March 18, 2025 - 10am Committee of the Whole

001e for e e e good morning o I go there good morning everyone uh wel welcome to Committee of the whole meeting um March 18th 2025 I want to welcome everyone here to today's committee meeting as always it's a privilege to gather in this space to discuss the critical issues impacting our schools students and Educators we have a full and engaging agenda today uh covering to key topics to speak on uh the Statewide and Nationwide challenges and addition to some jazz Joys that we will also um uh be presenting to you and opportunities within our district particularly opportunities for dual enrollment uh first we will hear uh I'm just going to run down the agenda really quickly first we will hear from uh Dr Sylvia Lego senior Economist at the center of Economic and policy

002research who will present on California teacher pay Decades of falling behind this issue is CR uh crucial as you examine how educator compensation affects teacher quality retention Recruitment and the overall success for students and schools next we will enjoy presentation on Jazz and schools uh featuring uh Miss Rita zor director of the Los Angeles Jazz Society along with uh Mr Randa Willis group leader and saxophonist and Mr Steven ban uh B Manan Excuse Me instrument repair shop supervisor from our facility service Division and Miss Dr Tony white uh music and entertainment education coordinator at beyond the bell this program um the music and Jazz and schools program brings the power of music education to our students and underscores the role of the Arts in a well-rounded education finally we will learn about dual enrollment dream

003it and achieve it uh with Dr Francis Bas our chief academic officer in the division of instruction dual enrollment programs create critical Pathways for students allowing them to access college level coursework while still in high school and just last week I had the honor of co-authoring a dual enrollment resolution alongside our student board member anelli uh Cortez Lopez a testament to the power of student leadership and the importance of expanding access to higher education in times of great challenge it is essential that we continue to uplift and highlight programs such as dual enrollment which help our students dream bigger and achieve more uh but before we move on to these wonderful presentations I want to take a moment to hear from our labor Partners uh whose voices and advocacy are instrumental in shaping the policies

004and programs that serve our students in Educators so if there are any labor Partners who wish to speak or present or say anything no okay okay none are here well we'll always leave this space open for our labor Partners um so now we will move on to our first presentation um on California teacher pay Decades of falling behind um so I just want to preface as we have Dr Aro come forward I just want to just mention why I um we're having this presentation which you know shouldn't require a um an explanation but I want to be able to use our committee of the whole to to address critical issues that are affecting um our schools our Educators our our our communities through research um I was an educational or I guess I still I'm

005an educational researcher and program analyst and research is is you know something that I always loved and thrived uh while I was in grad school and also in my professional background and so I wanted to bring this forward in our our committee here and just to discuss critical issues that are going on in um our educational landscape here in California and also nationally so I just want to say that our public education system is facing a crisis that threatens uh to undermine the future of millions of students a severe growing teacher shortage uh this issue is not new this is something that we um have been discussing but it has reached a point at schools Statewide and Nationwide uh to strug a struggle to fill classrooms with qualified Educators and the decisions in the unfortun

006in the current federal administrations is only exacerbate exacerbating the situation with the dismantling of the Department of Education and fund cuts to teacher preparation programs such as teacher quality Partnerships or qpt Grant programs which is one of the many teacher preparation programs affected by these cuts um according to the learning policy Institute the United States face uh a shortage of approximately 110,000 um teachers in 23 24 school year with projections indicating the Gap will only grow to nearly 200,000 by 2026 the problem has dire effects in high poverty schools and is particularly severe in specialized Fields such as stem special education and English as and uh students are for English Learners the teacher shortage like I said is not a new problem but it has reached alarming levels low salaries high stress and lack of

007respect for the teaching profession has driven many teachers out of the classroom and so today we will hear from Dr Alto um in regards to um salaries the the wage inequality within com in comparison to the teaching profession and other professions so really quickly um I want to um introduce Dr Alto uh who is a let me see what's up sorry um who is a senior Economist at the center of Economic and policy research Dr lto is also a research associate for the economic policy Institute she worked for 15 years in The Institute of research on labor and employ employment at the University of California Berkeley go Bears uh where she co-founded the center of wage and employment Dynamic cweed C CW's body of work on wage floors has greatly influenced the academ academy and

008policy Dr Alto co-author two editions of the state of working America while at e EPI and continues her work on teacher compensation public education and labor markets and provides frequent commentary on economic Trends so welcome Dr lto and we look um looking forward to your presentation so the floor is yours thank you thank you very much good morning to the board education of the city of La it's an honor and a privilege to be here I'm thinking of can I ask you to lift the mic up there we go boom how about this thank you perfect good morning again oh yeah that sounds better it's really an honor and a privilege to be here I've been doing this work for a long time I don't know why I've never addressed a board before because I

009don't I've done a lot of public speaking on this topic and I'm thinking of my mother who was uh I'm I'm from rural Pennsylvania who was on the board of my high school um for about 20 years I have a brother who's a teacher a science teacher in high school and a basketball coach my sister was an elementary school teacher for 25 years and when I went back to school to get a PhD in economics and I graduated in 200 uh three I guess it was I went to EPI and my sister was like what the hell does an economist do and I was like well I'll tell you because at the time I was at the economic policy Institute and Larry Michelle and I wrote our first book on teacher pay it was the

010first thing I've ever put out as an economist here we are 21 years later and we you'll probably understand uh why I have to return to this topic over and over and over again and so that's what we're going to talk about here today but specifically on California I have papers that I release now almost every year updating the research on the United States as a whole where I also have Point estimates on the gaps for each state but this paper is a deep dive into California so let me just say um okay this is working great thank you let me just say a few things about the data because it kind of sets the stage here so I'm using the current population survey which is kind of the Workhorse for labor Economist this is

011where we get the unemployment rate from every year each data point you're going to see this is just kind of in the weeds of little bit is five years it's a fiveyear average because I want to make sure I had enough Public School teachers to be able to estimate to have enough data to get meaningful statistics right so this is only on California and I'm only looking at Public School teachers in California and what I mean by public school teachers in in in in my definition is elementary middle and secondary school teachers so there are no kindergarten or prek in in these data things would look a lot worse if they were included right so it's it's pretty conservative in that respect I'm not including private sector teachers because I've already shown in other work

012that the private school teachers are even worse off most likely because they don't have unions so the question is are teachers paid fairly are they overpaid are they underpaid and the question is compared to what right and so I think what we came up with Larry and I so many years ago what which Larry Michelle now who was president of Epi all that all those years is now retired so I'm doing this work alone right now is that um I'm looking at all other college graduates in the state of California because that's basically the opportunity costs of not being a teacher when you decided what am I going to do with my profession so everybody I'm including everybody that has a ba yes it includes High earners down in Silicon Valley although they're a small

013part of all the workers in California right it includes if you have a ba and you are an Uber driver but it it kind of pins teacher pay to something that's meaningful right because because we're going to see that opportunity costs really matter right and so I think that that this hopefully this is going to make some sense to you about the way I have set this up and so I'm going to show first average weekly wages and that's just to see the underlying data and how it's been moving over time and then I'm going to show you regression adjusted or what I call relative teacher pay because that you know you put it through the regression Mill and it basically controls because these two samples can be very different just fundamentally different on margins

014that affect pay so we want to make sure that we're getting more of an Apples to Apples comparison and that's what I call the teacher pay or the weekly wage teacher pay Gap okay so I'm going to start out just looking at women because women still are by and far the majority of teachers even though it's it's a little less the share of women in California compared to to the US but in in this data set it's about 70 70% or so and so here here all we're looking at here is average weekly wages of women and the other college grads are the orange line and the dark blue line are public sector School teachers only women now this is really interesting right because when you have an ex I don't know about you like

015statisticians and economists get pretty excited when you have a series that crosses like like x marks the spot right and so you have this situation where you had other college grads in the early 80s made about 12% less than than public school teachers who are women right and now they make about 33% more and why is that well I say it right in the in the title opportunity cost now I'm sure there's a lot of Wise Women men too but maybe right here that understand what I'm talking about when I say opportunity cost because that is what's driving this trend right you can't ignore the opportunities that women were allowed to over the last 50 years ever opening educational opportunities ever widening opportunities in different professions and occupations right and so we used to have

016a captive labor pool so I went back all the way to 1960 the 1960 denial census and did this for the US and showed that if you were a woman that even had just two years of education about 65% of women in 1960 that means they would have been educated in the 40s and 50s if they were teachers in you know 1960 if they were working in 1960 they were in three occupations about 60% of all women just with the two years of education were in three occupations right you know what they are right nursing clerical work teacher so we had a captive labor pool of women that we didn't let do much else who were fantastic teachers right and we can't ignore that but we keep trying to ignore it as we keep moving

017forward right and what's really interesting interesting in this story is a great book that Dana Goldsmith wrote called the teacher Wars and I wrote about this in a chapter in um strike for the common good after the teacher strike and it's an amazing story and we're kind of still stuck in this history that when we started rolling out public education in late 1800s early 1900s we had this great ideal that we're going to provide public free public educ education for each and every kid regardless of means well only men were teachers right I mean this is a long time ago when we weren't even allowed to get educated women weren't allowed in schools aren't allowed to you know we so how did that happened do you ever ask yourself how did how did all the

018teachers become women it was purposeful policy to say if we're going to do this it's very well documented in the teacher Wars we need to let women have what were then called like normal degrees from Europe we need to hire women to do all of this teaching because it will save us money we'll pay them less so I do still think that that story matters and isn't really talked about much so if we look at this this is just the underlying Trends and it really is the in the the story behind all of this is that you have all of these widening opportunities for women better education different professions better pay by the way this is average weekly wage that's only adjusted for inflation so when that blue line gets pretty flat there you see

019that means the teacher pay on average in California is just keeping up with inflation which was pretty mild over most of that time frame right and then you see the downward trend on that last mark because of covid right so if we run this these data these underlying data through through a regression here's what I estimate to be the the teacher pay Gap it might be what you would expect that in the early years just like in um when I go back to 1960 I found doing the same exercise that women in the United States who were teachers made 15% more than other college graduates by the early 1980s here in California it's 88.3% more if you were a woman and you were teaching you did better than if you were in other occupations then

020we have the early mid90s where we're at parody that's crossing the zero line when it's about the same and now we have this big downward Trend where female teachers in California are making about 19% less than other college grads and this is quite the trend I see nothing in all the 21 years that I've been doing this this is the same story over and over and over again and um again I think we just cannot continue to ignore this massive Point swing of like 27 percentage points from positive 8.3 3% to negative almost 19% so now if we look at men here again remember these are all California data if we look at men who are teachers teaching uh Public School teachers in California they used to make about 18% less than their counterparts their

021college educated counterparts in California now it's about 39% just typically you know the average weekly wage difference is what I'm showing here and you see these two are really pulling apart the this these Trends are really widening right um so that might explain uh why the share of teachers over the the male teachers again not including prek or k so the the share is a little bit higher because it would be lower for men if I included them went from about 39% in the early in in the early 80s to about 29% now that's just elementary middle and secondary school right and um and of course you know it's it's not just diversity of gender that we lack we also lack just diversity about 64% of teachers in California are are uh White non- Latino

022white we're only about 20 students are where the reverse of that is about 56% of the students are Latino and only 21% of teachers are and we have almost no black teachers about 2 and a half% or so it might be a little bit higher now now these are I looked on the Department of Education they're a couple of years old but basically we really lack diversity in teaching especially to match the student body so if we run this through the regression what are what is the estimated pay Gap and these have always been large for men again going back to 1960s I did the same exercise and and Men uh we had more male teachers back then but there was always a large pay Gap and that's because of the fact that this is

023a feminized occupation so they're really going to get um because they're they're only I'm only comparing them to other males here and so this is what you see so you you you you can see that we're losing male teachers I think we can say with uh confidence we're going to continue to lose male teachers and that's as boys are struggling if we were hearing the reports about boys struggling in school and then they were we were talking about girls and 70 or 75% of the teachers were all men we would be clamoring to saying we need more female teachers and I think it's it's fair to say we need more male teachers that should be in the mix as as part of the solution um so it's it's there's no reason to expect that we

024can get more men to come into teaching when on average they're going to take such large pay cuts and imagine if you're in school today and we have a lot of uh survey questionnaires that that the that people have taken to show that that even students that want to become teachers would like to teach they understand this they understand these negative Trends and that by the time they're 40 years old what are these going to look like there going to be 50% less 60% less they know they can't afford it and they say so and even their parents some who are teachers and teachers always want their kids to be teachers like my sister was a teacher and now my niece is a teacher they even say you know it and there's many reasons why

025but pay is usually at the top of the list with other with other um with other uh other issues going on in in the public school systems and I just want to say real quickly that that pay matters on its own and you might be thinking about total compensation I can't do what I do in the US Paper because I don't have data just on California and I because in the US Paper I take um Bureau of Labor Statistics data on compensation and I do show that on average teachers have a little bit better benefits than other professionals again I I compare them to other professionals not to like all workers because they're professionals and so um you can you can you can take a little bit away from these these pay gaps and here

026here are all the pay gaps all is the middle and then women and men and over this period of time and you can you can say okay they they get a little bit more it's a little bit more of a benefit that they have a little bit more of their total compensation in benefits but but that doesn't help that much when you live in um a state like California where you can have a lot of benefits but you still need wages you still need pay because here I have California teachers this is this is nominal so everything is relatable around 2,000 these data are 2,000 for the last 25 years or so on each of these categories teacher pays just up 61% where other college grads in California their weekly wage went up 102% so

027at least they kept pace with inflation on average but then you see housing costs that went through the roof so this makes it definitely um you know hard to attract and retain especially young teachers in the teaching Workforce here in California by the way all of this is holds true for the whole us it's just a little bit worse than California not necessarily the California does not have the the largest pay gaps in the state but when you put the cost of living with it that brings it into a new realm and so what I think and I've been saying for a long long time is this really is one of our greatest ideals the idea that we're going to provide education for each and every kid regardless of means we've always come up short

028everybody knows that but we can't make it without the best and the brightest heading up our classrooms it should be people should be clamoring to want to be a teacher that you get into teaching and you VI and you compete and the best school systems in the world do it this way and then once you are proven because teaching is hard right I I definitely I used to go to my sister's classroom like I don't know how you do this right and um you can you have to know first of all what you're teaching your subject area but then you have to know how to relay information which is pretty difficult I've taught college students right and so but we need to you know then once you you prove that you're in there and we

029have the best and the brightest and what we need from a whole pool of of of just the greatest students right across the country then you should be in and you should be making a very good living you should be told we want you here we want you forever six figures should not be eyebrow raising at all right and so again there's no easy answers here because it's going to take again there is I've been doing this for 21 years which is why I have to keep coming back to it because it it just keeps getting worse and no one's really paying attention and we think that when we have bonuses here or there one time you know whatever to try to help that's not going to mitigate let alone turn around and undo some

030of these pay gaps I mean I can't imagine what it would take it would take a lot but I have been waiting to see the uturn but the U-turn right now is nowhere in sight so thank you for your uh attention and thank you for the invite I so much appreciate it and I can take any questions that you may have um thank you Dr Al Gro for your insightful analysis on teacher pay in California uh teacher salaries directly impact our ability to attract and retain the dedicated Educators who shape our students Futures and as we heard when Educators struggle to afford a living in the communities they serve not only affects their well-being but also the stability and quality in our own schools if we want to provide the best education for our students

031we must ensure that teaching remains a sustainable and respected professional um so with that said at this time I'd like to pause and invite my colleagues who are here we have um board member Ortiz Franklin Miss uh grego Mr schmon um um miss new Bill H hendy and uh Mr Moo here and our superintendent as well and is Miss gones online and we have Miss gones um who is on uh via Zoom watching as well so um we have a full house here with all the board members so I'd like to ask my colleagues if they have any questions or want to share any Reflections before we move forward Mr schmon yeah just a comment um I don't know any teachers when I started working as a teacher who didn't have to have a second

032job it was impossible it was impossible to maintain a home or an apartment even Way Way Back when I started teaching everybody had a second job and you had to work all summer too so it's one of these professions I I always talk about parents who have to work two and three jobs I feel so bad just to make a living today but even then teachers had to work two jobs you just could not make it on that salary and I remember when I first started I remember my uh father said why in the world would you want to be a teacher you don't make any money and you know certain people have the idea of you you want to make a living you want to have a family you want to be um content

033he said teaching is not a good profession you don't make any money and I know you keep going back to the salaries and it's absolutely true absolutely true I just wanted to make that comment about two jobs two jobs to to to live as a teacher yeah and I I could just comment a second um you when you started talking you reminded me um I'm a big baseball fan you know and uh even my hero Roberto Clemente had to work to jobs until they got the unions involved right but even with that being a teacher does require two jobs because back then most males who were probably teaching were like the probably the only bread winner but now we know that females and males the the bread they're both Bread Winners right for every family

034it's very important so the idea that hung around for a long time again this idea that um well they're just women making a little extra money that no longer applies it absolutely no longer applies and so I mean this is the most consequential job that I can think of it's not like any other job or any other profession teachers have the future in front of them each and every day it affects the students families communities whole communities because of segregation because of economic segregation and such and it affects the future of the entire United States Miss Ortiz Franklin thank you thanks for the presentation um my comments might be a little bit more for staff but Dr Ras when you first came on you wrote a resolution that I was happy to co-sponsor around equity

035for girls and women and it was really more around mental health um but part of that resolution I think was about the you know gender gaps um and reaching uh more Equitable outcomes that you know we have pay scales here and uh uh there's um ideally much more Equity among the genders depending on the the job position that people hold but I wonder to what extent mental health is impacted by salary and I don't know that it was necessarily part of the resolution but it made me just think about if we're really trying to build this employer of choice as we've been talking about La unified for a while um you know how the salary kind of goes into that alongside um cultivating the mental health of the employees that we have so um it

036just Ed me because we have some new board members there was a report asked for from that resolution if we could recirculate that to everyone it was mostly about Youth and and women and girls in in mental health um but it just you know um rejiggered my memory um from that resolution you first wrote when you came um and it reminded me of a resolution before we joined um with Miss Garcia called she leads and I actually um I don't know if Mr melin remembers or Mr shison you were here there was a report requested about Equity across District staff and so um not just the teaching profession but also in director roles and Leadership at the district and an analysis of equity across uh men and women and I think I think it even

037went you know in terms of non-binary and how folks identify um just to really help identify how well we're doing here and I know the superintendent was recently on a panel about promoting Women Within the district so maybe we're doing really great um but I guess my request from all of that would be you know for staff to recirculate any of those reports that are out there just so that we can get a better understanding of um how we're doing across gender lines and um pay but also mental health and any data that we have I think can kind of help us as we um you know continue to explore being an employer of choice in La unified thank you yes those reports are are long overdue and um I will open up the space

038at the a future Committee of the whole to um have those reports presented and also you know um have that discussion which and we might have them somewhere there's a board informative but it was an actually a report yes yes and is anyone else with question Miss grego sorry yeah thank you first for acknowledging teachers and the hard work um that because it is it's it's it's not just the classroom it's outside of the classroom it's the planning it's the collaboration right with your colleagues it's doing the research as to what it is that you can bring so our kids not only are learning but they're enjoying their learning right it's the communication with families and and community members to try to service students um so thank you for acknowledging that and um um I

039also uh you said something benefits are good and I think in La USD we've always said oh people come to work here because we have good benefits and because we have lifetime benefits people stay and work long because of these benefits but you also said that's not enough and it's so true we also need the wages and you know I entered teaching in 2001 as a special education teacher I think I was making $40,000 a year when I started teaching I looked at the salary tables in 2018 before the strike we'd only gone up to $50,000 a year for the first year teacher and after the strike we finally got up to about $64,000 a year for a first year teacher and cost is going up right and now I think the highest paid teacher

040could probably make over $100,000 after working 35 years that's a long time to barely make that here's the other thing that folks don't understand that in order to move up this salary scale teachers have to pay for classes that cost over $300 you have to be scaling for the deals around Labor Day right around spring who knows but you're trying to get deals on these classes CU that's the only way you're going to move up that salary scale and if you're a single mom it takes you a lot longer to get those classes done because you need money to pay for it and you need time to take these classes so it could take it took me until two years ago to finally make it to the bottom of the scale pointwise and I was

041beyond the 10 years but here's the thing you get there to the 10 years but because you took so long to get to 10 years you have to stay there you don't just get credit for all those other years that you've been working you still have to now barely make it it is really challenging and that's the reason I think it's going to be hard to get young people to come and or newly grads or people to come into this profession but here's the other thing that I think is also very important for educators is working conditions because I will tell you no matter how much you pay a teacher if they don't have a voice if they don't have autonomy if they are not respected if they are not valued if all of those

042things are not happening then they will not want to be a part of this they'll come for a few years and then they'll leave because they're burned out already and we get that we've made great strides people had to go on strike for six days in the rain to finally make get a big bump and then they had to do it again a few years later but if the working conditions if teachers and Educators I I I appreciate you highlighting teachers as I am a teacher for over 20 years but I also want to acknowledge all the other workers in a classroom and in a school our assistants our psychiatric social workers our cafeteria workers our AIDS campus AIDS all of those folks if we do not value them it's going to be hard if

043we do not pay our custodians better they're not going to want to come and work here so thank you for for this for this um for uplifting this issue I do think pay is super important especially in light of how tough it is right now for so many people and I also want to emphasize that working conditions and valuing the people who work for us and work with our children is very important as well so thank you yeah thank thank you for that um I absolutely agree with everything you're saying and I believe that you know it's a whole it's a synergistic system is what you're talking about and uh I have long thought about and and some other folks have look looking into other professions within schools right um so it's just that my

044things is Teachers right I was trying to impress my sister I mean I came over was it was teachers right so but I totally agree I don't think it's the only problem I don't think it's the only issue I don't think you know I just know that while they are one of you know without teach we we don't have anything um and uh so that's where my um energy uh is most mostly put forward put forth but there are a lot of issues you know with the whole of public education and they're different depending on where you are right I mean I wrote a lot about teacher pay like I said right after the strikes and I wrote about Oklahoma that was giving massive tax break to gas and oil Industries well teacher pay did

045not move for a decade for instance so you know depending on where you are in the country and even with you know across school districts and stuff the the stories are different the one story that's not very different is these ever you know this type of analysis showing these ever increasing pay gaps which do vary considerably um by state um so but but yes I look at as all as a you know and right now we're having an attack on the whole system again thank you for bringing this um obviously not that we weren't attentive to it um I am a lifelong teacher as well uh 25 years and as Carla shared uh continue education units um yeah and trying to coach and have a family not happening uh because you have to figure out

046what's priority and you have to figure that out in real time and often times as Educators you know familiarize ourselves with like the nursing profession because it's some it's a passion that brings you to do this work and when you're working sometime you forget about yourself and so you're like yeah I mean cost of living is going up but yet you're wanting to do your best with your students in at that moment and so uh thank you to your your sister for inspiring you to do this work um because you saw it firsthand so one of the questions that I do have for you as you mentioned in other states um do you have work or research that shows states that may have gotten an edge on this obviously across the country we know that

047it's a concern that does not um change but are there some states that you may have seen that there have been some increase in retention and seeing some differences yeah there there was a lot of movement after the you know the 2018 19 strikes in different areas I I'm trying to remember and recently like in New Mexico I believe and I can't remember all the states but some did this kind of like this just bumping up the schedules or something or giving onetime bonuses but as we can see the problem is going to be to to fix this problem is is going to take much more than like a one-time bonus or a one-time shift it's going to take Mass mive sustained investment and I know it's kind of crazy to say right now but

048I wrote a paper just a few years ago saying why I am I'm arguing for I think it's called the public education needs to overhaul the the paper and um and I'm arguing I was arguing for a much bigger role for the federal govern government to take to to really be able to come in because then the federal government can borrow money we don't have i' I've written other block during the recession saying you know we should not be balancing budgets on the backs of our students because every time there's a recession where does the money come from when you have when when the money starts drying up education right and so that's why I think the the federal government definitely needs to be involved because the last thing you should do during a during

049a recession is start cutting schools that makes no sense and matter of fact it's a really good stimulus that it's widely spread out just by the dent of schools are everywhere right so you you should spend money like crazy during recessions to to to keep schools um whole so yeah there's just not there's not an easy answer so I I know like you're not going to like fix the problem here today I I hope that you have a maybe a better understanding and a better expectation where you think this is going to be because the scary question is you see what's happening there's nothing right now that I can see that is going to slow down let alone reverse any of these Trends so you have to think of the students sitting in classrooms today

050saying well what am I going to do for my profession less and less and less and less we know from the statistics right the Education Department of Education statistics which I guess maybe we're not going to get anymore but um you know less less college students going into education wanting to be teachers it's already happening I just can't imagine I mean again I've been doing this 21 years I can't imagine in another 20 years what this is going to look like and maybe I won't be doing it but I have one of my um grad students from Berkeley that is going to be picking up the mantle here on this I hope uh at some point so this work will continue and uh I it it really scares me it really makes me sad because

051my other big issue that I've worked on I've worked on many issues of Labor but minimum wages I've been very successful my colleagues and I at seawed up in Berkeley really changed the the landscape and the narrative uh when I got here in 2008 when the uh when the minimum wage was $8 an hour for like nine years in a row and we did all the work and pushing for the $15 minimum wage and of course now it's spread on through most of the country except you know a lot of the Southern red states that are still 725 federally but that that was in many respects very successful but it breaks my heart that I keep doing this over and over and over again and it just nothing really is being done well appreciate the

052Insight on the federal and I say the same because I mean 4% of our budget for education and that's it like 4% it's it's you know it's it's I always say at the California certainly because we're one of the biggest gdps like we're fifth in the world as a country if we were our own country but in the US too we are a wash in wealth in this country we should be ashamed that we don't have the best public school system by far in the entire world agree it's not a question of wealth it's a question of will appreciate that and I mean as we you know discuss and like you said we're not going to solve this today um but as we continue to look at ways in which you know to change and

053what our practices that work and that you see successes across the country and whether it's you know changing tax laws or what it is to make that wealth that we have within this state uh permeate through our schools absolutely um so that we do see that influx and change and I mean we've been awoken by pandemic because many people appreciated teachers and the profession in 2020 when many had not seen teachers for a couple of months and they were like we appreciate you we love you I I appreciate what you do um we remembered and then so quickly we forget and here we are in 25 and wanting to dismantle the entire program so just appreciate your work thank you I appreciate those comments yes thank you you just U mentioned something that our previous

054um board president Jackie Goldberg would always say she's like We're the fifth largest economy in the world and yet we are doing a great disservice to our students and we should be ashamed um at how much um you know the the P people funding for each student is just so low so she something things that yes she said over and over she reator reated and you're right it's right exactly we should be ashamed as yeah California is one of the lowest which did surprise me when I looked it up um and you know as you mentioned my son um loves math and he said he wants to be a math teacher um and when when he mentioned this to um one of our family members are like oh going to be a teacher oh no

055no no you need to do something else and I stood up I was like he if he wants to be a teacher he should have every right to be a teacher you should never um sort of diminish that dream because it's something he wants to do now he helps his students his his classmates his students his classmates in math and is something that he likes to do is help others learn a subject that he loves so much and so I'm instilling even in my son you should be a teacher and that I am realistic with him until we're able to really um uplift this profession and um raise the salaries uh of teachers you're going to do you're going to need a little second job you're going to need a hobby or something that you

056can and he he draws beautifully he loves music he's a musicians like that can be something else you can do you can be a teacher and because you know the the living standards you won't be able to survive on that so I am also unfortunately realistic and not disting him I want him to be a teacher but I also need to let him know that you know there is um we live in a country that um says we're here for children that we love children and we want to do everything for children but yet we all the first thing that we always cut in the recession is education or public services they're drastically affect our children and our students and whenever there's an issue economically we always scapegoat on teachers um and it's something that

057I've always that is also a reality here but even when I was in Mexico doing my research every time I brought up uh education like oh teacher this and teacher that and I to this day we'll always defend a teacher and people will get because there is this perception um false narrative that are teachers are the cause of everything that goes wrong and we need to change that and I think the reflection and our econom our the wage wages for our teachers is reflective on something that we really need to change in society so thank you for your research we do have Miss um Miss gones with a question or comment hi yes thank you so much for um this presentation and for your research I think it's obviously the overall trend related to to

058teacher pay something I'm very familiar with um having been a teacher but also been on the board now for eight years um but I think it was really helpful to see kind of the detailed longitudinal analysis that you presented um just a couple questions on it I'm so sorry if I missed this but in terms of the recent widening of the of the pay penalties both for men and women um could you speak through a little bit more just uh why we might think um that those pay penalties have been recently widening well one reason is that after the Great Recession even the the the earnings of college graduates flattened out for quite a while the pay of lower wage workers were declining you know especially inflation adjusted were actually falling behind of course that

059was happening for about 50 years for low wage workers but even other college grads uh Epi wrote a lot about this at the time was pretty flat for quite a while and they really didn't take off again until we really don't forget here in California we had double- digit unemployment rates for four years in a row so following the great the great um recession was really really tough here in California because the the housing market was really imploded but as soon as the pay of other college grads started taking off again which you can see in that that slide around 2014 uh or so that's when you really get the the the the breaking apart if you go to the paper you can see that I have all the data put together instead of just

060broken out by gender I like to break it out by gender because it's such an important story and a different story but if you look at it you can see that then all of a sudden really it's the other college grads are just able to right now be commanding ever more and more money and don't forget on those slides the average weekly wages slides when that that orange line is increasing that means their their earnings are significantly increasing above and beyond inflation because they're inflation adjusted right so their basket of goods what they can what they can afford their basket of goods what they can afford is getting larger well teachers the basket of goods from year to year is pretty much staying the same of what they can afford now what what is controlling

061why you know the other college grads weren't doing very well I think it was just the loose labor markets following the Great Recession that lasted so much longer than the actual official recession during that time um and now that's not the case anymore and of course to attract workers here to attract all the High um level workers and workers with ba and master's degrees and doctorates um to get them to come to California you have to pay them more yeah I absolutely agree and we know that that investing in teachers is not just an investment in them as professionals but in the students that we serve in our schools and in our broader communities um so I appreciate you walking me through that um that all makes a lot of sense I was also curious

062whether you did any disaggregated analysis to look at um differences by race perhaps or via urban and rural districts or the types of schools that teachers taught in such as um schools in high kns communities versus schools that are in relatively affluent areas and whether there were any meaningful Trends to note well no I mean first of all like I said each data point is five years together because I have to make sure I have enough Public School teachers to get meaningful statistics right like and statistical significance so I will say that this is the current population survey data I did look and the vast majority of the sample are from the msas because that's where the vast majority of workers are and I ran it just looking at the MSA and it's almost the

063same I can't pull out the rural areas because again it gets the data gets too right and so I'm looking at maybe using the American Community survey which is a much larger survey that took over the like for the desial census but then it doesn't have all the other good data that I want um but I'm hoping maybe to do that and see what how that comes out because then you can start to disaggregate um a little bit more again the same thing with with race or ethnicity um we have too few you could never get enough um you know like black teachers I mean they're like 2 and a half% in my data I mean that's that's a handful I would never be able to like run a regression for instance on them or

064have any meaningful statistics because you just have like a few a few data points it's you can't really do a whole lot with it understood um yes the limitations of the data it's unfortunate because I think there's probably some um important disparities that we want to highlight and better understand but totally get that um and then one last question just to followup on um board member heny nil's question in terms of places that are are doing better in terms of teacher pay I think I I look back at the Epi um September 2023 article that um compare different states in terms of the teacher pay penalty and it looks like New Jersey maybe is um is one of the best in terms of still having a penalty but having it being much smaller so you

065speak to um maybe it's a state education Finance um issue that has impacted their teacher pay but could you speak to like what's happening well in the places where there is less of a penalty um and what might be our our Pathway to get there as a state yeah this is like when I put this paper out every year almost now the the US Paper I get all these calls from the states and I just don't have the knowledge of each and every every state I do know the one thing that New Jersey has are really strong teacher unions I think that definitely has something to do with it but it always comes down to tax policy for sure one way or another right that's the that's the money that you have to spend but

066I don't have a lot of insight um because once you start and I did try to look into this but then then it's not just a state because then depends on what state it is many states don't have much control it's more local control and then each local so maybe the state has one and which in the paper you're talking about every state has a an estimated pay Gap but the way that the the teachers are paid within State across States let alone within States varies so much it's hard for me to to say anything really really meaningful about why a pay Gap would be larger or smaller got it okay thank you thank you thank you for those questions those are very important questions I just know that um this District does invest um

067at least in teacher preparation and creating that pipeline I recently went to the celebration of recognizing our nationally certified teachers who are going Far and Beyond um to really you know have that education and strategies to you know to improve upon their own profession and um I know that we have an induction uh program as well for teachers and and um we have also teachers who are applying for their um you know ad administrative credential so there are different ways that within the district is is investing but yeah the pay is um the critical Factor here um that is really um unfortunately um impacting uh future teachers so um Mr M did you have a question sure thank you Dr Rus um Echo everything my colleague said I think we can all stipulate we want

068teachers to be paid more uh as a former teacher who was laid off as a result of the recession and I think as Dr revas said just the scapegoat for the financial crisis of the past and agree with what my colleagues have said um Tanya I I co-sponsored the she leads reso and there was a report we got so we can send that around and agree I think a lot of the research I've shown has shown has has indicated that besides compensation what Miss greo was talking about working conditions autonomy is there too so but thank you so much for for flying down um it's interesting and we forget often the historical context that you uh were alluding to whether it's the you know how the unintended consequences of cracks in the glass ceiling and

069kind of not backfilling or as you're talking about you know the tax code Prop 13 I think a lot of folks forget that even before what inspired Prop 13 was Serrano versus priests right an effort to provide Equity to school funding in California and then when folks said well if you're taking my tax dollars and giving it somewhere else then we're going to you know reduce the coffers and I know there have been efforts uh including in the last few years to remedy that um it's also it's surprising I guess this is your first school board that you're presenting from so I hope you come back but I hope you know and um given that 90% of our funding comes from the state I'm curious when you're presenting around the country or just the state

070to legislators because this is one conversation we rightfully have at school boards but we always you know work and lock step with our labor Partners or whomever to say well 90% of our budget is coming from the state and it's the state that needs to invest more heavily and I'm curious in how legislators um approach this work and do they say do they Point their finger at school districts saying yeah school districts need to pay teachers more do they own it I me particularly in California but that seems to be kind of just the back everybody we talk to will say teachers should be paid more and then in figuring out kind of where to pinpoint it because like we just had a budget presentation at our board meeting last week and like the state

071Cola um you know the the governor's already reduced the cola for next year the cost to living adjustment just enough to keep us afloat not to give teachers what they deserve and that was reduced and so I'm curious you know well everyone will stipulate teachers are paid more there's a lot of finger pointing I have some ideas for what Al unified can do but curious just kind of what the legislature is saying right now well um the legislates never call me up to speak to them and but let me tell you when I was you know really uh you know buried in minimum wage research particularly for California I was writing a lot of papers and I did a lot of the testifying at this in Sacramento for to increase the minimum wage and around

072the country I talk to them all the time but I've never heard from them in regard and I send them the paper I I have I know a lot of them and I send them the paper and they say thank you it does get attention in the um you know the the economic report of the president like under Obama under Biden it's mentioned all the time um but no I've never heard from the C californ legislature so because I think I mean well and that's interesting and and maybe we'll encourage them to talk to you I guess and just you know to clarify is the do you have L USD specific data or is the I mean this is aggregated no this is this all public school teachers yeah this is a public data set

073from the US Department of Labor so this is not from from M unified specific I mean I'm curi you know so I guess um I think when you think of the variables that a school district has when it comes to paying teachers more with the stipulation that um of course teachers I think should you know I think we all think should be paid more um there are uh and this I guess maybe there's a question there but it's just kind of I'm like thinking out loud a little bit there are um uh 90% of our a budget like ours is labor and so I'm I'm curious and and this is maybe where I guess there's a question when it comes to how a place like Al unified or a state like California where compare to

074other states one way to pay teachers more is to from and a wage perspective is to kind of pull it out of other areas like maybe we're too topheavy with administrators maybe there's too many out of classroom Personnel so you take existing budget and you put it towards teachers another um is looking at the total compensation which you alluded to California and La unified in particular having slightly better benefits and I think in reading your paper that the wage penalties diminished a little bit through that not enough but one of that is looking at that total compensation and retooling it to say to your point about kind of the historic IAL nature of teachers it used to be that maybe you were a two income household and then you were going to be in a

075teaching career your whole life and so you took a a lower salary for a better benefit in pension package that might have changed so districts can think differently around you know if the total compensation on average is $120,000 so we put more of it in wage and I'm curious if districts are looking through that and then finally of course is getting more money for for school districts which I think we'd all like to do that in um both in California and then from our federal Partners but I think that's somewhat you know at least at the federal level elusive right now so I guess on those first two things with the stipulation that like of course we'd all like more money coming in are there um comparisons that you can point us to around either

076there that that total compensation P um percentage kind of mix or just like looking at is there a norm around districts that are paying teachers well X percentage of their budget goes to teacher salary yeah I again I I there's so many there's so many examples I I don't know um but I don't think that I think what you're saying is reasonable but I don't think the answer is to take more away from benefits for instance I I think just more investment period is what's needed and don't forget I don't know about here specifically but around the country I talked to obviously a lot of teachers and they're always being asked to pay more and more and more for their benefits benefits are not 100% paid for right a lot of the benefits come out

077of here they are but yes and I mean here they may be and I hear he it's really good here and it's great uh so thank you and uh but around the country you know that's not the true that's not that doesn't hold true and teachers are always you know the whittling away right the whittling away at the benefits and the new tears and such that we all hear about again I'm not a teacher pay um uh you know a finance person to be able to solve this problem I I'm just the labor econ you know I'm I'm the you know the economist uh the Dismal scientist bringing the bad news so uh I do try to I've learned a lot obviously but boy wherever I am and whoever you talk to I mean there's

078again the way we pay teachers there's a million different ways people are paying teachers across States within States right so it's it's not it's it's not a one-size fits-all um so I'm sorry I come up very short there I I just don't know what all the what the answer is it it's a sustained a a significant sustained Investments one way or another that are going to get us there and part of it has to be local States and I do I still believe the federal government even though that sounds crazy to say right now because because of everything that's going on but um but yeah it's it's a difficult problem because there we we have such diversity in in Pay benefits how it works who's I mean some states contribute a lot some states contribute

079almost nothing right federal government contributes next to nothing so yeah thank you I mean I do think we need more investment if we start to think about wow we've done so much already so let's just you know we're doing good let's just keep it like that and we have no power or no control over what the state does um I think I mean for me I agree we need to have more investments from the federal government to the state and then from the state and I know that they invest a lot and I know here in La USD we do have some Investments but it's still not enough and I think that if we just sit back and say we've done so well great we're doing wonderful and we just kind of let it be

080then yes that's why we get that graph right right and we just have to strive for more right and I think as a public school district we need to continue demanding that the state and government does its part to either we do whatever what um Miss nuil was suggesting we tax more for people who make more to invest more in our in our schools or we do something else or we reallocate funding even at the local level but to say that um I worry if we start to say we've already we're doing so well in our little District we our big little District but it's that you're you know that's wonderful but no we need to do more because our students deserve more yeah it's all about the whole synergistic ex public education system that

081that they're trying to tear down in the end you know they want all public sector funds to go through profit maximizing hands that's a big problem going on but look if you can convince somebody that that wants to hear this talk because I don't know that most people have a reasonable way to to to even ask the question are teachers underpaid overpaid fairly paid I think the way I do it I think my methodology is very very strong I think it makes sense to people they understand especially what's happened to women in the opportunity costs like you just can't keep not paying teachers when all these other women are now in so many other professions with so many educational degrees that they couldn't even imagine even 50 years ago right so look if I could

082get a chance to go to Sacramento and and give this talk I definitely would I think we should keep you in mind definitely do that I know a few assembly members that will definitely share um your body of work and also for them to consider and in you know in their own policymaking uh Mr superintendent K do you want to make a comment yes I'd like to just align my words with the sort of the the the commentary that's already been uh discussed number one I appreciate you affirming what we all know uh strong correlation between teacher quality uh as an input and uh student achievement as a necessary output so to the extent that uh that is established and the research documents that well right then investing into teacher quality investing into the teacher

083teaching profession uh investing into the diversity of the teaching profession uh makes a great deal of sense second Point um yes while benefits and I think this is well known while benefits are certainly welcomed and provide stability Workforce to a certain extent no amount of significant benefit pays mortgage or puts gas in car or automatically adjusts to uh inflationary pressures in in in in areas um my question I guess uh as as I looked at uh in advance at at your research uh the regression adjusted um Gap that uh that you referenced and and you you break it down male female Etc do you have any insight um into some of the drivers that would differentiate higher paying States versus lower paying States and whether those are to a certain EXT because we we understand

084the pressures you state of California the board is said it the cola is insufficient barely meets inflationary pressures the cola secondly fails to recognize um economic differences by region within the state of California and that by the way is true across many states it is very different to live and work in Los Angeles versus a rural area where the cost of living is much lower so that lack of adjustment does not make sense um but I wonder if as part of your research you've looked at uh tax policies uh in in in different States as maybe contributing to the gaps that exist so California if the stock market is doing very well yeah there's additional funding for Education yeah there are the states that benefit from more stable over years uh education funding because they

085rely more on property taxes which are by Nature more resilient right because they're grounded to property values and those don't fluctuate daily or hourly this week on on the volatility of of the stock market so have you at all looked at that I I have looked at it but I don't have a clear understanding because again it's very mixed the way where the money come from especially over time and over economic Cycles right like how bad a state does like California is really not good because we have you know we're dependent on the tax money and doing very well and we hit a rough patch then all the money dries up so I I'm not really sure but I I do think that you know one thing I've been thinking about is getting the smart

086people in the room to say like what would this look like if we had a pie in the sky type of you know can we get a handle on what actually matters tax base always is going to matter um but it matters differently in different places so I I mean I just I just don't know uh that's not kind of what what I do but yeah you can see with when I when I said that blue line the teacher average weekly wage was pretty flat that's just keeping up with inflation basically and um that's not going to attract people into the profession when you see the orange line just taking off right and so um that's why so much more needs to be done and then if they if you can see those pictures and

087you can understand the context and how I presented it I think most people can get their heads around that well wait a minute yeah this is a huge problem with no end in sight but again I I don't have the answers and we would have to think hard about it just a followup maybe a comment more than the question because States like New Jersey Massachusetts where teacher salaries are higher they rely largely on a balanced uh approach to education funding that relies on a local property uh tax base that is adjusted by the state to equalize extreme differences so you know areas where the property tax is lower the state infuses more State dollars areas where the property tax is higher the state infuses a lower state level funding providing Statewide stability for Education funding

088and that that is consequentially reflected in the stability and the higher level of teacher uh teacher salaries yeah I would think maybe some of the the educational Finance people have looked into that I don't know you can maybe do a search to say where is it working where does it seem to be working better because then you can you know but you have to really get into the Wei why is it working better there and then why is it not working better my data shows that that it's clear that that the the stories are different in different places because you saw these Trends these average weekly wage trends that I have for every state right and so for California you see the pay for teachers was kind of flat as the pay for other college

089grads increased in some states the pay for other college grads is flat where the actual inflation adjustment pay is leaving is declining so the gap's getting larger but the story is different right and so uh when I first did that and I saw you know all the trends for all the states I was like wow it's not it's not one story because it's it it's not even the tax base and everything else it's the pay of other college grads and teachers and how it's trending over time and there's vastly differences across the states so um yeah well I thank you for coming here and um allowing us with your research to have this very important conversation um particularly here in California and what we're facing um so thank you very much for all that you

090do to bring light into um everything you know particularly in and wages in our U public education teaching profession yeah it's very close to my heart I thank you all very very much for your time and your interest and if there's anything I can do just give me a shout yes definitely be reaching out to connect you with some of our ass members to make sure they learn more about your research so thank you for taking the time to be here with us thank you um so yeah cl to CL so it's very important um discussion to have as the second largest District in the nation um because you know as we're the largest all the other smaller districts are you know facing if anything B dire um um situ um circumstances so you know

091as ensuring teach Fair teacher pay conversation but not just teacher but everyone um all of our employees and that are serving our students from classified certified and administrators all everyone definitely um having a fair compensation for all is essential because what who benefit the ones that benefit our children the future of of the future generation of our country of our state and our country um so now we are going to switch gears to um something that is also something that I is also dear to my heart uh we turn to the power of music education with our next presentation in jazz and schools so it's my pleasure to welcome Miss Rita W uh Randa Willis Mr Steve bag Manan and Dr Anthony White who will share how this program is bringing music creativity and opportunity

092to students across Los Angeles so I'm just going to do a quick um background on jazz in school so in case some people may know I don't know who doesn't know but oh just in case uh so jazz in schools was initiated in Los Angeles um in the Los Angeles Jazz Society in 1988 and provides free age appropriate jazz education performances by professional musicians in LD elementary schools all the concerts are scheduled during the month of February um in and recognition of Black History Month to emphasize the cultural contribution of African-Americans in creating the the only music originating in America the project has also addresses the need in music education Los Angeles Public Schools where young students have little or no exposure to live concerts with that I'd like to introduce Miss uh Rita swor

093uh she has served as a member of the Board of Trustees for the Los Angeles Jazz Society for the past 15 years becoming the uh the director of the Jazz and schools program in in in uh 2012 in that role Miss Rita selects and schedules a concert each year and assigns the musicians uh who will be um educating and Performing for our students um as do all the U members of the board she volunteers her time and skills to bring wonderful world of jazz music to young people of all ages so welcome Miss zor thank you so much Dr Rivas and thank you for the invitation it's a pleasure to be here this morning uh and before I begin I'd like to add an exclamation point to Dr aletto's remarks because there's something inherently wrong

094in a society that pays its sports stars $30 million and under CH under short short changes our teachers so totally agree um the Jazz and schools program was developed actually by the current president of the Los Angeles Jazz Society Miss Lo safian who couldn't be here today but one of the reasons she did it is because her life was so enriched by a music teacher in elementary school who encouraged her to take up the violin join the school orchestra the choir and and influenced her her love of all types of music from a very early age now let me for those of you haven't been there I know I've met several of you at our concerts um let me Begin by just describing the concerts for those who haven't had a chance to see them

095we engage three groups of professional Jazz musicians each group in uh includes at least one woman and one Spanish-speaking musician to present two 50-minute uh concerts at each school and although all three groups cover pretty much the same material they each bring their unique style to the presentation because of the interactive nature of these concerts they set up on the floor of the auditorium not on the stage then they take the students on a trip through the history of jazz beginning in New Orleans with a second line parade through the auditorium in which the kids follow the saxs and trumpet players through the auditorium usually to a Dixie Land classic such as the Saints Go Marching on by this time the kids are totally with it then each musician introduces their instrument and the next

096style of jazz including rag time swing jazz Boogie wogie up to and including straight ahead and Progressive Jazz they demonstrate how jazz music has served as the foundation of the music they're hearing today such as rap and hip-hop and they also introduced them to the famous musicians and band leaders of for from throughout Jazz history throughout the era now throughout the concert they continually interact with the students they asked them questions they encourage them to excuse me clap to the to the rhythms of the various on genres uh or in some cases even play one of the instrum struments they also play tunes that the kids are really familiar with such as the Pink Panther and the theme from Charlie Brown to demonstrate that they've been listening to Jazz their whole lives whether they realized

097it or not now a couple months before the concerts I send the school information on how to access our educational PowerPoint to prepare them for the concert and and I should mention by the way speaking of our wonderful teachers that this PowerPoint was actually developed by an LAUSD Elementary School teacher from the materials we used to use once I saw what she did I tossed our materials and now we just use her Powerpoint it's just great um then after the concert uh I send or rather at the same time or just before the concert I send them some post concert quiz materials uh to reinforce some of what they've learned now of course we couldn't do any of this without our wonderful Partners first of course the musicians these are Jazz musicians who get up

098each day in February at an hour that most Jazz musicians are very unfamiliar with to entertain and Enlighten an audience that does not have a drink in its hands and they do so with each one has a wonderful style each group has a fabulous style these are musicians that not only are expert and you know musicians and have played with some of the great B jazz bands throughout but they have that other special talent they relate to the kids they you know sometimes we have a younger group in the first concert and an older group in the second con my musicians just look out on that on those groups and they instantly know how to relate to the various ages that they're that they're presenting to which is a real skill in itself second the

099second partner we want to we want to mention is Steve bagman Manion and your fantastic music repair shop who has been just the most invaluable help to all of us I send him a list in September of all the schools that we're going to be seeing in February so that he can go out and start tuning pianos so that he doesn't have to tune 45 pianos in January and also provides loners to those schools that don't even have pianos um incredible wonderful partner and finally but not least Tony white your Tony white uh who has provided me with Incredible advice throughout the years who critically helps me communicate with the schools with the principls and the teachers and who last year orchestrated a five-year memorandum of understanding between the Jazz society and the district which

100for which we are incredibly grateful now the challenge that we Face uh to bring all these concerts to all the element El schools in the district now although over the years we have visited every ele almost every Elementary School in the district two or three times our grant funding is only sufficient to visit each school about once every 10 to 12 years so there's a lot of kids that never get a chance to see this program now this year alone the cost of bringing these concerts to 41 schools schs was $75,000 all of which is paid to the musicians in the terms of wages and benefits as again I'm a volunteer this is my retirement gig we've been fortunate to receive grants from the Los Angeles County organizational grant program the Los Angeles City Department

101of cultural Affairs The Herb Albert foundation and musicians Local 47 musicians performance trust fund and these monies are in addition to our own membership fundraising efforts it's been a source of Pride and pleasure for the Los Angeles Jazz Society to introduce the wonderful world of jazz to generations of students in the Los Angeles school district and now I would like to introduce Randall white one of our group lead leaders uh saxophonist composer producer music educator uh owner of ryel Records Randall's been involved in uh jazz jazz R&B hip hop and several other genres of music for a little over three decades his break into jazz came when he joined the Gerald Wilson Orchestra thus beginning his wonderful musical journey of performance teaching composition I producing and sidan with a host of bands uh and artists

102Randa would you like to share all righty good morning board I'm Randall Willis and it's honor to be up here to talk about jazz in school so what it means for musicians um particularly this jazz musician um my neighbors and my friends and my colleague um they say hey what are you doing you know you're up at 7 o'clock in the morning I said well first of all you know I used to teach High School I I taught at Jefferson High School LAUSD um and Santi High School the music programs there so I'm kind of used to getting up but I said oh man I have the best gig in the world man I get to I get to do concerts in the month of February um you know at least three times a week

103um I would prefer it to be five times a week but and um and and work with just some of my wonderful colleagues and just beautiful Spirits um during that time and um meeting principles and especially the kids um anywhere from um I think this year we did some TK kids TK through sixth grade depending on the elementary school and the kids are just um it's part my pun jazz jazz to to see us and and participate um I I love kids I I remember when I was working on my um um uh my teaching credential and our our music uh Professor was saying like you know before you just had to when you went to the this was in the 90s they said before like if you wanted to teach kids you had to

104just kind of like them and when I came about you have to love kids and I found out I love kids and I'm really good with them and um and I'm bit of a ham on my show so the kids they like the jokes um they get the history um kids this year were were more rhythmically inclined I don't know what's going on but they clap on two and four and um uh sometimes I go over a little bit over 50 minutes and you just can't help it and um and they love participating with us like that so you know it's the best job in the world for me you know just I get to get up in the morning and start start my day with a concert um two of the other members in

105in my band I got to take over from Dr Bobby Rodriguez last year he retired and um and the group you know they wanted me to do it and I said yes I wanted to do it and but two of the members um Brian work on piano and Ron barl is my trumpet player um we've worked together for over 30 years with the Gerald Wilson Orchestra so we've met practically everybody and that's of importance in the Jazz industry and um and plus I get to do an imitation of Louis Armstrong and yeah yeah and it's really funny so anyway so um wow I I wish the I wish we extended through March you know um that would be great um what else can I say um man you know what a gift I get to

106do you know I get to share you know something that I'm passionate about and um you know being in an educ Ator and I know how to get to him so across thank you good morning everyone Mr Dr thank you for inviting us all here uh it's a pleasure to be here thank you we all probably know what music means for our kids and and not only kids but for schools especially um I'm very proud to be part of this part of this magic that happens in schools but La Jazz uh society that we're in such a close relationship helping each other making sure that all the kids can kind of like get into this uh uh world of jazz jazz is a different music jazz is music that has no rules has no no

107uh uh borders so I personally know high school kids that they can express themselves through jazz music it's amazing I mean you can take them on the road um very talented and thanks to our uh band directors and music teachers another thing is uh fortunate for all we know that kids involved with all this with all the social media and stuff kids are SP spending too much time on the in the things that not really educational for them and I know a family that uh the the middle school girl I personally know them uh that had father was sick and then he passed away and mother is blind so the the girl was basically lost and if I wouldn't know the family uh so I make a story short short I talked to her to

108join the music class I spoke with teachers and she started playing the bass guitar uh Jazz went to kind of like jazz and and and she just changed completely she completely changed I mean she's more positive now you see a smile on her face and she doesn't think as she was thinking before so the reason I'm telling you all this music is very important Rita told me a story once about her friend 35 years in Sheriff Department told her that he never arrested a child who played a musical instrument it tells you a lot music teaches discipline music teaches the different approaches to objects not only in music but also in school in life so it's very important and La USD is the only District in the country country you probably all know that owns

109this Jewel this music repair shop and thanks for all your support support of uh Jazz society and Tony white especially and arts and education and Mr Calo thanks for all the support that you provided and everyone teachers I mean we we stay in very close contact and when I go to schools some con they I get invited to concerts and I see those faces of kids happy and the questions they ask after the concert and you see how music changes their lives how music is really does its magic so I'm here today again thanks for invitation but it mostly to support these programs and support our music teachers support the music in schools and the Jazz Society because like uh as Rita mentioned since 1988 ja Society uh was in schools in kind of like

110providing all this uh jazz education to our kids thank you very much thanks for all the support and I'll pass yes Tony is it still morning yes good morning everybody how are you uh I am I'm honored to be here to represent uh beyond the bell uh music and entertainment education represent Los Angeles Unified School District and I wasn't expecting to speak today but I am honored to be here nonetheless as we look at our pillars uh about joy and wellness and look at our partnership and collaborations that's what happened um when in 2016 when we started working with um La Jaz society and the idea was to um obviously to talk about our Rich musical history in La um starting with cental renue sounds and Beyond right now and then I want to point

111out to that Randa Willis is also a graduate of dorsy high school so it's tying back into the community um about the importance of what we do and where it could lead to so going to those concerts and seeing our kids obviously we know about all the studies that are said right now that when kids are exposed to music how it gets them to think differently and how it gets them to behave differently and then you see them you know the idea of them connecting to our in school music programs and eventually to our after school music programs and middle schools and high schools uh it's a no was a no-brainer to bring in the Los Angeles Jazz society as one of our partners and we're glad that this year we were able to get

112our um our five-year mou that will um allow us to continue to look moving forward we've already um sent out letters to schools for next year to see which ones would be interested in having the program so we're already working with it and really the work is honestly done by the LA Jazz society and I need to say I'm proudly that I'm a jazz musician myself um that's why I'm here today as a jazz musician U as an artist to represent U what the true qualities of what music does for our kids and how it helps them to go beyond and be ready for the world all right thank you thank you Steve and Randall and Tony um the only thing I think I would want to end with and I know I I passed

113some a couple of letters that we've received from principles and I received another one that probably caps it all off um on behalf of Broadway Elementary School I want to express our sincere appreciation for the incredible jazz concert provided by the Los Angeles Jazz Society our students were thoroughly engaged and the performance was not only entertaining but also educational it was inspiring to see our students experience live jazz music learn about its history and witness the skill and passion of professional musicians this program is invaluable in introducing young students to Jazz and fostering an appreciation for the Arts the concert not only enriched our curriculum but also encouraged creativity and curiosity among our students we wholeheartedly support this initiative and hope it continues to be available for schools like ours in the future thank you

114again for this wonderful opportunity sincerely Rachel Garmin principal Broadway elementary school thank you thank you thank you for sharing that letter we have two other letters here well I'm not going to read them but our board members have one from toen way from uh Prince principal Jenny U the tsp coordinator Jenny Lou and also from MacArthur Park Elementary School uh from Principal um Alvarez so um you know I every time I receive a letter or the list of schools in Board District 2 that um the Jazz of schools will you know take place at at U at our school I I'm there I am there because I'm a jazz offic myself I was not introduced to Jazz until I got to UC Berkeley really I mean throughout that's when I just fell in love with

115with um with jazz I got to see a lot of performers that performed at Berkeley and the Cal performances I worked at Cal performances through my work study and it was just um something that was just that sunk to my soul really Jazz really is that special special genre that really connects um so many wonderful artists that are also featured you know DIY gpie um my favorites the lonus monk John colr Miles Davis um I also got to see and love Joshua Redmond who's just one of the you know the um a contemporary I guess you could say um Ella Fitzgerald I mean it's I can go on and on with with my love for jazz and to and the reason I love going because I can see that connection with students and they're so

116intent attentive and they're clapping and they're dancing they're really connecting and and you can see and I was at one concert with um Dr White where there was one student that that just knew all the answers they knew everything and you can see that is a a future musician right there you know and that student will you know investing in that uh that passion that's already inside of him or her um that's what this this jazz in schools really brings out it brings out the already the the innate skill or Talent or whatever that may be that connection with music in our students and to be exposed to Jazz in schools or jazz or that opportunity to interact with real musicians and for them to also know their real careers and in being a musician

117and learning all of you know all of the different types of instruments and and connecting in all everyday lives like you mentioned you know the pig Panther um I know there's one I I'm forgetting his name a musician who who plays um um ah the bass or the CH the bass the bass the bass that's the first thing he teaches that's a bass not the Bas and he um connects with Selena he puts like music is Selena and speaks in Spanish salsa and then the students are like oh yeah I know that song you know and then they'll they're they connected to their you know their home so anyway so this is why I wanted to make sure that um all of our district and all of our principls know about um jazz in school

118so when they get a letter please make sure to open up your school to this just wonderful wonderful opportunity for our students to really enjoy Jazz for real beautiful wonderful musicians and um so I'm so grateful grateful for this for this program so thank you so much and and you know you hit on a point many of the excuse me many of the principls that I contact you know after we've sent the letter literally have never heard of the program you know they have not even been in the district long enough to have had a concert at one of their schools now the way I know that a principal has seen the concert is when those selection letters go out for through L USD inter Office Mail the first call I get is from a

119principal who's seen this concert at that school or another school and they they know that as soon as they call they want to get the date that they want and so that's how I know that's the best argument and the teachers our teachers are wonderful many of them are emailing me when is our school you know where is our school in the rotation when do we get it so yeah it's it's appreciated it's really appreciated and I think I believe there was a video that they that they had let's see if it's and here it comes let's see yes there we go [Music] [Applause] [Music] really are family [Music] as you can see I was there dancing along and I was right behind you yes exactly yeah again thank you does anyone have any question

120questions about the program questions yes um start with Mr SCH then miss g m let me just add that I have been to many many of these programs in Board District 3 and what is so amazing is our kids are fixated on videos all the time so when they see a live presentation I like to watch their faces they are absolutely amazed about what's happening and they learn so much they know so much the teachers do such good prep they know all the answers to to the questions that musicians are going to ask and the kids just have a great time for a live live performance so thank you very much great thank you our pleasure I I was so blessed to have witnessed it at Quincy Jones Elementary when you were there this uh

121I think it was in February and for District 5 I'm so privileged and so blessed to have um Jefferson High School in my district and historical Central Avenue um so I love music I've always loved music I don't know how to play any instrument and I don't know how to sing but I love music and um I've always instilled that in my own children and my son goes to Lola New Orleans where he's learning music industry and it and music was an outlet for him I mean that that was the and he he doesn't play an instrument but he creates music and um so I've seen the benefits and what I like about music is that it really can reach many many different kids from many abilities in many different ways so it's not just

122about being able to make or create music but it's also just being able to enjoy it and I always tell students use this if you play an instrument and you're a musician lean on that that is your gift that is yours only and lean on it in those times when you need help when you need support whatever it is that's yours and so um so of course that brings me to like my goodness we need more of these programs right because all of our students need access to this as a special education teacher my students didn't always have access to this I had a literally argue and fight to get my kids into the um whatever if there was going to be some event I had to push for my students to be able to

123participate in that so we need more of this and we need more um especially because music as we all know rock and roll comes from blues and jazz and gospel and who does not like that music so we need more of this because our our students need to learn where this comes from they need to know that music in in the US is rooted in African-American history and that is US history and so we need to invest more in this we need we need to invest more in AP programs on African-American history the black student achievement plan so we can have more black Educators uh speaking to this and and sharing this information and of course um I always say you know it it is it should not be a privilege to have access to

124this but when it when it becomes a privilege then it becomes a social justice issue right then we really have to to make this a bigger issue than just access to music so thank you so much and I hope that we could increase that amount of money for your um program so that we kids don't have to wait 10 to 12 years to be able to have access to the wonderful uh music that you present and teachings that you bring to our students thank you and let me add two points to what you made in terms first of all in terms of the the special ed we there's we go to lman uh special ed uh every couple of years and the first time I was ever went to that concert and they literally rolled

125the CH children and and these are children of course that are of all ages I thought how are they going to appreciate what this program is about out first downbeat all of a sudden I saw hands and heads up and down and we see we get a lot of special ed kids now mixed in in our elementary schools and a lot of time I mean sometimes it's like they don't know what's going on but sometimes all of a sudden they their attention is focused like a laser we've come through that language speaks to them so that's on that point and on the on the point the the touchy point about money okay we need more we need we could really use more Grant support I mean the musicians trust fund has been very very generous

126The Herb Alpert fund has been very generous we get a small Grant from the city and a little bit larger Grant from the county but if anyone would like to throw a good word our way uh yes we would like to do five concerts every day for every one of our groups then I could be doing 60 schools every year and we could start cutting into to that 10 to 12 because you got 500 elementary schools in the LAUSD if I can only do 45 a year you don't have to be a math Wiz to figure out it's going to be 10 to 12 years before I'm back again before we're back again so that would only be my my final thought on on that issue does anyone else have a question Mr melb yes

127thank you just thanks for the opportunity to highlight this incredible program and thanks Rita for what you're doing in our schools and always emailing the board to let us know when there are opportunities that you read a letter from Broadway Elementary which is in Board District 4 and I know they're huge fans actually met someone this weekend who's a professional musician who got his start I'll have to connect you because got his start through Jaz and schools at brown with science magnet in the '90s um and just had incredible things to say had not yet seen the last shop documentary but it was on his list and I know that we have a concert coming up there I think to raise money for the foundation but uh just Echo what my colleague said it's it's

128really amazing and I love specifically the anecdotes you were talking about with jazz and just risk-taking my a cousin of mine was a a pretty well-known jazz pianist actually he was a member of The Wrecking Crew and president of the recording um Academy for wild his name is Mike melvoin um and uh Mike would always talk about jazz uh as a series of miraculous recoveries uh which I love and I think it's such a great analogy for kids when you're thinking about risk I mean obviously there's notes but it's just you don't that's what it feels like so a series of miraculous recoveries which is also just a great analogy for how kids are learning and and creating risk and making mistakes so thanks for what you're doing and and all of you and I

129um uh this is just another opportunity as we've had over the last few years to highlight the wonderful work uh that's going on in our schools and with our our partners like jazz and schools and I know we'd all like to do more so thanks thank you thank you again thank you and I have been able to witness in person I think I was at Wilton Place um we're able to see them there and so I guess the question is I know you only can do 41 a year how no actually we could if we had the money we could easily do 60 I mean at that point we'd be limited only by the number of days in February correct he mentioned moving it into March which we didn't want to be constraints to a

130month but the question is making sure that the rotation is there because we have 500 schools how is it now prioritized because I know obviously you know you first get it in the mail you want to respond way is it first response or how is that uh what I do when I began this project I downloaded the LAUSD Elementary School database into an Excel spreadsheet then I put the the last year that we had done a concert at each school so I sort Ed that database by the year and so every year I pick the schools for the next year's concerts that have not had a concert in the longest period of time it and and then as soon as that year is over they rotate again and that's how I do it got it

131got it yeah just trying to figure out how the rotation comes back around yeah I'm here I'm I have no musical chops whatsoever I'm here for my administrative skills got it it perfectly honest uh like me um I wanted to say again and it's always encouraging to have a dorsy Don stand before us so always um and obviously we know that the music uh connects us to so many other areas of acade academic Excellence um when we talk about music we talk about math we talk about cognition and how it connects our students um to this and uh I recently actually yesterday was with a group um Iola uh who also in our community wants to continue to advance music and we're seeing the connection and how uh there was an interview with a student

132who shared just their connection and how allow them to go on to uh higher education because of their music background and the discipline and the call for excellence and so we do see the connection and obviously appreciate the work that you do and the privilege that you get and appreciate you sharing how you know you you like children and then now you have to love them and I think now you have to really really love them to continue to do the work but we do see the benefits and we appreciate what you do and uh Tony obviously your name speaks volume in this area for our students and I want to say continue to um say appreciate you for what you do for the students in this art form uh for the entire District because

133when you say Tony white everyone kind of like yes um so I want to say thank you for the work that you do and the fact that we have um you know an Oscar winner before us I always brag about that so I I lead with that when I go into rooms and we're talking about music I'm like do you know that we have an Oscar winner and so it's always great to be able to be in your presence so thank you Steve as well for being here thank you so much you well with oh yes we'll have a a comment from superintendent Mar uh thank you very much uh I'm all jazzed up about uh today's presentation I'm I'm I'm a huge jazz fan my my favorite uh musical style and uh always looking

134for great places to go and listen uh and I often find that uh some of the best places to listen to Jazz is actually in our schools so thank you for the work you do um you know there are three remarkable gentlemen in front of me here uh intimately familiar with the work that each of you does and uh I'll just Echo the sentiment of the board we have real stars amongst us uh many of them are students and many of them are inspired by truly inspirational teachers and I think you rank amongst those so thank you very much for the work and I look forward to continuing to experience the the great music and great offerings that you bring to our students across Los Angeles Unified thank you so much thank you well thank

135you so much for being here and um echoing the same Sentiments of my colleagues and superintendent that um the work that each one of you uh contributes to is such a wonderful contribution to students and because when the Music Stops it doesn't stop here in their soul and they're connected so it continues on and um the Arts music education U creativity all of that it contributes to the entire experience educational experience of students um you know tapping into all the learning modalities of students is so essential music is one of them like I met I've always mentioned I'm in of my son who um has had an opportunity to connect with music he writes music he knows and I asked him how did you learn how to I've never he's like I don't know it's

136just I just learned I just know it he it just knows it and um I to me that was just amazing and now he's learning the tuba so at home I hear I have the wonderful sounds of tuba at home and U he loves his band he loves music and um I know he's is one example of so many so many outs particularly our All City band where we you know have students from all throughout the district who participate in um a historical um event here at the district and Performing um at the parade the Rose Parade and and so much more and at the Martin Luther King Parade as well and so that's just um something that's really special about LUSD so I want to thank you Dr White for just your all of

137your work and all of your coaches and everyone that uh works with all of our students all of our band coaches and all of our middle schools and and high schools um it's they do it because they love they love their work they love what they do and they also want to connect uh with our students in there like you mentioned you know or somebody Mr bman and you mentioned that you know um students that have an instrument with them are not the ones that are um you know getting into trouble or doing things you know that um that the that they direct their attention in other things music is a connection and it's something that they connect through every single um cell of their of their body so yeah I've always said I'm I'm

138not only in music education I'm in crime prevention crime prevention beautiful well thank you so much for just sharing your love and what our students are really enjoying and through your program jazz in school so thank you so very very much appreciate thank you thanks so much for the inviting in us well with that uh Jazzy Jazz wonderful um presentation we are going to move on now to um our next presentation our final presentation which will focus on dual enrollment dream achieve it this initiative is a powerful tool in expanding access to higher education allowing students to earn college credit while still in high school by Bridging the Gap between K through 12 and college D enrollment help students build confidence develop critical SK skills and reduce Financial barriers to higher education uh so now

139I welcome Dr Francis Bas who will uh lead in the presentation thank you so much for being here good mornings greetings everybody greetings Madam Cher Ras and members of the board superintendent carvalo and Deputy superintendent today I will provide a brief a very brief presentation on dual enrollment which consists of college access while students attend high school the LAUSD strategic plan for student achievement prioritizes multiple Pathways for College and Career Readiness for all students this goal anchors the initiatives LAUSD implements to offer students many ways to ACC access future success be it a certificate program vocational education college or a university the Strategic plan states that by 2026 100% of schools serving students in grades 9 through 12 will offer access to one or more opportunities such as college courses and AA degrees that's Associates

140degrees Career and Technical education Pathways industry certifications internships and apprenticeships and we are well on our way to offer students this access with 120 schools out of 193 schools consisting of Comprehensive High Schools options spans and special ed centers that are currently offering one dual enrollment course we have 58 Career and Technical education Pathways and 15 industry sectors which consist of agriculture and natural resources Building Trades and construction arts media and entertainment education child development and family services energy and utilities engineering and design industry fashion and interior design finance and business Health Science and medical technology Hospitality tourism and Recreation manufacturing and product development Marketing sales and service and public service and transportation to add to the student experience each year we offer internship and apprenticeship opportunities to deepen career Readiness by exposing students to

141the workplace in 2023 to 24 we offered 8805 internships and 515 externships 401 pre-apprenticeship and 10,000 apprenticeship programs now I will share more about dual enrollment in LAUSD in 2015 assembly Bill 288 authorized Community College and school districts to offer and expand opportunities for students to develop Pathways from high school to Community College to strengthen High School graduation rates and help students experience college courses while they were in high school our goal is to offer students Career and Technical education La USD was one of the first districts to enter into a College and Career access pathway agreement with the Los Angeles Community College District in 2016 La USD partners with all of the Los the colleges in the Los Angeles Community College District to offer students dual enrollment on the high school campuses this includes

142Los Angeles Mission College Pierce College Los Angeles Valley College Los Angeles City College East Los Angeles College West Los Angeles College Los Angeles tra Tech College Los Angeles Southwest College and the Los Angeles Harbor College in tracking solely dual enrollment under AB 288 there are 6,330 students at 120 schools receiving a college course while enrolled in high school in the fall of 2024 there's a joint commitment to increase access to college courses CTE dual enrollment Pathways industry certifications and AA degrees between LAUSD and laccd last year superintendent carvalo and the president of laccd signed a compact agreeing to specific steps to bring this Vision to life and our teams have met regularly to ensure this Vision the LA USD region superintendent presented various events to students and families promoting dual enrollment as seen in this

143slide where region East led a dual enrollment student Summit where students culminated their learning with a presentation region north celebrated that all 31 high schools offer at least one dual enrollment course region South featured carsonies and their dual enrollment pathway and region West featured their partnership program as well LAUSD and the Los Angeles Community College District hosted its second annual dual enrollment Symposium with counselors and assistant principles over counseling to understand the core sequence for students and ensure that proper placement is made for students given their interest and this concludes my presentation on dual enrollment and we welcome your questions thank you Dr bz um first of all once again thank you for your leadership and um your team Miss Benso and Miss ales right Miss ales for all the work that you've um and

144also for our CTE link learning um uh Miss Esther I don't bavan I was last name I didn't want to put your last name thank you um so these Pro you know I just want to reify that these programs are providing students a head start on College and they're also about Equity access and ensuring that all students especially those from historically underserved communities have the opportunity they need to to succeed and by making college courses more accessible we're not only preparing students at academically but also helping them see themselves as College Bound and career ready um and then achieving all their um life you know goals as well so um now I'd like to open the floor for any questions or Reflections from from my colleagues Mr schmon yeah so uh hi Francis uh since

145AB uh 288 was passed do we know more or less um how we improved in these areas let's say uh a higher rate of students who are college ready uh higher rate of graduation and students participating in CTE any data on that that you can tell us yes definitely so we do know that this uh increases the number of students who have AA degrees we have seen uh increase in in terms of retention um students are able to complete their a3g coursework this has increase graduation through the years as as uh you've seen graduation goal uh goals increase when we come to present to the board on graduation outcomes um there's also been you know higher retention higher attendance of the students that are participating uh in these um college courses glad to hear that

146glad to hear that anyone else question comment thank you for this uh presentation wanted to ask you listed some numbers um as far as internships and apprenticeships what organizations are we connected with for these uh internships first and then the apprenticeships yes and for the question I'm going to invite um Miss PS at at cot Mall as well because this is also an effort from the division of uh adult education with respect to internships we have various um organizations that help place our students in the internship programs we have M us with various organizations whether it's media industry whether it's um in business um whether it's um within this District office within law firms different placements that our Career Technical education program leaders um try to find the placements which is also something that is

147an area of growth an opportunity for the business sector we really invite business um the business sector to open their their doors to our interns so that they have more opportunities um especially this upcoming summer um so with in terms of apprenticeship I invite um Miss PS a cotal to share more about who those industry partners are for apprenticeships good afternoon pada cotal chief of transitional programs so we have several Partnerships with externships and to give you more details about our iied health and others we'll have Matthew berlander and renie Nara to give you details good morning so due to the nature of our programs they're required our students are required to do externships not internship internships per we have 51 externship Partners Matthew sorry good good afternoon yes we have 51 um Allied Health

148externship Partnerships uh including right now um Kaiser Permanente which is one of our biggest and newest we have Optum um we have several uh smaller clinics we have viacare uh and we're also working with the Department of Health Services so of those 51 that's what's creating the 400 extern chips that you mentioned 40 And1 free apprenticeships no that was the I think Francis what she's talking about is our actual internship so maybe you can share how last year where we were is that what you're asking the internship gave two dat she gave data for two different area she said internships and then what she just mentioned externships the ex ship is what she just mentioned about and then I was asking about internships um cuz you list about 500 of those and then about 10,000

149apprenticeships we have 805 internships of those those are the ones that I mentioned earlier that are either in the med media industry uh they're in business sectors and finance they're in agriculture they're in different different areas and we're looking to grow um and then um renie just spoke about the externships uh you asked about the apprenticeship programs the 10,000 apprenticeship programs would is that who is that renie or is that yeah that number is because we are the Lea for um various apprenticeship programs throughout the state of California actually and here in La they're not all within La um unified per se because some of our students might live outside so they approach us to be the oversight body right of these different unions and different apprenticeships so last year we had a little over

15010,000 um they might not all be our students but they become our students um after they've gone through certain classes and certain additional trainings that they require depending on what um the employer may need can you explain a little bit they're not our students but then they become our students so um they can be um in a union already and need to be upskilled not everyone that is go that is a journeyman for SE or trying to be a journeyman um needs the upskilling right they're just they've already done it hopefully they've done it through us some have done it in other um um institutions but we oversee their training and their work site in order for them to be signed off and get their card and then where are these listings posted how does

151our students get this information how do they know how do families know so um they usually come to us unless they are in one of our programs for instance I'll I'll tell you one the MC3 program it's a pre-apprenticeship and then we through the pre-apprenticeship um let them know all the opportunities they have they go they visit some of these um unions they apply we help them pass those exams that they need to get to get into apprenticeship programs and that's how the information gets out Miss newble can I ask for a point of clarification and to Madam chair I think it might just help to clarify definitions can we talk about internship externship pre-apprenticeship apprenticeship what grade levels are we talking about here what kind of content area I feel like we're kind of

152missing something thank you yes so in slide number three where we listed um the uh CTE Pathways industry certifications internships and apprenticeships what we were referring to here is the internships are part of our high school experience our our compreh comprehensive our continuation schools our span schools those students are have access to internships in the summer with different um different sectors uh industry sectors and So currently we have about 85 students who participated in internships so there's been growth in that area when we're referring to the externships pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeships those are coming from the division of adult education so you'll see that while we offer students work Readiness career Readiness opportunities um there's a group that really focuses on our Adult Ed but even even some high school students would be able to participate

153in some adult ed programs as well um so there are just different entry points but when it comes to comprehensive continuation span schools um those students are in internship programs so that's the difference there and appreciate the clarification um are there opportunities for those that are not in high school middle school yes no for for dual enrollment or for intership pre apprenticeships are there opportunities for pre-apprenticeship what is the age because you mentioned age we didn't talk necessarily said 9 through 12 is it just 9 through 12 for high it's it would be for high school students yeah who high school students only okay if if we may I think Esther can also share though what we're doing at the middle school level to begin to create these preparations and experiences you'll see a lot

154of our Middle School have these kind of lab experiences that come with other types of experience so Esther if you mind sharing a little bit more so many of our middle schools have actual CTE Pathways that feed into high schools but they also have career lab experiences where our students go through all 15 industry sectors within one course and experienced industry sectors through project-based learning um with respect back to internships the age is 16 and over so they we are limited through youth labor law to limit those experiences starting at age 16 what's the name of the course that you mentioned that they go through these 15 career Labs career lab AB I can probably get you the course code later got it and I know we're focused on do enrollment here but we're happy

155to come back and give more in depth into different areas as I know that's an area of interest for many too I'm just knowing that it will lead into folks going into dual enrollment because if you get this experience and you want to continue that experience so it will open the door and considering they're just coming to you and we're not going to them we need to figure out a way how that works because often time if they don't know that it exists I wouldn't be coming to you CU I don't know so how do we get that exposure out there to our families to know because every time I mention something like this I never knew I don't know this is really happening in your schools and to say that we have 10,000 that's

156a large number so how do we get this information to the masses so we have multiple Career Fairs within um K12 as well and we're working very closely with counselors to actually get that information out to students in the schools as well we began that this year um very big push and when we begin it this year we're looking at across the board all of our counselors getting this information at the same time or is it being filtered out slowly or how is that working good morning or good afternoon I don't know what time it is but um we are um part of what doctor bias share with you includes um something that we started last year this was the second annual Symposium on dual enrollment we know we have to build capacity with all

157of our counselors so not only do we have a day dedicated for dual enrollment expansion and the right courses and the pathways but we embed this in our um monthly um professional developments with all of our counselors and we're working on a web page as well as um some campaigning for our families and our students to learn from very early on all the programs that they can access I'm I'm going to let y'all talk I'm going be done I promise uh is there a plan that we could have to see the trajectory of how this is to go considering this is like the first year and two Scott's first question early are we able to see the projection since this has passed uh from 2015 until now to see the number of enrollment how it

158increased over the years and um cuz actually I Googled and found the dual enrollment CU I didn't know that we had that Symposium so when I saw it I was like wow I wish we would have known cuz I didn't know know so um yeah we just got to do our best job even letting internally know what's happening cuz had no idea until I Googled it after we were passing your resolution and I was like oh that would have been great to be able to share but it was after the fact so yeah so the dual enrollment Symposium was a very technical Symposium for the practitioners and that's why it went out um to them directly uh and we had close to 400 participants there and all of our schools were represented with respect to

159coming back to you to provide that update we can definitely provide an update on the the whole picture and also the growth overtime in the college participation yeah we can also have a future presentation on this to really expand and provide more detail I know this is we were focusing on do enrollment but uh all the different Pathways um and expansion that you're all working with collaborating with different um industry um sectors Miss grego yes yes um regarding dual enrollment I me these are college level courses that the students are taking and they can start doing it in ninth grade right that's correct and so are there any supports that they get to be able to once they're in the course any study skill support any if they're English language Learners if they're in special

160education what supports do they get and who do they get the support from I'm going to invite um Brenda pensamiento to to uh respond to that one since we do have a support system for them it's a really good question so we want them to access the courses but we also want them to be successful so we talk to um we uh work with counselors but we are also developing um dual enrollment leasons at each School site so that they can communicate between the parents the professors that come from laccd and also the teachers and the different tutorial supports that are available at the school site also in collaboration with laccd to see what they can bring in to support the students that are in class and that is all part of our um current

161process to make sure that they have systems of support to be successful so that's happening it hasn't happened until you're in the midst of getting that set up this is our first year doing that through our collaboration with laccd and the dual enrollment leas at each School site and we're providing that training as well okay and then just to follow up uh what happens how do the grades in these courses impact students GPA so just like any other you know course that they're taking at the school side during the day or an AP course um it has impact but we are trying to make sure that we have some guard rails like that communication ahead of time that you want with um the students and the parents and the counselors to make sure that the

162students are successful we're also in conversations with lccd to see what else we can do to make sure that uh we give students opportunities and that they are not turned away whenever they're struggling and during a course okay um and then I noticed in the map you have um East LA College there's a satellite office in I think it's in Southgate and so do you have any data as to how our students in in the Southeast cities are accessing this these dual enrollment courses we will we are working on trying to uh gather more of that data that is part of our current process you're when do you think I might have that we are hoping to have all that by December by Regional yes okay great thank you um this may be a med

163question but I bet you can answer it so uh Board District 3 has lots of newcomers lots of newcomers the enrollment is really going up I'm very happy about that most of the newcomers are young but I do have many newcomers who are at vanise High School in our special newcomers Academy it's really great I even see them at night at the adult school I mean the these ladies and gentlemen are are studying day and night so are they able to participate in dual enrollment my my newcomers all students are able to participate in there's our met sorry so she's saying yes all all students are able to participate in D en r at uh in the high school level excellent and my other question is I'm always concerned about the digging down so the

164graduation rate for our traditional um marginalized communities uh the African-American students have an 81.6 graduation rate okay Latino students 84.4 graduation rate um do we have a data on these students and if they are um being successful in this dual enrollment yes so as Brenda had mentioned by December we should be able to have uh more disaggregated um presentation or um data available that also is able to see um if the students are more successful um in comparison to those that are not participating in dual enrollment so we can provide that uh in the fall as well yeah I was just curious if you have a general idea that um all of our students are being successful we kind of look at things as globally I like to make sure that our different groups are

165all succeeding because sometimes we forget to to hone in so qual ly we can tell you that it's a successful program and that our students that are um students of color have more access to college than they would have before and they can enter they have more access to college that in terms of um uh understanding their options and can apply and understand the application process more than before dual enrollment qualitatively we can Pro we can share that with you anecdotally we can share that with you because we're also hearing it from um getting feedback from the students and the families excellent quantitatively we'll be able to provide that to you later on uh in the fall in December and if I could clarify we also do track so for a through G as well

166as on track off track graduation as you know the team has been drilling down to our student level data so that way whether it's our Bap team working with the regions or our Med team working with the regions to ensure those students that we're not seeing progressing what are their different options to make sure they remain on track that is why our graduation has been increasing is because we are localizing that Clarity of the big picture I think another thing we need to understand about the college um cour taking data is that we've been capturing the college course taking data what we didn't do was differentiate between dual enrollment concurrent enrollment and so on so now we have been able to set that system up in myis and the team has worked very hard to

167make sure that counselors are now tracking that type of data so now we can differentiate based on student groups needs as well as by regions board districts all that good stuff even the community colleges that we're seeing a really good passage rate uh that's why the collaboration that Brenda talked about with our community colleges has been so important because it also ensures that classes that are being offered in one Community College can also be access in another area of a community college and that they have the same weight and value so these are all things we've been sorting out in the past uh year or so and so that collaboration has been really important and we look forward to Bringing forward that data because I think will be able to start to be even more

168tailored to being responsive and increasing dual enrollment sounds good sounds real good thank you sorry I was making a face because I was doing some quick math I definitely look forward to the Fuller data but the 6,300 or so students currently enrolled does that represent like 5% of our high school students enrolled that's my quick math looking at yeah team is agreeing yes okay so we got a long way to go it's great to get access but if only 5% are currently enrolled um I'm feeling really motivated by that so please keep us posted on how we can be helpful okay thank you and that was the intention of our resolution that we passed is to create that report or that Baseline data to really um help the district and understanding where are the strength

169where the areas that we need to grow and what are the connected outcomes for students that are um directly enrolled in um dual enrollment programs like you mentioned we do have the qualitative now we need the quantitative data to really give us a full picture so that's the goal of the resolution is to come forth on December to give us that report and um that said I when I do have two questions so with um March now officially recognized the dual enrollment Awareness Month in the resolution we passed um last week how do you see that resolution or or the direction is providing and helping to expand access and awareness for students and families across um L USD well I think that the great thing is that the the district has had a system in

170place where all of our Comprehensive High Schools um have a way to communicate to students that this dual enrollment opportunity is available because this has been going on for over 10 years we've had dual enrollment we've grown significantly in the concurrent enrollment where students actually attend um in the evening or with uh National Ed Equity lab uh and now with dual enrollment this is another part of the dual enrollment um U pie here and so uh in terms of what this resolution will do is just really providing that impetus for a continued Outreach to families about this we know that uh with respect to uh what we've had with the Symposium we also provide the counselor communication toolkits and different tools to reach out to families and to students so that they're aware of what

171this is with March now being the dual enrollment awareness month is really promoting that uh leading up to the date with additional campaigns and and other materials including that even in our in our fairs and our College fairs uh uh the college fairs that occur in the fall promoting that during fast fata so there's just many opportunities where we can continue to lift and to build the awareness but the systems are definitely there in place for for our students wonderful thank you um well as D enrollment programs require strong collaboration between our schools and community colleges what are some key steps we uh we can take to strengthen our Partnerships through community colleges and stakeholders like the California Community Foundation to ensure more students can take advantage of these opportunities what what how can we

172further that um collaboration so something that our team does our counseling office and others they meet regularly with the vice Chancellor of the LA um College Community Community College District they meet regularly um almost every other week and they're on the phone and they're always talking about how to strengthen the relationship between between the local school and the local Community College because they all operate in uh different ways and so we want to make sure that there is a streamline approach uh in a common way that everybody operates at the colleges and how we collaborate with them at the school sites so that's strengthening the relationship and then with the c California Community Foundation is definitely looking into how we can strengthen the the the relationship with the district and ensuring that our students and

173our families know about um D the dual enrollment program are there any other more questions or comments oh miss Andy just uh when you mentioned about uh reporting back to us of the information that we're asking about the number of students um are you able to give us the schools that they attend so we can kind of know if they're in our area um and what schools they're attending and then if also those that have receive those AAS um it's always great to be able to share those good news and and this best practice and you want to be a part of this don't you and so it's always great to be able to share that yeah that's the beauty of this of actually being able to disaggregate just for dual enrollment and ab 288

174because we'll be able to disaggregate to that level in that degree look for looking forward to that uh and one more comment I think one thing I've heard from the board is our need to really revamp our communication campaign and strategy on this so I want to make sure the team will put this as a critical aspect to our strategy what will be our campaign and our communication work we started with dream it achieve it but what more else posters things around the schools QR codes that people could just download immediately I've looked at our website it needs work so we will revamp all those kinds of elements I think we've got good Synergy in our partnership with the community college and the superintendent has established a very strong relationship even with the new interim

175Chancellor so we we will come back with some strong strategies I think one other thing that you asked about um a board board member shlon is around uh what are we seeing in our college career growth uh based on the California dashboard we did see an increase of 2.7% we are in the green which was not the case previously so we continue to make progress uh but I think this is really our beginning opportunity so some bigger work as you saw in our goal for 2026 how do we keep growing oh just one question um thank you all but because you're all here it strikes me I know one follow-up we had was as we worked to update the igp the individualized graduation plan I know the team was going to get back to us

176on um how it captures the internships the externships the Dual enrollments the CTE and pathway completion so I don't know if anyone has an update on that so we are continuing to work in a system to capture all of them and hopefully we will have um you know we will be able to include that in our update in December but that's definitely um you know in progress right now but it won't be updated till December we will bring you an update we do have an igp that actually shows all that we just want to make sure that systematically we can capture a data from the igp report so we're working on that okay thank you okay Miss Carla G yeah I I'm wondering also can we see and hear from the students who are part

177of this um how do they feel about it kids who took classes before who are currently doing it right now and from families whose kids have participated in this how are they feeling about it and what are we can gain some of that input to help us shape how we move forward um as we continue to grow this program we're happy to do so and as you mentioned some of the programs that are already existing the uh internships or the pre-apprenticeship programs that are in our schools is it possible to be able to share how they become a part of that whether that's information for our principles to be able to know that those programs exist um because I know there's programs that I know that are in bd7 um or bd5 that bd1 doesn't

178have and I know that have been approached by some of um those within uh Carpenters that work in certain schools already and they're like well we don't have any uh mb1 there's no schools with in bd1 that share the same so if there's ways that we can be able to expand within the district things that are already working in other districts so um that's something else and then the last question you said the counselors get like a tool kit now do they unpack the toolkit do you know they unpack the toolkit how do we know that yeah so we walk them through the toolkit during the professional development the training with them we show them how to use the toolkit so yes it is they're yes and they know how to use use it right

179and if they don't we have office hours okay all right well thank you Dr bz and the entire Team all the way from days to CTE link learning and um Al do enrollment teams thank you all for um answering our questions and presenting and we look forward to um seeing the expansion and learning more so thank you today to all presenters for their time expertise and dedication to improving education for our students and now we will transition to public comment we value the input from all of our community members as it plays a critical role in shaping our decisions and now I hand it over to Mr McLean to facilitate this portion of the meeting thank you thank you very much we will call on the folks who listed themselves as speaking in person and

180then we'll transition to those who listed themselves as speaking remotely so uh Mr David tolkovsky are you here I saw you here earlier uh you threatened that you were going to be remote uh but I do not have you on either so he's not here how about Carla Franco I think I saw Miss Franco come on up Miss Franco this SCH okay I will try my English okaye go ahead the two minutes want to lose my my fear for speak English but it's okay um my good afternoon my name is Cara Franco and I say hello everybody I'm here because I want to give you updated how my school's going right now I'm so excited to see a few results in the positive way yesterday um we have an special event for our English Learners

181to support them because pack is coming and I bring this first because last year I was a shairp person and iated and I focus a lot to support our our English Learners to recl classific reic reclassification but the think is our students feel so happy and they saw us they we supporting them a lot they they're not lonely there psws come to to them and give you a techniques to because they know that they frustrated for the test is coming and um they give you techniques before they take the test and also they let them know that the office is open for each student to support about for the elpac test our coordinator also make an amazing job to support our English learners and the principal Mr Gonzalez mentioned them that I was um a

182parent of the children's come from um English Learners too and also to let them know that are represented in the district and the student was so happy and excited to hear that so I feel like very special one day Mr carvalo asked me when when I can I see you one day to you be happy we almost there Mr carvalo I'm almost there to be happy because what the result I saw in my school it's amazing it's no fights at all they collaborated to put the the phone in the pouch wow it's beautiful so now I can say I'm proud to be our parents LD volunteer for almost the 22 years and remember thank you for your time okay uh Carol Kenny land come on up Miss is goingon to speak in Spanish I believe

183okay so please put your hands up if you'd like these translation headsets and we'll get them to you so you can experience simultaneous translation okay graas good morning everyone or good afternoon thank you for assisting us it's a blessing to be here amongst you all I'm here a bit saddened today because I've been a parent leader for four and a half years leading in different areas like SSC I'm parliamentarian I'm a member of elac as well as a representative and leader in PAC I'm also a La volunteer in my school Magnolia AV Avenue Elementary my son has been there since kindergarten and he's finishing fifth grade in June he's in special education he has autism as well as uh type 1 diabetes health related issues and one of the problems that we've had in the

184past have been part of my leadership and advocacy in Magnolia Avenue Elementary School Juan Reyes is the principal and currently I'm here due to the important reason that previously we were we had some disputes in the school because I'm a mother that is advocating for the kids for the parents to see the development within the school safety plan and I'm always there in all the school meetings Well turns out that previously I seek Mr basia's assistance and he did help me in his time and I thank him for that help but we had cases that weren't closed or haven't finished and I was and there was one case of a a teacher screaming at the kids and my child is a very shy person I will say so he his his autism makes him become

185provoked when someone screams at him and they get they're altered so I mentioned this to the principal and there was no Solutions so I was negated my parent conferences I felt so humiliated so humiliated I will tell you seeing all the parents going into the classes and the principal negotiating with me about doing it in the office or in the parents Center that the teacher was afraid to do it in the class because she was saying that I was going to note certain things I felt terrible and at the time I asked for Miss Franco for her help because she's a a parent leader with with good reputation and when I expressed this to Mr Placencia and Miss Duke they changed my hours Miss Sim Miss Duke Mr Juan Rees changed it told Mr Placencia

186they said that I needed Witnesses please help me please here are copies I'll come down and get it Evan Dred are you here Evan dredge are you here in person Miss Maria Daisy Ortiz you're listed as Callin but come on up I see you're in the audience you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin Miss Ortiz is going to speak in Spanish so if you'd like to use these translation headsets put up your hands and uh the two minutes is yours see oh okay gra thank you hello everyone my name is Maria Dey Ortiz and we have been seeing that I am one of those that believe that teachers should earn wealth because the architects of the future right and they need to have supports in place and we need to work together with

187the teachers as parents but in reality like I was telling quen Ramirez you might know who he is he's the vice chair of utla I am going to sit with utla and demand that they get paid better but also I demand results better results because there's one thing we can't stop is time time that our kids are it's so valuable and 80 5% of the success of a student is within a classroom or is done within a classroom so because of that we need to empower our teachers and work with them so that they be aware of how they need to teach dosy like I mentioned a teacher needs with a vocation and with a heart that they see in every student themselves their brothers their children so for me I never like to work

188against the teachers because we need them but we do need to improve the results that we are seeing and we need to have this conversation in the transparency revolving around our betterment so to be prepared to go to universities they need to prepare the graduation for the students and this there isn't being provided this opportunity with our students I mentioned this to the superintendent when he came to the district because this isn't success we cannot shape the future by graduating them with a lot of remedial materials or topics so I think self-help which is the art dance and all the things that the students have motiv motivation and I'm saying this as a a dance instructor a volunteer dance instructor three in Franklin and two elsewhere and I know the importance that they feel important

189thank you and have a great day okay and we'll now go to folks who listed themselves as calling in remotely uh Maria Louisa Palma I see you're on the line Maria Louisa Palma please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin Maria Louisa Palma good afternoon my name is Maria Lisa Palma I am here speaking today to remind you all you board members of the data request that I made to request Stacy incident data I emailed it to the district on February 6th on behalf of the safe schools committee and the safe the school police subcommittee I received a response on February 14th saying that I would get a response by March 3 with the estimated uh date of the data production I received a nondescript email

190on February 27th just telling me that there would be an estimated production date as soon as reasonably practicable no other information since you are Way Beyond your established date on which you called this request a public record deck request I disagree but you still haven't provided the data the committees need information updated complete and ongoing how can the Committees perform their advisory function without sufficient data on safety incident actual how can they make data drippen recommendations why is the district suppressing the information because it's damning because it's indefensible because you all of you board members would look bad that you approved all of these policies that are causing all of these incidents to be way out of control I will remind you in February of 2021 the vote was two to5 with only Dr McKenna

191and Mr Schon voting to allow schools to independently select to have school police on campus again September of 2021 same vote two to five in that resolution put forth by Dr McKennon so please ensure that you are causing these records to be released to the public everyone needs to see this you need to stand by your decisions that you made when you voted for your policies thank you thank you for your time Marcela Garcia Marcel garciaa not here Dian guen not here Monica arzola not here uh Karina Lopez I think you just signed on to speak Karina Lopez Karina Lopez good afternoon my name is Karina Lopez can you hear me thank you yes good afternoon everyone like I mentioned my name is garina Lopez this public comment is to bring this safety situation to

192your attention we need to have answers from the superintendent Mr carvalo or the board someone who can talk to us and tell us give us answers when it's coming to the topic of school safety and school police it's it's we have an increased need to have efficient job done and they're doing a good job but you are not seeing this unfortunately we need answers the other is regarding uh accredited interpreters it's important that we have a respect for language since we have a high need and the students that speak Spanish and in their home thank thank you very much okay the next caller is Raquel Diaz Raquel Diaz I don't see on the line are you in the room no Rael Diaz araseli Cabrera you're signed up to speak remotely uh are you in the

193room because you're not online no all right and erinda Morita you are on the line please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin erinda Morita good afternoon my name is erinda Morita we are fighting for the safety of the school sites for our students so that they're they could learn in a calm place and have academic Excellence I asked the district when will you have teachers that are accredited in the schools our kids needs need quality education by professional they are taking college courses with a low expectation I ask you all to please collaborate and improve the academic uh results for downtown business magnet also I wish that the teachers and the Personnel can please give us structured uh teaching with moral implementations in the academic

194realm we need help right now I saw a parent whose child has autism and these cases happen in any school and principles or Personnel when they try to harass the parent that speaks up that's defending the rights of the students and the parents this needs to stop they can't be harassing us because we are are handing over our students to them and this has happened to me but I will not stop I won't be stopped by them because I speak the truth and and LUSD is failing academically the downtown business magnet is not doing what they should be doing academically and this is something that we've already said previously in public comment we've said this in you la USD here at the board and nothing has been done you hear it and I'm talking about

19510th grade and I will finish the four years with my student without nothing ever having been done we need your help thank you thank you for your time uh that concludes public comment thank you Mr mle so once again a heartful thank you to all the presenters for the valuable information shared today from addressing teacher pay Equity to the power music education and expanding dual enrollment opportunities these conversations reinforce the need for continued investment in our schools uh our teachers and also Innovative approaches to Student Success looking ahead I encourage everyone to join us our next Committee of the whole meeting on Tuesday April 22nd where we will continue these important conversations and explore additional ways to strengthen our schools and communities now we will adjourn today's meeting thank you all and look forward to

196seeing you next month have a beautiful day