001Okay. So, I'll go ahead and call the meeting to order at 302 um and review the agenda. We have public comment, but I don't see any public here. So, I'm assuming there's no public comment. Does anybody else have any comment? Okay. Um I don't have any opening comments other than to say hello. Thank you for being here. It looks like it's going to be a real um lively meeting today with the four of us. Um but we do get to see the dashboard presentation before you um present it to the board. This is the same presentation you're presenting to the in the board meeting later, right? >> Yes. Yes, it's the same. >> Okay. Let's jump right in then. Paula, it's all yours. I'll go ahead and mute myself. >> All right, let me pull
002it up really quick on this computer. I can see Oh, no. I can't. I'm sure it'll be back up there, but >> All right, I might just do that. Let me see. So, we just I'm going to move this chair because it's a little bit in the way. So, this is just the opening slide for the the that just shows the dashboard overall. If you go to the California dashboard website and pull up our any district, this is this the slide that you would see. So, we can go to the next slide. So that we we're starting out with our completion rates for our 20 24 25 assessments. For the ELA assessment, we had 97 as well as for the math. Um for our CASS, which is the California science test, we have 98% of
003our students. And for our ELPAC summitive assessment, we had 99% completion rate. And then the data gets presented to the California dashboard and it also gets presented to ETSs. So the ETSs data looks a little different, but I like to show it because it shows it in a different way. Um, so for our English language arts, um, we have 34% of our students meeting or exceeding the standard. That's a slight increase over last year. So we are moving in the right direction. >> Hey Paula, do you mind if we jump in and ask questions because later we won't be able to, but while you're while you're moving through this, do you mind? >> Not at all. um on the completion your very first slide what is like the the goal of completion or what is
004the state standard where where do we stand with that because 99% seems really high but is that I mean the goal is 100%. You you don't get a ding in if you're in the 90 percentile. Um, but I don't know what that bar is because we I don't know what the low bar is because we always make sure we're above it. >> Okay. >> The penalty don't have >> a certain percentage. I don't recall if it's 85. It's in the I think it's in it's not in the 90s. We always are above that. >> Okay. So, we're exceeding that that >> mark by >> most um exceed that. what what and what this difference is is we do have a few student families who opt out of testing which is their right. Um and for
005our ELPAC summitive I can tell you that we had one student who was not attending school at the time we were doing the ELPAC. We weren't able to get him to take it even on the days he was here and that 99% is that one student. So, if he's on our radar for this year, we're hopeful. >> And typically, you want to make that 95% or higher. And, you know, Briana, you're familiar with this, you know, at your site or sites that you've served in the past. You know, the makeup days, you just want to really make sure that you rec, you know, recapture the students who miss so that you could actually go, you know, and make higher than 95%. And you want the assessments assessment results for each and individual student as much
006as you can get. So, we have the makeup phase, too. Yeah, the great thing with the makeup days is you actually have until the end of the school year to assess kids. So, we really stay on that. If you don't get like for the performance task, I think you have five days. If you don't get it done within the five days, like say they start but they don't finish because that does happen sometimes kids get picked up or um they're not feeling well, they need to go home. They have five days to finish once they've started. that I've seen times where that's happened and the student didn't return in time or they came like on the fourth day and the teacher wasn't aware and it just didn't happen. Um I don't I could find out
007specifically on these but when I was a testing coordinator I you know was doing that so I knew specifically if a kid had missed it why. So sometimes I know that those things happen. Do you want me to go on with the 5x5 for ELA? Okay. I know it's always hard when we're online. There's always a little delay. Um, so for go to one more slide up, Alex or Thank you. So this is our ELA. Um, that's the 5x5 grid. I like to use this grid because it shows you on the side where whether we're very low, low, up to high, and it shows you across the top if you've made um increases. So, it kind of gives you data both ways. Um, our area of concern in the area that we're working on is
008Vasquez is really struggling with math and so they've had a hard time kind of moving up. So, they remain in the low status and they did you can see at the top if you're looking across the top you can see that they did have a decline in their in their scores and it was well this is ELA. Um, you're going to see this again in math. So, we're working on that with the team and working on some um putting in some interventions and support in place to determine what our next steps are going to be. Um, unfortunately, we don't have I Ready at the high school. Um, but I know I Ready has been a really big help for to help us close those gaps as it relates to instructional um gaps in learning. So,
009we're working on that piece. Um, the good news is we did have increases districtwide. uh high desert and metallark had increased in had significant increases which really carried the district. So as a whole the district increased high desert and metallark had in had significant increases in ELA and if you go to the next slide um I in the next slide it shows you by student group so which groups moved. Um again for our for all district our Hispanic and Latino students increased Um, our students who maintained were our socioeconomic and our disadvantaged students. We didn't have any students who declined significantly or declined. We had maintained. We had increases also with our English learners and our long-term English learners. And we had an increased significantly for our students with disabilities. Again, this is with English
010language arts. And then the next slide. So the next slide looks at the dashboard itself um and gives you the wheel. You can kind of see the colors and how they align with those student groups. So in for us we had four groups in the orange. Um and that is and they and this shows exactly like they this English learners increased by 5.8 points. They're still below standard but they're moving in the right direction. Our long-term English um learners are also below standard, but they increased by 8.5 points as well. Our socioeconomic students are still in the orange and they maintained. Our students with disabilities increase 17.9 points. Um however, they do remain in the orange. Um our white student group is below average and they maintain. So they they have like a 0.1 in
011the negative, but it's considered in the maintain area because it's such a small number. And our Hispanic students are one level up. They are in the yellow and they increased by 8.8. Are there any questions before we move on? >> Yeah. Yeah, I do. I have some questions. So according to this slide here, basically you can say we're below standards in every single category. Is that is that I'm reading that right? >> Yes. >> Okay. Okay. So, how do we how do we compare this to last years and the years before? So, when I see these numbers and I'm not in education, I don't know, first of all, like if you go back to those the first two charts when it when it says 27% or 30%. I don't know how that compares to other
012school districts in the area cuz I'm not in education. So, I don't know that's really bad or not. Also, I don't know where again where we were last year. Are we moving up in the trend? Are we moving down? you know, I would like to know some some things like that, you know, so I can kind of gauge where we're headed. Um because I'm not in education. I don't know what these numbers mean. You know, when I look at this chart here, I see we're below everything. Now, do I know is Palmdale like that? Is Lancaster like that? Are the similar school districts the same? And we're just we're just average. Um so that's something. >> They're really good questions. You can see from this slide that in each of these areas we increased. So,
013I don't know if I stand like I don't know if it shows you like you can't see me pointing at this, right? If you look at the >> No, I can I can see you pointing at I see the increase, >> right? So, we increased in all areas. Um, some of the increases are significant. If you go if I go back a slide um you can see that if you go back one slide you can see that we had we had significant increases and this is the ELA the English language arts in it's all the way on the right at the bottom um with our students with disabilities they had a significant increase and then you can see that we had increases with our Hispanic and Latino group as well as our English learners and
014our long-term English learners. Now, but yes, the orange does indicate that they're still in the low status. >> Okay. So, if you're going from orange to yellow to green, is is that indication of progress? It was just hard to read this >> this um 5x5 here not knowing what >> it is. When you're moving up from orange to blue, that's a move up. And also, if you're all the way to the left where it says declined significantly at the top, you want to move toward the right, which for our English language arts, we moved towards the right with every group. >> Okay. Well, thank you for clarifying that. >> Yeah. And I can get you. I mean, I I I worry at the board that it's too much, but let me say at our next,
015if this is okay with you guys, at our next EDS subcommittee meeting, I would be happy to do an overall comparison of our district and the state, our district with Palmdale and our district with other rural districts. >> I would love that because I want to see where do we stand with the rest of the the county. >> Okay, I'm just going to put a note, but I would love to present that. It's really interesting and good data. I worry at like public meetings that um it's too much but in these meetings I would that would be great. >> I I do have a question sluggestion um the previous slide the 5x5s we'll see kind of throughout this presentation um and for the board meeting tonight to to to kind of at a glance because
016we're going through these slides pretty quickly. The 5x5 is um sake of transparency very difficult to kind of grasp immediately without del diving into it deeper. My suggestion would just be and you know folks jump in or shut me down what have you feel free you know the ELA by student group in indicating the by the subgroups increase decline stagnant this this slide in particular just you know shouts out to me it's a little bit more clearer the 5x5 just for consumption quickly it's is quite difficult to understand >> it's a lot it is a Do we do we remove the 5x5s? Do we just keep it to this? >> I would love the team's input. I'm not married to any of these metal. >> I mean I mean when I look at the 5x5
017I it takes me a while just to figure out try to figure out what's going on in that with the categories and in the previous years. It's it's not straightforward if you're not if you're not in education. I'm trying you know I spent at least five minutes trying to figure it out and I still got it wrong. So um yeah. >> Okay. I can hide those slides from the presentation and just focus on the slides that look like this for the board presentation. >> I think that's a good idea. Um for future meetings, I'm not going to ask you to go into detail right now, but for future meetings when we see um one of our schools in the bottom left corner of a 5x5, I think that needs major attention. And why are we
018um decreasing? I think increased um we always want to see increased. No matter where we are with the state or anything, if we're increasing in our points like we're showing right now, most of these are increased with the exception of one Maintained I would like to do better, but it's, you know, not we're we're at least maintaining, but when we're seeing groups decreasing um and like at the very bottom left of that 5x5, I want to know where what are we doing to target that? And when you brought that up, you said, "Well, they don't have I Ready there." Um, and we've already seen how I Ready is working to increase at the other schools. Can we get I Ready there. Is there something else that we can get if we can't do I Ready?
019How are we targeting that? How are we what are we doing to like intervention and and really increase those and at at that level? So I can tell you what we're doing um at the next meeting too. I at the ed subcommittee meeting if this is agreeable to everybody I would love to do a breakdown by school. >> That would be fantastic. So >> a little bit more. >> You can put my answer to that question put it on the next meetings for just for the sake of time and I want you to be able to get through your presentation here. But if we could just make a note of you know what are we doing to raise these scores that would be that would be awesome. >> Okay. All right. and I was taking
020notes. But yeah, I would actually love I mean I would love to do that. So before we move on from ELA, are there any other questions? >> We're good. Okay. And I will hide the 5x5 grid for our for our public audience. So thank you for that feedback. Okay. So for the mathematics this um this maintained but again our three schools do affect them affect the overall data but right now we have 19% of our students um meeting or exceeding which that's a really low number. I don't want necessarily say that during the board meeting but that is low. That is a number we really do want to see improve. It is an area where overall statewide and in other districts math tends to be lower than English language arts groups do struggle with that.
021But that is not a reason for us to not work towards improving that number. I will say like this is also we want to keep in mind that the ESPback data is a test that's taken at one period in time. It's not data that gives us information throughout the year. And when we present our I Ready data, we're presenting data that's more local data and that is showing more shows more truly student growth, right? So even when we're seeing improvement, which I agree with you, we want to see improvement. You're looking at different kids every year. Although there are some charts that show improvement and I'll share those at our next meeting too that are part of the dashboard that show our growth and our district has made is really moving in the right direction.
022Um, so I'm going to I'm going to do another 5x5 grid with you. Okay, it's on the next slide. So again, if you look at the far left corner or the column, it's telling you the very low, the low, the medium, the high. And you do want to try to move up from red towards the green or the blue. If you're looking at that top moving towards the right, you're looking at how we increased or maintained. So what we see the mo the first movement we normally see when we start to improve and I can show you at the next meeting the grids from last year and this year you normally move across the top be first before you move up. Do you have a question on that? It's because of the way the numbers
023are. Like I don't make the numbers, but the numbers that would be on the far left going up and down are are a bigger number. Like it you have to get more more to move up. It's less numbers like it's a smaller uh what's what's the word that like from zero to five. It's a smaller segments of numbers across the top where at the other side and I I'll go over this with you at the next meeting. at the other side. Some of them you have to move almost 70 before you move up. >> Does that make sense? >> I feel really stupid when I look at this this chart because I just >> I'm sorry. >> I mean I I mean I take it from the top here where it says very high highest
024status and you go over to the green green then go into the three blues and it says none. I don't know is that referring to Vasquez or metallark or high desert? I don't I don't maybe I'm just >> So on this grid math is in the red. We are low in math and we did decline with and these are our kids last year. So it's a and the other thing that makes it hard to compare our data is because we're small we only have one school. So we're talking about like 95 kids. >> Okay, I get it now. So wherever wherever it says Vasquez or metallark that's where we're at right now. So a metallark word low on math but we did increase. Is that correct? >> Yes. >> And then and then high desert.
025So everything else above that just means nothing. And it just it's just placeholders, right, where we could be. Okay, >> I get it. So, I just got to look for the where where we're at as far as where it says the school name and then that Okay, I get it now. >> Yeah. And High Desert did have an they had a significant increase in their math, but we're still low. But again, that number, it's so interesting. I'll share the numbers with you next time, but the number from like very low to low is like 70. Like you have to move up like 70 points before you move up. Once you go from medium to high, it's like five points. It's It's very interesting how they created the um the way the numbers move up and
026down like the scale. Again, I didn't create the scale, but it's I was looking at the scale today. I'll explain it to you guys in a little bit more detail at our next meeting if that's okay. >> Yeah, that's fine. I wish there was a graph that you can see the years and the numbers where you're progressing or or decreasing or increasing >> as you go along. I have a couple of those in here and there are I will do the comp there are some comparisons too year to year that I can share with you guys as well and if you decide like that information we want to share that at the board meeting in February. We are doing the LCAP um interim uh presentation and I can share some of that information there as
027well if that makes sense. >> Makes sense. Thank you. >> All right. Oh, let me go to the next slide. We could keep the 5x5 slides and just have George, you know, present these specific slides tonight if that. No. >> Yeah, I don't think so. Thank you. >> But I do really appreciate your feedback. I love these, but I look at them all the time and so it's really hard for me to gauge like what other people. >> Yeah, I get it now. Now that I now I understand it, but it is it took me a while to figure it out. So th this is the same thing but it's just by the student groups and and this one and I don't know why again I don't create these on their site. This one actually
028has the numbers on the sides. So you can see that from very low you go from 95.1 you have to move up to like 95 to 25. It shows you but so but for this one as far as our math and our student groups we don't have anybody in column one under declined significantly. We do have a decline for our English learners and we had a maintain for our students that were white. We had our long-term English learners, our socioeconomically disadvantaged and our Hispanic or Latino students also maintain. um we didn't have any groups increase but we did have a significant increase with our students with disabilities and then this is this is not school specific this is district it's all the students in in addition to I know this presentation presentation that's coming up
029for the LCAP um interim report midyear report just like we did last year each individual school site will be presenting their highlights coming up starting in February with um Metallark, March with Behigh Desert, and then um April will conclude with Vasquez. And within their presentations, they'll be highlighting um their academic progress um within each specific school site within ELA and math. So, we'll get a little bit more in-depth there as well. >> Yeah. And then they'll have the I Ready data, which I think we did some stuff with the I Ready data, too. And the I Ready data, again, that's your kids that are here this year. and you do beginning, middle, and end of year. So, you can see the growth. Um the the California dashboard tells us on one day that our kids
030tested, this is how they're doing. But it does give us data to help us decide as a district what we want to do. Like we really focused on chronic absenteeism, which is when we get to that uh was it a year a year and a half ago? We started on two years ago on that because we're like we really need to get kids to school if we want to see these numbers move. and we had a a big increase there and we're now seeing the movement with the academics as well which now our focus is will continue on chronic absenteeism but there's a real the push right now is is math and language arts it's really the academics if does that does do you have questions on that add something about them can I insert
031something okay >> yeah um I just wanted to share our students with disabilities. Um I know that um our special ed director Devon Coen and Nicole Chen worked really hard um last year on making sure that all the students accommodations were in there correctly into and we really felt the impact of that at High Desert and I'm sure other sites also because really extra attention was paid to make sure that all of those students had their accommodations properly in the testing system. And so I think that is reflected in the increase that they made. Um so I think when we do target things and we put extra attention in specific areas overall we're seeing like we focused on absenteeism, we focused on the students with disabilities, you can't unfortunately you can't focus on everyone all
032at the same time. But as we're you know intentionally targeting specific things that we see as concerns, um we're making huge growth. So I just want to celebrate that. But I mean we did focus on our EEL students in their language acquisition because that's the focus with designated language and we did see big growth there growth there as well. We're actually really making good growth. It doesn't look that great I guess on the on the 5x5 but whenever you see movement where you have kids that are increasing or or significantly increasing you're doing really well. But there's always areas of growth and I'll do comparisons with other districts and you'll see like other districts have areas of growth and you'll see primarily math is always it doesn't matter. I mean I'll compare us to a
033high performing high economic status district as well just so you can see the trends are there for all districts not just us. But can we do better? Absolutely. We definitely can. All right. I'm going to go to the next slide. This is the slide you like better. it's a little easier to understand. So, this shows our math by student groups. So, we did have a decline for our English learners in math. We And again, another thing that happens is when kids are working on their language acquisition or they're working on ELA, sometimes you see a slip in another subject area because they're really working on that subject. And once they start to get close some of those gaps, so in their English language arts department, like that part, when you start to close some of
034those gaps, you'll see kids be have that kind of bandwidth to to start focusing more on math. And so, um, with our Hispanic group, that group maintained their scores. Our long-term English groups also maintained their scores in math. Our socioeconomic disadvantaged kids also maintained. We did again see an increase with our students with disability and our students um in the white student group maintained their scores questions. All right, we'll go to the next slide. We're going to move to chronic absenteeism is up next. And so I did put a comparison slide in here. Um, and the reason I didn't with the others is it makes a lot of slides with math and English language arts. We did actually discuss that when I was putting this together. And again, I will add that to my next
035presentation. So in 2024, again, we're still in the yellow, right? So when you're looking at the the wheel, you see we're still the same. However, um, and what's interesting is we had a decline of 8.9% this year, which means we currently have a percentage of 27.7 of for our chronic absenteeism. So, our rate is lower, which is good. So, you can see last year in 2024, our chronic absenteeism rate was 36%. We had a decline of 15%. So, we are still moving in the right direction. We didn't go as far this time, but that's because our chronic absenteeism has dropped. So, as we continue to move to getting more kids to school, the percentage will increase. It just won't increase generally at as quick of a rate. So on the the math and the ELA
036all that we're looking at increasing is good but on the chronic absenteeism and the the >> suspensions we're looking at declined is good. >> Yes. Yeah. That means more kids are coming to school. >> And this is not from when this year is when we really started doing um >> it was last year >> right? So, this school year is when we really started in on um the STIS, pushing STIS more. And I know that this year already we've already increased our our ADA um rates. So, I'm curious this time next year how much that's going to go down because we're already seeing better attendance this year. Correct. >> Correct. >> Yeah. But even as we um as we regain some ADA through independent study as well independent study will affect our chronic absenteeism rate
037I believe but Saturday school won't necessarily change that but it will help us recover ADA >> right >> we are definitely getting more ADA recovery through the independent study as opposed to the the Saturday school but we still will see some movement because of the Saturday and attempts recovery that's also on Saturday as well. So, that's a good point. >> Questions before I move on? >> You know, I'm actually looking at the uh the Palmdale uh their their um dashboard and we're the same. We're at both at 27%. So, at least I can get an idea of how we stand. I mean, they have a bigger school and and the math the math um percentages are pretty much the same as well. So, >> yeah, it's pretty easy and quick. You can pull up LA
038County and California as well. And like if you're on the California dashboard, it's super easy to put a district in and just put the >> the year and all of it that all comes up. And then if you click on like say you click on math, you'll get the student groups and with the wheels like this. When you're on that page, if you look up in the upper right hand corner, it'll say detailed description or detail more detail. If you click on that, you can choose what you want as far as do you want to look at student groups, do you want to look at suspension? That's where you'll get the 5x5 grids. >> Yeah, it's great. >> So, when when I look at this and I'm I'm looking at as a view from a
039parent and I don't know anything else that's going on and I see these numbers >> and you know, in my mind, you know, it's it's really bad. But when they because I'm not going to take the time to look at the California dashboard and say, "Hey, how do we compare to these other schools?" they're going to think that we're just, you know, we're doing below standards in every single category. But when you look at this and you say, "Hey, well, this is how we compare as a parent, as someone who doesn't know this stuff," it'd be nice to say, "Okay, well, I guess we're on average, you know, compared to all the school districts districts around here." Um, that's the way I feel. I'm sure parents will feel the same way as far as looking
040at these numbers. >> I have an hour between these presentations. I can add a couple more slides that show um California or LA County or >> No, no. I'm just saying I'm for future references. That way we don't seem like we're, you know, it's like it's only us that have these low numbers because they're not going to take the time to look them up. >> It puts it in perspective. >> It does for me. It does. When I saw Palmdale at the same numbers, I'm like, "Okay, we're right about there. We want to we want to increase. Of course, we want to get better, but at least we're not this outlier here amongst all the other districts that we're doing so horrible, you know, but uh so yeah. >> Yeah, we're not. That's a good
041really good point. >> Doesn't negate our efforts and we focus in on our efforts, but just taking a look at it, you know, as a bird's eye view, it puts it in perspective. That's all. >> Well, I was already going to add a couple slides anyway, so two more. >> They're super easy to make. Okay, I'm going to go to the next one. Um, which shows the five by five grid. Sorry. >> Skip this one. >> I like them now because I can understand it. >> Once you hit them, they like give you but I Yeah. So again, you have on the side you have your very high and this one has the percentages. So it shows you like how do we move up to the next level on that's the one that's all the
042way to the right. I mean the left and then you have across the top. And you can see how the the scale is smaller across the top. But they want what the the state is trying to say is like we want to show you that you're improving, right? So that that you improve. You improve both ways. But so we don't have anyone um on an incre increased significantly which is good. Again increase again we have nothing which is also good. Even maintaining we don't want to maintain our scores. We really needed to get more kids to school. So we don't have any groups there as well. Um actually we don't have any groups in decline. We had a significant dec decline which is good. You want the decline um for both schools. Now Vasquez doesn't
043show up on here because the high schools um are they're they're monitored through the graduation rate and the college and career which we'll do next. But so on this one, both of our schools are they may be in the very high for chronic absenteeism, but they moved as a lot. That's why they're all the way to the left. Um, and we are as far as a district. I know we're in line with chronic absenteeism with LA County. And as far as I mean, all the districts, if you look at several districts, you're probably going to see decreases um across the board. most districts are moving in the right direction in this area and primarily because a lot of them and we work with other districts. We attend a lot of LEO um workshops and we
044have other districts like we share our ideas about like what are we doing that's working? They share with us what they're doing and so again the push is to get kids to school because no you know besides us other districts can't really get their kids to do better either if they're not at school. So, if you were to look at the trends, I pro I didn't look at Palmdale, but I look at LA County and um and California as a whole, and they're all decreasing and and getting more kids to school. Do you have questions? Let me go to the next one. The other next 5x5 grid is for student groups. So, we didn't have any students increase significantly. We did have an increase in our long-term English learners and that's a small group for
045us. So, uh Nicole Chun and I are already looking at seeing who specifically those students are so that we can reach out to the families and find out what's going on because we two years ago did empathy interviews with our English learners um long-term as well all of our English learners to find out like what what were the barriers for them coming to school? how could the district support them so we could get more of our English learners to school as well as we interviewed students that were coming to school to find out like why you came to school. Um and we interviewed parents as well and so that we got a lot of information about how we could better support our English learners coming to school. um we focused on our English learners because
046that was one area that was in the red for differentiated assistance and due to our efforts for focusing on one group. It had a positive impact on all of our student groups. So again, we had no students that maintained. We had our English learners and our students with disabilities that actually declined, which is good. That means they are coming to school more. As a district, we moved significantly um a decline and our so we have more of our socioeconomically disadvantaged our Hispanic or Latino students and our white students attending school questions on that. And our English our long-term English learners are students that have just not redesated for six years or more. So they're generally going to be our middle school and our high school students. And that is a small group, but it is
047a student group that we're really focused on supporting because we really do want them to redesate um to English learners. So again, that and we had a huge and I don't know if it's on this, but I think we redesated 35 students last year, 25 the year before. That's a really big number. So we're the work that our teachers and our principles are doing at the site level is really having a positive impact on our student learning. questions before I move on. Um, so this this is just another way of looking at our chronic absenteeism. This does show um from 21 to 22, 22 to 23, all the way to 242. Uh it shows meark, high desert, Vasquez, and the district as a whole. >> The high desert. >> Yeah, they're doing great. That is
048so interesting to see. High desert used to be the most and now they're the least. And High Desert used to be the I or I mean Vasquez used to be the least and now they're the most but they haven't had >> very much movement but the other schools have had a ton of movement. That's a really interesting graph. I like it. >> Yeah. I have a couple other slides that I'm going to add to this because one of the things again I just keep digging in and you find more and more data through Edgic Climber um actually metal for this last year. So between uh 24 and 25, metallark actually had the most growth as far as getting more kids back to school. I mean they also had the highest need. And now Vasquez which
049has been historically well I guess not um not if you look oh that's metallark Vasquez which has been historically low is now even though it's not a lot they actually are a little bit higher than the other two schools >> or as far as improvement I shouldn't say that middlearch I think is still higher overall but I'm going to add again I'm gonna so I apologize those weren't part of this presentation um but I did want to add them because just another way of looking at the the the data for our absenteeism >> Michelle like wait till you see this year. Yeah. Well, >> hi desert good at least. >> Yeah. I So Michelle said wait till you see this year. I will say like we we pull um our attendance. It's it's an Aries
050report. We I don't actually pull it out edge climber too and we go like down the list of um absentes and who we need to send letters to. But I'm pretty sure High Desert didn't have any on the even the last time we looked. It's really good and we're a good model. The other schools were working to model some of the practices that they're doing at High Desert um as it relates to chronic absenteeism so that we're like creating a system at all three schools that works. So >> yeah, if it works, definitely share it out and start it everywhere. >> It works. Yeah. And so it's just it's just that when it's just doing things in your system that you're creating with fidelity that makes a difference. And so um I'm sure she'll share
051more about that. But it is good >> and all the skills are moving in the right direction. Again, you know I you can speak to well Michelle being Michelle is part of it for sure. So I don't want to discount that. She does a great job. But also having that consistent leadership really just makes a difference. Like you know, even for me being here and being able to do this work with our teams and seeing this movement, the consistency just really helps because we're we've been saying the same thing to each other for at least for three years. And for Michelle, it's been five that you know, you're hearing the same thing. Your teachers, your students, your parents, they're hearing the same thing. So it makes a difference. So anyway, sorry I digressed. Sorry. >>
052Good stuff. >> Um, we can go to the next slide. So, but so I had I talked a little bit earlier about our our English learner progress. So, all students are in the blue. So, we do have an area we're in the blue. It doesn't show up on the grid that way because the grid is about uh growth across those numbers and that scale. But for our English learners, the progress that they made, they had an increase in 25%. So 65 they increased by 25% which means 65% of our students are making progress. Our long-term English learners are in the green. They 60% of our long-term English learners are making progress and there was a 5.1 uh% increase. Although, even though on that other slide where I have a long-term English learner in the red,
053that again just means that I need to reach out and see who specifically the students are and what their need is. But as it relates to their English learning as opposed to their math, they made significant improvements questions on that. Go to the next slide. Another grid. So the grid on all the way to the left has the numbers again. And each of these grids, the numbers are different. So they use a different scale. And then you can see across the top um it's showing our are our significant decline significantly across to increase significantly. So on this one, you want to increase you want your kids to increase in their English learner progress. We had no students in our declined significantly category. We had no students in our decline. We had no students in our
054maintain, which is excellent. We had our our um English learners at High Desert increased and are in the blue. So they increased and they're at the highest level of performance as far as making progress and and at Metallark we had um significant increase and again we're in the blue. So they're at the highest level um that they can be in. So I guess what makes it a little confusing is how can we have kids in the blue and then have other areas in the red. This has to do with their English language and their progress towards redesating. And again, we have had a lot of students redd designate primarily we think because um at High Desert and at well at Vasquez as well um they they have the designated class where they're both of those
055teachers are fantastic and have a have good admin support and they're just doing a lot of really good designated work with the kids and metallark as well. we we had a lot of um kindergarteners we who tested the beginning who redesated. So it's just I think the overall support that we're giving to the students as it relates to their to their English acquisition questions. All right, I'm going to go to the next slide. And this just is another presentation. It again shows the English learners in the blue. It shows that 65% of them are making progress and um the long-term English learners are in the green, 60% of those students are making progress. That was a 5% increase. And this actually shows the number of students. So we have 33. This was last year. So
056some of these kids graduated. These are our numbers from last year. And our next slide will go to suspension rates. if there's no questions. All right. So, in our suspension rate, this is also an area that you want to decline. You want to have less suspensions. Um, we are in the green uh and I believe we were in the yellow last year, so we moved up. We um had a decline of 2.2%. And the next slide just breaks it down a little bit more. The area of growth, the area that we really want to focus on is our students that are homeless in the orange. It's not a big group for us, but they are students that we're suspending more than we want to be suspending. So, what we do with this is we run
057reports so we know who those students are. We look at their suspensions so we can figure out what they're being suspended for. We talk to admin, counselors, social workers, and their families as well as the students to find out what's going on so that we can better support them because the goal for us would be to find supports that keep them in school um while not getting in trouble. And then um for the rest of our student groups, which includes our English learners, our Hispanic students, our long-term English learners, our socioeconomic disadvantaged students, students with disabilities, and our white students are in the green. Um and that's because we had decreases in our suspension rates for our students questions. And there this is the suspension weight rate grid. So we didn't have any student groups
058that increased significantly or increased. Um we did have a maintenance at metallark and that's because their suspension rate is almost zero. So they they maintain they don't have a they don't really have room for growth um because they they just generally don't suspend students. And then we didn't have just in the decline we didn't have any all of our movement was a decline that was significant. Um kids moved from the yellow up and that was at high desert and Vasquez questions. So I will tell you too if you're on these you're on these reports and you see that there's links on these reports. If you get into the dashboard and you go to the 5x5 grid and you click on these links, it shows you specifically what the it's it's a number value, but it
059shows you the the number that kids move that we moved in what direction. So it gives you even more information. Um so for our graduation rate, um so for the dashboard, we had um a late graduate that didn't get reported to CalPAD. So, the dashboard shows our graduation rate at 93.7, but looking at our local data and confirming with our counselors at Vasquez High School, we did have 100% of our students who graduated last year. So, I I'm sharing our local data, which is on the right, as well as the data that was reported to um our dashboard. Questions on that? And correct me if I'm wrong, I think that's three or four years in a row that we've had 100% graduate. >> That's correct. >> It has. So if you look at last year,
060it was 98.1. And what happens is sometimes it's not exactly 100%. Because if we have a student who moves from our school and doesn't reenroll in another school and it's their graduation year, it it impacts us even though they're no longer our student. But yes, we've had a 100% graduation rate. I think five years. something crazy like that's that's awesome for >> all the years I've been here I' counselors and our staff at Vasquez >> because that's that's like really incredible those are incredible numbers >> yeah it's really good >> for June might be five years so that's >> we'll go for five uh for our next slide this is a new indicator the college and career readiness indicator uh this is an indicator that doesn't so our percentage is actually a little bit higher
061higher and again it's it's how it gets reported to CalPADS and for us and actually this is all districts we're way ahead of the game on this because our district started working with it's CCGI which I don't know exactly what that stands for it's it's a we approved it at the board it's another platform that the state required us to start using and they gather the data and they that platform has to talk to ARIES and most school districts didn't have ARIES aligned with that platform because we never used it before, but our counselor started working with our IT team like well over a year ago. So, we're as a district almost done with those corrections. So, if you look you we increased on this just because we're getting our data in line, but our
062numbers a little bit higher, but we even had an increase this year. Um, and we have currently 45% of our students prepared. And if we go to Yes. >> How do we measure this? On the next slide, I'm going to show you the metrics. I was like, if someone asked me that, I don't know all the metrics, so I went ahead and put them on a slide. Um, I'm going to do a comparison for you to first. Um, they had a good comparison chart for this in in the dashboard. So, this compares 2019 to there was no data in between because of COVID 2023, 24, and 25. And so you can see in 2025 our prepared number has gone up to 45 compared to like 21%. Now I will say if you go look at
063my presentation from last year our number was higher. It just wasn't being reported because we had to work with Aries and Calpads and CCGI to align it. Um but again it's still a number that we're working on growing. So we've increased significantly in this area. And then let me show you the metrics. Do you have questions on this? So for the metrics for college and career uh indicators to be prepared you have to get a three on the smarter balance summit of assessments. There's multiple ways that you can um get credit for advanced placement. You take two classes. Um you have to get a three. There's like four or five different ways under advanced placement that you can get that credit. Um college credit courses which we offer. We have a several kids that take
064courses through um colleges off campus and get credit with us and also our CTE courses. Um also the state seal of bi literacy. >> Should we move the slide? Yes. >> Oh, I'm so sorry. Like I'm reading. I'm sorry. >> Slide one. >> I'm reading and not even paying attention, >> please. Thank you, Al. >> I'm sorry. Thank you. >> I was I was looking at my computer. So for students to be prepared, the metrics is smarter balance summitive assessments at level three or higher. Um advanced placement and there's several ways that you combinations of AP classes and AP scores you can get to meet that requirement. college credit courses like as I shared earlier, we have several students who take classes at AV and um Analope Valley and and other colleges where the that
065becomes part of their high school career and CTE courses which I know you guys have heard a lot of presentations recently from our counselors about the many offerings we have for CTE and then the state silo by literacy and then having met the university or California and California state university requirements that are the A through G requirements as well as the CTE. So there's several ways to make that to make that uh prepared kind of metric. Um and for students approaching prepared which was the second part of the previous slide on the bar chart is just it's the same um metrics. There's just only three of them as opposed to the five >> questions on that. Yeah, this is combined with the career as well. Like they're both combined. When you say preparing you for
066college or I'm preparing you for a career path, this is the same matrix, right? There's nothing different from the career path, right? >> Yeah. No, it's college and career. Yeah. >> Because and and I mean because college and career could be college then career. It could be college and career at the same time time. It could be career and then college. It could be career. So it, you know, there's a lot of ways that kids but, you know, approach this once they graduate, but we want to make sure at the high school level that we're prepar preparing students for all the different types of opportunities they might have that could in could involve college and career in different ways. So is there any preparation for college for students who are not in AP AP classes
067are not taking courses at you know a univers uh college campus is there anything that we do to prepare them for because I get a lot of students in my courses that are clearly not prepared they're not coming from they're coming from all over but clearly they're not prepared never even wrote a I would say an essay before but is there anything for those students who are not in AP courses or not you know do we have like a generalized curriculum for people preparing for co college? >> Yeah and we have a career technology education courses too. So that is part of that like as opposed to AP. Some kids take AP, some kids take college techn you know like the carpentry classes, the the um the culinary classes, the biology. So our students themselves
068would have to elect to get of course one of these as a um elective or or core class. They would have to decide themselves. There's nothing that we make them go through that says hey this is going to be an introduction of of preparing you for college level because a lot of times I I believe you know these students they they believe that their courses for at a college level is going to be the same as in high school. So they don't take these courses. So I guess my question is there's nothing else that we can do as far as preparing them other than them electing to go to these courses. >> It's kind of an on. So A through G are the courses that you would take and that all of our like our
069math courses, our English courses, our science courses, those are all A throughG approved courses. So if kids take those courses and pass then they that gives them kind of the minimal level for college entrance. Um, as far as like I understand like that trend like when you leave high school and you get to college, kids that aren't prepared sometimes it just have I mean there's so many different factors that affect that. But as far as us trying to do our best to make sure that we're preparing kids, it's an ongoing like you spoke with the counselors, they they speak with our kids at least three times a year and there's like a check sheet, a check off sheet. I can share those with you. I can just email them to you if you want to
070see them that the counselors use when they meet with the students to walk them through this process. >> Nice. Thank you. I appreciate that. >> Sure. >> Now, I don't have the I don't have statistics in front of me, but I do know for many colleges and universities, um, you know, they're grappling with the same scenario that you presented, Dr. De Jesus as far as English and math and essays and you know many of them you know with their assessments to kind of gauge where they fall for let's say their freshman year they take a lot of remediation courses as they enter as you all know. So >> yeah no I and I think math I mean just from what I've seen I mean math is such a gatekeeper course at the college it's super
071hard and that's why again I know that ESPbacks you know they're only for 11th graders except science is for 10th graders but it's so important that teachers remind kids to go ahead and release their scores to the universities because they can become conditionally approved for entry level classes and not have to take the remediation classes like the kids need to we we need to do a better job. I think explaining to kids how important what we're doing is to help them to be college and career ready. But if you've been a high school teacher and I have, you know, some kids really buy into that and some kids just, you know, there's just a lot going on with kids and sometimes it's hard for them to make that connection to how important school is going
072to be until they get to college. I mean, I probably was one of those kids. There were classes that I remember taking like biology having to draw a graph and I'm like I don't even think I know how to do this and I'm like how do you not know how to draw a bar graph? But I remember when I first and the scale like I didn't even understand like that the scale like had to be like if it was 0 to five then you better go 5 to 10. Like it has to be the same. Um but I learned you know I I realized like I I you know I there were some classes I didn't attend. I'll be honest. Like, well, there's no one in the public on this meeting. It's just us, right?
073I didn't go to school. >> We upload We upload this. >> Oh. So, will you can you cut this out? >> My editors. So, I'll just say personally my own story. I love >> Hang on. I'm going to step away for one second. I will be right back. You guys continue on without me. >> But there were courses that I didn't always attend school. I wouldn't say my attendance probably was very good but I learned when I you know went to college again education was super important to me and I filled in those gaps like you become a different learner right when you become an adult >> yeah you know what I 100% agree with you because that's the same with me you know I wasn't the academic person when I especially when I graduated
074high school that's why I went in the army for six years but it took me 13 years to go back to school so yeah I definitely agree with you and Um another thing where there was a student that graduated about three years ago from um a high desert not high desert um Vasquez and he's a family friend and also you know he wanted to go to college you know after two years he's like I'm like why why haven't you done anything and he's like you know what I don't know what to do I don't know where to start I don't know about what fast is I don't know where you know the first thing to do and how do I enroll and I think a little bit like I'm sure that he wasn't asking these
075important questions while he was in high school. But they are important important things and coming from a a family with no you know first generation college um graduation graduate you know I had to sit down with this young man and actually tell him exactly you know where to start and I'm thinking that did we fail him as a district not preparing him even though you know he probably didn't ask the right questions. So that's why I was, you know, trying to I was interested about this college and career indicators and the metrics and seeing how well we're doing with informing these young students when they graduate and, you know, of what the whole process is, especially somebody who's first generation college. >> Yeah. And I'm first generation college. I I do understand and and it's
076way harder now. Like FASA is way harder than it was. I I think all of it's way harder. I mean, and I know that the counselors have lots of meetings. They have parent meetings. they they they meet the kids. Like I said, I can share I can share with you the checklist and it's just I it's I think sometimes when you're a kid and if you have other things going on like I did and perhaps you as well, I didn't always make the connections, right? Because there was something else in my life that was happening that was causing noise and so I didn't hear it. Even though it might have been being said right to me, the other noise in my life like took precedence. If that makes sense. >> Yeah, we're talking about connections.
077You mentioned the word connections. I'll turn it over to Michelle so she could talk a little bit about how could we forget. It's a little bit of a plug for one of our agenda items tonight, but for next year, the service contract for AVID 2627 school year. So building the AVID, you know, the the collegegoing culture districtwide has a significant impact. Michelle, do you want to share a little bit? Sure. AVID efforts. >> So we've made a lot of efforts towards um including AVID at all levels um and we've been sending people to Sumber Institute to really get it into our schools and um intentionally sending different people so that we're trying to end up with all of our staff trained in AVID. Um, and so when you're talking about are there classes that prepare
078our kids, we're doing that through the AVID elective. Um, we're doing it through AVID advisory. Uh, the high school takes field trips to college. Um, I I'm on my third child that's about to graduate from Vasquez High School. um with number four as a sophomore and the support and the more college focus I would say for my number three kid compared to my number one kid that was you know four years ago is pretty significant. Um there's been a really big shift in helping our kids get prepared. Um, you know, when when Jake was there, he had a a principal that sat down with him, but that that was about it as far as filling out the FAFSA and it was new for us cuz he was my first and and here I am in
079education, but he's still my first kid and it's still my first experience with college now, which looks different than when I went to college. Um, and so looking at that, just a comparison, you know, McKenzie had even more support and there were more parent workshops and answers to questions and things pushed out. Zach has had even more than that. Like there's been so many more workshops and um college tours like they're they're about to go on another one. Um the connections that we've made with COC and ABC those didn't exist four years ago. Um the ability to take classes. So there's just that we may not see it um all and I would say if you're talking to a kid from three years ago I probably agree with you because I have a kid that
080graduated four years ago and you know I mean like like we weren't as good at it then but we've made significant strides towards helping kids figure out what do you want to do next and helping them kind of get on that path for what that looks like. Um, but Avid definitely is part of it as well because that's that's part of the AVID program. And it's not just how to write an essay. It's how do you even take notes? How do you you know, we have kids that take notes and then they they never look at them again. And I'm like, what's the point of taking notes if you don't pull them out and use them to study? Um, so there's just things like that that are like what we see as adults as well,
081of course you would take them out and study that our kids just aren't even thinking that direction. And so that's kind of where AVID is at is it's teaching all those foundational skills that you need to be a good student along with a focus on where are you going? And so they do college research and um and AVID has added career to it. It's not just college anymore. It's now also career. So it's where are you going after this? Where do you what do you need to do now to start tracking your way to that? So thank you. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Because I've only been here four years, so that's it sounds like that shift has happened kind of since Dr. Sahakin came. I mean honestly leadership makes a difference >> and I've only
082been here since you've been here so I don't have that reflection. So the history is really helpful. Thank you. >> Thanks Michelle. I'm done. Um, if you have other questions for me, I'm happy to try to address them. >> I don't. Thank you for that great presentation. >> Yeah, I think I asked all of my questions and we made our um our list for things that we want to bring back and kind of dive deeper into. Um, so that's fantastic. So, thank you. I'm looking forward to having this presented to the public later tonight and getting, you know, other board members input into it. So, this was, I think, a really good um time for you to kind of uh test it out on us. So, thank you. >> And I really appreciate your insight
083um on, you know, like this looks overwhelming because like I said, I see it all the time. and that mirrored. I really really appreciate that. Um, thank you. I only have one question. Do we want to have our next meeting on the 12th or the following board meeting? So, when we move to change these board meetings, it was to align more and make things easier for George since he's the only board member that does sit on two subcommittees. Um, and I feel like that we were taking a lot of his time. So, >> you know, my my schedule's now changed again next month. I go back to my working at night. So, if you want, it's up to you, Brianna. If you want to change it back to those days, I'm I'm happy to do
084that. I'm around. Um, so I'm on vacation right now, hence the goatee. I got two more weeks left of vacation, and when I go back, I'm going to be on uh nights again. So, it's a So, if you want to change it back to that those times, any dates you want, Brianna, I'm I'm open to anything. Um, well, jeez, you could put it right back in my court. I I don't know. Whatever you guys want to do is fine. >> Let's start with the date. Do we want the 12th or the following? Which I don't if that's the 26th or the 22nd? >> 26th. When does the when does the policy meeting >> uh we have a next one on the 12th? >> Okay, let's do the 12th then. >> Okay. Yeah, let's keep it
085the same like when Yeah. So, it'll be the first the first th or the second Thursday of the month, the first board meeting of the month. >> Yes. Let's do that. Um, and then we had also talked at the last meeting about making it the hour before the policy meeting so there's not >> so four o'clock. >> And I'll make sure to communicate that. I had that on the agenda but I didn't but our calendars were still 3:00 so we'll make sure we get that fixed. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. Um, and then at some point if we can add to future agenda items, I do want to bring back the things that we were kind of um bringing back for updates, which was the attendance recovery, just where we are on that
086and maybe get an update on our on our numbers for this school year and how we're doing with that. And then we were also working on um the plan for when schools are shut down. Did we did we finish that? Is that like pushed out if Basquez is done? This is what we're going to do. Is that pushed out and on the website and everything for families? If that's complete, we don't need to bring it back. >> Um, it is updated. I don't know that it's on the website. Let me see. Also, that instructional continuity plan gets embedded in the safety plans this year. So, it may be just that we need to post the new safety plans, which we're working on updating right now. Um, >> so when we were talking about this before,
087yes, it's in it's in the safety plan. It's like it's a document inside a document inside a document. And that's fantastic. What what we were hoping for and what I was hoping for um was that specific document. If this, then that, if this, then we'll house students here. And then we and make that readily accessible to staff and to students and to families. So, when that's happening and we're shutting school down tomorrow, people don't have to go, I don't know where that document is. Let me go look in the safety plan because that's the safety plan is not where I would look if I were looking on the website for it. Um, I I want it to be I I know that it has to be in those other documents and it's part of those,
088but I also want it to be its own document. >> Maybe like a one pager or an infographic. >> Yeah. And I I don't mind doing that. Only concern with that is we will probably need the 10 days to get up and running. That is how long we have five. I mean because that takes time to get up and running. My other problem is and I don't again mind posting it. But it's hard to know in advance what the emergency might be. Like is it going to be that black and white like if it's Vasquez we're going to high desert? What if it's I don't I just don't know if the district would need in an emergency like that time to meet as a leadership to make sure that we put the right plan in
089place. Like we have a proposed plan, but how do we know for sure that plan's going to be the plan in the I do you know what I'm saying? In the unforeseen like you don't really know what's going to happen. >> Should we just the proposed plan? >> So this is why we should bring this back >> um for a future agenda item so that we can chitchat about this >> at a future date. So it could be I'm not saying have the plan ready for a future agenda item. I'm saying let's bring it back so we can have this conversation um at a future date because we definitely need to have something. Thankfully, we haven't had power outages this year like we've had last year, but that doesn't mean they're not coming next week,
090>> right? >> No, I agree. And and you know, and just to piggyback, you know, whether it's a onepage infographic, whether it's a 10-page document, we could actually upload these once, you know, there's there's final approval um to the parent link, right, on the on our web page as a quick resource um besides the safety plan. And then it could be subject to change. You know, there could be section, >> right, a fluid document. If if this then that, if this then that. And you know what? If that doesn't work, we're gonna come up with something else that works best for students. So we're not locked in but so that we have some sort of a plan so we don't have kids sitting at home for three weeks. >> Right. And and and I agree
091and we can actually even like a separate section you know highlight the communication you know always look out for final communication coming from the district office as >> yeah so if we could just bring this back as a discussion topic not I want you to have something done in concrete approved by administrators all that just let's just bring it back for a discussion. >> Okay. Well, as I'm working on the the district plan, again, they they're all the plans overlap, metal, arc, high desert. As I'm working on that piece though, I'll pull those pieces out that we already talked about as well as the communication piece and share with cabinet, Dr. Sahakian as far as like kind to get their input as well and then bring that back to this meeting if that's okay. >>
092Fantastic. >> We can probably do it in March because like in February, we're going to do some more with um the dashboard. That sounds good to me. George, does that sound good to you? >> Yeah, >> sounds perfect. >> Okay. >> All right. Well, then that's we're all we're all good. We're done, right? Anybody have anything else? Um, so we'll go ahead and adjourn at 4:13. Thank you guys so much. >> All right. See you later. >> All right. See you in a few hours. >> All right. Bye.