001parents addressing the board please fill up and request to speak public comment blue card and submit to the board secretary become you card tonight Thank You ghost I listened so tonight I was looking at the 13 although there's no report the resolution the resolution because starts with you know what the governing board required to do for education this hearing within first eight weeks of school and then it goes down to City Board provided at least ten days notice the public hearing by posting it in at least three public places within the district time and I'm not you know it doesn't say where those places are it could be here with you and those are to say that the board encourages participation [Music] my biggest yes my name is Lizbeth Ghidorah this is Jeanette Trinidad we
002are Quality Assurance coaches for the thing together and we're here with the general manager Irene bull idea as you may already know thinking together is a nonprofit provider after school programs in the Sousa Unified School District at auto elementary school sites and middle schools first on behalf of our things together staff we would like to thank all of you for your support and opportunity to bring our after-school and expanded learning we're going to the children of this district it is truly an honor to serve this community and enjoy to watch the children and a student flourish as students and as young people October 25th things together is taking part in a nationwide celebration as you may already know called lights on after school to showcase after-school programs and as Susan unified and then I enrolled
003these programs play in the lives of children families and communities being together was formed over 20 years ago with one community in California expressed a need for their children to have a safe place to go after school our founders saw that some hard-working parents select the means to pay for after-school programs and many kids have no one at home to supervise these kids did their homework without additional support and often would fall behind their peers today thing together delivers a program that not only provides a safe place for them to be but it also provides homework help and academic support healthy snacks physical activity and opportunities to explore new innovative subjects such as robotics and Cody millions of families across the country depend on after-school programs but lawmakers in Sacramento question the value of after-school
004programs and they continue to be underfunded and at-risk being together is unified to secure sustainable statewide funding solution for after-school programs and our lights on after school event will bring greater awareness to our collective cause to ensure that the Azusa and all over California have access to high-quality and well-funded after-school programs you're all invited to experience the power of after-school by attending our I think together once on after school event on October 25th at 4 p.m. posted at Murray Elementary we encourage you to join the children parents staff and community members whose lives impacted by after-school programs thank you for your time and we hope to see you on October 25th your no 6.0 reputation Awards super excited it is my honor to tell you about my team our team Lori Rey and Natalie Beltran
005who work as a team together Laura and Natalie are responsible for a monumental task of making sure that all of our instructional materials have been ordered and that sites and students have the instructional materials that they need whether it's textbooks library books mathematic manipulatives document based question curriculum expository reading and writing curriculum everyday mathematics college preparatory mathematics collections wonders world wonders history social science science foreign language Dual Immersion Island read 180 English 3d just to name a few and each of these programs have a multiple listing of the different materials and supplementary materials and text as well and they are responsible for working with all web sites on the fault textbook orders which incidentally does start in this spring they create purchase requisitions they extract delivery they communicate the updates to the sites as well
006as to me their teamwork together illustrates key communication skills not only as they collaborate with one another but also if they communicate with the sites Lorien Natalie you are a dynamic proactive problem-solving team who continually looks for better more improved systems and processes and although each day they demonstrate together collaboration and teamwork above all you model service and support the students and staff that you serve each day and for that we are truly grateful and grateful to work with both of you and appreciate the joy that each of you brings to a workplace each day and for the smiles and for the leftover the fun [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you welcome everybody I just like to mention that I hid things to my contacts in the Department of the
007army having been a veteran they reach out to me every once in a while and they are starting a new program with their their high school students who are signing up for the military and also wanting to reach out to the schools and deal with empowering our young ladies and something along like with the seminars they would love to join in on that also with athletics and just you know make ladies more well more aware that they have the right they they also can join the service you know you can do just as well especially in stem and also I'd like to remind everybody if you know any juniors who happened to be interested in going to the military academy they'll grace Napolitano office is hosting I don't have the date with me I'm sorry
008but just a contra website they're boasting a information evening so that in the military academies they give you a free education you walk in I know when I joined I was 22 and a half and so by the time I graduated I would be 23 and definitely four years later and so I didn't qualify with for it because of my age but our younger students or the people just getting out of high school as long as they're 23 they don't me exceed 23 by the time they graduate so it's seniors and first year out junior college they apply for it it's a full ride scholarship they have six years that they will need to serve but as an officer which I can guarantee you having parents that we're often everybody else being officers at my
009family it's it's a good deal they can learn how to fly planes I fix armament systems and computer systems back in 1983 I cover in Apache helicopters so the opportunities for everybody are so huge and they can transfer to something here and then when they get back into civilian life six years laters or they continue I don't have other than the fact that I just wanted to congratulate the recipients lower you and Natalie so I just picked into the warehouse I existed so it looks like a fun place to work you're doing it with passion and with love thank you okay yes I also want to congratulate Gloria and nugget for their hard work and their dedication to a US team and I want to mention I really enjoy the new banners that we're seeing
010around - thank you better for the bond measure they're very nice they're posted in all the school sites in the schools I'm looking beautiful and I also went to Citrus College their open house to help them out for automotive and easel truck technicians and we you know we mean we're introduced of faculty and also the past students of our high schools that go there now they they show the students of course that they needed changing over they wanted to be Master Technicians and it took us a tour it's a beautiful facility and they had demonstrations on how to work on cars what mr. Harris was there the art teacher from the Gosselin high school and he was there to support his past students that he said out of the students were his students and my
011grandsons in auto shop and I'm hoping he takes an interest in it cuz my husband was a master technician of Mercedes and BMW and we have a lot of Jews in the garage that I stopped safe for my grandson it's really nice and I want to thank culture the partnership and I also went to the park to attend a luncheon for the LA County education of teachers 2000 future the year excuse me 2018 19 which is Rosie had at a fourth grade teacher at paramount school and well deserved I've seen her in the class in action and yeah she's very effective and I see why she won her award I went to 40 little school for the sixth grade Renaissance rally where um I was very impressed with these students did you know perfect attendance
012stood at 10:55 students already and they had bronze medal which is two point five to two point nine nine 18 students silver GPA 3.0 to 3.4 1933 students gold medal GPA 3.5 could be point nine forty students Platinum GPA 4.0 17 students so total 108 students six great students and it was so great for them to get started already in there right on the right foot you know and I also want to mention on October the trophy they are LV Azusa Gators to learn Educational Foundation which is newly formed for a couple years we're gonna have a gator dance at the Women's Club 6:00 p.m. and all proceeds will be going to the students and staff about to the Unified School District so if you ticket and having our board meeting there I also wanted
013to say later on the next week it was it was great to be able to go and watch the kids get awards as well for character and for attendance and so my son got the character work first class for the first month yeah so I guess his good behavior for school but now I want to really appreciate just all the work that's gone in in the beginning of the school year I think we've got some really great school year and I'm looking forward to that report we're gonna have a little while about about the results from the test scores last year and some of the new initiatives are doing and for myself I just want to apologize for not being here last couple board meetings I actually work in the evenings now so it's been
014very difficult to take some time off to these especially are extremely busy where I met so I just want to oppose it but and also thank my fellow board members for for stepping up and covering the site I appreciate that so really excited about tonight and the presentations for tonight so we'll move forward here we're on 8.0 comments and requests are you just calling appearing with this science parent room 19 through 11 and October 10 PS 18 the SAT test engineers and through 12 p.m. October 10th exam of tolerance field trip seniors 8:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. October 17 coffee with the principal parent to bring 18th great shakeout earthquake zero in that 10:18 a.m. blacks on high school October 3rd and 4th a day Northern California October and foreign fall report card night back
015some high school gym at 6 p.m. October 6 I'm sorry I'm sorry 12 I'm coming around the events of high school in 11 again up to with the 13th bag as a simple today's parade 9 a.m. October 13th and 14th JROTC accent a Missouri rodeo color party 6 again through 6 p.m. October 13th homecoming dance class on high school gym 6 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. ultimate 15 CA da Pasadena Convention Center October 15 Spanish financial aid night room C 16 6:00 a.m. through 8 p.m. October 18th great shakeout earthquake drill 11:10 7:18 a.m. as a sizeable October 3rd report car tonight 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. October 4th homecoming rally 11:30 October for homecoming game vs Sierra beast at 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. October 5th PLTW and a Renner [Music] so my face
016and say I'm coming dance October 6th in the gym six hands through champion October 8th and through 12 Best Buddies crispy fundraiser October 11 processing and torn up two winning teams great shakeout Jim hard at work we have a retro or so very excited to get that out our maintenance department has also been hard at work getting our LED lights as problems we have several schools that have already been completed with interior lighting we have lots of time Ellington Valley Dale Murray Center Foothill and Magnolia that had and complete it and we're currently working on Longfellow and the district office but what we're currently working on right now playgrounds are also going in across the district we're near completion at common POW and 90% there at Glasgow Street and about 50% at nineteen oh yeah
017so well underway on those projects so very excited to get those out assurance services has also been hard at work in getting those menial absent those a reminder for our families you know laps are vital beyond just getting a free meal or or reduced price meal for the district it also means our funding our I'll see if that formula is dependent on those meal apps getting in and so if you have not submitted your app to my records thank you I just want to report that on Wednesday September 12 thing together took students from Foothill middle school to attend yomo Los Angeles yomo stands for youth mobile steam festival that festival was also also featured events in Barcelona and Shanghai the event was hosted at the LA Convention Center and there were over 30 different
018vendors and participants that hosted and design hands on steam experiences for our students and so we're very happy that our students were able to participate in that we participate in a professional Learning Network pln called lcff Test Kitchen we met on Thursday September 27th to update our project goals and to share our progress and our development and our prototypes right now that is featuring two animated infographics one in English and one in Spanish they're in prototype boat still but they're probably 95% there and they're gonna serve to communicate about the outcome stakeholder engagement process for our community and we'll be able to give you a sneaky peek here pretty soon but based on the work that we have been doing here in Azusa the young lcff Test Kitchen team has been asked to participate in
019a presentation at the California educational research Association Sarah and the annual conference in November so we're very excited that we were asked to do that because of the work that our team has done and more excited to show you the prototype they'll be coming up here and pretty soon thank you one of the things I'm very proud of for our district as a whole is that we are often asked by other districts and other organizations to join with them and to share our perspective our experience our and our expertise and I thought I'd just talk about one professional Learning Network we are also in another professional Learning Network with the California School Boards Association on what should be the role of the school board and burnt in development and implementation and monitoring of the elk
020cabin as part of that then this is now we're starting our third year on that that group and as part of that we have been invited two percent at the California School Boards Association and no meeting in December so just really happy to share how much the work that's happening in this district is is being recognized and honored and valued by professional organizations throughout the state thank you okay now nine points are a report action of closed session matters thank you I am very happy to give you really it's really the most hot off the press presentation on test scores that has ever happened in California the test results were released this morning at 10:00 a.m. and the state was late in terms of there's time to schedule they've had a problem with some scoring
021and that took a lot for them to get resolved typically we would have received these results probably at least in the middle of September is not the beginning of September but we waited and waited and they finally came out today at 10:00 I got on my computer at 10:05 I think Jennifer Bryant was probably on at 10:01 and downloading and looking at how the how the results aren't so we have really breaking news for you and the news is good really police this is this year we have seen more gains overall than we have ever seen you'll see that as we go through it in terms of just the number of stars around pages so we're going to look tonight at two big areas one is we're going to look at the performance of children
022our students on the saga it's called the cast the California assessment of performance of progress that's the annual assessment that students take in language arts and math and this is the state test that we aren't kids taken into May and then the other part we're going to look at various college readiness measures that our students are moving forward on you want to move to the next slide so this is that it's like that is the most one of the press because California state had not released any information about how well the state was performing on the assessment till just this morning what this light shows you that our district Azusa has increased and that the whole point of the state accountability system is to go for continuous improvement look to see year after year after
023year are your students doing better and you'll see in this chart the blue is in Suzhou and from last year to or from two years ago to last year in English language arts our students gained for 4.0 4.0 to 2 percentage points in the number of students who percent of students have never exceeded the standard statewide the increase the one year increase was only one point three two so we are almost quadrupling our progress is much faster and statewide is showing and that is true if you take the long term view and look from 2015 when the state first implemented this test to 2018 we've grown 8.33 percentage of points and statewide that growth rate has only been five point eight points so in both looking at it from two years ago you know when
024you're in time interval versus that the four year interval our students are gaining faster than students throughout the state on average so congratulations to the teachers the parents students than structural aides everybody who has in hand the textbooks with the Lord and you know we couldn't be doing it without everybody's work together and that really is is very impressive highly statistically significant result that we know is a result of a lot of hard work and dedication throughout the district so thank you to everybody I think that deserves a round of applause let's go to the next slide now we're going to start to dig into what the results are so this slide shows you were in English language arts by grade level how the kids did from 2017 to 2018 and you'll see across the
025the slide that most of those were in colored bars are significantly the stars above me that's a significant increase in significant gain in performance that's good news that overall the far right is the overall average response and then the ones before that other particular grade levels so you can see in that every grade level except for six and eight that made significant gains that's pretty impressive okay next slide please this is showing the same kind of information but asking how our English learners doing it you'll see that the first set of bars are score 76 and that's not a significant difference that's that's basically the same result from earlier for English learners now by definition English learners are students who do not speak read or write English proficiently they're learning English so it it is
026to be expected that their scores are going to be significantly lower the next group up are the what's called car thefts or reclassify to redesignate fluent English Proficient students so these are students who have gone through the English eld if they finished it they compress and they have reached the status of being as proficient in English as a native born English speaker and you can see that they're doing outstanding work and showing gains from year to year and then over on the far right is a reference point of the all students what you'll notice is the the are fed kids aren't actually doing far better far better than all students overall that speaks to the value of the eld program in house working with our students and getting them really very very proficient in English
027so that they can achieve quite well but again the year to your gains is present next we continue to look at different groups of students the first group of foster students we don't have data from from 2017 because the state didn't disaggregate it that way they didn't provide that to us homeless students however we do have two years worth of data and we see an increase a significant increase their students with disabilities - refers to students who are participating with special education program and by definition to get into that problem they already have to be at least two years below grade level in terms of their performance levels so these are students who who need a lot of extra support to to afford but are already starting at a level that is is lower than
028other students and seediness students with economic disadvantages and you'll see that they're moving forward nicely and again just for reference that all students next slide please this is looking at ethnic and racial groups so african-american student progress is at the district average 239 however it did not grow is actually a hit last year and stay the same this year Asian students took a little dip there their numbers are small and so that that didn't really is not a significant change for them though in the middle students took a rise their numbers are actually a little bit bigger so that is a difference for them Hispanic Latino students and the white students all showed increases from 2017 to 80 some good news that we're getting increases in the almost all of our students except we need
029to look at the African Americans - that's a very small number of students but it's an important group we want to make sure that that trajectory changes now looking into particular schools and asking ourselves what kind of where are the schools really reaching and attaining pretty strong results that first on the left-hand side says achieve then as which of the schools in rank order from the top high schools that are to make significantly well you see the glance of high school in English language arts 69% of their students who took the test meant or exceeded the state standard and just as everyone has more than statements in average that's exactly right it's very good this is a body not too far behind at 56 and then you'll see paramount bleep el-hajj Magnolia and burning all
030schools that are really doing well in accelerating students even in reaching higher levels they want to Norma come on shows here she she was the principal last year at Marina I want to thank her for her work because last year Marie make really strong gains that's right there you are well you know what the work that went into that right but congratulations it really paid off you make a difference for those students thank you thank you okay and then the next the next half of this slide is the growth how many points percentage points did did this course change so for example Magnolia they gained behind the most change in language arts this last year their scores went up 12 percentage points so if you see on the on the left hand side were says
031they were at 43% so last year they were at 32% and they went up to weld points which is enormous just enormous oops can you go back current yeah that's that's really very very strong performance okay there we go into the back they're looking at their growth of schools Magnolia Dalton limestone Street glass from high school Lee Murray and paramount making really strong games gyro reader okay now let's go to the next slide please so here are the highlights of what we saw for annual goals overall our district grew four percentage points from last year's a or two years ago seventeen 2017-2018 and I will you know later on in the next work many I'll go into the the growth aspect more on more thoroughly but just to know this is statewide the growth is
032only a little over 1 one percentage point and we basically quadruple then and and we also did more than LA County Student Success the groups that are doing especially well in moving forward economically disadvantaged students Hispanic students and white students the growth at certain grade levels that was really strong was 3rd 4th 5th 7th and 11th and you might ask well what about ninth and tenth the test doesn't give it to my content students so its third through eighth and then it skips to 11th grade and some of the highest achieving schools there are listed and then at the bottom is the school the schools with high gross but those are the ones we just listed let's go to the next slide please how are we building on these games we have a lot of
033success to celebrate but that doesn't going to slow us down we really want to continue that and keep that trajectory going this year we're doing a lot of work with eld in terms of professional learning communities focusing both on intervention time supporting English learners and also making sure that that does a daily time when the English learners receive English language instruction or English son which development searching is really strong and focused we have two textbooks and language arts the one-ders is the elementary both collections is at the secondary level this is our second year of having those curriculum and we will continue to work together collaboratively with teachers with the ptosis together to make sure that we hone our understanding of how to use these instructional materials and then the we are in the family
034program which stands for California language and what language and learning initiative this is a partnership with about 30 districts we applied for it a couple years ago to be part of it and we were in it and we're not actually working with Stanford we've been asked to join it on additional advanced training with Stanford so again another example this district is invited to participate in other things because the quality of the work that goes on here and at the beginning of the school year one of the things we did and it's two days already a staff development with all of our teachers to to work with them on strategies to really help the students develop the ability to think and articulate complex thoughts advanced vocabulary and learn how to deal with really rigorous kinds of
035topics and issues that they need to do and to do that across the subjects all in all subjects want to say think about that our good thank you okay great um now let's turn to math so again this is us compared to California you can see that we are far exceeding the state that gains that weekend so our from 17 2017 to 18 we went on three point eight nine percentage points in math and to the state which was 1.09 so again almost quadrupling what the state did and if we look at the long term 2015 2018 a long term gain again much finer than the state nine point two eight verses five and six live which means our kids are accelerating faster than kids throughout the state a lot to be and now we
036break it down by grade level and here we see the grades that are making the greatest gains at four five six seven and eleven and third-grade took a bit of it - and um eighth grade went up a little bit but it wasn't a significant change let's go to the next slide again looking at our English learners now somebody might say well what does an English Learner how does that have anything to do with mathematics and in the old days searching like when I was young and even up to maybe five years ago the focus of mass construction was memory memorizing math facts and being able to calculate answers quickly and of course correctly and it's all that today but more today's students are expected to really read analyze and compute answers to very complex
037problems I'm actually some some of the word problems that maybe would you know five years ago were maybe two or three sentences long now could be a whole page long story and background about what the situation is students have to think through which part of it is relevant which boy or do they have to go for additional information if they needed much much more complex and English learners because they are still learning English they're being faced with the challenge of reading and understanding these very complex problems so we do care very much to make sure that that of course they want our kids to another mathematics but we also want them to be able to use them in resolving very very problems so we see that the English learners there that's not a significant difference
038from year to year but given that they are still learning English it's likely the reading part of it that so that's difficult and then the the redesignate affluent the students who are now considered couple of you from what they're making some strong gains and then as a reference point aren't Ballston so we went on for the wins overall and let's look at disaggregated again the foster students we don't have two years worth of data for them but we do in homeless that's essentially that they wherever they went up in language arts this says basically they stay the same in math over the last two years same with the students in special education low-income students improved and said all students and now we look at african-american students made a highly certificate significant increase there from ten
039ten points gained in two thousand seventeen to twenty three master that's an amazing growth rate and in terms of where they were they are so going up 13 points there it's really not you see Asian American students growing the Latino Hispanic one a basically in that all students group now that last it was the second year of our our new math curriculum and typically when a school district adopts a new textbook it takes the first year you're getting used to the materials you're exploring them trying them out with the students the second year you're able to go deeper with them and we're starting to see them lay out in terms of the students doing much better so here are the highlights highness in the district the amount elementary school where 44 percent of their students
040met or exceeded the state standards on a test that is indeed very very difficult not to be left behind forty three percent at lea 14 ellington forty five and forty and Powell so desert high achieving schools there and then the growth lot of girls at Lee and you see Dalton Ellington nope you may only have been around congratulations to them overall on average we gained four points from 2017 to 18 where we can see that the Ella games and as you can as we saw in earlier slides we exceeded the statewide games economically disadvantaged students Hispanic students and white students are all making steady progress and actually the african-american students - we've got growth and happening across the board not so much at third and eighth grade which are areas that we're gonna watch and
041see what we can it improve that you saw the schools that we've listed pretty high achievement and also for high growth so how are we going to build on this well the focus is here is really on shared continued shared professional development around what's called standards of mathematical practice and that is how students like to do and how they learn to think and to reason and to discover and conceptualize that so that it's not just a matter of them only memorizing but really getting towards that deeper understanding that's needed for continued advancing now we are in year three ef4 is is the title or the acronym for our elementary math program everyday math fourth edition and CPM used to be called college prep math it's now called California prep math because it's a two-top did
042it and then district-wide implementation was Callie's so that what we're doing Language Arts in terms of having the contras think and reason solve complex problems to articulate that we're also doing a mathematics now moving on to college preparation there's a number of elements that go into making sure that our students have the option going to college first cousins they graduate and you can see that our graduation rate is very high and it's certainly much higher than the state average the state average is 83 anywhere between 91 and 96 in the two schools so kids in our district come to school and they graduate and so on actually one of the highlights of my life here is going to this graduation so it's just so exciting to see the kids and see how proud they are
043to walk across the stage next slide please we also wanted to have our kids be eligible to upon to account State or UC and to do that there's a series of 15 courses that they need to take just to be able to put their hat in the ring and what we're seeing is some nice increases in that and you see that now this is a high 44 percent of the students last year completed all 15 of those classes and have to complete them with a grade of C or better and Gladstone's not too far behind at 37% and basically we're just about at the state average and that is despite the fact that our background our demographics our student population is not at the state average we have many many more students who face challenges
044and infinite challenges or maybe lack of opportunities to start a preschool that's changing now but for those kids who were seniors last year they probably didn't have some of these opportunities that were on for now and yet despite that they're doing as well basically as kids across the state and it's a real testament to our staff and to the hard work that goes on because here is gonna fall under a different kind of accountability system they're a continuation high school and so the state always has a separate type of measurement for what they're doing now AP classes or advanced placement courses you'll see that um Anasuya it's pretty much remained unchanged forty to forty six percent of the students pass their test Gladstone had a real strong high two years ago 77% it was it
045was just way off the charts of anything they've done it they've been hovering around 40 to 50 to 63% where they are now so they're still really basically at the state average which again is very very strong result in slightly that's right um overall we have a couple other programs that we pay attention we pay attention to the AP so on average about the district 57% of the students who take an AP test pass and qualify to have that that course that they took count as a college course that they do not have to repeat so if you take AP English 12 you know Amy English in the fourth grader you pass that test you don't have to take freshman English with me a better college if you take AP Calculus II that's that that
046counts as your first jump to this class so half of our kids were taking these very rigorous very rigorous exams or action more than half are passing them and if we look at the ECP early college program s the partnership with Citrus College our students are enrolled taking suggest college classes while they're in high school again almost half of those students are passing their courses and now if we look at our brand new I need program our numbers are still small in terms of enrollment but basically over half of the kids who took those events also paxton so it's a good strong indication that as we watch over the years more and more kids getting into these programs and doing better and better and we'll look again and another time at more of a historical
047record on that but it's moving in the right direction so overall we see and eleventh grade now it actually used to be in previous years that the state took the 11th grade was results from the aspect for a language arts event and rolled it in to the status of result for district with the third through eighth grade they're gonna pull them out now have to separately include them in a section on college and career madness so we've gained four points in language arts and six points in math just at 11th grade our graduation is above the state average our collagen mobility has been increasing with that a2g completion rate we see our kids who are taking these really advanced courses through either ap or Citrus College or IB program are doing well and our SAT
048results are going up - so what are we doing to get these results where we do it we increased our graduation requirements last year we're now requiring students to have at least one year of a foreign language which is you know a good thing you know for the world of today and being able to communicate with oh beep well but it's a new requirement in a stretch for some kids we've reduced some of what are called non ABG electives so that more students are able to complete their Aug 15 minute requirement or 15 course requirement because they have more options within the school day that meet that we're looking at summer pre AP courses to prep kids if you went to a private school that paid $30,000 a year you would be enrolled in a
049summer pre AP course to get you ready for that course so we're looking at that - and then the last one is just really looking to continually increase enrollment in AP and the ECP program early college program and Oddity program so that more kids are really stretching themselves and a few years ago I was working in another another community that invited the woman who at the time was in charge for the UC system was in charge of admissions for all the UC Kent California campuses and asked a question that selects people one of them then should a student take an AP course that they may not pass the test on it doesn't matter if they get a three or five the scores range one two three four five yeah if you get a three four
050or five it counts for college credit is you know in each College can decide whether or not they want to do that but the question was what about should we tell students to not take AP courses and we think they're only going to give a three or that's a my kind of one or two and then head of the UC system for admissions for all the UC said no absolutely not you want every single kid who's interested in a need to take that course because she said what we're looking for is not the scored we're looking to see if the student is ready and willing to challenge themselves if they will rise to the occasion and we know that some of it will be hard for them but we want as college students kids who
051look are willing to kind of stick their neck out there and take a challenge to work hard at it and even if they don't succeed the first time they will eventually and that's what we're looking for so increasing participation and supporting our kids to do as well as possible on these tests is it really good in and of itself it's a good preparation for college there you go and USD you can just read it with me a USD on do you need to succeed thank you yeah I just wanna congratulate Arturo and your team for doing phenomenal job so I just wanted to ask couple questions about some of the explanatory factors in positioning where we are with this gains that we see based on the day you know so what are some of the
052measures that you I know that you've done a lot of training a lot of the implementation what are some other factors that you I'm gonna bite that ship in if I miss anything or any part of the team some of the things is we have been really partnering with schools with teachers not just saying you have to be LC or you have to CFA or you have to date or protocol but really partnering with teachers and coming together and learning together and growing together the toeses also we have been moving into schools so moving into a job embedded curriculum embedded professional development mentality so that professional development is about their curriculum and how to strengthen and how to focus and it's about their job so there's a direct connection to what I can do tomorrow
053and so the support from mitosis has been amazing one of the things we said from the beginning when we adopted our curriculums or is that we're going to provide the Platinum version of the material but also the Platinum version of the professional development and that we're gonna be in this together for the long haul it's an eight year process it's not one and done that we're gonna continue to grow and so that mentality of learning really just trying to infiltrate that and not only at the teacher level but also at the leader level so our site admin or resource teachers that were sending the same message about and that when they come here on a monthly basis that they're also getting professional development around curriculum and instruction in the sensations so I want you to
054address the unity how particular is that change or an implementation to reclassification process and how are you measuring that how what have you done is essentially that has provided the game that you see that what what particularly we're doing something different from in the past that's working so well there's been a greater emphasis on designated English language development that very specific time in addition to integrated eld so there's been a lot of professional development around supporting teachers and utilizing that support for English learners throughout their day norman's I can add also when you are a designated eld teacher sometimes you're an island and at your at your site right because we don't have a lot of those and so also bringing them together as a PLC group so they're working across schools and coming together
055with as practices or concerns together has also been very positive and we started that this year as well as to some schools how about the others Mountain View for example it's not on the list that has made some advancement for the 18 goals there's a lot of percentages how students are doing what about the other schools those are the points that are presented right there almost every school is making growth and significant growth and within I confer with all the schools about their status and what they're doing it in terms their plans based on the data and the results that me out but and that's in conjunction with the work that they're doing with after them okay I noticed in both of those that I said I know why is a little explanation with eighth
056grade I've noticed that that's where they're there's a damping you know everybody else is gaining and then eighth grades is either even and could you explain you know is it just because they're eighth graders because that's an option that's an option but it never gonna take it oh good and somebody once told me once that the reason eighth graders couldn't do algebra it was because of hormones however they do algebra in Europe they have the same hormones they do algebra in Asia and we have the same hormones so it's not that and really it's the work that we are doing to understand how do we support them what is it that the kids need and are we providing that and also what you see in general often times is when you adopt a new textbook
057the first and largest impacts tend to be at the elementary level because they Chanukah is the length of time with another approach and so students who move up and a higher level you've got more catching up to do and that's probably more like what it is [Music] note and you know hopefully we're starting to see the beginnings of that of that data again this is anecdotally only at this point in time but we are hearing from middle schools like sixth grade level and from from high schools that they already seen a difference on the students that are arriving at the campus so you know now that we're in our third year of mathematics and our second year of English language arts right hopefully that's that's a trend that's begin to uptick a lot from people
058the Preferences premise and I always say this that I mean I think as a board member it's important for us to recognize that this is one test that's given on one day and a school year and it well it's maybe a good guide to look at it's not really a judge of judgment to me in terms of how we're doing so so my question for you is because I know we do a lot of internal assessment formative assessment so are these results that we're seeing aligned with what internally we think of we think we see with our students as the years progressing yeah I think one of the things that again I want to just congratulate the teachers that serve on these leadership roles one of the things that we are starting to see it's
059a better assessment of our students and what I mean by that is that there is a match in in performance maybe I want to want but it's hovering around that we can see now on a more frequent basis to know how to react as adults and out of how we're working with students because what you don't want is the Flint right where our assessments are so easy or so low level that we get huge bubbles and it looks like everything is great but then when they hit the real world whether that's aspect whether that's I'll pack whether that's PSAT whether that's SAT whether it's the real world college entrance exam that there's not that there's a mismatch so I applaud the teachers who have been on the math leadership team the PLC that have really
060embraced the level of rigor and what is being asked of students and so so - that was a long-winded response to say yes we do see a better correlation than we have in the past [Music] I wouldn't want this to be wasting I would feel like it was wasting time to give you this advice to just to judge how we can do on this back when I'm really what we need to be doing is if we're going to turn away from classroom instruction and it needs to be focused on giving something valuable for teachers to use in their instruction 100% so one of the things that we started years ago is we started this one made this whole notion about data protocols we've really been trying to build that from the ground up again my
061applause to the to the Towson's who of them doing this in their in their meetings now that it's an analysis of the assessment but more importantly it's after all of that the big question is so what so so what these kids are green and these kids are red so one that these kids are yellow and these kids so so the data protocols that we have been using is to really try to get to that to answering that question so now that we have this data what can we do as adults to you know maybe it's a tweak in our instruction or to go back or to reassess and so that's a process out that we definitely have been building on throughout the years so what can be a lot of different things that depends on
062the school site on the grade level on the content and so I couldn't say for you know specific examples but but I know that that's what we have been working on again rolling up our sleeves and just haven't had trying to work as learners with teachers on how we react to be doing the data is telling us and to continue on the discussion when the United States as a nation and people got together from the business world from the university world in front of that cage above well to look at what is that our students should know and be able to do and created the common core standards it was in recognition of what businesses wanted required theirs their employees it was a recognition of what universities were looking for in their students and recognition
063of what our teachers are saying students could could do those standards were adopted with very high high expectations much higher than what we'd seen before particularly around kids doing complex work that requires multiple sources of evidence multiple analysis ability to sift through what's important what's not important here to draw conclusions to take a to take a stance on something to make an argument for something to anticipate the counter arguments it to be able to refute those that's that's core to the common core standards that's the essence of it whether you talk about language at some time when the state they have determined that they were going to find these standards we want to measure how well our students are doing their work and not only just us our state but across the nation there was
064a contract given out awarded to two different testing companies to develop an assessment that would be aligned to the goals of the instruction of the common core one of those was the smarter balanced assessment consortium which is what we call it really it was really summarized well by Professor Linda darling-hammond of Stanford who's well known as an advocate for good quality teaching and instruction for students her point was that if you have an assessment and you make that assessment mirror what good teaching and learning looks like then the time in the assessment is well spent because students are engaged in something that is important now I can say not all aspects of the smarter balanced do that as well as it would like but I do have to come from in our district because my
065district has taken in a smarter balance there are short answer questions that are whenever these very complex what they call performance tasks aren't district assessments are based on the more complex the performance tasks not that we don't think the simple questions need to be known they do but we're really trying to get kids to is the more difficult question support and so we've got an assessment methodology that is embedded in our state assessment that mirrors good quality teaching and learning and that our assessments are built on to begin near a good quality teaching and learning so that there's a synthesis and alignment between and that their credit for that goes to professionals who actually thought this through you don't want to have to success but that's taking up tonight but also our own staff and
066our teachers over the years constantly defining the way we're checking our kids promise so I [Music] came to Frank and it really I really wanted to me I mean we're asking people at the scientist to dig deep and look what I would like us to look at is cohort grown fine so so you know how do they move from one way to the great this year and again next year it's different kids know we're gonna see the difference right that doesn't really tell us anything about how the system is changing over time so so I want to make sure that when the data comes back that it's showing that to us and then the other request that I have that we haven't but I really want us to look deeper but I'd also want us
067to start looking at the students that are on free/reduced versus not reduce the those gaps I think it's not something that we're showing we show the thing reduced and then all right so I want to see what those gaps aren't there are gaps and what they are and maybe it doesn't come at the board level but it but I want to make sure that we're looking at we're doing that even within ethnicities right so so one of the reasons I say that is because I look at some of these groups and you know for example with african-american students if we look at the central student this is the cohort right and if it turns out that quite a few Limor are not so deeply and we do this but they're still scoring this so I
068think to me that's a very something that we need to be looking at right so but if we're not digging into the data we're not going to see that so then those are the two those are the two ways that I'm hoping that I can come back to the board so we can better understand what's happening over the years and we have made it much more we push more students into advancement of courses so we've actually increased enrollment in these courses right am I supposed to reducing access to each other to increase our passenger aids so to see that the students are passing at higher rates and they did in the past but we're having more students enroll I may be not good stuff you that we thought would do well I think it just
069really goes to show what the quality of work that's happening in ER but I wanted to get information about when we talk about energy completion rates right so that I appreciate that it's going up and those are the students that got it's your plus better in all their courses right so what I really want to understand is how many of our students are actually completing the coursework but maybe maybe have a D in one of the courses aren't a couple of the courses I'm in haven't answer them that's why they're not getting they're not considered complete but maybe I'm so close and and I think once we look at that data maybe we can talk about how are we supporting those students because that bunch will be a little bit brighter could get the deans
070at school how are we making sure that they make summer or the next year so I really want to start digging deeper into some of this data at the Portland I know what's happening at school sites and in the district but I think it before me is that making sure that we're having the same conversation and I think that's a really good example one of the things we know from important and I think you have some experience with this too is it kids who did not get that C are actively being sought out by the county councillors to take that course over again normally you think you take a course over if you get in that you have to in order to get credit but we're putting students who didn't get that C in there
071too so they can take it again and raise their grade now we're moving on to ten point [Music] but I have to tell you a little bit about what I've been doing for the past two weeks I started here in u.s. before I launch into the communication plan itself I have a couple of things I'd like to preface with just to give you an idea of how this plan was developed the iterations that it has been through before and then just a little bit about me as a communicator so in the UI school - you know mentoring communications and in cameos for anthropology for fun they always encourage you to come up with some core values that you will adhere to as a communicator and sometimes in positions like these you especially when you're working
072Corp America you're asked to you know do things that you may not necessarily agree with I don't think that but it's important for me as a person and also in a role like this to have values that you will adhere to in any situation whether it be an emergency situation or whether we're reporting excellent things like our increases in our test scores so my core values as a communicator are consistency transparency creativity listening and learning and the last two may come as a surprise for some because people think that an efficient - as a communicator all you're doing is giving information a people and feeding information to people people may be positions like these a hundred percent of what goes out and they don't necessarily think about the things that are coming back in and
073what we're doing with those so I think that there there is equal importance between the information as a district that we're putting out in an information that we're taking in from our community members with my teachers from my school board from our cabinet and what we're doing it and how we're acting on the information that we are we were given so it's kind of with those things in mind that I worked on developing this communication plan so again like I said this communication plan has everything through a couple of iterations the first iteration of this plan is actually done before I even applied for the position personally I wouldn't want to apply for a position that I didn't already have a vision for so in order to get my vision down and to decide if
074I wanted to apply for this position my site then I wrote a communication plan so the first iteration of that the second iteration I created after my first interview I needed it in the second interview would probably they probably call me to talk about some of the some of the aspects of what I would do if I were business division once I this physician came and membership to the National California at school public relations Association I don't know exactly where that goes but at something of that sort and it's super helpful some other resources that they provide are kind of a guide and mentor to help create a capable communications plan that's helpful for somebody like me who came from higher ed so I'm familiar with how to create a higher ed communications plan a
075little bit of a different world so I didn't want to come in assuming that a me I knew everything about creating a k12 communications plan or B then everything about this district so having worked at a PU for four years and having been a part of this community for many years I felt like I had a little bit of insight into the district of the whole work of several schools my Burke's point Archer before they know a lot so I have all of that knowledge coming in but a part of the creation of this plan was also just taking the first two weeks of my time here and listening I was involved in meetings and a lot of site visits I had a lot of interactions with teachers and principals Association Federation's and do all
076of these things I was collecting notes and just kind of sucking in some information and trying to decide how all of this all together would fit into this communication plan so it's important for me that you guys would know and that you guys would know that this plan wasn't created in a bubble with me sitting in you know my office just kind of pulling things out of areas environment a reason to why this was created and also as part of it and we have a very close-knit group of public relations professionals with the local community so I took this plan to them I had them give me feedback on it I would set the plans but other districts in our area are using to make sure that we are on par with as far as
077what our priorities are with what other districts are also trying to accomplish so be good okay so to start out not just with a communications plan but with anything that you're communicating you want to think about a couple of different things hey what is a communications plan for how does it have a district equity of any person have an item Jesus in my position our audience jewelry community pew and what are we communicating about so the last two the board communicating to in the way we communicate about are things that are going to change communicating what we're trying share and we're trying to share do you suppose those are two things the audience and the messages that are going to reflect so those are two things that I can Raymond insisted and the communication plan
078itself is actually not something that should remain consistent a good communication plan is something that should be reevaluated we really looked at and reprioritize every couple of months about some thing that I'm definitely planning on doing with so I'm gonna start out by talking about our five major objectives so that's what's going to be on the PowerPoint are kind of the overarching objectives and written off appear for the board in your packet you should have the bold it's page many of what our communications will our energy to be but just to serve us so our first detected in establishment effective employee communications plan to improve internal communication and employee engagement so these are up you're not in order I had to prioritize them I would say that this would be definitely definitely within the top
079one or two so for any organization your employees are going to be a base asset and they're also going to be your biggest cheerleaders and sometimes they may also be your biggest critics but they are the way that you are going to be able to paint your leaders to gain which shoulders to talk about your message to talk about what you're trying to communicate and so one of the things that's important for me is that making sure that we are effectively communicating internally to our own employees about what our primary messages are what we're trying to accomplish what our overall goals are in schools at the district level and making sure that our employees have the knowledge and resources available that they are able to then share this information out so if somebody comes up
080to an a USD employee on the street and says pay tell me about rework and tell me what you do they should feel prepared to have you know one or two things that they just know off the bat that we're striving for as an organization in communications we talk a lot about competing the communications circle so what that means is that we're making sure that information is going from I'm already called a circle actually it's probably more of a line but making sure that communication from the bottom and getting to the top and that communication from the top they're just getting from Guinea to bottom so I really want to spend some time and I haven't said things he kind of taken a look at what are their ways that we use to communicate to
081our employees platforms that we use across the district we have things like blackboard we have Gmail we have areas all of these different you know platforms but what is it that we're utilizing them for and are there ways that they can be integrated so that our communication to our employees is more effective so I think one of the things that you'll hear across the board from employees in any organization is that we get too many emails so I want to look at some ways that we can narrow down the types of communication that are going out while still making sure that our employees are being informed about the things that they need to be informed about whether it be whether it's an effect whether it's a priority whether it's a goal whether it's a message
082all of that stuff is important to get out but we don't want to inundate our employees with so much that they're not even gonna look through things so we've talked about a couple of different things we've talked about newsletters that go out we can provide you know a quick snapshot with clickable links that our employees can go to to find out more information about the things that pertain to them so a lot of times what i've been hearing is that employees will get a lot of information and some of that information doesn't apply it to certificated or it doesn't apply to classified so I want to look at narrowing down there ways that we're communicating to different areas and if the communication only needs to be sent to want it so how do we go
083about helping that happen I say we because again something like this is not something that just I can do is partnering with mis it's partnering with all of our different offices and finding out what are the types of things that they need to be communicating how frequently do they need to be these things and then how can I in my position help them either develop the content help them develop a method of out and then how do I also utilize the resources that we already have as a district so that we're not spending more money in another system that's just gonna you know add to the fiber systems that we already have for communication and I know that any money makes mark happy and to you that some of the things I'm gonna this major
084objective are to help facilitate employee awareness initiative programs and resources so one of the things that I want to do I provide is create a resource product so I know that there was one that was started maybe a year or two ago in the past but I want to build on that so that all of our employees know where to go if they need to know if we have a certain resource so if my family company and they're you know with the school secretary at Belton the school secretary insulting couldn't go to a centralized location and pull up a resource guide and say yes we do have a you know counseling resource available on this day at this time at this location let me sourcefed will be something that we can just update every year
085with new information as it comes about and we can train our employees as to the location where it will begin everybody taxes and the same thing I'm hoping to do with the district actually so there are things about the district that change every year and then there's a drop the district that stay the same every year so the types of students that we are getting in the number of students that we have the population of our of our schools these are things like employees probably wonder about that they may be into others so I would like to have resources all consolidated in one location where our employees with that we need to find out that certain piece of information we know here is providing opportunities and resources for our employees to build connections within the
086district so at some point in time a couple of years ago there was a newsletter that was created called a USD in action and it was a way to update a USD staff on what their colleagues have been up see whether it was somebody wrote a book and all of these things are things that you know if you work with somebody you find out because you talk to them every day you see them at lunch or you see them in the hallways but for a community like ours that so spread out at different school sites it doesn't mean you have less interest in knowing what's going on in somebody else's life it was able to note that information and not easily access so the associations in the Federation thought that this might be a great
087thing for us to relaunch and we're in the process of launching yeah people that we can have it also filed an adverse issue will be out to all of our employees my goal is for next two weeks that when we do that I'm working on it so moving on to is to develop and maintain positive collaborative relationships with stakeholders to strengthen support or a USD so again this is something that requires a boots on the ground unique to this TV the city of Azusa is very small community everybody knows everybody everybody supports everybody else and we should be no different so there are lots of other community organizations that we partner with like home archives like my their place the police department the city itself the library all the different entities creep within the city
088and some they doing all view a lot of things for us and no one is blonde us also show up to support them when they need it so when you create a couple of things by doing that I mean you create goodwill you have people that you can call in if you need help a good example of that is the homework house had a fundraiser called out for charity or something like that and then the very next day was the [Music] opening ceremony for the killed bori and then on Monday was the 9/11 memorial at the police department and so of everybody that I saw on Friday night we always joked we'll see you tomorrow and I'll see you Monday but it's because we know that we have that core support that we can go
089to and that we can turn to to support our event and a lot of times people get nervous when they hear the word support because they think that it means you know giving money or giving a donation and that's not always the case which is great for us because we're on a position where we can just be you know throwing out money here and there but we can we can't show up we can volunteer we can't have an active voice in the community we can't be an active participant and the things that are going on and then it allows us to do things like called please farm and say hi you have five officers who can join us for watches whole long school day on 10th and they say yes because they know that it's
090reciprocal and then if they needed to call me for something that I would reciprocate it to the best of my abilities joining us broccoli on attend all the city manager actually but again this is just due to the reciprocity that's that you know I've been going to work on build building and will continue to work on building on behalf of the district so now you know everywhere I got one representative of the district so the way that I carry myself the things that we just play in and the things that we that we support it can say a lot not just about me but about all of you guys sitting at the table so if there's something that you want me to go to let me know I'll get it on my calendar this is
091something that I think might be unique to this community because of how small it is and how close it is so there there are other locations where it might not matter as much or it might not mean as much whether or not you show up to somebody's fundraiser or whether or not you show up to a certain city event but I'm very aware that here this is something that really matters something that's important to me because I love this community as well one of the things that people often often don't think about when it comes to a communication plan is the engagement side of it and I'm really glad that my title is communications and engagement community engagement because those two in my mind go hand-in-hand so for this community it's important that they know
092what we support what we stand for and that we are going to be present for them that we are going to show up for this we're gonna show up to games we're gonna show up to dances we're gonna show it to you know payouts for charity even though you're a vegetarian and don't eat meat all of these things are things that we can do to it to builds just goodwill within the community but then also it turns into we get the benefit of the doubt in certain situations so if Steve at the chamber here's a book remember about you know a school we have the relationship because of the associations that we felt just by showing up according am I going to things where he knows that he can call me and say hey I
093heard this you might want to look into it and I would do the same thing for him vice versa it's a way for us to get ahead of issues before they even start and submit things but or even to just stop the spread of rumors if if that's the case and so it's great to have a close-knit community where you know that in their minds at least they will give you the benefit of the doubt in a situation they will come to your defense if needed and that's a great thing to have in a community like this the third objective is utilize a variety of media to maximize support and awareness for a u.s. DS goals programs and schools so this is one of my favorites for so many reasons it has so much potential
094so under this objective we have all of our like Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube peach jar so a lot of these resources are free resources which again I know makes more copies if it saves this money but these are all platforms that we can utilize to tell our story and it's up to us to decide what that story is that we want to tell so we have test scores where we're exceeding this eight eight standards we have a teacher who we just found out about a book we have kids participating in robotics festivals where they're winning awards for what they're doing and all of these things are are things that we want to shout from the rooftops and our rooftop it's basically like Instagram and YouTube and page targets we'll get into a little bit later
095but again the bottom of the limit was the median we have the resources in place to create video we have the in place to create graphics to create memes if that's what we need agree all of these things that are our public likes to interact with so if you're a parent if you're a student you're used to binding information nowadays through social media channels so the way that we're leveraging our use of these channels is super important for our presence in the community it's super important to like help build up the image one of the things that I didn't say in the beginning regarding image is that I have a super-secret objective that's not within these five and it's not going to be super serious and I got to say it out but and this
096is being recorded but one of my overarching goals that kind of encompasses these five goals is I would really like to change the perception of a USC within this local community so I think that we've taken a meeting in some areas and I think a lot of school districts have there's a lot of school districts that are really struggled in our area for for various reasons and I think if people had the insider perspective that we all have they would really know and understand the reasons why they can be proud of us as a district they would know and understand all of the strides that we've made and all the things that we've accomplished if we are small but mighty we may not have as many resources as other school districts but we're doing a
097lot with what would you having they're accomplishing great things we have great educators and we have great students we have students who are overcoming challenges every single day and we just saw that nr and our test scores so my my overarching goal in doing all of these in and executing this plan is to see the public perception of a USC change to beginners and lots of secret Bowl but now it's out in the open today so back to utilizing a variety of media one of the realities of in this kind of goes in hand in hand with the next goal which is maintain a positive media relations presence to enhance the district's image one of the realities of today is that people do get news from sources like Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and YouTube
098especially in our area the San Gabriel Valley our Vince media resources in terms of these papers are very limited there are no longer education reporters that are assigned to a certain area and I mean use paper as a printed but how many people actually you know will get them and look through for the education section I've been getting newspaper every day I'm looking at the educate education section and it is it's small and honestly all the things that are in there it's you know something that's controversial so nobody's looking to promote these positive stories and use a muffin a pill bottle that we ever gonna have to fight but one of the things that we can do to leverage the decline of friend media in this area is to really bolster our presence on Instagram
099Facebook YouTube Twitter any other platform that we decide that we want to use so again this has been it's gonna be a little bit of a slope as I said before one of my core values is a communicator is consistent consistency so I've been here for about four weeks now and I'm working on getting all the things in place that we need in place to be able to launch a consistent video media presence within our social media channels and then again all of that will be integrated with our website president so anywhere you go whether it need to act the website or any of our social media channels you will be able to see our video media presence again already touched a little bit on next objective the fourth objective which is making topography their
100relations presence one can't enhance the district's image so even though these opportunities to take advantage of print media are few and far between that doesn't mean that I'm not going to send out news releases that I'm not going to you know keep in touch with reporters that I know part of my plan is to create an e-newsletter that goes out with updates to anyone actually who wants to on my target would be that we can send these updates to our local news media and if they see something in there that they would like to report on making that reach back out to me and I can provide them with more information but also for our community members who may be interested in knowing you know what's going on at the district things other than what
101is posted on our Facebook Instagram Twitter and all of that so I'm not giving up on on my media it's still there but it's just not as as much of a player and in our world anymore due to the the rise the use of social media and then last but not least our fifth objective is achieving a coordinated communication both internally and externally regarding safety and crisis management so this point is kind of a baby of mine because I have five years experience in law enforcement so part of my experience as a 911 dispatcher was to oversee emergency communications I worked in university studying at one point and part of my responsibility there was to make sure that we had a consistent and an executable emergency communications plan so that all of our faculty all
102of our staff whether or not they were sitting at a computer at the time whenever because he happened be aware when and they would know what their responsibility was in the event of an emergency so my goal is to build on what is already in place here and continue to use the communication systems that we have in place here to make sure that all of our employees are equipped with the knowledge and they know what their role is in the event of emergency that we have the ability to communicate with them in the event of an emergency so we have you know grounds people who are not sitting on a desk we have bus drivers who are not in office so if something happens at a school how how are these people to know that
103something is is going on the great news is we already have a communications platform that we can begin to utilize to send out notifications like this and they're already several of the pieces are and play when it comes to emergency communication is to make sure that we are doing right by our students and that we're doing right by our staff if something were to happen so again these artists there's a five overarching objectives there is a larger document that covers kind of good the more intricate ins and outs of each of these objectives as I said previously as a good communication plan is something that is continuously evaluated and updated according to the goals and priorities of the organization so I'm committed to consistently reevaluating this and adding to it or taking away and doing
104what we need to do to make I would love to go to the console meetings at the city hall periodically can give updates on I didn't so just one question for you and I just want to say appreciate you include listening learning because I feel like a lot of times communication is more that right listening to what you're saying and being responded to that so I I'm just if you could elaborate a little more on how you intend to ensure that we're getting they were that we're hearing you know feedback from whether it's the school site at what end you know at all the different levels and and how and how exactly have the work that we do in sort of the communication that we continue to send out what would be the easiest way
105for school sites for anybody really to communicate with me so do we need to create a forum for it is it just send me an email when this happens and we need to create some guidelines surrounding what what does Lika need to know or what does the board need to know so that I mean I think part of the question in people's minds right now is they don't want to inundate me or you guys for the information so it kind of like filter and through oh yes we should tell them this or know what maybe they wanna know about that I from my perspective everything matters so I would rather have more information than not enough information so any way that I can facilitate that information getting from out there to me I am willing
106to do so we've talked about two main things the the primary of being a web-based forum that everybody would have access to and that somebody can go through and fill out and that would come directly to me and then I can create a report to send to Kevin to central and it's sent to the border to whoever needs to get to to make sure that we're addressing those concerns so within the plant also in the more detailed plan I have come up with a system for making sure that we are following through on addressing these concerns when they need to be addressed and so again that is something that I'm thinking through insurance and okay once we have you know these issues can be due on these forms and once I'm sending them on what
107its gonna be in my process to follow up to make sure that okay yes we did call mr. now okay go back to address this concern on school lunch line or whatever it may be and then that can be something that we keep record of is what you know you know do we have these the same schools reoccurring and we have the same families coming up again and you know how can we make sure that we are staying on top of these things about people know that their voices are being heard that's great and then the other person after you is going the other way right so one of it one of the issues that we have right now is often a decision will be made or this thing will change back to look like
108approaches will change right and I would say there's uneven communication and understanding about why things are changing more the process and determining how thing that you think is so very often not decisions are made very collaboratively collectively and I'll point out that services where a lot of decisions don't make to through these different groups that you have that you do just make decisions right but but then often I'll hear you know sometimes there's not understanding why things have changed or there are that process and I won't say it's inconsistent rights and so it doesn't happen everywhere so how are we going to ensure that that people are aware of if there are changes aware of it aware of why those changes are and aware of the process that people that that we went through to
109make sure that that stakeholders in the board engage and it was them you know those changes were good off to a collaborative process I think that's probably something maybe I want to talk to you a little bit okay about to get some of the examples to figure out like what type of information it is or what what type of decision it is I think that would depend on how we communicate it out and who we communicated to by I definitely understand I'm trying to be everywhere but you know I like the basic calendar because I notice the peach term that everyone puts the fire on there you know why they were edifying what's good about the day but the website has a different time or it says various times what does that mean you know
110um and school site their page that's something different then any was the app same thing so in the old days it was a calendar you know each school pretty much like what they have here you recom and we had different place trying to figure out a map um they're the wrong time or what is very is talking to me to me so is it like one of these I'm not sure what like I said what's website with a was not every school utilizes it the same thing with the stream I'm looking at the screen activity stream line and the is app tonight I did my research okay yeah the app that has the stream is everything so if you're signed up for multiple spools within all and you will see everything from every school that's
111posted ever whether it be peach to our Facebook memo that goes out like every everything everything it posted an activity stream for every single school that you're signed up each but as far as the calendar if we need to work with our school sites to make sure that they have the tools to update their calendar and I'm happy to provide them training to make sure that they are doing that I could be wrong but I do think about is an expectation is that everybody is using the calendar so it is not a lot possible goes up and that's the word I'm gonna go so wrong I'll come to pick that up and I see where I'm gonna go you know but not everyone has it make sure that they know how to update it and
112that they have the tools to do it and that they are we gonna and on the app also on the under scoops not everyone has like what they say if the stare heights through their website it's not in here so yeah we're just go to tip you know but I wanted to go there what a person is oosan' high school they have it not so they have a section in the app no Mike it's his website yeah you know okay I just wanted to congratulate and it's an awesome plan yeah but my only concern is how how have you identified your cheerleader that's ready to say that you have I have that network of individuals going back important to receiving information from each side in the school site have you looked into that as to
113who that point person is that your model is how you're gonna be able to get that communication going yeah it's part of my note or tuned to the school of my my field trip around the schools identify who that person at that site it's advanced generally the person I'm also updating the Talz Facebook site and their and their webpage I'm surveying that whoever that person or persons are are my main source of information from the school sites so right now there is generally one or two people at each school site that have volunteered for the opportunity to be that updater and to be that connection information and they are my go-to person if I have questions about something that I'm I'm getting or not so you're also combining that training necessary we have to partner
114up to date yes yeah again that word your sugar yeah that's the work in progress so I've been a four or five school sites already and we have more scheduled for the coming weeks to make sure that everybody understands how to use all of these platforms and they know how to have a successful website in solution to you the other time measures to after your lunch is the next checkpoint is when it's working well Germany since you say you've been envisioned all of this ahead of time what's your timeline essentially that's assume that you launched it tomorrow and then we'll go visit and say it's working well in there month joins time I for like although these pieces working together is that by the end of this month all of our school site social media
115updaters and website updaters would have the tools that they need to continue to actively update so right now they're they're adhering to a schedule where they're required to post over there they get the opportunity to post a certain number of times many of them are already exceeding that and then the part two portion of them who aren't it's matter of them meaning the training some people just aren't as familiar with a lot of these apps that were even in a lot of the platforms but I'm working with both our vendors on school and feature our to help provide those training and I'm combining some of it myself as well well thank you for the emissions plan what come on board yeah I'm glad that the district discovered you so far you did a great job
116in in four weeks I wish you luck you know on your journey it's really good a fish think that I was disappointed where's the noblest release as a commissioner on the board for the significance economy and efficiency so hopefully I can help you with the schools they are in the undercurrent area which is Center and uh be down and look like when we that connection quit work school warden okay so your parents we weren't even texting we wouldn't even texting I mean parents wanted to be notified via text and so that's that's where we work and I think over the last five years it's almost felt like and I mean those of us here almost felt like we've been just kind of going like this you know waiting for that breath of fresh air where
117everything that you just stand right now is everything that we wanted to hear and so we have to be realistic to is worth a written saying there are so many different layers right to this a lot there's a lot I mean and so the expectation we have to be realistic to this is gonna take time it's a culture shift that's gonna have to take place and so um that's one thing that we have to be mindful I mean even with just you know training on a simple app it's it takes some time to get used to to those things so so thank you for this this is this is great I don't I'm coming to the end of my chair right now I'm just super happy that that that we found him and I know
118that you're gonna take this this mystery to another level so thank you very much for tonight and for this for this presentation it was you [Laughter] okay so we're gonna stay up here we're on 10.3 and we're on P star e fires update so okay so I don't know that peach jars had a little bit of history with the district before I got here so I've been trying to kind of wait my way through that I have a little bit of a unique perspective with peach tart because I was one the community partner of a OSC's who was hoping and praying that we would have a platform where we can send out fires because in my prior position one of the things that I hated the most was wider distribution time when I had to
119sit there and like hang out and transmit all the stuff but it was expensive to do all of this and now it's an interesting thing on the eponym side to kind of see the implementation portion of it and how it has or maybe has not worked out so one of the first things that dr. Kaminsky said to me when I came in with that we need to take a look at PTR and I know that with that the request of the board's I'm hoping that I can answer some questions for us all of maybe clear up some misconceptions about P star and then decide whether or not this is something that we do want to move forward with and we keep I will say upfront that my recommendation is that we would keep a star
120on there are a number of different reasons but I'm really reasoning and one of the things that came out of discussion with principals is the reality that we are never going to find one communication platform that will meet everybody's needs so especially with the way society is changing with the way media achieve me again you're gonna have some parents that you get by using Facebook you're gonna have some that you get using Instagram and you're gonna have some that you get using feature so I don't think that there is ever going to be a one-size-fits-all approach to communication platforms not just for us but for any district but I think that the more tools that we have in order to communicate but though the more the more tools that we have in picture being one
121of these tools the the wider our reach will be I guess you could say so one of the first things that we did was we kind of came up with a couple of questions and again these were questions that we're I guess you know passed on to me questions that you guys have come up with the board questions that others had asked it speech are an effective way for a USC staff to communicate with parents good parents to know what peach tart is and I access it and its feature of barrier for our community partners who may want to advertise activity and resources to aost families so we started out by talking to our principals and ma meeting and we started off with the conversation simple question and we asked is a strong effective way
122for the transmission of a parent so in person we have this conversation they've accepted amongst themselves and they reported back to our group they were sent a link to a feedback form after when they were able to kind of also enter their thoughts on peace truck so they could even vote yes you might be sure nobody don't what a speech jaar but then also there is an opportunity for them to just because I needed feedback that they may have had from their site as well about the use of our platform for communicating with parents so our person wreckin question this is from the principal or this was opposed to principles which are being an effective way to share information with parents we have 66% 66.7% that said yes it is 25% that said no and
123then a 20% that said what is pitch dark I realized that that that person the didn't know what everyone knew that we had a Flyers but didn't connect that each wires and pitched are are the same thing so I think actually that's a common misconception that parents may realize and teacher and staff may realize yes we are sending up B players and that one is called Jennifer's they don't necessarily equate the two as the same thing we move on to the next breath the next question that we asked was would you like to receive more training on how to use pitch dark we have 66.7% Pat said yes they would and then 3.30% that said no they wouldn't so I think that 33.3 0% that says no is the portion that you see that's octave
124on pitch jar right now so they're the ones that are continuously updating flyers and that are using the resource about speech that means that there is a large portal and our deluxe version of our principals and teachers the sites who are in need of more training on on how to use PCR so one of the things that I found in conversation that has prevented people from using it is the lack of knowledge on how to usin so I think this may have been just part of an implementation issue in the beginning any time maybe rolling out of new communications platform you need somebody with an expert on that platform who can then you know go out and train people on on how to use it and that may have been a piece that was missing
125before I was prepare at that point so I'm not quite sure what the situation was but and again anytime you're introducing a new platform like this there is a time investment on the part of the person who is spearheading the implementation to learn all of the ins and outs so the part of that training for me has been i sat there a couple of different webinars with peach dart and I went through all of their online resources that they have to filter through what what I need to know myself but then also what do our principals and our site administrators who are using peach tardies they have been using this platform so one of the things that we have already done and I think I'm jumping ahead here because I think this at the end
126but we'll go with it is the resources that I was given from each jar so the online webinars and these are a series of two to three minute videos so they're not super time-consuming they're all accompanied by a step-by-step picture guide on how to upload and how to create an account on how to access your account you got walked out on all the extra bonus resources that peach jar has like we have a bunch of fire templates that you have fundraiser ideas they have all of these things that are included with this picture license that we have that most people didn't know about those have already been sent out to all of the school site administrators who are the ones who are using peach jar and then I'm also doing visits to the schools to
127follow up to make sure that everybody knows how to assist them so what we're doing is I'm going schools were sitting on and we're uploading wired and they are doing and handing over the controls to them and just talking them through how to do it so that they've seen it they've done it they've experienced it and they know how easy it is to use one of the questions that is not on here was the last question that we asked principals was would you like to go back to home for fire distribution and 100% of them said no and a lot of them gave a reason why so one of the primary reasons why is that is to read paper fires for a school site is expensive all of the printing on paper all of the
128ink and then all of the time that it takes to package those out by class and then to distribute them to class it's too time-consuming it was too expensive were to talk to Bobby's living back we move on to the next component the next step that we took was sent out from surveys Japan and we asked them two simple pleasures I mean you can use pitch-dark to receive flyers from your child's school 59% offences yes 14 know and then 27% said what is PR so then I think part of this what is P started disconnect could be that experience to know that air is feeding a fire they don't know that it's from peach jar expect that might admit that we might could have clarified it from the beginning but through discussions I'm realizing that
129this is a common disconnect between people even within own district was in our district so if it's a disconnect the people within our district and surely it's a disconnect for our parents so we're trying to reach [Music] through blackboard just like agenda omegas 2015 so parents you have the so I partnered with Marvin and my ass and he helped create the two questions are they with her parents just using the dial to enroll to the second question that we asked parents is you prefer reason you prefer receiving paper files from their child's school or email fliers and I mean it's a pretty close split here with 59 percent saying email and 41 percent saying paper so again this is I mean we're not going to have one communication platform at the one it's also I
130look this and I do see a pretty even split but I also have in the back of my mind that no matter what it is that we're using we're slow to me missing some of our of our people that we do want to reach one of the pieces of feedback that I also received from sites is that when they send paper and wires home they don't necessarily know how many of us get the Flyers actually make it home because they see them you know on the playground after school they're picking them up from their walkways as kids are walking out one of the things that pitch-dark affords us that's integrated into the platform is we have the ability to then go back and see okay well how many people actually clicked on this how many
131people actually open this and after talking to our teacher our representative we found that our open rate across the board is about 33 percent which sounds small but it's actually the pitch-dark average so we are on par with the PHR average for opens of our flyers you know I think you should be able to picture today so what happened to the organizations in our community the 501 C 3 organizations like the baseball and cheerleading and the voting days and you know since we wanted we can you be friendly right cuz I were there asking and I think last year we had a situation with the I want to say I think one of the one of the misconceptions on our part as well as on the part of our community partners was that pitch turned
132icing that you could not also hand out paper flyers and that's not true so it's within our feature our contract each dart has to be the platform through which the fire isn't prude but then after it's approved you can also send out paper Flyers if you as an organization which to do so so I think we actually had our golden day golden days fibers that were through any star and then students got paper copies of those as well so that's one of the misconceptions that I've been working to clear up regarding the city person Bracken in the library I sat down with the city manager with the director of library and I teach divisions with Parks and Rec and what the head librarian to talk about the issues that they have had in the past
133and again that was one of the misconceptions was that they didn't know that they could also send out a [Music] great platform and one of the yeah that's a great idea why don't one of the differences for nonprofit organizations is that they do have to apply for a separate sort of user okay the repeats are that will allow them to post fliers with no cost so they try to go through the regular our platform there Bennett there's for it but again that's one of the things I think you can clarify on the website and I've already been working with community partners face to face let me know that they do have the ability to go directly through our chief dark person who's been great actually with helping walk some of them through how to set
134up the 501 C 3 account so they can't those fires but then it doesn't for the clarification a person like for example organizations want to send out hardcover clients because they have seen response arm or attendants essential or events and whatnot so I don't even relates to the beach I said out loud but it's the continuing and being able to provide those waters essentially on school sites independently not not the mystical so they're already getting those pliers just to be dispersed in my school science at night so I mean I just want you that that clarification is them it's just like that it's not that they're asking the school to put in it but was tributed okay have it already ready to be disappear yeah I mean again with the approval would look a picture
135yeah they're welcome to it talking about fire so I think one thing that we can do better as well or another thing that we can do better in regards to C star is let parents know that peaches are buyers are actually available to the AOS D so some people may be afraid of like oh you're gonna send me too many emails and clog up my inbox you don't necessarily have to access suppliers through your email address you can access them through the app and if you have kids at multiple schools the great part about using an app is that you can get all the keeps our fliers all in one place within so that's something again we're working on creating a social media piece and then hopefully in video just about certain generals that we
136can post and we can send out so I would update people about these types of we talked to some of these already but provide training resources and support for USC staff we utilize Petrarch's web again is in progress it's part of my road tour to schools we really hit several of them and will continue to do so and if some schools need a second go at it or if they're doing it I'm happy to be there and to do that with them utilize the community liaison tech schools you know like social media and regular meetings it's just the coffee with the principal meetings to inform parents about speech jaar and to especially inform parents about access to it via the app I think there are even parents in our community who may not necessarily know
137that we have an app so introducing that as well I know that there was new tools that were created that are in the communication poncets that we can distribute to school sites of the parents that I know we've already done a blast on on social media and making sure about it as well and then engaged in a district-wide campaign and sure parents have an updated email address on record at their child's school so this is important again not just for pre start but for any sort of communication that the district needs to send out via email and then engaging the community partners to experience the book will see with peach tower had questions about its use and so that is done I think we can provide some clarifications on our website and that's why we'll
138continue to work on this based on with our community partners who have had concerns and maybe a bad experience with peach tart I wouldn't want that to deter them from wanting to advertise their opportunities and resources within our district so again I think that our problems with peach jars can be to be resolved mostly I think we what we need to do or what I need to do is just run through the input patient process of thr again with all of our school sites with all of our community partners to make sure that we didn't miss anybody or anything in communicating what it is how to use it and then the many different ways that you can access peach jar so again I think that what may have been missing before was somebody who's willing
139to kind of take all this on and be that point person and not me I'm your girl and I do recommend that we keep it because again it's just one of a number of tools that we have to our constituents so what are we going to do with this 41% I think I think that portion as well and may also have access to the app and maybe we can help them to realize that they can just scroll through their app better than having you know bunch of paper spaces well maybe add another question whether or not they are connected they have device that are what EU gems get speakers in don't you work with them so you can go back and kick it to their school study and work with their parents my daughter uses
140pitch-dark educate in the school district that my grandchildren go to she absolutely adores it so I was like what's going on so it's really cool there you know we're working through all the problems when you said they possibly doing a video on how to use the beach for the can I know for myself I'm a preschooler right so I don't know and they don't have an Aries account and I'm not sure that's probably different issue but so there are some some probably some some parents that don't marketing communication because of where their students are but I appreciate this and you have me a believer again in each star for now so as you have seen and our students and faculty have seen their employees have seen it's been a busy summer and there's a lot
141of new things to celebrate out at the schools in terms of the the modernization that we've been working on so this is just a quick overview some before and after pictures to remind people where we were in where we are now so it's in a middle school there as part of the fencing that was done the as we call them years ago we started cleansing to enhance security and where we could do it that would also enhance the appearance in the school and particularly to make the school a welcoming environment for students and staff and parents we tried to incorporate them into the design what's happening there is they're actually shifting the parking lot a little bit moving building an area for plants in front of the school walkway and to make up for that
142space that was lost there they extended the a little bit closer to the sidewalk and now you can see a little bit more you can see the plants in front of the fence there with a sign of books about comedy with the principal you can begin to see the area in front of the building where the flagpole is and the building in the back event is their family center and that has a very large patio area there it was at the school just a few days ago they're talking with the faculty and actually I didn't even ask that they can it came through that way just raving about how how much better it was there's an open field that they just how much they likes it the sign of it they actually talked about it
143they're thinking about it it had to be moved in order to complete the work and so I think we'll have a bit of a competition to figure out where it should go it's a treasure hunt in a school Thurman Bell like that this is Dalton and Dalton aside from the work that was done earlier in Monster with the roofing and the HVAC their work in the we had a little bit of fencing work but mainly a lot of work in the quad area they've gone it's been all repaved and there was quite a bit of as they did the underground utilities there was quite a bit of unevenness that needs to be taken care of and they were also able to extend a portion of blacks the asphalt back around towards the scientists that when
144they go so there's kind of a before shot of it that was always a challenge I remember actually in one of the construction meetings before as we were starting this project I just said to them do you think we could do something about the parking lot and the answer was well it depends if the underground utilities go through the parking lot and thank you very much everybody the underground utilities went to the parking lot which meant their parking lot cut got upgraded and Murray and let's see there's normal who through that with these school entrance there afterwards and I'm hoping that the shapes that are inside that you see on the bottom portion of there that's the kindergarten area there I'm hoping the little kids are learning their shapes this is the Slauson kitchen this
145was a kitchen redo that involves getting a new walk-in freezer and a walk-in refrigerator this is a large kitchen many other schools and so they need equipment about great 40 internal workings of the kitchen itself but also for the survey of the students at Sloss and so there was some remodeling - it could be serving a line area and this is the finished almost finished project there where you see the new serving area there that's expanded with a the kids go in one side walk pass pick up their hot food and they come out the other way because you can't see in this picture that there are two other stations where they think I'm pretty and so we'll show you in the future we'll show you some of the pictures likeness not I received a
146picture today from me that Walker of their new walk-in freezer it is basically a memory looks like a room a room sized freezer with still shelving in it so it's nothing like you know I'm home where you open it up and you dig through things now this is a whole room that is the freezer and there's lots on high school before those were the non-avian compliant steps and now afterwards it's all organized or ramps to get people up in wheelchairs there's their famous letter G that they love and and it doesn't not to be forgotten this enzyme has been getting a facelift - they had a major project this summer to upgrade their storm drain system and that was completed they're able to start on the the complete the fencing that they were putting along
147the front of the school and hope that nobody finds it that signs hanging out and Susan high school and have actions a picture of all of our schools it's not calendar considered by the board to be routine and will get backed by the board in one motion format following last consent calendar agenda item there will be no discussion of these items prior to the time the board staff or the public request specific items to be discussed the discussion is requested by a board member that item will be removed from the consent calendar and will be considered separately the superintendent and staff recommend approval of all consent calendar agenda items do we have any items that we call tonight motion passes fighter moving on to 13.0 curriculum and instruction this is now opens Yuko the caring
148for sufficient textbooks do we have anyone here wishing to speak on this item saying uh no like the mushrooms close the public hearing 13.2 approval of sufficient expose resolution to make motion to improve 13.2 I don't need it right now but I'd like to know I know we do an audit like and we'd like madly try to rush to make sure that people have books can we just get an update on unlike how many we're actually missing books that we've exit but in place I just want to start tracking it and I think you know what I mean like I mean I know we make sure that everyone has it by a certain date but I'd love to have us achieve even more I make sure that everyone has it on the base we'll start
149and I know I mean I know there's all but but just if we can stop tracking that what does the student preferable yes we should pass this 5-0 about 13.3 is you so high schools field trip for Clovis Invitational cross-country tournament 2018 resolution 18 - 1998 what are the wishes of the board a major was little section includes any discussion questions seeing no one is a student potential oh yes motion passes five-0 we know it to 14.0 resources 14-point woman approve the tentative agreement between the Azusa Unified School District and the California School Employees Association this is chapter 299 what are those issues overboard like a motion to approve motion passes five-0 thank you okay now moving on to fourteen point two student teaching agreement between Pepperdine University and look past the spec zero moving
150out to 15.0 policies and bylaws 15.1 this is the second reading like you're reading approval of work policy related administration of revised work more closely to one four zero evaluation of this superintendent first-rate three Bibles Vogel awesome Akashi any questions motion passes 5-0 15.2 is a sick of reading the approval of board policy regarding personnel AR for one 12.2 to staff teaching English learners AR 4 1 1 2 2 a 2 3 special education staff a tart or one 12.4 of examinations what surpasses 50.3 this is a first reading that word policy regarding students and then it board policy they are an eliminated e51 13.1 chronic absence and truancy amended a r51 13.2 work permits amended word policy and eliminated are five I just I just have a concern about the both the AR and
151then BB five one one three point one so I don't see any language about any means of mechanism to implement some restorative justice here in absenteeism and how do we go about what is your idea about that as to it does talk about essentially that as a board policy that whatever the cause is so how do we find that that cause requires some some means to address them and the other capacitor gather them you've announced at one time two times three cents families why they're absolutely if there's a health issue we call the nurses in and it's something recently that we discovered that a lot of students were was something as simple as giving a nebulizer at school getting that doctors know it's medication and we have a recovery day where various homes the most
152recent visible as they just targeted students with many more absences the systems like traditional sweet redundancy sweet it's more just to find out what's going on and looking at data we find that a lot of the students who are absent or the TK's in the case and so that's kind of educating parents you know obviously we don't want children or ill in school but it's also bad you know they do need to be at school we should start processes we have start meetings at every school where students who are like Maria and the man at their meetings that they go out me you know they're not like loading the front with their app how can we help you help your child be in school indexed I think that's really good instead of going in in
153continue punishing they were in with their parents are thankful for that but that's also about 500 students were missing 10% of the school year those are chronic truants necessarily those are students who are chronically absent and they could have the justifiable excused absent but if they're on a school so essentially the community zones are equipped to handle all of you determined because you're also citing cluster comes to bullying for example that could be a number of inquired other questions okay so it is actually a 928 now that our meeting thank you everyone for coming out tonight