SUHSD Board Meeting Nov 17 2021

001all right welcome everybody let me try that with the speaker or the microphone we welcome everybody to this meeting of the sequoia union high school district board of trustees and i do see we still have zero attendees we have our panelists here this is an opportunity for members of the public to provide public comment on items on the close session agenda for today we will be going to closed session from five o'clock to six o'clock and then returning to public session at six o'clock we do not see any members of the public here in the boardroom and we do not see any members of the public as attendees at this point so having no public comments offered we will adjourn this open session to closed session and return at six o'clock good evening everyone and

002welcome excuse me let me mute my computer here right now i don't get an echo that's good all right welcome to this meeting of the sequoia union high school district board of trustees uh before anything else i would like to ask ms gonzalez to make a statement about translation and to our superintendent would you please do us the honor of introducing ms gonzalez to our community good evening everyone we'd like to welcome gabriella gonzalez she has joined as our senior administrator and office of the superintendent we are proud to have her here as additional support and so we welcome her and we just give her a sequoyah union high school district friendly welcome and congratulations thank you [Applause] please stand mr gonzalez please stand be recognized you come to the camera so people can see

003i mean they can't they're unable to see you you would like to say something where you're from [Music] okay and we are continuing with our return to new normal operations with members of the public here in attendance and members of the public in attendance via zoom for those present here those wishing to make public comment please fill in one of the speaker cards and present them to miss louisia they will make their way up to me and for those in our zoom audience wishing to speak please um raise your zoom hands when we get to the agenda item on which you which just on which you wish to speak for those wishing to speak on agenda on items that are not on the agenda those comments are to be made during agenda item 11.1 public

004comment uh we will normally allocate uh three minutes for each speaker and no more than 10 minutes for any given topic if we have a larger number of speakers than can fit in that time we will adjust the time and announce it before anyone begins speaking to cut it to two minutes or 90 seconds or one minute in order to accommodate all of those who do wish to speak and if the board agrees when there's a large number of speakers we can also extend the overall 10-minute limit for a given item but that is what we are trying to keep our time organized around and as a reminder the board will not act upon any matter that has not been agendized except under limited circumstances as permitted by law uh it is the policy of

005the board to refer matters raised in this forum to staff for investigation and or action where appropriate okay with that can we move along and have our roll call steven trustee said here didn't trust the osuna oh trustee student jesse osuna is on babysitting duty tonight so he sends his regrets but he'll be here next time uh trustee thompson here trustee stevenson here trustee again sure vice president dubois here president sarver here a quorum is present thank you uh that moves us along to approval of the agenda i would like to make one recommendation or actually two related recommendations for uh smoothing it out i would like to have our set of presentations hearings and action around um sunshining of bargaining proposals uh together so in order to achieve that i would recommend that we

006drop item 12.1 the presentation of the american federation of state county and municipal employees initially initial bargaining proposal to the bottom of the information item so move 12-1 after 12.3 that would put it immediately before the public hearing for the district's proposal and then i would further um suggest that we move our action our single action item to approve the district's initial bargaining proposal ahead of the discussion items so the result would be we would go 12.2 12.3 then 12.1 13.1 15.1 and into the discussion items and i put that to uh whether there is any um concern about that or um accept emotion president as long as you keep track of the order for us i'd be happy to move approval of the agenda as modified i'll second that okay all those in favor

007aye okay the modified agenda is approved and it's on me to remember all that stuff okay um the report out in close on closed session the board took action on three items by a boat of five uh board members in favor zero against the board of trustees approved the settlement agreement for case number 2021 dash 2022-04 by a vote of five board members in favor zero against the board of trustees approved the settlement agreement for case number 2020-2021-2 and also by a unanimous vote the board voted to approve the final settlement agreement [Music] that brings us to our approval of the consent agenda the board action is to approve the following items is taken simultaneously with one motion which is not debatable and requires a unanimous roll call for vote for passage the action indicated

008on each item is deemed to have been considered in full and action taken as worded therein only members of the board and the superintendent may remove items from the consent agenda members of the public may provide comments at the start of the consent agenda item which may convince a board member or the superintendent to remove an item for further discussion um the board the motion would be to waive the reading of the consent agenda except reports adopt the resolutions and approve other items i do not see any cards yet for that i do see one attendee hand up um and it is uh karen van putten is that um a request regarding the consent agenda if so uh please unmute and uh go ahead and speak oh the hand has gone down um so i

009uh i will assume that that uh was actually uh advanced warm-up for public comment okay um all right so with that uh having not heard any comment about the consent agenda uh we will accept a uh motion for approval i move to prove the consent agenda okay can we have a roll call for that please send a trustee step yes jesse thompson yes trustee stevenson yeah trustee again yes vice president dubai yes president sarver yes motion carried thank you all right that moves us along to special recognitions superintendent williams thank you again good evening this is always the most important part of our board meeting and that is we have an opportunity to recognize the excellence within our district i am going to ask that uh dr elizabeth chacon assistant superintendent of student services come

010forth for this recommendation i have the honor of presenting recognitions tonight from sequoia high school the first is for stacy star sequoia food services lead in overseeing the implementation of sequoia's lunch service this year stacy starr's leadership has been vital in ensuring that hungry students are fed efficiently and thoroughly each day the lines have been long but they move fast and it always end with a friendly smile from the service staff this happy adult face models for students how much their individual success matters to our community whether in the classroom or in the cafeteria what might seem like a small gesture has the huge impact of allowing students to focus on learning stacy's team gets it the sequoia community is appreciative of her leadership thank you stacy and the next recognition goes to their ethnic

011studies team consistently over the past three months if you talk to ninth graders or their parents at sequoia the likelihood is high that you will hear how much they are enjoying their ethnic studies class z nguyen carlos navarrete diana nguyen michelle payton melissa perez and pablo aguilera have been instrumental in preparing course objectives materials and assessments it is however the way in which they've structured and facilitated learning that has been a source of inspiration to the entire community they have made sensitive topics relevant and engaging recognizing the difference between being uncomfortable and unsafe by centering student voices and empowering learners the work they're doing with ninth graders this year will continue to enrich learning across the curriculum moving forward hats off to the sequoia ethnic studies team [Applause] thank you and we look forward to

012personally delivering their certificates of appreciation um before the holiday so once again thank you and we also thank each and every one of you for your service to our community and to our students thank you excellent thank you and thank you to all of those we have recognized this brings us to item nine student trustee comments okay there we go thank you so much president sarah i start my comments this week with an update on the student advisory committee we met last tuesday and had a great meeting discussing what we want our action items to be for the rest of the year as always i'm continued to be blown away by how much our students care about bettering this district uh in other news at all of our money site many student leaders at all

013sites have reached out to me to talk about the situations of bathrooms on campus many bathrooms remain locked throughout the day at times there will only be one or two open available bathrooms for students to use this is both inconvenient and uncomfortable for our students these bathroom closures uh seems at times unnecessary and also bathrooms are often closed during lunch and brunch meaning there's very few times for students to use the bathroom finally i would like to use this opportunity to once again ask for mandatory consent education to prevent sexual harassment and assault at our schools in order to combat these issues we have to be proactive and best address these issues with comprehensive consent education thank you okay duly noted input i see the superintendent furiously making notes excellent we move on to comments

014from the sequoia district teachers association hello um i wanted to start my comments by welcoming dr cohn to the meeting it's very exciting to get to meet her and she very graciously made time for me in her first week on the job to chat and catch up on some of our issues and i know she's made time for a number of our members as well and we really are looking forward to keeping that open door policy open and working with her to address student services um i want to thank the board for the action you just took on item 7.5 to raise the substitute pay rate we are hopeful we are hopeful that's going to help us address some of the coverage shortages we've had especially we are appreciative of the rate the higher rate

015for uh district retirees recognizing the sort of value add they bring and to our communities and i'm looking forward to the opportunity it gives me to sit down with ms leech to talk about ways we can avoid any unintended consequences of payroll issues that are tied to the sub rate in the area of student services the panorama survey went out to get sort of a baseline and i know it's being rolled out to students over the next week or so maybe two weeks and i took it myself this morning and um it was interesting to me how differently many of the questions landed this year than in previous years when i've taken the same survey and so i'm hoping when we look at the results both the staff results and the student results we're going

016to be able to have conversations that will put those results in context i worry greatly as i answered questions about the support that my site gives to me that i my answers were lower across the board but that's not because my site is providing me with less it's simply because i need more this year and they don't have any more to give me and so i worry that when we have things that we can compare year on year if those scores go down it looks like a negative to those people and so if i'm worried that my principal is going to be in a negative light i also worry that my members will be seen in the negative light if the student results follow that same pattern and i know it's not the intention of

017anyone because we all know that we're just in an area of much greater need this year um update on bargaining we have since our last i'm trying to remember when the last board meeting was but we've had a half day of bargaining that we had earlier this month and we will go back to the table on the 22nd because we've had some stumbling blocks in scheduling we are trying to schedule at least one more day potentially a half day maybe a day and a half the scheduling is very difficult at this point because everybody's availability is tight and teachers do not want to take time off before finals or when they're giving students finals because our first priority is to the students in our classes but we are hopeful we're going to be able to

018come up with those dates because we really think it's important to move as quickly as we can on in bargaining to be able to deliver an agreement to the community and to our members who are working you know harder as hard if not harder than they ever have before thank you okay and now we would like to hear from the american federation of state county and municipal employees you have a representative here tonight okay i'm not seeing a hand go up for that among our attendees either all right so we will move on to public comment all right and we now have five cards all right so uh to keep those five within our 10 minutes i would suggest we set a limit of two minutes a piece unless it is the board's preference that

019we extend the time um 15 minutes for public comment this evening i don't mind 15 minutes i don't either it relieves some guilt i'd have about telling one of the participants earlier that she would have three minutes okay all right so if everybody is planned for their three minutes let us go ahead and do that so our first public comment will come from susan moore in our second from abby corman so it's great to see all of you again it was wonderful for many of you to be able to attend the m.a homecoming game and you had our community sincerely appreciated it it was it was a very nice gesture on your part and it gave you the opportunity to see exactly uh how much our stadium needs improvements and renovations if you'll remember the

020sound system that you couldn't hear anything and overall the stadium is in badly is in great need of repair so not only is ma stadium the smallest in the district although we have the largest enrollment the stands were built in the 50s and those with disabilities as you noticed are forced to sit in stands to that are not part of the stadium of the regular stadium and this is truly not the inclusiveness that i know that our district is all about additional safety issues also exist with the overcrowding and many people who just want to come and enjoy this part of our community event are forced to stand during the entire game in addition to the stadium we need to address the needs of our student body with a student success center that would include

021space for our academic program potentially space for pe and we also do not have a locker room for our freshmen and it would potentially include that as well this project aligns perfectly with the sequoia union high school district goals that were laid out on july 31st especially numbers one two and three that include a focus on on strengthening instruction by improving attendance achieving equity through systems policies and procedures and ensuring the well-being of students through the implementation of a multi-tiered system of supports as we discussed dr williams achieving the 2.0 minimum gpa that's required for students to participate in athletics is a major struggle for many many of our students the motivation that being on the field provides is well beyond anything else that we can offer we have a large group of alumni community

022members and current families as well as the m.a administration who would like to see our school board invest in a project to improve our stadium and provide a safe inclusive place that brings together our community in a way that nothing else quite does we also need to continue to focus on our students well-being and connection to our school and education and achieving the goals of the district we've met with a firm who has previously worked with the district on different projects and have looked into what again could potentially be possible and we're very very excited by this what we need now is your support to move this project forward thank you so much [Applause] okay um abby corman and jennifer lang will be next hi good evening my name is abby corman i'm a teacher

023at menlo atherton i've been present at a lot of the board meetings through zoom so i'm glad to be here in person with you all tonight i'd like to first commend the district on the passing of the equity resolution the thoughtful town hall the superintendent set up and the revision of the el master plan that have all happened in the past few weeks all of these actions show the beginning steps toward changing policy so that we're not just a district that talks about serving all students but one that actively changes policy to better serve the students who need it most with this in mind my public comment today is about the immediate and urgent need to support our most underserved students whose behavior and academic outcomes are showing us they need more from us right

024now well i appreciated the esser funding presentation last board meeting including the three million dollars being used to implement strategies for continuous and safe in-person learning i'm concerned about how much of that money will be spent on immediate student-facing services and how much will go toward district positions my questions today are in regards to the s or funding presented at the last board meeting as well as any other funding and plans that may be available to support students immediately my concerns echo miss suzy chose public comments from a board meeting or two ago where she advocated on behalf of the district using its money for more student-facing positions it also echoes trustee stid and asuna's presentation around the needs of students on campus right now i'm pleased to hear we've hired another behavior analyst as

025i know kendra at the district has been swamped with double or maybe even triple the caseload an analyst is meant to have i was thrilled to find out that it means that my school site with almost 100 suspensions so far this year will be able to have her on campus three days a week i'm wondering why that third analyst position is not yet posted on ed join nor are the two additional school psychologists we approved nor the mental health counselor i'm also wondering if any of these positions will be student facing or if these positions will be district positions as well for the newly approved one mental health counselor from esser funds i'm wondering how the site will be chosen for this person if they will roam or if this too is a district position

026while it's important to have experienced knowledgeable staff making decisions at the district our students are in desperate need of mental health support right now our mental health specialists at our sites are overwhelmed and it's not clear what's being done in in the immediate to support our students even this funding feels as though it's meant to help students down the line after teachers have received training and the district has devised plans which is important but does not address the dire needs of our students right now we're a few months back into school after a traumatic once-in-a-lifetime event and our structures feel the same as they were pre-pandemic despite our clear naming that our students need more what new structures positions or plans are we implementing right now that directly support our student mental and behavioral health

027thank you next will be jennifer lang followed by carol ann coleman good evening my name is jennifer lang and i'm a teacher at woodside high school tonight i come to this podium to stand in solidarity for two items that are close to my heart one the lack of progress made on negotiation negotiating a new contract for stta and for the people who are under attack after the presentation of the equity resolution adopted in october of 2021 by this school board first i stand in solidarity with the teachers union who is fighting hard to maintain stability with an educational world that has turned upside down since covet 19. being an educational professional during this time in the pandemic is extremely difficult because of the uncertainty that teachers face as a daily on the baby daily basis

028of battling invisible germs that could harm us or take our lives what makes this experience even more stressful is knowing that we are working without a contract please offer some stability to our lives and return to the bargaining table so that we can start to negotiate the contract and begin a new chapter in the life of sequoia union high school district second i wish to stand in solidarity and want to go on record that i fully support the district's pursuit of equity and justice and education which was demonstrated by the adoption the equity resolution during the june the october 21st actually excuse me october 20 2021 board meeting i want to show my support for the work that dr williams has done in this brief amount of time serving on as our superintendent and the

029heavy lifting that the equity task force has done to bring about change within this district i'm concerned about a small group a number of stakeholders who are personally attacking those who are doing the equity work in the district and i will not stand by and allow people that i deeply respect to be threatened or verbally abused the equity work is pivotal in ensuring that all students are treated equally and have every opportunity to become the best people possible it is also my hope that the staff members are allowed to continue this work without fear of retaliation the time is now for change to ensure staff and student success in the future for sequoia union high school district thank you and now we'll hear from carol ann coleman and um john de faris de gomez okay

030thank you okay can y'all hear me it is so nice to see everyone in person my name is carol ann coleman my intention is to give a letter of love um as an education specialist at sequoia high school also a parent a mom a wife an edc member a facilitator of the affinity fellowship and an ally co-conspirator committed to dismantling racism i completely support dr williams and her collaborative work fully supporting the vision and commitment to resolution 1699 committing to equity inclusion and diversity this needs to be ongoing in everything we do i'm proud to work for a school district that has earned a b plus so far on equity work but i think that the school district can do better i believe that the school district can potentially lead the bay area in diversity

031intersectionality and accountability committing to equitable opportunities is not a fad i would love to see more of our bipoc colleagues and staff members be encouraged to take more leadership jobs at every school site i have been under the leadership of morgan marchbanks bonnie hansen and sean priest and want to continue to do the equitable work so that all students have access and that we care for the whole person instead of rigor can i encourage respect and regard for the dependent learner instead of referring to students as at risk can we find a different word that honors the students that struggle instead of labeling them as dangerous or in danger of dropping out i agree that racism and discrimination have no place anywhere and especially in sequoia union high school district and the board of trustees

032expectations of the highest standards of equity opportunity and fair treatment fair treatment is upheld i personally care about this ongoing commitment because every child deserves to feel safe cared for and loved every child deserves to be heard to be seen and supported regardless of economic status ethnicity race sexual orientation and abilities i will continue to support all students so that everyone has access and is treated equitably in all systems and structures and i acknowledge that i can always do better every day always in all ways thank you again dr williams board of trustees cabinet members glenda ortiz galan tasha henderson pablo aguilara you pave a way for more to do better thank you final card uh is it jondor so thank you president harvard and members of the board um i really had no intentions

033of speaking publicly tonight i'm here to support the sdta but after hearing the comments of our student trustee i felt the need to step in um because it's a trend that i'm seeing at my school and i'm rather horrified to hear that it's happening at all of our school sites apparently the restriction of student restrooms has an impact far beyond just the convenience and i want to give you an idea of how it's affecting the students and how it's also affecting the classroom so i am primarily teaching newcomer els this year that's 80 of my my teaching load and um we have struggled all year but especially since the reduction of access to student bathrooms because my students as i hear on a daily basis with no exaggeration are having to choose at brunch time

034and at lunch time between eating or going to the restroom if they are in line for food they don't have time to go to the restroom and if they take time to go to the restroom they don't have time to make it through the food line that is unacceptable the other thing is also happening is that the impact on the classroom when children can't go to the restroom in passing periods and in breaks and lunches then that falls to the classroom time i have spent i've never had such an onslaught of petitions every single class period by so many students needing to go to the restroom and you know i know this is an unintended consequence i'm not certain what the the philosophy is behind the closure of the student bathrooms i'm aware of our

035tick tock impact recently and other things but there has to be another way because it is interrupting class i feel like sometimes i'm a kindergarten teacher not a high school teacher because of having to help my students manage their personal necessities during class time and like i said every day having comments from at least one or two students about not being able to go the restroom or they skipped brunch because they needed to go to the restroom so i ask you to please consider finding another way to deal with whatever issue it is that may have us closing all bathrooms but one because these are impacts beyond convenience these are impacts on learning and impacts on some of our most vulnerable student populations thank you yes okay we do have one hand up among our

036attendees is downing sorry i was on mute how do i make myself visible can someone like i'm sorry i'm off on medical leave so i have not been connected to the computer if someone can make it so that i'm visible you will only be on audio aren't there oh there's no visual okay there you are excuse me you have been added as a participant and you're visible okay you can see me okay i can't see you but hi um good evening board of trustees superintendent dr denise williams sequoia district teacher association president edith salvatore parents all the students in the sequoia union high school district and if any of my students are logged in i hope that you're doing well this semester i i miss you um name is charlette downing i'm 16th year school

037counselor at woodside high school i'm currently on a medical leave of absence due to the inability to manage the high level of stress caused by the demands placed on school counselors in the district before the pandemic and now counselor case low size has been an ongoing concern for many years i've advocated for school counselors to have equitable student to counselor caseloads across the district but during contract negotiations the district has always stood in the way of this request and claimed to not have funds to add school counselors to the budget unfortunately parents and individual school foundations at different sites realized the importance of additional school counselors and decided to privately fund the positions across the district parents in the sequoyah union high school district see the benefit of having an accessible counselor we are a

038public school district parents shouldn't have to privately fund district positions when the district has the revenue to cover the district should fund counselor positions so that students at each site can have an equitable experience with their school counselor based on same allocation of students per counselor across the district currently each school site has a different amount of students per counselor which directly affects each student's high school experience as previously stated i'm currently out on medical leave to manage my anxiety depression and adhd the pandemic took its toll on my mental health too i hope that this message will encourage you to consider taking care of the mental health of the professionals to take care of all the students in the sequoia union high school district it's time to negotiate although i may never be able

039to return to my position as a school counselor to experience the lower case low sciences creating equity for students and counselors across the district is the right thing to do thank you for your consideration okay those are all the cards and speakers that we had and we are ready now to move on to our information items and so we'll begin with 12.2 the sequoia adult school presentation so thank you everybody for inviting us and allowing us to present uh sequoia old school's information in preparation for the small school study session that's going to be happening on december 8th so i just wanted to present to the board a lot of information about a sequoia old school because i know that we have some new board members some new cabinet members as well too that might

040not have a lot of visibility but about what's happening at the sequoia adult school so i just wanted to go ahead and present some information regarding school so first i wanted to give an overview just to give some information about the school and then i wanted to get into a little bit about the milestones that we've had for the past couple years as well as talk about some program expansion intentions and some growth opportunities that we're looking forward to as well so uh i have some items here to sort of review in regards to the overview of our adult school including the mission some basic school information that i think would be extremely relevant to understand some school data including some demographics and enrollments uh some of our major programs and and some survey data

041that we've collected as well so uh one of the big things about sequoia old school which i i think it's really important to recognize the difference between a lot of perceptions of what adult education is you know a lot of a lot of the times i think people view adult ed as sort of like you know senior classes for community enrichment which it is oftentimes uh or mainly esl programs where you know people play sort of games and activities and things like that it very it really sort of is determined by the population of the students so in regards to quite old school our mission is to help students transition to careers community colleges post-secondary education as well as help students integrate within the community as well so so some really important things about quite

042old school that i think are things to take into into consideration would be first we are completely funded outside of the districts mainly through state and federal funding so we do have through the state of the california adult education program and through federal funding the workforce innovation and opportunity acts grant the primary source of funding comes through the san mateo county consortium of adult schools and community colleges within this organization we work to sort of sort of negotiate the allotment of the funds for the different adult schools and community colleges as well in addition to that our primary programs include the high school equivalency program the high school diploma program english as a second language and computer training programs our morning classes are from 9 to 12 and our evening classes are from 6 30

043to 9 15. a very important point that's also related to our federal funding that we receive is that our classes are all free and that is a requirement of the funding that we receive as well in addition our school has a little bit over 30 staff we have 10 classified staff and a little bit over 20 certificated staff another thing to note would be our certificate of staff are on the sequoia adult school federation of teachers union agreement uh it's different from sdta the implications of that would be all of our teachers are hourly employees non-benefited so even if you work 40 hours per week you also do not receive benefits through that some information about our demographics so looking at student age you can see that a large portion of our students are between

044the ages of 18 to 29. furthermore we can see students ranging from 30 to 49 uh represent a large portion of our students as well too if we're looking at the population of students that are 50 and up uh that represents about what is that like nine percent almost 10 of students in years of education we can see that we have a lot of students that have less than a high school degree a fair portion of students that have less than eight years of education as well furthermore uh we have a very large population of hispanic uh or latino students uh 85 percent of our students identify themselves as english language learners and on average our students earn a monthly income of about twenty two hundred dollars so for enrollments our school generally enrolls about

045twelve hundred students per year uh as you can see from the numbers here the pandemic had a pretty significant impact on our enrollment numbers so 2019-2020 in the last quarter of that school year that was the when the pandemic hit we were actually on a sort of trajectory trajectory to be able to have one of the highest enrollment numbers in recent history but because of the pandemic you know we didn't hit that mark and as you can see our esl program which we have a lot of students that have limited access to technology and other essential resources to access education were very severely impacted by the pandemic so just a little bit of information about some of our major programs as well too the high school equivalency program is one of our biggest programs or

046bigger programs this class prepares students to pass the high setter ged we are also an authorized test center for the hiset and ged so when students are ready to take the test they're able to take the test at our site all of these classes are with direct instruction with credentialed teachers and we use canvas in all our classes very much just like all the high school sites our high school diploma program is an independent study model where students are able to get their courses through edgenuity there is a teacher available to assist students with their with help on their assignments as well so another important thing to note is that 97 of our students in these programs are students that came from sequoia union high school district high school sites um the majority of students

047maybe within the past zero to five years of attending one of the high school sites but occasionally we might have a student that might have attended a high school site within the past 15 or 20 years in terms of graduates in both of these programs um this is actually a pretty interesting number over here so at our best we get close to 80 graduates per year during the pandemic graduation rates significantly decreased especially for high school equivalency graduates when the pandemic hit we had to close the test centers for high set in ged and that was pretty much across the whole state so we had a limited amount of graduates but in the middle of the pandemic we actually had a significant increase in high school diploma graduates and this really was because of the

048130 credit graduation requirement that actually really made a significant boost for our students and helped to get a lot of our students graduated and progressing in their careers and further training as well too so the biggest program at sequoia old school would be the english as a second language program we offer five levels of esl we also serve some district minors enrolled in our sites upon referral from the district we have had a long standing partnership with kenyatta college to help students transition to community colleges about every year we transition about 150 students to community colleges with the majority of the students going to kenyatta college students in higher levels are also co-enrolled in computer training courses which is a sort of new thing that we started recently just like all the high school equivalency

049programs we use canvas across all levels similar to all the high school sites as well so we don't necessarily have graduations within esl but we do have uh level gains and this is one of the requirements of the federal grant that helps keep our programs running with that we can look and see that annually we have on average slightly higher than sixty percent level gains which is my understanding slightly above state standards of level gains for the adult schools across california we can see that the level gains decrease slightly during the pandemic again we had to close the school we weren't able to test a lot of students and also they didn't actually decrease that much just because uh we were actually able to transition to online learning completely synchronous online learning through zoom and

050canvas within a couple weeks of our school closing so it didn't actually have too much of an impact on the learning game i did mention before that we have district referrals for minors that come into our school so from 2018 2019 we had around the mid-30s of uh district minors that were referred to our program the year after that we had 60. we potentially could have had more uh because uh because of the pandemic our school got shut down so there weren't any more minors that were being referred in the midst of the pandemic the numbers went down significantly so also with some of the feedback that we've given that we've received from the students we do it quarterly surveys with our students to get information on how to improve our programs looking for areas

051of growth for our school the first thing that we usually try to survey with our students is to make sure that our mission is in alignment with our student needs so as we can see from this data over here the majority of students are attending our classes because they feel that our classes will help them further [Music] their skills in gaining better employment and advancing in their careers as well too also a fair amount of students also see our school is helping them further at their education whether through community college or job training and then there's a significant amount of students that see our schools helping them assist their children in their school and also contribute to their communities as well so the bottom two responses over here i chose these because i thought these

052were significant uh changes in our school or significant uh barriers for our students so when i first came into sequoia old school in 2015 uh this is before i became an administrator and i was a teacher on special assignment uh there was very limited access to technology the wi-fi couldn't support more than like 10 devices being connected at the same time so i really helped to sort of push for a lot of educational technology to be implemented in a lot of the classrooms we were able to upgrade the infrastructure we integrated canvas into all the curriculum we have chromebook carts in all the rooms now we're using edtech in pretty much every class so there was a significant increase in uh engagement with computers and this sort of shows in the survey results from 2016

053to 2018. so one of the major issues for our students is parking and this is consistently the area that is rated the lowest by our students every single year this this survey is analyzed every year um so we do not have a dedicated parking lot for our students our students are required to park in the community the surrounding community um you know i've heard anecdotally from students that they circle around the community for 20 minutes can't find parking and then they go home they miss class because of that we also get other information about career interest for our students as well too this is a county-wide initiative by all the adult schools so the majority of our students have a high interest in health careers in addition to that computer certification and computer training programs

054as well small business ownership is also very important for our students as well as business finance and construction trades because of this feedback we have integrated computer training classes into our into our curriculum we just recently established a partnership with kenyatta college where students that complete computer training programs at our school are able to earn college credit for some pinata college computer classes as well so prior to the pandemic we had partnered with the renaissance and east palo alto offer free small business ownership classes at our site in both spanish and english as well so this is another separate survey that we also administer annually as well too and this was done in collaboration with the stanford policy immigrant lab as well too and so this was a survey to help identify different barriers that

055our students faced to their education as you can see here there's a lot of uh significant barriers that our students face we do this annually so i have a strong suspicion that maybe within a year this might look different because this was administered in the middle of the pandemic but we can see that housing assistance is something that's a significant need for our students if you look at the red the red is uh what students want to receive versus that sort of teal color which is what stu services the students actually received and there's a huge gap there food assistance is up there immigration assistance is up there legal assistance so to sort of help with these we've established partnerships to help students overcome these barriers we've had international institute of the bay area visit

056our site to help students with immigration and legal assistance since the pandemic started we've partnered with vegan outreach to provide monthly free food distributions to our students and for relationship assistance we've partnered with cora to be able to provide referrals for students that are experiencing issues such as domestic abuse so with that being said i think there's been some actually pretty significant milestones within the past couple years for our school in 2020 we had a wasp midterm which confirmed our original sixth year uh which didn't require a visit and i think partially just because it was in the middle of the pandemic but you know i think we were doing pretty well according to the feedback we made some pretty significant uh milestones with our support services uh one thing that i'm particularly proud of

057and with the support of our new administrator cindy dominguez and also one of our teachers judith jones we are now going to be a copa vaccination site on december 2nd and this will be our first time doing this we're doing a pretty good outreach for the community to be able to help with the we've expanded our support services network to be able to help students overcome educational barriers we set up an infrastructure for support services within our county's consortium as well so uh the majority of that team is members of our school within the county as well so we are in the process of creating a toilet toiletries and dry food pantry to be able to have toiletries and dry food for students that need it and since the pandemic we've had a teacher on

058special assignment that's been really really great about expanding our volunteer tutoring program to be able to provide additional tutoring assistance for high school equivalency and high school diploma students and also instructional support in the esl classrooms as well technology integration has been a pretty big point for us as well too i'm really proud to say that we were one of the first adult schools in the bay area to completely transition to fully asynchronous learning through zoom and canvas we use canvas in all of our programs it's especially important for us just because all of the california community colleges use canvas and this really helps with our transitions to college for our students in addition to that we've been back in person since september our terms are a little bit different from the high school sites

059but uh we are continuing to offer permanent esl distance learning classes on our site this is actually a state priority for the california adult education program we're offering three evening esl classes in the evenings and we're we see the need for that as well too our school is actually pretty well known for its esl program in the evenings we have like a 200 person waiting list this is really going to help us be able to serve more students you know i think a lot of people have been to sequoia old school before we're sort of a small building we don't really have any more space for more classrooms i mean we have this waiting list with already putting 40 to 50 students in a classroom in addition to that we're very proud of our partnerships

060which we've either continued or established with kenyatta college we've continued to transition students to their classes we've also started that articulation program where students earn college credit through computer training through san mateo county libraries so i had mentioned before that a significant barrier for our students was access to high-speed internet unfortunately as our students were not eligible to receive district hot spots we were able to partner with san mateo county libraries to be able to get library hot spots loaned to our students for free vegan outreach has been a completely invaluable partner for us uh they helped us distribute food in the midst of the pandemic and they are continuing to assist us with that to this day there's actually a food distribution that just happened like like an hour ago upward scholars is another

061major partner for us as well too this is an organization that actually started at our school that was started by a group of teachers and administrators it is one of the first non-profits if not the first non-profit to provide scholarships to adult school students transitioning to community college uh they assist with books textbooks transportation costs such as parking and plus bus passes as well so and also uh one of our other big milestones is we've celebrated our 100 year anniversary which uh it's our 100 year anniversary now so crystal thanks for inviting us to present to the board last school year as well so so before i get into into the sort of program areas for expansion and growth and we're going to talk about this more at the small school study session but you

062know we're just sort of front loading a lot of this information now so i don't have to be explaining so much at that small school study session um you know i again i recognize that the nature of our school is different from the high school side so i think there needs to be a little bit of information before we get into it as well so um so one of the big things was just the student data that that we got so the parking need as i had mentioned before students will circle on the night around the neighborhood for 20 minutes before they can find any parking of times that they don't find parking then they just go home that's obviously a very significant barrier to their education the other thing would be the california adult

063education program and this is what i had mentioned is our major funding source for our school this accounts for about like 75 percent of our school's revenue this is priorities for this program for us to include issues of equity learner transition program development and technology and distance learning also other things related to our growth opportunities there has been recent state legislation that has stated that adult education funding is only permitted for students over 18 with no exceptions uh in addition to that we do have our wasp full self study next year as well too and uh part of our action plan for our through our midterm report some items included recruiting and mentoring new teachers which you know that's that's everywhere these days and increasing support services in collaboration with regional consortium also a lot

064of our growth opportunities is through observance of other consortia through santa clara county and other counties in the area the santa clara county of the south bay county of adult schools implemented 150 credit graduation requirement for all of the adult schools in south santa clara county so that's sort of a model that we're looking at right now and 150. and this is something that we are planning to propose to the board at some point as well so so the program expansion intentions uh so we plan to discuss this in further detail at this uh the small school study session in december but uh we are looking to increasing our partnerships to offer more cte classes because of limited adult education funding we don't have the revenue to be able to offer free cte classes for

065us to be able to offer this at our site we would have to charge thousands of dollars to our students which through our surveys they had indicated that they're not able to pay for that a solution to that would be to have partnerships with other organizations that could offer free or low-priced cte classes such as kenyatta college or job training partnerships to offer esl classes to evening waitlisted students is important for us as well too as i mentioned we have a large waitlist of students in the evenings we'd like to be able to provide additional distance learning options as prioritized by the california adult education program possibly within the high school equivalency programs and we would also like to increase our support services network and as far as growth opportunities one of the things that

066i hear a lot from our teachers and our support staff would be more support for the newcomer miners as i mentioned before in 2019-2020 we had 60 miners that came into our school and that significantly impacted the the culture of our school um you know i think some consideration can be thought of how this affects especially for the minors the academic support that they've received the support services that they receive and also the effect that this has on the supervision of these miners as well so um just to sort of highlight this um when the miners come in they often come in at the lowest level of esl which is three days a week for three hours per class and that's the extent of the learning that they get so currently we have a part-time

067counselor that we share with redwood high school as i mentioned before we serve prior to the pandemic and it'll get back to this at some point uh 1200 students per year and we have a part-time counselor for that um so we predict that there's going to be a lot a lot of need for a counselor with a lot of what's been happening during the pandemic and students being transitioned to our school i had mentioned about a lot of support service networks and expanding that network so we will need assistance with that through a counselor and uh especially if we're having more minors come in as well too then having a full-time counselor would really be able to support these students uh professional development is another big growth opportunity obviously diversity equity and inclusion training is

068a huge focal point of our district social emotional learning as well too the pd that we've been doing has been coming out of our budget and if there is some way that we could leverage the district's training for our staff that would be incredible um the other thing to keep in mind as well too is because our teachers are not on sdta they are hourly teachers we also uh work with the additional hourly salary requirements of teachers attending these trainings as well so um so access to technology is now the growth area as i mentioned when i first came to the school there was very limited access to technology now it's completely different um so the technology systems that we get right now you know all the ittech that come to our school is great

069they're very cooperative they're very easy to work with they're responsive but we also get it support like once a week which it would be great to have a little bit more um with our facilities um i think some people are aware of this probably a lot of people are aware of this we had originally this is before my time before i started sequoia adult school then maybe like seven years ago or eight years ago there was a lot of planning for a new building there was a lot of staff that sort of uh had a lot of uh stakeholdership in the design of the offices the work spaces a lot of investment of our staff in in this new building but unfortunately a charter school came in and they were given that facility instead of

070our school so our school has been at our location on middle field road since 1989 and my understanding is prior to that our school was like a meatpacking building um so one of the implications of that is uh we don't have any windows in our classrooms we have like three windows in the building really which is like the front office so um if you can imagine that could have a impact on learning as well so um we don't have a parking lot either as well so i mean fortunately everest high school uh their principal has been gracious to allow our evening students to park in their parking lot in the evening so that has been helping with the with the parking and with the survey data that i believe that's what helps the parking situation

071a little bit in the survey data but still we're still encountering the issues of students just leaving and going home because they can't find parking um i'm sorry uh yes sometimes yeah um so also the high school diploma graduation requirements i had talked about how the south bay consortium of adult schools have adopted 150 credit requirement that's something that we're looking into i've been actually in discussions with other adult school county directors about having the same thing as well so i think san mateo adult schools had already actually lowered their credit requirement and might have been to 150 already also new teacher recruitment uh gonna be there's some good teachers in this room if there's any uh interested maybe uh doing some night classes for some extra hourly pay we would love to be able

072to promote that within the within the district as well so so that's my little pitch for that i know everybody's excited about doing more teaching when they when they finish their regular schedules right our students are great though let me tell you so uh that is my presentation you know i went on for a little bit but thank you so much for your time and i'm open to any questions but we'll also be here on december 8th to talk more um thank you for your presentation all the work you do um you know we consistently hear from the community about the great job you do with your students so thank you um my mind was really stuck on the um newcomer minors and i had heard before i know there's some concern about spending sending

073minors to the adult school and this is actually an example i think every once in a while like big decisions are made before your time dr williams the big decisions are made and the board's not really a part of it and to me that's a huge decision to send minors to adult school and i don't remember the board that sounds like a bad memory i don't remember any discussion from us and i don't remember i i don't even really remember an update i i remember hearing about it from people in the community and i would think you know in our quest to serve all kids all kids means newcomer minors that come to our community and i think they should be with students their age um and with the wrap around that we have at

074our schools so this is a great example where we say all kids i don't understand how that and maybe there's somebody that knows why we would make that decision i know it's challenging because often they come with very high educational needs sure but this is an example of all kids is there and unless you tell me that no no no they really should be going to the adult school is this something that we can talk about and reconsider so um i can't say though that the adult school gets something like a 20th of the allocation per student as one of our high school sites so the the services that are available to the students are quite different from what would be available to a student at a high school site so i know that when

075there were 60 students that were referred to us within a year you know we had classes where there would be 32 minors and four adults and we lost all those four adults because they don't want to be in a class full of minors either so i that's what i could say i want to also say that since then and thank you uh for our informative presentation and one thing that's important 100 years standing and you are critical part of our district and so this presentation has come about from a conversation that i actually had with you and your staff and one of the concerns raised centered around unaccompanied minors and the support services the adult school was able to provide now there was a season where you would get about 60 students since then it's

076changed because we have newcomer services that students are receiving through the high school also one of the reasons i thought it was important that we have this presentation is to find an opportunity for the adult school teachers to interact and interface with our high school teachers and a way of knowing exactly how instrumental the adult school program is in helping several of our students complete their diplomas and then also offering the cte pathways and so to your point uh trustee dubois we have started to address the numbers they have reduced tremendously due to newcomer services and we also understood that the existing staff have been requesting or currently is requesting for additional training and support should it become a need for students newcomers students to transition back to adult school and that is a commitment

077that i have made to them uh that we would have articulation with our wonderful high school student teachers as well and then also uh we would share best practices in an effort to provide greater support to our adult school teachers when serving high school students great i would also like to clarify that the age of the minors that are coming in are at least 17 years old they don't prefer 14 15 16 year olds just uh no they're they're miners technically 17 17. sorry about that my mask yeah yeah okay thank you so much for your presentation um i just want to call you out a little bit in a good way i not doing that um i remember when the superintendent first came on board she did her entry plan and talked about her

078vision and goals and you responded with this thorough email about how the sequoia adult school was in line line by line the vision and the goals of the district so i just want to call you out for that it takes a lot of i think courage as well as just quick thinking about um how your program aligns with the rest of the district it is easy to forget about sequoia adult school because it kind of is its own thing outside you know in conjunction with the district so just wanted to take that time to acknowledge you for that and and just i it really showed your professionalism so thank you so much the other thing i wanted to ask you about and this might be clarification i might ask you some questions between the small

079school presentation sure absolutely i'm trying to figure out the data piece of it i know that might tell me if i'm wrong i know that we count our high school graduation rate as part of the reporting back to the state how does sequoyah adult school fit into that does theirs get counted into that is that separate are these kids brought from our system how does that how does that work uh they're counted separately uh so our our we work with a completely different database and system so students that graduate through us we no longer do concurrent enrollment it's just if they're at our school they're there are students um and this is factored into uh information that's sent to the cde and we get more funding based on graduates that we have as well oh

080okay all right i have questions about that but i'll talk to you later happy to talk about it and then the other thing one of the in the powerpoint you talked about some of the social needs that families some of the students are dealing with that could be a barrier to their education a lot of those are really complicated i just want to put that out there sure it's not really easy to um to address without partnership and without like a kind of a community schools model um but there was one thing that was on there which is child care and this is prior well prior to me being here that um you used to work as far as child care um with family connections so if i look at um palo alto community schools

081they work with a child care center and parent can get co-op hours they can and it will count towards something like it would have one that would provide child care but also they could volunteer like a co-op one or two hours a week in order to pay for um that child care and they're included as part of the ratio number are you doing that anymore because i'm kind of lost about that now sure um you know this is way before our time but uh so in 2008 there was like a 60 budget cut to our school and they closed a lot of programs so there was child care at sequoia ultimate prior to that and all i do know that that was uh reduced or dissolved because of the budget cuts i would need to

082look into future collaborations for child but one of the challenges that we do have is just the capacity of our school especially the the the noise that would be generated for you know we are a testing center as well too so they do need to have a specific testing environment but i'm absolutely interested in exploring that option connections was at a different site yeah and it was part of it was separated out but it was a part of the adult school and there was some i would strongly suggest us to think about if that is one area that we can respond to is child care on a couple of ends meaning that um when you're thinking also about adults getting additional skills child care is one of them yeah for the adult who wants to

083care for kids and increasing the teacher rates that we need because just like adults working with teenagers it is also happening to our babies and people can't go back to work without that and so i would hope that we as we grow in their funding opportunities that we think of a co-op program that would help help the individuals to come back and finish up their ged and we know ged or high school diploma um and we know that that would impact how much they're making on the hour so that they don't have to deal with the social needs issues that are happening because it's basically about financial stability yeah okay um the other thing i have a question about um you talked about parking it is horrible i just want to put that out there

084and so um and thinking about that i know where you guys are located is there any way that you can partner with like the catholic church or red you know i think redwood city has a couple of schools that are around there is there any way that we can partner yeah i mean to lose people any any suggestions would be welcome like uh there was that new parking lot that's you know like eight blocks down that they they created with that mural i forgot which street it's on but um you know we were in discussions of having our students be able to park there but um for some reason they ended up having a two-hour parking limit even like in the evenings which you know usually parking limits don't go until the evenings that was

085a one possibility for us to extend our parking for our students well thank you so much i enjoyed visiting you guys earlier well at the beginning of the year i don't know when i'll be wet thank you so much and you're gonna drive me back to the district office um so appreciate your staff and all that you guys do so thank you for answering this question oh one more question go for it um one of the things i did not know i was trying to refer student to your um and for some reason they didn't know that we had an adult school around um geds and things of that sort but there's a i didn't know that there and maybe um you know edith can share this with me but there's a five schools charter

086program that does ged work yeah john you know about that it's a job train right huh job training yep yep okay so i just wonder if there are also some confusion between what sequoia does and what they do as well yeah that's that's the first time i've heard of that i can definitely look into that yeah they do thank you i i am smiling underneath my mask yeah because of a couple things trustee stevenson said and jonathan said when you talked about the old ages uh alan sarver and i i think remember any of those issues and we don't think of them as the old ages the the other thing that i responded to and i was thinking about when trustee stevenson spoke was it's in politic when somebody when somebody from the district staff

087presents a list sort of a wish list item to us it's kind of impolitic to tell for us to respond to that and say what's positive and what we're going to vote for but but in the case of parking we were there for the wask i think it was in the parking is atrocious and i don't think you need to say another word about that and we will understand what that's all about um i am grateful to you and to our superintendent for setting this up because i don't think we hear enough from the adult school um i always learn learned um in this case i think i learned one embarrassing thing which is to say you've done a partnership with an institute that i host at stanford the immigration policy lab and so i

088don't necessarily who see who they're doing studies with but they do very important work there are no common measures for understanding the integration of immigrants into into our country and other countries and and now i understand you helped out with that so that's that's great um the two points or questions i wanted to make one concerns concerns the esl program and the ell work we're doing as a district and wondering if there's synergy and collaboration going on there and just anecdotally i would think some of those esl folks that you're working with are parents of students in the district who also may be and and so are there conversations we're having are you part of the the tri-district collaboration with stanford on that issue or their conversations at the very least sure um yeah oh

089okay as far as the district collaboration not yet um as far as the work that stanford has done it's actually very related to our previous director lionel was actually part of this organization called allies that really advocated for immigrant integration metrics into adult learning as well so so my understanding is the policy lab had uh applied for a grant to be able to continue this work but that didn't necessarily work i guess i i hope we're able to leverage the work you're doing and the in the critical work that's happening in the district helping english language learners so it seems like a natural the other question an issue i wanted to bring up was about the budget and might turn to our cbo as well for that as i remember the budget we approved the

090adult school has run a deficit and the deficit is funded through fund 11 is that correct which in some ways is district money i i is that not correct right okay but i do is it correct to say it's a district contribution to the support of the adult school okay the other maybe bigger issue is that the adult school has run in deficit for a number of years as i recall you on the budget it's correct me if i'm wrong but um that there's a deficit this year there was a larger deficit last year that i think you had to cut your budget by four hundred thousand dollars or some substantial amount i the reason i raised raise the issues is questioning what the long-term hope and level of support for the school should be

091because one if it's drawing on funds a reserve fund fund 11 that will gradually disappear i think it's probably down to one 1.2 million or something like that but should the board be aware of those things going forward um so historically we've actually been uh in line with the budget we we've we had a significant carryover for a little bit um during the pandemic we started going through a little bit of our runway um just because of all the extra support that was needed training for teachers uh you know we help paying for people to do food distributions things like that um also the extra distance learning classes that we established that also runs into a bit of a deficit with that as well so one of the federal grants that we get it the

092amount that we get is determined by learning gains that our students make and so uh with having more students the idea would be able to generate more revenue through this grant unfortunately though because of the pandemic in the year before the amount that we get to that grant is the same because if we were just basing on the learning needs that we made it would actually be lower but what the federal government is saying is we're just going to give you the same amount before but what we're doing now is we're adding more classes so our costs go up in theory our revenue should go up but they're keeping the the contributions the same so that's another thing that's impacting our budget as well and please understand i raised the issue because one i think

093you do important work for our community i think the board will have an interest in making sure there's stable funding for the adult school going forward i'm confident that the board will all right we should [Laughter] uh i guess one question i had you you talked about and i also i want to thank you for the presentation this is extremely valuable uh and engaging in something that we haven't been engaged enough in for quite a while thank you uh you talked about uh pivoting quickly to um distance learning and that um you have been back in session since september uh but not quite all activities are now in person what what does the the balance feel like um are there um you know substantial student populations uh and classes that are continuing to take advantage

094of distance approach is being back in person really beneficial for a lot of what's going on and and how does that kind of reflect uh the intentional uh forward direction of really trying to build back better sure um so the majority of our classes are back in person um so when we opened uh registrations for esl programs again the majority of the students that came in came back because they wanted to have in-person classes so there was a pretty good increase in students when we reopened the classrooms on the other hand because of all the covet stuff that's happening any symptom they gotta call they can't come to class they gotta go to the nurse they gotta get the clearance and oftentimes like you know i got a headache i get migraines you know i

095still sorry you still gotta you know it's health and safety of the school so that has decreased a decent amount of the enrollment i mean this is this is not compulsory education everybody can come in it's i mean the idea of adult education community college you know you have the opportunity to take a break if something in your life comes up and come back we are a free institution as well too uh we don't just let anybody in at any time there is managed enrollment but that's another thing that's uh important to understand about how the adult school works compared to the other sites um our high school equivalency and high school diploma enrollments actually went higher during the pandemic and i think that's a trend that happens for a lot of adult schools and

096community colleges during periods of unemployment people look to sort of re-up their skills and go back to school since the job market has been reopening our numbers have sort of flipped for those programs so uh what we did find was a significant portion of those students in those programs uh wanted to have some sort of online option and so what we did as because we also surveyed those students as well too there was a overwhelming demand to have some sort of hybrid options so we have half in-person half online and enrollment for the online portion of that class is almost double for some of the sections so the thing that's a little bit concerning for me is are they actually learning because a lot of times i'll see the teachers engaging with students if there's

097no response or that they might just be having the phone on in their work while they're doing their jobs or something like that so there has to be a little bit more of an analysis of the learning gains that's being made in in those formats um so esl is generally down because of the things that i had mentioned before distance learning is actually doing okay but in person is down because of maybe the symptom tracking and all those other therapies as well um i think this was just tremendously valuable and a lot of really good data and i'm looking forward to the small schools study session absolutely so thank you all for your time and i really appreciate the opportunity thank you dr elias thank you like we should give a round of applause [Applause]

098okay let's move on to item 12.3 our covet 19 update hello good evening again we wanted to give some information and some updates on data with covid19 and to do that we have our director of student services jarrett dooley as well as our health and wellness coordinator javier gutierrez who are here to present that for you this evening is the presentation gonna get put up okay thank you josoy you could go to the next slide oh i got it up here thank you okay so this presentation will focus uh mostly on our testing program our partnership with worksite labs and some requirements that we have this shows you that we have had a significant number of covet 19 tests this school year with our partnership with worksite labs you'll notice that our large sites have

099the most tests at those sites it makes sense if we keep in mind that those are our company for large sites have a higher frequency of testing with two days a week available to test there they also have athletics which brings sometimes more needs to test our students there for athletics also they have a higher student population and as john mentioned with the symptom tracking we may require a cover 19 test to return to school and so with the higher student population it's more likely that they'll get tested there and then also a reminder that anyone can test at any site so even the number of tests completed at a specific site aren't necessarily all just for students or staff for that school that specific school community as our testing is available at open to

100anyone at any of our school sites that's also a little plug there you'll notice that the weekly tests do fluctuate and that again could be due to the different needs that come up if there's a different athletic need or a case that requires exposure or testing after exposure or a student absence i will figure out how to skip to the next slide here all right i i am pressing it there we go so this has resulted in as of november 8th 2492 tests this provides more information to ensure that our schools are safe this helps us ensure that symptomatic people can return once they aren't symptomatic and also just to make sure that our schools are kept safe if we need to respond to any positive results i'm pushing down there we go so we

101uh we have identified 13 uh positive cases through our district testing program uh this either identifies them or it may confirm a positive case that we already suspected due to the protocols that we have in place to ensure our school safety again this helps us respond when we confirm the positive case and enter the protocol if we need to keeping our schools safe and additionally this is not representative of all of our positive cases just the ones that are identified through our district district testing program in collaboration with worksite labs just a plug for all total positive cases there is a dashboard on the district website which includes all totals of positive cases across this school district and sites so as you see on this slide just a little additional information as to timing of

102tests popularity we see a quick surge in the morning hour just before school a large surge in the early afternoon which is likely due to with athletics coming back around in full swing especially as we have currently in the winter season some required testing for activities such as wrestling we see a positive blip there in the one to two o'clock hour especially as they test within their site likely right before activities for the day you can see our age group data here we will be modifying this moving forward so it is much more specific that we can separate from students and adults here we have an age of all of our students below 18. obviously we do have some 18 year olds within our district attending uh schools as students and so some of those

10318 year old students are included in the 18 euro 18 and above data however it does give a picture that we are hitting uh a good blend of adults and students testing on a weekly basis across the entire district as you can see those seven day average number of tests are pretty close to each other moving on to uh some information around vaccination rates as well as required testing this is a data table and i want to briefly uh provide a little more background prior to just looking at percentages this table is titled the verified vaccinated workers across the district there was a state health order that was signed and implemented earlier this school year with the requirement for all school district workers across the state to be um vaccinated by october 15th and if

104not vaccinated fully vaccinated that they would be required to test weekly so in preparation uh for implementation of that uh state order by october 15th the school district uh our staff did a lot of work to communicate with staff all of our workers which is not just certificated and classified this is also substitute teachers contractors and partners short-term staff members coaches etc this is a large number of workers across our school district and so as you can see right after the order went into effect we have a first column there october 19 21 you can see our percentages across the number of the school sites as well as a district-wide percentage this is not inclusive of all of our sites there are some kind of outliers like an example of maintenance and operations however this

105is a good good percent of all of the workers at our sites but we did wanted i did want to put in a data representation for the district office subs contractors etc that is our largest group and as you can see that's the the the data across both dates that are listed in the table that is significantly lower than the rest now because that is the largest group what that does is unfortunately brings down the district-wide percentage just overall trying to kind of explain the overall data table just looking at why our overall district-wide at 85 percent may be significantly lower than seeing that percentage at the sites okay good thing percentages all are going up which is fantastic and phenomenal and this data again is also listed in the dashboard this is these are

106percentages again that are verified to be fully vaccinated across the sites we still though can end up with staff members that are vaccinated that still have yet to submit their verification documents those numbers are very few as we've been working diligently and communicating with all of the staff members as we'll see on the on the next slide as well that's fine for the people that aren't vaccinated do you have any data anecdotal or otherwise about you expect the numbers to keep getting better just people haven't had a chance yet i mean it's been almost a year or is it people are reticent or i would say yes that since we've started tracking data more individuals more staff have uh become fully vaccinated but also more staff have uh submitted their verification documents as well so

107it's kind of a blend of both you think if we see another report in a month or two it'll be better again i certainly would hope so yes we have we have one uh full-time staff member in our department that is by literally looking at line by line data almost all day so yes i think that uh certainly that staff member in question is really the driving force behind seeing those percentages climb additionally they could so the staff that are not fully verified in addition to maybe not having submitted it can also decline to state and they would even if they are fully vaccinated by choosing to decline to state you enter into the category of requiring to test because we have not verified they're fully vaccinated so they are also included in that in

108that in these numbers here of staff that are required to test again either because they have not submitted their fully ver they have not submitted and verified their fully vaccinated status they have not responded or sorry that's the same one they have not been vaccinated or they declined to state so all those three categories are included in these number here in these numbers here of our staff that are required to test you could see our classified numbers both both categories of employees classified and certificated as you see over the weeks we have decreased the number that are required to test and so that kind of answers your question uh trustee again where uh on the week of october 22nd we had 152 classified members classified staff members that were required to test and most recently

109that was down to 92. so over these four weeks we have had significant number of more employees at least submit or confirm they are fully vaccinated and so again this is a state order state health order that jarrett referred to earlier and as you can see we don't have everyone meeting that requirement to test and to address that i also want to point out that management isn't included in this we have an extremely low number of management there and and did not want to make that an identifiable number there so to address this we have communicated the process and provided the information to managers so that they can follow up with staff that need to meet this requirement we update that weekly again in collaboration with our testing partner worksite labs staff are required that

110are required to test need to do so through worksite labs to facilitate data management and have that information quickly and efficiently to managers to follow up with staff so again we update that weekly and our health staff is a big part of that as well in managing that data as jared stated earlier we've collaborated with county council for a legal and appropriate response to staff members that are not meeting the requirement i also want to appreciate the collaboration with sdta to encourage these staff members to meet the requirement i appreciate that and finally we have finalized a policy bulletin that will be sent tomorrow i believe to all managers outlining this requirement and uh what we received from county council in terms of the response to that one more and i think that's it thank

111you all right before we go to the board comments i do have one public comment card for this from abby corman i'm gonna face you since i'm speaking to you um i appreciate this uh presentation and the easy access to covet testing for staff students in the community now with worksite labs i am surprised that i'm still receiving emails from site leadership about my exposure to covid my understanding was that this contract was meant to support our staff whose already full jobs had sort of been overtaken by covid expectations and legal requirements so i'm wondering if we can have an update on the hopefully reduced strain and load covid testing tracing and communication has on site and district staff now that we have this partnership the vaccination rates and our numbers are important but i

112i'm also interested in like i said hopefully this reduced strain on our staff members so they can focus on their already full job descriptions thank you if i could just kind of talk to that a little bit i believe that uh what we were looking at in establishing the partnership with worksite labs was that the tremendous added burden of uh coveted testing tracking was something that the district recognized was completely inappropriate and impossible for our our staff to be expected to achieve and that we needed this external partnership to be able to effectively do it so what we're really looking at here is is a mitigation of the impact of all of this additional work going on not not that we had illusions that somehow that was going to make life easier than if if

113the requirement wasn't there at all um you know as you've said there are there's at least one dedicated staff member pouring over the numbers continuously to to be working on implementing the policy um impacts that come out of of what the numbers are actually saying to me at least this is a level of tracking and management that is part of of the additional burden we're all facing coming out of the pandemic into the new normal and the way we're all sitting here talking through masks tonight is a reminder that we are coming through the latter stages we are not out of it by any means and i think that's why we are continuing to have these updates and these concerns and the recognition that that the workload on all of us continues to be extraordinary

114um first i want to say you guys have worked so hard and i'm very grateful for all that you've done thank you um i saw somewhere the student vaccination rates at redwood are low right is there anything we can do about that and um [Music] we uh we did not share that data tonight but um you it may have been shared with you the student data or the data that we have regarding student vaccination rate uh was we got that from the california immunization registry uh for the those vaccinations that are verified through the state and i want to point out that if you look at the chart of testing sites our larger schools have it twice a week our smaller schools rotate once a week each month however east palo alto academy uh is

115weekly so they are uh the small school that does have it every week kind of in response to what you're saying so if you look at the smaller schools there you'll notice that they have the higher highest number of tests at their site and i hope that is to support that to support them because of what you said that they have a lower vaccination rate uh you addressed a little bit that we are working to put a little bit more teeth into the meaning of requirement for testing and clearly the you know the the state directive of proof of vaccination or regular testing is intended as a requirement as not only [Music] a safeguard for the entire community but an ongoing incentive to help convince the reluctant um to become vaccinated um and and clearly

116we need to be effective at um at enforcing the requirement in the sense that it it truly is a requirement and not just [Music] a positive gentle encouragement so you know that that's one of the places where as an agency our district gets put in a hard place of yes we have a partner in worksite labs but we are still saddled with the burden of being vaccination police and so i i appreciate that we are trying to to do that in as positive um yet clear-cut a manner as possible and moving forward um certainly to me the the kinds of percentages were we've been looking at there um shows that that it needs to be a little firmer as we go okay um okay and and you know we've kind of touched a little a

117little gently on you know the fact that there is uh another whole side of this to tracking um and doing anything about student vaccination and testing rates and we know that there was we have received general guidelines from the state that quite likely by the start of next school year um it will be a standard requirement um for registration like um many other vaccinations to to give that proof um is there anything that you are sensing um of of a movement and a need for a district like ours to be actively considering trying to put in place student vaccination mandates at a sooner date are we are we trending strongly enough along the path we wish to go with vaccination um of students that you know that that we feel that the environment is is

118continuing to become safer i think with anything on this we're definitely following the guidance of cdph and our county health and so we'll continue to do that and look to them for the guidance around this you know and as that transition is happening what we can do and what supports and resources we can offer to make a smooth transition as the state and county change their guidelines certainly you know as as we know [Music] our superintendent was for the board put together a letter to the governor's office asking for the statewide action and guidance and trying to take individual school districts out of the leading edge of trying to be the health officials but to be agencies that were capable of following the the state delivered guidelines um but part of what we need to

119be doing clearly is keeping our eye on the data seeing what's going on and and remaining aware of whether um anything more aggressive uh needs to be considered down the road appreciate that feedback i'll just comment on that i support your statement that we should follow what the state says and i'm uncomfortable saying we want to do something different just to just let's not be confusion but it's your opinion i would want to follow the state's guideline and i just ask that the board receive a copy of the um the um bulletin you mentioned the bulletin when it's available i'd be interested to see it yes we plan to push that out tomorrow so we'll share it with you as well other board comments or questions thank you very much okay i think it might

120be um a pretty good time for us to consider a quick break before we turn the corner to our our set of uh bargaining proposals and the other discussion items um so if the board is in accordance okay let it is uh 804 according to our clock which is now running on standard time uh with us uh very nice change uh let's let's aim for uh uh reconvening at 8 15. okay it looks like we are back and the clock on the wall says 8 15. so we're doing doing good here all right so let's move to our cavalcade of uh bargaining proposals we'll begin with uh 12.1 the presentation of the ask me initial bargaining proposal to sequoia school district good evening i'm wearing a couple different hats tonight i don't think any of

121them are the business one but we'll see i'm sure there'll be dollar signs somewhere for us to talk about okay so 12.1 which became 12.3 is the presentation of the american federation of state county and municipal employees also known as askme here their local 829 office and it is their presentation of their initial bargaining proposal to our district the public has provided the opportunity to comment to the board of trustees about initial proposal presented within the board docs tonight and i do have that open there are several articles that are open um for the record article 1 10 11 not 12. that's why that's why i'm reading them um 13 14 15 and 19. so it also says that afscme will propose other specific contract language regarding wages hours and other terms and conditions of

122employment persistent to this notice and the negotiations process so i ask that the board acknowledge on this information item of sun shining from ask me to the district okay i do not have any public comment cards and i don't see any hands going up among our attendees does any member of the board have any questions or comments at this time we will acknowledge having that been presented to us thank you all right with that let's swing around and i bit you get put on a different hat i do same same hat different side okay so this next um presentation is actually a public hearing um it needs to be operated as a public hearing president server and it's the presentation from sequoia union high school district's initial bargaining proposal to the american federation of state

123county and municipal employees again also known as afscme the district is um proposing negotiations around article 6 which is health and welfare article 8 evaluation article 11 discipline procedures article 8 wages [Music] and classified re-classification processes the district has an interest in modifying and updating contract language to be consistent with the new and current law for example in the discipline section and the term of the agreement the district has an interest in a three-year agreement term with re-openers two re-openers by each party each year okay i'm impressed with the facility with roman numerals so with that um we will open the public hearing take comments from members of the public in attendance and uh attendees online and i do not see any cards coming in i do not see any hands going up and with

124that we will close the hearing thank you so now we will move to our action item 15.1 to complete our trifecta here which is the action to approve the sequoia union high school district's initial bargaining proposal to ask me and at that this point i'll ask let's see dr williams you're in charge of that we have we have been presented the proposal let's make a motion that we approve and do approve the initial bargaining proposal all those in favor aye okay when we take action we take action that has been approved okay so we will now move on to our discussion items um item 14.1 oh look who's wearing a new hat that's a story that i've worn before representing miss hansen so um please offer some grace here um this is a discussion item

125um so any questions or comments i will make sure to um pass along back to um miss hanson this item will come back to you as an actionable item on december 15th so the educator effectiveness grant that is not a new grant for our district or for across districts throughout california the form the funding formula which i can't speak to is based off of a percentage of employees both classified and certificated the use of these funds are highly regulated they can be used for coaching and mentoring staff serving in instructional setting such as beginning teachers or administrator induction so this money can actually be spent on administrators a lot of funding that we get from the state does have a restriction to not be spent that way it can be spent on programs that lead

126to effective standards aligned with instruction or to improve instruction in literacy uh practice and strategies that re-engage pupils that lead to accelerated learning strategies to implement social emotional learning trauma-informed practice practices and practices to create a positive school climate uh strategies to improve inclusive practices including but not limited to universal design for learning and best practices for early identification and development of individualized education programs instruction and education to support implementing effective language acquisition so our el learners and any new professional learning networks for educators not already engaged in an education related professional learning network to more instruction education and strategies to incorporate ethnic studies and instruction education and strategies for certificated and classified educators in early childhood education and child development so as you can see it is it stands by what its name is

127which is educator effectiveness so the template currently has a proposal of two areas one is under the classification of coaching and mentoring staff by the district offering um or expanding our develop our own currently our develop our own is for classified employees who wish to become teachers this expansion would target our teachers to become administrators come to the dark side no no no i know i know i'm sorry okay and then um come to the light okay another area will be practices and strategies that re-engage pupils um so all certificated and classified staff will have training on trauma-informed practices and restorative practices and then lastly what's noted here are strategies to implement social emotional learning trauma-informed practices again and the district is proposing that we do this through wellness advisors to further support staff and

128students in the implementation of trauma-informed practices so that could look like certificate certificated and classified support staff that those would be new positions this is a four-year grant it's hard to say if this money is here to stay since the second i believe the second or the third cycle that the state has issued this type of funding so again uh this item is for discussion with an adoption um coming back to you in december thank you uh before the board begins discussing we do have one speaker card so far from the salvatore um i looked over the district's plan and sdta is very pleased with the addition of the new um developing our own administrative um effort we see this as a crucial way to help us install and follow those plans for equity and

129diversity in supporting that in our administrative ranks the same way that we see the developing our own teacher program having those results bearing that fruit among our teaching ranks we also would love similar programs to interest our classified staff or certificated staff in becoming psychologists counselors adding other types of credentials in very hard to staff areas roughly 80 to 85 of the funding is set aside for this new position of wellness advisors and i am intrigued by that because it's not a position that i'm familiar with and i know we don't have a current job description for it so i look forward to working with whoever is going to be in charge of developing that so that we can have some sdta input on what the role and description of that job will entail thank

130you um chris i saw your eyebrows raised [Laughter] i'll go back up uh first i'd like to say i think every item on here seems like it deserves support that they're all going to help move the supportive of all of them they'll move the district forward that sort of two questions which maybe this super i ask of the superintendent there's a longer list of needs that might qualify for this grant could you say a word about how you how these items were prioritized yes thank you um trustee thompson what uh the staff we came together and we looked at our goals and then our data we also looked at the allocation to uh other funds like our sr1 funds where we have provided additional support for our el learners and for training for our teachers

131around um strategies to teach our el learners and so for this we wanted to make sure that we hone in especially on uh providing opportunities for our students to receive enrichment rarely we get opportunities that we can actually allocate our resources towards enrichment and looking for innovative opportunities to support our students who are advancing above and beyond we also have the opportunity and we thought about our goals alignments is that we wanted to make sure that we have staff prepared but then also that we are providing some type of support in response to the need for emotional social emotional support not only for students but for staff and so if we can alleviate some of the pressure that we have on the campus as a result of the pandemic and we have some funds available

132to do that then we see that in the form of wellness advisors and we do look forward to collaborating with sdta uh in terms of what that might look like for resource and then the other piece the final piece in terms of the restorative practices we know with the wellness advisors we also want to make sure that we have a focus on alternative strategies where we can respond to the needs of all students that it doesn't seem punitive or feel punitive because we also realize that we are in a difficult uh season if you will difficult climate and sometimes uh behavior we see behavior first before we see the root cause and so we want to make sure that we have skilled professionals in addition to the ones who are providing services to our community

133already but additional support to continue to push that agenda and initiative in favor of supporting all students and so that's basically the conversation that we had we wanted to be able to be innovative and provide resources that we are not providing in other areas that's very helpful the only other question i have it concerns the developing our own administrator cohort which is a program that makes a lot of sense to me and i think it'll be important for the district it's the only item on here that's offered just in the first year so what are the assumptions about subsequent years and so we are looking at sustainability and so we are also funding grow your own we have alternative funding for that program as well and so we know that there's a big push to

134have folk join the workforce for educators and teaching because it's a wonderful profession and so we wanted to extend resources this year to see if we could encourage more folk to um to join the program that's a pilot pilot and then also we wanted to support uh some of our current staff members who are seeking a master's or administrative credential as well and so that will be embedded in your grow your own so not only are those paraprofessionals who are working towards becoming a teacher but also our existing staff members who are seeking administrative credentials as well primarily and specifically with the san mateo county office of education presumably the the results of that would come back to us and there might be an ongoing activity all right thank you very much okay i i

135did jump prematurely into uh engaging the board in the discussion because i received a second speaker card before miss salvatore was done speaking and i didn't act on it so abby corman put in a uh a card like here before we let all the other trustees take their next whack at them hi again uh i'd like to echo edith's comments um about supporting the grow your own growing the grow your own program i just have a couple of questions about this in regards to grow your own i'm wondering if there are efforts or preference to diversify our admin are we encouraging particularly our bipoc teachers we have an over representation of white women like myself teaching our students and that representation in teachers also currently plays out in our admin although we love them very

136much um it would be helpful i believe if we're doing this to also be encouraging purposefully and strategically our bipark staff to take advantage of this opportunity um and give preference to them when they're applying so i just want to first name that and ask around it um and then secondly um in regards to the wellness advisor position i'm thrilled about it as that speaks to my public comment from before i'd like to reiterate again my concern which is also susie cho's concern which is also trustee st nosuma's concern and many other concerns i'm hoping that this position is student facing that this person directly engages with students i'm wondering if this person will if it'll be this person at every site is this a rotating position someone who roams is there office at the

137district and again that question really is just to um make sure our funds are directly impacting our students urgently right now instead of just down the line in the next three or four years making plans so just want to reiterate that concern and kind of ask those two questions thank you would you like to respond to response and thank you um for the reminder and a gentle uh reminder and also uh support we do recognize um as your superintendent and also the cabinet and the um governance team we recognize that the sense of urgency around support needed at school sites in terms of the social emotional needs ideally when we thought about the wellness position or wellness advisors these are folks who would go to the school site and so as we are continuing to

138think through uh what it would look like i do want to just let you know these are positions or supports that will be given to the school sites and we will talk about the amount what the system of rotation may be but definitely the intention is to support provide direct support uh to students and to staff with a sense of urgency yeah um thank you so much um i'm actually very interested in this i wanna i'm i can't wait to hear more about the wellness advisors i actually have asked bonnie on the side so i'm trying to be mindful that still stepping in and so i know we're going to do a second reading but i do i'm um i just want to thank our stda person edith for bringing this up i don't know

139why i didn't think i'm of it worker um but i would love to see um somewhere in there grow your own around some of our mental health and um counseling staff i know teachers can also get um um persons uh pupil credential to do counseling and things that sort so there is ways to kind of move around um so i'm not sure if this is the moment or if this is the grant but i would like for us to think about that because i also heard there's not enough counselors at the schools um and i think really it's not just about bipartisan counsel we just can't find it anywhere um so love to see that and then i know that somehow tie this to the county office of ed because i know that they do

140the nmt training around trauma become informed schools um and things of that sort the other piece i don't see in here as far as training there's two pieces around training and i'm not sure if this is the right grant so i'm just putting it out there dr williams um is that um i actually am wondering around parenting i know we have a great parenting program but for families who are struggling with our restorative practice model i just linked back a community member to talk to a local school because they were like we don't understand that restorative practice stuff and so it i don't know if it translates culturally right so when i say that yeah i don't want my kid to be suspended or things like that but hey that might be exactly what they

141need that's kind of the approach that some families are coming from so i don't know how much of that is providing some education into our community about what is restorative practices or for the for the parent um to stay per se um so that was one piece um and then i was gonna say something convenient but i can't forget it now i'll come back later um oh training i know what i was going to say it came back um the parent liaisons at schools sometimes are called community liaisons sometimes they're called parent liaisons that is a very hard role um and i want to figure out how to get those individuals connected to some ongoing professional training or coaching it is kind of a mod pause role sometimes at sites and that's not because people

142don't you know like the role or anything like that i think schools just have a a lot of like gray areas and sometimes those individuals are there um and thinking of them this is my own term nobody has adopted it but me um but i think of like those front offices as well as welcome centers with kind of a team around them which is like the parent liaison i don't know what this wellness advisors are going to do but people who help families navigate sites um and so i'm just wondering what's the larger vision um you know because i know this is funding but like what's the larger what's the larger vision okay thank you other questions um i had i had a couple that actually um crystal might be a little bit closer to

143your wheelhouse i'm i i would echo what's already been said i'm very pleased at uh in general the way the uh uh this grant is being aimed and i think i think there's a lot of appropriate thoughtfulness in prioritization that's going on and it um just just the wording of what's on offer in the grant or what's appropriate to the grant is a delineation of what are the priorities of the district so it it's a matter of another opportunity to align some of the available funding with the intended um direction and i think that's great um so i first it looked to me like in a lot of the categories the amount of funding we were allocating on a yearly basis was was approximately one or two uh full-time equivalents and um so i i

144think that um you know as we've just touched on there's gonna be a lot of interest in in how that actually plays out and obviously that's details down the road uh from here whether whether we're talking about adding a full-time equivalent at a given site or if we're doing a district-wide role that moves around or if we're adding a 0.2 or a point four responsibility at each site or for for what it would be uh the other kind of observation and question i had is that this seems to be kind of a unique in-between sort of a funding structure this is not really one-time money nor is it really permanent funding it is a multi-year commitment and it seems that with it we are looking at adding full-time employee long-term head count knowing that we've

145got a five-year window of funding covered but we're still looking at a probable five-year-out sun setting and it seems like we are to a certain extent making a commitment to you know add ongoing um resource to the district and knowing that we're likely to have to readdress the funding at the end of the five years and i just i just wanted to kind of throw that out and and see your thoughts on that um we do track all this is considered restricted funding right so any positions that are attached to restricted funding are monitored and um will exist first and foremost as long as funding is available and then as we know that the funds are sun setting then we would have to look and see if other areas of the budget could absorb them

146educator effectiveness um kind of came in light as the governor was moving away towards one time funding right and so this was like the first of the rollout with these templates and how can we um provide districts with funding with some specific um identifiers right outside um this plan looks a little thin the regulatory items that can be spent on are the same regulatory items that we spend all the kova dollars we have right and so this is really duplicated um for districts right now which is definitely a cause of concern as a state level right is because we are adding these resources that that we believe are going to help they will become a part of us and then what do we do when the funding goes away um and so that's definitely something

147that we need to be mindful of um and make sure we address as we know that these funds are sunsetting yeah i think to me it's you know it's it's a great boost in the right direction but we recognize it's it's a longer than usual but still limited time with the sunset in there and we will need to be mindful of thinking about what we do next as the fifth year approaches any other comments otherwise you will be in this to have been discussed okay thank you very much and now we move on to item 14.2 the discussion of the east palo palo alto academy educator effectiveness grant and i understand that crystal leach has been designated to make the presentation and plays veronica had i known i would have been enjoying dinner with my

148family [Laughter] no no thank you crystal for setting the stage i really really appreciate it uh good evening board president sarver superintendent williams and our new cabinet very exciting i am here to bring forth the east paluto academy version of this two areas that we're trying to make better for lack of a better description one is something very specific we've noticed in our mtmdss work is under number three re-engage pupils and lead to accelerated learning in our mtmdss work we're noticing that there is a need for the students who are still general ed students not qualified for special education through an sst a 504 or otherwise what i like to call on our radar and so what we're trying to figure out is can we puzzle together some funds for having an individual at a

149the rate of an ia are we actually um have some folks in mind who have special background but are not qualified to teach in uh california yet who are interested and could potentially apply for such a position and so what we're looking for there's three categories as i mentioned before the 504 the sst and as we're all noticing right now very dangerous are the students who've been absent for multiple days because of the covid rules we have an ada right now ordinarily our ada is 95 right now it is at 89 and thankfully the way the rules work i hope this is not a fake news is that the ada that we're working with for our budget is the better of the two for the last two years it's not this year's actual 88 because

150lord have mercy that would really kill us but what it's more important because someone asked me are you concerned about the budget i said i could care less about the budget where are those children and why are they not in school and what are they missing so our hope is that we can create a system where upon entry re-entry well first they can call them at home get them on the phone and help them figure out their canvas over the phone they can really engage them in the learning and when they come back a lot of them have been showing a lot of anxiousness and anxiety i'm sure as a classroom teacher you see this where they don't know how to re-engage because they've been gone for a week and so what can we do

151to help bridge that return so they feel confident okay i've been gone for a week but i'm gonna be okay so that's our hope with i mean it's really just 15 000 a year for our little school but something that we can put towards that and then second this one has been really difficult for section number four around expanding the mental health services we as you know are very blessed to have the partnerships we have but we still need more tier two intervention small group interventions i have called maybe six different mental health organizations which i don't maybe is not a lot if you know more let me know i can send you the list of who we've called we're trying to find someone qualified to run small groups because that's what we really need

152we don't have we know we can't do enough with one-on-one that's just not gonna happen but we could beef up our tier two unfortunately we're not getting what we need so we might have to be like tier two light and maybe we won't get a qualified therapist perhaps we'll just get a really good non-profit partner i can imagine when you were for example at boys and girls club you could totally do small groups so we have to be careful how we do that but the intention is to expand sel groups small groups tier two interventions that's what we are hoping to do for epa as you saw it represents about 130 k divided for the two years uh and it divided equally at this point is our hope i i think for me it's it's

153very illuminating to compare the the um the funding going through the whole district funding going through epa because really what it reminds us is is you know this talk at the district level about one fte or two fte for a district of 9 000 students yes um and you know that that numbers you know in excess of a couple million dollars look like there's some real change being laid on the table um but then when you look at you know the range of a hundred thousand dollars for one school you realize that it's really all proportional and what we're what we're talking about once again is it's not quite another underfunded mandate but it's kind of like the doors open a little bit for a look inside the candy shop and you can go in

154and you can you can grab a couple of things but it's it's it's small potatoes of of real meaningful change it is more an opportunity and a directive to us to to focus our attention on what are the priorities where places that we can make a specific kind of difference and then get the momentum going of really the school and the district taking on more long-term obligation of actually making it work and and the change we want to make really goes far beyond what this funding opportunity presents well we hope we won't need this many small groups once we get our students and everyone over this recovery from the pandemic that we hope and we pray that we can give everyone the tools and the energy post pandemic because that's the hope with these extra

155funds these are above and beyond so i i really hope because as it is as you know i think in the past 76 of our students access counseling and these days it feels like 99.9 need to access including staff right so it's just a hope that though these funds may seem minimal they'll get us over that hump uh hopefully and and i think that that also reflects well to the comment we've heard uh a few times tonight that this work that we're undertaking now needs to be overwhelmingly student-facing and immediately impactful [Music] any other board questions comments i i wanted to say i appreciate the tier two i know it's going to be hard because it's a small school so you know people are like you don't have the massive numbers that they need to

156feel like they're doing a lot of work but i'll send you two names of people please thank you um who have um private practices oh um that maybe that is the way to go sometimes the larger company yeah um they're still recruiting sometimes if we do smaller practices sometimes that one person will be like oh okay i'll come out for three or four kids yes yes um so i'll send you some names for that um i am interested in what you're saying around kids who are students excuse me who are um be missing school because of covet yes ma'am um i'm not for sure dr williams how we keep those numbers it may be a small number but it still may be very impactful to kind of think about not just for this grant but

157in general how do we serve those young people who are not school they are tracked by our wonderful nurses aides who are amazing jackie furious is my angel and so what happens anytime we know that of some sort of exposure we fill out this spreadsheet she goes into conversation so it is in one place where you could see how many students are effective and it and it shows their allowed return date so you can see very quickly uh from that document how many students have been affected and as i mentioned it's six percent more than usual for us but you feel in such a small school you feel it it's just having them back in your classroom after such a long time is you know when a kid is absent that you you have all

158the systems in the world you know what to do you've been absent take care of this but it's not enough when you add the layer of anxiety and feeling are they looking at me because i've been gone for a week do they know that i was sick you know it's just there's so many more layers these days all right thank you very much okay thank you i'll be back for the approval before the end of december okay well due to our agenda juggling that concludes all our agendaized items we can move on to 16 the board of trustees and superintendents comments committee reports and agenda settings um yeah a couple of things um i wanted to thank trustee stevenson who came out to the teddy bear tea that was organized by redwood city together it

159was a wonderful event uh we had families from north fair oaks and other neighborhoods in river city building teddy bears together for united against hate week it was really a sweet thing and something close to my heart because i really believe we need to build a community before kids get to high school i've been saying that for as long as i've been on this board that's just a small step but i really hope that at some point we can do a lot more with our rising eighth graders because i think in a way it's too late for some kids once they land on the campus and it has to be in a social emotional fun way and this little pilot really worked i mean it was just it was just magical so thank you um

160chinese for a tent for attending it meant a lot to have you there um [Music] allen and i both attended this stu student uh climate action committee it was really really good it was really eye-opening as i was thinking about you know the requests we have for funding i was wondering if we should agendize i mean i learned a lot about recycling i mean i think there's some small things we could do and we really need to model as a district so i would love to request a discussion um [Music] with miss leach about you know is there anything more we can do for recycling and that could be a budget item and then these are some teachers who are so knowledgeable in our district about the single-use plastic issue and one teacher thinks they're

161just some things that would not really cost that much that would make a huge a huge difference so i found it a fantastic meeting and of course it's organized by our students so completely amazing [Music] one other thing remember now um there are probably other movies i can't remember but that's it for now hi hello hello i just have a couple things so this is more of an update and then i have agenda items but i can wait if there's another time for your agenda item i'm going to the dream club dinner on friday um from sequoia um i wanted i read something i'm getting emails oh it's not on oh it's not you can't hear me okay now you oh okay can y'all hear me now okay um but carmine i my heart patterned

162because claremont is going to the deca conference um distributed education clubs of america i was a deca student so love to hear more about what they're doing there i thought that was pretty cool um i wanted to let you all know that the san mateo chamber of commerce is doing a leadership program and i'll be speaking on a panel calling calls called changing landscape in an education i'm sorry i'm getting tired y'all um and then also let you all know that i met with bonnie we had a quick 30-minute meeting around person-centered language and we thought about what trustee genn was like what are the terms that we already use now and how do we want to flip our language to be more strength-based human-centered non-stigmatizing those kinds of things so we came up with

163a few lists particularly around the mo how we talk about students and specifically around certain terms that the federal government uses for the grant purposes which we'll always use but how do we want to talk about it in our meetings and videos all these kinds of things and so bunny i i came up with some things that we talked about she's going to come back to you and we have to figure out how to go through the different levels of leadership like student advisory group or the parents advisory group the principals whatever because i do think people need to have input and i'm not talking about an exhaustive list only the stuff we talk about here because it can go on forever but how we talk about our students who need support in different ways

164students of color students with different abilities and so just kind of thinking about that so that's coming so just wanted to make sure you all knew that and i think that's all that i have right now but i do have um a couple of agenda items that i i want to talk about shawnee did you mention the drink club dinner oh okay that's the thing i forgot i'm so excited for the burritos and the students speeches so thank you for bringing that up yeah yeah yeah um so do i do the agenda items now okay um president sarver you had spoke and maybe i'm misinterpreting i know we're going to get the governance calendar soon um you had mentioned something that really perked my interest given kind of what we've been hearing from the community

165why i know as a parent as well as working at my own school is around how do we care for our schools how do we humanize our teachers our students and how do we support them and their wellness but also many people who are support staff in other ways whether administration can we have a real conversation around that i don't know if it will end up in a budget i don't you know because i know things are we didn't plan for this um but i thought that you wanted to talk about that and i was just wondering when that is going to be on the agenda so i wanted to put that back around and then the other one i think i read this or maybe it was in my dream y'all tell me which

166one it was um but i wanted to talk bring up again the board evaluation not superintendent evaluation but how can we do a board evaluation to kind of figure out um how we're functioning now and how can we be better for the sake of our superintendent our students and everyone everybody's getting an evaluation but us and so i i think it's time for us to think about a formal process and when love i don't know how it gets an agenda maybe we take a vote but i'd like those two things to be considered okay so so let's go through both the the first the uh the uh the staff staff and student wellness um i know dr williams you were planning on bringing uh some things to us the next meeting okay so that that's

167that's great i think that's already on the way and we we have touched on [Music] the importance of uh structured board self-evaluation i've um i would well i would like to check do we have a majority of the board at least that would like to have that be a discussion okay so that is unanimous interest in that let's try and add that to an upcoming uh agenda soon had a procedural question it's my understanding we were going to put together a governance calendar and i was hoping it would have the series of topics we're interested in my concern is that when any board member raises a possible topic here i assume it's going to be it'll have great merit the issue for us i think will be in prioritizing them yeah and so looking at

168the group of them i think is going to be important rather than taking serial votes on each that will tend to support talking about it and we run out of time i think or we don't devote enough time i hear some of my colleagues speak to that don't devote enough time to any particular subject i think i've been thinking a lot about this you know because we do there are things that come up during the year and i think if we're so rigid then we do miss things and it's this idea that there's the big things but sometimes there's a small tweaks and you can't respond to everything but i think there does need to be an opportunity you know like with these students working on this there needs to be an opportunity for some

169things sometimes and maybe that's more of a bored discussion because i do feel we miss a lot as a board so i think you said something i think you two were consistent with each other absolutely suggesting that there'd be a list and that we would look at it and prioritize and so the prioritization something might move up or down with time because of needs well i mean i don't think you were saying different things i agree i assume that it's there's going to be a rolling nature to that it won't be settling on at any one point on what that list is going to be so we we have intermittently had um a version of the governance calendar attached actually to this agenda item on the board but this week it says dvd uh dr

170williams i believe you're you're getting ready also to present that to the board as as an item okay so it will be um yes we're presenting uh the updated version along with the list of requested items and so we do track your request and we also uh track when we meet those requests as well and so it will be helpful uh for you all when we presented so then you have discussion about priority we track we we track everyone's yes requests i do have a question do we um because the issues that trustees did have brought up do those get agendas or are those just parent student comments or how does that work how do students get things on the agenda so we do track those topics as well and so they will be part

171of the governance calendar review and then you all will have those topics among others to prioritize vote on their topics that they want to get under attendance i guess i'm trying to fight for processing so vote on their it's the same process so it's yes it is okay where's your need for clarity because um so let me just give an example it might be easier trustees did talk about the bathrooms twice right and then she talked about the consent training so she just made a public comment as part of her reporting but i don't i haven't seen from last from the last trustee of the student trustee that they actually asked to put something on the agenda right it's just comments and so how do they get things on the agenda so they are part

172of the governance team and i don't know alan if you want to answer it but i can answer it as well i'm sorry i wasn't challenging i was just trying to figure out the process [Laughter] so you know what dr olympia's talking about is that that part of the governance calendar includes on a list of um suggested agenda items and that our review of it should include looking at that list of suggested items trying to prioritize them within the board and saying we need to get this one on here soon and then to be looking at the overall governance calendar and say oh this is already a killer meeting it's it's not a good candidate for shoving something in oh here's a snooze fest you know we're either going to go we're either going to

173go home at seven o'clock with with nothing to do or we're going to add some good meat to it although i haven't attended that meeting yet okay so let me clarify so is the consent you i love you um let me get my thoughts together johnny's i have a question that might help here thank you help me i understand our practice to be two board members to do something that doesn't require staff work and three to do something that does so if the student trustee raises something how do they get the second or third vote that they need and you're in what you were just saying i'm just trying alan i'm asking you this is a procedural question our practice is i'd understand it two if it doesn't require stuff work three if it does

174and we need like people to to say something yeah and i think that's maybe shawnee's question it's how does it work in this case like just so we we could certainly we could certainly right now look across the board and say you know do we want to make sure that those are not only included so maybe yes to addressing those specific things but broadly how is it supposed to work how do you view in your in your view is it that we should whenever a student trustee see if there's other votes for it is that should that be our practice in your opinion yes i think that makes sense i think you know having you know i i think at this moment we can take those two suggestions as basically having having been effectively made

175during agenda setting and we could we could deal with it now but what dr williams was just talking about is preparing the governance calendar for a review including the list of things that have been suggested um to to look at them again i think i think as things have been raised by um the elected board members we have been pretty consistently making sure that we had the two or three persons support and those things have been going on the list as already supported so the the ones that our student trustees have raised are kind of on on the list um but we haven't gone through that process yet i think we were just talking about going back through the entire list balancing it against the governance calendar and saying where and when do we think

176we can fit those in so may i um raise a question or make a suggestion and it's not to duck a vote on toilets but instead to observe that some of the some of the things we may hear including the student comments are policy and discussion related but there are other issues that i'd think of as being operational and particularly the the way i heard the issue about toilets being urgent but is kind of an operational thing where i would not expect us to agendize a discussion on that but instead i think my general observation is i wait for the friday newsletter from the superintendent and if it's not and expect it's probably going to be addressed there and if it's not addressed there then i as an individual board member will either bring it

177back to us if i'm concerned and i would be i'd bring it back to us raise it with you raise it with the superintendent something like that so that we focus on appropriate discussion questions that should come before the board and probably the the the language issue sounds like a discussion item to me i'm sorry consent education yeah yes i'll agree with chris i don't know that we need to have an agenda items about our facilities being inappropriate for our students because things are locked i mean i think that's made more a board update as opposed to doing it i don't think anyone's going to disagree that we want the kids to be able to eat and go to the bathroom so we don't need an agenda item on that necessarily but um training could

178that be and that one well i don't know if that's something that requires board action or doesn't i i don't know the reason why i'm asking because i'm actually very confused that that we haven't i'm learning more through dr williamson all you all that we need to vote on topic so i keep hearing um a couple of topics keep coming up and i'm just wondering instead of it being a public comment every meeting how do we get things on the gen or do we say oh thank you trust student trustees for taking care of it like this and we'll get back to you like this or can we get this on just say it will be on agenda we'll figure out how to get it agendized but at least vote on it i think our

179student trustee is a comment maybe do i have to like officially say i want to put this item on the agenda i i think we've indicated that we we've heard you and we're talking about how to how to make sure that that goes through the channel but i would think it'd be appropriate for student trustees at the future agenda items if there were items that you want to have on the agenda that you thought would be agenda items to bring them up at this section of the meeting which is for future agenda items and just so you know our some of our past student trustees they haven't asked for agenda items very often i can only think of maybe one their time so this is why we probably don't have a very good process so

180can we take a vote on that topic i just wanted to make sure it gets on the agenda i just want to support trust student trustees um instead to get in trustee of cinna to make sure that that particular item is on the agenda can we ask the superintendent first whether that's something you think happens administratively by the superintendent or is appropriate to board discussion i do think that it happens administratively i also see the value of having students come forth and presenting a presentation around their thinking and actually their desires um within consent language so i think it will be a an appropriate information item and listening to student voices and then having our response as a district from an administrative perspective and we're saying yes to the consent agenda just for the minutes

181well because the consent language right the consent language okay clarify are we are you requesting this for the next or for a topic to um be added to the list of topics i think added to the list of topics but i would say this is probably i mean at least for your female students one of the most pressing issues so i would kind of star it i can respect that and so uh we will work with uh dr chacon as we prepare our social emotional uh presentation for december i believe that we could align that presentation with your request if that is the desire of the board yeah i think we're looking to you for guidance on it okay uh all right and uh i have uh a couple of uh committees that i've been

182attending that i wanted to talk i was uh as kerry mentioned i was with her in the sustainability committee and uh so that has students the students who have presented to us um about things like um solar paneling and um and uh recycling and and those things and they're very eager to be actively supportive and encouraging greater action by the district in the breakout session i attended we identified at least a couple of ways that they can have a large impact you know one is around transportation to and from school and really being active ambassadors for riding samtrans and trying to reduce the number of low occupancy vehicles coming to and from the campuses more bike riding more walking more rolling to school and trying to really help build momentum for that on the campuses

183[Music] and the other is there was a lot of interest expressed in the sustainability of district facilities and we talked about the fact that we have a strong intention to be engaging student voice in our facilities planning cycle leading to the next bond and i uh crystalline i believe you've been in touch pretty actively with some of the the members of that sustainability committee already but i did remind them to please contact you both about being sure they they are able to participate in the facilities planning and also whether there is there's somebody in your department that would be appropriate to be attending uh ongoing sustainability meetings and i think you think is the the organizing leader of the group excellent thank you um and and the the other um committee i've been attending regularly

184is also actually uh in your real house as well which is the uh the redwood city together safe routes to school committee and they have been sean has been a very active participant in those uh and they've been very actively looking at the actual safety around this area in particular access to sequoia high school access to mckinley mit and access to the large private school around the corner both walking safety and also sam trans service to the area and so there's a lot of ongoing work to try and make sure that sam trans in their route reworking actually brings her out down james avenue and and really delivers a lot of students right to this area but an important breakthrough that was just announced is that sam trans has apparently committed to piloting sometime during

185second semester provision of some additional number of paid bus passes to students qualifying for free and reduced lunch what we don't know yet is the actual timing and the actual scope of what that is uh but it's going to be very important for the district to be as plugged in as possible and working strongly with sam trans on that and making sure that we're able to absolutely bring that to as many students as we possibly can and that's that's an area that will uh we'll also ask that sustainability group to lend their voices to so those are the the two activities we've had going on um if i may i just wanted to uh clarify i know that uh trustee dubois mentioned the recycling of the topic and i just want to make sure and

186clarify that there was board support around that topic you can clarify what it is that you want is it is it something in the update or is you looking for someone to present to us or i think i'd like to hear from crystal because i think she's talked to the centristies and you know how much are we recycling you know and what i've heard is that it it gets contaminated because of the single-use plastic so it's really hard um i know when i first came to this district at one school we weren't recycling at all i was kind of shocked and i think students started to drive this and there's also some new legislation that schools are required to do more composting um [Music] and i mean maybe we could even do like a board

187tagline my theme just try just with even our own work with our own meetings to try to do zero waste and better recycling just so we can model it so i think i would like to have a more discussion on what we can do in a small way uh model from the chocolate and then also hear from crystal you might have better ideas you're in the same way well let me make a suggestion it seems to me that as we get that facility's task force actively going i think one of the many things that it will be looking at in a very large scale is sustainability issues and sustainability efforts in the district and that's going to play in heavily to the prioritization of where we're looking to be spending large amounts of money and

188i think a sustainability audit might be a a relatively early outcome of that facilities task force that could be reported back to the board and you know crystal you can give me some feedback if that seems to be kind of way off on a tangent from what what you're envisioning as important steps i wonder if i could state a preference a little differently and certainly i believe in recycling and do it and i've already done it here tonight um but but for me the issue of recycling is something that i think you could get to us in information and may not deserve full discussion as opposed to the sustainability issue which i think alan was speaking to which which is a big important issue and will have multiple impacts it can affect the budget in

189major ways i think it tells a bigger picture to students and and can engage students in a bigger picture about the way we think about global climate change and so the board discussion that i would advocate for is one around sustainability do our policies at the district support sustainability should should the district as a government agency lead on the issues of sustainability or should we follow if we lead there's a probably a cost to that i think that's come up in the bushes buses so i see a whole series of things that would be important to discuss and so i'd rather see that agendized rather than just this solitary issue of recycling [Music] and one thing to my comment which is a reflection on the fact that my city my hometown menlo park for example

190is engaging in the conversation about whether we should move to all electric facilities right that's a much bigger thing in that's homes and businesses eliminating gas as an example which would have big impacts and it's something the district could do conceivably but you'd want to have a board conversation and probably a community conversation about that that's my one opinion and chris i believe your statement of that was in in line very much with with what i what what i want to do i think so we want to have that big conversation and we want to have it when when it's when it's the right time for staff traditions and if not um i will entertain a motion for a german i'll make a motion to adjourn i'll second that motion okay all in favor all

191right thank you good evening look at that we didn't even have to ask to extend the meeting