001Hi, Maria. I can hear you now. Okay, cool. Yeah, I'm sorry. I had my audio muted. And we can hear you. Excellent. Thank you. Yeah. Good evening. You ready? Okay. Thank you. Welcome everyone to our regular board meeting today on Tuesday, September 2nd, you will notice that I am not Mrs. Rogers. She is not with us tonight. So I will be presiding over the meeting and Mr. Clawson will be the clerk this evening. So thank you for being here. This evening's meeting is being translated. If anyone in the room requires help with translation, please go to the table in the back and we will get you a headset. And for those of you joining us via Zoom, if you need translation, you can see the little globe or circle icon at the bottom of your
002screen and that click that and you will have Translation and now we will have that translated for you Buenas tardes, bienvenidos. La señora Rogers no está con nosotros como pueden ver. Hoy yo voy a estar presidiendo la junta en su lugar. El señor Clausen va a estar asistiendome y esta junta va a tener interpretación al español como siempre para acceder al servicio. Elijan el icono del globo terráqueo que va a aparecer en la parte inferior de la pantalla. Gracias. The board met in closed session immediately prior to this open session and we reviewed item 3.01, an item of personnel, and 3.02, conference with labor negotiators. Do we have consensus on the order of business? One good? All right, thank you. Okay, our first item tonight is the best part of the meeting with our student
003representatives to the board. First, I would like to thank you all for being here. It's great to see you. Hope you had a great summer. We're excited to have you participate in our board meetings. We usually have the away team go first in these presentations. So we've got two people from Morro Bay. Is that right, Jocelyn and Asa? Asa. Okay, great. Thank you. If you would introduce yourselves and tell us what you do at Morro Bay and then let us know what's going on there. Okay, yeah. Hi, my name is Jocelyn Ocampo-Mateo. I am the ASP president over at Morro Bay High School this year. I'm Asa Vidotti. I'm the senior class president there. Yeah, I've been doing ASP for about three years. I'm also a part of the drama club over there, and I
004really like to be involved in the school. Just a little bit about me. Gosh, yeah, I mean, I've been involved in ASB for about four years now. And gosh, I'm really involved in sports and many clubs on campus. And I just, you know, I love to give back. And so here I am. That's us. Do you want to go ahead and let us know what's going on? Okay, we're diving right into it. Let's do it. You're good. You're good. Thanks. All right, do we get to project? Okay. They're getting it for us. There we go. Yeah, so this year over at Morro Bay High, we have a really new schedule for all of our students. It's called tutorial, and we don't have block schedule on Wednesdays and Thursdays anymore. Instead, they have moved to Mondays
005and Tuesdays with a tutorial block after our second period block. And so overall students have responded very well and I think it's been very successful and it'll help athletes or students who have very busy schedules get caught up with work or get any tutoring that they need. On our registration day, we had a welcome day in the quad on the Friday before school began. It was very well attended. Students got their schedules, families met with Mr. Scaldi, we had music and many enjoyed the free hot dogs that we had. And yeah, and we also had our back to school night on Thursday and we held a welcome rally on Friday and both were very successful. Sports. All right. This this year and actually kind of our last spring season really ended with a lot of
006our teams moving up in leagues or shifting around. I mean, just that's kind of how high school sports have gotten and they're just insane now. But. our cross country, went to Sequoia. They went for a running camp this week actually just to spend some time there. That's that photo on the right. And then... Our football team had a life-changing experience, a trip to Hawaii, Maui specifically, and that was totally rad. I mean, just talking to some of the players there, they were just like, that was like once in a lifetime. I mean, just getting to spend time with your fellow peers, your players in such a great environment and landscape. And I mean, they said it was really hot when they were playing, but, you know, what a great time. All of our sports are,
007all of our fall sports are really exciting. We actually just hosted a couple of them in our assembly. And so that was fun. We get to kind of just show the school like here is all your captains, for instance, our football team or our water polo team. So we really like to feature them so we can feature them in the beginning. And then in the later rallies, we can then feature our clubs or maybe our academic life. It's more of a... a very resourceful poll. All right, our girls volleyball team hosted a 16-team tournament on August 15th and 16th. So that was, yeah, that's that photo in the bottom right. And that was also crazy because you're in class, you're in your passing period, and there's just like volleyballs flying in the halls. If you've
008ever been to Morro Bay, you know that the gym is very in the school. That was pretty funny. Our varsity girls and boys water bowl teams are doing great. As you may know, our girls water bowl team did very well last year, and so they're kind of on a roll this year. Our boys team just hosted a varsity tournament last weekend, which they did very well in. Girls golf, oh, we kind of need an update here, but they're playing this week, and so we're going to wait to hear from them then. Yeah. Here I have a few photos from our very first football game, which we had on August 22nd. It was a home game with an American cowboy theme, which was all very fun. Something that we are focusing on this year, specifically in
009ASB, is really building community and really trying to connect the students with one another. If you follow our Instagram, you've seen that we have been more and more active and we're really trying to create more posts and create a sort of feel at the school that everyone is there for each other. And we're just, you know, we all want to support our school. We support our football games. We support other sporting events, support our arts. And it's really something that we want to include to really like up the feel and like, again, the community of our school. yeah this this is a video from our most recent home football game and and kind of just a little comment before we get into the video it's really hard to get kids to dress up for football
010games believe it or not specifically teenagers and And so we always kind of struggle in that there will be kids just dressed in normal clothes in the stands, whether that they'll be sitting or standing and cheering. And so this was kind of a learning experience for me, this theme. I ended up actually not voting for this theme and being like, oh, this is going to be too hard for us to do. I don't think our students will be able to do it. But I mean, the vote passed for us to do it, besides me not wanting to do it. And then... comes the day of the game and I'm quite surprised as hordes of dressed up students walk into the stands all excited to root on our varsity football team. So it was quite the,
011oh yeah, just go for the video. You'll see. Yeah, that amazing video was made by our senior and also our ASB secretary, Gabrielle White, who has also been in charge of all of our social media and pretty much all the fun things that we get to post. Last, we have upcoming our Club Rush this Friday. It's something we look forward to every single year. It gives the opportunity for students to sign up for new clubs. um try and connect with some of their interests maybe um i'm very pleased to report that last year we had about 75 percent of students from morro bay high school involved in either sport or a club and we hope to either stay at that same level or even increase it um we also have our annual fall wellness week
012on september 2nd to fitz would also be this week um and then Morro Bay is to host their annual cross-country invitational as they have since the 1980s on Saturday the 13th of September. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share tonight. Yes, thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks very much. All right, Zoe, you are on. Thank you for coming. Wow, you guys did such a good job. I'm so proud of you guys. Obviously, I'm very, very honored to be here. My name is Zoe Fuji. I'm going to be this year's ASB president for San Luis Obispo High School. A little about me, I am on our girls tennis team. I'm a part of a lot of clubs on campus, Harvard Model Congress, Model UN, National Honor Society, Speech and Debate, Mock Trial, and
013my personal favorite, Student Senate. I love it so much. It is my favorite. Mr. Prater, looking at you. and obviously I'm so beyond honored and excited to be here with you all today. We will spend many Tuesdays together and I cannot wait for that. All right, moving on to the slideshow. Alrighty, so we had our first day back. I feel like it's a little important to say that before the first day back we had so many important events. I was unable to get any photos from this but we had our welcome back day where students were able to pick up their schedules, their IDs, and just generally get the opportunity to see so many friends and meet staff right before the school year starts. We also had our new student orientation, which is an event
014we are all very proud of. ASB and a number of other students involved on our campus work to get freshmen oriented into the school life. So we bring them all around, we show them where their classes will be, and we tell them a little bit about the clubs and the campus culture. Now going into what I actually have here on the slide. We had such an awesome first day of school. I might be a little too optimistic about it, but everything I think went so perfectly. On the left, we have a couple pictures from... The first day back, we had signs, music. We had someone allegedly selling cookies. I don't know. It was not my doing, but I think it really brought really good energy to the first day of school. We also, on the
015far right, had a chalk walkway into the school. One of the fun things that we did this year that's a little different, we did Do You Know Your ABCs? And so it was just like... affirmations following the ABCs. So A was awesome day to be a tiger and B was be great. And yeah, that was our awesome first day back. Moving into athletics, I was somehow able to fit it all onto this very small slide, so please forgive me if I miss anything. But in the past couple of weeks, every single sport has just been so busy. We had matches for our girls volleyball, our frosh, JV, and varsity football games, cheer, golf, girls and boys water polo, girls tennis, and our boys cross country team. And I want to take special note of last
016Thursday where we had our very first ever girls flag. football game. They tied 13-13. They will be in the bottom middle of the slides. We are so beyond proud of those girls. They worked so, so hard for this and they are doing such an amazing job. We also have a new dance team to our school, which is in the bottom right corner of the slideshow. They are working with our new dance teacher, Mandy Mettler, who is every single person who has taken her class from what I've heard. Every single person loves her. And this dance team is just so electric. They performed at our football game last Friday night with so many tiny tigers. One of my younger sisters was in there. They did such, such a good job. All right, moving on to the
017arts. In the bottom left, I just wanted to take special mention of the SLOW box art program, which works to make utility boxes more personal. And not one, but two of our own students' designs got chosen for that. We are so, so proud of them. Isabella Cox and Ava Pierce's box murals got chosen. Both their designs are right there. Again, I have never been more proud of my school. This is just so amazing. And we also had our very own band perform at the Pinderado Parade in Cambria. They have been practicing since August, and I know that they have been working even harder from before then. And they did so well. They were at our football game, and they are such a cornerstone to our school. We also have our first musical already being rehearsed.
018It's the musical, the 25th annual. Putnam spelling bee? I have never heard of it before, but I know they are going to do such a good job. Our theater company is recognized in California for being one of, I forget what it is, but it is something that excels beyond anything else. And we also, coming up this weekend, have our 24-hour musical, which is such a fun and clever way to get new students involved in our musical theater department. All right, moving on. We have our ASB updates. For this, we had our ASB retreat this summer. It was the weekend right before school starts. It's a really fun way for our ASB class to get all involved. It's in the bottom left corner. That is not our entire ASB class, believe it or not, but that
019is a good number of us. We really, really love it out there. We went a place past Cuesta, and it is just 48 hours in the wilderness, which... really makes you trust each other so many good events to come we had our first rally which was a roaring success we had a face painting booth out in front the morning of and you can see it above where it says first rally every single student we had one of our assistant principals being like, no, you have to go to class. And they were like, no, I just want a claw mark on my face. And we're like, no, we know, we know, but you have to go. But we had such fun games. Everyone got super involved. We have all of our football game themes there. We
020recently had a football game this last Friday night. As I already mentioned, they did such a good job. They were so close, but they ended up losing. needless to say the crowd was just ecstatic it was such a good night and then um just finally for our asb updates we have our homecoming theme which is a night in new york and so we have our homecoming rally on september 15th and then our homecoming dance on september september 20th and then our homecoming game on september 19th So it'll just be a very, very busy week. So for our upcoming events, we have our back to school night, which is going to be tomorrow night, where all the students' parents go to their classrooms and meet all their teachers so they can learn a little bit about
021the courses that those students are taking. It really is one of, I personally think, the most exciting nights of the school year. We also have our 24-hour musical, as I mentioned before. We're so excited for that. I might even be a part of it. We'll see. We have Club Rush next Wednesday, which will be such a good event. We always have over 50 clubs showing all of everything that they do, anything from Model UN to Pickleball Club, my personal favorite. We have homecoming football games on September 12th and 19th. And then, as I already said, the homecoming week and our homecoming dance. And that is all from San Luis Obispo High School. Thank you. Well, both schools are off to a very busy start. So on that note, we appreciate your hearing about what is
022going on at each of your schools, which is a lot. Your reports are a highlight of our meeting. You are, of course, welcome to stay for as long as you wish during the meeting. But based on what you have going on, we understand if you need to. depart and get back to being high school students but you are you are welcome to stay as long as you wish or move on thank you again can i ask a quick question um you guys mentioned during your updates that uh you provide a lot of updates via social media are there specific social media channels that would be good for members of the community like us to track or or not track how would we do any social media recommendations for me asa um Okay, well, um, so
023it's mostly Most of our students use Instagram and so that's how we communicate with them primarily So from a parent standpoint, I know that a lot of parents follow the sports teams that their kids are on. Or, for instance, ASB is always just a great one to follow because that'll kind of keep you in the loop of a lot of stuff. But yeah, I know even clubs have one. So our surf team has one. And so those are always great ones to get into. And so there are a lot, and it can be vast. If you're kind of looking for a news outlet, our ASB one is the best to go with. I would say our Instagram too is really good. I would recommend following the Slow High School ASB Instagram. And then also for
024some more general ones, Black and Gold, which is our parent funded organization. They post basically everything that they fund. And I know that they're always reposting whatever the clubs will post. So then from that, you can see, oh, my son does swim. And they just reposted that they gave this much money to swim and swim sent a thank you. And then you can follow that from there. I'll say that I have found on Instagram that if you pick one, then you will get suggestions to all the rest. So I. I signed up for one and now following all kinds of interesting things going on. That's how they get you. Yeah. And the elementary schools also all have Instagram pages, the schools themselves, the PTAs. There are many rabbit holes to go down. But thank you.
025Thanks again. Our next presentation is Hawthorne Program Highlights. So welcome, Hawthorne. Okay. Thanks. I assume I click after it's already up. Okay, great. Hi everybody, my name is Brittany Trocamo. I'm the principal at Hawthorne Elementary School. In case you didn't know, it's the best school, no shade to anybody else back here, but it's the best school in the district. I'm happy to say that I am starting my fifth year in this role. And something that struck me today Thinking about work in public education is that, you know, it's obviously really big work. There's a lot that we're trying to impact for good. And there's a lot of dynamics coming at us all of the time that make that tricky. But when we can refocus on... the students, these amazing Eagles who lined up so nicely
026behind me, that work is worth it. It's noble. It's worth it. So I actually have the students here to tell you more about what's been going on at Hawthorne, what our highlights are. You may remember our mission at Hawthorne is to ensure that every child leads, achieves, and belongs. So these kiddos are going to tell you more about that. Good evening. My name is Vida. I'm going to talk about developing leadership at Hawthorne. Leadership has opportunities for kids grades four through six to make the school more fun and joyful. What that means is it's a time when kids can pick their role in helping the school. Some opportunities for kids are TK support, yearbook, create team, news reporters, and content creators. We also have Student Lighthouse, which is for fifth and sixth grade. This team
027helps the school stay in check and makes sure everyone is leading, achieving, and belonging at Hawthorne. Last Friday, our fourth and fifth graders were so excited to learn what their first trimester leadership role will be. Here's Maite to talk about what we are learning at Hawthorne. Hi, my name is Mayte. I'm so glad to be here. I'm going to be talking about what are we learning at Hawthorne. At Hawthorne, we review our work to make sure we still remember it because of the summer break. And for those who are new, so they learn the rules and expectations for Hawthorne. At our assemblies, we are learning to have quiet and calm bodies and listening ears. On the playground, we make sure to take care of others and make sure we don't hurt each other physically or
028with our words. I've been at Hawthorne since preschool. Hawthorne has made me grow so much. Hawthorne helps me with my math. Sometimes I hate math, but Hawthorne made me realize that math can be easy and hard at the same time. We love talking together in our small fifth grade group called eLateTime. Now here's Connor to talk about how Hawthorne helps us belong. Hi, my name is Connor and I'm here to talk about how Hawthorne helps us belong. Hawthorne helps kids TK through 6th grade feel like they belong. Teachers at Hawthorne work hard to help our students feel and help their peers feel like they belong as Eagles. At assemblies, our school ensures that students learn LAB, leadership, and belong, and feel like they can soar like the Eagles they are. Our school sports, cross country
029soccer, etc., even though outside of when school is still learning, students still help each other to feel like they belong where they are doing their sport. Students also at Hawthorne feel like they belong because of the opportunities given to them. As previously said, Hawthorne has leadership teams that students can pick from for one that says it's for them or one that they personally like from their opinion. Here's a picture of one of our first grade classes doing a class meeting and working together with their big buddies in fifth grade. Now here's Lilith talking about her growth at Hawthorne. Hi, my name is Lilith. I'm so glad to be able to be here today. I'm here to talk about how Hawthorne has helped me grow academically and helped my leadership skills improve. I came to Hawthorne
030three years ago when I was in fourth grade, and I just wanted to get through the year. I had never stayed at a school for more than one year, so I thought that today wouldn't be any different. Then I stayed for all of fourth grade. fifth grade and now i'm here in sixth grade the school helps helps my grades grow and also helped me become a better leader and a better person i'm so glad to be here we love our buddy bench most of all our education at hawthorne has gives us the opportunity to learn about ourselves and each other we have an impact and we can choose what we can choose for it to be positive thank you for hearing our presentation tonight are there any questions mr banfield Well, this isn't so much
031a question as I want to thank you for having your statements so that I could read them. It's kind of like closed captioning for me, which I rely on all the time now at home. So thank you and a great presentation from all of you. I know it takes a lot to get up in front of strange adults or adults who are strangers. I'd like to quickly say something. I just want to kind of shout out everybody. We've been working a lot every almost every single day. We've been calling after school and working on our slides together and I think that takes a lot of work. Good for you. This is Walt Adano. Thank you. That was a really wonderful presentation and I can tell that you put a lot of work into it. It's
032always so important to be prepared when you present and clearly you were very prepared. I just want to say a couple of things that you mentioned really resonated with me and I think what you're doing at Hawthorne and what you all are achieving at Hawthorne are lessons that we can use in our whole community. So I love the idea of striving for quiet and calm bodies and listening ears. I wish that we could all be focusing on that a lot. And the idea of lab. leads you want every student to lead achieve and belong and i just hope that for our whole community so thank you for being the lighthouse that lights the way for all of us mr buckman thanks So I do want to add my thanks for your being here all the
033times that I visit Hawthorne and especially tonight. I just it's so nice because I see that there's a sense of belonging to the school and that's sometimes hard and a sense of respect for each other which also is hard sometimes and then also a respect for the school and it's it's just wonderful to see so I just want to congratulate all of you and everybody that's associated with Hawthorne. Thank you. I also want to thank Mr. Kamal for her patience. during construction. It has been a major sight and I appreciate the students' ability to continue to lead and achieve through these challenging days of construction. And you will reap the benefits. I'm hopeful that you already are to some extent as we work our way through this. Great school will become greater and we appreciate
034your putting up with all that goes on day to day through the construction. We know that it's been a particular challenge at your site and I don't want that to go unacknowledged. So thank you. Thanks again for coming. All right. Our next item is 5.03, Golden Quill Presentation. Dr. Prater. Yeah. No. Great job Hawthorne. Go Eagles. Good evening board. I love firsts. There's a first for everything sometimes and this is our first that I'm aware of in San Luis Coastal where we have taken on a challenge, an opportunity perhaps called the Golden Quill. California School Boards Association's Golden Quill. And we have been quietly admiring and watching a local reporter from the Tribune throughout the last couple years. And I'm here tonight because we found out over the summer, maybe late summer, that our nominee
035actually won. And we're talking about less than eight, maybe 10 Golden Pool Awards across California. So it's a pretty special honor and now all of you know CSBA also serves as our anchor as an organization with our annual conferencing which serves as professional development and learning for our board and for the superintendent as well. It also has a prestigious honor called the Golden Bell, for which it looks like we're going to get the fourth one coming up, assuming it all goes well. And so we're really proud of that. And so I have a few words I'd like to share with you. It's my sincere honor to recognize and celebrate a fantastic journalist in our community, Sadie Dittenberg. recipient of the 2025 California School Boards Association Golden Quill Award. This award honors fair, insightful, and accurate
036reporting on public education. And Sadie exemplifies all of these qualities. As a reporter for the Tribune and a California local news fellow through the UC Berkeley School of Journalism, Sadie brings clarity, compassion, and integrity to the stories that shape our schools. Her reporting is not only thorough and balanced, it's thoughtful. She shines a light on both the challenges and the successes within our education system. Whether she's writing about one of the nation's healthiest schools, or the one in ten students in San Luis Obispo County experiencing homelessness. Her work centers on the voices and realities of our students, families, and educators. Recently, Sadie invited all school districts in San Luis Obispo County to share programs and stories that we're proud of because she wants to tell the whole story, not just the headline. That, to me,
037is the true spirit of public service journalism. Sadie, we're proud to have you in our community and thrilled to see your work recognized alongside past Golden Bell, sorry, Golden Quill Award winners from the Los Angeles Times, KESQ, EdSource, Sacramento Bee, and others. Congratulations and thank you for helping us tell our story with honesty, with care, and with hope. Sadie, please come on up. Those smell really good. And with this acknowledgement comes a certificate that I managed to bend, and I'm sorry, and a fountain pen. Now I have to tell you, I received a letter, handwritten letter, from a student at Morro Bay High School who apparently knows you. And it was an amazing handwritten letter. And first of all, he said, you're the best. I don't know how he knows you, but he thinks you're
038the best. And he says, whatever you do, Dr. Prater, don't give her a cheap fountain pen. And I can't say, I don't know if this is cheap or not, but it came with the certificate. I also included a copy of what I just read for you to keep. And if you'd like to share some thoughts with the board and the public, please do. Yeah. Thank you all so much. It's been a pleasure working with, I mean, I think I've, obviously I don't get in front of the mic very often. You're accustomed to writing. Anyway, yeah, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure working with all of you and I will continue doing it. So yeah, thank you very much. So Sadie. As a former reporter, as a former editor at the Tribune, I... Oops,
039wrong seat. You're right here, baby. Obviously, I don't do this very often either. I just... That's okay. I don't get to... I just want the public to know that... They know very little about what it takes to be a reporter, how long the hours are, how hard the work is, how weird the people are that you have to talk to. And so I just want to just offer my personal congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks again. Thanks for coming. All right. Our next item is 6.01, Correspondence. And at the time tonight's agenda was published, no official correspondence had been received. So we'll move on to 6.02, which is public comment. This is the time in the meeting where the public may address the board. with items that were in the purview of the board but
040perhaps not on the agenda. If you wish to address the board about something that is on the agenda later, you may wait until that item appears or you can do that now if you are unable to remain until the agenda item comes up. If you wish to address the board, we have yellow sheets on the somewhere on a back table that we would appreciate you filling out thank you ms dawson and um and let us have those you will be called up in the order in which the sheets are received you have three minutes in which to address the board and that is closely monitored and we will cut you off at the end of your three minutes in order to be fair to everybody so with that Mr. Klausen, who do we have? Yeah,
041we'd love to hear from Phil Angel. Good evening, board. I'm here representing San Luis Coastal Teachers Association. Our members have been busy with school starting, and we're doing a great job. I think we're killing it out there. From our psychologists, to our counselors, to our teachers, to our support professionals, everyone is really working hard, especially given the budget cuts. I wanted to take a moment to celebrate Emily Capilano. She was recognized as a labor partner by the county Democrat committee. So a big applause for Emily. She was our president before me. And then last meeting, I got up and spoke about PG&E. And Lisa happened to talk about Bishop's Peak and their healthy school board. And I would be remiss if I did not mention Kayla Townsend. Kayla Chownson was one of our counselors. She
042was at Bishop's Peak and she was an instrumental partner in strengthening the social-emotional health program at Bishop's Peak. She's left our district and I ask why and you should ask why too because she's a phenomenal counselor and she was a phenomenal asset to our district, to our staff, to our community, and most importantly to our students. Why'd she leave? PG&E? I mean budget cuts really. When you look at the budget cuts that we are facing, you guys are forced to pit excellent programs against one another. And that is just an injustice, an injustice for all of us, especially our students. I'm hoping PG&E is listening, and I'm hoping that we can work together with Senator Laird to get the funding we deserve, that our kids deserve. Thank you. And next we have Ben Lippert. So
043you all know that, sorry, the charts are for the budget comment. So I'm not going to be referring to those charts this time. Yeah, so we normally don't do comment during the budget update or? The superintendent's updates. Okay. Let me think then. Can I, I can do the charts. It's going to take me a second to set it up or. What's the best way I talked to them for him about where to put everything but I thought it was gonna be after that update Yes, all right. Sorry And mr. Lippert I see you had two public comments one for now and one after the update But we can't have you have six minutes all together Okay, perfect Okay, thank you All right, Madam President, members of the board, Celia. Your time will begin now. Okay.
044Thank you so much for allowing me time here. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I'm just going to speak a little bit about the process that got us here today and about making sure we have accurate information and knowing what to ask for and how to ask for it. So I'm just going to start here with SB 1090. Staff knows I'm pretty careful with my numbers. I'm happy to show you any supporting documentation you want for these numbers. The part I want to focus on is right here. This is the money, right? This is called the Essential Services Mitigation Fund, which is part of the Community Impact Mitigation Program. That money was initially $49 million. County officials, Jim Erb, Guy Savage, went to equalization. They said, hey, PG's got the wrong numbers here. We should be getting
045more money because of the unitary tax loss of revenue Equalization agreed they came back That's how we got this money right was knowing the information finding out how to What to ask for and how to ask for it right specifics and not trusting PG&E this is This is 846 again. It's kind of janky, but this is how it is. This is SB 846 This is a huge pie, right? This is the pie that went into forming SB 846, which is what kept operations running at DCPP. All this money, we have this management fee, that's $100 million a year they get, straight to shareholders, PG&E shareholders. Volumetric fees, that's something I can talk a little bit more about. This comes from our electricity bills. We pay twice as much as everybody else because we're in PG's...
046zone, I guess you would say. That's to keep the plant running. Essentially, every megawatt hour they produce, they get money from us. Employee retention. This is something I didn't talk about previously. This was a part of the program for 1090. That's the money that went to union employees. You probably know somebody that got some of it if you know anybody that works at DCPP. That made it into SB 846. This is Diablo Lands Conservation. This is something I'm happy to talk about later. I don't have time right now. What I want you to know is that this is the piece that is missing. The piece of the Emergency Services Mitigation Fund that should have been an 846 was this much, right? It's not a lot. So when PG&E comes and tells you how hard it
047is, think about how much this is, right? This is not a lot of money. billion with the dollars that was their profit last year this is what we're asking for this little tiny thing up here thank you thanks Mr. LePert right is there anyone else who wishes to address the board at this time right then we'll move on to our superintendent's updates uh business and budget update Mr. Pinkerton Yeah, the board had a great question last meeting about one of our purchase orders and estimated utility costs. And so I just wanted to publicly explain that we do estimate our utilities for the year based on last year, based on the last couple of years. And we have a new person that was typing it into the computer system themselves. And so they instead of just
048putting PG&E, instead of putting the gas company, instead of putting the water company, they put estimated. So that's why it showed up on the PO. You'll notice tonight and ongoing that the word estimated is gone. But that's really all it is. So just so you know, I want to clear that up. And so for us, fiscal department right now is closing out the books for last fiscal year. We have our next meeting. We're going to have unaudited actuals. We'll kind of update the board about the budget. situation in terms of where we see ourselves at at this current time and then also talk about kind of the process for receiving more information about the budget ongoing for the school year. Next we have our educational services update. Ms. Yamashita. Good evening, board. As you heard
049from our students that joined us and Mr. Angel, we are off to an amazingly smooth start to the school year and are already firing on all cylinders. And while that's true, that also kind of means so the honeymoon is a bit over and we are having the opportunity to engage with specific students and specific families that may have challenges or concerns relating to their children. So me, my team, our principals have. all been having one-on-one meetings as necessary with individual parents and families. We also are already kicking off our LCAP planning for this school year. We're going to be working on developing what is the third year of our LCAP plan. More information to come shortly. We had more back-to-school nights at Del Mar, Laguna Middle School, Monarch Grove, Morro Bay High School. They were
050all fantastic. I know I've seen many of you at our back-to-school nights. Our principals are crushing it, talking with our families about the importance of attendance, how to engage. at school and sharing some of the great achievement data that we have. I got to attend a professional conference on artificial intelligence on zoom we continue I continue to hear from parents and families across all three levels of our schools. With concerns primarily related to either cell phones and or artificial intelligence and I continue to refer families. To our health future ready and healthy technology implementation document that we created last year with the task force that speaks. to our cell phone policies. And then we're going to be creating our artificial intelligence task force this year to bring more definition to that later this school year.
051I've also been holding goal setting evaluation meetings with principals and directors, just like our teachers get evaluated, our principals and directors get evaluated. We all get evaluated and set goals for ourselves, et cetera. We kicked off our safe and nurturing schools student group data challenge. Remember, we used to have site equity challenge goals where we looked at a group of students that may be furthest from justice or an achievement opportunity gap. And we wrote a specific plan in our secondary schools to address that. We are including this year. four well five we were going to do four but one more elementary school jumped on to join us in that adventure so miss shepherd and i and cultural creations team of pedro arroyo and sandra saroof met and spent the morning together looking at data and
052trying to narrow down the focus for this year for those elementary schools We're also regularly collaborating with the San Luis Obispo County Office of Education through the Ed Services Council, and that's the team of curriculum related issues. Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Supreme Court case was one of the topics we were discussing this past month. Janet and Angela Riles and I and the teams at the schools are also working on counselor expectations and redesigning and refining. What are the responsibilities of our counselors that are full-time at the school site and academic counselors? What are the responsibilities of our elementary counselors which now may be split and shared between two sites and figuring out what things are must do and happening and what things are may do and happening and all of that will be shared with
053you once it gets finalized we are still working on the list with the principals and the counselor groups so more information to come on that and also this year new we um ms shepherd actually created a fantastic slc usd volunteer orientation slideshow that principals are to do at a back to school night or a parent coffee or the first pta meeting to make sure that all of our volunteers understand we have levels of volunteers and what kind of background they need to be a volunteer what's the difference between a visitor and a volunteer as well as the ever important how to be inclusive and welcome all students and backgrounds when you work in our classrooms so we're excited about that this year Thank you. Can I ask a question? Sure. You mentioned that you were
054doing goal setting with the side administrators and with the directors as well. Do we have the equivalent of the Danielson approach for administrators as the same kind of evaluation that we do for the teachers where we look at specific aspects of their performance and have descriptors and things like that, a rubric? we do exactly do exactly that and with each of the domains each principal picks one or two areas that they're going like specific descriptors within the domain that they're going to be working on this year and then what evidence they're going to collect over the course of the year to show their progress and growth in that area and in addition to that we also add a goal about how to use breakthrough coach strategies to use their time more efficiently and effectively to
055allow them to be you know, available as instructional leaders and not just always managing details of the operations of the building. Thank you. I just wanted to comment the slides for parent volunteers or school volunteers were really helpful as a former parent volunteer. I appreciated them. In addition to principals sharing them out at principal coffees or back to school nights, I'm also wondering if they will be on each school website along with the links to the forms that have to be filled out just to make it as accessible as possible. Yeah, we'll look at that. I know they're on the HR website. Yeah, right. That's what I thought. They're already posted to the HR website. I would just say that. I hear you. Parents go to schools, not the HR. So we'll talk about that
056with our team. Figure it out. Thank you. Mr. Pinkerton again measures the update. Yeah, I'm going to go back to business for a while. I should have included this, but we received our first of 10 new electric buses. In the school districts, we finally finished the infrastructure to be able to charge them all. Our generator system is set up just in case the power goes out. We want to make sure those buses are charged in the morning. But again, kudos to Phillip Tarver, our transportation supervisor, Chris Bonin, his staff for getting grants that paid for all of it. So it's really nice, right? So they take one of our oldest buses. It goes and gets crunched and we will have those new electric buses start up. But again, first one out of 10 came today.
057So we have one already that we have been using and successfully using. So long term, it'll be really nice to expand that. Mr. did PG and he can finish the infrastructure work that they were doing out there. They did so so we're online with PG and he finally how many years has it been a couple years, it's been about three. Okay, cool. Thank you. So we needed that to be done before we could take delivery of buses. So it's exciting. On the on the measure seafront just one quick thing for the board to know we will have our citizens bond oversight committee meeting coming up in September on the fifteenth. And so we'll be reviewing the all of the expenditures interest all those things with Cboc as well as updating all of the current project
058statuses that are happening throughout the district. All right, we'll move on to our discussion action items. 8.01 is the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, also known as CESP, Local Preliminary Results for 2025. Good evening, board. I'm here with Mr. Neff as well as Principal May and Principal Dickinson and we're going to go through the preliminary CAASPP results. The results are preliminary right now because the state has not released things to the public yet. So everything that we're sharing tonight is only going to be about our school district and specific to our schools. We'll be back in a couple of weeks, I think about six weeks after everything is released and then we'll have some comparison data for you to look at as well. So the CAASPP stands for the California Assessment of Performance
059and Progress and these are the results from this past spring of 2025. And we are utilizing a school, excuse me, a tool called PARSEC. Okay, perfect. And through Parsec, we are better able to tell our story, not only of our district, which Mr. Neff and I are going to be doing tonight, but also at the school sites as well. And you'll hear from the principals because of that. It's helping us to narrow down a little bit more and be able to identify some patterns that we're seeing over time with particular subgroups. were able to make some actions and some plans to address some of those needs that we're seeing. So I wanted to just highlight that everything you're going to see tonight is from PARSEC, which you approved our payment for within the LCAP. So
060thank you for that. The other piece I want to touch on is a big focal point for us as a district, which is culture of achievement. I think this has always existed within San Luis Coastal. However, we are looking to expand and deepen our knowledge and our understanding of data. And we talked at our last board meeting about the STAR assessment tool that we're beginning to utilize. CASP projections and predictors for our students and so while we have CASP and we'll take it again in the spring, STAR will be a nice partner to that so that we can have checkpoints along the way so that we can intervene sooner and provide that support to our students. So let's dive in. I'm going to be going over the overall ELA and math. So English language arts
061and math both have two components. One of them is what we call the CAT or the computer adaptive test. And the other is a PT or a performance task. And those are extended responses that students actually have to type out. It's all taken on the computer. At the elementary level, we spread out the ELA over a couple of days, two, three days and same time. with math. We try to really pace the students but it is intense. It is unlike any other assessment that students have to take throughout the school year in terms of the length and the amount of perseverance that it takes for them to be able to attend and have that determination to take the test and finish it. all while doing their best. And so that is where that culture of
062achievement that I spoke about earlier really comes into play. And our principals are doing some amazing work about helping kids reflect on how did you do last year? What are our scores looking like? And what are we going to set a goal for this coming year? And so we're trying to raise awareness, not just around CAS, but around all of our testing components that we have throughout the year. I should also mention that our tests are given to students in grades three through eight as well as 11th grade. So it's not at every single grade level. So with that, let's dive in. This particular slide has a lot of information for us to digest. So I'm going to get you oriented as we get started here. On the left hand side of the screen, you'll
063see the overall meaning. all of our students that took the test in those grade levels English language arts results and then on the right hand side you'll see the overall results for math right underneath that you'll see that there are four different colors that and there's a key there for us the dark gray means standard not met and that is the equivalent of a score of one that a student would receive on the cast test The lighter gray is standard nearly met, and that would be a score of a two. Both of those gray colors means that the student did not meet proficiency or that they're not performing at the level that we would expect. The blue bar, the one that's a little bit more teal, means standard met, and that's a three. And then
064the dark teal color is standard exceeded. That's where a student would have received a four. On the very bottom you'll see the number of valid test scores and it's slightly different between ELA and math and that's mostly because we have our students who are categorized as newcomers when they first come to us for the first 12 months they're not required to take the ELA CAASPP assessment however they do have to take the math assessment so you'll see a little bit of a discrepancy in our numbers with math being slightly higher. Now within, well let me go through the actual, we usually call them donuts here in SLCUSD. So the circles are the donuts. You'll see that overall our score for this past spring was 67% of our students meeting or exceeding standard for ELA. And
065then within math we're at 56%. I now want to move into the donuts themselves. You'll see that we have a disaggregated breakdown that is by grade level. So that takes it a little bit deeper into those tested grade levels. You'll see three through eight and then 11. And what this allows us to do is see a little bit more clearly where those grade levels that might be performing higher or lower throughout the district in terms of meeting those proficiency standards. So I'll point out on here, sixth grade, for example, in ELA, you see a much smaller proportion of gray, meaning that we had fewer students. either not meeting the standard or at that standard nearly met and a larger proportion of students in those teal colors meaning that they met or exceeded the standard. You
066said that that our our newcomers take the math portion of the cast. Is my understanding is that that some of the new math testing requires has has a language basis to it. word problems, things like that. Is that going to affect their scores? More than likely it does, yes. Okay, thank you. Yeah, the test is administered in English, and so there is that. They're still required to take the math portion, although we do exclude for the first 12 months in ELA, which is an interesting approach by the state. And then within math itself, you'll see a couple of bright spots to point out as well. We have fourth grade. with the smaller proportion of gray in comparison to other grade levels as well. So we're going to dive in. As I said, Parsec helps us
067tell stories and we could stand up here and talk all night about what it is that we're seeing. But we're here to provide an overview this evening. So we're going to start really big picture and then we're going to funnel down to site levels and then we're going to go to our subgroups and then we're going to talk about next steps before we have our principal share out. So, Parsec also allows us to go pretty far back in time. And so, what we've pulled out is just a three-year trend here. We do have extended data and extensive data if we wanted to go back further. But the highlights from 2022-23 all the way up to this year are outlined on this slide. And so, this is looking at just ELA. You'll see those same color
068bands. Bless you. And what you can really see here is that there's a very slight shrinking of the gray, meaning that we are slightly trending upward over time. If you look at the three-year trend, so it's 65% proficiency in 2023, bless you, up to 67% proficiency for 2025. Now I want to go to the second graph that's up here. And we've looked at average distance from standard previously, but I'll take a minute to explain it because it's not something that always necessarily sticks in our brains the first time. So if you look along the x-axis, which is the bottom line that's showing us the test here, it's also showing us that there's a zero over on the y-axis all the way up to 40. And that's showing us an average distance from standard. So what
069does that mean? If we take a look at that zero, that baseline level, think of that as students scoring on the very bottom end of a three. What we're seeing here is that the average distance term standard for ELA that our students are scoring in 24-25, 39 points on average above that level three cut score. We'll also see that there's a nice upward trend in difference from standard over the past three years, which is exactly what we want to see. It means that our students year over year are growing. Can I just ask a quick question? So I appreciate the range of 22 to 24. Does this, or would I be able to see the COVID, the pre-COVID and post-COVID response within these numbers? So not necessarily in this presentation, but yes within parsec we
070have the ability to pull that data Okay, thanks. Yeah We say the distance from standard and I'm beginning to understand that but my question is Where what standard in other words? Where does that standard come from? So there are scaled scores that each student receives within ELA and within math. And for each assessment, the scaled score for what is considered and what we're looking at is the blue. So that standard met is slightly different. So there's a range that gives us a level one, a range that gives us a level two. three and so on. So what you're looking at is that average distance from standard is how far above the three they scored or what we'll look at in a second how far below so in they dipped into a score of a two
071and how far away from that score of proficiency or standard met were they. So you said scaled score? Correct. Okay, so diving into math, a little bit different story here. And I would say that overall, what you're going to see is that our scores have dipped slightly, or they can also be viewed as stagnant or rather flat. In 2023, we were at 57% proficiency. We went up to 58% in 2024. And this last year, we were at that 56%. But if you're looking across the years, what you'll see is it's pretty much remaining the same. So if we dive into distance from standard, when we look at that average, unlike the previous slide where we're seeing that slow upward trend, which is what we want to see, you'll see that we went up in 2024
072and then we saw a decrease or a dip in that average distance from standard in 2025. So one other way that Parsec allows us to look at our data is looking at our distance from standard growth. And so what this does is it takes a group of students and I'll start on the very far left hand side. Our students that went, they took the CAASPP assessment in third grade. in 2024 and then as fourth graders they took the assessment in 2025. What this chart is showing us is what was their average year-over-year growth. So in ELA we're seeing positive trends, right? We're seeing that above the line that we want to see growth in reading year-over-year. Math tells us a different story, however. I'll point out the kiddos that are in that fourth to fifth
073grade cohort. You can see that there was a sharp decline in their distance from standard and that really contributed to our overall decline when we're looking at math in general as a district. We do have some bright spots as well when we're looking at 6th to 7th and 7th to 8th, but that 4th to 5th is something that we're concerned about and we're diving into because we don't want to obviously see those dips below standard. Go ahead. If I'm to understand it, the group that dipped quite a bit. Are we saying that last year's fourth graders? So that was from fourth to fifth grade. They took the test as fifth graders last year. Those kids are now actually sixth graders. Okay. And what we can't do right now is compare ourselves at the state level.
074Was this a trend or at a county level? Was this a trend that we saw right now? We're only looking microscopically within our own district. Because I thought I discovered something just a second ago. And that is. Isn't that this year's fifth graders is the cohort. I call them the cohort because they were the ones that had kinder in Zoom. Right. But that's this year's fifth grade. Correct. It was last year's fifth grade. So you would be looking at if you want to call them my own child is in that fifth grade cohort this year and so the third they would have been fourth graders taking the test last year and they also showed a decline from third to fourth grade as well. It just was not as steep or as sharp as what we
075saw from fourth to fifth grade. I know Mr. Buckman asked questions typically about this chart, like this showing a cohort. So can we actually, using Parsec, could we say, OK, looking back, these students are now 11th graders. And here's how they did along the line. Yes, it's pretty amazing. We have a continuous enrollment tab that we can take a look at and you can say for how many years that you've been you want to go back so you can say that I want to look at kiddos that have been with us for two years, five years, seven years and you can look at their growth over time and multiple assessments so it's pretty powerful. A couple caveats in case you notice why I didn't have it for 12th grade or 11th grade, because there isn't
076a 9th or 10th grade test, right? That's just high school's the anomaly in that they just do 11th grade, so you don't have cohort data for that. So even the longitudinal, you're jumping from 8th to 11th, it's usable, but there's a little bit of some asterisks or whatever, right, with the 11th grade stuff, just an FYI. So then looking at that was district wide by Ms. Shepherd. So looking at kind of how did sites individually do? We'll take you through some of that in the table version because it's a lot of data, but trying to make it. understandable so some coloring the darker blue is where we saw gains in both the met or exceeded change so we're looking at 23 24 and 25 and then the far right column is how much percentage changed
077and met or exceeded from 23 to 25 so over those years over those three years how much change do we see if a site made five percent or more gain typically as we have in our l cap we want to see five percent growth overall or three percent and then five percent uh for subgroups so we're at five percent is kind of like that's a good good mark to hit um so that is what the darker blue as well as and if we saw a positive change in the dfs is uh distant from uh from standard That would be indicated as well. And so with that some of our top ones you can see as you look at it So we see with cinch I'm er making 12% in the met or exceeded Percentage growth
078over those two years and then a 20 point for distance from standard growth came in top and then we also with Bishop peace and bishops peak sorry and CL Smith making gains as well And our schools that have high numbers of special education classes and students disadvantaged in this system It could be dependent on their caseloads and where they're at, but yes, if you look at, which will, I think was included in the Friday focus, but you look at our achievement and principal, I guess it will speak to as well. Students with disabilities tend to have bigger achievement gaps. So yes, if, you know, kind of generally speaking, sure. Yeah. I'll just add also that's one reason why we want to look at distance from standard We can actually drill down to the student level
079and take a look at how our students whether they have an IEP or not are Growing over time. How are they getting closer to achieving that standard? Are they rising above it and are they maintaining that? So that is one key tool in looking at distance from standard as well as it lets us know over time How close is that child? to achieving and are we making the gains that we want to versus just looking at a score of a one or a two doesn't give us enough information there. We can see are they, you know, five skill score points away from achieving proficiency and when we have the full suite of assessment. rolled out to us from the state will also be able to look at claim areas as well and we can do
080that to see was there a specific strand within math or within ELA where the student struggled in particular. So again in the preliminary day we just don't get as much information but distance from standard really does show that growth over time which is what we want to celebrate and strive for. Again, that distance from standard will give us, well, I'd say a more granular perspective for the students instead of just you got a three, which as we talked, Ms. Shepherd talked about before, is a range actually of numbers, right? Now we can really see, well, what was your actual score over time? So it gives us a better, I think a more granular, more specific perspective of that student's growing, whether they're just making sort of this average mark or not. Hopefully that makes a
081lot more sense. Then looking in terms of math, we can see, again, same sort of pattern of coloration, right? The darker Buhler sites that made that 5% or more gain in the meta exceeded over the years as well as gains in DFS. And then light Buh would be if they made gains in DFS. And that and so you can even see even if you have a little bit of a loss or a little bit of gain and met or exceeded it still can see the different in that DFS and that's because that's that more granular view of students data and so looking at both Los Osos Middle School and bishops peak, making some, some games over the course of time from 23 to 25 and their met and exceeded as well as their distance from
082standard in their math scores. Looking then by student groups. I'll let Ms. Shepard share that. So similar color pattern here where the lighter blue is indicating that we saw growth over time and distance from standard and then the darker blue means that was both distance from standard as well as growth within the met or exceeded column. We have some celebrations within ELA as you can see there's a lot of light blue as well as dark blue. We also have some areas that are really we're able to spotlight and say this is an area that we want to ask more questions about we want to investigate further and that's really the beauty of parsec. However, I want to stop and celebrate for a minute because far too often in education, I think that our brains go
083to what it is that we're not yet doing. So I will celebrate that we have our Filipino, our African American, our SED, our students with disabilities, and our foster youth subgroups that showed growth over time. And those are the upward trends that we want to see. And I think it's also evidence of us really being able to hone in. and provide interventions for several of those subgroups over time. So those are celebrations. And as we look at a group, I'll call out our Hispanic subgroup that is listed in here, our ELs and our LTELs. Those are specific subgroups where we need to think about is what we're doing working or do we need to be doing something different for them over time and these are some of the conversations that we're having at the administrative
084level as well as at the site level so that we know who are these students what is their story what's their background and how can we help them to achieve over time just just want to thank you for this slide it's it's really good to be able to see all the subgroups and all their all their action. Thanks. Absolutely. Math tells a little bit of a different story. You can see there's far less blue. And with our dip, you can see that how that plays out within each of the subgroups. Foster youth is a little bit of an anomaly, just in that it is a very small proportion of students that you can see. So I didn't want to falsely call out that we saw huge growth in a large proportion of our students. And
085at the same time, I really want to celebrate that we had big growth, even if it is our... subgroup is 10 students that's pretty amazing that they're making that kind of growth and that was a group that we looked at hard and made sure that we were serving within our mtss model at elementary we did see some growth within sed in terms of their dfs as well as within our african-american subgroup as well we know we have some work to do in math and we're going to be talking about that in a future slide but let's jump into cast with mr neff So going into CAS, which is our science test. So looking at overall how our students do. And so looking at it's in grades 5, 8, and 11. And then just to talk
086about the anomaly, why do you see 12th grade? Well, another little sort of twist the state did with just science in high school is if they didn't take it as 11th grader, they have to take it as a 12th grader. but that's only for science. In this particular case, the cohort size for that grade 12 was 26 students. So it's pretty small, but we can see. And so looking at overall how students did, it's the same sort of donut, right? Called donut chart or circular chart on that about 51.5% either meter exceeding and then with 41.7 nearly and then 6.8 not meeting it. There are three overall strands in the science test across the grades and so that's on the far right you'll see a life science, physical science, and earth and space sciences. The
087kind of three main components of it and then you can see within each of those the percentage of students that are exceeding, meeting, or then for they say below standard they're lumping that standard not met and standard nearly met together and so that's why you see one shade of gray instead of two. So a little bit just how PARSEC does it and how the test does it within those bands. And across those for life sciences, physical sciences, earth and space sciences, not a ton of difference. You see some interesting, say within physical sciences that have the biggest group of meta or above standard, which would be our standard exceeded group. While then in earth and space sciences, we have our largest group that was like near standard or there. You know why those differences is
088a would be a good question is we're looking at grades five grades eight and grade 11. One thing I would speculate a little bit. If you look back now on in the middle of the donut chart where we see the breakdown by grade of what percentages you see eighth grade did the best in terms of having the most met or exceeded eighth grade is physical sciences is what they study in eighth grade now is there enough of those scores to skew across the whole district that part I don't know it's it's a little bit of a speculation but I think it definitely has an influence if you look at in earth and space sciences and that band but overall kind of on those bands on the right they're all fairly similar in terms of we
089don't see wow disproportionately a whole bunch of students doing really well or really poorly in one area versus another it's sort of kind of across the board and how they're doing with the science test and the science data I would say prospectively or comparatively to English and math is relatively new in terms of looking at the data is now showing up on the dashboard and so in years past it hasn't and so it's something that we're diving into the data a little bit more and having more conversations with our science departments and then at the elementary level with teachers engaging in the science materials overall. And then looking at by site, so similar that we did with ELA and math, looking at the same color configuration. In this case, we're just looking at the percentage
090met or exceeded over those two years. And so we see sites, Bishop's Peak making a lot of growth, which is great. Also looking at CL Smith and Del Mar, Laguna Middle School making some good growth as well. And so some highlights there, but also overall. we have some work to do in science. I'll say as a former science teacher myself, we have some work to do and so that's definitely something engaging with the principals and the science department's about to looking at you know using the interim assessments and how are we preparing students and you know even at the high school level looking at with the high the 11th grade to biochem and physics is what it's testing on and what are the sequencing of courses our students are taking. Oftentimes as they get in
091their junior year, they're starting to take AP courses. Sometimes that's AP Physics, but there's other options as well. It could be AP Bio, AP Chem, AP Environmental Science. Those are all great courses too. And so looking at how students take their courses, how we're preparing them, those sort of things. And so it's work we need to keep doing to improve those scores. That's good overall. So sharing a few of the key takeaways as we're wrapping up at least our district level portion of this presentation. We did increase in proficiency in ELA over time. As we're looking back to 2021 even until now, we've made some gains. But when we're looking from 2024 to 2025 specifically, we're flat. We're at that 67%. Our math proficiency did decrease from 24 to 25 by 2%, and we've had
092overall fairly stagnant growth, up or down by one percentage point over the previous five years. Students who transitioned from that fourth to fifth, we looked at that distance from standard really going much lower. That bar that went down was much lower than any of the other grade levels, and so diving into that and investigating that decline is... work that we're actively doing. And then we called out those specific subgroups that increased in both proficiency and distance from standard in ELA. And we also looked at how foster youth was the only subgroup that increased in both of those areas, both proficiency and distance from standard within math as we're looking at that three-year trend analysis. So now what are reflections? What are our next steps? There are just a few that are up here. We have
093many more that we're talking about within our principal groups and that sites are talking about as well. There's a lot of goal setting happening at this time of year. And we're wrapping up our first round of beginning of year star assessments that we're going to be diving into with staff as well on. in the coming weeks in early September that we're excited about. So with DFS data within parsec you're going to hear us talking about this more because of what we were saying around being able to track a student's growth over time on a micro level really looking at those scaled scores and not just they were we can now know if they were a low two versus a high two and almost there in their assessment and we can celebrate that with the student
094as well when we're looking at it at that micro level. It also allows us to really identify what are those trends and patterns over time. For example, that fourth to fifth grade dip that we saw. So it's a powerful tool that we're diving into and it's helping us to ask the right questions. Our focus in elementary, as you all know, has really been lasered in on benchmark implementation this past year and I believe that that that emphasis really has played itself out to maintain our score in ELA which is wonderful. We did not see an implementation dip as most districts do when they roll out a brand new curriculum especially one that's as involved as benchmark. however you'll see that there was less of an emphasis on math and science which probably contribute to that
095small dip that we saw within our scores themselves so teachers were maintaining and almost all of their energy was going into ela We are going to continue to prioritize our LCAP identified subgroups within our ELA MTSS Tier 2 intervention at the elementary level. We can see that within ELA all those blue colors show us that what we're doing is working when time is working because our classroom teachers have a smaller group of students that they can pull aside and work with and other students that are in need are getting pulled out of the classroom simultaneously to receive that really instrumental targeted support. So that's exciting to see and we want to continue to maintain that and focus in on some of our student groups and where do we see some overlap within some of our
096subgroups is going to be the work this year as well. Our star math data, I mentioned this one earlier, it's really going to allow us to calibrate over time and we're going to be able to see, we were looking at some scatter plot charts today with the preliminary star data to see what's the trend line that we want to see with our students and where are they falling around that. And we're going to be able to do that by sight. So next week principals and our S cubes are going to be looking at that data a little bit further and deciding what to do next. And this one's really big. We focused on this last year and I just see it getting better and better this year. year as we're beginning to talk about some
097of those schools that had the blue growth not only in met or exceeded but also in their dfs Those administrators are sharing out at our principal meetings and they're honing in on what actually worked, what helped move the needle at your school sites, and then how can others emulate that. So we really, we know that that culture of achievement has to start with our school leaders, but really it has to permeate at our sites. It has to get down to the student level. It has to be teachers helping to drive that, as well as families. So we're working on that. We're continuing this work this year, and I'm really excited. to see where we go next. So with that, do we want to dive? Okay, let's do it. With the summary and reflections, let's say,
098and you're going to be analyzing this year and studying this, what happens if the group, the cohort that is now in fifth grade transitioning to sixth grade, What happens if they show again a significant dip in math? What might that mean? And if it's just that particular grade level, then that grade level needs us to do something differently. And we'll need to look at first our Tier 1. What does our curriculum look like in those grade levels? And then we want to crosswalk that. There are CASP and SBAC. blueprints for testing. And as I mentioned earlier, we'll have the claim data is what it's called released to us soon. And we can really actually see like which specific standards and strands did kiddos struggle with or not. So if we're looking at was it two
099different claim areas? Was it all of them? The more data that we have. the better we can address some of those needs. And likely if that continues, we're looking at there are some needs from previous years of learning that there are some gaps in their knowledge that we need to address some of those underlying numbers and operations types of things. I was just going to say, Parsec, how does that actually work? I don't need a big explanation, but is it going to allow you to see the specific areas of the exam where you were just mentioning that? Yes, and we can see that in other forms as well, but what parsec allows us to do is look at it in a more comprehensive way, and we can do it in a way that is not
100while we're watching something spin and load. We can do it all in real time, and we can drill down is what it's called within the data to go, okay, now I'm looking at four or five. Let me see what the list of kids looks like at Baywood in comparison to Sinsimer, and how did they do compared to one another? So you can, and then how did we do in comparison to the state? So it really allows us to go from this big statewide scope down to an individual student with a click. It's amazing. And they're not endorsing me. I feel like they should at this point. I mean, I'll speak in terms of for even myself as a former principal and then our principals now. Parsec is pulling data from various data sources, right? So
101previously, or if you don't have Parsec, you're typically, okay, you're logging on the state dashboard. You're logging in here. You're looking up this school, pulling that data, maybe pasting it into a spreadsheet and doing that multiple times to try to see that more granular comparative data. whatever things you're trying to do you're pulling in like manually from multiple sources and trying to sort and organize and Depending on how savvy you are with Excel or Google sheets or whatever it becomes many many clicks in a sense to get to an answer You're trying to find where in parsec. It's already there and so you're as a principal I'm okay with spreadsheets. I don't mind them. I was a science major, but I much rather look at just, okay, pick my filters and sort it. And it's,
102I can see the data changing live as I'm doing it. And so it cuts down the amount of time for principals to be able to get the data they need and sort it and organize it to answer all different types of questions that before was, could be very cumbersome and time consuming. which at the end of the day means our principals can engage in the data so much more readily in real time and efficiently. I mean, it's going to happen more. It takes, yeah, if you think of kind of user's experience when you deal with technology, it takes a lot of clicks out of it that before you had to do. And so I think at the end of the day, for me, where the rubber meets the road, it means we're using it a
103lot more because we can get that data and sort it so much faster, if that makes sense. Thank you. Thanks for the presentation. It's helpful to do these really deep dives into the data, and I think Parsec is a really great tool for doing that. I also want to just thank you for including the three-year trends by student group. I think it's really important to break down our data this way. the screensaver on my laptop is a quote from robin villard lasalle who says every system is perfectly designed to get the results it currently gets so the data are the results right so we do need to be able to pinpoint you know those student groups that are really really struggling um and so um along those lines i'm just wondering When I was looking
104at the graphs and I see improvements in that top tier exceeding expectation, what's the phrase, exceeding standard, exceed standards? So I'm seeing that growth and then I'm seeing stagnant on the two gray levels. So to what degree are we, is our system? designed to move the people, move the students from meeting the standards to exceeding the standards and we're not serving the folks at the bottom. And so that's my question is, is that a trend? Did I see that correctly? And so I think what I would point us back to within these particular three-year trends by student group because and really you can look at it at the data in a multitude of ways right and that's what makes it both fun and tricky when we hone in on this data and when I see
105all of that blue it tells me that our systems are going in mostly the right direction but that we've got some tweaks to make right and EL is really it's a it's challenging only in the sense that as our students reclassify we're the ones that are getting our threes we're reclassifying typically and so we're not going to see over time unless we look at our RFEP data how are our students who have exited that EL status doing over time however That aside, I think that outside of that particular subgroup, when we're seeing growth with our students with disabilities, that tells me that Janet's team is doing amazing work and that we are seeing that upward trend that we want to see. It also tells me that within this, we still have work to do because
106we're not yet closing that gap. And I think that's what you're pointing to when we look at our overall results is that we're not there yet. We're doing things that are moving us in that right direction, but we're not yet there. I think that's right. And thank you for confirming that. that big picture perspective was accurate. So I think that's why the student group data is important because our system may be moving students from meeting expectations to exceeding expectations and that means we're leaving students behind. And so that's not improving our gap. Yes, our gap goal. That's the opposite of the direction we want to be going. We want to be shrinking the gray. right to give you that color visual and so i'm going to hand it over to principal may at this point
107because she's going to talk about oh i'm sorry chris go ahead and perhaps kirsten is going to be able to answer this question so i'm curious how teachers are using parsec and how is this informing classroom instruction through the teachers. So can one of you talk about that? I can tell you that our teachers don't yet have access to PARSEC except through our S-Cubes and our principals as well at this point in time. However, our principals and S-Cubes are pulling that data into all of their conversations as well as their staff professional development and their meetings. Hello, thanks for having me again and I hope I get to answer some of your questions because really it's dialing down to the students, right? Who are making gains? Who aren't making gains? And what kind of supports
108do we have in place on the classroom floor and in our interventions? that are supporting the students who aren't making the kind of growth that we would expect. So at Baywood in particular, as you know, we're a dual language school, really exciting. This is our first year of full DLI. So our first cohort that started online and Zoom are now fifth graders. So we are full dual language immersion school. So at our school, we have, we ground all of our work in these main goals. The first being the We want all students to exit second grade as proficient readers in Spanish, really focusing on that Spanish language arts. In third grade and up, we want students to achieve academic and language proficiency in English and Spanish across all core subject areas. What you'll look at
109tonight is the CASP, which is ELA and math. And then a really important component of dual schools is our reclassification rate. So if you look at a grade level cohort of students, our expectation is that students will reclassify as a rate of one third of that cohort by third grade, the second third of that cohort by fourth grade, the third third of that cohort by fifth grade, so that we're reclassifying all of our students prior to entering middle school to give them those opportunities with electives that they deserve. We also closely monitor for the students that we are reclassifying, our RFEP students, to make sure that they're showing an ongoing proficiency of 80% or higher on all of our exams. And then, of course, making sure that our students are well on their way to
110earning that seal of biliteracy. All right, so when we're looking at data, we are looking at the school level, grade level, classroom level, and like I mentioned, the student level. So what are we doing in all of those areas? How are we looking at student cohorts? How are we strategically helping to support grade levels who might show in our data that they're requiring those additional supports? And then how are we supporting teachers who might need a little extra help with their craft in that tier one instruction to optimize the learning for their students? And then how are we tracking the individual student growth to make sure, like I said, the students that aren't achieving their full potential have the opportunity to? So as was so eloquently explained, Baywood, as you know if you've been on
111the board for a while, has historically been one of the lower performing schools in our district. And what I have enjoyed about PARSEC, although they are not paying me to say this either, is that I was really able to dial down and find some wins, specifically in our student subgroups, and that's what I'm here to share with you tonight. So as was shared, we at Baywood, as you know, on the coast go to fifth grade. So we're able to monitor our students as they performed in third grade into fourth grade and then fourth grade into fifth grade. So what you're looking at in front of you are ELA on the left. Is that left for you? And math there on the right. And our third graders to fourth graders, that's our first dual cohort. So
112they are this year's fifth graders and what you can see is a large average growth distance from standard from as third graders to fourth graders. And then our fourth graders to fifth graders also showed positive distance from standard growth as an overall cohort of students. If we're looking at our English learners, and this is what you were mentioning just a moment ago, you can see a lot more gray than blue. which looks very problematic, especially in that fourth grade level in math, where we have no students who are English learners who are performing three or above. But if you look at our growth, what you'll see is that we have positive distance from standard growth. So even though a student maybe didn't... achieve a three, what it shows is that they have made growth towards
113a three in a positive direction. So that's closing that achievement gap. One thing I'm really proud of is that if you look in the bottom right corner, you'll see the number of students with growth was 20 in ELA. That's 20 out of 22 students made growth. And then in math, we had 22 of 23 students made growth. of our English learners. So then our job at the site is saying, who are the two students that didn't make growth? What interventions are they giving? Do they have an IEP? Are the right goals in place? And in math, who's that one student that didn't make growth and what are we doing to support them? We have other tools in our universal screeners like STAR help us do that on more of an ongoing basis. And Parsec does
114pull from STAR. So we're still learning how to use that tool, but we have some other bags of tricks so we know who those kiddos are too. Then if we look at our socioeconomically disadvantaged, as you see, we have negative distance from standard. But again, if you look at the growth, we have positive growth with 48 of 50 students making growth in ELA and 50 of 51 students making growth in math. For students who are not socioeconomically disadvantaged, we see that positive standard from growth. That's the achievement gap that we're talking about here tonight. But again, if you look at our non-SED growth, we had 43 of 43 students in ELA and math make growth. So what are we doing about this data at Baywood this year? So we noticed our fourth, our third graders
115last year didn't perform very well overall. One of the reasons for that is that they've, we focus on Spanish language arts through second grade and third grade is the first year that they get a core English language arts curriculum and then they're tested, you know, in March on, or in... uh late april on that so we have prioritized our fourth grade cohort or last year's third grade to avoid any interruptions and instruction and built our whole master schedule around that cohort in particular prioritizing times for interventions and specials we at baywood have a weekly MTSS meeting. We had a lot of success with the structure last year, including our student success specialist, myself, our school counselor, school psychologist, our English learner specialist, where we sit around the tower, excuse me, sit around the table for
116an hour each week talking about students that are of concern. and what our action plan is for meeting that. Also looking at their weekly progress monitoring that we do. This year we're starting weekly data-driven PLC meetings with grade levels and myself. We are launching those on Thursday. In K through second grade, our PLC goals will be focused on Spanish literacy. And in third through fifth, our PLC goals will be focused on math. We are also doing English Learner writing data cycles. If we dive deep into our ELPAC data, we notice that writing is the area that our students are not achieving. So we really want to focus on that using the ELPAC rubric and bringing student samples to our staff meetings. We are also going to be practicing intentional interim practice for both CAASPP and
117ELPAC. and then we are partnering like many other schools in our district with the county office of education to align our student expectations and behavioral supports to the PBIS model. Thanks, Roland. All right now for slow high This is my fifth year as principal at San Luis Obispo High School. I love it One thing I've noticed just in my time there is we've grown in our student population from around fifteen hundred and sixty students to over seventeen hundred Students this year to continue the commercial for parsec One of the nice things that you can do with parsec is just understand your enrollment trends And this is a nice just image right here that that lets us understand if you're looking at race and ethnicity the two main groups at Slo High currently 55% of our
118students identify as white and about 33% identify as Hispanic or Latino. This allows you to see those 10-year trends and just how Slo High has changed in that way. And so on one side you see students who identify as white and the other who identify as Hispanic or Latino. During this time, at least the last five years, one of the things that we're really proud of is we've reduced the number of students with Fs and reduced the number of students with Ds and Fs. So grades obviously are a key thing that we look at in high school. So there's a lot of work that goes into that, of course. But one of the things that we also, to continue that conversation, to keep that good energy going. is as we've talked about so far this
119evening it's really important to break down that data and to understand it in some of these key ways so if you're just looking at some key groups so say students who are socioeconomically disadvantaged that's 40 percent of our student population so understanding what what their experience is like in our school is important similarly if we're just looking at say white versus hispanic like understanding that So one of the things that we see in that grade data, even though that's a really positive story before, is that there is a higher rate for students who are Hispanic and there is a higher rate for students who are socioeconomically disadvantaged as far as the number of Fs they have or the number of Ds that they have. So that's important for us to understand, right? Going to AP
120data, same thing. We have a really positive story to share over these last five years of more and more students accessing these opportunities, taking these tests, and doing very well on those tests. So obviously we celebrate that, but then it's also important to look at what are the breakdowns of the numbers and are we meaningfully including our diverse student population in these classes? If you look at A through G data, that's really important for us as a school. We want as many doors open for our students as possible. So this is if students have C's or higher in the courses for UC or CSU admission. You know, same thing, we have a positive story of more and more of our students meeting those A through G requirements, 75% last year. So again, like these are
121things that make us feel good, you know, about what we're doing. CASP also is an opportunity to feel really good about what we're doing. Right now, though, it's a little bit more of a struggle at SoHi as we're trying to understand our numbers, which have either gone up a little bit and gone down or stayed stagnant or even dipped for ELA, for example. So there's a lot of work obviously there for us to do. And one of the ways, just give some insight on how we use things like Parsec, how we use data to generate energy. And that's one of the other key uses of data, right? Part of us to understand where we are, part of us to celebrate the things we're doing well, but part of us to frame problems in ways that
122generate energy toward a unified goal. and central to what we're trying to do is provide a transformative educational experience for each and every one of our students. So this is the way I framed it for our staff, partly to generate some of that energy so that we can keep the good work going. So what we did is looked at essentially the mode score, right? So like what is the most common score for people in a certain group? So what you see on ELA, if you're just looking at those main groups that we were just talking about, the most common score for a student who is white is a four exceeded. The most common score for a student who's Hispanic is a one. Same thing for math. Most common score for math is a four. If
123you're white, most common score is a one for a student who's Hispanic. Same thing if you look at socioeconomically disadvantaged, same story. So most common score if you are socioeconomically disadvantaged is a one. Most common score if you're not is a four. Now this is what Ms. Baltadano was just talking about, right? Same thing for math, you know, the same story. We could do this for students with disabilities. We could do this for students who are English learners as well. But so you say that to a staff and share that with the staff of such good, well-meaning educators, like suddenly you have some energy to do some things that really matter. So some of the just general questions you can obviously talk about the test itself, right? Like the culture of test taking, doing interim
124assessments so students do as well as possible, which matters, but also so the data is meaningful for us. We also really use it for thinking about instructional strategies. Earlier people talked about tier one instruction. So like as a school, for example, this year we're focusing on questioning and discussion techniques with the idea that learning is a socially mediated process, that students every day need to be engaged in academic language, critical thinking with each other, creative thinking with each other, collaboration, so that they're really learning and taking that learning to a deeper level. One thing that we know is if you don't scaffold and support that and structure it and design it in a way, you're not going to have all learners engaged in that way. So we've been working with Shannon McFadden-Sullivan, our EL Tosa.
125Our teachers are sharing instructional strategies. So really learning these ways to scaffold and structure these opportunities every day for our students. So again, there's more energy there if you're recognizing. a problem that exists and suddenly you're more willing to do these different things that you haven't had to do 10 years before the 10 years before also just thinking about our plc work for example in our upcoming act we have two teacher experts training our staff and really how to analyze data well by groups also just some questions about our intervention systems our mtss model. If you're thinking about our in-classes, what are some challenges there? If you're thinking about one of our main things is study skills. So that is really good for some students, but maybe it doesn't fully fulfill the needs if you're
126thinking about math intervention or intervention for reading, for example. And then also just questions about the bigger systems of our math scope and sequence or a science scope and sequence. So all of this is just really helpful information to have us ask those questions so that we can keep doing the good work for our students. So that's the slow high part. Any final, is there anyone from the public who would like to address this on this? Any final questions from the board, Mr. Unger? I think this is, oh. Not specific to this, but I want to just talk specifically as our role as board members. And I want to thank the administration for bringing this presentation forward to us. There are four, you know, thinking about what the four responsibilities of a school board member
127are, and I've got them here, setting the direction, establishing effective structure, providing support, and ensuring accountability. And having these discussions about our students' academic achievement is exactly fulfilling our roles as school board members. And I understand from a lot of school boards throughout the state that these are new conversations that they're having. And their school board members are going, we should be having these conversations. We have been having these conversations and we will continue to have these conversations because I think what it helps us do as board members prioritize what's important and what's not important. And as we make these tough budget decisions that we're going to be making, what kinds of things are going to support student achievement and what kinds of things aren't. And I think thinking about this. parsec and the data
128we're getting from parsec and our ability to drill down to individual students. This is really exciting stuff. And I just want to say again, I am so, so excited that we had this discussion tonight. And I hope we continue to have it as we get more data and understand more how to use it and get our teachers understanding how to use. And I think when you talk about getting your teachers excited, showing them data in ways that helps their teaching and reinvigorates them for things, this is great stuff. So just thanks, you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for the presentation. And I think I echo Mr. Unger's comments. I think the next step will be as we gather this information and do drill down to a deeper level to know what we do with
129the data we have, because that will kind of put the pedal to the metal in terms of, you know, we have all this information. How do we use it? What are we striving for here? I think we all... have lofty goals, but we achieve them one student at a time. Mr. Clawson. Thank you. I guess I'm... Board of Trustees Meeting, I think it's just about the approach that all of you took in in your thinking here. Um, similar to what Chris was saying. But um, I mean, I think there's a real tendency to look at data like this and view it kind of like a report card of are we doing well? Are we doing it poorly? And that really wasn't the discussion. The discussion was, Here's what we learned at a deeper level, and
130here's where the opportunities are in this data. And so that approach is really exciting, and I Again, I'm voicing things that have been said, but I'm just really impressed by the way that we're digging deep with our data, finding ways to address the groups that really need support and focusing on opportunities instead of just did we do well or did we do poorly, because you all just want to do better and do well for every student. So that was really impressive. Thank you. Thanks for taking the time. Our next item is 8.02 and it's our San Luis Coastal Education Foundation update. Ms. Dimashita. Good evening, board. I wanted to take this opportunity. to clarify how our foundation was started and its purposes. Because as we've moved out through the springtime and our budget reductions, there
131have been comments in the community interest in the foundation and its purpose and role here. And so before Christine and Katie and Erin got to present to you tonight what the foundation's going to be working on this year, I wanted to share some historical background with you and the community at large. The foundation was established to function as the innovation arm of the school district, focusing on inspiring and equipping all students for upward economic mobility in this rapidly changing world. It's an independent 501c3 with its own governing board, and the foundation works as a strategic partner to the district, investing in strategic programs consistent with the investment strategy. There are four investment areas or pillars. One is excellence in teaching. They empower teachers to dream big, be creative, and accomplish projects they never before thought
132possible. They work to remove barriers to opportunity and provide resources and supports to hardworking but under-resourced projects so that they can reach goals and realize true potential. Focus on innovation through exposure and experience and they help foster future ready learning experiences that help students be set up with the essential skills for personal and professional success later on. and they focus on community collaboration. They build a partnership network and work with a diverse ecosystem of industry, community, and educational partners to rise above competing interests and embrace collaboration in order to create the opportunity of increased economic mobility for all our local students. And as you hear the great projects our foundation is working on and goals and dreams for this year. You'll hear about the variety of partners in our region, spanning many communities and counties,
133as well as different types of agencies that they're helping connect to our fantastic school district. So with no further ado, I'd like to welcome Christine Robertson, our Executive Director of the San Luis Coastal Educational Foundation, Katie Peters, our teacher on special assignment, and also the new team member, Erin Black, who's our Director of Innovation, Engagement, and Opportunity. Thank you. Boy, I really know how to clear a room, don't I? All right, well, we're going to zoom out. I have no data for you guys to be looking through, but lots of exciting updates. So how do I get the perfect? Okay, just fantastic. So as Lisa mentioned, and every time I come and do this presentation, I always include this slide. So you've probably seen this before, but I think it's just a really good visual
134representation of the relationship between the school district and the foundation. We are separate entities, but we work in a tightly, tightly coordinated fashion around a common purpose of uplifting our educational system and uplifting our students. Since we were formed about six years ago, we have been really fortunate to raise and commit to the work that we do together over $5 million. This is totally separate and distinct from... the revenue that has come from our endowment this is community-based giving from individuals organizations grant-making partners who are inspired by the work that we're doing together and are directly investing in the programs and strategies what i would note here is You know, this past year obviously has been a little bit of a challenging time on the budget front. And so historically, for the life of the
135partnership between the foundation and the school district, we have been investing in financial partnership with the district. I think almost all of the programs, with the exception of our teacher grants. have involved some share of matching investment where the foundation commits a share of cost, the district has invested a share of cost, and that investment partnership has been a cornerstone of how we have rolled out and supported and sustained programs. This past year, in light of some of the budgetary challenges, we've worked with the school district to say, you know what, we really don't want to see these programs cease to exist for our kids and so we brought forward to the foundation board a little bit of an extraordinary ask that for some of our key cornerstone programs, the foundation would step up and
136assume 100% share of cost in order to make sure that your board can be focused on some of the hard choices that you're facing, but that we would have the assurance of program continuity for this year and for the foreseeable future. So, as Ms. Yamashita mentioned, you know, the foundation was started around the strategic premise, you know, how can we be taking a long view. You guys and your leadership team do so much work focused on what's happening right here today. How do we move the needle in the classrooms with our teachers, with the curriculum, and the foundation just feels very privileged to be a partner that is asking a different set of questions. What is happening in the world today that's going to remake that world 5, 10, 30 years from now? And then
137how do we backward map and try to understand where are the small, medium, and large pivot points that we need to make so that we can be setting kids up for success to step into that world that is so rapidly. changing. And so we do that work really with an eye toward economic mobility. And I will give a shout out to Ms. Baltadano, who was one of our founding board members for the foundation. And I have said this to her privately, so I hope she doesn't mind me saying it publicly, but she really, really really challenged me and challenged our board to think differently about the work that we were doing and her fingerprints are all over. how the foundation wrestles with some of these questions about what are we really trying to do. And
138out of that influence pretty early came this thread of economic mobility. How do we look across our community and recognize that in school districts across San Luis Obispo County, collectively 60% of kids in San Luis County public schools are socioeconomically disadvantaged. 60 percent. And so what can we be doing both in the classroom and as K-12 partners to our broader community to be lifting up those 60 percent of kids and helping change the economic realities both for those individual students as well as remaking the regional economy here on the Central Coast so that we have less disparity. And so that is the problem set that we're constantly thinking about. So innovation is not about robots. Innovation is not about Silicon Valley. Innovation is how do we think differently about where the world is going and
139who is going to be able to participate in the opportunities that are taking shape and be hyper-intentional. about making sure that we are being inclusive and really, really intentional about how we show up today so that we can close that disparity gap 10, 20, 30 years from now. So, of course, that means that a lot of the work that we're doing with that economic mobility lens is cast against what's happening in our economy. That's both looking globally at how things like AI and automation are reshaping the nature of work, what kinds of jobs are being eliminated, what kinds of jobs are being added. And we started talking when the foundation was first formed six years ago about some of the... pretty scary forecasts that were coming out of the World Economic Forum about the projected
140rate of disparity that was forecasted to increase rapidly as a result of job displacement from these technologies. And so those that huge gap that we're seeing that 60% if we do nothing is projected to grow. And so we're trying to work aggressively against some of those trend lines and say, if the global trends are increasing, how do we regionally decrease? And that means understanding where here in our community there is projected economic opportunity. Where are jobs being added? What types of skills, knowledge and skills do those jobs demand? Really digging deep with employers and industry leaders to understand how they're thinking, how they're forecasting, how they're hiring in light of a lot of these changes. And then bring that insight and intelligence back to our education leaders and try to dig in and say, what
141does that mean for our kids? So we have, I'm sure you're all familiar with REACH, our Regional Economic Development Organization. They were founded the same time that the foundation was from a similar origin story with the, you know, at that time announced closure of Diablo Canyon and thinking deeply about some of these same issues. So they have owned the job creation side of the problem set and they have set a goal to create 15,000 quality jobs here on the Central Coast and for them the Central Coast is defined as Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. 15,000 jobs over the decade and we then show up and say I don't know about you, but I don't really want to import 15,000 new people to the Central Coast. So if we're going to add 15,000 jobs,
142how do we make sure that our kiddos are at the front of the line to compete for those jobs? And we are using that job creation to lift up our own. So these are the seven identified industry sectors that have been included in our region's economic development strategy where we have projected job growth over the coming decades. And here in these seven categories, there are potential for billions of dollars of economic expansion here on the Central Coast. So when we talk with industry leaders, and this is industry leaders across those seven industry sectors primarily, we hear pretty much the same themes. We hear there's a lack of exposure, that young people don't know about the actual jobs that exist. that they grow up aspiring to what we jokingly refer to as sort of the Halloween
143costume jobs. But a lot of the jobs where there's significant job growth, nobody knows what those jobs are. Kids don't dream of becoming a land surveyor, but there's a real need for land surveyors in our region, if you didn't know. And so how do we surface and expose for kids the jobs that actually exist and have a lot of forecasted demand? They're also saying that some of the programming doesn't really match the educational or the training programs don't match the local workforce needs. This is an issue that K-12 and the community colleges and universities are lining around and saying, well, how do we create that continuum of education and training opportunities that do match what's happening here on the Central Coast? This third one is one of my favorites. An aerospace CEO told me maybe
144two years ago now, he said, you know, one of the things that makes me so frustrated about the education system is you talk about disadvantaged students, but what you call a disadvantage for us is an advantage because students who come from a background where they've struggled, where they have not had advantages, are oftentimes our best hires. The problem is they rarely get to us. And so what he was identifying was that these very valuable skills and competencies are around character, they're around grit, personality, tenacity, problem solving. These are the inherent competencies that many of our students who frankly don't connect well in a classic educational environment natively possess. And CEOs and industry leaders are saying the problem is they kind of get sidelined in the traditional education system and they don't find their way to
145us and they leave the education system believing. that they are not in demand talent because the metrics of assessment are not capturing and reflecting some of the qualities that we industry are most looking for and are having the hardest time finding. And so part of our wrestling is how do we surface those things? How do we celebrate and acknowledge those things that exist within our school and use that as an opportunity to inspire and motivate students to recognize their talents, their abilities, and to press in on some of the academic skills that maybe are emerging, but really celebrate the in-demand future ready skills that they possess. And then, you know, we hear a lot about traditional classrooms and that the world is changing really fast and how do we modernize and make sure that we
146are focusing on also developing the skills that frankly many of our historically underserved students possess. All right, Lisa mentioned these four pillars that define the strategic portfolio of investment portfolio of the foundation. And what I've done is add beneath each of those categories, the specific programs that reflect those pillars. So our excellence in teaching is supported through our teacher grants. Removing barriers through opportunity is our next gen scholars. Exposure and experience comes through iInnovate and Athletics for Achievement. and then our collaboration and partnership network is reflected in our new k-12 regional skills lab which i will speak to and our advanced manufacturing apprenticeship which we will also speak to all right so most of these programs you're familiar with but i wanted to take a moment and just spotlight a couple key changes that we've
147worked very closely with district leadership to identify and develop as part of our strategic investments for this coming year So NextGen Scholars originally was set up as a program that would run parallel to AVID. And there were some, I would argue, good reasons, and there was some good thinking behind that. But what we found was that we were missing opportunities for integration and leverage. And so the decision was made to unite these programs. and in so doing kind of bring the best of both worlds together but frankly avid has structure and continuous engagement with students that our next-gen program just did not have and we could not reasonably build that capacity and even if we tried we'd be building it as competitive capacity capacity rather than complementary capacity so it just made sense to unite
148them and i think that is a really exciting development The second is moving toward cohort counseling so that all of our next-gen kids are under the same counselor, meaning that they have one person looking out for their classes, making sure that the right moves are being made and the right conversations are being had, as well as outreach to the families. This was something that really came out of some conversations. that Ms. Baltadano and I had with some graduating AVID students trying to tease out what had they experienced that really set them up for success. And what were some things that they were experiencing that really, frankly, made their experience suboptimal? And one of the threads was around more intentional, supportive counseling. And so when Ms. Yamashita came on board, this was something that she really
149championed early on, and we're excited to see this taking shape. And then very new, just... a month ago was this new summer bridge program. This is as students are transitioning from eighth grade into their freshman year. We're pushing them hard. We want them in advanced classes. We want them to be reaching for a standard of academic excellence. But frankly, sometimes when you're making a big jump from middle school to high school, There's a lot of intimidation when you've never stepped into a class that has a syllabus before. There's language and structures that are foreign to you. And what we were hearing was that some students were feeling very intimidated and were looking around the room and just feeling out of place and wondering if everyone else knew what was going on and they didn't. And
150so... This is something that Marcy Badal, who oversees and coordinates NextGen for us, she said, I really think that this could make a difference for kids. Bring them in over the summer into a space where we then bring the honors and the AP teachers in. to get to know them, to talk through some of the vocabulary, the structures, the expectations, the rhythms, the routines of the honors and the AP classes to build that confidence. So on day one, there are some familiar faces in the teachers. They've asked all of the questions that they might have before it's the first day of class, and they just show up with a greater sense of confidence and empowerment. And so this was just a great success. This was something that we went ahead and required of all of
151our next gen students. And so we had extremely strong participation in this program. I innovate. Ms. Shepard mentioned some of the work that the district has been doing around benchmark. And so we've taken our I innovate hands on learning and united it with the benchmark curriculum. And Katie Peters, who's our I innovate TOSA, and then the ISLA team have been working to unpack that curriculum. and then weave iInnovate into those benchmark units and identify these insertion points that are consistent, that are academically aligned and rigorous, but also are joyful and hands-on and get kids off the page and working in different modalities to hopefully bring that content to life in a different way that engages and inspires kids who learn with different modalities. And then one that I'm particularly excited about is the addition of
152Del Mar as an innovation hub. So we have sort of a standard pacing for how we're rolling out our district wide innovation programs. But we thought it would be kind of fun to say, you know, does any site want to go a little faster and see, you know, be a little bit more aggressive or ambitious about thinking about the integration of innovation into instruction? And we just hold the principal, Chelsea Smiley, in such high regard. She is very rigorous, academically focused. And so it's kind of a fun pairing to take Chelsea, who just... like hold so tightly to rigor and then take innovation and creativity and put those things together out on the coast and so in that model Ms. Peters is going to be out at Del Mar on a weekly basis working one-on-one
153with teachers in a side-by-side coaching and support model to build the confidence of teachers. We brought this forward to the staff at Del Mar and asked the teachers, is this something you would be excited to do? And we put it to them in an anonymous survey. And 100% of teachers said that they wanted to do this, which is a real testament to, I would argue, teachers' passion for kids. They want learning to be joyful. And so, you know, we hear a lot like, oh, be really careful. Teachers are caring a lot. You don't want this to become one more thing. And we're very sensitive to that. But we were so impressed just to see when asked, hey, teacher. you want to do one more thing 100 of them said yeah if it lights up learning
154we absolutely do All right. Athletics for achievement. A lot of good things happening here. So our middle school expansion is something that Mr. Black brought to us and just had a lot of advocacy around saying we've done a great job of opening up free after school sports opportunities for all kids across all sites. But then they kind of go off a cliff. in middle school and they are confronted with the school teams with cuts but we've heard and seen that there are a lot of kids that would love to stay engaged and continue to play on a school team but they don't have that opportunity in middle school so we expanded our investment to include middle school no cuts teams and then we were a little overwhelmed by the number of students who showed up
155so we are going to stretch our budget a little bit more to say yep we got to serve them all so that is a fantastic problem to have mr black has also been working on what we call the power 30 curriculum If we go back to the genesis of Athletics for Achievement, this program was never intended to be really about sports. This was supposed to be as... we named it, about driving achievement. How do we use team sports as a platform, as a lever to capture engaged kids so that they feel more connected to school, so that they press in around leadership and goal setting. But in the first couple of years, I would say we watched that foundational premise sort of fade. And it was really about how do we just find coaches and
156how do we get these teams and get the uniforms. and we lost sight of the why and so it's been really inspiring for me to watch under mr black's leadership that focus come roaring back and he's developed this curriculum and not only a curriculum but that next piece is a data collection system so we've been running this program for a couple years but we have not done a good job of tracking who's participating and then linking that to the achievement part of the equation. And so now we're building out a robust tracking system that will allow us to look at behaviors, look at academic performance, and see are we moving the needle and then use that just as you've been hearing on the academic side of the house to really shape and inform how we
157evolve the program over time. And then One of the other things that was foundational when we first started was I promised Ms. Baltadano if we do athletics, we promise we won't start or we won't stop there. But we did kind of sputter out and stall. And so this year we are doubling down and looking at how do we use the athletics as a platform. Look at that schedule, the rotations, and say, can we begin adding in other offerings so that a student may say, well, this season I'm going to. play soccer. But the next season, I really don't want to play the sports that are offered, but I still want to be at my school, after school, doing things, being with my friends. So what can we begin dropping in? That is very early for
158us because we're looking critically at how do we staff it? How do we make sure that there's quality programming that's consistent across all 10 elementary schools? So the staffing and the scalability is a big one. We do not want to cannibalize our own resources with the Cal Poly College Corps fellows. But we do think that there are some additional opportunities to work in partnership with Cal Poly and Cuesta. And so one that we have committed to piloting this year is an after school robotics program that will drop in for one season. And that's been built by a Cal Poly College Corps student who stumbled into our office last year and said, you know what I'd really like to do? And so we just locked the doors and said, stay here and keep talking and explain
159to us how that would work. And so we've spent months and months working with him and he's been out recruiting from the Cal Poly clubs. And we figured out a model with the clubs that makes this very scalable, very sustainable for us. And then. Mr. Black and I have some new conversations that we're exploring around a performing arts offering. And so we're going to be looking at that kind of through the same lens, but also trying to understand how it could work in complement with what school sites are doing around Prop 28 and not collide. So, you know, it's a complicated landscape out there, but we are really focused on taking that next step, getting back to the original premise of Athletics for Achievement. but also getting back to our original commitment to not stop
160at team sports, but to use that as a kind of a platform to build a portfolio of experiences. And those two programs are the ones that I mentioned, you know, next gen, we've always been funding the student costs, but this year we've picked up the full cost of iInnovate and the full cost of Athletics for Achievement. All right, so what's new? As though that wasn't enough, we saw an opportunity in partnership with Trust Automation to build and launch the Advanced Manufacturing Apprenticeship Program. This kind of spontaneously came out of a conversation that I had just earlier this calendar year in January. I was down in Santa Barbara at the REACH Economic Summit. And Ty Sofreno, who's the CEO of Trust Automation, just said, hey, can you stay and just talk with me about this talent
161need that we have? Our company, like so many other companies here in the region, is growing rapidly and we're growing so fast that it's creating a little bit of an existential crisis. Either we figure out how to solve our talent problem or we move. And so some of the forecasts in advanced manufacturing are in the hundreds and hundreds of jobs in the next year and then same rate after that. And so. Sitting with Ty and just saying, what do you need and how can we be nimble to design in a way that's responsive? We were able to build this pilot apprenticeship program. Trust Automation is funding 100% of the program costs. They've pledged $750,000 to launch the program. They are the exclusive funder at this time. And so they're taking all the risk. And the
162intention is, Trust says, will be the one to step out and build the proof of concept around this. And then the intention is to be inviting other businesses into the partnership to continue to grow and sustain this over time. And so I have so much I would love to say about this, but I think what I will do is pause and invite Mr. Black up to share kind of a program update. But before I do that, I want to just thank the board for... taking a leap of faith in allowing us to build and launch this program but also I know it was not a small thing to release Mr. Black from the work that he was doing at CL Smith and allow him to step into this new role as the Director of Opportunity
163Engagement. But he has exceeded everyone's expectations. I cannot tell you how highly the industry community is speaking about the work that Mr. Black is doing. They are just knocked over by how fast he's moving, how dynamic he is, how passionate he is about solving both. their workforce needs, but also doing it in a way that lifts up kids and they are fully bought into this economic mobility premise in no small part because of the role that Mr. Black is playing. Good evening. Thanks for having us. First of all, I want to give Phil Angel a shout out about the athletics. He's been working hard all summer, even during the summer and off times. He's answering my emails and my calls. So, Phil, you're doing a great job, man. I appreciate it. Yes. So just a
164quick update. I was talking to Erica yesterday. I think it was. And she was like, this is great feedback. Thanks. We should address the board and make sure that everybody's up to par so we know what's happening. This summer, we've been working really extremely hard with trust and their employees, their directors, their floor directors, department directors, been showing field trips with them to the school sites. Last week, I took all seven directors to both high schools to see the amazing things that our schools are producing. working with them on this summer with the curriculum just trying to design out what this program could look like we have a set start date which will be in january when we return from winter break with our first cohort and we'll run through may in that cohort or
165in that curriculum there'll be various topics of we're creating five different builds so that'd be like five different projects that trust automation engineers and their their floor managers will design for us because of what style of product production they they create the products that they create and then utilizing that time to identify the various aspects of their jobs so safety quality control measuring tolerances of the materials and the parts and pieces and using those as simulations and we're going to make it like a satellite campus of trust so the kids will actually be doing what they do at trust in the format, in the flow, everything that they do with the vocabulary and the structures that they, that systems that they have. So that's kind of the game plan at this time. We're also. be
166building in a financial literacy aspect. We working with my wife, who's a an accountant, found some mock payroll systems that we can use so we can actually show them like we pay them and they can learn how to what's being deducted for their taxes. We'll be adding in resume building, interview practicing, just all the frameworks of job readiness skills and also tying in some care. You know job characteristics that they're looking for collaboration teamwork being on time you know those types of things that that they are hurting for for some of these positions that they're. searching so that will go two nights a week we're looking at Tuesdays and Thursday evenings here in J four and we'll be building that out. come winter break. The reason I did after school from 430 to 630 was
167so that both high schools and all three high schools can function together rather than during the class day because of different schedules, it would be more difficult and give us enough time to get students from the coast. If I need to transport students, I'll be picking them up and bringing them over and dropping them off. So yeah, that's what we've been working on. A lot of help from trust. Trust employees will be instructing the different builds. I'll be more of a floor manager, kind of making sure that they're... proper employees for us and then giving them that training that they're looking for. Right now we're recruiting. I just started today at Slow High School. I got to sit down with six kids that were referred to me through different teachers or counselors, and they all
168seemed really excited about it, about the opportunity. I'm doing Pack Beach next week, and then third week will be Morro Bay High School. I'm speaking at their tutorial periods at both high schools just to try to gather up some Some ideas of students that may fit fit this project or fit this opportunity we got about 16 students from pack beach right now already referred to me. I have about 30 for moral Bay and i'm meeting tomorrow morning with slow high schools counseling staff to get some additional names. At the end of this month, I will be taking them each at different high schools so different days to visit trust so we'll be taking them over there for an hour and a half and let them meet tie kind of walk through the plant and see
169what they see see if it's something that interests them. And then at the end of October, we'll be doing a family evening there as well. We'll all be inviting families to come with their students to see if it's something that, so they know what's going on as well. And then we'll start selecting in December for students that may be interested, and we'll kick it off in January. Who found who? Did you find trust, or did trust find you? They found me. Wow. Yeah, we're going to go. We're going. Christine found them. Well this is incredible. Gosh. It's a good opportunity. It's an amazing opportunity for some of these students. Well I gotta take a big breath. Almost fell over in my seat. I do have a quick question though on the Del Mar, what is
170it, the Innovative? Innovation Hub. Is this, I didn't come away with, is this like model that you're going to try and then possibly share it with other schools or is this the hub and it's the only place it's going to happen? No, so nothing that we will ever do is going to be designed to be exclusive. and so this is really the first time with iInnovate that we've done something focused on one particular school site as an accelerator site. We have historically tried to be even-steven and pace at all 10 schools simultaneously in all of the programs that we're doing for elementary and then similarly be consistent if you know we're doing anything in the secondary space. This was really a question around you know, can we figure out a model for engaging, supporting, coaching
171teachers that allows us to deploy and focus resources to create that acceleration? And so it's a little bit of a sandbox for us with Del Mar. And Del Mar was really appealing for us because it's a small school, it's a coastal school, and it's a school that, you know, can feel a little bit. um overlooked sometimes and so we've been talking to their pta they just said you know we just want to connect and feel like we have partners and so we're excited to be engaging with them and again we're just really excited about the leadership that they have out at that site to help us do this christine and mark if i can add to that i think also we wanted to make sure that i innovate went beyond a lesson in the lab
172as it was designed it was always an opportunity for teachers to look at the entry task practices that they were doing in the lab and then engaging those same skills of instruction and other areas of the curriculum and we weren't really seeing that transfer happening and so this is a different avenue to see if we give teachers regular time with an instructional coach effectively miss peters um to literally sit and guide them through and possibly co-teach the innovative mindset model in other already existing areas of their curriculum Yeah, and what I would add to that is, you know, we've had in the first several years, we had a whole suite of units separate from what was happening in the lab, a whole suite of units that were largely classroom-based that were these deep integrated units
173around core content. But those units had been designed. by our iInnovate TOSA team and were being taken and implemented by teachers as they were packaged and presented. And so what our iInnovate TOSAs were saying is really the transformational work is in helping the teachers become the creators and designers of these engaging experiences as opposed to waiting for somebody to hand them an amazing but a pre-prepared. unit. And so this is our, as Ms. Yamashita was saying, this is our shift to say, let's figure out how to move away from serving up innovative content to really empowering teachers to own thinking around what is that design that is academically rigorous and joyful and engaging and incorporates these future ready skills that employers are looking for. So that so soon or we will be seeing that success
174because I'm sure it will be a success Sharing this out We do hope of course that it becomes the model and from that we can continue to expand other sites Thanks You have some questions about the advanced manufacturing program? So you're saying it starts in January, right? Then how long does it have a set life like each year? Does it like run January to June and then kids graduate? You do another group or does it go longer? Yeah, great question. The first cohort is going to be January through May. And then right now I'm actually talking to juniors as well. So when I'm at the high schools these next three weeks, I'll be reaching out to 11th graders to explain that. The next year we're looking at potentially doing a fall cohort and then another
175spring. I'm hoping that with some of the regulations that they have to certain ages to be on the job floor there on their site. I'm hoping that some of the students that would do the fall would turn 18 before January and they could potentially get picked up and work the second half of their senior year. Yeah. And then. What is the expectation for life after the program? I mean, there's kind of an implicit expectation that some of the students might move into full-time careers or part-time careers, or what's the general understanding there? Sure. So the projections right now, trust in themselves, they're estimating four to five jobs in June. um from this cohort to develop the skills um but in the coming years they're looking at like 60 and above from then on but around
176in the area there's seven other or there's seven manufacturing companies that are all in the same position as trust so we're hoping that we can build out the skill level of these students that will make them eligible or competitive for another position in the surrounding area that they all have very comparative supports and salaries and things of that nature for for hopefully they can stick around in the area that's what we're looking for Cool. And is it tied into any specific high school programs? Like, do you have to be a student at the high school? Right now, that's what we're doing. There is talks with the adult school of potentially providing it as an adult school course as well. Right now, we just want to trial it with the high school, see what it looks
177like, and kind of get it built out. I think it's going to be morphing as we go year to year and cohort to cohort maybe. Different manufacturing companies need different skills as to so it could be adjusted as we go, depending on how, how this plays out if they start to combine and work together for a manufacturing pathway or pipeline for all the organizations, not just trust solely. The program itself, is it unpaid? It's unpaid. And you don't get credit for it, but you get training and experience. They get trainings. It's kind of just like an awesome extracurricular program on steroids. Yeah, if they want to have an amazing opportunity and have a chance at having an amazing job or career, sure. No, that's great. Yeah. That's the sacrifice they're going to have to make,
178right? Students will have to make that choice. It seems like an investment in their future that they should be excited about. That's cool. Exactly. Great, thanks. So I just, Christine, this just brings me back to a conversation that I remember you and Dr. Prater and I had. And we were talking about a specific type of career training that we were saying, oh, yeah, this sounds great. You've looked at us and you said, yeah, but that won't provide head of household jobs and won't keep people in this community. And you're right. And so here we are, we're doing this, right? We're actually looking at our community in general in our San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties. And we're saying, how can we keep people in these communities and how can we grow our communities and
179make stronger communities, which I think is great. The other thing I just am so excited about is recruiting at Pacific Beach High School. I think I'm happy we're doing Morro Bay High. I'm happy we're doing San Luis Obispo High School. But I'm ecstatic about Pacific Beach High School and the opportunities we're giving those students to be able to create those kind of jobs that we talked about. So thank you both. Thanks to everybody who's been involved in this. And I will say, Chris, that one of the things that ties to front of the CEO said at the outset was he said, I want you to start. with your continuation high school. He said, because if we can build this in a way that is really capturing and pulling those students into these opportunities, he said,
180that's where we're going to get true economic transformation on the community or on the central coast. And so. It's not just something that, you know, is happening here in the educational space. It's a design intention that is being shared by our industry partners. And that's so exciting because we hear those students and many, if not most of the students at Pack Beach are already working. And they're working in those, those, those. service industry jobs that they need to have to help support themselves, but aren't necessarily going to move them into the head of household jobs that you've been talking about. Right. Well, and Mr. Black and I were talking earlier today in the office about how at Trust, employees get full benefits, full healthcare, full vision, full dental. There's profit sharing, 401k. I mean, these
181are career and family sustaining quality jobs that are growing. and frankly are on the cutting edge of these emerging opportunities in commercial space and a whole bunch of sectors that are just poised for rapid economic expansion. So if we can be intentional about connecting our kids who otherwise would be talent at risk of being lost into the system, if we can capture that talent, we're doing two great things simultaneously. We're fueling. economic expansion and meeting the workforce need of growing sort of industries and we're lifting up those kids and changing the economic future for kids here in the community. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you to everyone at the foundation, the board and your staff for all the work that you're doing. Each and every slide, you're accustomed to me having questions, Ms. Robertson.
182Each and every slide, I have praise for each and every slide. And I won't go into all the slides. All of it, but I just really appreciate what you're doing, I think that the trust automation model is something that we've seen. I think it's in San Diego where they're doing it with cyber security and so it's about equipping our students with the skills that the region needs and then providing them, Mr Klassen you were asking you know what are they getting they're getting an. opportunity and we talk all the time about the opportunity gap so it's a tremendous opportunity that can that will lead to success i had the good fortune of walking my dog before it got too hot on yesterday and ran into my neighbor mr black and i appreciate you taking the
183time to explain to me a little bit more about the details of this program and i think my colleagues only heard sort of a surface level, but when you really dig into it, it's a really well thought out program. And so, and I just, with that program and with all the things that the foundation is doing, I really appreciate that through line of how are we removing barriers? How are we creating opportunities? And I just want to appreciate the work that you've done. Thank you. Yes. Okay. Because I'm not done. I still have more slides to go. You thought you were off the hook. Not quite yet. I wanted to add just one more thing about this partnership with Trust. I don't know that we would have jumped in and been so quick or enthusiastic
184about a program like this with just any other company. There is something really special about starting down this road with Trust Automation. And, you know, we've mentioned Ty and his wife, Trudy. co-founded the company and continue to own and run the company together but they have just deeply held values that are animating not just what we're doing but how we are doing it and so mr black mentioned uh content in the training program that's so far beyond you know assembly or building skills or kind of the engineering hard skills it's financial literacy that was something that ty said right out of the gate was I said, Ty, what do you want out of an apprenticeship program? He said, financial literacy. And I said, why? And he said, because it's one thing to make money. It's
185another thing to know how to build financial sustainability. And so he said, when you come into our company, you become like family. And we want you to not just be a successful employee. We want you to be a successful person. And that means knowing how to optimize these opportunities and make them life transforming. opportunities and so they're really committed to not just building talent but building community and one of the other things that ty shared with me in those early meetings was he said you know we're probably going to track like put on a track some of these kids because he said you know you're going to find these brilliant capable individuals who don't know how brilliant and capable they are and they're going to step into our world and we're going to take one
186look at them and go you need to go back to school you need to become an engineer. And when he said that to me back in January, I thought, well, that's nice, but how realistic is that? And then just a couple of weeks ago, totally unrelated to the apprenticeship program, I had an opportunity to meet one of the manufacturing engineers at Trust. He's maybe 30 something years old and I was asking him, you know, what's your story? What's your journey? He said, well, I grew up in Salinas, did not do well in school, was starting to fall in with a bad crowd and kind of a dangerous crowd. And when I graduated from high school, my mom grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and shipped me off to Santa Maria to live with
187my grandma. And my uncle then grabbed me and said, you're coming to work at this. aerospace advanced manufacturing company and he said i started at the very bottom in this entry level job and after a little while on the job my supervisor said you need to go back to school And because this young man showed up, was committed, had a good work ethic, they flexed the schedule so that he could start taking classes at Allen Hancock. And he took classes at Allen Hancock for six years and then transferred to Cal Poly and graduated with his degree in engineering and is now a manufacturing engineer at Trust. So it's inspiring to hear an employer say, yeah, we're going to be keeping our eyes out and we're not bringing people in just to be cogs in our
188machine and fill gaps. We're bringing them in to invest in them and lift them up and make sure that they continue to grow personally and professionally. And then to see that in. reality within that team is really inspiring. And so we're building this with a company with that outlook so that as we bring other partners in, it is around that set of values and not just a program, but it really is about lifting up the individual. So, okay. Get myself all worked up, fired up. All right. Also, We are so excited to have the opportunity to be launching the iInnovate K-12 Regional Skills Lab. This is a new program expansion that's funded by the California Jobs First Initiative. This is out of the Governor's Office of Economic Development, otherwise known as GO-Biz. So you if
189you've been tracking what's been happening regionally, the governor has been investing very heavily in regional economic development. The governor's office carved up the state into 13 regions. Our Central Coast region is made up of six counties from Santa Cruz down to Ventura. And then monies were made available for these regions to compete based on just really dynamic, innovative, transformational ideas. So our region came together, put together a super region economic strategy, and then opened up. a grant round that was ridiculously competitive. And we were competing in the talent development category against UCSB, CSU Monterey Bay. There was no distinction between K-12 and community colleges and universities. And so we were surprised. thrilled to be the recipient of one of these grants because not many were given out. But the idea that we put forward was,
190hey, let's take some of the work that we've been doing here in San Luis Coastal around career-connected learning. It was showing up in our monthly iInnovate lessons that were being rolled out across all of our grade levels that were connecting innovation to careers. Let's say, what if we were to regionalize that and blow it up and say, let's bring this to other neighboring school districts? So I brought that. audacious idea to Dr. Prater and he instantly reached out to a network of six other superintendents across three counties from southern Monterey County down to Santa Barbara County and we were able to bring together this first of its kind regional collective of K-12 school districts banding together saying what if We as a region aligned and focused together on trying to do something good for our
191kids that would match these workforce needs, but we did it as a collective. The magic of that is by banding together and saying we're going to build a first of its kind network of partnering school districts, we've been able to unlock partnerships and resources that would never... otherwise be available to us as one school district particularly the school district in the county that is perceived as having the most privilege which makes it pretty hard for us to compete for some of these opportunities But through this new network, we're going to be continuing the same rate of engagement that we had with our students here in San Luis Coastal, but also having this spillover benefit to bring those lessons and learning opportunities now to a regional collective of about 13,000 kids every month. We were able
192to prioritize school districts with really hard. barriers like Shandon, you know, geographic distance that makes it hard for them to partner with industry. San Ardo, again, geographic distance, but also like an 1800 schoolhouse model. And so, you know, we're reaching down to Guadalupe, Lompoc, really diverse grouping of schools. that, you know, again, in this idea of economic mobility brings forward a picture to our community of how we want to build the future talent pipeline. And so all of those lessons have been developed mostly by Ms. Peters over the summer. She had a very busy, busy summer. So if you pass her, give her a good pat on the back. She needs a vacation. And then we are going to be delivering these lesson boxes every month to our partner school. So all the lessons are
193prepackaged. Teachers don't have any prep. And then what's really exciting is we said, you know, we've got these great lessons that are hands-on. Kids get a micro simulation, exposing them to 56 different jobs that are part of our region's economic strategy. These 56 jobs were the jobs surfaced by our industry partners that they wanted to showcase that are representative of what's happening in these growing industries. But we thought we're missing the storytelling part of this. Yes, we've got the lesson. But it's hard for a third grade teacher in Shandon to really stand up and say, OK, kids, I'm going to talk to you about advanced manufacturing today. I'm going to talk to you about aerospace because they may have no idea what that industry involves. But it's also failing to bring representation to the kids.
194So under the grant, the next piece that we added in that I am just so excited about are these spotlight videos. So we have been running around all summer, every single lesson, all 56 jobs are paired with a three-minute video. showing and interviewing somebody here on the coast who has that job and is working for a local employer talking about, hey, here's who I am. I'm Ty Sofreno. I'm the CEO of Trust Automation. And this is what I do every day, talking about their work, their skills, what makes it a dynamic job. And then all of these videos close out with the individual speaking directly to the kids and saying, now today it's your turn. you're going to take on the role of a junior aerospace engineer and as you work through a challenge. So
195we had the opportunity to preview some of these lessons here in our district about a week ago and Ms. Peters was sharing with me that the kids are watching the video and then it gets to the point where the individual says, and today it's your turn. She said all these little spines straightened and they said, oh my goodness, this person's talking to me. And so we're really delighted. Not only that we get this rich storytelling, but I cannot tell you. how much our employers have nailed it when it comes to helping us think through representation. And the people that we have been able to meet by partnering with these companies and saying, bring us your talent. And the talent that's stepping forward and the stories that they're sharing, whether it's an architect who says, I
196came here when I was 13 from Mexico. I didn't speak English. My mom was picking strawberries in the fields of Santa Maria. I went to a job fair. And the man asked me, what do you like to do? And he said, I like to draw. The man said, then you should be an architect. So he said, based on that and that alone, I took the drafting class in high school. And now here I am working for 1906 Architects. And I just finished designing the new middle school down in Guadalupe, which is where some of my family went to school. Amazing stories. And I could just keep going. And so to bring those stories. to this network of kids to say, these are the people in your community. These are the employers who are investing in
197these opportunities. is just so inspiring for me, and we hope that it's going to be really inspiring for our kids. And so these are some of the companies that we've had the opportunity to connect with as partners that we otherwise would not be getting these deep, rich financial and program partnerships with. You know, SpaceX has been kind of a delightful surprise. Firefly was the most recent company to land Lander on the moon. ULA is another launch company. Vandenberg is just fantastic. And they've done three videos with us and they just want to keep doing more. And I could just keep going. But Blue Laser Fusion is fusion nuclear energy as opposed to fission. These amazing emerging companies that want to really think deeply with us about this next generation talent pipeline are now partnered. with
198San Luis Coastal. And I just think what an amazing resource, not just for this program that we're doing, but now. I had a principal reach out to me and say, I'm looking for guest speakers. Do you know anyone? I was like, I know like 56 new people. So we think that we can leverage these into additional opportunities to empower our teachers. Think about externships. Think about guest speakers and more and more and more exposure because this program has put us in the lead position to develop these relationships. Okay. I'm just about done. All right. So bringing back. this partnership. Again, we are these two different legal entities, but we are linked together so strategically, working hand in glove to think about these opportunities for our kids, that the foundation is out in the community trying
199to identify and cultivate these opportunities. And it really is this partnership between the foundation and the school district that is celebrated by our donors who say this is because it's not just an independent foundation because you're so deeply partnered with the school district we trust that this work will be implemented with fidelity and because these ideas are germinating from the district and then we get to be ambassadors going out into the community to try to resource it it just builds that that trust and confidence okay i'm done is there anyone from the public who would like to and talk about this. I'll come back to the board, Mr. Croson. A quick comment. Well, so the growth in all your programs this year was amazing. and i think it's forcing us to kind of miss one
200of the big points which is that the foundation really stepped up to help the district as we adjusted our budget this year and i think in a lot of situations you could have just been talking about um the adjustments you needed to make to handle that and instead you're talking about really impressive growth on top of doing that but the fact that the foundation was able to help i think we just owe you a big thank you and uh a lot of appreciation for everything that you've done just to keep us at a baseline and then grow on top of it. So thank you. I appreciate that. The only comment I have is with regard to back to what we're doing at elementary and middle schools with sports for achievement and some of the other
201programs that are beginning with that is I'll be really curious about following on the heels of all our Parsec discussions. If there's a way to... do some data collection in terms of kind of before and after. Where were some of these kids before engaging more deeply? with the school in some of these activities and we're keep looking at Aaron because he's doing this but and then how has it and I don't know whether that's measurable in any way but I'll be really curious to know is it is this working you know not just our and I really appreciate that we're doing this I think it's I I appreciate the focus on post-high school, on jobs, on careers and all that. But I, as people here have heard me say before, I also am really concerned
202about our kids having the opportunities to grow in the arts, not just performing arts, but fine arts, to have opportunities to experience beauty. in ways that may be missing from their day-to-day lives. So I'm, and I know that that is, some of those things are really not measurable, but I think that it is, as we are trying to grow whole humans with a wide variety of opportunities. Are you looking at Dr. Prater because he knows this is, yeah, I get that. You're like rolling your eyes. No, no, no. I think it was more of a conspiratorial look. These are things that as one board member are, you know, something that are really important to me in terms of the. the growth of a whole person. So I, but I am interested to know how these
203things are working with our kids because I think they will work and what you're doing is amazing. I appreciate all the efforts of the foundation many, many years ago when this foundation was a little bitty germ. to give a shout out to someone who hasn't been on the board for a while now, but Ms. Isandress Rogers and I accompanied Kim McGrath to a national conference on school board foundations. And it was, to me, it was a real eye-opener in all the different ways it could happen and what that looked like and all those possibilities. And it's... pretty amazing to see some of these things that we're able to do thanks to your efforts and to the initial seed money we received and onward and upward. So I appreciate that. And the look to Dr. Prater,
204as I said, was more of a conspiratorial glance because when we were in Madison this last week, there were some really exciting conversations happening about some emerging opportunities around the arts here. And those conversations led to some brainstorms about how what's happening in the community could spill into our schools. So we definitely, I don't have anything reportable yet, but very much on our radar. thank you okay i had a request to oh did you have something else yeah thanks um so the way i see it is that the foundation could have taken an easy path and it could have dealt with the kids of potential donors and it could have been could have been pretty easy, especially in our community. And you didn't. You took the path of working with kids that are not entitled
205and opening doors for them and giving them something that just it's impossible to get. And you found a way to give it to them. I also want to take one minute to get one of your staff members in trouble, but also to support your comment that she was here. So I was in this room with another group of people. that couldn't figure out how to get Zoom to work. And Katie was, we'll get there. And Katie was next door making boxes and boxes. The whole room was full of boxes. The light was off in there. I don't know why she had the light off, but she was probably trying to save money. And she came in here to work with this group of tech. impossible people and it was amazing and she and she was
206going to share and make herself stay here later and if I can also say I was also gonna say another person that wandered in here was Jacob in the back I'm not sure what he was doing and he what came in and he spent two hours with us even doing better than Katie did and so my thank you to Jacob as well but I want to get her in trouble because she was not on the clock the whole time So thanks what you're doing for the kids in this community that really, really need the opportunity. Okay. I want to quickly take the temperature of the board. There was a request that we take a break. We're nearly done with the agenda, but I leave it up to my colleagues. I would like to, I'd like
207to be done by about nine 30. Can we hang in there? Okay. Okay. All right. I can be really quick. Yeah. Mr. Pinkerton, our next item, it will be an action item, 8.03, measure C-22, RFPQ, RFPQ, lease-leaseback for Del Mar Elementary, phase two. So, yeah, we are finishing up phase one at several of our schools. C.L. Smith just finished up at the end of this summer. We have Hawthorne moving forward with theirs. Bishop's Peak just finished. But so again, moving forward, we're now starting to plan for phase two. And so one of the first projects that came up was Del Mar Elementary School, where we started the planning for that program. So again, at Del Mar, the two new modular kindergarten classrooms are in. They're currently almost complete with the TK building. And again, a
208lot, a host of new fencing along the front, those types of things. But since phase two is happening, we went ahead and pulled out our lease back. And again, for us, Wisong Construction came out not only as the cheapest price. And what you'll see with Mr. Wisong is he's really going after projects, right? So, and again, with our scoring, it's not just the price. It's also value. So in terms of does he have the manpower of the will? Does he do have the least least spec jobs, those types of things. So it's kind of a value scoring as well as skill based. And so with Mr. Wisong, because of the work that he's done in local aspects of construction and doing least least spec, if he continues down the path, his economies of scale. Will
209mean that again if he continues to move forward with these we will see very low cost associated with him I will say we did lay out all of this twice on his projects on kind of a two, three year calendar and looked at, you know, in terms of when are things gonna be done, how much work we have, who's gonna be the people we actually met with Mr. Bond and myself, Mr. Whitesong went over that, talked about who's gonna run these projects to ensure that of course we have the labor force there to be able to get these projects accomplished, right? So far our, again. Though Acme did most of the work in terms of the overall contractor for Measure D with San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay High, Mr. Wisong's construction group was kind
210of the muscle behind Acme. And so we do have good experience with him doing a lot of work for the school district. And I think this project in particular is kind of a smaller one that will easily be able to be accomplished by him and his team. Right now we have RSH, of course, doing Pacheco. They got the they got the bishops peaks phase 2 project for the new classroom building. And so may know construction and other local firm is currently our turf fields and our bleachers and moral Bay High School. And then of course Mr. Why song right now is again finishing up at Smith Del Mar as well very close and will be done this winter with Los Ranchos phase one right now has is currently doing Pacific Beach. Moving forward with that
211project, as well as Little Sosa Middle School. I will tell you, Baywood Elementary School, again, we're moving forward with it. We're working with the county. I have a meeting actually tomorrow to talk more about that process, but that is a project that's going to get extended in terms of start time. Because of the county process that we're going to have to go through to get the whole project kicked off. So again, I'll share more study session kind of where with that with that. And get all of that to tell you that I do feel like Mr. Weiss, I can accomplish this. Again, great price, unbelievable price. Other contractors, when I speak to them, they're big. They can't compete with that, right, that aspect of it. So the positive thing I think for us as a
212board too, he uses almost all local labor, right? Almost all the contractor services are all local, both union and non-union. Larry does, right? So it's a... I just think it's a positive one. Again, our biggest thing is that he has the manpower, the leadership, right, to run these projects at the sites that we'll continue to work with him on and ensure that that's happening in order for us to, again, because I can see him, the way he's building right now in terms of these projects, he will beat everyone out if he continues down this path. So again, it's good and bad for us, right? It's a great price. We'll be able to get more projects done. In terms of the use of contingency, he is the lowest by far in terms of contingency use. So
213all of that just means more dollars coming back to the district to get more projects done long term. Okay. Is there anyone from the public who would like to speak to us about this? There's one public person here this evening not responding. We will come back to the board. Any questions or comments from the board, Mr. Unger? Oh, I'd just like to make a motion if there's no other comments. I'd like to move approval of 8.03 Measure C-22 RFPQ number 335 award lease-leaseback to Wysan Construction. I'll second that. Any further discussion? Okay, I would just like to express my appreciation to Mr. Weisong. I had the opportunity to speak with him a few years ago when we were first starting on things, and I really appreciated his commitment to the district and his use of
214local labor. All right, we have a motion by Mr. Unger, a second by Mr. Banfield. Mr. Unger? Yes. Mr. Banfield? Yes. Ms. Baltadano? Yes. Mr. Buckman? Yes. Mr. Clausen? Yes. And I'm a yes. That motion carries 6-0 with one absence. And we will go on to our action consent items. Please let me know if you want anything pulled. 9.01, acceptance of donations. 9.02, approval of warrants and payroll for August 2025. 9.03 approval of purchase orders and CalCard purchases for August 12, 2025 to August 28, 2025. 9.04 approval of certificated and classified personnel items. 9.05 approval of minutes August 19, 2025. 9.06 proposed revisions to board policy 0410 non-discrimination in district programs and activities. Second reading. 9.07 proposed revisions to board policy 5113.1 chronic absence and truancy. Second reading. 9.08 proposed revisions to board bylaw 9223
215filling vacancies. Second reading. Right hearing no, nothing pulled. I would entertain a motion for acceptance of the action consent agenda. I'll move to second. Yeah, I was gonna be more. You got it? You can have more time. 9.01 through 9.08. 9.01 through 9.08. Perfect. I would like to second 9.01 to 9.08. Even better. Thank you. All right. We have a motion by Ms. Baltadano and a second by Mr. Clausen to accept 9.01 through 9.08. Ms. Baltadano? Yes. Mr. Clausen? Yes. Mr. Buckman? Mr. Banfield? Yes. Mr. Unger? Yes. And I'm a yes. Motion carries 6-0 with one absence. Anything for advance agenda? And reports by board members? Mr. Banfield? I'm trying to get my TV clearance so I can volunteer. All right, the County Health Department will take care of that for you. Mr. Unger. And
216I was fortunate to visit Baywood and Los Osos Middle School for their back to school nights. And then Kirsten May allowed me to come over to Baywood the other day and take a walk around Baywood and some exciting things happening there. It's really a great school. Mr. Buckman. Oh, Mr. Buckman, sorry. I just want to say. I was at a Labor Day picnic. Emily Capilano was recognized. We heard about that. I'm not sure it was clear that she was recognized from all the all the teachers in this in the county. She was recognized as the teacher of the year with her association and it was quite an honor to be there while she was being recognized. Thank you. All right, we will adjourn this meeting until our next regular meeting on Tuesday, September 16th. And
217then on Tuesday, Thursday, September 11th, we have a study session. All right. Thanks so much. Have a good evening.