001Okay, welcome. Good morning. This is the September 25 meeting of the Board of Education of the LVJ USD and it is now 9am as president this meeting is now called to order. Our meetings are broadcast over zoom to provide opportunity for our computer community members to observe in real time and video recordings of the board meetings are posted on our website typically within 72 hours after each meeting. All actions approved in closed session must be reported out in open session. And as a note Superintendent Gibson is attending a meeting with the Real Estate Alliance Livermore this morning to receive a donation check. I believe she will be joining us but she will be a few minutes late just wanted to let people know. We're going to begin with the flag salute, and we are going
002to ask Mr. Matthew Hart if you could come forward and lead us in the pledge. Thank you. In the absence of Dr. Gibson I'd like to ask Mrs. Pichette if there are any changes to the agenda. There are not. Okay. We have representatives from our bargaining units. Do they wish to come forward. Just checking. Okay, I'd like to recognize them at least we have Tara less the vice president of LEA and Victoria story, the vice president of CSCA, so we'd like to thank them for being here. We now have our public comment. This is now time for public comments and we have two public comments. I think are we ready with the three minutes. Just, I think you guys already know the, this, the procedures but well you'll have three minutes. And we will begin
003with Psy Maiten, and then followed by Megan Sanborn. I want to remind you if you get down close to the end of the three minutes, not trying to be rude just trying to keep everyone on on task for time. So we'll start with Psy. Good morning, honorable board members and cabinet. I lost my job. And that's why I'm here and HR fired me. And I don't know how much you have heard about that but I'm here to defend myself and a feeling for you to get my job back. I love this job and I'm enjoying I have been enjoying it and the reason for this to happen because apparently HR has this red marking when somebody some incident happens and then they look at number of the incident and they let the person go, which
004I believe it's not the right way to do but that's what has happened to me so there was three incidents last year, Mendenhall, and then there was in the liberal high school. A misbehaving student basically complained about me after school I did something wrong and apparently that was not the case. And then a teacher at Granada, she's the head of the math department she asked me to cover for her in the mall in Nepal, because she was going to be in the maternity leave. So I went to principal, principal got upset and attacked me and abused me, blocked me from entering the school. And then recently to elementary school principals basically for no reason absolutely one of them I believe it's a discrimination subject or something I don't know. I'm not sure so basically all
005these five incidents, our new HR director sees all of them, and she fires me and that's what happened to me and I'm very upset because I really love this job. I'm dedicated myself after working almost 40 years in the industry. I am a professional I know how to behave. I, in fact, I invented that dish antenna that physician network is using it. I am very smart and very professional I have had all the way up to maybe 300 people reporting me at some jobs. So, these are kind of nonsense is I don't believe this is the way it should happen. I believe if a principal is not happy with it with a substitute teacher, they should report to HR, and that HR deal with it and we shouldn't give this too much power for a
006principal, that even, you know, for no reason they block you and that becomes a negative point in your file and then you get fired. So I'm not happy I'm appealing for your constant answers. I like to miss pursue to be my point of contact and look forward to get this result. Thank you. Thank you. Megan Sanborn. It should be on. Just put it close if you think you put it close to your mouth be helpful. Good morning board President Pruso members of the board and Dr. Gibson. My name is Megan Sanborn, and this is my 13th year as the library media specialist at Rancho Las Positas Elementary. I am a product of Livermore schools, having attended Arroyo Seco East Avenue and Livermore High. Today, I would like to ask the board, if they are aware
007that every school library in our district currently has no direct funding for library books from the district level. If a site is lucky enough to have an active PTA, they might receive funds from them to purchase new library books. The only other source of funding from our libraries comes from running retail book fair fundraisers, asking our gracious communities to spend their money to support us. Book fair sales within our district widely range anywhere from $500 to $6,000, depending on community involvement. With the thousands of students we serve and support throughout 18 libraries, an average An average hardcover chapter book costs $15, an average hardcover picture book costs $20, and a hardcover nonfiction book can cost 25 to $42. The American Library Association recommends a minimum of 20 books in circulation for each individual student. Rancho,
008for example, currently has 19 books per student, due to the nature of lending books that can get damaged, mistreated, and become obsolete. As a professional, I recognize that there is always more need than money available in the district budget. However, with recent questions from the community over how our district has been spending and allocating money, I thought it was an appropriate time to advocate in front of you today on behalf of our students and the libraries that serve them. We have requested many times for some level of funding during our monthly library media specialist meetings with district leadership, and every time that has fallen on deaf ears by providing funding at the district level, you would ensure that parity and equity are being represented throughout our diverse school communities. Our students deserve access to libraries
009with content that is up to date and refreshed regularly, regardless of the affluence and financial engagement of their personal school community. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you to our speakers. We're going to move on to communications. Formal written correspondence to the Board of Education shall be acknowledged if received by the board or in the superintendent's office by 2pm the day before the meeting, formal written correspondence received after the cutoff time will generally be acknowledged at the following meeting. Please note our board electronic communications received via the LBJ USD website by accessing the formal written correspondence to the Board of Education link with all fields completed and verified shall be treated as formal written correspondence. I'd ask our clerk to please summarize the correspondence. Yes, the board received 14 pieces of correspondence in
010which community members expressed disappointment with the district's approach to teacher compensation. Their names are Cora Bugai, Alexa Galley, Christy Jo Hansen, Dennis Bertoli, Randy Bertoli, Angela Brady, Marina Guzardo, Gianna Salerno, Lucas Ostian, Kathleen Paduano, Mark Lillian, Julie Bertoli, Katrina Schaeffer, and Jennifer Babbitt. We also received two others. Janelle Harris expressed concern relative to dual litigation funding, and lastly LBJ USD speech language pathologists expressed concern regarding the compensation and benefits for speech language pathologists within the district. That's it. Thank you. Yeah, go ahead. Just a clarifying question and Miss Walsley maybe you can answer it. Does the district provide any funds to our libraries in that in that in a manner that would allow them to purchase materials and books. Currently at this time we provide sites, a site budget that they can choose how to
011allocate certain portions of their site budget but there's no funding dedicated directly to the libraries, so I've added it to my list for us to talk about as cabinet. Okay, did something change. No, this is the first that I've heard about this being an issue so I do want to have a conversation. Okay, yeah, I find that kind of shocking. Okay. Okay, we're going to move on to our discussion action items, and we will turn the time over to Michelle Bichette for our first for the LBJ USD digital data dashboard. Good morning, President Pruso Board of Trustees cabinet and community. I'm excited to introduce. Oh, actually, I need my Sorry, jump the gun there a little bit will allow it will allow. You're doing a great job Nico. Thank you. Yeah, okay. Let's see if
012it works. I'm excited to introduce a brand new initiative the LBJ USD digital data dashboard developed directly in response to parent feedback at a past PC IC meeting parents expressed a desire for a one stop transparent view of student achievement wellness and operational data at their fingertips. Today we unveil the result of that collaboration. I also want to begin by extending sincere appreciation to Mr. Matthew Hart, our director of assessment and accountability who did a lot of background work with this digital dashboard. And then to Michelle Dawson and Sarah deGroote who ensured a seamless website integration. This evening, this morning's presentation has four objectives. Number one, share the new district dashboard so you can see the design and content firsthand to to explain how the dashboard works including data sources update cycles and user navigation.
013Number three, to gather your feedback so the board and community priorities continue to shape its growth and forward to discuss next steps for sharing the dashboard with our broader LBJ USD community. These objectives ensure that the dashboard launches with board input and strong community alignment. This is more than a data display, it's a strategic management tool, it enables us to celebrate successes, highlighting growth across academics and student wellness monitor strategic work tied to our new five year strategic plan. Track progress over time so we can adjust interventions early. This aligns perfectly with LBJ USD's commitment to data driven continuous improvement. Identify areas of need and specific specific student groups who require additional support, increase transparency and accountability for the board, families and the public, and inform important decisions about programs and resources. Lastly, to identify
014groups of students who need additional support. Our new dashboard is a web based publicly accessible report that is free that will be updated throughout the year as fresh results are available. The key features include 16 initial metrics with capacity to expand and organization into our strategic plans five focus areas which are academic achievement student wellness and safety communications and engagement leadership development and employee success and fiscal and faculty facility resources by structuring data this way we provide a holistic picture of student and district success from early literacy and algebra proficiency to facilities and fiscal health. The homepage is designed for quick understanding and easy navigation. It provides background information, a legend. Just put all these up there, a legend explaining icons and color coding, and a score, excuse me a scorecard view of all metrics.
015There is also a direct link to our new strategic plan so viewers can immediately see how each metric aligns with district goals, The area of growth this year will be to determine metrics to add to focus areas three, four and five as you can see in the bottom right. This shouldn't this an intuitive layout ensures families and stakeholders can access and interpret key data at a glance. The initial 16 metrics were chosen because they are high, high impact indicators of student learning, well being and college and career readiness. They span academic outcomes such as CASP ELA and math proficiency algebra one readiness, and you see a to G completion, As well as wellness and engagement indicators like attendance the special suspension rates and teacher student relationship survey results. These metrics create a balanced scoreboard helping
016us create progress while identifying where additional supports are needed. Each metric is its own detailed page. That includes a clear description of current actions that have been identified within the LCAP. That's on the right hand side trend lines for the district. Each school and student groups. After January of 2026, the 2425 data will be inputted to have three years of tender trend data as you can see there's only two up there right now. Tools to add subgroups such as English learners or socio economically disadvantaged students, so we can monitor opportunity gaps and those tools as you see in the upper right hand corner, they're all drop down so the metric section the tool section are all drop downs. And descriptions of current actions being implemented to improve student outcomes this level of transparency turns data
017into action and ensures our interventions remain responsive and measurable. So our next steps focus on maintaining momentum and keeping in information current content, so we will one continue updating the dashboard with new data as it becomes available to we will launch the dashboard on the district website on September 26 2025 which is tomorrow, making it publicly accessible. Number three, we will prepare communications for families and staff, including tutorials. Number four, we will add additional metrics and five we will engage in continuous improvement ensuring the dashboard evolves as our district's needs evolve. So in closing the district dashboard is a direct outcome of listening to our parents and community, and an important step toward deeper transparency and continuous improvement. I again express gratitude to Mr heart, Miss Dawson, and Mr growth for ensuring a seamless online
018experience, and I welcome your questions, insights and suggestions, as we move to toward the September 26 public launch and ongoing refinement of this powerful new tool. Thank you. I have no blue card so I'm going to close public comment comments. Yes, I've got a couple of couple of questions, and I'm asking this before Mr heart comes up and maybe he wants to help answer the questions but I want to, I don't want to question his report does that make sense talk about the tool itself. So in order for us as a board and as a, you know, as a team to make important informed decisions how do you assure both trustworthiness and accuracy of the data that's reported. So this data comes directly from the state, which is comes from multitudes of assessments that students
019take qualitative and quantitative. So, to ensure the accuracy of the data that is, it's, it's embedded within the instruments that we use like the cast its students take the test and it spits out their assessment data, and then that immediately gets uploaded to this to this document, excuse me to this web based tool. Yeah. So this is accurate is, you know, as accurate as we can measure and we can trust it to help us make good decisions. Yeah, tell me more though about the concern with trust well sometimes just from my own personal experience. People report things in a way that they want us to see them, you know, and that's hard sometimes we have to really look into what's behind that where do these numbers come from. What's their origins. So for instance, looking
020at the historic data that's prepared, or there's a, you know, you can see the things are trending. Have these data always been measured the same way so we can compare apples to apples when we look back at 2022 have these already already been there. And so how is this different from the current dashboards that we already have. Yeah, so the trend data would be measuring apples to apples meaning, for instance, if it's a California Healthy Kids survey or it's the cast data, it's the same data every year. That's, that's what we're looking at in that trend data is, are we moving upwards, are we, are we stagnant, are we moving in a downward trend, so that we can respond and really drill down and dig into the data of why that's happening. This is a
021fantastic tool I really really like it what's the accepted biggest weakness of this tool that everybody sort of kind of the we agree, this is, I would say it's a lot of time on our end. But, but in the end very worth it for the tool for the community because this is what the community has asked for is a live living tool that they can go in and look at trend data based on student groups, and their personal this the parents are, they wanted to look at their, their own children's school sites to refine the data to be able to look and see how it compares to the district data and other school sites. So when parents or community members look at the data and they want to appeal, they say this is not accurate,
022this is incorrect information where how do they go about getting the background information how do they find out where these numbers came from. They would, they would send communication to either myself or Mr. Heart. We're happy to have any conversation with community members about the accuracy of the data. That's great. And is this tied to some of the ratings I think they're, you know they are that's our schools get, you know, based on people who who move into the area whatever they get they look at ratings, people that move into the area they look at ratings of schools and some get a four and other get an eight and a half and is this tied to that or is it. Is that based on the same data. I'm going to assume you're talking about a
023website that I won't maybe like in public but yes, I think it's called good. Anyway, anyway, but so that I think there's, I don't know the data points because I'm not really familiar with that necessarily that that has that gives schools rating like a good and excellent or poor. So I can't really speak to that. This is our specific data that we use to inform our decision making in the area of academics and student well being. So, I can't really speak to those ratings. I love it. Thank you so much. You're welcome. I think my, my assumption was that if you go to the California Department of Education there's a district profile for Livermore, and there's assessment data reports but they're in a PDF so if you wanted to find that information you could find
024the information you would have to know that this exists and you have to go find it and you have to dig and so my assumption is that this is trying to cut out a lot of those steps so that parents can parents and us can get a glimpse of what it is more seamlessly at their fingertips. Okay, I think kind of building from trustee van and who voles. I think help, because I mean part of this is once we can play with it I think we'll have more feedback, but making that directly like or having links to the CDE reports of here's where this information is coming from so that it doesn't seem that itself generated that, like, if you want to you can go here and here's where it is and here's where we
025get it. I think the other, the other thing that I think is powerful about this is that I read in the New York Times, 12th grades, 12th grade reading skills hit a new low and it talked about the 30 year low for 12th grade reading scores. And I think part of that is a lot of community members. I don't know if I could say a lot some community members couch their understanding of our students success in a national context. And I think that this helps us say, that's cool that that's, or I'm sorry that's happening elsewhere but here's what's happening with us. And I think that that can distinguish national issues from our local issues because, you know, I care about both of them but I mostly care and what's under our purview is what
026our students are experiencing and so if they're experiencing that then we need to address that and I think that this helps both the community and us see that in a timely manner. I think the other, the only other comment is I was thinking feedback related to this once it goes live, and I wonder, you had gather feedback for continuous improvement and so I guess I was just kind of curious about how that might take place. Is it asking for input at PCIC, are you going to reach out to us again and ask us for inputs, or would there be one of those widgets that we've had for the redistricting where we can get community inputs, and I'm not sure if you know which or if all of those would be but just some of your
027thoughts about how do we gather continuous improvement for this, it would be all of the above. Yeah, I love feedback in many different forms from many different groups, community groups in our district because it gives us then that wide perspective of how we can serve our community with this outreach. I think the only thing that I would say is that there's a depth of knowledge that people that want that robust, I don't know, digging data digging can happen. I think I would prefer this to be as accessible as possible. I'd like somebody that has limited English proficiency, a parent or guardian to look at this and to understand. So I think it but having those connections that if they want to do a deeper dive then then we can provide that link so it's both
028us and then if you want more you can go to the California Department of Education. So, but I look forward to playing with it since I think it's, I think it's a great endeavor and I applaud all of the work that has to go into this this isn't magic it takes a lot of, as you can see it was communications it was, you know, curriculum as well so thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Just to piggyback off of what Stephen or trustee during was saying how if they have access to wherever the data is drawn from. Is there a way that we could also put like comparison to maybe another district that has similar demographics to other school sites just so they have something to compare to. Yes, we probably could do that we
029just limited to our school sites because that was the initial feedback so as this morphs we can, we can definitely take a look at reaching out to the broader comparable districts but this is where we started just to answer the, the feedback that I received in PCC about schools having parents at schools having access to their school sites data at their fingertips and be able to compare in a live web based. That's good. I just feel like sometimes from a parental lens. It's really quick to compare to our neighboring districts or communities and sometimes it's just not comparable because different demographics or whatever. So I think that might be helpful for people to understand how unique our district is. One more question I think you kind of answered it but just for clarification is there
030any updates to the how the surveys. No. Is there any updates to the surveys at all so that we have more precision on the analysis of the data that we collect. Tell me which surveys are you like you said the California like healthy kids or any of the surveys that the kids, the students are receiving throughout the district, how we normally collect it. And he said it comes from the state. So has the state refined any of their data collecting tools. I think they're always in a continuous improvement cycle where they're trying to refine how they collect. I, I, that's I can't speak for the state but I think so but it's always it's just about our district connection with how we receive that information from them. And then how we utilize it to analyze
031and interpret and then apply to our teaching and learning. Okay. And our initiatives. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. I appreciate that I've been on the board long enough to see a few different versions of dashboard. You know it basically as I see it as just, it's a way to track and measure over time. The fact that this seems to be more transparent more interactive. I think that the community will applaud that and look at that as, hey, we can reach in. I don't want it to be even interpreted that we haven't had accessibility for parents because we have for a long time. Yes, parents are able to log in they can track that are most of the stuff is online my kids are older so I remember when that wasn't available you
032had to go to get a piece of paper, but parents have been able to track it. This seems to be more of an aggregate. My concern in this is that in changing versions. Do we lose the, the ability to track over time, you know, and you somewhat address that that it's an apples to apples cast will be measured the same data. But what I don't want to get kind of lost in this is that we're looking for ways to measure, but our effort in terms of changing what we're measuring. For as long as I've been on this board, and it's now 11 years I'm in my third term, the concern from the community from the labs, and one of the basis of stem is to increase our math proficiency in this district. And I don't
033see us taking the steps, you know, it seems like oh we're going to look at it and I don't want the community to lose to lose faith in us as a district that we're looking for different ways to measure, but to to the point of trustee I am concerned when we don't compare externally, because we become a silo in an echo chamber versus there is no difference between a Livermore kid and a pleasant and kid and a Dublin kid. If they're the same kid, you know within our own demographics, everyone's were just they're just kids that are the second graders a second grader, we're not that unique we're unique as a community perhaps, but that kid still has to leave Livermore one day and go out and compete in a world. And that was the
034basis of trying to increase our scores is that we aren't an echo chamber. And so I really would ask that when we see data, it does compare us internally and externally, so that when this kid goes off to college, he's not surprised, or that when she She goes into the workforce, that she's ready to compete. And so I think that it's imperative that when we look at a dashboard, that it's, we can't say that we want our kids to thrive in an ever changing world and then not let allow parents to see how we compare externally. I think that is, I think it's imperative. Thank you for that. Okay, thank you. I just want to say I think this is a major step forward and accountability and transparency. I know the data is out there
035but it's not as as trusty drone pointed out it's not easy to find. And to sort of have it all here in one place and accessible I was just looking at it and I think that I, I think the tools that are really important is that you can change the metrics right to what kind of student you're looking at. You can look at different schools, so you can compare schools. And then also you can look at different student groups, depending you know like sped or or ethnicity or whatever. And then I also love that you have the actions in place to improve the performance so that is something that's accountable to, you know, to you and to the people the school sites. So I just want to applaud you again. I know this data is
036there but it's it's not put together in a way that that it makes it easy to do this. And so I appreciate that. One of my questions is, I saw that it's going to be updated, you know as as as information comes in. I was wondering if we maybe there could be a way to put like a last updated timestamp. There's a lot of times people, or maybe how often this is updated obviously with cast scores that's going to happen once a year. Maybe an explanation as to when this will be updated. And when it was last updated, you know something so that people have an idea. Some things might be updated more regularly like the easy CDM I think they have more regular, just so that you can see where those updates are and
037why. And then, yeah, I think that's basically all the one other question I was going to ask is translations available I don't know if we're at that level or does it say that I missed it. Steven's going to find it. I think I'm confused. Oh, I'm looking at Mrs DeGroote who was working with the website in her. Okay, we're curious, you know, hopefully that I know we have some parents who absolutely English is this is their second language so something for them as well. And I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who's put work into this I think this is going to be a great tool for our parents and our community. Appreciate it. I appreciate the feedback. Thank you very much. Okay. Okay, we're going to move on to our next presentation,
038and we're going to invite forward Mr Matthew Hart. This is our district data presentation and my understanding is this is the presentation that our school sites will be giving the same okay presentation. So, good morning board president, so members of the board members of cabinet members of the community. My name is Matthew Hart, I'm the director of assessment and accountability. This is a kind of yearly report that I give that has two major purposes. One is that we are required by law to report to the board and the public the results of state testing, and so I'll do that within here. And over the years, we've done different versions of kind of changing that into like a, like a state of the assessment union kind of speech a place where we look back on the
039previous year. We've done different versions, places where things are going well and places where we have areas to work on, just to develop a kind of shared understanding I guess of academic behavior and social emotional data within the district. So that's the first purpose. The second purpose is as you said this. This is also meant to prepare you for what you'll see from the schools individually, that this is the centerpiece of this is our district scoreboard, which are prioritized metrics right the areas, the things that we have have emphasized according to sort of our direction and cabinet direction discussions within the district. And this is for the whole district, but then the school all 18 of our schools will be giving you their versions of this. And so it's, it's meant to sort of prepare
040you for what you'll see in that so that we can all, I guess so that the discussions can be as fruitful as possible and you know we can have sort of well informed questions that really get at the heart of what it means to help our students achieve in the district. So, this is exactly what the second page of each school presentation will look like it's a demographics page. This is the demographics for for our district. Of course I turned this presentation and I think it was two, two and a half weeks ago things have changed even since then demographics change constantly but essentially we always kind of hover right around 13,000 students. And then the, there's the ethnic breakdowns there at the bottom for English learners. So again, numbers change we had when I
041did this presentation there were point 9% to be decided like, because they, according to the home language survey we had indicated a need for initial LPAC testing don't know whether that will end and initially fluent or, or whether a student will go on to become an emerging bilingual student. So, still deciding on that and there's also some students that have been the process of reclassification and so even that 9.1% will go down we should have a really clear version of that number probably in the middle of next month, I would say. And same with socio economically disadvantaged last year we were at 26.7. This number is really still in the process of being constructed it's dependent upon a lot of paperwork that families turn in every single year for free and reduced lunch for the
042universal benefits application, our food services department works really really hard to build a lot of that works with student services to make sure all that paperwork comes in and it's accurate and verified and so that takes a while. The, I think that that number will be, we can be confident in a socio economically disadvantaged number probably near the end of next month. The state is even really counted all the way up until I think it's like December. The schools will show you their dashboard. Now the dashboards have not been released by the state yet they will be released on November 15 so any schools that present before November 15 before the release will have last year's dashboard on it. Any schools after November 15 will have the new dashboard. Just a reminder with the dashboard
043that it comes from this, I know I've spoken about this before and I'm not going to do a whole lesson necessarily on this but where do the speedometers come from. They come from essentially two factors it's a base level for each metric and then it incorporates change for each metric right so where is the kind of average of where everybody is. And then how did things change since last year did they go up or down and so you find the base level and the rows and you find the change and the columns and then that puts you in red orange yellow green or blue. As always you follow kind of consistent color coding throughout everything in general, blue and green is good yellows kind of meh and orange and red is our areas of concern.
044Also another reminder this isn't a slide that you're going to see neither this nor this is a slide that you're going to see on the schools but I just want to kind of remind you about for the schools that have a college and career readiness indicator. This is a complicated metric I think there's always good questions asked about this, but in some ways answering all these questions involves like a lot of background information. So again I won't give a whole lesson but as a quick quick overview with the college and career metric it's the percentage of students that fall into at least one of these eight categories right and some are like for example number one is very easy. If a student got at least a three on CASP BLA and at least a three
045on CASP math boom checkmark that student is college and career ready. They go on in various ways to get more and more complicated for example number seven we have students that qualify for this that is if you complete a CTE pathway and also if like you have to have that and then in addition you need one of the following you can have a level three in CASP BLA and a two in math or vice versa two in math and at least a three in ELA or you can have a certain semesters or trimesters of college credit so if those are in addition to the CTE pathway then check right and so. It's a good metric but it is a complicated one to understand there are a lot of different ways that students can. qualify for
046this so when questions come up about that kind of I think it's a good indicator of overall like hey how are we approaching a broad array of students and their needs and preparing them for just a wide variety of post secondary options but in terms of really digging into like what goes where and how exactly could we improve this that always gets a little bit more difficult and requires more time. These are our 10 district scoreboard priorities, you'll see that it's different for the school because different things apply at each level. But this is a good time to sort of talk about our overall view of the district last year and kind of how we did. It's a lot of blue right on the on the right I won't go through every single metric, but
047I am going to highlight I think I think four of these, but in general just the idea that we had a lot of improvement in the directions that we wanted in some areas significant improvement i'll talk about that and there is of course that one bit of glaring red there that we'll talk about as well. I want to start with the percentage of English learners progressing at least one LPAC level. I'm over the moon about this, because not only did we did we increase this by 4.2% but that's on top of an increase from 4% percent the year before. And so we've had two years of what I would say is like significant growth within this. We're not where we want to be 40% but but we're a lot better than what we were I
048think if you we can we have about. I think it's about we circle around 1200 anywhere 1200 1300 English learners in this district every single year. So, we have now if it's 40% and that's going to be right around like say 450 students that are making progress. Every single year, since that's up 8% more than 8% from two years ago I think I figured this out, this is about like 92 more students each year that are progressing then used to progress right so we have continued, we have improvement we made improvement I'm really proud of that. We're continuing that there's also what's good about it too is I don't think that we've, we haven't plateaued, I don't think, because there's still some things that we've done that we can scale up. And, and, and continue
049to sort of build on the improvement that we've shown. Next up I'm going to talk about you see a through G completion we had kind of stayed stagnant for a long time right or just right under 50% we've had 48% for two years, and then all of a sudden jumped up 5% and really I think I've argued this before. This one, there are multiple things that go into a through G completion but this is really dominated by math achievement, the, the students that can get through algebra to is largely the one, the, the number of percentage of students that are going to show us who's a through G compatible so we were able to get more students through algebra to last year. And so we saw 5% increase in our a through G numbers, really
050happy about the percentage of students suspended this is a metric. This is a suspension and discipline has been on our radar for a long time I think our success has made us. We almost don't mention it very much anymore, but we had a giant drop last year of 1.1% and I know 1.1% it's not like a lot but when it's when the numbers are huge. And then to on top of that to continue to go down and drop it under 2% just really speaks to the work of like Sherry Johnston and our wellness coordinator, Mallory Rachel running our PBIS, the work that schools have done I think in this district now goes back about, I think about seven years I think I know I was working on seven years ago or not a high school
051and so sometimes these, these, you see immediate benefits from certain like initiatives district initiatives and school initiatives, but they don't. But more often the payoff is like five years down the line and I think we're like finally really seeing that with suspension numbers, so very happy about that. Now with all of that of course there is that big glaring piece of red right there the one out of 10 where we did not have an outcome that we were that we were happy with. We did have a big jump last year and we have not regressed lower than our initial jump. However, you know with the work that we've been putting in I think that certainly in curriculum we looked at this at this number with with dismay the What this number exactly is measuring is
052worth thinking about for a second why we constructed this number the way we did in the first place. So this is the percentage of grade eight and nine students who are proficient on the algebra one final. So that's actually that's a fairly narrow band it's not math achievement right math achievement would be more like the CASP math percent proficient. This is looking at a very particular slice and why did we like prioritize that particular slice. Because we found that when students were proficient not when they passed algebra one but when they were proficient in algebra one that that meant they were going to get through algebra two that it was like a hinge moment for our students. That if they could get to this place by the end of their ninth grade year where they
053are proficient in algebra one standards, then they were going to get through geometry and they were going to get through algebra two and they were probably going to be And they're probably going to be college and career ready because they take CASP in their junior year and CASP covers through algebra two standards. So it kind of like if everything before that led up to this point and if there was success here, then that would pay off later. So it's a good sort of early indicator rather than a late indicator. There are a bunch of things that go into this number and there's there's because this is a narrow slice. There are different stories of math achievement across our district. I'm going to share some other data points with you throughout the presentation. But obviously this
054dipping 5% is not is not what we wanted. And I know I and others have argued that we're, it's time to really take a hard look at exactly everything that we do with math in our district. Can I ask something really quick that that Matthew. Just because I'm on the math test for so I know that this happened is before last year we didn't have a common assessment for the math final with that have had something to do with it because I know we do now have a common assessment. We've had a comment for algebra one we've had a common assessment in place for, I think, four years. It did change two years ago. So this this is measuring the same test. I was just curious whether that was too different. Okay. Yeah, the change.
055That was part of a wholesale effort to revise all of our math finals, largely because we found that the original final like that was a really worthwhile endeavor to have common finals but they weren't like constructed necessarily following like solid assessment principles. So we revised all the secondary math finals on grade six through algebra to, to make sure that they kind of lined up that they would give us valid and reliable data that answers my question. The P in parentheses is that pending or preliminary. Yeah, and actually, so this 62 and 50% have been verified since I turned in this presentation. The state released, though not cast, though not dashboard data that have released official casp data. So, the P there, it can actually be taken away those both of those numbers have been verified,
056still waiting on percentage of students suspended, although that one, sometimes the state counts that slightly differently so It's a reminder that what you see from the schools will be different than what I just showed you because some of them like college and career readiness does not apply to elementary schools, right. And there are some metrics that we use for elementary schools that we do not apply to high school like the screeners, for example, so you will see different things within each level they are all consistent like all the elementary schools will be presenting on the same scoreboard metrics, but each level has metrics that are applicable to their level. A couple of these I just want to talk about one is core SEL that's for each level, or actually elementary and middle that's the percentage
057of students reporting positive teacher student relationships. And that's, I just want to remind you that that's been changed from panorama right last year was our first year of implementing the core SEL and trustee Kaplan as you had asked about the the allowing for better analysis for some of our survey data so that actually this is a this change to core SEL has actually allowed that so panorama there was great stuff with panorama but we didn't like. We only had limited access to the data that we gender generated one of their several reasons why we changed, but one of the reasons was because we couldn't actually disaggregate it in ways that we wanted to, which was actually kind of aggravating because that's like our data right and so now we're running core SEL through our own
058data and assessment program DNA or illuminate as it's known and because of that we can now fully disaggregate by various student groups all the subgroups I've mentioned here and more. We can look at it per question we assign standards so we can look at proficiency per standard. So, this is allowed us a good deal more disaggregation that was possible previously with panorama. The other thing I want to mention is that there is a metric on elementary that has changed. So, it used to be it was screener data for fourth grade math that's what we'd used in previous years. And what we found last year is real problems. So we were pulling that data out of the easy CBM platform at the time, and we were we were finding really real problems with the reliability and
059the validity of that data, such that actually I no longer, and we no longer felt comfortable like really reporting on it because the numbers were really in question. However, it was still very important to us to have a math metric for you. So we changed it to investigations is our elementary math curriculum. So we changed it to the investigations math unit three grade 4% proficient. So this is no longer a screener which is looking for high risk. This is a unit test which is looking for proficiency right it's looking for who's sort of been able to meet the high standards of grade four students. And why did we pick unit three because we found that that has a super high correlation to achievement on on like for example casp math like across our district. The
060percentage of students proficient on this last year exactly matched the percentage of students who are proficient on the casp. So, this is what we call like a high leverage assessment, if students are able to be proficient on this assessment that seems to translate to success and sort of in a broader scope. When did we adopt investigation as the math curriculum. I'm going to defer to Mr. Connor. I don't need like an exact date is it 10 years or less. Okay. Okay. President wants an exact date. I think just just getting to the, the idea, well, comparing apples to apples, if we're using, if we're using investigation, we'll get a couple years of that but then, you know, when we need to adopt new curriculum then that that metric will shift but I appreciate the clarification
061about why you're choosing that and the rationale behind choosing that so I think if that's the best, you know, for if we're using data that doesn't seem to be helpful. Yeah, then, then I think going with this would be good. Yeah, actually, it seems to connect us comments you made in the previous discussion and you guys are all getting really good at these data discussions as a high level of professionalism and expertise here. I would, I would say that you kind of want to think sometimes you're forced to change metrics for whatever reason. What I will say with us is, and certainly in my position is, I would distinguish between a change in metrics and a change in what goes into the metrics. So that second thing will never happen. Right, because that would be
062comparing apples oranges or whatever other fruits you want to throw in there. If I'm saying that it's the district writing assessment, then that needs to be like the same scoring mechanism and the same sort of nature of the assessment. And if it isn't, then really we need to change. We need to change the whole, the whole metric. Right. So sometimes metrics by necessity like for example this math metric will will need to change. But what's within that math metric should not change and won't under me because that would be being dishonest with the data. 2016 investigations nine years ago. You just told since we were pausing on the, the math unit three. What are some other data that you're looking at that that's that are listed here right now where you go. Yeah, our confidence
063level in those is is nothing, but you will you mentioned how the confidence level in those were were shaken or it's just not as helpful, perhaps, I don't want to put words in your mouth but other other places where we're still looking for new ways to measure. New ways to measure better ways to measure. I feel very confident actually and all the other data points that we have here. The one that will have to change next year is easy CBM first grade reading because we no longer do easy CBM first grade reading that by by state decree has changed. And so we've adopted and class devils as the as the elementary screener so that one will need to change. But we're very confident, I'll, the risk of going too far into how the sausages made
064what happened with the easy CBM math screener is that we, for years we've been using the easy CBM platform. And so last year we did for both English and math is we took it out of the easy CBM platform and we started doing it within our own DNA platform and so I was, we had some wonderful doses working on converting over questions and then I was part of that project as well just making sure that everything was constructed well and one of the things I had to do is go to easy CBM and look at the rules for like the rules that they applied for where students land the performance bands right. And what we found is that I we were following their rules exactly, and yet coming up with other numbers in math but
065not English. So it really called into question the like validity of their numbers. And this was only apparent to us once we pulled it out of their platform and tried to apply their own rules to it. Right. So while the while reading remained consistent and we're confident in that number, the math one did not remain consistent. And so we took a look at that and we're like, we can't report this number, you know this is not this wouldn't be fair to schools or to students or to the public or you, we wanted to change to something that we're much more confident in. So are you still able to compare apples to apples when you go back historically to, to, you know, previous years and previous assessments with that with that easy CBM math number I
066would say no. However, what we did what that spurred us to do, because we had years like there had been there had already been some measure of like, not, I guess not happiness with the easy CBM math assessment it didn't seem to be assessing things on the same like, you know, kind of calendar as us. People weren't it basically wasn't useful for making meaning at an actionable level at the classroom level. Right. So what we did last year is we wrote our own math screeners, we looked around for other math screeners we weren't actually super happy with anything that we looked at. So, Mr. Connor, myself, a group of teachers of about we had about 12 I think 12 teachers or so got together and two through five. We wrote our own math screeners. This,
067we, we've already given those this year really really great feedback from those. They are shorter for for one thing. They are more focused on on lining up exactly with the, the count like the the pacing guides the teachers use right now. So the feedback that they get isn't on math generally but on on the prerequisites that they expect them to have at this moment. We've done that trimester by trimester, again because it's within our own data system it's very like disaggregatable and way I know Mr. Connor is hard at work during like unit studies with the teachers that prep them on okay what's coming up do they have the prerequisite skills. How do we intervene on any prerequisite skills that we know some students don't have. How do we provide extension for the students that
068do have them and are moving on. So, so, because we didn't have that last year I won't be able to compare that. However, going forward after that we will be able to have that. And I think that's been a big improvement. So, disappointed with easy CBM, but it really gave us a way forward that I think ultimately is going to help our students in elementary learn math better. Yeah, yeah, I guess I'm just trying to double click on the dashboard and the historical data that comparison from last year or three years ago. I fully agree with improving the assessment so that we have a better understanding what to teach and when, or the teachers do. But to compare ourselves then to ourselves from three years ago when we use a completely different assessment is difficult
069so that's, you know, that's why I want us to be as honest with ourselves and say well we have different assessments now now we look better but yeah no that's definitely true for elementary and we have other math metrics that are very consistent cast math, for example, measures a slightly different things. I think one of the points just for us as a board is we want to look at apples to apples. I mean, now I'm questioning what apples to apples means as we talk about it more but if the initial Apple isn't measuring what you want it to do then continuing to have an inaccurate measurement for comparability sakes it's not really kind of to the point that Mr. Hart was making that, you know, at the core we want to know how we're doing
070in math. Right. And so I think that there's a balance between those things and I think fine tuning. Because to your question which of these, which of these do you have the most, I mean, as someone that administered state testing and kind of seeing students like why do I have to do this like state testing is, it's okay but it's, I think, to some extent if it's done in the manner that you described where you have teachers who are on the ground, building an assessment that aligns with the pacing guide that the teachers have all agreed upon then I think that that can be more powerful than, than some other assessments, so I think. I think where it gets dangerous to me is when we, even if the appearance is there that we're changing the
071way that we assess to change the results, versus simply getting a better look, so we can look at causation. We're looking to improve math scores math proficiency in our students. My concern is the perception that we continually change how we're assessing it, and that we again get into like an echo chamber where it's, but I do appreciate how you, you differentiated you said, essentially, and correct me if I'm wrong, the test the name, what how we're calling is different but the data that goes into it was the same. So that remained consistent and also we're using a benchmark that is good, whether it's cast, there's still a benchmark that's running parallel to it. Yeah, that's correct. And if it were and if the, if the, if the stuff within the metric was to change like
072that's what I'm telling you here right like I, the bad version of that I guess would be to give you say math screener scores and act like we were judging the same thing when it's like different screeners, right, but we wouldn't want to do that. And so, and all of it being said, our math scores went down, it appears. In the eight nine proficiency for algebra one proficiency seems to be the gateway to higher, excuse me more advanced correct, you know algebra to passage. Yeah. So that's concerning it is because that's not I mean a point five one way or the other but when you're trying to track on a linear path upward, and you drop five percentage and we're, you know teetering in the 40s proficiency. That's very concerning so I, when I hear
073data and I hear measurement we're changing this to me that's all well and good and it's necessary. What are we doing differently. I mean we've split our curriculum department, we've, we've done so many things board actions and goals to attain proficiency in math, as well as the English, you know the arts for our students to see us going backwards. At a time when we're trying to refine measuring it. It's very concerning and, and it's beyond my concern is, I want to know what actionable items we're taking to not only reverse that trend but to continue to track upwards. Yeah, and I mean I think that's great because that's like the whole point of this right is it's I think I said before that like the scoreboard is like a light that we shine on things
074right. And in this particular case, there's plenty to look at that's great but I think we shine the light on that and it's not great. Let me get through a couple other data points that I think will round out our understanding of math within the district and then come exactly back to that question. That's okay. Suspension data you'll see this on the school. Oh I did. Oh I clicked so many times trying to get it there we go. Thank you. This is a slide with some differences from last year. So it before the board had given us direction and we want to make sure to pull out data for our English learners and our students with disability these are very vulnerable student groups we want to make sure we're doing okay by them. I think
075that in general from my angle on the angle of others last year I was kind of unhappy with the slide because we were reporting, just the base level, and it seemed, it wasn't generating, it was like a feel bad slide but without anything coming out of it that was particularly helpful like we all kind of looked at it and you know sort of felt bad but there weren't necessarily like insights or questions generated from that that would help help us help English learners or students with disability more than we had. So we've done this year has changed this slide, so that it's about change from last year like are we seeing that isn't just about, you know, comparison to say some kind of normative group, but about for this particular group hasn't gotten better or
076worse since last year. So we've changed that we're color coding it for as well. Those are the scoreboard metrics that that we can apply and break down for for English learners and students with disability. And I think you know it's a mix. We do have, I will point out that percentage of grade eight nine students proficient from the algebra one final. And while we certainly do for English learners, see a significant drop there that mere slightly bigger than the 5% drop that we saw overall so clearly some of our vulnerable student groups are a major part of that story. College and career readiness isn't something I can construct for English learners and students with disability this time I have to manually create that number. I don't necessarily have the connection to those data points I'll
077have to wait for state verification in November to get those for you. I have a question real quick about the LCAP leveling. You, you helped me to understand a little bit better in one on one conversations about how we're how this is going to get more and more difficult to go up a level because we're having more students who are already at a higher level so why is this measured the same way or it's in the dashboard in a similar manner as suspension rates which are just you know it's such a different number that progression rate. Am I asking the question correctly. I'll give you an answer and then you tell me if I'm if I'm close. Remember that what we're looking at there is not LPAC level but LPAC progression. So in other words
078LPAC gets scored one to four. So if a student scores a two is that good. Well it depends. It depends on the previous year. If the previous year the student got a one then I would say a two is fantastic. If the previous year a student got a four then a two is definitely not fantastic right. So what this one is measuring is not where they land on the LPAC but where they land compared to last year. What percentage of students have improved since last year. And that's, that's actually a metric I feel really strongly about I think. I mean I think it's helped it's helped focus our I think it's helped drive some of the improvement for our EL students that we've seen kind of over the cumulative improvement we've seen over the last
079two years is rather than rather than looking at a static level like like in CASP for example where that's useful looking at growth within the LPAC because I just seeing where they are compared to last year is I think far more helpful. But doesn't that have a have a limited runway because once you get all your students at a certain level now all of a sudden none of them are really progressing or fewer of them and then it looks like we're not. Yeah I think my dentist once told me his job is to put himself out of business right. Oh and I think that's our job here too is we want all students to progress so far that we're you know I mean that's not going to happen because we're always getting new students we
080get a you know about a thousand new students every single year and we have people move in and those people are all you know going to need a variety of English learner services and otherwise. However yeah our goal would be to be so good at helping our students in their English language development that they progress rather quickly to reclassification and by literacy. Now this slide suspension. This was again a board request from a few years ago and I think that and it's helped really right. I've talked about the improvement in our overall suspension numbers so schools will continue to report on this. I don't have a ton to say except I'm just I'm really happy. The numbers on the right there are very very low because it's early in the year those are like those
081cumulatively build up over time yeah I know like wow we're at 0.02 percent a month in. But anyway so schools will report on on where they are with that. In parallel with the overall district improvement you're going to see a lot of good news there. When we look at this data. I mean I'm looking at, I don't have the page numbers, but the previous slide where scoreboard data for EL and students with special needs versus the district. It's it's the same but we're breaking out to subcategories within the aggregate of everyone. But I've asked in the past is because I think it would certainly would help me I don't know if it would help any other board member. But when we look at that. Do we have other subcategories that we could break out. And
082then also by site. Because other student group categories. When we look at CASP math proficiency district wide and we see 50-49-50 up 1% and then we take that same one and we look under English learners. Can we even break it further and say English language learners at sunset same category at junction. When you're looking at it like what are we really looking at are we are we are we chasing a ghost, or is something fixable, like when we talk about drill down but to me that's drill down like when we actually look at it and say, is it a socio economic problem. Are we just trying to are we trying to fix something but not looking in the right spot. And I don't know I think I love the way you put the information in
083front of us and the way that you're able to understand it and present it. But as someone we just see a snapshot in a window. To actually see in terms of when we're trying to set priorities and we're trying to look at well how are we going to fix this what what is the problem is it proficiency or is it the kids aren't eating breakfast and so you're never going to get to proficiency. Is it you know what is the problem and to me that would it would help more because in all the years I've been on this board. We're constantly trying to fix a problem and just looking for new ways to fix it. But as a board member who's here to set those priorities and then evaluate them. That would help me I
084interject here so this specific set of data for EL and students with disabilities was a board directive that's why we added this slide in there. And as far as drilling down per site like what this looks like per site that will come in the site presentations. If the board is seeking for other subgroups that can be a conversation that we can pull out data but this is based on district priorities that the board had given direction on. And I'm not arguing against this because this does help it just what are you know when we're trying to fix it but what is the issue is it I mean we're trying to measure at the end the outcome. But to me most of these issues is as education seems to be education is a foundational premise you
085start in the beginning and you continue to build on it. So where are we faltering and is it is it our system. Maybe we're really good at teaching math maybe it's really good but the kids that are being challenged. Maybe it's a socioeconomic maybe we need to, you know, fix a food program somewhere or, you know, maybe it's a it's a facilities issue, but if we if we don't see that it's difficult. Just a little because I'd like to address one because this is very, this is what we talk about in in our curriculum and instruction director meetings we look at the data. Mr Hart does a wonderful job of drilling down and so we've made some. This is the process of continuous improvement is looking at data and ensuring the initiatives that we have
086in place are improving data, and if they're not, then we abandon them. And we do something different because you cannot continue to do the same thing and expect different results. So one thing that we have noticed to Mr Connors hard work is that we have changed the trajectory and our math scores and elementary. Normally we see regression in our math scores from fourth to fifth grade. We don't see that anymore. We see it either stable or going up a Mr Hart can give you more information but our cohort data for math scores in elementary has gone up and it is the direct work of what is happening with common formative assessments at the elementary This year, Mr Krolikowski has been tasked with that same initiative because we saw the results. We are now upscaling that
087to our secondary level. So that's happening it's happening within math task force, it's happening with work that just went on yesterday with with looking at assessments and deciding how we change our instruction, based on what we're seeing. So, I don't want it to feel like we're not looking at this data but it, we do have to change what we're doing when it's not working. So I'm going to just add to that a couple things to just as just kind of reminders that we have our sped work group that is about to roll out huge program design changes that I think three years from now we will see the benefit of that it takes time to get that going. We are just getting ready to kick off or just kicked off the yell work group as
088well, which is similar. And so I think, as we're pulling those groups of educators together, those are the same conversations that will be had in those groups to really determine the what the how the why all of those exact questions that you were just asking about. I would say you're, you're speaking my language more even than you know trustee Bueno, sometimes with teachers, I distinguish between data that tells you where to look versus data that tells you what to do. Or sometimes I call it day one data versus day 20 data, like on day one with a group of kids, you don't know you don't know any of them what kind of data would you want, well you'd want to see how they did on CASP last year. Right. But, but that doesn't that data
089becomes useless day 20, because by then you know the kid and how good they are at English or math and instead what you need is like actionable data data that tells you what to do with them. I think by the nature of the setting this is very formal we lean more on the data that tells you where to look because that's evaluative data, right and the role of the board is in looking at data sort of seems evaluative. But I think if the board asks for more examples of actionable data we can definitely provide that that is something we work with with teachers all the time. Still didn't answer my question if we can see it. I mean, are we as a board are we going to be able to see, I would like to
090see site by site data, I know we see it when we do the presentations. But if Mr heart if you were part of that, it just seems like everything comes through you and you do a great job of presenting it and you're able to drill down and get us, you know, but to maybe assist or be there for questions when we, and when we see the site data tends to be over time, versus like here you're coming in and you're, you're giving us a whole roll up. This is how the district looks. But if we were able to see to me, I'd like to know where the problem lies. I mean, is it in our facilities, is it in our meal plan, is it in our teaching, like what is it like you know and
091and I haven't been able to see I just see many different efforts trying to fix math, but yet we're going backwards in math. And so, I would like to see something different I mean I hear the word data and you do a great job. It's the best job I've seen since I've been on the board of presenting it, because that's your, your job and we have a curriculum department split. I would just like to be able to understand the causation of it a little bit better. Like what is actually the root problem to our math deficiency. What is that root problem. I know it's maybe one or two more things, but I'd like to see us get to that and have it defined to us, and then take the actionable steps to correct the causation.
092I don't, I'm just going to say that I think that's the magic question that we all try to answer all the time. I don't know that there is an actual pinpoint on a regular basis, student population changes regularly enrollment changes regularly in a classroom, who starts at the beginning isn't the classroom that starts at the end cohorts of kids aren't identical. Right. So we're it's it. I agree with the question, but I don't think we're ever going to find looking at Mrs. That because we have this conversation all the time right and and with Mr. Heart I just I don't know that we're ever going to pinpoint exactly what it is, and what is taking place can we look at our own internal systems and try and prove those, of course, because that's what that's
093what we're working on doing currently, because the work that our teachers are doing currently is fantastic. And so then where we're in the system, our question always is, could we have better curriculum yes, could we have better intervention Yes, that all takes time to plan and implement and train staff, and and and and so I'm going to pass it over to Mrs. Bush, if you have anything else dad. You said that beautifully. I, I hear the board member whose seat I took when I came on the board. Very wise person, Bill Dunlop. And one of the things that he did he was a data guy. And before people really using the word data here, you know, as extensively as we use now. And he was very blunt about he said always make sure that you
094pull out like to compare to like. And there's, if, if I was asking the question like what would it would be magical if I was looking to say, you know, we're trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip, I mean, it's not going to happen. But we have enough agencies around us that where is the challenge I get that But, you know, a seventh grade boy in the same socioeconomic status in this city should be performing somewhat like the same person in Dublin or in San Ramon or in New Haven. And so if we're right there and we're just trying to push a half percent, but when we're significantly behind, like, what are they doing different than what we're doing. And when we look at it in this rolled up version for me it's difficult
095to differentiate that versus looking at it and saying, I know that one of the challenges we have in this district is we have a higher percentage of socioeconomically disadvantaged in conjunction with English language learners. And that presents more difficulty in terms of the aggregate, we are not going to perform at the roll up level where a district that doesn't have those challenges. And we have a higher percentage of people that have kids that are diagnosed with stuff in the SWD category. But when we break them out, what is it that we're doing different. I just like to see it so that I don't think that it's difficult, but I think that there's five board members and there's been different renditions of this board since I've been on it many. And the question keeps coming up,
096but I think that now that you're able to present data at this level, it would be nice to actually be part of that magic formula as board members to be able to be presented with it. Just that simple. I guess work I'm so we do the site level presentations, and that all gets broken down during those presentations so what is it specifically that you're asking for. I'd like to see it in a common form, as when you present this data, it would be nice to me to see real spreadsheets that are there for maybe a bigger page, and it shows each school and we're looking at school to school year over year. Each year like your roll up sheet shows year over year, up down. But if we could see that within the subcategories, those
097subcategories could be inclusive of all the demographics that we do all the school sites, so we can literally look at why is that school under. Is it, is it a socio economic thing, you know, I mean our teachers are teachers, the buildings are buildings the kids are kids I just want to. I think that we could actually help by looking at it in not waiting all year long until each school site, it puts the school sites to me to disadvantage to have to come in and present their stuff like in this little silo, I'd like to see it as part of this with you, you know presenting it so we can actually see the whole thing. For math or English learner progression. Just when you're doing this I'd like to build, I would like to
098build to see this data, inclusive of the school sites know when they come in they can do their own presentation. But it's, I don't know I would like to be able to see it like where's the problem and why we can do that. Absolutely. Yeah, we can send that to the board it's just, we do it in a format that they come and present all of their data that's a three year, it's, it's presentation we aligned all that last year for the board. And I love that. Yeah, but we can I mean they're working on all that now so we I mean we could pull that information now and send it to you in advance you can see each school site in advance if that's if that's what you're asking for. Yeah, that's no problem.
099I think there's two things that are being asked and I can't, in my mind figure out how that would be presented because one is that we take Jackson, and we're looking at Jackson scores, year over year but we're also looking at every school site at the same instance. So, I'm not sure what something like that would look like, because I mean, I agree I saved this to my desktop so that when we hear the presentations, I kind of compare, but I think perhaps what may be helpful is if we had if this one included all of the school sites, you know if you collect that data and then we can keep that and then as we're looking at the school sites we can compare as we're moving forward, because I think it would be challenging
100and one presentation to look at the district. And look at sites, you know comparing to themselves and comparing to the district, I think that that's kind of mind warping, whereas if we focus on a school site, we can then compared to the school district, and we can look at them compared to themselves. Yeah. Also, I've had this idea for this thing called the digital scoreboard, where you can, it's online and you can. Yes, we do have that, which will be live tomorrow, but Mr heart also has a beautiful color coded document that we can send its public facing as well it goes on our website. We can send to the board that has all of the school data as well as the district data and it doesn't have student group breakdowns necessarily on it but
101I can add that separately I can add. If we send the board when it does go live, that would be great that is a live digital. I don't know of any other districts that have this actually they don't super exciting that you can go on digitally and it'll, you can pull out whatever you want to pull out instantly. And that's brand new. I think also at a base is I look at that negative 5.53 for eight through ninth, and as an oversight board I can say, we pay you a lot of money fix it right work with your team to fix it, because I mean we each bring a level of expertise, but I think that we pay you and the cabinet and the teachers and everybody to address this problem and so our job
102is to give direction and say, you know, create you know share the data with us, and now we see this as an issue, so do something about it. I'm gonna try hard to make the rest of this presentation as lively as that section. The schools will have a section other pertinent data and this is like schools just kind of get to choose things sometimes that that matter that aren't necessarily reflected in our priorities. I've chosen to hear actually for particular reasons. One is, so I'm trying to use the laser pointer but it's only for me. So the first is that first row easy CBM first grade reading percentage low risk. So, we had a 3.4% drop last year so what I kind of want to point out to the board and there's like a reason
103for this is, you might go red 3.4%, except that the base level is over 80%. So last year there was this moment with a boy now it was so amazing principal Marnie Angelo of Smith, and she was, she took about five minutes with you to explain of 4% drop in, in one of her, her screener data, and I was in back just like rocking back and forth because she was taking all this time sweating it out to explain a 4% drop, but that 4% drop was from was from 91% to 87%. So, I just kind of want to point out that like anytime the data gets over 80% like they're going to be up and down yearly fluctuations right now obviously we don't we never want drops or red or anything like that. But there's
104also a baseline like there is no like silver bullet, we go into this knowing that some students are going to need more than, than, than what the tier one curriculum is going to supply them. And so once you're over 80% things are going to go up and down we don't want anything to dip under 80%. But if stuff's up over 80% you know go go easy on them, I guess. The second thing here is middle school students proficient on the math final. So, I guess in looking at all the math data, I kind of want to point out a couple different things. So with CASP math, we went up, but, but a little bit really to back to where we were two years ago. Okay, so like a slight bit of improvement but very slight.
105We have the drop in algebra 189 which is very concerning. We have data that Assistant Superintendent Pichette alluded to, which is ordinarily what happens in our district with math is that we lose about anywhere from 5 to 9% out of proficiency each year so in other words we started something like 73 75% out of third grade, but then you go to fourth grade and that becomes like 69% and we sort of, and just that, that, and what happened I've looked at the students who drop out of proficiency and what I found happens with them is that one third of them recover back into proficiency but two thirds do not. And then they're joined by other students that drop out of proficiency and we get like a snowball effect over time. So if you look it's
106just a sort of steadily dropping thing until you get to grade 11 and something like whatever 43% or somewhere around there. However, what Assistant Superintendent Pichette alluded to was work that the elementary had done to stop the the standard progression or regression right so there had been work done from three to four, where they actually were with certain with schools where and then some schools stopped that three to four drop out of proficiency and then that affected us overall enough as a district to where we did not have a drop three to four in proficiency, and that is due to some things that he's doing I think we'll get to the end the questions if that's something that you want more information on and Mr. Connerby would be on enthusiastic enthusiastic to provide that. But
107basically what I'm saying is, we have the eight algebra 189 issue, we do it we have success in middle school it's been two years in a row. We have success in elementary school with some things that have interrupted and expected progression or regression. It's going to take time for some of those to pay off which means it doesn't mean we don't do anything in high school and obviously we're sort of we're we're working on on things there, but also we have things working. We have evidence that things are working in other places and ways that will scale to high school and also eventually reach high school when those elementary and middle school students get to ninth grade. So, as to the specifics of what those things are I'm going to speak more about those but
108definitely those those actions and things are happening. Every school will do a celebrations and programs page which is a chance for them to crow about some things that are great about their school every school's got multiple things going on that are amazing. Just as a district I want to point out a few things we have an extraordinarily high graduation rate and always have our credit recovery programs really allow students who may be fall behind to catch up. That includes our continuation school and independent schools as well do amazing jobs. I've already gloated and bragged about the improvement in LPAC progression for our English learner students and I expect us to build on that and continue getting better. Also, we don't have this as a priority but I just think it is part of the story
109of this district that we have consistently high AP passage rates. You compare it like we're well above the average nationally, we're well above the average for our state, and we, the amount of students that pass AP tests in our, in our classes is really actually staggering it's a thing we don't necessarily focus on but it bears mentioning every school will be asked to identify two priorities for the year what's important to me is I'm sitting back there is that I see them making an argument that what they're doing is based on a reaction to the data. Many of you have heard me say use data as information not condemnation right it's just a signal of what you need to do next. And I want them to be making their plans for what they're doing to
110be in reaction to what they're seeing in the data and that information. So for us obviously priority number one is math achievement and priority number two continues to be EL progression, even though we have seen growth with that but there's still there's still more to build and more students there that deserve help. So we can get to a point of questions and discussion, and that's where I am. Thank you. I have no blue card so I'm going to close public comment. I know we've had a lot of discussions already but there's time again for more questions and comments. Comment is that I think I want to spend more time learning from you about this because since this is so much about everything that we do as a, as a district and I really appreciate your
111work. You know, I'd like, like, one question of thinking like, explain proficiency exactly from your you know in your, because we, we talked about you know fishing in something but what is that. What is this. So that I don't read 50% of our students and are not proficient in math, you know, because that's not, I don't think that's what you're saying. So but maybe I need to set up some time just to sit and, and, you know, waste your time, but no learn things about this anytime and I'll give you that one for free proficiency is achievement of grade level standards. Okay. I didn't I didn't want to interrupt because I was listening to everything. The discussion but yes my concern is math and I know we'll get there. I just have a question is
112it possible. Because our graduation rate is good, and it's always been good and it continues to trend upward. Is it possible that we can kind of close the gap between college and career readiness to align better with our graduation percentage. I mean they're measuring, of course, slightly different things right, but I would say, I mean I would say what we want. Here's the way I kind of try to phrase it is when students graduate from us, if they choose not to do a thing like let's say they choose not to go to a four year college, we want that to be because they choose not to go not because they can't. Right, like we want students to have as many options as possible, and then to select what's what's best for them. We don't want
113every student to sort of be in that progression we don't want them to whittle away their own options with a lack of achievement or proficiency in particular areas. So I would say yes I think that certainly the goal is to make sure that that college and career readiness number, like, I think of it as like the graduation rate is like the base that's what we like have to do. And then this is what we want to do right is to get that as close as possible to the to the graduation rate so that we know that every single student that's graduating has a sort of wide array of options in front of them. Okay, and so also, then the proficiency would go along with that. Yeah, they're going to have options, if they are proficient
114right and I think the key is, we've identified these kind of high leverage areas like algebra one, you know proficiency as being just very meaningful as a gateway to other things later if they can get that, then they will get to the point where they're, where they're college and career ready and they have all the options that they want. Thank you. The. So first, I wanted to say to my fellow trustees that some of the metrics, some of the metrics that we choose are aggressively accurate, and I think that that's important for us to keep in mind, like, EL progression. I don't know you say industry or it usually takes about two years to move up a level. So the fact that we are measuring every year moving up is aggressively accurate and then kind
115of the point that you said about the. If we looked at students that passed algebra as a class versus students that passed the final, both of those are a math metric, but what they're saying is that passing the math final shows shows that you know math as opposed to completing homework and other other types of things and that those then track longer term. So, I think that I'm pleased that we're not just patting ourselves on the back and that we're actually trying to find metrics that help us. Address issues, and then suspensions is there, and I don't know if at the high school level they do our suspensions only for external suspensions or do they do like in house suspension and does that will that suspension data include both of those or good question, our
116local suspension data includes only out of school suspensions not in school suspensions state data does that differently they include in school suspensions along with out of school suspensions. Okay. Okay. And then, lastly, in the priorities you had talked about that you wanted principles to, you know that to be linked with data, to what extent are the presentation, do you do you like, will you and your team see the presentations and kind of provide guidance and feedback to them or is when they come that is just unfiltered what the school site seers at somewhere in between. So, they do great work and I'm sure they can handle that but no it's there's, there's, it's heavily filtered. Okay, thank you. Well, yeah, I know they get nervous and talking in front of us and I think but
117I think curating that message to talk talk about here's, you know, their, their data experts but so anyways I think that's good. Thank you. I think it's obvious on there where what areas, we need to work on and it sounds like you guys know, and you're doing I don't think you need me to tell you what to do, I do, I do want to say something about the algebra common assessment and that, and that work that's happening in that task force that I am have the opportunity to attend. And I just wanted to say how refreshing, it is and rewarding it is for me to be there. And watch the teachers. The teachers in that task force there are some new teachers there are some veteran teachers in there, and they all help one another
118from across the district from different middle schools and different high schools. And we have a instructor from SPMI which is amazing for people who want to, that's the sound, the Silicon Valley math initiative for people who want to look that up. The work that that she's doing is really incredible, and these teachers have an opportunity to work on lessons that they give to their students live and then they also spend several days during the school year working together, giving lessons to other math classes while people observe the rest of the class observes and talk about it. And I believe in Mr. Holocaust he's not here but maybe you can speak to it. The goal this year is to sort of really spread that out from that group and have these teachers then go and support
119the teachers at their school and doing some of these similar math initiatives and I just wanted to say like I have been so impressed with the in this group, and how much they care about the students how much they care. I think it's really hard for them sometimes to look at the data and see what we see and they care about that, and they want to improve it and they work really hard to try to improve that and I just wanted to shout out to them to those teachers there and also everyone who's supporting them in that role as well. Obviously it's something that we care deeply about. And I just want to point out that everyone does. I don't think anyone is is trying to brush this under the rug that people are really
120including the teachers, working so hard on trying to figure out how they can support students in this way so I don't know if there's anything you want to add to that but I just wanted to say, being in that group has given me the opportunity to really see the work that's happening. And knowing what you said I do appreciate our teacher and our teacher leaders. I've seen firsthand, the work that they've done to really dig in and, and as to Mr Hart's point looking at data is not condemnation, but but information and, you know, There's a lot of wonderful things happening and it's it's with forethought of what's coming to because we will be preparing for a math adoption here in the next few years. So preparing everyone with the new map math frameworks and
121having a depth of understanding of what is required to be taught, as far as the standards are concerned, but also in conjunction taking a look at those common formative assessments that we have proven in this district staff and our administrators to improve student outcomes. So we're very excited about what the future holds, based on what we've seen in the past, and what what we have planned for the future. Thank you. I just wanted to mention that and there's also administrators in the math task force which is also great. Okay, so I think we're going to move on to our, we have one consent item. The personnel recommendations. So, thank you, Mr Hart. Yeah, sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Matthew. Yeah, so I had entertain a motion for approving that the consent items unless
122someone wants to look at it, talk about it. I move to approve all personal recommendations as listed. Okay, so we have a motion by trustee that will be seconded by trustee components. Any discussion on the motion. I'd ask the clerk to take role. Trustee Vanden Heuvel. Hi, myself I trustee Kaplan us. Hi, trustee Bueno. President Russo. Hi. That motion carries unanimously. We're now going to adjourn to close session. Okay. We are now reconvening to open to back to open session all actions approved in closed session must be reported out in open session. And there was no action taken during our closed session. So our next regularly scheduled board meeting will be held on Tuesday, October 14 here at the district office open session will begin at 6pm. This meeting is now adjourned at 12 or
1233pm.