001one moment youtube is starting you are now live on youtube all right madam president i'd like to bring to order this meeting of the board of education on february 19th 2022. um that's i item number one item 1.1 pledge of allegiance trustee kemper are you ready to lead us i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all that moves from to 1.2 the roll call dr cutler would you lead us in the role yes yes president turnbull um please say aye if you're here uh trustee bannister we're here president that's all right you know i'm not used to doing it just stay here kipper trustee riley trustee mansfield here president turnbull here all
002our president apologize for my eye and a and yay and all that stuff very good so moving on to item two adopt the agenda is there a motion to adopt the agenda i made to adopt the agenda so there's a motion by trustee bannister to adopt the agenda there's a second by trustee kemper all those in favor say aye hi all those opposed motion carries item three communications from the public president turnbull and members of the board based on this being a special board meeting and a retreat we hold communication from the public from either during the conversations and or we ask for additional public comment at the end so that is the process for today's special meeting and with that we will move into item 4 annual board retreat annually the board convenes to
003review and discuss the board's vision mission goals and progress additionally the board participates in professional development to promote effective board governance the annual retreat will be facilitated by amy christensen and michael wash walsh with beacon results take it away president turnbull thank you so much and we are excited to have mike and amy here from beacon results and to help facilitate as they did last year last january for us as we continue our process of growing our team and focusing on what we need to accomplish as a as a board and governance team but for our the organization as a school district and so what i'd like to do is if we can move to 4.1 breakfast invite everybody to to take the time to go ahead and have some breakfast visit um you know
004as we just do what i really want to invite everybody today is just really enjoy being together enjoy the learning together the conversation and help and grow so let's have breakfast right now we have uh and and if there were public here the public would be invited to breakfast as well um so we have uh fruit for drinks right now water coffee and orange juice by the way i do have some soda water beckham office i'll bring out during lunch but if you'd like some sooner please let me know we have breakfast burritos fruit vegetables so so thank you are we good okay all right let's have breakfast that's good he's gonna mute us anyway but to save our batteries yeah to save our batteries hello everybody i'm going to unmute the board room i
005would encourage you to please turn on your microphone and so uh appreciate it you are now unmuted very good um i hope that everyone has enjoyed the breakfast this morning thank you i'm really excited about our time and our continued commitment to our team and personal learning and growth i just really really proud and impressed on how committed the five board members really are to that so thank you for that um and we don't have that much opportunity to do what we just did as a board is just have breakfast and and get ready for some incredible conversations that will be happening today so president turnbull if you don't mind i'll just help guide us through the agenda the agenda and then hand off to mike and amy for facilitation i appreciate that dr coleman
006okay thank you and and again let's have our mics up and on so that uh you don't necessarily we believe that they can capture your talk your unless you're talking really quiet they can capture you uh if you're speaking outwardly and the mics will pick you up so um right now we're gonna move to 4.2 review of topics from 2021 border retreat and mike am i handing that to you like this at this point in time or is that amy it's me okay for those that are listening uh roshan beau is that how you call that does that change otherwise known as rock paper scissors well that's what i was gonna say but i was trying to be sophisticated i understand all right i was translating and then amy always wants okay so let me
007have this uh mike you're on thank you thank you very much it's a pleasure to be back with all of you um so let's get to work because uh the work is conversations i appreciate what you've said dr carter this is all about conversations this morning and appreciate that you're willing to have those conversations and invite us back uh do you wanna say anything real quickly so we can get rolling anything you brought up the vision revisited and el cap update workshop that we have with the community focus group will be in here at six o'clock on tuesday march 1st followed by um what we're doing these focus groups and all of our employee groups will have the opportunity to sit with amy and talk about our district and how we're doing and their thoughts
008as well as parent groups so really excited about that as part of our collection of data on you know what people are thinking and feeling about the district and are you encouraging board trustees to attend these yeah no actually you know that that's a good question because i finally that's something i wanted to ask of you to uh in terms of the fire and information trying to get the public at the focus groups is i realized after reading the fire um that i finally like clicked with me like what is a focus group you know like no one else is in the room amy gets to be with the stakeholders without the staff but i don't think that the like it took me like three or four times for me to get it and um
009i like live in this world and i'm thinking the public doesn't understand the meaning of the word focus group i mean generally speaking that people don't think enough about it and so i think it would be nice if our invitations i know we've already put out flyers and we'll do it again but to really tell people this is for you it's not for the district staff i mean it's to inform the district staff and what we're doing but it's really for the public to have input because that's not as i haven't seen that anywhere in the flyers it doesn't it doesn't look very encouraging to me trustee kemper we appreciate your guidance and feedback we've sent something out we're going to send a reminder out on monday um february 28th and we'll do our best
010to consider what else we can say incentivize free food i don't know um i will tell you we're not feeding single one of them there's several there's several but by the way amy will be sitting with uh students at all of our our schools um she'll be sitting with staff we will have groups from teachers groups to classified members to management members and i won't be attending any of them because that's part of the process of not even helping people feel comfortable they can share whatever they want to share with amy and so that's why i asked that board members don't necessarily attend amy will pull together a report from her her time over the few those days and we'll provide that here but the vision first and the vision one we come to yes
011please the vision is a full invite anybody and everybody the focus groups that are the following days which are march 2nd through the 4th and i'm kind of excited because typically what happens is as of march 2nd i will let folks know why i'm here and what's going on and then the word spread and then i also offer my email and space for folks to actually send me if they can't be here or if their colleagues can't be there then i provide space for them to still so it actually works out and i thought it was great to encourage people you don't have to be going to your site yeah right yeah well actually because we it was one of the concerns from one of the only principles well if it's not at one of
012my sites enough i think it's for them well we have four and we did them regionally so bishop fbg school but one at south tau high really is recently for tahoe valley here right um and and so on so forth so that's uh in the middle school is for basically midtown if you will whatever you want to call this right i hope so so that's what we're doing um and i will say that that oftentimes amy's going to get hit with kind of the highlights of the urgent right like like so i'm sure that there's going to be conversations around start times and zones and mass and and of course with staff some of the some of the things that we've been hearing from staff right so she'll she'll collect that and she'll have a
013nice conversation about those things and and it'll help us continue to do the the work and refine the work accordingly since we're just on this conversation i would want to give you that full picture of what's happening right so we had our orga metrics survey which is a survey of internally as a staff about how we are progressing as an aligned organization and how we effectively communicate um i anticipate that there's going to be some some not you know some data that's going to say hey we need to do a better job we have our lcap surveys those are being done right now and then we have this focus group we haven't launched our uh echometrics survey because we were still working to try to gather more data on orgometrics but that comes to all
014of this is gets gathered and we review it to determine how are we really doing the things we said we're going to do specifically back to our board's goals and what's priorities it really really addresses that so i know that this kind of got us off that review with mike um but i but i appreciate the conversation the opportunity to just highlight what's coming up i have one question um when you do those meetings if it's just you and not stop how do you get all the info [Laughter] we'll provide her data that we've collected from the surveys and things of that nature but also she she did them last year she you know she you know have a sense of what we're doing in our lcap amy's really really good at this done it
015for me as a superintendent in other districts for a long time as well i i also wondered if we could put out an abbreviated lcap to accompany the invitation so people understand what really what the conversation's about i explain all that so i i literally i will give them all information when they arrive but i was considering in the invitation itself so people understood what it is that they're being engaged in or encouraged to attend who knows what a nail cap is right well so the the the tuesday night um we will continue to educate right and and i will say this when you say that that's disappointing what do i mean when i say that's disappointing they'll cap the local control accountability plan has been around since 2013 really 2014 the 2013 when it
016came out and so if we haven't been doing enough time it's a good enough job of continually talking about what is elk and reaching out that's what we're doing right so part of this process is because i don't when we i love the ideas and i thank you and i'm not trying to be critical of your ideas but most likely those the folks aren't going to open up and start reading a larger document right it's the conversation that they start to have with with amy and when they come to board meetings and things that we do that they start to get a really a larger awareness and that's really part of this piece of engaging our community and educating our community through it so when we do the tuesday night event the visionary visited really
017it's an elk activity division revisit let's help capture them there and we'll talk about how the lcap is doing work towards the vision but you do realize that for the first seven years of the lcap our district didn't do it i get to find out what they don't know you get to move forward in the future where if you front load it then they come in with all kinds of bias and and we're going to have conversations about that if you will trust in the process it really is organic and it will projector in here rather than the agenda i'm sharing so the public is seeing the powerpoint but i want you guys to see it as well yeah so scott can you hear us and is that a possibility with the screen i can
018hear you and if you share your screen i can put it on the tv or in my misunderstanding yeah no it needs to be on the tv and she and amy is saying she's sharing the screen okay i will stop here there we go perfect thank you all right guys i'm so glad you didn't have anything to say this morning amy all right so [Laughter] so i love the conversation and again yeah it's it's design the way we tend to focus is the same process we're going to use today you don't have to have front knowledge in it about framework for understanding poverty the conversations we're going to have we just take you where you are and go from there so this before we get started with that i do want to go so if
019you're just going to jump to the next slide yeah there you go so i'm going to just do a quick review like i said it's been a while since we've had these conversations so the process is the same you'll have a conversation with your elbow neighbor it may work out to be three two three however it works out it's fine but just a conversation not right wrong good or bad just hey what do you remember about these subjects um because these are the ones that are going to play out through the conversation today as we review and also as we learn some new things so thank you so the first conversation is again six conditions of systems change um got the information there you're welcome to take a couple of moments to peruse it just
020kind of scan over the information for me i will be up front with you right now the focus for me today is around mental models all right and so other than that i'll give you a couple minutes and then when you're done scanning over that information just turn talk to your neighbor what stands out what do you remember what do you not remember again not right or wrong good or bad just where are you at with that what do you remember so we're specifically asking what we remember from last year's yes last year's conversations about six conditions and systems change so go ahead and start with that very first part six conditions and we'll make sense out of it so a couple minutes to read it and then turn talk to your elbow neighbor and
021then we'll talk across the room that will be our process today um whenever you're done reading just turn talk to your neighbor what what stands out what do you remember don't remember anything you can you're welcome to announce that you want when we're all talking to shut the mic off so it's not a bunch of chatter or it doesn't matter it doesn't matter but if you want to you know just you know it's no worries i think because of the battery or something yeah i mean we're going to shut them off at different times but yes if you want to shut it off um but if you are going to be bothered by it just leave it don't worry about it do you know what i mean yes i'm [Laughter] we do so what um
022you know starting at the beginning you know we're talking about the time we're talking about policies right we're talking about hr right now and the practices is like the lcap you know what are we integrating into you know what we're daily doing the resource flows you know this is like the single site focus is like okay so now we're putting out power and resources out into the sites connections you know you can see all over the um administrators are especially making efforts to try to pull up more positions well and then so is power dynamics maybe single focus is almost like the whole thing right yes [Music] i would say it's all of them that's wrong actually yeah um [Laughter] to drive so she's more awake than the rest of us maybe maybe not but
023it just could be that way we'll see how it plays out so what just again share your thoughts amy and i we just each drop so this is your conversation with each other so if you talk too often to us we kind of look away and hide so again what are your thoughts how do you what stands out for you we'll just take about five minutes to cover this and then we're gonna do the next two together well we started off realizing that we didn't even actually remember that today was going to be a retreat so you know what do we remember from last year so actually the way what we mostly talked about was how you can take an example of the single site focus um uh strategy that we're using now and it
024embodies every one of these and so you can see how we're working on system change through that i mean i could go through each one but i think everybody could do that on their own i kind of unless you want to talk about that a little bit but it's an example of um of syst of how we're approaching systemic changes the only way the only thing i would add is that a year ago was theory was five things or six things by going into the single focus and those who have decided to participate and really understand how important this is in our schools they're benefiting a great deal now you always have those others who say no no no this is this is too much okay you're asking us to do too much i think
025they should come and watch the presentations because it's not too much and i think you can incorporate all of this in just a simple this is how we're going to do it and it's really simplistic because it's their decisions and what they want to accomplish [Music] well okay i think lori and i didn't told the difference that's okay tell us about you we didn't answer we didn't answer the question today um so when we looked at all six things neither one of us really remembered the topics from a year ago of the practices and the resource flows um but we did um you know we do recall the whole going in depth about the policies the um the way the district functions the rules that all that fun and that we felt like our focus
026was to bring the board together and the district together with the relationships and connections um the mental um aspect and then with the power dynamics the way that we looked at that was that one of the things that really changed i we feel in the district is the way we've reorganized um roles in the um district office and the proper procedure of like say you're a teacher you go to the principal and then from the principal to the next right um so that i we felt was something new for our district and then even though lori and i don't really recall going in depth about practices and it's just maybe it's well for me it might be old lady brain but um with the practices though we the communication in our district has changed a
027lot so i i wrote down communication under the practices just because it just felt right to like land that there um so that was our take yeah and i wrote the word connection there related to practices but yeah that part i felt like the focus last time was a lot of you know was on that mental models like who we really are and how that influences um and that you know our implicit advice that those are the things i remember from last year that was a big focus anna marie did you want to share any of the we have we i looked at it from uh um we talked a little bit about how our focus really has been since a year ago on the relationships and connections the power dynamics and mental models that
028has been a primary focus of ours yet at the same time we are still struggling with resistance to change implicit bias still exists largely in the community um and so we were just talking about some of those things that there is still a lot of work to do um around that give okay um when with the change in the district like because that's not my expertise like i actually you know dr cutler knows i was constantly heels digging in stop changing so fast but like as a whole like how long does it generally take with the population in a school district to accept change that's coming like like for example the rezoning meetings i was hopeful that we'd have a packed room and we kind of didn't so then i don't know if that's a
029symbol of if we don't go we don't see it's not going to happen we're not accepting it or it could be you know yeah we're cool with whatever the district does i have an answer okay but i'll wait go right here and then three to five years what'd she say okay well yes that was it three to five years i i disagree with that because i think it's continuous you never get to the end of it right so realize and recognize i think is um that it's happening you mean to shift the culture so when it takes about two to three years to create the cultural buy-in where people have dealt with their mental models and dug in because until you challenge your own mental models you look at what everybody else is doing and
030you judge it critically that's the way our brains are hard wired to work so i look at what todd's doing i haven't bought into it yet he planted kentucky ryegrass i can't believe he would do something like that he's explained to me 580 reasons why that's ridiculous and then a couple years later i start to notice you know his grasp does look pretty good he may be on to something i'll keep an eye on it and so i become more open to it and then so that's about the whole as you're moving a culture it takes two to three years for them to get that buy-in so that you can finally get the change the change happens pretty quickly it's the buy-in and the challenging of mental models to move them that's the part that
031takes forever you know and i would also add when we were down in san diego we had was it dr rios remember so this is the way my brain works i bought his books and i read them he has a great section in one of his books about you have to unlearn the bias yes and to unlearn the bias takes time and whether it's going to be three to five years whether it's going to be seven years or whatever i mean i taught you i taught you i taught u.s history okay i went i started elementary school in 1950 so i've seen let's say civil rights yes okay and i'm not necessarily i'm not applauding my generation of doing a good job we we talked about it but we didn't unlearn the bias and some
032of it still continues so i would say i do agree somewhat with bonnie that it's a continual thing but it is our responsibility to at least put out there you have to unlearn this bias that some people have out there and just work hard at it and hopefully can't give you a timeline but it'll happen someday hopefully hopefully i'm still alive it feels like trust is a really important thing because it sounds like what you're saying is it's not the particular change that you have to accept in five years or whatever it's like it's the um the habit of mind perhaps of um accepting that change is inevitable and we're engaged in it so it feels like we need to be able to earn the trust of the of the entire system for them to
033be up for that to build capital that goes forward like you don't have to unlearn that every time now because we trust that this institution is going to try to serve us all right we're going to join this meeting now we've got everything okay because i've been hearing this word lately a lot of changes just hear the term political will related to sort of society but i'm also just talking about individual willingness to change that uh that a lot of the pushback is you know like you said the way our brains are wired to that that unless you have uh people's willingness to change it then it's really hard to get them to change now i trust that most teachers really do want to see improvement like you know they're they are they want to
034improve what's going on in the classroom at some level but it does feel like that's a hurdle and that affects the time it takes to change i mean it's one thing if i say i want to lose weight i want to lose weight and i'm going to focus on it it's another thing if i'm like i'm happy where i'm at and i'm never going to you know i you know i'm going to gain 10 pounds or whatever how do you get that person that you know it doesn't happen unless the person wants to change so i that's just seems like that ties into trust but it's it's it's bigger too that it it concerns me about change people change because you have to want to change you know and i'm thinking there's another element because
035i'm walking myself through what happened with with the um pandemic you know i get a letter from a teacher way early that this is going on in the rest of the world and we need to start addressing it here in our district and i'm like what i think and and then it's going to be two weeks and and i can't pop you know we can't possibly be closed until summer and you know my mind's getting bright open bright open and at this point i'm like it's never going away right it's about as open as it your acceptance went up yes what i want to say is this is is all of this is incredible conversation it's very powerful conversation and and the research does say you know what to really change that mental model it's
036a three to five year time frame and that's what most people don't give the time for that um and what usually happens is is you start to make change and people fight and then you and you do this pendulum swings and these pendulums continue to swing and there's this push like you you put your this is the way we're going to go but then there's this push back and there's just push back and and so so what the the strength that will to use that word will the will to keep moving forward in spite of actually some hard pushback is really it's really there and sometimes what happens is well nobody trusts the superintendent we're just we're a mess right and so then you go all right let's change it and we change it again
037and here's the interesting thing about that mental model that people have in our conversation and i was sitting there thinking is anna marie over exaggerating that she hears that that almost every time she's in the l-cap meeting well when we did it in 92 and she was saying that when we did it why because that's the mental model that they're living on right it's the mental model that they're on and when you think about you guys hired me and you said we want this we want to change we want these things but we're working off old mental models it's really really hard so one thing i wanted to do and i did a lot of work in my in my doctoral program organizational change so some of this research right and i always do it's
038a little rough piece to just give a visual but most organizations when somebody starts the reason why they're starting is somehow the organization may not be performing all what they really want and so this is organizational performance and this is years so for those that are in audio i'm just going to do a graph of years versus performance and let's just say that the district was was performing at a level one when i got here it doesn't it doesn't even matter necessarily but let's just say it's level one and the goal is to what perform at a level five what usually happens in organizational change when you hire somebody new there's this like honeymoon time and so right off the bat people you know and you're not dramatically changing anything why because when you start
039you can't dramatically change anything because you don't know enough right you got to learn the history you got to learn there are some things that have to change immediately because you have to function effectively but otherwise some change doesn't happen so in the first year you actually sometimes see tick up now the level the the angle really depends on the mental models all of these pieces right so there's so many variables right and if code is happening at the same time there's all those variables there's so many variables so you start heading up a little bit what happens as you get towards year one into year two what happens is people start to realize oh this is work wait a minute they're changing this they're doing that and there's this fear factor and pushback that
040happens and so the so that we start to see a decline this is true research-based organizational change you start to see a decline and what sometimes i'm going to do a couple things here what sometimes happens is a crash and burn and there's a real interesting piece about this now i did it right about right before then two years did the research will say that happens between that year and a half to three year timeframe why do you think superintendent's life span is actually under three years because what happens is you usually hire somebody that's really pretty experienced has good knowledge all those things and they start moving and then the pushback happens and sometimes this crash now what you hope to see is that right around this time frame you get it under control
041but you see that we're kind of back where we started or maybe a little head or maybe a little below with good strong governance leadership planning consistency implementation of strategies building a team what you'll end up seeing is something like this it'll be up and down but it'll start to go up and when you hit that 5 seven to eight years if you have really been implementing and i'm gonna make it one other comment here's it and really consistent and building building your team building your community building confidence building belief all of a sudden it can go now this can happen faster depending on the variables covid fire ice i mean it's just all business variables depending on people if they're embeddedness they're there's an implicit bias all those pieces so this is the model
042most people most organizations don't get past they start over and and so that's again regards to the research so i've been i showed i share this often times when i'm really working with groups about organizational change is hard and by the way when you see these little dips it's the leaders and the governance team not getting too excited but thinking okay do we need to make a little little little alignment adjustments right now you're driving your car well you got to go in and make it a little alignment you go get a little alignment you don't get off the path because you get off the path guess what actually you go really quickly down because why it creates a a level of power so i just wanted to share this because i thought it was
043really important because when you think about these these components and and we're over in our conversation building you know relationships connections power dynamics mental models we're doing it and working hard at it right and and everybody has an opinion about how good that is right everybody and it's like to talk about this team we got to stay strong we've got to stay strong we got we got to be paying attention we got to be able to make alignment adjustments as we go so i just wanted to share that model because i did a lot of work around that model i would add one other thing you got to believe and it's our responsibility to believe i would you know my background is coaching and there are times when a coach takes over a team they're
044not his kids they're not his team but you but you got to play and so for a year or two and taking on the collegiate level those are not his players so what i would say listen to all this and i do believe in this is that if we believe in the plan we stay with the plan okay you have problems you go talk to dr cutler and say this is bothering me a little bit blah blah blah but his responsibility and i've said this to you many times is you have to build your team but you become responsible for that team their decisions have to be accountable i've said that too too many times probably right and that's the way i look at it i do believe that you cannot judge somebody in a
045year or two because people love to bail out and let's start over because you know what the grass i'm going to use your metal the grass is greener on the across the street than dr cutler's okay but we're not going to give him a chance to fertilize it we're not going to give him a chance to do a b and c we hired him to bring in change there's no doubt about it you got to give him time you got to believe and let him build his team and it's our responsibility to make sure that that system of change continues i think we've started in a great way with the single focus i think that is a great symbol of what we're trying to do i just just really i want to just i don't
046don't want to disagree at all because i appreciate it one of the things that is is i'm hoping for is it's not todd's way or todd's system is that as you hired me as i assessed the district as i looked at our structures i looked at our needs um i started to create the the dynamics two associate superintendents one over operations in business one over education the reason why we went to directors of elementary and secondary because there was so much work to do in those areas though you know what we talk about hr and how when i got here it's like we need an hr director yeah we we do yet we saw those is that especially in this early stages of that heavy lift of work that has to be done right but
047then that becomes ours like that's when we talk about the governance core and the work we're doing around that is that this is our work and and now and but what's hard on elected officials is that pressure that's always in play by the way that impacts that because every two years in elected official worlds you have elections and then people people start to be critical of the district because that's part of running for office so you was then you have to withstand that onslaught and then you get through it and if somebody new comes the board usually they aren't versed in all the work we've been doing they aren't versed in in the governance core so they come in and go on i want change and you got to kind of withstand another ups and
048downs you withstand it um because what and by the way when i say this people that get elected and want to come in and demand change they have a right to that's part of being an elected official right but understanding how that works in the governance in the structure so then that's education which all of you have been going through over the years that you've been board members and we're doing the governance core work because so i'm going on a little long but what my but my statement is is that it's not just about todd anymore now i but i burden the responsibility so i'm not so i right i do that but that this is our you know i heard an administrator say something the other day and says mine and i had a
049coaching session the next day and i said hey i want to think about our word mind versus our this is mine or is this ours and so it's just my encouragement there i'm i'm getting off soapbox go ahead okay there we go [Laughter] i was just telling him i'm glad we opened the conversation we've talked about everything that's in the whole set up today uh so briefly i'll just say that everything that you're describing is or any kind of skill development become aware of it first go through a period of awkwardness as you try to implement it's all of these things that go up and down causes to come backwards until you finally become proficient and then master it so if you need any music resistance all right um beginning it was a mess wasn't
050it did you even know what i couldn't get a sound out of the map exactly right that was very awkward that's exactly what goes through the organization and here's the interesting part for me is that when you talk comes to change we found out three things about change is that people's readiness for change varies and so where amy might be ready to make big changes because she's ready to go i make little changes but it's still what i'm ready to do um and that we often see change is what i have to give up not what i'm going to gain from the process and so that becomes that pushback that as uh dr cutler was talking about every two years you get the electorate who says no we're gonna make some changes now it's because
051we want to go back to uh i'm going to make change now but we're talking about change is going to be two to three years and the reason we struggle with that part is because um when the pressure for change is off we go back as much as we can to what we were comfortable with this also makes me think of a single site focus we have very different you can see the different presentations right and um so so that that part's clear that that we're gonna gonna have to be okay with different uh rates of change and um also that the foundation of change is building that internal community collaboration communication and if that groundwork doesn't happen first then you can't do anything else anyway right so it's which goes back to mental models
052yeah one statement about the single folks and i so appreciate the identification of what this really is right and so i'm really excited about it but what's really important to me and this goes back to the local control accountability plan is that we have this overarched plan that provides all of these different supports and and it addresses multiple areas right so we have these single focus plans that you're right you have to have a little bit of patience on what really is happening in each site but understand overall we've got this overarch that's supporting the system and it's what's really interesting about some of the conversations with staff is they think that the plan from the district should be doing exactly what they think on the ground well it's an over our support right we
053provide we provide some staffing some intervention teachers and some functionary specialists and some components to that and some training and things but then it gets into the school site specific work and and and that gives them ownership and and as you said we have to be a little patient because we're giving them and they think about this model piece is that hey you have to have your buy-in and your ownership to this and that's where this single plan is and and but it's not going to go to haywire because it's got to go under this overarched system of elk i just wanted to give that perspective right because i appreciate yeah you're right there's you're going to see different things but it's the principle with their staff really working and it's so well to me
054that's so important because it gets back to that willingness and if if somebody feels good about that small goal you know okay we we don't want to commit to this big thing but we can't com you know we can see that alignment connection and we're willing to take those baby steps but just that to be able to embrace that because you want it's sort of like the smart goals you want people to achieve them right so you want them to feel good about what the goals are so that they can achieve i love the conversation i'm going to move us along now because i want to we i want to get into the new stuff but we still have to finish the review kick things uh that kicking as we move along uh so we'll
055jump to the next two which the next two slides that you kind of go back and forth but your next two conversations would love you have on key terms around equity and then also the key terms around implicit bias which we've already kind of tiptoed on but that's the next two so please again turn talk to your elbow buddy about what you recall about our conversation around equity and what you recall about the conversation on implicit bias and then we'll kind of do this a little bit short of a version because everything you've been describing and talking about so far is part of the conversation around framework for understanding poverty so i'm thrilled that there's so many connections being made and we haven't even started that conversation so please go ahead and talk to your
056elbow buddy about equity and implicit bias and then we'll talk across the room and move a little bit faster this time start playing the music like they do at the uh i'm just gonna get a better chair that has backs lower back support you guys don't know that [Laughter] you know right here equity is not equality we were talking last night this is the thing that's going around in my head you know and i'm thinking i'm listening you know brown versus board of education they were basically talking about separate but equal is not really too example so i'm just i'm just hustling with this but is that the problem because when we're talking about our districts larry everyone's batting about this idea of equity but it's not equity that we're doing we're creating diversity in
057sites like equity it's not the mix of students right and so i'm trying to figure out like is it you know is it okay to not be so concerned about the diversity at a particular site if we're providing everything i saw the [Music] there so that's do you have your keys well if we should just put a sign on the door just so that we have time to get our masks all right we're gonna go back across the whole room [Laughter] start laurie okay um we talked about how we remembered talking about this last year but we also uh we're talking about how these words these terms equity and implicit bias keep being brought up in some of the public conversations like at the rizoni but not necessarily um accurately you know like they bring
058they sort of throw them out there as uh the rationale for something or the way we should or shouldn't be doing things but without really understanding what they mean and and maybe we're not we're not there yet where the public understands what we're trying to do and how it's going to improve this you know and why we're doing certain things so it's something that's kind of you know a little bit of an irritation wait brandon describes jumping in the pool with your eyes open which my eyes are reactive right now because of that drops i'm using so i get that so it is a it's it sort of creates this reaction i would concur that we have a bit of a definition problem because as i've been attending the meetings about rezoning instantly the conversation
059seems to run towards this idea of equity and at first i was kind of going with it and then i then i thought well actually it doesn't provide equity necessarily just what we're doing is talking about diversity at sites the equity is our job as as an administration as a staff to provide that equity to all students and so as we have these conversations i'm wondering if we need to distinguish these two terms equity versus diversity and then when i was thinking about the the diversity idea you know there's we have of course the um separate but equal idea um brown versus board of education and i was just battling my with myself about how does that apply to the our district you know are you know separate but evil i mean because no matter
060what we're not gonna you can't social engineer diversity right it has its way of responding the system does and so i i just trying to figure out for myself how important i think the diversity at a given site is versus the equity which we have control over we also had that same discussion in regards to the recent meetings we've been having with the rerouting rezoning excuse me and the diversity versus equity issue that there seems to be confusion on those two terms but which was is very clear but what annamarie brought up too was in regards to the implicit bias and how for many of those at-risk students the expectations are set low so we never give them the resources to bring them up to a higher level and it even speaks to that in
061this article that they had us read too sources to exceed those levels the expectations are oh they're at risk so they're never going to get above this point right where we need to set the expectations up at the higher point so they succeed in their lives let me just tag in on that just a little bit and um president turnbull and i had actually a brief conversation about this and what's what's really hitting me is exactly this implicit bias and how it impacts equity so so we are talking about working to diversify our schools right we have one school that's definitely more middle upper class and white and is seen as the best school that's the implicit so that's so so when you have that implicit bias there actually becomes an equity issue because for
062example i'm going to call these schools out tahoe valley is seen as the poverty school and and we see a slower and of a bar with our implicit bias and i'm not just talking about our staff i'm talking about our community i'm talking about the impressions we expect more of performance from what magnet why because certain built-in implicit biases which impacts the equity so when i say this we don't believe that diversifying our schools is going to provide equity with that said we have to to address the implicit bias that's in place and they are so embedded in our district so definitely it's it's just so strong and and part of diversifying is to eliminate that before and so why are people so passionate about what's happened to pisu well it's an interesting piece because
063there's some implicit bias going on at bijou as well that we don't want to acknowledge there and the react but the reality is what it did is it diversified the school a school that was zoned basically for our latino english learner population because of the housing in the bijou area all of a sudden had this infusion of what white smart speaking students so we said well that's diversity diversity yeah if you follow and track our spanish-speaking latino students and our white out of that school yeah it goes like it goes apart right right why in my opinion based on all the research i know and the data i'm looking at implicit bias so why i want to stress this absolutely diversity is diversity equity is different but to diversify can help overcome some implicit bias
064and equity so open the conversation absolutely loving it um i'm questioning the what is your definition that you're using for equity i i gave one that i thought had the best broad application from pedro naguera the focus of equity work must be to remove barriers that limit success for all children i was going to respond on that here's the deal and this may help bonnie this may help you is diversity equity but the word barriers i like that i like that word choice by him i think that's what we should concentrate on what are the barriers that are stopping some children from learning and if that and we can fix that let's fix it i think there is something though right that you also have to be able to recognize yes as a as an
065educator that we made actually the barrier yes in and of ourselves that would be due to our own implicit bias that is preventing and accelerating um yeah so i you know that i um i don't disagree with this statement about removing barriers and trying to figure out what they are but i worry about the whole right it's sort of like lifting something away and then you know whatever you've left left these kids kind of you remove the barrier but to me um i i was talking to a teacher a couple years ago about this term because she was struggling with the term with the definition herself and and it took her a long time to she was you know she would always deliver her curriculum the way she always delivered it and she couldn't figure
066out if she took the time to work with an individual that that somehow was unequal because she was spending more time with them or giving them maybe some additional supports that she felt like that was not fair to everybody else and she really had to overcome her own barriers to say equity and i wrote down is meeting a student where they're at yes and figuring out what they as individuals need and that a lot like i said because of all of us yeah and it's in our thing discover foster unique talents and potential of all students so to me that is so much bigger than removing barriers because it's the filling in it's the supports and the encouragement all of that has to happen you can't just say well i'm going to get out of
067the way you know i mean that's good you know we do need to do that but what are we going to provide and um i know teachers don't have enough you know that they struggle with that i'm not having enough time in the day and the resources but it's really about that self-reflecting i knew we're talking about the bar is set low yeah if you have the bar right here you're going to have some kids go over you're going to have some kids meet it you're going to have some kids under it you set the bar here you're still going to have some kids go over it some kids meet it and some kids go under it so why not set the bar here instead of here i think it's also what you were talking
068about in the sense of wherever you set the bar you have to meet those kids wherever they are to get them there you can't arbitrarily lower the bar because you're worried about the poor child right right we have to be honest that what did we do to continue yeah so what do you scaffold what do you what do those kids need to get there because that's the problem with why the bias comes true is that we feel sorry or we we try and overcompensate and so we leave those kids there which is what causes that divide when they get hired and we hear it yeah and they hear it they hear the language of our staff oh the kids kids if the kids are the first ones to tell me teachers of when you hear
069that now what do you do because it's how do you now work with the staff to recognize you're not helping them move to their fullest potential how do we now find the creative ways to do that and so i love what you were saying but i want to make sure that we have to we have to be really clear that the bar has to be set high enough absolutely and they have to we have to continue moving them up to that they you're right or someone's going to always follow someone's going to always go over we have to know what to do for them as well because that's where you have parents here if you think back to my focus groups last year is the biggest complaint is why is every average for all well
070how are you going to continue challenging my student when you're helping all these other students what am i going to give up versus what are we going to be doing as we go and so that's that becomes that piece of how you market you share that becomes part of how people then begin to trust that my child's not being bored because of i would say also if we had perceived if people perceived that there was equity at the sites there wouldn't be so much resistance to this rezoning idea and there's a whole angst over the shopping around that they're doing because they really do feel like they're making a different choice for this you know for their child and you know it's really our job to to communicate that wherever your child is they're going
071to get what what they need you know the other thing that i read todd has said that at every need and but you know i think we were able to overcome that at bijou when i first started paying attention to bijou it was the achievement scores were scary low and um it was relatively easy to overcome that perception as soon as we diversified it right that it was now um a different kind of an environment for students yeah but even when you look at that and you break out the white students that i i know yeah but i'm just saying this is where the perception perception right well even actually um the way you were delivering at the different rezoning um like a bijou like you know it was kind it didn't sit right with
072me with the tall i mean you and i had a discussion about it and then the language changed it each that that did it was the language has shifted enough that it actually properly talked of equity it is an individual thing the demographics the diversity the implicit bias all of that the language changed at with how it was presented and then i started hearing that language carrying through with other parents the ones that weren't even there just the shift of the language which actually one of the things last year amy that you had mentioned was um at promise kids and i thought that was like a weird it's not a weird concept but it's a weird way to say it like i still kind of struggle with it and all year i like work on
073it when i'm you know out in my world and then i it kind of filtered out because i don't i'm not good about the flow of that i tend to like say things like disheartened or whatever i can't find my niche with it but it has made me more aware of how we're you know with the equity like just changing the tone like todd did and then a board meeting or two ago larry talked about an author and and he's the term at r at promise and i was like sweet kids getting out somebody else brought that up because when after you know it was just shifting that a little bit and i think that with the equity piece that if you know one of the things like equity be even though i know it's
074a group thing it's really an individual thing and it's like at the some of the people are talking about the equity like it's not individual that's one thing that i noticed and felt like oh the term equity is getting you know it's just getting skewed because it's like the new hot word or whatever you know and i felt like it was like really falling through the cracks with the goal of like rezoning really doing the whole child individually when i when i joined the board in 2016 i visited elementary school and i had a teacher tell me that if i really knew about this school how difficult it is to teach these kids and so forth and i'm going gonna say why oh i gotta take one okay but my reaction was and i think
075maybe we can simplify this i like simple things is that every child can learn and that we cannot do this implicit bias of well one school can learn but another school cannot and we can't provide because i think i go with you make the bar high but go with the premise that all children can learn okay i used to tell kids that you guys have you how many of you know me how many of you have heard that i'm the toughest teacher and i'm like that's why you're in my class because i teach the gay kids i keep i teach all the gifted and talented kids and they're like oh so that means i'm gifted in town i'm like yeah so then we go through this year and it came back like 10 years later
076some parents said well you want to get the gay kids in your class it's like no i turn them into the gatekeepers but here's here's here's another point that i want to make this word equity is going to come under attack i i really challenge everyone in this room to read ted cruz's e-book because and i read it to my group ted cruz new e-book on critical race theory argues that seeking equity in the u.s is really calling for discrimination against white people so larry can you we're going to have to give up not what we're going to do that's what i'm saying i'm giving you a compliment thank you i'm giving you a compliment for bringing that up because it's going to be a political issue and if you study politics just go to
077the virginia election okay i was in dc this past summer and i got to see and watch all of that first hand especially loudoun county and prince george's county right i just sat there in amazement but i think but i think if we simplify it that all children can learn and that we want our schools to be the very very best and we don't want to hear this implicit bias that some kids cannot learn okay i mean i know we have certain abilities and so forth and so on but i agree with you make make it a high standard and work hard at that maybe we can sort of escape some of this equity and that's really about the focus that you create in the conversation and the language that you're using in the community
078uh because martin luther king called that the soft form of bigotry if yes believe kids can't so you now you lower the bar for them that's another form of bigotry because of the bias and the beliefs around those those particular students that grew so everything you're describing trust me we're going to dive into it deeper i've been over here high fiving with amy because i pulled some new material together for this conversation and you are all on the mark and so i'm excited because the rest of this conversation i set aside an hour and a half for we'll need about 10 minutes so you're okay then i went on a little bit of uh no i'm still not okay with that i i want to protect them i'm going to protect everyone else in the
079room uh so a final slide that i am going to spin oh so now we're fighting for control all right mike president go right ahead i'm sorry i i just had this i'm with brandi that like i this at promise idea um i don't i don't know it just doesn't flow right and as i've thought about it basically you're looking at this kid at this cusp right and they can fall one direction or the other and if we assume that that they're at risk then it absolves us a certain level of responsibility because we could probably maybe save them but you know but that's the way they're going anyway right versus the idea that they're going to achieve and grow like every other student it's just it's a really different um mindset i guess it's
080it's shifting from a deficit-based mindset to a it's to the asset and that's just why the app promise came around and was announced that if you constantly say honey you're at risk and kids hear that so whether they're never told that they're at risk right we always said you know i'm concerned about branding she's at risk for this this and this randy's going to figure out like oh i've got all these things down to me why don't you even try versus if you know every child is at promise every child has a potential not just for you you know just something yeah i guess the part that was really a little bit transformational for me just now was the level of responsibility because if you're assuming that they're at risk then you you give yourself
081an exit if um there's a definition the deficit model names the problem and then assigns the problem to the individual that must change in order to eliminate the problem so it's exactly what you just said that as a teacher it's not my problem it's those kids that's how they look that's how that's gonna go that's what i got well that's how you recognize those and what i was gonna say um and i feel like i've said this to you guys before but i remember getting an interview on a very large school district for superintendency back in 2013 and the question was around achievement gap and i i said i don't use that term and i talked about this 2013 about when you do that you're you're highlighting that this group's performing right and you're then
082highlighting that this group is not and then i talked about that and of course i didn't get a call back but um because i i saw it in their faces like that's not what we were looking for you know we have we have achievement gap in our district and and and i think it's the same thing right at risk and achievement gap and and and so i think that that's really important of the language we use so the last conversation and then we'll jump into where your real tests will all begin um it's just a reminder of discussion and dialogue you as a group do a fantastic job of dialogue and i just said it here again because the reminder is dialogue is the best way to make a decision collectively and then discussion is
083how you go out and explain to the world what you've decided uh and dialogue is really based on assumptions and the five-year plan there's some assumptions built into that that if we do this then we will have these results those are all based on assumptions if it was established and proved and then we'd already have been done with the work and the rest of the world would already be showing up to lake tahoe to say how did you do everything so we're gonna get there but for now it's just a reminder so um we have just passed out your uh your part of your test so those first two pages that we've just given you this is again around framework for understanding poverty and i wanted to have this conversation with you today because i
084think it's the next part of the equity next part of the implicit bias conversation and oh by the way the things that we're going to talk about for the next hour or so are the things that you've been describing for the last half an hour or so so you've done a wonderful job of foreshadowing if you will so what i'd love you to do is just go ahead and read those first two pages of the additive model and then when you are done i will just let me know and then i will ask you your test question all right so be prepared to get a score foreign oh oh one more minute and then i'll ask you the incredible earth-shattering question this is going to be good but you will have to our board is
085working on figuring out when we're gonna do a first retreat and i'm hoping that our conversations are as rich as they are in this room that would require amy to stay focused there goes that this in part isn't part of this reading placing blame exactly i've been practicing so so are you modeling that just asking just a simple question i may be i may be planting a seed or two all right here comes the it usually happens when we play dominoes this place yeah oh wow so he's one of those guys somehow for me that would sneak into the conversation all right so here comes the big challenge for the day your big goal straw poll poverty is caused primarily by a the individual primarily or b political and economic structure so i'll give you
086a chance to lock in your votes and uh here we go so those of you in the room who think that poverty is primarily caused by the individual please raise your hand those of you who think did you record that score okay very good those of you think that poverty is primarily caused by political or economic structure please raise your hand all right so did you record that there we go and poverty is caused primarily by the individual and political economic structure raise your hand you have some hands going up all right congratulations the answer is d i didn't even give you that option but if you'll go ahead and pass those papers down go ahead and share that wait a minute so you see most people's hands didn't go up so that's right so
087i'm just saying i noticed no hands going up so i didn't see this but i saw high school hands the high school hand is up nobody else is going up mine goes down so it really it's a combination of all four of these in they interact on each other whether it's behaviors of the individuals human and social capital exploitation and political economic structures uh and that really this is around again it starts to challenge the mindset but from what i've my experience is that most people argue especially if you again we talk about the political discourse across the nation the argument tends to be one camp or the other we've got to fix the policies and the structures and that usually comes in the form of systemic when people you hear people talk about systemic
088anything they're usually talking about the structure when you hear folks talk about victimization or the individual just needs to pull themselves up by their bootstraps etc that's about the expectation of the individual so they tend to follow those two camps which oversimplifies the challenge the challenge is really about these four different areas that are on that the third pages i've given you that's answer that's the teacher's guide an answer guide if you will causes a power but it doesn't i mean sometimes when i think of the word systemic uh you know because it's more of a system that it's broader than the structures in other words so that that gets so some of the exploitation and the capital you know resources kind of in my opinion can be embedded in that system and well typically
089where you hear it is when someone refers to it or says something about systemic racism systemic racism says there's a problem built into the system and that's when folks respond to that with no no no that's about the individuals you just need to get off your engine that's the more of the framework structure that just that right but these other pieces are definitely a part of the overall and those are the the sample topics that they share underneath that's the type of articles that you tend to find and that's where they're really digging in on that in that conversation so when you hear conversations about single parenthood the breakup of the family unit etc dependence on welfare those conversations tend to be focused on the individual again as if the individual is completely to blame
090and if they would just change then they would no longer have to be poor and have those conversations and then the other fixed side of that the other extreme like i said the human social capital in the community that's an exploitation those are the conversations that tend to be in the middle but that other extreme is around no no if we could just fix this the system if we could fix the politicians and the way we do the cloud those things tend to show up there and really it's about how all four of them interplay and how they all impact with one another i was thinking our current one of the issues that we have and one of the paramount issues in south lake is housing and i was like overlaying that on here too
091you know and what mostly what you hear is well let's just give them cheap houses which is just it's like the reason you're homeless is because you don't have a home let's just give you a home and i'm like wait wait um but it's clear that that's the way the community thinks because of the recent prosperity center uh survey that went out overwhelmingly you know that's that's the site the reason sighted is they're just on houses right they're not houses but it's way more complicated than that it's far more and uh the then again those comes back to people's mental models that if those folks you hear that when you hear those folks with just you know the mindset that's going on i mean we just have housing on this piece right then there's so
092many other people it's just going to be a continuous you're not even that doesn't tackle the root problem at all right because the root problem is so much bigger than not having a physical structure right there that's part of it you provide housing but if you don't know how to take care of the housing and manage it then the housing declines rapidly and now you're stuck without the ability to do that in pieces and and it's tied in with wages and employment and there's all these other elements that are in the system the structures of the system you know and then you know when we look at homelessness as part of this is you know is it because they're mentally ill that's the individual right and yeah it's just that it's we we want to
093take a really complicated problem and create a simple answer which also leads to the the impatience from the community as they wonder well hey how come we haven't already gotten these changes so here's what i want you to do now we get to laugh and giggle and have a little bit of fun uh as if we haven't been having fun already so you have page seven oh thank you very much for coming in page seven um and page eight and page nine let's go ahead and do all three of them one at a time uh but all the way i want you to think about the surveys these assessments and again it's not right or wrong good or bad you're not being graded it's a curve it's a really horrible curve but it's a curve
094and so what i want you to think of is each item i have a full belief that everybody in this room could figure out the answer to each one of these items i want you to think of it in terms of could you teach a class on each one of these items so as you go through are you ready at this moment that you could teach the class on each one of these items so as it says could you survive in poverty when i do this especially with folks who have degrees after their names the more the higher the degree the more they oh i could figure all this stuff out i always say and this is not just actually actually i'll be kind to dr cohen i'll be kind i know there's two of
095them these degreed folks are doing fantastic wonderful work but a lot of other folks i do run into that where it's we have such high belief in our ability to accomplish because hey we've already gotten the degrees so we can figure some stuff out and i put myself in that group as well so this is why i changed it when i first looked at it because i went through and i went yeah i could figure that stuff out and then i started thinking no no no am i prepared at this moment to teach this class and that's when it shifted the way i look at all these answers so i want to just go through and check them off in poverty check them off in middle class check them off in wealth could you teach
096the class on that specific item right this moment so just go ahead and check through those and again this isn't right or wrong that are bad it's just to kind of give you a frame and understand for understanding poverty i guess that's what we're talking about here you can write on your papers you can send you the master so if you want to copy it after you've gone out and learned all those things foreign how much longer are we gonna be uh do we need to work i'm just going to use the bathroom you think i think you probably have time for that yeah it's just going to check the next five minutes take it to go to the restaurant if you need it absolutely we will take whatever time we need yeah this is
097this is about [Laughter] come on i'll save all my brilliant comments from when everyone is in the room like three is scheduled is not funny you must be reading the one on wealth yeah i'm not checking but how the higher more success you have the more your efficacy is i believe you can accomplish a lot of stuff but then i look at the life i i'm not accomplishment on any of these lists right oh my god i came to terms with that as well i'm middle class i'm good what happened to my childhood if you know you look at this much league i did get to do some work one time at a school with a lot of the one-percenters veggies all right for you and we said [Music] and she had here's some apples
098here's some of my muffins you never know you never know what they're going to have as my father would say the words my father you got the life yeah [Music] i had to make a choice but continue but i know people in it you know what that's hilarious that's hilarious i love it my refrigerator's full i just didn't bring him out i'll come here i just died [Music] in this this one is like summertime what is that one me um i amy this is very important flavored soda water is over there um it could be a hard time [Music] um so you'll learn right now [Music] because it's like [Applause] like is [Music] so i want to set a little bit of context before we go too deeply into your results um there's a great
099book out there it's called despite the best intentions how racial inequality thrives in good schools and a little bit of an analogy on this because this is around racial lines and then we'll jump back into this poverty but i want to kind of set the context and this is an actual school riverview high school is in the midwest that's all the book actually alludes to it doesn't tell us exactly which part of the midwest it just says there was they received a phone call from an assistant superintendent um who are the principal i've got to remember the story now assistant principal who was about to retire and he had spent his whole career trying to close achievement gaps and the ones along racial lines and he was frustrated in his last year that they hadn't
100made any progress and so he called these researchers in and they did some work and this was kind of the basis of it so they said it was riverview high school it was in the midwest and even with an ideal scenario present somehow in the high school where the demographics uh again the the folks in the town the community poverty was not much of an issue was they had 30 percent low and low income right even with ideal scenarios somehow in high school where the demographics were 45 white 45 percent black and then 10 were asian american and latin x students so again 45 and 45 and then the other 10 percent what they found and they they were doing wonderful god's work they were wonderful people well-intentioned and they were trying to do their
101their best to come about with better results for all their students while riverview students often attend the same classes during the elementary grades their classes become differentiated along racial lines as they move towards the upper elementary and middle school years the high school has three instructional levels basic honors advanced placement now remember i said it's 45 45 and 10. in a school with less than 50 white students almost 90 percent of their ap students were white and 80 of honor students are white while two-thirds of those in their basic level students are black and latino all right and so this isn't because you know you've got to challenge your mindset in that moment like well those kids just aren't up to it or what are we doing that we if we were to do a
102little bit differently how are we funneling them and again this i think in that case it comes back pretty easily to the implicit bias it's just not evil nefarious people sitting in the background going look another black student let's hold them back there's just they're underlying some things that are going on in there that cause those where the tracks start to split and i think i heard you mentioned something about that already this morning okay and that's why i said this is the perfect time for the conversation now if we can we can agree to somebody and this is what they really found out was that the best way for them to start to make changes was around this this room around the board level and that if you don't understand the challenges that those
103students are having then you can't really address the problems and how do you remove those barriers and so that's where i thought okay we're going to move in from this conversation into the conversation about poverty because again socioeconomic students what are we doing for them and how do those how do we close some of those gaps and change things as well questions or comments before i die before we start sharing your scores and having some real stories well i just like say that the article about um just a sentence about everyone being a problem solver you know it doesn't matter what uh where you are in life you know that each person has that so it gets back to that you know believing in an individual not just assigning delay really good what was the
104percentage of white in the honors level uh and the honors 90 for ap and 80 for honors i was just fascinated that the middle one is called honors it's like and i wondered how that correlated with racial makeup yeah basic honors i'd have to go back and read through it again but the book is it's some interesting an interesting look at how we process and how we automatically move kids in a way that we don't think of until we look at the results and then you have to try and figure out how do you add meaning to the results gotta interpret it somewhere and your willingness to like like said willingness to do this i did focus groups and did some of this stuff a few years back and this was going on and the
105district did not like the feedback that they received the report never went to the board and so that's why i vowed never again i'm really clear with districts if i'm going to do this work you have to let me you have to let me move this forward or i don't want to waste my time i don't even care about being paid i do not want to waste my time and it hurt my heart for these kids because this is exactly what was going on and the kids were very clear to say that they were being they were being tracked from elementary school on like students were in classes together all the way through high school because i said well don't you ever entertain with these other student populations and they said no we don't we
106are in the same track and so those students of color were not even having the opportunity because they were being tracked that's not the standard and it just so just you know so it just happens but just now you're having the conversation of what do you do i'm i'm still fascinated with the language though because you know you're we were talking about the distinction between at risk and at promise and if you call those middle kids honors you know there's honors and then there's ap and then there's no like you know just a note to that to the transparency of the data that you collect right all that we collect has to be transparent back right and i had some staff ask are we going to get to see these these results and surveys of
107course we did last year and we will this year and we'll always well some of the root cause analysis work we did in the initial development of the lcap process really highlighted and exacerbated the systemic issues that we have with our own fracking that we do and it was you know it was very challenging though for some staff to even have a conversation about and taking ownership of that instead of it was a lot of wanting to highlight all of the variables that were out there that actually created this problem instead of that really taking a deep intrinsic look at ourselves and saying well you know what am i doing that is also setting this up to get what we're continuously and i i put i'll put another layer on that one who went through
108this is a teacher no child left behind created a lot of this because if you did not measure up to a test school guess what you became remediation intervention and we used those and we used you guys all remember that that famous famous manuscript students at risk okay and that we're not teaching them correctly and they need to test out at a certain percentage or they were not successful people okay and so and we never got away from that because everybody remember all schools i think was wasn't it 2015 if they didn't test out a hundred percent far below yeah yeah and you're you're going this is him this may be impossible you got to remove the principal you got to bring in somebody else you may have to remove the superintendent because obviously he
109or she is not doing their job and you probably should have removed the whole school board right and and we got into this wrong conversation instead of the child can learn you know what are the barriers we got in the wrong thing about a test score i mean i just have to inspire sorry i just have to say that i've i started taking kids out you know to the creek 20 years ago in this town and 20 years ago kids and i love i love it it's like it's it's like talking to kids talk to kids generationally in this town for the past 20 25 years 20 years ago i went out with a group of kids freshmen in in earth science they all said to me right away i said oh we're going to
110learn about water quality we're going to pick ph we're going gonna temperature all the stuff and they said you know we're the dumb ones i go what do you mean and they said we've been trapped we were tracked all through middle school this was an entire class of freshmen in earth science 20 years ago and to this day because i've been mentoring two latinas for 15 years 14 years and when i hang out with their friends they all say the same thing they have been tracked they have been put down they have the expectations haven't been there and so this is not five years ago this isn't a bush era thing this isn't a whoever clinton this is so this is so embedded in this town and it's generational it's kind of like when phils
111was saying you know but there's certain families that want their kids go to collect because they had a nurturing environment this stuff is so generational in this town well i will challenge this town and say that my experience is wherever i've gone sure i'm gonna say that i'll echo all of my environments and all of the environments that i've worked on worked in have been a little bit different a little bit and they all come back to certain components of this and i mean not just certain they're that this is embedded this is this this is there's and you can talk about complete history of our of our world our country how we've driven to where we are but i think uh just just because no child left behind was just it was 20 years
112ago you know and up until no child left behind most schools and school districts didn't really do a lot of work around data high school proficiencies were in place but you know you didn't really worry about it and so there's some good things that came out of it but again i go back to what also drove out of it was this level of well we've got to spend all this money on these kids and we started identifying these kids in that context right i think another thing was there was this movement towards if you were going to be a success in society you needed to go to college and so that's when a lot of this metrics gathering and expectations i think sort of developed you know just part of that it was okay to
113just cut him well and you could go into the job world right all right so here's what i want to do then let's go ahead and move this conversation forward let's find out who's an expert on poverty who's an expert on middle class and ooh who is who's my new best friend the expert on wealth i want to become now oh yeah yeah my bestest friend is in the room ah darn it all right so uh what were your scores on poverty we'll start to my right and run it all the way around the room are you supposed to just add them up yeah questions real quickly out of curiosity grins and giggles who scored the highest property factor coin we're looking your way would you score on poverty i would feel confident teaching a
114class in about four sections you got four on yours all right three three two okay keep it going i i would say currently zero but i have been in environments where i could have done pretty well all right good good love the honesty um i have three that i said for a limited time you know like i can go camping without electricity okay i like that honestly but i do know how to keep my clothes from being thrown at the laundromat college teaches you that okay there you go which by the way so that's an experience of poverty because poor college kids i was there twice loved it so much went back and tried again all right i have eight good good i have uh two i had i had like i had five marked
115originally like i could do this ready i'm actually i'm an expert here um i could probably do all of them but for sure 18 out of the 21. yeah all right let's do the same thing now for middle class we'll start with brandy and then we'll work our way around this one um of on this page there's 17 choices i got eight i got eight i got sixteen good uh bal and i must have dated because i have sixteen notice this room is firmly planted with both feet in some cases otherwise firmly planted in the middle class section uh and then again by the way this is not right wrong good or bad it's just the current reality all right this is the one i'm very excited i'm hoping anyone could score it because i
116got zero all right so uh could you survive in well what were your scores anyone who would like to go go right ahead i got a goose egg yourself you sound like charlie brown i got something i got one okay i said one one and i know it's going to shock everybody but reading corporate financial statements sure where are you laurie did we stop with you where are you at i had two but i i but i but that's funny because i i think i stopped at the corporate financial statement and um but i just i have to and i had the venue only because you know my son's living in switzerland for the past four years and they have three official languages so at least that's how to do that but i had shockingly
117three i might even be able to do one more just because i can be a chameleon so thoughts what are you noticing about the scores and and why you scored high in sum and why you didn't score very high in sum what would you say are the the reasons for that how would you add meaning to it why you talk just briefly about you know a lot of it is your experience right and i like you don't just land in me in a work position right it took moving through a process of educating myself to get here but during that you experience everything from not having any money and learning how to survive on your your you know minimum wage job and so you have those experience i haven't educated my way into welcome yet
118i think that's a good point in like college or when you first get out of college i can't say how many friday and spam sandwiches i had and you had to rob peter to pay paul right so i think it's just you don't remember this time yeah they changed me you know that it was but i didn't need to interrupt you but no i don't i don't forget those were big lessons i had to take an entire day off from work to get to the health clinic across town because i might have contracted hepatitis from my co-worker right i mean and then i had to make multiple lines of public services i really remember those and actually one of the things that i've been thinking about is how did my because i'm just three you
119know it's my grandparents generation that emigrated here right like how did we make those moves so that i am solidly middle class they somehow are able to put me there my parents i do agree with the personal experience because the reason i had eight for the poverty in august when i was entering my senior year my dad had a stroke he was disabled for 12 months there was no income and so we had to i was the only other one in the family who drove i was one of five children my mother didn't drive she was a housewife and so the thing when when i was sent this to read on thursday at 1 30 in the afternoon and i did read it i actually maybe because i'm a 1960s guy i did go sort
120of through this flashback because this was and i'll tell you the survival for my family was the community i lived in a i lived in a neighborhood six or seven high school teachers in our neighborhood all these people that worked in our neighborhood we all went to the same church because we were all catholic and they just did a fabulous job of helping my family and so i did have a little bit of a flashback to this it's a time period i do not want to go back to obviously okay but i have a lot of respect for those who go through poverty and find that's from your read find that find a way to overcome those barriers and make a different life the other thing that i reflect is because i've been in and
121out of poverty in my life and but i get to carry with me all of the knowledge from my middle class experiences and i'm continuously um in awe of people in poverty that may not have all of those tools and resources or whatever it is and how expensive it is to be in poverty like you can't like you know i can't park i don't have a garage so i have to park on the street now my insurance goes up you know it's just it's um it's interesting to be for me to be able to kind of look at both sides of that from my experiences and that is by the way the goal of this conversation is just to start to contextualize and just help you understand the significance of your experiences the costs that
122come with different levels and it's again not right around good or bad it's just there's costs that we don't recognize and there are behaviors that mindsets that are part of the hidden rules for how you survive in poverty or how you survive in middle class and how you survive in wealth and they're not the rule book where we go all right congratulations now you're my middle class neighbor here's all the rules you need there are a homeowner's association so i suppose that's not too far from it uh but you don't receive the book that says oh no no no here in middle class neighborhoods we don't put the cars up on blocks we go into our garage and work on yeah that we don't know that that i discovered along the way um in in
123having been a part of the pain in her association for some time and some of the things that i recognize is getting a bachelor's degree you you you're now automatically in middle class whether you're there or not because you can think that way you can think that the other piece is that when you move from poverty to middle class you believe a perception that you have left behind so as we educate young people one of my biggest with reading the whole book is that the students are now dealing with their families um feeling that oh you think you're better than me and i'll explain that from a framework of when tana took place years ago which is a temporary assistance for working i was working in early childhood at the time and it's when parents
124were required to go back to work and one of the moms was going got a job at the new walmart norville and she was so excited about doing the job at walmart she'd actually gotten you know they went through the interview process and she was thrilled i mean here she is thinking she's on her path and i was at her baby shower she was having her second child and i went as the teacher i went to her baby shower and her aunt and the family were ridiculing her and saying you oh great now you've got a job well you're going to miss out on all things that you get to do every day all day because you're not going to be here you're going to be at work and you're not going to get to
125do this with us and you're not going to do that with us and in my mind i went oh crap how long is she actually going to be able to maintain that to not have to deal with that every single time of that left out syndrome so when you think about our children there's a whole greater level of what we have to recognize when we're doing this because education is an elevation especially when you're when you're in poverty it's those relationships that are your foundation and so now you're ripping yourself out of your your whole world right yeah further class because brandon you scored the highest i want to make space for you to have some conversation as well i think it's huge and you and i probably could teach the most at this moment
126i think the thing about poverty is how you look at it like i mean even today like my truck broke down this morning and right away i'm like digging through snow and trying to get to my bike hoping to get here and you know but for me like i love my life like every day even though it's hard you know when you guys went to san diego my cell phone was actually shut off for over two weeks it's like you know it's hard and it's like i got you know my two kids like i've never been on a vacation with my kids but i'm fine with that i actually am because we have these like incredible moments of like the holidays like we make all our own stuff we have wild stories about getting a
12715-foot tree to fit in an eight-foot tall house like and making it a dr seuss tree like we do that we do these like crazy wild things and you know but thanks you know i'm really like you know mount lac is like i love that school because of all the potential that's there and the majority of people i feel like in the nation doesn't see that potential because of where those individuals are how they're labeled and you know i grew up with a lot of learning disabilities and it still filters into my adult world and so when i look at this i was like oh sweet i could do uh i'm totally good i know i can keep doing what i'm doing because i you know i i can get it i mean yeah i'm
128uncomfortable in certain settings because you know whether i think i'm not good enough or you know i still feel that even at my age but you know when we as adults like if something we see something from our childhood and we're like oh those are good old days and i wish i was a kid again and i think you know i love that i loved my growing up you know growing up on a ranch we raised all our own food our meat everything we did we were completely self-sustaining and it was a lot of work but like i treasure it and as a kid i was excited to be an adult make my own decisions as an adult i'm like i do kind of miss that freedom of you know no pressure but i mean
129i learned so many skills even in poverty that you know i mean i don't sometimes i feel like i'm missing out most of the time i just i love everyday life you know camping with my kids we were four-wheeling we were wild and crazy and my kids don't act like they lacked for anything even if i'm like wheeling and dealing like my kids got to play sports because i coached because i was on the board like those were how i got my kids to be with you know middle class kids whatever so opportunities i don't know i just feel like maybe i'm a pretty decent will and deal kind of girl after reading this list you know i mean it's and i'm firmly entrenched in my middle class this but when i was nine months
130old my dad left and my mom made all of our clothes i wore my older sister's hand-me-down knee socks the elastic was gone on him um but it's that whole community and you don't know where you are if everybody around you is the same you know and it's like and then when i was 10 my mom graduated from college with her teaching credential and then she got remarried like all in a week and we moved and so we moved to a different neighborhood and so yeah my life totally changed you know from mom keeping weekly envelopes of cash and this is all we have you know no we don't we can't go to mcdonald no we can't do that we have to do this and we got the little chipped beef you know in the
131cans from argentina on toast and you know that was like we don't they didn't have the top rom and then but you know that's like but that was like normal that's what it was normal it wasn't you know so were we poor well we certainly weren't rich but um we had love we never went on vacations we didn't you know um a big deal was driving around to get lost and then going around to other people's neighborhoods to look at the christmas lights and all that kind of stuff those are the things we did as a kid yeah you're making me think of my transition because when you know growing up we never went to a restaurant i mean like i could count on one hand the number of times at all but when i
132went to my liberal arts college is when i realized what other people were doing so i want to talk a little bit about that because i think that's kind of this conversation around the navy's mentioning that the notion in order to move from poverty to middle class or from middle class to wealth you have to set aside relationships and there's uh bridging capital like who is that new relationship that's going to give you the knowledge the inside knowledge again they don't hand you the booklet that says here's how you behave in middle class here's how you believe it well but you get cues and hints from the new neighborhood so when i moved in we've moved out of a apartment complex into a neighborhood that was middle class and my next-door neighbor he was the
133guy who said hey if you need some tools because i my car broke down and it's been sitting there for too long said you need some tools let's just push the car into my garage and let's do the work together because he could sense i didn't have the tools and rather than come out and make a big deal of it and go look you don't belong in this neighborhood yet man you just said come on i'll help you out and that was the part of the transition my relationship with him and the rest of the neighbors and my relationship with other individuals who helped me get to that point and it's interesting because um in some of the for those who actually did read at 1 30 and took notes and everything uh it actually
134talks about if the system is to blame why do some people make it out and others never do and that comes back to that conversation about is it the individual or is it what are those barriers that you remove except it goes back to all of those conversations so some key points to remember and again this is in your booklet as well that poverty is a relative conversation if you're around everyone who's equally poor you really don't think twice about it it's not a big deal i was raised on my grandfather's disability in welfare from three to eighteen and i had zero clue we were poor in englewood we had a swimming pool in our backyard i had no concept of pork we must be rich we have a pool and all the neighbors want
135to come over and play and then when we moved to northern california and now all of a sudden i start to realize oh we are right and i started to figure that out as we were gardening and canning and preserving and not buying and as i that was when i first learned but it meant to walk two and a half miles to the bus stop because my grandparents were very clear now we got to pay money for your gas so you start walking it's cheaper to buy you some shoes every now and then it is gas and if you're going to play football and do sports in high school then good luck on getting home so this was home every day for two years me and my best friend corey we walked and we we
136knew if we get that far it's going to be a long walk and someone usually came along and gave us a ride and so friends now that secret came out about uh six months ago on facebook and several of our buddies like you guys did what yeah we were both poor and our family said you plan you walking yeah and so we just did it but it was no concept no big deal and i realized in the past that yeah it was just it was relative we were just poor when we didn't even notice it and there were not a whole lot of vacations in my family also i struggle still to this day to market on the calendar we're going to go take time away and i i'm not very successful so i'll leave
137it at that we have these conversations often yeah about miss growing up in middle class or vacations i lived near disneyland and harvey went there she did it like millions of times they've got they own parts of disneyland poverty occurs in all races and in all countries there's a difference between generational poverty and situational uh i'm both right because i think my grandfather is he but he ended up injuring himself that was the generational or rather the situation of poverty and then my mother never got a high school degree and has never driven as all kinds of limitations on her as well and somehow i broke out of it and that was not me that was the people who surrounded me generational is one of the family i was talking about just talked about situationally
138is i had a family that i worked with that one of their children he was a construction worker great job doing really well owned a home one of the children ended up having major medical issues it put them into poverty and in in in an instant and we're seeing that a lot right now with families because of loss of jobs in other places and then we also know that individuals bring with them the hidden rules of class that they were raised and i think this the biggest example of this i always think of sports figures who get signed to incredible contracts and then we hear two three years later they're broke they don't have it's because there's a lot of things that we do in poverty to support and take care and we own everyone's
139problems because we're part of the family and family family family and then all of a sudden we move into wealth and people judge and say well how can they possibly be poor again well they brought some of the patterns and thoughts with them uh that helped them survive earlier on schools and businesses operate from middle class norms and use hidden rules of middle class um and but these are again they're hidden they're not necessarily taught openly so i see students often who um their behaviors are great behaviors for survival in impoverished in impoverished neighborhoods i had a young man at a program from hayward high school who was um not happy because some of his needs were being met around a snack and he lit into me and we were done it was like that
140was my third conversation with them i'm sending them out the room and my challenge was man if i could have just taught him a way to get his needs met based on this middle class thing it would have helped him out so much i don't want to discount him for how he behaves and how he challenged me i wasn't going to put up with it but at the same time i didn't need to scold him and say ah that's not how we do it here and if you understood how we do it here he was i just really needed to look at his behaviors as a new skill set that he wasn't aware of the opportunity that his the way he got his needs met in poverty don't work very well in a middle-class setting
141where we have these higher expectations of negotiation for this young man i imagine that his this tough exterior was protection when he's out walking on the streets so i want him to be safe when he's out trying to survive in poverty and now what i need to figure out is how do i develop a relationship with him so that i could teach him these hidden rules for how you stay successful here in middle class society we tend to look at it as well if they would just do what we do life would be fantastic you know what if that were the case then all we'd have to do in middle class as a nice polite middle class people is behave the way wealthy people do and we would magically be wealthy that ain't happened so
142far in this group right and so that's why i always caution folks that when you tend to judge the stuff that will allow you to survive in poverty hang on a second honor it because it means they are surviving and now how do you give them the extra tools so they can now survive in middle class we often look at kids and go fighting never solved anything and i had some middle school students in the mountains who they they they rejoiced over the fighting that their parents would do with the other parent dude your dad did what he got his butt and they literally we hadn't even started our little group yet and they were talking about the fight this guy beat up that guy because that guy said something about his wife it solved
143the problem because that guy is never going to say something about that guy's wife again so when we tell kids all the time well no that won't that doesn't solve a problem they look around at you like shoot at my house that solves everything and now we get into the fight with them about stuff where we honor and say look whatever is helping you survive in poverty god bless you let me give you some other stuff you can now add to that again the edition of the big one for education is the register language very casual register in poverty oftentimes storytelling other pieces where it's more of a formal register in in middle class and wealth so you see the difference and so for our students is how do we differentiate between between them and
144how do we educate teachers and how to get students to move from one to the other because when they go home they have to go back to the casual otherwise their parents are you being sassy with me what are you doing with that uppity talk there's those challenges as well so for students to be successful we have to understand their hidden rules and teach them the rules that make them successful at school and at work we can neither excuse students nor scold them for not knowing as educators we must teach provide support assistance expectations and to remove to move from poverty to middle class or from middle class to wealth an individual must give up relationships for achievement for at least some period of time and the knowledge of the hidden rules is crucial to
145whatever class so a little bit about just just because your board members know that you were reading off of page 10. i just wanted to teach you didn't realize that and then a little bit about what amy had just talked about this conversation around language and i'm going to let the expertise the educators in the room talk a little bit about this as well because i think this goes to a great argument for early childhood education is that we've got these different types of language about we're on the frozen and they're formal the formal is the stuff that happens in business and in schools very formal in language we have expectations my grandmother must have understood this because she was on me about reading from day one reading in the language and she expected me
146to have to be able to talk in a way that sounded like i was educated i didn't know what the heck was going on back then i just thought okay this is what my grandma expects so i'm gonna do what grandma expects because grandma told me one time i come to school because they can't get you to behave i'm bringing the belt and i'm not whipping your clothing because i got to pay for that okay i got it i was in kindergarten my pep talk uh and so i was never a problem but i did read and i made sure of it so even to this day if i'm on the phone with some folks they struggle sometimes to realize they're speaking to a black man instead of they see me and they'll freeze i
147enjoy having fun with that one did you continue that's because you guys travel all over you can tell immediately when folks can't look at him like okay where's mike and i'm like yeah he's black they're like again because he doesn't have some of the vernacular that they imagine goes with color of the color that matches code switch very early on that's exactly what it's referred to as this building code switch so if you look at page 11 the part that i want the educators to step in here on is this notion of language and the words that we are exposed to in households and so in the average welfare household students kids are age one through four are connected with about 13 million words they're exposed if you're in a working class family you're exposed
148to about 26 million and if you're in that professional household you experience about 45 million words that head start that you're getting before you even get into school and also this notion of affirmations and prohibitions that's basically um you're getting some love or you're getting some pushback right and um you can see that in the again in those houses where there tends to be the poverty is that you get some strokes some good ones but you're getting prohibitions that discounts are you're getting you know ragged on uh twice and then when you look at what happens in the professional houses you get six strokes to each time you get discounted for something um so what i'm going to say is i'm going to turn over for just a second and say so what is the
149significance for you in terms of um privilege is where this comes back to is that if you're in a privileged household of professionals congratulations god bless you there's nothing wrong with that take advantage of it um but the question i always have is how do we get those students who don't have those privileges how do you get them caught up so i'll kind of step aside you can wax eloquently and i'll just sit and listen i want to highlight one thing there's a huge interplay here before educators and where trauma plays into this trauma informed practices and using uh and learning what the strategies and supports are that you can actually embed in your in your classroom and um in all of our education settings that directly and systematically help teach the skills that bridge
150the trauma that comes with poverty and help students then move over into what is considered a middle educational environment i would totally agree with that is there any um in terms of like english english learners that i wonder if the number of words is um small you know i know that's this is a different conversation because we're talking about poverty here but um i just know from when i started working with this four-year-old who's now 18 that when i met with her on a weekly basis that was my thing was really vocabulary because i just felt like she was um she just didn't have the vocabulary you know i mean her dad spoke to her in spanish but he wasn't maybe he didn't finish high school you know and his vocabulary wasn't huge in spanish
151necessarily either but it just seemed like um those words and i know we're doing that like at the middle school too of focusing on vocabulary is really important and just exposing her and naming just going out in the world and labeling you know identifying names of plants vocabulary is huge and so isn't really childhood educator i had hmongbian laotian spanish-speaking students in my class i'm verbal if you haven't noticed yeah i talk a lot and so one of the things that was noticed when when i transitioned on and moved into another job they said all of a sudden the tk transition to kindergarten and first grade the teacher said what happened oh for compared to what you compared i was there not only spoke english but spoke spanish by the time they left me they
152had a very strong vocabulary and they said what happened what happened was is they had an early childhood educator who took my position who was very quiet and let the kids explore on their own and don't talk to them and everything else where me i'm like i'm talking your name and everything i'm making everything so it becomes a huge piece so there is critical which is what leads to your early childhood and your tk as you develop well i think it's i really appreciate what you said but i want to caution you yeah right because it's not about the language and i'll get back to it that it is but the welfare working class or professional no matter what the language they speak they have the words right so when we but this is an
153implicit bias that we face is that we believe that our our families that are the latino english that don't speak english you know those families they just don't have the vocabulary well that's not necessarily true it's based on and many of them are here in welfare right so they're so the the families that have just moved from mexico to be able to survive and they're in their home they're speaking spanish well when you think about it they're in welfare they're speaking spanish they're getting their vocabulary at that 13 million words right so now they make that transition and you think okay now we're exposing them into english now they have to make that transition from the word that they learned in spanish to the words they are in english and we as white english speaking
154well they just don't have the words wait a minute they do in spanish now if they were spanish speakers in working class this is an average number right they got 26 million words right so it is that sense of how much more difficult it is because they have to now learn two languages they have to transition their their their vocabulary from what they've learned in their home as a spanish speaker into our world and that's why we have well we have karen goldberg in our district right it's why we have these structures in place but we've but we have this implicit bias and what do we do with those learners i got to tell you professional spanish speaker speaking families that end up being tracked into the wrong into a and these kids uh have
155afford have the words by the way these students in all of these ranges have academic skill sets right right but we because of what you said so i want you just very being very careful about it right because it's real a reality and even with with her it was yeah a lot of times i we would we would do the spanish and english for the you know i'd ask her what the spanish is for that word or whatever so we would do that but yeah so i get it and it is it is about like people's experiences a lot you know whether it's welfare or whatever those families experiences are what their vocabulary is you know well yeah and going to um something that amy just said a little while ago right and even picking
156on mike you know people see him go oh right oh well i mean i say oh god you look kind of you know old and old and wrinkled and gray and by the way his his his dialect changes when he's losing in dominoes but but here's how would you know so here's so but here's that point to that right then we talk about culture right and we talk about how words are utilized in that environment of culture and by the way once again poverty has something to do with culture as well if if you're black in in an inner city uh inglewood california right which is where mike's from and you're embedded in that culture your use of your vocabulary is different right so then you have to think about that challenge and then again
157i'm going to go to the implicit bias that comes with it when people hear that dialect right and so all of this is such a important piece to getting back to where we talk about equity right and how how it's so impacted because uh when we think about language it is it is everything and in our community i really want to drive home in our community we have a large spanish speaking population that are in welfare and then we bring them to school and because they are in welfare they don't have they don't have very much language in their own life right they have a more minimal language pieces compared to a more middle class or upper class student and then they have the barrier of language and so uh i'm i speak spanish and
158i've got a 13 million dollar million words that i gained one through four versus these others and and so and then what we automatically think they're just not as smart and then what do we do and by the way i saw this embedded in my previous district striving to get over it having such difficulty because you know we just want to love on them right and it's embedded here all of a sudden we don't think they can perform as well but here's a go back to the last board meeting just go back to the last board meeting and these use presentation if you read that article they gave us to read it hits a home run about hey el kids it's going to take five to seven years for them to get proficient in switching
159that yeah but here's the most important thing and i and i think cindy martinez did a great job it's got to be targeted language just because you put a kid in a classroom and you speak seven hours of english to them most of it they're not going to decipher okay so if i'm teaching us history and i've got three four el kids and i'm gonna tell them all about good old george washington and so forth and so on that this is not gonna this they're not gonna be able to decipher that so you have to have that talk so my thing would be that as we talk about poverty and language is to take elements from what bijou has presented to us and see if we can put it into that targeted language for the
160els and other you know so forth and so on and and the understanding that this is going to take time if we do it correctly i really like the way they were doing it at middle school i think last year right the middle school was really focused on that yeah targeted vocabulary and making the connections between the different um yeah subjects you know and just really building uh dysfunctional you know vocabulary related to education and that was huge i'm sure that's continuing but anyway no no no i'm just saying if we do that in all our schools we're going to make great strides i think i'm thinking myself in circles on this you know i'm thinking you know first of all that schools by their nature by having this professional class of administrators and so
161on are a middle-class institution and how are we ever going to really understand these kids and then i'm thinking well it's cultural immersion these kids are coming to school and the thing is that they need to value that this is cultural immersion and then i'm thinking like how do we teach them like i have this vision of i worked in a very impoverished neighborhood and this kid came in for a job and he sat on the floor and he had on his shirt uh let's get high and i'm like he's filling out this job application i'm like wow look at the rules that this kid is violating he doesn't even know right and so how do we get those all of those kinds of um behaviors into a school setting and then i'm back to
162it's got to be relevant and we got to do problem solving i'm spitting myself around here so i i love the wheels that are spinning carry on it's just you know um and i think the other thing that it really has to come down to is respect for that that student's experience and that student has to have respect for the middle class experience and where that's going to get the kid so and you just nailed it right at the end when you say where it's going to get the kid i think that's part of the reason why the conversation about college and career are so critical because if we're serious about preparing students that same student who's got his t-shirt that says let's get high if we're serious about preparing him for college and a
163career wouldn't we have that conversation earlier on not in a you know in the pejorative way where we're upset and we're explaining once again you're blowing it's like oh it's fine you you see a snoop dogg your favorite music oh yes me and snoop dogg go way back okay good by the way when you get your job that's probably going to cost you and so here let me teach you what else you can do that will add to that so if we start to take that mindset along the lines of instead of dismissing and judging not that this group does that and that's the the big picture out there what tends to happen is i'm guilty of it as well and we look our bias kicks in and says that's not what i want to
164put in front of my customers and so what if we were to teach that skill set around oh if you want to be successful let me teach you some of the skills you need what's this skill we're learning now to talk with other people in an open way that doesn't cut them off or that so now we practice that skill that's a skill that i would love to have people in my employee also be able to do so we look at like well no i was just going to say so going back back to some of the changes and shifts we've done to lack you know not to laugh historically i've been doing a lot of things that you just talked about so they really were doing one of the things that they weren't doing
165as much is then shifting that to what that looks like for your future they did a lot of conversations about how you go about changing you know thinking about it um and the work towards career right now is really that shift and getting that preparation right because they did a great job and i go to amy jackson everybody wasn't here again you know sarah and teen they they understood that they had to start to teach some of those things about experiencing this world but then just teaching it and then making relevance and application to it was the shift in their change in graduation requirements and the change in how we would remodel the school of course the teachers are sometimes still holding on how they did that before and that we just need to because
166we again it goes kind of back to but we just love these kids and i go yes and you love them and you have to prepare them to go get ready for life right not just love them and teach them and because you have to because the relevancy of it is then the component of the shift because you can say hey listen an employer is not going to like like that shirt and it's going to impact your education yeah yeah yeah that then actually going to application of that is such a piece you don't add to that just go back to what brandy said earlier if we can teach all in all schools that we don't have at risk students we have at promised students and that's what talaq is trying to do and that
167would be the next level of okay you're going to leave high school are you going to go for a career you're going to go to college whatever whatever you're going to do i'm the first riley to ever graduate from college i remember my dad after he had a stroke and he said to me hey you know you're pretty smart but i have no money for you i have five kids you got to go on your own if you want to go to college and i had to do that and i had to go into debt to do it didn't bother me a bit because what i chose is what we want to do so i think if we change just the dialogue a little bit and the vocabulary a little bit that all of our
168students are at promise and they all can learn then i think we will see that cultural change they all have talent oh yeah right and and i mean like i said they all have talent yeah and i think sometimes we don't realize that i i gotta tell you i love where we land in office this is always this since we landed on this vision statement i mean it drives me every day because every one of us every one of us in this room and every student that's out there has a talent and an ability to be successful within their unique their uniqueness right and and that's going to point um you know so i i'd like to hear a conversation around trauma since you've raised it i almost feel like that is kind of the
169same thing all over again there's always been trauma right and somehow at this point we we're like it's um we're now pitying these students that have have experienced trauma and we're focusing on it and all these things and you know in my generations was get your boots on and go you know and um i'm i'm struggling with this focus on this deficit model that's how i see it and but i'm not sure i do anyway i would like a conversation around that i i love what you just brought up with and just brought that up you know that you share but it's so true in my mind and actually i've been thinking about my my life and my childhood and my mother who what was um the complete poverty and how that impacted my childhood
170with them becoming into the middle class and the struggle here in tahoe i mean i'm going through all of these things right but one of the things that i also remember as a child is man you did not get away with it's like buckle up betty you know this is not an easy path right and you know my parents both came out of poverty my mom more more severe and i think that we are in this time right now and then we've gone in and out of it but right now it's oh we can't expect so much these kids because they're they're in trauma right and all of a sudden we're making excuses that's i saw so i hear that concern and i've been it's been a lot of my mind sure so there's a
171lot of work that has been done around this um i i would say it really came to light over the last probably 10 years of really highlighting you know adverse childhood experiences and the impact it has on brain development growth education ability to acquire what we would consider more hard skills in an educational environment because the impacts that are happening on the outside so it's not about highlighting the deficits necessarily but i do think that it doesn't come naturally to educators always about recognizing and understanding and embedding the strategies that it takes to recognize those experiences in students it's not about lowering the bar it's about shifting your educational practices so that whatever your content area is english you're not going at it and just teaching english you're also recognizing what else needs to be
172in place in order for that student to be able to learn english and i think that's the piece that that you have to we we have to be able to recognize that and that's where the trauma informed practice piece comes in because if you don't address that at all you're going to teach and teach and teach and there's not a willing or receptive student that is there and available to be able to learn whatever it is that you are teaching rock on and i just want to say this right teachers so often say well i taught it they didn't get it and i think that if you listen listen to what emory says is you have to understand each and every student i used to teach with a colleague he used to tell his class
173i get paid the same whether you get it or not well that's terrible well i want to just say that one one thing that they may be the positive thing coming out of the pandemic is i because i and i've heard this too i mean i feel like we've been doing a great job about this and just that we've all experienced trauma you know that right at this moment in time um we can all legitimately say we've experienced trauma and i think that helps at least that helps me get out of this deficit mode because it's really more about a common understanding it's not it's not an us versus them it's not you know you experience trauma i didn't i had a privileged life whatever it's like we've all experienced trauma now some you know
174their ace score may be a lot higher than somebody else's um but it just gives you a common place of understanding that i think helps a t hopefully what helps the educator understand that you know there are some days that each one of us can't take in but because of whatever's going on you know in their life and so i'm hopeful that that this kind of education of our educators and everybody it helps helps us all just be like kinder gentler you know understanding and can fill in these um like whether it's nutrition whatever the social emotion but i think bringing it back to poverty is really when you're you're sitting in a middle class seat you have had the experience that increase your coping strategies it increases your ability to access resources whereas if
175you're sitting in a seat of poverty you don't have those and you you don't have that as a place to draw from so my ability to cope with trauma is going to be very very different than someone who's sitting in the seat of poverty because i have had the education experience the know-how to access resources that may be able for me to become i'm more self-aware i can see assistance that others do not have or cannot recognize you know i just want i just want to challenge that a little just because on the scoring like i only scored myself eight on the middle class like i don't feel like i necessarily have a lot of tools um that others do and that and the poor like we talked about that people living in poverty in
176many cases have a lot more tools and resources because of what they've had to struggle through i mean i'm just suggesting that some of those people have been through so much more trauma and have made it through i'm not saying made it through to middle class i'm just saying that keep in mind that the when you're as we're making it through we're making it through based on the resources that we have right and not necessarily um all those because if i if i don't help the self-aware thing i mean it's just i don't know it's an interesting i i i lost a baby um you know 30 years ago you know and my mom said you know you live this show i created this sheltered life for you you don't know how to actually handle
177um trauma you know you you were never taught and in some ways um people who have experienced more trauma you know have these they they've they have maybe a stronger community you know they've surrounded themselves they're you know i'm not saying i live in a gated community or i didn't have community but it's just when i looked at that list of middle class life i'm kind of a non-conformist i don't have a tv i don't have a tv period let alone tv in every room whatever i i've chosen not you know i'm choosing maybe to be more sustainable or living outside the cultural norms of you know of certain lifestyles and i'm i'm not saying that they're better again it's it's kind of getting back to the honest thing about not so much the deficit
178because it's recognizing the unique skills they're different that they're you know think of it this way um the tools well those are the tools that i that i've developed to this to uh survive in poverty and trauma right are going to work wonderfully as long as i stay in poverty but if again we want to bring me into a middle-class world well you got to give me some different tools now and if we're not recognizing that it's different so think of it this way people in wealth are probably not concerned about eating all right they no longer have that worry if i'm in poverty i'm concerned about eating and the damage that happens when i get one good meal and that's when i'm at school now i've got a two-week vacation and i'm not getting
179meals there's a lot of damage that goes with that and we figured out how to survive in poverty it's just not going to help us middle-class attempt so those tools again around how do we become more aware of so if one of the challenges for a kid um this is why i'd look at this way if we know that a full stomach means you learn better then why aren't we figuring that did why did it take us so long to come up with that to just say look come to school and eat we're just gonna be done with it i used to make me crazy when we'd have the one golden week of the year whatever the testing was and i walked into one school the teachers are getting massages and it's don't go near
180the students and i i was in a lot of other curriculum with the kids i'm like nope mike this is the golden week no interruption of those kids they've got to get those scores and every child is eating and during the break they have they had a masseuse at one school the teachers were lining up i was like we're going to take good care well if this is so critical why aren't we why is this just a natural part of our practice yeah and so what i love about the trauma-informed work that we're doing now is we're trying to help people develop more skills around how they manage that because someone explained it to me real well they said if if you go out here and you run into a bear our bodies are designed
181to deal with that trauma we fight or flight or freeze and we go through it immediately and one of them happens but if the bear comes home every day at five o'clock it has been drinking on the way home and now comes in and delivers more our bodies aren't designed to deal with that day after day after day and that becomes a challenge what you're saying is the whole aces piece of it is in education this is just a brief example if you have so much trauma you have the experience of things over and over and over again there's a lack of exposure to certain pieces and so how are you defining what you can expose students to during the regular day that levelize the field so it's not an excuse or a deficit based
182of thinking of the traumas as being a negative but how do you capitalize on those traumas and and expose those students to a variety of other positive influences that are then going to offer them for example we have some schools youth county is one of the highest aces scoring counties in the state of california we're number one we're number one and we have been so one of the things we recognize with our students at the county office is we have a lot of students are really struggling to exposure because all they see is what they see in their daily life they don't know anything different we're going to a place based learning which is exposing them to a variety of other curricular pieces so that they can actually learn and be excited about what they're
183applying their excitement about a subject to learn the history around it to learn the language around it and all the other pieces to develop their ability to learn it's just one strategy and so what you know i think what we're looking at in education is how are we taking those deficits and flipping them to be how do we not capitalize on utilizing those in an education system to elevate students at a level which we know they can all learn and they all accounts with whatever they're bringing south central different set of skills to the forefront of a way a teacher approaches education or educating in their subject areas so for example we know relationships matter right so one of the number one things you can do is focus on establishing a really positive relationship with
184a student that's going to go a long way to them learning english but if we don't teach teachers how to do those things and that that becomes a primary strategy before whatever the english concept is then the english part doesn't matter and you're only going to reach a certain portion of your kids and i think that's like so when i'm talking about strategies it's what kind of strategies can we give teachers that they walk through the door with on day one um that then allows students to become more receptive to whatever the content is that we're actually teaching that's the removal of the barrier which is in another way it's giving them access to more skills so that they that how they overcome those barriers again part of that success when we talk about how
185if the system is so broken how do some people make it out because some people have other resources that others don't have i had a resourceful anita sheed and she had very high expectations that not every black kid growing up in inglewood had and so that's a resource and the question becomes how do you and how do you duplicate that resource if it's part of my success well how do we duplicate that so other kids have the same success and that's part of the trauma informed is instead of just saying to someone that is gonna have to figure out how to manage it you never learned it so good luck to you maybe you should have learned no never mind all that because that's blaming the individual again and we're trying to figure out how
186do we put some things into the system that compensate that over time right so we're talking about the teacher and not the student i mean some teachers are great at this and some i mean how receptive the teacher's been to this summer and it just seems like somehow i have the attitude that hilarious was saying about i'm just i'm an expert in my subject and i deliver it and we which again goes back to my beliefs well i'm gonna tell you so this is when you say some teachers are really good at it they get lucky when i say this because most teachers don't acknowledge that right again this goes back to implicit bias because you just don't know that you know it well i mean i think every teacher i don't know i don't
187know that again it's this thing it's like the dr rio's thing or it's like even i was just down in arizona and the guy that was driving me uh to my mom's house you know was telling me he grew up in phoenix which is not a great place to grow up uh if you're latino and whatever but he talked about a specific teacher same thing you know he was like this teacher told me i could do it you know it was my music that you know whatever so most of these i mean you see this in successful people they talk about that connection with a teacher you know or an adult somebody who really did believe in them yeah i just want to because i want to be really careful that you understand what i
188was trying to say right because i'm not saying because i believe that not every teacher by the way what i say is but i believe all teachers not everyone so most really care about kids they're in this profession they care about kids they went into it you know that right but to be aware of the needs and how you um and how you can support them you have to be it's like you have to break through this you have to be aware and most of our teachers aren't really aware when i say most i'm not trying to i'm not trying to say they're bad people no no no let me let me let me try it i mean that's why we are focused on the trauma practices for every teacher i mean that's the idea
189right everybody can learn but let me let me let me clarify that we went through a period in education the value of a teacher was a test score okay and we got away from hey how are you feeling today yeah how are you doing okay the first thing to make this as simple as possible our schools have to be sick and our teachers have to exhibit that when you come here for seven seven and a half hours you're going to be fed we're going to care about you we're going to ask how you're doing we've got some problem you know some some issues we're going to try to help you with those right he went to a tell so he knows this but i had a classroom with two doors i locked one door every
190child that went through every morning i said hello to and i had a rule with it if they were having a bad hair day they would see mr riley i'm having a bad hair day that means i did not call them because they didn't do their homework or didn't do whatever and we'll deal with that later what we forget sometimes is that let's say i'm teaching government and i started out talking about you know the branches of government and blah blah and mike's not answering the questions so i can now be nasty and say mike do you ever read do you ever do your work do you want to get out of the situation and see that happened for a period of time where i think we let's take the curriculum piece and put it
191in the back of the bus so let's do the humanistic approach and say hey how are you doing today and let's through that social emotional piece and i think you'll see the curriculum piece will improve because they'll go hey i sort of like being in here but man i'm telling you we've all been there if you've ever been in a classroom you didn't really like the teacher or whatever good luck and that's where you as board members have to deal with the public because the public will come back to you and say look back when i was a kid yes my accountant said that to me and i just looked at him uh jimmy we went to school together with dinosaurs from the planet i don't want to hear about when we were kids it
192was different it's not the same so and that's the challenges like how do you again continue to help folks understand because they're just expressing expressing you their implicit bias that they're aware of and it's not right or wrong it's just what it is so you get last word and then i'm gonna move you into your homework i wanted to raise a whole another bigger topic which is kind of related but that's okay you don't have to go with it um one of the things that i see is not only that we're looking at these the economic concerns but we have a culture that's rapidly changing and we so we have this huge generational change that's going on and as a result we have lower income mobility kids have this apocalyptic view of the world it's
193it's climate change it's whatever and so there's this element that we don't have hope like we did like i had when i was raised there was this fundamental belief that the world was on this trajectory towards getting beautiful you know all the time everything was going to be great right and we've lost that and i'm wondering just there's no answer to this either but like how do we deal with that that we have this generation that it's not only that they lack this emotional sense of hope they really don't have as many options like they're not we're not fixing climate change and we're not fixing the income mobility issues that are developed and stuff because i mean not quickly that's part of the job right that generation for you think because think it matters where
194your experiences are currently so do you even do you ha even have the ability to conceptualize an apocalyptic world right because your whole everything around you every day is the pocket well and but even the larger impacts of climate change are pandemic so maybe that's part of the issue though is that not only do we have this trauma amongst um children from a challenged background our middle class kids then are also struggling with a different version but it's really kind of the same in a way right they're they're looking at their futures and saying where can i where am i gonna go like i'm not gonna earn what my parents earn never mind go up to the next level and which is interesting because i think that's when change starts to happen we talk about
195an uncomfortable place um when folks in poverty are struggling no one cares not literally but that's kind of the the message is like look that's your problem you just need to go change and do things the way i did or was the system you're a victim etc so we have that conversation but the second that we become uncomfortable in middle class society that's when change happens like whoa i'm a good well-meaning person i'm not like those lazy people over there i get up and go to work every day and now it's all been taken from me that was a lot of the conversations you hear over the last couple election cycles and especially whenever technology impacts the world and suddenly jobs are removed it's what happened and then we find victims and someone to blame
196it's those people over there it's that thing over there it and that's when we we don't go deep into the conversation start to really look at it so i think it's again it's when the middle class society becomes impacted by it in a large sense then you will see change and i think i think that what you're what you're saying is that we're seeing it and it's it's again goes back to the ability for teachers to have a conversation around it and know that you want to solve it and it goes what todd talked about earlier it's organizational change our world's changing and so you're going to see a some some things that are going to work and then you're going to see things that aren't going to work and then you're going to see
197things that start working and you're going to see this go because it has think about women we didn't used to have jobs i mean we talked about you know your mom was a housewife right that's changed it hasn't changed a lot in some places but we're still i mean so it's it's no different than it's just it's another it's just not a piece and it's going to be how is my community and this isn't your greater community how is my creative community creating this place for this for us to model climate change or whatever else how is it being modeled and then they're going to take it to the bigger level because they're going to go off to college and then they're going to take a bigger level they're going to go and travel the
198world and then they're going to come back so it's again it's all that peace you know one of the things that hasn't been mentioned in terms of poverty is um dreams goals and wonder i mean those are kind of the secrets about surviving poverty and um you know like a lot of our a lot of people in poverty don't dream big because we don't know how we haven't been taught we haven't don't know how don't believe it'll happen anyhow it's yeah it's a safety thing like can i put all my hope into a dream and sometimes the dream literally has to be a goal and then you have to like build on it build on it build on it until it's a legit dream and it's like even though saying there's uh you know with
199uh wisdom and wonder i mean that's a true thing even like the majority of you guys are all teachers so you know um if a teacher is able to show you know like i can appreciate people geeking out on something that they really love you know mr daniels my science teacher we would look at water and he would geek out so hard on the particles in the water and we would kind of at first laugh about it and then we would be so stoked to like you know oh wow okay it opened such a different frame of mind and that is a great way to capture all kids all minds i don't care what your age is if you're two or a hundred like it's it's that piece it's just looking it's like you know
200todd changing the language with you know um doing change in the district and you know like for me i think very differently but i feel super safe going to todd no matter how i'm feeling about something if i'm happy angry scared worried confused like i feel safe going and just being unfiltered with him and it on both levels i could i think it changes us it like okay i'm understanding where he's coming he's understanding where i'm coming you know but i really do feel like the secret with poverty with children is teaching them to dream is teaching them it's okay to have a goal i mean i still at 48 years old have to do that you know and i'm always adjusting my dreams and i think that that's important because in poverty you're so
201stuck in survival mode that you forget how to appreciate thriving and how it feels to thrive so to know how to have a goal that turns into a dream i mean that's pretty huge there's a the movie south pacific has a song called happy talk and it's like you've got to have a dream you don't have a dream how are you going to have a dream come true enough just come on sing it i love it didn't you do it in a heartbeat so here's what i want to explain is that um the next cert the test that we're not going to do it because i i promised amy that i would turn this over to her about two minutes ago and i've been chiding her because she keeps stepping in i'm like look you
202told me 10 20 and you keep you stole at least 15 minutes of time all right so uh the the purpose of that next test that you can take again on your own it'll be for grins and giggles um and you don't have to own it and admit to anyone in the room but what that is is an opportunity for people to take a look at the spouse or the mindset that you could live with and typically what happens is after that the conversation is oh i i see i would struggle to be in a relationship with whoever that is and that often is a reflection of the same people in the community when you run into them and you're not quite sure why it is you struggle to connect with them this is part
203of it it's just their mindset is in a very different space than yours is and there's a tendency to go there to kind of go off into the mind and kind of go oh i just don't like that person i'm not quite sure why they always have such an interesting belief and so it's yeah as you look at that it's like these are the people that there's no way i could get along with that that person and so when it's it's kind of a gotcha moment where you look at it through the eyes of a spouse and then i say all right take the name of the spouse off and put in community member who you struggle with and you may find that some of their mindset is just the biggest challenge for you the
204teacher who you can't get to think differently it's a mindset it's not right or wrong good or bad it can just be the mindset sometimes you know since we are going to skip past it i just think that's really really is important to think about that right because i think each of us have our mental models and that we work from and understand from our life experiences how how we currently live and to realize that you're going to be working with an environment as a board member and you work for people that sometimes you we get a little stubborn because like well it's the way i think but having to realize that well they come from a different walk of life they come from a different experience and and and like i think the make
205things really good right because we tend to be with the people that we feel comfortable with right and then sort of push that out and think about the people that we worked with together it's an interesting piece thinking about when you're hiring people to come work with the team you want people that just agree with you on everything or do you want people that are going to make you a little maybe a little uncomfortable but push your thinking and and that's a very place where when you can do that you have a level of of self-confidence that you you're able to be open-minded to the inputs and so like when i think about our team here you know we don't all agree on everything and that's really a good thing yet we probably don't have
206a lot of differences because we're all middle class people signature right but think about how you bring in those diverse components but then how you work with them so i just wanna i think it's instead of just really raising past it so fast is just to make that statement right because i think that take the time on your own to reflect on how comfortable i am with people like i'm thinking from the spouse standpoint but just people we work with every day i and then also think about what could you do what could you do in those situations and practice it he's going to take that that's the next that's my next don't sorry look you steal your own thunder lady all right so thank you for adding that part thank you for segwaying into
207the next part of the conversation so on page 15 exactly so page 15 i'd love for you to take a look at those actions now these are action steps to educate students and that's i want to make this a board conversation those are the ones that the staff should be mindful of etc i'd love for you to take that and and just change it a little bit to what are the 10 actions that you could take to educate the community so when you look at these action steps here which ones stand out to you that hey as a board if we were to do this it would help us become better with our community um so and i think there arguably there are a few there but i don't want to tell you that this
208is the one you have to do so i would just love you to look at them hey if you were to follow if you take those action steps which ones would improve the connections you have with the community and the community's belief faith and trust that they heard someone say trusted so how does that increase there you go so anyone see any of them that you think you would jot down on page 16. uh any of them you see that you think if the board were to take those action steps it would make some changes that would be positive and helpful again this isn't with the students per se it's with the community at large i personally really love um action number one i think that that often is like the key i mean that's
209probably the reason why it's the first on the list but you know because all of our backgrounds are different and coming onto a board you know my personal experience is i thought with going on to a school board it was just like one step above pta but it really is not it's like completely different worlds and sometimes it's like drinking from a fire hydrant other times it's like chilling in the sun soaking up the lake but like even you know for me because of my background i'll use the example the rezoning i have to do a lot a lot of listening a lot and not very many questions because like my perspective like with the early start times for elementary like some of the things that families have said i'm like really trying to understand
210why getting up at seven in the morning is difficult for children because my upbringing is you had to catch the bus at seven it was at least a half a mile walk we lived on top of a mountain and we had to do our ranch chores before we walked to the bus and it snowed where i lived not like tahoe but i mean you're i mean even when you you know springer and when you're on crutches you're walking to the bus on crutches you know and so like part of me you know it's like missed because and this is probably the whole poverty middle class like i sometimes want to laugh because i'm just like oh my gosh that is so foreign to me like i think that is so cool that moms are worried
211about their kids getting up before a certain time you know because my parents didn't care get up if you got to get up at four you're getting up at four to get your stuff done and so you know it's also the piece like the last rezoning meeting there was a certain member that really was targeting three of us board members like everything is our fault and part of me i thought does our community in the district like realize everything is staff driven like the staff is doing the work and then providing us the end result to make the best decision which requires us to trust our staff and you know like we're not the ones out there like banging down the doors we're going with the flow of what the majority of the staff is
212learning growing and organizing does that make sense so to be able to like listen and like there are people that i don't understand okay it doesn't mean i'm gonna like respect them less it just means for me i gotta work harder to understand listen and honestly be open-minded like consciously open-minded um even though sometimes i'm just like okay you're i do totally don't agree with you i'm done listening even though you're still talking like i as a trustee you have to like totally keep my ears open and my mind open your honesty i would i would second number second number one and add like number nine one of the things that i kind of go around with is um the families appear disengaged so i've thought well they trust us as being the prevailing culture
213to do well by their children right but if they were trusting us to do well by their children how come there's their children aren't necessarily coming to school with that trust is that really what's going on like i don't know what's going on there so um anyone want to speak about it it's just yeah i mean i think i i agree i think the mutual respect the piece about understanding family resource and dynamics um just getting i think for as our board as a board we need to uh do more i know we're going to move into like priorities and goals and when i think about some of the things we talked about last year related to that is like the family engagement piece and how to really get you know how to really lit
214go back to your point how to really listen and hear because each and every one of these families are having conversations about education they may not be coming to any of our meetings but if we sat down and had dinner with them right we would we would hear their perspectives you know and we're going gonna get some of that in the surveys you know but i feel like um there's so much of that touchy-feely stuff that doesn't happen with i don't know 95 of our families because they don't they don't show up at our meetings right they don't and so um that's just an important piece to me as well as the number three which is the piece that anna marie's been focusing on is really how do we help kids you know at school
215you know what other resources what can we what can we do there you know those those pieces about connection the only other thing i would add is that i think that the behaviors of the middle class have changed since i grew up and maybe you're this is what you're talking about because i had those same you know yeah you still i had to run past the dog that was going to chase me every day right on your own to figure that out but middle school middle class kids aren't expected to do that now they're driven to school so there's that weirdness that i can't relate to either yes there's a lot of research around that that says that um we're losing the ability that if you look at generationally the distance that people would travel
216to explore has shrunk and now we put the kids in the band minivan and the bike on the minivan to take them to the place where they now get out and ride the bike right right you used to say no go ride your biking good luck see you before it gets dark right you know i want to and randy brought this uh trusty banister i brought this up earlier it's just brandy today you know and i think that and and glory i i think this belief that people aren't showing up because we're not trying to engage them we're not or we're not engaging them i tell you families are busy people exactly okay so i think that that when we really get down to the realities of being up being a parent raising children working
217hard you're busy and honestly they're not talking about education as much as you may think because they're just not right they're cause they're just not and and and i am going to say for the most part they trust us they trust in the school system to take care of their children and and i think we lose sight of that because why we have and i can call out the names if we wanted to those people that think they know more than we do that think that they have the answers better than we have them and when they have those they want to come tell us now i'll share that that's okay because i i welcome that and invite that right i think it has to be done respectfully and out of the the four meetings
218i thought one person really pushed the level of respect well two because the second that last night one person but but those people that have those ideas it's good and they may share something that really triggers a oh um but for the most part the most part the reason why people show up is because they know better or they don't like it but but but i'm telling you and there's a lot of research around this families are so busy and they're busy trying to just make sure that they're doing their thing and the extent of the conversation with the child is hey do you have any homework because if you do get after right now all right i mean that's the reality and and so i would tell you that when people show up in
219the sport or they show up in this community of events most the time because they have a better idea or they don't like what we're doing by the way that's why most people run for board that's why they run for the board because they haven't liked what's been going on or they feel like they could do it better now not saying that it's just reality right it's just a reality and that's just the truth now to say well how do we get them engaged well you know what the reality of it is hey if you're gonna take care of my dinner tonight so i don't have to worry about taking care of dinner because i got to get dinner on the table and then okay i'll come i mean there's things like that but then
220of course that takes time money and all of these pieces so what we got to try to do is just continue to encourage people that what we have a mutual respect for them so i'm going to go to this and that there are ways to for them to engage which really is number two for me i was hoping someone was going to mention number two right and there's ways for them to engage in the school system because that's the next piece i'm gonna tell you yeah yeah if most cases they are they trust us and they really aren't talk about it but when they do they don't necessarily know how to properly go about engaging yeah because i've never had success while i was in there i didn't have great relationships because i was raised
221horrible to me so i don't even really know how to do it matter of fact when people actually for the first time come see me they're scared to death why because of the syndrome of being scared of the principle right or scared of authority and and then really i think that the number 10 on this right and then teaching them how to go about asking questions in that mutually respectful manner um and i think that so for example if you think about how i was working to structure these these meanings let us tell you about what's happening then let us answer your questions and sometimes i say okay what's the question right because mostly you don't get questions i'm not getting them why because they want to show you what to tell you what right
222but it's actually so it's also helping people learn how to ask questions and then us being great listeners right i think you got to take another step forward that when i look at number one build relationships and mutual respect you listen to people and i i think what's important with parents teachers whoever is that our responsibility is to educate not advocate the public and i think sometimes what happens is they believe we're advocating a certain position when in reality we're trying to educate let's go back to the phases remember the five phases that we did with code okay we had some people really angry about that they want us to skip one two and three and go to four and five right but you just you listen to them and then you say well you
223know what this is the plan and this is why we're going to go in this blah blah blah blah but you know parents i agree with your parents are busy okay and i think sometimes and i got to add one other layer to this sometimes parents are given misinformation or disinformation however you want to put it and it's our job to educate that when they say you know about when they say no no that's that's not quite true we know we have not done it i'll use the example you and i went through with a certain teacher who was convinced that the board automatically voted 5-0 for dr cutler and blah blah blah blah blah no and i had to tell him yeah just because dr keller and i said go back and look at
224the agenda the agendas prior to that and they noticed that it was informational then it was discussion and then it was action and they looked at the minutes and so you know i i think we got to keep it in perspective we're going to get yelled at we're going to get that dog you're talking about that chases you we're going to get chased okay that's fine and they have every right because it's their children and they're concerned but when it's the misinformation and the disinformation i think that it's our responsibility to educate and so forth and so on so i i want to push back on your idea that you that the families trust us what evidence do you have for that i don't think anyone cut trusts institutions anymore we're just another one yeah
225so i i i don't want to get into a debate and that's what that well i'm just curious because because of my vast experience in general i think yeah my vast experience with working in in the industry that where we work here um there's a hierarchy families parents you know number one when i go back to their busy they're busy and so they really don't have time to to get into the to all of that intricacies of what's happening in school and as long as their children are safe and they see some evidence of them growing as as people they trust um and you know and i think that that mental model that you're bringing forward is that that that nature of distressing entities and organizations because we see certain level of people facebook um
226some actually coming to meetings being driving that negative narrative but if you look at that negative narrative it's not a large percentage of people and and we listen to so there's percentages in research um that really talk about percentages of of of populations and now i'm going to talk about it from this side right schools traditionally meet the needs of about 70 to 80 of students depending on the structures and there's about 20 to 25 percent that traditional school settings don't work but by the way when you start to break down that population of of that 20 25 don't work for really we only hear from about two or three percent right and there's actually research around all this and and so then when you start talking about um people do do a piece of
227people liking their politicians actually the percentages aren't actually all that bad that they they dislike they actually for the most part and by the way the closer the politics are actually more trust in place it's kind of an interesting piece my competition is fantastic it's yours it's yours it's so it's yours so so i take it from the school district elementary parents pretty much love their elementary schools they just do they get because they're connected with it but they think maybe of the broader district is not quite as good but my school's good well it's it's this expanding piece right now there's a lot of angst about cal state of california but when people really look at it for us there's actually a little protection and yes there's that percentage they're going to come at
228us but understand that really we're just bound by certain state of california says right so the further entity away and there's research around this the less trust you have the closer it is the more trust you have so that's why if when i have a teacher by the way we hear this all the time and even in teachers that are not very good they trust their teacher because that's their teacher and you know there's that really close to them trust the principal maybe not quite as much but yeah i trust trust supernatural yeah i don't know you know whatever right so the distance is out so so the closer in people just again i'm going to go to this we think that people care more than they do and i'm not saying that that's it's
229just because they're busy yeah that's all i'm saying so when because we hear from i'm going to talk about staff you have heard from a lot of staff you know what go ahead and add up the percentage we have 450 employees in our district most of them are busy just working to stay and stay on top of their life busy to do what they need to do to to get to work every day to plan for their day to be successful in their day to take care of their family you know what the reality of it is um very small percentage actually now they some like start listening and this is an interesting piece of cancer cancerous culture because if we don't address those that really don't feel that way some of the cancer spreads
230to them um and we've seen some of that so i guess you asked me and and i'm telling you i don't know if i directly answered your question but the research is pretty clear you did and i just want to add one more piece that's still puzzling me you know that if students trusted their um educational system to give them what they needed then i would expect them to just you know deal with the code switching and everything else that was required and do it right like they do by the way this mask is masking here's what's interesting about it right we really you know now quality mask wearing depending on the age level is is just a different story right but you walk in our classrooms and i was let me just take an
231elementary school i was at recently i walk in the inner art first grade classrooms they're on now sometimes they're here yeah uh you know but and you go into the older students they just got them here now you go to high school they're up and down you know right but it's not it's not but it's not necessarily rebellion against it they're just it's interesting the middle school middle school had been experiencing some really misbehaviors well why because we weren't really getting on top of them all of a sudden we got this news team going over there they're starting to really get after it and all of a sudden we're starting to see quiet down why because kids fall into order they really do because you know what again i'm gonna say this 95 percent of
232kids are just going to follow the rules whatever that might be a little high depending on your environments they're just going to and and and actually teachers staff there's a variation here because of of culture right because so i've been in different different school districts that most you know most staff are just going to do what they're expected to do now california is a little bit of different with protections and i don't want to go into all that so it's a little bit different but so it's just but we get these like each of the elementary school sessions we had somebody somebody decide they were going to tell us how wrong we were or that they didn't like or whatever else it was one at each of them now they might have said god i
233can't see you you've got to not start that early that's that's just their opinion but but being aggressive or telling us we're wrong or or questioning our judgment or it was one but we hear so much of that and it gets it gets to us yeah and that's where as apol as politicians and leaders there's that thick skin that has to be there a little bit so i apologize i needed that we've already adjusted yeah well because this is such an important conversation it actually goes into where we're supposed to be on the agenda a little bit right because because it's just hard work and i go back to this right when when we start going down down those people that want to be critical they jump on because they're gonna let's go let's go
234so when they see an opportunity and by the way we've had a few opportunities and most of them at the high school recently let's just use one of them four by four we started again and group people are no way and so then we then we had we spread that to some students no way and then we spread that to some parents no way and all of a sudden all right we're on this path to crashing [Music] and and and it's not it's not a large large number but it's a loud number and then that's where disrupters is your word and that's where you you that where we have to be really aware of like sometimes we say oh my god the the sky is falling yeah that's a couple drops but they but they
235but they're pretty heavy drops you've got the disrupters because you had disruptors last time i was here you had disruptors but i can tell you and it's where you have to have the trust of your staff and your leadership i could tell you that the number of people that dropped in chat that we don't agree with them that won't voice it because of the bullying that goes on behind that you have to be able to trust the staff that says you know that when todd comes to you and said that's one person where we have five others that are on the other side yeah yeah you may keep hearing that one person exactly you know because that was the part for me was like like the number of people that dropped in the chat the
236private chat to me we don't feel this way we don't feel those we disagree far outweigh the loud voices that were on the other side that you all were hearing by the way right now just so you know this to me i drew this accurate yeah we've been on this piece right here with with certain people trying to drive it down right and what and and i've shared probably too directly well if we want to listen to those people that are driving this down guess what where am i and that's just reality of my world yeah right and so i'm not but that's what happens when people drive the the negative negative narrative and we allow them we allow it to overwhelm us where and it's hard because because i'm telling you the reality is
237it's not everybody yet yet they do have legs people do listen and i think it gets back to a comment that happened in the recent conversation we had is that we we have to show we care so so as we're dealing with the rest disruption and all we have to number one be consistent we have to show we care right that mutual respect and i thank you and i want to i want to just say you know back to that number nine about 100 i appreciate everything you've been saying everything and this focus on the just the minority of you know the disrupters but i think that number nine that understanding that even though even though it's like a passion of mine to like get families engaged when i say that i'm open and i
238hear you say this too you know that it's really learning it's for us to hear and really appreciate you know but and i think our job you know as the board is that's what that that's what's embedded in this these words to better understand the resources the child has access to and better select interventions and and to understand the family resource and dynamics to really understand it you know to really um accept that yeah i'm not saying when i when i say no one shows up like that i want a bunch of people to show up you know uh i would like that in these families oh sure the kind of you know family math night or whatever right but i'm so and this is what i learned when i was down in san diego
239it's like how do we make it simpler and i know we're working on this really hard you know with our newsletters going home every week to families again they don't always read it but you know it's like really understanding and and i think again anna you're great at this and other teachers have been of you know like um learning that okay don't send home some you know difficult thing about measuring um you know legos at home because kids don't all have legos but what about what about um pens or forks in the drawer or what you know something that everybody has but real i mean really having our educators and me understand what what do families really have at home what are their resources and how can we um how can we help them grow
240how can we help kids learn with those things at home i mean this is just a quick analogy was like took an art class here at the community college by the way i cried through the whole thing but because i'm not like a weakness of mine but i was working i was at work i was in a motel room where i had to do a still life you know and i literally had like a hanger a paper cup and a napkin you know that was my still life you know but that's just an example of like you know we're not telling the kids to go home and you know draw a picture of a pumpkin and a and uh and a lamp or whatever because not every kid has a pumpkin a lamp at home
241but whatever you know that so that i'm that's where i i want to highlight that because i feel like we all need to better understand what our families have and because what they have can help kids learn that's a key part of it as well because you we often send again we're basing it on middle class society and we say you should go home and find a quiet place to sit and do your homework but if you live in a family of poverty and there are two or three families living in that the where's the student now going to go find their quiet space in a closet and i've run into a lot of cases where yeah that's the reality this is a kid not sitting in a closet with some type of a flashlight
242because it's just the rest of the house is just normal it's not that they don't care that the child is not learning the rest of the house is just hey look it's crowded it's kind of busy and go in the closet and so that's part of the challenges all right we did we just set that student up for success or did we you know are they now prepped for it do they have these tools when you think about the things that you're doing just considering all these pieces as you make those policies and practices which goes back to some of the classroom policies and practices right homework with the child's getting it done and you really get into the root cause understanding why are some of these things happening so if you go back to
243those pieces of your mental models of how your middle class framing is it truly what's going on it is a benefiting holistic system is this this list like in a particular order it's just like random it's not like that now i am going to forward you the uh i gave you the test and and then i gave you the answer sheet for the test which is pages one two and three i will forward the rest of the article it's written about this so i'll give that to you as well um and i just want to add a couple things because it sounds like my favorite part of the day food is here uh and so i wanted to say a couple of things before we turn up and i'm going to let amy explain your
244lunchtime assignment you're gonna give them lunchtime homework wow you or something else all right you took 15 minutes from someone what about it patterns this whole conversation is about patterns not the individual these not everyone who lives in poverty has all of these patterns some of them are different so again just recognize these are about patterns that tend to show up these are tendencies um hidden rules allow us to understand the not everyone thinks the same so once you recognize there are hidden rules they're not right or wrong they just those are the rules that we have figured out they just sort of are the things that make survival in those areas possible there's even survival in middle class and then the one thing i think is critical is that there's a difference between social
245bonding capital that's the neighbors that's what helps you get by and it's bridging capital that helps you get ahead right who are the people that are in that space that are doing that work or that are living in that life that if i were to spend more time with them and develop that relationship so again relationships become important that they will help me understand the rules for that next level so the truth is if all of us wanted to figure out what it was like what are the hidden rules to live in wealth we now need to go create relationships with people who are that upper one percent and spend some time with them for a significant amount of time so we can start to figure it out and understand it and that's still not
246a guarantee that we would survive in wealth it's just an opportunity for you to start to learn the lessons and learn the rules so that you can be you can fit and that's why oftentimes people who are in poverty get placed in situations where they're living in middle class groups and they just struggle because it just feels so odd it doesn't feel like what i've been around all my life i'm just not comfortable and that's where part of that happens it's bothered me about the whole um the busing conversation when i brought this up a little bit at the last one is our middle class parents don't use the resource of each other like carpooling they just feel like i've got to solve this on my own how am i going to get my kid
247to school you know they don't i'm kind of astonished actually that they don't they don't they don't think that way but it is part of it is part of the of a real problem for middle class thinkers is this this fierce independence like i'm gonna i've got it i've managed myself but i think also i'm gonna go back to pieces of that it's they're just busy and they'll just you know instead of oh you save yourself time by carpooling no i i understand that they don't take it yes exactly but once it's going you have if you are living in middle class life or a wealthy life you have far more options than carpool right i'm just not a recess not a resource or a concern that enters your mind but if you're living in
248poverty and the truck breaks now you got to figure out how do you deal with it and carpooling and relying on other people becomes an important skill set to help you survive so you don't need that skill set in middle class as a matter of fact we have bought into the notion that none in the middle class you're here because you're a rugged individual who's figured out how to make it in spite of the world exactly and this like goes into like the whole idea of group problem solving or cooperative learning right middle class kids want to because i want my grade i'm i'm going to work harder than that kid over there or whatever you know we don't want it i don't like the youtube activities no parents get involved so transition well now
249you take time assignment well lunchtime assignment you guys have been reading the governance core um and i know you've been having your study sessions and such and i think one of the important components is really taking an assessment of yourself i actually had the privilege of having dinner with davis campbell um as part of um in in december at aec he actually came to um masters in government because this is a big part of what that entire master's in governance is the foundation so on page 18 and 19. so you mentioned that dinner i met him a long time ago board board of directors but that's okay carry on right next to him lots of conversations with you that's okay staying up with the joneses okay little total middle class issue here did you get
250a signature in the book yeah exactly but it's kind of cool but one of the things that struck me is that it is that governance mindset is is relevant to where you're at in this space and time and it's relevant to where each of you feel you're at as a board and i know that this is an election year and there's other pieces there to come and play and it's the culture that you're creating and so um i know you're reading the book but now it's what are you gonna do with the learning that you're learning in the book in the sense of how are you planning so as we move through lunch what i would love for you to do is on page 18 and 19 it's here's there's um six areas and then
251there's the emerging awkward accelerating proficient mastery all i'm asking you to do is kind of glance and go where do you think you are as a board right now for example system thinking are you in the recognition that governance requires a board systemic view of the district but not yet incorporated into the work that you're doing or are you already at the other end where you always stay grounded as a system thinker with a strategic focus so kind of think about where you are in this process and just circle literally collectively or individually individually yeah it's just an opportunity for well because we're gonna we're gonna go off mike here for a minute um eat get our lunch and have the opportunity to do this and by the way it's it's it's it's 1201 so
252we're thinking about that uh we'll make sure we have about a half hour right yeah that's my goal i heard two things is this is as the as the group right individually but you know what i will say this if the group wants to be a little more advanced think about where you are and if you think about where are we as a whole yes well i think that would come in the conversation of this is the way i feel it i may also have to say blah blah blah but make sure you think about you exactly but i think you do it her way do it her way she's the teacher i just wanted clarity yeah sure for you so are we going to lunch yes let's let's shift down our mics just so
253that we save our battery so with your permission i'm going to mute the meeting and i will revisit you just before 12 30. yeah that's great thank you scott thank you the room is now muted i have unmuted you guys um if you wish to resume you can do so thank you thank you thank you scott and we are about to resume thank you very much thank you and making sure your mics come back on when you're as or then then taking those bites [Music] and so the person i was practicing with the team is predominantly we have one young man who stayed for the whole season even though he never got eligible but he's a 226 pound freshman wow has one speed great talent speed and determination and it was all i could do
254just like 160 on a good meal and so we uh steph and i said okay this is [Music] and so tracy was really concerned about me so he's like careful we got out two weeks ago and went to go run across the field we're running with each other 15 or 20 minutes just kind of walking through some of this and seeing where everybody's at and then um it will give you a place as you wrap up the book it will give you a place um to go now what do we do next what are some of the areas of work that we need to continue moving forward on um just so you know that the governance corps um has a workbook that goes with it and so this is this rubric comes from bike store
255my book this comes from the workbook and so it has some great things to unpack but i really like the rubrics because we don't often look at a book and go where am i and where do we need to go so with systems thinking i'm just going to kind of get a tally if you where you're at if you rated yourself and emerging or awkward um raise your hand on systems thinking and then wouldn't go back so if you were accelerating and proficient raise your hand pretty much well i mean it's interesting questions um strategic focus same thing emerging awkward i actually haven't marked in all those kinds of like pieces of yeah i kind of i don't know if i sometimes i do what i want so i kind of marked on that one
256like certain items where it's the board me personally and the district is under strategic focus what about accelerating and proficient so you think you so you're not quite you don't think you're quite there but you're getting yeah i'm kind of like between could you talk a little bit about what it means by strategic context rather than industry so when you think about um when you think about uh let me start with very clear clear in the comments so i want to take it like this the contextual information is being provided is simply just from the administrator or is it from the governments as a whole right so um like some people in in a in a governance structure just take the you know the information in the context of the situation from the administrator and
257then that and then ends there versus where it becomes part of the whole governance team talking to a contextual component does it make sense i'm not saying it's clear it's already it's it's here but it's not coming out i'm wondering if that's again the single site focus you know what we're trying to do more from the ground and i think when you bring in the words to treat strategic and i think that's so that's really great that you you see it that way we're in essence we're strategically thinking about how we're developing components and not just administratively deciding so in other words nasa objectives would be the administrative focus priority statements give you the idea of once you put all those administrative tasks together where it is we're going that's the strategic direction so are
258you operating out of a sense of understanding the strategy is that the conversation or is it really just about the administrative task list and you're not really sure where those are headed and and if you look at the mastery part of it if you look at the strategic focus the perspective is it's kind of are you going through the motions based upon a task list like might just talk about or are you fully going through that it is your values everything that you want to be your everything is in alignment the things that you're setting out to do strategically and focused on are in alignment with your vision and your own personal values of where you're headed that's that strategic focus across the spectrum from emerging and awkward yeah right now yeah yeah that's really
259good okay i'm gonna make it even simpler i i wrote down governance as a strategic job okay so our you know it's part of what we do highly effective trustees have a we have a strategic focus and i think when we brought dr cutler in in july of 2020 i think we started he started his system and then got started to get going with sort of a strategic focus you came on board so now we became five we were four now we're five people and so forth and so on so i mean i just try to keep it as simple as possible you know and now that i've you know trying to get my words out and i don't think that's clear i think that's really the piece right so when you're on a strategic
260focus you you have vision you have mission you have your goal your priorities right that's the work we do and if you're on an administrative piece it's like okay all right this is what you know either we do allow our superintendent to do his job or we're not we're even navigating right the other piece of it is think about it this way one of the things that we say in the masters in governance or more of your time on your agenda should be spent on student stuff if you're dealing with a tree we talked about this last time if you're dealing with a tree being cut down or not and that's taking 45 minutes of your time you're not focusing on the strategic direction of the district if your agendas aren't built around what is
261going to impact students you've got other business to do but if that's the whole focus of your agenda then you're missing the strategic focus collectively with the whole conference piece i think we've made a really good movement toward that we spend a great deal of time about students in our in our meeting yeah so while you started with the question like i was really struggling to spit it out i think through the conversation we got it does that provide clarity yeah good i want to say i just wanted a squad the whole team over there i'm looking mostly entry in amber because i think they've been doing a phenomenal job but i know it becomes a good job when she's not sidetracked with having to write a letter to explain to you what groceries but
262in terms of just that i feel like because they because they end up on the agenda you know he's on our he's up there with us but when they stand up at the podium and andrea's talking about the budget or financial planning and anna where he's talking about the lcap or something like that it really it's really been good and and maybe it's because of all the new money that has certain purposes but it's just been really excellent how um it all kind of aligns and how you're really good at um when you're talking about money like this is how we're going to use this money we're buying buses or we're buying you know we've got this expanded learning opportunities it's not just about the dollars and cents or the bottom line you know there's
263not this big focus on you know how much money is left in the bank or you know our expenses and our assets it's more just like this is how we're spending the money and it's really important how we're spending the money and i i so appreciate that because it is it's totally back to that strategic focus instead of just you know the balance or the injustice or whatever that's really been nice and average similarly with the goals of what we're trying to accomplish you know which takes leadership and allowing you to do that and that's why as a whole the government i think i think one thing there that i struggle with personally is the sense of urgency and understanding you know i kind of toggle because i'm feeling like there's this precious time these
264kids you know it feels like it's cheating students if you don't keep pushing this agenda on the other hand that this they're human beings they're administered and not delicacy that comes if the pressure's not working you're going to get lots of feedback and push back and so it's that balance of you know you are part of that governance team that makes those decisions um but it's it's not always urgency in the sense that it has to be done immediate again it goes back to that three to five years that you have to be able to look at that conceptually over time and recognize that urgency means you may be talking about it it doesn't mean that you have to immediately act and respond to it there's a big difference well i think let me let
265me take it that what you said and back to it what you just shared it is this board's job along with this team to really put you know what is those expectations where are we going keeping it keeping the business of what we're working on in front of us at all times but also understanding that there is level of patience there's level of time things take and really that's where your superintendent comes in to utilize the expertise of experience and and the ability to see how good the team's working through it and being able to be alert to that and and by the way not always perfect right because then you all of a sudden get a surprise and we've had some surprises lately they go whoa right not necessarily surprises because you expect certain
266levels of discomfort pushback you expect some of that right and and then that's where you know having had some tough conversations with the board about hey you know there's this push pull there's and and and and and how fast you go and how fast you're not peter's saying a researcher on organizational change um i actually had the opportunity to be at a training with him in chicago back about 2007. uh and and uh he talked about change and pressure and decision making and and how much pressure you put on the change and any and he had us all hold a rubber band and i've done this with our team right um hold the rubber band and say you know what pull it really tight you're probably putting too much pressure you got to be alert
267to when you've gotten that much pressure on because what's going to happen if you go any more you're going to break everybody go too loose let it be limp you're not making any change so there's a there's a leadership component of change that you feel what he called creative tension and in that tension you're aware of you know sometimes you gotta be a little tighter but don't don't pull it so tight that you break it because then you're back to square one right go too loose and you're not gonna ever grow and it's that and that's really what i find my job to be is right is to take what we've you know as we talk about our board goal and priorities and and we think about our vision mission and it's like no that's
268the call that's the cause but we also have to aware that the motion toes change is you know um is fluid which really goes to the next bullet on here which is a deep learning it literally you're moving across that's because of your along with the focus you're actually how much time are you spending in understanding all those components and pieces and so thinking about where you are on that realm right um where do you all think you are are you in the emerging and accelerating or remastering where are you in that spectrum and again not right wrong good or bad but really kind of thinking about where you are i put down all of them but it's not it's like um so only certain uh bullet points i mean some of it yeah we're
269still working on them or you know and i guess maybe even now that i'm thinking about it with some like the mastering for example i feel like we're um consciously aware of certain things and i marked it in the mastering part because even if we don't have it mastered we're definitely aware of always doing and striving well i would go with we're talking about deep learning correct and you told us to do it individually so i was thinking in terms of that a trustee with the governance mindset is committed to making decisions based on quality of information evidence and death okay that i think this is a big turn for us i've been here six years okay and i'm going to tell you i want to speak i don't want to speak for anybody i'm
270just going to speak for myself because i said trustee that's me that i there were times i left i was shaking my head i didn't know what direction blah blah blah blah so when we made the change and dr cutler came as our superintendent and and that's one of the reasons and i like to learn i'm a lifelong learner i like the book i like to meet the guy because i like to talk to him about okay now tell me about postcodex with some of these ideas because some of them aren't working but but that's here nor there but i think he makes a great point where they make a great point that i think we're making more quality decisions on the information evidence and data that we're gathering versus an emotional response i i
271feel this way so i vote this way i think we're getting away from it which i like okay and then i would just say just to finish this because there's writing some stuff here that once again a trustee with this governance mindset that we read about the greatest strength is the deep understanding of the purpose and the work of the district and i go back to in the work of the district i think we're getting a better understanding we're not there yet i understand all b c d but we're getting there and and it's a lot easier to talk about because we do understand the purpose okay um what we're doing the purpose of work i wouldn't want to say this though right is that there's if you're on the left there's not a failure
272to it i want to change your context and that it's it's that it's still a little maybe uncomfortable that like if we just go to to deep learn it's you know i'm i'm i'm i'm emerging i'm coming out of this but it's still not perfectly comfortable to me that's why i'm a little awkward versus i'm starting yeah this started rock and roll a little bit i'm starting to really get comfortable i think i think if you think about from your comfort level right yeah i'll make a statement about the next one and i'm just going to jump into to use as an example because i'm going to tell you i feel like overall i actually operate from a mastery type of component on these elements for me personally so when we were asked to write
273when i when when i'm when we're in my office working on decisions right i mean we're working off of not just conscious we're getting we're gathering information we're talking we're getting deep understanding we're you know it's like when people think that we just threw this idea together and that was that in regards to the rezone no no this was a process together right and it just wasn't just when i go to manor i actually feel like i might have dropped from mastery to proficient just recently and then i could explain why if i really really wanted to but and i go you know what i got to be really aware of this it was something i did for myself and i put my i put my little bullet kind of in the middle between them
274from mastery to to celery proficient because i realized you know what my my i'll be real build transparent my climate of trust and was has been shifting a little bit the last couple last month so i'm like oh i might have to i'm not sure i'm in a full mutual trust right so i so when i was reading this i was being real about it so it's not you know what i'm saying yeah so it's like hmm it's been shifting and so i'm back over here but i don't think that's wrong i mean because i think i'm still that accelerated proficient right but i you know i was i feel like i operate over here but it rolls well maybe something in the moment something at a time that's okay that's what's so good about
275being him to reflect on too so i hope that helps a little bit honest you know we yeah we had deaths and different things happen on our work we didn't do board members in some cases we went backwards so at some point we had a new board membership the trust of what was the culture wasn't very so just those pieces so you were operating in a different space because of the context because the going to context because someone new comes on how do i how do i relate to it are they in alignment with us i think context is really important right because i think that you would as as amy asked us to do is reflect on where do we see ourselves on this and and that's why i was using manor's example because
276i that was the one i thought again sharing out i feel almost overall i'm working from a level of and i've been because i've been studying these things for years too right it's been in my this has just been who i am um and and i and i tell you even off of and trust is an interesting component under man so context does drive maybe where you're at on some sort and we also have these columns basically another way of saying skill development um because they're not ready to it's like okay now i can do an honest assessment where they are here's what i need to give them next to get it to the next level so i say mastering these concepts so it's more of an honest conversation starting to move but not quite
277yeah yeah exactly that's a good thing i'm going back to barbara calling this a bad boy [Music] which i because that's what education and learning is all about right is that we think about hey our end in mind is to be a really great governance team but if we don't know what that means we can't do that so now we got to go back back and that's why i would say don't think of this as a failure right then we go back and go okay where are we in our knowledge base and our application personally as well as a team of doing it right and and and so well i got the chills like yes like when i got here in july of 20 what's one of the first things we did we did our
278boards um protocols our borders protocols right which we all agreed upon yeah right and we said but but even but but even agreeing upon them not everybody understood them clear and i'm saying right it didn't follow well because you didn't understand them right it's like you have them but okay yeah yeah yeah it sounds all fine and good but in but but then what did we have to go on we had to go on a journey of learning right of learning them and one of the hard things about a superintendent in that world is right it's like okay i just told my board here's what i expect for you guys to behave right now i gotta actually try to hold them to that but then you gotta help them learn the other thing is that
279unless you have um that's really what it's talking about so governance mindset is that you have a shared unified understanding of what something actually means what it would look like if it was actually happening you know and then the cohesion part is that you're working collectively in a high-level way that allows you to maintain even if you disagree you're still able to work through it in a cohesive way that you all lead with that one voice like mike talked about educate and advocate you're able to lead if you disagree which is fine you don't want a vote that always is a five a 3-2 or a 4-1 is okay as long as the person who's the one or the two and shows up in a way that supports and as long as the four or
280the three really rigorous dialogue goes deep and then you come out of it at the other end that you all still have the collective of what you want i'm gonna there's two things that just went through my mind and one i want to just tell you guys rubrics like this are so powerful in learning in education and and actually that training that i highlighted um that john brought doug ryan dylan whatever the trainer from they talked a lot about that yeah i'm sorry but but they talked about when we were instead of telling students they pass or fail or get an a or you know where are they on a rubric because then it provides might what what mike did a great job with our with our middle school and high school staff that were
281in attendance and it's like instead of it saying can we start to get to the idea of what's our end what do we want to learn and where are we on a process of learning so these rubiks are so powerful because they do give you an opportunity to think about you know do some self reflection we can also do some self some whole team assessment to determine really where we're at you know i i try to be really in tune with you on this process of of how we govern and where are we at in that process and and i need to do a better job sometimes probably be an understanding and and being that teacher that supports that that's that's going back to the governance core and the other thing i had in my
282head is not there so i too yeah actually that's that's actually where i was gonna go thank that did you just hit me back to where i was going right so what's interesting about this if you think about if you're a newly elected or newly selected selected or newly placed board member go to those people that i think would probably be great board members that are so passionate and advocate advocating at those meetings but they they would walk in and they would not know how to do any of this there's a way to do some of that that before they run so but we had a seat vacant and we had someone that was going to run and i went and actually had she actually asked to have ic with me at the end of
283the meeting and having ice tea with that person and explaining what we do as a board she goes i don't want to do that i mean seriously she understood that she understood that she wanted to come in and disrupt i'm going to come in and get my way and i said you're one of seven right i'm like if if that's what you're thinking then you're gonna have a real uphill because there's six more of us and that's not the way the system works but what do you mean that's not the way it works and so i think that there's a piece for it for individuals that it's important that they understand because a lot of folks that do come in think that that they're going to come in and change individually change and this transparency
284is about a shared governance team yeah just so you just so you know especially we have two offices open next year um and if only two people of people run then i don't worry about right but if folks are running against uh or in a proposition right i i will actually treat them while they're running like a board member the reason why is not no other reason but i'll have i'll have the i'll have a meeting with them about the upcoming agenda i'll start to get them started so that they understand that so let's say let's say that there's a you two are writing there's two other people running each speech yesterday i'm going to add two more meetings on a monday right before the board meeting right and i'll take advantage of teaching how
285we do this um that's and that's something i've always done is because as soon as they are running there's the possibility that they're going to be a board member and i want them to experience that through that of course it's not always it's actually much more difficult than with the board members because the board members are versed in all these things but you start to teach right so i think we'll do a much better job in the future of onboarding and preparing and and really those folks will get an immediate copy of the board's protocols um ford's goal and award priorities um and we'll work through that and explain why so so but yeah actually i do respect us to do some level of book study every year i don't know if we'll do every
286you know every month we'll have a just depending on what we decide but the governance core book i would do like again i'm i'm not hoping this right but let's say the two of you are no longer on the board and i got two brand new quarterbacks i'll do the governance quote except i appreciate your commitment to that to educating um you know members of the public who want to be on the board i mean it's huge that's it's a huge amount of commitment like you said the time the time and energy you have to put into that up front i know it pays off oh yeah but i also think it's just it's i just commend you for doing it because i i ran back in 2007 and i had to kind of insist
287on you know i had to insert myself if you end up sitting there like if you aren't i mean to me and i know that there's very thoughts around this those monday meetings before board meeting to me are are so important and i know that you know sometimes they're not as valuable as others but it's it's first and foremost we're coming together with two board members just just being together just that alone then going over the agenda you know that's just hey so that we're having conversation um when i sit down with these these folks before we come to a court meeting we who do i know some of you all don't love this but we do rehearsals right part of that is is all preparation to be really what we want to do in
288the border yeah well after i've met with you on mondays i'll say hey by the way andrea there's this question make sure you know you're answering it there right and it and then it so we have this long system that provides that we're always thinking and we're always working on what was important to you what we hear you're concerned about what your questions are and so when we sit down and they go over their their preparation for what they're about to present you i mean we're we're oh yeah that's it hey make sure you add this i hear you say that and and they can talk about those things but they feel that much more prepared too right at first are you expecting to always do those rehearsals and so on so let me what
289do you guys think do you think we need to continue to do rehearsals i think it is helpful even if it's an abbreviated to some extent version of what i'm what is going to happen because um it does highlight a question that might come up like you know if todd asked me a question i can i can insert that information then because sometimes i think andrea and i are so immersed in whatever the topic is that we forget about how incomprehensible it might be [Laughter] [Music] and so you know it all sounds great to me i'm like living it but but to that point um it helps to have somebody ask you a question to make it more comprehensible because the reason we're giving that information is so that people understand what we're doing right
290so you don't want to give information um or a presentation that and i know i have done this a couple of times where everybody just looks at me and i'm like nobody understood [Music] and even still you know because anna marie will come in and i'll be like that's a lot and i'll say okay that was a lot right and i'll say it but to get you your question um it's not about trust that i trusted or not coming into the room it's about making sure that we've thought thoroughly through what we need to say to the board who the community needs to hear that we're all on the same page that there's this com you know so i would want to give you the impression that it's it's it's about let me say this
291we expect our teachers and not all do this is to lessen to be thorough in their thinking about what they're going to be teaching that day and how they're going to make sure that that lesson gets gets learned and how we're going to know it's learned it to me it's the same level of preparation for board it's not just hey we need to cover this no are we are we thinking about what we want to make sure that the public hears the board understands um and and that so going to the monday meetings is that and this new structure that i wanted to get off of tuesdays to get to to thursdays you get your board packing on a friday and you have the weekend if you have time to get through it then monday
292if you've got questions and i'm going to hear them number one those questions you're having some the public might be as well right because you are representing the public and then when we're sitting down um then we get to do that work now i i don't sometimes i'll let uh dr cohen meet with her team and they'll present to her now you know because she's getting so that she's taken on that role and i don't always have to right because as an associate superintendent that's you know i i see when you have the term superintendent i see hey this is your this is your governor this is their yeah we've talked about the six of us being governments right and i didn't want them to because they're so busy to be in our book studies
293but they're reading the book they're moving through it they're they're gay you know gaining that ground because this is our governance right and and like um and going back to the trust piece and some of this when you when when we first started and i gave and i said here's the protocols and you guys agreed to them well i knew you wouldn't understand how to necessarily navigate through that and so i was very cautious about you going out and meeting with staff or teams right because you'll push the envelope a little bit and all of a sudden we're going to go down that wrong path towards the governance structures and core but now i'm like no i want you guys to feel comfortable meeting with them and asking have any questions for them but i
294also don't want because their time my time is you guys right my time is the our leaders our community and you guys their time is their their their different departments and the materials so i always want to be very careful and cognizant of their time as well as our principals because they're busy people you know so the board and the superintendent are in the shared governance the board is to define the what gets done the superintendent and his leadership team is the house that's that's that those lanes are just really important in the process for how it moves forward well i just wanted to address your question what animal recent was saying as well i agree with her sometimes like especially in the financial aspects i get way into the weeds and to help get
295the layman's terms but it helps to me educate us and help us educate my director financial services who's gonna do presentations so we can think of okay what would the board ask well i think it was a great exercise not that we did miss you todd but for anna marie and i to meet with the board members oh absolutely and so it was a great opportunity and it's educating us more right and so i think that's really important is that he's mentoring us to think like him and think in those ways where we're not so layman's terms like okay we have to make sure the community understands this we need to make sure the board understands we need to make sure the staff understands this and sometimes because we're so in the leads it's hard
296to address all that at the time when you're doing the presentation yeah i was going to just say use the metaphor lesson plan if you teach three periods of u.s history by the time you get to the third period whatever you're whatever you're doing that class probably gets the best teaching because you now do not leave anything out once again i'll just go on my own personal experience of being on the board there's nothing more frustrating to sitting up there and i'm confused i have no idea what you're talking about or what direction we're going and so forth and so on um and but i'm polite i'm not gonna say stop i don't understand what you're talking you know i don't want to embarrass you so i understand that and we've been in those meetings
297where we've been all confused okay and then we got to go back and and sort of fix it so just think about everything we've done today is about communication how well are we communicating to the public how among ourselves and so forth and so on i i'm a believer in practice i think practice makes perfect and so i encourage you guys to continue that i look forward every time you speak to the board um i always try to be prepared to ask you a question or call you and say this doesn't quite measure up and so forth and so on so yeah i think you should continue that yeah again i appreciate it to me it's not necessarily about the rehearsals no no no no practice it's communication communication it's communication you're practicing communicating and
298the more you practice it the better you get at i can remember being a first year teacher and sometimes being really flustered like oh my gosh i don't think i i don't think i did a very good job that i think you know the result the main result uh you know i i i would be much more interested in just seeing these these meetings that we ever had before because we're actually talking about stuff that's like news well you think about the structure in my friend we just recently had a conversation in uh regular all district cabinet this is executive cabinet with shannon the district cabinet about information discussion in action about how we must follow that process because because of certain aspects we're talking about here right and of course you know i got
299after all of our team a little bit about making sure this that we we can't scoot around this there are you know and then when we do why why would people but you know it's like i love that that uh both andrea and anna marie feel comfortable to share their thing that's important i think for me this the practice process of presenting to the board i actually had a hard time with even though i had nothing to do with it but sitting like i rely very heavily on body language and so for me when people are reading off a script i can't read your body language i can't see your personality and um i guess in some ways it makes it a little bit um black and white and i like to try to stay
300in the gray so i've had to do a lot of extra to for me to be able to fit into how things are presented because i do take things in differently and you know but then i've talked to like certain people that like principles right now with a single focus like i saw the presentation and i didn't i wasn't like in love with it just certain verbiage um labels um because i don't i know it this might be me in dreamland but i want to see us always using words that are positive um and i don't want to see like negative words in presentations as a title but it's funny because as like much as like todd's like yeah i meet with everyone they present and now it's like shifting a little bit which is
301uh that makes me stoked to hear that because that tells me as high as anyone is in a particular career you guys are still growing learning developing and which is important in a school district to model that behavior but when i met with a particular principal about the presentation i didn't realize until i was talking to this principal how they really needed the practice they like presented and then they went back to their desk and like whatever they had to do and you know and i just mostly was hung up over one slide that was one word and because you know for some particular people um okay so for me as like living in poverty single mom i like i'm huge into paying it forward i want our town to create opportunities so that our
302kids don't live my life in terms of struggling and struggling and so you know when i was talking to this principal i'm like if you're if someone looks at our agenda and only looks at your slide and doesn't like show up to the board meeting or what now they're recorded like they're gonna look at that and be like oh wow so these items are an issue they're a struggle for this particular school and so when he when this principal and i were talking like you know my perspective was different because a lot of people don't watch our board meetings they just like look through i do the same thing even with like other entities in town if i look at their agenda i'm like am i interested in these topics does it apply to what
303i'm doing at the school district now and when really if i showed up for the presentation i probably would have gotten like way different perspective and so you know as much as i was like why aren't they practicing and i don't like you know someone holding their paper reading line to line but now like it's really made people a little more sure-footed i've noticed and you know like when i've had to have conversations with either actually any three of you i can like now capture a different perspective because the deliveries are all different so it's like tackling so many different avenues of learning our agenda and what we're doing as a board um i just wanted to share my first experience of presenting at the board here was the electrical bus versus the four diesel
304buses my first presentation ever i wish i could have practiced we walked into a room full of people protesting it we put it on consent agenda and it was oh my gosh it was horrifying well and that's going to this point i know you guys need to move a song i remember and i i'm really grateful to hear what you just said so thank you because i know that you've been like you know they're reading at us they're they're really they they're they're trying not to read that to you but they're also trying to make sure that they they cover what they need to cover and they've they've written this and prepared this and they've thought through it and there's a lot of work that's on that back side right and and for like the
305single focused plans every single school has that's presented to you has already presented and had a lot of feedback for them to think about and and that feedback and just thinking about the other day with elevated which elevated was so good and that we were sitting over there and they were over here and i pointed i said guys they're not going to understand what you're talking about on this piece and i was pointing to you guys and then i said let alone our community so you right and so i'm thinking about that regularly because they walk in and then there's now like bijous was pretty depth intensive and like you could use theirs and go god what was their single focus and their single focus really comes down instructional practices so you know but i
306kept saying you guys will be really clear on that right you got to because you have a lot you're sharing you've got to be really clear on it so it just provides that i really appreciate that that that example because how how terrifying i could think about that being for me and i'm pretty veteran at this right i mean i've been pretending to be boards for a long time you know i used to stand at the podium before i was a suit i was there i'm just i'm with you you know i felt your pain i told you afterwards i felt your pain yeah what a great conversation i know it's probably off of where you're going but i'm going to circle back to this because of governance mindset and governance we just had a
307conversation about government's cohesion and governance mindset if you really think about it we just did that around this topic of some structure that we've put in place but it's this it's this concept of how we've structured things that we create this conversation we create this this component of how we're thinking about uh what are our priorities and how do we approach those priorities and how do we how do we think about making sure that all of this is happening in a very effective and efficient manner with a governance mindset in place at all times in the cohesion of that unity i just want to make one i'll just make one observation one comment one sentence and i think this captures everything that we've been doing and simply this is that the people in this room
308including you we've we've made a commitment to good governance and i think we just keep it that simple and we just keep on going it doesn't matter what where we're at here we've made that commitment and we're going to stay on that path and we just continue to do that a commitment to good governance i think it takes care of itself you know and there was this growing realization perhaps [Music] um of the year what's going to happen next year next year's just unfold which is kind of what we're seeing a lot of at this point in board meetings we're getting a lot of informational things it's not decisions at this point it's the so as you move forward one of the things i would suggest is when you come back to reading coherence and
309you have your next meeting that you do your monday and you do that week is is bring this with you or or make copies of this again and then jot down what do you need i mean what else do you need so you continue progressing what are some of the skills that you might need because everyone's on a different place and a different plane with where they're at and that may be a conversation that you have with dr cutler in the sense of where where are you personally and what else might you need in the realm and i think about manner in the sense of being able when you have angry disgruntled individuals coming how are you handling that are you prepared as a word president and are you prepared as a board to deal
310with those not just as an example because it's happening a lot these days it could be any um but it's just it's that piece of utilizing the rubric again as just a place that's simple that your own agreement that solid governance is important to you it's now how do we continue on that path of continuing work what's the next book what are you doing they're those kind of pieces and i'm gonna turn back over to mr walsh oh hi hi i'm back okay um thank you uh so good the rest of the conversation today is it's not separate from what you've just been talking about this morning that's the healthy part right we always say before we start diving into the smart and spend some time in healthy i love the healthy conversations i've been
311jotting notes for a few things based on the conversation so what we're going to do is going to look very familiar um we're going to jump back into did you change the yeah i got control of everything again wow we are going to jump on to paige yeah we're in the area of 21. okay and by the way i i made a copy of board's goal and and priorities and of course the key areas are under those priorities so what we're going to do is is uh washington's repeat we've done it before we're going to look at accomplishments and uh basically again you have this hey there we go there's the controller uh so a question about what's worked well over the past 12 months you've been doing a lot of that conversation already so
312i'm going to set my timer for six minutes as soon as i find it so six minutes and you can just dot your thoughts to those answers or whatever comes into your mind again those are just prompts just a way to kick start your thinking if you don't need them don't worry about them it's literally giving you a chance to think through what are the things that you that you feel like have done well over the past year and we'll just roll through this rather quickly because i am mindful of the 330 goal it means you don't have to have one for every single one you may have five for one none for another just this you're just stim starters so what we're going to do is just simply answer the big question what has
313worked well over the past 12 months again this is the option to review word and assess where you are not right or wrong good or bad it's not a judgment from us again so six minutes basically to answer that overarching question of what has worked well and the rest of it those are just props to kind of help you think of some places they work great if they don't don't worry about them really looking for answers to that topic [Music] verification page 22. so questions you um four minutes you selecting your responses in about one minute uh one item off of your lips and then we'll go all the way around the room here you get to give us two because you get together next one and then go back around all right more teamwork
314all right next agenda review with board members okay i have the third one um one i'm really happy about is his commitment to professional development for learning and growth um yeah just that's fine that's hard i was going to go on but you're right um give us that bullet point how do you wear it because she's only got so much room so give us the bullet point and then we'll get back to school discussion action i'd call it the system the agenda it would i think by the way if anyone who shares a bullet point that you want to know more about what they mean that is just simply asking me to put a star next to that and then we'll create space for more fuller conversation this will keep us on time i want
315to get us to the 3 30 mark on time creation of district-wide vision and mission more stabilized financial position i'm about the numbers [Laughter] i love it oh gosh what do you focus on um development of cohesion vertically and horizontally those two lines are one yeah she's she was asked to do two i know i'm just making sure [Music] because i thought that could be a long-winded one and then she'd have another one but that's okay comments wreaking havoc on my ability to write mistakes um promotion of accountability and ownership gross goals for all cultivation of self-reflection i think one of the things like what we did to raise morale actually really having november actually i'm trying to go through everyone seems to have here yeah just one of mine no no i don't want
316one of you um no here's what i'll give you this i'll give you this i think what has worked well is that uh i i feel that the revealing a sense of belonging for every child in every school okay that's that social emotional piece okay i do have that [Laughter] getting kids back in classrooms yeah yeah i'm gonna steal that um and i'll put um the focus of each child um i would say problem solving was that up there right now all right next um hiring hiring hiring a that's me i only have one last thing but i didn't really develop it too much i i did write down the governor's mindset means being a systems thinker i was thinking in terms that i'm really happy that we're going into a system of governance i'm
317not sure how to put it i just threw a bunch of words together that's okay mindset uh arrow to system yeah that's perfect perfect that's why you're good that's why you're up there um you can say past if you don't have no i was thinking cap in the budget you're killing me you're killing me over there that's attention to feedback moves you could probably just write metrics but both opinion and data i like digital movement yeah i'll go with um the conversations around map data it's really grown over the years collaborative leadership okay what todd meant to say was systems of measurement [Laughter] you know i could always leave it for you to have a lot more advanced words there's value in rehearsal um i think that was different mine was focused on that they
318were actually talking all right now okay another one oh another one okay i have to be another number one sorry um staff ratios and cohort enrollment projections yeah that's a good one that's a good one that was a huge piece for what we i've addressed them differently so for example somebody sets up about our leadership leadership but the focus on quality of leadership on a quality leadership team identity okay i want to add something about elevate just having that just having a cream and putting that together because that's about english language learning language development okay okay um i'm going to combine two but there's related development of a plan to update curriculum and the adoption of new health education and we adopted the health education curriculum yes so we developed a plan to update all
319kinds of curriculum like several and then um collaborating with other um town entities like the two by and partnerships thank you collaboration though that's that's two by two followers and then you get a second one if you have one um i say um trust and balancing um remaining consistent on protecting student and staff health through token testing encouraging vaccines and masking for results consistent focus on health yeah you could just put in the princess diverse and valuable alignment of bell cap actions to the vision transparent and open communication okay and mine are already all up there back around if anyone has any just yeah i i wrote a communication plan and it's implementation no that was my last one mine is related to communication too but i put improved this had to do with us
320as a board improve communication through better listening and mistake uh i was just thinking the district listens more and is open-minded more open-minded right anyone else going up here all right [Music] professional development and growth um process and procedures input discussion action cohesive plans and systems creation of a district wide vision admission uh increased stabilized resources dollars strategic leadership um development of a cohesive cohesion of vertical and horizontal alignment promotion of accountability and ownership growth goals for all cultivation of growth mindset pb in november instead of august sense of belonging that all schools getting kids back in the classroom whole child focus problem solving hiring kind of retiring growth mindset that moves to system thinkers um the work of the elk actually being focused um attention and feedback to feedback groups data conversations collaborative leadership
321systems and measurement are articulated dab ratios and cohort projections focus on quality leadership further development of district identity elevate elr focused development of curriculum plan and adoption of a health education plan uh program collaboration collaborating with other tenant entities trust and balancing consistency um for help i need to cover the double vaccination that you stay consistent in the whole increase student and teach your voice alignment of ldap to the vision of mission transparent and open communication actually having a communication plan improved board communication and that the district listens and is open-minded so a very brief question is there any one of those topics that you need more explanation been fantastic congratulations a nice nice list of accomplishments let's move on um the apologies for pushing but i'm going to remind you i'm very wonderful so
322i would like to go to the next conversation which is let's look at that all right here we go so the conversation around what i refer to commonly is disappointments or missed opportunities just the same process here i'll set the timer for six minutes your job just answer so we'll added changes are done differently what are those areas of disappointments whichever way is the easiest way for you to think of it the goal is simple it's just genre we're just going to list them the same way we just did whatever accomplishments so six minutes i found foreign oh i'm forgotten we'll have a conversation about this later mr cover all right during recess we'll talk about this there's definitely a playful tease that we have with each other um two i think mine did too
323didn't mind as well there was no other rules involved [Laughter] is we will gather again i'm going to remind you we just want the bullet point for right now because amy doesn't have that much room for mark and she's tired hands going into cramps and i don't want to hear this the whole drive back home for three hours okay so here's the bullet point stop every hour and get ice or something [Music] it's a bullet point and then if you even have a question about what's the story we'll ask amy to star that and then we'll go back and get the full full transcript but for right now we just want the bullet point so here's how we're going to start he goes first who who is the next birthday in the room who has
324the next birthday what day of march i'm 26. all right congratulations you get the beginning oh this is great well i'm just going to take the obvious let's get this elephant out of the room the pro the last part what what were the things that slowed us down just put kobit okay kobet is is our unwanted step child there's fire in there well no i'm just gonna take it there i'm gonna take the older problem which is coving okay so i'll start with cobin now larry you get to decide did we go to your right or did we go to your left oh no you know what these two young ladies need to have a little time to take a little deep breath i'm gonna go to why did you get offended if someone calls
325you a lady i've never understood um when i say this i'm not trying to add information but i would say i really took it from the place of change or do differently or add and so when you hear mine assure clarity of purpose and actions so increase that yeah and make assurances of clarity of purpose and actions again things that slowed us down was a caliber fire and i didn't come at this um strategic emphasis on professional goals reactive what she's writing on since disappointments and that doesn't seem like what would you add it all depends on how people think about it how they approach it i've used different language and it's helped some folks so it's based on one of the things that we're disappointed on that we could have added a change let
326me let me give an example of mine right so and it kind of has a pattern here but i i said you know i was thinking about like the 4x4 right and i was sitting there going you know what i think we we didn't have complete clarity of the purpose and the actions obviously there and created them so it's like we got to be really clear of what the intent is what the actions are what's the purpose so i went that's one example so i could have said the disappointment was how that process went but to me thinking forward towards the change or do differently is making certain before we move forward that people understand and are assured of the understand the clarity and of the actions of the purpose for the purpose of the
327action center so when i've done this in the past i used to talk about disappointments and some folks were bothered by the nourishment we weren't really spending so much time trying to talk from the disappointment i walked away from that word and said well great what would you have had to change here's what i would have done differently right and they well the words came out so for me it's i don't worry so much to just say it's typically based in a disappointment that's how this list was generated and so i started changing look it was just a missed opportunity to be lost i'm not judging you about it it is just giving you a chance to speak it in the truth and add that language as well let me just say one more thing
328on that so then how do we verse when we like we went over this list and really didn't have any questions we're probably gonna have questions on what were you thinking when you said that i don't know i know we kind of yeah um and you get two by the way well i do oh because we started okay so i'm good good i've got my list um i'm just trying to figure out how to frame the words so let's just say performances so incre and what i really try to say is increase spectators at sporting and performance events right that's just a disappointment because of code right people didn't things didn't happen performances didn't happen music art theater sporting events more access to expanded learning opportunities and this is for students and families it's like
329the work of the family resource center parent quality education um things like that i like boys and girls club i'm having more access get those things uh support and staff fatigue come to you no no i we got a new system all right sorry what was that rigidity in mind okay stacking shortages realistic time frames [Music] you try to do it in um meetings by saying time for clarifying questions and so on but somehow we have to keep pushing that conversation respectful i think it's called civil um i'll do one um let me just give you a quotation this is something that i would love for us to add i don't teach subjects i teach students everybody else took i got to find another one go ahead you go is it no it's called it's
330coming it's coming again soon um [Music] yeah um again something i'm going to change right is highlight progress and successes lack of buy-in is [Laughter] oh uh respect and conversations and meetings um increased or volunteers at schools um family nights safety and asking questions in open session [Music] you're right yeah i'm fine i was more worried i gotta find one now because some of them might have been out there um oh gosh okay give me a chance to get something else because more celebration um somehow this idea that we're being transparent that doesn't necessarily mean that this is a democratic process which is going to rise um and unity or your decision right right so what is transparency for what are we actually communicating when we're trying to be transparent versus democracy okay okay that's
331good i i'm up okay yeah okay here we go um after listening today i would come up with we need education reform that promotes fairness you get to learn oh no go ahead i would i killed it yes [Music] well i've got one more i wrote and this one probably is going to be like more love and care that's good i'm yeah what she meant to say was uh yeah um i put fully embracing safe and trusted food safe got it it goes share your feelings i'm going to say feeding kids in sport programs increasing student connections to adults um more information attached to agendas okay i think more mental health support um see i think some of my verbiage might be the same i feel like our offices need they lack youthful energy i
332think we need more light-heartedness and then my last one is uh safety awareness it goes back to the equity piece and the barriers and so forth and so on a lot of times we get politicians who all of a sudden say we want this educational reform but don't really have any experience whatsoever of what how public education or what it's about i just want simplistic education reform where it's fair for all okay fair for all and i think we're running into this right now with zoning and all this where we used to have helicopter parents hovering around now i call them snowplow parents where they just want to get the snow get it all the way out of there and no obstacles for their children but it's about their children it's not about all of
333us making it fair and that and that that's what i'm thinking in terms let's let let's make sure that anytime we talk about educational reform that it has a huge scale of fairness for all versus just a couple people build positive energy so what i'm really talking about there is that it's safe when people feel threatened to blame other people and complain and i'm wondering how do we change that general tone the major reaction is not to say no yeah the reaction is to say oh more or something like this that's not easy one of the only two that it looks like got stuck never start are there any others that right this moment you're thinking i'd love to know a little more about what you mean by covet i haven't heard of this cover
334thing talk [Laughter] and like my hands actually got sweaty at first like my heart rate went up when we got to this um because i actually didn't look ahead even though it's on the same page um but i feel like i mean we have a lot of work even though we're actually doing a lot um i just think it's the district i think a lot of things might help with our um disappointed list if our energy was more playful youthful like you know sometimes that's kind of missing in our offices um it's all the pressure that the laughter's gone you know and i don't know how to fix it i mean if we're not here to solve that right now right well but let me get some clarity on it because i'm going to tell
335you um i think we laugh a lot right i mean i think that when we think about our work so i would have to ask like for the observation of it like right but but i'm going to go to where i'd like well i wrote you know we really need to make sure that we are you know celebrating and and thinking about the successes we have and not about the failures um that we really need to show that through you know the care and the passion and love for folk for the work right but when we talk because we're pretty jovial um as a as a group from my experience and that's why i was looking so so you know are we thinking more you know what what does that look like is i guess
336i i would just add this mike don't take this personal i didn't i disregarded disappointments because disappointments to me is just too negative what i liked about the question is what would you add okay that's all i was looking at okay by the way i don't take it personal but that was literally why i moved away from the phrase disappointments because it created a lot of negative connotations ran away from them okay i'm good let's talk about what you would agitate with all disrespects especially some things that have happened in my life in the last few weeks i need all the positive stuff that i can have okay so disappoint but but but my point is my point is this is that you know like for example i don't teach subjects i teach students that's
337what we talked about today i would love to be that the philosophy of this district you i think you emphasized that we got a long ways to go on that and so i wrote it down as you were as you were speaking and said you know i'm going to add that somewhere and then here we go i'm going to add add it here and so forth and so on so you know i there's a lot to add but i think we got to keep it in in that realm of staying positive yeah you know going back to to what you said uh you're what you listen granny i think that in my reflection is that we're all so busy there's all so much happening and code and masks and fire that it feels heavy sometimes
338right um because i think that we do have lightheartedness i mean you know when anna marie kind of said well what todd really said i mean she's pretty she pretty she has those one-liners a lot right and we laugh we juggle and and we're able to kid and like we tease each other about the shoes we're wearing i mean you know there's some but i think what happens is that there's a lot to the work we're doing and so sometimes that might feel a burden and and and maybe that's what we're seeing and that's why i in my in because i'm trying to you know like relate to it is that like you know sometimes we have to just identify man we're doing pretty good you know celebrate some successes and progress that we're making
339and not be so uh because we we have a long ways to go like going back to this thing it's like you know i think there is a realization for some of the board if not all man this work towards change is really hard and so then that gets heavy too right oh we're so far away from success that we want and then we go you know what maybe you gotta change that a little bit and say but look where we've progressed to let's celebrate the the small wins or the small small successes and maybe that's really what brings out the more the celebration right because you know we've been doing much more as leadership that you don't see every leadership council we do um unbelievable we call them unbelievable nominations and people submit like
340things they've seen from leaders and we read them out and then the win the winner of the of the unbelievable rock from the week before selects from what they hear and passes the unbelievable rock on and it goes on to to their desk for the week you may or may not know this but we have the academy award for fortnite um and uh anna marie and andrea have have held on to that academy award because it goes around you know depending on who we thought had the greatest performance of the board night so we we actually are doing those things as a staff trying to you know create some of that but you may not see that right well you're in absolutely you're inviting criticism you know you're going to hear it you care we
341hear deeply you don't have clarity really you can make a hypothesis you know being constant the feedback that we get is is largely negative and it's and the work we care so much about what we want to do it well you don't know if we are doing it well because it takes so long and you just you know keep friends of mine like look at what you do so i i mean i think that that's just it i think there's a lot more playfulness that happens like in classrooms and in offices but when we step in to the room there is everybody turns on the professional you know trustees in the room and it was kind of fun to be at talaq the other day because i got to see some of the teachers be
342playful because they were really trying to get because it's a new group a kid a lot of a lot of new kids that came in at the half year mark and they're trying to get them out of the shell you know so they're being goofy and silly and it was nice to witness a little of that but so often we don't see that because when we step in they're like oh here's the trusty and that's body language too okay like like you're saying you step into it you mention body language okay i mean i love you i i love to laugh okay um and you and i and we get after each other and sort of chuckle around i like to get after you guys a little bit and you guys i get you to
343laugh but the bottom line is i think it's food for thought let's look at this and let's look at let's look at maybe maybe we've hit on to something that's pretty good here maybe our body language causes some of this to you know seriousness right and you know i think we should all be reflected maybe in that same so this is [Music] i think individually you can do i mean you and i laugh all the time with each other she makes fun of me all the time i i don't have a problem let me go back to something that laurie just said though that is really true there and i've tried to explain that to board members throughout my years and sometimes don't understand when you walk in the room you're a board member and
344it's sometimes intimidating or they're concerned why are you there they get tired they get nervous yeah they get stiff it really is a true statement and it happens when the superintendent does too right she pretends here right why is he here they're all going to straighten that right and and so because i related to this i'm like i really want you know it's been so hard in this first couple years of being here because we've been behind masks we've been behind zoo and and and we've also got a lot of work and a lot of pressure to do a lot of stuff some of it because code some of it's just so much pressure on us to to navigate but just use masks for example i mean i got an email last night and from
345a parent said my child is done wearing a mask and they will be at your school on monday the 28th and they will not be wearing a mask i just got that last time well understand a couple things all right publicly let me say it i don't want him to have to wear a mess but guess what it's a california mandate and guess what our insurance company will not cover us if we don't require masks because it's it's a california mandate so i don't have an option right and so it becomes this burden and so it makes is heavy and i think we've been operating a lot underneath that and as your superintendent right trying to get to know the community you know um it's not been a normal time like you know go to
346rotary meets where they're on zoom go to go to you know these things that you try to add foundation so that you so you're on a zoom you're on a little box there's no there's no building relationship it's really a hard time so i think that you're all i mean getting back to i think there's a rainy thing that's true about this and i think it's an awareness because i think that we have to work to lighten the load i'm not talking about the workload but you know the load that sits on top of our shoulders that puts so much pressure on us right and you know i i say this to all of you i don't mind it because i think it's my job and i try and matter of fact what i i'd
347really try hard and probably not as much andrea and anna marie and i feel bad sometimes because they burden some of the slogans but i try to take as much burden off of people as possible and i'll take on certain things of course they when i take on those things other things go to that right so this is there's heavy burdens on these things i i think that it is about trying to light and i think we've been when i say thanks i'm looking at you guys to maybe i'm not right i i think we've really been working hard to do that with our teams it's that getting that out to the schools right and and and some of this is tense in one of our schools i think there's this interpretation that something's being
348done to them right right and and that's where i went to making sure that there's real clarity of what we're doing and the purpose behind it and how we're going to you know because i think there's just misinterpretations the word perceptions came up so i i just think that it's it's just a it's a really good awareness because i think there was a thing back here perfect segway so if these are your accomplishments and your disappointments the rest of the conversation i have zero concerns about being able to fit it into one hour because it literally comes down to do the guidelines still stand if you have if you keep focusing on these guidelines building relationships among diverse stakeholders oops that was a conversation that came through a lot today um having laser focus on
349purpose and direction i'm pretty sure i heard something about that providing direct clear and concise communication i'm pretty sure you've talked about that one too so if those are the guidelines that remain do they still help you increase the accomplishments and and uh shrink the disappointments so turn talk to your neighbor talk to your elbow buddy for two minutes do they still hold hold up and then we'll have you talk across the room so two minutes talk to each other guidelines only you know i know [Music] just you know what i mean so it wasn't me um yeah not that we had to do it i was thinking oh maybe that came across wow instead of disappointments because it doesn't have that negative connotations what and what could we collectively do more of or better
350yeah sorry all right that was time so please direct your conversation across the room because the question is do these guidelines still hold or is there a need to change any first how others you feel about the guidelines do they still hold uh will they continue to give you more accomplishments and fewer uh challenges all right so kind of real quick just summaries these are the guidelines we came up with last year right that drove us to our priorities right okay our goal in privacy okay all right thank you uh i i just had this aha moment while i was talking to brandy so i want to share it is that we looked at those guidelines that they feel like these are places that we as individuals i think and as as a board have
351done well on and we've seen improvement across like individuals each of us as well as the group i'm just wondering if we need more guidelines or a different guideline in addition to that list to help us with our goal and i think that's because our goal on the one hand is focused on the last line about um embracing you know all student outcomes and trying to improve those outcomes but the first part about being a strong team that builds a culture of shared leadership um we were both reflecting about how that we could probably improve in that area of really um supporting each other and valuing each individual's um perspective and what they bring to the group you know the notion that we are a team of diverse i mean that's sort of like that
352first bullet build relationships among diverse stakeholders i guess if we built relationship amongst each of us more in terms of our diversity amongst each of us as individuals on the board as a team and recognizing that a strong team means we respect each other's opinions and individual approaches and trying to figure out how to build that into this shared leadership so if i hear you correctly then you're saying that first of all it means addition language yeah each of us is individuals maybe that that's just an idea that and that was just like this sort of came out of what we were talking about so so just clarifying it sounds it sounded like you thought there needed to be another bullet but you're just saying expand the first bullet we it could be i'm just
353suggesting there might be another bullet that has more to do with um mutual respect amongst board members and improved um improvements in this concept of a culture of shared leadership you know basically it's it's sort of team it's more team building you know it comes back to trying to connect those dots those three bullets to the goal and i think that was just where uh brandi and i were discussing how sometimes uh you know we don't always necessarily as individuals feel heard or you know we're building our confidence as a team and towards our our external goals but sometimes there's still this little like i'm not sure being treated with respect or you know or hurt in as individuals so making sure i have some uh just one piece of clarity we're talking about the
354board on this statement or are we talking about the whole district-wide type of shared leadership okay i just want to make sure specifically because we imagine that that might i mean i could i could i could because i'm sure their staff would feel the same way right at some point that they they see that goal but they don't necessarily um see it then themselves as individuals being treated with respect or as part of that shared leadership so i imagine that i'm just imagining that because i don't deal with it but just kind of what we've seen from some of them well we took these guidelines of goal that we wrote there and and created this if you'll remember right right and and that's how that came about i appreciate it thank you my feeling was
355that we've made a lot of progress on all of them and then i also zero in on the first one as being the one that that probably still needs the most work going forward because that says stakeholders but what that statement was really thinking about continued building here and i just want to say i i i think we could always continue to do this right i think it's ongoing yet i've been reflecting a lot today on how much further along we are in this conversation today than we were when we did this last year yeah maybe i'm misinterpreting that first when i'm thinking diverse stakeholders you know we're building we have this spiderweb out around us right and we're maybe all together in the little center of the spider web but we have to connect
356everyone in this community for this to go forward at all easily yeah so um diverse stakeholders to me was meaning you know our role as board trustees is also is just to make all of those we have to build that web we have to and we have to be able to bring that you know yeah i'll give each one i like that analogy of the spider web of just that we're these we we're these five points that come together but we represent you know all these different voices and we're trying to link all of them yeah yeah i i just have a word i guess a comment of of caution and or like fear maybe it's more that right is is i i really love the goal that we have right and taken from what's
357written up there to what we wrote wrote on our sheet here develop strong district-wide team that builds a culture of shared leadership and ownership of all student outcomes what i find oftentimes is that if we don't believe if we don't if we don't believe in something somebody said out there then we're shutting them out right sometimes i think we think about shared leadership is that doesn't mean that all of a sudden that we have to go believe in somebody else's statement right and i think we have this problem in our district a little bit like somebody said here's shared leadership that means you're going to listen to me right well yes but that doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to agree with what you said or do it your way and i think that gets
358lost sometimes um we talked about it in this way actually of just the and i was sort of i think i don't know i remembered it from last year but this notion that um it goes back to just the basic definition of collaboration right um that any one of us could like do this job by ourselves you know not necessarily well i mean we have a good idea as an individual to say this is the way we're gonna do it's my way the highway whatever and that's not what we're trying to do we're trying to do this with shared leadership inclusive inclusive and we all believe that by having everybody in the room everybody participating we're gonna have a better outcome so the better outcome is not you know anna marie's uh idea or your
359idea you know it is it's in the context of bringing everybody together and so it is the collective but what i worry about is there are people in the room i'm not just talking about this room about the high school room or this room or that that if it doesn't go their way yeah then it's then and then we're not part of the collective no it's it's a little bit more than we're in a culture now nationally states county and also in our district i'm offended by what you just said or what you've done so i'm right you're wrong when at times you can be offended but it isn't the right thing to do okay i mean think about it well this is my problem though my problem with that is that when you sit
360down and you try to have a disclose and a dial and people discuss stuff we're saying that we don't have to have a vote we're just discussing whatever whatever whatever issue that sometimes when people leave the room they're not going to give up on it they've been offended and now i'm in the right and they're in the wrong and this is one of the problems that i wish we could fix in our culture but i'm not sure we're going to well i'm going to say this and this is a statement i made the other day right this is my third superintendency i truly have not been spoken to by staff and or parents the way i've been spoken to here i've never experienced it had people stop not talk to me nicely but disrespectful it's
361really interesting and and i made a comment the other night and uh that that person was out of line and there was a statement made and remember well they have the right to their opinion well they didn't state their opinion like it was this was a collaborative process they started their opinion like they were the what they were right and we were wrong and and you are screwing up and and and again you go that's where i get worried when we think about this culture of shared leadership is that in some people's opinions her leadership means do what i tell you to do and if you don't then you're wrong and and i got to tell you um and i think that our our work as a the leadership team we actually do a lot
362of conversations to bring in ideas we try to build consensus but that doesn't necessarily mean that when we land on a decision that i even agree with because there was a recent decision that we made as a team that i was right but we worked through it because we did it but so sometimes even me right as a superintendent have to go okay the will of the team really feels this way i'm going to go ahead and do that um so i just i love this goal of ours i i mean when i look up here and i go we're a strong team that builds a culture of shared leadership and ownership of all student outcomes we are not that but i love the goal of developing a strong team and that if we reach
363that goal we're humming as a district but there is a caution to it right because um thursday night at the other one it was like where's this person coming from right um and and you go okay they're not understanding what shared leadership right right yeah i feel like that one of the risks when you have the idea of shared leadership can look like democracy and this is really not a democracy which is why every conversation has to be framed around um this is not a conversation about opinions it's a conversation that's based upon data information coming in and we're not as a group gonna like vote right you know it's just that that line is a little hard to navigate right it's i applaud shared leadership but i don't i don't expect everything's going to
364come off to a staff vote like no no we don't want to change that way well that's not like this is what i think started to happen with the 4x4 right yeah well i think to that point i mean the reality of this reality is we could change it forward by 41 change but what was taken was we don't do it my way then it's the wrong one but that's why you have to frame the conversation going into it or you're actually that's and that was why i said my statement um listed up there was we can assure having assurances of clarity of the purpose and the actions of what we're doing right because i think that you know i'm not saying there was or wasn't because really i wasn't in those meetings the whole
365time right but i think that's making sure here's what we're working on and here's how we're working towards it you know i often will say to the team hey in the end i got to make a decision in the end i've got to make a decision let me hear your thinking so that it can help it can inform my decision and and what people think well who makes you a decision maker or why should we bother i'm the superintendent right i mean i mean but and so it's kind of who makes you guys the decision maker the voters did the democratic process that put you in place made you the decision makers so it's just we have to frame it i think it's really important this is so and i worked for years where you
366know the goal was consensus but people would get all wrapped around the axles because there were too many community processes that they said we're gonna have we're gonna achieve consensus which is such a high goal and it's great if you can do it but so often you'd have this minority opinion or whatever and so it's so much better to walk into the room and be really clear like we may be working on consensus but we don't we don't really expect that that's going to happen so it's but we want your input and really define those words but i think that's going back to what yeah but i'm saying crystal clear about that yeah so we're looking for the win-win we're really looking to negotiate not we don't want losers at we don't want people to
367walk out without feeling like they lost right so we were that's part of why we are taking the time to truly list even if they're not respectful but i mean it would be nice if everybody could be but i'm just saying as leaders we are taking in input no matter what karma comes in and really trying to understand their perspective i know it's hard you take it personally whatever you want you want them to behave differently i'm just saying i i wasn't i was in public policy worked for a regulatory agency for 33 years nobody liked us and it's the point is is that you have to really truly understand to understand where people are coming from knowing that you can't please everybody but somehow working on a solution where they feel heard and they
368don't feel like a loser that they feel like somehow they um had some influence on the process and this is maybe impossible it doesn't always happen that you know you're not going to make them happy but if you can that's our goal again it's back to that you're not going to have complete consensus but if you can focus on a win-win solution and sometimes that's just giving them some little like 4x4 might be a good example where we're taking the time you know just slowing it down we're not you know whatever but there's just there's a way to hear people and try to um accommodate them it's not always i'm not saying it's easy or this can always happen but we used to use the word collaboration versus collaboration and as a regulators we were
369really good at collaborating collaborating because that's what we did we'd say the word send this civility to it that's why i'm showing you there's some uncivil ways that people have been sharing no right then they know what the culture is yeah we're not going to fix them we're not going to but we but we can be role models and hopefully improve something i've been trying to figure out because we are the democracy right we are the representative democracy and when you have these public meetings in a way you're kind of almost going around us unless we're all there because we're the ones that are supposed to be representing the voice of those people out there like how does this all fit yeah and actually i'm going to tell you that that's that's actually not how
370it fits and see that's that's one of the concerns i have about this right is because your job as a group of five isn't here and and there's real laws specific to that and um i am your voice whether you like this or not i am your voice to this public outside of this boardroom um for the whole you're your voice for just you outside of the sport i'm the voice of for the whole group out and and so i cautioned that that feeling like you had to be at all of them because the reality of it is is number one if you engage in conversation especially if there's two or more there's there's more than two of you there it could be seen as a meeting um obviously you guys didn't do that when
371we had three or more at any of these meetings and and it is my job to to represent back what we heard when we met with csea but we heard when we met was stea we heard when we met with parents we heard when i admit spoke to the chamber you know all these different things that i do because i did many more than just these four platforms right because i've been working to get this conversation out in all of the environments and when i say a comment like this the board had came to a consensus that they believe we should move forward and implement towards this law that was me speaking for all of you because of the actions and we didn't take an action on it but the the consensus you built in
372the border um gotta be really careful and a big part of it goes back tonight [Music] and that's where the trust of this body comes i want to do a specific example about thursday night those people weren't talking to me no they weren't and why was that because i had three board members and and yeah and so they were they were they were essence of trying to persuade three board members and you've got to be so careful about that now i think you have every right as a individual board member to attend right you do and i think if that you can make it then you get to that perspective but to think that you have to be that you have to count on me to report back [Music] i had a conversation with our
373attorney this week about brown act and the two two common comments came out one is perception of the of the brown act and then an actual violation of that and both are very dangerous but also if you actually violate the brown act there's consequences to it i did think a little bit about that um the thursday that one of the differences that happened out of the four meetings is that one we did sit closer to each other everybody whereas the other ones we were all over the room i mean and i did was kind of sitting there thinking the lunchroom at that at the last school it was set up weird though it's it's more intimate the way it was set up and but it was like you know sometimes you know three years on
374a board like i'm still learning to be a board member like my honestly this might sound so crazy but when todd came on as our superintendent and i went on a tour with him at one of the schools i literally left like i wanted to cry my head off because everybody acted so grown up it was like i didn't know any of the people that i knew and i even said to the principal i'm like what just happened with your stuff like what was going on and he said you're a trustee we are treating you professionally and i was like yeah i don't like that like i'm still a mom these people like i you know and that is it's a hard yeah it's like what i got to be a grown up now like
375i'm in the elementary school come on i mean that was like a true reality check for me in all honesty it's like okay we i have to be more aware of the rules and you know the thursday meeting it wasn't until we were basically being yelled at when i went oh shoot i forgot we're trustees we're all hanging out together well we were like in separate rows but it wasn't someone talking about it there was no violation there was no violation but with that said why i caution that you feel like well we should be out there we should be that's not the job and when you attend you have to be ready that folks are going to shift them talking to me or talking to staff and make sure you're here and you're hearing
376because you're the ones that really made a decision and i'm and where really these meetings were about was telling them what what what the what the challenge was what the solutions were looking at answering questions and getting feedback right which we don't i mean the reality of it for you guys it's great that you were there but that's that's that was the job of staff to do i only went to the first one because i was out of town but the concept was to educate right okay not advocate the problem we're running into now i'll go back to chapter five the book we're reading right someone can interpret that if we have three people and people are talking to them that they want micromanagement out of us you've heard us now i want you to
377vote i want you to do you go tell the superintendent yes you need to test your superintendent and i think we have to be very careful about that okay and you know you guys all know i i get on my bandwagon too when he started i asked every one of you let him do his job don't interfere and don't spend a lot of time taking his time the guy works ten plus hours a day okay so if you spend two or three or four hours with him in one day that means he's only got 60 to do what he's supposed to be doing and those are the things that i think are part of myself yeah but but that's but this that i'm telling the truth okay some of us spend you know you gotta
378think about this he is we hired him he's got to do a job and you know parents are parents i was a parent i i probably would have stepped some balance somewhere along there but the bottom line the bottom line is that we're going to have to make a decision here and i don't want to be precise perceived as a board that you know micromanages or this will be even worse for us that you're not listening to us you're only listening to him okay so let's make sure that that's clear about it we're getting back because i want you know going back to the guidelines and goal for a minute around this conversation you know using this conversation as the piece right is that um i really love what we came up with last year
379i i i ought to tell you and i think that as we drive towards end of today really knowing whether is is that it is kept capturing it and i and and i you must know and if you don't then i'm going to tell you every one of these things that's written on here i'm thinking about daily i really am right this is it's not just some words on paper this up here i think about it daily i mean it's truly it drives the work i do it drives my thinking i you know when we think about this is rezoning and start times it's my thinking goes back to these priorities right my thinking goes to these components um my caution when we started this piece of conversation is that i think sometimes people misunderstand
380what shared leadership is and they don't read ownership and so really i think that there's still a lot of work around right because shared leadership is is is leading is not decision making leading by by the way if you look leading has a level of influence true but it's not decision making and i think sometimes we get into that misperception or conception of it because decision making in the end is board when they are asked to take action or a superintendent that's making a decision or or another executive that's making a decision right that's decision making so just because i actually don't i want to advocate that i think that when we have this conversation and all that i've even heard today on all of this because this still really applies but but i want
381to make sure we think that so that's what i was going to take us back to just simply say that from what i'm hearing in this conversation the only adjustment i hear goes back to that guideline for bullet number one which is build relationships among board members and the diverse stakeholders so i'm gonna i'm really looking for a yes we got we heard yes we heard you correctly or no let me clarify because this the conversation while it's rich it's not going to get us out of the room today and so i want to land on this one so just all i want to hear from you right now is did amy and i capture this correctly that build uh yeah i think the only thing that i'm thinking about is like we have to
382really understand our roles like and i guess that's part of the study that we're doing and all that that laser focus on purpose and direction maybe that's kind of what i see that as a part of our rules you know our purpose really like it embodies more than the bigger purpose of the district but um within that is our individuals i'm hearing that he wants more of the technical roles maybe because i'm still i'm still mystified like okay i'm represented by i'm representing the community they've elected me so where do i get my input so i'm supposed to go to these meetings but no i'm not supposed to go to these meetings i have staff telling me you're only listening to him you know it's like i don't um yeah i want to say you
383can go to those meetings but to think that that's a half dues it's not but your your input's right here there's an agenda item called public input now you go out into the community you have a responsibility to represent your community right it elects you that's part of that right and you individually can go out and gather information and talk to people but i will say that's risky because people are going to tell you you're not doing the job right or or you know they're going to they're going to feed your mind through things and so you have to fill you have to have a filter of that process i'm not saying you can't go to these meetings what i'm saying is is that to think that that you have to go to those meetings
384it's not the purpose of it the purpose of those meetings was not for you to hear that the purpose of those meetings were for us to make sure people knew what what's the law what what we're planning on doing about it um some options that we may consider are there any questions for us to clarify and if you have opinions tell us right because if you have opinions tell us so that when we come back to report that to the board we met with csea and here was their thoughts around these changes we met with stea here's thoughts around these changes we talked to our minister our leadership team here's the thoughts around these changes we went out to the public here's what we heard from all of that based on x y and z
385this is our recommendation that's that's really right there is the exact structure of how this all works yeah i mean the point is that we're supposed to trust we're trusting you to bring that information it's like what amy said earlier about being you know she's you're going to collect data like the survey results whatever from these other things you know and that we are trusting that um the three of you you know everybody else is going to share that information that you're gathering information and we're trusting you're bringing it back but you can go to anything no i agree no i'm just saying that that's part of it i'm just saying that that's what we are that's part of this mutual respect and trust is that we're we trust our staff i had a person
386say it be issued to me when when we were leaving i i really wanted your board members to hear this right right yeah and and i thought well tell me i'll make sure they hear it all right well no they need it here for me well they can come to a board guess what the board reward and we have on the agenda public input yeah right and and you can comment on agenda items and i think that what we get lost in in this work that we do is actually the dysfunction that's happened in this organ this this community in in as a whole and this culture that we have is that not understanding that we actually follow through with structure of good governance good and good management and leadership strategies to to a highly
387effective organization and and uh again i want to make sure because you made the statement no you can go but but when you go to go because you you have to hear it all see i went because i kind of feel like i have my opinions and they're kind of made up and so maybe i should be more open-minded and listen to what other people have to say exactly that's that's exactly what i was just about to say too because in my in my world you know if i don't understand something i have to decide something i study it but i'm supposed to be this political figure right and actually but let me take let me take what val said and really jump on it for a minute absolutely your job is to get as
388much information as possible for you to make a decision up there right that's why we meet on mondays even though you sometimes you go god was that really valuable we spent our time talking about if you come in and go i'm struggling with something that's why we meet on mondays but also you should go out and talk to constituents you should go out and listen when you can right what i'm saying is is to think that you have to be at that meeting is different so one of the reasons it's better though is when i talk i talk to my people right my people are not representative of the community they're they're my people so the only way how do i are you not talking to your to your to your area no you're talking
389to the people that you normally went into your friends your friends the folks who are good yeah friends perfect if we go back to the same people be careful because you have a constituent group unless i go door-to-door that's not happening i talk to the people that talk to me thank you this is why i tell folks all the time when when board members start to say to me i've been talking to my constituents i said stop you ran into somebody at the produce section of this grocery store you didn't run or you ran into your neighbor who saw you at the baseball game and they know you're an elected and therefore they gave you an earful that is not uh you get a poll of everyone in your constitution so and i think part
390of the challenge the conversation that i'm hearing is that we've got to keep a couple things in mind that the public has as much understanding about the governance process as many people who run the first time for that single issue and discover as amy was saying oh i don't have that kind of power no you don't all right and so people tend to look at us as board members and they say i don't want to talk to him i want you to hear this because you're his boss and you will do the x y and z all right excuse me no i don't have to do that because i my vote is not for what's best for this neighborhood my vote is for what's best for this district yes and it's the kids and it's
391for us it's the voters for the county i got elected by the oroville residents to make decisions on the county that benefit and so i always have to keep in mind we are running our meeting and we're just happy to let you come in and sit and watch us run our meeting you don't run my meeting we do and i had a board member stepped in for a conversation once on a a charter school and the board member from the district started to give a little too much voice and i incorrectly i didn't do it politely i probably should have done it differently but i looked at her and said hey this is my meeting not yours and after i said that i was like because the whole everybody else on the board kind of
392like oh i have to fix that relationship later now look there's a judy hang on we already have questions we know what we're going to ask please be patient so it's the notion is that it's our meeting the public is invited to watch us give our meeting but the public doesn't understand that the public thinks it's your meeting and i'm going to now wander in here and tell you we even worked with one group that a board member was getting text messages from the audience and asked this ask that can't happen yeah well once you're elected from your district you're no longer for your district you're free trust the area trustee area you're for all your whole district and then folks don't understand that otherwise you'd be fighting at five or five people fighting for
393your five opinions and not looking at your benefit for all the children you serve so i'm gonna push back to this one to get you guys out of here again if you end up going along in the 330 it will be because of her not me uh and so are there any i was told i thought we were here till [Laughter] there's always the meeting after the meeting too right and i was told 3 30 but if it goes before i'm okay it's on her fault all right so build relationships among diverse stakeholders and it's the adjustment again is would you read yours again it is build relationships among board members so that you're encompassing that piece of how you're meeting together so all i'm looking for at this moment is no i absolutely cannot
394live with that hearing no one say no i cannot live with that then that's what it sounds like that's the adjustment um to land again once again on the goal and i'll read it the way you have it written is just develop a strong district-wide team that builds a culture of shared leadership and ownership of all student outcomes is that still the most important for this board right now am i hearing anyone who says no we need to change that going bueller gone all right so that is where it is again you have the ability to adjust a few things you can decide throughout the year but at this moment that's where we stand all right so again we're going to take a quick look at the uh overarching your priority statements or the board
395priorities again priority statements just a reminder that there's still some conversation around about covet and how it's impacting the world etc um that's not a bad conversation but just really focus on what are the things that have high urgency at this moment those are the crisis if it's not something that we have to deal with at the moment i think the high urgency conversation if we were to talk about what the public thinks it's about vaccines and mass mandates that's higher urgency higher you got to decide if that's really a high urgency or if it's lower and i think in some of it it's kind of low energy whether or not it's going to happen i don't know who to fight about that but there's the idea what really is around strategic is what are
396the things that are low urgency but they're very important and high urgency just means we've got to we've got to do something about that right this moment so that we can move on with other things low urgency is i like that that's something we can work on over the next three years because it's going to take us about three years to get people to understand why and then another two years to make it happen so that's why strategic looks like that picture that todd is wrong again that's my reminder that we're looking for things that are strategic and strategic issues tend to focus on strategy building relationships new possibilities personal development and progressing projects proactively etc crisis is deadline driven it's depressing and it's important all right so here we go the first one student
397preparation and performance achievement is attainable for all student groups of the submission for all students to meet or exceed standards am i reading their correctness all right so um do you want to give a very brief reminder of all of the things you kind of talked about over the year it's like touching a couple things and you're i have your notes or if it's not even necessary we can just have the conversation so i guess i'm just not connecting with what you asked me to do just now you've done a lot of things over the course of the year that have contributed too many boards on this goal oh sure the board the board the board has received all these updates i said you want to touch on any of those for example some of
398the things we've done under student prep and performance are there's so much that we've done for student groups for exceeding students to meet the same students but number one if you think about our elk cap and all the and the specific goals under uh rl cap and the actions whether that be um i don't know just to find a few right but the use of map is a huge piece of this process and as dr cohen said well what he really meant to say right and that is that that how we're utilizing data to drive conversations around how we're going to meet the needs of our students so so key on this one aspect so i'll just kind of land on that to be the overarch of it well what what what mike just handed
399me and you guys in fact i shared it out with all of you um as a google doctor recently is the goal one of the superintendent schools right thinking about all that we've done and and also this all comes under also through lcap again client content area specialists to begin work on alignment of curriculum and practices and by the way our content area specialists are now beginning to implement professional development which is you know another section another piece um you know the [Applause] i don't even know if we need to talk about it yes i don't think so really well we have been talking about it all year yeah well that's what i say that's why i was saying that i'm pretty confident yeah yeah but i think he would i think what mike's trying
400to make sure of and this is part of my direction to him is that before we walked out today making sure that our board's goal and board's priorities are same or need to be changed or adjusted so that's where he was driving and i've just played some looks there and normally we would have spent more time in that on the scale of zero to 100 i will have you progress on this priority instead we're going to look at right here are there changes necessary in the prior well i never make the assumption that's why i always ask the question so let me let's let's just get an off the reaction from you though on a scale of 0-100 how well did we progress on this priority in your in your opinion and and and i
401um anna marie what's your thoughts that you'd share with the board about how we progressed in this area i think we've delayed a lot of the foundation and done a lot of the ground work so that we can can work towards meeting this goal but i also feel that you know we've had very little time um in the scope of this year um however we have put in place a lot of actions and services and met many of our objectives as we're working towards our goals um so i do think we need more time to show uh where we're at in our achievement timeline well i think that to bonnie's statement right always right it's always a good goal but to your statement then i go you know what but the end time has been
402limited right we lost time of year we lost lots a lot lost a lot of time but we've built a foundation that's right right so like if i look at the percentage and i'm just kind of like you know what we probably got a 25 to 30 percent of like the foundational stuff done so that we can go down to that further percent would you agree or disagree no i would agree i would agree we're at the place now where actually the work is getting out to the classroom that's getting out to the teachers it's reaching the students but it took the foundation of getting the right people in the right places getting the right plans developed made synthesized so that there's a systematic way of going about the process you know in the way
403that i would add to that just look at the chart yeah okay no wait a minute let me finish please look at the chart because of coba because of evacuation we could we can make but we don't need to do that what we need to do is stick to the plan and know that within three to five years we want to see that student achievement going in this direction and there may be a drop like you talked about because we're doing mapping and we may change some curriculum or whatever and so forth and so on but if we do believe in that and we do believe in that plan i give it time i think also you know you are going to get a presentation on uh map data and the differences between um our
404initial assessment and then our mid-year assessment and you are going to see that there has been growth that's one metric and i think so we've laid a foundation where we are going to be able to start to um show definitive growth um in and that's just one metric but um but i would say that that is not necessarily the measure of achievement yeah so going back and mike i'm doing your job i don't know why um i think you're right right this is gonna always be there so then so so that priority remains but is it is is it specific and clear enough for everybody and so just to say student preparation performance achievement is attainable for all student groups the commitment for all students to meet or exceed standards and i think it probably
405is but just double doing that double check with you so this is literally just to check in with you to see if these goals the priority statements still stand so for me it's not judgment it's literally hey this is your stuff are you still happy with it is it still providing the direction that you want staff to have and if it is i'm i'm happy i'm fine with it we move forward yeah i just let schools do let's move on to the next one i'm just saying i'm with you and i still like to check and make sure people are all in alignment all right i can't tell you how many times that person would say well that wasn't my belief i don't know how we got there all right next one culture and engagement
406utilize two ways of communication with stakeholders that increase engagement and the belief that all students are valued and will achieve same conversation if you're absolutely fantastic and happy to work with that and you believe you're on that scale of what zero to 100 i'll let you go and do my job yeah no i just want to say you know what we we truly do and we are operating on on a communication plan and now are all parts of that like you know rocking and rolling you know we're doing a pretty good job with the way we're pushing information out um but it's a two-way right so what are some of the ways that we're working on that are the visit with the superintendent the chat with the superintendent these opportunities that we're we're inviting folks
407in this these these four meetings previously are part of that two-way so that we can be there and listen and hear from folks inviting people in email that's part of that two-way so we got to keep educating our parents about what it means and how that means and it's not necessarily a democratic process well yeah thank you you know that that i meet with the pta presidents once a month you know and by the way my last month with the pga presidents i shared the rezone and and the start times with very little comment you know just so you know right so i think that we have structured pieces that really are working on the 2a i don't think we're there yet mostly because i don't know if our community still is understanding their way
408of having it there like our visit to the superintendent we're not getting any attendance now why let me go back to some historical pieces number one is that people are really busy and number two they think unless it's really something's really bothering them they don't necessarily need to show right so they're they're trusting us so again that's why you did what you really kind of asked me give me a little highlight i actually would pick at this one um i would suggest that really this is about communication and i would expand that part a little bit and get rid of the second part i would say something more like utilize two-way communication with stakeholders that increases engagement and teamwork and this idea the belief that all students are valued and will achieve just stick valued
409in the first statement and you're done with that section that is about achievement and this is about communication and engagement yeah i'm totally good with that just to just i'm going to give a reminder of what happened last year in our conversation so if it shifted is that we felt and tell me if i'm if you're not remembering this right but for each of the priorities one thing it was like but we want each piece is driving toward people understanding this is about students so that was so i don't think it's necessary i agree with you but i wanted to give you the perspective of how come even on the next one uh about professional growth and learning to achieve our goals and for student success right it was into the conversation last year now
410i'm okay with the chances and i wonder because i'm looking at that sentence i don't know if this is just wordsmithing but like because i i agree with dr keller but i want to know the purpose like just to say you know we're going to improve community two-way communication engagement you know for what purpose right that i like having that um the students are valued and that will achieve so i had a word like instead of saying and that increases engagement and the belief that like increases engagement around the belief like just changing the word and to around the belief that all students are valued and will achieve i don't know that's just an idea but it's about it's about why are we clarity about purpose about purpose yeah again i think but i think
411what bonnie's statement was is that we really hit it on on the first one and that's what but i was trying to give you clarity of why that ended up like that is because the board last year was like everything we're doing is has to circle back to that we're about student performance part of why that's important super important is this piece you talked about earlier about people believing that their opinion matters um about all sorts of different topics or whatever you know that culture if you if the sentence is just hey we're going to improve our communication with stakeholders and increase engagement period um that invites sort of criticism on all sorts of aspects oh yes the district's work that may or may not be the district's work but we want to focus on
412you know student achievement and the belief that you know that all students are valued that's like our priority our main thing so the word are using or the word around the belief is there a belief in this group that that would help that strengthen that that priority statement you're making notes well and the only other thing that i that just got kind of lost in this is um to me it's more than an engagement it's it's this teamwork idea that um we don't want just people there's more people to show up at meetings we want people to be working with with each other yeah so so like and then i'm not trying to wordsmith either but when you say utilize two-way communication with stakeholders that increases engagement and teamwork so around the belief that all
413students just adding the word teamwork yeah right because i don't if you want to put it in i'll reach the achievement in all of it well yeah i understand what your point was but i just wanted to kind of circle back to why that i see it's in the last one too right okay all right well i think again speak up for the folks because it's really i mean this when i say this and there's again some direction to mike in our planning today was to make sure before we leave that we did address this because this really drives me i mean it really does i don't want you to think it's just words it really isn't so i love the teamwork component of it because this actually this one this one priority has always
414kind of been is it really hitting what we wanted to get because it's not just about communication so maybe that impact on communication engagement and teamwork so a little bit a little i probably should have said more i allow myself to be pressed by time but the reason why i like to go back over these is i can't tell you how many times i have done this review one year later and someone who was part of the decision making than the very when we made that priority statement they were part of it they gave the vote and then they said well how i really felt at the time and now the sudden they tell their truth and the whole room turns to look at them like why didn't you say that we were in the
415meeting well i didn't really want to go there yeah and then when they didn't feel like it was safe to tell the truth or they just retired and when it goes so i always stop and say are these still standing is there anyone who wants to give pushback on any of this now and oftentimes i have found folks who have said yeah it was i never liked that idea to begin with and it's like ooh because that's at the time where that person could be undermining everything that's going on because i um i i say one thing in the meeting and then they say the real meeting takes place in the boardroom bathroom at the bar all right now i tell you what i really think and that would just undermine all this amazing work
416so i always go back over these just to give everybody a chance to say yeah they still stand or no i think we need to make some adjustments hey what what what are you saying i said i i have a thought on that one what about embracing instead of around raising the belief that all students are valued and will achieve much more powerful embrace i want to also say something and i want to see what your you guys are thinking this utilize two-way communication two-way communication actually i don't have full control over 2a meaning it's a somebody else has to engage on the back so i'm just asking what about promote two-way communication instead of utilize it's promote and i'm not as if i'm just looking for your thoughts on it because sometimes when i
417look at i go you know i'm i'm i'm doing so many things to try to get this back and forth like and i'm getting myself on a chamber meeting and i you know i'm i'm working to try to put myself out there um and and then sometimes i don't get much back so it's the idea that i promote that regularly i need to hear from you you know please come to the visit with the superintendent when i'm talking to folks that he'll want your your thinking i i feel like i mean i feel like we could even just say improve get rid of the promote communication with stakeholders well i was thinking improved communication with stakeholders to promote yeah either one but getting away from the word two way only because communication really does require
418a little back and forth even though i know we were trying to emphasize it so i'm just throwing that out there because but i do think because if we take the words out we're saying improve communication with stakeholders that increases engagement which involves trying it it involves promotion is what i'm saying too so my worry about improvement i'm just sharing a lot is that we're actually doing a lot we really are doing a lot of communication improve implies deficit oh i see that well that my mind so maybe just so when stepping back okay what are our priorities culture and engagement we could leave it at you know communicating with stakeholders that increases engagement see i think the idea with two ways that teamwork you know what i mean we could just take the words
419out the idea of two-way was we were trying to make sure that the listening component was was somehow indicated and maybe we should be more explicit and and use that word instead you know that's really what the point is well i don't and again i i'm not trying to change the word two-way but i understood but what i was worried about what why why because you said maybe this was the one thing i wanted to bring up is that we we're trying to utilize 2k but we're not always getting so we're let's promote that bi-directional you know that two-way communication let's promote it and keep working on that um because our we want to engage um stay with stakeholders and build team with stakeholders you know and we could say like increase we get rid
420of the word communicate increase engagement team increase engagement teamwork you know increasing engagement and teamwork embracing the belief but also i don't know i'm just uh we're wordsmithing but i just i hear what you're saying i mean what i'm trying to say is i hear what you're saying and we really are focused the priority is not the communication as much i mean that might have been the prime minister someone said we priority could be about communicating both to wave but it's also the it is around the um getting the higher level of engagement and teamwork getting building that engagement and teamwork embracing the belief that all students are valued yeah that was my that that promote is that we have to do a continue to really promote come on in like the focus groups that
421are coming up right we're that this is a two-way this is we got to promote we're doing it right we are doing at the beginning of it day i was like we really got to promote it we really got to say you your opinions are important to us like that we got to start i think shannon's flyer is good but you know but we just got to we're asking our principals to do more yeah promote get people to come but yeah we're willing to say you're about your inputs and value and we want you there i think that's good thank you i i don't tell you i think that we've done so much in this area and when you think about all of this thing about board we've done a lot of professional growth for
422us right we really have but we've got professional i mean the single focus is all about professional development the collaboration time that we now have is so much more professional development we're getting we are working um at such a different level than when i got here and what i'd and what was what was in place our content area specialists were they're providing trainings across in our training room if you haven't been in our training you know i should take you over there you should see it we have a training room now right right next door to the contrary specials because we need the space we train in here you know i'm doing uh leadership development with the leaders and learners we've got so many components to this we're training uh on business operations and that
423and we're doing across the entire district so so much has happened here yet we i think it has to remain a priority because we have so much to continue and i am my priority my focus for this year is really about parents and families right well we started pk i know we started it yeah and i will tell you that this is that mis understanding of some of this i think that one of you had said this earlier part of doing these meetings with parents was to get their input but was also the education was to you know to go out and say here's the stuff we're looking at here's the things we're concerned about here's what we're doing that's what we're gonna do about it what you know so that was that every time
424we do that the the vision revisited elf cap work update is a it's a parent education it really is right so um anyway i i think this is wordsmithing i just like to replace foreign with two a commitment to continuous learning and growth to achieve our goals okay it says it says read the blue one is it what you said just now yes it is oh good yeah okay good i think well you read that i'm like okay she's reading off of this over here got it third one should be two instead of four yeah it's because what you guys left with yeah yeah we changed numbers okay i think i think i think it's imperative that i didn't even see the difference in the two i literally yeah yeah okay last one all right
425where are these guys you know safety was one that wasn't necessarily driven fully at the board but it really came out um through the conversation at the vision workshop and some other components and and and we decided hey this we're hearing it enough from our public we should most likely say hey safety is a piece one of the concerns uh that came out from the board is well what's really that mean and so we tried to capture it in that statement and that's that's emotional safety that's physical safety you know you know because we talk about that emotional uh you know social emotional component i think is part of that and i think it really plays in but if it doesn't if it's not clear i'd really definitely want to make sure we think about
426it my feelings on this topic have kind of changed since being part of the facilities committee you know for the first time i started to to recognize that if there's an earthquake and the roof of the magnet school gym falls in that's the community i mean like i mean i i look i've got it in a different way because i i am not very sympathetic in some ways to the level of safety that some people are trying to demand you know but um when i started thinking about the physical safety and the responsibility that we have that way i think anyway my thinking changed over the course of the year you know the i think perhaps having natural disasters occur right here you know like okay we're gonna evacuate and my my plan has to
427be if i can't get you know evacuated out of the city i'm running to the middle school and i'm like that's our middle school like that better be good you know right kind of um yeah absolutely is there any con so we've moved from this is being the fourth of the priorities is there any concern with that staying there or believe it should be the fourth priority yeah i guess i still have trouble with all feel safe because that's that's impossible that's a goal that's part of our like these things unfortunately it was a foreshadowing not someone but i i am glad we had this in place because we had to leave town okay yep yeah i think that the safety captures a lot of things we have to have that in this day and
428age physical safety social emotional piece kids have to want to feel they belong yeah so well i would say this um i like that we have four five might get heavy but is there something we're missing that's a great question from thinking about like our disappointments is there something missing i think we capture i think what's in here is here i just have to make sure i think about what you've said and how it aligns here that's important for me you know then with staff i see these are the things that came up in the disappointments conversation before where do these fall and how do we address them i would also add that i thought your conversations earlier this morning around the healthy parts of culture align with your concerns for disappointments right you spoke
429about the things you wanted to see and then your conversations about what you were disappointed in reflected that same conversation i thought there was consistency and alignment in there uh so i'm also feeling my personal opinion i try to not say this i try not to be prescriptive but you're i think you're in alignment in your conversations that you feel like you're focused on the right things that are going to move you along and your understanding of culture is the most important part for me it's hard to get folks to understand if you don't have the right culture your strategy will just disappear and it won't mean anything and i feel like your strategy is in alignment because your conversations that i hear you talking about health you give you give a lot of importance
430and priority the health and those things that are um sometimes again goes back to kind of that touchy feeling where the public will look at you and go well i don't care about that we just bottom line is and they're ready to jump into the strategic again where it's right or wrong so i think your my professional opinion is you're on the right track please don't leave it i don't know if this is something we can even add but you know going back to the culture and engagement the communication because i have such a concern for the tone and the civility of our conversations i'm wondering if somehow that should be wrapped into that civility yeah i how do we do we set are there ground rules somehow that we're setting in the board like
431we started to talk about you know at the meetings we're going to say explicitly this is what the that's really important and i'm not even only talking about board meetings i'm just talking about i mean we all need to the community needs to work on this right but that's important even at every at every meeting like even at those um right meetings at each of the school sites that could have started just with these uh right up front these are like this is how we're you know you kind of do that you know in your introduction and then but then but you know almost having it on a poster once i started to think that too because instead of because because they went straight to comments right what if it was on a poster yeah
432this is the way the communication you know the strat the flow of communication is going to run in this meeting maybe any meeting right first we educate ourselves then we get clear then we have a discussion that kind of thing by the way it's just like we do with information discussions right right you have different people in the room and they're not always listening you know they walk in late or you know distracted or whatever so the notion that some of those norms be i think some folks were just waiting till the end to say what they wanted to say right yeah and i'm just how do we change that tone yeah i think you're right i think i think i think that there's actions and activities that we can do to continue to work
433on that right yeah um and and i think that we can look at this language on this cultural engagement piece to to see is there a way to make sure we capture teamwork and civility right right and i think that you know to me i i see it embedded also in the next round about the commitment to continuous learning and growth to achieve our goals for students success i mean this is the fact that all the time larry about um uh about behavior parent i mean we have parents listed here and i'm focused on that that notion that um educating our parents about civil engagement and about behaviors because you know like you brought this up top to be like well we you know talk about bullying and you go well look look at society
434you know look at look at the webs they look at facebook the parents all arguing and they're the most offensive of the people or that's the same model it's part of the modeling right so i see that like in our commitment to continuous learning and growth it's this expansive view of the word growth you know personal social emotional development kind of growth right and so anyway that to me it's it's embedded in some of this you know whether we want to be explicit about it but i just think when we are talking about students and achievements it really requires all those pieces about a year ago we adopted a policy of civility we all voted for it that's what you read that's what i put in there but i'll go back just just as an
435example and actually mike brought it up we were going through a period there where parents were trying to [Music] text us during board meetings and if you remember i took my word comments and told them please stop and i think what we need to do is model that kind of civility so that when you do talk to a rude person parent or whomever you just have to remind them we want to be civil i'm going to listen to you and then write a comment i'll give it back to you and so forth and so on sometimes i think we're in that culture where i get to say whatever i want i get to act anywhere any way i want but i don't want to be held to it i think we make a mistake doing
436it i think we ask them hey we want you to be civil well we're just not going to have this conversation okay that's simple yeah yeah they actually covered this in a sense by which we engage in derogatory or mean or rude in your house it's our business okay that's all you have to say that's our business and then you go from right there no no but what i'm saying is you just hold to that and you i i think you're fine i think you i think you have been very i thought about this because i'm i'm i'm so i look back on some of the meetings that we've had and how much um personal attack has been in some of them and i'm i feel like that should not have been there i mean
437and how do you stop it because it's their right to speak right yeah it's really hard it's still it's your meeting yeah we get to determine the rules for how you approach the board in the meeting you don't get free reign as a matter of fact there's assembly laws or bills that they're working on right now that address public behavior to increase your because what's happening with coding in these boardrooms i would say you know we've seen some uncivil discourse but we're pretty tame we are pretty safe careful here yeah we really haven't had it back fortunately for us we haven't seen how many of the boards out there have seen um because i would tell you you know this is hard work you know as we kind of come to the closet today you're
438you've taken on quite a a job you really have and like we talk about these roles that you play and they're they're not easy and there's role there's the roles that you play there are rules on how you you you do this and and and then there are some unwritten there are somewhat some that you know we've put in protocols so that we can best be the most efficient effective governance team we have that we can have we're learning through the governance core how to go about this work we're built we're committed to our professional growth and development yet this is hard and it's never simple um and you you've taken on i think you know one of the the most important jobs that there are in the communities help lead the education of a
439community yet you know you don't run the day-to-day you don't have the incredible day-to-day influence you have an influence in the boardroom through your actions and you know through what your ex through your setting of goal and priorities and expectations of me as your superintendent um and i think that as long as we are committed to and this is going like back to the manner and that trust build we're building and growing our trust together through hard times and good times through the challenges that come to at us through the and through the celebrations you know both sides it's really kind of hard because when we think about these these levels of a of aggressiveness or attacks that you guys face that i've faced regularly right is that we stay um committed to this in
440fact i would want to encourage you to when people are coming with you think about your priorities and what is it that they're talking to you about lines with the priorities and if it doesn't then it might not be worth talking to them about like because sometimes they're trying to take you down a path that if you just can stay focused here you're going to be really successful but if they are talking about one of these elements then let's then pull it out and say well you know the board has a priority and let me tell you about that priority that priority is promoting two-way communication with stakeholders stakeholders it increases engagement teamwork around the belief that all students are valued and will achieve and we and we want people to be civil in that
441process but we really want to focus back on it's about our students in the performance it's not about adult issues whatever right and you can use this language right here to help guide your process with folks um and and so anyway i just i just want to tell you how much i appreciate this no board is perfect no board has got it all ironed out and down and by the way because it's always evolving and always changing but i'm really proud of this board i go back to july of when we sat down with all the protocols and you know you guys agreed upon but that we're so far advanced from that moment we get pulled back into the mess and the stuff and um but i really i really think that and in today's
442work today i mean the pieces around the the the understanding poverty and ruby pain i mean this has been around for a long time and it's just tried and true uh components and uh very powerful so mike did you what were you going to say anymore no well i was going to address just two things real quickly and bonnie for your your sake um i would say the best thing as a board president or whatever you got the chair at that moment the galba um i always reiterate the purpose of every conversation especially if i think there's going to be some some controversy involved in it so i'm the chair for the advisory commission on charter schools to the state board of education and we get controversial stuff that comes along and i'm constantly reminding
443everybody about what what type of comments we're going to be looking for at this point and we'll be in the middle of public comment i will remind everyone again this is a public comment we have itemized agenda items just because i want to make sure that as people as their their temperature starts to rise they are less likely to hear that they've heard it over and over and over this is what this conversation is for so i don't have to go back and then chastise someone and put them in their plans i want to say it in advance before they even get up there as the reminder and allow them to just remind them there will be a time when we allow comment for x y and z okay so they're a little more patient
444otherwise their patience is because i didn't set the tone right that's how i take it as as the chair or when i was the president for csba when i've got 300 delegates in the room who think they know as much about running a corporate board as i have been sitting there learning and they're two different worlds but we have the delegates who are constantly complaining and i would always remind them hey right now we're having this conversation it is because please stay on that and just keep doing it but i do politely and nicely and then the other i think is what todd was just talking about um you're doing a fantastic job because not all boards even though they pay lip service to whatever their protocols are not all boards follow that you can
445pull up i just watched a youtube one another the other day about a particular district in the central valley area i don't want to say their name out well it starts with the letter f um and okay i'll stop it so anyhow their board just literally one person on the board just said he he or she did not care about whatever protocols were in place this was the moment in and off the board meeting went so when it comes to a board that's unified i always explain to folks it is not that you're unified in your all exact thoughts you're just unified in how you're going to have that conversation how you're going to run your meeting and your expectations so um i'm a firm believer that a structure produces behavior and if you're all
446consistent with the structure the public will figure it out they'll start to understand here's where we get to voice our training we get to push back at you and here's what we do the trust goes up so i i'm with todd i really appreciate working with you and just listen to your conversations you're focused and unified as a board even if you're not in complete agreement on some things i would still argue that this is a this is the example of what i'd want more boards to be working towards versus what i see in a lot of places where you know i said we get the phone call when there's pain i think out of the 10 years or so we've been working with school boards i've gotten two phone calls in those years no
447we don't have any pain we're just this is what we like to do we heard you guys did this work otherwise it's ooh we got this one board member can you come straighten them yeah we'll be there all right so i think you guys have been fantastic in the spirit of final final thoughts by the way we do this at every meeting that we hold in leadership sometimes it's just give a word because we're a hurry uh fun sometimes it's just to give you know give a sense final thoughts let's just go around the table and have some final thoughts and anna ray field start and then i already gave my final thoughts let's go around this way sometimes i allow just one word right and included my brain is full that's what that's about
448no it doesn't have to be a word she set the standard over there didn't she like you shouldn't have asked her to go first like well because why and why you shared that right because in ours sometimes i'll say hey sure because we're like at the where time is up and i'm going to just provide a word today sometimes it's like hey final thoughts anything so wow i liked how we really did a i think a comprehensive evaluation of you know our past year i feel like we had a really in-depth conversation i that's something i feel like we kind of lack so i love that today was more like that [Music] that are [Music] i love the self-examination of your own mental models that will allow you to do even better by the students
449that you represent thank you guys for doing that mike and amy we appreciate that thank you very much that you came and facilitated and since we had so much the conversation driven over here uh we'll talk about that never mind guys thank you have a wonderful rest your weekend if you're able to take a little bit of time since we are on a winter break for school but every whatever your next week provides you we are going to be in the office uh i know all of us will be in the office the three of us on wednesday um in case you need anything but actually andrea and i leave the day to head to a cat what's called cash conference um we're gonna be spending some time think hearing more about bonds and and
450projects and things that impact us so that we're prepared and ready all right anything anything for the order i will see you all the uh no he said for the good he didn't take your morning first week thank you president president turnbull if there's nothing further i guess we can adjourn if you if you if you feel that way uh public comments yeah there's there's no public in in attendance but we always want to make sure the public is welcome to join us and provide their be a participant in this conversation with us so thank you we now adjourn this public meeting at 3 46 on february 19 2022 it was a little backwards all right very good um scott if you hear us we're going to shut our mics off and we're complete thank
451you everybody shutting down youtube