NVUSD Board of Education Meeting-August 5, 2021

001the sd board of education is holding a regular virtual board meeting tonight that all can participate in remotely you can join via zoom specific directions on how to participate or look are located on the board of education webpage on the district's website nvusd.org board the open session part of the meeting agenda begins at 7 pm now we're going on to public comment on closed session items so before going into closed session the board is available for public comment on closed session agenda items mr bassinet do i have any public comment on closed session items there is no public comment thank you seeing that there are none the napa valley unified school district will now adjourn into closed session see you all back at seven thank you good evening everyone we are reconvening to our open

002session my name is alba gonzalez mares and this is the napa valley unified school district board of education nvusd board of education is holding a regular board meeting tonight that all can participate remotely you can join via zoom interpretation in spanish is available for tonight's virtual board meeting to access interpretation from a computer click on the interpretation icon on the bottom of your screen from within the zoom application on a mobile device click on the more button on the bottom of your screen and choose language interpretation from within the zoom application this is a separate channel that will allow you to hear english and spanish translation concurrently please note interpretation services are not available when you join our meeting by calling in our interpreters for tonight's meeting are paul huertas in claudia and lindgren may

003we have one of the interpreters please translate these instructions on our english channel so our spanish-speaking families can hear the instructions uh [Music] thank you specific instructions on how to participate in the meeting are located on the board of education webpage on the district's website nvusd.org board can we please start with an attendance roll call from vera morales executive assistant yes student board member here trustee gonzalez mares president trustee jankowicz present trustee gracia president trustee reiser present trustee water president trustee shu present trustee dooley here quorum present thank you thank you vera thank you for joining us tonight for our napa valley unified school district board meeting the public participation remains virtual online only this meeting tonight is in accordance with the open meeting rules in the state of california for the governor's order on

004june 11 2021 the governor issued executive order n0821 which expressly extends the flexibility concerning the con conduct of public meetings through september 30 thus nvusd will continue to conduct our public meetings online through september 30th as trustees we have returned to the boardroom however in order to ensure access to our meetings without any limitations we are holding meetings online with remote access via zoom for the public and guests i'm going to start tonight with some basic instructions on how we are going to be using zoom and involve the members of the community all board of trustees and the superintendent on our video throughout the entire board meeting from here in the board room other staff members are present by video members of the community will not be on video and will be muted except during

005public comment during public comment any member of the community that wishes to speak must raise their hand using the raised hand feature in zoom you will be unmuted and will be provided three minutes to speak there are two ways to make a public comment within the time allotted for public comment on an eligible agenda item to comment by video conference click the raise your hand button to request to speak when public comment is being taken on the eligible agenda item when it is your turn to speak your name will be called out you will then be unmuted during your turn and allowed to make public comments after the allotted time you will then be remuted instructions on how to raise your hand are available on the district's website at nvusd.org board to comment by phone

006you will be prompted to raise your hand by pressing star 9 to request to speak when public comment is being taken on the eligible agenda item when it is your turn to speak the last four digits of your phone number will be called out you will then be unmuted during your turn and allowed to make public comments after the allotted time you will then be re-muted be remuted instructions on how to raise your hand by phone are available on the district's website at nvusd.org board in addition community members were allowed to submit comments via email at publiccomment nbusd.org up until 8 a.m this morning for every agenda item i will prompt the meeting participants to who have joined us via zoom for public comment please follow the instructions just provided when you would like to

007comment on an item okay now we'll ask trustee gracia if he could give us a report on closed session items yes uh in closed session the board took action to approve the following staff recommendations effective 2021-2022 school year elizabeth coro to the position of coordinator of the migrant education program and that is all that we have to report from closed session thank you trustee gracia we now go into our next item which um we will do more formal welcome in a moment but i will ask our student board representative of our school year emily if you could lead us in the flag salute please i pledge allegiance to the god of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all

008thank you emily we have an announcement that this meeting is recorded for live streaming and archiving of the district youtube channel for a detailed review of any meeting agenda item the archive video can be referenced located on the district's webpage at ndusd.org the public can join the virtual board meeting remotely via zoom participation instructions in the process of public comment can be found on the district's web page we now move to next agenda item which is item e4 approval of agenda prior to doing that we do need to pull an item and that's item h6b move to approve uh with the pulled item second the first fight trustee gracias seconded by trustee dooley all those in favor aye aye student board rep hi thank you anybody abstain propose great thank you we have our agenda

009now we're moving on to our approval of minutes all right i'll move to approve e5a june 22nd 2021 second first by trustee gracia a second by trustee water our student board rep wasn't here at the time so all those in favor all right anybody oppose abstain okay thank you now item e5b move to approve second first by trustee gracias second by trustee water student board rep wasn't here yet our new one um all those in favor aye aye anybody abstain okay thank you item five e5c move to approve a second first by trustee gracias second by trustee chu student board rep wasn't present yet all those in favor all right any abstentions yeah great thank you now item e6 this is recognition of visitors and employee organizations dr masetti who do we welcome tonight [Music]

010thank you very much uh president gonzalez i do not see miss i don't see any of our labor leaders i think they're still probably enjoying some of their time yes they should in the summer great thank you right next item is public comment public comments on non-agenda items members of the audience may address the board on any school-related matter that is not on the agenda the board will not take action on any issues raised during this section of the agenda inasmuch as board auction is limited to posted agenda items speakers are requested to limit their comments to a maximum of three minutes before we see who's joining us virtually i will ask christy grossett to please read the public comment received on non-agenda items yes uh no public comments on non-agenda items were submitted via

011email at publiccomment nvusd.org before the board meeting okay thank you now i will ask um mr bassinet if we have any public comment under this item f uh we do have a public comment first person will be jacob burgess hello yes we hear you go ahead hi my name is jacob burgess and i have two children that will be attending northwood elementary school and i'm just curious as to what the decision is for the school district to force our children to wear masks zero risk is not attainable whether the kids wear masks or not and at best applied perfectly an n95 mask will only filter 95 of particulates take that a step further and the smallest particulate an n95 mass will filter is 0.3 micrometers coven 19 is 0.1 micrometers this is from the cdc

012website and the california department of health website so i ask you you could also look on the website and it'll tell you that an n95 mask cannot be applied properly to fit children so i ask you why are you forcing our children to wear masks why is it not up to the children whether or not they would like to wear a mask that is all i have to say okay thank you for your comment next speaker mr bassinet next speaker will be the phone number 707-624-5605 okay i don't hear anybody hello yes go ahead can you please state your name yes my name is norma ortiz and um i want to know at some point how much does the district receive in supplemental and concentration grants and how will this figure grow over time the

013second question how does the district plan to use these funds to benefit low-income students english learners foster youth and other high-need group of students next question how will or is the district evaluating progress towards lcap goals following the previous board meeting i would like to also reference that it's important to continue supporting financially the special education department so thank you and in regards to mask i think it's important that we continue that policy thank you for your comment next speaker is lindsay cling hello can you guys hear me we can hear you hi thank you so much for having me um i am a resident i'm a mom of five i have three school age children that attend pueblo vista and willow elementary i am an eryt 500 which is a high level professional level

014yoga teacher i was actually hired 2020 by you guys by the school district to teach yoga for willow elementary and the week i was set to start was um unable to because that's when the lockdowns happened i also was given a volunteer award for uh volunteering teaching yoga at west park elementary for my children's kindergarten and first grade i saw 50 children once a week for the school year of kindergarten and first grade i taught these kids movement and breath work um meditation quieting the mind and saw incredible results the ability to sit and focus and be participating in class especially for the kids who had a little bit of a harder time getting their wiggles out and sitting still and paying attention the yoga training was insurmountable the evidence that they were actually able

015to do this thing called school um in the most effective way was there and that's why i was so excited to start teaching at willow in 2020 i guess what i have to say is this um i do not believe in mass mandates i believe that children should be free to breathe to smile to connect my kids have experienced grave repercussions from the masking and the social distancing not being in school um i don't agree with it i think you'll find that there are more than enough parents to get this mandate to stop i ask you um what are you planning to do as far as having the masks come off and on the kids faces all day in school a how are you going to stop bacterial transmission from hands-on masks with all levels

016of children um b if you're going to have outdoor school how much outdoor school are you going to have are you going to have if the weather is nice are the kids going to be outside learning and how are you going to deal with the budget issues of mothers and fathers who do do not send their kids to your schools anymore when masks are required um it's really really really important that you hear us um this is not going to go away we're not going to stop calling in we're not going to stop telling you that it's wrong that you're covering our children's faces and we're not going to send our kids to school if this is what you're doing so um you know if you could please just let me know what your plans

017are is this just going to be a trickle-down effect of mandated from our governor who's got all these emergency executive orders in place or are you guys going to think for yourselves thanks for your time thank you for your comment next speaker mr bassinet jeanette hi can you hear me we can hear you go ahead thank you so much for having me tonight um my question actually is also about masks um as we all know there's been multiple tragedies that have happened to our children and to our young adults due to the mental health impact of school closures and the restrictions and masks we are concerned um that if we don't make sure that our children are free to share their smiles they're going to start losing their smiles because what we know is our

018children are at very low risk of covid but they're at high risk for the mental health crisis that is happening right now and i know that we're all concerned about that it's it's everywhere and we can see it in our communities and our children our friends children's we're told that kids have to wear masks because they're at risk from covid but the data shows that their risk is less than from other respiratory viruses like influenza the cdc estimates that only 332 children have died from cloven 19 in the last 18 months the cdc also estimates that 434 children died from influenza during the 12-month 2019-2020 flu season and 600 in 2017-18 season the new york times found children are about 10 times more likely to die in a car accident than from covid the financial

019times found that children are less risk for coven 19 than vaccinated adults so i'm asking can you guys please explain why we are forcing our children to wear masks kicking them out of school for weeks and testing them for a virus when they have no symptoms to avoid a virus no worse than influenza i know you're all also concerned about the learning loss that you're seeing in your academic community i know i'm seeing it and my friends are seeing it in their own kids i know you're concerned about the rising anxiety and depression rates we understand you're under a state mandate but you still have a responsibility as a school board and you do have things that you can do you still have a voice and you have people that elected you that expect you

020to use that voice there's a lack of science showing that our children need to wear masks but there's abundance of science showing that these masks are hurting our children we're asking for school boards for you guys to stand with us and tell the state that you want local control back you want to be able to do your job and make decisions for your community and you want to be able to listen to the parents and children who just want a choice someone wants to wear a mask that's fine but if a child is saying that they can't take it anymore they can't focus with the mask on or breathe with a mask on they want to be able to see their teachers faces and friends faces and make connections they need to be able to

021have that choice and we're just asking for the ability to make our own medical decisions for our children thank you so much for your time thank you for your comment next speaker mr bessemer kelsey hunsaker hello can you hear me we can hear you go ahead all right i'm a teacher in the school district for elementary and i also have a daughter um in elementary and i'm just kind of picking back on math choice for parents you know as a teacher last year i taught pregnant um in our classroom with first grade at that time that's when masks were optional for tk through two and we were very fortunate where during that time when half of my class was not wearing masks we had no cases and then when we went to mask wearing for

022all tk through two there was one case in my class at the end of the school year and um no community spread so as a parent and a teacher um you know like you can definitely celebrate that that you know our kids can be in school and um but my biggest concern is that two and a half hours i saw first graders who are at a young age just learning basic hygiene how to wash their hands how to zip up or need help with zipping up their jackets or putting their sweatshirts like can you help me it's inside out these children do not know how to basic hygiene with masks and i have a first grade daughter i'm worried about the studies i've seen with high levels of carbon dioxide within three minutes i'm worried

023about all of the bacterial infections they can get wearing a mask and now this is going to be a six hour day um you know where we're gonna have to send our kids to school with multiple masks they're worried about are they gonna get rocky mountain fever are they gonna get perional disease are they going to get um you know are are they gonna have fatigue headaches what are they gonna get from wearing these masks all day they're gonna be taking them on and off dropping on the ground they're sneezing in them and those are things as in adults that we know like we don't want to put that back on our face and you know as a teacher and as a parent i just want to put that out there i know it's a

024sensitive topic for um right now of mass choice in schools but if if we are going to continue this way we need to find ways to have our kids be outdoors how can we teach them outside let them breathe you know the community of napa they were able to figure out ways for restaurants spending up tents and you know outdoor areas our kids need to be outside more with fresh air and learning and just those two and a half hours as being a teacher last year i had kids complaining not being able to breathe having a headache um feeling tired can i take my mask off now we're gonna be in school all day and i worry about that or about my own daughter i'm thankful that i had a preschooler last year at st

025john's lutheran a whole year no masks for kids and teachers not one case friends at veritas academy whole year no masks optional no community spread i'm worried about we don't have enough studies of carbon dioxide or bacterial for our kids with masks and we need to find a way to have our kids at least be outdoor more and work together as a community to let our kids be outside breathe learn and um just learn to work together because i know it's gonna on both sides have their argument but i just hope we can find a way to let our kids breathe thank you thank you for your comment next speaker mr bassinet alicia hi uh i'm sorry i wasn't totally expecting to speak this quickly i just raised my hand um i am a district

026employee as well as a parent of a seventh grader and a fourth grader who has special needs and i just wanted to chime in to say thank you to the district um for having the mask mandates i appreciate that we are doing it to keep our kids and staff members safe that the state of california is doing it napa county just a second ago issued an order by dr karen relucio the county's public health officer making it mandatory for all individuals to wear face coverings while indoors in workplaces and public settings regardless of vaccination status i worked at an elementary school during covid i do not agree that the students have a problem with wearing masks yes sometimes they fall down over their noses and under their noses and have to be reminded but we've

027been doing it long enough i think that we've we've got it under control by now so again thank you um and let's have a great school year and i hope everybody stays safe and healthy thank you for your comment next speaker there is no more public comment for non-agenda okay items thank you then we will um now move forward with the agenda uh with our section g of reports starting with the board of education and student board representative um we usually start with our board representative but seeing that it's your first day um first meeting um emily i don't know if you want to go ahead and just tell us a little bit about yourself um and um and then we'll i'm sure we'll share our excitement about having you here today um hi everyone

028so my name is emily i'm a rising senior at american canyon high i've been american i've been an american canyon resident for almost my entire life so i'm very excited to be serving on this board alongside with all of my amazing school board members and superintendent um a little bit about me i'm a leadership student um i really like to volunteer within my community i really like to work with kids and i'm really excited to represent students and connect with more students across the district for district issues thank you emily all right let's start with our student board um updates here to see gracia yep so i just wanted to start by saying welcome to our new student board member it's great to have you here at our first meeting um hopefully everyone had a

029good summer with some much needed time off i took the opportunity to go on a camping and backpacking trip uh i also wanted to take a moment to let the folks who are impacted by the various fires around the state know that our thoughts and prayers are with them as they contend with the losses suffered from those fires i hope everyone enjoyed their summer hiatus i hope you are rejuvenated refreshed and received a little fuel from spending time with family and friends i share david's thoughts about those impacted by the fire we've all experienced it all too well so our hearts are with you and we started our week with a back-to-school safety family information session where mr manzo and mr pearson reviewed our safety protocols and on wednesday we had an independent study information

030session where we addressed the protocol to participate in the independent study program and the process that one needs to follow to participate and welcome back everyone so um i will echo my previous trustees comments welcome emily we're so happy to have you here and thank you for being here on this first meeting and thank you in advance for some of the late nights that you might be putting in and i know all of the hard work and diligence you're going to bring to this role so we're very happy to have you thank you so much um and yes welcome back everybody it it it's great to be back and i hope everyone had an enjoyable time off i clocked 3 000 miles in a um smallish suv with two teenage girls and my husband and

031a dog so it was the great american road trip and we had a wonderful time and um was a much needed uh reset for me and my brain like trustee jankowicz i wasn't able to do it in real time but i listened to the recordings of the family information safety session that was on tuesday i was tabling for mom's demand action at the national night out sponsored by the sheriff's association so i'm that's where i was when that was happening um and then i also listened to the recording of the independent studies session and um and i guess that's all because i've been i've been clocked out of board work so that concludes my report glad to be here i'm glad to be back too and welcome emily bit to um this is just going

032to be the most fun filled time of your senior year i just want you to batten down the hatches and get ready and emily is too modest but she was she's the young lady who organized the art show last year that i was bragging about and so she has wonderful organizational skills very impressive okay well um i didn't go anywhere this summer i um after all i live in a tourist paradise i'm told and so i had a staycation but it seemed like the world came to me and i was very happy to welcome my son who i had not seen in 18 months because of covid so that was a lot of fun um uh i there's a sad occasion i went to dr john glaser's funeral our memorial service our former superintendent and

033um i guess he's the example of the life well-lived highly educated person but most important he was a great gentleman kind to everyone and he left he let his legacy is our um interest-based bargaining that we have in our school district and uh he had a serious illness got him in the end but he remained active and contributing serious contributor to our community right up to the end and um uh set an example to us all and it was really i've i know his i know his uh wife carol but it was really a delight to meet his daughters and um well you want people to be sorry when you leave and people we are sorry that john left us i um let's see i went to let's see on um july 9th uh governor

034newsom came to shear school where he um signed with students help the biggest education bill in the history of the state of california and our superintendent and i and isella and assorted other people were there and saw it happen and um it was it was a great day i also on the 16th went to the summer graduation um for the summer school students it was held at valley oak where i gave the greatest speech of my career [Laughter] on august 3 august 3rd i listened to the back-to-school safety protocol meeting and last night i listened to the meeting about independent studies and i'm here and i'm glad to see you all and i'm ready to work so i too had a lot of road trips this summer um went camping lake tahoe where we did

035see the fires that were north and south of us um and uh went to san diego zoo because my youngest had never been um but glad to be starting a new school year um so and glad to be working with all of you and especially emily uh it's great to have another american canyon resident in the same room where you know it's it's you know it's it's just been great to i'm hoping that you'll have a great experience with us good to see you in person finally um on uh june 28th i actually attend just visited um the camp envy usd at canyon oaks and i am in cindy's camp where she thinks that all the kids are going to be super happy and grateful to be home back at their home school and i

036did see that happening all the kids were engaged i recognized a couple of them so i followed up with their parents to see what they felt um and they they were just ecstatic to be back in the classroom even though it was basically the week after school ended two weeks after school ended so i'm looking forward to a great school year and i hope all the kids are as well on july 14th i attended the i listen in on the california school board association budget workshop with all the new changes that are coming up it's exciting all the new infusion and money i hope that it you know we continue in that direction because i know all schools need that extra funding um and i also um listen in on the back to school safety

037family information session this past tuesday it's also great to be back i uh went on a road trip uh with my family down to southern california uh and i've also been um we're having work done at our home so i've been spending my summer in my old stomping grounds of sonoma um and while you know it's we're making do it really reminded us and reminds us of why we left sonoma and why we we love the community of napa so um you know it's it's temporary and we're ready to be done but it's it's good to have those kinds of things that put life in perspective um i also want to welcome emily it's it's a a great thing that you're you're participating in and we all feel it and i'm i'm glad that you

038get to experience it i too went to attended the back to school safety meeting on tuesday last week i also attended the middle school language academy mission and vision information session um it's a mouthful but it was it was a great kind of first look at something that'll be uh coming to the to the board uh in in the future um [Music] and yeah i'm ready to get back to work you know i think we all toured had a facilities tour too we just did it separately yeah eye-opening for some of us yeah we were we were busy before taking a it felt like a tiny break though it was a break um i won't add more except that i was reached out by um a friend um who was um letting me know the

039passing of a teacher that i had never met but i just wanted to recognize that virginia loffler she worked for nbsg for 26 years retired in 2002 and unfortunately passed away um but her obituary was just beautiful and as trustee water was mentioning of our past superintendent john glazier um but what is most striking as well is that even in her passing she continues to be a teacher because she donated her brain um for um to continue to be studied so just being a legacy and just continuing to to give back so i think with that said um maybe let's take a moment of silence and just remember those who have been lost we've talked about um fires and um our past um staff of nvusd and i think it'd be kind of nice to

040take that moment and reflect upon that so let's do a moment all right thank you everyone okay so now we're on to board representative reports this is from our various committees um let's start with curriculum and student support committee not yet i get that and then facilities and technology committee i've not yet met nightmare finance committee yeah that's the coming up meetings um policy committee next week special education committee advisory uh upcoming but haven't met yet okay thank you city of american canyon that's next week that's next week city of napa next week next week and town of yachtville have not met okay thank you for those updates superintendent and executive staff great well good evening trustees our new student board representative emily welcome and nbusd community welcome back i'm so excited to be here

041for our first board of education meeting of the 21 22 school year sounds like the trustees got their well-deserved rest during the july recess and i hope you're all as energized and enthusia and enthusiastic it sounds like you are as i am about to return to school on august 18th so the clock is ticking um and because it's ticking our staff is currently working really hard to ensure that all of our campuses are prepared to receive our students in the next couple of weeks and wow i think i said it at a previous board meeting what a difference a year makes we are thrilled that the first day of school will be much more normal much more like what we're used to despite the fact that we do still need to tend to some of

042the safety precautions and protocols as we continue to navigate the evolving impacts of the kovid 19 global pandemic nvusd continues to work closely with napa county public health to ensure safety remains our top priority in school operations all while preparing for the majority of our nvusd students to return to full days of in-person instruction in the classroom i just want to take a moment to note we heard um concerns about the indoor masking requirement we heard advocacy for the indoor masking requirement um from our various community members and i want to thank community members for all voyages providing their input insights and feedback but just you know for the record at the school district is required to follow the guidelines the school guidelines guidelines the california school guidance that is provided to us vis-a-vis california

043department public health which then comes through napa county public health and right now the mandate is masks indoors but students do not have to use those masks outside that is the current mandate we do not set those mandates and we are legally required to follow them on another note this week my full cabinet team and i facilitated our annual two-day leadership conference for all nvusd administrators in the district the theme of the two days was better together stronger than ever a theme that we're adopting for the 21 22 school year at large across our school system i have a short slide show to share with everyone tonight so you can observe our leaders in action thinking collaborating and strategizing about how they could start this upcoming school year with the strength the positivity and the

044enthusiasm our students deserve and need from all of us as their school leaders so mr bassinet can you queue up the slideshow of the leadership conference for me [Music] looking back on the things that we've taken for granted but it feels like we're learning to be better without what's been holding us back now let's move closer to a new history find out what we can be together take my hand and we will conquer the world this is [Music] [Applause] [Music] we found the strength to go on together [Music] thank you mr bassinet so hopefully you got just a feeling and an energy about the day we were very focused on team building and reconnecting the conference was designed to ensure that nvusd leaders are focused on rebuilding community and connection while prioritizing the socio-emotional well-being

045of students staff and as you can see over the course of the two two days most importantly themselves because we have to take care of ourselves first before we can take care of others and we're hoping that they make this a priority we modeled that modeled over the course of two days because we all need that as we return to school after such a tumultuous period in all of our lives we did that by first rebuilding um we're going we accomplished modeling that model by first focusing on rebuilding our relationships as a leadership team our connections as a leadership team as i hope that you were able to observe in the slideshow shared this evening and i'm confident that they're going to take that energy out to their departments and schools as they prepare for

046successful back to school in the next couple weeks our central office team confidently believes that we've set the tone for the year and that we've positioned our nvusd leaders to have a successful 21-22 school year it was an absolute pleasure for me after returning from medical leave to spend two full days with all of them and i was reminded of how lucky and blessed we are to have such a committed passionate group of leaders here in the napa valley unified school district i wanted to report to the trustees in the community that i was also pleased to use some of the conference time to share with our full management team the annual priorities that were established by the board during our superintendence evaluation workshop in late june in fact as we start our upcoming year

047of governance i wanted to just take a few additional minutes this evening to also share with the public the annual priorities established by the board of education given that these priorities will guide my work as your superintendent of schools and of course consequently also the work of the entire leadership team that you saw before you in the slideshow throughout the course of the upcoming school year so mr bassinet can i ask you to please queue up the slideshow on the board annual priorities so trustees this should look very familiar after our work in june so i just wanted again to kind of put it in a formal quick presentation for everyone reflect them back to the trustees as we start our year of governance as a reminder and then of course for the community at

048large um go ahead mr bassnet there's the eight of us who worked on this back in june go ahead mr bassinet i'm just a reminder that these um annual priorities are connected to our strategic plan our six goals but most importantly the priorities are the way that we're going to advance um you know breathing life essentially into this mission and vision that we have adopted when we adopted that strategic plan in december of 2018 we also adopted this mission and vision which is about transforming lives by instilling and inspiring lifelong learning in every student and all of our priorities are a way of making sure that this mission and vision manifests go ahead just a reminder six goals we don't want to forget about our strategic plan as we focus on our annual priorities and

049so go ahead mr bassamet we're not aborting and abandoning our six strategic plan goals it's just that our annual priorities become the elements of the strategic plan that we are going to have laser-like focus on as a governance team and then of course for our district leadership team at large so there are the six goals and you'll see as i briefly share about each of the annual priorities we've connected how the annual we we've made the link between the annual priority and which strategic plan goal it's connected to next slide mr bassinet annual priority number one then is to redesign our middle school programming we know how essential that is given the difficult work that we did in the late the spring the late spring connected to our strategic goal around student achievement learning and

050access go ahead why what's the long-range impact of that annual priority is that we want to improve every student every middle school student should have an improved experience in our middle schools and that's true for our middle school students and of course subsequently their families go ahead mr bassinet our second annual priority you'll recall is going to be focused on the development of a multi-tiered system of support this is really a focus on both behavioral and academic intervention again it's connected to our goal one and our strategic plan of course around student achievement learning and access why this focus on the multi-tiered system of support go to the next slide please mr vestnet the long-range impact we're seeking as we focus on that work for this year is that we want to ensure all students

051have consistent access to academic and behavioral interventions and we want that to be true across the system not at some schools at some grade levels but tk 12 at all mvusd schools go ahead annual priority three something i think this board is super passionate about is making sure that we um attain that tk12 mathematics program alignment there's been a lot of preliminary work or through the task force you all have been i'm hearing about that over the course of the last couple years and this is the year where we want to see implementation around that alignment and so again you can see the connection around annual priority three is a way to operationalize strategic plan goal number one student achievement learning and access so those are why why we chose this as a governance team

052because we're committed to improving tk12 mathematics program and student mathematic achievement outcomes in the district we know that math can be a real gatekeeper for future opportunity for our students and we want to remove all barriers for all kids so we're going to work really hard and you'll um we have i didn't report out we do have success indicators articulated for each of these um and in the success indicators that's where we'll bring evidence to the board around our accomplishments around these priorities um at the end of the year or towards the end of the year we'll be reporting formative progress throughout the course of the year but you'll see as we lay out some of the success indicators and you all can recall is that we really really want to focus on secondary math

053grade 6 through 12 is really really important to get clear here in nbusd go ahead um the fourth one is around ongoing financial stabilization in a declining enrollment environment and although our first three priorities are focused on student achievement we know that it continued we have to continue to keep a focus and an eye on ensuring that we're making really good decisions around our facilities and finances because it's through the the stabilization of our financial uh reality that we can accomplish annual priority one two and three and have excellence in education for our students so what's our why go ahead to the next slide ensure again nvusd continues to have the resources necessary to deliver that excellence in education despite declining enrollment which translates into declining revenues so we want to keep our eye on

054that um and and we can't lose sight of that in this declining enrollment environment despite the infusion of state monies um annual priority number five another area i think this board is really really passionate about and i i'm also really grateful because it's an area that i'm super passionate about it's the enhanced communication with all stakeholders continuing to improve our communication this is clearly linked to our strategic plan goal number three um around robust communication community engagement and advocacy so we're going to see a lot of work unfold in in this annual priority and why is this important mr bassnet next slide because in we want to build and enhance nvusd's reputation in the community by telling the beautiful amazing stories and how our school system is impacting the lives of so many of our

055students in a positive manner while recognizing all of our areas improvements our areas of improvement and reporting on those improvements to our community as we make them next um last sort of formal annual priority is um to identify ideal nvusd employee competencies and key hiring criterion guidelines for hiring as you can see this this um annual priority connects to goal two around our employee relations and recruiting a um a a talented and diverse workforce as we've laid out in our strategic plan and also goal five around equity centered leadership and creating an inclusive organizational culture and in order to do a lot of the work in the plan that you all adopted late last year the diversity equity inclusion and talent plan our human resources team really wants to focus on you know building sort

056of a profile of an ideal nbusd employee what do those competencies look like no matter what your position is in the organization and how do we have consistent hiring criteria against those competencies so that we make sure that um you know the our our processes around hiring recruiting and retaining our um retaining high quality employees are really grounded in these values as an organization and so that we're attracting people who want to work for an employee who values the things that we do so that's the work of our hr team and so the why there is that we want to hire recruit and retain a talented and diverse workforce we want the very best for all of our kids across all of our schools and then go ahead in addition to those six annual priorities

057as you can recall trustees and for the community that's learning about this for the first time we also focused on a couple of this california school boards association superintendent governance standards um and we chose to focus on promoting the success of all students and supports um and support and supports the efforts of the board of trustees to keep the district focused on learning and achievement and i think we've all learned through csba that governance teams that focus predominantly on teaching and learning and on its student achievement are the governance teams that start to align the organization to be able to move the needle on achievement and we've been making a lot of tough decisions so that we could be in a position to start focusing on teaching and learning and achievement and so given that

058we building on that foundation we want this year to really breathe life into this governance standard and start balancing our focus and shifting you know still having to tune into the facilities and finance but making sure and there's our why balance the organizational focus between facilities and finance with an an end an emphasis on student learning achievement programs and services because that is our fundamental why why we're all here and then lastly the second um superintendent governance standard that we chose was that works um this comes again right from the california school boards association works with the board as a governance team and assures collective responsibility for building a unity of purpose communicating a common vision and creating a positive organizational culture so you know me and my role as superintendent to make sure that

059i'm fostering and nurturing that um because we know that a school board that works with that unity of purpose that cohesion and that clarity can get a lot accomplished for the students in the district in which they serve so what's our why there mr bassinet next slide we as a you know we want to strengthen our governance team as we move forward from being a more newly formed team given that we have three new trustees who aren't don't feel that new anymore you're newish i guess um to becoming a more experienced familiar one that's focused on accomplishing our agreed upon priorities those six priorities that we laid out so i really want to thank the school board for their work in late june the feedback that we've received from our leadership team as we share

060these annual priorities as they feel that it is a real gift from the governance team that they get to work with such clarity like what you know there's so much work to be done in a school district as you aim to do the large-scale improvements that we are um that we're seeking on behalf of our students but to know that between august 2021 and june 2022 that this is going to be where we're going to have the laser-like focus really you know positions them to feel more successful because with that focus they feel they'll be able to accomplish more um so thank you so much for giving us that that clarity as a as a school board so thank you for your time and attention this evening i know it's a slightly longer um superintendent

061report tonight but i wanted to start our governance year strong and grounded in in that critical work i know that 21 22 is going to be filled with lots of joy excitement progress and success for nvusd students families and staff and with that i'd like to now invite my assistant superintendents to give their first reports of this new academic year so let's begin with assistant superintendent mr rob manguala thank you dr seti thank you for the opportunity to have the board update the board and the community um the dating and assessment team have been collaborating with the instructional services division in support of annual board priority 2 development of the multi-tiered system of support aries has now been configured to allow teachers to document research based tier one interventions and supports in the classroom and

062allows teachers to easily make a referral to the mtss team when tier two or tier three interventions may be needed mtss teams are are able to process referrals directly in aries and document tier 2 and tier 3 interventions along with progress notes the new configuration allows us a system that closely monitors students who need academic behavioral social emotional or attendant supports throughout the school year in support of annual board priority number four ongoing financial stabilization in a declining enrollment environment the business office is working closely with all divisions of the district to implement the new funding opportunities found in the budget trailer bill also known as ab130 just some of these opportunities include additional funding for tutoring and after school care funding for food services and funds to help students meet a to g requirements

063on the enrollment side we're seeking enrollment daily while our numbers right now are a little lower than we expected we'll need to wait until we get to the first 15 days of the school year to have a working number in terms of enrollment for that year on the technology side we're pursuing something really exciting it's additional funding to provide students with an extra device to keep at home to help with homework learning and so forth they also have the ability to potentially obtain a wi-fi hotspot as part of the application process for these funds we'll be sending out a survey for all families to inquire about their need this concludes my report great thank you very much mr manguala and right to work on that annual priority around mtss so that's great to hear that

064we're configuring our student information system to track interventions next we have assistant superintendent miss dana page who oversees the human resources division good evening president gonzalez morris board of trustees and dr masetti student board member and the community so while much of the um district slows down in july hr just gets you know just gets going in july it really heats up and we get to work doing a lot of hiring and you can see that from tonight's personnel document where there's tons of new employees represented on there and then some new positions for some of our current employees so i'd just like to take this opportunity to acknowledge hr teams who were responsible for this tremendous amount of work and just give you a brief summary of their accomplishments our certificated team consists of

065mary jarecki roseanne crandall dede lockett and dominique dominic marcus who collectively supported the various hiring managers to recruit interview select and sign on um only just in the month of july 10 new teachers four counselors a new speech language pathologist and a credentialed nurse um we also were able to offer 12 extra periods for existing teachers and counselors and nine of which were earmarked as additional learning or counseling support for students at the secondary level to to help support them as they return back to school and this is being funded through the extended learning opportunities funding also we have an amazing classified hr team who consists of nancy crane maria lara and ellie pena tamayo and together they had completed four promotions eight new hires including the opportunity to bring back four laid off child

066care workers and um they also executed on the increased hours to 23 employees 14 of these employees were library services providers who are now going to be able to extend library hours for students at all campuses where students can then go and have extra support with homework and with literacy have more time getting getting their hands on books so we're very excited about that we still have a few more positions that we're working on but with nine working days left before the school first day of school we're in very good shape so all of this work ensures that we have high quality staff providing services to our students and i'm so proud of our team and what they've accomplished this july in preparation for a great school year thank you this concludes my report thank

067you ms page and thank you for all the hard work in hr to make sure that our positions are filled for the 21 22 school year um next we have mr mike pearson assistant superintendent of operational services uh good evening president gonzalez morris mbhd board of education trustees dr missetti student representative and members of the mbsd community thank you for the opportunity to provide each of you with an update on operational services tonight my comments will focus on the planning logistics and adjustments related to cobia 19 and the and the reopening of mbst schools for the 21-22 school year these actions are all meant to ensure student and staff safety along with making sure the student and staff experience is positive for teaching and learning to occur throughout the school district so to review with

068transportation the routes have been set for the 21 21 school year school year and will resume regular service transportation routes are being bid with the bus drivers as part of our agreements in the cse collective bargaining agreement in regard regards to covet 19 safety protocols students and staff riding a school bus will be all be required to wear a mask while riding on the mvc school bus and or charter bus physical distancing on the bus will occur to the greatest extent possible given the number of riders on a bus and additionally operable windows will be opened slightly to improve airflow lastly the interior school buses will be disinfected nightly on the operations and custodial side recently the cdc and the cdph shared that the risk of transmission of cobit 19 from surfaces is extremely low

069following the most recent guidance cleaning schedules have been adjusted slightly to disinfect services in all classroom spaces nightly however head and day custodians will continue to wipe down high-touch services in each campus along with frequent monitoring of student restrooms throughout the school day custodial staff will also make sure that every campus has sufficient personal protective equipment such as student and staff face masks gloves hand sanitizer disinfecting wipes alcohol wipes mobile hands and sanitizer stands etc and lastly cleaning schedules will be reviewed with all custodial staff in preparation of the upcoming school year from the maintenance side specifically hvac all hvac units are set to run continuously to pull in as much air fresh air as possible and doors and windows that are operable or can be opened as needed filter replacements will happen on every

070three months from our hvc units as opposed to our normal six-month change and air air purifiers are being placed in most classroom spaces where students and staff interact the exception of our schools with our new hva systems that have a merv 13 rating which is the top-of-the-line hvac hvac unit available in addition we'll make sure that all that all classrooms have wall mounted hand sanitizers available there are also barrels outside for outside wall hand mounted hand sanitizers for outside use plexiglass will continue to for that we placed last year for staff will continue to be in place for the time being and then the amount of signage that we put up around campuses related to covet 19 best practices will remain up for the perceivable future as well with food service there's no need to

071limit with the new guidance there's no need to limit food service approaches to single-use items and or packaged meals this does include salad bars school sites are gonna excuse me be promoting hand washing and sanitizing before and after eating they will be maximizing physical dishes as much as possible while the students are eating using additional spaces at either outside of the cafeteria and or in classrooms or gyms to help facilitate the distancing and then as a reminder and this is for all the community the mbsd community is that meals are free to all students for the 21 22 school year regardless of your income level finally covet site school 19 safety plans are being asked by each school site to develop them so each school site will update their coven 19 school site specific protection

072plan which is very similar to what all school sites completed last year and once this is completed they will post this on their website vaccination clinics will also be happening in the very near future we are collaborating with napa county public health to use mbsg school sites for vaccination sites so upcoming will be phillips elementary school on august 10th from 4 to 6 p.m in their multi-purpose room to receive your first dose and your second dose you'll receive on august 31st from 4 to 6 p.m again at the phillips elementary school multi-purpose room and then and then on august 11th at harvest middle school from 4 to 6 p.m you can receive your first dose in the cafeteria and the second dose on september 1 uh from 4 to 6 pm as well and again

073that's for harvest and in their cafeteria more locations and dates to follow in the near future and if you'd like to register you go to my turn.ca.gov to register to take to get a vaccination they will also take walk-ups finally the mvsg operational services team is ready to adjust as a guidance chain changes again in order to ensure student and staff staff safety plus to make sure the student and staff experience is positive for teaching and learning to occur throughout the school district this concludes my report tonight thank you so much mr pearson and the work of your team all that hard work and making sure that our campuses are ready for our students to have a successful and safe school year um and last certainly not least uh tonight is assistant superintendent miss pat

074andrew jennings who oversees the instructional services division thank you dr masetti good evening president gonzalez morris for trustees student board member and nvusd community the instructional services division had a marvelous and phenomenal summer hosting students at all levels to connect and engage with learning after six weeks of programming across 11 elementary school campuses camp nbusd came to a successful end last friday on june of july 30th feedback has been incredibly positive from students parents and teachers the tiered support approach to programming allowed us to differentiate the levels of intervention based on student need with programming ranging from four for from full day four week sessions to two week half day enrichment programs this was a collaborative effort requiring the support of all nbusd elementary schools and departments along with ncoe special thanks to my colleague

075mr pearson and gloria aguilar and the custodial teams at the host school sites who went above and beyond to work around students and staff on their campuses at the middle and high school students had the opportunity to engage in the arts and stem programs during the summer in partnership with the napa valley education foundation music connection students participated in band and string music camps we also had 278 middle school students participate in idtech camp which included opportunities to learn coding using c plus python and javascript the scholar series launched the summer with dr victor rios at balyok um over uh 30 students who attended summer credit recovery completed the two-week course to learn about being a leader and how the positive choices you make show your love for your family some of the students who

076participated will become members of the newly formed student advisory council in july related to board priority one members of the napa valley language academy pueblo vista magnet elementary school harvest magnet middle school and river middle school communities came together um to uh along with uh principal alejandra uribe led by the newly appointed director monica reddy ready to work on the development of the mission for the new middle school language academy uh director reddy and principal uribe hosted a community information sessions one in spanish and one in english that provided an update on the visionary work and collected feedback from families and staff through an interest survey the mission of the middle school language academy will be co-constructed with community input and presented to the board in late august our students who received intensive special who

077receive intensive special ed services participated in 19 successful days of instruction focusing on student growth in relation to their iep goals 140 students tk through post-secondary attended classes at vintage high and snow and again we want to thank maintenance and operations for supporting all of the equipment moves that were necessary cleaning and all the cleaning that was necessary along with food the food services department to make sure our students were well fed on another note directly related to hr we are fully staffed for certificated uh teachers and thrilled about that and we're closely and we'll continue to work closely with human resources to fill a few open classroom instructional support positions in relationship to board priority number two which is focused on the effective implementation of mtss over the summer 35 nvusd educators virtually attended

078the california mtss summer professional learning institute and they left inspired and motivated to put their learning into action for this upcoming school year also over 25 of our elementary scl champions received two intensive days of training earlier this week in toolbox project our newly adopted sel and life skills curriculum this these certified district trainer trainers will now train all elementary teachers at their respective sites in this exciting new program which develops a common social emotional language to support our shared humanity and our individual differences in the napa valley unified school district also as we prepare to welcome students back to in-person learning we are working closely with napa county public health site leaders and health services teams to understand and operate operationalize most recent uh covet guidance director mike mansley along with uh assistant superintendent

079um mike pearson um led a parent information session on tuesday august 2nd regarding covet 19 safety and mr uh director mansway is working with napa county public health to coordinate the vaccination clinics that mr pearson shared with you earlier i want to take this opportunity to share information regarding two legislative bills that were enacted in july that impact our students and programs mr bassinet can you please pull up the slide presentation i want to briefly preview the changes and impacts of this new legislation um next slide please there were two bills assembly bill 104 which focused on retention policies um the grading policies around pass and no pass and then also a graduation exam exemption this bill was signed july 1 of 2021 there was also assembly bill 130 which was uh provided guidance around

080independent study and the requirements around offering independent study as an alternative to in-person learning this was signed july 9th and we received guidance around july mid-july on how to implement independent study um with this new guidance next slide please so with uh ab-104 in terms of retention um what it does is allow parents um or guardians of students enrolled in kindergarten through 11th grade during last school year to request retention of their child if their child has sufficient grades for at least one half of their coursework and what that means mr bass in that next slide is that death deficient means that they received a d or an f or a grade of at the elementary level of one and if that's the case then they can put a request in to ask for retention

081and then that requires us to hold consultation meetings and during the meetings these are the things that we're going to do we're going to talk about what some of the options are for learning supported learning learning not recovery options and supports um we're going to look at data we're going to review the retention rate research that indicates that retention is not an effective strategy um to improve uh student academic achievement at the in the very end though it's the lea we are the ones in the usc makes the final decision about whether or not we feel that the retention is appropriate this aligns with our current board policy um and then we have to make sure we notify parents within 10 days of this parent meeting of our decision around retention next slide please also

082a part of ab104 is a pass or no pass students have the option to request that a grade be changed from a letter grade to a pass or no pass grade and so what that means um next slide mr bassinet is um that uh there is no limitation on the number or types of classes and this only applies to high school um the um they want to make sure that has no impact a negative impact on a student's gpa and it does not indeed have any impact on the student's gpa and what we have to inform parents of is that the csus are accepting pass and no pass as part of the transcripts but ucs have not officially said that they would accept that as a grade in a class that was uh a to

083g uh required we notified parents on august uh 2nd regarding their ability to request this grade change and students can request this they have until august 17th to request this change if they don't request by august 17th we don't have to grant it if they request by that but if they request by august 17th we have 15 days to notify parents and to um make that great change request for example if a student received a d in an english class they could request a pass no pass grade which a d is still considered passing that would change that d to a pass next slide please ab104 graduation um this allows for students at the uh that were uh high school seniors last year or 11th graders last year to meet the california standards for graduation

084as opposed to the ndusd standards for graduation next slide please and so we have identified all of our 11th and 12th graders were not on track for graduating um based on their current uh transcripts and then what the bill requires is that we exempt all additional coursework beyond the state requirements and that we provide opportunities for students to complete the graduation requirements through credit recovery or a possible fifth year which we typically do um anyway it's part of our our policy next slide so what are the differences between nbc graduation requirements in the state of california i highlighted the the most significant or the significant differences nbc requires four years of english state of california only three we require three years of math state of california two years of math and then we also require

085two years of wrote language and the state of california requires one year of world language or cte or visual and performing arts and then there's no elective credit required to graduate and we had 31 students over the summer who elected to take the ab 104 waiver and graduate under the state of california graduation requirements next slide please the other bill that passed was ab-130 which is focused primarily on independent study and what this bill does is requires us to make available students whose health would be put at risk by in-person learning as determined by the parent or guardian so we have to offer independent study as an option um for students who were that where health would be put at risk the bill also um distance learning has gone away the idea of the way

086we did distance learning or hybrid learning that has gone away and this is the replacement that the state of california has provided us next slide please so what there are requirements that they put in place we have to um that the districts could have uh asked the county to provide the service of independent study we're fortunate in usd that we offer we already have an independent study program we could have applied for waiver clerk declared financial hardship but none of those are the case in our in our case we have to notify parents and they have a right to a request a conference and we held the information night that many of you attended last night and we had to provide them information about enrolling disenrolling and re-enrolling in independent study and on tonight's uh

087board agenda is uh update is updated board policy that's aligned with ab130 and one of the uh sort of unique pieces of this legislation is that we have two transitions once a parent request that they want and if maybe independent studies not the fit that they thought it would be we have five days in which to place them back um place them in another school um we will shoot obviously aim for the their school of residence but if there's not space available then it would be the closest the nearest closest school um next slide please um the requirements around uh leveled synchronous and asynchronous um were spelled out in ab-130 uh kindergarten through third grade require daily synchronous instruction we're offering one hour of synchronous instruction five days a week for students who are enrolled

088in independent study that are and actually it's tk through third grade um and then um fourth through eighth grade has weekly synchronous instructions so it's one hour one hour a week and then a daily check-in and then for nine through 12 weekly synchronous instruction so they have one hour a week where they meet with their teachers and then they get independent work to do for the rest of the time we're required to do a written agreement with families and then a daily documentation of instruction because um for independent study we acquire ada based on the work completed not just simply attending class so that's really important that we have evidence of student engagement and we track their work which is what independence city currently does as part of their their practice next slide please and

089uh they require a tiered reengagement plan which is similar to what we used last year for all of our students but in this case if students miss three times um or absent three or more times um during the day or the week depending on which level they are then we would have to you know institute this re-engagement plan and we would have to progress monitor with the teachers and make sure that they the work that they're completing is appropriate and then students who have um um who are special ed or have and have an iep um they have to have i'm sorry they have students who have who are in special ed have to hold an iep meeting to see that the independent study is an appropriate placement for them and finally synchronous and async

090intersection is um this independent setting is for longer than 15 days in the past we've had short short-term independent study which was uh typically five or more days um now it's three or more days and the uh this independent study program is for 15 days or longer that's people would have to that students would have to sign up for next slide and finally i just love this picture i the joy that these these two young ladies uh um send out is just always um makes me happy so this that concludes this part of the report mr bassnet can you go ahead and take down the slides and lastly we look forward to welcoming um staff and students back with joy and love and care um and as we reconnect and re-engage with each other um

091thank you that concludes my report thank you very much for all the hard work happening in the instructional division the excellent programming that was offered in the summer and now sort of all the translating of these state mandates i do want everybody to know that um that you know we've been sort of at the will of the state this information and these specific guidelines have just come to us and so i want to thank the instructional team for their quick translation of those guidelines and implementing it to make sure that we have compliant programming for this fall so that concludes staff reports i know it was lengthy but we wanted to start out strong with the right information for the school board this year may i say something i just hope we have a lot

092of parents watching who understand that our high school graduation requirements are more rigorous than those of the state napa valley unified school district has higher standards got that thank you trustee waterslash our previous high school english teacher well you know i had students transfer from other counties into my class and they were kind of shocked up at what they had to do yeah thank you trustee water all right um we're now moving to the next item of our agenda and this is the approval of consent agenda yes i would like to pull item h4c and then i would move to approve the rest so we're playing item h4c do i have a second i'll second the motion second by trustee dooley but before we move forward do i have any public comment on the other

093items on the consent agenda mr bassinet yes we do have one public comment uh i'll allow justin i think well this is justin justin hall and i know all the soul in 1987 and 2017 and i want to just wish you all welcome back for a long vacation and um one thing i want to say for shout out um is bring dawson wait very nice color over there so i wanted to wish you all welcome back for summer break thank you thank you for your comment do i have any other speakers mr bassinet there is no other public comment okay so we had a first and a second uh there if you could conduct roll call please yes stu student board member aye trustee gonzalez aye trustee jankowicz aye trustee gracia aye trustee reisser aye

094trustee water aye trustee shu aye christy dooley hi thank you vera so now let's go to item h4c yes uh this was one of three items on the current agenda that i think we could do better in making more clear um in the future rather than attaching the master cellpa contract i think it would be better if we instead attached the individual service agreements which were being asked to approve attached to the agenda so i think that would be a change that would add a lot more clarity to what's happening so instead of the master self a contract the actual contract that we're approving sandra jennings would you like to dress up yes i actually would one of the after sort of looking into sort of where why we don't attach the individual service agreements

095is that a previous board had asked that those not be attacked because they include student names and so those are actually signed and held within business services and if we can find a way to attach them without including student information then um we can do that but that is the reason why they're not currently attached to the master agreement could we not simply redact the name of the student we can there's quite a there's quite a few of them so we can do that and then i would move to approve second first by trustee gracias seconded by trustee dooley veera if you could cadet uh world call yes student board member hi trustee gonzalez matters aye trustee jankowicz aye trustee gracia aye trustee reisser aye trustee water aye trustee shu aye trustee dooley aye thank

096you vera um all right so we are now going into items i which is our presentations and discussion items item one um i one a presentation of west ed english learner program review so um thank you president gonzalez morris we are eager to present the comprehensive assessment of our english learner program performed in partnership with west ed in march and through may of 2021 this assessment is the first step in the process of crafting a new english learner master plan the west ed report provides us with baseline data that we can use to measure our progress as we implement the soon to be co-constructed english learner master plan at this time i would like to introduce our two presenters from west ed who have guided our work and this is in the assessment of our

097english learner program dr uh rachel um and dr um martha um paula ceo um mr back mr bassnet can you please bring up the slide presentation i believe dr palisio is going to start the presentation that's right can you all hear me yes okay wonderful thank you so much ms andrew jennings and good evening madam president members of the board of education superintendent musti student board member and nbusd community um i think that i'll just say next slide if that's okay and next slide thank you um it is a pleasure to be here to share our findings from the english learner review with the nvusd board of education and stakeholder community i want to first say how pleased we are when a school district seeks us out to conduct these reviews because it means that

098english learners are a priority in the district over the past few months rachel and i have worked closely with a planning team composed of pat andrew jennings matt manning peter hartnack and monica reddy to plan organize and carry out this extensive review of the instructional programs and supports you have in place for english learners i want to take this opportunity to thank them for their commitment to this review and for their collaboration and leadership tonight we'll share our final results from the el program review as well as our recommendations to begin the questions we asked in this review fall into four main categories they are who are nvusd's english learners and how are they performing on key metrics how are english learners experiencing schooling what professional learning opportunities have been made available to teachers of

099english learners and how are parents experiencing engagement with their children's schools next slide there are five research-based principles that we at west ed consider to be the foundation of quality instruction for english learners for us high quality instruction for english learners is possible when the following principles are present academic rigor high expectations engaging english learners in quality interactions a purposeful focus on language and equality curriculum the review focused on three of these principles academic rigor quality interactions and a purposeful focus on language i'm not going to go into these principles specifically for lack of time but they are defined in the final report if you'd like to learn more about them we consider all five of these principles to be the bedrock of any quality program for english learners next slide please it's important to

100situate any work that is done in the context of nvusd's strategic plan luckily for us the el review is aligned with a student learning achievement and access goal next slide please i want to say a quick word about west end west ed is a non-profit organization that provides a variety of services to educators in schools districts and state departments of education throughout the country our mission is to work with the education community to promote excellence achieve equity and improve learning for children youth and adults rachel and i are both part of english learner and migrant education services at west ed where we partner with schools and districts to provide customized research-based professional learning technical assistance research and evaluation opportunities to develop the capacity of educators who serve english learners next slide please an english learner

101program review is an opportunity for the district to consider the current status of programs policies and practices for english learners this is done through multiple lenses we do it by examining existing student data we do it by conducting guided observations in classrooms by conducting english learner student shadowing by collecting survey data from various stakeholders by conducting interviews with key district staff and by listening to what parents academic specialists and students have to say next slide the english learner review was undertaken as a collaborative process between west ed and various teams of educators in nbusd in our experience school districts are more likely to learn and make changes as a result of the review if they serve as partners through key activities in the review process by engaging multiple layers of nvusd educators in the review

102process 37 people throughout the district now have a common understanding of the current state of affairs and moving on next slide please in terms of our timeline as miss andrea jennings said we've been working since february in various data collection and analysis activities and we'll move on um now i'd like to dive into some of the data that provides a backdrop for this review what do existing data tell us about english learners in nbusd next slide please first of all 44 of all students in nvusd are english learners or former english learners 21 of students are currently english learners the vast majority of these students come from homes where spanish is the primary language not all english learners are the same in the report we divide the population of english learners into several different categories

103newcomers general english learners and long-term english learners newcomers are typically students who have been in the united states for up to two years their very recent arrivals general english learners are those who are not recent arrivals to the us and have been english learners for less than five years long-term english learners are those english learners who have been in the english learner category for five or more years as a general guide the goal is to have students exit english learner status through a process called reclassification before they reach the five-year mark in examining this data we noticed that the proportion of general english learners stays pretty consistent from transitional kindergarten to grade two hovering at about forty percent of the student population within each grade beginning in grade three we see a slight decline in

104the percentage of general english learners and a slight increase in the number of reclassified english learners this is good in third and fourth grades students begin to be reclassified at a greater rate than in earlier years however students who are still not reclassified by the end of fourth grade become long-term english learners in fifth grade this is because once a student has been in the el category for five or more years they're considered a long-term english learner one other finding is that in grades 5 6 and 7 there is still a large proportion of long-term english learners which indicates that they are not developing the language and literacy proficiency they need in order to attain rigorous grade level standards next slide please as explained in the report the elpac is the annual test given to

105english learners in the state of california to assess growth in english language proficiency the elpac elpac assigns english learners to a level one to four based on their level of english proficiency level one being the lowest and level four being the highest in looking at nbusd's elpac data for the last year that it was available school year 2019 2020 most english learners were found to be at elpac levels two and three however about 15 to 23 percent of english learners were found to be in level one in grades eight through twelve this implies that there is a strong need for intensive english language development services to be provided to these students in terms of academic achievement english learners perform far better than their english only peers far below excuse me i'll start that again in

106terms of academic achievement english learners perform far below their english-only peers at every grade level in both the ela and math portions of the state assessment reclassified students by contrast those students who have exited out of english learner status do much better interestingly those students who have a home language background other than english but were never classified as english learners perform better than their english only peers next slide please so in the next few slides we're going to focus on english learners experiences in schools i'll share findings from classroom observations and student shadowing as well as information from our student survey and focus groups next slide please classroom observations focused on three principles of quality instruction academic rigor quality interactions and a purposeful language focus what we found was that quality instruction was most apparent

107at the elementary grades less apparent in the middle school grades and least apparent in high school of the three principles we looked for the one that was observed most frequently in classrooms was academic rigor yet despite this we found that english learners didn't always receive the support in the form of carefully scaffolded instruction that they needed in order to benefit from rigorous activities in terms of opportunities for students to develop proficiency in the academic uses of english or what some people call academic language students in the classrooms we observed were generally not engaged in these experiences next slide please aside from classroom observations we also examined data from from shadowing english learners a total of 23 english learners from all three great spans were shadowed for a period of two hours english learners who were

108shadowed represented a variety of english proficiency levels members of the expanded leadership team again who were me who were employees of the district were asked to mark whether students were engaged in academic academically rigorous activities or quality interactions and they did this over 12 10 minute segments what we found is that across all 12 10 minute segments observed students we shadowed were engaged in academically rigorous activities 56 percent of the time and they were engaged in quality interactions just 20 of the time taken together data from classroom observations and student shadowing led us to conclude that the level of engagement of english learners in high quality classroom activities can be improved next slide please in terms of what we learned from surveys administered to english learners in grades 6 and above students indicated that they

109have high hopes for themselves and that in addition to doing well in school they have the desire to further their education by receiving a university degree among respondents more than 75 percent of students agreed that they want to be successful in school that education is an important part of their life and that they want to pursue college in general 85 percent of the 111 students who participated in the survey expressed an understanding of the connection between doing well in school and being successful in life next slide please we have the privilege of conducting two focus groups with english learners throughout the district one group was made up of middle school students and the other was made up of high school students one important trend we noticed was that most middle school students mentioned wanting to

110no longer have to take eld as a goal in essence what they were saying was we're tired of taking eld we want to be considered regular students and we want to have the opportunity to take other courses one student in particular mentioned having begun to study the violin in middle school but because of the fact that eld takes the place of an elective in middle school she had to give up the violin the the next year in order to continue her eld requirement interestingly these very students did not know what they needed to to do or achieve in order to successfully be reclassified they don't understand the multiple criteria that must must be met in order to become fluent english proficient this should change the final thing i will mention about students perceptions is that

111english learners generally had high opinions of their teachers and felt that they did a lot to ensure their success when one student was asked to elaborate she mentioned that her teacher at times gives her a pass on completing some of her work if it's too difficult for her now this is not at all representative of all students experiences but i want to emphasize that this this might well indicate what receiving help looks like in the eyes of students and how it needs to be redefined for them and for their teachers and with that i'll pass it over to my my colleague rachel loganoff thank you thank you martha i'm going to continue with two more sets of findings and then i'll present our recommendations so on the next slide um we're going to move on

112to looking at what we learned about what professional learning opportunities are available to teachers and principals across the district on the next slide we see results or a small sampling of results from the teacher survey about 154 teachers participated in the survey there are a large number of questions on multiple topics and this is just a sampling of some of the questions around professional learning um excuse me approximately slightly over half of the respondents said that they receive professional learning that's useful um only about 40 percent rece said that they received coaching or mentoring or the right amount of professional learning to successfully serve english learners just under half believe the district supports their growth in knowledge and practice to ensure english learners progress linguistically and academically so these results are fairly low and they're

113also contrasted to what we heard from the open-ended comments in the teacher survey and also focus groups that we held with elementary and secondary principles that they want to have more professional learning they value professional learning to to help them grow to be able to better serve english language learners and they just aren't getting the professional learning that they would like on the next slide we're going to see some of the results from the focus groups that we conducted with district staff this was focus groups and interviews so we had focus groups or interviews with eight district staff these included the academic specialists and the migrant coordinator who are some of the providers of professional learning in the district so we heard that a variety of professional learning events are offered to teachers across the

114district including district-wide professional learning days um there are also ongoing professional learning opportunities for teachers that include things like professional learning communities um and so there are offerings across the district in for professional learning for english learners however overall um the professional learning that is provided is piecemeal and it varies across grade levels in school so there's a lack of consistency and a lack of consistency both across time and across the different grade levels and schools in the district so our um the participants in these focus groups and interviews expressed that they would really like to see or they feel that there's a need for district-wide professional learning for all teachers and principals that is comprehensive and sustained and has a unified consistent focus and vision and also that that site administrators are positioned as

115instructional leaders as part of this consistent and comprehensive professional learning okay on the next slide i'm going to move on to what we found from the parents and how the parents and other caregivers are experiencing engagement with schools and the district on the next slide um again we sent we had a lot of surveys so this survey was the parent survey about 137 parents responded to the survey again there were multiple questions in multiple topic areas and this is a sampling so the positive outcome of the survey is that a large majority three-quarters or more of the parents who responded feel welcome at the school that their children attend um they have opportunities to talk with their child's teachers and they receive communication in a language they understand so this is good news um one

116of the areas that had lower um percentages responding was in the area of receiving information about what is required for their child to enter college or about financial aid for their high school child to attend college or university especially with the last question that was focused on high school students but also for the one about what's required for their child to enter college presumably these lower number of responses were based on um the the parents responding potential that not applicable or left blank they may have felt that these questions didn't apply to them and we wanted to emphasize that awareness of the requirements and readiness for college and career starts in late elementary and that information that's provided could start in elementary school and definitely needs to be provided throughout middle school and high school

117and we saw that of the of the parents that responded to these questions just a little more than half said that they were getting this information um so there's positive the positive findings are that the parents feel comfortable communicating with the school but we need to see an improvement in um communicating to parents what's necessary for their children to meet the aspirations that we saw earlier that they want to be prepared for college and career they want to attend college and they need to know what to do in order to to reach that achievement goal next slide please we also um had uh um the pleasure to have a focus group with um 13 parents of english learners um and we talked about a number of issues and and some trends emerge from this discussion

118um some of the trends are that the the parents that we spoke to um value participating in their children's education and they feel that it's their responsibility to be involved so we have uh active parent community that wants to be involved and feels it's important they also want to be included in decisions that affect their children and are willing to participate in leadership development activities that will allow them to serve as leaders in their schools in the district and we also heard from the district staff that they are making taking steps toward that and that's recognized that parent leadership is important um the another outcome that we found from the parent focus groups is that the parents expressed awareness that the quality of instruction may vary by school so they know what's happening in the

119school where their child attends they also hear what's happening in other schools and they're not seeing the same level of quality instruction at every school um so one of the parents specifically mentioned that um the school where her child attends um they needed more resources she didn't feel that the the resources for english learners or for students um that she knew about were getting the the resources that they needed to succeed at school parents also expressed ideas about what could be improved around the english language learner programs and english language development instruction so they already have ideas that they would like to bring forward to helping improve some of the elements of programming that we that martha has presented so one of their ideas is that eld instruction could be provided before or after school

120so that it wouldn't take up time during the school day or take up the elective time and that their peers and teachers could use that time instead during for academics and electives during the day um okay on the next slide i'm going to move on to school to parent communications while we did see the the positive communications results from the survey we also in our focus groups with principals heard that a number of parents may not be able to read written communications in any language so even if the the communication is sent in spanish or other or other languages they may not be able to read even in that language so these parents would benefit from audio messages sent to their phones um and i believe it was mentioned that this had been available previously

121and had been discontinued so that's that's something to look at um in addition there are um as we saw like the vast majority of english learners families in the district speak spanish but there are a number of other languages represented and they also need to receive communications in the languages they speak so from the data we received from the district from the previous school year english learners families they're about 60 have filipino as their home language they're also between 19 and 27 have vietnamese punjabi arabic and we also heard that there are other languages spoken by by newco especially newcomer students um so there's a wide variety of languages in the district and that needs to be paid attention to in the communications as well okay on the next slide i'm going to move on

122to the recommendations so we just presented a small snippet of some of the findings the full set of findings is in the report that you've received and then we also mapped out a number of focus areas that came up from the findings and then the findings were organized by these focus areas and we organized the recommendations in the same focus areas so what i'm going to go over next are the recommendations based on all the findings organized in these focus areas so the first one on the next slide and i have to pause a second is in the area of programming and services and this first one the first recommendation is actually an overarching recommendation of what's going to happen next so it's very important as a next step um to develop a comprehensive systemic

123improvement plan and this is the master plan that pat anderson andrew jennings mentioned before so the we west ed would would be available to continue collaborating with the teams the teams that we brought together for the english learner review or assessment to continue as a continuation to develop this master plan or systemic improvement plan and it will serve as a roadmap for ensuring high quality english learner programs and services are implemented monitored and sustained across the district so we'll move step by step through developing all of the plans to make sure these things can happen the rest of the recommendations starting on this slide and after that are all going to be incorporated into this planning process so we want to make sure that we're defining and implementing a high quality designated eld program consistently

124across all the schools incorporating the five principles of quality instruction that we've already looked at designing and implementing programs to address the specific needs of newcomers and long-term english learners as we heard um these these these subgroups of english learners may not be having their needs met we've seen that long-term english learners persist through middle school and sometimes high school and newcomers um they're very few but they still need particular services they arrive in the country they have um very little english language proficiency and yet for the especially for those in middle and high school they need to catch up very quickly and they need particular services number five establish accountability structures at the school and district levels to monitor english center program implementation and guide continuous improvement so what we don't want to happen

125is that we hand over a plan you put it on the shelf and you're done what we want to see is this is a living document that once going through the process with us um it will become the guide for everything that's happening in the district for implementing all of the recommendations that are that we're making in this report um okay moving on to the next slide another one of the areas that that are that came up as we were analyzing the the findings was around equity and access so we've already heard that um students have high aspirations for um graduating college and career ready going to college in order for them to access the high level of rigor and academics that they need to to complete to graduate college and career ready they need

126to have a high level also of english language proficiency so we want to make sure that any um support for their english language development and eld programs happens in an accelerated way that we don't wait for years for the english learners to gain the proficiency they need to access the high level content and especially secondary english learners need to have access to the full education program including electives so we know that there are requirements for graduating their requirements for getting into college that include a wide range not just of academics but also electives and also just for the full participation of the students to feel that they're well-rounded and they can do what they want to do in school so in general in terms of equity and access we want to make sure that we're

127not holding english learners back from participating in the full education program due to their english learner status next slide please so how do we get the students there what does it look like to give them access to this high quality instruction that they need so we want to make sure there's a focus in the secondary grade so that will be part of of the master planning process is ensuring that there's an initiative targeted to those grades to make sure that that they're going to graduate college and career ready and have the quality of instruction they need we saw at all grade levels um from the observation and shadowing that we weren't seeing the quality interactions which are described in our in our principles where students on a daily basis in every class in every subject

128even math should be interacting talking exchanging ideas gaining ideas from each other um and we recognize that we were observing classrooms in an unusual situation it was a hybrid classroom often the teacher was on the com on the computer screen the students were on their computer and it makes it a lot harder to design these quality interactions it's still possible so we were looking for ways that it could have been done through the mediation of the virtual learning and we still weren't quite seeing the level of quality interactions among students that that we that are an indicator of high quality instruction and build that's for all students but also build the language and academic skills that english learners especially need one another way another focus for english learners would be looking at the simultaneous development

129of academic content knowledge and language proficiency and one way to do this is focusing on purposes and uses of english and academic context so even when english learners are not in their eld class they're in their regular content class if there's a focus on language they will learn english faster and learn academics faster at the same time and it also benefits all the students in the class because focusing on purposes and uses of english and academic context is also good for all the other students we also want to ensure that even when rigorous activities and high quality academic instruction is happening that english learners are intentionally supported and and scaffolded to build their english language proficiency so they may not be um in um sorry i lost my notes but that's okay i'll just keep

130going um english learners need again as they're developing their english they'll still need access to the um academic rigorous academic instruction and the way to do that is to intentionally design particular scaffolds and supports and the way teachers can learn how to design those would be through the professional learning the comprehensive professional learning and then designing depending on the student proficiency students may need more scaffolding the scaffolding can go away as soon as they develop higher proficiency so there it's a complex skill for teachers to develop to learn how to support students adequately and not over support them and this is what we were seeing was needed in a lot of the classrooms that we observed next slide please so in terms of professional learning uh there's only one recommendation but it's a huge recommendation

131develop a district-wide english learner professional learning plan for all teachers principals and key district staff it is comprehensive sustained and has a unified consistent focus and vision so that's the charge there it it won't happen all at once we're not expecting like in a year we'll have all this done this will be a plan that's gonna take the entire master plan will take place over three to five years but especially the professional learning we'll need to identify what the priorities are for professional learning and gradually build up to this comprehensive type of professional learning it won't happen all at once but we'll start right away in year one and keep building across the years and part of the planning process that we'll engage in with our district teams will be looking at where do we

132want to focus which schools have the highest need which grade levels and we'll develop the plan from there um okay the final set of um recommendations on the next slide um oh no it's not the final set sorry okay next to final set um are around parent and family engagement so we want to make sure that um the engagement strategy for parents and families involves them in decision making so it's it's great for them to have input it's great for them to build leadership but really engaging them in decision-making and designing and implementing school district programs and policies for english learners is a slightly bigger left and that's what we're hearing that the parents want and the district would greatly benefit from this we also want to make sure that communication strategies provide accessible and

133comprehensive information to parents about the post-secondary infra opportunities we heard from the district that the schools are expected to be the primary have the primary responsibility for delivering this information it needs to be done consistently across all of the schools clearly the middle schools and high schools but also even the elementary schools the thinking again of thinking about what does it take to prepare for college and career all the way through starting from uh especially late elementary through middle school and high school and have a consistent focus and communication um uh plan around what does that look like and how do we know that the the parents are getting the information they need and at middle school and high school how do we know the students are getting the information they need so this is

134another sort of long-term planning of looking at at how can we improve this and what needs to be put into place to make this happen okay now the final one on the next slide is around additional analyses so we did some analyses of data from the district and as soon as you start digging into data you start seeing wait i want to go more into the data and look at other trends so we are recommending some areas to investigate and your teams may come up with more one of them is to look longitudinally longitudinally at reclassification rates and patterns so what are the trajectories of students so we were seeing some trends in the in the single year of when students start to be reclassified in late elementary um that there's we still have a

135large proportion of long-term english learners in middle school so maybe dig deeper into when students are reclassified how that's happening looking at students that are in third and fourth grade it's at-risk long-term english learners if there are students who are english learners in third and fourth grade who have been in the system since transitional kindergarten or kindergarten they're at risk when they enter fifth grade of continuing to be an english learner which makes them a long-term english learner so those are some of the things to look at in the data of how are we using the data to look at what's happening and um see you know what what the ways that instruction and understanding of what the students need can be improved um another element one of the elements that we did not focus

136very much on in this report was english learners with disabilities and a starting point for that would be looking carefully at the data comparing english learners with disabilities to the general student population to look for potential trends for over identification of english learners as having disabilities or under identification and this can be based because their the student's english language ability can be either confounded and a disability might not be assessed or recognized or in some cases students might need to be assessed in their home language so there are a number of things to look at in this area that we don't go into in the report but for future analyses we would recommend so the final slide is a big thank you to all of you we have heard that english learners are a priority

137for the board they are prior priority for the for the district in general and that is commendable um and it's a starting point recognizing that their priority recognizing all of the findings that we found through this collaborative review or assessment effort is a starting point to go on the path to developing the master plan or systemic improvement plan to implement the recommendations and west ed would be pleased to continue working with our napa valley partners in a collaboration to guide you and help you with identifying high leverage strategies action steps a three to five year plan that includes monitoring oversight and accountability structures so that you can really implement all of the things that you're seeing that need to be improved and we are grateful that we have this opportunity to present this report and

138we could now take questions before we open it to questions thank you to the west ed team for your very comprehensive report i just wanted to let the board of trustees know that typically when wested does these this type of assessment and plan it's over the course of one school year we started due to covet we didn't start our assessment until february um in terms of our first initial meetings um with the west ed team and then started to to do the assessment and then the next phase is the plan of actually digging in and building on the work of the expanded leadership team to uh complete the plan that we would then implement that we would bring to the board and then implement so there are those two phases typically you start the process

139begins beating the school year work on it do the assessment do the plan and then bring it to the board but we wanted to give you a report and give you sort of a process of where we are right now and then as we move forward and um just want to thank west ed for their partnership and um look forward to um you know future work that would help us to identify those levers that really move the needle for english learners and with that we'll open it up to questions and thank you um for the presentation it's just i'm going to do a quick check in with the board it's 9 20 and we usually take a little bit of a bio break and stretch a little bit before we go into the discussion and

140then public comment and then really so i'm guessing we're not going to forget very much what was presented we decided to take a break now or do you want to go into discussion public comment and then take the break you're okay with that okay so let's do that yeah okay so just uh we're gonna take a quick five minute break and then return so that you have our full focus um not that you wouldn't but this would allow us to um be more present thank you thank you we are back now so finish the presentation um and we'll start with um questions or comments um well go ahead no please cindy i just wanted to say that um this is uh we should i'd like to congratulate the superintendent for seeing the need for this

141this was announced um i think at our last meeting in june of 2020 and then you know last year was just completely crazy so we couldn't um get started on it but this is it this is a deficiency and we're admitting it and we want to fix it and i'm speaking as a person who taught eld for three years at napa high school and um i had it was uh fortunately i'd taken some courses at uc when i was renewing my credentials so i wasn't flying blind and i took spanish and you know i all my students were spanish-speaking but yes i'm well aware that there are many other languages in this school district and at one point i had a a student from um iran who ended up living at our house and knew

142very little english and after two years at napa high she graduated went to uc davis your favorite school graduated in four years with a good gpa and what what um how did she learn english well she was living with an english teacher who never shuts up that's me um you know you have to be verbal in our house you're going to die that's it and lots of reading lots of writing and drama class so the rich so a rich selection of electives can help students um you know they it's they're they're not frills they are practical you know the singing the acting you know you making making friends who speak english all of this happens when you're in these electives so um this is what really spoke to me in this in this presentation and

143um i think we're being very bold in uh recognizing something that we need to fix we and we're going to do it because um you know we're we're going to do it that's it i'm we're i'm not going to accept anything less than success thank you and uh thank you to west ed for the presentation it was a thorough review and assessment of our english learner program the fourth slide developing a common understanding of high quality instruction for english learners outlined what was considered the key principles for success what i found powerful is the application to all learners so the focus on english learners can become part of the foundational work we are already striving to achieve to conduct the highest quality work we as a system must strive to be fair and equitable in

144carrying out our work with the end result being impact this work is not just for this moment it needs to be constructed and executed in a manner that becomes part of our framework this is more than just being sustainable it has to be a part of the fabric of who we are as a system and what we do this review will define and drive the content and implementation of a comprehensive systematic improvement plan this is an opportunity for educational shift and growth in how we approach learning for our els and through these actions we have the opportunity as cindy just stated to benefit all students this work will intersect with our district-wide focus on achievement and curriculum alignment it is a critical time we are focused on our english learner population improving academic achievement middle

145school enrichment and providing support for teachers as we address curricular changes as well as strategy and implementation protocols so with that a few questions come to mind we will need as stated appropriate support and scaffolding for our teachers so they may execute on this important work nbusd is working on infrastructure alignment in a multitude of areas as well as capacity development will we consider having the ability to create expertise within the system so that we can have internal workshops and support protocols in addition to the external support being provided for these professional learning goals per this review and and i apologize you did state at the beginning of the presentation that if we wanted the definition of some of the key principles that we could ask for it so i am asking for the definition

146of what determines a quality interaction and then how are the accountability structures determined you did um there were percentages given percentages about my school has a clear focus on supporting english learners and and i won't go through all of them but the feedback and stated statistics speak to the belief and importance of our english learners achieving academic outcomes but it also spoke to as you addressed a lack of consistency the comment regarding individual colleagues designing curriculum isn't it's inspiring and i mean that genuinely but it can also lead to a lack of consistency and uniformity in curriculum and a lack of time and planning necessary for those successful outcomes to be achieved this work will address the issues that have limited our success and the recommendation in programming services as well as equity and access

147will challenge the previous conventional wisdom you are identifying identifying what has not been successful and are acknowledging the importance of the gains that will be made throughout their trajectory and i appreciate the good work thank you so much sure um i would love to answer the question um with regard to quality interactions and then maybe rachel you can you can answer the the question regarding accountability um we consider quality interactions to be interactions or student talk that happen around academic topics so they have to be on an academic topic an issue a concept and um the expectation is that there's a purpose for the communication um so students have to be um trying to understand something communicating something to a peer it has to be authentic communication in a group format um the other important

148element of a quality interaction is that it needs to be reciprocal it can't be one-sided it can't be two people speaking to each other with one person doing all the talking and the other one just nodding right they have to be building on what the other they each say if they're in a group they all have to be contributing um to the conversation and responding to one another and co-constructing the conversation and through that conversation um deepening their understanding of the topic at hand also in addition to being reciprocal the interaction has to be sustained so it can't just be one person says one sentence the next person says a sentence the next person says a sentence right it has to it has to be a sentence or more it has to be multiple people

149contributing multiple ideas um it's it's not a short one-sentence kind of um interaction so the classroom setting has a lot to do with how you can measure those quality interactions so if the classroom setting doesn't necessarily have group settings it's a difficult benchmark to measure i assume exactly right that's exactly right thank you very much and then in terms of accountability again one of the things we'll be doing in in developing the the master plan and mapping out the high leverage strategies and action steps will be also be again collaboratively determining milestones and metrics and assigning a responsible person for each of these strategies and action steps so that will be part of a sort of a oversight structure that will be built into the master plan and as part of the intent then also

150to um be able to create create an infrastructure that allows this work to be sustainable with on within our own learning community you guys are setting up the the implementation plan the action plan but i um [Music] are there going to be professional development opportunities that allow this to be sustainable without having to kind of go back year after year [Music] and trustee um jinkowitz i can answer that that yes that's indeed the idea is to build the compass the capacity within our own staff and and part of that work is already begun you ask the question around quality interactions and um martha and rachel provided training to our expanded leadership team on what that definition was and what they needed to look for when they were doing the eel shadowing and the classroom observations

151and so some of that training and building capacity among our own staff around identifying what is good instructional practice for english learners um has already started and that started in the spring and that will be ongoing and making sure that we're building capacity within our our own uh district i don't know if uh rachel or martha wanted to add to that we do we do have a service um that we provide that um allows for districts to apprentice their own teachers into the professional development that we that that's aligned to our to our principles so that it's a very intensive program we we work with teachers over the course of a year and a half um on um becoming seasoned presenters of the pedagogical approach that we espouse and um and the idea behind that

152is that they can then become the go-to people the the professional developers within the district who you can go to for um for more professional development um year after year that is quite an investment it's uh it's absolutely worth it and um um our our goal is is is for you not to have to hire us again uh thank you at the end of uh of of the of the plan question uh what is the time frame on which we can expect the master plan could be completed um i think typically like the process of between the assessment and the plan is like a year-long process through the school year so having done the assessment in the spring i imagine that it's about a half of a year that would take to develop the mass

153the master plan or the improvement plan um and i believe that's about the timeline that we've been discussed i don't know if you guys want to add any other additional information to that yeah the activities definitely would happen in approximately six months um often the actual writing and preparation of the plan can take longer and that's a pretty intensive process too that um we'll we can take a lot of that on as well um so the the completion could be like another whole school year but we'll the the initial um planning and setting up all of the um the the implementation guide and all of that can happen i think what we've submitted is september through march continuing in through june to finish writing but i don't remember exactly but along that timeline yeah i

154think that was the original proposal um one of the things about uh nvusd is that you know we are impatient when it comes to results for our students and we want to you know move the needle as quickly as we can so i know that we'll probably speed that timeline up yep christy reiser yeah um first of all i just want to um echo what trustee waters said i'm so grateful that we are willing to look at what is a weak area and shine a light on it and not shy away from that this is a district-wide issue and we are our mission is to educate the children of our community and a good percentage of the children of our community come with an additional set of needs and we know what those needs are

155and there's a lot of research about how to meet those needs and i'm just so grateful that we're doing it and i i understand because i um spent a lot of years in elementary classroom teaching english learners how you get to a point where the program is really fragmented um and it's not from a place of not caring or not paying attention or a place of thinking it doesn't matter to take care of english learners needs it really is this sort of um fragmentation that happens when you say oh well that school has a lot of english learners so we should put resources there or well our school hardly has any english learners so we don't even really need to pay attention to that and that's how you end up with fragmentation and then it

156really can spiral from from there and and the other risk that i didn't really come out in the presentation but i just want to surface is is um very well meaning educators can still get confused and think that good teaching is enough to meet english language learners needs and it's not and so i um it's necessary but not sufficient and i just want to thank the presenters for giving such a thorough comprehensive and nuanced um explanation of kind of where we are and in particular i just wanted to draw out um the intentionality of scaffolding and supports and the use of language and giving kids opportunities to talk are are just two two of the big lifts that we need to get um consistent across the the district it's not enough to give rigorous academic

157um lesson planning that's it would be you know that's very engaging to english speakers you have to give the front loading of vocabulary you have to give the visual supports and then the other piece that was in the report but i didn't i don't think made it into the slideshow was the the the distinction between the eld time that is designated generally a 30-minute period but then there's the rest of the day and so i was really happy to see in your report the focus on the integrated english language development and just really what we have to do is and and we're chart you know the district is is being charged to do and and we have these recommendations is that piece of um professional development because teachers want to meet the needs of all

158of their students and we need to hold them accountable to doing it no matter whether it's one english learner or half of their class or three quarters of their classes english learners but we have to give them the tools and the information and the strategies because i mean i got my credential in 1995 and this was kind of at the forefront the research about english learners that's not it's been a while now and we have this wonderful resource of the the west ed group bringing your expertise because we know what to do we just need to get every all the teachers the tools and the um the training and uh get everybody on the same page so i just wanted to say i'm really grateful that we're doing this i'm particularly excited about the focus

159on really making sure we're being intentional throughout the day and not just in the designated up i checked my box i did my 30 minutes of eld so i'm good now that's not how it should work in a highly effective classroom so uh i don't really have any questions but i i'll get off my soapbox now but i i i just wanted to make those comments and and and also to say that this is not to say that the teach current teachers teaching english learners in our district are not working hard and do not have expertise that's not the case it just is you get a lot of fragmentation and there was the other comment um that one of the presenters made about we want this to be implemented we don't want it to be

160a binder on the shelf and that is a phrase that i have used a lot in meetings here and then in other conversations of the dane you know the thing that we have to focus on is the implementation and that it is not does not become well that was a really interesting training that gave me something to think about for a few hours and now that's going up with my other professional development experience binders um and and then i'll go back to what i was doing before so i'm just excited and very detailed i'm really jazzed about this because we need to do it and we know what to do and we're getting the expert help that we need and i'm just really grateful on behalf of all the english learners that are really going

161to benefit from this shift that we're going to make because i really believe and feel that we're committed as a district to to making it um to making this change and making it a permanent shift so i also echo all the other trustees comments about how grateful i am for this being a focus for the district so i was an english learner i started here in second grade and i went through the process of getting re-clustered this is a long time ago of course so the you know the the process was very different but i do remember the high very purposeful intentional um instruction that my teachers had given me which was you know you pull out into groups and you talked in english and you have a lot of feedback from your peers and

162from your teachers and it was just very high quality and i felt like that really made a huge difference for me to be integrated when i you know i started school in taiwan in chinese and then having to learn a totally different language here um i i do want to ask that when for some of the further analyses um in addition to identifying english learners with disabilities maybe also look at how do we identify kids who are who would qualify for alps because i think those are the two areas that are very very underrepresented for english learners you either miss their disability or you lit you miss their giftedness and and need to have different types of instruction to support that both so um i hope that this is going to be one of the

163directions that will also go towards supporting our students as well but thank you very much for the research and the presentation no trusty dooley i don't have a whole lot to add i actually a couple of my points and questions were addressed by other trustees um i do appreciate the mix of quantitative and qualitative analysis um and also the the focus on uh the qualitative or the quality of of the student experience elements that are involved in this report one of the harder to measure but increasingly important things about learning in general but especially learning uh language and and uh for for english learners is um the quality of their their ex experience in the classroom their investment and interest in in not just the learning the language but learning the subject matter learning in

164the context of english instruction and i think that goes also to the point that trustee water made about having meaningful learning experiences in uh electives and something that you know as a student you're excited to go to those classes and you get to have the opportunity to select them and and and be invested in in that that um the instruction so i think you know having an and a connection not just with the um the quantitative or um kind of i don't know just having an an infusion of that quality of the student experience in the classroom in this plan i think will be important [Music] thank you um i'll just add um um very similar comments um i do appreciate um although i feel like we're doing lots of thank you to ss but

165west ed but um with no disrespect i think that thank you to the board and to the to the to the superintendent and the team to want to address this and that we we have committed to um not only finance a team qualified to help do the analysis on this and the execution of that report that i do think for that process of of analysis um in terms of um how do we go about this right i mean it's just it's a question we've been we've been asking it's it's in the numbers it's in the data and it just how do you fully grasp what's what's in the issue right and then are we um doing our due diligence as a governance to give direction as to please go and investigate please go and analyze

166this please tell us where are some of those um issues so that we can as a governance team look at our you know i'm looking at our annual priorities for this year but it may not be aligned in here it's in some areas but i can almost see that in our next conversation next summer when we see the plan i can see us putting that as a as a priority right but we need to know um what's out there with our with our students there's a lot of um a lot of um obviously i think moments where it's not surprising for us to see this right but it's so important to take the time to gather that data because we are a data driven district as well where we make decisions based on on our

167facts in front of us um so that i i'm i'm just really um looking at quality information in front of me that can help us and most importantly help um the staff to to draft what um superintendent andrew jennings was mentioning that the time that it takes to really analyze this and work with the team to see what we can go about doing this with the different collaborative um teams that are that are working on this um my question in terms of additional analysis um [Music] was more i keep thinking of like our system right like one criteria that i find and i don't know i couldn't find that in the report necessarily of little little um they seem little but it can change a student's life like when you register and roll your child

168into the district and you put spanish as the preferred language it it's it kind of puts the student in this particular track just because the parents are choosing spanish a particular language and my understanding is that sometimes then the child is sort of flagged like oh that must be an english language learner because the preferred language is in spanish and just gets so what are those analysis in terms of like in terms of the system of some of those um [Music] structures that are in place whether they're not intentional right i don't think that's the purpose but unintentionally can create um a life-changing event for for a student because parents may not be aware how the school school district or the swiss system works and doesn't know until a year or two goes by right

169like it just it just it can get really hard and so you know and that relates back to the data of like how engaged parents are with the schools how if they feel connected if they feel that they understand if they're getting information in their language right all of that so i i'm i'm curious about what are those you know systems in there that may um um put it put a student or you know in the family um as they're trying to work with her or their kin in a particular track if you want to call it that way um so curious about that and if there's any analysis there or additional work around that and then i couldn't help but think also of how this connects also with the dei work that we're doing

170right it's it's there's there's a lot of um [Music] intersection that occurs there when you're talking about diversity equity and inclusion and then we're also talking about our english language learners there's a lot of um you know without having to take additional time here but just lots of life examples that occur that can impact a language in english language learner because of a staff that may not have received the training and understanding of the dynamics of maybe the home of that child and understand the diversity and how important it is to create an environment that is inviting and inclusive that can embrace um um this you know the students um life and encompasses all the other other things that um that surround them and the complexities that it's not just education but just many of

171our english language learners are low-income families and um and are you know and many of them are in survival mode right so it's all these other dynamics that we we need to understand so um i just couldn't help but think that how how as as our district continues this work how that can intersects right and how that um i don't know we we have a particular plan to quantify that that's hard you know but i think it's all of those factors that come into place that can help um with the overall culture and the overall goal that we're trying to put together and and help our students set up be set up right for that for that success um and i think my last uh comments i appreciated sort of that category of like oh

172newcomers and sort of long-term english language learners and sort of because it is um when you're an english language learner it just it really does depends like how many years how long have you you know been in the school district having been in the country and just how long have you been faced with that so i appreciate that sort of ability to kind of dive into the students um almost just capturing their english level uh versus just oh you checked the box therefore you're you're in this particular track or something um but yeah i guess that was my my in there was my hitting question about systems and sort of how does that play into your analysis or future analysis i think um trustee gonzalez mars i'll start and then see if um the team

173from west ed wants to join in but i i think you touched on a critical point around the intersection not only between students who may be english learners but also struggling economically but the intersection between all of the different uh sort of uh initiatives and plans that we have around english learners around our diversity equity inclusion around our college and career readiness like all of those tie in together with the work that we want to do with our english learners and um tonight they touched on the importance of families of having the information they need earlier in terms of uh college and career readiness and um you know and how do you how do you get reclassified and making sure students understand that so all of that really connects to all of the plans and

174the strategic goals that the um the board has set um up for us i don't know if um martha or rachel you want to add to that well i will speak to the point on the home language survey and to the tremendous consequences that um that a parent's honest response on that survey can have on their on their child for the rest of their life um i'll share that when my daughter was in kindergarten um i spoke with a mother who had she was very clearly fluent in english educated in u.s schools but she was honest in her in her home language survey and she chose to reveal that that there was some use of another language in the home and that is an automatic trigger when and whenever uh a parent uh uh identifies

175another language as being spoken in the home that's an automatic trigger for a diagnostic to be given to that student to see if they truly are an english learner or not um and that mother regretted her decision to um to to state that there was another language in the home because her child scored such that um he or she was then determined to be an english learner and they were forever in that category and they couldn't get out of that category um as she put it her child just didn't test well you know as coming into kindergarten um and um so and that is an issue that parents have with the home language survey it's institutional it's not something that we can that that you have control over at the district level or at the

176state level unfortunately it's it's something that all schools have to administer um however there there was work that was started a few years ago on improving the home language survey and i i hope that that's continued um and then the second part of that is that we need better diagnostics we need better tests um so that um a child doesn't mistakenly get uh classified as an english learner when they really have uh sufficient english to to do just fine in school um and tests are getting better all the time um so we we can hope that one day um that is the case but there's no there's not a lot that we can do at the local level unfortunately yeah and to add on to what martha said part of the process so again this

177is defined by the state by the california department of education the processes that districts follow for identifying english learners part of the process includes notifying parents of the student's english language learner status and the programming that they're expected to engage in as as part of that status and the parents have the decision to accept or reject that that the student isn't is placed in that program also um and then parents are consulted also in decisions about um reclassification so that might be an area for further um analysis as you suggested that um the district look into are they following all of the protocols and ensuring that the parents um are con not only notified but they're actively consulted um and that there's a there should be a team that's um determining these decisions about english

178learners so um we it's true that we didn't delve into that deeply for this review but that might be an area to look into um for uh future analyses of how students are identified and the notification and consultation with their with their parents and families thank you um for that additional explanation about and that's what it's called the home language survey thank you yeah so i just would like to close this out um i i just want to draw everyone's attention here to close that um 44 of our students that's half of our student population are either a current english learner or a past english learner and any of you who are former english learners um reclassified i'm going to raise my hand i know we have other ones on the board and trustee chu

179identified as such as well um it takes a whole life time to really truly become proficient in a language and so just because only 21 of them have maintained the english learner status and that and the other 20 it's late so math is slow for me 23 have been reclassified that doesn't mean that all of a sudden they've met a success criteria and they you know that the concept of intentionally focus on language as part of the instructional experience in the classroom doesn't need to continue to matter so when you have half your school system either being a past or current english learner we have to build the organization's capacity to be able to meet the needs of language learning and it's just the reality of our system our kids and our teachers our staff

180are on a dual track agenda the dual track agenda is academic achievement and ongoing language development and proficiency even once reclassified and that is a reality for half the kids in the system in nvusd so shame on us for taking this long to sort of surface these trends and give it the attention and focus that it deserves and start the process of developing a very focused english learner master plan that'll provide the roadmap for the system on how to build that organizational capacity because there's not one adult in this system that doesn't need to have that capacity improved and be sustained because there's english learners across the entire system or prior english learners across the entire system because it's 50 of the kids in our schools so um thank you so much to the instructional

181team and we look forward to watching this work unfold on behalf of our kids uh one last thing i i you brought up the priorities um uh president gonzalez and and we've we reflected on that um assistant superintendent andrew jennings and i talked about this and i know she talked about it with her team of directors and we don't have an intentional annual priority but here we are sort of you know launching this work but you know we i do just want to even though there isn't an intentional annual priority around english learners when you talk about redesigning the middle schools where many of our l tells our long-term english learners are sitting english learners will be part of that conversation when you talk about um the gatekeeping that's happening because we don't have um

182strong tk through 12th grade mathematics program alignment guess who is you know who who are experienced experiencing the barriers the most the 44 of students in our system and our other one around the interventions right who probably need a lot of those academic interventions are those students who are currently classified and or reclassified english learners so although there's not intentional um an intentional priority that states english learners all three of those priorities focus on the english learner experience being improved in the school district yeah thank you for pointing those out um you did it much better than i did as i was mentioning that it's it's embedded in there of course um so i will now ask um mr bestnet we have any public comment on this item we do have public comment from caller

183624-5605 yep can we [Music] um we have the speaker come to the um and share their comment please they're permitted to talk in my notes i think that number is from a previous um i believe it was norma ortiz yes you're right mr bessonnet hello can you hear me yes miss ortiz go ahead oh thank you yes um well there's a couple of things that um i've heard uh lester and the board talking about in terms of english language learners but of course as we all know the ones that face the the bigger challenge or the double challenge is those also classified as special education uh students so um it would be really um i would like to really see how that scaffolding and all those additional intensive supports are going to look like in

184terms of when our students come back um especially because there's a lot of a lot of documented regression and also um i have as being part of the of the dlac committee i have pointed out and requested that parents because there's a lot of lack of of knowledge and understanding of and i've seen it all all across meetings um from several parents and i've had discussions with some of them too where um there's not enough understanding so we need the adequate trainings and i include myself i have mentioned in previous meetings of this nature dlac elacs and um email back and forth with leadership that we need to um get the appropriate trainings last uh academic school year 2020 and 2021 we just got one training and i was pushing and pushing for that training

185i did go to a six-week training that i paid out of my cause which i'm grateful i was able to it was very affordable in terms of education topics involving english language learners equity and inclusion and also being a part of as an employee of napa valley unified school district i would highly recommend that that be also a mandatory training for especially top leadership i would like to see that and um in terms of last year 2020 2021 at least it wasn't and i went to all the meetings like i usually do the dlac meetings we didn't have a discussion about um parents getting together like we usually would do in the past with dr sarah williams who was the previous director of english language learners and we would do presentations to the board where

186we would suggest those of our recommendations and our input involving these important topics to better support our our are the learning of our children i didn't see that happening this past year i hope that that still continues because that's part of engagement and i do feel that that portion that also falls into them the master plan needs higher priority in terms of parents we need to be uh better involved and really yes if you can just wrap up please sure in the decision true partners in the decision-making process um with the district and um i'll continue more comments i have to say in in the next meeting one more thing that west said i had mentioned also and requested that if they certify training thank you ms ortiz thank you for your for your comment

187thank you mr bestinet next speaker please there's no further comment okay thank you um well we've now concluded this presentation we had discussion again all right okay we are moving on to item js um our package are action items so j1 a request to hire educator less than fully credentialed so moved second first by trustee gracias uh second by trustee dooley do i have any public comment on this item there is no public comment for this item thank you mr resident student board rep we're voting on item j1a um i thank you um all those in favor all right anybody abstain or oppose thank you all right we're moving to j2a this is the agreement between lynn carlisle and napa valley unified school district so moved second first by trustee gracia second by trustee dooley

188do i have any public comment there's no public comment for this item thank you student board rep hi all those in favor aye opposed or abstain thank you j2b agreement between marie butler and napa valley unified school district so move second first by trustee water second by trustee gracia do i have any public comment there is no public comment for this item all those in favor opposed or abstain thank you item j2c memorandum of understanding between sonoma state university and napa valley unified school district so moved second first by trustee gracias second by trustee dooley public comment on the side of mr bassinet there is no public comment for this item thank you student board rep hi all those in favor aye opposed or abstain thank you item j2d agreement between billy donegan and napa

189valley unified school district could we talk about this for a sec uh certainly trustee watergoing okay one of the things that appealed to me about um the presentation we heard tonight from west ed was that people are being trained you know the the goal is to train our our teachers we're pretty smart so that they can be the experts and um billy donegan is uh is a well-known consultant and she has worked for us um for 12 years and um and i attended some of the workshops and um i'm just you know uh do we have how long does this go on and what are the results and i guess i'd like to know the deliberate the deliverables at the end of the year because um the idea of training up our people to teach

190our people is extremely appealing to me jennings would you like to address uh trustee water's concern um yes i'm gonna um toss to um i think this um is it monaco or matt director manning or director manning is going to address sort of the the work that billy donegan has done and sort of the support she provides to our administrators um that's specific to um of initiatives so director manning or director ready if you want to weigh in on here sure i can go ahead and start and then pass to director ready so um billy donigan will be working this year specifically through the cal grant with mcpherson elementary school and silverado middle school she'll be working with the principals of those two schools and with the leadership teams of those schools to do exactly

191what you're describing trustee water which which is to build the capacity of the principals and the leadership teams to deliver on the promises that we're making around supporting for our english learners and improving the instructional practices so that are happening in the classroom so this really is about capacity building for both of those schools uh and the outcomes that we would expect at the end of the year are improved results for students and the and the the the sense of leadership that's that's being built amongst the the leadership team at both of those school sites thank you very much okay excuse me thank you very much you're welcome and director ready do you want to add to that as a follow-up following the uh el presentation i think it's important to note that part of

192the focus of these is really to to support uh specifically the sites with our teachers too around results for our english learners which we know will improve all language and academics for all students and so i think that's just in addition to building capacity the focus is really aligned to the work that's happening with our with our board priorities as well as a presentation you just heard from wested okay great that's good move to approve uh first by trustee gracias second by trustee water do i have public comment on this item there is no public comment for this item thank you mr bassinet student board rep hi all those in favor pose or abstain great thank you um great question trustee watering correlation to what we're just talking about j2e agreement between design for emergence

193and napa valley unified school district so moved second the first by trustee gracias second by trustee dooley do i have public comment on this item there's no public comment for this item i just will say that i'm pretty excited about this item um it's got lots of language in there that i um just really dives into designing and getting focus groups and users and all of that so um just want that in the record um all right we had a first and a second and no public comment student board rep hi all those in favor aye anybody opposed or abstain excellent thank you item j2f adoption of updated board policy 6158 and ar 6158 independent study so moved second first by trustee gracias second by trustee dooling do i have public public comment on this

194item there is no public comment for this item student board rep hi all in favor aye you oppose or abstain great thank you item j 3a spc number 71-21 request for surplus two relocatable classrooms at the old napa junction elementary school site so moved now second first by trustee gracia second by trustee chu do i have public comment there's no public comment for this item thank you mr bassinet student board rep hi all those in favor all right anybody oppose or abstain great thank you we're now going into informational items so this is item k1a taxpayer savings due to general obligation bond refinancing just want to say that it's really good anytime we can save our taxpayers some money that we proceed to do that and this was a well-executed plan to do so [Music]

195great thank you um [Music] then item k1b nbusd credit rating improved largely due to strong governance i would say well done to the board and to our executive team on getting this increased rating because it took a lot of hard work to get there another round of dittos makes it worth it late nights and everything in the early mornings conversations and thank you staff and board for the leadership okay so now we're on to item k2a this is stone bridge charter council minutes the february 2021 through june 2021 much better minutes much much better minute so good job stonebridge all right and now um additional suggestions and comments from board members and superintendent well i guess um my suggestion is something that could actually go to uh m but i'll bring it up now uh

196we have on our board now um a leader in uh a student leader on the issue of climate change and i was wondering if uh i'd like emily and her group to do a presentation before the board because we did pass the resolution a couple of years ago and you know you all have been hard at work since then do we have room to do it on the 19th she could do it for her um you know uh member presentation you know when we asked you whether you have to the the the youth the youth group right or did you want her did you want um our board student rep emily to share that during her student board rep a present oh you could do that too which would you prefer um either works for

197me um i guess in the interest of time i could do it during my share out okay and if you have slides or anything that you want to bring um just provide them to us in advance emily and we can have them ready for view during the meeting and if you need more time that's okay also let us know because we know school's what starts she's been very they've been very very active okay and um i just have um i i um just the english learner topic and so it was it's an area of passion in mind it's why i became an educator and it's um you know i got a i wrote a dissertation about english learners and so just this is um bringing up a lot of stuff for me good stuff but

198i one last thing i just want us to close with um as we dedicated a significant proportion of tonight's board meeting um to the needs of our english learners is that i just really want to caution us um as a superintendent to not view [Music] the fact that our students have to learn english in school as a deficit and that we need to remember that the english acquisition process in the k-12 experience actually our students are coming with an asset and it's the asset of another language and they have the gift and the opportunity to learn english in school and then potentially potentially leave our school system um you know assuming they still have their other language at home or whatnot they have the opportunity to actually become bilingual and biliterate um you know and

199and our students that are in our immersion programs have like you know laser-like focus on that and their experience but still our our students that like me i went to school only in english but i had spanish at home and um i have the gift of being bilingual and biliterate and so i just want to i want to remind we we talk so much about the improvements and the needs and the challenges but that this this is not a deficit and it's actually a potential asset in our mindset around that is really critical so i just want to close with that thought and and make sure that we do not take um take on the mindset of deficit thinking when it comes to meeting the needs of our english learners that's really important to me

200um i appreciate that very much dr masseni um i think we get we can get so focused on these assessments and the tests and so on and then their design for who and for what student and for uh and so that kind of um that lens is is really important so i i i did want to respond to that and i really appreciate that comment um and um because when you're looking at it the other way just sort of the approach is going to be very very different um so well that's why you're here um okay any additional comments um from the student or anybody all right so now yeah thank you trusty water agreed uh future agenda items okay all right move to a journey thank you first by trustee gracia second second by

201trustee water student board rep all those in favor all right we are adjourned have a good night everybody thank you