001We good to go? Okay, great. I'd like to welcome everyone watching on ITV and via livestream and call the October 26th, 2021 regular meeting to order with all board members present via Zoom webinar. Vice President Whitehorse-Payne, could you please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? Certainly. Please stand. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Thank you, Vice President. Okay, can we get a motion to adopt today's agenda with item E4? The data reports students receiving special education services to be heard following item G1, which is our Community Advisory Committee for Special Education Semi-Annual Report to the Board. Do we have a motion? So moved. Second. Okay, motion and
002a second. Trustee Patterson? Aye. Trustee McCrory? Aye. Trustee Bozzo? Aye. Trustee Beiser? Beyond in a second, Vice President Whitehurst-Payne. Aye. And Barrera, aye. Okay. Today's meeting of the Board of Education is a business meeting that is conducted in public. To reduce the chance of coronavirus exposure, the Board of Education is accepting public testimony via Zoom webinar for the October 26, 2021 meeting. board bylaw 1025 that's the time limit for public comment on agenda items at 10 minutes per side pro and con or 20 minutes total speakers will be able to provide testimony at the beginning of the appropriate agenda item or at the end of the meeting for non-agenda public comment The list of public speakers as of 2 p.m. is attached to agenda item B2. If you submitted a request to provide public comment
003after 2 p.m., please listen for your name to be called. Speakers are listed and called in the order received. When your name is called, you will be allowed to speak. Please unmute yourself at that time. If you hear your name called and are unable to unmute yourself, we will call the next speaker. Once all speakers have been called for the item, your name will be called again, and then please unmute yourself. Zoom does not allow staff to access your personal device to unmute a speaker. Please follow along with the agenda so that you know when your item is coming up for discussion. Okay, and we are excited for our student presentation item C1. This is our STEAM program at Wilson Middle School. And I think I'm going to go straight to announce one of my
004favorite students. Alina Nguyen is an eighth grade student who is included in the video and will introduce the presentation. And of course, Alina is also the proud treasurer of the Cesar Chavez Service Club of Congress. So, Lena, if you could kick us off. For those in the booth, we're going straight to the video. She will kick it off through video. Great. Thank you. Good evening, school board members, Superintendent Jackson, community members, and fellow San Diego Unified students. My name is Alina Nguyen. I'm in eighth grade here at Wilson Middle School. On behalf of Principal Mr. Downey and Teacher Ms. Piaz, I am so honored to be here to tell you the story of our amazing science, technology, engineering, mathematics, also known as STEM program here at Wilson Middle School in City Heights. We have created
005a video highlighting our award-winning program. But before we show the video, we would like to thank the school board for helping to ensure students like me have access to the best facilities, staff, resources, and education. Welcome to Mrs. Pease Wilson Middle School STEM program. The Wilson campus was recently rebuilt and Mrs. Pease has a brand new 2200 square feet lab facility to house our program. We have a lot of electives and activities that are run through this lab facility and these are some of the things that we do. The Wilson Robotics Club was started in 2012 and has participated in many different regional robotics programs such as Bop-Ball, FIRST LEGO League, iROC, and the Steam Maker Line Following Challenge. Usually these programs involve building and programming robots to solve a particular challenge using techniques such
006as line following, motor control, and sensor feedback. The robotics club has won so many awards over the years, but our favorite part of the club is that robotics is really fun. The Wilson Robotics Program has been featured in local media and national TV shows such as CBS's Mission Unstoppable with Miranda Cosgrove. The Wilson STEM Program has numerous 3D printers that we use for our projects. We use 3D modeling programs to design parts and print them out and using different filaments depending on the needs of the project. One of our recent projects was printing out PPE supplies for hospitals during the pandemic as part of the program at MakeTheMask.org. As part of this project, we printed out 300 masks to donate to local hospitals. In our Gateway to Technology class, we learned to build Android apps
007using MIT App Inventor. In the beginning, apps often take the form of simple games, but our goals for these apps is to build them to solve problems in the community. Past examples of community projects have included apps to report bullying or graffiti, as well as homework helpers and college prep tools. We are using graphic tablets to draw digital artwork that can be printed out using a variety of large formats, and dye sublimation printers to make class projects such as posters, t-shirts, and mugs. We also use our digital tools to generate artwork for our app development and online projects. This is an example of a game that we submitted to the National Games for Change contest. This game was designed to advocate for CTOs and won the national competition for middle school under its category. Our
008makerspace facility has extensive capabilities for project fabrication, including tools such as laser cutters and CNC milling machines, as well as conventional workshop tools such as saws and drills, and also has tools for working with fabric, such as sewing machines, vinyl cutters, and heat press machines. We also have many electronic supplies such as microcontrollers and soldering equipment that we can assemble and program to add sound, motion and as many blinking lights as possible to our projects. Mrs. Pisa's STEM classes have visited and taken part in events at many local community partners such as free trips at Northrop Grumman, RIFTEON, the Cogcom Thinkabit Lab, Midway Engineering Experience and most recently we participated in building and testing ROVs at the Walter Monk Legacy Celebration. These events are fun, a way to gain exposure to the many fun STEM
009careers opportunities that are available. Wilson STEM have been encouraged to consider the uses for technology for entrepreneurship and fundraising. Some examples of potential product ideas that have been considered are customized t-shirt production as well as printed items such as phone pop sockets. If you are ever on the Wilson campus please shop by our new robotics club vending machine in the teachers lounge and buy all the big chips that you can carry. I think that there's a lot of females in mechanical engineering or engineering in general. So I'm glad to be a part of a program that allows females to do things like this. Over the years, the Wilson STEM program has been working to increase the representation of girls in STEM education. Wilson has both boys and girls robotics teams to give girls the experience
010of running a robotics program from start to finish. Through recruitment and refinement of our STEM offerings, we have seen female participation in our programs increase from under 10% to over 33% and growing. In fact, our current robotics club is being led by a strong female. Wilson's STEM program encourages students to consider and respond to issues with representation in STEM careers. We are currently involved in project-based learning lessons to answer the essential question, why is there under-representation of certain groups in STEM and what can we do about it? The project includes activities such as doing research, preparing for interviews with STEM professionals, creating a brochure for exposure, and making a PSA. Students who have come through our program go on to attend prestigious colleges and pursue STEM majors. They also come back as volunteers and role
011models to inspire future generations. The goal of Wilson's STEM program is to increase exposure and awareness for students of the many opportunities that are available to them in the STEM fields. By getting us involved and excited in these programs in middle school, we feel equipped to further develop the tools that we will need to excel in STEM subjects in high school, college, and beyond. I am a future robotics engineer. I'm a future biomedical engineer. I am a future surgeon. I am a future software engineer. I am a future coder. I'm a future game designer. I'm a future mechanical engineer. I'm a future marine biologist. I'm a future electrical engineer. I am a future veterinarian clinic owner. I'm a future astrophysicist. I'm a future robotics teacher. Due to Wilson's robust STEM offerings, we know that we
012are one step closer to realizing our dreams. Thank you from Wilson Robotics! That is fantastic. That is so exciting. Thank you, Alina and all of the Wilson students. Thank you, Ms. Pease. And thank you, Principal Downey, for presenting that to us. I think when we have a conversation about Vision 2030 in our district, I think we just saw it. And, you know, when we think about what these students are doing now, where they want to go. and the contributions that they want to make. The competition that the Wilson students won was about saving the sea turtles. So it's also about contributing and using their skills to make the world a better place. So congratulations, Wilson Middle School. That was really, really exciting. It's great. Okay, we will. Oh, I'm sorry. Vice President Whitehurst-Payne, yes. I
013want to know how we can get this out to all of our CSI schools. Good. That'll be a question for upcoming on the agenda tonight. All right. Okay, let's move to item C2, and this is recognition of employees for years of service. Superintendent Jackson. Thank you, President Barrera, and I agree. Thank you, Alina, and Ms. Peace over at... Wilson and Dr. Whitehair Spain appreciate that plug there and that push for us. As we do, I want to say, you know, we try to emphasize not only our students but our staff and this is one way Acacia Thede, Chief Human Resource Officer and staff in HR recognizes our employees for the success that They have contributed to doing the district. And, you know, we honor our employees by celebrating service year milestones. And this is an
014effort to really lift up the great employees and how the employees make San Diego a better place. So I want to thank Acacia and the HR staff. And this video is going to lift up some of our employees. My name is William Holsinger, and I'm from the science department. at Montgomery Middle School, but I have been at Mann Middle School, and I started my journey out as a TA at Lincoln High School, and it's been 40 years. I didn't realize it was 40 years. And so I appreciate this recognition. I used to work at NASA a little bit, SeaWorld, I worked at SeaWorld for a little bit, Penguins, and the community. So I try and have the kids do a lot of awareness about their community and what they can do. I've had a lot
015of jobs. The kids always wonder, did you get fired? Like, no, but, you know, working at SeaWorld, I used to drive an ambulance in the town. I worked at Scripps Clinic, you know, all kinds of stuff, even grocery places. But I really enjoyed teaching. So every place I went, I realized I was teaching. So I stayed with it. I went and... Got my certification over at Point Loma, Nazarene. I'm most proud of just helping students that come back and tell me that they didn't like science and now they do. My friends always ask, how come you're not retired yet? I enjoy teaching. And so they always know that I'm doing some experiment or... making something that the kids can try to enjoy the subject. My favorite part of my job is actually working with my
016department, which right now is sixth grade, and we all are a very good team. and I continue to dedicate years of service to the district because I enjoy teaching. I'm Randy Perez. I've been working for the San Diego Unified School District for 30 years as a student teacher at San Diego State University, and we wanted to go to a two-semester instead of a three-semester, so we ended up at Zamorano because it was a year-round school. and driving all the way down Zahmaran, I'm like, oh, where is this place? And then as soon as I drove up to Zahmaran, I said I wanted to make this place my home, and I did everything I could to get there. So I student taught there, and I've been there ever since. So I've been at Zahmaran for 31
017years now. I'm a grade teacher right now. I taught second grade for 21 years, and I taught first grade for the remainder of that. When I was in eighth, seventh grade, it was my science teacher, Mr. Jones, that inspired me that I wanted to be a science teacher, and I really, really wanted to be a... a junior high school or high school teacher i ended up at zamorano so but it was the mr jones that turned me on that i wanted to be a teacher to teach science to kids it's been awesome being at zomorano the last 30 years and making a difference in everybody's lives the whole staff at zamorano the administration the staff the teachers everyone together working together as a team making a difference one child at a time that we're just
018dedicated together working together as a team All the administrators, I don't know if I can remember them all. Derek Mertenson, Jeannie Stieg, Karen, Marion Kim, Carol King. Those are the ones that I've worked for for the 30 years that I've been there. It's like when people come to Zamorano, people want to make it their home and people like Zamorano because it's just a great place to be. I don't need the pin. I don't need the recognition. I never did it for the money. I did it to make a difference in one child's, you know, each child. You know, what's that old story like? All the seashells show up on the shore and the starfish and she's throwing them back. I'm like, you can't make a difference for all these starfish. Like, well, I just made
019a difference for that one. So it's like, you can make a difference for one kid. That's great. But over 30 years of like, how many kids did you make a difference for? You know? Thank you. You're on mute, sir. Thank you. Thank you, superintendent. And congratulations to Mr. Holsinger and Mr. Pettis. Incredible, incredible contributions and impact that you both have had. Okay, we will move on to item D and this is a report of closed session actions in our superintendent board and ASB president information reports. Ms. Green has noted that we do not have any report out on closed session. So, Superintendent, I know we've got a couple of administrative assignments. Yeah, two announcements. President Barrera, very, very excited. Our District Community Schools Coordinator, Aaron Peterson, welcome. Welcome aboard to San Diego, sunny California. I
020know you're coming from Wisconsin. So this will be quite a shift and very excited to have you leading our efforts around community schools. Thank you to the entire panel for a great find in Aaron Peterson. And then we have the Director of IT and want to thank and congratulate Tyler Rudolph, who will be continuing his work as he has been a longstanding employee in Senegal Unified. Tyler, congratulations. Both of you tonight should be very excited, and we are very excited for your continued work in Senegal Unified. Thank you. Thank you, Superintendent, and congratulations to Tyler and Aaron. Aaron, you can put away your winter gear. This is about as bad as it will get all year. Okay, now it's time for our ASB student body president's reports. And at this time, we'd like the ASB
021presidents to introduce themselves. Please tell us about yourself and what's going on at your school, both academically and socially. And we'll start with Rachel Schneider from University City High School. And then we'll have Julianne Su, who is the Scripps Ranch High School ASB president and also the San Diego Unified District president of the Council of ASB presidents. So congratulations, Julianne. Rachel, could you kick us off and tell us what's going on at UC High? Yeah. Hi, everyone. I'm Rachel Schneider. I'm the ASB president at University City High School this year. And thank you for having me today, first off. To start us off, I believe that we're, UC, just working within the conditions and the confinements due to the pandemic. Our ASB team and just our school in general has done a really good job
022at keeping UC. The whole UC community upbeat and spirited. On last Friday, we had our senior night football game and we surprised the team and spectators with a halftime chalk experience and homecoming was really fantastic as well. Recently, we've been doing a lot of work to promote a more inclusive and equitable environment at UC. Our ASB family came together in a student-led discussion and we identified blind spots that we might have, and we committed to a pledge that all ASB members created together. Our primary focus moving forward is to look at all students through all student events through an equitable lens, and we're currently investigating ways to support our LGBTQI plus community and students on campus by creating dedicated gender-neutral restrooms and a non-binary locker room. um we also have really high expectations at uc
023and it leads it leaves a challenge for our students as we transition because of the closure due to the pandemic and since we're coming back to the real world in person. And our teachers are providing us with support and just challenging learning experiences and the rest of the staff are working hard to address the needs of our students around campus and I've definitely seen that throughout the whole campus. One big bright spot is that Math Academy supports are available for our students twice a week, both before school and after school. And currently we're looking for peer tutors to support our Math Academy. And so like some of my friends, I know there are tutors there and it works out really well. I'm also proud of the fact that our school has identified the importance of
024supporting mental health. We're looking to return. to the return of having a weekly therapist from Mending Matters on campus. And finally, we're working to make our campus a more inclusive and welcoming space with COVID-19 and our ASB advisor, Ms. Fallon, passing. A lot has changed in the last year. And I'm proud of how... We honor the legacy that Ms. Fallon has left for us by welcoming one another and connecting with others that we may not usually be around. And most of all, we're being kind to everyone around us. So, yeah. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Rachel. That was a really fantastic report. And we know it's been, you know, a powerful and challenging year for your campus. But to have that student-led discussion about how to make sure you're looking out for everybody
025and including everybody is great leadership. And we honor that. Thank you. Okay, Julianne, tell us about Scripps Ranch and also anything that you want to report on on the Council of ASB Presidents. Alrighty, hello everyone. Thank you so much for having me at this meeting tonight. My name is Julianne Su and I'm the ASB president from Scripps Ranch High School and I'm also here to represent our council of the ASB presidents in San Diego Unified School District. So first of all, I'm really excited to share that we've been implementing many new activities and programs to welcome students back to in-person learning at Scripps. So these events are specifically designed not only to continue our traditions from past years, but to also move forward. in reaching out to new groups of students, testing new creative methods,
026and really being flexible through any event that might occur throughout the school year. So for example, we hosted our summer bridging program specifically for our freshman students. And this is where we emphasize the five pillars of our Falcon Pride. So that includes positivity, respect, integrity, diversity, and excellence. We really wanted to make sure that these students are prepared, that they're welcomed, and that they're also comfortable both on our campus and with the many student mentors that we had at this event before this event of the school year officially began. And on a similar note, although we were apart last year due to COVID, our student leaders have been working really, really hard to make sure that all students feel included within any activity that we initiate both on and off campus. And so this includes
027having a very positive, frequent participation on all of our social media platforms, our new website, and our many different virtual and in-person club meetings. We recently relaunched our ASB website to include a variety of photos. We have different resources, feedback forums, and communication outlets that are not only accessible to students, but also all parents, all staff members, and all community members as well. Within ASB, we are working to keep students informed on a very weekly basis. And so this includes spreading information ranging from... reports from our principal, Dr. Lawson, to grade-level specific opportunities and school-wide spirit events. And speaking of school-wide spirit events, we recently hosted our homecoming celebration, just like Rachel. Ours occurred two weeks ago on the weekend of October 9th, and this was the very first time that we were able to
028incorporate colored chalk, sparklers, and student-run music within our student section at our homecoming game. It was definitely challenging at times to plan these activities where students would be safe abiding by those regulations, but I'm very proud to say that we successfully featured different entertainment opportunities and we made a very memorable event for all of our students who attended. Moving forward into the next few months, we are continuing to support students and we're encouraging them to get involved. Around this time, our fall athletic teams are hosting their senior nights and ASB is working to gather support for them. And speaking of ASB, we are also hosting our class meetings, just like this one we have today. And here we are approving all the clubs that are going to be hosted on campus. Once these are all
029approved, we are looking to host our traditional club day fair, where students have the opportunity to bond with their peers. interest-oriented clubs. So that was what I have for Scripps. I'm going to be transitioning now to my report on behalf of the Council of ASB Presidents. As of today, October 26th, we've had three official meetings. The first one was specifically an ASB officer training opportunity where students were able to familiarize themselves with our many different online resources. And so this includes templates for our events like homecoming or fundraisers. We have inclusion of activity ideas and also proposal outlines for any new events that students decide to host throughout the year. Our other two meetings were our monthly September and our October ASB present meetings where we met one another and we discussed the various events
030that we were working on individually. We've also elected our officers for this year's council. Like I said before, my name is Julianne. I'm our president of the council, and I'm from Scripps Ranch High School. Our council vice president is Ella Sykes from Point Loma High School. Our council secretary is Angelina Rosette from Mission Bay. And lastly, our council treasurer is Lucia Cavallini from East Village High School. These meetings are great opportunities for us to collaborate. We share ideas with each other. And this is great because we're able to really bond with one another regardless of if our school is a traditional or an atypical high school. We're all in the same boat regarding leading our peers. And so it's very, very helpful to gather ideas and to really learn about other schools' activities to increase
031student spirit, engagement, and awareness. Within the next few weeks, we're working on gathering input on two specific topics. And so the first is our new school cash online program. And this has shifted the way that all of us at all the different schools manage our finances. We transitioned from using our individual school web stores to this one platform. And as a result, we're looking for more efficient methods of becoming familiar with this website. The second point that we're focusing on is planning an opportunity for all of our ASB classes within San Diego Unified to share ideas and meet one another. As the ASB presidents, we know firsthand how helpful it is to hear ideas and perspectives from other student leaders. And as a result, we really want to give our ASB members the same opportunity
032to be inspired and motivated by one another at this event, regardless if we decide to have it in person or virtual. And that concludes my report on behalf of Scripps Ranch High School and our Council of ASB Presidents. Thank you so much for having me. Great job, Julianne. That was a lot. And it's a lot of work on both fronts. Thank you. Great, great report from both you and Rachel. Okay, Superintendent, you got to follow that. I do, and thank you, President. I don't know how I'm going to follow it. I'm going to try. Rachel, first and foremost, well done. Way to step into your leadership and represent Donna Fallon. Wow, she is so proud. I am so proud. You should be so proud of your leadership, your voice on behalf of all of the
033students. I know Trustee Patterson is super, super honored. And thank you for representing the Centurions. And Julian, great job representing Scripps Ranch and all of the ASB presidents. They have a great leader in you. Actually, I'm going to start with lifting up another... Scripps Ranch Falcon and alumni. I know Monica Hazel area superintendent's on the call or on the webinar. And Trustee Beiser, I don't know what's in the water up at Scripps Ranch, but golf seems to be something that Scripps Ranch is known for. And I want to recognize Kyle Mouspot, who is a scholar athlete at the University of Cal, Berkeley, who's recently recognized for both his personal commitment to excellence as well as all of his service. He's a golfer. And he is recognized. So we certainly want to join the Berkeley family
034in celebrating one of our own. And, you know, maybe one day he will be on the big stage like Xander. I'm sure, Julian, that'll make you proud. Now, you know, don't ask Trustee Bozzo about last Friday's football game. Let's move on. I want to also lift up the fact that I've been with with Chief of Staff Sophia Roditti able to visit about 40 of our schools and about 70 classrooms. I want to take the time to really lift up our staff. From our office staff, our custodial staff, our cafeteria staff, our teaching staff, all of our support staff, our leadership teams, the non-classroom staff. anyone who is serving in our district, I want to thank you and lift you up because you have all made learning possible during these tough times and learning is engaging,
035it's rigorous, it's connected. As Rachel mentioned, students are getting what they need and we're so appreciative of the fact that you are connecting and you are caring for our students. You're making learning fun and the experience fun. I can tell you just seeing the children, they want to talk about their learning. They want to share their experience with us. And thank you for providing our children with hope because that's what they need right now. They need us to show up for them. And it's tremendous. So that's how I want to begin my report. Next, I have both an opportunity as well as a request for families. As you know, we are in the middle of our choice window and the choice application process. And at the last meeting, I talked about the new tool that
036has come out of our neighborhood schools office. And this is going to help parents navigate the process through discover.sandiegounified.org. And so the first is the opportunity. And thanks to Pam King, who is doing a great job of leading our family engagement, she is organizing a virtual town hall. that is going to walk parents through the new website. Again, that website is discover.sandiegounified.org and the application process. And this town hall is scheduled for tomorrow night. So again, Wednesday, October 27th from 5.30 to 6.30, the Family Engagement Department has sent a district-wide email. to all of our families and posted the information details on all of our district social media outlets. So want to make sure that you have that information. So that was the opportunity. Now the request. Just a reminder to all families, Friday, October
03729th. So Friday, October 29th, the last date to complete the information regarding the local control funding formula information. This information that families provide provides us with significant funds for all of our schools. The information we collect will help increase the potential of funding for San Diego Unified. So I want to lift that up. And when we get more funding, that means more resources. And as we think about more resources, that allows us to really lean into and make good on our promise around equity and access for our students. As Dr. Whitehurst-Payne, how can we support our CSI schools with getting our STEM, our STEAM, our robotics? all the opportunities that we saw in the wilson presentation at our schools and these are opportunities for us to do so and so we're asking all of our
038families to participate in getting this information in so please go to the parent portal and go into the account in power school and submit all the requested information and return the form that is was recently sent out So, again, I know that I'm asking for this from parents, but I think it's important information for us to get the revenues we need to make good on our promise around equity. And, again, information is due Friday, October 29th. And please help us. So attend the family engagement event on October 27th. Make sure we're meeting the deadline of local control funding formula forms on October 29th. Thank you. And in the spirit of Ubuntu, I am because we are. Thank you so much. Thank you, Superintendent Jackson. Thank you for that message about the forms, getting those forms
039in. So important. Okay, we'll move on now to board information reports. Trustee Beiser, do you have a report tonight? Yeah, thank you, President Barrera. First off, I'd like to congratulate Julianne Hsu for doing such a phenomenal job this evening. And congratulations, Scripps Ranch. Just amazing leadership at how you're moving the Scripps Ranch community forward and also being president of the Council of ASB Presidents is just phenomenal. And Dr. Lamont Jackson, thank you for the accolades and shout out for Scripps Ranch. I'm honored to represent Sub-District B for Biser, which represents so many amazing communities in San Diego. And it's all these communities and neighborhoods together that are contributing to San Diego Unified School's academic performance and success. I just want to thank all the teachers and the employees for all their hard work. We are
040not out of this yet. But together, we will. If we all get vaccinated, we all continue to wash our hands and wear our masks when we're indoors, then I think we're going to be able to all take our masks off together sooner rather than later. I'll save the rest of my remarks for the resolution on anti-Semitism later. Thank you, President Barrera. Thank you so much, Trustee Beiser. Trustee Bozzo. Yes, thank you, President Barrera. I have a couple slides to share. Let's see. Okay. Let's see if I can get this to work. All right. Can everyone see that? Excellent. So I think as I've mentioned before, I've been trying to go out to area schools, especially since I'm new and this is my first actual real school year that I can actually go into the classroom.
041And so Steve Elizondo, which is the area superintendent who's new to this area as well, has been very gracious to let me tag along on some of his site visits. So I just wanted to share a couple of those with you. This is the principal Armando Lopez at Doyle Elementary, and this is in University City. And that's him on the right, and then Steve on the left. And from Doyle, we had an amazing time there. Sorry for my big head in that picture. I'm not very good at selfies. Steve's much better. Oops. Sorry, I've got to go back from it. But on the right, the students were doing a science experiment, and the little boy that's closest to the camera on the right was telling me all about it, and he had this whole booklet
042that he'd done, and I think he's going to be a scientist. But they were so cute and they were all really excited to share what they were working on. And it was a treat to hear about that. Then we move over to Toller Elementary and it's Peggy Lewis is the principal there. And again, there's Steve on the left side there. And Toller has a really cool program. Maybe some of you are familiar with it. And they have a garden program through the Sage Garden. And they actually take the vegetables and herbs and different things that they grow in their garden, and they have a program on site where they actually make recipes with it, which I think is so cool. My kids would have loved that when they were little. And so the guy who's
043actually a parent, who's the chef, showed it, let us taste his hummus recipe that he had shared with the kids, and it was on the cucumbers, and it was just really neat to show them. you know, some of the things we're talking about. I mean, just seeing them in action, going from the garden right to Rest Peace so that they can then go home and share that with their families. And then on the right, again, another thing that we're focusing so much on is the whole child, social, emotional health. So this lady, I don't know her name, unfortunately, who works for the district, but she goes out into classrooms. And she actually works with students about an hour a week, I believe, in each classroom. And she was doing an exercise while we were there.
044And she actually had all the kids write their name on an index card. And then she shuffled up the cards and then passed them out. So they all basically had someone else's card with the name on it. And so then they had to flip it over and they had to write something nice about that person that that person had done. And then they all read them. And it was just so neat. to see like just the smiles and you know some of these kids didn't really know that person and so they had to sit there and think about oh gosh what can i write you know and it was just it was a small exercise but it was just Neat, again, to see what we're talking about actually being done in class to help bring.
045And she talked about the fact that this class is a family and we all need to work together. And it was really cool to witness that. And then finally, over at Marston Middle. with Principal Jonathan Goliath in the middle picture. He's on the right. And then one of our special education area coordinators on the left. And then, of course, Steve and myself in the middle. And again, Steve, we're taking a selfie with some of the boys. But like I said, Steve's much better at the selfies than I am. And over on the right, they were doing some math in class. We were getting to watch that and it was just it was really interesting watching the process of them understanding the you know, the what they're the problem and working through it and just kind
046of again watching that there's nothing like we can talk about it, but just actually seeing them doing it in class and and really, you know, the light bulbs going off and things like that. It was it was great to see. I I step back in math. I don't really try to help any of them. I just ask them, well, what do you think it is? So get out of it. So that's just some of my adventures the last few weeks. I also wanted to end by, I have to say that the Scripps Ranch Mirror Mesa, for those of you who don't know, is a big rival game. I was there last Friday, and it was probably one of the most exciting football games I've ever been to in my life. And I'm not a football
047person, people, but it was, up until the end, both teams played amazing. And I will just say that a freshman kicker, In the last two seconds of the game, she got a field goal, so it was a Mira Mesa win, but it was an incredible game, and both teams played amazing. And they also had a moment of silence for our coach at Mira Mesa, the head football coach that we lost a few months, a month or two ago. So that was really nice. Both teams came together for that, which I really thought was wonderful, coming together as a family. So that concludes my report for this evening. Thank you. Thank you so much, Trustee Basso. Thank you. Trustee Patterson. Thank you, Board President Barrera. I just want to start off thanking Rachel for being here
048and thanking Julian for being here. It was so wonderful to have both of you and to hear about what you were both working on in your campuses. I wanted to congratulate you for winning your position as president on the council, and I want to say I'm looking forward to working with you all. I know we've had such good relationships in the past, so I really look forward to hearing from all of you as students and student leaders in our district that are helping do this work. And I can see and I can affirm from working with Rachel on my own campus, one of my good friends, that we are doing that work and we're doing that process of healing, getting back to normal and recognizing that normal is a little bit different than it was
049before. And that we're not going to go back to where we were before. We're going to reach new heights. And thank you for sharing that. It was such a privilege to get to hear about the work we're doing on our campus and to affirm that. On to a larger scale, I wanted to just say, you know, it really reminded me, listening to the students at Wilson Middle School today, it reminds me of what Dr. Mike talks about a lot when we talk about this push for being a global citizen. When we saw those students at Wilson Middle School, we're talking about that, making our students competitive for the incredible challenges that all of us are going to face in this world. And I think that brings me right into the incredible site visit that I
050got to attend this past week. I was able to get to Longfellow K-8 and was just so impressed with the dual immersion program and how that works and what it looks like. specifically the incredible work of teachers in kindergarten who six weeks into school already had students speaking Spanish. It was just incredible to see the methodology that they use in using vowels and in working with the students to understand the English and Spanish cognates to be able to come together and make those sounds and move forward. And speaking to some of these kindergartners who didn't speak a word of Spanish six weeks ago who now I'm speaking to in full sentences. And it really, really is incredible work. And I think speaks. It really speaks breadth and speaks so much knowledge to what we can
051do as a district. And I just want to say when we do have that capacity, I am so looking forward to being a partner in expanding our dual immersion programs and to getting that goal that we set forth to where every student can be proficient in a second language. We live in a city where more than one third of the population does speak Spanish. We live in a state where the majority of students in our state are Chicano, Latino or Latinx. And what that means is that we are a multicultural state. We are a state that we need to recognize that speaking both of these languages is so critical. It helps us be more competitive. It helps us be those global citizens that we're talking about that we want to see in our schools. I
052just want to thank Longfellow for letting me have that tour and getting to speak with students on the campus to see what it means. I can only imagine what those kindergartners are going through and the frustrations of it in the first few weeks. I know I spoke to one student who said, He definitely had anxiety in kindergarten and first grade and learning how to get to learning how to speak Spanish and get there with that full immersion. But spoke Spanish beautifully in eighth grade. And it was incredible to see and incredibly motivating. So I just want to say thank you to that. And finally, I wanted to end it with some general observations that I was able to get from speaking with students throughout the past few weeks. One of the focuses I want to
053see is really helping students identify who their leaders are on campuses and where they can be agents of change. And what that means is how are students able to be on the campus and actually be creating the rules and helping facilitate co-creation? Because we know when we agree towards one thing and we come together on it, we're much more likely to be able to hold that together. Thank you. Thank you, Trustee Patterson. Trustee McCrory. Yeah, so thank you, Board Member Patterson, for this shout-out for world language acquisition, improved international understanding, and the importance of global connections. I also want to congratulate William Holsinger for your 40 years of service. And thank you, Dr. Lamont and staff, for the visit we had last week with the Council General of Japan, the Japan Foundation, and the Japanese
054Friendship Garden, which was arranged by the San Diego Yokohama Sister City Society. So I have multiple slides that will automatically be shown as I present the rest of my report. So the Council of General and Japan Foundation visited schools in Poway and San Diego Unified. Then they met with the San Diego Mayor's Office and finished the visit with a meeting with the Interim Superintendent, Dr. Jackson. This visit celebrated the collaboration that exists between our school district, the city of San Diego, private organizations, businesses and corporations, and our national and international governments. This visit also acknowledged the special relationship we have with Yokohama, Japan, which was formed with a charter signing in 1957, one year after President Eisenhower developed the idea of international sister cities. where world peace could be better developed through partnerships formed between
055cities, when citizen diplomacy and person-to-person relationships can be developed at the grassroots level. Since this first sister city partnership, 15 other sister city partnerships on all continents were formed that include Tijuana, Mexico as the closest, Jalalabad, Afghanistan as the most distant, and the Panama City, Panama as the most recent. Where we have sister cities, we are able to link students in our schools with students in these international cities. These sister city and sister school partnerships have provided our students with an opportunity to develop international understanding, expand cultural competencies, and support the acquisition of world languages. Currently, students in our schools have international connections with multiple schools in Yokohama, Japan, Jalalabad, Afghanistan, Balat-e-Sfak-Sak, Russia, Alcalá, Spain, Espíritu Landreau, Austria, and Tijuana, Mexico. We have had visits from school officials from these countries, including delegations from China.
056came to La Jolla and it was the incredible experience. I'll share that later. We have pending visit from a delegation from Uzbekistan and we're connecting our students with international school partners that will better prepare them for a more globally competitive world. and better develop students for civic and global engagement and increase their capacity to become global citizens. Well, thank you, Dr. Jackson, for the excellent international visit and your commitment to preparing our students for college and careers as well as preparing them for civic and global engagement. Thank you. Thank you so much, Trustee McCrory. Vice President Whitehurst-Payne. Thank you, Mr. Barrera, President. I would like to just mention that I visited several schools, and I'm not going to take the time to go into any of that because I want to devote my time tonight
057to an amazing lady who passed at 97 years old. This is Dr. Shirley Jenkins Phelps. And, you know, we're always looking for some role models for our students, but she is an, she was an amazing lady. She was the first African-American medical doctor here in San Diego. She was also a forensic psychiatrist. And she died at 97, but she was still serving on committees at 82 and a consultant to a lot of different organizations related to medicine. So the reason I'm lifting this up tonight is because it ties into my other concerns that we'll hear more about later related to the African-American community and the fact that students are not faring well on our indicators. And perhaps we need to go beyond Martin Luther King and start lifting up some folks like Dr. Phelps, who
058did things right here in San Diego. and who left a legacy not only in science, she was into microbiology, and as I said, into medicine. And then she was also into the field of having her own business. She opened up a shop called the Kwanzaa House Gallery. And I want us to really look at, you may go online and pull up Dr. Shirley Jenkins Phelps to find out more about her, but I would hope that as we go through it, we said we're not going to have African American history just one time of the year. but it will be woven in throughout the year. She is someone you should really check out and find out a lot about her. I have some concerns about the data that I'll talk about later, so I want to
059save some of my time for the SBS essay report. Thank you. Great. Thanks so much, Vice President Whitehorse-Payne. We'll move on now to Section E. Can we get a motion on E1, our 22-23 instructional calendar? So moved. Moved by Trustee Beiser. Seconded by Dr. McQuarrie. Thank you. Any board discussion or questions on this item? If not, Trustee Patterson? Aye. Trustee Bozzo? Aye. Trustee Beiser? Aye. bosty mccorry i am vice president whitehurst payne i carrera i okay and then uh item e2 i know uh vice president whitehurst payne wants to have a discussion here so this is uh the 21-22 school plan for student achievement and categorical budget summaries for our 16 comprehensive support and improvement as schools i move approval Approval by Vice President and seconded by Trustee Beiser. Okay, any discussion? Yes, lots of
060discussions. First of all, we have out of the 16 schools that are noted, half of them are from District E. And I commend the fact that the high schools, I believe San Diego High School was only a part of the comprehensive schools noted. My concern is that if you'll notice the feeding patterns here, we have Mann, MTM, and Knox. And then you look at the elementary schools, and they're feeding into the elementary, one of the elementary schools and a middle school in the same segment are having issues. And a lot of it related to absenteeism, at least according to what the schools are working on, and suspensions. So I think we really need to find a way to start grouping these schools together and not just looking at them in isolation. I commend Lincoln because
061although Knox and Porter feeder schools... had issues. Lincoln had somehow or another found a way to address their concerns. And with the same pattern we saw with Euclid and Fay feeding into Mann, but Crawford had addressed its concerns. And then Johnson feeds into either MTM or probably into MTM. So we've got to look at these schools. In conjunction to find out if there's an attendance problem at that elementary school is probably at the middle school and that's problematic. So we need to to find ways to really address these issues and not just, you know, make it put it on the report and say we're going to deal with it. And then with the K-8 school of Audubon, my question is they have. I believe 430 students. Is that school too small to offer the kind
062of supports that they need for the middle school children? I know there are some parents who don't want their children to go to middle schools, but when you have limited staffing, it can present problems. So I really would like to meet with the superintendent and some of the folks doing work with these schools to figure out a way that we can address some of these concerns so that. next year. They're not on the list. I did note Audubon, one of the things you have to look at, Audubon is way out from the mainstream, so that may be a problem that they're having as a K-8, which is isolated. And then you have Mann, which is, and Fay, which are further on the eastern side of the city. But we've got to find ways to really
063stop talking about it and to really come up with some plans and some ideas about ways that we can address this. And I know Johnson is a deep school, so with that I expect some support in that arena. But I hope you can feel my frustration because every time it keeps coming up. Yes, if I may begin just broadly and then may ask staff to come in as well. So first and foremost, I think, Vice President Whitehead, what you're addressing is more of the CSI school matters and where schools fall. I know that's under the SPSA. I want to make sure everyone understands. Some people may not know this. All schools are required to have SPSAs completed. One of the things we thought was important was to listen to our leaders and our staff and
064recognize that having all of the SPSAs do at the same time was a heavy lift. And so we're bringing, because of the state requirements, we're bringing the CSI schools forward because these are due no later than October 31st. So I want to just make sure everyone understands that their schools, uh are required to submit the spsa uh in partnership with the sscs uh to make sure that um our categorical funds are going towards as dr whitehurst pain said towards the needs of our students a couple of things that i can speak to is We hear you, Dr. Whitehurst-Payne, and your concerns that some of the schools that continue to fall on our CSI list continue to be the same schools. And so I know the area superintendents are working closely with principals. I know many
065of the schools are receiving support through the literacy acceleration plans that we did where we spent quite a bit of monies in terms of the instructional supports for our schools. In addition, we know that mental health supports are going to be needed for our schools and really focusing in on some of the schools on the list. I would invite, rather than going into my role as the former Area 2 Superintendent, I'm going to be respectful and not go there for Audubon, but invite Steve Elizondo into talking specifically about that specific school if he wants to talk a little bit about some of the things that Audubon is doing to focus on increasing attendance and making sure that we are not Um... you know, suspending schools at, suspending students at high rates. I would also, if
066Monica would like to come in and talk about some of our schools in the Crawford cluster. And then finally, I know that Christina Casillas has been very close to the SPSAs and specific strategies for any of the other schools on behalf of all the other area superintendents. So first, Steve, would you like to talk about some of the specifics for Audubon that's happening? And then if Monica, I know I saw her earlier. Just a couple, Steve, just a couple of things that you know Audubon is doing to support some of our schools. Yes, and just before you do, Steve, I just want to say that I read some of the things and some of them are repeated activities and others seem to be lifting up some different things. And I want to commend man, as
067a matter of fact, because he called me in and we sat down for a half an hour and he went over his plans with me and some of the things are brilliant. And I commend him for that. But I know that all of these things are written in a lengthy report and I did go through. them to see what they were doing. And I believe that we are trying, but I just want us to get over the line and finish so that staffing, as I said, I read that Audubon is having difficulty with a PE teacher or something related to being so far out and so small and so forth. And I'm sure everybody on the board doesn't want to hear all these concerns and issues, but I just want you to know. that I
068am looking and we've got to move it. Okay. And I want to be mindful of time as well because you're right. We can certainly connect with you, Dr. Whitehurst-Payne. But Steve, just to let Dr. Whitehurst-Payne know that you hear her from the Area 2 perspective, just a couple of things you're thinking about right now. Absolutely. Thank you. And thanks for bringing that up, Dr. Whitehurst-Payne. Hi, everybody, by the way. Nice to see you all. Yes, I was with Tim Swanico, the principal, actually today and just a few weeks ago as well. And we talk quite regularly. A lot of beautiful things going on at Audubon. I've been there several times. There's been a huge focus at Audubon, as to be honest with all district schools, the big push on welcoming all of our students back.
069after this pandemic pandemic so there is just a lot of love in the classrooms on the playgrounds with the um with the classroom teachers paraprofessionals uh noon duties that's been a huge focus so you talked about um chronic absenteeism that's one of the main ways that we can address that by creating this loving welcoming environment for all students They also have this really cool Playworks program, it's called, that I got to witness, which is a company that comes in and trains the teachers and the noon duty staff to run just really engaging and fun games for kids. Because a lot of times on a recess playground, you'll see some kids playing and a bunch of kids kind of left out. And this is just a, I literally saw, I feel like 100% of the students.
070actively participating and having a good time. Again, that builds that fun, that excitement about wanting to come to school. I think that that directly addresses that chronic absenteeism issue. And then just one more thing on the literacy side. Audubon was fortunate to have an additional literacy support teacher as well as the support of an instructional coordinator. And, you know, the big focus there is those people are working directly with the classroom teachers on just, you know, solid quality tier one literacy instruction, which is going to have, I feel like lasting benefits, benefits this year, lasting benefits. So just a few things. Be happy to talk to you about it much more extensively because I'm quite passionate about that as well. Dr. Whitehair's pain. Good Steve. Monica. Thank you. I'd love to brag a little bit
071about the work happening at Mann. First of all, we have an entirely new leadership team, principal, vice principal, instructional coordinator, who are really changing the culture at Mann to a space that respects our students, respects our families, and we're really focused on increasing attendance of our students and decreasing suspensions. And in so many different ways, Mann has been focusing on this. Dr. Whitehurst-Payne, one of the things I know you're excited about is their engineering and STEAM lab that we are building over at Mann. You know, one of the things we said is that, you know, we want kids to be able to, we want kids to get excited to come to school. We want to have something there beyond basic math and reading that gets them excited where they can't wait to come to school.
072and engage in science inquiry. So I've been able to peek into the beginning stages of their science lab. We've hired some amazing science staff so that we're integrating language as well for our English learners into our science curriculum. So you'll see in the CSI plan actually a big investment in STEAM and in our robotics lab. You'll also see a strong focus on attendance and motivating our students. We have special, we have partnerships with outside organizations also that are providing mentorship to our black youth. to motivate and to work one-on-one with our students. So those are just a couple of the things happening at Mann. In addition to a focus on literacy as well, when you go into the ELA classrooms, every class begins with independent reading. They invested in amazing high-interest books for children, and
073they're doing competitions across classrooms. related to minutes spent reading and reading at their appropriate reading levels. And so we're starting to see those reading levels increase and students taking ownership of bringing books back and forth to school and getting excited about literacy. Our feeder schools to man, I made a commitment. Ryan said to me, you have to ensure that all of the feeder schools at man ensure guided reading every single day for every single student. We cannot send students to man that cannot read. And we need support with that. We know our youngest learners, our most vulnerable children really struggled last year online learning to read. And so our district, and you'll see in our CSI plans, all of the CSI schools in Crawford. are part of the literacy acceleration plan. And so you're seeing
074our students getting not only their high quality instruction in class, they're also getting a second dose with a trained reading intervention teacher. And so that priority on literacy, celebrating reading, is going to support the outcomes and ensuring that our graduates graduate from elementary school and go to Mann. strong readers and then we're going to give them a reason to come every day to school and make school exciting. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Monica. Thank you, Steve. I know it was right on the spot that I asked you to do that. And Dr. Whitehurst-Payne, our commitment is to ensuring what you and all trustees envision for our learners and that, you know, all of our schools and all of our students are making the progress they need to make so that they can go on
075to the college and career of their choice. uh and that we're not hindering that so thank you both and uh thank you president barrera i appreciate the time to just share a few things uh based on these plans i know absolutely and i appreciate vice president whitehurst pain you know this was uh the csi schools were an issue that we lifted up in the uh in the superintendent's evaluation process and superintendent jackson and steve and monica thank you so much for uh giving us some information and i and i know that there's a lot of conversations um you know to be had going forward so we do have a motion on this item in a second uh uh trustee patterson hi uh trustee bozzo i think we hear you oh yeah there we go thanks
076thank you trustee bryzer Aye. Trustee McCrory? Aye. Vice President Whitehurst-Payne? Aye. And Barrera, aye. Okay. Thank you. And we'll now move to Item E3. This is a very important issue as well, and this is our expenditure plan for what people call ESSER III, the most recent federal relief plan, Superintendent. Yeah, thank you, President Barrera. One of the things as we think about ESSER III or any funds, I think it's important for everyone to know that our district plan is our LCAP. And we have engaged our stakeholders in developing that plan. And that is a three-year plan for us. Often what we are showing is the funding for the one year, and that's the current year. And we have earmarked dollars for the out years. Unfortunately, often we don't have all of the funding for all
077of the years. And so when we get additional funds, these funds, what I've encouraged staff and what we should be talking about is that we shouldn't develop a new plan, but we should continue to invest in the priorities and in the current plan, the three-year plan. And so the... Typically, categorical funds will come with a requirement to develop a plan, if you would. And we have remained committed to our LCAP. And that is very clear. And when we complete our Vision 2030... Those two components will drive how we spend our money. And when we get new funds, this isn't time for us to say, hey, we have all this new money because we've already invested in our priorities. And now we have to fund those priorities. And we will continue to do so. So what
078you'll hear today is the alignment of our ESSER III funds to our LCAP. And in the plan, we are required to explain how we'll use the funds to address specific things like what Dr. Whitehurst-Payne just said is around the academics, the social, emotional, and mental health needs of our students and really speaking to the opportunity gaps that exist. And that's what Dr. Whitehurst-Payne is saying is how are we investing and what are the things that we are doing so that we take it from plan to action. And what we believe is important is that we invest in the monies invest the monies where the gaps existed for our most marginalized students, our Black children, our Latinx students. And these were gaps that existed before COVID, and they may have been exacerbated by the pandemic. And
079so this is a plan that we are coming forward and the plan must be adopted by the Board of Education as we submit it to the San Diego County Office of Education. It has to be done by October 29th. I want to thank the team for doing this and appreciate the team who will be presenting this evening. So I'm going to turn it over to Drew Rollins who will begin the presentation. Thank you, Dr. Jackson. That was a great introduction. You set it up wonderfully for us. So we have a slide presentation that I hope is popping up here in a moment. Good evening, everyone. Good evening, trustees. Tonight, we are excited to present to you information on the elementary and secondary school emergency relief plan. I'm sorry, really fun, part three, known as ESSER
080III in shorthand. And ESSER III is part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, which was enacted in March of 2021, the broader actions taken by our government. Tonight, we'll walk you through the components of this plan and the tremendous opportunities it affords us. And as Dr. Jackson mentioned, ultimately seek your approval of the ESSER III expenditure plan. Next slide, please. But first, I wanted to give you a little context and background and a slightly broader look. On the slide here, you see the various state and federal funding sources that have been provided to us as a result of the COVID pandemic. You can see there are a variety of funds, and this crosses over six fiscal years. Many of the funding sources reach back to the start of the pandemic in March of
0812020. The various funds here total $677 million. And we also tried to show on the chart where expenditures have already occurred. With we will fully expend all of these funds within the guidelines and timelines that are required for each of the funding sources. Next slide, please. And then more specifically, and what the rest of the conversation tonight will be about is the ESSER III itself. And again, so here are the basics around the ESSER III fund. These are one-time funds. provided to address the impact of COVID-19 and lost instructional time. The funds can be used for expenses incurred from March 2020 until the end of September 2024. And again, the total amount of ESSER III funds are $302 million. Next slide, please. As I've alluded to, ESSER III, like the other funds, has specified uses.
082They can be categorized this way, support for students, which includes learning and instructional needs and the student's social, emotional, and mental health needs. And secondly, uses under the broader context of health and safety, including things like PPE, COVID testing and contact tracing, and health office staffing. So with that as an introduction, I'd like to now turn the presentation over to Area 2 Superintendent Steve Elizondo to further discuss RSR 3 planning. Thank you, Drew. And hello again, everyone. I got to say, I'm just going to take a moment to tell you, I'm really fired up to be here. This is my first presentation actually to the board in my new role as area superintendent. And so I'm excited I get to present on this plan. You know, I really believe like this plan is awesome for
083our kids. And the only thing I can hope for really is to be. partially as eloquent as Rachel and Julianne and Zachary. Maybe we can get some public speaking tips from the three of you. You all are awesome, seriously. All right, so moving on to slide five. There we go. Thank you. So the ESSER plan, like all district plans for supporting students, are based on the same guiding principles. So closing opportunity and achievement gaps with a focus on our historically underserved student groups. outcome driven investments those that we know make a real difference for students investments in social emotional learning supports and for high quality instruction for all students community inspired plan to meet student needs and long-term sustainability we know that any major strategy is going to take multiple years in order to realize
084the full benefits and gains that we're striving for next slide thanks And I'd like to point out that Dr. Jackson mentioned this. I'd like to point out that our ESSER plan is not a new plan. It's based on our LCAP. Again, as Dr. Jackson talked about, LCAP three-year plan and these specific six goals, which were created with robust community engagement efforts. So you can see that our foundation remains our foundation. And so I encourage everyone to take just a moment to read through these goals. Slide, please. But just a bit before we talk about our path to recovery, Let's examine how we were performing as a district in meeting the needs of our students before the COVID-19 pandemic. And these four graphs here illustrate the National Association of Educational Progress, the NAEP results for San
085Diego Unified as compared to the results of other large city public school districts. So you can see the San Diego Unified outperform these other large districts in both reading and mathematics. And also among large urban districts, we've had the fastest improving literacy rates in the nation and the highest graduation rates in the state. So obviously huge things to celebrate. And so really our vision here is to sustain and build on this success. Next slide. And I'd like to just read this slide because I feel like it encapsulates the spirit of this plan. San Diego Unified School District will leverage new state and federal funding to make long-lasting investments in actualizing our promise that each and every student will graduate college prepared and career ready. Our unified team is committing to taking advantage of this unprecedented
086opportunity to heal, recover, and advance both the wellness and learning of our students, investing in the whole child. and now i'm going to turn it over to area 4 superintendent monica hazel thank you if we can advance the slide Excellent. Good evening, everyone. So this visual on the slide lists all of the plans that our district has developed since the start of the pandemic back in March of 2020. If you look on the left-hand side, it includes our operations written report from June 2020, our learning continuity plan from September 2020, our extended learning opportunities plan and LCAP. in June 2021, and finally in October our ESSER III plan. Each plan that we've been required as a district to complete has included a process of community engagement. So it's important to know that input from our
087students, our family, our staff and community has been essential in order to develop plans that are congruent with the needs of our students. So we want you to know that engaging the community remains a top priority for San Diego Unified. And that each time that we've reached out to our stakeholders and with each new engagement session that we've held over the course of a year and a half, each one builds upon the next. That the voices of our community are guiding and they are informing our decisions. So the goals of these plans, they're not separate. They're tightly aligned with one another. And the feedback from our stakeholders throughout has been consistent and it's been aligned. You're going to see evidence of how the goals of both our LCAP and the LCP are integrated into this
088ESSER III plan. Next slide, please. All right, so here we just see a list of the various stakeholders that have been involved with us throughout this process from June 2020 who've provided feedback in a variety of different ways, whether it was surveys, stakeholder meetings, think tanks, focus groups, or interviews. Next slide. Thank you. So in this past July, I had the absolute privilege of meeting with our advisory chairs and leaders from the DAC, the CAC, GATE, DLAC, PTA, Student Advisory, and our Administrators Association. I met with each of them separately, and I asked them to engage with me in a design thinking process. I asked a very broad question from our superintendent, our interim superintendent, Dr. Jackson. From your respective stakeholder perspective, what are the five to seven big ideas or priorities you feel have
089the most powerful impact on our students' learning and social development? We had some really rich discussions, and I'd like to just take a minute publicly to thank each and every one of them for their time and their input. After all of the meetings were over, we poured through the notes and we searched for trends that were common across all of the stakeholder groups. And here are some of the themes that we found. Our advisory leaders prioritized health and safety, additional supports for students and staff related to social emotional well-being. Additional academic support to support learning loss due to COVID. Extended learning opportunities. Additional supports for our students with disabilities, English learners, and our duly identified students, GATE and students with disabilities or English learners. And additional supports for students transitioning from the elementary to the
090middle to the high school. And so, again, these were not the only ideas that were shared, but these were the common themes across all of the stakeholder groups that we heard. So these common themes, the way that we use these, these common themes from July, these advisory chair meetings, in addition to adding the increased opportunity for family engagement and professional learning of our educators, we use these ideas to design the ESSER staff and community survey that we sent out. In the survey, we asked the participants to rate the importance of these items in helping San Diego students succeed in school. So we asked them using a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being less important and 10 being extremely important. Next slide, please. And here are the results of that survey that went out
091to our staff and our families. So what you're looking at, this graph shows the percent of respondents that listed an item as a 9 or a 10, considered highest priority. So results show that the stakeholder top priority, with almost 80% of respondents listing them as item 9 or 10, highest priority, was additional academic intervention support due to COVID learning loss. The next highest priority with over 70% was social, emotional, and mental health supports, followed by health and safety at 60%. So you can see here on the bars on the graph, we also color-coded the bars, and we coded those to highlight the point that all of these priorities are being addressed by our district in one of the plans that we've outlined. Five of the priorities in blue fall under the ESSER guidelines for funding
092and are in the plan that you see tonight. And the remaining priorities that are in gray are part of our ELO plan or our LCAP plan. Next slide, please. So the following proposed allocations pie here, pie chart, this highlights our proposed expenditures. It highlights that they're aligned, the expenditures that we're suggesting are aligned with our stakeholder priorities. You can see the dark blue pie of 194 million, that's our largest proposed expenditure, addresses the impact of the lost instructional time. So both academic and social-emotional impacts that we saw on the survey results was the highest priority for our stakeholders. The next lighter blue piece of the pie is the second largest expenditure of $85 million, and that addresses strategies for safe in-person learning, so around health and safety. And finally, the smallest piece, the lightest blue,
093lists other actions at $22 million, and that's to support students' continued access to technology. So what I hope is very clear in tonight's plan is that tonight's plan meets the needs of the whole child, including the academic, social, emotional, and the physical health and well-being of our children, and also that it's a true reflection of the priorities of our stakeholders. I'm going to turn it over now to Nicole DeWitt, our Executive Director of Leadership and Learning, and she's going to provide some more specific details related to the plan's proposed strategies. Nicole, they're all yours. Thank you, Monica. So the first area that we will go into more detail with relates to our continued commitment to provide safe in-person learning with concentrated efforts on the following areas. If we could go to the next slide, please.
094So we're particularly going to look at COVID testing, contact tracing, PPE, and services that support both student and staff health, as well as overall school safety. Our expenditures in this area total approximately $85 million. Next slide, please. We will continue to provide regular on-site COVID-19 testing and contact tracing to keep as many students as possible in school and learning with minimal interruptions by monitoring our daily case rates as well as response times for contact tracing. In addition, we will continue to provide PPE to school sites in the form of cleaning supplies, face masks, hand sanitizer, and plexiglass, and will monitor use of PPE materials monthly to replenish supplies as needed to all district sites. In order to uphold current health and safety guidelines, we will ensure sites have adequate levels of staffing for nursing, custodial,
095and air filtration workers. We will monitor weekly vacancies in these positions in order to fill these as soon as possible. In tandem with this effort, we'll continue to recruit visiting teachers to cover classrooms when staff are out, increase the amount of bus drivers and routes, and provide site supports based on individual site needs. The second area of the SR3 plan details how we will address the impact of lost instructional time. Next slide, please. We will be focusing on mental health services, literacy acceleration, early learning, ethnic studies, and both in-person classroom support as well as online education via our virtual academy program. Our expenditures in this next area will total approximately $195 million. Next slide, please. I believe this next one shows those different bullet points. Thank you so much. And then in the next slide,
096we'll go through our mental health supports. So we know that mental health support and services are a high priority for our students as well as our stakeholders. We have increased staffing levels for site counselors and mental health clinicians in order for students to receive timely support and also plan to provide more direct mental health services at school sites that all students can access to address both individual and small group mental health and social emotional learning needs. We will use key indicators in the California Healthy Kids Survey to monitor our progress and we'll make adjustments to best serve our students, recognizing that needs will shift as the year progresses. I will now turn it back over to Area Superintendent Steve Elizondo to go through the rest of this area. Thanks, Nicole. So next slide. Thank you.
097So we know, sadly, that our young learners struggle to read online. during the pandemic. And our next action and expenditure, our literacy acceleration plan, addresses this. This plan focuses on our TK4 through fifth grade students. And the plan involves daily, monthly, and tri-annual literacy assessments, as well as quality leadership support and professional development for both principals and teachers. I've been really fortunate to have the opportunity to attend these professional developments around early literacy, and they're fantastic. They're really, you know, boosting again that level of Tier 1 instruction that we're going to see, that we see, and will continue to see and build on in every classroom. Another focus of the plan is on our early learning programs. We know from educational research that a common element among the most successful school systems in the world
098is an investment in the youngest learners. So we have launched 56 sites for universal transitional kindergarten and 70 classrooms. And we have over 2,600... TK, UTK students enrolled. And so these students are learning early how to read, how to conceptualize mathematics, how to interact socially, to name a few benefits. And we've also made and plan to continue to make substantial investment in developing and implementing a high-quality ethnic studies program. And through this program, our students develop critical thinking and social awareness skills that we know are essential to college and career success. Next slide, please. Enhanced classroom support is another key to the continued success of our students. So we've hired additional teachers above and beyond our normal district allocations. And this provides our schools with a variety of things, additional supports for students, including small
099group and individual with credentialed teachers. And this is another evidence-based approach which will help us sustain and build on our successes. And the virtual academy. grew from our previously existing i high program and we've expanded dramatically throughout the course of the pandemic to meet the needs and desires of students and families so this planned expenditure provides for continuity of learning for virtual academy students most of this expenditures for staffing of teachers and paraprofessionals to provide instruction and support to students learning online and now i'll turn it back to drew rollins thank you steve next slide please oh there you go got it stay there Thanks, Steve. So the last and smallest wedge of our pie, if you will, yet no less important, is the support for our students' access to technology. As you may remember,
100the district accelerated our one-to-one move to one-to-one computing for our students, ensuring every student had a device and the connectivity to learn remotely. This item provides the additional supports in the form of infrastructure, devices, and other supports to continue the one-to-one program so our students have access to technology in and out of the classroom. Next slide, please. So just to summarize, I hope you've seen in our ESSER III implementation plan, it's a continuation of our work. It's aligned and consistent with our plans and priorities and comes from our foundational planning developed in the LCAP. ESSER III continues our approach to support the whole child, meaning the student's academic, social, and emotional and safety needs. And finally, we need to remind ourselves that ESSER funding is one-time funding. and I hope you've seen in this presentation
101that the vast majority of the items presented are the right things for our students regardless of the COVID pandemic. These initiatives and supports to our students should continue into the future and beyond where we are now. Next slide please. This concludes our presentation and we're seeking the board's approval of the ESSER III expenditure plan. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Drew, and thank you, Superintendent Jackson, Steve, and Monica. And I know many people worked on this report on the staff. I think it's extremely clear and very coherent and tied to our goals, as the superintendent outlined at the beginning. So can we get a motion to approve this plan? i move approval don't move second okay i think we got uh vice president whitehurst pain with the motion and uh trustee beiser with
102the second any uh board questions or comments yes trustee mccorry Yeah, thank you. I saw on the one of the earlier slides on the bringing supports for grade one, six and nine. These critical grades are the transition grades as students move from elementary to middle to high school. And we noticed that in the during the. our distance learning and we were doing virtual instruction, the grades that had the lowest attendance and participation were these transition classes. We had those lower numbers at K-1, lowers at grade six and lower at grade nine. I'm wondering what considerations are being made to assist these important transition classes as we go forward? More than happy to speak to that. Thank you for that question. So we actually already started this work this past summer with all of the great
103summer bridging programs that we provided for our incoming ninth grade students that we presented on during the last board meeting. So our intention is to replicate the success that we saw in our ninth grade summer bridging programs for our incoming kinder students as well as our sixth grade students. So we did ground that in particular pillars. for connecting students to the school community. And so we will look to be replicating that for our incoming kinders and sixth graders. Thank you. Great. And thank you, Nicole. I think Trustee Patterson, you had a question? Yeah, thank you, Christy. So one of the things that I wanted to mention in learning about this and going through the presentation, I was so impressed to see all the accurate specifics the public really has been asking for this information. So
104I think it's so clear in the way you all put it. I know it made me feel really comfortable. And to be able to see the investment in mental health specifically and to see that number, you know, we talk about it. It's one of the top priorities. I know staff and definitely students have said it. And now that... we're actually getting to see that dollar amount attached to it. And kind of moving in that direction, one of the things, one of the first questions I asked is, so does that mean we're hiring more staff? And what I've learned, which I think is just so important to emphasize, is that idea that this is one-time funding. And I think maybe this is a question for us on a larger scale, but what is it going to
105take for us to be able to see this investment in future years so we can get to that point? And I don't know if that's a staff question or if... uh board president brayer you have some thoughts but how can we as a district and as a staff move forward to support this investment in the future yeah trustee patterson i think that's a very important point and i think uh what our board has said and been very clear um on is we are going to invest in our children and what they need and that's what we're doing And then the second piece is we're going to continue our advocacy at the state level and the federal level to articulate why it's so important for us to get adequate funding. so that we can continue beyond
106these one-time dollars. And this board has been very committed to the investment and the advocacy. And so our work with our government relations team, with Enrique, is critical to our work. And I think that's an important piece that you bring up, Trustee Patterson, is... to make sure the public understands that we are investing and we're going to continue to push for adequate funding. And I think that's one of the things in my report today was why it's so important to get information from parents. I think it's important for everyone to know that I continue to work with our board trustees to make sure that we have uh the components that we want to advocate for as we get ready for the the next upcoming legislative session um so that we can continue to to work
107with our electeds uh to get the funding that our students need there's there's no question that our students as you said need more mental health support we need more mental health clinicians as monica shared the importance of uh steam education stem education uh at man middle school like it at uh wilson we need more funding uh to go to schools uh when it's used um you know accurate accurately and effectively we can see the change and i think uh what monica and steve articulated that's happening in our schools that's what our board wants And so that's our plan going forward. Trustee Patterson is to make it a priority, listen to our community, our stakeholders, put our money where our mouth is, and then continue the advocacy for funding in the out years beyond 2024-25. That's
108going to be critical for us. Vice President Whitehurst-Payne? I want to commend the staff. I know people feel like I don't do enough commending, but I do want to commend the staff, Dr. Jackson and your staff, for this report because when the president, Ms. Barrera, and I met with you again, it was really critical that you drill it down so that we can see, as Zachary said, The public wants to know where the money is going. We're getting it. Where is it going? And I think you've outlined it here and put it in a format that should be clear that we do have a plan. It's not just going in some empty pocket or whatever. We actually have a plan. And we wanted it in this format so that we can all see, the general
109public, legislators in Sacramento, in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, the general public can see where we're putting the monies and where we will need to continue to put additional dollars to meet the needs of all the students that we're talking about. uh one-time thing will not work for some of these students we need to continue and so we want to target the monies and then effectively use the monies to get results and to keep those results increasing so i want to thank staff for that thank you president trustee bazaar Yeah, I first wanted to mention it as I've been going around to some of the different school sites that it has been mentioned by many of the principals that that extra teacher support that's being provided has been huge for them. So I just wanted to
110share that comment because that's been pretty common across a lot of the school sites that that's made such a difference for them and just helped alleviate some of their stress, their daily stress. as far as having, you know, someone there to back up wherever needed at the school. And I also wanted to make the point, it seems some of these findings are similar. I don't know if you've looked at that to the group that did the superintendent search community input sessions, especially around the social and emotional support for students, but it seems like there's a similar theme to what we were hearing at our last board meeting. So I think that's interesting that with it, you know, we're seeing that across the board. And then as Trustee Whitehurst-Payne was saying, I think it's important that
111we are making it tangible, you know, the results. But my question is, so you had mentioned on the slide about how do we target those students? Like the, okay. So if a student is having issues, it sounds like they're, uh, addressed or they're, they're, they're focused. That particular student is focused on through, uh, survey results and maybe through, you know, if they've gotten in trouble at school, but what's the next step after that? That's what I'm trying to kind of just visualize. So I have an idea of how it works. So if a student is, is been targeted as struggling, um, what happens next? I mean, is it a, or is it more in the classroom that they're working with students? Are they taking students out and doing specific, you know, are they part of
112a specific program? You know, if you could just give me kind of an example of what that looks like, that would just help me to kind of have a better visual. So, you know, in terms of are we really drilling down and utilizing those funds for their specific purpose? Sure, I can jump in. Oh, go ahead. Monica, you were reading my mind. Jump on in there. I didn't mean to put you on the spot, but I was just thinking of an example just to give us an idea of what is actually happening at that level. Yeah, for sure. So I can give you a couple different examples. One would be related to our literacy acceleration plan. The plan begins with a universal assessment, which is like a side-by-side reading assessment where the children read with
113their teacher as the teacher takes notes. And we have certain benchmarks of where our children should be throughout the year. And so after assessing the student to determine where they are, and all those assessments have already been done, we determine that a child is below where they need to be in their reading level. First off, we provide really strong tier one instruction in the classroom. So we need to ensure that the classroom teacher knows exactly what the need is. And because they're the ones that did the assessment side by side, they're the ones that are going to begin to tailor their small group instruction to focus very specifically on their needs. So they'll be in a small group. that's tailored directly to their reading need. And then additionally, they'll get a second dose of tier
114two intervention, which is so important to truly accelerate their progress. They'll work with an additional reading teacher that's in the classroom that partners with the classroom teacher. And instead of being independent by themselves for the next 30 minutes, they would be working with the reading intervention specialist to give them additional support. in that manner. So that's one way that we use the universal screener, the reading assessment, to then determine what it looks like inside the classroom and then what it looks like at that second tier level. The same thing can happen with our social-emotional screener. You know, we've always had the check survey, but that gives us general school-wide information about how our kids are feeling about school. The new social-emotional screener that we have gives us very specific feedback related to individual students. So
115we can look into the mindsets of our children and how they're feeling about school. Do they have friends? Are they, you know, are they connecting with their classroom teachers? And we can use that screener to, again, the teacher gets that information and finds out, you know, there are some children that are feeling disconnected from their classroom. And the teacher can make some personal connections, you know, find out what they love, make some, connect them with a good buddy in the classroom that can be, that can. partner with them and build a friendship. And so the teacher can tailor their tier one instruction based on that information. But also our counselors, right? Our social, any social workers or mental health supports that we have on the school campus can provide that secondary tier two instruction, maybe
116gathering a group of children that are having issues making friends, and they can get that additional tier two social emotional support outside of the classroom. So that We're working together between the tier one inside classroom and tier two out of classroom supports so that we're truly meeting the needs of the child. So that's just a quick example, one social emotional example, and one academic example. That's perfect. Thank you so much. Related to that, I was at Morse High School yesterday and on the counter they had a flyer for the students. It was called Crash. Credit recovery and student, I'm trying to remember what the H was for. But anyway, they are having classes after regular classes, out of class time, so that, thank God, we're not doing that pull-out program anymore. They're still getting their
117instruction at the appropriate time, and then we're adding additional times for them to get additional support. Thank you, Vice President Whitehorse-Hippenpane. And thank you for that question, Trustee Boslow, and Monica, for your response. Really, really helpful kind of getting into this. Sabrina asked for, you know, kind of helping everybody understand specifically how we're identifying and supporting students. You know, and I would just, you know, build on... I think Trustee Patterson's point about the need to sustain this level of investment. So, first of all, again, I think the staff has been extremely clear tonight in your presentation. And part of your clarity is distinguishing between these one-time federal funds, you know, from these different federal relief packages, and ongoing investment. So, you know, and Superintendent Jackson's point is that everything relates back to the LCAP. Everything
118relates back to our priorities. So our key investments in these priorities are from our ongoing funds, from our LCFF, from our ongoing categorical funds. You know, we're prioritizing where to use those funds. And so you don't see those reflected so much in this report because it's focused on the ESSER III. But it's important to know that, you know, that the ongoing funds, we are prioritizing in the same way. And then, you know, the point that I think Trustee Patterson is raising and Dr. Jackson is highlighting is when these one-time federal funds go away, it's not like our kids won't need these investments anymore. They're going to need the extended learning. They're going to need the social and emotional support. Maybe, hopefully, we don't need as much with some of the health and safety investments. But
119the ongoing, as Monica pointed out in the pie chart, where most of these resources are going, they're going into areas that students should have had pre-COVID, shouldn't have taken a pandemic to get to these resources, and students will need them going forward. And so the advocacy that Superintendent Jackson talked about is so critical. And that advocacy has to begin now, not a couple of years from now when we're about to see the federal money run out. One important place, you know, for all of our advocacy, you know, people who care about public schools across the country, is the president's proposed budget for the Department of Education. So, you know, there's a lot of attention appropriately right now on the, you know, kind of the Build Back Better plan. But and that plan has important investments,
120particularly in early childhood that can, you know, help support, for instance, our universal TK. But the president's ongoing budget proposal talks about a doubling of Title I. That's an enormous ongoing investment that can sustain, you know, many of these investments that we're talking about here. It talks about a significant increase in the federal support for special ed, which we know has been woefully inadequate, you know, forever. uh and and it will take time to get it up to the 40 level that you know the federal government is supposed to be supporting special ed but it's certainly a start you know in the president's proposed budget so A place where this advocacy for the ongoing investment can happen right away is the conversation about the budget at the federal level and what the president is proposing
121for the Department of Education. And that's the beginning of the sustaining of, you know, these federal investments beyond the relief packages. That's a place where our advocacy can certainly begin and focus right now. And then we've got the state budget coming up. We'll hear the governor's proposal in January, and that fight remains a constant for us. So with all of that, we've got a motion and a second. Trustee Patterson? Aye. Trustee Beiser? Aye. Trustee McQuarrie? Aye. Trustee Bozzo? aye vice president whitehurst payne ollie and barrera i great okay we will now move on we get a uh a motion first on uh items uh f uh f one two and four so moved motion by trustee visor seconded by trustee bozzo we do have one public comment on item f2 and that is from megan
122glenn megan are you available Item F2 is about our board advisory committee reports and our briefings and summaries. Hello. Yes, go ahead, Megan. You've got three minutes. Thank you. Hello. I'm the parent of an eighth grader with moderate to severe disabilities at a San Diego Unified School. He spends his entire academic day in the moderate to severe classroom, with the exception of PE and an elective. San Diego Unified has entirely failed to provide him with a meaningful, guaranteed, viable curriculum as you currently do not have one for moderate to severe students. On textbook pickup day, he comes home with a blank notebook. Without a curriculum, his chances of earning an A through G diploma get further away each and every day. San Diego Unified's commitment to only offering an A through G diploma denies him
123the diploma he could earn if he lived in another district within the state of California. And yet, San Diego Unified will count his certificate of completion when he gets it towards the district's graduation rate to deny my child access to the meaningful employment and post-secondary opportunities available to those with diplomas with one hand. while quietly awarding themselves the credit of graduating him with the other, is appalling and serves only the district, not the student. But I guess I'm not surprised. After all, the San Diego Unified School District's vision statement fails to acknowledge my child's very existence. I would say San Diego Unified is failing its students with moderate to severe disabilities, but that would mistakenly imply that the district was even trying in the first place. Thank you, Megan. Okay, we've got a motion on
124items F1, 2, and 4. If no further discussion on those items, Trustee Patterson? Aye. Trustee McQuarrie? Aye. Thank you. Trustee Bozzo? Aye. Trustee Beiser? Aye. Vice President Whitehorse-Payne? Aye. And Pereira, aye. Okay, we will move on to item f3 now and this is the resolution in the matter of addressing anti-semitism and affirming the value of Jewish students staff and families authored by trustees Patterson and vice president white first aid on we've got a number of Public speakers who have signed up on this item on either side of the issue and I will just ask for the board's consent in Allowing for a doubling of time So normally we allow for 10 minutes throw and con of public comments and I would have left to ask that we allow for 20 minutes pro and con or
125for this item So moved. Okay, moved by Trustee McCrory. Thank you. Seconded by Trustee Bozzo. Trustee Patterson. Aye. Vice President Whitehorse-Payne. Aye. Trustee McCrory. Aye. Trustee Bozzo. Sorry, aye. Thank you. Trustee Becer. Aye. And Barrera, aye. Okay, why don't we go straight to the comments then, and then we will come back to discussion of the resolution. So we'll begin on the support side and what I'll just do is alternate 10 minutes support, 10 minutes opposition, go back and forth. So, and as speakers, you have one minute each. So I'll start with Karar Ali. Do we have Karar available? We'll move to Tamar Caspi. Hi. Go ahead, Tamar. Thank you. On behalf of Peer K-12, I want to first give credit to student board member Zachary Patterson for his courage and perseverance in writing this resolution.
126It has been an honor and a privilege to work with him on this resolution. Zach, you are an incredible young man with a bright future ahead of you. Thank you also to co-sponsor Dr. Whitehurst Payne for your support. They came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me. That's from Pastor Martin Niemöller. This afternoon, we sent the board a letter with the endorsement of 50 Jewish organizations comprising nearly 100 local Jewish leaders, all in support of this resolution, including every major Jewish agency and every synagogue. Why? Because the threat of anti-Semitism is real. The number of students that have said they've experienced anti-Semitism is astounding and unacceptable. All students, as well as staff,
127should feel safe while at school, and that includes, must include, Jewish students and staff. This resolution represents the voice of the organized Jewish community asking you, our elected representatives, to speak out against and take steps to combat anti-Jewish hatred within our schools before it gets any worse. Bigotry against us should be taken as seriously as bigotry against all other historically oppressed minorities in this community. All we are asking you to do is recognize that demonizing, delegitimizing, and holding double standards against the one Jewish state in the world as an act of bigotry. Thank you. Thank you. Leora Bergstein. Do we have Leora? Yes. Yes, go ahead, Leora. Yes, go ahead. Thank you so much. Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for having me. My name is Leora Bergstein, and I'm a Jewish teen educator
128in the San Diego Jewish community, working with teens from this district every single day. And I was a San Diego teen, born and raised, growing up. And it's... honest, it's disheartening for me to witness the fact that Jewish students are still fighting for their right to live without fear, especially in their learning environments, along with many other communities who are still living with these similar fears and fighting for these rights as well. And we ask that in addition to your commitment to your learnings and fighting for the rights of communities. throughout this entire district that you also commit to learning more about the history behind the specific form of hatred known as antisemitism and award it the same attention as you would for other communities. It wasn't that long ago, under 10 years ago, where
129I was a public student in San Diego and I was told on my campus by a fellow student that I would be murdered one day for being Jewish. And it's completely disheartening that just a couple of weeks ago in my work inbox, I received a message about a student at the same school that I attended. um learning to know that he was assaulted for being a jewish student it is clear now more than ever that i think you've lost the spectrum especially with the adaptation of the iraq thank you so much okay um ariella moelle we have ariella with us good evening everyone my name is ariella moelle and i'm a latina jewish student in san diego i'm also concerned You would expect that a teen like me would be stunned to hear things such
130as Hitler was right. But alas, I'm spending my Tuesday afternoon here, scared that students are being left without education around anti-Semitism. I am here today to ask you to vote yes on the resolution titled Anti-Semitism and Affirming the Value of Jewish Students, Staff, and Families. The IWRA working definition on anti-Semitism is an educational tool that helps to identify how hate can manifest depending on the context. We're simply asking for the same acknowledgement of our lived experiences that all minority communities deserve. It's disheartening that just last month, my friend was thrown a penny. She was asked to pick it up simply because she is a Jew. A minute could never sum up the complexity of this nuanced issue. Please signal that hate as such is not acceptable and commit to increased education by voting yes to
131this resolution. Thank you. Thank you, Arielle. Esther Turkey, Turkey. Since I was a child, I've always believed in the power of education. And in this case of anti-Semitism, I believe that education holds the same power. Today, we use the power of education to prevent racism and discrimination. We use education as a way to acknowledge and combat the struggles other marginalized communities experience and give them the respect they deserve in doing so. Education has always been the road we take when combating hate. And this time, when it comes to Jewish people and the hate they experience, it should be no exception. As a historically oppressed minority, we deserve the same treatment and the same resources to combat this hate. As the leaders of this district, it is your responsibility to provide every student with a safe
132space where they can follow and express their beliefs without receiving backlash or harassment. Being a member of a historically oppressed minority makes us more susceptible to hate, and in my personal experience, even if I try to educate as many people as I can, it will never be as powerful as the knowledge that a teacher can provide and educate hundreds with. Unfortunately, Jews like myself are experiencing hate and discrimination directed towards us because of misconceptions and misinformation about what is simply criticism of Israel and what is evident anti-Semitism. While everyone is entitled to their own opinions, they cannot deny. Thank you. Thanks so much. Devorah Marcus. Hi, thank you so much. Thank you for inviting me. And I want to thank our two co-sponsors of this important resolution. As a Jewish people, we're the only group
133who is a minority with a long history of oppression that is repeatedly asked to justify our status as a minority and who is largely singled and targeted by things like... the conflagration of talking about the Israel-Palestine conflict and the need for our students to have safety in their classrooms. Students regularly come to me expressing their fear, their concern, and the stories that happened to them in their San Diego classrooms. This resolution is an important moment for the San Diego Unified Community and its leaders to stand up and say... We believe in protecting the rights of our Jewish students, that we recognize our Jewish community as a minority who makes up less than 2% of global population, less than 3% of population here in San Diego. We are thankful that you're taking the time to consider,
134and we ask that you consider safety with the same... of care and concern that we hope for all minorities and all students, regardless of ethnicity, of religion, of background. We believe in celebrating the dignity of every human being, and this resolution does that. We thank you for your time and your consideration. Thank you. Eduardo Pucco. Can you hear me? Yes, go ahead, Eduardo. Alright, hi, my name is Eduardo Pucco and I'm a member of the Jewish community in San Diego. These past few weeks have been extremely saddening in our Jewish community. We never expect for Jews to be discriminated against in San Diego and even less for it to be in our community, in our school system. We don't ask for special privileges, but we do demand to be treated with the respect that everyone
135deserves. I believe this shouldn't even be a debate. How can Jews go to school if they feel unsafe? At its worst, antisemitism has led to forced conversions, ethnic cleansing, massacres and genocide across Europe and the Middle East. Historically, the violence has been preceded by the spread of racist ideas and ideologies and hate crimes against the Jews that were left unchecked by the societies in which Jews lived. One way in which the Western world has engaged in anti-Semitism is by refusing to acknowledge the Jewish people's history of oppression or our unique struggle against hatred and violence today. Therefore, I ask you to please follow suit and vote yes in an effort to support our community. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Eduardo. Jake Zukov? Hi. I want to thank you for opening the
136public comment. So just this week, I've had to deal with and take down posters labeling Jews colonizers, comparing the Israel-Palestine conflict, the genocide of Native Americans, and shouting things like, So I think it's clear this resolution is timely. It's needed. But more importantly, I think it's... It's been developed by experts on anti-Semitism. And again, I want to emphasize that this resolution is not relevant to the question of ethnic studies. It's not a proposal against that. Really what it is, is we're asking the district to acknowledge that anti-Semitism is varied. It comes in many forms. And it's the duty of this district to respond to that and to acknowledge it. for the protection of both Jewish students and also Jewish staff members. Yay. Nicole Bernstein. We have Nicole. Okay, we'll try Edie Wills. We have Edie.
137Oh, there's Nicole. Go ahead, Nicole. Hi, this is Nicole Bernstein. First, I wanted to thank the board. I wanted to thank the board for considering this resolution, especially Zach, who has just been an incredible inspiration. When I was growing up, I experienced the same anti-Semitism that a lot of the students today are experiencing. We were always made to feel different. We were never accepted. Whatever the evil was of the moment is what apparently the Jews encapsulated. The IHRA definition is the one that more than 90% of the world's Jews agree on. If we are not able to define anti-Semitism for ourselves, then I can't imagine who would. I really want to thank the board for considering this resolution. I urge you to vote yes, condemn anti-Semitism, and let us ensure the safety of all of
138our students and all of our kids who go to school here in San Diego. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Nicole. And Edie Wills, I think you're on mute, Edie. Yes, go ahead. We can hear you. First of all, thank you to the board for considering this resolution. This resolution is about anti-Semitism and denouncing it in all of its forms. That is simply what we're asking. When we talk with kids, with families, we can tell you the community is hurting. The pain that they are feeling, the fear that they are feeling of not wanting to Tell anyone that they're Jewish to not wear the Jewish stars or any indication that they're Jewish is haunting. No community, no individual should ever have to hide a part of themselves. And we're asking this board to
139pass this resolution to say no. Anti-Semitism in any form is not acceptable. And we are here to say as a community, as a part of the community, that no. We know that Jews worldwide, and especially Jewish students, regularly find themselves targeted by exclusion, marginalization, harassment, or even violence due to the real or perceived identification with Zionism. More and more Jewish students are being forced to relinquish a core part of their identity to participate in school activities and in public life as equals. This is anti-Semitism. We ask the board... to pass this resolution and say no vehemently to anti-Semitism. Thank you. Thank you, Edie. And we'll do the last on the support side for this round, Karen DePodesta. We have Karen. Yes. Go ahead, Karen. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Thank you to the San
140Diego Unified Board. My name is Karen and I am a mom of four. And I don't know how many on this call or on the board are parents, but if you are, you probably agree that the one thing we care about the most is the safety and the well-being of our children. So let me tell you what the landscape looks like for my four children who are Jewish. Even though we make 2% of the world population, 57% of religious-based crimes are on Jews. And just in the last five years, it's been on a 60% rise. And the sad part is that these are no longer headlines that I read about. This is literally happening in our backyard. I now know people. I now know personal stories. of kids that are beat up simply because they're
141Jewish, of kids who roll down their window and say, where are all the Jews? I want to kill them. Of kids that spray swastikas on my friends' mailboxes. I am sure you would agree, no one should fear being the target of discrimination, of harassment, of vandalism, certainly not of verbal and physical assault. And this is what's happening today when kids are perceived, simply perceived, to identify with the state of Israel. And sadly, kids are relinquishing the core of their identity. So thank you for being a guest on this resolution. Thanks so much. Okay, we'll now move to 10 minutes on the opposed side, and we'll start with Tricia Gallagher-Gertson. Tricia, are you there? Yes, I am. Can you hear me? I'm here. Can you hear me? Yes, go ahead, Tricia. Thank you. Thank you, Trustee
142Patterson and Trustee Whitehurst-Payne, so much for taking up this very important resolution. I'm a parent of three children in the district, and we condemn anti-Semitism in school and society. As our speakers have so painfully shared this evening, and my own neighbors have endured, anti-Semitism and our fight against it is too serious an issue to politicize. The fight against anti-Semitism should represent the full community of diverse groups in San Diego. However, the proposed resolution does not represent the full diversity of Jewish people and groups in San Diego. Because the resolution contains divisive, highly debated political elements, I ask that you please consider omitting the names of specific organizations or references to definitions that do not represent the full diversity of San Diego's Jewish community. Naming specific organizations and their political positions creates a perceived bias. Please
143affirm our district's support for Jewish students and condemnation of anti-Semitism in an inclusive way for our whole community. Thank you so much for your consideration. Thank you, Trish. Jamal Conj. We have Jamal. Can you hear me? Yes, go ahead, Jamal. Yeah, I oppose the resolution to partner with bona fide Islamophobic organizations, ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Anti-Semitism is a serious matter, and it must be confronted. SDUSD cannot, however, do that by working with proven Islamophobic organizations unless you plan to supplant anti-Semitism with Islamophobia and ignore the rights of your Muslim pupils. People have the right to criticize the American government and can criticize Republicans and Democrats. Israel and Zionism should not be the exception for this criticism. ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center conflates Jewish values with Israeli occupation with the building of Jewish-only
144homes on Palestinian-occupied land and conflates the inhumane Israeli siege on Gaza with Judaism. This by itself contributes to anti-Semitism. While I cannot ask ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center to change their politics, I can ask SDUSD board not to partner with Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian organizations and protect the interests of pupils from American Muslims and Arab ethnicities. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jamal. Nada Dibas. We have nada. Hello. Yes, go ahead. Yeah. Hi I was born and raised in San Diego and I have long time in an active member of the community My issue this resolution is that it falsely equates anti-zionism with anti-semitism Zionism is a political ideology and opposing it cannot be anti-semitic the same way opposing any other political ideology cannot be inherently racist This is true on its face without diving
145deeper and breaking down what Zionism actually is and the violent beliefs that it perpetuates Not letting people openly criticize this political ideology is outright dystopian and the equivalent of preventing students from engaging in critical thinking. The equating of anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism downplays and outright ignores the main source of anti-Semitism in the United States, which is white nationalism. It is not only not anti-Semitic to criticize Israel. It is absolutely crucial and critical and necessary that we do so. Palestinians are living under a brutal occupation, and the fight for justice and freedom requires our advocacy. Though I strongly urge you to vote against this senseless resolution, regardless of how you vote, we will always criticize Israel and stand up for justice for Palestinians. An unjust law is no law at all, and we will engage in civil
146disobedience if this resolution is passed. Our desire for justice and freedom runs deeper than any resolution in any law or any state oppressors. Thank you. Thank you. Lalia, Alali? Hi, my name is Selma. I'm actually taking my mom's spot, Lalia, today because she's unable to make it because she is in class right now. For those of you who don't know, my mom sits as the chair of the DLAC committee and has worked years with San Diego Unified, specifically with English learner students. What I would like to say today is that ethnic studies adopted by the school district is about recognizing and creating a safe space for every ethnic group. San Diego Unified for years has adopted policies on social emotional learning and culturally responsive teaching to create a safe space for every student. This resolution
147contradicts with ethnic studies goals and the social emotional and cultural responsive teaching policies. Furthermore, the equating of anti-Semitism with criticism of Israel by lobbyist groups represents a grave threat to academic freedom and the fight for Palestinian freedom and equality. It sets a precedent for other state legislatures and even school districts. and encourages the silencing of educators around the nation. Pro-Israel interest groups should not define anti-Semitism. Definitions that name criticism of Israel's anti-Semitic are opposed by many Jewish organizations, both within the United States and internationally. They downplay the main source of anti-Semitism in the United States, which is white nationalism. We urge San Diego Unified to reject. Thank you. Okay, thanks. Farida Erikat. Do we have Farida? Yeah, I'm here. Yes, go ahead. Yes, I'm here. Hi, my name is Farida Erekat. I went to SDUSD
148from K through 12, and during my time there, I experienced a lot of anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia, and the school board's partnership with the ADL and Simon Weissel Bell Center will only exacerbate this. These organizations have documented histories of using their positions of power to... designate organizations representing marginalized and racialized communities and even organizations representing Jewish communities as anti-Semitic and hate groups. They use this as a means of suppressing BIPOC communities, manifesting in this case through the silencing of Palestinian advocacy. This same organization's lobby against ethnic studies statewide and are pushing against critical race theory. This is very obviously a firm way of pushing back on communities of color and trying to suppress them. This resolution is also proposing the adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which has basically been used to criminalize and
149stigmatize the Palestinian freedom struggle and any sort of criticism of the Israeli government. As community members, we wholeheartedly reject the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism and believe that the SDUSD can and should make a clear statement against anti-Semitism without relying on the definition. Thank you. Nancy Nguyen. We have Nancy. Okay. Janine Ericot. Hello, everyone. Can you hear me? Yes. Go ahead, Janine. Hi, thank you all for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Janine Erika. I attended San Diego Unified School Districts K-12, and I could feel the pages, the amount of anti-Arab, Islamophobic experiences I received from peers and teachers throughout my time. which is why I'm so concerned by this resolution. This IHRA resolution criminalizes and stigmatizes Palestinians, and it puts an intense amount of scrutiny on Palestinian activity and Palestinian students. This equating
150of anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel by lobbyist groups, because this is a political moment, this resolution doesn't care about the welfare of its students. But instead, it's the political interests and perspectives of a narrow consistency unnecessarily centering and affirming the ADL. The ADL, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Simon Winslow Center, which are the two organizations outlined that SCUSD would partner with, have a long history of anti-Black, anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Talestinian racism. And I completely oppose any education on anti-Semitism from these organizations when they have a history of bigotry and racism. Thank you so much. Hannah Miyamoto. We have Hannah. Okay. Kyle Weinberg. Hi, I'm a Jewish middle school educator and founding member of our district's ethnic studies advisory committee. I support our district's efforts to combat antisemitism and all forms of oppression. This resolution, as currently
151constructed, however, is divisive and will hinder our ability to work together as San Diego Unified community members to advance social justice and respect for all students in our schools. The reference to ethnic studies in the resolution is unwarranted, as ethnic studies is a powerful initiative within our district that uplifts the histories and movements of communities of color and is fundamentally opposed to anti-Semitism. Also, there is no need to reference the already existing controversial issues board policy, as San Diego Unified educators should be trusted to use our professional discretion when selecting materials to use in the classroom. Please amend the resolution so that we can move forward together around our shared values. Thank you, Kyle. Dr. Alam Mutaseb? Dr. Alam Mutaseb? Can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Oh, it took a minute. I'm a professor
152of media studies at Cal State San Bernardino, an aunt of several nieces and nephews attending public schools and colleges in San Diego. First, let me emphasize the non-negotiable right and duty to fight against anti-Semitism, which is part of my intersectional approach to justice. And while I'm happy that you're addressing this issue, I was shocked at the veiled attempt to politicize this crucial discussion in favor of a foreign country, which is the state of Israel, and at the behest of its lobby in the U.S., which includes organizations that are heavily affiliated with Israel, like the ADL and Simon Wittensohn Center. who have a history of racism themselves, surveillance against people of color, and undermining many of the initiatives aiming at fighting racism. As an expert on this topic, who spent the last 20 years researching and
153teaching on the Palestinian history and struggle, I find it alarming that an important public educational board like yours would consider a measure that would stifle the academic freedom of its faculty and students to address important historical and political issues related to the Palestinian struggle against the colonial rule and oppression of the state. of Israel when you equate anti-Israeli or anti-Zionist materials and speech with anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic materials and speech. Thank you, Dr. Muthaseb. Thank you. Please vote against it. Okay. And last on this round, on the opposed side, Jay Costales. We have Jay. Yes, I'm here. I'm a Jewish Sandy again a student and member of the Filipino youth organization on a client I absolutely think that real cases of anti-semitism in our community and on our campuses should be addressed however this revolutions this
154resolutions divisive language and false conflation of anti-semitism with anti-zionism as is highly offensive and frankly disturbing I don't need Israel to be Jewish nor does anyone but within the ADL and IHRA's definition of antisemitism to say that would be turning my back on my religion. This resolution asks for an unbiased or a balanced depiction of the occupation, but trying to justify this to students would deny them the right to understand Judaism as a religion that has existed for thousands of years before the modern state of Israel, not to mention how unfair it is for Palestinian students to have to empathize with a violent occupation force. Palestinian students in general deserve the right to learn. about their heritage accurately, not through a Zionist sympathizing lens. This resolution would also put Palestinian groups under even more scrutiny
155and demonize their struggle for liberation. This would also end up putting Jewish groups whose mobilization relies on youth and student interaction at risk and further divide our community on this issue. Thank you, Jay. Thank you. Thanks so much. Okay, now for the second round on the support side, we'll start with Stacey Bresler-Reinstein. We have Stacey. Hello, this is Julian Reinstein, and I'm speaking on behalf of my mom, Stacey Dresser-Reinstein. Go ahead. I'm a sophomore at University City High School, and I'm Jewish. I don't want to see anti-Semitism in our schools, especially not in our curriculum. And today, one in four Jews have been targeted with anti-Semitism. I can't believe that in this day and age, I still have to make up work on the Jewish High Holy Days. And I encourage the efforts made to
156keep these harmful and hateful ideas out of our school districts. I hope that we can teach inclusivity and diversity in our schools so long as it does not include anti-Semitic thoughts. It is my hope that the entire San Diego Unified Board will vote to support the resolution. Thank you. Thank you. Anna DeAngelis? Hi, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead, Anna. Hi, good evening. So my name is Anna De Angelis and I am a San Diego Unified School District parent of two. I am proud, very proud to be an American who was born and raised in Italy. Growing up as a Jewish student in public schools in my home country, I have experienced firsthand racial slurs, verbal aggression and more. And I vowed to raise my children in a much better place. And that is
157why I'm here. Antisemitism is rising in full force, emboldened, and it is growing in our society and in our schools. And we need you, this board, to help us. This is why I am asking you to please send a clear message that antisemitism does not have a place in American schools. Thank you, board. Thank you, Anna. Julie Littman. We have Julie. Hi. On behalf of Julie Littman, my name is Nate Neustadt, and I am a student. Through my time in school, I've been bullied for my lack of stature and for my extracurriculars. But in the last year, especially during last spring's war, I started being bullied because of my religion, because I am Jewish. I'm only 16, but I'm old enough to understand that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is so complex that to truly understand it
158takes intense study, years of analysis, and exploration. It's dangerous to allow curriculum that demonizes one side of this conflict over another. Students like me looked at people like you to make schools a safe place for all of us. This resolution helps to do that. This resolution is necessary to ensure curricula does not demonize one side over another. There have been times in the last year that I've had to stop and think whether or not I want to wear my Star of David around my neck. And that's in San Diego. Can you even imagine having to wonder whether or not it is safe for you to walk around the city showing your cross? I'm begging you to adopt this resolution in its entirety. Entirety. I'm begging you to protect us. Thank you. Thank you so much.
159Adi Cohen. We have Adi. Okay. Uri Feldman. Can you hear me? Yes. Go ahead, Uri. Hi. Thank you. My name is Uri Feldman. I'd like to thank the SDUSD Board of Trustees, especially Zach Patterson and Dr. Sharon Whitehurst-Payne. I admire what you as trustees have to do. You have to be brave and make difficult decisions. And you are constantly attacked from all sides. What I can tell you, I went to school, elementary school, middle school, high school, university in San Diego. I am now a parent of three children in San Diego. And what you are seeing is really an attempt to politicize a discriminatory practice. This resolution is something that allows the district to protect its students. If, and what I heard from the other side was there are Islamophobic tendencies that happen in San
160Diego, that should be dealt with, and there should be a resolution to protect that. That's not what's on the table today. What's on the table today for you to decide is whether you will defend and support your Jewish population that is currently not only being attacked with more hate crimes than any of your other populations, but is also forcing people to hide their own identities. So I urge you to support this measure. Thank you. Thanks so much. Lynn Kaplan. Do we have Lynn? Yes. Okay, go ahead, Lynn. Hi, I'm actually Heidi Gantwork, speaking on behalf of Lynn Kaplan. I am the interim president and CEO of Jewish Federation of San Diego County. Federation has an 84-year history supporting Jewish life in San Diego, and we would prefer not to have to focus on anti-Semitism, but
161the current climate in San Diego, in California, and the U.S. compels us to do so. We support this resolution as written, condemning anti-Semitism and affirming the value of Jewish students, staff, and families. Students must feel safe to learn and faculty must feel safe to teach. It is incumbent upon this board and this district to create conditions that make every student and member of faculty and staff feel safe. I have three children, all of whom attended San Diego Unified Schools, and all three experienced anti-Semitism on campus. Historical echoes of anti-Semitic acts and policies are growing louder as public discourse becomes more divisive and our public institutions have a responsibility to step up and take a stand for what is right. This resolution is an important step in recognizing the reality of anti-Semitism. It simply cannot be
162tolerated, nor should any form of hatred or bigotry directed at any group be tolerated in our schools. Federation and our partners stand ready to support the Unified School District in any way we can to ensure schools create safe and welcoming environments. But the Jewish community cannot do it alone. We need local organizations and entities to stand together with us, and together we condemn hate. We support this resolution. Thank you. Thank you. Merov Shinar? We have Merov. Okay. Shakar Lovett? We have Shakar. Okay. Lana Gold. Hi. Yes, go ahead. So much has been said, but basically I want to say that unfortunately we didn't see the speakers, but I happen to know a lot of them. And we have kids since middle school through high school and college, et cetera, that have been represented here. And
163the fact that they have to take action and come and speak to you is... very telling of the situation that they're living. It is very difficult for all of us to live in a surrounded where... where we don't feel like we can be ourselves, where it's a threat to have our Star of David or our name in Hebrew or a yarmulke, et cetera. It is very, very important that everyone feels safe and that everyone feel accepted. And I would just like to thank you for taking up this resolution to condemn anti-Semitism. Thank you very much. Thank you. Iris Barr. Do we have Iris? Okay, Nava Michon. We have Nava. Okay, Alana Markowitz. Alana. Elon Pesmanic. No, Elon. Abigail Pesmanic. Do we have Abigail? And if there's anybody that I called on that you can unmute.
164Let's try to get a couple more. Dana Ben-Artsy. My name is Nava Mishan. Okay. Go ahead, Nava. Hi. Thank you for letting me speak. I just want to say that Jews around the world, especially here, Jewish students regularly find themselves targeted by different organizations. They get harassment and sometimes get violent. just because they love and believe in State of Israel and Zionism. We are please asking to please help the student that just want to come and learn in the school to be safe and care about everybody. It's a safe issue. Thank you. Thank you, Nava. Dana Ben-Artsy. Okay, David Michon. uh sharon zarfati okay i'll call a couple more and then we'll uh go back to the opposed side annoy nehardea and yotam ben chine okay we'll we'll move back to the uh uh last
165round for the opposed side and we'll start with winter smiley we have winter okay patrick malcoon Hello, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead, Patrick. Yes, hi, thank you all for being here and for hosting this. First and foremost, I want to acknowledge the pain of all the Jewish folks that have spoken today, that we acknowledge on the opposition side that anti-Semitism is real. but we can jock and chew gum at the same time. Our biggest issue with the opposition of F3 right now is the conflation of anti-Semitism with anti-Semitism. It's disrespectful to the lives lost in the 2019 Poway Synagogue shooting as well. The definitions right now we're concerned about is the ADL and the SWC and the IRA definitions. We approve of the resolution in of itself, but we need other sources to
166include Black Jewish voices, Indigenous Jewish voices. Palestinian Jews also do exist. The speakers in the pro side as well have been predominantly white. The issue here right now is academic integrity, that anti-Semitism is genuinely real, but the true way to combat it is by having critical race theory studies and actual genuine studies that show that we are on the right side of history, that this is a matter of power dynamics, and that these organizations of the ADL and SWC and the IRA have consistently reported folks that are organizations that are pro-Palestinian as hate groups. And really, that is not the case. So again, we can walk and chew gum, but we cannot conflate anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism. But anti-Semitism is so genuinely real. You must include Black Jewish voices as well. Thank you. Thanks so much.
167Lofty Eldeen. Lofty Eldeen. Okay. Zach Baker. Olympia Beltran. Layla Britton. We have Layla. Avital. We have Avital. Ricardo Medina. Is Ricardo with us? Okay. Niall L. Wardani. No Niall. Susan Thompson. We have Susan. Okay. Linda Williams. Hello. Can you hear me now? Yes. Go ahead, Linda. Thank you. Yes. My name is Linda Williams. I retired after 39 years of teaching K-6. I graduated from San Diego Unified School District, as did our daughter. And I am, of course, in support of anything that helps support students and staff and families whose rights are not being respected. condemn anti-Semitism and absolutely want to have inclusivity and diversity. My concerns are the fact that the inclusion... four times of the word Israel and one time of the word Zionism. I would just plead with you to delete those. That
168is so political. It is so divisive. I would direct your attention to the resolution if you count down on the whereases. Those words occur in numbers 9, 11, and 12. And please eliminate anything that is a name of a country and therefore just doesn't belong in this resolution, please. But I, of course, support the heart of it. Thank you. Can you hear me? I was muted. We can hear you. Go ahead. Thank you so much. I'm Niall Elwardani. I attended San Diego Unified, and so did my children. I'm a public health and public policy professor. While anti-Semitism has no place within San Diego Unified, religion-based discrimination is a problem for many groups in our city, and we need to take a stand for all of us. Some historical context. In 2015, the Committee to Support
169Cultural Diversity created a content and training materials for district teachers and administrators to address the bullying of Muslim students within the district. Research shows that Muslim students are bullied three times more than any other group. We met with Cindy Martin and board members, and we were prepared to start training when a Jewish organization launched a lawsuit against the district in 2016, stating that the program was biased towards one group. This lawsuit stopped the whole intervention program completely. This resolution is doing exactly the same thing. It is doing precisely what that organization did to stop us addressing one specific group. This is very clearly hypocrisy. You cannot have it both ways. This new resolution should not favor one group over another. Thank you, Niall. And should have no political agenda whatsoever. I urge the board to
170vote no on this resolution. Thanks so much. Godwin Higa. Do we have Godwin? Okay. Ann Barron. Do we have Ann? Okay. Lorraine Rehan. I am here. Can you hear me? Yes. Go ahead, Ann. Thank you. I'm sorry I was having issues. Yes, I'm also concerned about the specific use of names in what this policy is. Of course, we don't accept anti-Semitism or any other ism that operates. And I fear that by continuing to focus on Israel and on some of the organizations that are cited in the resolution, that we're going to continue to flame the discord and there will be less conversation, less reconciliation, just more discord. So I prefer that we would rewrite the resolution to include all those groups that have been continuously impacted by hate and racism here in the United States
171as well as around the world. Thank you. Thanks so much, Anne. Lorraine Rehan? Jack Rheingold. Hello, I'm here. Can you hear me? Yep. Okay, thank you. Good evening. I'm an arts educator and I've worked with high school students throughout the county for the last eight years. I'm here today because I stand firmly against all forms of oppression, including anti-Semitism. I support self-determination, and I have a responsibility to protect my students. Therefore, I oppose this resolution, which harms all of my students, including my Jewish students, because it offers a very narrow definition of anti-Semitism by equating the cultural and religious identities of Jewish people to the state of Israel. The language in the resolution conflates Zionism, a political ideology, with Judaism. Criticism of a nation state for its policies that harm the Palestinian people is not
172an attack on the Jewish community. Failing to make the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism compromises the integrity of academic freedom and ethnic studies curriculum. I ask that the board re-evaluate the definition of anti-Semitism put forth in this resolution in order to protect all of our students and their families. Thank you. Thank you, Lorraine. Okay. And Karim LMs. We have Karim. And try one more time. Godwin Higa and Jack Reingold. Okay. Okay. So thank you, everybody, for speaking. And I know that we had some speakers that were signed up and unable to speak tonight. But we appreciate your comments, and we know that many of you have submitted written comments as well, which we've looked at. So I'm going to just ask the board for the permission to go first on this issue, and it's because
173I want to move approval of this resolution and very much thank Trustees Patterson and Vice President Whitehurst-Payne. for your hard work on this resolution. I think it's absolutely critical. that the district sends a clear and strong message against antisemitism and in support of our Jewish students and families. I think we've heard from our speakers tonight and certainly beyond our speakers tonight that antisemitism is very real and it's a very real experience for students in our district right now. And I think it's critical that this board uh sends a clear message uh that we do not tolerate anti-semitism and we will support our jewish students and families second okay but just thank you trustee beiser there are two amendments that i want to suggest in this resolution and one is um in the whereas that refers
174to the ethnic studies program in the district so i'm just going down through it yeah so it's it's it's Several where as is down it reads as sending a unified school districts operates a robust ethnic studies program seeking to recognize the incredible contributions of minority communities and to promote cultural inclusion. We absolutely do. And, you know, obviously, I think everybody on our board is a strong supporter of ethnic studies. However, I don't think ethnic studies is the place in our district to center our work. to combat and confront anti-semitism and i think having it in this resolution uh creates confusion and the potential for uh conflict in the development of our ethnic studies program so i would uh offer a first amendment which which would be to strike that whereas from uh from the resolution
175And then under the resolved paragraphs, we have, yeah, we have a paragraph that reads, Be it further resolved that the Board of Education supports balanced and open classroom discussion, including the use of unbiased and politically neutral materials on issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as laid out in Board Policy 6144, Controversial Issues, while condemning content that delegitimizes the right of any people, including Jews and Palestinians, to self-determination. Again, while I certainly agree personally uh with uh with the uh spirit behind that paragraph my concern is that i don't believe that we as a district or frankly we as a community are prepared to offer the kind of guidance that our educators would need in order for us to really provide support to educators around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I think a lot of what this discussion is
176tonight and the division that comes from this discussion is people obviously have extremely deep and passionate beliefs about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I think this resolution in other sections works hard to make sure that we don't conflate. uh people's views on the israeli palestinian conflict um with who they are as as members of the jewish community And I think that before we as a district talk about how we intend to teach a subject like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I think we have a lot of work to do as a district and as a community to really support our educators to be able to address that issue. So my two proposed amendments would be to take out the paragraph that refers to the ethnic studies program and to take out the paragraph that talks about how we would
177teach Israeli-Palestinian conflict. but that's what that's what i would propose i i you know later okay thank you uh trustee beiser okay so we have a motion on the floor and again i i thank thank you uh board members for allowing me to go first and make that motion and um so uh board members please uh discuss and trustee patterson Thank you, Board President Barrera. I just wanted to start by saying, obviously, when we look to put in that ethnic studies reference, that was because of the fact that we do have a robust ethnic studies program. And most importantly, because of the fact that the Jewish community does not oppose ethnic studies in any capacity. And I completely understand where you are coming from there. I am okay with that amendment, but I do think
178it is important that we understand that the reason that this was put in in the first place was because of the fact that we wanted to say we don't oppose. We don't oppose ethnic studies. And this resolution, frankly, does not have to do with ethnic studies. And when we try to compare the two, we're not getting anywhere, as you said. We talk about these two things. Ethnic studies was a discipline that was created specifically with those four focus groups. And we recognize that. And then we also recognize that there is room for minority groups to join, and one of them being Jewish studies and talking about anti-Semitism and what that looks like. So that was the intention behind that, and I understand that one that you shared. The second one, I do completely agree with
179the fact that we do have a lot of work to do in an effort to teach this conflict. When we think about a class like world history, where you might spend 30 minutes on this aftermath. There's simply no way to teach this in 30 minutes. There's no way to get a full perspective and to understand that. And what we find in an issue that is so high stakes like this, that to attempt to only teach half of it or a quarter of it or more realistically 5% of it is to really have the inability to give students a full perspective on it. And that's not acceptable. And we worked in that resolution to talk about politically neutral materials, putting that in front of students and having them understand it, talk about it. But we recognize,
180and I recognize, as you said, the challenges with doing that in our current state and where that is. And I think that the 6144, which we referenced, controversial issues, I think that is very important. And I think we do have to stick with that as... we are already obligated to do when we bring up these issues, talking about them, but fully talking about those perspectives. And I understand that. I'm willing to accept that second. I'm willing to accept that amendment on there. And I will say that I think we do have work to do, though. And I don't think that we can. forever go around it. We will have to discuss it at some point, but I recognize the hesitance here, and I appreciate you sharing that. I want to go into them as we
181go to a whole. I just want to start out by taking a moment of silence. Tomorrow marks three years since the deadliest religious-based mass shooting in U.S. history, or one of the deadliest in years, and that's the anti-Semitic shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. where 11 Jewish people were brutally murdered. I'd like to take a moment of silence now for that. Thank you. In the end, this resolution is about one thing, the safety and acceptance of Jewish students and staff on school campuses. And yet here we are one hour later, and it's upsetting. Students all across our district experience hate. And just like that, Jewish students, be it black, white, or any other race, experience hate for that sole reason of being Jewish. And I myself have been questioned by fellow students
182if I can serve in this role on the board because of my religion. These are my real experiences, but they're not isolated. Students across our district are scared. Scared to share their religion, to miss school, to wear kippot on campuses. And when I worked with Dr. Whitehurst-Payne to write this resolution, I did it not just with the ADL, but with the support of Jewish organizations across the Jewish community. Because in the end, anti-Semitism is hatred towards one group of people, and that is the Jewish people. Thus, I know it makes sense to write this resolution with the main support coming from the Jewish community. And this resolution was agreed upon. We heard a lot of things tonight, but I do want to keep in mind, we received a letter this afternoon sharing the full support
183of this resolution by just about every single Jewish organization in San Diego County, including the Jewish Federation, the Jewish Community Foundation, the San Diego Rabbinical Association, Democrats for Peace in the Middle East, the JCC, the San Diego Jewish Academy, Pure K-12, and literally every synagogue in San Diego. So combined with the over 1,000 emails I've received in support of the resolution in the past 48 hours, I, to the best of my knowledge, feel that this resolution does indeed have the support of the overwhelming majority of the Jewish community. And when we worked to write this resolution, we looked at the many, many ways that anti-Semitism moves into our schools. With Jewish people making up 2% of the population and nearly 60% of religiously motivated hate crimes, we know that there is an issue. And in
184this resolution, we recognize that. And we make a commitment to stopping that. And I know as the student board member that when I'm standing up for the experience of students, I'm doing my best, like I would do for any group. So while I'm happy to answer questions and move forward, I ask my colleagues to remember that in the end, we are standing up. Just like when we stood up for Asian hate, just like when we just stood up for Native American Heritage Month. We care about our Jewish students, and tonight let's say that. This resolution has been vetted many times by the people and groups that it affects. We face a lot of challenges in our school, and I hope that in the future we would not need to pass this resolution because we wouldn't
185face these issues. But as long as we continue to hear, see, and experience anti-Semitism as we are on our school campuses, we need to make it clear that there is no place for hate. And it is with that, with the experts in anti-Semitism that helped me write this resolution, to clear an overwhelming support of the Jewish community and the experiences of Jewish students on campus, that I ask for your support for this resolution with the revisions proposed by Trustee Pereira. Thank you, Trustee Patterson. Yes, Vice President Whitehurst-Payne. First of all, let me just say that this is something I really wanted to support because I spent 17 years in this district defending folks being discriminated against, and that was employees primarily. I believe that folks should be able to work, to attend school, to live
186without discrimination, without being discriminated against because of your race, your gender, your color, and all the other categories that are spelled out in federal law. And for students, we have policies on board demanding that students not be discriminated against. So when it came to my attention, and I want to thank Zach for bringing this issue up, I just could not believe that this practice has been going on in our district when we have a clear policy stating... that we will not tolerate discrimination based upon religion or any other categories that we've articulated. And so to hear that, I just really still can't believe it. When I first came on the board, we had an anti... Muslim policy. We've stood up for that group. We've stood up for gays and lesbians, LGBTQ groups to say no
187discrimination. And certainly, we are not going back on our policy and on our beliefs and our philosophy that we will not tolerate discrimination against Jews in this district. That is a no-no. So I heard the discussion about how this policy may have gone a little while here or there or whatever, and I accept your modifications, President Barrera, but I just want to make it very clear, very clear, that that is not discrimination of Jews in this district, will not be tolerated from my perspective. And you'll hear me just beating the bandwagon on that. I shared with them, with Zach and some others, how when I was a freshman in college, one of the things we had to do was to, we had a class by, what do we call them, a graduate level professor in
188history. And I had... a European history teacher who insisted that we do our own primary research. which meant that, as you said, you cannot do this in a half an hour. But we had to go to the main library at Duke University and dig in the files and find the primary documents, letters, newspaper, articles, etc., and do our research on what was happening in Europe when we came up with Hitler and all of that. And I was just simply horrified to actually see the original documents and the deception, the lies that were going forth, the same kind of things we're doing now, just lying and accepting it. We cannot tolerate that when we know it's not true. And in this case, when students are afraid to go to school, they're afraid to be themselves. That
189is totally unacceptable and we we need to insist that all these cases that we've heard about Whatever group is from when we hear about discrimination We have a system in place or we have a system in place to identify those cases Bring them forward and to deal with them. It is not appropriate to have swastikas and all the other things going we should not have that and there should be consequences to that kind of inappropriate behavior and that goes from the top down to the bottom from at school size principals everyone who's engaging in that behavior we need to stop it so that's my challenge to the board to the cabinet and to this school district that we address it, we stop it, and we have to live together on this earth. There's only one
190earth we're on. We have to live together. So that's my two cents worth. Thank you. Thank you, Vice President. Trustee Bozzo. Yeah, thank you. And I want to also thank Trustee Patterson and Trustee Whitehurst-Payne for developing this resolution. Zachary had first told me that he was doing this, I was like, this is fantastic. I mean, it's so much needed. And just wanted to share a little personal connection I have with anti-Semitism and that my dad is Jewish. My mom was not, so that was a big scandal when they got married in the 1950s. But many of my dad's relatives, as many of the people who are probably on the call tonight, were killed during World War II because they didn't make it to this country and because they were Jewish. So pretty much half of
191my family almost was wiped out during a war because of their religion. I mean, people I never got to meet. And this always weighed kind of heavily on me because, you know, as a kid, you'd think, wow, I mean, you just feel helpless and what can you do? And it just has always, you know, been very heavy on my heart. But again, you feel helpless growing up knowing that. So I think just being able to do something because. you know, if I'd had an anti-Semitism resolution at my school, that would have been fantastic. We never had anything like that when I was growing up. And I had multiple, you know, situations where I was, you know, a lot of anti-Semitic insults and things of that nature that I experienced in my life. So being able
192to do something like this is just so, you know, it's miles ahead of where we were. And so I think it's so important. And again, I commend Zachary for bringing this to the forefront. And I am going to be supporting the amended version. And again, yeah, thank you so much to everyone. And I also wanted to point out that, interestingly enough, when I got married to an Italian, so then I had an Italian last name, the anti-Semitic comments went away. But as a Levy, you know, that was my life. You know, my dad was a singer. This was back in the 50s and 60s, back in the East Coast in New York. He had to change his stage name because it was a Jewish name just to get jobs. I think again that we've moved
193we're moving so much forward from where we were and I'm just proud to be able to be in a position now to um do something you know to be to be able to support a resolution that would um take you know to help students now um and for those reasons I will be supporting the resolution as amended thank you thank you trustee bazaar trustee biser Thank you, President Barrera. I think that this is really an important thing that we're working on. I agree with the amendments because I think that we need to make sure that we're not censoring any discourse. But I would like to make sure that when our students in classrooms are learning about anything, that they learn about both sides. Because there are more than one side. There's always more than one
194side to the story. And if people only listen to one side, they won't be getting the truth. I really am glad that a lot of the speakers that spoke against the resolution. also endorsed anti-Semitism and making sure that we're bringing forward a policy and a resolution that will support the end of discrimination against any group of people. So I really appreciate your work, President Barrera, in trying to find a way to make a resolution that everybody could embrace and move forward with. Thank you. Thank you, Trustee Beiser. Trustee McQuarrie. thank you president barrera so i do i also want to thank uh trustee patterson and vice president whitehurst pain and uh for the resolution and the effort that went into it and the uh the amount of community involvement engagement you've used to arrive at
195this uh at the resolution and i want to thank you president brer for for your amendment so tonight we had speakers for and against this resolution that we're in general agreement with action that condemns anti-Semitism, hate, and discrimination and supports schools that are safe for and accepting of all students and families. However, there were questions raised by the passage of this resolution, and I will note five that stood out for me, and two have already been addressed by the amendment. So the two that were addressed was the resolution that includes specific organizational names that implies a specific bias and politicizes the intent and draws attention away from the purpose of the resolution. So I think it's a wise adjustment. The second was the concern about referencing ethnic studies in this resolution. Incoming. And I wonder
196if I could get a response either from Zach or others to the remaining three questions that were raised by those who opposed the resolution. One, the resolution will increase anti-Arab and anti-Islamic behavior. Two, it stifles academic freedom. And three, it does not allow criticism of the Israeli state. Yeah, I would be more than happy to answer that. Well, I just want to start off by asking, why would anti-Semitism in any capacity imply that we would be for any type of anti-Arab hatred? Anti-Semitism is separate from that. And I think that conflating the two to say that supporting one works to increase the other is just not realistic. I would be. happy to sponsor a resolution or co-sponsor a resolution on Islamophobia. I'm looking at that because that's what I believe, because that's what this whole
197board believes. But to make any conflation that the two are somehow intertwined completely defeats the idea that this is a resolution focused on hatred towards Jewish students in anti-Semitism. I do not see how this resolution would, and working across communities, I would be... Confused I would be confused by that. So that would be my response to your first question stifling academic freedom stifling academic freedom Well, we look at this resolution. We are not in any capacity looking to stifle academic freedom This conversation still allows for open discussion and just as we heard this evening this This resolution says that these items will be discussed at times and we will talk about controversial issues But we do that in a manner that presents both sides and it talks about this discussion We actually chose to remove
198that reference just now Discussing the specifics as we talked about that We're probably not ready to bring forth district materials and resources on this but knowing that these things do come up naturally We are bound by the state policy 6144, which goes over controversial issues, and that's already a discussion that has happened at the state level that we don't specifically have control over. If you don't believe in... certain aspects of the state of Israel. And you're welcome to share that in a manner that is appropriate, in a manner that's respectful. And this open discussion is something that does have to happen. But when we talk about, as we mentioned there in their anti-Israel trope, going in to anti-Semitism, that is when the issue crosses the line. And that's where that line has been drawn historically.
199And then obviously, once again, that line drawn by the fact that Who's going to say that besides the Jews that are experiencing those things on a day-by-day basis? That definition comes from Jewish communities, because just like when we look at racism, you're not going to have someone who doesn't experience that define it. Just like we have anti-Semitism, you're going to have that Jewish community define that. Thank you for your response to all three of the remaining questions. I stand ready to support the resolution as amended. Thank you. And if I can just say one final thing. It really is my hope that one day we don't have to deal with this. Because when minority group goes to attack minority group and we go back and forth like this, nobody wins. And we can't move forward.
200And I want to move forward together. To the speakers that said we condemn anti-Semitism, thank you. And we're going to keep working to get there and move forward. Because I truly do believe that we can support each other and we can move forward. And we're in the business and the game of education, and we're going to work to do that together. So it's my hope that we can move forward in this direction, that we wouldn't have to see that. We still, to this day, see anti-Semitic materials. We still have issues on a daily basis, and we can change that. This moves in the right direction. And this resolution, while focusing on Jewish students, is... Let this be a message that we stand up for hate for all groups like we always have and like we
201always will. So maybe next time we can get to where we won't have this long discussion just like we do for every other group that we bring a resolution forth for. Thank you, Trustee Patterson. And just the last thing that I would say on this is it is absolutely our responsibility to pull together as a community and move beyond where this conversation is today. It is not good enough for us to stay in a place where we stereotype each other, we don't listen to each other, we don't understand each other, and we separate from each other when we need to be pulling together to support all of our students and to fight against racism, discrimination, bigotry, everything that limits all of our students. You know, I was having a conversation earlier today where we talk
202about, you know, I so much appreciate the frustration that comes from members of the Jewish community who talk about the fact that they need to constantly somehow justify and prove, you know, that anti-Semitism exists. And let's not forget that it's the Jewish community. that has historically been on the front lines fighting with all of our communities, on the front lines of the civil rights movement, on the front lines of the farmworker movement, on the front lines today of supporting children who are coming into this country as refugees and the work that's been going on at the convention center. I know that members and leaders in the Jewish community here in San Diego are 100 percent committed and have proven that with their action. to fight against discrimination against all of our students. And I also
203know that many of the speakers who signed up in opposition to this resolution are 100% committed and have a proven track record of standing up for all students and working through these issues. I think we can do better as a community. And that's kind of the point. The point is, When we engage around these issues in classrooms with our students, We have to, as adults, so, you know, we can separate Zach from this point, but as adults, we have to walk in and acknowledge with humility that what we've done to date has not been good enough. And that what we're trying to do is equip the next generation to be better than us. to not get stuck in the same places that we've gotten stuck. And so we've got a lot of work to do.
204And a lot of the people I know that either... spoke tonight or have weighed in on this issue um are capable and and ready to do that work together and so um you know i'll you know defer uh to superintendent jackson and not for discussion tonight about how we move that conversation forward um but i i i believe in the people uh that have always contributed uh to our district and to making our our community a better place i believe that we have the ability to do this and and to and to make progress beyond where we are tonight so with that um we will vote on this uh resolution uh as amended and uh trustee patterson trustee beiser aye trustee baza aye trustee macquarie Vice President Whitehurst-Payne? Aye. And Barrera, aye. Okay. Thank you
205for that incredibly important discussion. Okay, we will now move on to an information item, but an item that is extremely important. And this is our Community Advisory Committee for Special Education Semi-Annual Report to the Board. And thank you for your patience. And we'll begin by introducing... Oh, I'm sorry, are we going E1 first? No, we're going G1 and then E. We're going G1 and then E. Got it. Got it. Thank you. So we'll start with the chair of our community advisory committee for special education, Scott Sodi. Thank you, Scott. Thank you, Trustee Barrera. Sorry, are my slides up and ready to go? I don't see them happening yet. They're coming. They're almost up. Great. Thank you. Okay. Next slide, please. Obviously the board knows who I am, but for those who are unaware, my name
206is Scott Sodi. I'm the chair of the Community Advisory Committee for Special Education. The CAC represents over 14,000 students in the district from birth to age 22, as well as representing the interests of parents, families, teachers, staff, and others concerned with special education. Next slide, please. When I first heard the enrollment numbers over the summer for Virtual Academy, it was around 670 students total, and this seemed quite low. Sure enough, the actual enrollment in Virtual Academy more than doubled, and it appears that this was not anticipated, leading to a long waiting list and staff shortages. We would note that enrollment might have been higher, but families either had a terrible experience with Zoom last year or did not want to give up their spot in a choice school. The scramble to fill the demand at
207Virtual Academy had a cascading effect to in-person classes, leading to students not receiving IEP services due to lack of staff. I also want to highlight that the virtual academy is only an option for students K through 12, students that are birth to kindergarten who may have underlying conditions making them even more vulnerable to COVID who do not have this as an option. The same goes for students in the adult education program, TRACE program. We've even heard of a few cases where students in Trace are refusing to be vaccinated and will most likely drop out of the program entirely if exemptions are not made for them. I'd also direct everybody to the lawsuit filed by Disability Rights of California against the state for the lack of ADA accommodations and distance learning. It's a very important issue
208that should be pursued. Next slide, please. I've been participating on the Superintendent's Surge Advisory Committee, and the topic that continues to come up is equity. Obviously, equity is a very important topic. However, an issue that I see is when people talk about equity, they seem to be not remembering or excluding disability from the definition of equity. This is especially problematic because there's such intersectionality amongst the student population. As the district report shows, there is a great disparity in minority populations and English learners who have a disability. Improving outcomes for students with disabilities will also have the effect of recruiting outcomes for other minority populations. The district report included discipline data. However, this information is presented in a vacuum. It really doesn't compare to overall student discipline. So it's certainly incomplete at best. That said, I
209do applaud the district for giving this, at least an earlier version of the same presentation that you received tonight, specifically to the Superintendent Advisory Committee. It demonstrates the district's willingness to highlight the issues of outcomes for students with disabilities and that whoever the next superintendent is comes prepared to address these issues with full force. Next slide, please. It would seem that Zoom IEP meetings are here to stay, as it can be a convenience for families and staff and cuts out the need for travel. That said, there needs to be guidance and expectations given to families prior to every IEP meeting. The other issue that we've seen surrounding scheduling, especially when there is a need for translation, there seems to be a trend for district staff to say that we only do IEP meetings on this
210day and this time, which is obviously against district policy. And the law requires that the IEP meetings be at a mutually agreeable time. The issue is that this is, if this keeps coming up over and over again, it suddenly solidifies itself into district policy, even though that's clearly not what the district policy is or should be. Again, this is exacerbated with translation, and many families are told that IEP meetings can only be an hour, which is, again, not correct. This is due to the availability of translators involved in the IEP meetings. At our last general meeting, Mario Garcia did a presentation for us on the improvements that are being made to the translation department. And hopefully these will address a lot of these issues. It's especially problematic when a family cannot meaningfully participate in the
211IEP meetings because the assessments, reports, and the draft of the IEP itself is not translated prior to the meeting. Next slide, please. One of our main issues is dealing with the curriculum for moderate to severe students with disabilities. The stated goal of the district is to improve graduation rate of students with disabilities to 87%. As we heard from public testimony earlier from Megan Glenn, the problem is that the certificate of completion is included in that calculation. The definition of graduation is receiving a diploma after a successful completion of a course of study. The certificate of completion is not bad. Further, the certificate is not accepted as a diploma for the equivalent for college, employment, or military service. Also, the district's focus on the A through G diploma means that students are required to fail over
212and over again before even being eligible to receive this alternative certificate. I would note that recently the California Department of Education has released a report from the California Alternative Pathways to a High School Diploma Work Group. One of their main recommendations was for districts to offer a state minimum diploma in addition to the A through G diploma. Law on this is already in place, and all it would take is for the district to offer the state minimum diploma along with the A through G diploma. We wonder how many students were denied an A through G diploma who would have otherwise gotten a state minimum diploma. We'd also like to see better data tracking once the student leaves the district. Obviously, the rates of college acceptance is reported, but if students are not attending university, there
213is little data about them as to what happens to them after they leave. How are we as a district to evaluate student outcomes if we don't know what the outcomes are? The district report included a status on the creation and modification of the Mod Severe curriculum. We are dismayed to see how far there is still to go to meet the so-called deadline of January. I would also point out that this is the curriculum that's in the district report is only for English language arts and math and does not include any other subjects that also need to be modified. Students and staff had needed this modified curriculum for some time and is still not available. How is the graduation rate supposed to improve if there is still no curriculum available for students currently attending the school?
214Next slide, please. The problems start when students and families enter the district. Staff does not have the time or resources to properly communicate with families about their student needs. So instead of properly onboarding the families into the school district, we are left confused and frustrated from day one. This only breeds an adversarial and resentful relationship with the district moving forward into later grades. The district must do a better job building trusted relationships from the start, especially with universal preschool beginning next year. Next slide, please. Speaking of building trust, this is an ADR, Alternative Dispute Resolution. It's a long overdue program that we hope is successful. I would note that, as mentioned prior in the meeting, that this is being funded through the ESSER funds that was mentioned earlier. uh so that's the only funding for
215this program currently uh this absolutely needs to be made permanent uh assuming it's it's a successful program which we hope that it is uh and that the program is not lost when the source of the funding is no longer available for small victories we do thank the district for changing the name of this program based on our advocacy next slide please We included the slides from our virtual above and beyond ceremony last year. We do thank all the families and staff and board members who participated. Our next award ceremony will be May 12, 2022. And next slide, please. We are having regular monthly meetings with the superintendent and chief of staff. These meetings were initiated by interim superintendent Dr. Jackson. We thank him for that. These have been an invaluable way of communicating issues that
216we are seeing within the district and is certainly much more direct access to the superintendent than we've had in a long time. We hope this continues with whomever becomes the next superintendent. I already mentioned that I was on the advisory committee for the superintendent search. I'd like to thank the board as well as Dr. Whitehurst-Payne for inviting me to serve on that committee. I believe the board has heard about some of the issues and challenges that that committee has had, and I certainly do want to echo those concerns. But all that being said, hopefully it will result in the board hiring the best candidate to tackle the issues that are facing the district. A particular shout out to the SELPA director, Ed Baisley. He worked collaboratively with us as well as other staff members on
217the local plan template last year, as well as hosted a series of Q&As for families relating to... extended school year, ESY, and was able to answer a lot of the parents' questions and concerns about what exactly was happening over the summer. So thank you, Ed, for that. And again, I'd like to, we highlighted this last year, but again, the continuation of free meals for all students is a particular highlight of the work that the district is doing. Thank you very much, Trustee Beiser. Thank you so much, Scott. And maybe what we could do is do E4 and hear the staff presentation, and then we can take questions and comments from the board, if that's okay. All right. So we'll move to item E4, and I think, Sarah, you want to? Thank you. And I'm going
218to turn it right over to Area Superintendent Christina Cassew. Oh, great. Okay. Thank you very much. Good evening, everybody. Good evening, Superintendent Jackson, Board President Pereira, and Board of Trustees. I'm Christina Casillas, Area 3 Superintendent. I'm joined by my colleague Sarah Ott, Executive Director of the Special Education Division. Tonight, we will share with you an update of our collective work on improving the success of our students with disabilities who receive special education services. Specifically, we will share our progress and impact towards our district's cohort graduation rate, access to general education, and our newly opened virtual academy. We will also share attendance and discipline data points and information about our alternative dispute resolution department, along with the number of due process cases. And finally this evening, we will provide you with an update of our moderate
219severe guaranteed and viable curriculum or GVC development. As a district, we remain committed to equity, inclusion, and diversity. This includes our Black youth and Latinx youth, our multilingual students, and our students receiving special education services, recognizing the intersectionality of our students. We continue to work on our own self-awareness and work on addressing our own bias as we think about becoming an anti-bias and anti-racist district, including recognizing any bias towards individuals with disabilities in order to support their unique needs and strengths. We define equity as a district as providing students what they need, when they need it, and in the manner in which they need it. From our instructional programs and support, budget priorities, and staffing allocations. As outlined in our LCAP, our goal to accelerate and increase the achievement for each and every student we
220serve remains our North Star. and our calls to action around ownership, access, and quality instruction further guides this work. In San Diego Unified, we educate 14,903 students who receive special education services from birth to age 22, representing approximately 15.3% of our district's learners. Together, we remain steadfast on our goal to increase the cohort graduation rate for all our students receiving special education services from our current rate of 64%, which is a slight increase from last year, to 87%. We believe that with our integrated approach, working in partnership with our families, and our intentional commitment to building capacity and coherence on our calls to action, our students will achieve success. As I shared earlier, our preliminary cohort graduation rate for students receiving services in the class of 2021 is 64%. You can see that over time
221we have increased the graduation rate from 56% in 2019. As we examine this cohort data across the different student groups, you will note improvement for our Black and Latinx students. As Scott mentioned in his CAC presentation earlier, we too are concerned about the performance of our dual-identified students. Recognizing this need and the urgency, the leadership and learning team, along with area superintendents, site principals, and staff, are intentional in accelerating the learning of our multilingual students, our dual-identified students, such as providing support with effective designated and integrated ELD approaches, and providing training opportunities for our educators. We know that we still have work to do. We have work to do across the system to strengthen and improve the graduation rates for all of our students. The past two years have been extraordinary times as it relates
222to our students' school experience, including their access to college coursework. This slide here represents the percent of students receiving special education services enrolled in college courses over the past five years. from 2.7% to 4.2% pre-pandemic, which are indicated in the blue and orange bars, and remaining fairly stable at 3.4% and 3.2% of our students taking one or more college courses last year and in our current year, respectively. As shared last year in our presentation, our local colleges were impacted with the number of courses offered and ultimately the number of students enrolled. This remains our current reality. Additional barriers include vaccine requirements, college liaisons not having the same direct access with students on campus face-to-face, compounded with students needing to prioritize taking and enrolling in credit recovery courses to fulfill their graduation requirements. Over the course
223of the past four years, we have seen a dramatic decline in the number of applied courses our students are taking, indicating that students are prioritizing a course of study towards high school graduation. From 1,447 course enrollments in 2019, as indicated in the blue bar, to 331 course enrollments in our current year, as represented by the yellow bar. This is a decrease of over 1,000 course enrollments, which is about a 77% decrease. This year, we have about 150 students enrolled in the 331 courses for multi-level or applied courses, which are in alignment with the student's IEP. For students working towards diploma, the applied courses are in addition to their general education coursework, providing them with additional support to access core instruction. Now I'd like to give you an update with our virtual academy. In August, we
224opened our virtual academy as a K-12 option for our families choosing to remain online. As of early October, we have 1,735 students enrolled in Virtual Academy. About 12%, which is 214 students, receive special education services, with 173 in the mild-moderate and 41 students in the moderate-severe programs. And just like at a comprehensive site, we have ed specialists, paraprofessionals, and related service providers assigned to support the identified students attending Virtual Academy. Now I'd like to turn it over to Sarah. Thank you, Christina. So first I'd like to start off in examining our attendance data. We do notice a slight dip this year overall. We believe one of the reasons for this dip is students are absent due to being quarantined or having COVID symptoms. When this occurs, students are offered an independent study contract. When a
225student finalizes the independent study contract, the site can then go back and change the student's attendance to presence. for completing the work in that contract. This can happen up to three weeks after the absences, which could change this attendance data. Next indicator is our discipline data. The blue bar shows the number of unduplicated students with at least one behavioral incident during the first six weeks of the school year. The orange bar shows the number of unduplicated students with at least one suspension during the first six weeks of the school year. This is for all students receiving special education services. In addition, this slide compares the percent of the students receiving special education that have been suspended during the first six weeks of the school year, for the 2020 school year and the 2022 school year.
226The blue bar shows the percentage of students receiving special education services with at least one suspension in the 2020 school year. The orange bar shows the percentage of students with special education with at least one suspension in the 2022 school year. So for example, in the 2020 school year, there were 237 students out of a population of 17,649 students receiving special education that were suspended for a rate of 1.3%. In 2022, that was reduced to 1.0%. We believe as we continue to decrease suspension rate, it will help with our inequities. And we're doing this by working on our site interventions as well as our alternatives to suspension. So we know that this is an area where we need to grow and we'll continue to work in this area, as mentioned by the CAC. Another data
227point to understand our work supporting students that receive special education service is the due process data. This may indicate how sites are doing at building relationships, working with families, and supporting a partnership with parents on supporting the needs of our students. So this will be a data point we will continue to compare. As DAC stated, thank you, Scott, we are excited to launch our new alternative dispute resolution special education process. This process is the support to both staff and families during IEP meetings to help resolve any issues that they may be experiencing. Our current department has a program specialist and two ombudsmen. We also applied for grant funding for additional instructional coordinators and translators. We also now have a PowerSchool computer assistance translation program, which will increase our effectiveness and to reduce the amount of
228time it takes to translate IEP meetings or IEP documents. So we agree that having that translation services is needed, and we hope this grant funding will help support that as well as the computer assistance translation. In addition, in order to support the IEP process, as indicated some concerns, we have launched a virtual IEP compliance training for all staff. This will help staff navigate the IEP process to ensure they're providing the IEP documentation, the smooth running of the meeting, and the improved parent participation from mutual agreed upon times and for the time that it may take to hold the meeting. Our team, including Maud's severe education specialist, has been working very hard to modify the general education curriculum resources to develop the guaranteed viable curriculum for the special education program. On this slide, it shows where
229we are in the process of completing the English language arts units. We've also started to pilot the completed language arts units with positive results from both our special education and general education teachers. We are also beginning our work on modifying the math units. Working with the Ethnic Studies, History, and Social Sciences Department to modify the curriculum for our students in high school. In addition, the Department of Defense Education Agency has awarded a grant that includes our specialized school Whittier in collaboration with UCSD Consultants who is working with our STEAM Department to modify the GVC for STEAM. This concludes our presentation. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Sarah, and thank you, Christina, and thank you, Scott. So we've had great presentations from the CAC and from the staff, so why don't we go straight to board questions
230and comments? Yeah. Sorry, Trustee Bozzo, do you want to? No. Yeah, well, let me just ask. So part of the discussion tonight from the CAC, and we heard from the speaker earlier, was around making sure that our students with special needs graduate with a meaningful diploma but are not held back from being able to graduate and move on. successfully. So where are we with that whole discussion? And I guess, Scott, maybe if you could just explain a little bit more about what you think needs to happen in the district to make sure that more students have access to a meaningful diploma. Sure. So I think it was on my slide. I did forget to highlight it, but it was, we do have an ad hoc committee who's looking into both the mod severe curriculum as
231well as meaningful course of study and graduation. And we've had several meetings with the district to to sort of address what we're looking for. And really what we are looking for is an alternative, I shouldn't use the word alternative, but a diploma, right? Like there's the A through G diploma and there's the certificate of completion. And one of the issues is that the certificate of completion isn't available at all school sites. So you really do have to fail at your home site to then be entered into the program to be eligible for another for this for the certificate. So that's that's sort of issue number one. I know the district is working towards getting that program getting that program available on every school site, but they're also It's the focus on the A through G
232diploma. And again, in no way am I trying to advocate for like we should lessen our standards for graduation for students. And yet there is this, the A through G diploma is a higher standard than what the state requires. So if we really want to look at improving graduation rate, why not look at different types of diplomas that are still legally valid. There's certainly no reason why this couldn't exist in the school district. I hope that answered the question. Yeah, no, that's great. And Sarah, I know you wanted to jump in with some thoughts. So just to clarify a little bit, and Scott, I think you just changed up your words a little. So we have what we call option two, which is different than the certificate of completion. So I think what you mean,
233Scott, is option two at every school. Yeah, okay. So option two is meaning that the student, if to get an A through G diploma, you need 44 credits. An option two diploma means you need 22 credits, but it's an adult only program. So in order to enter the option two, you have to be 18. So that's where, you know, CAC and us agree, like failing to get into this means you didn't graduate. Now you go to adult ed and then you can get an option two diploma. So what we're working on is how do we let people understand that that's an option, that they could do that in high school to work on, and that, you know, it can be offered at every high school and they don't need to go to Twain or Garfield
234to get that option. And then they can go to the adult ed program and maybe have one class to take to be able to graduate as opposed to, you know, taking classes and not going through. At the same time, we don't want to limit access to A through G. We want to hold a high standard and we want to make sure as many kids as possible are getting the A through G diploma. At the same time, the state is coming out with guidance in November around moving away from certificate of completion to an alternative diploma, so that it is the term diploma, and they are getting that, and there's a course of study assigned to that. And so we won't know that until late November, but we are working in that ad hoc committee with
235CAC around what that would look like as a team to think about what we could do in that direction, and we appreciate the feedback about how we can move forward in that area. Great, thank you. Yes, Vice President Whitehurst-Penn. I'd like to go back to the discipline data for students receiving special education services slide, if you will. Yes, let me get there and I'll pull it up. Okay. One of the fascinating pieces about this is I've been telling people don't hold us accountable for pre-pandemic data and then data being compared to that. during the pandemic. But these data, as I read them, are from the first six weeks of school in this current school year. Is that correct? Yep. So 2022, this school year is the orange. And then not 2021 when we were in
236COVID. And then the first six weeks of 2020. Okay. For that discipline slide there where it says incidents. And then suspension incidents? Yes, this is for this school year. Right. Well, let's just take blacks for a moment and take a look at them. 84 out of the 453, and then 41 out of the 162 suspension incidents. The 41 is clearly 25%, and clearly they're not 25% of the population. So my question is, and I dare say for the multiple ethnicities, probably some of them also are seen as African Americans. My question is, have we really... It's almost like a mantra. Have we really done anything to really interrupt like we said? When people call me and I said, oh, look at the year of those data, that was 2019. We're in 2021 now. But we're
237still seeing 25% of the suspension incidents are African American. For a population that's probably, what, 8%, 10%? or 12. I mean, it's just, again, the high number that I'm very concerned about. I know it's late and you guys are tired and we're all tired, but. Yeah, I think your question is, you know, what are we doing in support of this? And, you know, looking at this and agreeing that. thinking about our black youth and our anti-racism work as well as our alternative to suspension is really what we're working with sites. So not only does our behavior support resource department, our restorative practice department, and other departments work with sites around interventions and supports, that's how we're supporting all students but with that focus on our black youth. And Dr. Whitehurst-Payne, if I could just jump
238in and explain the data a little bit clearer on this particular slide. I wanted to point out that we have really done our due diligence in cleaning up our discipline data. So what you're seeing here. are all incidents that were entered that are associated with suspension codes. So if we're talking about the state suspension codes, and in particular for our black youth, there were 84 incidents that were associated with state suspension codes. But of those 84 incidents, only 41 moved forward with the suspension. So I just want to highlight the fact that we really have been trying to support our school sites in offering site-based interventions and alternative to suspension programs. prior to moving to suspensions. So there have been 84 incidents that could have moved forward as suspension, but only 41 actually did. So
239I just wanted to clarify that data point there. And that's fine, but also look at the data point that 41 did move forward out of the 162 overall for the district, which is 25%. we're looking only at the orange we're looking at the 41 and we're looking at the 162 total 41 is 25 of that and the african-american population is not 25 of the district so what is happening to correct the fact that you're still getting 25 percent i i think what uh staff is saying dr white explained is these data were significantly more uh we're moving in the right direction we are no where near where we want to be and so i think the way in which we are looking at incidents we're looking at our students uh i think is making a
240difference in the data so do we have work to do absolutely we're not we're not questioning that um Are we further along than we were? We believe we are. I'm going to ask you guys to send me a memo. And I want to know what the data were, the comparison between that before. What were the suspension data before the pandemic related to suspensions out of the total for that particular group? And we'll look at what it is now for the first six weeks. And I'll see whether or not that's considered as improvement. Okay. I would say we do have that on this slide for 2020 and 2022. So you can see for our black youth, it was 5.2. It's now 5.2. That's what I'm asking. Anyway. We can do it. Okay. We can do it.
241Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Vice President. Whitehorse-Payne, any other questions or comments? Yes, Dr. McCrory. Yeah, thank you. So when I got on the board seven years ago, we held a Panasonic workshop. And over these seven years, there was an effort to improve the quality of the IEPs. And I'm wondering, what has been the impact of this effort? For example, in what way will a continued effort to develop higher quality IEPs address some of these issues, such as those raised by several slides and by Trustee Dr. Whitehurst-Payne? IEP document is a pathway to... to ensuring team understanding of what a student needs to access the generalized curriculum. So the more compliant and the better the IEP is, the more understanding family, the general ed staff, the related service staff, and the special educators have
242to ensuring that access, meaning that better outcomes for students, more accommodations, more supports, and to see that... follow through within their general classroom. Thank you. Sorry, Trustee Patterson. Thank you. Just wanted to ask one more time, and you might have already shared this, I apologize. When is that date that you have this curriculum, this new curriculum that's being released that's from our district specifically, and what's that rollout look like? So are you talking about the GBC for Motsubir? Okay. So our goal has always been that we would get as many, we would complete the ELA and math units or all units January 2022, 2022. However, you know, we've had some barriers along the way. And so, you know, as Scott mentioned, and as we can see from the data, you know, that's a lofty goal.
243And so right now, we do have curricular resources in the ModServir classrooms. We purchase News2U, Unique, and other resources. So the classrooms are curriculum-based, the standards are curriculum, and we have curriculum resources. This is an addition to help with our inclusion movement. So when we modify the generalized curriculum, then students can be in those generalized classrooms with a modified curriculum. So our goal is still try to get as much as we can by January. We are rolling it out once it's completed. So as we complete it, we pilot it, and then the staff gets it for the ELA. As we complete math, we'll roll that out. We did ethnic studies in the trace program, so we can start rolling that out and then move down to high school. So it is moving forward. With the
244completion date, you know, it just starts over again. So as we pilot a new math. um the new enhanced math we have to modify that along the way so it will be a continual timeline um but our hope is that we have all ela units done by january definitely thank you yeah i really just want to emphasize it's definitely important that you do have the support you need in your office to make sure that that gets done in a timely manner and as you said that january 2022 date of looking at that for that next step really hope that All of you are on track and you have the resources. I know that I know the superintendent will make sure that we can move that forward. So thank you. Great if no other questions or
245comments from board members, thank you again Scott and and the members of the CAC for your work and and thank you Sarah and Christina and thank you superintendent Jackson and chief of staff for a ditty I once again Scott brought up the access and the level of communication that the CAC has been able to have with you and with our chief of staff so that's going to be critical, obviously, in moving these issues forward. So appreciate it. Thank you, President Barrera. And we appreciate Scott and the collective group. I know Maura has been doing some great work and others. We are working on our partnership and appreciate the sentiment, Scott. Appreciate that. Great. Okay. Let's move on. Can I get motions on items H1 and H2? So moved. Thank you. Moved by Trustee Beiser and
246seconded by Vice President Weiters-Payne. Trustee Bozzo. Oh, sorry. I was just seconding. Oh, okay. Okay. Well, let's do this in order. Trustee Patterson. Aye. Thanks. Trustee Bozzo. Aye. Trustee Beiser. Aye. Trustee McCrory. Aye. Vice President Reuters-Payne. Aye. And Barrera, aye. Okay, item H3 is a public hearing on a SCG&E right-of-way, so we will open the hearing. Ms. Stultz, I don't see any public comment. None, she says. No public comment on this item. Okay, so we will close the public hearing, and can we get a motion? So moved. So, okay. Move by Vice President Whitehurst-Payne, seconded by Trustee Bozzo, Trustee Patterson. Aye. Trustee Beizer. Aye. Trustee Bozzo. Aye. Trustee McQuarrie. Aye. Vice President Whitehurst-Payne. Aye. Barrera, aye. And again, H4, do we have any speakers? Nope. So we will close the public hearing. Can we get
247a motion? So moved. Moved by Vice President Whitehurst-Payne. Second. Seconded by Trustee Patterson. Thank you, Trustee Patterson. Aye. Trustee McCrory. Aye. Trustee Bozzo. Aye. Trustee Beiser. Aye. Vice President Whitehurst-Payne. Aye. And Barrera. Aye. Okay, item H5, and this is the appointment of representatives to the redistricting engagement committee. I believe we've all submitted our names. Do we have a motion on this item? So moved. I think that was moved by Trustee McCrory, seconded by Trustee Beiser. Any further questions or comments? If not, Trustee Patterson. Aye. Trustee Beiser. Aye. Trustee Bozzo? Aye. Trustee McCrory? Aye. Vice President Whitehurst-Payne? Aye. Barrera, aye. And finally, we've got a personnel update from Acacia, and this is an information item. Go ahead, Acacia. Thank you. uh good evening superintendent jackson thank you board members i will make my comments brief uh
248due to the lateness of the hour and we have some good news to share um so the purpose of this report is our annual update um to discuss how we prepared for the staffing for the start of the school year i'm just moving past mr johnson brent if you could please go to slide two um our commitment is to ensure that we are um Finding folks who can support. And we say that we are ensuring the success of our students by supporting and empowering a diverse workforce. Our work is conducted in collaboration with our schools and departments to select candidates who reflect the diversity of our students and community. Our students have told us the importance of ensuring our teachers reflect the diversity of themselves and their experiences. And they have told us why diversity
249matters. Therefore, we've included this as part of our local control and accountability plan. It's very clear and go for where we stand. It's been in Vision 2020, and I fully expect it to be in Vision 2030 as we develop that process. We are committed to ensuring and increasing the diversity of our employees with a focus on our classroom teachers. I'm happy to share with you our progress. In the July to October 1 date range, 43% of the educators hired into the district self-identified themselves as ethnically diverse. When sharing this information, it's really important to put it into context as a percent of new hires both exceeds the state and the county's data. Using the California Department of Education's DataQuest system, the state percentile of diverse teachers in 2018 was 39% and the county was 37%.
2502019, we just kind of had this conversation just a moment ago. Statewide data is not quite yet caught up. And so we will rectify that as the 2019 and 2020 data becomes available. Tonight, I'm also going to share with you our work in context of the county's labor shortage and how we're addressing the needs of our school communities. Next slide, please. I'll begin with similar information that you've seen from me for the last couple of years and changes of our workforce using the time period of July 1, 2020 until October 1, 2021. In that time period, we onboarded 920 new staff. This includes new hires to the district, rehiring of individuals who previously worked for us, recalling individuals, and then also returning folks from a leave of absence. Next, we'd like to highlight the 238
251promotions, which demonstrate our commitment to building the capacity of our employees through the implementation of career ladders. This is part of the commitment that we've outlined in the LCAP to provide opportunities for growth and development of our very dedicated staff. On the right, you'll see that there are 192 separations. Those include individuals taking a leave of absence, those who retire, or those who might leave for other reasons. And finally, you'll see that there are 560 positions that are technically vacant. And so I want to be careful because that's a big number. It's a big number for us. And so I want to give some context while sharing the story. So when reporting the vacancies, we use the HR technical definition of vacancy, which means that a person hasn't been yet hired. But you'll see on
252this slide that we actually have a number of hires in place and in process. So there's nothing just sitting still. We have 335 in recruitment. And when I say that, that includes everything from it being posted to an eligibility list being created to a list being already created and the site having it. You'll also see that we've indicated where there's interviews or a selection process already in hire. And then we also have a number there of hires that are in process. The board knows this, but I'll share for those who are still with us at home, that because of the size of our system and the number of people that we employ across the county, we actually hire all the time. There's never a point in time where... I've worked in other districts where there's
253always a point in time where you can point to and say, we have everybody. It's just not the case when you have a system that has more than 14,000 employees. And so that is our summary. I'd also like to update the board on our fall staffing process. Each Friday, sorry, let me take that back. As we know, the third Friday of student enrollment is when we adjust our teacher allocation for paras and educators. It's to ensure that students have people in place when they're attending school. In our district, this means that we transfer the adults from one location to another. from schools that have lost enrollment to schools that have gained enrollment, both for, again, as I said, teachers and paraeducators. We used this year's strategic staffing process to ensure that we could really make
254sure that we had staff in place where they needed to be and made considerations for special programming. By using a strategic transfer process, we were able to limit the number of folks who moved. Approximately 100 educators had a change in their assignment. And this represents, for context again, less than 1% of our total workforce. And next, I'd like to give you some information on those 560 vacancies. As one of the largest employers in the county, our recruitment strategy is year-round. It's recruitment, it's selection, it's hiring. We work all year long on this. Due to the volume of employees, we will always have a vacant position. However, we work to ensure that we're going to provide eligible candidates to sites and departments in order to shorten the time period that a position is. During the recruitment
255process, we leverage short-term staffing strategies such as the use of substitutes, interim placements to fill the labor need as we're in the recruitment. The district has definitely felt the impact of the jobless rate in the San Diego labor market. A recent summary provided by the San Diego Workforce Partnership provides a clear summary of the impact on our county. You'll see here that I've given some folks. August saw a reduction in the number of people in the labor market at a time when the economy needs more people coming back to work. We also have been recovering as of August at a slower rate than the rest of the county. Our August jobless rate, as reported by the San Diego Workforce Partnership, was 6.3% adjusted for seasonal unemployment, or seasonal employment, excuse me. So in comparison, the
256district's 560 vacancies is approximately 4% of our workforce. So while we do have that number, we are competitive in a really tough labor market in the county. Again, for context, on the right, what you'll see is that we've provided some statistics. uh that represent the last year of work by um my team and um all of the sites and departments who participate in the recruitment selection and hiring process um to prepare for the start of the school year you'll see there that i have listed move this slide oh yes i'm so sorry we need to be on that sorry i did not say i'm just moving right along and i'm not letting our booth know what's happening thank you so much i'm thank you So what you'll see on the right of the slide is
257that there's a different date range. Before I gave you a date range of July 1 to October of this year, we actually, as I said, recruit year-round. So I actually gave you the data from November 1 of last year through October 1, and that is a true representation of the massive amount of recruitment that happens to prepare for the start of the school year. So you'll see there we've got some big numbers, 19,508 applicants, 535 recruitments, 350 classified positions, 92 certificated. You can see there. And what's really important that this board should be proud of is that we didn't issue any layoffs. We were able to work with our bargaining units and our employees to find them places within our system. So that is actually a benefit to us. And then finally, you're probably thinking,
258well, what are we doing to fill the 560 that you pointed to on the last page? And so we are absolutely committed to filling those positions. We're working every day to get them filled. We do a number of different things to ensure that we're getting people. weekly teacher and substitute interviews and job offers, weekly interviews between my department, school sites and departments, monthly hiring events for paraeducators, continuous postings and paid training for select classifications such as bus drivers and paraeducators. And then next slide, please. And finally, we'd really like to encourage members of the community to view our open positions. There's truly something for everyone. Our salary and benefits are very competitive with other employment, and we'd love for you to give back to the community by coming and joining our team. So please apply
259today. Refer a friend or family member. We have immediate openings for substitute teachers, bus drivers, paraeducators, substitute clerical staff, regularly employed. If you are interested in joining us, there's a lot of opportunity right now. So that is the end of my report, and thank you very much. Thank you. Questions, comments? Yes, Vice President Weitersman. I just want to say thank you. I know that was a difficult report, Acacia. I know you're here still at the Ed Center. Yes, so thank you for your report, and I think you answered the questions that we had. Thanks. Yeah, I agree. Thanks, Acacia. What could be helpful is, I like that... We're seeing, you know, good percentages and the diversity of our new hires. Maybe if we could see at some point, you know, how that compares to the
260past, you know, four or five years, that would be great. Yeah. Go ahead. Absolutely. Yes, Trustee McQuarrie. Yeah, I may have missed it, but what's the situation with our visiting teachers, our substitutes? Can you say more, Trustee McQuarrie? Well, I'm wondering, do we have data about the diversity of the substitutes or visiting teachers that we're bringing in? I didn't break it down by individual classifications within each of the bargaining units. I just did overall educators. All right. Thank you. Great. Yes, Trustee Bozzo. I just had a question from going out to schools. I don't know if this is true or not, but it's being said that other school districts pay higher rates for substitutes, and so that's why the schools feel like they're not getting substitutes. Do you feel like, I'm assuming Santa Unified has
261competitive rates, but do you feel like you lose subs or other people to other school districts because of? salary or are we pretty, I mean, competitive that way or is that a concern? So we are looking at that again. We looked at it right before the beginning of the school year, and we have been working closely with SDA on that very question. One of the things that we did to maintain and be competitive is we agreed to a rate that's called the resident visiting teacher, and those are visiting teachers who actually get to stay at the school site and are able to cover on a day-to-day basis, cover more than one classroom if needed. um and so we've heard from um our site leaders that those positions are very helpful and supportive um and then
262we'll we're continuing to monitor the rates across the county to ensure that we actually pay the most so that conversation will continue and we do things like monitor our fill rates and look at areas of schools that are consistently not getting substitutes covered and that's for everything from classroom teachers to para educators to clerical staff so we monitor that and we work with our units to make sure that we're getting the word out and addressing areas that we need Great. Thank you. Yeah, Trustee Patterson. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I know this is a personal update, but I do just want to piggyback off of what Trustee Baza just said. So definitely seeing where we are, I know staffing shortages are incredibly challenging. So I guess just by student perspective, I know having large groups
263of students sit in the library during the day is no question a frustrating use of the period. So it's wonderful if we can. Move away from that. I know you're all working hard, but definitely, as Jesse Baza said, if there's something more we can be doing to incentivize to make sure that it's not our students at our schools that are getting in the library instead of being in class, that's wonderful. Yeah, absolutely. And I do think our subrates are... pretty good compared to the rest of the county, right? I mean, we... They're admittedly lower than we have had in years in the past. But as I'm working with the other 42 districts in the county and our colleagues, everybody's having the same similar low fill rates for substitutes. Sorry, Keisha, I meant the rate that
264we're paying subs. Oh, yeah. We pay... rate is fine. The fill rate, sorry, my brain went to fill rate based on Justin Patterson's comment. And so, yeah, our rates are still competitive, but as again, I shared, we will, and we continue to monitor that and then work with our partners to ensure that we stay competitive. And then we, just a little bit of context on substitutes. Most districts share the same pool of subsidies. So if you're a substitute employee, you are not under a specific contract. And so you can work for more than one district. So our substitutes are in a unique position. Like many folks in the county, they have multiple options for jobs. And so we really focus on working conditions, pay. and support for substitute teachers in particular, but also substitute clerical
265staff and many of our substitutes because those individuals provide a really important time-sensitive and critical need when that person who is gone or sick, you know, has something happen that they can't come to work, that we really rely on our substitutes to provide that support in our classrooms and in school. I'm actually sure that fill rate, that was interesting. Once you started, I wanted to hear it. It's just every district, Trustee Patterson monitors their fill rate, and fill rate just means if I request the sub, how often is that job getting picked? That's all it is. And I use the I use another HR term. We most districts in the county use some kind of electronic system where substitute employees can log in and select a position that they would like to obtain. And so
266we can calculate data based on when those jobs are put into the system, how often and that's how we determine how we're doing the system. And we use it to determine where there's hot spots, where we need to go, what we need to do. whenever day points. Not like it was where you had to dial up every day. So the dial up, Sharon, is still there. On SAMS, though, right? All right. Well, great. Thank you, Acacia. Thanks so much. Okay. Superintendent's consent agenda. Can we get a motion? Yes. Approval. Move by Vice President Wayne. Seconded by Trustee Bozzo. Any questions or comments? If not, Trustee Patterson. Aye. Trustee Bozzo. Aye. Trustee McCrory. Aye. Trustee Beizer. Aye. Vice President Whitehurst-Payne. Aye. And Barrera, aye. Okay, and so last we have non-agenda public testimony. We've got nine
267speakers, so we'll allow two minutes each, beginning with Tina Ellis. Hi, this is Tina Ellis. Hi, Tina. Go ahead. Thanks for having me. I'm a mom of a kindergartner and a third grader at Bay Park Elementary. Last week I sent a letter to Joanne, I think it's Lily, and she said she was forwarding it to the board of directors. So I hope you guys had time to read the letter from my husband and myself that we sent to you guys. Were you guys able to read it or no? Okay. Sorry, Tina, we're not allowed to respond. Oh, sorry about that. I'm new to that. Okay, so I'll just give you all a quick recap of what happened last Tuesday at our school. I received a notice from the principal about 15 minutes before the bell
268rang that my daughter's third grade teacher was being moved to another grade and my daughter was moving into a new class with a different teacher. I honestly wasn't sure how to handle this, let alone did I know if my daughter already knew this really awful news. When I saw her face at pickup, I knew she knew. There was tears, sadness, and disappointment, which eventually turned to being upset and mad, making me feel helpless. The next day, I spoke to the principal to find out if I could do anything to figure out like a solution to this. There was none. Enrollment was down by 70 students and it was already decided which teachers were being moved out of the school. Again, I felt helpless. I was told the school district made the decision and there was
269nothing our school could do. I'm here today to ask you to put a freeze on teacher reorganizations due to low enrollment, which I just heard. Patricia speak about strategic staffing process, which in my mind, this isn't a good thing. Instead of punishing children and teachers based on low enrollment numbers, I'm asking you to figure out a way to wait until the end of the school year to reevaluate the school enrollment numbers and how many teachers are needed. In a media release via email in August, promised us parents, and I quote, social emotional health will be a priority for all students this school year, end quote. How is disrupting a class with teacher reorganization prioritizing our children's emotional needs? Another email was sent out just recently. Thank you, Tina. Could you maybe conclude? Yes, I will.
270I will conclude. Recently it was from you, Board of Education President Richard Barrera was quoted. Our unwavering commitment is to serve our students with the highest level of education, to provide a support system for our educators to achieve that goal. End quote. Again, as a parent, I am struggling to see how the school board and district are helping our children when to us it seems like our kids are just a number and not a student with feelings and the need for normalcy. They need the support. Thank you. With one more, in closing, with the FDA looking to approve COVID-19 vaccines for elementary school children, we are assuming that the vaccine might soon be a requirement for our children to stay enrolled. Preparing for this change, I personally think a lot of parents will pull their
271children from public schools, meaning a possible lower enrollment. And in the eyes of the district, another teacher reorganization. So again, I ask for all... Thanks. Thanks so much. Okay, William Beggs. All right. Can you hear me? Yes. Go ahead, William. All right. So I'm a Bay Park dad. I'm here for the same reason as Tina, reorganization. My student was moved. I'm also a professor of finance at the University of San Diego. So when I found out that my son was getting moved, naturally I looked at some of the academic research, tried to figure out what are kind of the implications of this on student achievement. There's actually, luckily for me, a very timely study. And I'm going to forward this. to the board on the effects of within-year teacher turnover on student achievement. It's a
272study from University of Florida by Henry and Redding. It's a pretty extensive study. They use unique data from the state of North Carolina from 2008 to 2014, over 2.5 million student observations. The data is unique because they can see the month that the teacher leaves the classroom or is reorganized. Analysis is empirically sound, a lot of controls. I trust the findings. The main findings is that within-year turnover of a student's teacher is highly detrimental to student achievement. Math is more affected than language arts. The results were significant across elementary and middle school students. Your turnover much more pronounced at the end of your turnover. Economically, the authors estimate that the loss of an elementary teacher translates to 72 instructional days lost on average, or 40% of an 180-day school year. This is significant across student
273demographics. Minority students were actually more affected, in math in particular. The reason for teacher turnover didn't matter, whether it was shifting students or just teachers leaving the profession altogether, which suggests that the classroom disruption is the primary factor influencing adverse student outcomes. Authors even identify spillover effects from losing a teacher as other students in the same school and grade as the departing teacher are impacted, suggesting that the organizational implications as well as classroom implications. So one of the fourth grade teachers leaves. There's less people to plan. It affects the whole school. There was one mitigating factor if the turnover occurs earlier in the school year. The effects were more muted in September, October, but we... We'll have to ask you to... Close to the end of October, which is clearly, you know, going to cause
274major problems. So the key takeaways I'll conclude. SDUSD needs to understand there are student achievement costs to shuffling teachers once the school year has begun. At a minimum, any district-initiated turnover in teachers needs to occur well before November, not mid to late October, to avoid student gaps in achievement. Given the author's findings that end-of-the-year turnover does not appear to have any effect on achievement, SDUSD would be best served students by avoiding reshuffling teachers in the middle of the year and delay these changes until the end of the year. Thank you. Thanks so much. And I apologize for needing to cut you both off. Jacob Womack. Yeah, you need to unmute, Jacob. Go ahead. All right. Hey, I'm actually shocked to be at 926 at night, and you guys are talking about how you've got a
275teacher shortage, and there's a cry to not have students in the library due to shortages, but you guys are willing to terminate teachers who aren't vaccinated. This is like insanity to me, and I think I'm shocked that you guys are disillusioned by this. It's really shocking. Anyway, some questions I need to answer. You can answer them directly to me. jwomack at sandy.net, or you can answer it to the nursing and wellness non-vaccinated list that they target every time. We need to know the process the district is going to move forward with religious exemptions. Who in human resources is going to be determining our sincerely held religious beliefs? Is it going to be a state employee, which is going to breach our separation of church and state? What about similar religious exemptions that are approved in
276other public or private businesses? but potentially denied by our district. How's the district going to calibrate and accept or deny the religious exemptions? We're looking for calibration here. Can't do your own thing. When the employees hear of any information about their religious exemption, when are we going to hear this? It's causing employees to be stressed out, be discriminated at their sites. If you think that's wrong, then you need to go visit sites. We're being discriminated. And there's going to be a rise in stress leave that's going to be backed by SDEA, which is going to further, you're going to lose more teachers that way. Lastly, I just left a really large Zoom call with a lawyer, his associates, and many San Diego Unified employees. There's many more of us than you guys think or are
277even projecting. So I just want to let you know we're organized, we're motivated, and we're more dedicated to our religious beliefs than to our profession. So we're going to see this through. I need you guys to actually understand that. Also, thank you to Superintendent Jackson took the time to give me a call when I emailed him. President Barrera, I'm still waiting for your phone call or whatever. You can call me if you want to talk to a concerned teacher. Okay, thank you. Martha Shepard. Go ahead, Martha. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Hi, thank you, President Barrera. I find it interesting that student trustee Patterson commented on an overwhelming support for a resolution because he received over 1,500 emails. Yet when there were over 1,500 people signed up to speak in opposition of
278the resolution requiring a vaccination, it wasn't considered. This school board has ignored their own code of conduct by not serving the parents of the district and being inconsistent with the law. When student trustee Patterson suggested the board require all students be vaccinated, even with emergency use authorization vaccines, Vice President Whitehurst Payne suggested the topic be tabled until Governor Newsom made a decision. He has. His mandate is for FDA-approved vaccines by January 1st or July 1st, whichever is closer to approval. You are usurping his authority and ignoring what the legislature has decided, not by mandate, but through the well-established legislative process that our children can make their own medical decisions about gender and sexual orientation. Yet you are not allowing them to decide if they want a vaccine. Your actions are not consistent with the laws
279or the mandates. Thank you. Alana Markowitz. We have a lot of, okay, concerned parents. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Okay, I'd like to speak today in opposition of the vaccine mandates you are imposing on the children and the teachers in your district. I'm a parent of three students in the district, and I'm preparing to pull all three of them from your district if you continue down this path. I will share with you tonight just a few of my many concerns. This pandemic has taken a toll on my children, as it has with all of us. I have two students in high school. Prior to COVID, they were social butterflies, very involved in extracurricular activities. During COVID, that all changed. The isolation changed them. It became harder to maintain those relationships with their
280friends. One of my students suffered greatly during long-distance learning. Now they are back in school, slowly starting to build back those relationships. They joined a cross-country team and continued track and loved it so much that they continued it into the track season. Now they're in their second season and they were notified by their coach that they could not continue the team unless they subject themselves to unwanted testing. They cannot participate in a no-contact sport unless they test, even though they are healthy and symptom-free. Soon they will be forced into online learning again once the vaccine mandate comes into play. These kids have a legal right in California to an in-person education. It seems to me the district is more interested in taking things away from children that they care about in an effort to bully
281them into making decisions about their body that are unwanted or under coercion. As we have all heard, the American Academy of Pediatrics has declared a children's mental health emergency. I find it very sad that this district doesn't seem to care about the mental health of their students or how the mandates are impacting these kids. To make kids and their parents choose between allowing an unwanted intrusion on their body that could in some cases violate their religious beliefs or else give up their school, their friends, their sports is appalling. I listened to the FDA meeting today and heard several of the speakers make mention of the unknowns. They just don't know what the long-term effects will be. These are children with their entire lives ahead of them. They should not be part of a forced clinical
282trial. As many who voted in the meeting today stated, they want to make it available for parents to choose, so they do not feel they should be mandated. Where there is risk, there has to be. Okay. Ramina Weissbaum. Do we have Ramina? Okay. Sari Esserman. Or Sari Esserman. Okay. And finally, B.R. Yes, who is this? Hi, this is Beverly. Okay. I am a parent and a volunteer with Children's Health Defense California Chapter. We give voice to the children. I'd like to address the issue regarding the discriminating and segregating of healthy students with an illegal mandate to the board of supporting. School districts do not have the legal authority to mandate new vaccines. This is an unlawful bark from the district. And the district is being hypocritical if they are defending students who are discriminated against
283when the school is, in fact, supporting a segregating medical mandate. San Diego Unified reporting bullying form includes social exclusion and public humiliation. The district's COVID measures are bullying and creating stress, anxiety, and peer pressure on school grounds. To this, parents are taking their kids out of school and finding more healthy space for our children. Students are not dying from COVID. They are not the drivers of COVID, but there is a high rise in mental issues due to COVID district measures, and there has been over 17,000 COVID vaccine deaths recorded to VAERS injury system, which is a conservative number from the Harvard Pilgrim Report. Has the board reviewed the available database of material of adverse events reported to date in growing number of children? and adults who have received the COVID-19 shots. Today, there is a
284growing number of children with myocarditis, heart inflammation from the COVID vaccine. The FDA approved the swine flu vaccine, but was taking it, took it off the market after 50 deaths. Excuse me. Please note, never has a student been asked to take a vaccine that's still in trials and without long-term human studies. Also, there's a question of liability. The Federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act shields certain covered entities from liability. It does not include a school or a school district. As a result, San Diego Unified and any school complying with the resolution and mandating the experimental vaccine, or even the FDA-approved ones, will be exposed to lawsuits and liability arising from any harmful resulting therefrom. Okay, I'll have to ask you to conclude. Okay. We as parents demand the board to advocate for our children's
285individual rights and health freedom. We do not consent to the district's unlawful mandate. Parents, hold the line for your children and do not cater to the discriminating, illegal, and dangerous mandate. Thank you. Thank you very much. And we are adjourned. Thanks, everyone.