State Board of Education Meeting March 11, 2026

001All right, good morning. I Good morning. I see nine of our 11 members are present in person today and I understand that board member Orosco Gonzalez is participating in this meeting from a remote location. So, consistent with the laws governing remote participation in our meetings, member Orosco Gonzalez, please confirm the following. Would you confirm that you are present? Yes, I do. >> Great. And would you confirm that there's no other adult in the room from where you are participating remotely? >> There are no other adults. >> All right. And we hope you feel better soon. >> Thank you. And I hereby call the March 2026 meeting of the state board of education to order at 8:34 a.m. And I'd like to commence by saluting the flag. Member Lewis, will you please lead us in the

002pledge of allegiance? to the flag of the stands nation. I'd like to uh welcome board members, staff, and members of the public who are attending this board meeting in person and who are watching on the live stream. The proposed waiver consent items are W1 through 8. The proposed regular consent items are items 4 through 10. There are two public hearings on the agenda. Item 13 is the petition for the renewal of a charter school authorized by the California State Board of Education and it is consideration of Bayoint Preparatory Academy San Diego. And item 14 is petition for the renewal of a charter school authorized by the California State Board of Education consideration of Olive Grove Charter in Santa Barbara. Uh we will reopen item one SBE priorities tomorrow to take action on the preliminary report

003of actions draft January 2026 meeting minutes and to report on our liaison assignments. There will be no closed session today. The attachment to item six was revised twice on March 5th to correct the authorizing entity for NOVA Academy OC from Nova Academy OC to Orange County Department of Education and then to correct the charter term for Orange County Prep, a navigator school from uh 712025 through 6:30 2031 to 712026 through 6:30 2031. Item nine was revised on March 5th to reflect the March 3rd, 2026 date of the letter included in the attachments sent to the United States Department of Education. Item 14 was revised on March 6th to reflect that the charter schools 202425 reserves were 15% instead of 10%. In terms of public comment, public comment will be accepted either in person or by

004phone. Members of the public wishing to call in for public comment should view the live stream of this meeting to know at what time public comment will occur for each item. Public comment may be provided by dialing the phone number, entering a participant access code, and then following each of the operators prompts. Upon dialing in, callers will be added to a caller queue. The operator will notify callers when it is their turn to provide public comment. We will also ask callers to please turn down the speaker volume of their computers if they are following the live webcast to avoid an echoing effect. Members of the public wishing to provide public comment in person should sign in using the binder at the table just outside the room. The binder is on the table with separate pages

005for each item number. This will help ensure that staff is able to track the in-person speakers for a particular item. Public comment will be limited to one minute for each speaker. Where speakers require interpretation, two minutes will be provided. Item 15 is the general public comment item during which members of the public may provide comment on matters that are not specifically listed on the board's agenda. At this point, I will open up item one and turn it over to State Superintendent Thurman for his report. Welcome. >> Thank you, Madam Board President. Uh good morning, everyone. Uh let me begin by acknowledging that in March we have uh two celebrations. We celebrate um art month as well as women's history month. And I would be remiss to not begin by acknowledging all the incredible women who've

006made contributions in so many great sectors, but particularly those who've made contributions in education. And I'd like to start with just acknowledging our own board members who continue to make history, who continue to break the glass ceiling, to make great achievements for our students. Could we have a big round of applause for our own board members here in Women's History Month who are doing uh incredible work. Um thank you. Um you know there are so many challenges taking place in the world right now. Um you might have noticed a few. Um there are a lot of things coming out of the federal government that challenge us on many many levels. But I would like to start by telling you about some great accomplishments and great things that are happening. And we can talk about the

007challenges later. Um, not the least of which is that we've just announced 408 distinguished schools who will be acknowledged and recognized at our annual awards ceremony uh in April. And we hope that you all will mark your calendars. Many of you have been there and you've experienced um the wonderful celebration um that we have. We have uh three categories of schools that will be recognized uh on this uh at this celebration on April the 24th. Uh we will acknowledge a category called exemplary high achievers. Uh these are the schools that are amongst the highest in academic achievement in our state. Uh we have a category that recognizes achievement gap closers. Um, these are school uh schools that have accelerated progress for uh students in two or more categories of historically dist uh disadvantaged students. And

008a new category that's been added called beacons of opportunity, a chance for us to recognize schools in rural communities and title one communities that are making high um uh accomplishments in terms of student performance. And so, uh, we'd be honored to host our board members if you're able to join us, um, at the happiest place on earth, um, on April the 24th, um, to recognize our distinguished schools. We also award schools in the categories of civic learning and green ribbon uh, for schools that have made um, um, uh, progress around sustainability. And finally, I would just note that while the federal government has chosen uh to stop recognizing schools in the nation in the category of blue ribbon schools, we will be honoring and recognizing the 2025 uh California Blue Ribbon Schools at our distinguished

009schools event uh in April. So, we hope that you uh will join us uh at that event. Um I I would also note that we are continuing uh our many efforts to support literacy in our state. I want to thank everyone from Jordan Academy and Orange Unified School District for hosting me and our team, our literacy team, our statewide literacy director, um Dr. Barney Garcia, uh for their read across America celebration. Um it was an incredible celebration that highlights the school's accomplishments in literacy, but also that they are a dual language immersion school. um that they are a steam school and um many displays on hand um to learn about um their robotics programs and the contributions that our students are making uh in technology. I would also note that um our move the needle

010cohort that focuses on helping students improve uh literacy and math uh held a u a webinar on the subject of highdose tutoring. Something that our board president has talked about often that has been noted as a way of helping students to make achievement um and uh in particular is helping students make dramatic improvements in literacy. And so um we want to thank the team for putting that together. And I want to let you know that we will be turning our focus to writing and the role that writing plays in helping our students um in reading. Um we will be putting out a call to all districts that have students who have written books. I've met a number of our students who've authored books and we will be highlighting those student authors and creating the opportunity

011for students who want the chance to write a book or learn about authorship or just improve their writing um will have the opportunity to do that and a very special celebration of our um move the needle uh cohort in this very room. uh we celebrated the 50th anniversary of IDA and despite efforts at the federal level to dismantle education to um create confusion um I want to thank the folks from our um advisory commission on special education and Dr. Rachel Henan our division director uh for bringing together incredible leaders and students who can speak to how we continue to ensure that our students receive an appropriate education. Um, it was a a rousing celebration and it dovetailed with some conversations that we're having about how we support our own California state special schools, our two

012schools that serve deaf students, our schools that serve blind students. Um, you know, they they are providing incredible programs, state-of-the-art programs. Um, our California Schools for the Deaf provide American Sign Language, provide CTE programs, provide STEAM programs, but yet districts often don't take advantage and avail themselves to uh these great schools. And so our as we approach the 50th anniversary of IDEIDA, we've started a conversation about how we can promote more uh enrollment at our state special schools, how we can get the word out for families to know that we have schools that can serve their children. Um and on that note, I want to acknowledge the students at the California School for the Deaf Fremont who won the academic decathlon uh that was hosted uh at their school. Um, our schools have state champions

013in sports and in academics. And I want to um give a big shout out to our students who are the winners of the academic uh decathlon. Um, during Black History Month, we held a very robust uh series of conversations focused on oral history. It was an honor to interview our own Secretary of State, Dr. Shirley Weber. um the former mayor of San Francisco and the first uh uh the longest serving speaker of the California State Assembly uh the honorable uh Willie L. Brown and a chance to um interview someone who has made significant contributions in the field of astrophysics um a renowned professor at UC Berkeley uh Dr. Gabbor Baseri who has helped to identify stars and name stars um and his his research has supported uh NASA and so we're grateful for um the

014work that we've been able to do um for Black History Month celebration. I would also note that our education to end hate uh initiative also hosted uh 200 plus educators uh here in Sacramento um to uh talk about how we use education to counter hate. And I want to thank our partnership with the uh uh teachers collaborative uh on teaching holocaust education and um countering genocide for the work that they've done to educate 5,000 educators um in our state. Uh we'd like to tell you just about a little bit of legislation um that we are working on. Uh we are working on a bill with Assembly Member Mirrosuchi that would provide um kindergarten for all. Um um it comes as a surprise to some that kindergarten is not a requirement in this state and many

015times students arrive at first grade not having had any exposure um to school and um we are honored that uh assembly Mary Miruchi has uh chosen to work with us on our legislation uh that will make kindergarten the law uh in the state of California. Um I also wanted to note that uh we are working on legislation to help homeless youth in our state. Uh there is an estimate that there are some almost 10,000 uh teens who are unaccompanied minors on their own uh who are homeless and we know that without uh work to help them they will become uh homeless adults. AB673 would support schools in their ability to provide more resources to these students and would provide direct funding to provide housing and other benefits uh to these students. And uh we hope

016that you will support uh this legislation. Uh AB1631 is the bill that uh I mentioned um for uh kindergarten and um I would mention that AB1633 is a bill that we are sponsoring with Assembly Member Matt Haney that addresses the subject of immigration. And this bill would put a tax on any company in our state that operates an ICE detention center. Sadly, there are six or seven different ICE detention centers in the state of California, and we believe that this is an area where we need to build on the work that we've done. Uh, our legislation has kept ICE out of our schools and out of our hospitals. Uh, but we know that many of our families are still affected by ICE and it uh it depresses our school attendance. It makes people afraid to

017leave their communities. And so we've chosen uh to work on these issues uh to continue to support our uh immigrant families and to support California schools. I do want to note that on the issue of immigration um this last week we experienced a very difficult situation. One of our students who served at the California School for the Deaf in Fremont. uh a six-year-old named Joseph was uh abducted by ICE while he and his mom were at a meeting with ICE officials complying with what the law requires of them. Uh they were abducted and without providing notice to the family's attorneys sent to Colombia. Um the mother of this student is an asylum seeker and to make matters worse uh this student was sent um to Colombia without his hearing aids and cannot communicate with anyone

018uh in Colombia. He is learning American Sign Language as is his mom and there are not the uh appropriate supports in Colombia to meet his need. Needless to say, uh we've mounted a public relations campaign and a and a campaign of diplomacy and um working with our members of Congress and the US Senate to see how we might have Joseph return so that he can continue to benefit from what is offered uh by um the incredible uh staff and educators at the California School for the Deaf in Fremont. Um we hope that um we can bring you good news here. Um and on this point, I would just like to um thank the attorneys um at the state board of education and the California Department of Education. This has been a um quite a time

019um so to speak and um um the good work of our attorneys to um support legal challenges and legal inquiries and defend against those who would attack California children and block their ability to get an education. um deserves uh recognition and appreciation and thanks. Um we have a lot more work to do, but I'm grateful for our attorneys who've worked closely with the attorney general's office, with the legal community. And uh I would close with just this note as we continue our work to try and help students like Joseph um to get a quality education. I want to acknowledge the parents who have been active in our migrant education program who will be celebrating the 43rd uh parent uh meeting on March the 21st. Uh these are the students who travel and have to travel

020wherever the work is. These are the students whose families work in agriculture um who work in u uh various industries that require them to move and often their education is affected and we are continuing to support them and to give them uh support through our migrant education program both at the state level, our county partners and our local districts. And so I just want to acknowledge that they will have their um 43rd uh parent uh migrant education meeting uh coming up on March 21st. We hope that you will join them. Madam President, this concludes my report and I'm happy to submit to any questions for members of the board. >> Thank you. >> And I want to start by just thanking you for your strong um leadership in the area of immigration uh and in

021the area of human rights, you know, in this state. It's been, as you say, it has been a time. It has been a time. uh and also to recognize um the literacy office that you uh launched inside the department of education on the occasion of the read across America day and all of the good work. I'm so excited about the emphasis on writing uh that will be coming as a former English teacher. I will not say an old English teacher but former English teacher. We know that, you know, writing helps our reading and reading helps our writing and literacy is the foundation of democracy. So, it is um it's a wonderful thing to be able to see the progress that California is making and you have had so much to do with that progress. Um,

022and as you know, because you've been involved in all of this, we've made historic investments in literacy in California, including money for learning recovery and early literacy programs and literacy coaches and reading specialists and support for students with reading challenges from our universal early reading screenings and the Golden State Literacy Plan. And I know you continue to pursue uh that trajectory until we really get to a place where all of our um learners are uh both literate and multilingual. So uh I want to appreciate that. Um I'm going to uh speak a little bit about um the uh budget that was launched uh when we met in in January. There was um a lot to digest. Uh there are many discussions to be had uh in committee hearings at the capital as we've moved towards

023the May budget revision. In February, I was able to participate in a jointformational hearing regarding coherence in education finance and planning focused on how to bring greater alignment with less burden to the many programs and regulations that school districts are seeking to coordinate. Some of you have probably heard the term plemic which accompanied our our many needed efforts during the pandemic to bring a variety of supports uh to schools but those were accompanied by a variety of um plans and um requirements that people are uh trying to deal with. In addition, the current system in California was built over the last hundred years, bit by bit. And so we have a geological dig of policies and governance structures uh with intersecting and occasionally competing roles and responsibilities. And it's informed by our shared aspirations and

024I think we we uh articulate those at this table. Uh but it wasn't constructed to provide a coherent foundation. It was constructed bit by bit. uh and schools have to do different work today. Our schools are navigating a rapidly changing economy uh and society with continuous technological changes. Many of you know that there's a predicted 30% loss of jobs or dramatic change in jobs in the next five years due to AI. Uh we've got a a factory model approach to education that we inherited that we're gradually trying to change to respond to this environment. But it does contribute to this sense of incoherence, how we're um trying to manage all of that. Furthermore, of course, the pressing needs in recent years from the pandemic and its aftermath to the effects of rapid climate change and

025immigration rates, uh to the growing numbers of students who are low income, experiencing homelessness and with disabilities means that we have needed to add many new programs and initiatives to meet those those needs. but they've often landed on top of other components or programs and sometimes that has felt to produce redundancies, reporting requirements and restrictions on how districts use the funding. So, uh we're tackling this question of how do we really modernize the uh California education system? There are some underlying sources of uh systemic instability that we have inherited that we need to address. There are multiple state and federal initiatives that land on top of each other and you know need to be sorted out and um the department's been doing a lot of work to identify and think about how that could could

026proceed. Uh we have a fragmented system of governance and implementation. Of course we have state board and and department of education but there's also CTC and CCE and FICMAT and I could you know there many many acronyms. our 58 county offices of education. We have three higher education sectors. Uh you know the UC, the CSU and the community colleges, none of which are particularly connected to each other in a governance uh structure. Uh they're they're operating as individual segments and so uh that creates another set of challenges for coordination. we have unstable sources of state revenues and so that means we get you know times when you know we get a lot of money and times when there's very little and that leads to uh the need to do one-time funding because we can only

027put into the formula what we know we can sustain. Uh and so that then also often creates categorical programs that over the years have sometimes developed wonderful programs that have come and gone and then sometimes we bring them back again. So that's another source of uh instability. And then uh with a funding system based on average daily attendance, but lots of growing climate events and immigration rates and so on, that can create instability for districts as well. So some of these challenges will ultimately require some more fundamental shifts in our state revenue and funding systems uh to create more stability and reliability. Others however are things that we can address through better coordination uh within and between the branches of government and some uh thoughtful uh policy. Um we have uh in at the board

028and the department in concert with the governor's office and the legislature taken up several strategies that do aim to support greater coherence. One is that we've been very intentional in our use of one-time funding and we've put seven to 10 year trajectories on those funds rather than something that would come and go very quickly. So, uh, with the Golden State Pathway grants, the community schools grants that have had those long spending tales, we have the opportunity, uh, to, uh, see what's working. Um, teacher residencies is another one. Uh, and where we have success, we have the opportunity to try to bake that into the system. Uh so that's uh there are a lot of those that are coming uh to uh the four now having been launched in the beginning of the administration where we're

029going to need to consider how to create stability and reliability for programs that are working. Uh we have tried to develop local capacity for coherence around the goal of whole child education and our community schools partnership program which has been quite successful across the state uh does enable schools to bring coherence to a fragmented collection of federal and state programs. So it's a major force for coherence in the field and we hear this over and over and over again. Uh, and I was just talking to someone who uh had recently been um looking at the uh differentiated assistance and and improvement strategies that a group of uh schools and districts were doing and the single most uh frequent mention of what had been helping them over the last few years was community schools uh as

030a way to cohhere to bring things together to address the needs that they could see that their students have. Uh so that's I think another thing we want to really explore is how to deepen that and expand it. Alignment of applications and funding systems for related programs. Um last year we aligned we created an integrated approach for teacher support programs. Uh residencies and student teaching stipens. Um the department of education has done a report looking at places where that could be um uh done more widely in different areas of the uh funding system. uh greater coordination across currently disconnected educational sectors. There is a new coordinating council, the California education inter agency council that will try to uh bring together the TK12 system, each of the higher education sectors and the labor department to really

031look at our needs in this new economy and then think about how do we align our efforts to give kids the kind of uh streamlined pathway into um that economy that is needed. Um and then finally rationalizing our accountability system and statewide system of support. As you know we are rethinking the differentiated assistance system. Uh thinking about how it can be brought to and aligned with uh LCAP and many other parts of our system of support. So there are a lot of things that that can be done. We're going to be looking at all of those uh over this coming year. And um we have two things on our agenda today that are related to this. Uh we uh will be developing a north star to uh guide policy through our a portrait of a

032learner and graduate which we'll be talking about shortly. Uh and then continuing to think about how to remove unnecessary barriers to innovation as we hear from those uh schools in the secondary school redesign pilot uh about what they would uh would would enable them to do the good work that they're doing uh more easily and uh more widely across the state. So we're trying to take a our own continuous improvement approach to our education system. uh and uh that will be a topic for us over the coming uh year. Uh and we um as part of uh our efforts to modernize the school system, we need to ensure that we're meeting the changing needs of our students. In this regard, in response to the Department of Education's denial of our 1% cap waiver request, the

033state superintendent and I sent a letter to assistant secretary Kristen Basler to provide the federal administration with data uh depicting the current upward trend in the number of students with disabilities. This is nationwide, but it's especially pronounced in California. Uh, as stated in our letter, when um total enrollment decreased from 2018 to 2024 in California by about 400 um,000 students, the number of students with disabilities was increasing by more than 80,000. At the same time, in 2003, when the 1% cap was established, the rate of autism in the country was one in 150. Today, the rate of autism in California is one in 19. uh and so the needs of students uh have grown and the federal requirements have not responded. So we are taking that up uh and there were more than 20 states

034last year who sought waiverss of that 1% cap. So we will be working with uh them and with the department uh to see if in fact uh we can get education to be more responsive to the needs of the states. Uh finally just to commemorate uh women's history month uh which we uh are celebrating this month uh we have been of course in California uh advancing policies that support women and families paid family leave, reproductive rights protections, efforts to close gender pay gaps uh does give us an opportunity to highlight progress while acknowledging that there is still much work to do to ensure equity across race and income and geography. Um, in a state known for innovation and opportunity, it is a time for us to celebrate leadership. Uh, and one of the women who

035helped to define our work today is Sylvia Mendes, who began her career as a civil rights activist at the age of eight when she sought to attend a whites only school uh, and became the lead plaintiff in the Mendes v. Westminster case in 1946, which ended the juror school segregation in California. She reminded everyone that we are all individuals. We are all human beings. We are all connected together and we all have the same rights, the same freedom. Uh so I want to recognize that um inspiring uh call to uh our work uh that we continue to do today. And with that, I will uh open item one, I mean item two, which is our study session uh on the state board of education's portrait of a learner and graduate. And this is an information

036item uh which we will uh begin with just a few uh remarks to remind you of what we're doing here and then we will hear from um our colleagues at the um CCE and um from AIR. So we as you know have been trying to develop this portrait of a learner and graduate which will represent an agreed upon set of aspirations for what every learner will know and be able to do when they leave school. The purpose of the board's portrait is to serve as our northstar. providing greater coherence across our work and guiding decision- making in areas within the board's purview. It will allow us to see whether what we're doing is uh across venues is leading in a common direction including in assessment accountability and other key policy areas. Uh to be clear

037and I just want to emphasize this uh the adoption of the statewide portrait will not create any new requirements for school districts. uh there is no plan, there is no report, there is no audit trail. Many eleas have already developed their own portraits that guide local decision-making. Those have been very helpful in the districts that have done that. Uh and this effort will build on those efforts and articulate our board vision at the state level. This study session is a follow-up to several previous board discussions. Uh in earlier meetings, we heard examples and learned from other states. Uh, now it's time for us to apply what we're learning and begin the process of creating our own portrait. Today we will hear from CCE and our comprehensive center, which is the American Institutes for Research, on

038the exciting work they have done to solicit input on what the portrait should look like, including what are the most important skills for students to learn and know when they graduate. Uh, and I would like to ask President Glover, Vice President Glover Woods for her opening remarks. She is leading our charge on this. Thank you, President Darling Hammond, and good morning to everyone. Um, again, I'd like to underscore the importance of this work. Uh, I believe in I know in our past conversations, we uh have articulated that the adoption of this portrait of a graduate or learner by the state board uh will provide the coherence that's necessary across our various policy areas and anchor our decisions uh in our shared long-term outcomes for students. So, I'm quite excited that we are at this point.

039We've been on this journey, at least this conversation journey for a while, and it's so exciting to see where we are today. I do want to thank CCE and AIR for their outstanding work in gathering input from a very broad range of uh educational partners and interest holders. Um, if you had an opportunity to dig into the board item and look at just the wide breath of feedback we have received on this item from people who sit in so many different seats and uh serve students throughout our state, including parents and teachers, which I'm quite excited about. So with that, with no further ado, I should say, let's begin the presentation. So I'd like to invite forward Christine Olmstead Lee Sutcher, Linda Choy and Ben Kina who will lead us through our presentation and then

040after that in public comment we will engage in some very robust discussion board members. So let us get ready for that. So thank you so much for being here all of you and um Dr. Olmstead I turn it over to you. Thank you so very much. I think we're on now. Um, good morning, President Darling Hammond, members of the board. Um, and just a special thank you to President Glover Wood or Vice President Gloverwoods um, as she has um, been our liaison through this process and helped us guide us um, through everything that we've done here. Um, I'm Christine Olmstead with the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence along here with my colleagues and I'll let them introduce themselves. Hi everybody. Good morning. I'm Lee Sucher. I'm a consultant with CCE and really grateful to be

041here. Nice to meet you all. >> Good morning. My name is Ben Kina. I am a principal researcher with the American Institutes for Research. >> All right. So as um both of our president and vice president have told us um our portrait of a graduate or portrait of a learner will be our northstar for the state and we will be joining a third of the other states in the nation who have already developed portraits and we have been learning from them as as well in our journey of collecting this data. U most portraits um across the nation emphasize skills like critical thinking, collaboration, communication and creativity. Um, these are now being called durable skills. You may have heard these called soft skills in the past, but now these are durable skills because you need these

042skills to be able to pick up and go with you anywhere you go. So, you'll hear that changing of names throughout um, our journey here. A little history. Um, the state board has been working on this and considering this for quite a while now. Um, and so studying the hundreds of portraits across our state already that our local districts have developed um, really helped us kind of put this presentation together to give a landscape of what's been going on um, across the state and as well across the nation. So, our community input approach, we took a two-prong approach to this. Um, so we called it reach and depth. We launched a survey at the beginning of November that went out to thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people through list serves um and

043other people we had communicated with to please push the survey out um with over 2,94 responses between um basically November 1st and January 31st. So we got a pretty good outreach there. Um I'll show you on the next slide the demographic outreach we had as well. Um but the depth as well. We met with um 10 different groups across the state to hear more from them with some focus group questions and our colleagues at AR helped us with those presentations there. As you can see here the survey respondents we had a vast majority from our parents which is really what we were searching for is to really get our family um input on this portrait. And then our next highest group was teachers. So really hearing both from our families and our educators in the

044classrooms on what they felt were the most valuable skills. You'll see we had a wide variety of demographics represented too, rural, suburban, and urban. And so we did have a strong reach across the entire state of California. One of the questions on the survey was asked, should we call this a portrait of a learner or a portrait of a graduate? And 69.9 69.9% of the community right now is saying portrait of a learner. So just something to consider as you have your discussions. We also asked how many learning goals should we have on a portrait and overwhelmingly it was between five and eight. So something to consider as you have your discussions later today as well. On the survey, we started with 21 common competencies that we found across the national um portraits that were

045out there as well as our local district portraits that have been developed. From these competencies, uh the survey respondents were asked to identify the top five that they felt were most valuable to developing our portrait. So as you see um then we rankordered these as we saw the survey results come in and across the board of every group critical thinking was the number one skill. As we went down they started to cluster and so the next set of skills that you see that were most clustered by respondents was communication. Something around problem solving, perseverance and adaptability, character and collaboration were kind of the top skills identified by the groups. And this is just more of them. We also included this slide. I know it's hard to see, but you can if you analyze this slide,

046this is where you start to see the clustering by groups and making sure that it's representative of students, parents, community members, um, teachers, and so it's just clustered by who responded. So you can see the commonalities between the top skills that people are saying. We also uh had an open response and asked people to write in comments and anything else they saw missing from the top 21 that were noticed there. And we added three more uh based on those frequent responses. And so we had over 798 written responses and almost 40% of those asked us to add something around multilingualism. Also, environmental, climate, and literacy was something to add, as well as civic and democratic participation. And I'm gonna have Ben talk about our focus groups. Thank you, Christine. So, AIR's primary role with this

047initiative has been through conducting focus groups to understand um from the voices of educators, parents, students, and community members what they thought were important to include in a potential portrait of a graduate or learner. Um we conducted a mix of 10 virtual or in-person focus groups um and just try to get a a sense of what they were thinking should be included. Um our our protocol for the focus groups was intentionally um simple. We wanted to make time and space for them to respond to our questions but also for them to hear from each other and to be able to build on each other's thinking. So the first question we asked participants was simple. Um we asked them what did they believe were the most essential competencies or skills that should be included. Um, and

048at this point we didn't in uh we intentionally did not give them a list of potential competencies because we wanted to understand what inherently rose as important to them. We then asked them if they saw any differences between what they would consider in a portrait of a graduate or learner versus what may be considered in a portrait of a successful citizen after schooling ends. Uh, and then finally, we asked them to look at the list of competencies that Christine referenced earlier of the over 20 competencies to see if they could nominate their top five to eight. Um, to see if there were any changes in the naming or descriptions of the competencies on that slide um, and to see if they would suggest combining or collapsing any competencies. So it should go without saying that

049uh we learned a lot through all of the focus groups and really the main sentiment was that students need a balanced set of academic, social, emotional, civic and practical life skills to succeed in post-secary education, the workforce and civic life. The seven competencies listed here uh are in rank order. Uh meaning they showed up most frequently in all of the focus groups and those are academic foundations, critical thinking and problem solving, communication and collaboration, social, emotional and interpersonal skills, practical life skills and independence, digital and media literacy, civic, global and community awareness. Uh it should be uh noted that there is a lot of overlap between what we learned through the focus groups and what we were learning through the surveys. Um however all of these um these competencies are dense with content and some

050of them like communication and collaboration for example could be considered two distinct competencies but in the focus groups participants talked about those going really handinand uh so what do we do with this learning in relation to the survey learning? I'll turn it over to Lee. >> Thanks, Ben. Okay, so um next I'm going to take us through um some examples and some considerations to help inform our discussion today. Um the examples I'm going to show are printed in your packets. Um, if you'd like to revisit any of them, I'm going to warn you now, I'm going to move decently quickly through these, but I'll make sure to pause at some key moments to draw attention to some uh important uh information. So, when looking at um portraits um across the country and in California, um

051obviously the first consideration is what collection of competencies is included. So, here we have Kentucky. um they include six competencies that are here and I'll revisit these so you don't need to speed readad them. Um and in winter's joint unified here in California they include six um competencies as well but slightly different. So when comparing these um Kentucky includes engaged citizen, critical thinking thinker, effective communicator, empowered learner, creative contributor, and productive collaborator. Whereas Winter's Joint Unified, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creativity, cultural awareness, and community engagement. So a lot of overlap there. The the difference between those two is that um Kentucky highlights more empowered learners where Winters um emphasizes cultural awareness. And so hopefully with the help of the survey and the the focus group input um our conversation today will help us move closer

052to the right mix of competencies for the state board uh portrait. The next important consideration is um the phrasing of the competency titles. You'll you probably may have already noticed that different states handle this differently. Different portraits handle it differently. So in join uh in in winters um they just name the competencies critical thinking, communication, collaboration and so on. Um, in Kentucky, um, they're a little bit more outcome based, engaged citizen, critical thinker, effective communicator. Um, in Washington State, they're a little bit more actionbased. Um, their graduate solves problems, sustains wellness. And so, there's different ways to phrase um, the the titles to communicate different things. Um just to highlight that um this is all this slide shows three different ways to um describe the um competency communication communication effective communicator or communicates effectively. The

053next consideration is the actual specific language of each competency. Um the same competency can be described um differently in that that addresses a slightly different set of underlying skills and and points. So, we're turning to our core examples here. Um, in Kentucky, their critical thinker competency um is defined as thinks deeply and makes informed decisions to create solutions or new understanding supported by relevant and reliable evidence. It's a little bit different than Winters um where their critical thinking competency is students seek deeper understanding of complex ideas through dialogue, questioning and and um problem solving and apply their knowledge in novel and cognitively demanding ways. Um so they're subtly different there. K Kentucky in their critical thinking um highlights the use of reliable sources. um whereas Winters talks more about um how critical thinking includes dialogue

054and questioning. So those subtle differences in how we describe our competencies allow it to address slightly different skills. So another consideration, the last consideration I'll share with us today um is the implementation framework that sits alongside the portrait. So here's Central New Mexico's graduate profile. Um on the left sits their portrait represented by this colorful hot air balloon that um describes a set of attributes that their graduates um embody. And then on the right um along with their portrait they also share a set of foundational experiences that each student should be provided with. They call this the launchpad and it uplifts experiences like students have relationships with caring adults or students have opportunities to apply their learning in real world situations. In Washington state um they have six competencies but they also outline the goals

055of a basic education um and a purpose of a diploma which adds additional context to their portrait. And finally, in South Carolina, um they have 12 competencies. Um and each of these skills is broken down into six readiness levels that um talk about the learning stages from childhood to adulthood. So um these implementation frameworks that surround the portrait um conceptually is another important consideration and one that states use to bolster coherence. So, now that we've talked a little bit about examples and considerations, um we're gonna in this next set of slides, we're going to um illustrate one possible example of how the community survey results could inform uh the state board's portrait. So, to do this, we started with really community voice. Um, we took the top 10 most commonly selected competencies that Christine talked

056about there on the left. Um, we also knew it would be important to incorporate multilingualism which showed up in 40% of our open-ended um, additions, really strong support across the state. Um, that that's an important um, competency to represent. um and then also um in tried to incorporate the themes that we saw across the focus groups that had nice overlap. So we took this kind of set of 11, the top 10 plus multilingualism and then a lot of the overlap from the focus groups and we tried to look for areas of overlap and synergy where could we combine some of these key competencies and this is something we heard over and over again in the focus groups that there's a lot of great competencies and skills here and there's room for synergy and overlap between

057them. So um on this slide you can see we started to group this um in number one there you can see um we combine critical thinking which ranked first in the survey with academic proficiency which ranked 10th. This decision was representative of what we heard in the focus groups that um that a strong academic foundation is critical to being a critical thinker. So that was a a natural pairing. Um, in number two, we combined communication and multilingualism. In number four, we combined adaptability and perseverance, which ranked fourth in the survey, with growth mindset, um, which ranked seventh. And then in number seven, we combined global citizenship, um, which ranked eighth, um, and the ability to value varied perspectives, which ranked ninth. So, we did some little combining there. In this next slide in red um

058you can see the shifts we made in language to accom to accommodate those combinations and synergy. So for example that first competency critical thinking now reads students build a strong foundation of academic knowledge to ask questions analyze information and think carefully to find good answers. So that new red text is representative of adding that e extra wrinkle and synergy between critical thinking and academic proficiency. Same thing in number two, their communication. It has the original competency that was on the survey for communication and then the red text adds and and acknowledges the importance of multilingualism that students build skills in multiple languages. So this process of synergy left us with these seven um that are from the top top uh getters on the survey but are inclusive of a wider set of competencies um in

059there. So this example is just one possible way to move forward and really is more a model of some of the the principles um that can be used to support further suggestions and refinement of the um portrait and really a jumping off point for board discussion. Um with that I'm going to pass it back to Christine to share some discussion questions and highlight next steps. So as you notice, leave took you through a way as a state board you could look at combining some of these competencies and and guide your discussion. But for you, we've also developed some discussion questions um to consider. So some of the things we asked on the survey is what should we name this? Um so consideration um how many competencies should we include would be another item for discussion

060for you all. Uh what set of competencies? you saw the 21 plus the three that um came from input on the survey as well. So what should we land on for those competencies? How should we combine? Is there anything missing? Um and then how should we phrase these titles as well? So little descriptors that need to go with each one after your discussion. Um, some of the timelines we're looking at is after your public comment discussion today is to provide an interim draft back out to you based on your feedback and then possibly potentially bringing it back to in May for final board approval. And now we'll turn the meeting back over to President Darling Hammond and Vice President Glover Woods. >> Thank you so much. We appreciate it. Um, we will put up the

061public comment slide. One more. >> There we go. Um, we will now open the phone line for public comment. Uh, members of the public wishing to provide comment on this item may do so by calling the number and using the access code provided on the slide that is shown now. And while we're waiting, I want to ask our liaison, Vice President Glover Woods, if she has any additional comments before me. Thank you, President Darling Hammond. And again, thank you so much uh to our presenters today board. As you can see, there was a lot of work done to really get a wide variety of feedback from so many different stakeholders throughout our state um regarding competencies and their thoughts and their ideas. So I thank our presenters and those who helped facilitate this process and

062uh definitely thank uh which with huge gratitude the public who took the opportunity and time to respond to the surveys or participate in the listening groups and also the groups that helped convene them. So thank you so very much. I do want to just kind of lift up before we go to public comment how encouraging it was again to see the feedback that we received from so many different interest holders as well as from so many different geographic areas of our state. So when we begin our conversation I lift up for our thoughts and ideas a way to kind of dig in to this discussion if you will. There's a lot here. There are a lot of meats meat and potatoes if you will to say. Um so uh we received as you can see

063in our slide some significant uh feedback on the first two discussion questions regarding the name of the portrait and as well as the number of competencies. So I would encourage us to perhaps start there and then uh spend our time looking at the illustration of the synthesis of the top um top competencies that uh the public has given us feedback on. and then engage our discussion uh from there uh with trying to avoid if you will the rabbit hole of word smithing. I'm still traumat I still have trauma from basic and minimal. So we want to try to avoid going down that rabbit hole but yet still provide some very robust feedback uh for us to have a draft prepared for us to be able to see in April. So with that being said, President

064Darling Hammond, I'll I'll turn it back over to you. That was going to be my comment. It's it's going to be a temptation, but and we do want to know what people think are important, you know, words to uh to reflect our sentiments. Uh but we will try not to finalize any text today. Um I want to now turn to public comment. Uh do we have any public comment in the room? >> Yes, we have six individuals who signed up to give inperson public comment. So, as I call your name, please line up uh behind the microphone at the back of the room. Steve McDougall, Lindseay Poli, Carlos Machado, Roman Sterns, Natalie Shin, and Lorraine Richards. >> And Steve, you may begin. >> Okay. Thank you. Steve McDougall with CFTI Union of Educators and Classified

065Professionals. I just want to appreciate the work that's been done. So far, this is quite a journey. I know we're kind of still at the beginning. Hopefully, we don't have too much issues with word smithing. Um, but I'm looking forward to the outcome as it gets fully baked and becomes hopefully a guide for how to do things perhaps differently. Um, but there are a lot of things in the system that need to be adjusted, especially how we fund schools, um, to really fully appreciate this work and make it happen. And hopefully we can get there, too. Thank you. >> Good morning, members of the board. My name is Lindseay Polioli and I've been supporting AVID at the Sacramento County Office of Education for 22 years. Thank you for your leadership in developing a statewide portrait

066of learner for California. For more than 45 years, AVID has partnered with California schools to develop the skills highlighted today. AVID began here in California in 1980 and today serves over 418,000 students in California across over 2,000 schools. AVID's college and career readiness framework founded on student agency, rigorous academic preparedness and opportunity knowledge, and the accompanying AVID essential skills are almost mirror images of the competencies we just discussed. For example, Avid builds critical thinking and communication through inquiry, academic dialogue, collaboration and problem solving through team-based learning and collaborative tutorials, perseverance and adaptability through goal setting and self- advocacy, and character through relationship building and leadership development. These competencies are deeply embedded in daily classroom practice. >> Thank you, speaker. Your time is up. >> Thank you. Good morning, members of the board. My name is

067Natalie Shin with Californians Together. We were very excited to see multilingualism included as a suggested addition for the most valued skills and competencies in the portrait of a graduate learner, making up 39.2% of responses. If it had been one of the original choices, we feel confident that it would have received an even higher ranking. We respectfully ask for it to be officially included within the skills and competencies of the portrait of a graduate learner, as it is a vital asset tied to identity, culture, global readiness, and communication competency. Thank you for the consideration. >> Good morning. Carlos Mashado with California School Board Association. CSBA commends the state board for ensuring the portrait of a learner remains a guiding northstar rather than a new mandate. This approach honors local governance and the years of work uh

068local school boards have already invested in their own community-led visions. However, uh to truly empower local boards, we believe California equally requires a state level portrait of support. Uh currently, our districts must navigate fragmented landscape of uh peace meal programs and disconnected reforms. We urge the state board to consider adopting a framework centered on three pillars. Strategic uh prioritization, where state policy focuses on removing compliance barriers that dilute local resources. Second, operational coherence where uh new initiatives align with the long-term strategic plans already implemented locally. And lastly, a shared accountability where we move together uh towards a system where the state is also held accountable for ensuring its budgets and policies actively facilitate local success, applying the spirit of the portrait to state operations. >> Thank you, speaker. Your time is up. >> Thank you.

069Good morning. My name is Roman Sterns. I'm the executive director of Scaling Student Success. We're a state partnership that has built a community among the 100 plus school districts in California that have developed a portrait of graduate and the many TA providers who have a role in helping them move their portraits from poster to practice. For these districts, their portraits redefine student success and serve as a north star around which to build coherence. I applaud the state board for your visionary leadership to create a portrait of a learner. Thank you. It puts wind beneath the wings of districts engaged in this work. It validates their journeys to shift instruction and assessment and hold themselves accountable for students demonstrating portrait competencies. I'm pleased to share that we'll host our first annual portrait of a learner summit

070in September in San Jose. We've also requested state funding for a portrait of a learner resource hub, a free online platform where educators can access tools, examples, case studies, and more. Thanks again. >> Good morning. My name is Lorraine Richards. I'm a classroom teacher representing California Teacher Association. Thank you to the CDE and state board of education staff for collecting and compiling the survey results and providing this comprehensive analysis. CTA shared this survey widely across our membership and we noted significant number of teachers who participated in their survey. Almost 400 teachers responded and over 100 openended responses being from teachers. Educator input in statewide education educational priorities is critical. Although during today's presentation, slide six stated listening sessions with 10 diverse groups. Slide 16 does not list any organizations that would represent current educators in

071the classroom. CTA is here to help with teacher participation, to provide feedback, and we look forward to future opportunities to collaborate. Thank you. >> Thank you speakers. We have three additional people that signed up. Uh Rob Manwearing, Lindseay Tornator, and Diana Woo. >> Thanks so much. Robert Manwearing uh from Children Now. I want to make three quick points. First, I wanted to join our cowg colleagues uh in lifting up multilingualism as a skill that should be part of this conversation. Uh second, as you develop this portrait, encourage you to think about the integration of the academic curriculum side of the world and these these new portraits um and and how those two will be woven together. And in relation to that, a third point is really building a strong technical assistance and professional development apparatus

072to support this work. A absent that uh you know we know from the optel tool which was a a a tool for EL reclassification that the state board approved recently um without support and professional development it may not get used um and that's what we see with the optel and we fear that that might happen with this portrait absent some professional development and technical assistance support. Thanks so much. Good morning, President Darling Hammond, Vice President Glover Woods, members of the board, Lindseay Tornator on behalf of the California County Superintendent. The county superintendent strongly support the board's commitment to advancing innovation in eleas and schools over the next decade. And we commend the board for developing a statewide portrait of a graduate to help guide that work. We also want to recognize the California Collaborative for

073Educational Excellence, especially Dr. Christine Olmstead and Lee Suter for their thoughtful engagement for educators, families, and community partners across California. The county superintendents appreciated the opportunity to share input during the session facilitated by the CCE. The top priorities for the superintendents were character, critical thinking, and communication. They also recommended grouping the attributes into three to five broader themes for a clearer, more cohesive framework. Finally, the superintendents encouraged the board to use this effort to broaden how California defines student success. A statewide portrait can reflect multiple pathways and move beyond the false dichconomy of college versus career. Thank you. Good morning board members. Oops, sorry. Uh, Diana Vu on behalf of the Association of California School Administrators, AXA appreciate greatly appreciates the board's collaboration and its efforts to actively seek feedback from practitioners and communities in

074developing a state portrait and the board's commitment that any state adopted portrait will not create additional requirements for eleas. However, given the indication that the board approved the portrait will serve as a northstar, it is essential that any future policy referencing the state portrait explicitly acknowledge that locally developed portraits will differ in order to reflect distinct educational priorities and goals. The board must be cautious of a one-sizefitit all statewide approach that do not account for the differences in demographics, enrollment size, gradespan, and community dynamics. Additionally, the portrait should not should remain aspirational and not evolve into a compliance a compliance structure by another name. Clear and consistent communication from the state will be critical in ensuring local flexibilities is um preserved. Thank you. >> Public comment on the phone. >> Yes, >> we have more

075in the room. >> I don't think so. Thank you speakers. Um I will move to public comment on the phone now. And just a reminder for the callers in the queue, we are currently taking public comment for item number two. That's the study session on portrait of a learner, portrait of a graduate. Um, if you wish to speak to another item, please call back then. First caller ending in 7909, please state your name and affiliation for the record. You have one minute. Your time starts now. >> Good morning, state board members. My name is Dr. Cecil Nadel. I am a French high school teacher in San Diego and the California Language Teachers Association 2025 teacher of the year. I am here today to support the inclusion of multilingualism as an element in the state board's

076portrait. Multilingualism is not simply an academic subject. Research consistently shows that learning additional languages trans cognitive flexibility, problem solving, and literacy development. It also prepares students for a global workforce where communication across cultures and languages is increasingly essential. In our classroom, multilingualism also affirms students identities. When we value and develop students languages, we strengthen belonging, confidence, and engagement. For many students, language learning becomes a bridge between their communities, their education, and their future opportunities. Multilingualism is a powerful and necessary part of that vision. Thank you for your time and for your commitment to California's students. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 9797, please start your public comment. Next caller ending in 0533, please begin your public comment. >> Excuse me just a minute. I'm kind of a driving to work and so I'm pulling

077to the side of the freeway. Uh hello and thank you for taking my comment. My name is Ali Moano and I'm calling to request that multilingualism be included in the portrait of a graduate. I'm president of the language cal uh California language teachers association with 40 years experience as a language educator. I spent the last 35 years at Stanford University and 30 as coordinator of the Spanish language program there. In the various roles that I've performed, I've seen languages make a difference in kids' lives. Studies show that students who learn a second or third language receive a huge variety of benefits. Cognitive outcomes such as greater neuroplasticity, focus, and working memory. Uh long-term language study also correlates with better grades across all subjects. In addition, a recent meta analysis published in the Journal of Bilingualism

078reports that language students also score better in math. Language students also demonstrate better reading comprehension, vocabulary, uh, knowledge, and writing skills. And perhaps most importantly for our world today, language students develop greater cultural awareness, empathy, global competence, communication skills, and confidence. And really all of the skills that you have talked about today are enhanced by language study. Our students need these skills to be successful in today's world. Thank you. >> Thank you. Caller, drive safe. >> Next caller ending in 3648. Please begin your public comment. >> Hi, my name is Alexa Martinez and I am calling on behalf of Angela Elliot Santos, tribal chairwoman. Manzanita Band of the Kumi Nation. Um I believe that this was we were wanting to talk about item three. So this is still item two, correct? >> Yes. >> Okay.

079So then um we will wait for comment. >> Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Next caller ending in 2142. Please start your public comment. >> Good morning madam president and members of the board. My name is Margaret Peterson. As an educator, California educator for 30 years, I strongly support adding multilingualism as an essential competency in California's portrait of a graduate or learner. I applaud the synthesis, which already includes multi multilingualism with the competency of communication. Decades of research show that bilingual individuals demonstrate stronger executive function, better problem solving, and cognitive flexibility. Multilingualism is also an economic imperative in a globally interconnected economy. And as AI rapidly transforms the labor market, students who operate confidently in more than one language are better better positioned to collaborate and lead. As multilingualism was the most frequently written incompetency named in

08040 40% of the responses, Californians are telling you a a very strong message that multilingualism is not a nice to have but a core competency and our north star and that reflects our democra demog demographic reality our economic future and our commitment to equity and belonging. For these reasons, I respectfully urge you to explicitly include multilingualism in the portrait of California graduate or learner as a key driver of cognition, workforce readiness, and educational justice. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you, caller. Next caller, ending in 4369, please state your name and affiliation for the record. You have one minute. You may begin. Buenosour. Good morning. I'm Sally Fox calling from San Diego on behalf of Cababe, the California Association for Bilingual Education. And my salutation was in four languages

081I would have loved to learn during my K12 years. Cabab believes the new portrait of a learner can promote such opportunities for today's students. Cababe held our 51st conference last week in San Francisco with about 4,000 participants. It was energizing to be with so many people dedicated to optimizing academic achievement while maintaining home languages and adding new languages for everyone. That's why we think multilingualism belongs on the list for the portrait, too. And it's not just a subset of communication. It's an element that enriches and enhances all the other competencies from critical thinking to creativity to collaboration to leadership to self-awareness to of course global citizenship. Multilingualism and multicultural competence add value to them all. Multilingual education for all. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 0924. Please start your public comment. >>

082Good morning. My name is Elizabeth Matchet and I am the executive director of the California Language Teachers Association. I have been a Spanish as a new language and heritage language educator in California for more than 35 years. I am here to advocate in solidarity with Californians together for the addition or combination with communication as proposed in this morning's presentation of the word multilingual to the proposed portrait of a graduate because it promotes equity. Adding this word will honor and expand the linguistic and cultural diversity brought to our schools. Our school should be intentionally educating all students to be literate in English in at least one other language. Multilingualism enables deeper, more authentic communication with diverse groups, fostering empathy, and reducing prejudice. It acts as a bridge for cultural exchange and helps preserve heritage. In a

083globalized economy, knowing multiple languages provides competitive career advantages. It is linked to higher academic achievement and better educational outcomes. Adding multilingualism to our portrait of a graduate will allow California students and graduates to be successful and contributing citizens to our world. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 8576. Please start your public comment. Good morning, state board members. My name is Alana Sanchez and I'm a student at UC Santa Barbara. I urge you to include multilingualism as one of the key elements of your portrait of a California graduate. There's a powerful global and economic reason for this. We live in a world characterized by a global society and a global economy. And such a world demands that it inhabits inhabitants be able to communicate across languages and cultures. Our students are not limited

084by the boundaries of their neighborhoods. They live in a global world that requires high levels of competency and multiple languages in order to be able to navigate it with ease and to develop deeper understanding of the world's economic, social, and political issues. Economies are more independent and connected to international trade than ever before in human history. American society is more diverse. Global challenges are more complex, calling for coordinated global responses, all of which require understanding of different languages and cultures to facilitate communication. By making multilingualism a key element of your portrait of graduate, you'll be supporting student success as global citizens. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 2250. Please start your public comment. >> Good morning board and members. Ra Morales with Ed West. We would also uh like to align our

085comments to the previous uh callers around adding multilingualism to this. Additionally, as the board moves forward with finalizing the competencies students must demonstrate, we advise having concurrent discussions regarding the relevant roles and responsibilities the system actors have including CDE, SBE, COE's, eleas, and schools in supporting students in meeting competencies defined by the portrait of a graduate. It's essential that all entities have a mutual understanding of these things to effectively and coherently collaborate to support student success. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 8674, please start your public comment. >> Good morning, Rachel Murphy with Public Advocates and the LCFF Equity Coalition. We appreciate the board engaging in this study session and soliciting feedback from education interest holders over the past several months. We'd like to align our comments with our equity coalition partners

086and highlight the broad support for including multilingualism as an important skill or competency. We also recommend that in in addition to competencies SBE develops in this portrait, the state identifies opportunities for districts to develop these competencies, including expectations for districts and clarifying school responsibilities versus state responsibilities. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 9797, please begin your public comment. Caller with the last four digits 9797. Please start your public comment. Okay, this concludes public comment for item number two. >> All right, thank you so much. Um and appreciate all of the wonderful public comments. Um I want to open up to board discussion. We have uh several items as we uh heard to think through. One is sort of the scope of the uh portrait. Uh whether we want to call it a

087portrait of a learner or a graduate or both. Whether we want to um think about uh the number approximate number of competencies but I think most important uh what are some of the um key elements that you think are very important for us to consider? member Escobado, you're just you look like you want to say something. >> Well, seeing that the vast majority uh wanted the portrait of a learner and it makes sense, I think more than just graduates since we're really want to create a more of a global type of citizen, right? So, I I I do think Portrait of a Learner would be more appropriate. I think the number I I think five should be the minimum. I I don't think it should be more than seven. I think having you know that

088number we don't want too many. >> Right. Obviously >> um I like the way they combined language into the competencies. I think that's that's and and I the only you know when you look at these skills compared when the chamber of commerce does like what they want for work it almost mirrors it. >> They do combine though critical thinking and problem solving. So that might be just a possibility. And um the whole multilingualism I also do God I embrace that because and and I heard the quot the caller um it is connected to more than just communication. It is connected to different perspectives, global citizenship, critical thinking. I'm just not sure how we're going to do that in how we interconnect that. But I I think uh that there's something there. I'm not sure. >>

089We'll find a way. >> Exactly. But I just love what AIR and what CCE has done, the focus groups, the combination of survey and focus group. I think they did a a stellar job. So just wanted to share those points. Thank you. >> Perfect. Member Olen, I think I saw member Yoshimoto Tyrie and then I saw member Lewis. Um, I just want to start by saying this is uh so fun to be thinking big picture about what our goals are. It's it's sort of what motivates us to do this work. Um, and I really appreciate the work that's come um in advance of this meeting so that we're we have so much information about what um people in our communities, our students, our families, our educators um believe is important. Um it's been it's really

090helpful to see what other states have done. So I just feel really well set up to have this conversation and I think it's really important. Um with that here are a few things that I think um I um I really appreciate. So one of the questions was sort of looking at the different ways states have named the different things. This is not um words smithing, but I like the way I like the Kentucky version where there is sort of what's the intent like the difference between productive collaborator and collaboration suggests an end goal for collaboration. Um, I also appreciate in the Kentucky version the things that one might consider character like empathy, integrity, respect, curiosity are actually woven into each of the um key areas because they're necessary in order to be an effective communicator.

091You can't be an effective communicator if you're not um respectful. You can't be a protective a productive collaborator if you don't have empathy. So, it's I really like the way those things are woven in as part of what's necessary. Um, I also really appreciate again in the Kentucky version the empowered learner. um which maybe is some combination of perseverance and adaptability and growth mindset. But as somebody who in my mind being an empowered learner is the most durable thing that's out there um you can learn in all different settings and you understand how to learn um and you feel capable. I have a lot more but I'll stop there for now. Thank you. Shimano Tarry and then member Lewis and then member Rodriguez. Yes, GK. >> Thank you. Um I concur with my colleagues that

092have spoken before me. So I won't repeat. Um but thank and thank you to CCE and AIR. I really like Sharon said feel very prepared to have this conversation today because of all of the work that you did. The way you broke down the report. I read the entire thing. It was really well done. Um, there were a few thing and I also appreciate that you asked open-ended questions in the survey because it allowed us to see perhaps what we didn't include which became very clear. Uh, so so thank you for doing it that way. The I did have a couple of suggestions that of things that we didn't see in the report. um and you don't need to answer them today, but I would hope that uh moving forward between now and when this

093comes to board for action that we can try to make sure that we achieve um balance. For example, in the parents, I was really happy to see so many parents engaged. Um and I wonder about the percentage of parents that were parents of students with disabilities with mild to extensive support needs. Um, and so please can we make sure that as we continue this work forward, we have a focus group or two um with parents that are representative of of parents with students with disabilities, of English learners, of parents with students who perhaps are in the juvenile justice system. I would like to see more industry and workforce partners um be engaged because as a parent myself sometimes I know what I think I know, but there may be parents or there may be experts

094in the workforce industry uh arena that know where our students need to be in the next 10 to 25 years um that I may not be aware of as a parent. Um and uh and then can you please make sure that the cultural and racial diversity of those surveyed um is representative um of our of our great state? The um I do want to say I think there I appreciate the slide that has the red markings towards the end with the changes and the way you've leveled things. I also feel like when this comes back to us, if it could have some kind of umbrella language besides just the five to eight indicators we end up on. Um, I would be curious. I think it's important to situate these competencies and the why these competencies

095are so important. Um, as you know, this is civic engagement week uh that came up throughout the the conversation today. Um but I think establishing the why for us as a state board of education will be really important um to frame the entire document. And my last comment is around what I think is missing perhaps in the conversation. Um I would personally like to see a little bit more of when I read what we have currently and I can tell you the slide number exactly on slide 38. Uh I think it does a really great job on the seven competencies of looking outward, of being global, of caring for the community, um of communicating with others. Um I personally would like to also see some language representative of a strong sense of self, strong sense

096of self-awareness, self-confidence, um perhaps curiosity and wonder um as as part of that because I think um in today's age to be a global citizen, you have to be able to lead authentically. um knowing your own culture and your own place of origin and being proud of that. Um and you can't really do those other things without having a solid place to start with. So, thank you. >> All right. Um Lewis. >> Okay. I'll make sure that I don't repeat as well but I do agree with uh what's already been said about the name giving difference to the name for learner because that's what has been recommended by the majority and also as far as how many competencies I think we don't have too many but make sure that we have enough >> ears a

097little stopped up too so okay I think that's better thank you do you want me to or are we good? Okay. So, I'll move on to uh the third uh discussion question about additional competencies that may not be represented. Um along with I think the interpersonal um awareness or understanding is is very important. I think it's a little different than um uh uh excuse me the the ability to value varied perspectives. So I think uh along with the character maybe if we could look at an adding the interpersonal understanding uh to that one um and also problem solving maybe add the ability to work independently uh or collaborate because I think as we talk about the job market and what's going to be needed in the future I think that's a durable skill that students

098will need to have and I think we need to emphasize that as well. uh there was some mention of making sure that we don't we put emphasis on academic uh achievement of students. So I think maybe adding college and career navigation somewhere in the competencies to make sure that students understand that it's not a one uh one-sizefitit all just everybody's going to college but careers are an option. So I think that's something we could add to the competencies as well. Apologize for my voice today. Just don't ask me to sing. >> Here he goes. >> Thank you so much. And uh yes, I agree this is fun. Member Oaken. Um and I want to begin by expressing my appreciation uh for the guidance for this presentation. Um also like member Escoedo, I like the range

099of five to seven. I think that's those are good numbers to work with. Um, and as someone who works directly with students, I'm encouraged to see critical thinking at the top of the list. Um, and to see it emphasized. I would also like to add creative thinking because I think they work with each other. uh critical and creative thinking could it be uh combined and uh as our students um you know they need to understand the world uh through critical through the critical thought process but they also need to imagine new solutions uh within it and if uh these are outcomes that we value we should also continue investing in teacher preparation and professional learning so that we as educators are supported in intentionally and seamlessly integrating critical and creative thought uh into our everyday

100instruction. And I'd also like to uh thank member Yoshimoto for those comments. You're very poignant about um starting with ourselves at New Mexico's examples were very inspiring that way because it is about who I am uh as a learner and uh and then you know the space where I belong. Um, and uh, lastly, as somebody who is bilingual and uh, or was raised bilingual and now multilingual, I also want to lift up how the importance of being able to communicate in various languages. Thank you. >> Yes, I'd first just like to agree with everything that my colleagues have said so far, especially um, with choosing it as a portrait of a learner. Um I noticed in the survey with the respondents that there was a high volume of people uh especially students who picked literacy

101specifically things like digital literacy and financial and economic literacy as um in their top five and I would just like to have those considered in the final portrait as well. I can already see that the Washington State Board of Education included um understanding of financial and digital literacy. I think you know as President Darling Hammond said um as AI continues to um evolve especially in the near future and as um we're focusing on preparing students for post high school life. I think that those are just essential skills that should be considered um being incorporated in the final portrait. Member Patello Bronson. >> Good morning. Um I want to share in the appreciation for um CC um and AIR's presentation um and also their their method of actually seeking um a robust um amount of feedback.

102Um so much of which I think actually just aligns quite well with many of the states and other school districts um that we have been benchmarking. Um, a couple of points I want to uh align myself with the uh idea of portrait of a learner for sure. Um, I do think what's interesting about that is um it sets out the goalpost not as diploma in hand but the idea that we should be graduating lifelong learners. That not just the competency but the mindset and the end result should be that we have adaptive thinkers who are ready for a rapidly evolving world. Um and naming that explicitly I think is is absolutely a step in the right direction. Um I also was quite drawn to uh the model from Kentucky around the creative contributor. Um, problem

103solving, I think, uh, captures part of this, but part of what problem solving does not fully encompass is the idea that we all, but I think more acutely, the next generation of learners um, and California students aren't just solving problems that are already crisped up as a here is problem A to solve. They are also thinking about how to create different structures for a world that envisions some problems but some improvements and just different modes of thinking. Um the the example that comes to mind is um Steve Jobs didn't create a iPhone to solve a particular problem um that was anticipated and someone was like oh I really need this this micro computer in my pocket. it was actually thinking about what improvements the world um might benefit for and I think that that framing

104is actually quite helpful. Um definitely excited that critical thinking rises to the top um among our the survey group um as well as so many of our our peer um states. Um, I do think it's quite interesting, particularly looking at the survey data, realizing that academic proficiency, which is something that we think about as a board quite a bit, was so much in the middle. Um, which is to say it's necessary but not sufficient for um the challenges and the types of um, Californians we want to see in the world. Um I I will say the idea of integrated exclusively within critical thinking does not I I I think it's a part of it but I also think it's actually related to this piece around digital literacy. There has to be a a baseline of

105understanding of shared common facts that doesn't require an AI assist um that are known to California students that doesn't that is part of what they know as a baseline that um I I do think is worth calling out um that is beyond critical thinking that there are certain uh common shared bases that students know about um that doesn't require pulling out a calculator to be able to do basic multiplication to know um what happened in in our world wars. And I I just want to not lose that there are there is this baseline that um we shouldn't uh lose sight of even if you can always um do a quick search to find uh the exact date of the end of World War II for example. Um the last thing um that struck me that

106I think is worth lifting up is in the Washington um model, Washington state model. I appreciated the explicit naming of the goals of education as well as the purpose um of a diploma um to board member Lewis's comments um earlier. I think this idea of naming post-secary education, employment and civic engagement um as what students should be able to do upon graduation I think is really important. Um, the last thing I'll name, and I don't think I saw this, but I actually remember this um more from uh actually New Jersey, which I don't think is um one of the states that was named um on this idea of what it means to have an adequate public education. One of the things I know um as they were doing school funding litigation work um was the

107idea that we expect every Californian to be able to serve on a jury. Um and I I think that aspiration of um naming civic participation, civic engagement, but also there's a certain level of and maybe this is proficiency. Um but I think jury service is one of those um ways that concretely we expect not just for people to make their voices heard in the way of uh voting but also of contributing to our broader society and actually giving back in ways that don't necessarily acrue immediately as a benefit to you of you saying this is my voice this is who I believe should be in office but actually this is how I am contributing um on a regular basis. and the capacity um to provide and meaningfully contribute to jury service I think is is

108worth calling out. Thank you. >> Yes, Vice President Glover Woods. >> Thank you. Just to align myself with some of the comments and just lift up a couple of others. Um I also agree that uh the portrait of a learner reflects very nicely what we are looking at because uh while we have the end goal of graduation uh learning happens during each area of our system and having these competencies as a north star regardless of whether you're a student sitting in TK or a student in eighth grade or 12th grade I think is very very helpful and also agree with the number of competencies I Um wondering I'm thinking about what member Yoshimoattowi brought up as far as I believe it was member Yoshimoati as far as having the descriptors for the competencies reflect both

109the individual responsibility of the learner as well as how the learner interacts with the world around them. So, as we think about um beefing up I don't know why I'm on beef so much today, but you know kind of you know kind of beefing up the descriptors for each of the competencies. We may be able to um be a little bit more descriptive in that particular space and um capture some of the other uh competencies perhaps that might not have been woven in in the synthesis but can still um give a little bit more insight into each of the areas. Uh I also want to lift up of course uh the multilingualism aspect and um encourage us to consider how we might be able to have additional language in some of the other competencies related

110to multilingualism um as well. So um the last thing I will say is regarding the kind of umbrella language that will help to anchor the portrait itself. uh within that umbrella language really setting very clear for us uh why the portrait of a learner is so important and also weaving in that um thought and idea around career and college readiness um as we think about um I don't want to say the end goal but one of the anchoring um aspects of the portrait itself. So again um really I really got a lot from our conversation today. Uh again, thank you to all of the work that has been done and I know as we move forward, uh we'll be able to receive more public comment between now and when this comes back before us in

111May to provide even more insight for that next conversation. Thank you, President During Hammond. >> Yes, member Yoshari. >> Thank you. I I did have as I was listening around the DAS one more comment. Um, and I know we're not wordsmithing today, but it just it dawned on me as I was listening to my colleagues that the word um, citizenship might be feel exclusionary to some. And while I know we mean global citizenship as a mindset, not a legal status, I wonder if as we think about the next iteration of this, we revisit that. and also that we not only think about global citizenship but I think there are a lot of local actions that our students can take that are right in their neighborhood and right even in their school. So perhaps also considering

112um some language in that regard. Thank you. >> Okay, I think we've got a lot of good ideas on the table. I hear some consensus around the uh >> I'm sorry. Oh, I'm so sorry. There you are. You're a little tiny square on the screen. Now you're big and that's wonderful. Remember Rosco Gonzalez? I know it's easy to forget since I'm that little minuscule little hand up there. But I just wanted to listen to the conversation without being redundant. Um, I can't help but think about these competences competencies and how they grow throughout a student's educational experience. So, for that reason, I love the framing. This is around a portrait of a learner. As several members have mentioned, I think that resonates more than the portrait of a graduate. I love that there was a

113process to hear from classroom teachers, families, and communities from around the state. That type of outreach is crucial when it comes to asking what we want these students to learn from their educational experience. And again, thinking about my English learners in my learning community. I also think that about how multilingualism is a huge factor in California. Our students are learning how to communicate and think using multiple languages and from and think using multiple languages and from different cultures. That's something that's unique to California's educational system. And I think it's important we recognize that as a competency as we define what it means to be a California learner. And lastly, as we move forward, I do agree that less may be more when it comes to competencies. Uh fewer allow districts and educators to make more

114meaningful connections to what students are actually doing each day in the classroom. >> So, uh it's nice to build on the next meeting with a lot of consensus, I think. And um I I love the fact that as we've talked about the portrait of a learner, we've talked both about all of the grade levels, you know, through graduation, but also being a learner for the rest of one's life and um the the empowered learner construct um that um is is lifelong. So we do have a lot of great comments. We're going to come back to this in May and we're making I think really good progress uh strong consensus around multilingualism and um global perspectives but also local perspectives. Uh so we'll we'll need to you know think about the word smithing. I I predict

115we will have some word smithing in our in our adoption meeting but I think we're very close to having the concept. So thanks thanks to all thanks to everyone who gave comments. Thanks to our teams at CCE and AIRIR for the wonderful summary and um uh discussion. And at this point I'm going to give us a 14minut break. Uh we will see you back at 10:30. Thank you. All right. Well, this is our big item. Uh item number three is the update on the implementation of the integrated local, state, and federal accountability and continuous improvement system. And we are going to be we're going to look at where we are with our um dashboard um indicators. Uh and uh there's a long introduction here that I have about all the things that we're going to

116talk about, but I think I'm going to let Cindy Kazanis tell us what those are. And we need to start and end this um item with thanks to Cindy and her team for all that they are doing to make it so. >> Thank you. Um good morning. Cindy Kazanes with the California Department of Education. Uh I am going to be joined by more than a couple people today. So uh let's get started because as you mentioned we do have a lot to cover today. Uh you do have uh six different attachments. We're going to walk through each of them separately. We'll pause for clarifying questions like we always do um because some of these are um a little more technical than others and want to make sure that we're answering your questions as we um

117go through go through the item. Uh the item recommendation uh is around um well things that you have heard in some form in the last year, the last two years, maybe the last four or five years. Uh so just there's there should be no surprises but let's just walk through um what the recommendation is. Uh first around the college career indicator we are asking that you approve um the proposed career measures uh and their respective highquality definitions for inclusion on the college career indicator around work-based learning. So there's three different pieces of the workbased learning you're going to hear about today. And then I'm thrilled that um we are also going to uh we have for bring forward to you for recommendation the adoption uh finally for the state syllabus civic engagement. Uh so we

118are have a recommendation on that inclusion along with other indicators. So as a plus indicator the dashboard alternative school status um you will see that um this recommendation has slightly changed. So from what the item um was printed the The words that are in bold are are new words. So, let me just read this out loud. We are asking that you approve updates to the applicationbased dashboard alternative school status criteria. And the recommendation now is to adopt the revised credit deficient definition and delay requiring high-risisk students to have a minimum enrollment of 30 of more than 30 days at the applicationbased DA school until the CDE can provide the state board of education with an impact analysis for consideration of this metric for the priority one teacher assignment data. This one is actually going to

119be um for adoption at your May meeting. So today we're bringing forward to you uh some options for consideration and discussion for long-term English learners and the suspension rate indicator. This is something we were hoping to have you um take action on in July and July turned out to be I think 17 different um action pieces. So we we were trying to uh relieve you of that um effort in July and so that's why you see it um come forward to you today. And then finally um with our English language arts, mathematics and science indicators, a recommendation for removal of the grace periods. I want to acknowledge that we probably got a record number of public comment letters and um you may hear uh a bit of that today. Uh we have been looking um

120through them and and I am prepared to to talk about um those as as we come up on those pieces. So just in terms of um how we have been um working with the dashboard and making adjustments to it um this has been now adopted we're almost in our 10th year of adoption of the dashboard. Uh you all adopted a work plan in January. It is a truncated work plan um trying to get the majority of our items completed by your main meeting and so that's how you see um information uh chunked out. we put forward a memo to talk about the items that you um adopted for the work plan and any additions uh in February. So that's really a nice easy to follow along chart because there's a lot of moving pieces um

121even though we're again almost 10 years into adoption of this um dashboard. We also um just want to mention and we do reference in the item and you'll see this um reflected in each of the slides uh dashboard principles that you all adopted back in 2022 um that really helped to serve as really that anchor for how you make further decisions. Uh so each of the as I mentioned each of the the work plan um will describe this we'll actually bring this up on another item. So um the dashboard principles does apply to other places in your agenda today too. All right. So, without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, Kimberly Montake. Good morning everyone. Kimberly Montake, administrator of the accountability development and policy analysis unit, and I will be

122walking you through attachment one, the first 21 pages of our item um today. Um so just to uh reframe the um momentous work that we have ahead of us for the college career indicator the work plan that um you adopted in the January meeting um involves the following for the college career indicator. So this month we are looking at the consideration of the inclusion of the state seal of civic engagement as well as additional career measures for the college career indicator. Almost immediately following this meeting, um at the end of this month, we'll be having the uh our California practitioners advisory group meeting or CPAC um and they will be reviewing the information that will be present uh presented to you at your May meeting. So that will involve um looking um and providing feedback

123on the inclusion of IB courses, Cambridge courses and exams as well as ASVAB within the college career indicator and also reviewing the request around industry credentials that you made. And then in May, we will bring that feedback to you along with the other actions that we have slated for our um work plan. The dashboard principles that cover the CCI are principles 2, 3, 4, 8, and 11. As always, we are subject to continuous uh revision and improvement. Um, and first off, as as Cindy shared, we will be looking through the career measures for inclusion for work-based learning internships, student led enterprise, as well as simulated work-based learning, as well as considering the state seal of civic engagement for inclusion. Now, back in January during the other study session that you had around the college career

124indicator, we walked through in depth each of the currently adopted measures that are present within um our accountability system um based on either assessments, courses or combination of the two. So presently within our robust college career indicator, we already take into account um how uh districts and schools help support their students for college and career by um performance by their students on sparter balance summitive assessments in ELA and math. um international balorate exams, uh college career courses, registered pre-apprenticeships, transition classroom and work-based learning experiences, advanced placement courses and exams, um meeting our UCCCSU requirements, um for courses, uh state seal of biiteracy, our CTE pathway completions, leadership and military science, as well as state and federal job programs. Additionally, in January, you requested to see a little bit more information about the impact that your

125decisions made uh that you made in 2025 to add um advanced placement courses to the college career indicator to the dashboard and see what that actually did to the results um on the college career indicator. And I can tell you this is the most asked question across the state is how come my 2024 dashboard status for my college career indicator does not reflect the same information as my 2025 one. Why is there such a huge difference and change doesn't measure the difference between the two. Um and the reason for that is because of the dramatic impact that the addition of AP courses made on our college career indicator. So just to see this in actual numerical figures um in 2024 we had 81,000 students who were prepared by taking um rather by passing two AP

126exams when we look at the addition of courses and that's either through passing two AP courses and again these would be different than the exams these aren't duplicative right um as well as passing one AP course and one exam um you can see that that we added 72,000 additional students in 2025 for just passing two AP courses and then another 9,79 that passed an AP course and an AP exam in order to improve almost double the number right up to 142,431 students who were prepared through that decision. Now AP course completion also impacts another metric which is our met UCCCSU plus metric. So um for that metric we can see that um by adding in an additional course we have another um 156,000 students 5 uh 56,578 students who were prepared using um either through

127total UCCCSU with AP versus if we had not looked at that if we were just looking at the AP exams it would have only been 119,000 students. So you can see the addition of measuring um and including students who have completed and successfully completed those AP courses has um created a dramatic uptick in the performance for our college career indicator overall. Any questions on those results? Okay, then without further ado, we'll walk into a state seal of civic engagement. And I would be remiss, um, I already mentioned it during the break, um, but, uh, member Yoshiari already mentioned she wants to make sure you all heard that it is civic education week. Um, and we're going to be celebrating hopefully um, by making some big movement with the state seal of civic engagement. Um, and

128I'd like to um please uh thank our uh members of our professional learning support division, Monnique McGuain, um Julie Agnes, Agnes Senelli, and Sarah Smith for all of the support that they have lent to us over the past five years in assisting us to develop um this metric out for use in accountability. We're just borrowing it um from all the hard work that they do in supporting the program within the California Department of Education. So, in September of 2020, um the state board had adopted criteria and guidance to award the state seal of civic engagement um for public school students who demonstrate excellence in civics's education and participation as well as an understanding of the United States Constitution, the California Constitution, and our democratic system of government. And now each LEA creates and develops their

129own local requirements um and procedures and their own local criteria considering the um the context for what how they want to award the state seal of civic engagement and it's based on the um criteria that this the board adopted. So those are to be engaged in academic work in a productive way to demonstrate a competent understanding of the United States and California constitutions, functions and governance of local governments, tribal government structures and organizations, the role of the citizen in a constitutional and democracy and democratic principles, concepts and processes. They need to participate in one or more informed civic engagement projects that address real world problems and require students to identify and inquire into civic needs or problems, consider varied responses, take action, and reflect on efforts. They need to demonstrate civic knowledge, skills, and uh

130dispositions through self-reflection, and exhibit character traits that reflect civic-mindedness and a commitment to positively impact the classroom, school, community, andor society. Now that all of these requirements came through um education code sections 51470 through 515474 um in order to direct the state superintendent and the state board to adopt these criteria. You adopted the criteria and we began collecting student level information beginning in the 2023 24 school year. um and that um prior to that we did have information on the number of seals that had been overall requested right so when you in order to award the seal you need to reach out to CDE and say I'd like 75 seals now we don't know if you're actually awarding 75 seals right we just know that you anticipated that you were going to award 75 seals

131so that's the number you requested um and um our off the offices collect that information and have been reporting out on that. But beginning in 2023 24, we um set up a data collection adjacent to Calpads um that allows folks to enter the data specifically for those students so that we know exactly which students were awarded the state seal of civic engagement so that we can track that through our system. And this is how the data looks for with um 5,310 seals requested um all the way through 202425 where um CDE requested 21,284 seals. Now we received in our adjacent again adjacent to Kalpads, not even in Kalpads, we received 20,425 students that um had uh were reported by ELAS as having earned those seals. So as far as data coming in, this is probably

132the highest match rate we've had in a very long time with adding new data in. So we can be very confident that um we can say over 20,000 students right in the state and almost you know I would say probably all of those right um really did earn the seal and we're capturing a very good number of those. So how we looked at evaluating the impact of adding the state seal of civic engagement is as follows. We looked at how all of those students in the 2024 school year, those uh 20,425 students, and we looked to see where they already placed in the CCI. So, were they already prepared for college career by their LEA? And almost 80% were. So those students, no matter if we adopted this or anything else, would not impact our

133CCI in any way, right? There's uh we don't give bonus stars, right? We don't have, you know, you've been prepared seven different ways on our dashboard. There's no extra credit um in that sense. So what you know, and what we've heard from you is that you want to see how this would expand access, right, to the college career indicator and readiness um to students who are not traditionally already being seen as prepared. So, in that count, we see 19.5% of students um or 3,980 in the 2025 cohort that we would be looking at to see, well, if we added in the state seal of civic engagement, would this make an impact? And we considered four different options for inclusion of the state seal for your consideration. The first would be that it would simply be

134a standalone metric. So if you earn the state civ civic engagement, you would be considered prepared by your LEA or school. The second would be that it would be the completion of that state seal along with meeting UCCCSU course requirements or as we talked about before a kind of UCCCSU plus, right? We would add that to that metric. Another way of looking at it would be for our CTE pathway completers um for option three. So if you completed a CTE pathway along with a state seal, you would be seen as prepared. And option four is just simply a combination of both options two and three, right? An amalgamation. So or um you can do either of them. So you can either have UCCcsu met and a state seal or a CT pathway completion and a

135state seal. And we would recognize both of those as being part of uh prepared. This is your shorthand to that because that was a lot of words on the other slide. So, we hope that this one's a little bit easier to read. This is what we would put in a flyer, right? Um, and here is the impact that that would have on um our these 3,889 students. Um, so option two, just the UCCCSU MET and state seal would add an additional 842 students to the prepared category. Um option three, state seal and civic CTE pathway has a very similar number of 8 uh 854 but the combination of the two is um 1696 students. So as you can see um the number the percent prepared would move up to 52% moving forward. You also made

136quite a few requests about making sure that the distribution of uh this was seen as across the state, right? That this wasn't just impacting one LEA, right, in one area and wanted to make sure that this was representative of an achievement that would um be impactful across the state. And as you can see, um, if we look at option four, the most inclusive option, um, that would impact and affect 186 schools in 73 districts in 23 counties. So it might not be a lot of students, but it is a lot of impact across the state. Um, so you can see that perhaps um, these programs are small, but mighty moving forward. um an expansion of them could see um expansion of awarding the seal to more students could obviously inflate the number of students um

137but that's a very large number of districts and counties for a very small number of students. Therefore, the board recommendation from CDE is that the state board adopt um and approve option four um the completion of the state seal of civic engagement along with either meeting UCCSU course requirements or successfully completing the CTE pathway. And I will pause if there's any questions around any of the data we presented. Oh, I feel like I won that one. There we go. All right. This one is a little bit more robust. This is the majority of those 21 pages, right? Um, our career measures, internship, student led, enterprise, and simulated work-based learning. So, again, this has been a long data collection since 201920, meaning that um all of the board predecessors before you um set in motion are

138uh the ability for us to begin collecting this data. Um and so um in response to um uh the board signaling that they wanted to have more inclusive opportunities for our career-based education and career opportunities being offered at our LLES and schools. CDE began collecting information in CalPADS um directly uh around student led um uh internships, student led enterprise and simulated work-based learning as well as collecting data on students um success on the armed services vocational aptitude battery test or ASVAB um and which we will be discussing at the May meeting. Um while we started collecting that data um something magical happened in the world um where maybe some students weren't able to go out and have work-based learning experiences because a lot of people were not working out in the world during our co

139times. Um and that really took a a beating to our data submission right in the first few years because that was just an opportunity that wasn't availed to students um during um the two years of COVID um that were dealing with at our high schools and schools. So in August of 2023, our technical design group in reviewing that data when we thought about bringing it to the state board um recommended a pause and CPAG agreed with them that we would pause moving forward. And then in September of 2023 um the board agreed with that decision as well to collect additional data. Last July, as Cindy mentioned, we brought you a lot of items um moving forward um and requested information about what we would like to do with this data, if you'd like to continue

140collecting it, stop collecting it um and move forward with action. Um and you signaled that you would like to continue to collect that additional year of data, move forward and make decisions this year. So, here we are. Um we collected a lot of data over the years since 202021. Um and as you can see from the numbers displayed the overall in general the numbers have ticked up in each of these categories for collecting student um workbased learning. And again I will remind everyone this is in Calpads right it is a formal piece of our endofear submission um within CalPADS. So, um, we're up to 21,776 students this past year, um, that had, uh, internship data submitted, 9,322 that had studentled enterprise data submitted, and 61,618 students who had information around work-based learning data submitted. Now,

141the data that was submitted might not be complete in all cases. Some folks may have submitted, we had students do that. How many hours did you do? The hours are blank. Um right what course did they take? The course is blank. Um so is this information full and complete and um a full reflection of it? Not yet, right? Because we are not using it. So folks may have submitted it halfway. So I I do want to caution that with the data in that um while all of these you know it's 61,000 records um there's also a large portion of those records that are reflective of one hour of experience in student um simulated work-based learning or two hours right so very happy to have that data right um moving forward but it might not be

142all of those are robust experiences in the same way that you'd be looking at um considering it so therefore um in uh wanting to present something for the state board of education to adopt. Um CDE looked at how to recommend um work-based learning moving forward. And we analyze this work-based learning data that we've received over all of those years and worked handinhand with our college career transition division or CCTD and educational partners to define what data points led to high quality work-based learning. We then evaluated that impact of what those measures would have on the CCI cohort of 2025 and the students that were either approaching prepared or not prepared by their college or career. And at this time, I will turn it over to CCTD's Mindy Parsons to walk you through the um the

143work that they did in developing that high quality criteria. >> Good morning. Mindy Parsons, division director of the career and college transition division. and thank you so much for creating the space to talk about the college and career indicator. I'm very excited about it. So, as we look at work-based learning measures, I want to start with highlighting the 12 essential elements of a high quality college and career pathway. Uh, this was developed by the California Workforce Pathways Joint Advisory Committee, which um includes member members from our state board of education and our community colleges board of governors. So, it was first adopted in 2018 and later updated in 2020. This framework guides our LEAs as they design and implement highquality CTE programs. These elements ensure pathways remain centered uh student centered, equitable, align with regional

144workforce needs and focused on meaningful student outcomes. A critical component of CT pathways is the inclusion of work-based learning. This includes internships with industry partners, simulated work environments, and student led enterprises where students operate real or simulated businesses with applying both technical and employable skills. So to identify what highquality work-based learning looks like in practice, we conducted outreach to select eleas. So using cowpads, we identified eleas with strong participation in internships, student led enterprises, and simulated work-based learning. We met with these eleas, which included county offices of education, school districts, and our regional occupational programs to learn a little bit more about their structures and practices um regarding work-based learning. So for internships, and I know we talked about this in January, but an internship is a work-based learning activity which allows students to apply

145classroom learning in a workplace setting. It could be paid or pay or unpaid and must be tied to a course. Now, the criteria that we talked about included 50 hours or more that a student would participate in this internship. It would be sponsored by the LEA. It would be supervised by a certificated staff member. The student would receive a three or higher on employer performance evaluation and it would be completed as part of a CTE concentrator or capstone course or through a CTE work experience education. And again, the um the gold star for our CTE pathway is an intro concentrator capstone course. So, we're talking about that concentrator capstone course, the second and third course within a pathway. So for work-based learning, student led enterprise again that's a studentled enterprise involves the development and operation

146of a revenue generated business um operated outside of the classroom and must be operated by the student be ongoing and not a one-day event and tied to a course in which students develop a business and marketing plan. Again, the criteria that we discussed with those select LEAs included 50 or more hours and it would be completed as part of a CTE concentrator or capstone course. For uh simulated workbased learning, um again, this is where students gain career experience while at school through an emulated workplace environment that is aligned to the classroom curriculum. It must be tied to a course and of course an instructor via workplace experience within a school environment in conjunction with the business or industry and needs to involved workrelated and or technical skill development. And again, this criteria is very similar

147to the last one, 50 hours or more completed as part of a CTE concentrator or capstone course. So to broaden our data collection, Kimberly and I um had the opportunity to present on the college and career indicator at the educating for careers conference. Um we were able to run real time survey about the workbased learning indicators and we had more than 400 educ educators respond which gave us valuable statewide input. So the results were very clear. uh respondents believe a high quality work-based learning should require approximately 50 hours and that the CTE capstone course is the most appropriate setting. So that last course within a CTE pathway. Respondents also overwhelmingly agreed that internships should be supervised by a certificated staff member and of course all of our all of our teachers within within the state

148are credentialed and include a performance evaluation um with demonstrated student outcomes. But importantly, these results closely aligned with what we heard during our initial LEA outreach, which strengthens our confidence that these recommendations reflect practices already valued by educators and workforce partners across the state. So, we hope this information is helpful as the board considers these proposed career measures for the college and career indicator. So, um I'm very honored to present um Fresio Leafario, superintendent of the Valley Regional Occupational Program to share examples of highquality work-based learning programs that are currently being implemented by students. >> Thank you, Dr. Pson, Madame President, members of the board. Thank you very much for having me here. My name is Fabriio Faro. I'm the superintendent of Valley Region Occupational Program. We operate in three counties, Fresno County, Terary County,

149and Kings County. And we serve eight school districts. And just wanted to show you a quick snapshot of a VIRP. We serve almost 12,000 students, 750 being middle school and fitting into the pathways of the high schools. We have 189 uh teachers, credential teachers that work part-time, full-time. Dual enrollment is a big part of our of our program as well with 5,600 students enrolled in dual enrollment industry certifications and then obviously workbased learning hours that's very important that we've been collecting for the last six years. Um just giving a quick snapshot again about u our pathways individual CT courses and again a big focus has been on the um on the workbased learning. Just wanted to show you real quick on the CCI reports that we u we do every year. Um among the school

150districts that we we um we serve, we have an average of 74.2% of the school district meeting the CCI standards for preparedness. Um and so you can see that the workbased learning but also tied to the college and career readiness, how that is affecting the students and the pathways. I just wanted to show you real quick how the how val and general RO ops matters for our districts. We create we have the knowhow for the CTE programs and our models are reducing duplication and we create um we bring equity to all the school districts. I'll give you an example. I have a school district that has about a thousand students enrolled total and we have school district that have about 15,000. we can create the same program and we can we can have the same

151equity for those students in the small districts as much as the big districts because when they come to us and they want to create it for example a CNA program or a firefighting program we can we can incorporate all of them and create the same opportunities uh we share cost and we have this regional approach to CTE so I just wanted to show you what does a high quality industry aligned simulated workbased learning student enterprises and internship look like. Just wanted to give you an example. Last year we had over 4,800 students in simulated workbased learning. And I just want to make sure the simulated it's not a VR type of simulation. These are um labs. These are shops and these are um these are uh again labs and that students are doing with tools,

152equipment and skills. They're aligned to industries. We have business business partners that come to our meetings and they tell us what they want to see in the class. We purchase those equipment. We purchase the materials. We make sure that the the students are trained and the teachers are trained with professional development. And we make sure that what the students see in the class once they move into an internship or they move into a job, they see the same equipment and tools and they see the same environment. Um again, we replicate the workplace industry equipment. uh clearly define the workplace and then realistic work schedules and workflows. Just wanted to to give you a couple example of two pathways that we do simulated workbased learning. One is our urban rural firefighting programs with um our first

153responders. We have a partnership with eight fire departments. Um we built a two different facilities to train students and firefighters together with the eight fire departments. The students train alongside with fire firefighters, captain, chiefs. And so what they see in the training, they see it once they go to the fire academy. A student who is um exposed to that type of training once it goes to the fire academy, they're going to have a lot more confidence in themsel to do the skills because they have already done it. Um teachers again fully credentials. We have 10 plus teachers and the programs are already do enrolled. So again combining that in in the CCI the college and career readiness right so the students who are taking the courses take the prerequisite courses into to get into the

154firemies so when they graduate they have both courses to get into any fire academy in the state by the time they graduate they've already been exposed to this we call yeah simulated workbased learning workbased learning they do internships and then they go to the fire academy this is just another image to show you what one of the centers look Um, talking about first responder, we have one of the largest wildland firefighting programs with this with the US Forest Service and Calire. Um, just to give you an example, about 10 years ago, we have 15 students graduating from this program. And with the liberal market research and with the need of the states, we went from 14 to 170 students graduating with national certification for wildland firefighting. And again, what they do and how they train,

155it's exactly what the industry looks like. Um because that's what we need to train students for. Um um on the on the P on the on our patient care pathways um again simulated work-based learning hours, those are very critical for any nurse. When you also look at industry and a nurse practicing even for even for a uh in a in a hospital they are in simulations first and then they go and look at patients as they train whether they're training for NRN LVN or CNA. We have 700 students in CNA and MA programs. They're high school students graduating with these these certifications. They're putting in almost 15,000 hours combined of work-based learning. It's incredible. Um, and again, who are our partners? There are our local hospitals. There are our local long long-term care facilities. And

156our classrooms look exactly like the the facilities. And one of the things I I'd like to um uh um thank you for. It's all the support with the budgets, with the GSP funds, with um CT incentive grant fund K12. This is what allows u our ops and leas to create that environment in the classrooms because when they when the industry comes into a business advisory and they tell us what we need to purchase those items are expensive but at the same times are needed for all those work-based learning and then we have a mobile clinic we see 800 patients per semesters the students rotate through the clinic we deploy clinics in very different ways farmers market. Um, we have a lot of farm workers in our area. So, we work with packing houses, we work

157with local hospitals, and the students see 800 patients with a mobile clinic. That's work-based learning. Um, another example of high quality work-based learning is our student land enterprises. And um, we've been able to develop several um, student uh, student land enterprises. And again, like Dr. person said these are students enterprises where the students now they've been doing the simulated workbased learning they move outside the classrooms and they're actually running business and the infusion of entrepreneurship and business skills is going to really help them across many different pathways and so again industry standards professional tools um we follow all their regulatory compliances and rural customers and with exchange of funding or with exchange of money um this is an example I'll give you an example. This is an example of a student land enterprise. This is

158one of our um automotive shops and the students on one time of um per month on Saturdays they perform light repairs and maintenance on vehicles for the community. So community members they they sign up and they bring the vehicles on Saturdays and the students all day Saturdays meet with clients, they give them the report, they work on the cars and and then there's an exchange of funding. Everything you see in here is exactly line up with the industry. They spend hours and then the industry is telling us what they need to see and what they need to have. Another example is building tiny homes for um we work with the city of Fresno to build with an initiative for um for the non-housed and Fresno City College. So the students are actually building the tiny

159house but there we're selling the tiny house to the city of Fresno to create this. So there is an exchange of money and the students are creating this based on on the needs of the of the business. And then lastly but but um one of the most important is the high quality internships like Dr. Parson said high quality internships are internships where the students now are actually getting into the workplace. So after spending hours into the class with simulated workbased learning student learn enterprises the final step is to go to into u internships. The internships are rigorous. Again, they're using the same tools environment that's seen in the class. But then nevertheless, there's a strong uplift from the administration. This is a year-long process. Even if it's a summer program um between administrators, counselors that

160need to oversee the in the um the internships. We createus with the businesses. We have um we have an oversight for the summer internship. So there's a there's a strong presence of of administrators and counselors and the students have to demonstrate the technical skills and again there are 50 plus hours sometimes there are 50 hours up to 150 hours depending on the type of industry. Okay I think I took a little bit more time but uh if you have any question I'm glad I'm not driving down the freeway as I'm giving this uh presentation. Um, and if you have any questions. Okay. Um, I also have some some uh some folders if anyone I'll leave them here if anyone would like to see some of those folders that we have more information on those. Thank

161you very much. Those pictures are amazing. Um, I just, you know, when you think of how school has changed, right? um those amazing opportunities that those folks have. Um so I similar to how we just looked at our state seal of civic engagement, right? I will um narrow your eyes to this final chart um after all of the charts obviously that we presented in attachment one um but looked at the students who were had completed a high quality internship based on um that criteria um that Dr. Parsons had uh spoken about that they developed at CCTD. Um, and so for high-quality internships, we had 6,26 students in the 2025 cohort that had completed a high-quality internship with 76% of those already prepared within the system elsewhere. So, 1490 students for us to evaluate to see

162if this would make an impact um on their CCI preparedness. Um, for studentled enterprise, that's 3,293 completing that those um benchmarks. And so again, 70% of those students were also already prepared by their LEA. So we're looking at um a remaining 30% of 988 students. And then for simulated work-based learning, there were a total of 8,601 students in the 2025 cohort completing um those requirements. And so uh we have again almost 70% um at 69.1% of those students already prepared in the system. So 2,654 students that we would be looking to evaluate. Um and so you know looking at the spread and reach of this I apologize there are no counties on this count. We were unable to get that one. But um you can see again we're looking at a wide dispersion right of

163the students um and uh the schools and districts that would be impacted with their accountability um uh by adding highquality internship, student led enterprise and simulated work-based learning to the system. So this is the number of students who completed those three components. Now what we are asking for um from the board and looking forward and our proposed criteria is that we would add this to the C um to the CCI by um through a CTE plus. So looking at the completion of a CTE pathway plus either of any of the three following, right? High quality internship within the uh CTE pathways concentrator or completion course or through CTE workbased uh education. high quality work-based simulated work-based learning within a CTE pathways concentrator or capstone course or high quality studentled enterprise within the CTE pathways uh

164concentrator course. So this would be another addition to CTE plus so CTE plus a high quality um internship simulated workbased learning or studentled enterprise would show that a uh LEA or school had prepared a student for college or career. And you can see the um overall outcomes for this are as follows. So for the high quality internships NCT pathway we would have 796 students at 8 181 schools in 79 districts. For high uh high quality studentled enterprise NCT pathway 586 students at 104 schools in 58 districts would be shown as prepared. And for CT pathway plus high quality simulated workbased learning, we'd have 1158 students at 136 schools in 69 districts as prepared. So if overall we included um all three of those simulated workbased learning, all three of the workbased learning rather um uh

165measures within the CCI, we would see overall the CCI improve from a statewide um uh reporting of 51 51.7% of students prepared by their LEA or a school uh for college or career up to 52.2%. Therefore, the CDE's recommendation is as following. Uh, approve the following proposed career measures and their respective high-quality definitions for inclusion on the CCI for work-based learning internship, workbased learning, student led enterprise, and work-based learning simulated workbased learning. Any questions on those sections? >> Else does before I I'm going to try to keep these to clarification questions. Um I'm I'm wondering there's a very tiny number of students who move to the prepared category from this but there's so many assumptions about who would qualify and how it would be a plus and um I'm wondering as we are um trying

166to move to enable college and career not to college not to be such a separate pathway from career whether it has to be um only uh considered if you're in a CTE pathway as opposed to an internship. A lot of growing number of schools are trying to create internship opportunities for students irrespective of what pathway they're in and trying to reduce tracking and you know separation and segregation of students into different pathways. So I I worry that um making the assumption that we've made in the past that this is only really a CTE uh pathway uh undertaking might reinforce those old assumptions and prevent some students and schools from expanding experiential learning for students irrespective of their pathway and I'm not sure whether the tiny number of students who would end up being added to

167the prepared category is partly because of the other hoops along the way, you know, not hoops, but the other elements of the definition around the way. And I know that's maybe a bigger question than we should tackle now, but I want to put it on the table. Did we think about or look at the question of allowing the internship to be uh added to, you know, other um pathways or other um indicators We so in the data that we've we have shared again the only the only pathway moving forward was using that high quality definition which was exclusive to those course codes of either a CT concentrator course a CTE complete comp uh capstone course or um for internships was also the work one of the three workbased uh work experience education courses there's actually

168three so with CTE um the number of courses that reported I believe is on page 11 of 21 um where we spoke uh that students uh had reported 196 different course codes so 30 course codes were academic or non-academic there were multiple um reportings of courses such as home room or um self-contained courses uh and classes so um we don't know if that was a um a glitch but I can say that the overwhelming number again was 166 of the of the courses reported were CTE based and that could have also included introductory courses. So it was a very small percentage and number of students that completed courses that were not CTE based. >> That being that that being true, one doesn't we're also trying to be thinking about where does the system go in

169the future and is this do we want to maintain two-tier system? Um how many Um, did you do the calculation? You may have, and I may have missed it, so I apologize. Uh, of how many students had met the standards for 50 hours of an internship um, separate from the question of um, what course it was attached to and what pathway it was attached to. >> No, we did not. >> That would be a separate thing. La, my last clarification question is, Do all employers use the same rating sheet all across the state for all internships? >> There's a >> Mindy is saying no. There's a definitional criterion that they all have to get a three on an employer rating sheet which assumes that there's a similar employer rating sheet that everyone's using and that

170is a we have collected information for the past um five years um requesting that information on a a scale of one to five um and a and a review of an employer. So that is a required piece of the data that's necessary for folks to be submitting. >> Right. So they include that in their cowpads information. >> So they may not be using the same rating sheets, but they somehow can translate whatever they get from their rating sheet to the CalPADs requirement, >> right? If it was a successful um you know internship. >> I'm just trying to figure out how that happens. But that's okay. Some somebody somewhere along the way the translation gets made. Thank you. Those are my clarification questions. Are there other questions before we move on to the next indicator? >>

171All right. Yeah. Yeah. Member >> I'm just wondering the 50 hours, how was that? Um just curious how was that originated? >> You know, we started with those those select ELEAS. So there were eight LEAs that um according to CalPADS had really large number of students participating in these workbased learning opportunities. So we we reached out to them, talked to them about what it would look like. Um how many hours um and so you know we came up with 50 just because with that dis with that conversation and then we went out and asked at the educating for careers conference where we surveyed over you know the respondents were over 400 saying um 50 hours would be that that um that minimum number. Now we did get some respondents said a 100red hours and we're

172like really 100 you know. So um but a lot that median number was 50. So we did get some 25 all the way up to 100. Yeah. Yeah. >> Just one more clarifying question. The small percentage increase is the the assumption is the numbers now, right? Because it could be that if we accept these three criteria, especially the simulated uh student simulated um >> studentled enterprise internship significantly because it's more of an acceptable form. Right. >> Right. Correct. And then we'd go out and really help in terms of that data integrity, making sure that everybody is including this information in their student information system that gets uplifted into Calpad. So that was be the biggest piece is really going out educating this is, you know, the the and you know, if you create if you

173um complete a pathway and your students are participating in these workbased learning um opportunities, you know, this is how you would capture it. >> Well, there's a possibility those numbers could expand. Yes, we're hoping >> we should we should save some of this to the discussion. I'm just there's a deep dive on this that I think you and I both want to get into. Um but we we just want to get clarifying questions at this point. And um for as far as the numbers go um so I would uh point your as far as the hours and the recommendations and the data we used again as that foundational information page 11 page 13 and page 15 um have those distributions of the hours reported um and you can see there's a huge uptick at 101

174plus hours right so um there's a large and that happens across all of them um a large contingent of um students that are completing well in excess of the minimum of 50 that was um recommended by folks in the field. >> Just just a point though just so that folks are processing as we go forward. Adding the requirement then that that has that those internships have to be attached to particular course and have to be attached to a particular sequence of courses etc. shrinks the number of people who are going to be eligible to get it to count on the dashboard substantially. And so that's you know the definitions piece of this has a lot to do with whether it will matter um in the um in the ultimate dashboard. So I think are there

175if there no other clarifying questions on this we should keep moving forward because we still have more indicators to discuss. >> All right. Uh Cindy Kazanis again with the California Department of Education. I'm going to pick up the next couple of attachments. This first being around the dashboard alternative school status. So uh we are asking uh that you consider modifying the criteria to address credit deficient students. The dashboard principles that this addresses are 4, eight and 11. So looking at each of those values in terms of the background uh you know this item and the amount the volume of of letters we got and the reaction to um what is being proposed and and how we've changed the recommendation since then um really got me thinking about like how did we originally approach this and

176when I think about DAS when we originally um worked with um the Gartner center from Stanford on this and a large-scale report there was a large task force that came up with these ideas. It was around the fact that we were actually going to have alternate metrics for DAS schools. So, DAS schools were going to have a one-year grad rate that we could use in place of the four-year grad rate. The US Department of Education later told us that wasn't acceptable. So, the the basis for um this program was really uh around um making sure that we were meeting students and those schools where they were at. Uh, of course, since then, we've had to really walk away from those pieces because of the um strong reaction from the US Department of Education and our

177failure to get to get a waiver. The other thing that's happened since then is an introduction of a bill called 1505, which has drastically changed how charter schools are uh are renewed and looked at through um through through various means. And if you are a school that meets the criteria for the dashboard alternative school status, you also have a different means of going through the renewal process. And so something that was really designed first um to look at uh highstake schools and looking at schools that serve large um populations of high-risisk students uh has now turned into something that we have heard from the field. If they don't get a DAS status, they won't be renewed. That was never the intention of this program. This program was always around since 2003 to look at again

178um schools serving large percentages of high-risisk students. So in terms of um the education code, we've also tried to to clarify and make this a bit more digestible in terms of what we're looking at. So category one has been defined in education code um for a number of years as the schools that are have always been considered alternative schools. Um, I think of our juvenile court schools, our community schools, um, the schools that that uh are u our continuation schools. When we shift over to what we're looking at today, it's our category 2 schools and we're calling them applicationbased alternative schools just to um make sure that the distinction is there. And those are our charter schools and alternative schools of choice. Over the years um this these metrics have have have shifted. Um the

179board really made the the biggest um uh uh changes to this back in 2017 2018 when um other additional information were added in. Um and today we're really talking around students who are credit deficient. One of the letters mentioned um you added in youth on on one of the metrics and specifically that's the parent pregnant and or parenting youth. And when I think and I've spoken with our um uh our comprehensive sexual health consultant at the department, that's always been the definition for um for those students. And so um adding in uh the the word youth at the end is simply helped to clarify the population of students we're expecting um these schools to serve. So the other question we got is um what are the makeup of these schools? Right? So the majority of

180our um category one schools again um defined under education code um you see the whole breath right you see some elementary um you see middle high of of being the bulk and then K12. So the majority of of uh DAFF schools in general you know over 800 um uh are within um category one. What we're really talking about today again is category two those um schools of choice alternative schools of choice and charter schools. And as you can see, um, neither of those categories serve elementary or middle, but they do serve the K12 space. We have seen schools over the years, I actually saw that in another item that you're considering, I think tomorrow, that you've seen schools drop out of the DAS program because their their actual um demograph demographics have changed. They shifted

181their population to not focus on high school and at risk students. So um this is a program that again that has has changed and evolved um over since the original adoption um back in 2017 18. Uh and in terms of um you know this original uh adoption uh schools it was said from the beginning schools are required to maint maintain documentation that they continue to meet the criteria every year they were on the list. Um there was a three-year process in which the department would do a renewal. Um but one of the biggest things that we've heard since that original adoption and especially over the last couple years is the challenge that schools had in actually self-reporting the data to the department. Um they would also they would often call and ask for technical assistance

182on how to complete their applications. So, one of the things that um we have been working on for the last couple of years and have actually put a hold on reopening this process due to this work is how do you shift that data burden from the schools to the the department? The department is already collecting a lot of information from schools. Um in fact um we get criticized for collecting too much information or repetitive information. And so uh the the irony um is not not lost on me on uh the fact that you know this is um something that's coming to bear. But like every other piece on the dashboard, we use CalPADS. We are using Calpads to make sure that what we put out on the dashboard is valid, reliable, that folks can have

183um its integrity in the system. And so we're really trying to shift that uh with um these actions that you've taken over the last um couple of meetings. So with your action today, the goal is to um restart this application process to allow several schools that have been waiting. Um in fact, one of them just reached out to me this week. Um when are you going to reopen the program? We really we think that we have this new school that would really um meet the criteria. so they can show up on the school dashboard, the California school dashboard in 2026 with this um with this uh designation. Uh the renewals for our uh application based schools, those 151 that are in a three-year cycle, they are different three-year cycles for for many of them. Um

184we've paused that. So every year we've continued the list that we had back in 2024 with a couple of exceptions. some that may have closed um and been removed from the list. Uh so we would pick this up and the criteria, the last piece of criteria that we're asking you to adopt today would be for inclusion in the 2027 dashboard. So we're giving over a year um lead time um for those schools, but also again for those um new schools that have been waiting to show up on the dashboard as DAS, we would give them the opportunity um in 2026. So in terms of um the differences between the prior process that we talked about and the the data burden being on the schools, the shift of this modified process um allows again the department

185to use data that we're already being given um to uh to begin this three-year accountability cycle which um again would begin with the the the 2026 dashboard for new schools and for all others that have to go through the new process 2027. So the last two pieces and the first piece um as I mentioned um we're recommending a pause pending um our ability to um actually uh do some impact analysis is around a length of enrollment and the second piece that we are asking you to take action on today is around credit deficient. Um, so we are um asking that we we be able to use information about a school's prior history um because we don't know how many credits each school uh has or requires in order for a ninth grader to be a

186nth grader or a tenth grader to be a 10th grader. And so if they are trans transitory already, we can say um with um some certainty that they probably are potentially lacking um the credits they need to be in the uh the grade that they are. um and that be between that and making sure that the student is in um a cohort. So they're still in a valid cohort between uh the five-year cohort, we'd um identify them as credit deficient. So it is a very generous um definition is how we phrase it because um by by definition we are um again not not able to look at the actual credits that that each student is given but just by in terms of um enrollments and again if they're still in their cohort we would allow

187them to um meet this definition. Um so this is uh really the the the revised change is simply removing um from the enrolling schools credit requirements um because that cannot be validated within uh CalPuts is the action before you today. So again um the bolded pieces of this recommendation um are new. This is something that um we've again uh with the reaction that we got from from the letters thought it would take be important to take a pause on that. Um, so the recommendation before you today is to adopt the revised credit deficient definition and delay requiring high-risisk students to have a minimum enrollment of more than 30 days at the applicationbased DA school until the CDE can provide the board with impact analysis for consideration of this metric. So with that, I can hop

188into open open up for questions as needed. Could you just go back to the slide previous to the one that you just were showing which is just disappeared from the screen so that everyone can uh just take a look at the revised credit definition deficient definition which is the thing we're going to be voting on. It's um a fine definition. I'm in my own mind trying to parse what's different um with the previous one. >> It it's literally the removal of of the last uh seven six words. So uh removing from the enrolling schools credit requirements. Um we do not know what the credit requirements are for every single school in the state of California. Uh so by uh removing that it gives us the ability to again look at whether or not a student

189had a prior enrollment. So uh by default we would say that they're credit deficient. That's how we would operationalize this. Basically just inferring the credit inferring the credits from past history is what would be rolled into the operationalization of that definition. Any yes, member Yoshimoto Tari, >> thank you. I I just want to make sure I'm understanding this correctly. Um, so by virtue of moving from a traditional school to an alternative school, students would be deemed as credit deficient. >> Yes. And it doesn't have to be a traditional school. It could be a charter school to another charter school. but that your original enrollment in grade nine was not in that that school. So, we spoke with a school locally that serves credit deficient students. They typically are getting students um as 10 second year.

190So, they may be 10th graders, but they probably more likely have credits as ninth graders, but their first enrollment was not at their school was at a different school and they moved into this space because it met the needs and was serving that population of students. And that's because right now schools are self-report schools in category 2 are self-reporting and we want to move away from self-reporting >> like to we would like to make this yes more >> I guess my only maybe concern about that is I do know of students who have gone to alternative schools because they needed alter more flexibility but that weren't necessarily credit deficient. Um and also students who go straight to an alternative school um and don't start at another school. >> Yeah. And I I think that's where

191we see you know majority of our students um in in category one and you don't have to demonstrate credit deficient in category one. Those are automatically enrolled. So all of our continuation schools are all of our county our district community day are are students are automatically this this does not apply to them because it's by ed code they're defined as as alternative schools. So it's a small population of 151 schools that we're looking at applying this to the students who are not uh who believe they will not be successful but have not yet been unsuccessful in another school and want to go to an alternative school. Do they um have a place? Do they have a category? I don't see a bullet for them. you know, students who have s e either failed in traditional

192school or are expected by their parents not to succeed and they send them to an alternative high school instead of, you know, um a a traditional one, are they? >> So, if if if they're not being served in category one, which again, which is where 825ish of our schools exist, the majority of our students that are in alternative education are being served. We then have to look to category 2 and all of these definitions and what that what you described potentially, you know, they they started at a traditional school or they started at a school hasn't met their needs. We're going to say that they are most likely now credit deficient by um changing their enrollment to to school too. >> Yeah. I mean, they may or may not be. They might be, you know,

193sneaking by with D's in every subject area. I mean, we know a lot of kids who just don't do well in traditional schools and um anyway, member Yoshimoto and member Oaken, you're both and member Lewis are you're all reacting. So, what did you want to go ahead member Lewis? >> Based on just what based on what you just said, uh I'm just thinking about my experience with the alternative schools in my past district. So, wouldn't those students that President uh Darling Hammond just described, wouldn't they just be going to the school as a school of choice, >> but would they not be considered in that percentage that the DAS school has to meet to be qualified as DAS, right? So, you could have a population of students, >> some of them just enter for whatever

194reason to be that's my school of choice because I know we have those students. So, it's really percentage of students that fall into the other category, right? Category one, that would if you meet that, isn't there a 70%? >> Category one doesn't have a 70% threshold. The only this the 70% threshold and the in and the the items that I just showed on the next slide apply to category 2. Category one assumes that you are an alternative school student. That's what education code is to find our alternative school space. So, I think a lot of schools in your old district, was it Kerna or Bakersville? Yeah, Kern like you absolutely had a number of it's a large large district. So, um you were serving you had continuation schools um potentially even a community day school.

195So that does not the 70% and the criteria that we see on this um high-risisk piece does not apply because it's already you're already statutoily in in in as a school. >> Oh, I'm sorry. I don't mean to confuse you. So okay, so maybe maybe this helps. So, the majority of schools, and I would I would allege that Kern probably has, you know, many of these in that high school that that top top row, uh, are already statutoily in as an alternative school. We don't have to have this application and demonstrate a need of serving 70% high-risisk because by statute, that's what this school is supposed to be doing, right? Those schools. So that that burden there is no burden on um an a category one school they're automatically in >> but those are schools

196that are not serving students of choice particularly those are >> yeah they require this court cord associated or continuation or yeah go ahead >> well are are we still in clarifying questions >> clarify we're clarifying what schools we're talking Yeah, I I don't I'm not sure I have a clarifying question. I think my questions are more trying to understand logic and discuss. So, I'll hold. >> Okay. Uh, Vice President Glover Woods. >> So, my clarifying question is this, and it may help Cindy to go back to I can't even remember which slide it was. Um, that showed the maybe back one more. That's the one. Okay. So here's my clarifying question. Category one schools were not concerned with as it relates to this because they automatically are um categorized as DOS schools for category two

197which are schools that are applying for the status 70% of their population needs to serve the types of students we saw on the other slide. However, yep. So, 70% of the students of the school that it's applying for DOS status needs to fall within this one of these qualifications while they may have 30% of students that may be enrolled at their school for other purposes. Am am I correct with >> correct? >> Okay. And again, we're focusing on schools that are applying for DASH status that serve 70% or more of students that fall within these multiple categories even though they may have students enrolled that are not. >> That's correct. >> Thank you. that we were exploring is whether every student who is not succeeding in another school is going to meet a credit deficient

198standard. Is that right? >> That's right. Yeah. >> Yeah. The the I can add a I think I can add a clarifying question that maybe So, so just to make sure I understand what you're saying is in order to clean up the data um in other words, in order to rely on data solely from CalPADs. That's number one. And number two, in order to relieve the data burden on charter schools, um the proposal is that all students who transfer into a DOS school would be deemed credit deficient and so they would count in the potential 70% that that needs to be met. >> Absolutely. As long as for the credit deficient piece that that is that's how we would operationalize it. >> So that that's just at least whether we Whether that we think that's

199actually true or not that all those students are credit deficient. That's what the proposal is. >> Credit deficient without having to count their credits. >> Correct. >> Gota. >> Yeah. >> Thank you for the clarifying question and answer. Uh Vice President Glover would >> I'll add one more thing real quick. >> Oh, just real quick. It would be if they had a prior enrollment at a school, right? a prior a prior high school enrollment. >> Yeah. So if they transferred in >> from a high school, >> right? And they are currently presently within their own their cohort has not expired. So they need to have it needs to be before their cohort has expired. >> So meaning if they transferred in for a fifth year, >> you would not that that is another category that

200we see is dropout recovery. >> Yeah. >> Okay. I just want to make sure I Yep. Okay. Thank you. Uh >> oh. Did we I was clear and now I'm not sure I am. Goodness. And that's a bad place to be. A very bad place to be. Going back to the statement are, let me think how to best word this question. Would all students that enroll in the DOS application school be considered credit deficient? Or might some students be considered credit deficient based upon their prior history but may also fall in another category and not be deemed credit deficient. >> Absolutely. >> Okay. So we're adding credit deficiency as one of the qualifying >> groups of students. >> We're trying to >> changing the definition or adjusting it. >> Yeah. We're trying to operationalize the

201definition. so that we can utilize the data that's already being given to us from schools to so yes so they may they may not be credit deficient may actually be something else and we can pick these other pieces up homeless is a program record right foster youth we get from our department of social services it is validated that is a very um you know precise definition so these are all the pieces that would we would look at to get to to 70% of the students >> I am now clear thank you >> all Hey. Okay. Did you have your hand up, Member Alen? >> No. >> Okay. >> All right. >> Hold on to that precious moment of clarity. Thank you so much, Cindy. And Kim, >> we have just a couple more attachments. And

202these are these are much shorter than what we've been doing. So, I I promise we'll we'll get through this >> and get you to lunch soon. Um so our priority one uh teacher assignment data is something we have been working on um as well for a number of years actually prior to COVID. Uh and uh what we're talking about today is refinements to terminology and options for presenting intradist comparison data. Um so the work plan that we have today is around um both of those pieces. uh specifically um introducing uh the feedback that we received back in January and then uh considerations for moving forward for May. We will take to this this to the California Petitioners Advisory Group meeting at the end of the month and so that's something we really want to make

203sure um we've been touching base with them each each time this has come up and get feedback from them as well. So uh the pieces that we are I'm into bolding these days. So the bolded text is what we're we're focused on is the extent of disparities, any disparities across school sites within a school district. This was something that was brought to you in July. Um there was a lot of feedback around this and there were um there was a to-do list from you all. Uh so really I'm just going to skip ahead because we've been talking about this for a bit. Um really the pieces are um around uh what what you you asked for in in 2025. So in 2025 we added a new dashboard co card to each school. So now you

204can see it at the school level. Um and that information um leads uh you to view more details where we can see information um around um the percent of uh teachers who are clear the the cards that we use on the dashboard. Um you had asked us to label them as teacher assignments. So that's the other piece uh there. And um really what you had asked us to do after the deadline meeting was to um ensure that the that that that the teacher assignment data terminology on the dashboard is accessible and aligned with terminology used in SARKC that we clarify the word clear um uh and u go from there. So let's let's move into engagement. um state board staff arranged two uh check-in meetings which was uh which was great to not only um

205bring forward education management but the civil rights and equity groups um to get feedback on a couple of things. First on the new teacher assignment card that was on the dashboard in 2025. What have they heard from the field? Um you know how is it how is it being perceived? How is it being utilized? and then um ideas for uh any sort of um statuto direction around the extent of disparities within teachers uh assignments within schools in an LEA. So that um interd district um piece and then just having a conversation around the teacher data terminology which is not clear to many people even though we use the word clear. So just um uh all joking aside, it is it it is something that was um really brought up some um a good robust uh

206feedback session. So in terms of the feedback we received, um the new teacher assignment cards and the LA details um are being used by some to support teacher quality conversations uh among equity groups and community based organizations. Uh there was definitely a loud voice in the sense that rural eleas and their schools and county office of education run court community schools um are still experiencing um you these workforce challenges and staffing challenges. Uh we also know that and have heard that the word the word clear is can be confusing um given that it does not indicate that teachers hold a clear credential. Um, so there's terms within uh the credentiing community that are um similar. And then uh the other piece has consistently been around this word ineffective which is um in our SS state

207plan um and is used on the teacher assignment monitoring outcomes um report which is on data quest that they don't like the term and it's unpopular among um interest holders uh and uh is actually seen as pjorative to temporary permit holders and misassigned educators serving in California's classrooms. We don't use that word on the dashboard. I want to be clear. We actually used the word clear in in teaching assignments. So um one of the things that we are suggesting and wanted to get feedback um from you all today on is aligning the terminology. So changing the word clear on the dashboard to fully credentialed and properly assigned. Um this would be on the assignments card as well as the local indicators dashboard page. and um the consideration that um terminology be updated on the teacher

208assignment monitoring outcome reports to align with the dashboard terms. The other piece is adding a second teacher assignment data table to um meet this in u requirement around intradist transfer. So this is an example of um a a district who has not only an elementary but a middle and a high school. they have um a count of schools uh that uh for each of those types of schools and then uh the suggestion and I think this actually came from a letter that you received last year um from the equity groups is highest percentage fully credentialed and properly assigned and then the lowest percentage of fully credential and properly assigned. So um this provides yet another view of data that is um is is already available through the data quest reports but it is a summary

209of that to be put on the dashboard. So with that we are requesting feedback and direction from the board on updates to the terminology and options for displaying intradist county teacher credentiing and assignment data on the dashboard. And if there's no clarifying questions, we can definitely hold until you have your discussion. >> I'm not seeing any up. >> A quick clarifying question on the the labeling. Um besides clear, do what are the other >> That's the only term that we use on the dashboard. >> It's the only term. Okay. So, we don't use an effective >> other the other terms are all um are not specified in that statute that we started with. Um but they are part of our SS state plan and they reported out on data list. >> So there's six other

210terms. >> The ineffective term is required by the feds >> for their reporting. >> Okay. >> And we report to them with that only. >> Thank you. >> All right. Uh yes, Vice President Glover Woods, >> Cindy, just to clarify the box for the open response. >> Yes. >> Will that remain? >> Yes. So that was one thing that we did add was a a narrative box right underneath this table. Uh and of the 10,000 schools, we had about two less less than 250 take us up on that. So uh we found that they were overwhelmingly um from charter schools um talking about you know their um what was going on in their local um context. But we now with this knowing how many and and how many um how much more opportunities we have

211to have 9500 or 9700 schools uh actually fill it out. We'll we can spend some time on that this next year to point that out. Okay, I'm going to return over the remainder of the presentation to Kim. Luckily, my entire coffee was already expired, so we're good. I just spilled it and it's fine. Um, so no, we're good. It It was all good. That's how we've been here for a while. All right. Long-term English learner student group and the suspension indicator. This one should be lovely for all of us. Um we are looking um to um move forward two specific actions um in um response to your requests to help assist um changes to the LTEL student group, right, that was added um to the 2025 dashboard uh 2024 dashboard rather. Um and specifically those

212are with regards to amending um our suspension 5x5 tables for ELELS. Um and then in um for CPAG later this month as well as the May state board meeting, we'll be looking at adding reclassified students as an additional level to the LP for LELS. So stay tuned for that. Um today's discussion um centers around principles 5, 8, and 11. So in 2025 um we evaluated the dashboard metrics to ensure that ELELS had valid results across all of the indicators after ELELS were added as a student group um into the 2024 dashboard. And um we noted that the age specific student group um for ELELLS, meaning that you needed to have been an ELTEL for at least seven years or more, um may have been assigned incorrect 5x5 tables to the suspension rate indicator. Um and

213so we dug into that. Whenever we see something that looks off or strange, right, we do our due diligence and look in. Um, so we evaluated the current suspension rate uh to indicator to determine whether a modified application of our 5x5 color grid for LTEL students was warranted. Um, and therefore would provide a more accurate and equitable reporting of outcomes for these students. Um, and this work has continued from last year. It we didn't make it over the line in July, but we're here um hopefully today um to help out with that. So um as I just said, you know, we added ELTELS for the first time in 2024. Um and then again that that definition on the dashboard is specifically just a student who has not attained English uh language proficiency within seven years

214of initial classification. Now the suspension rate indicator is um our precious indicator that has six separate 5x5s for uh for distribution on the um uh dashboard. And um the reason why is because um suspensions look very different for different school types and different district types. And so when the board first adopted our suspension rate indicator, we wanted to make sure that we were equitably um assigning what was a good outcome right for schools and districts um to the proportion of suspensions that they were seeing. So we know that there are very few suspensions that occur in our elementary school spaces and when we looked at the data um we set those expectations accordingly. However, there are many more suspensions at our middle schools, right? Um and so while we wanted to reduce those numbers proportionally

215the number of suspensions that are on average um at our schools um is a very different number than those are at our elementary schools and similarly at high schools as well. Um so overall, as a reminder, the um requirement for our uh suspension rate indicator to perform well is for your suspension rate to go lower, right? And to have a lower rate. Um so we have three 5x5s for districts, elementary schools, high school districts, and then our K12 schools and unified districts. And then for schools, we have three elementary schools, middle schools, high schools. And then just for funsies, um for our schools that are uh K through 12, um we apply the district K through 12 5x5 to schools that have that distribution as well. So um there are technically six uh 5x5s that

216with their own sets of cut scores um across all of those indicators. Now, as you can see here from the 2025 dashboard and looking at our population of LELS, while there are some students who have had English uh have been an English learner for seven or more years um in grades four and five, there are just a few of them, right? Obviously, the proportion of those students starts ticking up in grade six and moving through grade 12. Therefore, other than um you know, while students may be in an elementary school setting of a K6, right? um school or a K8 um they're not taking up the majority of uh those grade spans, right? They're taking up um just grades six, seven, eight um and then our high school grades accordingly. And then when we look

217at the counts of suspensions for ELELS by grade level, um I've circled in I, you know, put them in boxes for here to see that um for our ELTELS at elementary schools, right? there are um a significant number of um suspensions happening in grades six, seven and eight and none in those grades before that right or grades after. Um and similarly for K12 schools you see a large proportion of um suspensions happening again in six, seven and eight. um in the hand in the attachment um you can look through and see I we didn't copy the slide here because it was very not 508 compliant um but specifically you can see that the cut scores and expectations for our students in our elementary schools is much lower right as I said um than our middle

218schools but when you're looking at um a school that just happens to be a K8 right they're an elementary school they've labeled themselves as such um they have ELTEL students there but we're holding their LTEL students which are only sixth, seventh and eighth graders to an expectation of behavior, right? That is for all of the other students, right? Um proportionally uh they they have students who are represented in grades kindergarten or TK, kindergarten, first, second, third, fourth, and fifth as far as a rate, right? They have a lot more students in their denominator because of the rate that's being presented. So, um it's not really an applesto apples comparison. We're essentially looking at how middle schoolers, right, in grades six, seven, and eight are being suspended at an elementary school setting because the only students

219who LLTs are only middle school students. Um, so it would be silly to hold them to a higher threshold, right, uh, or rather a lower threshold of expectations than it would be for a middle school. So that's what we're looking to do. And this is um uh through um the application of the middle school 5x5 on these elementary schools. We saw that 28 schools exited the red because of um our changes to that and 44 schools would exit the orange if we changed our ELTEL um 5x5 from using the elementary school um requirements to a middle school requirement. And then you can see here for district types as well, elementary school districts. We have quite a few elementary school districts again with those ELTEL students. Um, and walking through. And when we applied the unified

220K12 school district 5x5 table to that LTEL student group, we saw that 13 elementary school districts uh exited the red for LTELS. Um, and then additionally, eight elementary school districts exited the orange. There was a question that came up and that um around why the unified K12 school um distribution was selected. Um our technical design group looked at either applying the unified K12 school designations or high school. high school has an actual higher threshold for um uh suspensions and our TDG felt that the unified K12 school expectations were more aligned with um those requirements than they were um than the high school ones. So that is why we chose the UN uh unified K12 school 5x5 for the districts. So our recommendation is as follows. Um, we recommend that the ELTEL student group be represented

221within the suspension rate indicator by the middle school 5x5 at the school level and the UNIFI K12 5x5 at the district level. Any clarifying questions that I can assist with? Okay, last one. Our participation rate for English language arts, mathematic and science indicators. Um this is also a um moving forward a holdover from last year where um with just action this month and we're hoping to get this action so that we can um uh provide information to the field prior to testing beginning shortly. So um it is around the SBE approving the removal of the participation rate grace periods from the ELA mathematics and science indicators. This is on principles 4, 8, and 11. Now, for those of you who are not intimately aware of our academic grace uh uh grace periods for our academic

222indicators, um in 201617, we developed these indicators within the accountability um department and our business rules to address concerns of large assessment windows and student movement within those windows. Um during that time um we had stu uh schools that actively began testing um very uh you know very early in the year. So as soon as they possibly could and then those testing continued all the way until the last day of the school year. Um this was a time of computer carts being pushed around from classroom to classroom, right? Um and uh the duration of the assessment taking a a long period of time. um and with the new assessment not knowing how long it would take students to complete them. Uh schools scheduling out two weeks per grade level, right, to test and to get

223the computer carts around to everyone um and moving forward. So it was a very different type of test administration um that we began um uh during 201617. And so we heard concerns from the field about what things would look like for the participation rate. Um and therefore, uh we developed a series of um grace periods intending to hold schools and eleas harmless from testing students who transfer out too early or transfer in too late. So um the unended outbound transfers just as the window opened would be excused from the participation rate and unintended transfers during the last days of the testing window would be excused. Um, what this looked like in application was that if we had a very short window of testing, there were no grace periods. If you had a window of testing

224of 14 to 30 days, there was a 14-day grace period afterwards. And with 31 days or more of a total window, um, the grace period before was 14 days and the grace period after was 14 days. Um this is a sketch of one of the many diagrams trying to explain this to the field as to how the grace periods work. Um and specifically I just point um to that little purple arrow um that's showing the windows for all assessments and these these testing windows don't begin until the very first student logs in and starts beginning testing um at that school in that subject area. So you can set up a window for as long as you need it to be, right? Um, and it's only until you actually begin the testing that we would count

225your window um to be to begin. So, LEA sign up for testing windows um separately with our uh assessments division. They they tell everyone that's the date that they can begin testing, right? But we don't um actually start looking at that until they begin moving forward. Now, as a part of our 2025 and this year's 2026 accountability work plan, um we started reviewing some of the feedback that we had received around the validity and reliability of our grace periods for all of these indicators. And specifically, it started coming up with our science indicator and our alternative assessment for our science indicator as well as the fairness um in adjacency to our um English learner proficiency exams um that do not have any grace periods attached to them. Um and so from inquiries in the field,

226we went through and decided to look at specifically what was going um on with our grace periods and if this was something that perhaps was an outdated idea that we could move um forward from. Um so specifically um reducing the need for those grace periods brought up greater access to individual devices obviously improved technology um so many more devices right um around and um additionally the shorter duration of the assessment administration for the CASP in general. So, in looking at what the actual impact of removing the grace periods was, and um I will be um I will clear this up. I saw a couple comments um from folks um previously, but um as far as statewide impact, 2,00 to 3,000 students would be added overall to the entire academic indicators for the entire state. um

227so less than onetenth of 1% of students those would be added to our participation rate overall um for schools and districts. So we saw a very minimal impact on the um percentage of schools and districts that would and student groups that would not meet the 95%. So that was a 1% impact that we saw. Um and then also a minimal impact to color assignments for LEA schools and student groups. only one to two% of all schools, LEAs, and student groups, every color distributed along that would be impacted or affected. Therefore, moving forward with the 2026 accountability plan and the 2026 dashboard, we are recommending the removal of grace periods from the participation rate calculation for ELA, mathematics, and science indicators. Are there any clarifying questions? Any clarifying questions? All right. Thank you. Are we ready

228to take public comment? >> Very quickly. So, um, just to let you know, we've been busy as always. Um, we see you so often, but we also see everyone else in the field. Um, so we had two policy workg groupoup meetings with a total of 42 participants between the last meeting and this, as well as seven inperson and virtual presentations with around 679 participants. Um, would you like me to review the recommendations before or just go to public comment? >> Repeat though. >> Okay. I know we we'll go back to the beginning when you saw me the first time. Um, our uh recommendations >> the most important thing is to clarify the one that changed. >> Yes. So for CCI the recommendation is to approve the f uh proposed career measures and the respective highquality

229definitions for inclusion in the CCI for work-based learning internships workbased learning student led enterprises work-based learning simulated work simulated work-based learning as well as approving the state seal of civic engagement for inclusion in the college career indicator as a plus metric in combination with either meeting UCCSU course requirements or successful completion of a CTE pathway. For number two, and this the bold is the difference in the motion. Um, dashboard alternative school status, approve updates to the applicationbased staff criteria, adopt the revised credit deficient uh credit deficient definition, and delay requiring high-risisk students to have a minimum enrollment of more than 30 days at the applicationbased staff school until the CDE can provide the SBE with an impact analysis for consideration of this metric. For priority one, this is just providing feedback and direction on the

230updates of the terminology and options for how to describe and display interdist county teacher credentiing and assignment data on the dashboard. For four, it's adopting the proposed revisions to the suspension rate indicator 5x5 for ELELS. And for five, it is removing the grace periods for the participation rate calculation for the English language arts, mathematics, and science indicators. Okay, thank you. Um, we are going to put the public comment uh slide up. It's it is up and we're going to uh open the phone line for public comment. Those wishing to make public comment on the phone can use the telephone number and access code displayed there. Uh we will start with public comment in the room. I do want to note before we go to public comment that um the over 10,000 written public comments we

231received related to the DOS criteria uh have been attended to. We have seen the letters. Appreciate the comments and the CDE recommendation uh as you know has been changed and does not include the 30-day minimum enrollment criterion at this time. We'll do further analysis of that and bring it up at a future meeting. Um, and so, uh, I encourage, uh, callers to address the decisions before the board today. Uh, and in order to be able to hear from everyone, we'd like to who would like to provide public comment, uh, while ensuring we can move through the board's remaining items of business at that meeting, we ask that for those signed up or calling in to provide public comment. If you are providing comment uh regarding the DOS criteria that repeat the substance of the large

232volume of public comment, please simply state whether you support support or oppose that recommendation about the revised criteria um for our future reference. And we are going to um open um the deis and then the phone line for public comment now. There are 16 people signed up for in-person public comment. Uh, please remember to state your name and affiliation for the record when it's your turn to speak. Um, will the following people please line up at the microphone in the back of the room. Lindseay Poli, Shelley Haynes, Karen Manley, Lindseay Ree, and David Vieira. You may begin. Good afternoon, members of the board. Again, my name is Lindseay Poli supporting AVID from Sacramento County Office of Education. Thank you for the opportunity to comment and for taking the time to consider additional measures for the

233college and career indicator. Expanding the CCI is an important step in ensuring it reflects the full range of ways students prepare for success after high school. As shared earlier, for over 45 years, AVID has partnered with schools across California to close opportunity gaps and prepare all students for college and careers. 90% of AVID graduates in California complete the A to G requirements compared to 52% statewide and 80% of AVID graduates enroll in post-secary education compared to 62% statewide. AVID is a a sustained, intensive, and evidence-based system that equips students with the durable skills that employers consistently identify as essential for workplace success while serving as an accelerator for rigorous coursework and other key CCI outcomes. AVID would welcome the opportunity to engage further as the state continues strengthening how the readiness is measured and supported

234for all students. Thank you. Good afternoon, members of the state board. My name is Shelley Haynes. I am here as the superintendent representing Crescent View West authorized uh DA school authorized by Fresno County Superintendent of Schools. I'm here to share that credit deficiency should remain a DA certification criterion with no changes to how it is currently calculated because it identifies students who are significantly off track toward graduation. If this issue cannot be satisfactorily resolved, I encourage the board to extend current death status for one year while the policy is reviewed and clarified. Thank you for your consideration. >> Good afternoon. My name is Karen Manley from Varel Charter High School, a DAS school in Ventura County. Our students often arrive far behind in credits and at risk of not graduating. That's why credit deficiency as

235it stands must remain a DAS criterion without changes to how it is calculated until we see and understand a clearly operationalized proposed definition and understand how it will actually impact the DAS schools across the state. If a 30-day enrollment threshold ends up being considered in the future, it should exclude all students enrolled 30 days or fewer, not just higher risk students. I respectfully encourage extending current DAS statuses and processes until the policy is more carefully reviewed. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Lindseay Reese and I represent San Diego Workforce Innovation High School in San Diego County. We are a DAS school. I respectfully encourage the board to extend current DAS status for one year while the policy is thoughtfully reviewed. Credit deficiency is a critical DAS certification criteria because it identifies students who are

236significantly off track towards graduation. It's one of the clearest indicators of students that have seriously been underserved and are low performing academically. The proposed new methodology is less precise than the current methodology and would lead to more calculation errors, not less. We have a high bar for determining credit deficiency and could easily show backup documentation if tested. Since the board does not yet seem clear on the recommendations currently set forth, the DAS certification criteria should remain unchanged. I respectfully urge the board to extend the current DA status for one year while they continue to review this policy. Thank you. >> Good afternoon, Madame President, president, members of the board. My name is David Vieira, former and superintendent. I'm speaking on behalf of the educators working in DAS schools across our community. While appreciating the CDE's

237effort to strengthen the integrity and cons consistency of DAS criteria, we urge careful consideration of potential unintended consequences. Many DAS schools serve students experiencing significant instability, youth who are highly mobile, credit deficient, navigating foster care, homelessness, or involvement with the justice system. These are precisely the students the DAS framework was designed to support. The proposed revisions to the credit deficient definition and 30-day enrollment requirement risk excluding some of the very students alternative schools exist to serve. We respectfully encourage the board to maintain sufficient flexibility so schools serving the most unstable high-risk populations are not inadvertently disadvantaged. Thank you for your consideration. >> Will the following five people please line up at the microphone? Nicholas Watson, Carlos Machado, Wayne Ashbrunner, Laura Kerr, JulieRandle. Good afternoon, President Darlingham and members of the board. I'm Nicholas Watson, speaking

238on behalf of the California Charter Schools Association. We appreciate all the work that CD staff has invested in these policy changes, but we have concerns about the current form of the proposal. Um, we do not support it. We ask that you support an extension of DOS status for existing schools while CDE works with DOS schools on a better approach to updating these important policies. Thank you. >> Good afternoon. My name is Wade Ash Brener and I represent eight altis schools which all are DOS schools. As you consider the updates to the DOS application, we respectfully urge the state board to pause any proposed changes and extend the renewal criteria for current DOS schools. First, you must ensure transparency and accuracy in the use of eligibility data, particularly data coming from CDE and CalPADs. Schools should

239have an opportunity to review and correct eligibility determinations, including those based on cowpads. Schools also should be able to correct missing and inaccurate CalPADS records which often occur when students transfer between schools. Secondly, clearly define the term and methodology for determining credit deficiency which you guys have done some hard work today. Because cowpaths was not originally designed to determine credit deficiency across different school credit systems, it is a critical that the definition and methodology are clear, accurate, and developed with input from schools serving these students. We thank you for your leadership on this. Uh important topic. >> Good afternoon. Carlos Mashado with the California School Board Association. CSBA appreciates the work to refine the dashboard, but we must ensure these updates support LEAs. Regarding the college and career indicator, the new tracking requirements could create

240a heavy local administrative burden, particularly for small rural districts. We urge your board to consider the infrastructure needed to manage this data. We also have deep concerns regarding court and community schools. Uh the current multi-year cohort model often masks the intensive uh local efforts to engage these students uh whose transitional status makes long-term metrics a poor fit. We asked the board to consider more equitable approaches for these specialized settings. Finally, teacher assignment data should be used to identify state level policy barriers, not just highlight local disparities. Transparency must be linked to a unified strategy of support that helps uh eleas address staffing challenges. Please refer to CSBA's uh written comments for more technical details on these and other recommendations. Thank you. Laura Kerr with the Charter School Development Center representing over 80 DOS schools. We

241are deeply concerned about the many changes to DASSA terminations have made without have been made without board approval. These changes narrow eligibility and lack transparency. Uh sole reliance on cowpads introduces errors and emissions inherited from other schools. DOS schools need the ability to review and correct data. Other changes restrict who counts as at risk youth and and still more tinker with how the 70% is calculated. Each of these can impact death status and jeopardize at promised student access to needed school options. To prevent inadvent inadvertent closures of schools uh providing critical options for high-risisk students, we urge the board to conduct a formal review of all past and proposed changes to the process and to extend DOS status for another year while the SBE addresses these issues. Thanks. JulieRandle, principal superintendent of home tech charter

242in Paradise. We are a category 2 DAS school serving TK through 12. Um I do want to clarify that applying for DAS is not too cumbersome for the site. In fact, it's one of our highest priorities. We serve an incredibly high number of students who are vulnerable, high risk, and fit into many of the categories that you've discussed here today. We're heavily invested in ensuring our accurate reporting in our DAS applications. Unfortunately, we have found time and time again that the CowPad's system does not always accurately report a student's history and we usually find this with uh with DAS reporting uh criteria such as suspensions, expulsions and habitual truency. So, we respectfully ask that the board consider um consider looking at this more clearly, talking with some of the DAS schools so that we can

243explain what it is that we do and how important it is as we go through our process. >> Speaker, your time is up. >> Will the following six people please line up at the microphone? Natalie Shin, Lorraine Richards, Lindseay Tornator, Diana Vu, Rob Manwearing, and Cynthia Sores. Good afternoon, members of the board. My name is Natalie Shin here on behalf of Californians together. We are in strong support of the proposed revisions for the suspension rate indicator for long-term English learners and want to thank the board for this your attention to this critical issue. Long-term English learners often experience multiple systemic challenges, and these revisions ensure that any discipline disparities affecting them are accurately measured, visible, and addressed through a statewide accountability system. Thank you. >> Good afternoon. My name is Lorraine Richards and I'm a

244classroom teacher representing California Teacher Association. Thank you for this comprehensive item and the opportunity to provide input. CTA would like to provide comment on both DAS criteria and the priority one assignment data. CTA strongly supports the proposed changes to the DAS application. The existing system for applicationbased dashboard alternative school status which is specific to alternative schools of choice and charter schools relies on the school's selfcertified data. This process does not allow the CDE to verify the data that is put into the application. The proposal to streamline item three streamlines the process and shifts responsibility to CDE to confirm eligibility. We also support aligning terminology for the priority one teacher assignment data. This will help to increase transparency and provide parents and families with a clearer picture on teacher assignments. Thank you. >> Good afternoon. I'm

245Lindseay Tornator. On behalf of the California County Superintendent, I'd like to lift up the letter we submitted with our positions, input, and requests and briefly highlight a few items on the DAS issue. First, we want to appreciate all the work CD has done to uh propose revisions to the criteria. As we all can see, this is a very complex topic. Um, broadly, the superintendent support any changes to the DAS criteria to ensure that DAS status is reserved for the schools that the DAS program is intended to serve. We appreciate CDE's responsiveness to the concerns from the field and look forward to the data analysis on the minimum 30-day requirement impact. Regarding teacher assignment data, we believe the addition of a second data table would be duplicative of what is already reported in the SARKC and

246publicly available on DataQuest. We support transparency around teacher credentiing and welcome continued discussions with board staff and partners. Finally, we support removing the grace periods but request the change take effect with the 2027 dashboard and timely communication be provided to the field before the 2026 dashboard release. Thank you. Good afternoon board members. Dina Vu on behalf of the Association of California School Administrators access supports including the state seal civic engagement in the CCI as a standalone measure. This would preserves LEA's flexibility to implement civic engagement opportunities that reflect their local context and the diverse ways students participate in civic life. This approach also helps ensure broader and more equitable access for students particularly in alternative education settings while encouraging eleas to expand civic engagement opportunities. Separately, AX supports the term fully credential and properly assigned

247which will help reduce confusion. At the same time, AXA recommends avoiding the addition of a new of new data tables that may introduce unnecessary complexity or lead to misinterpretation. Prioritizing clarity and simplicity will ensure that the dashboard remains a useful and accessible tool for families and communities while minimizing the confusion about how teacher assignment data should be understood. Additionally, AXA remains concerned about the use of the term ineffective and appreciates the board's support and alignment on this issue. Thank you. Good afternoon. Cynthia Sores. I'm the director of the Yuba County Career Preparatory Charter School. And to simplify my public comment is that I support the public comments that have so far been made in relationship to the DAS credit uh definition that is under consideration. I appreciate that the CDE uh staff have um taken

248the other 30-day criteria off of your agenda at this time for further analysis of that, but simply put, I oppose the definition that is currently on the agenda for your consideration and hope that there can be some more conversation and clarity about how that will be defined. Thank you for your time and consideration. Uh hello Robert Manorin from children now. Um in our letter we put in a place uh a provided display of how to show the distributional uh effects of the teacher assignment monitoring data. We we would I as you've heard today uh DOS schools have very different schools very different students at their schools and need different things. We think that you should report disagregating not only by elementary, middle, and high school, but also by alternative ed schools because they have very

249different rates of fully assigned teachers. We think this is a critical equity issue in how districts distribute their qualified teachers across school sites. Uh we also support adding the seal of civic engagement and suggest the recommended option four which is either the seal plus a throughg or the seal plus the CTE pathway and we support adjusting the performance standards for long-term English learners on the suspension. Thank you so much. Oh, and one last issue. If you could break down uh the assessment item into multiple sub items, it might uh spur greater public engagement because >> Thank you, speaker. Your time is up. >> We will now move to public comment on the phone line. >> Thank you. Uh first caller with the last. >> Sorry, Haley. One moment. >> Did you have a comment? >>

250I apologize. The binder moved before I could sign it. Lee Angela Reed on behalf of the Small School Districts Association like to align um our association with the comments of our colleagues from the county superintendent access and CSBA particularly relative to teacher um misassignment um with smalls you have very unique circumstances and we feel that the information would be duplicative um as as reiterated in by by my colleagues. Um, also it's important that we make this continue to make this a usable item. With regard, I also want to speak on behalf of the California Association of Career and College Readiness Organization. The more we can put into the CCI, the more engagement we will have, the better it will be. So, we really want to continue to encourage us to build that out and appreciate

251the board's work and staff work on that. And if you get a chance to visit Fbrezio's programs, I highly recommend it. You will come away a better person. Thank you. We will now move to public comment on the phone line. >> Thank you. Um, caller with the last four digits 7084, please state your name and affiliation for the record. You have one minute and your time starts now. >> Hello, my name is Michelle Herszog. I'm representing Californians for Civic Learning, representing several civic learning leaders and organizations across the state. We strongly strongly support the inclusion of the state seal of civic engagement in the dashboard. As we know the state seal has created a lot of interest in moving civic engagement forward in schools but not to the numbers that it should. We believe strongly

252that adding it to the dashboard will incentivize schools and districts to not only get more students to earn the seal but to implement highquality civic engagement programs even beginning in the elementary schools. We heard a lot of interest in this in in item two and we appreciate the board's support of civic enga civically engaging our young people in our American democracy. So thank you very much for your time and we hope you can include this in the dashboard. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 0161. Please start your public comment. >> I'm Aaron Gorance, executive director at Pacific View Charter School located in Oceanside and Marino Valley. We serve students who are credit deficient, formerly incarcerated, parenting, and young people who need a flexible pathway to graduate. Our program attracts high-risisk students who

253have typically been unsuccessful elsewhere and need our supports to make it to graduation. We are very concerned that the recent changes could harm our community's most vulnerable students. Please require state board approval of all changes, including past changes made without public engagement. Maintain all eligibility categories without narrowing and extend current DOT status while resolving these issues. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 305 3015. Please start your public comment. >> Hi, my name is Eliana Kuryako, superintendent of Options for Youth, a Dash Charter School Network serving communities across California. We serve students who are credit deficient, previously disengaged from school, parenting youth, and students who need a flexible pathway to graduate. These are young people we care deeply about and believe in. I want to highlight a concern with the proposed requirement for continuous 70%

254high-risisk enrollment. DAS schools experience enrollment fluctuations throughout the year as students transfer, return to schools or re-engage after failing falling behind. Removing DA status if enrollments drops below 70% at any point does not really really reflect the reality of the students we serve, especially when the state board already requires reertification every three years. We also ask the schools have the ability to review and correct eligibility data before determinations are made. We respectfully ask the state board to reject the continuous 70% requirement and protect schools serving high-risisk students. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 4835. Please start your public comment. >> My name is Bill Datson, director of Motivated Youth Academy, an applicationbased DOS charter school in San Diego County. We are opposed to the recommendation in item three attachment two on DOSs

255eligibility. We serve high-risisk students with our largest student group being those who are credit deficient. Our DAS status expires this June. Next year we renew our chart. If my losses do status, our school could face presumptive non-redual based solely on ill-fitting dashboard indicators. School accountability should recognize student context. It should not unintentionally disadvantage the very students it is intended to support. I urge you to extend DOS status one year and require state board approval of all changes that affect DOS eligibility until these issues can collaboratively be resolved by the state board, the CDE and educational partners. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 7369. Please start your public comment. Uh, good morning. My name is Christa Woodri, superintendent of Sage Oak Charter Schools. While our school is not designated as a DA school,

256many death charter colleagues serve students who are credit deficient, formerly disengaged from school, parenting, youth, or young people who need a flexible pathway to graduate. Traditional school districts often refer students to DA schools because they have a reputation for being able to support some of our most vulnerable young population. I've heard countless stories from my colleagues about students who were on the verge of dropping out, but through the support of their schools, they were able to graduate and completely change the trajectory of their futures. I respectfully urge you to oppose the proposal to further reduce the students counted in DAS eligibility criteria and to extend DAS status while the state board reviews all past and proposed changes to DAS eligibility. These schools are doing life-changing work for students who need it most, and we need

257to protect them from inadvertent closures. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 2979, please start your public comment. >> Hi, my name is Elizabeth O'Neal and I'm the director of data analytics at EDI where I support multiple alternative charter schools. I share the concerns particularly about the definitions for credit deficiency and I am asking the board respectfully to please make sure there is full public review and state board of education approval of all past and proposed changes to these eligibility categories along with very clear data definitions and enrollment methodology or timelines that just do not exist right now. there are too many questions and in light of that I would respectfully ask the board to extend D status one year while these issues are addressed. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 8945.

258Please start your public comment. >> Good morning. This is Suzanne Kooie with the Charter School Development Center. Without DAS status, schools serving high-risisk students face charter renewal using indicators that mostly do not measure their impact. Let's be clear about the goal of DAS status. Is this a school that the dashboard indicators fit? Words of the court was eliminated because it's not in powpad. Without board approval, pregnant parenting and credit deficient got restricted to youth. Now the DAS application web page suddenly says DAS status will be dropped if the school does not continuously maintain 70% enrollment of high-risk students. We urge the board to conduct a full public review of all past and proposed changes including those that have not gone to the board for review with engagement of schools. Let's remember the goal. This is

259about whether school accountability should be based on dashboard indicators or not. Narrowing dash dash eligibility is the wrong direction. We see solutions that protect needed options and we're standing by to find those solutions together. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 8937. Please begin your public comment. >> Good afternoon. This is Christina Salasar. On behalf of the Riverside County Superintendent of Schools, I'd like to highlight three key areas. First, on the state sila civic engagement, we remain fully committed to graduating students who are academically prepared and civically responsible. That's why we support option two, earning the seal along with the A to G requirements. Secondly, on the CTE programs, we serve more than 13,000 students each year, providing hands-on industry aligned learning. So, we strongly support incorporating internship, student led enterprises, and simulated

260work-based learning into the college career indicator. And lastly, on the student um on the teacher assignment data, we align our comments with the county superintendent and AXA. We support aligning terminology to fully credentialed and properly assigned for greater clarity. However, we oppose adding a second teacher assignment table to the dashboard. The data is already publicly available and would be a duplication. Thank you for your consideration. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 5991, please start your public comment. Oh, they dropped. Um, okay. Next caller ending in 2199. Please begin your public comment. >> Good afternoon, State Board of Education and President Linda Darling Hammond. Um I am uh Dr. Rudy Quas and I'm the superintendent of Youth Build Charter School Cove of California. Uh we respectfully request that the state board keep all eligibility categories

261as initially conceived. Keep reertification every three years without a new requirement to meet the 70% threshold every day. Ensure that schools can review and correct eligibility data. require full public review and FB approval of any changes to eligibility categories, data definitions, enrollment methodology or timelines and extend DOT status uh one year so schools can prepare for renewal without sudden role changes. Uh students need access to high quality options preserving a stable, transparent and inclusive DOS eligibility criteria in the best interest of students and communities. Thank you for your consideration. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 9797, please begin your public comment. >> Alexa Atkins with the Manzanita Band of the Kumi Nation with approval from tribal chairwoman Angela Elliot Santos. I am opposed to the recommendation on DOS eligibility in item three. I am

262also deeply concerned about changes that have not been brought to the board. My concerns were summarized in a letter on the matter I submitted on March 6, 2026. In the spirit of co collaboration, we invite the state board to take part part in a te talking circle with tribal representatives and educational partners on these matters before taking action and changing anything. This approach will create an environment where all voices can be heard, including the students whose futures are most affected by these decisions. Talking circles are an important cultural practice that foster respect, listening, and thoughtful conversation. By coming together in this way, we can share perspective and work collectively towards solutions that support the well-being and educational success of our community's youth. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 1619, please start your public comment.

263>> Good afternoon, members of the board. My name is Paul Dogado and I am a seventh grade student at South Junior High School in the Anaheim Union High School District. I support including the state seal of civic engagement on the California School Dashboard. At my community school, students have real opportunities to participate in civic life. I took part in youth and government day with the city of Anaheim where I learned how lo local government works through a city mock trial. I also serve as a senator in our south senate where students work together to solve real problems. This year, we studied water quality on campus, partnered with Anaheim Public Utilities, and advocated for filtered drinking fountains that are now being installed. In my game-based learning with Minecraft Education Plus, we designed solutions to community challenges

264in our district's reinventing communities world. It shows how civics can be in integrated into CTE and inspire real change. Recognizing these civic engagement dashboard would show that these experiences matter. Thank you for supporting students who want to make a difference. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Next caller ending in 2250. Please begin your public comment. >> Good afternoon board members for Morales with Ed Trust West. Currently, many Els are held to an elementary level suspension standards despite being predominantly enrolled in grade six and above. Shifting the middle school and unified K12 5-5 tables provided a more equitable and and statistically reliable measure that reflects the actual grade levels of these studies. By ensuring our accountability system accurately identifies and supports the unique needs of ELELS, we can better protect their access to the rigorous academic

265opportunities they deserve. We urge the board to adopt these revisions to ensure for access to academic opportunities for our ELTL student group. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 3609, please begin your public comment. >> Good afternoon, state board members. Jeff Rice, founder and director of A+, the association of personalized learning schools and services, representing a total of 119 flexbased personalized learning public schools serving more than 128,000 students in California. About a third of our members are D classified, many of whom you've heard from today. We are also concerned that any changes to current eligibility criteria, particularly in light of today's new proposal uh regarding credit deficiency without further review and analysis of the potential impact of these changes that may result in the declassification of any of these existing data schools would

266have a devastating effect on many of our most troubled, vulnerable, and challenged student population resulting in the severe reduction in viable options available to them. I respectfully request that the state board delay any criteria eligibility decisions at this time in favor of further impact analysis to preserve these critical options for California's most challenged students. Thank you for your time and consideration. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 5467, please start your public comment. >> My name is Brian Gillespie. I'm a director with Options for Youth Adas Network. Our students are often credit deficient, disengaged from school, or facing significant life challenges. The dashboard doesn't capture the progress students make during this their time with us. So, we use alternative metrics established with our authorizers. Seven of our schools are currently preparing for renewal. We're finalizing

267our renew renewal petitions. Now, changing DAS eligibility mid-stream creates uncertainty and risk in this labor intensive process. We respectfully ask the board to extend our data status as these issues are resolved. Second, we are concerned about the current proposal to only consider a student high- risk if enrolled for 30 plus days. That would distort our high-risisk count. Instead, it would work to extend the 30-day enrollment minimum to all students in the calculation, not as a requirement to consider a student high-risisk. Thank you for your cons time and consideration. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 8674, please start your public comment. >> Good morning. Rachel Murphy with public advocates and the LCF equity coalition on the college career indicator. We support the department's recommendations to include the workbased learning pathways in the state seal of

268civic engagement. We uplift our previous request to modify the indicator to measure student preparedness for both college and career, not one or the other. And at a minimum separately report on the number and percentage of students who met the college readiness requirements, career readiness requirements, and both on priority one. We appreciate the department and the board's engagement with education partners, including the LCFF equity coalition related to teacher data and terminology. We support the proposed change from clear to fully credentialed and properly assigned on the dashboard, which is language that aligns with the William standards set forth in the ED code for priority one. We support including the interdist comparison chart and recommend that alternative schools be included in their own row alongside rows for elementary, middle, and high schools. And also recommend including a link

269to the district's data quest page displaying percentages for each school to improve local transparency. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 4364, please start your public comment. >> Good afternoon. Lucy Salceto Carter with the Alama County Office of Education. I want to express our gratitude for the proposal for the new career measures for the CCI and also reiterate some of the comments made by my colleagues at CSBA um on this item with regard to the challenges that Courton community schools have with the CCI. Our students are very mobile. We often don't have them for very long and the long-term measures and multi-year cohorts make it very difficult to capture our students successes in this area and the dedicated efforts our educators are making to support our students in preparing for college and career.

270We look forward to additional conversations to address these concerns. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 3122. You may begin. caller with the last four digits. 31. >> Hello, my name is Heidi Gasa, superintendent of Excel Academy Charter Schools. While we are not a DOS school, I have witnessed several of my colleagues who lead DOS schools have tremendous impact on our most vulnerable students. I'd like to raise several concerns about the proposed changes to DOS eligibility criteria. First, we urge the board to reject the proposal to only count students as high-risisk after 30 days of enrollment. Soft schools serve highly mobile students, and this requirement would exclude many students who clearly meet high-risisk criteria simply because they recently enrolled. Second, the proposal to require schools to continuously meet the 70% high-risisk threshold is

271far more restrictive than the state board's existing three-year reertification framework and could create unnecessary instability for schools serving the state's most vulnerable students. It's also critical that the schools have the opportunity to review and correct eligibility determinations, particularly when CalPAD's data is used since errors from prior schools are common. Finally, we strongly encourage a full public review of all DAS eligibility changes with meaningful engagement from affected schools before these policies move forward. Thank you for your time and consideration. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 1385. Please start your public comment. >> Good afternoon. and Jarah Lilis with Teach Plus California. Uh with regarding to priority one, the teacher assignment data, we appreciate the board and department's efforts to ensure information and language on the dashboard is understandable and consistent and we support the proposed

272change from clear on the dashboard to fully credentialed and properly assigned. We also support the adoption of a chart to illustrate the interdist comparison and recommend alternative schools be included in their own row in the chart alongside elementary, middle, and high schools. We also recommend including a link that will direct parents and other interest holders to the district's data quest page uh display. Uh we recognize this change in terminology is just one of several the board will be considering over the next several months and we appreciate the board's signal that language and words matter. As the board takes on more of these discussion, we urge you to continue to focus on how the end users, students, families, and educators understand the terms being considered. While consistency is important, it is even more important that the

273words being used are understood and me meaningful so that local communities can engage in local planning and accountability. We recommend that as more language changes are proposed, staff can engage directly with educators, families, and students to gather insight into the utility and clarity of these terms and that the changes be proposed over two board meetings to allow time for public input. Thank you. >> Thank you. This concludes public comment for item number three. >> Great. Thank you. We are um about an hour later than we thought we would be and so we're going to try to have a an efficient approach to discussing these. Um I want to give uh Vice President Glover Woods an opportunity to add any comments and then I'm going to propose a way that we could break up the um

274conversation to take the lowhanging fruit and then move on from there. Well, my comments very brief. I can pepper in during board discussion. Um, again, just thank you for all of the data that was been provided. Um, it's quite valuable. And I also u align myself with President Darling Hammond with let's talk about the lowhanging fruit, if you will, and then um look into the other areas. I I do have a question, but I can save that. President Darlingham. Oh. Oh, okay. Um, so I do have a question. Um, I don't know Cindy or Kim, whichever one. Um, on slide 72, um, there is a statement on the last bullet and we can put that slide up if, uh, it will be helpful. uh that says renewals for current applicationbased DOS schools have been paused

275pending SB action on updating eligibility criteria and CDE will resume the DOS renewal process for inclusion on the 2027 dashboard. My question is does that bullet mean that current DOS status will remain for another year until the criteria is finalized? >> That's correct. >> Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Say say that again for me. >> Yes. So what this slide says is that um first I'm I'm gonna start with the second bullet. Any new DAS applicationbased schools meeting the criteria would be authorized for 2026. And why it's important you take this action today is we do have a handful of schools that have been really excited about coming into this status who are most likely eligible for the criteria. uh we have to get those eligible schools through the application process and into our directory

276by July. So, you know, if you if if if we don't take this action today, you potentially would lose the ability for those schools that have been established since we last um had the application open for existing schools that are, you know, everybody's on a three-year cycle. The three-year cycles may be different. Um this criteria and would not restart until 2027. So we would it would be effective with the 2027 dashboard. >> Okay. May I ask one other question in relation to that? Within the time frame between now and 2027, is there is the department's intent that there would be opportunity for dialogue conversation around the criteria to finalize it or is it this is the criteria. Everyone has a year to get ready for it, but there will be no further discussion about criteria

277depending on how the board takes action. Board action today actually um does not uh put into effect the 30-day piece which is the minimum enrollment. Um the criteria that you are being asked to take action on is around credit deficient. The other pieces that have been referenced have you've already taken action on. So I don't with today's action we are not asking you to reopen every single piece of the of the criteria. Uh so I hope I hope that answered your question. I think my question was is there opportunity for dialogue and uh conversation with uh educational partners particularly those who have DOS status between now and uh 2027. So as things are being paused as their DOS status continues will there be opportunity for any conversation and adjustments as needed? >> I think that

278the conversations can can definitely continue. We've had many especially in the last week with with folks. So it's not it. Please know that when we give you that last attachment and the amount of contact we have, we are out there and we are talking to people. I I do worry about your last statement adjustments as needed. Like are we reopening every single piece of this criteria based on what we heard today? And I I hope that that's that's not the case. >> Okay. And I'm not saying one way or the other, but I just want to get clear. Okay. Thank you. Chief Deputy um please go ahead. >> I think what I can add to that that's a really great question. I mean as we're adding this piece around the impact analysis I think part

279of that can include that additional uh conversation with those who are affected. So again I do want to reiterate we are trying to make sure that this can happen because we actually do have programs uh that are waiting to be included. Um, but yes, I think as part of that impact analysis, we can have some follow-up conversation focus groups. >> All right, I think we're um ready to open up the discussion. Um, what I'd recommend and thank you Cindy, you're you're allowed to sit for the moment. We may have some more questions. If you want to stay, you're welcome to do that also. Um I would propose that we take up there are uh s five recommendations. Uh numbers uh three, four and five are the priority one teacher assignment data, long-term English learner suspension

280rate indicator and English language arts math and science grace periods. Um and those I heard very little um concern about. Uh I would like to open up any further discussion on those three and um entertain a motion for those last three recommendations. Then go back to the meteor ones and take up number one and two and then take up numbers uh yeah take those up in that order. So uh is there any um we are uh asked to provide feedback and direction on the terminology for the teacher assignment data. Um and the proposal is fully credentialed and properly assigned to replace the clear um designation. Um, and then there's also the question about whether we would uh recommend that um alternative schools be on their own row, so to speak, in the data. Uh, and

281then any recommendations about the display of high and low? Yes, member Patella Branson. Um, so I'm glad we're circling back to some of these less controversial items maybe, but I I I also I was thinking about one of the comments around this idea of clarity versus consistency um in terms of language that communicates and conveys particularly to um families what is is the point of particularly the uh credentialed and properly assigned designation. So one easy thing I think is just to actually just name it as credentialed rather than fully credentialed. Um and then the absence of that being something like provisional. Um the table I I also um think falls into that category um of there may be some inconsistency as to how we look at that information. Um uh but I I I think

282the um some of the concerns about that data already being publicly available but pretty hard to find. Um uh definitely tips the balance at least for me uh for the inclusion of a table. Uh the remaining question I think I have though is is whether the table should be calling attention to um the distinctions uh between elementary, middle and high school which is one sort of cut of the data um versus what I actually think of as as much more top of mind when I think about fully credentialed teachers and that's whether fully credentialed teachers are disproportionately assigned going to low FRL schools. Um, and that's that's a very different indication rather than elementary, middle, and high school. Um, and I I think that would be something that actually would be worth including. >> I

283think that um the um when you you'd have to get down to the level right now of the SARC to then trace to the schools. Yeah. Um I don't think that question though is on the table right now. So >> but it's good to have it in the conversation. >> This is a evolving document. I I think this what is presented gets us part of the way and I just want to signal I think this is part of the way. >> Thank you. >> Other comments? Vice President Glover Woods and I'll encourage us to be expeditious. So as as it relates to uh number three on the recommendation, I am comfortable with the updates to the terminology that have been shared. Um also the chart um showing the three levels of elementary, middle, and high.

284I do concur with member Patello Brownson with it would be helpful to see uh data at some other points with this, but I do think it's a step in the right direction. Okay. Um member Yoshimro Tari, >> I agree in concept in the future also because that is the major way we would want to look at the data uh by unduplicated student account perhaps or free and reduced lunch. I think the terminology is fine. I just you raised a question for member Pertill Bronson. When we say fully credentialed um if I were looking at as a non-educator I would say does that mean there's a partial credential? Um >> and the and the uh answer is yes. >> The answer is yes. >> The fully credential terminology is used for someone who has a preliminary

285or a clear credential. We also have an intern credential which you hold while you are preparing to teach but you have not yet all the standards. So the it is a term of art the fully credentialed. So, it I just ask that we if we use the term fully credentialed that we're clear with um and use accessible language for people who might be trying to understand the complexity of our credentiing system in California. Um and I liked the public comment idea and the example of perhaps putting DAS um in the table separately because it it is a different different than elementary middle high. >> All right. Um, I just want to say about the I like fully credentialed and properly assigned as well, only because I could have a credential to teach um, construction, a

286CTE credential, but be placed in an English class. And so, I just think that that's important to differentiate. And you know we're talking about this one place on the dashboard but there are multiple places where the terminology is also consistent with this and where you can get the deeper dive. So um I'll just add my voice to say I I think the fully credentialed and properly assigned makes a lot of sense. It also makes sense to me to have the alternative schools as a separate row as many people raised. Um and um I'm always interested in more data about where different teachers are. I mean we do get this, you know, analyzed by folks at different times, but I think that's a separate question from what we're taking up right now. And um the uh

287uh display is another question that I I don't know if anybody wanted to respond to so that we can then say we've given any feedback that we want to give to the department on this. All right. So you we have given you uh our feedback on that. This that actually is sort of more like an information item for us to respond to. Uh let's take up the um recommendation for the long-term English learner uh suspension rate indicator which is to adopt the proposed revisions to the suspension rate indicator 5x5 for Els. Is there any further discussion on that recommendation? May I get a motion? Vice President Glover Woods. I move that we adopt the proposed revisions to the suspension rate indicator 555 for our long-term English learners. >> Who's who's whispered second? Is that member?

288Um, all right. Any further discussion? All right. We need to take a roll call because we have member Rosco Gonzalez on the Zoom. >> Member Yoshima Motari. >> Yes. >> Member Rodriguez. >> Yes. Member Priscilla Bronson. >> Yes. >> Member Rosco Gonzalez. >> Yes. >> Member Olen, >> yes. >> Member Lewis, >> yes. >> Vice President Glover Woods, >> yes. >> Member Esco, >> yes. >> President Darlin Hammond, >> yes. >> Member GK, >> yes. >> Motion carries. >> Okay. Uh and then the the fifth recommendation is the English language arts, math, and science indicators grace periods. Uh and removing those from the participation rate calculation. uh for those three indicators. Is there any further discussion of that recommendation or questions? May I get a motion? Member Olen. >> I move that we accept the

289recommendation to remove the grace periods from the participation rate calculation for the English language arts, mathematics, and science indicators. >> Right. Second that. >> Member Rodriguez. Uh we'll take a roll call. >> Member Otari. >> Yes. >> Member Rodriguez. >> Yes. >> Member Patella Brownson. Yes. >> Member Oscar Gonzalez. >> Yes. >> Bulan. >> Yes. >> Lewis. >> Vice President Glover Woods. >> Yes. >> Member Scabello. >> Yes. >> President Hammond. >> Yes. >> Member GK. Motion carries. >> All right. So, we can feel like we've accomplished something. Let's move to the um uh number one, which is the college and career indicator. uh which asked us to approve the um both the three measures work-based learning internship, student led enterprise and simulated work-based learning uh and um uh also in that same one to

290approve the state seal of civic engagement for inclusion um and their respective definitions or add-on status. And I think that's where it gets a little bit more complex. Um, I'll I'll lead off with a couple comments on that. Um, I'm uh I raised some questions about the uh high quality definitions for the um work-based learning. Uh, and then I was struck by one of the comments that we just got in public comment about students in alternative schools who aren't able to be part of a long-term um CTE pathway and have a capstone and so on. And I do believe that things like uh these work-based learning measures which we had wonderful presentation from RO that was terrific. There's so much value in this work ought to be as available as possible to all students. Um

291both if you're pursuing, you know, an intention to go to college and if you're not and if you're in a DS school. And so I worry about the piece of the definition that attaches it to certain courses. I think the other aspects of the definition could be um mobile across settings. um you know that you could have a 50hour internship with you know all the expectations in a DOS school in a in a school that is not you know uh have a set of CTE pathways but is trying to be sure that there's experiential learning it could be attached to whatever the course is so that piece of the definition I think restricts us you see that the number of kids um who end up becoming prepared based on this is very small by the

292time we um put all the features around it. Uh and I I feel like the direction of our education system is to expand uh experiential learning, to expand meaningful learning, to expand relevant learning to as many students as possible in as many ways as we can. And I I don't know that we want to keep it in a I mean I'm happy for all the CTE students who are currently in well-designed programs to to do that and I don't know if it should only be uh available there. Um so I don't know if there are other Yes. I just I just wanted to add I as I was listening I was thinking the same thing about um first I really do appreciate the time and thought that went into what makes for a high quality

293workbased learning experience because I think there are lots of things that students could participate in that don't move the needle in terms of their understanding of what could be open to them beyond um secondary school. So, I really appreciate that. Um, I wonder, however, about tying those work-based learning experiences um to a CTA path CTE pathway um because it presupposes sort of college or career rather than college and career. So if you for example did 50 hours of a high quality internship program and um fulfilled the A throughG requirements that feels to me like an indication that you're college and career college or career ready college and career ready. Um, I wonder if some of the if part of the reason it got tied to CTE programs is because of the course it could be

294tied to is some like I wonder if there's a logistical issue um with decoupling that work-based learning experience from CTE. But I but for me in theory it makes sense that it w it would be decoupled that you could do it. You could um that in conjunction with some other measure perhaps you're demonstrating college or and career ready. >> I think the intention of having it attached to a course is to be sure that it is something the school is offered that that is something that they do. It may be tied to, you know, the way in which they're doing dual enrollment, any number of other things as well. Um, but you could imagine it um being um, you know, you've got a 50hour internship as part of a with the local newspaper as part

295of an English course, you know, a journalism internship. Uh, Vice President Glover Woods, >> I think when we look at this particular indicator, I kind of lift back up that the indicator is to give us information on how well schools are preparing their students in these particular areas. And um thinking about some of the complexities of schools that are not our traditional type of high schools, I can see where it would be challenging to link the workbased learning measures to a completed CTE pathway or the concentrator or capstone course, particularly when part of the criteria is already that it is connected to a course if I'm understanding and reading the definition correctly. So, I can see um perhaps um keeping the 50hour requirement but not including the it has to be completed as part of

296a concentrator or capstone course for students that would be served in those alternative settings which we would want to provide high exper uh work-based experiences for their students. Member Scavo, member Rodriguez, >> when you're looking at the work shifts, especially in lie of the AI integration and I'm I'm just wondering when we look at new jobs that may not be connected to any of these courses or jobs that are no longer needed and you have those courses. I just I just we we need to really open be a little bit more open-ended especially now than ever because of the work shift that's happen >> things are going to happen at a astronomically rapid speed. >> Exactly. >> Um and I think you know to the extent that we want kids to have these wonderful experiences

297which you I really appreciated the presentations that we got um you know that really make it clear how valuable the experiences are. um making it more widely available. Um member Yoshimando Tawi, did you have your hand up a minute ago or Yeah. Okay. And then member Rodriguez, >> I think there was a comment made earlier about not creating a two-tiered system of college um or career and I just wanted to second that that I think it's really important that we're preparing students um across the board and that at the same time students have different entry points. Um some students may opt to go to career first and then go to college or some may go college and then career some may do both at the same time. So this uh CCI indicator to me is

298different than some of our under other indicators which are sort of very standardized and concrete and uh formulaic. This to me is a much more open-ended um indicator that has multiple ways to show multiple measures and ways to show that students are preparing students for college and career. I just wanted to acknowledge Superintendent uh Lafaro for for coming today, taking time away from your uh from Valley Regional Occupational Center. Um I think his examples were the the rigor that we want in our programs so that we have seamless transition uh into into career and I feel a little bit of that tension as we're talking about this and also the the seal of civic engagement about the level of rigor and the tension between being as inclusive as possible. So I just wanted to sort

299of name that elephant in the room um because that's very present for me in this moment. So, so um Cindy is at the podium. I know she wants to tell us something. Member Rodriguez, I have not forgotten about you. I will come to you as soon as we hear this comment from Cindy. >> I just was asked to clarify, you know, if if we um uh you know, delay this or if we want to reopen this criteria, um there's not really time available in our schedule to do it for 2026. So, this would have to be moved to 2027. This is also a plus um of the CTE pathway plus one of these things. So, it's always been in the career space where we're trying to add more metrics. That's how we've been evaluating each

300of these components. Um so, I just want to clarify because I think there was some confusion around it being on the college side. This is on the career side. >> Well, I think that what we're saying is we would want to put it on both sides that it could go in either place. >> I guess then the question would be for you is like is it what is the plus piece of it? Is it plus A through G or something along along those lines? So just um we we're asked to tease that out. >> Y >> I and I might propose that one possible solution could be to put them separately the three bullet points separately under approaching >> and then as a plus um to count towards prepared >> as a thought. I think

301that it already is a plus because it's a plus with the CTE program. Um, yeah. So, I'm just wondering what you were suggesting is different than how what you suggested is different than what was already proposed. I think what's being proposed is that the workbased learning, the the student led enterprises and the simulated work is uh that we're being asked to approve it as a plus >> CTE with CTE >> not academic and >> right with with only CTE >> was just saying is that if we were proposing it as a plus to academic we'd also have to suggest what that indicator would be >> or academic >> so it could be A through G or it could be a two plus three, a two and a three on the um SPback. >> Those are

302those are examples of places where there already is a plus required for it to be um fully prepared. >> Yeah. So that's right. It's those three places and one proposal would be to allow it to be attached to any of the three. Um, I want to get to member has been waiting. If I could please. Yeah, member Rodriguez. >> Thank you. And I I was also going to thank our presenter from um RO because that was a phenomenal presentation and definitely something to aspire to. Although I want also want to acknowledge how difficult it is and especially with the quantitative uh ability to to you know whether a common rubric that all workplaces are using uh and being able to transport this to uh other areas in our state is is difficult right because of

303the different logistical factors. So um that's uh and and also some of the other factors that have been mentioned why I'm hesitant um to codify this. >> So I think I want to just propose there two ways to think about this. One would be to go ahead and approve the measures uh without the existing definition and um you know explore what the definition is. The other is to um approve them with a decision that it would be um attached to any of the three standalones um and to any course within those. Yes, Vice President Glover Woods and then I think member Olen again. Yeah. Okay. I I just wanted to say that uh the idea of attaching it to any of the three doesn't feel as restrictive as uh only as part of the CTE

304concentrator or capstone course. And I do recognize uh to Cindy's point how essential it is that we do make a decision so that it's reflective on the 2026 dashboard. So, um I I I like the idea of saying prepared is the workbased measure plus um a a throughg UC or I should say C UCCSU capstone concentrator or SPback score to be determined two or three I don't know. member, >> I just wanted to suggest um in theory that makes a lot of sense to me what you just said and um that is not something that um we have any data yet to see how many more students that would impact. You know, we we have we got to see there was analysis done basically um by the department um for the recommendation that was brought

305to us. And so I'm wondering if another possible um way to move forward would be to um vote on the existing proposal and then ask for next year to look at um also to look at what it would mean to um have those work-based learnings learning opportunities be a plus for the what we currently consider college indicators. So that we're we're sort of moving away from the idea that it's one or the other. Um it's just another way of going at going at it. >> I I'd be in favor for having all three indicators given that it's not I don't see it as harmful as adding them as plus measures. It's not taking away. It's actually being more inclusive. Um but I would be interested in the data. Um and I just wanted to answer

306member Oaken's earlier question is how was my proposal a little different? We didn't really talk today at all about um what would what qualifies for an LEA in terms of what criteria applies for approaching. But I'm looking at my little cheat sheet here on my computer and we do allow for example CTE pathway completion by itself counts towards approaching or one semester of a dual enrollment course with a C minus or better by itself counts as approaching. A to G completion by itself counts as approaching for a school district. And so I was also suggesting that maybe we consider um these three bullet points as alone, not as a st not as a plus measure, but alone perhaps. I'd be curious to know what would that be to have them just be a standalone measures

307and count towards approaching uh >> and that the plush measure count toward toward prepared. >> So we're getting into a ter and Cindy I saw that you came up and then went back to sit down. Do you want to tell us something else? Um Vice President Glover Woods, do you want to speak? Thank you. Um so, so what what I'm kind of hearing because I want to be sure that I'm calibrating my thinking as well. Um first of all to say I don't think adding the academic measures takes away from the data that we've received that have already showed how many students would qualify based on the CTE piece. It would just add to it. It wouldn't take away. So de determining deciding to add the academic measures along with the CTE I don't think

308can be detrimental um in our in our in our thoughts and the other point that I would just add uh to member Yoshimoto Tower's idea of approaching the only qualifier I would add to that is we would need to be sure that it at least is inclusive of the 50 hours. I'd be very concerned about approving something uh for approaching that doesn't have the 50hour requirement. >> There there are set of things with the 50 hours that we're not talking about deleting, right? We're just talking about what what it would a what need to be attached to um and as a course or as a plus uh and broadening that just to just so we don't go down into the rabbit hole of the other five bullets under the definition. Uh did you want to

309make a motion? >> I can. I can. But I I do need to clarify something before the motion, which is as it relates to the SPback score. I don't think we've had conversation. I heard two or three. I'm not sure what is already existing. >> It says two and one and three in the other. >> Maybe I will take the opportunity. This is Cindy again. um just to uplift I think what what member Olen had said that we haven't provided you any data on these metrics with on the academic side and so I would I would just ask we've been trying to be uh very pragmatic about how things get added and making sure that it's it's adding extra students um if you gave us the opportunity to do that on the academic side we

310could bring back something but this proposal was asked just to look at the career that's why you're only seeing a career look so just just to give you that perspective >> and would that be possible in uh to have those data in May or June or May or >> we have a couple other things that are already preparing to bring you in May and June so we're just we're running out of time on >> I think that Vice President Glover Wood's point is that it will only incre it may not increase it by much but it will only increase it and it's very tiny now it's not adding very much to the number of students who are approaching prepared or being prepared um in the current context. But the other thing that these in these

311things do is not just tell us who's doing what now, but they provide incentives. And so, for example, if we can define this in a way that it provides an incentive for students in these different contexts that we're talking about, it can promote opportunity in the longer run. Did you want to make that motion? Yes, I can make the motion going back to the recommendation. So, um I move that we approve the following proposed career measures. Work-based learning internship, workbased learning studentled enterprise, and work-based learning simulated work-based learning with the high quality definition proposed adding the CSU requirement. >> Let me try. Let me >> Thank you. Thank you. I'm I'm struggling through this one. I was so close, but yet still so far because I want to be sure the motion is very clear.

312re removing the constraint that it be attached only to a CTE course or capstone uh and uh allowing it to be a plus measure with the academic measures A throughG uh SPEC as well as the CTE pathway measure. >> It's spec three best. Yeah. >> All right. Can I interrupt real quick if this is possible? I just want to make sure that everyone's aware that there are many academic measures. So that includes A throughG, ESPback, AP 2AP courses, AP um tests, IB. So there's a number of the academic side. And so just want to make sure that that is all everyone knows that as well. >> Those are all core as opposed to plus. Um so there the only like core with standalone is um pre-apprenticeship or that would be on the career side but

313the two AP courses that's just two AP um also three on one aspect test and three on the other that's also standalone but then other things are already plus so things like a one AP plus something else A through G is a plus um one dual enrollment class is a plus so there's a number. Most are plus measures as well. >> They're the base for a plus. >> They're a base for a plus. Yes. >> I think our intention is that it be able to be attached to any of the academic measures that are a base or the CTE pathway which is the base for CTE. Thank you. >> All right. Cindy has another comment. Here's another another suggestion or idea is what if we bring back the plus like the the broad spoke uh

314uh broad swath of academic for you to make a decision in May regardless of whether or not we have data you can actually see where things lay right now and whether or not to add them as a plus or not a plus just so you have it because right now you have none of this context in front of you and I I'm worried that you're maybe headed in a direction that is going to make it a little messy. >> I think that would be fine. So I think that we can say today that we're in, you know, gonna uh enact this at the next meeting. >> Okay. >> Cindy, just to clarify, in make in doing that in May, would it still be able to be reflected on the 26 dashboard? >> I think I

315think so. Yes. >> Okay. Okay. Then I think I'm ready for >> not going to see the simulations that you're used to, but we can we can at least give you a metric so we're not thinking out what are the 13 different pieces we need to talk about. >> Thank you. Appreciate that. Sorry. >> I'm ready for a motion. >> We don't need a motion. We're going to post we're going to postpone the adoption of the uh proposed career measures uh the workbased learning measures, but we will take them up in May. Uh now we get to the seal of civic engagement. I'm kind of working up to you know uh so the that portion is to approve the state seal of civic engagement for inclusion uh as a plus metric in combination with meeting

316uh actually UCCSU course requirements or CTE pathway. Um this also raises for us the same question. Uh if we could broaden it to any of the um core um indicators, we would get a lot more incentive for people to be using the seal of civic engagement. >> I was I was just going to say yes to what you just said. Um although I think um Allison will raise that herself but um it seems there's a even a step back that we just want to confirm were these decisions are pointing towards which is we've been considering these as separate. So you're either college prepared or career prepared. And we're saying we think that these indicators demonstrate preparedness for post-secary success and a combination of what we previously thought of as college and career indicators satisfy this

317for us. Um, and I just want to make sure that's what we're saying because by I think that's the reason that the um the reason that the recommendation is very specific is um on this one is because um it was about that it was about college, right? Well, I think and I think there's a different broader point which is I think ultimately we're wanting to make the um point that we want people to be college career and civically prepared >> 100%. >> And this index should become the college career and civic readiness index. >> Yes. >> Um in some fashion because that is you know at the root of the re rationale for public education. So, so I I just I just I appreciate and I just wanted to make sure we we specifically say

318that because in asking for to look at things next at our next meeting, that's what we're saying. That's what we're indicating, right? And um it feels like a a really positive and pro and intentional point we're making >> to that point. the there were four options for this indicator. The first of which was as a standalone and to the point you were making earlier you know uh in the approaching prepared category you know that one may want to be considering civic um engagement as being you know important remember I want to be sure this side of the room is also I'm looking over here to see in case you want to chime in did you want to make a point earlier you had your hand up >> just that and I don't know if we

319have the same flexibility with the state solici engagement that we do with the previous discussion around internships and others but in terms of looking at it in May but I think it's the there seems to be broad support even as we look at public comment to include the California seal for civic engagement it's whether we include it as a standalone or as a plus measure and there was mixed feedback on that um two of our biggest organizations statewide had different opinions about it. So I I think um again for me there's a tension between having rigor and standardization and being as inclusive and as possible. And I wonder whenever this comes back next if we also have a broader conversation about that approaching category um and an understanding of the broader framework um of how

320we believe the CCI um what what message it sends to the field and whether it's part of our strategy that this incentivizes more students more eleas to offer these things that are now part of the CCI. Um but really um my my initial question is do we have to make a decision today on C CCSC or SSE the state solicific engagement or is this also can be lumped together with the the May conversation. I think the the intention of the board is going to be to adopt a seal of civic engagement as part of the indicator. But then in what way is the question. >> So if we go back to the actual item and I'm not sure that it's in the slides, but it's page six of 21 is is the table and it's

321the four different options. I I I do think to your original question um member Gishami Chowry that that we uh it is it does work different than the workbased learning measures, right? We looked at it against the UCCCSU requirements and the CTE pathway. Um the the rigor piece was real. That's something that we've heard um somewhat consistently in the field that it it it's not right for a standalone, but perhaps as it matures and maybe there is more I'm not sure what the word is um rigor there that it could could turn into a standalone. I'm not I guess my question would be what what do you need to help make a decision in May? What are we not providing you in this item around this particular piece that we would it would be helpful

322to bring you in May? Is there another option beyond the four? I think that the the um point that we were just making in the last um discussion about the range of academic indicators for example uh which you know you helpfully suggested we could actually take a look at in May I think is this probably the same kind of question for the civic engagement indicator >> and also within the context of approaching um because we weren't really talking about that today what constitutes approaching So more holistic look at CCI and what constitutes for approaching. We also have a a section that what constitutes for students with extensive support needs. Um and those are all varied in this you know as we look at the totality of it. So >> is that helpful Cindy? Does that

323answer your question as to what we want to see? have a conversation after this. But yeah, we can definitely get a little bit more guidance from the liaison u because this sort of went in a different direction than we >> maybe we can yeah and we could try to um those of us who are in that role try to be very clear when we come in about what the various options are in a way that is laid out and colorcoded. So I think what we were deciding is that we are going to postpone the adoption of of uh these measures until May. uh and we're going to evaluate the ways in which they can be added given uh being clear that we are ready for them to be added in uh the appropriate way. Now

324it's up to the D desk alternative school status recommendation which was that the SPE approve updates to the DAS criteria by adopting the revised credit deficient definition. uh the portion about minimum enrollment of more than 30 days is not in that recommendation that we're considering. Uh we did hear a lot of comment about everything from the field both the uh definition of um credit deficient and also the enrollment definitions. So, I want to be sure we have a moment for conversation about this questions, comments. I I have a question. Um I think it's for Cindy. Sorry. Um my my question is if we have data around um the proposed definition change, how that would impact um the DOS schools. >> Uh if we have data around operationalizing this using Calpads, I do not have data

325around that. we have we've been I think waiting for uh all these different pieces to come into place before actually implementing um the model knowing that it's about transitioning to um making sure that the data that we have is valid and reliable and that we're able to stand behind um this definition. Okay, great. That's my first question. Um I'll hold for now. Yes. And then Vice President Gloverwoods, were you also halfway raising your hand? I couldn't tell for sure. Remember Yoshimar? >> I'm using up all my spoons today. Um I there were a number of com public comments um that asked for an extension of DOS status for one year. the same slide that you pointed to U, Vice President Gloverwood's slide 72. Um, and I don't know, I don't think this is even up

326as an action item, but it's a grave concern of mine that um, we bullets two and three on slide 72 that there are schools currently uh, whose renewals are on pause. um their DOSs renewals, their application, their ability to apply, right, has been paused. So they if they're up for renewal, let's say this June um they >> just it's been extended. So we've we've by let me clarify the pause means that they just keep the DAS renewal stays in place until the new criteria are implemented. >> Okay, I don't think I'm not sure that that's clear with the field yet. um based on the public comment and based on conversations um I've had. So I think it would be and some people didn't know that this was up until they went in to look at

327their renewal. So I think it would be helpful um and I have the same concern about bullet 2 which is around the I know there's schools that are pending. Um, so I think it would just be helpful if we could I know you're engaging the field as much as possible, but I think to uh Deputy Superintendent Roberts Robertson's point is if to engage the field as much as possible, particular category 2 schools in the next month, coming months. Thank you. >> I just want to reiterate that um I'm in support of us um allowing for those applications, the new applications, people waiting for DOS approval um for those applications to get processed while at the same time keeping the renewal status for schools that are currently DOS schools until uh I guess is until the

3282027 dashboard so that there's opportunity to look at some of these nuances that we've talked about today. And I'm not quite sure that the way our recommendation is stated allows for that clarity, but um I' I'd like to see that that's what I'm in support of. So this is um the whole the the the group of schools that that um are dashboard alternative status um through application, right? It's complicated in that it's really important that they truly are serving a population that um that merits having a different way of assessing if they're being successful. Right? That's number one. It's really important that they're serving that population. Um, and it's important that we the way that we're deciding whether they serve that that high-risisk student population actually um is fair or actually is is um based

329on who the students really are. So the thing that I I have some pause on on this is and this is my understanding at least is the current way we determine credit deficient. Whether a student is credit deficient is by the school themselves analyzing the students transcripts based on their requirements and certifying if that student is credit deficient. The proposal is to say any student who transfers in to a DOS school is probably credit deficient because why else would they transfer in? That's my understanding. Um, it's hard for me to see that that actually helps us move closer to being certain that the the DOS schools are actually serving at least 70% of students that they um who are eligible if that makes sense. Um, and so I that gives me pause about this recommendation.

330Um, you know, on the one hand, one could say it's uh like a generous way of thinking about the numbers. Um, meaning maybe their students are going to be counted as DOSs who um who really aren't high- risk. They just happen to want to go to an alternative school. But I don't know if it makes the data cleaner, which I think was the point. So, we heard a lot of commentary from the field also about concerns that the proposed um new definition and its application would be um I'm not sure if the concern is uh that it would be well that it might be flawed in terms of the way in which it's received by the the schools that that might there's not a high level of confidence uh that we heard that we would

331that it would lead us to proper designations >> and that's why I asked about the data. >> Yeah. So I personally my own view I would not adopt this recommendation at this time until we can get greater clarity because I think what we're hearing from the field is you know um a lot of consternation about um what it would mean and how they would how it would impact them. I don't know if if somebody wants to push forward uh differently I'm open to that. Vice President Glover Woods, >> I'm going to push just a little bit. Um, particularly thinking of those who are pending the status that may definitely qualify based on the current criteria. I I'm concerned about not allowing for those applications to be processed. >> Would you like to make a motion

332on that? so that we are clear about that proposal. >> I need to think of how I would word the motion specific to that. >> I'm not I'm not sure. President Lewis, we I mean just a question came up. Um if we do that, if we move forward with that, could we do that without adopting the new regs? We could >> I think what Vice President Glover Woods is suggesting is that we encourage the department to move forward with the existing criteria to approve those who are waiting. Is that what you're saying? >> That is that is what I'm saying. But the other portion to it goes back to my earlier comment which is the the maintaining of DAS status for those who currently have that status until we work out all of this other.

333So there's there are two things happening. one process the applications of those who are waiting to find out about their status and then the other portion is everyone who has their DOS status remains with their DAS status for this next year while we work out the criteria that would impact 2027. >> Well, that is the motion before you. it would not affect um the the renewals until the 2027 dashboard. Um so unless I'm not doing that right, that is the motion before you allowing for c the cowpads data to be used um starting with the 2027. >> I think that's what Vice President Glover Woods is is saying. I think she's >> is is what that question >> is is what you're suggesting that we maintain the current definitions the the current um uh what's

334the right word uh yeah criteria for determining credit deficiency um and and we reopen the DOSS status application using the current definition >> clarify the current definition is using the Calpad's eligibility criteria which we've not been able to implement because of this last piece. So if if you're not if if the board's not >> So that's the part that's the part that was changed by statute was it we're supposed to is that what you mean when you say the current definition >> current way to operationalize restarting this whole process restart >> application process is to shift the burden of looking at the data to the department. >> Why? Well, because we found that the self-certification process was rigorous for schools to to go through and we also found that there were errors and that we

335had schools that shouldn't have been DAS schools, >> right? >> Had to later go in and remove their DAS status, >> right? So, okay. So in it's sort of back to the idea that in order to we we have to change it to calpads because we think that will be better not because it's required by law >> it's more valid and reliable and since this is high stakes >> accountability and now it's high stakes for renewals we need to have some faith in this process or risk this flexibility even going away alto together right there's there's an integrity issue going on right now with status >> and >> it's based on what you said in slide 73. Correct. That's kind of the basis for the change. >> And so if we don't move today, then

336none of that happens. I'm just conscious that it's Yeah, I'm I'm conscious that we're about an hour and a half past lunchtime. It's hard to make good decisions uh in this moment. There's a lot of confusion on the board unless there's someone who feels strongly to make a motion to move forward with the recommendation. And I would suggest we postpone this >> I think just because of the discussion and the level of confusion >> there's and there's clearly a lot of concern in the field and until we understand that level of concern and what it's based in and how to um understand and respond to it. It's hard to know how to make a um how to make a good decision. >> I'm in agreement with you. I just what I thought I heard Vice

337President Glover Woods trying to get us to is to make sure that our postponing our action today does not hurt schools that are waiting. Um and those that I still I still don't understand what it means that current application based DOS schools have been paused because I thought I heard um Miss Kosana say that they actually have are they're car they're carrying their DOS status for for another year. So I but I just want to make sure nobody's hurt by our non- action today. Otherwise I'm in favor. I think that the motion you wanted to make was to move ahead with the existing criteria. Do you want to make that motion or >> Okay. I move that we move forward with the existing criteria so that the new DOS application based schools can be authorized

338for 2026. So I move that we utilize the existing criteria for any schools pending new DOS applicationbased status so that those applications can be processed for the 2026 dashboard. Is there a second? >> Thank you. Uh, let's take the role. >> Member Yoshimoari. >> Yes. >> Member Rodriguez. >> I'll abstain. >> Member Patil Brown. >> Yes. >> Member Rosco Gonzalez. >> Yes. >> Member Olen. >> Yes. >> Member Lewis. >> Yes. Vice President Glover Woods, >> yes. >> Member Esco, >> yes. >> President Darling Hammond, >> yes. >> Member GK. >> Motion carries. >> Uh, at this point, I think we have done everything we can do on this item. We are going to adjourn for 30 minutes for lunch and we will see you back here at 2:20. Thank you. Now that we're reconvened,

339uh do you need to call the role because of uh Okay. I would like to reconvene the board and take up the regular consent items, items four through 10. We'll now open the phone line for the queue for public comment on those consent items 4 through 10. Members of the public wishing to provide comment on these items may do so in person or by calling the telephone number and using the access code provided on the slide that is shown now. Are there any speakers signed up to provide comment in person? >> Yes, there are three people signed up for in-person public comment. Please remember to state your name and affiliation for the record when it's your turn to speak. Will the following people please line up at the microphone in the back of the room.

340Steve McDougall, Natalie Shin, and Lorraine Richards. >> Members of the board, Steve McDougall representing CFT Union of Educators and Classified Professionals. Just want to speak briefly to items five and six respectively in that order. One, until the process that we currently use to determine funding for non-classroombased charters, we still are at risk of having funds be misappropriated um as have happened in the past by those few unscrupulous charter operators out there, present or future. And then regarding item number six, with the passage of 1505, we were supposed to leave control locally on charterbased decisions, but yet it is continued to be circumvented. I know I should be saying that to the legislature, and I will when I get an opportunity, but I thought I would say it here as well. Thank you. Good afternoon. My

341name is Lorraine Richards. I'm representing California Teachers Association as a classroom teacher. At the last meeting, we raised concern about the proposed list of IMRs, which at that time did not meet the requirements in the regulations that the majority of the IMRs must be current K12 teachers. We appreciate state board of education and CDE addressing those concerns by reopening the IMR application window to recruit more classroom teachers as well as a collaboration with CTA to broadcast this opportunity. A special thank you to board member Osco Gonzalez who supported the recruitment by recording video to encourage participation which was shared widely with CTA members. As a result, the list before you today reflects an additional 136 candidates which would bring the number of classroom teachers from over 50%. We strongly support this list and look forward

342to future opportunities to collaborate. In the future, we would also like to explore ways to increase classroom teacher participation by making it more feasible with substitute coverage and sufficient funds to cover their expenses. Thank you. >> Our third speaker does not appear to be in the room. So, we will now move to public comment on the phone line. >> Okay. Thank you. Uh caller ending in 7643, please start your public comment. Moving on. Caller ending in 2957, please begin your public comment. >> Hi, my name is Rosa Gutierrez. I support the seven renewal of by and payoint academy school renew because I like the school. My baby is very happy to be there. >> Sorry, we're currently taking public comment for consent items 4 through 10. If you could please call back during the item

343that you wish to speak to, which is item 13. Thank you. Uh, next caller ending in 8722, please state your name and affiliation for the record. You have one minute. Your time starts now. Oh, they dropped. Okay, last caller ending in 3587. Please begin your public comment. Caller ending in 5251, please start your public comment. >> Hi, I just wanted to call in. My name is Diaz from Bay Point Academy and I wanted just to support the sevenyear renewal. Sorry, please call back during item 13. Uh, this concludes public comment for the consent items 4 through 10. >> Given that there's no further public comment, I'll ask for a motion on consent items 4 through 10. >> So moved. >> Member Rodriguez and a second. Member Esco. Oh, to call the role. >> Member Yoshima

344Motari. >> Yes. >> Member Rodriguez. >> Yes. >> Member Patil Brownson. Yes. >> Member Rosco Gonzalez. >> Yes. >> Member Olen. >> Yes. >> Member Lewis. >> Yes. >> Vice President Glover Woods. >> Yes. >> Member Esco. >> Yes. >> President Darling Hammond. >> Yes. >> Member GK. >> Yes. >> Motion carries. >> We're going to move on to item 11. U. This is the study session on California's differentiated assistance and statewide system of support. Uh this item is information only and um I want to give um couple of thoughts about what we're doing here today and how that relates to where we've been and where we're going. Uh we're going to try to deepen our understanding of several components that will help the board get closer to determining updates to the differentiated assistance criteria

345by July 15th. We're charged by the legislature for doing so. This is an extension of November's study session which highlighted both the strain of our on our current systemwide system of support and the opportunity to build a more coherent preventive and sustainable measure. Several themes emerged from that um study session. First, more time is needed across the system to implement targeted improvement strategies. Second, greater coherence and focus would help reduce churn and allow support providers to work more deeply with districts. Third, the system should become more proactive with stronger universal supports that prevent challenges in the first place. And fourth, a shift from compliance to productive support is essential. Other challenges beyond capacity constraints include the reality that small districts are almost never eligible for DA in part because they don't have uh subgroups that

346are large enough to show up in the subgroup calculations as well as the whack-a-ole effect where different combinations of student groups and indicators trigger eligibility from year to year making it difficult to deliver coherent systematic interventions. We will begin with CDE setting um uh sort of a background on the current differentiated assistance structure, how it fits within the broader statewide system of support. uh how um federal assistance works and the upcoming shift in CSI eligibility that would create a new pathway into differentiated assistance linking the federal system with the state system of support. Next, we will hear from Jason Willis who will share one set of recommendations developed through the CCE statewide system of support core working group which was facilitated and authored by Jason and by Heather Huff. Jason will walk us through areas

347of consensus, areas of disagreement, and some viewpoints the board may want to consider from that working group. Lastly, we are fortunate to hear from Dr. Antonio Castro, who will provide the perspective of a district that has received both differentiated assistance and targeted assistance. His experience will help ground today's discussion in the realities that districts face as they navigate the system. Uh while this is not a legislative hearing, I would like to place this study session within the context of the governor's budget proposal, two elements intersect with our forthcoming decisions on DA criteria. There are proposed changes to the DA funding formula. The proposal emphasizes strengthening universal and preventive supports and providing more consistent funding so county offices of education can support districts from being eligible for DA in the first place. as well as reducing

348any financial disincentive associated with entering differentiated assistance. Second, um in response to concerns about short timelines and misalignment across systems, the proposal would extend the criteria C cycle to three years, aligning it with the LCAP cycle. The governor's proposal would also expand the board's jurisdiction to design a more effective, stable, and coherent system of support. As the department will outline shortly, there are multiple pathways to DA eligibility. Uh for purposes of this discussion, I encourage us to not be constrained by the current criteria, but instead consider how we might best provide universal and targeted supports for our local educational agencies in ways that are effective. uh and um efficient for them. Looking ahead, there will be opportunities for public engagement on potential criteria changes through interest holder input sessions. This feedback will support the development

349of a more coherent and effective system that ultimately we hope leads to improved outcomes for students. So today's study session is really intended as a learning and exploratory conversation, not a decision-making session. The goal is to build shared understanding that will prepare the board to discuss specific options in May with a final decision in July. So our guiding question for today as we listen is uh what system design features and criteria might most effectively identify districts needs while supporting coherent sustained improvement for students. And with that, I'm going to introduce our um introducers, Erica Torres and Cindy Kazanis from the California Department of Education to get us going. Thank you so much, Erica. Good afternoon, uh, President Dr. Darling Hammond, Vice President Dr. Clever Woods, Chief Deputy Superintendent Dr. Roerson, members of our state board

350of education. My name is Erikica Torres and I serve as deputy superintendent here at the California Department of Education. It's such a pleasure to be with you today. Um, I'm going to begin by providing uh some background information with regards to our statewide system of support and then we're going to provide detailed information regarding the eligibility criteria. So, just as a reminder, um, under Assembly Bill 121, the state board of education is required to update the performance criteria no later than July 15, 2026. These updates must align with the findings from the state funded evaluation of the system and its implementation and also ensure that the resources and supports are appropriately focused where needs are the greatest. And so just to give a quick recap of our November 2025 board study session, uh we shared

351that differentiated assistance is part of the California statewide system of support which is designed to ensure that every local educational agency, including school districts, county offices of education, and charter schools have access to the supports needed to improve student outcomes. So differentiated assistance as we know is triggered by data but it is driven by collaboration. It's centered on the belief that every student group matters and that improvement effort should be grounded in local context capacity building and shared accountability over time. During that study session, we also discussed overall trends, challenges, impacts on the system and opportunities moving forward. So, as we know, under California Education Code section 52059.5, the state established a single coordinated system designed to build the capacity of local educational agencies. At its core, the system focuses on three main goals. First,

352supporting LEAs in continuously improving student performance in the state uh priority areas. Second, helping address achievement gaps between student groups. And third, strengthening outreach and collaboration with educational partners so that local control and accountability plans truly reflect the unique needs of students, families, and the broader community. And so at the center of this work is a collaborative structure that brings together both state level partners and regional lead agencies. And at the state level, the system is anchored by three key partners. The California Department of Education, the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence, and our state board of education. In addition to these uh state partners, the system also includes seven geographic lead agencies located across California. And these agencies serve three-year terms and work directly with local educational agencies to provide technical assistance, share expertise, and

353support continuous improvement efforts at the regional level. So together, these partners form the foundation of the statewide system of support to help ensure that assistance is coordinated across both the state and the regional levels. And so California's system of support includes three levels of assistance. Level one, which is universal support. It's available statewide to all ELEAs, and it includes tools, resources, and professional learning. Level two, which is differentiated assistance, is triggered by data and led by the county superintendent or CDE in partnership with the district. Level three, which is intensive support, is reserved for persistent multi-year challenges requiring deeper collaboration and expertise across agencies. So this tiered structure is really designed to ensure that the level of support matches the level of need and that we are building a stronger systems um through sustained relationships,

354ongoing learning and shared responsibility across state and local partners. But before we discuss the eligibility criteria, it's really important for all of us uh to remember why California designed the dashboard the way that we did, which is to ensure that multiple measures of student success are considered. So, California Education Code section 52064 directs the state to use evaluation rubrics that provide a holistic multi-dimensional assessment of school and district performance. The dashboard was intentionally designed to move California beyond a single indicator accountability system. So for many years, student success was often defined primarily by standardized test scores. I think we all remember those days. However, through research, policy development, and our collective experience working with schools and communities, we know that student success is far more complex than any single measure. And throughout my career as

355an educator, school social worker, healthy start coordinator, and leader in dropout prevention and re-engagement, I have seen how acade academic outcomes are deeply connected to factors such as engagement, school climate, wellness, and belonging. And these conditions are not peripheral to learning. They are foundational. Research on whole child systems, including the work related to community schools, reinforces this understanding. When schools attend to climate, attendance, mental health, and family partnerships, academic outcomes often follow. The California school dashboard reflects the statutory intent by including both academic and non-academic indicators as part of a holistic view of school performance. And that design was deliberate. Multiple measures provide a more accurate and actionable understanding of how schools are serving students. The statewide system of support was designed to strengthen systems, not simply respond to academic outcomes after they decline. So

356measures such as chronic absenteeism, suspension disparities, or graduation rates often signal deeper challenges that require support. So maintaining multiple measures in determining eligibility helps ensure alignment between our accountability system, our statewide investments like community schools and the support structures that we provide to local educational agencies. So, at this point, I'm going to invite my colleague Cindy Kazanis to join us and to walk us through the dashboard principles, which also reinforce the importance of using multiple measures to support a holistic approach to accountability. >> Thank you, Erica. I'm back. You don't have to make any decisions with me today. Um, I promise. Uh Cindy Kazanes with the California Department of Education. Uh in thinking about uh what I was asked to present on today, uh I I reflect back 10 years ago. Um I had a

357daughter and I was at home watching this very meeting where they were talking about differentiated assistance criteria. It was March, it was May, and there were big decisions that were made. And I think member Oakland's seat was where Patricia Rucker sat and member Rucker um has a very she's a loud voice and and a great great voice. Um but she said multiple we're moving away from multiple assessments to multiple measures. And so when we looked at um really the criteria that that we that you currently have the ability to change which is um let me talk about let me step back the the existing criteria simply is what you see on the screen uh that the criteria needs to be based on performance by pupil subgroups either across two or more of the state and

358local indicators. Right? So I've I've bolded that because there is actually a lot of flexibility in that. And I looked at the dashboard principles and the ones that really um spoke to me as to places where you have placed value but is not in statute are the following. Uh so the first being that we report each indicator separately. There are some states where they combine things. They combine English language progress and something else, right? And so, uh, California's distinct way of, uh, making sure that, uh, we didn't have a single number, uh, we we weren't, um, an A throughF state. We weren't an 800 state anymore. Um, was something that that you all had the opportunity, your predecessors rather, had the opportunity to determine. The other piece is um, the weighting of indicators. In other

359states, they may weigh academic um heavier than you would see your college career indicator or your school climate indicator or even chronic absenteeism may only be weighted at 25%. And so that is something that um when you adopted these principles back in 2022, you you I mean we've continued this, you know, for the last almost decade now that each each indicator is weighted. But again, it doesn't say that in education code. You have a lot of flexibility here. The last piece or second to last piece is um dashboard principle five that you value high performance and growth equally. So this looking at um you know uh improvement uh over time. So looking with with our color of course our our prior year and our um difference from prior year to create status and change and

360then ultimately a color that is a design feature that um the board adopted as well. And then finally, um I think this is what we're talking about today is really that we're subject to continuous revision and improvement. And you saw that with four hours of discussion around an accountability system that's been in place for almost a decade that there's still tweaking that is need to be made to making sure that we are measuring um and accurately um showing a reflection of how schools and districts are preparing our students. So, there are four different ways that um county offices and districts and then our our um count our charter schools are able to um determine that they're eligible. We determine that they're eligible for differentiated assistance. And uh those four different ways really primarily are around

361the state indicators. Um so we're looking at student group performance in two or more of the state indicators. Method two is around just local indicators. Method three is the combination of state and local. And then method four is something that's been added in recent years. And some may say that you shouldn't call it differentiated assistance, call it technical assistance. But right now, it's still under differentiated assistance. And it's failure to to complete to submit your cowpads on time. And in future years, it may be that you also told us maybe after the fact that you gave us data, but then you've realized that you gave us the wrong data. So again, that that does happen um unfortunately. Uh and so that is uh method four. Um the charter school space has a little bit of

362tweaks in this in the sense that um you need two or more years of data to create these uh criteria. So let's look back to well the last time we met in January um we did provide you this information. I don't think I provided it to you by the methods but the overwhelming majority right are in that method one. So all about state performance on state indicators with um only one on local indicators, none of the mixed and then 11 from our diff um our new cowpads differentiated assistance criteria. The other piece I was asked to talk about is something that we've never seen come into effect, but it will this year. So in the every student succeeds act state plan, it was adopted back in 2018. It feels like is now coming to haunt

363us. We had to address what happens when schools don't improve and they don't exit from comprehensive support and improvement. We've never been in that situation um because we've never had four years of of schools being in uh comprehensive support and improvement. We've always had to reidentify, right? So, this is our first full year full full cycle of the three-year cycle and 2026 will be year four. So what what our estate plan said was that if they did not exit within four years they would become eligible for differentiated assistance their LEA would that is. So just to refresh because it's been a while since we've talked about comprehensive support and improvement there's two different um two different uh categories. The first being the low graduation which is where you find our DAS schools. Uh so all

364schools with a three-year uh graduation rate so average of below 68% and that does not matter what your funding type is. It could be title one or non-title one. The second type of uh CSI is called low performing and that's when we have to look at anybody who was not identified because of graduation rate. We then look to see if you're title one funded and if you're title one funded did you meet any of the following criteria? All red indicators. all indicators except for one of another performance area or five or more indicators where the majority are red. So what does this look like? We um we picked some flowers. So uh patunia and daisy. So we're looking at patunia middle and daisy high. Patunia middle is our example of low performing. Um they were

365low performing for uh 2023, 2024 and 2025. and we're doing some predictive analysis and we're seeing that they're going to be in for 2026 which means they would now be eligible garden unifi would be eligible for differentiated assistance under this new criteria that has to be implemented. When we move into the high school space, Daisy High is also struggling and has a low graduation rate of under 68% for um the and meets the criteria for all three years plus predicting 2026 they would meet for 2026 they would be in for differentiated assistance. they're the same district. So, it's only one district being eligible for differentiated assistance. So, this is the um citation in um the federal statute that requires this um rigorous um state action. And again, how the uh board decided this would be

366what they agreed to um was again moving um schools that were not progressing uh into differentiated assistance. So, we have been signaling to the field since 2023 that this is coming by putting a flag in our data file for the Every Student Succeeds Act state plan. I mean, every student succeeds act um assistance file and we've also been talking about it sort of on on the on the um presentation circuit. So, we have 224 schools from this last file that have either a three or a four-year flag. And of those 224 schools that they represent 168 LEAs that may become eligible for differentiated assistance. So I was asked to break that down um between LEA type. So the first row is our county offices of education where we see 36 schools in CSI for at

367least three years as of 2025. That represents 20 county offices of education and of those 20 20 are currently in differentiated assistance. So all for school districts we have 102 62 are um would that represent 62 LEAs and of those 58 are already identified for differentiated assistance and then um for charter schools uh your you are your own LEA so it's 86 and 86 so you can see that we do have um a significant number of LEAs that are already currently in differentiated assistance that would have this new category But we do have a gap of those that have never been identified and would move in and be eligible for differentiated assistance. Uh the other piece I was asked to look at is um looking at it by non-charter or charter space um just because

368uh especially with the low performing versus the low graduation rate. And so we can see the overwhelming majority of all these schools are in the low graduation rate. are not in the low performing because we did see tremendous amount of exits this last year um due to improvements of these schools. So with that I um wanted to pause and ask if there was any questions uh for Erica or myself. >> One thing that would be great for folks to wrap their heads around is the criteria for going into CSI since you're tra tracing that forward. Could you do that for us? Give us >> Sure. So again, um for CSI, you either have the low graduation rate, it's the three-year, um graduation rate averages below 68%. You're identified and that is for doesn't matter the

369type of funding you receive. It's title one and non-title one schools. Then we look at whoever is not identified under low graduation rate and we look at title one funded schools and this is the you have to get up to 5% of schools. California has typically been gosh between seven to eight and a half% of our schools identified using the criteria here. So the all red indicators all red indicators except for one of another performance color and then the five or more indicators and that is again that was negotiated as part of um the as a state plan that was adopted by the board and and um approved by the US Department of Education. I just want to make I just want to understand the math. So on slide 24 um which is CSI differentiated

370assistance. Yeah. So there are 29 I think or 31. >> Yeah. >> I'm realizing as I was presenting the slide I probably should have figured out the difference between those two numbers. >> That's okay. Um, so there's either 29 or 31 depending on how you do your math. Um, who are um who have never been identified for DA but who have been CSI for three years. >> They were not identified in 2025. >> Ah, okay. >> They could have been identified in prior years but they are currently not eligible. >> Thank you. >> And remember that they have to be for most of them a title one school to be identified for CSI. That's actually and I think that's where this this chart really is impactful. Only 18 of them had to be tw title

371one schools. The low graduation rate doesn't matter your funding. You have to be over the 68%. To not be eligible. Well, just a personal privilege. You're going to hear from Ventura and you almost rarely get to hear from Western Ventura County, which is where I grew up. Um, so I wanted to acknowledge Lisa Solace and Antonio Castro's in the room and just a grand welcome because again you don't get to hear from that part of the state very often. Good afternoon. >> I was waiting for somebody to call my name. Uh, I'm so glad to be here with you today. Um, >> thank you, Dr. Darling Hammonds. >> Well, uh, good afternoon. uh uh President Darley Hammond, uh Vice President uh Glover Woods, uh Dr. Robersonson, uh members of the board. Uh so glad to

372be here with you today. Um I'm going to uh talk a little bit about the work that the CCE's core working group um has been doing over the course of the last year. um and in particular discuss uh its intersections um in a number of ways with uh this board's consideration of the performance classification that you've taken up uh at the direction of uh state law. Um as I said uh Jason Willis, I'm a senior policy fellow at Weststead. Um also have the privilege of teaching at the Mc George School of Law uh not just a couple miles from here. Um and I'm joined today by my colleague Heather Hoff um who is sitting behind me. she'll be coming up to do the question and answers. That's how we decided to split things up today.

373Um, and I want to go over some of the content first to just create uh some context around timeline and some of the identified challenges and then transition to discuss the results of the core working group uh and in particular some of the things that they uh they were finding. So, uh I think importantly this work has not been ad hoc. Um it has not been shotgun. Uh we've been at this for nearly a year. Uh working very intentionally with a cross-section of LEA leaders, uh county office of education leaders as well as representatives from uh the Department of Ed, State Board of Education, and obviously the CCE. Um the initial convening that you can kind of see here in May of 2025 was preceded uh by a series of interviews that both myself and

374Heather conducted both with all the workg group members but also some of the primary policy architects of the LCFF um and those that um in particular were very interested in the development of the statewide system of support and the impetus for this work why we were you know we had come together really came from the field. Um CC for years has been hearing about some of these disconnects um parts of the system that weren't connecting in the way that we had intended. Um and I say that with a great degree of humility. Like Cindy, I stood before this board nearly a decade ago offering suggestions for how the state could go forward with the statewide system of support. So to hear that from the field um in a place where I participated and I helped

375to offer advice and suggestions um I feel just as obligated anybody uh in this state uh to help support creating more cohesion across those elements. Um you can kind of see the kind of progression that we've gone through the attachment of the core working groups recommendations that uh was published in December um has been quickly followed on by a design team. Um the focus of that design team is really to now take those recommendations which uh largely are guides and ask the question how do we actually put these things into practice? Um how do we do this in a state as large and diverse as California? Uh and that work um continues. Uh we'll be finishing up uh that work towards the end of this fiscal year. And so I think the points of emphasis

376that uh this work has been really broad, deep um and iterative are important to uh point out. So uh what you see here are just some of the uh let's describe them as buckets of some of the challenges that came up from the practitioners themselves. And I think importantly um of all of these we find that the that they push the system and by that I mean specifically the staff and the professionals engaged in actually creating these processes and procedures and engagements with eleas towards compliance not improvement. Um it is a phenomenon that we have started to document but we see very very often. Um we think that this might uh be further emphasized by the fact that there's just a lot going on maybe too much uh for practitioners in the field. And so

377just to um briefly touch on each of these in terms of the unstable and broad identification uh this has really led to the kind of sizable shifts of um yeartoyear in terms of the systems that are coming in and going out of DA. Uh I think most of that um has already kind of been brought before the board and that it's captured a vast majority of eligible districts. Um we document in the core working group report uh a significant number uh perhaps so significant that the amount and allocated resources through the statewide system support could never nearly uh provide the type of rigor and quality um and sidebyside work that's necessary to help those systems move forward. Um, you pair this with the overload and fragmentation that I mentioned before. Um, and just fact the

378fact that there's so many mixed messages around what priorities leaders should be paying attention to. And while the support has been standardized, right, that that has been an important part of the development of differentiated assistance inside of the statewide system of support. It has created structures that even as staff and county offices of education have turned over uh has been a staying point um that we still find the support to be inconsistent at least from the perspective of the core working group and that it's very reactive. Um I don't think I have to tell anybody on this board or anybody in this room that uh the work that happens at the state often happens at lack. What I mean to say by that is the work that's happening on the ground with practitioners is constantly

379moving, right? And by the time we can kind of get our ducks in a row, if you will, and put that out in the field, those practitioners are months ahead of us in terms of the work. So, one of the questions becomes what is the role that the state might play to find itself more in sync with the work that practitioners are doing on the ground on a day-to-day basis. And finally that um there was no operational escalation procedures. Um it was and has been articulated in law but we have not seen that um as an opportunity to really provide additional levels of meaningful support uh to school districts. So uh what do we make of these challenges? Um the result is a series of iterative components that you see listed on this slide. Um

380this is the compilation of months and months of work of this core working group um and subsequently the design team and while the slide it itself would infer that there's a very linear relationship between these elements um I think it's really important that uh it not fool anybody that these components are not in fact linear at all that they are very much um dynamic working with one another that as you are pushing on one others are being pulled or redirected in other places. So in this way the intention here uh and probably need a better graphic for it uh is that it's truly an inter an ecosystem. It's an inter interconnected evolving set of components both individually complex and together would incentivize growth and capacity of our professionals and therefore that no single item can

381be addressed without the consideration of others. the the analogy that I want to offer and I I've I've touched on this a number of times but I think it's super important um I think most folks in this room um have probably been on an airplane uh and at any given time the pilot probably has turned on autopilot maybe have a bite to eat or um chat with his or her co-pilot and the analogy that I would bring in terms of thinking about this is not looking at just a single part of the system but having to consider other parts of the system as you were thinking about the refinement um is very similar to the autopilot feature in an airplane. Uh the autopilot feature uses essentially a number of other instruments to basically allow it

382to autopilot the plane without the pilot uh steering. And in particular uh this includes things like control surfaces, feedback sensors and other pilot interface. So if somebody is going to recode the programming around the autopilot, it's essentially a series of ones and zeros. You can't do that alone without being concerned with how those other sets of items are going to react. And in fact, if you are just looking at the autopilot, if you're just looking to change some of the code underlying that program and not address those other features, you're more likely to get into more trouble by just looking at that one feature versus looking at them all together. One of the things that we think was really important and this came directly from the core working group was to identify some anchors. Uh

383and the two anchors that the this this group of professionals came together around um the first coherence and alignment and the second around reciprocal accountability. And I just want to offer uh a little bit of context on each and then I'll turn to talking in particular about some of the recommendations of the core working group uh concerning more of the performance classification that we're discussing here today. The first around coherence um is that those that work in coherent systems will often tell you that it's just as hard to stay focused on a few priorities as it is to say not yet or even no. Right? But that's the tension that practitioners have to live or anybody in a system has to live in order to maintain coherence. Uh and the importance of that uh raises

384for us that you have to make decisions, right? Like I used to be told, my superintendent would tell me that's why you get a paycheck, Jason, to make some really tough decisions to say these are the things that we're going to continue pushing on and when feedback comes from the community or from parents or from teachers or other staff, we can make appropriate adjustments and shifts. on the other side um of these anchors around reciprocal accountability. Obviously accountability um very common term for us here in public education but the core working group advanced this notion of a model that was a little bit different and in particular that it is a two-way street that as leas are responsible for improving outcomes uh as they should be because they are the individuals and professionals on the

385ground working with students that everyone else um by that I mean county offices of education SELPAS, the CCE, the Department of Ed, and even this board itself are held to a simple but historically elusive standard that we need to be able to provide the right support at the right time. And I would even go further to say that part of that support is helping to clear the path for eleas to stay on a direction that they know is good for kids because there is so much that practitioners are contending with on a day-to-day basis. So just to give you a quick look um these are the six recommendations uh that the core working group had come up with and in particular I'll spend a little bit of time on a little bit more focus time

386on number three around rethinking the identification and needs assessment and as you know consistent with my comments uh we'll pull in a couple of these other recommen adjacent recommendations uh for context as well. Before I move into that detail, um I did want to just hit on uh a number of these items that in particular um the first recommendation when we look at setting clear non-negotiable goals, some very wide consensus from the group that it would be very helpful for the state to set those kinds of goals. It doesn't mean they can't change. In fact, they should with feedback from the field. But setting that direction, allowing folks to stay on a sturdy path to align resources is something that the working group was very favorable to. The other one that I'll I'll lift up

387is really around number six. Uh building a learning infrastructure. Um over the last decade in public education, this notion of continuous improvement has been very often used and practiced um within our schools and school districts. And part of the notion of continuous improvement is that the feedback you are getting as the decision maker, whatever that be, in terms of changing the system, informs your next set of actions. And a lot of what this working group found is that when we think about the continuous improvement cycle of the state's policym regulatory and guidance to the field and then how feedback comes back up to the state to inform future policy is not as clear as it might be. And so needing to build what we described as a learning infrastructure is really important. that state leaders

388that are here in Sacramento that are making very important decisions on nearly a week-toeek if not daily basis uh should be more ingrained and more informed by what is happening in practice to help uh push forward better policy and regulation in the future. Okay. So uh let me spend a little bit of time on uh the recommendation uh three and the first place that I want to um unpack is really this recommendation 3.1 that states that the refinement of quantitative identification measures should focus on the highest set of priority outcomes. And in particular, this comes about um because of um this notion that if we're really serious about driving outcomes for students, that it should be tied more directly to teaching learning. That if the focus that leaders are having in systems that principles are

389trying to focus on, that teachers are trying to focus on that we should be clear about what it is that we intend and hope to have as an output. And why this matters in particular because it gives signals to the field about where we should be driving a lot of our resources. Not all of them and I'll address that in a moment. But that's our work in public ed. Our our work in public education is to educate to teach and to help students learn and create opportunity and access in an equitable manner. And that's where we were hearing a lot of feedback from the the work group. And one of the things that's important and I'll touch on this is across a couple of these parts of recommendations is that we took the temperature of

390each of the work group members. What I mean to say by that is I'm not standing before you and saying that uh everything that's coming out of that core working group is a monolith that everybody agreed that everybody had consensus. In fact, I will sell I will raise a couple of issues in which that is absolutely not the case. And I think that what that signals is where those places of great alignment are, let's lean in there because clearly there's something there that we can get some asset from. But in places where there is some discussion or debate, we need to spend more time there and understanding not just what those different perspectives are, but specifically what's underneath of that, right? get past the basic, get past the simplicity. And on this one in particular,

391I think that there's a lot of nervousness. Uh I was in Oakland Unified and Stockton Unified during the days of API. I remember how they were calculated. I remember when those scores, that single score would come out and how schools would react or not, how the central office would react uh sometimes in a very positive way and others in a not so positive way. Um I understand deeply the behavior that that could potentially drive and I want to be clear that in the discussions that we had about this item specifically, that was not the tenor. Nobody wants to go back to that. But what we are hearing is that you can still regard, you can still look at multiple measures to drive your system. In fact, practition practitioners do it all the time. And that

392what we were hearing is that the state in the way that it presents performance for schools. It presents performance for school systems should perhaps be more reflective of what's actually happening on the ground. Jason, could you take about three more minutes to round up your comments because we're trying to catch up a little bit and >> Okay, I will help with that in two minutes. >> I want to offer this uh description of a way that this might occur. So this uh represents a kind of t a three- tiered pyramid that articulates not a singular lens around performance uh but really a multi-dimensional way that practitioners often function. The base of which is really thinking about how high quality system practices occur uh and this is reflected in the report. Um that is then led

393by a set of what you might describe as leading indicators. Um there has been plenty of research to suggest that uh these leading indicators they're think about it as it's smoke before the fire if you will um are actually very helpful in understanding how to how to intervene and to create a preventative system as opposed to getting uh going too deep uh in terms of symptoms. And particularly with um these leading indicators, things like chronic absenteeism, suspension, uh and other indicators on the dashboard are many of these leading indicators that are used. And so that this simply regards again the way that practitioners are thinking about this work. I'll say here simply um in this uh associated recommendation that the alignment and streamlining identification across programs is really important that as state uh uh state

394entities come in to do reviews that that we're finding them happening in uh very ad hoc and un unaligned ways. One of the components that the uh core working group has really been looking at is really associated with uh recommendation 3.3 in which we would introduce essentially a holistic and systematic review process. uh think about this as something that would be modified off of what we do for Wasp or some other way in which peers um to those practitioners are coming in to look at what's happening in those systems that helps to identify some of the bigger and deeper issues that are happening in the system that build off of that quantitative indicators. Um and finally, I won't spend too much time on this um uh for sake of time uh but that the high

395quality kind of coordinated district support that comes as a result of both those quantitative data and the systemic reviews uh would really need to be reccalibrated and specifically I think it's important to think about a shift here that when we think about dashboard identification what we were hearing from the core working group is that it would shift away from being the kind of final uh identification to really just being an initial filter and that the systemic reviews or something that might look like it then become a mechanism to truly differentiate how support is flowing to these systems that are being led by county offices of education. So in closing, um just a a couple things to underscore. Um thinking about uh several elements of the system redesign at the same time. Uh thinking about quantitative

396data as an initial filter, not final classification. And finally, as you all are thinking about and considering changes to this these performance criteria that one of the biggest drivers that we've seen from administrators is really around how they see things as valuable. And the closer and closer that you all as state decision makers can get to seeing the same value that practitioners see, I think you will be pleasantly surprised by how much additional effort they are willing to put in despite the fact that they already put a ton of effort in to really move the system forward. So, thank you uh President Darling Hammond for the extra time. >> Thank you. And um uh before we get into um the Ventur um unified discussion. Uh are there any comments chief deputy um that you'd like

397to make around the process? >> Yeah, I appreciate that. Um so I've been able to participate in this process representing the California Department of Education along with Dr. Eric Torres and I've really appreciated sort of the container that's been built for robust conversation. Um, it really allows all of us who really are on the provider side. I think as we talk about really talking to site leaders, district leaders, teachers, we definitely want to bring in much more of the teacher voice to what um Jason is identifying about that practitioner piece. Uh, this really has been those of us who are on that more provider side and it's been a robust conversation where there's been agreement and disagreement. I think one of the things that you've heard just even in Dr. Torres's opening remarks is that

398for the California Department of Education, we really value multiple measures. Um I think in you referencing the API, I was over at OSD, SFUSD. I I've been at Alama County Office of Ed and have a real sense of when we narrow things too far just what that does for the practitioner. And I'm hearing that. And I'm already hearing that whether it be the emphasis on chronic absenteeism, looking at the suspension indicator, we still have a big issue when we take a look at our African-American students, our Latino students. And so these are things we have to really be thinking about in a community schools approach. Again, you heard Dr. Torres and Sydney Kazanis reference that. So you can just see kind of what the range of perspectives are uh that is happening in our state

399system of support. I think it's helping push how we think about how we do all of these kinds of supports. Um, but I do think it's important to lift up that there are many perspectives in this process. Um, and so we got to make sure we're bringing even more perspectives closer to the classroom that help us understand truly practitioner voice and what's happening. >> Thank you. So, I think at this point we're going to move to Ventur County. uh we'll call you up when we have questions which will be uh when the board discussion begins. Thank you so much. And we're going to hear from Dr. Antonio Castro, uh, superintendent of Ventur Unified School District where Cindy Kazanis graduated with I'm sorry, it's been it's a different district within the in the county, but nonetheless

400an auspicious place uh who will share his district's experience with navigating both universal and targeted supports within the system of support. Welcome, Dr. Castro. Thank you, board presidents, uh, Darling Hammond, Vice Presidents, Glover Woods, members of the state board staff. It's a privilege to contribute to the discourse that elevates the power and promise of public education. Uh, as stated, my name is Antonio Castro. I have the honor of serving Ventura Unified as the superintendent. I'm in my fifth year with the district, uh, in my fourth year as superintendent. U, we could spend a lot of time going through demographics. I'm just going to highlight a couple of things that, um, that we're going through. Uh we are a long-standing district. Uh like some people from Santa Paulala, we've been around for a long time and

401take a lot of pride in in where we come from. We have multi-generational uh families that have gone through schools. Uh that is a deep level of connection that is valued in our community. Uh consequently, we value relationships uh and accessibility to to all decision makers um in trying to create a very flat system. Uh although we used to be a much larger district like many districts around the state, we are currently at 14,000 students. You can see some of our demographics there. Uh we are experiencing uh extreme declining enrollment rates. As you know, uh Ventura County um has hovered between second and fourth in terms of the rate of declining enrollment across the state. Uh we are now in the process of uh working through a school closures advisory committee uh because it's become

402so pronounced. Um that work starts next week. our board has been for the last couple of years exploring educator workforce housing uh for variety of means as other districts in the state have been doing. Uh and finally, and this is an important piece that will be um threaded throughout my presentation, um I continue to benefit from a board of education that is committed to addressing district-wide areas for improvement. I'm not going to get into the details here. I'm just going to um you can see them yourself and later on if you have questions I'm just going to call attention to a couple um issues that we have looked at our eligibility for differentiated assistance uh as a symptom of need. Um we have addressed these areas of need through a commitment to understanding our data,

403examining short and long-term trends and invest uh investigating the status quo. So you'll see that in 2022 we were eligible under four student groups and now currently uh we are no longer eligible for differentiated assistance. Uh we heard earlier the interconnectedness with our federal accountability system uh short well I'll just call it ESSA. Uh we have 27 schools in our district. If you count up all of these you'll note that we just fall a couple short of almost every school in our district in 2022 have been eligible meeting that criteria for federal assistance. Uh and currently in 2025 uh we have only two schools that are remain eligible for uh TSI. Actually just want to go back real quickly because it pertains to a future point. Uh VOSD may be unique in this regard, but

404uh even though uh school site plans and the SIPA process are are required for schools receiving title one funds, we mandate that all of our schools uh invest in the SIPA process. They all complete that process. U I'm not going to read through the the details to the right. This is the CDE guidance. Uh but one of the things that uh Mr. Willis pointed out was that um the dynamism uh of of the conditions that unfold either on an annual basis or um every other year basis across a variety of metrics and those of you who've been in public education for a while see how even the metrics the points of comparison change over time that's happened a multiple numbers of times throughout um our our processes. This is just another unique one in that

405even trying to explain to our community that we should be very proud of the work that we've done in improving grad rates. It always come in this case this also comes with a caveat. We have to say well we're very proud but also we can't compare this result to results that have taken place before 2016. Um and the energy that it takes to remain committed uh to having an entire system uh working hard and achieving this is something that also adds complication. I also want to note that the results in 22 and 23 um should serve as an indicator that the the focus for having a multi-year um adherence to a a system of support is critical because that if you take a look at the trajectory from 21 um through 2425. You'll note that

406that looks like a dip. Um that is a result of a of a data anomaly. that those things happen. Uh and that happens as a result a result of change over in staff um new systems, new um uh student information systems as well. I don't have time to highlight all of the areas of improvement across of our our district that you saw earlier, but I do want to call to attention um the comprehensive uh improvements that we've seen with our students with disabilities. Uh this I hope that you would see. Sorry, I'm trying to work on two computers. As you take a look at the outcomes for students with disabilities, I want to just call attention to a a couple of key points that uh in Ventura Unified, we believe that this is reflective of

407a tenant that all students are general education students first. Um we have a belief in the application of the least restrictive environment. Uh case in point, our board dedicated a robust discussion on the continuum of services uh late through last night. Um we uh believe that these are identified areas of need emblematic of our entire system. I'll talk in a moment about our FIKMAT uh process that was uh self-imposed and self-sought. Uh but part of the the focus on students with disabilities is strategic, right? In in many districts, the students who are found eligible for um as being a student with a disability, it could be due to over representation, disproportionality, um even uh disproportionate low-income students, um often foster youth. So, what we see is students with disabilities and special education in general as

408an intersection of need reflective of the entire system. Oh, and uh recently, so we just found this out last week, so I snuck it into our presentation. Uh we uh were recognized as one of 13 LEAs uh for a model SAR program. U as proud as we are of that, I think what's important for uh the board to to be aware is that this is just another um opportunity for us as a district to to take an evidence-based approach to improving our systems. there are there are defined um pathways to success and so we were able to study other districts like ours that were able to improve this. We didn't have to make it up on our own. Um another area which is um always important we are it's easier to seek assistance when you

409need to improve. Uh and one this was an area where we needed to improve. Ventura Unified uh lagged behind other districts in our post-pandemic recovery uh for ADA. uh we had been prior to the pandemic hovering around 97 or 98 uh ADA. Uh just a couple years ago we were still stuck at 93. Uh we are now at 95% ADA. Okay. So um some u trying to highlight just a few of the major areas and major components that have helped us uh be successful over the last few years. Uh the first one and some of these aligned with Mr. Willis's presentation uh setting strategic priorities. Uh the LCAP we consider to be strategic to our um overall improved outcomes for unduplicated students. It serves as a planning, implementation, and communications tool. It is the focal

410point for aligning student needs, coordinated responses, and allocation of district resources. Uh we feel that this is a critical role for county offices of education assisting districts with not only compliance but equally as important working collaborative collaboratively to ensure a through line from state priorities to the classroom and it being reflective of the district conditions. That said, I do want to make sure uh very similar to what I said that Ventura Unified is like a lot of other districts. that does not mean that our community nor our board necessarily are in agreement about the best way to proceed uh you using the LCAP. Um so for example what what is stakeholder engagement look like? What is stakeholder feedback? What should it look like? Funding allocations are they being used uh uh proportionately supplemental and concentration

411uh that should the LCAP be reflective of only supplemental and concentration funds other funds or should it be uh should it be a completely budget document which we we've heard over the years that it should not be. But these are all questions that we wrestle with. Are the interim success metrics that we hold ourselves to are they meaningful uh for the board as decision makers? Uh and then of course ultimately we are a district that is over 55% of duplicated students which means we have the ability to write a district-wide uh LCAP. But still there are tensions about what does it mean to have a district-wide LCAP versus those uh allocation of resources for uh for specific schools especially those that have uh demonstrated need over a long period of time. U also the line

412the need for alignment and coherence. You'll see that this is a document an artifact from 2324. Uh really what this does is just is a visual to show the alignment between our board goals uh our LCAP goals at the time we have a new LCAP now uh was goals our SIPA goals and then although not noted uh there is a portion uh that that I asked the board to include in my superintendent's evaluation. So that is there's a through line uh from board governments to our performance. Uh also to note uh we have student board members and in the reports I asked them uh to include uh the connectedness between the things that they report on their campuses and our board priorities. In 2024, uh we with with uh full board support uh we con

413we contracted with Fikmat to conduct a comprehensive review of our sped programs including the connections with our student uh success team processes. We sought the authority and transparency of an outside public entity with independence and expertise. It served as a resource of validation in areas of strength um with our emerging district practices and ongoing areas of need. Um, similar to the LCAP, however, the report findings and recommendations did not make our public conversations any easier, but it created an accessible process for our staff and our community to engage on an issue of great importance in terms of uh implementing systems based approaches. Um I can share now that I was uh proud uh to be a former uh county office of education associate superintendent of education services with the benefit of having learned from the

414phase development and implementation of our differentiated assistance processes that includes the principles of improvement science the application of the equity lenses and more recently the inclusion of compassionate systems our MIT methodology um overall and this is where I um couple myself to those who have done the work uh there's a humility that comes with this and a learning uh of times where we've uh experienced success, but also times we've had to learn from our our lack of success. And so to date, um having gone through these systems in the county office and led these processes in the district, what I've learned is that ultimately what we're trying to do is to surface and hold system tensions in a manner that honors the complexity of schools and districts that illuminates root causes. that we focus on

415learning about student and family experiences and how our school systems either interrupt or facilitate predictable outcomes. The need to remain resolute enough to endure the dynamism of our education systems and to remember that we are addressing issues formed through our individual and shared histories. Uh also as previously stated by Mr. Willis the our system of support is is broad. Um it is also um very unmanageable and also unknown to people who aren't part of the system and haven't created it. Uh they don't understand it. Um they don't feel like it's accessible. Uh but when what I can share is uh leading Ventura Unified our journey speaks in particular toward the importance of humility recognizing when you need help. um taking the effort to find out who are the experts that can that you can rely

416upon wherever they exist. Um h having the discipline of exploring uh what our broad systems uh can provide uh and then taking the initiative for outreach and collab potential collaboration. I I can't possibly uh list all of the collaborators that we've been the uh fortunate to benefit from over the years. Uh but some of them um are the county our county offices uh CDE uh CCE FICMAT obviously my fellow superintendents and their staff access CSBA etc. Um and uh years ago uh the positive outliers um research that was done uh when I was at the county office, we reached out to those um those districts to find out how were they achieving the results uh that were so atypical um from uh districts like them. Then moving on to a focus on continuous improvements. Uh

417it is uh in my experience um the importance of any kind of community of practice the network improvement communities nicks um any the coops these are are in my opinion critical for a variety of reasons it's one of the reasons that I reached out uh even though I wasn't required to yet uh but it could have been on the horizon I reached out to cce uh for support uh before it was a required element because the paradigm of of uh being purposely proactive as opposed to being under a deficit model. Um there's an energy that comes with that and I want to thank CCE for being responsive to my outreach and allowing me to participate uh in the learning of other superintendents and districts uh that were further along in the DA processes that we

418were uh in that I experienced high levels of collective efficacy, mutual accountability. Um we shared our successes uh learned from one another uh and then also maintained one another's confidentiality. And so key takeaways, uh, sustained district improvement benefits from adherence to a multi-year evidence-based approach. Uh, just as stated, I believe that improvement networks are critical, uh, catalyst for collective efficacy and mutual accountability. Um although we didn't get a chance to talk about it, the the distinctions between growth and achievement are critical and focusing on growth is very important in moving our systems forward because we need that energy in order to maintain um our focus uh on those long-term plans. Um and then in terms of um not directly addressed but I'll touch on it now. There is a a clear distinction between technical and

419adaptive uh implementation. One of the reasons that uh we struggle and you hear this in mathematics implementation a lot and the studies are very clear um if if our problem with mathematics was just a technical issue it would have been solved by professional development and curriculum adoptions. There's obviously more to it than that and that's what I mean by the adaptive um change processes as being something that needs to be considered. And then uh finally uh winding back where we started um that alignment is foundation u is foundational to achieving coherence. Uh coherence is not possible if it doesn't start with alignment. So thank you again for the opportunity uh to be here with you uh and uh to represent our district in our county. So, at this point, um, we do want to go

420to public comment and then come back and ask questions unless there's anything that you want to ask that's a clarifying question of any of the speakers. If not, we'll go right on ahead to uh, public comment. And those who want to call in can use the phone number and the participant access code shown on the slide. Uh are there any u public commenters in the room? Yes, there are 13 people signed up for in-person public comment. Please remember to state your name and affiliation for the record when it's your turn to speak. Will the following five people please line up at the microphone at the back of the room? Andrea Ball, Carlos Mashado, Natalie Shinn, Lorraine Richards, and Diana Buu. Thank you. Good afternoon, President Darling Hammond, board members. Thank you for holding this study

421session. Thank you to the department and the other presenters. I'm Andrea Ball here today on behalf of the Orange County Department of Education. For over 10 years, the Orange County Department of Education in partnership with BU County Office of Education has been the state lead on California's multi-tered system of support or MTSS. And as the state board considers the statewide system of support and the criteria for differentiated assistance and the approach, we want to highlight the role of MTSS as a powerful tool for school districts and county offices of education to align and bring coherence and consistency to efforts to improve teaching and learning and student outcomes. The tenants of MTSS reflect the ideals of the statewide system of support. A system centered on support rather than sanctions, responsive to local context, committed to resource

422equity, guided by continuous improvement, and building on trusting relationships. MTSS provides a structure for schools and districts and the county offices who support them to evaluate whether interventions are working, redeploy resources toward what does work, and ensure that every state dollar is used in a co coordinated and coherent way at the local level. When effectively implemented, MTSS functions as the organizing container for statewide initiatives, enabling local agencies to align their multiple funding streams into one preventionoriented system. As OCD and to deepen their work with the statewide system of support. They are proactively working with county offices of education to provide additional training and materials to assist them in their support of districts through MTSS. So, we encourage you to consider opportunities to strengthen MTSS as a proactive approach that increases coherence, alignment, and accountability for

423improving student outcomes. We submitted a letter that has a little bit more information and look forward to continuing the conversation. Thank you. Good afternoon, uh, Dr. Darling Hammond and members. Uh, my name is Carlos Mashad. I'm with California School Board Association. I wanted to highlight a few items for you. Uh, on this item, uh, CSBA supports aligning differentiated assistance with a three-year LCAP cycle. The shift replaces the yearly churn, as was mentioned earlier, with the stability needed for deep sustained improvement. However, we deeply concerned by the trailer bill language that would remove student group performance as a core requirement for DA. Equity and achievement gaps must remain primary focus of the system. We also urged the board to prioritize the addition of guard rails that continue to center student performance uh ensure small school districts

424aren't penalized for data volatility and treat CalPAD errors as technical issues rather than DA triggers. CSBA appreciates the plan to hold input sessions. We look forward to participating in these sessions by bringing together a diverse group of local board members to help provide the unique local perspectives uh they have as you refine these criteria. Uh please refer to our written comments for more technical details on these and other items. Uh we look forward to partnering with you to keep the system support centered on student success. Thank you. >> Time um thank you speaker for your time is up. Next speaker, please. >> Good afternoon, members of the board. My name is Natalie Shin here on behalf of Californians together. We support the vision of shifting eligibility for differentiated assistance to three years in aligning with

425LCAPS, but have significant concerns about the governor's budget proposal striking this the eligibility requirements. We align our comments with our partners in the LCF equity coalition and want to emphasize that any new criteria that is developed should be focused on student growth and closing gaps. We appreciate that the board is seeking input from stakeholders and also want to uplift the request from our management partners, direct staff to share more context and vision for these sessions, including the data analysis of any options under consideration. Thank you. >> Good afternoon. Lorraine Richards. I'm a classroom teacher representing California Teacher Association. CTA has significant concerns with the statewide system of support core working group recommendations report in attachment two. The working group itself is mostly state agency staff and administrators with only one teacher union staff member and

426no current classroom teachers. Several of the recommendations themselves are concerning. Recommendation 1.1 would focus on just reading and math academic outcomes which leads to a testdriven system. It also disregards California's approach to the whole child. Recommendation 4.3 creates an accountability arm to the statewide system of support as an active means for escalation. The statewide system of support is supposed to support districts to improve not punish them. Try the method flashlight instead of a hammer. These recommendations undermine the s the statewide system of support and give deja vu to no child left behind. CTA urges the state board of education to re to excuse me to reject these recommendations. Thank you. Good afternoon board members. Diana Vu on behalf of the Association of California School Administrators. AXA appreciates the board highlighting Dr. Caston's exceptional work supporting

427student achievement at Ventor Unified School District as part of the statewide system of support. We also appreciate the board staff plan to hold additional educational partner input sessions and respectfully request that administrative perspective remain involved to ensure that to ensure coherent improvements that support effective implementation and meaningful outcomes for students. further acts as part of an education management and equity coalition where our collective concerns includes timing with just four months until state board of education's July deadline to take action. We respectfully request that some context including data analysis and options that are under consideration and would encourage the use of multiple years of data to provide a more stable and accurate picture of district performance recognizing that a single year of data may not always capture broader trends of the impact of improvement efforts already

428underway. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Will the following five people please line up at the microphone? Lindseay Tornator, Lisa Solace Brown, Dena Wilson, Evan Bartleheim, and Rob Manwearing. Good afternoon, Lindseay Tornator. On behalf of the California County Superintendent, I'd like to start by thanking today's presenters for their thoughtful work in support of the ultimate goal to revise the DA criteria. The education management and equity groups have formed a joint coalition to engage on these criteria. As noted in our letter, we were encouraged to hear the board staff plan to hold input sessions before the July action. With only four months remaining, we asked the board to direct staff to share more context and vision on these criteria during these sessions along with initial data analysis of the options under consideration. This would help ground the

429discussion and support more productive engagement as the criteria are redefined. Additionally, the county superintendent submitted a letter with four preliminary recommendations with the clear caveat they may evolve as new data and proposals emerge before July. Finally, it's important to recognize that while there's much work to be done, the statewide system of support is working. As Dr. Castro shared, Venture Unifi's improvement journey. When ELEAs create the right conditions and lead with compassion, students succeed and gaps close. The California County Superintendent are committed to partnering with Eleas and communities towards student success for all. Thank you. Lisa Solless Brown, Deputy Superintendent of Educational Services for the Ventura County Office of Education. On behalf of County Superintendent Dr. Morales, we thank Dr. Castro for highlighting Ventura Unifi's collaborative work and the data reflecting systemwide improvement. The district demonstrates

430the impact of aligned educational partners, district staff, community members, board of trustees, county office, and SULPA working together to support student success. Post pandemic, as mentioned, there were four student groups. Now there are zero. Genuine community engagement throughout the LCAP process. Now suspension rates are 2.2 2.1% lower than the state average. and graduation rates 95.2%. This progress reflects the trust, relationships, and systems leadership cultivated by the district and its educational partners, including our county office and our county sour. Thank you. Good afternoon, President Darling Hammond and members of the state board. I'm Dina Wilson, director three from Los Angeles County Office of Education. I've had the privilege of supporting eleas throughout our county, including those eligible to for differentiated assistance since the current model was initiated. County offices are well suited to support our ELEAs

431and develop the relationships needed for systems improvement work. And we are best situated to understand the local context of our districts and schools. Just as we work with our eleas within a continuous improvement model, we seek the state board's reflection. We support the state board's reflection refinement of our current system. In this vein, it's current to you it's important to use the same continuous improvement model and begin by recognizing the successes and strengths that we have seen over the past several years. Over the past four years, there's been a clear reduction in the number of DA eligible LEAs and improvements across the dashboard for our multiple student groups. Let's build on these successes and make modifications as needed to mitigate the challenges we've experienced. The dashboard has been a moving target. The rules can be

432inconsistent and measures such as the CCI have so many variables, the validity of the data becomes questionable and reduces the ability to make actionable interpretations. Thank you very much for your time. >> Good afternoon, members of the board. I'm Evan Bartleheim from the Los Angeles County Office of Education. Thank you for this well-considered discussion regarding possible changes to differentiated assistance. I would like to emphasize the vital role of county offices uh of education within the statewide system of support as demonstrated by LA County's recent progress. Between 2023 and 2025, the number of charter schools and districts that met the criteria for differentiated assistance in our county, which serves a quarter of the state's students declined by 41%. We believe that much of this success can be attributed to the relationship driven process and system improvement

433work that the county and eleas engage in. To sustain this momentum, we believe that it's important to keep the DA eligibility criteria predictable by continuing to include them in state statute. Though less flexible, this would support the CCE core working group's recommendation to avoid frequent shifts to the metrics that foster short-term compliance cycles rather than the sustained system building required for lasting improvement. And while we agree that the eligibility >> speaker, your time is up. >> Thank you. >> Will the following three individuals please approach the microphone? Christina Salazar, LeangAngela Reid, and Sarah Petrrowski. >> Hi, this is Rob Manorin from Children Now. I'm wearing two hats today. First, as uh one of the leaders of a joint equity and management group, some findings that we sent in a letter. One is uh around some

434concerns with the current statutory requirements for focus on student subgroups going away. Second is some requests for some specific data analysis. Uh and then third, some recommendations around the input process uh and our our willingness to partner in those efforts. U wearing my children now hat. We want to maintain a focus on multiple measures and and core to that should be the inclusion of a student growth measure. There's a reason that 48 other states have growth in their accountability systems and it's the single highest weighted one in over half of states. Um, we would like to see it move to a weighted system because that's the only way to maintain multiple measures that we can see and also narrow the focus on a smaller number of eleas. We would like to see uh a new

435set of different indicators used for DOS schools because our current measures don't measure what's happening in the quality of those schools. >> Thank you, speaker. Your time is up. Uh, good afternoon, Christina Salasad. On behalf of the Riverside County Superintendent of Schools, thank you for the opportunity to comment on today's study session. We want to express our strong support for the proposed trailer bill language that transitions LEAs to a three-year cycle and that aligns with LCAPS. Aligning these will create a greater coherence and has, you know, which is a goal that we've been talking about today. uh and it'll also allow this to engage in a more strategic continuous improvement. With just four months remaining until the July deadline, we are encouraged by the plan to hold partner input sessions outside of the formal SB

436meetings. Uh and as the work continues to move forward, we want to underscore the importance of using using multiple years of data rather than relying on a single year when determining DA eligibility. A multi-year approach offers more of an accurate view of the district trends and reduces uh one-year, you know, uh off one-offs and ensures the support is um directed where it's most needed. Thank you for your consideration. >> You're taller than me. Good. Good afternoon. Leangela Reed on behalf of the Small School Districts Association. I'd like to align uh SSDA with the comments of our colleagues from AX and CS, excuse me, AXA and the county superintendent in that we think that we would really like the decision-making process to be data driven. We're very appreciative of this study session. It's very helpful to

437the field. We love to hear the conversation. We we look forward to continuing the conversation in the meetings that we hope to to come uh in the next few months because we're on a short timeline. If we're going to require the dashboard to be data driven, then the decisions around DA have to be data driven as well. Transparency for all makes us all better. Um on behalf of particularly on the side of the smalls asking it's we welcome the opportunity during these conversations to talk about the volatility for smalls. We talk about it for subsidi for a student group. We don't talk about it for school size. And when you have two suspensions and a scroll of 150 and you go from blue to orange, um, that's something we have to talk about because I

438know that's not your intent. >> Thank you, Speaker. Your time is up. >> Good afternoon, President Darling Hammond and members of the board. I'm Sarah Petrowski on behalf of the California Association of School Business Officials. Thank you for holding this study session today. I want to lift up the Equity Management Coalition's request around transparency and clarity related to this important issue. Ensuring that student needs are effectively identified through the system of support moving forward will require two essential elements. First, the board should clearly articulate the new criteria under consideration and the policy rationale for those changes. Second, the board should conduct and share data runs demonstrating how the proposed criteria would have functioned using prior year data. These data runs are critical for understanding the real world impact of the proposed changes and ensuring that

439any revisions strengthen the system of support intended to serve students and eleas most in need. With this without this information well ahead of the quickly approaching deadline, we are concerned meaningful engagement will be impossible. Thank you. That concludes public comment in the room. We will now move to public comment on the phone line. >> Thank you. Caller ending in 8945. Please state your name and affiliation for the record. You have one minute. Your time starts now. >> Hi, this is Suzanne Kuy from the Charter School Development Center. It's wonderful to hear the presentation calling out the distinction between achievement levels and growth. Regarding identification to focus on eleas that most need support, we continue to advise using ELA and math growth as part of the initial step to identify schools. We compared growth results for

440student groups that triggered differentiated assistance for each LEA. Many of the LEAs have student groups with growth in the average or accelerated performance categories. I'm talking about the ones that triggered the the same groups that trigger triggered the DA are getting the you know average and above grow growth in many cases. A more intentional system would even consider student group growth relative to student group growth norms. This would help focus BA on just those eleas with below average student group growth relative to student group growth norm. Multi-year calibration is important as well and we appreciate also the commenters uh noting multiple metrics and finally d specific indicators are most certainly needed. We thank you so much for your progress in this area and would love the opportunity to share our analyses. Thank you. Next caller

441ending in 2250. Please begin your public comment. >> Good afternoon board. We're com with Trust West. In alignment with our equity partners and management groups, we would like to express our appreciation of the staff on the plan to hold additional educational partner input sessions. We would also like to raise two concerns. one around the budget trailer bill proposal eliminating the equity focus of the current criteria's inclusion of subgroup performance. We believe that having in having that in statute is important to ensure that there's a focus on closing equity gaps. And our other concern is around the short time that the board has to take action. Overall, we urge you all to continue prioritizing efforts to close the achievement gaps while preserving high and consistent standards for student academic performance. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next

442caller ending in 8674, please start your public comment. >> Good afternoon, Rachel Murphy with Public Advocates in the LCFF Equity Coalition. We appreciate the board's continued discussion and uplift our coalition's guiding principles submitted in the fall. We urge the focus to remain on closing opportunity and achievement gaps and maintaining standards for student performance. Additionally, we recommend identifying those eleas that are showing emerging performance issues but who are not yet qualifying for DA um and requiring them to hold public hearings which address self-reflection and continuous improvement while also providing more robust technical assistance at the tier one level. We also appreciate that the board is seeking input from interest holders on updated performance criteria and we encourage the board to include a variety of student, family and educator perspectives. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next caller

443ending in 4364, please start your public comment. >> Good afternoon. Lucy Salceto Carter with the Alama County Office of Education. Thank you for this uh study session on differentiated assistance. I want to reiterate comments made by colleagues that we're grateful for the input sessions that are planned and we look forward to learning more information about them so we can bring bring our our best prepared selves to the table. In addition, ACE signed on to the ad management equity partnership letter and in that regard I also want to express our concerns regarding the trailer bill language that would remove the equity guard rails. We must keep accountability structures firmly focused on student performance and closing opportunity gaps. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 7959. Please start your public comment. >> Hi, my name

444is Priscilla Nelson and I support the 7-year renewal of Bayointy's charter. I'm sorry. We are currently taking public comment for item number 11. Please call back during item number 13. Thank you. >> Next caller ending in 9786, please. Oh, next caller ending in 8722, please start your public comment. Okay, that concludes public comment for item 11. Thank you. And I want to thank everyone who presented and everyone who commented and um we had intended to uh be ending this um particular session at two. It is now after 4. So I'm going to uh suggest we keep the item open and continue the board's discussion tomorrow so that we can move through the other items that we need to get through today. Otherwise, you will be here until midnight. So let's um if that's all right,

445we will we will keep this item open. Take notes if you have, you know, burning thoughts and brilliant ideas at the front of your brow. Uh so that we can resume the conversation tomorrow. Uh and we're going to move on to item 12, which is the personal finance curriculum guide, adoption of the curriculum guide. And uh the uh CDE recommends that we adopt the personal finance curriculum guide. Uh it will be this item will be presented by Mike Taus of the CDE. Uh and we're always excited to see Mike. Where is he? There he is. And I'll just uh start as as our room is clearing out by saying it's always a pleasure to see both of you and we're very excited about the finance curriculum guide. Um, and because we are so positively inclined,

446we would encourage you to keep this as brief as you can because we are two hours behind our expected schedule. >> You got it. You got it. >> Thank you. We love you and we want to hear everything you have to say quickly. >> We'll keep it. We know what this is like. Quickly is what I heard. That's the operative word. So, good afternoon, Dr. Darling Hammond, President, Vice President Glover Woods, board members, staff, and community. My name is William McGee, deputy superintendent of public instruction for the building educational success together branch. And so, as you mentioned, we're excited about this item, personal finance curriculum. I know that when I was in school, definitely learning about money was important. And as a site leader, we had students who wanted that. when I was director of

447office of African-American student achievement, our student board member actually put this initiative together for us and we able to roll that out. So, without further ado, I'll turn it over to Dr. Torres and his team who will guide you through this and we will get you guys out of here quickly. Thank you. >> Thank you so much, uh, Deputy Superintendent McGee, and hello, President Darling Hammond, Vice President Glover Woods, uh, Chief Deputy Robersonson. I will make this pretty short. Um, so we do have our timeline uh that I do want to share with you and this started back in 2024 when the superintendent had uh started his initiative over improving financial literacy um in the state. Um we uh we then moved to uh have AB 2927 um signed and put into place. Um, we

448held very quickly a uh public input webinar to collect um public input on what elements we want to see included in the personal finance curriculum guide in December of 2024. Um, this body worked very quickly in January of 2025 to approve uh the foundational principles that that were utilized to create the curriculum guide. Um, as well as the timeline. um we engage writers very quickly in March. Seems to be a very common trend with curriculum frameworks and instructional resources division to work very quickly um on our projects and we're very thankful um to our team and our writing team. Um in July an initial draft was reviewed by the instructional quality commission. Feedback was provided. Um a revised draft was brought back before the uh the instructional quality commission in September. um at which point

449they offered um additional perspective, some additional changes to be made and then approve a full month of public comment period the entire month of October because we do truly value all of the different perspectives from across the state. Um, we collected all of that public uh comment. Um, brought forward a revised draft to the instructional quality commission uh with revisions at their December meeting and um realized that we can bring this before you way before the um May uh statutory deadline and the original um the original schedule uh that you would be seeing this item. So, we brought forth an item before you in January to say, "Hey, guess what? Uh we're we're early um on this one. you very happily approved. Um, and here we are today to consider uh this personal finance curriculum

450guide. Um, I do want to take a moment to thank the stellar work of our writing team and the instructional quality commission. They were able to move very quickly to the finish line for this project uh quicker than expected and as a result were able to recommend this um recommend this curriculum guide. Um we felt uh that having this available early for local educational agencies and schools and teachers um is very important considering they are gearing up and getting ready to implement and have courses available to students as early as 2728. Um so I'd like to introduce the two speakers that we have here today who are going to go into more detail about the curriculum guide. First we have Mr. Jeff Allen and Mr. Matt Hayes. Uh Jeff is from Fresno Unified School District

451and Matt is from San Diego. Um who will walk us through the contents and the supports of the guide that it offers to educators. And then after that we'll be hearing from instructional quality commissioner Lena Bradshaw who was the vice chair of the personal finance uh subject matter committee on the instructional quality commission and she'll be outlining the actions taken by the IQC um during the development process. But uh we'll move on with uh with Jeff Allen. Hello. First off, whoa, that was loud. Thank you all for this opportunity again. Um, and yeah, as as Dr. Torres just said, excuse me, the goal would be to go over the seven chapters, right, very briefly, as we've identified, um, and just kind of express the fact that there's definitely a very specific intent behind each one.

452So starting with what you see here, chapter one, it's to establish the the context, right? So the history of personal finance education, um both on a national and obviously state level. So we talk about the impacts, um the drive and the the fact that it's somewhat of a national trend. Right now we're up to 30 states. California was in 24 and we're already have I'm sorry, the 26th state, we're already up to 30. So that tells you the speed in which this is moving across the nation. Um so after that introduction we then jump into California specific uh the legislation uh Assembly Bill 2927 and the subsequent ed codes and then kind of set the stage for chapter 2 which is really um diving into the actual uh content pieces. So we look in chapter

453two, it starts off with actually a screenshot um or a snippet of the legislation itself showing the 12 content pieces and then the 13th as well the and you'll see we address that separately. So for each one of those content areas, excuse me, let me change that. For each one of those topic areas, we do what you see here. We we introduce it with a why it matters, right? Trying to again build that context and then we jump into the learning outcomes. The learning outcomes for the 12 content topics range between four and six learning outcomes for each one. And so then after going through the learning outcomes, we look at potential community impacts. And then there's a side by side that shows the standard alignment, which we'll talk about on the next slide, and

454a possible student activity that you might see. So I do want to clarify because this came up in a couple of the previous presentations about that student activity or student task and activity. It is not a lesson plan. It is not a step-by-step sort of introduction and then how you check for understanding or anything like that. It is just a quick little snapshot. Think of it as like a mini vignette, right? What you might see in this topic just so that again people that are just becoming familiar with this new uh these new topics might see uh get in their mind's eye what they would see in a classroom. uh when you see addressing topic 13, the reason we we called that out specifically is topic 13 is a is a vehicle to add additional

455topics. And so we spend a lot of time throughout the document talking about local control and and context. And so we we went out of our way to through public comment anything that was identified that that made the curriculum get right additions beyond the 12, we tried to embed in the existing 12 topics to keep it um tidy, so to speak. But we still call out that topic 13 is a great opportunity for um leas to again cater this content to their specific student needs and their community needs. Um when we go on to oh I'm sorry and I told you we'd talk a little bit more about those um standards just realize that we at the end of the um chapter 2 have each individual learning outcome uh aligned to the standards that you

456see here. So California Common Core standards uh the national sorry model school library standards and then the the national standards for personal finance education. It concludes with one more graphic organizer at the end that just again at a very quick glance will give those teachers an opportunity to teachers, community members, parents, families, whoever are going to be utilizing this, hopefully all of them. Um it will give them a quick look at again why these were the chosen topics, how this could impact their communities and so forth. So we're trying to make it as user friendly for all. Third chapter is a deep dive into the actual implementation. So we're trying to provide guidance to those district leaders, to those site leaders on on how to actually achieve um the requirements of this new legislation and

457the the uh ED codes. So we start with timelines. We try to frame it in in two ways. One, what you really must do to be in compliance, but we also try to look at it from the standpoint of of early implementers and so on. So, we're trying to incentivize and and try to show those districts and those those sites and opportunity is out there to pilot more curriculum um to to explore different avenues and so forth. But again, at the same time showing the timeline that if you don't have that flexibility, you must do these things by this time period. Um we explore leadership models, what it might look like for a small versus large district, what it might look like if it's being districtled versus sightled. Uh I already mentioned benefits of early

458implementation. uh staffing and scheduling. We we look closely at the credentiing requirements. Uh and again at the end, if you guys have any questions about any of these things, please ask, but I probably won't go into that level of specificity. Right? So, we talk about single subjects and so forth and then what it might be paired with and limitations to doing a seme uh those limitations that might appear in looking for those pairings, but also that there's the flexibility of a fullear course versus the semester and so on. Then we spend quite a bit of time on the economic wave economics waiver. We explain um that there will it with the graduating class of uh 31 when this becomes a mandate there will be the opportunity of utilizing the waiver and if you do utilize

459an economics waiver we try to bring attention to what you will be lo what your student population might be losing out on um with those pieces. So as a result we look more closely later on actually in chapter 4 about economic reasoning skills that could also be introduced. uh moving forward. Then we look at the course development itself and look at uh a lot of things that we just wanted to make sure to draw to uh the attent because it's going to have to happen at such a a swift speed right now. The importance of getting that A to G designation. Um the timelines for submitting those course approvals, reminding districts that every district also is different in what their own internal timelines might look like. And so we just bring those things up. And

460then that chapter concludes with the importance of communicating that to the community at large, not just your um your campuses and your your student population and what that looks like to scale because again in 2728 that first class will need to be offered at every California high school, but by 31 we're going to be hitting the entire graduating class. So what that might look like, uh chapter 4 is is really the heart, right? So chapter 4 is looking at those curriculum resources. And so what we identify here is again just the importance of that local control and that it's not prescriptive. So that there are going to be a lot of opportunities for districts to put their own um flare on this, right? Uh but but as a result that we need to uh well

461our our foundational principles and guidance was to identify all those free curricular resources. Uh and so we we tried to make it as user friendly as possible by identifying um what were comprehensive versus what were specialty. So on a comprehensive realm, we're looking at turnkey. We're looking at at a curriculum provider that offers um resources that cover all 12 topics. Uh that and that often includes slide decks, assessments um and so forth, right? Professional development. Um, but we also looked at the specialty realizing that if we could find those quality u turnkey or or comprehensive providers and those specialty providers would allow those districts to again cater their their programs to their own populations um to best fit. Uh when we look at the uh economic waiver again here, it is now with um a

462dozen economic reasoning skills. And we try to identify that one of those credential areas that can teach um this course is obviously going to be a social science credential. So if a district was to utilize the economics waiver, we wanted to leverage all of those um skills that that economics teacher already had. So we try to just call that out. Um, and again also pointing out that regardless of if it's an economics teacher teaching it, if they review again these economic reasoning skills, there will be less of a loss if they do utilize that waiver. Um, and then the last slide that I wanted to go over with you is just what that looks like for a teacher or for that curriculum team that is is um trying to identify how they want to build

463build out their program. So when you look at the comprehensive providers, you can see that it starts with an overview on each one, then access. And when we when we're talking access, we're talking about again, do they have to form an account? Do they need to set up some sort of connection point? Is this just open source? What have you uh supports for diverse learn diverse learners? And that's also that sample lesson. So we call out what those curriculum providers identified as their as their um supports. And then we suggested that they provide us a lesson that show these supports in in action. And so that's the one that we we led with and then delivery model and flexibility. So exactly what it sounds like. What are what are the options on delivery with this

464program? When it comes to specialty, we had 19. We had 19 other identified resources. Some were just they didn't hit all 12 topics. Some really only focused on one of the topics. But again, when we present those specialty providers, you can see in that little graphic down below, um we present them both as an overview of what they have to offer in one section and in another section. It just aligns them to the individual topic um out of those 12. So we're again mix and match, go with a a turnkey comprehensive. We're we're providing that guidance throughout. And then it moves on to I'm sorry, it wasn't my last slide. We move on to chapter five, which is the professional development, which obviously goes handinhand with chapter four. So we start with those curriculum providers

465that we called um comprehensive the turnkey and we looked at what professional resour professional learning resources they offered. Then we looked at any other professional learning uh that we could identify um again free of cost to provide teachers and districts and county offices of eds. And then ultimately we landed at the end of this chapter with a spotlight on one organization or curriculum provider called NextGen Personal Finance because they had the most robust of all the PL and in fact one that was utilized by many other providers. And with that I'll turn it over to my colleague Matt Hayes. >> All right. Good afternoon board members, fellow San Dieagan Dr. Esco. Um good to be here. Um so we recognize that um students begin their personal finance um studies not as blank slates but they

466have experiences with finances. Very often um they are contributing to their family economics and making decisions on how to stretch limited resources. And we also recognize that there's a tremendous opportunity to develop something that is really relevant for students. And so chapter six um kind of centers some ideas around inclusive, effective and engaging personal finance courses. And so we focus on areas like the integration of universal design for learning and differentiated instruction, use of culturally sustaining pedagogy, targeted supports for multilingual learners, including long-term English learners, um engagement through inquiry, um inquiry based and projectbased learning, um integration of financial technology and digital literacy tools, um and an alignment of instruction and assessment to support student learning and continuous improvement. And then like really connected to this chapter is chapter seven. So the bringing this home

467with the last uh last chapter in the curriculum guide. Um again we recognize that um personal financial education works best when you engage students in relevant authentic learning experiences. And so chapter 7 offers schools and LEAs with ideas for going beyond the classroom with personal finance education and offers examples of effective partnerships between schools and financial organizations. And it includes strategies for engaging families and communities um which ties back to kind of a lot of the the emphasis in chapter six. Um so and it provides ideas for connecting students to internships, mentorships, job shadowing opportunities as well as expanding student access to scholarships and grant programs and that it also offers advice for reviewing, reflecting on and revising personal finance learning experiences um as part of a cycle of continuous improvement. So that was a

468quick synopsis of about 200 pages of personal finance curriculum guide. >> Any questions? >> Are there clarifying questions? Just to say we appreciate the uh focus on active learning in this important domain. Uh if there are no clarifying questions, I think at this point we want to open the phone line for public comment. So, thank you very much. Oh, Mike Mike has something. >> Um, we actually have Commissioner Bradshaw here to talk a little bit about um instructional quality commission and the edits that they had requested. >> All right. Thank you. >> Who has a flight here in just a little bit. Commissioner >> Bradshaw to the talking fast part of the meeting. >> Thank you. I'm very pleased to be here today to highlight uh the role that the instructional equality commission played in

469the development or exc of this document. To begin with, we were truly impressed with the first draft presented to us in July. It was thorough, wellorganized, and highly practical. It was clear that the guide was crafted with practitioners in mind, providing leas with a clear understanding of the new graduation requirement and offering meaningful guidance on designing courses that not only meet statutory expectations, but also support positive outcomes for students and their long-term financial well-being. After reviewing the draft and considering the thoughtful public comment submitted both in writing and during our meetings, the IQC approved several revisions and additions to strengthen the document even further. Some of the more significant edits include strengthening guidance for teachers of English learners and long-term English learners. language referencing both English learner and long-term English learner student supports was added

470to the equity and accessibility section. In chapter 2, references to the ELD standards were added where the guide outlines alignment across California's personal finance requirements and relevant state and national standards. In addition, two new vignettes were added. The first showing how a personal finance task can be scaffolded to support the three ELD proficiency levels identified in the ELD standards. The second vignette demonstrates how a teacher draws on the California EL standards to ensure the lesson on comparing different types of insurance supports long-term English learners by focusing on both content understanding and language development. narrative was also added to include a list of instructional strategies known to benefit the development of long-term English learners. These include explicit instruction in academic language and literacy as well as emphasizing oral language and development. Providing explicit instructions and models,

471addressing key cognitive and language functions required for academic tasks. The use of graphic organizers as scaffolds. Building background knowledge, building relevance, affirming language and culture, and maintaining rigor. Edits approved by the OIQC also updated guidance on the economics course waiver and economic content. New language was added explaining that last year's trailer bill language granted alas the authority to wave the one semester economics requirement beginning with the graduating class of 203031. LAAS are encouraged to carefully consider the economic topics not addressed in the personal finance course and suggest that some LEAs may wish to maintain both courses to ex or expand economics themed electives. Others may explore ways to embed those concepts into existing courses such as American government or US history. The IQC also requested additions to support for the use of artificial intelligence in

472the classroom. A vignette was added in which a teacher demonstrates how AI tools can be used thoughtfully to support financial research as students develop detailed personalized budgets based on a hypothetical career path. The project's conclusion includes student reflection on their experience using AI and a consideration of how responsible digital literacy and emerging technology can support real world financial planning. Following the October public comment period, the instructional quality commission approved another series of revisions informed by the feedback we received. These updates expanded the personal finance content to include wills and trusts, credit card education, distinctions between banks and credit unions, and guidance on tax credits, particularly those commonly applicable to young adults. Many commenters also recommended incorporating more practical resources. In response, we added references to a hands-on app-based personal finance simulation available through credit unions,

473introduced new teacher tips, addressing tax credits and support for collegebound students, applying for financial aid, and expanded the discussion of research demonstrating the benefits of personal finance education. Finally, the commission requested refinements to specific language to ensure that the curriculum guide presents a neutral and objective representation of communities that may hold diverse perspectives on money and financial management. We are very pleased with the outcome of this process. The work unfolded with remarkable efficiency in just 12 months and the result is a thoughtful, high quality and genuinely practical guide. We believe it will serve as a meaningful support to districts as they prepare to implement the new graduation requirements and we gre greatly appreciate the collaboration and care that contributed to its development. I now turn the mic back over to Dr. Torres. Thank you so

474much, Commissioner Bradshaw, and thank you, Jeff and Matt, for going over the content. Um, I I also want to say that, and I've said this multiple times, um, before this body, that I truly appreciate the diversity of California and the transparency of it. Um and even after the public comment period um and after concluding uh our draft and preparing it to post for your for you to for you to look at, we did receive some additional comment um uh that kind of that came up to our attention um around special populations that you may wish to consider. It was recently brought to our attention that some information regarding tax credits and financial aid may differ for young people who are enrolled members of federally recognized California Native American tribes. We would like to point that

475out in the curriculum guide um in two specific teacher tips. And so, um, we are proposing in addition to the draft that you currently have, um, a proposed edit on page 30 after line 682, which is the tax section where, um, Commissioner Bradshaw had talked about the inclusion of teacher tips. To add in there, teachers may note that enrolled members of federally recognized California Native American tribes may qualify for exemptions from certain California taxes. teachers can build awareness regarding such exemptions. More information regarding such exemptions is available on the California Franchise Tax Board website and that website is included in the proposed edit. And in a second section, we are recommending um to add the bolded uh uh part of of this that's already within the draft that you have that adds and enrolled members

476of federally recognized Native American tribes because it's important to call out special populations and that was done so in this teacher tip area and wanted to include u the recognition of Native American tribe uh individuals um in that section. So, going right back to our recommended action because I know we're chomping at the bit here. The CDE recommends that the state board of education adopt the personal finance curriculum guide. Yay. The CDE also recommends that the state board of education delegate authority to the CDE staff subject to the approval of the state board of education executive director to make any necessary revisions, including any needed for clarity and accuracy as the document is professionally edited and prepared for publication. We are here and ready to answer any kinds of questions you may have. Bravo and

477brava. Uh what a wonderful um tool this will be for the field. Um I hesitate to ask are there any clarifying questions before we go to public comment. Uh let me then uh also um see if our liaison would like to uh give us a few thoughts. Members Olen and Lewis in either order. I know you guys always go back and forth. >> I'm gonna I'm gonna cover it for the two of us today. Um I just want to say first how um how happy I am to have been assigned this duty to be a leazison for this item because well really for two very different reasons. The first is it's such an important thing that we're um bringing to our students in California and I hear that from literally every student and most parents

478that I speak to. Um just how important financial literacy is. And then two, it's been such an incredible process um from uh so I was able to participate or um witness the IQC meetings led by Dr. Torres. Um I which are fantastic. I um got to see our two lead writers in action responding to questions, thinking through the what teachers and school leaders need and they're just incredible. and um the input that we've gotten from the public through the public comment periods has made the the curriculum guide even stronger. So, it's just it's something I think we should all be proud of um and will help make a new requirement in our schools um a delight to implement. So, I'm I'm really honored um and excited that we're going to vote today. should open up

479the phone line for public comment. Uh please use the phone number uh and the participant access code shown on the slide if you want to call in. And meanwhile, is there any public comment in the room? >> Yes, there are four people signed up for public comment. Please remember to state your name and affiliation for the record when it's your turn to speak. Will the following people please line up at the microphone in the back of the room? Natalie Shinn, Eric Menzel, Cynthia Tam, and Lorraine Richards. Native Finance Development Corporation. Native Americans are the most under represented community in the financial services sector and consistently score in the lowest form for financial literacy inside of the United States. And with that, we would like to thank Mike first of all for actually including the Native

480American voice in today's augmented presentation. It was a last minute addition and we really do appreciate that. Our group at Native Finance uh has the only nationally recognized and accredited high school financial education and literacy program currently operating in the country. Now, within the state of California, you have 350,000 American Indians and 109 tribes. We want to ensure that you are dedicated to hearing their voices and giving them a seat at the table. Thank you. >> Good afternoon, members of the board. My name is Natalie Shin here. On behalf of Californians together, we want to express our gratitude for including guidance for English learners, including long-term English learners. Making personal finance digestible and accessible for high need students is critical as these personal finance courses have the potential to uplift equity and help students navigate

481complex economic systems. Language access should not be a barrier to financial knowledge and targeted instruction and guidance will help students build critical skills and make informed decisions. Thank you. >> Hi, I'm Cynthia Tam from Native Finance Development Corporation. I have submitted my written comments, but I just want to congratulate the IQC and also the board for passing this very important curriculum guide. So, thank you very much. >> It appears our final Oh, >> hello. My name is Lorine Richards. I am representing teachers for California Teacher Association. CTA supports the personal finance curriculum guide and we thank the state board of education and CDE staff for their hard work on this final version. As this process draws to a close, we want to elevate the importance of thoughtful and intentional implementation. How will this information be

482disseminated to local educational educators and also how will the teachers be informed about the changes? What kinds of support will provide to teachers such as professional learning? Thank you for your consideration. We look forward to future implementation and discussion. Thank you. >> Okay, that concludes in-person public comment. We will now move to public comment on the phone line. >> Thank you. Caller ending in 1530, please state your name and affiliation for the record. Your time starts now. Next caller ending in 8722, please state your name and affiliation for the record. You may begin your public comment. This concludes public comment for item 12. >> All right. Going to board discussion and a motion. Uh any comments? May I have a motion? Member Rodriguez. >> Yes. I'd like to Is the I was looking for the

483text. I'd like to move to approve the financial literacy uh >> curriculum >> and all that it says there. >> Yes. Recommends be delegate finance curriculum guide. >> Yes. >> And should I read the rest of it? >> Okay. I would like to move the CD recommendation to approve the personal finance curriculum guide. >> Thank you. >> I'll second. And I also just want to shout out appreciation for inclusion of um looking at financial aid options for uh post-graduation options for after uh diploma. Thank you. >> Terrific. >> Wonderful. Uh with that call the role. >> Very impressive. Yes. >> Member Rodriguez. >> Yes. >> Member Peter Brown. >> Yes. >> Member Rosco Gonzalez. >> Yes. >> Member Olen. >> Yes. >> Member Lewis. >> Yes. >> Vice President Gloverwoods. >> Yes. >> Member Sketto.

484>> Yes. >> President Darling Hammond. >> Yes. >> Member GK. >> Yes. >> The motion carries. >> Right. >> Yay. I'm going to recommend that those who need to take a break take one individually as needed because I want to move on to um I item 13, which is a public hearing regarding the petition for the renewal of a charter school authorized by the California State Board of Education, the Bay Point Preparatory Academy in San Diego. Uh and I know people have been waiting for a while to present their um case and there are others who want to call in. So, I want to respect their their um patience as well. Um, this item will be presented by Rick R. I will just say that the uh uh California Department recommends that we approve the

485charter schools renewal petition with the technical amendments outlined bel uh below which I'll note uh for a term of five years beginning July 1, 2026 and ending June 30th, 2031. Uh and then we must in a separate motion designate either the district or the county as the charter schools chartering authority. Uh and this item will be presented by Rick Reyes of the CDE. I have a uh legislative appointment that will cause me to leave shortly and I will be handing the gavl to our vice president Glover Woods shortly. Thank you very much Rick. Get us go. >> Thank you very much. Good afternoon, President Darling Hammond, Vice President Glover Woods, members of the board, Chief Deputy Superintendent Shapyra, and Executive Director Allen. Um, I am Rick Ryes, director of the CDE charter charter schools division,

486here to present item 13, the renewal petition for Bayoint Preparatory Academy San Diego, which is currently authorized by the SBE. As with so much of what we do, uh, this presentation is riddled with abbreviations. So, here's a quick preview of some of the ones that you'll see. I think they're all familiar, but um just a little refresher. And because we have two types of appeals, I wanted to make sure to point out that this is what we commonly refer to as a denovo appeal, uh which is different from the abuse of discretion appeal. In this one, we are looking at the charter school itself and its program and its petition. we are not reviewing the process or the denial or the findings of the district. Um and and in this case there is no uh

487county because after the district this charter school comes straight to the state board. So you have somewhere between one and four decisions to make today for this item. Um first to approve or deny the charter school's renewal. Um, if you are moving to approve, um, you will also need to decide whether to accept the CD's proposed technical amendments that are detailed in the item and choose the length of the renewal term because the charter school um is eligible for five, six, or seven years. And then after that, in a separate motion, um, you will need to designate either the district or the county board of education as the school's new chartering authority. And we'll have this nicely laid out for you at the end. A quick summary of the issue and what brings us to

488today. Um, in March 2018, Bayoint Preparatory Academy appealed to the state board and had their petition granted for a term of five years that was originally set to end in 2023. And then with some COVID pandemic related extensions, their term now um was extended to this June 2026. Um following the process laid out in education code, they first petitioned their local district which was San Marcos Unified. Sorry for the typo. U and San Marcos Unified denied the charter school's renewal by a unanimous vote. And then following that, the charter school submitted their approval to the SB. >> I did want to note for you the findings of the district when they denied the charter school. They found that the petition did not contain reasonably comprehensive descriptions of each of the required elements from education code.

489that the petitioners failed to update the petition to reflect the current program offered by the charter school and that the charter school is demonstrabably unlikely to successfully implement the program set forth in the petition due to substantial fiscal factors. Our recommendation today is that you approve the charter schools renewal petition with the technical goal amendments that we propose in the item for a term of 5 years which would begin July 1st, 2026 and end June 30th, 2031. We developed this recommendation based on the school's dashboard data, which places the school in a high performing category under education code, which means the school is entitled to a presumption of renewal. And our recommendation for a five-year term is based on the situation where the charter school will be transferred to a new chartering authority that they

490have not worked with before. And so in transferring um oversight, we are recommending the shorter renewal term. The ACCS heard this appeal at the February meeting. Um there were two different motions made at that meeting. First was a motion to recommend that the board approve the renewal with the technical amendments proposed by the CDE for a term of seven years. Um four of the six commissioners present voted in favor, one voted against and one abstained. Um and the ACCS does require five votes to pass a motion. So that motion failed. After some discussion, a second motion was made to approve the SBE or to approve the renewal um with the technical amendments pro proposed by the and without a recommended length for the charter term and leaving that decision up to the board. And that

491motion passed with a vote of 5 to1. Um our standard of review um again it is the denovo review which education code summarizes as cons um determining whether the renewal is consistent with sound educational practice and with the interest of the community in which the school is located and along with that we are required to consider the charter school's performance on dashboard state and local indicators. Education code lays out three categories for renewal tracks for charter schools. And these categories are determined based on dashboard data. There's two criteria for each category. Criterion one is based on performance colors on the dashboard. Uh schoolwide performance colors for two years. Criterion two is based on the status or just single year data. um for only the academic indicators um schoolwide and for the the numerically significant student

492groups. Um and this one's also for two years. Quick review of criterion one, uh we won't spend too much time on because the school did not meet criterion one. Um looking at criterion two, uh we only look at indicators and student groups that received a performance color. So for this school, we'll be looking at ELA and math. and we'll be looking at ELNA ELA and math schoolwide. And then we'll also be looking at the student groups of the Hispanic students and socioeconomically disadvantaged students. Here we have two years of schoolwide ELA and math data. Um, sorry, a piece I left out. Uh, part this criterion compares the school's data to the statewide average. And so here you have the school's um status laid out side by side with the statewide averages. And you can see

493for both ELA and math for the past two years, the school scored higher than the statewide average. Moving into the student group data. Here is just ELA, but broken down by student group. Again, this states the statewide average laid out next to the charter schools. And you can see in this one the schools scored higher than the statewide average for all of those. And then for math the same student groups and it is higher for all of those. And based on that is how the school was determined according to the criteria laid out in education code to be a high performing charter school which entitles them to the presumption of renewal and makes them eligible for a renewal term of five, six or seven years. I did want to include the school's growth data um

494forformational purposes. One just so that you know what that data is for the school and also as a new indicator. Um we thought you might be interested in seeing that. And so you can see the school received or achieved the accelerated level for both ELA and math. Um and then between 75 and 80% of students improving their scores. There is one subdivision in educ education code that lays out a um possible denial for a high performing charter school which is the finding that the school is demonstrably unlikely to successfully implement the program set forth in petition due to substantial fiscal or governance factors or that the school is not serving all peoples who wish to attend. Uh both of these findings would require a 30-day notice, reasonably reasonable opportunity to cure and then more findings

495that their corrective action plan was um unviable or had failed. Though education code lays out the presumptive renewal, we do conduct a thorough and comprehensive evaluation of the school and the petition. Um and so first looking at the fiscal sustainability of the school. Um looking at the enrollment projections for the next um the seven years, we want to note that the growth that they are projecting is large. Um but also we've been working with this school for seven years as their oversight entity and we've seen to um en enrollment fluctuations in the past and they do have um adequate reserves should these projections not pan out. their current fiscal position. Uh, their most recent independent audit report, um, received an unqualified status and ending fund balance of about $1.6 million, which is roughly 44% of

496their total expenditures. And for their first interim budget report for the current year, they are projecting to end this year with a little over $1.7 million, which would be roughly 56% of their total expenditures. Um, and just for frame of reference, our SB authorized charter schools um recommends at least 5% reserves. Looking at their projections moving forward for the next three years, um we see forecasting operating surpluses and increasing reserves. And so we've concluded that the charter school is fiscally sustainable. The school since it opened in 2018 has been under the authority of the state board and with the CDE charter schools division conducting oversight on your behalf and the charter school has been in good standing throughout that time. We do want to note for you that the school did receive one letter of

497concern uh in July 2021. Um this was following a change in law um SB126 that uh enacted several transparency requirements that charter schools had not previously been um subject to. And while the school did adopt a conflict of interest policy as they were required to do, um many charter schools had some confusion over who the appropriate um approving body was supposed to be. Um and so school did not have the appropriate uh approval and when we issued the letter of concern, they resolved the issue um the following months. Um besides that or um after that we have no outstanding concerns and over the course of the term we've found the charter school to be in compliance with its charter and theou between the state board and them. I'm noting again the technical amendments that are

498detailed in the item. These amendments do not make any material changes to the program. They are simply updates to assurances and references to statute. often just the letter or number of the subdivision or paragraph um and then the inclusion of the street address to the charter schools facility. We did review all 15 required charter elements um elements that are required by law and with the technical amendments that we detail in the item, we find them to be reasonably comprehensive. And these elements include um a description of the educational program, measurable pupil outcomes, descriptions of governance and student missions among several others. So our conclusion is that um the with the school meeting the requirements for a presumptive renewal as a high performing charter and because we did not find a basis for denying the renewal

499um the CDE recommends that the SBE approve the charter schools renewal petition for a term of five years beginning July 1st, 2026 and ending June 30th, 2031 with the technical amendments detailed in the item. Of course, we'll be here to answer any questions you have for us and then I believe we're moving on to the school now. >> Thank you, Rick. Thank you very much. At at this time we are going to open the public hearing and the public hearing is going to is open at 4:56 p.m. We will first hear from the representatives for the petitioner Bayoint Preparatory Academy San Diego and they will have 10 minutes to make their presentation. Following the Bayoint presentation, we will then hear from the representatives of San Marcus Unified School District should they choose to present and

500they will have 10 minutes to make their presentation. After the presentation, we will open up the phone line for public comment from individuals who were not a part of either presentation. Petitioners, you may begin. You have 10 minutes to present. >> Thank you. Uh thank you, President Darling Hammond. uh Vice President Woods and members of the board. My name is Frank Aguaro. I am the CEO and co-founder of Baypoint Preparatory Academy. We also want to thank CDE staff for seven years of hard work and partnership as well as ACCS commissioners for their thoughtful deliberation and being part of the process that brings us before you today. We're here to present our request for a seven-year charter renewal and excited to share our story. Out of 1,300 charter schools, only 135, 10% have been academically high

501performing for three consecutive years. Baypoint is one of these charter schools. We will share how we accomplish this and provide some background with data in this presentation. We believe this three-year academic high performance is strong evidence to support a seven-year renewal term. With respect to enrollment demographic data, this is the most recent data we have for both the district and the state. Bayoint's demographic enrollment mirrors the state's demographics more closely than the district. This slide demonstrates Bayoint's three-year demographic growth in these significant subgroups. Statistically, schools with growing populations in these subgroups tr trend lower academically. At Baypoint, all students, including the most vulnerable students, are supported to achieve an equitable academically high outcome. Our only student group that decreased was our English learners as a result of reclassifying 13% of those students. We do track

502continue to track all students for four years. All the reclassified students for four years. Here are the most recent cast results compared to schools Bayoint students would otherwise go to. Quite often we receive students at a grade or two behind these subjects. Hence our emphasis and our communication in the community that we do not have a year in a child's life to waste. This slide speaks to Bayoint's ELA growth based on the most recent dashboard data. As shown on the school's dashboard, 76% of Bayoint students not only demonstrated a high percentage of improvement, but also showed strong score growth compared with similar students statewide. Likewise, in math, there was 77% student growth from prior year on the most recent dashboard data. These distance from standard performance slides further supports our request for a 7-year charter

503renewal term. So, how did we achieve this growth? We implemented programmatic changes and academic enhancements. We changed how we use I Ready data to drive our growth. We now use the diagnostic tool rather than we we now use it as a diagnostic tool rather than a summative tool uh to drive our instruction. And then we increase the professional development to allow teachers to use the data to further um to further instructional for further instructional planning and review days. We also implemented a looping model and this is grades one through five. This is where the teachers follow the same group of students over multiple years. We brought science into the classroom rather than push in. So that really helped with our science scores. And then we have an ELOP program that is staff run and that

504enhances also classroom work. Our teachers implement our before and after school care tutoring. That's every day. And our grades six through eight rotate classes based on course subjects. We've also facilitated the interim assessments as well. Our record shows a trend of increased enrollment albeit with a substantial drop in 2024 as a result of this programmatic change that was described in the last slide. These program changes were implemented in 2023. We actually went from an enrollment budget of 277 students to a revised budget of 162 students prior to the fall of 2024. A loss of over a 100 students. again associated with the programmatic change and the subsequent fallout from that change. Although unpopular, the change was has served students academically at a much higher rate as evidenced in the preceding distance from standard slides. The

505purple bar now shows our current enrollment. We were trending a steady growth prior to the drop and then resumed that growth after the drop as evidenced in our current enrollment and the large weight listed students for this upcoming fall. In addition to our three years of high academic performance, Bayoint's governance has been consistently in good standing for the past seven years as documented by CDE. A question was brought up regarding board meetings and a quorum of the board not being met uh for some of the board meetings. For clarification purposes, all board meetings met the quorum requirements. The question was actually a teleconferencing rule interpretation. Once informed, our board in full transparency reconvened, reviewed, discussed, and ratified the agenda action items. In addition to our three years of high academic performance, Bayoint's financials have been

506consistently in good standing for the past seven years as documented by CDE. Our governance and financial good standing supports our request for a seven-year renewal term. This slide provides Bayoint's leadership uh team's educational, business, and charter experience. Baypoint success is further strengthened because of the dedicated and extensive experience of our teaching and student support teams. And further supporting students, we've implemented a healthy food initiative. This is a critical resource for many of our Bayoint families and school safety and security is our top priority. Thanks to the arts grant, we've been able to implement theater and dance programs. This further helps support the whole child. We also have an archery program. This is unique to the San Diego area and the team holds two national qualifications. Archery is open to grades four through eight. Baypoint is

507actively engaging the community by hosting many school events as well as various activities to support individuals in need. We host an annual event honoring veterans, many over a hundred years old, as well as honoring our first responders. Just another way we model kindness and get the students engaged in their community. Our relationship with uh San Diego County of of education has been strong and long lasting. We have ongoing active collaborate uh collaborate collaboration uh with LCAP and ELOP to ensure students to ensure goals are uh data driven. We work together on indu the the induction program as well as CTC with teacher assignment uh assignments and monitoring. We partner and we're They've been really helpful with respect to uh partnering with us regarding SARB and SA SART and we work closely with them on the

508community uh schools grant. We're actually very proud that uh they were we were asked to present at San Diego County Office of Education ELOP um meetings regarding our effective practices and extracurricular initiatives that just happened uh uh recently. So, our long-standing uh strategic partnership with San Diego County Office of Ed does elevate the quality of our instruction and program. Based on this long-standing partnership, we're requesting authorization oversight by San Diego County Office of Education if our charter renewal is approved. in recent communication with Christian Armatus, executive director at for the charter schools services at San Diego County off of education. Quote, SDCE has the statutory capacity to assume that role and would carry out its responsibilities consistent with law. Additionally, quote, "If SBE members inquire about oversight transitions, it would be accurate to state that

509SDCE fulfills its role in accordance with state law and stands ready to implement any action directed by SBE" unquote. At Baypoint, we strongly believe we don't have a year in a child's life to waste. That and our mission statement are what drives every decision we make from governance to finance to academics starting at the top of the board of directors all the way to the child in the classroom. Based on three years of consecutive years as an academically high performing charter school as well as education code section 47607C, we believe Bayoint meets the criteria for a seven-year charter renewal term. As documented by CDE, Baypoint has been compliant in all three areas for seven years. Based on the renewal criteria, if three years of high academics combined with seven years of sound governance and seven

510years of sound financials doesn't meet the criteria, what further steps are necessary to receive a seven-year renewal term? Thank you on behalf of Bayoint Preparatory Academy San Diego's students, teachers, staff, and parents. Thank you. Thank you very much. At this time, I'd like to uh ask if there is anyone from San Marcos Unified School District in the room that would like to present. Okay, seeing none, let's proceed to public comment. We will now open the phone line for public comment. Public comment is limited to one minute and is for people who were not part of the presentations. Members of the public wishing to provide comment on this item may do so by calling the telephone number and using the access code provided on the slide that is now being shown. We encourage you to please

511state your name and affiliation for the record. Please remember to turn down the speaker volume of your computers if you are following the live feed. Speakers will be limited to one minute each. Where speakers require interpretation, two minutes will be provided. Do we have any speakers signed up to provide public comment in person? >> There are no speakers signed up for inperson public comment. >> Thank you. Is there anyone waiting to provide public comment on the phone line? >> Uh yes. I will open the phone line now. Um, caller with the last four digits 1530, please state your name and affiliation for the record. You have one minute. Your time starts now. >> Hi, my name is Elizabeth Miller and I'm a parent of two students at Bayoint Academy, one in TK and one in

512fourth grade who has been at Bayoint since kindergarten. I support the seven-year renewal of Baypoint Preparatory Academyy's charter. Our family appreciates the small class sizes, concern for safety, and personalized curriculum based on students individual needs, especially challenging our high performing students. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 8722, please start your public comment. >> Good afternoon. My name is Briea Loredo. I'm the parent of a student at TK at Bayon Academy. I support the seven-year renewal. This is a great school. It has exceptional teachers, outstanding education. I'm a parent of four kids, and I wish I would have found Bay Point sooner with three of my kids attending public school. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 3587. Please start your public comment. >> Hi, I'm Jonathan Perpich. I'm the father of a

513student in TK. I support the seven-year renewal of Baypoint Academyy's charter renewal application. My daughter has thrived at Baypoint. Uh it is a joy for her to go to school every day and actually we found Bayoint uh because of a referral of of another family that was already going there and we've recommended a couple of our friends and so we are thrilled with the school and really hope that you guys approve the seven-year renewal. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 3271. Please start your public comment. >> Hi, my name is Nelly Hernandez. I'm a parent of a fifth and a seventh grader and I strongly support the Bayoint 7-year charter renewal. My boys have been attending Baypoint Academy since its inception. Although we had other schools options closer to our home, which

514is in Escanido and Baypoint is in San Marcos. It's a long drive, but we have continued to choose Bayoint because we truly believe in the teachers, the staff, and the leadership. The care, guidance, and support they provide to students and families is something special. The staff is dedicated, and it shows the way they support our children both academically and personally. Our family is grateful for everything Bayoint Academy has done for our boys. We're proud to be part of Bayoint family, and I hope this school is granted the opportunity to continue serving students and families for many more years. in the case in this case seven more years. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 7219. Please start your public comment. >> Hi, my name is Andy Laredo. I support the seven-year renewal for

515Bayoint. My son has been thriving at this school and I believe it's in direct correlation of the wonderful teacher and staff. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 7555. You may begin. Good afternoon board members. My name is Sarah and I'm a sixth grade at Bay Point. I've been at Bayoint since kindergarten and this school feels like my second home. Everyone here knows me and cares about me. My teachers have always believed in me, pushed me to do my best, and supported me when things were hard. Bayoint has helped me to learn so much not just in school, but about believing in myself. Because of Big Point, I found archery, which has changed my life. I've qualified for nationals three years in a row. For the past three semesters, I've also been part

516of theater, and it has helped me grow so much. Being on stage helped me become more confident, speak up, and believe in myself in a whole new way. Bay Point gave me a place where it's okay to try and make mistakes and grow. I want to thank Miss Char, Mr. Frank and all my of my teachers for always being there for me and for believing in us even when we don't always believe in ourselves. Miss Chariz is always open to us and we can always talk to her about anything. Baypoint is a family and I'm really proud to be part of it. Please approve Bayoint's petition for seven years so that other students can have the same chances I've had and feel as supported and loved as I do. Thank you for listening. Thank you.

517Next caller ending in 9864. You may begin. >> Good afternoon board members. My name is Kalia and I'm in seventh grade. I have been a student at Baypoint since fifth grade and this school has given me many opportunities to grow and succeed. I love Bayoint because it encoura encourages students to try new things and believe in themselves. I participate in archery and last year I was proud to being ranked one number one in the state for middle school girls. I have been to nationals twice and I'll be going for my third year next month. I am also involved in theater and the leadership team which have helped me build confidence, responsibility and teamwork. I also participate in the annual participated in the annual veterans event in November which taught me respect and appreciation for those

518who have served our country. At Baypoint, I have the opportunity to be mentored by amazing people like Miss Char, Miss B, and Mr. Frank that will carry through for years to come. I respectfully ask for your support to approving the petition renewal for seven years so students like me can continue to learn, grow, and have these meaningful opportunities. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 7643. Please start your public comment. Good evening, members of the California State Board of Education. My name is Zach Wolf, and I'm here today in strong support of Bayoint Preparatory Academy San Diego 7-year charter renewal. I've worked in charter school fiscal services across California for the past 12 years, including seven years in close partnership with Bayoint. During that time, our team at Creative Back

519Office has worked closely with Bayoint's board and school leadership to provide accurate, transparent, and reliable financial reporting. Based on my experience, I can say confidently that Bayoint's board and leadership are among the most committed and operationally sound I have worked with. Financial decisions are discussed in detail with both the board and back office, ensuring strong fiscal controls, accountability, and long-term sustainability. This reflects a clear commitment to transparency and responsible financial management. From a financial and governance perspective, Bayoint is a well-run organization that plans thoughtfully for the future while keeping students at the center of its work. Respectfully urge you to approve Bayoint Preparatory Academy San Diego 7-year charter renewal. Thank you for your time and consideration. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 5251, you may begin. >> Hi, my name is Susanna Diaz. I'm

520the mom of a third grader here at Bayoint. My son was having highly behavioral issues in public schools to the point that he was traumatized, refused to go and he has now found Bayoint and he looks at it as a family. He loves it here. He's academically thriving. He is at grade level. He loves it here. he will refuse to go back to a public school and has stated very clearly that he will rather be homeschooled than go back and leave Baypoint. I highly suggest that you support the second seven-year academic renewal for this school. They have done lifealtering things for my child. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 4518. You may begin. Hello, my name is Ricardo Roland and I strongly support the seven-year renewal of Bayoint Charter Academy. I am

521the uncle to a third grader as well as a big brother to a TK student. Um, I've seen both of them grow and be academically learning so many times within this charter school and I strongly support it. Thank you so much for your time. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 4469. Please start your public comment. >> Hi, my name is Priscilla Nelson and I have a student that attends Bay Point. He started when he was in first grade. He is now in the seventh grade. Before we found out about Bay Point, uh we were uh trying to get him in a public school. The uh principal of the school told us that because he had IEP that kids wouldn't understand what he was saying because my baby couldn't talk. But once we got him

522to Bay Point, Mr. Frank and his angels, the staff there, they helped my baby and my baby, like I said, is now in the seventh grade and he he uh completed um the speech. You can understand everything that he says and that's because of Mr. Frank and staff. And so I support the sevenyear renewal of Bay Point. Um there the renewal. My granddaughter, she will be coming in for kindergarten in a couple of years. So I'm if there was a way they could get longer than seven years, that would be amazing because Bay Point is clearly not just a home for our children, but it's a safe place and that's what we need. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 9336. Please begin. >> Yes. Hello. My name is Ia Canola.

523My daughter um Oana is a fourth grader who is thriving now at Bayoint. So I firmly and strongly support uh Bay Point uh preparatory academy 7-year renewal plan. Thank you so much for your time. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 9221. Please begin. Good evening board members. I'm Gal Fardo, chair of the governing board at Baypoint Preparatory Academy. Um, as the son of Honduran immigrants and a parent who's chosen charter schools for my own children, I understand the transformative power of education that believes in every child's potential. I choose to volunteer my time at Baypoint because of its mission. Um, Baypoint builds discipline, accountability, and resilience in our children. um not just for academic achievement but character and critical thinking that serve these students for life. At Baypoint, we serve many underserved students, English

524learners, families facing economic challenges. Uh that's where I came from as a child and as an adult. I really believe students need someone to believe in them. The results are clear in our academic performance and how our students carry themselves with confidence and purpose. You have a great opportunity to continue supporting a school that's preparing the next generation of leaders who will strengthen our entire community. And I respectfully urge you to renew Bayoint Preparatory Academyy's charter for the next seven years. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. Next caller ending in 8722. Please begin. >> Okay, this concludes public comment for item 13. Thank you very much and thank you to all who called in and especially the students who called in. I as they were speaking I just thought about the seeds of civic

525engagement. So again we appreciate the public comment. Now I'd like to turn to the leazison. I'll first turn over to member Oaken uh to provide some comments and then I'll provide comments after her. Member Oaken >> you have have we concluded the public hearing? No, we have not, but we will right now. Thank you very much. Given that there is no other public comment, I hereby close the public hearing at 5:20 p.m. Thank you, Member Oaken. And now we will begin board discussion beginning with member Oaken and her comments. Thank you. >> Thank you. Um I just wanted to start by um saying it's always such a pleasure to hear about a school that's doing such good work on behalf of kids and families. Um and um the fact that this has been a state

526board authorized school all these years makes me really proud. Um and so um I also want to note just remind us that um based on the criteria by which we're supposed to make our decision, this is a high-erforming charter school, one of only 10% in the state. Um which is a presumption of approval. And um you know this is there are very few times when a school can be approved for more than five years um and this is one of them and um so I would um like us to put to consider that. >> Thank you member Oaken. And I'll just add uh for our consideration in our board discussion um just underscoring again the high performing category that this charter school is designated in. And um just a reminder that CDE recommends a five-year

527renewal. Um but the reasons for the renewal was the fact that they would have a new authorizer and uh I think we know that based on our pres the presentations the there is a relationship already with the point charter and uh if San Diego County Office of Ed is selected to be an authorizer if this charter is renewed uh there is an established relationship there. So, um, to member Oaken's point, I just underscore the there is the opportunity to provide the seven-year term. So, I just want to lift that up and I support that as well. So, let's move into board discussion. Um, at this time, are there any board members that would like to make a comment or any comments or questions? Yes, member Patello Brownson. Um so the presentation was very impressive and

528all of the the data um from the PowerPoint as well as the public public comment. I I just wanted to confirm if there are any statutory guidelines that sort of trigger one way or another about a um extension of five versus seven years um or is that a discretionary uh decision? >> Thank you Rick. Thanks for coming to the microphone. >> Um statute does not lay out criteria for the length of the term. Um just once they are in that high performing track, they're eligible for five, six or seven years. >> Thank you, member Rodriguez. >> Yes. I just want to uh thank the presenters and the callers. I was really moved and inspired by um the the testimony that uh the students and parents all gave. So, thanks for making my day. >> Thank

529you, Member Rodriguez. Are there any other comments from board members, comments or questions? Okay, hearing none. Uh may we have a motion? And just a reminder, board, we have we would have possibly two motions. The first motion would be whether to renew the charter. And if so, that motion needs to include the technical amendments if we were adding that in as well as the term. And once that is done, if that is passed, then we would have a second motion to designate the authorizer for the this school. So, member Oaken, I see your hand. Please go right ahead. >> I'm happy to make a motion. Um, I move that we approve the charter school's renewal petition for a term of seven years with the technical amendments proposed by CDE in the item. >> Thank you.

530May I have a second? Member Rodriguez has a seconded. Thank you very much. It's been moved and seconded. And um, Brooks, please call the role. >> Member Yosha Motari. >> Yes. >> Member Rodriguez. >> Yes. >> Member Pat Brownson. >> Yes. Member Rosco Gonzalez, >> yes. >> Member Olen, >> yes. >> Member Lewis, >> yes. >> Vice President Clever Woods, >> yes. >> Member Escto, >> yes. >> Member GK, >> yes. >> Motion carries. >> Thank you very much. Now we will Yes. Now, we'll need to take up another motion, and this would be to designate designate either the district or San Diego County Office of Education as the charter schools chartering authority. And we did hear from the petitioner that uh their request and desire would be San Diego County Office of Education. Do

531I have a motion on that area? Thank you, member Oaken. Um, I move that we that we delegate San Diego County Office of Education as the authorizer for Bayoint um, Academy. >> Thank you. >> Now second. >> Thank you. Member Esco has been uh moved by member Olen, seconded by member Esco. Brooks, please call the role. >> Member Yosha Modari. >> Yes. >> Member Rodriguez. >> Yes. >> Member Patil Brownson. >> Yes. >> Member Rosco Gonzalez. >> Yes. >> Member. Yes. >> Member Lewis. >> Yes. >> Vice President Clever Woods. >> Yes. >> Member Esco. >> Yes. >> Member GK. >> Yes. >> Motion carries. >> Thank you. Thank you, Rick, for the presentation. Thank you for everyone who spoke um in relation to this item. And I we will I hereby continue the meeting.

532Do I? And end today's session at 5:26 p.m. And look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Thank you.