001Okay. Okay. I'm going to call to call this meeting of the SAO board of directors to order on today, Tuesday, October 7th, 2025. And uh in attendance, we have uh three board members, Christian Gerson, Dr. Roberto, and Michael Jones. missing board member or or director William join us. Uh from the staff we have Mr. Winchell and Mr. Rip. I don't see any other guests on Zoom. >> You have Ken Park here. >> I'm here. Dan Park. >> Ken Bart. >> Ken >> sitting out there in front of me on the screen. Yes. All right. Yes. Ken Bark from DMS is with us tonight. Also, I think that takes care of guests and attendees. We'll now go on to public comment. Is there anything anybody would like to share for the uh for the meeting uh
002that is not on tonight's agenda? Seeing nothing, we will move on to number three, approval of the agenda. And I have a motion to approve the agenda. >> Second. >> Okay, we have a motion in the second. Mr. Thice, how do you vote? >> I. >> Roberto, how do you vote? >> I. >> And Michael votes I as well. The agenda is approved. Move on the consent agenda. Is there anything on the consent agenda that we need to pull off for further discussion? Not hearing any. Can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? >> Roberto second. >> Thank you, Gersham. Gersham, do you how do you vote? >> I. >> And uh Roberto, how do you vote? I. >> Michael votes I as well. The consent agenda is approved. Going on to report
003items and uh Mr. Bark and Kent, we are ready for you for the Delta monthly update. >> And do you want me to share or what's easier? >> Um I can share. >> Yeah, >> problem. I turn that down a little bit. Um, may I get the um sharing request? >> Yes. >> Okay. Go ahead. >> All right. Alrighty. Uh, good evening everyone. Uh, tonight I'll be presenting SA's um August financial update. >> One moment. All right. Are we good? Okay. >> All right. So, this page is a summary narrative page uh which summarizes my report. Uh so these will be covered through my presentation. All right. So on to the um budget summary page. So uh on the budget versus actual summary page, we are comparing the uh July 256 July preliminary budget and
004the actuals as of uh August 31st, 2025. So we're about uh 17% into the fiscal year, you know, accounting for u July and August. So thus far uh we received about 321,000 in revenue, which is about 3% of the budgeted revenue and we spent about 1.6 mil uh which is about 16% of the budget. And on to the details uh which is basically the same numbers uh from the summary page but in more itemized details. So um starting from the revenue uh revenues are and will be light uh in the earlier months as you might have noticed uh which is uh very typical uh because they are mostly reimbursement based and they are they do flow in a rears meaning we spend it first and then and we report that number and then they will
005um uh send us the money for those expenditures. uh except you know some of the uh monthly flow of the revenues which are LCFF those are um those will be coming in but most of the uh ones I mentioned on the notes section uh those are reimbursement based so those will be coming in a little uh they will be a little lagging behind the uh the percentage of the uh years completed All right. On to the expenditures. Uh most of the expenses are you know being spent just as expected. Spending about spending about you know 15 16 17% of the budget thus far. uh and some of the uh budget lines are frontloaded uh due to the nature of the expenses uh which I noted uh on the notes column as well. >> Ken, there's
006a question I have about the uh insurance. It looked like it uh went up 12%. Uh yes. Uh that's um uh looks like insurance did indeed go up uh since we last budgeted back in July. So uh but rest assured this will be the onetime payment. Uh so that won't be going up any uh we won't be paying that um for the rest of the year. That is a year annual payment. >> Can I clarify something though, Ken? >> Yes. >> Um so that's for our charter safe insurance for our school. However, they will also Sable will also be covering the health insurance premium increases for our staff. Is that somewhere listed on here on one of the expenses? >> Uh, this will be under >> 3,000 uh employee benefits. >> There we go. I
007just wanted to clarify that. >> Yeah. So with with that 12% increase is that part of uh what we're seeing in all the other insurance sectors uh in terms of increases whether it's house insurance or uh healthcare insurance uh is insurance in general just going up. >> Uh yes in general everything's just kind of been going up um uh year after year. So it is it is not um unexpected. uh is pretty typical along with the other expenditures um you know accounting for inflation and uh just just a general increase in you know health care costs and uh everything else. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. All right for the details. Um this page is the monthly cash flow. Uh it shows the accounts for the uh just the cash portion of the fisc uh fiscal
008uh reports. And uh it looks like the cash is expected to be healthy in healthy position as well. Uh starting off the year with about 5.6 million in July 1st and as of August 31st we have about 5.1 million. um which also translates to 197 days of cash and um and at the end of the year we are expected to have around the uh similar level of 5.4 4 million uh or 209 days of cash. And uh this report will be updated every month um for you know every DMUs or uh every budget cycle. All right. Uh last but not least, we have a balance sheet. uh it shows the kind of a snapshot of SA what SA owns and owes uh on August 31st. So the school um has assets of you know total
009about uh $13 million whereas we have a liability of uh 5.3 million uh which makes the difference uh of the two uh a about 7.5 million which is the kind like a net worth of the of the school. Um so the bottom line uh everything seems to be good thus far and nothing is u out of the ordinary and that concludes the presentation. Thank you very much. >> Thank you Ken. Any other questions for Ken? All right. >> Still looking healthy. >> Yeah. >> Yep. >> Okay. >> Right. All right. Thanks everyone. Yeah, thank you Ken. >> Appreciate that. >> Let's move on to the expanded learning opportunity program. >> All right, one second. The elop update Give me one second. Okay, back over. sharing. >> There you go. >> Okay. >> All right. So,
010I'll go over the ELOP 2526 school year program updates with you guys. So I want to start a little bit about talking about what we did during the summertime and go to the next slide there. >> So uh we had ELP from June 16th to July 18th. And so two of those weeks were the prior year and then two of those weeks were for this year. So just so you understand that was four weeks but two of those were for the prior year. So we had a total of 57 students attend one or more ELOP activities over the summer. So it kind of depended we had a lot of different offerings. And so we ran the Barton reading system. I think we talked about that at a different board meeting and that served 40 students.
011We had the X Academy program that you brought in. >> Yeah. Yeah, that is. Yeah, we started it with the ELP summer. That's kind of where we got the jump start for that and trained our staff as well. Then we had X Academy that was 15 students and then we had Friday field trips. We did field trips each Friday and so you know roughly over 40 students would come. It depended on which field trip it was. Our numbers fluctuated. And then we had outdoor training. My coach Paulina and the same 40 students that did the reading program also rotated through that. And what I don't have on there is some of the other activities like some of the Khan Academy we did or some art we did. Our staff did an amazing job leading those
012activities too. So we had to program those days to be nine hours. Right. Next slide for me please. >> So real quick, real quick. And I think I've shown you the slides. I'll go real quick on this. But uh we partnered with reading excellence center. Excellence Center. This uh an old colleague of mine, he actually works at Fresno now, but he started a reading program. It's been really successful. And so what was kind of really neat about this program is we were able to train our staff members and they're able to practice. I just had a meeting with them yesterday up here just to kind of sum up what it's uh quarter one look like. we're still doing this reading program and it was really amazing to watch Hector which he's in that second photo
013there with the red binder and he was showing Emily who has younger kids and isn't quite as far along but he was going through the whole process and as he's doing it I'm just like wow this is why this works like the way he's breaking apart these words and using the tiles and focusing on the vowel on the different sounds of the vowels are like apples apple apple a so it's like the way it's spelled out so it's really helping our students you saying that some of the students that had sounds that were a little bit off because they're bilingual, right? So that occurs. They're able to correct that and they were like they can able they can hear the difference now. So we're continuing that program that was part of ELOP in the summer.
014Next slide, please. >> We also sent 15 students to X Academy and that was a STEM enrichment program and it's cool because it's local, right? It was right here in town. It was at um >> Sequoa. What was that? What's that school called? >> Sequoa. Thank you. It was at Sequoa. So they got this beautiful large area to work to have the the program in. They do mass circles and camps. And so that was a week long. And then the next thing >> we did our Friday field trips. We went to Point Lobos. We went to the tide pools uh Gil Gardens and we went to the Monterey Zoo. And uh these are all pictures from the trip except for the one that says Gilway Gardens. I took that one offline. But the others are
015actually our trips. And uh it was really neat seeing the two I guess m those are lions I guess. So, I thought they were mountain lions. >> Those are mountain lions, right? >> Those are regular lions. Okay. >> I took a picture of two mountain lions. So, maybe that one's off white, too. But anyways, >> but uh >> never seen a mountain. >> The mountain I was really surprised to see a pair of mountain lines. Are usually pretty They're like solo animals, right? >> Well, that is not a pair of mountain lions. >> That's definitely not mountain lions. Those are just Thank you. Yes. >> But all the other photos we took um and so Okay, next slide. I was like, I thought I took that photo of mountain lines, but now I'm looking at
016it going, that's not mountain lines. >> That's good. >> All right, next one. >> All right, so we're also partnering for the school days to extend our days. So, ELOP also has an extension needed for school days, right? So, we start at 8:30, so we need to extend it to 5:30 to get our nine hours. It does go a little bit after with the YMCA. So we have right now 50 middle school kids who have signed up for this but depending on the day the attendance is looking more like 20 days 20 kids rather and sometimes that fluctuates and is a little higher. Our contract is up to 30 so we're still within that range but 50 did show interest and actually have all the paperwork in to go. So, uh, what YMCA does is
017they provide us with walking buses or bus, you know, it's like essentially they bring staff here and walk our students to the Y. On Monday and Wednesdays, they have a 3:15 and four o'clock uh, dismissal time. And Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, they have one group that goes at 4. And so with SA and the YMCA, it includes a youth membership for the weekend and program day access. And when they're there, they can participate in basketball, kickball, swimming, volleyball, board game, and board game room. You can see some of the SA flyers on the right there. They uh have like free swimming and volleyball and kickball. Some of those flyers they made up for us. Next slide. All right. So then we just have we just finished our ELB fall uh five days of trips and for
018those trips we took 49 students. Now, some days were a little bit less, but our highest attendance was 49, which is funny because like we were supposedly supposed to cap at 40, but they just show up. They're like, I heard this. I'm like, wait a second. What's going on here? But, uh, we had a waiting list. They just showed up anyways. But luckily, I ordered a big enough bus, so we were able to accommodate the extras. Um, so we went to California Academy of Sciences on the first Monday, and then we went the we went and saw the 30th anniversary of Toy Story. Went to Blue Ball Park. They love that park by the way. It's the one in Capola or no SoCal actually. And then uh Santa Cruz Theater and Woodox Pizza afterwards. We
019did the SJ Tech Interactive. I got a roller coaster activity. You can kind see a photo at the bottom right. We went and saw the IMAX theater and uh when we came back to school, we did some STEM and art with students. And then we did the Arboritum in Santa Cruz UCSC uh as well as paired that with a trip to Natural Bridges uh park. And then the last day we kept the pre-chill again and did Sandra's theater and this time went to Pizza My Art and again students got back a little earlier. We offered some STEM activities, some building kits and some art that um Miss T ran which is really good. So So those were really amazing trips and those are the ones we just had. So all right. So what did we
020learn over time? So the field trips really the most successful ones are things that have hands-on activities which seems pretty obvious, right? So San Jose Tech Academy sciences. Oh, the zoos. Both the zoos were great. Point loss. I was on the fence on whether that kids love that. I They love that trip. Gway Gardens movies when it's the right movie, right? That's the one they like. Uh hands-on museums. Um so Winchester Mystery House, they loved uh they really like that one. Uh Natural Bridges, Grand The So like things that are viewing only. So we did take them to the D Young Art Museum for example. uh kind of a miss. They're like, "Okay, we'll make this a fast walk through, but they saw some interesting things. We had to cut that a little short." We
021actually paired that one here with the uh Academy scientist, so that worked out pretty well. You just walk across the street. Uh the arburitum, the uh in the botanical garden seemed pretty cool, but can't touch anything. It's really about looking at plants. Some of the plants look weird. They like that, but that one was kind of a miss, too. So, we're kind of tailoring in like what kinds of things are students connecting with. If we want to do the botanical garden, then we're going to need to do a lot more front loading, have like almost like a scavenger hunt, right? So really thinking about how to how to structure it better. Summer programming. Uh I really liked working like X Academy, the YHCA reading excellence, the group out the gentleman out of Fresno, right? But
022I want to continue to develop this and the team wants to develop this to include things like Orchard School does a camp, right? Santa Cruz parks runs camps too that we can have. We just need to build those relationships. So those are the next things we're going to be looking at. Live Earth Farms is another good example. There's actually a lot of smaller things like uh there's a woman in Appto like art, right? I don't remember what it's called at the moment. I called her last year and is so we're going to build out this summer. I like to build that out more. There are like little things you got to think about though like we have to provide transportation. So we start you know offering all these things then we may have to start
023offering rides too. So it's all balance and so we got to look at that. And then uh YMCA extended days. Uh we've added eighth grade into theou for YMCA. So now is it sixth through 8th grade that can be that can attend. Uh the walking groups solve the problem of students not being able to attend fast 40 and then go to the Y. And we're also adding in additional ELP full days with the YMCA which you'll see have changed on the calendar. That's why there's some changes in the calendar. So we're going to try out some of those days. So what that does is what's kind of nice with that is it does they do the lifting of the curriculum design and the programming. So right now we're programming 30 additional school days and um
024by giving say five or six to them that actually gives like a lot of time it gives us the time to really think through what we have as it kind of keeps us from rushing right so um I appreciate that so that we can come back and the days we provide here we can really program out well. So >> yeah nine hours is a lot to plan for. >> Yeah. Well, yeah. What happens is like um it gets to be a lot like we finish graduation and like that Monday I had the first ELOP day. So then so like I'm pretty involved in running graduation and working people there. And so that's taking almost 100% of my time. And so then I'm also trying to program nine hours a day and give out tasks to
025different employees. Like Hector's really good at doing the journals for example and Miss T is really good at designing the art out. And so like I'm penning those things off. But it gets to be like if we could have some more time to sit down as a team and really think it through a little more, we're going to be able to provide better services to the kids. So, um, that's where we're going with it. So, that's great. So, and the X Academy stuff like that where we can make those part when we can continue those partnerships, those those are very really thoughtout programs. So, they're great. So, yeah. Any other challenges that we should uh walking the kids over to YMCA? We've had some complaints from the YMCA YMCA staff members over student behavior. So,
026we addressed that. Um, you know, if the kids are going to be disruptive repeatedly after we've spoken to them and their parents, they don't have to go to the LOP program. So, we can remove them from that. We did. But, I think that's been the biggest challenge that I saw terms of partnerships with YMCA uh after school. And then, yeah, I agree with you with the rest of the field trips and summer programming. We've kind of made a change like in the field trips instead of running them a full week that'd be five backto-back field trips. I get a little bit of staff burnout around the fourth day. So I'm pretty like yes to everything. But even by like day four I'm like this is a lot. I'm back on a bus going to San
027Francisco again, you know. So we're kind of now what we're doing is doing like a three and then two days and having it split over two weeks. And that's been really helpful too. Actually the staff came back to me and was like thank you so much for not doing these all in a week and dividing it up. So then on Monday again we went Monday Tuesday Wednesday at Thursday Friday no students I took Friday off just to kind of this is during inter session right then back on Monday it's like I'm back at 100%. And bringing it again so is the staff they're back like okay let's do this and so the students they sense that too. So really thinking about like how the energy levels of the staff too and how we design it
028is what so now you'll notice in the calendar there's these kind of three two combinations that occur that's the purpose behind that. >> Um yeah X Academy is a great partner is started by uh a husband and wife team. The husband has a doctor in mathematics and I believe the wife does as well. Her name's Barbara Meister and she um does math competitions which I'm just so excited about. We had quite a few participants in this last year, but they have national and international math competitions and it's like the level of math that goes into these uh is incredible. And in addition to that, they have a whole underwater robotics team. And the team that they assembled last year through the X Academy took like third place worldwide. They had the competition somewhere in Europe
029or no I think it was in Michigan but this year I think it was in Europe. And so uh just having able to be able part of the be a part of this X Academy. I'm excited what we can turn this into and maybe uh kind of motivate students especially our uh students who are accelerated to go compete in the kangaroo math competition, math olympi, math olympiads and um the international math competitions are all like just great stepping stones to being ready for rigorous college education. So uh we had they had their first math workshop this past Saturday and I know we had at least five kids go out to that. So hopefully we can continue with that. Cool. Any questions for you? >> This is great. Keep up the good work. This is awesome.
030I love it's almost 10% of the school was dissipated. >> Yeah, it's a good Yeah, it's a good point. >> Yeah. So, is the program just for sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students? >> Yeah. Like this re So, it's kind of more focused on sixth initially, right? And but we can bring in I'm not sure how we word worded ours, but we definitely bring in sixth, seventh, and or seventh and eighth. I think we can go up to 10th grade. >> The financing is for the sixth grade specifically, but if you have offered it all the sixth graders and there's still space, then you can offer the programming to seventh and eighth graders. >> So, the majority of those on these most recent trips were sixth graders. And so, I would say on that day,
031we had I think 49 go or something or 47. I filled the bus like every there was not a like with the chaperrons I had a 56 seater. We had every seat. I was like a little nervous if we if we go over I just drive. It's fine. I could I can drive a few kids if I need to. But um I was like, "Wow, okay, this is getting popular." Opposed to when we first started, I'd get a bus and fill half of it and I'd be like, "Oh, we got to like get this out a little bit more." But the word's gotten out. I think one of the fun stories when I picked up water on the way over over here at the Chevron, the guy like recognized what we were doing. He's like,
032he saw my shirt. He's like, "Oh, you're at Saba. Oh, you doing those trips for the middle school kids?" He's like, "My niece goes there. She was up at San Francisco and he's like talking about it. He's all excited about it. I'm like just buying water from this guy. But I was buying cases of it. So he knew it was for a group. I had brought in students. We bought like four cases. And so uh he was so stoked. I'm like, "Okay, the word's getting out." So >> how many sixth graders are there? >> 90 total. >> It's pretty good. >> Yeah. >> I can't really exact breakdown that one list has it, but it was mostly sixth graders. maybe 35 sixth graders you should say. >> Yeah, something like that. So, >> yeah. So,
033no, I think it's it's going well and I think the more we do it, the first year obviously we had that uh some struggles and trying to get attendance and now it seems like it's really starting to fall into place and we can make make it sustainable and exciting for the kids. >> All right. And for the Barton program, there's 40 kids involved in that and they're all sixth graders. >> Barton program right now is focused in sixth grade. And so I need to go back and look at the exact numbers. It's not quite 40 now that we're rolling. You keeping the group sizes a little bit smaller. Part of that is the balancing pulling them out of PE time or so we're looking at maybe scheduling in a different time during the day. So,
034but right now, um, we're working groups about three students per interventionist and that seems to be working pretty well. But that's kind of what the meeting about was about yesterday is just when can we not pull the kids. So, sometimes PE might have a test like a like the mile run for example is a bad day to pull the students out and trying to kind of figure out how do we build the consistency now for quarter two which I need to we need to sit down and have a meeting about too. Um, >> I think you went over, but how are you identifying the kids that participate in the bargain? >> So, first they it's off the STAR exam first and so they take the STAR first couple weeks of school and then that'll give
035them a reading score, but also when they come in if it I can give them a test called Dibbles and they're on the ETH edition. It's out of the University of Oregon. It's basically like the reading records if you recall those. >> It's a little simplified from that, but it's a pretty quick test. And what I can do, what I do is I give the second grade one first because that one really builds looks at um can they sound out words? Actually, it looks just like the Barton system. They give them nonsense words, for example, see if they sound out the letters of the word or say the word even though it's nonsense word. Then they give them a word list and then you do the actual reading of a of a paragraph. Everything's timed.
036It's one minute each each page. And then that all gets calculated into a score. So you can kind of get a reading score. is even a little bit more refined off of that. It's a little bit the star gives you a pretty good idea. But then if we're questioning if a student's really that low, like we had a student that scored pretty low, I went ahead and pulled in my office and had him do that test with me and he he actually I mean kind of unfortunate, but it was true. He actually was that low, right? Maybe he was slightly higher, but so he was in the right place, but the teachers wanted me to. But right now, the bar system has assessments built into it as well. So they'll do a unit and an
037assessment and so they can graduate the students out as well. So we have two students right now that we might graduate out of the system and open those spots open open those up for other students to come in. So we're really been taking a close look at reading too and I'm so glad that Mr. commercial brought Barton system to SABA, but I almost feel like we need to expand it is what we're talking about in our onetoone this morning because we have some sustained reading for students who have reclassified as fluent English proficient after lunch and uh according to their star score on reading comprehension it gives them okay if you're going to participate in accelerated reader 30 minutes a day reading for 30 minutes a day gives them a point total they should get
038to by reading books and taking quizzes and probably only half the kids had a passing score midway through >> and so they're not reading as much as they should. Um and we do have I think we could expand our library more which we're going to do. Um in fact that's going to be installed later on this month and we can expand the offerings that we have but it's tough because you want to have middle school interest but in but sometimes it needs to be more elementary school Lexile levels at least to start. And so we're looking at ways we can fill the library with that, but also just like what more can we do to better support our students with their literacy skills. And that just it's just keeps on jumping out to us. Yeah,
039>> obviously we're identified as being low on for our EL supports on the dashboard last year. We're having a meeting with the county um this coming Monday for a PD um to just go over what additional EL sports we can provide. But it all kind of blends together, I feel like. So >> yeah, it's definitely relevant to the Barton system. Like we had little notes in there which should talk about later, but like how can this how can we use some of these strategies in a classroom setting? And so like Hector who has been subbing a lot um >> well he's actually the seventh grade teacher now >> essentially. Yeah. And so he knows what it how this would look in a classroom and he's doing the Barton system interventions. So he's like, "Oh, here's
040the things I would do in the classroom. here's how I would support students in in spelling or prefixes, suffixes, and Latin and Greek roots and like how you break apart words, all that. I mean, all that stuff, right? Um, >> so would you say it's primarily word attack phonetic approach to being able to pronounce words? >> Yeah. So, it's like a phic like for example like some of those sounds. It's a bilingual student, students will not quite get some of the sounds right. And so it's almost like it'll be training them. Each uh vowel sound has a an item that goes with it. So a is apple, right? For example. And so when you get say you're spelling map, you'd be mapped with your finger. M. And then they have to spell it with their
041finger on like a piece of paper but just imaginary. M A P. All right. So then that's like real basic. That's like book one >> multiodal. >> Yeah. >> Or sensory. >> Yeah. They do the centy and they're they're using tiles the whole time. Like the whole program is using the tiles the whole time. They don't come and go. They're there like so then as the books continue on. I actually have tiles over there if you want to look at them. But then they get the blending sounds like like the sh, the ch, and then a bunch of others I didn't even know existed apparently. And so I was like, I guess those are all I I didn't know those were actually splitting sounds, but okay. But so it just shows you like how how
042much like you take for granted. It's really difficult, right? Like like wow, there's a lot here to teach. So it will individually teach those, spell those words, have them sound it out in various ways and and it continues to progress down that route until they get into like a reading comprehension past book five. Then it starts to go more reading comprehension. We're like hovering around. So the advanced kids in this program are like halfway through book three. Maybe they got through one and two pretty quickly because it is pretty simple, right? But they're going to slow down in book three. Book four, they're going to really slow down. So I'm curious to see where we get this year >> and where does comprehension come into it at some point they're reading these >> later like
043book five. Yeah >> book five. >> Yeah book five. So the bart system is very much like what I like that example I gave you about uh understanding how to pronounce the words how to sound out all those pieces. The comprehension has to be brought in separately. It's like another piece you got to bring in. It does it later but if you wanted to say teach both you'd have to do Barton. If you want to do additional comprehension that need to be done I mean preferably in the classroom right that's what I'd want to see additional support in the classroom for comprehension but they have dibbles has two tests really they have the reading record as I call it I think they call it something else but that's kind of what I refer to that's
044the old school reading records I used to give those to teacher and then they have a something they call the um the maze maze I don't know what the acronym stands for right now but it's a full just a comprehension test and so we actually reviewed that yesterday too to see if we want to start bringing in the maze exams to see where the read comprehensions are for these students. Use that as another piece of data. So anyways, yeah, that'd be the second piece too. >> Um I was reading in the paper last week about uh a new reading program that the district's implementing. Are you familiar with that at all? >> PC. >> Yeah. >> Oh, I don't know if I am. They're actually uh paying stipens to teachers to go through the training
045because the training is happening beyond their work hours. But it sounds like the latest uh bandwagon that the district's going with in terms of trying to come up with a solution to get kids ready. >> Yeah, I'm curious. I know. I was pretty happy with So, my daughter's in second grade. She's at Valencia. um that's our neighborhood school and so I went I'd been to the parent conferences and just had some I don't want to be I don't want to be ask questions right like and I've been really happy with the the teachers seem they're really on it like the way they're teaching reading and um but I guess I'm curious I can message your teacher just ask >> I think this is just being introduced so I don't I don't even know if they've
046got it off >> okay yeah I'm very I'm curious then um my wife teaches at high as well so She might be able to poke around and find out. So, >> I don't remember the name. >> All right, >> that sounds great. >> Thank you for your presentation. >> Any other questions for Mr. Winell? >> Thank you so much. >> Okay, let's move on to the fall interession updates. Ready? pretty small colors. Glad you noticed, Michael. Thank you. Okay. Um, so, uh, false intercession update. Uh, Mr. Mr. Win went over a lot of what we did, but I just wanted to there was actually a lot of things happening over the last two weeks. Um, so I just wanted to start off with the calendar like Mr. Winell mentioned. We did uh ELOP activities Monday,
047Tuesday, Wednesday of the first week and then Monday and Tuesday of the second week. Um, also during the first week of intersection, we offered high school credit recovery. I'm going to go over that in just a moment. And then we had a group of eight high school students go out to Oregon and they completed a college trip out there. uh they'll come and present to the board at a up upcoming board meeting, but I was unable to connect with them post trip since they were out of school. So, want to get that ready to go. Um and then the second week we had another Southern California College trip. They went out Wednesday and they got back uh late Thursday night. And then finally, we had a band room construction going on Thursday, Friday, and Monday.
048Um so, I'm just going to give a few highlights about each of these items. All right. All right. So, our credit recovery, we can take a look at this. Our total number of students participating in credit recovery uh was 18. The pass rate was at 67. We still have two students with uh extensions, but it's looking possibly like they might need to take the class again. And if that was the case, it would drop down to 55, which was low. Um you know, we have an assistant in the classroom as like a tutor as well as their teacher online. And for a couple of the classes, specifically algebra 1B and ELA 9B, um it was a challenge to get uh through those classes. >> Just for my uh make sure I'm clear about this, credit
049cover refers to students who went through the the first quarter of school, >> first semester of school >> and uh for short credits due to their performance. So, this is an opportunity uh after the the inner session credits. >> Yeah. So, if I could just Yep. That's basically it. Just want to clarify a couple things. It's only for high school students because they need those high school credits to graduate from high school and also to enroll in UC or CSU college. Um and credit recovery is they have to have passed. So, there's no freshmen here because they're still in their first semester. We send home progress reports, but that grade's not final. So the only final grade is the one in December and then again at June. So all the students here, the 18 here
050failed. If it's 1B, that means semester B or the second semester. If it's A, it's the first semester. They failed a semester and they need to make that up. If they failed both semesters, say they failed one algebra 1 A and algebra 1B, then they'd be reenrolled in the class. But if they just failed one um semester, then they have the opportunity to do this credit recovery. For the student who did not pass algebra 1B during this fall credit recovery, they will likely be reenrolled into algebra 1B with the teacher live in person for the second semester. Um the only issue with that is that pulls out a current class that they have and so then that gets them further behind in terms of being able to graduate on time. Sometimes they can make it
051up their senior year. senior year, there's always a little bit of more space in terms of the credit requirements, but um you know, that's why we're offering this is to kind of keep them on path on pace so they can graduate on time. Did that answer your question? >> Yeah. And so when you say semester, their school year started in August, right? >> Correct. July 29th, actually, and it'll go till December 18th. That's semester 1. Oh, so >> so these students failed sometime during the 2425 school year. >> Or for some of the seniors that were in health, they may have failed it a couple years ago. >> All these students have transcripts and it shows their accumulation of credits and these 18 are the ones that >> were selected >> are missing credits due
052to their performance. >> That's correct. Yes. Um and then the random culinary arts like sometimes they just have minimum requ uh elective requirements they need to meet and this senior was short his credits so then we enrolled him in this this course. So that's why culinary mers are up there but then the rest are all you have to take here you have to take ELA history and biology and algebra. So so um yeah you know I think the system more or less works. Um, you know, I'm not sure why the passage rate was down this year to essentially 55%. Um, so that's something that, you know, I talked to the kids, they all seem to say think that they were doing okay, but then if you look, it gives them a rate. It's like, what
053percentage of the course are you done with? It's really, it's really easy to follow. So, it's like, oh, are you halfway done, threequarters done, fully done, as well as your overall grade? Sometimes they'd come to me and they'd be like almost done, 85% done, and they'd have maybe a I don't know, maybe a 72, but their overall grade would be a 48 or something. I'm like, you're probably not going to pass this course um unless you do some retakes. And they are allowed to do retakes, too. So, um but you know, if they struggled with it, and the other rule that we have is if they they can get an extension if they get to 70% by the first week. So that means they have to complete 70% of the course in those five days.
054They're here 8:30 to 3:30 every day. So that's plenty of time to get for most students get to that point. And then if they need that extension, we'll grant that second week. Um if they've shown that they've been mostly passing the class and they've got most of the class done. >> You highlighted the algebra 1B and the ELA 9B because >> that's where there were students with extensions. >> Uh yes. and also exceptionally low pass rates. >> So, um >> is there a reason why that happened? >> Um students involved. >> I think it was a little bit of the students involved. um you know to be honest they did a lot of the work and they would fail the test and so I think they have some underlying skill deficits that they need to
055uh work on and it might be better if they're in algebra 1B again. You know it's funny just talking about the Spartan system. I almost feel like we need to have something similar for the math skills that I mean we use Khan Academy is probably our main intervention for and it works great. You can just dial it in to whatever grade level you're at but I don't think we're doing enough of that. So the students end up being in these classes and especially gets worse and worse as we go through where it's algebra 2 or geometry or even pre-calc yet their underlying math skills are still not fully developed. And so for these three um at least two of them I think they need to probably be back in the class and they'll just have
056to work on those underlying skills so they can be more successful. And then for the ELA um similar story one of the students was caught cheating used PT and his teacher caused that. Um, and so she didn't fail him automatically, but she'd also failed a number of other assessments on the essays that he had to write. So, he's working on that. >> Based on your gut assessment, what percentage of students are using chat GPT and not getting caught >> at home? A lot. Um, here they can't get onto it because of the web filters on their Chromebooks. and then the phones are more or less not an issue because of our new no new phone policy but if they have the ability to take it home they can either get chat to be on their
057phone and then it's a big deal and um yeah it comes up quite a bit our ELA1 teacher actually moved to a system where he's only doing paper and pencil essay submissions >> um but yeah, you know, nobody has came to me with a suspected chat GPT cheating but they don't always let me know like it's a discussion post or a assignment, they're probably not going to come to me. But if it was a, you know, a summit of essay, then they would let me know about those. Um, so that has not came up this year, but yeah, it's ever present. All right. So, while this I wish this was higher, I wish it was 100%. Um, but we'll get there. I did want to call out something and this was the historical. So, I'd
058looked at inter sessions from fall 2020 to this past fall interession, and it's interesting to see the number of students who we had enrolled in credit recovery. It peaked in 2021 with 95. Um, then we came back down to 2022, 68, then 63. We only had 14 last year, and then we had a little bit of an increase this year at 18, but the numbers are, you know, a fifth of the of what they were four years ago. That's mainly a product of COVID and what happened with COVID. >> Oh yeah. >> So, um it's a pretty manageable program now. It was a lot to get just all these all these students getting the because a lot of times they need a lot of support too. There's a reason they failed the course. Um so
059it was tough to get them the resources that they needed. Now I feel like our program I mean they basically had a one to three or one to one tutor for most of the kids who were here. So they should that's why I was kind of surprised that all of them didn't pass. But um that's where we're at. >> That's good news. >> Yeah. Um Oregon College Strip uh that was led by our director of parent engagement, Shelley Perez, and our new college counselor, Mle Burge, and they left uh on Sunday at 8 a.m. from San Jose. They went to Portland and then they did two universities a day. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Portland State and Lewis and Clark, University of Portland and Reed College and then William Met um Lilette, excuse me, and West Oregon
060University and then they finished off with Oregon State University. I saw a lot of students today wearing their Oregon State Beaver uh hoodies and so it seemed like that must have been a hit at least from just uh seeing the gear again. They're going to come out here in probably November and give an overview of how their college experience, college trip experience went. Um, >> a an agenda. >> Yeah, they did a lot in a short amount of time. Uh, there was one minor hiccup. Um the last day uh Wednesday night from Wednesday to Thursday uh they were in Corvalis and we booked a days in you know days in maybe not the nicest but according to they both called me and they're like hey we cannot stay here. Um it was just they said
061there was it smelled like pot everywhere and there was just really un not clean in a lot of the hallways and everything. So I went ahead and just said like see if you can get to another Holiday in Express or something like that which they did. So but we had to eat the rooms that we had already purchased at days in for that night. But at the end of the day if they had to stay in this unsafe place probably was not worth it. Um so that was probably the only hiccup. I'm sure we'll hear about that uh when the students come to talk about it. I just I also didn't want them to after having this great experience. I know that'd be the only thing they'd talk about when they came back. So um
062>> I'll be inspired to write a letter to the uh >> administr the management of day zoom. >> Yeah, exactly. So I could go into detail, but I'll let them do that when they they get back here. >> Yeah, exactly. Um so that was the Oregon college trip. That was the first week of inter session. Then the second week of inter session, we had a SoCal college trip. Uh the student up on the left hand side of the screen is a student who graduated from Saba in June this past year. Um and uh so they saw him at uh UC Santa Barbara. Um and so they drove down on Wednesday, October 1st to UCLA. They toured to UCLA. They had dinner in Westwood. um they got to meet a movie producer then they were there
063that was one of the teachers who works here who's um visiting um was one of her classmates when she went to UCLA way back in the 80s. Um and then on the second day they went to University of California Santa Barbara and then Cal Poly St. Louis baseball. Um sounds like they just had a lot of fun. They all had great stories about using the walkie between the two minivans on the way back um and doing fun games like that. So, uh, it was a great experience for all of them and hopefully they apply to some of these schools. >> Were they in a bus? >> No, we did, uh, two minivans and so was Darren Commons, who's our US history and, uh, senior project teacher. It's the teacher in the green hat right there.
064And then Miss Gallagher is our anatomy and environmental science. She's also the UCLA alum, and she's the one who organized it. And she drove one van and he drove the other. >> Oh. >> And so we rented those from um, Enterprise here in Watsonville. All right. And then, um, the final item I had here was the band room construction. Um, we were able to get Selt in the Sun, our general contractor, out on Thursday, October 2nd. They completed demolition, which consisted of um tearing out there's about six closet doors, full-on doors there, and then um uh some framing around the doors. So they called all the