001e all right here we go good evening I'm ready now uh I will call to order the uh November 1st 2023 uh chica unified school board meeting and workshop thank you uh and I will ask for everybody to please stand for the flag salute all righty um the next item on our agenda is announcements are there any board members that have announcements to make at this time okay uh seeing none we'll move along to the uh next item which is the consent calendar uh is there anybody that would like to pull an item from consent this evening okay do we have public comments on consent uh seeing none I'll ask for a motion on the consent calendar I'll move of acceptance of the consent calendar okay we have a motion by member Lando a second
002and a second by member conin any further discussion board okay those in favor of approval of the consent Calendar please uh let's do a Voice vote starting with Mr Lando Lando I tennis I Dolby I Robinson I Conan I all right it's unanimous it passes we'll move on to item number four item four is the board Workshop uh this is an informational item the November board Workshop topic is the review of the 2223 chica unified results from the California assessment of student performance and progress um that's the Casp I'm to prevented prevented W we're going to prevent it right no I'm just kidding presented by Tim Caris good evening there we go right nice and Loud um thank you for bearing with with us I moved over here just to make sure I had connection
003to the keyboard and the mouse um this evening um we're going to be discussing the TW spring 2023 uh Casp results that were released publicly on October 18th in smarter balanced English and math as well as the California science test results that were not released publicly but we would like to include those in tonight's presentation um as as well so tonight we're going to talk about um where cast fits into to our overall U use of Assessments our assessment system in Chico Unified I'll give you a brief overview of the cast system as a whole talk about the data life cycle in Chico Unified um from the time that we test to the time to how we use the data how we analyze it um and use it on an ongoing basis in future years
004then finally we will get to uh our Chico Unified English language arts and math publicly released aggregated results from the state as well as the California science test those results will were locally aggregated by us there's been no public release of the science test scores so where cast F fits into a a balanced assessment system um the first and most important piece of an assessment system is formative classroom assessment this is Teachers um uh giving able to give quick assessments that may not look anything like a bubble test or a computer online test these are checks for understanding and allow the teacher to give timely feedback by far the mo most important piece of assessment mment in K12 education next we have our formative um and summative common benchmark assessments in Chico Unified we are
005fortunate enough to have a number of DLC members here if you could raise your hands real quick and these are the folks some of the folks not all DLC members are here but that that group as a whole um decides what assessments are important enough for every every teacher across a grade level or a grade level span or Department to give in Chico Unified and assists with the implementation of those assessments we use those um in order to keep keep tabs on our on our kids learning throughout the year in a standardized fashion across the district so that we can uh collaborate across sites collaborate within departments within grade levels at the elementary and essentially we're we're checking for understanding and making sure our students students are ready for the annual Summit of Assessments number
006the third bullet there and that in chica unified is the California assessment of student performance and progress and that's a mouthful so we just say Casp and that those are the only true sumita of Assessments um at times we will utilize reading level assessments um locally given and managed reading level assessments as a sumita at the end of the year but for the most part our summative assessments rest in the Casp uh system so there's many components to the Casp system um the most most people are familiar with smarter balanced English and math um also testing English and math for our students with the most severe disabilities is the California alternate alternate assessment the C for science um grades five8 and 11 are administered the California science test or cast um the California alternate assessment
007for science also um is meant to be given to those students with the most severe disabilities we also have the Spanish uh reading we also have the California Spanish spish assessment administered in Chico it currently it's only administered by rosale it is a test in Spanish um what we're going to focus on tonight is English and math smarter balanced and the California science test no other uh like I mentioned earlier we have state aggregated results for Math and um language arts but not for science implications of of the results um first of all this data is shown in a different form on this on the California state dashboard and the dashboard will come out in mid mid December December 15th and that is what's used by the by the state to hold us accountable for
008what we are doing um there's both both uh state and feder federal accountability measures um that are based on our dashboard data so this data as it comes out um is really to public publicly release this data to the whole state the whole world um allow us to view aggregate results and compare to other other school districts it's used as a college readiness measure um used for English Lang English learner reclassification and really what we use this data for is a more of AO broad programmatic evaluation where are holes essentially is what we're looking for and what do we need to do more of what's going well um teachers and uh other collaborative groups such as DLC also look on it for for reflection and it's also part of our local control and accountability plan
009evaluation our lcap so there's a lot of limits to this data um number one um results are reported for overall scores and claims and these are claims are very broad sets of Standards so no teacher can look at their their results and say this is exactly what I missed last year and I need to do a better job on this this standard or this standard it's it's much much broader than that uh currently we have no claim data which is a set of Standards um all crunched together and an example would be listening and speaking for English language arts so all the standards that fall under listening and speaking and there might be you know 20 are are given in a single aggregate for for listening and speaking both all three of these tests we're
010going to discuss tonight have those um but no claimed dat is is given to us on a student level so no teacher knows EX exactly which students scored low on listening and speaking for for example is that something that is forthcoming but just hasn't gotten there yet as the state builds out the the testing program or is it something that we shouldn't expect to come out it's something that we shouldn't expect I I hope it comes but we shouldn't expect we had that for years in um English and Lang English and math however with with the pandemic the state shortened the test and so there's not enough data in a single students's um test data to say whether or not that single student um mastered a certain claim or not um however when they look
011at the entire set of aggregate dat data points they do have enough data and so they release those um for groups of students in the Aggregates only now and I expect us to stay with a shortened blueprint the shortened test um from here on out and another limitation to this data is teachers don't get this data until way after the fact to be really uh actionable teachers need to get get the data almost instantaneous and be able to act on that with their kids in the moment that's the importance of formative assessment that I I mentioned earlier um Tim this this is an area that um our DLC is is involved with trying to get our um formative data as soon as possible and get it to the teachers so that those teachers that need
012to be able to identify which student in the class that's sitting before them has a gap and and that they can treat to it you know almost as quickly as they are instructing and then reviewing whether or not a student needs to be retaught a certain exactly okay so explain how that's working if I if the state isn't involved and we are doing it what is it exactly that we do through the approved stuff that the DLC has worked on to get that happen happening so we do a wide variety of things I'll focus on a on a couple um uh one example is is Junior High math for example Junior High Math teachers U administer the ISL assessment um and what that assessment does is it goes beyond the skills that are taught in
013the course what it does is it goes it um adjusts to find the the holes in the students earlier learning what does a student need to remediate essentially and then gives the teachers tools to assign um work and and review um of those remedial skills that's that's one example of of H of how that process works at the junior high do we do at this ISL thing at all grade levels we don't we have a variety of assess assessments at a variety of grade levels uml currently is only given at the secondary level and not all high school grade levels um and we have a wide variety of that's really a whole separate Workshop as local assessment um a wide variety of Assessments at elementary that are meant to specifically diagnose um what students need
014to learn essentially Neil DA has a program that's doing that that that's the only school I'm familiar with because that's the only one I visited and got informed on so what what Neil Dow does is where we would like to have all of our elementaries what Neil da does is done at all of our elementary schools for example it does it look different absolutely there's different you know funding that's available to different schools and things like that each School puts their different different flavor on it one of the things that we've been happy to be able to do over the past couple years is um Implement reading um interventions via our reading specialists at our at our elementary sites and now the um the cohesion that that group has is now growing to include Title
015One teachers that um really um are there for the same purpose they might be doing a little something different in groups but we're bringing the title one teachers in with the reading Specialists to be more cohesive um to have a more cohesive Approach at the elementary level so the life cycle of data um and this hold on sorry um can you go back to the last slide please we didn't touch on the last bullet here oh yeah um aggregated data yeah you say it I don't need to read your slide so the agre aggregated data from the state is is like one way we get a report card you know it it's a report card for the public it gives us information to reflect on within our district um and it also allows us to
016to go out into the state and look for similar schools and similar districts and see how we're doing compared to them um one thing that you're all very well aware of is that different student groups perform different differently throughout the state um and so the the district makeup um is going to affect how your overall scores look so we go out and we look for sites schools and districts that are similar to ours I think we could say the same within our own District right like we see data that supports that schools that are not Title One schools are significantly different and I use that word specifically for this reason statistically then um than our non-title one schools and we see the scores be different between the two we see differences in our in our
017district absolutely same thing I was mentioning before about looking out at outside districts you know the the population of a school is going to generally going to have an effect on on the um the test results the scores that we're seeing right and you know I think everybody's sick of hearing us talk about multi teed system of supports probably but that's a crucial what's that acronym again mtss thanks um that's crucial to closing those gaps um so on this bullet one of the questions I had initially written down was this is almost a philosophical question right not necessarily what I expect an answer for is um how do these specific scores impact our students individually sounds like they don't our schools maybe a little bit where schools are looking at what are other schools in
018our district doing are there differences is that they're driving our scores or are we doing the best we can with with the programs we have and then our district overall as we're comparing you know like districts um in the state with us right um how is this specific data informing Us in in the decisions that we're making I'll give I'll give you an example we saw two years ago we saw really high math achievement um um and we looked at that and we um tried to replicate that the best we could across all of the elementaries and what you'll see in a few minutes here is Elementary looked very very good um in math in particular because of that because we identified okay this this site's doing really really well let's replicate that so we
019really start looking at data in June um it's it's gotten harder and harder um over the last few years the state's been a little wonky with their releases of data but this year we did get preliminary uh results in June um I turn those around as fast as I can because we get a student file and send them send those out to our um administrators this year now um I would do DLC as well we gave them license es to the software that we use for that um in August we're bringing our administrators back together and and looking at the data reflecting on how we did what we need to do differently etc etc um sites are presented with the with the data um upon return to school and then the public release comes out
020in October now the difference between the publicly public release in October and all the data we've been looking looking at since since May is that the results that the state gives us prior to the Aggregates are student level data that we have to crunch and we have a few different systems that we use to to Crunch that data um and so it's not public so the public hasn't seen it yet um but the October is kind of you know it's one of our report cards throughout there to the to the public in December the state dashboard comes out and I gave a presentation on that in February and then we use that for looking back on this year we use it to measure growth for next year and years Beyond Tim on the subject of
021data life cycle our lcap development and all those meetings and things we're we're basically looking at and reacting to last year's data um but I if I peaked and looked ahead at your presentation it looks as though there is now an an ability to look at at um consistency in our data rather than big highs and lows right am I wrong about that no you're right we're relatively consistent across the board so so the fact that we are building any changes or enhan ments to our lcap is is an okay thing because we have good reliable data flow from the previous year right and for academics we're not just looking at English and math as well we're looking at you know local assessment data um grad rates CTE completion rates etc etc so the English
022and math um publicly released data is not there's no cohorts in here um there's different inclusion and exclusion rules for students than on the state dashboard so this will be a slightly different student set than you'll see on the state dashboard um like I said before we use it to identify similar schools and districts across the state there's no State accountability attached to this really the accountability is in our school board and our public um currently we only have English and math results and it's a much different focus on the state dashboard data that focuses primarily on how much did we grow or not um this is just here's the data there's no focus on growth the locally aggregated data um on the cast test that we we'll see again no Statewide Aggregates available and
023we process this data internally so first I'm going to dive into the um smarter balanced balanced English and language arts and math okay so what you see here on the left hand side is English language arts and on the right is math Chico Unified is on the left State of California is on the right for both displays what you'll see is that the Green Dot indicating 2122 data and the blue dot indicating last year's data are essentially right on top of each other and what that tells us is um minimal change from the previous year we can also see that we're above the state averages in both English and math and we essentially mirrored the trends of the state um for smarter balanced Ela um we actually went down 0.2 percentage points so 02 percentage
024points the state went down 4 four for math we went up 1.1 percentage points and the state went up 1.2 so we're pretty much almost exactly mirroring the state Trends here um one thing I should point out is uh on the first chart is what you see here the the AIS is p percent of students who met or uh exceeded standards okay so that's what we're looking at with this data percentage of Stu of students meeting or exceeding St standards so you can see we're right around the 55% Mark for ELA and right around the 40% Mark for math we're actually right at the 40% Mark for math Tim yeah we've talked about this before but these uh standards are um where they come from is a bit of an enigma to me um but
025I I think that you said there are just experts who know what the standard is and that's where this comes from could you want to talk about that a little bit sure sure um the the tests these tests are built by the smarter balance Consortium and that's that's where when you hear people say esac Smarter Balance assessment Consortium that that's a multi-state Consortium of uh some of it's an organization that is building tests around the Common Core State Standards and they serve a number of states the two biggest consortiums in in America are Park and uh and smarter balanced and those are the big consortiums states that have not adopted smarter balanced or Park uh tests have changed those tests very very minimally in general um with you know giving their the flavor from their
026state to those tests but generally they're they're very similar um Park and smarter balance are are the two big ones though and those are the consortiums that build these tell me what you know about the the experts who decide what is standard uh made up of psychometricians um for the most part in my world that's where they I'm I'm concerned with um psychometricians um professional test Builders essentially that's what they are the commic cor standards themselves I can't really speak to it's a bold statement to say that you know you know um 60% of of all kids in in California's public school system are um you know not able to perform basic where they're supposed to be functions in math you know and 40% or or 50% are basically kind of illiterate on some level
027not what they're supposed to be so I'm just really fascinated by who these people are and I'm surprised there's not more curiosity like burning curiosity out there to know more about them where these standards come from are they too arbitrary um anyway thanks I I think on an extension of that I'm sitting here wondering what about this data do you find useful what I this data right here tells me we went with the state Trend overall um that's and that could be the test could have changed we could have all adopted the same practices I mean there's so many variables this to me from my much more naive seat here than your position is data doesn't really tell us much of anything about our about our student population right this data in particular does right
028that's why we disaggregate it further right yeah right like it's nice to say oh we did slightly better than the rest of the state on average but I mean kind of hearkening back to that but like okay but 60% we're saying are not meeting this m right and really what this does here's a what I try to do is add context to data sure um looking at a data point out of context is essentially meaningless I mean I could come in here and say you know hopefully someday we went up 10 percentage points and without context if the state went up if the average School District in California went up 20% Then have a big problem right right yes and and and I think on that note the other piece that I'm questioning while I'm
029sitting here looking at this data point is where what are what's the spread from last year to this year on the students who did not meet or exceed the standards I'm sure that data is here somewhere but like did students who were at the very bottom make a bigger Improvement or you know what I mean like we're talking about the Bridging the Gap of of where they where they were last year to this year or where we performed from last year to this year like that seems like valuable data also that's hugely valuable data and you're going to see that um in the cast data that we that we show later do we not get it from the Casp we don't get it in um the Aggregates that we need from the Casp fascinating yeah
030it's on the state level sometimes the state me that's the big difference between this data and the um the dashboard data is just that what you're talking about and that's why we generally look unless the state tells us to look at uh percentage met or above um and it's released to the public we generally look at distance from standard because that does take into account those kids that are maybe a you know these K these kids on this test get on put on a level one through four three and four are three is met four is above one and two are below so we have a a number of kids we have a lot of work going on in our school district and a lot of training and time invested um in all of our
031kids so I prefer the DFS measure as well because a student at a one that gets to a high two and grew a ton they still don't show here absolutely by the same token a kid that was a low four and went to a high for or got a perfect score he shows the same he or she shows the same here so um yeah there's there's a big difference yeah and I think and just from my background I I understand those nuances I just think it's really important to kind of remind everybody that that that those nuances are there and that looking at very simple data points that the state's giving us is not telling not even a fraction of the story right right thank you MH so when we look at our our student
032groups some of our student groups these student groups happen to be um very similar to the dashboard student groups that we are um held accountable for on the California state dashboard um we can see most student groups in in English language arts scored better than the state average um not all um it's one thing that we're particularly proud of is our economically disadvantaged kids being um significantly higher than the state average for for that population um as well as one of our our well our second biggest um race ethnicity in Chico ified as Hispanic or Latino and we we showed much better than the state in that in this visual Chico Unified is red and the state is orange and this is last year's test only did you choose these colors I did just that's
033all I'm going to say you sound like ed services okay uh math was more of a mixed bag um as I showed before all all students was above the state average our economically disadvantaged students were above the state average uh um a a worry point a concern for us here really when we talk about the importance of context is our English English Learners um Foster youth homeless Youth and the reported disabilities that's our our special education uh population scored lower in the percentage of students met or above when we look by grade level um every grade level um was above the state in English language arts when we look at math um every grade level was above the state in in math as well um and I mentioned that these are this is not cohort
034data true cohort data um what I mean by that is these seventh graders here year that took the eighth grade test in 20223 last year um it's not the exact same group of students however it is somewhat similar of a group of students so when we see jumps like this from 7th to 8th grade um that's pretty significant and so that that is um something that um we're proud of um and again above the state average in every grade level when we look at similar districts across the state what I look for is um school districts that are unified school districts that are within plus or minus 25% of our enrollment so that's about 15,000 kidss to 9,000 kids and plus or minus 10 points 10 percentage points in the unduplicated count of their student
035population so the unduplicated count is your free and reduced lunch students your Foster and your English learner and so those are the U roughly economically disadvantaged socioeconomically disadvantaged students um which we see as a a huge factor in in achievement and so when we look out across the state um at at those criteria we we were in a group of of 12 unified school districts of those 12 um Chico Unified as third in from the left here we have one District outscoring us who also didn't change very much last year um Al hamur unified but out of those 12 we're we're we're second so we're we're up there um for me and I think everybody in this room we always want to be Top Dog there but um but not bad for math we see
036the same story um we were second after alhamra um both went up a similar similar amount in math and the reason why I chose that unduplicated count um as a factor to look for similar districts is when we look at our test scores and we look out across the state we can see that students that are not socioeconomically disad or not economically disadvantaged tend to Fair far better on the state test than those that are economically disadvantaged and this is one thing that we call the achievement Gap and really we can see a stark difference between the light green that are not economically disadvantaged and the dark green that are economically disadvantaged we see that across all raced ethnicities um with a a significant Gap and really that's what um you know initiatives like like
037U the Community Schools Grant um our targeted case managers our our focus on counseling those types of services are really um along with instructional practices and assessment um we're that's what we're trying to do here is get those um Bubbles as close as we can and as high as we can so we see that Gap in English language arts we see that Gap in in math any questions so far before I get into the sites okay so for elementary language arts we had seven of 12 of our elementary schools um increase their percentage of students um at met or above standard um some of the more significant increases here are uh maragold uh Shasta Neil da and I want to also um congratulate Citrus and mcmanis for making growth um they are you can see
038where they achieved in 2122 and all we ask is keep growing keep growing keep growing and they did um and they have some you know a high needs population at those sites and I think they did a a wonderful job last year so Junior High language arts um we saw Chico jior high with the biggest growth uh we also saw um Bidwell cre creep up a little bit I don't know if you remember but Bidwell grew a lot the previous time from their from their last esack score and it's really hard to keep those big jumps going um but um we did see some increase and of course Marsh took took a little bit of a dip there High School Ela English language arts we saw saw both sides both sites take a little bit
039of a dip um again still above the state average um however nobody nobody likes to see any school go down um and this is absolutely not an excuse or anything like that um but the last test that you know obviously English and math are are going to be the same the last smarter balance test they took was in seventh grade and so it was a a big um big uh uh air big time period of no testing there so not used to the system etc etc that being said neither group in DLC is is happy about this and actively trying to change it this is administered in which grade 11th yeah so I'm curious why are uh high school students in Chico more proficient I mean and in the state it looks like just high
040school students are fairing better than students overall on this test if you look at back at the general scores you don't have to click there but they're just lower English language arts um is hovering right around the 50% Mark right uh for English Ela and then right around the 40% Mark or less for math for everyone whereas high school you know we're up in 70% of kids are proficient right we've we've seen that um um as long as I've been in this job both in distance from standard and in percentage met or above at 11th grade um I'm unsure why the the students you know it's obviously the same system that the kids are going through um and we we see it Statewide they just tend to score higher um an example you know counter
041to that might be sixth grade uh math fifth and sixth grade math that we see low across the state as well just like the the high schools are generally higher in both English and math um but that's you know I account for this the other change with you know standards changes and things like that but I'm unsure about 11th grade so you would postulate that sixth grade and maybe uh is dragon dragon the across state that's a that's a hard year for you know for students in general fifth and sixth actually all right so alternative Ed um Ela um we can and I I put Oakbridge in with alternative Ed even though it's not really alternative Ed um just because it's doesn't fit into any other group and it's a nice small group so um
042you can see our alternative Ed campuses on the far left ACA Academy for change AFC and um Center for all Alternative Learning Cal really those are really hard comparisons to make year to year the it's a very very transient population at both of those sites are in and out of there quite a bit um very small numbers um we saw fair viiew and we saw um Oakbridge both decline are our two biggest sites on this so elementary math in my eyes is a is a huge success last year nine of 12 sites increased math achievement um and you can see you know it's hard to list off all the all the growth here you know see Citrus um hookero mcmanis again Neil da on and on Park View rosale um Sierra View Etc so big
043changes last year in elementary math and it showed on the in the test scores Tim you just um said that there were big changes in elementary math what exactly was our change changes I think a couple things iene one of them we got a pacing calendar so every school is kind of operating on the same timeline with uh when they're teaching what units certainly some flexibility by individual teacher in there but kind of by X point point you should be at this this this place in the curriculum and we had assessments matched up to it at that point also so we really dipped into fibbs and iebs which if you think of like many uh State practice tests that's what we used also so everybody's using that same kind of structure another big thing we
044did was those iabs and fibs Rex set up tutoring around that so we put things in place and I'm going to give kudos to the people sitting in the back Marisol Lopez was one who drove a lot of that in particular for us they had tutoring lessons put together specifically so if students struggled with X standard out of that FIB they had curriculum put together they had things ready to go for those kids with after school program tutoring also and during the school day like our Title One groups would use it as well with those kinds of things so really DLC was the one that kind of really crafted and pushed these changes through to make sure everybody was much more coherent cohesive we could look at things along the year and kind of know
045who is struggling and be able to put things in much much more timely with it with them thank you when we get to Junior High math we can see Chico Jr again Chico Jr had a great year all the way around um with excellent growth in in math um Bidwell and Marsh took a similar um saw a similar decrease high school math looks very very similar to high school English with a little uh drop for each site and finally for our Smarter Balance scores um we have Al alternative Ed and Oakbridge here and we can see Fair View um being our our our two biggest sites here Oakbridge and Fairview we saw Fair viw going up and and oage um taking a bit of a decrease good excuse me on the uh the slide you
046just left fair viiew and Cal on on the left percentage of students that were that met the standard and above that's not a very good presentation of how many of them were meeting standards or am I misreading what it it started with zero the previous year and went up a two I think it was 2.2% H concerning are our alt our alted schools including Oakbridge are they getting the same formative assessments as our Jed School sites I'm actually unsure of Elementary I know yeah at Oakbridge there giving the same assessments um at um alternative Ed they are giving um they big on I using iel as well there we go okay now on to our locally aggregated data from the California science test um this data is going to be a different flavor um mentioned
047this earlier this is this data is shown in distance from standard so the average student in the groups that we're going to show you um how close were they to meeting standard so ideally every student would be you know plus 100 above standard um if a student if a group of students average below standard um it's we obviously have some work to do so then just to give you a little overview on on how this is calculated the the Red Square there is circling the lowest scale score a student can get in the given grade levels there in and meet standard so students are given a scale score and then that scale score you know puts them into the categories that we were just looking at for smarter balance and and English language arts um
048but that scale score may also be used to calculate distance from standard okay this is the measure that the California state dashboard uses and this is the measure that allows us to essentially get credit for lack of a better term in our test scor we pushing a kid who's well above standard even higher and pushing a student who's well below standard higher but maybe they didn't quite meet standard that year but they're moving in the right direction and they're moving significantly so what we want to oops what we want to see on these charts is we want the bubbles to be as high as possible okay and we want the the blue dot the 2023 data to be above the Green Dot which is the 2022 data so that we're moving our kids up either
049closer to if it's below standard or we're moving closer to standard or if they're above the same thing we want we want those dots higher so you can see on this chart the average student was a little less than nine points below standard on the cast this year up um a little bit more than one average of one point from the previous year when we look at our district student groups um we can see our generally most of most of our student groups increased um we can see particularly um our second largest race race ethnicity group um Hispanic as shown here um with significant growth um we see growth in students with disabilities we see growth here in socio economically disadvantaged homeless Youth and there's no Foster data here because they're it's too small of
050a data point too small of a number of students I'm sorry when we look out across the grade levels um we can see a very significant increase um in grade 11 and really when we when we talk about it increas districtwide it was grade 11 that carried us we we went down in in fifth and eighth grade um but that 11th grade increase is encouraging um that we're moving in the right direction just just as a point of explanation the the 12th grade there um those are kids like Chico Unified give we give our cast test in 11th grade um if the kids don't take it in 11th grade they have to take it in 12th so that little blue dot at the bottom is representative of a of a normal year um you know
05148 kids here didn't take it the year prior so they had to take it in in 12th grade we see the same gap between um economic statuses we can see students that were not socio economically disadvantaged growing at a far higher rate and scored much higher than those that are socioeconomically disadvantaged we saw half of our elementary sites um increase on the cast test we you can see Park View up here and we can see Sierra View over on the far right as the two highest um but we did see good growth at mcmanis at Emma Wilson um I think that's Shasta there and Shasta as well two of our three Junior highs um increased one fairly significantly Marsh um went down pretty significantly both comp hensive high schools increased um PV at increased um
052at a very high rate I would say I would say both you know our 11th grade scores are are trending in the right direction we can see Fair View showing a very slight increase here um while the other Al alted schools and Oakbridge went down any questions clarifications okay I mean you're not done uh I have a couple questions J down just from when you were presenting um when do we is there a typical time um in high school that the science uh classes are taken is it generally 9th and 10th grade that science has taken um and then they don't take the cast until 11th grade I'm sorry I don't know off the top of my head yeah oh it just got quiet I'm Sarah pus one of the assistant principles at Chico High
053kind of to answer your question about the science progression um most students take three years of science it's not a requirement um but two years is the is the requirement however for College Prep students um most universities require three years and they encourage a fourth year um so students in the freshman year traditionally take a biology class in the sophomore year now with the new ngss traditionally take um chemistry or physics and then in the junior year we'll take physics or chemist we'll flop we'll flop that depending on um their interest and then or they would take an AP Physics or an AP Chemistry or something along those lines so to answer your question I think you're asking are they taking all of their science and then being tested in their junior year when they're
054not in a science class that does happen with a percentage of our students if if they are two years and done um I would you're asking me to pull a specific data point out of my head that I don't have but I think we have more than 50% of our Juniors taking a science class um and the cast is a it's a it's a much oh what's integrated that's the word I'm looking for is a much more integrated test so it does take all of those Concepts over time and and embed them there test test biology chemistry physics and environmental EnV Earth environmental Sciences correct so at the minimum students need to take biology yes which integrates a little bit of the earth and environmental stuff and then either chemistry or physics also integrates a
055little bit of the relevant Earth environmental science correct but then conceptu could not take a third year but still have to test at the end of the third year yes and have missed a quarter of the content right well a quarter or more a quarter to a third of the cont of the expectations of the test yeah okay correct thank you does that answer everything yes I just wanted to clarify that for the audience okay all right thank you um I also let's see my notes are all over the place I'm sorry that's a later question um I was wondering since we have our DLC folks here we don't really hear very often from our DLC folks and I was wondering if we could put them on the spot in a very lowrisk environment and
056just see if yall can introduce yourself and what you what what your DLC topic is is that too much to ask on we have until 6:45 for This Workshop technically although all of us would like to go home I'm sure sooner but um just you know I'd love I'd love for your faces to be brought to the Forefront on you know who's helping Drive these leadership conversations at the cont content area level thank you yes my name is Melanie perin I'm a sixth grade math teacher at Chico Jr and I represent um all of the junior high math departments hi my name is Camille Upton I am a high school math teacher and DLC member from Chico High I'm Monica Egbert I teach at Pleasant Valley high school and I represent the um DLC math
057from our high school hi I'm Hollis and Saro and I teach seventh and eth grade English at Bidwell and I am one of the two uh English DLC Reps for the junior high English teachers hello my name is Lloyd hiow I teach at Pleasant Valley High School special education and I represent all secondary teachers special teachers at DLC hi I'm Jess crane I teach it NE da I'm our Title One coordinator mtss Le DLC representative I also help with kindergarten Prep Academy and summer school reading intervention hello my name is Marisa LZ I am the DLC rep at for rosale I am also the assistant principal and the title one coordinator there and at DLC we do many many things um I actually have a list of things that we go over um um we
058um are currently we meet every two weeks and um we talk about our assessments we talk about the data we as reps go back to our sites and ask um our teachers um feedback and then we come back as the Reps for our site and Report um we discuss the data what we could do to um better improve the students um success and there's many topics that we go over right now one of the main focuses is um Stacy Bane she we have been getting PDS where um we're getting trained on the science of reading Rosell just recently had Helicon who he's trained our teachers on the science of reading in Spanish um we have a PD coming up in December for third fourth and fifth grade teachers um and then together we just discuss
059what we could do to better support all of our students Rhonda odam the principal of Oakbridge I'm the elementary and secondary DLC rep and Sarah also Sarah pus also comes to DLC as well you already met her as well as a wide variety of um secondary assistant principles and I and Elementary um assistant principles for the most part um it's a group um of true leaders um on their sites and you know in the case of our secondary DLC across sites um Hollis um and melany in particular at the um Junior High sites have do a wonderful job working with the sites that they don't they don't work at you know so they're really bringing um the junior highs together um and it's a it's a very uh honest group um nobody's there to tell
060us what we they think we want to hear they're there to tell us the the real deal I got called out a couple hours ago by Camille for something and which I'm sorry again Camille um and it's a wonderful group and they go way above and beyond their point two that they're given for for participation in DLC I know not all DLC members are here tonight but as I was kind of tallying up we had um we have one math DLC member from each High School right correct and then one math Junior High DLC representative in total okay and then I I jotted down that there are two junior high level English DLC members correct how many high school math is there one or sorry English from is there one English from each High School
061correct and then we have um but we're missing one Junior High if we were going to have representative from each right okay okay I'm sorry I'm still I'm like not seeing the we also have alternative Ed representation and then at the elementary school level is it at least one person from each site right are and there content area Specialists for elementary also no they're they're they're the represent present their entire staff yeah and then is in there right and we have special education um at the secondary level Lloyd high tower introduced himself yes I really that um and really like you know they're subject area folks um focusing on in the world of assessment their subject area assessments but really they're the Reps for their entire site and so why aren't there more DLC math
062reps at the junior high level uh comes down to money yeah we give each just like the elementary gets one point uh point2 each uh junior high gets a point2 DLC member from each School site um for the two English to just what they have at the marsh and um Bidwell that those the two teachers when we ask them to have an English or a math um those two schools have English and then we always make sure that we have one math and that is Melanie she's the queen of math for okay I see I see now there's one DLC rep from each Junior High School M either English or math and then how does science fit in all this science currently does not there's no DLC for science right now true okay got it
063thank you any further questions yes next tricky question all right um so I think that my like the big idea question that I don't expect to have an answer this is another philosophical question is um knowing that Forma of assessments while important also take away some classroom time some teaching time and I know that there's a variety of perspectives on that and individual teachers have certain feelings one way or another um have are we working towards or have we struck that balance of having meaningful formative assessments clearly our state testing assessment data is is not really a driving factor in what programs we have and what is happening at the classroom level but simultaneously mitigating that loss of of instructional time you know having inform your instructional time I just I we talked about this
064last year and I don't know that we ever there was like really any I don't know follow up but there are still are those complaints coming from classroom teachers about too much assessment time in the classroom being spent onl for example or any of the other various programs that are being used right there's always going to be a push and pull with that um there's there's a need for standardized common assessments across the district for a variety of reasons um collaboration um progress monitoring um assigning students in need to interventions uh tier two interventions that would be um and there's a need and I think DLC does a does a good job of the best possible job because having been in this business for a lot of years like there's there's always going to be
065a push and pull on that on that question that you asked um what I will kind of any DLC member can come up here but I think what they're what they're striving for is is meaning meaningful assessments um and I'll use ISL for an example if students are given this assessment that teacher gets a lot of help with remediation that may save class time on on remediation um those kinds of things are taken into account when um assessments are selected the elementary version of what Tim's talking about there's a Perpetual revision of Assessments every year it's always kind of an ongoing topic for us so the Reps like you heard Marisol talk they go back and forth um some changes this year is an example like we used to give a bass reading assessment that
066has become optional just based on the feedback back and forth in one-on-one nature and time El with those kinds of things teachers felt they got enough other information to kind of Drive instruction without that one so DLC and I kind of laugh because we talk about things like that for six months in there before we pull a trigger of going yes or no with it so at the end of the year they were like we don't need the bass we feel like we got enough other other assessment information but if your site wants to do it or you want to do it you're welcome to also so individual sites do some things a little bit different um we're also already talking about the fibbs and IBS for math we're talking about what we want to
067do for next year with them there's some feedback that we have the wrong order and those kind of things so it's just it's a Perpetual ongoing every year discussion and and modification for elementary and occasionally they actually want to put more on there and I have to say Ted Sullivan is not going to Advocate to put more Assessments in there right now all right so I I guess I'm I'm still trying the next question philosophically that I'm working towards is how much our formative assessments are matching up with what we're seeing on those State assess those state test the summit of Assessments I mean is it a pretty are they tend to be a pretty good predictive tool to see how that plays out or are you know are our yeah I don't know I
068guess that's basically the question I I would say that when you like when you buy an assessment program every vendor is going to tell you that our tests can tell you exactly how your kids are going to do on a state test I I tend to not believe that um we've hadl now for example for a year um I think it's too early in an implementation um just because teacher comfort with the uh with the platform in in the first year is it's a hurdle you know it's It's Growing Pains um but we will continue to monitor that um I know um you know going back to the ele elementary math piece and and that site that we used as a model um was watching their I ready math scores and it was a great
069indicator of what um of how their students were going to do on the state test and we really saw that play out they knew typically when you when you talk to a site that grew a lot they know they were going to grow a lot before they go into testing they know is it this is this is going to sound not great but is it kind of safe to say in a weird sense that the state testing scores that's on the dashboard it's really what the public is talking about that's our public P perception but it to me personally as a classroom teacher with my classroom teacher had on granted I've been removed from the classroom for a few years now because y'all voted me here um is it safe to say that uh those
070that's it's almost unfair the public perception is based on State Testing and really that's not a good I don't it doesn't seem to be a very good indicator especially now when you can't disaggregate the data properly and see growth specifically you know um on that same level as like you you can kind of break down more in the cast scores yet the public is judging our schools based on that data and and and then the you know our formative assessments I think tell a more specific story right but that's not really necessarily public data right I you know my my your opinion safe my good I I think as you know the the California public should have a a a report on how their schools are serving their kids in a standardized way and so
071do you think that this is a a fair snapshot of how our schools are serving our kids I think yes but I also think the California state dashboard um academic measures are a much more fair representation of growth in any school or District great thank you for I'm sorry I've capitalized on every I just had a question regarding the smarter balance real quick how often um does Smarter Balance create a new test is it yearly or I mean I'm just wondering if that's a factor that they'll rotate items through um yearly it's not a whole new test every year but they will rotate items in and out um and so it changes changes a little bit from year to year that's part of the reason why it's important to watch the state Trends um to
072see you know is everybody happening to everybody or not you know see if you're an anomaly or you're right with the trend and I wanted to add to that question you asked earlier so um we currently Elementary has been using the F ABS and the I aabs and as an ass assessment to um track to see if the kids are mastering the standards or not and once we get that data we we analyze that data we check to see which students are below standard approaching standard and um at standard and all the sites have been doing tutoring so after after school students are asked to stay for 30 minutes where there's curriculum that is built on these that that was built based on these interims and so we're able to ensure that the students are
073meeting the standards um and the data from these formative assessments do tell us a lot of information and that way we're able to meet the needs of those students we've also started creating frontloading materials based on the standards that they're supposed to be learning where the teachers are able to teach the kids the standards before practice them they take this assessment that makes this far below group a bit smaller now we're only meeting the needs of the kids that really really are still struggling with that standard after doing the front loading materials and being taught the standards using I ready so we do track this data um each site has a coordinator and um there's tutoring happening after school I actually was just creating a to-do list I've been sending emails to um the admin
074and teachers at rosale to remind them that the nrm is coming up here's some front loading material that you could use and um I've seen that it helps it helps a lot with the front loading and um now that ensures that we only meet the we meet with the kids that really truly are having a hard time comprehending the standard and mastering it any further questions okay I wanted to thank board members Lando and Robinson for meeting with me as the board Liaisons uh for this uh presentation um the cast results that I presented are presented my in my opinion uh much less friendly form um on the website linked in the in the agenda here or on the last uh page of the slides here um they're they're available um again more updates in
075in December when the California state dashboard comes out thank you thank you thank you all right excuse me um so this was an um informational item um I don't think we have any additional public comment for um the workshop topic this evening um and so uh seeing no additional questions from the board we can move on to item five um start discussion action calendar uh under ed services uh we have a discussion action item on homework uh this is titled the implications of a no homework policy um presented by Mr marot yeah I'm going bringing up um Pedro and Ted you guys need to Clicker so good evening this uh is a topic that's kind of been floating around there forever everybody's favorite topic is homework um so with that being said it's really hard
076to actually Define homework it sounds kind of funny but if you ask 10 different people what is homework you'll get 10 different answers from very likely is it work left over from class is it work that's assigned to kind of check at home with those kind of things things is it an extension of the school days there's a lot of different definitions which makes it a little bit difficult to talk real specifically about some of those things but with that being said this is currently what we have as far as our policy with homework um Pedro can talk for secondary but in elementary generally it's supposed to be something that's kind of an extension of what they've been working on in class and our general rule of thumb is it's about 10 minutes per grade
077level maximum for homework for a night so if it's a third grader they should be maxing out at about 30 minutes of homework at night it's kind of a reasonable chunk able to do those kinds of things etc etc so one of the things we look at is we survey parents every year we kind of ask them what they think about homework for their children so about 70 plus% of our parents think that they're getting a reasonable Fair appropriate amount of homework we ask them this is kind of every year one of the questions we ask as far as feedback from them do you have that divided Out Among levels like elementary middle school and high school this is just kind of the General survey question we send out so it's different could been could
078have been useful information so some of the considerations if we were to take a deeper dive with this actually are actually like I said what is the definition of homework you will you I said you ask 10 people you're going to get 10 different answers as far as what is homework specifically with those things um if we if you're looking to take further action on this you would definitely want to be involving much more feedback from parents and Guardians about what they think about homework and what's appropriate what's not with those kinds of things we want to be surveying teachers because there's huge differences between an elementary third grade teacher versus an AP English teacher at a high school level as far as what would be reasonable appropriate for homework as well uh consider higher
079hyrid level course requirements such as advanced placement etc etc they're going to have different loads of homework needless to say with the expectations goes goes with those courses um academic achievement implications does it really affect how kids do on the State Testing having homework or not having it we talk about um 504 IEP accommodations how would that reflect with homework expectations changing it and analyzing legal contractual obligations I'm not sure how that weaves into some of the grading policies and some of those kinds of things also so that would be a lot of time kind of going through it that that that's the that's just a much deeper dive to look at into those levels the elementary school kind of got feedback from principes via their teachers with it as far as kind of some
080of the things that they think are advantages of having a no homework policy uh some of one of the first one is really students um the amount of significant amounts of support they need to get homework done every kid's really different with what's needed so there's huge variations as far as what's happening at home for those ones one of families appreciate less stress and more family time I know LCC has kind of moved towards a I'm going to call it a very minimal homework policy I think that was one of the factors and I know Mrs shrock is here someplace too I don't know if she wants to talk about it more but you can ask her questions but LCC is one that has moved towards it I'm going to call it not a no
081homework but a minimal homework kind of process if their school um AB ility levels are different might take one student just the different amounts of time involved for doing a one homework assignment it really varies um sometimes I get calls parents frustrated that it's a students doing three hours of homework a night and we say that's way too much that shouldn't be happening with those kinds of things um inequities of how teachers grade homework definitely see those kinds of things also as far as expectations from different teachers with it some of the elementary school disadvantages like why we think it's important to have homework policies in place it allows practice of additional topics covered in class which is an extension of what they're doing in class they get additional practice with it there's the benefit
082to requiring certain amount of homework and seeing the amount of students move up a grade level as It prepares students so if they don't ever do homework it's harder and harder to kind of catch up with just that pattern of of getting work done and accomplished with those kinds of things a lot of um classes in teachers use planners also it kind of it helps as an organizational tool for them as they get ready to move up in the levels with those things parents also get a little bit of information about what's going on in their classroom what kids are focusing on and kind of checking on their children to see how they're doing with the comprehension with it as well so I'll let Pedro talk a little bit more about secondary implications of it
083from there thank you uh the advantages of a no homework policy and I should uh start off with we uh surveyed our DLC reps and uh they provided tons of information and I also want say a lot of the information that they did provide it did not all go in there because there was a lot of it there so just want to make sure we do have our DLC reps here tonight so if there are further questions later on make please make sure that uh they're here to answer some of those questions okay uh students would not need to take home anything okay and please consider the homework definition there when we read that statement right because every single teacher had a different way of looking at it when we say no homework policy uh
084students have more free time to spend with family friends and extracurricular activities kind of same thing you saw with Elementary grade based more on student knowledge slash assessments next one less opportunities for cheating that's something that oh all right students feel more pressured to know content material for teachers it means less grading and the next one may be more Equitable some of the disadvantages for middle schools of a no homework policy hold oned yeah sorry yeah I'm I'm gonna jump in with the equity statement um in in some of the the research that I've read and in talking with what um LCC is is doing and and some of their stuff if a student doesn't have the support for homework and stuff after school and another student has you know Wonderful support and does the
08520 minutes of reading and does the discussion doesn't that lend itself to increasing those gaps that we're trying to deal with in that scenario that you are giving the answer is yes um I could also give another scenario where um for example you have students that need remediation to fill in certain gaps and those gaps could be filled for example uh using ISL then not giving them those opportunity means that maybe it's unequitable there so it just depends on how we Define it and how we use it do we have an opportunity for all of our students to have that after school half hour 45 minutes um in order to get assistance with homework and you know what's being directed by the teacher as far as this is what you need to work on kind
086of thing or are is that not available for all of our kids not the way that you have uh specifically defined it across the board um we do have teachers across the board that I'm sure our if our students ask hey can you please help me I'm pretty sure a good 90 plus perc of our teachers going to stay after school middle school you have the after school program but that only serves approximately 120 to 150 students and that's 6th through eth and it's broken up so if you have like 58th graders 57th graders and 56th graders so um and then at the high school there is no such program just the the elementary answer I excuse me the elementary answer is um all of our schools have a blast or all will have a
087blast program next year with it so part of that component is is a homework or schoolwork component for but as Pedro said we can't serve every there's not space in it so it caps at about 88 is I think something in that range so out of the school we've got 85 90 spaces in there for students not not only can not all the students attend blast but not all students can attend blast because they have other family obligations that they have to attend to which usually is our kids who are tend tend towards economic disadvantage because they have parents who are working multiple jobs and things like that so we're we're it's it's that your previous slide that that we were reference she was referencing where it says may not be Equitable is is not
088a may we know that it's not Equitable I do want to mention though at the high schools now that we have the blog schedule they have academic success classes so students that are identified that need more assistance can be taken in academic success class or um so that is we're hoping um um over time as we get um I would say more the ability to understand what we can do in those classrooms to give the kids the support need that will continue to improve I know that they made a huge leap from the first year that we have had block scheduling to now to get that support needed for those students so when we say we don't have something after school you are correct um but we do have built-in things in at the school
089day okay is another way to put this Equity question that basically to your saying and this is directed to both you I guess um Madam president and um Mr Robinson homework helps students that have a good home structure for doing homework uh therefore it's inequitable because some students don't have that and so you might consider removing homework because it helps these students who have a good homework structure at home is that another way to characterize it I think that the difference would be that expecting learning to take place at home through homework is a differentiation here additional practice could be beneficial for anybody who have who has the time to do it so if if a teacher is saying you can practice these additional math problems at home but if you have just been in
090class you should still be able to be successful but there are also instances where students may be assigned homework that is an extension of learning that they're not they don't have the opportunity to learn that in class but they're still being held accountable for that learning to be taken taking place at home so that goes back to the definition of what what is homework that we're saying is being assigned yeah and I I would say you know Elementary has really pushed hard for kind of what you shared as option one this is something they've been working on in class it's an extension a time for Teacher to check and see if they understand stood it outside the class also additional new learning is something that we really say shouldn't be happening and being expected to
091be done at home just for that reason and thank you for that clarification because that's how difficult it is to be able to Define homework amongst our Educators Middle School uh disadvantages of a no homework policy for certain classes students may need more time to complete a writing assignment because they are thinking revising editing Etc or need to read independently students also miss an opportunity to practice they miss time uh to spend outside the class period to think about material uh homework is another opportunity for Teacher feedback on student work and then students work onel and fill in their learning gaps could you clarify that last one for me so are we saying that uhel is could be used as homework that is correct just make sure than Middle School disadvantages of a no homework
092policy and once again this comes from our directly from our teachers we already use a lot of class time for grade level English classes to read novels in another required reading but sometimes students need to read on their own a novel unit may take eight weeks instead of four uh next one studying for tests may also benefit from additional time outside of class honor students are expected to read at their own pace on their own and this could eliminate their independence I don't think a one-size fits-all policy would work for all subjects I could also see a lot of backlash where students would tell teachers they weren't allowed to have them do anything outside of their classroom and then uh possibly a no homework on weekends policy for Middle School would work ready to move
093on to the next slide okay High School advantages of a no homework policy no homework means less stress and anxiety I believe it should be called a no graded homework policy less grading for teachers equals better lessons for students upgraded sorry ungraded check for understanding assignments are still an option to gauge student understanding of Standards based assignments I ask my students what the pros to a no homework policy would look like more sleep job experience more time for training and athletic events more time for research projects that's kind of an interesting one right because it's a isn't research projects kind of like a homework and community service more time for extracurricular and cultural activities more time for family and friends disadvantages for high school grades would be based on exams only students would not learn
094time management skills this policy would not prepare college-bound students for the rigor of college studies students learn to use outside resources ask for help and check for understanding by doing work outside of a class students miss an opportunity to practice they miss time to spend outside the class period to think about the material teachers are not able to get feedback and students don't get to receive feedback and last there students would never be able to read the 8 to 10 novels we read per year they would not be able to write the 8 to 10 essays we have them produced per year class time would have to be dedicated to these activities and that would eat up already sparse instructional time especially with the block schedule time for discussion and questions um you go ahead
095in Reading um you know some things over time because this has been an an interest for me because well it's been of an an interest and now we're getting to the point where there's research from other districts and other states that have um gone to these no homework policies and taking a look at what's the impact on the level of understanding and learning and stuff you know it long-term what is it doing with the kids and the advantages seem to be on the plus side and so um you know if you have sources that are reliable and and again I don't trust other people's um interpretation of whether or not something's working or isn't so if if stuff comes through the system that you think is credible that we should um you know take a
096look continue to throw that in our laps please I think one thing Pedro did as we were looking into this a little bit was looked Statewide for a policy about this and it didn't exist like no other district has something like that in place currently I do want to say that homework policy no other District No I do want to say there are schools with no a no homework policy and there's a also a lot of definition out there sorry I should rephrase that there are there are schools out there that defined what a limited homework policy was there is that but a no homework policy there was nothing and there was nothing that was districtwide and we have been able to find like well ped data like the we have a an AR reg
097regulation on types of things of of homework again what they talked about what I believe this one District was not allowing homework to be provided on a Friday so the families could have the weekends for their families so you couldn't do those types of things there's different rules I mean in different School sites up and down the state have different things that they do for for homework or not homework but um I I believe that the the actual board policy we have not been able to find any wi with board permission if Mrs shck wants to come up and give kind of a minute overview of kind of LCC and what they went through and how they've landed and what they're actually doing just more information for you guys hi good evening um so I
098did get a chance to meet with myth Robinson I think it was last spring correct and so little Chico Creek's uh minimal homework policy kind of came from our uh instructional leadership team Gathering and we really saw a change in our demographic right as I got to that school about 10 years ago and so it's been about seven years that we decided to um Institute a minimal homework policy as um Mr Sullivan said and so we just have this policy on all of our staff meeting agendas and it reads like this in recognition that demands on students and staff and families have increased during after school hours LCC has adopted the following homework guidelines homework at LCC will primarily focus on reading and spelling skills and math practice activities So reading activities can include reading
099independently reading to someone reading with someone listening to an adult read or online reading activities and then math activities can include practicing basic math facts practice may be accomplished with flashcards dice or card games um or online math activities so occasionally students may need to complete unfinished classwork or be assigned um unfinished projects at home it's our intent to provide homework that is Meaningful for students academics as well as honor the after school time with families we don't hold students accountable um for turning in any of those practice assignments after the next morning we don't hold a minute recess in case they didn't get it done um that was all kind of let go uh once we talked with our instructional leadership team our teachers and our families do you have any questions how long
100ago how long ago did that start I want to say about seven years ago um what if any significant changes Did You observe in the students or or family interactions or the culture of the school the culture of the I think the culture of the school improved just because we didn't have what we had called working recess where oops you didn't do your math homework last night you didn't get checked off so you're going to go to this classroom for half of your recess time to finish up um the same kids were in working ress all the time um and it didn't help them get any help so we did Institute a homework tutoring group we now have blast it has a very strong homework component and that has been helpful too and U you
101know there are a couple of teachers especially in the upper grades that really wanted to hold on to that um homework piece and how do we hold them accountable for it and it's it's something that we deal with all the time we haven't come up with a great answer about that but being an avid school we really do want our students to become organized so we really focus on those daily planners and reading and getting the parents involved in signing the daily planners but we don't hold them accountable for any kind of turned in homework the other thing that I did find when I first got to little Chico Creek is that the math homework that they were assigning it wasn't getting reviewed or graded and so if a student had done it incorrectly that
102didn't get caught and then they had ingrained that in them and so they didn't want to take the time the next day to grade or go over the homework I didn't want them assigning it so that's kind of how this started thank you you know with 12 elementary schools I would say each one has a slightly different culture as far as expectation from families etc etc with it also Mr shro kind of work with the group there work with families to kind of put something like that in place and I would say if you look at some of our other schools it would it would not go over as well um and once again each school's got a little different culture as far as expectation Parent Connection and all those kinds of things too how
103many uh I mean I know we go by instructional minutes but about how many hours uh are students doing schoolwork when they're at school at the elementary level like there's 300 instructional minutes for fourth and fifth grade can you do the math for me so how much time of that are they actually engage in doing class how many hours are they doing school work during school uh five hours I would say oh I'm sorry 300 minutes is like five so more than part-time like a part-time equivalent of an adult yep okay and then so and you had mentioned at the beginning like a rule of thumb that you you prefer to see is 10 minutes per grade level so a fifth grader would be getting about have could have about 50 minutes on average of
104of school work but that's average right so not all students are going to complete that work in 50 minutes some will do it in 10 and some will do it in two hours so then if that student is a two hours student they've just now had seven hours of work almost a full full-time job equivalent and that is going to be eating in on family time and all the positive things that that we were talking about here it's it's just it's a really interesting topic to think about holistically like that yeah and I would say it's not like Ted Sullivan El Tre director preference that's just kind of what has been in place and kind of the the standard expectations about that semi status quo you can call it that's fine um and then if
105we were to continue that to the Middle School level sixth graders 60 Minutes sth graders 70 minutes e8th graders 80 minutes nth graders an hour and a half at at the ninth grade level and now they're doing six hours at school um so we're really getting up there and and I mean I know from teaching middle school science that my my students were experiencing you know anywhere from three 30 minutes to an hour per topic you know per core topic of of homework every night that's an insane amount of homework I mean there are teachers who are parents in our district right now who are begging for Less homework for their kids because there's no meaningful quality time with their kids during the week and then and then the fights ensue and you know then
106the home life is degraded and it's just it's a it's a it's a Cascade effect that we do have the ability to think about how we might bring some solutions to the table I guess you know obviously not a blanket one size fits all but I think that there's room here to to contemplate that especially with our DLC folks being so in tune to the school sites and and staff and the student populations and the culture and all those things homework is a topic for this Friday Elementary DLC how exciting I have a question um on the slide uh Middle School advantages of a no homework policy um specifically the point students feel more pressure to no content material I'm kind of unclear um as to what this this means Middle School advantages of a
107no homework policy so if there's no homework in place one of the awesome things about it is they feel more pressure to know more content material I so let let me give you an example and I'm GNA try to answer like the teacher that possibly did this so if I'm an educator I may assign homework and I may only give them maybe a two or two to five minutes my whole intent would be to make sure that something goes into long-term memory for this student right so therefore I want this to just I want a long-term memory I want this student to remember this concept or this standard uh five months from now right so what I would do as an educator I say okay you know what I just want you to learn this
108maybe do a exit ticket or an entry ticket and you're going to turn this into me let's make it an entry ticket because it's more of a a a homework right so they come come in they write down the concept and that's it maybe it takes anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes but I do this routinely let's say uh I don't know once a week for over a course of three months right and my belief is that over a course of three months because of repetition and speaking about it in class that it has now been ingrained in long-term memory without using the purpose and therefore we have to define the purpose of what homework is but under that scenario that could possibly lead to me as an educator not making sure that the student
109learned that concept and ingrad it in long-term memory that would be an example I hope that answered your question so the advantages that the teacher feels more pressure to use the class time more effectively because there's no homework I I'm not drawing the well no the the problem is that within say that it's going to be something that you're not going to cover like every every day you might not be able to cover that because as an educator you have this whole curriculum and there's a pacing guide so your subject within or or the themes or units within that subject area changes weekly monthly and you're not going back over it you don't have time to go back over it on a big large scale so you want to make sure that the students keep
110that in their mind and that it's fresh and you do it sometimes using homework does that answer your question maybe I just don't agree with that concept I guess so this was listed under advantages not disadvantages and I was wondering if maybe it's kind of a restating I read it as a restating of grades being based more on student assessment like if students know there's no homework to to plump up their grade their only chance to to do well in class is to actually know the material and be able to show that in class and again I don't know who teacher no you could look at it that way as well hard and and you're specific in that point of view you're kind of looking at it like grade wise right like let's say that
111homework is 10% of a grade in this case 10% of that homework now is gone now you're basing it more on the assessment if that's another way to look at it you know I was yes yeah I always um I went to school here Chico Unified um and I always strongly felt like the teacher in the homework they assigned was intended to prepare me for the test I never had any other impression of it you know whether they were grading 5% on homework 10% on homework 40% on homework I have no idea and never had any idea it just really seemed like if you want to be ready for the test you better do your homework because otherwise you're not going to internalize the ex exercises um so um um yeah I don't see the
112logic of laying down a blanket no homework policy for Chico Unified I mean seems just like a you're taking that tool out of it seems like if a teacher's goal is to educate children this is one way that on some level this is a way to prepare them for the challenges that are going to face them in the class as they go to try to take a test so I guess I agree with Miss Conan it's an advantage that a student uh feels more pressure to know the content material I guess if we could sort of dramatize this you've got a student who's like wow I got this big test coming up and uh I know I really want to do a really good job so I guess I better pay really really really close
113attention in class and then I'm going to maybe talk to the teacher and go over what's going to be on this test and they're going to tell me in class and then I'm going to go home on my own valtion and if I really want to do well on the test I'm going to you know take a lot of initiative and make myself flashcards and and I'm going to you know imagine what it'll be like to get these questions you know that just doesn't sound like something that most Junior High kids middle schoolers are going to going to do but when you give them a homework assignment or a worksheet when you say do this you know then they're like at home and they're like you know this doesn't make any sense to me you
114know and some kids can say Mom can you help me understand this or maybe the parents is doing it with them every day and I understand there's some kids that don't have that person to call on to help them through that worksheet clearly that's an issue that we need to do our level best to address I don't deny that for one second yes that's inequitable no doubt about it um but you know our goal here is to enrich and educate kids and clearly this is a proven way to do it you know I did receive communication from people who I respect who say that they think we've got more uh homework in some situations than than ought to be there and like a lot of these points that are on here absolutely it uh takes
115time away from things and and the cascading Hey listen I wasn't actually that great of a student uh I know you're going to be blown away by that Madam president but uh it's really true uh you know I really struggle in in school a lot of times and yeah I mean you get to a point where if you're not an ace at this stuff you're just spending your entire life staring at these worksheets and trying to wrap your head around this stuff it's tough no doubt about it you know but um hey it's becoming really smart or awesome in a subject area or multiple subject areas is can it takes a toll on you you know and if we and look at the concept of college prep right I mean no good College self-respecting college
116is going to not give homework to students all on the contrary at UC Davis in calculus we were not held to our math homework we were given math practice wasn't graded we didn't have to turn it in but back to your point if I wanted to to be more successful than I actually ended up being on my math tests I would have practiced more but I did just to get enough to pass well um people who go to UC Davis sorry just people who go to UC Davis are boring wonks and so that's one reason why they're that way but no I mean even in that scenario it's like UC Davis I I know because my sister went there there those are some of the smart kids wind up going there uh and it's like
117uh hey here's a packet of you know exercises associated with this course work right your typical UC Davis student and I've known many they're going to take that and they're going to they're going to look that over right they're gonna they're going to look that over and that's going to give them a signal as to whether they're ready for the test and and all that kind of stuff right um you know so as a Prelude to that we are giving kids or empowering teachers to give kids a homework assignment maybe they're going to grade it based on 10% or 20% or something like that so that's different from that but the goal is the same and that is to you know through process of repetition and rigor to kind of prepare these students for taking
118these tests and knowing the material and then College Prep thank you yeah so to not dis disagree with you I think in a way having that suggested practice is really helpful because students it teaches students to be in tune with where they're at in their Mastery right if I was more responsible of a freshman calculus student I would have recognized or I did recognize but I just didn't have the energy for it uh that I needed more practice and I would have taken the initiative to do more practice and if we are if we implementing that in our in our high school levels or even our Middle School levels but the caveat being that that's not necessarily graded which is a hard thing to teach for students like kids most of those kids you know
119it's not great and I'm not doing it but then to teach that lesson and say look look if you would have done these five practice questions and realized that you couldn't do three of them then we could have had a conversation about it and that teaches that that teaches I didn't have that skill going to college so I mean not and this is very personal to me and like obviously everybody's origin story is different but that's just one example of of that type of of experience so do we want to create an inequity in grading for students by making them have 25% of their grade is homework when they don't even have the opportunity to do homework quite literally but you haven't solved the inequity if you turn the graded homework um into a sort
120of like a a little pack of of advice or or exercises that they can't do the homework and they still can do they still are doing well on the on the assessments or on the or on the classwork they don't need to do the homework if you're making kids do homework that need that don't necessarily need to do the homework and they're not doing it and that's bringing their grade down I don't know there's just there's a Nuance there but I thought you were holding up the whatever they had at UC Davis the ungraded it was like an ungraded sort of like non I wouldn't say I was holding it up I was just giving it as example so didn't you say that that's something we could do instead what I'm saying is that that
121would be an that could be an option to you give for for teachers of particular topics and it's not nothing's going to be a blanket policy anything that's going to be like one this is the one siiz foit all there's no such thing as that but to say this is this is practice you know and to say hey I see you're struggling with this while we're working on this in class together and I've taught you the skills you need maybe practice these five and let me know if you need extra help on them tomorrow before we move on that and and that's not graded so you're not holding them to to that standard and if they can't get to it at home you bring them back around around and then you say hey let's do
122this during lunchtime or you know you let's maybe you should go to the after school you know homework help or I don't know and if we don't have those things then that's a whole another conversation to have but you could do those things without um with with homework also you could bring the the student in during during lunch to talk about it the equity problem is not affected by that scenario because because the student who has the you know um the home environment that's conducive to preparing the student for class is going to go through the exercises and the teacher's going to talk about it at at back to school night and stuff like that and so so that sort of on the- ball home structure or that that parent who has more availabil time
123to help their child is going to do that work but a child who does not have that structure at home is not going to do that that non-graded exercise so I don't see that that solves the equity problem okay make a point of procedure in that we have pretty much moved into debate there is another slide that talks about next steps and I would like to uh get through that this is the time for clarifying questions before we really dive into argue about what we're going to do about it I think um just to break the awkward silence for a moment um the point of this debate that doesn't need to go on any further because obvious for obvious reasons is that uh we are not the the people to have these conversations it's going
124to be our site representatives and our DLC team and it's going to be a very long deep conversation that's going to be taking place ongoingly until you know potentially we come to some sort of best solution um it's nothing's going to be perfect for every situation but it's obviously a conversation to to be had and and to bring back up again um I think and I feel like with the nods in in the room um that's probably the way most of us are feeling um okay so considerations I'm looking at my slides I thought next I don't see that slide on my on my slides but okay if I was just going to make a the third one yeah it's the fr just just go back to the front gotcha thank you oh I see
125all right you guys want to um we started off with this yeah so yeah again if I was going to make a suggestion I would probably again as I talked I bombarded the DLC secondary group today they're like what are you doing in here today but anyway I was talking to him about this is what's going to be talking what we're going to be talking about and everything that we kind of talked about in DLC came true um up here on the board it's a it's a deep conversation about Equity versus um what we need to do for our kids to be learning in their classrooms and everything that you guys are talking about is exactly um the conversations that dlc's been having um it's interesting that we would like to one go back and
126have more deeper conversations with our departments our grade levels our dlc's and see not maybe come up with not a no homework policy but maybe adjust our homework policy if we wanted to make changes if we brought you some um other districts that they use or some of the things that maybe are recommendations that would come from DLCs to to one um talk about the equity issues and and the family issues that we're talking about but also defining what that homework is and what is not um so we would like to have more time um again like you're talking um about if we were going to make policy changes what what they might recommend or if they're going to recommend any at all coming from our departments and our grade levels if I'm if I'm
127being articulate at all on this you know as Mr marant shared they're really the experts that are kind of seeing the benefits or the issues related to it so I think that would be echoing j a great starting point to have them have those discussions you said the topic at uh this week's de DLC where was the homework policy topic going to be discussed yeah for elementary DLC this Friday it's one of the four or five things are on our agenda okay yeah this is an ongoing it it is but that's okay one of the things that is our responsibility is to stay attuned to progress in what our uh responsibility is which is the education of all of our students you know back back to that Mantra again because what what works for special
128ed students may not work for our AP students and vice versa so just just keep us a breast of what we're talking about I like our discussions by the way and please any research that you guys come across send us send it our way y yeah that was going to be a caveat not a caveat that I but along those lines um it's important to have the conversations but also you know what what everybody else is doing isn't always the right thing either it's what's research based what is what is the latest show us when we look at performance or student outcomes versus you know different types of policies um so you know evidence-based um research is always useful obviously also I'm also getting nods from behind you as well um I realize why I'm
129confused because this says considerations at the top but mine says recommended next steps board policy considerations and then has that list I think your your presentation changed from the one that was submitted for the board okay titles Chang that was just an aside but I'm not lost anymore and that's what's [Laughter] important um yes any more questions of clarification yeah and maybe you already said this but um as far as where you got the breakdown um like the Middle School versus the high school um what what were the sources for like the advantages and disadvantages our DLC reps okay and they'll go and they will tell me that they needed more time to get more information our DLC reps also had some conversations with some additional teachers you needed a word cloud just kidding it
130is a very passionate conversation with our teachers and our our community and everybody else on board that's um and I don't think that anybody in this room would would argue necessarily I could be wrong I guess uh that reading isn't extra important and some type of reading outside of school time is going to be essential for all students so I would never say no homework so no reading at home or no assigning reading at home like that is really important for all for all subjects no I think we need to kind of as a group decide what the purpose of homework is and then find a process to make sure that the homework that is assigned meets that goal I we just need to be real careful and intentional as we approach creating homework policy
131that fits the needs of all our kids is there something from here you would like for us to work on first I think that first I'm speaking only for myself of course I think that first step there forming an agreement or a broad agreement among our our leadership and our teachers about what is homework and what do we want homework to what role do we want it to play how is it going to serve our students and that really the foundation for everything else yeah what is homework or what isn't homework and how what are the objectives that we're trying to meet with what we consider homework and I think it would be important to also find out what currently exists I mean do we really have students that are doing five six hours of
132homework a night because that's not reasonable if that's happening there are some similar stories coming out and how do we mitigate that um there I just have one comment kind of question like looking at um specifically High School um which I actually see more importance of with high schoolers um or with homework um but like when I'm looking at the high school advantages of no homework policy I'm seeing like very um sorry let me just take a look here I'm sorry High School disadvantages of a no homework policy they seem like very objective statements and then looking at like high school advantages is of a no homework policy it just seems really subjective like I don't know I don't I would I would like to see like a little bit more um objective I guess
133those seem like subjective statements and it's kind of like a high school reporting um what they believe and the other ones seem more objective looking at so would you also say that the survey for parents and Guardians could be useful a survey for teachers Andor staff could be be useful but also a survey from students could be could also be useful you know they may also identify advantages to homework that maybe we don't see from their perspective being 20 plus years removed from high school student status speaking for myself I on that um the grades would be based on exams only is not true but that was that's my own sticking point I don't think that if you have no homework doesn't mean that you're grading at in the high school level on only exams
134it was just one of the bullet points on the disadvantages of a no homework policy the very first thing says grades would be based on exams only yeah that's false but okay somebody had that opinion so so would you like DLC to come back at some date to be determined and kind of give you an update on the status of what Mr Lando was talking about as far as kind of that conversation starting with the definition of it and making sure it's cohered to what what they should be learning as well yeah and maybe um an outline on on how to make progress toward a more unified vision for the district so like how long that may take it may take a year and a half to get to that point and we may be
135bringing it back for a final decision you know in March of 20 five ouch um but you know or is it you know sure does the group think you know what what are going to be our kind of our our goal posts in a sense um in terms of what you just asked what whatever is reasonable you know not not next month okay we will we will come back at some point to be determined future date with kind of number one has to a little bit more thir DLC reps and maybe an outline of kind of what we see as kind of discussion points along the way getting there yeah that's sounds great any other questions or comments my my only comment in in sitting listening and and thinking back to is you have you
136probably have five different opinions and definitions at the table up here which is what we need to remember yes I yeaha let's all talk the same language let's start there that would be great um there's no public comment signed up for this did any of you all folks in the audience want to say anything else that maybe hasn't been said or that you'd like to emphasize or are we ready to roll forward with where we're at at this point can I say one please I've been trying not to oh gosh no that's this is not the space for that I I just I feel like one of the um ideas that wasn't present there you know you talk about college prep but there's also life prep and our jobs have become increasingly more important to
137teach life skills and I really do believe if we can better Define homework you know no one fails because they're not doing homework and and and try to address some of these um inequity issues I I think a little bit of work outside of the school day is important meaningful work of course but I think we all can agree that to some extent as an adult ad our job outside of our profession there's always something we're doing to get ready for the next day um and life is hard and life is a lot of work and I think that we need to teach kids the value of responsibility and time management um and I just I feel like homework can serve that purpose in some way again maybe more at the junior high and high
138school level as we're getting geared up to kind of going out on on their own so I just wanted us to consider that as well yeah yes um I don't I don't know that we need to take particular action we instr well we yeah we but I mean as far as like a formal we ask for continuing updates I mean if there is a particular motion that anybody would like to put forward now is a time to now is a great time to do that um but otherwise it sounds like staff has has has Direction and um can come come up with a reasonable reasonable timeline to revisit it with us ex we'll put it on a DLC agenda for discussion and start with the definition and also find out what we currently have guing
139all over the board and see if we can't come up with something that what are our goals what are our expectations for home thank you thank you thank you thank you and thank you to our DLC Reps for sitting in the front row over there I appreciate that first and second row we're here every other Wednesday come anytime thank you feel free to stay if you want um not a lot left good thank you thank you staff for all the work all right um we can move along uh to Let's see we are at Business Services all right 5.2.1 discussion action approval of design build entity for walk-in cooler freezer combination Edition at Bakery hi good evening thank you for having us here tonight um have with me Vincent sah who is the director of
140nutrition services for the school district um bringing forward the design build entity approval for the project the walk-in cooler freezer combination expansion at the bakery out at the Corporation Yard um back in June the board directed staff to circulate um number one decided that design build um project delivery method was appropriate for this project and then directed staff to circulate a RF QP RF uh request for qualification SL proposal proposals for the project um which we did um we actually ended up doing it twice um the first time U there were some mistakes made um by by both of the parties that proposed so they were rejected and then we we redid the process again this time we had four companies that qualified to uh submit statements of qualifications and proposals for the project however
141only two did um um those two contractors were evaluated um on their qualifications things like how long their firm has been in business their insurability their financials um their current commitments do they have the capacity to do the work um past project experiences with design build projects safety record and um letters of reference from other customers additionally they um submitted a proposal for the project in a separate packet um to the district which discussed um their ideas for the project um what project enhancements they may bring to the table um the equipment that they proposed to supply um what their services were going to be regarding preconstruction going through the design the design of this project will be uh reviewed and approved by the city of Chico because the Corporation Yard is in the city
142of Chico and not under the jurisdiction of the division of the state architect like a school is and then their overall cost so those two proposals and qualification statements that we received were from uh UBC United building contractors of Chico and modern building contractors of Chico um based on the evaluation by the committee which included myself and Vince and Saro and Chris click who is the mechan his mechanical um worker who oversees all of his mechanical equipment helped us to evaluate the technical side of the proposals um the committee brings forward the recommendation that the board approved United building contractors for the project um so you know the cost um proposals were not the only thing evaluated but they were very close in the case of of both contractors Modern Building Company proposed 1,21 2017,18
143th000 and United building contractors um proposed 1,239 so um within $4,000 of each other the main differences between the two uh proposals that we received were one of the contractors UB had a an enhancement where they decided to relocate an electrical panel to another location therefore allowing more space for our buses and our trucks to um maneuver around the building so it was a beneficial enhancement and it was included in their price um the other big difference was the horsepower of the equipment they proposed um four units with much higher BTU then the um other company had only two units with less BTUs so um we determined that they were a better value United building contractors and that's why we're bringing it forward to you tonight if you have any questions Vince is here with
144me and we can answer them now um I I recognize the UCB well we're all familiar with modern but UCB is a firm that we have worked with in the past so both of these companies are familiar to us and our local yes they have both provided um very beneficial services to The District in the past a modern is a current contractor at mcmanis mcmanis yes UBC isn't currently working for the district well I like what the UBC suggestions on the panel and the increase in the BTUs um was there a the committee recommended um UCB correct UBC yeah yes H you're looking at a dyslexic board member who gets backwards all the time what you're talking about when you're ready Madam president um if there's no further questions from the board uh no public
145comments I can call for a motion I move approval of the recommendation um from the uh screening committee on the letting of the contract to UBC there you go thank you I'll second that all right we have a motion by member Robinson and a second by member Lando uh any further discussion board okay our last uh vote was unanimous so we can um all vote uh signify your approval by saying I I any opposed it's unanimous it passes thank you um our next item we want chocolate chip cookies as soon as you're up and running we can do that this District makes the most amazing chocolate chip cookies thank you very much um our next item is 5.2.2 a discussion action removal of existing trees at Pleasant Valley High School's baseball batting cages thank you
146um tonight we have another another person here accompanying us um teacher from Pleasant Valley high school and varsity baseball coach John maudis is here um to help answer any questions you might have on this topic um right now the baseball team has one batting cage and since the block schedule implementation at the high school um the hours are uh severely limited for practice time while it's light enough outside and we have three teams uh that are trying to get time in the batting cage during practice so they want to uh it's very exciting they want to add additional batting cages to the baseball facility so um in order to do so as you can see in your board packet you have a layout of where the new cage will be and where the current cage
147is as you can see the large rectangles side by side and to the right you will see um some trees that are along the fence line that intrude into that area um so tonight we are bringing forward a request to remove those trees in order to facilitate room room for the batting uh cage the new full-size batting cage uh John and his uh Team have spoken with the neighbors U just to make sure that um they're okay with the removal of the tree and they're in fact in favor of um of removing the trees most of them are just ones that have sprouted up you know all on their own so um we can open it up for questions at this time Julie um because I'm I live a block from this work site so
148I went down to take a look at what was in the picture versus what I could see when I went over there so I'm lost I couldn't figure out where exactly this is along is it is it behind the bleachers yes it is okay just west of the bleachers okay along the property line with the neighbors yeah if um if that's the the answer then now I know exactly what this is representing um there was no budget information included that I saw sorry about that I thought it was I mean it could be an oversight on my part too it's a yeah it's in that first paragraph It's a sports booster funded project what first paragraph oh see I always go to the bottom to look for like fiscal implications sorry should have included it
149down there sorry about that that's okay oh it is in there I just oh it is there too kind of okay so it's fully funded by the boosters it's not it's it's expensive to remove trees like yeah really expensive it is um and it it will be costly be very beneficial that it will be costly um but John's already uh got some quotes and he's working on narrowing it down okay I need to just tell you that I'm never a fan of removing a trees for any reason except for safety I'm I'm speaking specifically to you and also I played Varsity softball for four years but in Chester and we had to practice in the gym because it was snow and the only time that we got to get on the grass in the early
150season was when we came the valley so just so you know it's doable I'm just totally kind of yanking your chain right now like yeah we all just put up with what we have given right if I had to practice in the gym in the batting cages uh among the baseball team you guys could probably figure it out but these trees are are in the way of every everybody's everybody's space including the neighbors and if the neighbors are a fan of that too I think as a neighbor my only concern would be my energy cost going up because you wouldn't have that shading anymore but yeah yeah and there's no map provided for my reference and I don't really feel like digging onto the map right now I have it open but um it's not
151that important I just wanted to make you have to stand up there even longer I'd be happy to comment I feel like I have a couple strikes ahead against me just no you don't you really don't because I'm a I'm a cal good baseball terminology you just used right there well done you so number one I'm here representing the Mustangs against the the the yaggies um so there's that and then I also teach math math lab and I use ISL and I assign homework and there's all kinds of um we did this is my sixth year uh as a teacher at Pleasant Valley High School I'm kind of new to the game as a teacher so you guys um it's well you guys are beyond my pay grade um but this is my third career
152didn't first one didn't quite work out um you grew out of it so but anyway since I've been here we've we've we've started another uh freshman program there's Now 60 uh approximately 60 kids that are participating we have the one baseball field and so it it is a challenge for us to um to practice in our facility with just the one field and this is going to increase our space tremendously the tree line uh that we are talking about um four of the five trees are are volunteer trees and they they share the fence line there will still be foliage along the tree line it's just the one major one is called just I knew you'd want to probably know which I I saw the species names it's the uh it's a atlas Alder is
153what's can't read down my glasses are not helping Cedar it's an Atlas Cedar so and um anyway this is all fundraised by our program with golf tournaments and car Raffles and and different things of that nature and I do have a good price and a and and a reputable reputable company that's ready to start um at the end of the week if we get an approval tonight so Julie is this the coach that I called on because there was somebody stealing gravel from behind the bleachers at Pleasant Valley that might have been me me using a shovel taking the putting in my and and a pickup and I sent an email to Julie and said Do You Realize somebody's stealing the ground I have approval from my athletic director for the record she did tell
154me that it was approved but yes it was you then with the pickup and the shovel stealing gravel from what was left over at the that that would be me anyway I sometimes less is more so I think I'm just going to stop talking when you're ready mad PR I'm still trying to figure out where it is on the side I pulled up so it's not the she the like the trees that that are like parallel with the manzanita that kind of provide shade for all the spectators it would be kind of behind the batting cage behind it they're sort of like tucked in the corner it's the the big one that's tucked in the corner that's sort of out of the way it does I've had branches actually fall um it's it's big and
155okay probably so not not parallel with the road but perpendicular to the road correct cool along that fence line I was really good in Geometry just so you know probably had some homework assignment help calculus is that really did me in uh those differentials um great I have no further questions sorry for giving you rough time I expected to get be given a hard time oh good I'm glad I could deliver it's about this time that I start getting kind of silly too uh any other questions or comments everybody's getting sick of me I think let's move it along Doby don't don't confirm just kidding I'm sorry silly okay um public comment not seeing any uh do we have a motion sure I'll move approval of the proposal for removal I second all right we
156have a a a motion for approval in a second uh all those in favor I I I it passes unanimously wonderful thank you very much thank you Julie I appreciate thank you thank you see you later one see if those those can be chipped up and use those wood chip somewhere else on campus that might need it okay right it's my turn still to move on uh 5.2.3 discussion action Charter Schools measure K projects requests I'm excited about this one yeah we have all of them some great projects um up at Forest Ranch Charter School um the first one is the installation of removal and installation of some new doors that have just reached their useful age so they need to be uh removed been replaced and the installation of some um basketball it says
157basketball hoops but it's actually the back stops um they already purchased the back stops out of other funds but um they don't have the ability to put them up because they bought steel ones and they're very very heavy so they had to bring in a contractor to help them um get those installed and then um the pricing you've already reviewed the pricing on the in wall table for their cafeteria building but the price came the final price came in 13,000 more so you previously approved 75,000 and now it's um 83,000 in change uh for those eight new in wall tables uh so there just a price increase that you're approving for that tonight do we know why I mean not that it's because we were trying to uh we used what he thought what the
158price was going to be on our initial approval um but then when he gave the final quote it it just was higher but still Falls within Forest ranches yes it's still their measure K funds um so it's just sort of accounting adjustment there and then um they have some really cool but really old metal play equipment and a really large um yard uh in the back of the campus it's a great campus by the way um but some of the equipment is a little bit too tall and it's a round metal play structure that they haven't allowed the kids to play on for quite some time because it's a little too high off the ground for their liking so they uh applied for and received a grant from a company called game time to add
159a new playground to the site actually a whole new play structure like you see at some of our elementary schools and then also some individual play equipment that that can be placed um in other areas to spread the kids out a little bit more so um those three projects are what we're bringing forward tonight for your review and approval so just for clarification the 250,000 listed here is that all the measure K funds or is that measure K plus the grant that's measure K the grant is separate I was very impressed with the the play structures that they've selected they're pretty cool yeah I think the kids are really going to like them yeah the theme is great up there so I don't know if you all got a chance to look at it but
160it kind of looks um woodsy outdoorsy kind of play equipment will fit right in I'm hearing no additional questions um see no public comment um I'll call for a motion I move approval of this expenditure for Forest Ranch Charter second we have a motion for approval from Member Robinson and a second from um member tennis um all those in favor I I thank you so exciting their metal equipment is it's a a lot Isa has played on those tall slides was fascinating uh okay up next um we're going to 5.3 which is the board um discussion action on chica Unified School District board self- evaluation so this is just in here so that the board and the community is is aware that the survey is out it is attached here in the the agenda it
161is also on our website um Erica has made sure that it has gone out to all Chico Unified staff it has gone out to our families and it's also posted um on our website and Facebook great and the deadline is November it's on the agenda I just I clicked off of it now I can't remember it's like in five days the fifth Sunday November 5th Sunday Sunday November 5th and that also includes members of the public is that right yeah um and so did it it get sent out to any additional media Outlets or just through our own networking channels just through our own networking channels okay all right um great that is on here's discussion action um but I don't think that there's really any action unless the board wants to give us further
162Direction no and um we'll we'll receive the feedback from that at the next meeting correct okay great any other questions or comments board all right we'll move right along um item six is board member request to agendize an item um no board member requests were submitted for this meeting um and with that that uh we will move into closed session do we have any public comment on closed session all right then the board will now go into closed SE closed session I think Kelly did