001[low level talking] Doug Paulson: All right, well, it is 5 p.m. on October 21st. I'm going to open this Board of Education study session. We are looking for any public comments regarding closed session items. Seeing none, we are going to adjourn to closed session. We will be back at 6 p.m.. [low level talking] Alright. Well it is 6 p.m. and we're going to reconvene this meeting of the Escondido Union School District Board of Trustees, and we're going to open with the Pledge of Allegiance. Miss Harper. Please stand. Ready? Begin. All: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Doug Paulson: Alright. All members are present. There is no report out of closed
002session looking for a motion to approve the agenda as presented. Motion. Zesty Harper: Are we raising our hand? I'll second. Doug Paulson: We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Motion passes 5 to 0. Looking for any public comments? Do we have any public comments tonight? Seeing none, we're going to move on to our study session, the Framework for the Future. And I would like to thank all of the teachers, principals, staff members who came out tonight who have worked very hard to prepare their presentations. We very much appreciate it and are excited to hear about the work that you're doing, understanding that this is a great first step and the implementation is what we're really looking forward to. All right, Mr. Oser. Rick Oser: Good evening, President Paulson. Board
003members. Superintendent. Doctor Ibarra. Cabinet members. Excitement is definitely the word of the day. We are really excited about this opportunity. Excited to hear our school teams embrace and share what they have been doing and not only what they've been doing, but about the future. Because really, this is the Framework for the Future. And so it's setting the course for the future. So, as you know, over the past several years, EUSD has established our Framework for the Future. The district has really embraced this work. This is now the fourth year working with learner centered, collaborative. And more importantly, it's about the teachers really embracing, the teachers and staff and principals and family members, embracing the work that is creating a structure that's going to create monumental changes in the future. The framework captures our learner profile,
004and you can see it up here with the six elements, as well as the learning model, which is personalized, authentic, competency based, inclusive and equitable learning opportunities. The framework is our North Star. It guides us as we develop learning experiences that help every learner, child, and adult reach their unlimited potential. Today's study session will focus on our continued efforts to actualize EUSD's vision and mission, which is at the core of our Framework for the Future. Great efforts continue to be made to put the framework into action. The Framework for the Future has five big moves. Today's presentation will focus will highlight several of these big moves. Big move number one focuses on school redesign. That's what we're here for today. We're going to hear some wonderful presentations about cohort 2 schools and the redesign efforts.
005The purpose of school redesign is to create engaging, ouTKome driven, future ready learning environments where students are active participants in their education rather than passive recipients. Collaboration is at the center of this approach, as the school community comes together to co-design learning experiences that align with the district's Framework for the Future. So I want to take a brief recap and visit all three of the cohorts that are now in the redesign process. So cohort one includes L.R. Green Elementary, North Broadway Elementary, Hidden Valley Middle School, and Mission Middle School. These schools continue to meet periodically to further their redesign implementation, focusing on their big moves as well as deepened implementation of the learning model. A significant part of these meetings is for the school teams to share their implementation journey with the other cohorts goals,
006and gather feedback on their redesign efforts. These meetings not only deepen the connectedness between the team members, but also create an opportunity for innovators at each of the schools from across the district to learn from each other. And you can see from these photos right here, you can actually kind of feel the amount of collaboration and and sharing of ideas, because that's a key part of of those sessions. So year three, so cohort one, which is now in their third year, they met already once this year on October 7th, and the ouTKomes were, as I mentioned, to continue the big moves implementation and refinement, deepen learning model implementation, and then the collaboration with the other ohort one schools. Cohort two, who's in the house [applause] includes Central Elementary, Felicita Elementary, Rock Springs Elementary, Rose Elementary.
007We did we did not practice this, by the way, and Bear Valley Middle School applause]. Also, I want to note Lincoln Elementary is part of cohort two, but because they have an administrator, a principal change, they actually will not be presenting at this point because they have some internal work to do to get everyone on board with their redesign efforts. So school redesign cohort two is now in their second year. Cohort two had the first meeting of the year on September 16th. The intended ouTKomes of this meeting were to strengthen and refine their big moves. The school teams focused on developing the five year plan. Remember, this is not just about the present. This is about the future. And so develop their five year plan, which is referred to as their scorecard. We'll hear from
008these trailblazers in just a few minutes. And I want you to notice on the photos here, just the intensity and the collaboration of the teams in in these pictures. Once again, you can actually feel that energy just through the photos. All right. Before we get to the school presentations, I do want to highlight two more aspects of the Framework for the Future and the efforts that are happening right now. So we have our third group which is cohort three. They're in year one now. That's Juniper Elementary, Miller Elementary and Pioneer Elementary. Mission Middle, because of their leadership change, they're also kind of teetering back and forth. They're taking a step back to cohort three for the beginning parts of this year. And then they're going to rejoin cohort one as the year progresses, just so
009that they can actually refine their mission, their vision, their model, and really do a deep dive into their school redesign structures. So cohort three started the redesign process this year. These schools have already engaged in their Discovery Day, which is a foundational step in the school redesign process as well as their initial meeting. The Discovery Day elevates students and educators' voices, identifies, As strengths and opportunities, and builds a shared ownership of the change process. Through these empathy interviews and class visits, the vision and priorities for redesign take root. So once again, taking a look at the photos and you could just capture the efforts that are there. The first row of photos is actually part of the redesign, or part of the Discovery Day where the team visits. They, they do stakeholder input interviews, and
010then they also visit classrooms and just gather lots of authentic data about the current reality. So cohort three has met on October 8th, and the focus was on professional development around student centered learning, design thinking centered on EUSD's Framework for the Future and a deepening of the understanding of the why behind redesign. That aspect is critical because you can't just engage in the work. You have to understand the why behind it. And then, as I mentioned, they've focused on analyzing the data that they've collected and laid the groundwork for school transformation. So before we get to the presentations, I want to highlight one additional aspect of the work that's been happening in collaboration with the Learner Centered Collaborative. So to address Big Move two and four, we're continuing our implementation of project based learning opportunities
011(PBLs). We we have acronyms for everything. As you know, PBL's are critical because they provide an enriching learning experience that allows students to demonstrate learning through an authentic, competency based approach. Through PBL's, students solve real world problems that promote learner agency, collaboration and ownership of their learning. Students also make personalized decisions about their learning process, product, and pace while increasing their voice and choice. PBL learning is a cornerstone of the Framework for the Future. So I wanted to highlight some recent professional development focusing on PBLs. Actually, one of those professional learning opportunities were just a few hours ago in this very room. Through our partnership with Learner Centered Collaborative, we have 40 teachers this year deepening their expertise in this area. The first group has already completed their three day training and the second group
012started today. The training not only focuses on learning the strategies, but also provides hands on, hands on opportunities for teacher teams to design and implement a PBL unit that they will implement with their students. Here are some photos of the teacher teams in action. All right, so now on to the really exciting part of today's study session, the cohort two school presentations. So we have five schools who are presenting. And first up is Rock Springs Elementary. Who gets the magic wand. Elizabeth Ramirez: Is it okay to remove. Thank you. We want to move this along as well for you as well as us. So I'm very excited to be part of this cohort and we are year two or cohort two. First thing you do when you want to change the world, you get a
013change adjective group with you who represent a very diverse group. I want to first welcome our librarian, Kate Montes, who also has a student at our school and a student at Bear Valley. Representing our special ed department and ESN specifically, is Miss Danielle Parker, our community school specialist, Jami Schmottlach, our third year, I'm sorry, third grade teacher, teacher of the year and every other grade as well. Sorry. Sarah Sandige. And moving from fifth all the way down to kinder, she has extraordinary background, Miss Hannah Echeverria. Yes. I talk up my staff. I love them dearly. So we started this move a few years ago because we were very lucky to have a 30 year anniversary. We got to move forward with our logo. We got to refine what our mascot, Rocky, looked like. And we
014revisited our slogan, and moving it to roadrunners of character keeps succeeding, with the center being us being aligned to the character counts pillars and keeping that at the heart of all our work. We relooked at our vision and our mission. And again, it's the empowering words that move this work forward the adjectives of empathy, community involvement. And right there again in our mission, character development. So it just kept coming back as the core to everything we wanted to do. Rock Springs staff member: As we move into Big Move number two, building strong and inclusive communities and creating safe spaces. One way that we've been implementing this big move is through our nests. Nests are monthly meeting with kindergarten through fifth grade students. Last year our meetings really focused on the EUSD learner profiles. And this
015year we're focusing on the Rock Springs character counts pillars. Our students really love these nests. Every time one of my nest students see me around the school, they say things like, you're my nest teacher. Or do we have nests this week? Students in the separate class setting are participating in this. It's a great opportunity to engage with their general education peers. It provides structured and supportive environment for practicing communication skills, self-regulation, and social skills. Moving on to community circles. Across all grade levels, classrooms are intentionally building community through daily connection practices such as morning meetings and restorative circles. These experiences nurture empathy and enhance social emotional skills and promote a deep sense of belonging. I think on the next one, no. So next is our Roadrunner Retreat and it launched last January, and it's been
016very excited that there's a place for kids to go during our lunch time to really give them an opportunity to relax, to recharge, to make connections in a safe environment. It was funded through EEF grant that we did, and it's been amazing that we had this opportunity to create a space where they could feel safe and have fun and make new friends, and we're excited to see how it expands and hopefully opening more to reach more students. Elizabeth Ramirez: Rick just spoke about the project based learning. That is something that we very much dug into. That was a big thing. In June, I allocated or leveraged funds to allow our teachers to work in June and create project based learning lessons two units per year. Some of the lessons aligned directly to and I appreciate
017Escondido already had some of the set for us about the science field trips, and I want to make sure I had them correct. San Elijo lagoon, Elfin Forest and coastal routes. They're just connected to them and each grade through third through fifth. But every grade level is creating two of these project based units. Rock Springs staff member: Here's a list of our projects for the fall. I help to design the third grade project, Animal Adaptations, where students are going to research various animal adaptations and use them to design, write about, and create a sculpture of a brand new animal. Students and our extensive Support Needs program are also participating in project based learning. Some of our kids push out with the general education grade level projects. But our team also created projects that align with
018our functional skills curriculum. Our big move, number four, is celebrating high quality work. So this year we're collaborating across grade levels to define clear expectations for excellence. Students are learning to recognize and produce high quality work, and we'd like to celebrate that through showcases, displays, and portfolios. These are some examples of some rubrics that we've come up with or collaborated with our team on to help students be able to see what is expected of them and so that we can have a clear rubric for all grade levels to look at. Our big move, number five, is empowering teachers, students and our community. We have a diverse staff comprised of seasoned veterans and new teachers who have great ideas and strategies to share, and we have prioritized professional development time to allow for more collaboration, while
019also providing a chance for staff to demonstrate instructional strategies during our meetings. I requested to present to my colleagues at our last staff meeting, I gave a talk on how we as a staff could improve our school reading culture, and teachers were very receptive to it and have already employed strategies I suggested, and I came out of it feeling empowered and valued by my principal and my colleagues. One way that we empower students at our school is through our student leadership team. Our leadership team is made up of multiple groups, including our announcement team, our assembly team, our welcome committee, our problem solvers, and our library leaders. I am fortunate to be a leadership advisor with my own library leaders group of five very driven students. Their biggest idea was to be able to support
020our youngest Roadrunners, our TK students. And the library leaders are now coming in during TK library classes to read with the students and help them choose books. Yes. Hi. Community isn't just a neighborhood around us. It begins within the gates of our school, where we build a strong sense of belonging for every student and staff member. From there, we extend our connections outward, partnering with parents, families, and local organizations to strengthen the bonds that support our students' growth and well-being. So some of our examples would be Teacher Night, Love Esco. We do our Lunch and Learns. Nature Collective and also neighborhood health services and some of the new things that we are implementing and going to implement, the monthly newsletter, that has been a big hit and also Future Roadrunners. And it's a story time
021for kids who have not started school. Parents walk their kids, or they might stay and bring in their littles for story time with Miss Kate. Our next big move is Clear Identity, and we'll be using the Riasec inventory which helps to identify unique strengths and interests. Everyone is a combination of these characteristics. No right or wrong answer. But we'll be tying these into our next meetings. This year, our staff is learning more about Riasec before we start implementing. Elizabeth Ramirez: Overall, I know at the beginning they shared this is a five year timeline, and that's really where we're at. And as we have our big moves, we make adjustments as it goes. We're looking at our leaders. We never knew we'd have library leaders who wanted to give up their recess and go read with
022TK. I never knew some of these things would just evolve out of something else. It followed the big moves. So as we get more feedback, as we get more input from people and move forward, I want to really hand it to Kate to having toddlers come into school to read for library time as well. We just keep adjusting and evolving to the feedback and the needs of our students and our staff and our community as it continues to change. So we wanted to end with, you know, we are amped for greatness. We really evolved into this whole "Rock Springs Rocks". And you can thank them that I didn't play the music coming out. So but thank you. That concludes our presentation. Do you have any questions? Zesty Harper: Oh, I just wanted to give you
023a compliment. I really appreciate you doing the inclusion of the special ed in, in all of your thought processes as well. And I love that you have been able to share with your peers ideas. And they're actually taking it because I think, you know, peer to peer, they're really going to absorb that better than if it's coming from something up high because you're in it every day. So excellent. Thank you so much. It's very exciting to hear. Elizabeth Ramirez: Thank you, Miss Harper. Doug Paulson: Other questions or comments? Thank you guys so much. We look very much forward to seeing all the wonderful things you do in the future [applause]. Rick Oser: And now next up, Bear Valley Middle School. Jason Wrzeski: All right. Guys. Ready? Alright. Good evening chool board and cabinet members. This
024year and last, I've had the opportunity to work with all of these amazing individuals. And we are very proud and excited of what we have implemented so far and are excited to share our progress this evening. I would first like to introduce our redesigned team for 25-26, starting with our assistant principal, Miss Rall, Casey Vogel, our STEM and robotics teacher, Jolynn Busch SAI, Cynthia Sabbs-Hall, eighth grade, social studies, Camille Flores, seventh grade ELA, Elyana Sotelo, SAI, and sixth grade math science Christy Blake. Bear Valley staff member: So far, our redesign journey has included the following steps this year. Empathy work, which we implemented during the 23-24 school year. Design sessions where we took part in a variety of team activities to help narrow and refine our focus. School visits where we visited three different campuses.
025Bear Valley Planning Days where we came together as a team to further the work that we were doing around our redesign. A Discovery Day at BVMS where we gathered feedback from numerous stakeholders. And finally, we gave a pitch to our staff, various committees, and recently the school board. We did that just at the end of last year on our journey and our big moves that we have developed for this school year, after all of the work we put into our journey the following is what evolved and the highlighted words came up often in our empathy work and has become the main focus of our redesign, which includes focusing on creating more leadership opportunities for students, creating more opportunities to have community partnerships, and having students showcase their voice through portfolios. Jason Wrzeski: After refining our
026focus last year, we begun the implementation process this year along with creating success metrics. Members of our redesign team will now share our rollout of our new mission and values, and will also share the implementation work we have done so far this year, along with a few examples. Bear Valley staff member: On the screen is our new our school's new vision and mission statements. During our week of welcome, all of our advisory classes had time to go over these new vision and mission statements, and we broke down what it meant and what it would look like at school. So what do we want our students to say, and what do we want our students to do in order to carry out our mission? Our new motto, Keeping It Real, guided our first school wide student
027showcase. This event allowed students to demonstrate their understanding of our core values through collaborative activities created within their advisory classes. We continue to reinforce these values daily through our common language and engaging activities, both inside and outside of the classroom. And our big move number one is student portfolios and our new mixed grade level advisory periods. Students are articulating their understanding of the student profiles. They're connecting this understanding to their own accomplishments, and then they are gathering evidence from their work and compiling it into what will become their portfolio that they will showcase later on at the end of the year. And big move number two, Student Voices. Students will be able to verbally identify how they have demonstrated each learner profile through the Portfolio Showcase presentation, which will take place in June 2026. Leading
028up to the showcase advisory period, teachers are providing opportunities for students to practice presenting their portfolios to their peers and teachers. Our goal is that students will be able to effectively articulate their demonstration and understanding of the learner profiles. Okay. So. Okay. So this year, we built a community partnership with the FTC robotics club from San Pasqual High School. The super nerds. And this award winning group is made up of high school students and high schoolers come to Bear Valley two days a week and work with students ranging in age from 12 to 14, sharing their expertise and knowledge with construction, operation and design with the use of robots. Additional community partnerships include our Builders Club and the partnership with the Key Club, also at San Pasqual, and then continue to work with LR Green
029and BVMS supporting their race at work. Building partnerships with our other two feeder schools. We have the American Heart Association and various science fields in our community supporting our dinner with a scientist and others. The goal in year one is to develop seven partnerships, and we're well on our way. All right, big move number four is collaboration. So currently as a design team, we weekly meet every Monday before a meeting, before our staff meetings to collaborate and create an effective staff meeting agenda. We also have this past month worked on creating examples of portfolios for students and a collaborative Google Classroom for teachers to share, and examples and ideas. Our big move number five was leadership opportunities. And we have expanded our Explore classes, the after school program, with different classes for the students to
030take. We've also expanded in our elective classes where students have the opportunity to take two elective classes instead of one. And we've decided that through data collection. So it replaces their personalized learning. We've also done work with students to show them how to do leadership, such as even small classroom roles and assignments that they are allowed to do and identifying different ways that they could use their voices, not just at home, but also at school and, and in different clubs that they're involved in. Jason Wrzeski: And as a redesign team, we've created a five year plan to map out our implementation of our big moves and have started work this year on how we will be measuring our successes. After starting the implementation process, we have realized that our plan is not perfect and in
031fact messy at times. But with the continuous input from all stakeholders in this process, we are moving the work forward in a positive direction and look forward to what Bear Valley will look like four years from now. Thank you. Questions. Comments. Zesty Harper: Can you elaborate a little bit more of what you have in your success matrix and what that's aiming towards, or. I know it's probably not done yet, but. Jason Wrzeski: It's very new process. We just met, I believe, less than a month ago. So they're like Smart goals in regards to at this time will be doing this, but we don't have that really ironed out yet. We just started that process. Zesty Harper: Okay. And then how have the since you guys are the only middle schools today, how how has the
032have the students taken to these new initiatives? Are I mean and they're middle schoolers. So we you know, they're not going to tell you, but are they enthusiastic? Are they engaging in it? Jason Wrzeski: And I share this often at some of our meetings, too, with the language that we're using with our learner profiles like empathetic collaborator, you can hear students talking about that, and they're able to identify that. You can hear staff talking about that. So the language is out there. And I also I often say that even our parents, sometimes when we have issues they'll be they'll email myself and say, you know, how is my kid an empathetic collaborator if you're doing this? So they're using the language also. So it's getting around and it's getting out there. Zesty Harper: Perfect. Thank
033you. Jason Wrzeski: Yes. Doug Paulson: All right. Thank you very much. Rick Oser: And next up is Rose Elementary home of the dolphins. Laura Ruggles: So good evening, President Paulson. Doctor Ibarra, cabinet and board of education. We are Rose Elementary School, and we are definitely excited to be here with all of you this evening. Yes, I do have to do this too. I've had the incredible privilege of working alongside a team of dedicated professionals who lead with positivity, embrace change, and are deeply committed to seeing Rose school thrive. I'd now like to invite them to introduce themselves. Stephanie Schiman: I'm Stephanie Schiman, and I teach second grade. Rosalee Calderon: Rosalee Calderon. I teach kindergarten. Jennifer Hill: Hi. Good evening. I'm Jennifer Hill, first grade teacher. Karina Martinez: I am Karina Martinez. I'm a proud parent
034of a fourth, second, and TKer, as well as a registrar and attendance clerk at Rose. Laney Hughes: Hi, I'm Laney Hughes. I teach fourth and fifth grade separate class. Ashley Meglich: Hi, I'm Ashley Meglich and I teach second grade. Sarah Hansen: Hi, I'm Sarah Hansen, and I'm an intervention teacher. Last year, our team conducted multiple interviews and surveys with the staff, students, and community. With these insights, our team co-created mission and vision statements that we shared with the school community for feedback. That feedback helped us refine our statements to truly reflect our shared values. From there, we developed our new school slogan, "Make a Splash" as you're here [repeated splash sound effect]. It represents our belief to make a meaningful impact. It represents our belief in every student's ability to make a meaningful impact with
035personalized opportunities to grow, lead, and contribute to our community. Jennifer Hill: All right. So this process was definitely a co-construction. We definitely had to get lots of input and feedback from all of our stakeholders, from our community, from wondering, what does our community want from Rose school, what are they interested in? And that came out on our Discovery days. Through our empathy interviews, we were able to survey staff, both certificated and classified leadership team. PTA parents, community partners and students. Those empathy interviews with students were the most fun, I think, and we got a lot of information. And at the end of every interview, we asked these stakeholders to tell us what's one word that they thought of when they thought of Rose school. And here is our word, cloud. Laney Hughes: So our design
036team worked together to create five big moves that we would like to share now. The first one is regarding the mission and vision statement. As long, as well as the new slogan "Make a Splash". We updated the mission and vision and also created the new slogan. We also created anchor charts for each classroom. So every classroom has one of those anchor charts that you see on the screen that have the new slogan, the mission and the vision statement. In our weekly dolphin TV. The principal message highlights a different aspect of either the mission or the vision statement, and in our bi weekly or bi monthly pods, we will also be highlighting a different aspect of the mission and vision. And for example, last week we highlighted the word inclusive and we did an activity about
037friendship and how to be inclusive. Ashley Meglich: Our big move, number two, is an expansion of our pods, which are across grade level meetings or our groupings. This is with the purpose of building relationships, increasing engagement and improving attendance. We've already seen a huge positive impact with our upper grade students being able to be leaders and role models for our primary students. And we are measuring our impact through two, two surveys that we have listed there. These surveys are happening now and then also will happen again in the spring. Stephanie Schiman: All right. Big move number three is increasing or sustaining our fourth and fifth grade dolphin delegates are the provides our big kids with leadership opportunities, including supporting our morning assemblies, reading to primary classes, presenting weekly school updates on our DTV news TV
038show, and providing tours to new students and visitors. And then we are building on this. We are having our student leadership go down into even second and third grade, where each pod has a podcaster who we voted on, who will be meeting with Mrs. Ruggles once a month to help refine our pod content, and also to report back any news to their pod. Karina Martinez: For our big move number five this one talks about service projects and community partnerships. What we want to continue to do is foster our current relationships, but also reach out and build new community projects. For example, we have we want students to be involved not only in the organizing, but also the advertising and helping out. For example, if we do a drive and packaging and just putting things together
039to get them involved. What we ultimately want is 100% of our students that will have the ability to support and be supported by the greater community. Rosalee Calderon: And last, but certainly not least, is our big move five. Is our community circles. Each and Each week every class will join in a group to discuss different topics. Such as, you know, to build connection within the classroom. Right now we're starting to do it. Every teacher has committed to doing it at least once a week. Eventually we're going to be growing in this for as this year continues. They will also have as need arises, compared, you know, if there's some behavior issues that need to talk or restorative circles as well. During our staff meetings, we are aim our aim is 85% of staff meetings. We
040will have our own community circles before the staff meeting begins. Laura Ruggles: Excuse me. So, as you heard, we've really made a lot of strong progress at Rose. In the first stages of our redesign. Community circles are taking place. We've had staff meetings with the community circles, and we're really hoping that all of that is helping strengthen across the connections across our campus. We've introduced new leadership with our second and third graders becoming podcasters. We just love that. And then this year moving forward this year and into next year, year three, we're really looking at learning more about PBLs and planning to expand that work into maybe 1 or 2 grades this year, 2 or 3 grades next year, and moving into further along down the road. Our community service projects are underway. You saw
041that Geico sponsored us this year. We have many community partnerships at Rose that we're so grateful for, and we're hoping that our students can learn with those and learn from those and give back to their own community. And then finally of course, we really want to celebrate. So in our fifth year, we plan to do a lot of celebrating that of these things that we've put forward in our plan, we're going to definitely take time to reflect and refresh. Refresh. And like Mr. Wrzesky said, it is a messy process and we're learning as we go that some things need to be changed. But we know that at the end of this all of our dolphins will Make a Splash. So thank you. [applause] Doug Paulson: All right. Laura Ruggles: Questions or comments? Doug Paulson: Yes.
042Quick question. Your Dolphin Delegates. How many are there and how are they selected? Laura Ruggles: So our social worker goes in in early late September and does a presentation about it. We have anywhere between 20 and 40 dolphin delegates divided into three groups. One group does all the Thursday flag assemblies, one group does dolphin TV, and one goes into classrooms in the primary grades and reads to younger students. So it's about 20 to 40 students each. So we divide it in half. So it's half the year and then in the spring as well, 20 to 40 students. Doug Paulson: Thank you. Zesty Harper: I just had a quick comment. I do like on your pods how you have used extra time so the teachers don't have to come up with that every cycle that that
043we've taken something off their plate that they just need to implement and plug and play, which is really nice. And I think that's a great use of time and funding for this event and this, you know redesign. So thank you. Laura Ruggles: And I'm just going to give a big shout out. We have an amazing teacher, Julie Sherwin, who is the spearhead behind all of our [inaudle] lessons. And so we're so grateful for her. Zesty Harper: I know the one I saw was real. I mean, that was great idea. Moved right along and had great activities that they were all engaged in and got moving. And it was a really great job. Laura Ruggles: Thank you. It's a lot of fun. Doug Paulson: All right. Thank you all so much. Rick Oser: And our fourth
044school who's presenting tonight. It is Central Elementary School, home of the Cheetahs. Sharill Cortez: Good evening board president Paulson, board embers, cabinet and colleagues. I am so honored to share with you where we are in our our ongoing redesign journey. At Central we live by the motto Central Pride Community wide. Our story continues to be one of collaboration, teachers, students, families, community partners working together to make learning more engaging, equitable, and meaningful for every child. This work is driven by an incredible team. I am joined by Dannie Hampshire, our MTSS and community school site specialist. Brenda Hampshire. I'm sorry, Brenda Heil, our math coach, and Felicia Hutchinson and Andrea Von Esch, our fourth grade teachers. Our trailblazers. Each of them plays a key role in helping our redesign evolve and thrive. Last year we realized
045our three major initiatives the EUSD Learner Profile, our redesign partnership with the Learner Center Collaborative, and our Community Schools implementation were not separate efforts. They were three doors leading to the same goal creating the conditions where every child and adult feels a deep sense of belonging. That guiding question: do our students, staff and families truly feel they belong at Central? became the heartbeat of our design. So we began by listening through classroom observations, empathy interviews, family surveys, and student focus groups. The message was clear students wanted stronger peer connections, families sought inclusion and staff wanted shared purpose. That feedback became our roadmap for action. From that listening emerged our new vision and mission, which continued to guide and ground our work. Our vision says, at Central, we are more than a school. We are a
046community. Our mission calls us to foster an inclusive environment where every student is empowered to learn, lead and achieve excellence. These statements anchor every decision and practice on campus to share how this work is impacting our students, teachers, and families. I will hand it over to Dannie Hampshire. Dannie Hampshire: Thank you. At the heart of our redesign is the student experience. Each month, Learner Profile Awards celebrate students and community members who model traits like empathy, creativity, and collaboration. With learner profile progression posters, students can visualize their growth, set goals, and understand what success looks like. And through student coalitions such as Safety Patrol, Central News, Peace Patrol, Pay It Forward Club and Student Council, students lead assemblies, plan events and model school values. These experiences empower students not just to participate in school, but to
047shape it. Turning belonging into leadership. Behind every moment of student leadership and belonging is a teacher intentionally designing for it. Our students continue to our teachers continue to apply strategies from Doctor Doug Fisher's Belonging In School, engage in our school wide building thinking classrooms book study, and use learner profile progressions to co-create success criteria with students. We've also brought our leadership teams together into one guiding coalition, uniting PBIS, grade Level Leadership, School Site Council and our Community Schools Advisory Council, creating alignment and shared purpose across our school. To strengthen our staff community, we hold a Monday Morning Roar, a short, uplifting gathering where we reflect, share opportunities, offer acknowledgments, and review reminders. This weekly ritual continues to build connection and collective purpose among staff. Our redesign work extends beyond classrooms. The Community Engagement Center has
048become a hub for belonging, a welcoming space for PTA, volunteers, and family learning events. Through meet and mingle nights and learner profile recognitions for families and partners, we're building relationships and shared ownership that continue to strengthen over time. Families, staff and community partners are learning and growing together. Sharill Cortez: What makes Central's redesign truly unique is how we've reimagined leadership through our guiding coalition. This diverse team of teachers, classified staff, families, and community partners lead with purpose so that every student learns, leads, and belongs. We've unified our leadership across PBIS, grade level leads, school site Council and CSAC into one cohesive team that aligns initiatives and strengthens school culture. So each meeting centers on reflection, collaboration, and continuous improvement. It's more than a committee. It's how we live our mission of shared leadership and collective
049voice. On the next slide, you'll hear from our trailblazing fourth grade team and our math coach, educators who are bringing this redesign to life in classrooms every day. Central staff member: As part of our redesign journey, our fourth grade team is focused on building community both inside and outside the classroom. We've hosted family staff events that brought everyone together beyond the school day, deepening relationships and trust. Inside our rooms, flexible seating has transformed how students collaborate and problem solve. And our morning community circles help students start each day feeling connected and ready to learn. Participation has grown from less than half to nearly 98%, showing the power of belonging in action. And through the work done during collaboration time and with our book study, central teachers are sharing ideas, sparking creativity amongst each other and
050experimenting with new strategies, which in turn leads to students growth. Our teachers have created spaces where every child feels seen and where voice and choice are valued. Central teachers are intentionally weaving belonging and student engagement into daily instruction to support the whole learner outcomes identified in the learner profile. Sharill Cortez: So as we move forward, we're deepening what we've begun embedding belonging practices into instruction, sustaining partnerships through our engagement center, and strengthening shared leadership through our guiding coalition. Our redesign remains a living process when we reflect on, refine, and recommit to every day. At Central belonging is not a program, it's who we are and who we are becoming. Thank you for your partnership and for believing in the power of community driven redesign. Together, we're building a school where every student, every staff member,
051and every family continues to learn, lead and belong. Questions? Zesty Harper: Thank you so much. I just wanted to comment. I'm so glad that the community room is getting a lot of use, because I think that's an amazing design and layout. And then I remember talking to your group last year, and the fourth, actually the fourth grade team with Brenda. How you felt that need that it needed that the school needed to be more part of the community and how you can reach out to everyone around. And so it's it's great to see that come to fruition, all the steps you're taking to get there. So it's great to see it. Keep up the good work. Doug Paulson: Thank you all. Thank you all for everything that you're doing. Rick Oser: And our final school
052who will be presenting is the Felicita Bobcats. Felicita staff member: All right. Good evening. We are the redesign team. Where Bobcat's Roar. We're going to introduce ourselves. We're first going to start with our OG redesign team. Stephanie Higginbotham: We merged our redesign and our leadership team into one. So we've added a few new members. But our original team is me, Stephanie Higginbotham. I'm the principal. Good evening. Heather Hodgson: I'm Heather Hodgson, math coach. Tanya Zammit: Tanya Zammit, first grade teacher. Jacqueline Stepan: Jacqueline Stepan, third grade teacher. Carla Hodge: Carla Hodge, second grade teacher. Katie Lyon: Good evening. I'm Katie Lyon. I teach fourth grade. Lorrin Hernandez: And I'm part of the new redesign team Lorrin Hernandez, kindergarten teacher. Paula Ortiz: Paula Ortiz, fifth grade teacher. Sonya Shaffer: And you don't see me on the slide.
053But I am Sonya Schaefer. I am the well, I mean, my name's not on there, but I am the MTSS Specialist Community Schools site coordinator. Stephanie Higginbotham: So when we started this work we were brainstorming what makes Felicita unique. And what stood out to us was that many of our students come from countries all over the world, and therefore they come with a global perspective. We see this as one of our greatest strengths, and we wanted it to be our assets based approach. So this became the core of our work and the identity of really our whole redesign. All of our stakeholder input led us to a new mission and vision. We kept hearing students and staff say that they wanted learning to be applicable to the real world. The other word that kept coming
054up for us was impact. We wanted to embolden our students to impact the world around them, not just be participants. So our mission is empowering learners to solve real world problems that impact the global community. Well, we want to initially impact our communities, we want to raise leaders that grow up to have an even more profound impact on the world around them. And this led us to our vision. We strive to help every student recognize their unique value and their ability to make meaningful contributions to their local and global communities. In short, our slogan is Think Global, Act Local. Katie Lyon: Our our first big move was to focus on global learning. And that led us to partner with the California Global Education Project. And they showed us this competence framework, which is the circle
055there on the left where we are getting children to investigate the world, recognize different perspectives, communicate ideas, and then ultimately take action. We are really excited that that also led us to the Sustainable Development Goals created by the United Nations there on the right. We are also piloting something called I-earn that's helping with some of our problem based learning that we're focusing on. So if we could go on to the next. One way that we're taking action, we've taken quite a bit of action on this first big move. We've had the California Global Education Project come out and give some PD to our teachers the first week of school, and then they're coming back out in November to talk about some global book bags. And it uses literature to bring some of those SDGs (Sustainable
056Development Goals) into our classroom. There's some pictures up here of some problem based learning that we've already started. The first one is actually Mayor Dane White with our fourth graders just yesterday. They did a PBL where they wrote letters to their government about things that they thought were going wrong in their community or problems that they had. And we were lucky enough that he was willing to come out and listen to them. They had a Q&A with him. He kind of told his story. They were super excited to have that authentic audience at the end of their PBL. That next picture is our second grade team, and they are participating in trout in the classroom. So they're learning all about the habitats, raising trout, I think soon. Right? Tomorrow, and then hopefully releasing them eventually.
057And then in the bottom corner, there is some of our fifth graders who are working with the waste diversion and sorting. We know that schools make a ton of waste, so they're going to that clean sanitation SDG and helping us sort waste and learning about how to do that at the school and at home. Heather Hodgson: We start every fellow student families safe. Stephanie Higginbotham: We wanted to give you the whole immersive experience. [song starts: We Are Family by the Pointer Sisters] I got all my sisters with me. Because we are family. Get up everybody and sing. We are family. And I got all my sisters with me. Cause we are. Heather Hodgson: So we start every Felicita Families the same way. Our students walk in and as they walk in, we greet them with
058singing "We are family". Our second big move is all about creating deeper connections through Felicita Families, which is multi-age learning communities that meet once a month. They are designed to bring students together, help build lasting relationships, foster a strong sense of belonging, and really bring our Felicita culture to life by making sure our students are empathetic collaborators. These special mentorships will continue year after year, and the relationships will grow over time. To kick things off, we started with a micro school last year with just our redesign team, and then this year we have started our new Felicita Families with the entire campus and have met with our new families twice so far. [load sound from music abruptly starting] Sorry I didn't want to do it this time. These photos show our families in action this
059year as students come together across grades to build relationships, mentor one another, and live our Felicita culture. It has been very empowering having our older, older students take on leadership roles in their families this year. Carla Hodge: Our big move three is learning with discovery classes, so using input directly from our students, we are designing discovery classes that connect real world, real world learning to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The EUSD Learner Profile connection of empowered learners, creative problem solvers, critical thinkers and effective communicators. These classes are meant to be fun, engaging, and meaningful, something that not only excites students, but also gives them a reason to look forward to coming to school. So this big move was originally slated to happen next year, but there's so much excitement and so much enthusiasm at
060Felicita that we are going to pilot this in the spring and bring some of these classes to life even sooner than planned. Tanya Zammit: Our fourth big move is all about developing confident, capable student leaders who are not only ready to lead, but ready to speak, share, and inspire. Every classroom at Felicita has implemented student greeters who welcome visitors ensure their learning. Students will facilitate student led conferences and participate in presentations of learning called Showcases, building their voice and presence. Alongside Student Council, our Student Ambassador program gives students a stronger voice in real ways to lead on campus and in their communities. We're not just building speakers at Felicita, we're building leaders. And here's a little bit more. So every day, in every classroom, we're building effective communicators, empowered learners students are articulating what they're
061learning. We're starting PBLs where they're getting their voice and their choice, and they're working to meet their goals together. Jacqueline Stepan: Big move number five is creating staff leadership teams. At Felicita, we are fostering a shared leadership model. Each team member has had the opportunity to join one of three teams. We have dedicated collaboration time during staff meetings to set goals and create action plans. We have already met in our teams, the three teams are curriculum building, public relations and culture as part of our Learner Profile focus on empathetic collaborators. During our meeting we document global learning work, share ideas, and create action plans to keep moving our efforts forward. Sonya Shaffer: We do have a very detailed five year plan, but this is just a summary and a timeline. We are not rolling everything
062out like big time this year, as you can see, but some of the things we discussed are on here, and we'll be measuring the impact of those moves with our Healthy Kids survey and also our own internal surveys as we go along, just to check in to see how everything is going. Paula Ortiz: We want to establish a clear and strong sense of identity as bobcats at Felicita. And when you hear the word bobcat, we want you to envision the kids and how they wear that bobcat name with pride. So to bring that vision to life, we have a video of our students, in their own words, sharing what a bobcat means to them. [rhythmic music playing during video] A Bobcat has a global perspective. A Bobcat is a leader. A Bobcat is a public
063speaker. Bobcats impact their community. Bobcats are a tight knit family. Felicita Bobcats think global, act local. Doug Paulson: All right. Thank you so much. Felicita staff member: [inaudible], right? So cute. Let us know if you have any questions. Zesty Harper: No, I don't have any. I'm just kidding, I do [laughing]. So if you had one of your like, your graduate kids that have already graduated. Well, I'm sorry, promoted. Like, they're in eighth grade and they came back to your campus. What would be the biggest thing that that would really they would notice the change. I know I gave you the hardest question of the night, I apologize. Stephanie Higginbotham: Yeah. I would say I would hope they have that feeling of family. We say once a Bobcat, always a Bobcat. So I would want them
064to come back and just know that even though they're at a different school, that they would still feel loved and have so many people that know them because of those multi-age learning communities. That's something that you know, we are rolling out different things at different times. But in year one, we're starting Felicita Families with a bang. So we've already got that up and running and they the kids that left, you know got a small taste of that with our micro school last year. So every year that's just going to get stronger and stronger. Zesty Harper: Excellent. Thank you for your presentation. Oh, yes. Yes. Please, please. Katie Lyon: I had a fifth grader last year come back because they love to come visit, right. And so a sixth grader now and they walked in and
065that was the first thing. They were like how is Felicita Families going? Are you still doing it? And how many times are you doing it? So I think that really shows. And they were in such a small. I think we did three sessions last year only at the very end of the year. So I think that shows the power in those. And it sounds like a lot of the schools are doing those cross grade level groups and how powerful they are. Zesty Harper: Excellent. Thank you. Doug Paulson: All right. Thank you very much. Rick Oser: Well, I think we wanted to maybe take a moment and bring all the teams up for a photo to celebrate their efforts and memorialize this wonderful evening. Doug Paulson: And I think on behalf of the Board of Education,
066as you're doing that, we would like to thank everybody for coming out tonight, sharing your plans. We very much appreciate the time you've put into this and the time you're going to put into it in the future. Hey, guys, as you're setting up, we're going to adjourn the meeting. Next regularly scheduled board meeting will be held on Thursday, November 6th, 7 p.m. EUSD. We are adjourned.