001hello hi mr duffy how are you good ready to get started i think we're only missing trusty cuevas okay we shall join us shortly uh so welcome everybody thank you for joining us tonight i would like to call to order the june 30th 2020 special board meeting of the west country costa unified school district board of education thank you for joining us this evening um mr watson do we have any public comment for closed session so uh president hernandez jarvis we do not have any uh public comment for our closed session great thank you thank you mr walton okay so we are going to recess to closed session and we'll be back for open session at 6 30. thank you everybody thank you good evening everybody welcome to our meeting i think our superintendent duffy
002is still um in the process of joining us right now i see trustee phillips jose banas trustee cuevas and trustee lara are present so we will get started um with our meeting as soon as we have superintendent duffy um sign into the meeting too thank you and welcome again and just a quick note for the board i was able to connect with trustee lara and confirm um the report out thank you so brendan duffy and i will call the meeting to order in just one brief second i have to close um a window nearby because there's a lot of noise so i'll be right back okay thank you everybody again good evening and welcome to our board meeting i would like to call to order the june 30th 2020 special meeting of the board of
003education of the west country costa unified school district um board of education thank you for joining us tonight please join me for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you welcome again and thank you for joining us tonight i would like to thank our wcc usd students families employees and the entire community for how you have continued to support each other these past few weeks thank you to everybody working with urgency to ensure that children in our communities are safe and healthy during the summer months i would like to share some basic instructions regarding how we're going to be using zoom today for our meeting and
004before we do that um no yes we're going to do this right now and then we'll do roll call right after that sorry about that um we're going to have public comments verbally during our meeting via zoom this may result in some uncomfortable situations so we hope that you will bear with us and it is our hope for board for members of the public to be able to participate and share their public comment with the board in a space conducive to a respectful public forum for all all board members and the superintendent will be on video throughout the board meeting staff members are also press and it will be on video members of the public will not be on video and will be muted throughout the meeting unless they have raised their hand for public
005comment in order to comment on an agenda item at tonight's meeting members of the public should raise their hand by pressing the raise your hand button on the zoom app or by pressing asterisk or star 9 by telephone when the board reaches the item on which they would like to comment if you are calling in your in with your phone when your name is called press asterisk or star 6 to unmute your phone when when we get to the item a member of the district staff will call your name comments will be restricted to the amount of time allocated by board policy your hand must be raised before the first public comment is read on an agenda item after the first comment is read there will be no additional public comments accepted in order to
006be recognized to speak you must be using a first and last name thank you i will now share these directions in spanish [Music] is gracias thank you everybody mr duffy can we please have roll call president hernandez jarvis present trustee lara present trustee phillips president trustee panis here great thank you do we have student representatives uh present i don't see them or i don't see him thank you great so uh our next item is reported of closed session yes tonight we have a number of items to report out of closed session the first item by a vote the board has identified a finalist for chief academic officer with trustee hernandez jarvis cuevas lara and panus supporting and trustee phillips dissenting the appointment shall be done as an action item for ratification at the next regularly
007scheduled board meeting on july 15th the second item the board appointed kristin hardy as self a director for the 2021 school year unanimously and finally the board approved unanimously maria duarte ruiz as an assistant principal at de anza high school that is the end of the report out of closed session thank you superintendent duffy next we have our agenda review and adoption for item b5 do any board members have any items that they want it pulled it seems like we have a very short agenda is there a motion to adopt the agenda assist we adopt agenda as is moved by trustee venus suck at that second by trustee latta can you please take a vote of us yes yes yes lara yes in london's drive is yes motion passes unanimously to adopt the agenda as
008is thank you board up next we have item b6 wccsd public comment yes president hernandez jarvis at this time we have one speaker with their hand raised um thank you that would be leslie reckler great thank you mr reckler good evening everyone i just wanted to thank dr delgado for all her years of service to the district i believe tonight is her last board meeting her last day of work for the district and i've just enjoyed her so much her educating the parents always coming out whenever we needed her to come out and educate on any issue charter issues the number of times that she spoke to pta and um i i will miss her very much and i thank her for her service thank you and good night thank you and that concludes public
009comment i will re uh remind the audience that you must have at least a you must have a first and last name in order to be recognized to comment thank you mr walton and thank you to ms reckler for your comment as well so our first discussion item item c1 our only discussion item african-american student achievement the evening board and community i am going to be uh leading this presentation uh this evening um we did not get a chance to get to this presentation at our last meeting um so i'm really glad that we're able to get to it at a at a much more reasonable um hour um i do want to thank a number of people who helped put this presentation together uh nicole joyner and the data team lashante smith and millie
010burns on the positive climate team the mafinicio team dr guerrero asset leaders bobby jordan reverend schumacher and jamie allardyce of the neastrom team and many many african-american staff who've given feedback and suggestions about how we move this work forward um this is work that people have been doing for many many years in this district there's incredible incredible energy and effort all across our district by so many people and i'm excited to to continue to share what we're doing and where we need to get better and what our next steps are so i'm going to ask marcus or tracy to go ahead and bring up that presentation i will say we had a presentation um on the work we were doing a few weeks back around african-american student achievement and we got some feedback that uh
011folks wanted something more comprehensive more data um just a better outline of what we were doing and where we needed to go so i hope this evening we're able to present the work in progress uh the work over the last few years and talk about where we're going next for me it continues to be an incredible honor and privilege uh to lead the work to lead the community to be allowed into this community and to be able to have our students and families given to us the great honor of educating them every day and it is a real honor and a privilege so i thank our community uh for continuing to believe in us so let's go to our first slide so mr pattis has uh constantly asked us to make sure we have a
012good executive summary and really summarize what we're talking about in our presentation and this one i'm going to read i'm not going to read all of our slides because there is a lot in here but african-american students in our district do not perform equal to their peers over the past five years and beyond supports have been put in place to support african-american students african-american students in the district have made some growth but overall continue to trail peers of other races and ethnicities growth has been made in school climate and high school graduation but academic scores and attendance continue to be significant issues for the district focused work to support african-american students has taken place in the areas of positive school climate after school programs college access programs and targeted school support while the number of
013african-american teachers and administrators closely reflect the student population there are many schools that have few to zero african-american teachers in the school as a result of the african-american resolution as well as the dedication of the board and the community additional resources will be in place to support african american students next year decisions about exactly what will be provided with these additional resources are still to be determined we can move to our next slide these are slides that the board knows so i won't spend too much time on them but for the purposes of this discussion we're about 15 african-american and we can move on to our next slide we can move on to our next slide wanted to make sure the board and community had an idea of the african-american student enrollment across the district
014and you can see on this slide the schools with the highest percentage of african-american students on the left and the schools with the highest total number of african-american students on the right we can move to the next slide this is a slide about african-american staff and you can see the schools with the most african-american teachers the schools with um that you see that by elementary middle and high and then you'll also see schools that have zero or uh one african-american teacher i believe we have that wrong i think at olinda that they have one african-american teacher so if there's any um errors here i apologize for that but it's meant to give you a snapshot of what we look like as a district with african-american staff let's keep going you can see the s back
015performance of our african-american students and you'll see the difference between males and females in terms of percent met or exceeded and you can see significantly how american students are trailing other students in the district so give you a moment to take that slide in let's go to our next slide sorry the last slide was english language arts and this slide is mathematics so you know we do perform overall better in english language arts than we do in mathematics and that's work we're continuing to stay focused on and you'll see we're really struggling here um sadly our latino students are performing just a little bit better but you can see that our african-american students are our lowest performing subgroup here let's go to the next slide here you'll see the science test the science test we
016can go to our next slide here we have a few slides about our suspension rates that you can see i need to move my screen there you can see in the blue line the african-american suspension rate so it has trended higher than others but you can also see that we've been able to decline that number in 1819 we don't obviously have our final stats for 1920 but the board's resolution around positive climate the tremendous dedication and work of our school staffs our teachers administration support staff is really starting to help bring that number down let's go to our next slide here you'll see the african-american student graduation and a to g completion rate the graduation rate is the blue and you'll see that that has really ticked up over the past year and we saw
017tremendous growth uh almost 10 percent growth in the a to g rate and that's dropped down a little bit as well but overall that has been a positive place for our work with our african-american students and really proud of the work our high schools are doing let's continue to go and you'll see this is the california dashboard and you'll see the green as i mentioned the green is the graduation rate and that's really the most positive trend in the district with college and career and suspension rates following behind where we've done a nice job we continue to struggle in academic achievement the s back scores and chronic absenteeism our numbers aren't finished from this year we've had a better year with absenteeism and attendance this year than we have had last and this year as
018many folks know we didn't administer the sbac exams so we won't have that data but that really i think paints a good picture a disappointing picture but i think the real picture of where we're at in the district as most of you know we've joined the core data collaborative which is another uh way that we're looking at our data and instead of just looking at it simply from one year to the next this data really helps show how we're moving students and this also shows you the tremendous struggle that our district is having moving african-american students in their achievement so you'll see that in these areas elementary school middle school and high school let me move my screen for one minute in english language arts on the left and math on the right you'll see
019that we've really struggled to move our students so you know even though there many of them are coming in low we need to be able to move them and grow them the place we're doing all right is high school high school math so we've got an orange it's not great but it is better than the others so we continue to see you know some stronger movement in our high schools than we're seeing in our middles and our elementaries let's go to our next slide another thing we wanted to point out was where african american students are performing at or higher than the district average and you'll see that in english language arts on the left with the district average of 35 percent and in math on the right uh with the district at 24 and
020you can see the schools um where students are doing better than average um and note these are only the schools with 10 or more african-american test takers so we don't have that in every school and reminder that our the s back is not given at every grade level and in high school only one grade level let's move to our next slide here you'll see the schools where the difference between the percentage of african-american and percentage of white students meeting standards is the largest so that means that the percentage difference between the scores of african-american students and white students so these schools have the widest gap achievement gap as we commonly know that term let's go to our next slide so that's the data and that's the story um in terms of the data right now
021um we wanted to talk a little bit about the last five years and what's been happening there are many things that were in existence uh or before i i arrived and many people working at this uh before i arrived so 1516 uh was a year before i arrived and just making sure you know i'm honoring that and honoring all the work that's come before so you'll see that in 1617 we started the initiative around the kennedy family and the south richmond schools which is where our largest percentage of african-american students are we started to develop new schools uh to give african american parents and all parents options the mafinicio program began and we continued with our trauma-informed practices 1718 we continued to develop new models as parents asked us for those we developed out our
022k-8 models we implemented our positive climate resolution we added additional aps and vps we had all of our leaders go through workshops with the national equity partner at national equity project we deepened our partnerships with organizations like bright futures and rising scholars and we were awarded a million dollar school climate grant to continue to allow us to do this work and then we also began a sports league in the kennedy family to enable many of our students who can't afford to pay for soccer and aau and the sports to be able to do that so let's go to our next slide in 1819 we moved to the youth truth survey to get better data from our students they were the ones actually who initiated that and asked us could we move away from healthy kids
023and try something new we started to see the decline in african-american suspensions and the improvement in the a to g rates we changed our transfer policy to allow students to stay in their new school until the final year so if you transferred to a new school and you came in in third grade there was no chance that in fourth grade you'd be asked to leave because there were new resident students who took your spot the asset executive committee was formed and the a great success was that all of our kennedy elementary schools exited the red category on the dashboard this year to continue the work the african-american student resolution was passed we improved graduation rates we fully adopted the pbis system uh we now are working with the equal opportunities schools organization to ensure that
024more students have access to honors and ap courses in our high schools we are awarded 1.3 million dollars from the hewlett grant to make sure that our deeper learning experiences happen for our students inside the classrooms a black educator network has started we've expanded ethnic studies offerings multicultural books for classroom libraries we began a pilot at stage brought them out of csi status returned having all teachers return except one which is the trend that we've had there and we open the office of african american student achievement so a lot of work has happened and i really wanted to try to connect the dots um so people could see everything that we've put in place um as we work aggressively to make sure our african-american students are supported so i wanted to talk a little bit
025about the kennedy family initiative we're now in year three home to the largest population of african american students historically underserved schools with high teacher turnover so this was also meant as a teacher retention strategy to focus on these schools and it can this initiative consisted of a number of additional supports assistant principals in the schools leadership coaching a family sports league a community of practice for teachers and additional site dollars obviously we're in budget tight times but we continue to work to ensure as much of that initiative stays in place as possible we've seen some very positive results from this initiative and this was really one of the first things that i set out doing when i got here in partnership with the board in partnership with the teachers union and partnership with the community
026to really help support these schools every kennedy elementary school moved out of the red on the california dashboard we increased teacher retention in the kennedy schools and the elementary schools league was so so well attended that we've expanded it to all of the schools in richmond so i wanted to tell a success story we've got a lot of work to do but i wanted to tell a success story of kneestrom elementary school many folks ask like is it this program or is it that program and i really believe knee stream is a place where all of it has been brought together successfully we added the vp support we gave leadership coaching we have a strong african-american male leader leading the mafinichio program and on campus philanthropy has kicked in a full-time math coach they work
027through deeper learning practices especially around math and they've seen amazing results this year only seven students were suspended two african-american they've moved from two percent proficient to fifteen percent proficient in three years for african-american students let's go to our next slide you can see on this scatter plot um where they are and that is really really really impressive in terms of average growth and on this while african american students are not the top achieving band you can see how nistrom has started to significantly close the gap with the overall students and here african-american students outperform uh english learners so nistrom is is a real success story and we continue to go there to study what's happening but i believe it is the mix of all of these things coming together really well positive school climate
028training and support so i wanted to spend a few minutes talking about that the board passed a positive school climate resolution getting after the need to reduce disproportionality and discipline and this year we ensured that 95 percent of all of our schools completed our pbis tiered fidelity inventory so they could assess their school culture and climate and begin to move the work forward we implemented a plc for tier one in pbis focused on restorative practices the plcs use monthly reports to monitor african-american suspensions we've partnered with the santa clara county office of education which is a leader in pbis technical assistance and continued trauma-informed practices with a couple of new courses relationships matter and consequences and interventions we can go to the next slide we dramatically increased our trauma-informed practices trainings to our csos we've
029added experienced cso and safety specialists to ensure the physical student safety so we've really bumped up that infrastructure we continue to implement the sanford harmony sel curriculum across the district so that continues to grow and hopefully we have full implementation next year we've partnered with an organization called seeds to explore implementing implicit bias training across the district for next year and seeds is supporting best practices around student reintegration as students come back from juvenile hall back from expulsion and back from suspension and we have a district and county task force that actively meets uh and combs through our data to deter determine root causes of suspensions and we'll be developing training and further support for the district staff i really want to thank lashante smith and millie burns for their work here on their partnership
030here as well as phil johnson mike booker and the rest of the team that's helping with positive school climate throughout the district i want to talk a little bit about the mafinicio program one of the programs that is a signature program of this district a program that's paid through our past budget it's an after-school program for african-american students it features culturally relevant curriculum it features access to the arts including partnerships with the east bay center for performing arts uh access to engaging stem curriculum including partnerships with the calculus round table and the calculus round table is a wonderful organization led by a terrific african-american leader in our community and what you'll see in the mafinikio program is leadership by talented and experienced african-american educators with the belief that our young african-american students really need to
031be connected and touched by african-american mentors and educators and there's many many field trips throughout the bay area you'll see here some of the data on the mafinichio programs uh a little bit of some of their subcontractors who they work with and a little bit of the the money that that costs um so i won't read all of those uh notes to you but they're in your packet and here for you let's go on to the next slide i wanted to talk a little bit about the uc berkeley trio programs um so this is these are you know a really really deep thorough set of programs that we have in partnership with cal berkeley they're designed to increase college awareness access matriculation uh with uc ucb center for education partnerships the biggest part of this
032program is the dcac college advisor fellows at every comprehensive high school so we have a college advisor at every comprehensive high school who's dedicated to supporting students especially first generation students students whose families have not gone to college to help them see and understand the path to and through college we also partner with uc berkeley in the women in stem program the african american male pipeline program and they help us evaluate our a to g work and we get a deeper understanding of which of our students are really struggling to meet a to g requirements and how we can support that and they have another program called talent search so our partnership with berkeley is an amazing opportunity for us to continue to help african-american students and others bright futures is another program that we
033pay for out of the past budget it's an after-school enrichment support for african american students at the el cibrante location and it includes early childhood education family and parent engagement homework support social emotional support mentoring performing arts and youth summer employment and we've been proud to partner with bright futures the last few years you'll also see here some of the data and some of the outcomes self-reported the sites where the students come from and the total cost excuse me rising scholars last week we had an opportunity to hear from the rising scholars program thomas scott who you see there in the picture is one of our employees and the liaison to rising scholars so you got a chance to hear a lot about that but another program that's been historically paid for through the past
034program started specifically for african-american boys and opened up to more students of color over the past few years and you'll see some of the bullets that outline really what rising scholars is doing across our six district high schools also here another chart with some of the outcomes from rising scholars cost focus areas and the site served something we haven't talked about a lot and i'm really excited to share uh this evening is we're working with an organization called equal opportunity schools they work throughout the nation working to ensure that representation is as equal as it can be in advance placement classes so there's a process that happens where equal opportunity schools comes in they work with our schools they identify many many many talented students and really begin to discuss with them hey why are
035you not taking an ap class we think you would be great in an ap class and it works towards historically disadvantaged populations students were not often seeing in ap classes we know our ap classes are mostly white and asian so this is directly targeted to african american students latino students and we've started this project at pinol valley high el cerrito high and hercules high where we're seeing the greatest gaps between white and asian students in ap classes and black and latino students in ap classes so they've gone through this process this entire year and next year we will see many more students who have not been historically represented in ap classes there we will continue to pay for that through the hewlett foundation grant as part of that grant has a deep equity focus let's
036go on to our next slide another new program this year uh that kicked off for us a few weeks ago is nav to cal some of you may know that cal berkeley has a program called nav cal and nav cal helps students first generation students uh students who have not uh known the university system before really understand cal everything it has to offer um all of sort of the the cultural parts of being in higher education and so we're very lucky that the vice chancellor of the berkeley is division of equity and inclusion who's a wcc usd grad has kicked off a new program just for wcc usd called nav 2 cal where we are working specifically to recruit high achieving african-american and latino students to be enrolled at uc berkeley so we had about
03780 students on our first call two weeks ago and we're really excited about this program and what it can bring to our students our budget we have paid for some of the programs that i've talked about out of different pots of money and some of them have come directly from the past budget which is our programs for african american student success that budget is now a committed budget of seven million dollars per board resolution in january we obviously are going through major major state budget issues so that really moves to about 6.2 to 6.8 million dollars same ratio and as of writing this we've committed 5.6 million dollars to the past budget uh for next year while we're continuing to work to get all of that from our supplemental concentration budget with this serious serious
038budget issue in the state and some of the budget issues we've faced in the district we will pull from some different funds to get there and we know that we will get to the 6.2 to 6.8 while we continue to get to the supplemental concentration funds over time now our next steps are work with asset leaders community staff to determine the right expenditures going forward and because we are in the pandemic we really may determine that there are certain uh expenditures certain things that we need that are very different if we're in a virtual environment or we're back in a school environment so we've got some work to do over the coming six weeks to really determine those expenditures going forward so what's next for us i want to start by saying the core classroom
039experience must change for the majority of african american students that's where we find that the struggles really emanate from and that's where i'm excited to continue the work to improve this experience whether we're in the digital or physical the work we're doing around deeper learning the work we're doing around workshop the work we continue to do around our district to ensure the classroom experience is engaging empowering challenging the work we've laid out in our roadmap also next is hiring the new director of african american student achievement we have an item on the agenda this evening to look at the job description a few minor changes suggested from our asset team and that position will be posted tomorrow morning we also need to define the one-year and multi-year goals of the office of african american student
040achievement this includes academic achievement and representation in advanced classes where offered so we know that one person coming in as a director of african american student achievement can't do it all we've got to create a simple scope of work that's attainable and inspiring that really helps us say we believe these are the things in year one year two year three so that director in conjunction with staff and community can be very successful as i mentioned in the last slide we've got to determine the expenditures and programs to be funded by the past budget the primary focus area for this work is academic academic tutoring services and mental health supports these are the things we've heard loud and clear over time that we want to make sure the academic intervention the academic tutoring is there and
041the mental health support is there and especially in the pandemic time we're seeing more and more need for mental health supports across all of our students we need to ensure that asset and the african-american parent community continues as a strong partner to the district in district decision making including the past budget go to our next slide we need to ensure that school-based apacs are empowered and active in the 2021 school year we know we've had some years where we've done very well with that and other years not as strong and we want to make sure that every school has a place for african-american parents to come and discuss their experiences with other parents and with school leadership we've got to determine the all district all staff training needed for next school year to increase cultural
042awareness so we have to make sure that over the next couple of weeks we solidify what we're offering to everybody when they come back around implicit bias growth mindset trauma informed practices so we are as culturally aware culturally sensitive smart and reflective as we possibly can be that's not work that just happens in a one and done training it's work that's going to have to happen all year we've done a lot of that and we're going to continue to step it up we need to ensure that our african-american staff get proper timely and support where needed we've got to examine schools with few or no african-american staff places that we're seeing strong african-american progress like nystrom like de anza we are seeing a good amount of african-american staff not just teachers but staff kids are
043seeing themselves and many of the wonderful staff members that are around and i think we can probably show an even deeper data connection we just talked about teachers tonight but the wider staff so that's a piece of work for us we need to explore partnerships that were initiated by the previous director of american student achievement like one goal and king makers and see who else is out there that wants to partner with us to help another big ask has been that we ensure that contracted vendors meet set objectives before renewal and that we establish clear amos for new work so we are updating our processes and that is in progress dr wold martine blake are working together to make sure those processes are solid as can be and continue to get strengthened every year but
044i do want to call that out that is something that we've heard loud and clear and i want to note it that we're committed to making that work we need to restart the positive climate working group that had a that's had a bit of a some fits and starts in the last year between budget covid to get that working group up and going we're doing a lot of good work in that area and it's been a real highlight for the district but we want to make sure that that continues and we want to systematize ethnic studies courses and expectations for all of our high schools so while the ethnic studies courses are growing across our district black studies courses chicano studies we need to make a determination of how we're going to systematize that if
045there's going to be an expectation for all 9th graders what is that going to look like as an entire district process while while our schools are doing great to continue the course offerings i think that's my last slide so i know that's a lot and i don't usually uh talk a lot um but i really wanted folks to see the breadth of the work that's going on and i think the breadth of the work is going on because we know we have a lot of work to do we know we have a lot of outcomes to increase and there's many people across the board getting after it so my commitment is to continue to get after it with our team with our staff i really enjoyed the partnership with asap uh over the last couple
046months getting to know them more deeply in their leadership group um and again you know i thank a lot of the staff for for so many things that are going on and we've got big decisions to make because of covid and what we will resource and what we won't so i know there's a lot there i just want to thank everybody for taking the time to listen to this work and obviously this is a big team effort so with that i'll stop i know there's a little bit of public comment uh i know that there is um board discussion and we can take it from there so thank you thank you superintendent duffy and we do have some public comment now i'm mr walton yes president hernandez jarvis uh the first speaker is christine hatcher
047thank you ms hatcher good evening thank you um i wanted to a couple of things like first i kind of let my ego jump in the way riverside had four african-american teachers not one and i understand that sometimes the details get away from us but i wanted to make a comment on um when we look at certain schools and and opportunities that they're afforded that other schools may not have and so this is not to take away anything from the good work that is happening at nystrom we celebrate that anytime african-american kids brown kids are successful that's a win but i would offer the following at riverside elementary school helmed by a black woman myself without the opportunities and supports that niche stream has i think that the progress that we have been making also
048is significant and i haven't had opportunity to talk to anyone about that and i'm sure that i have several colleagues within west contra cost unified who have experienced that same thing so while i appreciate again the work and i appreciate that we are taking steps toward eradicating these gaps of opportunity that exists for all of our kids in the district i would ask that we also be a little more inclusive um and and really look to the leaders that we do have african-american leaders and include us in the discussion around what needs to happen for african-american kids in this district if we are truly going to be disrupting these systems and structures of inequity and marginalization and really get into what makes it a diverse and successful uh working group and and district so thank
049you the next public speaker is estella de pause good evening president hernandez jarvis board members and staff my name is estella de paz i'm from hercules and i'm also the school side council chair for hercules high school before i call out a concern um i'd like to make sure to share with you guys that uh our principal miss moses over at ohlone asked that i correct a couple of data elements on the powerpoint deck and that is that in ohlone we've got 101 african american students making that 22 percent of our student body and one african-american teacher um superintendent duffy on slide 14 you highlighted several hurricane schools and we are really really happy and proud of that and as you have said moving the achievement gap requires a tremendous a tremendous amount of commitment
050and hard work from everyone in our community it really takes a village to educate a child in hercules that includes the role of our sros who have been our first responders for when one of our young folks is in crisis or making bad decisions that said our community currently has got a lot of conversations happening about what we would do now what is our plan that the srl program has been defunded are we expecting our administrators and teachers to act as first responders we really need to know what the plan is and we'd like to know before our schools are open thank you miss allen thank you uh good evening board of trustees um if anything this presentation has really highlighted the need to me um for having access to the data um parents have
051asked for this um and it's really important because you can very easily um present a picture that really isn't reflective of the reality so talking about growth does not really highlight the status um it's a way to manipulate with numbers um which is a big problem because still in the two areas that aren't superintendent tonight has highlighted as uh showing tremendous growth in climate and in graduation rates african american students are still suspended 10 times higher than any other group so while you make it seems like there's been growth we still aren't successful there we're talking about graduation rates increasing but at the same time only 30 percent of our seniors are graduating with enough credits to be able to attend a four-year school um all of us have heard of those students who just
052keep getting passed on and this again feels like the the way that what we're doing is we're just passing kids on who really aren't prepared to do anything after they uh finish high school so this the access to the these numbers and the perceptions that we uh provide with that is a real key and an important piece of the picture here because still we don't have the because it's about the academics it's about the academics it's about the academics and i thank you uh mr duffy for saying that you have heard that uh now um and uh hopefully as we move forward and we're trusting in that and are grateful for the opportunities that we have had to sit with you and talk about this that next steps will really stress that and that the
053plan that we come up with is comprehensive in scope and not scattered as this continues to look um to us so we're hopeful um we're in it we're not going away um and we're committed to making sure that our students achieve and that they are granted access to successful programming and services that really raises the bar and raises the pr the potentiality that we know um is in every single one of us thank you for your time thank you our next public speaker is uh maisha gash good evening can you hear me yes we can so good evening um i am my shaharis gash i am a teacher at kennedy high school i am a graduate of kennedy high school as well um one winner when is this district going to give kennedy a chance
054to really thrive um i had mr greenwood as a principal i had mr john as a principal and right now my heart is hurting because coach enos has gone to be with the lord he was pivotal to my years in school now i work with some really great people at kennedy what kennedy has been lacking is consistent sustained leadership from the principal to the admin staff because kennedy is a difficult place to be and granted some of you have been on the border not been on the board in the past 15 years that i've been in this district but when is the time gonna come when this district when this board when the leadership says we are going to make a strong concerted effort to pour into and to empower and to support kennedy high
055school i pray that that time is now because i love my school i love richmond i love my community and i love my kids and they deserve better than what they have been given over the years that i have been in this district it's great that we're going to start building partnerships but key makers of oakland has been around for a little bit of time when i looked into some things why hadn't we reached out they have proof and what they're doing hiring black teachers in this district so kids can see teachers that look like them it is not the easiest thing to do but as a member of the bargaining team some years ago i always had conversations with the leadership of the district about it's more than going to a hbcu you have
056to build relationships with people you have to tell people the truth about why you want them to come and what they're going to be walking into and not that we just want warm bodies i think my closing part is i was so hurt after waiting so long for omar wanderer was that position to be created and then for him to leave granted it was something about relational trust i don't know all the ins and outs of it but it was very hurtful because he was building relationships among you know staff and we're going to be going to trainings and whatnot and now we have to start over we're behind the eight ball when it comes to our black children because the person who was in this position that way we waited so long for it
057is now gone and we're starting all over so in closing i just pray and i mean i'm sincere i pray that you guys ladies and gentlemen put kennedy at the top quit treating us like we're the stepchild of this district because my kids our kids deserve better thank you for this period of time thank you our next public speaker is jamila fultz miss hi my name is jamila smith and i'm jamila smith foes and i understand the vastness of the district i am a teacher and i believe there needs to be a clear theory of action as it retains african-american students what are the districts deliverable to students what are their deliverables to parents and what are their deliberates to the teachers and the staffs thank you for your time i look forward to hearing
058your responses thank you our next speaker is zulon harrison ms harris hello good evening my concern is that that was a lovely presentation we looked at beautiful however what what is the board going to do to ensure this happens a lot of things sounding good but just ensuring that we really have the data from programs you guys said the board put in place for evaluation tool for programs to get looked at to make sure that they were adequate to address uh educational outcomes that hasn't been happening so can we um black parents know that you guys are gonna make sure that these programs that we're funding work i brought peace makers to you when i first came and there are programs and service providers in our community besides the ones you have the superintendent has
059identified that we need to bring in too because the children can have mentors and leaders and other that look like them that they can also feel safe and learn in education besides the ones that you have pointed out but all our programs need to ensure that we have the outcomes we're looking for in changing education for black students in our district that they're reading that they're graduating and being able to be productive citizens not just getting out of the school and checking your box and also i just wanted to make sure that we we involve parents to the point where we need uh the district as far as the education we need the board and the community all to make this work but leaving someone out the table because you could it always causes chaos
060because you're able to to create the vision and black people and black students and black educators and community partners don't need division so getting uh most the most representative you can at the table i think is the best way to go when you're looking at best practice for people and trying to make a change for our children thank you our next public speaker is william mcgee mr mcgee thank you good evening board superintendent staff and community my name is william mcgee principal at dejan middle school and i appreciate the presentation tonight thank you for having it a couple of things did resonate with me and some colleagues who have been in communication but glaringly are the hiring practices and so really looking at supporting with hiring practices and human resources and not only with hiring
061but the sustaining and support once you do hire employees is very crucial and critical one of the things that i would like to state is give testimony about dejan middle school it's a school that has improved tremendously and we're continually trying to improve but it is tough when we have ideas that we don't get the full support for and so something that i'm referring to is we just lost one of our assistant principals who was very effective because of monies and hiring practices and when you have people that want to work at a school like dejan middle school want to work at a school like kennedy coronado king richmond high school and we cannot get them back in that's tough and i have lost an assistant principal who ensured that we only missed 23 of
062our 460 children during distance learning and we had a high percentage of black children participate in distance learning and this man made it a point for him to really track down the children with the help of teachers and classified staff so this speaks volumes to a void that will be missed at our school site who also started a peer court to reduce suspensions and hold children accountable i am excited that i do hear mr duffy stating he is going to work with us because west contra costa administrators association has a lot of good ideas that if we work in tandem can be implemented to sustain people working at our schools and again i'll talk about dejan one of the toughest middle schools that has the highest and duplicated percentage of pupils and what i have
063a plan for to do with our money but am not allowed to there are positions identified in the dl cap that do not work for our school and so we do need to have you all reach out to the sites really polis we're there day to day we know what can work well for our community give us that opportunity that's been afforded to other schools that we're stating have improved i really do feel that if we work with the sites we can really make the growth that we want and when we do get the new director it'll be paramount to allow that person the autonomy to do the work and really assist us in what we need to do so again i would say please look at policies and procedures and really work with the
064sites because again there is money that we can use as resources that we know can help our student achievement thank you our next public speaker is othory christian mr christian hello can you hear me can you hear me yesterday all right good evening board um my name is o3 christian and um you know based on hearing the presentation this evening um just looking at the overall picture of the african-americans uh in this district uh if we don't do the right things to make it to build the education from elementary that's our crucial point if the resources are not going into all of these schools uh to service the african-american students to help them to go to the next level we have to ask the question what what have we done why have we failed and
065why have we allowed these things to be like this over the years so my question is what are we going to do about it we just can't talk about it you know a lot of times we do a lot of talking but we don't put the action to the road to make it happen so um and true people will true leaders will make it happen and so you're looking at how many african-american teachers we have what are we doing to reach out to recruit uh male and female teachers what are we doing to improve the status of of of the status in the district of african-american young people so um what i'm saying is to um tonight is that we got to show action even despite winning the major budget crisis in despite me and
066all of this we still can do some things to make some things happen because i've i've been around to know as a community activist in richmond for a very long time i'm from richmond and i understand what's going on in the dynamics of things why things the way it is thank you thank you and our fun our final uh public comment comes from martine blake miss blake good evening everyone i just wanted to raise a quick point in regards to next steps and advocate that we also insert um some structure or something for our students to lend student voice to this plan for them to contribute input um you know i've learned a lot from parents and aipac and i think we've gotten incredible insight from them an incredible perspective from our parents our parents
067have even adopted a motto nothing for us without us and i think that that same sentiment extends to our student and that we're missing an opportunity by not embedding their voice in this process thank you thank you that concludes public comment thank you mr walton and thank you to all the members of our community who share their public comment with us this evening student trustee vasquez absent i'm from the meeting today uh so trustee cuevas oh trustee trustee vasquez welcome i have not i have not seen you yay i didn't know about this meeting until now so i'm going but i'm here now so oh no well thank you so much for being here so great to see you okay so if you're ready um to get started with comment uh you can for sure
068start and then we'll continue with the rotation of trustee cuevas trustee phillips thanos and lada thank you okay thank you very much um quickly i just want to let you guys know that i am indeed on my bed so i'm sorry that i'm looking so informal it's the only place i could get really good lighting um and again sorry that i am late um but this is yeah i'm really i'm really excited to be here and uh able to talk on this and so i think first place i would like to start mr duffy um when i looked at the s back in the last five years it actually looks like the african-american community is doing a little worse each year albert einstein said that the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over
069and over and expecting a different response or answer right so i'm wondering what about this year what about the information you just gave us now is going to be any different than it has been in the past what is it what how is this new information this new hope or like how is it going to be any different i just want to know that i'm i'm actually really frustrated right now like we're in 2020 and we're still having these conversations i think we should have had a decent answer a long time ago this is frustrating to me this whole topic is really frustrating to me honestly um i think one thing yeah so what it seems to me right now is that nothing we're doing right now is helping or working so why are we
070doing the same thing over and over again what i think we need to do is we need to come from a new place new stance new everything just try a completely new way of doing it and i think one way we could do this is by trusting in our young african americans to to take lead for other african americans i think if i was given like some time and some resources i myself could even help with this but nobody is asking for other educated african-americans to help educate other african-americans i think because i mean let's be honest after young african-americans it seems to me like personally that it's harder for them to listen to a white teacher or to someone with white authority right then it could be to like another black student or a
071black teacher um so i think one thing that we could be doing is giving is like yeah is having other students try and help um one way we could do this um for an example would be through black student unions i think i go to lsu to high school and the black student union there so far isn't as strong as i would like it to be i'm hoping for some big changes this coming year um but still i think if we were to focus on those kids or like focused on giving the power to other young african americans to help push each other what could possibly like what can you do like what could be better than young african americans helping push each other on i'd like obviously right now having a bunch of white
072teachers is not helping having all these advanced classes with mostly white kids is not helping so we need to do something different and i think the presentation mr duffy was pretty good but i think there was nothing new and that's what i want to see and if you so if you want to follow up with me afterwards and talk to me about this i would definitely be down i know that i'm not the only african-american student who would be down for this as well we need to reach out to other young african-americans because i bet you every african-american right now that is doing pretty well none of them are going to say no to helping other african-americans succeed as well we want to all see each other do better um i don't know i'm sorry
073that i'm all fired up but this really means a lot to me and i just think that like we should know to be doing something different by now and that nothing is helping so we should be completely coming at it from a new direction and i think the first place to start is with our students asking our students to help the other students that's that's that's kind of the reason that i'm here and that i'm doing that i'm on this board as a representative and why i do all the other activism that i do is to help my other fellow african is to help everybody but especially the young african-americans because i see how they are struggling and it's not that they're not capable of learning or that they are stupid it's because they are
074not giving the right kind of help so think if we had the right kind of help for these students how much better everything could be like i think it doesn't have to take a bunch of money or like a bunch of resources or a bunch of this or that to really fix it but it needs to be the right way that we're coming at it so i could go on but i think i'm going to stop right there thank you for the time thank you vasquez thank you so much trusty um and definitely uh you know i think that we need to continue to hear the student uh perspective specifically from high school and middle school i think that this is something that that is a an ongoing message that we're hearing loud and clear
075so thank you for reiterating that and i can't find my list let me find my list but um trustee trustee clevis is next i believe yes jessie glovas thank you so i'm going to be pretty brief um but i will say that i don't i don't think our student trustee should ever apologize for filling something deep within your spirit and your soul about how your reaction i think it's definitely the challenge we have is how do we actually take um our intentions and make them real and i do think that it is something uh after five years have come to the conclusion that it really is about how do we activate everything um and it is about really the kinds of decisions that we're willing to make and there's one that i don't think we
076talk about enough and that is what are we willing to sacrifice what are individual parts of this district what individual parts of our system willing to sacrifice to invest in our students that need it most uh let me give you an example of what might be coming up in terms of decision making um our community was generous enough just to pass a new school bond facilities bond measure measure r just the way it happened for decisions that were made previously and i've always believed high schools are in fact the flagships of every one of our communities and our school uh families we've had every uh school significantly refurbished and re re-um reconstructed with the exception of kennedy high school and richmond high school so we will again have a conversation about facilities master plan and
077the question will come up will we make the decision to prioritize those schools or will will we not and i guarantee you that it i won't hear everybody unanimously saying yes do that but i certainly know that that's a symbolic indication of whether we support our highest need students at this moment and so that's where the rubber here hits the road because i spent a lot of time hearing about what works and i've really started to really understand and kind of come to really deconstruct why things don't happen and at the end of the day i've constantly talked about it is about investing more and folks might disagree and that's okay because that's what our country is about about different perspectives but the clear choices we make is usually because it's framed as a zero-sum
078game if i invest in our highest need students here that must mean somebody else is going to think i'm not getting what i need and we hear those dynamics played out in the district so i do think that part of the issue is going to be where the will is to actually everybody think about what are we willing to do for each other to get things done um but i don't question in terms of where the shortcomings are the data we talked about the data we've known about it and we will always find reasons why we don't hit the target oh we changed the tests in the last five years oh we've changed curriculum over we don't have enough money there are all of these reasons why but at the end of the day nobody's
079asking what are we willing to sacrifice and prioritize with the money we have and what does that mean when it's other folks will feel and rightly so we'll want to know well why not meet and the bottom line is we're going to have to say because this is our priority and our investment if we're going to further outcomes equity outcomes for all students and i don't think this district has been ready to have that conversation ever in the last five ten years we have good intention but we haven't talked about how are we willing to restructure in ways that mean even different staffing patterns at our schools looking at what the specific needs are at our specific schools the way we run education now is really a by formula so many because there's also some
080interest in doing that because that's what we thought would maintain equality so i i do think that you're that our everybody's comments are are well taken and i would just add for the um conversation in our discourse that and still we until we start talking about what we're willing to sacrifice and what folks are willing to give up for the sake of furthering and we're going to keep keep coming back to the same place sadly i know i've talked to some leaders within the community and this is the same conversation that they had with their children when they were going through our schools the same conversation they had with their parents when they were younger and that's the thing the question is for our student trustee how how can you help inspire us so that
081you're not sitting here 25 years from now with the same gray hair that i have and still having the same conversation but maybe it's time to start asking what are we willing to give instead of of what i'm not getting and that's from everybody that concludes my comment thank you trustee cuevas justin phillips thank you very much i'm gonna be looking away from the screen that everybody's on because i'm working off of two computers and i'm keeping notes on one and so i'm going to go over these notes so what i want to do is i want to start by identifying a couple of issues we all know that there are myriad problems but i want to start by identifying a couple of issues one is anecdotal and one is from the presentation itself so
082i'll start with the anecdotal one uh since we've been out of school i have had several african-american families come to me and tell me that their children are doing better outside of the classroom that their children are blossoming that their children are blooming and that they see a huge difference and when i say outside of the classroom i mean outside of the school house and the concern that these parents have brought to me is if he's able to do this or if she's able to do this what was going on before that caused the problem what was the hindrance before because my child is clearly capable and i think we have a fundamental problem when we have parents and i don't know if anyone has shared anything like this with any of you but we
083have a fundamental problem when we have parents coming to school board members and saying uh and i get it distance learning is not for everyone and we have access issues as well around the internet and connectivity but when we have parents coming and saying you know what my kid's not in that room anymore and he is doing better we should be concerned about that we should be concerned that there are parents who and i'm talking about african-american parents right now who don't want to send their kids back because they believe that the environment that their children came out of uh was actually a negative environment for their children and being and being outside a traditional school that their children are actually doing better there's a fundamental breakdown in that and it needs to be uh
084examined because it should be the opposite it should be kids are not in school because of covid and therefore there's learning loss um kids are not in school because of kobe therefore they're doing worse but with some families we're seeing the opposite and the kids didn't get any smarter over the last two months their aptitude didn't go up over the last two months for some of them the difference is that they're in a supportive nurturing and positive environment and that's not always the case it is the case in some spaces but in some spaces uh frankly in a lot of spaces it's not and so that's that's the problem that i want to identify that's anecdotal the problem that i want to identify from the presentation is that graduation rates are going up and someone
085when you say well mister how in the world is it a problem that graduation rates are rates are going up the problem is and uh ms vera allen i think called in and said something similar to this or alluded to this but the problem is that the graduation grades are growing up going up but the kids scores are not going up so what we're doing is we're graduating more children who are not college or career ready and that has been a problem in urban school districts forever the problem of passing the child along and not giving him or her what they actually need to be successful once they get outside of our doors so great kudos on the graduation going up but what happens to children when they graduate and they're not college or career
086ready and i say college or career because we have children who have different interests who have different likes who have different needs and aptitudes and they should be able to springboard from this space this k-12 space to college or career and they're not able to do that next after i've identified just those two problems because i think they summarize a lot i want to talk about what has been done so mr duffy um you want to answer these questions uh i know i don't have forever i'm going to go through some of this and you could reply when you want but when i heard the presentation i saw a lot of legacy programs uh matter of fact almost everything that i saw was a legacy program so the current administration has been in place for
087about four years and the question is what has actually been done four years ago we knew we had a problem with our african-american students around their achievement for various reasons and we've had presentations uh over that period of time where we reiterate that there's a problem and what has actually been done when i look at the presentation i see a repeat of legacy programs and then i see things like the kennedy family initiative well this presentation is about african-american student achievement the kennedy family initiative is not an initiative targeted for african-american students not saying it's a bad initiative but it is not designed to alleviate the issues academically that african-american students are having i heard you know vps or vps in the uh presentation everybody knows i love vps i've advocated for more vps but
088those vps are not targeted interventions for african-american students again this is a presentation about african-american students i heard we have given the csos more training i don't know what in the world that has to do with african-american students i've heard you know we're increasing you know mental health trauma services again that's not a targeted intervention for african-american students and while i'm on the mental health and trauma i just want to take a moment and say true it it it is true that trauma is an issue in the african-american american community but it's also true that trauma isn't new we were traumatized on our way to america and we've been traumatized ever since we set foot on america and this school district is not going to and even if it wanted to doesn't have the capability
089to erase uh or the resources to erase all of the trauma that african-american students have experienced and quite frankly uh unless something seriously changes uh in america will continue to to experience as a people and the reason that i'm bringing this up because trauma for me while it's real i almost feel like it's becoming a buzzword that you just kind of throw out trauma trauma trauma trauma and i think what that does is it gives people some excuses because these kids are so traumatized we can't teach them these kids are so traumatized they can't learn and until we fix these broken kids hey we're off the hook because they're broken they are mentally defective and so we're just going to talk about trauma trauma trauma trauma trauma because it makes us feel good but also
090what it does is it takes the onus away from us doing our job black people have been traumatized since we've been black people here and i don't mean that uh you know to be flippant i mean it because it's the truth it's the truth and so as long as we stay on this and again i'm not saying that trauma is not real but our primary goal is to teach these kids so they can get out of our district and take care of themselves because what is happening now is we're graduating kids who can't go get good decent paying jobs and get health care for themselves i will tell you this if i had a choice between spending money on had equal money and i had a choice between spending money on making sure that these
091kids left our district academically sound and prepared are making sure that these kids left this district with their social or emotional issues resolved i'm gonna tell you which one i pick i pick academic and i pick academic because i want because i want them to leave here and be able to go get a good job and take care of themselves and take care of their families because guess what when you can't do that that creates a whole nother level of trauma because now you're out there struggling and now you're out there hustling trying to figure out how to take care of your family because you were not given the skills in school that you were supposed to but you were given all of these other services i'd rather have a child be able to get
092a job with good health care and pay for his own or her own mental health insurance and be able to take care of his or her family that's my opinion i know some people may be upset about what i just said but i believe that we're supposed to be sending kids out of here ready for college and career and we're not doing that i heard the office of african american student achievement that is a target targeted intervention but it's not really accurate that we actually have an office we have it we had a director we're going to hire a director but that is a one-man band i don't consider that an office so i think we should just speak of it the way it is it's true that the black educators network is being created
093or has been created but that has nothing to do with the central office that's because some black parents and black educators decided you know we need to band together and do some self-help and i'm very glad that they did that but the question is what has the administration done since it's been here to actually address these issues i heard about one goal for example and i'm just going to tell you because this is the first opportunity that i've gotten a chance to say something about it personally i am opposed to creating at the anza high school or any other high school a class that just has black children because this is i although you know if kids decide when they leave here that they want to go to an hbcu i i support that but
094that's not what this space is this is a high school this is an integrated high school and i believe that they should be able to attend classes uh and that they should attend classes with children of other races um so i i don't support that uh idea i want to talk a little bit about some of the solutions that have come up and that i i've heard and some of the things that i think that i've said in the past i know trustee laura has talked about ethnic studies i've talked about it as well i think we should actually have a department of ethnic studies not this kind of ad hoc one-off thing that we kind of have and if we're going to actually talk about how do we level up or scale up and
095do it in a coordinated way i think it should be a department of ethnic studies president hernandez jarvis has talked on multiple occasions about an office of equity because we keep having these equity conversations uh as a board but there is no one really driving that work and she has said this this is her idea so i do like to give credit where credit is due and it's a conversation that we should have when we look at the scores that these children have um and it's not just about scores but the scores do mean something and it means something regarding their ability to do work work that is very critical and that will actually have an impact on what they're able to do successfully in the future we need to do in my humble opinion
096these children need rapid remediation right now we're talking about african-american students but the truth of the matter is i'm going to bring everybody else in for a minute the overwhelming majority of our school district the kids in our district need rapid remediation and i get it how do you do that i've been talking about let's go learn for a long time i really believe that we are doing ourselves a disservice by not at least hearing a presentation from them to see what they can do we had a meeting last week where we talked about diagnostics and assessments and all of the things that we need to do in the covert environment that program does all of that and it's able to do rapid remediation and if people don't like it or i think more highly
097of it than i should people can just say no we don't want to do it we looked at the presentation we don't want to do it but the idea of not having a presentation around a program that could really help these kids i i don't think that's right i heard pd as a solution but the truth of the matter is our teachers our staff are not actually required to do pd so and this is bigger than just this this single incident that we're talking about but if we're really saying you know we want all of our people to have implicit bias training or we want all of our people to have any kind of training uh for that matter um that means pd has to be mandatory because if it's not we're always going to
098have these starts and fits it's always going to be hit and miss and we need to move to a space where pd is mandatory and i understand because of the contract that means that there needs to be a talk with the bargaining units around what how do we do that but we need to have that discussion because we're not we're talking about training people and then we put on a pd and tell them they don't have to come if they don't want to so it's just it's a lot of talk i heard more support for african american staff but in this one call i've heard principal moses call in i've heard principal hatcher call in i've heard principal mcgee call in all african-american principals and it is very clear that nobody reached out to them
099before this presentation happened so again if we're going to collaborate what does that actually look like well at a minimum it means actually reaching out to folks and and and listening and we have some people uh in this district uh and what i'm about to say applies really across the board we have some people in this district who are very strong in what they do very talented um who know their stuff and what we need to do in my opinion is sometimes when we not sometimes every time we see somebody like that we need to reach down and you can't see my hands but i'm literally reaching down we need to reach down into the organization and pull people up who are ready and able who are here already to be able to do that
100work and we have some folks so we're going to collaborate let's collaborate but i'm going to tell you what i've heard ultimately in this in this presentation um is i've heard work that's already been going on so it's it's not new i've heard work that other people have created or started uh just because it's important to them and it hasn't come out of the central office i have not heard a plan a concrete plan to address these students and and their needs and i'm gonna i'm gonna say this you know however rude or or what not it may be but if it's true it's true our student board member you know he said you know in the last i think he said four or five years he said every year african-american student achievement gets worse
101and you know and i'm just gonna i'm gonna put this in your lap mr duffy and ask you because that's how long you've been here and so we could talk about plans and we could talk about how you know the last couple of months it's been good to you know talk to the asap people but at what point are we going to change things these children but is it accurate is it true that every year since the superintendent's been here african-american student achievement has gotten worse and i'm done but you know we're going to change something then let's actually change something and stop talking because people are tired of talking to jesse thank you very much president hernandez jarvis um i'd like to thank the public and trustee vasquez simula for sharing their thoughts tonight
102it's a message that we need to hear and keep hearing i completely agree with trustee cuevas that this work is not a zero-sum game i don't know what the name is for the opposite of a zero-sum game but i firmly believe in that opposite perspective um i've been an active advocate for culturally relevant curriculum um and i have literally noticed um the power of this in the last couple of weeks last couple of months actually our trustee vasquez simula has been on fire in a very positive way and that's because he is currently exploring an amazing curriculum called social change and he is learning math he is learning english he is learning communications he is learning a ton of stuff the guy is on fire right now because in my mind he's looking at culturally
103relevant curriculum so interesting i have a few questions specifically about the presentation when i look on slide 15 it talks about s back performance and it talks about the greatest difference between african-american and white students meeting the standards is all schools that are in the el cerrito family and mr duffy i'm just wondering if you have any particular perspective to share on that that's on the ela side not on the math side i'm sorry i don't have the slide in front of me can you say that one more time okay so um it's it's as it's slide number 15 uh 2018 19 s back performance schools where the difference between the percent of african-american and percent of white students meeting standards is the largest 50 or higher and all those schools are in the el
104cerrito family and i'm just wondering what perspective you have to share on that well i think um you know we have pockets of high wealth in the district i think you see in the el cerrito family um you know pockets of high wealth and there's some of the highest uh performers within the district um so you'd also expect to see higher performance of african-american students so i don't have the socioeconomic status in front of me but we also know that at times even our high income african american students are not performing as well as our high income white students and i think that's part of what we're seeing in the el cerrito corridor as well as just seeing very high scores in general so it really stands out that we have this issue in el
105cerrito specifically um that we have to continue to tackle okay thank you um on slides 25-33 of the presentation we've described a number of different programs and i'm wondering right now do we have a master plan that is driving those or is that part of what on slide 35 the third bullet says define the one-year and multi-year goals of the office of african-american student achievement would they be like creating complaints i don't i don't have a feeling and i could be wrong like we don't have a master plan with milestones and people responsible for outcomes driving the work we're doing to try and support african-american achievement right now please correct me if i'm wrong we do not the goal was to have that built out through the director of african american student achievement begin to
106start that work so we could clearly define exactly as you said what do we want to see in one year three year five year and i think that is not just um you know proficiency percentages but it is you know radically increased numbers of students in ap classes radically increased numbers of students in advanced music classes all of the things where we're seeing absolute under representation in our district those are the places that we need to get after and call out these are our goals for one three five years but we have to do that mutually okay thank you um on slide 34 the first paragraph talks about with state reductions our target uh for the uh african-american student success budget is 6.2 to 6.8 million and then the next paragraph says as of this
107writing we've committed 5.6 million dollars to the past budget and then um back uh earlier this month on the 10th when we adopted the budget slide 32 said that we had completed allocations to the african-american program of 3.12 million plus we have summer allocations anticipated about 3.5 million so i guess what i'm literally wondering here is like right now we passed a budget how much do can we are able to say how much is in that budget right now to support african-american student achievement and maybe that's a question for dr wold or maybe you know that or that's not handy well what we do know is we know our total revenue that's what we know so we know all the money that we're getting in next year and so now we're in this process of
108reallocating dollars to support uh the resolution uh the strategies um the work and so you know that's what we're doing right now so we're not getting new money but we are little by little saying okay we now can move this money over we now can move this money over we found another way to do x kind of to miss cuevas point what are we willing to give up okay we're not going to be able to do that we're going to do that in a different way so we can make this money available initially the resolution was driven by this idea or the money um connected with the resolution was driven by this idea of uh proportional representation through the supplemental concentration right so that's where we now say okay we're going to follow that format
109at 6.2 to 6.8 million dollars but we know that that's not easy for us to get to out of supplemental dollars this coming year that's hard it's even harder in the budget situation so we are saying what can we give up around the district in other places what do we have that can be put towards this effort and so that's how we're getting there right so the board decided to put another million and a half from the uh sro contracts there so that adds to the pool so that's how we're getting there okay thank you for that um on slide 36 uh a third up from the bottom bullet says ensure that contract vendors meet set objectives before renewal and establish clear amos for new work um updated process in progress and i'm really happy
110to see us to see us write that down and you know we have all these programs that we're operating right now and as of the end of the year or as of some point time during the year we're actually running these programs with the sense that we're going to be able to tell we're going to know that they had goals and objectives and we met them or met them partially because of covid i'm just wondering like with all the current things we're doing and i don't i don't know which of them quote work well or are they meeting their goals or they're working but if we did something else would it work better so i'm just kind of wondering do we have anything in place to be uh measuring the efficacy of the programs we
111have in place right now we do we do i think you know folks have asked that we strengthen that but you know every contract does demand a set of deliverables um every service provider has a set of targets that they need to hit so we have absolutely something to measure against that at the end of the year you know the covet situation makes things a little bit different because we have to take that into account but for anybody who's coming back to work with us we do have what they said their their stated objectives were or their deliverables as you see in the contract um and i know we've talked about that in detail and we have something to measure against we have some of those are finished and in where providers have sent in
112year-end reports we're analyzing that and i know both dr wold who's in charge of contracts and martine blake who's in charge of community partnerships continue to work together to make sure that that process is strong okay thank you one last question here like um i have to confess i'm not completely clear on [Music] how the amount in the past budget is related to or is the same as or is different than the 7 million or the 6.2 or the 6.8 or whatever we're basically saying we're going to assign as a result of the aasat resolution sure i'll try to explain that so in the past is part of the l cap the supplemental concentration we had lots of different programs that we would fund one of them was pass the programs for african american students
113and that was around 800 000 i believe maybe a little bit more that we allocated annually uh through lcap through the supplemental concentration so what we're going to do now is we're going to create a pass budget or a pass fund where monies that are coming from different buckets will funnel into that past budget and will have a past budget that's sort of cumulative i guess maybe as a good word to use that covers it so money might be coming in from supplemental coming in from former police contracts etcetera etcetera but it will form uh one pot of dollars that then can be allocated out okay and is that essentially the aasat money or is it still a little bit different than the aasit money well i think that's something we're going to have to
114work to clarify because i think the aasat is just like um the mdac or other groups there to give strong recommendations about how we use that dollar how we use those dollars okay um so you know just like the um mdac gives recommendations about how to use title three dollars or how to use dlcap dollars for supporting english learners asat gives recommendations presents a budget um and we work together in that and then obviously the staff brings uh forward to the board the final budget okay thank you that's all my questions right now thank you sure thank you joseph trusty letter yes uh thank you president hernandez jarvis i first of all want to uh thank um our student trustee uh trustee doewit um because every time you speak not only do you identify those
115problems there's a lot of people identify those problems but what i notice is that you do something you you contribute something you come up with an idea you are constructive in that way and i and and that's that's what uh you know is powerful in your in your when you speak and i'm grateful for that you know um i'm thank you for the presentation it was very thorough but like has been um you know those programs are called interventions they're called interventions for a reason because the system is broken so we need these interventions to try to bring up you know people that are if only through the cracks and so the problem really is beyond just the interventions i mean there's parts of those that are just beautiful they work they're we've had some
116great success but the problem is really systemic the problem is really institutionalized and it's not just our district it's everywhere and it's all districts and it's this society it's systemic racism and it's deep deep deep uh structural and that is the work that is the real work to identify those structural policies that perpetuate and maintain the systemic racism and you know sometimes i think it's it's almost it's not what they say it's normalized we don't recognize it sometimes it and that's that's the harder work it um and it's harder to solve of course but um that's where we're going to start i think but maintaining of these interventions are are great and i think uh part of those there's pieces in there that real gems and you think well then that what they're doing there
117that should be institutionalized that should become a place not a an intervention that's separate from from the district so there's a way that these a lot of these have can be uh need to be um blended in with what we're doing and um so uh i'll just end with that that this is a lot a lot a lot more work than oh then we realize and uh but i i'm always an optimist and i think we can get to work and identify those policies and and help to change them get rid of them or think of new policies and better policies and that's i think where the work is okay well thank you very much bye thank you jesse lotta um so i i want to begin sharing my perspective just on on the way
118that you know thank you superintendent duffy for the presentation but on the way that there's a difference between schooling and education and i think that a lot of the the way that i think african american students and other students too have been um schooled not necessarily educated in the way that they should be like their peers like their white peers is something that we cannot ignore and i want to thank um student trustee vasquez for sharing his experience and talking again about you know where he's coming from with his ideas and and just really being open and straightforward about his perspective on having peer support groups and black student unions um that that provide that type of support and mentorship um across the board to peer groups and peer organizations and so i just i
119think about the the purpose of schooling versus the purpose of education so if we're going to do schooling we're going to teach about procedures of our processes about how to do things how to do things that are necessary um you know for adult life but with the focus on the how to the mechanical as well and and when we think when i think of boarding schools of schools that are for assimilation um it's a lot about the cultural norms that are passed down and when when i think of education i think about the knowledge the actual critical thinking the values the the content uh the curriculum that is used that gets passed down and that is used to to teach students to enable them to grow their brains not just to learn how to do
120something for the sake of doing it because somebody told you that you have to know how to do it but you actually understand the reason why you need to be growing and learning and what your purpose and outcome is as a learner as a student um so i i appreciated the questions and the points that the other trustees brought up and i i would really like for us to see um a use of an evaluation tool that is not just specifically basing off the metrics of success of a program or service specifically for african-american students just based on self-reported assessments i think that we need to have accessible transparent and deliverable outcomes that are measured through an actual evaluation tool that that can be easily accessible um not only self-reported i think that should be
121part of it too but that is from what i was reading more self um the self-reported was more qualitative so i think that we have to blend in the story of qualitative data with quantitative data like what are the actual outcomes of the kids enrolled in these programs and receiving these direct services and how are they being used to reach the larger african-american student population across the district not necessarily have bubbles of success but how do we expand that so that we have a larger um you know reach and reach more african-american students with these programs and services and so i i just want to ask you know that's my first question mr duffy what are we going to do as a district to ensure that we have an evaluation tool that does not consist
122only of self-reported assessments but the actual you know annual measurable outcomes and how are we going to to do that now since we're in the middle of a pandemic and we want to make sure that we do reach all the kids um that we can with that funding specifically but how do we ensure that we renew contracts that are actually going to show success and have shown success not just in specific um populations within african american student enrollment populations but how do we actually expand that success to to a larger um reach of the african-american student population so i guess my question sorry i went a little bit off um topic a little bit but what what evaluation tool are we going to use because i think that there have been um a few things
123that have been presented to us but i want to know more than self assessment reported by by the actual um organizations providing the services what are we going to have for us to to stand and say okay these are the things that are working so these are the things that we're going to continue well i would i would answer that in a couple of ways and i think it goes to some of the points trustee panus is making often on the dice that it's about the amos that are set up and established because i think you have to ask the providers to do their final reports they are accountable to that but we have to then look at those and make the determination based on what's reported and what's written if we believe it's the
124outcomes were strong enough so there was uh a template that was put together earlier this year through the dl cap and both uh martine blake and dr wold are working on that and making sure the amos are strong for the following year you know we have over the years determined that we would reduce a contract we would not continue a contract we would expand a contract based on outcomes for students so i want to be clear we're not not looking at these things but we do know folks have asked us to make that process even stronger and we've had some models produced by a couple of people and that's what we're working on so um i hope that you will feel confident as you see these things come to you at the beginning of the
125year um that what we're asking to be evaluated to be measured is clear because if it's not then we have to continue to discuss that before anything moves forward thank you so when can we expect um that deliverable that you mentioned that evaluation tool that um miss blake and dr gold are working on to come back to the board you would see that on well we've passed some contracts at the last meeting and you you may have seen the way that was formatted but we'll make sure on the july 15th when any contracts are coming uh that it's clear the tools that we're using to develop and measure so you can see that at the beginning of this the cycle of this school year thank you and i think it would be helpful to um
126for the board and i know for myself and potentially for members of the community to have um to have the draft of it to actually see it without all the input in it so that we can look at just like the skeleton of what does this look like this tool um i think that will provide a lot of clarity thank you thank you and you know i i'm thinking right now um there's there's other sections in the presentation that i'm gonna address but i was thinking back about the presentation that we had at our last board meeting and the conversation that we had in regards to the students that were not reached during distance learning during the last six weeks i believe and i think the total was 713 right um that yes we're down
127to about a hundred something uh right now through the really intense efforts of the last three weeks um so we'll be able to have that um for you at the next board meeting but our our scouts and everybody else has been working around the clock to figure out uh who knows those students to make sure we've connected with them so we're down to about 100 students right now that we haven't connected with thank you and so from 100 students that we haven't connected to since the last board meeting right when we were talking about this uh well i was looking at the data today i don't have it pulled up in front of me um so that's the number i was looking at uh today i think the number at the last board meeting i
128can't remember what that was yeah but my question was more i guess about so since the last so the last six weeks of school it was over 700 students right the last six week of school well no there were 700 students that we had just not accounted for over the three months they have three months been marked at uh present at any time over those last three months i find that i had previously understood that it was 713 in the last six weeks um okay so then so then since the last time that we reported that number about 600 students have been contacted yes okay so in and i don't remember the specific um demographic data breakdown um but do you do you have that information with you or can that be looked up if
129you know how were african-american students affected like what percentage did they make up of that total number sure i can get that for you it'll take me just a couple of minutes but i can pull that up okay thank you um because i think i i'm looking at the suspension rates right and i'll keep on talking right now while you're looking that up but i i was looking at the suspension rates on page 10 of the presentation and the fact that our african-american students total 18 to 20 of our total student enrollment in the district right uh down to about 15 percent now so 15 um so then 12 of that 15 percent is affected disproportionately by that suspension rate i mean that is that is really high and i know that it's it's lowered
130it's it's been um higher before in 1516 it was 14.7 seventeen it was fourteen point four seventeen eighteen it was fourteen point eight percent and in nineteen nineteen twelve point nine percent and i just think it's it just really blows my mind that it's still that high i know it's it's gone down about two percentage points but that to me speaks about the way that classroom management is done and and you know identification of student needs early on um because i think that we need to have classroom management that is anti-racist and that doesn't overly target disproportionately african-american students and i think that's a bigger conversation that we are going to need to have um part of it now but it's going to be continuous because like like somebody else on the board said earlier
131it's not just about one pd and we're done and things are solved like no it's gonna it's gonna take it's gonna take a long time to get this work done right but we have to start somewhere and i think also i just i want to share you know i don't know if you have the number you know if you want to share the percentage yes so um the number of students sorry to clarify that we still haven't contacted is 196 and the of that 26 are african-american okay so that would still i mean would you call that also disproportionately high for the enrollment of african-american students yes yeah so i thank you for for confirming that yeah i think that all of these are not happening um on a you know exclusive basis from each
132other i think we see a pattern and i want to echo you know what trustee vasquez was talking about that these are things that we have seen for years and i know some work has been done and i hear about stanford harmony about seeds and implicit bias training and it's it's great to get started with this but i just worry that we're not going to have a long-term plan like we may have a vision but i think i really want us to focus on a plan and and talk about what does it look like to to ensure that you know the the exact process for ap courses and enrollment for incoming and continuing high school students is is not colorblind what does it look like to actually be actively promoting anti-racist practices um and i
133actually don't have an answer for for what the process is for ap courses enrollment or placement for incoming or continuing high school students so if you can um you know just let me know if you can explain that that would be uh greatly appreciated because i actually don't know um and i know from my own experience in another uh school district it was very arbitrary and it was up to the counselor so i just want to know if you can shine some light on what does the ap course placement look like for incoming and continuing high school students sure well i would like to take an opportunity to share that is exactly why we're working with equal opportunity schools for that very reason um so you know this is one of the the programs that
134we are we're doing uh because we've called out explicitly that we see massive disproportionality in ap classrooms and that program is helping us and helping our schools make sure the process to get into ap classes is equitable and clear so those courses do have some type of prerequisites but they are actually meant to be open to every single student and if any student decides they want to take an ap course they are supposed to be allowed to be in that ap course now there's often prerequisites that help say um you know this is really what you need um and i can get you those how we're doing that across the board i don't have that in front of me but the idea of course is that everyone has access and i will certainly say i
135did not see that work being done and that's an organization we've brought in to help us because it is obvious that we don't have enough african-american and latino students in ap honors ib advanced music etc thank you so uh yeah i think that that's something that we need to clarify i think a lot of the processes in our in our district i'm glad to hear that i just think that we need a bigger push still to see what does that look like before kids get to high school too um and indirect interventions as part of the core programming and instructional experiences of african american students not necessarily just after school or supplemental or in addition but built into the actual educational experiences of african-american students and i think that we need to have clear also
136targeted efforts how do we build our interventions to be anti-racist what does really inter breeding intervention look like and support for um instruction and social emotional learning during distance learning uh for african-american students in the fall semester i think that these are questions i have that i think other parents other teachers have because it's it's it's very clear to me that african-american students have been disproportionately affected by this pandemic and and i know many other students have as well for sure i would say that each child who has had their educational experience their formal education interrupted has experienced um setbacks but i think that we already knew that there were patterns that were affecting african-american students more disproportionately and negatively than other students in our district so i i would really like for us to
137continue to have this conversation and address it and call things for what they are so that we can identify them and address them collectively and you know talking about the evaluations we talked about the amos we talked about what does it look like to ensure programs work um in addition to that i think that we also need to focus on implicit bias training and i know trustee phillips was making some points about pd and what does it look like to to actually say you have to do this pd it's not actually optional it's something that we need you to do um because we need you to be the best equipped as possible to to really ensure that all of our kids are cared about and cared for and taught with the dignity and with the
138urgency that they need to and i think that will guide us to have specific understandings expectations and requirements in place of what do we uh need from each site leader and educator uh to embody as they teach african-american students and and see them for the length through the lens of equity and and for who they are um and i and i just think you know if any of the work that is being done in terms of reopening schools or um planning not just imagining education in the fall semester and the next school year um like are we are we looking at it through the experiences of african-american students growing up bilingual being enrolled in dli schools needing support that may not be readily addressed or even identified yet are we looking at it through the
139perspective of um african-american students who are not being taught to read by third grade um i mean it's it's four full years and i think that's that's my struggle in my issue with this is that we have tk kinder first and second we have four full years of brain plasticity you know kids have amazing brains that they can build on new learning experiences with previous experiences and activate their prior knowledge and are fully capable when we take the right actions but early on and with urgency and i just cannot emphasize that you know i don't see that we have enough in those first fully four years before they get to third grade um to say like these are the targeted interventions we're doing because we see these patterns we recognize these patterns they repeat over
140and over and if they're not reading by third grade we know the very likely implications of high school and if they're not having a successful high school experience we know the very um you know transparent outcomes of that high school experience and we know what that translates translates to when they go to the um college or job market or you know their experiences post graduation so it's all linked together and i think that we have to do our part as a district to ensure that we disrupt these patterns and we need to identify them call them out and make plans to address it but real plans because i think vision sounds great reimagining i love that i'm all for that but then without a plan we're not actually going to get there and i think
141that so far we've identified a lot of things that that we need to make plans for and you know i i want us to be able to have a conversation about you know the majority of african-american students are reading you know at uh proficient fluent or advanced reading levels by third grade i want us to see okay we're having these interventions if if by the time your first grader who was in one of our schools in tk in kindergarten if they're not knowing their alphabet there's something going on that we need to address it's not the child's fault it's not the child's inability they're fully able to do it fully but it's up to the adults in the room and the adults that need to teach them that and i think we're all capable of
142teaching them too but we need to make sure that we're we're identifying what we need to disrupt so that we can ensure that they get the best education possible and i think you know having conversations with parents and and just reflecting on distance learning versus in person learning i've also had you know very interesting narratives and just things that have been shared with me that i think that we need to not repeat and mirror racial disparities that exist within schools and outside of schools once kids grow up um i think that we we need to continue to pass on a growth mindset and not a fixed mindset and say you know like all african-american kids in our district with all the necessary instruction intervention support and resources are going to be successful and they're going
143to be able to read by third grade they're going to be proficient in math they're going to have the same outcomes that their white peers are having and and i just think that we need to really focus on the science and the the instructional pedagogies that are going to get us there um and really remove all of the extra politics that don't come into play to this and i'm almost i'm about to wrap up right now because um i know that probably other people may want to share again or superintend duffy if you have any responses but i think that we really have to focus on on the things that we can change and that we can no longer accept like having anti-racist classroom management policies like what does it look like to really look
144at it am i targeting students because of something that i'm unaware of am i being implicitly biased towards a group of students and and how do i identify that and not just to educators but principals um anybody that works with children anybody that has any contact with uh children because children are impressionable anything that we do may have a lasting impact on them so i think that's why we need to really have a vision of educational equity that centers their experiences and in what they expect they need from us because quite frankly there's no reason why a third grader a third grade african-american student should not be able to read all children should be able to read by the age by the by a grade three um because they you know if they're in formal
145education they would have had at least four full years of education if they went to tk or preschool as well or three years if they started in kindergarten so like scientifically there's not a reason why they should not be able they shouldn't be able to read by third grade it's just a matter of the systems and the interventions and the commitments that we make to supporting their cognitive and um brain development and actually socialize them in a way that sets them up for success and and yeah so i i definitely think that we need to have data sessions where we hash this out we need to have a planning sessions we need to have an anti-racist framework of education committee and and we need to look into creating an office of diversity equity and inclusion
146because i i know that you know we have multiple people working on things but stringing it together to to create an action plan and and i understand our funding is limited but i think that all of us on this board and i think everybody on the cabinet understands the urgency of this and and it's really to benefit all students that's that's about it but yeah i just think we need we need a lot of work to do and this is again the tip of the iceberg and and i don't want to repeat another presentation um without new information and new planning thank you superintendent sure um thank you for all the comments and thoughts i'd like to certainly respond to a few things especially the idea that we've done nothing or very little over the
147last number of years i would really um challenge that i i don't i didn't see anything uh when when we walked in the door um to help the situation where one-third of the teachers in the district were coming in and out of the kennedy family and our work to do something about that and support our students um there you know i think we not perfect called out raised the flag and said we're going to do something different at siege elementary school the idea to even open an office of african-american student achievement the desire by the board to build more ethnic studies courses and our staff out there supporting schools and teachers to do that the demand by the board certainly to ensure literacy through the the tc adoption and really doing everything we possibly could
148do to support that really strengthening student safety across the board with new infrastructure in our district so i mean i could go on to talk about the many things that have happened you know i'm of course disappointed that our cst scores not cstr s back scores uh haven't been better you know i i'm the first one to say i'm very disappointed by that um but i think to say that um the staff and that would be all staff have have done very little over these last four years i think is is just really uh not true and i think we should we should be really clear about um you know what has happened you know we heard parents black parents also ask us for more options better options and we work to start to create
149new schools and and new programs and see what we could do there um and i would say you know i i really hear the caller about kennedy high school that's a place like in my heart i know that caller is right it has to get better and you know the idea uh we heard from some black staff tonight saying hey take a look at what we're doing and i would also ask the board to for us to to to not only focus just on the cst the s back score alone there's a lot of good things that are happening inside of our schools and we've got to make space for that um and allow ourselves to talk about those things and i'm proud of those staff and i know our communication has to continue to
150get better so you know we have started to address many of the things that have been called out there's plenty of work to do we'll continue to get after it but i really want to make sure uh folks are clear that uh we haven't you know been sitting on our laurels that people have been getting after it and 100 dedicated to to making improvements so you know there's there's a lot we can say i think we're all really at the end of the day working toward the same goals um you know i've heard a lot of feedback taken a lot of notes um from the board and from community and look forward to putting the kind of plan in place that uh folks feel is clear transparent aggressive uh and gets us where we need
151to go so thanks for giving me a little time to to respond i really appreciated all the comments this evening thank you superintendent duffy president hernandez jarvis yes trustee vasquez could i ask mr duffy a really quick question yes mr duffy i just want a really honest answer from you do you think that the district is doing enough for the black students for the african-american students i just want just your opinion i don't want any of the factual or any evidence or any of that just from your own opinion um because obviously you know quite a bit seeing how i mean you're the superintendent just your opinion sorry um i think we can do more i really do think we can do more i think we can do more i think we can do better
152and i think it's a combination of district-wide initiatives but it's also like looking deep inside schools right you're at el cerrito high school you have to dig in with your colleagues to say what's what's going on here like the master schedule that you have which is an incredibly unique master schedule at el cerrito high does that benefit african-american students right and if not do we need to really take a look at that and who benefits the most from having an accelerated curriculum where a year is squeezed into you know half the year so i think we have to do a lot more um i think we have to get after it and i think it is a combination of the ownership at the district level i think it's an ownership at the site level and
153then even at the board level we're going to have to really prioritize i think going back to trustee cuevas like what can we live without it also means not just what can we live without in terms of uh money but what can we live without in terms of time because our time is a limited asset and if we want to spend time talking about this then we have to spend less time talking about other things and so we've got to make that sacrifice as well so you know this is really at the end of the day you know i think why we are here um so i hope that answers some of your question i think that it does uh partially answer and i think you are i do agree with you on most of
154it um i have a follow-up question real quick to that though um you are definitely right that it has to do a lot of times internally and i definitely agree with that but i think the other problem that we have here is that even if a student does see a problem intern um within their school or whatever they don't know what they can do as students especially as an african-american student who maybe has been put down by the teacher so many times they just don't know what to do next or they've just they've lived their whole life being told whatever from a white teacher that i just now just don't know how to respond to it right so you are i definitely agree that these are internal within schools as well as the whole district
155but then what can a black youth do or a black student do within their own school to fix that yeah and i would also say on the other end of that students of privilege often feel like they can speak up that they they feel that they can say i have a problem with what's going on here and they have the privilege to say that and you know make the complaint or feel very confident that they can do that so i i would love to partner with you to continue to think about what are the structures we need to put in place you know whether that's stronger bsus whether that's stronger student governments whether that's stronger advocates where students can say this happened to me and i didn't like it and there's somebody that they can
156go to and we need to make sure that that's available at every school that students feel like something just happened that was wrong in my class and i have a place to go talk about that and it's not going to get pushed under the rug so i think at the end of the day we have to hear from students more because at the end we're here for you you're our clients at the end of the day um and we've got to make sure we're hearing from you part of what we wanted to do with that uh and yours your fellow students wanted to do with moving from the healthy kid survey to the youth truth survey and that was all student driven was so that they would have a simpler way of being able to
157tell the story of what was happening at their school and so i think we did the first by adopting the youth truth and now we have to figure out what's the response structure where youth can lead that and say you know only 15 of the kids at our school said they're engaged or only 10 percent of african-american students said they like coming to school and students can help lead that debrief um of that data because we have a lot of data so i'm open wide open to figuring out that together so our students don't feel vulnerable and don't silence themselves i think the main thing that i got from all that mr duffy is that you do agree with me that students should be the ones that are like not should be the ones but
158should have a bigger role in all of this um and in the black community right yeah i mean that's just one thing that i didn't hear in the presentation you had and that's okay um i just hope that that's something that we can do better in the future with yeah and i'm sorry that wasn't called out as strongly because i i think we i certainly do believe that um that we need to make sure your voice is front and center um because you experience the learning and the education and you have to be the one who says this is working this isn't working that is true thank you that's all i have i appreciate it thank you uh and superintendent do any board members have any final comments or questions before we move on to
159our first action item okay president hernandez jarvis i do this won't take long but um mr duffy i want you to to try to hear hear what i'm saying uh i didn't say that over the last four years nobody who works for the district has done anything um and i'm asking you to try to hear me i don't know what you're doing right now but thank you so i want to give some examples when you just you just ticked off a list of things you said i was i'm not the fastest typer but i was trying to type you said the kennedy family initiative then you said steej then you said tc adoption which is teachers college adoption adoption then you said safety then you said new schools then you said the office for african
160american student achievement which we understand there's been some hiccups with that but that's one two three four five six things that you said as as evidence that this work is being done but only one of those things is targeted to african american students that's the point that i was trying to make this presentation is about african american students but the majority of the things that you're ticking off to support or show evidence that you have been providing interventions or doing works for these students in particular are things that are not targeted for african american students teachers college is not for african american students it's for all students the kennedy family initiative is not for african american students it's for every student in the kennedy family the stage the stage the stage redo yes african-american students
161go to stage but that's not for african-american students it's for whoever's going to steed the cso's the safety redo that has been happening and the training and it's something i've supported but that's not for african-american students so i'm asking you to hear me i'm not saying that over the last four years absolutely no work has been done we're not talking about work in general however we're talking about work specifically targeted to african american students and what i'm saying is that's not what i'm hearing in this presentation and i'll give you an example if we can make this even more clear right if we were in a presentation about special education students and the needs that they have you wouldn't say well we're doing the kennedy family initiative and we're doing stage and we're doing tc
162adoption and we're doing safety and we're opening up some new schools because that has absolutely nothing to do with special ed if we were doing an el presentation an english learner presentation you wouldn't take those things off because those things have absolutely nothing to do with the els in particular that's what i'm trying to convey um and then the two two more things that i want to bring up very quickly i understand that folks have different views around test scores and whatnot and i understand you want us to look at more than test scores and i get that because there's more that goes on in a school than test scores and that's 100 percent true but we want our kids to be able to read and we want our kids to be able to do
163math and yeah i can look at all of those other things but at the end of the day this black parent and my black wife and my black everybody else we want our kids to be able to read and to do math and so we're going to keep focusing on those scores as long as they're there because they indicate something they indicate that our children are not performing at the level that they should and then the last thing that i wanna i wanna say is is this and this is just some perspective for folks i am very glad that we're looking at making sure that ap classes are open to all students and that it is not black kids latino kids it is that the majority of our student body are not prohibited from taking
164these classes but when 8 out of 10 black students are not proficient in english language arts and 9 out of 10 black students are not proficient in mathematics and since we're going there our latino students don't score much higher it's about the same numbers that's the truth so because this ap thing is it affects both of them so when essentially i think well when you have eight out of ten who aren't proficient in ela nine out of ten that are not proficient about what does it mean that we're spending our time trying to make sure that the kids can be in ap courses they can't do the ap courses if they could do the ap courses then we wouldn't have the proficiency problems that we have now for the children who can do that work
165yes it should be open to them and that is great that we're making changes or strides around that but we need to look much deeper at this issue because yeah it's great to say we're going to open up ap classes but the truth is ninety percent of the black kids can't aren't proficient in math it's a joke so i know you don't agree i don't expect you to agree but and it's the same thing for the latino children that they might have five percent higher so 85 percent of them are not proficient in math but they can take the ap courses what does that even mean it means it means nothing except for the select number of children who actually can do those classes so i just would hope we would actually look deeper at
166this stuff and just not go for um easy points that we could put up on the board because that's what i what i heard today well i'd like to just briefly get trusted phillips respond to that um so a couple of things you know i hear trustee phillips saying two things what's what are we doing only for african-american students but i also hear you saying that african-american students and latino students are so closely together in their performance and i want to build off that which is our students go to school together in schools so many of the things that we're going to do are whole school initiatives whole system initiatives whole classroom initiatives and their aim to improve everybody and then we're also targeting certain things for certain populations so yes actually if you ask
167me about special ed i would talk about what we're doing in the whole school to make sure access is there for our special education students so when we try and work to improve literacy and teacher training in teaching reading it is an attempt at dealing with the whole situation when we deal with stage which is 50 percent african-american it is a whole school attempt and then when we target things like mafiniccio bright futures rising scholars those are very specific things targeted to african american students i think we have to continue to talk together about what the vision is and the shared vision is when i talk i hear you talk about let's go learn is that saying we want to let's go learn license just for each african-american student or are you saying i want
168let's go learn license for everybody because i think it will benefit those african-american students because if we were to do that then it would we would want to know are we doing that for everybody and we think it benefits african-american students or are we just buying a license for those students and is that what we're talking about just buying certain things for certain students so i'm eager to get into those conversations and continue to talk about what are we doing for all since we have many students not performing and what are we doing that's very targeted and i believe we are doing both but if we want to shift make a shift there then we need to continue to talk about that and just be really clear what our theory of action is together around
169how we move that forward and i think that's the conversation about where are we on that continuum of how much that's solely and specifically only for african-american students but knowing that they spend seven hours of their day in school with everybody else what are we doing inside the school experience that's going to benefit them so i see it as both and i'm certainly open i think we're all open to continuing that conversation about what we're doing that falls in that continuum of all within the whole school day experience and specific and targeted if if i may president hernandez job is uh two things um yes phillips thank you when i'm talking about let's go learn i personally believe that let's go learn should be available to all the children uh in the district i believe
170that it should come down uh out of the hills and be made available to everybody that so that i mean i brought it up in this conversation because it fit but when i am talking about that i'm saying and i just want to be very clear that i think it should be made available to everyone and then as far as the idea of what's happening at the school or schools in general and then what's happening for african-american students in particular i do think it's both i do think it's both because right they're not going to be like i just 15 minutes ago i said i don't think that they should be segregated into a class all by themselves right so i do think that it's both i do so i do think that's part of
171the conversation i do agree with that but the majority of what i've heard in this presentation has been about students in general not african-american students and then the things that i have heard that were specific to african-american students for the most part their legacy programs things that have been going on for a very long time and so when i'm talking about what has happened around american students in particular uh you know when we got here there was a pr when you got here there was a problem uh when i was you know when my my when my dad was a child here there was a problem and so what i'm really saying is when i say what has happened over the last four years i'm not saying in general because this is the conversation for
172afro-american students in particular but what where is the innovation because even though we have all of these legacy programs uh if we're just gonna be honest we still haven't gotten to where we need to be even with those programs right and so that doesn't mean they all need to go away because i think that there are some good ones but what targeted things are being done differently because where we are right now is worse than where we were four years ago so i agree and i'm done but i agree it is both because they have the experience that all of the kids have and so i do appreciate that but just if it's a conversation about african american students or if it's a conversation about els or if it's a conversation about sped students then
173i i prefer um to really hear how we're drilling in on those students in specific and not just what's going on in the general universe school and that's what i was trying to express thank you for loops thank you uh and thank you to the rest of the board members as well for this conversation and for members of the public too who share their public comments and who have been here tuning in to our meeting today um i think that right now it's time to move on to our action item and i just want to thank again student trustee vasquez stimula and each board member i think this is going to be a conversation we're going to continue to have and i hear that there's a lot of energy behind continuing this work so i'm
174very excited about the next steps and and the deliverables and report box that we're going to be getting thank you up next we have our first action item d1 job description director of african american student achievement yes i'll talk to that um and i just wanted to say you know mr phillips said i don't know what you're looking at right now um but sometimes i look down at my phone because i don't have two screens so like i'm teeing up the next item so pardon me if i look down because sometimes i have notes either on my paper or in my phone to prep while i'm also trying to look at the screen so i'm just bringing something up really quickly so as you know the director of african american student achievement resigned earlier this
175month and when that happened the asset um group uh wanted to take a look at the job description to really determine if there was anything in there um that was needed before hiring the next african-american director so they have made if we could open that um attachment and one thing i just wanted to apologize um in advance because i don't think we um bolded what we added here but there were there were only two main ads and i want to find them for you one was to maintain analyze and make available the data on the current status and trend of african american black student achievement and the other was to facilitate communication and collaboration between site administrators ssc and apac to create spsa goals so if we go down a little bit further i'll be
176able to point out um those bullets so number three is the new one and number four is the new one the others were just a couple of grammatical uh corrections so number three and number four were added uh one really around data one really around facilitation at the site level of communication uh so those are the two that were added we're asking that we approve this so we can post it uh tomorrow morning and i thank the asap for uh getting their team together and making these recommendations thank you mr duffy um board can we um have a discussion on this item here oh thank you uh trusty uh lotta or jesse guevas i'm sorry about that mr watson do we have public comment there is no public comment at this time thank you so
177we can begin um with our student trustee vasquez then trustee cuevas trustee phillips trustee panas trustee lara and myself would it be okay if i went last yeah for sure thank you chelsea madam chair outside of any questions if there's any reason why we won't be approving this then i would just like us to do it expeditiously and move approval of this item and then go to discussion i will second that but i also have a specific question about it thank you motion made by trustee cuevas to approve this job description seconded by trusty bonus bullet five on the second page it starts off it looks like in the middle of a sentence you said on the second page yes number five i keep getting muted somebody keeps muting me um so uh um i
178thought we corrected that i'm sorry mr panus um the one that's up should be corrected um so let's see um can we pull it up again so what i read for uh bullet 5 in that page it says facilitates communication among campus administrators and district departmental leaders to enhance service delivery program development and parent satisfaction around african-american student achievement yeah in the one we posted originally the facilitates the verb got left off so um sorry about that and it's corrected now [Music] okay fine thank you thank you trustee lada trustee phillips uh i'll go after trustee laura if she has a comment um no i don't have any comments and i'm ready to move on this web thank you jesse phillips so that one line that we were just at with the facilitates communication between
179the site leadership and the aipac are you know the parents um [Music] yeah so yeah right there thank you very much can it be changed just a little bit and the reason why i'm saying it i don't know what the change is but there was a problem last time where we had a parent uh who was the president of her aipac and then she went to communicate with her principal and essentially the director i'm going to say allegedly because i wasn't there but the director basically told the principal that the the president of the apec essentially had to go through him and and that so she didn't need to communicate with this person so is there a is there a way to say you know encourages our helps to facilitate but i wanted to be
180very clear that if a parent wants to uh you know our you know parent leadership at the school wants to to communicate with the site administrators that this person is there to help them do that if they need to but that they don't have to go through them and that there is a direct line of communication between the ssc uh between the between the apac because i don't want this person to to to be a gatekeeper uh to administration at the site level and that i think kind of happened last time so i don't know is there a way to massage i mean there is obviously there is a way to massage it uh mr duffy if you have any thoughts mr wold if you have any thoughts i know ms williams the hr person
181is on there i just wanted to be clear that you're supposed to help you know ease communication if you can but you're not the parents don't have to go through you to talk to their principal that that's what i'm trying to say um i mean we could change that from facilitates to like supports positive and healthy communication um you know yeah and i think they should support i mean if that's the right language i mean i don't have anything in particular but i think you get what i'm trying to communicate yep if you allow us to uh take a stab at it you know after approval we can work on a little bit of wordsmithing and post it that's fine with me thank you thank you trustee phillips thank you mr duffy trustee vasquez simela
182yes so i wasn't given the agenda ahead of time so i just had to read over it really quickly now um but yolanda yolanda said that she approved it and it seems like mr phillips approves it um so i also approve it then as well thank you trustee vasquez so i don't have um other comments other than saying that i just think we need to make sure that we um support you know the staff that will be in this position um in a way that is a collective effort and not just putting it um on one person to have the success of african-american students in the district but you know building a team effort for sure um so i we have a motion on the floor and we need to take a vote it was
183made by trustee cuevas to approve this job description and seconded by trustee panes can we please take a vote that would definitely yes yes yes lana yes i'm going after trustee cuevas that's where i'm in line yes motion passes unanimously to approve the job description of director of african-american student achievement thank you board president hernandez jarvis yes trustee vasquez um could i quickly ask mr duffy to make sure to include youth um when we do have these meetings i know you probably already know this but i just want to just make sure that um that well if you could tell me because i could help get it around because i do know there's definitely some students who would definitely be down just listen in on some of these interviews yeah well we'll have some we
184will have students uh on the panel as we uh do as much as we can so we don't okay we can also you know if you'd like to do that or you have suggestions um that would be helpful okay thank you i appreciate that thank you great point thank you up next we have our second and last action item d2 approve revision to administrative regulation 3300 expenditures and purchases this one is dr wald so i'll turn it over to him thank you so good evening at the last board meeting there was a request as we were doing the annual resolutions to make an adjustment on the purchasing thresholds this was a big part of tonight's conversation as well about amos and metrics and the work that we're doing so looking back at the board policy
185the board policy actually does not reflect a number there it's the administrative regulation that provides the direction to staff so we did go through and make the amendment that trustee panis suggested into the administrative regulation that for the service contracts that we bring forward while the district is qualified we would be bringing those forward at the 25 000 threshold following all of the different metrics that we've been talking about and as superintendent duffy discussed we're working on a new template for the summary that provides more of the information in a snapshot as well as partnership criteria that will ensure that there are annual measurements that can be measured by both the provider and by within the district as we bring forward contracts we anticipate that this will go into effect for the august board meeting
186we're going to try to bring it into effect for the july 15th as much as possible and then the templates will be presented to the board for review to go into effect either the first sec either the second meeting in august or the first meeting in september as we get everything clarified and all the stakeholders so we would ask the board to approve this administrative regulation which technically doesn't even need a vote but we would like a formal vote so that we are moving in this correct direction thank you dr wolf mr watson do we have public comment there is no public comment at this time thank you is there a motion by a board member for approval and we can begin discussion i'll move approval of this but i'm going to actually propose some
187amendments as well okay that was just the bonus right and that was jose cuevas thank you okay so if we can have uh the board uh go in the same rotation that we're going uh trusty vasquez and then myself thank you i have nothing to say thank you thank you thank you trustee vasquez similar oh trusty clevis i think your headset is not working i just thought your right now it's uh really fuzzy okay why don't we go move on how's that better no i can't understand you but it's just really it's super fuzzy okay that you're ready to move on you said thank you sorry about that um trusty phillips um i just have a quick question doctor well you said um you're going to try to put this in place when we're going
188to work to try to get in place for the july 15th quarter meeting the threshold will absolutely be in place for the um august board meeting the first talk of the sport meeting and then the templates will come behind that the new updated templates okay um me personally i think when trustee pan has proposed this that it was a good idea um and i would like to see this in place for the next meeting because we're we're spending money uh the entire time and that was the whole purpose of this so uh so please you know put this in place by then and and then the other thing that i i'll leave it at that that's my only request i support it can you jesse phillips trusty bunnis uh thank you president hernandez jarvis um
189so i'd like to thank the staff for bringing this forward and bringing the ar forward um because it's pointed out this this uh ar has not been updated since uh 2015 and it points out a couple of things that actually need to be changed on the second page um the paragraph we're talking uh on the second page uh just above item three consultant contracts it says change orders in excess of ten percent of the original um contract um and in fact our our practice now is uh either 10 of the original contract amount or that are of an individual value of 000 or more so um [Music] we we need to change that to reflect our current practice um and then going down to um the purchasing guidelines on page three [Music] number three uh
190or reads the superintendent executive director of general services i'm i don't think i could be wrong here do we still have an executive director of general service or has that title changed now you're correct and we should have caught the title there it should just be the director of business services there so we can make those two changes okay but then also um you know what you wrote here um it doesn't actually reflect what exactly what i had said uh because we left out the the way it's written right now it leaves out the um the case of a negative certification but then also um when i said you know when i proposed this i actually did not mean it should apply to anything other than unrestricted general fund so back on page 2 in
1913 [Music] a and b in each both a and b there's a section that reads unless the district receives a qualified budget outcome then the amount reverts to 25 000 while the budget remains qualified certification um i i think it would be more helpful if we said unless the most recent nmr report did not receive a positive certification uh the amount reverts to 25 000 for unrestricted general fund contracts until subsequent interim report receives a positive certification because also it's framed in terms of budget right now and budgets don't technically receive a certification that's why i actually had picked um interim financial statements so once again i was like unless the most so that like for example 3a would read consultant contracts costing between one dollar and 50 000 and then in parents unless the
192most recent interim report did not receive a positive certification in which case the amount reverts to twenty five thousand dollars for unrestricted general fund contracts until a subsequent interim report receives a positive certification so i mean that that more closely reflects um what i'd actually proposed and also i i'm not convinced that we need to apply this to anything other than unrestricted general fund contracts so we we absolutely support that that's actually better language when we put in the qualified that was what we had heard stated so it's much better language to state it in the positive than in the negative connotation okay so um i'd like to ask uh well i'm the maker of the motion i'd like to suggest we amend it to reflect those three changes but then also you know as
193as dr wold stated um staff can actually this is an ar and so it doesn't have the same force of law that a board policy has so staff could actually change this at a later date if they pleased i'm not saying they would without the permission the board so i'm also thinking that we should actually add that same kind of sentence to our board policy 3300 as opposed to ar 3300 um and say like and just add language to board policy 3300 if the most recent interim financial report received a positive certification and threshold for board approval versus ratification of contracts is fifty thousand dollars otherwise the threshold will be twenty five thousand dollars so i'd like to so when we looked at we looked at the word policy that way and it doesn't have
194any mention of the 50 or the 25s we would recommend actually to to hold it binding you add the sentence at the bottom of this ar that this ar shall not be changed without a formal vote of the board and that would accomplish the same task because the board policies checking models do not mention any of the dollar amounts okay i'm fine with that if we say this can't be changed without board approval but i would like to ask we'll make those adjustments and we'll send a copy in the friday letter with the adjustments in there after approval tonight okay well i'm wondering if the second will accept my modified motion i i will accept it um i i see the point i think the point is you want to provide oversight when we're unqualified
195when money's tight and that's the reason but i do want to remind the board that while we do this we shouldn't necessarily be spending three hours approving every single 25 000 plus one contract so i just ask that we maintain discipline in both oversight and get the work of the board done uh with that i'll accept your amendments mr pandas thank you trustee panas can you restate your amendment as well i typed it but i think i only got part of it okay there's actually three well actually now there's four places we're changing so um first of all on the second page just above uh the item three consultant contracts there's a line that starts forward action currently reads change orders in excess of ten percent of the original contract amount actually our practice now
196is in excess of ten percent of the original contract amount or um for twenty two hundred fifty thousand dollars or more and then uh there's two places in section three a and two places in section three b where it talks about unless the district receives a qualified budget outcome i'd like to replace that wording with unless the most recent in a report did not receive a positive certification in which case the amount reverts to twenty five thousand dollars for unrestricted general fund contracts until a subsequent animal report receives a positive certification so that's the same text in four places two places in 3a and two places in 3b and then on page 3 in the purchasing guidelines item 3 we need to update the uh title of executive director general services to whatever it it
197is now and then one more thing this ar cannot be changed without a vote of the board as suggested by me dr walt thank you jessie panas so the second for that motion still stands by trustee cuevas board can we please take a vote sorry did i wait yes thank you lscs phillips yes hey unless yes all right yes and then this drop is yes motion progresses unanimously to approve the revision to administrative regulation three three zero zero expenditures and purchases with the four changes um made by uh trustee fanas more than four changes actually there's there's five changes to it great thank you so much um and we're gonna have follow up on this item in our friday memo as well to ensure that we um address all of the changes that were made
198to it and dr walt is that it superintendent duffy that's it madame chair at this point of order a quick request trustee just a quick request out of respect and honor for our poor christie who passed away this past week can we please make sure that we honor him uh not just i'd like to tell you this now just a small moment of silence but also formally in our next regular board meeting with information service to our district both well in multiple capacities as a teacher as a principal i believe as a school board member i think we might want to just repeat that because you're very fuzzy just so everybody i can repeat it because yes please thank you jose cuevas yeah so former trustee uh randy enus is actually one of the trustees
199who hired me and got to know him very well when he was board president those last couple of months he passed away recently and he was a teacher and a principal and a trustee and a big part of this district for a long time so we'll do a full um in memoriam for him coming up but trustee cuevas asked if we could do a moment of silence this evening for randy enos thank you board thank you trustee cuevas for um stay sharing this with us right now and then for this moment of silence thank you and we will make sure to have a moment of silence into to honor um mr arenas with with uh with the work that he did here at our next board meeting as well on july 15th and we have
200actually um completed all of the items for tonight's board meeting so i just want to you know thank everybody again thank the board thank the staff uh mr duffy thank the community thank the students thank everybody who tuned in who participated and who um is making every effort to ensure everybody is safe and healthy during this time especially all children and i just want to say thank you and we'll see you july 15th for sure at our next board meeting and please make sure you wear your mask thank you so much take care everybody have a good evening thank you