001discusses that item on the agenda. If you're addressing the board on a non-aggenda item, we will take those comments at this time. Please be aware that the provisions of the Brown Act prohibit the board from acting on or discussing non-aggenda item matters at this meeting. Public comment are limit limited to three minutes per person per topic. Um there'll be a timer on the screen as it approaches three minutes. You'll see it and if it goes past that, I will offer you a warning now that I do so respectfully. Miss Ellinger, do we have any speakers wishing to address the board? Yes, we have one speaker, Nick and Jessica Shmeir. So, just want to put a face to uh our names because we have been in contact with each and every one of you and we
002will unfortunately continue to be in contact with you. Um, just letting you know that now. Um, you know, while we're here, um, at the end of the day, I just want to stress because I'm over here in conversations and this is not about Sam Piper being a bad school. This is about it being not Rston. So, all this has to do with So, I need to stress that first. So, when we get into it, um, at the end of the day, started out 49 kids. It's now 36. Eight girls >> In the sixth grade at the minimum, This is a a developmental Tom. I'm trying not to read, you know, regurgitate our emails. There's eight girls. I said in our email to I don't know who you apologize. Um, you know, playing football with the
003PE teacher because no other girls want to do anything. The past two days, volleyball by herself at lunch off the baseball fence. She shouldn't have to go play with seven eighth grade girls in order to have friends and develop and socially, you know, grow. Um, the school's not for her. Rston is for her and everything it it offers. Um, at the end of the day, we weren't in the district last year, but we've been in the district for four of the past six years. Um, to kind of exclude kids that weren't there seems a little unfair. I think that's a topic down the line that needs to change. Um, it's a hard it's a hard thing to talk about. You know what I mean? I'm here to fight for it. That's what you do for
004ones you love and I will continue to fight. Um, had a whole bunch of stuff I wanted to say, but it's it's it's hard because I'm emotionally it's hard. >> I'm going to go into a quick little thing and just show you Olivia's academic achievements. She's a straight A student. She needs to switch classes. She needs every opportunity that every other kid had last May when they enrolled. She enrolled. We're here. She got the faith award. She was the president of her fifth grade class. She wants student body government. She wants to have hundreds of friends. She wants to play sports. She was the captain of her team. She's made a team for every sport. Volleyball, basketball. She plays football. She plays softball. She was awarded. It's more than sports, but sports align with so
005much social emotional activity for these young girls. When there are eight girls or 36 students in one grade, that is limiting who she is. She's crying at night. She has headaches at night. She's stressing because she's alone. Sne Piper is phenomenal. They should have 200 students, but our daughter. She's alone and we're begging you to be our voice and to fight for her and let her have every opportunity that Rston allows. There can always be wiggle wiggle room and please allow her to be one more number there. She deserves it. >> It's not a black This is not a black and white kind of issue. There's gray areas to everything. To everything. Um >> she shouldn't be crying. This this is a gray area and and there needs to be some understanding of it. >>
006Thank you for listening. We know you can't respond, but thank you. We really hope we get it. >> Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. >> And that is all the speakers. >> Okay. U Thank you, Miss Alinger. Um on to item number five, our superintendent's report. Uh good evening board. Uh I want to start with uh real quick clarification on our consent and uh consent approval. Uh we had four um approval with one absent uh showing trustee costs as here at this point. Thank you trustee. Um and I want to just go ahead and launch in. We had a successful start to the 2526 school year. We welcomed 3,8884 kiddos uh last week um and we're well into the school year. So really exciting start. Um I want to send a quick uh thank you
007to our the SMCE staff um who are hosting our board meetings uh this year while our district office is under construction. That construction will take place actually will start moving out at the end of this month. Uh but the uh Sonteo County Office staff has been really gracious and letting us use their facilities this year as well as uh setup. Zach is here taking care of us with tech. Uh Richard was here taking care of us with all the setup and much appreciation to Superintendent McGee for allowing us to use this space. So uh with that, the big pieces that I had are actually covered in my strategic plan update uh in just a little bit. So I'll hold it for there. Welcome back. >> Thank you. Um I'll do item number six or 2025
00826 certified substitute salary schedule with director Eastburn. >> Good evening. Um tonight item number six, we have an update for the certificated substitute salary schedule to um compensate for the increase in Wednesday um congregate setting. Um so that half the half day rate and um the partial day excluding Wednesdays and conference those two uh partial day rates were updated to reflect that. Also the home instruction teacher um rate increased from $210 to $230 primarily because that's a hard to fill position. and that matches the long-term substitute rate. It >> is recommended that those items be um approved. >> First, open for discussion. Are there any questions? Seeing is there are none. Um I have a motion to approve the 2025 2026 certifi certificated substitute salary schedule. I move that we approve the 2025 2026 certificated
009substitute salary schedule. >> Second. >> Thank you. Um all in favor please say I. >> I. >> Seeing as there are no naysay item number six is approved. Um don't go anywhere. Item number seven uh classified substitute salary schedule. Director >> item number seven before you is um our updates to the classified substitute salary schedule. Um the first item is to increase the or to add a a line item for licensed vocational nurse otherwise known as LVN. Um and the second one is to align the hourly rates for par educator and nutrition clerk. So for those reasons it is um recommended that the classified substitute salary schedule be approved. >> Thank you. Uh any questions from the board? Again, I have a motion to approve the 2025 2026 classified substitute salary schedule. >> Great. I
010just want to say thank you to Director East and her team for um identifying that need. When we make those adjustments, it ensures that we are able to recruit and retain our substitutes, which are really important each and every day. >> Thank you. >> I move to approve the 2025 2026 classified substitute salary schedule. >> Is there a second? Second. >> Thank you. Uh all in favor please say I. >> I. >> Seeing as there are no nays. Uh the classified substitute salary schedule is also approved. Thank you Dr. Eastburn. Uh item number eight, our strategic plan with superintendent Dora. >> Great. I am uh tag teaming this uh strategic plan update tonight with director Simon. Uh, so he's gonna have to find his way to make it up here a bit if he can
011or deliver from back there. Either way, um, I want to go ahead and just, uh, jump in here. Strategic plan framework 2326 uh, through 2026. We're in the third year of our strategic plan, and I'm really pleased with the way it's all come together. Uh, you'll recall that we have four main components. uh teaching all students to be well-rounded learners, fostering belonging and inclusion, promoting community engagement, and investing in securing in our long-term future. Uh tonight, I'm going to be talking about the bottom two quadrants. Uh promoting community engagement. Actually, I'm going to be talking about that one. Jerome's going to be talking about the investing in the long term with our technology piece. We can go to the next slide. Uh we've been doing a lot of work thinking about what it is we
012promise our community in terms of of a profile of our empowered learner. Um teaching students to be well-rounded learners to think uh and deepen their understanding to innovate uh exploring ideas and to advocate champion positive impact in themselves and in others. Um I got really excited this summer when I read the book uh Disengaged Learner or Disengaged Teen, excuse me. Um, and I'm just going to start by saying the name of that book uh is a little bit of a distractor for me. The idea of teen, right? Uh, I think it it really speaks to learning at all levels from little guys to teenagers uh to adults. We always want to make sure that when we're learning um our learning is optimized, that we're engaged uh in the greatest way possible. So, I started the
013year with our staff um around the idea of engagement and agency. Um we talked a lot about um how we build a culture that encourages both agency and engagement within the context of our profile of a learner. If we can go to the next slide. There we go. Uh so the idea kind of this year is setting that driving question of how can we cultivate a learning culture where achievement, agency and engagement work together to bring our profile of a learner to life for every student. So that's how we kicked off um the year. Uh we're focusing on really three levers this year. If we can go to the next slide. Um one is just engaging in that conversation with our teachers. What does it take to ensure maximum engagement uh for each and every
014one of our students? Right? That idea that strong teaching and learning happens in each and every one of our classrooms and how do we continue to build on that. Uh two is through professional learning and professional development. We're sponsoring a kind of a unique cohort uh that'll go throughout the school year to build a project-based learning style around environmental literacy. um looking at connecting uh our students with um learning in different ways. Uh that'll be facilitated by Cheney Mson. Uh and it's pretty exciting, right? We're we're just starting to recruit for the cohort now. Um hopefully by the end of the year, we'll see examples of of lessons and engagement that brings our profile of a learner to life. And then finally, the um uh community book club. Uh you've probably seen the advertisements already.
015uh we're going to facilitate a book study around the disengaged teen with um uh Stanford's um uh success group um challenge success um already we have a good number we have 40 as of today we had 45 folks signed up for that uh and we just started promoting it so it's going to be multiple uh 75 minute sessions uh coming soon the board has the book study club the book club study guide uh on your uh on the day here for you. Hopefully, you will attend, but we're encouraging all of our community members uh parents, teachers, daycare providers, uh anybody who's interested in learning and thinking about engagement uh to join us. So, that's uh again, I'm going to emphasize sponsored with our PTA. There's a collaboration happening there uh Stanford's challenge success um and
016the district team. So looking forward to that. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jerome for an update um on tech. Next two slides are justformational. Yeah. So I'm just uh here to kind of give you guys an update on some of the projects we've been working on that long side that have been outlined in the strategic plan. Um you know all of them were kind of uh you know brought out during that period of planning strategic plan you know was a things that came up are like staff devices student devices just long-term plans for that and providing you know effective um effective technology to you know do that well learning piece. You go to the next slide please director Simon real quick I just want to make sure your mic is on. it
017was coming on that >> perfect >> uh first piece is the staff m deployment so uh as we planned during the strategic plan uh we decided to move forward with Mac devices for staff that's just to provide a more effective device um previous to that you know we had been doing Windows devices you know just to make new and refurbished um staff uh the we kind of went to those Macs just because um they provide you know better battery life staff and better performance and as Apple moved to Apple silicon platform the cost kind of became a good differential as well. Um we piloted that in spring of 2004 and that involved you know uh 26 MacBooks to a variety of staff and um we kind used Mosul as our mobile device management solution. So
018that's to manage all those devices out there. So we were testing both the devices and the device management solution. Uh we went into year one, we surveyed staff um to kind of get our early adopters there. And things that we pushed when we did that early adoption too is we decided um to move towards two-factor authentication for all our staff. So we're using Google authentication for our MacBooks. Um reasons behind doing two-factor authentication is it just provides better security for our staff accounts, but also um you know it provides a measure of uh coverage as far as insurance and things like that as well. Um so that first year um you know we we uh surveyed staff we got those early adopters and we deployed there. Um now we're in year two and we have
019u we're looking to deploy 71 MacBooks. So of that we've deployed 26 to new staff. So generally what we do in the district is we do deploy new devices to new staff. It's just easier to do that at that point and then we uh recycle other devices back. Um, so we deployed 26 of those. The remainder of those are going to be deployed at towards the end of September once we complete our move um to the district office. We're kind of focusing on that a little bit. Um towards the end of se September into October and we should have all the 71 deployed. Um then we'll have finally will be our year three. The goal will be to move everybody over to MacBooks. Um there are some limited staff district office and other people who
020will still use Windows devices who need to but for the general point it will be 86 MacBooks being deployed in year three as well and then we'll be a full deployment after that the focus will be on our fiveyear refresh cycle for um staff devices. Um and you know we're going to kind of early on we'll phase some of those earlier than five years. Uh just because we're in this three-year deployment we got to match it to that fiveyear but after that um we'll be on a fivey year. Next slide Chromebook road map. So um historically we've had a you know sixish year Chromebook refresh. Um something that came up in the strategic plan was providing effective devices to students. Um things that had come up was cart management with wiring. Uh some people, you
021know, they're being linked with keyboards, things like that around Chromebook devices. We were looking to kind of improve that. It wasn't necessarily switching from Chromebooks. It's more just making sure that life cycle is uh um fully utilized and that we're replacing devices effectively. So what we did and alongside that um there was a a need or you know want from teachers in the lower grade level. So we've been three we've been one to one at grades three through five for a number of years. Um we've been onetoone take-home in six through eight uh since right after the pandemic. Kind of pushed that out in the pandemic. We kept it going forward. Um it was just to uh kind of improve the time spent in repairing devices and getting students replacements in 628 through eight and
022also in three through five just making sure there was an effective way for staff to you know report issues with the car make sure that wire management was better on those carts and then in the lower grades there was a need um for more devices in classrooms. So we've had uh smaller classroom sets. We've had shared carts over the years. Um the decision we kind of came to was to move grade two and one to one to one. So the first year was last year. We moved grade two to one to one. So just like three and five through five, every classroom has a Chromebook card. We also added things like for our middle school, we added a locker solution for RS and Sam Piper NE's doing it a little bit differently, but Rston and
023Sam Piper have a locker solution where student reports an issue with a Chromebook, they get a code, they can go and get a replacement device. Um, so we implemented that in year in the in previous to year one. Year one, we were kind of trying to work out all of the bugs and issues as far as getting those devices replaced in a timely manner. And then um this year um what we're working on is uh kind of reigning in some of the uh the damage that we get in six through eight just you know um not so much you know wear and tear or accidental but um the intentional damage or like a big one we get is screen breaks. Um so kind of we're working on setting up billing for that. So we started
024that in the summer of last year. We did our first round of notifying parents about billing and um at the beginning of last year we had notified people that we were going to start um billing families for damage on intentional damage. Um so this year we're moving that into our new ticketing solution which is in IQ and I'll cover that a little bit later but um we're going to move that building into there so it's a little bit more seamless for kids and parents as well. Year two is a grade one deployment. So that grade one is moving to one to one carts as well. And then u we're doing some uh phasing out in three through five of just our older Lenovo Gen um gen two Chromebooks which are not out of date yet
025but they will be out of date in 2026. So we're just trying to get ahead of that as well. Um after that it's mostly future planning for us. So nice thing is I know the board had highlighted we're kind of artificially going through Chromebooks. They're not necessarily um previous Chromebooks would be fine but they wouldn't get updates anymore. There was a limited lifespan of updates. You know anywhere from five to seven years it was prior. Um and we would you know intentionally have to e-waste devices because they were no longer getting updates. So they didn't support a lot of the curriculum material the state testing things like that. Um the nice thing is Google's kind of heard the school the complaints of schools on that you know just this a lot of int you know
026unneeded waste um and they increase the lifespan of Chromebooks to 10 years. So all new Chromebooks purchased after 20 from 2022 on have a 10-year lifespan as long as they're a 22 2022 model on. Um, so that was a part of that. Lenovo Gen Gen 200E, those fall a little prior to that. They're a 2020 model. So those are the last ones we have that weren't purchased in 2022 or later. So when as soon as Google announced that, we there was kind of word that that was probably going to happen. So we've been trying to buy newer models in general. Um, so once we get those 100 E out of there, we expect to actually have to phase out fewer Chromebooks. So generally what we were having to do was buy the four year four
027to five year lifespan we were having to get rid of about 70 to 80%. Um but 40% were probably in good working condition. Um now moving forward we'll you know be able to keep that for um 40%. Even past that um our refresh cycle is five years for student networks. Next slide. So another piece was our infrastructure. Um just improving our network performance and capacity. Um things that had come up with uh during that strategic planning was just uh enough bandwidth for students and teachers for the growing need of like high you know high bandwidth content and also capacity is a big one. um you know we don't we haven't necessarily used a lot of bandwidth and thing but classrooms use a lot of capacity you know for as far as wireless so it's not
028necessarily everybody's using a lot of bandwidth it's that everybody there's so much so many students in a concentration concentrated area so it was focusing on those things so the first piece we decided was our wired network would be first in in line for that but most of all mostly that's because um that's coming on 10 plus years it was the last bond measure. Um so we went and we piloted that at Fox in the spring of 200 um the summer of 2024. Um and we decided to move move forward with an HP Aruba solution. So previously we've had an HP Pro Curve solution and uh it's very similar and a lot of we a lot of the same takeaways um plus there's some good centralized management pieces with the Ruba central which is a piece
029of software along with that. Um, so we did adopt that solution and we picked up that hardware towards the end of spring, early summer this year and we're in the process of deploying that. We're expecting all of that to be deployed um by and so the whole project for that is around 1.5 million. um it was from the previous bond um monies and uh we do have a reimbursement of 295,000 from our e- rate funds for that for category 2 funds that'll come from there. Next piece that we're working on and we've kind of continuously worked on is just our internet WAN connection. Um so you know for saying internet you know is our internet services just like you would use at home. Our WAN connection is our wide area network that supports all of
030our school sites in our district office. Um, so we upgraded that previously from a one gig to a three gig connection a few years back. Um, as we went to bid because our cont Comcast contract was up. Um, we went to bid and we bid out for uh a five gig connection with the um intention to move to a 10 gig connection eventually. So within that five-year contract, we can move to a 10 gig connection without having to Um it's just a you know we future proofed a 10 gig connection at our district office moving to Nesbbit for that but our district office is our main collector that's going to move to Nesbbit in the next couple weeks and that hosts our WAN so that is a 10 gig connection now whereas previously it was
031a one gig connection as well and like I said our primary site is moving to Nesbbit um that aligns with the district office construction construction, but it also lines with um we do have some power issues up higher up on the hill. Um it's also a little bit more beneficial for our main site to be a school site. PG tends to uh you know shut down power wise for school sites. Um so Nesbbit will be our our main collector going forward. When the district office comes back, it'll just be a subsite of other school sites as well. Uh the final piece for this is our wireless network. Uh so last year I had presented we did a full-sight survey at all of our sites. So that's just you know doing heat mapping to see how
032the wireless is performing at all of the sites. Um in that we highlighted some areas of weakness. We've improved upon that. Now the next step is kind of the district planning for a wireless refresh. So our wireless system age ranges from anywhere from eight years to five years for depending on the system. We're a mix of Ruckus and Ubiquiti is our technologies there. Um we're probably looking to standardize a single system um across the district. So um what we're planning to do is kind of pilot that alongside our MUR work that's going to happen um with this with this bond with the first phase. Um the idea behind that will be we would pilot it this summer uh or install it this summer, pilot it during the school year and go out to bid for
033um either the next summer or the following summer to replace the whole wireless system throughout the district. Uh last piece or you know one of the last pieces is kind of in the strategic plan was you know exploring AI and technologies. you know it's very developing you know still you know even from when we first developed the strategic plan you know when uh open AAI had released their first u models um you know it's a lot different that landscape now that's going to continue to change really quickly uh so in that planning phase we kind of just decided the best thing to do would be to monitor what was going on uh our year one approach was kind of just following a lot of the staff early adopter innovations and Cypriyani and a few other
034sites have done some PD around that. Um we've kind of followed along that. As far as the district office, uh myself and previously uh CBO bow, you know, had done a lot of um coursework around prompt engineering just so we could better understand it. You can't really expect other people to be using AI unless you completely understand it. And prompt engineering is really the you know biggest piece of it for userf facing userf facing LM AI. Our year two pieces are to continue to monitor a lot of that. That's kind of a continuing piece, but um Google has recently um we are a Google Workspace district obviously and Google has recently moved the Gemini product into the workspace product line. Um so we've opened up Google, you know, Google Gemini for staff users within the
035district and um we'll start, you know, advertising that to them as well. We opened it late late spring early summer for a few of the staff users last year that wanted to try it out. We've opened it to all staff since. Um and then you know we're going to work on some of our own projects internally that we can kind of uh you know work at like we're going to work on building a you know with the notebook as a product in Google Gemini suite. We're going to work on building a somewhat chat chatbot for to uh for our board policy and some of the administrative workflow. It's just a you know good proof of concept and a test as well slide. So some completed projects we had in our strategic plan as a piece
036part of our strategic plan. We've completed our phone system upgrade across the sites. So that was a a long process to move through. Um so things that are big on that is it's a full IP system. So it utilizes our our network. It's kind of a tech resource now rather than between a tech and phone resource. It's moved off of our old copper technology from AT&T. So AT&T is in the process of kind of, you know, soft phasing some of that phasing a lot of that off um over the years. Um we've had some issues with it. That is, you know, a relief to be able to move that to an IP technology and kind of just uh run that as a service. Um, great features with that are just better fality, but also voicemail
037to email first staff and um, sight specific 911. So, the 911 technologies with that you have to deploy with new phone systems are a lot more targeted. So, you can um, you know, when they call 911 from a classroom, it'll flag it at the front office, you know, and the room that it's coming from. And it will also provide a lot of that mapping and you know mapping and um information that they would need for emergency services to be able to navigate if they couldn't come to the front office or if they needed to go after hours it would give them that information as well. Um so other things are cross site transfers. So now our phone system used to be a little bit uh more segregated. We had phone controllers at each site. All
038of it works out of that main site now. So they can transfer calls directly from site to site now, which we couldn't do before. And improved caller ID. That was always a complaint for staff is that you couldn't really see. Caller ID worked, didn't work. Sometimes it depended. Um it's a lot more improved now. Um as I think most people can attest to. Future pieces are um we're just moving um we're going to be enabling sitewide all calls. That's for emergency calling. will have kind of a secret code that they can use to press into a phone and do an all call to the full from it and also panic alarms at the front office. So, um we're working on installing a button that can panic alarm on the phone system as well. Uh nice
039things about the phone system is it's a big piece is it's cost effective. We used to have to pay for our device licensing. We no longer have to do that. We just have to buy the cost of the phone. Phones are about 50% of the cost on the they were on the system. Second piece is campus security enhancements. So um we're transitioning all the sites from our older sonetrol system to a ricotta system. So um we've had a limited amount of ricotta cameras at all the school sites. Um the focus on those has been mostly towards the exterior of campus to provide security and safety not to you know watch students and staff as much. Um so we've completed four sites. Redwood Shores was our pilot site on the Ricardo alarm system a year and
040a half ago. Um this summer we moved Criyani, Nesbbit and San Pepper to that. Um so the nice thing with the system is this is a full tech system. So um uh or techbased system. So it's all web- based management on that. Um it provides camera verification for both administrators for an event that would come up or the um for cottage screening staff that would call for an event to an alarm. Uh cameras are all kind of strategic place. We moved some of those. We took the opportunity when we're doing the alarms to move some of those and upgrade a few of them um that were kind of lacking. Um and uh that's kind of focused again around our safety and priv privacy piece rather than you know monitoring our settings at large. Uh we've
041also added scheduled disarming and arming. So the nice thing on that is a big piece we've had a problem with is false alarms. We don't want PD showing up or shores. Um, it's just people, you know, you know, not knowing if a door is closed, not knowing if a door is opened, disarming or not knowing if a site is armed or disarmed on the weekends or off hours. Um, we've moved to a schedule where we're arming the system at a certain time, automated, and disarming it at a certain time. Um, and that prevents it doesn't have all of the staff at large outside of custodians and administrators having to really arm and disarm system all the time. we've already seen, you know, a decrease in the amount of events there. And that is our um
042our completed project for our street plan. Another piece that we did complete was our tech ticket management system. So, we've moved from fresh test incident IQ and that's going really well. Um we've uh been advertising to staff and it's been pretty well received. >> Thank you, Tro. >> Thanks, Thank you. Um, any questions for Jerome? >> Thank you, Jerome. Thank you again for your presentation for curious uh the AI piece. Uh, you have so you said in your it says year two deploying Gemini to staff, but you also mentioned that you kind of let early adapt, right? >> Sorry about that. Can you hear me now? Okay. Can you just explain why we're waiting till year two? Because I think as as staff and I get >> So year two is actually now this is
043year two. >> This is year two. There we go. Never mind. >> This is year two for that. Just like with our staff Chromebooks and the student devices, I know that doesn't align necessarily. >> We're in year two. >> All right. >> Um so we're gonna, you know, like I said, we continue that monitoring of how people are using it in the classroom, but opening up the Gemini product because that's something we have available for. So we've opened that up to staff. We had about 20 staff into last year who were asking for it. Um we were just waiting kind of for us. So now that it is available uh it's not I wouldn't say it's equivalent to the pro product that you subscribe through for Gemini. It's somewhere in between. We do pay for
044workspace licensings workspace licensing as a district. Google has kind of leveraged that into there. So it's it's it's in the middle of all that what their access level is. >> Okay. Um thank you for doing that with the verata the other three sites that has not transitioned to it. Is there a timeline? >> Working on Reese and I are working uh CBO um Atumoto working on transitioning those this summer. We're still kind of in the planning phases for that. Um but it looks like we can do all of them this summer sites. So that would be uh Rosson Central and Fox. the district office would get done probably somewhere around September or um you know August or September depending on where construction is at. Um but all of them should be done by next summer
045or you know into you know late October. >> Thank you. The final question I had was um one of the goals was reducing the the damage rates to the Chromebook. So I was curious um did you have did you feel like the communication to the parents that we were going to charge them I didn't know if that you know how the mitigation of reducing did you have we >> did when we last year when we first advertised it to parents um we did see a drop in the amount of damage for Chromebooks >> in on the flip side we've seen an increase this this beginning of the school year Um we do think that um we've seen less repeat offenders for Chromebook damage which is really what we were trying to focus on that I
046would say that's not the largest part. You know generally kids are breaking one device you know in a year if they break it at you know in their whole threeear span of middle school or maybe breaking one screen. I don't think that's necessarily decreased at large but um we've definitely seen a lot less of the repeat or some of the intentional damage that we're seeing. So from that aspect, you're happy with with >> we do have some room to improve there and figure out ways to increase you know increase u you know student responsibility around those devices but um we're get we're getting there. >> Okay. Thank you. >> You think do you have questions? >> Yeah I just had a question around um how do you do you see any challenges with the teachers
047going to MacBooks and the students still being on the Chromebooks? They're just two very different user interfaces. >> Yeah. >> And the inongruency there sometimes. >> Yeah. Um I don't think we have a lot of challenges there mostly because we've been a Google Workspace district as far as most of our products for a number of years. Another piece when moving to MacBooks is we started phasing out u Microsoft Office. That was a big thing in that early adopter year. Um continued it. We're not installing Office as a default on those. It's just uh a push to you know obviously we have Google learn space as a platform. It's much better as a collaborative platform than just you know using office for those tools. So um it's uh you know our teachers have definitely you know
048post pandemic have moved towards their Google workspace tools you know in there. So I I think with the productivity suite being accessible on both um and you know tools like classroom and others that are aligned and most of our curriculum is based now it's no longer you know related around direct software installs on >> I I think what I'm thinking is more around those younger grade levels especially as you have new teachers who've come in who may not be so familiar with how we're doing things they're they're adjusting to a MacBook and then they have these kids that don't know what they're doing saying oh my gosh so and so I don't know what what's my clever login like you know what I mean so are or do we have any plans in place to
049help especially those newer teachers who don't necessarily know how >> so we do have one of our staff members uh uh Vinnie is kind of aotted towards staff staff devices in general or staff technologies in the classroom uh the teachers who have needed a little bit more um you know a little bit more um intervention as far as learning to use a Mac device and how to effectively use it in a classroom help more one I think last year when we deployed um to uh our uh teachers, we gave them the choice between >> new teachers, we gave them the choice between a MacBook and a uh Windows device. Um of the people we deployed to, we only had two people who allotted for the Windows device. Everybody else went for the Mac. Um those
050two people um you know, we this year we've had I think probably around two to three again. uh we just gave them more one-on-one time to get them used to using those devices and how to effectively use their >> Thank you. >> Other questions? All right. Um start it. >> All right. Again, uh thank you Director Simon and your small but mighty team. Uh you guys have done a lot of work. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> A quick just uh point of order. But I just want to note uh and I was supposed to announce this at my superintendence update. Um beginning of the school year, we always have back to school nights. Um the number of days for our schools to have back to school nights and avoid all conflicts, including board meal.
051So I just want to note that uh I think it is fantastic that all of our trustees have students in our schools. Uh that is amazing and we want to make sure that you can participate with your your kiddos as well. So I know trustee Deng uh is headed out to central uh here uh starting shortly and uh trustee CS and trustee Bruno um also have back to school nights and then next week um is Rston and many of you will be there. So just thank you for that and thank you for your flexibility and meeting times. >> Thank you for the Thank you. Uh item number nine, ed service update with um assistant superintendent who >> Hi, good evening everyone. All right, we have a quick presentation for you to give you a little
052bit of an update on what we did during the summer while schools were closed, district office remained open and we were continuing to serve students. So I am joined tonight by director Denny Payne as well as Caroline Baldonado who is currently Sand Piper seventh grade teacher but served as our ESY principal. We are going to talk a little bit about the extended school year offerings that we did this summer as well as Power Scholars Academy and just a little bit of PD that we offered for our teachers. So, I'm gonna invite Caroline up. Caroline did an amazing job in her first admin call. Um, again, I'm Caroline Bulanado. I'm a teacher at Sandpaper, but I had the honor of being a principal uh this summer and I loved every moment of it. So, I'm just
053here to like tell you about our amazing team. Um, as many of you already know, we over ESY focus on academic growth and social development and really maintaining key skills for students. Um, over the summer, it's a four-week program. We had about 70 students that attended regularly with um, nine mild, moderate, and moderate severe uh, classes from preschool all the way to eighth grade. So, quite a range on one campus. You can head to Oh, even better. Thank you. God, I love all these pictures. Okay, so I have really quick notes because I wanted to just give shoutouts to so many people. Um, I think that what really made this summer so successful was the amazing team that we had from uh many of our teachers that came on for the summer are our regular
054teachers during the school year. They already have solid relationships with our students and for some of them they've actually been their teacher for multiple years because some of our special education classes are, you know, maybe a threeyear span. So, I think having those solid relationships with students, it really showed over the summer and also their families. Uh, I also want to point out that we did have some temporary staff come on for the summer and maybe the PAR educator position and uh they enjoyed it and we actually were able to hire some on for the school year. So, it's really lovely to see them um as part of our uh annual or yearly team. Um, I have to give the tech team, I'm not just saying this because Jerome is here, but the tech team
055and also facilities a huge shout out. They were my right hand. I would I would text, I would email, I would send anything and they were there on campus immediately. Um, and they were extremely supportive. A lot of our students have special devices. Their AAC devices, which are like iPads, um, Chromebook chargers, whatever I need, I really have access to. Um, and our facilities team, I mean, they're also um, awesome. So, I just have to say they're great. So, special programs department, phenomenal, but also the support staff that kind of um, backed us up. Uh some of the pictures you're going to see up here tonight is our field trip to Wonderlick Park in Redwood City. This is actually the first field the first time that ESY has taken students on a field trip. The
056shirts, I have to say, uh were all high visibility shirts for the students. We were kind of in like a wooded area and some of the kids did do some hiking. Uh but they were in a neon yellow shirt. We can see them really well. We were fully staffed. Um and opening doors, PTA paid for our shirts, which was wonderful. And the buses were all paid for by the this town of Woodside. It's part of their program at Wonderlick Park. And uh volunteer dosent led us through. We also had some other fun activities this summer from uh Redwood City Library came out and did a special assembly with us. We had theme days. We did a water day where the students were able to do a lot of water play. Um and overall it was
057just um a lot of wonderful experiences for the students. I think one thing that I'm really proud of with ESY is the unique opportunity to blend all the schools together. So these typically these kids are on many different school sites, but over the summer they all came together. It made it wonderful because the teachers were really able to collaborate and work together throughout the four-week program, but also the students were able to interact with each other, really build on relationships, social skills, their language skills. Uh, and so one of the teachers said, you know, we saw students make incredible strides as they worked in developing confidence in social interactions with the peers. And I think that these um these photos really show it. I think one photo I'm the most proud of is in the
058bottom right. And that is um one of our students with his par educator. He went running up to her and I like tried to grab my phone as soon as I could. But I think that really encapsulates the the feelings of this summer and the success of it and the um the love that our special programs um and our RSSD staff have for this group of students in general. And sometimes days are hard and they go through challenging things, but these people are not just here as a job. They're here because they are really passionate about what they do and they um just deserve a shout out. So, thank you. I'm just so impressed. I loved being a part of this team and I just wanted to give a shout out to everyone including Sonia
059Vienna who she's told me not to say anything but she is a behind the scenes um she is a a person that works at the district office she with Jenny often and um she's phenomenal and she does so much and she really is a big piece of this so thank you everyone >> thank you right because Caroline was running that program neither of us had to worry it was amazing this was my first summer where I didn't really have to worry worry about any of the programs. So, it was fantastic. >> Uh we also ran Power Scholars Academy at Central. We had 463 students invited um of which 111 enrolled and participated. Stephanie McMaster, our wonderful reading specialist from Nesbbit, took the helm. She's not the official principal, but she was the I don't know
060what their title was at the YMCA, the the coach of the program. She took care of everything. She she worked with the staff. She made sure kids were in the correct places. She facilitated and again I didn't I didn't get a single phone call on the few days that I was off during during the program. She ran everything. We had seven teachers from within the district. This was actually the first year we had more teachers interested in working than we had spots. We also had counselors participate and they staffed the program every single day between three different counselors. again more counselors wanting to participate and we had to divvy up to say you know what we we got to stop because we can't have you there for two days at a time but it was
061an incredible program. The pictures that you see there are the annual graduation. This was hosted up in San Bruno and our kids were giving a speech about all the things that they learned and then performing a dance. Um really quite touching to see all of these kids having fun during the summer. Best part was you can see some parents standing up in the photos. I went to go watch the graduation. I was not prepared to see so many Nesbbit families. Um, sorry, so many Belmont Road Redwood Tour families. I I I only know that they're Nesbbit because I knew who their kids were. Um, but there were so many parents there to see their kids and it was really exciting. Um, also over the summer, you've seen the slide before, we hosted a kind of
062pre summer, pre-start of school training for MClass. As you'll remember, we adopted MClass for our reading difficulty screener. It is also replacing our K2 um benchmark assessment because we have the ability to do the three times a year and it really is fully aligned to to measuring reading progress. So we had 15 teachers come in the summer to get trained early. So they are going to start assessing students. The remainder of the K2 teachers, we have a total of 45 will get their training on September 29th during learning day. That's our summer. Little bit little bit breezy a little bit fast but do you have any questions >> learning? Okay. Can you briefly remind us or me what the difference between the extended school year and the power scholars academy? >> Extended school year is
063specifically for students with IEPs for whom summer loss would take longer than 2x the vacation to recapture at the beginning of the school year. So really for our kids in the special day classes, not just general kids with special ed needs. And then PSA is our summer elo program, our 30 days of nine hours. >> That's it's right. So that's the YMCA. >> You hire the YMCA to run that program. Yes. >> So it's it's amazing that the the field trip and everything. I think that's awesome. It's always great when the kids get out. How did you how did the town of What was the reason the town of Woodside was able to partner with us or pay for the school bus? I think that's awesome. So um we we were looking for a field
064trip for the students. The previous summer students had walked because we were at Nesbbit. So they walked to the gas station and and really our goal of working on social skills. Um we were looking for another field trip. So Sonia, I have to say she's the one that found it and and Woodside regularly does this. They get grants and funding and they welcome school sites and they pay the for the buses which is really the largest expense and they also um have the dosens come as they're all volunteers that are happy to be there. >> Oh wow. >> Yeah, it's really wonderful. >> Next summer I don't know if they're still going to be there at that site but the horse ranch I don't always find like animals people say right animals are very cathartic.
065I mean they are to me. So maybe there's a and I know they do things with Girl Scouts and everything. So maybe there's an opportunity if they're still around >> since they are on that site. >> They actually brought out a mini pony. Okay. And so I had I probably have 500 pictures from that day alone. I could show you. Um and so many of our students were able to go up to the like of a mini pony. Um there's one student in particular um who I think I honestly feel like she probably never had seen or interacted with the horse before. Um and so it was just a beautiful moment. Also at that time, even though we weren't there for the horses, uh they had horse camps going on. So there was other kids
066on horses coming through. So we did at a safe distance get to interact with horses. Uh so it was it was wonderful. >> Yeah, I'm sure it is. >> The thing we're looking forward to I'm doing at Sandpiper is I'm doing a collaboration with K9 Companions. So it's something that we've done at Rub Shores. Um, and those are actually uh therapy dogs. And so I'm going to be bringing them into the middle school setting and um having much more animal therapy services done. And so we um we're just something that we're doing. I know we also have a therapy dog. What's her little name again? >> Margot is one of our therapy dogs with Chris and Sevilla. Uh and so I think that it's something that I'm interested in and many other people are. We
067just have to navigate um allergies and things like that. So making sure we're um keeping all the kiddos safe that can be around them. I absolutely bring believe bringing in animals is a goal that we'll have to do. >> Yeah. >> Um, one final question just it's great that it's getting um a lot of um play or exuberance by the staff that want to do it that they're almost on a wait list, but what what do you do you think it's word of mouth? Do you think it's just Well, obviously the ex the programming is is of interest to them. Like do you have any ideas? Well, >> I think there's multiple reasons. I think um this is the first time I'm a general education teacher and I'm going to administration but uh the special
068programs department is a wonderful uh department to be a part of. They work really hard. They also have a lot of camaraderie amongst each other. >> Um we also did fun things like taste of the table where we have like meals together. I brought in a variety of Oreos. Dan's seen me do this before, but there's other things we do to really build a culture and climate um to make it fun. I wanted it to be a fun environment. I wanted if I'm going to have a really quick staff meeting every Monday, a check-in meeting, I wanted them to come in with a smile. I think um oftentimes at education, uh we have hard days sometimes. And so I think that was really uh an important thing. But I have to say it's really uh
069the special programs department is really the heroes in this. during my last come up to the other >> during my last meeting with all the ed uh sped staff I promised them like you will walk in there that you'll have the curriculum you have the materials and you don't have to scrunch around and buy uh and so that was an assurance for our staff to know that okay I have it like I have my class I have all the material materials and I have my support staff. So that assurance is big. >> Oh, I agree with you. Um >> that's similar for PSA, right? Stephanie is has been our guru there for the past couple summers and it's through her personal recruiting and every single one of the PSA teachers that I saw over the
070summer and this was the smoothest year ever. We're so happy to be doing this. They get the curriculum and they're fully clean. >> Materials are are not a problem, >> right? It's it's good to have people working with our student. >> Thank you for uh your leadership and thank you for selecting good leaders and um I'm so happy that they had an amazing summer and both programs. Right. Thank you for that. On to item number 10, our CSBA policy board policy update with Superintendent Devar. Uh so as uh typical uh we always go through two reads of uh suggested board policies. This is the June update uh from CSBA of all the amendments and policy recommendations. Uh cabinet staff have uh thoroughly reviewed. Uh it is open for first read. uh board uh has a
071look can suggest um uh amendments, ask questions uh same as the public may. If there's any suggestions or needed amendments, uh staff will make those take those along the way and then we'll bring um the policies back for a second read and approval uh next month. I will just because Jerome presented tonight uh just note that there is a policy on here from CSBA recommended um of AI. Uh I'm going to just say it doesn't get into the nitty-gritty that necessarily dos and don'ts but sets a general groundwork which is the first step. So we're happy to be recommending that uh for approval as well. Uh but happy to answer any questions for the board as they come up either tonight or between now and next meeting. Thank you. This is the discussion item. Are
072there any questions? Seeing as if there are none, we can move to item number 11, future board meeting agenda items. Back to you >> on the 27th next week. Uh and I will note that is a change uh that was included in our our consent uh change of board meeting from the 28th to the 27th to avoid back to school nights. Um we will be meeting uh here at SMCE. Uh couple items uh on the uh agenda. Uh English language arts, specifically the science of reading uh facilities master plan. We'll be talking about updates to tranches and and uh getting into some uh details there about next steps. Uh and then hopefully with all that, we'll still have some time for governance. Um but it should be a good meeting next week. Uh and then
073September 11th is our uh uh next regularly scheduled board meeting um on topics for that. Uh we'll have had a two 2 by two with Sequoa. So we'll debrief that. Uh Director Eastburn will be giving a comprehensive enrollment um report uh for the new year, how everything settled in and then uh Reese will be providing a construction update um as well as some main topics. Beautiful. Any comments there on the agenda? Seeing as there are none, we've made it to item number 12. I'm going to call this meeting closed at 6:03 p.m.