001Good evening, welcome to the March 22nd meeting of the Berkeley School Board. If you'd like to follow along on our online agenda, you can do so on your phone or you can borrow a Chromebook from Ms. Chires to my left. I want to remind everyone that tonight's meeting is being broadcast live on YouTube and over the radio on 89.3 FM and on Comcast Cable Channel 33. I'll now call the opening session of tonight's meeting to order at 7.32. For the record, closed session began at 5.45 p.m. Ms. Chayres, can you please share with the community members present our process for translation? Director Beatriz Leyva Cutler. Present. Student Director Alante Keyes is absent. Director Karen Hemphill. Here. Student director Petra Sylvie here director Judy Appel here vice president Josh Daniels Somewhere president I over the present.
002Thank you We will now approve the agenda. We're we're going to Just give me one minute, okay No, we're doing there right now, okay, so we are going to pull item 14.3, which is our local control and accountability plan, LCAP recommendations for discussion, and add that to the discussion items at the end of that list. In terms of order, Mr. President, is there a way of putting that item higher up? I mean, it's all very important, but perhaps right after the budget priorities, since it is somewhat related to budget. We can do that. I don't want to put it before that, but we can put it after 12.3. So we'll be doing 14.3 after 12.3, and then we'll do 12.4, which is the potential bond measure for employee housing. Are there any other requests for
003changes to the agenda? Okay. Is there a motion to approve the agenda as amended? I'll make a motion to approve the agenda as amended. Motion by Director Leyva-Cutler. Is there a second? Second. Director Appel beat you to it. All in favor? Aye. Okay, we have the agenda. I'm now going to report out from closed session. I just want to make sure we are going to have time for board comments because at your request I didn't pull an item, but I want to make sure I have time to comment on it. We will, and we will not be postponing them until the end of the meeting, so we'll do them at the normal time. I'm going to come back to item 3.1, but in item 3.2, collective bargaining, we postponed to the end of the meeting.
004We'll recess back into closed session for that discussion. Item 3.3, threat to public safety, we discussed and gave direction to staff. Item 3.4, there was a motion by... myself, the second by Director Leyva-Cutler, to approve the staff recommendation, and the vote was unanimous, and the motion passed 5-0. Item 3.5, Conference with Legal Counsel Existing Litigation. There was a motion by myself, second by Director Leyva-Cutler, to accept the staff recommendation to approve the settlement in this case. Voting in favor of the motion were myself, Director Leyva-Cutler, and Vice President Daniels. Voting no was Director Appel and Director Hempel, and the motion passed 3-2. Item 3.6, we are also passing to the end of the meeting when we will recess back into closed session. Now I'm going to report on Item 3.1, consideration of student expulsion. We'll
005be taking these votes in public, I mean in the open session. So first, just bear with me here. Case number three, this is item 3.1.1 on the agenda, case number 1617-11-061503. Is there a motion? I'll make a motion to... Accept. Accept the recommendation for I believe I would hold on one second make sure I read it right All right. We'll make a recommendation to accept and approve the wreck the stipulate the recommendation from staff Which is a stipulated suspended expulsion? Is it good we didn't do we doing it now in public we didn't do in closed session Okay, is there a second? The motion has been made. The motion has been made by Vice President Daniels. Is there a second? I'll second. Second by Director Leyva-Cutler. All in favor? Aye. Okay. I'm willing to abstain
006on that, not because I have an issue with where the rest of the board is coming from, but there wasn't an opportunity for me to ask a question to staff before the vote was made, and it was something that I wanted to know before I made the vote. Okay, thank you. So vote is 4-0 with one abstention. Now we'll consider case 1617-16-071-901. Okay, is there a motion on this one? Make a motion to accept the recommendation of a stipulated suspended expulsion. Is there a second? Motion by Vice President Daniels. Second by Director Appel. All in favor? Aye. Hold on. Wait a minute. Isn't that the one that Judy recused? Director Appel can't second. Yeah. Sorry. 3.12. Okay. So I will second. Director Leyva-Cutler is seconding this motion. Director Appel is recusing herself. So that would
007be a... 4 0 0 vote. Hold on. Did we I don't think director is our did voted. Yes. Okay, so it's a 4 0 0 vote not a 4 0 1 vote Because there's one recusal. I know this is very impressive to those of you I have a procedural question that maybe we can get our board clerk to investigate. It may be different for Ed Code than government code, but in my experience, when you recuse yourself, you have to state the reason why, and it's kind of legal reasons why that you would recuse yourself as opposed to abstaining, which could be for more factors. So I just want to make sure that we're being accurate in terms of how we're counting our votes. I'm recusing myself based on a conflict of interest. Okay. Okay, well,
008we can look into that. Okay. Item 3.1.3 is case number 1617-17040102. Can I have a motion on this case, please? I'll make the motion to accept and approve the stipulated suspended expulsion. Wait, wait. And so I have to recuse because of a personal conflict that would prohibit me from being impartial. Okay, so the motion has been made by director. Leave a color is there second director appellable second All in favor aye So the vote on this one was also four to zero to zero Okay now on this next one is item three point one point four 16 17 18 0 4 2 1 0 7 I believe director labor Cutler is Accusing herself from this case. Yes, I know the family. Okay Can I have a motion? I'll make a motion to reject the recommendation
009of a stipulated suspended expulsion and to reject the underlying recommendation for an expulsion Is there a second? Second. Second by Director Appel. All in favor? Yes, I think I know which one. I think I made the wrong vote for the wrong one. Yes. This is the one that I wanted to abstain from, not the other one. I'm sorry. Okay. We saw them in a different order than we're talking about them, so I'm getting a little... Thank you for bearing with us. Sure. Okay, so let's... On item 3.1.1, Director Hample is voting in favor. Is that right? It's this one that I wanted to abstain from for the reasons given. I'm voting in favor. Yeah, we've got it. Okay, so Vice President Daniels has made the motion which was seconded by Director Appel. I'm voting in
010favor of it. Director Leyva Cutler has recused herself. Director Hemphill has abstained. So the vote is three to zero to one to zero. Is that right? There were four board members cast votes on this one. Three to zero to one. With one person recusing herself? Yes. That person does not actually cast a vote of any variety. Got it. Okay. All right. And President Alper, if you'd like, I can give more specificity as to why I was recusing myself. I don't think that's necessary right now. It just needs to be logged into the minutes. No, you didn't recuse yourself from this one. It needs to be logged into the minutes that there was recusal and a brief summary of why. So the conflict of interest is sufficient. Okay, everybody got that? Okay. All right. Thank you
011for your patience. I'm going to provide a brief overview of tonight's meeting. But before I do, first we're going to hear 30 minutes of public comment. Then we'll hear comment from our unions and our district committees, and then from board members and the superintendent. Then we'll consider our consent calendar, which are items that the board may vote to approve all in one motion. Then we will hear five action items. First, a discussion of a proposed new course sequence in science instruction at Berkeley High for 30 minutes. An update on Common Core math at Berkeley High for 30 minutes. Staff's recommendation on 2017-18 budget priorities for 40 minutes. our LCAP local control and accountability plan recommendations for 15 minutes, followed by a potential bond measure for employee housing for 20 minutes. Then we will briefly hear
012an action item, which is the approval of an amendment to our school governance council bylaws. At the end of the meeting, there will be another opportunity for public comment. So if you don't get to speak at the beginning of the meeting, you can stay and speak at the end of the meeting. The next item on the agenda is 30 minutes for public comment. The Vice President and I have organized the speaking requests by agenda item. We'll rotate through the relevant agenda items so that we can do our best to hear from at least one person on each agenda item and from each position. If your name is called, you can cede your time to another speaker. To do so, please stand up if your name is called and state your name and indicate to whom
013you're ceding your time. By ceding your time, you give up the opportunity to speak, and no one can later cede their time to you to speak. I want to make a note that you may only cede your time to a speaker who is speaking about the same topic that you have written on your card. We have a lot of cards tonight, so we're going to limit speakers to two minutes so that we can hear maximum number of speakers in the 30 minutes we've allotted. When there's one minute left at the lectern, your light will turn yellow. It's up here too. When the light turns red, you'll hear beeping. If you're still talking when the beeping happens, finish your sentence and then wrap up. Please don't try to speak beyond your time. We're trying to get
014as many people to speak in 30 minutes as we possibly can. To keep things moving, I'm going to read the next person's name. So if you can stand up and wait over by the Year of the Reader poster. If you're the next speaker, then we can get through as many people as possible. During the public comment, the board does not respond directly to comments or questions made during the comment. Board members, the superintendent, and staff do take notes on public comment and often follow up with the speaker after the meeting. Following the public comment period, there's a time on the agenda during which board members and the superintendent have a few minutes to each make a comment about whatever they want. That's the time in which board members can choose to, if they wish, respond
015to something said in public comment or make any other comment that they wish. We've found that this process keeps our meetings running smoothly, allows for maximum amount of people to speak during the 30 minutes, and it ensures compliance with the Brown Act, which does not allow for board discussions about items not placed on the agenda at least 72 hours before the meeting. Okay. We will now hear from our first speaker. Heather Flett followed by Rebecca Levinson. Do I get to go? Okay. Hi, I'm Heather Flett. I'm a parent at Washington of three children and I want to cede the rest of my time to Ron Levy. Hi everyone. Thanks for having us today. So as you can see Washington Elementary turned out in force tonight because we've got something to say. We'd like to demonstrate
016that to you graphically. So if one more parent could come up here right now. The three of us represent what CDE, the California Department of Education, recommends as an appropriate number of students per acre. Can I have three more parents please join us? Thank you. This is what Washington Elementary looked like about 10 years ago, 2006, 2007, exceeding the recommended students per acre, but probably manageable. Can I get three or four more parents? Actually, five. Okay. Let's all squeeze together because this is the situation. We are critically, this is critically overcrowded. What the CDE calls critically overcrowded. Can I get six more parents? Okay. Not all of you. Not all of you. Please, a couple hang back. Because Washington today, this is Washington today. This is four times the number that we started out with
017at the beginning of my little speech. Okay. This is four times the recommended CDE. students per acre. Can I get the rest of it? Everybody up. Everybody up here please. Kids in front. Okay? Okay, this is what it feels like at Washington. Okay? busting at the seams. And I've stood here before you guys many, I'm sure many of you recognize me, okay? Because every time I come in here, I tell you that this is the most spacious, beautiful, wonderful room in the entire Berkeley school system. And you know it is true, okay? And this is what Washington is like right now. And what you need to do is solve the inequity issues, right? Because the reason why we feel this way, is because you are not properly staffing us to deal with the population issues
018at hand. And that's the short-term issue. Think about 10 years ago and what it looked like. We have to do something for this community, okay? It is time to think big, okay, and solve this problem. Thank you. Ms. Levinson, followed by Michelle. I can't read the writing. Let, let occur. Let occur. Oh, okay. Go ahead. Good evening board. My name is Rebecca Levinson. I'm a parent at BUSD. I'm one of the two parent advisors to be just stop harassing. And I've been in front of you a number of times. The reason I'm here tonight has to do with BAM. where my youngest child goes. And there were a number of fourth grade parents who reached out to me and said, hey, we're having a problem. We need some help. We don't know how to handle
019a situation that's been ignored since second grade. Their children are in fourth grade. They have done everything that they know in their power to get help. for a child in a classroom that is very out of control. And I'm thinking about this relative to conversations that we've had in the past. And even thinking about it relative to East Bay Law Center. And the children in question in this particular class where there's been a great deal of violence, and you'll hear about that tonight, out of control behavior classrooms that had to be evacuated. What's so clear is that that child's needs aren't being met. and neither are the children in the classroom. And what they asked about was, well, what do we do? And I said, did anyone tell you about how to file a universal
020complaint form? Did you know about that? Did you know that that was a right you had? And their answers were no. And one of the things that I'm really hoping, and we've brought to you before, is that I think parents who have situations where their kids aren't safe, They need to understand what their rights are. And it's a great example of two years of many, many wise parents desperately trying to get help for their children. And I hope that you'll hear them tonight. And I hope that as part of thinking about the complaint process, we'll do something radically different. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Leidecker, followed by Irene Moore. Good evening. I'm here with some excellent news for everyone who's interested in special education. I know we all are. And this comes from NPR, KQED,
021Public Media, and I couldn't say it any better than they did. So I'm going to read into the record that the Supreme Court rules in favor of a special education student. So Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts wrote the unanimous opinion in today's ruling. School districts must give students with disabilities the chance to make meaningful, quote, appropriately ambitious progress. Appropriately ambitious, unquote, progress, the Supreme Court said Wednesday, today, in an eight to zero ruling. Yay! That's why I'm here, positive news. The decision in Andrew, for the record, E-N-D-R-E-W, F as in Frank, versus Douglas County School District, which is in Colorado, could have far-reaching implications for the 6.5 million students with disabilities in the United States. The case centered on a child with autism and attention deficit disorder whose parents removed him from public school in
022fifth grade. He went on to make better progress in a private school. His parents argued that the individualized education plan provided by the public school was inadequate, and they sued to compel the school district to pay. is private school tuition. The Supreme Court today sided with the family overturning a lower court ruling in the school district's favor. Basically, John Roberts said, it cannot be right that the IDEA generally contemplates grade level advancement for children with disabilities who are fully integrated in the regular classroom but is satisfied with barely de minimis progress for children who are not. So a standard more meaningful than just above trivial is normal today. The reason I'm very happy is also personal. Our daughter was, we were told our daughter in elementary school would never learn to read. I said, what
023are you doing on our IEP team if you don't believe in her? We had to bring a due process case because we were told that the goals are just that, they're goals if we don't meet them. And as long as we're making a little bit of progress, it's okay. And that was a standard before today, but it's not. And now this week, my daughter is reading books. Thank you. Irene Moore, followed by Nicole Holler-Wilson. Okay, Ms. Armstrong. Hello, nice to see you all again. I'm a parent of two boys, one at Washington Elementary in fifth grade and one student, proud student of Willard Middle School. And for the third year, I've been at Washington seven years. For the third year, we come before you as a community to ask you to address the overcrowding and
024understaffing at Washington. We're tired, but we're not giving up. In the last nine years... Our student population has increased by 60%, so that's the time that my students have been there. We had 300 students in 2008, we now have 481 in 2017. Yet, we still have one literacy coach and two special education teachers, as we did in 2008. We still have one dauntless staff member who runs our entire cafeteria and she serves an extra 181 students lunch every day. In June of 2015, almost two years ago now, Superintendent Evans wrote an email stating, we're looking at how staffing and student needs differ from school to school based on facilities, enrollment, and programs to ensure all of our schools are equitably resourced. We took Dr. Evans at his word, but we're still waiting for the response.
025Our children are waiting. Right now, they play on crowded playgrounds, they use crowded bathrooms, and eat packed like sardines in a crowded cafeteria. They receive ELD instruction in the back corner of the library, which doubles for part of the day as a music room. So English language learners strain to absorb the sounds of English trying to tune out a room full of violins. If they'd come to Washington in 2008, our children would have had PE twice a week, garden every other week, library once a week, but now their enrichment teachers have too many students to serve for that. As with any inequity in our school system, the burden falls the hardest on our disadvantaged students. There are the small injustices. They will not likely get extra trips to libraries or gardens to make up for
026what they're missing at school. They now have to share the principal's attention and the secretary's with an extra 181 kids. But the larger injustices are the most concerning and need urgent attention. And hopefully the next speaker will be able to tell you more about that. Thank you, Ms. Armstrong. Nicole Haller-Wilson. Followed by Stephanie Up. Hi, my name is Nicole Holler-Wilson. I'm a parent of a child in the fourth grade at BAM. I'm going to cede my time to Kent Mitchell. Hi, my name is Kent Mitchell. I'm a father of a child in the fourth grade at BAM. And I have, my daughter has experienced assault in her classroom. Her teacher was assaulted by a student on the 14th of March. There was a 40 minute period in which the teacher was assaulted by the student
027in front of all the children and then the principal came and the children were crying and the principal evacuated the children from the classroom because he couldn't get the child out. And when the children left, it took a while for them. the child to get out of the classroom, was taken to the office, and then the child came back onto the playing field while the children were out there and assaulted the teacher again. And the teacher was... pursued by the child with fists with verbal threats saying that he would get her and then he was actually she was actually chased off the playing field by this child and she had to lock the door to a classroom to escape leaving the children out on the playing field there were there were 200 children out there
028witnessing this event I don't think this is acceptable and I'd like to know what the school district can do about it We've gone through the channels we knew to ask the teacher, the principal, the school district, Maggie Riddle, the principal's supervisor, the counselors what to do. And the best we've gotten is that the principal denies that there was an assault. So I'd like to know whether this board stands with your principal, Renee Molina, in denying that there was an assault on the 14th of March, or whether you would like to face this now. Thank you, Mr. Mitchell. Stephanie Up, followed by Heidi Goldstein. Hi, thank you. And I'm going to continue on representing Washington School. And this is a continuation of Kira's remarks. But the larger injustices that are most concerning and need urgent attention,
029one of BUSD's most important goals is to close the achievement gap of all students. And yet elementary students who go to the larger schools like Washington are given less access to the very services designed for this purpose. There is some proportional funding through LCAP, but essential positions for students and teacher support, such as special education teachers and literacy coaches, are a one-size-fits-all. The district currently provides one literacy coach and two special education teachers for every elementary school. At Washington and other large sites, intervention resources are spread thin. The size of our school significantly increases the workload for special education teachers. They have more teachers, classrooms, families, and students to support, and increased responsibility for handling families and students, and handling the initial assessments. and an increased number of meetings and staff to coordinate. If you
030walk into our school at six at night on a Wednesday, chances are both of our special education teachers are still there hard at work. The fact that special education is severely impacted affects the students in that program, many of whom are socioeconomically disadvantaged. The size of Washington also impacts our students' access to academic interventions. Our literacy coach has almost twice the number of students to support as she used to, and as would a literacy coach at a smaller school. Intervention is crucial to our most at-risk students, and if we want to help them succeed in elementary school and on through high school, we need to have an impact now. It means keeping students of special needs out of qualified programs. We want to help them access the curriculum in the classroom and reach grade level.
031Thank you. Miss Miss Goldstein Followed by Martine is Kierda. Good evening. Heidi Goldstein. I'm sitting my time to Sharon Mitchell. Good evening Thank you for being here We love the BAM community and it is tragic that we have had to resort to coming here to speak with you tonight I'm the parent of a fourth grade girl in an at-risk classroom b3 at BAM There are so many emotionally and academically high need students in the classroom with only one adult present at all times, a dedicated new second year teacher. A large group of parents have documented and requested additional security and support and done everything we can to find a resolution to multiple problems, bullying students not listening to adults, refusing to leave the classroom, students disrupting the learning environment and stealing. Leadership is consistently dismissive
032and refuses to take responsibility. Interventions have failed. My husband spoke of the incident, so I won't go into that again. I was going to go into that. I wanted to tell you that is this violent intimidation, bullying, and assault what BAM and BUSD tolerates? The response from the principal to one parent was that because no one was in danger, the incident did not warrant parent notification. Really? Neither the teacher nor the weeping children were unsafe? Maybe emotionally ravaged doesn't register as significant under BUSD policy. Our children are suffering anxiety reactions, asking not to go to school anymore, feeling sick and are crying when these major at-risk incidents is yelling, I'm going to get you, I got you, bullying the teacher, I'll rip your arms and legs off, kicking, punching a neck, shouting, girls are wimpy,
033to our daughters. Abuse of violence, evacuations required, threats evolving repeatedly in front of them. I am unsatisfied with the leadership of our principal district and board. The teachers and high needs students need more support and our children need to stop suffering every day at school. What our children have witnessed and endured is unthinkable. This will always be the story of my child's fourth grade year, a year when my young daughter learned that her teacher had to lock the classroom door to keep screaming, threatening child from assaulting her. Shame on you. Please fix this. Thank you. Mr. Izquierdo, followed by Ms. Staples, Christine Staples. My name is Martin Izquierdo, and I'm ceding my time to Liz Schultz. Hi, good evening. I'm just going to pick up where Stephanie left off. So 95% of the students receiving
034reading intervention at Washington are socioeconomically disadvantaged or English language learners. They have made big gains. From fall to winter, 20 students rose to grade level, 10 made a year's progress, and 24 made six months' progress. All disadvantaged students below grade level at Washington deserve intervention. And yet, because we don't have proportional funding, 15 below grade level at-risk students have yet to receive it this year. It is a terrible thought that if they had been assigned to a smaller school in the district, they would have. We want to emphasize that we are not arguing that any site needs less special education teaching staff or literacy coach support, but rather that the current levels need to be increased at larger sites to meet student need, strengthen our inclusion model, and strive to reach the 2020 vision. Ultimately,
035we urge the board to find a long-term solution to the overcrowding at Washington. In the short term, at the very least, give the children who need it most access to the services they deserve. Every day of their elementary education counts. If you are truly committed to closing the achievement gap, this is the perfect opportunity to prove it. Thank you. Ms. Staples, followed by Sasha Moustakas. Hi, Christine Staples. I'm ceding my time to Peggy Scott. Ms. Scott. Hello, board. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I'm speaking to the complaint policies and procedure item. We've heard you say that you hear us. You aren't just a stone wall sitting up there. No offense. It doesn't really matter how you feel. We care what you do. Superintendent Evans, I'm glad you admitted there's a file of unresolved
036complaints, but what actions are you taking to resolve them or to address them even? Have you ordered investigations? Have you offered any remedy to those complainants? Because they are complaints. We don't know how many there are. Are there 12 or 30 or 75? We don't know. You heard about a boy being bullied by a Berkeley High teacher and that was on February 8th. Since then, the mom has gotten one phone call. You're two weeks past the 30-day deadline. Her complaint was filed nine months ago, and even that didn't jog any action, and I know you were concerned about it because you called and asked me for her contact information. She asked me if I thought she would ever hear anything, a story that was heart-wrenching and severe and still no investigation, no remedy, no 30
037days, more than nine months since she filed. What is wrong? What does it take to get something to move here? You've neglected complaints for so long that the complaint process itself is in doubt. You've lost the public's trust, and now it's bad faith. Now, that's the first time I've said bad faith in seven years. I've tried never to say it, but I think it's true. Bad faith. A school district is like a family or a business with a corporate culture, family dynamics, and the modeling behavior that you've exhibited is pretty much to blow off complaints. So that's the behavior that principals see. Monkeys see, monkeys do. If people know their complaint will be ignored, they don't file. It only makes life harder. Why stick your neck out when it's safer not to? The accused student
038or teacher then has you in their sights. Inaction has led to unsafe schools, and that's the problem. Please fix it. Thank you. Sasha Moustakis. Okay. Followed by Karen Kagan. Hi, my name is Debbie Taylor and I'm the proud parent of three BUSD students including Benjamin Taylor who's here with me tonight. Anything else you want to say? Hi. Great. So I want to start with two thank yous. So one thank you is that Benjamin's brother and I were here talking to you a few years ago about safety at Washington and about having the bungalows across the street unable to be locked off in case there was an issue. And I want to thank you because there is now a way to, in the need of any unfortunate incidents, which we have had this year, lock down
039the far side of the street. So thank you for doing that. And also thank you for appointing a great principal, Katja Hazen, who's been doing just a magnificent job. And who, when we were discussing the issue that you've heard so much about tonight, the lack of proportional staffing for special education, we also said to her, hey, there's also lack of proportional staffing for principals at elementary schools. And there's another large school in town that happens to have an assistant principal. Is that something you'd like? And she said, I would rather have special education staff and work the extra hours. So thank you and a kudos to her. I want to wrap up the series of discussions you've heard about the lack of sufficient staff at Washington by talking from the perspective of a parent who
040is lucky in some ways not to have a student of special needs. My students are thrilled to be in classes with people of all different backgrounds and abilities. They also feel the difference as their teachers are pulled to provide personalized instruction for more and more students in their classes and for students of increased needs. So when there's a lack of special education staff, our teachers thankfully provide assistance to those students who are furthest behind, but it means that students who are challenged never receive the personalized instruction that I know you all wish they would. Thank you for your efforts and your time. Thank you. Ms. Kagan, followed by Ann Peaty. I am here tonight as a student and parent advocate. Berkeley, no, I'm gonna skip that. I thought and would think that BUSD has a
041zero tolerance for bullying policy. There is a fifth grade classroom at Washington where the students are faced with the biggest and hardest to deal with bully of them all, the teacher. He yells at the kids, puts them down, denigrates them in front of the other students, embarrasses and insults them, otherwise known as bullying. There is no teaching going on in this classroom. And although the 26 or so students having to deal with this day in and day out are learning extremely valuable life lessons, they are not being prepared academically for middle school. I appreciate the fact that the principal has tons to deal with and may be a wonderful person. This situation is just not being dealt with appropriately. Like, there is no way she can be in the classroom the entire day for 10
042more weeks. And when she goes out of the classroom, the teacher reestablishes his bullying attitude towards the students. Unacceptable. On it to the class by the way We should all be very proud of those students who are standing up and expressing themselves both to the teacher and to the principal There are a number of parents who have filed formal complaints as happened in years past about this teacher The problem is that the complaint policy is so cumbersome Nothing actually gets done There is, as you all know, a six-step policy to deal with a complaint. By the third step, if not resolved, it could take another 25 weeks for any action to take place. I would like to suggest this process be evaluated and changed, not now. There should be some kind of triage system where
043any complaint filed is is analyzed for the seriousness of it So that the powers that be be taken out something has to happen about this classroom so that the kids can leave Washington feeling good about their educational experience. Thank you and PD followed by Jennifer Ricks Hi, my name is Ann Petey. I'm a parent of a first grader at Washington Elementary. And I'm just going to reinforce what has already been said tonight, which is that there are a lot of kids at our campus. We don't have a single room where the whole school can meet. In fact, when we do assemblies, we usually have to divide them up. Half the school is in there, and that is still packed wall-to-wall with kids just having half the kids in the assembly room. This has especially been
044an issue over the winter when it was raining and kids had to stay inside during lunch. We had one brave and our hero cafeteria staff watching all the kids basically at recess when they should be outside playing. And this is just getting to be a really serious issue for her. That's not in her job description to be watching half the kids at lunchtime. So we would really like to see Just Proportionate staff at Washington. So, thank you. Thank you. Yes, Rick's Jennifer Rick's had to go. Okay. Thank you Holly Robertson followed by Aaron Murphy Graham Is how is miss Robertson here? Hi, I am another very proud Washington parent. I have a child in the kindergarten there and a second grader. I think... The thing that has hit me the most this year with regards
045to overcrowding in our school is the pressure that it's put on our teachers. Both of my kids' teachers had to go on long-term leave this year, which meant that they had substitutes for more than a couple of months. One was expected, one was unexpected. And I feel like the... The way that the substitute thing worked out certain teachers were able to step in and support those substitutes that had to sort of come in on the fly But when when things came up there was no backup. There wasn't sort of anybody to catch those kids that were Needing extra support and I feel like that shows up even more when you have substitutes that are taking these really long Periods of time in classrooms, so I think everybody's from Washington's gotten up and spoken about the
046different things that this sort of overcrowding causes from like the feeling in the physical plant but I feel it a lot in my kids themselves that when they're needing extra support through their teachers or their teachers are that the teachers are really taking the brunt of it and these are our in my mind these are my staff these are my people that are taking care of my kids that are that are supporting our children and we have to support them so thank you. Thank you. Miss Murphy-Graham will be our last public speaker. Great. Thank you very much. My name is Erin Murphy-Graham, and I want to say that I'm a proud Rhino from Washington Elementary. So as you can see, we have an amazing community of parents and we have an amazing staff of teachers,
047some of whom are here tonight. So I want to acknowledge them and I want to thank them. I also want to thank the board for all the work that you do. I want to say that the comments of Karen Kagan echo and touch my heart because my son is in the fifth grade class that she speaks about. I see the issues in that fifth grade classroom intimately linked to the overcrowding at the school. When you have an overcrowded school, when you have a principal who has... too many teachers and has too many students, it's just impossible to give the attention to all the matters that require her attention. So I want to say that I think that when you have a problem at a school, you have to look at the interconnectedness of these issues
048and the overcrowding is at the core of many of the issues that we see. And I also want to echo the concerns about the complaint process. There has to be some sort of triage system so that we can make sure that our students are protected at all times. Thank you very much. Thank you. Now there's an opportunity to hear from our unions. Ms. Phillips, you have five minutes. Good evening, school board members and to our listening public. My name is Paula Phillips. I'm the president of the Berkeley Council of Classified Employees. I want to say thank you to Deputy Superintendent Cleveland for working with the union to come up with an MOU, to sign an MOU to address the restructuring of the Nutrition Services Department. Our members are excited about the change. It gives them
049an opportunity to increase their hours. while earning more money at the same time. And it also provides them an opportunity to better service the students. So what I would like, I'm asking you to do, well, what I'm asking you to do is to please approve the staff recommendation to increase funds for the Nutrition Services Department. And then also. Washington, they were very vocal in getting some support. So I want to thank the parents for their support with the staff out there. Also, I want to address some issues that I've been trying to work with staff at Berkeley High School to address and human resource. And to no avail. We have not gotten very far to address the uneven distribution of work amongst the clerical staff that man the front office. In the front office, you
050have four clerical staff. You have a school administrative assistant three, a school administrative assistant two, which, by the way, is only supposed to work at an elementary or middle school. You have a clerical assistant three and an administrative assistant two, which works with the parent volunteers. So within that structure, the bulk of the work is on the classification that should not even be at that school. And the bulk of the work includes registration for over 800 incoming students next year, entering emergency cards, entering the emergency information for over 3,000 students, also managing the immunizations. In 2008 and 2009... A sub-certificated teacher was hired at Berkeley High School in order to manage the substitute teacher, in order to manage the teacher absences. And also, in order to coordinate the substitutes that were needed, in addition to
051that, her responsibility was to be on site in case a position went unfilled and she would fill in for the classes. What I'm asking you to do is to... is to go back to that model because or go back to the model of staffing a certificated teacher to cover absences. It's unfortunate that sometimes a teacher gets ill or they have their own emergency or crisis that causes them to leave school early but when that happens it makes it difficult for the classified staff to find a substitute to fill the position. It may happen at the beginning of the day, it may happen in the middle of the day, it may happen at the end of the day at fifth period, leaving two periods uncovered. It's very difficult for the classified staff to split what's called
052splitting a class in order to find coverage. It's very difficult for that person to manage the absences with very little support from the administration on filling in when in order to find someone to fill the job. So what happens is that the classified staff is left to go around and ask the counselors if they'll be willing to pick up a class. And if they say no, then she's left with trying to, with that burden of trying to fill the class. And that burden should not be on a classified staff in order to assign someone to take the class the way i view it is that a vice principal or someone or or the principal someone should be filling in for those classes when the classified staff is turned down someone in a higher authority should
053be in more involved with filling those classes because the way I look at it, the way I understand it, it also puts the district at risk of being in violation of the Williams, of receiving a Williams complaint because there's no certificated teacher to cover the class. Students are sometimes sent to the library. If the library can't take them, so then what? So I'm asking that staff is directed to take a serious look at this issue and work with the union to address the uneven distribution of work in the front office as well as the teacher shortage and substitute coverage at Berkeley High School. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Phillips. Ms. Campbell. Good evening board members and superintendent Evans. I'm Kathy Campbell. I'm the president of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers I really appreciate this opportunity
054to speak to you. I know you've had a lot of people talking at you this evening I want to speak on briefly on three agenda items budget priorities employee housing and LCAP recommendations. With regard to budget priorities, we want to really appreciate the thoroughness of the document that you have in front of you. And in general, I just want to say, which I've said before, but it's worth repeating, that we're so fortunate in this district to have the systems and structures we have around this budget process, particularly when times get tough. And we're so fortunate to have the leadership of our deputy superintendent, who takes a very clear and transparent approach. to this process and it's greatly appreciated. I want to urge the board to keep in your mind as you look at this document
055one thing that is not in the document. This document is not obviously meant to be an overall statement of our most important priorities, right? This document is very much a list about next year. One thing that is not mentioned in the document that we're just here tonight to ask you to hold in your mind as you look as we go through this process over the next three months. is the vital need of the ability of our district to both recruit excellent new teachers for our students and to retain the fabulous teaching core that we have. Compensation for teachers is the most important part of that equation and it is something that is a challenge now in this current state and something that we are calling upon this board to really keep carefully in your mind
056as we look both at next year and the year afterwards. I think we would all agree that there's nothing more important really in the end in our structure. There are many things that are important, but if we had to pick the number one thing, I think we would pick the quality of the teacher that's in front of the students or working with the students. And I think we heard some comments to that effect tonight. We're asking the board to hold that as a top priority when you look at budget priorities. In addition, in the budget priority document, we want to call your attention to the item about support. for the older adult program. We want to thank this board for your support for that program in the past and to urge your support as we
057go through this process of continued support as staff is recommending for this program. The sad truth is that our state government, our legislature, our governor does not value this part of adult education in the way that they should. And it is a real tribute to you all as a board, previous boards, that even through the Great Recession, You have respected this program and supported this program. We're asking you to continue to do that. You know and I'm sure you'll hear over the next couple of months the importance of this program to many members of our community, including a large percentage of Berkeley residents. I want to talk about the subject of employee housing. We really appreciate the item that's in the board tonight. We want to urge the board to give direction to staff tonight
058to explore the really important questions that are in that document as well as others that I think stakeholders can contribute if we're included in this process. This topic is complex. BFT has been studying this topic now for about six months. We've done significant research about models in other districts. We've learned what some of the hurdles and glitches are, and they're not insignificant. So this is complex. I think it's going to take some time to really understand the options and potentialities of this idea. This may end up being an important... part of what I want to come back to, which is that teacher housing should be seen in the larger structure of recruitment and retention. That's why you do it, and you have to evaluate carefully. Does this fit into our overall plan? Is this the
059best use of resources? What resources will be required? Should we use those in other ways? That's the frame that we believe should be used. I want to talk briefly about the LCAP. Oh, my gosh. I want to just state that we're very pleased to see some of the priorities that BFT has been emphasizing since the beginning of this process, I think in 2012-13. in this plan. Those include support for response to intervention, support for behavioral health, sometimes called mental health, which we believe is critical, support for a position specifically for the recruitment and retention of teachers of color, which we're happy to see continue in this document, and support for restorative practices. And we'll be speaking to you more about all of those. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody here from the district committees?
060Okay, now we will hear comments from the board members and the superintendent. Is that you, Director LaVaca? We reviewed, we got a copy of the 16 safety plans for our schools, very dense documents that have all the information regarding safety around our schools. And I just mentioned this to Dr. Craig and to the superintendent, some of my praise. for first of all, their uniform, they're consistent across the elementary, middle and the high schools. But I think there's something missing that is our responsibility as a board and as superintendent, and that's to give guidance. What is our mission and our values around health and safety? And this document did not include that. And so at some point, I think the board needs to, with our stakeholders, with our Berkeley school community, discuss how this document helps
061to guide what we are intending to do in terms of the health and safety of our students. So I don't know where that has to, when that can happen. We're present, but at some point we need to, we don't have, we have the LCAP, we have different plans, safety plans, and so I think that somehow we have to figure out how we can include that. The other thing. There's things that were missing I think in the document that I think we can build on and we're talking about it I definitely think the Williams complaint should be a part of it and wasn't in the document though uniform complaint procedures are in there So it's something that we're continuing to build and to work on. I know when we first started off it it wasn't It
062wasn't a working document. It was really hard for our principal So I appreciate that we have a template name now that we can definitely improve upon And that's pretty much it. My first meeting will be in not the first week of April because we're on spring break. It'll be the following Monday, and I believe that's the 9th. Thank you. Director Hempel. Yes, my office hours are usually the last Saturday of the month, and so my office hours for this month will be this Saturday, March 25th. at 1030 at Cafe Lila, which is at San Pablo Avenue and about Delaware Street, right across from the adult school. I also just wanted to comment briefly that I was able to the first time in my now 11th year of being on this board is that I was
063invited to attend the California African American Superintendents and Administrators Association. And Berkeley gave a presentation on some of the work that we've been doing with our LCAP and our anti-racism task force to address issues relating to the academic success as well as social-emotional well-being of our African-American students. And I was really struck by, it was really... I liked a conference that, for a board member, was at a great level in terms of focused on things that you could take back to your district that were of a board member or senior administrator level. A lot of times it's a lot of programs that are really interesting, but they're not in context or they're not something you could take back. But I wanted to at least talk about one, and that was that I did go to
064a morning session on unconscious bias. struck me particularly about this session is that it was given by consultants that are available for districts, they have to be selected to participate, that are completely funded by the California Teachers Association. I know we are CFT, not a CTA district, but the fact that a teacher's union would actually use its union membership fees to take on this issue of unconscious bias within their own members to me shows a very rare and admirable self reflection that I think too many professional disciplines do not have. And I was really taken aback by that. And we are not a CTA district, but I'm interested in the kind of work they're doing with that they have decided to take on as a membership is something that we will be taking on, I
065hope, as an administration, but also in conjunction with and in partnership with our teaching staff and our teachers union. Because I think that was a very powerful message to send, that it was a union recognizing that as professionals, as a community, that this was something that they would take on. And that was very inspiring for me. Thank you. Director Appel? I wanted to just also maybe piggyback a little bit on what Director Leyva-Cutler was talking about, which is our safety plans, which are up in front of us today. And I also want to commend the schools. I know that there's a lot of work that goes into creating these safety and disaster plans, and I know that they're important to have. I did consider pulling this item. and possibly voting against them because I am
066concerned that some of the language in them is not reflecting our current policies and procedures and to some extent also our values. So I want to mention a couple of things and then make a suggestion. So there's... A fair amount of consistency, although in going through them, not complete consistency on the language. One of the areas that I was looking at was the area that defines sexual assault and harassment and talks about our complaint procedures and what we would do in the case of... if a student has a complaint for sexual assault or sexual harassment. And we have a lot of conversation here. We've done a lot in the district to address this, but I don't feel that our safety plans adequately reflect where we are in the district. And so I want to ask
067that we take a look at both of these things, actually take a look at them and provide language for the sites that reflects our current policies and procedures. The second one, which actually was of equal concern, is the section on procedures for removing a student from class. And I know that, I believe the policy committee has been working on this issue. Are you still working on the issue of the police removing a student from school? Yeah, it's still on our agenda. It's still on your agenda. So I... I've run out of time, but the safety plans reflect what I think has been our standard practice historically when police want to remove a student from class. I personally believe that police coming onto campus removing a student from class should really be an intervention of last
068resort. And so I think our safety plan needs to reflect that. Our safety plans need to reflect that. And I do urge the... policy committee to come up with a policy that works for the sites, works for students, and also is amenable to the police department. And I just feel really confident we can do that. So my request to staff is that before the sites begin to work on their safety plans next year, if we can provide them with language. that accurately reflects our policies and practices in these areas. And so that when they then dump them into the template, because they are similar enough that it's understandable that they should receive that guidance from the district, that it... That it like I said it reflects what we're actually doing and the movement we've made
069to better protect our students in a way that also is consistent with our values So if that's and I would be happy to work with the district if you want someone to look at that or if you want to have a subcommittee, but I know this comes up over and again, so that was my request my final note is that I I did change the location of my office hours last weekend and then I showed up at the cafe where I was having my office hours and they're closed down, which made me really sad because I love those people. So that, I moved over to Mojo, I left a note. So if you came to my office hour, you didn't find me there and you gave up, I really am sorry. I am going to
070change my office hours and this is the last time I'm going to change them. It's going to be the same day, the third Saturday, 10 to 12. at Mojo. I'm going back to Mojo. I'm going back to my original plan because it's near my house. So I hope to see you. I love seeing people at my office hours. So please come next month. Vice President Daniels. So I haven't been able to hold office hours because there's a relatively new person in my family the last few months. But if you're interested in reaching out and talking, please feel free to email me, tyalper at berkeley.net. And I'm happy to get back to you. Seriously, do email me. And on a more serious note, Didn't want to pull it because it's obviously very important. It's great to
071see the new B-set measure in action, item 4.1. It's great to see the new teacher template and the changes, I think very positive changes that it will be bringing to the district. I do have one concern about the placement of 2.93 FTE on page two of the teacher template. For all those of you who are not tracking, don't worry about it. Basically, The concern here is that I think we need the combined eight FTE at BTA and the placement of a portion of that FTE on page two gives it, you know, less protection than if it was on page one. I understand the budget considerations. I understand there's a lot of factors in making this all work. But I do think that even though that site has not a lot of students, the needs at
072that site are pretty significant. And so I think the concern would be that at some point, particularly since the budget is not looking so good, that when we look for places to reduce, this might be a place and it provides less protection. So hopefully we can address that before it would come back to the board for approval. And you're talking about the policy committee? Okay. I need to have a bond. All right. I need to talk about the bond. Oh, sorry. And then lastly, I'd all encourage you to go to caschooldashboard.org, all the thousands who are watching. It is the new accountability system, and it is a way that we are going to be looking at, one way to look at sort of how our district and our schools are doing and where we might
073want to focus more attention or more questions. Thank you. Okay. Sorry. Thank you all for coming out and for speaking in public comment. I wanted to mention, I think all the board members know this, but the special meeting that we had scheduled for next week, the 29th, we've postponed to October 4th. So hopefully you've gotten notification of that from... from the superintendent's office, but we will not be meeting on March 29th and We will be meeting On October 4th for a special meeting from 6 to 8 p.m. So I appreciate everybody's flexibility with that the I wanted to mention with respect to some of the public comments about the complaint process to to let folks know who aren't aware that the Policy Subcommittee of the Board is currently in the process of revising those policies
074to address some of the specific concerns that were raised tonight and other concerns that have been raised about our complaint policies. The Policy Subcommittee of the Board meets regularly in an open session in their Brown Act. It's a brownout committee, which means that the agendas for the committee are posted online 72 hours in advance of the meetings, including usually with the proposed policies that we'll be discussing at that meeting. The meetings are open to the public. They're usually in room 126 in this building. We will be discussing the – we have a meeting this Friday. The agenda for that meeting – sorry? At noon. At noon. The agenda for that meeting is already posted online. You can go to BUSD. policy committee, Google that and you'll get to the agenda. We'll be discussing the complaint
075policies specifically at our meeting on April 14th. No, yes, April 14th at noon in that room 126. Our calendar does tend to change, but like I said, we provide... by law 72 hours notice of the agenda. So just check the website to make sure you can also email myself or Vice President Daniels. We're the two members this year on the policy subcommittee. I think that's all I had. Superintendent? Yes. Good evening, everyone. I want to thank the Washington and parents, Washington and BAM parents for coming out tonight and sharing their concerns. We finally have our Title IX coordinator, Dana Clark. She has started. We have been working together and trying to work through the complaints and also looking at what needs to be changed on the policy. And so, as I said, we've been working
076really hard on that. We're trying to make changes as fast as we can. And we are working really hard with that. I was going to mention the CASA Conference, which is the California African American Association of Superintendents and Administrators. As Director Hemphill said, there was a presentation given by Dr. Sadler and... Director Hemphill and myself on addressing racial equity and racism, LCAP and beyond, that was well received by those that attended that training. We received another AA plus rating from Standard & Poor's. So thank you, Jovetta, and all those that worked hard on that. And then finally, I want to congratulate our student board member on getting accepted to UCLA. So congratulations. Now we will consider the consent calendars. Is there a motion to approve the consent calendar? So moved. Motion by Director Appel. I'll
077second. Second by Director Leyva-Cutler. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All in favor on the consent calendar? Director Hempel? Consent calendar. I'm sorry. I was joking. We're voting on the consent calendar. I was congratulating her on going to UCLA, but just reminding her that University of California, the best. But you're voting yes on the consent calendar? Yes. Okay. The consent calendar is approved. Now we will hear the first discussion item. So you all want to come up for science? We've allotted 30 minutes for this. How much for prison? So as they come up, I have a disclosure to make. So Mr. Wilkenfeld is my uncle. You're welcome. You can say it. I just have to disclose this for the record. Joshi, did you have to say this right now? I do. So for the record, he's
078my uncle. Per law, I have to disclose the fact that this may, this action were we to vote on it, may result in a financial benefit to him in one form or another through the course of many iterations. And I do feel, however, that I can be fair and appropriate and impartial in my discussion and vote on this, but it's important for everyone to be aware that that relationship exists. So, thank you. Before I turn it over to... That's true, but before I turn this item over to Pasquale Skidary our assistant superintendent ed services I do want to say to the board that this is tonight's item serves as a first reading Plans for a new science content instruction as well as a new science course progression at Berkeley High School Our staff goal is
079to begin implementing and offering the three the new three-year sequence in the fall of 2017 in both BIHS in AHA and in the fall of 2018 for all ninth graders as part of the proposed new universal ninth grade curriculum. And we will be bringing this back again later on in the spring. Thank you Superintendent Evans, board members and community members. We are very excited tonight to have our staff with us to present a new vision of science instruction at Berkeley High School. It's been about 18 years since the National Council of Research and the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences made recommendations and gave reports that essentially shaped what science standards looked like in several states across the country. Obviously in the last 18 years there's been many advancements both in science itself and
080in our understanding as educators of what really helps kids to learn. So those sets of advancements have led to the next generation of science standards which in turn have influenced our vision of what we think will be a very notable upgrade to science instruction at Berkeley High. And so I'm gonna turn it over to these veteran thinking partners of mine and let them take it away. Thank you very much for giving us time to be here and make this presentation. I just wanted to start by having us introduce ourselves. I'm Glenn Wolkenfeld. I've been a teacher on and off at Berkeley High School since 1992. I'm department co-lead. I'm also a Berkeley High parent and Berkeley resident. I'm Colleen Simon-O'Neill, and I am one of the co-lead teachers for the science department. I've been teaching
081at Berkeley High School for eight years, and I will be a BUSD parent next year. I'm Steve Salser and I've been teaching physics and physical science at Berkeley high for 16 years Tamara Friedman vice principal working with science. I've been there for something like 20. I don't know a bunch of years So we know that this isn't the first time you've heard about the NGSS, but we wanted to start by talking about its major features because it lays out the rationale for the changes that we want to make. NGSS is a new approach towards teaching and learning science that we're really enthusiastic about. It's a three-dimensional model of learning that focuses on cross-cutting concepts. So these are ideas that... spiral K through 12 and that appear in all the disciplines of science things like cause
082and effect structure and function it also involves core ideas, disciplinary core ideas in each discipline. So like for example, the idea of evolution in biology or conservation of matter in chemistry or force and momentum in physics. It's a broader vision of science than the one we've been teaching at Berkeley High School, which has been very discipline focused. This one integrates topics such as physics, chemistry, and biology, which are taught at the school, but also astronomy and geology are deeply built into the NGSS approach to learning. And finally, it's one that is much more hands-on in terms of engineering and design are built into all the disciplines. And here you have before you our current science sequence, and it varies slightly by SLC. But for the most part, our students take biology followed by chemistry and
083then electives, which are very heavy. A graduate would leave us very heavy in the life sciences. And our electives are listed below. So those would be 11th and 12th grade for most of our students. And Glenn walked you through the details of the NGSS. And we followed with our current course sequence. And you can see that basically our current sequence is poorly aligned to the NGSS, mostly because our sequence of biology, chemistry, and electives It leaves our students, again, what I said before, is it's very life science heavy, and only about 20% of our students leave with physics, either at the regular or AP level. The new national vision of science literacy includes geology, astronomy, and engineering, which is largely left out of our current course sequence. And one of our challenges year after year
084is that we have an under-representation of students of color in our AP science program. And we really feel that by thoughtfully reorganizing our courses in physics, chemistry, and biology, our students will be better positioned to succeed in upper-level coursework. So what we've come to offer you tonight is a different sequence of how we want to approach science. As opposed to biology, which is a ninth grade course for almost all kids at Berkeley High School, we want to propose a physics class. And we'll be talking to you about that in more detail with Mr. Salzer actually taking the lead on that. But one thing to emphasize is that this is a very different class. from the physics that's offered to juniors and seniors at Berkeley High School now. It's a rigorous class, but it's one that's
085specifically designed to be within the math capabilities of ninth graders. That's gonna be followed by chemistry, which will be followed by biology, which will then open up into science electives. And one thing that I want to emphasize is that this is actually part of a national movement, a physics first movement, that orders the sciences in a logical order. Chemistry is really based upon physics. When you think about the kinds of things that you're thinking about in chemistry, you're thinking about bonds and you're thinking about interactions. And in the same way, a modern biology course is deeply based upon chemistry. You can't really talk about chemistry, you can't really talk about biology without talking about DNA. And you can't talk about DNA without talking about how molecules interact with one another. And that begins with the
086simplest biological processes all the way up to the more complex ones. And one of the things that I think is the strongest endorsement of this move is that biology teachers are at the forefront of wanting us to make this shift because it enables us to teach a biology in a modern way that really accords with modern standards. I think that what we'll do now is we'll turn it over to Steve who will talk you through. our ninth grade physics class. Steve along with Kate Haber have been doing the primary design of this course with funds that have been generously provided by the district and they're going to tell you about the course that they've put together. Steve is going to tell you. So what is our vision for physics 9? We wanted to support student
087success in as many ways as possible. The course is designed to be inclusive and support all ninth graders. The math level is carefully chosen to be accessible and reach all incoming students and special attention is paid to support at-risk high ASI students with grading based upon multiple measures of success. At the same time, the course is designed to meet UCOP D-level lab science credit. This is not a conceptual physics class, but a real physics class that includes math and includes lab investigations to make the math real. Our goal is an equipment-rich classroom environment designed to hook students with interactive hands-on and minds-on content. The labs are not cookbook labs but require genuine problem-solving ability and teamwork. Students decide what to measure, how to measure it, how to interpret it, and there is much more than
088one way to succeed. We have chosen an amazing textbook that allows the course to be structured around these hands-on investigations. Each unit has strong coherence and strong direction to it, and each unit has a meaningful culminating activity that ties it together. The course includes over 60 labs, approximately two labs per week, and ideas for these labs are detailed in the companion guide to the textbook, which is actually good. I'm not usually impressed by these things, and these labs are really, really good. Obviously, we'll modify these labs to make them even better, but these are 60 amazing starting points that we can build off of. The content of the course is explicitly linked to key Math 1 concepts. For example, students will identify patterns and rules, find relationships between variables, explain what an equation means, justify
089steps in their calculations, use quantities with associated units, notice ratios and proportionality, interpret graphs and identify whether data is consistent with a given model. These are all parts of the Math 1 curriculum and the strength of this approach is that students will see the usefulness of math not just in their math class but in other classes as well and specifically in the sciences. We hope this will set the stage for future success in chemistry and ultimately in biology because students will have a stronger math foundation and a better understanding of how math can be used to understand the real world. Students will also have been exposed to key ideas like energy, force, acceleration, wavelength, frequency, and electric charge, and orbital motion that will help them understand how atoms are put together. So I want to
090turn it back to Glenn. So just to close, there's a couple of reasons why we're making this change. One of them is that the standards have changed, and we want to have a curriculum at Berkeley High School that's in accordance with best practices nationwide. So NGSS alignment is one important thing. Along the lines of that, we currently have only about 20% of our students. graduate having taken physics, either at the regular physics class that we offer at the 11th grade or at the AP level. And that is really just not going to cut it in terms of creating citizens from Berkeley who are science literate, who understand the key ideas of science. We want to sequence our courses in a way so that all students, struggling students, high ASI students, have a better shot at
091succeeding in every single level. Organizing the concepts so that kids get a solid foundation with physics, followed by chemistry, followed by biology, seems like it's the best way to do this. We really respect the efforts that have been made by our math colleagues in terms of bringing common core math to our school. And we have an opportunity to redesign curricula where we can align a physics course in the ninth grade that lines up with math one and continue to do that with chemistry and biology in subsequent years. Though this isn't dependent upon the BHS redesign, it works really well in terms of having a strong ninth grade program that's going to get kids really excited about school, that'll work in the kinds of houses that we're trying to put together. And since choice is an
092important thing in our district, it enables kids to continue to access the AP, the IB classes in grades 10 through 12, while at the same time bringing in additional levels of support for underrepresented students. So this is why we're making the change. We look forward to your questions. and we look forward to your support. Thank you. So as Dr. Evans said, this is here for first reading. You all will be coming back for formal approval. At a future meeting But we have we have a little bit of time for questions and comments. Did you mr. Skidward? Did you know I just wanted to say that and in between the time we come back for that second approval We have an information night planned I think for the community that we're working to schedule and we
093have that plan for April 18th and we'll be Communicating that to middle school families and Berkeley high families so that they can come and better understand the changes that we're proposing Okay. Thanks. So questions Director Hempel? So thank you for your presentation, and thank you for taking this on. I long had some questions about the science progression at Berkeley High, and I'm glad to see that the science department, like the math department, is looking at reviewing its practices, particularly in line with Common Core and the need to really, in general, beef up our quantitative side of the fence in our schools. So I have a couple questions. Questions, comments, issues that I'd like to see maybe addressed, not necessarily right now. So please, I'm not necessarily asking for an answer right now if it's a
094question. So I'm glad to hear that. I wasn't sure at first that this was a lab science course that you could get, I guess, what you used to call G. Was it G science? D is the gold standard, and that's what we're going for. D, right. So that was one of the questions that I had. So I don't have them in a... I didn't really order these, so if I'm bouncing around, I apologize. So one of the thoughts that I had was that, at least right now, the current high school graduation requirements, I understand them, is you have to have one life science and one physical science. And when I was in middle school, or junior high and high school. So the fact that I say junior high, you can imagine how old I am.
095Ninth grade was in the junior high, but it was earth science. And that's how you got one life science. And then 10th grade was usually chem. And actually, it was bio. But anyway, I never took bio. But the idea is that there was, you took your earth, your life science and your physical science, your freshman and sophomore years, and then your junior and senior years were really elective time for science. And the way we're doing it now, you would not get that second life, you would not get your life science requirement done until your junior year. So I have a couple questions about that progression. I get questions about this. One of the things that I have been concerned about in science is that I feel that we have many students who are now taking
096AP and IB science classes as freshmen and sophomores when those are really supposed to be upper division classes. No one's taking AP or IB classes as freshmen. I've known kids who've taken IAP biology as freshmen. I beg to... Anyway. Okay. I have. But so I'm a little concerned that I think that for a student that is looking at that, because you now kind of have your three, you now have three years before you would get your high school requirements done. I am concerned that more students will feel pressure to take advanced classes before that they take in the regular class. And this is to me of concern for two reasons. I think it's a disservice for many of the students that are taking these classes, like AP Chem, having taken regular chem first. Most of
097the students I knew who were taking advanced placement chemistry as sophomores as opposed to taking them. after they've taken regular chemistry, struggled in that class and passed because they had private tutoring. The other issue is that for those students that are doing the more traditional nationwide progression of you first take the regular science class and then you take the AP class for more rigor and because you have more interest. This makes that much more difficult to do just because you know if you're going to take a second biology class as a AP or IB or a second chem class as AP or IB you can't do that plus you know take I would call college level physics, like the regular physics. And so I'm a little concerned about how it might force students to take
098more classes before, quite frankly, they're developmentally ready for it. Doesn't mean that you don't get the grade, but it's not the same experience if you're kind of holding on by the skin of your teeth through private tutoring as opposed to you're prepared to take that class on your own terms. The other question that I have is when we talk about equity. I know that one of the reasons that I think that some kids of color or kids whose parents are not themselves in the science or math fields don't take it, is that there's a lot of pressure if you are taking, let's say, a chem course as an AP class and you've never taken chemistry in your life before. There are a handful of kids who I believe can do that, but they're kind of,
099I don't think it's the number of kids that are doing that. I think it's a small segment of kids. I know that my son, did regular chem in sophomore year, did very well. Did then AP. really IB chem junior year and he was openly told that he was really almost like a remedial student for having taken regular chemistry first. It was like he was cheating that he took regular chemistry first and then AP slash IB chemistry when in fact that's the normal progression. And so I think to the extent that we are now kind of reinstituting that thought of taking, of getting AP classes as a replacement, not as supplemental to the regular college class, I consider a bit problematic, I think, for all the kids concerned. Because I think that's really just a very
100small percentage of kids who can walk. It's like, I remember taking a freshman philosophy course. freshman year taking an upper division philosophy course and was lost. Scared me out of philosophy until I was a grad student. Took one my first year of grad student, shaking my boots because I had such a bad experience. But now, four years later, I was prepared for that philosophy class and rocked it. So I'm just a little concerned that we're instituting some of those same issues in terms of really Accelerating students beyond where they really should be going to really have a true deep appreciation of science and those fundamental skills. So that concerns me very quickly. I also just want to say that I also am wondering how this will sync up with the current redesign proposal that maintains
101the small schools as they are. I noticed in your proposal that there was some discussion with the small schools about... them diverging in some respects and then so I'm a little unclear about how that would work. If you're not, you know, I don't know if anatomy for example would also count as a life science class. I know for, if you're in the biotech academy, those two years of biotech would count as a life science. So if you did do that, that would kind of free up, well not free up, but. you would have a little bit more options to take more upper division or lab science classes. So I'm just a little concerned about what this will do in terms of students taking accelerating beyond really where they should be in order to get those
102classes listed on their transcript as opposed to really fundamentally understanding and being able to cope with the sophistication of those courses. Do you want to start with the small schools and then we can talk about the AP issues? Yeah, we had meetings with each of the teacher leaders in the small schools. And in AHA, for example, they take honors anatomy as their second course. So it follows advanced biology and then honors anatomy. And they were discussing... They're going to take on ninth grade physics next year if it goes through. But ninth grade physics, and then they were looking at chemistry. And then they're looking at honors anatomy later in the sequence as opposed to 10th grade. 10th grade is where it is now. And moving it later is an 11th or 12th grade course. They're
103all anatomy then be a life science requirement. We would still have to take biology your junior year. Oh, I understand They are still looking at that there. They're kind of toying with um You know, is it biology and then honors anatomy or is it you know honors anatomy there? They're they're kind of open to discussion there So they're they're pretty flexible and excited Well, first of all, we'll find out about the idea about the ninth graders who are getting accelerated because I think it's a pretty rare event. In terms of tenth graders, we now have five sections of AP chemistry. That's not exclusively sophomores, but it's certainly a lot of sophomores do take that class I don't think that this proposal will change that I think it'll be the same They haven't taken chemistry before
104and they're taking it now and I think that this will be the same It's true that for many students who try to take AP biology that'll be their first course But there's no reason why kids couldn't delay AP biology in this system until 12th grade and take it as a senior elective after they took it in 11th grade and you know, I don't think there's There would be any problem with doing that. I'm not really sure how much it would change the AP Situation in terms of kids choosing to take that there's a lot of community pressure to accelerate and We're really not sure what to do with that and we really haven't heard direction from the board about whether that's something we should be trying to change or not it wasn't it wasn't really
105sort of the heart of this proposal, but we can get back to you with the information that we can I would like some information just, I mean, I know that one of the things that the math department did is they kind of did before and after test of kids that were like going into ninth grade, taking some of these accelerated classes and found that really half of them didn't have the basic skills to actually be in that class. And I think that was some of their thoughts in terms of having. a deeper kind of dive of math fundamentals before kids started really taking off on the upper math classes. And I'm just a little, so I'm just, it doesn't seem that the science department has seen this as an issue to be concerned about. But
106I just feel that if you've never been exposed to chemistry and then the first time you take it is an AP class, either the class isn't truly a college level class. you know, you're getting the college level credit, but it's not a college level class. I mean, if I never took chemistry and the first chem class that I took was in college, I think most of us would have a very difficult time actually doing well in that. And so I don't see why it's any different if an AP class is in fact a college credit level class, why we're expecting that a majority of students would be taking a college level class without ever taking the high school class. So specifically, like for example, if we got back to you with data about pass rates
107in that class, both on the AP exam and in the course, is that something you'd like to see? No, because if you're getting, I mean, I know one of the issues I've seen is that if you're getting an A or a B or even a C in a class because you're having private tutoring, you know, five hours or however many times a week, I mean, that's not indicative. of the true pass rate. I mean, I would like to know, it's like the students that are not, you know, how many students are not getting private tutoring that are getting As and Bs and that have, that are as sophomores. That to me would be more indicative of that that's a correct placement. Okay, we only have six minutes left, so I want to make sure we
108hear from the other board members too. Director Leyva-Cutler. Thank you. Well unlike Karen I don't remember our high school science and I don't remember college science at all and much less I don't think I ever took physics so I'm very new to this but you know I am concerned as you express the the I think this is an opportunity for our students and while I I sort of have faith in the kind of structure and reorganization that you believe will increase our students' color participation in AP science and get them more interested in science. I still would like to see more specific steps in terms of how we're gonna address this equity and inclusion and the diversity of our students and of our teachers in science and physics. you know, we just all of us
109have seen this movie Hidden Figures and this is like a piece of history that's missing in our history and it's unfortunate that it has it comes decades later. So I'm hoping that we have specific things of what we're going to do not just in reorganizing but also in the curriculum in our teaching practice and in the classrooms with our students so that they they're feeling more welcomed and included and excited as our science teachers are obviously. So I really appreciate that. So specific steps in terms of the, you know, what kinds of training you think our teachers also should be getting in this to inform them. The teaching practices that need to change or be boosted up to increase our students' participation. Also... For me, it's how does the doing physics at the ninth grade?
110How does that connect to what's happening in the middle school? What's happening in elementary school? How is that bridge being made so that students come ready and prepared for ninth grade physics? How is that bridge being connected? So there is some continuum of learning for our students, a little bit of physics and all along the way to build this builds a stronger foundation in the ninth grade. And well, actually I would start all the way in preschool. And also I look forward to the connections that you will be making with math and with English language arts because I think all of this involves language and our students are failing in not being able to read the content, much less express it in the math problem. much less the content in math, in science. So I'm
111hoping that we, you have some stronger bridges and collaborations together in the professional development, in the training that you'll have for art science teachers. Vice President Dinos. You may have mentioned this, but timeline and cost, I don't recall that being part of the presentation. We're hoping to start with ten sections next year. So eight of those would be in BIHS. Two of those would be in AHA. The teachers there's no cost Except for that what we're hoping is to get release periods for teachers to design curriculum in that first year So that's the main cost that's associated with it. There are textbook associated costs and there's money that's probably available That's NGS money for buying equipment that's associated with the curriculum in the in the Common Core budget That's within budget priorities. There's a notable
112increase in science allocation for the high school and we'll also be bringing back to you a revised educators effectiveness grant which will put some money into this for next year and in terms of the so the impact of the general fund would be one-time funding yeah okay um in terms of um I mean, I think overall the need is there. You've articulated it seems like the staff is supportive of it. I guess two questions about, or two points about one timing, one process. So when we, this is a little bit like sort of a redesign, but just for the science department. And I'm thinking back when we did this with Common Core, particularly with math, there was a fair degree of outreach and process. And my sense is, and I don't want to make wrong
113assumptions, but that that process was longer and more process-y than this, to use a technical term, than this process has been. want to know if there is other than just the desire to do this and what appears to be very unanimous support among science teachers to do this if there's any reason why we wouldn't want to potentially make sure that we've done more than just one community session but really sort of engaged in a little bit of a deeper, more broader outreach similar to the process we engage in at our Common Core. I think we could certainly be open to doing that. I think one rationale I would give for why this process would be somewhat abbreviated is those discussions around math really included changing options for acceleration and some things that were. I think
114substantively more controversial in some people's eyes. What we're talking about here is reorganizing curriculum that is perfectly in line with the shifts that the new standards have dictated. So I think the process for this project is more to inform people of what those new standards are and how what we think we're doing is aligning them. I'm not sure that we would need an extensive community process to. There wouldn't be a discussion or debate about what the standards that we need to teach in science are. Yes. To the point particularly about sort of acceleration. Oh, sorry. Vice principal to respond if you think of the difference between the shift that happened in math and the shift that happened in the English Common Core To my knowledge there was no community outreach around the English Common Core
115shift Certainly at the high school in the sense that we were aligning the curriculum to the standards. I should be more specific Thank you for that the point that the assistant superintendent made about about many acceleration And there was much, my sense is, I don't want to get it wrong, but there was more discussion around acceleration and more time for the community to sort of be aware of it and weigh in. I guess I may be assuming something incorrect here, but my sense is that some families, I don't know if you can bring up the slide that shows what we used to have or this is proposing, but some families might look at that and see a diminished opportunity to take AP classes. I don't know that to be a, I don't think that's actually
116a fact. I think it is. Not if you take them your sophomore year, which is my point. So I actually think that this makes a lot of sense and I don't see a diminishment. I don't see a concern, but. So that's one potential consideration. Sort of related as one of timing, I have some concern that you'd have ninth graders and twelfth graders taking basically the same physics, sorry, not the same physics class because the curriculum would be different. But the courses would be titled the same. They're going to be different UCOP courses. They'll have different. Yeah, the substance would not be the same, but you'd have a senior taking a physics course for the first time and a freshman taking a physics course for the first time. And that, and I guess that would happen
117whenever you roll it out because you're going to, but I wonder whether it would make more sense to do this. to do this along with the redesign for the following fall and what the urgency is for this fall versus next fall versus the following fall. You start coming. Yeah, just very quickly. We have to roll it out because of credentialing issues. So there will be a year basically where the bio classes will not be. taught basically. So we have a number of biology life science credentialed teachers and during the second year the number of biology courses offered will be low. So to protect jobs. Because it would be, because in the past it would have been their junior year but I see. Okay. Yeah, it's complicated. So that's part of the reason why we would
118need a rollout and also a run-up to the redesign. Because otherwise, if the universal ninth goes through and then we have half the kids taking physics, half the kids taking biology, it gets very confusing as they go into their SLCs, their 10th grade year. I can share a map. That's a good answer. All right, that's that's a fair point off to think about that but that that that makes sense. Okay director Powell I Agree with what director Daniels? I will the points that he made so I I just I want to just get a little more specificity on the cost I saw that in the proposal that the the proposal is I get where we're gonna get the money from But I'm still curious to know how much the total price tag is between the
119release periods for the teachers, the equipment, and some of the techs, including I think we had some technology equipment in there. We're looking at a proposed $100,000, $75,000 from the Common Core budget within budget priorities tonight. And like I said, we'll be bringing you a revised educators effectiveness grant proposal with a $25,000 line item. So estimated $100,000 one time money for the implementation. So that includes the materials and what about the professional development? The professional development is in those costs, yeah, some summer training. I mean, Glenn and I have. Yeah, ideally, you know, we have to do significant amount of work to be redesigning chemistry and redesigning biology as well. So we're hoping that money for release time for teachers to do that work and do the heavy lifting of curriculum redesign is going to
120continue for a couple of years as we roll this through. But it won't roll through forever. So there is release time in this for the teachers teaching those 10 classes? Not all 10. How is it? How is this going to work? Because I know how expensive it was to pay for release time for the math. It's three. So imagine three instructors, so one release period per instructor. Okay. I just want to, I just know how that it's, it was a heavy lift to get the math teachers and we invested quite a bit. So I want to make, this seems like it would be just as significant of a shift to a new kind of, I mean, you talked about the five and the three and that's really different. So everyone's going to have to learn
121how to. shift their pedagogy. What I would hope would happen would be that over the next three or four years, for example, we'd have a couple of release periods for physics teachers that can do heavy lifting in terms of redesign of curriculum and then bring all their colleagues on board. And then a similar amount of release for chemistry teachers and biology teachers as we roll this up from ninth to 10th to 11th grade. And then just to also piggyback on Josh's point about the, about I guess whether it's public input or in community, I don't know just Having some what you say? communication some process I Get your point Tamara about the English curriculum, but I do think because again this is limiting I Mean what any way you look at it. There's there's it's
122there's gonna be less options for science and at least in your junior year, right? So right now there's pretty many options like, you know, some kids take environmental studies or science is their junior year some take I don't know what else they take but I don't know what they take That's my kids. I think I only have had one through he took environmental studies But I hope everybody takes this in the right way and I sure don't want to offend it I mean, I don't mean to I don't I understand that I just think that it is a significant change and together coupled with the math change, which also you know, limited options. And we've seen the response from some parents really feeling, I mean, students just, yeah, I just feel like we need to
123have communication because our community does value, some of our community really values the choice. I'm concerned about some of the equity issues. Is it going to be, is physics going to seem, I really think we have to educate families about physics being accessible. I like the idea of ninth graders taking physics, but, you know, I'm, my kids in 10th grade, so, you know, past that. So I think, you know what I mean? I just think there's a lot of conversations parents are going to have questions on, I think, across the board, and I want to make sure that we're there to answer them. Yeah, and the thing that I was going to say is that we're not changing the amount of science and the amount of advanced science that kids can take. And what was
124it? What I was about to say is that kids are taking a lot of science at Berkeley High School, but we're feeling that they're not taking the right science. In other words, they're not taking the science that's leaving them truly science literate. They're taking too much life science. And I'm a biology teacher, and I'm owning that. And I think it's really important to talk that. If our kids want to graduate in 2017 and 18 and 19 and forward, truly science literate, they need to understand forces. They need to understand the difference between a volt and a watt. And most of our kids don't. and we're really leaving them ill prepared for the kind of work that's required in college. I mean I want to say I agree. It makes total sense to me. I just
125think that we need to have those. I do think we don't want to shortchange the process of letting our community know. Director Seely did you have any? Okay, I want to thank you not only for being here tonight, but for the very thorough packet and presentation and for all the work you've put into this. Thank you for being here tonight. Thank you. We'll now move on to item 12.2, which is an update on Common Core Mathematics. So I'm actually excited about this item because I can remember when we started talking about this and the... Teachers as well as the administration were having meetings with the community around the new math program and so this is actually the second year of implementation and it's part of a three Three courses coming together to complete a three-year
126sequence and so this is update and We will have questions after the presentation We've allocated Liz 30 minutes for this item. So you're about to hear an update on the Common Core Math implementation at Berkeley High. While Nicole is furiously setting up, do you folks want to introduce yourselves? Erin Schweng, Principal, Berkeley High. Nikia Baird, I am a co-math team lead. I also just want to say that I'm a former physics teacher before I came here, and I taught a freshman physics course. Nicole Nagapun, math teacher. I'm Kate Garfinkel. I'm the co-chair with Nikia of the math department. So this is an overview of, oh, sorry. I'll just, I'll sit like this. So. So far for the last two years we have been using the money that we have been given for ten release periods
127for our math one last year and our math two teachers this year. This has given the teachers with the release three periods per week to meet together to plan lessons to go over curriculum to create common assessments to analyze student work and twice a week we have been in each other's classrooms. co-teaching lessons and working directly with students in those classes. There have been some minor tweaks this year, but for the most part, it's been the same for both years. Some of the work that we've been doing is we have a shared Google Drive with all Math 1 and Math 2 teachers and anytime we make any resources they are available to all of the other teachers so it has been a really great resource, any worksheets, any quizzes, anything like that. We also spent
128some time over the summer making teacher guides for every module. that specifies objectives and vocabulary and pacing, particularly for teachers who will be new to teaching the curriculum so that they have some of those same resources. We have common pre and post exams and also common module tests and quizzes. And in addition, we've been working pretty closely this year with the special ed department to help the teachers in special ed get more knowledge about our curriculum. So far we've been really happy with the way that it has gone. We've really created a wealth of resources for our teachers teaching both Math 1 and Math 2. And the more we teach these courses, the better we're getting. So, yes. Our plan for Math 3 moving forward, we'll continue with the collaboration and continue to make resources,
129creating the pacing guides and lessons, so similar design as we did for Math 1 and 2. We also will need to, we've already begun the work on vertical alignment to our fourth year courses. That work will need to continue next year and of course into the fourth year because they have to be adjusted. because we have several options as they get to the fourth year now, not open to all students. So our teachers will still focus on high needs, so in those, the other periods they will be in classrooms, working directly with students. And so even if they're teaching Math 3, they can be in the Math 1 or Math 2 classrooms. And also continue on with the math tutoring which has been funded by the development group. We have tutoring labs for math one
130and two. And so we'll expand that to have a resource for students for math three. So the transition process and in general how it's worked rolling out. So of course we're noticing as students come up into the high school they have more experience with the common core that's being introduced in the middle schools and elementary as we come up. Also, there's the change because historically we had all of our ninth graders actually came into six different classes. So now they're all coming into a ninth grade course. So a rigorous course where we have all those students together instead of sorting them out. And so we can now really identify them in the classroom and have the targeted curriculum. And the integrated nature is it's allowing students to have different access points only as we go
131within each lesson, but also mixing up the modules. So for example, if a student is, if we're learning geometry, as we have a few modules of geometry, while that'll connect into the next year, we also have a chance to engage in some statistics and then go back into algebra as well and connect all those ideas, but also give students different access points. And then our teachers continue to have the transition as they'll be teaching new courses and learning through the whole process, teaching maybe every year a different course. And then we continue to collect and gather data with the common assessments that we have. It's really these are our baseline years as we roll out each year, really collecting as much data as we can as each class comes out. So this slide shows our
132DF rates over the last year and a half. These certainly weren't the DF rates that we were hoping for. We really were looking for some improvement and we found at least this semester data to be quite disappointing. As a department, we have spent time looking at this data. We have also looked at Teachers have looked individually at students who have DNFs to really take a look at who the students are and what further supports these students need because we do really care about all of our students. And right now, as part of our PD, teachers are creating inquiry cycle plans to address the needs of some of the students who are getting Ds and Fs in their classes right now. One of our goals is really to interrupt the predictability of failure, and this is
133something that we're obviously going to have to continue to work on. So also in our department, we have talked about some of the differences that may, that have influenced perhaps the data last year versus this year. So one of the things that is really different is that last year our teachers had collaboration, and this year they don't. that may be influencing some of the numbers is the teacher is having that extra support and having that extra time to talk about students who are struggling, about the ways that we're teaching. Also the Math 1 curriculum over the summer was dramatically changed. The modules were switched around and one of the more challenging modules that was in second semester last year has been moved to first semester this year. And also we All of our students, as
134Nakia said, are taking Math 1. They're coming in from 8th grade, no matter what their 8th grade math grade was, and they're all coming into Math 1. And at this time, we don't have specific supports for those students who are struggling in 8th grade math who are coming into our classes. So those were some of the differences that we noticed between last year and this year. So we were aware that students would come in, like Kate was saying, all into Math 1. So what we did is we created a pre-assessment and then embedded it in our semester exams as well so we could look at those questions and track them over time. Because our students were often stuck in a sequence that they were repeating in our previous model, whereas here we wanted to show
135that there was growth and learning going in there. So by looking at the pre-assessment and then embedding it, We can look at that piece all throughout. And so we are seeing that students are learning. So even if they're all in that class, we're seeing that our struggling students are coming in and learning some of those pre-skills as they're in that more rigorous class that they wouldn't have had access to previously. So some of the supports that we have in place right now for Math 1 and Math 2 students. As Nakia mentioned earlier, we have these tutoring labs, these tutoring rooms that are one room special for Math 1 students, one room for Math 2 students. In those rooms, four days a week after school, we have two teachers who are teaching the current course in
136there to help. students answer questions, look at homework, et cetera. Another support is that, was one that Kate mentioned, and we want to thank the development group very much for that. It's been really nice to have a space where all Math 1 students can go to, or if you're in Math 2, all Math 2. Centralizing it has been great. Kate mentioned that one of the things we did over the summer was to create some teacher notes and with that we also created some student notes. And in the fall we shared the student notes with the special ed department and they gave us some incredible feedback. And from that incredible feedback we were sort of able to move forward with creating a bigger, more rigorous support for students. Right now we have up a Math 1
137and a Math 2 website that has videos for the lessons and the videos cover two things. A recap of the lesson that's done in class and then also sort of, you know, walking through some worked examples for homework. And if you don't find my voice too grating, you could go watch all of them. They're really fun. The other thing that we've done with working with the Special Ed Department is actually sitting down and looking at some of the lessons with them. I was able to sit with them. We did a lesson together and then we sort of went and looked at the resources that we have so they could see how the resources complemented the in-class lesson. So we know that the SBA data that we have from the grade eight test has some predictability
138for how students will do in our ninth grade course. which is great. It's good that we have this predictability because it means that we can really focus on finding the students who we're worried are going to struggle and really start finding ways of interrupting that predictability. We have one small thing that we need to kind of work on here, which is that for students who don't take the SBA in grade eight, we don't... Therefore, we don't have a way of predicting. And of those 136, 32 earned D's and F's this first semester. So we need more robust ways of trying to predict which students we would like to target for additional support. And we're hoping that one of those would be that we would look at the internal assessments that the eighth grade students take.
139Lastly, we wanted to talk about some of the next steps, future goals. So we know that we have students who struggle. We know that students are coming out of eighth grade, earning ones and twos in grade eight math, and they're all going to math one as a ninth grader. And we need to find ways in order to address their needs in particular. So some of the ideas that we've come up with is, you know, we have an intervention. team at Berkeley High and we've sort of thought about the model that they've used and thought about wouldn't it be great to have sort of intervention that's specific for math. So for instance, having a math teacher who can come in and watch a student in a classroom, see what they're doing, help them with student skills,
140help target what kinds of resources would be the most useful for helping them move from growing to a place where they're growing and passing. We also know that it's really helpful to be able to collaborate with each other. And so having, again, you know, a math coach kind of person who could be working with teachers during lessons, you know, before and after sort of debriefing new teachers, old teachers, everybody would also be really powerful. We also know that community outreach is a really big piece of all of this. And, you know, the middle schools do some math nights. You know, I think that it would be really wonderful if we could have some space to do that at the high school also. And really make sure that we're bringing in the families that are the
141least connected to the curriculum so that we can really be opening that door up further for our students. Thank you. Questions, comments, Vice President Dino? Thank you very much for the presentation. I found it really interesting and I really want to commend you for the data that you presented. If you could go back to that slide real quick, please. One more. There you go. Oh, man. So two points. One, obviously, to your point that we obviously wanted to see something different. I also wanted to remind you and to the thousands who are watching about the data we saw on our suspension rates and the uneven progress that we made in that area over the last four or five years. Obviously, this is only one year of data. You don't want to draw too many conclusions.
142You don't want to be too lax in our assumptions. But I just want to commend you for being willing to share data that isn't necessarily positive and I think that bodes well for our ability to recognize what we're doing right we need to improve on and how to how to make it better go back one more slide please oh no the transition that there you go Okay, I think you covered it. Just to be clear, the last bullet about collecting baseline data, what you mean is baseline data for Math 1, 2, 3, 4. We're collecting baseline data for Math 1. We already saw that. Yeah, I think that one thing that's important to understand is that this is, in some ways, this is our baseline for Math 1 because last year we didn't have all
143of our ninth graders because we still had the scattering. And that compiled with the fact that Math 1 was kind of realigned and shuffled. The actual curriculum so it becomes a little bit difficult to compare those so in many ways This is this is our baseline year for math one But yes, we still have some information about especially when it comes down to each module and topic and I Forget who mentioned but somebody mentioned that there weren't a lot of math supports available To easily be identified to support students who we we know are likely to get D's and F's or we see your head in that direction We are obviously investing money in this, in this effort. And I guess not to say that the... current ways we're investing money aren't valuable and important
144and keep it going. I guess I would ask whether if our intent, one of our primary intents is to really support those students who are getting D's and F's. If there wasn't a way to redirect some resources which we would not do something else that we want to do to be put into PD around those supports or training around those supports or whatever programming was necessary to identify those supports because It's not to say that the other work that we're investing in through this is not important. Obviously, it's how we got where we are. But if we are sort of staring at the fact that we have these students heading down the DNF route and we have the resources if we are able to shift it around, it just means making a tough decision around
145what not to do that we know also helps. I don't know if you've thought about that or have any reaction to that, but I would offer that as something to consider because We're looking at it, and it seems like you might have ideas about how we could invest in that area and make a immediate difference. Yeah, I think that as we move through, even this year, our focus was still on Math 1, as that's our introductory class, and that's where we need the most support for our students. So trying to get even our teachers, instead of being in Math 2, like last year, they were in collaboration Math 1. They were also in Math 1, but a lot of our Math 2. TEACHERS THAT ARE DOING COLLABORATION ARE IN MATH 1 CLASSES AS WE CAN
146TARGET THEM WITHIN THE SCHEDULE. AND SO MOVING FORWARD IN MATH 3, WE HAVE THAT SAME MODEL, BUT WE ALSO, WE'RE GOING TO HAVE FEWER TEACHERS THAT ARE GOING TO BE IN THAT SITUATION AS WE HAVE THE PREVIOUS YEARS. SO, YES, I THINK GOING FORWARD, THINKING IF WE HAD THE SAME RESOURCES, WE WOULD PULL MORE OF THOSE TOWARDS SUPPORTING THE MATH 1 AND 2, IF THAT IS OUR, BUT WE ALSO HAVE THE THING THAT WE HAVE TO ROLL OUT A NEW CURRICULUM. SO, YEAH, WE'RE BALANCING THOSE THINGS, AND IT IS, I MEAN, IT. is difficult because as resources go down then we we're not really have the same amount of of resources and then shifting them down they're actually getting cut up as we're moving yeah moving forward so i i i hear you completely i
147i would offer though um that a student can't pass math three if they can't pass math one um and and i You know, it's tough. Like, obviously, we want to develop a robust Math 3 curriculum. We want to make sure that those students who've passed Math 1 well, who've passed Math 2 well, are succeeding and being successful in Math 3. At the same time, one of the concerns that the board has expressed in the past is the ability of ninth graders to be successful in math. And so it does require some difficult choices, and obviously we can't direct that level of minutia. But we are looking at that chart. around DNF. And I guess I would ask that if next year the data comes back and shows a similar trend, the question would be, well,
148we chose to invest in Math 3, understandably, but we did not invest in... clear knowable remedies for math one and if that choice was made that's fine but but then what on what basis would we expect there to be a different trajectory on that data and if that's the case that's the choice you make the choice you make but I don't think we we as a community should expect those numbers necessarily to go down if we're not doing anything different for next year Yeah, I just want to acknowledge that I think that's the crux of the question that we face and it's an excellent point and obviously if we had enough resources to support direct directly support math when students with something like a math support class And support math three teachers to be building
149out the curriculum and dealing with the fourth year alignment with our you know and cap courses it that would be something we would want to do. So we do have those competing priorities and I think there's lots of ways you can cross cut it and think about well benefiting, you know, having a very well articulated course sequence benefits all students. However, when we're looking at that data and thinking about those students who are physically sitting in Math 1 classes, we feel a very strong pull to help them as well. So I think you got immediately to the crux of what we're wrestling with right now. And I don't envy the choice because there's not an easy and obvious option. Director LaVecatla. Thank you. I am concerned about the class, that some of the students at
150ASQ who have a three and they're failing, and are they the ones going to the after school programming? You know, my feeling is they're not the ones that are going. and they're the ones that are absent from class. And so how do we capture them during the day class and not in after school, but really giving them perhaps looking at a double period of a class where it would be supportive of them, and it's not after school. Because my feeling is, and I see them in SARB, they're the ones not in class, and they're the ones getting Ds and Fs. And if we were to look at also the same students who are successful, who have... who have the ASI 3 but are doing well. What is going on for them that's different? What are
151the skills that they have that our other students don't have? So for me, it's really how do we incorporate this into the daily? experience someplace in there and it's not an after school it's not before school because they're not we're not getting them there I don't think that they're they're sticking around it's few of them so I would I would hope that we would be looking at how we can incorporate more support during the school day Are we seeing, did we have new teachers come also into Berkeley? Is that also part of the challenge that we have in terms of bringing new teachers on board to Math 1? Yes, and some who have been in Berkeley for many years and didn't teach Math 1 last year. So for them, this year is their first year
152teaching Math 1, even if they are a veteran teacher. And then the very apparent one is the internet access that students have in... that these children who are ASI 0 to 3, most of them don't have internet access or a computer or a printer. And so what happens for those students at the end of the day when they go home? Or they didn't come to class and now they're behind. What are we doing to support those students? Cell phones? I mean, I guess I don't have... Well, I mean... Yeah, all students have the curriculum that the videos and stuff have been other you know other supports that we've created I mean quite frankly because there's pressure to have even more and more and more and more and so but we are aware that students You
153know not all students have access to that We do have guides and such as well that students and teachers are giving notes and support notes in class that are very similar to those videos and stuff. Of course, working together and working with teachers and making sure that we're all kind of doing the same thing is that collaboration component. Are you checking with those students who don't have, maybe they're doing their homework on their cell phone? Are we checking with those students who have the ASI 3? Do they have internet access to that? Are they doing their homework on their phone? Are they doing the tutoring sessions on their phone late at night? So I think point of clarification. So all students have... each module and they have access to what they need to do their
154homework, a hard copy. I think your point is well taken about support during the day. However, we did do an intervention last year and try to figure out who was accessing the tutoring and we found out that many students who were getting a B who wanted to get an A instead, understandable, but they were the ones who were at the tutoring and so we did an outreach to make sure that students who were getting lower than Bs were at the tutoring classes after school. Buying popcorn actually really helped, seriously. But in terms of the other supports that we have, those are the things that are in addition to what the students need to do their work. So everyone has what they need to do their work. And then in addition, the support website and things
155like that are up. If a student went to the CCC after school, they could access the math support website. And we're getting that information out to students. We've been working on that in the last few weeks. Well, I would hope that we can support better those students who don't. They shouldn't be doing. I think there's more tutorials they could have access to. Okay, Judy, then me, then Karen. Hi. Yeah, I agree with Josh that it's great that you brought the data for us to see because we all need to grapple with it. We've been recognizing that we're investing a lot. We've invested and are planning to continue to invest in our math program, recognizing that we had work to do. And I know you've been working hard to do it. But of course that chart
156is very sobering, that table is very sobering for all of us. And so I have a couple of questions. One of them is, do you have a plan, like kind of an assessment plan? So I agree this is still the first year and a half. It sounds like you made some changes, some adjustments over the summer. It sounds like you might be reevaluating some of those adjustments. It sounds like you're still tweaking a little bit. So is that right? Yeah, so are so at what point and I was actually thought this is what Josh was gonna say because this is what Josh often says but at what point are we gonna look and say okay this this is you know, we really need to shift course or something. So I just wonder, I want to
157know kind of what the plan is as far as like how many years do we continue to look at the data? At what point do we look at the data and say, okay, this is great, we've made it, you know, that this was a blip, we've worked it out, we're actually getting kids the support they need and there's no predictability based on their ASI scores, both their academic outcomes. Or at what point do we say, look, that 49% isn't getting better and we need to really do something. So do you have a timeline? Do you have a timeline for evaluating? When we should be reevaluating our implementation of this curriculum and how it's rolling out. Well, I think much like when as a classroom teacher I'm often reevaluating things as I go And we we
158have to continue to do on that as well I think that it's a really important to understand that our old model that the the over acceleration and sorting of students actually led to very Actually the same type of results. It's important to understand that now we have made a decision as a district to give students access to mathematics that we didn't otherwise do when we when they were going into all these different classes and also I mean on a positive note, these students are in the same class now. They're not scattered all over in different curriculums with different teachers and everything. Now you have your colleagues to work for and identify them. And yeah, now what are we going to do? When do we reevaluate and say it didn't work? I mean I think we're
159constantly, we're working to identify students and find things that are working. we're not ready at this point. I mean even at the second semester, I mean what are teachers, what are we doing? We're identifying students and we know that after the first semester, when we get to the second semester we There can be a lot of growth between that as well. So we're looking at one semester right now. Just to be clear, I'm not saying we should do it right now. And you don't have to sell me on the benefit of this. I voted to support it. I've invested. I've been fully in support of this process. So you don't have to convince me. I'm not asking you to convince me that it's a good idea. What I'm saying is we also have to be
160willing to say at some point, like, oh, maybe we need to do a little bit more than that. I understood. Dr. Garfinkel, you had a list of some things that could be, but none of those were really like concrete pivots or redirections. They were some thoughts. And so I feel like it's part of my job and our job to keep us. accountable to the investment in our kids that we're making. And we're talking about making these major changes with this ninth grade and Math 1 is a part of it. So, you know, we're going to have Math 1 and we're going to have physics. We're going to, you know, we're changing the experience. We want that. We all, all of us want that to be, you know, one that. ends the academic predict, the racial
161predictability of academic achievement. So I'm, I just, I guess what I, maybe I should be more directive. Like I think that it would be really good given this chart if we are able to take a look at the year-end data that we keep looking every semester to see and have a conversation just to make sure that we're. providing the supports we need to provide to you doing your work, your hard work in the classroom. So I think that's what I'm going to request if others agree that we take a look again, you know, maybe at the end of the year to see how things look after this semester. And, you know, it's not an attack, it's a question. I know we're up here and you're down there, but we need to help grapple because... We
162are getting ready to make some more, hopefully, some more significant changes in the ninth grade. And we want to make sure that we're being smart. I think an accompanying piece of information to that that I do want to give credit to the math team for coming up with is actually looking deeper if you look at the protocol that they used with that DF rate to really kind of, you know, get into why kids were not succeeding. And, you know, they kind of went through a protocol of, you know, these are students that... are not coming to class, these are kids who are coming to class and not doing much, these are kids who are coming to class and really trying and we're still not getting to them. So I think to kind of keep those
163types of protocols going, we'll get more specific information on whether or not it's a social-emotional engagement issue and the students in this pool are struggling in other classes. But, you know, for those kids who are coming and trying and, you know, our practice, I think that information looking at that subpopulation of kids who are struggling is a really critical place to look at when we're evaluating our curriculum and our teaching practice. So I think along with that data, we should continue to look at that kind of really those specific distinctions in student groups that are struggling. Yeah. And I'm sure you're looking at it. I mean, even if we're not seeing it, I'm sure you're, the district is. So I think part of my questions around that also had to do with the fact that
164I'm hearing from parents of students in math one and two of kids who are. feel that it's not challenging. So if it's, you know, it's just, oh, I'm sorry. I went too. So I just want to say that it seems like there's the, you know, there's the both ends of it. So I would think if that was happening, then it would be serving maybe the lower end kids. But if it's not, if neither are kind of being served, that's, that's, and I like the curriculum. I have a 10th grader. That gets to the second, I have one final question, which is how are you as the math department at BHS supporting the credit recovery programs at both IS and BTA? So how are those educators being trained in, what are we doing with math one,
165two, and now three at BTA and IS? And how is that integrated into this? for those students. Yeah, I think that I'd let Erin jump in. I brought up the credit recovery because I would have met, since they're on a quarter system, I thought maybe it would be different. I don't know. Yeah, I think, you know, given where we are in the second year of implementation for Math 1 and Math 2. There definitely is a need to kind of draw a more solid line to what happens for BTA. I think since we've been in curriculum building phase and the majority of kids who need math credit recovery are in 11th and 12th grade there, it's just part of a next step. And I think, you know, it's been brought up in multiple domains, the need
166to kind of connect a little more closely with IS and we're trying to allocate some money and some time for those folks to collaborate to plug into. high school PD. So it's a good point. We have more to do there. I don't know if you want to add to that, Erin. Also, not this past summer, but the summer before that, we had the publishers come out and do a training for us with the curriculum. And then we did a three-day additional training, just us sort of doing that big initial ramp up before the school year started. the independent study teachers and BTA teachers were invited to that. And I believe one or two of them did come. I can actually look it up at some point. My memory is not always the crystal clearest, unfortunately.
167One thing I could say specifically to independent study is that as we work with them to generally a student independent study can choose to stay and enroll in up to two classes at Berkeley High. And those are supposed to be classes that are not offered at independent study. So that's generally how it has worked. However, with Math 1 and the way that it's important for a student to be part of classroom discussion around the mathematics every day, we've relaxed that rule somewhat because we've been finding that there's a need for the independent study students to actually remain. in a math class at BHS to be available for that sort of daily conversation. So there are ways that we're adapting and changing with them as we're looking at the new curriculum. So we're already over time,
168but I have some questions. I know Director Hempel does too and maybe Director Sylvie. And we still have two big items to discuss. So I'll be brief, but I share. and appreciate the concerns that my colleagues have raised, as well as all the work that you all have put into the presentation and the rollout of this curriculum. Can you go to the next slide, the chart that we're talking about? And I just want to make sure that I'm understanding not to, you know. Try to make excuses for us or minimize the concern that the numbers that the trend is not going in the direction We want to but am I right that and I think you may have said this that when we look at this the third row where the ASI three plus number
169goes up that That's including that's all ninth grade students So whereas the first two rows With the 29% in ASI three plus that doesn't include students who were repeating algebra Is that right? No. All the courses that we had shut down last year included Algebra 1. So the students who historically would have been in Algebra 1 last year as 9th graders were in Math 1 as 9th graders last year. This whole chart is only 9th grade students. So only 9th grade students who were in Math 1, Semester 1. and then last year and then this year. I think what the president is trying to ask about is the fact that all ninth graders were required to take Math 1 in 16-17, but in 15-16, not all ninth graders did. Oh, correct. So this is the
170ones that had, well, the ones that had skipped, no, they were already skipped, right? Yeah, this is all ninth. Wait, it's all ninth in both years? Right, right, right, okay. Is the first year all ninth grade? All ninth grade. Okay. So in both years, if you were a ninth grader, you took Math 1. No. Okay. So that's... So it is. So... Yes. That's why we had to do it this way. I was talking about the baseline data. It's a little... Will you turn your mic on? Yeah. Okay. Well, do they all take the same class? No, I think what your point is that in part 16-17, the incoming, the freshmen in 16-17 may... have had included some students who we would predict would not perform as well as the average that great student and Those
171students were not as prevalent in the 1516 class. That's your point, right? It is that is my point is that and so therefore it may be the increase in The DNF rate is due in part because of the change in population of ninth graders that took math 1 in 16 17 versus 15 16 That is what I'm saying. I'll be here all night in case you need help. But is that really the point, though? It's still 43%. No. All of the ninth graders, I mean, most of the ninth graders that are missing were in, like, Algebra 2 and the other classes. So even if they were accelerated. So they were accelerated. necessarily in the honors class because they may have fallen out of that, but they're in an accelerated class, so it does contain those.
172I mean, there are other things that, I mean, I don't think we need to explain. So you're wrong. I'm wrong, thank you. Yeah. Good point. But that was my question. I know it's confusing. It'll get simpler in the data. No, I was confused. So thank you. Let me ask you two quick questions about advanced math, which we haven't mentioned. I'm interested in the gender breakdown and the sort of achievement. I know it's a small amount of data. And in general, I just, and this is true even of the chart we're talking about. I think it's hard to make, we shouldn't be making decisions based on one or even two years of data. But what struck me about the achievement and enrollment information with respect to gender and advanced math was two things. One is that
173there were significantly more. Boys in advanced math won this year. I think it was about 57% to 42% or so. 71 boys, 52 girls. But the girls did significantly better in the first semester. I'm trying to scroll through now, but a significantly higher percentage of A's and B's. Here we go. 95% of the girls got A's and B's and only 80% of the boys got A's and B's. So it was interesting to me that fewer girls are in Advanced Math 1, but the ones who are in it seem to be doing better than the boys. And so what that makes me wonder is whether what we're doing in eighth grade to encourage girls... who might be able to do well in advanced math to take the placement test. I'm sorry, can I pick on that?
174To add students of color? Well, I'm getting to that. Because with respect to students of color, there's only one African American student in advanced math. There's 18, two or more races, students, 12 Hispanic, six Asian. But yes, so the same question. We don't have the achievement data by race, but... for advanced math. So that's my question. And I think the data question would be of the eighth graders, because we know we have students coming in from non-BUSD schools, but of the eighth graders who are in BUSD who were doing well in eighth grade, you know, we're getting fours or 90% or whatever a high score would be in eighth grade math in a BUSD school. Do we know what the race and gender breakdown of those students who took the placement test is? I don't
175expect you to know it off the top of your head, but is that something that's trackable? Does that question make sense? Yeah, the question makes sense, and yes, it's trackable for our in-house students. We can know the gender breakdown, the ethnicity breakdown of who took the test and how they did. We can also look at it compared to their SBA. One of the factors is that our middle schools give the test at their sites, so they often do it as an optional after school. although some have not always done it that way. And I think one of the things that, you know, there's all kinds of different ways you could think about what that communicates to a student and how you can encourage people specifically. We worked with Longfellow actually specifically to encourage girls to
176take the test in their classes last year, but there's not been a uniform outreach message to say, you know, these are the talking points to say to your classes about who should take this test. Yeah, and I know about the efforts at Longfellow and I appreciate them. So I guess I would encourage you all to think about ways to affirmatively encourage both girls and students of color to take the test so that they can access the more advanced class. I think that's important because this data to me suggests that there are girls who might be doing well in advanced math who maybe didn't take the placement test. I could be wrong about that. Sorry. Well, I did have a question about, in the interest of time, I wasn't going to ask it, how the students
177who waved into advanced math were doing in comparison to the students who tested in. Do you have a rough sense that you could give us tonight about that? I feel like you're opening the can of worms at the end of the presentation. No, that's a really big deal. I think that's worth a whole entire conversation about the waiver process and how those students are doing. When I look at the students who drop the class, more than 50% of them had waived into the class. And I think there's an important conversation to be had about the placement process itself and how multifaceted we could make it so that we're placing kids well. No, we are constantly looking at that and looking at how students are doing and what that means for them as they go through
178the rest of their year of math. Okay, thanks. Last question on this, then I'll turn it over to Director Hempel. Do we know roughly, again, I assume not off the top of your head, what percentage of kids who were in advanced math last year are in advanced math 2 this year? In other words, what percent stuck with it versus decided to go into regular math 2? Can't remember the number who dropped off the top of my head I think it was around five or six, but I have to double check five or six kids Okay, and again, I think it's really important to understand that that cohort is a different It's a different group this year because those students were The students that would have been accelerated were already in the other courses for as
179the group that we have this year are all they're all the ninth graders. So we don't have any kids that are jumped up a course. So it's a little different looking at last year to this year. The other thing, if I could just ask the board to remember the end game of the sequences and the advanced sequence. And remember that our sequence, the regular sequence prepares students to be able to take a college level course, an AP and IB class and kind of. back to what Karen said in the other presentation, that I think that we need to be mindful of students making good decisions and holistic decisions and understanding what the course is at the end of that advanced course because I'm currently teaching it. giving our students access to you know AP statistics,
180AP calculus, IB math is what we're doing. We're not holding it back. But I would absolutely agree that we want students to take that test and have that information. But I also don't want to be in a situation to force students into it. I mean I have a lot of students that decide not to take the class because they have a balanced schedule. So just kind of seeing both of those things and understanding the end game of both sequences and how that We haven't taken anything that previously was offered, but those classes are different. Right, and I totally understand and appreciate that. And I'm not in favor of pushing kids to accelerate faster or beyond what they should be doing. I just want to make sure we're not even unwittingly discouraging girls and students from
181color from taking courses that they could do well in. So, Director Hempel. Go ahead. Although I just want to note for everybody's benefit that we are over time already, which is not your fault. You have not because of us, but just noting it. Okay. I will be quick. So a couple questions. Now I lost my place. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So the questions I had was. It seems that one of the issues that because it's a new curriculum and teachers are new to teaching it and are still working on their professional development is differentiation. I'm certainly hearing that from some of the families potentially there saying that it's not rigorous enough. doing something for the first time, it's another level than to get to the point where you're comfortable enough teaching that you can easily
182differentiate for two, three, or however many levels that there are. I would urge that as you're doing your professional development to help teachers with being able to scale up. the class because part of the reason that we like this kind of curriculum is that it is more scalable because it's more deeper than broader. So I think that that might be one of those issues that there should be enough richness in this math course for anyone to be challenged. And so that might be an area that as your teachers are feeling a little bit more comfortable with just getting through that textbook, so to speak. without having read it Friday for Teaching Monday, that would be an area I think that would probably address that. In terms of some of the issues that the struggling students
183are having, I think I would like, I think it's, I think that ninth grade math is. has been a perennial issue at Berkeley High and I commend the math student for kind of taking that on as part of the math department's redesign. I'm not surprised that the same students that aren't doing well in math one are kind of the same students that didn't do well in algebra one either. I'm seeing this more of a holistic issue than necessarily just this curriculum. Particularly when I look at those with the lower ASIs, it's, you know, it's, you know, it's. There's work to be done, but there's not such a outlier as we're seeing with the ASI 3 plus So that makes me believe that Those some of those same issues that we've always had with those students
184that not not and maybe that this curriculum activates this Ascertains this some but I don't know that that's the primary issue that we're having so the questions I had around that was one is just I would like to know more once you thought about it more exactly how can we help with that transition between math eight to math one It seems that as we're looking at the LCAP and our funding for next year, what we may be doing with a summer gap kind of program, because even though students are getting the C in eighth grade, that by the time they get to ninth grade, that C is now at a point where they're at that DF in terms of their retained knowledge, and so their likelihood of struggling in Math 9 is even greater. Sorry.
185You know what I'm saying by Math 9. So, Math 1. So that's one of the things is I think we really need to be looking at those students for this summer because we'll have a repeat. The other issue that I wanted to bring up was I don't know if we've done a good, when's the last time we did an evaluation or assessment of our after school tutoring program in terms of kind of matching up students that, I assume it's some kind of check-in system or something. to kind of match up are the students that are going through that program, kind of who the students are and who's being helped. So if it's, you know, so from if it's mostly A and B students or mostly B students getting that A, why is that? You know,
186it may be that the... the DF students aren't motivated because they already think they're failing so you know kind of bad money you know would throwing money down a hole or it could be that the way that the tutoring is is being presented or provided may not be welcoming for students that are getting the D's and F's of who they see at the tutoring or the A or the student they know is doing well next to them and that's who they see getting help and not only that They look like the same folks of the folks that are giving them the help. That's not necessarily very welcoming for that student that kind of has the courage or the maturity to get the help. That's not necessarily the most welcoming environment to stick with it. So
187I'm not saying that that's the case, but I would think that it would be a good thing to look at just what's the effectiveness of the tutoring and are there any barriers to the tutoring. conscious or unconscious kind of things that we can improve upon. I also would like to know about study groups. I know that there's oftentimes informal study groups and I know that there are times in which not all students have necessarily been invited to go to study groups. Sometimes it's either who you know, who you feel comfortable with, or who you think is going to help you, not someone who you think could benefit from being being with stronger students. And so I would also look at that as, you know, are there study groups going on outside of the class that
188not all students are participating in? As well as... the forming study groups, maybe helping kids to form study groups. It may be an alien concept to some students that there's strength in numbers outside of the classroom. And I think students can maybe do some of that encouraging, meeting at the library and let's go through our, let's take on this one problem together after school kind of thing. It might also build a little peer support. And the last thing I wanted to mention as an issue for me is Now, with the students that got D's or F's there in ninth grade, well, already they are missing at least one, if not two semesters of their E3G requirements. And so, you know, not only do they, I mean, hopefully they're making up the math credits so they're
189successful enough math to be able to graduate from high school. But I really am concerned that whatever you're doing after high school, if you're not getting through Algebra II these days, just that level of analytical conceptual ability and familiarity with math, it doesn't matter if you're going to four-year college, two-year college, or into carpentry or any kind of skilled trade. Not having been successful in those kinds of classes in high school are going to be a concern. So what are we doing so that even those, you know, that, so I think we need to look at, you know, how are we making sure that as many kids as we possibly can, that we have that responsibility, that our goal is that every kid finishes that math progression that's considered, you know, college ready. And then
190specifically, what are we going to be doing for those ninth graders that are now going into 10th, that may be going into 10th grade, certainly missing one semester, if not two semesters of mastery of math one, what happens to them now in 10th grade? So that's a question that I have. It's what happens to them in in what and what would why would their? Experience be how is their experience going to lead to a different outcome because we certainly saw that with algebra one those same kids Took it in ninth grade. They took it in tenth grade. They took it in 11th grade and Never passed it So our students that don't pass, we'll get a second chance at Math 1. So they will be in that. And we will know those students. Unlike going
191in to ninth graders, we talked about identifying every single student. If they repeat the course, we will know for sure. So we will target those students harder than we have before. And like I said, one of the things that is different than in our previous model is if they are repeating the class, they're all in Math 1 again. And they're going to be with students. that are going to be successful in that class instead of in the other model if they were repeating they were in a class where they were all repeating together. I think that that has a huge, I know that it has a huge impact as far as, yeah, if they are taking the class again, that's not ideal, but being with students that are being successful around them instead of being
192all with students that like, I will all fail the eighth grade and coming together. So the sophomores will be taking Math 1 with ninth graders? Yes, and it wasn't that way in the first year rollout because of some of the complicated things we talked about. But going forward, that is the way. I don't want to take up more time than we already have, but I'm very curious on staff's thought about why that would be a more successful model. The issues that I have with it are maybe not real ones, but I don't know if I was a 10th grader being in a class and everyone else was a freshman. I'm not quite sure that that would make me feel more successful. That's why we tried something different last year. and found that those upper grade
193repeater only classes are not successful classes. So we went back to having at least the 10th graders with the ninth graders and are finding much more success with learning and teaching in the classroom with that set up rather than the isolated group of students who all failed the class before. So we were looking at the students that from 15, 16 did not pass. how they're doing now that they're in 10th grade taking the same class. So could we see a slide at some point or Friday notes about 10th graders taking Math 1? Yes. Thank you. Okay. Dr. Selig? I just have a question about students that are getting D's and F's in Math 1. Maybe like earlier in the semester, in the quarter, what's kind of the process of the teachers? Like what's the protocol
194of addressing those D's and F's? So I know that you're going to refer them to tutoring and you're going to give them those resources online, but who is kind of responsible for these students, especially if their parents are not? advocating for them are the teachers checking in with them is there somebody else who's responsible for that and how how does that work exactly Ultimately, I'm responsible for my students. If a student is sitting in my room is not doing as well as I know they can be, it falls on me to step up and push them. And if that means getting parents involved, then I'll do that. If it means getting involved with the academic counselor, I will do that. If it means getting them some social emotional help in the health center, I will
195do that. So I think it varies a lot depending upon the kid and their own situation. My job is to figure out what things I can help put into place for that student that will result in them having more success. Yeah, and one thing I would just quickly say is that Pasquale mentioned it earlier, it might not have sunk in with everyone, but one of the important things the math department did was have each teacher look at each name of each kid who's getting a DRNF and then really think through what that DRF means. Why is that student, what category might they fall in, so that the appropriate interventions can be in place. that they need because there are, we came up with four different categories for why a student might be struggling and there's
196attendance issue, there's the student who's in class and working really hard but not getting the content and so really looking at what all those categories are and then figure out what each student needs was the next step that the department took very recently. I think it's also important to note when we have students that we actually have resources on campus as well. Like we have the Bridge Program, we have EL students, the special ed. So you can kind of see which students are attached to something. So you might have another resource on campus to tap into. And then you have students that don't have that. And so as a teacher, those are the students that you identify and, you know. put some of your own resources towards and maybe in some of the other ones
197you can contact additional resources and partners that you have on campus to help that student. So you kind of have to balance all of those things. And so that's one of the things that we talk about in our Monday morning meetings is how to do that and how to do better. So thank you. Did you share? I'm sorry. Point of order. Point of order. We are 30 minutes over and we have three other items. Mean do very quickly do some of the stuff like via Friday enough something because we we're gonna be here for a long time Okay, but you want to make a quick comment The only thing I was going to say is that I was also wondering how much time in professional development do you kind of do peer modeling? Because I'm
198sure that there are math teachers that are more successful with struggling students than others. And I think those that are doing really well can potentially have some reflection about why they think they're doing particularly well as opposed to some teachers trying really hard, but whatever they're doing isn't getting the same outcomes. So do you think you could provide an answer to us in Friday notes? Yeah, I think it would help us if you feel like there's more that you wanted to ask or things. I've made notes as we've been talking, but if you could give us a concise list of what you want for Friday notes, we could provide that. Okay, we can do that through the superintendent. Thank you all very much. We really appreciate you taking the time. We did go over, but
199this is an important topic, and we're glad that we got you here for so long, so thank you. And now we'll move to item 12.3, which is... Budget priorities are you all Javetta and Pessoa are you coming down there staying where you are? Okay Well, I was gonna say I think for both of you you should assume that we've read very closely the packet and so Unless you feel like there's a presentation that you need to give which you're welcome to we can also just go right into Giving our thoughts on this first reading of the budget priorities What do you think Javetta you do have this? We don't have that. Would you want to, maybe you can put that up. Do you want to start while that's, while we're getting that? Thank you, math
200team. Thank you. Good night. Good night. So can we make this 30 minutes? So while you're getting set up there, and tell me if I'm wrong, Dr. Evans, but this is the first reading, essentially, of the budget priorities. You all will be coming back in another meeting or two. With a more right and less right So this is the first step in the beginning of our budget priorities listed So what you're going to get is a summary of what we've started in terms of assessing and allocating our resources according to our goals And so we will be bringing this item back. We've actually talked to the superintendent's Advisory Council as well. So they've actually weighed in we've actually gone to P&O as well. So we will be bringing this item back. So we just want
201to know if you have questions, clarifying questions about some of the items or some of the questions that you might have around items you'd like to see that were not on here. But I just want to remind the board that we are cutting and we still have got to continually cut. And we're adding to the structural deficit as well. So with that, I'll turn it over. Okay. Good late evening. So we're going to go through the budget priorities. An overview would be we want to discuss the district budget priority process. I think I want to highlight how we went about determining which priorities are on the list. Multi-year projections, including the district proposed priorities. I want to show you what it looks like once we place the proposed priorities into the multi-year budget. And then
202I guess we can reduce time on the summary list. If you've already read the items, then you can just ask us questions on the items versus us go over each item. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Because the packet has a very good detail. So we'll just go through the overview. You want to do them up here? No, go back to the overview. No, the beginning. Right. Okay, the next one next slide, okay So just a reminder that after I put the budget priorities into the multi-year projections We're still showing a structural deficit of about four hundred thousand for 1718 and it grows to 1.3 million in 1819 the budget Increase in the base grant revenue for 2018-19 is 2.1 million. So even though we're going up 2.1 million in revenue, the deficit
203is absorbing and the increasing cost is absorbing that revenue in both 18-19 and 19-20. And the reason for that, again, is the pension costs, the reduction in the projected state revenue. We're losing ROP revenue through the LCFF formula with Constance Acosta County. OFFICE OF ED, AND WE'VE LOST BITS OF REVENUE, WHICH IS IMPACTING OUR BUDGET AND INCREASING COSTS. WE HAD A DECLINE IN ENROLLMENT. We're assuming 60 increase in these projections. We don't know if we'll get all 60. We hope to. And then the special ed cost has increases, some due to just increasing costs of pension. And then the step and column increases and continued compensation study increases. And again, as Kathy mentioned, there's no negotiated salary increases incorporated in the multi-year projections. The process that we used we had to identify some items that
204aren't necessarily budget priorities but have impacts on the budget because of loss of revenue so that would be ROP and BITSA have lost in revenue these aren't new programs that we're asking the board to fund but their current programs that are losing funding sources and then we have the special ed increases. On going costs are more challenging to fund than the one time costs. So as we were building the budget priorities, those items that would be considered one time costs were easier to place in the budget norm that we have a pretty substantial reserve. The more challenging costs, which would be the ongoing costs including the Berkeley High redesign, that's where we had our struggles in terms of uh... not having enough funding to start ongoing planning to support those increase costs over time uh...
205we address the operational needs to the growth of the facilities which would be a lot of fellow cafeteria and then we address food services because it was a pain point in the district around the food delivery We began a process of identifying budget reductions to address the structural deficit and we did the real quick budget reductions that don't require necessarily a release of employees. But other than the two BTA teachers where we're downsizing the number of teachers at the Berkeley Technology Academy. And the budget reductions are going to be needed still, even though we did some lightweight, I call them lightweight reductions, non-staffing reductions. We'll need to make budget reductions in 17, 18, and 18, 19 to address the structural deficit and any priorities on the consideration list. The budget reduction list should be prepared
206that includes proposed reduction from anywhere between 500,000 and 1.2 million dollars depending on enrollment depending on what budget considerations we want to add to this list and then looking at Increasing pension costs and the May revise. It could be anywhere between that number that we still need to reduce in the 18-19 budget because like I said negotiated salary increases are not in those out years and we have increases in revenues in the out years. Addressing the structural deficit helps maintain a balanced budget, fund the priorities and maintain reserves. which makes it easier to fund the one-time costs such as bus replacement technology and other needs. So what I did was as I placed the actual budget priorities into the multi-year projections, so our ongoing reductions was $400,000. Our ongoing increases was $500,000. So there was
207kind of like a net. almost it says 87 000 in the summary but it's about a hundred thousand if you round up in savings that would be going across um the reason why it changes to 0.6 or 600 000 in terms of ongoing increases in 1819 and 1920 because we're assuming that the food service increase will have to go into the base grant funding source because that budget doesn't have enough reserves to continue paying for the increase in costs. And then the one-time expenditures is $1.7 million in one-time expenditures proposed for 17-18 and only $700,000. We had to look at this as a multi-year, $700,000 in one-time expenditures for 18-19. We really worked hard to downsize the number of one-time expenditures in the 18-19 year. So the next slide shows how- Can I just interrupt
208you? I'm sorry. Can you go back one slide? When you say this includes- budget priorities this means this includes the list in the packet up until the ones where you said only funded if more money that's right we did not the consideration list we're not con we're not proposing at this point so this is only including the ones that we propose that were not just considered okay The next slide actually shows the change in fund balance, which is our surplus or deficit spending. So you can easily see in 17-18 when you put the one-time cost in that we go upwards. And it was about... About a half a million in deficit before I put those costs in you can see it grows to 1.9 million But that includes one-time costs 1819 grows to 2 million
209and that includes one-time costs and then $200,000 It's the deficit spending in 1920 uh... and remember pitching costs are going up so there's a big increase in picking costs that's absorbing the increase in revenues and the just structural deficit is rolling in the bank and its cumulative going forward into nineteen twenty so if you look at our ending fund balance you can see that in nineteen twenty we absolutely don't make any cuts and we continue forward and we don't have any negotiated salary increases we're looking at 2.5 million dollar ending fund balance above the three percent state required reserve the ending fund balance line it's a it's a third row if we do nothing with the structural deficit that's the that's the direction we would be going and this includes going back up 60 ada
210as well as no negotiated salary increases incorporated in the budget. And this is just a summary of the, that was included in your packet of all of the changes. I did make a slight change. The $278,000 for BITSA is really ongoing. So I put ongoing and one-time expenditures in the 18-19 column. That's the only item that would be ongoing in that column. And then these are the items for discussion. We have both the ongoing and one-time expenditures for discussion. Okay. Okay. Go ahead, Director Daniels. So my understanding, Dr. Evans and the two of you, that you're looking for, we're not... You don't want us to vote on each of these or specifically prioritize them, but you want to... So what we want... First of all, are there any questions around what we have put on
211our consideration? If there's something that you feel that... You want it on here or take it off? We need to know that now or if there's something that you want us to explore and bring back we can do that as well It's just questions about what we have on this part on this consideration list. Okay, so why don't we do this? Can we just go down the row and we'll do the same thing with the LCAP discussion and just each of us? state our questions or We're concerned and each take a couple minutes to do that. If I recall, when we first did the small learning communities, we got some funding specific just for small learning communities and that from outside source. Is there any kind of sources out there that you would know, because
212that's not something I explore, in terms of helping us with the redesign, I wonder? Yes, you're outside funding someplace in some foundation that would help and support this is something launching Nothing that I'm aware of to the tune of what would help with a an added $500,000 ongoing cost. I mean That that's unlikely given the kind of grant landscape that I've looked at maybe some startup funds But we're already gonna propose some of the monies in the college readiness block grant and the educators effectiveness block grant that we have now Be designated for supporting the redesign in 17 to the planning in 17 18 and implementation 18 19 Okay Thank you Mr. President. A couple points related. The main one is I really appreciate the work that staff has done to look at for example
213non-salary central office reductions. I think the identification of the two FTBTA makes sense. I would encourage us to look at more meaningful cuts. And I said it for two reasons. One, I think that if we really want to do Berkeley High redesign, we don't wanna, as I said at the time, we don't wanna do it partially. We really wanna do it, otherwise we're gonna in 10 years, we're gonna say, well, why didn't they do it right? Well, you know, because we didn't have enough money. And to do that well without sort of really Sort of holding back. I think we need to have more budget flexibility The second thing is it looks like we're okay more or less in 1718 but 1819 looks tough and that is in part due that that is Even with
214a what I would consider relatively rosy projection around our revenues in 1819 and if things do slow down in 1718 like the governor predicts 1819 is not going to be as rosy as his budget currently is and so I I just think that that year is gonna be a more difficult year and much better to make a somewhat difficult cut now than a really difficult cut next year. I mean, you look at all the districts around south of us, north of us, way south of us making really difficult cuts. We are not in that situation. We don't want to be in that situation. And so I guess... What I mean by meaningful cuts is just things that we really don't want to cut, not just efficiency gains, but things that we know have the potential
215to be helpful, but are not as effective as some things. Maybe not be as important as Berkeley High redesign and say, you know what, we're not gonna pursue that. even though we want to or not going to pursue it to the extent that we want to or whatever and I know that is a tough ask but I want to encourage us to at least put it on the table so that we if we not to go down that route we're doing so knowing very clearly what we're choosing what we're not choosing to do and I've offered concrete suggestions in the past because I don't want to feel like I'm just telling you to make the hard decisions. So if that would be helpful, I'm happy to at some point offer more specifics. But I want
216to encourage us to look at something that is in the realm of $250,000 to $500,000 of a cut, not just an efficiency gain, but a cut to a program that would, while difficult, may be necessary in the long term for us to be more effective and successful. Well, the $225,000 we cut are not, they were difficult cuts. These are cuts, those are funding sources that we use to support the schools when they need funding from us that we cut. Oh, I thank you for that. I want to be clear. I don't think these cuts are just like, oh, you know, flip a coin, why not? Meaningful, difficult cuts. But I'm talking about the kind of cuts that get people at a board meeting yelling at us. Those are thing are the kind of cuts we
217have some hypotheticals that might meet those needs. Okay Yeah, that's what we plan to do we plan to go back into budget retreat mode and and put together a list 500,000 a million a million and 250. Yeah, these are what we would do if we really had to make those type of cuts This is what it would look and I don't want to seem like I'm excited about it. I'm not but but you know we don't want to whoever's on the board in two years or three years or whatever and the students that we're serving the idea of making more difficult cuts then you know we need to be able to recognize what the future holds and and lead and really say that this is a time to make some difficult decisions and so i'm
218glad that you're potentially considering some approaches in that direction thank you um i want to really agree with that um and and also um say that I'm also willing to engage in suggestions about, personally, where I think there may be places that would be painful to cut, but necessary to support other priorities. And I guess the comment I want to make is about the redesign. I understand, well, first of all, that we don't need the full amount for next year. We need about, I understand, maybe about $100,000. for next year, and then we're talking about the full amount for the next year, about half of which we hope to fund through LCAP, or we think that that might be available, LCAP or BSAP or other site funds that can be reallocated. So we're not talking
219about a half a million dollar general fund ongoing need in order to do the redesign, but we are talking about a still significant general fund contribution. And to me, I feel like that's got to be you know, right up there really as our highest priority. I think we have made a commitment. We voted in February. I think we've made a commitment to this community that we will be doing this redesign. So for me, it can't be another consideration if more funding becomes available. I think it has to be something that we're willing to cut elsewhere in order to fund. So whatever that means, I think we have to be willing to make those decisions because we've made that commitment. Are you asking that it go the other items that are listed go into consideration and
220that one move up the restructure for food services the custodian for Longfellow where we're currently using subs I mean are you asking that those go down the consideration and the Berkeley High redesign goes up in their place? I would I would put Berkeley High redesign above the custodial and the admissions. But there's there's a there's a there's a there's an hourly sub currently cleaning those facilities and we have a red agreement that they can't be Temporary for more than 90 days with bcce They have to be permanent. So we do have a new cafe. So I'm not sure how we would I think what he's in is to interpret I think he's saying you would add Berkeley. I reason is number three So custodian itinerant then Then Berkeley I redesign that admission support the nutrition.
221Is that what you're saying? Well, I I don't I didn't understand us to be asked to sort of literally prioritize tonight. I think that I'm just saying for me You know, what I hear you saying is even with these priorities, we still need to make some more cuts. That's correct, but even more. And so what I'm saying is if there's priorities that we just need to do, I think nutritional services is in that category. Maybe from what you're saying, the custodial service is in that category. I think admissions is, I know from talking to Mr. Martinez, that's a critical need. I don't think I would put that as high as the Berkeley High redesign, but it's also not nearly as much money. My point is... We're going to need to make cuts even to do
222this right that's what I hear you saying I we need to take you make the the birthday redesign needs to be funded and so We need if that means that we have to make more cuts and I think we need to do it But Josh suggested which is really make more cuts. Okay? Okay, I just want to make sure In just in terms of prioritization for this year. We're still working with that implementation cost not the full cost of the redesign right right Thank you. Yes Yeah. So I also expressed my support for the redesign. I think we've had staff that have now been working on this for quite a while. And I think the preliminary proposal that we, I guess, approved in the proposal we approved in concept, I think. is one that was
223probably as fine-tuned as possible in terms of it's not the Cadillac model, but it's the one that will give personalization to all the students as well as it should when it comes back to us as a final proposal provide a lot more support not just for the general student body, but for also our kids that are at risk and struggling. I would say that for me what I would like to see more information about and it's very dear to my heart is is the achievement of proportionality with the RTI staff. But I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that as part of the LCAP evaluation that we asked that we get kind of information more about the RTI program as a whole. And that includes part of special ed because the... pinnacle of that pyramid is
224special ed so that we can look at appropriate staffing models not just in terms of the number of staff but also the class looking at who are the people we need to do the job and do we have the right classifications performing the right duties in order to make our program successful and not encroach either way, not having folks that really should be doing RTI work, backing up, doing work that should be primarily special ed teachers and that special ed teachers are not being taken away from their kind of direct services to support a general RTI. Having said that, I do believe that while I don't want to support any just across the blanket increases without kind of having some analysis of where do we really need the staff and also looking at the fact
225that we do have schools that Right now we provide some RTI staffing based upon total school enrollment, but I remember looking at the data, there are some smaller schools that actually have much higher numbers of special ed students, and we have some, not the largest schools so much, but some of our medium schools that have, in some cases, substantially less numbers of actual students needing those services. So to me, once we've looked at all that, making sure that our RTI program is appropriately staffed and staffed for success is very important to me. We put in a lot of money in RTI. We have said that that is our major way of direct intervention for kids, particularly at our elementary school level for getting support they need before they experience chronic lack of progress. And also,
226it's kind of really been our only, it's one of our major ways of addressing disproportionality, which, as you know, we are, if not already, we're about to be under federal monitoring, if nothing else, for not one but two categories of special ed. And so to the extent that we're going to make any... Denton that at all. We need to have a robust RTI program So I would just like to make sure that I mean it's already slipped fairly amount down and it's a to be determined Which so I would like to know when we're gonna have a number for that and And that if it takes the evaluation of that program to get that number It's not a whole lot of time now that it's the end of March director something dr. Pelt And then,
227yeah. First, let me make my comment and then I'll make a motion. Okay, good. So first of all, was this an error I noticed that, because I've seen this chart a few times before, the IB coordinator is now no longer funded? No, what that means is that currently we thought we were going to get some donation money for 16-17. We did not get any. So the last year's budget priorities indicated we would partially fund the IB coordinator. So what this means is we end up fully funding the IB coordinator in 16-17. So it's already rolling in the multi-year projections. Got it. Okay. So it's not. So it's no additional increase. It's when you saw my numbers, it's already incorporated in those numbers. So it just shouldn't be on here because it's already in there. No,
228because I wanted, it was not really approved. to be fully funded by the board last year. I just wanted to be transparent and state that it's now being fully funded and that that's an area that if you want to keep that, then it's already in the budget. If you don't want to keep that, then we can remove it from the budget. Although we have to have it in order to have the IP program, right? Correct. Okay, so I just want to reiterate, and I think it sounds like you now have five board members who are... Who are saying that very very similar thing? Which is that I think the BH has redesign is and we talked about this before is a priority and I Agree that we're gonna have to really look elsewhere to make
229some make some reductions and come forward with the proposal on that and I thought your number of Starting with 750 or a million is probably realistic I'm I did want to say I do Also think that the second nurse I just want to bring that up because that keeps being on our list and I had a meeting with Ricky and it's just really not realistic to have one person do the job that she's or two I guess there's another there's the City's nurse, but there's a consulting so yeah, so there's a few Yeah, but she's doing a lot and I think she's also kind of leading the billing right is she doing the late the le a billing For this I don't know the model anyway So I think and that was that was another
230question that I wanted to talk about was wanted to get a sense of Offline maybe between us about how we're how effectively we're using the possible Both the MA and the le a billing to see if this way that we could possibly be funding some of these services particularly now with the changes in the federal law around services, so but That was my main point. I think all of the things that you prioritized are things that I agree with, and I just think we're going to have to look and make some hard choices, like Josh mentioned. And that being said, I want to make a motion that we extend the meeting to 1145. Second. All in favor? Aye. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. That was... productive and helpful and thank you for doing it I
231mean I also wanted to let everybody know because you didn't I don't know if you talked about this but the the superintendent has reconvened his super his superintendent's budget advisory committee you did mention that yeah no I don't think Donald did okay Pat you can do you want to come up is there anything you want to say about that um there's a meet on Tuesday um I think at 6 p.m to 7 30 in room 126 And we'll be discussing the budget priorities and getting input from our unions and our community members. And we'll also be discussing LCAP and the BSET budget as well. We had a really great turnout at the last meeting. Yeah, we had 100% turnout of all the members of the committee. That's great. Okay, Dr. Sadler, you're up. We actually
232pulled this item. I want to thank... Pat, staff, and everybody else for the hard work in pulling this together. We have a process for the LCAP before we approve it, but we had this on as information to give a board update. I hope everyone had a chance to look at what we're looking at in terms of for next year. But if there are questions that you might have regarding some of these items, we'd like to hear from you now before we bring it back to the board. So thank you. And let's do the same thing we just did. But Director Appel, do you want us to start down with you this time? And we can give you some time to click. Do you want to start? I'll just talk for a second. Okay. So I
233think this will be coming back. This isn't even the first draft. This is the pre-first draft. The first draft will be coming back to us at our next meeting, which is on the 12th. So this is an opportunity. That's what it says for the board to weigh in the the packet says the 12th Okay, so that would be the first draft so this is to give brief brief feedback on What we'd like to see or maybe questions that we have or information we'd like to get When we see the next draft go okay, so I will try to be brief so I I really appreciate getting this. This has been a very transparent process. And I think, again, this is like the third meeting that I've been able to see a draft. And so I
234really know what's involved in doing that. So I appreciate that you're kind of letting me. I feel like we're at a new. level this year of really trying to integrate the conversations that are happening with our different sources of money and public involvement and I want to I want to recognize it and give that some sunshine because I think that's impressive. I wanted to focus just a little bit on the restorative justice and restorative practices component, which is the third priority or the third goal. And I see in looking at this, I really am starting to see the different pieces being knit together between what we're doing in elementary school, particularly with a mix between behavioral health support and then the school climate teacher leader stipends, which in some ways are very close to what
235we, put in our kind of initial roadmap last year of trying to really support toolbox and PBIS and I guess to some extent welcoming schools at. and helping to bring out the restorative practices components of that. So I see that there. And then we have, of course, the middle school, the RJ counselors at the middle school, which I understand is going well. And then we have, you know, peacekeepers. I really support the intervention counselors and adding the third intervention counselor. For me, that's that room and what's going on in that room is really going to be the magic sauce around restorative practices in our high school and the climate. So that includes the restorative practice cohort. the intervention counselors, and I want to make sure that people know that what they're doing under the guidance
236of Kiernan, the Dean of Students, is really, I feel like is really. very much in alignment with what we've talked about around restorative practices at the high school. So those are all really encouraging and the only thing that I would ask, it's not so much even for the maybe for LCAP, but maybe just for the district and is we really need to, I really would love for us to really be clear about what our five, what is our plan with the restorative practices because we have a lot of different pieces and LCAP is funding them and that's fantastic and I just want to make sure that we're building on something that's getting us where we want to be because we're investing a lot in it. But I'm very encouraged by the progress that we've made
237in this area. So thank you. Director Silvey, do you have anything? Okay. Director Hempel? Okay. Okay, a couple of quick things. These are things that I'd like to see more information about. The equity TSA. district coordination of services position, the PLCs. I think those are the three that I wanted to mention. Oh, and sixth grade bridge. So this is sort of in the vein of, you know, all of these. are worthy, but those are ones that I'd like to see more about what we think the effectiveness of them has been. And because if we, you know, there may be other ways to spend that money. Combined, that's a big, it's a fair amount of the supplemental funds that we're funding, and those are for... line items that I just had some questions about. Just wanted
238to learn a little bit more. And then I just had one question. This was really helpful, the way that this was laid out I thought was really clear and easy to read. I did want to ask about at the end where it says after careful review the LCAPS parent survey has been determined that there's Needs in these following areas and then list some areas are those areas that were then reflected in these priorities or those Okay, so the idea is that that's those were taken into account when you made these parties, okay? Okay, so those are the ones that I wanted a little more information about thanks Wanted to again sort of following on the president about the format of this I I want to acknowledge the willingness to follow the policy and recommend just
239continuing a couple of programs per the policy, which I think is never easy to do, but it forces us to be thoughtful about what's effective and what's not. And to our earlier point in terms of the budget, I think it gets us better at being willing to look at... What is effective and what is not or build our capacity and our culture as a system around that? So it's encouraging that that this continues to be front and center and we're willing to you know point it out straightforward Director Sadler and I had a conversation and the deputy superintendent and I don't know director Sadler dr. Sadler Excuse me if you wouldn't want to briefly summarize where you sort of, you and I had ended around that one piece. So there was a request for us
240to take a look at potential. Method a method or a pathway that we could identify current classified employees in our district who are interested in moving into a Instructional position in a classroom and we know that there are several Classified employees that have current have previously been in credential programs, but they did not complete it. And so we have looked at legal advice on how we could best support them in completing their credentials, potentially with an interest-free loan. There is a district that is doing a similar pilot project in which the district has a partnership with a local university, and they pay directly to the university so the employee doesn't actually touch the funding. So it's still to be developed, but I have since I produced that board doc, we have identified resources in LCAP
241that we will add to the line item for recruitment and retention, potentially about $40,000, and the details will be worked out between now and the next presentation. Great. Thank you. And, you know, this may not be the right time. but we have now invested in ELD teacher coaches for three years. And it is the single line item that is the biggest. And obviously this is an important need if we have capacity and if we have time, not necessarily to discuss cutting it per se, but just looking at what the program is, what's it been doing, how sort of effective it is. Again, not a high priority. If we can't do it in a robust way, we can look at it next year. But if there is time and incapacity and there's some data that we
242have available, that's something that I'd be interested in looking at since it is our biggest line item in the whole thing. That was my question, too, about the ELD in terms of looking at where we're seeing more success and maybe duplicating that in the district. And I don't know that we've seen that in terms of where it's being more effective in our district on that. For me, also, I think summer school is really important, and I think the training for our teachers on how to support and get those students there. That would be important and the after school the effectiveness of the after school You know, I know we've allotted certain monies to the schools to do it and and how were we are we seeing what we wanted to see there? Where was all
243my other questions? I'm sorry. Well, I can take it. Let me see. No, I also wanted to say it's I I've participated in a dashboard and Training and wanted to and then there's a seat six categories, correct? So there's six categories and how are we linking these our priorities to those sync? The six categories that will be evaluated. We'll have to evaluate ourselves and do we put that alongside this? Yes, it's required that we evaluate The data and progress that is currently available in the dashboard and include that in our LCAP. So we've been working on that this week and And one area that we just one identifying area is our long term ELs. And so really looking at how we can support them in middle school because we know that the research says that
244if we don't redesignate them before they go to high school, it will be extremely challenging. And so we're looking at some shifts in the EL allocation to ensure a comprehensive approach to address their needs. Thank you. Sparked my brain in terms of what the other absenteeism and how the intervention counselors are trained to help support. Students who are absent and truant and I think that's really critical right now. We have one person doing in at Berkeley High for all You know all the students and so how do we train them to also so it splits up the responsibility and there's more people watching and besides that the attendance officer so And also that would help increase our ad a which would help increase bring additional revenue to our schools So I think there's got to
245be more eyes on that Great. Thank you. Okay, we run along. Thank you. Dr. Sadler now item 12.4. Mr. White although We're gonna ask Josh to do this, right? Okay Jack vice president Daniels. Do you want to lead us in this one? Sure so let me pull it up so This item looks at one potential way that we could support our employees through housing, through a bond measure. This item is not about approving a bond measure or putting it on the ballot simply about whether or not We think it makes sense to at this point in time Start exploring what that would would look like it's not too early or too late To do it for November of 2018 But we probably need to start relatively soon. So this seems like a good time to
246begin the conversation and make sure that the board is interested in looking into it. It wouldn't commit us to anything other than that exploration. I think to Ms. Campbell's point when she spoke earlier, You know, districts around the state are looking at this. We are hearing that our ability to provide our teachers with raises may be impacted by our budget constraints. And we have heard stories in the past about teachers and other staff leaving the district because of housing costs. commuting long hours and this would be a way without impacting our general fund to provide additional meaningful compensation that would allow us to recruit and retain teachers, particularly those that have a hard time affording to live. in our community or within a reasonable distance. So I think if there's general interest in supporting this,
247just wanted to get a sense of that. And if so, then the next step would be to have staff begin to look into what the issues are, financial, logistical, the need. Because there's not a formula to this. There are ways that it's been done, may or may not apply easily to us. But I think it's an opportunity that we should explore without committing ourselves one way or another to what it is that we're doing. Great. Thank you for bringing this to us. Go ahead director. Thanks. Yeah. I also asked for an item similar to this to be put on the agenda. I Very much support are starting to look at our role in teacher housing. I also think we should maybe it's also Consider thinking beyond only certificated staff and also look at classified staff
248I would recommend, my preference would be to not only look at bond financing, but also we've been discussing this at the two by two. We discussed it at our last two by two and I've had some additional conversations with the city. And so I think looking at how we would partner with the city on this would be something I'd be very interested in. So I would just make a friendly, not that there's a motion, but kind of a friendly amendment that we, explore more broadly how we would move forward with a strategy to... to a strategy to build teacher housing. So again, not vote to do it, but just that we have a committee or something. I know the mayor's office is very interested in a joint committee to talk about this, and I think
249that's actually the best way to go in this kind of situation, because we're not actually housing developers, and so we need to figure out a way we can do this that would make sense. Yeah, I... Would also support a more broad look at how we can support Affordable housing for teachers as and I am also very concerned about classified staff I mean for one or classified staff in general make less than our credential staff does and I know there are exceptions but in general that's true and I know that while We are concerned about being able to fill our teacher slots. We are actually not filling classified slots these days. You know, we just had a IT'S AN ITEM ABOUT OUR NUTRITION SERVICES AND I'VE BEEN HEARING IN GENERAL THAT IT'S INCREASINGLY DIFFICULT TO GET
250QUALIFIED PEOPLE TO EVEN APPLY BECAUSE AT THOSE INCOME LEVELS PARTICULARLY SINCE A LOT OF IT'S PART TIME STAFF, YOU CAN'T AFFORD TO LIVE NEARBY BERKELEY AND TO COMMUTE TWO HOURS FOR A THREE HOUR A DAY JOB IS A DIFFICULT THING TO DO. concerned just from a point of a staffing situation that we actually have more of a crisis with our classified staff right now than our credentialed staff. Not that I'm saying it's easy for teachers either. I'm more interested in a wider look at this because I think that as you mentioned, we're not in the business of housing and the city is, and that the city already has mechanisms such as developer fees as well for housing specifically, affordable housing specifically, as well as through owner participation agreements or developer agreements have the ability or
251conditions of approval have the basis to, in some case, dictate. housing or as part of a negotiation. And so to me, a very kind of low hanging fruit part is to work with the city on getting them to look at either giving bonuses to developers that do extra, would be probably moderate income housing for teachers, or do extra housing that are then specified for our staff, for teaching staff. And the reason I'm concerned about this is also that I think that I'm a little concerned about going up for a bond for this as opposed to maybe some of the other methods that we could encourage more housing for our staff because I don't know what this current presidential administration is going to do with any kind of educational funding and we may need. We can
252only go to the well to our taxpayers, but so often, I mean, I pay a lot of taxes in Berkeley and I'm glad to do so because I know what those monies go for and I support it. But we don't know what's gonna happen in the next couple of years. And this is something that, while important, there may be other ways of being able to meet that. Because I would also be concerned as to how much housing could we actually build in terms of, I've now been retired too long to remember, but I used to remember how much it cost to do one unit of housing. And so if we're doing... $400,000 or $300,000 or I think last time I was, you know, quarter of a million just, I mean, I'm not talking the selling
253cost, but the construction cost, you know, we're paying a whole lot of money for not supporting a whole lot of people. And I'm not so sure that that is the most efficient way of, or equitable way of doing this. So I just like to see it broader. No, I agree. I think exploring all the different options, but also making sure, I think regionally is probably the best way to go to and including, I'm pretty sure I heard Assemblymember Tony Thurmond also express interest in supporting some regional housing for teachers. So I think not just working with just the city, but who our neighbors are in terms of the broad net that we can perhaps bring in as partners. Make a motion. Well, it's actually on for discussion. So no motion is required Or even allowed
254thank you. I do have one quick thing, but I do want to chime in mr. President before I know I agree with everything everybody has said, okay, I So just to be clear this definitely is an employee housing a item not just teacher housing. So it's it's for all There's there's some specific programming that exists for for teacher housing. I had a conversation with a representative from a company called landed which is an independent entity of a school district but helps with Mortgage payment sorry down payment assistance things like that I I love the idea of expanding it beyond just the potential for a bond I guess the only limitation I'd offer to see if the board's comfortable with is not looking at what would cost our general fund anything So whether it's through the
255city or whether it's through a tax credit, whatever, but we would not ask staff to look at things that would impact our general fund, that we'd be limited to other options. And as I think if you look at the items, the question prompts in the item itself, it looks like, you know, where could we build? How many units could we build? What would the cost be? Because it may be that if we're talking, you know, 15 million per unit, it's, you know, that's going to nix. I'm just saying, right? Like, it really will impact our decision about what options to pursue. And we may end up not doing a single approach. We may end up doing a variety of things, and that, you know, could include the city. It could include lots of things. So
256I think that's a great way to move forward. But so what's the actual direction? I know we're not making a vote. Sure. So I think the direction would be to address the items in the the the bullets in the item as well as to look at other potential ways to support employee housing beyond a bond measure. And to the the way the item is written is that the report will come back to the board by August? Do you want to mention that? Yeah, so that would be five months from now. I don't know, Director White, if that, given the expanded scope, if you think that's too soon or whether you think that's feasible, given all the other things on your plate. But that would, I think sometime in the fall would give an opportunity to
257keep things moving forward, even if it's not August. I WOULD JUST LIKE TO INCLUDE TIMING IN TERMS OF WE JUST FINISHED PASSING A MEASURE, SO A TAX MEASURE, SO WHEN WOULD BE GOOD, 18 OR FURTHER OUT? Do you think August is feasible, Mr. White, or would you prefer something a little bit later than that? No, I think August is good. If we run into something during the process of the analysis, we can always update the board and request additional time. I would just really encourage us to work. I know that the mayor is really interested in this, and they have people that are looking at it in their planning department, that it seems like it makes a lot of sense to communicate because he seems to want to put resources into it. doing some of
258this planning so yes okay all the more power to him is um the analysis that the board is uh contemplating directing staff uh one that would allow staff to look at all available property across the district in terms of what may be the best options for for the development I mean, I would say yes, but I also think one of the things that I was also wondering in this conversation if you're going to work with the city is, you know, that in order to use this new state bond money, you have to it has to be on school property. But that doesn't mean somebody can't give us a property. It can always be an exchange or a property swap or some other. In the just in for clarity that the reference I think the director
259is making was the Leno bit Leno SB 1413. Okay. All right. So do you I feel like you have the direction. Okay, great. Thank you. Thanks for being here, Director White. Now we'll move to item 13.1. The reason why this is on for action instead of consent is because the policy committee and superintendent are asking that the board approve this change to the bylaws on first reading, which is... according to our policy, has to be a super majority of the board. And the reason is that the change has to be made in time for the constitution of the school governance councils at the smaller schools, BTA and BIS. So I'm going to make a motion to approve the policy as recommended in the item. Second from Director Hemphill. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Thank
260you all. Is there anybody here for public comment? No? Okay. We will adjourn to closed session now. I just didn't even know what it was. Yeah. Thank you. I do have a key No problem.