001Testing one two three check check one two three english microphone in the translations booth one two three check check one two three english gooseneck microphone in the translations booth one two one two now jump over to the spanish hey good morning everyone and welcome to this rainy day for our committee of the whole uh good morning i'm scott smurlson chairperson of the committee of the whole and before we begin this meeting I have a few announcements and housekeeping items to share. As a custom, we will be taking public comment at the end of the meeting. Additionally, in order to be compliant with the Brown Act, we will not be discussing any items that have not been properly agendized for today's meeting. We have two presentations for our meeting. The first will be by Chief Academic
002Officer Dr. Francis Baez on the progress of the interventionist model Interventionist Program Updates. Our second presentation will be on the 24-25 budget update given by Chief Business Officer, Mr. David Hart, and Chief of Legislative Affairs and Government Relations, Ms. Martha Alvarez. But before we get started with our presentations, we will turn to any labor partners that wish to address the board. And I see Mr. Pais. And then board members and senior staff. I am Mary Pice president of over 3,000 frontline managers at schools regions and offices I am here to ask that the district pause on the IOC's and 30% carryover and Revise and allow for choice and exceptions for school communities Increase the carryover to the 50% or higher Schools are accustomed to and be able to actually budget for supporting resources services and
003programs. Our school administrators feel less than partners with the current climate this budget season. Our APs feel like just a number to the district with no empathy, respect for the human factor of those supporting and connecting with school staff and communities. On Friday, February 9, about 400 or more of us heard from John Hattie and how school leaders are responsible for the climate and culture in their school and in every class. In light of the APEIS and carryover reductions, school leaders will not have the ability or resources to continue and maintain a safe and healthy climate. Why are their leaders at the regions and Baudry telling our members not to contact a ALA or board members? about concerns That is not a healthy climate Let's work together as partners and improve the current unhealthy climate
004and low morale of employees Thank you. Thank you. Mr. McLean any more labor partners that you're aware of there are none. Okay. Thank you. So Before we begin this presentation, let me say that in June of 2023, the district implemented the new literacy and numeracy intervention model. In alignment with the strategic plan, the division of instruction took the best practices of effective literacy, including the science of reading and mathematics instruction to expand support in this model. Even though multiple presentations took place last year, there is still some confusion amongst school personnel and constituents on the ultimate goal of the program. the effectiveness of the program, its funding model, and resources available to the schools. And for this reason, I've added the topic to the agenda in order to bring clarity and for my colleagues and
005also to provide feedback so that together we can improve the services to our students. So we'll first begin with our presentation welcoming Dr. Francis Baez. Please get us started with the presentation. Thank you, Francis. Thank you. I first superintendent Carvalho. Thank you very much. Just a brief introduction Thank you for the introductory remarks Mr. Vice President So if one Analyzes the performance data for this district by great level and further disaggregates that data by student subgroup One reaches some interesting conclusions First, this district, because of its long-term belief in intervention, has seen some degree of improvement, albeit modest, particularly in the early grades. Beyond the early grades, beyond third grade, then there is a precipitous fall in terms of performance. The reason the rationale is clear is that the support systems that have existed, particularly
006benefiting the youngest students, K through second grade go away. The district did not have a comprehensive, systemic, strategic intervention process or a theory of action that would benefit all students across all grade levels. Why is this important? Well, number one, some would say if you build a strong foundation for literacy with young learners, that foundation will be sustained over time. Research proves otherwise, particularly for very fragile students who do not have supports at home. If all you do is an injection of intervention early on in their school years, that will be lost over time. Secondly, that premise assumes that the vast majority of our students come in kindergarten and stay with us. We know that students come into our school system as immigrant students, as newly arrived students, as newly registered students, not necessarily having
007benefited from a structured, high-quality literacy support between kindergarten, first and second grade. Therefore, This district absolutely needed and continues to need an across-the-board, all grade levels intervention system of supports. That goes beyond literacy, includes also numeracy, considering that our numeracy performance across all grade levels is actually worse and has historically been worse in numeracy than literacy. So today's presentation I believe will address our vice president's concerns and comments and some of the lingering questions and assumptions in our community specific to the why the how, and now that we have a number of months of implementation, we believe we're beginning to see some of the early signs of academic recovery, which our chief academic officer will touch on, as revealed mainly by two assessment instruments, DIBELS, 4K2, and then 3 through 12 iReady. So with that
008said, let me introduce... Once again, our Chief Academic Officer, Dr. Frances Baez. Thank you very much, Superintendent Carvalho. Good morning, Board Member Schmurlson, Board of Education, Superintendent Carvalho, and Deputy Superintendents. My name is Frances Baez, Chief Academic Officer in Los Angeles Unified, and I'm here to present the progress on the interventionist model and intervention program and their updates. Today I will share with you the overview of the multi-tiered system of support. the evidence-based interventions in place, and our next steps. The interventionist model and intervention programs we are currently implementing are aligned with the strategic plan which focuses on eliminating opportunity gaps. We analyzed student achievement data from the spring and closely looked at the Smarter Balanced Assessment in English Language Arts and Math administered in spring of 2023. And this data was used to help
009us to develop and design the interventionist programs that I'm going to share with you. The results on the slide demonstrate how far students are from meeting grade level standards based on the Smarter Balanced Assessment in English Language Arts. The higher the negative number is determines how far the student is from meeting grade level standards. This is the distance from standards or DFS, which you heard Dr. Johnston from the Office of Data and Accountability speak about. Here you see that 11th grade was the level that was closest to meeting standards with a negative 11.89, whereas grade 8 was the grade that was the farthest from standard with a negative 36.71. The results on this slide demonstrate how far students are from meeting grade level standards based on the Smarter Balanced Assessment in math. Here you see
010that third grade is closest to meeting standards, and the widest gap is in grades 4 through 8 and 11th grade. So as you can see, this supports the statements that Superintendent Carvalho made about the gaps that continue to grow in the middle and the high school grades. In summary, there were improvements in math from 2022 in comparison to 2023, although we have a long way to go to get our students to meet standards. The widest gaps exist in middle and high school grades in English language arts and math. This data supports the direction we designed in the spring of 2023 to scale up the interventionist support to middle and high school and take a K-12 approach. We also prepared district-wide professional development and onboarding for interventionists called the Intervention Academy. A well-structured intervention program requires
011high quality instructional materials and highly trained teachers who can deliver the curriculum through culturally and linguistically sustaining approaches. Now we'll present the state adopted curricula and the tier one and tier two and three intervention supports for our students. I'll begin with this graphic that shows the high quality instructional materials and approaches used for Tier 1. All of our students get Tier 1 instruction from the teacher using this curricula, whether it's benchmark advanced or core knowledge language arts, and the teacher uses evidence-based interventions in the classroom. This is what all students get. In the upcoming year, we will be implementing the core knowledge language arts so that all of our students use... learned from the Core Knowledge Language Arts program, which is closer to the science of reading. All of our students have access to on-demand
012homework help. And then tier two is the additional dose. So tier one is everyone gets this. Tier two is they get the tier one plus these additional supports. They get small group instruction using the 95%. Hagerty, Orton-Gillingham approach, language essentials for teachers of reading and spelling, reading horizons. I want to focus on UFLY, which is the foundation of the University of Florida Literacy Institute, which teachers really, really like. And they are enrolling in lots of training to use that curriculum as a supplemental material to ensure that our students are getting foundational reading skills. There's a support from the interventionist, and there's also access to the locally designed programs when teachers provide tutoring after school and on Saturdays, and also high-dose and in-person virtual tutoring. Tier 3 is the third dose. So now students receive Tier
0131, Tier 2, and now Tier 3 is above and beyond. Third dose now. So a student is really behind grade level and is not meeting grade level standards. We're offering them these three opportunities to catch up. So now at this point, we have interventionist support, the locally designed interventions, the high dose and in-person, and more intensity and frequency of the interventions using supplemental resources. When it comes to the 6th through 12th grade, this is the Tier 1 instruction that we provide based on these materials. You can see it's either StudySync, Springboard, My Perspective. They all have access to on-demand homework help and evidence-based instruction and small group instruction and on-demand homework help. In addition, students get Tier 2, which is the Tier 1 plus these additional resources. So students could participate in Read 180 or
014Achieve 3000 that helps the students improve on their reading level. Also digital tools that are personalized and adaptive and help their students move along based on where they are. Students can use this during small group instruction. They also have access to locally designed interventions that's from the teacher after school or on Saturdays, support from the literacy interventionist, and also homework help. Tier 3 is going above and beyond so you've got tier 1 which is the first dose tier 2 is the second dose Tier 3 is with more frequency and intensity and here is ensuring that students are again receiving intervention based on the needs of the students through that corrective reading so The interventionist teacher works with students using corrective reading which helps students who are not decoding are not able to read read words
015We also work with community partners such as families and schools and Read LA, the LA and County Public Library. And we also participate in multiple festivals, book festivals. There are also reading challenges like MyOn and Accelerated Reading. This is for students to get more help with reading, but also to be excited about reading. So it's not just about learning to read, but it's to be excited about reading and being exposed to different genres of reading. Just as with English language arts, we also offer tiered support to students in math. An elementary and math tier one curriculum includes Eureka and illustrative math and evidence-based strategies. The emphasis here is for students to get real-world experiences and solve real-world problems above and beyond the computations such as 2 plus 2 or 2 times 2 because students are
016asked to solve more complex problems in the world and in the assessments that they take. Tier two is going above and beyond the tier one. So here students are receiving instruction with building fact fluency, for example, which this one is the very popular one. Teachers really like this resource and they're signing up by countless numbers to sign up for this training. Cognitive guided instruction, the U.S. math recovery early numeracy and digital math programs. The digital math programs also meet students where they are and help them with improving their math skills. This is where they have exposure as well to locally designed programs such as tutoring after school and on Saturdays and high dose in-person and virtual tutoring. Tier three is with frequency and intensity. Now students are getting those instructional strategies and small group instruction
017with more frequency, with more intensity to address the needs of our students. This is what it looks like in tier grade 6 to 12 in tiers 1, 2, and 3. We begin with CPM, big ideas and springboard and illustrative math, which are the prevalent programs in those grade levels. Again, using evidence-based instructional strategies because it's not just the curriculum that's driving the instruction. It's also the teacher connection, the rapport, using culturally relevant and sustaining practices. And then when you go on to tier 2, These are the additional materials that are used in the classroom. Here you begin to see the use of iExcel as a digital tool. High dose in person and virtual tutoring are also part of the menu of supports that are provided. And tier three is with intensity and frequencies, providing students
018that additional time for learning, whether it's after school on Saturdays, high dose in person. Later you'll hear about the introduction to home-based tutoring. Now to eliminate any barriers to access to tutoring, students can even access tutoring from home. And we also collaborate with families and schools to provide parents workshops in the Parent Academy. So, for example, in November, with Unlocking Reading Success with Structured Literacy. In December, we presented a topic on Continued Learning and the focus being literacy and introduction of the Sora app. In January, it was Returning to School After Winter Break and Developing a Reading Routine and Nurturing Young Writers, a Guide for Families. In February, we are planning to present the critical media literacy and research skills. In March, we're planning to present a piece on building math fluency. In April, on
019problem-based learning, applying math in the real world. In May, we are scheduled to present an applying math and materials around us, and then a special edition on summer school and extended school year. So as we have prepared our teachers to engage students in learning, we're also helping our parents understand how to connect the learning at home. And now I will present the evidence-based interventions. We offer a menu of interventions. The interventionists work with students in grades K through 12. They were trained using an implementation guide that consists of tools and strategies to personalize learning. I'll also be talking about tutoring, tutoring through on-demand, focused high-dose in-person, focused virtual tutoring, home-based tutoring, and the locally designed interventions. I'll also talk about the digital tools that are leveraged to personalize. student learning and meet students where they
020are. So I'll begin with the interventionists. The interventionists work with the students in grades K through 12. They were trained using an implementation guide that we developed to ensure that everyone gets the same information, the same pedagogy, the same strategies that are proven to work, that all teachers get that training. And we also provided reading instruction and reading intervention based on the science of reading. So I want to just spend a little bit of time on this graphic here. One of the major frameworks in the science of reading, which you just heard me speak about, the training that our interventionists are getting, is called Scarborough's Reading Rope. I want to bring it to the forefront because it's the central focus of the way that we teach reading. This reading rope was created by Dr. Hollis
021Scarborough. and has become widely used to guide reading instruction. The rope consists of two areas. It consists of a language comprehension section and a word recognition, which is in blue. The word recognition encompasses all of those finite skills a young reader must master, such as phonological awareness, decoding, and sight word recognition. Now, the language comprehension, those are the skills, the infinite things like background knowledge, vocabulary, and language structures are things we continue to master as we go through school and learn new content. These are most important for emergent bilinguals who are acquiring English. We must incorporate multiple opportunities during the day for students to apply that academic vocabulary in discussion. So those pieces on language comprehension are really important because depending on a student's background knowledge, when they engage in a text, if they don't
022have a background knowledge about what they're reading, they're not going to be able to connect. They won't be able to understand. So building background knowledge is part of the instruction. When we're launching a lesson on a particular topic, bringing it to life through videos, through field trips, through experiences, so students can understand what they're learning. That's where that language comprehension piece is so important. And to this day, everyone here in this room is still developing language comprehension because as the experiences shift and change, our understanding of what we're learning changes. So those are infinite skills. But those finite skills like breaking the code with word recognition, phonological awareness, learning the root words, the prefixes and suffixes are things that we learn early on in school. One of the reasons we have so many reading problems
023in California is that the finite skills on the word recognition side have not been taught systematically. with diagnostic assessments and targeted work in areas in which individual students show deficits. When students reach middle and high school with these knowledge gaps, instead of directly addressing these gaps, we often resort to instructing teachers to just scaffold the lesson, differentiate the lesson. However, the interventionist model aims to tackle this issue by providing targeted instruction on these essential concepts. Scarborough's rope is a visual metaphor for the development of skills over time, represented by the strands of the rope that lead to skilled reading. That's why you see these intertwined that lead then to reading comprehension at the end. I want to thank Board President Jackie Goldberg for persistently advocating for middle and high school students who are not reading.
024Many are international students, long-term English learners, or students with disabilities. She has been asking critical questions about these students to understand what we're doing to support them. With her experience as an educator and after helping many students to read, she has raised a heightened awareness about our struggling readers at the secondary level. We have a system in place to support secondary students who are struggling with reading and she's demonstrating support of our strategy and the strategy hadn't been strengthened as it has in this in this recent months. Through our newly adopted diagnostic assessment, iReady, we have further examined student performance and identified the precise skill that needs to be retaught and how far below grade level students are performing. These are the emergent readers that are now receiving intervention support from interventionists. In the case
025when we have not been able to staff high-priority secondary schools, we have trained resident subs who are assigned full-time at schools, and we have also pushed in tutors to support teachers during small group instruction. As you can see, every step of the way, we have been unstoppable in ensuring that our students are receiving small group instruction and interventionists. With highly trained either push-in tutors or resident subs, we're able to support schools where there have been vacancies. We also offer tutoring services to students. We have multiple options, and this year we introduced home-based high-dose tutoring. The options we offer are on-demand tutoring for all students through tutor.com and paper.co. In addition, we offer focused in-person tutoring at priority schools, focused virtual tutoring, and locally designed interventions from our teachers. When we look at a comparison data
026from January 2023 to January 2024, We can see the locally designed is the most desired type of tutoring by families. We've grown three times in participation since last year. The reason for this is that students know their teachers and will stay after school for them. Rapport is there and the teachers know the needs of the students. Here you can see that we have grown the number of students participating in high dose in-person and high dose virtual tutoring from where we were last year. We have trained study smart tutors to push into the classroom under the supervision of a teacher at schools where we have not been able to staff interventionists. This innovative approach has benefited students. We're also providing small group intervention and support from the resource specialist teacher. We also offer digital tools for
027students to engage in during independent work time in the classroom while the teacher meets with students in small groups. So here you see the different digital tools. They are not the comprehensive list, but the most that are highly used. So, for example, if students are taking the DIBELS exam from K through second grade, they'll be using Amplify reading skills, skills-based instruction, and those are adaptive. The MyHaggerty, very popular with teachers again because that really... addresses the foundational reading skills. My path is that personalized learning and reading in math that is offered through iReady. So when students participate in that 30 to 49 minutes a day, a week pardon me, for each of those subjects the students are improving based on their participation in those individualized lessons. Discovery education is very rich in content, in videos,
028and it really helps to build that background knowledge when teachers need to help students understand and introduce a new concept or a topic. Reading Horizons and MyOn are also personalized and interactive reading digital tools. At the secondary level, again, you'll see MyPath, and here you'll see more on the iExcel. And these are adaptive and interactive for our students. This is where it's important for teachers to assign these during small group instruction because this is when they get that adaptive. It meets the students where they are, gives them the lesson, and helps them improve. This is not a replacement for the teacher, but this really helps accelerate the learning while the teacher works in a small group with a different group. This year we've expanded intervention support to middle and high school students. We've provided evidence-based
029support to meet student needs based on a multi-tiered system of support. Research indicates that the science of reading is necessary in secondary grades, in particular in middle school. Emergent readers need a daily regimen of vocabulary, morphology, and spelling with occasional decoding lessons. They also need an additional dose of phonics instruction. Research shows that we need to provide the regimen listed above, plus phonics instruction and teacher modeling, students reading with each other, and one of the most important aspects of adolescence, the motivation. Students need that motivation to continue to stay committed to learning when they're not reading at grade level. The California English Language Arts and English Language Development Framework have a specific chapter on the most effective interventions. These are evident at the first sign of difficulty, whatever the grade level may be. Frequency of
030intervention is needed for students from three to five days a week for 20 to 30 minute sessions, and depending on the development of the learner, it could be up to 45 minutes. The student size of the intervention should be four to six students per interventionist. Here you see the listed types of Tier 1 instruction for students. Tier 1 means all students will get this program. So you can see iReady as being one of the tools that we're using. Small group instruction is done as a core. Teachers are pulling students in small group to work with them in the area of need. the on-demand tutoring, the winter academy, the summer school, and all of these different programs, they are the core. That's what we're giving our students as the main instructional experience for our students. The
031Tier 2 is the Saturday intervention, two hours per week, high dosage tutoring, three times for 30 to 45 minutes per week, bell-to-bell intervention, tutoring periods, targeted small group instruction, the coaches that are assigned to schools for the emergent bilinguals, supports for international newcomers, like the International Newcomer School, coaches, and of course when the school community meets together. to look at data through the SSPTs. Those are meetings that are held at the school sites. It's a student success progress team where the teams meet together to look at student data to see what additional supports they need. Tier 3, that's that third group with the interventionists with the daily pullout of 40 minutes, integrated support through a push-in, the use of Read 180, the corrective reading program, which we just introduced to our system this year, using
032the 95% group, Achieve 3000, and also understanding the use of dyslexia assessments and support as needed. And here you see the tools based on the science of reading for our emergent readers. You see what's available for all of our students. That's what you see in red. It's the iReady, Diagnostic and Personalized Learning. In green, you see what we've introduced to the middle schools. It's the corrective reading. For students with disabilities, it's the use of 95% group. There's 26 middle and high schools that are using Read 180. All students have access to iExcel. Our priority middle schools have access to Achieve 3000, and the 26 secondary schools that have access to the multilingual, multicultural academic language coach and the international newcomer coach in the high schools. I will now share the improvements we see in student
033performance since beginning of the year to the middle of the year. We are seeing that when students participated in reading intervention supports in literacy, 20% of the K-2 students moved out of well below benchmark on the dynamic indicator of basic early literacy skills. 9.6% of the K-2 students moved up to benchmark. 29.4% of 3rd through 12th grade students moved closer to grade level reading. That's 29.4. In numeracy, we are seeing similar outcomes. We're seeing that diversification of intervention strategies appear to improve outcomes. Preliminary data shows that students are moving up to three levels in reading and math. Across the board, there are improvements in reading and math. A combined effect of tutoring and intervention are making a substantial difference for students. Students are moving from three years behind to two years and one year below
034their grade level within the past three months, given the instruction and the intervention. So we're staying the course with this acceleration. We are moving forward with the next steps. So we are developing a Read to Lead movement, which is a reading communications campaign that promotes a love of reading and access to high-interest books through the Sora app. We are moving forward with professional development. Middle and high school interventions will continue to expand, and the Literacy Coach and Reading Specialist Grant are funds that we have access for this year and future intervention support. We will continue with K-2 and 3-5 instructional strategies in this literacy movement. So we're launching a Read to Lead literacy movement, which is a communication campaign to promote this reading engagement. The reading challenge currently exists through Mayan and accelerated reading, but
035we really want to expand it to all of our schools and make this part of the culture of this district where we're all looking to see how many books we've read. That's actually data we're able to capture now. So the Sora app lets us know what books are the most interesting books for our students. And at this point... We are actually at 140,000 books. I'm actually looking at it all day long, and I get to see the books that students are checking out. And so, as you recall, in December, we introduced the Sora app for the Winter Academy. And after that, it's really skyrocketed, and we have a hundred and... 140,000 books that have been loaned. Of course, we want to spread the word so that it's even more books than these. And the reading
036movement, we want to expand so that it's in classrooms and schools and in regions. I'm familiar with the school in particular that at the Friday assembly introduced the reading challenge and said, this year I'm going to... I will get a mohawk if we meet our reading challenge. And so that principal said, I'm going to get a mohawk again this year if we meet that reading challenge. So if you start seeing that our principals have different colored hair or different kind of hairstyles, it's probably because they made a commitment to students that we would do that if they meet that reading challenge. The next steps are also in terms of professional development. So there's a district-wide implementation of core knowledge language arts that will take place, and we're already purchasing the materials. The training will begin
037in March. With regards to dyslexia, we're also continuing the professional development. And then the language essentials for teaching of reading and spelling are also very, very popular. professional development that teachers are continuing to enroll in. Our summer professional development is in progress and planning. Our paraeducators will be participating in professional development and so were our special education teachers. We will continue the expansion of push-in tutors and the use of iReady MyPath, the tutoring and the locally designed programs and middle and high school. The Literacy Coach and Reading Specialist Grant is designed for several literacy programs to employ and train literacy coaches and literacy specialists and develop and implement interventionists for students in targeted literacy support. And this concludes my update on the progress of the interventionist model and intervention program updates, and I welcome questions
038at this time. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Baez. That was a great presentation. And I'd like to ask a few questions first. I'll give my fellow colleagues a chance and I'll ask some more questions. So one of the things that I think we have to do when we do these Committee of the Whole meetings is that people in the Zoom world understand what we are talking about. And for example, on slides five and six, it says... Can you explain these percentages in a way that parents can understand? For example, we know that a third grade student may be behind minus 28%. So, you know, like parents at minus 28%. What does that mean? Could we look at it the same way as being behind two reading levels, three reading levels? How do parents supposed to
039understand when they are minus 28%? What does that mean? So I want to create an example here. Say you're looking at the ocean and there's a... the bottom of the ocean. So you've got the ocean at the top. The ocean being zero. Like zero means you're not far from standards. I mean you're at grade level. So I'm here at the ocean and my head is above the water. I'm at standards. I'm not drowning, right? So that's probably not the best metaphor, but to be able to understand. Now if you go to negative, now I'm going down below in the ocean line. Now I'm... The farthest I go to the top of the ocean, that's how far below standards I am. It doesn't equate to the years below grade level, but it means that that's how
040far away you are from meeting the grade level standard. So the bottom of the floor would be possibly up to 190, negative 190, a distance from standards, which would be at the ocean level. at the C level. So that's the way I can describe it is just the negative is you're going down, but if you're positive, that means you're above. In terms of grade levels, it's not represented in terms of grade levels, but the current assessment instrument we use, i-Ready, does help us see how far below students are in grade level. I guess I was trying to figure out in what areas they are in below grade level. So if we were to go deeper into the domain, if we wanted to say is it number sense, is it geometry, is it algebra, we would
041need to look at the individual student's report, and those are available at the school site. The iReady, for example, also provides us those reports and helps us see where we need to improve on. So right now it's geometry and operations and algebraic thinking. In reading, it's reading comprehension and vocabulary that we have to target. So with respect to the specificity, where is it that I'm far below grade level? It would be speaking to the teachers, speaking to the principals. They have the resources that tells us. And there's also a report that was either sent out, sent home, or that the school has on file or in the QM that shows what the negative means. And it tells you what the student needs to do to improve. That would be the most specific way to get
042the answer. It's at the school site. Well, that's the important part that I wanted to know. So parents could always consult with the teacher at the school to know exactly in what areas the students were below. Okay, that's great. Thank you. I appreciate that. One more question and I'll pass it on. How many interventionists do we have district-wide, do you think? How many? We have a total of 1,037 interventionists. Okay, thank you. Okay, I'll go to my colleagues and I have more questions, but whoever wants to go next. Okay, miss Tanya Ortiz Franklin. Thank you. And maybe just to clarify Mr. Smurelson's questions the slides with the negative numbers are not percentages but distance from standard. I know that's a big how do we describe that to families because I know that can be confusing.
043Yeah, so it's the distance from standard is the way the state of California has identified the way to communicate whether we're at grade level. It does not reflect a percentage. The negative is just how far away. That's the best explanation. It doesn't tell you by grade level. I tell them it's like going somewhere, okay? And what I want to do is to get to zero, which is my destination. And this is how many miles I am away. So if I'm 88, I'm much further away from getting to home than if I'm 27. And I help them see that it's a distance from home. I call it home. I like that, distance from home. Maybe that's a phrase I'll start to adopt. Thank you, Ms. Goldberg. Okay, a few questions from me. On slide 35, it's
044sort of the summary of our progress. And I don't know if the team will follow up with more specifics, but, you know, really exciting to see phrases like... students are moving up three grade levels or we're having improvements in reading and math. But of course my first questions are, how much, which student groups? Is it some students or most students? So will the team be following up with more details or what more can you say about that today? Yeah, we will definitely follow up. It's really good news and it's definitely broken down by demographics. So we'll follow up with further details. Do you know by when we can expect that? Very soon. Great, love that. We want to, I'm sorry, we want to get data dialogues, which are this week, the next three days, behind
045us, and then add that anecdotal information directly from the principals about where their schools are, particularly for the Priority 100, and then we'll bring the combined set of information specific to disaggregated data based on particularly DIBELS and iReady in addition to qualitative information directly from 100 principals who are leading some of the most fragile schools in the district shortly after that we'll bring that information to the board I appreciate that. And I think we haven't done systemically as good of a job on the qualitative data. So I can appreciate adding the stories to the numbers that we're going to see. So thank you for that. And another question that comes as a result is, do we know which programs are yielding which results? Because we're doing a lot. And I don't know if we're doing
046things in such a way that tells us this program is helping us move the needle the most, or is it depending on the student group? Or do we have things set up in such a way where we can tell this investment is what we should continue versus everything is contributing in some respect. If we need to cut at some point, how will we know which programs to cut? Yeah, so what we can see from the data is, for example, when students participate in a locally designed program with the teacher, there's a code on MISIS. When the student participates, we look at the data on that code. So for all the students who participated in that program, we can see the data for that. The Office of Data and Accountability warns us that we cannot make
047causal conclusions based on that, but I can tell you that of the students who participated in this program, these were the results. When a student participated in this tutoring program, these were the results. However, what we're advised is that we would need experimentation and different types of research studies to really conclude that that particular strategy made a difference. But what we can do is say, like, when this student participated in this program... These are the results that we saw. And when we see that the implementation is based on the research, we are more confident that that particular strategy made the difference because previous research demonstrates that when you do this thing, it works. And when I looked at the data for this particular strategy, the students are improving. So based on past research where this
048strategy was successful, I can then make some... better decisions about that particular program. But at this point, they're advising that we cannot make those causal conclusions at this time because you can be in locally designed, but then also in a tutoring program after school. So what would you attribute that success to would be difficult to conclude so soon. However, based on past research and knowing that research shows over and over and over again that this particular thing made a difference, and when we see it in place and when we see that the students are improving, we're confident that that continues to be the strategy. I will add something very briefly. I absolutely concur with everything Dr. Baez said. With that said, we're going to go one step further. So by the end of this year.
049Once we receive the state accountability data, which basically will be smarter balance not just the interim assessment data We will convene the major providers supporters of the district in terms of curriculum support acceleration mediation you name it from tutoring entities to Curricular platforms that we take advantage of and then we will have impact review meetings with these entities present with the data One of the challenges which Frances highlighted is causality. Can you isolate the impact between this one entity and student achievement? The reason why it's so difficult here is because we have so many different providers, sometimes within the same school. This will be the first year where we will make decisions for the following year. regarding specific impact analysis to the extent possible on a basis of data disaggregation. Not easy work, but it
050is doable. We've already made some decisions as we started this year, ceasing, abandoning certain programs which we had already seen no connection between the program and impact and student achievement for a number of years. But I think we need to continue to do better in that regard. There are some concerns, to be fair to some of these providers, specific to cause and effect, obviously, when we have so many different variables at play. impacting the same group of students but we can do better than we've done in the past. Yeah, I appreciate that. And I think that is helpful for us when we start looking at budgets and understanding the impact of our investments and what will stay versus what will go. And I appreciate you saying that we might have already identified some things that
051needed to go. Maybe I'd ask for a follow-up unless you have some thoughts publicly today. But that's also a question for us is what have we stopped doing given how many things we add to our school site implementers plates? We hear from a lot of folks like, I'm doing this and that and going to this training and that training. And maybe it's working. and maybe we continue it for a long time, but is there something we can take off their plates, or have we already taken things off of their plates? And that just helps us when we're at schools talking to folks, being able to sort of defend the decisions we're making, not to just pile on for the sake of piling on, but really because we're learning and we're adjusting course because it's right
052for kids. I'll offer one now that I think makes a lot of people very happy in terms of interim assessments. So we reduced testing time by 45%. We abandoned a whole host of district generated as well as acquired assessments specific to subject area and grade level. We did that prior to beginning of this year as we implemented I-Ready district-wide. So that became sort of the go-to tool. Obviously, we kept DIBELS because I-Ready does not assess K through second grade, right? But that's one example. I would, at this point, pause on advancing additional titles, to be fair to some of these companies, that we may or may not have had an opportunity to chat with them about why the cessation of contractual engagement with them. That's respectful. I can appreciate that. Last question for me before
053I pass it to my colleagues. Just on slide 23 on the tutoring, can you tell, like, what counts as participation? If a student goes one time, does that count in these numbers, or do they need to have attended two or three sessions of tutoring? Is there a minimum number of sessions to count as participation? Yes, students need to have consistent attendance to count them as part of being part of this intervention. Of course, there will be... some attendance issues as we see them if they're absent at school that day they won't participate in attendance so I would probably see that it's about I don't have a cutoff If you are looking for a particular cut off, I don't have it. For example, if a school had 95% attendance that day, then it would be that
05495% of the students who are enrolled in the tutoring would attend their tutoring session. I don't have a cut off in particular to show how we would come up with the participation. But these numbers are students we would expect to participate regularly, not just once and then it counts. Okay. Great. Thank you. And following along with that, I had a question too about a breakdown by grade level, if it's possible to do that. Of the tutoring? Yeah. If possible, yeah. Okay. Thank you. This side. Go ahead, Dr. Rivas. Staying with tutoring, the board informative that was sent to us on February 15th shows numbers that would have been very helpful to have added here. I know there's a lot, but that would have helped us understand the participation of students. So I'll just read off.
055So based on the board informative February 15th, which was sent on February 15th, it seems like we've actually seen a reduction of students participating. So for instance... students participating by groups, all students, 2021, 2022, there's 20%. And then 2022, 2023, 37% of students. And then this current fall semester, it was 26. And then, so it seems like it's been like this. It's like first they come, then they don't. And then there's, so we're trying to regain them. So, and then it was also broken down by board districts. So particularly for my board district, it seems like there's 29,000 students, which is, you know, not a lot of students that are participating. So my question is, and I have seen on social media, there's been a lot of, you know, trying to get parents to sign
056on, and I share it as well. What do you account for this fluctuation of students participating tutoring? Which was great, and I know that you've been increasing the bench of tutoring, but it just seems like there's a lot of challenges in that. If we're investing a lot of money in that, we need to have a better strategy in really addressing tutoring for our students. So even though we're constantly changing our strategy, the most popular is the locally designed. Students want to stay after school with their teacher. They are very hesitant and reluctant to stay with the tutor. We've even introduced home-based tutoring this year. That was a change, right? We introduced transportation. That was a change. We have liaisons at the regions and a liaison at the school, so there's continued inconsistency of communication. We
057reach out on a regular basis to families through their different communication strategies. So there's always outreach that's going on on the field. However, the... the parents and the families are all deciding that the teacher is the one, the teacher of record is the one they want to go to. So that's what we're seeing is happening over time because we've tried so many solutions and we're not done. We'll continue to problem solve, but clearly the teacher's who they want to stay with. So given that that you mentioned, then why don't we... put more emphasis on the teachers instead of getting more sort of partners and our vendors spending that money maybe we need to readjust and providing more supports for our teachers. I can tell you that the money that we've sent out for the after
058school and tutoring or a Saturday there's still a balance at schools so it's not a lack of resources but I can tell you that teachers are also tired it's also hard for principals to recruit teachers this day after school and come on Saturdays sometimes they even have to recruit teachers from other schools to come to their school and teach. So that's not as easy, but it's the most preferred tutoring opportunity for our students. So given that, what supports can we provide to our teachers in our schools? And also given the fact that there's going to be a drastic reduction in assistant principals. So my concern is, you know, assistant principals, they do a lot. And a lot of the work that they do is being on top of the intervention, the data. Our principals are,
059you know, they can be everywhere. They want to be the instructional leaders, but if they're going to lose their right hand and their left hand, what is going to help them to make sure that we're staying on scale, right, and we want to improve? And so... My thing we need to provide more supports to for our schools rather than less supports So my other question is are we planning to hire more interventionist or what additional supports can provide to our schools? Given that tutoring, you know is the you know The external tutoring that we're providing is not as effective as the supports were giving inside of the schools Yeah with respect to intervention is at this time. We're looking to see Schools have received their allocation and they are at this point there and they
060know whether they're getting an interventionist Our goal is to sustain everything that we've had So we don't see that there's going to be a reduction but but sustaining The intervention is so that they continue to count on those people to be at their school sites to provide support and and even and you know schools have even purchased additional interventionists So not just the ones that we are we've assigned and given them an allocation, but they've actually purchased additional interventionists as well And I do know that it is very difficult to fill these positions. So it would be also very helpful to provide that support. I guess they have the money and they're hiring them, but I know several schools that still have some positions that are available because it's not that they're really trying, but
061they're just not able to, you know, attain those interventionists. So as I mentioned, given the fact that, you know, assistant principals... are going to be drastically reduced. What impact do you feel that would have on the ongoing supports that we're providing, particularly for intervention and instruction for our students? If I may add some details. So one of the things as we explore every single one of our schools system of support. So every school is expected to have different tiers of support. One of the things we find is some of the schools already have some of those systems in place and we'll be able to continue to lead in that way. Some of our schools may not. And so we need to be able to explore individually. This is where, for example, our high priority schools
062get that extra support from the ETO office. It's also with the regions, how they're working with these schools that we're seeing. need that additional support. One of the things the superintendent has been very clear is as we look at every single reduction that may impact a school. we're looking at what does that mean and what will we need to then be able to provide in a different way? Or is it, do we need to rethink the AP situation at that school? I think the dynamics and the criteria at each and every school is so different. We've really wanted to make sure we had a clear business rule, which is our norms, and then being able to purchase outside of that norm. However, we also recognize every school is different, and so we'll have to examine
063that based on their data and as well as some of the supports and services. One thing I will say, is partners that are really good partners, certain tutoring companies, for example, have been more than happy to step in where we've needed them to, and the data is showing good results. Those that are not, the superintendent has been very clear, will not be continuing partnerships with those that do not reflect the kind of partnership, as well as the results that we want to see. So all of that is being thoughtfully considered. That's why Dr. Baez, as she was talking about... The data is as part of the initial analysis That's what we're looking at right now even down to which companies and which partners So all of that is being analyzed to your point because we
064want to make sure good decisions are being made to support our schools best And that may mean reinvesting dollars in a different direction Thank you. Mentioning partners, families and schools, is that the only partner that we have, and how many schools that they actually support, and what is their professional sort of expertise in providing support, and how do they provide support? Families and schools, they provide support in various ways, but right now we're focusing on the reading aspect and ensuring that our families are familiar with the science of reading, how to support it at home, how to look for it in the classrooms. It's really going to be available for all of our schools. It's a district-wide effort that we are collaborating with them as well. The list is not comprehensive. So, for example, we're
065in conversation with the Dodgers. We're in conversation with different sports teams and different organizations and entities that are going to help us with promoting the reading challenge that we want to introduce to the system. So it's not a comprehensive list, but there's many organizations out there. The tutoring companies also have a parent engagement component. I won't call out any names right now, but they also have parent engagement. engagement components and they do parent workshops with the parents as well as the teachers working with the students. And how many parents are we talking about? I don't have that information for you right now. The parent academies, I can give you the list through Antonio Plasencia, who captures the attendance. I can tell you sometimes we're in the webinars of over 1,000 parents that are on the
066webinars. I can tell you that anecdotally without giving you precise numbers for every single workshop, but they're well attended with about 1,000, over 1,000 parents attending. It would be very useful to have a board informative in terms of the family academies, which students are attending, different languages that are being offered to them. In my schools, I have... you know, parents from Bangladesh, I have, you know, Ukrainians. So we'd like to see more disaggregate information in terms of how effective and efficiently we're reaching out to our parents, particularly our working parents who don't have, you know, who get home at 5 and 6, and how are we engaging them. So that's one aspect I would like to have more information and an understanding. So the board informative for the tutoring was great. I was able to
067see that, but I think more board informatives will be helpful. particularly in parent participation and how we're engaging our parents. Last question before I turn it over to my other colleagues. Can you give us, or if you don't have it now, the percentage of students that are in the Tier 1, 2, and 3 and disaggregating by elementary, middle school, and high school? Like how are... what's the percentage of students? Is it highly concentrated in tier one and two and three? Because that would also help us understand the level of impact that all of these strategies are giving to our schools. Because I know interventionists, like you mentioned, they're only working four to six students, and once they work with them, they'll grab another four, but it just seems that... how many students do they have
068to get to? I feel sometimes that interventionists are trying to hurry and help these four so they can get the other four who are still waiting to be assessed or to be assisted in either numeracy or in ELA. I don't have the exact breakdown by school of how many tier one, two, and three students they have, but typically if you're able to see the data, and I know you have a board informative on the Smarter Balanced Assessment and the results, and there's a percentage there. It says the percent of students that are proficient. So the students that are proficient, that would be your tier one, and the students that are close to proficiency would be your tier two, and the students that are farther away from proficiency would be your tier three. So without having
069the numbers in front of you, I can direct your attention to the Smarter Balanced Assessment board informative that can pretty much tell you over the course of the year. Overall, this is how the district is doing in terms of tiers of support. Every school has their different percentage. Ideally, the research says that it should be about 80% of our students that should be at grade level, and that's tier one, and that it should be 15% that should be tier two, and it should be... that it should be tier three. But right now our triangle is upside down and it's most of our students who are below grade level. Again, I can call your attention to the board informative. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but that would guide you in terms of
070the percentage of students that are in tier three. Right, so it helps us, but as you said, we want to let the community and our public know about that. So, you know, if you can just attach some of those numbers in here, so at least we can have more of a visual of what percentage we're... you know, addressing or what you're addressing. And either in tutoring, you need to have more qualitative and quantitative information. I know it's a lot, but if adding it in here would really not only, you know, inform our constituents and our public, but also us as well as we're seeing it all aligning and co-hand. So we have a lot of board informatives, but seeing it all together in a thread, I think that helps us more. and understanding. But thank
071you so much. It was a really great presentation. It just needs a little bit more substance and more detail. Thanks. Thank you. Let me go to my left, Jackie. Do we have an interventionist at all of our 100 priority schools? Yes, we do. How about BSAP schools? We should have, I don't know if Dr. Whitman's here, but he has them for all of the schools where there was vacancies, there's a push-in tutor or a resident sub. So they're all covered with an interventionist. What? Not high school though. Middle school. Elementary and middle. Okay. So we don't have interventionists in high school. We have some. We don't have every single high school, but we do have some interventionists there. Okay. I would say that that's very important for schools that have the largest number of Tier
0723 students. That's correct. Okay. And we have a list of the schools that have the highest number of Tier 3, so we're leveraging the out-of-classroom support staff and resources to focus them on the students who need the support the most. So our most full-time intervention is centrally funded? It's a combined into a combined funding stream. Okay Are there some that for example were paid partly by the central funds and partly by school funds or is it one or the other? It's a combination. Oh, it's a combination. Okay, just to be clear though for our priority schools Those are all centrally funded. Okay, so for priority schools, those are centrally funded. And BSAP schools too or not? Well, many of our priority schools are BSAP schools. So most likely they are but there might be some
073outliers All right, so I'm concerned that, well, let's see. It would be good to know, because we've moved from an elementary model to a model that includes middle and high school, how many interventionists are currently assigned at the grade levels of 6 through 12, just a number when you get around to it. So here's one of the issues that is not really addressed that I keep coming back to. We have some schools, and I'm sure a lot of them are the priority schools, but there are other schools that are not priority schools, where over half of the school is far from standard in reading. I think they are different than schools that have 20 or 30 percent that are far distant from standard in reading. Do we have a school-wide approach for those schools that
074are... Maybe not needing to look at this the same way that a school is that has a small percentage 20-30 percentage of the students they need to address Because when I was doing this myself we found that particularly because of we were in middle and high school We didn't have the kids all day So we had to figure out something that gave them opportunity to work on them all day and it was not enough to simply tell people scaffold or try to do this or try to do that. That didn't work. One of the things we found useful was to purchase through Title I science, history, and literature books at various reading levels. So that let's say I was doing a science lesson on cell, cells and all the parts of the cell. We would
075have in the same classroom. Because we had a school-wide problem, not just a few kids, but a school-wide problem. We'd have the regular science book that every kid had, and then those kids for whom that was not at their reading level, we had a level that covered the same topic. It's when you have a lower reading level, it's not as thorough, but still covered cell structure and cell history, so that students could actually read the material, because what we found is that the very low readers were learning everything by listening. But not by reading, because every book that they had was at a reading level they couldn't achieve. Are we looking at using Title I as a mechanism to put into classrooms so a teacher doesn't have to try to figure out how to do
076this? actual books in science and in history, because those are reading classes and literature, that are various reading levels, understanding that when you lower the reading level, the content isn't as good, which is why they get the real textbook. Are we doing that? So there are a number of resources that currently exist. For example, Sora. provides you a book at your level, at your Lexile level. So that's one way. Teacher can assign them, through Stora, assign them the text. There's also the Achieve 3000, which provides them the instruction on the content, say it's history, but at the Lexile level of the student. That doesn't mean the level of the reading. But the last time I looked at those, they were subjects, but not necessarily in the order the teacher was teaching them in the classroom.
077You know what I'm trying to say? I would like us to look into providing supplemental materials for schools in science, in history, and in literature that attempt to do what the regular textbook does but at a lower reading level so that the teacher could say to the students who are not reading well enough to use the textbook, but you will still read Chapter 3 tonight in this other book. Okay, understanding you're not going to get as much data and information as the ones that can read the regular text, but you're reading to learn, not just listening to learn, which is what we found so many high school students were doing. They were very excellent listeners. They learned an enormous amount of material, but still couldn't read very much. Okay, so that's one question I have,
078is some kind of look at these schools that have the highest number of FAR. from standard and seeing if we can maybe find additional text in the classroom so the teacher doesn't have to go find them. They are there. They can say when you go home tonight I want you to read chapter 3 in the main book and I want you to read chapter 17 because it's not the same in this book but it's on the same subject. There's access through digital but we'll look at getting books. A lot of my specific questions have been asked, but let me go and see what else I had here. Oh, yeah, just a suggestion. On tab five, you talk about critical media literacy. I would just remove the word critical and call it media literacy. We've gotten
079some people who get hysterical over the word critical. and think that critical means critical race theory, which I love that they're banning since it's never been taught in public schools. So banning something that's never been taught, I think, is always appropriate. But we need to not scare people by thinking that this is something other than it is. So that's just a small suggestion. Thank you. On tab 32. You talk about the tier three relies on reading 180 as some of it. I had very poor success with what you would call tier three students with reading 180, but better success with tier two students. I'm wondering if we can check that out to see if that is still the case, because what I found with the Tier 3 students that I was teaching that were using
080Reading 180 was that they would just wait until they got it wrong, learn what they were told that they had to do. They'd back up two steps and answer two questions that they already knew because they had been told the answer from the previous question. We did not see a lot of growth. Tier 2 students we saw some growth. I would like at some point, I know these are difficult things. You have to wait to see how it works. But I would like us particularly to look for whom reading 180 is still useful in secondary schools. Because we were using it heavily and found out we were not getting anywhere with the kids who were farther away from standard, but with the kids that were closer, helped a lot. Okay. We talk about dyslexia assessment
081and all of this. I'm wondering if we have done anything about ADD. It's not listed as a disability, but we know we have a lot of students who have attention deficit disorder. When I was doing this as a high school teacher, I found that kids who were ADD were often struggling readers because they had a hard time staying focused and on task. I'm wondering if while we're looking at dyslexia, we can take a look at ADD students and how they fit into this picture because we may or may not already know. Thank you. The same thing on page 39. You talk about professional development, special ed, dyslexia. I would add ADD here, too. I had a lot fewer kids with dyslexia in my lowest reading classes than I did kids with ADD. And I think
082that was part of the problem. Okay, nearly done here. On page... I don't see a number here. It's the one that says, oh, no, I'm in the wrong. I'm into the next issue. All right. Let me see. I think that may be it. Let me quick look. How much time does an interventionist usually spend with students during the day? And how many are they being assigned at some schools to do other tasks? Yes, I have that. They are required to spend 75% of the day dedicated to instruction, and they're eight-hour employees. Okay. All right. Because I know that that that's in some places an issue I think because sometimes some of the interventionists have been asked to do things which help the school out for sure but are really not Interventionist tasks so they can
083do them in that other 25% Well, no, it's because there's extraneous circumstances that the school needs that person Maybe there's an unfilled position and they're collapsing a class and they need someone to cover for a moment But the goal is for this interventions to be with the teachers. No, it's We are explaining to principals these are not people who get a bunch of assignments that you need? Correct. They don't have, no. Okay, all right. No supervision on the yard or things like that. I asked about interventionists at grades 6 through 12. You're going to get that for me. Okay, I think that's it. Thank you very much. I am, as you know, overjoyed with this new focus on the kids that are very far from standard because I just think we change lives when we
084move them to being real readers. Thank you very much. Thank you. And yes, a lot of my questions have been asked. I appreciate it. There's a lot in here. You know, I agree with my colleagues that the major deficiency is any data whatsoever. And so to have a summary slide with no progress is a bit frustrating. For obvious reasons, but also I think because a lot of these one-time investments in particular the board made with very clear expectations that we would look at data and reassess and recalibrate knowing that the money was going to run out and we were going to say this one works and this one doesn't and so To say the data is coming and not have it as part of this public presentation is I think unfortunate But I know it's
085coming. Some specific clarifying questions and then a few quick deeper ones. But like I said, most have been covered. What are Study Smart tutors? The Study Smart, it's a company. It's a vendor. And they have tutors that typically would stay after school, work with students. But Study Smart has made them available. And so we're training them to use our instructional programs and routines and strategies for them to support teachers in the classroom. They are a third party that's working on school campuses in person? Correct. During the school day or after school? During the school day. Is that the only vendor that is doing that? I have to check how many others, but there are others that are working in a similar way. And do you know how many study smart tutors we have? I don't
086have that number with me. That would be helpful as a follow-up, like how many, what schools, et cetera. Just to clarify, depending on the school, certain schools have been able to work with their school campus to have tutoring during the day. So just really dependent on the school. Not all schools are exercising that. Well, I ask because I love that. You know, I think Harvard just released a study that looked at Chicago public schools that improved more than above average in pandemic recovery. And the two strategies it really highlights are they hire a number of tutors for. school day tutoring and then they also increased after school and summer learning and we've done versions of that but they really pinpointed the tutors during the school day and I know that and I have a question
087a follow-up question in terms of well maybe I'll ask it now do you have any sense of what percentage of our tutoring is after school versus during school The majority of it, I don't have a percentage, majority of it is after school. The interventionists are the ones who are really working with the students, the small groups, tutoring from a tutoring company. I don't have a percentage. I could share that later. Yeah, and I don't just mean a third-party company. I do mean teachers, but it would be really helpful because, again, I think that's a promising strategy. Obviously, the kids are there. It's during the school day through push-in or push-out. So I would love to know more about Study Smart and how that's complementing our existing efforts. The, what is the literacy grant? What is
088the, the. The literacy coach and reading specialist grant. Is that what it is? The, I think that's at the end. Sorry, I had it pulled up here. Yes, the literacy coach and reading specialist grant. Those are the two, those are the inter, so that, the state of California has awarded schools individually a number of funds to purchase either a literacy coach or a reading specialist. Reading specialists would require a special credential, but it's also for intervention programs. This was the first year of it, and then we just received an allocation for the upcoming year. And so it's been used for the interventionists. That's a state grant? Yes, it's a state grant. Do we know how much? I don't have the total value of the grant. That would be helpful. And then... I think Ms. Goldberg
089asked the question around interventionists that you're going to follow up with us in terms of school funded versus centrally. I have the same question for, I think you mentioned 1,037 aides. Interventionists. 1,037 interventionists. Interventionists. Okay. And then I'd be curious to the extent we have aides as well, which are different than interventionists. Same question around school-based and centrally funded, just as we're having these budget conversations about what's going to be ongoing and what's not. On the tutoring participation, just to clarify Dr. Rivas's question, so that box, that doesn't include like the one time I go to paper.com once. I'm not there on that 90,000 slide. Sorry, I should have written down the number. No, that slide only shows particular. particular tutoring services. It doesn't break down every single one of them. Slide 23, locally designed
090tutoring, 94,502. There was a question about how often do you have to participate for you to count that we didn't have a clear answer to. I want to does that include like you mentioned that the on-demand is separate on the menace separate home base is separate I was looking at this because those were these were the areas that we were really strategically solving for last year and so there's been an increase in those intervention supports so we were not as high as that high dose in person for many reasons the vendors still had not hired tutors. There were a number of reasons why this was low starting off, but now we're at double. The high-dose virtual, there were challenges there too, but now it's increased. But we do have the on-demand and all the other
091tutoring services as well that we can provide the information. Yeah, I would just be curious for all three of those rows, what is the criteria? You alluded to it a little bit. What is the criteria to get in that box? Attendance. Being enrolled and attending. I'm curious for high dose in person, is that once a week for an hour? Up to three times a week. Am I one of the 23,832 if I only do it once a week? Attendance. I can get the attendance to see. Yeah, I'm just curious like what is the formula that is putting out these three numbers? So there is a criteria for instance that we have for each of those different tutoring options. So I think that's what he's asking about is a different . Yeah, perfect. And again, yeah,
092thank you. The percentage, the extent that we can just understand tutoring versus school day versus after school. And then I've always been confused with this because we have like priority schools and some priority tutoring. Not every school, has tier three intervention. Is that correct? Not every school has tier three. There are schools, we have tier one through three that has an interventionist. But all of the schools that are priority have an interventionist. Right, but I'm talking about those three tiers of intervention. Every school has tier one and two. Every school has tier one through three because it's a multi-tiered system of support. Every school has tier three intervention. Yes. Okay, so there aren't and what that tier what that tier 3 looks like at the school depends on the resources that they have and what
093the school has decided this is our tier 3 intervention. It's a multi-tiered system of support that's that the schools develop they all develop their own tailored one the ones I've listed are the ones that are most frequently used in our schools. I think it would be helpful and superintendent Carvalho was alluding to this a little bit with the challenges of school-based and third-party tutoring and then kind of rolling it up in the data, but it would be really helpful and maybe I mean it would be nice to have data for every school, but maybe in a follow-up presentation just illustratively like take one school like Westchester High School and look at like how does how are we getting the tutoring numbers for that like is that data coming in like it's input by teachers is
094it the principal is there a book like a partner like a book nook or a study smart that has their own tracking system just help us see under the hood that is building up to these numbers so we can also get a sense of what's happening because I think taking what's at this presentation and seeing how it translates to I'm a parent at a school and I know what my opportunities are or we're a board member trying to hold schools accountable to certain improvement would be really helpful if that makes sense and then my last question which is just more philosophical I guess is when you were talking a lot about these interventions, a lot of it is on the screen. And I know another thing this board has flagged is just concerns maybe around
095screen time in schools. And so I don't expect you have an answer right now, but I am interested in whether we're looking at balancing, you know, get on your iPad, do this reading, do this read 180, do this accelerate 300, whatever, versus making sure kids are spending less time on screens given the research showing how detrimental that can be. Yeah, and that's where the small group instruction comes in, the professional development. All of that is based on the teacher delivering the lesson and engaging the students. The tier two and three is when the teacher's with the group, working with them, that that's an opportunity for them to do that. For example, with the iReady, it's 25 to 49 minutes twice a week. It's not every single day. It's in reading and in math. So it's
096not a daily recommendation, but it's a tool that's available for students. really it's the teacher who's driving the instruction the entire day. Yeah, and I don't have a great answer or solution. It's just something, seeing how many of these are, on one hand, really accessible to families and kids because they're screen-based. On the other hand, how is that increasing their time on screens, particularly at younger ages? So, thank you. I think that's it. Okay, I have a few more, and then I'll go for a second round if people have more. So this is an important question that comes from a lot of my constituents in Board District 3. So what type of training are the intervention teachers receiving? Is it similar to the training of primary promise teachers? There are some similarities, but there are
097also some additional trainings. So the Interventionist Academy is once a month, and that's new. That's something that we did not have before. And the reason why we have that Interventionist Academy is to ensure that every interventionist is trained on the evidence-based... practices that they use with the students in small group, whether they're a priority school or a tier two school or tier one, whatever it may be, anybody who has an interventionist is receiving this professional development, which is different than with the primary promise where they were just getting professional development just for that developmental stage and then reading. We also offer the letters and the UFLY, which I mentioned, which are very popular. Those were part of the primary promise before, but what we're continuing to do now is as we're introducing new programs like
098the corrective reading. Corrective reading would be the new professional development. So as we're moving along and seeing how students are engaging, how they're performing on i-Ready, our professional development is also being modified and deepening so that we're addressing the needs of our middle and high schools. So before, it was just focused on the K through two, but we've expanded it farther on. So as we're seeing, i-Ready is saying that we need more support in vocabulary and reading comprehension. Now we're going to pivot away from that phonological awareness, the foundational reading skills, and into vocabulary and comprehension. Whereas before in Primary Promise, there's a heavy emphasis on foundational reading skills with phonics and phonological awareness. And as we're looking at data, we have to focus on vocabulary and reading comprehension. Okay, that's important. That's very important
099for my constituents to know. So another question, will the Saturday intervention support take place in specific sites around the district or will it be at the student's residence school? The Saturday intervention, when schools offer the tutoring, the locally designed intervention, if the school is deciding that they're going to offer it, it's at their school site. So it's really locally designed, locally determined when that's going to be offered. And this coach, the N-M-A-C-L coach, how is that person different from the international newcomer coach? Those coaches are assigned to the schools according to the number of emergent bilinguals that are at the school site that support the teachers with providing lessons that are designed for our emergent bilinguals, our English learners to acquire the language in addition to working with students. Okay. And putting on parent thoughts,
100tell us what does this mean? Push in. and push out. What does that mean? I'm a parent and I say, what do you mean push in and push out? Thank you. So pushing would be when that interventionist or that resident sub or the tutor come into the classroom and while the teacher's working in a small group, that tutor's working or the interventionist is working at another table with the students. Got it. Inside, they're pushing in. pull out is when the student is now going to another room with a group of students to work with that teacher in a small group. Got it. You mentioned home-based tutoring. So I'm assuming and hoping that someone has to be at home who's an adult. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. So if there's no adult home, the tutor
101should not go there. And the tutor does not go physically there. It's virtual. Okay, okay. So it's a teacher virtually. I feel even better now. Okay, okay. There are no adults going into the halls now. Excellent, excellent. Okay, last thing. We wouldn't dare reduce a middle school library time for an employee. We wouldn't dare reduce a high school librarian at school. Yet, the love of reading is very important. And this is my same story all the time and people are tired of hearing it, but I'm not tired of hearing it. Elementary libraries are very, very important for kids to be able to begin to have a love of reading with picture books in the library. And that's staffed by library aides. Yet we still consider that position to be flexible. No one would dare to
102make the secondary librarian flexible. They wouldn't dare No one would make the high school librarian. This is no response. I'm just spouting information No one would dare to to say, okay, you're a flexible secondary librarian, but we do it in elementary school and I think it's very unfair that in elementary school where the love of reading actually begins, we should have libraries in every single elementary school and help them the most we can. And that's my statement. Questions on this side? This side? Okay, thank you very much, Frances. We appreciate it. Okay. We're getting ready for you guys next, okay? As you may recall, in our previous presentation, the Legislative Analyst's Office projected a larger budget problem that may require additional cuts, withdrawals, or delays. And the projected state general fund budget showed a $37.9
103billion... billion budget shortfall and the COLA's cost of a living adjustment will be lower than in previous projections. So since then, our budget team continues to monitor any changes in order to protect our budget properly. Today we'll take a deeper dive into the governor's proposed budget and any changes with our LAUSD budget. And with that... Mr. Hart and Ms. Alvarez will provide us with an update on the 24-25 budget. And please take it away, Ms. Alvarez. Great. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for having us again. We hope to have more details for you today. That's our goal for today from the meeting that we had about a month ago. Before I get started and then invite Dave to come up to cover more of the local context and the impacts for LA Unified, I wanted
104to first mention some updates about the LAO, the Legislative Analyst Office. We did not have an opportunity to add these slides to the PowerPoint given the timeline to submit them for today's meeting. But late last week, the Legislative Analyst Office, LAO, nonpartisan, that advises the state legislature, they came up with their own analysis of the governor's proposed budget, including some recommendations for the state legislature. So again, I wanted to first start off with those comments, and then I'll turn it to a few of the trailer budget bill language that are of most interest to us at this point. The the lao and let me back up one more step the governor's office department of finance They also released that late last week on Thursday the 15th the trailer budget language for the proposition 98 Minimum
105guarantee proposals as you may recall and friendly a reminder to what I mentioned at the meeting in January the one of the governor's proposals is to Keep eight billion dollars that schools were over-appropriated in the 20 to 23 school year. So given that the state revenues and the tax receipts were extended until November of 2023 the state was not able to make any adjustments to the state budget last year when they normally would have received that tax collection in April. And so fast forward, the state legislature approved the budget in June of 2023. Fast forward to November 2023 when the tax collection was due as a result of the IRS extension. Fast forward to January 2024, the Department of Finance and Governor were recommending to keep $8 billion that was over-appropriated in Prop 98 for
106schools for 2022-23. The Governor's proposal was to borrow from against the general fund in the out year starting in 25-26 for over a five-year period in order to minimize impact to schools given that the money was already appropriated in 2022-23 and they would have to make a reduction to money school districts already spent. And so one of the concerns at the LAO, and this is this $8 billion mystery of how will the governor make up the $8 billion already appropriated for schools in 2022-23, this is going to be a major area of discussion and negotiation in Sacramento. Because again, that's $8 billion in 2023 that already happened. It already passed. And as a result, the LAO continues to underscore that the budgets will get worse in the future years. The budget deficits will continue to
107be exacerbated and even create future shortfalls. The constraint that the LAO underscores, the governor is using Prop 98 reserve and also one-time funds to make up for ongoing costs of school district service. are receiving. And so this is going to be a tension I wanted to highlight early on in my presentation because you'll continue to hear these concerns that they're not only going to have to make up that eight billion dollar loss retrospectively, but also looking into the 24-25 school year and beyond. As a result, the LAO who tend to be more conservative, again doing their job as a nonpartisan analyst. They're recommending a series of concerns and recommendations that were not present or not as evident when I spoke to you a month ago. Some of those recommendations include eliminating the COLA altogether. You
108might recall when I came a month ago, the governor's office was recommending a 0.76% COLA, which is significantly lower than the 3.94% from last year. And so now the LAO is saying zeroing out the COLA. It's so minimal, small enough as it is, that they're recommending that they give school districts a zero COLA in 24-25. They're also recommending that the governor, the legislature reject any of the governor's one-time. funding increases. There was a number of programs that I mentioned last month when I spoke regarding trainings for the dyslexia screenings and other areas for one-time investments. The LAO is recommending even going as far as rejecting the governor's $500 million grant for school bus electrification. It's one that we have been very closely monitoring and advocating in Sacramento. The LAO is saying there's no money for
109even one-time programs like the school buses EB grant. The LAO is recommending that the legislature rescind or take back the unallocated grants for the community schools and also other funds that may have already gone out to schools but have yet to be unspent. Again, the one that's most important to us from those one-time grants is community schools. And then for the ongoing funding programs, the LAOs basically put in for the legislature, which is what we anticipated, everything is on the table for any reductions. That includes reducing ongoing funding for programs that districts have unallocated carryover funds. The biggest example of concern to us and others would be ELOP. the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program. The state has been providing about $4 billion for each of the past two years, and it's meant to be an ongoing
110program. And then the other one is special education early intervention grants. That's also an ongoing funding source that we've been able to benefit from. Beyond those reductions or rescinding some of those unspent dollars, the LAOs also, unsurprisingly, also recommend to the state legislature that they restructure programs that have ongoing costs in order to have that long-term sustainability. Those examples, again, that we have benefited across our district, ELOP, BEFORE SCHOOL, AFTER SCHOOL, SUMMER SCHOOL, ET CETERA, STATE PRESCHOOL. school nutrition, now that we're able to provide two free meals for students regardless of income. School transportation, we've been fortunate over the past two years with the state legislature moving in that direction. We've been able to increase home-to-school transportation and the state reimbursement rate. And then potentially also transitional kindergarten in some way or another. And then
111lastly, they're also recommending, which you'll hear me speak more about, that the legislature delay the implementation implementation of the instructional continuity attendance recovery program until 2526 it would be one year delay from what the governor's recommending So I want to start off with my comments again that we did not have an opportunity to add in our slides into the PowerPoint for today given the timeline for submitting this on Friday, but the Bottom line is that the LAO we're not surprisingly they're recommending in a nutshell, that everything be on the table for reductions, for decreases, rejecting one-time proposals in other areas. This will make our advocacy even more meaningful in the sense that we'll have to really prioritize not only what I had mentioned at the last meeting, but also any of the new programs that
112I mentioned as of... The governor's proposal, there was no consideration that there would be reductions to the home to school transportation program or to school meals or to TK. And so as we talk about all of these ongoing investments that the governor's committed to, it makes it a difficult situation if the state needs to balance out not just for the $8 billion reduction from 22-23, but also any reduced funding moving forward. And then the other update before I go into just a few slides and turn it over to David, since the last time I spoke to you a month, ago, we've been tracking the state's tax income receipts, and they have come lower than what the governor had in the estimated proposed budget in January to the tune between $3 and $5 billion, and that
113just was one month alone since the last time that I spoke to you in January. Those tax receipts usually come out about a week, a week, week and a half after the beginning of every month, and so we'll continue to track this until the April and May revise when that comes out. So lastly, our last follow-up to our last conversation and discussion here a month ago, we, working with Board President Goldberg and Superintendent Carvalho, we're definitely exploring opportunities to engage our LA delegation sooner rather than later. And so that's ongoing work behind the scenes. Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant, this is one of the grants. I mentioned that the Trailer Budget Language came out also February 1st, and so I have a few slides, very, very few slides, just to highlight some of the key
114details of information that we did not have when I spoke to you a month ago. And then David will be coming afterwards to talk about the local context and what all of this means to us. We have since received information from the Department of Finance about some of the parameters they are recommending or what we would call restrictions or limitations into funding that we had already been appropriated years ago. This learning recovery emergency block grant was over $7 billion given out to school districts about two and a half, almost three years ago. And for LA Unified, that's over $600 million that we received. Our finance team can... Clarify exactly that the dollar amount that we received but in essence this funding came to school districts when we received it was a multi-year one-time grant to
115support learning recovery the funding was meant to be very discretionary to be able to supplement and complement any other other federal funds we've received now the The Department of Finance is recommending adding some parameters in how the school districts can use the money. This includes adding a requirement that the funding be spent only on evidence-based programs and activities. There would also be a requirement starting this summer of conducting a needs assessment that would be taken into consideration in the following areas. Really identifying which are the students that have the highest needs based on performance in the California school dashboard. that would help inform the kind of interventions that we need to make progress. It would need to include identifying the students who have the lowest performing data around math and English language arts, and then
116also looking at chronically absent students. The intent of the funds would be that it would be earmarking the funds more so for this particular student population than generally speaking supporting students across the district. And for any unencumbered funds, the trailer budget language right now does not include a definition for unencumbered funds, but it's a topic that we've had internally and also other school districts are starting to wonder what does the Department of Finance mean by unencumbered since these funds came to districts again a couple of years ago and the funds were allowed for a multi-year effort. So starting in 2021, 2024, school districts need to incorporate this information into LCAPs starting for this upcoming cycle. And again, these are new restrictions that were not there when we got this funding two and a half years
117ago, and we had already made plans for how to spend the funding to support us, especially with the funding for ESSER expiring in September of 2024. The other three pieces of interest to us that we have started to discuss internally last week and will continue discussing this next week amongst the various departments impacted by these proposals. I know our leadership has mentioned this before. It's a welcome opportunity to help inform the state how school districts can better leverage credit recovery and especially with attendance. These are some of the more specific proposals school districts will be able to take tap into ELOP funds to support at Saturday school or after school or other supports to be able to create credit recovery. So that's one welcome possibility of leveraging the ELOP funds that we get from the
118state. There's also a requirement that, and this is consistent with what we already do, but now it would be codified in law more clearly. Any credit recovery program would have to be substantially similar to equality and the content that students would otherwise be receiving during their instructional day. that instruction would need to be done by a certificated teacher and it could be done before school, after school, weekends or during intersession periods. Students would be able to leverage this credit recovery opportunities as voluntary and not requirement. And then there's also some class size ratios and restrictions which are currently not part of the current credit recovery efforts. that we would have to be mindful of. There's up to 15 days that we would be able to tap into for ADA and credit recovery for any one
119student per year, and increments of 15 minutes, which we think it's too small, and we will be looking to do other advocacy on some of those specifics. Instructional continuity, the Department of Finance Newsom administration has really been concerned about the ongoing climate change related efforts that has impacted schools, whether it be wildfires, storms, catastrophic environmental impacts that has an impact to schools being able to continue instruction and keeping schools open. And so they're recommending a couple of different changes to the way that currently schools are able to recoup attendance and ADA funding. and also ensuring that there's a better connection between that J13 waiver process, which is an administrative way for school districts to receive funding from the state when schools have to close down, and ensuring there's continuity of instruction even during a school
120closure. These requirements would be only if the school was closed for more than five days. So again, Some of them were catastrophic incidences like Paradise Fire a couple of years ago in Northern California, Pajaro in Monterey County that also had some storms and flooding last year. So thinking about more the long term after more than five-day school closures, this would be some additional requirements. And the school district would need to ensure that the instructional continuity is available for students outside of the school closure. And then there's also requirement, more specifically around the written policies we need to have in place along with independent study or any other programs that we have. Data collection, I know our Deputy Superintendent Pedro Salcido mentioned at the last meeting, this is an opportunity for LA Unified to really demonstrate
121as part of our ongoing I Attend efforts and other credit recovery, attendance recovery efforts. The state's going to be looking to research and getting better ideas about how to ensure that students are coming to school, getting greater clarity on the type of absences, why students are not coming to school. My staff members in Sacramento on our Office of Government Relations, they've done some research about over a dozen laws that have been in the books since 1999, which is when the state stopped paying school districts providing ADA funding for excused absences. In discussion with the New Southbound Administration last week, they underscored to us that they are interested in understanding the nuance as to why kids are not coming to school, and perhaps this might be a change of heart in also funding, that if the
122state's providing more excused absences, that might be a direction for them that they also need to be providing. funding for those excuse absences. So with that, this will be ongoing engagement my office will be having with administration, with legislators and others in Sacramento, and I'll be happy to come back during Q&A. Thank you, Martha. So to continue on a theme, just to put in context further what it was Ms. Alzebraz was speaking to, in the event that the state does go forward. with a reduction in COLA to zero. And as a sidebar, let me also note that SSC, which gives us commentary as to the state of the state and what we might expect, does note that there is an opportunity for the state to actually introduce a what I'll refer to as a negative
123factor. The point is that the state is in a position where they're not quite certain how they're going to navigate over the forecast period and ensure that they are able to meet all of their constitutional requirements in the face of revenues coming in much lower than projection. That quarter percent going from .76 to zero is the equivalent of $45 million of lost revenue in year one. played out over a three-year period that would reduce our revenue by upwards of $130 million. When added to what you see on this slide here, the combined total of that effect would be, and let me get to, maybe I went past it. Let me just do the math here. What that would estimate is something that would approximate $800 million in lost revenue over a three-year period. At this
124moment in time, I'm not certain that that shouldn't be considered a best case. When we came to you, Ms. Alvarez and I, in January, in response to the governor's proposed budget, my hope was that would prove to be a middle-of-the-road type forecast. As things have played out in a relatively short time, it appears to be that that is the best case scenario. As we have commented to you over a period of months, we should take our cues from how the state looks at its own reserve funds. They are clearly developing a more conservative posture. That suggests that they think the, to me, that suggests that they believe that the need for those reserve funds in future years will be greater and the economy will be slower to replenish those coffers. It is also the case
125that we are needing to differentiate between how the economy is functioning on a large scale basis as opposed to how those activities result in tax receipts and then ultimately how it is the legislature seeks to adopt a budget. More to come. In the context of what I just spoke to, you can then see that there is the detail on a year by year basis here. What I will say, and this is again repeated on slide 11, we have fundamentals that we are attendant to. We are working very hard to ensure that the dollars generated in a year attributable to a student are spent on the student in that year. We are doing what we can to mitigate for impact upon schools. We are not talking in terms of any loss of employment opportunities, but there
126certainly is pressures upon us as we look at our forecast period. Next slide speaks to, in fact, the evidence of those commitments. Over the last handful of years, we have made significant contributions to and investments in total compensation. The increased compensation was of a historic nature. The maintenance of the health and welfare in the context of total compensation is, I would suggest, unprecedented for this district and further establishes us as a district of choice for employees. There are no notices, RIF notices, in this current fiscal year and at present there is no intention for that to be part of the 24-25 budget balancing solution. That said, there are statutory requirements on how that process works, something I believe you are well familiar with. But it is the case that in subsequent years, depending upon the
127depth, if you will, and breadth of the state's fiscal circumstance. we too will need to bring all things to the table. We have in the context of our investments reduced class size, we have added additional staff in an effort to try to meet those students who have greatest need with the greatest resources to drive for student achievement in the year in question. Additional investments include the supports made to CENI. It is expected at this time that the CENI allocation increased from 280 coming into the recession, bumped to 400, and then bumped again to 700, will be maintained at 700 million for the school year 24-25. We will see a continuity of our own in the continuation of an acceleration strategy, sustained investments in the cultural arts program, among others that are alluded to in this
128slide. Budget balancing principles, as I said earlier, we do see that there needs to be a, if you will, an acute focus upon student learning and equity. It is the case that if I can bring the first and last bullet together, what we are trying to do is ensure that in our efforts to balance the budget, not just for 24-25, but to do so even beyond the three-year forecast, which will take us through 26-27. But to begin the conversation about what does 27, 28, 28, 29, and beyond look like, that the aspects of student learning and equity have to be thought of in the context of fiscal sustainability. Those principles that I spoke to are worth repeating. We are mitigating the impact on schools and students. We are mitigating the impact upon employment. There is
129an explicit effort to reduce, excuse me, misspoke, to avoid the conversation of having a reduction in force. And we are doing everything that we can to ensure that the investments align to the strategic plan, which is thought to be strongly aligned and directly in support of board goals, et cetera. You have seen us increase our conversation and our attention on actuals in terms of the budget to actual variance. That is a primary focus for us. We are identifying as best we are able correlations, if not causal factors, between actuals and what is in fact achieved and doing our level best to assure that the actual. Once noted as an achievement, how does that align then to the strategic plan in support of the board goals? We will continue to do that. What that also means
130is that we are getting more precise where we see underspends or dollars altogether not spent, and we are working to understand why that is occurring. And with so, we remain optimistic that we will be able to introduce budget balancing solutions that do in fact mitigate the impact upon schools and provide for a maintenance of employment because we'll be pulling back those dollars that might otherwise sit unused. So that speaks to or begs the question of what are we doing for 24-25? I believe the board is aware. We have spoken previously of the business rules we are creating about the allocation of assistant principals and this slide speaks for itself. Myself, Saman Bravo-Karimi, will be happy to field questions on the specifics of this if the board has questions at this time. There have been communications
131that have gone out to the schools as part of the budget development process and the training that has occurred since we were last before you. In that same vein, you then see what are the numbers associated with this activity, and you can see that of the 400, excuse me, I misspoke, 713 total schools, had this cap been in place in this school year, you would see that there were 268 out of that 200, excuse me, 713 that were impacted. In terms of speaking to the allocation of dollars and where discretion might land, you see we are also having conversations around the APEIS and the alternative schedules. I believe the board is familiar with the particulars of this. To move us along, simply will offer that myself, Mr. Prabhakarimi, or others are happy to field questions.
132on the particulars but let me re-emphasize the point we are in a moment in time when we are dealing with the evaporation of the various coveted relief dollars bears in my mind reminding the board the public those that would consider to be stakeholders of the district that we will have received since the beginning of the esser programs total COVID relief dollars will total an amount greater than 5.6 billion dollars. That is a difficult amount for any school district, any entity to absorb and then not have there be a consequence of having done so when the dominant feature of those investments was in personnel. That is and has been a comment that you have heard from me and it remains a challenge for the district on a go-forward basis. These strategies then are very much intended
133to ensure that the third year never comes. It is our effort. to work collaboratively with all vested stakeholders, certainly at the direction of the Board of Education, to provide for multi-year strategies that give us the opportunity to, in fact, mitigate for the impact on schools, demonstrate that we are spending the dollars that were generated in year one from a student, benefiting that student in that particular year, and maintaining employment offers. opportunities, excuse me. In that regard of the budget to actual variance you see then that we are focused upon carryover. One of the things that we have noted is that we have a practice whereby the budget in year in any given year is often predicated upon what the budget was in the prior year which allows unexpended balances to accumulate on a year-over-year basis.
134We need to interrupt that process and ensure that the dollars allocated are in fact being expended for highest and greatest purpose as we look to enhance our commitments to learning, teaching, student achievement. And so you'll note that the direction given as part of the budget development process this year is that instead of an 80% allocation with a 20% true-up, in the fall that we are allocating only 30%. There still will be a fall determination as to a true up on that 30%, but until further notice, we have not made a commitment as to the 70%. It will sit essentially in a committed fund. If what we know today stays intact, those funds would be committed for the 24-25 school year with an expectation that they would be drawn down in 25-26 for reasons related to
135our investments in total compensation. In terms of our key budget dates and when it is, we would next be before you. We being fiscal staff, and I'll volunteer Ms. Alvarez if she has news to join in that, and that would be that we will be back for the second interim in March. And to remind what that is, that will be a forecast of where we think we will finish this current school year, 23-24. with an eye to how we think we will finish the 24-25 and 25-26 school years. As the prior slides indicated, the concern for us is not, based on what we know today, not immediately on our windshield, if you will, for those three years. The significant challenge comes in 26-27 and 27-28. As we look out on a multi-year basis, what I
136can say to you and Superintendent Carvalho and I, I think are lockstep in this, our ability to mitigate for the impact of those years begins today. The actions we take today will mitigate for the language folks often use about a forcoming cliff effect. I don't believe that there has to be that kind of step down where you would attribute it to being a cliff. What we're trying to do is create a glide path that gives us an opportunity to smooth for what would otherwise be a disruptive process and that serves no one well. After the first interim, we will be back in May as we learn more of what the governor's proposed budget looks like as we get to the May revised based on past practice of the last handful of years anyway. And what
137we are hearing year to date, I would not expect that the May revised will in fact be the June adopted, which means to me that we'll look back to you revising our own budget previously adopted in June of this year to revise it again in August. And at that, I think we are at... Hang on. Let me just make a couple comments before we turn back over to the board. Appreciate the somber approach that both Martha Alvarez and David Hart guided the conversation. Usually you attempt to triangulate information that comes to us. Unfortunately, from Sacramento, whether you're looking at an independent analysis or the governor's own budget, they're both negative. The question here is by how much, right? There's a significant delta between the level of deficit calculated by the governor versus the level of
138deficit calculated by others. I have not heard a single opinion whether it's coming from Sacramento or beyond. that would put current conditions in the state of California under a positive light in terms of expected revenues. In fact, what we continue to receive is information that projects worsening conditions rather than improved conditions. And by the way, this projection is over the next two to three years, and then there's a projection that economic conditions will in fact turn around. It seems that every time we speak with you we bring a decaying financial condition. So just looking at COLA as David spoke about, we went from a close to 4% increase to 0.76%. That resulted in a $600 million reduction. That is made worse, taking us close to $800 million loss if in fact that 0.76 actually is
139reduced to zero. That's an important number, $800 million, because $800 million is what we still have to solve for in terms of ESSER solutions. Kudos to the board and staff because compared to where we were just two years ago, where we had roughly 6,000 positions under ESSER funding, we're now less than 2,000 positions. But those positions are still carrying a significant amount of budget. Not the totality of this 600 million, but this is a gap we need to eliminate So in total we're looking still at a 1.6 billion dollar if conditions hold Meaning if in fact the coal is reduced to zero and we don't solve for the ESSER conundrum We're looking at 800 plus 800 million dollars 1.6 billion dollar problem Now, we have solutions. The solutions have been revealed to you. The problem
140is that most folks forget that some of the expansions, some of the solutions are taking us back to normed position allocations that were in existence prior to the pandemic. During the pandemic, as we've said time and time again, it is worthwhile. reacquainting not only our workforce but also the community with what we did during the pandemic. During the pandemic we use short time money and invested in long-term liabilities particularly personnel. We are very unique in that position across the country and today we're dealing with that stress point. That speaks to psychiatric social workers. It speaks to APs, APISs. It speaks to a whole host of positions. By the way, all of them important. All of them important. And as we've discussed before, and I'm stealing our board president's message, for the first time probably in
141our collective history, as a result of this short-term infusion of revenues, particularly through COVID recovery, we reached a modicum of adequacy and funding. only for it to now be taken away from us. And there is zero hopes, zero hopes that the federal government will come up with any type of substitute or continuation funding. That is not going to happen. We will be lucky, depending on how the politics will shake out in November, if we are able to sustain entitlement programs, Title I, IDEA, etc. Because there is one party currently, particularly in the House, who actually wants to reduce entitlement programs. I don't think it will happen unless there's a significant shift in terms of national politics that provides the power to all three entities in Washington, D.C. Then we're in danger. I don't think that
142will happen. But what we're currently solving for is to really achieve, it's a set of balancing solutions that... provide us some degree of principled approach to the budget that minimizes sacrifice and minimizes the inherent risk with not solving for these issues now and punting them another year. And the reason here is if you punt some of these solutions by another year, considering the state's forecast, next year's cost will be a lot more than this year's cost, meaning the pain will be much greater for all the reasons that we know. Our board president, second time I'll quote it today, has said that we are in a position of actually protecting people. We cannot protect people and positions at the same time. We cannot do that. And the reason why we can't is because what the source
143of funding for those positions has been, short-term money attached to long-term liability. So our guiding principles are important. We want to spare schools, and we believe we can do this. We want to spare schools and school programs that directly impact students. from any type of reduction. We believe we can do this. We want to avoid reductions in force, not only for 23-24, which we committed to, but also for 24-25. We can do this, but this is contingent on implementation of budget balancing solutions that we are proffering. As I said, we cannot protect people and all positions. So functions need to be somewhat flexible, and that's what you're seeing. We need to honor, and we believe we can do this, honor our commitment to our employees to provide them with health and welfare benefits at no
144cost. We can do this going into 2024-25 contingent upon the balancing solutions we brought. And obviously we have this almost legal requirement to prevent the district from being in default. That includes not only not submitting to LACWA qualified budget, but it's about protecting the long-term viability of the district with the direct and indirect ramifications of not solving for these problems today. Meaning, if we have to go back to New York or San Francisco and defend our credit ratings, and paint a picture that's not consistent with reality, we're going to get downgraded. And we fought really hard to improve our credit rating. Why? Not just because it looks good on paper, because it saves dozens of millions of dollars annually to this district. If we compromise that, then we might as well accept an additional liability
145to our budget. So our promise to this board and the community is we know that we are facing... a whole host of Hobson's choices. None of them are easy. None of them are easy. But with an excess of 87% of our budget invested in schools, it is impossible virtually to right the ship as we're seeing a deterioration of COLA at the same time as Aster is disappearing without shifting some personnel entities. particularly in schools, over to other positions of direct support to students. The last point I'll make at this point is specific to the carryovers, and I appreciate the way David Hart positioned this conversation. It is both a technical move as it is a protective move. Technical because we need those funds that currently are in the possession of schools as carryover. to not
146allow a perspective that would require qualified budget to LACO. Those funds are, you know, are here. They are part of our budget. But we need to qualify them, classify them in a way that takes us away from that dangerous zone. Secondly, they will be deposited, they will be sitting in a protective fund, a category. that specifically, explicitly ties those funds to schools. I believe this is a prudent way of approaching this problem. If conditions change, obviously, then we will take further action in terms of releasing, in a timed way, funds back to schools. But we ought to be in a position of being cautious, considering where the state is in terms of releasing less. rather than releasing more and then having to pull it back. It's always more difficult. And by the way, if you're
147in that position, more than likely you will be breaching the principles of equity. Because when you pull funds back, not every school will be able to satisfy that pullback right now, considering the level of carryover. We can do this through a lens of equity, making it less impactful to schools. The last point I promise is this. And no doubt probably you will be asking this. Is there legitimacy behind the rules that have been explained to principals that are orienting whether it's APs, APISs, or carryover? Yes. Is the waiver request process legitimate? Absolutely yes. Can principals right now request waivers for other elements that aren't even touched as far as budget is concerned? Of course they are. And that applies not only to carry over to APs, APISs, but also to alternative schedules. Any principal, any
148school council can at any point petition the region, the regional director or the regional superintendent for special consideration or dispensation specifically the individual needs of the schools. What we cannot have is every possible exception that would result in a waiver become a rule unto itself. Then it's very difficult to manage and we cannot reach the point of fiscal solvency that we need to reach just within weeks. So this is very, very tough territory that we are entering into. We recognize that. We're going to continue to approach this work with an emphasis on empathy and compassion to the individuals impacted. I know if you are someone who's been in the position for the past two years and now going to be asked to go into a different position. that right now you're not thinking about the
149fact that we are protecting your job, we're protecting your health care benefits, we're protecting your retirement, first and foremost. You're probably just concerned over the fact that what you did for the past two years is going to change, and we understand that. It is destructive. But what is further destructive is failing to adopt these solutions that may then result in catastrophic impacts to student services, to actual not only positions, but people that we want to protect. So thank you very much, Mr. Vice President. Thank you. So I have a few questions and I'll share the time with others. May I just ask you the term... business rule. I have never heard that term before ever used with our school budgets, unless other board members have heard business rule. Why are we using that term of
150business rule? We're wanting to distinguish, if you will, statute from a board policy. Business rule would be, if you will, promulgated through the administration. So we're not looking for a board adoption of a formal policy. We are trying to communicate the uniformity and... create to superintendent as comments not solve for every exception but to make sure that there is a clear clarity as to how we expect to apply a particular direction to one and to all class size for example norm tables are business rules Yes, I don't like that word. That's my problem. I don't like that term. I think it's very impersonal and I think it's a way of getting away from compassion and everything else. But okay, that just bothers me. Just like human capital bothers me too. I like to call them
151employees, but it's okay. Here's my first question. What is the district doing with all the TSP money that has been historically spent on the arts education? And where's that money right now, the TSP? The TSP dollars are allocated in two ways to answer this. The TSP dollars are spread across a host of activities in individual schools. In terms of on a total amount for... Non proposition. I'm trying to remember the numbers non proposition 28 art money It was about 125 million and I think we augmented that by about 75 million this year The combined total is about 200 million into the arts for the school year 23 24. I don't think I understand the answer so The TSP, go ahead. Two things, I'd be happy to follow up later with the detail on how TSP
152is allocated. What I'm recalling off the top of my head is the budget for arts in 23-24. There's a total of 200 million that was allocated of that amount. 125 million came from, and I'm rounding my numbers, sir. 125 million of that came from non-proposition $28, and about 75 million came from proposition 28. Proposition 28 is the amendment that was passed in, get my years right, November of 22. We received that allocation in its detail, I want to say it was in January of this year. And to be clear, Proposition $28 come by way of a spreadsheet that the state gives to us on a per school basis. It is not a determination that is made on a district by district basis. The state has a master spreadsheet for the allocation of those dollars on
153a school by school basis within each school district. To the question that was raised at the last board meeting, I feel very confident that we are not in any way stepping afoul of the intended supplement versus supplant. I will acknowledge that there is school by school variance, but the requirement of the amendment to the constitution is that it's on a district total basis. I just wanted to add some clarity on the TSP. TSP is our Supplemental and Concentration funding that we receive from the state, a portion of LCFF. There are numerous programs that are funded out of TSP. Sani is one of them, some of the arts funding. There are other programs around intervention, credit recovery that all are supported through TSP allocations. Arts is just one subset of that. Okay, and to if you
154will to mr. So see those comments That's what I'm suggesting we can give you an accounting for how TSP in total is being allocated It is a much larger dollar amount than 125 million And I believe this question is for Ms. Alvarez. Is she behind you? Yes. Question for you. So it mentions that more than 15 days of attendance recovery may be considered for students due to medical reasons or if they experience a significant personal difficulty. So is there a list of what a significant personal difficulty is or is it up to the discretion of the administrator? at the school? Well, we're still looking about the flexibility that the Department of Finance may have around the definition. I think they're open to ideas for how to better define it. So it's one, I mentioned we
155had our first meeting in turn last week. We're meeting again next week to talk about the specifics and what we want to see. One example I brought up that our staff already alluded that is a concern, the increments is over 15 minutes up to, you could do 15 minute recovery per student. No one's going to do just 15 minutes. We think an hour would be more appropriate. So we're looking at that nuance to be able to determine where we want to recommend to the Department of Finance changes for the May revise. Because one of the questions was how does this affect the student mental health days that are assured by the the state of California? So I keep that in mind too. Okay. Thank you. I'll go to my right this time who wants to
156go first? Rocio go ahead. Dr. Rivas You mentioned miss Alvarez the delegation that is that we're working they're gonna work with our State delegation. So what are we doing different? now, considering the LAO's recommendations and everything that has been presented to us, how are we being more, I guess you could say, aggressive or very, like... Dire letting them know what are the needs and how yeah, what what strategies are we doing different in in terms of great? So I was in Sacramento last Wednesday I traveled a few times a month to me to me with the individuals I mean with the chief of staff or the new chair of the LA delegation at Tina Mackinac in or the delegations having a retreat in in LA in March They've already set up their agenda. So we're
157looking for opportunities to get us in there in front of them I mentioned in the coming week. So that's that's going to be scheduled soon because of brown act rules we will probably need to limit the number of board members who participate in that conversation given the restrictions we have. With that said, the LAO information and the analysis, the Prop 98 language that I mentioned is $8 billion proposal how the governor is proposing to mitigate the funding that already came out to schools. That just came out on Thursday afternoon. So today is Tuesday, holiday weekend. We will be very intentional in always being proactive. I myself have to first have discussion with our leadership internally. I cannot just go out and advocate for anything. I have to make sure that, as mentioned today, when I
158spoke to you all last January, we did not know that. what the LAO would be saying, I speculated what they would be saying about cuts. Now they have something in writing that came out late last week that articulated those positions, including reductions to ELOP, including home to school transportation, including reductions to the teacher to staff ratios for TK. That was all speculations a month ago. Now it's real. So I will be discussing with our leadership in the coming week, a week or two at most, what are the priorities that we have. When I spoke to you last month, I mentioned about the TK penalties that we will potentially incur for last year and this year. This is not an LA Unified specific issue. And so as example, we need to prioritize what's going to have
159the biggest bang for the buck. So once we have those internal conversations and prioritization, then we can do a formal letter, we can do meetings. But it would be premature to be talking to legislators right now without knowing the prioritization of those priorities. I can assure you this afternoon at 4 p.m., I have a meeting with the senator regarding the TK penalties, part of the Senate leadership. So the advocacy is being pursued accordingly for things that we know for sure we're going to. be advocating. But in terms about what we prioritize, what cuts do we prefer to see other than that's going to be happening in the coming weeks. Okay. Please keep us informed because we can reach to our parents. We can make sure that we're being as aggressive from each board, from all
160of our constituents because as we... are communicating not only with our employees, but also with our parents and other advocacy groups in helping us in really applying pressure because all of these cuts are going to have dire impacts to all of our students, particularly our highest need schools. So as I'm sitting here, I'm just like trying to taking it all in, but I want to remain very proactive and very positive rather than just thinking, you know, I don't want to lose hope. I think there's hope that we can still, you know, try to maintain despite the recommendations of LAO. Great. And rest assured that we will be providing any advocacy toolkits in English and Spanish. Just this past Friday, my office, we released an IDA full funding toolkit. If you have not seen it, it
161was part of my weekly report. And that's a resource as an example of advocacy at the federal level. It's a three-page toolkit that talks about a sample letter of support, social media tweets, and other resources. So I plan to have something similar for the state-level advocacy. advocacy and but again we first have to get organized internally to identify the priorities and also be clear what the impact to us means as already discussed today by Mr. Hart. Thank you. I have another question but let me think about it first. So go ahead. To my left who would like to go? Jackie go ahead. Ms. Goldberg. You gave us and I took copious notes at your opening of things that have come out since this. recent LAO paper. I'd like to see that in writing since I'm
162not sure I took excellent notes and I want to make sure I don't make a mistake in them. One of the things that you said is something about making up $8 billion. I have no idea how one does that. So let's say that they decide that we're going to do that. What are the ways that could happen in a district? And how much of that would be ours? And what kinds of ways do you, quote, make up $8 billion they think they shouldn't have sent? So the LAO specifically is recommending to tap more into the Prop 98 reserve. As I mentioned at the last, and that's specifically for the 22-23. shortfall. When I spoke to and David and I spoke last month to the board I mentioned there's roughly about 10 billion dollars that has
163been added to the Prop 98 reserve over the past decade. In the governor's January proposal he was recommending to tap into about 5 billion, 5.2, 5.7 billion roughly of the close to 10 billion dollars. So almost two-thirds of it would be spent. in 24-25 and leaving roughly about a third of the Prop 98 reserve for future use. The LAO is recommending to tap more into the reserves that is left over outside of what the governor already proposed in January. In addition, there's about $4.5 billion that the LAO has already identified as potential recouping or taking back. I mentioned unspent ELOP funds. They have some cost savings. for example, on the COLA 0.76% COLA that I mentioned that they're recommending zeroing out and not giving out, it's 600 and I have it here. roughly $650 million.
164I was looking for the exact number. Let's say give or take $650 million. That would be the state savings if they were to give us a zero COLA. And again, there's other programs that they would try to tap into. So they're not actually talking about reaching into our budgets around the state and taking money back, are they? It could possibly be that. Well, that's why I'm asking. That's exactly why I'm asking. To give context to that, Board President, I think Martha and I were even talking this morning, I was joking that instead of referring to it as the TBL in terms of the trailer bill language, it should be TBD. And the reason to say that is in the context of this $8 billion and comments we've had about the reserve, It is a current
165year circumstance. They have found themselves in a circumstance where the estimates came in so far below what they expected that they're having to use the reserves to satisfy in-year cash flow. And so that means they have less for future periods. This is what we were speaking to last year. So part of the solution in which I think they're very serious about. Because to your question, how do they do this, is the reduction of the COLA to zero. I see, okay. Those, when you look at the COLA, when you look at, and we've all been there. This is this ebb and flow to the comments the superintendent was attributing to you to prior meetings. We are seeing a shift away from the general government use of LCFF. to a more tailored use of funds and with
166that use of funds you're seeing an increase focus on us having to speak to not only eligibility but achievement and if we can't meet those thresholds they're going to pull it back it's not as it's a strategy we're deploying it is essentially our carryover language is mirroring what's happening at a state level So to the extent they enact these reductions, we have to pivot in like, if not in greater amount, because where they can introduce a negative factor, we can't operate at a deficit. So this $8 billion that they say we were over-allocated. That means that the school budget of 40% of the general fund that was said this is the amount was $8 billion too much. That's how I understand it. We can get greater detail on this, but to your comment of the
16740% and to follow on Dr. Rivas' line of inquiry, this is the conundrum for the state, and you know this firsthand. There are these overarching guiding principles that the state is operating under. So to the extent they say, well, we're going to go to 41% as if, there is somebody in that 59% that used to be 60. that is going to be highly motivated to ensure that it goes the other direction. I get that, but I don't get how they could be $8 billion over, was it they underestimated the number of students that would be? No, it is because of the state revenues being lower than anticipated. I see. So the 8% of what? So it's eight billion so so there's no percentage here. It's eight billion dollars at the minimum guarantee according to the
168lao Um, there's eight billion dollars that the state over appropriated above the minimum guarantee in 20 to 23 This would have been rectified last may in the main revise had the taxes been collected in april But because the state did not have the final tax collection until november 2023 They adopted a budget that was using old fiscal information that the state had at that moment in June when the state adopted the budget. Come November when the final IRS deadline came about for tax collection, they realized, and that's where the deficit is between 38 to 68 billion dollars. So that's translating to an eight billion dollar hole that Prop 98 was over guaranteed. What I mentioned in January, the governor's office did not have the details. They just said there's an eight billion dollar we have
169to over correct. What they are proposing is using projected future state general fund revenues to be able to borrow against that making so we would not be seeing a direct cut or impact to us. They're doing it starting in 25-26 or a five-year period that they would be borrowing from the general fund to Pay off the a billion that they're allowing us to keep so the governor is trying to help us stay afloat and in good standing the lao saying that that's irresponsible because it's going to create a greater deficit along default future years and that's where he's saying that Recommending that they should reject the governor's proposal And tapping into the reserve that has yet to be spent in order to mitigate and avoid any concerns. The 0.76% COLA reduction if that was to
170go to a zero is $628 million that the LAO is recommending as savings to the state. Okay. I've heard a lot of expressions in the 42 years I've been doing this and over allocation of prop 1998 is the first time I've ever heard of that. So that's a new language. Because of the unique IRS collection delay. Right. And that's the concern that LAO keeps setting a precedent to California that this has not happened over allocation. But as of now, the governor would be doing that. Okay. I think we've already kind of gone through what the various solutions are that we've looked at so far. One of the questions I have is that there is in Sacramento two districts, there are two districts, Oakland and us, that are treated differently than pretty much everybody else because
171of the uniqueness of the number of students and the high percentage of students in low-income and poverty situations. Are there things that the legislature will propose as solutions that will target us? And can we anticipate what the, I'm not expecting you to answer this off the cuff, but can we begin to anticipate what that is? Because we have a trouble lots of times with our own delegation because it represents high wealth schools and a little bit of LA Unified. So they vote with their high wealth schools against LA Unified, even though they're in our delegation. I think we need to be able to present to them fairly soon ways that they can see equity in what they do. Because it was the whole time I was in Sacramento, the word equity was not used. equality
172was used and you know what that means. Everybody gets the same even if you don't have a single kid in poverty in your district. Okay. We went and pushed hard and others have since then on equity. I seriously think there is a threat to the equity ideology that will come with this budget. And I just want us to anticipate how we're going to figure out which ways those folks who don't give a about kids that we represent and school every day, what they're going to go after and how we might be able to be prepared for those attacks. They are coming, I can assure you. The one example that with certainty I feel comfortable saying is the Electric School Buses, EV grants. Right. Last year, the legislature was proposing to cut off no funding or
173delay the funding for future years. It's a competitive grant. because that was part of the chopping block a year ago. I could anticipate, and that's the LAO's recommendation, that they may also push off any competitive grants around that. And then to underscore what the LAO's proposing, I could anticipate, it's already been mentioned by Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel and Assemblymember Amartya Suchi and others in the budget committees, the Assembly with new leadership in the budget, and also in the Senate, there's new Senate leadership. There's interest in reexamining any unspent dollars. And so that's where. we will need to examine what kind of unspent dollars we may have. Given that LA Unified, given the population of students that we serve with a lot of needs, we may have received additional federal support than other districts did not receive
174proportionally, given our student share of low income and other criteria. And so I could see that the legislature, especially the assembly, will be interested in reexamining grants like ELOP and others that we and others have significantly benefited from. I just think it's an important thing to note that it's a kind of a semi-competitive indoor sport in Sacramento to screw LA and Oakland. That's just true. And I don't know how we change that, but so far we have not been very successful. Okay. My last question has to do with the thing that I hear. probably more than anything else. Well, don't you have so much money in? I mean, there's all these budgets that have all these dollars in them. What's the problem? Why are you changing anything? I mean, my God, there's just all these
175balances and all these accounts. Are we flush with money and reserve and accounts? It's a complicated answer, and I'll do my best to distill that. At this moment in time, we have sizable balances. That's fact. We have been, I'll go so far as to say, extraordinary in protecting the general fund and finding ways to utilize the eligibility of non-general fund funds to manage our expenses over the course of the pandemic. We did so with an intention to create the balances that now have people asking you those questions. However, our forecasts show that those balances that look to be supersized today will in fact be in a deficit position inside of three and certainly no more than four years and be in a deficit to such a degree that professionally never faced such a conundrum. The
176deficit that we will be facing as the superintendent spoke to and as we have shown on numerous occasions is in the absence of any budget balancing solutions to just leave as if we are on autopilot will be over $2 billion. So that is a reversal and it is, if I might echo the sentiments of our superintendent, it is that which the rating agencies has focused upon. His summation that the effect of poor management will have a consequence not just in the day-to-day of things but will cost us more money is absolutely spot on. And it is that that the rating agencies, and I use those agencies as sort of a neutral, not unlike the LAO, but looking at us more specifically, is commenting on. They are asking two questions. Are you willing and are you
177able? to do what is necessary to balance the budget in the forecast period. What I would like to see, if you can, is a one or two pager which shows these balances and why they don't mean we're flush in money. That will be part of our presentation, most assuredly, at the second interim. And to the calendar that remains on the screen, I neglected to note that in April we are working with Mr. McLean and in conjunction with the Chief Strategy Officer. to schedule a joint, if you will, budget retreat, budget workshop time. What you're asking, we will touch on more than one time. You'll see it. I think people don't understand that when you know trouble is coming and you change things so that you can hold on to money to take care of that
178trouble, that that doesn't mean that you just get to spend it during the current year and not have it for that trouble that you're holding it for. And I think that's the issue. I don't think people have yet looked at what is the impact of all of the salary increases that have occurred in terms of that money which is being held. and not being spent right now in balances. How much of those balances are in the next two or three years of these contracts? How much of those balances are we going to have to look at as we open negotiations with SEIU or any other bargaining agent? I think people have understood that we made commitments and investments. They don't understand how that looks at balances. because they think, well, you're expending it right now.
179That isn't part of your balances. Well, yeah, actually it is. But you know what I'm trying to say? It's not a clear path that you can see with your eye if you're not used to looking for it. And I'm saying I think we need to be able to show people that the decisions we made on... keeping all of the health and medical benefits not paid for by employees, the decisions made to lower class size, the decisions, all terrific decisions for which all of us voted have had an impact on those balances as they go out in future years. And I think that's where people lose it. And then they see these balances and think, my God, why are you cutting anything? You should be adding. Okay, that so I think that's a really important part
180of this message that we have to get out is is that yes We have spent we had we didn't spend it for a single year those about those salary increases didn't happen one year and then they're gone You don't have to pay them next year. No, you not only have to pay the ones you gave them this year, you have to pay the ones that come next year too. And I think people don't have a notion in their head that these balances over here that are sitting there are related in any way to all these actions that we've already taken. We'll bring that as part of the second interim. And usually we put it in the context of base budget requirements. Then there's your contractual requirements, which are compensation requirements, statutory. But how that relates
181to these balances is the problem. People get what we're spending. Yep. But they believe somehow that we have this money all on hand for all the next three years and that those balances, therefore, should be spent right now. Okay, I'm done. Thank you. If I might, President Goldberg, the... To add to the challenge, you're familiar that the state distinguishes in its language between a projection and a forecast. Forecast is when we might offer conjecture. We have yet to do that with the board. We have stayed very strict in our interpretation of what is due to LACO and how it is we communicate our current fiscal circumstance and project. What that means is you've heard us say what's not included probably ad nauseum. You can probably finish the slide for me when we put it up.
182It is our intent in the next couple months to start, if you will, augmenting our presentation of projected numbers with a means by which the board can grapple with the forecast of those activities that we think might come. and work through the solutions in that context. And an example would be in our forecast period, the health and welfare agreement you mentioned runs through calendar year 2025. In some form or fashion, whether it's negotiated in advance or after the fact, it will come back to January 1st of 26. We will have to consider what that looks like at some future date. Mr. Melvoin. Thank you, and thanks my colleagues for the questions of which I had similar ones I guess just on that last point Mr. Hart, and I know that I'm broken record on this
183would be helpful at Miss Goldberg asked for like a one to two page Explanation I think a one to two sentence explanation you know like a haiku version of your answer because I think for the public I mean it's That all makes sense what you said, but if you distill it, it would be helpful for folks to know, you know, it's like Ms. Goldberg said, it's because we have to plan for raises or it's because we have to budget as if we're staffed at 100% and we're never staffed at 100% or all the money is held at school sites. Like just in a, I think, user-friendly explanation. Because I do think, especially when we show charts, and I brought this up before too, like on slide eight. where we just show unassigned and unappropriated. We
184don't show committed and assigned. It does fuel this rumor that there's like money hiding places. And I know that the assigned and committed dollars are usually related to the two things or the few things I was just mentioning. But I would just maybe on the one to two pager we could have like a header that's one to two sentences. We'll work on a haiku. Thank you. And just to clarify, when you were talking about achievement and spending at the state level, that doesn't mean student achievement, right? That means like achievement, like budget to actual. efficiency in the context I was using it my apologies if I conflated the state with us we are looking very much at what our actual spend is on a month-to-month a quarter-to-quarter year-over-year basis we then look to see if
185the budget once appropriated if that actual if you will aligns to with the intent the theory of change theory of action call it what you will and did that expenditure achieve something that was in alignment with the purpose for which the budget was allocated. We then want to ensure that that is in support of the strategic plan. Ultimately, just as a generic comment, we will have a very difficult time because the opportunity to balance the budget won't be the, oh, there's so much fat here and easy to trim. I suspect we will have a difficult time because we will be choosing among things that have some measure of achievement. And so then the question is, just to be illustrative of a silly example, do we want to do two things at 50% or one thing
186at 100? And that's the deliberation that the board will engage in, and we will do our best to ensure that that decision-making process is informed, but that is the context of this work. Got it. That's helpful clarity with strategic achievement or achievement and spending vis-a-vis the strategic plan. A few questions around our budget policies and then one for Ms. Alvarez, well, maybe Ms. Alvarez or our instructional team. So the superintendent talked about the process for submitting the exceptions to the business rules. Are those criteria that the team will use to evaluate the submissions set and have they been communicated to schools or how is that process? You know, and I agree with the superintendent that the exception can't become the rule, that's why we have the rule, but are we communicating with that exception? Looks
187like our intent is to communicate that this week in terms of the waiver process which would look at a number of criteria whether it's looking at specific HR needs Staffing needs a school may require and to support a particular initiative or program looking at the status in particular our priority school status as well as when we're looking at year to year spend, looking at what's available in school budgets, because sometimes we get advocacy and as we do budget reviews, we find that they actually have available resources to commit additional dollars. One of the other areas that we're working with schools on as part of also the waiver process is identifying other positions that are intended to actually fulfill the need of the school. And so this is an area where we're actually trying to direct
188schools to, you know, when you're looking at an assistant principal. If their intent is to hire an assistant principal to support student safety or wellness efforts, there's a dean of students. Doesn't count towards R2, but it actually may serve as a solution for the school site. And so this is an area that we'll be working very closely. Dr. Estrada, myself, and others, along with the region superintendents, will be supporting that. If I might to, and I know it's more time Pedro would mention this, I'm going to just jump in. In that particular example, dollars are not being pulled back. We're changing the rule around how those dollars are to be expended and in measure part of that is in consideration of the penalty so the cost of the Position becomes a two-for-one and not in
189our favor. Yeah, and that all makes sense I mean one of the reasons I've advocated for these hiring more fiscal specialists is to help principals with with exactly that and so I think it makes sense to say if you actually have the money to pay for something we shouldn't essentially allocate it necessarily and if you have another function, you know specification that can do that function that makes sense. I think it just would be helpful to communicate that as soon as possible and also with the board because without that being transparent, one, I would assume any savvy principal or even unsavvy principals would just request waivers and two, there might be, you know, I know board offices will get a lot of questions of why wasn't this granted? Can you help us with this? And
190then on the APEISs, what index is being used to determine those allocations? That's something off the top of my head I don't know, Mr. Miller. So it's different metrics related to counts of students with disabilities at the school as well as the nature of the needs that they have. So it takes into account specifically criteria with respect to special ed students, and that's how it determines the allocation that each school will receive of the 315 FTE in 24-25. And given that those are central allocations based on that central criteria, is there a waiver exception process for schools for that one? No. Sorry, Dr. Estrada, looks like you want to chime in. Not at this time. What typically has been done with the APIS is that it's centrally organized with the Special Education Service Center as
191well, and they try to really assess again the programming and the type of student population they're serving because some of those require more time of an APIS. And then what they'll do is also map out how they're gonna get from point A to point B if they're going to be sharing a school site. So all those kinds of things are taken into consideration. And I wanna say that I've heard the superintendent talk about the over reliance this district has on APISs versus having a more hands, all hands on deck approach to students with disabilities, which I support. I just want to make sure we're not going there overnight as schools are, as we're scaffolding in the change. And so a lot of it, probably there is too much reliance on, on the one individual at
192the detriment of like more folks being involved, but like that change management is going to be key. And then, um, Is there been any change to carry over policy for accounts other than general fund or CENI? No, so the only change is to two programs the general fund school program and CENI TSP no changes to any other programs. Great and then thank you. That's helpful I think some schools were confused when it came to donation accounts or things like that. So thank you and then We've been hearing a lot, well not a lot, we've been hearing a little over the last few years about budgetary earned autonomy at school sites and that's never really been articulated and so one thing that could be helpful in an upcoming Committee of the Whole or other budgetary presentations
193is what we mean, you know, some of that maybe is the waiver process which is giving school sites more control over flexibility, but it would be helpful to know how our evolving concept of earned autonomy What that looks like, is it based on achievement, is it based on school need, principal experience, and, you know, because we've just used it, and then when asked what does that actually mean, there's not a lot of clarity. We understand the ask and we'll respond. Great. And then my last question, maybe it's for Dr. Estrada, just the going back to the beginning of the presentation, what are the impact of changes to the learning recovery block grant for us given how our money is currently allocated? So are you asking how we're then dispersing to schools or? Well, is there
194anything we have to do? Are we changing anything? Because we've basically budgeted and then the state now has this change to the learning recovery emergency block grant. And does that affect, like are we having to do anything substantive or at least procedurally to change or are we unaffected? With about the like funds being encumbered. This is slide three. I appreciate you directed that to Dr. Estrada. What I will say is the question 100% relevant. I think until that language is finalized and knowing that we are going to engage in some significant advocacy for how we want that interpreted, it would be premature to commit. Okay. You know our strategy the efforts in which we're aligned to so those are the things that we're going to be really leaning into as we've been working with Marta
195and our advocacy we've its alignment to our current strategy for sure. I understand. Yeah. I'd say that much of the changes that are being proposed is more on the reporting and accountability side, as well as kind of delineating some strategies at the state level. I think there'll be alignment. It's more about the additional, I would say, onus that it will require of districts to report out on their activities associated with the block grant. And to the extent that becomes more limiting, we may then have to pivot in a way to much like we did with the COVID relief funds. What we thought was going to be paid from Fund 1 becomes from Fund 2, and we spare Fund 1. Understood. I think that's it for now. Thank you. Ms. Ortiz-Franklin. Thank you. Looking at slide
1969 and 10, sort of these general ideas that we've increased compensation, and it would be really helpful for me, and I imagine for the public, to understand what we have already committed to maybe contractually versus what is part of our strategic plan, and so it's a recommendation, because I think, you know, the board will look at the budget in June, but I hope we'll have real conversations about... you know, what changes could be made this year before then and the timeline mentions things happening at the school site or at the state level but it misses the board conversation. Like what decisions can we make prior to June or at least direction can we start to give the team? So for example, you know, this idea of no rifts, great, we would all want that, but
197it's a trade-off for something else. So the allocations of PSWs, PSAs, counselors, psychologists, are those contractual? Are those, you know, determined by Beaudry? And so that's the recommendation to keep moving forward. Same with the PD. Like, is that school site decision-making that is going to come out of TSP dollars, or is that something that Central is deciding? So I feel like when we put everything in a big list, it doesn't help us to understand, like, where our choices are. really are, what we are already committed to, and for what reasons. Does that request sort of make sense? I'm going to say it back to you to make sure we're on the same page. Part of my prior comment to President Goldberg in terms of our projections, on the multi-year basis when we have a multi-year
198agreement with labor, we are reflecting that in an unaltered state. And so that's part of how we know the dollar amounts we will expend in future years. We're working through assumptions of staffing. number of hours per staff per site but we know what that rate is because of the agreements on some of the other aspects you spoke to there is perhaps more discretion and what i'm hearing and what we can try to do through the march time frame is work to identify where there is more of either a if you will, a dictation to us because it's coming by virtue of an assigned committed fund balance where we might not have discretion given the nature of the funding, if you will, statutory rule, regulation, what have you, as opposed to a contractual, as opposed to
199where we have more latitude. To the comments made by Board Member Melvoin, the reason we show the unassigned is because that is where there is the most discretion. But it is also the case that those funds, though they are, if you will, by their titling, indicating that there is some level of discretion, if they were not used in the manner we are. forecasting and at this measure we're starting to interject a presumption then we would have to make offsetting reductions elsewhere. That then has to beg a, and speaking in the macro term, but trying to, and I appreciate Mr. Melvin's comments of it's hard to follow. I'm paraphrasing. If we're not operating on those presumptions and we have to go to other presumptions and that pushes us, if you will, upstream, taking on existing contract
200or rule or regulation or law. And so if we're not successful in amending the contract or changing the law that we get we would be delivering to you something that is undoable. So we get caught. Yeah, I know you want to have more discretion but some of those decisions were made in the past that predicate how the board acts in the future. Yeah, it's helpful to be reminded of what decisions have been made. So, for example, class size reduction. Is that that happened this year? Is it happening again next year? How much does that cost? You know, those kinds of things. We had a targeted, if you will, rollout, but it is going to be in full effect in 24-25. That was part of the agreements that were reached in the last year. And the
201college counselors and the PSAs, PSWs, were those contractual or those were part of the strategic plan and so, you know, the direction that was recommended? And those can be followed up on. I think that's sort of my, you know, help us understand to your point, which... areas we have discretion in and which we don't because of the questions we get from school staff too is well which do we need to purchase and which are going to be provided for us that's another layer of these questions here and I would assume that since schools have their allocations we've told them which positions would be funded centrally but I don't know that the board has a good understanding I'll just speak for myself I don't have a good understanding of which positions are funded centrally this year
202and then that's always the question of you know, have we led people to believe that they will also be funded the following year? And if they are contractual, then potentially if they are not, then that's why folks are asking to keep their carryover so that they have more flexibility in purchasing some of these positions. So, you know, they're all sort of connected. And when we get the advocacy, it helps us to see the bigger picture to be able to understand, you know, the tradeoffs at the school site level, at Beaudry's level, at the board's level. I think it will be helpful as we bring the second interim to have that matrix of tradeoffs, commitments, as well as when we talk about contractually required investments for staff, whether we're talking about class size reduction or college
203counseling ratios, those are the ones that will be called out. We're looking at allocations for PSWs, PSAs, those are existing allocations within our current investments, but there will be a shift. for certain school sites that those centrally funded itinerants will be based off of need does not preclude a school site from purchasing additional psa psw time but here we're talking about those centralized investments and if i might just in terms of managing the expectations a current year budget we work very diligently to ensure that the budgets that the budget and i say plural budgets i think in june and august adopted by the board accurately, appropriately reflect the commitments, whether they are required vis-a-vis law or by contract. The underspend that we speak to, it is often understood that folks think, well, that underspend can
204be an offset to the reductions you need to make. I wish it were that easy. We take those underspends into account in our multi-year forecasting. We've already factored that in. And Dave, I'm sorry, just to answer the question about class size reduction. So at our priority schools, they will see the second reduction in class size for 24-25 for the original schools identified as priority schools. For next year, all schools, all the other schools will see a class size reduction of minus one, and it will actually be in 25-26 that the full class size reduction of minus two in TK through 12 academic classes is realized. Next year, however, we will see the additional counselor allocated at all high schools who have 900 students or more, that additional counselor to provide college counseling services. Thanks, that's
205helpful. And I think it's helpful to understand the cost associated with that too, just so we can get a sense of are we talking 5 million, are we talking 50 million, and all of these various categories. Because what I'm anticipating is that the board's going to get a presentation of PowerPoint slides saying greening, arts, class size reduction, all of the big priorities with a plus 30 or a minus 2. We get those slides. And I think several of us have asked over the years, can we see a bit more of the trajectory on a line by line rather than the PowerPoint slide. And I think part of it is like building that schema that we understand where is the line by line on our big priorities so that we can prepare for the changes that
206likely and historically the board has been supportive of the superintendent's direction. But it just helps us to understand, for example, cultural arts passport. We've gotten a lot of questions around how much we're spending from Prop 28 versus what we had been doing before. And if we had some tools that said, well, here's what we spent three years ago. Here's what we're spending this year. Here's what we're looking forward to for next year. It just helps us to be able to reference materials that we look at over and over rather than finding in a particular slide how much we said one particular program was going to go up or down. And again, if we have the discretion to be able to do that. So I'm saying this now because I often ask for these things in
207June. And so just trying to ask the team to kind of help prepare for some of those questions that you can expect from me and maybe some others as well. But appreciate the team's work on this. But I am also really looking forward to the dialogue because we do want to start. talking about the longer term implications for that viability with the equity questions that inevitably will be hard for us. So appreciate you all bringing the hard discussion points and letting us really meddle through them. Thanks. Dr. Rocio? Yes. I had a question that was mentioned about the waivers by principals. Is that like an appeal process? I think I'm short, yes. And this appeal process, what is the criteria? What will the region leadership be looking at? What is the criteria they're looking at
208to either grant the waiver or deny it? It appears Dr. Estrada is going to answer the question. So we will be looking at a variety of criteria including some of the data to see where student performance is because it may be that we need to re-examine some of the supports at the school. It's not just the AP for example. A couple of the things we'll be looking at is to see what type of schedule they do have and starting to see if it's double block for example type schedule versus a full day period, seven period schedule then we'll know okay there's some ways in which supervision needs to be looked at. Another major one that has been brought up has also the number of new teachers at the school site because of evaluations and making
209sure that evaluations are considered. We're also looking at I-STARS, any kind of incidents that we need to be aware of. Again, the type of programming that they have at the school site, sports activities that maybe happen on the weekends, so on and so forth. So looking at that, and of course, how many APs they already have on the campus. So number of students, versus our current norm, how much more above that are we at? Or is this a school that is so close to enrollment, they'll probably get into that norm range soon, so do we wanna make the decision now? So things like that are all things that are being considered. Most importantly, the regional director, along with the regional superintendent, will be working with the school team to really look at that budget first
210and seeing where are there opportunities. or if not, bringing forward a recommendation based on that school. And the criteria is being provided to all the schools so they know exactly how to write the report or how to present their appeal? Yeah, so the appeal is more of a consideration. It's not something that we want folks to spend all this energy trying to create because there are so many valid reasons across any school that we'd be, obviously, it's a difficult decision to make. We first want the regional director and the regional superintendent to work with the school first and seeing what solutions they can come with. However, if the regional director and principals and regional superintendents still feel that additional appeal needs to be considered and that no other solution can be thought of, but this
211is... is the best solution for them, then they'll bring that forward and then as a group we will review to determine anything else we can do for them or is this a school that we really should take up the appeal. Okay, thank you. I just wanted to make sure what the criteria was. Thanks. And thank you for bringing it up, Dr. Rivas, because I was, especially with the PSWs, the number of suicidal ideations that we have in I-STARS, that would be an important indicator of when a school really should have a PSW. Okay. Thank you. Jackie? Okay. In class size reduction, special ed classes are not counted as part of the class size reduction. They don't lose one or two students in special ed. That is my understanding someone there and I think Jen it
212only yes, okay. Just want to make sure of that And then I had my thank you for Rocio for answering that question, so that's it from me Thank you Thank you very much. So number one. I certainly appreciate immensely the the feedback received from the board Some points based on what I heard. We will continue to come to the board for more opportunities to get more granular and obtain more detail about some of the decisions that are being made, but also long-term implications associated with those decisions so that you're not surprised. I think one of the challenges that we have faced over the past couple months alone is not process-specific. the problem having shifted so dramatically. So the way I started the conversation today was we, a year ago, six months ago, we were basically
213eyeing cessation of ESSER as the biggest threat. That's when we were down to about $800 million of ESSER still to go. The problem doubled in size with the loss of COLA. So we went from a problem of $800 million to $1.6 billion. that we needed to solve for in just a matter of months. If this was something that we anticipated would be a temporary fix for a temporary problem, much easier to achieve. But it's not. All the indicators suggest that this is a two to three year problem that will persist with us. So I appreciate the comments made by all of you. We will endeavor to be more explicit as we move forward with all impacted parties, particularly schools and school principals, specific to the viability of the waivers and some of the key prerequisites
214and criteria we'll be looking at. Secondly, we'll be explicit with the board in terms of that difference between centrally funded versus school adopted positions. And in my mind, really, there are only a couple of positions, a couple of position types that we have opined on aggressively. We owe to the board also based on the prior conversation as well as the conversation now specific to budget additional information regarding contract cessation and the achievements specific to procurement reform that have netted millions of dollars back to the district as well as to the board and to our stakeholders both internally, workforce as well as externally. the impact in terms of savings of the reorganization, the realignment centrally and what that means in terms of reinvestments back into schools. That has not yet been declared and we'll be declaring
215that to the board very, very soon. So thank you. Okay, everyone. So thank you to all the staff for the wonderful presentations. It's essential to always acknowledge the efforts of our staff here at Beaudry in central office, the region office and also our school sites. We hope that students who might have difficulty learning how to read can receive the help that they need through LAUSD programs. Also for the past two Committee of the Whole meetings, we have discussed about the Governor's budget, the district's future, and how the budget affects all of us. And that's why I'm calling on, I see my parents out there in the audience, I'm calling for my parents and community members to join LAUSD in its efforts to secure more educational funding. Not by going to Sacramento, but by going to
216the local offices here in Los Angeles of our legislators right here. When you go to Sacramento, there's a hundred people visiting those legislators all at the same time. But when you visit them here, you'll have your own private audience. And I think it's a good idea to visit them here. You'll also save money on buses and stuff for going to Sacramento. And let me say that very, very, very, very few people visit the local assembly member's office. I was in the assembly for six years. I had an office right there on Figueroa Street in Highland Park. You couldn't miss it. You could fall over it if you were walking in it. Six people came the entire six years. Total. You hear parents. We want you to visit our offices here in the city. I couldn't
217believe it. So we need this funding to help us make these crucial transitions in the interventionist model and other things such as special education programs, after school programs, green energy grants, and many more. And thank you, Ms. Alvarez and your team at the Office of Legislative Affairs and Government Relations. You have developed a toolkit. for IDEA funding for the year 2024. Thank you for that. And this toolkit is available in English and Spanish, and it contains prompts for writing letters to federal representatives and sample media posts you can use to help your school district. So if you want to get involved. please visit the resources page on LAUSD government relations website and you can find this toolkit and more and you can also community members advocate with all of us. So thank you very much.
218So before we move on to public comment, I want to move, we are going to go to public comment, but I just want to give a couple of minutes to our Inspector General. Ms. Sue Stengel to make an announcement and provide the details on the 2025 Annual Risk Assessment Survey. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Sue Stengel, the Inspector General. The Office of the Inspector General is developing our annual work plan for fiscal year 2025. An important part of this process is conducting a risk assessment of the district for which we are soliciting input from stakeholders and the larger LAUSD community about any areas where you believe there is high risk or exposure to the district for fraud, waste, and abuse. The OIG is responsible for the independent and objective oversight of LAUSD. We report directly to
219the Board of Education to ensure we have the independence needed to perform audits and investigations objectively and effectively. In June, we'll present our annual work plan to the Board for approval. We have launched a survey. You can see our website and a QR code up on the slide and you can access our survey through either one of these means or through our social media. It is available in English and will be available in Spanish soon. We encourage all of you to please take the survey, employees, parents, families, and any community members. The survey will be available until March 6th. This is a really important part of the work that we do each year. Thanks so much. And thank you, Ms. Stengel, for those details. And again, if you're listening, don't forget the survey will be
220open through March 6th, 2024. I encourage you all to participate. And by the way, our next Cal meeting, Committee of the Whole, will be on March 19th, 2024 at 9 a.m. And now, Mr. McLean, let's move on with public comment. Okay, here we go. We have a full slate of public comment. That's 15 commenters with three minutes each. Maria Luisa Palma, I see you're all ready to come on up. You'll have three minutes to speak once you begin. Hello, my name is Maria Luisa Palma. I am here speaking on behalf of Oleada Inc., a nonprofit organization, and as a parent and as a member of the Parent Advisory Committee. Just here to give you an update on a couple of things on the lack of transparency that we parents have still out here. I understand
221the interest that you may all have in us advocating for additional funds from state legislators, but first we want transparency on the funds that we do have already in the district. The most recent parent advisory committee presentation from last week's meeting February 15th on the parent advisory committee I have to say was a complete disappointment the lack of quality of the presentations We had asked to have all of the actions all of the goals from the LCAP Shown to us in presentations from that committee last week's presentation had one action from goal one a total of ten million dollars out of the six billion one out of 34 actions in that section Two actions from goal two, 60 million out of the 562 million, two out of the 16 actions. I will leave you a
222copy of this so you can see what we had. What we requested was to know what the funds have been spent on under each goal and action item. What has been projected? What are the outcomes? and contact information so we can get in touch with the departments that can give us more information for parents that want to do a deeper dive in particular areas. Another point, the school allocation budgets for 24 to 25, we can't see them yet out here in the public. I've looked on the school directory, on the budget services website. They were supposed to be issued February 9th, planned February 12th through the 23rd for the school budget planning period. We can't see them. So we have no way of knowing what's going on there. The TSP plans I mentioned before on
223the school directory system are outdated. We can still only see the August of 2022 plan. Nothing on this school year. And now we're supposed to start planning for the following year? I mean, we're really very outdated here. On the Office of Inspector General survey, I'm glad this was mentioned. It's currently not in Spanish. I hope that that's forthcoming. But I don't know where it's going to be shown to the public. Because right now, you have to dig for it. You have to know that it's there somewhere. I don't see it on the home page for the district. It's buried on the Inspector General's website. And there's been a lot of talk here about equity. But I see an overall lack of transparency to the public and therefore to the parents. As far as I'm concerned,
224these presentations, poor quality, continue to obstruct the state mandated purpose of the Parent Advisory Committee, the purpose under state law. We're supposed to have... significant input to the use of these funds as part of that committee. And if we don't have the information, we cannot make significant substantive comments. If we don't have information about what's going on at the school sites with the allocations, the TSP funds, how can we parents get involved in local decision making? So please, let's remove the barriers to that significant input across all of these areas in the district. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Maria Daisy Ortiz, I see you're out there. Come on up, Maria Daisy Ortiz. You'll have three minutes to speak once you begin. Ms. Ortiz is going to speak in Spanish, and if you'd like
225to hear what she's saying in English as she's speaking in Spanish, please put your hand up and we'll give you one of these headsets. Listo? Okay. Muy buenas tardes. Good afternoon, esteemed audience. My name is Maria Daisy Ortiz, and I am here... as a mother, as a member of the public, as a person who pays taxes and that you are elected officials, to whom you need to respond in an adequate fashion. First, I am in agreement with the person before me. Everything you spoke, everything that you put here is very limiting so that parents can receive this information. from the information about budget, from the information about LCAP, it does not get to the schools because first of all, you have not created the spaces so that there is efficacy in parent engagement. There is
226a saying that says that you need a village to raise child and you with your 48 parents that participate in DLAC that are those that are privileged, 50 on the pack, you think that that is parent engagement. There are categorical funding that needs to be evaluated in their programs. First of all, I want to say that the safety schools, the bullying policy that the district has, it's just a decoration for decoration's sake because how do you as a district evaluate that this safety policy is being implemented in the schools? When do you review with the parents and all of those stakeholders the school safety plan? What is most sad is that the employees that you pay at the school so that they take care of our children are the ones that Intimidate our children. They
227are the ones that cause bullying They bully our children so that they don't say what is happening in the schools that principals are just saying that there are no fights that there's no drugs that there's nothing everything so that everything looks pretty and everything how you put the plans that are just made up but it's not the reality please invest more in our students education in programs that are effective and more than anything in school safety The program for mental health is the way that you're bleeding out the budget because it is not working. When a student is hit at school, you just care that they go to school. You don't care how that student is emotionally. And if that student emotionally is broken, they will not be able to function within a classroom. You
228don't have adequate staff that can help to integrate the student back when they have been in a fight. That is a deficiency. When a student is not happy as a good teacher that they might have, they're not going to learn and you are not working with the appropriate partners who are parents. We need for this information to get to the schools. The parents do not know how a budget is developed. just reading data and seeing the conclusions or findings and how our students are feeling. Our students are intelligent. They are privileged. The ones that are incompetent are you because you think about your retirement, you're thinking about your position, and you have a lot of alliances. The district has nepotism and has a bunch of family members within the district working and that's stopped with
229so much negligence with our children. Thank you and have a nice afternoon. Thank you for your time. Monica Arrazola, are you here? Monica Arrazola. My children assist Hollywood High School and La Con. Once again, I'm here because on Friday, we had a shooting outside the school. What happened? Well, our children sent us pictures. They were under confinement. They were scared. They wanted us to pick them up again. The parents that were able to pick up their children early were there. This is something very sad. It's been more than a year that I've asked for us for you to please support us with Hollywood High School. But it seems that it comes it goes from one year to another. And I tell you directly, Mr. Nick, because you're the one responsible for that school. I came
230I personally came here. To give you more than 130 signatures for parents, you never sat down with me to figure out if this is true. Is it really that you really want school police back? I've asked. I begged you. And school security is very important at a school. This is a school where the majority of the students are Latino schools and parents are working. They are not at home scratching their belly. They're working. They're cleaning homes. They're taking care of children. They're working at factories and I say this because parents that gave me their signatures are they're the ones who told me what they work at I asked you for the support I also asked you for us to have a doorbell with a camera and you said there was no budget for it. You
231didn't have $15,000 to pay for a doorbell. Us parents need to outsource for the support. Hollywood High School is not just any school. This is a very special school because it is located in a very touristic place in Hollywood. It has a lot of homeless around it and a lot of delinquency. You're not focusing on this. You're not focusing on this because you are busy with your campaign. I don't wish any bad upon anyone, but I do want to tell you that I hope that no one votes for you in your Congress because you are here to take care of our public schools and you're not doing this. You're focusing on the charter schools. And I have the picture of your office where you have a police officer that takes care of you. And thanks
232to this, I will begin to tell... The 14, 15 days that we have left, we will see if you make it to the Congress or not. I want to tell parents not to vote for you. Or maybe not parents because we know that there are a lot of immigrants and that don't have documents to vote. But you know what? Your children, at least one of those parents are of age that can vote, but they won't vote for you because you don't deserve to be in this place. You don't deserve to have this place where you haven't supported Latino parents and you've given us your back. And you don't care. You haven't done anything for the Latino community and the immigrant community. It is very sad. I wish for your dreams not to become reality. Thank
233you. Thank you for your time. Ms. Diana Guillen, I see you're out there. Come on up. You'll have three minutes to speak once you begin. Good morning, members of the board. I'm Diana Guillen, and I've been president of English Learner Parents for four years. The previous person that spoke, she says that a doorbell costs $15,000. I'm in shock. How is it that the district is costing them $15,000 for a doorbell? If not, correct me. Let me know that this is incorrect, but I do believe it. My school, we've asked for a doorbell, Ms. Rocio, and we haven't had it. I'm not sure, superintendent. I don't know what the region, what region East is doing or the office. Or their office. They're not working with the community. And Mr. Carvalho, well, I would have liked for
234you to visit our school, MacArthur Park, where you canceled on us. You canceled our ELEC meeting and you move everything for you. But honestly, the things that are that we need at the school is what? are the things that impact our students' education. Unfortunately, within this school, we've been working a lot. We have a lot of services. The school has become better because of parent engagement, not because of personnel. It's because we've worked as a group. And I do want you to keep this in mind. This is what we need here. There is an agenda for parents that are against you. As a person that's... as a previous person said pac and elac committees don't work because they don't give us the information we want the budget and they don't give it to us miss
235palma brought to you guys what it is that they're showing us they're not giving us the adequate information to give any recommendation in in a way that really works we also know that you have given lots of funds to psws to tutors and to counseling for students, mental health. And what we don't want is for you to make this up and say that having mental health is... Giving security to the school stop saying that because you're saying the more counselors we have is school security No, it's not that is not security within the schools. The security is for parents to be inside the schools Participating and for us to be volunteers and for us to know everything about the budgets and for school police not to be removed because school police is what helps to
236remove to remove people They're selling drugs and the ones that are trying to recruit our students to be part of gangs. Well, their job is to be outside the schools. The school police job is to be outside the schools and that crime doesn't get inside the school so they can steal our community. Hopefully it doesn't happen this way, but you know where they were. in Los Angeles has more crime. As you mentioned, because of the recession, things will become worse. Please make decisions that support our community. And I know that you're being pressured because your campaigns are paying you. But the community comes first. Thank you for your time. Graciela Navarrete, I see you're on the line. Graciela Navarrete, please press star six to unmute yourself. And you'll have three minutes to speak once you
237begin. Graciela Navarrete. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Good morning. I am Graciela Navarrete. I have two children that go to LAUSD schools. And with all respect, you are... on top of all the violence that's happening within our schools. And I do want to tell you that crime percentage within LAUSD has incremented. And based on comments made from parents within our district and example within the district south, our students feel less secure even at the schools. Have you asked yourself why is it that our children don't want to go to school? Why is it that us parents and other parents have removed their students from the district to enroll them at different other schools or other districts? We feel insecure because we're afraid to lose our children. I want to ask
238you all a question. Why is it that you don't monitor the schools? Why don't you go to the schools? Why don't you supervise this? I'm going to speak in regards to my school. The school calendar was given to me, and we have no meeting, no meeting with the principal. Who supervises that? We need to know who we can speak with to be able to have a meeting with the principal. We don't know how the schools are doing or what's happening. Now, in regards to tutoring, this is not working for our students. Our students are very low in reading and math. and you implement tutoring that doesn't help our students. Tutoring is not working and I've been with my daughter, I've taught her and it's not working. I don't understand why you waste your time on
239that. And the very low parent involvement that a district is having and the district is, they're saying that they are doing groups like innovation. Parents, I don't know what that they only do certain things to cover or for them to honestly, they're the privileged ones. They're saying there are no genuine parents that have a cause with the students. And it's not parents like us. We have different worries, whether it be in funds that are not being distributed accordingly within the district and school police. Everything is happening in social media. You can see that the students shouldn't walk. alone because they will be shot at. Insecurity is so high at our schools that the students are afraid. A lot of them are afraid to walk the streets. And this is a big rumor saying that there
240is a vehicle that's just shooting students. Therefore, how is it that you will respond? on the life of these students, you're just brushing this off and saying, well, this happened after school. Well, I believe that security should be before, within and after school. I believe that you should, we should have security inside the schools and it's not to criminalize students. It is for their... for discipline to happen within the schools so that there can be a way of appropriate conduct and that there won't be any drugs, there won't be any harassment within the schools. I am very worried, not just for myself and my students, but for the whole community of students that are around my students. It is inevitable what's happening. There are lots of funds. There are lots of funds that you are
241giving to other organizations, and they just brainwash certain and they come and they say that they don't want school security, but they're privileged because they are being bought with things or they promise to give them things so that they can say that they feel insecure. Honestly, the importance is that we feel that we don't want to criminalize students by saying that we want school police to come back. In the contrary, we want school police. We want general order in all the schools so that parents can feel safe and for our students to take action, to take academic action so that they can prepare themselves. You have a plan and we want cameras. You want people? Yes, you can also bring all that stuff. But we also want school police to come back. I believe that
242distributing... We appreciate your time. Thank you. MARCELLA GARCIA, I SEE YOU'RE ON THE LINE. MARCELLA GARCIA, PLEASE PRESS STAR 6 TO UNMUTE YOURSELF AND YOU'LL HAVE THREE MINUTES TO SPEAK ONCE YOU BEGIN. MARCELLA GARCIA. GOOD AFTERNOON. I'M A MOTHER OF TWO STUDENTS THAT ARE IN LAUSD. I'M INTERESTED IN SCHOOL SAFETY, THE SAFETY OF THE CHILDREN AFTER SCHOOL HOURS, DURING SCHOOL HOURS, ALL SCHOOL RELATED. Because they walk after school. They walk. They drop off their backpacks. They go eat something. They go to sport activities, excited. But who takes care of them? Who is supervising them? Around the schools, there are different areas where there's locales that have marijuana vending. situations happening and it's in school adjacent areas so they're running the risk of being in contact with these drugs so that's my concern because young students
243young people are going to places around these areas and it gets darker early and they and the parents work so they want to go to their sport activities and our us parents are concerned when they walk around the schools and when they go to competitions and sport related things, our concern is their safety. Also, you're wanting to take away the coordinators and having certain students in every school with coordinators in elementary school, they're going to be removed. And this has a lot to do with the student education, especially English learners. Thank you. Thank you for your time Karina Lopez are you on the line Karina Lopez? You're signed up to speak remotely, but I do not see you online. Are you in the room miss Lopez Karina Lopez? Okay, Nelida Mendez Nelida Mendez you're signed
244up to speak remotely But you are not signed in at the moment. Are you in the room miss Mendez? No Araceli Cabrera, I see you're signed up to speak remotely and you are signed in right now. So Araceli Cabrera, please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin. Araceli Cabrera. ¿Se me escucha? Sí, se escucha. Okay. Well, I'm here to speak about the same subject that I think all the other parents have talked about. about school safety. It is the same, the same, the same. I agree with all of them. But what is the action that will be taken? Because coming here every month to say the same thing over and over again, and you all not taking action. Well, in my school, the same things are
245happening, the fights, the problems. On the street where the cars are passing right there on the corner in front of the school, nothing is being done. Inside, continuously, I see school police in front because they won't let me through. I'm not being informed with what's going on. So I'm concerned. I have a special needs student as well. And what actions are being taken? We need to be more aware about these things and give it the importance it deserves because it is the fundamental base that these children receive when it comes to their socio-emotional health. We need to see and have these bases covered because if not, nothing will work. Nothing is being done. Believe me, every time this gets worse. How is a student going to go to school and be prepared to learn? Socio-emotionally,
246they're not able to see all these different things in school. I'm going to go comfortably to sit down calmly and learn. No, I don't consider that the teachers should have this. This understanding, this socio-emotional understanding with how to interact with a student and in general, all of us have to be prepared. A lot of times they say, oh, the parent is responsible with instilling this. But how if we are not properly educated? Why are parents not? being integrated into this part of schools. Why are principals not interested in parent involvement? We need to break these chains. That's why we need to vindicate emotional education. That should be part of general education. All of this needs to be taken in consideration. Please, we need to cover our bases. And we need... Thank you very much for
247your time. We appreciate your time. Thank you. Irene Morales, Irene Morales, please press star six to unmute yourself, and you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin. Irene Morales. Good afternoon. My name is Irene Morales Ortiz. I have students in high school and I am also concerned with school safety. There is no security. Please have the school police come back within and outside school hours. I've also called so that there can be additional personnel and stated I have a student with special needs and I asked for additional personnel because in my son's class there was 15 students and one teacher and one teacher assistant. And instead of additional personnel, I'm hearing that they're going to be removing different positions. And I'm concerned because half of these kids in these classes, they need so much
248help. And I'm not in agreement. with personnel being eliminated instead of adding. Something needs to be done because it's always the same. We're always asking for things and nothing is being done. You need to take our concerns in consideration with what's happening with our own children. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Martha Martinez, you're signed up to speak remotely, but I do not see you signed in. Are you in the audience? No, Martha Martinez Miriam Esparza you signed up to speak remotely and I see you are signed in so Miriam Esparza Please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin Miriam Esparza Miriam Esparza press star six to unmute yourself and you have three minutes to speak Once you begin Miriam Esparza for for a premise
249yesterday to say say is but a bar you tennis trace me new does adelante Miriam Esparza Miriam Esparza Okay, she's not coming through. Juan Magandi. Juan Magandi. I see you signed up to speak in person, but you're also not online. Are you in the room? And Maria Sanchez. Maria Sanchez. It looks like Karina Lopez has signed in to speak remotely. So, Ms. Karina Lopez, please press star six to unmute yourself. And you have three minutes to speak once you begin. Karina Lopez. López, por favor, oprima Estrellita 6 para hablar. Y tienes tres minutos adelante. Wait a few more moments, Ms. López. Oprima Estrellita 6 para hablar. ¿Me escuchan? Sí, se escucha. Okay. Muchas gracias. Great. Thank you. Yes. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Karina López-Zúñiga. Definitely. School safety is first and foremost. In any
250place, just how you experience it, all of us, we need it. And more than anyone, our students, who are the most important part of education. It's very important, imperative, to increase the amount of school police and increase the... They're ours as well. The fact that an officer had an inappropriate conduct-related situation in other areas, that particular officer does not represent the entire department. It doesn't represent the officers that you have nearby and the ones that are surveilling and working within the school sites. inside and out. An officer that has poor conduct and incidents does not represent the rest of the department and cannot speak for everybody else. That's why there needs to be maybe an investigation done if there was a particular officer guilty of malfeasance. And we can't judge everybody else for one individual's
251conduct or behavior. Because the training of an officer is pretty ample. So if you, there is no communication done saying, oh, you should behave poorly. So no, we need to increase the amount of school officers for the schools, for the extracurricular programs after school hours. So. After the school day, it's very necessary to increase the amount of officers for our students and the adults. Also, I see that it's very necessary in order to deal with a bullying situation on a school site. The school police should investigate this because if there's bullying on behalf of professionals towards students and superiors. They can't investigate each other because there's a bit of a conflict of interest. This should be an area that is appropriate for school police. And so please, it's very important to make these changes. It's
252necessary because if not, the families are the ones that are having to go to community police instead of school police. And we're also identifying. that it's very important to have a revision of the multicultural department and to increase the numbers of interpreters that are certified since there's a lot of conflict of interest in school sites. Thank you very much for your time. We appreciate your time. And one last call for Miriam Esparza. I see you're still on the line. Ms. Esparza, please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin. Miriam Esparza. I see you've unmuted yourself, Mrs. Barza. Please go ahead, or we will just have to move on despite all of our best efforts. Miriam Esparza. Thank you. Today I'm going to talk about school security
253and safety. This happens inside and out. How is it possible that when something happens the next day, all these... The police is all over the schools. It doesn't make sense. It's illogical. You think that the people that vandalize are going to be doing the same the next day in the same location? This safety situation has to be a daily thing. This isn't a game. So if the district says and repeats that the priority is school safety and. student safety. Well, then they need to demonstrate that with their actions. So if in the school sites you have coordinators, principals, they need to do their job responsibly and ethically. Do you know who the students, which students are the ones that need the support and assistance? This is typical in middle school and high school. Do you
254know that in the bathrooms and certain school zones that aren't supervised and coordinated with the personnel, that is where things start? and unravel with students, with fights, confrontations. And in the bathrooms, there's some students that don't even want to go to the bathroom. The type of student that truly needs the assistance, what point is there to have psychologists and people that are supposed to be in the schools just to archive paperwork? These students need support. follow-up counseling a protocol that can be followed Stop budget cutting with personnel in the school sites. I know I'm speaking for thousands of parents that have this same concern. Thank you Thank you for your time. This concludes general public comment and it also concludes the meeting the time is now 1249 Thank you all. Thank you