001good morning everyone it is 903 a.m on October 18th 2022 welcome to the committee of the whole meeting thank you I feel like I need to have a dark deep voice to um to match you uh good morning welcome to today's Committee of the whole it's 904 a.m on Tuesday October 18th uh October is National principles month and we want to honor our principals including uh Blanca Cruz who we're going to hear from in a minute but all of our principals um for their significant impact on the success and well-being of our students and while we officially honor principals during October uh their dedication and commitment is evident every month every day of the year so thank you uh enjoying I hope you all join me in thanking our tireless and hard-working principles this week
002yes National Breast Cancer Awareness Month which I think is very important for us to remind everybody of because it is still an ongoing pandemic in this country thank you yes thank you for raising that as well and we know that with our wellness centers and health clinics we're promoting awareness and screenings and appreciate that it's also this Thursday uh the 20th is also Unity day where our school schools promote kindness and inclusivity as a way to prevent bullying and so I know folks will be wearing orange and standing up against bullying and promoting acceptance and love so thank you all today um we have three things on our agenda we're going to start in a minute with our school Spotlight and hear a presentation from our principal at the Roybal Learning Center to have a
003perspective from the field on School site budgeting we're then going to get an update on the 2022-23 norm day enrollment and then we'll turn to our budget priorities input session for fiscal year 2023-24 which will be one of a few opportunities where the board can give feedback directly to our budget team who's here on what we'd like to see vis-a-vis the Strategic plan implementation from a budgetary perspective so as always we have a packed agenda and we're going to get started we'll do public comment at the end we know folks want to maybe comment on what they've been hearing and I'm going to ask Mike really quickly do we have any labor partners that we know of who would like to join or speak kind of checked in okay uh well if we have anyone
004who joined who joins us they can do so for public comment so with that um I'm going to introduce our principal Ms Blanca Cruz who's the principal at the Royal Learning Center and here with her team um principal Cruz has been an educator with the unified for over 20 years he's worked as a Spanish teacher A Lead Teacher Dean in AP and is now in her fourth year um at the helm of Roy Bell so take it away principal Cruz good morning always for me an honor to be able to speak about the team that we have at Roybal the impact that this team has on our not just on our students on campus but directly into the community because anything that we do does impact our community um today we're here to speak about
005budget I'm not sure if I'm just Advanced the slides um but just very briefly just a little bit about who we are as as a school um Roy Bell currently has a little bit over 1100 students um that is above our projected Norm um we proudly say that we've been above Norm for the last five years and I truly attribute that to the staff that we have on our campus the efforts not just around recruitment but beyond that what we're doing in the classrooms what our communities know that we're you know what we're doing to dedicate our time to instruction and to in ensuring that our students have a very safe and productive learning environment our school currently houses about 20 percent of students with disability 20 close to 20 percent of English language Learners
006um as well as about 60 teachers and over 10 counseling support staff um what we get normed at and what we have is very different we believe in investing in teachers we believe in investing in support staff we know that with the support staff in place we as admin are able to get into classrooms we as admin are able to work with developing the capacity of our teachers and our our leadership teams so here at um at Roybal you're also going to find that we have uh become the top school of choice in the Belmont swim of choice um and and we don't take that lightly we know what commitment we're making to our community um and we uh wholeheartedly commit ourselves to working as a team and so today I want to introduce to
007you um our team here and they're all going to speak a little bit about the work that we've done um but I do want to highlight that at a time when we were struggling um 2020 2021 um we got together as a team developed a plan um and you know hit the uh for running with the plan in terms of instruction while our students were at home um and as a result we were awarded the 2022 pivotal practice award and so I'm going to have my team share a little bit in terms of what we've done both in terms of getting the input from our teams with respect to how we're going to manage our budget and what we're going to do with our budget to putting our budget into practice and what that looks
008like you know on our campus um our Collective purpose is what grounds us this is what drives our work um our staff rewrote this mission and vision statement last year took us I'm going to say about six months to do this because we were going back from staff to students to parents back to staff as we were rewarding it because it we needed to own it we needed to be a part of drafting this yesterday that we got together um and I know Ms Garcia mentioned that we are on the same campus with downtown Magnet High School and we got together as a team to focus on our schoolwide writing efforts to enhance the work that we were that we started about five years ago and continue that work of writing across the curriculum and
009so we worked with that with that team to also continue those efforts so we're we're working hard um but I definitely know that um it wouldn't be possible to have what we have at Roybal limit we're not for the team that we have there um and investing in our staff investing in our students I'm going to hand it over to miss Mendes uh who is our assistant principal good morning everyone uh so to continue our overview of budget process here at Roybal Learning Center we do emphasize on Staffing our our campus with with with professionals that might support our student education uh using the school funding sources that you see on the screen are traditional General funds our Sunny title one but we go above and beyond in being offered additional funds because we do
010serve different subgroups in at Roybal uh with an emphasis on black student achievement and uh wellness and mental health supports and learning opportunities for our our at promise students at Roybal with that said how do we collectively bring about our purpose our mission and that's really bringing everybody um involved our stakeholders our parents our students our families our teachers our faculty because they're the ones uh at the front line correct um they're the ones that I identify and let us know what is needed uh in order to provide an education uh Equitable education for our students when it comes to counseling for example uh making sure that we have we have enough counselors to individually service our student needs academic interventions are identified to be able to support our at promise students uh our diverse
011Learners our English learners for example um and making sure that they Master the language to order content um I'm sorry to access content areas and be able to achieve graduation rate eventually but it all comes back to our data our data our numbers is what drives us it's what identifies what is needed in our budget what needs to be allocated and as you could see our graduation rate is uh close to 100 percent and our proficient rate our proficiency rates are are indicating that the the instructional strategies implemented are working are making progress throughout the years um that we've been in a upward trajectory at Roybal Learning Center um in in making sure that our English Learners have a structured learning environment to be able to increase our reclassification rate at 36 percent um our
012attendance rate at 38 being one of the three highest in our uh Local District and also offering choice to our students not only does our data indicate what is needed what is working to move forward but we also completed our three-year wasc accreditation uh mid mid-year um accreditation where our critical needs are identified to increase Proficiency in Reading increase Proficiency in writing and increase Proficiency in math our findings in WASP identify our strength again what is working what our budget what we have budgeted and what is in place as far as academic and social emotional supports whether it's Personnel like counselors psws attendance counselors whether it's professional development with specific strategies being implemented to support our teachers so that they could instruct our students and students could access the content and be able to make
013learning relative and make connections and also expanding our College and Career culture our fine our wasp find is also identify what we still need to work on and it's okay to identify those items because our needs change every day our our variables in in society change every day and our students are diverse Learners that need to benefit from different strategies on a on a daily basis being on a 4x4 schedule we did for example change advisory period to um be more beneficial when it comes to the social emotional learning and support attendance we continue doing data analysis with their different subgroups and their performance um in in different areas and Mathematics is implementing a new curriculum where we constantly do a lot of data data analysis in order to measure progress and be able to
014modify and implement so budgeting and identifying our needs is an ongoing process it's an everyday thing at Roybal it's not just a spring budget budget planning sessions with our stakeholders but it ends up being a day by day from Summer from participating in PDS with our teachers surveying our students in the classroom areas our ASB leadership class our parents during meetings just to identify what is needed what continues to be needed so everything that miss Mendes just spoke about in terms of you know doing our needs assessments uh communicating with our stakeholders looking in um at every literally every day what are the adjustments that we need to do um we are even in the last two weeks submitted to budget adjustments reports why because we find that as we go through classrooms or as
015we meet with teachers or as we meet with parents like she says that is that is where we see okay there need there's a need for a shift there is a need for a change there's a need for an adjustment um in the end as we go through that budget process and we look at our data we solidify our instructional Foci for the year so this is our instructional Foci for the year uh up in front of the screen and everything we do is in alignment with this foci everything that we that we purchase the PD the programs and so forth aligns to the different needs aligned to the different goals as is does they relate to this instructional Foci and so this leads us for the entire year um and so as you can
016see a lot of this is even aligned to our strategic fund for 2020 to 2026. um and so I'm not gonna I'm gonna hand it over to Mr de Paz who's going to talk a little bit about the alignment of our budget with the main priorities thank you good morning everyone so like Miss Cruz was mentioning our budget is not something that is set in stone it's something that's constantly changing it's changing based on student need and so we're constantly reflecting and identifying the areas where we might need to make some shifts uh to that end our goal is to realize equity and in order for this to take place the following must also be in place it begins with us having an unwavering commitment and focus on our Collective purpose like Ms Cruz mentioned
017we must let the vision guide us the vision must guide our work it is telling us where we are headed and we are constantly reflecting on that if we are not headed in that direction then we have to sit down as a team collectively at the school site and identify what it is that we have to change what we have to do differently we must also ensure that we are intentionally creating opportunities for our students that are unique opportunities that they otherwise would not be exposed to and we're not just referring to academic opportunities we're referring referring to Opportunities outside of the classroom as well extracurricular activities field trips for example the last couple of years we have sent students on field trips where they have visited not one or two colleges but three or
018four in one day and they've been long field trips and they have benefited from that because they have been exposed to different colleges they have visited many colleges by the time that they are seniors and they're graduating they have visited many colleges and so that's those are the Opera the experiences that we're trying to expose our students to and lastly it is a collective responsibility and when I say Collective I don't mean just those of us that are here standing before you not just teachers not just support staff Collective responsibility we're talking about everyone all of our stakeholders teachers classified staff the plant team counselors first and foremost our students and their parents as well well without parent involvement with our parents engagement our school would not function and so to that end we do
019have these additional supports here that we embed into our daily practice at Roybal parent engagement I just mentioned that one it is very important for us to engage parents and constantly reach out to them involve them in the process like Ms Cruz was mentioning when we developed the mission that when we when we redeveloped the mission and vision we involved all stakeholders it is crucial that we involve and we continue involving our parents in this decision-making process at the school accountability yes we are assessing our students constantly but I'm not just talking about testing our students we are walking into classes we are observing how they interact with other students we are observing what are their needs uh yes they might have academic needs but they also might have social emotional needs they might have
020behavioral needs and that's where uh like the team was mentioning earlier we have additional support staff that we have invested in so that we can provide our students with all of these all of this additional support so that they can Thrive so that they feel that we are meeting their needs and that we're not just speaking putting stuff on paper for the sake of doing it but we are actually putting it into practice uh based on our observations we Implement interventions behavioral intervention for example we have a restorative justice advisor that we have purchased uh we have school climate Advocate that works with students we have uh psws that also work to support our students many mental health needs and so we try to be an overall well-rounded school to meet the needs of all
021of our students not just academically but outside of the classroom as well School culture we do have a culture of care and when we mention our culture of care we're not just talking about supporting the needs of our students we're talking about supporting the needs of all of the stakeholders um we are constantly reaching out to parents bringing parents in for workshops we are constantly calling them bringing them in for parent meetings yes it's tough right our community parent involvement isn't always the greatest but we do what we can we involve them we are Relentless in our Outreach efforts and so when we have parent meetings our Auditorium is full right and it's a lot of work ahead before that actual meeting but we are getting the parents in and we are providing them that
022support that they need um for parents for students Equitable grading we pre-pandemic Roy ball transitioned to mastery-based grading and so we believe wholeheartedly that a student's grade should reflect where they currently are academically and so to that end we have aligned our grading practices to ensure that the grades reflect where students are academically based on standards-based assessments and lastly our teachers we have to support all of our teachers and so one way that we do that is through developing and implementing professional development that is tailored to meet the needs of everyone we have veteran teachers we have brand new teachers and so we need to adjust our planning so that we are meeting the needs of teachers and we are supporting them and so that they are growing as instructional leaders whether they are novice
023or whether they have been teaching for 15 20 years or more done but we do want to share with you and opportunity to have one of our students our climate culture a little bit about what they see and what they do on campus the presentation does have a lot of our priorities a lot of our actions that we've taken alignment to our strategic plan when it comes to academic Excellence um but I want to make sure that I give I give them an opportunity to also speak um and then we are prepared to answer any questions you might have in terms of our budget hi uh good morning everyone my name is clarine valpajardo and I am a ninth grader at ROBLOX Learning Center um I'm part of AE it's academic Academy of educational enrichment
024and I'm also a part of the ASB class as well I really appreciate the opportunity to share with you all how Roybal develops um pillar 2 joy and wellness of the district's um strategy strategic plan and how we cultivate a culture of care for our students families and staff on campus um so for someone who just completed their first Corridor of their freshman year I must say I really don't think I would have made it without the friends I've made and the activities I've participated in since I've started school they've made me feel like I'm part of a community where I am loved and cared for and I don't think without that I would have grown as much as I have um so since school started I participated in school-wide events like um Spirit day
025Fridays Club Rush college shirt Wednesdays the homecoming parade and the homecoming dance the seniors also had a field trip where they went to colleges outside of La which really I'm looking forward to participating in when I become a senior I've noticed that our school also has strong emphasis on providing teachers with the support they need like getting training on how they can be able to support us students and our learning our school also I've noticed has strong focus on Humanity we have our own restorative justice teacher instead of a Dean so that we have a more positive approach to addressing student misbehavior we also have clubs established on campus on addressing issues regarding race and gender and the like we have groups like black students matter and our racial Justice tests forced to discuss issues
026such as these and learn how to navigate a Multicultural Society by having staff engage with materials such as we want to do more than survive robal has also invested in different support staff to ensure that us students our social emotional well-beings and our and our needs are met like our two psws Mr patillo and Miss Ortiz who constantly make themselves available to us in case we need someone to talk to or a safe space we also have our college counselor Mr Jimenez who guides us and provides advice for us on how we can get to college and which path we should take we also have Miss Valdez who encourages students to um get to school on time and by holding weekly attendance challenges and providing the winners with trophies and rewards um a robot we
027have five academies and I think I'm really lucky to have um my own academic counselor for the Academy I'm in just like any of my classmates who may be part of the other academies like CSA swcd the BAM Academy and the film television magnet as well as other support staff who jump at the opportunity to help us and with our different needs um additionally we also have people who support student-centered activities that allow students to develop critical leadership skills um and support our ideas of how to create a culture of care for robot students so that we have the support we need to become successful citizens outside of the classroom like our ASB advisor misspelled and our school climate Advocate Miss Cynthia um we also receive funding in support of student engagement activities like the
028homecoming dance and school spirit days and winter movie night these activities um allow us to spend time with friends in an environment where we feel safe and meet other people lastly we also enlist the help of arc our after school program staff to support um school-wide positive behavior intervention and support as their sort of action step by keeping students involved in sports or hobby related activities out of the streets so um there are many other ways right where we align our budget um you know beyond joy and wellness academic inter academic achievement we also look at investing in our staff I think overall when you look at Roybal um you know you can give us all the give a school all the money in the world but if they don't take that money and really
029use it with intention and investing in staff investing in our students investing in our parents investing in in additional teachers because we do need class size reduction um we wouldn't see the success you know I know I'm I'm the school leader there but honestly my work is made a lot easier because of the team that I work with everyone has taken on this Collective purpose our mission our vision and we can consistently come together okay we need a shift in this direction or this isn't working or we need to make you know we need to add this to the plan um it hasn't been easy work especially in the last couple of years um which is why when when we won that award we we knew that that for us that was that was a
030long time coming because we have committed staff we have committed ourselves to the success of our students um and we definitely uh will continue to take whatever resources are given to us and multiply those for the benefit of our students and again um we do thank you for the opportunity to present um if you have any questions where we're open to answering any of those but please continue funding our climate coach Advocate uh please continue funding our our nurses all of that allows us to be able to be in the classroom thank you thank you all and yes Round of Applause for our team and I know we already have some questions I do um so appreciate you being here and great to hear the the diverse perspectives and maybe I know some of you
031were able to introduce yourselves when speaking but maybe before we get to board questions let everyone just say quick hello and who you are and so we can thank you for joining us hi my name is Miss Cynthia and I'm the school climate Advocate at Roybal my position is to bring a positive School culture and to make sure students feel welcome to create a safe environment and to help build community between our students our staff um the school does not fund me um it does not find my position but the district does my position plays a big role in the joy and wellness pillar um my position I focus a lot on the students and their school-wide activities we do activities throughout lunch time after school and on weekends I work very closely with our
032ASB um I sorry through through weekly newsletters I also focus on making sure our students stay engaged at all times with what's going on in our campus on our school-wide events and not only on that but what's going on outside our community I also um uh uh sorry I make sure that our students are always engaged and that they stay up to date our student leaders make sure that they all are students I make sure that they continue to be leaders that they know what a leader is um that they stay engaged and to open up to their problems our students know that I am here to support them at all times and to help them at all times thank you thank you good morning everybody uh Antonio Guzman I am leading the effort of
033coach of care assistant principal at this school okay great so I think that was everyone okay perfect thank you again so I thought Mr smerlson maybe with her first question I have two first of all do you have a parent rep at your school and how many hours are they one of them is six hours with Europe so because of our need for parent engagement we fund it too this year excellent last year I concur that's excellent excellent excellent uh next question um your continuation school connection is Newmark what is your relationship with Newmarket how do you work with Newmarket as far as students coming and going and making up credits and going back sometimes they want to just stay with you sometimes they want to go back Numark so how what's your relationship there
034was a time where we had a lot of students going to Newmark um we don't have that happening right now I think part of that and I and I want to say this is you know going back to 2017 is uh back back at that time our admin team at that time instituted um very direct support one-to-one support Adam and working with students to make sure they graduated um and so we've continued that practice um and last year you know Ms Monica Garcia who's our board member can tell you we had 100 graduation Although our three percent that were in um our alternate curriculum program did not count towards that 100 we push and we meet we we meet with our team and that's going to be an effort led by it is being led
035by Ms Mendez this year in terms of identifying those students to keep them from from leaving we did have one student last year who who left as a 10th grader and came back to graduate on stage with us and so they do come back wanting to reintegrate once they've met the requirements but we did have one that left when she was in 10th Grade and came back last year as a senior yeah I wasn't trying to say that uh oh no no I know situation schools don't have their rightful place and I work with mine in the valley all the time they're very helpful kids go back and forth they make up credits and it's interesting that some kids um tell me they want to graduate from their continuation school they have that connection with
036them and others say they want to go back to their host School their main school and do that but I'm glad that you have a relationship yeah we've made every effort to try to graduate our students and I think part of that going back to what Mr de process with the grading conversations again five years ago I I learned you know the need for us to really sit down and engage in those great conversations with teachers and begin to ask those very direct questions um and so I think that then led us to the next step is what support do they need to make sure that we're actually our grading practices are aligned right to what our our mission is as a school our vision um and so since then even our a through G
037rate has gone up over 20 um and so we we look at all of that as a result of the fact that we push ourselves and we push our team to you know shift practices if we're going to shift results we're going to have to shift practices so the practice of sending kids to continuation school has diminished because of what we're doing to hold on to them at Royal thank you thank you Mr Schmelson Mr uh Dr McKenna thank you first of all I appreciate you coming I'm always fascinated about your reports and other schools that come I need to ask some direct questions I want to go to the page that says Where We Are instructional focus and you have data on graduation rate attendance rate English proficiency rate English reclassification rate mathematics proficiency
038rate advanced placement index rate you can put that slide back up there so everybody can see what we're talking about it's in the first part of your presentation about maybe the third or fourth but to have it we'll make sure we have someone come help with that I have a hard copy here but I wanted to reference it I don't understand any clarification about the numbers that are in there's a big number printed is where we are the pillars in the first part maybe about third or fourth slide kidding is where we are plenty of data Eric there we go there you go help me with the first one and then everyone upper left hand corner 97 graduation rate 95 of the little number below foreign the previous year so the lower left hand side
039is the previous year previous year okay good to know now you have your English proficiency rate 43 percent the previous year was 36 so you've increased English proficiency mathematics proficiency rate seemed like it went down yes from 18 to 16 yes attendance rate tell me about that last year but it's 38 now yeah so the 65 uh was uh the year that we came back from pandemic I'm sorry the pre when we were at home the 65 proficient and then the 38 was when we last year when we came back um in the last school year so that's the proficiency uh rate 65 represents when we were at home 96 or better the 65 here yes when we were at home 65 percent uh at 90 65 of our students were attending school at 96
040or better rate last year with uh with covid when we came back we were at 38 attending at 96 in person still confused he said last year when we came back we didn't come back last year we came back this year well that last school year last school year when we were assumed in person 2021 2020 excuse me it's not back in class I'm still confused is it what what is 65 mean and then 38 so 65 of our students were at 96 or better attendance rate uh while we were at in the at home during distance learning filming zooming then the following year which was last school year um we were at 38 percent we're at 95 attendance rate not proficiency I'm talking about attendance now right so 96 being the the rate 30
04138 of our students were at that rate we're at the attendance rate of 96.95 okay um English reclassification rate increase from 10 to 36 percent correct advanced placement rate went from three to four to seven small increase appreciate that now I want to ask a question about you put up there some of concerns and one was uh advisory period how long has the school had an advisory period as long as I've been there and I started there in 2014 did a daily period no twice a week price Mondays and Fridays Mondays and Fridays and it is what time of the day is the advisory period So currently it's right before lunchtime middle of the day last year in the years previous to that was at 8 30 in the morning is the advisory teacher assigned
042randomly or they're assigned based upon something about the students at The Advisory period composed of 10th graders or a mixed group of students are just a previous class and you now have graduate people grade level by small learning community so if you belong to let's say the magnet you will be in an advisory class with magnet students of your same grade level The Only Exception is our 11th graders our 11th graders are in what we call an aspect advisory and so they are all Math teachers and because of our math rate we need that additional support that additional time advisory teachers stay with the students beyond that one semester that they're assigned as much as possible throughout those four years with that exception of that 11 that 11th grade um and so what we're what
043we're finding is because we're pulling out in the 11th grade those 11th grade those 10th grade and 12th grade teachers have to shift so our senior teachers what we did this past year was assign senior teachers who were language teachers so that they can help our students with um the 11th grade students still have an advisory period they do with the math teacher though and so one day of the week is dedicated to advisory within their SLC for that grade level and another day of the week is dedicated to S back s back intervention as back support do you have a dedicated college counselor we do we actually funded two this year because of student request but we only have one in place right now College counselors access all four grade levels yes good to
044know along with our academic counselors as an academic counselor stay with the students for four years yes so like that as we clarine said we have uh counselors per SLC as well so we were able to fund two additional academic counselors so an academic Council who starts with the cohort of ninth graders in their counseling cohort no by SLC so by small school so we have four small schools and a magnet so each counselor is assigned one of the small schools back up again a ninth grade student is assigned to a counselor when they get to the ninth grade does that Council have only ninth graders does that counselor have a mixture of students a mixture of that same Academy that they belong to the same cohort that they belong to does that ninth grade
045students stay with that counselor yes for four years yes all right trying to see how you how you assign the students to the counselors and how do they build that relationship over a period of time because my experiences and my preferences are that I won't give you my preferences do anything about just expressing that the advisory period also has the time to the council I believe that somebody on that campus or to be so tired to a student that for the whole four years somebody knows that student for four years that they don't pass them on to somebody else and lose track of them because they may know more about that student than anybody else does and that's a good resource for the other staff members to tie into The Advisory period Captain every every
046day for the every year that advisory period teacher might know more about their students than the counselor does and making sure that they know how to make communication contacts because for correct phone numbers correct email address is very important to reach out to the parents because sometimes the students don't want their parents as involved in their lives because they're not they're grown right in their mind and they're teenagers and so they say mom you don't have to come with Grandma you don't have to come up like you did when I was in third grade but that's when the grandma should come up because when you become teenagers they're not the same as third graders and they can be uh they can be susceptible to some things that they get into and before you know it
047they're behind and then I have to pay attention that's my suggestion street but no and I and I agree and that's why we funded two-parent reps because we do need our you're right we do need our parents there this is not the time to let go at high school I think that's what happens uh often is this is why for us our parent reps are a major resource they're they're outreaching to parents constantly because we do see that we do see that they let go at that age thank you thank you good questions thanks Dr McKenna uh Mr Ortiz Franklin thanks my question is also on this slide and I just want to appreciate you know the culture of care the focus on Equity um College trips like that joy and wellness is really coming
048through from your school and this gap between graduation rates and math proficiency is a common story across our district that I think we're really struggling with and I heard you say that you got a new curriculum this year so I was curious if you use your budget in any way you know to change your curriculum or your PD um and really like what do you need from the district to help with this because it is heartbreaking when we graduate nearly 100 of our kids but less than 20 percent of them are on grade level in mathematics in a world that is increasingly requiring great problem solving skills so sort of what have you done with your budget around math um and how can we be more helpful so we instituted something at Roybal call release
049time right now because of what we're seeing and not just with math I think across the board in general uh when you look at even our English proficiency rate which was higher pre-pandemic uh we we do see that our teachers need that important not just because we had got new curriculum we are implementing IM curriculum at Roybal this is our second year in implementation um and because of that we've even been more intentional in giving the teachers planning time so all last year uh this year teachers are getting uh planning time uh which is what they're asking for we just need more time um and so we're giving them the time to work as a team to work in grade level uh like teams to be able to even like yesterday we've talked about backwards
050planning with writing our math team is looking at the IM curriculum and really looking at chunking that learning and ensuring that we implement the different strategies in place because if our students are going to develop an appreciation for math they need those strategies embedded very intentionally they need that additional support so obviously in addition to tutoring and so forth our teachers are getting a lot more time with planning just very strategic around planning and bringing our teams together to see what it is that they need last year our team spend a lot of time visiting in the math classes because it was new curriculum and we were able to identify this is what our teachers are struggling with and bringing our teachers Mr deposit was a math teacher last year uh with our with our
051team and so there was uh weekly meetings that the math department held outside of our regular scheduled PD um and that was funded because of the the additional budgets that came in funding that came in great what's your experience been with them Mastery learning and Grading or Equitable grading instruction um for us it's been a I I want to say it's been a positive experience that we were able to implement mastery-based learning and Grading prior pre-pandemic so when the district released the the memo for us it's like oh we've been doing this we've been we we have been engaging in conversations with admin before a student bills we have been looking at our fail rates we have been engaging in those conversations and looking at role books um I've trained our counselors in knowing how
052to open up a role book when they meet with the student and being able to look at the assignments themselves because some of our counselors did not know how to go in and do a Gradebook analysis uh so we had already done all that work prior to the pandemic so when the pandemic happened and we started seeing this this you know High fail rate across the district with the issues with grades we were already uh we had already started the work around conversation so our teachers know that if we're going to see a lot of students there's going to need to be a shift and so our our role as as school leaders is come in have that conversation what is the resource that is needed do we need to bring in our parent rip
053what is our counselor going to do with this one student that the teacher might identify needs extra support or what is our PSA going to do with the one student that isn't showing up to class and this is the reason why they're they're fading so all the different elements at play we were already having those conversations so come in come this new grading memo it became easier for us to you know align our practices because we were already in that headed in that direction so it hasn't been as difficult I think as other schools because you know we started looking at having great conversations back in 2017. that's great and like I mentioned in a sort of you know ping Mr selfie on this on behalf of the superintendent's team um this this is a
054real need for us across the district really um we would expect to see uh test scores and and grades kind of matching more closely right like once we get to full implementation of Mastery based learning and Grading and we know it's a process for our adults as well um but when we see big gaps between a grade like 100 you know getting their a through G I guess it's D or better and so we also have to think is Mastery C or better is it what is it um and then the 16 of students this is just an example because I think Roy Bell is experiencing what a lot of our schools are experiencing thing across the curriculum but I am particularly concerned about mathematics because it has been a bigger area of Need for
055us so I wonder you know what the team will think about in terms of your analysis of grade books and assessment scores and using a solid curriculum like I am and the interim assessments that come with that just really how we can use the sort of cycles of learning to make our system better um getting better for kids so that they are really prepared for college particularly as it relates to mathematics so not to pick on Roybal but I think you're a prime example this is what we're all sort of struggling with right now but it comes down to being intentional also as a leader like asking the right questions in terms of what have we done for this child right you have this child in front of you that is failing or getting a
056d because to us a d is included in that rate for us because we know that that's not a college you know grade we ask what have we done for this kid what is it that this child needs we pull up the child when we when we meet with the teacher it's a conversation we pull up the different students that are struggling and we see what might be at play what what is it that that student might need and so either I call on a counselor I call on the PSA or PSW or just something as simple as hey having the teacher try a different strategy right or seeing what are the strategies that we have tried with that student and one last quick question um just for uh to help us understand you mentioned
057a budget adjustment can you share an example of what that might look like what you did fund and that what you switched it to just so people can get a sense of that so we initially funded thirty thousand dollars for College field trips when we sent in our request for funding for a trip to San Diego um and just to back up a little bit our every one of our grade levels goes on a college trip last year our 10th graders went to Santa Barbara our 11th graders went to Riverside seniors go to San Diego um and so when we made our uh when we created our budget last year we had something in mind based on what we had spent that year uh this past year this year alone just when we got the
058the proposal from the bus company it came out to close with ten thousand dollars and that's just for one grade level to go down to San Diego so we I had to move more money into field trips um and now that we're you know we're fully you know back in and just really trying to you know recuperate you know the as much time as we lost with our kids being out there in in doing activities we are funding more field trips even more and so we you'll see even if you log on to our field trip we have about just for our school now we may be having them the next two weeks about four or five more field trips planned okay we love field trips especially to colleges so thanks for modeling reference great
059thank you and before Miss Goldberg goes I know Mr Associated just wanted to jump in to respond yeah and I think when I'm one of those is where you are looking at just overall costs and how we schedule some of our transportation um it's part of the kind of ongoing work when we're looking at just overall Transportation availability in the district one question that I had and it's in the presentation around adjustments based off of what the data is telling you when it comes to instructional strategies how are how are you measuring impact of strategy right so when you make that adjustment or do a kind of follow-up on a particular strategy what do you have in place to make a determinant on impact like a do you have evidence-based tools that kind of you
060outline for your staff do you all kind of collectively kind of test or kind of Rapid prototype strategies and then select which one's the best one just wondering how you're approaching that so um we have instructional Retreats programmed into our calendar already at the beginning of the year when admin come together and sit down and our teams come together and sit down we look at what what is the need what are we seeing what are the trends um and so one thing that we did at our instructional Retreat about a month ago when we met in September with our entire teaching team is we took a step back we have 20 new teachers on our campus and so we really needed to take a step back and really look at standards standard grade level standard
061space instruction but we did it through the lens of teacher Clarity the teacher Clarity Playbook so our teacher were able to complete we we planned on module one module two really looking at what is the objective for your lesson what is it that you're you know doing with with uh going to achieve for this particularly particular unit um and we took our teachers back to square one let's look at let's look at our standards 20 brand new teachers but then the other thing we looked at as well was scl and our kids need that supports us we're visiting classes we're seeing incidents of our students using inappropriate language and that's not just that Roy well that's across the board so how do we as a school take that responsibility so our instructional Retreat focused on
062two items teacher Clarity and uh scl um and so we took our teachers all of them even veteran teachers through that PD went back and then implemented lessons everyone drafted a lesson and we go in and observe the implementation of that lesson we came back to the drawing board about a week and a half or two later uh talking about Kagan and Kagan strategy did a survey teachers wanted Kagan strategy we uh training we brought in a vendor again another need for for an adjustment because they were finding okay we've got all of this that we want to do but we really need to engage our teachers we have what we call was constructional toolbox but we wanted to add more to our toolbox and so that way our teachers have a lot of different
063strategies to pick from so that's what we do we go in we assess we look at what we look at the trends and then we with our iot team we determine what is it that our teachers need even uh two weeks ago we looked at our school-wide PD and we shifted we we cancel what we had planned and focused on on on a priority that was identified by our teachers so again it's about just being responsive to to our staff needs and our student needs thank you Ms Goldberg yes thank you first of all thank you for your excellent presentations I appreciate hearing from all of you um I'm taking a look at your Ela Improvement of about seven points between last year and this year but I'm wondering what percent of the 57 percent
064that are not at Mastery or at least at basic uh how many of that 57 are far below basic as opposed to below basic so um we're looking at about 25 of our students in the Far Far Below basic um I've had some personal experience uh teaching in a high school in Compton where we had a much higher percentage we had about 55 percent far below basic but we found that it is not easy to move far below basic like it is below basic are you doing anything in particular to look at the Far Below basic students and if so what are you doing I don't want to I don't want to say we're doing something very specific for Far Below basic but we are looking at those students in terms of what we call
065defend time not just in English though in math as well um and also looking at very specific time in the classroom for what we also call lpac because some of those students are our El Learners as well so we have elpac warm-ups we have S back warm-ups uh depending on the subject and and the grade level um the teachers are unpacking lpac warm-ups or S back warm-ups in the classroom directly and then also looking at writing as a whole so writing across the curriculum yesterday we again going back to the adjustments and the shifts we started writing across the curriculum uh in 2017 and looking just specifically at Jing Shafer um fast forward to now our teachers have gotten used to using you know structure releasing as needed but we need to go more and
066we need to do more um and so yesterday we came together again with the support of our cost team and run up ran a PD with our leader leadership team along with downtown Magnet High School instructional coach just on writing because literacy is taught at all at all levels at all content levels one of the things that we've identified as a particular problem for the Far Below basic is is that every book that they are given they cannot read so they are not reading at all all day or all night or at home or anywhere and that's why the reading doesn't get better because the most important element of improving reading is to read more is there something that you're looking at uh to increase the number of materials that are available in academic courses
067like history like science that are written at a lower reading level so that students have something to read I don't want to say that it's at a lower uh reading level but it is uh we focus a lot on relevancy we focus a lot on on making intentional connections between you know bringing in curriculum and content that our students can connect with um and being very matter of fact about that with our with our staff um and I we don't get any pushback when it comes to that because our staff know that our students are going to be a lot more engaged when we put something in front of them that they can connect with so depending on on what we're Department we're talking about um every one of our teachers has the autonomy and
068they develop they've got in time before the year started to develop their Curriculum maps and we do embed ethnic studies tenants within every one of our curriculum that may suggest that they are learning a lot but it is not reading and if they learn a lot without having to read there's not much push to need to learn to read I mean I did this for 17 years I'm not talking from anything but experience so I would just urge you to do both definitely to also find materials that they can read even though the content won't be as good because when you lower the reading level you get much less content but if they can read every day yes in their content courses because they have something that's within their realm to read you're going to
069both get the advantage of them ruining all of this because of how you're identifying a way to connect them to the curriculum that's fabulous so they're learning but they're not learning to read yeah and yesterday's PD we did mention literacy as a whole reading not just reading speaking listening as well because those are all measured right in our different assessments um and so we know that our focus on writing is not just exclusively on writing it is paired up with a reading uh it's paired up with listening it's paired up with speaking so we you know address the different modalities throughout not just uh the focus on on writing but that was something that was brought up yesterday in terms of our our literacy across campus it's things that our district has gotten infinitely better
070at moving the below basic up what we have not really yet attacked is the far more difficult problem of the Far Below basic if they get through middle school and get into high school still being far below basic they tend not to move and that's a real problem because uh I I do believe that if you cannot be at least functionally literate you're going to be a victim pretty much all your rest of your life so that's just something I want to keep raising that I'm thrilled to see your scores going up but if I were a betting person I would bet it was the below basic moving up not the Far Below basic and that's why I keep raising it because that's a much tougher problem and they have to have something they can
071read and in most of our high schools there is not a single book that they can read so they don't read all day they don't read all night they don't ever read anything you know uh and that that means they don't improve in their reading so anyway I'm a broken record on this I know but I feel very strongly about it because I think if we don't do that we're sending kids who are graduating but not ready for the world thank you thank you Miss Goldberg good night that is you know seems more of a curricular intervention than maybe a budgetary one but they're intertwined and so I think this could be right for future discussions and I know the superintendent wants to chime in very quickly so just very uh briefly number one uh
072commendations uh to to the great work that's taking place at Roybal I've been to this school probably uh more often than uh than most schools and it's uh significant to me that's where I was first announced to this community so always great to see you uh to uh board member Goldberg's comment I wholeheartedly agree we've discussed this matter and this is a phenomenon not only here at Los Angeles Unified but across the country one further exacerbated by the pandemic what we have noticed with the release of the nape long-term Trend data is that the 10th and 20th percentile meaning these are the lowest performance in reading and also method management particularly reading their distance from standard so to speak uh continues to grow further exacerbated by the pandemic so the solution were in aggressive conversations
073right now is that particularly for those uh very low performers in Reading at the secondary level particularly at the high school level teachers at the high school level are not necessarily trained nor are there necessarily classes to address their needs your writer can move the intermediate performer or the low performer but the extremely low performer almost needs the intervention of a reading specialist who is trained on Elementary education to provide that needed support and that's something we are currently evaluating a very specific course set of interventions for secondary students particularly high school students to boost their performance but again there is a real crisis Across America and that crisis is manifested here in Los Angeles Unified as well specific to the 10th and the 25th percentile that's where the the Lion's Share of loss of
074proficiency across the country has taken place thank you superintendent Miss Garcia anything that I did so I appreciate the word the so many things so superintendent I just want to raise the uh language choice of calling out a crisis and I will challenge us to think about this crisis has existed particularly in this neighborhood way before the pandemic right so I want to just talk about Revolution I want to talk about how these children 20 years ago only had one school in the neighborhood and there were 5 500 kids going to a school built for a 1 500 kids a hundred years ago I think Belmont is a 1923 school that's coming up on a hundred thousand so choices this organization made very much tried to deal with a crisis as best as we could
075but it wasn't until the vision of let's build out the space So today we're hearing from a school God bless Congressman Ed Roybal who taught us to persevere that today in four years of challenge times they're having more kids come than the year before right and what I so appreciate about this presentation you told us about the strengths we could have had a conversation of a lot of excuses and challenge that's not what I heard I heard leadership owning the challenge to thrive and so here is where I am uh most interested in the conversation I want to see the Delta close on proficiency and graduation but remember board members in in 2008 when this District created the report card Belmont High School pre-a through G was graduating 24 of its kids right so when
076we move forward and sure the skill building the Gap is great we're all challenged by does that diploma that La unified offers people and in California it's still a d is a passing grade they didn't change it we thought they would but here's the thing the LAUSD diploma is more rigorous than the state of Californians right so I I want to lift the authentic voice of how do we help our students these 1100 that are coming here and superintendent Carvalho my challenge is they're doing some things to accelerate quicker than the district and so when I think about we must learn from Roybal and what I heard in the budget piece is you know honest conversation about where we are where we want to go and then the enrollment of the adults into that Vision
077I'm so curious where our student speaker went to middle school can you share um so before that I was homeschooled because of the pandemic but I finished eighth grade in Virtual you and and what what elementary school did you go to that uh I didn't go to LAUSD for elementary okay so we recruited somebody awesome but there is choice in this neighborhood and I think the personalization of the service there's so much joy at Roybal if you board members uh they have one of the most active social media and that it's a lie and it talks about kids about that possibility and it sounds like every time I go on the campus I hear about the challenge but from the adults in our you know because we're working to find Solutions but as the district
078moves towards the next version of itself we need to find a way to support on the ground adjustments that are dealing with what kids need and district-wide desires like instead of mandating a field trip they're just doing the field trip right but he but you said board members I want you to fund the student climate uh coach but you didn't say give me the money and would would you fund the coach I mean here's the challenge right if you got more money would you fund that position or how do you so the balancing to support I wanted actually Miss Cruz for you to comment on the difference from doing the Mandate from the district which I see the uh you've already Incorporated the Strategic plan into your work so there's alignment but how do you
079deal with mandates from your cos your local District your central office to building something on the ground that lives and is about your school thank you I think one of the things that I know is a big part of me is is having courage and advocating for our students not just during the day but beyond the school day um and so when things come down I do assess is this something that is going to impact us uh you know in a way where it will derail my team or give my staff something else to do or is this something that's going to benefit us and I and I do and I will push back when I have to when I have um and and that's where the culture of care came in um you know
080because that was something we it needed to come from Roybal and it we needed to you know push what that would look like on our campus um and so when when things come down I I do look at okay is this something that fits and I've been very fortunate enough to be able to get that support when I do hey this is what we're doing this might not work at this moment but we you know we'll look at it down the road and if I can take on some of the work without it hitting my my teachers I do thank you Mr chair I have one more question so tell us about uh working to not have a carryover and spend all the dollars that these kids deserve on them so we had it we
081had a lot of carryover last year there were uh there was one position that we were not able to fill last year and we actually have that to happen now so we had a closer position um we use it funding to provide PD uh additional you know what we said field trips uh yesterday we pulled all of our staff for a retreat that was not planned you know back in June when we did our calendar for the year again but we saw where the need is at and and we pushed for that so being responsive being responsive to what's coming you know our way in terms of what we're seeing even in the community we saw you know you know the death of a student not too long ago and I get on the PA
082system and I address my students directly you know it means I have to bring in my climate coach for an extra couple hours for us to work on a campaign or to work on you know plan then we do that it's about being responsive to our students needs go titans well thank you to my colleagues I have questions but in the interest of time maybe we'll take it offline um I really appreciate the presentation thank you all for being here and the helpful discussion I'll say kind of to segue us in our next presentation it's great that for five years in a row you've been above Norm it also makes me think we need to rethink our projections around norming if consistently you're beating them and so as we think about this next presentation but
083that's great and a testament to your leadership collectively so thank you all so much for joining us enjoy the rest of the school day yeah um and uh and with that uh we are going to go into our 2022-23 Norm day enrollment presentation and conversation um it's uh an oddity maybe of the district that this is a budgetary thing I mean I know it's aligned with positions but our CFO Mr Hart is um going to be leaving this presentation in conversation um and I know we've already heard the superintendent opine and a few board meetings around better practices going forward and just the um anomalous nature of our norming system versus other major districts so do you want to say a few words okay superintendent uh just very briefly thank you very much um David
084we'll cover the details and and where we stand today but suffice it to say as I've uh said a number of times as you mentioned um there is a better way a better process while recognizing enrollment shifts and the direct and indirect consequences on funding notwithstanding those issues there is a better way of uh planning for the scheduling of schools that does not result in a five to six week after the beginning of the school year disruption to the school environment and uh the only thing I will say at this point is number one we are deliberately delaying deliberately delaying the announcements for today you'll hear in Roman shifts Norm day data specifically ecas projections versus true enrollment on Norm day but you will not hear the direct implications on Staffing specific to schools because
085we are attempting to mitigate those to the extent possible this year particularly uh for those most impacted schools who happen to be some of the most fragile economically fragile and performance fragile schools in the district but the celebration here today is that you'd have to go back a full decade to match a percent decline in true enrollment in the district um equal to what we experienced this year we were embracing ourselves for a 4.1 decline if not higher that was what was forecasted and the true enrollment on Norm day came in at less than 50 percent of that at 1.9 percent so the corollary here we're still declining but not as quickly as was anticipated and it seems that for the first time in a decade there is at least at this point the reversal
086of a long-term trend of aggressive enrollment to climate the climate in uh declining in in this District so that's reason for celebration but the work continues so with that said uh David Hart and actually not not to interrupt but I just need to know or just need the public to know that today is David Hart's birthday so I'm going to ask my colleagues to join me in a very awkward rendition of happy birthday to you yeah as I said when you said we do need more art and music in school but uh yes your birthday can only get better from here Mr Hart so after you all right well that was unexpected but very appreciative thank you thank you um let's just uh do we have someone on the slides here or is that going
087to be me let's begin with the headline news and and uh perhaps being redundant to what the superintendent offered uh the good news is that we beat our projections and let me before jumping into the detail of this also throw some uh thanks to our partners Chief strategy office in multiple units within that group uh led by Veronica arguin as well as itd we can't pull this together without that contribution and to Sentiments that if you will Bridge from the last presentation to this uh we're we're speaking at a macro level there is a lot of nuance that occurs by region by grade by school we have to disaggregate this data to ensure that the decisions we would recommend that the board endorse evidence the rigor that is necessary for us to make sound judgment
088that would in fact be uh stand up as being prudent so with that said here as you can see in this forecast comparing the forecast to where we are we that middle bar in the bottom grouping the 412 000 students compared to 422 that is uh good news those 9 700 students is an improvement against our forecast it is worth noting the column that is above the 9700 and seeing where it is that you uh are drawn to by by the variants if you will a phrase that we have spoken to before of budget to actual you see in the uh Elementary School levels we are incurring uh on average over a thousand student growth that for declining enrollment District should be thought of as a positive you see in the ninth grade one of
089the transition years that occurs from eighth to ninth grade where you will often see a decline in enrollment and increase against our projection of almost 2 000 students it's worth noting that we're perhaps there was the largest Miss was in the 12th grade these are the kinds of things that we need to disaggregate because when you look at a high school you whereas in elementary school you're going grade by grade with some specificity when you're doing it at a high school because of how grades are more a function of hours attained we look at it in total and in total that is across the grades 9 through 12 about a 16 almost 1700 student growth and we are pleased by that but the headline here is that overall we beat our forecast the news uh
090that good news needs to be balanced by the comment also made by the superintendent and this is a chart where you need to do a little bit of an eye dance on the left is the forecast enrollment against where we ended uh last year for sacred discussion 430 000 students was our enrollment at this time last year we had forecast a decline of almost 18 000 students to take us to a total of 412. that was the expectation uh when superintendent Carvalho was speaking to a decline of 4.1 percent he is citing that number that is on the uh of the left chart the rightmost column the third line from the bottom that that news uh is tempered by what you're seeing on the right side so if you'll just allow your eyes to stay
091on that total TK line and you go across you see that 430 number I think is the count from last year to where we are now of rounding 422 000 students we improved uh against our forecast and only had a loss then of 1.9 percent welcome news certainly and when you look at it in the context of let me get the page to flip here if I can get the page to flip let's go the right way this needs to be taken in the context of what has occurred over the last number of years as was noted by the superintendent you have to go back to 2013-14 to see a rate of decline that is consistent with what we are witnessing at this moment in time the two rightmost bars are the same year to
092be clear it is our forecast versus the actual numbers so we forecast the 4.1 percent you may recall that from the prior page the superintendent's comments as opposed to the 1.9 percent here as you can see you have to go back to 2013-14 to see a decline of 1.9 percent for context let me remind you that in the spring of uh the school year 1920 so spring of 20. ahead of that thing we call the pandemic we were adjusting our forecast we had for a number of years been forecasting the decline of three percent we change that to be 2.7 we're thought oh wow we're being aggressive now um little did we know that we would exceed our forecast of 2.7 percent when we got into the depth of the perception excuse me of our
093decline of 5.8 percent so what we what do we take from this you know the trend as the phrase goes the trend is your friend your friend until it isn't uh now we have to disaggregate the data and start to take us back a couple slides and start to look into that grade by grade experience school by school region by region Coast by coast and start to do the work to better understand where are our enrollment trends not just in a neighborhood but across grade levels how is it affecting into families and of course that then has implications for how it how it is we show Prudence in terms of managing for the budget budgetary consequences so uh the takeaways enrollment higher than projected but still declining physician impacts are under review we have schools
094that did see enrollment growth we had schools that did not within schools that may have been a overall decline or an overall increase you had grade levels that moved in different directions one from another unfortunately uh good news bad news is kids don't come in bundles a uniform per grade level per school and so it requires a fair amount of finance and to the comments that have been made here previously and today we are in a process of seeking to evidence a continuous Improvement cycle and how is it we might reconcile and hold those who are most fragile for any number of reasons harmless as we seek to evidence Prudence in the allocation of resources let me be clear on this this isn't just to say it's a blank check for those who have need
095or is it to be punitive to those who are perhaps enjoying a change in enrollment but we we do know is that there is not adequate resource for all those needs that we would identify and so it is incumbent upon us to show that it is uh with some Precision that we make adjustments and when it is we make adjustments and how it is we make adjustments so at this point in time we are suspending doing anything of a blanket approach as might have been the case in the past and as the last bullet here speaks to we are prioritizing those with greatest need to ensure that the impacts of any adjustments are felt if at all in the most modest of ways it is also the case that the numbers that we showed you
096believe those numbers to be um let's figure out what's going on here that was just the music signifying we're ready for questions so almost almost yeah almost let's see hold on the next slide uh I'll I'll speak to it and um and jump to the questions uh we have three other dates that matter uh let's be uh also clear on on what Norm day is it is it is of our doing it is not us being in response to a mandate from a County Office of Education it has nothing to do with the Department of Education what it does have to do with is how it is we allocate our resources in the most Equitable way manner possible it is that approach that we are speaking of that we will modify the official dates that
097you need to be mindful of are the uh here the October 5th seabeds the numbers that go into are what we refer to as the P1 and P2 those numbers are required those numbers will factor into our funding it is and particularly when we do the second interim which is the April 15th those are the numbers that will find their way into our budget we do not expect that they will be materially different than what we have seen to date but just be clear these numbers are for our internal resource allocations and should not be thought to represent our funding as it pertains to the state it is those numbers that will give relevance to our budget as we come forward certainly what you see in front of you I think is accurate it shows
098a certain amount of rigor the content is correct what we're working on in the weeks and months ahead is the context and we will be coming back to you with recommendations on how it is you might think about that when we get into the meat of budget discussions some of which we'll discuss will be kicked off by the subsequent presentation and with that we are now done thank you thank you um helpful and I know there are questions I see Ms Goldberg so we'll start there what do we think happened in the 12th grade you know I asked the question and when I asked the answer I got is uh um work needs to be done we don't have a great answer so so we don't know whether it's in a few neighborhoods or a
099little each across the entire system or something and fairness to those that I asked I have to be candid with you uh board member it was a week 10 days ago and at that time those answers weren't known the numbers were too fresh I know that we will be able to disaggregate that data in the month ahead I'm looking at the page that says enrollment forecasted versus decline and I'm seeing on the right hand the percentage of change that uh basically we were the most wrong like in first grade I picked one other I think it was uh first grade and something else I don't know probably 12th grade probably 12th Street uh yeah we thought that would grow and it actually declined that's right okay um so as you do a deeper analysis you're
100going to look at specific schools you're going to look at neighborhoods you're going to see whether this reflected for example as some of us believe in the Southeast that it reflects you can't find a place to rent that you can afford so people just left Los Angeles how are we going to try to figure out what elements I know birth rate in the county is down I know immigration into the county is still substantial but down and I know that people leaving Los Angeles to go somewhere where they can afford the rent is way up there are things we can do something about and there are things we can't we can't do much about the rents but we might be able to do something about the other things is that part of what your next
101steps are I think the short answer is yes okay what's a long answer board member uh as you and you and I have had the conversation to go back not just to 2013 but to 2000 2002 2003 at a point in time when the district had over 700 000 students we will not be going back to those totals anytime soon but what we are very intent on is understanding what is within if you will our control right our severe our spheres of influence and how it is we leverage uh our skills our talents uh our finances for that matter to ensure that we are a district of choice uh not just in the context when we talk about that for staff but for students and families so I think you'll see a very robust response
102a multi-dimensional response to not only stem the title of a declining enrollment which is I think evidenced here but we need to do the things that will buoy that and in the same way that our budget process requires us to have some finesse I think we'll have to have differentiated approaches based on the learnings we have associated with a school a feeder a coast a however it is disaggregated one of the things I hope you'll look at is is there a difference in seventh and 8th grade attendance uh staying in our our district in a KH School versus a school that is K-5 or six with a middle school some people have suggested that K-8 is a higher retention rate for seventh and eighth graders I don't know if that's true but it's a question
103I'd like to maybe have you guys explore because I think there are span schools which are very attractive and others that aren't actually uh and it'd be good I think for us to know a little bit more about which type of school not just neighborhoods and things like that maybe more conducive to keeping kids in our programs I would just uh say that as we get to the third part of this one of the things I'm going to actually suggest in the third part of this meeting is is that we hire a marketing firm to substantially let people know what they're missing when they're missing our schools um so that's just I think that's something we have long not done uh and it's something that everybody else seems to think that it's okay to do
104and I don't see any reason why we can't we have a lot of things going on in a lot of our schools that are the best kept secrets in America and I don't want them to be the kept best kept secrets in America anymore thank you very much thank you thank you um Superman has a quick comment and then we'll continue so a board member Goldberg a couple of elements number one I do think the conditions that have led us to uh where the data is today the difference between uh true enrollment versus forecast are driven yes in part by economic circumstances that transcend what this board can do so cost of housing cost of living inflation Etc but then there are also um we believe intuitively uh but without a doubt because this has
105been seen in other districts as well is internal conditions created by this board so there's increased confidence in a school district particularly as far as health conditions in our schools that have put parents and families in a position of selecting in also some degree of relaxation of protocols that has appealed to a sector of the community that have become disengaged I think the combination of that because this is where we are today to your second point and the last point I do believe in a power of marketing but um you cannot Market a defective product right and I think you're right there is growing consensus that we have good products we have good approaches we have good processes we have good schools we have great teachers we have great leadership and to the extent of
106the crescendo of their Improvement is known to the community then we can Market that the only uh friendly amendment I would say is having traveled the road of higher hiring a private sector marketing company versus making a significantly lower investment with a small team internal team of marketing thank you I don't care how you do it and then I'll stop talking because I just got what I wanted thank you seriously I really don't care how it gets done I just have felt very bad I've seen schools in my Board District that have things that nobody knows about that it's a secret it's a secret I went to a school where they're making hydrogen Motors I drank from the tailpipe nobody know I did I drank the water from the tailpipe nobody knows about that school
107it's a secret school you know and I don't I just think that there are parents everywhere who would love to have their kids in a school that's creating hydrogen motors for example so that's all I'm really saying and also I think it's it's important for us to talk about the fact that you can still put your address in and get a charter school instead of a district school in not many places but still several in my Board District so I think there's just some things we just have to pay more attention to and and I'm glad to hear that marketing is one of them thank you thank you um other Mr Ortiz Franklin sure thank you um this is exciting that we're not going down as uh for much as we had thought before but
108we're still going down and I think you know your team is constantly thinking about the long-term fiscal sustainability of the district as are many of us so appreciate that um a couple quick questions are continuation schools included in here we hear that their Norm day is in February so just curious how that fits into this when they have to different I'm getting the knotted yes they are okay okay so then I'd be curious to learn like what does their Norm Day in February then mean for them that's just the Staffing gets reallocated we'll get a response to um that's more complete okay perfect um and then we got a bit more of a breakdown yesterday which I was grateful to see him across the board districts and every individual school can we also get a
109like racial breakdown um where the students are growing or um reducing I think there there might be some more to the story too of like who's moving into La who's seeing you know La Unified Schools as the best options right now um maybe special education or English Learners I don't know if that's the next level or if this is usually where where it stops IT the grade level analysis will we get any other groups of student analysis we board member we have a shared perspective if you will I'm hoping that the disaggregation will give us the ability to slice and dice from uh any reasonable metric in a reasonable demographic so that we can to the earlier comment if you were going to have a successful marketing strategy we have to know the answers to
110those questions it will not be a one-size-fits-all across the board great yeah that would be helpful to know um and then just curious about the City of Angels and how that might have worked so for maybe some of the schools where their enrollment increased is any of that due to them being in Virtual Academy and then coming back to being in person certainly we will in this same if you will disaggregation and trying to understand where we saw growth against a projection where we might have or vice versa we're going to want to be able to sort of give credit where credit is due we want to be able to take things to scale if we saw that it worked conversely if the investment didn't bring what we'd hoped we we understand that we're going
111to need to tweak our approach to have more success in the future great things looks like annoying yes just right yes so there was a benefit to some schools as a result of the decrease in in enrollment in City of Angels but there was an internal redistribution of student enrollment from a school within the district to a lot of schools within the district right there was something else happening however because district-wide we didn't experience the decline that was expected so yes City of Angels um created a scenario where a lot of schools benefited from students returning back to their home school or their magnet school right uh but something else happened beyond that because that's an internal redistribution as opposed to a systemic continuing bleeding out of enrollment that appears to have at least slowed
112down considerably considerably by the way this is a phenomenon that um it's interesting uh that I've seen only in in one additional large Urban District in the country and that's actually Miami-Dade so Miami did in La is 10 hours outliers in a large Urban District perspective as far as stabilization of of enrollment in the aftermath of the pandemic hey who else um um and then oh I had one last question uh I noticed the magnet schools tended to stay the same and I'm assuming that's based on slots that they only had an approval or an amount um and so just curious is that an accurate read that a magnet school will have both a Max well they have a Max or do they have a minimum in terms of number of students for magnet schools
113I think Derek um how do you know the answer to that well so note the question we'll get you a more precise they're generally capped um there is no minimum um but generally there are there's a waiver process so if there is uh an ability to actually um accommodate student growth the school would submit that through kind of the magnet office and they'll make that adjustment okay yeah I think it's exciting to to think about you know what our schools are doing well and maybe this is more future presentations for those that did grow whether it's dual language magnet we have so many choices or to Ms Goldberg's point just the kinds of programs that are not advertised yet um so I'm really excited but we can learn from the data and really what we're
114going to implement so that we can bring kids from outside of the district back to LA unified I think when I was a kid we were over 700 000 kids in the district that tells you how old I am so I'll be excited to see you know where we can go from here it's it's uh it's good stuff thanks team yes birthday boy [Laughter] uh two to the board members questions and to um Mr Salcido's response part of what we want to understand on the magnets is is there in fact a waiting list and so is there are vacancies created is it just sort of um if you will suck that back up and then we'll want to know where those students coming from are they new students to the district or are we sort
115of feeding upon ourselves uh so here here are the questions and we will try to get um that much sharper in our response so we can answer that one thing I will note in this I want to play off of the comment the superintendent made if you look at the chart that's up it's worth noting that when you look at our K first second third grade that those uh enrollment numbers are on par with the high school numbers when you have a growing or declining enrollment District depending upon which you might be you'll typically see a much greater spread than what we're seeing here it's tough to say coming out of the pandemic with certainty but this would suggest to me in the absence of additional data which we will get from some of the
116additional analytics and the additional dates that we are going to be pulling uh enrollment data from but this would suggest that we are starting to find a place of equilibrium and so now that now the trick becomes how do we grow and I think we're very intent on ensuring that that is the case for all of the reasons spoken here the other piece to note from a standpoint of the finance would be remiss if I didn't speak to this while the enrollment numbers are positive we do not have the data yet and won't until in the second semester to speak to whether or not our attendance is in fact changing it was a couple of years back that we changed our budget practice to be from a 95 percent assumed attendance to 90 percent at
117this moment in time we have reason sort of anecdotally to believe that our attendance is up what is the exact uh level of attendance relative to enrollment remains a TBD and the budget implications for that are also then uh forthcoming so just so noted and that concludes uh thank you thank you um other questions Ms Garcia Dr McKenna um well from me uh first of all thank you for this I also know that there's more detailed analysis in terms of school by school numbers and I hope that we can release that to the public maybe throw it on open data soon I know also it would be interesting in particular to um look at virtual academies which I know are embedded in the numbers but actually just to see side by side um per grade
118uh I I know I'm at least curious about that um so you've alluded to or you've addressed or kind of pledged to address some of the anomalies that I was curious about 12th grade 10th grade which is up not just vis-a-vis projections but up just in aggregate I'm curious if that's because people are coming back with increased confidence like the superintendent was saying maybe they missed the first year of high school uh but now are are here so that's one uh eighth grade the drop seems to still be a bit of an outlier in terms of the size of the percentage change um it's 5.8 percent versus the others uh are significantly lower I'm curious if we have any initial thoughts on eighth grade I don't uh we're in the same camp that middle school
119is sort of the dip when you look at the elementary uh grades were were up and and solid in the 9th through 12th grade similar but we have that dip in Middle School I appreciate your question uh board member I'll offer anecdotally that Middle School dip is consistent with Urban school districts Across the Nation it is a Achilles heel for most school districts uh most PC way to put it the rambunctiousness of Youth tends to have parents seek other Alternatives at times and so we'll take your question and whether it's through open data or bi or subsequently we'll we'll come back with a refined answer yeah and as a former Middle School teacher and I overheard my colleague who's a middle school principal say the same thing I think we can attest to that I'm
120curious I also just want to Echo I think Ms Goldberg's question is a good one disaggregated by spanned schools would be really interesting because anecdotally I think we see that as a way of families coming back um yes Mr smells so um three questions or kind of two questions in a comment one is do we have access yet to Charter independent Charter enrollment because I know for years the two were working inversely but I'm understanding a little bit that they're now moving kind of concurrently in terms of Charters following similar pattern so I'm curious if we have that data for the independent Charters we authorize or when when we can see that data yes we do have the data and can get that for you and we are seeing that there is of the last
121handful of years there is a parallel uh in Roman expense or excuse me experience got it yeah um parallel experience as in Decline lines um my understanding is their decline you know and some of this is It's the CFO way if you will we're going to over State the expenses we're going to understate the revenues uh enrollment is one of those drivers it is the principal driver for both of those so we we need to sort of disaggregate to see if it was just bad numbers or if in fact they are uh substantively improving and that's as true for them as it is for us understood and I guess so one question that I'm hoping you whether superintendent can help elucidate is around early ad enrollment because you know the district um has announced with
122much fanfare and I think there are you know seven votes and plus a superintendent who's very supportive of our expansion and we talked at one point about thousands of new seats I think you know close to 20 000 in terms of expanded Universal transitional kindergarten and Pre-K and we definitely have an increase I think my back of the envelope is about 3000 between TK and Pre-K which is on slide three um not just again not just beating our forecast but just increase in the aggregate 26 000 2687 in TK and then 191 in pre-k but that's far short of the 19 000 that we were talking about so I'm just curious if someone can explain that what does that mean for this year what are we doing to get those students where are those numbers
123coming from why such a huge discrepancy a couple things to say one um uh I'm gonna sound like a broken record more to come secondly we are not as far in our implementation as we will be in the subsequent year and I mentioned that because we're lagging uh as a for instance San Diego schools when San Diego went through their onboarding their implementation they saw significant jumps in enrollment in each subsequent period we're expecting that we will see a similar growth exactly how to quantify that that's part of the work that's in front of us and so at this moment in time I don't know if the 19 000 is a legitimate number certainly a this moment in time it hasn't been seen I see the superintendent but one more one more comment on that
124we also have to understand these ratios of what is the feed you know at each subsequent grade level and coming out of the pandemic we knew that there would be parents that would hold students out until they got into a compulsory level of education so we've we we're still in this moment of trying to transition from that period in our operation to better understanding what it means for the forecast period superintendent so two quick points number one uh David is right we will see that bump but the original declaration regarding number of seats and the expansion was a multi-year goal and what we're seeing is year one which is a little bit over three thousand so we are progressing towards goal not necessarily slower than anticipated but there will be in my opinion consistent what's
125happened not only in San Diego but other places an exponential jump going to the second year why to board member Goldberg's uh earlier comment um we are very very good at building in public education very good at building something right and actually implementing it we're not very good at telling the story and you know the fifth dimension of Abraham Lincoln's Master leadership was paint the picture tell the story we don't paint a good picture we never tell a good story because it usually costs money it's not what we're trained to do and I think that will make a difference as we consume the rest of the months this school year going to the summer build really the marketing plan for Rapid expansion ftk and K going into next year we'll make a difference I'm so
126appreciative that you mentioned that because that's been one of my observations that we have this diversity in early Ed programs we have our early Ed centers we have state preschool we have Pals we have etk we have TK we have tkk splits we have magnet schools that don't yet have the TK programs despite some of this board's efforts to get us there and so from a parent you have all these programs you don't know what you're eligible for yes the compulsory piece Mr Hart comes into it and I know we're all disappointed that the governor vetoed the mandatory kindergarten bill that we sponsored but finding out where those families are I mean even even though these are talking about different age cohorts I mean there we can estimate roughly 20 000 more kindergartners next year
127there will not have been in pre-k program who are eligible in figuring out who those families are why they're not coming to our schools and I think it is some of this just not knowing they're there not knowing how to enroll um so I hope as as part of the Strategic plan implementation you can work on that um last point and then I know Mr schmerelson has a question I think just talking about the policy I appreciate superintendent the um the deliberative nature of holding right now in terms of the displacement that may result and definitely appreciate that going forward we're going to have better systems because of school stability but I just want to note that hearing from the schools there's concerns on both sides there's there's concerns obviously for schools that have that
128lost enrollment and the instability of losing those teachers there's also concern from schools that have increased enrollment and are being told they may not be able to grow positions either through the district or through their own School site dollars and I understand district-wide from an equity perspective with a limited pool of teachers why we would say to a school that's maybe lower need you can't purchase a teacher even if you have the funding because we actually need those bodies at a higher need School the other hand when we're talking about enrollment when we're losing families when we're seeing other options the idea that a school would say we have the money we have the resources we want a class size reduction teacher or we want another counselor and they're being told somewhat artificially we can't
129hire that's problematic so I know that's what the district's struggling with and we see it both ways but I just put that out there for your consideration because I think it's schools that are losing positions that are a little anxious but it's also schools that may not be able to grow positions that they feel they've earned or can at least support with discretionary dollars so a brief comment on that and I'm sure David could could add to it number one there's a good story being built here the further we analyze the data the more aware do we do we become over the fact that for the schools that lost enrollment a significant percentage of the positions that they would lose are currently being reflected as vacant positions which means there is no human displacement there
130are still some but there is a significant percentage of uh of those positions and by the way this is credit to our our leaders our school principals who anticipated that probably the enrollment would not materialize in some cases so they they sort of put a a freeze on hiring that person smart anticipatory leadership uh the other point you made is is is accurate um we are going through a very quick transitional period my Assurance to you is the principles of the schools that saw an increase in enrollment uh are and will have greater latitude in hiring those positions they're not going to be artificially held to a standard that's not aligned with their current enrollment position that's helpful both of those comments thank you um Mr Schmelson oh I have to speak in behalf of
131my middle school brothers and sister administrators so that is usually the most online my line group of people uh the middle school principals and assistant principals there's a reason that we are working at middle school and it's because we do love the kids we do know they are extremely in need of help all the time they're growing in elementary school you know they have usually one teacher and that teacher has them under control all day long at the elementary school they don't budge there are exceptions but when they come to middle school they think that they've come into a jail break where they're just going to go wild in middle school and it is not it is not like that it is not like that um what we need at Middle School of course is
132as Dr McKenna talks about lower class size man oh man that's where the kids have five or six different teachers they travel from class to class it's a new experience they feel this newfound freedom and they take advantage sometimes of this freedom and misbehave but let me tell you I worked at Virgil Middle School for 12 years and I was the person in charge of orientation between elementary and middle school and I visited all my middle schools and you know when it used to be Elementary grades one to six those teachers in sixth grade in elementary school couldn't wait till those kids went to middle school because they were starting to feel their oats now the fifth graders are feeling their oats just as well and they are causing lots of problems for their teachers
133as far as misbehavior goes it's not Junior High it's middle school kids have lots of problems lots of lots of concerns um we have something that we had called the bridge program I don't even know they still have the bridge program it was really great it was really great kids had the opportunity from elementary school to come over to the middle school and take courses during the summer and see what it was like to be Freedom at a school they loved it they loved it but they also learned the rules of the school and where their classes were and how to behave so lots of funding I know you talk about funding lots of funding is really needed for the middle schools to make that transition a healthy one and a safe one and parents
134are also needed in middle school they think that while my kids out of elementary school that's it oh no that's just the beginning you're even more needed in Middle School participating in parent events participating in meetings coming to school and and being a classroom aide like they do in elementary school they don't mind being a classroom aide in elementary school but God forbid in middle school they should be a classroom Aid of course you could be a classroom aide volunteer aide that is volunteering why not the middle school is very very important I wouldn't want to work anywhere but a middle school and of course high school principals told me are you crazy are you crazy because everyone knows how difficult middle school can be but We Make It or Break It in high school
135you know I really don't think the kids need us that much as they do at middle school they really need us and we need them to so that's my plug for middle school so thank you Mr Hart thank you sir if I'm given the power of the pen we'll sign you up to be the advocate when the marketing campaign Begins for the middle schools you're here uh thank you all for uh uh for these great questions and and requests for follow-up which we'll um communicate with Mr Hart's team but I heard you know continuation schools what what does continuation schools what is Norm Day in February mean Staffing reallocation there's some additional analysis requested around ethnic breakdown special ed El City of Angels enrollment shifts uh our magnet schools capped are based on the minimum
136was one question those uh specific grade level analysis 12th 10th and 8th further early Ed enrollment analysis Charter enrollment data and then the span question um kind of looking at the middle school piece the span schools um so thank you all we're gonna I think keep Mr Hart up here at the hot seat um and turn now to our budget priorities board input session for the next fiscal year this is an opportunity for board members one of a few opportunities for board members to provide input as the budget development process for next school year is underway the conversation will be rooted in the Strategic plan and board members were asked to come prepared to share one to two of their highest priority strategies for each pillar um in the Strategic plan so there are five
137pillars to review and six board members present with valuable ideas so I want to thank my colleagues in advance for keeping comments to a couple minutes each just for ease of facilitation um but I'm gonna turn it back to Mr Hart to present the present the presentation and then we'll go around and folks will share and we'll I know the budget team and uh Mr Salcido will be taking notes and asking some follow-up questions and then we'll go from there so with that Mr Hart thank you very much and as you noted part two of today's presentation let me jump ahead to speak to the table of content review budget principles speak to our timeline the timeline broken record time it matters there is a certain Rhythm sequencing of when data becomes available to us
138whether it's of our own origination or or is that from the state it does have uh impact on how we proceed and then we'll jump into the meat of today with the input session in terms of the budget principles a couple comments I would make at the outset one is each of these we have covered in some detail in Prior presentations I would tell you that these are all under the banner of prudence it is important for us to recognize that Prudence when one were to look up the definition speaks to how it is an entity shows a decision making based on a discipline that is grounded in reason uh it is also to say that you as an entity you manage for risk that which is known in addition to mitigating for the unknown
139I think it's also the case that when we speak to Prudence we are intent on showing ourselves to be appropriate in the allocation of resources and so when we talk about how it is our dollars get expended it is the matter of people their time technology and other resources that might be found in the classroom or in support of a school and with that said we'll touch on each of these that we have identified as areas of focus improving student achievement the spending the funds on the students who generate them in the year in which they are generated protecting and re and investing in our highly effective Workforce doing so with an eye to a long-term sustainability the word fiscal I don't mean to skip there but the implication being it does this no good
140to begin the programs that we see promise in if we cannot sustain those programs because we did not show attention to the bottom line and finally that issue of being stewards for the taxpayer is uh in fact a Cornerstone for us as we look at the budget timeline I can see where we are here October 2022 developing internally the material for what will be school year 23 24. uh this first interim the not this the upcoming first interim report uh will be in December that will be I think a important date an important presentation as we speak to then current budget to actual variance as we speak to refined uh pupil count matters attendance matters related to the attendance thereof and start to give a forecast for what we think might be coming by way
141of the governor's proposed budget in June and the more formal kickoff of the budget process after the start of the school year in terms of the actual presentation then we have aligned today's presentation to be consistent with the pillars within the Strategic plan with that noted we have taken each pillar it is represented in one page per presentation and then we have taken what I'll refer to as the elements within uh and and beginning here with page five you see high quality instruction enriching an experience the elimination of opportunity gaps and then finally how it is we prepare students so that they are deemed College and Career ready right and I will pause you there um thanks for that framing I was thinking we could have called today's meeting budget principles and principles different spelling
142um with our Roy ball perspective and then our guiding principles but uh thank you Monica at least I can always count on you um I'm getting different risk reactions over here um I'm gonna uh we're gonna start with Miss Ortiz Franklin ask her to maybe model um we have that slide at least still up um and for each of the of the slides each of the pillars uh the board members will have the opportunity to share over the course of a couple minutes you know one or two priority strategies and again this is the first of a few of these input sessions just to have the budget team and other folks who are present think about what what is on our minds and so for this first pillar of academic achievement I'm gonna ask Mr
143Ortiz Franklin to begin and give us a few tops and suggestions yes thank you um so I am zering in on the high quality instruction which we know is both the curriculum and the pedagogy and as came up earlier today I'm really interested in investing in greenlit curriculum that's an ed reports approach to what is not only user friendly for teachers and students but also on grade levels so I know a lot of our schools have shifted to you know illustrative maps to ckla I do want to make sure the materials we're putting in front of our kids are always on grade level and to the extent we have any materials still that are not on grade level it does our kids and our teachers a disservice to have those materials in our schools so
144I want to make sure curriculum is strong and then my second is around the assessment and progress monitoring and I know that's a big priority for our superintendent's team as well so once we have the good materials we can teach really well we also are able to assess kids regularly about how they are meeting standards give them multiple opportunities to demonstrate those uh skills but really supporting our teachers and using data to re-teach to pre teach to group and close those gaps in the classroom I hope that was succinct that was very assistant great modeling um thank you and now Ms Goldberg uh yes um I think under high quality instruction I have two needs the first is to figure out how to make available to more people more easily best practices in any area
145we as I visit schools I see things which I think are just incredible and I ask who else is doing this I don't know we don't talk to anybody how did have you reached out to your neighbor Elementary School I saw one on Thursday last week to say are you trying this when would I do that I don't have time to do that I understand that but I think we need to develop a systematic way of presenting good practices that are working places to other people where they are still struggling to find those things so that would be a a kind of a system development the other thing I have is a little different than my colleague here you don't want any materials that are not on grade level and I say that if we're
146going to take the Far Below basic up we got to have materials that they can read which are materials that are not written at grade level readings so that that's uh not to say that the content is on standards but we're going to find I believe that when you reduce the reading level of materials to help far below basic have something to read all day you do limit the amount of content so it means that the teacher needs to be able to address the difference by making sure that the content is available orally and orally in the classroom to all students but I don't see how we can possibly deal with Far Below basic if we do not do a serious exploration of how to get more readable materials into classrooms for students who can't
147read anything they're given all day they just don't read any they don't read they don't read ever because absolutely every book in written material in their classrooms starting in about fifth grade are things I can't read so I'm I'm asking that we put some serious effort into looking at what kinds of materials and what kinds of PD and what kinds of systems might begin to address the Far Below basic readers in our schools that's my highest priority thank you and it seems like and maybe not only question for the budget team I know we have Mr Garcia here but a question in the future for our academic team either an innovation committee meeting or an instructional curriculum committee meeting on like the empirical question of for readers who are still developing what is the best
148instructional strategy grade level material or not so um Mr Schmelson sorry mine is to fully fund the gate program we are losing students because they are seeking gate education which many of our schools cannot offer we need to have students searched out recruited tested and uh it's just not happening there's just no money anymore for someone at the each individual school to be the person in charge of gate education testing we have lots of counselors but I don't think they're really testing for gate and lots of parents are asking for this and not getting these services and they're leaving because gate education is very important and we are not doing enough nearly enough to support gate gifted and talented education when I say gifted and talented education thank you thank you and I'll note I
149think it's still the policy of this District that we don't test students who aren't already enrolled and from an enrollment strategy from an enrollment inquiry strategy maybe changing that policy into your point Mr Wilson putting some funds behind it could help us attract families who would come in if they were in a gifted program Mr Salcido I'm going to try to avoid uh responding to each of your your items because I think there's there's work happening currently to address some of the concerns that you just highlighted uh for member schmerelson a lot of it has actually been from an equitable approach especially giving assessment identification for in particular African-American students that have not been assessed at the levels that they should be assessed and given the opportunity to be part of the gate program um
150but there is definitely opportunity here to do both assessment Recruitment and program expansion because when we're talking about get did and highly gifted programs they reside in particular areas of the district we know that there's disproportionality in terms of availability and this has been an area that a division of instruction and other have been trying to Target where is the demand but we also need to create the demand through the assessment models that we have yeah would you expand Mr Melvin what you said about we don't test students for gifted if they're enrolled in LAUSD what did you mean us Mr saucedo maybe that elucidate the policy so the current policy is they have to be enrolled in La unified so generally we wouldn't begin the assessment and then tell her I understood the opposite
151okay thank you thank you okay yes it's clear it's clear my suggestion was that for folks who aren't if we say hey we'll come test your student and then you come to another unified program it might help us bring these videos I hear you miss Garcia so I will be a broken record uh but likely lift I would go with uh the eliminating opportunity gaps and and I would love to see a financial report with every instructional report I would like to see even today Roy ball didn't bring the per student work but we heard the adjustments so sometimes one of our challenges and being the mothership it takes us too long to make the adjustments that are needed on the campus and you know district-wide the policies we don't really say for which kid
152is it the struggling kid is it the thriving kid is it the functional school is it the supportive the support seeking to school and I think that's the level that we need to have choices so we could have the dominant academic achievement and then create the flexibilities with guardrails that the different levels of schools can choose into what they're doing but if we don't close the gap the biggest a tractor if we look to schools that are not losing students at the levels um at district-wide levels it's the relationship on campus and the intentionality of personalization and so I call that eliminating gaps thank you Miss Garcia Dr McKenna yeah I'm going to purpose my remarks with it with a Coliseum and a caveat a briefly message just came to me this morning when I
153was talking to miss uh Goldberg on the way down on the elevator when I first began to run for office I'd never run for office in my life I went to one of these public [Music] shall we say political parties for an endorsement and they had a process to select the candidates they would endorse and they said you have two minutes to tell us all about yourself and I said to them if only have two minutes to tell you and that's what you can get from me I don't have much to tell you because I don't have much of a life that I've ever done if all I have is two minutes I can't tell you who I am in two minutes so I will respectfully say you decide who you want for this position
154based upon my body of work if two minutes is all you wish to give to me I'd rather spend my time watching you go through this process now that didn't go over well I did get the endorsement because the decision was ahead of time no no endorsement for anybody and it was somebody manipulating the process that you didn't get an endorsement so it was like a stalemate so you had to run for the position which I did and obviously I'm here when I look at this this is the best meat and potatoes that I lived on so I start with the first one I said two things that that I've hit but more importantly overriding is the quality of the teacher so all of the things I can tell you about what ought to be
155done are not going to be able to be done other than theoretically if the quality of the practitioner is not exceptional immediate of the practitioner cannot produce an exceptional outcome unless the students are teaching themselves and in some neighborhoods they don't really need to teach you they're already well versed and just need to teach it to give them a grade the first thing I'll talk about is all teachers should have the ability and willingness to improve literacy and math in the subject content areas Reading Writing and Mathematics embedded in the content area now I can say that but everybody doesn't know how to do that so some teachers will say I'm not a literacy teacher I'm a science teacher I'm not a reading teacher because I teach math and in elementary school teachers might say
156well I teach everything so I try to do everything I can but I'm single teacher in this classroom so this whole classroom is dependent on me and I've been disadvantaged by the year before by the teacher that sent them to me and there's some needy I think that embedding the basics skills in the content area can be taught to teachers no matter what the subject area is number two and I'm abbreviating this exactly middle schools should be grouping students according to grade levels by proficiency rates rather than numerical grades in order to focus on skills development I think Middle School is a is a key grade school level to all of this they get and they give they're the only group that gets them and then sends them on and kids with needs of skills
157deficiency they have skills deficiencies that enter Middle School if the middle schools don't correct those deficiencies they wind up in high school for elementary school skills in the high schools are ill prepared to do that I don't know too many high schools that have a reading specialist on campus trying to teach a teenager I don't mean it's just a pre-teen entering team I mean a 14 15 16 17 year old how to read that's a skill I don't know how to teach reading I know how to read I don't know how I learned to read my mother had a lot to do with it because before I got to kindergarten I knew how to read I could point to words and pictures and I knew what rabbit meant and all that kind of I could
158do that so they thought it was a Jesus I really was I'll just memorizing stuff which I think is the way you learn to read you memorize stuff and then it becomes part of your your vocabulary so I believe that the skills in the content area and restructuring Middle School so that they don't leave middle school as efficient as they were when they came in it's really sad but the only Advantage at a third degree third grade has over an eighth grader is in a third grader can only be three grade levels behind eighth grader can be seventh grade levels behind and winds up in high school because they had birthdays and that's a tragedy and you see what I call the dead man walking syndrome is walking through the hallway and people acting like
159they don't see him because they're not we're not educating we're just avoiding them and then averting our eyes and putting them in classes that somebody whoever that somebody is is supposed to rescue them and that's why we need professional development somebody still got to be responsible for teaching the teachers to teach not just the subject matter Mastery the teacher is supposed to have the subject matter can they teach it and that's the challenge working hard and I'm blowing my horn again not about me working hard is not the issue because ineffective people work hard even incompetent people work hard it's hard work being in common but it is effective if you watch where other people are doing it well somebody said that where are these other masterful classrooms for which we can learn can we
160visit them the Stellar classrooms where you can learn how to teach not from a book but with children in the classroom while the teacher is teaching that look like the children that you go back to and teach don't bring me to a gifted magnet to watch the teacher teach the kids then I got to go back to a group of kids in another part of town that are already under under developed unskilled resources that's not going to work you got to show me somebody who's teaching the kids that looks like my kids and I don't need any mean you know look like the kids you know ethnically minority or you know culturally skill sets at their development level I'll stop at that because I could keep talking but uh I I it wouldn't let me
161talk when I was right thank you Dr McKenzie I think you got um some of our endorsements at least with most of those ideas so um and we'll we'll continue as we have other pillars to go through but thank you for that and I will just add my part um Mr Hart on this pillar uh paraprofessionals you know investing in teachers assistance AIDS and instructional AIDS or giving schools more money for paraprofessionals I think the only program where we have this baked in explicitly is primary promise but we know that kind of higher income schools higher with with parent fuzz or fundraising or discretionary funds so paraprofessionals as a strategy and then also just more specifics around the Dual language support and expansion I know we had a kind of budget increase um when I
162pulled my resolution last year but looking at differentiated class size for those programs support of Team teaching models um professional development for current employees to gain bilingual teaching certifications I think some of the specific policy editions for dual language that do require some funding um and with that we'll go to our second pillar and if we could bring it up and if you have any um introduction to that Mr Herrick will do thank you a comment about also the process that we're going through today when we did the budget presentation and subsequent conversations about the hundred day and strategic plan we spoke to values based as a Cornerstone this input that you're giving to us is very helpful I just want to thank the board for taking the time and making the Investments and suggesting
163where it is you and how it is you would expect to see the Investments that we bring forward uh reflect your sentiments with that said pillar 2 join Wellness as you can see again the four elements underneath there a through D welcoming learning environments hold child well-being strong social emotional and then finishing with outstanding attendance thank you and thanks for your comments I'd also add that in addition to I know you and Mr Salcido and the teams taking notes that I encourage the board to send a written feedback um I know we all kind of jotted some notes to that in preparation for this so just send it to you and your team so that you have that as well which we can do yes board members sorry to interrupt if you would that will
164be helpful uh what I was going to conclude with is we will uh in short order sort of turn that into a document turn it back to you to make sure we've captured the Essential Elements um and uh so thank you I will be helpful maybe we'll go in the opposite order and Dr McKenna if we could start with you this time pillar two got it um our statistics or two I'd like to see there'll be an academic counselor especially in the middle and high schools with no more than a one to 250 student ratio teacher a consulate the new world in 250 students and another math and literacy coaches that can go around and help the teachers without having to teach the class themselves other than doing demonstration lessons but not have to be
165a registered carrying role but caring teacher it's called a coach that they can go and regularly be in the classroom to be of assistance to the principal and the other people who are working hard everybody's working hard but we have to be smart and be able to bring best best practices into tangible evidence and be able to smell it touch and feel it and all that so if I could put two things in here and restrict it to these two I want to have an academic counselor especially in the middle of high school when they have various classrooms and various subjects and bears but one could various teachers and then the uh math and literacy coach to help the teachers that's it great thank you Ms Garcia you know I'd love Wellness checks I'd love
166um some level that I I'm gonna I'm gonna use the words that Roy ball used that um they have cult case management for certain students and then they have this culture of care that is about students and adults and so some level of personalized understanding of the experience of a child so that they can learn thank you Mr Schmelson yes continuing my struggle and theme for fully funded School library AIDS in the elementary school there is nothing more important than the love of reading and if you ever visit an elementary school library and see what a welcoming environment that is for lunchtime for recess time for after school it is really important you know um taking your kids to the library today is like maybe riding on the Metro uh you have to be very
167careful kids I don't believe elementary kids can go to a public library on their own I believe they need to go with an adult to to the library how it is today um but at the school library they can go every single day to the school library pick books out the Librarians are very skilled they instill the love of reading and I think that's how we're going to improve by having kids read learn to read in the school library so fully funded School library AIDS no flexibility fully funded School library AIDS no flexibility you got it thank you thank you Mr Charleston I'm Miss Goldberg yes I'd like to see under um strong social emotional skills to have much more attention paid to training everybody about what restorative practices mean I when I talked to
168schools that I go to I hear from some that it means that they've given up a dean and they now have a restorative practice person others say no we have a Dean for some things and restorative practice for other things and that made me a little nervous I don't know which is which and how they determine that what I'm saying is I don't feel like we have intentionally supported restorative practices in the way we need to people don't always understand it they don't know how to do it they don't get supported when they try to do it uh it doesn't work immediately so people say I've tried that once I want to give it up I I think if we're going to say we want to do restorative practices we need to invest in helping
169people understand it get good at it to find out why so few schools have a restorative practice position so if they don't have a position then who's doing it so for me that's a big one uh also the other area is that in uh I visited a couple of my Community Schools and I found that they are doing some really interesting work in terms of attendance they're trying to spend time with parents and families to figure out why kids aren't coming and then begin to figure out whether the school itself can address some of them uh in one school for example they found that one of the kids was late or not coming at all because he was going to be late because he took not one but two younger siblings to school first when
170the school figured that out what they began to do was to change his first period so that it would be something like uh that an elective that being late would not bother and the kid now comes on every day even though he's still late every day he comes every day because he's not embarrassed to have to go through some kind of process to get admitted to the school anymore all I'm saying is I would like to see us Focus uh some training on how to do a a a an assessment of what's causing the problems maybe even kid by Kid and figure out how to address them and I know that takes money and time and I don't know how to suggest we do that but I'm seeing in a few of my community schools
171that that's a big effort and they're seeing some results so I just want us to be able to figure out how to help schools look at more than just sending the PSA out more than just making a phone call because lots of times that's not working so I've seen a couple of schools go much deeper into this what's really causing that kid not to come and addressing that makes a big difference to that kid but also to the whole school environment so those are my two under joy and Wellness though I would say on to a welcoming environment it should say for students staff and families because I think it's not just kids we want to feel welcome we want everybody to feel welcome a parent that comes shows up in a or a a
172student or or staff I mean the staff should feel welcome at their schools so I don't know how to do that so I didn't put that in but yeah no noted I think that's a good good addition um thank you Mr Ortiz Franklin my number one priority here is getting our measurement tool so the board passed four goals last June 21 I mean and the fourth one on social emotional learning still needs its rubric portfolio performance you know whatever we're calling it I know there have been some iterations and some work on it but whatever we use as our assessment tool should guide a lot of this work and without that tool I feel you know a little lost um so I'm looking forward to that you know the team is working on it I
173hope that's that's clear um and then the other priority I'll just say is kind of holistic learning I've been using as an umbrella and that includes Outdoor Learning and field trips and internships sort of all the things outside of the classroom that help kids really access um their full you know scholarly potential and it shouldn't just be in here but I'll add Arts that also goes into you know the first pillar as well because it is an academic subject area but you know that's my umbrella as the holistic learning right thank you and I definitely heard some consistency even afforded differently by by board members I'll add for my part um Greening uh you know I know that a lot of that is Bond investment not a general fund but specifically um expanding the community
174school Parks program uh beyond the partnership with the city uh that we have going so that more schools are open um after hours and on weekends and kids have access to shade Etc um so I would like to see uh you know we'll take some some Bond dollars for maintenance but also the general fund when it comes to the Staffing for example of schools on nights and weekends um and then also uh still remain committed to wellness centers um a wellness center in every Board District and Telehealth options available for families just as we're thinking about the whole child approach so thank you um for pillar two thanks to my colleagues and now we'll throw up pillar 3 on the slide which is engagement and collaboration indeed it is and I thank you for that
175board member uh engagement and collaboration as is our custom there are then three headings under that three elements strong relations accessible information learning for impact and honoring perspectives sorry thank you and we'll start back with this artist Franklin if that works um so I would say community reps I know a lot of our schools have been hiring them more um but if they could be full-time if they could uh get more training there's been a big desire for um you know just strengthening their skills because they are such a key component in working with our families so this is kind of being a little more specific um and then I would add two-way communication I know we've been trying to build our websites our social media and we do a lot of great one-way communication
176out to the community but how are we also receiving feedback and um sort of using the voices or I shouldn't say using but including the voices of our our families and community in you know all the great work that's happening here thank you Miss Goldberg well I have a question before I comment I'm not sure what 3C really means yes I'll see that so on this one it's really focused on our advocacy efforts so leading for it I wasn't sure okay so in that area I'd like to see us organize a national effort to have a program like the National Defense Education Act of the 1960s enacted and funded in Sacramento for every school type of employee classified or certificate I do not believe we will ever get to where we need to go as
177long as people who teach can't afford to live or who are custodians can't afford to live or who are any of the positions in any of our schools and part of the reason they can't afford to live is they have uh horrendous debt from any education or training they did in the trades they paid for all of that they're in debt and besides the High Cost of Living they can't get out of debt and when I first became a teacher we had a National Defense Education Act which provided a either 50 percent or a hundred percent relief of your student debt if you taught for five years depending on the type of school we need that not just for teachers we need it for classified we need it for people who are PSAs and psws
178why don't people go into those positions it's because it costs so much it takes so much time to go into them that when they get done with it the salaries across the country that's why this is a national effort across the country are not sufficient to keep people going into those professions why can't we find PSA counselors when we can afford them who goes into it you don't get paid enough compared to other positions that take the same amount of cost in training and time so I want us to be very strong in that I want us also to be very strong in Sacramento about providing a line item for support of increasing salaries for all of these positions in California one of the most cost expensive places to live there should be a separate
179line item in the Sacramento budget for K Pre-K to grade 14. payment for supplementing teachers salaries custodian salaries salaries of everybody we need to run a school and there should be a line item in Sacramento to do that if they really care about what we're doing they should direct funds directly into that school districts can only use to enhance salaries for the positions that we're having a problem with the other area that I'm concerned about um is that when we talk about honoring perspectives of students and you say everyone we serve I'd rather spell that out to include the parents and the families because I find that a lot of our parents and families do not feel honored at all even recognize their existence in some cases uh so that would be important to me
180I don't know how to suggest we do that but I think it's an important area and finally I would say that when we're trying to strengthen relationships between families and students and their schools I think we should say between family students and all staff at their schools because those relationships not just to teachers but to counselors in some cases to a cafeteria worker you don't know who it is that's reaching out to a student but I think that those relationships should be encouraged at all levels thank you thank you um and I'll note Ms Goldberg too that that's a typo on this slide so it should say leading for impact hence the confusion 3C yes in the actual plan that says leading yeah yeah that's why I double checked because I thought yeah that seems
181on itself yeah leading frame back so good good flag and thank you for those um Mr schmerelson yes Miss Ortiz Franklin you took my answer away but it's okay because I have a second one too again um parent wraps at the school full-time not the parent reps where you're doing budget and you say um I have an hour left over what shall I do at that hour I'll get a parent rep because I know that that para repa Works seven more hours for free and I only have to fund one and that's not right full-time parent rips so I agree with you miss Ortiz Franklin and the second part of that was to make sure we have parent trainings and encouragement for parents to take lead roles in the school Leadership Council instead of sitting
182there quietly and listening take a lead role but you have to be trained on what you need to do to Be an Effective member of a Leadership Council so those are my two great thank you Mrs Garcia so I'm interested in the strengthening relationships the strong relationships and I'm not sure the district uh should put out a how but you know because we need to support the schools that um have figured out because sometimes it's a position but it is somebody's responsibility to be the linkages person um for to the families and communities with the school sometimes on the natural it is teachers who live there and uh have stayed at the same school for a while but sometimes it's it's another person so it might be the community rep but it might be uh
183a person who has been on campus just in different jobs so I would say we should be intentional about it having schools speak to how will they connect who is their linkages person how is the door open for folks to come in again sometimes it's the principle sometimes it's a counselor it depends uh but we should be aggressive about schools are open for business and it is somebody's job to help create the connection uh I'd love schools to have an allocation and to tell us how they're using it and certainly has been said already there are schools that do this well it speaks in my experience to you know we heard Miss Cruz say it about our Collective focus of being intentional and it is just not an option not to be available to build
184relationships we should make that uh we should strike no one's an island and gets to be doors closed or or should be a mystery when schools are open it's not the case thank you great thank you Miss Garcia and Dr McKenna yeah um I agree um I'll tell you how I agree every school should have a parent Center a tangible place that's exclusively for parents stuff I just went to a beautiful Center that Mr Koval had been put together the facilities did it at An Early Childhood Center parks and Rancher which is named after Rosa Parks and Brewers where did they call it Parts where beautiful little facilities that they put together so I asked for who works in here nobody it's just there when we want to use it we use it but there's
185nobody's dedicated Unapologetic responsibility to bring the parents in and when I say bring the parents in that's not the easiest thing in the world to do you got to pull them in and you have to pull in the parents whose children are not doing well and you have to work even harder at that so it's more than just an eight to three job you have to call them on a weekend you have to get all their phone number you have to do all kinds of stuff not just for elementary kids middle school high school kids when they don't want their parents there parent involvement piece I can tell you when I was a high school principal it was one of the most powerful things that changed the culture of that climate of that school when
186you had the parents centered and you have violent and you get volunteers walking the campus you didn't need a school police officer you didn't need a security guard now we needed them when stuff hit the fan but the parents walk in the school I'm telling you the Crips gang born on the campus taking over the campus two other principles were going to run out of there here I go never been to the school in my life and when I started that parent Center and parents started walking the Halls when you when grandmas walked the Halls nobody's in that hallway but their Grandma those students do not tell the grandma you can't make me go to class and they they start talking that model language to them and my God in a couple of days you
187didn't have to worry about they start they stopped calling the police pigs and all of that they transform the culture of that school allowing the teachers to teach the children that they weren't already afraid of so a parent Center is essential not just to build it but it's got to be somebody's good and since they have no budget we have to put people in there with a job and we don't just give them a job because they need a job we give them a job because they can do a job but what job do they want we don't want them to do be communicative speak the language of the community if it has to be bilingual be let that be so and so we we need people in there and maybe two people I had
188two and I use my Title One funds together so parent centers essential the second thing is staff selection and effectiveness I think that the parents ought to be part of a committee that advises and sits in on interviews when people want to work in the school and they give the principal some insight into whether that person looks like they can fit in this school but sometimes principals wind up with somebody at the human resources sentence because they have a vacancy or more than one in my neighborhood some of our schools still have vacancies and we'll take a warm body and some of the principals don't have time to Rally up to the parents to be part of the committee so they take what they can get and then they try to teach them to be
189a teacher but you gotta you gotta you gotta work at getting the community to be a part of you so that they feel that they belong there they're just not invited and they have to do more than set up a parent Center to provide cookies and coffee it's not what it can do that to be hospitable that's very nice but that's not the reason for us there is there to instill in this uh need for the other parents to be pulled in and sometimes you have to drag them in sometimes you have to feed them you have to have a budget so when you call a night meeting you got to say well have some pizza for you and bring your kids we'll feed them too but there's some juice and stuff like that it's
190a little budget thing I got it but you got to get the parents involved in the operation of a school we cannot do this in isolation they can't drop those kids off in kindergarten and pick them up in 12th grade I hope to get a graduate out of that you can't let them do that they're not it's not there's no no good for them it's no good for the kids it's not sure no good for us those are my two recommendations thank you Dr McKenna um and I will add just for our third pillar uh no surprise here but um open data clear and transparent data and information whether that's through open data and investing in in its Improvement or opengov or a newer platform but making sure that data is a transparent easily accessible
191to the public online Etc and then also a unified enrollment and um enrollment support for families so I think we've we've seen a huge increase in the number of our programs that are on our e-choices and enrollment platform and as we were talking earlier about early Ed I think that's one we can still get more of those programs up and streamline enrollment and provide support for families including magnet TK and residential school confusion so that it's easier for families to access the wonderful things happening in our schools um with that we'll move on to pillar four operational effectiveness or elements under operational four four a data-driven decision making plays a little bit to your comments just made modernizing our infrastructure is the second sustainable budgeting is the third and District of choice uh concludes this
192pillar growl Mr Ortiz Franklin's advice and go in a different order we'll go alphabetically so we'll start with Miss Garcia and then fun I like the pops so sustainability budgeting if that means multi-year budgeting I I absolutely see a possibility towards um this District spending every dollar it has in the more coherent way when schools can count on money La if we can do the norm day Shuffle to change that and do budgeting that it can be student centered and uh overtime schools that would be wonderful so I'd love to see the multi-year budgeting and some way that schools can have dollars that aren't related to attendance and enrollment shifts that sacrifice the school's Wellness great thank you and we'll go to miss Goldberg next um a brief one on data-driven decision making is is
193that it is still difficult for parents to know about where to go to see the data we know that but they don't know that and so I think we just need to do more to tell people how do you if you're interested in data about your school here's where you go or have something on the front page of achieve.lausd that says if you want data because it's hard to find it's hard to find out where it is okay um in terms of modernizing infrastructure I want to make sure that we are emphasizing every opportunity to Green to provide climate resistance to talk about water capture and Recovery if we ever get rain we're told it's going to be in Torrance and or nothing so we need to figure out how to make use of that
194water when it finally comes so I feel very strongly that we need to make air put every effort into Greening um I've been to schools now to see that they've used certain types of of coverings and playgrounds because they have no trees and they cover substantial portions of their playgrounds but they actually put poles into the ground to do it and that's a different method and I I think that's going to be very short-term helpful well as trees take a while to grow so I feel very strongly about that and then in terms of District of choice uh if we don't figure out how to make sure that when you put your address and you get an LAUSD school I don't know what I'm going to do because um I have at least six schools
195in Board District um five that are getting creamed because when you put your address in you get a independent Charter School uh there may be more than six I'm aware of six uh and also we have residential magnets that are not reaching out to their community and one of them in my district is a residential magnet but I asked the principal only one-fourth of the students come from the local communities and I asked that principal how are you reaching out to the local community and we're full we have all our spaces filled I don't really need to I no I want them to reach out to that residential Community I don't know how to say that other than maybe we should help them understand that when you have a residential magnet the families in that
196neighborhood should know that it's their resident School and I think that's part of the problem so those are my pieces on this one thing great thank you Miss Goldberg and you have been consistent about the residential finder on that piece so I know Mr Salcido has taken note um Dr McKenna uh Staffing I think that's teacher allocation should be made based on proficiency levels as measured by standardized test scores for students we budget based upon numerical money balancing like 30 to 1. what if we staff so that we gave students who needed more and more help so that I'm gonna make it and I've written it before and just it's not the it's not concrete but it's hypothetical students that are at single digit proficiency rates the whole school is a single digit Proficiency in
197both math and language arts so most of the students who have single digit proficiency a single digit proficiency student might need a class of ten to one not forever just long enough to no longer be single digit proficiency so there's a budget requirement so you might need instead of 30 you might need three teachers for those same 30 students and you break them up and then you teach them those skills along with everything else so that you concentrate on those students you might see you have a a space problem and all that you can use a partition you can do team teaching you can do a lot of things but first you need the people in there to teach the students otherwise we keep relying on after school and tutoring all that's great but between
198eight and three whatever that means you need to have Staffing based upon student needs as opposed to balancing budgets and saying this many students give us this many teachers and there's an arm date and we did it but you haven't armed on student needs if you don't do that you can't solve the problem you can address it like the comedy uh you know Jackie Gleason and his friend Norton he would address the ball hello ball and we get I'll take kind of golf and that's what he would address the ball but he never hit the ball he just addressed the ball so addressing the problem is insufficient the next is uh collegial support among staff now there's a whole lot of branches on this tree so I won't go into all that it talks about
199the staff and the culture of the school where they support each other so we can visit each other and learn from each other without evaluating each other in our in our job alike meetings whether the second grade all meet together uh or all the math teaches me together all of the science teachers meet together and they're assessed on a regular basis when teachers meet together and plan operationally Effectiveness Effectiveness means students learn something not that we got paid the three basic questions that you have to ask when you're planning for student achievement Effectiveness and outcomes first question the faculty meeting with each other in small groups what are we trying to teach for the next two weeks what is it we're trying to teach we're all teaching the same subject what are we trying to
200teach second what methods are we going to use to teach you I'm not going to be the sage on the stage or I'm going to get a new group that group dynamics break them up a lot of ways to teach and the third question is overly simplifying this what do you do differently for the kids who don't get it and do you know they're not getting how do you know that after you get through making your presentation your lecture whatever you did how do you know they've mastered anything yeah they're looking there I don't and they don't even want to look at you I don't know this I didn't know it last year I don't know it this year I'm going to sharpen my pencil again you just keep avoiding the teacher and they never
201get into dealing with their deficiencies and it takes a skilled teacher to break that down maybe you don't break them down in front of the front of the class but you break it down by pulling a student aside before I have to meet with them they're like I know you don't understand it let me help you and they bond with the teacher the collegial effectiveness of the staff where every student is valuable and the teachers are disappointed when students are not learning and particularly in middle and high schools where the kids go from classic class to class to class to class and this teacher says this child is a pain in the you know what and notice when I say you're not a pain with me well you teaching the class that he likes well
202then make him like your class but he likes music that doesn't mean he can't learn math Etc et cetera Etc what is it about what I can't do now is there somebody that can teach me what I need to do to teach this child who's not getting it what do I do differently and if you don't know what to do then you raise your hand and that's where it ask for some expertise to come from down here to the puzzle Palace and we send somebody out there to see trying to help you we can do that and help you when you don't know everything you're not supposed to know everything so I believe that Staffing properly and then collegial support Staffing of teachers with each other [Music] an Administration has to help with this but
203getting the right people it'd be great if we could select the teachers we wanted ahead of time but uh I tell the principals all the time when we assign you to a brand new school you don't you're not you're not going to get to pick anybody over you don't know you're going to a room full of strangers the building full of strange they don't know you you don't know them and they think you will not last long because I've been here many years and we roll them over a lot we roll them over every five years I have some high schools at least one in particular and others too in the last 20 years they've had like six and seven principles there's no continuity there because there's no bonding among the faculty and the administration
204you have to be willing to stay there for a while you don't just get that that position as a as an administrator as a springboard into something else what is the something else what's more magical than being a princess and if you are my finals now if you are a director or somebody above the principal who's supposed to supervisor principal recognize the fact that that some of these principles are better at it than you ever were but you're supervising you have to give him an evaluation you might be able to learn something from them because you didn't become a director necessarily because you were a great principal maybe resistance either the director and you were available I've seen that happen it's a warm body sometimes went up in high places because they like people and
205people like them so they get promoted but that doesn't mean they're efficient as a practitioner that's it thank you Dr McKenna uh Miss Ortiz Franklin thank you so in pillar won my uh statement around assessments and progress monitoring was really about the materials and the teacher support the same concept but here for the data systems required to capture all of the information um and I think it'd be great if our interim assessment data was not just at the school level but Folks at the local District or Beaudry could easily access to know like where to support it I know again the team is working on getting those Data Systems really in place for the student interim assessments um so that we can be more responsive so that's my connection to 4A here and then for
2064C you know I've been using the term long-term physical sustainability for a while but I've been hearing and I'm curious if others have heard about fiscal Vitality so both that we are sustainable in the long term and can address some of our liabilities like opeb but also that we are values based in our budgeting and so we are thriving and our dollars are really getting us the vision or you know realizing the vision that we're hoping for our kiddos here so it's that that tension between the two of making sure our budget is sound for the long term but also that it's really doing right and for me that would definitely mean an equitable approach where like Dr McKenna was saying the kids who need the most are getting the most so it's a lot
207in in a couple of words great thank you uh and Mr schmerelson yes okay thank you so uh for this one um Mr Hart you're going to need to get your checkbook out because this is going to be the most expensive thing you've ever done I just want you to know and my 4B is to modernize all classrooms with appropriate new furniture including technology such as Promethean boards right now I'm doing that board District three is paying for furniture and Promethean boards at schools when they ask me what project would you like me to work on for you now you know when people go looking for schools they go looking with their eyes and for example some of my schools have a prop 39 um school on their campus and they go look in the
208prop 39 rooms and they're all new furniture it's just beautiful new furniture and Promethean boards and everything and then they look across the schoolyard and they see my Traditional School rooms and it's furniture from 1950 mismatched and I don't have that kind of technology so I'm asking for to modernize all classrooms with appropriate new furniture including technology such as Promethean boards I have a school I know it's hard to believe but I'm going to be buying them white boards they don't even have white boards they have chalkboards so that's pretty sad that is pretty sad and I think that's an emergency need so get your checkbook out okay thank you please so I just want to say out loud um painting our schools the uh it's uh Wilson got 1.5 this board approved 1.5 million
209dollars to paint the exterior only of a rather it's a comprehensive school but it's one of the smaller ones so but to the degree we can unleash our bond dollars to include paint and paint every school I think that would also draw a level of Health and Wellness thank you great thank you and um my pillar for requests uh areas of Interest I'd say um one is I know Miss Garcia earlier mentioned multi-year budgeting but the investment in that strategic budgeting support for schools um I know that this has been something that we've expanded and invested in but uh even more so you know as we think about a flexible dollars to meet local needs at the school site more staff to help you know fiscal staff to help our principals make those decisions so
210investing in Street strategic budgeting support and then one that is kind of similar with the the painting um just spending more on maintenance you know I know that we went below three percent in 2008 2009 and we are still ramping back up just so we don't have to spend uh more on bond dollars when it comes to replacing equipment if we um have more uh mno staff I think touches on a lot of what my colleagues were saying around curb appeal welcoming environments but just investing more in maintenance and operation staff I know that's something I've heard the superintendent talk about um with that we'll go to our fifth and final pillar pillar five investing in staff a diverse Workforce professional learning staff wellness and this one is concluded with the high performance Standards Board
211member great thank you this time we will go we'll start with district one so Dr McKenna back to you for pillar five okay um I'm going to take advantage of the concept that you pay for what you get and get what you pay for we have to offer more funding for people to work in some schools everybody's not gonna like this we have something called educational impacted schools at one time Eis and they said these were the hardest staff schools parts of Staff meant these were schools that people didn't want to work in so the people that didn't want to work in this school didn't get a name but the school got the name hard to stay at school so you put up this is a hard to stay at school because people don't want
212to work in it and they bypass the invitation to come and work and even interview to work someplace else and Human Resources sent them people would drive from San Pedro all the way to the valley and pass up all the schools off the Harbor Freeway the 110 freeway and never get off that freeway because they were not going to go to those schools and I worked in those schools but for me I wasn't I was in great shape working with how I wanted to be there those were like the kind of schools I grew up in when I was in New Orleans but everybody couldn't work in those schools so that everybody can't work everywhere I got that so in the under achieving schools and they are visible to us the data tells us where
213they are they're not a mystery we're gonna have to go looking for them with a flashlight all you have to do is just look at the data they're available how do we how do we uh incentivize I would give the principals in those schools additional okay and pick them carefully so they don't have to promote to someplace else and give the teachers additional pay an additional time to earn that pay if you want to I just give it to them because they're working in those difficult schools but they have to do certain things in those schools it's not combat big that's what it was labeled at the time so cost and compensation considerations have a lot to do with who we recruit who we get and are they willing to take the training to be
214the kind of teacher we want to work in those schools and that assumes that we being the people that make the decision that we really know what we're doing if we've never done it before we don't know we're just here as the administrators in charge at the central office but if we say in your career what did you do what kind of school did you turn around they haven't done that that's not that they're they're not they're not bad people they just don't have the experience so they're teaching from a textbook instead of real experience of how to teach people to be effective people and working with students that may be reluctant learners there may be skills deficient that enter This World skills deficiency certainly enter the world of Education skills deficient with limited vocabulary
215and not a not a not a place at home that can really Advance their instructions too so I'm going to say compensation funding and I would say the experiment can't be with every school with the schools that need it the most commit to a 10-year period now maybe you can't commit to 10 years maybe you can't commit to so many thousands of dollars five thousand dollars per teacher seven I don't know what you can commit to but to commit to nothing said that well you really don't have a plan you just have a wish you have a wish list because you can't fund it you can't resource it and you never overcome it you just keep addressing It And discussing it and complaining about it but you can't change it so if we're really going
216to do something we've got to put our money where our mouth is that's the only basic thing I have about the compensation package because I really believe we all know teachers and I pay it enough but that's not a labor piece for me let's Embrace this out you can double people's salary you wouldn't raise student achievement one cent one one percentage for about doubling a teacher's salary literally would not reduce produce a better student they have to be trained they have to be incentivized in other ways but practices that work and I know people mean well but doing well is better than meeting one that's my concern that's my yeah write that down shirts for everybody doing well is better than meaning well I would second like did we want that to be La unified's
217motto this year uh Dr McKenna so here's here's where I'm thinking um I grew up at a time where combat pay you know incentivizing people who get more money to do a certain job or a certain place brought people who wanted money as opposed to prop people who wanted to build wellness and success and so I struggle with this but I understand the idea that or I support this idea that it's not all the same work is there a way to tier our campuses to say based on this history this school gets X resources and then there's these norm-based budgeting that this board has chosen to stick with unless superintendent Carval is going to introduce something different but that norm-based budgeting really makes us kind of do one-size-fits all in a way that's absent intention
218or or uh the desire of serving all kids well so I'm one I I think about staff Wellness as my highest priority here because again what I heard at Roy ball and and it happens it wasn't automatic this lady's been there for four years but um it is an evolution of building the team to agree on the mission and be able to execute in a high um high efficiency right uh not all easy but I I think we have to recognize where our district has different kinds of schools and different populations and you know every poor kid of color isn't the same uh and and so getting back to the student the teachers and the people if you are a school where homeowners generally send their kid to the neighborhood school and people see each
219other in the community without doing anything extra that's a different experience than the ones who work outside of the community and come here and deal with a team a place of work and so I'd love to see us differentiate Wellness to support people with training that have this other kind of um it's instructional and operations and the district hasn't done it well for it for a long time on as a system-wide level so the district has to be able to fund something that they haven't mastered or it is in funding the people who have mastered it in a particular place and that's where the community of schools I think gives us an opportunity to fund the wellness projects but understand that it's different based on the kind of school or the kind of growth you
220want to make if you're a high functioning school you're really repeating and dealing with incremental pieces that make it better since I've been here God bless Bravo medical magnet they were at 96 graduation and they keep moving towards more and they go to 100 and they go back and forth but other schools started at 24 and have moved to 60 and that's giant so staff Wellness matters it cannot be by HR assigning people to spaces without support how do we build teams of people that want to do this work and then celebrate when we're getting it right because I I don't think even though scores are sometimes not impressive some of the work being done at places that academic Wellness seems still developing is another way to support people working there tough tough work but
221as a social worker I know it's possible thank you air here uh Mr schmerelson so Mr Hart you will not need your checkbook for this so this is going to counterbalance my last request so and that is to uh increase career Pathways to recruit teachers and counselors and nurses and there are so many great people in the district who we can recruit I know I have a campus aid over at Earhart High School which is a continuation school she's a graduate of Earhart she's a campus aide at Earhart she's in her third year at Cal State Northridge and she's going to become an LAUSD employee through career Pathways and that's letting all our Tas know in our special ed aides know that there is a great opportunity for you at LAUSD so let's keep our
222people let's advertise I always tell them you know those trucks that are delivering to all our schools they should be have banners on them and pictures on them of different career opportunities at LAUSD people see that especially if you're stuck in traffic and you're looking at that truck you you can see all the great things that are available in LAUSD so career Pathways is my choice great thank you Miss Goldberg yes um I have a couple of issues one I want to just concur with both uh board members Garcia and McKenna that we need to be seeing it's the same as why absenteeism we need to identify why people don't want to teach at certain schools sometimes it's the conditions there the school is dilapidated and run down and nothing works very well and compared
223to schools they've been but if we're going to make sure that we're having Staffing I like Roybal for example today when they talked about how they changed the content of their professional development because teachers said they needed something different than what was being planned I'd like to see us encourage that professional development is based on what the folks were being professionally developed need as they describe it um I'd also like to see that there'd be more planning time for uh Educators to work together my mother taught at amistoi for almost 41 years and in that entire time she never had a planning period not one minute that was at school um so I think we need to be looking at that it's gotten better but it's still not good I do think if we're going
224to really talk about investing in staff we have to be reducing class sizes dramatically where they're needed not everywhere not everywhere I'd like to do it everywhere but we can't afford to do it everywhere so we should focus on those schools that are not doing well as Dr McKenna mentioned um in both categories of language arts and math and say to them that if you're below a certain point we're going to reduce your class sizes in grades three four and five to ten to one if we stop the passing on of kids who can't read or do basic arithmetic skills to the middle and high schools if we stop that in grades three four and five by reducing class sizes dramatically and giving those kids every opportunity to get help every single day you don't
225need to have as many issues in grades uh 6 through 12. so that's what my focus would be on I'd you need a checkbook for what I'm talking about but you need to spend it where it's needed I also would say that back in uh 1980s when we were discussing these very same issues I'm embarrassed to say um one of the things teachers said to us was that I'm not sure I would transfer to one of those hard to staff schools alone but I have three or four teachers I teach with that if we could transfer together where we felt we could have an impact we would be willing to volunteer to transfer to them but the district at that time was not willing to talk about multiple people transferring at the same time but
226I thought it was an excellent suggestion and I'm just raising it because we didn't try it but it may be useful to think about I think staff Wellness comes from feeling successful much more than from counseling and I don't think we do enough to identify why teachers while custodians why anybody is not feeling successful at their job where they're currently located if we were to spend more time for example asking all those teachers who try to transfer out of the so-called hard to staff schools why they want out we would get a pretty good idea of what some of the things are that are causing the staff not to feel well when they are at that school some of the things we can't control but a lot of them are and I don't think we
227do nearly enough in talking to the folks leaving hard to staff schools about why they are leaving what caused them to leave um so I I have a lot in this area but I think the most important for me is to say that we have to look at grades three four and five and substantially reduce class sizes where there are single digits of of uh academic uh achievement in math or English or both uh because I don't see any way to solve the problem if we continuously haven't solved it before they get to six seven and eight where it is much more difficult when they have multi-teachers and multi-rooms and how do you reduce class size there I'm not sure maybe just in their English and math classes I don't know but I do know
228that class size reduction is critical but not one or two kids not one or two kids across the district but rather to take a look at where you can actually begin to have an impact on outcomes by substantially reducing the class sizes as needed and that's my most important one on investing in staff thank you great thank you and I know we heard that across a few pillars too but it does align um or it does manifest itself across those pillars when it comes to learning but also staff wellness and retention uh Mr Ortiz Franklin thank you yes I have some agreements with my colleagues as well I'll bucket my categories or my ideas into Recruitment and then retention and so like Mr Schmelson said on the pathways the pipelines particularly for our high vacancy
229areas which we talk a lot about teaching and social work but also campus AIDS and our instructional AIDS um and there I'm sure many many others but I think a big part of that is what is the incoming pay and how competitive are we with other sectors it's really heartbreaking when you hear someone could earn more at McDonald's than working for the school districts that their kids go to and that raise them and so I really want to think about recruiting folks in at the early stages of their career um and then on the retention side I agree that Wellness is about your your colleagues and feeling successful and so that the cohorts support that professional development and I think what would be helpful for us is understanding how that professional learning is impacting them
230so really assessing the adult learning and even modeling Mastery learning and Grading for the adults so that they can then TurnKey it for for their students um and just asking folks we've had several Innovation committee conversations about what will it take to keep you and people do want to be paid they they want to feel valued they want to feel connected um and feel like they're making a difference because that's ultimately why lots of folks come to work at La unified so those are some of my ideas there thanks thank you and I will uh add to our fifth and final pillar um housing it's not listed explicitly in the Strategic plan but it's something I know the superintendent has discussed along with this board developing Workforce housing to ease our housing crisis and provide
231safe affordable housing for District employees I know we have a couple projects and I'd like to see US expand those and then um and my colleagues touch on this as well just better aligning incentives to other areas of strategic plan alignment I mean we really don't incentivize employees vis-a-vis compensation besides to just live another year but if we think about hardness to have schools if we think about keeping teachers and principals where they're most effective I mean I know I'm a broken record on this but the number of principals who said I was a really effective teacher I was happy as a teacher but I took this promotion to make more money the number of Administrators and um bureaucrats is too pejorative I'll just say out of school site administrators uh who have said I
232love being a principal but I got this promotion so how do we pay people to stay where they're more effective and think differently about aligning incentives um so thank you I just want to appreciate oh yes Dr McKenna yeah if I've made I didn't I I could have added one more which I did I only had one about costing compensation paying Peach with more money we need to actively develop future teacher clubs on Midland High School campuses to produce future teachers we have all the future teachers in the world right in front of us they don't know their future teachers yet so we say we're going to make something out of you and we have a long discipline we're going to turn you into this how many of us we determine the teachers and if
233you've watched if the students relate to the teacher they fall in love with their teachers high school students fall in love with their teachers I know that the still go to reunions and they're still in love with me but if we don't actively have the money to have a sponsor for the future teachers on different campuses maybe not every school can do it and you can help the rest of the faculty identify the future teachers and have exercise in the various classrooms where they can teach a sample lesson there's a lot of activities you can get in develop the interest in teaching as a profession instead of lamenting the fact we can't find him we got to go all the way to Louisiana to find some teachers and they don't want to come out here
234because they can't afford to live here Etc et cetera et cetera why would a child not want to be a teacher if they love school you can find the future teachers in elementary school I'll show you how you do it walk out of the classroom and say I'm going on I'll be back in two minutes watch the one or two that wants to take charge of the class when nobody's in there shut up sit down right on the board I want a feeder feed the Goldfish you know what are the plants all that kind of stuff that's the one that wants to be in charge that's a little ham that's a little actor or actress they can't resist being in charge teachers like being in front with hands we like to put on the performance
235that's what we do we can find Future teachers but if we don't do it aggressively and actively we just keep hoping that we find these people who accidentally work in the teaching while they're waiting to be discovered for their big break in Hollywood that's my recommendation that's all it is thank you it's a good one to end on and I want to thank my colleagues for both the the incredibly helpful suggestions of the budget team and the fruitful conversation but also adhering to our time constraints and efficiency and I just really appreciate the team um and also thank you the budget team and the soups team uh I know that the superintendent has committed to ongoing conversations including individual ones with board members where folks can further clarify the priority the priorities to describe today
236but I like um Mr Hart your suggestion to compiling your notes our notes and then maybe a future input session sharing that written feedback so that the board can clarify and hone in on and I know there are a lot of co-signs if you will um and some other board members priorities so we can coalesce around a few as a as a body so any concluding remarks from you were Mr Salcido I have none I just want to appreciate everybody's time and effort today to kind of coalesce around the Strategic plan the pillars and really think about those key Investments are are supposed to really kind of Drive the work and so um I know the team will be coming back I actually just sent them the notes um organize them by board member and
237we'll Define those common themes and then come back to you all to have a more thorough conversation great thank you and I know it'll be hard to enjoy your birthday more than you already are but uh have a good one Mr harp and uh with that I will turn it to Mr McLean I just want to for those here in person or live streaming apologies for being a little behind with public comment but we're going to turn now to public comment before we adjourn let's do it uh Robina Sewell are you on the line Robina Sewell if you're on the line please press star six to mute yourself and you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin Robina thank you my name is Urbana still I'm the executive director of California state schools and
238the environmental representative on the district integrated Pest Management oversight committee I'm speaking to you today as an individual and not on behalf of the committee but I'm sure that you're all familiar with the district's internationally celebrated IPM policy and the basis for California and other state laws for almost 25 years the IPM oversight committee serves as an independent body that reviews plans and actions by The District's mno division to make sure that they comply with the district's policy and state law in July of 2022 the LA unified Inspector General issued an audit of the program that revealed widespread lack of implementation of the IPM policy and the California healthy schools act by The District's mno division during 2020 and 2021. additional concerns that came to the intention of the committee include unapproved unauthorized applications by
239mno of an agricultural pesticide at La Unified School site a meeting with board president last Friday Gomez raised concerns when she informed the members of the IPM team that she'll be appointing an ad hoc committee to consider changes to how the committee works and functions and although the item is not yet on your agenda I'd like to respectfully make three requests the first is please direct mno staff to begin implementing the IPM policy and the California healthy schools act and to provide the IPM committee with a briefing and its plan for addressing these issues going forward secondly it's imperative that any recommended changes to the policy or the committee be discussed thoroughly with the committee in advanced support action public committee members are volunteers and have nothing but the children and all School stakeholders health
240and safety at heart and please also ensure that the committee is allowed to continue to meet why the board considers these issues three of our standing committees were canceled with little as um with little explanation by mno and third please talk to committee members about the audit just speaking for myself I have concerns about how it was conducted but I also think it raises concerns about how mno is implementing the policy and finally an independent IPM committee is critical to the success of the policy District staff must not be allowed to undermine the IPM policy the healthy school fact or the committee's ability to have the oversight that was intended and codified in the policy thank you very much for your time thank you thank you for your dedication to children and all schools stakeholders
241thank you for your time uh Mr David tokowsky are you on the line Mr David tokowski if you're on the line press star six to meet yourself we have three minutes to speak with you thank you very much uh board members a great meeting uh aspirational a happy birthday to Mr Hart uh who uh says very clearly to you today he likes to overstate expenses and underestimate revenues so really he's not the person Mr schmurlsen uh to do this this is government relations this is the superintendent as a leader and for Pedro who who's wise on all these things number one TK is 20 000 kids short doing 3 000 growth when you have an early Ed three-year-olds that is 30 000 kids short this is a 20-year plan not as aspirational as the board
242is you need to move it and move it faster because this is the pipeline of growth additionally on the demographics the loss of 11th and 12th graders is a distortion therefore of the a through G statistics you need to get on figuring out why kids are not sticking around to finish the rate through G also I've spoken many times about Affiliated Charters if you made more magnets Affiliated Charter magnets like the open Charter magnet you would probably gain 5 000 kids from other districts we are not getting kids from other districts in our magnets currently because there are no seats we need to figure this out if you put uh Affiliated Charters near many of the other districts from Hawthorne to Linwood to Paramount you'd probably grow ten thousand kids if you made your virtual
243schools Affiliated uh Charters you'd probably gain 5 000 kids from districts up and down the state next Mr smorlson talked about furniture and other technology the bonds are being made now at the state level for the the election in a year and a half two years from now as well as hopefully an LA unified Bond put those ingredients of instruction technology cares or whatever it is in those uh initiatives number four in Florida they mandate gifted in California we do not mandate gifted therefore disproportionality can exist because there's no voter site we need to not just pursue mandated kindergarten but it would be very wise if it was a legislative intent to pursue mandated gifted in the state of California Additionally the governor is making his budget right now which he will announce in January
244the special ed is important to him early and is important to him perhaps you need to make an ask for child fine to help the uh the federal requirement of pursuing kids with special needs in the earliest of Ages lastly you did not talk at all about safety monies there's lots of safety monies in the the president's budget and you can pursue some in the state budget you have a model police department uh you have model programs go get some money for it and last two items Medi-Cal you did not talk at all about the medical reforms it's the biggest thing happening in the state budget there's four billion dollars in this year to help bridge education and Health Care together the community schools has three billion La cares is supposed to be providing clinics
245on the campus this is not happening at the rate necessary and finally your Arts monies that will be coming in you need to diversify those because you will not find the requisite number of Arts teachers you need to make this about embedding the Arts in social studies and in the English classes not just as separate arts classes uh and finally very much was mentioned career Ed thank you so much Mr tarkovsky Rachel are you here Rachel if you're here come on up you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin greetings that come before you as a parent um and I'm an ambassador that brings some loving truth okay last week I called in and I implored you to cancel the gay men Choir performing and entertaining our children at our schools instead Mrs Goldberg
246you went on to celebrate the student survey with 10 identifying as homosexuals why are you making them ponder their sexual identity at such a young age is it possible that your forceful propaganda and prematurely sexualizing discussions is confusing our students homosexuals you teach are just another minority I've seen it in the ethnic studies are you also teaching minority rights for child molesters and rapists because they have sexual preferences ludicrous parents are demanding for our children to be educated I'm sorry I'm sorry you do not get to call people who are gay pedophiles and child that's not what I said what I said is are you also fighting for the rights of those people that's what I asked um I hope the timer stopped so if you claim to promote inclusivity awareness and respect then where
247can that be seen if our schools are no longer safe spaces for learning safety from schools are no um safety from schools from this political brainwashing are missing in our schools instead of bombarding our children with the colorful flags and the BLM propaganda let's focus on reading and arithmetic the ethnic studies course that's racially divisive it encourages students to see themselves as privileged oppressors or victims of Oppression and why this obsession over race anyway we're all brothers and sisters one human race and I humbly propose to focus on real education devoid from political agendas or expect continuously declining enrollment elements of critical race theory gender beliefs and sexualized material the 1619 project which is on your website and malicious Landers of America are being injected into the minds of our children and they should have
248no place in our schools those wellness centers and the high schools offer services without parental consent whose roots are established in Eugenics read up on the founder Margaret Singer I'm sorry sorry um interestingly enough the district fights so hard to a firm identity but you've terminated wonderful employees because they consider themselves the Temple of the Holy Spirit and of God and they've rejected and decided not to undergo experimental injections why the Discrimination there in closing our parental rights are being robbed they're being diminished and you're teaching our children to normalize what is actually evil but be warned one day you will stand before a judge for damaging and morally confusing so many innocent lives of our babies but I have some good news you can be forgiven you can be washed you can be saved
249fix your eyes on Jesus because what you guys are doing to our children is not right well you're well this District cannot well this district is compelled to hear all public speakers I just want to say on behalf of this board we do not condemn intolerance hatred bigotry or ignorance uh Mr McLean next speaker please I wasn't hateful I'm defending our children and their to a proper education Miss fefferman are you on the line nicolefefferman if you are pressed R6 to meet yourself and you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin hi good morning everyone um that was really intense thank you Mr nalboin and Miss Goldberg um so at last week's board meeting uh equitous Charter organization was on the agenda as they seek to open two more locations it was baffling to
250hear that the school board is entertaining this idea well at the same time we are working to manage the dip in public school enrollment that was predicted years ago over the last year the drum beat from District leadership was that our schools are so under enrolled that we may have to close some down I sat in on Dooms with po Pico's Community as they were told by Local District West folks their school was going to be shut down and their students had to pick a new school this despite the specialized physical upgrades and dedicated staff to a student population with a high number of special education children the community fought like hell to demand Justice for their school they never heard anything directly from Local District West leadership or their school board member it was
251terrible to witness and awful to think that more school communities would suffer a similar fate as a result of poor planning poor support and poor leadership choices allowing for even more Charter Schools would be a continuation of poor leadership choices the last two equitas schools are under enrolled one of them at only 49 of projected enrollment and another at a depressing 27 enrollment why does this organization get rewarded with more District Real Estate and support when District leaders are constantly worrying in the media about under enrollment at our Public Schools why would we consider allowing them to open up more of their schools to compete for the same population of students they already cannot attract why would we give an organization more opportunity to drain students and resources from our district that is working to
252figure out how to better support families during a predicted change in Los Angeles demographics please make this make sense because I just don't understand there are 56 charter schools in district 2. 50 of them are under enrolled what are we doing here how do these propose new Charter Schools support the superintendent's Vision to build up our Public Schools how do these propose new Charter Schools support our Public Schools they do not more charter schools in this area of our city and more charter schools in any area of our city undermine the hard work being done by School staff and threaten School communities please do not approve these new Charter Schools please draw upon your courage and Imagination to support our Public Schools as we enter a new era of LAUSD thank you nilita Mendez there
253you are testing testing hello good afternoon everyone Martinez I'm here with some concerns about the racial racist and discriminatory remarks made by council member Nuri Martinez and their Mente board members who was a board member of this board back in 2007. and members de Leon answer is these three people had linked their campaigns with three of the board members presidents Franklin melvoy Monica Garcia and Monica Garcia por quesos and now I've made I've realized that they use their discriminary discriminatory policies against parents which are also racists also used against uh students and parents and you know they treat us as third class citizens and there's no equity practicas and for students and as parents we ask that you correct these practices that you make changes to this discriminatory and racist thinking that is used against
254people parents and students of low income I think I understand now why Kelly Gomez does not want many more school police in the schools Monica Garcia is also against there being additional school police in the schools tools is very important to have police is sometimes I think that the police are more important even than a principal because the principle stay stuck in their office while the police are out walking about maybe Mr Carvalho is hiding somewhere outside of camera range I'm not sure how to say their name but my daughter is still here outside you said that you were going to place someone and still no one has been placed there foreign was going to talk to someone but no one seems to be doing anything they seem to be treating my daughter as if
255she were garbage nothing is getting done Mr McKenna I'm also waiting for you to fulfill your promise my daughter is still outside of school you can see she's here they did give me someone named Mr sankoya who's supposed to work with us so the first week it went okay and then I told them that I was going to come to the board uh and ask for a different worker and it's been three weeks now and yes so I'm just waiting for my daughter to be placed in a school otherwise I'm going to take her and we're going to go on vacation I don't know where maybe to Miami but she'll be out of away from here out of school and it feels very strange to me the police come to my house since there's no
256funding for police how is it possible that there's funding to send police to my home it's been three years now since my daughter has been out of school yes and I hope that this year at least they will place her in a school is and my daughter's been very even if it's by online my daughter's been really happy being at home even though we're waiting for Mr McKenna to fulfill his promise I can jog your memory we were there with you with your secretary we took pictures we were with the previous superintendent there with you I'm still waiting for that promise of the special ed that was going to be made at Foshay high school I have the paperwork that your secretary and you filled out and we're still waiting is foreign so here's my
257daughter she's still out of outside of school not going to school where is she there you can see her thank you very much for your time Maria Daisy Ortiz Maria Daisy Ortiz good afternoon distinguished board members my name is Maria Daisy Ortiz I am a mother with a student in LAUSD who has dyslexia is escuelas so I'm here because right now all the elections are being convened for the d-lac committee at all LAUSD and from all the different school districts which have 130 schools each there are only 60 to 70 Representatives coming leaving 50 schools out without representation is and the chaotic part is that the majority of these committees like elac and study groups are not initially initially formed in the correct manner for these groups committees to functions I think what you're trying
258to do is complete and be in compliance with the law as you create these committees but you're not paying attention that these committees be formed an appropriate matter and that the elections are done appropriately is foreign these practices are discriminatory against parents and they put parents um they're treated as lesser people of lesser importance education is a business where parents are your business partner and children if we didn't bring our children you wouldn't have a business is so I'm I'm not saying that the law 1116 doesn't say to do these committees federal government sends you the money to form them it's and you need to comply with them otherwise it's not you're not up to par imported there's no equity and for those of you who are new I'm going to give you the feedback
259from parents when you ask about Equity participation is we were the ones when there was true parent engagement we were the ones who helped develop and plan the meetings in the convention center where more than 5 000 people would come because so parents plan these conferences parents brought training for Budget resp they were trained on being how to run a committee responsibly endorsing con app what was the process for a school plan it was all based on Equity is so like that's what's happening unfortunately that's not happening with these apparent academies where you don't know who is in that meeting and as Miss Ortiz Franklin said this is one-way communication only in these webinars information in those meetings parents could have direct be sitting on budget committees legislative committees be directly connected with state and
260federal representation not like now where you just send an administrator to hand out the information is in those days we recognize the best Title One schools we would bring up to 30 students with their teachers and staff to show what they had done we would give out backpacks with materials take them to the Aquarium of the Pacific students who had never been to a place like that is not happening now I want to know why you are not making this happen the government is sending you money to make it happen why don't you want to do it thank you thank you for your time Marcela Garcia are you on the line Marcela Garcia if you're on the line press star six to unmute yourself you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin Marcella Garcia
261my name is escucha foreign Padres is for example in Una Middle School the program in a high school foreign Hijos Dinero yeah futuro is programas para Padres Los Padres Padres [Music] Los Padres Araceli Cabrera are you online Cabrera if you are press star six to mute yourself I'm not showing that you're not here uh yourself and you have three minutes to speak once you begin Karina Lopez are you on the line Karina if you're on the line press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin Karina Lopez hello hi hello Karina Lopez assistant [Music] foreign presence area foreign acceptable foreign thank you Dr Amber Marie Irving are you on the line Dr Amber Marie Irving Diana Guillen are you on the line Diana Guillen if you're on the
262line press star six to meet yourself and you'll have three minutes to speak once you begin again see when I started my name is completely Los Padres yes connection entrances parakeet is members expressions foreign gracias thank you very much this concludes the public comment portion of the committee today thank you Mr McLean thank you uh board members and um I don't think I heard of any adjourning motions so with that it's 12 59 p.m and we will adjourn our next Committee of the whole is hold on I'm like Tuesday November 1st so only a couple weeks you have to wait for the fund to continue um and uh see everyone then