001and we will get going so trustee smith we are recording it's all you get us going all right welcome everyone to the second academic subcommittee thank you so much for being here we want to take a minute and recognize that it is international women's day today and the profession that we are all dedicated to is about over 70 women i looked it up in the last um the last data point i could find was it's about 76 women so we want to make sure that we know that when we are honoring teachers we are honoring women and we are honoring this work so we want to center ourselves around just how great of a profession this is all right mr raleigh if we could have roll call yeah so chair trustee smith folds present uh
002trustee dimitro gonzalez good evening present all right we're all here and accounted for all right so um this meeting will provide public comment opportunities through the zoom app or by telephone to indicate your desire to speak on an agenda item oh thank you so much i went faster than that thank you so much to desire to speak on an agenda and raise your hand by clicking the appropriate icon in the zoom app or by pressing star nine if it says us accessing the meeting by phone in order to be recognized to speak you must be logged in with your first and last name and your hand must be raised before public comment begins for each item we will have public comment after each one of our discussion items and we will also have public comment
003in our opening procedures trustee gonzalez toy if you wouldn't mind doing the land acknowledgement act i would appreciate it thank you chair smith folds uh we recognize that we are presently on the lands of the churcheno mumbachma carkin oloni peoples and acknowledged them as the first inhabitants of the land we currently occupy perfect thank you and we need to go to the approval of today's agenda are there any corrections to the jay's agenda anything you want to take out anything oh thank you chairsmith folds i would like to move to approve the agenda i second that and i see absolutely no dissension so we're gonna say that that's approved great um approval of the minutes let me just say in full disclosure these minutes were great they were done by ms sherry they're fantastic please
004do not expect this every time we have given ms sherry the ability to not do eight pages worth of notes but they are great and we are recording these so anyone in the public can go back and look at it and our notes can be uh can capture what we're saying but not to the letter of every word that we speak but we want to thank her so very much for doing such a great job um trustee gonzalez toy did you have a chance to look over the minutes i did chair smith falls to be honest i usually leave minutes till the last minute and i'm glad i didn't for the first time uh because of wonderful cherries minutes today so i'm glad and no they were great i would like to move the minutes
005for approval i second that seeing no points of dissension i say that those minutes have passed and mr raleo is there any public comment on any items that are not on the agenda so this is the opportunity if attendees want to make a comment to raise their virtual hands and at this moment i don't see any hands raised all right let's give them one more minute we can just sit and look at each other for one minute so i think we can move on to our first discussion item perfect all right and we are at discussion item a multilingual education dual language immersion dli and the dli timeline okay it's it's on you sorry my kid opened my door behind me um so this evening we have our afternoon this afternoon we have uh director
006christie rasigno who will be leading us through this presentation this is an update at the last academic committee we did start we presented around multilingual education in wcc usd so this is an update to that presentation we've also invited one of our bilingual principles alice and everett to support in this presentation so you'll be hearing from both of them and then of course we will take questions from the two trustees and then open up to comment and then discussion so christy it's all yours thank you so much thank you for this opportunity this afternoon to be able to provide further update around multilingual education in our district and looking forward to being able to provide more information and also of course yield any questions that come up we want to start just with a framing
007around what we believe in our district to be a shared understanding around being bilingual being a superpower and it being something that we are trying to support for our students who come to us as multilingual learners who come with english as a second language who are english language learners and also for our students who don't have that experience and who might want to learn another language in order to be able to fulfill their their greatest so our agenda for this brief presentation is we're going to start with some of the goals of dual language instruction and then have some guiding principles and get a little bit into the research base then we'll go ahead and talk about some of the short terms goals for our programs and longer term goals for our programs in addition
008we have some data in relation to our english language learners to share we have a little bit of an update around the classification and then we will turn it over to um to any questions and answers that you or the community have and we also will be adding in some framing around support we have for our current programs within distance learning because distance learning is not easy for anyone and especially makes learning another language even harder and i'm going to turn it over to allison everett principal at chavez elementary school she's going to be joining us this evening to talk a little bit about where multi-language multilingual education in wcc usd is good afternoon thank you so much for having me and giving me an opportunity to share a little bit about dli in our
009district i'm gonna just start with some of the programs that we have so we have one way dla a one-way dli program at west county mandarin and that's a program that's where the instruction is in english for i'm sorry instruction in english and another language for non-speakers of that language sorry sorry the goal of that program is academic is language proficiency academic achievement in both of the languages and a deeper cross-cultural understanding another program that we offer is two-way dli program and that those are offered at downer stuart washington and korematsu and that program has integrated language learning and academic instruction for native speakers of english and native speakers of another language the goal of that program is to attain language proficiency academic achievement in both languages and cross-cultural understanding the third program that we
010offer is the developmental dli program that's offered at chavez my site coronado dover ford grant lake and lincoln and that's a language acquisition program for english language learners that provides instruction to students in both english and their native language in this case spanish for literacy and academic instruction the program begins in either tk or kinder and continues with the goal of bi-literacy through sixth grade students typically participate in developmental bilingual programs for five to six years or longer with the goal of um bilingualism and by literacy and this is former most of these sites were formerly tbe programs where the goal was just english proficiency rather than bilingualism for students in all of these programs they have the opportunity to earn a seal of bi-literacy upon graduation of high school which is a demonstration of
011proficiency in in english and the second language can i add just briefly and i know you went ahead on the slide that's fine that those grade levels listed it's really important to note that many of these programs are increasing at grade level next year um because the development of the alive program were formerly the tbe those used to stop at their grade we've been growing programs with the gold eventually to have k6 at all those sites thank you and the goals of the dual language uh immersion program overall is achievement um for students are performed at or above grade level in both languages um bilingualism and multilingualism oral proficiency in both languages by literacy so the ability to read and write in two or more languages and global citizenship so cross-cultural competence all right thank
012you i get the pleasure of talking with you a little bit about some of the guiding principles of dual language instruction and i'm not going to read these strands to you but these seven strands or principles are what we're working towards with our dli advisory group these are the some of the strands that underlie the work that we're doing and the goals we're working towards as a group and something that we're going to continue to develop over the years it certainly doesn't happen in a short amount of time but these are these are what we're working towards is having effectiveness um in all of our programs for all of these seven strands and i wanted to also include some of the research base behind this so for our dual immersion programs we know that english
013only students show significant gains in overall educational outcomes i'm not going to read the whole research to you however i think that one of the takeaways for me from this is that around supporting students and not only um their their educational goals but also in the cultural piece which sometimes could be lacking when we had our program that ended at a certain grade the idea is that our programs are supporting students throughout what they're doing in school and then also wanting to note that we know that research also shows that students who might initially show a little bit of a lower rate of proficiency in the beginning because they're learning two languages which is a lot um they are able to catch up or surpass achievement levels of el peirs and so this is saying
014that our students who are english language learners who are in our dli programs are well positioned to outperform students who are not in these programs simply because of the way in which their their language is being built upon it's not something that's subtractive it's additive and then as promised i wanted to detail some of the current supports for dli one of the current things that we have in place is specified professional development that is really geared towards supporting our lowest grade elementary teachers who are teaching in a dli setting to be able to try things out and to improve what they're doing within literacy instruction we know that our work with teachers college reading writing project is somewhat relatively new to our district and the idea of the specified professional development that our tk or
015k-2 dli teachers are able to take a part in is it's called a literacy lab and so the teachers have hands-on practice they get to see some exemplary literacy practices with our own students and then they get practice um doing it themselves with another group of students within the space of the professional development these were put in place specifically to try to support our teachers who are working with our students at the youngest levels some of the supplementary resources that we have added for distance learning specifically are we have purchased a set of books from capstone interactive and these capstone books are available for all of our gli sites for our students who are learning in spanish and in english and the books are meant to round out um some of the other options that
016we have of course we have other online collections for our students but those are mostly in english and these capstone collections were specifically put together to to supplement those so that it would be more equal for them this also is easily available to our students and to our teachers because it's within clever which is the portal which are used to going to so it's not a lot of extra steps and then the third support that i wanted to highlight this afternoon is that there is a plc a professional learning community on literacy workshop for our third through sixth grade dli classes and that is led by emily hill who is our elementary literacy coordinator and also has the lived experience for years of teaching um in a dli setting the spanish side of the dli
017instruction for years and so that plc is in order um was put together in order to support the sharing of best practices and space for teachers to be able to work with one another to improve what they're doing within elementary literacy for their dli students and so those were the three current supports that we wanted to highlight for this evening this afternoon excuse me and so now we are going to transition to having a little bit of time to provide information around some of the short term goals and also the longer term goals for gli um here you see um a logo it's always nice to have images a logo for stuart and one of the things that we were wanting to provide one of the short-term goals is around middle school classes for students
018at stuart and i'm going to turn this over to reuben for just a moment thank you so one of the uh challenges we've been facing recently with stewart elementary is we do have a growing program where dli has grown year to year the highest grade level served in dual language right now is sixth grade however there it's a small cohort of students um i i want to say the numbers are at most 12 students now in the bilingual cohort that are left and that structurally has really presented a challenge in sort of forecasting and building out these these programs year to year uh so we are going to make some recommendations to the board to you two as far as and also the greater board around stuart and how we can support stuart as a
019school long term and also short term one of the things we would like to propose is for the current sixth grade students that are dli students who want to remain in receiving doi instruction we want to make them an offer potentially to move to the koramatsu dli programming korumatsu has 7th and 8th grade dli programming currently they service the students who come from washington elementary but we'd like to be able to offer that as an option for this those 10 to 12 stuart families and students that doesn't mean they have to take us up on our offer and they might want to remain at stuart but we are going to be really challenged in providing a seventh grade dli next year at that school just structurally and how it's intended the other thought that we
020want our discussion point we want to share with you both is um just the long term for stuart is this a school we'd like to start moving towards the wall-to-wall dual language immersion um and this slide here really points a picture so the board took action to relocate west county mandarin west county mandarin is going to be moving towards the panel area and it really creates this nice vertical alignment with pineal middle school and panel high school around the mandarin instruction we we also see that similar structure with washington and korematsu um i put tbd on the high school because as of right now and then i mentioned this at the previous academic committee which is el cerrito high which held the dli programming for secondary really it's programming a name and not in reality
021at this point we're not providing those services so we do have to re-examine dual language for spanish at the high school level and decide where the best place will be and what that program will look like long term so what we envisioned with stuart potentially that we would have a dual track almost for the panel area that you have the option in panel to do west county manor in padua middleton ohio with a mandarin track and an ib track right an international baccalaureate and that we could potentially get to a point where stuart offered offers a similar track with spanish dual language and potentially ib so that would be a long term so then you have these two essential feeder schools moving towards pineal high school with both language and international baccalaureate so that's long-term
022planning of course we would expect direction from the board if that's the direction we want to go in and of course community involvement in that process as well and listening to the community if that's what they truly want to see i do want to add one of the shifts we made in that area as well was to uh push to relocate one of the charter schools that existed in that neighborhood voices charter would be moving out of that neighborhood voices charter is a dual language program so we do see this as an opportunity potentially to capture enrollment back into our our schools and communities if we have that similar offering still in that area one other piece to add in relation to goals um when we already spoke a little bit about koromatsu and some
023of the students from stuart potentially for next year going there for the middle school program also looking to um strengthen and broaden the middle school program at koremasu to shift it from what it currently is where students who come from washington they have um two spanish classes two classes that are taught in spanish and one of those is a spanish elective and then the other one is history which is in spanish and actually to broaden it to make it more of a true gli program to have two multi-subject um teachers who have their dual language certification to be able to hold content more content level instruction for those students that's one of the other short-term goals we have and of course collaborated a little bit with mr burnham in order to before we move forward
024the next piece of our presentation is going to be around data and this data here um shows how our els are doing the star growth report as you can see um that in fall and winter of 1920 if we looked at how our els were doing we were looking at 65.7 at a higher typical growth rate over on the right the chart that you see is showing fall to winter 20 20 21 and so you can see here that um we have a smaller percentage that is above and having that higher growth rate we do of course want to put the data into context that any one measure is not going to give us everything and all the measures on the far right are done within distance learning but wanted to be able to provide
025some of that data for you here this afternoon and also wanting to share around with classification and to show the percentage rates so what you see within those two blue bars the lighter blue bar is showing the percentage reclassification rate from and the darker blue one is showing from 2021. there are a lot of reasons behind this data um the are the the rate dropped for several reasons um in short one of them is that in 1920 it was the first year that the lpac criteria went to level four prior to that it was level three so that that that alone led to less students reclassifying also due to covet 19 we did not administer a full round of the elpac last year and that made it so that we had a lot fewer student
026a lot fewer students who were able to be who able to meet that criteria and then even the students that we did have that that qualified from the prior year the paperwork wasn't returned in a timely enough manner for us to be able to reclassify them which is understandable given the circumstances at the time and so this is just showing where the percentages are um far lower than they usually are due to covet 19. christy do you happen to know just historically because i know this in 1920 and 2021 the criteria changed prior to that criteria roughly what our percentage was year to year in reclassification um i i wouldn't want to speak out of turn i can if you give me just a moment i can and i'm not showing my screen i'd be
027happy to pull that up but i would say roughly was in the 12 to 13 range much higher than what this is yeah i i can speak to my previous district we typically were around 12 to 15 for reclassification with the old criteria um so i know that definitely the criteria change impacted this tremendously and we are one additional piece around reclassification um with the board's approval of our use of the elevation platform we're very much looking forward to our reclassification processes being much more smooth and that also can make it so that all of our students who are eligible will be much more likely to be able to receive that designation and so we have provided space for any questions that you have thank you christy thank you so much for that presentation trustee
028gonzalez-hoy questions thank you uh chair smith folds i have seven questions if that's okay um i counted them to make sure i'm looking at the clock today um so my first question is um the the developmental uh bilingual program the li program um to what grade level are we at now obviously tve only went to third grade so what grade level are we at in all the schools we do have some fourth grades oh sorry christy you can do it dude i know we do have fourth grades at a number of schools most of the schools that had tbe that switched have fourth grades there are schools that did not grow from third to fourth based on just sheer numbers and and timing of the year but the many of those schools do have fourth
029grade so next year we would be going to fifth grade [Music] but the goal is for them to get all the way to six correct okay great thank you for that by the way i didn't thank you uh ms rocino and miss everett for the presentation i apologize i just went to the questions thank you for being here and and i know that you both have children late at night so i appreciate you being here um so next question is um you know since we're transitioning from tv to the to developmental dli and we have been for last year or so or two years um what is the training been like for educators uh to make that transition uh because i know that it's tough to teach 10 years in one program and all of
030a sudden switching to another one what's been the support there um a couple of the support options were laid out in this training specific to what they're doing within the literacy curricula and then prior to me being in this role and prior to covet 19 there were also a series of trainings that were held specifically for the purpose you're mentioning and supporting teachers with some of the pedagogical shifts around going from a tbe to a dli got it and you mentioned the plc it's really more towards third through sixth grade teachers um how are we supporting the k through second that's a great question and i think that the plc is something that could be stretched to the lower grades if that is the desire of the teachers for next year but the the reasoning
031on that was that the tk through two were the group of teachers that were able to be a part of the lab side professional development which is also a form of plc because it happens at four times across the school year and is a chance for teachers to not only learn in the space um but to try something and then to bring it back and to um to collaborate around it thank you um so you know this whole situation about steward and its future uh what's the thought um about you mentioned mr aurelio the next step after kuromatsu for our dual immersion schools what's the thought after kuromat so since we don't have space at el cerrito um is this something you want to talk about in the future or is this something that you
032are already thinking about uh well one thing i i want to correct wait it's not as not necessarily space really the limiting factor is credentialing and teachers because when you're looking at high school dual language immersion you you one you need single subject credentials so imagine trying to find a physics teacher but a physics teacher that could teach it in spanish and so that's the limiting factor is really a staffing factor um at that point and that's been a a challenge for el cerrito hyde to find those types of teachers so we would really want to start recruiting and looking at building a program um you know they're the unicorns in our system right there how do we find those teachers who have both the right credentials and the level of language expertise to teach
033in those languages so that's a big factor we i think long term we we need to decide where where it makes the most sense to put a program like that if you look at where our schools are located that offer bilingual programming maybe el cerrito's not the right location um you can see where the developmental dli schools are located a lot of those are in richmond and san pablo and so it might make sense that we grow the programs there so it's something that we would be building you know a task force to look at that in the future to make sure we can do that and also partnering with human resources to make sure we can recruit the right kinds of teachers for those positions thank you for that um my next question is
034more about um the inclusion of families um i know last time we talked a little bit about specifically our african-american families um and you know how uh we heard we've heard from parents right they drop out over time or there's just lack of of of african-american families that joined the dual immersion track um could you talk for a minute about what you're doing when it comes to the the communication and the the development of a plan to recruit african american students and families to the program i think i can start on the initial steps on that we're to collaborate with our director um of african-american student achievement mr mcgee and we already did you know we worked together on a lot of things and this is one of them and he has already started to
035share some of the information within his newsletters around opportunities for families to enroll in their programs in addition it's something that i think is going to be that's a long-term goal for us to continue to strengthen and and do and it's going to be something that within partnership with our principals at dli schools to ensure that our dli advising committee is representative of all the families that are included um in the program that makes sense thank you very much and i saw mr mcgee was also in the audience so it's good to see him here as well that partnership makes total sense anyways i'm heading to comment so i'm going to ask my next question uh so when it came to the data um are we prior the data obviously was concerning to me but
036not surprised due to the to the virus um are we prioritizing english language learners for summer summer programming yes it's one of the factors um that are going to be included in the list uh in in the formula in which where students are qualified to be able to come back in addition to having one of the points of in the system be around being english language learners there will be an additional point for students who are newcomers or long-term english language learners or potential long-term english language learners to increase their abilities or the in their not their ability excuse me but the the chances that they would be included and the the point system is it's we're building out a matrix in identifying our highest need students or to be given the initial offer for
037summer programming um it's also a similar list that we'll be looking at for any potential spring reopening as well and the priority list of students that's great thank you for that uh last two questions um uh mr sino forgive me because i'm starting to forget this piece but lowering the criteria for a classification was that a local decision or was that a state decision it was a raised criteria and it was a state decision got it okay yeah it became harder to reclassify right so they increased the criteria gotcha okay and uh last time i talked about my concern about newcomers in our district um and trying to develop not just the the program that's happening at grant school but also the communication that it exists within employees and families um that need to access
038it right which is gonna be quite a bit um what are we doing when it comes to that newcomer program in order to to share that to share specifically what you said right that exists that people can access it that people can transfer to that and get priority transfer um could you just mention that super quickly christy did you did you want to speak to that or do you want me to add around i think we can add to that one please i think we i know we've extended the transfer window priority transfer technically ended in february but we have extended that for specific programs one being the bilingual programming so if families come in we are going to treat them as priority for those systems the other piece of it is making sure our
039office staff at these schools that offer programming know that that is an option that there are these programs available and ensuring that they're they can direct families in the right way so that i'll be another layer to that and i know fernazz is in the audience too so if we need her we could always pull her in and one additional piece that long term is going to make this um a little bit less of a hurdle as far as communication goes and programming for our newcomer families is we recently have posted for three central school community outreach workers of our most commonly spoke languages in order to really wrap around our newcomers and those would be school community outreach workers that speak spanish arabic and portuguese um in order to this will be one of
040the pieces that they're communicating to our families um but in order just overall to provide more support for those families that's great okay thank you very much actually i want to add dimitra sorry yeah gonzalo toy that um at grant uh elementary we are actually adding to their tk program will be a bilingual tk next year so we want to get them in early for that they are going to be doing a bilingual tk at that school and and that just made me think of another question uh last last question uh chair smithfolds uh is is the cramp is grant having an issue with spacing with the program like do they does it cap off and and maybe that's one of the reasons why people are not transferring because there's no space or is it
041just purely maybe just that people don't know that it exists so i actually i'm wondering if i should bring principal hidari in because i don't just i don't want to speak about on her space hopefully she doesn't mind me pulling her into this conversation sheriff smith folks if you don't mind i think she's willing listen i say bring everybody in the audience yeah if she's willing to come in and speak to it i think that would be great so there's principal hidari you connected so through the secretary grapevine when newcomers are enrolling if my nearby schools know to know that we have room in specific grade levels they contact us and we try to do an internal transfer between principles and secretaries that way we are addressing the needs of the newcomers and i think
042when we hear the newcomer program you're thinking maybe the newcomers in isolation with a teacher in some off corner in a school that's not how we operate the newcomer program uh teacher miss hudobro who is a great find through the hiring process um she applied for the position and she was actually the data at an analysis tosa at vallejo school district and she had worked at oakley so she has a lot of background in assessments and analyzing data so when we brought her on we had specific questions because we have noticed that although students are enrolled in the tbe program in in time even if they became fluent english learners they were not um achieving at the pace they were prior in the older grades in the upper grades so then we had them and
043that's how we came to have the um newcomer program because what we do is when we have students that have entered the country we keep them in our newcomer program for three years the general education teachers are providing the students with grade level curriculum then my prep teacher when the children go through the um prep program instead of just sitting and you know practicing typing we have purchased ixl and several other site licenses that they of the prep teacher miss brockhoff and the newcomer teacher keep analyzing the data so it's a comprehensive work that the grade level teams and prep teacher and newcomer teacher uh created in order to support students so that we have data at our hand yes you know star reading of star math is great i'm not um but they're not
044always accurate one thing that we purchased last year from our own site funds which we could not keep for this year was ames webb it's a one-on-one assessment and we um assess every single student it comes in english and it comes in spanish and um through the spanish process we were able to assess even our newcomers who speak a different dialect of spanish so our data are is meaningful to our program and our community and unfortunately there aren't enough hours in the day so what ultimately happens is my newcomer teacher out of the goodness of her heart runs an after-school program and she supports the newcomers even more and if they have older siblings that are at our school but they're not in our dli program or they're not um for whatever reason are not
045achieving at a faster rate they can participate in that and we have created a connection between the after school program at our site which is love learn success and our newcomer program so parents can feel comfortable and having um after school program care knowing that when their child is done with miss widobo they can go to the after-school program and also have an enrichment so everything is not just convoluted around oh you must become fluent english learner you have to lose out on enrichment as well so that's something that we've been conscientious about we have a great team that works collaboratively and um coveted has thrown a wrench in our programming because a lot of our newcomer families are um experiencing um more serious um consequences from kovid than any other community that we have
046at our school i don't know if i answered your questions but um the newcomer program has allowed children who have been in the country only three years to reclassify and since we have brought on the newcomer program which this is the fourth year of we were um reclassifying more students because i think the highest number we went up to was 54 and that was a year ago last year for this year we did not reclassify any one because alpac testing had not been completed at our schools thank you principal hidari thank you god thank you so much for just coming in and just like this i really appreciate it so so if i understand it correctly the newcomer program is all the way it's three years what happens to them after they go into the
047developmental bilingual program so many of our newcomers haven't had schooling in their home country so it's really important that we educate our office teams as well as anybody who is enrolling them in the district to know whether it's a sound um objective to have the students enter the bilingual programs that we offer because if they're already in the third grade and they haven't had any schooling in their native tongue it would be best to have them you know enroll in our sei classes with the sheltered english and also put in the supports last year i was able to hire two fully bilingual instructional assistants who were supporting my learning center we have a very comprehensive care process which we look at students academically and social emotionally and we refer our students to the learning center
048so what those instructional aids were doing for the students that were in the sei classes they were supporting them not only in spanish literacy but also in english literacy but then it takes a tremendous amount of funding and when there's off i've learned the term soft funding we cannot keep them and unfortunately um i lost one of the instructional assistants he just left our district and the other one we turned over to our special education department so that she could become a paraprofessional supporting an english-only student so manpower um and professional development for classified and certificated employees um that has been a non-negotiable uh grant for the last excite uh six years so that's how we've become so strong in our programming we have really zeroed in on what our stakeholders want what our teachers
049feel um they need to implement in their classrooms and of course with the funding we try to provide them with any instructional materials or the human resources to support those programs so we need money yeah hear you larry and clearly thank you for that i appreciate the candor on that piece uh smithfold that was my last question thank you so much all right thank you so very much and thank you for coming in and speaking with us thank you for adding that clarity around your school and your programming um i do have a couple of questions um what supports do we as a district offer for parents who speak like a high variety of different languages like i know we have supports for parents this is outside of the the dli i'm just asking a
050general question like what supports do we have for parents who speak a multitude of different languages do we have those supports in the district for example if i come into if i come in and i'm brand new to the district and i my primary language is french right i speak french fluently i speak very little english but i want to participate in schooling and participate in my child schooling what supports do we have for that adult that parent that comes in christy do you want to speak towards sort of the rap center and sure i'd be happy to so we within my department um we have a team who is designated exactly to what you're mentioning around providing native language support for families in relation to anything for school and we do have a process
051in place where anyone at our any of our school sites whether that be a teacher an administrator anyone can request any type of interpretation um for any type of meeting or any type of translation of any document that they want to send home that's one of the things that we currently have in place that's held within my office and we are always looking to expand upon it and make it better however it is in relation to other local districts that i know it is a more robust program than a lot of other multilingual districts is there a formula or a ratio to where you if you have a certain number of your students or student population that speaks a certain language then it's automatic papers are automatically translated into that language does that make sense
052what i'm asking so like if what's do we have a formula for that is there a how do you figure out okay i need to send this district document in mandarin also in spanish also in swahili also in french like how did we figure that out christine are you aware of the rules so the state does lay out um the percentages that are supposed to be of um of a dominant language for that would necessitate what you're mentioning a site sending out documents for translation but i also say that principals are really well aware of whom is in their who is in their school in the languages that are being spoken and so i don't know of it i don't know of a lot of situations of principles who are not aware of um of
053that and where the percentage has been an issue okay and they have the the principles they are aware and they also have the position of power to say okay i need to get these resources to this parent or this group of parents because this is necessary for them to feel the inclusion that i want my site to offer they have that they know how to do that okay um so when you brought up the slide with one way two-way and developmental bilingual okay my kid was asking me for a snack when you were going over it so i caught a lot of it but i do have a question so one way is the one-way track is for example the mandarin school and then the two-way track for the two-way track that would be like
054washington elementary school where you have a group of kids that are going in for spanish and then you have a group of kids that are going in for english the developmental bilingual are all the kids just going in understand tell me can you explain the difference between developmental bilingual and i guess the one-way tribe do you want to take allison because you presented all this or i can up to you um i can start and then you can fill in any gaps developmental bilingual mostly serves english language learners so students are coming in with varying degrees of english and in our case spanish um whereas the two-way program chrissy can check them because that's not my program but when you're dealing with the developmental bilingual are you only dealing with with your ell population are
055you only you're not just dealing with kids coming in speaking spanish primarily but you're dealing with different students correct or is it just primarily spanish-speaking students spanish and yeah spanish and english and some varying degree every kid's different varying degrees of each of those languages but for example like a student who's french and english they would not um the program is not designed for them do we have a program for them so the dual the two-way dual language is open to all students like at mandarin i know that you get kids who speak multiple languages three languages so you can select into the two-way dual language immersion program even if your language is not spanish spanish right okay it's really intended to be a the two-way dual language is really intended to be a choice
056program right it's something that you want to choose into and and really there's tremendous benefits in doing that but our developmental bilingual is just that it's intended to make sure that those kids who are developing developing those skills are able to have a program that's laser focused on them to give them that kind of gap feeling to be able to get them to the next step is that is that the best way to kind of think about it i think so yes to support them to be biliterate so it's the gap feeling and also the continuation of their development in their native language so it's really both do the developmental bilingual children do they ever jump out of developmental bilingual and into two-way i have not heard of that happening i bet it could but
057i have not heard of that happening okay um and then on your strands you had seven strands what strand do you believe needs the most growth the most growth and how do you foresee that happening like how do you which one are you looking at that you're concentrating on that needs the most the most growth that's a great question i think that the strand if you're like right now the one that we need the most um support with is the staff quality and professional development as trustee gonzalez hoy had brought up that there's a tremendous amount of growth that needs to happen to transition from being going in one model to going in another model and educators who are working within our develop in all of our dual language programs are tremendously committed and it
058is a lot more work so when to me that that speaks to the amount of support that we need to layer on for that okay and then my question before i get to a i think i have about two for stuart but my question is how do we add exposure to all students uh all of our students with multi-language like multiple languages dual language like counting to 10 in multiple language is a benefit for every student like if you can count to 10 in french and in spanish and it's a benefit for every student if you can do colors in multiple language it's a benefit for every student if you can do you know have sight words in every language that's a benefit for every student and when i say every language the top five
059you know what i mean like the top five that are spoken all around the world because it also helps with that increased curiosity like if we can lay a foundation to where we're creating curiosity around language and global citizenship i think we're knocking off a couple of those strands you said that dual immersion focuses on so for me i would love to see us find a way to incorporate languages at all levels especially at the elementary school level but let's not forget about the middle school level too because they're going to do class choices where they go and they figure out which language they want to take in high school because our requirement we require them to take adg requirements require them to take some language so the exposure to having it before they pick
060out that choice sheet in eighth grade would be the best like exposure to some language i think i told this story before i spoke french because the person who came and told us about french said it's the language of love and every girl took it because we're high school we didn't know we were like oh language of love let's take it and you know yes i can speak it but maybe i should take spanish okay so that's what like again exposure and experience for all of our students i think breaks down those barriers and it increases their curiosity around language and i think that's really what dual language and global citizenship looks like it's just to increase that curiosity and give them the resources so i would say because i think you had a question
061at first there and i'm going to say that um i would love to see language being taught at every school or even bilingual education at every school obviously we're not there yet but i think it's a benefit for every kid to speak multiple languages i agree and yeah i did have that question but you know i fluffed it with a whole bunch of comments in there but i did i agree i really do agree that language should be exposure to language should be at every school and at every level um when we're talking about steward and i think that's going to have to be a separate agenda item because that's a big lift that we're going to and i want to i do have some questions about that but right now there's have we reached
062out to those 10 to 12 families yet so i don't know if we specifically reached out to them directly about the korematsu offer yet that is something that you know if that's the direction we think we can go i i think it's safe to say we can offer that as a transfer and a priority transfer really the decision for uh there's the pressing decision is what we're gonna do for seventh seventh grade next year right because are we gonna try to have a teacher for ten students and that we know is challenging um and trying to figure that out long term for stuart as a school we probably have a little more time to figure that out um you know i would love to have a decision this school year going into next year but
063if we had to wait a little we potentially could wait a little for to do that definitely need to figure out seventh grade though okay and then you were talking about el cerrito it was a staffing issue because you're looking for teachers that hold that single credential but are able to do it by with bilingual like who are able to teach it teach physics in spanish and right now you have a teacher that can teach history in spanish is that what i heard that teacher is i i don't know if that teacher is there anymore oh sorry i thought you meant korematsu not at the high school no no we're talking about history okay so that's the staffing issue we're looking to fill is at the high school level correct correct the korematsu is we
064want to strengthen that program and the way we view that is because you can go multiple subject at middle school and we can find bilingual multiple subject teachers it's a lot easier to find them obviously for that reason and we can really do some core core coring of students cohorting them essentially with that program okay and then the last one and really quickly can you tell me just in summary the reclassification process and if it's gonna if you say it can't be done quickly okay i'll ask it again at another time but what's the summarized version of the reclassification process i will cry can you also jump into we could actually add that to a friday memo as well like upload because i know the board recently approved that i'm trying to remember if it
065was this version of the board or the previous version of the board but i it was this version okay so you guys did approve the process already which is great um but we can add it to a friday memo so it's there for you to review again if you if you prefer okay actually that would probably be great because it goes out to the greater community if it's in a friday memo to the reclassification process and i just want i'll save that for discussion okay so those are all of my questions do we have any public comment all right so we're looking for hands on the bilingual education or this topic you want to give us i don't i think our most of the hands are going to come up are going to be the
066next topic um so i don't see any public comment at this time okay great discussion trustee gonzalez hoy thank you chairs chair smith folds i know that we have a lot of people waiting for the next one so i'll ask them as quickly as they can i have four comments um first one is on the stewart thing um i actually really like your idea chairsmith folks about potentially maybe putting this too hard specifically and yet in another agenda i know that's what tonight was kind of supposed to be um and and now we have like you know two big items so i do think that you know we want to talk about it a little bit more maybe invite the stuart pta and maybe talk to folks um i on to be completely frank i
067have not spoken to a single person stuart so um i would also like to get their input a little bit um i do have questions about you know transportation and if parents i loved your question about are we having survey parents maybe we want to talk to them about how they feel about transfer to koramatsu um i'm still really concerned about the long-term real issue about what happens after kuromatsu as as you know you all mentioned um you know i i would love i would maybe love to see it at the ansa to continue to expand some of our other high schools since every high school starting to get kind of like a different path and priority um i would love to see it there since it's more central um and i know richmond high
068has international programs and and pineal valley has the iv program and that kind of goes tied to the piece about the ib program at pineal valley and being offered to men to the mandarin program i'm a little concerned that we're potentially creating an inequity that we're only providing the iv track to one bilingual program in one language which i'm not saying that mandarin schools shouldn't get it i'm actually really excited that that's kind of heading that direction but how can we provide it to the spanish tool immersion as well uh so they have access to this amazing program um so so food for thought for our next conversation on that piece um and then you know another food for thought uh for you for mr aurelium is rocino how we potentially consider stuart to crest
069be to the end so if that's the trajectory um just another thought since we're also trying to grow crespy um and that pathway uh since you know the charter schools leaving crespi maybe that's another idea um and then my last comment um the sole situation about grant one i would love to see obviously more resources for our newcomer program i completely agree with mr daria on that and maybe that's conversation we can have with the budget committee and and dr wald because i do think that they need a little more support but i am challenged that i do hear constantly from sites right and i even see it like i mentioned the example of my wife last year taught two newcomers in her class without her speaking the language right and i hear it with
070like so many people um i do think that i think that it was humans racino who said it's more literally more of education for central central office uh front office staff to let them know this exists and they can transfer them i think that we have to do something there whether it's a memo or just continuous communication i'm sure you already have done memos and emails what could we do right to continue to share this program exists maybe continue to expand it and then also more resources can be take can be given to grant to continue to do that right and i would love to do something to thank and appreciate the newcomer teacher there um later that's for later but maybe we can invite it to a board meeting to think or something anyways
071just to put it out there uh that was my last comment uh chair smithfolds thank you everybody for this conversation you trustee gonzalezoi i think my comments are i want to make sure that and i want to probably agendize this but i really want to look at the black experience in dual immersion like i think it's something that we need to agendize and really have a deep dive into the black experience and dual immersion that's the first thing afro-latinas and black people who speak spanish they're not unicorns they're not like we need to make sure that we understand that and intentionally look for that and highlight that in our programs highlight that in our messaging highlight that in the books that are being taught in the classrooms like really make this is an inclusive program
072because it's not um i also want to and uh mr aurelio mr mcgee said you can bring him in to talk to this he just texts me so um if you could bring him in that would be great because then it could because we're speaking to this right now tracy gonzalez hoy are you okay with that for about five minutes totally fine i just want to make sure that you know we have enough time for all the public comment for the next one but yeah and i would love to i would agree with you or maybe agenda i think that specific topic too for another meeting i would love to hear more about plans on that piece anyways yes of course and trustee smithfolds i will volunteer to go to the caribbean to recruit teachers
073and i think that you know i will join you with that i think that we need to make sure that we are um focusing on it so i'm gonna lend my time i'm gonna yield my time to mr mcgee and mr mcgee if you could come in and just tell us what's happening with the what you know to be true about the black experience with dual immersion what you want to see happen um anything to that we would love to hear from you absolutely no thank you good evening you guys and i'm gonna be right on the plane with you reuben's gonna fly it but um so real quick i think that as miss rosigno mentioned there is some great outreach being done the mandarin school has done some great stuff as well as our
074other principals asked about advertising and so we did that what does need to be strengthened though is just the support for the black children when they get there and so that's something we're trying to do through the spsa development the single plan for student achievement and i will i will say that two of our schools through conversation with oasa are actually rerouting some of their funds to support their black children through additional tutoring in that second language and so that's the conversation that i think needs to be had and our schools are really embracing that because that is where our families are struggling you all and i again like i said hats off to miss rosigno for really trying to create that uh what's the word i'm looking for i don't want to say advertising
075but that acknowledgement and recognition and that's where i think a lot of our families are struggling and i know that um i'll forward some information to christy just about that need because there are a couple of schools where they do feel that there are some concerns and they're being overlooked so no i appreciate you guys in this conversation thank you so much uh mr mcgee so i think that um mr raleigh what we're hearing is we need to also set out time to have that conversation specifically we need to set out time to have the conversation about stuart specifically we need to set out some time to have a conversation about grant so there's three conversations that just came from this one um presentation and i think that's great because this is what the academic
076committee is we're supposed to take these deep dives i want to move on if we don't have any other questions comments or concerns let's move on to our second item which is teacher recruitment cycle okay and i'm i'm i see that marcy williams and dr greenwood are with us and they're going to be presenting uh marcy are you presenting your screen you have this deck okay so you should be able to do that all right thank you and um thank you for having us here let's see if i can find it all right do you see that okay all right all right so we're here to talk about recruitment um dr greenwood and i are going to switch off a little bit and i will get started the first step in this recruitment cycle is
077anticipating vacancies so we have our potential retirement retirements our upcoming you know potential resignations we have class size we have new staffing allocations that may change up or down and then of course historical information that can give us an idea of where we're going so we're gonna the next slides three through eight are really just talking about um our retirement and i'll go through that fast because i know there's a lot of information to get through but we look at you know the age range and our potential retirees in each area elementary secondary special ed another so kind of do an analysis again this is through 65-69 60 to 64 and then 50 to 59 so we kind of look at that to see where we're at um and then our total rate age range
078so we get an idea from that um i'm going to have dr greenwood kind of talk about elementary class sizes um and the class sizes but they change and they um can can change what our allocations look like so we take a look at the class sizes every year based on the contract or and or mrus and you can see from every year based on elementary or secondary classes that has a range on um and takes place with our recruitment but we look at based on those class sizes they can adjust as well and then for tfa and international i'm sorry that was me sorry and so then we look at our resignation and retirement so last year we did um a bonus incentive to get people to notify us early that they were going
079to retire so as of february 28 last year we had 76 people to notify us um that they were retiring and as of this year with not having an incentive we had only 10 people notified since probably up to 12 right now because i've gotten a few more in um so you can see the the big difference when we have an incentive to to get us to kind of notify and so we can better recruit when we have a better idea of how many openings there really are yeah and i'll add on to that um you know we obviously have more of a pool to pull from when we are recruiting at job fairs when we know earlier on as it gets closer to may and june and even after the deadline in june 30th
080it makes it much more difficult so it really is important to know that information as soon as possible and can affect how the teachers that we recruit so based on the historical information and dr greenwood can jump into we look at what our trend is with the information for the past several years and then we project based on all that information so right now we're looking at um approximately 200 but i will say with covid we're we're really not sure we don't know if people will take um you know are still wondering what's going to happen and and trying to will not know so this year you know we can estimate as best as possible around 200. and then this is what the projection breakdown looks like in our areas that we will recruit for
081these are total estimations yeah but these are traditionally kind of the averages in each area um what we hire all right so just wanted to give you some background about um what the race and ethnicity of our school district our current teachers i have our teachers on our left and then our other certificated staff providers so this is all of utr um at the bottom we have about five percent that are not reporting and about out of 15 1440 employees and then we will be able to kind of look at um at our other recruitment methods so what does our recruitment efforts look like um we right now we're doing virtual job fairs but um obviously job fairs in person we would go to a lot of those um we do postings um we do
082postings on ed join as well as selected colleges advertising both websites flyers social media and college boards word of mouth and referrals is always a great method networking we're going to talk about our teacher residency program that we grow our our own certificate staff and then how teach for america assist in our recruitment work and then just mention a little bit on our classified certificated grant program so so sylvia you go over the job fair and so this is where we have attended virtual job fairs um so far and then we have the listing of the upcoming job fairs that we have coming up um and the reason we didn't list where we're going because we don't want people to know where we're going because other districts have become public they'll they'll copy us and
083follow us because we're so popular no um but really um you don't see jamaica on there or the caribbean because i would be the first one going me and thomas because we do the hard work but um i just want to go get you guys to really understand when we normally go off and travel you know we carry suitcases full of our district swag we have our gear on and so we're really ready to recruit hard so this has really been adjustment for our department to recruit virtually because just like the zoom meeting this is how it is when we're recruiting people have to jump into the zoom so i'm used to standing there like hey welcome to west contra costa i have the map i have our flyers i have our swag to give
084out so this is a very different setting for us and so when people have to sign up to come in the room i can't just talk to people live so this has been very different so we're limited and who comes into our room if they don't really know about us it's harder to get them to kind of see who we really are as a district and really promote who we are so this is a really big change for us i just want to to guys to get you guys to understand how different it is for us and virtual is like killing us so but they're definitely attending um as many virtual job fairs as possible so we're doing that work um again i'm gonna have sylvia kind of talk about and so we are partnering
085with mr mcgee and thomas was doing this prior with um miss rushing and her team and so while he would go on the the trips with um with the young scholars he would go to some of these um hbcs and so while he was doing dual duty he would be with them and passing out flyers and and promoting the district and trying to get students of color to come back and teach for us the biggest barrier for us and i've said it multiple times is the cost of living is too high for most of these kids to come back and live unless they really are from here and know about california or have family members here you know that have a connection is it's just extremely hard for them to come back here and and
086work and live and so the cost of living is just too much and so their the intent is that they would love to come back um but um we just can't pull them as much as we would like to and that's that's always been my goal since i've gotten this position to attract students of color to come back and teach us and and we have traveled pretty much i want to say all over the country but most of the country uh trying to get um people to come here and it's just extremely just not a california issue it's a united states issue and that people are not going into the profession and it's just really extremely hard to recruit period and then also to get because now especially with the pandemic people are not really
087willing to move so that's going to be another issue that's going to play i guess so people are are really kind of staying close to home or close to their university that they're live at school at so they're not willing to to move far so that's another issue that's going to plague us this year all right so we're going to draw next to the next topic and the another area that we use for recruitment which is the teacher residency program and this is a combination of graduate level coursework at a university with a full year of teach student teaching and this is something we've partnered with the ctc we're in our third year i believe and with special ed so we are basically growing our own teachers in through this program so there's a lot
088of information on here but just to kind of give you an overview so they earn a mild moderate or extensive support needs credentials it's um they make a commitment to teach the district for four years after the completion of the program they work under the supervision of the mentor teacher and that mentor teacher gets a stipend and then they're also working as a paraprofessional so they're um part time as well they receive the we pay for the cost of the program the stipend to cover expenses and then um reimbursement for c c best etc so we have um year one was a cohort of two year two was a cohort of 11 and this year we're looking to recruit 15 which is the max for the program all candidates are from wcc usd or nearby
089communities and 10 of the 13 residents are district paraprofessionals and then there's the breakdown we have 15 percent are male 85 female and then here's the comparison of the current residency program compared to our current wcc us teachers um 40 46 are spanish bilingual and one is is fluent in american sign language so we're excited for this program and think that you know we can definitely move forward with this and if we can with the ctc um here's the information about the tfa um that another it's again it's another component of our recruitment toolbox it's not the only one um we've been partnership with them since 2006 for 15 years we have close to 100 alumni and wcc usd schools 19 in school leadership and 3 in central office leadership we've had since 2011 we've
090had seven teachers be teacher of the year we have 51 tfa alumni serving at wcc usd teachers with three to five years experience and then 36 with five year plus of experience and then out of those 36 and 18 are administrative roles and 13 have more than 10 years of experience so here is uh the race ethnic ethnicity comparison again current our current wcco's teachers with the tfa alumni that we have nearly 50 of tfa recruits are teachers of color 25 come from low-income backgrounds and nearly 33 are first in their families to graduate um tfa contributions um diverse pipeline this year in the cohort they have 74 teachers of color 42 identify as low income 39 first in their family to attend college and 52 are from california they know the cost of living
091the other thing that's important is that their national recruitment team recruits from over 200 colleges we don't have the bandwidth to go to 200 colleges i'd love to but we just don't have the capacity to do that to go recruit they provide support for teachers of color and educators from low income in the navigate the credentialing and onboarding process and the tfa members receive a combination of instructional as well as diversity equity and inclusion training and this year they've had assistance with coveted mentors to assist during the pandemic recruitment and retention status strategies this is something that and i'm going to have dr greenwood talk about this um in terms of what she has seen in in the fairs and recruitment um one of the one of our drawing cards is when we out recruiting
092that you know they ask how what can we do to support them and one of our major stars and our crowns is our tip program as our teacher induction program so we support our teachers for the first two years and we and we pay for that and so most districts do not offer that as a plus and so this is something that we really use to attract our teachers and so they know that they get this and so i send them directly to christian's website and so it spells it all out and so they so they really buy into that they know that they have the support for two years and so what um i put together is what i found out you know being on the road and recruiting is the these are some
093of the suggested bonuses that come from other districts so some districts offer a fifteen hundred uh dollar signing bonus other offer fifteen hundred dollar paid mentorship for new teachers only the first year others have had uh two thousand recruitment and retention bonuses uh two thousand dollars to assist with a clear credential others have given a five thousand dollar uh bonus for a sped math or science credentials cleared and then others have benefit packages ninety ten um 10 benefit package so this is what we're um up against when we go out to the recruitment so these are just some ideas that that may help with the recruitment process and then just our overall promoting promoting wcc usd um you know we we did i think dr green when you said we saw a new a lot
094more candidates with our new salary schedule we have five full weeks of break um we value experience we take up to 15 years of experience and obviously it's a great place to live even though it's expensive so and i think that's it so thank you thank you so very much for the presentation um and thank you for the hard work you do with recruiting teachers um trustee gonzalez hoyt questions and if you i'm sorry trustee gonzalez if there are people who want to make public comment go ahead and start putting your hands up now while we do the questions that would be great so we can uh oh look they're already started oh good googly goo okay trusty goes all this whole questions thank you chair smithfold first of all thank you both for being
095here and everything you do secondly wow you you ran through that presentation so thank you appreciate it i know we're all time constrained today um so i do have a few questions um so first one is you know i did see obviously um the com the the breakdown of ethnicity was was really good to see i haven't seen that before actually so i really appreciated that uh what do you what would you say are some of the biggest barriers from us recruiting more people of color i know you kind of mentioned some of them but the biggest barriers in your opinion of why um we haven't seen more even though my understanding police scouring if i'm wrong is that we actually have a higher percentage than most districts around us but what are some barriers
096that you're still seeing um i think part partially some of the exams as well like you know the the last one that you know the state implemented the edtpa is a very hard one to pass and then when um the pandemic hit it created another barrier because that's an exam or that you have to do you know in front of a class and record yourself and then you have to write you know this long you know explanation of how you did in front of the class and and so a lot of people because of how that they from what candidates have told me how the class is taught it didn't it didn't translate to the exam and so i and so i've had some people within um through the tip program and some other people
097that have become familiar that teach at the university level help assist kind of tutor these people even that they're working with us right now kind of get through that exam so i know that exam is going to long term be a problem for candidates to complete their credentials so they can work on temporary credentials until we can get them all the way clear so that's going to be an up-and-coming barrier for a lot of people on top of the exams that they already have to pass that makes sense thank you for sharing that um so you mentioned the incentive the incentive for notification on retirement resignation um i'm really concerned obviously that that we haven't heard from most people i think that probably a lot of them are waiting to see what the model is
098going to be next year right but um you know i am concerned so that you all can start you know recruiting as soon as possible um would it be helpful if we were to do it again um even if it's a little bit later than what it was last year we've only done it once but i mean i can see just the difference it made and i think it we've talked about it and i think it may be helpful right you know that people move we know that people you know decide to leave retire um regardless of the pandemic so so yes i think that there is you know a possibility that it would be very helpful okay thank you for that uh third question is how we consider expanding our not expanding but doing
099an educational education maybe this is more for mr aurelia an education academy so that we can develop our own teachers um i love the residency program first of all that's amazing but like one that actually goes even before that where we're actually sharing with our students uh a track to become teachers i know that there's been discussions around an education academy tied to el cerrito high in the past and that's something we'll have to revisit um i don't think dr huey's on the line right now i would pull her in and ask her directly but i will i can get information back to you both about that and see where we're at with the pathways thank you maybe that'd be a great conversation for another meeting actually uh thank you chair smith saying yes thank
100you um my next question is um actually this is my comment um the tfa contract uh miss williams and miss greenwood dr greenwood in your opinion do you feel like it is absolutely needed for next year due to what you're seeing out there and your recruitment i would say yes because again it's not it we're not we don't rely completely on tfa it is a something that affects us and we don't have the capacity to go to 200 different um you know job fairs or colleges to do that the nice thing about the contract is that that it's up to we're not required to hire that many and all of them go you know get all of them are interviewed by at the sites and the sites choose them and so it is again not
101a requirement but it just gives us another option for hiring um last year for example after the after the risks and when we did the hiring we needed their assistance at the very end in april may and so having them help us you know was really was um was definitely needed so okay thank you for that and um my last question my last question about that is um do you see a higher retention of tfa core members um as they're called in our district than other districts or is it lower or or maybe you you wouldn't know that so i did try to pull retention information and to be honest the data it wasn't clear how it was being pulled we have it but i wasn't clear how it's being pulled and so we needed
102to do a more of a deep dive on that to make a really correct comparison so i didn't want to bring that data but we do have it and i do want to sift through it and we can provide that later through a friday memo but we do think it's important to look at that got it okay thank you very much uh chair smith that's my last question thank you so much trustee gonzalez toy um do we have a referral process like if i got a homeboy that i knows it would be a good teacher and then i refer him and then you hire him do we have that type of process i ask because my husband has that process in his job if he knows an animator and he refers that animator that animator
103gets hired my husband gets a bonus like you know what i mean like do we have a process like that because a lot of us teachers know teachers we do teachers know teachers and teachers know teachers have cousins that are teachers and so if we could start some kind of network like that i think it would be beneficial because it's there's facebook pages there's a thousand facebook pages for teachers and we all know each other or we're on facebook friends with each other and be like yo they're hiring in what's contra costa and then you could have that kind of referral or conversation um i did like trustee gonzales toy's question about um the barrier is tip tip is that like the old vista program or is it different yes yes that's the exactly vista
104so i was me too so that makes sense and then the tfa contract how many years is that a tff contract is it one year is it annual is it an annual renewal or it's three so they're up for three more years now right but again we're not we're looking we're not looking at the max number that's just the possibility we don't have to hire all 40 of them but we still have to pay for it we still have to pay even if we don't hire them it's not based on no no only those that we hire we only pay an amount for those that we hire so if we only hire 10 we're only paying for 10. okay so with the contract with tfa you're only paying for the candidates that you hire from
105that program right okay and then the max number of people that you're thinking that you would hire this year would be so 40 is the max for two years so 20 and 20. okay we're not looking at 40 per year we're looking at 20 per year because we pay for them to be mentored the first and second year and how much of a burger king is tfa how much can i have it my way can i say i want this x number men can i say i want this x number of black teachers can i say i want this x number they speak spanish can i say is that something that tfx yes and the earlier the better because again though that their cohort that they're that they're finding and getting ready they are going
106to be you know um hired at a different school district whatever if we're not in that process early on and dr greenwood do you believe that this would be the best move to make this year what for a tfa yes ma'am yeah it it's a value at the end for us once we go through and try to get people that want to really come here and then once we fill positions through the transfer process tfa helps us fill those hard to fill positions at the end because we know that they'll have their uh credentials are on their way to have their credentials so it kind of supplements us at the end and so that we're not scrambling okay i thank you for that i want to get to um i want to make sure that
107we have time for the public to have their public comment um and then trustee gonzalez we can real quickly swoop back around for uh discussion thank you so much uh miss williams thank you so much dr greenwood if you guys could hang on just if there's something that pops up um and mr ray leo we're good to go for public comments okay so i see ten hands we're gonna do two minutes per public comment i think sherry's gonna bring up the clock um we're gonna start with carlo juntia oh and my screen just jumped bear with me uh carlo you can unmute and begin your comment hi good afternoon y'all can you hear me yes okay awesome good afternoon again my name is carlo juntia and i've been working in the district for nearly three
108years now i became an educator because of my own experiences and frustration with educational inequities and i joined teach for america because of its commitment to centering diversity equity and inclusion to its mission and the intentional leadership development it provided for our us core members with the help of my tfa coach and my cohort of other like-minded and committed teachers i seriously felt prepared to take on the challenge of teaching at richmond high where i took on the responsibility of teaching advanced placement history in addition to my regular course load that totaled three preps during my first year of teaching and i wouldn't have been able to overcome that challenge if it wasn't for my collaborative support that i received from teach for america and my own school site it was because of the support
109that i was able to increase academic performance in my students ap scores and ultimately expand the program the ap program at my school for the following year to give more students the chance to take rigorous coursework that prepared them for college after high school so less than three years later i'm really humbled to be recognized by edfund for teaching excellence and i directly contribute that to the training and collaborative support that i receive from teach for america and my school site and that's all i have to share thank you thank you carlo next is farnaz hidari you can unmute and begin your comment good evening once again i am the proud principal of grand elementary school this evening i'm here to support the renewal of the mou with teach for america i've appreciated partnership with
110them for the last six years through their pool of dedicated and diverse educators i've been able to staff my school with the best candidates possible that make a difference for my kids each and every day when our students walk on campus they're able to see themselves represented by our staff the best experiences that our core members have had are a window of possibilities for our students the core members have a strong background in leadership and have walked the path of service that allows them to build strong relationships not only with their students but the entire community corps members receive continuous support and professional development that enhances what the credential programs entail and the internal experiences they're having as a school leader what i have really appreciated is that tfa leadership collaborates with me as the
111site leader in how as a team we can support the beginning teachers i urge you to renew the mou with teach for america and one factor that i wasn't going to speak about is my own child is a second year teach for america core member this i recommended for her to continue with the process of recruit recruitment because i knew would open up her eyes even more to more possibilities for herself so i thank you for your time and once again i cannot emphasize enough how much the partnership means to our school communities thank you principal hidari our next speaker alexandra cohen you can unmute alexandra hello can you hear me yes awesome hello my name is alexander cowan and i am a third year teacher um at bayview elementary to say that teaching has
112been one of the hardest things that i have ever done would be the understatement of the decade and then to put on top of that a pandemic has made it potent the most hard the most difficult it could potentially be through all of these hardships that any teacher will face the ongoing support that i receive from teach for america has gotten me through it all the coaching process alone has helped me grow into a trauma sensitive data-driven culturally responsive educator that i am now and will continue to work towards being through regular teaching programs one learns the basics how to run a classroom maybe set up a little bit of social emotional learning and some behavior management but the unique process of teach for america on top of all of that we learn how to
113build relationships we learn and work towards allyship we learn about the history of our communities and we learn how to be the most effective educators while for making an impact on our students it saddens me to think that these passionate people who take teach for america might not be from teach for america might not be able to come into this district and make the impact that we've already made and are still making we have seen tfa teachers um stay way past their required years like myself we've raised so much money that pours directly into our classrooms bringing in furniture books supplies etc we've seen members rise to the top of union and leadership get nominated for teacher of the year we've seen coaches directly serve at wcc schools and now are aiding us new educators
114we have members rise to administration head of committees at school sites and so much more teach for america is so much more than just teaching the type of people to apply and to come to work here come to communities like ours and are here to make lifelong impacts on our children thank you our next speaker is john valdez cleaner you can unmute hi everyone my name is john valdez clinger i'm a first year teacher for america uh core member um i really wanted to talk about the holistic approach of support that teach for america was able to offer me when i decided to become an educator uh firstly i did not think that this was something that i could do i've been a afro-latinx man first generation college student uh queer college student i was
115concerned about the location of where i was going to be and the support that i would be able to have in our schools i knew that i would be able to uh be impactful or i had a strong belief uh that that would that i would be able to reach a connection with my students um but i didn't think that i could actually get here and teach for america support was really what allowed me to be able to do that um let's talk a little bit about the holistic support that i have firstly i first thing i said was i there's no way i can move across the country i have incredible bad credit i will never get an apartment this is not going to happen teach for america said we will help you with
116this we will figure out your finances we will figure out how to get you there you just think about where you want to get and we will make sure that we get you there uh the other thing that i was extremely concerned about was just these roadblocks in the process of making this happen testing uh credentialing things that i had absolutely no idea uh especially after 15 years of being a working professional coming into a new system i needed a hand in order to be able to do this and teach for america was able to hold my hand and say okay i want you to focus on the impact that you're gonna make towards your kids and we will take care of the rest we will do the credentialing we will make sure that you
117have all the needs in order to get you there and i just want you to concentrate on the impact that you're going to have on your children and because of that i think that it's a wonderful idea for it to be considered again thank you thank you our next speaker is jose de leon mr de leon you can emu good evening uh board trustees uh mr davio uh dr greenwood uh so i'm uh some of the things that i want to talk about is uh is the ctc program uh replacement for the cal state east bay program that the district used to run it was very the eastway program did help a lot of our grad tutors become teachers in the district also another roadblock that we've run into with getting subs or people in
118smc best support sometimes to see best support and uh taking the test but sometimes as an incentive paying for the sea best for a sub or for incoming teacher may be a a good uh incentive in the long run and uh the other one is i really like the comments about the referral system uh one of the things that a lot of the schools kennedy richmond pinol we have seen more and more of our graduates coming back after they get their bachelor's to to teach but they're looking for some support with the credential program because they're just out of college or or some more guidance and as principals as we find quality people we were asking uh for a way to streamline the process to get them hired for our site and one of the
119reasons is to keep them at our sites if they get a better offer someplace else and uh we have to wait for postings etc if we can make a referral and get some priority on on this personnel because we already have some some idea of who they are and how they can benefit the campus i think that goes uh for all principals uh across the district uh we appreciate uh the work that hr does uh with the principals um to get our sites staffed thank you mr de leon uh next is taylor parham you may unmute hi there um i'm the proud principal of lincoln elementary in richmond and i'm in my ninth year uh here working in the district i am an alum of teach for america i was placed at dijon middle school
120from 2012 to 2014 um to serve my two years as a core member dr greenwood was actually my very first principal and i learned a ton from her um and i loved my time at dejan i ended up staying five years there um absolutely loved it and then i've been at lincoln in school leadership for this is my fourth year versus assistant principal and now as principal um so i was at dejan for five years i was very grateful to receive the teacher of the year award while i was at dijon and now on on the other side of it as a school leader i've just really really appreciated working with teach for america because of how extremely collaborative they are they're very open with their communication i've found their coaching model to be very
121um very responsive to what we need as a school they very much are listening to what we want and what we need um i've found working with our core members they tend to be very positive very very much team players and extremely student focused um so i just want to continue to advocate for the partnership with teach for america both from my positive experience as a corps member and also now working with corps members and and the tfa team um it's just been a very positive experience so thank you very much for your time our next speaker catherine acosta practice you can good evening board members and staff my name is catherine acosta ever proskus and for the past eight years i've been the broad principal of montalvan manor k8 but i didn't start there
122my family emigrated from lima peru with the hopes of a better future i was a fourth grader and i didn't speak a single word of english but i was lucky i had mrs spiker and she changed my life i was propped up by her and other caring adults and eventually became the first person in my family to graduate from college sadly my brothers were not so lucky and i'm still the only one this injustice is why i became an educator every day i show up and i'm driven to make sure that this doesn't happen to any of our students teach for america gave me this opportunity to serve to be that role model that i wish my brothers would have had starting with my years teaching special education at lincoln elementary school to the role
123that i serve in now sadly there are vacancies in most schools every single year and finding caring adults gets harder and harder this year alone i had six vacancies at montaven i pride myself in actively recruiting teachers that look like my students and i'm proud to say that four of the six new hires identify as people of color two of which are currently teach for america teachers all six however are equally passionate about providing a high quality equitable education for our students making a true lasting impact in their lives like mrs speicher did for me please approve the partnership with tfa and give us more options to find the dedicated teachers that all of our students deserve thank you our next speaker is julie yoon julie you can unmute hello yep go ahead good evening
124everyone my name is julie yoon and i am a third year teacher at stage elementary during my time at tfa i felt supported as a teacher with my coach visiting my classroom bi-weekly and trainings on learning content and culturally responsive teaching as well i also found a community of teachers working in different schools not only throughout the district but the bay area collaboration asking questions and working together within the tfa community of teachers has helped me discover new approaches to intervention and more in my classroom i have been focusing on intervention database growth and pbis through culture and climate meetings these are skills that i have learned through tfa and will continue to apply as a teacher i knew that my school's turnover rate was high but was still shocked when i returned my second
125year to a family commenting you actually came back i love my students community and co-workers stage is a smaller school and that has allowed me to do buddy systems with the sixth grade students collaborate with the third grade teacher and more if not for tfa i may not have realized my passion for teaching and gain the skills that were taught through the content training and coach sessions i feel strongly that teach for america is an impactful partner for west contra costa and is making an impact in our schools and community i hope we can continue to work in partnership with each other thank you again for your time our next speaker is miss mench i hope i said your name correctly yes you did thank you um good evening everyone my name is sarah minch
126and i've spent the last three years as a fourth grade teacher at murphy elementary i want to touch on how scifi has supported my time in the classroom i was drawn to teach for america because of its mission and commitment to promoting educational equity for all students i've been able to grow as an educator due to the support i received from the tifa community my students academic and socio-emotional success was directly tied to the coaching and support i received through tfa i've been able to work collaboratively with community members leaders at my school site and passionate and like-minded educators across the district to promote student success without easter america i would never have realized that i have this deep passion to work with students i'm excited to dedicate my life as an educator and i
127look forward to serving as a champion for all students this commitment to serving as an educator would not be a reality without the unwavering support of for america and my school site thank you for taking the time and making the space to hear about my experience and the experiences of other educators thank you miss dumar you're our next speaker you can unmute can you hear me yes okay um my name is monique dumar and i joined tfa four years ago um i wanted to talk about two parts of my experience the first being that i am a second career teacher um and teach for america gave me the opportunity to transition from corporate accounting into the classroom which was like my dream career prior to that and i think without teach for america one of
128the like attractive pieces of teach for america is that they don't just recruit from schools but also through to people who are currently employed outside of the teaching career um and as you've heard from many of other people throughout my experience with teach for america i had um unconditional support from coaches and from the team and from the community that i think made me into the teacher that i am but i wanted to talk more about the experience that i've had within tfa that's outside of the classroom over the last couple years so i've had the pleasure of working with their institute team for the last three years and seeing the um dynamic changes that they've made year over year to better prepare our teachers and i have specifically worked with the teachers that are
129transitioning to the bay area and firsthand see the training and dedication that teach for america is putting into bringing in these new teachers um and those two things combined are why i believe that we should 100 renew with teach for america that's it thank you thank you our last comments are from jesus calindo mr galindo you can mute good evening can you hear me yes good evening trustees mr aurelio dr greenwood miss williams my name is jesus alfredo galindo and i have the privilege of being a third grade dli teacher at lincoln elementary where i've been for the last eight years immediately after graduating from uc berkeley i decided to commit my life to proving to the whole world that when given the right opportunities it doesn't matter where a kid comes from it doesn't
130matter what language they speak at home it doesn't matter if they're undocumented or not when given the right educational opportunities those kids will achieve their full potential i was lucky enough to end up at lincoln elementary and when i told some of my friends about it when i told my family they're like are you sure that sounds like it's going to be a really difficult school but i knew that being lit there was a line to what i wanted to accomplish and um when i got to lincoln along with a lot of other tfa members lincoln was known for not being that highly performed academically performing school but through relentless and unwavering commitment to our students we've been able to create a powerful counter narrative at lincoln elementary for two years in a row we
131were known as we have been known as one of the highest performing schools in the in terms of math growth and that's because you know i think it's a combination of different stakeholders coming together to ensure that our kids no matter where they come from or whatever social economic status they may be in when given those opportunities those kids can achieve their full potential and a big part in the some of the main architects of the systems at our schools have been uh members of tfa whether they're alumni like myself or their first or second year core members uh tf affairs have played an integral part in the success of my school the school i love thank you mr villendo so that concludes public comment on this item thank you so much to the public
132i really appreciate hearing from all the teachers that called in in their experiences um trustee gonzalez hoy comments thank you chair smithfold yeah i have a few one i really love the idea from principal de leon about the sea best i think that we always struggle with recruiting substitutes not just us but statewide but i just i'm even more concerned moving forward to next year having lack of subs so i really like this idea of potentially paying for the sea best or training them and supporting them through the process of people interested um maybe that's something miss williams if you remember that we could explore um the second piece i love what you're doing what you're both doing around the residency program i mean that's just awesome i love the the the recruitment from within
133house right um it shows that it obviously has a higher percentage of people of color and people from the community that just we know are going to stay long-term right possibly so so thank you for for your efforts there and i'm glad to see that it's growing to 15 people um the next you know the bonuses i have this larger concern obviously we've been seeing the articles we know that like there's a lot of people that are leaving the profession because of what's happened this year and potentially the what might happen next year and just how tiring and difficult it's been for teachers and educators in all levels right all the way to administrators um and i'm preaching to the choir here it's because it's been hard for all of us really but um i'm
134just concerned about the recruitment of educators and potentially having empty classrooms next year right because i'm hearing this as you all know in my day job i support some of the wealthiest districts in in california and the south of santa clara as a union rep and they are talking about having a hard time recruiting and retaining educators so if they i know they are who they pay like up to 150 000 on a yearly basis for each educator i know we're gonna have challenges right so um you know this idea of the bonuses i believe with the need to refer resurface i would love if if chair smith falls in an agreement i would love for us to send a letter to the to the budget committee so that they talked to dr wald about
135um potentially putting some fun funding aside for bonus signing bonuses especially around our special education our bilingual teachers we literally just talked about in the last presentation i mean having a hard time recruiting before and and having a hard time probably now it's gonna be even twice as hard so some bonuses there to support the work that you're both doing and thomas as well mr scott on the recruitment and your team math and science secondary credentials i know they're already difficult before right um they're only gonna be even more challenging now so um i want us to compete with all these districts i know that we already are making strides in our salary and other pieces so so i don't want us to lose that with the retention pieces as well so um if chair
136smith false one it also agrees i would love for us to come maybe send it to the budget committee for them to look through and potentially um provide some funding for you both outside of what you already get uh i don't know if you have a comment on that mr aurelio uh just so you know that dr world's in the audience and he's hearing a lot oh okay well wink wink dr walt we will i would love to see some support there uh in finding some in your hidden chest of money that i know you have in your office uh that's a joke there's no chess but anyways miss dr walt if there's anything you can find i would love if you could support them um because uh some of these wealthier districts we've been
137negotiating bonuses um the last couple months with the unions um and there are big bonuses right we're talking about ten thousand dollar bonus i'm not saying that's what we need but if that's who we're competing with right as well i'm i'm just worried and then lastly you know on the on the whole teach for america contract um as you all know i started as a teacher for america core member here eight years ago um and um the first person i met was miss clinton the president of utr the second person i met was actually mr galindo who was the last speaker uh and he was the best man in my in my wedding so you know i owe quite a bit to that but but i just want to say in my in the best
138world scenario for me teach for america wouldn't exist because the the the the gap wouldn't exist either right for teacher recruitment um i also think that teach for america has a lot of challenges and difficulties that i disagree with uh nationwide right on on just the way that they do things on on training and recruitment for other places what i would say is that my experience locally was very different and i do think that they they have a different mindset than maybe their national teach for america um offices right where they here they truly care about the development of teachers them staying in the profession uh not just jumping to the next thing um that was my experience and i was experienced with many of my colleagues um so i keep going back and forth
139because at the end of the day i wish we could develop our internal hiring more right and i know we were but now with the current pandemic and everything else i'm just really concerned that we would end up with empty classrooms otherwise so chair smithfolds my personal view is that i would recommend this contract to the full board for discussion um so that we can continue the recruitment of teach for america members in our district where we also can have a little bit more say like it was mentioned on who they bring us how they've developed them and then also how we support them in the classroom um and then the last piece i will say is that i really like the idea of a stipend for mentorship and mentoring not just teach for america
140teachers but all new new teachers in our district um i know that's one of the things that you said that you both said in your presentation that you're fighting against other districts in in the recruitment i would i would love for us to develop a mentorship program as well more than what we have in tip but just overall um and i just want to say thank you both for all your recruitment work i know it's quite a bit so i appreciate everything you're doing thank you for being here chair smith falls that was my last comment thank you so much i i'm glad dr wool is in the audience i want him to give you what you need my mama always said you need to ask for what you want so that slide needs to
141be cut and pasted in an email to him because you need it we can't ask you to do a job if you don't have the resources to do it well so i think that you the money can be found figured out that's not that's not on us they can figure it out but you need to have the resources to be able to do the job that's required of you and to do it successfully representation matters representation matters we need to have in front of these students people who look like them and have their shared experience it matters in the education system i knew the numbers but i was shocked to see that only 12 percent of our teachers are black i was even more shocked to see 51 are white or caucasian we good it
142represents representation matters so if we're going to run anything forward we need to run it with the idea and the mindset that representation matters that's not saying that we should not hire white teachers i'm not saying that i'm saying representation matters that it matters that we have students in front of we have teachers in front of our students who look like them i also think that we need to start picking up some best practices we had 10 people call that were teach for america ask them how they can help us like what can you do to help those best practices because they just learned it they learned what the best practices was with their mentor teachers will bring them in and help them with the tip and help them formulate all of those things that
143they said worked really well from them i don't think we have to reinvent the wheel but i think we have to ask some stone crust we have to ask strong questions and say show us what made it made it good for you what made this work for you what can we use that they had um if we put this contract forward if we push this contract forward i really do want to be clear about what i want like i really want black male teachers black female teachers and teachers of color those are two different things black and people of color are two different things so i want to teach for america to be clear i want black male teachers black female teachers and teachers of people of color who are teachers that's and if we're
144doing three years they got three years they can bring all of that back and then our percentage numbers can look like they represent the students that we teach that's the ultimate goal is to get those percentage numbers up to where they represent the students that we teach in the district um i think that that's my only comment we got five minutes we are doing well um uh trustee gonzalez hoy i will co-author a letter with you but since dr wool is here he can hear the letter give him what they need give him we can put it in a formal email if you want but he's here he knows um i'm okay bringing the teach for america contract forward but i want to do it under the guise of we're asking for something specific we're
145asking for 40 specific teach specific teachers coming to our hiring plate like we want something very specific i want us to build our internal bandwidth to get if that's paying for the sea best if that's getting rid of any other barriers is that having mentored teachers if that's doing bonuses and stipends anything we need to build up internally i want us to do that i love the idea of a teacher academy i knew i wanted to be a teacher since i was little so it was real easy for me to say i want to be a teacher and i think that we have those people in the district too there's like i want to be a teacher whether they're parents for teachers their brothers and sisters or teachers we have that and i also want
146us to talk about that um referral process because i too have three or four people i could drop a name to you so like there is a good process for that um those are all of my comments our next academic committee meeting would be march 22nd this was a special meeting and this was a special meeting to talk about the dli and to talk about teacher recruitment cycle those will come back to us because this is an ongoing conversation we never kind of say something academic and put a bow on it we continue to talk about it and go layer by layer um mr aurelio the future agenda items we kind of talked about in the meeting mr trustee gonzalez hoy do you have any to add i'm really trying to get us out of
147here by six because i know you two gentlemen have to be somewhere um trustee gonzalez do you have anything to add to our future agenda items not that i can think of in this minute uh trustee smith holds thank you okay and then i would like to invite miss williams and dr greenwood back to give us better um more information and a more in-depth slide on what we can do with not only retention but support so not only recruit well not only recruitment but recruitment retention and support in all forms of teaching and what we need to do to help um yes trustee gonzalez hoy sorry uh chair smithfolds i didn't remember one item which is i would love to get an update on summer school uh and the progress there uh maybe not for
148the 22nd but maybe for the next one to give enough time to staff uh that way we can just get a quick update thank you and also we need to invite um miss uh edith back edith mccormack jordan back we need to invite her back to give us an update and look at numbers and such yes sir and she is agenda for the next for the march 22nd richard look at that fantastic that one is done um that is it we have two minutes we are two minutes early thank you everyone so much for joining the academic subcommittee uh at our height we had 54 attendees here so great job everyone um you're very welcome dr greenwood and thank you miss williams thank you trustee gonzalez hoy thank you mr aurelio and we will see
149you guys next time march 22nd please keep a lookout for the agenda right thank you have a good night thank you everyone thank you chelsea folks no worries bye