001Good morning, welcome. This is the May 22nd board meeting, the Board of Education of the Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District. Our boardroom is open with an in person format. However, we will continue to broadcast our meetings over zoom to provide the opportunity for our community to observe in real time. The meeting is now called to order and it is 931am. Please be advised that our board meetings are televised on channel 28 on Wednesday, Saturday evenings on Monday, Friday and Saturday mornings. We're going to go to our Pledge of Allegiance and we're going to turn the time over to our superintendent. So I would like to take a moment and invite one of our newest US citizens to come up and lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Mr. Chris Connor was officially sworn in
002yesterday as an official US citizen so Chris please lead us in the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Congratulations Chris and to your family as well. An official welcome even though you've been here for a long time. I'm okay. Oh my gosh. All right. Okay, I'd ask the superintendent there any changes to the agenda. No there are not. And now it's time for public comments, and it looks like we have one perfect timing. Now is the time to address the topic that is not on this morning on this morning's agenda. And now is the time to do so we have one card, and I believe we'll invite Tara voice
003up, and I think she understands the process so we'll leave it at that. Good morning everyone. This is my deferred comment from Tuesday night, you see before you an extremely white woman, literally came from whitey McWhiteville, but I'm the proud junction mama of two tiny black men, we chose to live in the junction neighborhood specifically for its multi ethnicity characteristics, walkability to junction and downtown and junctions diverse student and teacher population, and especially its dual immersion program. Given that Spanish is the fourth most spoken language worldwide, with just over 560 million people speaking it, the opportunities for my kiddos to learn it from day one, rather than in high school was an easy choice. Although a parent at junction, I am speaking today about all of the students district wide that are English language learners,
004and especially our Spanish speaking students in which to highlight changes occurring for next year that remove important supports for this group of students for junction specifically we lost our second vice principal, due to the reasoning that Joe Mitchell does not have to, and no attention paid to the differences between sites with junction having 55% unduplicated students, beater schools into middle school, and a dual immersion program. Initially, additionally, our instructional specialist Oh, sorry that was initially our instructional specialist leading PB is was initially reduced but we did get her reinstated after the decision was contested by school parents. The reduction of Dr color Carla Estrada Hidalgo as director of English language development and title one coordinator, a professional with almost 20 years experience in that area. And the responsibility assigned to a current employee that already
005has a full time job and no direct experience in that area. As a reminder to everyone listening, the reclassification rate for our students last year was only 13% for English language learners. Additionally, the high school was hit with a reduction of their first generation counselor. Elizabeth Esquivez that was budgeted and paid out of LCAP, both this year and last year, but the savings was classified as general fund for 2526, which may have been due to reduction in LCFF supplemental funding. This means Spanish speaking students in the high school, no longer have a counselor that speak their language natively. So, what are the most important reasons why students in that area need somebody like that studies show mentors, people who speak their language, people who look like them is the number one prevention technique for those
006kiddos not dropping out of school, not joining gangs. We've seen a rise in gang activity in the Tri Valley and making sure that they are able to have somebody that they can conversationally speak with within the school. With nine seconds just super quickly LCAP funding reduced this for next year I was on the committee. We're now spending a higher percentage on district expense. That's your time. Thank you, Tara. Perfect. Thank you. We have. I don't believe we have any formal written correspondence. And so we'll move on to our discussion action items. We're going to begin with our site, our school site reports and we're excited to invite Mrs. Valerie Nebo to the podium the principal of Arroyo Seco Elementary School. Welcome. Thank you. Good morning Superintendent Gibson President Pruso trustees Bueno Kaplanis, Bannon Hubel and
007Druin, and members of cabinet. I am proud principal at Arroyo Seco Elementary School, and looking forward to sharing with you today, some of our schools data, as well as some of the action items that we're thrilled we've taken this year. So to begin with our demographics one of the things that our site team for both our ILC and teachers in general, noticed was over the last three years we've seen a significant increase in both our students with disabilities, and our socio economically disadvantaged population of students. For a lot of the changes that have been made to address the needs of our current population of students. When you look at our California dashboard. We saw either static results or slight declines, which were areas of emphasis for this year and we really did take that data
008to heart as to what our action items would be for the year. Similarly, when we look at our comparative data for districts that look at our schools that look a lot like ours. Math and suspension rates both stood out as areas for improvement for this year's focus our scoreboard for school success data told a mixed story while we did see the declines in LA and math, which we're working toward a celebration was our panorama data where students are reporting pause an increase in positive teacher and student relationships. That was a strong focus for our staff during that school year so those outcomes were very positive. When we look at our scoreboard student progress data. One of the things that was a discrepancy that we noticed was while our easy CBM math scores and fourth grade
009increase that didn't translate into caps scores. And that was also true for reading so we're really looking at other ways to address these areas are scoreboard data for English learners and for students with disabilities. Really don't do highlight some of the disparity of outcomes changes to our special education programming as well as our enhanced plan for English learners this year were designed intentionally to to address both of those. When we look at our suspension rates for students, while those numbers are still higher than we like you will notice that the work that has been done to address student behavior has shown significant impact based on the number of suspensions over the last three years so this has been a concerted effort on all the part of all of our staff. So with that let's talk
010about some of the things that have been done. Some of the celebrations that I would like to share is that we have been able to integrate the zones of regulation as school wide. This required release time last year for staff members to develop a comprehensive plan to teach social emotional learning It also required training in the zones of regulation for all staff at the end of the school year. So this year what that meant is that all students in all grades, understand the zones of regulation, they understand how they can talk through your feelings and what that feels like in their bodies in very concrete ways. And likewise, start to implement strategies that they know will help them. The zones of regulation have been shared with our parent community. So parents are able to also
011have resources and use the same language at home creating consistency for the ways that we're talking about emotions and how to regulate them, even within the classroom. This is translated over to our, our programs to support students like kid connection where check ins are done using the different zones of regulation. So it really is something that has become a school wide effort. Likewise, we looked at the second step curriculum which our district had adopted and found ways to integrate that. So over the course of our, the year our students were first introduced to our revised behavior expectations which align with those of our middle school students attend, then move into the zones of regulation, followed by training in second step curriculum, which meant that at least weekly for 20 minutes, students were receiving specific instruction
012in social and emotional learning. We also focused on improvement of student teacher relationships by enhancing our, our recognitions for students, our teachers have found ways to celebrate students and recognize their accomplishments in ways that allowed them more opportunities to engage with their teachers. We are the only elementary school participating in the positive behavior intervention and support project this year. This has allowed us to look at some of the disproportionality data and develop targeted professional development in those areas really identifying high leverage strategies that are easily implemented within the classroom. So let's talk about some of our priorities. One of those really was math where we saw the decrease of 5%. We know that district wide math has been an area of focus so it makes sense for this to be one of our priorities. Our
013goal this year is to increase that to 5% again that would be making up our game. Some of the things that we have been able to do was implement the Silicon Valley math initiative lesson study cycles in grades two through three. The previous year the cycle had been done in grades four and five so really looking to expand that to more primary grades. With those lessons study cycles teachers are also integrating things like math talks and dot talks into the classroom and we're seeing those now grades five. We've also implemented math PLC cycles in grades four through five in partnership with the district curriculum department which has allowed our teachers to do specific analysis of student data group students and provide targeted instruction in identified areas of needs so as students are completing the year
014they have a strong foundation going into the next year. We've also made use of the teacher on special assignment to develop interventions for students including things like happy numbers so teachers have more resources available when they are recognizing such areas of need during these math PLCs. Now for our emergent bilinguals which truly was something that our staff honed in on and worked hard to address. What we noticed was that we only saw a 1% increase in English learner students progressing one or more LPAC levels. That's not enough. So our goal really is a bold one. We want to increase that by 10% for this year. What we have done is we have developed a system of regularly monitoring student progress with the online lexia learning platform that students are using and providing monthly celebrations of
015student progress during designated ELD. They're recognized at assemblies monthly for their work with their parents invited to attend as well and they're earning lunch times with the teacher and a friend outside. So it really is something that's motivating our students to demonstrate progress in ELD. I've also provided for staff professional development on the LPAC assessments. Our staff was not familiar with what was on these assessments so taking the time to really look at what we're being asked of students allowed our staff to shift what they're doing in instruction, recognizing that what is being assessed on the LPAC really is just good understanding for all students. We also increased the percentage of teachers who are GLAD trained. Our second grade team has specifically implemented GLAD strategies across the board to support students and third grade has
016likewise implemented several of the GLAD strategies. We also took the models of success from other schools in our district and had staff assess students on the LPAC in all areas that were given on the computer that allowed students to be with somebody who is familiar with them and for teachers to be able to predict concerns students may have and intervene appropriately because they have that intimate knowledge of students that outside assessors don't necessarily have. Alright, so with that I'd like to open for questions and discussion. Thank you. I have no blue cards. Who would like to go first. I just wanted to say there's a lot of good happening I think using the SVMI that's exciting. The PD on LPAC assessments, which I know acronyms city buts and then also GLAD training so there's lots
017of acronyms in there but I think that's like all those things are think we're seeing successes across the district with each of those initiatives so I'm pleased to see that adopting and embracing those. The easy CBM and CASP data is kind of a for math is kind of a head scratcher so I just wanted to initially what are some of your thoughts about the discrepancy between those, I recognize those are separate assessments, but they're both related to math and so seeing growth in one and decrease in the other is a little bit head scratching so I'm just curious, some of your, you and or your staff's thoughts about this. Well, I will actually steal thoughts on this one because this was something that our curriculum department did do a deeper dive into and there really
018were some areas that the easy CBM math was assessing that didn't align with what CASP was assessing. So, we're looking at moving away from that and having better assessment measures that will likely better align going forward so you can expect to see that on future scoreboards. Cool. Thank you. Trustee Kaplanis. Good morning. Good morning. I appreciate my visit with you and I actually got to see some of this come to life when we were in classrooms. You did point out that they were doing the zones of regulation. And I like that you are. You're aware of the challenges that you guys have and you have a good plan of action and you guys are implementing that right away. I wanted to comment that I liked how you guys are striving to have consistency, both in
019the classroom but at home with the self regulation, and you're collaborating with the parents so that they're using the same words and helping I think that's a really helpful thing that you guys are implementing. So I appreciate that. And I don't have any questions at this moment but I do appreciate all the good things that you guys are doing over there. Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for the presentation. Your whole career I've watched, you know here, and your work on IB and working with students has been exemplary so I really appreciate it. I know you're going to make strides there. It is difficult looking at stuff like this in terms of data, because we're looking at 23-24 when we're finishing 24-25. And then we had principals switch campuses. So you're in that era,
020a lot of the principals are inheriting the work of others, and so it's, and then we're coming off of COVID, and we're changing some of the metrics and how we measure things so there's a lot of variables in there. So I don't look at it as kind of comparison I just have to look at you as a professional, the kids, the funding sources, and the challenges that are ahead and if we have a good plan, because I can't really look at it in a literal sense, because we don't even have comparative data here to show likes, like schools, like students, demographics, socioeconomic factors, things like that. We're looking at each one kind of in a pocket, and so it's difficult from that sense. But I appreciate your approach. I know you're a professional, I know
021you're going to get good results over there. So thank you. Thank you. Hello Ms. Nebo. I saw that you have some celebratory language around student teacher relationships. However, the score is not great. It's gone up, but it's not great. What are the conversations like with your team with your staff on how to improve that or where the low score comes from Is it because of how that that panorama test is taken or what do you get? How do you guys talk about that? I feel strongly and I think there's been conversation here too that if when when when teachers and and students click, or when there's a really good relationship, it automatically translates into better scores and better performance. So what is your conversation like? I think just really consistently maintaining the five to one
022ratio that, again, it's part of the positive behavior intervention and support, having staff being very mindful of if you had a negative or corrective interaction with the student being cognizant of that and looking for those opportunities to promote and identify positives, even if it's something small that may be the student who You notice that they were the first one to get in their seat and get out the materials and calling them out by name. So and so I notice you have your things out. Thank you. You're ready to go. And that's announced in front of the whole class. So really being mindful of that. And that was, again, part of the training that we did this year as well was keeping that front of mind as we're approaching students. I can't wait to see how
023that translates into improved, you know, score in this panorama test. So thank you. Thanks for all you do. Thank you. Thank you. So I can combine comments from trustee Bino and trustee Duran for my comments. As trustee Bino stated, we don't have this year's data yet, but you have implemented a lot of things this year, including the SVMI, the PLC cycles, the extra information on the LCAP assessments for your teachers. In your, as you're just kind of, I know you don't have hard data. Like, how are these things? Do you think these things are helping to affect? And what are you expecting for the data to look like next year? So the data that where I've seen the most consistent trends is in the third grade. It's very positive for both math and ELA. I've
024actually notified my fourth grade team that they are just coming in with super well prepared third graders and I expect to see something similar with fourth and fifth grade as I'm looking at the data. Yeah, good. Yeah, so I think, I mean, it looks like you're doing, as trustee Vanden Heuvel said, or I don't know which one of you said it. We're seeing a lot of success at other schools who are implementing some of these same things and so it is nice to see it going across the board and I think we're going to see that at your school as well. I also think that I've been on campus a few times at Arroyo Seco and I do feel like it is a very unique community over at Arroyo Seco. It's actually very diverse if
025you look at the data as far as like true diversity. And I think it makes it a sort of a special school and I think it's great that you've been there and I am excited to see the relationships with the teachers and the students getting better so appreciate your work. Thank you so much. I have a tremendous school community both staff and families, so very fortunate. Thank you. Okay, now we'll invite Mr. Tom Jones up who is the principal of Jackson Avenue Elementary School. Good morning, Superintendent Gibson. We're President Pruso members of the board and our cabinet. It's nice to see you in the morning rather than the evening but we could probably swap those and I would still be happy to see you all. So I am ready to present the board presentation and
026interestingly, yes, it's near the end of the school year. It's just where we fell but we're very proud of the work that we've, we've been doing. So, same format as my colleague, and that you've seen all year we have our demographics at Jackson we're very stable, as far as the student population, the number, and then the demographics do not change from year to year. By more than just a couple. I would just point out English learners, we're at about 40, so that generally breaks down to about one to maybe three per classroom just to kind of give you an indication of how they're, they're spread out. Students with disabilities we have 53 students that includes students with IEPs for our learning center, and then also students with speech IEPs. And then our socioeconomically disadvantaged is
027at 27.6%. On our dashboard, we are happy that we're at the green on the English Language Arts and the mathematics but you'll see later that we did have experience a drop in percent proficient which is disappointing so while green is satisfactory it's not good enough to make me smile, I want to see us at the blue. You can also see our English learner progress, and we'll talk about that in a bit dropped as well. Students would be about three students based on our population did not move up, which dropped down our percentage suspension rate is in yellow, and we'll talk about that in a bit as well, and then chronic absenteeism so we definitely want to move up on those and while attendance is good. It always needs to be better. Looking at our comparisons.
028The yellow the chronic absenteeism and suspension rates. That's something that we want to focus on and we'll speak about more. And while we are in the green for ELA and math. Like I said our goal would be blue. So some things that are favorable here we've seen a trend upwards where it's 76% of students that have that positive student relationship and we can talk about that. Our average daily attendance, we're close to that 95%. I really think we need to be at 97 or 98% you need your students to be there. And then we did have like I mentioned where, while we're in the green on the dashboard, disappointing that we did drop, we did see that and then kind of see I wonder why that is and we'll talk about that a bit as
029well. So a percentage of drop 5% and then with the ELA that 10% scoreboard student progress data. You can see the numbers there so the year prior we had 51 students with 39% of them move up at least one LPAC level, but kind of static but there was that drop of 2%. And it was, it was three students that didn't move up that level so we want to make sure that we're supporting when you have about 40 students you should be able to keep track of them and keep them moving forward. Percent of students with two or more major referrals. Those are higher level referrals it that I would address and it's when you have things like pretty extreme profanity threats of violence or fighting those things ends up in as being a more major
030behavioral concern. And then some celebrations here that I am proud of and we saw this and other. I think Miss Nebo had pointed that out as well. She had some really good growth didn't necessarily correlate with the CASP. Our percent low risk in fourth grade, 91% so very talent really great. It looks like they're doing well, doesn't correlate as closely as we would like it to with the CASP and then again, she spoke to that so I won't be redundant. That's why we're looking at curriculum based assessments that will give a better indicator and it should match more closely. And then our first grade, this is probably my favorite to go if you see that growth we've almost doubled in two years and that's the work of the first grade team and our PLCs. We're
031really really focused on teaching our youngsters how to read and read effectively so to get up to almost 90% low risk something to celebrate. We're really really happy with that. The long term benefit is that we're teaching these kids and by the time they get to second and third, we're really focusing on comprehension, and we can get them writing, learning at an even higher rating fourth and fifth grade. So, lots of percentages here I think the things that I would point out is that there's always work to do to support our English learners. They're bilingual, they're speaking two languages, and they need additional support. And then our students with a disability, they have difficulty learning. We have to figure out the best way to support them. That's something that we do through our LST that's
032the learning support team. I know somebody pointed out the acronyms. LST stands for learning support team. We meet every other Wednesday. Those are the resource, special ed case managers, myself, our school psychologist, program specialist. We talk about our students who have IAPs, how they're doing, what's next for them, just so that we can support them. And then for English learners, we're meeting in cost coordination of services team. And we talk about all of our students of concern, but we especially focus on our students. If they're an English learner that takes some precedence, we need to make sure we are supporting them because data shows they deserve and they need that. And then I'll let you just kind of look through their first second to see the other percentages. I am proud that they're there. 94%
033of the time, so it's good. We want those students there learning and being presented with instruction. And then the other good concern is behaviorally, they're not acting out at an extreme rate that we would be concerned with. At our school site, remember I pointed out on the dashboard that we're in the yellow, which is of course concerning, but I do want to point out the level of suspensions and numbers. In 22, 23, no suspensions. In 23, 24, 5, and then up to this year currently, I have suspended six students and it's always for student safety. If there's other things that I can do to change behavior, I will do that and always elect to do that. If there are things that I need to do in order to ensure that students are safe and feeling
034safe, then I will use that tool. As you can see that there that there were five students so obviously there was one student was suspended twice this year. Celebrations and programs I alluded to those throughout that 18.1% and I had to put all of that on our universal access time we call it when what I need. And the first grade team, all of them are doing great work, but I'm speaking about the first grade team because that's the data indicator here. They're teaching their kids because the skills are so discreet, you know they're learning a CVC word as soon as they know that they're ready with that they're changing groups. They were using a template to keep track of this and it became cumbersome and they work with the tosa they work with our curriculum
035department in order to make those more efficient, so that they weren't hampered by changing these groups as often as they were, and it really paid off. The first grade levels throughout our district fourth and fifth grade have implemented new math DLC cycles which is really really exciting because it's going to allow them to have protocols. We taught the material. Did they learn what we expected them to especially the central standards and if not, who are those students and then what will we be doing to support those students so that's going to be a big focus next year. I would add to my ilt the instructional leadership team that that's our primary focus next year is focusing on math we're really dialed in on our reading interventions. Math is that next area of growth. We had
036say what tutors are volunteer support this year. We're actually meeting today with the fourth and fifth grade teams and some representatives from there at three o'clock to talk about next year, so it's great to wrap up a school year that was positive not wait next year. Just a couple weeks in beginning in September we'll have that support again in the classroom and it was really the feedback from the teachers is it very very helpful and informative. And then the math intervention blocks something that I'm jumping on in my, my whole grade level or my, all my grade level teams are on board with is that we'll do math intervention blocks K through five next year. They will be because time is time is hard to carve out they're going to be 10 to 15 minute
037blocks of time next year. Priority number one English learner development. We looked at the L pack and the cast. I shared with the board and I'm going to continue with that I always think we need to be 50% or higher. I feel like we should be able to do that we didn't. That's disappointing. So we call that out and say, what are we going to do to continue to move forward. We did a lot of great things this year. We've always continue with the 30 minutes of designated ELD time Lexia is something that we've been using, but further students are doing that independently on the computer. If they, there's a dashboard so seven times throughout the school year, I've dedicated Wednesday afternoon PD time for the teachers to go on the Lexia dashboard if you
038want someone to do something you actually carve it out say this is when we're going to do it. They look at it as a grade level team they find out the English learners who did not score 80% proficiency on their most recent activities online, and the areas that they fell short is where we would want to then supplement offline so we take it away from the computer and support them and we've been doing that all year. And then the coordination of sort of services team that I spoke about earlier, and then of course the connection to the sips is that we use our PLC is to focus on all things instruction priority number two was mathematics and will continue to be next year. We saw that drop so we are wanting to increase by 5%.
039We're very hopeful. I will be as disappointed as anyone because I know how hard our students have worked. And I know how hard our teachers have worked to move them forward so I'm really hopeful that the scores will will show the work that we've done and be representative of that. We're teaching a lot of math we're focused on dream box we were a leader, almost maybe too much use, and we went down to let's let's be realistic there's a lot of things demanding of our time and we said let's have a school wide goal of five lessons let's have all students earning five when I checked the dashboard, want to see that that's what you're averaging for your classes and I looked at it yesterday and it was 5.2 from September 1 through today is
040about how deep I went to analyze but that's really, really helpful to see. So we want to, excuse me, increase the percentage of students who have the skills and knowledge to graduate from high school college and or career ready and really we're building great students good kind happy students at Jackson. At this point, I'd like to open it to questions and discussion. Thank you. Okay. I think I'm ready. So, first, thanks for your presentation, I think if if any of the trustees have not been to Jackson, I think in the presentation what's kind of missing is the vibrant and lively culture that you inculcate I don't know if that's the right word that you inspire and create at Jackson so I appreciate the numbers but I also want to recognize the culture that you bring
041to Jackson. Lexi is a fantastic tool and I'm glad that we're using that targeted intervention and but I also appreciate the curated experience and having teachers, look at that and think about it and how they can leverage it because just putting the students in front of the student in front of the computer and having Alexia do its work is good but if you compare that with teachers who also are looking at how it's working and how it's not working. You're just putting it in front of the computer and hoping that it's doing its job is one thing but if you can what's connect that with teacher support I think that's fantastic. Somewhat similar, looking at the cast and the easy CV, easy CBM so casp date is state testing one day one shot, and so
042I think it's important for us to keep that in mind. Easy CBM, we have multiple touch points so in my mind easy CBM is the more reliable of the two, the two. So, but I guess a question that I have that maybe you can answer or maybe Mr hard can answer is the, the easy, easy CBM scores that we're seeing are those aggregate from throughout the year, or is that like a composite score from the multiple times that it's given or is that just the last. The last. Okay. I think, I think. Oh, and then since I'm asking, can you LST versus cost, can you help me when you when you were saying LST I was like, is that cost and then you mentioned cost was something else and then I was like, Okay, everything's
043connected but LST is learning support team cost is coordination of services team, different members, but some crossover for example on cost our school psychologist sits on on both. Because she's special ed but she's also offers a lot of behavioral support social emotional support. You can have you generally have your entire special ed department so we have a speech and language pathologist school psychologist resource specialist program specialist and myself, that would be our LST and we're focused primarily on students with or discussing students that came through costs that we had an SST for. And there is a request for assessment or we believe that there may be a learning disability, and what are we going to do to support that student costs can include students who are referred for kid connection because of some social emotional
044or behavioral concerns, academic concerns, behavioral concerns we've got some of those kiddos that just, they do things they shouldn't be doing and it's not okay with how we do things at Jackson. So let's talk about that and what we can do to support them so similar and that both are supporting students, maybe different members different avenues different. I guess maybe positions that kids would be in, but always designed to support kids and those are both they flip flops so every other Wednesday so LST the next Wednesday cost is how we do it currently. Thank you. You're welcome. Just a couple on us. Good morning. Good morning. I appreciate it my visit with you to add Jackson, and I attended a few events over at your school as well the cultural night was fantastic and like
045trusty drew and said it just brought to life like the vibrancy of the different cultures and the good community that you have at Jackson. I just had a quick question. First a congratulation I thought you guys did really well with the big improvements in your easy CVM in math and reading, and the implementation of like the PLC cycles in the fourth and fifth grade I like to see that. For the younger grades I know that you guys are doing well and you have some strategy and plans of action for the future for math but do you foresee yourselves doing any PLC cycles for like the earlier grades. For mathematics. So the the rollout is that we would add, this is district wide third grade would be trained as well so fourth grade started we brought
046fifth grade in and we say we this is the curriculum department under Chris Connors leadership so I want to have Jackson's doing something extraordinary special we are on board. So third grade will be brought on. I don't know the expansion plans beyond that but I would say math is important for all. I'm jumping ahead, as far as math intervention blocks. I have 15 minutes to just really target instruction, daily, or at least four days per week Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, K through five because that's important to me as well. I hope that answers your question that does. Thank you. And then, lastly, for the suspensions, it went from zero to five. And then five to six. I know you said it's mostly like safety concerns but what do you think like cause that big jump.
047Quite honestly it was students that used force on others so fights, and when you purposely try to harm someone there through a fight that's very likely in all circumstances under my leadership and a result in a suspension. And amazingly, I had zero of those, the year that there was zero suspensions. Different circumstances different students, right, but that's, that's the explanation. Okay. Well thank you so much. Welcome. Trustee Vanden Heuvel. Think most of the questions have already been asked so that's that's great I did write them some stuff but I think if there are questions for Mr heart so for instance, did the state testing that for this year has it already happened. The window is still open, we have all students except for one that I may do some makeup testing. If I have time
048today so yes it's done, but we're still trying to get her so your 5% goal. You may have already reached it. Let's see. Yes, I know. But no thank you for what you do. I think I've been a Jackson the most or had the most contact with parents and, and teachers and stuff and I really, I'm really excited about what's happening there and then to see academically how well you're doing is, is pretty exciting. So, keep it up. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Thank you. As everyone else says I would just wanted to say to take back to your first grade team. Congratulations, they obviously their, their work is paying off that's really amazing to see. I think, thank you so much for coming. We appreciate it. Thank you. Still my turn. Okay. Okay, now
049we're, we're going to invite Miss Dana Taylor, the principal of Rancho Las Positas Elementary School. Morning. Good morning, for President Pruso members of the board, Superintendent Gibson cabinet and community. My name is Dana Taylor and I am the proud principal of Rancho Las Positas Elementary School. And I'm honored to share with you, our board's annual report highlighting our student data progress celebrations and key instructional priorities for the 2024 25 school year of will take a look at demographics right now and currently we serve 587 students and growing. We're proud of our diversity and our richness of our student population and as you can see, our legend, our largest demographic groups are white, Hispanic, and Asian students with a meaningful representation of African American students and Pacific Islander and American Indian communities at 7.5% of our
050students are English learners and 16.4 our students with disabilities. And this is a significant population and important population for us and we've prioritized inclusion and support for those students. Almost 24% of our students are socio economically disadvantaged, which continues to shape our school and our commitment to support those programs. This is the 2324 California dashboard, and on this slide I just want to highlight our performance with comparisons from the previous year, we made significant progress in several key areas and one is chronic absenteeism. We went from yellow to green which reflects the success of our site site wide attendance initiatives, and our parent engagement strategies. You can tell we're slowly rising our population from a post COVID like for rising, and we want to even make it higher. Our suspension rate move from blue to
051green and this was due to just one additional suspension, and I'll show you that later. While it technically shifted our color. It's important to note that our, our, our suspension rate still remains extremely low. And we really prioritize our PBIS so we're hoping it will remain our suspension rate remains low. But most impressively our English learner progress indicator jumped two levels. And that is a result of our targeted interventions, stronger ELD in our instruction and careful progress monitoring. So we were really proud of that as a site. Our English language and math achievement indicators remain stable at green, which we're, we're, it's demonstrates solid progress but we want more so we'll talk about that in a moment. What you can see is, as we examine our district to others in our district and beyond. We
052can see that our school is similar in our math in ELA, and has a higher product, lower percentage of chronic absenteeism and suspension rates which we appreciate our Our school board success data shows that when we look at the three of the previous three years and our of our academic and climate data, we can see that our ELA and math cast scores dip slightly this year, and but we're still within the strong range and our response has been immediate. We have, we have had focused universal access time teacher PLC work and strong tier one instruction. On the bright side our attendance continues to improve year after year we're now at 94.73% and we will, we are working on that, that level to rise to pre coven numbers. Our teacher student relationships remain strong with 80%
053of students reports reporting positive connections, which is obviously fundamental to student success. This data is it affirms what we know is that the importance of consistent, consistent responsive instruction and a nurturing school environment. We'll talk more about that when we talk about our PBIS Our student progress data shows that we saw meaningful gains this year in our early literacy and math screening data. Notably, if you look at this, our first grade reading low risk scores jump from 86.7% to over 91% and our fourth grade math data shows 94% of all students are at low risk on our easy CBM universal screener. And you, and you can also see if you look at this trend in first grade that 31 we've had a 31.5% jump in two years since the introduction of our universal access time.
054So we're in we're especially proud of our 15% increase in English learners progressing at least one LPAC level, our behavioral data shows a positive trend with fewer students receiving major referrals, year after year. And we think this is an outcome and it's an attribute of our, our proactive PBIS planned at our school or the Rancho way which we'll talk about later. Our EL, and I'm sorry our. This slide is going to compare two critical student groups are English language learners, and our students with disabilities. And while our cast proficiency rates for these students remain low, we're seeing promise in other areas. Attendance for both groups is 90, almost nine near 94% behavior referrals are almost non existent and screening data shows 80 80% are considered low risk in targeted interventions and we know these students
055required layer support. So this data just helps adjust our instruction and resources to better serve them. As we talked about earlier, this is our suspension rate. Before I was there and while I was there. We, it remains low, and we believe it to be a safe and positive school environment. So I've had two suspensions, the past year, and I think that is because of our proactive response with our teachers our student center relationships our discipline approach, our, our PBIS and send what we do our process. We have as a PBIS committee and staff we've continued to monitor our behavior trends, while supporting the social emotional growth and our school believes in importance of the Rancho way is to be kind to be responsible, respectful and safe. This is the fun part where I get to
056talk about our celebrations in our programs this year. And this is a time where I can say there was a lot to celebrate our school wide focus this year was one of them. One of them was supporting neurotypical students and students that have had challenges with behavior. So we had a professional development series this year. And with that, that professional development and a collective mindset shift. We've seen stronger general edge and general education inclusion and support, and I want to thank Carolyn Doige and Anna moon of as for their support throughout the year they led some great PD, and we all learned a lot. Our PBIS program continues to be a model and we've been earning medals since 2019. We're hoping to get gold again this year. We added a student led Rancho way promotions
057this year which was new for us. We had students wrote. We still send home homework to parents and students so all of our parents can tell you what the Rancho way is. And it's nice to hear they use it at home but our students are leading with posters and newsletters they've written songs they've made videos for us, and our, our SDC class actually published a book which I'm so proud of. They published a book, and it's housed in our library about the Rancho way. And so if you ever come by, I can't wait to show it to you, and our, our kids actually check it out and and bring it home, which is amazing. What else do we have we have our monthly school wide assemblies. And this is where Rancho really shines as a
058newer principle this is, I'm just finishing my second year. If you have never seen a Rancho assembly. This is an experience, and it just leaves you with this feeling of culture like you've never seen before in and tradition and appreciation and so these usually center around appreciation of people diversity, PB is the Rancho way, just, and just basic school spirit. Rancho has deep rooted traditions in culture and of positivity. So I invite you to join us. We're, we're also building and this is something amazing this year we're building a culture of physical activity and we've always had this, but Rancho has always had this really strong running culture. And this year, we always track lapse but this year we decided to make a point of tracking the lapse our students ran all year long as
059part of PE or different things. So Rancho collectively ran 93,869 laps, that equals to that, sorry 23,467 miles, and we have an amazing map at our school that can show all of the routes they've made around the United States and we're going to present this to them at our Olympic day, but it's amazing, and a parent of ours made a representative, a representative map to show the students. So, um, we also combine that with events like our Friday running club, and we have a big event called our annual mile challenge where all the students come out and support our top runners in the school we have different heats. And then also, we do our school fun run so it just, it's just a culture of physical activity at our school and running. That is something
060to be proud of. Our arts and one other thing our arts and history is really into, we really make it our winter program our gold rush plays Gold Rush or Bush or in the history of Livermore musical is amazing it's amazing program. So, they're learning history through different walkthrough adventures and different performances so again I invite you to check those out so we're always proud of them. So let's move on to our priorities for this year, we made our priorities. One of our key academic priorities this year was improving our math proficiency. Our cast sports dip to 59%. So we prompt a targeted plan that would raise the number, hopefully 11 percentage points and we'll see if that happened this year. We have been strengthening our tier one instruction using the adopted service curriculum, incorporating
061our mass screeners and expanding our universal access time in math to the upper grades are fourth and fifth grade teachers and now third are engaged in math curriculum department where they're analyzing data, they're planning units and exploring a strategic interventions. Hopefully these actions directly to support our sips a goal to reach 70% proficiency or higher by the end of this year. Hopefully, our ELA proficiency is a top priority. Our cast proficiency rate stands at 61% and our goal is to raise it to 70. And through that multi layer approach again, it is high quality tier one instruction using benchmark advanced our foundation literacy work integrity, which we love the program and we see a Again with you fly and Sunday and the use of our easy CBM screeners to guide that intervention. UA time is
062being leveraged for targeted support and both intervention and extension occurring four days a week. Our PLCs on instructional planning and Alliance support ensures that every student can grow as a reader and a writer at Rancho. Thank you for your time this afternoon. And I can, you can tell I'm incredibly proud of my staff and students and families and in our relationships and I opened the floor for questions. Thank you. Trustee van and who will. Thank you miss Taylor. I have not been at at Rancho enough. I now recognize I need to come up to all these assembly so thanks for the invitation. You can count on me, I'll be there. You mentioned, you, you really want to improve your ADA numbers. Yes, is that a lever you can pull as this as it as it
063as a team. What are some strategies that you hope to. I have already this year will we start out in the beginning of the year with the back to school nights and showing the importance of edge of how many days actually on our marquee to it's a, you know, absences and tardies add up. I think over coven a lot of people got used to being out and coming back and so we're trying to build that again. We talk about the school nights I send out newsletters with different statistics about how much time we're missing. We've really made it a point to talk to our PTAs and our school site councils and get their feedback on it, but really it's just about educating parents, I don't think they realize that education or our ADA has fallen
064so much since coven so we're going to get it back to those numbers And is it is it certain students that you like they they're just gone for a week at a time or is it like all throughout the every demographic of students that are just they easily drop out for an afternoon or they get dropped off late or what do you see. Well, obviously in the numbers we saw, we do have higher percentages in students with disabilities, and we all, and that can be due to medical issues as well, but really, we do see students leaving for three and four weeks at a time and, you know, making vacations so we try to tell parents, you know, there's a time for vacation and there's just like teachers right we have a, we have time
065for school and time for vacation so we try to educate parents as much as we can. And then one other thing that stood out to me is you started your presentation by mentioning that you have about 590 students and growing. Yes, do you have room. No. But we are we are growing. We were projected I think at 610 so far next year so little bit at a time. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we're bursting at the seams, but we look. Thank you for being here. Thanks for the work you do. Thank you. Okay. I noticed on some of these things when we're trying to look at, like that dashboard and then we compare it to the charts. Is it, and you may or may not have the answer, it just seems very sensitive, like a single students
066performance moves the needle up or down. Yes, it just seems like that's just bad data like it's a bad illustration of data. It's hard when you still have low numbers but it looks like you dipped in your color changes. It's frustrating. Yeah, I'm looking at the attendance and it moved point three eight but it moved your needle and it's what that represents and, you know, blue to green on a single incident of something else so you know just kind of a warning to folks when you're looking at you look at the gauges on your car, which is that's the dashboard thing. You know if it moves that much you're overheating but in this case it's like one little small thing. I just don't think that that dashboard really, you know, we're always over let's look
067for them all to go to the blue but it doesn't take much to move the needle. I know, especially with suspension right. Yeah, if your numbers are low. Yeah, and certainly on different category categoricals of, you know, people demographics. But, uh, your outcomes are nice and you did a nice job, and I've had the opportunity to watch you know over junction and stuff and I think that the reason you have good outcomes because you have a passion for kids. It's really really clear. You work really good at building community. I saw you do it at junction I saw the transition going to Rancho, the culture that was there you embraced it the running raccoons and all that. And you're just really good at it. So I think that's why your outcomes are going to be
068there and I really appreciate you being a principal and work in our community and I know it's a family affair kind of thing so you guys do a really good job and I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, couple of points. Let me see. Building from trustee Buenos I think I'll try and articulate don't let moving from blue to green dictate decisions in what is best for students at your community and thinking about suspensions, like one suspension I think that that shouldn't be a factor in in in that that, oh no I'm going to, this is going to move me from blue to green and I'm not saying that that's the case I'm just saying, why, we trust that your professionals are doing what is the best for students and recognizing the complexity of
069the dashboard and so. There are some actions that push the boundaries of PBIS and we recognize that in most instances all of you are trying to do positive behavior intervention and support, but if a student makes an action that questions the safety of the school that suspension is a tool in your in your kit, and so, and then I was thinking in talking in hearing you talk about the professional learning about neurodivergent students in my brain I'm like, this is great we should do this everywhere but I think we need to find balance between district led initiatives and site based initiatives and I think the three schools that we've heard from here showcase that it's it's power it's powerful and I'm proud that we allow you the autonomy to make those decisions about what's best
070for your students in your your school community. And then since on the ADA conversation I think I've, I've raised this point previously that public education is both a right but it's also responsibility we need to make sure that students are in in classrooms as much as possible so they become educated community members and or citizens, and I think I've mentioned previously that in the UK they take that to the kind of go the other end that parents can be find if their students are not present for an excused reason, I think it kind of gets to the idea of this is, you need to be in school, I'm not saying that we advocate to that way but I'm pleased to hear that you helping communicate to parents that they need to be here, and it's
071not just about funding it's like they need to learn and they need to be educated members of our society. And then last point, cast the California assessment for what is it science California science tests, that's right, the CA is is off. They're taking the test and next year I believe it goes live in November so just kind of communicating to us all and perhaps, you know, posing the question should we include cast data. Next year on school sites presentations. It's still preliminary they're kind of great out at this point because it's not like official yet because there's been some want to want to make it. Some want to go ahead and some think we're not quite there yet. So I think it's something that we as a board may want to discuss or other, other
072people, so just the dashboard will eventually have science as well as the other ones. But all that aside, thanks so much for your work, and he's, you stepped in there, you're doing great work so appreciate it. Morning, I will make it to your schools, I think, Friday, tomorrow, tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow to visit. I wish I could be there for an assembly or running club or something you guys are doing a lot of fun things over there. I'm excited that you're implementing the history of livermore and yeah I'm a big fan of American history and the fact that you're implementing that for your school is really exciting so I don't really have any questions but just keep up the good work I'm excited to see the scores for next year and more of the celebrations. Great.
073Thank you. Thanks for coming. I to wanted to congratulate you, I think your English learner change, or progression is, it's great. And it's coming from targeted intervention it was like specifically targeted. And also I think that your goals that you have are, they're good and they're attainable. So I appreciate that for your cast scores, and also that you're having such great success in your easy CBM scores as well. I did want to say that I, my favorite. I think it's been my favorite presentation ever that I've gone to is the history of the livermore musical. I've said this many times. And maybe I need to just call someone but I really think that should be at the bankhead. I think it'd be amazing. Can we do that. Right. It's so good if anyone, if you
074guys haven't seen it was written by some teachers right right here. Yeah, and they played this little light of mine to our, our light bulb and learn where it's really good. Yeah, it's adorable. Seriously, I was emotional which is weird because I'm never emotional. I know. I'm never emotional and I was, I was quite emotional there. So that's something. And then also I think it's really cool that the fun I know a lot of elementary schools do running clubs but I feel like there's an added focus and what an important thing to learn at such a young age, and the way that you guys have really, I know you have some running teachers over there so I know that probably helps to have the whole culture over there of running I know you have some
075like marathoners that that are over there but I just think that's really great as well so the culture there is great you're doing a great job we appreciate you coming. And thank you. Thank you. And a huge thank you to the three of you for being last but certainly not least. The last week of school almost, and you are working on these presentations so just also additional kudos and extra credit for you because of the timing so yes. We have no consent items and no public comments on our closed session. So at this point we will adjourn to our closed session 1036 am. Welcome back we're now reconvening from closed session. We do have a readout. That's the trustee why not to read out for us. Thank you. The board conducted in closed session the
076superintendents evaluation process for the preceding year. We are reporting out. The superintendent received a positive evaluation with unanimous consent for the 2025 25 school year. And as a reference the next our next meeting is Tuesday, June 10. And this meeting is now adjourned at or 56pm.