want to make sure our parents are getting the um information about our summer programs and services and resources that the district will be offering sooner than later. So, they'll have an opportunity to take advantage of the things our district
029will be doing this summer. That would be um greatly appreciated. and we um I did attend the equity meeting that you all had and I did like some of the things you all were saying, but I do definitely feel that the district needs to get more involved with our BSUs and our black and African-American students. Um really listening to the issues that they're having around the climate in our district. And I do believe um I did hear a good start, but I definitely feel that it needs to be much wider spread than the few youth that came from Hercules. We need to get, you know, a bigger um ban on that and talk about a lot of the harm that's being caused in our district um for our students and what they're experiencing at school
030with the names and just the feeling that there's not equity in their schools. And also we want to get some support around ensuring next school year that our H.B.CU tour happens that the things that are um our engagement activities are funded to the point that where parents know what's going to happen. So if we need to look for further funding that that's done in a timely manner and not we just can't do anything. So that parent trainings and um engagement activities are you know already planned ahead of time. So that would be a great big lift if you guys um especially our lison would help us with ensuring that activities and parent engagement activities and um our trainings and our youth support for our children um all of our events that we have. We do
031um have things coming up and we want to just a part of all that with with the district. Parents are ready. We're volunteering our time and that we have a clear pathway to become volunteers where it doesn't take forever to get our fingerprints. I did hear in DLCAP that you guys were um working on a clear pathway with that. So, I won't go on a soap box with that, but just, you know, making sure that we have barriers to fully participate and walk in lock step with you all to um support changing our educational outcome and to continue to get um better academic scores for our children. And there's another thing I would like for the board to look into regarding our children, and that's the over identification in suspensions and expulsions. making sure that
032these suspensions and inspections are done correctly, that there are no falsified documents, that these things are fully vetted, and that these children's civil rights are not being denied. And I'm complete. Thank you. Have a good evening. Our next standing report is the CBOC, Mr. Don Gazny. Before you start the clock, your Zoom audio is going in and out, just so you know. Okay. Since I last reported to you, the CBOC has had two meetings. The first was on March 19th where there was a joint meeting between the CBOC and the Board of Education. The second was just this last Monday. Since I first hooked up with the bond program back in 1998, I have sang the praises of joint meetings, pointing out that these meetings are one of the few ways of the that the
033elected representatives of the people can meet and converse with the appointed representatives of the people. I still believe that this is a possibility and strongly advocate for these meetings. In recent years, those these meetings when they're permitted come across as meetings of the board and staff where the CBOC is allowed to attend and sit at the grown-ups table. All too frequently, the agendas are largely set by staff and the board and items of interest to the CBOC are pushed aside. For instance, the scope of the bond program performance audit has been a major bone of contention for the CBOC for the past six years, but it was deemed not important enough for discussion this year. Because the bond program and financial performance audits were so late in arriving, they were added to the joint meeting
034agenda and took up a significant amount of our limited time. Because these meetings have such a structured process for conducting the meetings, the CBOC wasn't given sufficient opportunity to address the auditors and speak with the board about the content of the audits. It's also important to understand that we weren't given even given those audits until a few days prior to the meeting. So, we really had did not have the time to review them and we never had the time to meet and discuss them amongst ourselves. Yes, I can easily see where you might be looking at me and thinking about how I always standing up here before you complaining. And you would be correct. We were very rarely ever have an opportunity to actually sit down and talk with our elected representatives and senior staff.
035All too often, we seem invisible. We've even had board members attend our meetings and loudly try to put us in our place. We've had board members use the bully pullpit board members are afforded on the record to take personal pot shots at me. And we even had one board meeting where three of the board members went on record to vocalize their disagreement that the CBOC thinks they are independent instead of working directly for the board. For the record, Prop 39 in 2000 and the California Ed Code is are very specific that the bond oversight committee is an independent body. We have another joint meeting scheduled for September. Perhaps we can open up a dialogue between the CBOC and all five of the board members about what is important and needed from both the elected and
036the appointed representatives of the people. One of the major items of focus at Monday's CBOC meeting was our annual report. We've been derelictked in drafting these reports and we're working overtime to bring ourselves up to speed. The CBOC spent a fair amount of time discussing what actually belongs uh in the annual report. I shared with the CBOC the 48page annual report from 2016 and then the 148 page report from 2018. Since everyone on the CBOC is pretty much a newbie with the longest term served is only a tad over two years. I wanted them to see what other CBOC's have produced so they could compare what others have done and what they think West County deserves today. I expect that we should have our most recent annual report for distribution within the month. Former CBOC
037Chair Brendan Havar Dottton drafted this report and I think he did a pretty good job on it. A key part of what we do is physically reviewing the work being performed with West County's tax dollars. Whenever we can arrange schedules, we try to have site visits. Lake Elementary and Hercules Middle School have been schools visited last year, but we have have three new projects in the works right now. Siege Elementary, Kennedy High, and Richmond High. I've been pushing since August to visit these schools. We've been told the siege is off limits, but we have a site visit scheduled for Kennedy this coming Friday afternoon. We still have about 17 schools left on the list, and it's unlikely that anything can be done for them for maybe 15 to 20 years. We simply do not have
038the money. What I'm trying to do is provide a photo essay to go along with articles where I can explain where the last $621 million will be going. The good people of West County desperately want to know why the schools in their own communities might not see any of the our bond dollars while other communities are having their schools almost completely rebuilt. This is a very contentious subjects. People have questions and deserve answers. Okay. In the past two weeks, former CBOC chair Lorraine Humes and CBOC Secretary Ariel Xi have both termed out. Both serve this community well and their association with the CBOC will be missed. This means, however, that instead of the 11 COC seers we are permitted, we're down to only seven. The CBOC, the board, staff, everyone needs to redouble their efforts
039to find volunteers willing to apply and to serve. I'll do what I can to fill fill those seats. If anyone is interested, please reach out to me, Don Gosny, at [email protected] or at 510-6852403. Our next scheduled meeting will of the CBOC is at 6:15 on Monday the 16th of of May. No, that's not wrong. I said it' be the the 12th of May as is at the facilities building at 1400 Marina Way South here in Richmond. All are welcome to attend and participate. Our next standing report is Council of Elders, Miss Anna Blackman. Can you please unmute yourself? Good evening members of the board. I'm Anna Blackman and I'm res representing the council of elders. Tonight I'm speaking about the selection of the new superintendent. Over the next few weeks, you members of the board
040of West Contraosta Unified School District will make a decision that will permanently affect the lives of over 29,000 students. As a result of your decision, the future of many students can begin to look more promising, more positive, and hopeful. Or as a result of a hasty decision, the future can be a replication of what has happened in this district over the past few years. Some of those things were decreased enrollment, instability in our teaching force, students without certificated teachers for more than a short time. For example, like some of the kids at STE without a teacher for one or two years at a time. Unnamed central office officials making budget decisions that negatively affect student learning. High superintendent turnover. Consultants giving orders or directives to principal and most important continual decrease in the performance of
041our students on standardized testing. According to the schedule you published during this time you are going to be reviewing the applications of persons who wish to be considered for the position of superintendent for the district. I'd like to take this time to make a couple of comments about the need to select a person who can provide real leadership. A person who has a vision of what success means. a person who has a proven track record of being able to work with a diverse community. It is not enough to read well-crafted well-crafted applications and a recommendations. In fact, as you know, if you done your own resume, the product that comes out make you look like an angel because you can make it look good. It's not enough just to read these documents. You've got to
042find the evidence that this person has actually demonstrated that he or she has this track record of success. We need a person who has worked in a K12 system who knows the difference between the needs of a large high school and those of a K6 bilingual elementary school. We need a person who does not need to hire expensive consultants to quote train all the existing experienced staff and who continually get their lucrative contracts renewed. We need a person who is respected by the previous staff persons and teachers as a leader, a team leader, a person who will require that each and every person be accountable to the do the job that the person was hired to do. We need a person who respects and encourages others opinions and a person who inspires people to want
043to work together for our common goal providing an excellent education for each and every student in the school. You need to go and see for yourself. Go to the school districts or cities where the persons worked in these communities and draw your own conclusions about the person. And above all, look for the evidence. Improve test scores, good programs, successful students that this person really can lead, can listen, and can insert. The ball is now in your court. Your decisions can make or break this district. As you recall, we underwent a major rebuild after bankruptcy late 90s. Cannot afford this to happen again. It will happen if we don't carefully look at the person we select. We trust that you've heard the concerns from the citizens, from the students, from the teachers, and that you will
044make the right decision for the district. Thank you for listening. Our next standing report is DLI. Miss Erica Orbina, please unmute yourself. Here you go. Thank you. Good evening, board trustees. My name is Erica Sabi Rubina and tonight I will speak on behalf of the dual language immersion parent action committee. also known as DLIPAC. To begin, I'd like to share my learning journey and why being a parent advocate is so important to me in my children's school. I feel privileged and blessed to have grown up as a first generation in San Francisco. You could say my childhood was pretty typical. I love school and it came pretty easy to me most of the time. As usual, life has a catch. My schools in San Francisco were diverse, but immersion classes were not offered. You see
045the problem? I was bilingual. You might be thinking, Erica, why are you saying it like it's a bad thing? Well, was it a bad thing? But let me explain further. My mother arrived in the early 70s from El Salvador on a tourist visa. When she had me, my mother had lived, worked, and gone to school in this country for over a decade. She had been Americanized and had lived in a time where being different wasn't seen well. During this time, she knew it was important to hold on to your roots, hold your beliefs close and your language even closer. My mother would say, "At home, espanol and at school, English." But the reality was she never felt comfortable speaking in Spanish on the bus or even at Safeway. Speaking Spanish was important because if you
046threw in an English word in the middle of the sentence at dinner, you better believe you needed to start all over again and say it in espanol. I'm so thankful. My mom really gave me that foundation to be bilingual. As you can see, at home I was whole. At school, I was a fragment of myself. Never really seen or appreciated for my whole true self. I've got to tell you, I've done my own personal quest in learning and becoming bilingual so much more. In my journey, I came to a conclusion being bilingual is a superpower. If I look back, I was always asked to come help translate at school. I wanted to help. I grew up as my mother's translator, interpreter, secretary. The journey of being first generation and bilingual was interesting. I now have
047two children of my own and I'm really trying to instill to them that they have a superpower. But it's not like Superman that you have to hide it or it's something to be something of a convenience. They're being bilingual is something meaningful. It's something greater and it's a part of them and it makes them whole. I'm lucky. My kids love their school. Grant Elementary and its old and weathered state, it's our second home. It's where my children walk happily every day, excited to learn, excited to see their teachers and friends. Grant is where my children and myself feel welcome to speak in either Spanish or English or even both. The teachers in the dual language program offered a grant feel like family. I see how much the teachers care to connect with the students, care
048about their successes, and celebrate who they are and who they are striving to become. But like every story, it's not perfect. I see some missing pieces. The puzzle's not whole. And every year, students, parents, and teachers are trying to fill those missing pieces. Tonight, our dual language immersion parent action committee would like to provide the board and our community with a few updates. Our parent action committee is in its second year formation and many of our members are in their second year. The participation in our group has been slow, but tonight we are proud to say that we have representatives from the following schools. West County Mandarin, Carla Galves, Lima, our chair, and Jolie Lynn, Washington Elementary, Emily Menes, and Dulce Hernandez, Steuart Elementary, Katya Aras and Rosalinda Pñate, Lincoln Elementary, Ariana Morales, Grant Elementary,
049myself, Erica Estabi Rubina. In addition, this year the DL pack DI pack drafted and distributed anformational pamphlet to help inform and recruit more families. As a pack, we participated in the ED fair and would like to be invited to participate in future events. Per our pack recommendations and with the help of our district leaison, Mr. Orosco, a space was created to strengthen DI pathway working with administrators and teachers. Our pack also met with go public schools to review and learn about the new unit of data on the dashboard to help inform our recommendations. Tonight, our dual language immersion parent action committee is looking at all of you to expand your commitment to our DLI students. Our recommendation this year will correlate with the LCAP goals as our members have prioritized their attendance to LCAP meetings
050and town hall meetings. Currently, we have identified a few recommendations. aid in improving parent participation and communication, committing to aligning SLA curriculum and set standards throughout our district. Collect more data to inform best practices and view the whole child. Thank you. Our next standing report is UTR. Uh good evening board. Um my name is Mark Mitchell. I'm the executive director of the UTR. I'm here um on behalf of uh our president, Francisco Ortiz, who had another urgent meeting he had to be at. Um I wanted to raise a few things um that uh are going on that we wanted to share with the board. Um negotiations. UTR has now um as of a couple of weeks ago put all of our negotiating proposals on the table with the district. We hope that your labor negotiators
051are sharing those with you, President Reckler, to the rest of the board members so that you can see that we've really put a lot of thought into crafting a new agreement that will um encourage uh the staffing of our district with our region's most talented educators. We really look forward to working with Dr. Johnson and the management team to come up with an agreement that's going to serve our students and attract and retain our region's most talented educators for West County students. Um, second, I wanted to share the concern on behalf of the UTR uh with the BACR uh executive about the state of our community schools uh implementation in the district. We're at a critical juncture. Um, we're now, you know, nearing the end of our third year of the grant. Um, and there
052is a uh a mix of experiences throughout our district. Um we have dozens of community schools and some like Dejon are doing well and are really uh creating uh change positive change with uh additional programs and supports for students that have been identified by students and families at that site. But other uh sites are not as successful and what we see are two major dynamics uh that are that are very concerning um to United Teachers of Richmond. One is the supplanting of existing services uh by the use of uh community schools sitebased funds. Um and this is happening uh more frequently as the district has tightened its expenditures for different uh staffing uh complements and and uh programs. Site administrators are turning to what they see as a a local piggy bank perhaps of community
053schools dollars that for whatever reason district uh uh administrators have allowed to be s you know diverted um to to pay for things that are not contemplated or permitted by the grant. We are raising those issues as we see them occur through the grievance process and in discussions with management. Um, but it's a dynamic that goes to what the BACR uh executive was was talking about. This is not a grant. It's a strategy. So, the dollars that are here are to implement a strategy. They're not to pay for this or that or the other that are no longer supported by uh uh district priorities. Um, the site administrators are under enormous pressure to run their sites effectively and I understand why they might be tempted to to look to community schools resources, but that's not
054appropriate. It's not part of the strategy and it's not going to lead to successful implementation that are going to create compelling campuses that are going to attract and retain families and students in our community. The second overarching concern we have with the community schools implementation is the use of community schools directors and resources to assist in day-to-day tasks at the schools. For example, if a assistant principal or vice principal is is removed because of budgetary concerns, the community schools director might be used to perform some of the student supervision or discipline uh uh tasks that were handled by that administrator who's no longer on site. I understand why that might happen and that's you know something that um you know we just need to be on the lookout that these additional staff resources that are
055being provided by BACR and Synica are not being diverted to to perform day-to-day tasks. This is supposed to be a program a strategy to change and transform our schools. It's not a a staffing agency to backfill for vacant positions. Um, finally, the secondaryus remain unsigned. Um, they've been sitting on the desk of the interim superintendent for weeks. Um, her deadline was April 15th and and understand that, you know, there may be some delay and that that's that's understandable, but those are really key, especially at Elserto High School, Kennedy High School, and Richmond High School. Those have been delivered to the district on a time frame dictated by the interim superintendent, ratified by our members, done in a way that we believe uh complies with the interim superintendent stated requirements. We'd appreciate her consideration and you're
056directing her, President Reckler, to sign those for the benefit of our students. Thank you. I believe that concludes standing reports. Yes. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you to everyone who made a report tonight. Okay. We're moving to B10 agend agenda review and adoption. Is there anything that the board wishes to adjust? Any changes? Okay. Seeing none, we will proceed as the agenda is printed. B1 approval of minutes March 12, 19, and 29, 2025. Does anybody have any corrections to the minutes for those dates? Seeing none, we'll accept the minutes for 12,9 and 29. Sorry, President Regler, I have a correction. Yeah. Um, on the minutes that we are approving, it showed Trustee Hernandez as present and she was absent. Okay. And for what meeting is that? The March is it? Let me I'm sorry. I
057just had it in my notes. That's okay. or Trusty Hernandez, can you remember being absent for March 12th, 19th or 29th? Yeah, I understand. I was For wh for which meeting? For March 12th. For March 12th. Okay. So, the correction would be that um Trusty Hernandez was absent for March 12th. Are there any other corrections? Okay. Then we will accept the minutes with uh the correction that Trusty Hernandez was absent on March 12th. Great. Okay. Moving on to B12. Resolution 2425-69, Dolores Huerta Day. Good evening board Dr. Johnson, staff and community. Now therefore, be it resolved that the West Contraosta Unified School District Board of Education does hereby adopt this resolution to honor Dolores Werta, a national civil rights and labor leader. And be it further resolved that the West Contraosta Unified School District board
058of education directs the superintendent and all district staff to support lessons and activities that teach about the life and struggles of Dolores Werta and to conduct celebrations honoring her life as a powerful force for social justice and empowerment for all. Thank you so much. Is there any public comment on this item? Is there any are there any board questions? Are there any board comments? Go ahead. Oh, motion. Thank you, board president. I'll move that we approve uh resolution number 2425-69 dollars worth a day April 10th 2025. Thank you. Is there a second on this item? I second. Seconded by Hernandez. And are there any comments on the on the resolution? Okay. Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. Student trustee Espinosa Jr. Yes. Student trusty Von. Yes. Trusty Hernandez. Yes. Clerkyan, yes. Trusty Gonzalez wife,
059yes. Trusty Smith fols. Smith FS. Yes. And Reclari, yes. The the motion passes unanimously. Moving on to B13 2425-70 ArabAmerican Heritage Month 2025. Miss Johnson, I believe this is your Miss Forest, I believe this is your item. Yes, thank you. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the West Contraosta Unified School District Board joins the Arab America Foundation in celebrating April 2025 as National ArabAmerican Heritage Month in recognition of the many contributions ArabAmericans have made to our society. Thank you so much. Is there any public comment on this item? Are there any board questions? I'll accept a motion on the item. President, I move that we uh I move that we move resolution number 2425, J70, ArabAmerican Heritage Month 2025. Great. Thank you so much. I'll second. All right. So, we have a motion and a
060second. And is are there any comments on this item? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. Trusty Espinosa Jr. Yes. Student Trusty Veron, yes. Trusty Hernandez, yes. Clerkyana, yes. Trusty Gonzalez Hoy, yes. Trusty Smith Falls. Smith Falls is a yes. And I am a yes as well. Motion passes unanimously. B14 resolution 2425-72, public schools month. Yay. Go us. April 2025. Thank you. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the w that the board of education of the West Contraosta Unified School District hereby recognizes April 2025 as public schools month and urges communities and educational institutions to appropriately observe the efforts of students, teachers, and administrators of the public school system. Thank you so much. Is there any public comment on this item? No. Okay. Moving to any board questions. I'll entertain a motion. President, I'll move
061that we have accepted resolution number 2425-72, public schools month, April 2025. Thank you. Smith second. Great. The item's been motioned and seconded. Is there are there any comments? Okay. Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. Student trustee Espinosa Jr. Yes. Trusty Baron. Yes. Trusty Hernandez. Yes. Clerkana. Yes. Trusty Gonzalezy. Yes. Trusty Smiths. Smith FS. Yes. And I am a yes. Motion passes unanimously. Moving to see business consent items. Are there any items on the uh consent agenda that board members would like to pull? Seeing none, will can we accept consent without a formal vote? Seeing no objections. Okay, consent is approved. D, superintendent report. Uh, do you have a report? I do. All right, great. I will be sharing Dr. Moses's superintendent report. Thank you, Rosa. Okay. All right. Good evening, board president, trustees, and
062members of the public. I am honored to present tonight's superintendent report on behalf of Dr. Moses, who cannot be with us this evening. Next slide. Thank you. This month, we're proud to uplift and celebrate several important recognitions and board approved resolutions that honor the rich diversity, dedication, and contributions of our school community and beyond. In addition to the board approved resolutions that we just presented, we are proud to recognize the following. National Poetry Month, Bilingual and Multilingual Learner Advocacy Month, California Adult Education Week, National Library Week, High School Voter Education Week, and National Environment Education Week. Next slide. In addition in addition to those just mentioned, we also have National Student Leadership Week, National School Bus Driver Appreciation Day, National Administrative Professionals Week, National After School Professionals Appreciation Week, National Public Schools Volunteer Week, and
063lastly, we acknowledge Harbor Day. We honor the contributions of our school community throughout April that reflect the dedication and the heart of our students, our staff, and our volunteers. And we encourage all students, staff, families, and community members to join us in honoring these contri these contributions this month. Thank you to all. Next slide. Well, this month we kicked off organic strawberry challenge on April 4th. West contraosta USD partnered with conscious kitchen to launch the statewide organic strawberry campaign at PI's K8. The campaign promoted student wellness, climate smart agriculture, and support for local farmers. It serves as a great example of how our food choices in school can reflect our values regarding healthy regarding health and sustainability. We want to thank Barbara Jellison and the food amazing food services team for their continued dedication and
064support in ensuring our students access healthy produce produce and balanced meals. Next slide. We'd like to highlight Elserto High School. Their United States Air Force band performed at Elserto High School on April 5th with over 850 attendees. Nine Els Certo students performed alongside the band. An inspiring moment showcasing our arts programs and talented students. Congratulations to all those who participated. Also, KQED poetry forum at Elserto High School. Miss Trot's creative writing class collaborated with KQED and Elserto poet laurettes Tess Taylor. Students original poetry was broadcasted demonstrating civic engagement through art and student voice. Next slide. The the Don College and Career class recently enjoyed an exciting field trip to the finishing trades institute providing students with a firsthand look at career in the trades. Students received hands-on exposure to the trades industry through this meaningful
065field trip. Thanks to Tom Torixson, whole child institute and FTI for supporting our students career explorations. Next slide. On April 1st, the Fab Lab and STE Elementary staff hosted a family STEM night, which provided a meal and several hands-on activities for students ranging from slime to 3D printing. The event included our new Fab Lab interns from Kennedy High School, and we'd like to thank the Fab Lab team for offering these leadership and mentorship opportunities. Next slide. Congratulations to West County Mandarin who are recognized as a 2025 California Distinguished School by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Tony Tony Thurman. That does that does should get a round of applause for that. That's amazing. This award recognizes schools that close the achievement gap and demonstrate exceptional student performance. Seventh graders who recently returned from their IB
066school abroad trip to China, immersed in cultural and academic exchange. And another cohort cohort will travel to China this summer, continuing this powerful global learning experience. If you are interested, you can scan the QR code to learn more. And once again, congratulations for being identified as a California distinguished school. Next slide. We are honored to celebrate excellence in our school district. Conga congratulations to Caitlyn Marzi at Vista Virtual Academy, now a Contra Costa County Teacher of the Year finalist. District leadership including principal Jordan McCormack and West Contraosta superintendent oh excuse me Contraosta County Superintendent Lynn Mackey came together on Tuesday April 15th to surprise her with the news and I was also proud to be there just and I say that because her family was so proud and excited for her and it was just
067a joy to meet them. So, shout out to her family as well. Her innovation and dedication to students set a high bar for excellence. We want to wish her well and let her know that WCCUSD is rooting for her. Next slide. Yes. Congratulations, Caitlyn. That's right. Youth Hall of Fame awardee. We are proud to recognize Kayn Matthysse, a freshman at Polola Valley High School who has been named a 2025 Youth Hall of Fame awardee. Kayn exemplifies perseverance through her resilience and her ability to uplift those around her. This honor is awarded to students who make outstanding community contributions. And Kayn has done just that, serving as a committed volunteer and face painter at the annual Adopted Child for the Keys to the Future holiday event. Please join us in congratulating Kayn on this welldeserved recognition.
068Lots of congratulations tonight. We love to celebrate. Next slide. In our ongoing commitment to our WCCUSD community, we are exploring ways to enhance opportunities for community engagement and participation. The district will host three upcoming town halls to support this effort and we would love for you to join us on April 21st, April 28th, and May 14th to discuss labor, budget, and district priorities. These forums are a chance for families to hear directly from district district leadership and to ask questions. Please visit www.wcccc wccusd.net/th_quests to submit your questions prior to each meeting and we will look forward to hearing your input. You can find that information on our website. I'm assuming so correctly. Thank you. Okay, next slide. Additionally, we have several upcoming events and deadlines to share. April 17th, all parents elementary open house. April
06925th, unified basketball special Olympics at Riverside Elementary in Contraosta County. Please come and support our students. And April 28th, our community town hall at Pol Valley and Hercules High School. Next slide. Calling all students afterchool applications for the school year 202526. We want to remind our families and afterchool programs applications for the 2526 school year are now open. Please visit P school and the parent portal to complete your application and secure a spot for your child. Next slide. Microgravity contest calling all student innovators. We're encouraging all students ages 13 to 19 to participate in the microgravity contest which includes two exciting opportunities. The experiment contest and the art patch contest. If you're passionate about science, technology, or space exploration, this is your chance to help shape the future of space tech. The deadline to apply
070is May 15, 2025. Don't miss it. Next slide. Oh, listen up. A thousand degrees scholarships now open. We want to remind our students and the community that the 1,00 degree scholarship is now open for applications. The opportunity is one of many scholarships available to support support students as they plan for life after graduation and take the next steps towards their future. We encourage all students to apply. Next slide. Graduation season is almost here. Graduation season is right around the corner and we're excited to begin celebrating our incredible high school seniors starting in miday. The full graduation schedule is now available on our district website and is being shared on social media platforms. We encourage families and community members to check it out and join us in honoring the class of 2025. That went by fast.
071Last slide. Get involved. Join a district committee. Lastly, we want to remind our families and community members that several district employees meet each month and your voice matters. We encourage everyone who's interested to join, tune in, and stay connected to what's happening across our district. Committee involvement is a great way to deepen engagement, stay informed, and help shape the future of WCCUSD. This completes the superintendent's report. That was terrific. Thank you. Does anybody have such good news? So much in there. It's great to celebrate. Does anybody have any questions? Yes, please go right ahead. Trusty Smith Wol. Um, thank you for the presentation. Uh, it was very well done. I do have two questions, actually three. Are the town halls hybrid all of a sudden? I forgot your name, but we work together every day.
072Director Forest, can you please answer the question regarding town hall meetings? Yes, the town hall's uh meetings are hybrid. Thank you very much. The next question I have may be for director forest also, but the question is around are we going to in some way uh through proclamation or through the superintendent report uh highlight earth month and are we in some way through proclamation or through the superintendent report going to uh call out that April is autism appreciation month? I am complete. I will pass that over to Dr. Director Forest. Yes. Thank you so much for lifting that up. Yes, we will acknowledge both in the upcoming board meeting. Thank you. I'm complete. Is does anybody have anything else? Okay. Well, great. Thank you. That was terrific. So much good news. Congratulations to everybody and
073all the recognitions. That's really terrific. Thanks. Okay. We are now moving on to our action items for the meeting. The first action item is number E1, student discipline. And there are two cases. And for this one, I do have um I was given a script for the motion. So the first case is number 242505 and the board must make a motion to either approve or deny the recommendation of panel to expel student. So the motion can be to approve it or the motion the motion can be to deny it. And so with that I will accept a motion on case number 242505. President, I'll move that we approve the stipulation stipulated expulsion for case number 242505. Thank you. Is there a second on this item? I'll go ahead and second it. So, it'll be Gonzalez
074Hoy and and Reckler. Um, there is no questions or discussion, so we'll just go straight to a vote. Uh, student trustee Espinosa Jr., yes. Trusty Baron, yes. Trusty Hernandez. No. Trusty uh clerkana. Yes. Trusty Gonzalezoy. Yes. Trusty Smiths. Smiths. Yes. And I'm a yes. Motion passes with Hernandez as a no. And that's the only no. Okay. Now moving on to the second case. 242506. On this one, the board must approve or deny stipulated expulsion agreement for student. So this the motion is either to approve it or to deny it. And I'll accept a motion on that. President, I move that we approve the stability expulsion for case number 242506. Thank you. Is there a second on this item? I will second that item. Okay. So we have a motion by Gonzalez Hoy, second by Anyana,
075and again there's no questions or discussion. We go straight to the vote. Student trustee Espinosa Jr. Yes. Student Trusty Baron. Yes. Trusty Inana. I mean, I'm sorry, Trusty Hernandez. Yes. Clerk Inana, yes. Trusty Gonzalez. Yes. Trusty Smith Folz. Smith FS. Yes. And I'm a I'm a yes. So, we have a yes, but Smith Folultz is a no on that one. Oh, Smith Falls is a yes. Oh, you said yes. Well, I'm sorry. I'm sorry about that. We have a unanimous yes. I apologize about that. Okay, thank you for that. Moving to E2. This is the Leadership Public Schools Richmond decision hearing. And clerk Inana, do you have anything to say on this? Yes. Um, I will be recusing myself from this item. My child is currently enrolled at LPS and I wish to avoid any
076appearance of improperity. Therefore, I will not participate or vote on this item. Great. And so um clerkyana is leaving the dis and there's a open room for her in the back where she'll sit and we will call her when we're done with the item and somebody please remind me. Thank you. and we'll wait until she clears. Okay. And so for tonight we have a public hearing and I am opening the public hearing regarding Leadership Public Schools Richmond decision hearing which is currently authorized by the school district. The time is 8:20 p.m. The petitioners are asking the district's board to approve the charter renewal for a 5-year term and the current one expires at the end of this June. The district granted the charter school's original petition on February 27, 2023 for a term of four
077years beginning July 1 20 I'm sorry 2003. Uh that was February 27th, 2003 was the first became effective July 1, 2003. Renewal was approved in 2007 and 2011 and the currently active renewal petition was submitted by Leadership Public Schools Richmond in January of 2017 for a period of 5 years. Then it was extended by AB130 during COVID and Senate Bill 114 to expire this June 2025. The petition submitted for the current renewal period was received by district staff on January 13, 2024. And if renewed, the term would be for 5 years, July 1, 2025 through June 30th, 2030. The initial public hearing was held February 12th, 2025. So first, representatives from the West Contraosta Unified School District will make a presentation. Following leadership will make a presentation. Presentations will be 10 minutes in length. Following
078those, we'll take public comment. Board members may ask questions on the public comment. It will be 10 minutes in length with one minute per speaker. Public comment may be extended by a motion of the board and then we will close the public hearing. So now I would like to invite West Contraosta uh representatives to make their presentation on the decision hearing. Good evening, trustees, uh, district staff, and public at large. Uh this is Douglas Pelton, consultant with West Contraosta Unified School District and in the Charter Oversight Office, and I'm here to present remarks uh regarding this uh petition and the uh recommendations of staff based on the report that was completed and I believe part of this package. I'd like to just make one comment about the receipt of the latest renewal petition. It was
079uh in in January of 2025, not 2024. Uh and we're here uh within the 90day uh period to uh to have the public hearing for decision. So, if we could go to the next slide, please. Um just a refresher here, the uh AB1505 introduced the new three- tiered system for charter renewals. Uh and that went into effect um after the last renewal was processed by um by this district. The state identifies the renewal tiers as low, medium, and high performing for each school based on uh relatively complex formula around the state dashboard indicators. uh Leadership Public Schools Richmond met the middle tier criteria uh last year and then again uh was a middle tier performer uh as the state released their their ratings in March of this year. U middle tier schools are provided with
080a five-year renewal term under AB150. Next slide please. So staff review and recommendation here. Uh while staff has identified areas in need of improvement, uh leadership public schools does not meet the criteria for nonrenewal under AB1505 and staff did not find governance or fiscal concerns that could not be remedied, nor could they validate that closure would be in the best interest of the students based upon the AB1505 language. Based upon the requirements outlined in AB1505, West Contraosta Unified School District Charter Oversight staff recommend approval of the charter renewal petition for a 5-year term from July 1st, 2025 through June 30th, 2030. Next slide, please. to quick review of the non-renewal decision requirement for a middle tier or middle performing school. Uh I'll read through this. failure to meet or make sufficient progress toward meeting standards
081that benefit students and as documented closure is in the best interest of the students and decision to not renew gave greater weight to the school's academic performance. Again, these are the requirements for non-renewal for a middle tier performing school. Alternately, if st if staff found that the charter is demonstratively unlikely to implement the program set forth in the petition due to substantial fiscal or governance factors, or the charter is not serving the pupils who wish to attend as documented by aggregate data reflecting pupil enrollment patterns at the charter school. Again, those are the requirements for nonrenewal decision of a middle tier performing school. Next slide, please. in the process of uh going through the charter documentation provided by leadership public schools as well as the site visit and the regular recurring uh submission of required
082documents by the school to district staff. Uh we excuse me just for a second. Uh we identified uh several strengths uh and want to highlight them from the staff report which is part of the board packet tonight. Um we wanted to recognize that leadership has a sound educational program. uh they are in strong financial health and amongst the positive site visit findings we're pointing out uh the strong mission and vision apparent uh throughout the staff student parent teacher interviews uh strong program implementation uh well organized and well understood by staff and a strong set of leadership at the school at the site uh with a strong professional learning uh program. The challenges that we identified in the staff report uh relate to some inconsistent academic performance over the last three to four years. in particular
083um limited family partnership structures and as uh the board I think pointed out in the last meeting the public hearing um we're looking at enrollment diversity as an opportunity for the school. Next slide please. in order to highlight some of the elements in the uh staff report. As you can see over the over the course of the last six years, um we had some ups and downs. I think many schools have these same uh trends. Uh and then we did see in 2324 uh some real improvements um over the 22 and 2022 and 2023 uh results in both ELA and math. Next slide please. the um the highlight here on the enrollment diversity item that we brought up. Uh we still see students with disabilities uh year-over-year uh at a lower rate than the district
084and we have highlighted that for the school. And we just wanted to do some comparisons here between the two other high schools in the area around English language learner uh enrollment percentages and African-American student percentages and students with disabilities in comparison with the other two high schools. uh we see that there's real opportunity for the leadership program to reach out to those communities. The next slide please. Um our focus on oversight here is really on um family engagement. Um as another area where we felt the school could could really seek to bring more of the voice of the family, the student, the parents into the decision- making at the school. They they seem to do the outreach. uh it's an area uh for them to develop. And secondly, the strategies to recruit underrepresented student subgroups.
085Uh we have seen that it's uh discussed in their plans. The issue is, you know, can they make improvements on the actual uh percentages and do they need to look at other strategies to augment what they're already doing? Well, thank you for the time to make this presentation and I I believe we're uh on to uh a presentation that leadership has pro provided. Yes, thank you so much and thank you to Mr. Pelton. That is correct. It is 2025. It is printed correctly and I just misspoke. At this time we'll have um leadership representatives from leadership public schools to come and make their presentation. Thank you. Uh testing everyone hear me. Okay. And I'll just say next slide to move the slide or do I have a Okay, I can go back. Well, first I
086just want to start off by saying good evening West Contraost Unified School District Board of Trustees. Uh Dr. Dr. Moses is not present but want to acknowledge her and also the West Contraosta staff. Uh thank you for having me here. My name is Dr. Brent Daniels. I'm the superintendent CEO of Leadership Public Schools. We're honored here today uh for the termination hearing for LPS Richmond. Our presentation will walk through measurable progress our school has made, areas we're committed to improving, and why we're requesting a five-year renewal. Um I would like to have gratitude um to the West Country board and staff for your partnership, the thoughtful review and the recommendations uh in the staff report. Uh we deeply value your commitment to equity and to the students of Richmond West Contraosta. Next slide. Slide three,
087please. Um on slide three, what you can see on the 2024 dashboard is that LPS has made meaningful gains in the areas of English, math, English language learner progress and maintained our college and career readiness. These results demonstrate our sustained academic momentum that we're making and we plan and work hard to continue over the next five years if renewed. Um if you can go to slide number five please. Um, slide number five. I don't think that's slide number five. Okay. Uh, math math. Thank you. This is the 2024 dashboard. One of the areas in the staff report was around our our performance and in terms of being consistent. What I would like to report to the board is that we've made gains for English language learners, socially economically disadvantaged students, and Hispanic students. And the
088gains that we've made uh on the on the the dashboard um demonstrate our strategies are working and our investment in our professional development and high quality curriculum as well as our professional development. And these are subgroups that typically perform uh less than um the California average. And then we saw great grains. You can please go to slide number seven. Just want to uh this slide number seven uh shows our college enrollment rates. They exceed the state as well as peer averages around the community. Slide number eight, please. If you look at the enrollment trends, you can see that um the two-year college enrollment trends are also uh above the state. Next slide. And that the our perseverance in terms of persistence with our students uh being in college remaining in college is on par with
089peers nationally. Uh next slide. And then the piece that we are very proud of is our six-year college completion. Uh as you can see that we exceed um high poverty high schools um comparatively for students who earn their six-year college degrees. Next slide please. Slide 11. Actually uh uh LPS we're are financially stable. Uh, one of our key priorities is remaining fiscally solvent as we implement our programs. We want to make sure that we have financial stability, support student success. Next slide. Uh, part of the success has been investing in illustrative mathematics. Uh, an area that we want to uh, grow and invest in across for all of our student groups. uh illustrative mathematics focuses on universal design for for learning as well as we're embedding EL strategies into our program. Uh with that said,
090by using UDL and also embedding EEL strategies, we're hoping to also use that to increase our enrollment in those for those student groups. This past year, all of our teachers mathematics as well as our special education teachers engaged in professional development in the areas of instructional routines for math and also a two-part series on UDL uh un design for learning where students are engaging in problem based learning as well as mo math talks in class. Um please go to slide number 15. Uh we do want to acknowledge that the west contra costa staff report identified student part uh family partner structure uh excuse me family partnership structures as an area of growth for LPS. We're embedding family voice through our current structure capacitos, implementing listening sessions, and also looking at our parent advisory structures. Uh
091we want to promote uh engagement with our African-American families through our BSU as well as look at strategies to strengthen our parent advisory and English learner committees and ensure that students are playing an active voice in our governance. Our principal and school leaders are committed to providing opportunities for staff, excuse me, for parents to provide um to provide input to improve our school improvement efforts. Uh next slide. Uh we have a uh we also in the staff report wasn't talked about tonight was looking at our disproportionate suspension rates uh for African-American students. Uh what I can share is that this year we did have one suspension for African-American student. U of the 16 that we had, we had a total of uh 17 suspensions. We had one that was African-American student. Um but we're trying
092to look at setting goals to ensure that uh we're supporting our African-American students that do attend. This past week, I attended a a program called Kings Makers with the principal um Mr. Arona. Uh we during that time we looked at curriculum as well as different supports and systems for African-American success in schools. Currently the school is looking at restorative practices as well as looking at cultural relevant professional development and strengthening our BSU and we also have our historical black college tour. Um we had students from Richmond attend the Maryland area where they visited Howard Howard University as well as other other HPC tours and the Naval Academy. LPS is committed to engaging in a cycle of inquiry to identify and implement the most effective systems to support our African-American students. Next slide, please. Uh in
093the staff report, we also looked at our enrollment equity and we want to name and own that we want to increase our outreach for African-American students, English language learners, and students with disabilities. Uh we are working actively to partner with K8 schools u again to promote our historical black college tour that our students were on last at uh spring break. Ensure that all of our materials are translated into Spanish. Have a bilingual staff. Ensure that we're working with students and families with um uh with disabilities. let them know that we are implementing instructional strategies to support their student as well as we're collaborating with within our staff to have a strong sped program. Okay, next slide. Um I know the board has already had opportunity to look at the data submitted by LPS. Um but
094why renew LPS? I wanted to share that we are delivering on our academic achievement. We show strong post-secondary outcomes. We're fiscally stable. Uh we deeply appreciate the partnership with West Contraosta. Uh the visit really provides us opportunity to look at our program and areas of improvement. LPS is making measurable uh measurable gains under AB50. Also strong post-secondary outcomes under AB50 to warrant renewal. We're working to have inclusive instructional practices such as luster of math, UDL, and EL achieve. We also offer strong fiscal management and we're committed to improving our family engagement and student belonging. Next slide. Just in closing, uh LPS is delivering on its mission. We're growing. We're also listening and we're improving. Uh we respectfully ask for a 5-year renewal and we thank you again for your time and for your trust. Thank
095you. Thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation. We'll now go to public comment. Is there public comment on this item? And is there a lot? Should we line up? No. No. We have about five First public comment is Maria Romo. Go ahead. Okay. Start again. for the little Fore speech. Our next public comment is Mariana Martinez Gomez. Your next public comment is Ruben Orona. Good evening. My name is Roven Orona and I serve as a acting principal. Esteemed board members, I am asking for your support in granting our school a 5-year renewal. We were pleased to read the staff report recommending our renewal. And we also acknowledge that we have work to do. As a team, we are committed to improving our community outreach, continue to offer school tours to prospect families, and
096opening lines of communication with feeder with feeder schools like Levana Dean and Caliber to support our recruitment efforts. As a former dean of students, I personally witnessed our shift to restorative practices in addressing root causes for student behavior. One example of that has been dissolving the lunch detention model in order to prioritize restorative conversations. We're excited to continue the work in preparing students for their post-secary goals while being a strong option for Richmond families. Thank you. Next public comment is the defi bad comequ. Hi, my name is Diani Bud Kamar. I've been working at LPS for six years. first as the chemistry teacher, then I added on AP bio, and now I'm also an instructional coach for the science team. I came here to speak on behalf of our extensive AP courses and how it
097has transformed student opportunities. We currently have about a third of upperassmen enrolled in an AP class. This week, we've been running AP interest sessions, which is an annual routine. Yesterday, 50 students attended the AP psych information session. I have looked at the spreadsheet for enrollment numbers and of of about 300 kids um 120 of them suggested interest in an AP science which when I started was something that I couldn't have imagined. I also know offhand just from being a teacher that about a third of the sophomores are contemplating AP English next year. The math team readjusted their teaching assignment this year because there was an entire course or an entire cohort of students. My time is up. That was ready for AP Calc and they're currently in AP pre-calc. Sorry, that's my time. And our
098last public comment is Tomasa Espinosa. is Berkeley. Scientific function. another and that is the end of public comment. Excuse me. Do board members have questions? No questions. Okay, we'll move to a Go ahead. competing over here. Um I was going to do a motion. Are you going to do a motion? I had a question. Okay, never mind. I had a question. Oh, yes. Go ahead. Um, one, my first question is, what is your school's anti-racist policy, practice, and procedures? Um, I don't have the uh the policy present in front of me, but it's on our our website. uh we we follow the um the practices outlined by the education code. Thank you. My second question is could you tell me about your application process? Yes. So I'm going to invite our u student fossil to
099talk about that process. It's a it is a lottery process that we have and she'll talk more about that. Good evening, board of trustees. LPS Richmond participates in the enroll west Contraosta portal um for charter schools. Our applications are open to all students within the county. If there are more applicants than there are um seats within each of the grade levels, we do have a prioritization process um and then a lottery is is run. Once that lottery is completed, um we reach out to the families who are first offered um a position in the school and then as students accept or decline, we go through the weight list um within the order. Thank you. If I could just circle back, is there anyone from your school that can talk about the anti-racist policy practices, procedures
100that you have at your site? Hello, I'm I'm Chris Herrell, the director of student services. I can speak to the the UCP that we follow like all schools. Um, but I'm I'm waiting to bring it up so we can go re read through it. Thank you board. Um my name is Billy Libernet. I'm one of the instructional coaches. I've been at LPS Richmond for the last nine years. I've been in public education for 17. I'm also a parent of West Contra Kasa student. My son goes to Michelle Obama. Um your question was about some of our anti-racist practices specifically. So, I can speak a little bit to where where that lives in the instructional side. Um, as an instructional coach, I also help plan and facilitate our PD. We've been lucky over the last two
101years to partner with Dr. Roger Zard. Um, that's been an ongoing relationship where she's done both whole staff um work as well as working with our instructional leadership team and our site leaders. Um that work has included um deep work in anti-racist teaching, dismantling whiteness and bringing that into the classroom and our systems. On top of that, uh she's also helped us reflect on some of our school practices and systems and try to design systems in the back end that aren't just directly student facing, but helping the school run in a more anti-racist way. Um this year we've continued that work. Um we've um we've no longer partnering with Dr. Rogers are this year but have continued an anti-racist PD sequence that's included a mix of whole class or sorry whole um staff professional development
102as well as um small groupoup discussions focus on specific needs and issues as they arise. Um, some of the ways where that's shown up in our instructional practice specifically has to do with both the content that we have teachers reflect on and build that is specifically dismantling whiteness and centering anti-racism. Uh, on top of that, we really work on instructional practices that are themselves anti-racist. Uh, we try to desenter the classroom to have classes that uplift all students, especially students who are historically marginalized. And we're really trying to create learning spaces that themselves reflect the world that we want to be in. And so that's ongoing work. In my instructional coaching work, I talk about this with teachers literally every week in our coaching meetings. It's also whole group and small group work, whether that's
103in departments or grade levels or our whole staff work. And it's been ongoing and we still have work to do in those areas. But I'm excited and proud of the work that we've done. And on the instructional side, um, we we've made a lot of accomplishments that, uh, that I'm excited to build on. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Al. But I I just want to state just in general, our UCP, we we tolerate we have no tolerance for any racis racism at Leadership Public School in in our network and at LPS Richmond, but we do follow our same um UC UCP policy like any other traditional school. Um if if someone wants to file a complaint around this, thank you so much. Everything else is comments. I'm complete. Are there any other questions? Okay, we
104can move to comments. Go ahead, Tristy Gonzalez. Thank you, President Recllar. I was wondering if Sorry, we should actually we need to put a motion. Yes. I was wondering if it'd be okay for me to make a comment in order to make the motion. Is that okay? Yeah, sure. Cool. Go ahead. Um, thank you. Uh, this comment, Dr. Daniels and LPS staff. Uh, first I want to commend you on the things that you're doing really well. I think that you're making a lot of progress in many different areas in your school. Um, and I think that there are things that you're doing really, really great. So, I want to commend you on those areas, but there are things that I have quite a bit of concern. Um, I think that you have acknowledged those things.
105Uh, Dr. Daniels, I think that I can hear a lot of pride in your work as superintendent of LPS. um that the school principal. I also hear that pride. Um therefore, I think there has to be quite a bit of work still to be done. Your numbers around special education students, your numbers on African-American students, your numbers on newcomer students, your numbers on uh foster youth, to be honest, they're pretty shameful. Um, and I say that because my expectation of any charter school in our district is that it needs to be outperforming our schools by a much greater number in any metric because that is supposed to be the vision and the mission of any charter school. If that's not happening to me, you're not meeting the expectation of what charter schools are supposed to
106be, which is the promise of what every charter school makes. And I think what your school stands for now to me specifically as a newcomer to this country seeing your very low number of zero I almost makes me want to vote no on your renewal because I know we get thousands of kids that come from countries in South America on a yearly basis. So, I'm using this opportunity not to put down your work because I do think that you should take pride in a lot of the work that you do, but you have a lot of work to do when it comes to diversity. Um, and with that said, I am going to make a motion to renew you, but I am going to make a motion to include something in the operationalou. And I
107hope that you agree to that because if there's no agreement to thatou, I'm going to request that we re reagendize it because then I will actually change my vote. Um, and I will reconsider my motion at that point. So here is my motion. I move that we approve the renewal of the petition for the five years as requested. But as part of the operationalou, we include a requirement that LPS provides us with a yearly progress report towards increasing their enrollment of students with special needs, foster youth, African-American, and newcomer students. That's my motion. Can I add to that? Yes, absolutely. I would also like to put a report on suspensions and a report on special ed enrollment also including the type of student uh that that spends uh a portion of the day full day
108or less than full day in classroom. Absolutely. I accept that regular class. Okay. Okay. So, we have a motion. Do we have a second? I second. We have a second from Trusty Hernandez. Do we have any comments on this? Yes, Trusty Smith Pulse, go right ahead. The challenges that were presented have a direct impact in student experience at our at the school. I find it just a huge red flag. The number of African-American students at the school, if the math is correct, that's 15 out of 525 African-American students at the school. The percentage of special ed students that are at the school is just as much of a red flag. Um, inconsistent academic performance, enrollment diversity, and family partnerships. These are where the challenges were uh presented to us. And these are where I think
109the challenges stay. I didn't see a pathway to change. And I think that that's something that also gives me a red flag. I have to tell you the biggest red flag is the what I believe is the incomplete answer to anti-racism. I think that I would urge everyone to understand the the quote that we use so often from Ky. There is no neutrality in racism. you are either actively working to dismantle or you're saying yes to. Um I think that there is a lot of work that has to be done at every school around anti-racism and I think that it's falling short when we don't push that lever all the time. I believe that not having certain policy, for example, an anti-slur policy, having a full anti-racist policy on site, and also having articulable practices
110and procedures that you do to ensure that student safety is paramount out your school. the suspension rate of 22% uh for African-American students. Again, that's a huge red flag. There's 15 there's 15 African-American students, give or take, if the math is correct. Um I think that I I'm complete. I'm processing, but I'm complete. Thank you. Are there any other comments? And and can we get a clock up for two minutes? I'm sorry. I forgot to request that. And then Trusty Hernandez, you can go ahead for board members too. Two Can I go ahead and start now? Okay. Um, I want to thank LPS and all the staff and all the families who are here in support. Um, I'm someone who's committed to equity and inclusion and transparency. I do want to acknowledge the strengths outlined
111in the staff report and the recommendation um for the charter renewal, but we also have to recognize the serious concerns that were brought up. Um and I think it's important that we do come to an agreement on how to improve, especially when it comes to the underenrollment of African-American students, uh English language learners, and students with disability. Um, that's just my comment. Again, thank you so much. I do want to uplift, you know, the hard work that you guys have done over the last couple of years to improve academic outcomes and strong financial management. Thank you. Thank Thank you so much. Uh, anybody else? Okay, in closing, um, everybody has said what I feel as well. I want to congratulate you and thank you on your successes and I I thank you for acknowledging your
112challenges and where there's work to be done and in our motion we ensure that we have it recorded and we can expect um um you know your path to improvement and and it's uh documented and we look forward to reviewing it. So, I thank you very much and I don't have anything else to add. And with that, we will go to the vote. Student trustee Espinosa Jr., yes. Student Trusty Baron, yes. Trusty Hernandez, yes. Clerkyana is recused. Trustee Gonzalez, yes. Trusty Smith Folds, Smith FS, no. and I am a yes. So, we have one recusal, we have one sold is a no, and we have the rest at yes. At this time, I will close the public hearing at 9:03 p.m. Thank you. And we'll wait just a couple of minutes for the room to
113clear and for clerk to rejoin us. Okay, we will get restarted with E3 curriculum adoptions. Let's see where are we here. Okay, we're up with curriculum adoptions, I believe. Uh, Miss Aosta Veruskus, this is your item. Yes. Thank you so much. So, this evening, we bring the instructional materials that have been selected for recommendation to the board of education for the terms beginning in fall 2025. The selected materials will support four content areas: American government, high school English, middle school math, and high school algebra 1, and elementary math. And now I would love to turn it over to director Dr. Chilcott to describe our selection process for these high quality instructional materials. Thank you, Mr. Aosta Procus. Good evening, President Reckler and board trustees. We are truly excited to be able to share with you
114tonight four proposed curriculum adoptions to be implemented in fall 2025. We will present all four recommended adoptions before taking questions at the end of the pro the presentation. Today is an opportunity to share with the board and public. Let's see. Uh actually the slide before that please back to now. Yeah, perfect. Thank you. All right. Today is an opportunity to share with the board and public our systems for ensuring highquality instructional materials are in front of every student at every grade level in our district. Today, the curriculum and instruction department will share the process for four different adoptions. We follow the California Department of Education recommendations for how to conduct pilots, but each is different depending on the context. Although each is different, they all include developing the district lens, including stakeholder feedback and a
115rubric that centers equity. First, I will review the recommendations. Then I will tell you about the American government adoption process before passing the mic to Sanji Bell, the literacy director, who will tell you about high school ELA. And then on to Mark Labco, the math coordinator, will speak about elementary and middle school math. Thank you. Next slide. These are the current adoptions for the content areas and grade spans we will be discussing. Next slide. Thank you. These are the four curricula we are recommending for adoption that we hope will be approved by the board tonight. And with that, I will uh begin talking about American government and the process for uh the selection of this publisher with you. Next slide. American government is a semester course taken by 1300 12th grade students and is taught
116by 21 teachers in our district. Next slide. The committee included the central office staff and these five teachers, Robert Gade, Joshua Jun Manuel, Richard Snith, Joseph Granada, and Rico Atkins. Next slide. And here, as I was discussing, we develop a district lens. And so we really want to focus on who our students, the demographics, the instructional setting of all of our students, how these instructional materials are going to prep our students for college and career. We want to focus on who are the teachers, the experience, style, turnover, like what'll best uh suit our district um our teachers and our students. And really the bottom line is what are we looking for in instructional materials for the next six to eight years? Next slide. Oh, no, you're on this one. Okay. And specifically with the history
117adoption, here's the rubric um that is adapted from the CDE. So content alignment with standards, program organization, assessment, universal access, instructional planning and support, integration of technology, and then we take those broad uh topic areas and build a rubric from that. And that's what we use to assess the curricula um as we go through. Next slide. The timeline for this adoption was a bit abbreviated because we had enough funds to fasttrack this adoption for fall 25. We invited all teachers to a meeting at which we selected the committee. We chose three publishers to present their materials and then teachers voted for their selection on January 23rd of this year. Next slide. And then the uh teachers were unanimous in their decision to recommend the adoption of McGruters. And I'm here to ask the board to
118approve this recommendation. And with that, I will pass it to Director Sanji Bell who will talk to you about ELA. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Chilcott. Um, good evening board members, board president. My name is Sanji Bell and I'm director of curriculum and instruction and I'm here to present supplemental curriculum for ELA for students in secondary and our adoption is for study sync. Next slide. I think you're a little bit ahead. Um our instructional committee consisted of myself Francie I knew I was going to mispronounce her name. Um, Kunanak, she will correct me tomorrow. Kunaniac. Hunaniac. Okay, I don't want to upset her. Um, if you know, you know. Um, and also Jessica Petrelli. Um, who is our director of college and career. Francancy is our supervisor for library services. Uh, next slide.
119So in essence, to address disparities in reading achievement, particularly with ninth and tth grade students reading below grade level, we must always be ready to target support to help them engage in complex text, academic discussions, and critical thinking. And although our curriculum supports standardsbased instruction, it is also necessary for us to provide scaffolds, various formats um for content access and culturally relevant curriculum needed to meet the diverse needs needs of our students in West Contraosta. Without this, this forces teachers to have to create supplemental materials leading to potential disproportionalities and impacting various student groups. Um, this also includes our English language learners. So, the district's commitment to antibbias um anti-racist instruction and tier one access for all students requires that we have high quality researchbased materials that close the opportunity gaps and not widen them.
120This is our rationale. Next slide. So with this um this is a list of our schools within West Contracasta and the graph um depicts the schools who are participants. Next slide. So our district's um consideration when adopting um outlies outlines these particular tenants. It's important again for highquality instruction materials which reflects the district's vision for student achievement aligned with college and career readiness standards, instructional coherence against excuse me across grade levels and um expectations or high expectations for student works throughout the year. Um next slide. So here's our timeline. So, we're very familiar with Study Sync. In 2016, it was adopted or piloted, I'm sorry, for middle school teachers previewing ELA programs and was unanimous unanimously chosen and recommended for adoption. Um, and so this continued with our licenses, our digital licenses for all grades,
121including K8, but specifically 6th through 8th grade. um our independent school using uh it for 9th through 12th grade for v Vista visual um both digitally and um actual text. So in 2023 24 based on student data and the need to offer standardsbased instruction um meeting the needs um and also differentiating for struggling students uh high school students excuse me high school leaders were surveyed um around the use of study syncs for 9th and 10th grade for English one and two to address um uh potential disparities in the data. Um so curriculum and instruction provided ongoing development professional development during the summer during our PD series um for schools where leaders were surveyed and um started with um ongoing training and continuous training to support teachers. So here we are in 2425 and high school
122teachers in ninth and tth grade for students in English one and two have access to instruction for their students. Um and just a quick overview, Study Sync is comprehensive. It offers um digital ELA curriculum designed for grades 6 through 12. Um it uh provides a diverse library um and collection of literary and informational text um through multimedia resources um standards alignment for lessons and supports reading writing speaking and listening skills which is important for our students in West Contracasta. Um the academic impact. I'm sorry. Next slide. I didn't say that like a couple of times. Okay, we're all caught up. Um so, Study Sync integrates technology to promote collaboration and critical thinking. Um provides writing prompts for teachers and scaffolds instruction. um also built in differentiation school to tools for diverse learners, which is really
123um important for our new teachers coming in and for students who need additional assistance. Um and here's a quick shout out to Kennedy High School. This is feedback from one of our teachers, Mr. Mogi. Um he says that the activities instructional moves for a text are both wellcraftrafted level appropriate and comprehensively cover most import most of our cover the most important standards. Sorry. Units are organized around relevant themes and guiding questions remain relevant leverable and leverable for most students um to access. And additionally, the language activities integrate well essential vocabulary and language development. And those language activities for every level are very appropriate. And so with that, we ask um for um approval for this adoption. And thank you very much. Thank you for the pres Thank you for the presentation. Oh, is there something
124else? Yes. I'd love to invite up Mr. Mark Labako, our coordinator in math to um discuss Eureka Squared. Great. Thank you. Go ahead. Almost there. Uh uh good evening uh President Reclair, board of trustees cabinet. Uh great to see you guys. I'm Mark Labco, mathematics coordinator. I'm here to share some exciting news about adopting two highquality mathematics curricula for a TK through algebra 1 uh tools that really will effectively move math teaching and learning forward uh for our district. Uh let's start off with uh curriculum for middle grades and alge one amplified desmos math. Uh you know we started this journey about five years ago um with the opportunity to um to apply for a Bill and Meinda Gates f uh grant focusing on education um effective implementation of middlegrades curriculum. We're really excited to
125take that opportunity. Um so uh to get that high quality materials in front of uh teachers and students. Um it's a curriculum that promotes student discourse which we're really uh we're really high on as well. And um so we wanted to start working on that early on and uh also to learn a little bit about the implementation processes. So we got the grant started moving forward um identifying some teachers that were interested in opting in to use Desmos. Uh next slide. Desmos is student centered um problem based um students presented with a problem. They investigate, talk with each other, figure stuff out uh and share their ideas uh together. It's a blended curriculum, both digital and uh print. Powerful online teacher tools as well for instruction. Next slide. Next slide. Thank you. Hold please. Ah,
126okay. Here we go. So, uh, yeah, our journey has been one of, uh, really about relationship building, um, and creating a sense of community. uh uh something we couldn't have done without the help of uh our one of our our two math coaches in secondary uh Shauna Foster and and Lilian Austria. And uh really u in order for us to make it happen, we slowly built up this trust and building relationships. We've known lots of teachers throughout uh the district um from all these years and um we were uh we built momentum. We started with back in 2021 about 15 teachers and about a thousand students using Desmos. Up until now, this year we have about 6,000 students and about 80% of the math teachers already using uh Desmos at K8s, middle and high schools.
127Uh in fact, a recent vote that we just uh asked teachers to take was um whether they wanted to vote to adopt. We had a 93% um yes vote on that. Next slide, please. Uh we asked teachers to do an antibbias screener as well and uh met those criterias. Um here are a few of the indicators and voting results. Next slide. We really do believe that student engagement is essential for learning and uh this is an expectation that's embedded in amplified Desmos lessons. You'll see some of those uh pictures of students engaged in in the curriculum. Uh we've also provided ongoing professional development throughout the years for uh teachers to ensure they're building the necessary skills uh to carry out this interactive classroom environment. Next slide. Finally, uh here are some teacher testimonials. Um as
128you can see, teachers love it. Uh they find it effective, uh engaging, mathematically rigorous. Students find it interesting and relevant. uh MMSN teachers can easily make accommodations for their students. Um so we're really excited to continue this journey for for the years to come. Uh next slide, please. So we're going to transition to elementary mathematics. Uh I'd like to share with you our adoption process for TK through sixth grade. Um we started this work back in the spring of 2023. Uh we built review committees. Um, we selected highquality instructional material for review through the fall and winter. We listened to publisher presentations. U, we selected two pilot programs and we made our decision last spring. Next slide. Our amazing uh team of educators uh consisted of teachers across the district. We had advisory members from
129special education, from Elma, from Oasisa, uh, as well as principles and mathematics coaches. Uh, special nod to Francancy. Thank you, Francancy, who continues to support and guide us through this process. Next slide. Uh for our district lens, we developed our selection criteria based on who our students were are uh our teachers and defining what strong math curriculum uh instruction is. Next slide. Our selection criteria included teacher and student supports, the design assessment as well as other additional uh district criteria. Next slide. Just as with Amplified Desmos, teachers did an antibbias review and the chosen curriculum passed all indicators. Here are a few examples with some teacher quotes. Next slide. Um, click one more, please. Thank you. Uh so this were the five curricula that were uh initially reviewed and were greenlighted by ed reports as
130high quality meaning they were focused, coherent and mathematically rigorous. Next slide please. One more. Thank you. Uh teachers selected two um curricula to pilot in their classroom. One full unit for their current classes. It's illustrative mathematics and Eureka math squared. Next slide. and they reached a unanimous decision to propose that Eureka Math Squared be adopted. Next slide, please. some more Tester testimonials for you. Um, describing some of the reasons for their selection, included very userfriendly, uh, minimum modifications needed, effective, engaging, collaborative for students, help build conceptual understanding, plenty of materials to work with, and the online platform easy to use as well. Next slide. And finally, when we asked uh teachers whether they thought Eureka math squared would serve our students well, we had a 100% uh yes vote on that. Slide, please. So, in
131conclusion, we're excited to move math teaching and learning forward with both of these highquality tools to help us towards our district math vision, which is all learners know, use, and enjoy mathematics. Thank you, trustees. Thank you. As we wrap up, I just want to say thank you to our dedicated team of teaching and learning directors and coordinators for their leadership in these efforts. You are critical to advancing highquality instruction and academic rigor for our students. And this evening, we are recommending approval of the four adoptions to ensure that our team has ample time to plan, to procure the materials, and to lay the groundwork for a successful, wellexecuted implementation. and we are available to answer any questions you might have. Great. Thank you very much. Is there any public comment on this item? Okay, next
132item. Okay. And do board members have any questions? Yes, Trusty Smith, go ahead, please. Smith, I'm sorry. Um, I do have a question. My question is when we are looking at building the these committees, right, that the initial committees that then look and then bring the committee selections forward, are we intentional about diversifying those committees, right? ensuring that those committees especially in government that those committees represent uh the diversity that we have in the district because we want to make sure that that book aligns with the vast diversity and experiences of the children that it's going to teach and government is super important. So did we take that into account when building the committee? Uh yes absolutely. So we invited everybody out and we took into consideration everything that you were highlighting there as well
133as um the breadth of the district meaning from uh different schools. Um so the representation uh definitely was uh on the committee and that was part of our selection process. Thank you very much. And I'm assuming the same was for English and math. Yeah, absolutely. The same criteria basically used when we come up. It's it's some level of volunteerism, but it's also trying to make sure that the the spread across the district and the representation as well as the representation of special ed um teachers and just making sure that we have uh folks that can really um help us select what's going to best support all of our students. Thank you very much. Everything else is comments. I'm complete. Any questions? Okay, I have a couple. Um the first is this is going to seem
134ridiculous. Are there printed materials or have we gone totally online? Uh no good question. So um there are definitely printed materials for all of them. Desmos is a hybrid uh curriculum and therefore it has the online component which is the core of it but there's also the printed materials that are coming with that. Uh one of the things that excites us about this adoption is that uh Mr. Labco has been having to use the print shop to support the printed materials for Desmos up until now because it wasn't our core adoption. So like as we transition to that, we're going to have both online components and print components for all of the uh adoptions that are coming forward. Okay. And then how are students involved? So this is uh why I led with context um
135for each of the um the adoptions was somewhat different. So for the math adoption which is the largest one that we have here um it was definitely bringing in the student voice was important and so if you look at some of those testimonials it will bring forth some student voice with the American government one it was through the teachers to be um talking to the uh the students about what they wanted in it because it was a relatively smaller um adoption and so just the nature of it um we it wasn't pulled quite the same way. Um and then I don't remember with the study sync what there was but what I will say is uh actually it was from this uh presenting to the board I think three years ago and I think you
136brought up the student voice at that time and so we've embedded in every adoption since then and made sure that we had that um as well as the antibbias screener are things that we've added in the last three years to make sure that we're really um hearing from all stakeholders and um ensuring support for all our stakeholders. And yeah, because my daughter actually got to try two, which I think is I don't know if that's normal, but she happened to use two science curriculums and was like, "This was terrible. This was better." So, she could really see right the difference. So, no, it's important to have the student voice because they do often recognize things that, you know, give us a little more nuance about the decisions that we're making. And then finally, what's your
137plan for roll out and professional development? Um, that is going to be finalized once we get past this point. I mean, we need to have the adoption before we can really make those plans. But I can tell you, um, we've had a lot of conversations both amongst ourselves and with the publishers for how we can roll that out. Um and so basically the second that we are able to get board approval for these adoptions um the um the requisitions will be going in tomorrow for the purchases and then we will move forward with the uh planning. Um but implementation is huge. Mr. Lakco I can say has been working with uh implementation plans with um with Desmos and how we rolled that out because that one is in front of the teachers and so that's
138going to be invaluable in how we plan the implementation um for the other curricula as well. So I can't speak specifically about it but I can say there's going to be many touch points. It's going to be um for both administration and the teachers um and it's going to be multi-levelled. So we're really excited to move forward with that. Okay. Thank you very much. Any other questions? Okay. Motion. President Regular. I'll move approval and adoption of M McGrder's American government in grade 12. Extension of study sync for ELA in grades 9 and 10. Adoption of Desmos for math in grade six in K8 middle school and algebra 1. and adoption of Eureka Square for math in grades TK through six. Thank you. Is there a second? Smith F seconds. Great. Any comments? Go right ahead.
139Um I just want to make the comment that whatever we do, we need to do together. It needs to be something that you're not skipping from one school to another school to another school and getting three different versions of the curriculum. um also want to make sure that there's built-in times for teachers, parents, and students to discuss the curriculum and to collaborate with each other. And it's not just about the curriculum, but it's about how it's delivered. So, we all can use the same book, but there needs to be some real professional development about how you deliver the information. And then we need to in my humble opinion move away from sit and get and move towards project-based learning, moves towards discussions, move toward and we hear this from our students all the time when
140we ask them. It's the sit and get in the lecture is just not content is no longer king. Are we really moving towards skills? Are we leaving our students with the skills that they need to be productive and the best version of themselves? Um, someone told me that the way that they describe it is in this district we speed date with curriculum and then we tie ourselves to a marriage for 7 to 10 years instead of taking the time to really get to know the curriculum and get to know how it would benefit our students. So, I think that that's where we need to lean towards and I am complete. Thank you. If I may have a clock up, I'm sorry. I just keep forgetting this. If we get two minutes for comments for board
141members, please, that'd be helpful. Okay, thank you. Uh, I want to thank staff for their work on their work on the committee, their time reviewing the curriculum and all the time spent the piloting. Our math curriculum especially has been outdated and honestly left on the shelves by dozens if not hundreds of educators over the years. I want to thank all of our educators for spending countless of hours researching and using other resources and purchasing their own curriculum to overcome the lack of highquality materials. I also want to thank uh Associate Superintendent Aosta Verasquez, Dr. Shel God, Miss Bell, and Mr. Lovakco for making this happen tonight. With that said, for the last few weeks, I've been reflecting of what to do about this item. I've decided I will be supporting and voting in favor because
142we really need this for our schools, our educators, and our students. This is long overdue, but I am really disappointed that we had an opportunity and ability to partner with a foundation who was willing to provide us with $5 million for this adoption, but we did not move forward with that partnership. I don't believe it would be helpful to shame or call out the decision maker and and but in my opinion, this was not a good decision. The learning from this experience is that we must be more informed about grants. This is just another aspect of training the board needs. Therefore, colleagues and board president, I would like to request that we create a policy that allows us as a board to have accountability on grants past a certain threshold or amount that staff must
143ask us for permission to either enter into partnership or turn down the money. I am thankful that our staff has been able to find funding to make this critical adoption happen, but now I do believe as a board we meet we need to be more handson about grant funding in the future. Thank you. Are there any other comments? So, I I have some comments, too. So, I'd like to thank all of you very much and everybody who worked on this. This is a lot. I mean, this is like a lot. So, really, it's it's great. I'm very happy to see it. I'd also like to echo Trusty Smith's comments about parents. I think it is really important that parents understand curriculum. It's not something I think that I ever thought about, but I think that
144this is celebratory and it's and that they deserve to know and how to support their kids. So, I do think it is um an important piece of the of the roll out and um I also the board does have to have discussion about grants. There are um many issues with this um that I I agree um the the board has the right to dip some toes into some of the issues around this. So um I think we can uh strategize on on how to do that and um um be thoughtful and um responsible about it. So I I appreciate that. Um, and with that, I think we can move to a uh a vote on the item. And we'll start down at the student trustee level. Trustee Espinosa Jr., yes. Trusty Baron, yes. Trusty Hernandez,
145yes. Clerkyana, yes. Trustee Gonzalez, yes. Trustee Smith Folultz. Smith Falls. Yes. And I'm a yes. The motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Okay, now we are up to E4, another public hearing. I'm getting good at this. Okay, let me take out my little script. Um, I am I am now opening a public hearing regarding Aloney Elementary School's instructional time waiver to clear the 2324 financial audit finding. Um, what? Okay. So, I'm opening the hearing now at 9:35. Um, the uh members of West Contracasta Unified School District staff will make a presentation. Then we will have public comment. We will ask for board questions. Um uh and and that will be our order for the evening. For public comment, it will be 10 minutes at one minute per person. It public comment may be extended
146uh with a with a vote by by the board. And with that, we'll go ahead and start E4. Good evening board um and student trustees. My name is Margarita Romo and I'm a coordinator in the business office. Um next slide please. So tonight we'll be talking about Aloney's uh public hearing to approve a waiver for an instructional time finding that we received in their 2324 audit. Um some of the requirements of um of us as a district are to provide adequate instructional minutes to all of our schools. And so for grades 1 to three, we're required to offer 50,400 minutes per year. And grades four to eight, the requirement is 54,000 per year. Annually, um, our schools provide their schedules to us by May 15th, and business services will review the schedules to ensure they're
147in compliance with EDC code requirements. And whenever um schedules are changed like in the middle of the year for example for for whatever reason they come back to business services for review and approval. Next slide please. Every year our district undergoes an annual financial audit and our bell schedules are reviewed as part of this audit. Christy White Associates, who's our current auditor, reviews our schedules. In 2324, we we received an audit finding for Aloney, and that audit report was presented to this board on January 29th, 2025. Per the auditor's review of Aloney's schedule, they noted that grades 1 to three had a deficiency of 35 minutes. and um grades four to six had a deficiency of 55 minutes. The district is subject to a financial penalty of $126,584 due to this shortage of minutes. Next
148slide, please. This slide shows um a breakdown of how that penalty was calculated. This is from our audit report. Next slide, please. We um as part of finalizing our financial audit prepared a corrective action plan for this finding. We acknowledged that in the 23 24 year, we did not consistently implement our process for reviewing schedules, which is why this happened. And so moving forward, we're going to ensure that we review the schedules thoroughly. For the current 2425 year, every schedule was reviewed and is currently in compliance. Next slide, please. So in order to avoid paying the penalty, um we need to um file a waiver with the CDE. And as part of the waiver, we need to demonstrate that we're making up to the shortage for two consecutive years. Business services worked with Aloney Elementary
149to adjust the minutes for the current school year to um facilitate us being able to submit the waiver. And our plan is to do the same thing in 2526 to ensure that the minutes are made up in 2425 as well as 2526. Next slide please. So this table shows um an overview of how the minutes how the correction of minutes was um made. And um looking at the first column we see the annual requirement for both um grades one to three and four to four to five. The second column shows the total minutes in the 2425 schedule before any adjustments were made. The third column over shows the minutes after we made adjustments with the school. And um the next column over shows that we added six minutes to grades four to five. And um
150no no adjustments were needed to grades 1 to three because they already were over the requirement for this year. And so um when you compare the um the amount we were short to the amount we're over, you can see that the minutes are being made up. Next slide, please. Um, I just wanted to include a slide here to show you that the county oversees us in this regard. They are required by EDCO to ensure that we're correcting our findings. And we provided documentation to the county to show that we are taking steps to fix this. The CDE also reached out with a similar letter which is what prompted this work. And so a draft waiver is attached to the item for um for tonight. And um in order to move forward with that waiver, the
151board would need to vote to approve the waiver. Next slide, please. That concludes my presentation. Thank you. Thank you so much. Is there any public comment on this item? We have no public comment. Great. Thank you. Does anybody on the board have questions? I I have one question which is how what kind of process can be put in place or has been put in place to ensure that we're solid from the beginning of the year in every school. So our current process is that um business services reviews every schedule that's changed as well as schedules that are not changed. Um that review needs to happen by the end of June so that power school can input the schedules into um our student information system. and uh we work closely with principles to make corrections and
152ensure that the schedules are meeting the minimum state requirements. Okay. So it there's a permanent fix, right? Um the permanent fix is that we um as a department are working with with our principles to ensure that the schedules are compliant and we also provide training annually to assist with that. Okay. Thank you. Something to add. No. Okay. I'll go ahead and and accept a motion. President, I'll move the approval of the waiver. Thank you. Is there Is there a second? I second. The second by Hernandez. Any comments? Jesse Smith FS. Go ahead. Can we have two minutes on the clock? I think this is kind of a mix of a question comment. Um, as a teacher, I remember having to have a one-pager checklist of every, for example, when I was closing down my classroom,
153there was a checklist. Return your keys. Make sure you take anything out of the refrigerator. Make sure you know um because teachers have so much to do. That one pager always helped. I think with principles, principles have so much on their plate, so much to do. So, these one pager check-ins, okay, you know, it's getting close to June. make sure you turn in your schedule to business services or make sure that you're doing x y and z. It will lend itself to closing these uh gaps that happen unintentionally around all of our schools because again we are a huge district and there's so much on everybody's plates. I think one pagers or um things that we give our EDS to make sure that they're checking in with the principles about always will give us more
154degree of compliance than not. So I am complete. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any other comments? Okay, we'll go to a vote. Student trustee Espinosa Jr., did you have a comment? Sorry, hold I didn't want to turn. So, um I think my only comment is that, you know, this must be a priority, especially when we're talking about educational minutes and not just at the elementary school level, but at the secondary level. I think we need to take this serious. There needs to be more oversight and more followup and more communication with our site leadership so that we have an understanding of our expectations and that we are giving our students the education especially educational minutes that they um deserve. So that that was my only comment. Thank you. And with that we'll go to
155the vote. Student trustee Espinosa Jr. Yes. Trusty Bars. Yes. Trusty Hernandez. Yes. Clerkyana. Trusty Smith. Trusty Gonzalez. Yes. Trusty Smiths. Smiths. Yes. And I am a Yes. With that, I will close the public hearing at 9:46 p.m. Thank you. Item five, E5, approve resolution number 2425-68 declaring one, an emergency and two, the futility of public bidding for the provision of assessments, generators, and fueling and security services due to power outage at Elsto High School and delegating authority to enter into contracts with Pashke Electric and American Global Security for the President regular point of order. Do we want to extend the meeting? I mean want is like a big word. Do we need to extend the meeting? Do we want to? No. Do we need to? And what time would you like to extend to? I
156I think that we have we should do the all the items tonight because we pushed the two discussion items a couple times. So, um uh Dr. Johnson, would 11:30 get us done? Just just I'm not saying we'll get to 11:30, but I'm just saying like at least like that will get us through to through all the presentations. I am confident we will be done before 11:30. I'd like that confidence then I I move that we extend. Is there a second? All right. I'll second it. All right. Gonzalez is a motion. Reclar second. Student trustee Espinosa Jr. Yes. Trusty Von. Yes. Trusty Hernandez. Now I got to text my husband, but yes. Yes. Trusty Gonzalez. Yes. Trusty Smiths. Smiths. Yes. Reckler is a reluctant. Yes. We better be out of here at 10:30. Okay. So, I've
157just read off number E5. And this is Miss Payne, but she is away. Who's making the presentation? Ellen. Okay. Yes, Miss Payne is not in the building, but we should have Ellen on Zoom. Correct. Good evening, board. Uh, my name is Ellen Mahia Hooper. I'm the director of facilities planning and construction for the school district. And tonight we're bringing forward this resolution for the emergency repairs at Elserto High School. On the evening of March 18th at Elserto High School, there was a failure in the main switchgeear busing at the connection point with the main bus duct. Uh this failure resulted in the shutting down of all power to the campus. And tonight, staff brings forward this resolution um to be able to uh utilize um emergency contracts to hire Pashki Electrical as well as American
158Global Security uh to complete the work to be able to get uh the school back up and running um to continue school. We are still in an emergency uh situation at the campus and the power is being run on two generators. Um, we will be bringing forward in the near future the contracts to be able to complete the final resolution of this failure. Thank you. Is there any public comments on the item? We have no public comment. Any board questions? Go ahead. Thank you. My question is for Mr. Hart. Um, Mr. Mr. Hart, uh, I was wondering if you could talk about the funding. Where is the funding coming from? Thank you. Uh, sorry, I was just having trouble hearing you. Uh, those funds have not been earmarked. We do not have a contingency reserve.
159Uh, but we will, um, we we know we have to manage for that. There's also the possibility that we will be successful in I think the easiest way to summarize it is submitting the claim. Uh and I think at this point we're trying to uh thread that needle so that we are both documenting the costs uh in uh staff time as well as that which we are contracting for in the equipment necessary. uh that will become part of the catalog that we will use. Uh we are maintaining meticulous records uh from the date of the original loss of power uh on a daily basis. Um will be determined whether or not we'll be successful. In the event that we aren't, then we will just uh need to find those funds elsewhere within the general fund
160in all likelihood unrestricted dollars. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, President. Any other questions on the item? Trusty Smith BS. Miss Hooper, what's the timeline for completion? We are currently evaluating a couple different options to be able to complete um the final repairs and we'll be able to get back to the board about that shortly. Thank you. And my second question is when you bring that to the board. Well, you know what, Miss Hooper, I'll put that in a comment. Never mind. Thank you so very much. I'm complete. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay, I'll accept a motion on the item. I'll move Sorry, a question about the motion. Do I have to read the whole resolution or am I just gonna just read the Why don't you just say that you approve the resolution? I move
161that we approve this very long. I move that we approve the resolution number 2425-68. Thank you. Is there a second on the item? I second. Okay. Clerk Hernandez is the second. Is there any comments? Jesse Smiths, go ahead. Can we have two minutes on the clock? I think my only comment is when we bring this back with the timeline attached that we um have a clear understanding and a plan for the impact. So if this goes through graduation, what does that look like? If it goes to the beginning of the new year, what does that look like? What is the cost that's associated with the timeline because we have to keep using the generator? what are um what's the degree and the level that this is going to not only impact that school but then
162turn around and impact the entire district because of the budget. I am complete. Thank you. Okay. And with that we'll go to the vote. Student trustee Espinosa Jr. Yes. Trusty Baron. Yes. Trusty Hernandezana. Yes. Trusty Gonzalez. Yes. Trusty Smith. Smith. Yes. And I'm a yes. Motion passes unanimously. Okay, we are done with all of our action items. Moving to F1, student data and I ready update. Miss Aosta Reprocus, I believe this is your item. Yes. Thank you so much. Um, we'll wait till we pull up the presentation. Amazing. So, our educational services team is excited to be back tonight to share our most up-to-date learning data and next steps to support student achievement. Next slide. I want to start by taking a moment to reconnect with our guiding teaching and learning theory of action. When
163we equipped instructional leaders with the tools and skills to effectively analyze and observe tier one instruction through a shared lens, we create the conditions to provide teachers with timely, meaningful feedback. And this drives more responsive instruction, enhances effectiveness of teachers, and accelerate student learning. Next slide. To align and strengthen tier one instruction, we use the instructional practice guide. We refer to this as the IPG. And this is that common tool that I just referred to in our theory of action. The IPG helps us establish a shared language and expectations for rigorous instruction. And it really focuses our conversation around effective teaching as well as what student engagement actually means. Next slide. This is a slide you've also seen before. As a district, we ground our data practices in the equity centered framework from Shane Sapphir
164and Dr. Jamila Dugan's popularized in the book street data. The model helps us to understand and act on three levels of data. level one which is satellite data and that's those big largecale indicators like our CASP scores and it's really useful in identifying district-wide trends but it's really lagging data. Level two data is map data and it offers us more timely insights like I Ready which we're going to be analyzing and diving into today and this helps us to better identify patterns and target areas for instruction. And then there's level three data. It's street data. It's the most immediate and actionable data. It captures realtime insights from classroom observations. This is student works. This is student conversations. And all three levels are essential. And like I mentioned, today we're going to really focus on level
165two, specifically our I Ready ELA and math scores to guide our next steps in teaching and learning. Next slide. So across WCCUSD, we use multiple assessments to track student progress. And with I Ready being that key district-wide tool, it's an adaptive, nationallyormed assessment administered to kindergarten through 11th grade students. We do it three times a year, fall, winter, and spring. And it really helps us to monitor growth, to identify learning gaps, and to adjust instruction accordingly throughout the year. This tool directly supports our LCAP goal three and we aim to increase the percentage of students meeting and exceeding standards and ELA and math by 9%. Next slide. So you can see that in the fall only 15.4% of students K through 8th grade were meeting or exceeding standard in math. And by winter that number
166increased to 25.1%. That's a 9.7 percentage gain across the district. And while our students are not year where not yet where we want them to be, this data indicates that we're on the right track and slightly ahead of the 9% year-end target that we were shooting for. On the far right, you can see that every single student group showed growth, though it's at varying levels. And this growth is encouraging. However, we know that we need to focus our efforts to accelerate progress with our African-American and Latinx students. Next slide. In fall, only 3.2% of students across 9th to 11th grade were meeting and exceeding standards in math. And as of winter, that number has grown significantly to 18.8%. And that's a 15.6 percentage point increase. The growth in foster youth is particularly noteworthy, though we
167must continue to push and accelerate progress again for our African-American students, our Latinx students, our English learners, and our students with disabilities, as well as our socioeconomically disadvantaged students. Next slide. So, now let's shift over to reading. In the fall, 24.2% of K through 8th grade students were meeting or exceeding grade level standard in reading. And as of winter, that number has increased to 30 point 34.5, a 10.3 percentage point increase. This midyear gain again surpasses that annual growth target, which is a strong signal that our instructional focus and support is having impact across the board. All student groups are making meaningful gains. While this is encouraging, again, we notice that like we saw in math that our African-American students and Latin Latinx students are remaining below the district average, indicating that we need to
168target our support uh and really focus on culturally responsive instruction. And while we know that these groups growing is a positive step, we are not where we want to be. It's still low for ELS and students with disabilities. and it underscores that importance of needed un ongoing scaffolds, intervention, and really providing differentiated tier one instruction. Next slide. For our secondary students in the winter, we saw um actually in the fall, we saw that 18.5% of high school students were meeting and exceeding grade level standards. And in the winter, that increased to 22%, a 3.5 percentage point gain. And while this growth shows some movement in the right direction, it's really behind pace um to our 9% growth. So it really highlights the need to focus our instructional refinement in the second half of the year
169with secondary. And it's a reminder that while we see encouraging movement, particularly significantly with our foster youth, we have a lot of significant work to do still with our second grade or secondary students and instructional support and intervention throughout the days with those models. Next slide. And so now we're going to further disagregate the math data and I would love to turn it over to Dr. Chilcat, our director of curriculum instruction and assessment over STEM programs. Okay. Hello again. Uh thank you, Miss Aosta. Thank you, Dr. Johnson, President Reckler, and board trustees. I look forward to telling you a bit about math achievement in West. Is that echoing as much as it seems like a second? Okay, let's try that. Um, thank you. Uh, next slide, please. Yeah, that one. Perfect. Uh, we always try
170to have a proficiency and a growth goal. And this is a breakdown of the proficiency levels in I Ready. So, the first set of slides are going to be um proficiency with these five levels um as they're broken down in I Ready. So we always start just by uh sharing that um this is what teachers and students have done this year. Oh sorry next slide please. Thank you. This is what teachers and students have done this year so far from 15% students demonstrating mastery to 25% of students demonstrating mastery. So really it's as simple as red shrinking and green go growing. Um this is a very positive slide. We would expect the light green to be in full green indicating mastery by June. We aim to shrink the red more and also move some of
171those yellow into green. So that's how we interpret these. Um and then when we look at the numbers and break down to specific standards uh to to try to move those students. Next slide, please. We're taking a look at the K8 comparison of national scores. Um, and we're showing this chart to demonstrate that although we definitely have work to do, our scores track with the California and national proficiency scores. Thank you. So, this is uh a slide that is explaining the median progress to annual growth. So, as I stated, we have a proficiency um score and a growth score. And we really want to have uh both of those because proficiency indicates a slice in time. You see what that student is achieving or those students are achieving at that particular moment. Growth really tells
172us the change over time, the growth that students are engaging in and tells us how we're doing in moving forward. I want to be clear, the number on this is just um to explain the median uh progress to annual growth. So uh it does not indicate our scores. Our scores will come next. But I wanted to make sure to have this to talk about what we're really talking about when we say median progress to annual growth is the middle student out of our 20,000 uh test takers and that's how we judge our growth. So that's what median indicates. So what does that mean? Um our testing window is February because this is roughly halfway through the school year. And these are the scores that we're doing. Remember we were attempting to do this the last
173board meeting. So, it's a little bit um later now, but this is talking about the fall to winter um growth over time. And therefore, if that's the halfway mark, we should expect students to have achieved about half of their learning. So, any score of 50 or above indicates that we are on track as a district because that would be basically the baseline for growth that we would expect halfway through the school year. So, let's look at the district data. So, good news, everybody is above 50%. Now, I want to be clear. I know that I'm omitting uh kindergarten, which is at 49%, but that's because the assessment is optional for kinder in the fall and only a quarter of students tested. So, just the way that this chart um is displayed, it's not a statistically
174valid um comparison. Um so, let me orient you to the chart. The light blue is our typical growth. So these are this is the typical growth by grade level. Um I'll remind again that anything above 50 um is uh good numbers. So these are healthy numbers. Um so all of our grade levels are on target to achieve their expected growth this school year which is fantastic. The dark blue is our stretch growth. Um these numbers are also uh really positive. So 42% of sixth graders are on track to achieve their stretch growth, which is 120% of their uh typical growth. So that's a a um a really strong indication, especially for the sixth grade, that we're going to have a number of students that are going to achieve um beyond what typical growth would indicate
175for them. Thank you. Here we see that 25% uh well, actually, I should pause before I start doing the numbers. If you look at the left, you'll see the proficiency scores and this is the breakdown by um race in contraost in West Contraosta. And then the growth is the blue bar that's to the right of the multicolored um proficiency ones. So again, you got proficiency on the left on this and then you have the growth on the right. And we really like to look at both of those. So we get the slice and time score broken down by race, but we also get the growth. So here what we see is that 25% of the 13,490 students um for a total of 3,373 students who took the mathematics assessment this winter scored in the ongrade
176level range. Um so that's represented in the bars here in the green shaded portion. Further, we see that all of those students who took the mathematics assessment, the median student has made 57% progress towards their typical annual growth measure. Um, so again, that's a really healthy number. Um, but as uh Mr. Costa Voscus was saying in the opening with the uh ESPback data and some of the other data, these are very healthy numbers, but we also need to attend to some of the discrepancies in that. For instance, you can see that the African-American score or growth score is 50% which means that the median student achieved typical growth which is a healthy number but is lower than the growth for other subgroups. So we need to continue to attend to that. Um, I'll say that
177a large part of that, um, was achieved today by having the math adoptions go through and us being able to align around one core curriculum across all the, uh, the different schools and be able to align our supports around that with our implementation plan. So, we're super excited to be able to engage in that work, building out those supports to address um, because these numbers are good, but they're not good enough. And so we're really looking at targeting our work around improving these numbers even uh more. Next slide please. And the next set of slides are uh broken down. So uh because of the way the state categorizes u race and ethnicity, Hispanic is not included in the race one but is included here um broken out. And you can see that um overall 57%
178growth rate and for um students that are Hispanic or Latino 58% um median growth. So that's great. Uh our uh Hispanic Latino students are outperforming the um the the typical student or the uh the average student in our district. English learner, same 59% growth for English learners as opposed to the 57%. That's a fantastic number. Um, and the special education, same 58% uh, median growth for our special education students um, against the 57% for overall. So, oh, I did I did not say go. I'm sorry. So, yeah, that's Hispanic. So, let's go one more. Sorry, I was flying through these and I forgot to say go forward. Thank you. And then the English learner. Um, and you can see that there. It's really the same speech for each slide so we can go forward to
179the special education. Thank you. And so we really wanted to break those out um and just show that uh that highly positive news. So next slide. Thank you. So this is a new one and it's a really interesting way of looking at growth in West Contraosta. So this chart shows the median growth percentage for students by their initial proficiency score. So this says that our lowest students are growing at a faster rate um than the students that initially started out higher. And so this is fantastic, right? Because the students that are below proficiency, in order to address that, we need them growing faster to towards proficiency. Um obviously want everybody growing and this indicates that we're doing a pretty good job uh with growth in West Contraosta. Um but this is just a really interesting
180um chart that this this is the first time that we've uh we've brought this one out. And with that, thank you so much and I will pass it to Sanja Bell, the director of literacy. Um, thank you Dr. Chilcott. Um, my name is Sanji Bell and I'm director of curriculum and instruction and my portion of our data discussion tonight focuses on the ESGI um, assessment and also I read um, and I also appreciate the format. Our data will look similar in terms of the presentation. Um, next slide or stay right there. Sorry. Um, so our ESGI is our assessment tool for kindergarten students. Um, and in Wisconsin, we projected that there would be a three-year, we projected as a three-year goal, I'm sorry, the TK students um would reach a desired percentage of 95% mastery
181for uppercase letter recognition. And as of our recent diagnostic, which um was not that long ago, but we're a little behind in our presentation, um it appears that our students are making adequate growth towards this goal. Um currently all currently students overall have made a 10% increase um from the fall diagnostic. Um next slide, please. And so this is another perspective. This is our these are winter results. And at this point in the academic year, we anticipate students to correctly answer at least 50% of the assessment questions. And if this trend continues, we are on track for our goal of 95% for student proficiency by the end of the school year. Next slide. So transitioning to our I Ready data which is represented here for our students engrades K8 and K1. Um this data indicates
182that our students are trending upwards from our fall diagnostic one to our winter assessment with students increasing in the mid or above mid or above level or early on grade. Concurrently, the second diagnostic ind indicates that fewer students fall into categories two and three grade levels below, which is exactly what we want to see. We want to see those numbers decrease as the others continue to grow. Next slide. And this is also a bit of a comparison from how our students compare nationally and within the state of California. and students in Wisconsin's percentages are commensurate with those of the national and the state averages. Next slide. Um and so as uh my colleague Dr. Chilcott outlined, this is uh this data represents how we look at our student data. looking at the um the median
183um in terms of how students are progressing. Um the top graph depicts the percentages per grade level of student growth towards proficiency. Um this is representative of typical growth which represents the average growth you expect for a student to acquire and the stretch growth represents how students are progressing as a as a result of their daily instructional practices. such as data analysis and high level scaffolding and intervention. Um, all of our students, as you can tell, are progressing. Our sixth grade students are showing an impressive um percentage of 46%. Um, and they were intended to reach their stretch goal. Um, and so looking at this with as Dr. Chilcott stated we omit kindergarten because we are still allowing them to acquire skills that in terms of what I expects for us. We've surpassed that um
184with students at least at 50% or above. Next slide. So for ELA um our percentage is uh districtwide is 67% of typical growth. Um and here we see that 35% of the 13,288 students um for a total of 4,651 students who took the reading assessment this winter scored on grade level range which is representative of the bars um in the green shaded portion. Further, we see that all of the students, all of those 13,288 students who took the reading assessment in winter, the median West Contraosta student has made 67% progress towards their typical growth, which is actually quite exciting. Um, another way to say this is that about half of the students who were tested have made about 67 or more percent towards their typical growth. Um, next slide. So, this presentation represents our different
185student groups. So, here we have our Hispanic or Latino students with our overall average being 67%. Um, they're trending a little a little lower at a 3% um difference, but they are also on track um and making steady progress. Next slide. This is representative of our English language learners. Um and they represent six their growth represents 62%. Um which means again they are slightly below but they are making adequate progress. Um um and we're impressed with that. Um next slide. And these are are our our special education students. Um and they are at they're they are at 53% but according to I Ready in terms of where they place students to be performing at this juncture um they've exceeded that benchmark of the 50%. Um and so we are hopeful um and we are um
186looking at their progress. Next slide, please. So, in our district, 47% of the students who started this year with baseline placement, aka their fall diagnostic three or more grade levels below, um have already met their typical growth for the current school year. Um this progress suggests that they are on track to continue for continued improvement and are actively working towards their stretch goal. And you can as you can see we have 47% of our students have reached 87% excuse me 86% and these are the students in the three or more grade levels below. Um and that concludes my presentation. Thank you. pass it back to our assistant superintendent. Thank you so much, Director Bell. We could go back one slide. We believe it's essential to center success and to elevate best practices as a means
187to drive continuous improvement. And with that in mind, we would like to take a moment to really highlight the bright spots within our schools. Next slide. Scatter plots are particularly useful tools for visualizing the relationships between two variables. And in this context, each point represents a school with a median growth displayed on the Oh, sorry about that. Oh, were you trying? Thank you. with a median growth displayed on the vertical axis and performance percent tentile on the horizontal axis. And this really allows us to observe both how students are improving over time and how their performance is comparing nationally. Encouragingly, the majority of our schools are showing that students have achieved like we said at least 50% of typical annual growth by midyear and this is a positive benchmark. But more notably, schools in the
188lower performance percentile, those that face the steepest challenges, are often demonstrating the highest level of growth. This indicates that even where the performance is starting low, meaningful progress is underway and these schools are effectively accelerating student learning over time. Next slide. So this table here represents the same information shown in the previous slide in the scatter plot, but it's more detailed and in a tabular format. We've highlighted schools that demonstrated the highest level of student growth. For those are who are interested in a comprehensive view, the full data set used to generate the scatter plot including the growth and performance for every single school in the district is available via the link in this slide and the documents provide disagregated data that allows us to examine how different student groups are progressing across the different
189schools in the district. Next slide. So similarly to what we saw in reading, we can see that the majority of our schools are on the top half of the graph for typical growth. Though those growth scores on the whole are a bit lower than their scores that we saw for reading. And again, this type of view can be really helpful for us to visualize how we're doing as a system and to identify where the outliers that may need more attention either because they need more support or because we might be able to learn from their success. Next slide. And again, this is that table version with more information represented. And you can see that we've highlighted the schools with the top growth performance. And if you want to see the full list for math, you
190can also access that in the link below on the slide. Next slide. So, we were really excited that the principles of each of the top five performance schools for both math and reading for winter assessment were invited to participate as panelists during the March principal professional learning community um where they had the opportunity to really share about what's working at their school sites. These leaders really prepared and answered a series of questions and really spoke to their colleagues about what led to their success. And some highlights that they shared out is that the biggest leadership moves that they made was really creating an intentional focus on the assessment and creating strategies to both engage and motivate students and staff within their school communities to emphasize the value of the assessment and the data to inform
191instruction. And so they shared tips like making morning announcements and really including those metrics both on the weekly memos for staff on the weekly memos for families and for students. And this really helped create that buyin that's really necessary to make sure that students are trying their best. They also shared that they intentionally made I ready part of their formal collaboration time with teachers. So both in creating intentional small groupoup plans, analysis and really focus on that instructional piece of the assessment data to drive instruction. And then our school leaders also shared that they have all been implementing for the most part the instructional practice guide that we talked a little bit about earlier, the IPG, and that they've created learning walk structures within their schools as a common learning tool to drive rigor and
192tier one instruction. So, we were really excited um to not only create that collaboration that we know is really necessary between our leaders, but to affirm that our highest growth schools are doing the very thing that we're focusing as our theory of action for teaching and learning. Next slide. So as we drive into the second half of the year, our focus is really shifting from analyzing data to taking intentional coordinated action across the system. We're hoping to do this through the implementation of communities of practice across our schools with our principles who come together to collaborate problem solving for areas of focus based on their IPG data to create spaces to share strategies to address common challenges and to just learn from one another. In addition, our PD is going to be grounded in continuous
193improvement cycles, giving teachers and leaders opportunities to reflect and refine their instructional practices. And in fact, um, we're holding a virtual PD for elementary and secondary educators to norm on the use of the instructional practice guide and rigorous instructional practices for math next week virtually. We've already held those for literacy in the past. And aligned to this strategy, we also led targeted learning walks for all of our principles, most recently hosted at Bay View Elementary, Montalavan Manor K8, and Koramatsu. And it all focused on rigorous standards aligned instruction using the IPG. And these walks together really help us to calibrate expectation and offer coaching to our school leaders on what highquality instruction looks like and what feedback might look like if we practice it together. At the principal meeting in March, our leaders participated in
194a data summit led by Dr. Chilcat and Sanji Bell and school teams are going to continue to engage in structured data analysis using the I Ready data so that teachers and school sites can really translate those insights to concrete instructional actions to support student learning in the classroom. And of course, our central office is continuing to build, implement, and monitor, especially right now those school plans for student achievement to make sure that the plans that they're creating are really aligned to this real time data that we have so that we're creating targeted actions, goals, and resource allocation in the areas that we need to improve. We are expanding edge climber to help schools to disagregate data and plan for focal student groups to make sure that we have a real equity focused decisionmaking and accountability
195system. And finally, we're really pivoting to focusing on intensive coaching for our highest need schools. It's about pairing urgency and support and ensuring that our most underserved students have access to excellent instruction every day. We took a really big step towards that with our adoption today with our adoptions. Um and the steps really reflect our commitment to building capacity across the system so that data leads to focused action and that every student has the opportunity to thrive. Next slide. So in closing, our sense of urgency really has to be grounded in equity. We have a responsibility to ensure that all of our students, especially our African-American, Latinx, English learners, and students with disabilities are really receiving the highest quality tier one instruction that they're getting meaningful interventions and culturally um culturally responsive practices that are
196really honoring their strengths and meeting their needs. And the path forward for us is about going deeper. And so in this na next phase, we're really going to focus on our street data because we believe that's going to tell the real story. This is going to include deep dives into student work, empathy interviews, and continued classroom observations with a focused lens because we know that when we find the insight, we're going to take the right action. We're going to do it in the right place and we're going to do it at the right time. So, I just want to thank you so much for your commitment to the district's instructional work and we welcome any questions that you might have. Great. Thank you very much. Is there any public comment on this item? Yes, we
197do. Our first public comment is Jeffrey Bean. Please unmute yourself. Good evening. I'm Jeffrey Bean. I teach uh fifth grade at Shannon Elementary in Penol. And I know that some of you have already heard my thoughts on this topic. How how much time do I have? I can't see a timer. One one minute. Oh man. Okay. So, um the the thing that leads to student achievement is good teaching, not good testing. And I feel that for the last several years since my school piloted I Ready uh two school years ago um there's been a lot way too much testing got a lot worse since co um let me tell you about how it is for a fifth grade student at this time of year. We do the physical fitness test. We do the CASPback ELA
198test which there of which there are two. The ESPback math tests of which there are two. the California science test. On top of that, we have the many surveys, cell phone survey, uh survey about healthy kids, uh Kelvin, all those things. And the district sees fit to add on top of it. It takes up hours of time and leads to less instruction. So, please consider advocating for a change. Thank you. Our next public comment is Kimberly Daer, Sergeanti. Please unmute yourself. Yes. Hi. Hello. Yes, we can hear. Yes. Thank you. Um, I also wanted to speak to the I Ready. I feel it's not an effective test, especially in kindergarten. It takes us several weeks to administer. Um, I don't know that the results are that great because if a student rushes and we retake,
199I feel like they go either two levels down or two levels up, which makes me question it. I do like the ESGI and I feel like that is a um a helpful test, but I would like us to go forward to look at some different ones because as Mr. Bean said, it does take us two weeks to give this particular test. And I know that the people who make the test when they did RPD said that it's specific to their curriculum and I know some schools are buying that curriculum which then seems like they would have a different advantage on the test. So um I would just like the board going forward to look at other options. Thank you. That concludes public comment. Thank you. Thank you to everybody who made public comment. Does anybody
200have any questions? We'll start down there. Trusty Gonzalez, would you like to start? Thank you, President. Thank you so much for the presentation. Um, I had a question about the I Ready toolbox. Um, I remember that when we first started Ready, we were providing the toolbox and then it went away. Are we still providing it? Did we go back to providing it or is that a side decision to purchase the the toolbox? And if I'm using the wrong lingo, please correct me if I have no idea what if it's called even a toolbox. I think you're referring to the learning pathway. Yes, thank you. Um yes, you are correct. There was a a period of time where we were providing the learning pathway um for ELA um that was provided through a grant. And so
201we are not providing the learning pathway for students in math nor literacy unless school sites are providing it for math using their site funds. Got it. So sites are leveraging their site funds if they choose to. Yes. Okay. Um sorry a quick addition to that as well just because the term toolbox does refer also to the suite of tools that is included with Ire. So, we're no longer funding my path centrally, but that there is a toolbox where they use the the assessment and it gives lessons and uh um advice to teachers from that. So, they do have that. Got it. Thank you for that. Because I I hear a lot of negative feedback about the time and effort the actual assessment takes, but really good feedback from a lot of teachers about what comes
202from the assessment, right? the the the tools and the platforms that come from the small grouping all those uh post-testing things, right? So, how do we balance the what we just heard coming from teachers which is very real, right? The over testing but also needing to test in order to have that data which is critical in order to inform the instruction in the classroom. Absolutely. And I agree. Right. There's a balance that we need to strike and we only know the effectiveness of good teaching when we actually know what students learned, right? And we do that through assessment. And there's different levels of assessment that we've talked about. And this is really key for that very thing that you just brought up is the instructional uh groupings tool that we've really invested most of our
203energy and time focusing with our educators this year. Because once you give an assessment, you're a first grade teacher. It will give you a suggestion of the groupings linked by different skill sets that are aligned and it will suggest lessons that would be appropriate for the missing skills for those small student groups. It also has additional resources that teachers can send home for stu for families to be able to support at home. And so it really um that work is extensive for educators to be able to do and it does that magically for them. And so while it is um a big commitment and time, we feel like the rewards in terms of being able to support our educators to do that differentiated instruction that we know is necessary is worth it. Thank you. And
204I really appreciated the piece about the the bright spots and how you went deeper into what leaders are saying is leading to the bright spots. Um, so what I heard you say is that sites that are digging deep in the data from I already what you just discussed as teams they are seeing results. Is that what is that what I'm hearing? Like I just like concised it. Is that is that correct? That's our top five schools on on content sides are using very similar strategies and it's working for them. and they are um growing at a very rapid rate. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you, President. Yes, trustee Smith Folz, please go right ahead for questions. So, I have a couple of questions. Um are we using I ready as it was designed? Are
205we doing it to full capacity, full out? I think that Trusty Gonzalez spoke to that, but I just want to kind of re ask that question. Yeah, and I can start it off and then maybe pass it to Dr. Chilcott or Director Bell. Um, there are different components that are available of I Ready. Um, obviously there's the assessment suite and then there's additional tools. So, we're not leveraging every single tool. Um definitely that instruction the length of the amount of the assessment has a lot to do with determining the level for the instructional pathway and the way that the model is done with the assessment is you have to fail so much so that they know where's that it where's that frustrational level for a student and so that's why it does take a long
206time. Um but like I said we were not able to identify the funding to be able to pay for the pathway for both ELA and math. anything you want to add to that? Um, yeah, I will say that uh we contract with I Ready to have an embedded uh professional development um uh coordinator Leah Smith and year over year, month over month, she's out in the schools um working with them to increase the usage, to increase the efficacy of our implementation and how it's rolling out. So what I would say in a direct answer is no, we're not using everything, but you can see it upticking. Um, and the data is pretty conclusive that we have been using more and more in more and more schools and classrooms um, as we build out and we're
207thinking that next year especially because that's the third year of full implementation that we're going to like really be able to leverage that um, and get uh, closer than ever. Thank you for that. My second question is, and it's a little bit of a kind of weird question, but no, it's not. It's a great question. Do you believe that we need to have a discussion as a board about how much testing we're actually doing in our schools and at our sites? because we hear it a lot from elementary all the way to high school that test fatigue, test exhaustion, the length that it takes for parents or I'm sorry, the length of um testing that it takes for students. We hear it around Ramadan that that's right around our testing thing and that has an
208impact on our students. Do you think that as a board we should have a discussion around testing and what we can do to take some things off and keep some of those important assessment data points on? Thank you for that question. I you know obviously having been an educator absolutely understand the challenges that were brought up in public comment regarding the the time and the investment. Um I think we would welcome the conversation. And I do want to share that this is the conversations that we're having all the time about how to strike the right balance. And it's really about what is the purpose of the assessment? What information is it giving us? Is it necessary? And so, especially as we come back in May for the reading difficulty screener, we've had some really good
209discussions about how do we take some stuff away that's more purposeful for our kinder, first, and second grade learners that's going to give us better information. And so it's not about adding more assessments. It's about making sure that we have the right tool to give us the information that we need for learning for those students. So you can expect that when we come with that reading difficulty screener that we will be making a recommendation to scale back on I Ready for those grade levels to make sure that we're really keeping in mind the fact that we have to be able to have time to teach. Right? If we're assessing the whole time, we're we're really losing that very valuable instructional time. So, absolutely. Thank you so much. I'm complete. Are there any questions down here
210at the synth? I just have one question. Uh what are the target strategies that are in place currently to support students with disability um who are continuing to show a the lowest growth in math and uh ELA? Thank you. That's a really important question and actually um we were in differentiated assistance for both foster youth and students with disabilities and when we began our work at the beginning of the year. Those are the two um student groups that we actually focused our energy around and we were excited to see that we saw some growth with definitely our foster students. that um we need a more coordinated effort and collaboration with our special education department um because it's not just the work of our general education teachers, it's also the work of our special education um
211instructors that really support that work. One of the things that we've been talking about, you know, both with supporting math and literacy instruction, especially as we go into the reading difficulty screener, is how are we really building a framework of multi-tiered systems of support to really make sure that students are are receiving all students, both special education students and general ed students, really great solid first-time instruction, tier one, that there are opportunities to get intervention within the classroom for our students with um disabilities as well as outside of the classroom if they need additional support. And then how are we collaborating with our SUPA director and with our directors of elementary to make sure that there's an alignment between the instructional practices and tools that we're using in the classroom because as a department we
212firmly believe that it's high dosage intensive instruction not different instruction that really supports all students especially our students with disabilities. So um I wouldn't say that it's yet happening to the place that we wanted to but certainly in our ed services meetings we have a joint opportunity with them and have plans to collaborate in the future better. Thank you. I have another follow-up question. Um so are so correct me if I'm hearing this incorrect. It's late at night. Um, so the special education teachers are not collaborating with the general ed teachers, right, in order to be able to read the I Ready data and support the student both in the classroom and outside the classroom. I wouldn't say that that's necessarily the case. I would say that we don't have a consistent systematized way for
213an expectation for how every school does it. And so at this time, what we've noticed is schools are doing it a little bit differently. And so our team has been talking about how we believe all of our educators, both leaders and teachers, they want to rise and meet expectations. And so it's our job as a central office to be really clear about what we expect. We expect collaboration to be happening across the board. And in fact, we firmly believe that it should be happening across the district, right? So, it should be school leaders from a school that might be struggling going to visit the school. I don't know if you noticed, but Verde was on the list as I believe twice. And so, it's really some promising and exciting practices. And so, how are we
214learning both from each other in this space and collaborating as well as across the district. And so, there are some pockets where it's happening really well and there are some places where it's not happening the way we want to. And we believe that that starts with us. And so with us really setting clear expectations about what needs to happen. And so that is the work that we are doing is is um really focusing on making sure we're aligned on what that vision of excellence and success looks like. So it's really clear for both our site leaders and educators what we expect to see. Thank you. So going back to using this program to its full potential, does having all the add-on support for better outcomes? Um so yes um in cases for sure there are
215some sites that does showed growth using the uh the my path uh with i which is basically they take the assessment then it routes them directly to the online platform. um in all honesty it's prohibitively expensive and that's why we couldn't continue to support that and basically what had happened is I already gave a pilot for free to certain sites um but we simply couldn't um continue to support that and also um aligned with that uh it was students spending a lot of time on um tablets so yes there was definitely some indication of success there but we've also had indications of success with Zern a different online platform form for math. Um we are allowing um sites to purchase the my path for um for reading. Um so that still is uh used um
216site by sight depending on how they want to leverage their funds. Um so in short the toolbox we've seen some success there. Some my path it's varied across um the district. I wouldn't say that it was wholly successful but there definitely were pockets of success. And I think my follow-up question to that is how do we leverage the burden of cost on some of our most needy schools? Because I know that was an option to use sitebased funding to purchase some of these add-ons. So have we thought about how do we leverage that especially at the schools that mostly need it? I'm not sure. Look, I stepped up to the mic to reference another question. So now I'm in the hot seat for the question that you currently asked. Um I I really couldn't say
217um in term I couldn't speak in terms of the budget or how we leverage what I did want to uplift was that one of the things that was blaringly obvious in the schools that may or may not be using the additional tools was their commitment to consistency um and buyin in terms of this was a goal that they had decided if it were within their ILT or principal having convers conversations is that it looks like fidelity um information to families and parents and the significance and the in the importance of the assessment seemed to be the reoccurring theme with all of the principles um that got up and presented that particular day. Um I also wanted to reference that the I Ready tool does have additional tools that are available for schools that have maybe
218more money, but we're also seeing that um with Leah that um Dr. Chilcott mentioned our consultant that works with schools is that in this year we're really seeing schools dive into the tools that are available to them and in those spaces where people are using it daily. They're looking at their standardsbased instruction. They're using the instructional practices that are aligned with that to support the instruction in front of students with consistency is where we're starting I see we're starting to pick up some momentum. And then earlier referencing the call about testing because we do we have heard recently and it seems like it's primarily from the kinder first grade teachers that they are really um maybe having a struggle um with babies having the stamina and I think like over time it's improved because when
219we first came back from the pandemic we sort of saw that systemically across all grade levels. Um, but we're also looking at how we are actually administering the test. Um, how do teachers feel about that? Do they know how to create momentum with their students, some excitement? There's professional development that we'll be providing to teachers around how to build that stamina so that kindergarteners and first graders don't feel like, oh my god, we're testing again, but they have more excitement around it. And it's really incumbent upon the instructional leaders to provide an environment where we know that assessments are important to um how we look at student achievement. As our um assistant superintendent outlined that in terms of being able to know what students are doing, we have to be able to assess to see
220what they actually know. Um, look, that was what I was trying to answer previously and I will defer to my illustrious colleagues with your question around how to leverage both budgets better. And I will just add that we're operating with the belief that it's essential that instruction and lessons are aligned to practice. And so if I'm teaching a lesson on this topic, the student practice needs to be aligned to that. And that's what leads to success. And when we purchase programs that are um you know here's the assessment sit down and and do practice um that component of the day should be for what some people call wind time what I need time which should be about 30 minutes of the day. And so we think about thoughtfully the instructional day of a student. It
221should be around really targeted, strong tier one instruction that's aligned to practice. And so we don't want students spending an enormous amount of time just freely um on the computer. And while you know we have seen pockets of success with it, that's the philosophy that we're operating under. So we're absolutely open to school sites um utilizing their funds to be able to have it for wind time. But like Dr. Chilcott mentioned for the amount of cost that the program um you know was was asking us to pay. It wasn't worth the 30 minutes quite frankly and we felt like the tools outlined um were much better um provided by our instructional leaders in the classroom who really know their students well. Well, that was it. Thank you very much. Thank you. you. I have a
222couple of questions. So, a couple of years ago I asked um I Ready is supposed to align with ESBAC and the feeling was yes, it was going to be predictive and aligned to ESPback scores. Has that proved to be the case that what we see in I Ready we see in ESPback? Uh yes. Um I couldn't do a correlation to tell you that the the 96% correlation that I tells us. I couldn't be that fine with it, but there is a definite correlation. Um, and it is predictive of ESPback scores. Okay. And then the next question, I did not set you up for this. Okay. I just want you to know that these are separate questions, but I did at one point speak with uh Jeffrey Bean about testing. And can you or have you
223eliminated the late I Ready assessment? Because if it is if ESPback is predictive of I Ready, can you did you knock something out or could you um to lessen the testing burden? So I if I'm understanding I believe you're talking about the spring assessment whether we could take that out and the answer is not really because we want to be able to track the growth throughout the year. So I do understand the idea of having the ESPback be sort of the third and being able to do that comparative analysis but that wouldn't um be within the system. So we couldn't track like from um from spring to fall to see what happens there. we couldn't tell from fall to spring. We would lose the growth measure that we just presented today, which is highly valuable.
224Um, so I guess short answer is no. We really couldn't as a system lose the spring administration. As much as I agree with Mr. Bean that there there is a lot of testing. There's a lot of assessment going on and instruction is our core mission and we need to be focused on that at all times, but assessment needs to be in support of that instruction. And so, but isn't there growth data in ESPback? I don't know if you get it I you must get it at the student level, but I think that I haven't looked in a little while, but I'm pretty sure that you can see like third graders move to fourth graders and there is a growth. There is there is and there is somewhat of a version of like what the typical
225growth should be but it's just not as strong as the representation of growth typical growth stretch growth and how we can build that within the system that we find in Ire um ESPback just isn't that fasile I mean to be um yeah to be open like it's just not okay that's that's it um that's all I have are there any comments or anything else on this item two. Can we put two minutes on the clock, please? Okay, we'll start to my left and work work across. So, go ahead. Um, I think that one of the things that I want us to dive into when we're talking about testing is the social aspect for students and teachers. There's a high level of test anxiety that we don't really even talk about and we don't I think
226we could do better giving strategies and examples when we send out the messages to parents. Hey, testing is going to be next week. We talk about make sure your kid gets lots of rest. Make sure your kid eats well. But we also don't talk about hey here are some strategies to talk to your kid prior to the test about it's okay test anxiety is real. here are some strategies of breathing exa strategies or whatever we look to our district experts to tell us how to provide those bullet points for students. I think that's something that if we implement then we can start helping students not only understand why they're being tested but how to handle what the test is and how to read their results. If when the results come in, this is where you
227are. This is the stretch goal. Whatever it is, this is how you do it. Um, that's one thing. The other thing is I would love to know exactly how many students were supposed to be tested. So, because sometimes the 11th graders don't test and sometimes the 12th graders don't test. So, when you presented the information, like for example, on slide 16, that last column, it would have been helpful to say, you know, 6,000 students were supposed to be tested. We tested 5,893. making up numbers, but something like that to give us an idea of what's the depth and the breadth of the students that we're looking at in the district. Um, I believe that that's all of my comments and I really do I really would like us to revisit how much we are testing
228our students and to what degree that we can do it in a manner that it's really impactful on the next steps of their learning. So, not only how much we're testing, but what's the impact? I am complete. Thank you. I'll be really quick. Uh I just want to appreciate the progress that we're making. Um seeing that we're already meeting our goals. Uh I I think that's fantastic. Um I know there's still a lot of progress that we got to make, but especially highlighting that some of the schools that are making the highest progress are in our Flatland schools. Um I haven't seen that in previous years. So, um I just want to thank you all for the work that's happening and the work that's happening at the sites. Uh specifically you all mentioning uh what
229the schools are saying that's working because I don't always hear that. Uh so I I I would love to hear more about that in the future and I agree. I mean I think that uh at one point the board might benefit from just seeing the number of tests, the number of curriculums that we all have. I mean, my wife comes home from the for the summer with a such a large amount of curriculums that I don't let her bring them in the house. She has to leave them in the in the garage and she can only bring one at a time. Sounds really horrible for me to do that, but honestly, it would take the whole living room. Uh, so it just shows I think just the amount of work that we're giving educators um
230and students that it's so sometimes unachievable, right? but necessary and it has to be a balance, right? But I think it's important also for put in context for us um and maybe one of these one of in a board meeting on a study session or you know and during our retreat we could just look at all of our the curriculum just so we can also see for ourselves uh just the amount of work that uh our educators have to go through and our students. Thank you. And I think that Trusty Hernandez had a comment. Any other comments on this side to my right? Okay. Well, I'll save time. I echo everything that was said here and I thank you all very much for the work. Growth is promising. I think it's great and and thank
231you and full speed ahead. Thanks. Okay, moving now. F2 update regarding district actions to support attendance and enrollment. Good evening everyone and thank you so much for your attention to attendance at the end of the evening when everyone is ready to go home. Um we will have lots of empathy for how our students feel seventh period. Um and Rosa, oh good, the slide deck is coming up. You can go to the next slide. So, our intent this evening is to provide the board with a comprehensive update on attendance and enrollment, including last year's challenges and progress that we've made through targeted intervention. We'd also like to note that since January, the political landscape uh around attendance for our families and students have shifted dramatically. um and in advance. We appreciate the insights that you bring
232from the diverse perspectives and communities that you serve. It is my pleasure uh to introduce our director of positive school climate, Lehante Smith. Good evening. All right, that's working. Good evening, President Reckler. Trustees, Dr. Johnson, cabinet, and community. My name is Leseante Smith and I am the director of positive school climate in our department. We oversee all of student services and I'm so excited to finally come and present to you all our attendance update. As Miss Sigler stated, this update um actually was on previous board agendas. So I want to preface this presentation with some of the data points that you will see today are um previous data points but throughout the presentation I will update you with the most relevant data points up until today. So, we wanted to start our presentation off with
233just giving the board an overview of attendance and how we track and enter and document attendance into our student information system. So anytime a student is absent from school, teachers will log attendance into powers school which is our student information system and their attendance is logged in that system as absent which is the code A. The attendance is then verified and then it's changed to either an excused absence, an unexcused absence, or another reasonable um or applicable reason code. Once students accumulate three or more absences, they receive a first notice of truency. Now what's important to remember is that students who are absent can be unexcused and the unexcused absences are what counts towards truency. However, today we're talking about chronic absenteeism. So that counts for students who are excused and unexcused. The reason why
234this is important is because in order for us to pursue truency as a district, the site or the school must first implement interventions on site before we can do anything at the district level. Before we go to the next slide, I also want to just give a definition of what Well, actually go to the next slide, please. Thank you. There it is. So, I wanted to give some definitions about chronic absenteeism and attendance rate because I think the terms are used interchangeably but for um in interest of time chronic absenteeism is when a student misses 10% of the school year for any reason. So again, that's truency, that is excused absences, and that's unexcused absences. And so chronic absenteeism can change monthtomonth because it's calculated up until the day uh that we we are currently
235at or our day a student is currently at. Attendance rate really looks at the percentage of students who are absent or who are present on any given day over an overall period of time. So really you have to look at both. You have to look at students who are missing a significant amount of school. But then you want to look at your overall attendance rates and those are two different measures. Next slide. So last year I presented toward the middle or the end of the year and what we did was a root cause analysis to really look at chronic absenteeism across our district to identify what are our families experiencing and what are the barriers to school attendance. And what we found from last year was several things. The biggest being there were some huge
236economic disparities that were impacting our attendance. uh and more specifically transportation and supervision for younger children continued to be a challenge and it was one of our major challenges that we identified last year and we identified this data last year through a root cause analysis looking at all of our district data and we also did some deeper analysis at our SARB which is our student attendance review board. We also found last year that a lot of students in the secondary level were having additional responsibilities put on them like taking care of siblings or having to help with uh sibling care. And then we know that there was um a lot of in some of our areas a lot of extended family vacations that could have impacted attendance. Next slide. So our theory of action has
237been and we started this really last year and emphasizing our theory of action and what we came up with and what our team continues to work on is that if we specifically provide outreach and support to students who are chronically absent in addition to tier one universal supports, we will support students abilities to attend school. And then by meeting the individual needs of students and families, we will be able to reduce the rate of chronic absenteeism with the goal of then increasing our overall attendance. Next slide. And so we ended last year on a really good note. We decreased our chronic absenteeism and we increased our attendance rate. Next slide. So for this year, our goals remain the same. We want to continue to lower and reduce the number of students who are chronically absent
238by 5% and we want to increase our overall district attendance rate by 2%. Next slide, please. But we realized in order to do this that we had to shift our strategy this year because as I explained before when we think about chronic absenteeism and lowering that number. If the number becomes lower and lower it then is not large enough to have a significant a significant impact on the overall attendance rate. And so what we have done is we are continuing to think about chronic absenteeism, but we're strengthening our strategy to include a targeted focus on attendance rates and getting all students to school. Next slide. So we started surveying a our families and we started surveying our students and doing some more targeted efforts at our SAR board to really identify what is what are
239the current barriers to school attendance now. And so we're seeing a lot of the same things we saw last year with the biggest being a lack of transportation. We have found in some of our communities that transportation is a real burden for families who have one car or they have multiple school drop offs or they don't live in walking distance to the school. Uh this has been an issue and particularly again for our younger students when parents are leaving for work in the morning. um some of them don't feel comfortable sending their kids on public transportation or they don't have reliable transportation to get their student to school. We also know that chronic illness and frequent illnesses is still a a thing and families are hesitant to send their kids to school uh because of
240the fear of getting sick or or not getting over a cold. And then we've seen an increase of student refusal to attend. And this could be just students not wanting to attend school for perceived um not feeling encouraged or supported at school, but also students experiencing mental health issues such as anxiety and depression that are limiting their um ability to attend school. And the last thing again just emphasizing uh parent work schedules and child care constraints. Uh this data is consistent with what we've seen um in city data around child care is a it's a real issue in our community and sometimes parents um have to really make those difficult decisions around how will their child be cared for while they are at work. Next slide please. And so our current strategies again we really
241want to focus on how do we improve our attendance rate for all students but how do we also continue to focus on our chronic absenteeism rate. So our strategies have really been around increasing awareness and communication to all of our stakeholders around attendance and the importance of attendance. enhancing our school-based supports through the use of counselors, social workers, and mental health specialists to really provide those targeted supports to students. Improving attendance incentives and accountability, making sure that we recognize when students are attending school, when students are improving their attendance, and when they're there in the classroom and really welcome them, welcoming them. And then the last thing has really been around strengthening our partnerships with our families and our community- based organizations. Next slide. So this slides right here shows our progress toward our goal.
242And so again, if our goal is to reduce the number of students who are chronically absent by 5%. our baseline at the end of 2324 we were at 8,22 students who were identified as chronically absent and as you can see we were trending in a really good direction and then right after January and um as Miss Ziggler stated there was a real shift in our political climate we did see the impact and the effects of students not coming to school as regularly as before and so you'll see the data. It's live right there around um what happened from January to February as far as our students who um for chronic absenteeism. I want to say that this issue is not unique to WCCUSD. This is what we're seeing uh statewide. Next slide. This just shows
243the percentages and so that the previous slide was the pure number and this is the percentages. The reason I wanted to show the percent is some people think that oh a reduction of 5% would mean we reduce down to 24 23% right and it doesn't necessarily mean that we are reducing the number of chronically absent students by 5%. But this is where we are with our overall percentage rate right now for chronic absenteeism. I want to pause really quick to tell you all that um as a district we're looking at chronic absenteeism for grades TK through 12. The California dashboard only looks at chronic absenteeism for TK through 8. So if board members were to look at the California dashboard data, the numbers will look a bit different because the dashboard is only including students
244from TK to 8th grade. Just wanted to make that note. Next slide. So, we're really excited that this year through our systems change collaborative, which is a part of our community school strategy, we have partnered with city leaders from all of our cities, local officials, and community organization to address barriers to attendance. And our focus continues to be on strengthening our community- based outreach and really looking at our community to see how they can support us in our chronic absenteeism efforts. And so this is our chronic absenteeism rate by city as of February 2025. And as you'll notice, the cities of Richmond and San Pablo have um statistically higher rates than the other cities. And so, um, I'm happy to report though that Richmond and San Pablo have been active members on that support collaborative
245and we have really been engaging with them to identify different ways that they can support as a city to address this issue which is important to all of us. Next slide. So, this is just another way to look at our goal. So I just created a graph so you all can see that green line is where we wanted to be um in regards to chronic absenteeism. So for September, October, November, December, January, we were right where we needed to be trending. And then in February, we went up and I already kind of explained some of the correlations we saw. Next slide. And here's our attendance rate progress. And so some trends I just want to note that we do still see higher trends around Mondays and Fridays of student absent absences. We had that later
246half of January decline in attendance. But some encouraging trends are we are seeing schoolwide engagement efforts have an impact on student engagement and we are seeing an increase of schools implementing tiered intervention and student recognition programs and initiatives to improve daily attendance. Next slide. So I wanted to update you all. In March we um held a district-wide attendance campaign. it was stronger together, show up, rise up. And so we really had three approaches. The first was targeted support for our schools with the lowest ADA. Uh our team met with those schools and we required all of the schools to really look at their data and think about what they could do for the month of March to encourage attendance for all. We had them complete activities and we uh kind of guided them through how
247to look at the data uh in an actionable way. We launched a district tier one toolkit to support schools in communication to all of their stakeholders around attendance so that they can increase their family engagement efforts and build stronger connection between school and home. And then we monitored and continued to monitor trends from all of our schools and followed up with them about their attendance activities for the month of March. Next slide. So, I guess I'll take this time to tell you some of the results of our attendance challenge. So, previously we didn't have it because this presentation was going to be last month, but now we have results. So, that's really exciting. And so, from our attendance challenge, I'm happy to report out of 38 elementary sites, 34 sites had an increase in their
248ADA in March compared to February. We also had an increase of 11 out of 15 middle schools and then we had all seven high schools increase their ADA percentage in March over February. So I just want to take this time to acknowledge all of our school sites and everyone who participated in our attendance challenge. Um and yesterday when we were at our principal meeting, the principles were really excited to continue this. So although the challenge was in March, we're not stopping. So we're continuing tier one activities and universal supports to really promote attendance uh for the rest of the school year because it's important. Next slide. Next slide, please. It's back on. All right. Excuse me, Lante. I am so sorry. I just want to do a quick time check. We have 15 minutes left
249for presentation, comments, and questions. I'm going to speed through this in two minutes. Thank you, Dr. Johnson. This is an example of our attendance action plans. So we met with all of our schools. We said fill out this action plan and this is how we monitor schools. Next slide. And then I just want to out um highlight that this work is not done alone as a collaborative effort. So as a part of our community school strategy, we our community schools were also doing a lot of work around attendance. This is highlighting Lincoln Elementary who held an attendance town hall. Next slide. We have continued to work, as I said before, with Richmond Moves and different partners from our city. And we're excited because we are looking at uh potentially another partnership to expand transportation services.
250And then through collaboration with the ED fund, we also have an emergency response fund for our SAR board that can get families access to immediate resources that support school attendance. Next slide. SARB is open for anyone who wants to be a part of our SAR board. Uh I'm happy to report that we have increased our SAR board to precoid levels. So every Thursday we have SARB. It is representative of community members, uh community based organization, concerned mentors, citizens, and we all want to work together to really help our students who are most chronically absent. Next slide. And we can go to the next slide. And this is just continuing to outline the work that our community schools have been doing as well. Next slide. Real quick, I want to give you all an update on
251enrollment. That was also something that was asked. So, we have continued to work to promote enrollment, new family registration. We're connecting to our underresourced areas to spread messages around enrollment. And what we've been really looking at is our TK numbers. Um, I wanted to give you current numbers. Our TK enrollment registration as of today is 936. Our total TK enrollment for this school year was 812. That's an increase of 124 students. And we know that this is still midyear technically. and we have families who will enroll all the way up until the first day of school. So, we're really excited about that expansion. Next slide. And I'm here for the summary and just happy to have presented this information to you all and I will take questions at this time. Thank you. Thank you so
252much. So much to discuss. Is there any public comment on this item? Yes. Our first public comment is Sky Nelson. One minute on the clock, please. We've waited a few weeks for this. I'd love two minutes, but I'll take what I can get. Thank you so much for this information information. I think the bottom line is we're we're looking at the wrong metric. We're spending a lot of time dealing with attendance strategies. we need to focus on um enrollment and talk to the state level deal with that. But with what we've got, I want to share about connection. Attendance is better with connection. I've got two students I could speak about in my class. Um a student that started coming to class after two months and he's coming. He's happy every day. We've identified some
253of the reasons why he doesn't come and when I'm connected to him, he stays. And the connection that I have with every student is what makes them come. It's not the learning. They love the learning, but it's the connection from the teacher. So when we let go of teachers or adults in the classroom, we lessen the connection. So we're it's this downward spiral. When we we cut budgets and lessen lessen the teachers or the adults in the classroom that connect with the students, we that's how we keep him in the class. Another student that um leaves when I in the middle of class and when I stay connected to him, he stays. No, thank you for your comment. Okay, we're so short on time. It's so unfortunate. We're going to have you come back. You
254want to just do a one question sweep and see what we can cover? Do you want to start down to my left? Sure. Thank you. I'll just have one question. Um on slide 16, um there we were seeing a lot of promising growth uh until we hit February. Um do you see have you seen correlation to maybe what's happening nationally um as of why attendance has decreased uh because otherwise do you can you tell us maybe what you think led to the decrease of attendance in February? Yeah, I think that's exactly it. I think there was a shift in our political climate and I think that parents were scared for very valid reasons and some parents chose to not send their kids to school. And so what we've been trying to do is actively reach
255out and let our school sites know about independent study contracts and so that parents can know that that is also an option for them. And the good news is that students wouldn't miss out on school time and then it counts towards attendance. But yes, nationally and specifically in the state of California, we are seeing um a higher trend in February compared to January. Thank you. Trusty Smith pull student question. Are we question or just question? Uh we'll we'll try and see if we can get question in for everybody and then I have an idea. We're going to have a community schools presentation and maybe we can kind of put some of this back in. I don't have any questions then. Any qu any questions down here? Um, how are we ensuring the the attendance strategy
256is uh being implemented all across all of our schools? How are we keeping track of that? So, we're keeping track several ways. Uh I briefly shared with you a template that we asked all of our schools to complete. Um in addition to that, schools that did not complete, we went to the sites and followed up to support them. And we also hold a SAR collaborative every month. And so that's for school site teams to come together if they need support with any attendancebased initiative. And then our sites who need extra pushes, we've been actively working with them and just supporting them to make sure there's full implementation. And then on that template, we're actually asking for what activity did you do, when did you do it? Um, and we're asking them to put their data
257points in there. And then we follow up every month in our principal PLC's too to ensure that there's some alignment there. I would just add LSante actually had every principal share out yesterday in the principal meeting strategy they used so that they heard each others and everybody had something to share. Okay, I have a question which is um California Department of Education gives out SARB awards every year for like the best SARB teams. Yes. Do they ever hold webinars or publish anything about their strategies like what makes them great? Um or is it do are there connections throughout the county or they do I sit on a collaborative space with other student services directors around the state and actually uh next well in two weeks on the 29th I'll be able to meet with all
258of the schools who received the model SAR recognition award and they're share out their best practices what they did their data and I'd be happy to share back what we find or what I find from that. Yeah, I'd certainly love that. Any any last comments on this for anyone? Go ahead. I think just the a quick comment is I wanted to give a huge shout out to Hercules High School. Hercules High School had a lunchtime uh a lunch brunch where they brought in their some of their chronically absent students. brought them in. We served lunch and then the students led a conversation about why they're absent and then they brought that data back to the climate team and the climate team which also has students in it then presented that data to the climate team
259and then we worked solutions from there that are specific to Hercules High School and it mimicked the in-depth data that you had presented to us about why students are absent in certain pockets of the district. So, it was uh not only informative, but it allowed the chronically absent students to have their voice heard and to be seen. I'm complete. Any other comments? Well, I want to try and weave this back in when we have community schools so we can learn from that um from those schools about what they're doing and maybe we can pick up on some of this conversation again uh through that lens. Yeah, I would be happy to do that. and there was limited time, but I wanted to recognize all of our school sites and tell you all the different activities
260that they did for the month. So, I think that would be a good opportunity. Thank you. Yeah, that'd be that'd be great. And thank you very much for your diligence and and work on this. Um, yeah, I know it's a you know, lifting boulders, but really very appreciative of the attention that you guys are putting on it. And with that, we will close out this item. And next scheduled meetings of the board of education. There's a closed session scheduled for Wednesday, April 23rd, 2025. And then a regular board meeting is scheduled for April 30th here at Levana Deon. The clo the special session is closed session to begin superintendent uh work and I don't have a location yet. And with that, I will close us out at 11:26. Have a good evening everybody. Good night.