SUHSD Board Meeting April 23, 2025

001I call this meeting to order at 4 pm. Um item number one on the agenda or item number two is close session. So now take public comment on close session items. There is one person in attendee. Are they Oh. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Um, please raise your hand if you have any comments on closed session agenda items, which are items 2.1 to 2.4. Any other public comments about any or 2.5, sorry. Any other or 2.6? Yeah, sorry. Um, any comments about non-cloed session items? We'll have to wait until um our open session meeting. There are no comments in person. Are there any comments online? Please raise your hand. There are no comments. If not, the board will recess to close session. Good evening and welcome to this meeting of the governing board of the Sequoia Union

002High School District. My name is Sautic. I'm the president of the board. Um we're now on item number three which is our reconvene to public session. And we'll um start with 3.1 which is sharing our public protocol. So um just to remind our audience both in person and online members of the public who wish to remotely provide comment during the meeting should use the raise hand feature during their agenda item if they're online. Um speakers must raise their hand during agenda a item 8.1 the public comment portion of the meeting in or in order to comment on topics not included on the approved agenda. If you want to speak about an item on the agenda in person, please fill out a speaker card and indicate the agenda item and hand the card to Laura at

003the dis. When the requested agenda item comes before the board, the speaker will be called forward. So make sure that if you have a public comment on non-aggendaized items, it's actually a public comment about items not on the agenda. Otherwise, we will redirect you to the appropriate time to make public comment. Um, with that, we can move on to item number four, which is a roll call. Trusty Cruz here. Trusty Thompson here. Trusty Gin here. Vice President Coup here. President Nory here. A quorum is present. Um, next we'll move on to item number five, which is approval of our agenda. So, are there any changes you'd like to make? Otherwise, could I get a motion to approve? Yes, I would like to to the chair. I'm sorry. We do have a public comment for five.

004Okay, sure. I'd like to call up Abby Corman. Good evening. I'm going to be blunt. This is either a rude or a poorly planned agenda or there's things happening behind the scenes the district has not but should explain. This is a packed agenda and most of our recent meetings have ended by 8. By how you've structured this agenda, you're purposefully making your constituents who clearly care stay here until I'd guess at least 900 p.m. if not later. Why? Whether intentional or not, the framing of the agenda today shows the same pattern many stakeholders have been complaining about for at least the past for for years. You're showing your community that policies matter more than people. Ethnic studies teachers did not know their board presentation was an action item. They had to rally over a religious

005holiday weekend because they're fearful of a no vote on something that was supposed to be an update, which would logically then be anformational item. Because what are you even voting on? You don't have a say in curriculum. You're confusing and scaring ethnic studies teachers and forcing many to stay on late tonight to share its value, even though they must be ready to teach teenagers at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow. Through continued pressure, one part of the community has pushed the board to change its agenda for going on three years now. They clearly care. I'm going to have to reach out personally to students first to ask how what part of Brown Act specifically they actually cited to get their issue on their agenda as a vote, but their issues literally last. for both of these groups. Regardless

006of my position on these issues, I feel some type of way about this because I'm staying till the end. That's late for us. Thank you. I'd like to request to um pull 18.1. Okay. Does anyone else have any Okay. So, could I get a motion to approve the agenda with the revision that our superintendent proposed? Motion to approve with revision. Second. Um in favor I I or do we have we don't need to do roll call. Okay. That motion passes unanimously. Is item number six um report out on close session? So there's a lot here. So give me one second. Okay. So starting with item 2.1 or or sorry starting with item 2.2 two, a majority of the board voted five to zero to grant claimants application for leave to present a late claim um

007simig claim number 2024-01067 presented to the district on March 21st, 2025 only as to those events or occurrences alleged to have taken place within one year of the submission of the application um between March 21st, 2024 and March March 21st, 2020. 25 and deny the application with respect to any events or incidents alleged to have occurred prior to March 21st, 2024. It was unanimous and and a majority of the board voted 5 to0 to reject the claims claim number 2024-067 presented to the district on March 21st, 2025 with respect to events or occurrences alleged to have taken place within one year of the submission of the government claim between March 21st, 2024 and March 21st, 2025. With respect to any events or incidents alleged to have occurred prior to March 21st, 2024, those claims will

008be returned as untimely. This was also unanimous. Um, next we have item 2.4 four where in closed session the board voted unanimously in favor of immediately suspending and dismissing employee number 5798 from his employment with the district based on the charges set forth in the statement of charges for dismissal and immediate suspension without pay. And then for item 2.5, by a vote of five board members in favor, zero against the board of trustees approved the settlement agreement for case number 2024-2025-6. So that's the report out of close session. Uh next we'll have item number seven, which is special recognition. So I'll turn it over to Superintendent Leech. Yes. Good evening. Tonight we have two special recognitions from Sequoia High School. We would like to recognize Coach Wand of Sequoia's inter mural boys soccer team. Um

009what is it? What? Oh Sequoia, my apologies. senior students James and Derek who have each received appointments to the United States MilitaryMies this [Applause] year when you come up. Um I want Sean Priest to the podium to share more about um the soccer team and our two future military cadetses. Okay. Thank you very much, Superintendent Leech and trustees. Um, I am very, um, grateful and, uh, proud to recognize uh, some outstanding members of our community. First, uh, Coach Juandan, who also teaches social studies at Sequoa. This uh, year founded FC Sequoia, which is an intramural soccer club. Um, in the fall, he started working on this. He uh fundraised for uniforms and equipment. Uh negotiated with our athletic director and facilities team to get field space and held tryyous and put together a team of

010intelligent uh poised and fast uh soccer players who have earned their spot in the semi-finals of the Sanonteo County Intramural uh soccer league. This is a team that has not only made us proud with their play, but by focusing on leadership, perseverance, and community, uh, coach Duran has helped his students achieve their best selves in more ways than just as athletes. Um, this has been contagious, and so this recognition is for the ways not only in which coach Duran has helped the students, but also built a tremendous following among among our staff and fellow students at Sequoia. FC Sequoia has a big following and fills the bleachers with the largest crowd of any of the schools and their vuvellas and horns and snacks and dance parties are about the most fun thing um that you

011can do on a Friday night in the fall. So for coach Duran, we salute you and thank you for everything that you've done. [Applause] Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Um, I just want to give a huge shout out to the boys in the back. That's the soccer team right [Applause] there. So, I also want to uh recognize that this couldn't have happened without the support of like the whole community, right? Uh, Mr. Priest behind me, uh, all the EOD EML multilingual teachers include, right, who were I'm very happy to be a part of. I myself teach ethnic studies EML and I teach government economics. Some of them are my students and they're also my soccer players. So, it's been really nice to mentor them in a different space. Uh the

012BAS are right here, the bilingual instructional aids will also support the students in a different [Applause] capacity. Yeah. And really just just everyone. Um we had only one week to prepare for this league and I think we've done pretty well. Um, and I've never coached before. I'm a huge I'm passionate about soccer. I I know I understand soccer. All right. So, no worries. We're good. But, um, but I had, you know, I've never coached before. So, it's been nice to to do this and, um, and I can't wait to do this again next year and next year and next year and, uh, continue to have, uh, open up, uh, more opportunities for our players, for our students to feel more involved, to feel like they are really part of this community because they are. And

013they offer so much. They have so many talents, so special, so much knowledge that they bring uh to our schools. And so uh can we just clap one more time for them, please? That's so cool. Good Good. I know. I love special recognition. Although we need more. Okay. Uh and uh moving on, I'm also uh very again very proud um very honored to recognize two more Sequoia 12th graders. Um a little bit of context. Um the uh first year class at West Point each year is between 1100 and,200 students. a similar number for the Air Force Academy. For some context, that's about the same size as the freshman class each year at MIT, where Sequoia also has two students starting next year. I'll drop that in there. Um but for uh James and Derek um

014this is uh the the first time I can ever remember two uh students earning an appointment for an academy um from the same school in the same year in my uh 25 years in education. So really proud um of these two gentlemen um for everything that they've done to distinguish themselves in this way. Academics, athletics, community service. Um, but most importantly, I'm really proud of the way that they've lived. Um, the ideals of our school and our community as a place of friends. Um, they've inspired great confidence um, in those around them each day in their classrooms uh, and in the way that they conduct themselves as students and they have all four years that they've been at Sequoa. Um James Lendell, Derek Heimer inspire great confidence in the future of our uh officer corps

015in the United States Armed Services. And so for their uh appointments at um West Point and the United States Air Force Academy respectively, I'm very proud to um speak on behalf of James and Derek. James Lendell, Derek Heimer. Thank [Applause] you. I know. [Music] [Applause] I know this is highly unorthodox. So, you show me the door. Um, I just wanted to add on to that that both of these young men were principal nominations, which means that a local congress person can say, "These are my top 10, and you guys decide who you want to take, or this is my single one choice, and they're automatically in as long as they can cut it athletically and academically." And these two are principal nominations. [Applause] And I've known this one since he was in his mama's tummy.

016And if my husband and I kick the bucket, they'll raise our daughter. Congratulations again. Um, moving on. Next we have item number eight, public comment. Just just some quick reminders. Um, this this period is for speakers wishing to address the board on matters not on the agenda. Um, members of the public who wish to remotely provide comment during the meeting should use the raise hand feature. Oh yeah, no worries. Um, and just a reminder, the board does not act upon any matter that has not been agendaized except under limited circumstances as permitted by law. is a policy of the board to refer matters raised in this forum to staff for investigation and/or action where appropriate. Board policy ordinarily limits the time to be devoted to any single agenda item or agenda topic to 10 minutes

017and individual speakers are ordinarily limited to three minutes. If the board decides to expand the amount of time to be allocated to a particular agenda item because many speakers wish to address that item, the board may reduce the time allocated to individual speakers to 2 minutes or to one minute as appropriate in order to permit more speakers to comment. The board will announce the amount of time to be allocated to each speaker before public comment on each particular agenda item begins. And we ask all speakers to keep within the time limits. So um please raise your hand on Zoom if you have a public comment. Remember this is only for non-aggendaized items. And then how many do you have in person? I do have one in person and it looks like there's three hands on

018Zoom currently. Okay. So final call if it's just these four. Okay. We can do three minutes each. Okay. Why don't we start with the one in person? All right. First up is um Wen Bourha. Hi everybody. My name is Walkin. I definitely won't be needing the three minutes, but I have been asked to speak on behalf of Alandre Pir Fuentes, who is the president of the Sequoia High School Dream Club. Good evening, Superintendent Leech and trustees. My name is Alandre and I am the president of the dream club. Thank you to the student advisory council for offering us a few minutes to talk about what we do. There are 35 active members in our club. We are undocumented, come from mixed status families, or we are allies. Our goal is to create a safe space

019for undocumented students who may face many challenges as they sorry who may face many challenges as they try to pursue higher education. Every year we host two major events, a fundraising dinner in November and a student conference in March. Our members participate in several community events during the year. Our artwork, posters, and t-shirts can be seen all over the school and hopefully they make students feel safer, especially those in very difficult times for immigrants. And she just wanted me to make you all and um you who are here to observe aware of what they do and who they are. Thank you. We'll move to our online attendees. First up is Jeremy Ray. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes. Go ahead. Okay. So, this month, parents from the black community have reached out to me multiple

020times, you know, and I was just doing my normal thing. Um, and they were very frustrated with their experiences at MA and then in the district around a variety of topics, but I noticed if you look at the upcoming WASK report, none of their reality or true experiences around some major issues are reflected in that report. And I was just wondering like why after I've left years later, parents and are still reaching out to me talking about their experiences and they're reaching out to other black educators and they're eager for help and to be heard, you know, even after we've left for a couple years. And it's because they simply don't trust you enough to share their real experiences and they know what type of environment they're in. And at every point where change could

021have been made to demonstrate you truly care about their children and the staff who support them. the school board, the superintendent, administrators, they focused on promoting more of a supremacy culture around retaliation, fear, and tokenism. And so this year, from what they've communicated to me, because it's been going on all year long, every month, every couple weeks, I'll get an update. Somebody will contact me, and their students are facing obstacles, and this is one of the worst years for resources and safe spaces like BSU. um they've seen their trusted mentors and educators pushed out and then when they did make an effort to speak up towards the beginning of the year, they're met with excuses and in action and like we've seen tonight, you can actually change your agenda on a fly or change the

022format of your board meeting if you really want to. Um multiple black students I heard were pulled out of the district because the parents are frustrated with the lack of concern or care from the principal, particularly at MA, and they said their complaints and experiences aren't being properly documented. So, they basically just gave up hope and they pulled their kids out and then they reach out to people outside of the community. Um, they're forced to look outside of the district to seek resources that should be basic rights and the school and district isn't truly responding to their needs. Um, the lack of the loss of the black staff and resources over the last few years have affected their ability to be safe, protected on campus from daily racism, and harm of many forms ranging from

023online harassment, physical, and sexual assault. They lost the ability to connect to cultural understanding that provides academic rigor and confidence, scholarships for college, community service opportunities that were designed for their needs, resources that help with tutoring and graduation, development of leadership skills, and even taking AP classes they wanted to take. Um, and like I said, you could have changed the board format at any point to address these issues. But the thing is, it's not going to be something where the facade is maintained. People are going to be upset. They're going to have horrible stories and experiences, the type of things that they tell me and others behind the scenes and that the stuff that they haven't had resolution for years on and it's going to be tough and mean that you have to make changes

024to staff and leadership. So, I just want to say if the black community really gets together, former teachers, staff, students, and puts a lawsuit against the district, there is no way it would it would reveal so many illegal things going on and so Thank you. I'm sorry your time was up. Next we have Ellen Sarver. All right, I think I'm unmuted. Yeah, go ahead. Okay, great. Uh, good evening, uh, Superintendent Leech, uh, board of trustees, staff, and audience members. I'm both live and on Zoom. Uh I'm a little bit more light-hearted than the uh last speaker uh who who I hope will have a chance to be listened to and share some of that important information. Uh I'm here to uh proudly announce that the 21st annual Celebrate the Music Festival will be taking place

025in Belmont in Twin Pines Park this coming Sunday, April 27th. and um the board of trustees and superintendent are um eagerly invited to come and join the festivities uh and participate as MC's if possible. I I have received uh regrets from um trustees coup and Gin who are both going to be out of town over the weekend. Um and uh yes from uh trustee Thompson. Um so um hope for a little bit more. Uh but this is a very exciting event each year. Uh Carlmont High School is very active in this with their uh band, orchestra, um drum line, uh chorus, uh robotics team and a huge number of student volunteers participating in the festival. uh providing a huge amount of performances uh along with elementary and middle school students from the Belmont Redwood Shores

026School District. Uh it's a tremendous community event and the theme is always play it forward. uh at every level uh the older and more experienced musicians are sharing their skills and their love of music not only with the community but also with the younger musicians to inspire and lead them forward. And uh the grand closing highlight of the festival each year is the battle of the bands where the gigantic more than 200 member Carlmont pep band has challenged the University of California at Davis marching band to a battle of the bands and they will be going at it tooth and nail for an hour and a half to close out the festival. Um, in addition to all of that, uh, the Carlmont robotics team and also the Menllo Athetherton robotics team will have their robots

027on display and show the community how they work and what uh, First Robotics is all about. And they will be supporting the elementary and middle school robotics teams from the Belmont Redwood Shores District at the festival. U, please come enjoy all of this. support our students and our feeder districts. Thank you. Uh last up is um Dan Daniel Danny Molieri. Hi Dan. You're still on mute. Can you hear me now, ma'am? Yes. Okay. First of all, I said uh thank you uh congratulations soccer team. Um that's a great job. Um congratulations coach. Congratulations players. Um second of all, before a meeting starts, I'd suggest in the future since you guys are on video, you know, you the third council person to the left of Nor from my right, you you guys both shouldn't be laughing.

028You guys got some serious situations going on in that district and you guys are being videotaped and everything we see. Close sessions so the public understands. Is it very important for governmental agencies and stuff because they can't afford you to know that they're digging holes and that you're you're paying for it. So they didn't talk about 2.1, they didn't talk about 2.5, and they didn't talk about 2.6. so quickly because I'm on a time frame and I can't go through all the messes in that district. 2.1 the Shay Codwell matter is currently in heavy litigation and I know their lawyers are there and I'm sure their lawyers have told the district in close session that we can only delay so much. They've lost every single motion and they are doing everything in the power so

029we don't get the rest of the evidence we need and and more importantly it just puts the people under oath because Leech is done be is done. Hansen's done that board member done. Nory I'm going to go right to you. You have failed to apologize to Shay Codwell publicly. You owe an apology. So whether we get it public or we get it in your deposition we will get that apology from you. I'm going to go to the other matters. 2.5 those litigations that are going to involve OFA and Mike Molieri that you guys are telling the public about and Mike Molieri and both of them and OA had an amazing reputation and it goes to what Jeremy said you guys are cutting out resources because those resources don't want to go by your threat 2.6

030six union. I'm going to tell you guys real quick. Stop worrying about a little raise. Anybody could do that. Any lawyer can do that. Start worrying about protecting your teachers. Start worrying about protecting yourself from an administration that's corrupt, deceitful, untruthful, and scared you by just standing up for their rights. So, like the sheriff did, they recalled that sheriff. I don't know those facts, but I can tell you a police department will a union will not let their members be violated. Next, Jenna Carson, I suggest you stop looking in the children files because my phone gets blown up every single day and you're violating now more verbal rights, more lawsuits. I'm going to end with you, Hansen. I'm going to instead of worrying about raising a child, because I would no one would want you

031to raise any child, I'm going to say you cut services for black children. You cut services and I've been dealing with you since 2011 when you started your nonsense with Beal, who's absolute an idiot. And the last thing for you board, you got eight more seconds to understand. If you don't eliminate this problem, it's just going to cost you more money and more people are going to be hurt as students. Thank you. That concludes public comments. Okay. Item number nine is board of trustees correspondence. Um I do not believe there's any correspondence for us to share. And then item number 10 is board of trustees and superintendent comments. So um I'm happy to go first. I just have one thing to share. So, um, me and Trustee Cruz were able to attend the MA WAS

032committee meeting and speak to the visiting WAS team during the certification process and that was something I speak for the both of us. Um, we greatly enjoyed the opportunity to share our perspectives on the successes that were taking place at MA. Thank you for inviting us. Thank you. Um, I have two items because Mr. server stole my third one about celebrate the music. Um but two to report out um the Redwood City Together committee that uh trustee uh Jyn and I are both on met in March. Um and I wanted to just let you all know that we went into detail and talked about the community collaboration for children success report which is um the survey findings that they've been doing for a while. Um they've surveyed at this point um 595 and 150 of

033them are youth. And I think the the themes that I wanted to highlight that came up in that committee um that students in particular were talking about that 150 youth barriers to well-being, mental health was definitely on that list along with housing insecurity and financial strain. Um so thinking about as I was thinking about like re when I read the Rosk reports and thinking about like pause and what we're doing for my um for mental health that should absolutely continue to stay front of mind. Um, in terms of the school experience, the the theme that popped up was students seeking more emotional support and inclusive environments. Um, so I wanted to bring that and elevate that as well. Um, and then the committee also moved into updates on some of some of the initiatives that

034they're doing um, red cards distribution and child care needs and community outre outreach. Um, so that was a good good committee meeting and we'll meet again next month. The second one, um, and you might have more to share with this, um, Trusty Coup and I attended the annual legislative brunch sponsored, um, by the Sanonteo County Schools Board Association in March as well. Um, so some of our elected officials were there. Um, like, uh, uh, California Senator Josh Becker, um, Mark Burman, um, Diane Papin, um, Sam Lardo. So, it was really interesting and I'd love to if you have more to share on that um to hear what our elected politicians were talking about um to a room full of elected um schoolboard officials um and and they spoke particularly um about budget a lot about

035budget um talking about what is going on in Washington um with all that's happening politically um and then on the local level again they talked about budget state budget according to them seems relatively status quo but it's we're are bumping up against our bond capacity. So they were that that was a topic. Um a lot of the questions that other uh schoolboard members asked our elected officials is what's being done about non-funded mandates. That was a very hot topic I would say. Um and then the other question that popped up is how the Bay Area in particular is disadvantaged by state formulas. um just because we are a unique location in our state. Um and that's all I have and I'll let you continue. Yeah, I don't have too much more to add about the

036legislative branch, but uh the one thing I mean at the time people were very concerned about the Department of Education, all those things that were happening. So, it was interesting hearing from um Congressman Licardo just the fact that he's a junior person like the lowest of the low in Congress right now. So, there's a limited amount of things that he can do. Um and at the same time, you know, he's trying to partner with people on both sides and and broker things, but um it is still a hierarchy and you have to work your way to a higher level of position. So, it's kind of interesting to hear that standpoint, right? Um, and so that's why Congress people who have been there for a really long time have so much more influence um than people

037who are new. Um, but that that's really my takeaway, too, is that the state legislators are kind of limited as to what they can do to influence the feds. And then we have a junior congressperson who's also a little bit limited. But you have to just partner with people who have the seniority and the influence. Um, and then also I just wanted to wish everyone had a a good spring break. Um, I do have a junior in high school. So I took advantage of that time to do some college tours. So we went to two UC's, a CSU and a private school just to give him a feel for different types of schools. And that helps me rem remind myself how grateful I am for this district and all the efforts we do to provide

038um our students opportunities to tour college campuses um either during their freshman year via AVID via different extracurricular activities, CTE programs. I mean we're we're really doing a lot to help kids see different um next steps and expand their visions. Uh, so my my son didn't get opportunities to do this since he transferred after freshman year. Um, and he's not in AVID or any of the other programs. So I think this trip really helped him uh figure out more about what he wants to do next. And he does seem a lot more focused on his work now. uh today was the SAT the SAT at Sequoia and uh I don't think he was really studying that much and all of a sudden afterwards he was studying and I said well it's a little late now

039so yeah I guess just to remind him of the end goal why he's doing certain things but really thank you to all the administrators um teachers and staff for making those opportunities happen and also the PTSA and and foundations right they're all chipping in because um I I don't think it's a given that every school has a school-based SAT test. Um you know, you read about all these students having to travel to Sacramento or other places because everything is sold out in the the Bay Area. So, much gratitude. Uh Trusty Gen, do you have anything to share for this agenda item? Okay. Oh, yes. So, it may be hard to believe, but we are in the final stretch of the school year. Um, I want to take a moment to recognize the incredible decation uh

040des dedication of our entire school community. Spring is always a season filled with both energy and urgency. Testing will soon be here. uh end of year events, graduation planning, staffing transitions, and wrapping up all the work we've invested throughout the year. It can feel like a sprint. I'm talking to my sack people. It can feel like a sprint and a marathon all at once. I refer to this time of year as the 100 days of May. Let's keep showing up for one another. Let's keep centering kindness, curiosity, and care. and let's finish this year with the same heart and purpose that got us to where we are today. Okay. Thank you, Promise. Thank you. Thank you. Um, next is item number 11, which is a student trustee comments. Hi again. I am walking Borha and

041I am a freshman at Sequoa High School and there's quite a lot going on at Sequoia right now and recently um the media center are like library and they have computers and all this other stuff. They recently started the Sequoia Storytelling society which used to be summer reading as a way to honor reading across um formats while building a community of readers and engaged teens. They also recently started the seventh period student tutoring where you can go to the media center during seventh period and get tutored in many different subjects by students from students for students. Um this past Tuesday, yesterday was Earth Day and the freshman student leadership class did a quad takeover with a celebration of Earth Day. Tons of different tables and many events going on there. And it was also the

042start of Squoy Masters, which is a new mini golf tournament that's taking place in RT Garden, which will end tomorrow during lunch. Also on Thursday, tomorrow is the eighth grade welcome meeting that I know Mr. Piece will be there, and I'm sure Miss Muhold and a ton of other people on campus just making sure all the students know what's going on. Um, Friday is Poly Day, which is a celebration at lunch of the Polynesian culture put on by the Polynesian club. And later that day, the GSA or gender sexuality um alliance is throwing their second annual pride fair that afternoon, which will be followed up by the Skoya dance show, which is this Friday and Saturday. This coming week is prom week with several theme days, a rally on Thursday, and the health careers academy

043blood drive and prom is that Saturday. That week is also socks or the Sequoia Olympic competition of kind of sports in which many clubs and Sequoia organizations will play minute to win a games to win a trophy as well as just general bragging rights and recognition. Um, and Sequoia's Youth Advisory Board, the YAB, is an organization on campus that works through Star Vista. And they're really big on mental health and making sure people know their resources. And they have recently held two focus groups to learn about what students would like to see from and for surveys and what might get them more involved as they try to make a new survey called YES, the youth engagement survey. We also recently had the Sequoia Brewers crab feed and um the Jewish student union has been very

044active in celebrating Purum and Passover with the Jewish families and children's services or JFCS recently and are reportedly currently trying to get a Holocaust survivor to come to Sequoia which is similar to the trip mini Gene Brown Tricky who was one of the Little Rock N members made this past November. Um, and despite all of this, students seem to be very happy and upbeat as we get closer to the end of the school year. As um, Superintendent Leech said, the 100 days of May, which I'm sure we will all start feeling very soon. Um, and that's all I have. And now I'll turn it over to Kate. Hi, good evening. My name is Kate Dunn. I'm a junior at Sequoa High School. Going off of what Waqen said, um the some Sequoia students have made

045a memorial with signs and flowers for David Gutierrez, the 15-year-old Sequoia High School student who passed away in February. His birthday was also a couple of weeks ago. So, the Sequoia students have organized and had a birthday celebration for him in the student activity center at our school. Um, this isn't as much of a concern for the board members, but something that Sequoia High School is working on. But the associate student body, ASB, is our student leadership program at Sequoia. And recently, someone sent out a Google form on Instagram in order to get an anonymous, ideally more truthful answers about what the Sequoia student body thought of our ASB program. Um, while it's vital to consider how the data is biased and extremely skewed based on the students Instagram followers, given that the survey wasn't

046sent to the entire student body, um, our ASP program is still taking those responses into consideration. Many students highlighted in the polls their concerns about the diversification of ASB. This critique comes from the belief that ASB is not a true representation of the racial makeup of our school. um as one of the incoming ASB vice presidents for next year, I can't agree with that comment. Our school is almost 70% Latino, but that statistic is not reflected in the two ASB classes. So, right now, our school is working on um how to diversify in terms of like ELD students or students with spe special needs um to choose the best candidates. So, yeah, thank you. Thank you. And um just a quick aside, actually my fault. I forgot to do this earlier in the meeting, but

047today's actually a special day because it's actually um administrative assistance day. And one person that I think really has a thankless job in during our board meetings, who stays late every single time, is always there to help people with public comment, direct people who are new to their first B board meetings, is our very own Laura Lois. And I think I speak for everyone on our board when I say we would not have our meetings run as smoothly as they do without her help. So, we we'll be forever grateful for everything that you do for our board. And we wanted to take a second to acknowledge that, too. And all our admin all of our admin assistants districtwide. They work really hard. I just want to put a plug in for them. Thank you. Um,

048so with that aside, um, we'll move on to item number 12, which is comments from Sequoia District Teachers Association, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. Good evening. Well, I clearly am looking forward to spending a long time with all my buddies here at the board and then coming back early tomorrow to celebrate our second day at negotiations. I want to echo the comments made by Abby Corman earlier this evening. It's frustrating to have our meetings fluctuate so wildly in anticipated length and our agendas vary so widely in importance. Similarly, as I've expressed in previous meetings, I'm concerned with this board's tendency to turn information items into action items. Though I do appreciate that at the very least this time you have the decency to list them as such on the agenda as opposed

049to simply reserving the right to propose action on items agendaized as information or discussion. Additionally, I want to take a moment to address an item that's been bothering me for a while. While I understand that there are laws protecting the speech of members of the public at public meetings, it is painful to hear attacks on individual employees week after week at these meetings. As someone who has borne some of this abuse in the past, I expect the board to set an expectation that while we welcome discussion on the issues that face our district, this is not a place for personal or ad hominemum attacks. As the superintendent alluded to, though she references March, April is a busy time for teachers, parents, and schools. We're organizing our curriculum to finish out the year, helping students make

050decisions about what classes to take next year, and celebrating the post-secary acceptances and summer plans our students share. And at the same time, we're having to fight against attacks on public education from the federal government, organized to maintain state funding for public education, working to support our immigrant students and their families so that the fear brought to them courtesy of public events doesn't prevent them from continuing the education that will be the base for their future success. Supporting our students and colleagues who have lost friends to violence. And yes, showing up at board meetings to advocate for our courses and for our colleagues whose classes and work find themselves under the microscope. Yet again, I am constantly amazed by the dedication of the educators in our district, their commitment to their students and to opening

051their eyes, their horizons, and their futures by tackling big issues. They could do less. They could take an easier route, but they do the hard work to make curriculum relevant, engaging, and inspiring. And then do more by supervising organizations like the Dream Club, JSU, YAB, planning library programs, Earth Day remembrances, fun activities, blood drives, and other celebrations that you heard about earlier this evening. California's Day of the Teacher is three weeks from today, but I want to take my time tonight to honor the teachers and all the other educators in our district who keep showing up every day to do the hard work of serving this community and our students and often with not much thanks. Thank you. Okay. Is there anyone from ask me here to speak? cuz if not we can move on.

052Okay, seeing none um item number 13 is approval of the consent agenda. Board action to approve the following items is taken simultaneously with the one motion which is not debatable and requires unanimous roll call vote for passage. The action indicated on each item is deemed to have been considered in full and action taken is worded therein. Only members of the board and the superintendent may remove items from the consent agenda. Members of the public may provide comments at the start of the consent agenda item that may convince a board member or the superintendent to remove an item for further discussion. With that, the motion would be to wave the reading of the consent agenda, accept the reports, adopt the resolutions, and approve other items. So, are there any public comments on the consent agenda? There

053are none in person. Are there any online? Please raise your hand. I see none online. Motion to approve consent agenda. Second. Roll call. Student trustee Borha. Yes. Student trustee Dutton. Yes. Trusty Cruz. Yes. Trusty Thompson. Yes. Trusty Gin. Yes. Vice President Coup. Yes. President Nory. Yes. Motion carried. 5-0. Thank you. Um, next we have item number 14. So we'll start with 14.1 which is a presentation of the East Pala public or PaloAlto Academy was self-study and visiting committee report. Um, let's start with public comment. Do we have any public comment in person or there are none in person? If there's any online, please raise your hand now. There are none online. Okay, seeing none, I'll turn it over to Assistant Superintendent Hansen. Thank you so much. So, the uh WASK stands for the Western Association

054of Schools and Colleges and it is the body that in California and other is Hawaii nearby state? I think I think so. Um is responsible for the accrediting of uh universities and schools uh within that jurisdiction. Um, and we have had three visits. It's been a busy couple of months. I want to echo uh, Miss Salvador's words about our staff and um, while we are far from perfect and working to improve every day, the uh, preliminary findings of these three different groups visiting three of our different high schools, I think speaks really, really well for all of the great work that's going on and I'm proud of all of them. So with no further ado, I bring you principal Miranda Pinky to talk about East Palto Academy. Good evening. I had the pleasure of welcoming

055our awesome Wasque visiting committee. I feel very privileged because they were incredibly supportive from the beginning. And so according to people that have gone through the process, because this was my very first time, lucky me, in my first year, um I just thought they were incredible. But people have commented that not all committees are the same. And so we were very fortunate and we're so glad that we decided to start the week with a community welcome. We had a beautiful um event hosted um by some of our families. We had a mom cook for the welcoming committee and they said it's the best food they've ever had and it was wonderful. We had students, we had families, and we had staff welcome our committee just to get off on the right foot. And so it

056was pretty amazing. Um and then um some of the things that our committee shared with us, what students shared with them our areas of strength was that they love the senior seminar and how it prepares them for opportunities after high school. financial classes that we offer, having Foothill classes in person, our wellness center, and the relationships that they have with their teachers. And as far as what students shared were some areas of growth was student participation. They want to see a lot more students um attend events. And so thought this was really beautiful. The words that came out of the students and I think um hearing enjoyable, that school's enjoyable and that they love the community is pretty powerful um to the work that we're doing. Some of the things that our parents shared is

057that safety. They feel very safe there and it's a community and this is really big for our community because that's something that we've worked on really hard over the years. There's a great sense of caring for the students and they love our collegebound culture and having computer access for our students was a very good move. Areas of growth. They want to make sure there's more parentto parent referrals and recommendations and they would love more support with translation and equity of access um from the district with all events that happen in our district. As far as what our staff shared, areas of strength, a general sense of pride um and caring for our students, they love our advisory program, the grade level collaboration that comes with that and then the student support and also they appreciated

058the collaboration on the was self-study um because it brought a lot of productive discussions and planning and they appreciate the autonomy with regards to curriculum and instruction that comes with being a dependent charter school. areas of growth is more consistent and frequent opportunities on analysis of data and collaboration and clarity of resource allocation decisions. As far as class observations, what our team observed the three days that they were with us, they enjoyed watching a lot of student interaction. Um, activities such as four corners, intentional grouping, speed dating, lots of classroom libraries, and having a universal reading block, math journals, exit tickets, lots of student teacher report, lots of communication was very welcoming, intentional signage to signal inclusivity, lots of one-on-one check-ins with our students, and then opportunities for student choice and assignments. Other schoolwide strengths

059that were noted was inclusive and effective self-study process, advisory and our student led conferences, our portfolio defense projects and family engagement opportunities. Also uh strengths were our road to legendary days where we bring community partners on campus for our students to explore their passions and the safe learning environment are many community partnerships and lots of teacher creativity and passion. Um so along with that some of the areas that we need um to grow on and the great thing was that a lot of these things right our staff were the first ones to note these but number one is to develop and maintain systems to improve datadriven decision-making and engage in long-term progress monitoring for continuous improvement cycles. Two, implement targeted support and resources for diverse learners to achieve more equitable outcomes, including closing the achievement

060gap between English language learners and their Englishonly peers. Three, increase collaboration and alignment between both certificated and classified staff through professional development opportunities to address diverse needs of students and school culture. So these were like the three that our school site came up with. And then four and five are ones that our was committee after their interviews and everything else they offered to us as additional areas for us to work on. Four, the district and school site develop systems to promote more transparency in budgeting and auditing practices and to include all stakeholders input into allocation of resources. Five, the district and school site further develop a sustainable approach for retaining highly qualified teachers and leaders. And so with all of these, I mean, they just came a few weeks ago, right? Right before spring break,

061but you know, our team was just so excited from the self-study and we learned a lot about ourselves. We've jumped into action into some of these things. So, just to tell you a little bit about growth area one, our department teams have been looking at what data can be collected and how we can create a system for progress monitoring because that's a real need that we have in order to improve student achievement. As far as growth area two, the things that we've been doing for that is we're looking at how we can um utilize our current bell schedule to offer targeted supports during the school day because everything we offer is usually after school, but we're really trying to focus on offering things during the school day. And some staff have reached out to other

062school sites to inquire about their flex time and to see how we can um look at that. And like Monday, our leadership, we have a survey going out and our leadership team is working on that to see how we can do that. And then um for growth area three about professional development for both classified and certificated, we're working with our partnership with the Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center to see how we can support this and put that in place with our PD for next year. And then for growth areas four and five, those are areas that we still need to work um with the district and work on this area of growth. So again, it's only been a few weeks, but the staff was really inspired um and ready to take action to make things better.

063And so it's been great in our leadership team meetings and department chair meetings that people are ready to get to work and make things better. Um and then I just really want to thank he's not here but u my was coordinator Mr. Philip Wong. There is no way that I could have survived this year without this man. He was just absolutely incredible. And to any new administrator like you have got to have a coordinator because this is so much work and I'm just so grateful for his time. So thank you Um, any questions for the board? From the board. I apologize. Yes, I had questions, but a lot of them you did address. So, I I had some good three wasps, some good reading. Um, so I'm seeing if there's any of them you didn't.

064I apologize. Give me one moment. Oh, one one of the questions I did had was about um the panorama survey um where it it it was showing some drops in like belonging in school climate, but then looking through the slides there seems to be like almost like this pride in in school climate. So, I'm I'm wondering what sort of if you could talk more about that because the what what I was seeing from your presentation versus what the survey was showing um I'm curious if there's is there things being done to rebuild sort of that student connection and engagement particularly with 9th and tth graders. So I think one of the big things that when our staff talked about that, right, a lot of times the students don't take the survey seriously and so that

065was something that I know the staff worked really hard on like last year that when those were taken like to educate the students beforehand and you know coaching them through it how to answer better but definitely that's been a focus this year that we've really worked on improving our student culture with our student advisory council and seeing what are the things that we can do to to improve that. And so that's definitely something we want to carry over to next year. We even had Stamford researchers work with us this semester and they're supposed to share some research on their findings about our student culture. Thank thank you for the clarification. And the uh last question that I had um first I I definitely want to commend the the there was a deep commitment to equity

066and student centered learning like that was very clear throughout. So I definitely want to commend that. Um, one of the things that you mentioned was about the datadriven systems to really see whether how to make it more equitable. Um, and what I maybe you said and I I wasn't sure the outcomes in terms of restorative justice efforts and how those data inform like discipline policy adjustments. Is that also sort of part of the growth or are you really focusing your these new systems on academics and achievement gap? So with the W was it basically came out more of the academic right and the achievement gap but definitely because I mean our data is going to show that there's definitely a need to focus on more in the restorative justice and what things we can do

067and that's something that we started doing with our partner um Peninsula Conflict Revolution Center to see what are the things starting off in August what's the PD that we can offer and the things that we can work on to support our teachers and to help with the behavior for next year as well. So, and better systems for tracking that too because we don't have good systems. Any other questions from board members? If not, thank you so much and to Rosker for all the hard work in making this report possible. Um, next is item 14.2, which is a presentation of the Woodside High School WASK self-study report and visiting committee report. I think we'd start with public comment. There are none in person. Are there any public comments online? Please re raise your hand. There are

068none online. Okay. If not, I'll turn it over to our Woodside principal, Karen Van Putton. Good evening, trustees and uh audience members, student trustees as well. So, February 10th through 12th, if anyone of you remember, if you're a football fan, what is that weekend? Super Bowl weekend, Super Bowl Sunday, and that's what we chose as our first day of the Wasque visit. So, it was a little um non-traditional. Okay, so let's just put that out there. What is exciting about a WASK visit is while people kind of get excited and a little anxious about things, what we do is just do your thing. Woodside staff, students, just we'll roll out the orange carpet. Just do your thing. Keep teaching, keep learning, keep doing all the 4A, the activities, the academics, the arts, and athletics. Life

069continues. Let's not worry about so much of a dog and pony show. So, I'm going to start the timer first. Um, and why I preface this presentation with that is when we're doing the work dayto day, um, minute to minute from 8:30 to 4:00, but for many of our athletes, maybe until 9:30 p.m. When we're doing the work that we say we're doing, it's going to show up in the report. It's going to show up during the visit. So, um, our kids are honest, our parents are candid, our staff, brutally honest. Um, and so this is a wonderful opportunity for Wasque to for our staff to basically and students and parents to showcase not only all the good things that are going on. Um, but also reflect and as they're talking and sharing with the

070committee members why we love Woodside and as well as an opportunity for how can we improve. So that's ultimately what a WA was visit. Um, I'd like to invite um and ann um introduce Cara Clickle, our instructional VP, our coordinator in charge. And um I wouldn't leave home without her. So that's why Cara's with me. So she's going to kick it off with the first couple um points. Hello. Um so I will admit this is my first time talking before the board even though I've worked in this district for 13 years. So bear with me. I know, right? Anyway, um so one thing I would like to share is like was already mentioned, each visiting committee does things very differently. So we got a very different report than EPA got in terms of the format,

071but I do want to just if you you've read the report, I know you have ourselves study and the visiting committee um report as well. What we have is mostly the data from chap from chapter 3, which is five categories that they sort of review us on. Um and the first is organization for student learning. So what you have in pages 8 through 35 of their visiting committee report um is what we're going over today largely um in terms of areas of strength I'm not going to read the entire slide but in terms of areas of strength the thing that came out strong for us is that they reaffirmed that our clear vision and purpose continues to be you know obvious to them and to anyone coming to our campus you'll see it painted on

072walls and buildings as soon as you get there all students can and we'll learn. And so that was that was an area of strength. Terms of a growth area I wanted to highlight would be sort of taking an opportunity to review and update our charter because our shared decision-making process on our campus is a shared decision-m uh comm excuse me council and our our um site council as well combined. And so they had some questions for us. And so they sort of affirmed what we believe and we're already starting to do which is reconsider some aspects of that charter for that group um in terms of making it even better. Uh moving on to curriculum. Um the things about curriculum that as Karen already mentioned we have a proud campus. Our staff and students said

073a lot of things that they were impressed with and we had a um sort of variety of members of our team and the visiting committee from lots of different walks of life even in education. Um but they reaffirmed what we already believe to be true, which is equitable access to advanced coursework um in terms of no gatekeeping for students to be able to access content should should they choose to to do so. Um however, they did still find one area of growth, which is our sort of burgeoning EML teacher collaboration. Um, as our EML or U merging multilingual students grow on our campus, um, the need and the necessity for our teachers to collaborate continues to grow. And so we're sort of suffering some growing pains in that way and some need to address that.

074Continue to address that. Turn it back over to Karen. There you go. Also piggybacking piggy back on u what car just mentioned we do have a wickedly strong staff uh wickedly strong and smart staff I often like to say but they don't just stay at that academic high level what they do is they break it down for the students and that's what I think the the foundational piece for our students when they talk about our students our teachers care our teachers teach us they push us they shoulder tap us and say, "We see you." Um, and so that third point, staff have strong content, knowledge, and passion that translates into high quality instruction. Our science teachers are, case in point, they geek out in their labs and they are so proud of it. They they're

075so proud of um nerding out and and things are exploding. Sorry, OSHA issues, but in all a good way. Um, okay. One of the growth areas though is with strong and wickedly smart teaching is that they're always anxious for more. They want more con tools. So that first one more professional development focused on optimizing the technology tools and digital tools in the classroom. For instance, the the increase of AI and how are we handling that um and the challenges the ethics of AI in the classroom. So what we're really hoping for as an example is teachers, our early adopters, is to embrace it instead of fighting it. Embrace it and learn how to use it as a teaching tool and then in the same way embrace it and then teach the students how to use

076it as a learning tool as opposed to being in constant opposition with the burgeoning technology. So um you know our staff is always asking for can we get more tools so that we can be even more efficient and resourceful. Another area for assessment and accountability an area of strength um all of our collaboration groups. So Wednesdays are our collab and staff meeting Wednesdays. The collab groups are tightly anchored in with all of our SIP goals or schools and our W schools. every one of the collab groups that are proposed have to be anchored in a W was goal otherwise it's going to be hey let's meet on basket weaving um so we cleaned that up in the last four years so that people are anchoring every one of their collab or task force topics has

077to address one of the goals so when people talk about they come every six years in the midyear midyear cycle people are talking and doing the work of so it's not this out once out of six years we're we're we're working on it. We work on it all throughout. Um and so with that we're always looking at what is the data, what's the analysis and then how do we support students? A lot of it is with this time, how are we going to improve student learning with this given collaboration time? How are we going to change teaching strategies or practices? And then finally, um, an area of growth is expanding teacher involvement in the data analysis and formative assessment. Um, refining it. So, we've got this data, we do formative assessment. What are are we

078doing good things with it? Are we changing our practices? Are we changing the ultimate, you know, summit of assessment? What are we doing with all this data information or uh data analysis? And the idea is we've got to coach our teachers up so that we can be smarter and more efficient and streamlined. And so that was an area of growth for um the group. And then for the last category in that chapter, we had um the visiting committee did actually acknowledge our celebrations. We're very um happy campus, a very bright orange campus that does like to recognize our stakeholders, our students, our volunteers. Um sort of to um the board's point earlier, it was administrative professionals day today. So we did celebrate those that team um they have more Woodside gear in their closets today

079because of us. But they also had uh lots of heartfelt welcomes and thank yous and um lots of staff honoring them. Um in addition to of course every other celebration. This is a a performance that was done on our quad um this school year. I believe beginning of the school year. Um so the areas of strength they affirmed most of them. They also add something added excuse me something there about MTSS as well. Um but in category E there were some areas of growth um that were additional and specifically the supervision and tracking. You'll notice in the overall when we get there um they had some questions and concerns about how we track our students during our tutorial period. Um, as you may know, every school in our district has something like tutorial and everybody

080is managing it slightly differently. Woodsize is new, newer, I think, than other sites and so we do have some work to do on that. We already have a committee who's working on it and they were working on it before was got there, but we did agree with that as an area of growth. Okay, these are the overall strengths and there were six um in total and I'm just going to call out some key words that jump out. Um access um inclusive, robust, and I'll take a pause if you take a look at the photo on the bottom right. In terms of robust college and career readiness program, we couldn't do all the things that we do with just the general funds. We partner so closely with our foundation and PTSA. Um the foundation has now

081in our third year um supported a program called the college access program providing students with SAT and and essay workshops as well as overnight um college trips multi-day um trips. That photo is from a Pacific Northwest trip that we just took um over spring break. And so the visiting committee was recognizing the fact that we do we do have this robust allocation from our community partners. Um so we went to six campuses in three days in the Pacific Northwest from University of Oregon all the way up to University of Washington. Um three more overall strengths and the words that pop up jump out meaningful strong and collaborative. So those were the kind of if we did a word bubble those were the things that kind of come up for our strengths and of course growth

082areas. We touched on a couple. So our committee chose to take the opportunity to both concur with the three growth areas that we already had said. Most of those were discussed but then also added to additional um the growth areas that we've been ta talking about and working on on our site especially over the course of the last six years since our last visit would be um continuing to have strategies to engage communication with the family um and our sorry the families in our community and their involvement. We have a growing ELAC for example. So we want to continue to bolster that and see how we can overlap some of those things. Um, additionally, the instructional strategies um that we want to use relative to tech. I think the tech on our campus as it

083gets updated, the staff wants to continue to be able to use those that tech. Um, and then also the ESPback test. We've worked partnered with the district to do some um acknowledgement and sort of training of our staff and our students on what ESPback means to them and sort of invigorate them in in participating in those tests. Um, so that already netted some growth areas. And then in terms of the additional ones, the the things that they talked about, I'll just highlight the first one again, that idea of supervision during tutorial time um and potentially unscheduled periods as well. And we just wanted to wrap it up with a photo, a collage photo of our club rush, which is an annual event, which really demonstrates um something that the group noticed, which was student voice

084um and student engagement. Students ask for clubs, they create clubs, they ask for classes, we create the classes. So, so much of a of our school is driven by the student voice. Thank you. Um, I'll turn it over to my board colleagues first if you have any questions. I just had one question, but I think you kind of answered it in regards to communication with family and community. Like, how are you doing that now? And how do you think you want to improve that? So, we've we've tried a few things over the years. Most recently, we tried to adopt Remind last year with some funds um to make that happen schoolwide. We're very excited to start Parent Square as soon as we get that onboarded. Um just simply to remove the the barrier of email

085and how students and staff are reading email. Um and then bigger picture, I think um the groups that are already doing good work and trying to understand how they've got our parents on campus. Um over the last three years, ELAC has grown every year. Um and so what are they doing? How are they making that work and how to sort of bring that to other groups? Um and then sort of the removing the barriers for families to be part of multiple groups on our campus. For example, the overlap of PTSA, ELAC foundation, you know, different groups and things like that. And I'll just zoom in on the ELAC uh population. When I came four years ago, I came to that first ELAC meeting and there were a total of six people. Two of the administrators

086and four were parents. And so I looked at the group and I said, "Next meeting I'm going to ask you guys to bring six or more of your friends." And you know what? They did. And each time, each year, I challenge them to bring more people. And they do. And it's been consistent. And they are a proud group. They are our leaders in the DAC, the district group. Um and so their excitement has um channeled over to the PTSA and representation as well as their partnership with the um foundation. The ELAC parents are such a beautiful kaleidoscope. They just say we are not a fundraising group but we will do whatever it needs. If that means making our tamales for our open house, we will take the funds and we will give it straight to

087foundation because foundation has the power to do more with that. So those kinds of outreach programs um and and katasittas and platas is I think happened last night. So again, it's not just the uh Spanish speaking population community, but just making sure that all of our parents have a chance to access their the admin team or any of the teachers. Thank you. Any other questions? Uh yes, and for context, WASK is my jam. I've gone through it a lot. I've been on visiting committees. I've gone it I will say I like it much better when it's over. Um but I yeah just I didn't shout this out before, but just a huge shout out to administrators and the teachers because there's there's just so much that come goes into these visits and leads up to

088it. Um, and I wanted to really thank you for reiterating the point of WASK. This is a completely outside accreditation committee. And so to have these committee come in from the outside and give you highly effective, highly effective, highly effective over and over again is a big deal. Um, so I really wanted to to point that out. Two of the one of the things that they gave you a highly effective on was equity and course access improvements. And this is an outside group coming in and saying that these changes really unified um the the nth grade class and they saw that and so I wanted to bring that to attention. Um you didn't see this as a growth but as someone who has had lots of cell phone policy iterations um they brought that up

089that this was a schoolwide cell phone policy has positively impacted academic support. Um and I know that phones is something that we have talked about and so I think that that's worth rising to the to people understand that there is that's a good thing. Um I won't one of the questions I had I think you already started to address in terms of the discrepancies with particularly um like LPAC and and quite a few of our Yale students um earning a level one but I feel like that's going to come up in our LCAP presentation later today in this meeting as well. Um, so I'll hold off on that. The other thing I was curious about your you mentioned that your staff was sort of itching for some more PD on like optimizing technology and I

090know um, you know, EDC code teachers get the final stand grading like that for sure, but it did pop up a few times about this alignment across departments and grading practices. And so that is one thing that I'm curious about. Is this something that you're thinking about? Is that a potential PD? Just where if if that's on your radar? It's definitely not going to be overnight. There's going to be a lot of philosophical debate and discussion and um honesty at the table. So, that is I I'm that's what I love about WASK is that they they peel back the onion and say it looks like you guys need some work here or so that is um something on our horizon. Yeah, it's been happening at kind of a uh boiler maker kind of level, but

091um it's happening. Very quickly, I just wanted to talk about the culture of our school. It's spirit week. It's denim day. The principal doesn't always wear denim all day. So, nonetheless, please. If no other questions, thank you again for all your hard work. And last, but certainly not least, um we have the Melo Athetherton High School WASK summary report. um start with public comments. There are none in person. Are there any online? Please raise your hand. I do see one hand. Okay. Um three minutes. All right. Um first up, Jeremy Ar. Hello. Um I just wanted to speak on this to kind of connect to what I said earlier. um when the parents reached out to me this week, you know, it was just out of the blue and I took a look at the

092Wasque report and the things that they're mentioning about their experience in the black community and the struggles, the unique struggles that black students face are nowhere in this report. There's not really an effort to center the black students perspectives or traumas. There's definitely some like superficial equity language around inclusion and things like that, but you know, there's not really any meaningful analysis of what's going on. I saw like they highlighted stuff like the Black History Month, but there the reality behind some of those events is that sometimes the black community made efforts to connect to that and they were disconnected. And so it's being misrepresented about like how those events happen, what happened behind the scenes. Um, and so the Wasque report, you know, it should include more engagement. Um, there is the word engagement,

093but um, you know, there's no mention of like the mistrust, the retaliation, the fear that a lot of the black community families have communicated to me, you know, and that's through various mediums like events and meetings and calls and things like that. There's no mention of the massive loss of black educators, mentors or programs that supported black students which led to isolation, cultural disconnection, direct loss to the academic, emotional and college prep support, you know, academic rigor, things like that. Um, and then, you know, there's a claim that stakeholders, including families, were involved in the process, but I'm not so sure about that because it doesn't specify what groups or how diverse that feedback was. And the reality is a lot of black families behind the scenes are communicating that they feel ignored, excluded, and

094unsupported. Um, and then I also saw the mention of affinity groups, but when I looked at the affinity group policy, the reality is that they're now stripped of any real function or autonomy. Um, the facilitators aren't paid for them, which basically makes them unsustainable. So, the WASP report doesn't mention any of those things. And um you know so some of these things are mentioned in the report that because they sound good on paper but among like when you look at a real analysis of this there's a lot of things that are left out and it's misrepresenting the true situation especially what's going on with black students, black families, black educators in the district. So I just wanted to point that out. Thank you. Um thank you for having us um board members uh thanks for

095the community. I know everyone from MA is out for the Wasque report. Um, thank you. Um, I want to thank Woodside. Uh, they you guys mentioned the phone policy and like we're looking to follow your lead next year and do a very similar all school policy. So, I appreciate you guys taking the lead on that. Um, and with that, um, I'm going to introduce our marvelous, uh, WAS coordinator. Um, which I agree, Veronica, um, I I we couldn't get through the year without her. So, Susie Cho is our W was coordinator. She's going to kick us off. Um, and then we will switch off also. Hi everybody. Susie Cho. Um, I've greeted some of you before in previous board sessions. I'm 14th year English teacher at MA. This is my third WASK report. I was

096actually going to introduce Carl since I have more experience with this than he does, but he stole my thunder. Um, so our WA was visit last week, so it was from Sunday the 13th to uh Wednesday the 16th. And during this time, the six member was committee met with board members. So, thank you, President Nory and Dr. Cruz for showing up for us. Uh they met with community representatives, staff, district representatives. Uh and they also met with two different student groups, one that they wanted us to choose for them, one they chose themselves. And so, they saw more than 60 students just in small group panels. They visited almost every classroom and observed instruction as well as student activities. And it's only fair that kind of in your third WASK uh debrief meeting here, we

097actually tell you what WA was. Um at MA, we believe in making WASK fun because we're a great school. We do great things and everyone should know about WASK and MA. So this is for you guys as a gift. What [Music] is the western assoc? Association of schools and colleges. They check on our practices and that we're constantly looking to improve on what we do. [Music] We have a good program. Students are involved in sports clubs and leadership. [Music] W stands for the western association of schools and colleges and they're visiting April 14th to the 16th. This is an almost six year conference school as part of the process to verify that MA is doing what they're supposed to in your eyes of colleges. What does this mean for you? Just do you the best

098and say hi to the law team. [Music] All the great things we're doing. Can't you [Music] see? Take a stand at LA. We do a lot of great things. We have a good sports program. Students are involved in sports clubs and leadership. [Music] I learn [Music] actually was the student who put that together for us. Um was our attempt to um just get the whole community on board with uh what was and uh prepared and so actually thank you. We have some students here too from our journalism program but but the students did a fantastic job just you know Wasque is a little bit showing off the school and um everybody just I think they felt really welcomed there and um uh really positive with with what everybody presented. So see if I can figure

099this out here. Okay. So, um I will talk just about a few of the data highlights that we uh put in our WAC port and we're proud of um and uh so one I think this is a statement I I I promised to make every time I stood up here all year long. Um is that you know ultimately this year was a great year to do was because we've got um roughly a 5% growth in both our ELA and math cap cap scores. So that means uh that's 5% more students who are meeting or exceeding the standard in English and math. That's great. And you look at a number like 72% meeting or exceeding the standard in English. That's a something where you see all subgroups are increasing in that area. Um except for English

100learners, which that we'll talk about in a second. Um and so we're really proud of that growth and enrollment and success on AP exams. last year. Um, as a matter of fact, we had more students enrolled in AP classes, more students taking AP exams with greater success than in any year prior. Um, and I little blurb there. Actually, it's an amazing number. Uh, 40% of all test results result in a score of five, which is the highest score possible. Um, so just incredible. And I was told by my um our instructional vice principal recently that this year we will have 200 more exams administered. So, it just continues to grow. So really proud of that. Uh so again rising uh number of students meeting and exceeding math and English on the CAT scores, more students

101taking AP exams, more students succeeding on AP exams, and also declining suspension and referral rates, declining referral rates out of the classroom. Last year we had record low numbers of students referred out of the classroom and a record low number of students suspended from the school. Um and so we're really proud of to highlight that data and to show that off to Wasp. Um for in terms of areas for growth, uh we also we do see as I mentioned where English learner progress um on the the ELPAC part of the ELPAC exam uh the California dashboard now it's a relatively new measure allows you to measure how students are growing um no matter whether they're year one, year two, year three um as an English learner. Are they moving from year one low to year

102one high? from year low two to year two high. And so unfortunately we saw a decline in the students that were growing. So we know that's an area we want to address. And we also um saw a decline in the number of students that are college and career ready which is a lot more complicated than just A through G. Um it's actually a wide range of measures. Um we are looking to address that by developing more CTE pathways, doing more dual- enrolled courses. Um so those are some of the areas for growth. We're looking to um address the English learner um growth on the ELPAC exam. Uh and you'll see that in one of our areas for growth at the Wasp pointed out and really um strengthening our collaboration and alignment in our EL courses

103and in our EML courses which is our core content courses for newcomers. um and really looking to uh not only align those courses but align the courses to language expect expectations on the ELPAC exam. So there's a really clear kind of sense of hey this is what you're being asked to do and perform on the ELPAC. We're teaching that explicitly. We're calling that out explicitly and we're building skills over time. So that's one of the ways we're trying to to address both that area of growth. Um and so ultimately from that data from from the whole report this is from our self-study uh what we identify as areas for continued improvement increased opportunities for curricular alignment. It is something we work on consistently. Um but it is something that we know that we want to

104continue doing and strengthen. Um improve efforts to support EL students in accessing accessing the curriculum. Um that's part of the what I just mentioned. increase student preparedness for post-secary success and continue to grow a positive school environment, uh, which I will talk about in a second. Um, but I'm going to pass it back off to Susie. So, after reading our report and analyzing data, observing classes, again, I say they went to almost every class because they missed mine. Um, meeting with I know, right, the WAS coordinator. They see me so much they don't want to come to my class. Um, they met with students, they met with staff, families. Uh the W was committee went through a checklist for their accreditation status factors and in these 19 categories um MA received uh 14 highly effective

105ratings and five effective ratings. Um and then so some of the things that the was committee shared with us uh so when they met with parent groups parents said I'm just highlighting some for you that students find a place to belong at MA. Uh and they also heard that there's diversity in courses and students at MA. Uh and then other areas I could go over areas of growth. Uh consistent communication, right? And then some parent groups say that it's hard to know how to get involved with other parent groups. There's a lot of parent groups. Um what students said as areas of strength, students feel connected to MA. Uh and there's a variety of classes and choices in their schedules. Uh areas for growth from students. These are students. So, you know, parking is an

106issue. They wanted us to know that parking is an issue. Uh five minute passing periods can be tough. And even though, you know, they say a lot of students do have places to connect, uh, some students are still looking for ways to connect. Um, and then they say that, you know, teachers have different policies, but all teachers are at least consistent in the policies in their own class. So that's something that was pointed out to us. And then what staff said, uh, so staff are committed to creating a sense of belonging and staff will often help guide students to find a place to fit in and belong. And something that staff want as an area of growth or pointed out as an area of growth is that they would like more elective exposure for underassmen.

107So um overall areas of strength they listed eight. I I've only put four here but uh they did comment on heterogeneous courses being offered to all nth grade students or increasing access to state standards and A3G courses building community and success for all students. Um students reported feeling connected to the school. This is a point that they really um that stood out for them. Uh they mentioned that every student they talked to of the 60 that they met with in small groups they said felt said that they had an adult on campus that they could go to. Um and they made it a point when they shared out with the staff just to comment on how much the students loved our staff. And so that was one that they really highlighted. Um teachers employ a

108wide range of summitive informative assessments to meet the needs and of student learning modalities. And then they highlighted students mental health is supported by district and site staff through a variety of strategies including the pause center and easy access to mental health counselors which increase the sense of belonging that students and may feel. One other point, one of the other um eight they commented on was just the the breadth of courses available to students and um a ton of choices and a ton of things that prepared students for life after high school was something that they commented on. Um, I'm going to and while I have um uh Paige Winnoff and Michelle Dhoff in the room, I'm going to comment actually on something else they they also uh shared. They loved the prom closet. Um,

109and if you haven't uh stopped by MA the prom closet, I I forced them to get up and like go go walk, but the prom closet is incredible. And and these two are some of along with our staff member, Miss Sledge. Yeah. So, the prom the the the Yes. The prom closet is incredible. It served uh I just asked Paige how many kids she's she's uh the group has worked with. Over 230 students have stopped by and we have about 50 or 60 kids coming tomorrow from Mid Peninsula uh to check it out. You can get jewelry, get shoes, handbags, suits, ties, you can get it tailored if you come the day of prom this Friday. You can get your hair blown, your nails done, and your makeup set. Um we will also we've also

110purchased a charter bus. We will take you to prom. So uh one of the things that uh the lost committee pointed out was that um this was one example of the community supporting a wide range of kids um and creating a sense of belonging on campus. And that's why I bring it up now and while you're here to say thank you publicly. Um moving on to areas of growth. uh we were really happy with what they what they identified um in in part because most of it was stuff that we had already identified in our um uh self-study. So the administration along with faculty to continue to work toward horizontal and vertical alignment to include common assessments, rubrics and grading policies. Uh the administration and staff investigate opportunities for interdep departmental collaboration to enhance alignment.

111and the administration searched for ways to expand curricular offerings to allow opportunities in CTE and non-deree post-secary options. I think what they meant by that was students who were not A throughG. How are we developing programs that are preparing them for life after high school? Um so that was their areas for growth. Lastly, I do want to really shout out and thank Susie Cho. She is amazing. Um, she also, not only did we do a video, but she also created this wonderful staff bing bingo uh for for staff and she just kept the spirit up all along. Um, writes a fantastic report. Very detail- oriented, but it was really fun. You know, people staff got to draw these little crazy faces over all the things that happened to them. Did they come visit? And that's

112why she circled. The wasp did not come to her room, so she didn't get bingo. But if you got bingo, you won a prize. Um, and this was John J. Bruno. All the things happened to him. just a great way to keep the spirit up around Wasp. It was really fun. So, thank you to I was told that you were gonna give them a prize, but maybe you just found that out right now. Uh, and so lastly, uh, do you have any questions? I'll turn it over to my board colleagues. I just have a comment. Thank you for doing the prom closet. Is it called the prom what is it called? The prom closet. Okay. And how do we donate or how do people uh if they want to donate is there a way to

113donate I mean I don't know I just wondering how do we donate or how does the community donate right like how do parents how do people in case anybody else wants to donate that's why I'm asking they have so much material they're begging students to come by and pick up dresses okay not that's not to say they don't need more for future years just for the community and people out there and is it in Spanish too? Is it like people? Yeah, just curious. We're working on all of that, but right for now just write to the prom closet at mapa.com. We've kind of closed donations for the year. We're working on next year and we've got 200 dresses coming next month. Uh donation from Ren Bridal. So um hold back. Hold on to your donations.

114I'm just talking, you know, I'm thinking about community and people like wanting to donate. How do they do that? So, thank you though. Thank you for that work. They do great work. Paige also did some wonderful trunk shows on the green uh in full full prom attire um in in Kaden kids. So, there was a lot of lot of yeah, a lot of reach out to kids on campus. Um so, uh other questions? I'll go. Um, first, yeah, absolutely commend the fun and the joy that I have never experienced a wasp like that and I wish I could steal your bingo. I'm going to steal your bingo idea. Um, again, things I wanted to commend. You you brought these two up, but um, the equity focused curriculum or design. This is a completely separate WAS

115committee coming from the outside and also recognizing that. Um so really wanted to commend that and also seeing seeing a school where they can belong. So all of the none of these things exist in a silo. They all come together. So for for almost 80% of students report participating in clubs and athletics and activities. To me that is that's not just I chose a club one day. That is all the pieces of the puzzle. highly effective pieces of the puzzle that teachers and admin are working every day to to create that they feel even you know freshmen feel comfortable to join the club as well as seniors. So commend those. Um one thing I didn't hear that I wanted to commend is that I noticed in your report the partnerships with community organizations. Um that

116was really evident to me and I think again none of this exists in a silo. You're talking about lower suspension rates and you've got live in peace on on campus. Like th those things go together. Um, so yeah, it was it was it was a fun read. Um, just to comment on that real quick, Trusty Thompson, um, we've really grown this spring in particular. We had probably between 150 and 200 kids involved with community based organizations. That's huge. Which is incredible. Yeah. Um, the only question is actually the same question um that I had asked Woodside because it it came up for you all as well. So maybe this is more district than even just but it's it's the same it popped up in your Wasp report as well. the the consistency grading across department.

117So I think that would be something that I would again ask you is is that something on your radar where is that going anywhere? Yeah, I mean they um they heard that from students and they heard that from parents. Uh so it was something that they um clearly brought to the table to us to make sure we were thinking about as we we wanted I think we were already planning on talking about alignment in terms of like common assessments, common rubrics. uh they really emphasize that you also need to be discussing uh grading policies and developing some consistency in that area. It's not to say that wasn't mentioned because I know Susie's brought it up. She's a big um advocate for that um in our WASK report, but they also clearly highlighted that. Um so

118something we will um they gave us some ideas for increasing um you know discussion around that in curriculum groups and um kind of trying to to move in in some areas that will create commonality. So I had one question in terms of um opportunities for non A throughg students. I know there's already some CTE programs. So what are other thoughts um that you're exploring? Well, what we're trying to do is uh build more CT programs. So last year we started a biotech uh program, a CT uh level one course. So we're continuing that for the second year now, but we're expanding it to um we made the mistake of offering this biotech course, but only offering it to seniors. And so well, they couldn't complete a pathway because they were seniors. So now we've offered

119it to underassmen as well. So we have two sections of biotech starting next year and then the idea is in the third year to add that level two course. Um and so we'll be able to do a full pathway in biotech and those courses are also dually enrolled with community colleges skyline community college. So that's one way we're exploring. Uh we're not fully there yet and the course hasn't come to you yet, but we're exploring a course called uh sports medicine um which would also be dy enrolled and if successful would would develop a CTE pathway as well, but again exploring. We're still in the processes. We we do have a a potential staff member who's interested in teaching it. We have a course a new course proposal that's going through the process. We still

120need to tinker with that process, but we have several kids that are actually very interested in that. Um what we find though when we do that there's just a lot of structural challenges you know are students enrolling in those courses um are we kind of you know do we see declining enrollment in other CTE courses so we're trying to expand the you know the number of students who take those those CTE courses and then we we want to do some additional things like we we some years we're successful and some years not but we need to kind of systematize and develop a real structure around bringing kids to community colleges in the various programs that community colleges offer so that kids are really aware of all the choices out there. And so like some years

121we do it because we we get some staff members that are really fired up and we're supporting it and other years when we're really busy we may not do it as much. So we want to build a structure or a system around that so it's happening consistently and we're inviting kids um to to see what's out there. Thank you. Any other questions? Uh I have one question. Um there's a statement about heterogeneous courses and A through G completion that I think read as being uh causitive and when we had reports uh in the past there was talked about correlation but we never determined causation and I'm wondering if something came in the WASK that indicated causation where before we only had correlation. Yeah that's a good question trust again. Um I think that uh you

122can look at causation um in in micro ways at this at the moment. Right? So you could say you could look at a course like multicultural lit voice and you could look at the number or the percentage of kids that are earning a C or higher which has increased and it's increased for significant subgroups. That would suggest a sense of causation because more students are earning A3G credit in a course that perhaps they weren't before. Um, that's at a micro level. I think at a macro level it's harder because you're you're um involving so many different courses and really we really won't know um you know as we look at A throughG rates for this graduating class um we'll have the first year of really looking at a macro level how those course changes have

123impacted overall A throughG rates. Yeah. So I guess that's consistent with what what you said is consistent with what I understood. I just I I maybe I interpreted the slide wrong as the slide wasn't um implying that the committ so they they they asserted a causation. Got the I think you can do causation on a micro level from class to class. Um and I think as we move move through the program and we watch maybe for the next couple years we'll we'll determine whether there's a macro causation. Thank you. And um before I end, I just had a final comment and I'd like to highlight the increases in AP scores. I think it's really important especially in courses offered and I did hear that there's some new APs coming to MA next year and you

124know um actually at Stanford the other day they were doing senior studies and someone asked us what was one of the things you felt prepared you best for college and a lot of answers including mine were AP classes in high school and I think the rigor of those courses really do serve well to prepare people for or students for what comes next in the next four years of their life if they choose to go to college. So, I just wanted to highlight that and say it's great to see more courses being offered. Thank you, Trusty Nory. Just to comment on it, yes, we have two additional AP classes that we're offering next year. So, we continue to look for ways to to grow that and engage kids in and having different opportunities, different choices. And

125thank you again for all the hard work that went into the report. Thank you, Susie Cho. [Applause] Next, we'll move on to item 14.4, which is the review of the Everest Charter School second interim financial report for fiscal year 2024-25. Are there any public comment? There are none in person. Are there any online? Please raise your hand. They're none. Okay, I'll turn it over. So, good evening. I now present the review of second interim report for district authorized charter schools. All three charter schools, Everest, Summit, Prep, and KIP Asparanza submitted their second interim report to the county office of education and to the school district by March 15, 2025. That's the due date. Everest public schools submitted positive certified second interim report. Due to declining enrollment and significantly low ADA, the staff recommended that the

126charter school is not financially and operationally viable. So as of March board meeting, the Everest board adopted a resolution to close the charter school at the end of the school year and to re relinquish the charter. Everest submitted two-year cash flow statement with their second interim report with ending cash balance of approximately 1.9 million and 1.5 million respectively. Compared to second compared to the first interim report local revenue increased by 40,000 from settlement reimbursement but there were no other changes in revenue and expenditures. This slide shows enrollment, average daily attendance and inloop property tax transfer through different reporting cycles compared to unodudited actuals. At second interim local property tax transfer reduced by almost half a million as of P2 attendance reporting to CDE in April the ADA was 195 for Everest. Submit prep charter school

127submitted positive certified second interim report. It means that it will be able to meet its financial obligation in the current fiscal year and the next two fiscal years. Ending fund balance as a percentage of expenditure was at 82% in 2425 and 97 and 77% in the two out years. Submit prep is also anticipating enrollment to reduce in the out years. Their incoming 9th grade cohort is expected to be smaller than the graduating class. Two-year cash flow statement that was submitted with second interim shows a cash balance of approximately 4.5 million and 3.8 million respectively. KIP Asparanza second interim report was positively certified. There was no change in enrollment and ADA projections compared to the first interim report. KIP continues to maintain a reserve of over 28% in the current and two subsequent years and cash

128flow statement had positive ending cash balance in each month with a ending cash balance of 2 million in the current year and the next year. Thank you. So um before we go to board comment, why don't we do public comment for item 14.5 and 14.6 because I think those are also covered in our presentation. I don't have any com public comment cards in person. Are there any public comments online? Please raise your hand. This is for items 14 four.5 and 14.6. There are no hands. Okay. Seeing none, I'll turn it over to board for any discussion or questions. If there none, um I had one question. So, um you did share that Everest was stated to close. So I'm just curious what happens with any excess funds that they have after the end of the

129school year. Do they come back to us? So they are going to keep their books open for another year and uh whatever is the you know revenue that is still to come or expenses uh that uh they will give themselves a year to kind of take care of all that and money will not be coming to us because it's not our money. It's the money that the charter has. Okay. Question about the enrollment because I I know both Everest and Summit were showing enrollment declines, but I think the idea was that a lot of the Everest students would transfer to Summit. So would that then negate some of the decline? Are they talking about declines even with Everest students transferring over at this moment? at second entrrim report it is separate. Okay. Got it. Got

130it. Okay. And then I guess when Everest closes, does the building come back to us as of next school year? Okay. Any other questions? Just curious because I'm not sure when a when a charter school closes like that, what happens to the students? Where do they go? Do they get a choice to go to the to the other unified school district? Yes, we they will cycle through and um have choice what their home neighborhood school is if they choose to not uh enroll or transfer to Summit. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Um, if there's no further comment on this agenda item, why don't we take uh why don't we tell how long break? Right. Why don't we take an 8 minute break and we'll come back at 8:08. Thank you, Trusty Thompson. [Music] Okay.

131Um, we'll now resume this board meeting. Um, next is item 11.7 or se 7 7 or 14.7 20 2025-2026 local control and accountability plan proposed goals, actions, and metrics. We have public comments. Yeah, let's start with um public comments. How many do we have? We have one in person and if there are more online please raise your hand. I see one online. Okay. Why don't we start with the one online and then we can go to the one in person. Okay. Um I'd like to welcome Miji. You're still on mute. You're still muted. Miji, are you there? Okay. I don't think they might not be there. Um so why don't we go to our public comment in person. Okay. I'd like to welcome um Edith Salvatore. Hello. Good evening. Welcome again. Um SCTA had our

132opportunity to um give input on the LCAP presentation at our consultation meeting last month and we really appreciate that. Um the district makes time, specific time for that every uh year. Um we do want to draw your attention to goal for item two, which is the creation of a union district committee to look at um ways we can recruit and retain a more diverse um staff. And um we have been ready and willing to participate in that committee all year and since it was on LCAP last year and um it hasn't happened yet. So we really really hope we're going to get that off the ground soon. Thank you. Thank you. Um I'll now turn it over to Assistant Superintendent Hansen. All right. Thank you for having me back again. I am one of several

133people who will speak on this topic and I will be brief. We have before you uh for a look the local control and accountability plan. Uh you saw it uh last month before we went out to get a lot of community input and now that we've gotten the input, it's before you again tonight. Just a really quick reminder, the timeline you can see is linked there for anyone who cares to take a look. Basically, we talk to a whole lot of people about what they think. This is the second year of a three-year LCAP. So, it we're not redoing all the goals and all the actions. We're tweaking them as we see fit. Um, and my favorite quote, I got to fix that. Woah. Just wo. Um, while the strategic plan addresses the district at

134large, the LCAP is intended to be the strategic plan, excuse me, intended for the state dashboard in particular. In other words, uh, we are not supposed to talk about everything going on in our district. We're supposed to look at our results on the state dashboard and say we are not doing very well here and so what are we going to do about it? We're also allowed to have maintenance goals for things that are going well. We chose to have one for something that's going very well. It's goal five. Um but all of the rest of ours are improvement goals. Um and this was the dashboard. You'll see the areas in which we were in red on the dashboard um that the LCAP is based on for last year, this year, and next year. We are

135required, even though several of those items are no longer in red, to track them over three years to make sure it's not a blip, but a trend moving in the right direction. We chose as a district for groups that went into red this year, you can see how a lot of the red from the year before is gone. For the groups that went into red this year, we chose to add them because we want to make sure that those students get some um extra support as well. So, uh, the draft LCAP, I'm going to have the authors come up, and each of them will do their goal, action, and metrics. Something I want to point out is that every place that is in depending on what screen you are looking at, rust, orange, pink. Wow,

136I can't even see it. Anyways, where the where the font is a different color, those are the updates that we made to the uh goal, action or metric based on the feedback that we got from different uh community groups. So there was critical mass of people who thought that we should make a change there. So we are proposing that a change be made. Um and yes, privacy and security is important. Thank you. Uh, so the only other thing that I will say is that um why isn't this moving? It's it's locked me out. Smart machine. There we go. We do show on the slides how we are aligned with the strategic plan because they are married to each other because they're about serving all of our students. Um, and so with no further ado, I

137welcome Jared and Shaya to talk about goal one. Thank you, Assistant Superintendent Hansen. Uh, our goal one remains unchanged as you can see here with no color other than white text. Uh, while improvements have, uh, we've seen with our English learner chronic absenteeism rates as well as suspension rates with African-American Pacific Islander students, we still have work to be done. And uh we received val very valuable feedback from our uh stakeholder groups with a level of specificity desired for certain action items and Shaina will elaborate a little bit in detail. Good evening board and superintendent Leech. Um so uh like Jarrett said specificity. So for our first goal action uh for school one action uh um the things that we added were the pieces of that the interventions are rooted in neuroscience of behavior motivation.

138Um and that's still a large framework but um it helps to kind of give some more of that speci specificity since um interventions are tied to specific student need or student group needs. there' be an exhaustive list to co go through each one of those individually. Um and then our second the reduction of suspension rate. Um we added in um that our restorative practices are grounded in our um castle core competencies and our transformative social emotional learning competencies as well as grounded within our um SMCE restorative practice guidelines. And then the third part uh just to give some more measurable uh input information for you. Um our student voice focus groups are studentled uh researchbased activities that we're going to be doing annually. We might even improve that to be more annually more than annually

139because students are really um enjoying that activity. All right. Hello. uh in goal two um was it was edited for clarity based on feedback from our um interested parties and because the LCAP is the strategic plan for the state dashboard in particular we've added in that it's the uh achievement is relation in relation to CASP results the actions there were three added actions the first two are really uh reflections of work that was done over the course of this year to help students become come familiar with tools, accommodations and supports and applying and then also applying feedback data that we uh received from student focus groups to develop outreach strategies. The third added goal uh or excuse me third added action is um a new need area on the dashboard. So we are going to

140conduct some needs analysis to determine the best course of action and also reflect on um changes that happened over the course of this year after implementing the actions here. And then uh we added a couple more metrics to help us track our progress and goal two. Uh for goal three, it's focused on college and career readiness indicator. Um we did not make any changes to our goal. Um but we did make some clarifying changes to our action items. Um we added some verbiage to make them act actionable. Um and to provide a little bit more detail. So increasing the nth and tth grade participation. Why? To provide students more opportunity to complete the pathway. um around the interest inventory and registration that's going to be done with 10th graders and the hatching result lessons providing

141summer school credit recovery and enrichment to help all students graduate as well as prioritizing English learners and low-income students for enrichment academic intervention and summer school. Uh for our metrics, we also added in the survey results, the staff survey, the parent survey, and the student survey. Um and that those results would be included in metrics and how we measure this goal. One of the first times I get to raise it up. It's awesome. Uh thank you. This is goal four. Uh again related to retention and uh recruitment of our staff. You can see we updated goal four uh to state strate strategically recruit and retain a diverse and qualified uh workforce. reason for this change uh as we put it on here, we focus more on student demographics and matching that. Uh legally, we can't

142uh hire someone specifically because of their race or ethnicity. Uh as you'll see with the rest of this, we have to ensure that we actually have opportunities um and practicing procedures in order to attract more individuals at least within the district. Oops. Uh there is some changes in our actions. Uh you'll see in number two we struck out that section and and the big part of that is the program that was brought to our attention that we attempted to work with the uh program itself did not take our individual that were selected um and so they did not qualify for that. It kind of upset us because we were trying to work with them to uh help our class help our uh certificated individuals move into a management position. So what we did, we looked

143at the input from our uh stakeholders and they wanted to focus more on looking at our developer own program which we have um which is a fantastic opportunity for a classified staff to get their uh teaching credentials and we have a number of them that do that. So it's great. Uh the one regarding the um uh the um the management labor um sorry the labor and management um opportunities to meet we do have our meeting on March 7th. Uh so that's coming up shortly. Uh number five, uh something that relates to the the goal itself is we ensure they have consistent unbiased hiring practices and procedures to screen, interview, and select applicants for district positions. Uh we do have a handbook, a hiring retention handbook that we utilize, but it's always good to update and

144review on an annual basis. Uh in addition, since we have our executive director of people, culture and collaboration, uh we would like to utilize him uh in a more u strategic fashion to help with our recruitment and retention policies and procedures. And at this time, our goals uh and metrices or metrics metrics for our goals remain the same. Good evening everyone. Um I will talk to you about goal five and as assistant superintendent Bonnie mentioned um that is our maintenance goal. That's a goal an area where we've been doing well but we want to continue to improve in that area. So the area the uh in terms of reclassification and really focus on on continuing to reclassified our students but on how we continue to monitor the students. We are charged with monitoring students for

145four years after reclassification. So in terms of the goal and the alignment with the strategic plan there were no comments um or feedbacks to make any edits to that section. Um, and for the goals, there was um a couple of questions in terms of who's involved with uh participating in um number three and number four. So, I just want to clarify it for you, there wasn't enough space to like really put in all of the different uh parties involved in um in the collaboration of number three and four, but um just do for the record that um for the for number three collaborate with feeder districts. We are part of the Sequoia Stanford collaborative and we focus with our we work with our feeder districts to one of the things that we've done with them

146is to standard standardize their local criteria and talk to them and work with them across um the reclassification process to really create more of that alignment um across our feeder districts and then um also share with them the the the new dashboards that we have in order to monitor how students continue to progress academically once they come into our district. and um and for us to be able to know also not just all the new incoming nth graders but also the students who have recently reclassified at their um at their future at their at their middle school level. So we continue to work with them. For number four um systematize the process for monitoring EL and RFP students. Our BRTs are a key um part of that reclassification process and also ensuring their monitoring process.

147Um, we want to continue to uh grow the involvement from our counselors and um um um and really use the elevation continue to use the elevation um data monitoring tool that we have um continue to make sure that everyone knows how to access it, how to like really track the progress of our students. We've done trainings in the past that where we've gone to depart to hold staff meetings to talk about elevation, but we want to continue to make sure by bilingual IAS have access to it. Our teachers know how to track the data, our counselors as well. in addition to our new um um dashboards that we're continuing to share with everyone and continue to update after uh grades are delivered. Um another point of clarification and we added just the metric that in

148addition to using the English learner pro uh monitoring the English learner progress indicators um to measure progress for Woodside and Redwood, we're also going to add the the LP to monitor EL progress districtwide. and the eels across the board are you know showing up in different in different areas and different areas that we need to continue to to grow and improve but reclassification will continue to work on that but also that LP will help us monitor in all the different sub subcategory areas of what we can how we can continue to improve. All right, goal six is actually uh principal Stephanie Ogden from Redwood. She is home quite sick today. Although she has texted me several comments during this board meeting. She does not think I must be a bad mother. I hope that she

149has now gone to bed. I am going to read for you verbatim what she wrote about this item. Redwood met all goals for graduation and is no longer under CSI. To ensure that Redwood maintains this success, we are continuing with the same goals through utilizing our state equity multiplier funding. A small change includes continuing the support to the after-school program, the hub, as opposed to initiating the program. In addition, we are adding literacy as a goal. The focus on literacy has been a school objective for the past two years, and we are fully committing to this priority by including it in the LCAP. There will not be a metric for the 2526 as Redwood will establish a baseline and then include it in the 2627 metrics. The overarching goal is to move all students to

150grade level with the focus on increasing at least two grade levels for students currently reading below grade level. Thank you and we welcome your questions or comments. Thank you for that presentation. I'll turn it over to my board colleagues for questions. Well, if there are no questions for us, um I'd like to on behalf of the board, I'd like to thank everyone for their hard work on making this agenda item um and presentation come together, and we look forward to seeing what these improvements and changes result in in future years. Um okay with that we'll go on to our next item um action item which is 16.1 approval of request for declaration of need for qualified educators for the 2025-2026 school year. Um are there any public comment on this agenda item? There are none

151in person. Are there any online? Please raise your hand. None online. Okay, seeing none, I'll turn it over to Assistant Superintendent Beiel. All right. Uh, well, good evening. Uh, this is a form that we have to bring up every year to the board. And this is basically as a district, uh, trying to predict what the number of individuals we're going to have next year that are on emergency permit. Um, and so there's different categories they look at. One is if they have their clad credential is what something they need to have when they are teaching students that are e students and the other part we have to look at is do they meet the basic qualifications to teach in certain areas. Um and what we try to look at is what are the high need

152areas that we see either with our district or we look at trends uh throughout. And so what we put on there is we have uh predicting uh that we'll have uh 10 teachers that will can be considered um emergency permits or emergency credentials on there. And so you'll see we have them in our special ed, our math, our science. Uh we also have social science and then we have a couple on the English. Um we've done a pretty good job um of being able to get highly qualified teachers into these program into our classrooms. Uh this past year 2425 we had two that were working on their clad uh permits and we had one that was on a what we actually call emergency permit. Um part of the requirements is they have to be in

153a program working on their credential. Um and so they have certain timelines to get that completed. Um the one with that's on emergency permit they have a year to get that done. Um so we do monitor make sure that they are completing it. um then that we have qualified teachers within our classroom. Okay, sorry about that. Um thank you for that. Um I'll turn it over to my board if there are any questions or comments. All right, thank you. Okay. Um is this a Yeah, it's an action item. So, okay. So, um could I get a motion to approve the declaration of need for fully qualified educators? Motion to approve. Second. Um roll call. Student trustee Bora. Yes. Student trustee Dutton. Yes. Trustee Cruz. Yes. Trustee Thompson. Yes. Trustee Gin. Yes. Vice President Coup. Yes.

154President Nory. Yes. Motion carried 50. Great. Um, now we'll move on to item 14 or 16.2, the ethnic studies curriculum revision update. Um, for this one, we'll start with public comment. So, could you raise your hand on Zoom if you're interested in making a public comment just on this agenda item so we can get a sense for how many people? Okay. Um, how many do we have in person? We have 10 in person, five on Zoom. Okay. Um, I think we can do two minutes each. Is that good with the uh Yeah, I think I I think two minutes each is fine. So, we have six now on Zoom. So, if that's good with the board, um what Yeah, why don't we start with Zoom? And I also see that we have um our state

155senator Josh Becker on Zoom. So, as a professional courtesy, why don't we let him go first because I'm sure he's very busy. [Music] Yes. Hi. Um I'm sorry I'm I'm not obviously Josh Becker, but my name is Joan Dentler and I am a staff member for Senator Becker here in our district office. And um he is in Sacramento, of course. Um they are in session and he had a another meeting to attend to this evening, but asked me to come and speak on his behalf. So, I'm reading a prepared statement from the senator on item 16.2, ethnic studies curriculum revision update. This is a quote from the senator. Education's purpose is to foster an understanding, not to deepen division or spread hate. As Sequoia Union High School District considers its ethnic studies curriculum, it is

156critical that the course reflects the true intent of ethnic studies to lift up historically margin marginalized voices while promoting respect, inclusion, and historical accuracy for all communities. That includes ensuring the curriculum does not contain or enable anti-semitism, islamophobia, or any form of hate. While ethnic studies is not yet a graduation requirement, I know many districts are teaching it already or are considering teaching it. As a history major and as a parent, I believe deeply in the power of education to bring us together. Every student deserves to see their story told with dignity and to learn in a classroom free from bias and harmful stereotypes. End of quote. Thank you. Thank you. Next we have Melissa Diaz. [Music] Hi. Can everyone hear me? Yes, we can. My name is Melissa Diaz and I'm an ethnic studies

157teacher at Sequoia High School. All throughout my education, I loved history. I read every textbook I was assigned, took meticulous notes trying to understand the country that my parents immigrated to. When I was a junior taking AP US history, I started to develop questions that my textbooks didn't have answers to. Why was it that I didn't want my wealthier friends to come over and see my neighborhood? Why was it that people whose ancestors immigrated a few generations back held anti-immigrant beliefs? When I looked through my textbook, there was only one small paragraph on the history of the Brasto program. And I wouldn't learn until college through an oral history project that my grandfather was a brasto. I remember a passage on the wounded knee occupation of 1973 and realizing that up until that point, I

158had only learned about indigenous people in the context of colonization. In the spring of my junior year, I asked my counselor if I could supplement my history education at my local community college. I scoured the course offerings and found an ethnic studies course that focused on native and Mexican-American history, and it transformed me. As a ethnic studies teacher, I strive to listen to students uh where they feel they have a gap in their own education. Every year for the past couple years, I've worked hard to survey students to make the curriculum more inclusive, more local, more relevant, more joyful with the goal of having students see our interconnectedness and build out essential critical and historical thinking skills so that they feel empowered to research and create their own knowledge and offer to the world. I

159always give students choices on their assessments and they consistently bring up difficult topics. They talk about government officials using dehumanizing language to criminalize those seeking a better life. They notice and ask questions about economic inequality in our own communities. Ethnic studies is about questions, fostering curiosity, introspection. It's about reading the world around us. Teaching about race doesn't divide us. It helps us understand how history has shaped our world. And it helps students realize that everything we see has a history. Students benefit from ethnic studies not only because it offers critical thinking skills, because it offers them to become more engaged members of the community and tackle hard questions in the pursuit of justice. And it's one of the most joyful spaces I've been a teacher as a part of. Thank you. Next up is restore

160honors and pause e. Yes. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. Thank you. Um I'll talk about the honors later. Um, but this topic is ethnic studies. And um, I wanted to just express why I pulled my daughter out of Emerald after she took ethnic studies. What the teacher just explained, I would have loved that. You know, when I first learned about ethnic studies as a poor immigrant myself, I was ecstatic that she would learn about the different cultures. That's why I sent her to the Spanish immersion program at Enel um so that she could be bicultural and bilingual. I believe in um you know the fact that we should all belong but belong under what under what category? What how do you define belong? This is the problem because what I'm

161hearing is neither the African-American community nor the Jewish community, nobody feels safe in this district. Nobody feels like they belong. Everybody, why do we have five lawsuits? I will gladly share my personal experience, which goes back to 2021 with Bonnie Hansen. I have emails. I have receipts. You can look at them through Killing America, which was the documentary premiered last year that gives this story. We have so much healing to do as a community. And I'm so sad to have listened to this board meeting where you guys haven't learned anything. You are patting yourselves on the back as if you're doing such a great job while your your kids are suffering. Again, yes, I'm privileged. I pulled mine out. She's thriving now. But there's so many kids that are just falling through the cracks. Look

162at the suicides. Look at Look at the I'm sorry your time was up. Um just a reminder, you have two minutes to speak on this um agenda item. Next, we have pause ethnic studies. [Music] You're still on mute. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thanks. Okay. I'm a parent and longtime resident um of the district. I'm asking the board to pause ethnic studies and revert to world history. Schools can be given an option to include representative histories but with standardized curriculum and standards if we revert to world history. The ethnic studies roll out at Sequoia Union High School District was premature, non-transparent, and has resulted in classrooms using discriminatory material and has students locating themselves on wheels of power and guessing the races of other people. We are gra all the while we are

163graduating students who can't write essays or do basic math. we should focus on getting back to the basics instead of layering on ideologically driven classes. There further there has been and continues to be little to no oversight of the supplementary materials used in ethnic studies and other classes in the district. The district has acknowledged they need better oversight because much of this discriminatory material has already made it into the classroom and the district acknowledges that they need to do a better job of making sure that this discriminatory material does not make it into the classroom. Ethnic studies is a discipline that currently has no standards and leaves a lot of layway for teachers to bring in this supplementary material. The board should pause ethnic studies and revert to world history, which is an established course

164that was in the district for many years and has clear standards from the state. Until this should happen, until there's better oversight put in place of the supplementary materials that are used by teachers in this district and also until there is clear guidance of what ethnic studies um should be and also the community is given um time to to put input into uh this class. Thank you. Uh next is Tracy Downey. Hi, thank you. I um have more of the same to say. Um I think the curriculum what uh I think it was uh Miss Diaz who was talking about how rich ethnic studies could be. The curriculum as it stands now is not that. It is discriminatory colonialist. it's um divisive and I guess um I would just request further review and evaluation and

165transparency around any uh mandatory curriculum. And I also agree that it's more of a social studies class than a history class. and I hope that the board will um reconsider or consider not approving um the curriculum as it stands now. Thank you. Thank you. Our last speaker online is Miji. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. As a parent, I will uphold marriage to be taught in schools instead of dividing children based on their identity of race. As an immigrant and a naturalized US citizen, I know that America is the most diverse and inclusive nation in the world. And it is only right that we should teach unity instead of division as taught in the current ethnic studies in school to date. Please stop this useless and divisive ethnic studies class. Thus,

166I also advocate for restoring as honors courses beginning in the 2025 and 2026 uh school year. And we need to bring back classical history study. Teach children to respect each other regardless of their race, nationality or culture. After all, we are one nation. We are Americans and we should teach our children from their young age. We should reward people based on merit, not race. Thank you. We'll switch to our public comments in person. First up is Jen Wson. [Music] Good evening board members. I'm Jen Wallison and tonight you'll hear from five of us in sequential order who believe in teaching the histories and stories of marginalized populations and who have a deep concern over our district's current recommended approach to ethnic studies. The new proposed curriculum should be rejected and revamped. When our district voted

167to make ethnic studies mandatory in 2020, the assumption was that the state would make it mandatory by 2025. However, the state requirement to teach ethnic studies is now on hold and is not required by the state for the next school year. What's causing this delay? The contention over what is taught in classrooms. As a reminder, when ethnic studies was being built out at the state level, a controversial framework known as the liberated model was pitched by some with a very distinctive point of view and agenda. Not only did the governor and legislature reject this liberated model, it prompted them to pass AB 101 to set guard rails for ethnic studies. The liberated model teaches kids to label people as either oppressed or oppressors. The lessons inherent in the liberated model impose a narrow ideology, polarized

168students, create prejudice, and some go as far as glorifying violent movements in the name of resistance. They are based on university level ethnic studies courses that are not appropriate for our 9th grade 14-year-old students who have yet to learn US history or world history at the high school level. Unfortunately, many districts follow this liberated model which continues to be pushed by certain biased groups and some of the ethnic studies curriculum that has been implemented in our district has some of the lessons that have been are in violation of AB 101 as well. As a result, I ask you to end the ethnic studies mandatory graduation requirement in our district, reject the one-page current curriculum proposal, and revise our district's approach to the ethnic studies class. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have Karen or Oh,

169sorry. Orzens. Okay. Thank you. Orchowski. Um, I'm an MA parent and I'm here tonight because I love I love our school. I mean, that that WASK video was I'm obsessed with it. It was great. Um, I'm here to ask you to end the ethnic studies requirement and reject the current curriculum proposal. Unfortunately, our implementation of ethnic studies to date has not gone well. There have been multiple records requests, UCPs, and lectures that violated state law. Students who took our ethnic studies courses shared feedback and surveys that the class was not a good use of their time and students did not feel safe expressing opinions that differed from those presented in class. Sadly, the new version discussed here tonight, even in outline form, appears to be worse than the original curriculum. Ethnic studies was originally intended

170to teach our students the stories, struggles, and contributions of four California communities: Native Americans, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Pacific Islanders, and Latin Americans. Instead, this curriculum creates an us versus them narrative. It has not focused on the stories of marginalized groups, but presents a narrow ideological agenda that students are required to echo for a passing grade. Ethnic studies is not bringing students in our community together. Rather, the mandatory nature of the class requires students to enroll in a course that has the potential potential to alienate and divide them. We ask that the district develop a constructive ethnic studies curriculum, one that builds understanding, inspires mutual respect, confronts racism, celebrates ethnic accomplishments, and does not glorify violent resistance. I hope we can work together to make these much needed improvements. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next

171is Paige. Hello board. My name is Paige Winnoff and I speak to you tonight as a parent of two children who will be impacted by ethnic studies as a graduation requirement. Both children are members of protected classes and one child is black who should benefit from a course that highlights the histories, challenges, and contributions of traditionally under reppresented groups. After a significant study of both the curriculum as it is and the the modification that that really consists of just one slide, I ask you to end the ethnic studies graduation requirement in our district. Reject the one-page current curriculum proposal and revise the district's approach to ethnic studies. In October 2020, this board, it was slightly different board, authorized the Sequoia staff to move forward developing the ethnic studies curriculum which was made mandatory class two

172weeks later. All five board members spoke at that at that meeting. They noted in large part that the curriculum to be developed would not reflect the original governor rejected ethnic studies model curriculum. Then President Winer emphasized that point. Then student trustee Safik Nori, who's now the board president, said that he believed when developing curriculum, it should include stakeholders and trust and stakeholders and trustees as well as significant input from the community to make sure that the course had a positive impact on people. Today, our district's current and recommended new version reflects exactly what that 2020 board warned us against. The curriculum does not encourage critical analysis based on balanced information. It does not teach histories, challenges, and contributions of marginalized communities. I believe it is a wasted opportunity. And with only 4 seconds left, bringing

173out Thank you. Next we have Jam Aahar. Hi Jamshed Gajar. I'm a parent of two girls ninth grade at uh MA and they they're taking ethnic studies right now and I have a girl at Hillview coming up for next year. So, our district's new proposed curriculum conflicts with AB1468, a bill introduced in February by Assembly Member Rick Chavez Zver, which aims to create content standards for high school ethnic studies and to address implementation mistakes. It is scheduled to be passed in the coming state legislation session. AB1468 represents a collaboration of legislative groups, including members of AAPI, Latino, and LGBTQ caucuses. It calls for guard rails against some of the very content we see in this outline and has wide support in state assembly. We must pause the ethnic studies curriculum in Sequoia District. The district's

174proposed outline is contrary to both the needs of our students and legislative guidelines of AB1468. Passing this new curriculum will now only trigger a lot of future work to meet the bill's requirements. We need to get this right and to adjust the curriculum for three reasons. One is to meet the clarified AB6 1468 legislative guidelines in AB 101. Two, to avoid litigation in our district. And three, probably the most important, to ensure our students are engaging in a thoughtful, productive, and most importantly unbiased version of ethnic studies. For these reasons, I ask you to end the ethnic studies mandatory graduation requirement in our district. Reject the one-page current curriculum proposal and revise our district's approach to the ethnic studies class. Thank you for your attention. Thank you. Next is Michelle Dea. Thank you everybody for

175having us today and for serving our community. Uh we support the teaching of constructive ethnic studies but are not in support of the original district model nor are we in support of this new model. We and others submitted an analysis of the proposed ethnic studies 2526 scope and sequence. The board should have received it yesterday by email and I will also give you a copy now. This analysis shows specific examples illustrating each of our concerns from the proposal. Among the concerns are there are judgmental questions which obstruct a balanced analysis, bias framing that assumes answers rather than inviting student exploration, deeply historical examples that require extensive content context, misleading claims that our essential questions were taken from the state's model curriculum when in fact they were not essential questions in our curriculum. We read the

176ESMC in detail. We won't have time to cite all the details here, but we hope you will read the analysis carefully, add it to the record, and use it to revise the district's approach to ethnic study. Additionally, we submitted a petition with 350 local signatures requesting the revise of the ethnic studies curriculum to remove the collegic level liberated oppressed oppressor or what's also known as the dominant and counternarrative approach to one that is more balanced, broad, and approachable to nth graders. In summary, I ask you to reject the one-page current curriculum proposal, revise our students approach to the ethnic studies class, and end the ethnic studies mandatory graduation requirement in our district. We can and need do need to do better for our kids. Thank you. I will hand this out now. Thank you. Next,

177we have Adam Tub. Thank you. I'm a parent and resident of this school district for the past 14 years. Please reject this ethnic studies curriculum. Students need to learn history of all people, including minorities and those most marginalized, not the radical ideology that hides in plain sight in this curriculum. There has been a disappointing lack of transparency in this district. Not only are our tax dollars being spent on misguided educational programs, but they're being spent on legal costs for this district to defend itself against lawsuits that allege civil rights violations. We are all losing two ways, and so are our children. Please take a step back here and realize the mistakes that have been made and don't double down on them. Students should be learning from robust course materials, not slides with questionable sources. Some

178of the materials that have made their way into the classroom came from Tik Tok and other woefully misinformed internet sources. I don't know about all of you, but I think kids are polluting their minds well enough on their own on the CCP controlled Tik Tok with their time outside of the classroom. They don't need it in the classroom, too. Indeed, there is little to no oversight with the supplementary materials used. And given the amount of problematic material out there, teachers will be bringing a plethora of materials not approved by the district. For example, in one such slide accessed through the P, a teacher thought they would weigh into a topic they clearly knew very little about but felt called to teach. They shared a photo of a pro- Hamas protester with a sign that in

179my view supports the rape and genocide of Jews. I support free speech of even the most evil vile idiots like this protester. I don't support teachers tripping over 12 guard rails to give voice to rape supporters and ask students. Let's consider the rapist perspective, shall we? You know that local You should know that local districts have been censured by the CDE recently for far less objectionable materials. The district has already acknowledged they need better oversight because so much discriminatory materials has made it into the classroom. The board should reject ethnic studies requirements and revert to world history. Thank you. Next is Loretta Del Carman. Hi everyone. Um, I am Loretta de Carvin, more informally known as Lori Lyle. I am a Bear Era native, born and raised in Menlo Park. My father was born in

180raised in Menllo Park. So, been been here a while and seen a lot over the years. Um, representing myself, my son, my my husband over there. Hi, Scott. Um, and I'd like at this point to formally state to or ask to please reject the current curriculum proposal, revise our approach to ethnic studies, and end the ethnic studies mandatory graduation requirement in our district. Um, we've kind of had a different path because although I've I've lived here my whole life, we also spent a number of years in three other countries. So, I've seen a lot of different curriculum and I was shocked by what I saw here in in our district. Um, ethnic studies, it's divisive. It's meant to be uni, it's meant to unify, but it doesn't. It actively encourages discrimination. At its core, um,

181it separates people into two categories, oppressor and oppresse, or the oppressed. It's based solely on skin. It divides. It does not unite. It doesn't help kids achieve academically. As I was researching this out of my sort of um interest in learning more, um I found so much in quote, "Students report being unprepared academically for 10th grade history and social science classes, especially AP classes, contributing to a growing achievement gap, disproportionately hurting marginalized communities. Um instead of mandating a divisive and controversial ethnic studies course, let's prioritize reading and literacy." We heard a lot about those goals right here on that whiteboard. um let's give them the competency and the literacy so they can evaluate for themselves what these social justice programs look like. I think we can all agree that race and discrimination are wrong and

182they don't have any place in the classroom, but neither does racially motivated propaganda. Thank you. Thank you. Uh next is Edith Salvatore. As you're going to hear in the actual presentation to the board this evening, a group of teachers have been working on creating an updated dynamic student centered curriculum during this school year using the current California model curriculum as their guidepost. When I ask them what they'd like me to share about their work, they ask that you trust their expertise, believe that they want the best for students, understand that their goal is to help your children navigate the world, and know that ethnic studies teachers spend months on building a safe learning environment and classroom community. Even as we work to create opportunities across the curriculum and throughout the school day that bring students

183together and build community, this may be one of the only times our students academic lives where they get to learn about different individuals and groups in a respectful classroom community. Students have questions about our community and our systems and it's important to have civic discourse with their peers in order to build the tools to engage in a democracy just as we are tonight. Some of the comments and at least one sign show a concern that students will be labeled as oppressors or victims in the ethnic studies context. Be clear, teachers are not putting students in boxes. They're asking students to study the history of the creation of those box boxes and how they've changed over time. They do not focus on limiting or narrow definitions, but rather ask students to define themselves in expansive ways

184and give them the context to see how many different influences there can be on that definition. We can't ignore the political context. There is a coordinated attack on teachers and on schools generally and on ethnic studies in particular. As a society, we have normalized the harm of def decades of euroentric and white- centered curriculum. And while we have made progress, more is needed. Our goal is not to demonize, but simply to create more balance. Ethnic. Thank you. Next is Abby Corman. Hi. Okay, first I'd like to name that Jenny Ortez, an ethnic studies teacher who's actually on sbatical, raised her hand on Zoom on time and is still waiting and would like to speak. I'll name that because of all my privilege as a cis, white middleclass heterosexual woman in this country, I wish I

185had ethnic studies as a high school student growing up. I had to pay for coursework like this in college to be exposed to ideas I should have I feel like I should have known earlier. As just one example, I learned way too late that I need to see people's race and how harmful it is to say I don't seem color because it ignores the realities folks who are not white face because the world and systems we live in do see color. I'll share that before ethnic studies I read with my students about Roberto Alvarez and Sylvia Mend Menddees and remember clearly a student saying why haven't I ever learned about Latino people before like me at school? Why am I learning about this in English and not in history? Now that we have ethnic studies,

186I hear students talking about their history class in engaged ways, describing the world around them and feeling represented. We need ethnic studies to talk about the world we live in. Discomfort talking about race and class, power, privilege, equity, racism, discrimination, and bias do not make them go away. These are real words representing real ideas out in the world that we do a disservice to students not mentioning. I'm proud that our district adopted ethnic studies before it became mandated by the state. and I hope tonight we see the board stand behind it. I'm not sure why this is an action item and not an information item. Clarity on that would be helpful. And my other concern tonight is around the complaint process for community members if they are concerned because they have a valid right to

187be if they are. If not tonight, soon the district needs to clarify to all of us what processes are available. My colleagues should not be facing individual uniform complaints or disrespectful harassing emails from parents who do not agree with ethnic studies curriculum. What are you doing to help teachers feel safe teaching this curriculum you've worked so hard on? Thank you. Our last speaker is Diana Newan. Hi y'all. Um, my enthusiasm for ethnic studies is a little jarring because I know y'all really don't like ethnic studies, but I speak as an educator who has been at my school site for eight years. It's the only school I taught because of the validating ex um support community I have from students, their parents, my admin, and the district who has supported this um reiteration of ethnic studies.

188Today I ask you to validate the work of our teachers, our extraordinary efforts. And really, we are listening um to approve the scope and se sequence and keep ethnic studies as a graduation requirement. We've learned a lot over the last five years. We are better educators and we know how to make a curriculum um more relatable to students to make it joyful, meaningful, meaningful, relevant, and serious at the same time. As an Asian-American teacher, I'm sensitive to students who don't find themselves reflected in the um the majority and ethnic studies can't represent everyone because that would be all four years and I don't think we want that. Um however, we've gotten way better at providing authentic multiple points of entry that connect students together. Let me give you some examples. When we talk about the

189history of immigration and how the 1790 naturalization act only allowed for white Americans, many Asian-Americans, Ozawa and thin the supreme uh the Supreme Court case, they weren't allowed. So then the one drop rule for black communities or how blood quantum is used in Native American communities or how Jews or Italians face discrimination when they first came. We're really trying to build that connection in ways that students haven't seen before grounded in the history. Um, and what it's so beautiful. We're asking students to talk to each other, to talk to their families. We just had an oral history project. I learned a student was Armenian and they moved because of genocide. And other students who've moved because of genocide saw that connection within themselves. I had a student who was Chinese and Jamaican. And we had

190to learn about the Thank you. Okay. Um, now I'll turn it over to Assistant Superintendent Hansen for the board presentation. [Music] So, one of the statements made from one of the speakers was that this is not become a mandate from the state because they're still trying to figure it out. So, I just want to say that I think that everybody involved almost without exception, teachers and parents, however they feel about the current class, wants for all kids to feel part of solutions and not that they are the problem. And I am sure that we have not done a perfect job of hitting the mark. Understatement, but I am certain of the intent of the people working on the project. This is an update. There will be input. This is not a final product. The teacher

191we just heard speak has been a part of trying to make this a better curriculum than the first round of it was. And I hope that you will listen knowing that we are a microcosm of what is happening on a national level and that there's not a bad guy or a good guy side of this. I want to thank the parents who spoke tonight for your thoughtful and well-reasoned comments. I'm really grateful to you for that. And I want to thank the teachers who are trying to do right by their kids. This is a crazy crazy time for all of us. here in other school districts and internationally. So, I'm really grateful to the two people who are going to speak after me tonight who I know are part of this ground swell of people

192who want all of our kids to feel that they are part of solutions and not part of the problem. So, I hope that you will give them the same kindness that you are showing to me in listening to what they have to say. Um, and that I just want to say again that we don't believe that we got this all wrong and we sure don't believe that we've got this all right. And um, this is worth conversations about, but it's it's not easy. So, the first person who's going to come and speak is going to give you an overview on ethnic studies at more at a much higher level. And then um Victoria Dye who is our executive director of curriculum and instruction um is going to give you a view of what we have

193developed thus far in the district in an ongoing process to do the right thing. So first person I want to call up is our executive director of people culture and community Dr. Okenzo. Please come and speak to us. trustees. Good evening. Good evening, Superintendent Leech. Good evening to the public who has taken the time to be here and to be on Zoom. So I'm going to provide some general contextual overview for my uh efforts involved with the ethnic studies curriculum but then my colleague uh Victoria Dai will take it from there. So people, culture and collaboration, which is essentially a part of my title, is also a part of the strategic function and placement of my role in a variety of different areas throughout the district. I have the pleasure of having been assigned by

194Superintendent Leech to assist my colleagues who are teachers in trying to essentially co-f facilitate dialogue related to the ethnic studies curriculum revision process. This means broadening and shifting perspectives. It means aligning as much as possible with the California uh model curriculum for ethnic studies which is also a process that we consistently engage in uh in other areas of our curricular disciplines. Um but aside from that um at its core I'm anchoring the purpose of ethnic studies. And while a variety of different people have different definitions for what ethnic studies is, I'm going to anchor us in purpose. So essentially the purpose is to provide opportunities for students exposure to the histories, culture, worldview, etc. of people of color, marginalized populations, particularly in the United States of America to build an understanding and create space for

195inquiry. Now because of time restraints this is really an abbreviated version but of course it pulls from sociology, cultural anthropology and the like a variety of different disciplines. But all is for the purpose of essentially shifting um what some might characterize as discomfort. But I'm going to reccharacterize that as uncertainty through essentially an intercultural communicative dialogue that's created in classroom space using the curriculum to be able to foster essentially uncertainty reduction. In my function, in certain capacities, I do executive coaching to some of our administrators. They have to ask me questions related to whatever they may be wanting to discuss that's top of mind. Sometimes it's racial in nature. I grant space for those conversations to exist so that we reduce the level of uncertainty, create the connections that need to be made, etc. And

196so in the same way that adults need this experience, so do students because those students ultimately reach me. Like I was a professor at Howard University, I was a professor at Benedict College, Allen University, an academic dean at City College of San Francisco. On and on and on I mean I'm published etc. like I I am a scholar scholar. I've edited works etc. But so much of my work is namely anchored around areas and disciplines that will fall within the category of ethnic studies. So what does the input and listening component of my role, my function look like, sound like? It looks like really allowing us to shift from a defensive disposition which naturally occurs when you are trying to uh undergard the work and effort and time and perspective that you have. But the

197beauty of being in this position and the beauty of making these contributions as a professional to Sequoia Union High School District and the community is that I anchor in offering opportunities to broaden perspectives to be able to create collaboration through healthy civil communicative dialogue that then allows us to better listen to the feedback both good and bad that we are being provided as a way to become more informed about the depth of knowledge that we have when we try to engage in this very iterative process of revising our curriculum. The collaboration piece speaks to creating space particularly internal to our organization for an iterative critique and thoughtful consideration. This takes us through processes where I, a consultant and faculty meet with each other to be able to sort out the the the direction that we

198have related to ethnic studies. But then we go through and we get feedback from leadership. We're listening to the feedback that we get via email. We're taking all of it into consideration for the purpose of making it make as best sense we can to make determinations about how it helps guide and inform what we do. Last but not least, um I am shifting slides to be able to talk about the promise. But before I do that, um I must say that it's a great pleasure to be able to work with the faculty here with a variety of my colleagues to have the input and the opportunity to be able to present to you tonight an effort that is an iterative process no matter where ethnic studies finds itself. Because amidst all of the different definitions

199that people have offered, which have actually been pretty good for the most part, the one thing that has been missing is that ethnic studies, different than any other historical discipline, centers the voices of people who are otherwise usually only thought of as the subject. It allows people to be subjectively objective, to be the subject telling their own story and their own voice from their own perspective. And so the ability for students to learn how to listen to other voices, to create space that centers other voices without having their center removed is in fact the beauty of creating this type of intercultural experience. And so to that end, I take us to our promise which says essentially that students really are able to find space to belong, expand their world view through diverse connections and graduate

200ready to pursue their dreams here at Sequoa Union High School District. I believe in that. I know the board believes in that. The faculty and staff believe in that. I hope that we get more people who are parents and community members, other constituency groups to believe in that because that is the work that we are really putting forth. And so I thank you and I yield my time to Victoria D. Thank you Dr. Salassi, fellow Superintendent Leech, President Nori, trustees, and um interested public and community. Thank you for being here. Uh, I'm going to present to you our work this year to improve upon the district's curriculum resources in ethnic studies. Uh, as a reminder, in October 2020, the SEOA board of trustees voted to make ethnic studies a graduation requirement beginning with the class

201of 20 uh 25, our seniors. They were acting on a petition uh initiated by district graduates and signed by more than 2,300 interested parties um that called for ethnic studies for all students. The petitions initiators drew from their own experience in ethnic studies and in our district and compelling research about the benefits of the course. Uh the board's decision was ahead of California Assembly Bill 101 and which passed in October 2021 and made ethnic studies graduation requirement in California beginning with the class of 2030 and it's linked uh in the slide deck. In March of 2021, uh the California Department of Education approved and published the uh model curriculum after a great deal of revision and uh and public input. And in Sequoia, ethnic studies has been a freshman social studies class since the 2122

202school year. Um and so we've had four years of student and teacher and community experiences to learn from. This year we've embarked on a curriculum revision pro project to incorporate feedback and improve the learning experience for all students. At the end of the process, we will have a robust set of curriculum resources for ethnic studies teachers and input from social science teachers across the district and our school and district leaders. So, I'll share with you why we're revising the curriculum, how we're doing it, and our work so far, what we have at this point. There are several reasons uh for revising the district ethnic studies curriculum. Uh at this point, when we launched the original curriculum, as you've heard, the uh we didn't have yet a state board of education approved model curriculum. So, we're

203now using the approved ethnic studies model curriculum as a guide for our revisions. Uh, we're also availing oursel of the four years of teacher student community member experiences to influence our process. One piece of feedback that we've heard over and over from teachers is that they would like a much more robust set of vetted resources. So, we're going to provide it. And finally, we now as a district community have a strategic plan um that we'll use to also guide our courses goals and um the outcomes. And we're really excited to improve on what we have. The curriculum revision process is a collaborative effort of many district uh interested parties. It's facilitated by an external consultant who's a subject area and curriculum development expert that we've had a relationship with in this district for 20 years

204and she's worked on uh many many curriculum revision or curriculum development projects with us. Um her role in the process is to help keep the team moving along on track and to incorporate feedback from leadership and to ensure that there are really quality instructional strategies embedded throughout the product. Also leading the process uh are the instructional coach for social studies, the executive director of people culture and collaboration Dr. Salassie and myself the executive director of curriculum instruction and professional development. uh the ethics ethnic studies teachers from four sites are participating in the revision team and uh they're experienced and professional and care about all of their students. Additionally, uh district and site leaders and all ethnic studies teachers are providing regular feedback and the products that I'll discuss with you tonight have all been reviewed

205and vetted by district leaders on multiple occasions. The district underwent a strategic planning process last year to collectively identify our goals and priorities for students. We came together to decide what we want our students to get out of four years with us. And uh the goals that our the members of our community expressed valuing align completely with the goals of the course and they've been a key consideration in our curriculum revision process. Supporting nth graders to become more effective communicators and collaborators aligns with the ethnic studies course outcomes. Uh we're incorporating learning activities to help students understand different perspectives and contributions. practice communicating their viewpoints effectively and collaborate well with diverse teams. The course also emphasizes civic-mindedness and is community centered. The instructional strategies we've been using will help students communicate across diverse audiences. They'll

206build students skills to respond to social, political, environmental dynamics of their interest in choosing. And they'll model valuing diversity and practicing empathy. We spent the better part of the year reviewing input and resources uh to create guiding documents that outline our learning goals for the course and setting common criteria for our curriculum materials. As part of the ethnic studies revision, as part of this process, we developed a course overview to communicate what the field of ethnic studies is. um why it's beneficial for students to study it, what the learning outcomes for the class are. Um and the content of the course overview comes directly from the the model curriculum and it's giving us guidance as we develop our curriculum materials to meet the needs of our community. The overview lays out the align also lays

207out the alignment between the ethnic studies course and the rigorous common core standards for history and social science and the history and social science framework in California. Using the course overview and our four years of student experiences in the class, we developed a set of criteria to guide our curriculum development efforts. The criteria will ensure that curriculum units provide students with the multiddisciplinary learning opportunities to explore ethnic studies um concepts through case studies rooted in the four foundational disciplines. Um that's African-American studies, Latin or Chani studies, Asian-American Pacific Islander studies, and Native American studies. Those are the four foundational disciplines. As we develop materials, we're also we're evaluating them against these criteria uh to ensure that we're meeting them. So, uh for each lesson sequence, we have three types of criteria. We have criteria for

208the content and skills and those are what will help us create alignment with the key approaches to history and social science teaching including inquirybased literacy refor reinforcing approach to analyzing primary and secondary documents or sources of all sorts. Um the pedigogy and delivery criteria are going to ensure that effective instructional strategies are embedded in curriculum materials like differentiation strateies strategies and integrated ELD strategies. The sense of belonging criteria will ensure that curriculum materials scaffold opportunities for safe exploration of ethnic studies content and case studies. This includes centering student voice, but avoiding activities that require students to disclose personal identity factors in a way that's uncomfortable for them. So, these criteria are going to set us up to have a curriculum that is far better for all of our students while remaining committed to the goals

209of ethnic studies. The inquiry focus throughout is going to teach students to ask great questions. Uh the student choice will enable students to apply their learning to topics they care about and the instructional strategies will provide access and rigor no matter what a student's academic background is and building critical thinking skills and literacy. The scope and sequence is an outline of the curriculum's four units, the essential questions that will be addressed in each unit, and the historical and contemporary case studies that students will use to investigate um while learning about the essential questions. Unit topics are aligned to the four primary themes of the model curriculum. Um and with the exception that the first unit in the state model curriculum, one of those four units is systems of power and instead we included that as

210one component of ethnic studies foundations where where we also discuss um what ethnic studies is and why we are why it's come to be taught in schools. Uh the essential questions also come from the model curriculum. the authors of the model curriculum uh offered five sample questions for each of the four themes. And so the curriculum development team prioritized three for um each unit. And the way they did that is that they grouped those 20 sample questions, categorized them and formed the four units and then used the the sample questions, sometimes collapsing them together and then also sometimes expanding them by using um uh questions from the uh sample lessons that are part of the the um the model curriculum. So the learning goals um the last row are describe how students will explore the

211themes through historical and contemporary case studies. Uh the um the stories will we we wrote it this way so that we could communicate really clearly that we're centering the histories um that are you know from the four foundational disciplines as a way of teaching of um students to explore the four themes and the essential questions. So the stories represent the four foundational disciplines of ethnic studies and will center um the histories of marginalized people and our local context. The historical case studies uh well there's throughout the course there's a sequential throughine from American history and that runs through the course and we believe that this will be be beneficial to our students in a number of ways. Um, one students can build on their existing knowledge from previous social science c classes and prepare for

212future social science learning in US history, AP US history, IP US history. The connection to US history also provides a common ground. It's all of our shared American history. Um, and uh, you know, with some with some historical remove also to make them safe topics to explore. Um within each unit there's also a contemporary case study which will that's drawn from the model curriculum. And so making a clear connection between the past and present day is going to um help students see history's relevance and hopefully set them up to engage meaningfully in history learning throughout their time in our district and beyond. uh the the specific historical case studies were selected were chosen uh because of how they'll help students answer the essential questions um because of their historical significance. For example, an episode like

213uh Bacon's Rebellion in unit 2 was selected because of its historical significance in the formation of racial identity in our in our country has a it marks an important turning point historically. And as with all of these materials uh so far, the learning goals, the essential questions, the units were all reviewed for input by ethnic studies teachers across the district and by our site and district leaders. So, our next steps um as a curriculum development team are to build instructional m materials for all lesson sequences and to continue to seek review and feedback from social science uh teachers and from leadership. And that's all from me at the moment. I'm sure you don't have any questions, so that's great. Thank you. So, um, when we do this, I'm sure we also have a lot to

214say. Why don't we start with just questions and after we all ask our questions, then we can feel free for the board to move on to comments. So, because it might be I'm sure we all have questions, it might be a little more straightforward and kind of get everyone on the same page. So, I have questions, but if anyone else has questions, happy to start with that. Oh, sure. So, um, I did try to email most of my questions ahead of time, but, um, just to kind of start, I do appreciate the work that's gone in to try to reform the curriculum, but you know, one of the things I did notice when I researched other districts, even districts like Santa Ana, which were straight up using the liberated model of ethnic studies was on

215their curriculum teams to decide curriculums, they had parents and community members to also give input. And this didn't always work out well in their case, and it end up in a lawsuit. But I'm curious if there was ever a decision on our end to have outside stakeholders also be a part of this curriculum revision process like many other districts were doing. Yes, there is opportunity uh to engage. Um, we wanted to bring this to the board to kind of update where we've been and to acknowledge, as uh, Bonnie said earlier, where we went wrong and where we want to go. And several of the members that I have met with spent time with are in the audience tonight. And I know that uh, Principal Loose Coot has also met with them. So, but there um

216can be more of a formalized opportunity to engage with the community. Okay. And then um some of my other arguments mainly center around the unit 4 essential questions because that's the one that kind of stood out to me a little bit and you know it was brought up to our attention that some of the language of the EQs especially EQ1 which is quote how do systems of power create injustice and how have people challenged them in the pursuit of equity and belonging was different from what the state EQ trying to address that question was to me the state EQ seemed a little more neutral in its framing. So I'm just curious how some of the essential questions kind of got to their language versus a more neutral framing. Yeah. So I um I shared with

217you sort of the protocol that uh the team used to develop these essential questions. But um what was a I think that including that focus on systems of power really represents what the model curriculum how the model curriculum describes what ethnic studies is. It's really a discipline that um has questioning systems of power at its heart. um and understanding how we can look at and analyze issues in our world, problems through a framework of understanding levels of power. So that was the part of that decision. Oh, I'm sorry. One more quick thing is that in the model curriculum, there's a whole separate one of the themes is systems of power. So rather than have an entire theme dedicated to systems of power, it's addressed as part of ethnic studies foundations and then as part of

218you know how do stu how do communities respond to ills that come from you know um abuses of power. I do want to say that power isn't represented as a negative thing throughout the curriculum. I mentioned that we're very much in progress with developing the where we are right now is we have a draft of unit one that will still needs to go to ethnic studies teachers and leadership um and so you know before it goes before it's finished and in that unit um a variety of types of power explained there's power within power with where we work with people so it's not vilified power isn't something that in itself is taught as being an e evil It's um it can be of course and it can be used for good. Um so that essential

219question reflects the ethnic study the model curriculum's focus on systems of power. Um thank you. Yeah, I think that um has a lot of clarity and hopefully there'll be diversity of viewpoint too in some of these examples. But the last question um I kind of had was this is also kind of brought up to our attention is one of the focuses of ethnic studies was to kind of share the accomplishments of marginalized groups. And I wondered where in the current course sequence you think we might add some of those because it does seem to be lacking to me. It seems to be a lot of negative kind of examples of where our country hasn't always lived up to its ideals. But I'm curious where we share some of these accomplishments of marginalized groups that might

220otherwise go unnoticed. Yeah, it it will be throughout. It will absolutely be throughout. um even where it's not 100% obvious in the lesson goals, it's highlighting the stories of marginalized communities. For example, a um one of the lesson one one of the unit learning goals is about um let's see about the I need readers. Okay. The uh case studies on conditional belonging during World War II to explore historically marginalized groups responses to um instances of inclusion, exclusion and belonging. This is where we can uh discuss the uh experiences for example of Japanese Americans in internment camps, the differential treatment of um of Italian-Americans, German Americans, a variety of groups in World War II and and their responses, how they came together as communities. So, it's um incorporated throughout. And I think that you'll also see

221it reflected in our criteria that we um have a and I want to say also that the criteria is not just a page we are actively using it to check our work in every single you know uh step of the way as we're developing curriculum. So when we say that there is going to be an inquiry based approach, we're literally checking off, we're checking our work for every learning sequence that there will be student focused, student centered inquiry throughout. We're also, you know, co we're checking our work to make sure that the um that the criteria for sense of belonging and safety is there. Um, and I think if you you look into them, you'll see a lot of the comments that you've received from community reflected directly in these criteria. Thank you. Um, so

222those are my questions. I have more thoughts to share, but why don't we continue with other board members questions for now? Um, any board members in person or if Rich, do you have any questions? I have comments but not questions. Okay. So, no one else has any questions just to Well, I I just had a question. Can you because I know it's uh aligned with the final version of the uh model curriculum and I know there were a lot of sample lessons in that model curriculum. So uh are those being incorporated in the various units? It sounds like unit one is the only one that's more fleshed out. Yeah, unit one so far is the one that we have a draft of and it's probably I would say about a 98% complete draft. There's a

223few more things. So, we're going to bring it to the ethnic studies teachers in early May and uh to leadership for um re review and comment and feedback and revision. Um so, the uh the question was about the sample lessons. The sample lessons are definitely figuring in throughout the contemporary case studies are from the model curriculum and um the model curriculum sample lessons are still not robust enough. If you take a look at them, it says do this with your class and then do this with your class and it's not enough. What the team is uh producing includes really fleshed out materials that focus that have um a much much much greater student centered focus in every learning activity every day. Um there will be much more of a of student voice and inquiry represented

224in the activities that students are participating in their ethnic studies classes. Now, when I say this, I say I want to remind everybody what the charge is of the curriculum revision team. We're developing a set of resources that we think are going to be awesome enough that the um the teachers will use them and be able to rely on them really well. And then I guess is the intent um to finish all the various units before the end of the school year and then kind of what's the the process? So uh as I'm sure you know life skills is the first quarter of uh the year for freshmen in 9th grade and that's the first so that's the first quarter. The first unit should take us through the end of the first semester. We if

225we are able to complete um a unit two by the end of the school year, I think it will be a remarkable accomplishment um and have it fully vetted and um and reviewed by leaders and um and all teachers. So, we won't be done by the end of the school year. Can almost guarantee, but um so it'll be a little bit of a rolling implementation. And we went very slow with the developing criteria and um learning goals uh in order and it had several revisions and like I said multiple opportunities for leadership input because we wanted to lay the groundwork well before we began um the planning process and it's not been without herculean effort on the part of our curriculum development team. I will say sorry. Um I just have one more question before

226you move to board comments because I know this is something come up um with the competing ethnic studies model. So in your opinion was there any intent for us to use the liberated ethnic studies model at all or was that not the model that we were trying to go after? No, we have not once referenced the liberated ethnic studies model. Okay. Thank you. Um, why don't we go to board comments now? Anyone want to start? Sure. Rich, you want to go first? Uh, sure. Uh, so I'll start by saying that my understanding of AB 101 is different than what was presented tonight. My understanding is that AB 101 did not create a new graduation requirement. It created a like a switch by which the state could make a graduate requirement upon funding it in 2025.

227They kind of put in place this switch that they could choose to switch at the time and then when the time come they chose not to flip that switch. So there there has never been there is not and there has never been a state graduation requirement. There was the possibility that they could create one if they chose to fund it. and when it came time to do so, they chose not to. Um, and then I'll I'll say um, broadly I support course choices and I support meeting demand for courses wherever possible. That's broadly my philosophy and this includes ethnic studies for which there was strong demand. I support having ethnic studies class to celebrate the contributions of the selected ethnic groups and to share aspects from history both positive and negative events that are not

228sufficiently covered in other social studies courses. Um the board that approved development of this course they specifically said that the course should not be based on the model curriculum. They did not support the model curriculum at the time. I don't believe they expressed concern about just some small part of the model curriculum. I rewatched the video. It's been a couple months, but I believe they specifically said to avoid the model curriculum. And then I hear in this presentation tonight that we're intentionally aligning with the model curriculum, which was exactly what my understanding was the guidance was to avoid. Um, I do not support the state model curriculum and it appears by the recent action of the state government that they don't support it either. Uh I believe it includes controversial content and based on the

229many messages we received and the public comments that we heard several members of our community uh feel the same way. So um I don't if if I have to vote on a course that is aligned with the state model curriculum. Um my vote will be no. Yeah. Uh so uh Superintendent Hansen asked if we could make a clarifier. The board of trustees in 2020 were referring to a draft of the model curriculum that was uh the subject of great push back and debate. Um there was treatment of certain groups that was perceived as very inflammatory and that's why it did not pass and that's why um as I understand it the board of trustees at that time did not support alignment with the draft model curriculum. it didn't pass in California after revision and after

230a public input process across the state. The model curriculum that has passed um it is the one that we've referenced in our development efforts not the one that was the subject of such controversy controversy. I'll just say I think it's clear from what we've heard that the current one also has plenty of controversy. Thank you. Um, first of all, I'm an ethnic studies professor at San Jose State University, so I wholeheartedly support ethnic studies and I always have. I wish when I was in high school like my son who was an MA student had ethnic studies you know so that I could learn all these wonderful stories about my family right world histories or world traditions and and in sort of the names that we don't know right we know the Dolores we know the

231Martin Luther Kings but we we don't get to center ourselves as you said um in in this history and in regular history you don't get any of this it's it's very it's cherrypicked and It's if if at all mentioned, right? People's um histories in the US. Ethnic studies is history, you know, it is part of the history. We are part of the fabric of this history. Latinos, Native American, indigenous peoples, uh AsianAmerican, uh black, we are part of this history and it often has been erased or um omitted. Right? So, I wholeheartedly support ethnic studies. I hardly support um this curriculum. I do want to say uh thank you to the teachers, the amazing teachers who have done such an amazing job to create this curriculum under so much stress, right? And scrutiny. I wish

232that we can have that same scrutiny for all subjects, right? Because it's it should be that way. Why why is it just ethnic studies? Um I do thank you. Thank you to the ethnic studies curriculum. um your dedication in creating inclusive, thoughtful, and engaging lessons do reflect diverse voices in our community. Um and it's nothing short of inspiring for me for what you're doing. Um also, um as I said, I was I was I I know that the curriculum is is robust and it can be more robust. Um there are uh lessons that I've seen from my son in particular uh that I look at and I say wow you are reading uh college level college grade uh uh material. Uh one of the uh people that he's reading is the Ronald Daki is a

233different mirror and I didn't get to read that until I was in college. So I told him you are definitely um doing curriculum that is college level and so I think ethnic studies is college level. I think all the material that I've seen from my son's curriculum um really can be unofficially an AS or an or an AP course because it's so intense and it's theoretical and it's very thoughtful and critical analysis. And um I love having those conversations with my son when he comes home and and just having really really thoughtful questions about the world around him and how he sees himself in this space, right? He feels like he belongs finally. He did not feel that um in his elementary school because he just didn't he didn't have this curriculum even though I've

234tried to teach him. But you know, mom, I'm mom, so you know, whatever. He won't listen to me. He'll listen to another teacher. Um so I just want to say thank you so much to the teachers for all your um hard work and for also creating this curriculum that I do not think is divisive. I think that teachers are really working hard to make it inclusive. Um and ethnic studies is not a fixall for everybody, right? It's not a fix all one one space for everything. It's just not. Um and I'm so glad that you know everybody came out to speak um their voices and and and we're hearing you. We're hearing everybody. But the big part of the community of East Palto M Park, they're not here, you know. So I'm speaking up for

235my community, people that are not here to speak up for themselves. And you know, right now I think ethnic studies is really important too because Latinos are being, you know, targeted. There's an anti-latino sentiment right now. And I think in in ethnic studies is a good place for students to feel safe to talk about sort of the issues that are happening right now with our community specifically being targeted right from this administration that's happening now. So I just want to say thank you. Thank you so much. [Music] So, I want to start by saying that I know that this is a topic that evokes a lot of passion. It's complex. There are concerns. Um, and I want to recognize that. I have read every single email that has come in except for the ones that

236came in because close session started at 4. A bunch came in. We were already in close session. Um, and I know that the conversation around ethic studies is not new and it can't be taken lightly. Over the past couple of months, um, like I said, we've have the board has received lots of emails. We have met with concerned community members. Um, listened to a wide range of perspectives. And I want to acknowledge that I yeah I had I it's not it's this is not a topic that is that I take lightly. Um I want to affirm that while the original implementation of ethnic studies as a graduation requirement began years ago. The curriculum revision process has not occurred in a vacuum. And I want to reiterate that it's been shaped by student experience, teacher experience,

237district leadership, and extensive community feedback. And I don't want to underestimate the the power of incredible teachers who know what they are doing in the classroom and know how to respond in the moment. I I don't know that there's a teacher out there who will teach the exact same class from CL section A to section B because there's a different group of students there. They adjust in the moment. They they they work with that. And so I do I do acknowledge um what President Nory said. I I think that that this is not the curriculum is not perfect. There's I don't know if there's ever a such thing as a perfect history curriculum as a credentialed history teacher. I do think that there's space there could be space moving forward to to bring more to

238even bring more stakeholders into the that curriculum shaping process. Um but meaningful changes have been done and I think that's what we need to recognize. A lot of the comments that I heard tonight were about what was happening and I think what tonight's vote about or taking action is how to um about these refinements that are coming. Like I said, I'm a credentialed California history teacher. I know the complexities of teaching social sciences. I believe the process has been iterative irrit sorry late responsive grounded in a commitment to improving the student learning experience. I also want to mention that at our board retreat, we collectively agreed that the time to discuss the broader question of graduation requirements including ethnic studies would be this fall. We all agreed on that. That upcoming study session will provide

239the full picture and allow for thoughtful reflection on the context of our graduation prior priorities. I ran my campaign on a simple study question. What is best for students? I will ask that every single day. I do in my own classroom. And while I know not everyone agrees with this decision, I believe that pressing pause now after teachers have planned, students have registered, the class of 2026 is already preparing for what's ahead. it's actually not going to be in our students best interest, nor is it it the best use of valuable district resources at a time when we are urgently needed elsewhere. So this doesn't mean we're done listening. We are far from it. It means we continue to improve and adapt always with students at the center. I trust our educators. I trust the

240process we've built so far and I trust that we can keep moving forward striving to do what is right by all students. Um, so tonight I will be voting in favor of this recommendation. All right. So, in terms of my comments, I I actually have uh a long history following all the ethnic studies uh model curriculum. So, um, some of you may not know that I'm on the and have been on the API school board members association for quite some time since 2017, I think. Um, and so we we as a an organization were very actively involved in the ethnic studies model curriculum. So, I've read it multiple times over all the drafts and all the feedback. Um, so we went from that first draft to the final draft and we were specifically focusing on

241the sample lessons for the AAPI unit which started out with only three sample lessons and we said this is this is completely inadequate given the complexity of the A&HPI community. Um, so we've really rallied and by the end of it, I think there were how many uh lessons almost 20 lessons, sample lessons in the AAPI um, unit, but that was done in collaboration with 15 different organizations that we were partnering with. Um, and so we reviewed the whole thing and felt that this final version was a very solid version. Um, and I did actually make public comment back in 2020 when Sequoia was adopting the course proposal. Um, so it is uh a valid point that President Winer was referring to that very first draft and the last draft was very different from the first

242draft and really vetted across the state many times over thousands of public comment. Um, I had to practice my public comment because it was one minute on the dot. Everyone was lined up, start the timer, read your the one minute script, and boom, stopped. Right? So, it it went through a lot of vetting. And so, I'm very excited that the revision is based on that final model curriculum. Um, I do see like I was looking at the learn learn learning goals and there were actually some sample lessons that were attached to the learning goals and I wanted to make sure that it really was representative of the histories of our our communities. And one goal in particular struck a chord because um it was the unit 4 one on United Farm Workers of America. And

243that story hasn't always been fully told. It's it's told primarily from the Hispanic perspective, but actually Filipino Americans were very instrumental to that fight. And so when I looked at the next level down, which was their their ideas for sample lessons, I saw that they were including both perspectives. So that made me feel much more comfortable that okay, we're going to actually tell the full story of each of these examples. and not just one version. And that's really the goal of ethnic studies because most people out there don't realize that AAPIs had a role in the United Farm Workers of America, right? That's a completely untold story and uh I think it really makes a big difference. So ultimately um I am in favor of the scope and sequence as presented and also agree that

244we we agree to not discuss requirements until the fall. Okay. Quickly before me share I share my opinion on I think we need a motion to extend our meeting. So could I get a motion to for an hour? Oh we don't go time. Could I get a motion to extend our meeting past 10? Motion to extend. Seconded. All in favor? I I I Okay. Um that motion passes. Okay. So, um um I wanted to share my thoughts even though I think a majority of our board has already spoken. But um clearly we can all agree even our educators that our first draft of the curriculum that we came up with did not get it right. And by the vast amount of complaints and upset community members we have seen there has been harm that has

245been caused by some of the supplemental curriculum in some of the lessons. You know, I did see stuff that did make me gravely concerned whether it was stereotypical um descriptions of our of Jew of Jewish people or also um identity wheels that asked students to out themselves in way that seemed would make people uncomfortable. Um the problem is I do think the draft is slightly better, but I'm still have a lot of questions. I'm not fully convinced that the revised curriculum solves some of the problems that a lot of our community members have addressed, especially in ways that many people pointed out seem that some of the essential questions that I identified seem more prescriptive in that they try to say that there's a certain right answer to theories of power instead of focusing on

246the contributions of minority groups to this country, which I do not still see or feel comfortable is reflected enough in that one-page document. Um, I'm also concerned in about the ways that some of these tricky concepts like systemic oppression are going to be taught. So, for context, I actually did debate in high school, which is long been critiqued as a left-wing social justice echo chamber. And in many ways, I don't think that's wrong. Me and my partners would go look for obscure articles in academic journals that would argue for the most intellectually crazy things. For example, we found arguments from authors in published university journals who wrote arguments that anyone who wasn't an indigenous American should straight up leave the country and go back to where they came from or that the American civil society

247was founded on the oppression of African-Americans and the only solution was violent revolution that would burn everything to the ground. I disagreed with a lot of what I read, but I do think I gained intellectual vitality by learning about these arguments and these authors perspectives, but not in a way that tried to place any one viewpoint or theory of power as correct. I do want to say that almost all the teachers I had at MA were very good about trying to do this and give space for differing voices, but as we have seen, that sometimes hasn't been the case in our district. I do especially worry that as freshmen entering a new environment, some of our students are especially vulnerable in ways that even a few years later in their high school experience, they not

248be. Even by the public comment and the amount of emails that we receive from constituents, there's clearly deep mistrust here. And I'm really worried that pushing forward at this point will drive our community further apart without some more careful consideration. I also do want to acknowledge that I think our history department does a great job sharing diverse stories. For example, I never took ethnic studies in in high school, but I always do remember that in my A push class, I learned about a lot of these examples from a historical perspective in the school district. I also want to share something that my A push teacher told me that stuck with many my and my classmates till today. He shared with us that the story of America is a about one that about a country that

249was founded on these great ideals that were never seen before about equality for all its citizens and also about you know the idea of democracy that we don't need a monarchy or one king with absolute power ruling us but also how our country hasn't always lived up to those ideals and the contradictory notion between having these ideals of equality and how throughout our history there's always been a struggle to get our country to kind of live up to the true meaning of its ideals and not leave certain groups behind and I think that viewpoint really shaped me in a historical sense that I can appreciate and something I worry that is not exactly reflected properly in our ethnic studies curriculum. Lastly, um one of the other reasons that I do have quite concern is that

250we do have to acknowledge that there is a changing political landscape right now in the times we are in. Like them or not, the new administration in Washington is itching for a fight. And it's pretty clear to me that our governor and his friends in Sacramento have no intention of defending us if it comes in their way of their political expediency. Being the subject of a Department of Education civil rights investigation will not benefit any student, teacher, or administrator in this room or in our district and will only add to the to our ongoing headaches. I also do not believe that this curriculum or in the way it was explained will can sustain court challenges or in the court of public opinion. And it does seem to me that even at this point, the Supreme

251Court is very likely to rule in other cases about the autonomy of parents to opt their students out of curriculums. For those reasons, I do tend to agree with Trusty Gin that this course should be made optional or we should take a pause to reassess it for later. Okay. Um, is there anyone who wants to make a motion? All right. Um, I move that the board accept the changes and modifications to the ethnic studies course of study. Um, and that we discuss the class's future as a grad requirement in the fall during a study session when the board examines the complete list of graduation requirements. Seconded. Roll call. Trusty Cruz. Yes. Trusty Thompson. Yes. Trustee Gin, no. Trustee, Vice President Coup, yes. President Nory, no. Motion carried, three yays and two nays. Okay. Um, next

252on our agenda is item 16.3, which is the streamlining course offerings and creating a more diverse learning environment to increase student access and success. Uh, do you have public comment? Yes, I have four or sorry, five in person. And if if you would like to comment online, please raise your hand now. Looks like uh four so nine alto together. President Nori, I know it's late. Is there any chance we could take like a three minute just Yeah, sure. Why don't we Yeah, why don't we do that? We can take a break. Yeah, three minute break. Come back at 10:10. We have nine. Are we capping that or Okay. Okay. Okay. Um let yeah why don't we do public comment so um if just on Zoom raise your hand and then we'll call it in 10

253seconds. Okay so I think we have eight five in person three online. Yeah no worries. Okay. Yeah. So, why don't in the spirit of fairness, why don't we just do two minutes each for Oh, now we have nine again. Okay. Why don't we just do two minutes each? How many do we have in person? It's nine total. Oh, yeah. So, um and leave it at that. Okay. So, why don't we start with the ones on Zoom and then we can go in person. Okay. First up is Megan O'Reilly Green. Hello. Um, my name is Megan. I'm the mother of four future students of Squeen High School District who are currently attending public school in Redwood City. First of all, I wanted to express how deeply grateful to the school board and administrators for the time

254you've given me this past week and taking my perspective consideration because I know you guys are very busy. I wanted to share that I had concerns that Redwood City had apparently removed advanced classes across our entire district in order to align with the streamlining conventions at Sequoa Union High School District. Our district is generally more economically segregated and ability segregated at Sequoia Union and students at Kennedy Middle School are an average of two years lower than grade level. We have many students in my daughter's school that are ready for college level material and we have students that still need to work on phonics. And man, you know, the heroics we expect from teachers these days, they give me concern. Um, you know, since the advanced opportunities have disappeared for sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students

255in Redwood City because of pro a programming change made by school union for the less privileged high school stu schools, less privileged high school high schools I'm now. And my daughter is experiencing a painful story of an incredibly, you know, multi-thnic economically diverse fabric of an elementary community being broken up along lines of economic status. You know, this is not academic for me. It's personal. It's painful. I looked into how the lack of options expected by high achieving families affects economic segregation, particularly in our district, and I sent analysis and I would thank you for reading it and taking into consideration. I would ask that policies meant to support historically marginalized students be applied universally or not at all. And that the district consider the effect of the attrition of high socioeconomic status students on

256policies meant to support historically marginalized students. and that the district work with more closely with feeder schools with high levels of marginalized students to prevent early economic segregation. And also I would ask that the district take an equal consideration for the needs of advanced and gifted students. The attitude of deploying one group of students against another as a public resource is kind of a dubious moral ground. Um you know and uh yeah so thank you guys so much for reading my emails. Thank you. Next is restore honors and pause ethnic. Yes. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes. So, you know, again, um speaking to my lived experience, I um came here as an immigrant and if it wasn't for the gate program in San Francisco public school, I would never be a physician today. And

257and I think are you are disempowering these children by removing choice. It is not. So what my daughter experience is in the same classroom there's two versions of the test. And you think it's it it is mentally healthy for some kids to see that oh I must be the dumb kid who gets three of the multiplechoice questions removed. I mean the receipts that I have that is happening in the classrooms is disgusting. You are disempowering these kids and then you wonder why they have mental health issues. You have the opportunity to really make positive change there. You have a community here of people who don't even have kids anymore, but they see the community suffering and we want to help. And bringing back honors is just the first step. just the first step, but hopefully

258one of many that can help bridge the divide that is clearly created by unfortunately poor leadership in this district on every level. At the board and superintendent level, at the administrative staff level, at every principal level, although I have to admit I don't know Croant, but the rest, I am so appalled. And I am a believer of public school. I'm a product of public school. So is my husband. So is my first child. But my god was I grateful when she finally was done with ma and that's why I'm not sending my second. And that is sad because this is my community high school and that should not be that way. I wanted to ride her bike to school and and yet she's still friends with all her friends, you know, and you think they

259don't see it. The kids are suffering. They see it. They're just Thank you. I'm sorry your time was up. Next we have Lou. Restore Honors AS. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, thanks. Um, I myself um am a product of public schools as well. Um, the public school I went to was in rural Texas in the 1990s and we didn't have a lot of talented teachers in the sciences like uh like Sequoia Union High School District does and nor funds for lab equipment. When I got to university, I went to a bio class during the first two weeks of class shopping time and I heard the kids around me. They had so much more familiarity with with the concepts they had. Uh they were answering the professor's questions, talking about things I

260had no idea about. And I promptly uh went and dropped that class and opted for something easier. when I am thinking about um the the question of having honors and um particularly in the sciences, um I I feel like there is just so much more of a value to um to keeping the rigorous coursework available to the students of all ends of the spectrum who want to take it. so that when they get into um the upper level 11th grade AP classes, they um they they they feel confident and more empowered to take the to take that. And I speak specifically for about the kids who um who come from a less privileged background. I fully acknowledge my background of privilege and that my my children um there a lot of my my daughter's friends

261in nth grade um have been talking about taking these supplemental um classes outside and um tutoring outside of school um and they were saying, you know, well, when when my kids trying to do her lab, two of the kids just went to the bathroom the whole time and screwed around and so she didn't even get to finish. Therefore, I'm supplementing her outside of school so that she will be ready when the higher level course work begins. So, I just wonder if the whole um purpose that you were trying to solve to help the people who are underprivileged isn't actually hurting them the most. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Our next speaker is pause es. Yes. Hi, thank you. I'm actually um was going to make very similar point as the last speaker. Um,

262I advanced courses are incredibly important to keep high-erforming students engaged in uh school and they are particularly important for our marginalized communities who would not have access to um advanced courses other than through their public schools. When we cut these courses off in our public school systems, you know, the most privileged kids have access to summer schools, to Russian school of math, to tutors, or um some even leave the system and go to private schools. But our most successful uh students of marginalized communities are stuck in public schools and their access is cut off. and if they're bored and disengaged, um you may really lose an opportunity to change a student's life. Our California legislature recognized this when they passed the Math Placement Act um many years ago and and it was in fact um

263access to advanced students as a means um advanced math courses as a means to bettering um opportunities for our marginalized students. that that motivated that that act. So I would urge you if you want to keep our high-erforming students engaged regardless of their socioeconomic status, please give them the choices they need so that they can thrive academically. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to switch the comments in person. First up is Melinda McGiver. Good evening board members. I'm speaking tonight to urge you to restore AS honors courses because doing so isn't just the right thing for students. It's what our own strategic plan calls for. Goal two of the plan commits to academic growth and mastery for all, including increased participation in advanced and specialized programs. And yet over the past few years, we've lost

264nearly half of all honors courses districtwide. That's not expansion, that's erosion. Signature strategy 2 further directs SUHSD to expand enrollment and rigorous coursework aligned to student needs, interests, and readiness. But by eliminating the middle lane that is AS honors, we've actually narrowed student choices, especially for those who want more challenge than college prep, but aren't yet ready for AP. These courses are also a key part of signature strategy 3, which calls for structured enrichment options. Honors classes provide that enrichment, especially especially for historically underserved students who benefit from scaffolded academic challenge. And finally, the portrait of a graduate envisions students as curious, resilient learners. But you cannot cultivate those traits while denying student access to coursework that nurtures them. Restoring honors courses isn't a step back. It's following the path you've already mapped out. Thank

265you. Thank you. Next is Abby Corman. [Music] How is this on the agenda again? I really need to know the part of Brown Act that got it here. We've had an internal review, an external one. We've had multiple agenda items over many years. I'm not clear if the answers aren't being disseminated clearly or if they're being ignored. I'm not behind the scenes, so I don't know if you've had meetings with students first, although I heard that maybe alluded to earlier. But what I've seen is that there's a group of our community who does not feel heard and they're not backing down. I believe both for ethnic studies and this conversation around streamlining coursework. Part of our tension is that we're forcing the topic only at board meetings. As Trusty Coup just named, it's quite difficult

266to get an authentic sincere response out clearly in such a strict timed format does not allow conversation. The district could have had and still could host community forums moderated fairly that allow questions to be answered publicly and myths could be debunked live. With that in mind, I need to debunk a few with the little time I have left. We have more advanced coursework this year in our district than ever before. In 2024, SUHSD students took AP exams in 38 subject areas. 71% of them passed with a score of four or five and nine out of 10 achieved a score of three or higher. One of the arguments is that we are taking away access to advanced coursework. And yet the reality is that there is more advanced coursework available at SUHSD than any other district

267in the area, including at local private schools. Thank you. Next is Mark Denon. Hi. Hey. Uh, good evening board. Um, my name is Mark Dynan. Um, I'm actually on city council in East Palo Alto and was up late last night at a meeting. Um, really did not want to come out tonight because, you know, you do enough of these and you're just like, "Wow, what am I doing?" Um, again, at a local uh, meeting, but this is important to me. My son's a freshman at MA. I can tell you that he does not find his freshman year at all challenging. He is doing less homework and is less challenged than his this year than he was in his eighth grade year at Lantrada. It's a real disappointment. I'd heard good things about Lantrada. And um

268you know he's in class with uh kids that are reading at the fifth grade level. It's it's really a challenge and I know my my son went with to school at Lroter with Ectctor. You know, you would never have a a band or you would never have a athletic event where some kids are up here and other kids are down there and expect a band director, you know, somebody who's been playing trumpet for 5 years, somebody just started yesterday to not have uh instruction that's geared towards both advanced people and, you know, people who who might need a little extra help. Um, I'm very concerned about this. I'm an East Nepal resident and people in EPA are definitely dependent upon public schools. They don't have the option that a lot of parents will have if

269this continues of pulling their kids entirely out of the public schools and setting them to private schools or doing um enrichment activities. Um for me, detracting is a big message to the many affluent parents in this district to send your kids to private school if you want them to have a rigorous education. I don't think we need to do that. I encourage the district to restore honors uh provide rigorous honors classes for advanced students and classes at all levels, you know, for students who might need some extra help. So, thank you for your time and uh you know, I think if you did want to, you know, do outreach in East Pala, let me know. I'm happy to help. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have Betsy Snow. Hello. Um, tonight I'm here as a

270community member and the mother of a boy scout who's here to earn his citizenship in the community badge. So, I thank you for all of the um, mostly professional discord and of course heartfelt discourse on display. Um, and I need to share that that same son thrived in a heterogeneous ninth grade ethnic studies class taught by the revered Melissa Diaz, who is his favorite teacher as a freshman, one of his favorite teachers. He actually loves everybody, but she's a standout for sure. And I trust her implicitly to know when to differentiate if children in that class are not challenged. And I should mention I happen to be the library media specialist at Sequoia High School. So I watched just today many of those ethnic studies students of all levels come through the media center to

271print their projects proudly and I help them and I ask them hey well who did you interview for this immigration project and who did you find as a primary source. These are the students that are learning as freshmen the same way to site and find primary sources as our seniors. So I assure you they are getting the challenges that they need. I have to share a personal story. I'm going to just like completely go off script here. Um Harry K. Wong is a revered author, he's since passed away, of the teacher's first day of school and in off um a private conversation with me, he once said, you know, in the 70s uh parents sent their kids to private schools because they were afraid of them being around people who were other or of other

272races. And now it seems that parents send their kids to private schools because they're afraid of their kids being around poor people. So I really want to ask, what are we afraid of? Are we afraid of our students being around people that didn't have access to trombone when they were in fifth grade because they went to a neighborhood school for a whole wholly other reasons? I really want to to remind you that every student matters and we see the beauty in all of these students in these heterogeneous classes and um they end up choosing the rigor and the honors classes that have not disappeared after their freshman year. Thank you. Thank you. Our last speaker is Edith Salvatore. It's been a while since I've gotten to speak four times at a meeting. All right. I'm

273not sure why we're here right now. The board has discussed this and asked for data. And while no study is going to be able to unequivocally declare a causal relationship, we have repeatedly seen data that shows that our sites AP and IB access has improved since the institution of more streamlined offerings that have helped to lower the barriers for students who have not traditionally seen themselves in those advanced classes. This was one of the measurable goals that was at the heart of the initial decision to pursue the goal of increasing heterogeneous groupings at the ninth grade level when we first recommended it to the board as part of our work on program improvement. I want to thank the parent who spoke on Zoom earlier who said we should keep the rigor in early classes to

274better prepare students for advanced level classes in the upper years. That is exactly what our nth grade teachers are doing, providing rigor for all students so that all students can be prepared for AP or IB coursework if they choose to pursue those classes. I was confused by some of the other recommendations that somehow resegregating our students would heal the division that they experience. The most consistent comment I've heard over these many times we've discussed this is that the district should not take access to advanced classes away from students. I could not agree more and I thank the district for providing all students in 9th grade English, biology, and algebra 1 classes access to AP and IB courses based on the foundational skills they will learn in those heterogeneous classes. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes

275public comments. So, does anyone have a motion? I if Yeah, there's no comments, I'll make a motion. I'd like to have a little discussion before motion if we could. I'd have comments. Is it possible to have some discussion before we go straight to motions? Yeah, for sure. Go for it. So, um, first I want to say broadly, I'm in favor of course choices, broad range of course offerings. let students choose the path that's right for them. To the extent any board member has an interest in exploring that line, I'd be interested in seeing if we can get to three people on anything. Uh but specifically, there are two recommended uh course off two recommended motions. And I just want to make sure that I understand that affirming the 2526 school year is in no way

276saying anything one way or the other about the 2627 school year. Is that the intent of that recommended motion? I I can't hear. So, I'll just I haven't spoke yet. Okay. Um I I would I would take it from exactly what it says. Okay. And then um the second one committing to the committee that no change will be made. course offers without board approval. Um, I would maybe want to narrow that to something like controversial courses or courses that the superintendent believes might be controversial or something because as I recall, there's a very large number of courses that come and go and many of them are not controversial at all. And I don't think we should have to commit to every single one of them going through a full board hearing and process. Um, so

277I just wanted to maybe get some the thinking behind every course is it versus having some level of judgment. Maybe the board president, the superintendent select which ones merit a full board discussion and other ones could that are deemed not at all controversial just to not um burden our agendas with courses that might be coming and going. I'm not sure the exact number that come and go every year. So maybe I'm off on that being an issue, but I thought I'd see if we understood. The intent of number two was to follow current process. Um so as I had stated I think a little over a year ago um in a board in a board meeting that we would not be reducing um any honors or as classes and we would continue to increase you

278know again just for clarity um that also goes on what students interest is. So if students interest falls short on potentially a new AP class, we won't be able to run that section. So obviously just to make that clarity, but the intent um the intent of number two is that we will follow our current process where uh we are um bringing new courses uh to the board for approval. Okay. I don't know if anyone has anything to add, but I just wanted to at least mention those things prior to people starting to making motions. Since there are no other comments, I make a motion to affirm the district's course offerings for the 2025 2026 school year as expressed by schools to families during this spring's course selection process, as well as to commit to the

279community that no changes will be made to course offerings without board approval. This includes streamlining decisions as well as new coursework. Motion to approve. I'll sec I'll second. Trusty Cruz. Yes. Trusty Thompson. Yes. Trusty G. Yes. Vice President Coup. Yes. President Nori. Yes. Motion carried. 50. Okay. Next is item number 17, future agenda items. any okay if all okay if not um we can move on to item number 18 which is adjournment um can I get a motion to adjurnn motion to adjurnn second all in favor this meeting is adjourned at 10:35 p.m.