School Board Meeting of Trustees Study Session 05-14-26

001arise for the pledge of legion spanish language michelle worldly online um actually i need a approval for the agenda a motion to approve the agenda i'll second all in favor aye aye um public comment board recognizes the value of public comment on educational issues prior to this time for members of the audience to address the board anything in the room yes welcome thank you good evening my name is lee cavalier founder of Sonoma Schools Alliance. I want to put one thing on the record tonight because the board is about to discuss LCAP goals and direction, and the public is being asked to comment on a plan it cannot fully evaluate. The draft... Sorry, this is a study session, and so I believe that the... So unless it's on the goals that they have established, there's

002nothing else that can be discussed? Well, no, no, no, I mean is that the rules that's the rules so Say again what I'm allowed to discuss in my time period that's okay about the LCAP But not the stuff So only the goals oh, that's fine. Yeah Well, okay, then I'll just make one real plain comment and then I'll post this online so people can see with the LCAP it's really hard to evaluate a plan that Many of the blanks are not filled in, especially from what happened last year, so people can compare and contrast. And asking for feedback from the public when all the information isn't available to them is useless. So that's what I wanted to say. Thank you. Anybody on line, Michelle? No. Okay, great. We will start with Dr. Sutter. All right,

003trustees, President Bell, tonight I wanted to start our study session with just sharing with you my listening and learning report, which when I first came in, we talked about doing this, and I've compiled what I've taken from all of that process over the first 60 days. I wanted to share it with you tonight. So here's where we're going to go in this presentation. You've seen some of the... The classroom instruction is the the largest part of this report also a little bit talking about district leadership board collaboration the community partners that we've been able to connect with And then moving into taking a look at the achievement data that you've looked at before, but I want to point out just a couple of things for you all to consider as we develop priorities tonight with

004Mr. Callaway, and then sharing with you some of the planning and next steps that I see for our team is in front of us. Does that mean? Okay, great. So if you remember back when I first, the first study session that we held, these were some of the things that I was laying out as the plan for coming in was looking at building relationships and trust. meeting with board members, principal leaders, leaders, labor, community, and all of the members in our community. Just hear perspectives and understand what they're seeing and what their priorities were. Learning about our system, what our documents are, our plans. Visiting, one of the goals I set was to visit every classroom and meet with every department and see how the work is going to support our students. looking a lot

005at the relationship between the district office and school sites and then moving towards preparing for action like which is what we're hoping to do tonight as we as we work as a team to identify what the priorities for the board are that could then help direct our our work as we move forward these guiding questions in the bottom were the questions that i discussed with most of the community members that i met with and to really hear for them what what's working well What's not? What's the disconnect? And what do they need from the district leadership? So here's a quick little snapshot of the first 60 days. So I met with 17 different leaders. So those are every principal, every department head, department heads even in maintenance and operations, all of the different leaders that

006we have. Over 140 classroom visits. That was ambitious. I was worried if I'd make it we did got through every classroom and was able to Also meet with over 20 community different community member partners And you could see that this started, I started with meeting with leaders, moved into classroom visits after the first two weeks, and then there was an overlap where I started to, in the second month, started to also meet with community partners, trying to fit all of this into the schedule, and I learned a lot through this process. Even when I first started out as a board, as I interviewed with you as a board, one of the things that you asked was, what is the first thing, the biggest priority? And I shared with you at the beginning that I really

007felt that building relationships and trust was the first step because all the rest of the work is predicated on that. And I really saw how much of a gap there was in this. this relationship when I one example is I went to one of the sites and walked into the office and and one of the people introduced themselves and I I said I I said I said I said this person's name and they they literally started to cry and said it has been so many years since someone from the district administration knew my name and like that was very I was glad that she felt gratitude for being seen. I felt very sad for us to be in a place where we had staff that had that feeling. And similarly, when I sent out a

008message to the entire district about the passing of one of our longtime teachers, I got so many emails. I can't tell you how many that said, thank you so much. It's been so long since we've had these kind of communications that just... center our humanity. So it's that kind of message of just... the thing that was missing in our relationship between up here doing the work and connecting with our people that are serving kids. So how specifically we focused on this was lots of visits, being out, being seen. It wasn't just about seeing what's happening in the classroom, but it was also about communicating the work that you're doing at the site is important. It's important enough to take time out of our schedule and day and be here to see it and to... to

009witness that. We've done little things like we've given gift baskets to staff on conference week or this the beginning of this week we get brought out baskets to each of the schools because it's it's certificated appreciation week last week it's classified next week we wanted to say thank you for all you do. They're small gestures but they matter. Been trying to leave lots of communication both in emails like when we had someone passing and when I visit classrooms I've been leaving appreciation cards for each teacher. So I've had a lot of teachers say, thank you so much. I appreciate you taking the time for this. And finally, you all hopefully saw the videos. We've been doing the virtual raffles, which were for a Starbucks card. But we got a lot of people saying, thank you.

010This is fun. And we brought kids into it. So just trying to connect because the relationships and trust are really important. So moving into classroom observations, I wanted to start by just framing this up that a lot of times when we think about classroom observations and what we're looking at, we focus on what students are learning. What is the curriculum? What is the program? What are the standards? What are the outcomes? Which are important, but equally important is how students are learning. How are we asking them to engage with the material and the knowledge? We have a lot of research based programs in place and what I noticed in some of the themes that came up were really on this side of problems or concerns about the how we learn. And so I'll unpack that

011a little bit but I want to make that distinction because as you look at it you need to keep those two threads in mind is that there's the programs that we might buy or we might implement and focus on or the standards but there's also the way we ask kids to engage with their learning. So There we go. So there were four major themes that came up for me as I did all of my observations. Strong relationships. I expected that and I shared that when I first even interviewed was that is really our strength as a community is the relationships we have within this community. Some other themes, instructional variability. I'm going to go into each of these. Engagement, student engagement, and then what I'm calling structural coherence, which I'll share a little bit about.

012I saw a very strong theme and thread through all of our schools of the strong relationships our staff, not just our teachers, but our staff, all of our staff have with our students. These are some of the things that I saw and I noticed was just the rapport that they have, establishing positive cultures and connections. This whole piece about enthusiasm and joy, bringing that into our schools. And I know that as a board, we've talked a little bit about that, about how important that is. It's important to start here because relationships are the foundation for everything. This business is about relationships. It's about connections. And when we don't have relationships, it doesn't matter what other programs or skills or strategies we have because kids need to be connected. They need to feel like they're valued

013and that they're seen. The second theme that I... that came up for me in my observations was instructional variability. And what I mean by that is that when I went from one room to the next, or one school to the next, that there would be one room where instruction looked one way and it looked very different in the next room. Like in one room we may have high engagement and very structured timelines, in the next very loose, not as strong use of classroom minutes. So there wasn't a consistency in what it means to be in a classroom. even in the same grade. And I'd also see that the same students, their behavior is shifting dramatically as they go from one room to the next. And what I'd like to call out for you as a

014board is when we think about this in educational terms, something that we call guaranteed curriculum. And you don't want to think about that as just like a curriculum, like a curriculum adoption, because yes, we have, like in our elementary schools, we have an adopted math curriculum. But the guaranteed curriculum is really not just talking about the the text the curriculum that we've adopted or that we're using and whether we're using it it's also about our pacing how we're focusing like what standards are we focusing on how are we engaging students in the learning because what matters is what students learn through that process so when we have a guaranteed curriculum a student might can expect similar outcomes from one third grade class to the next. That we know that even though these two teachers are

015different, they have different styles and different approaches, at the end of the day, students are coming out with the same skills, the same standards, that there is a comparable educational experience for both of those third grade classes when we have a guaranteed curriculum. And when we have high variability, we don't have a guaranteed curriculum. So I hope that part makes sense. So what that means is that obviously the challenge is that students' experience depends like if they won the lottery. Did I get the teacher that is really delivering on what I should be getting as a, going with that example, as a third grade student. And we also can focus on the fact that we have an opportunity because models already exist in our system where we're seeing some great teaching. We're seeing like all,

016and all, the aspects that we want to see in our classrooms are already in our system. So that is an opportunity because how do we then scale that? How do we replicate that? How do we share that across the system? The second thing that came up or the third thing that came up was about engagement, student engagement as a central lever. So when we talk about engagement A lot of times people think of engagement as, were the students paying attention? Were they in their seat? Were they facing forward? Were they not talking to their neighbors? But when we really talk about engagement, we're talking about, are they cognitively engaged? Like, are they required to engage with the learning and the thinking? So we know people are engaged when we see that they're talking, that they're

017collaborating, that they're doing. they're presenting that they're doing hands-on tasks because they're required to engage with the learning that's that's being brought into the classroom when when someone's um passive we we don't know if they're sitting and listening we don't know if they're engaged or not we know that they're facing forward that their eyes are on the teacher maybe but um we don't know if they're cognitively engaged or somewhere else and we oftentimes see that those are the moments where kids lose interest so Putting like a fine point on that the way that I would think about it is is when we think about engagement What we're looking for is we're looking for who's doing most of the thinking who's work who's doing the work like is the teacher working harder than the students when

018a teacher is doing a lecture and students are just taking notes or Teacher is at is the central hub in every Discuss like they ask a question they get a response they ask the next the teacher is the one that is working Versus when we get students talking, when we get them engaged in dialogue and discussion and hands-on activities, they are doing the cognitive work. So when we think about engagement, because you hear engagement a lot in education. When we talk about engagement, we really are talking not about paying attention. We're talking about, like, is our mind engaged with that work? So it is an important distinction. And then... The last thing that came up was this one around structural coherence and it's about like do we see effective classroom practices in all of our

019classrooms? So this has to do with the pacing of learning because strong pacing that keeps moving is purposeful and it communicates that we have a purpose in our work today. It uses, is there a good use of instructional minutes? Are there clear routines and accountability for students especially if we're doing centers or we're doing hands-on work there needs to be a lot of good routines and accountability and we're looking for high levels of student thinking and participation that as an observer I can come in and I can see that they're thinking and that they're participating so Seeing this, this goes back to that idea of variability. We're looking for good structural coherence across all of our classrooms. And why this one is so important is, let me bring an example that we've talked about in

020this room about reading by third grade. And we've talked about what reading program will help us do our scores. Because what we have, like what we're doing isn't working. And it might be that we need a different program. But it doesn't matter what program we have if we don't have this because this is the prerequisite for being able to have effective learning environments for our students. So how so as a system, how do we get this coherence where we see that every classroom we have strong pacing, we have good use of our learning time, we have clear routines and accountability because that is the foundation that another that us. research-based program needs to be laid upon in order to be effective. Yeah. So just so that I understand this concretely, because I'm not an educator,

021so each grade has, you know, standards that are defined by the state. And you were talking earlier, I just want to understand how structural coherence works. Some teachers may be emphasizing some standards over others or not covering all of them in their pacing. I mean, how does it work really in practice? And also the instructional minutes part, right? We've had lots of conversations previously about... Are some schools doing less instructional minutes in math? And we have different instructional minutes, you know, at each of the various levels. We have less instructional minutes at the middle school than we do at the elementary school, for example. Yeah, that's a great question. So going back to that first slide when we started the classroom visits, when I was saying there's the what. What students are learning and how

022they're learning. So I'm going into over 140 classrooms. I'm looking at maybe, I'm in there for five to 10 minutes tops. I'm coming in, I'm looking around, I might be talking to students about what they're learning. What you're talking about is in that what they're learning, like which standards are they learning, and that is an important component because we as a district in the past have had divine. define what are our essential standards at each grade to make sure these are the, we want to hit them all, but these are the ones we better hit. In my visits, I wasn't able to see like what, which standards were we hitting. It is an important question. But what I could see was that I would see examples where, wow, this transition took seven minutes and it

023should have been. 30 to 60 seconds like that if we're transitioning five times in a period like that's a lot of lost minutes So that's where when we say this slide about coherence It's about how are we how are we structuring and using the class the classroom time in the way we we teach Within that is the content of which standards are we hitting which is a whole other important but different thing Who decides what standards? I mean, obviously the state has a list of essential standards. Is it the teacher? Is it the principal? Is it the grade level? So there's, it depends on what the district standard is. So some districts, you're supposed to hit them all in a year. Our adopted curriculum has a scope and sequence, so if our staff is going

024straight through a curriculum, they theoretically will hit all those standards if they get through the entire curriculum. I know in times past, we have had essential standards where we would block them by... trimesters at the elementary or grade levels in the secondary might be deciding as, for example, a math team at Altamira could say, here's how we're going to block our standards for eighth grade math. That's why when in our LCAP we've talked about common assessments. When you have common assessments, one thing it does is it starts to help teams align on standards because this assessment will be about this group of standards. we better hit those in this period to be ready for that assessment. So I could ask Amber about the, do we have, like are we still following the pacing on essential

025standards that was, that work that was done years ago, or how is that being determined at this time? As far as the essential standards, I don't have a clear answer on that because we haven't dug into that in this year. However, in math, they're all giving the unit assessments at the end of each one. And then in the three through five group, they have been working on the interim assessments. So they have been working on common assessments with each other in math. And then in elementary, at the other levels, we've been focusing on CLN units. So those are aligned. together because they're building the units together and then their next phase of that would be learning about the OLAW to give them the next steps for for language acquisition and vocabulary So so I can

026come back to you about where we are with that but it's something that we that we need to that is one of our next steps is making sure like are we aligned and if you go back to guaranteed curriculum part of that is ensuring that if we've identified these as essential standards that every student at that grade level is going to have the opportunity to master those standards and are we doing a good job of facilitating that learning, I say it that way because it's not enough to say, well, I taught it, they didn't learn it. Are we facilitating the learning for students to master those standards that we've identified are this is what we wanted to learn during this block of time so that when you look at the profile of a graduate, the

027graduate portrait, you have to work that back. We have to be hitting those marks to be able to get to the target we set. So yeah, I hope that answered part of your question, yeah. Yeah, so is it it just seems so complicated more complicated than it used to be so when I was years ago in Billy Perez's class doing my student teaching and like at all Verano, you know, I don't know who to Mifflin whatever it was you open the book it said Okay, this is and you plan your your week, right and it would say this is so kindergarten These are the letters that we're gonna be working on this unit, right? Let's just say our letter, you know These are the common core. These are the not common core. At that time,

028it was the stand, just the state standards that we're meeting. And this is how it's going to go. And then as you moved on through the book and you developed your plans for the weeks and the months ahead, there was always a time to review. So things overlap like something would come back. Right. Does it not? Is that not how it works anymore? I mean, not obviously we're not using Houghton Mifflin, but like. I mean that's a pretty nuanced question because the standards are more complex and demanding than they were in the first iteration of standards in our state. You know, when we came to the Common Core standards, those are asking more of students and the rigor has been upped. Some of the things that we're talking about here were absolutely in play when

029you were in Billy Perez's classroom. So a lot of the things about how we teach, I think over the years as a profession, we've been really recognizing that teacher on the stage lecturing to students is not a way that works for today's kids. Like getting them engaged with the learning in more active ways is what needs to happen because... having them sit and take notes or listen isn't an effective strategy. So that part has changed over the years from, I know, when I started teaching to now. Yeah. The structural coherence and then the instructional variability, could that be directly affecting our... I mean, are students prepared? Like, if there's variability in the classroom in what's being taught and these standardized tests, if, you know, some students are receiving the material at one pace and others

030are not, could that have a direct impact on, I mean, I think I know the answer, but are we looking at that as a possibility? That's why I'm bringing these up. And theme two, three, and four are all related. Like, the variability, what we see, we see variability, we see variability in student engagement in the way that we're asking students to engage with their learning, and we're seeing variability in the way classrooms are structured. And those are all, for me, first order problems. Like, that needs to be shored up before you're able to confidently layer on any other kind of programmatic. changes, we need to know that we're on the same page about what it means to teach in Sonoma Valley. Like this is the way kids should be learning and that we're all on

031board with that and we all understand that and that we get support for teachers that need support in moving into that direction. Yeah, anything else? Okay. There were many bright spots, some that I wanted to highlight out. One, I saw at many of the secondaries different levels of building thinking classrooms, which is a vertical whiteboard math. where students work in trios or pairs or trios and they get up, they're standing at the board, they're engaging, they're discussing and engagement is required. If you go into a room, all the students are around at their own whiteboard. So there's eight or nine whiteboards in the room and they're in groups of three or two and they're... doing their work and the teacher is circulating, she or he is engaging. So this was a great bright spot. It's

032scalable, it's already inside many of our math classes and I think that we'll probably be seeing this expand into more. Another bright spot that I have mentioned already a little bit to you as a board, is this going? Oh, went too far. SEAL, this was an area where I saw coherence, where I could go from one classroom to the next, and what I would see is I would see the same strategies in action. The teaching strategies, the way they were engaging kids were consistent from one classroom to the next. I would see the evidence on the walls, and what this showed us was that we have some coherence around our targeted support for our multilingual learners. The other piece is that we know this is focused on instructional strategies that are excellent for our multilingual

033learners and they are excellent for all students. They're about getting kids engaged, getting kids to speak. It's a great strategy that works for all of our students and so we're seeing this strategy in place in many rooms in, like as we went from classroom to classroom. Not every room, we're still like. we're still bringing it in but there were the places where there were many places where i went especially in the k2 rooms where they're in their second year where we saw coherence from one class to the next and then um and uh and the other piece was this was nice to see that this was an effort that we took on as a district and said everyone everyone were doing this and we could see it in place in some form in almost every

034room I went into. So it was nice to see the commitment that the district said we're gonna do this thing and then there has been follow through, which I've shared with you, like that's another important part about professional development. Well, that's interesting because it solves the structural inconsistency that you alluded to before as one of the challenges. Is this providing some of the, you're saying structural coherence. Yeah, it's a great question. So I wouldn't want to oversell that part of it. Like this is a beginning of it. This isn't the whole picture of how we instruct, but this is an important piece where we're seeing that it's, having our staff standardized on some strategies that we know work for kids. The other piece that is really what I was encouraged about was going from one

035classroom, like one third grade to the next or one first grade to the next and seeing the same poster up, like drawn in different teachers' handwriting, but it was telling me the teachers are having an opportunity to intentionally plan together, which is so very valuable as well. It's not just about the delivery, but as professionals. them having the time to meet together and be very intentional about how they plan their lesson. There were a couple other bright spots just because those weren't the only ones but our CTE, we've all talked about that. We have some wonderful CTE programs. I saw some great inquiry-based history where students were really engaged, especially I saw that couple of really strong examples when I was at Sonoma Valley High. So much, a lot of arts and experiential learning within

036our system and we... have a new co-teaching model that we're just starting to pilot which has a lot of promise that I know Director Knox has been trying to bring in and it's a great, that should give, it promises hopefully some great support for our students that, our special education students. And so overall diagnosis. Like the strengths here the things that I saw as strengths really about our caring and dedicated educators that we have some great examples within our system that we could be lifting up and having trying to replicate through the system but also that there's some gaps inconsistent practices uneven rigor and engagement and and inconsistent use of our minutes and routines in terms of the structures in the classroom, so Put an intentional pause here for questions because that was a lot

037Yeah Thank you. It was nice to see the the photo the vertical whiteboards Just reading vertical whiteboard. I didn't know what the distinction was as opposed to any other whiteboard So so thanks for elaborating is there any sort of feedback from teachers or students Specifically on this strategy the building thinking classrooms that they're they're kind of coming out and telling you that, not you directly, but saying that this is much more engaging. And, like, I guess, is there any data quantification of that? So I believe there is. I know that it's... I think it started as a county initiative because I know that I was seeing the same thing in some math classrooms in Petaluma and I came here and I'm like, it is here too. So the teachers that are doing it say it's

038amazing and it's wonderful and there's research. I'd have to get the research for you, but research about getting kids up. And there's something about the verticalness because a lot of times students will do whiteboards. They have the little ones that they do on their desk or their lap, but they feel. One of the teachers was sharing with me that there's something about the vertical, the getting up in the vertical that changes something in kids' minds. I'd have to get you that information. And that part was only anecdotal. I haven't read that myself, so I'll have to follow up. But the teachers that do it have been very passionate about what a great strategy it is. All of our secondary math teachers have been working with the county office and have even gone on site visits

039in other districts to see a district that's been doing it longer than us. So it started, I believe, last year and continued on into this year. But I feel like it's just been given a name. Like if I were to go into Ms. Williams' classroom when she was teaching fifth grade, that's what you saw. And I'm just saying her because she's here. I mean, I think our teachers have been doing it. Well, and just in general, like that building thinking classrooms, I think it was given a name. But I feel like we all know that sitting in our desk, especially if you are a trained educator, like you see how your kids learn. I think a lot of our teachers have some really creative pedagogy that they use that could be part of building. But

040so it just got a name. Two years ago? I don't know. It's not just about the verticalness of the whiteboard, but it's about the teacher circulating, students speaking and talking through how they solved a problem, them analyzing each other's work, finding their own mistakes. So it has a math talk kind of atmosphere to it, but with the students doing the majority of the lift rather than the teacher doing the lift. The other thing is that, yes, those are strategies that teachers, having kids, a number of kids work up to either individual or groups on the whiteboard, but this is intentional where if you walk into the classroom, they have boards all around the room so kids can, like there's an intentionality and a structure to it that is more just next level than I think

041what teachers had done in the past. So it's worth taking a look. We have a number of teachers at both the middle school and the high school that are doing this. Yeah. Other questions? Yeah. So my question is, if you solve for the coherence problem, I mean, there are lots of aspects of it. Is that in and of itself going to develop better readers without also adopting high-quality curriculum? No That won't so what we would need to do is is first we have to solve for that and the the other piece is for example, if one of if one of the the priorities that we set as a board is is there's been talk at the in the board about reading by third grade if that is one of them we then need to also

042go in and look at what is the curriculum do we have science of reading curriculum that is in place in our primary grades to support that instruction we have we have a lot of different curriculum and in different places within our district and some of it is very research based and and some of it is state adopted so The next step would then be to do an analysis of what is in place and do we have the curriculum in place that needs to be more uniformly used or do we need some, do we not have the right program in order to help kids learn to read? That is the next step of analysis to really understand what the deficit is. But just putting that, hitting it on the head, just putting the program in. won't

043be sufficient. It's not sufficient. It would not be sufficient. So you need the combination of both. I mean, one of the things I'm struggling with, which is what should our priorities be, is that you need those two things together. I'm also struggling with, sorry, I just lost my train of thought. What was the thing I was, oh, I was, I'm also struggling with. teaching strategies that SEAL is doing, which is that no matter what curriculum you adopt as the core curriculum, SEAL is always going to require you to take the framework and redevelop whatever your unit lesson plans are. And that's just such a heavy lift for teachers because they're not curriculum writers. You know, that's not and and and the time that it requires is so time-consuming I mean you you did mention that

044there there's there's collaboration and lesson planning that's happening But I'm hearing that it's very limited. There isn't a lot of time for lesson planning So it's great that some teachers are taking this extra time But we don't have enough lesson planning going on in the district cook, you know coherence across the entire third grade or second grade or yeah. Yeah Yeah, so I think that that the one piece about this is you started with like where do we put our priorities? I think that that that Mr. Calloway is going to guide you into the big picture about a for the example I just used a priority could be students reading by third grade or you know, whatever that is and then that's my job then to figure out. Okay, given where we're at. How do

045we structurally make a path forward like where do we tackle first and how do we strut how do we strategize that and I have some you saw some of the slides at the end I have some ideas about how I work within our system to build structures to make those decisions in in partnership with our staff that are implementing it because I think I think separating that is a huge mistake yeah other questions so district leadership we do like The work is not done here. The work is not done at the district office. The work is in the classroom, and we have a district structure to help facilitate that. These are some of the goals and initiatives that are in our LCAP. Some of which are not happening. Like we want to have them happen

046and we haven't even started them. For example, we don't have an instructional framework, which is kind of the how we teach. We have adopted curriculum, but I don't believe we have guaranteed curriculum where there's continuity about the outcomes for students. So this list... What I'm asking you as a board tonight is to help let us know where should we be prioritizing? because we can't execute a list this long and Also wanted to give us all a visual for the district leadership So right now in addition to the superintendent we have four other cabinet level roles that are going to be new and We've eliminated one director So just to keep in mind, like, how do we set priorities that a new team can target and move towards and get their feet underneath them at the

047same time? We need to still move. We have an urgency, and we have to also acknowledge, like, the reality of where we are as we're bringing new people in. The other piece, so I had here, I was sharing this with... one of my support like with my coaching support for my superintendent coach around this presentation of what I wanted to share to get feedback and we got to this slide and he was saying, oh this is a bright spot. So I added bright spot to it. His point was that since March we've had four study sessions, two of those on governance as of tonight, lots of individual and ad hoc meetings and that we've been really actively working to have goal alignment. He said that's impressive, like most boards are not. working at that level.

048So I wanted to thank all of you and give you kudos when he was like, that's a bright spot. So hooray for us. But I would say, I would also want to say, like, what I would encourage us as goals is to continue governance training, like to schedule that out so we aren't in a place where it's where, oh, we haven't done that for a year and a half, but like that it's maintenance that we schedule that. And I've received from at least three different previous trustees emails saying, congratulations on being superintendent. The best thing that you and the board could do is go to CSBA in December as a team to that conference. And so I've received that feedback from a number of people and I encourage us to consider that because the consensus

049is that's a very valuable for us as a team to work in a unified way. I also wanted to just share during this time, this is a list of the different partner groups that I have been able to meet with. It's been a lot of great connection, and this really goes back to the fact that not only is a strength of our valley the staff that cares so much, but the community that cares so much. Every group came in saying, we want to partner, we want to help, we want to be, we want to help support our students in the Valley, so that was really encouraging. In addition to this, we did have a community forum where we had, I think, 40 to 50 people there with a mix of staff. We had two trustees,

050and I also had a Memento Capacito at, at Alvarado at the Family Resource Center that was hosted by La Luz. That was a great conversation with about 20 different families there and been to a couple of PTO meetings. So we have a community that's really invested in our district and our students. It's actually a great slide. I've never seen that all on one slide. And that's quite impactful. I don't know how we publish this more often and talk about it. But that's for a community of our size. I'm actually quite impressed with just how many partners and how much support is available to us. I think unlocking that support is, I think, still an opportunity. I think we're getting a lot. But I think there's more coordinated opportunity. I'm excited about it. And these were

051just the ones that were able. Packed like trying to get into classrooms that these are just the ones that reached out to me to set up time So I there's more. Yeah, there's more so Yeah for sure these Mm-hmm. Yes, the boosters clubs not even on there and that's a huge one, right? There's just I mean I'm in that with them. No, no, I get that. That's not a knock on them at all. Are you but yeah, I mean it's resource rich. It's it's activation Opportunity. Yeah Are there any other questions? We'll move into the next part. So I wanted to just talk a little bit about data. I know that you've seen the dashboard quite a bit. Some of the things that have come up is concerns about even though chronic absenteeism is in

052the yellow, it's not in the orange or red. It's been something that we've talked about. We've also talked about math, about English language arts, and about English learner progress. I wanted to share, so I pulled all four of those into this chart that's called a four by four, a five by five, sorry. And I'm not sure. how much you have seen this. It might be easier to look on your paper, but let me just explain for those of you that may be unfamiliar with this. What this is showing is on the, so if we're talking about chronic absenteeism, we're talking about on the left is the achievement. Like, for example, if you have a very low chronic absenteeism, that's a great score. See, that's at the very top of the left-hand side. If you have

053a very high level, lots of kids that are chronically absent, that's at the bottom. So you could be anywhere vertically, depending on what your score is. But what this does is it also shows how your progress is. So compared to the year before, did it increase significantly? Or did it decline significantly? So we want it to decline. We want chronic absenteeism to decline and we want it to be very low. So if you're very low and it declined, you're blue. And if it's very low and you maintained, like if you're really at the top, it's hard to grow, that would still be blue. So blue is amazing. Yellow is, that's great. Yellow is somewhere in the middle. Orange is we have concerns. Red is alert, alert, alert. Does that make sense how this is arranged?

054So what you can see when we look at this measure right here, you can see that it's yellow. right, on the chronic absenteeism. When you look at this chart, you can see in the yellow, in bold, Sonoma Valley Unified District. Like, that is kind of our average aggregate is right there. But the thing I like about this, this also tells us where each of the schools are. Like, which schools are struggling with it more, which schools are more successful. So it can help us pinpoint if we wanted to work on this, where are the areas that we might need to focus our efforts. Yeah. Ann? So, but chronic absenteeism on the dashboard only looks at K-8, right? So it does not include high school. So high school is absent from here. And you have to

055look at that completely separately. And what about TK? Is it in there? TK should be in here because it's the elementary school. But there's a huge amount of absenteeism. Right. But it's captured at the elementary level. No, yeah, I get it. I'm just saying. But that. To me that could skew the stats because if your kid's in TK, what's the downside of not, you kid not going to school today, hey, I want to stay home today. Well, yeah, that's not, it's, it's, it's. I mean, people treat it, people treat it as daycare and preschool. Correct, yeah. It's not, to them, it's not formal school. Right, so I would just be interested to see if you took out the TK stat, what it would do to the rest of them. Does it, does it make a

056difference? Does it skew the number at all, overall, or not? But the numbers were pretty high, if I remember when they. Oh, okay. We could take a look. I mean, the other piece is that there might be a perception that TK is like a preschool, but... The reason we've implemented TK is because it helps get students ready for kindergarten. And being there does matter, just as it does with any grades. We've talked about you can't learn if you're not there. I think it's whether we take it in or out. I mean, we have our schools to compare against each other using the same barometer, which includes, at least at the elementary school, TK. And there's real variance here in what's happening at different school sites. And I believe... all the elementary school sites have tk

057today they do yeah so it's yeah i mean obviously yeah yeah go ahead uh it'd be helpful for all of these subsequent charts if we could have an overlay of the actual numbers the like in parentheses after each school because there's a lot of variability within each you know high very high you know so for high it could be 10 or could be 20. for very high it could be 20 could be 60. So that would help us understand a little bit more in terms of how significant the issue is. Yeah, I think that if we, as we look at what your priorities are, if we feel that they would be helpful to go back, because this is generated through the dashboard, so we would need to probably go back and manually figure that out.

058And if we had said this is an area of focus, then we certainly could do that. I think we should do that for the areas that we might be having as priorities. What I wanted to share with you all today was we've been talking about these general areas. There we go. You know, math. In each of these areas, we have a lot of room for growth and a lot of room for improvement. Here's our math. And here is our language arts. It's not going. Go ahead. There you go. Here's our language arts. to put a fine point on this, when we talk about reading, like getting kids, this isn't saying that kids are reading at grade level. Getting kids to read at grade level isn't a direct effect on this because this is a CAS

059test, this is testing other things, but kids that can't read at grade level will not be able to achieve on this. Like the reading is a prerequisite. There are different measures, but it is a prerequisite. And the one thing I did want to go ahead Michelle this is giving problems the one thing I did want to call out was when I look at this one and I look at our English learner progress and I look at three of our elementary schools in the red and and that has me very concerned this is 25% of our population is in this category we have 25% district-wide English learners and This this is one thing I'd encourage the board to think about as an area of focus because it This is telling me that the efforts that we've

060been we haven't been adequately serving these students So just yeah interrupt and can we back up to the absenteeism for yeah, sure So I had been talking with Jason about the chronic absenteeism and so obviously if you don't have kids in school you're not going to teach them. So my question was do we have enough staff at the district level to combat absenteeism? And you know I've said we need to evaluate our staffing levels particularly as it relates to this subject because if we can improve you know, if we can reduce chronic absenteeism by some number and you have to hire another person, it's money really probably really well spent. And so I would encourage us to give a directive to Superintendent Sutter to say, look, evaluate the process, the staffing levels, how much contact

061do we, you know, where's the focus? Do we have enough staff? Do we need more staff? Would that make a difference if we hired another person, if we hired two, whatever it is. This is like a critical aspect of learning, right? And so I don't know what everybody else's thoughts are on that. And if you want to sort of tell us what you think our current staffing level is and is it adequate or is it being evaluated? I'll come back to that in a minute. I was just going to ask, I guess I don't really understand. I mean, I understand the staffing component of it, but the first thing that I wrote down when I read this was ask the families the why. I mean, I feel like we need to understand, is it accessibility?

062Are there things going on at home that are preventing students from coming to school? Or is it the culture of the school and how kids feel at school? no matter what work i mean we kind of had this conversation before about the position that we have and the the um the person that's you know reaching out to families and going to that like i don't think that one person has the ability to fix the culture of the school or accessibility for all of our students so i think for me before i say yes go put another person in this place we need to really find out from our families why and if the why is because they don't understand the system of school and the importance of being here, then that connection with a person

063from the district makes sense. But if it's the kids struggling to come to school because they're not feeling safe or they don't feel comfortable or they're having a hard time in the classroom and that connection wasn't made, then we're not going to solve it by putting money in a person there. We have to get to the root cause of the problem. And I'm not sure how you would solve the accessibility. I don't know how you would do that. I add to what Kat was saying. So I agree with you, which is you have to understand the problem. Like, what is the problem we're trying to solve? Is it a person problem or not? What I do, you know, we don't know the reasons. I mean, I've had anecdotal conversations with families. And so, you know,

064I think there has been for some groups of parents, there has been an ongoing cultural I don't know what to call it, but like an attitude that during the pandemic, you know, we had a lot of absenteeism. And so parents either. are at the drop of a hat or like, okay, you don't have to go to school because culturally they've kind of got ingrained to this practice. But I don't know if that's Sonoma. I don't know if that's Sonoma Valley Unified. I know that's kind of generalized when you read the general research of chronic absenteeism. But so we have to understand the problem because we don't really know what the real problem is. I mean, there's, you know, there's fear of ice raids. We had, you know, that there was a clear drop in attendance

065when the ICE raids were kind of at their peak. So that's also an issue. But I think what we have to get at, I mean, one district that I kind of learned about when I was at CSBA last year. They had a terrible chronic absenteeism. I think it was the worst in the state. And basically, their board and their superintendent was like, we got to make learning more engaging. We got to make it so that kids feel like they're missing out if they don't come to school. And they, you know, they've turned that whole, you know, Compton Unified around. It's incredible. They had a 50% dropout rate. Now it's like 95% graduates. I mean, it's incredible what they did K-12. I mean, I'd just be, look, let's evaluate it and let's try something different for

066a year and see what the statistics are. And if it moves the needle and we can gather more information during that period of time because it's not just on one person or the principals or whatever it is. There's someone who's working on the issue. I think that would be a positive, you know. Can I make one other comment? And this is really to Ron, which is that I feel like what our role as a board is to say give a directive to address chronic absenteeism, but it's not our job to say hire an individual to do this, that, or the other thing. You are correct. In fact, it's in my slide. We're going to go back. A little bit of governance is in the slides that I will present. We go back to our governance

067structure. The governance is you create the priority or the policies of the district and the superintendent carries out those policies with actions. So you're at the 30,000 foot level, he's at the ground level. And that's the process. And you'll see those in the slides. But again, that is what, so tonight when you create those priorities. tonight for the superintendent for the 26-27 school year then the superintendent's job is then to work with his staff to carry out those objectives for you and then come back and say this were the these were the priorities you created for us for our staff and these are the results of that now I would recommend and this is up to you is a quarterly benchmark where are you in the process where are you in in looking at that

068so it doesn't get lost because And I'll just, I'll get off my soapbox and I'll come back to something later on. Well, that brings up a really good point. And I'm curious to know, I mean, I guess one of the things that is for me is hard to digest with just putting a person is it's also if these families have personal things going on where they're already not feeling comfortable, where they. where they have familiarity is at the school. So do we have protocols? So if I'm a fifth grade teacher and I have a student who's chronically absent, is there a consistency with that? Am I contacting the family first and then am I contacting my principal? What are the steps that we're doing with the people who know the families the best? Or do

069they even exist? And if not, do we need a policy? And how can the board support that? Well, I think going back to similar to what Ron was saying, like if this is an area that we that we're. wanting to focus that the first step would be for me to work with our team to first figure out why what's going on I think Ann's point about about like having engaging joyful classrooms that's always going to be a one component of it you know that what there's some kids that you know if they feel like there's a lot of purpose they're going to be more likely but there's a lot probably a lot of other reasons that students are are not coming to school that we could First, we would want to figure out what that

070is. I'd want to talk to the person that we have already in place about what they're doing, what's effective, what is the impact that we're seeing. Because would it make sense to add someone else? Or we might find out that the reasons are very different and there's a different solution that would make sense. So if that's something that we're working on, the first step is trying to understand why. What has been the challenge? Why do we have the problems where we have them in terms of kids getting to school? This always comes up for me, back to structural, like the difference between basic aid and LCFF. Do we know if that's a driver to how we're either counting or our focus on students showing up each day? we'd have to look in that I mean

071theoretically like there could be there could be a feeling if I'm hearing you right that like oh in a school that's driven by by a da like yeah if kids don't come you don't get paid we're hustling because we and that's the perception I would I would hope that what you're saying isn't true because it comes back to the point of we can't educate kids that are not at school yeah so it's possible that what you're saying is is at play somewhere I would hope not, but we'd have to look and see. If it was, we'd have to address that. Yeah. I mean, you came from a school district, right? Mm-hmm. that had a different financial model and it was dependent on the student headcount per day. And I'm just curious if you've seen culturally

072people, like I think it's important, like if your principals and your staff are speaking differently about absenteeism, like is that coming up? I mean, Troy, you came from Napa Valley Unified, again, different model. And it's like, you know, what is the language? What's the attitude towards, you know, students? showing up each day and i think even if it's not overt if it's subvert that does make a psychological difference to how you approach your job and your in your culture so i just that's an insight i'm i don't i don't have a answer on and i'm not trying to project an answer i'm i'm inquiring on if that if that is something that that's going on i think it's something that we would want to know and then we would want to address i i'll I'll

073step off my own soapbox here for a second, but I do, in a second, I do think the chronic absenteeism, being that we are in the high category overall between 10 and 20%, I think for me, categorically, this would be a top item for us to move to medium, like to see that progress and to see an overall SVUSD. decline again. It's declined. The current chart shows a decline year over year. I don't know what our percentage is. It's just 10 to 20 is a big range. Are we at the high end or the low end? I'm not sure. And it would be great to know if, depending on where we are, if we're under 15%, can we set it to be below 10? If we're a five percentage point change and to continue to

074decline. Like that's where I would, I would, I would advocate for one of the top goals and targets for us. Why do we not have the high school stats in here somewhere? Yeah, Amber does have some stats she can share if you'd like to hear those. So when you... Molly, I'm going to give Molly credit because she texted me. But when you look at the high school's data, their chronic absenteeism is low, and they've had huge drives in improving it. So they've decreased by 22.9% from 38.4. In 21-22, it was 15.5 in 24-25. And then just to kind of add on to your conversation about, like, at the elementary level and at middle school and high school, I know that. Like, I've been a teacher at three of the schools, and all three operated very

075similarly. When students are chronically absent, I know that I could always go to my office staff and be like, why wasn't Jason at school today? And they would already know by the first break. because they had already contacted the parents. And then when students are chronically absent, we have systems in place through COST, the Coordination of Services Team, where the school team meets about students, and then they make individual plans for those students. And then that increases based upon if those interventions don't work, then they apply new interventions for those students, which then goes into SARTS and SARBS. So there is an articulation of services all the way up to the most chronically absent students. There you go. Thank you. School Attendance Review Board and then eventually to truancy. Thank you for that. So then

076is that all our staff? So that encompasses all people that we already consider in our budget. It's not anyone outside of that. This is all our people. Okay. Because I think that's important to know, right? Yeah, and we do have an individual that's focused on, like, making home visits and following up. So in addition to what Amber was saying about the offices making calls and checking on why someone didn't show up, we also have somebody that's actively working with kids that are more habitual, making home visits. We haven't seen you in this amount of days. So we could be, if this is an area where we focus, we could, I mean, we. Regardless, we still can do a deep dive on what is working and how do we try to improve this. I'm sure we

077don't have to reinvent the wheel. I'm sure there are very great case studies and places where this is successful. Before tonight, I was researching locally. I think Novato, in a matter of a couple years, I had gone from an 18% K-8 chronic absenteeism down to 7%. This is just in the last couple years. like that's a wild change in a matter of a couple years like what happened right and it was there was articles written about it and it was a cultural thing right the district leaned into it obviously they have a different funding model as well but like what i'm sure there are success stories locally that have have have made these strides and like let's figure out what that is and let's use that to our advantage yeah um So just finishing up

078my report, the last part that I wanted to share with you was... kind of planning in the next step. So one of the things that I'm planning was working with incoming Associate Superintendent Sanchez-Moseley, looking at identifying an instructional practices advisory committee, one for elementary and one for secondary, to really work on things. Like one of the things that came up was the implementation of SEAL. Trustee Ching was mentioning the rigor and the way it was impacting teachers, working with teachers on how do we do this in a way that is thoughtful and sustainable? Because when we have unrealistic expectations, there's just, we get, it's an unreasonable expectation, and then we get resentment, we get people working against that, because... there hasn't been respect. So how do we start by working as partners to identify, okay,

079if we're, as an example, if we're looking at doing SEAL, what is a, if out of your classroom nine days in a year is not reasonable, let's talk about what is a reasonable model and let's make those adjustments. The other thing that I were really thinking about when I was planning with Associate Superintendent. Sanchez-Mosley was thinking about what kind of work is what we would call simmering work. Like there's some work that we've done a lot with and it needs to be continued. For example, PBIS, we've done a lot of work with that. That probably doesn't need to be pushed from the district, but how do we empower and elevate our principals to lead and continue those kind of efforts because it's good work still. How do we teach kids what the expectations are? teach

080them how to be successful and hold them to that expectation. That's stuff that we can work with principals to lead and working with our principals to make sure that they feel empowered in their leadership to apply the district focus. Every principal needs to be able to take what the district focus is and then implement it and apply it in their setting at their school. That's why they're leading there because we can't. Make make classroom instruction happen from from this building like it has to be a partnership all the way through with our with our staff and with our principals so that they can figure out how the best way to implement it at their site as a team The the other thing that is a piece that that I think we have an opportunity in

081is these are These are documents that are in the El cap In the LCAP, there was work done over the years on a graduate portrait, an adult portrait, and a systems portrait. And these documents state what our goal is for students when they graduate. And they're good documents. They're strong. And they can be that guiding North Star for us as we are making decisions. The problem is when these documents were created. I looked at who was on the guiding coalition, you remember that term, the guiding coalition was a team of people, it was a big, broad team of people. It is conspicuously absent of any, as far as I could tell, of any actively classroom teachers. There were no classroom teachers, which is the people actually doing the work, and so a lack of buy-in

082from our staff is not surprising. Jason it's why you're here so so I mean I'm looking at this and saying this is great work and we don't have buy-in because we we neglected to include all the right people so I'm thinking how do we re-engage with this work because no one would look at these things and say that's a bad thing for kids or that's a bad thing for the adults like the adult one of the things is bringer of joy like who would argue about being a bringer of joy into our schools but there's no ownership for this so how do we re-engage our staff and make whatever adjustments so that we all feel this is representative of where we want to go for our students, for our adults, and for our system. And

083then... But just really quickly, students were part of that. Yes. Students were. Yes. It wasn't just the adults saying what the students want. I mean, it's terrible that we didn't have, in my opinion, that we didn't have our educators part of this, but the kids did get to participate. So, like, that was their word, Springer of Joy. Yeah. Which is, that's my favorite thing on there, you know. So, but yes, there were students, and I'm not at all throwing shade on how that... It's a really broad group of people. It's just unfortunate that we missed a key part in that and that would have helped us to be in a different place with this. And so I'm thinking how do we, we put a lot of energy as a community and we have community members

084that worked on this for years. How do we reengage this? And then just the last thing, seeing our next steps, like I'm hopeful that tonight we can get some clarity on what are your areas of focus, that then I can work with the educational services team and the rest of the district team to figure out, devise our plan to move that forward. And then the last piece, working with an advisory committee that is composed of the people that implement that work so that it's not. done in isolation, but any plans involve the people that are responsible for working on that with students. So that any questions? I mean, we've been talking along the way, but there's that's that's the end of my report. And there's any questions? I just think it's important to highlight that.

085i mean i've and and i have been on this board the longest and obviously has seniority over me but in the last three and a half years and we've personally and as a board we've struggled with the amount of stuff in the lcap and how we tackle it and how it just seems like such a performative document and i will just say i'm really like although this highlights weaknesses it also highlights strengths but i think the weaknesses or the struggles that you identified with what you've done in these first three months with building relationships will resolve in a way that will put us to the place where we're putting our best foot forward for kids and so kudos to you i mean i really geeked out on this when you sent it and i think

086it's really i think it's really honorable that you weren't afraid to talk about the thing the weaknesses but also we're we're willing to bring forward the strengths and I think we just need to identify where the help is needed and as a board just give the district the support. You did a lot of work and I personally think that you gave us the guide to how I want to, as a board member, direct what our next steps are because this is a lot of... really valuable work that you did in these in these last couple months so thank you i know that there's a lot of people out there who have said a lot of wonderful things and thanked you but this document in itself is is really amazing so after being here for this

087long and and not having someone bring this forward it's clear that there's some things that we can solve with building you know these relationships that i think will solve it'll be a trickle-down effect so kudos to you good job thank you So I just had one follow-up question. I just wanted a little bit more detail. So one of the observations you had was, you know, students felt connected to teachers. There's a sense of belonging. I mean, you said lots of positive things about the culture. So I'm just curious. I'm trying to figure out, like, where does, you know, sense of belonging and connectedness fit in priorities? Because you seem to convey that. You saw lots of positive environments. I feel like my perception, having been on this board for the last... six years is that

088that's a huge problem and we need to address it and it has to be the highest priority because kids don't feel a sense of belonging. Our schools aren't safe. I mean, that was the whole premise of the safe grant and then the continuation of those expenditures. But you kind of told a different story. And I, so, yeah, no, I appreciate that. So, and I'm telling you what I observed as I went through classrooms. So this isn't based on survey data about how students, and I'm not, I'm inferring, like, so I didn't see, I can't visually see sense of belonging, but I could see as I walked into classrooms, I saw students interacting with their teachers in a very comfortable, friendly way. I saw teachers. bringing joy into their classroom, joking with their students, just that

089there was, I could see, you can see rapport. So I saw a lot of examples of rapport. Did I see examples where that wasn't there? Absolutely. So there were, it wasn't that every single classroom that that was present, but by and large that was a theme where I saw a lot of classrooms where I could visibly see the care that our teachers had for the students that were in their room and were there for them. But by no means I want to try and convey that this is based on other data than my observations through those. There are other measures that we have looked at and we could look at. What's the plan now? Are we going to discuss these areas of focus or are we going to do it? Ron's going to take you

090through it. Take it away, Ron. Two-minute break and then we'll be back. Thank you. Probably five. How did this consultant help for you tonight? Tonight we'll look at the Sonoma Valley Governance Board and Superintendent goal setting because that is one of the other pieces that we will move forward to in a few months is setting the goals for the next year as well. So but that's not. The agenda, we've kind of already looked at, I had the 75-day report to the 60-day report, but going forward, and then we'll discuss, we'll take a quick look at the LCAP current goals. We'll discuss priorities and next steps in reflections. So I want to go back to something that we talked about earlier, and this is the board level and the superintendent level. To make sure we're all

091clear on this is, oh, it's the next one. Next slide. The core distinction. The board is the what and the why. The superintendent is the how and the doing. Because we had this question earlier, the board creates, as we know, the board sets policy, approves the budget, and defines the direction of the work. If it involves people, processes, and operations, that's the superintendent's work. Sorry, I'm hitting my computer. And so I I'm going to kind of give it. Yeah. The example of adopting a new student policy policy. I'm not saying you're doing this. This kind of gives you an example. So the board adopts the policy you go through a process you adopt the policy. The superintendent creates the administrative regulations and ensures the implementation of the policy that you created. Again, the board is

092the policy makers and the superintendent is the procedure of those policies. So as we look, oh, we can go back one. As we look at it again. I look at it this way, the board is at the 30,000 foot level. You're up way up high, you're looking at things. One of the better things about your board is you do have office hours, which helps you in that 30,000 foot level. Because you can hear from your constituency, then take it up at this, take it up to that level with your discussions at the board level. So that's really important. I really admire that you do that work. Because it's hearing from people who don't normally have access to a board member. So that's really good work that you do here. And then of course the superintendent

093is staff as at the ground level with the students, which is very important. So these are your goals and these are in your document and they're called broad goals. Engagement, connection, belonging, wellness, create safe, engaging, culturally responsive learning environments to promote a positive school culture climate where all students feel welcome, including, concluded, and they belong. That's a lot of work right there. I thought that these areas of goals are kind of defined by the state, like these five pillars. Yeah, they are, but it just becomes this big, giant pillar. That's what I'm trying to share with you. Yeah, I mean, it is the kitchen sink. It's the kitchen sink. And it always has been. And I just want to go over this piece with everybody tonight that you can't do it all. Don't think you

094can do it all. Don't put it on your shoulders to do it all. There's a great line. Take it away tonight. Less is more. Less is more. If you do a few things great, it will continue to grow. If you try to do everything, nothing will happen. We can skip the next one. I put them out there at the proper end. So here we go to the board. And we go to the next slide. So I asked all of you to give three priorities and I'm going to we're going to go through them as the three priorities your responses your names are not attached to any of the responses is Just when you gave me the answers and I put them in to a document. So we'll go to the first one This is what

095you responded literacy adopt a high quality instructional curriculum in math and implement best instructional practices that have demonstrated success in the U.S. school consolidation continue to build on the middle school consolidation of this year and ensure that there are adequate student and staff supports for the upcoming elementary consolidation literacy And finally, reading improvements across all grade levels of five points measured by student that meet or exceed grade level. So when I look at those, just at those goals, obviously what comes out is four of you chose some kind of form of literacy. I'm going to include the reading improvements as the bottom piece. And then there was one part of school consolidation that was the number one priority to you. Next one here comes number two reserve policy and capital expenditure plan Create a cohesive

096team among middle school educators the cultural divide between the original Altamira teachers and the incoming Adele teachers is continued to low student expectations and poor student outcomes Labor partner relations. Several years of consolidations and deep cuts have left both certificated and classified hurt and with little trust. Safety and climate. Discipline matrix. District-wide behavioral expectations. and et cetera, and then finally build a financial reserve to the amount of 7.5% of the annual budget. I can see, I saw two common themes in that goal was the reserve policy and capital expenditure and obviously your budget. The other three were different. Although the cohesive Altamira kind of goes back up above with the consolidation piece in the first priority. There was someone who had mentioned that. And number three, superintendent evaluation criteria. In a sense, what you're going

097to be looking at is going to be creating that in the future. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm getting too close. I thought it was reduce chronic absenteeism to pre-pandemic levels. You can improve student performance. Students don't come to school. We have over 500 students who are chronically absent in our district. We need to understand the drivers of chronic absenteeism and also restore the joy of learning in the room. LCAP Strategic Plan and Vision and Facilities Master Plan. LCAP is set to renew for the next three-year cycle and the other two are long overdue. Now that the consolidations are complete and the budget is stabilized, it's time to start planning for five to ten years out. ROI, return on investment is what I'm assuming, on programs and people specifically and those that came into the district through

098safe grant and have been absorbed into our budget. And finally, English learners' academic achievement growth. So when we look at those, we're going to have a discussion now. Priorities. I'm going to share less is more. We're going to have to give up some things tonight, right? Everything. And it's like what I shared, less is more. Some do. We could set up a whiteboard. We need a whiteboard in here. We can pull out a whiteboard. Okay, we're going to get a whiteboard. We might as well, I mean, to make it work. Perfect. Perfect. Let's bring it up. So let's go back to let's go back to the first responses because that let's because that's gonna be our first priority no matter what yes, it wasn't clear that there was a ranking one to three when I

099was All three were priorities. Okay, so I Didn't do one two three. I just did here my okay. So now you mean my job real difficult 15 to evaluate well, let's start with number one Yeah, three people, four people said one thing. Yeah, a high-quality instructional curriculum. There's four. What is our instructional framework that we're going to be going with that's complementary to SEAL if we're going to continue with SEAL? And so that's the sort of the first priority of that sort of puzzle. And so from my perspective, it's like let's not reinvent the wheel. Let's figure out who's using, if we agree that SEAL is the way to go and we're going to continue with that investment because we believe that that's a good strategy, then what schools are using SEAL and have had

100success and what's their instructional framework? And let's just copy that or do something very similar to that so we're not having to then. kind of try something new and different and be pioneering on that. So that would be my, you know, let's look at somewhere else that's been successful and let's copy it and implement it the way they're doing it if they've had success, if we feel that they're a similar kind of a case study and go for it. I have a suggestion also. I mean, if we're going to move forward, should I be? I don't. You want to know something about me? I don't ever like to see my writing on the whiteboard. That was why I was never the student to get up and do it. But Jason will do the writing. But

101one thing I will say is that, yeah, voluntold, is that in terms of. Oh, great. In terms of the literacy, like I would encourage the board to look at what our superintendent just provided us, because for me. What's in this presentation is how I want to be a supporter of what the next steps are. And so it seems as if we're talking about literacy and we're looking at structural coherence and instructional variability, those two things were highlighted as ways that if we could find... like close the gap on those two that we might be able to take the next step. So that's at least my interpretation of what you said. So we have work that's been done. So it would be, I would think that we might consider this as a two-step process. And I

102don't know how that works within the LCAP, but if literacy is the goal, then support the superintendent and the district staff to figure out how we close the gap on those two pieces. with then the implementation of a curriculum that you feel can be successful and all of that comes from The buy-in which you're working on in terms of creating relationships So this is like all of this has to come together and I think all that work is already being done So I see it as two things Addressing this these issues and then the curriculum component Yeah, I'm just gonna I'm gonna start this conversation with I we got to follow Ron's advice and we've got to follow The advice a lot of people have given us and not what pass boards in Sonoma Valley

103did we have to stick with the what and the why and get away from the how like I'm not a I'm not a trained public educator the Superintendent is as Ron has advised the person that is responsible for the how when the doing We need to trust our trained educators on the how. And I think we can approve it. We approve policy. So let them recommend the policy and we can approve. But I am not going to sit here in any meeting and debate, I think, the how. I'm not doing that. And that hasn't been the advice from multiple people that are trained in this field. And it's not. And we are not trained. Other than Trustee Landry, none of us are trained educators. So it's been a little while I get it I get

104it I get it but I I want I really I I am tired of debating the how I want to give our Superintendent and staff the direction on what is the darn goal for this district? What is the goal? So I would just really help us center on that So don't catch it. I'm gonna go first And then I wanted to ask a question that piggybacks on this just because it has to do with what I said. And so I think this is really important is my question. Okay. Okay. Then you, then you're, well, I'm just, this is where it's really hard. So is that record is the recommendation I made not. No, you were, actually, you were giving a broad picture of what you would like to see in that process with the literacy,

105which we will take down in that information. And then Jason will come back to you and share. These are the objectives underneath the literacy goal, or priority, if that's what we choose. Okay. So we'll take down that information that you're using because that's really good information. Okay. Okay. So we'll agree that literacy is the number one goal? We're going to get there. I believe the question to us was to narrow these 15 responses. I guess in the spirit of collaboration, can we turn it on our superintendent to see which ones kind of jumped out, spoke to him? I'm going to let him speak first, but that's a good idea. I'll think about that for a second. There's a lot of ways to skin the cat here in terms of like setting a literacy goal. And

106I'm just, I'm having a hard time. Like, is it, do you make it really narrow and specific? Like, for example, my goal, I think, would be I'd like to see growth in our English language arts. scores and proficiency for all levels and all groups. That's really what I like to see. I mean, it's a long-term goal. It's not, you're not going to get growth every year. And that's what you have control over in teaching is the growth. You don't have, you don't have control on the baseline of where kids are starting because that is a reflection of, you know, socioeconomics, parents' education, all of that. But you do have, you do have control over growth. So that's one way or you could just say the goal is to Follow best practices of other districts to

107achieve, you know higher literacy I mean, that's another way to go about it. So I'm having a hard time like do I go narrow or just say just improve literacy scores I think you have to be a little bit I'll be honest you're gonna be a little bit broad with the literacy and you're thinking because it's and I think you hit it on the on the on the nutshell there I want them I want the board to understand this is not going to happen overnight. And I'm assuming we're going to go with a literacy goal. I'm just going to be straightforward. Your process, I actually have some slides to that, but I'll get to that, is it's going to take five years at a minimum. I want everybody to hear that word. Five years to

108turn around the ship, to make it going forward. And that's with this superintendent and his staff working their tails off. Because they're going to have to build so much trust and so much implementation with your staff to make that difference. So I want to make sure. I agree with the idea of literacy. But I want to make sure this board hears clearly. It doesn't happen overnight. Okay? Jason, I want you to kind of to her artist question. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I think one thing. Just to clarify like we are we're calling these goals I think we probably want to think of them more as priorities because we're not rewriting L cap goals. Yeah, like what I'm asking you all is The L cap says a lot of things that we want to do

109and I shared that list What I'm really hoping from all of you is what are your priorities? And so it might be our priority is literacy and we want all kids to be on grade level by third grade or we want all kids across To move forward I'm asking you for direction for me to work with our with our existing teams at our sites and our new team at the district office to Develop what is that plan to help move us forward like let's take concrete observable steps forward towards that priority Because we can't do it all like we can do anything we want we just can't do everything we want So what is it that you all want us to start with? Where are the priority areas? I think I'm clearly To your question,

110literacy is certainly jumping out. I did see there is a There's on the first page first page or school consolidation. There's the out dell Altamira teachers That's kind of a consolidation There's labor partner relations those three to me are somewhat related and about in terms about the relationships that we have and the way that we that we Work together as adults within a system. So there's some there's some kind of coalescing there of those. There's a couple on the reserve policy, which I think, like, that part. That part is something that the board that that's them that the board really is working on like you you are Identifying how what budgets you're adopting what cut all of that spending so I don't see I do see we have our part in that but that's not

111one that I'm gonna be working with our team to say how do we how do we increase the reserve or that kind of thing I think that that's one that we can still be working on and it may be not the priority you're telling me to actively Engage. Develop a plan with my team. I think that the chronic absenteeism, I'm hearing that right now I think the best thing to do is to gather more information on that. To understand, like we could be looking, gathering information and bringing that back to see what. what we might be able to do to address that. I did call out to your question, I did call out in the data the English learners, so that showed up on the last one on goal three. That is a big concern

112for me because it's a quarter of our students and we can't make the progress without serving. one quarter of our students and we're not. So we can't get where we want to go without making sure that we're bringing all of our students along and that's a piece that we can clearly already see we're not being successful in serving our students. So that is one that I came at the beginning was saying I think that that's an area that we should make sure that we don't let go of because it's a moral imperative in my mind. So what I'm hearing so far from the board is for us to prioritize literacy in the district to create a mindset growth with that literacy and let and what I would recommend then is for for Jason his team

113and Specifically Jason to come back with kind of a model that we're going to work from This we part of when we meet for evaluation is this is going to be the process that we're going to be going through kind of he'll kind of just step through the steps but he'll this so you're gonna pick literacy and then he'll come back to you and I think we're coming back in July I think we're August August in August with this is the this is kind of the the outlined plan of how we're going to approach this process with my staff Does that make sense to everybody? Are we going to, I mean, I agree with sort of Anne's point saying you've got a couple of options, which is one that says looking at other districts that

114have been successful in implementation of something like from that perspective. Because from my personal opinion is that I don't want to spend the next 12 months studying seal and then, hey, at the end of it, well, it's not as good as something else or whatever, blah, blah, blah. In my mind, if we're trying to, You know, and we could try to say, well, we want five-point increase or whatever. If we've implemented the most successful, you know, instructional framework curriculum that's been proven successful elsewhere. theoretically if we replicate that we'll see growth in student outcomes so for us to sort of say well we need to do X percent or whatever it is that is not relevant the learning outcomes will come with the implementation of a success and and that's where that's Jason's work sure

115put that together to you and this is laying out the plan for this process that we're gonna work out this is the goal right or it will be his goals but these are priorities And so tonight we choose those priorities that will be in basically will be developed for his evaluation. Does that make sense? That's why the sprint and evaluation. But that comes back in August to you as a as a basically a plan laid out. Yep. Mean the in the private sector. It's all about how not to be a micromanager So I think there's there's a lot of seminars and lessons around the three things you provide an employee in in our case Our employee is Jason Sutter and it's structure goals trust Give them the structure you give them the goals and then

116you trust him to go get the outcome and then you evaluate after. So if a year from now we haven't made progress, that will be part of our evaluation. But it's not in our purview to be picking and selecting every minute detail of what's going to happen. So I'm iterating. I'm sounding repetitive, but it is a total break from prior trustees that sat up here and didn't do that. So I think it's important that we get this right with a new trustee at this time. All right. I think we're going to now comes the hard work. Can I just ask a question? So would English language learners or multi-language learners be part of the overall literacy goal? I mean, what I've seen is they are the students that are performing the worst, but 75% of

117our students are not showing growth also. I mean, it's not that much, but it's the majority across groups are not showing growth every year. So while... while english language learners is a really large proportion of the whole student group there's all these other kids too like everybody needs to benefit and i i would i would so i put english language learners as one of my goals um i would ask you if we improved our literacy rates by five percentage points but our english language learners didn't improve would that be success okay so i think it has to be included I would say, if I'm understanding your question right, I would say that I would like to be you looking at how we're able to raise our literacy scores for our students and separately how are

118we serving our multilingual learners. There's a nexus there, like there is, like there is, they complement each other, like some of that work overlaps. And as we work, like for example, SEAL, the next phase of that starts getting into connecting that to reading strategy. So there's a benefit to reading, but it's not, the focusing on reading is different. And so I think, to me, they're different items. And if we were hoping to see progress in both. our literacy, our students' ability to read, or our scores on the CAASPP and our support of our multilingual learners, they would be separate focuses that we're looking at them separately. Can you just clarify? So you're saying if we focus on literacy, we won't necessarily get better reading outcomes. Is that what? That's what I heard. No, no. What

119I'm saying is that if you say, if you as a board say, we want you to focus on literacy, and I'm just pulling this as an example because it's been, I mean, it's also part of the state plan is let's get kids on grade level by third grade. If that's what this board said, we really want to be able to say we're doing everything to get kids on grade level by third grade. That is one focus that... our team would develop a plan and strategies to impact those scores and we would measure that probably by the internal measures that we have whether it's star literacy which is nationally normed and it shows us where kids are reading on on the path towards grade level or whatever measure it is that we're looking at that would

120be one set one plan one set of strategies and one measure If we were looking at we want to raise, I heard, the CAT scores on the English language arts, that might be a little bit of a different strategy. We would need to focus on reading, but now we're also looking at the depth of knowledge on the questions that we're asking kids so that they can address those in the CASP. And then if we're looking at... at our support for English learners. How are we doing the work and the energy so far has been put in sealed towards that effort and the measures that we be looking at is probably our reclassification rates and scores on the ELPAC as a measure of those. Does that make sense? Well, I don't know if I agree that

121just because you can score really well on the ELPAC and not be a grade level and not be able to have opportunities when you leave high school. I mean that's what I really care about is the having what's the economic impact going to be on our kids are they going to have are we leveling the playing field for them. I mean that's what I ultimately care about. That understood and that's a different a different measure and a different focus. I would say that if we think about English learners if we're not reclassifying our English learners. we're taking away opportunity for them. Like as they go into middle school and high school, they have less opportunity. So by definition, we're limiting them if we don't, if we can't get them reclassified. I understand that. And there

122are ways to like manipulate the system so that you can end up with better reclassification. But what I care about ultimately is like. Are these kids prepared to enter the world and have all the opportunities? That's what I ultimately care. And if they were reclassified, that can make a difference. But, I mean, it's important. It's a necessary, I guess, condition, but it's not sufficient in itself. Yeah, understood. Okay. So moving forward we're going to look at look at the next we're going to come back we've kind of we kind of identified literacy as our piece we've talked about EL perhaps we'll do four just to be safe just to be sick let's look at we have school consolidation let's turn the page to next one I just want to pull them out a little bit

123more reserve policy we've talked that's a board more prerogative more than create a cohesive team at the middle school educators the cultural divide between the original Altamira teachers we have that piece we have the labor as we mentioned safety and climate build our financial reserve again that goes to board and one let's go to the next slide superintendent Val which we were talking about I think that's going to be part of that process so we can look move there chronic absenteeism an LCAP three to five year cycle, return on investment, and we've discussed ELL. So of those, which one would you advocate for as a priority? I'm going to let you think about it for a minute. Yep. I feel that the superintendent evaluation criteria is really important that we as well be Jason's priority

124well it should be ours in terms of how we're going to evaluate his performance as it relates to the implementation of our wishes as a board right and if it's we set very clear goals with his performance and what we expect of him, then theoretically if we've hired the right person for the job, then we're going to be successful as a district, right? And so I think that's a priority from my perspective to say, okay, let's... set his evaluation criteria that says you've met you know we've asked you to do X Y & Z and you've implemented it and Great and we've it's very clear what the goals are and that criteria and then it's like okay great We want to renew extend contracts and all that sort of stuff So that's my one of

125them and I'm not I don't know if I really It's just one of the priorities that we really need to have because we have one employee But I think that's our that so the I think there's a distinction between the board priorities and the superintendent priorities So we want to give Jason his priorities But we have to set our own priorities and that the evaluation criteria and evaluation are part of our governance Calendar that we do regularly except I don't think you've been part of that. Yeah, okay, so and What happens is the priorities you share tonight are embedded in his evaluation So what you're doing tonight is you're saying this is going to be important work for next year that we're going to embed in your evaluation Don't have that set up. We gotta

126get it done. That's the August meeting Chronic absenteeism was on there and I think a lot of these things without getting into the weeds will fall under that if Chronic absenteeism so I think we all agreed at some point in this conversation that I mean we engaged enough to I Have an assumption that that's a priority of all of ours um and there's a lot of things in here like culture and climate if we're if part of what our superintendent does is goes out and finds out the why then it could be that that culture and climate is part of you know so i was just looking at some of the things that were listed where those things could be captured under the overarching goal of chronic absenteeism but that's just a suggestion I'm okay

127with having literacy absenteeism those two things go hand in hand but as defined goals I didn't put chronic absenteeism on the list but I'm fully supportive of that being a top three goal but it's an incredibly easy to measure goal and it's it's something that is very useful and you know we can really measure it and say okay has there been improvement what have we done what have we haven't done and part of my thinking is that look you know what the suggestion is if we've got a higher another person let's try it for a year and see what the measurable difference is again I just would stick away from no no I get let him figure that out but let's give him the goal right and but you know from the perspective of reading

128a lot about districts that have improved in their literacy rights, absenteeism has been a huge, big factor in staffing and making that a priority. Pranic absenteeism from you? Yeah, I know, making sure. It was one of mine. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I'm hearing a consensus, but I just want to make sure I've got a consensus. I mean, I hadn't written that down myself, but I do agree with everyone. I mean, we spent, earlier tonight, we spent a previous study session at length. Yeah, it's certainly a priority. And to add on to that, there's some short and long-term goals here. Yes, yeah. So we heard the literacy, it's five years minimum. Yeah. So I guess building in on top of the long-term, I see the LCAP, you know, the three-year renewal, then there's the

129strategic plan and vision that we heard earlier that needs to be revisited, and also facilities master plan, and, you know, there's some other ones here about the capital expenditure. So those are some of our long-term ones. But is our board goal for this exercise? For this upcoming school year? Yeah, it's 20, well, you're saying what you're doing right now is you're setting the priorities for the superintendent of staff for next year. Okay. You can say we can have like a literacy pieces. We'll be, Jason will come back and share you with you. This is what will happen in the first six months. This will happen in the next 12 months. This will happen in the 18 month period. This will happen in the 24 month period. Give you that broad range. When we come back

130in August, when we talk about evaluation, does that make sense? Sure. yeah so in the short term yeah i agree with the chronic absenteeism and then also um the um the consolidations yeah the ongoing at altamira and then the upcoming one with uh presswood sasserini over on all the nations flowery right thank you if i may double down on um gerardo's here I do think the third one is the culture. So the culture, I think that's tough to define. That can be a little abstract or quantitative, but I do think if we can quantify the cultural maybe success or progress at the middle school being one, and I think of maybe culture and behavior. I think there was a different term used other than behavior, climate. climate I'm looking at the different I don't even

131know if every school has the same behavioral expectations look at that over on Oh 2024 behavioral expectations first do I don't actually even know if like where we are and we've talked a little bit about the different behavioral matrix you know baby or an idea of updating our behavior matrix and our expectations I think that's an opportunity I don't know if we need to split those two out or if they're one in the same but I think there's a there's a how we interact with each other uh goal that's really important like are we yeah i just i i'm not i'm not sure how i want to how i would want to goal that i think it's really important if the work was done to figure out which one of these, I mean, I can't

132even read it with my glasses on, but in the graduate, adult, and systems portrait, like the kids said, bringer of joy, right? And we do these listening circles. So what if one of our goals was directly related to what the students asked for? That would be the first time we actually did something like that. And I think culture and climate really addresses a lot of those pieces. I don't have, I don't know if, That's a realistic goal to set for a superintendent from the board. So I think you might yeah, I'm trying to figure Yeah, I just want to add, you know, I think appreciate all of that and I I've spoken with you all a couple of times about and today even about There's a piece when we talk about culture and climate and

133we look at these for some of these things about consolidation middle school, labor partner, and then safety and climate. There's culture and climate as related to the experience of students, and then there's also culture and climate in terms of the way adults in the system interact and morale within the system, which is also pretty requisite. So I don't know how you all... I want to think about that and how you want to categorize that, but that has already been some of the major work that we've been focused on is how do we repair relationships and try and increase morale within our system so that the adults in the system can show up to be their best for our students. Because when you go to bringer of joy, we're not going to have bringers of joy

134in a system that has low morale. So that is one thing that I've mentioned. a couple of times that that is a lot of the work that we have to do as a district team. The board, the district office, our sites, how do we, because we're one valley and we all care about our kids in this district, and so how do we bring that to life in the day-to-day that we're acting in that way, that there's positivity in our interactions because kids see all that. the people that we would like to have. I mean, I don't know what the real, I don't know what the, what do you do? Like, because I think we got a grant for that. Like there was money that came in to support that. So I don't know what, if

135that's realistic. I don't, I don't, it doesn't sound like anyone wants to reinvent the wheel and a lot of work is done, but how do we engage with our educators and bring the kids back to the table and make this a goal? I mean, I've written down, you know, culture, climate, and cohesion, right? It's like the cohesion of the consolidation. And so the middle school stuff. And so I think that Jason should spend time and effort on... team building, you know, at the different, you know, at the Sonoma Middle School, whatever you've got to do in terms of from that perspective. And then I think that we should also have a focus on now we're down to three elementary schools, so those staff should get together on a regular basis and collaborate. All the third

136grade teachers take them out to lunch on a day so they all get to talk about what they're doing and what's going on at the different campuses. And the climate is important, right? It's safety. It's the bringer of joy. I want to go to school because it's fun. I want to go to school because I feel safe. I want to go to school because I like the orange chicken or whatever. Pick the reason. I mean, kids aren't that complicated in a lot of ways. And so if we serve orange chicken on... you know once a week and it's the favorite let's serve it twice a week right and see if that makes a difference to get no i'm serious but let's so see what happens if if if anyway whatever it is i'm just saying

137different things like that you gotta just um so i i would be saying that the third goal would be some some measure of that right i mean yeah yeah yes okay no you go first well i um So are we talking about tactics or goals? I'm getting kind of confused here. So like, for example, when I was thinking you gave a broad description, which was team building, safety, culture, cohesion. I mean, that's like a priority, like team building, which we haven't done much of. That can in itself bring joy to the classroom. It can help with coherence of instruction. I mean. you know there's labor relations kind of embedded in that but then but then we started veering off to like the actual tactic so i'm i'm a little bit confused like is it too

138broad because it has so much stuff in it i think it's it's a little bit broad right now in my in my my thinking for i think we have to narrow it down just a little bit i i think that the the biggest piece and this is the hard part is trying to measure this piece, is the building of trust in this community. I, just as an outsider, that is the most important component of anything that's gonna happen here. The building of trust, that'll be, the trust is you're safe in school, that's climate. The safe is where. I'm engaged with you as a human being, both as a child and as an adult. That's your, there's your, your, right? And the system is there. So the building of trust in this community has got to

139be, it's a funny thing to use for this, but it's a moral imperative. You know, I think of ELL learners in my life, that was my moral imperative. But for you in this community, from what I've seen and heard, needs to build that trust back. If I think that you're spot on, Ron, I think of joy, and I could be wrong here, as an output, not an input. The input is the building of trust, the characteristics that we want in our employees and our students, right? It's the way we respect and treat each other. The output is joy. And I think if we want to put... However, we want to do the building of trust again. It's really hard to measure and I think that's fine I mean, I know we can do surveys of

140teachers and surveys of parents I think it's a little more qualitative of like do we feel that we're moving in this direction where we built we're building trust in this community or not and I Well, I'll talk to Jason about this how I envision that piece being built is you just saw Jason's report That was a step toward building trust, going into rooms, coming back and sharing with you all the information, the strengths and the weaknesses, opportunities and threats, the SWAT, as it were. That is really what it's about. So, again, we can put that into that piece. This is what I'm going to be doing. This is how I'm going to report back to the staff. Does that make sense, Jason? So I think we're at... I'm going to make it four in a

141sense because I think we're going to have literacy as one priority. ELL is another. I think it needs to be a priority as well. I think we're going to separate them. And chronic sapientism and then building a trust, the four, is what I'm hearing from you right now. So I would suggest, I mean, that the English focus of English language learners would be under. the overall literacy goal because I still think and I agree and I agree with the building of trust chronic absenteeism if I were to add a fourth it would actually be math because we're doing so poorly in math and we're graduating 97 of our kids and to me that that uh graduation gap is yeah it's kind of unacceptable but it's a lot. I just don't think that we have to

142maybe wait until next year. I don't know. It's a lot. I don't want to have four things because literacy in itself is going to take up everything. I don't understand that Jason and his staff will not just say, we're not going to look at math at all. That's not going to be what's going to happen. I want to make sure that that's clear. The main priority for next year, setting up, is those pieces. Does that make sense? Yeah. I think we will be also looking at math. Like, that may not be on this list, but we also, we're going to need to be managing what's the capacity of the team on this list and what's the capacity of the staff that we're looking at. So it might be that if we're doing a lot of

143work in literacy that's hitting those primary grades, like maybe we're looking at how do we make some, how do we work with the teams at secondary in math? We have to be conscious about the system, not only the capacity within this building, but the capacity within the school rooms, because we can't be hitting the same elementary teachers, literacy, ELL, our multilingual learners in math. all at the same time. So I think that's also part of the equation is how do we focus and how do we balance the weight on our staff in terms of where we're trying to ask them to make progress. And I will just add that starting with the literacy, the math will come with it as well. I was trying to help my first grader with a math problem the other

144night. That was a paragraph long word problem. And I was scratching my head, like, how do I break this down for him? But yeah, you have to understand what it's even asking you before you can even attempt to start to solve it. And I went that later that night as I was washing the dishes and I had a light bulb moment and I drew it down on his little whiteboard. So then the next morning at breakfast, I was like, look, look, I solved it. It was the penguins problem. Yeah, it was. The good news is you didn't go straight to chat GPT. No, no, absolutely not. You figured it out yourself. Well done. You're brilliant. No, no, we're just putting focus, but we're going to keep it out of your literacy. So obviously there it

145is. So Ron, I'm hearing the next step would be that we're coming back in August and I'm going to come back with some... with some plans to share with the board about what our team is thinking. longitudinal plans like there'll be some immediate some immediate steps and some long-term steps like to share with you all as a board here's how we're going to work on these I'll also come with some suggestions about how we look to measure some of that and we can have discussion about those measures is that the right measure we look at something else but I'll get us a starting point on all of those of how you are able to evaluate progress so that you can see we're moving forward on these priority areas and this will establish jason's these are

146the most important priorities for jason in his evaluation you will have other obvious other items in the evaluation but these are the main priorities does that make sense any other questions i it's up to you i can show the mark west thing or not I have a so one of the pieces that her heart asked me was of what do you do with your LCAP long term you know kind of like when you're coming through a planning stage and I was going to share with you what we did in the Mark West district in creating what we called a strategic plan LCAP we married the two we shortened so the document is not 140 pages It's like 15 pages. We invited the community in. We invited teachers in. We invited, obviously, we didn't have hires.

147We didn't bring students in because we were an elementary district. Obviously, we had to admin, and we had all the board members. And then we broke that down so that we had those five goals. Each board member was on a different team of those goals. So they participated as a whole and as an individual group. in that process. So I do have that, but if you want me to share it another time, that's up to you. It's on my PowerPoint. It's building interest, consolidation. This is, yeah, that's an interest. She had it up there. Yeah, that's what I, that's what I did. Thank you. At the STC? Yeah, it was cool. We took all of our administrative staff. Oh, you guys already did it? No, I'm kind of a little bit older. It was cool.

148There it is. My goal is for you to open this here. Okay. So... I'll make sure to invite you. Yeah. thank you annie you got an all screen behind you too so obviously we had obviously the board members are on there the district personnel are on there principals staff parents community members we had center health but you'd have many more than needed our five priorities achievement well-being professional growth community involvement and financial financial sustainability because as we know you can't do anything if you don't have the money yep this is there was no place for us to do like this is what we but we we may see this is i wanted to do it i'm just showing you it so no but this is this is this is overreaching financial goals with three to

149five year plan as a district right so it's a little bit this is not the superintendent's priorities this is the general well yeah but we we took it out of there We as our community because this is a community goal. This is I'm gonna Yep, this is the shadow Elko. This is my this is this is what because people can look at this This is that's my point what I shared with you earlier. It's it the the El cap becomes a compliance document of 140 pages that nobody can get through But you may be the only human being So that's what I'm sharing is this is why this work, and it takes a year to get through the work. I want to go to the end. This right here, phase one, you can see the

150dates we worked on. I just want to give you the idea of the work that went through that. We went through going down subcommittee work, data collection, phase two, all the way to June 9th. That was our work. I know Jason is well aware. This was Babs Cabin and myself. Jason is well aware of that. And so obviously we have a mission and vision just like everybody else. We did a mission and vision. But that's... I'm doing at least two leader planning exercises. And I have both of them after they're sitting on their shelves somewhere. Yep. So it's not like we haven't done this before. Okay. But there's been no cohesion or a through line from the LCAP to the strategic plan. So this is a way of marrying the two because you're going to

151be going through your LCAP process, right? And I share this as a great opportunity. Thank you. Obviously, guiding principles, core values are always... It would be nice to have this electronically. Yeah, we can say... Yeah, I'll let you... I'll send it to you, and then we can go from there. But I just want to share with you what it was... If you would just go down one... Go down to one goal. Goal, objective, and then... And you use this... You develop that first, and then the LTAB gets built up. off of that or is it the reverse? It goes that way. We built this, LCAP was thrown in. We kind of made sure we had the LCAP and we covered everything else that was needed to make sure we had a good compliant. That SCO

152said, you did a good job, congratulations. And I always said, you know what? I just want a C on my LCAP. I don't want an A from SCO. That's it. I'll send it to you so you can take a look at it. Okay? I shared that with you as you move forward. That's it. Okay, I think that's it. Has anybody got any comments, questions? Great. Meeting's adjourned then. What is that, 8.01?