SUHSD Board Meeting Oct 13, 2021

001okay all right well we are still broadcasting so uh good evening to the public and welcome to this meeting of the sequoia union high school district board of trustees this is our first in-person meeting since the shelter in place orders went out early in the pandemic and we look forward to having the public join us more and more all the time in the future but we are continuing to broadcast now out to zoom and those members of the audience who wish to make comments can do so by raising their zoom hands we will be adjourning to close session until 6 pm when the open session will resume so if there are any members of the audience at this time who have comments they would like to make on items that are agendized for closed session

002can raise their zoom hands at this moment to make those comments and seeing none then we will adjourn to closed session and we will resume our open session here at six o'clock all right we welcome everybody to this meeting of the sequoia unit high school district board of trustees and let me say it is with great enthusiasm that we welcome some physical bodies into our board room for the first time in almost two years it is tremendous to have members of the public and our staff back and we are also taking our first experimental step with a new technological approach so we are back in person we do have members of the public here in person with us we are streaming out to an audience over zoom for the first time and we are accepting

003public comment in from not only the members here but from our remote audience also new technology that board members are using some of us do have our own laptops up um so that we can be kind of seeing what's going on on zoom although we are not um actively participating in in that um and we can manage our own copy of the agenda and scroll up and down and see what's going on as as people up here we want to be sure that we have our both our zoom input muted and our speaker muted on our laptop so that we're not contributing any feedback or echoes or things and we will probably have um some interesting times as we make mistakes and learn things we're also now for the first time using the microphones in

004front of us at the dios we have a little button that lights up red when an individual board member or other member of staff want um needs to speak the rest of us want to leave our microphones off except when it's our turn we will also become better at that skill over time as we begin practicing it now and we're also going to be going to things like raising our own hands and nodding and winking at each other and other kinds of ways of communicating and making sure everybody is included the right way so it's a very different experience from what we've done for the past year and a half plus but it is very similar to the way the world worked for many of us for many many years before that and we welcome

005this return to some bit of they have a normal there because the microphone is here but we'll see you succeeded in getting yourself off the window i will speak up then thank you okay uh so let me go through the protocol since it is new this time we are reconvening the public item number three and the protocol says that members of the public may submit comments for the board in advance of the meeting via email at boardseek.org all comments sent in advance of the meeting will be shared with the board prior to the meeting but will not be read during the board meeting um so this is a change to the way we have been doing correspondence um we're making sure that everybody gets it but we're not going to go through and kind of

006present it to the public one of the things that we heard back from some members of the public was that comments that that they had emailed to board members were not intended to be broadcast in public and they felt that that was a little bit inappropriate for what had been done so we will go ahead we will be making sure that the board sees it all members of the public who wish to remotely provide comment during the meeting will use the raise hand feature and that's why board members are monitoring the zoom session um to raise your hand on pc or mac desktop or laptop click the button labeled raise hand at the bottom of the window and you will lower your hand by clicking the same button which will then be renamed lower hand

007on a mobile device you tap raise hand at the bottom left corner of the screen the hand icon will turn to blue the text below will say lower hand when you use it again later when you're participating on a land line press star 9 to raise your hand speakers want to raise their hand during agenda item 11.1 the public comment portion of the meeting in order to comment on topics that are not included in the approved agenda to comment on specific agenda items speakers must use the raise hand feature immediately preceding that agenda item they wish to comment on once your hand is raised please wait to be acknowledged the board president with the assistance of uh the meeting facilitator will call on speakers uh when called upon speakers will be unmuted and uh the

008timer will be presented okay members of the public who wish to provide comment in person at the meeting must do the following and everybody who's in here has already done this any others who arrive later on will also be able to do this provide proof of vaccination or a negative result taken within the previous three days and we ask people please arrive early just in case it takes any time to to go through that as an alternative to make sure that we're not excluding anybody uh rapid antigen testings will be available for meeting attendees who do not provide either very verification and vaccination or documented test results but that will take 20 minutes or so to get your negative result and so please plan to be able to wait while that goes on and all

009of this is uh our very strong intention to be as inclusive as possible while being safe and be sure to wear a well-fitting mask that covers both nose and mouth without gaps while in the building maintain physical distancing from anybody not part of your household when you come in okay speaking to issues not on the agenda in person to speak to an item that is not on the agenda please fill out a speaker card which can be found i believe over on that table there and hand it to actually the superintendent's administration uh miss louise who will bring it around speakers addressing an item that is not on the agenda will be called during agenda item 11.1 public comment speaking to a specific agenda item same card please fill it in and specify which agenda

010item number it is for and hand that in as well and they will all come to the board president to call you up okay as a reminder the board does not act upon any matter that has not been agendized except under limited circumstances as permitted by law it is policy of the board to refer matters raised in this forum to staff for investigation and or action where appropriate please note that each speaker is limited to three minutes and any topic is customarily limited to 10 minutes board's executive assistant will keep the time and advise the speakers when there are 30 seconds left and again when it is when time is up um if there are a large number of speakers for any topic the board will consider whether to adjust the time in order to

011allow more people to speak okay so much for that bit of housekeeping and it won't be all brand new every time as we go forward and we won't be as long-winded about it but we do want to make sure everybody is comfortable or at least familiar with how we're doing it as we move into the new the new world of the old and familiar can we now have a roll call please student trustee step here trustee thompson trustee stevenson here justine vice president dubois here president sarver here the quorum is present okay we move on to approval of the agenda and there was uh one suggestion uh for a movement of um item 15.2 the approval of uh contracts uh with uh university of southern california race and equity center up um we do have

012uh guests from out of town who are uh here in support of that was that no excuse me okay 51 and 15 too one two and three okay superintendent has got it all figured out here all right um so we would like to move those ahead of our information items and um and do those immediately so 15 1 2 and 3 before 12.1 so if that is suitable i'll accept a motion for proving the agenda i'll move all those in favor aye okay the agenda as amended has been improved improved and approved all right that moves us to item six our repo poured out on closed session in closed session this evening no actions were taken and that moves us along to approval of the consent agenda and the board action is always to approve

013the items taken simultaneously with one motion which is not debatable and requires a unanimous roll call vote for passage the action indicated on each item is deemed to have been considered in full an action taken as worded therein only members of the board or 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 the motion would be to waive the reading of the consent agenda accept the reports adopt the resolutions and approve other items do we have any um actions from any board members the superintendent or any uh let me start are there any comments from the public wishing to remove items from the consent

014agenda for discussion i do not see any hands up on zoom we have not received any cards if no board members have any okay all right uh if no board members uh have any items that they wish to withdraw we'll accept um a motion for approval okay uh carrie got in the movement and uh shawnee snuck in with the second and this is done by a roll call please student trustee steve yes trustee thompson yes trustee stevenson yes trustee again vice president dubois yes president sarver yes motion carried 5-0 thank you all right this always brings us along to our favorite part of the evening the superintendence recognitions good evening everyone and so once again it is an honor to be able to acknowledge and to lift the wonderful work that goes on throughout our

015district we are especially excited because the work that you all have done and commitment to students it only makes us better and it only proves that while even in a pandemic that we are doing the best and we're giving our best every day and so it is always a pleasure to acknowledge the good deeds and work and actions of our staff community and our students for our first recognition i am going to yield to dr schimel our interim assistant superintendent of human resources and he will make that uh presentation for our first recognition so dr shimon as many of you know we had a retirement in the human resources department of assistant superintendent effective july 31st and i did not come on board till august 28th so we'd like to take recognition tonight and recognize

016all the people in human resources that kept the department running for almost a month it was a little more difficult this year because we had teachers returning and classified people returning and public law requires several things mandated trainings fingerprinting the whole employment process and that ran very very smoothly because with covid we had a few more people change jobs new jobs and to get everybody in place for an august 11th opening was quite a task and i will say i have never met a more competent group of six people the whole department is six people and they came together and they first met me in august and really helped me focus on what needed to be done so i was able to provide support to them to do their jobs and they did it really

017well and tony de chico which we affectionately referred to as our team mom kept all of us in line in communicating with each other so all of the things like vector training that was mandated and particularly with our frontline computer evaluation system we had several people and i'll point out just one but there were many katrina grant who does all of our substitute calling and hiring stepped up and with her computer skills helped us put forms and items on board so that our teachers and principals could use those forms and along with her own task based on covid as you'll see later on in some reports this has been a challenge for all school districts to hire substitutes and have them here part of it has to do with financials part of it has to

018do with they're just or not a girth a lot of baby boomers are retiring and yet more students are coming back to school so we'd like to thank all of the departments but in particular this human resources department of just six people that made school start kept things going and had to transition from one assistant superintendent to a new one and will soon be transitioning to another one but had your interest to your students and all the people interests that have to take place up front and foremost and we're very fortunate and thank them [Music] all right well we we thank you for for that and we do indeed very much appreciate the extraordinary work that has been done as as you uh indicate a very small staff has a very large responsibility in not

019only a time of greater challenge than ever before and this transition back to normal which has meant maintaining all of the extraordinary conditions that we have been under while reincorporating all of the experience we we have been used to and finding a way to move all of it forward safely with a whole new range of challenges but also that has been done in a period of leadership transition and for a good chunk of the time with a gap in the leadership we've been used to so it is uh it is a testament um to this to this extraordinary effort hard work that we have seen um the smooth operations of our district and and the quality benefits uh that we have been able to deliver to our students as this school year has started so

020my thanks to uh katarina and and the whole the whole team thank you and thank you and um my gratitude is extended to the human resources division and thank you for serving as our interim uh through this process as well uh dr chanel in addition we always like to recognize the great work that our school community is doing to connect our partners and to make sure that we have relationships with our community members and so tonight um we have a recognition of one of our schools redwood high school where students who attend redwood come from all over our district boundaries and redwood has been exemplary in establishing strong relationships with various organizations to support student success some of those partnerships include but are not limited to the boys and girls club of the peninsula live

021in peace san mateo county office of education whole foods san carlos community foundation acknowledge alliance each green corner vegan outreach stanford hidden villa jasper ridge sims medal and for the past year and a half redwood high school staff members have been working with numerous community organizations to support families through the pandemic this support included rent relief housing food and gift cards through redwoods community partnerships they were able to supply much needed food boxes to those facing a need during our pandemic on top of that redwood also focuses on supporting its community through the revitalization revitalization of their large garden area located in the back of their school through a variety of grants received they are establishing a food forest as well as an environmental center including outdoor teaching space and for that we are extremely

022proud i would like to recognize and present a certificate of recognition to redwood high school for your leadership and cultivating and expanding community partnership which is one of our goals as a governance team and as your superintendent as well in our entry plan the partnership to support student success and also at redwood high school principal ogden please come forward [Music] thank you for all thank you so very much thank you so much that there is a a consistent theme that we see of going above and beyond and doing more in these critical times and uh and redwood and the work that's been recognized is another tremendous example of that but i think beyond that what's what's really special here that we that we talked about is the kinds of community outreach both into generating new

023partnerships that are increasingly beneficial to our students and bringing in some of the tremendous community resources that are out there for whom we're so grateful and also in providing services and opportunity to the surrounding community all of which helps embed our students in a more authentic real world experience that does so much to strengthen their outcomes so this is uh excellent work that's being done and and couldn't be more appreciated thank you all right now we move on to our student trustee comments and i know that uh student trustee osunya is not here currently has i believe a conflicting rehearsal going on or a practice of some sort so we will turn to student trustee student thank you i am so happy that board meetings are back to being in person so that we can

024better communicate and share with our community the student advisory committee met yesterday to great success and we discussed what we want to focus on this year and what was going well within each site feedback we received from this meeting was that students really want to thank their teachers for working so hard and for caring so much about not only our education but also our well-being moreover students wanted to give a shout out to certain programs which do so much for our students such as sos at woodside and the entirety of the middle college program at kenyatta students are also very happy to be having more normal after-school activities this week the whole focus is on homecoming and finally however students do have many complaints about bathrooms being locked continuously around campuses it is understandable that

025this is being done to avoid kids skipping class and to fight vandalism but it really is harming students um especially when there are so few bathrooms at these schools to begin with uh someone did the math and apparently at woodside one day it was it was like 153 students per one stall of the open bathrooms and so this is obviously not great for our students thank you so much thank you okay we move on next to uh comments from the sequoia district teachers association and edith we welcome you to the podium very first person to speak at the podium i'm so excited um well very first person in a while um first i wanted to thank the board for their action on the consent agenda because it gives me the opportunity to say congratulations to

026the 49 members of the sdta bargaining unit who are now officially permanent employees under the california education code these are employees who many of them started in our district in the 1920 school year had to scramble in march to make that transition and then had to work through very trying circumstances last year all while knowing that their future with the district was being judged in that uncertain time so it is a big accomplishment for them and we are very pleased that that action was taken i also want to take this opportunity to congratulate renee alvarez and krisha poister who were recently elected as the new president and vice president of afscme in our district we're excited for them as well we're looking forward to bargaining tomorrow we've had one session a morning session a few

027weeks ago when we go into our first full day session tomorrow and then i have another two topics that some of our members asked me to share with you one has already been alluded to by our interim assistant superintendent and that is the impact of uh sub shortage it's being felt everywhere across the district we have many anecdotal stories of pleas for teachers to cover classes and others to cover classes mentioned at the last meeting that some of our administrators in special ed got themselves in the pool to help out and we had some shortages there you'll see them later and you can keep that imaging your mind but one of our one of our reps put together some sort of back of the envelope data from september in menlo atherton there were of the

028many many thousands of teaching periods that month there were 715 periods in which classes needed substitutes 149 of those were not covered now 159 of those were not covered by a substitute that's 22 percent of the need 139 of those were covered by our bargaining unit members 19 and a half percent and the other 2.8 percent 20 of those periods had to be covered by the site administrators that means those side administrators weren't available to do anything else during the periods that they were subbing we know that it is a dire situation when the administration has to step in and our members are asking when we're going to see the need for the district office administrators who also have credentials to step in and help we know there's no easy fix for this we know

029every district is going through it but as this is being broadcast and we have people at home i wanted to make sure people are hearing that because when we don't have a substitute when another teacher has to cover when classes are combined so that they can work with one substitute students often don't get the lesson that was planned we have a situation where the photography teacher had to be out due to illness she left a lesson that included work on the computers there was no substitute for the period the students were brought to the library to be supervised by the librarian media teacher and the software wasn't available on the computers in the library so the students had a study period rather than being able to complete the work their teacher had left for them

030it's important that we know the impact it's having and we know that teachers who for decades for centuries have come to school sick in order to prevent that impact don't have that love that i would say luxury don't have that ability this year because if you have any symptoms you have to stay home because you don't want to get anyone sick i'm sorry i didn't realize that this time was being timed um the other item that i was asked to share was about the situation we are facing at two of our sites with english language learner newcomers these data points come from sequoia high school where we've had 44 new students join our school since august 10 more are incoming at the moment 54 students is two full teachers worth of students but we haven't

031hired two new teachers for those students they are coming to us from more rural less formally educated areas with higher academic needs much more difficult to fulfill well we have wanted obviously to provide all of the social and emotional services that all of our students deserve just providing the academics for these students is incredibly challenging because of their varied levels they're varied languages and their comfort level in the classroom so we're hoping that the district can see their way to providing us with more teachers and more aids for those students at all of the sites that are impacted if and when we can find them thank you and i believe there are plans to talk to some of those points a little bit later on this evening so excellent excellent preparation lead in thank you

032um and do we have comments from the american federation of state county and municipal employees this evening is that someone present from the group i know we have uh new leadership that is coming in but okay hope hopefully in the next meeting all right then that brings us along to public comment and public comment is a period for speakers wishing to address the board on matter is not on the agenda um and we spoke about using the raise hand feature for those who are on zoom um to provide comments and also members of the public who are here and wish to provide comment can put in a card and we do have um one card that has come in from our present public and that is from david staller all right greetings to the board

033i've never been in a being like this so this is a new experience entirely so um it's basically uh something i wanted to ask a question so my child goes to sukhoi and i read um superintendent williams plan for the for the district and so i just had a a question really that just came up so um i did notice that the word equity appears quite frequently in in the plan and then i also noticed that one of the action items or the goals is to define the word equity so it seemed a little bit like essentially um you know and that that word equity can mean different things to so many different people so i first wanted to start with honestly just a question um what does equity mean at this point you know

034it's like it feels like it's such an important part of that plan and um i know that there's there's equity of outcome that's being discussed and there's also you know equality of opportunity and i and i honestly just um [Music] since it's sort of a new thing and everyone when you hear diversity equity and inclusion everyone just nods their head but for me i was like well actually i'm not quite sure i understand what that means so that is why i'm here to just simply ask that question if at the moment there's a way to define what you think equity means and and how you might go about achieving equity if i have that phrasing right so that's it thank you [Music] okay okay that um that question is well noted um and is part

035of the ongoing communication uh that the district is working on so we won't stop for a discussion of that right now but it will continue to be a topic of much discussion uh i want to look i believe we have two participant hands up work on for comment um the first is abby corman and the second is susie chill hi my name is abby corman i'm a teacher at menlo atherton my public comment today is again about public comment um i'm still lack some clarity around as our procedures change what our expectation and hope is around having our public comment at board meetings i am a little confused i'm i guess i could say happy that we're back in person but still have the zoom option for board meetings it was something i had asked

036about at our last board meeting and it seems like the decision was made during a study session when i thought no decisions could be made um i know we got an email which i very much appreciate um explaining this policy but i'm still unclear around um how to write board comments public comment to the board in advance if you're unable to be here um and i'm also wanting to just flag for the team moving forward i know this is our first time the only person i've been able to see through zoom speak besides board members has been edith i even missed principal ogden accepting um the award on behalf of redwood and so as a community member i'm a stakeholder a voter not just a teacher in this community i'm hoping more and we maintain

037and maybe even increase our public engagement at board meetings because they're so important and so i'm hoping to just highlight this for the board as we talk around engaging the community there's still a lack of clarity around how to give public comments if you send an email to the board will it automatically be shared out as it was in the past um how do i how can i participate from home and still see the people um so i'm just trying to flag these things in the hopes of having more voices speaking up at board meetings in the future which i know is the goal of the board i have heard you name that and i'm so appreciative that we still have zoom i'm glad that decision was included um during in that study session decision

038that was made and i'm just hoping to flag this again and hope that there's more clarity not just in emails also on our website thank you thank you um i would like to throw back a couple of comments one one of which is that apparently we were successful enough with the sharing out the information about public comment that we were able to receive that last public comment and we have been successful enough in sharing out information about how to attend the meeting in person or through zoom to have had both of the last two participants from each camp as i i did say earlier this is the first iteration of trying to go in the direction of bringing back the convenience and the immediacy of our pre-pandemic board meetings um as well as sharing the

039greater convenience and the greater engagement that we've seen through some of the things that worked during the pandemic period and we're going forward trying to bring out the best of both worlds so we do definitely anticipate that we will both through experience and feedback have opportunities to continue improving the experience we do appreciate every bit of feedback we can get toward doing that um so thank you for that our next comment uh is from susie chill good evening everyone um thank you for taking the time to hear my comment it's great to see you all back together in person even if i'm still staring at you from my computer screen my name is susie cho and i've been an english teacher at menlo atherton for 11 years and i learned last week that the position

040of assistant superintendent of hr was split into two positions one as the assistant superintendent of hr and one as the assistant superintendent of student services this is in addition to a number of other district positions that have been added in the past four to five years including director and coordinator positions in special education cte el and technology i appreciate that these other district positions were added as i have benefited from trainings pd sessions and program reviews that were made possible with these additional staff members however while the necessity for these district level positions is great we also have very pressing needs at our school sites that must be addressed in returning to in-person instruction addressing the needs of students at our sites has been more acute than in past years for example in august i

041requested a routine vision test for a student who said he could not read the screen of the chromebook on his desk in front of him in previous years this test was done within a week or two this year through absolutely no fault of her own the district nurse could not perform this test until last week six weeks after my initial request our nurse is currently supporting two sites with a caseload of more than four thousand students and this year she has the added responsibility of managing covert cases moreover with the lasting impact of covet and in light of the sub shortage that many people have already talked about today teachers are asked multiple times each day to cover additional classes rather than prepare lessons for their own classes and this does include site administrators who

042are subbing almost daily and all staff members are pulling extra duty as campus aides and support staff as we manage student behaviors and student mental health in returning from the pandemic as we are adding additional personnel to the suhst staff i'd just like to stress the necessity for more direct student-facing support at the site level such as additional mental health specialists additional campus aides or dedicated nurse for each site we must work to further support students where they are thank you very much thank you those are all of the hands we had up and the comment cards that we had okay i would um like to go back to uh and a second to an item that i [Music] gave a short shrift to earlier um because uh i my report out from closed session

043was incomplete and uh the point was just raised here um a moment ago so i do want to um complete what was done there there were actually uh two actions that i need to report out on in closed session the board of education took action to offer employment to dr dwayne davis as assistant superintendent of human resources effective october 28 2021 dr davis's management employment offer will be presented at our next board meeting as an action item in open session on october 27th also in closed session the board of education took action to offer employment to dr elizabeth chacon as assistant superintendent of student services effective october 28 2021. dr jacon's management employment offer will be presented at our next board meeting as an action item in open session on october 27 2021. all right

044let me return now to our regularly scheduled agenda and we have moved our first three action items up um ahead of the information items so our first one will be action item 15.1 adoption of resolution number 1699 commitment to equity inclusion and diversity at sequoia union high school district great opportunity to amplify greatly on some of our public comment and many other things good evening again it is again a privilege to stand before you and to co-sponsor this resolution for committing to equity inclusion and diversity at sequoia union high school district where excellence is our baseline through leadership service and equity i am proud to say that i am co-sponsoring this initiative and i would ask that ms henderson if you would come forward as well and miss ortiz as well and so we're going

045to present to you and i think it's going to address a question briefly that was posed earlier and we thank you for your question when we look at the notion of equity it could mean a lot of things but at its foundation what it means is providing everyone an opportunity to have access and also for them to be able to engage in opportunities that are specific to their needs so for example i know we're all familiar most likely with the image of a bike if i were to give each and every one of you the same bike at the same height then that may not necessarily meet your need however if i considered your height considered those things in terms of your experience consider also um just the length you know i think of my

046my feet and i may have a little extra after cobin and so i would consider that i want to customize a bike that will fit and suit your needs so that i would guarantee that you or give you the opportunity to reach success in your cycling as much as possible as opposed to giving you a standard bike where it may or may not suit your needs or also just fits the requirements and uniqueness and nuances of your physical makeup and so as we think about equity in sequoia union high school district it is our opportunity to have a collective definition as we advance this work it would not be of support for me to come in and say this is what equity is one in my entry plan the question was posed how are we

047ready or are we ready for equity and so in order to respect what has been done in the great work that has been done around equity what our intentions are is to define to define equity together and so that we all understand the pathway and we all understand how we are going to continue to advance equity in a way that is going to not only acknowledge but honor the multiple voices that we have through our families through our staff members and most importantly for our students and so discussing race equity and inclusion and injustice openly can lead to very tough questions one of which is what does that mean why is that important why are we focusing on equity and topics that may not so clearly be resolved in just one conversation yet we had

048educators last year during one of the most trying times when we were confronted with a twin dimming we had a racial reckoning also followed by a pandemic that many of us have never ever experienced in our existence but yet and still because of the leadership and the commitment and the courage of a group of folk members within our sequoia union high school district had come together with a vision and said we will not accept it anymore we want to feel not only included but we want to be heard we have a voice we have a perspective and we want to make sure that not only staff members but every student within our community has that same platform for voice perspective and also contributions and so i just want to say that i commend each and

049every one of those individuals our colleagues who serve on the equity and diversity committee because they have created this platform for staff to share their experiences and discuss these very difficult topics around what is the social construct around race how his culture and racial identity influenced us as educators and learners what is privilege and power through a historical and critical lens and then what are policy and practices that perpetuate an equity and beliefs and values that prevent some of our students some of our staff members from thriving and moving forward so i thank them again for having the courage and as a result we are no longer the same individuals who once walked these campuses back in march 2019 2020 rather while we may not all have a clear understanding right now around issues of

050race and equity within our district we are in a timely space that has allowed us to unravel the truth about racial justice and injustice so it becomes the very fabric of every policy and practice and point for our district so with that i want to bring the attention to if you can change the slide please our vision so our vision of the district is to lead sequoia union high school district and becoming a national and international beacon of equity and excellence and equity meaning that we make sure that we give and we provide spaces for all students and staff to be serviced to thrive to advance according to their needs in order to better support our students and that stands as the first choice for all families and communities within our school district boundaries in

051addition our district-wide equity goal statement from our governance team and i want to say that our governance team has really rolled up their sleeves and continued to engage in the conversations around equity and what does that mean from a leadership point and what does that mean as they continue to give direction to the district and so the district recognizes that equity requires strategic and sustainable action to meet the needs of every student and employee we commit to design and implement structures systems and policies that achieve equity making sure that we provide customized nuanced support to ensure the success of every staff member and student community member within our family to achieve equity in our instructional institutional and employment practices so the necessary conversation venita mayfield reminds us that conversation on race and racism are seldom

052easy but they are absolutely necessary to address the disparities in education and with that i am going to yield to miss henderson who will continue the conversation but before i do so i ask that we give her a big round of applause she and pablo aguilar who again in a very bold time took the steps to open this conversation and to hold us accountable as a governor's team and as a community to make sure that we know that everyone in our district has a presence and they also are valued and they also have a worthy contribution to the success of this district and so thank you um thank you dr williams and to continue with your analogy about using the bike um in terms of having these conversations about race and doing this equity work

053some of us still need training wheels some of us are still riding on sidewalks and others of us are ready to compete in the olympics um and so with that those of us ready to compete in the olympics in uh we as dr bettina love says we need to do more than just survive um and many bypass staff reached a point where we weren't surviving and we created a call to action to again push this district in the right direction to address some of the inequities that exist for not only students but also for staff um so with that um the design team and i'm gonna we are truly doing hybrid presentations so pablo as well is um he's on zoom um so we are going to like tag team a little bit and we've

054got members of the design team here so again i am tasha henderson um and glenda ortez gallon is here as well and pablo is in our zoom sphere somewhere um so to continue um the design team along with alison osidal and amy hansen we collectively represent sequoia high school minlo atherton east palo alto academy and woodside um so it wasn't just a few of us we made sure that we collectively brought in sites across the district um in order to work on setting some ideas and goals and questions around what policies and practices are continually holding back students and staff we focused on looking at curriculum and instruction we definitely focused on staffing because we have an under representation of bypass staff and administration at all levels if you just even look around this room

055it is evident while we are here at this board meeting of where the underrepresentation exists and we challenge the district to figure out some solutions to do some things differently and i believe even from hearing um those two hires for the assistant superintendents that we are starting to do things differently in this district um so we can take off those training wheels and start moving faster with this work um so i'm just going to share the vision for the edc and then i'm going to pass it along um so we again are centering equity and social justice in our work we wanted to look again at the policies and practices that reproduce inequities that happen for our students um all you have to do is look at the data and it's there and you can

056see how bypass students are underperforming basically at all levels across this district um so there definitely are some systems and practices that we need to challenge in question and with that i am going to pass it on hi pablo good to see you yes um pablo i believe you have the next piece yeah can you all hear me just fine hopefully everyone can hear me so um okay thank you so uh my name is pablo aguilera i'm also teacher at sequoia so thank you very much taja for introducing me i apologize for not being there in person i'm simultaneously taking care of a little baby infant um so uh some of the findings that we found in the past why we started this but also in the past year that we've been doing this um

057uh equity and diversity council is that we found out that we had capitalized on this critical moment to challenge policies and practices that reproduce academic disparities that exist within our district however we want to make sure that this work is ongoing it doesn't just end when we reach one goal it's ongoing so therefore we ask for the school board the district all school sites to make a commitment to continue the edc's vision of equity and diversity because we can't just stop and say good job pat ourselves in the back we need to make sure that we continue because there's always new challenges furthermore we discovered that did the district office and school sites did not necessarily have the systems and still do not have the systems for true equity for all students in our district

058and that that is embedded in the frameworks and foundations of our schools i mean we have one example that you have mentioned with the english learners and newcomers that are coming and making sure that they have not just academic services but also we have a lot of mental health obstacles that are coming our way with students in detention centers and all that so all this needs to be taken into consideration uh on top of that we have the continued work that was being done in regards to racial equity like at our school sites was being done on the fringes and most of this was by classified and certificated staff and primarily by bypoc staff that was how it was done for many many years decades and what happened was the bipark staff were carrying the

059burden of challenging these inequitable systems because it wasn't the challenge wasn't embedded in changing the systems and the framework and all of that uh so on top of that we also realized that in the past year we've tried to create this group and we're trying to get it going not just a district level but also at different school sites and we saw that at some school sites we did have some resistance kind of like we see in general public uh to this work and we had staff equity groups doing this work to change systems and policies but they were actively being disrupted and dismantled um even at some of our school sites uh so there's a lot of things that we've found which shows the emphasis and the need as to why we really really

060need to make sure we keep this going and work collaboratively to do this and take a really deep deep look at our systems so now i'm going to pass it over to colleague glenda who's going to talk tell us about some recommendations hi good evening buenas buenas tardes i'm head counselor at epaa and in terms of our recommendations the first one we have is to provide we've talked a lot about mental health supports for our students we've all experienced this secondary trauma and we've had students who've experienced that and also primary trauma for different reasons and so providing those mental health supports especially culturally appropriate supports for bypass students and many students have recently immigrated into our communities the return to school has been very difficult as a school counselor i can attest that i've

061had several several meetings with students not only about academic but also about mental health so we're definitely very inundated with with need and the same with the same amount of staffing at our schools uh providing support for body park staff which includes mental health and professional career related support to ensure that that bypass staff are thriving in their respective spaces as currently for many it feels like we're just surviving in in the in the workplace increasing the number of bypoc administrators that represent the student population at school sites and at the district office create pipelines to develop more bypoc teachers and administrators creating systems and policies that lift all students needs which we've been pretty much talking about this this entire evening and this one's important because currently the the burden has fallen on the

062shoulders of staff members and uh it's a matter of creating accountability and collaboration by having a director of equity and satellite coordinators at sites to implement and support these changes so actually having staff members to do this work and not rely on members that already have full-time jobs to do this work after school during their prep time during their lunch time or on weekends and the last one is create ongoing multi-year training this is this is going to be ongoing work and so again continuing to provide that training that pd for the entire staff around equitable pedagogy systems curriculum and affinity groups training thank you and so now we will have the reading of the resolution whereas the sequoia union high school district board of education reaffirms its commitment to providing safe welcoming and affirming

063spaces for all students staff families and community members regardless of race ethnicity gender religion sexual identity or orientation ability or disability country of origin or any other identity category or characteristics whereas the board of education empathically declares racism and hate have no place in our schools or our society and we must protect the constitutional rights of every person who lives works and learns in our community whereas systemic racism and racial oppression have long led in physical political social legal economic and environmental harm on people of color in the united states whereas we must lead each of us individually and collectively is responsible for creating and nurturing an anti-racist learning environment where every child is respected and valued for who they are regardless of their skin color we must actively acknowledge address and prevent racial bias

064whereas we acknowledge that this resolution does not diminish the commitment of the sequoia union high school district in the pursuit of its vision to design and implement structures systems and policies that achieve equity in our instructional institutional and employment practices rather this resolution demonstrates our responsiveness to the dynamic need of our diverse community and ensures we publicly commit to accelerate our efforts around racial equity and equality diversity equity and inclusion whereas the board of education recognized that all of our students have academic potential and bring unique valuable perspectives and experiences to our classrooms at the same time we also recognize that disparities persist in the educational outcomes of students of color students with limited financial resources and students with disabilities we will always work to raise expectations both socially and academically while closing gaps caused

065by racial barriers whereas the health safety and growth of all of our students in mind body and spirit are the ends for which the sequoia union high school district community continually strives moving forward together on a journey to provide all of our students with the desire and character to set worthy goals for themselves and means and ability to achieve and be productive and the wisdom and vision to find their place in this world whereas the securing union high school district is committed to systemic improvements of policies programs and practices that provide equity in student and staff opportunities to succeed that include but are not limited to curriculum development and equal opportunity employment practices whereas we continually continuously monitor the effectiveness of the district's priorities and strategic plan to ensure the success of the whole child

066the board of education expects the superintendent cabinet principals and staff to keep equity and inclusiveness in the forefront as they plan implement monitor and evaluate district supported programs our diversity equity and inclusion commitments must be integrated at every level of our school district the board of education further expects actions and outcomes that are evident to students staff and the community whereas the board of education is reminded that when with aligned values and community support our capable staff uses research-based best practices we see success and and expanded opportunities for students we will not stop thriving for change with bold action until we reach a complete eradication of inequitable educational opportunities whereas the board of education is heartened by our diverse capable compassionate educators and staff who strive for equity equal opportunity and social justice we are

067inspired by their commitment resilience and willingness to learn to break down barriers that deny our students access to equity and excellence whereas the board of education recognizes that to more fully live into our values of diversity equity and inclusion requires collective action we acknowledge that strong community partnerships are a point of pride and strength in our school district and we will investigate innovative ways to enlist them in these efforts the board of education encourages families and community members to have courageous and honest conversations about racism and realize the roles we can all play in improving our students educational experiences and post-secondary opportunities the board of education commits to facing these challenges together with our students their families our staff and our beloved sequoia union high school district community therefore be it so resolved that the

068sokola union high school district reaffirms its commitment and will continually examine itself to ensure it re-mains an open and inclusive institution of public education for all its students staff administrators community members and supporters therefore be it further resolved that racism or discrimination have no place in sequoyah union high school district and the board of education expects the highest standards of quali standards of equality of opportunity and fair treatment we will see each other for our individual worth and human potential may we move forward from lessons learned and continue to improve both ourselves individually and the sequoia union high school district as a much beloved academic institution thank you all right well thank you for that spirited and inspirational presentation and there is uh an important vote ahead of us but first we do want to

069hear uh public comment before we get into board discussion and action i do have one card on this agenda item from edith salvatore hello i just wanted to relay officially um to the board of trustees the superintendent and our my wonderful colleagues that sdta was very excited to learn about these plans from the superintendent to see them on the agenda to see this action being embraced by the superintendent so early in her tenure with the district in what is you know there's nine billion things going on but not losing track of this and that sdta is looking forward to working with the district to achieve all of those lofty whereas and resolutions thank you thank you um all right i do see one of our panelists hands up i don't see any attendee hands up

070uh so we will go to uh board conversation i'll give kerry first shot since you've got your electronic hand up the rest of you can use your your fleshy hands yeah i do have a questions we have you here tonight first of all i want to thank you for your work i so appreciate that this was teacher and staff driven from your experiences in the classroom and at your school site so i know this was a heavy lift and a lot of work and thank you for all that you've done because i have you here i do have a burning question um and the question is you know where to start to really make sure that we are serving all kids and i have been very passionate about this idea of you know trauma-informed learning

071and was really doing restorative practices and i was at a community meeting this week with some community partners and this was more of a meeting county-wide and the topic was serving all kids and one of the community partners who works with our kids not on sometimes at a school site but also outside and again county-wide perspective and her question was have all teachers and staff members been trained in trauma-informed practices and i know the answer that is no i didn't say that because again she's thinking trauma and form but when i think of our district some people have been trained but not others how does those topics restorative practices and trauma form did you guys discuss it and how does that all fit in with this work and how can we make those things really

072a reality i mean really doing restorative practices and really serving all kids how does it fit um so a couple of things at sequoia high school um i believe next wednesday a group of 30 teachers are being trained around community circles so that we can bring those restorative practices to our freshmen and we will roll that out in the spring so they will have four opportunities to do that type of restorative practices with a small group of 15 and each teacher will have a small circle so that's at sequoia m.a for the last two years has been working with toby shruggs hussein and their whole staff has been trained in trauma-informed practices toby also just led a pd workshop through rpd here in the district um for teachers to opt in i believe the next

073agenda item with dr williams is coming about bringing usc um into do facilitation so that it's not just teachers but it's administrators it's the cabinet it's the staff so that everyone gets a baseline of training and i believe our intention is to roll that out on january when we have that staff write that p right so yes that is our goal because we know that in order for all students to have access it starts with the educators with the administrators with the district office with the school board so yes that is in our long-term plan and it also can't just be a check mark one of the recommendations that glenda talked about it has to be continual so if this is truly something that we are committed to don't let it stop with this year

074make sure that it's something that you continually put resources behind um so that teachers have the skills in order to help our students thrive i also wanted to add that last year there was a formation of a social emotional learning task force and i understand that that task force is going to convene this year but i think that what's important is to ensure that that curriculum that eventually gets rolled out or rented the training that it's from an anti-racist lens i just wanted to say that that's really important that i feel it was lacking last year and i think it's important to to look at that yeah okay uh yeah pablo has a comment as well uh yes just to add on to my colleagues said and a very important part also like a third

075prong to this um to your question carrie is to also recognize that we have practices and systems and policies in our schools and our district that also traumatized their students so i think a big a a big big thing as we're going to see in the presentation next agenda items is also to just take an honest and very truthful and at times painful look at everything in our district and realize well what is causing trauma and i think that is something that we have to we have to take a look and it's more than just a reflection it's actually in a sense like bringing things to light exposing it in order for us to say okay that is traumatizing our students what can we do and not just saying okay let's put something there to

076help those kids deal with the trauma like no let's change that system so that we're not traumatizing them so that's the third prong is being able to actually unearth these things and kind of take an honest look that's gonna be painful at times but also show some successes so um that's also where we start board members chris i have to figure out where to look now but um i wanted to begin by thanking the authors i'm not quite sure i get some collective contributions there i found it important the statement was resolution was important thoughtful step here how about hear me oh all right i'll get mine thank you so i wanted to begin and i'll repeat myself uh for thanking the authors for this statement which i found to be important thoughtful and well

077articulated and i'm going to be proud to support this two i want to share with you two of the statements because it's i think it's nice to repeat some of the whereas is in there but and it's hard to pick out just two but i think it was important to me that it says we're striving for change with bold action because i think we need that and the other thing that we need and we get is we are inspired by your commitment resilience and willingness to tackle to take on these things um that said i think most board members in face with a resolution will have ideas for ways they'd like to see it changed so i wanted to offer four amendments for my colleagues to consider two are really uh stylistic grammatical and two

078have a little bit of substance but i don't think it changes much uh one is that i think um here in our in our policy we refer to this body as the board of trustees as opposed to the board of education sounds like a los angeles term but i'm not familiar that we've used it so i'd suggest that maybe it's the board of trustees the other small thing is toward the end it refers the document refers to it's eliminating racism or discrimination i think it's probably racism and discrimination i can point to in the very last paragraph therefore be resolved that racism or discrimination have no place in sequoyah and i think it's both the things those things that have no place um the two more slight substance that i want to suggest to my

079colleagues is that in the on the first page in the sixth whereas where we're referring to students of color students with limited financial resources than students with disabilities i think in the following sentence it would be nice to parallel each of those groups for the barriers we want to break down so we will always work to raise expectations both socially and academically while closing gaps caused by racial social socioeconomic barriers and the barriers that result of disabilities or something like that and the fourth and final thing i wanted to suggest to us is in the second whereas on the second page where we say the board of education is hardened let me make sure i get the right one board of education is heartened by our diverse capable compassionate educators and staff who strive for

080equity i'd like to add students there because i i have to tell you that i think some of the movers and motivators for us and the work really comes from students as well as the staff and i know teacher is going to be critical to this but i'd like to acknowledge the role of students in that i would suggest right at that point that we also include the word community because our community has been an active outreach partner in this work as well and has given significant input that has made a difference in our actions that's all thank you thanks please um you all hear me um first of all i just want to thank you all um for this i am i it took all i could not to cry and i might as

081i look out at my former principal hello at m.a going to her with my own stories and worries um having three kids three different ability levels three different excitements or no excitement for school and and sitting with her saying i i i'm struggling i'm struggling not because of you know collectively teachers were great but also having some experiences that caused some pause for me um as a parent um and if you can't tell i'm a person of color and having different my own different experiences growing up not all bad but there's definitely some that stick out that shaped why i became a social worker why i'm so involved in my kids life and also being new to the area not knowing the community as well and really sitting with that principal frankly angry and thank

082god i had a good principal who listened that doesn't happen everywhere and so the things that you are saying um touch deeply for me as a parent of three kids two who graduated and two who are doing well in college thank you m.a but also as i sit and think about the many of people who when i did decide to run for the board and trying to figure out is this really what i want to do with my time is it worth it um because frankly i don't have a lot of time so it's like is it worth it right to give up that time and sitting with um grandparents of students who are in our school who were um ravenswood high school graduates or they were there in the 90s and things that i

083sort and some of the pain that some of them talked about and the glory because they like their ravens with high school and things of that sort but they talk about the pain of being in a district that did not see them or what they didn't feel like they were seeing it's not that the effort wasn't there and so i am a person who sits at the feet of my elders and i don't question their experience i may not agree i may not even have the knowledge of it i assume based off their experience that's what they felt and so when i hear something like this it makes me want to cry because it's finally being acknowledged that people were hurt whether it was intentional but people were hurt by racism and discrimination or just

084not being seen um in the system right and i think it's important to verbally say it um and coming on the board and having the letter rent written from our community members calling us out on that even though they feel a little uncomfortable i'm not gonna lie first time on the board get a letter um how do you deal with that but knowing that the foot soldiers were already here doing the work and this is an opportunity to acknowledge those foot workers our district is not horrible and we have some areas of growth and so i think there are ways we can pat ourselves on the back with the grow grow your own program out of saying that right bonnie or the ability to listen um during those trying times or giving us the budget

085thank you jesus for the budget to do some of the things that we want to do thank you crystal uh or even our board taking a chance on certain curriculums and ideas and shifting things even amongst criticism right um and it we are gifted and and blessed that we have people who aren't throwing darts at us about things that we know impact kids at the end of the day it is my child it is my daughter it is my son it is their lacrosse players it's their neighbors it's everyone at the end of the day i see those faces and they look different sometimes they are white and sometimes they are black and sometimes we may not know who they are right and so it's like it's really important to see people see their abilities

086i like to take disabilities out abilities um so because everybody has abilities abilities to learn abilities to be successful and abilities to come back and be a teacher here so i am so excited about this i know i'm standing on my pulpit so i'm just gonna sit down but i am extremely excited that it came from y'all and that it came from the grassroot efforts of people who care about our kids the allies the friends those experiences thank you for not um avoiding that and facing it head on with compassion love frustration tiredness institutiveness which is probably a word that i made up there's an english teacher in here somewhere thank you so much okay and i'll throw in um i am i'm very enthusiastic uh to support this um what i what i do

087want to say is that um this is a statement that is another major milestone along a long and tortured path and it represents a lot of recognition and a lot of work that has been done and a commitment to greater recognition and much greater work to be done and that there are real meaningful deep-rooted institutional issues that need to be dealt with that there are a huge range of priorities to be set to be looking at the most egregious and the most impactful areas where we can set our energies and that every direction we turn as time goes by we will be seeing things that have been left unaddressed and need to get better attention we will look at progress we have made and say oh we've had some big breakthroughs here and it's not

088a matter of patting yourself on the back and sitting down in the corner and feeling proud of yourself it's a matter of being able to evaluate what were the actions we took that were most impactful what made this difference happen how do we double down on what's really effective to make sure that we continue being more effective as we take the next steps forward every change we try to make is going to have embedded in it a sense of how can that still be a problem that is unaddressed today how did we get this far down the road and we haven't done something about this yet some of them are going to be well we thought we took this great big step forward there but look at what's still going on there and how much

089more work there is to do we can't be that proud about what we've done we need to be upset about what remains to be done and we're going to look at our progress at every step of the way and say this is slower than the way we wanted to go we have left more students to suffer these inequities for longer than we should have and we need to be taking the time to say we have also improved outcomes for many students for many staff members for many community members that things used to be worse and they're getting a little better and we need to keep that dual edge perspective there that looking backward and seeing where we've come from and the road we've taken helps us be more efficient on that road going forward but

090we always need to be looking forward with a great sense of urgency that there is so much more work to do and it is so urgent that's what i believe is in this statement is the commitment commitment to do those things to hold those beliefs to do the hard work we need to remember that the price of progress is always change it means that for the great things that we want to accomplish we have to do the difficult painful work the introspection and making ourselves and our institutions change this is a commitment to continue doing that we need to be able to look ourselves uncomfortably in the eye and say here's an area where despite all of our work this is just unacceptable and it must change and get to work on it this is

091also an understanding that years from now we will be still having what feels much like the same conversation how can so much still be so bad how can there be so much still to do why have we left this until now but we'll be continuing to surface new things and making them better and this is a commitment to continue making them better um it's a commitment i'm very very excited about you made the comment earlier looking around the room you can see that the leaders and the power is still imbalanced and not reflective of our community you can also look around the room and see that that has changed over recent years and is continuing to change we are making progress while we are bemoaning the work that is there to be done and we

092have to be able to balance those things to make sure that we keep progressing so i am extremely excited to be making this statement tonight and then to move on to other action items where we take action to put our words um into action um and make more happen um so again i thank everybody that has been involved in bringing this to us for the long hard work not just of crafting the words but of helping to shape the vision and the mission and the sense of urgency to get to this point and to launch us forward where we're going and i would be eager to accept a motion of approval for this may i ask whether the board accepts one or one two three or four of my suggested edits i thought those were

093all clear improvements straightforward the substance is still there it's just the word pablo uh your uh insight as well and the recommendations for change i i agree with taja his small edits the question there was a word of ability trustee stevenson i agree with that changing that [Music] yep um all right with that do we have a motion of approval i'll move to approve with the um edit suggestions by both uh chris and chinese i second that okay uh as a resolution is this a uh roll call vote student trustee said yes rusty thompson you want to catch the other student trustee who's here now he came in very quietly and discreetly but he's part of the team welcome carlos student trustee osuna yes leslie thompson yes rusty stevenson yes trusty vice president dubois yes

094president sarver yes motion adopted 5-0 thank you thank you once again thank you to the members of the edc thank you for holding us accountable and we will continue to work alongside of you thank you equity diversity committee the equity and diversity committee thank you all right with that bit of excitement we move on to item 15.2 approval of contracts with the university of southern california race and equity center thank you trustee sarver i was at the mic before you even called me because i'm so grateful to dr john pasquerella who's been hanging in there for over an hour to join me in this board item not only teaching classes and doing meetings tonight all the while waiting for our turn to speak this evening but he's a professor of clinical education at usc he's

095the chief academic officer of the k-12 equity leadership academies for usc race and equity center but my favorite thing about him and he's got easily a page-long resume of things he's written and had published and boards he served on he started out as a high school english teacher in the inner city and so what i have to say about him is i believe that when he talks about bringing actionable professional development for all of our staff that he will deliver so i'm so grateful and so delighted that he is still here with us this evening dr pasquarella many many thanks to you my apologies to your colleagues and your wife um he's got some slides to share with us so john in the essence of time i'm going to ask if you would go first

096thank you so much and it's a great honor to be here with the sequoia union high school district it was uh quite an honor to listen in uh through the last hour of the meeting to see the steps that the important and incredibly difficult work that the members of your community have advanced in order to put forward this resolution and so it is also my honor to represent the usc race and equity center this evening so let me begin by uh just sharing a little history about our center and its founder and executive director professor sean harper sean harper founded the center for set the study of race and equity and education in 2011 at the university of pennsylvania which was its home for six years the center was then relocated and renamed uh we

097were so fortunate here at the university of southern california as uh they recruited and uh dr harper moved to uh usc and established and renamed the usc race and equity center in 2017 when he joined our university our our mission at the usc race and equity center is to eliminate disrupt and dismantle racism in all its forms we do this through rigorous interdisciplinary research high quality professional learning experiences the production and wide dissemination of useful tools trustworthy consultations and strategy advising and substantial partnerships while race and ethnicity are at the epicenter of our work we also value their intersectionality with other identities and therefore aim to advance equity for all persons experiencing marginalization last month we were invited by superintendent williams to prepare two scopes of work to one conduct a racial equity climate study

098of sequoia union high school district and two to carry out a designing carryout to racial equity academies one for all sequoia union employees faculty staff non-certificated staff leaders and one for the sequoia union executive leadership team in the next few slides i'm going to review the key features of the climate study and then following that i'll review the key features of the racial equity academies and after that point i'm happy to address questions okay our first scope of work and we have two scopes of work and two respective contracts the first being our racial equity climate study this study is designed and led by dr kendrick davis our chief research officer at the university and dr davis was unavailable this evening so i'm going to present the information from these from our scope of work

099for the climate study and do my best to address the details of how we conduct the study as you saw on the scope of work there are three basic phases to the the climate study the first is strategic advising as we work with your members of your leadership team your dib and task force and members of your skory community our strategic advising will focus on a foundation setting strategy that is with the goal of setting racial equity goals and indicators what we'll do is a content review of any developmental and archival documents to date that the district has prepared reported and we will continue with an audit of existing survey instruments quantitative data and other value tools that the district has used to this point and we will do that through a racial equity lens

100by centering race and race and equity we're going to be looking for the ways in which the district has uh has collected information based on race and racial equity indicators previously and look for opportunities to set new goals and new racial equity indicators and and then in phase two we will conduct the climate study portion which involves assembling convening targeted focus groups of priority stakeholders at each of the sequoia union high school district schools focus groups may include students of color their parents and or caregivers teachers school staff and administrators and then we follow following our focus groups we will then move into four district-wide forums held with sets of priority stakeholder populations to present the fine findings from the quantitative and qualitative data and in phase three once we have completed phase one and

101two and have uh put together a preliminary report after phase two of our quantitative and qualitative findings we then move to working to assemble racial equity project teams at each of the sequoia union schools and what we do is we look at what the report finds for each of those schools as the major racial equity challenge or opportunity that was documented in that report over six months each project team will complete an eight-step project plan with support and feedback from our center experts and the projects will then launch as the new academic year begins our strategic racial equity projects can typically involve project teams of school leaders faculty and staff at each of the schools and those teams are assembled to design and implement these projects to address very specific racial equity problem or opportunity

102in the school community and then the our racial equity experts work to offer practical and applicable tools and resources along with feedback that might be used in those projects and helpful to the more immediate daily weekly and ongoing practices as school leaders and members of the community represented on those project teams some examples of projects underway with some of our current partners are listed here on this slide i'll highlight just a few of them one equity and justice initiative a team approach to designing anti-racist pedagogy integrating anti-racist learning the focus on pedagogy and learning in this particular project in at one of our partner schools the second one increased awareness of racial bias white supremacy non-inclusive curriculum among teachers third one black students matter and racial justice task force fourthly building a school culture that

103promotes racial equity fifthly and timely teaching and practicing racial equity in digital world as we continue this work through the kova 19 pandemic and there are many other projects that aren't listed here and a few others that are and i'm happy to answer questions about the projects themselves here's a sample timeline of how the climate study and projects would occur in phase one we would begin in january of 22 through march phase two moving into march with the climate study focus groups and district-wide forums to uh through december and uh with our report at that phase then moving into phase three uh at which time we will uh convene our uh project teams at each of the uh sequoia schools and build out the projects between january and june of 23 from there launching the

104projects through the 23-24 school year and in the summer after assessing and renewing uh the goals and opportunities of those projects to revisit the opportunities for new racial equity challenges that still exist in the school and are continuing to be revisited and renewed in the uh year that follows um in in this next segment i'm going to focus on our racial equity leadership academies which is the second scope of work and engagement with the uh with the uh district our racial equity leadership academies are designed around uh 12 core principles first that these academies involve deep challenging honest conversations about race racial inequities and racism secondly that they are rigorous evidence-based practically useful content thirdly that they include high participant engagement opportunities for meaningful personal reflection fourthly strengthening racial issue literacy and racial problem-solving skills

105is a priority fifthly sustaining sustainable learning and enduring commitment to advancing racial equity in each of your schools six inclusive treatment of all racial and ethnic groups resisting the erasure of asian-american multi-racial native american and pacific islander persons our seventh principle accepting individual and collective responsibility for racial equity eighth analysis of individual actions as well as histories policy systems structures cultures and organizational norms our ninth principle is strategic thinking planning and action through our projects our tenth principle is hopeful optimistic pursuits of racial equity and our 11th principle is anti-diverse anti-deficit perspectives of students of color their families and their communities and our last principle number 12 recognizing the vitality of communities of color in our schools depends greatly on racial equity work educators do now and sustain into the future these principles guide how

106we coordinate our racial equity leadership academies and uh in addition to that in the preparation of each one of our experts nationally known experts that work to lead our sessions these sessions are built in and our experts are giving guidance to provide uh contemporary cases of racial problems happening in urban k-12 schools and emphasis is placed on learning from equity gains and racial missteps that have occurred elsewhere learning how to get ahead of situations and reducing the risk of racial crisis and learning actionable racial equity leadership strategies in each one of the sessions that are prepared for and led and facilitated by our experts here are just a a limited list believe it or not i packed a lot on this slide there are many experts that are listed here there's only so many we

107could listen on a powerpoint slide along with uh on the right-hand side in red you see a uh about 12 of our racial equity academy topics which are also represented in the scope of work that has been uh presented to your district okay and um that um so that concludes the the sort of presentation of the contents of our two scopes of work and i'm happy to answer any questions that the board may have or members of your community may have on the scope of work or the details that i presented this evening thank you for that presentation and i would first uh like to hear if there are any um comments that uh the board should take into account from members of the community present or viewing through zoom i have not received any

108comment cards on this topic yet from inside the room and i don't see any hands going up among our attendees um so if board members uh have things they would like to bring into the conversation chinese i just have a question i'm not for sure if um dr prescott how do you see your name pascarella i'm sorry i'm looking at the print it was kind of blurry pascarella um is the timeline that you presented if we can go back to the timeline sure apologies one moment and please please just call me john no problem there oh okay all right dr john um going back to the timeline um the strategic advising um and then it's the climate study why does that take like so long like it's january to march strategic advice and help me

109understand what that is and then the climate starts happens from march to december this is the equity study correct this is the equity state okay yeah that's right right so then from march to december 22nd then the climate i'm just not understanding the timeline i guess i want it to be quicker but i'm not for sure you know this is not my expertise can you help me understand those two things i i think that dr davis uh scheduled this timeline based on his average engagement with attending meetings and scheduling meetings to ensure that the team has an opportunity to have meaningful input on the developing the equity goals and indicators based on where the district is at the current time um so i think that that is really a sense of understanding that there's going

110to be a content review of your our your your developmental and your archival documents uh to get a sense of the work to done to date um and the various uh ways it's evolved over time um and any other addition additional audit of existing uh survey instruments quantitative data or other evaluative tools um that process uh can take you know can can be a time consuming process with that you know with the research team um adequate you know having adequate access to an opportunity to uh review those materials as well as meet with the uh leadership teams to lay the groundwork for phase two um and and i apologize uh that that i cannot speak any further uh i i hope that is helpful that that is my sense of the process that dr davis

111leads but i would have to defer to dr davis for additional detail beyond that okay huh what'd you say no said dr davis oh dr davis sorry sorry and what's the what is strategic advising again so the the strategic advising and the is uh is the the process that dr davis will take with uh whomever he is being with at the district level um to whoever is convened to meet with dr davidson and our team of researchers to to go through that process of determining what the goals and the racial equity indicators will be that will be used in the climate study okay gotcha and who's the i guess respect to bonnie and dr williams um so bonnie who's the strategic advising group have you thought about that that's going to be just district leadership

112we're also a lot of the work will be in conjunction with the edc as to their availability and willingness to do so or other teacher leaders and if i could speak to the timeline i think that those first two pieces are so important so for us to know what is it that we want the outcomes to be and what are the measures we're going to use because this is a deeply personal topic and so i think that people really need to feel that they had an opportunity to weigh in on what they think the measure should be and then produce but wait this is what we've been doing and we've really tried that and while it was different over here and then making sure that the different different focus groups and stakeholders get spoken to

113part about what is built in is for community engagement nights for our general public that's a lot of prep that's a lot of processing so i agree with you i want it done tomorrow as well but i think it's one of those go slow to go fast and make sure everybody feels like it was a good it was a rich and encompassing process okay thank you so much that's all my questions i think i would characterize it that it's very easy to reach the wrong destination very rapidly but it's more of an investment to reach the right destination through the right amount of planning and careful execution here which i'll rattle off um first is this is important and not in significantly expensive work what should the board expect in terms of progress reports on

114this it seems to me we want to check in on the work so that might be for both dr williams and dr pasquerilla second question probably for our assistant soup is we want to make sure teachers have enough time for this training and if you could say a word about how we accommodate that with the other pressures of teaching obviously and the third particularly for for dr pax gorilla it goes to an understanding i have that in school districts often the initiatives that are most successful are driven internally by teachers now within with and yet this is really coming from the outside to some extent i was pleased to see you've got a theory of change um in one of your contracts and the third kind of alludes to ways that you can work with

115teachers or make sure sure of success that it that it has life internally uh could you that's the third question i'd have you speak to um how do we make sure your this isn't just outside consulting coming in questions one two three so in terms of the progress at each phase of the timeline we will prepare and we will provide ongoing updates in terms of where we are so for example in the strategic piece where we're going to identify identi indicators identify indicators then we will bring those indicators forth prior to going to doing the collection of data to support um and to start so at each phase you will get a check in and also just to note that um while external dr davis and dr pasquerella have met with um the equity and

116diversity committee and gotten their feedback so it's really important that this work that we're doing is going to be in response to the resolution and also in response to the work that they have been advocating for in terms of teachers training in terms of the topics and also in terms of identifying those inequities that have persisted in our district and then those things that we have done well so in order for us to responsively address some of those issues so we can support the growth and access of services for all students and families for your question around uh teachers having enough time yes so we uh vicki dye and i met with uh dr john and his team earlier this week and i've really appreciated their flexibility and wanting to really partner with us in

117our context and we are looking at doing this series of workshops this year and next year and that does a couple of things it means we've got a few different staff development days where we can use part of the time for this work it it carries it out to the point of this not being a one year wonder where we're doing at least two years of training on this initial stage and then it also allows us to continue on with some of our other uh work that we're doing district wide so we're very cognizant of making sure that we do this in a timeline where we're not asking more of teachers than we've been asking in the past for staff development to get this done anything else from dr john on theory of change and

118[Music] working internally as well as externally yeah i'm sorry pascarella if you can also highlight the purpose and deliverables through the strategic racial equity um plans that they will create yeah thanks for the question the opportunity to address it uh i think that what my team in particular on the racial equity um academy series is steeped in the research on professional development and the way in which it is successful or not and what we've learned also through our years of leading and coordinating i think that it involves deeper partnerships with our school leaders with respect to how for example plc's or faculty learning communities are established or not on and regular ongoing professional learning happens at the school level and the extent to which this work can be extended through those regularly occurring already spaces

119in which teachers are meeting and engaging in professional learning beyond the scope of attending uh our academy series uh with that the the various resources that and strategies and frameworks that get introduced in the series we are focused on them being applicable usable and extendable into uh that kind of work and so it is through our debrief sessions after each of uh the academy sessions run by our uh nationally known experts we then meet and debrief our center experts uh with um the whether it's the eib team or its members of your you know all the principals are present or however the school determines who should be present at a debrief session to then discuss the ways in which that can be and plan for the ways that in which that can be then extended

120into the ongoing professional learning work happening in the in each individual school so in addition to that as dr williams superintendent williams has pointed out we we also are the team that at the phase in phase three of the racial equity climate study when we get to phase three we will be convening and working with all of the project teams to carry out the work at the school level and expect that the racial equity project teams will include members of your faculty staff and community members as as you deem appropriate meaning that we have we have our advice and it is up to the school to determine uh how they who's represented on those teams um and how those teams evolved particularly over a you know two-year process um so i i hope that addresses

121the question adequately i think there's more nuance to it that depends largely on the district and individual school context and the folks who are who are committed interested or volunteering who want to be a part of the work who have been raising their hands prior to a racial equity series being run to advance this work and i think that was certainly represented in our meetings with your div team prior to assembling these proposals for sequoia thank you that's very helpful gary you have your hand up yes since we have expert in the room with [Music] so question for dr john i can't help myself because we have an expert in the room so um for me personally i felt the implicit bias work took a while it certainly wasn't just one or two trainings and

122there were certain things that sort of jolted me into place and it was it was really hard work right um and i'm still working on it but um one of the things that jolted me into place was the work on white fragility which was really it was shocking when i read it but i saw my flaws and i'm just wondering if you use that at all or just you know how do you move people i mean you need to move fast right really but you need to sometimes go slow to go fast but there's a need to go fast and especially with i think sometimes you know when we think that we have to bring our whole community along right so just wondering if you have any thoughts on that uh i i have many

123thoughts on that i think that i'm concerned uh how much time to take in your meeting but um i i think that first of all i think that it's so often the case that uh we have gone through our entire schooling process our entire um socialization without ever uh centering race or the history of racism in our institutions and our own centralization and the way we've been acculturated with racist bias racist prejudice racist ideas and i think that the work around implicit bias is really focused on as i think your equity question earlier was focused on the impact uh that unconscious bias has uh on in and across historically marginalized uh groups and i think equity coming back to the definition around equity is re-examining how our actions efforts resources the funding decisions that we

124make as educators result in equal outcomes across historically marginalized groups in our and our society and our country um in our district and communities and across those historically marginalized and those who have been historically privileged and i think that by examining the system of racism and understanding the uh the ways in which that happens at the institutional policy uh level uh understanding the way it happens in our context through our social interactions and understanding how it's happening at the self level through our everyday thoughts and decisions in the classroom in our interactions with parents and caregivers and our students is um is essentially the the the commitment around the work is are we working in solidarity is everyone working in solidarity with people of color or as a person of color with other people of

125color who have already been fighting to abolish racism and systems of oppression that have um you know that harm people of color and unjustly benefit white people in this social system of racism in our country and throughout the world um and so i i think that the that the work around white fragility is and for white folks um to engage in really is focused around choosing to see race and racism um and and choosing to recognize the way in which the ways in which we white people are are racialized not to talk about race we are socialized not to talk about um our uh ourselves as having race um and and are socialized to think about um other folks uh and people very you know people of color as as a as a is a

126highly uh homogenized unified group which they're which no one is uh and and is used uh you know i i and on top of it you know sort of in not recognizing uh the ways in which or identifying the ways in which we've been socialized uh as as a white person with a racial identity um we are uh through that silence uh reproducing participating continuing to participate in a system that that benefits and privileges it privileges us and so getting into discussions around white privilege does not you know mean that your life was not hard or that you did not experience different forms of of oppression or different hurdles or challenges what it means in the context of talking about race is that race was not an obstacle in those situations and those experiences now

127yeah yes and and there are examples in which you know white folks have experienced forms of ethnic racism from other whites in in our social and historical system and that history is there um and it but it is not it is not to be uh it is not the same as the experiences that uh so many different uh folks of color have experienced throughout our history and certainly through our own you know our your community's history um and and this is something that i think is you know very importantly work part of the work and the aim being that if we're going to work in solidarity as a racially privileged person then we have to work through a form of questioning and self-interrogation that includes looking at our actions our language our private thoughts our

128interactions with white people and with mypoc people and to interrogate the ways in which we have been socialized white other board questions or comments okay this is an action item for approval of contracts and these are a couple of contracts for work i'm very excited about i think it derives very effectively from the resolution we just passed so i would welcome a motion of approval just really quickly just with the the contracts we are asking in the recommendation is for the approval of the contract and the contract amounts with also the authorization of staff to make some minor adjustments in the language it doesn't change the work the scope of work it's just some minor changes that have been recommended that we may adjust so we'll work with usc to adjust it but again it's

129not substantive changes it's a very minor minor changes with the language all second okay um and this is not a roll call this is just a uh all those in favor so all those in favor all right all right it is unanimously approved with minor work to be completed thank you everyone and thank you very much dr john thanks dr john thank you for hanging out with us for so long no wonder you're known as the night tripper thanks everyone have a great evening and rest your week okay i've been saving that up all the last hour i'm sorry hey okay um now i know we we also moved item 15.3 up is there anybody um actually on board waiting to uh discuss that or um um because dr schimmel okay um what i would

130like to suggest uh i've been alert to a certain amount of squirming going on around the room i'd like to suggest a brief recess so that we can clearly focus on this all right it's exactly 8 15 let's be back at 8 25. okay i'd like to welcome everybody back [Music] and we'll uh we'll move on to the third action item that we move up and then after that we'll return to our uh special ed annual update so our third action item 15.3 is approval of a response to the civil grand jury report building a racially and ethnically diverse teaching workforce a challenge for our schools thank you dr shimal good well every year the grand jury's responsibility to issue a report the report this year focused on building racially and ethnically diverse teaching workforce

131a challenge for our schools was appropriately named because it is a challenge you start with the teaching workforce that is a baby boomer in millennial age and you look at the student population of the last 20 years and it's a completely different generation of students and quite often different in ethnicity so the grand jury issued a report it wasn't issued to the sequoia union high school district specifically but all the schools in the county and all the schools are required to respond to the 11 items that they called out with a response and the choices are to agree or disagree and to then also indicate what you're going to do about it if you agree you have to have a plan something's already in place or something will be in place if you disagree then

132what is the reason that you disagree and why and it has to be filed by november 5th and the board of education has to take action and so we read through the report wrote the responses and tonight the board will has looked at the responses and will take action to approve the response to the grand jury which will then go under the superintendent's signature and be returned to the court any questions that i might answer okay we have a question more for alan so it surprised me the reference to the san mateo county school boards association and the equity network um first of all i'm surprised that the grand jury would point that out i do feel that that work is ongoing and for the audience there was an equity class for school board members

133about 20 hours many of us attended and completed that class and i feel that the work is continuing i don't believe that that pandemic disrupted that work um and i don't know if the grand jury understands that the san mateo county schools association is really an education arm for school board members and an advocacy organization many school board members are also participating in the equity network through the california school boards association and there's also um book clubs that are going on right around the topic of equity so i don't i don't understand why so alan i just wonder if you have any perspective on that and i don't i don't really agree but with that that that should have been pointed out i would jump in on this i i think i you know i

134agree with with the concern and i think um to a certain extent um it applies to much of the uh of the the list of points that were raised in general uh that uh when an organization like like a grand jury looks into the operations of various organizations from outside they're going to draw certain conclusions that may not be very reflective of the work going on inside um and for the san mateo county school boards association equity network i think there was uh a year and a half of groundwork that was laid before the shelter in place order went down and in many many ways the smc sba group has functioned more closely more interactively through meetings on zoom with greater regularity since the shelter in place and work that came out of that equity

135network came into our district as well as several others and remained a topic of conversation uh and in fact a lot of that work has led up to the things or was were contributing pieces leading up toward um a lot of the events that have gone on tonight um and the resolution we passed so uh to to me i would say that certainly the pandemic has been disruptive um but i mean their statement about restricted to meeting online as a result the group has had limited opportunities uh the that group has made multiple opportunities and worked hard at them but equally to say the pandemic has been hugely disruptive and and certainly um the focus that was coming out of that equity network i think would have gotten more attention if so many cycles were

136not being diverted to everything that was going on with the pandemic and and to me i mean the way that reflects kind of the whole piece of the reporting is uh there's lots of ways in which kind of the the claim is is rather simplified of you know this this is a gap where this is a problem and the answer is typically yes it's something that we've been aware of and working on and here's what we have done and here are some things that were that we have in in the works to be doing next um so you know to the extent that it's gee the pandemic has disrupted the work of the equity network yep like everything else but to draw the conclusion that the work of the equity network got parked on the

137side of the road or thrown on the truck in the trash during that period of time is is not a valid conclusion so to me i i think again for the for the purposes of the response i do think it's it's reasonable to accept it but it's it's it's worth noting that this like many of the other items in this report is it's work ongoing and there's you know work has been done and there's more work to do that's the way i wrote the response i took it very similar to asu clearly expressed i didn't take it personal to sequoia because i know what effort you're making but they did this for the county and i don't know what efforts and we didn't make that statement and we were saying if that's what you feel

138obviously the pandemic had some disruptions to just scheduling meetings getting people there safety kinds of things something might have gotten postponed i don't know the details but it wasn't worth arguing about we know what we're doing you can see that evidence tonight and what happens with this is really up to the court system of the grand jury and all that they really don't have authority to direct you to do anything yeah i think you know my sense is that i don't read this as our district you know this this item or any of the entire report uh i don't read it as our district is accused of certain things and we are under uh scrutiny for making amends but it's just it's kind of calling out here are widespread issues that are evidenced in this

139way across the county and we want to be sure that they are a focus of attention in this district and action is being taken and more action is being planned and i i do feel that all of the responses indicated that understanding i think i'm gonna have to vote no on it just because i i'm sorry i'm really involved in that organization so it bothers me bothers me that the grand jury would point that out that's a problem so i'm gonna have to vote now let me ask instead if there if there are some specific ways that you would want to change um the details of this response [Music] it bothers me that the grand jury would call that out um so i'm going to vote no the san mateo county schools association section um

140[Music] of their report so i don't think i don't want to hold it up to reward it um so it'll just have to be a 4-1 vote can i i mean that's fine but i i just i i do want to put this into perspective of this letter is actually about us right i mean i get about the school board association but you know as my mama would say this is about me so what is my responsibility in this and i think when i think of this i actually had a lot of questions i was like grand jury was this mean and i was being rich asking all the questions and i was like trying to be analytical it didn't work but i was like what is this really about so i kind of looked

141it up right and so um around what is a grand jury what does a grand jury do and so when i thought about this this is a independent investigation there must have been a concern where there had to be an independent investigation right so why is that there right and it says that you know it's the ombudsmen of citizens who really looked and analyzed how we were dealing with the reflection of our our teaching community to our student body and then when they talked about meaningful submitting meaningful solutions and so when i think about this i think about more of the essence of it the essence of it right um if i've been on this board since december of course the things that they were talking about are essence of what people have been talking

142about all along before the the past um trustee when um stepped down or was it reelected um georgia she talked about housing and the impact on our community actually there's an impact if you look at globally about the impacts on whether or not you continue to have the diverse pool of teachers particularly new teachers coming to the field right and keeping that that that maintaining our experience but also recruiting news new teachers to our community so housing is an issue or with i think about what keeps a teacher from staying in our district as we struggle to keep communities of color um of teachers and staff represented so we can have the reflection of our of our students these things to me are true so when i think about the step back the essence of

143it is actually true right and so if it's true as much as i want to say sba whatever is doing what they're supposed not or are doing what they're supposed to do i'm trying to say what is our responsibility right and this is our time to respond to say what we are doing um so when i think about the letter i actually talked talked to dr williams i said everybody else just said we agree we agree one sentence two pages it was done but ours what i'm proud about is that it's more specific we're calling ourselves to a higher standard of saying what are we doing that someone investigated and actually told us what we already knew around the issues that impact the quality of teaching the recruiting quality teachers having students and having teachers

144that represent our population and so for me it is just signing off on something that we're already doing and our public can hold us accountable as well because they have already started indicating that these issues have been here it just came in one email here one email there and then we scramble and try to figure out are we doing something about it right and i just think and i i respect you um um trustee dubois if you want to say no i'm not trying to convince you at all but i'm just thinking about the essence of the report thank you for that i appreciate your comments it's just that i've been through several grand jury reports okay and so i think i just can't vote yes if there's something i really disagree with i all

145the other points are fine i don't think it's going to disrupt anything i don't want to slow it down but i do want to vote no and i think it's because i've seen several grand jury reports come across um our district so they can talk to me if they want but they probably won't even notice but if they do i'll talk to them [Music] okay i yeah i could continue with with one more one more round of thoughts but then i want to move on to just other people the other detail i'm kind of seeing and thinking about one of the statements they make there at the bottom of that number nine consequently as of january 2021 their ability to like both identify and deliver on stated outcomes has been limited i would say that

146looking back to january of this year the the online work that the smc sba was doing was meeting very regularly online with the county superintendent to talk about safety measures for reopening schools and that the focus that had been on the equity network was not evident in in the group interactions and all of the in-person meetings that had been scheduled were canceled and put aside um and a lot of the work that individual school boards were doing with the csba equity network as part of their follow-up tended to be put on hold for a while so to me that particular piece of it i think that the smc csba has done a huge amount of work over the course of this calendar year since that stated date to really return our county-wide focus toward the

147issues of education beyond just health safety and return to the classroom not not to neglect that issue but to make sure that we stop neglecting some of the other issues so i would have less disagreement with that with that particular line in there as of january 2021 i i think i think this is looking at a period of time in the in the last three quarters of 2020 where essentially this work had been put aside um and they're calling out that yep it was disrupted for that period of time and our response again says yep there were disruptions and here's what we're doing uh so um i i would feel comfortable even with my very active insider status in sm csba in agreeing with what's here and i i do think that if that is

148the difference as to whether or not um our board supports this response five to five to zero i would i would like to see that happen um but all i can do is lay out the arguments mr president can i add this to the mix because they really aren't just choice the choice of agree or disagree is the one that's the lack lack of information to agree or disagree and we also wonder which we've used in other parts or or i wonder whether we can just affirmatively say we cannot agree or disagree with this and leaving the rest intact because i think you support both of our representatives to that organization support the rest of the statement yes so we're not limited just to agree or disagree there's one clause that we've used before which

149is we lack the information to agree or disagree also wonder whether we can just say we we do not either agree or disagree which may address some of those concerns because it's only that conclusion i think that you're calling into question and not the rest of the statement there to the grand jury i mean if that helped us achieve the problem with the dissent on this unless somebody reads the minutes they're not going to know what the dissent is about right and and i guess the reason i might hope that the board does a 5-0 on this is is we've just approved a resolution that and and then some funding and professional development uh the the things the district is affirmatively doing to address work um that the grand jury is highlighting if you guys

150want to do chris's suggestion i don't really feel it's that important to have a 5-0 vote on this but um all right i would you know i would um you know be happy to say that you know the uh the district does not have the information to accept or or dispute uh the grand jury's findings for the purpose of this response and then continue with everything else exactly as it was written the district does not have the information to accept or dispute the grand jury's finding or yeah i mean it's a finding about a different organization so we'll start the paragraph with that sentence yeah there is the one above district black's information right history period yeah we'll make the unnecessary change i have the language yeah but that's the board's pleasure we'll put that

151there with that recommendation i'd be happy to move the approval of the letter for the response okay i'll second okay and again this is just a vote i believe so all those in favor aye okay it is unanimously approved thank you thank you all right so now with great excitement we return to our information item item 12.1 the special education annual update julia and team take it away good evening [Music] this way would you mind putting it up um it's not running yet on this one all right um good evening board of trustees superintendent williams members of cabinet our focus for this evening is our special education annual board update my name is ilya van laar i'm the special ed director and with me are my co-presenters claire chandler coordinator of special education and carla

152crenshaw our other coordinator of special education our focus for the 2021-2022 school year is to successfully resume in-person instruction expand our continuum of district placement options make progress towards our state identified compliance measures and ensure that all our sequoia high school district students with special needs are offered a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment at our comprehensive sites all aligned with dr williams seven and three goals as published on our website to that effect we are highlighting completion of our individualized education plans or ieps by continuing the remote zoom option for easy access for our parents who are not always able to attend in person our student information student education information system compliance which is our monitoring organism to direct our numbers to the state professional development for new case managers

153during our new teacher orientation week as well as our professional development days in september and january a refresher training for returning case managers on how to remain compliant with data reporting as well as electronic signatures again to make the process easy and accessible for our parents during the 2020 school year we were required to resume in-person assessments even though we were still on distance learning in august of 2020 and we did that by utilizing the q global platform which is an educational psychologist online testing system to establish special education eligibility we continued our academic testing through the wechsler individual achievement test and the woodcock johnson achievement test which commensurate with our feeder districts using the same test so that we have a clear picture of a student profile before students enter our high school district

154and then we were very excited to be able to add additional bilingual school psychologists who were able to perform these tests in students native language also excited for us was being able to be fully staffed for all our related service providers they're listed here as occupational therapy our assistive technology service physical therapy speech and language transportation and very importantly student engagement services which is a service that we use to transition students back to the home environment from residential treatment centers as well as non-public schools buenos noches my name is carla crenshaw and i'm the coordinator of special ed and also the principal of the satellite plus program so like everybody here we've been consumed with our response to covid and and the learning loss that is experienced by some of our most vulnerable and complex

155students so as a result um we anticipated this coming along and not the not the pandemic but the um our response and um and so we did a great deal of planning um so we came up with a plan that has some students um addressing learning loss via the um the supports that are provided in the general education classroom for some of our other students they required a very defined plan and with additional services to meet that learning loss so one of the things so some of the things that we did to plan for this is um hire additional staff so we hired speech and language therapists um uh psychologists anticipating the mental health need we hired some additional support there we extended our special ed summer school is called extended school year and what

156we did is we added an additional eight days to the calendar than we normally provide and then increase the day um the the extended school year day by 30 additional minutes in order to meet those needs one of the things that we did was um we realized that for some of our most fragile populations and students that had very little limited time with us that are about to leave our system this group here decided to put our money where our mouth is and we got into the classroom and started cohort groups on november 4th of 2020. so we took on our role as teachers and we provided those supports and additionally what we did is we took all those resources and we allocated them during the extended school year time so that we would have

157a smoother transition into the fall and we also because we went live for our extended school year program all three of us worked all summer long to be able to supervise those programs and as i think most of you know in special education we wouldn't function without our individualized education plans and that requires meetings so we gave you the data for the 1920 school year and as you can see we continue to hold meetings throughout the entire school year even when the pandemic forces shelter in place our timelines didn't stop so you'll see march through june we continued to hold those meetings which totaled 1441 various meetings 50 of which were initial assessments to determine student eligibility um keep in mind most of these students require a minimum of three staff members from our district

158a special education case manager general education teacher and local education agency administrator in addition there may be other designated instruction and service providers such as our vision services our speech and language therapist so you're talking multiple staff members in these meetings meetings on average last 1.5 hours some are much longer therefore if you totaled that out you're talking an average of 2161 minutes for those meetings in 1920. that brings us to 2021 where everything was held via zoom um and i have to give shout outs to all of our teachers on the comprehensive sites that managed to figure out zoom and and um getting parents to participate and so during that time period we held 1728 meetings 51 of which were initial ieps that was roughly 287 more meetings in 2021 than 1920. so moving

159forward um some of the things that we've done to increase supports for students with disabilities included we're starting to bring in a lot of our students that have that are medically fragile and so we hired a licensed vocational nurse to have some of these students come back to our schools we talked about our speech and language how we increased it and um our psychologists were key and particularly with the data that claire just shared because um because of shelter in place the feeder districts have not completed all the assessments that they needed to do so we had to be prepared to absorb that and to do that so some of our more exciting endeavors have been around professional development um we have been we talked about the case manage case management training which helps with

160our um our goal of compliance and and the world of special that is ruled by compliance we had training for former pairs of co-teachers and new pairs to be able to again further our inclusive practices and there was the california dyslexia law that was passed and it's a b 1369 which charges the school district to be able to provide instruction for students with um with dyslexia and other reading disorders and so we've started to train all our folks at the sites including some non-general education so like our intervention specialists etc etc um the sunday training is a curriculum that is um that is evidence-based research-based specifically for dyslexia um and um and so yeah so that's kind of our next step is to address the uh that particular law okay so another focus over the

161the two years has been expanding the continuum of placement options within the district and i know i've talked to the board before about the satellite program and so that program was actually designed to support students so that we could serve them in district rather than sending to non-public school placements and the satellite program was implemented in the 1920 school year three classrooms here district office campus one which is a small group intensive another one to support students on the autism spectrum and the third one students with social emotional needs in 1920 the enrollment was 43 students 21 22 the enrollment was 37. we've had eight students graduate with their diploma or equivalent in the two years that the program has been running three students have been able to return full time to their comprehensive home

162school site successfully and this year we have an additional three students bridging back to their home school site through hybrid schedules [Music] this program was one of the programs identified for the in-person cohorts that we did in november of 2020 as well as the in-person during the extended school year students in the program recently participated in a heritage day and completed an art project modeled after diego rivera's artwork and the feedback from the students after that day occurred was extremely positive and they were really excited about it i forgot the student sample artworks in my office but i can email them to you if you would like to see them so we have amplify amplified our satellite program and last year we started satellite plus obviously during distance learning um but uh this year we're

163live and um we are on green street in east palo alto and i welcome any of you guys who want to come and take a look um so the satellite program satellite plus program was created for students that had have have had not a lot of success with their academics their emotional regulation behavior etc it's um it's not on a comprehensive site obviously it um it is really a relational program and so one of the things that we did was with all the students who had experienced not a lot of success we concentrated the first month and a half to build relationships after that after we had a relationship with a student then we introduced the rigor the academic rigor the program is comprised of two classrooms no more than 24 kids total in the

164school we have one it's a collaborative with an agency called beacon and they have a particular expertise in mental health and behavior and so each one of our classrooms has no more than 12 we have an educational specialist we have a behavior coach from beacon we have a paraprofessional and we have a mental health therapist embedded in each one of the classrooms um let's see it's been it's been a wonderful journey watching these kids who some of them weren't previous non-attenders start coming and the feedback has been really wonderful but it's because it's such a small place that we make those connections and support student learning um so this year at satellite plus um we have accepted donations from home depot and the students created their community garden which they have salads and make things

165like that um we have a basketball coach that is teaching kids specific uh uh basketball skills um and he happens to be our behavior coach as well we have friday we make our own ice cream and we have math poker we just had a kayaking trip and it was a critical trip because it built trust among the students and also let them shine their leadership skills in different ways um so coming up for uh satellite plus in the next month we're looking forward to a ropes course and we are also a gentleman who's an educator in east palo alto is an expert on african and the brazilian uh percussion and so he will be coming in and showing the kids how to draw et cetera et cetera so those are the highlights from satellite plus

166oh yeah i don't know where doesn't matter it's me anyway so another big area of focus in the department was the development of the comprehensive coordinated early intervention services plan or c-space and i think i'll just say that because the other way is much too long um and this is a plan that we had to develop and we'll continue to work on and monitor over the course of three years the primary area of focus is to address the disproportionality specifically with our students who identify as african-american with an eligibility under other health impairment so we did a lot of file reviews [Music] talking to feet our feeder districts to develop the root cause analysis we've done a lot of professional development in particular coordinated professional development with our feeder districts around eligibility for that sub

167subset of students we're working very closely with our feeder districts regarding matriculation and starting those conversations earlier in the year and uh involving all the stakeholders i just got a five minute warning so um and then the other part is uh the equity work so we're working with our csa's consultant dr mary bacon uh working on mirror and window work um we also held both student and parent focus groups which were very helpful and so we would like to give a special note of appreciation to trustee stevenson for being part of our stakeholders group and helping us move our csa's efforts forward hope i have the next one too okay with uh when governor newsome agreed or signed assembly bill 130 our team went to work to develop an analysis for our site teams to

168use in iep meetings to facilitate the discussion to determine whether independent studies was a free appropriate public education for each individual student we developed a script for our site teams to use and vetted it with stakeholders which included program specialists and special education advisory committee members we also provided program specialist and administrative to supports to case managers with the implementation once the once we receive a request for independent studies the iep team must meet within 30 days of that request being received and make a decision as to whether independent studies is appropriate if it is appropriate then we have to provide for the provision of related services and we discuss that as part of that conversation as of the development of this slideshow we also did hire a designated 0.3 full-time equivalent education specialist to

169help support those requests we've had 23 requests for students who are already in independent studies prior return to independent studies and we've approved nine of the requests our fiscal highlights show a three-year comparison in terms of our spending the biggest increase is going to be in certificated and classified salaries as well as in benefits however i do want to point out that 2021 was an abnormal year as you can see we had a slight decrease in our contribution to the general fund of roughly 609 000 and that was partly due to an increase in some of our self-funding for excessive and extraordinary costs and a larger increase in our mental health distribution from the selpa we can only guess obviously what it's going to look like in 2122 but more importantly i would like to

170point out the increase in the numbers of students with ieps in the 1920 school year we had 1359 students last year we went up with initial assessments to 1406 as of september this year 1486 students need special education services again the largest increase went to salaries and benefits however the 2021 increase in our total budget was slightly less than in 1920 and another important number that we look at is relatively speaking how do we compare to similar high school districts in san mateo county in santa clara county the state average for special education spending is about 20 of the total budget we're below that we went up slightly but right now we are at 18 and that is again it's below what the state commencement number is for special education spending to wrap it up

171what we're asking from you the board is continued support for our three large areas of our goals compliance equity and alignment we didn't speak a lot about the alignment piece but with dr williams here and her entry goal bonnie's work on the lcap we wanted to make sure that what we're doing on our department level is helpful to moving our entire district forward and again mtss and our collaboration with student services is going to be a big part of that for the coming years we welcome questions excellent i'd just like to make the observation this particular graphic looks to me like an oncoming train a cow catcher and a headlight and it's barreling down the tunnel in our direction um which is an interesting metaphor for special education um uh with that irrelevant uh observation

172uh well welcome some questions and comments from other board members ah thank you thank you very much all right we do have a comment from abby corman yeah she's on meeting yourself okay hi thank you my name is abby corman teacher at menlo atherton i so appreciated hearing this share out thank you for that thoughtful and thorough presentation i was particularly struck by the information about satellite plus even though i've been in the district and a community member for more than 10 years i know very little about that program so i was really enthusiastic um hearing that work that's being done i was also struck um to hear i think i heard that we're fully staffed and that was just a question that i had i i heard um that staffing of course is the

173largest bulk of our budget for our special education students and really probably for everything in our district um but i was hoping to hear more about that if possible from my lens at the large comprehensive site trying to get um you know students tested having the behavior specialist come that was sort of not the messaging i was hearing we weren't fully staffed i know on our lcat plan we had talked about hiring multiple psychologists so i was just wondering if there were if you could speak a little bit more about our staffing our student facing staffing thank you so the comment about staffing was related services which are are our auxiliary services as part of the students needs through their individualized education plan and it really was directed towards an occupational therapist physical therapist those

174are very difficult to staff positions and you know we're in competition with many other districts in the county so to be able to have those positions filled and to be able to serve students during the summer that was our main goal so that we didn't start the year behind in related services it wasn't in the context of teachers we had another comment card from edith thank you i wanted to make some comments like abby mentioned i think many of our employees probably are not very familiar with the satellite and satellite plus programs and their locations the satellite plus program being located on green street with carla right there the satellite program is located um in the area sort of the the area between the district office and sequoia high school and our teachers in that

175program have expressed at times um some concerns that because they are only two classrooms and they're not affiliated with the site they lack some of the supports that you come to expect when you're at a fully integrated site they do not have security they don't have necessarily other supports that they need and the special ed administration staff is often spread thin to many different locations and so it is a a struggle for them and it's one that i hope that the special administration continues to look at and brainstorm because we definitely have some of our students of most need in that program and their teachers are are being worn out with lack of not a lack of intentional support but lack of actual people and systems that would come if they were at a larger

176school additionally there was a comment about the behavior specialists and i want to share with the board that our behavior specialist from the last few years transitioned out of that position and had relayed concerns about the the caseload size and work size and i think that speaks to ms corman's comments about the ability for the behavior specialist to get in and do some of the work that is expected by general ed teachers or perhaps by the education specialists who are working with those students so they are not easy to come by behavior specialist but if you find one and we have money for them we we could probably do with a couple more thank you thank you edith for for those comments um a couple of responses um are unfortunately our behavior specialist uh suffered

177um a personal health issue and well as well as a personal bereavement issue and so that compounded the perception that she was unable to provide those services she has since recovered and is back on campus so we're hoping that that issue will soon be resolved and we're also looking in some additional supports through extra covet monies and to edith point it it is difficult to hire qualified personnel with that bcba distinction our satellite staff who is on the district office campus it was it was difficult for all our staff in special ed to return to in person with instruction with students they hadn't served and especially ninth graders that they essentially did not have a relationship with and again those are our most impacted kids that are not able to thrive on a comprehensive site

178um and uh we also lost some classified staff that was assigned to the classrooms again um those positions have all since been filled so we are definitely in a better space than we were when we opened school in august thank you other board member comments questions chris very quickly oh if i'm on i wanted this i wanted to acknowledge the challenge you three face uh and the importance of your work and there was a quick note in there about the rolling up the sleeves you did during the pandemic and i want to say thank you personally and i think that the district really owes you a debt of gratitude for that work and that willingness to step in where it was greatly needed grateful for the report the piece that's missing that i hope that

179that is appropriately missing this year i think that i guess i'd like to see in future years are some measures of outcomes for students we saw accounts and we saw programs and we saw money and we always see money but but i didn't see a measure of how students are doing and i know that we have to take that in context i i know educational measurement is difficult but but still would like some conversation about the metrics that you personally use to assess whether we're being successful and that that gets shared with us is important yeah and real briefly um when i started here in 2018 just as an example of measurement we had 65 students in non-public schools and we just looked at the number today and we have 30 students district-wide and our

180increase in total number of special education students is about 250 more than we started with in 2018 so you're absolutely right we closely track our least restrictive environment and our goal really is to have students be educated at their home schools in districts i'm asking for more than that not just the programs that are how many kids we have in the programs that we have but how how are they doing we have on the district dashboard which we haven't reviewed there there is a breakout i think for special education students i'm not sure that those are the appropriate measures i'm not sure that when we haven't looked at that in a while but base the basic question is how are we doing serving the students thank you we will uh have that report for you

181yeah and it's sort of a request now i was going to of going to respond trustee thompson that we will get back um with the report uh regarding the student progress over time and what was some of the root causes and how they were mitigated so we will give a report at the next meeting um to the board with your question thank you shaunice thank you all for your report tonight um i really appreciate it i think we don't always get to hear from our students in special ed services and what kind of services are supporting them for the long long term as far as their academic growth their social emotional learning their mental health whatever it is that they're eligible for i do have a couple questions i'm just gonna run through them and

182then maybe you guys can answer them um i had actually sent you all an email thank you so much for responding about um especially you had different educational categories so the one of the beauties of special education when you talk about diversity of learners it is everything from um other health impairments to multiple areas of long-term disabilities that's going to be with them for a lifetime or something that's just for their learning so it's very very diverse and so i know within that beauty of that diversity and spectrum that there's also challenges and there's also um different tools for different kiddos who have different profiles and learning abilities um so when i asked you guys about the breakdown of the eligibility one of the things that stood out is that 70 of the individual who

183have ieps have learning disabilities meaning that i'm assuming that there's like adhd there's a reading disorder there's dysgraphia all these kinds of things and so my question for that one uh is that are they in general ed and i think that that's very important i'm looking at bonnie because you do the educational services so that is different than a kiddo who's at green or let me change that in that kid oh sorry student or learner who is that i'm seeing bonnie's head i'm saying it right at green street or a satellite plus is very different than it could been a student or a person who's learning in a general ed um environment so how no it are those kids in general ed um are they being included and if so how do you support the

184teacher because i can only imagine with the diverse learners in the classroom and when i say diverse learners i'm really thinking about how kids learn not their not the diversity of race and equity but more so the diverse learners like how did the teacher get support with all of that and what does those services look like for those kiddos because i saw the broke breakdown for like autism and speech and all that good stuff and then my next question is um here it is one of the things i'm interested in i'm not for sure if it's on the docket or if we can do it dr williams but feeling like parents need their own like advisory for parents who have children with different learning abilities um i don't know if there's a place on site

185councils i'm but those those these are very different than the individuals with who who can um don't need as much support intensive support so those are my two questions and the other thing that i noticed is that there's been an increase since the pandemic and i was wondering even if it's a guess where is the movement is it a 504 plans is it an iep so that we can begin to kind of think about not just this school year but what do we need to think about for the future uh thank you trustee stevenson um in terms of the specific learning disability which is the largest category uh because what it what it tells us it's a processing deficit and there is a standard deviation through etcode that determines eligibility for specific learning disability so

186what that means is that there is a relative weakness in an academic area that is 22 points below the mean and so it's a discrepancy model that we're utilizing and when we're saying specific learning disability it's a large term that could include auditory processing visual processing it's not just one thing it really is a huge bucket if you will of relative weaknesses and so when we're talking about supporting those students what we're really looking at is where does the relative weakness show up in the academic progress and when we're talking about general education you could have a specific learning disability with a weakness in math but be perfectly doing well in english language and so for english you could be in a general education class no additional supports needed but your relative weaknesses in math

187and then we can add study skills class a specialized academic instruction class a co-taught class so the supports are determined by where the relative weaknesses based on the processing deficit um yeah that that doesn't quite answer my question uh so huh i'm sorry about dr williams if it's okay if i may yes if we can take the questions and then um we can work on a response to the questions thank you and i'd appreciate that and so with the teams thank you i learned today about or from the presentation that there's some additional site satellite and satellite plus um are those the only places are there more besides the names the school there's a list of schools outside this building on the wall and satellite satellite plus are on there are there others that have

188students that are run by the district and what are their names we have and how many students are at them we have our post-secondary program it's called trace which is on the sequoia outskirts there are 84 students in five classrooms and it's for students ages 18 to 22 who earns a certificate of achievements and need an additional four years in a transition program there's trace there's satellite and there's satellite plus and can you remind me how many are satellite and satellite plus uh there are 24 students in satellite plus and 38 in satellite okay and then you mentioned that there are 30 in non-public schools currently yes are those the same ones when we see settlements in closed session that's the 30. no settlements there there is a difference between students on a settlement agreement

189and students who are in a non-public school because of their iep okay so does do the numbers in special ed include the settlements yes are they in services yes in contracts are you are you referring to the budget the slide that has money by year in category yes they're included and i'm wondering which category the settlements are in under services and then under contracts services are our contracts services and contracts are the same yeah okay and so the 30 and do we know how many are in totals and settlements is that something that is not not enough yeah i'm just trying to get an idea of the scope is it okay and then i guess the general question um i learned tonight about the satellite and satellite plus programs how do you think about so

190there's 30 in non-public schools some number that have settlements make up a number there's 50 people that aren't served by the district what sort of analysis or how often do you think about would it make sense to open a program to meet the needs of some of those students perhaps even offer this program to other students in the county that would pay to send their students here like what's the what's the process like for thinking about is that something you think about and and and if so like how let me just give some thoughts about er how do you think about that how do you think or is there something you think we should do that we're not doing or you think it's just right as it is and i don't know i'm not really

191asking a specific question but just kind of your thoughts on can we serve more of our students in a way that makes sense and does better for them and can we help others in the broader area by meeting needs in a way that yes and i can guarantee you that's something i think about of all the time my team thinks about it all the time and what we what we found was um in the with the development of satellite and satellite plus we prevented tens of students not having to go to a non-public school at a cost of a hundred thousand dollars plus per student and also giving them a much richer experience in their own community so on a philosophical and ethical and moral and equity level it's always best for a student not

192to have to be separated and be in a more restrictive setting so i think that's an area where we are making progress where where it's going to be difficult for us is legally when students matriculate to the high school district from the elementary district there is something in the law which is called statehood and that means that the iep that the elementary district developed and that parents consented to at the time will transfer over to the high school district and we're obligated to make what we call a conf comparable offer and when that offer we inherit is a non-public school it will be difficult for us to not offer a non-public school and some of the ideas that we're working on is because of our relationship with beacon what what could happen if we designate

193a classroom at our green street campus as a non-public school classroom so that legally we can make a comparable stake put offer that's something that we're working on we are in discussion with that i know crystal has done a lot of work with contracts and what it looks like it requires the non-public school to request from the state a specific code so the classroom is designated as a non-public school classroom so we're working on that behind the scenes again we didn't covet really did a little bit of a number on us because we essentially had to restart from scratch because the students that we intended to serve in person were you know virtually for this year but those are definitely some of the options that we're looking into and then you know down the road

194we can expand by having san mateo county students attend that program at inter district transfer rate but again that will come once we have confidence that we serve our kids first who live here yeah great i mean i'm interested in seeing as much of that as you you all think makes sense to do so thank you so i also want to thank you for a great presentation uh thank you also for the for the careful effort to use all of the the full phrases behind that huge pile of acronyms um i know as as a 12-year veteran of receiving these updates uh you see the acronyms and you see the acronyms and they kind of become part of your background and then everyone smile you look at them and say i've got no idea what

195that stands for so i appreciate that it kind of uh helps it all right out in context and it's also obvious why you want to be able to use acronyms and actually move your conversation along and i also had wanted to make a comment along the lines of what rich was just checking into it it sounded like from what you said that our that our non-public placements have basically been cut in half over uh recent years um which i think is is a tremendous accomplishment it really you know it means that we are very effectively increasing our capacity to deliver faith and which is free and appropriate public education to all of our students and you know the the the core of what we're after of course is to provide the the right appropriate service

196to every student we possibly can and there are going to be certain circumstances where there is specific niche expertise and resources available in some non-public setting with which we just can't feasibly compete against and and it's going to be the best outcome for the student to take advantage of what's been painstakingly set up outside the public schools rather than the best the public schools can do to to compete against it but the fact that we are offering more and more of what works for more and more of our students is a tremendous testament to the work being done there and and another part of that is that at a at a bottom line level being able to do more of the work in-house really is less expensive to the taxpayer at the end of the

197day and it means that not only are we delivering what our special ed students need more and more but we are we are not diverting as much additional resource from other classrooms as we would have to otherwise so um that's the kind of win-win we really wanted so i i definitely didn't want to let that slide by without comment um so it was uh overall a great presentation thank you i i know that dr williams is for good reason eager for us to wrap up but i just do have to say that the fact that they have gotten so many kids back from private placements over the last two years really does need to be highlighted i mean they've opened up two programs mostly during a pandemic families are choosing them and kids who had

198to move away from home to get an education who didn't get to stay in their own communities are now in their own communities in a more quality program building relationships with people around them doing internships at places where they can work after they leave us during the pandemic ilya was the district of all the administrators district-wide ilya was the one who got the least vacation time of everybody and she and her team were tireless in the supports that they provided to kids and at the board level it was pretty much crickets from our sped families because of the work that they were doing to keep the wheels turning and to keep our sped kids engaged and i'm just we can always do better and we'll get you some information that you definitely need and should

199have but i'm just so grateful for this team and what they've done for our kids okay we return to action items and move down the home stretch 15.4 is approval of the ninth grade math placement long time no see bonnie hello and for this item we got diana wilmot joining us diana tell us about our math placements and our english placements we do this annually we're back again but i will let diana take it from here hi there how are you nice to see everybody awesome oh and good to see you too thank you thank you for taking the time to meet with me tonight and talk about our placement for math and english language arts it it came up suddenly so i was but i'm ready um so we do this every year we

200talk about our efforts to make sure that students are placed appropriately at the beginning of the year make sure all kids are placed in classes and have the necessary supports that they need we use our english language arts placement chart uh from from this for the feeder schools coming in and then the math placement chart we use to figure out if kids are which math class they're going to to go into there were some changes to the placement chart last year um that were were positive and uh had both the impact of the pandemic and knowing that kids were coming from from their homes some of them testing at home and then testing again so there were some tweaks that needed to be made both you know from testing in january to testing in may

201to maybe testing again in the summer school and then again when they started at the fall so we waited a little bit longer to present i think than we normally would have um but i can say that students have been properly placed and i've made all the necessary calls and checks to our counselors and our students are properly placed in english language arts and math two items diana could you speak a little bit to how many kids were moved from one english class to another and the directions in which they were moved yeah i believe it was something like 22 i reviewed 22 students um and sorry i'm just gonna bring it up my apologies um in the board item i wrote it out how many students i reviewed um in the end i know

202for are we talking about english language arts or math first ela please ela okay my apologies um now let's just bring up the book agenda i was so engaged in listening to that special education were reviewed 22 were reviewed and um and i i believe it was everybody was placed appropriately so i did i have how many were moved in or down or up it was something like um i shouldn't i should rattle off the number exactly as as the paragraph reads my apologies bonnie but i do know that any placements of movement were due to parent parent choice moving the student to a level down we were concerned that there might be a lot of movement because for the most part students took these tests for placement on their own at home and we

203were very pleased that there was so little movement of it and there was as much movement i think there was more movement up than there was anything else all of these are done with parent consent now with us not having algebra readiness students would be placed into algebra based on the class they had the year before or higher and we are actually this year doing a review of our literacy program and our english supports and their effectiveness and we may be looking at some changes for that for the following year so stay tuned on that front but like like diana said when she started we've we've checked everybody's where they're supposed to be everybody's got a waiver from a parent if a movement was made and there were not many movements made bonnie is it

204fair to say at this point that at least in math the rubric represents a guarantee of a floor that basically every student will be placed at least at the level that you know that they should buy by every kid will start our in our district in a uca through g approved math class and that with uh with the math project and everything else we've opened up more opportunities for greater advancement absolutely and we will be back in december with a report on that for you guys so so to me i mean in general the the equity guarantee rubrics that we you know that um was very much driven in math and we put the equivalent in place in english they have they have been kind of the baseline upon which we've been building our equity

205efforts and that um essentially within the normal operations of the district students are guaranteed at least that guarantee of equity or better i don't know if i would go that far but i do think and i don't know that it's we've only been building on academics but i think we're in a way better place than we were four years ago i don't know that you're wrong i just need to think about it and look at some data to decide if that if i were in a much better place than we were in providing equity but in and i just wanted to say one of the things the mathematics placement act of 2015 ensures is that students are not repeating eighth grade their eighth grade math course um you know through subjective measures so i you

206know one of the areas that we really focus on and making sure that kids aren't necessarily replicating um over and over the same math course content um so our math placement chart did take into account the students course that they were enrolled in and instead of doing a placement test we did a readiness test for our math initiative that was very successful we were able to still identify students who are need of support but it was not about you know boxing them into a course that wasn't a through g um eligible so go ahead sorry diana no i just i just wanted to acknowledge that i mean i looked at every student um to make sure that you know if they were in you know even the students who were repeating geometry from eighth grade

207to ninth grade that there was there was an approval um and that's what parents um was we're requesting i struggle with your question about equity in academics because i think we're in a much better place than we used to be and but you know we still have um higher numbers of students from certain partner districts starting math at higher levels or so there's still equity i don't know you know and then anyways it's complicated i mean to me the the the key sense of all of this is is opportunity and support yeah and that we are ensuring that we are not shortchanging any student on the level of opportunity um that they're that they're prepared to be successful at and we are not shortchanging any student on providing the kind of support to make them

208or to let them be successful at that level yeah i think that what we have done in many cases is that we have raised our expectations and put in supports to help kids meet those expectations so instead of i mean we saw it when our with our science change right we stopped having kids take advanced integrated science at the freshman year for which they did not get uca 3g credit and we had everybody go into biology or physics depending on the high school you attended and we had 107 more kids district-wide who were supposed to go into ais based on their previous year science who got a c or better and met a uc a3g requirement in their biology or physics class and we did not see a higher rate of failure in the freshman

209class in science by making that change so that's a really good example of where we put him in the game we said we're not going to have you keep practicing practicing your shots practicing your shots but never playing basketball we're going to put you in the game and we're going to coach you to help reach those expectations and get there and and that's great work yeah i mean to me this whole bundle is is really one of the most exciting areas of work that we have been doing and it it goes back i'm always reminded of a time bonnie that you stood in front of the board and said board you talk about wanting to be bold this is how you go about being bold and we're seeing it you know reflected across our incoming

210ninth grade classes and the opportunities that they are getting in in much greater numbers and the success that's being engendered um thank you this is what we've been after uh so so to me i mean that the fact that we have these rubrics again this is kind of at this point it is a compliance baseline that we've been living with with great fidelity for a number of years but we've got a great structure built on top of it so this is almost now an afterthought it's a good way to check that we're not we're not screwing up anywhere right but what we're doing is a lot more than what these safeguards yes represent i totally agree with that and and and so seeing how much fidelity there is to the safeguards is just kind of

211reassuring of okay we're built on a solid foundation so i'm i'm really pleased to see that um i've monopolized this other board member comments or concerns all right um these are uh are there any public comments questions on this one before i move on and ask for action um these are two different approval items although we've discussed them together so uh let's do them one at a time for approval and i'll be eager to have a motion of approval for the math placement don't move second i heard chinese second all those in favor aye aye okay who who is eager to move approval for the english placement verification [Music] okay all those in favor aye all right excellent thank you so much thank you for not firing me when i suggested doing something bold thank

212you bonnie oh look at this we're in danger of not having to ask to extend the meeting beyond 10 o'clock um let us talk about future agenda items and there's one one comment i wanted to throw in here that i hope will become a little bit of future uh discussion i think in almost every topic we touched on tonight we talked about the extraordinary effort that members of our staff have put in and the focus the extra time the going the extra mile one thing in another and something we hear about continuously is everybody's worked and worked and worked and they are very tired and they're very stressed um i think it would be very uh appropriate and valuable for uh this board to consider putting together some sort of a resolution recommending that our

213district go through a deep shutdown this winter break and that beyond making available the services that our community members need from us during the break that our faculty and staff do not have carry over responsibilities through the break and that our students do not have carryover academic responsibilities through the break and that this is one board member's suggestion for a topic of discussion uh if there are other board members something similar but maybe slightly more broad thank you i'm not used to this yet our student trustees have talked about stress for students i've heard bathrooms i've heard homework um one of our presenters asked a rhetorical question what is causing trauma there's probably a number of things that you know there's pressure and one way to relieve pressure is hire additional people to shoulder more

214of the burden but there are perhaps other ways a deep shutdown over winter break is a possibility i made aware from a friend of friend at crystal springs that they have every whatever eighth weekend is like zero work over that weekend um or something along those lines there may be other ideas i'm not married to any one particular idea or any particular ideas but i think looking at different ways that we can reduce stress or give some amount of relief to our students and to our staff that would be acknowledgment of all the hard work and acknowledgement of the mental health issues or mental health stress whatever those are would be what i would propose as a topic alan so slightly more broad but it would include what you're saying that was one of my

215items as well i actually was gonna i'll bring up some of the things that i've been doing over the last couple of weeks just getting to know our school a little bit more and kind of what's happening i think there are some things we can do around mental health it may not be hiring more staff but because we are in a crisis i think we need to think of ourselves as fema and say exactly what we need for a short amount of time that's a quick fix that preserves our mental health counselors and academic counselors for the kids you really don't want to go to someone else who you don't know but maybe there's something else that they can do you can come in like a call center and just be there for a couple

216of hours triaging kids or triaging adults who are struggling right i think we have to start thinking way outside the box um as i think about and i'm not talking about traditional mental health talk therapy but just also well-being and thinking about my own family just having to rethink what that looks like for us because we are coming out of a crisis but we're in this transition phase where you still need support we're not back normal and so i want for us to think about what does re uh what are some band-aids we can do for short term to preserve our teachers particularly because i heard the students that was really important to me to hear our teachers are tired and they are the tools for at for high quality education but our students there's

217probably some synergy happening there right where teachers are feeling what students are feeling and so no one's naming it and so there's some synergy there so i would love for us to put that in the context of that but looking at it from an emergency perspective all right uh superintendent does it feel like you've gotten a good sense of what the board would like to talk about so i don't want to uh just cc i know you've got something to contribute so i'll let you in just to say i just i don't want to actually have the discussion now because it's not agenda but i think we have a sense of what we would like to agendize and yeah please thank you and so to kind of avoid discussing it but i think this is

218a really great point um and something i'd love to discuss further and i think there are a lot of like pitfalls that um can can come up with even trying to find ways to reduce stress so like those are things that we'll really need to be quite intentional about um and you know obviously you want to uh work to reduce stress but do that in an intense intentional and meaningful way as kind of more to prevent it just from being an empty gesture of like oh this is what we're doing you know is your stress reduced but to actually really like follow up on it and so i think that we should really keep that in mind when we move forward and have these conversations and carlos also wants to say something um yes so

219um last meeting i kind of made a an address to the students directly and i said that isabelle and i are here to represent them and represent them we will at sac yesterday we heard from a student who wanted us to keep in mind something that they referred to as cultural competence um which is a very complex subject and we only heard really just a few minutes of it and i'm fascinated to hear more about it and more points of view about it but when talking about something as complex as mental health and the ways a district can work to support students when it comes to mental health i think that something really important we need to keep in mind that that aspect of cultural competence um it it's not so widely accepted in every

220culture for better for worse that that mental health is something we can talk about and something that we can actively um keep an open dialogue about so not to track things out further but i do think that that's something that unfortunately does fall behind sometimes when it comes to planning these kinds of things and talking about these kinds of things absolutely and in response um to the trustees we will make recommendations because um i would think it would require convening groups of folk to get input so that as you say to not just say this is what we're going to do but actually survey folk and see where they are and what's causing some of the stress outside of the obvious and so we are concerned about our workforce we're concerned about our students we're

221also concerned about getting to the end of the year successfully with everyone whole and also um respected and we will find ways to work through it together so thank you i appreciate your comments yes the two requests i have um happen to correspond to two points that needed the fcpa and one is about the substitute shortage and i just don't have an awareness of the comments there and common emails from others about the issue and how we're able to respond [Music] you talk about your uh i i support both of those um topics i see rich nodding at least i think what she was referring to um we have you know students that have been seeking asylum arriving at our schools and that's something we've never talked about like what support we give so it's

222a little bit more narrow than the whole english language learner topic and our collaboration with stanford so i believe that's what she was talking about and that's what i've heard is a huge issue at our sites so i'd like it to be a little bit more narrow because that's a you know what types of support trauma-informed supports are we giving kids that we know have been through trauma and they're arriving at our campus [Music] um president sarver sorry i'm just doing a check we're now over okay well we we didn't get out the door at 10 o'clock so would anybody like to continue for another few minutes until we wrap up i'll accept a motion rich would like to continue with anybody okay and shawnee seconds all those in favor of continuing until closure okay

223we're gonna plow through okay so just a refresher um the three of us were on a i think it was a county zoom and we met with a community college district trustee and then we discussed the idea of doing like what we call a two by two we decided that we didn't want something that formal that he contacted me again and asked about a single meeting not having an ongoing thing but a single meeting and i see it could go two different ways it could be superintendent with two board members meeting with two of their board members and their i guess chancellor and president or we invite them to come to one of our meetings and and have a sharing of information that's already scheduled i guess you just didn't know that okay so the

224their trustee didn't know that and reached out to me and i didn't know that so um i can get back to him if you have some details of a date yeah that's in our friday update i've been working with uh dr lopez and so um no it's not a date yet but we'll get you to date so she has to share it with her trustees and so i will keep you oppressed and i can share with them that it's in this process and he can talk to um dr lopez yes thank you i just want to be clear that we've all had several calls from the college district and i just want to make sure we're saying the same consistent messages because we're not able to you know talk freely because of the brown act

225i do think we need to push that through um through our superintendent because i know i've gotten two or three calls regarding getting a meeting and different ways i know bonnie has met with them because of um their inquiry at the begi you know inquiry at the beginning of the year shawnee's not knowing what to do which is no problem i've been sent an email but i just want to be clear like there's a process [Music] um something to put on the agenda and i don't know if it's the right timing yet but to begin to think about our language and how we talk about kids or describe kids i love how bonnie used our partner district i know that we did some changes some in the resolution but i'm just wondering how we can

226have a clearer conversation i know rich and i had talked about this a little bit more what are the top 10 words that always come up when we're talking about kids and how do we really my kids see that's that's one of them students sorry student trustees sorry it's the mama and me um so i am also trying to change my language um and it's you know some things are a little bit more difficult because i'm in a formal state right now but i would love for us to come up like you know the top 10 ways we talk about certain students because um because of the federal regulation and things that i saw we get reports how can we talk about them in a that would respect their learning respect who they are so

227it's just something that came up for me now i would think that um touching on this kind of language is is going to be part of um or something that can be touched on as part of the trainings that we've got coming up i think that is one of the areas of um respect and sensitivity um that would be part of what we're gonna touch on yeah but i think that's something we can if there's a direction or somewhere where we can actually talk about specific terms so even though we're waiting for training at least i know this is how i'm gonna talk about instead of disability those with different abilities like just certain terms really quick the top 10 until we get our training but until then we're going to use certain language when

228we talk about students or how we talk about students i don't know so that was the only thing that was on my mind for our agenda items have we heard from from everybody i i think that might take might be as interesting as uh perhaps the superintendent could uh kind of collect input from from various board members and staff members of you know what what are a handful of phrases you've heard dropped around board meetings that just kind of made you cringe that would be worth talking about and it would be completely independent of whose lips it came out of but just here's something to be sensitive to that someone wasn't at some point um i will work with um our team to propose um a response to what you're requesting yeah i won't go

229shooting off the top okay if uh if everybody's had their their shot at input um let's say we were very close to tan and call it almost successful chinese you've got one more i i wanted to let you all know that i met with the student trustees thank you all for meeting with me we have really good student trustees we keep getting them good every year so i'm excited that i met with both of you all i really appreciate it on november 1st we're going to have our first town hall at tight academy am i correct so people will be hearing more about that had the honor going all of us went to the epa moving forward and then i just want to let you all know that i visited the zinden at menlo atherton

230which is basically they have as an innovative response have created this room where students can just drop in whether you have an iep a 504 plan or just if you just want to take a break i think trustee steve talked about this room is b22 um it's a beautiful concept and they've had over 400 kids drop into that center for different reasons with the past and things of that sort so i just want to let you guys know there's some innovation out there so thank you yes and that that reminds me i know we we have uh the board has all received a uh special invitation to uh attend uh the m.a homecoming game and i know that at least uh several board members are planning to take take up that offer and uh superintendent

231will be there so we'll we'll look to a another reunion friday evening so with that we say uh go bears and uh go giants [Music] and and uh i'll be happy to hear a motion for german i move that move us to german all right all those in favor stand up and walk out thank you everybody is