11.18.25 Board Meeting

001I'm gonna call this meeting to order. Good morning. This is the November 18th meeting, the Board of Education, Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District, and it is now 9 a.m. As president, the meeting is now called to order. Our meetings are broadcast over Zoom to provide the opportunity for a community to observe in real time, and video recordings of the board meetings are posted on our website, typically within 72 hours after each meeting. I'd like to invite Mr. Conover forward to lead us in the pledge. Okay, thank you, Mr. Conover. I would also just to recognize and acknowledge that Trustee Bueno cannot be with us here this morning. He has a family commitment. Dr. Gibson, are there any changes to the agenda? No, there are no changes. I just wanna acknowledge that Ms. Pichette and

002I will need to leave at about 9.45 as we have meetings with policymakers virtually in Washington, D.C. today to review some of our federal funding situations. Okay, all right, thank you. Now it's time for our Employee Association reports. Yeah, yes. We have Amy Thompson here, President Valier, and I see in the audience, Tara Lutz, her VP. Welcome. Good morning, Board President Prusso, members of the board, Superintendent Gibson, and cabinet. I am Amy Thompson, President of the Livermore Education Association, representing teachers, nurses, counselors, psychologists, speech pathologists, social workers, and teachers on special assignment. The Public Employment Relations Board has approved LEA's declaration of impasse for our current negotiations and assigned a mediator to help LEA and the district reach an agreement. A date for mediation has been set for December 12th. Our understanding is that the

003district is planning to bring a lawyer as part of their team for this process, which is new for us, because for at least the past 10 years, we have met and negotiated with the district without a lawyer present. Reference has been made to the Me Too clause during prior board meetings without an explanation of what this is. Every group in our district has a Me Too clause, which basically says any negotiated agreement that any group receives, all groups receive. For example, if LEA negotiates a 5% salary increase, all other groups, CSEA, SEIU, Classified Management, Livermore Management Association, and cabinet members also receive a 5% salary increase. But all of the Me Too clauses are not the same. LEA only receives the Me Too on across the board negotiated salary increases. The settlement just approved for

004Classified Management that added a column to that salary schedule with a 5% increase LEA will not receive because it was not an across the board increase. LEA is not inherently opposed to the Me Too clauses, but it has created a structural problem. While management positions are currently compensated at or above market rate, or at least average, LEA is currently compensated below market rate, below average. We are requesting that the board take action to freeze the Me Too clause for management until LEA is compensated at least at average. This action will allow the district to create parity in compensation between the units, lowering the cost for our request and allowing LEA to catch up. We are not saying that everyone here should not be fairly compensated. We are saying us too, please. At the last board

005meeting, there was a discussion of the board meeting schedule. LEA is in favor of reverting to the previous board meeting schedule in which formal board meetings were held on Tuesday nights and they were more accessible to our members. Less formal board workshops were pre-scheduled throughout the year so that there was predictable timing, but they were only held if they were necessary. We've heard a lot about the Brown Act in this past year and I'm certainly not a Brown Act expert, but there was value added to the district in the less formal board workshops that allowed for informal discussion and that has been lost in the past few years. I think Emily, you and Craig had both experienced the informal workshops. I don't think the rest of our board had that opportunity. It seems to me

006that the purpose of the Brown Act is to ensure that the board is not making decisions out of public view, but having the less formal meetings, the workshop, allowed for conversational input with a give and take of information. It allowed the board and members of the public a greater depth of information and understanding. It created an environment where people were talking with each other instead of at each other, allowing for an exchange of information. It would, in the workshops we used to, it would be everybody sit around the table and we're gonna explore a topic in depth. Sometimes it would be everybody in an all in conversation. Sometimes we were divided into groups where each board member was at a table with a group of people to hear input. It just, it allowed the board

007to get a better sense of information, I think, and for the people who were in the exchange to share, people to ask questions. Lastly, I wanna say LEA members so appreciate the parents who are here this morning when they cannot be, who are supporting our request for fair compensation. Thank you. Thank you, Amy. Okay, we're gonna move on to our public comments on non-agenda items. And we do have one public comment. Odessa Silva, she could come forward and we'll have a three minute timer, I think. God, okay, better. Okay, here it goes. Good morning, Board President Prusso, members of the board, Superintendent Gibson and cabinet. It's nice to see all of you bright and early this morning. I do wish there were educators behind me, but as you can imagine, a 9 a.m. board meeting

008makes it difficult for many of them to attend. I attended and spoke at the last board meeting on November 12th. At that meeting, there was a lot to digest as a parent. Watching all the educators get up, head held high, make eye contact and clearly remind the board that they are valuable was courageous and inspiring. I especially appreciated hearing from Amy Thompson, president of the LEA. After we received the email titled, understanding our financial position and commitment to staff compensation from Superintendent Gibson, I was like many parents confused about what it actually meant. After listening to Amy, I realized that email was incredibly misleading, starting with the subject line. Commitment to staff compensation felt ironic because all I've witnessed is a lack of commitment in that area. I'll be honest, I don't tune into every

009board meeting and I'm sure many others don't either. So I made it my mission to make sure Amy's message was heard. I've told everyone I know about her speech. I've sent that part of the video to multiple friends, parents playing the classic game of pass it on. The superintendent's email spread like wildfire in our community, and I'm hoping Amy's transparency helped put out the flames. As many educators and parents said in the last board meeting, this community is watching and waiting for you to do the right thing. Pay our educators what they deserve. Now, because this 9AM board meeting made it hard for educators to be at, I made sure to ask them, is there anything you would like to say? This is what I received from Michelle Ryan, Croci's reading intervention specialist, Superintendent Gibson

010and members of the board. Our children are cared for every day by some of the most extraordinary human beings, our teachers. They provide a safe space, a second home and a steady shoulder to cry on. They create classrooms where learning is prioritized and where teaching is carried out with the utmost dedication. It takes someone truly exceptional to guide our kids, shape their minds and help them grow into the engineers, doctors, teachers, board members, and even superintendents of tomorrow. So I ask each of you directly, where would you be today without the teachers who taught you the value of education? Think back to the most influential teacher in your life and then imagine that same person unable to support their family because their profession is undervalued. Our teachers pour their heart, soul, time and personal money

011into creating a stable, nurturing environment for our children. They give everything they have because they believe in our kids. Superintendent board members, it's time for you to show that you believe in them too. It's time to do right by the people who make this entire district function. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Odessa. We're gonna move on to our formal written correspondence to the board of education, which we acknowledge if received by the board or in the superintendent's office by 2 p.m. the day before the meeting. Formal written correspondence received after the cutoff time will generally be acknowledged at the following meeting. And please note, our board electronic communications received via the Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District website by accessing the formal written correspondence to the board of education link with all fields completed

012and verified shall be treated as formal written correspondence. So I'd ask the clerk if he has. Can I ask a clarifying question before? Superintendent Gibson, can you briefly elaborate what does impasse mean for the community members that may not understand what that is, what it means, where it falls? So impasse is when both sides come to an agreement that we don't agree. And so what happens at that point is the state provides us an outside mediator that comes in. We meet for the day, our team is in one room, their team is in another, and the mediator kind of goes back and forth. The mediator's purpose is to really come in and learn the lens of both sides and tries to, if successful, find a middle path that we can all agree on with some

013sort of terms, depending on what the situation is for us, it happens to be compensation. And it's our entire compensation package, not just salary, but our health benefits as well is how we view, and we've agreed with LEA that we would view all of our compensation packages in our comparisons is it's not just salary or just health and welfare, it's all of it put together because it all does matter. And so we're very hopeful that the mediator that's been assigned will be able to help us on the 12th to really identify for both sides where we are and where we can go long-term. But the mediators, they're not a judge. They're just trying to be an outside person that kind of goes in between. So at the end of the day, the goal is for

014both sides to come to an agreement. Correct. Okay. Thank you. I have a similar question. Just about the Me Too, is there ever, or is there a reason why there could be, since Me Too helps lift all boats, is there ever a reason why all of a sudden there's disparity in how one bargaining unit perhaps has more than another? Because that's what Me Too tries to avoid. Yes. I think one of the biggest struggles in education is we factor everything by percentages instead of a dollar. So for staff, depending on where you sit, if you're a principal, let's say, your salary schedule is higher. So 2% is higher than 2% for LEA. That's just the reality of math. And so over time, as you compound those numbers, let's go back to two years ago when

015we gave a 16% raise in this district, which is fantastic. It spent down all of our rainy day funds, which is great. However, 16% on management salaries is more than 16% on teacher salaries. And so that's where that disparity begins to come into play. I do, since you've asked the question, I can go ahead and acknowledge this since it also was brought up, and that we are looking into not applying Me Too to management in this current situation. We acknowledge that there is that disparity, and we are trying to find every penny we possibly can to the point, and I will even put this out there just for anyone watching or who does watch later, looking at making severe management cuts going into 26, 27. We are looking for every single possible penny that we

016can give to our staff, and that will not be management. Thank you for that. So regarding board correspondence, Ken Williams offered that biological males, despite their gender identity, have no place competing with girls. Second, 15 others urged the board to prioritize teachers in the budget, stressing the need for fair wages, stronger health benefits, and cost of living adjustments to ensure educators can afford to live and work in the district. They expressed frustration with delays in negotiations and called for creative budgeting, transparency, and swift action to reach an agreement that supports teachers, counselors, psychologists, nurses, and other staff. Thank you. Thank you, okay. We're gonna move on to our discussion action items. We're going to invite forward first, Mr. Matthew Hart, to update us on the California Dashboard. Good morning, Board President Prusso, members of the

017board, Superintendent Gibson, members of cabinet, and members of community. My name is Matthew Hart. I'm the Director of Assessment and Accountability. Last week, the state of California released the Dashboard for, it's released this year, but it covers last year's data. And this is just a quick presentation to kind of, I guess, surprise you of the news. It's good news, mostly, so I'm happy to share it. This is the Dashboard for this year. And we had gains in, of those seven speedometer areas, we had gains in three of the seven. So mathematics went up from a yellow to a green. College and career readiness went up from green to blue. I will mention with that that we knew that we were gonna go up in that, but it went up even farther than we thought, because

018the state changed one of the ways that students qualify as college and career ready. What happened is one of the, as you remember from college and career readiness, it's like eight different ways that you can qualify. Some of them interconnect with others. And one of the categories was, for example, scoring a three or better on two AP tests, or you could score three better on one with other things like having a CTE pathway or something. So the state of California changed the rule on that so that now it's not passing the AP test, but passing the AP class. And so that made a big difference, as you can imagine. We were gonna go up anyway, but certainly as a district and for our high schools who will present today, that number really, really shot up.

019So good news for us. And then the one that, as you can imagine, I'm really proud of is the English learner progression change. So we actually shot up from an orange to a green on this one. And this is, yeah, thanks. Yeah, the work of our teachers and everybody involved with teaching our English learners has been amazing. We've really sort of sewn some things up over the past couple of years and improved what we're doing. I think what's also exciting to me is that we're gonna, we're not like just resting on the laurels, right? The successes that we've had have given us an idea of where to keep going and where to scale up. And so it's good news there. I will mention that we did have a drop in one area that crops in

020chronic absenteeism. That is the percentage of your students that are absent 10% or more of the time, did drop from a yellow to an orange. Our ADA went up overall, and yet the percentage of our students who were truant also went up, which is bad news in this particular area. So we are looking exactly into like where and why and action plans for how to address the concern. So our high schools are going to present today and when they had to turn in their presentations to you, the dashboard was not released yet. So you're gonna see an older dashboard on theirs, right? The good news for us is also largely good news that's reflected on the high school ones. So the principals will probably address some, you'll be seeing the old dashboard, but they will

021probably mention changes that are reflected within the new dashboard. So hopefully you've had this ahead of time. You know, here's the Granada High one in case you need to refer to that. We had gains in several areas on that one. Here's the Livermore High one, also gains. Obviously gains for both of them, gains in college and career readiness, given the change in that metric, but changes for example, on the CASP as well. So both English and I think math for both of them went up or at least math for one of them. The high schools greatly reduced the number of opt-outs last year, which decreased, wait, did I say increased? They decreased the number of opt-outs, which decreased the loss rules that we had to apply, which meant that the dashboard speedometers went up. So

022good news there. And then we have a DelVal and Vineyards also. So just kind of keep that in mind that unfortunately they're in the weird in between of having to finalize their slides before we were able to have completely updated information. And that's it, unless there are questions. I have a question. Great, I mean, thank you for bringing this, of course, great job to everybody who works directly with the students to get there. Is it, am I correct to assume that it's very, very difficult to go from green all the way to blue, that that's maybe, you know, that would be a three to five year goal from for each school or for us as a district? Yes, remember that the speedometers are made up, they call it the five by five grid, right? And

023so it's a grid and the horizontal levels are like your base level and your vertical columns are the change from year to year. The state incorporates both of those and where you land. And I would say if you're gonna go up one, that's often like a movement horizontally, like you're maybe at the same base level, but you went up like, you know, a 2% instead of 1.5%. And so that kind of boosted you up an extra color. But in order to go up two, it's more like a diagonal shift, right? That you increased so much that now your base level went up. As I reported to you, maybe a month ago, maybe two months ago, something like that, you know, we've increased by our own metric, which is harder than the state's LP, we've increased

024by 8% over the last two years and the percentage of our English learner students who are progressing at least one level on the LPAC. So, you know, I think holding our, like if we're seeing improvement in that standard, which is a higher standard that we've set for ourselves, then, you know, we're definitely gonna see those reflected in a major way on the dashboard and we have. I think as I, every time I do a site visit, I run into some classroom where there are some professional learning PLC is taking place, like yesterday at Junction, I accidentally came across the CCC presentation for our dual immersion staff. And it was everywhere I go, they're just always learning, always progressing. And I think, I'm assuming that this is a result of that, of our, you know, our

025scores getting so much better. I think we have a lot of momentum in this area and our district, which is good, we're due for that. That's really great. Just kudos to you and to everybody who does this so well. So it's very exciting. I had a question on the chronic absenteeism. Could you explain what exactly, I'm assuming that same person absent long time, but the difference between that and the ADA, you mentioned the ADA went up or the chronic absenteeism went down. Yeah, ADA is average daily attendance. And that's what percentage of students are coming on any given day. Chronic absenteeism is the percentage of our students that are absent at least 10% of the time, because that's defined as children who are chronically absent, right? And so we have, you know, while on average,

026our students as a whole came more, we also at the same time increased the number of students who were gone for more than 10% of the time. Can I follow up on that? So I think you've answered my question, but this wouldn't, chronic absenteeism on the dashboard wouldn't go down if we had, like let's say we have five students that are identified or 500 students that are identified as chronically absent, but it's not, if those students then all are missing 20% or 30%, it would be the same thing. It's just anybody that is 10%. So we have more students that are missing 10% or more of school. Correct, yeah. If a student, it's the percentage of the student population, not necessarily a percentage of time missed or something. And so whether a student is missing

02715, 20, or 80% of the time, it's always counted once. I had a question about that too. So what would, I know like students are allowed maybe what, three days is the average that they're allowed to be absent. So what would it be for the high school student to fall into that chronic absentee category? Like how many students are you talking about? So sorry, I should mention that actually, high school students are not actually included on that number. For the state's chronic absenteeism number, it only counts grades K through eight, that nine through 12 are not included on that. In general, that's actually bad for us. Our high school students, they, there are more high school students absent because there are more high school students, but as a percentage, they tend to come more often.

028Some of the early analysis we've done over the past couple of years have showed us that chronic absenteeism in our district right now tends to be more densely located in the lower grades. Kindergarten grades one, there's just a higher percentage of students that are chronically absent at that time. Interesting, okay, thank you for sharing that. No problem. All right, yeah. Thank you. Germs, yeah, sorry, thank you. We were just wondering. One of the things that I think happens is as students enter into the school system, especially now that our TK program is so much larger, is they're exposed for the first time to a lot of new germs. And so, you know, TK and K, so I think what'll start happening is those numbers will start pushing back into TKK and then our first grade

029numbers will come up because their immune system, you know, gets better. Kind of goes with educators, new teachers, tend to be more sick often, or staff members at school sites. And over the years, the immune system just is a lovely thing that helps a ton. So those younger years are definitely a little bit more difficult. I'm just gonna express, my educational systems are so complex. Like saying that I wouldn't have thought about TK and now it makes complete sense, but thinking about kind of the similar complexity of the state offering free lunch and then that leading to a dip in the people that are, you know, applying for free and reduced lunch and just those unintended consequences relating to those. So, yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hart. We're now going to invite our principal

030from Granada High School, Mr. Clark Conover, to come for his school presentation. Good morning, Board President Perusso, members of the board, Superintendent Gibson and community. I'm Clark Conover, the proud principal of Granada High School. It's my honor to share the information about Granada High School and what my amazing staff is doing. Now, like Mr. Hart had said before is, this presentation was kind of based on two years ago's data and then the new dashboard came out. So you'll be able to compare and see kind of what we've done. These are our demographics. And as you can tell, we've stayed about the same over the years. If anything right now, our EL population is a little lower than it has been. Our dashboard two years ago, not most recent, but is there and you can kind

031of see our, we've made some changes to the current one. We increased our current one, where college and career has gone up to blue. Our ELA has gone up to blue for this year. And with mathematics, we've gone up to green. Now, I will point out that our EL, our English learner progress has gone down. Now, this year for, or last year for CASP, what we used to do is have a special testing schedule and where our juniors would come and test in the morning and the rest of the school would kind of have off until a late start. And last year we said, no, we're gonna have kids test during the normal school day. And what we found is we had more kids testing. Okay, we cut our opt outs down by a third

032by doing this. And if you look at it, even though we had a drop two years ago with our ELA scores, 75% still pretty good where we're at. Looking at our scores here, I'm looking at one of the things that concerns me is our drop in our math grades. But what I've found is, so if you come in as a freshman at Granada High School, about 35% of our freshmen are coming in taking geometry or above, and those students are not taking our algebra finals, they're taking it in middle school. About 57% of our kids are taking algebra. So we've got to work with, our teachers are working with them to see what we can do to bring that up. These are scorecard for EL and our students with disabilities. We have a lot of

033increases there. Mentioned the algebra final before. These are our suspension rates that tend to be pretty low. We encourage our students to be connected with their school. And we've also have done some more, instead of suspending students, we're trying to do more restorative justice assignments with them. Being connected with their school means participation. And even though our enrollment is a little lower last year than it has been, our enrollment and our participation numbers are high. My kids like to represent Granada High School and be involved. These are some of the athletics, dance, band, choir, orchestra I have listed. But we have a vibrant club scene too with over 50 clubs. So at Granada High School, if you want to be connected with our school, there's a way to do it. Some things to celebrate. Many,

034as you know, we had John Thayer, one of our teachers was named Alameda County Teacher of the Year. We were named the top school and top teacher trailblazer of awards for the Alameda County Fair. This was based on the student art project submitted this summer. GHS came out on top with the highest overall ranking and was awarded $1,000 for the school. Our digital photography teacher, Deb Bailey was individually honored as the top teacher trailblazer award and won an additional $500 prize for classroom. Achievement, we produced eight national merit semifinalists and 23 national merit commended scholars this year. My priorities as a principal at Granada High School is to increase our math achievement. Our students are utilizing our access period this year to do that. We're trying to get our struggling students into interventions such as

035tutoring and co-taught classes. We're informing our student community and our parent community about the tutoring available through the Los Angeles College and Livermore Public Library. Some of our algebra classes, they're toying with Project Lead the Way, which is more hands-on projects. We're doing professional development and our staff is taking place with the math task force. Our second priority is to increase our English learner achievement. Same thing, utilizing that access period. Trying to do targeted intervention for our students in English. We let our staff know who their EL students are so they can concentrate with them and give them the attention they need. Any questions? Congratulations, Mr. Cronover. Some cool achievements, I really like that. You run an amazing team of people out there and I love going there. I like the whole vibe of the

036school and just really well done. When it comes to the math achievement goal that you have, I noticed that most of the items you have listed really take place outside of the classroom or it's outside of the period that they're... And then the bottom one, of course, talks about some development of teachers through Silicon Valley Initiative. Can you expand a little bit on that? Why so much of it has to happen outside of... Well, the things that are happening outside the classroom, we hope that our teachers bring back into the classroom, such as the development with Silicon Valley Initiative. Besides that, we think though it's a team effort. So some of our students just need extra support. And like I said, that's where the access period has been huge. Through the Livermore Public Library, every

037student in the district based on their ID card, it has a library card. In fact, I helped the students the other day, showed them. There's something called tutor.com that's accessible through the library's website. So if a student's working on homework or extra help at home, 10 o'clock at night, their teacher's not available. They're able to jump on and get help right now. And it's not that I disagree with that. I think that especially in math, if you're a little bit behind, if you just miss a class or two, you're immediately at a disadvantage for months. So I love that idea. But I also think like, what can we do more for, especially disadvantaged students or students who are very involved in sports or just are super tired at the end of the day and don't

038want to do extra work to catch up that we also help them. For sure. And I've got an amazing staff and our teachers are there to give them support as well. Maybe Michelle, maybe you could talk about the SVMI for to explain that to Trustee Vanden Heuvel and anyone who's listening and how that trickles down into the classroom. I think that'd be helpful. Sure, I'd love to. Thank you for the opportunity. Through Silicon Valley Math Institute, we've had a partnership with them for a few years. What I would say to that is that we have had that partnership and it spanned through TK-12. The work that Mr. Connor, I'm gonna speak about this then I'll talk about what we're doing for our secondary schools. But Mr. Connor in elementary and we've talked about this, disrupted

039that downward trend of our CASP math test scores. And we know it's not about just the test scores, it's about students understanding and retaining math instruction. So that when we get to algebra one, which is our goal is that students pass algebra one because that's a graduation requirement, that they feel competent and ready to take on that course. So because of that work, that PLC work and the work that Mr. Connor did with our common formative assessments and our data protocol analysis with those assessments that translates into the teaching and learning, we are now doing that. I was able to on October 24th, that full day of PD was able to sit with our high school teachers through some of that work with SVMI. And there was a lot of excitement with our teaching staff

040in the area of looking at scope and sequence. So that we're all talking about the same thing. So when we meet as departments, as educators, and we look at assessments and we look at students, we're all talking about the teaching and learning with the same common language. And I hope that that makes sense. But this is, and I do appreciate, I'm gonna go back to something Amy Thompson said at our last board meeting that working together, district teachers working together for a common goal, that's always what we wanna do. I was able to see that on October 24th. And it was really, really exciting to me to see that and the excitement. So kudos to your team and Rox's team and all for really digging into that work. Yeah, thank you for that. That really

041helps, thank you. Good morning, Mr. Conover. Congratulations on all the achievements, both academically and also that you're extracurricular. We heard from the students last week on all the achievements and celebrations going on just in the fall. And so we celebrate with you guys as well. I just wanna point out, I really like how you commented and said, how you guys changed the schedule and how you guys do the testing and not just doing it in the morning and letting the other students kind of have a free day, but making just part of the regular school day. I think that is attributed to the success of the turnout of students taking the test. I just had a quick question. You did touch on it a little bit about the freshmen math algebra one final and how

042you said there's a larger percentage of students taking higher math. I just had a question on like how, and I am part of math task force, so I understand the work that's being done, but how are we working specifically towards just those freshmen kids? I know Mr. Conner is doing his work with the younger, but just how do we build upon that? Yeah, so a few things. When our freshmen come in here and if they're taking algebra, we are, like I said, we try to give them support right away, let them know about all these supports we have whether it's tutoring, whether it's the access period where many of our teachers have office hours where they have them come in as well to do that. Okay, thank you. So just a clarifying question, I think

043directed to Mr. Hart. So in your presentation we had the, was the dashboard that was presented for Granada High like the more updated version? Yeah, okay. So I think that looking at, if you look at math for the latest one, I think that that's fantastic. I can see it's in the green. So I think I'm done with you, Mr. Hart, but that was it. Wait, Mr. Hart, Mr. Hart stay. Just really quick since we have Mr. Hart here. Just sorry, then we'll come back to you. I was just gonna ask you, if you do know what the new data is for the math, it was 43%, I believe. Maybe you don't have it right in front of you with the new data. You have last, we have last year's. It's in the green right now.

044Yeah, I can look it up in a second. It's fine, okay, thank you. So I think it's important to, I mean, we can't, it'd be nice if we had cutting edge data at every point, but so I'm focusing on that because I think if we look at the other, there's a lot of questions. But so my question then is, I see mathematics is in the green. So what worked? What, you know, and I'll back up to that, knowing that I think this is your third year in the role, as a fourth year. You kind of, you know, you're in the groove. You have, you know, you've got that mantle of identity. And I'm just curious in what are the leverage points? Because as educators, we have finite resources and you know, what would you attribute

045to the success regarding math? You know, I think our teachers, for sure, they're taking place with the professional developments that's available to them, like the SVI. Also though, is a lot of times our teachers will present and teach and it just doesn't click for the students. So these extra supports, whether it's tutoring on campus, online tutoring around, but just let them know supports that are there. I think those are the big things. Like this, like I said, this year, last year we had something called a study lab where kids would, it was basically tutoring after school and they'd go get that help. This year with access built into the school day, our students have access to go get that extra help they need. So I think. I think for me, the other thing to keep

046in mind is that math is not just about, our students aren't robots that are learning programming, that they're humans that have identities. And so I think some of the gains that we see in math, that Mr. Connor and his team are working on are building those identities. I'm someone that can succeed in math because knowing that you can compute it, but then you come in and you have that lack of assurance can shape your ability to perform on the assessments. But having those early successes and building up their confidence can get them in a place where even if they're uncertain, they can keep coming back at it because they don't see themselves as someone that can't do math. They see themselves as someone that has experienced success and can keep going at it. We also

047have our, like I said, many of our students are involved with different sports and like our coaches do grade checks with them. And I think by having another set of eyes on our students, it helps them stay accountable. Well, just generally speaking, good work. I think that obviously there's some areas of concern looking forward, but I know that you're gonna prioritize resources towards those and looking at the English learning progress. I think that's something that we can pay attention to moving forward, but there's a lot to be happy with. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I just, to Stephen's point about the, just sort of your math confidence. I have set in, I'm in math task force, so I've sat in those SBMI lessons and I wouldn't have considered myself a math confident person,

048but I'm learning in those courses that I'm not a math confident person yet. And the way that they're teaching and the math language that they're teaching and how they allow students to come up with ideas on their own, I feel like is really important. I've had some breakthroughs in those classes. They always look at me, they're like, did you learn anything? And I'm like, yes. So I just wanted to point out, I think it's great what's happening and we can see the progress that you're experiencing. And I think you're making all the right priorities just because it's been mentioned a couple of times and there may be people in the room or at home who don't have high schoolers and maybe understand what this is. Could you just maybe describe the access period, how often

049it is, what it looks like and what the students do during that time? Sure. Access period is built into the school day, two days a week. Wednesday, it's about a half hour and on Thursdays, it's closer to an hour. And during this time, students have the ability to choose what teacher they can go to, to get extra help. And teachers have the ability to select students that may need extra help to come to their access class. It's part of our instructional minutes role is taken and kids are really enjoying it. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay. Now we will invite up to the podium, Mrs. Roxana Mohammed, our proud principal of Livermore High School. Just need you to know that they gave me a time limit. I like to talk. Okay. Good morning, President

050Prusso, members of the board, superintendent, she's not here, but superintendent Gibson and cabinet members. Thank you for the opportunity to share highlights of our achievements at Livermore High School, as well as the areas where we are working to support growth and improvement. Okay. So this is our demographics. At the time of writing this report, we had about 1806 in populations. We have about 44% white students, 36% Hispanic, 16% Asian. And then moving on down, we have 9% of those students as English learners, 15% have disabilities and 29% are socioeconomically disadvantaged at Livermore High School. So it shows you that it's really important for us to have tailored programs and supports to meet the needs of all of our students. But it also allows us to celebrate the diversity that we have that prepares our students

051for a global society. This is our scoreboard for ELA math all the way across. As you can see, we have gained in every area. I'm very proud of that. Our UC A to G completion has also gone up. As you saw in Mr. Hart's report, we went up quite a bit in that. I'm gonna go on to the next one so that you can see for our English learners, we have increased since 2022. We have increased from 21% to about 33%, which is a 12% increase over two years. So that's a pretty substantial gain with our English learner progress. For suspensions, we've decreased from 4.7 to 2%. So a little bit more than half in terms of suspensions have decreased. Our college and career readiness, as indicated, we went from 45.6%. And on this report,

052it shows 50, but in Mr. Hart's report, it shows that we have gone up to 64.9%. So again, quite a substantial growth with our college and career readiness. As far as Algebra 1 proficiency, that is our greatest area of growth. We declined by almost 11%. And I'm gonna give it up for California Dashboard. Again, this is the older one, but we've moved over on all of the areas. So very happy to see that when I looked at it on the 15th. So thank you for that, Mr. Hart. Our scoreboard data for EO and students with disability, as you can see, this area is some areas of growth, but one of the things that I do want to celebrate is our percentage of English learners that are progressing at least one outback level. If you look,

053we increased for English learners about 5%. And then for our students with disability, I had to look at that number a couple of times because it shows 30%. I even asked Mr. Hart, is this accurate? But it was accurate. So we increased by 30%. In terms of support for some of these areas, we're looking to implement a mentor program that we're going to be putting in place on semester two. So our teachers have volunteers to be mentors. And what we're doing right now is waiting on our administration to be trained on a check-in checkout model. And so once we're trained, then we can train our teachers in the check-in checkout model. And then those students will also then be placed in those teachers' advisory period in their homeroom type class. And so they'll have the

054opportunity to check in with those students to provide that additional support. For, again, during cowboy, we call it cowboy advisory period, our tier two interventions is focused on literacy, numeracy, and academic vocabulary during that time. So when the students go to their access period or their advisory period, there's so many different names for that, but they will be going, they go in and meet with their EL teachers or the EL support staff that you saw last Wednesday night. And then they get the support in those particular areas. We will continue with the integrated designated ELD supports, EL achieve, novels in the home language, as well as studies thing for English learners. And we also are doing a lot more outreach with differentiated support for our EL parents through the instructional support center, which is where

055their tutoring is happening, as well as through our family resource center. And we do have full-time and one part-time bilingual aid, instructional aid that man those and actually provide the support. We are also, let me go back to, all right. We have EL coordinator. Again, he will be this year, cause we saw that it really worked. This last year, he will be administrating the administering the interim and summative LPAC assessments. And again, really focusing on the importance of these tests with families. And I think that had a huge advantage for us cause families didn't understand what that test was for. And I don't think the students really understood it. And so we explained it last year. You can see the growth that happened because then they understood what it meant for them academically. For our

056SPED students, we have, we are partnering with career launch. And so this is huge. We have an actual class that is focused on just career skills for our special education students. And so what we're looking at is monitoring the transition piece for their individualized academic, sorry, individualized education plan. So in that, it's going to help them build independence, strengthen social and professional skills, and then also gain confidence in navigating real world environments. And so we're hopeful that this will be beneficial to our students. We do have a trainer that comes in and meets with our special education teachers to help support them with rolling out this curriculum. For suspensions, we're doing better. We have decreased the number of suspensions. And I think this has a lot to do with our positive behavioral interventions and supports

057our PBIS program, as well as some of the restorative practices that we're putting in place, as well as our wellness center initiatives. So this is from our PBIS data. We have to go through an intense analysis. It's called a tiered fidelity inventory of the work that we're doing with PBIS. And so it's the levels of support that we provide for tier one and tier two and tier three. And so the last two years we were analyzing, the first year we analyzed tier one to see kind of where we were generally across the board. And as you can see, we have grown incrementally over the years. And then tier two was the main focus last year, and it continues to be a main focus this year, but we're building on that for tier three. So tier

058three is a little harder, considering kind of economically, we count on these people to come to our sites to provide those individualized supports, but that is still one of the goals that we're going to do in terms of reach out and whatnot. And they've been responsive. So fingers crossed that we continue to build on that. Celebrations, Erica's Lighthouse, Mental Health Model School Awards. We also featured in the Alameda County Health School and Communities Guide to implement wellness centers. So we won PBIS gold for the second year in a row. Our Ag, Livermore High FFA program had an outstanding showing at the recent opening and closing sectional speaking contest. And then of course our Music Honors Chamber Orchestra plays top 12 in the nation. And they're being invited to participate in the National Orchestra Festival Championships.

059And our 2025 Tri-Valley Visionary Awards as part of Livermore High School's Environmental Action Club. Our students partnered with Fertile Groundworks and the Xerxes Conservation Group to create a thriving butterfly garden. Yay, so this time next year, you'll see a migration spot for our butterflies. And it's in the science class. So I'm really, really happy about that. This was my pet project. I don't know why I love butterflies, but there you go. All right, this is priority number one. And so we have a lot, as you heard, the district is supporting us with this work, with the math task force. So I have three math teachers and a vice principal who are on this math task force. And right now what they're doing is they're participating in PD on the new math framework. And then teachers

060are reviewing math units by grade level to adapt to this new framework. We're also, we have LHS staff members participate in what is called the California Academic Partnership Program Interventions and Consortium, which is the APP, CAP, to build a sustainable approach to student intervention. And the focus is going to be on completion of A to G and then math achievement. So they're using in this initiative, real-time data to identify students needing academic or social emotional support, and then assisting our staff in their PLC work. So moving into PLC, teachers are collaborating and strengthening tier one instruction and expanding tier two and tier three. And they're able to do this through advisory. Advisory really lends itself to tier two and tier three interventions with students, particularly those students who are struggling with particular concepts in math.

061In particular, they're able to reach out to their teachers two times a week for additional support. Within the PLCs, within the departmental PLCs, their teachers have completed a data protocol analysis and the course-alike teams, algebra, geometry, algebra two, have created action plans based on those identified needs. And then a big part of our algebra one final, you saw that our students didn't do too well on the algebra one final, the decline was about 10%. And so what we're doing is our math teachers are aligning those questions as warmups or do now activities for their corresponding units for ongoing formative assessments. So, and lastly, just wanted to add that our algebra teachers are participating in the equity, our algebra teachers are participating in equity-based grading. So about 80% of them, four out of five of our

062teachers are participating in this cohort. And we have about 20 teachers participating in this cohort across, yeah, whatever, the departments, there you go. That's the word I was looking for. And then, so we started off with a day and a half of kickoff and then it's a coaching model. So the teachers are being coached and then they have four additional training workshops that they do in the afternoon. Lastly, for this, we are also doing PD on high behavioral expectations. So motivation and building student trust through trauma-informed practices and building connections. We also offer tutoring Mondays and Wednesdays. Okay, all right. So for EL progress, I talked a little bit about what we were already doing but I wanted to add the last piece is that our staff is also being trained by EL coordinator. And

063this year at our staff meetings, we're looking at explicitly incorporating strategies for ELD standards into the content standards. So we've done that twice already this year, just looking at what the standards are being taught and then looking at where our ELD standards are within those content areas and seeing if we're meeting and if we're not, we're adding explicitly. So questions. This is the part I dread. Again, I'll reiterate that it's kind of nice. I can look at where you were and then look at where you're more closely. So looking at math, moving from yellow to green. So in the presentation here, it's yellow but in the reality, it's green. And then regarding EL, let's move from orange to yellow. So the kind of same question, what do you think is helping? What are you doubling

064down on regarding? I think I'll focus on math. Well, it's the PLC protocol. So basically what I've done is allowed the teachers to have more opportunity to collaborate. But what we've done is have structured PLC time. And so this year in particular, as well as last year we have quarterly updates on what they're doing in their PLC. So the first quarter right now is looking at formative assessments and looking at how students are doing in those particular areas and then targeting those students for additional support. So that's where we are in quarter two is looking at where the students who were struggling in the initial formative assessments that we were doing with them and then rebuilding and reteaching the concepts. That's great. I know from my own experience, time is an invaluable resource to teachers

065and the more you can get out of their way let them be the professionals to address the problems that they need to do the better. So, I mean, there's a lot to be proud here. Lots of blues, lots of greens on the latest ones. So fantastic work. I think both of you are kind of in your groove. And so I would encourage you to keep going. Thank you so much. Good morning, Ms. Mohammed. Good morning. I just wanted to congratulate you as well on all the awards and celebrations going on, extracurricular, academic, of course. I just had a quick question about your guys Lighthouse Mental Health Model School Award. How did you guys do that? Yeah, I don't know what just happened. I think our school is known on the wellness center is known on

066a national level. And so we have done presentations, and not me personally, but my wellness counselor has done presentations in Chicago as well as throughout California. And we are a model school for Alameda County. And so I guess somebody put in an application for us and we got it. So I'll take it. That's awesome. Congratulations. I was just wondering if it was directly related to the wellness center. It is directly related to the work that's being done in the wellness center and our PBIS work as well. Right. And then one quick comment. I really like to hear how you guys are supporting your students with special needs and working to support them to be college and career ready. Yeah, I really appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Muhammad. Thank you, Ms. Muhammad. This must

067have been so fun for you to come here knowing what these numbers look like. I can't tell you how much I'm happy to see those. I was like, oh, about 10, 10 for the math. But outside of that, I was very, I was happy because it shows the hard work our teachers are putting into supporting our students. And I think it's a lot of evidence at the heart that they have to ensure that our students are getting the support that they need. So I was very proud. I think also it has a lot to do with how it is to work at your school. I think, you know, it's a relief. I mean, of course, my teacher wife loves coming into it to live more high and just loves being there. And I think it's

068shared by a lot of people there. So that makes you work a little harder, a little better, a little. And then I would just say, don't let up, okay? So that next time there's even more, I mean, these numbers look so great, but I'd say don't let up. I really like how you're showing us that you can walk and chew gum at the same time, getting those suspension rates down, but also upping, you know, some assessment. Great, it's just amazing. So thank you so much. Keep going. Thank you. I love it. Thank you. I do have one question. I don't know if you know the answer to this. I see that the, for years, it's been like this for years, but the algebra final is something that we, across the districts, it's something that we

069kind of get stuck on. I guess I never thought of this before, but I'm not sure what proficient is. Is that passing? Is that a percentage or just passing the test? Do you know? Sorry, I'm looking at Mr. Hart. It's a percentage that's, it's based on the way that the assessment is constructed. So for example, let's say, because that one's set up to focus on priority standards. So let's say you have three standards and you say, and when the teachers construct that, what I ask them is, well, what's proficient? And say like two out of three, and then three out of three would be, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Conner. Three out of three would be mastery. Okay, so then if every standard has that same construction, then take that over the course of the

070test. If there are 10 standards, then there are 30 questions, then two out of three for the whole test, right? So that would be 66%. So that's where you set the proficiency markup. So it is a percentage overall. It's not necessarily per standard, as far as proficiency. Okay. I was just curious. I just realized as I was sitting there, I actually don't even know what that means. Okay. And that's actually, but it's a great note because one thing that we've shifted over in the past few years is shifting over from more like the a hundred point scale of sort of like 70% as a C, and more trying to put proficiency to reflect like the construction and the philosophy underlying the assessment, rather than just like traditional notions of where like a C is. Yeah,

071okay. And I have sat in the task force and I've seen the teachers working on the assessment together and they're, I don't know. I guess it's really helpful for me to be in there and see the work that they're doing because obviously I'm not an educator, but to see them go through the questions and they go through each, they look at all the questions and they go, look at like 70% of our kids didn't get this concept and they can then work on that. It's just pretty impressive, but I was just curious about that. And I think Mr. Conover made a good point as well is that you have a larger percentage of ninth grader or not a larger, but a large percentage of ninth graders who've already taken algebra. And so then they're in

072the geometry class and that's something to think about as well. So, okay, thank you, that's helpful. And then I just wanted to shine a light on the wellness center. I think it's a bright spot. I was gonna say a bright spot in our district. I think it's a bright spot in our state and I think it's a bright spot in our nation for sure. And so wonderful that our students have the opportunity to have this amazing space on campuses. And I think it's been, I mean, I like going in there. It's really nice. And just appreciate the work that's gone into that and the support that you have given. I know that Mr. Radicki now is solely in there and the other counselors have sort of, and VPs have sort of taken up some of

073that work so that he can do that. And I think that that's showing in what we're able to do. So I just wanted to say that as well. And then I also just wanted to commend both principals. I think all of us were at the rivalry game, I believe, maybe. Oh, Mr. Trustee, no, okay. Most of us were at the rivalry game. And I just wanna say like coming there as a community member and I know it felt like all of Livermore was there. And it's such an exciting event every year. And I just love, I know that there's sort of, there obviously is a little bit of a rivalry. Well, maybe not a little bit. There is a rivalry that happens. But I also am so impressed with, I guess, the way that everyone

074supports one another. I, sorry, I'm fine, I'm fine. I love watching the girls dance together. I love watching the boys on the field and how they are very respectful. The coaches are respectful. The bands are amazing. Sometimes the crowd gets a little unruly, but that's on us. And then also the drum line at the very end has been such a fun tradition that I think just started maybe last year or the year before. Two years ago. Yeah. Anyway, it's just such a great event. And I just wanna thank and commend both of you. I know that it's a lot of work for a high school principal to be at all of those games and making sure that the students, and I know your VPs are there helping as well. I see you all there making

075sure that the students are doing the right things and paying attention, watching and teaching them how to act. And I also wanna thank our middle school principals who also come and help because sometimes their students are the ones that have the most trouble. Yeah. So I just wanna, I know it's a big group effort from everyone's part. And I just want you to know that I see it and I appreciate it. And it's just been such a great thing for our community. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. To both of you. Okay. Thank you. Your excuse, great job. Okay. Now we will invite Mr. Eric Taylor to come forward and he will be giving our presentations on DelVal and Vineyard. So we're excited to have him here with us today. All right. Good morning

076board, President Prusso, cabinet and our community. My name is Eric Taylor and I'm the proud principal of Livermore's adult ed or alternative education programs. So props for today is principals wear many hats. So as a fun little thing, I'm gonna put both of them up here just for a moment. All right. So let's get started with DelVal. So our demographics, DelVal is a continuation high school. And so it has, it focuses on students who are 16 years old and mathematically credit deficient. And so our population is transit. So it is consistently moving where we have a quarter system. So we have multiple entry points for students to come in and find success with our program. Students can graduate with us with a two 10 graduation requirement, which is different than Vineyard, Livermore and Granada, which

077is 240. Okay. Every year our demographics change just a little bit. And again, it's, you know, we started the year with about 80 students and now we're about at the semester change, we'll probably be around 100. And so our both Alt-Ed sites, our demographics grow as the year goes on. Our California dashboard. I know Mr. Hart had talked about it as well too, but our suspension rate, graduation rates are positive. Our English learner progress, mathematics and English language arts are grayed out because our populations are small. And so if there's a small percentage of students, the state will not provide information about that. And obviously areas of growth, college and career readiness as well too. Our scoreboard, student success. But just an overall for both schools, just a reminder that a lot of our percentages

078going up or down can be based on a small group of students because we are so small. So when you look at a loss of eight or gain of four, that could be one to two students. And so it's just putting the knowledge out there for everybody. We focus heavily on credit earning and the ability to earn a diploma. And so one of the biggest things that you'll hear me talk about over and over on the DelVal side, but along with the Vineyard side as well too, is attendance. We always want kids comfortable coming to school. We have a much smaller caring environment, which is typically a little bit different than the larger traditional high schools. Again, we see swings in different ways. English language learners will be present at DelVal and then we'll either

079graduate early or are able to transfer back to Granada or Livermore High School. So there's just a lot of moving pieces when you look at English language learners. Progress at our school, students suspended is obviously a positive trend. And college and career readiness is, we'll talk about that one a little bit later. That's one of our pride and joys is our college and career readiness programs that we have. Again, we see kind of a mix, right? We see a little bit of ups, we see a little bit of downs, but everything revolves around wanting to be at school and making sure that kids are comfortable being at school. Suspensions are a positive trajectory. Obviously we still suspend students for behavior, but typically if students are engaged in coming to school, we see less and less

080behaviors and our staff does a wonderful, wonderful job of connecting with kids every day, talking to them, getting to know them and helping them feel supported at school. Not just our teachers, but everybody, our counselor, even our campus caterer, Tony, he does an amazing job with the kids talking, our librarian, our office staff, you name it, everybody is on board every day. Celebrations and programs, we continue to have a wonderful culinary program at DalVal and hopefully you're all invited to our Thanksgiving feast on Friday, so hopefully you guys will be able to make it there. We're planning on being outside, however, if there is rain, we will shift it inside, but we're looking forward to having a great celebration, supporting or celebrating all those who have helped us throughout the year. Our construction program is

081relatively new. Youth Build several years ago transitioned as the grant went away, it transitioned to DalVal and so our program is continuing at DalVal and then we also have a WIOA grant, which is very much a mentorship program, so we have students that meet with mentors regularly to help build and inspire students to go out there and be positive contributing citizens to our society. Friday number one is attendance. Our average daily attendance last year was 68%. We wanna obviously increase that. We're looking at systems every week to identify trends, see which kids are coming into school, which kids are not coming into school and reaching out to families, talking to them, helping understand maybe there's needs that are not being met outside of school that we can connect with services. It is just a variety

082of different things, but the thing that you'll hear me say is build, build, build, so building systems, reaching out to families, making positive connections to help the kids be at school. Next one, credits. So credits is a big word that we use at DalVal. So quarterly academic credits, students can take five classes, so theoretically they can earn 25 credits in a quarter, and so this really helps them meet the goal of graduation or returning back to Livermore and Granada in their senior year. We want what they want. They come in and tell us like, I wanna go back to Granada, great, let's get you there, let's do that, but I need you to come to school, I need you to get the work done, so that way we can put you in a position to

083do that. Again, this is just part of a weekly process that we are continuing to develop and communicate with our parents and students as well, too, so they're aware of what their credit earning is. So that's all I have for DalVal. So any questions, comments? No, just it's really fun to look at the new dashboard and see where you have really improved, especially college and career readiness. It's really cool. The graduation ceremonies that I attended this last year, it just, they stick with you. I mean, you know, God bless the high schools, but it's really, really, really cool to see people get a hold of their future so much earlier than just going through the motions and graduating, and it's really, really fun to see, and just kudos to your whole team. They're amazing people

084and keep going. I think it's really cool. I appreciate that, thank you. So question, and then I think a statement. So first question, what programs and resources exist for students with disability at DalVal? The special education program that we have at DalVal is a resource, is a resource program, and that is the only program that we have. And then the second is, I'm gonna see if I can kind of birdwalk to this compliment. I think I'd read a piece a while ago that was looking at, is there a difference between getting a GED and getting a diploma? And the study that I read talked about that there is, there's a difference. It's not just about credits. That's part of getting a diploma is the social aspects, the navigational capital required to make it through the

085system. And then also the school culture support, interacting with different people in diverse contexts. And I think that you are phenomenal in building school culture, making people feel connected. And it's not just about credit, it's about credits, but it's also about all of those other aspects of what it means to go through school and be successful. So I just wanted to say that, thank you. Thank you, and I have a great team that supports me that makes it look easy. So I wanna recognize them as well too, for sure. Thank you. Morning, Mr. Taylor. Morning. Thank you for your presentation. I wanted to say congratulations with all the achievements as well and all the work that's being done. I too really, really valued being at your guys' graduation and the spring. And we continue to

086celebrate the culinary construction, ROP programs that you guys offer. I just had a quick question, cause you did touch on it about attendance and credits, but how is, can you just elaborate a little bit more on how you guys encourage the students? I know you said you work with your librarian and different teachers and people on campus to encourage the students, but what is it to directly with the students to get them to come to school? So part of our orientation process is I will meet with every student and their family and we'll go over how many credits they've earned. We'll ask, just get to know the student and the families. And maybe sometimes they do have struggles and try to figure out like, what is the best way to help support them, whether it's

087through our CWA or through other county resources to help settle that instability. So there is more of a desire to come to school. And sometimes kids will feel bad about coming to school because I think sometimes they feel like they have not been successful. So there's kind of that weight, but once they come and they see the smaller class size and they see the environment and our culture, a lot of kids will kind of take a deep breath and then they'll sort of get back to work. Things that pull kids away from school tend to be obviously sickness, but it can be a variety of other things as well too. And so when we don't see a student for a day or two and we haven't had any connection with the families calling in, we'll

088reach out to them and just check in with them, say, hey, how's it going? One of our processes that we do around 10 o'clock is if we don't see a student, we call home. We say, hey, we haven't seen Johnny or Rebecca or whoever. And nine times out of 10, the parents are like, didn't get out of bed this morning. But just that communication, that kind of family piece helps a lot with the kids coming in and seeing familiar faces and people that they trust and they wanna do right by that. So that's a lot of the leveraging points that we use to get the kids to be part of our community and our school. Yeah, I really appreciate hearing that. And it was nice to hear just from the students at graduation and just

089their personal connection and the success stories and the work that you guys are doing just to encourage them to stay on the right path. I really liked how you said too, you want what the students want and that their goals become your goals. And that's just something I really value about the work that's being done at both Vineyard and DelVal. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for coming. I know that looking at both of these schools, the data is unique and it's not something we can really compare or look at compared to other schools. And so I think we have all experienced being on your campus and experienced the community that everyone's talking about and how important it is. There are right now about 100 students there who found a home, found a place where

090they feel comfortable. And just like at the graduation itself, like seeing the challenges, I mean, the fact that some of these students are young parents. And at the graduation, we got to see some of the babies, which was, I mean, my heart, yeah, was just so beautiful. And what a great opportunity for them to be in a place where they can come and get their high school experience and get their high school diploma, which means that they're gonna have more success for that little baby that's sitting in their arms or wearing their adorable little graduation caps as they deserve. Absolutely. That's what I say. So I just wanted to say that and I appreciate, I know we talk a lot about credit and graduation, but I just appreciate, as everyone else has said, the community

091that's there and that you're doing the right thing and that the good things are happening there and we appreciate it. So we'll move on to Vineyard now if you're ready for that. Sounds great, thank you. I just thought it'd be fun. It's great. We have millions of people watching right now and they are loving it. I hope so, I hope so. Okay, so now we get to move on to Vineyard. So Vineyard is an amazing school and the staff. And again, you'll hear me talk over and over again about just bragging on them. Vineyard in the past has been at a separate site and now I'm not sure if you guys are aware, but they're both on the same site. So if you're back to the street and you're looking at Fifth Street School, the

092right side is primarily DelVal and the left side is primarily Vineyard. Let's get into, there we go, okay. Demographics, again, we start small and we grow as the year goes on. And so right now we're probably going to be, I think rocking around 85, 90 kids by the time we get to semester two. So we have both a middle school program and we have a nine through 12 program. The middle school program is strictly online. It is grade seventh and eighth and we're looking at about I think 12 students in that particular program. And the remainder are with the ninth and 12th grade. Students will come into, Vineyard is a semester system. So we try to be a little bit more open to transfers at the beginning of the year. And then once we get

093towards that middle part of the semester, then we will defer students to transfer at the second semester. So students have the ability to, based on our master schedule, can do all virtual or they can do virtual and in-person. So there's a little bit of a hybrid that goes on. It's fantastic. I mean, this is my first year working with that team and I'm just blown away by them and the work that they do. And yeah, so I'll leave it at that. Sorry, I'm passionate about this stuff so I can talk all day long. I know I could feel the heat in the back of my head so I'm sorry. So we're talking about a California dashboard. So again, a foundation, a base. Let's look at what the numbers are. Let's see what we can improve.

094What are the things? Can we make small tweaks with different systems to help improve our scores? School dashboard, we see a little bit of a slip in both ELA and math, but we do see some positive growth with attendance, which is great, as well as A3G completion. Student scoreboard data progress monitoring. It looks like a huge shift when we have 66%, but when you think about it, it's only three students. So that's great. Three students that are making progress. We're very excited about that. And our team is doing an amazing job working with them. Yeah, it's crazy. I look at it and I'm like, what? Oh my God. We were just commenting. That might be the biggest jump we've ever seen. So far, so far, there might be other schools. Students with suspension, again, a

095positive trend. College and career readiness is creeping up as well, too. Students, English language learners and students with disability, we see positive numbers in most categories or remain the same. Again, suspension is a thing that's still out there, but we just don't have a ton of behaviors at that particular school. Reflects here, celebrations and programs. The cool thing about Vineyard is it provides kids the opportunity to, who struggle with large groups of people, the ability to thrive because it is much smaller. Friendships or connections that kids make are much more, you're not in a room with 30 plus kids, you're in a room with five to 10. And so learning is different, learning and connections with kids. They have a leadership class, which I know I didn't put that on here, I'm sorry, but the

096leadership class did a haunted house and it was a collaboration between both schools. And it was absolutely amazing. And the kids were so excited and they're really excited about Thanksgiving because they're both working on it together. Our environmental science pathway is amazing. It's relatively new. And so it gives kids the opportunity to meet the college and career requirement. Our Vineyard staff is amazing. They've had some transitions with administration and facilities, but they are student-centered and they're focusing on the things, the main thing, which is the kids and their progress. Again, attendance. Attendance for Vineyard is based on work completion. So the kids completing the work and turning it in is our attendance. So if the kids are not completing the work, not turning it in, that brings us to a question of, is this the

097right fit for you? And then we work to try to help support them by having them come in on Wednesdays for individualized kind of instruction or support or organization or whatever that is. So that's how we're working through attendance and through credit earning as well too. We wanna make sure that the kids just don't drop off and become dropouts. We want to make sure that if they're needing support, that they're coming to school and getting it with the instructor, with our counselor. So that's another piece that we're building this year. And Ms. Soprante has been instrumental in this and we've seen a lot of success so far. So I'm cautiously optimistic. It will continue to be positive. Okay, questions and discussions. I just wanna say a quick comment. I really appreciate how you're taking the

098time to just share how the schools operate and how they differentiate. For some people, they may not even know what's the difference. And just thank you for the little props too, switching the hats. I like that. Thank you. Absolutely. It's been a learning curve for me too. So if I'm learning, I'd like to share that learning with everybody. For us as well as the community, can you remind us why and how students come to Vineyard? And I know that that could be pretty broad, but just generally, what brings students to Vineyard? There are a variety of different aspects. The things that I've seen have been sports. Students are very involved in a sporting aspect. And so this type of program helps with that. That's a small percentage of our students. But I would say that

099a majority of students that we get, the 2,100, the 1,800 is just too much for them. And so this smaller environment, this more personalized piece is more ideal and suits them. And then kind of secondly, I think putting one principle in charge of both of these sites was, I just wanted to say the collaboration between the sites and that they're all students, they're there to learn and building community. I think that's fantastic to promote those types of collaborations. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. Question, one question for you, one question for Ms. Wosley. You've said that there's a number of students that are just hybrid or are just online. There's others that are hybrid. Do you see any correlation connection between the results of what ends up on the dashboard by them

100being fully online versus being more hybrid and there's more of a relationship between a teacher? I was motivated by my relationship with teachers and I would have bad grades in the classes where I didn't have a connection and better grades in a class where I really liked the teacher because I worked for them, I guess. And do you know kind of the percentages? Is it mostly online and then there's a couple that do hybrid or does that move and fluctuate throughout the year? That is a great question and I will have to do some research to get back to you on that one because I just, it's something I've never come across this far in working with the team. Yeah, because if we get more and more students that are solely online, that may also

101hit us on the dashboard, so to speak. Yeah. And my second question was just the economics of it. Do we get the same amount of money for students that attend these two schools and does it cost us about the same to serve them and to give them education? We do receive the same base funding for both continuation high schools as well as our alternative education in high schools. So the same we receive for Granada and Livermore is what we receive for Del Valle and Vineyard. And then as far as cost, typically a continuation high school does operate at a higher cost than your traditional high schools just because the economy of scale is lower. So that school does cost us more as well as independent study program typically does cost a little bit more. And

102so we do see that and you see it reflected in the school accountability report cards that are presented each spring as well. So traditionally you do see a higher cost. And so that is what we've been kind of looking at to make sure that we're at least within the normal realm. And so that's what the schools did see some changes in their master scheduling and their staffing going into 25, 26 school year to try to balance out the cost. Yeah, it doesn't surprise me. Do you want to take a stab at like percentages? Like it's 30% more expensive or it's 5% more? I'd have to do some research. Yeah, that's a tricky question, but yeah. Thank you for that. Thank you, I just have kind of one question. And that is, we mentioned that Vineyard

103and Del Valle have just recently merged as one. And I know you've had experience with just at Del Valle and how is that experience different with Vineyard? Do you see positives, negatives? I know you've seen positives, you've mentioned some of those. Are there other things that are challenging about it? Nothing comes to mind when I think of challenges. I think having both schools on one site, I think is great. The accessibility for all of our students just because of where it's located, I think is very helpful. Both staffs are funny, amazing, like, cause we work together. And so there's times when we're doing the Vineyard thing and there's times when we're doing the Del Valle thing and then we'll do it together. And so just watching everybody interact, it's really cool. So. We need you

104to, we need to make you like a Del Vineyard hat or something. There is an alternative, there is a middle ground. I just haven't got it on any swag or anything yet, but yes, there is something out there. Thank you so much for coming to all of the principals today, thank you so much. We are gonna take a short bathroom break and then we'll be back. Welcome back. We just have one consent item, which is the personnel recommendations. And I would like to ask Dr. Bondoris, I noticed that on the classified, I know we have coaches listed twice, somewhere for JV and varsity, but we also have a classified hire, I believe maybe an error that's listed on there twice. I think that's a duplicate. I'm checking with staff to make sure it's not two

105different PCN numbers for some reason, because we have DelVal and as we noticed, both of the schools located on the same campus. So I know that's a 1.0 employees. So I believe that's the situation where it's the two schools, but I'm gonna double check and get back to you. So should we table this whole thing or can we approve minus that or? No, I think we can. Approve as is. Yep, I was right, 0.5, 0.5. Okay, so one for DelVal, one for Vineyard. It's correct. Okay, great. That is fascinating. I saw that on there and I'm like, oh. So we're good. Okay, so I would entertain a motion. I'll move to follow the superintendent's recommendation to approve all personnel recommendations as listed in item 8.1A. I'll second. So I have a motion by Trustee Vanden

106Heuvel, seconded by Trustee Kaplanis. Any discussion on the motion? I'd ask the clerk to take roll. Trustee Vanden Heuvel. Aye. Myself, aye. Trustee Kaplanis. Aye. President Peruzza. Aye. And that is Trustee Bueno is absent. Yes, so that carries for zero with the absence of Trustee Bueno. And then our next regularly scheduled board meeting will be held Tuesday, December 9th. The district office here in this room, open session will begin at 6 p.m. And this meeting is now adjourned at 10.44 a.m.