001i've seen somebody do it i am opening our school board meeting tonight before we go into closed session wanted to see if there are any public comments i received no comment cards thank you okay see nope public comments uh we will adjourn to closed session thank you so much okay welcome everybody i'm going to start our meeting um just want to let you know if anybody is here to make public comment we have cards on the table under the went the window and you would fill out a card and submit it uh to the board secretary if you're a part of our zoom audience um you can make public comment uh by raising your zoom hand and for both people that are here and on the zoom audience there's several times when you can make
002public comment to the board you can do it under our public comment section for items that are not on our agenda and there's also opportunity during each of our various agenda items so again either fill out the card if you're here or raise your zoom hand so we welcome all of you tonight we have a pretty hefty agenda so i'll do my best to move us through laura can you do real call please student trustee sooner student trustee stood here justine thompson here trustee stevenson here trustee sarver here vice president again here president dubois here a quorum is present and i should also have mentioned that um trustee stevenson is out of state and is part of our zuma audience tonight okay next item we're on item five of the agenda approval of the agenda
003are there any changes no changes none for me can i ask the question of whether we're are we pulling one item from the agenda um we've got to find it yes yes okay somebody like to make a motion i'll move to prove the agenda with us after striking uh 1512. second in a second yes second okay all in favor all right i agenda is approved with that one change i do have one report out from um closed session the board has looked has worked over the last couple of weeks to do our evaluation of the superintendent she has had a very positive evaluation and her evaluation document was signed tonight so congratulations dr williams okay next um is item seven approval of the consent agenda any changes i'd like to pull item 715 a gateway
004contract okay anything else okay can i have a motion to approve or to approve the consent agenda okay in a second a second okay and roll call please student trustee assona trustee steve yes steve thompson yes trustee stevenson yes trustee sarver yes vice president again yes president dupois yes motion passed and you want to speak to 7 15 i do um so i've been uh i've spoken with several members of the san mateo county school board who have asked about our board's position about gateway and i've told them that i've been not able to talk to my colleagues about their position but that i would check as soon as i could and circle back for those of you who have not had contact with any of the san antonio county office of education board members
005and in may maybe this what i'm about to do will help you if that happens help you with your response as well so i've spoken to our superintendent about this and i believe that our position is as follows and my ask would be of my board colleagues if you think this is not our position to let me know but otherwise this is what i would share with the san mateo county board members who have asked me about our position when the sequoyah union high school district team learned that the gateway program would be ending after june 30 they began planning to welcome the former sequoia student served by the gateway program back into a program in our district initial planning was underway when the potential closing date for gateway was extended to june 30 2024
006the current plan is for a sequoia team to work with a county team on exploring various options one option is improving the existing gateway program offering and its financial viability another option is to create a new program within this aquarian high school district to meet the needs of students whose needs are currently being met by the gateway program there are potential benefits to students of being served more locally and there are potential benefits to students of being served along with a larger number of peers for whom more specialized programs may be offered because of economies of scale the current plan is for the sukhoi union high school district staff to present their findings and recommendation to our board sometime during the 22-23 school year since we have time one year to decide and one year
007from there to plan and the findings and recommendations from our team are not yet known we do not yet have a position about what we believe should happen next so i think that's our position that's my position that we don't know and that we're waiting to hear recommendations from the superintendent and her team after their exploration for the next year but i did want to circle back and provide some response so before i did respond to a question about what we all thought at least wanted to share with you and if anyone thinks what i said is substantially different from what you believe i'd be interested to hear it i think you've captured it pretty well i agree i think that's a a good capture of what we've been through and that there is work
008in progress that will inform the board i want to say i'm supportive of that work in pro progress without knowing how we're going to decide on it after we've seen it but but otherwise i assume you're not objecting to the action item here but i am not it was a question about the question to me was about this contract and since it was on the agenda it gave me the opportunity to ask their question related specifically to the contract that we're being asked to approve i do support approving the contract okay i would actually like to interject a little bit at this point because i was i was about to pull that item myself uh and it was um about the current contract um so i am uh you know pleased and satisfied with the
009contents of the contract but i am highly concerned about the timing of uh the signatures on that contract um we it is for the school year now concluding and we are effectively approving a contract for the coming eight days um with this action and uh the the contract itself was dated january of this year but the first signature to appear anywhere on it was mid-may of this year and now it is late june um that it that it comes to the board and it is reflective to me of of an ongoing challenge that we have had is that we we appear not to be in the habit of being able to really plan effectively in advance with the san mateo county office of education on how our district will continue to participate in the gateway
010program we have been going through this entire school year without a contract in place clarifying how many students from the district will be served clarifying what the cost per student would be clarifying what the actual services would be that are delivered we have been acting on an expectation of partnership and good faith and that everything would come out well in the end and we have confidence in the county office of education in continuing to to deliver on that kind of a promise but the nature of a contract is to really lay out those expectations i do understand and i very much want to support the strong efforts that are going on to get a clearer picture and a contract in place much earlier in the coming school year um for what's going on i i
011think it's it's incumbent on our district to ensure that we know how many of our students will have services available to them through this program what the services of the program will be and what the cost per student will be to the district so what i do want to encourage is that we continue having an aggressive and positive continuing focus on this detailed joint planning and that we have you know a contract come out of it that we can all be very confident that the uh best service is rendered to the number of students who need it at a fair price wonder so following up on alan's comments since this contract ends june 30th next week effectively as far as we understand we don't have a contract for the coming year i wonder whether we
012might well check with the superintendent to see if it's reasonable to expect that we'll see a contract fall quarter thank you trustees and trustees thompson to your question yes we will have a contract in the fall we are currently in a conversation for the logistics around uh next year's agreement in terms of seats and costs and so crystal leach and myself have been working with the county team office of education and so you will have a contract in the fall so are we saying are we going to move forward with approving this contract i haven't i haven't moved to the contract i have my hand up i have my hand up oh shawneese sorry oh my goodness you had to scream because i'm not looking at my hands i just wanted to appreciate um trustee
013um again for bringing this up i do think um i i do think some of our community is confused about this i've had a couple of community members come to me about this they're happy that we're um planning um over the next year i think that's been the message i've been sharing that we're trying to figure that out of what that looks like in a year um and i do think this is a tricky issue so i want to make sure that we have good communication with our community not just with county office bed of what we're doing because i've had several people come to me about this one and um wondering what are we doing since we according to their report that we have a high number of our students um at gateway and
014so i do behoove us to have some type of communication go out to our community about what our stance is and i love how trustee jen really wrote that and i i wonder dr williams if it's appropriate from your perspective to send something out to our community about this uh absolutely we can provide a status update on to the community in terms of where we stand as a district in our planning process is that okay or do we take a vote to make sure that's if if that could be a direction for her um or is i know that's my recommendation but i'm not for sure if the other four board members um agree that's second to recommendation or i'm in agreement with that recommendation okay i don't think i caught it completely could you
015repeat what you said sorry my understanding is that the recommendation is to make sure there's communication to go out to community members summarizing the status of the gateway school opening or closure for the 23-24 school year okay thank you and thank you for that recommendation chinese so i think i do have a motion right a second and a second okay all in favor all right so five five in favor all right thank you for that um okay now we are on item eight of the agenda special recognitions okay this is the great part of the agenda um glad to see everyone out this is our last meeting of the 21 22 school year and so what better way to close up and wrap up our board meetings is with celebration and so i am going
016to have the principal emil atherton high school come forward principal lew school right thank you dr williams and thank you trustees i had such a good time the last time i was here recognizing one of our staff members that i wanted to take the opportunity to recognize three of our staff members because it was so much fun and these are three people um one i believe is i know is listening um online and that's uh sylvia torres i don't know if you want to put her on the panel just so we can see her um but i know she's listening uh the three people that i want to recognize tonight are three people that really make m.a great and make him a run and the first i'm going to talk about is maria luisa de
017seta who as let me start off by saying i often as an administrator i often wonder about my value and i realize you're so close to the role and i realized the other day last week when i went to mr seta and i i was panicked about supplies because miss carson was texting me about what about supplies for compass i was like oh man okay let's go talk to mr sedan well mr seda had like oh no no we sent an email to two weeks ago we communicated this way all the supplies are back there and i thought that's the value of an administrator right they they've got it all figured out you don't even know they're there they provide it it runs really smoothly and she's done a fantastic job being the principal of
018summer school uh this year and this is her second year and it is perhaps the smoothest summer school that i've seen from my perspective and she's really done a fantastic job navigating the hiring the contract situation working with compass the registration situation working with the district it's really been remarkable so i i think you've done a fantastic job running compass this year thank you i mean running summer school this year thank you is also um stepping up to be our world language department here sorry i'm not done uh our world language department chair um and um has done several things she's led staff professional development she has um participated in the mara benitez affinity group leadership workshop and helped lead a anti-racist white affinity group on emmy's campus so i i look at mr seda
019as a real emerging leader if not already a strong leader on campus and so thank you so much for your work mr sethup um and in one second i think we're gonna have people come up and take a picture with dr williams okay um and so the next person i'd like to recognize is also here is ms carson um miss carson and and the following person are real miss torres are real engines uh for m.a uh they are um i don't know how to put it uh leaders in every way um ms carson in particular somebody who is always thinking about um something that i know i should be thinking about you know whether it's thinking about attendance how do we focus on our kids that aren't here how do we do more of that
020um how do we help kids that that aren't that are struggling um how do we how do we become stronger liaisons with our feeder schools right what can we do how do we let's get a lunch together with our principals right constantly thinking about things and constantly up to date to the point where she knows what's happening before i do it's it's really remarkable what i'm really recognizing her for though and what we want to what we want to highlight is her work getting seniors across the finish line this year and she is an amazing liaison between parents and teachers with students in the middle she is our sap coordinator our sequoia aspirations advocate program coordinator and she does a again remarkable job of know looking at the kids helping the kids prioritize what they
021need to finish to graduate what class do they need to do what assignment in that class let's look at canvas together let's go talk to the teacher together let's let's encourage you let's help you go talk to the teacher let's talk to the parent how do we make time to get this done do we need a meeting with all the stakeholders on campus she does that time and time again and there are a number of seniors who would not have graduated if it were not for her help and that's why we're recognizing this carson today so thank you um and the third engine of ma is miss torres um who is our head guidance counselor and oh there she is on the picture there um uh she is you know i don't think there's a
022consensus constituency or faction on campus that does not respect ms torres it is really incredible and i don't know if i can say that about anybody else and and because of that she ends up on every committee possible right she serves on every possible committee it's a bell schedule committee sdmsc um you want to talk the equity steering committee um the guidance count district counselor committee if you have a committee that you want run and you want somebody who is grounded thoughtful can look at perspectives from a student's perspective from a parent's perspective from a counselor's perspective from a teacher perspective ms torres is your person and that's why she does everything on campus um and she's tremendously respected right everything that comes if you if she makes a recommendation it is something that you
023need to seriously think about and i often feel like you know what if she's recommending it we should probably do it um she also um want to point out that she does supports everybody um including mr setta miss carson and myself um a lot of teachers a lot of staff members go to mrs torres for advice she is a tremendous asset to our community and personally both to me personally and to our community and so i want to thank you ms torres for everything that you do for m8 these are three amazing mr uh dr williams do you want a picture not just a picture yes i do i just wanted to say this is so perfect and the way to end the year and i just want to personally say uh this is the
024bow uh on the great gift of having this position and working in this wonderful community i can just say uh personally my interactions with jenna carson from day one she has kept me on top of things and she keeps me aware she asks the hard questions and she does it in a way where you can tell that her heart is in the right place not only for students but for staff and for all of us in sequoia union high school district i could say the same about miss taurus garza she she keeps me on task and she will also ask the hard questions and then also provide support and when you say organized and be a part of a committee that she is she is not only an organizer she also is a person that
025will take the ideas and put them into action for the betterment of our students and also for our school district and then also the same miss decetta and her work as well is just excellent in terms of making sure that her advocacy children first a lot of people say kids first but she doesn't have to say it it's in her action it's in her work ethic and i know that personally of all three of you and i just want to say that i truly appreciate you and this year you all have been tremendous support and i hope i have supported you as well now drum roll for the exciting part certificate of recognition yes general that's my favorite part certificate of recognition the sequoia union high school district board of trustees proudly recognizes all of
026you one jenna carson for your dedication passion and contributions to the students and families of menlo atherton high school as a sequoia advocates please come forward certificate of recognition the sequoia union high school district board of trustees proudly recognizes sylvia torres garza for your dedication and outstanding collaboration efforts as a school counselor and everything else and multi-group committee member at menlo atherton high school and right alongside i won't say last but right alongside of greatness certificate of recognition and then we see okay sylvia can see us still the sequoia union high school district board of trustees proudly recognizes maria luisa de seta for your dedication outstanding leadership and contributions to educational excellence at middle afterton high school round of applause everyone [Music] um i recognize everyone working in june so some of us are still
027working almost every day and uh just because the school year doesn't really stop uh families are still in need and kids still need support and uh administrators are still on campus trying to get the job done so we're all still here thank you sylvia did you want to say anything i'm not one for speeches so um just thank you um yeah thank you carl for your words i i truly do appreciate them um and that's it thank you ford for recognizing me this evening thank you congratulations everyone that was really wonderful thanks okay moving on uh we are now at item number nine student trustee comments i think we have the passing of the baton hello everyone thank you so much i'm quite sad to be here tonight it's officially carlos is my last meeting
028as trustees and kind of our last event really is high schoolers but when i first started attending these meetings as trustee over a year ago i had no idea all that i would experience and all and i had no idea how amazed it would have been at all the sport has accomplished over the past year from increased consent education to the community college mou this is officially as i mentioned our last meeting and we are both so grateful that we have been able to serve our fellow students in our work as trustee we have learned so much about our school district and i think i speak for both of us when i say this position has taught us more than we ever thought it would we have grown as students as leaders and as people
029and we would like to thank all of the board members and dr williams miss handsome miss leach dr chacon and miss lausa for all that they have taught us and for how they have continuously put student needs first and listen to the stakeholders in our district thank you so much and now i pass it on to carlos to introduce our very worthy successors uh well since this is my last one i'm not going to go down without a fight so uh ladies and gentlemen board of trustees good evening for the last time as your student trustee well it's melancholy to be giving my very last comments from this lectern i have great i have the great privilege and high honor of introducing the student trustees for the 2022 to 2023 school year great before i
030announce these two don't look i told you so surprised before i announce these two outstanding individuals i would first like to make some final remarks first off i'd like to thank isabelle for being such an amazing colleague throughout this process going into this i was hoping desperately for a partner that i could rely on trust and most importantly be able to call my friend after all this was said and done at like 11 p.m isabelle you'll go far in life and when you do i'm happy to say that i'll be the guy that points to you on the tv screen and says i knew her in high school the memories experiences and the lessons i've learned from you will always hold a special place in my heart thank you student trustees did he worked and
031then while i couldn't have done this without isabel none of us could be here without the persistence and precision of one person in this room tonight laura law essay is an institution uh is an institution of this district she's a class act and the most valuable asset this district has laura if this district were a tower you'd be the foundation your work behind the scenes to ensure that everything is running smoothly is instrumental to the work that this district does laura is the living embodiment of what su hsd strives to be consistent persistent and effective please everyone let's give a hand to laura for all that she does for us in the school district thank you carlos thank you isabel it's a pleasure working with you all so well deserved now that that's out of
032the way it's finally time to introduce our new student trustees over the last year isabel and i have developed a pattern isabelle's the brains of this operation while i'm the mouth with these roles we were able to represent suhsd students to the best of our abilities and advocate for them to deliver results these two students harness those skills and other unique ones that i know will help them in their work to represent our shared constituency um first up is ivantika she has an entrepreneurial spirit and a passionate soul she says in her own word she's an aspiring chocolatier though i'd say owning your own chocolate business as a high school junior puts you a few steps above aspiring she attends carmont high school and is actively involved in the effort to make her community a
033more inclusive and accepting place often facilitating conversations with that effort in mind her passion for the goal of compassion has encouraged her to become president of caramon's gsa she'll use her strong voice to both represent her new constituency and continue her advocacy advocacy to pro broaden student understanding by reducing misrepresentation in curriculum and increasing appreciation of other cultures samantha rodriguez velazquez and by the way ivanthika could not join us tonight physically she's here on zoom i know there you are uh and then samantha sam behind me is a proud student of the middle college program a program that su-hsd regards with much pride sam has grown to deeply understand and appreciate the functions of this district during her last year on the sac which she'll now be leading along with ivantica as presiding officers of
034the sac isabel and i came to greatly appreciate sam's reliability laser sharp focus and readily readily available contributions to any and all discussions helped she is always seeking the best solutions for the various challenges posed to suhsd students and is ready now to face them head on these qualities and her love of coffee will ensure that sam is always performing at her best during her term as student trustee and i'm just kidding sam please don't drink too much coffee both truly understand the importance of listening representing and advocating for their peers in this district i'm proud of the successors issa isabel and i were able to choose during and the interview panel during our round of interviews i'm proud that so many other suhsd students who weren't chosen for the position will be here to
035support these new trustees over the next year now i'm sure after a year of me you've all had enough of hearing my voice so now it's my great privilege to introduce the new su hsd student trustees to evan present to you all avantika and sam so uh amanthika if you want to share you can unmute yourself kind of introduce yourself and then we'll have sam come up afterwards yeah i don't have much to say at this point but just thank you carlos for that wonderful introduction and i really look forward to to making some changes and being a great part of this community and being a voice for the students in this district thank you hi everyone oh wow this is interesting um yes i just like to repeat ivantika's um sentiments i'm really excited
036to work with all of you and thank you to carlos and isabelle for being the leaders and i was honestly a big part of my inspiration for applying to this position was because of them because of seeing the way that they communicate with others and the way that they articulate i kind of wanted to grow to become more like them and in service of the district of course so i'm really excited and thank you and so as you take your seats uh have something to take with you that you can cherish with your name and this is both to carlos and isabelle again we appreciate you i look forward to working with both samantha and ivanka as we continue to do the good work in our district thank you both thank you carlos and isabel
037for showing us what great leaders look like so you have really been an inspiration to all of us that was great okay um now i'm on to comments from the sequoia district teachers association um i see trustee stevenson has her hand up so i'm going to defer to her before i begin i think that was a mistake i will lower my hand okay well um hello i am also joining you remotely from south lake tahoe so if you hear commotion in the background it is my children and their uncle playing board games downstairs um tonight is officially the last board meeting of the 2021-2022 school year and as such i've been doing some end of the year reflection this year has been a challenge from the joy of being able to be back together with
038our communities and our students to the fear faced with each new exposure notification or message from a friend who was out sick through the challenges of relearning the in-person dynamic and teaching so many more students what it means to be a student in a school and classroom community again we also had many new people to meet and personalities to learn new priorities to embrace and renewed ambitions to work towards like many of my colleagues i ended the year exhausted i have heard from so many that this was the hardest year of their careers and from too many that this was their last year either with us or in the profession i'd like to take this opportunity to address all those whose time with us is ending we didn't have our normal opportunity to recognize retirees
039so i'd like to take this moment to thank them for their service to our students and their friendship over their careers for those who are moving to other teaching opportunities i wish you full classrooms of eager learners and a school community that recognizes how hard you work and the skill and passion you bring to your job and for those who have decided to move on from education i hope your new journeys challenge and satisfy you professionally and that you are able to look back on your time in the classroom and with our students fondly personally i hope to be able to unplug over the next seven weeks and recharge for the year to come i'm looking forward to asking the students presenting on sustainability how you manage to recharge without plugging in i know there
040will be challenges awaiting me when i return in august there always are but i'm hopeful we'll be able to come together to meet whatever new challenges are placed before us looking at the roster of teachers counselors psychologists librarians speech and language pathologists and specialists who will be returning in the fall i am confident that we can succeed that we can reflect on this hardest year ever and find the positive takeaways to build on and that we will move forward we will do this in partnership with district and site leaders who are committed to continuing to improve our schools and with a vigilance that may have been hard to access in the recent past nobody said that working in education was going to be easy and if they did they'd clearly never tried it so thank
041you to everyone who has done their best and is committed to continuing that work i'll see you in august thank you for your comments next is american federation of state county and municipal employees i don't think we have anyone here okay so that will take us uh to public comment are there any comments on items not on the agenda i've received no common card cards and i don't see any hands up okay so no public comment we are now on item 12 information item presentation by the sequoia union high school district sustainability committee are we good hi everyone thank you for making the time for us to speak today i'm sarah typhron i'm here with other committee leaders brandon we and sophia bai as well as yca carlmont students um norika prachanda and kara kim
042we are here to request your support on district sustainability issues so if you don't know the sequoia high school district sustainability committee is student-led and it includes students teachers and site level administrators to a variety of different stakeholders and this year three subcommittees carried out projects demonstrating that this leadership model is effective the committee is also continuing momentum with this momentum next school year so now i'll pass it on to sophia who will highlight how the district can support these efforts and signal a commitment to sustainability sarah so one way the district can honor the adults including certificated faculty thank you co-chair leaders of each of our three subcommittees and board of trustees trustees in our committee is by providing stipended positions these stipends would be a solid step towards institutionalizing sustainability and have been
043voted in favor by a majority of our members to ensure the continuity of the committee and the movement towards sustainability we can take a look at san mateo union unified high school district example to better understand what these side events may look like in their committee they have one district-wide sustainability facilitator and they are paid eight thousand dollars a year they also have multiple site levels of standard sustainability facilitators representing each of their sites at two thousand five hundred dollars a year we would also greatly appreciate if the district board could support a website or a webpage on the district scq.org site showcasing the projects our subcommittees have been working on through this page stakeholders and members can get an overview of what initiatives are currently ongoing in our committee much like how the san
044mateo district sustainability page works which you can see on the screen right now and another way we can institutionalize this committee is through the green ribbon school award so this award is held by the california department of education and is eligible for schools school districts and counties who demonstrate progress based on three pillars reduction of environmental impact and costs health and wellness of students and staff and environmental and sustainability education and the green ribbon school award aims to facilitate state and local collaboration around school facilities health and environmental education the application opens in august and runs in november and the award application consists mostly of audits and data gathering however we already have access to a large amount of data from the energy and waste audits as well as environmental literacy survey which all have
045been conducted in the past year or earlier the san mateo county office of education is also willing to provide free assistance with the application audits and assessments and as you can see schools around us are applying and receiving the green ribbons award including schools in our own district the award importantly provides a baseline of where this district is in terms of sustainability setting groundwork for future projects to help achieve this goal ysca students cara and harca have developed a proposal for progressing sustainability within the district hello i am the haruka rashanda i along with kara works on energy efficiency as part of our yca community impact project on the subject of led lighting in the 2015 facilities master plan there was a commitment to install led lighting in the dna link can you pull the
046microphone a little closer here oh sorry it's flexible yeah sorry um in his 2021 report abm building solutions recommended retrofitting schools in the district with led lighting and noted that led lights do not make up a majority of the lighting and that current lights have poor efficiency compared to leds to our knowledge exterior lighting was replaced in 2017 the interior lighting has not been replaced yet led lights use less energy and make both financial and environmental sense they are simply a bread and butter common sense component to making the district more energy efficient and sustainable so in addition to the installation of indoor leds we also needed the installation of more solar panels at carmel high school as mentioned by najarka we found an energy audit done of of the sequoia unit high school district
047by abm building solutions in july of 2021 that recommended installing more solar panels at carmont as well as i believe sequoia and memo aftertin specifically um to save 80 thousand dollars specifically at carmont and have uninterrupted learning during power outages among other benefits for example the power i did yesterday left my entire area without power there's also the overarching benefit obviously of having cleaner energy and helping the environment which is extremely important during this time um also as mentioned previously uh the san mateo high school district has already taken big steps towards sustainability cappuccino high school in particular has large solar panel canopies in its parking areas which would be great to have common as well we are aware that the board has taken an interest oh geez sorry we are aware of the port
048has taken interest in these improvements um and we found the letter intent that was created in october of 2021 regarding this letter we would like to ask um what actions have been taken and what is the progress on the engineering study if it ever happened we hope that the process is sped up because of how important it is for these changes to be made in summary in this presentation we are asking the district to consider adopting the following actions to demonstrate our commitment towards sustainability and help contribute to the continuity of this movement thank you thank you very much i'm sure there are comments and questions from board members ellen so president dubois along with you i've had the privilege of working on the sustainability community committee this year with many of the students here
049on we've also had a separate presentation from the other group of ambassadors that weren't involved in that it is first and foremost tremendous to have this kind of student voice come to the board come to the district the kind of thought and organization and effort and structure that you've all brought to the work has been tremendous it has truly been a student-led effort throughout the year and you have done a tremendous job of bringing along staff and administrators to make sure that progress was being made the presentation that you just completed really demonstrated how you are bringing external resources and structure to the conversation you are bringing examples of nearby communities that are taking action you are bringing suggestions recommendations directions that have been well thought out and are um you know if not completely
050actionable already um ready for active uh embracing by the by the district to really look forward to action uh and to me i i'll i certainly hope uh we have more board comments on this i i would lean very strongly toward recommending as as one board member that we look at each of the four proposals that you've included there to see how much we can do to move forward with each of them as a district i think each of them have different resources and supports that you've outlined that we can leverage off of and opportunities to really move forward with them in particular as we continue with the facilities master planning and with the progress on the bond we are making sustainability is an area of work that we intend to include and i hope
051that um student representation from this group will be part of our of our team as we go forward there um both to have the advantage of all of the thought and preparation you've already done and to hear your voices but also to give you the active opportunity to really be right there in the middle of the works and to have the learning opportunity and the satisfaction of having making more of this happen in a real manner and the the last thing i wanted to throw out there we have now had we are seeing a transition here similar to what we are seeing with our student trustees we have presenters here who are not students of this district they are recent graduates of this district i had the great good fortune of meeting sarah for the
052first time in person with a handshake um at woodside a couple of weeks ago and after many meetings on zoom where a lot of this was moved forward and in both cases with both groups we have seen a tremendous example of student leadership of the benefits of continually bringing student voice more and more into the leadership of the district and really supporting that opportunity for for you to blossom and show how much you bring to us and in both cases we've seen a very high bar set and we've seen a very careful handover to the next generation to keep it going so we are very appreciative of the work that has been done to date and i for one very much look forward to the continuing partnership that this group is going to bring in
053the coming years so thank you very much for that and i hope we have a lot of action come out of it thank you for your comments i also want to say i really appreciated participating in the sustainability sustainability committee and i've shared this before but there's some new people up here so sorry to repeat myself the committee had a huge impact on me personally i now may be small but i i pack my lunch now in a environmentally sustainable way i have given up bottled water which was not easy and in one of my last conversations with the superintendent i brought up one of the things i learned on the committee that we have a problem when it comes to disposing of textbooks and it's a huge problem in our district that's something i
054did not know about i didn't know about the complexity of um you know removing some of the older items off of our campuses so um i appreciate what you have taught me personally i also was involved in a memorial service and we uh we had a lot of people there hundreds of people and we made sure to use compostable items so that's all because of what you have taught me and i do hope that we can continue this work you know it's not easy to make change in a school district but you all have had just high impact on us and i think it is going to result in the changes in our system um so and it's very exciting that this was student-led so thank you again any other comments chris i want to
055quickly speak to concur with my colleagues in recognizing the work you've done and the importance of what you're talking about in terms of action i guess i'd hope for three things that that the board might see in the newsletter through the superintendent how we might respond to the recommendations you've made i think that would be if my colleagues agree it seems like that would be an appropriate thing to do two i did have the privilege of working with our chief business officer and looking at the abm solutions guidance and i think that will be good for us to see at the board i'm not sure what what its readiness is right now but i think that's that's a helpful kind of look that you suggest to us and the third thing that alan mentioned is
056i think to finance to pay for the changes you're talking about and meaningful sustainability moves it really does take more resources for it for the district and in particular the bond initiative which we're going to be talking about later today i would hope would give us the resources to do the real work that you're talking about and make a difference also you know it's a final comment i think public institutions to some extent this is an area where we need to lead and your leadership in that has been important so thank you very much richard is curious do we have any of you that aren't seniors that will be around next year or is everybody graduating still got a few staying back okay awesome so um i appreciate the advocacy by students and to help
057sustainability the district helping with our part for the environment just commenting on the solar panel some things that we'll likely be talking about at some point during the next academic year or on the school board that'd be great if you're able to tune in or have discussions offline about it but specific to like the solar panels just some things that that i think about maybe my colleagues think about as well but that eighty thousand 000 savings comes at a cost and those costs will be taxes that we have to assess to our taxpayers to pay for those panels so we're trying to look at how much would that be versus how much the electricity would be to see what sort of yields we get on our investment and whether that we feels a good rate
058for what the taxpayers have to pay for electricity that's generated and there's a lot of what makes it a great real world problem a lot of moving uncertainties the cost of the panels the cost of maintenance the price of electricity so there's a lot of things are moving around and another thing that we'll be looking at is the the model one is that we buy it we own it we maintain or the district does and hires people who do that the other would be that you effectively lease the space on the roofs the third party that puts them on and pays you in electricity or some other model from there so there's a lot of different models for how you actually go from a roof with no panels on it to roof up with panels
059with the different players that are maintaining installing and and the contract so there may be a lot that we're exploring as a board and in deciding what direction and i think for those of you who have an interest in this area um it could be um interesting for you to participate or listen in on those discussions so i appreciate student interest and something as important as this and they'd be great if some of you are choose to stick around as we discuss these things uh maybe i don't know the best way to keep them informed of when these things will be on the agenda because it's hard to keep track of everything but it'd be great to have you know your voices and thoughts when we get to those decisions so thank you chinese okay
060thank you carrie president dubois um i wanted to thank the youth for their presentation i i really appreciate it we've gotten out a lot of emails regarding this so sometimes it's just nice to to have it in full presentation mode so that we can hear it from beginning to end and understand i do have a couple of questions for the group and maybe my colleagues can answer this there's been a couple of groups around climate um change and all that stuff who have been talking to us and i'm kind of confused of who this is and who that other group is and is this a group that's working with our district or is this an outside group so i'm just a little confused about that and then i have a couple other questions does someone
061want to clarify i think it's the county group versus the sequoia so we're basically speaking on behalf of the district sustainability committee which i guess is associated um okay and then these two people come from yca um who are also working on sustainability efforts specifically energy in school districts so we weren't really affiliated before but now we're working together in this presentation oh okay so now your your requests are in line with each other not competing yeah they follow the same theme okay great great because i was a little confused about each group okay and what in in in your group um what staff are you working with right now in sustainability work or i'm sorry on climate work like the staff in our committee no the staff of the sequoia union high school district
062who are you working with right now um we're working with alan sarver and trustee dubois um they are kind of represents the district board in our committee and then there's a bunch of teachers and other district representatives who also attend so it's kind of a large pool people okay okay and then if you're working on a group how would um designating staff would be different than working on this group as a committee like how how would that be different and how would that impact the work or not impact the work well for a couple of reasons one having those different voices together actually makes it easier to coordinate efforts for example like waste you need the students to get more people to sort waste and then on the other side of that there's the administrators
063who are actually responsible for making sure that waste is sort of correctly meets the standards so that kind of like cross leadership different kinds of leadership makes things easier to happen makes things happen easier so that's one reason why having all these people together actually makes things more efficient okay and then i noted that you looked at cemetery unified high school district as a model are there any other models that you looked at on how to move forward the recommendations that you have not talking about staffing but are there other models out there yeah committee models because you're asking for staffing is basically what you're asking for right and time commitment well like you said san mateo high school district has a little bit different structure i'm pretty sure their stipended positions come from are
064like sent to specific people at sites so that there's representation from each school site and i don't know if they have subcommittees and then there's cabrillo unified school district who we've also been looking at they their school district includes elementary schools to high schools so um i think it does look a little bit different from how the sequoian high school district does it okay gotcha um thank you so much for bringing this attention i just had those few questions thank you and carrie someone put a note into chat thank you very much great presentation thank you you didn't have a comment [Music] we are now on um item 12.2 of our agenda that's a report on the equity audit all righty well uh good evening president dubois members of the board and dr williams i
065would like to introduce cheryl hiblin and dr suzette lovely from the lumined they will present to the board their preliminary report and findings from the audit of the district's process and procedures in relation to human resources and to identify any barriers that may restrict equal opportunities and assessments for our students though they are joining us virtually and so i will turn this over to them good evening uh superintendent williams president dubois and board trustees uh it's great to be here tonight to deliver the human resources and schools and schedules components of our equity audit as was just mentioned my name is cheryl hiblin and i'm the president of eliminate ed collective and educational consulting group contracted by the superintendent to conduct an equity assessment within your district prior to founding eliminate ed i spent 21
066years in san diego unified 10 as a high school principal in six at central office supporting secondary efforts i'm joined tonight by dr suzette lovely retired superintendent from carlsbad union carlsbad unified school district who spent 10 years as a deputy superintendent of hr prior to her superintendency dr lovely completed the completed the human resources portion of this assessment as a reminder the scope of work for this assessment included working collaboratively with the superintendent to examine the delta between the district's vision for equity as reflected by board resolution 1699 and governance team goals effective july 31 2021 and the impact of our of system processes procedures and practices on student achievement our scope was limited to a review of human resource finance and schools and schedules and we examined each area as we examined each area
067we kept our focus on equity specifically asking ourselves throughout the process whether there were any opportunities for the district to explore changes to process these procedures and practices that would ensure and strengthen alignment between policy and implementation as we discuss our assessment methods i want to point out that we are not researchers our lens was that of leadership and systems expertise qualitative and quantitative data was collected through stakeholder interviews of which we did more than 50 which i would define more as conversations artifact analysis and data reports our findings and recommendations are just that recommendations whether or not there is agreement with or action taken on these areas of opportunity will be for sequoyah union high school district to decide tonight's presentation will begin with the key findings and recommendations from the human resource review
068and with that i'm going to hand things over to dr lovely thank you good evening uh trustee superintendent williams and staff we appreciate being invited here this evening to share our findings as cheryl mentioned my role in the equity assessment involved looking at the structures systems policies and practices that underscore the recruitment hiring staffing and retention of employees across your district and so during this review five findings emerged that present um opportunities as cheryl mentioned to look for opportunities to accelerate your equity work surrounding personnel related functions so the first findings um revealed uh some gaps in some department staffing ratios and workflow and one example that was presented to us is departments like special education and student services are in two different divisions special education under ed services student services is under on the
069resistances of student services and so um staff members in both of these departments reported some redundancies as well as some gaps in services um for example counseling is in one place that colleges and other support services are in another place and some of the functions overlap and some of them don't so there's opportunity there to review some of those services and create better alignment and along similar lines the job descriptions um specifically in human resources those are the ones that i examined most closely because that was the department i was asked to look at but i heard this from the other departments that i spoke to the job descriptions aren't necessarily um updated to match current roles and responsibilities some of them the job descriptions have been around for a long time and people's jobs
070have changed so that's again another opportunity including mid management level support and where that might come from so within that examination some responsibilities might be outdated and eliminated some job descriptions because they're no longer being done and others may need to be added and so and there is finally a need in this finding for some clear protocols for adding new positions or reclassifying existing management specific positions uh particularly so people aren't sure how many positions get added or how they're reclassified and associate protocols would be helpful in finding two i understand that some of this is already in the works with the distinctions between and clarity between the senior cabinet positions there were um was not clarity about the differences between an associate suits role and an assistant superintendent's role but again i understand that
071some of those are our job descriptions are being looked at already and another recommendation here in this area was to consider assigning all the superintendent positions to the certificate salary schedule so that you could address and work your charity the positive news is that you have existing board policies one in particular 4351 with language on employee compensation so this policy could also be updated to include things like y rating initial step placement and application of the career increment credit so which by the way is a great incentive that the district has to cast a wide net on diversity and hiring so for finding three this um finding focused on the district's decentralized hiring practices across sites and departments and as a former principal i so appreciated having the autonomy to hire the teaching staff and
072support staff i wanted and there's a great benefit in this but um recommendations also suggest that some new universal protocols are in order so that um there is consistency and equity in posting vacancies applicant screening selection and background checking and those should all be overseen basically by your human resource department and then giving some defined autonomy to principles and hiring managers that they still can go out and find the most qualified candidates for their team these guard rails will address also the board's governance team commitment that cheryl mentioned at the beginning which is to design and implement structures and systems that achieve equity in hiring and so another area that i was also asked to examine was the proportionality of workforce demographics so finding four reflects the ratios between students and teachers by african american
073asian and hispanic subgroups and this data in the first three bullets comes from forecast five which is a data warehousing portal that pulls information from the california department of education website which your district uploads into the california department of ed website this is from 2019 there has not been current data and see the website because of it the last bullet reflects 20 21 22 percentages of all certificated non-management employees staff that was provided by the um hr department so you can just see that proportionality here and and of course if we looked at classified staff it would be a little bit different ratio and then finally finding five addresses the initiative and the incentives that the district currently has in place to recruit a diverse workforce and support upward mobility for your existing employees and
074your board policy provides an exceptional recruitment incentive one of the best that i've seen in any policies that will allow that allows the district to provide incentives to recruit teachers administrators and other employees to the district that will help with diversity and make sure that you're getting people casting a wide net in that it's unclear from talking to staff how widely used that policy has been but at least it's there so kudos to the board for having that policy in place and then you also have a standout developing our own program kudos to bonnie hansen um this program has supported 27 classified employees to complete their teaching credentials and seven teachers who are earning their administrative credentials and according to ms hanson the majority of the participant and participants in both programs are employees of
075color and um and lastly in this finding there does not appear to be a career ladder from the principalship into director position because your high school principals earn more than directors but overall the program's in place to recruit diverse candidates from within are very strong so now i'm going to turn things back over to cheryl and she's going to discuss the key findings and recommendations from the schools and schedules for you thank you suzette and as a reminder the schools and schedules assessment included a review of sitemaster schedules the district course of study site single plans for student achievement the district lcap the superintendent's entry plan california dashboard metrics policies procedures and stakeholder interviews to name a few so the first finding in this area is that there is a need to define how a
076shift to higher expectations through the adoption of a uca to g graduation standard will be accompanied by appropriate tier one access and support for all so there is evidence that conversations about uca to g alignment are happening with stakeholder groups across your district and evidence that sites have already adopted uca to g as a standard are present in some of your master schedules if the district would decide were to decide to adopt a system-wide graduation standard that align to uca to g entry requirements there are several opportunities for processes within the system to support this shift the most important being that all diploma-bound students have access to tier one coursework taught by a single subject credentialed subject area teacher in combination with appropriate tier one connected supports to ensure first-time mastery that's a mouthful but
077basically these supports should be um not instead of access to uh tier one but in addition to so where do you begin first graduation requirements would need to be revised an example would be you would include three years of math rather than two as your graduation standard in addition a district graduation procedure should be created to provide implementation parameters to sites to ensure that a guaranteed experience is consistent across sites why is this important because sometimes perceptions about what kids are capable of or not capable of dictate course placement or course access for example if i'm not good at math i might not get in physics and that's not the case in your schools in most cases but there isn't consistency across schools in some cases as to which course is aligned at which grade
078level sometimes there are options and you have to watch variants to see who gets in and who gets out i recommend that you examine the role that placement exams are playing in your district they should be examined to ensure that they provide guidance for additional tier one support rather than gatekeeping tier one access and or creating tracks an example of this would be your 9th grade ela coursework how kids get in and some of those courses are not in the ninth grade graduation eligible there is also evidence of significant ability tracking in the master schedules this is by course and i would examine i would do a further examination of that tracking by student group clear guidelines need to be established to clarify system expectations versus school site discretion and one thing that is a
079major strength in your district is your professional learning i think an opportunity would be to make sure that processes are in place at sites to move from not just receiving pd but to actually monitoring those instructional shifts once the teachers get back from the pd and that happens in different ways at different sites and finally given the fact that you're a high school district that receives students from many theater districts you might consider convening monthly meetings with your feeders to start aligning your pathway efforts so that the expectations coming from different directions start to align more when they come into your um to your system finding two is that there's a need to translate district policy and resolutions around equity into actionable implementation steps so there is clear evidence that the district has a clear
080resolution and governance team goals as it pertains to equity the translation of those expectations into clear procedures that support sites to build shared belief systems and messaging about equity to their unique communities is the clear opportunity for a next step in equity this will require that conversations between multiple stakeholders take place about loose and tight relationships around site autonomy when it comes to equity these conversations should lead to the creation or revision of procedures practices and processes that reinforce what will be tight which is expected systemically and loose what the site has leeway to decide the principles need to be able to refer to clear procedures if they are expected to implement changes that may initially cause concerns within their communities finding three is that there is a need to integrate the efforts of central
081office divisions and departments to provide instructional coherence so i already mentioned that your professional learning department is doing not only an outstanding job but everyone that i interviewed mentioned it as the number one thing that sequoia um had that that they were doing well and that they were really proud of i do think though that at the central level you need to eliminate silos within the system an example would be that a positive step was taken by separating student services from human resources as was previously mentioned however the counselors and mtss support staff are in student services but graduation and professional learning are in ed services there need to be formal processes and i know that the leaders of those divisions are already putting some in place for meaningful collaboration between those divisions to make
082sure that those efforts are integrated and not operating in silos i also think that given the strong stance that your professional learning division has taken around the clear instructional shifts that are expected in your district there should be more alignment between special education english learners at the english learner division and the general education division around those instructional shifts so they're all speaking the same language and they're all for the most part heading diploma bound kids towards a meaningful graduation the clear and coherent instructional shifts driving your curriculum and instruction division should be the through line for all and i would make a clear connection between what teachers are learning and what administrators are coaching and use that professional learning division to be supportive in making that connection between the teachers and the principals and the
083types of professional learning they receive finding four is that there is a need to develop a data culture to respond to significant gaps in student achievement by student group there is evidence that there are many useful data reports on the district website and the overall achievement data in sequoia is positive the equity work i believe for your district is in the achievement gaps between student groups like the hispanic special education and english learner groups versus the performance of your white and asian subgroups i would consider making sure that the human and fiscal resources at the site level are aligned to clear goals with ongoing monitoring not just talking about how you're going to assess but how does that lay down on a calendar and what are you going to do if things aren't moving in
084the direction that you want them to in real time and reflection of those priorities should be seen in the master schedule across the board in the sipsas and the elk app principals also need to be able to access more than summative data a discussion about ongoing formative data that is actionable should take place i would also look at grading trends over multiple years by site course and student group and possibly trace one graduation class from k-12 to look at trends in regards to which subgroups graduate on time which subgroups transfer to alternative sites who meets a to g and who doesn't who's coming to school and who isn't and look at it all through the student group lens to understand the health of the system overall and finally um my fifth finding is there's a
085need to acknowledge and address the trauma that many central office and site staff experienced over the last four years this finding was actually the direct result of trends that i heard in stakeholder interviews many stakeholders shared and or acknowledged that the last four years in sequoyah union felt like a system of chaos due to a lack of decision-making loose structures and incoherence resulting in a feeling of trauma and compromised relational trust between divisions and between central office and the ground the only purpose for sharing this information as a finding is that it will be important for district leadership to acknowledge this perspective seek to understand its root causes and respond in a way that allows for the system to heal so this concludes our prepared remarks and i will hand things back over to um
086dr williams and the board thank you mr sibling and team for that presentation and the share out of the preliminary findings and recommendations from the report we will have an additional information regarding finance at another time and then also a comprehensive final report will be provided to the board at a later date are there any questions or comments from the board um actually edith has a comment you know before they do carry carrie would it be fair for the students who are still here to let them know that we're several items away from bond if that's why they're staying staying around and that some of us no action on the bond resolution will be taken today and either individually or with a couple of board members we could follow up with them to let them
087know about the okay for the bond that is probably going to be a while it's up to you you're welcome to stay that you don't have to stay okay and we're also available on zoom from the comfort of your home i think i'm gonna go ahead and call on is it okay if i call on me mr president do whatever i want i'm going to call on edith um i wanted to um thank the uh presenters for this um i would be eager to read the full uh full report if that's going to be made available to members of the public um i had a a good um hour-long conversation with cheryl about my perspectives as a stakeholder and i see that many of those topics made it into the presentation i um i am
088encouraged that the district has embarked on this in having an outside lens brought in um to to look at these issues i'm encouraged to see that some of the frustrations that i have brought to the board meetings over the last two to three months about the um seeming uh [Music] popcorn nature of new positions being made available is um reinforced in some of these findings and so i i really i wish that we would have been able to get this report sooner so that job descriptions could be reviewed and revised and aligned before we set about creating hundreds of thousands of dollars of new positions that may ultimately not serve our students as much as better aligning the work that we are already doing and already paying for um i agree that professional development and
089professional learning is a is a huge strength in our district and i agree that there needs to be unified support of implementation of those strategies in the classroom we have gotten much better as a district over the last decade and a half of matching what administrators are looking for in evaluations to what we are teaching teachers to do in their classrooms but we can always get better at that and get on the same page with the same vocabulary i was taken aback when i previewed the presentation by the first systems and schedules recommendation because i have not been part of any conversation that would suggest that the district was anywhere near considering aligning graduation requirements to the uca through g uh requirements and in fact have been part of many conversations where educators have pushed
090back against the uca through g being used as the um sort of standard for student achievement there are many many colleges available many post-secondary options available if you do not complete your uca through g and um beyond the steps and student supports etc that cheryl mentioned a shift that drastic would also have potentially overwhelming staffing impacts because it would change fundamentally which classes students had to take and which classes students were then available and able to take from amongst our our electives and so i think it's important for the board and the district and site administration to be very clear about where we are as a district or where we are not as a district in uh terms of seeing that as a goal because that as a goal will be a um it will
091ring alarm bells for every electives teacher in our district that their job is on the line because we need to create more sections of science of math and a world language um and so uh while i appreciate all the context that was given to it that context isn't in the presentation and there's only 28 people here in this meeting so i really want to emphasize to the district leadership and to the board that we need to be careful when we talk about things like that thank you for your comments actually i'm i appreciate your comments i'm going to go ahead and go first um i had the same reaction to the a through g graduation requirements um so i i think in our push for equity what i think about is the kids that need
092the most help i mean you think about the kids that need the most help they're often not attending school they're disengaged from their learning um many of them you know their life circumstances and i have spent so much time talking to teachers who work you know intently with that group of kids and some of our teachers will say and i learn the most from our teachers because they're with our kids every day and they will say because we do have a focus right now on a through g completion it may not be a graduation requirement but it is a focus and our teachers believe many of them believe it is a focus and so many teachers have said to me that push for a through g is actually damaging for some of our kids and
093i believe that is true so i think we need to carefully consider that i love your recommendation of you know talking to kids this is one of the things i've always wanted to do just take the kids that end up at redwood our continuation high school interview every one of them and it's those stories that will tell us what we need to do and i'll tell you it's not one more year of math it's that is not in what they will tell us i can just guarantee it so um thank you for your comments i completely agree with what you said other comments and questions chris i i think i'll begin with edith sdta president's opening comment which is she's encouraged that the district has embarked on this work i i wholeheartedly agree with that
094um if we accept a line that's in the bond the right at the start of the bond resolution it talks about the district that is committed to equipping every student with the knowledge skills character and well-being to thrive in an evolving world to do that really to do that effectively we need a report like this that raises important questions for us to discuss on the the a through g thing to me this this is not the place where we have a deliberation about that issue i i understand our board president believes one thing i believe a different thing there are probably five different beliefs on this board but one of the good things this report does it raises important questions that we should deliberate on i guess my hope is overall with the document there's
095a lot in it that is administrative regulation and that the that the superintendent might act on her own on much of it and just report to us about the changes and then there are policy questions um that should be that are rightfully brought forward to us and then there's sort of this third category of values that drive the district and the values discussion i think will need some sort of retreat study session for us to be engaged in the conversation to to react with share our personal beliefs but also to bring in evidence to back up those beliefs and so so in that way i think this this report is marvelous for us even though it may raise questions about the directions we want to go so than okay thank you and then chinese so
096remember look out in the zoom world i'm here you're there first of all thank you for the report um i think i'm gonna take a step back and not be a board member for a minute and think like a parent and what i experienced as a chinese we're having trouble hearing you can you get cute okay can you let me know and you might you're gonna have to speak up can you hear me now can you hear me now yes okay yes i gotta keep my microphone at my mouth but anyhow um i'm gonna take a step back to um seven years ago when i became a parent of this district um and the concerns coming into the district we're particularly around not necessarily a through g but are we getting our kids to college
097right and particularly kids who are coming out of my community or the areas that like north fair oaks and belhaven that that was kind of the group i hang out with and um so when i hear the a through g i'm not for sure if we should line of through graduation rates i think we need to look at our poli our our population um because everybody needs a different path but what i am thinking about through equity process is that not all students are seen equally so when i say that the standard of a through g is given to some and the standard of a through g is not even offered to other individuals and so there is a difference right um and and so the expectations for certain students is lower we don't it's
098there's a belief issue right it's more of a belief that comes out in action right um so when i think of that a through g it's just good education right it gives you options of what you want after high school if you're a through g you go through career that means you're prepared if you go through a through g and you decide to go to a two year or four year go to the army you're prepared right and so i'm wondering about this particular recommendation is are we really offering individuals their options versus assuming what track they're in and i hate to use the word track but that's the only word i can think of right now so when i hear that that's what i hear i don't know if there should be a complete
099shift because i know that we did have some students particularly doing the pandemic we made some changes to graduation that was more in line with the state that allow some of our students who were really struggling right and um to to just finish they were just they were just tired of school after the pandemic right and so they needed to see the light at the end of the tunnel that doesn't mean they got less of an education means that their path to where they want to go may be different maybe career it may be to your college it may be fifth year of high school whatever it is right um so i get that so i do believe in personalization i believe in having options for students based off their personal needs carrie or trustee
100president dubois like i i believe in that because i do think there are some students whose life got it life gets in the way and i don't want to lower the other standards so how do we keep i love how you said it's like how do we make sure that um the tier one access the instructional piece that they get the support to be in those classes if they want to right or that placement tests aren't used to put you on a certain track but placement tests are used to say what supports do you need in that classroom and not take away the choice of going to college because we don't believe you should be in that that particular a g and that's more philosophical i don't know how we monitor that the other thing
101that i thought was interesting to me i'm looking for the career ladder from principal to director the principal makes more and thank god that we love our principals they got so much going on but the but different than the directors right so like no wonder people don't want to move up right i still remember a principal said we said you want to go to central office she said oh heck no like because she she she had the salary package right and so we need to think about that if we want to have upward mobility of people going through this developing your own we do need a career ladder for some of our our staff so that the ones who are principals can then you know bring their knowledge to the district office and help us
102grow and then we have new folks coming in who can do things you know differently or or you know and take the baton so i think there's something there that i would like to explore and then um there was something else that you said i'm looking for right now that i thought was interesting around shared beliefs and frameworks i think that that is really important for us to do i think a lot of the other things we are trying to do so it wasn't a shock and i think the interesting thing that still stands out to me is that the number of gaps we have between latino children children who are latino and to the staff and the t particularly the teachers i still think that is a huge concern i love the grow your
103own program i think that is just a different path um and so i know i think this gives us information we need to be strategic not close off anyone else but really be strategic in our recruitment as well as from our staff but also i think there's an opportunity if we do well by these by our kids they're going to come back and teach right so like if we're doing our jobs we're getting them academically ready they're going to be able to teach other kids and come back with their own credential so i think there is some creativeness around what to do around that even preparing some of our students who are interested in teaching how do we help them begin the exploration long before they leave high school so thank you thank you shaunies
104uh ellen um i think my my overwhelming sense of the presentation uh is be careful what you wish for you may get it this is really um a reflection of of seriously moving forward to try and get beyond the wording and get into the nuts and bolts of what equity means in our district uh at a at a both a policy and at an operational level and what comes back is a very mixed bag of results um there are many many things called out in the presentation that you just made that resonates with me of i feel very positively about the work that is underway in this area that we have long prioritized uh getting progress in areas where we have seen issues and have concerns and much has been done particularly over this past
105year to really address it strongly the way that our district office org structure has been examined and changes that have been made the way we have defined much more clear roles and structures and responsibilities and put new positions in place the way in which we are reviewing our job descriptions across the board but in an organized prioritized manner and um really clarifying many things the ways in which we are looking at not only recruiting and retaining our employees but really helping them to advance and become as effective as possible the steps that are being taken in those directions but there are also many many areas here that we look at and we say boy have we got some work on our plate and some of it is at a policy discussion level uh where we
106do need to come back as a board and look at many of these issues and really have some of those deep conversations and really be strongly informed by our stakeholders and the professionals on our staff there are other areas as trustee thompson pointed out where there is actionable useful operational direction contained here that our superintendent and staff can really begin making progress on and keep the board posted as we go forward but what it really does mean is that we have a much more actionable road ahead to really get traction on the ground on these areas of equity and student outcomes that are critical to all of us so i'm deeply appreciative of this kind of feedback i look forward to the full report and not only the amount of reading and learning that is
107going to be there but the the great ongoing reference that will be there for us to come back and and make real a lot of this thank you okay i think that's all of the comments thank you very much we'll move on to the next item and then we may take a break after that um we are now on item 12.3 presentation on the district climate study thank you madam president and the conversation around equity this year just to know as part of my entry plan as the new superintendent is actually to bring reports forward to look at where we are at equity in terms of equity one of the questions that i presented in my entry plan was how ready are we for equity and in order to do that it is it's going
108to require us to step back and to reflect on where we are in terms of our practices and where are we in terms of our actions and our commitment to all children and so part of that in addition to the audit that was conducted by illuminae illuminated we also have been working and moving forward with a climate study and also professional development for executive teams with the usc race and equity center this evening the center will present key updates from its district climate study work and the racial equity academies we have dr kendrick davis chief research officer who will highlight actions taken and progress made in phase one of the district's climate study we also have john dr john pasquerella chief academic officer and dr erica silva associate director who will present actions progress and
109learning outcomes from the racial equity leadership academy series for our district executive team and the racial equity academy series for all district employees so it is my pleasure to introduce dr pascarella dr davis and dr silva turn it over thank you for being with us good evening dr super uh superintendent dr dharnise williams uh good evening to the scoy union board of trustees and members of the skoi district community uh present this evening um my name is john vasquerell i'm the chief academic officers dr williams introduced us i'm here at the usc race and equity center and i'm a professor in the roster school of education here at usc um and as dr williams mentioned i'm joined here this evening by my colleagues dr kendrick davis dr erica silva dr davis is the chief research
110officer at the center and he's also associate professor of research prior to joining usc dr davis served as the vice president for policy research at the campaign for college community he leads two national projects aimed at improving racial equity in stem departments in state policy positions related to post-secondary education and he and his team lead the district climate study for sequoia union dr silva is the associate director of k-12 professional learning programs at our center and she is also an adjunct professor of education prior to joining ufc dr silva worked in both public and charter school systems in southern california as an elementary middle school teacher instructional specialist instructional coach i'm going to share my slides just now and as i do you'll see in our title as the title suggests our mission at the
111usc racing and equity center is to eliminate disrupt dismantle racism in all its form and we do this at our center through rigorous inner interdisciplinary research high quality professional learning experiences to production and wide dissemination of useful tools trustworthy consultations strategic advising and substantial partnerships tonight we present a progress report on three major district initiatives advancing equity that began in january 2022 and will continue through june 2023 our first report will provide updates on the district climate study from dr davis without further ado dr davis uh thank you dr prescott i appreciate it um good evening to uh everyone superintendent williams uh president obama other trustees uh thank you so much for the opportunity to be here and present um not so much i want to be clear that the findings but our major sort
112of action uh steps and what you can expect from our climate study um and then dr prescott and silva will talk about uh what you can expect from the professional learning series moving forward and so one of the things before i dive into the major action steps and uh things one of the things i hope that comes across clearly is that the climate study work is is complementary uh to the other equity activities happening in the district um and that we are working in concert to prevent a coherent and cohesive picture as opposed to sort of like one-off ideas of how equity is operationalized and working on the district so i first want to start um or sure thank you now using the next slide so i first want to just start by giving an
113overview of just the the three major steps that are part of our process uh one is the phase one is our strategic advising and really that's our opportunity uh to get to really get goal oriented with the sequoia union leadership as well as those who were leaders in the equity diversity and inclusion committee and the the goal of that is to make sure that we're not coming in with our sort of own agenda that every every part of the climate study process is um is centered around what the goals and vision mission of sequoia district is it's also an opportunity for us to look at other documents other instruments things that are used to to understand the student teacher paraprofessional and other experience happening across sequoia phase two is a process we began toward the
114spring and toward the end of the school year uh that will continue in into the fall we completed the the quantitative assessment that really and i'll go into detail about each of those and go into more detail about each of these we completed the quantitative assessment that helped us give us some direction on where to go um and we're currently in the phase of a qualitative assessment which really involves a series of focus groups of with priorities student subgroups across all of the sequoia high school districts and phase three just so that you're aware of which won't go into too much detail about tonight is i heard uh appreciating the opportunity to see and hear others present uh phase three is is where we will start putting some of those ideas into practice and go
115beyond sort of the definition and concept of equity to how it's going to be operationalized not just in the district but in the individual school communities next slide please so for strategic advising some of the major activities that were part of this phase is really the foundation setting of racial equity goals and indicators uh working with the board resolution and sort of those equity concepts and and looking at what are what is the leadership understanding of these goals uh how has this been uh how have these ideas been discussed in the equity diversity uh inclusion committee uh really just trying to understand what are the larger goals you want to point to and one of the things that was clear from that was the academic success and performances uh certainly a goal and priority uh
116that the social emotional development particularly in these covet remote environments where we sometimes know even less about what's happening in the day-to-day lives of students and and teachers uh what are the social emotional supports and experiences and around mental health when i say operational coherence that's really around how are we making sure these equity the different equity strategies and projects are working together and not in silos and then certainly want to understand what are the specific impacts of racial incidences uh some that have uh yeah what are some of the impact of racial instances that have been experienced across the district the content review of development archival documents again just a place for us to um make sure that we're launching from a common uh setting point and then an audit of but i mentioned
117some of these before and out of existing circuit instruments quantitative data lcap survey that's also reviewing the lcab again to make sure our activities are our methods our strategies are in line with the goals visions and missions next slide please we move into um phase two phase two with our quantitative assessment looking at the uh looking at the sort of numerical data to give us direction and also a qualitative assessment which really helps to fill those gaps and what the data are not telling us about the student teacher and other stakeholder experiences so we developed a list of quantitative indicators that were largely driven by again those bucket areas are a through g will certainly come up in that social emotional learning what are the rates of chronic absenteeism how do they how do they
118compare to how the state is performing but more importantly the crux of this is how are different district stakeholders experiencing their learning environment their work environment um and how does that impact uh how does that impact how they show up in programs how they implement or don't implement policies um and essentially what those attitudes and perspectives are across a range of issues and our um oh you can go to the next level please the analysis section and i'm not going to go uh you don't have to go back i'm not going to once well i know this during report materials so i just want to get the broad strokes of qualitative focus groups are really and i think um it might have been president dubois or another board member to talk about uh understanding the
119perspective of students um really starting from the in some ways an end user experience if all of these system structures policies and programs are set up to create the best sort of student experience how are students actually experiencing it um and it's almost uh they're a lot not just the coin school district but there are no sort of statewide we do work with schools and districts across the country in different contexts we don't currently have data systems set up to really have that sort of formative and ongoing monitoring and reporting of student information and and where they are so hopefully the the the climate study the focus groups as we continue in the fall they're currently starting with students and we'll continue them but we also hope to talk to teachers and paraprofessionals uh to
120bring out and understand some of those um some of those dynamics that were brought on the former presentation uh we'd hope to talk to board members if you are open and willing to do that to really present as holistic and coherent picture as possible um and we asked the range of questions uh those question types at the bottom of your screen what are the impacts of covay how your relationships with faculty and staff impact the racially motivated events how are you experiencing it how your attitudes change about your learning environment between now and this time last year those are the different types of questions we asked the next slide and it finally uh was one more after this but nexus for climate study again we're going to continue the qualitative data collection in the fall
121um and continue our focus groups at schools um across the sukhoi union district as well as with staff and other key stakeholders uh we're also going to do some definitional work uh i want to just uh point this out because one of the important things as we move from just taking these things from paper to implementing it into what's going to actually happen and work and what's feasible in the district is making sure that there is a there's a facilitated or organic um formation of a definition uh and that's important for a couple reasons sort of these top-down uh directives really fall apart because they're not properly and reasonably incentivized um and people feel like they're not a part of buying to the process and so in the fall and particularly in the early fall
122we're really going to work to pull all these things together and offer some kind of definitional uh definition of equity or concept or something that is uh mutually bought into that can serve as guiding principles moving forward for professional learning for the racial equity strategic projects and other district priorities um then of course i want to let you all know this perfect segways that pass it to our dr silva and dr pascarella uh we do have you know the professional learning and climate study activities run separately uh but again they're about the same district and so we make sure that we coordinate and share information uh we're relevant and where appropriate next slide i think is the timeline i will um won't run through the timeline but there's a snapshot of where our worker started
123we're anticipating it going of course with um flexibility and uh adaptability in between um but that is the broad strokes of the climate study um and willing and able to sharing answering questions after uh my colleague's presentation um or to provide any further information afterwards so dr prescott take it away thanks dr davis um and thanks again to the board as we present in the next section our discussion of two racial equity academy series one for the entire district for all staff uncertificated and faculty certificate administrators attending our racial equity academy district-wide series as well as the racial equity leadership academy series that we've led since january with the sequoia union high school district executive team our academies are built around offering credible accessible and actionable racial equity strategies all of our expert facilitators use
124contemporary cases of racial problems in urban k-12 schools emphasis is placed on in each one of these sessions learning from equity gains and racial missteps that have recently occurred elsewhere learning how to get ahead of situations and reducing the risk of crisis and learning actionable racial equity leadership strategies each one of these sessions are led by nationally known experts in specific areas of racial equity that they have conducted extensive research and published and presented and worked in partnership with k-12 schools just like yours and so for the racial equity leadership academy uh series that we've run for your executive team our first session was held on february 8th with dr mark anthony goodin from the columbia university he spoke uh and addressed recovering from racial inequities produced during kova 19 and then on march 8
1258 we were joined by dr travis uh bristol from berkeley who presented understanding the manifestations and effects of anti-blackness in the education workplace and for those who were present at that session you learned that dr bristol was in fact a former teacher in sequoia as well as had children who attended sequoia and then more recently on april 12th we were joined by dr maisha nguyen who is renowned expert in restorative justice and looking at disproportionality in school discipline racial dysportionality and school discipline and she presented and discussed her work um focused on eliminating disproportionality in school discipline in sequoia and in fall and leading into this next spring we have three more submissions lined up in the series uh addressing explicit acts of racism in schools recruiting supporting retaining teachers and staff and members of
126color as well as cultivating relationships with families and communities of color and with that dr self is going to present on the reactions responses to the sessions so far thank you so much dr pasquerella good evening superintendent williams the members of the board community members um it's my pleasure to be sharing some of the data that has come out of our exit surveys from our professional learning series with on the executive team and so in our first session with dr mark anthony goodin this was focused on recovering from racial inequities produced during covert 19. our respondents were able to share with us the usefulness of this racial equity academy session and as you can see 100 of our participants showed that it was very useful or most useful um the information that they were able
127to learn again this is the data that's coming from the respondents to our exit survey um and one of the comments that a participant put forth in the exit survey they shared that they appreciated the format of the session and the opportunity to have honest conversations about systemic issues and equity in our school schools and districts in sequoia for the session 2 again you see a high rate of respondents to the exit survey show that again they found it very useful or most useful and again this was a session with dr travis bristol who really was able to dig deep around the manifestations of systemic racism and really help leaders begin to think about the ways that this can emerge within school communities um and in this session in particular one of the respondents shared
128that they were grateful that we were able to anchor the session in personal stories videos of concrete steps and application and this quote was particularly stood out to me was they thanked uh the presenter for providing hope that progress is possible and again the goal of our professional learning series um with both the executive team and the greater district community is to really help um leaders and and your school communities begin to think about how you can advance racial equity within your community by discussing the challenges but also beginning to plan um how we can use those challenges to overcome um and create next steps uh using data from the climate study and the multitude of resources that dr uh williams has put forward to advance equity in the sequoia union high school district and
129for our last session this past april with dr maisha wynn again here the respondents from the survey again rated uh this was a very useful or most useful and so as we look to the fall we will be using the climate study to inform the way that we are conducting our professional learning series begin to think about how we might change and adapt based on the feedback that we continue to receive from participants within the district and really continue to work with the executive team and the district-wide series to ensure that the professional learning goals are being met for our racial equity academy initiative in the sequoia union high school district thank you dr silva and as we continue with our district-wide series that began on january 31st with our very own dr sean harper
130who's the founder and executive director of our center who led a session on engaging in productive conversations about race and racism this series will continue in september march april of next academic year and then into the following year in september and november of 2023 as you can see the titles that are lined up there we will continue to be working with nationally known experts in each of these areas to engage the entire district in addition to our racial equity academy uh for the entire uh for the district-wide series uh we have led uh additional initiatives um with your executive team after each session led by a nationally known expert we uh worked in an equity leadership lab approach to working with our executives to debrief the sessions um and and determine the ways in which
131equity can be advanced and sustained through the leadership decisions and members of the executive team that also involves deeper discussions of the racial equity challenges themes resources practical strategies that were introduced in the series in addition to that we've led specific professional learning sessions for tight academy and redwood high school faculty staff and leadership at the request of those two school leaders and it was wonderful to work more emily with those with those school teams um in addition to that we um our sessions absolutely center this focus on building racial literacy and challenging intersectional racism in the work with students um and so as we conclude our presentation we want to present to you what we see as a strategic continuum of engagement to advance racial equity in the district and we see as dr
132davis mentioned earlier all three efforts working simultaneously to advance the equity work in your school district the racial equity academies as explained and updates provided the district climate study as dr davis outlined and illustrated updates and how as dr silva pointed out we will use these report findings to continuously inform the racial equity academy work we're doing in the professional learning experiences as well as the racial equity projects as we form project teams in response to the racial equity challenger opportunities outlined in those reports and continue to support those project teams as they attempt to take up those challenges and opportunities in your respective schools and then just one more slide with those timelines so you can see how these phases all line up together and in sync with dr davis's earlier timeline side so
133thank you so much for your time and we absolutely welcome any questions you have on any of these three initiatives thank you so much again thank you for the presentation very exciting work any comments or questions chris a simple question of our superintendent really is how many how many people do we have engaged in the academies and and by position essentially who's going so in terms of our uh academies what we started with uh we started with our executive senior executive cabinet members and so that includes all of our directors our coordinators and specialists and folk who work in district offices and our principals as well um we have had one session which include the entire district and so when we negotiated the five professional development days um those days will be used for our
134district-wide trainings and so that will encompass every staff member within the district so to date we have about 69 people in our academies just one other question this might be of the team i think what we saw here was the approach the methodology of the climate study is there a point is there a plan for presenting findings from the climate study to the board yes um we will report the findings and as dr davis mentioned this work is all aligned so the work from the illuminated uh lumined consultants as well as with usc it is all going to be coordinated and then the findings will be presented together and so you'll get a midterm report around october that is when we're planning to discuss the definition because we started off this work with wanting to
135understand what is our operational definition of equity one is that are we ready so our readiness and where are we and what good work are we doing what can we build on and then what do we need to do and then the other is about how do we operationalize equity and lead and function on a daily basis from an equity lens and in order to do that we wanted to make sure that we had feedback from all stakeholders so that we can develop a district-wide definition that's going to continue to guide our work so that is going to come to the board and to the public in october thank you i'm very grateful for this work chinese um thank you for the presentation um um that was very helpful um i was wondering though about
136what is the board's interaction with this like i know that it's just presentation but are you gonna interview the board members um i'm starting to sound like carrie sometimes i feel a little left out can i still give input or like what is that what does that look like as a stakeholder thank you oh okay thank you for the question um trustee um yes stevenson the board members will be involved in this process this next phase they will be interviewed or you all will be all of you uh will be interviewed and your input and also your perspective will be included in the report dr davis you were going to add something that was perfect i just i didn't know if you wanted me to jump in that's perfect okay so you want to just
137underscore what we discussed about having board members absolutely and hopefully what i um what came across was that we're beginning our the sort of qualitative part of filling those gaps of all right we understand the data we know the policies and procedures but how are stakeholders in the district experiencing that so we very much want to um continue our conversation in the fall and include the board members in that as well so are you going to do any assessment of um you know when i think about readiness for for equity there's different levels right um and i know you're getting stakeholder input but how are you assessing board readiness you know community readiness i think students are already there they're already talking about us the adults around them that need to talk about it so
138i'm just wondering how do we actually assess people's readiness not just to talk about it but readiness for change i'll go i'll go first so um trustee stevenson again thank you for the question we have started the readiness and the assessment or appraisal of readiness comes with um the feedback in terms of where we um from each of the audits and then also it comes into the recommendations and knowing that these recommendations and the findings which are supported by artifacts these are choices that we get to make as a district so when you find when the finding is presented it is just that it is a finding based on uh research or based on um qualitative measures that have been instituted and then that's when we as a district come together and we have to
139do an appraisal of this information and say can our system uh withstand moving forward and making steps to push for equity so let me give you an example so in the last presentation when one of the um recommendations um brought forth was about a through g doesn't mean that we were going to change the whole system and blow it up and say oh wow we're going to require a through g as the graduation requirement it gets to the point that you raised it's going to require us to determine are we treating all of our students fairly are we providing them with the same level of access to a robust educational program that will provide them for college access or for career success post secondary and so when you're asking the how we're in the thick
140of the how the how is collecting the data identifying trends having conversations presenting the information publicly to all of our stakeholders and then we're going to engage in reactions right and reactions sometimes where you hear reactions sometimes it has a negative connotation but with this it is are we really really willing to do what it takes so that everything that we do within our district from our governance team the way we make decisions are we willing to put not only equity but children at the center and in order to make those decisions we have to have data we have to also have resources and most importantly we have to have the willingness to make certain adjustments so that we can ensure that we are definitely doing the work of equity that is intended and one
141thing i just want to remind everyone these conversations are healthy because once you commit to transitioning or advancing equity work within a system it takes time and it takes patience um and it's not going to happen overnight and so to the board and to the community from a leadership perspective i appreciate your patience in this work and i also appreciate the feedback some of which has been positive some of which has been just a bit tentative but nonetheless is going to continue to help us in the work that we're doing and so when you say board readiness is how does the board respond to the data that's presented and then what actions do we take someone had the statement of how do we take actions and um for our findings and to make them actions
142so i look at it as a triple track and triple track means you have a body of information so call it findings then we have conversation and it's about board direction and it's also about superintendent how do we do this how do we work with our stakeholders to make sure that this information lands in spaces that is going to directly impact kids i.e schedules we heard about that today doesn't mean that we're going to accept these recommendations but it gives us a basis and foundation for that conversation hiring practices doesn't mean we're going to accept all of the recommendation but again it gives us a basis and foundation and a starting point for us to make some adjustments in our system so that we might hire and retain talent a diverse pool of talent and
143so we are in the thick of to your point to your question we are in the thick of assessing readiness with all the work that we have started we are done and that we are doing dr kendrick you want to dr davis you want to i can only underscore well used to have nothing to add okay alan uh so again i'm going to repeat a little bit once again this is a matter of being careful what you ask for you may get it we are here looking at the uh challenging uh sometimes difficult sometimes uh uncomfortable work of really understanding where we're starting from and trying to really plan and operationalize where we want to go to and it means a lot of self-examination a lot of intentionality and then a lot of hard work
144and i appreciate the road map you're laying out for this work i think one of the questions i would have uh for the for the superintendent and and the team here is um i i do want to be sure that we're looking at every opportunity as we progress to make sure that the board is not left behind in any training opportunities i would i would hate to find ourselves in a position of trying to lead as a board when a substantial majority of our staff have been exposed to concepts that that we need to catch up on i want to make sure that we have the opportunity to grow um with the team and help continue to to lead the team thoroughly um because lord knows the the board is not short on the need
145to learn and grow as everybody else in our organization is but once again i'm more than anything i'm very excited to see this work going by i like the way it's been laid out and it's a recognition that the task is large it's ongoing and the time frame is going to require patience as well as commitment so thank you for that any other comments all right thank you so much for the presentation good work so i think we should take a break um we come back in five minutes you want more why do they laugh at my five-minute breaks you want ten okay ten is okay i'm gonna get this get this road back on the show we have such a full agenda so um shaunich is back good you're timing it perfectly all right
146so um everybody ready um moving on with our agenda we are now on 12.4 presentation of data zone good evening i'm diana wilmott the director of program evaluation research i'm introducing tonight's presentation of data zone we have two presenters from the santa clara county office of education dania uni the it manager and nabil shaheen director of k-12 data governance um we engaged in an mou with uh these folks for data zone which they will share about our process and we're very proud that we're in this engage engagement with them with our feeder districts uh really for the focus of goal six which as a governance team you guys put together last july which is on initiating a long-term effort to data share with k-8 districts and community college districts so it is a a valiant
147effort of data sharing and um we are in the pro we are just starting the process with them and just from my own experience i uh i used to work at the santa clara county office of education it was a decade ago when you know the idea of the cloud and data warehousing was just starting and so data zone has been around now for a full 10 years and it's great to see them they have really spread across santa clara county and now have moved into san mateo county and it's really you know the inspiration of the san mateo county office of education to engage with them uh around this effort and without further ado i will uh take this opportunity to have them come up here and tell you more i'm going to take
148off my mask i haven't mastered this presenting with a mask on thing so uh so i'm nabil shaheen i'm the director of k12 data governance with the santa clara county office of education and i do want to clarify that donya is actually from the san mateo county office of education and this is a partnership between the two county offices and so donya comes from the tech side of things there's another name you see on the presentation which is ganesh he's not with us tonight but he is our director of data analytics and development at the santa clara county office of education and we work in partnership from the tech side to the educational side ganesha's background and donya's background is all in the technical stuff that i don't know how to do my background is
149all in k-12 education so i come from a teaching and high school and middle school site administration and i've been with the county office for about three years so i'm going to cover very briefly we're asked to keep it short so i'm going to cover a few things but i provided an extended slide deck where you'll have a little bit more information there's some screenshots and things like that that you can look at when you have a little bit more time but for me to go through all of it would take would take us deeper into the night than we already are so um so our mission for data zone is to transform the education data culture in california by providing an integrated data warehouse platform and analytics tool that supports a student's first focus
150uh one of the key differences for us is that we are a county office of education so we're not a company we're not profit driven we don't have shareholders we have stakeholders but it really positions us a little differently in that we work to be responsive to districts and to county offices and our focus is working in partnership and developing uh platforms and applications that serve them and serve their students right and it aligns with our mission as a county office to make sure that we're serving students and that really is the bottom line for us in every situation uh and so sometimes when we look at this it's it i sit in this weird space because it is a product that we do generate revenue from we're never out to sell it our goal
151for every district is to make sure that we're working with them to service their students in whatever way they find that they need to um and so it's never really about sales for us so our focus as a county office is to close the academic and achievement gaps to be an active partner um to provide an integrated data warehouse platform and connect timely and accurate student data and to provide all of this at cost so all of the work we do is always at cost so i just want to cover real quickly how the student data warehouse works so it is a large repository of information we currently house data for all of santa clara county napa county we have 16 districts in san mateo out of the 24 right now we're in butte county
152and also in mariposa county so we have upwards of 300 000 student records that come in every single night the way it works is that we connect to the student information systems in every one of the districts and we use these customized transformation scripts in order to map all the data and then we transfer the data so the data comes out of the student information systems with these customized scripts it extracts that it transforms it and it loads it securely into the data warehouse and once it's in the data warehouse then we can form that data so that we can look at it across the county we can even look at it across multiple counties and so we use calpads where appropriate to conform the data and then we also generate attributes and measures so
153that we can use that uh to either cater to the analytics platform that goes back to the districts or use it for reporting or in certain situations where we have interagency applications then it can also be used in those interagency applications and what you see in the diagram there is just a sampling of what we bring in to just kind of give an idea but we bring in all student information systems or it's called sis agnostic so power school synergy infinite campus it doesn't matter what student information system it is we also bring in interim and benchmark assessments so all those large ones nwea map iready dibbles star and then we also bring in college board assessments and any of the state assessments for elpac and for casp so there's two different types of implementation
154there's the student data warehouse and the student data warehouse and analytics and they're slightly different so the student data warehouse on you see on the right side is a base level implementation and that's currently what sequoia has engaged in through the san mateo county office of ed so this is subsidized by the coe so there's no cost at all to the districts when we do this but it does have limited data available the data we bring in is just the cis data we don't bring in the college board assessments or the state assessments or the local assessments under this agreement under the student data warehouse and the analytics platform when we start providing analytics for the districts it's still subsidized by the county office of ed but there is additional cost to the district and
155to just give you an idea the overall cost of a district paid for it on their own would be about seven dollars per student uh the county office picks up three dollars of that for every student and then the district would pick up the other four dollars um and what that allows us to do is on top of the data warehousing then we provide a full set of analytics and then we bring in the college board assessments all the state assessments any local assessments um because then we're actually utilizing uh a power bi base in order to provide analytics back to the district or just real quick questions yeah four and seven bucks per day week month year per year so it's annual based on the cbed's enrollment data so just kind of looking back
156at that diagram it just kind of gives you an idea so when we look at all of that data that's coming into the student data warehouse that's really under the warehouse and analytics implementation when we look at just the data warehouse implementation it's this just assist data donna and i were just talking though about especially about state data we really want to bring in the state data currently we've been talking with cde and ets and there is no solution for county level extracts out of toms in order to bring that in so we do still have to rely on every district to provide that with that said if all the districts agree to provide that data once a year then we can easily bring that data in we haven't done it in santa clara county
157because we just didn't have every district that was willing to provide the data on an annual basis uh diana talked about this being implemented a decade ago and it was and i if i could go back and be a part of that i would have really pushed for that state data to come in so i think for san mateo county we really want to look at that state data coming in because we think there's a lot of value in bringing it in and also from a data sharing perspective so when we look at data sharing because i know that's a big interest again it's slightly different depending on whether the districts that are in it are doing analytics or just in the data warehouse so if you're just in the data warehouse then the data
158is extracted from the warehouse so we would provide a data extract because there's no front-end access to the data right now for um for a district so even though your data is flowing into the data warehouse you don't have access to that uh from a front end because the analytics piece isn't set up but we can still pull an extract out from sccoe and provide that to you and that can include data that would be coming from your partner districts or your feeder districts it would be however limited to the sys data so it wouldn't include right now the state data or local assessment data in that but it would include all of the demographic data attendance behavior grades everything that they hold in their their student information system it also allows for connections to
159interagency systems so as san mateo county begins to build up more interagency systems it would allow the data to then be connected to the interagency systems it's always done with permission from the district so districts retain full ownership of all their data and nothing is ever done with the data unless the district has signed off on it to be done so it would never be shared with anybody it would never be connected to any system unless there was an agreement with the district and the county in order to do that there's some examples of that in the extended deck but in sccoe we have a couple different integrated data systems where we work with juvenile justice we work with dfcs and ssa and behavioral health in order to have integrated systems that feed educational data
160from the every district in the county into systems where people can utilize that if you're in the the analytics and your feeder districts are in the analytics then you have a little bit more of an extended way to utilize the data we can still do extracts from the warehouse they do have a larger set of data because they can include any of the data that's coming from the state for elpac sbac as well as interim and benchmark assessments there's also the option at that point when data sharing is in place in order to have districts be able to access other districts instance of the analytics platform so for example if you had an agreement and you were in the analytics platform and so was redwood city um then you could go in feasibly and just
161switch from sequoia to redwood city and be able to look up data on students that were incoming you'd also be able to look up historical data on students that you currently have and you can do that through the system but both districts have to be within the analytics platform for that to happen all right i'm going to stop there because we could keep going on but i want to be able to answer any questions that you might have because i just really wanted to focus in on how does the data warehouse work and then how does the sharing work i'm happy to go into more depth on the analytics platform if you want but i didn't want to spend too much time tonight doing that chris allen uh just a couple of quick questions to
162start with um are all eight of our k-8 partners uh participating at this point not yet so um everybody has signed on to the dsa with the exception of san carlos woodside and ravenswood uh woods sorry woodside is in uh san carlos roadwood city and ravenswood and we're in conversations with both uh redwood city and ravenswood and we expect them to come on this summer i'm going to be meeting with liz wolfe in a couple weeks uh and uh nancy mcgee's been working with ravenswood st colors is the one we haven't really engaged much with so far it was just we had a kind of phased implementation based on student information systems they were at the end of those waves so we're just starting outreach to them okay but every other district is in um
163and of the five that are on board so far are any of them involved in the analytics as well they are not yet so our focus was getting everybody into the data warehouse but i will be talking with redwood city about the analytics i'm presenting on friday to belmont redwood shores about the analytics um and there was one more but i don't think it was one of your feeder districts okay um so kind of thinking about uh you know i can kind of see both sides of the picture involving the analytics one is let's kind of get going in the data world and start getting some uh sharing going on with our partner districts and kind of get things going and then you can decide to upgrade to the analytics after that uh the other
164thought that kind of occurs to me immediately is [Music] a district might very well want to see the whole range of capability as early as possible and then you could decide oh maybe for the long term for us the analytics side isn't necessary because only this much of it looks really really useful to us and here's a bunch of things we want to look at that we're going to have to custom develop anyhow yeah we see that with different districts um so part of what we've really been working on so one of the things i guess to maybe make you aware of is for a long time for most of the decade that diana was talking about we were partnered with who knew it which was acquired by powerschool and that actually limited our ability
165to do a lot of things it limited our ability to be able to actually do a subsidized model like what we're doing right now it limited our ability to do a lot of the data sharing and so we recently have now deployed and developed a brand new uh platform and a brand new data model that allows us a lot more flexibility so what you're talking about like we can work with districts to kind of figure that out so and even one of the big things that we're now working on is to provide more access to the data warehouse itself for districts if they have the sql knowledge and things like that there are things within the platform in the analytics that allow you to extract out certain data and then you can bring that into
166whatever you want to and work with it because there are always going to be things that we're not going to be able to meet there's going to be a unique metric that a district needs that won't be in the warehouse and we know that it's impossible for us to be able to have every metric that everybody could ever need so really trying to build out that ability to to bring all the data together and then allow you the control to bring it out and do whatever you need to with it and then finally you mentioned a handful of data sources uh that would only be taken in if you were part of the analytics part right and my question there is that if a district was to transition to including analytics somewhere down the road
167i would assume that basically your history of that chunk of data is only going to start after that point not necessarily because we can bring in whatever data they provide us when they start so when we bring in like so all of the cis data because there's historical data in there all of that data comes in we usually go three to four years back in that data um right now because of coven we're pushing back a little bit further because we really know that the last good baseline we have is 1819 but we bring in whatever historical data they provide so if they were providing us with multi-years of casp data we would bring that in if they had multiple years of local assessment data we'd also bring that in so i mean it sounds
168to me in in general that [Music] taking our time and really coming up to speed with the data warehouse and getting fundamentally there and building out the the sharing of partnership data and things like that uh with a certain amount of cost savings up front is probably uh a pretty sound approach and then when we're ready in the fullness of time taking advantage of the full capabilities would be completely on the table yeah absolutely and we've been doing the data extract work with jefferson union high school district for a few years now and they are in a situation where all of their feeder districts are in the analytics platform um so we provide them with a pretty large data set every year um coming from their feeder districts we're actually working right now i've been
169working with jefferson elementary to define fields to provide data sharing and a data extract back to the elementary districts from the high school so that they can look and see you know how are students that are going through different math pathways what are their outcomes look like you know any students that they might have in special programs that they've really helped to try and support because they have a vested interest in understanding how the programs that they're implementing are really resulting in downstream for their students to be able you know it's hard i can tell you i was a middle school principal it's really hard in three years to be able to figure out if the programs that you have are really having long-term sustainability because you have the kids for such a short time
170and so they're really interested in that and so that's part of what we're also building into the platform is is that ability for them to be able to go and look at students that they used to have at the high school level and be able to see how you know what do outcomes look like for those students our articulation is a two-way street it is it is so and it's it often isn't because we push the data up right and we get busy and so really trying to work with them to make sure that we can articulate you know both up and down is really important i'm chance yes i have two questions um one is i'll start with the first and i'll let you answer and they answer the second one but the first
171one is looking at our districts i know that i think you said san carlos redwoods city and ravenswood are the last one to come on and i'm wondering what questions or cautions are they having around the data data analytics and being a part of the system yeah that's a great question um ravenswood when i had spoken to nancy was purely just capacity to to look at it and engage so they just asked to wait until summer so i don't know if they had any specific reservations i don't know donya if you know at all or if you've been part of that conversation no i think it was mainly the resources okay i couldn't hear sorry she said mainly it was just the resources so we're not aware of any reservations that that ravenswood has um
172i've spoken to liz wolfe in um redwood city and she same sort of thing her and i were engaging in april and she just asked if we could put it off and talk a little bit more because she wanted to talk about the analytics platform as well and she asked if we could put it off into june until after school ended and then san carlos is the one we haven't really had any conversations with so we're just going to start engaging with them we haven't done outreach to them yet okay and maybe i'm off because i don't understand all the data information but i'm just wondering i'm thinking from kind of like a a biased perspective right um how can we ensure that data is not going to be used against students versus for students
173like misrepresentation of data how to use that for planning sometimes we look at it from a deficit perspective so i'm just i'm just wondering about that no those are great questions um i have to say as far as sccoe we actually don't do anything with the data other than bring it all together and conform it so we don't utilize that data for anything um sm-coe would be working a partnership but only on things that are agreed upon with the district so you know i don't it wouldn't be that anybody would be pulling this data and utilizing it for anything else and we have very strict uh security protocols in place so unless you have granted people access to this data they nobody will have access to it um so with uh smcoe there's only a
174couple people in smcoe that would have access to it and they are all on teams that are really working you know i think donya you might be able to answer this better because i know it more from the elementary because the big lift but you know what sort of things might be worked on in partnership with high school districts yeah so the our data and analytics team would have specifically will be working directly with sequoia and they will be pulling and it'll be mostly for your use the anal if you are signing on on the analytics platform any data will be used for it'll be only for you your use the data warehouse portion that's the part that nabil was mentioning that there is this vision to connect the juvenile justice and these child welfare
175um you know all these third party uh systems will be uh talking but again as nabil mentioned like it will be the district who authorizes and it's not like genealogists will get access to all data it will be specific student level permission so there will be a district administrator who will be granting access to saying yes this student needs help and you know you are specifically specifically granting student level permission to those third-party agencies so it's not like they can look around and see who is there and um so it will all be controlled by the district so you will have full you know full ownership and you will have full access to determine who will see your data okay and then the last question are families and i guess this is more for our
176district staff dr wilcock and i think it's um and dr williams will families be able to opt in and opt out of giving their data into the system not sure if that question was for me or for you so we we don't currently have a mechanism for families to opt out um it's the same data that would be in the student information system okay um it's a great question because i know one of the the of san mateo county is they are building out their interagency work around school threat assessment um and but that utilizes a different system it would utilize the the student data warehouse as the repository for educational data but it utilizes a different application that has an active consent uh structure that's built into it right so in order for any
177agency to be able to see data on a student then that the holder of that agency data so in this case it would be sequoia union high school district would have to actually consent to that data being shared across agencies um and so so it's a little bit little that system's a little bit different and before the data is connected to that and used there'll be separate agreements between the districts and the county in order to engage in that okay i think those are the questions that i have i think families are still going to have questions around how the data is being used and with a helper hurt my kid um and and how do we ensure that it's not is used for goods because sometimes data is not used very well so thank
178you okay i just wanted to add um this is diana wilmot again um one of the things that they're talking about i think that would be most valuable is the eighth to 9th grade transition where we really lose time um in terms of making this transition as smooth as possible for our freshmen coming in so that data transfer we spend the majority of the year really trying to track down and make sure we can um [Music] track down either even if it's demographics or test scores or or what have you to make sure that the students schedules are in place there's a lot of personnel involved in in all of that in that collection of the data and that i could see is a really valuable asset to to bring to our to our district
179to be able to communicate with our eight feeder districts and us on i'm not alone would be a huge win thank you rich i wonder if you can give just like 15 seconds on general um like is it a relational database is it on rackspace or google like just not a long thing but just big picture what is it yeah no i can um so and it's actually there's information in the extended slide deck on this as well so it is cloud-based it's on an azure platform um with a the database is actually snowflake database and that's part of how we are working to be able to grant access to the actual data warehouse layer so the actual data model layer that we can create measures and attributes that we can then profile and then
180allow access to where people would be able to go in through the snowflake interface and write a basic sql query to pull data out okay great yeah and if if at the current level that we have you're just we are importing the assist data what can we learn from the cis data in data zone that we can't learn from our assist data ourselves is there some are there like different there's a whole value seeing other people's information is that the purpose or the sharing but no um when you within the analytics platform there is a lot right because it's taking all that cis data and it's actually compiling it into metrics and charts to be able to look at it so um an assist doesn't do any of that the sys doesn't some do um
181i can't remember which student information system you're on diana what's what sis are you on infinite campus so infinite campus currently does not have um an analytics uh component to it uh aries has some powerschool has some but they're add-on pieces um so really when you look at it i guess the best example i could get give would be you know if you're bringing in like the cis data you can look at discipline disproportionality you can look at great disproportionality um you can break that out and disaggregate that data by race by student program um and and you can see it very quickly and you can take that and then you could you know if i can look and see okay i have x number of students with d's and f's right i can click
182and i can drill into that data to a student list that tells me here's exactly my students who have d's and f's uh we can't do with infinite campus you can through ad hoc queries but you're going to have to write an ad hoc query pull it out and then bring it into excel or something to do it yeah and then there's information about ieps or 504s included in data zones like if an eighth grader had certain accommodations we would know that when they come to us in ninth grade actual accommodations that are written in the 504 or in the iep are not included in it because those are either held the 504s don't tend to be held in the student information system some have modules that do and the ieps are being held in
183cyrus and space so that detailed information doesn't get held in the student information system the data that does come in though is um and i don't want to get too detailed but like the table a and table b data that you would see from seise and sarah cyrus that you bring into your student information system that does come in so you can see if a student does have a 504 if a student does is in special ed and receiving services what their primary disability is those sorts of things and we're actually right now looking at how to source data from some of the calpads reports that are going directly from states and cyrus in order to be able to see a student percentage of time in mainstream and some of the other pieces as far
184as special ed setting okay thank you chris so you're you sound to me like an educator who's learned some of the tech talk and anyway um i think this is great and what what promise it also seems to me that doing it at the county or by county level is sort of the right level to do it that state would actually be too large get economies in scale uh we can't do it ourselves at the district level so i like the placement of it and the promise seems great a couple couple of comments one are there provisions for providing extracts for research purposes so i work at stanford the federal administrative statistical system has now set up systems so this has great value and also is done in controlled ways that protect that you know
185get rid of any individual identifiers it's only aggregate data stuff like that so you can't backtrack it is that included within the thinking because that could be very useful to education at large i think yeah it actually is it was part of the original silicon valley regional data trust concept and that was a tri-county that was san mateo county santa clara county and santa cruz county and the idea was to build out the student data warehouse across those three counties and it was in partnership with uc santa cruz but that stalled out quite a few years ago so what we've actually done recently is we engaged in an mou with cal policy labs and we've been working with them in order to just be able to be a connector between districts that would be interested
186in participating in research and some of the different research initiatives that are going on across the uc system we don't have any you know open access or open data portals for research and it wasn't thinking of that but one there's probably there may be federal funding to support this and two i guess what i was hoping it might be built into the mouss with the participating districts we didn't build it in so one of the things that we know about when we engage with districts in this way is that the trust building aspect is the most important for us um we can you know once we have that trust as established you know we can really do anything that the district wants to do and wants to engage maybe it's the next step and i
187think there are certain things you need to do to build the trust and so yeah yeah and that's exactly it and so for us you know like the most important thing for us is to be able to tell districts that nothing happens with this data without their direct consent okay i also wanted to comment on trustee stevenson's question about the individual people opting out of the system you