State Board of Education Meeting September 9, 2021

001well good morning everybody i'm seeing the board members are now present brooks would you please call the role to establish a quorum for the september state board meeting education member son here vice president strauss here number rucker here remember rodriguez here member patilla brownson here member mcquillen good morning here remember glover woods here member escobedo here we have a quorum so um i'd like to commence by saluting the flag and we'd like to ask our student board member rana bananka to please lead us in the pledge of allegiance so we'll wait for a minute for the flag to be visible on the screen and then rana if you'll lead us that would be great please salute i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it

002stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay so um i'm wondering um executive director um allen whether um we want to wait for president darling hammond to do the oath or whether you'd like maybe myself for superintendent thurman i think you can move ahead and administer the oath vice president strauss thank you okay so um we're gonna um administer the oath for our two newest board members which are delighted to have us to have them join us so first i'm going to do it one at a time so dr francisco escobado will be first and then rana bananka will be our second so francisco if you'll raise your right hand and repeat after me i and state your name i francisco escobedo do solemnly swear that i will support and

003defend the constitution of the united states that will support and defend the constitution of the united states against all enemies foreign and domestic that i will bear true faith and allegiance that will bear true faith and allegiance to the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of california to the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of california that i take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion that i will take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion and then i will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which i'm about to enter and that i will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which i am about to enter well thank you and congratulations and welcome to the

004boardwalk escobar we're gonna um introduce you in a minute i want to um do the um i think well actually let's let's welcome you first and then we'll um we'll swear on rana so uh we're delighted to welcome dr francisco escobado as our new board member today he served actually until very recently as the superintendent of chula vista elementary school district since 2010 until his retirement last week he was the superintendent of the year for the association of california school administrators region 18. dr escobado's experience includes working as an assistant superintendent for educational leadership in the south bay union school district and principal research analyst from the american institutes for research since 2001 dr escobado has been adjunct professor of educational administration at san diego state university and he's currently a member of the doctoral

005factory fact faculty i um he was appointed to serve to on the west end board of directors by dr darling hammond last year so please join me in welcoming dr escobedo to our state board of education francisco would you like to say a few words sure i'll say a few words again i am so thrilled being part of this illustrious group and look forward to working together to make just an amazing what i call learning environment for our students great working environment for our teachers and definitely want to help california just continue leading the way in in educating our students so thank you for the kind introduction and again looking forward to this uh school year thank you so um now i'm working i'm going to administer the oath to rona bananka but ron was

006selected i would say from a very very rigorous group of applicants last year she was incredibly impressive which i'm sure you'll learn so rana would you please raise your right hand and repeat after me so i and state your name i run abanka do solemnly swear i will support and defend that i will support and defend the competition of the united states against all enemies foreign and domestic the constitution of the united states against all enemies foreign and domestic that i will bear true faith and allegiance to the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of california that i will bear true faith and allegiance to the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of california that i take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or

007purpose of evasion that i take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion that i will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which i'm about to enter that i will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which i'm about to enter well so let me tell you a little about our amazing new student board member she's a senior at modesto high school in the international baccalaureate program and in addition to serving on the state board of vacate education she serves as a student board member in the modesto city schools so she's had some good practice in her district she is a student representative on her district's lcap committee and wellness committee and as a member of the district student advisory council and inter high council so ronna would you like to

008say a few words yeah well first and foremost thank you so much for administering my oath of office vice president strauss good morning esteem board members and members of the public my name is ronna benica and i'm a senior at modesto high school in modesto california and it is truly my absolute honor and privilege to serve as the student board member on the state board of education this year and i want to just thank the board and the state of california for ensuring that students truly have a full vote and a full seat at the table when it comes to these critical decisions regarding education policy at the statewide level i know that not many states have a position as unique as this one so i'm incredibly grateful for this opportunity and just to give

009a little bit of background about myself i first became interested in education policy when i was a freshman through a classmate of mine in a journalism class who happened to be our district's student board member and ever since then i've been really interested in learning about the policies that shape our classroom and thinking about ways that we can potentially improve them to better student outcomes and so i think that my experiences of serving on my district councils like the lcap committee as you mentioned in the wellness committee and the student advisory council coupled with my experience of serving as my district student board member have really served to refine the lens with which i view education policy again i am truly honored to serve in this position and i'm looking forward to representing all of

010california's 6.3 million students this year thank you wow well welcome to um our board ron and francisco we are so delighted to have you join us um remember president early hammond would you like me to turn it backward just at the beginning of i guess comments from the board and then moving to general announcements let me add my congratulations and yes let's invite comments from the board uh on both of these wonderful appointments and thank you so much vice president strauss for kicking us off this morning my pleasure well i'll just say um dr esquiveto we're going to have a lot to talk about on doctoral classes and instructional leadership and i'm excited to hear about the center that you're you're leading at san diego at the university and uh i just think you'll add

011a lot i actually have read your the lpi study on the work that you did in juventus and i think we're just fortunate to have you and um and i'll just say tarana in the interviews last year we had like twice as many candidates as we've ever had and you weren't incredible we just heard your voice now and i think we will look forward to continuing to hear it i think you play a very important role for us to make sure we keep that at the center of our work and we're excited and hopefully we'll get to work with you in person this year at some point but thank you for being with us today and for what you're going to do for students in california terrific are there other comments from members of the

012board hi this is team i just wanted to um say rana welcome to the board i was on the initial interview panel and when we interviewed rana and some really great students and i was just thrilled to hear that the announcement that you were selected so congratulations and welcome terrific we are delighted to have you ron it's i'm glad i was able to tune in in time to hear your comments and dr escobado it's a treat to have you on the board as well we're doing our second lpi study on chula vista as you as you are exiting and going into your new new job and really appreciate all of the fine leadership you have exhibited both in that district and in the state and looking forward to the months ahead as in your participation

013on the board uh i want to apologize for my later rival there was a miscommunication about uh things on my end and so i'm delighted that we got going uh and that we are off and running on what's going to be a pretty robust board meeting today we have what could be a nine hour agenda we'll see how we manage to be both thorough and efficient in dispatching all of our business as i announced at our july meeting we've launched the fall recruitment and selection process for the following state board commissions the advisory commission on charter schools the california practitioners advisory group and instructional quality commission the state board office is accepting applications until the close of business on friday september 24th so please submit the completed applications as soon as possible i also announced

014in july that the kickoff for the recruitment and selection process for the 2020-2223 state board student member is in operation the state board is accepting applications until five o'clock p.m on friday october 8th so we encourage all eligible students who will be seniors next school year to apply uh then we have one addendum uh the following item item eight the request to ratify california's american rescue plan elementary and secondary school emergency relief homeless children and youth application addendum is in your computer files or packets there is one public hearing on the agenda item five is an appeal from an action of the riverside county committee on school district organization to approve a petition to transfer territory from the coachella valley unified school district to the desert sands unified school district on the consent calendar the

015proposed waiver consent items are w1 through 15 and the proposed regular consent items are items six through nine we do have a couple of changes in the agenda we'll begin with item two which is our mega assessment item then we'll take up item one to hear the state superintendents and board presidents reports we'll reopen this item later this afternoon to take action on the july minutes and receive the state board liaison reports we'll also take up item 11 just after item one this morning uh you need a scorecard to keep track but i'll keep announcing where we're going as we're going there in terms of public input members of the public wishing to call in for public comments should view the live stream of the meeting to know at what time public comment will occur

016for each item public comment may be provided by dialing the phone number entering a participant's 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 public comment will be limited to one minute per speaker item 10 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 a board members please mute your microphones when you're not speaking and keep your cameras at all times on except during the schedule breaks

017and any brief personal breaks you might need to ensure that we maintain a quorum throughout today's virtual meeting if you need to take a brief personal break please text our executive director brooks allen so he will know and can help us maintain a quorum for each item on the agenda there will be an opportunity for you to raise your hand using the zoom participant window if you would like to ask a question or make a comment so we're going to move on to agenda item 2 which is the california assessment of student performance and progress system and english language proficiency assessments with california the request for approval of the smarter balanced summative assessments for english language arts literacy and mathematics blueprints and an update on assessment program activities as a spoiler alert the cde is

018recommending that the state board approve the smarter balanced summative assessments for ela and math blueprints as described in tables one and two for the 2021-22 administration and this item will be presented by malvang of the cde mal please take it away we are not hearing you yet you i have to get myself oriented here into my new environment so thank you president uh darling hammond again this item is item number two of the assessment updates uh good morning i am um our superintendent thurman president darling hammond and our esteemed board members i am malvang the director for the assessment development and administration division um again this is the mega assessment update item before i go into this formal presentation though i would like to let you know about some staffing changes in the assessment development

019and administration division of the california department of education i want to just take a moment to congratulate dr eric zilbert our associate director who has recently retired just want to share a little bit about his contribution to um california's uh the department of education and california students and teachers over the last 20 years our dr zilber has contributed tremendously through the multiple roles that he has had in our division and he has provided educational measurement or psychometric expertise for all of our statewide programs such as the california english language development test the california assessment of student performance and progress the english language proficiency assessments for california or elpac just to name a few and he has guided the test development analyzed data developed systems for reporting test results and participated on the cde technical design

020group and contributed to as well as collaborated with the analysis measurement and accountability reporting division on the growth model work furthermore he facilitated our casp in elpac technical advisory group meetings to ensure that cde has the access and california has access to expert guidance of leaders in the field of assessment to assure the highest quality assessment program possible and dr zilber certainly has made a deep and lasting impact on assessments in california thank you dr zilbert one other change i would like to update you on is to remember michelle glippa she was an associate governmental program analyst in our division who lost her life due to coven 19 in november 2020 uh for the last 14 years michelle glippa's work spanned across four different assessment programs in our division [Music] and she was on a

021team of three people to support the work of eight units consisting of about 50 staff members and and multiple contractors facilitating the review and approval process of over a thousand assessment deliverables per year and that's only the ones that are numbered in each of the positions that she has held she has excelled in everything that she did she held herself and others to the highest standards she demonstrated an exceptional work ethic she was professional punctual and reliable and she has had she has an excellent eye for detail and she kept help keep all the project deliverables of the division moving along so her death was devastating and painful for our division as well as all those who knew her and due to the impacts of covet 19 there was not much we could do however

022this summer we were able to share in the celebration of her life with her family and friends and we we certainly did lose a great employee friend and overall beautiful person inside out and although she is no longer with us she is not forgotten so here i will begin my formal presentation this is the again the assessment item and i will be joined later by cindy kazanas the director of the assessment the analysis measurement and accountability reporting division in addition we have mary our aunt marianne arcella the executive director of ets or educational testing service and tony albert the executive director of the smarter balance assessment consortium are available to assist with questions during this item so the item before you is both action and information item in the presentation i will provide an overview

023of the recommendation for approval cindy will join me and in presenting the use of assessments for accountability in the upcoming years and then i will circle back and give you some key updates in the california assessment of student performance and progress or casp in english language proficiency assessments for california or alpac updates and wrap it up with the national international assessments update and then bring us back to the action of the recommendation and here is the recommendation the california department of education recommends that the calif the california state board of education approve the smarter balance summative assessments for english language arts literacy or ela and mathematics blueprints as described in tables one and two for the 2122 administration and in future years as laid out in tables one and two in the item okay so

024just to give a little uh background i will provide this overview and background on our recommendation um remember that the the every student succeeds act is our uh has section 111b2 which requires that states uh that a statement administer annual assessment so um in in reading language arts and mathematics and um to students in grades three through eight and once in high school and then science uh which is for grades bands uh once in grade spans three through five six six through nine and once in high school and then um english language the english language proficiency assessment which is to all eligible students in great in kindergarten through grade 12. so under our california assessment system we have the casp as defined in education code section 60601-60649 and that includes the smarter balance summative assessments

025for english language arts and math our science california science test and the california alternate assessments for english language arts math and science and we have an optional california spanish assessment for spanish reading language arts and this is to meet our state as well as federal requirements under essa and then including the alpac as defined in our education code sections 313 and 60810 and that includes our initial alpac the summative alpac and the alternate alpac so again providing a little background in the last school year 20 20 21 the u.s department of education did provide some flexibility to support the administration of assessments due to the impact of the covet 19 pandemic so the state board of education our sbe did support the flexibilities and approved adjusted blueprints for the smarter balance summative assessments for ela

026math to be used for one year only so the cde continues to seek opportunities to maximize flexibility for our local educational agencies in california and also trying to keep the critical elements of the infrastructure intact so so for us to use the adjusted blueprints and preserve that maximum flexibility for our local educational agencies for this spring 2022 testing the sbe would need to approve the continued use of the adjusted blueprints for both the ela and mathematics per our state education code and at this time the cde does not recommend changes to other smart non-smarter balanced uh blue blueprints so the rationale for this for the adjusted blueprints and continuing to use them is that they are derived from the adopted smarter balance summative assessments for ela math and this uh the the uh there's a

027reduction in the computer adapted test portion or the cat portion by about 50 for each claim and this will also maintain comparable proportion of content across all the claims and i'll say a little bit more about claims later for example a claim is in english language arts in mathematics i'll just give a little background is you'll have the claims such as reading listening research inquiry writing those are claims under a content area and it'll also maintain proportion of depth of knowledge of the depth of knowledge being assessed and this will keep the performance tasks intact because they are integrated tasks so some advantages for continuing to use the adjusted blueprints are that they do reduce the amount of time students spend on the english language arts and math summative assessments so to allow more time

028to really fully utilize our comprehensive assessment system which includes the use of other resources that support the formative assessment process such as our tools for teachers that have resources in english math and science and then our interim assessments throughout the year and this will also maximize connectivity as well as minimize the potential for having network issues since all of our assessments are online so this form length change will support the needs of specific groups of students allowing for such things as fewer breaks more flexibility and scheduling for local educational agencies and also reduce the potential for test security incidents just to name a few and then continuing with some additional advantages uh leas will continue to meet state and federal testing requirements for english language arts and math the overall scores the scale scores and

029the achievement levels are still reported at the individual student level and they will continue to be reported in support of the growth model calculations as well so all the claims as i mentioned such as like reading writing listening research inquiry results will continue to be provided for groups of 30 or more students on the public reporting website and this does in terms of reclassification or usage for reclassification of the english language arts results the reclassification guidance will not for english learners is not expected to be changed or impacted so some advantages or disadvantages are um that again i just want to reiterate that the individuals claim categories will not be available this year the 21 22 school year and the summative assessment target reports for groups of students will not be available as well however

030we will conduct further analysis and it is anticipate that we can create or work with the smarter balanced assessment consortium that we could come up with composite claim categories for individual students and the target reports for groups of students will be available in the following year the 22-23 school year so the recommended just a blueprint this table provides the recommended adjusted blueprint for the english language arts test again the total number of items are provided for reference at the top the first row indicates how many items the adopted full form consisted of and the second row indicates what is in the adjusted form so using the same rationale the performance task item counts remain the same the difference is in the computer adapted items and here are the claims uh first claim is reading second

031is writing a third is listening and the fourth is research inquiry for the english language arts assessment okay and then moving on to the estimated of the recommended for math um again the total items by grade are provided for reference at the top and again the first row indicates uh or shows how many items are in the adopted form for the full form for math and then the second row indicates what is in the adjusted form and in math the claims are concepts and procedures problem solving communicating reasoning modeling and data analysis again the difference is in the computer adapted items or the cat portions so i want to give some context to the estimated testing times for the smart balance summative assessments we have shared this in the past but i would like to

032revisit this table displays the estimated testing times in hours and minutes by grade for both uh english language arts and mathematics and then the combined time of both assessments as we cover um there are no projected shorter times for the performance tasks as they are unchanged however the testing time is in the cat portion across all grades and tests and the last two columns show the comparison of estimated testing times for the full form and the adjusted form so there's no there is significant time savings especially um at the upper grades and although we have provided estimated testing times here these tests are untimed that means you could take them and stop at a certain point pause the test and continue where you left off in a different on a different day as i mentioned

033earlier the cde does not recommend changes to other non-smarter balanced cast summative assessment blueprints as they are much shorter so this table displays the estimated testing times in hours and minutes for the california alternate assessments or caas for english language arts math and science and then the california spanish assessment as well and the cast there is our regular science test and this um table here is the estimated testing times for summative outpac this test is already much shorter in terms of estimated testing times uh summative alpac is about two hours or less than two hours in the lower grades and about three hours for the upper grades so before we go on to the next steps i know that there have been concerns about the reduction of proposing or continuing to use the reduction in

034the in the adjusted blueprint i just want to say that overall a reduction in the test blueprint does not mean a decrease in accuracy right we're very thoughtful about this process the assessments will continue to measure what it is designed to measure the parents and guardians will continue to receive reports as one measure or one data source of their students performance and schools and staff and families will continue to be able to make observations and identify achievement gaps among groups of students the overall student scores will continue to support the calculation of the growth model measures and in discussing our next steps here we are recommending that the cd is recommending that the sbe approve the continued use of the smarter balance summative assessments for english language arts and mathematics uh adjusted blueprints for this

035school year the 2021 and 22 with the intent that we are going to use this in future years too it's just that at this temporary time we want to make sure that we continue to further analyze the blueprints and evaluate and identify if there's any additional changes that may be needed but at this point in time this is the adjusted blueprint that we will continue to use and probably we will prioritize the comparability of data in future years you know using as we use the adjusted blueprint and we'll continue to analyze the data and propose the approach to maximize its use in growth model calculations again the cde will continue to collaborate with the smarter balanced assessment consortium because that's how we get our english language arts and math assessments and this is a multi-year

036approach and process we are going to explore um the reporting of composite claim categories based on the analysis of our of the content standards and the consortium-wide data we are members of a consortium so these uh composite claim categories are expected to allow california to meet peer review requirements and expectations in english language arts and mathematics and at this point i'm going to pause for a little bit and have uh in bring up cindy kazanas the cde director for our um analysis measurement and accountability reporting division thank you mal good good morning members of the board and welcome to our new members see my head's cut off there okay i need to to be mouth-sized uh i am here today to talk a little bit about the interaction between assessments and accountability and of course

037um we are in constant communication and i just wanted to acknowledge mao and the work of their division in helping us with so many things over the last couple years specifically just in the context of assessments and our accountability system for this year the 2020 california school dashboard just to make sure that we're on the same page we are not producing state indicator data of course that's in a direct response to the federal labor that we received as well as assembly bill 130 that was passed by the legislature and signed into law by governor newsome we are committed and as an eb 130 does require us to post data that we determined to be valid and reliable for the school year to support leas in development of their local controlled accountability plans and so we'll

038do that through a variety of means including our dashboard additional reports data quest or other uh reporting websites as we look ahead to 2022 and the dashboard for this current school year we are looking at a state indicator display of status only based on of course just the data from this school year and of course we're required under that federal waiver to identify schools and ab-130 requires us to look at identifying districts using that data set we will bring that to the board as we have more information next year and then with 2023 again looking ahead a couple years the state indicators will go back to normal we'll produce not only status but change and we'll have the performance colors based on the data from the two years because you need the two years of

039data to create a color and why this is important is because we're headed towards a student growth model and in giving uh just a brief update again for for new members especially the board adopted the methodology for a student growth model this past may the model captures academic growth for schools leas and student groups for grades four through eight in both english language arts and mathematics we used data historical data to construct this model from the 2016-17 2017-18 and 2018-19 school years we are we did produce individual student growth scores which have been shared with districts through our assessment operation system called toms that was done at the beginning of the summer we are working towards a public release of our aggregate growth scores in later this month specifically this coming monday if you're interested

040we're hosting a webinar to talk about our communications toolkit for the student growth model as well as what to expect with the public release specifically how this affects the this item affects growth model right now is that we need to have three years of consecutive data to produce the growth model of course that's for the same students um in our english use in our english language arts and mathematics assessment scores with this frame of reference in mind the soonest we can produce this model would be 2024 that said we are already in the beginning of a school year that is experiencing a lot of change a lot of turmoil and i just want to point out that we are very dependent on the fact that students have to test come spring if we don't have

041a full testing regimen of smarter balance this will be at risk so the participation rate is really important when we think about producing a growth model three years from now but that said we are working really closely with now we're working really closely with the testing contractor to make sure that any adjustments to the assessments will not um will not deter us from the goal of producing um our first growth scores uh using real data not historical data in 2024 with that i'm happy to turn it back over to now thank you cindy so with that i will give you a quick overview of our um castman elpac updates because we're constantly working and developing and administering and uh communicating with the field so we want to share some updates with you as well as

042you know the science uh test the california science test or cast is constantly being developed and having additions just want to make you aware that we have some new cast range achievement level descriptors web page developed and and deployed and the range alds or achievement level descriptors are really detailed descriptions of observable evidence of student performance by grade and content and they do they were developed to provide evidence of how students knowledge skills and abilities change and become more advanced across the achievement levels so that is available another update is that um we have updated the item content specifications and um with that we have about a 175 oh let me see something the i like something that's wrong with the computer oh yeah remind me tomorrow we're a little busy here so yes and

043so we have about 175 item specifications for the cast um and they do provide details on each assessed dimension of a california next generation science standards or ngss performance expectation so the revisions were made to the science and engineering sub practice assessment targets and the possible phenomena or context sessions sections another thing is that we're implementing this year we are implementing the state board of education approved cast revised blueprint that you had approved in january of 2020 but we were not able to implement it yet due to what happened in 2019 as well as 20 20 21 school years another update is that we have the california alternate assessment for assessment for science updates here i just want to let you know that this assessment already opened on september 7th remember they're embedded tasks that

044are administered close to instruction and we have also made some improvements in the area of the directions for administration to give consistency across all the alternate assessments starting with this assessment and then we revised the practice test to include two science connectors and com and to correspond with that structure with the structure of the operational assessment so that they will be able to use that teachers and students will be able to use that in the field and then there's also a new response options for alternate assessments resource that was developed for test examiners and we encourage educators and examiners to look at these resources so that it will help them have a smooth administration another update that we bring to you on a regular basis are our interim assessments for ela math it is part

045of our comprehensive assessment system and the three types of the smarter balanced interim assessments that are available are um like i mentioned that there are three types so there's the interim assessment comprehensive uh the interim comprehensive assessments or we call icas sorry there's a lot of acronyms thrown at you here but hopefully it will tell you what they are here the interim assessment blocks these are smaller chunks of assessments based on assessment targets and then there's the focus iabs that are also smaller blocks of assessment interim assessments but they're a little bit more focused on a few assessment targets and we have for the whole state to use is we have over 200 interim assessments including 38 new focus iabs and they have been available since august 18th the tools for teachers our formative assessment

046resource uh resources website um is just want to share a few or a couple formative assessment resource workshops that we've done with educators over the summer and um this is really to develop a formative assessment resource for the tools for teachers we have the science workshops that were held in may and june and 43 california science educators participated i'm happy to say that my staff here at the division worked really hard to plan and lead this workshop along with the assistance of local educational agency staff who served as team leads and coaches and then during the workshops the educators uh particip educator participants they really worked in teams to develop new science formative assessment resources for kindergarten through grade five for inclusion in the tools for teachers website so again a few other little things

047um each of the science resource was developed um was peer-reviewed by other participants and coaches so they did a lot of work just wanted to you know do a little shout out to our state because california is the first day to add science resources to the smarter balanced tools for teachers resources and more than 50 science resources are available now um in terms of uh the um english language arts and math workshops we did hold a few or in june and july as well and there were 15 california state network of educator members we have a network of educators when we say things like sne state network of educators we have a team of them across the state they participated and then we also had three cde state lead leadership uh state leadership team members

048that participated at this time we have more than 75 new uh english language arts and math formative assessment resources developed at these workshops and they'll be available later this fall in the tools for teachers another um update that i want to share with you is that in oh sorry i'm a little ahead of myself it's the alternate alpac um as a reminder the alternate opac is designed specifically for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities and this assessment is aligned with the 2012 california english language development or eld standards through the eld connectors so the eld connectors provide an aligned expectation of students english language proficiency that has been reduced in depth breadth and complexity to make sure they are appropriate for english learner students with the most significant cognitive disabilities so they the alternate

049all packs serve two purposes and the initial alternate alpac determines a student's initial classification of either english learner or initial fluent english proficient and the summative alternate elpac provides a measure of a student's annual progress toward english language proficiency and support for decisions made on students reclassification so once both the initial and summative alternate alpac are operationalized they will replace the locally determined alternate assessments and we and will provide the statewide consistent measurement of english language proficiency for this eligible group the alternate alpaca operational field test sorry i'm kind of flying by a lot of things but we have a lot to cover today so i want to let you know and make you aware that we are as last year we we plan to have the alternate alpaca operational field test but due to

050conditions that you are aware of we had to postpone this alternate uh opec operational field test to this school year they will open on november 1st through february 15th that is the window and uh to prepare for um the field test we have made online training available in our in the moodle training site since uh last november and for this fall we have scheduled question and answer sessions to provide local educational agencies additional support and once the field test has been completed educators will participate in a standard setting or in standard setting meetings in early spring of 2022. so the proposed threshold scores are anticipated to come to the board of education in may of 2022 and then by july of next year our hope is that the initial alternate lpac will launch and the

051summative alternate alpac will launch in february of 2023 i mentioned a little bit about that about peer review earlier on our um blueprint section but this is really a peer review federal peer review update for you on the federal peer review is really a process through which uh a state documents that it has met federal law and requirements so under essa um in the development and administration of its uh its assessments california has provided and submitted evidence for federal peer review review for our um english language arts and mathematics assessments and for the alternate assessments for english language arts and math as well and then we will provide an update with the results of the reviews when they become available another um thing is uh the first submission of the cast or the california science

052test was initially scheduled for this summer but has been postponed till december of this calendar year so another um change that we wanted to be aware of is that there our california alternate assessments are developed for students with the most significant cognitive disabilities and and if a an individualized education plan team or ip team deems it's appropriate for a student to take an alternate assessment the student is eligible for all the alternate assessments so to assist the local educational agencies with this we have made some systems enhancements to ensure uniformity of assignment of alternate assessments for the students who qualify in our test operations management system so this is across the board for all the alternate assessments and we have worked with our the multilingual support division as well as the special education division in

053coming to this guidance almost there you're still with me we're we're going to cover a little bit of the national and international assessment updates in this next section so um one of the first uh assessments is our national assessment of educational progress or nape nape is the largest nationally represented assessment and continuing assessment of what u.s students know and can do in various subjects so since 1969 nape has been mandated by congress and our california students do participate in nape every year and nape results are reported as the nation's report card so depending on the assessment results may be at the national state or large district level uh three of our california school districts participate in district level nape and that is fresno san diego and los angeles so for this school year for 2022

054approximately 550 schools are selected to participate grades four and eight we'll be participating in math and reading and then grade eight will uh be participating in civics and u.s history and then there's also uh nape also consists of age there's a age nine long-term trend math and reading assessments um being administered just prior this was supposed to be administered prior to the cova pandemic however um we it was not so it's postponed till this year and results from this 2022 long-term trend assessment will allow for pre and post pandemic uh comparisons and then the name 2022 testing window is mid-january through march uh an international assessment of reading is called the progress in international reading literacy survey or pearls it is a minister every five years in grade four and pearls um did draw students

055from over 50 countries and the results are from this assessment are used by researchers and policy makers to inform discussions of international competitiveness 30 california schools have been selected to participate in pearls and um it takes about three to three hours to complete so it's a it's not that short of a assessment either and will be administered in october so given the current conditions we're not sure um how everything will be rolled out as well but we want to be aware of this assessment and then the program for international student assessment or pisa this is for 15 year olds in reading math and science and financial literacy just to highlight some things 80 countries participate or administer it every three years and again they are used to um look at uh and form uh international

056competitiveness when they can compare us to other countries and it really takes about four hours um for students to complete this one so there will be a field test um this fall um however again about 10 schools are partic are selected to participate in this field test and then the last international test we will cover is the trends in international mathematics and science if you hear tim's studies and comparing us to other countries the assessment is really full fourth and eighth grade students in math and science over 65 countries participate and again it is really to dis inform us about international competitiveness in these content areas this one takes about three hours so again this field test is planned for spring of 2022 and 10 schools have been selected to participate so um just i'm

057wrapping up here just reminding you to join us and follow us on the assessment cde assessments twitter account i will stop here for any questions or turn it over to our board president thank you so much mal uh we'll put up the slide for public comment now and we will take some clarifying questions but we want to get the cue going for public comment members of the public wishing to provide comment on this item can do so by calling the phone number and using the access code provided on the slide that is shown now while we're waiting for members of the public to call in i want to ask a member son if she has any initial comments before me and then i'll check for clarifying questions before we go to public comment um remember

058son do you have thank you thank you so thank you mal for a very thorough um presentation so i wanted just to speak to the action portion of this item um with regards to the blueprints um i fully support um a shorter testing period at a time so um at the same time you know my concern when i spoke to staff around this was that it seemed like we had taken so much time to build up the blueprints and that it seems very quickly that we are reducing the items so i was very um glad to hear um mal and her team will continue to do analysis and to continue reviewing and looking at the accuracy of these the items and the reduction of the blueprint items um i also and working with the smarter

059balance consortium as well um what i also wanted just to emphasize and that we're very clear to leas and to schools um that we had a pretty significant disruption after 2019 and so what cindy was speaking to around looking at the growth sword not starting and resetting basically in 20 20 20 21 22. i think that is right so for those schools and leas that have did take the casp ela and math in the spring last year if they are looking at well our scores went higher or lower than 2019 i think that there was enough disruption that we can't really say that you can compare that these were apples to apples comparisons and so we want to make sure that we understand that um that we had a significant change in this last year

060and that we should not be trying to look back at the past and doing comparisons moving forward especially with the changes in blueprints and everything else thank you appreciate that i want to thank mao for not only her leadership on this item but her leadership over the whole year it's been an intense and difficult year there's been a lot of adjustment needed mal you've done a terrific job in helping us through uh wend our way through this process and appreciate the work to queue us up for this year um i do uh favor the recommendation that is being brought to us to adopt this shorter form i am very familiar with the technical advisory group that advises the smarter balanced consortium they're an excellent and thoughtful group of psychometricians they have looked at this and

061i know we can ask more questions of tony since he's here if we need to but they um you know i feel confident in their judgment about the stability and the reliability of the scores and i appreciate you having articulated the advantages i do also want to note that um to the point that cindy kazanis made we are uh you know off to a a good start uh in the face of kovid's delta variant this year relative to many other states and i'll say more about that later but there is no um we have all become humble in terms of predicting the future in the face of this this virus there are other variants yet to come and we want to be able to use the test this year it's i think a sound judgment

062to go with the shorter form which will make it more feasible more doable more manageable in whatever circumstances we have this spring to ensure that we are able to assess students learning so i'm very much in favor of uh this this i think uh prescient act and we will hear more from the public and get clarifying questions on the table before we deliberate i think that there may be a clarifying question from member rucker yeah i thank you very much board president um darling hammond i have a clarifying question for now and also for cindy now when you were going through and explaining the assessment times for the shortened smarter balanced assessment based on the blueprint you identified the amount of time the administration of the items would of the assessment items would be in

063each grade since the tests themselves are not timed for the students during the administration if there are students who actually do take longer than the times that are shown in your chart they will still be allowed that additional time they will if they want that they won't be cut off is that true sorry uh yes absolutely have as much time as they need to take the test within the window that their uh their district has determined yeah so i understand that so for the assessment so within the assessment window they want more time than what's shown on your chart that's fine thank you i appreciate that clarification and then cindy my question to you on clarification you spoke to when we anticipate the first time the growth model would actually be able to give a

064report based on the idea that we would need three years of statewide assessment data for the to use the growth model and so you said that that could happen in and if i heard correctly i want to make sure i heard this correctly the only obstacle to that a likely timeline could be some disruption or some problem with statewide assessments the changes that now talked about on the change in the blueprint or the length of the assessment itself for shortening the smarter balanced assessments have nothing to do with the timeline for implementing the growth model is that correct yes and just examine your prior point about um the only the only thing would be the disruption i i think to um president darling hammond's comment earlier i i'm not going to commit to anything on

065on that piece we are doing our best to make sure that you know we have as little disruption as possible but you're absolutely right as far as the the test length and such that should not impact the growth model it's something that we've been keeping an eye on like i said with mao and the psychometricians uh and the experts girls model experts at ets so um we are we are all you know for forward-looking um ready to produce something come 2024 um assuming that again we have testing for three consecutive years okay thank you very much i do see other hands and i just want to remind all of our members that we are only doing clarifying questions right now so anything that is more deliberative we're going to wait till after public comment but

066i do have hands here for member burr and member patel brownson remember and you are unmute i was so articulate too i know thank you um i just wanted to clarify first just to point out in the item itself the the written item there i feel like there's a lot more rationale for the um recommendation that i would just want to call people's attention to but in that right write-up i just also wanted to clarify that the blueprints we're being asked to approve here are identical to the blueprints that we use last year again in the face of a raging pandemic that we have no way of predicting whether or not it's going to end this spring so that that was my clarifying question are those identical the second one and maybe is a question

067for tony but i think mal could answer it as well how many other states in the consortium are have gone to a shortened uh assessment thank you i believe tony is on but the question to your the first part of your the answer to the first question you have is yes oh the answer to the first question that you had is yes the the adjusted blueprint or bringing forward is identical to the one we used in 2021. um and tony i don't have the number committed to memory so if you are available if you could share how many other member states yeah thank you oh go ahead go ahead brooks oh thank you mel um uh for the record this is tony albright uh president darling hammond and members uh member burr uh i believe

068i i don't have the exact number but i believe seven states used the uh some form of the adjusted blueprint last year we anticipate that many if not all of those states are going to continue the use of the adjusted blueprint this spring but we haven't we haven't surveyed that and i think a lot of states are in a similar position uh still trying to to have those conversations with uh critical policymakers and and uh and stakeholders uh about what should happen this spring and um did we get all of your questions answered remember burr i believe we did yes thank you okay i'll go ahead then to remember patio bronzon thank you um i just was looking um back at sleds 11 and 12 around uh both what parents would receive and then also

069what reporting would happen for groups of 30 or more so if if you could just clarify what would parents receive in um versus what they'd receive in 22-23 um and then on slide 11 i think it says that the claims um would be uh released for groups of 30. um but then on slides 12 it says that the asses summative assessments for groups of 30 won't be available and i just if you could clarify the timeline for that as well yes i can do that what parents and students will receive are the overall performance scores the scale scores as well as the achievement level scores at the individual student level while we continue to look at reporting out at the composite claims in 2023 the following year so the claim results when we group them

070by uh groups of students of 30 or more on the public reporting site you'll see in the claims of reading writing research inquiry or listening for under english language arts they can't be done at the individual level for the adjusted form in this current state however we can do that at the group level at the state level to give you an indication of how students performed in those areas and that will be publicly reported so sorry for purposes of what parents would receive in 21 22 does that mean they'd get for example school level data and aggregate state level data yeah those will be public information but in terms of their individual student score reports they will um they'll be able to see how their students perform and the scale score that the student received

071and their achievement level the levels of you know not met standard at or near standard med standard and exceeded standard so they'll still receive those achievement levels as well as the scale score and where the students scored landed on the honor the range of scale in and that would happen in 2122 still yes it will happen in the 2021 we are providing that to parents okay thank you and maybe just to add to the clarification there the the scores that would not be available for this year only are the claim scores which are the sub scores for particular sub elements of the broader ela and math uh let's move to public comment then uh and so uh do we have any public comment yes we do have public comment very good hello caller please state

072your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now caller ending in 8945 your time begins now are you there caller hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now my name is lexi lopez from edvoice edvoice recommends the board rejected proposed blueprint and request other options be presented to reduce test taking time losing key summative data makes it more difficult to gauge performance on key standards and more difficult to tackle equity of opportunity and identify achievement gaps across subgroups this is not a wise balance of testing time with actionable data for teachers and parents there are other ways to balance testing time in item contracts to collect meaningful summative data the proposed blueprint will likely force leas into redundant

073summative testing at the end of the year when loss of instructional time is of greatest concern lack of comparable data could also delay the implementation of the student growth model during these times schools should be providing parents with more information about student performance not less thank you hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now good morning jessica sacco on behalf of children now welcome new board members i'd also like to align the comments with the previous speaker i'd also like to thank you for the inclusion of the presentations and is kazan is relative to the potential impact of this recommendation on the development of the growth model while i appreciate the assurance that the assessment results from the short film are accurate they do

074not yield results with the same level of position as the full form particularly as it relates to the claim category currently the starting smarter website refers to parents offers resources and information to families on supporting their students based on the distinct claim categories children now is concerned that the continued use of the short form will not provide families with the detailed level of information they need as well as this becoming a more permanent change i asked the board to recall that the decision to administer a short form assessment was made in a time of emergency and was never intended to be made permanent i will conclude with the question which is with a short form assessment yoga lexile and quantile scores yielded from the full form assessment that were to be added to the student

075school report thank you hello caller please state your name and affiliate for the record you have one minute your time begins now good morning my name is michael juba and i'm a classroom teacher representing the california teachers association cta strongly supports the cde's recommendation to continue to use the shorter adjusted blueprints for the smarter balanced summative assessments in ela and mathematics for the 2021 22 administration and beyond the cde's recommendation will provide several benefits for students and teachers first reducing the number of questions in the computer adaptive portions of the test will shorten the overall length of the test and reduce test and time second shorter testing blocks will give teachers and schools additional flexibility in how they administer the state assessments and finally we believe that the most accurate and actionable indicators of an

076individual student's mastery standards will come from the multiple local measures used by teachers that are embedded within the classroom thank you hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now hi i'm marco hernandez with california's together i also welcome you board members our organization supports the intent of using shorter assessments which would reduce the amount of time students spend on the summative assessment providing for increased instructional time especially this year as well as more flexibility and scheduling for adequate monitoring we understand that the adaptive portion and the integrated performance task of each test will be maintained and overall scale scores and achievement levels will be comparable to those of prior years however we need a better understanding of the impact that implementation of a shorter

077test would have on the implementation of the growth model specifically if we revert to the full test of next year will we be able to use the two versions of the test to compute the growth model the board should not take any action that would further delay the implementation of the growth model thank you hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now good morning dr darling camden the board members dianaboo association of california school administrators access fully support cde's recommendation to meet the xbac suggested students and from 2012 administration the justice blueprints bring straight the right balance at this time as the cover 19th pandemic continues due to the short-term assessment educators will have additional time to focus on accelerating student learning and improving

078student mental and social emotional health while also collecting when necessary status enhance student learning thank you hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now caller ending in 9571 it is your time to speak hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now this is c vancouvey of the charter schools development center we support the goals of the shortened test and appreciate the consideration of strains on schools at this time we are concerned about achieving confidence in the data as well as clarity about what various cast metrics do and do not mean confidence and clarity are important to understanding schools successes and opportunities system-wide does a metric show students absolute performance growth or school's relative

079value added to school here's an example of how lack of clarity has high stakes impacts last spring a charter school was closed but actually achieved growth scores above the state average almost across the board the school had been labeled low performing however based on distance from standard scores this led to confusion and ultimately to the closure of a school achieving above average growth for its 800 students this is a sign that we need to do more to achieve system-wide understanding about this data we ask that the board direct the cde to improve clarity about what metrics do and don't do to achieve greater system-wide hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now good morning my name is preparing organization network i'm calling to recommend

080for the board to reject the proposed action to shorten the math and english language of art assessment for spring 20 2022 and for an organization that represents parents we want full and accurate information about the performance of our students and that's critical this year especially when a lot of families are experiencing variance in the quality of education depending on the program depending on whether they chose for their children to return to in person or whether they chose um at any point they choose independent studies and so having a full information is key so that we can better support students and so we recommend doing the full assessment as usual thank you that is the end of our public callers all right thank you very much um we'll now begin board discussion uh and board members

081please remember to raise your hand in the participant panel of zoom if you have a question or comment i see a couple of them are raised i do want to start and ask one clarifying question myself before we get going with the full board discussion and this is for cindy kazanis cindy uh earlier you talked about the importance of having stable growth measures my understand i believe that you were heard to be by some callers to be in opposition to this recommendation in that concern but i i thought i understood that if we did this we would also be considering a continuing the short form in the future so they would be comparable so i just want you to clarify uh if i understood correctly and um what your major point was all right happy

082to clarify my major my major point was we are absolutely in support of this recommendation we are working very closely with our assessments division and our testing contractor to ensure that any future changes to these assessments will have as little impact as possible on the growth model so that we can use the consecutive years of data to produce something in 2024. great thank you um i will now start the board discussion and we have a member escobado and member patil bronson in the queue so i'm bruscobado great thank you president darling hammond um just just a a thought about i know one of the major disadvantages of going to a certain assessment is the individual claim scores just a thought i applaud what we're doing in formative assessments and i just wonder if we can

083amplify those workshops so that these claims scores can be created through the format assessment and and and i think we can never um as an organization we also have to magnify formative assessment as much as our summative assessments that it is truly during these formative assessments when we actually will be able to monitor student growth and second um with parents i i know um there's always a lack of understanding of sometimes the results i know our organizations have have clips to help parents understand the scores and i i just hope that there's messaging for our parents and the changes and what are these changes and what these changes mean and then how can parents help their students given them ideas and how to help their students once they receive uh these assessments thank you thank

084you and and i thank you for mentioning the formative and i'll also add a mention of the interim assessments smarter balance has built out quite extraordinary repertoire of both formative and interim assessments that do allow educators to drill down and see how students are doing you know within those individual claims and even below that level within particular content and topic areas so we do have those tools we are working hard to make sure that people can use them effectively and so that is a an important part of the system as a whole remember glover woods it looks like remember patio browns and you took your hand down because it was still up from before is that right okay remember glover woods thank you president darling hammond and good morning again um i just wanted to

085share my support as well for the shortened form um i know it's been mentioned that we approved that shortened blueprint really as a response to the emergent situation with the pandemic and what we do know is that even though students have returned to in-person instruction which is absolutely wonderful the school year has had a varying type of start if you will as unfortunately students and staff have contracted the virus or people have needed to be quarantined so there's still a lot of uncertainty as was mentioned in president darmian hammond's comments being able to approve the shortened form the shortened blueprint really provides leas with the opportunity to start planning now what those testing schedules would need to look like in the spring in case there needs to be some mitigation and result to uh making

086sure that everybody is safe so i um definitely want to be sure that we keep that in mind and also as it's been mentioned in some other comments the fact that there are local assessments as well formative assessments that are being administered at schools that will continue to provide additional information to students and their performance uh so we're excited we want to be able to have the smarter balance assessments administered in the spring we know those summative assessments are important that combined with the interim assessments and formative assessments at the local level should provide schools as well as parents a lot of good information on how children are doing this year thank you very much and just for those who may not have been present during our deliberations last spring one of the challenges we

087had was the length of the smarter balance test in terms of being able to get them accomplished during the pandemic so given that we can't entirely predict that is an important part of being sure we can move forward with assessments this year i have many folks who want to get in the conversation i'll just let you know we're a little behind schedule so i'll ask you to keep your remarks to the point so we can get to a motion remember rucker remember rodriguez member bananka and um member strauss i thank you very much i will just say i was also struck by the report from mao about the other assessments that will be added to the assessment schedule in school so there's the pisa the pearls the tems and all of these are for purposes

088of research and developing comparative information about the performance of our school instructional plan programs as well as the attainment of skills and knowledge among our students and so with all of these assessments and given the length of them in addition to the local assessment activities as well as the formative assessment activities it seems that as we go into this school year where there's a lot of changes that students are tasked to cope with what has not changed is the multiple assessment environment that students also need to contend with so let me just suggest that as we as this school year goes forward and districts are doing the struggle of dealing with the struggles that they are coping with in reality and in real time on a day-to-day and hour-by-hour basis that we also understand that

089while we sit here and operate at the 5 000 foot level the reality of all these additional assessments and the assessment environment that we are asking students to function well in we need to consider not only what we're tasking students to do but what we are taxing students in doing all of these assessments so i do have that concern even though it is something that is important and significant i would just ask us to consider the question is all of this additional frenetic activity for assessment and testing actually required and necessary that is an important question for all of us to consider let me just clarify if in case people are counting up all of those assessments that anyone invo any schools the small number of schools involved in tim's or pisa or nape are

090not the same schools so we will not have any children taking all of those tests we will have a small number of schools each taking one of them but it is a valid point always to worry about the total impact of assessment member rodriguez thank you president darlene hammond and i want to echo what's already been said so i won't repeat it and i'll just say that with my experience as a classroom teacher currently working with students um i i'm in support of this recommendation and i appreciate this recommendation very much uh because i have you know firsthand information of the assessments that we as teachers are giving our students right now and also what our students are going through um and i'd like to thank um mount definitely and cindy for their presentation and

091also wish dr zilbert a great retirement and thank you for your contributions and offer my deepest condolences to michelle gliba uh michelle glippa's family members and um thank you thank you very much uh member bananka yeah so first of all i want to thank the cd for putting together such an informative and detailed presentation uh and just to add along to the support on this recommendation with like a student perspective of someone who did take the cast test last year with the shortened blueprints i found that this shortened test was absolutely beneficial to my class from what i observed many students especially those connecting from home had trouble with tech issues or internet issues which definitely slowed them down and i was one of those students that did get slowed down i started my test

092about halfway through the class period so this shortened period or this shortened version of the test gave us the flexibility though to account for that that loss of time because of these internet issues which allowed more students to fully complete the test in the time that we were given in class so i think that it is important to note that while there might be somewhat of a trade-off in how detailed the reports are this is offset by the fact that more students are able to fully complete their tests in class in addition if some students in some districts were to go back to quarantine obviously we can't predict covid so this might happen uh i think that this blueprint would be more equitable in that the students with internet issues are probably going to be

093disproportionately uh socio-economically disadvantaged and rural students so in terms of equity i think this recommendation would definitely improve the equity among students so all in all i really support this recommendation and i think it would be a great benefit to students this year thank you so much member strauss so i i want to thank the ce team for an amazing thorough and comprehensive presentation and i do think in sharing this out with county offices and out with districts we could help them and understand all the information that was part of this item and um just for the public to know that this presentation is available but i think we have a responsibility to communicate out to the field the comprehensiveness and the variety of assessment options and all the work that we're doing um secondly

094i appreciate the clarification around the growth model which we've been working on for five years and uh the intent that we are going forward with the growth model i think there was some question in some of the letters about that and i just wanted to clarify it we have every intent of using this for the growth model that this reliable data is going to provide us important information and i just appreciate dr escobeno's comments as well as dr glover woods comments on formative assessments and how important that is in the process this is going to give us a point in time that schools use for lots of instructional reflection and planning but the work that we do ongoing with students every day to inform their the instructional decisions and support for students who need help

095that's the whole picture and i think that we have to remember that this is one type of assessment and the formative assessments and the opportunities to inform our teaching and learning are really critical particularly as everyone is noted that this coming back we didn't come back fully the way we expected to and that this year is continuing to be challenging for everybody so again i want to thank you for a thorough presentation and i support the recommendation thank you thank you and i'll just take the opportunity to reinforce the point that you made that the growth model is an ongoing commitment and the reliability of the total score on the smarter balanced assessments will not be affected by this decision and we were never going to use the claim scores for the growth model so

096it does not this does not undermine our ability to continue our plans for the use of the book uh remember patio bronson your hand is up again right yeah that's correct thank you um so thank you to to mel for uh the presentation and for also um clarifying so much of of uh material that is quite dense um uh i i particularly wanted to lift up i think one of the points that board member escobado had just lifted which is that there are multiple measures and there are formative and interim assessments that are being made available at the level of school community leaders who are on the instructional side and i think we just need to be more intentional about how we share that same information with parents and with community members because the multiple

097measures the richness of what multiple measures offers is sometimes not reaching parents and community members and in the same way that we were just hearing from um board member strauss about the need to and responsibility to communicate out all of that information to the school community that has to also crest into families and to community members as well thank you sorry i'll also just say i i very much appreciate um many of the uh comments that were uh mailed in and emailed in about how this also reclaims more instructional time which i think is just absolutely necessary given given the last year thank you so much so i'm going to see if someone wants to make a motion remember rodriguez yes i would like to make a motion and i'll second i was too late

098to get my off mute all right we have a motion to uh i assume to accept the recommendation of the cde yes and a second to that motion is there any further discussion uh hearing none we'll take a roll call vote brooks can you call the roll number son i vice president strauss hi member rucker yes remember rodriguez yes remember patillo brownson yes remember mcquillen yes remember glover woods yes nebraska yes president darlingham yes number i member all right thank you so much and thank you mal for that presentation uh and we're now going to go back to agenda item number one which is our state board priorities item and i'm going to turn it over to state superintendent tony thurman to provide his report superintendent thank you president darling hammond members of the board

099mr allen i would like to welcome the new board members uh dr escobedo who we've had the chance to visit many times in his role as superintendent at chula vista one of the bright spots uh recognized by dr darling hammond and others for incredible work on closing learning gaps and a great partner for us in showing the way on how our schools can get open and keep our students safe great to see you and congratulations dr escoberto and congratulations uh to our board member bananka it's uh here we are congratulating you at this meeting but it feels like you've already begun your service long underway um incredible leadership that you have provided including um the opportunity to work with you and many other youth leaders in our conversations about engaging young people to get a

100vaccine thank you for your thoughtful comments it is a pleasure to have you here i'd like to ask the board members if we could just take a moment to acknowledge that on this week we will celebrate the anniversary of september the 11th and to recognize many who lost their lives including many californians who lost their lives and to recognize those in public safety who also lost their lives trying to secure safety and security for those so if we could uh with your concurrence madam president just a moment a brief moment of silence um as we celebrate that anniversary thank you for your recognition um as you all know this is the first board meeting since all of our california schools have opened uh 10 000 of them um it has been as you all have

101noted quite the experience let me just be strength based and start out by saying i i've had a chance to visit a dozen or so districts going back to july since they've opened including chula vista elementary school district to see great things and i have to tell you um even with the challenges that we're experiencing with the delta variant the in the energy for a new school year has been incredible i have to tell you that at every single district that i have visited and i know that dr darling hammond has done as well upwards of 90 to 95 percent of the students have returned their families eager to get our students back for in-person instruction there's no question that we have to continue to monitor the impacts that the delta variant can have and

102we have to do everything that we can to accelerate um the uptake of vaccines in the state and in this country to help keep everyone safe but what our schools are doing is just beyond heroic and i just want to acknowledge every educator first with our students for their resilience their teachers and classified staff our administrators our parents our volunteers everyone is working hard to make this work the legislature has given new uh guidance for how i would say the almost five percent of california students who are requesting some form of remote education the legislature has given us ab-130 which allows them to do that through independent study and the independent study guidelines have been refreshed to allow for additional ways to ensure that students get support that as as member bananka said that students

103have access to computers and high-speed internet that someone is monitoring their progress as you probably have heard independent study has quickly become the way for families that need to quarantine to stay connected with their schools and it's been difficult i'll just acknowledge that none of us has ever lived through a pandemic before there's no blueprint for how to do this it has been difficult at times and we must acknowledge that but again also acknowledge their heroic efforts of everyone to get our schools open and to keep everyone safe including all of our public health advocates the california department of public health who we've worked with in the governor's office to secure 5 million rapid covet tests that our schools can use for free by the way they've all been used up and now we're working

104closely with the department of public health to get more of those tests and of course the legislature and the governor have provided billions to our schools to purchase all the covet mitigations that they need we've gone through many webinars showing schools how to get open how to do outdoor classrooms how to use more ventilation how to sanitize the campuses at the end of the day this is the moment and there's nothing more important than what we do around colgate mitigations and of course putting in place the kind of mental health and social emotional resources that we must provide our students and our educators and our families to deal with the trauma that covet 19 has created uh we'll talk more about that but obviously the state budget has provided some 4 billion dollars for mental

105health 3 billion dollars for community schools and it is an honor for the california department of education state board and others to be working to implement how these programs will be there to support our students just a word on vaccinations that's a game changer we continue to work on how to increase the rates to vaccination in our state we've made this a mainstay of our conversations about how to get schools open keep them open keep us all safe we've held a number of town halls focused on vaccines we've had a number of vips and celebrities helping us get the word out um amen a number of elected officials help us get the word out we held a town hall where we reached out to more than half a million people in los angeles county which

106has some of the highest rates of covent infection and we literally held a vaccine town hall with more than 60 000 participants where we talked about vaccines where we've offered vaccine incentives for those to get a vaccine we continue to support the efforts of everyone to get a vaccine for everyone who is 12 and older at the same time that we're dealing with delta variant many of our families are dealing with the devastation of wildfire and i just have to acknowledge uh so many who've been impacted um by wildfire and we've had the opportunity on last week to visit with students and families and educators in el dorado county and in particular those who've been impacted by the kalador fire and it is devastating to be in communities where an entire community has been leveled

107and where schools have been burned down and homes have been burned down but i want to commend our students and their families and their educators for their resilience and their creativity and finding ways to support student learning even under the most difficult circumstances and of course i have to acknowledge our first responders our firefighters who have been working relentlessly to stem and contain these fires and congratulate them on their most recent progress in the tahoe area and in many other communities and allowing some families to return i want to thank our partners at the california department of education foundation uh california's dedicated to education foundation uh for helping us to raise dollars to bring resources to those families we were able to provide them with gas cards hotel vouchers food and of course books and

108our visit to el dorado county our students were in the library they were reading they were learning they were having support and so even in the face of adversity our students persist and continue to learn let us continue to do all that we can to support our families who are impacted by wildfire who are impacted by the many challenges that has been presented to us by covet 19 in these last 18 months i want to acknowledge that during the pandemic we have created a new youth advisory council a statewide youth advisory council we've launched this to create voice to hear from our students on all matters related to education i'm asking these students to advise me and my staff to advise the governor and the legislature on all matters and of course we would like

109to create an opportunity for our newly forming statewide advisory council youth advisory council to have a chance to present and have dialogue with you the members of the state board to discuss policies and to amplify the great messages that you're already getting from board members like board member bananka we will also be launching a first ever statewide parent advisory council to create a formal structure for parents to give more voice on matters related to education and we're excited to partner with many education advocates we're excited to have created during the pandemic our first ever family engagement division families let us know what you heard from board member bananka how during the pandemic technology issues were a challenge how families weren't always connected to school and so we've created this family engagement unit to help us

110think about how to steer through some of the big challenges that we're seeing including enrollment decline how do we help students maximize attendance support our families with the resources that they need get access to tools and resources more to come on those subjects i want to acknowledge some transitions um our general counsel keith yamanaka retired after 42 years of state service thank you keith for your incredible service i want to let you know that our new general counsel is someone who is not new to cde and has incredible experience and has worked closely with the state board none other than our own amy holloway who returns to the office uh who served at cde for more than two decades in our legal division and already is making great things happen uh as many of you

111know uh two familiar faces that you've worked closely with at the state board have taken new jobs and have gotten great new opportunities rachel mays is now in leadership at the tennessee department of education uh and uh uh dr shanine coats has taken a position uh at the sacramento county office of education also in leadership we want to thank them for their work on you know the model ethnic studies curriculum guide and as you heard from president darling hammond all the work that's happened on assessments uh during the pandemic i can't imagine a more intense way big shout out to uh rachel mays and of course uh to you uh mao and to your entire team uh and cindy kazanis and others who've done this work with these changes we've taken the opportunity to make

112some changes to how our branches are laid out to create some efficiency and greater alignment i want to just tell you a little bit about it and just remind you of some of the faces of folks who will be leading that work reintroducing you to some deputies who've already met who've already been at cde who will be taking on some of the work that comes from what was our primary our teaching and learning branch i'd like to uh reintroduce you uh to dr daniel lee um who will be heading up what is a newly created equity branch we've taken this opportunity to create a branch on equity and to create within that a whole child division these are first for cde and it's a pleasure to introduce c will we introduce to you dr lee

113who is now heading up formally that equity branch as you know he is both a clinical psychologist a school psychologist an educator for more than two decades i'm gonna give a few minutes to share just a few thoughts about the the work that he will now be leading uh in this equity branch which will include um our college and career transitions division and our student achievement and support division dr lee a word well good morning um and thank you president i'm darling hammond and board members for this moment i want to thank the superintendent um for the opportunity to sort of organize our first equity branch at the department um you know i think most of the faces i don't feel as new because i looked around and said i know most of the faces

114on the screen so that feels good and i'm looking forward to working with everyone um on other projects as we move forward i think one of the pieces i do want to highlight oops is that we are working on some major projects in our branch primarily community schools is a big one and and with the governor's investment and we're also working with layla and other school board members to think through the behavior health initiative so i'm really excited about the work we can do to center education around all these major initiatives so we can promote healthy learning environments and positive school communities and and have great outcomes for students so thank you for your time thank you dr lee and for those of you who remember dr lee and pam kadakia led during the height

115of the pandemic a new initiative under the equity branch called education to end hate how do we use uh training around implicit bias to address bias in our schools and of course we started with our own organization at the california department of education thank you dr lee for that word about community schools thank you dr linda darling hammond for your advocacy to help us get to what has become three billion dollars for community schools i think we'll be talking about it a lot next up i'd like to invite uh cheryl cotton who's been deputy superintendent for human resources to just have a quick word among other things she uh is overseeing our state special schools where we serve deaf and blind students and she can give you a word about how we've been able to

116stand up these schools even in the face of the delta variant but i want to remind you that cheryl cotton is an educator for more than two decades she has served as a classroom teacher she has served as a principal she has served as a county as a level administrator and she is committed to the principles of teaching and learning and equity and she will also now oversee the divisions that focus on assessment and curriculum frameworks just to name a few but a quick word from cheryl cotton hello um to our state superintendent um of public instruction tony thurman it's not on yes we can hear you cheryl okay um i just want to say thank you both to our state superintendent of public instruction for this opportunity as well as to our president of

117the state board of education linda darling hammond and our state board members our staff and members of the public i just want to say thank you for this moment i do support our state special schools and services division i'm delighted to report to you that our state special schools and diagnostic centers have reopened this fall including the school for the deaf in riverside the school for the deaf in fremont this school for the blind in fremont also as well as the diagnostic centers north central and south i'd like to note that the state special schools did reopen in the spring and they held summer programs as well residential and day students are excited to be back for in-person instruction and we're taking all necessary precautions to safely return to in-person instruction our safety precautions were

118established to our partnerships with cdph and local public health agencies we've instituted a twice weekly kova testing cadence particularly for unvaccinated students and staff but also it's available to all with testing support from vestra we have the indoor use of face coverings appropriate air filtration regular hand washing and intensive cleaning we've ensured that vaccinations were available to all of our students and staff as well we continue to monitor and support in-person instruction at our state special schools thank you thank you cheryl uh and next i just want to reintroduce you to mary nicely uh who many have known who has worked closely with me on uh the task force on closing the digital divide she literally helped to source upwards of a million devices for our school districts at a time when there just weren't

119any available from the manufacturers in in the month of august she became she had been leading our um superintendent special initiatives office in the month of august she became deputy superintendent with a focus on technology and innovation uh also in the month of august i named her as our co-chief deputy superintendent um and you uh gracefully hopefully will be uh confirming her today in an item that is on this agenda um i'll i'll just say this that mary has taken on uh the task of helping to address our cradle to career uh needs for technology for our students at cde she's working very closely with our technology division that is i think far beyond any in terms of what they have done during this pandemic to give us the platforms to speak to listen to

120and educate uh our state but technology requires all kinds of vision and support and she's someone who has a background in working in data management and so for those reasons we were excited that she'll be working very closely with our analysis and measurement division our educational data division and our technology services division a quick word uh from mary nicely thank you state board members and superintendent thurman for this opportunity um today i'd like to just give you a quick update on as cd moves forward as the cornerstone of the california cradle to career data system supplying 70 of the data through our calpads data collection system during the 18 months of meetings almost all via zoom i'd like to thank west ed for facilitating all of these meetings incredible work was done by every education

121segment and 15 state agencies to develop a governance structure build a data dictionary discuss legal agreements cyber security as well as take in massive amounts of input from partners across the state and lay out the technical groundwork for moving this cradle to career system thanks to my fellow work group members cindy kazanas sarah neville morgan and sarah petrowski for representing our agencies so well and ensuring our voices were heard loud and clear thank you to the dozens of cde staff that sat on the numerous subcommittees and prepared us well for these meetings uh and i'd like to say that jerry winkler director of cde's data education data management division will represent cde on the c the cradle to career governing board as we move forward into the more technical aspects of the cradle's career cde

122has formed a information and technology branch as the superintendent mentioned to not only ensure the most efficient and forward-thinking implementation of technology and data and data for the cradle to career system but to modernize cde's internal and external facing systems i look forward to regularly updating the board on progress of the cradle to career data system and other efforts to update our technology to better serve our families students educators and staff thank you for this opportunity thank you mary so many things have happened during the since even just the last meeting and i want to acknowledge that on yesterday the ab-101 a bill that we sponsored to bring ethnic studies as a graduation requirement uh has now been passed in both houses and want to thank you all for ratifying the model ethnic studies curriculum

123guide that guide had created the pathway uh for there to be an ethnic studies uh uh a graduation requirement in our state and so i want to thank you for that we know that there'll be much work that will need to be done to help in implementing that there's also so much work that has happened to have the incredible successes that we heard about in the announcement of the state budget like universal tk and i know that's important to so many of you who work in the field i i see you beaming and smiling board member patil bronson i you know i know that many of you know that we could not have steered some of that without the incredible leadership of everyone in our early learning and care division under the direction of our

124deputy superintendent sarah neville morgan who has just put this on her shoulders all at a time when there was a major transition happening in programs with all child care programs moving to the department of social services a difficult move but an opportunity to create alignment that's going to mean more efficiency for families who are supported by the various programs that our subsidized child care programs connect to uh just have to acknowledge the incredible leadership of sarah neville morgan and of lisa constancio and her teams all these conversations about how to create uh independent study how to address the issues of ada all of those come from places like our school and fiscal services division um incredible work by elizabeth dearstein by our fazzy division i mean the budget work that has been done by lisa

125and her staff and fazzy we have to acknowledge you we have to acknowledge our newly created emergency team that has worked with all of our communities that have been impacted uh by wildfire it has been incredible uh the work that juan and his team have led and we just have to acknowledge how difficult this time has been for everyone and i just want to thank and acknowledge the entire cde team for the way that you all continue to respond the way that you show up um it's a hard job and it's hard for me to share this with you but i also have to acknowledge one more transition and that is for our chief our other chief uh co-chief deputy superintendent dr stephanie gregson who some of you may have heard has taken a position

126at cceee you'll be missed dr gregson dr gretchen is in the chamber and so i want to acknowledge her in the presence of all of you many of you have worked with her over the course of her five years going all the way back to her helping to shape the work on the history of social sciences framework to help launch what became our model ethnic studies curriculum guide to work on the health frameworks to work on literacy and of course the last 18 months of trying to help steer districts in the right direction on how to manage survive and continue to educate during the pandemic she's written an incredible guide for school reopening and has taken countless meetings with stakeholders on how we support them what's not known about cde is that it is just

127a job unto itself managing what is 2000 employees focusing on reporting for focusing on support on technical assistance and the chief deputy is someone who has to manage all of that i'm grateful to you dr gregson for managing that we'll miss you but we hope that your new role at cce as the deputy executive director gives us an opportunity to work even more closely with you and with ccee and so would you all please join me in acknowledging our chief deputy superintendent dr gregson uh maybe she's smiling this is her last board meeting but we'll invite you back so that you can be on the diocese again and have to present to this group but we want to all thank you for your incredible service and leadership at the california department of education we look

128forward to working closely with you in your new role congratulations dr gregson and and with that uh president darling hammond i'd like to turn it back to you if you and the board members uh wish to have a word for dr gregson self off of mute uh i'll see if any board members would like to make their own uh thanks and i'll start with member burr and then vice president strauss thank you president darling hammond um i actually have a dual responsibility here as the chair of cce to say how delighted we are to have dr gregson join the collaborative as superintendent thurman said i think this will only strengthen what is already a very strong relationship between the two organizations i want to express my appreciation to the superintendent for his renewed commitment for

129the to the cce we really look forward to his participation as we move forward but stephanie i think you know how much i think of you i've had the pleasure of working with stephanie over all of the years on the board and prior to that as executive director and her talents in curriculum and instruction and professional development are really without compare and especially her her relationships with people make it so important to get these very difficult issues resolved and coherent policies created so stephanie delighted to welcome you i will miss you in this role but i look forward to seeing you in my other goal thank you vice president strauss so um first uh stephanie um so i just would say you have had quite a ride in the last five years as um superintendent

130thurman was discussing the health framework the ethnic studies history social sciences were not easy processes and i just so appreciate your leadership and calmness to pursue through the process and to get us where we are today um we actually have some really wonderful guidance documents that will really help the field going forward and i think your commitment from theory to practice will really translate well at cceee so you've helped develop the theory and the policy documents and with your work as a school principal and a district administrator and a state administrator i think you just bring so much to ccee as we help districts decide how to manage and move forward in their challenges as well so i just want to thank you for your commitment to the students of california and your continued commitment

131in your new role i think uh new opportunities always give us new challenges and kind of renewed opportunities um both in the organization you're going to and and then the or the staff who remains to think about the legacy you leave i'll just make one other comment um i just want to thank i know rachel mays was only with us for 18 months but she did a tremendous job during the pandemic her voice and experience as a small district superintendent a county supreme administrator at the state board was wonderful and helping cde and i i wish her only the best in tennessee as she helps them um go forward and she coats i could not say enough about her amazing competency and calmness in managing the frameworks particularly ethnic studies and i think she will

132continue to impact student growth and improvement and i think sacramento county is very lucky to have her joining their team so i just couldn't stop by saying how those of us in curriculum instruction have so appreciated shane's work and we're very fortunate she stays committed to the communities in sacramento thank you thank you and i'm gonna add my um thanks and congratulations and then slide into my president's report um so i do want to add my deepest gratitude to that expressed by the superintendent for the important contributions made to our work by dr stephanie gregson who has led with grace and intelligence in these most trying times i'm delighted that she will continue to support this work from the vantage point of cce where she will help strengthen our system of support and i also

133want to recognize the wonderful work of rachel mays and shanine coats who enabled so many important initiatives to come to the state board uh rachel's headed off to tennessee uh where she has new colleagues that await her i have alerted my friends there to support her in her journey and i'm delighted that shaneen will remain a colleague as director of strategic initiatives in sacramento county office of education so she's right next door she'll still be part of the support system that you know uh california offers uh to its schools and counties um i do want to welcome dr lee cheryl cotton mary nicely and add my thanks to sarah neville morgan lisa castanzio and many others in the department who've just done enormous work to lift not only the work of this over this pandemic

134year but also to lift all these new initiatives that are beginning and really redefining and reinventing the system of education in california so it's a trying time it's a challenging time it's an exciting time it's a time for a lot of hard work and joining of hands i thank superintendent tony thurman for all of the good colleagueship in figuring out how we move forward and then in helping it happen and i'm i'm excited about the year ahead i do want to recognize and thank all of the educators and staff and districts across the state of california for their amazing efforts to launch this a new in-person school year just as the delta variant is sweeping the country like superintendent thurman i have seen and many of you have seen and experienced the excitement and the

135joy of people coming back to school our educators have shown extraordinary planning skills and deep levels of commitment to create that joyful and purposeful opening in 100 of our districts while at the same time putting in place the mitigation strategies that allow our opening to be safe the wide range of social and emotional programs and engagement activities that allow the opening to be personalized and supportive for our young people and of course you know delta has complicated the well-laid plans of our school leaders it's required expanded testing there have been some quarantines but i want to tell you that in contrast to many other states the path to opening schools in california has been extremely promising thus far thanks to all of those focused efforts of principals teachers support staff parents students superintendents and all

136of the folks in the department in the county office with continued vigilance and state policy support our path promises to be even smoother in the coming months as of this week our 20 largest districts plus more than a thousand smaller districts have opened on schedule there have been community based infections identified by schools testing programs it's required some quarantines as students return schools have largely made the necessary preparations to manage those processes and those that were taken by surprise have been getting help from the state school outbreak response teams that are offering testing and vaccine resources connecting them to the state's coven 19 providers who offer multiple options for different types of no cost testing systems to meet community needs nearly 700 of the state's 1 000 districts had already taken advantage of these programs

137before the start of school and more are setting up their programs every day and schools are continuing the great work they did this past summer when nine out of ten did offer summer programming and they have been doing an excellent job of keeping students safe with improved ventilation and teaching students to wear their masks with pride and practice good hygiene parents have most voiced support and gratitude for these safety measures in most districts more than 95 percent of students have returned for in-person instruction again in most districts i want to give you a little national perspective on where we are there's a service called burbio that reports school closings and tracks those things across the country and they report that 1400 schools in 35 states have closed for quarantining or reverted to distance learning across

138the country fewer than 10 of them have been in california and all of those have reopened quickly or are set to do so with the support of the state we educate about 12 percent of the nation's school children our schools open earlier than many parts of the country for example in the midwest and the northeast and still we account for far less than one percent of the school closings in the country and while covet case rates have been climbing to very high rates in most parts of the country california's rates of um of cases are not only among the lowest and far below the national average but they've been sharply declining for the last three weeks and so we are in a much better position because of the policies that have been undertaken here places

139like georgia and florida and texas and so on have rates of coveted infection that are four times higher they have rates of pediatric infection that are five six seven times higher than in california and it's important for us to understand why this is and how we can continue to make progress toward ending the pandemic back in july california was the very first state in the nation to issue a renewed masking mandate for all adults and children in schools as well as for adults in indoor settings even before the cdc did so since then at least 16 other states have done so in the last week or so as they were overwhelmed by coveted cases in their schools on august 11th california became the first state to require vaccines or weekly testing of all school employees

140on the heels of a similar requirement for government workers now other states and cities across the country are beginning to follow suit since last spring we have at least partially vaccinated more than 80 percent of our eligible population the state is supporting school-located vaccine clinics for every school that will host them offering fifty thousand dollars to support schools who do who will do so this can be an especially critical strategy for getting both students and families vaccinated and as you know the governor with our state public health and education leaders legislative leaders our state superintendent has been laser focused on providing the tools and resources that would be needed for safe school reopening we had that six billion dollar package last march to fund safety measures such as ppe and ventilation upgrades and covered 19

141testing more than 98 of districts have used those funds uh with the the funds to kick off the school year with expanded mental health after school learning supports like high-dose tutoring keenly aware of the students who've experienced trauma and lost instructional time in the last year and a half since covet has hit and educators themselves of course have experienced sources of trauma in their own families giving so much of themselves to take care of our children and their own children often at the same time in a version of multitasking that has never before been so complex or so remarkable so i just want to say to all of the committed educators and school staff who are handling all of the complexities of the school year and to the parents and students who are doing the

142same that if we can stay the course things will be much easier in the weeks and months ahead the science clearly shows that the multi-layered mitigation strategies diligent masking testing screening hand washing ventilation are effective at preventing infection we have a lot of studies that show that in schools and child care centers where that is the case there is very little transmission even when there are cases in the community as a whole we're making progress on vaccines like half of our 12 to 17 year olds are vaccinated a vaccine is expected for 5 to 11 year olds by early winter we should see a vaccine for two to four year olds within a few months after that for those of us who have children and our grandchildren in days daycare and preschool so as we

143continue on this path with purpose and with diligence we will see cases and illnesses continue to decline and we'll see fewer needs for quarantining state board and cde are working to get schools the latest information from cde and the department of public health clarifying that even if cases do appear vaccinated students and adults who might have been exposed do not need to quarantine as long as they have no symptoms nor do unvaccinated children if both parties are wearing masks at the time of the exposure with testing they can be in school safely we can support in-person teaching and learning with minimum disruptions and so while there is a long way to go and many challenging moments ahead uh california's policies and our hard work and expert educators and committed parents and students can continue to

144lead the way through this pandemic to a safer future that supports children in their learning their development their relationships their friendships their social and emotional well-being and their educational progress and with that i want to turn the podium back to superintendent thurman for one more announcement and a final staff blessing as we move forward superintendent thurman thank you darlingham and i think it needs to be said that our state board president is the smartest and hardest working state board president anywhere i think you can see that dr darling hammond is at the intersection of all aspects of what we're doing to support teaching and learning and to support all the covet mitigations and all the ways to ensure that our students are getting an opportunity to have what they deserve a quality education it's an

145honor to partner with you dr darlingham and i think your report puts in context just how much california is doing and i gotta say i'm proud to be a californian and so thank you dr darlingham your partnership thank you for this opportunity just to provide some final remarks and of course i'll take questions from the board members i did want to also just share the mic with dr stephanie gregson if she wanted to have some final words this is her last time sitting on the dice at least for now dr greg said did you want to have some remarks thank you superintendent thurman and thank you for president linda darling hammond for your remarks and vice president eileen strauss and thank you also to the other board members who have reached out and shared some

146very kind words they are very much appreciated it has been a journey the past five years for myself and with you as state board members and i've appreciated all of the supports the questions and the challenges that we face together over those past five years going through frameworks and structural materials adoptions and most recently these past 18 months in supporting all of our districts as they navigated the challenges of the pandemic i also want to thank the cde team they are amazing and phenomenal hard working people and we could not do what we do without each and every one of them and so i just want to have a big shout out to our cde team and also much appreciation to our state superintendent tony thurman who provided me this opportunity and without this experience

147and learning i wouldn't have figured out what i want to do when i grow up and i'm honored and privileged to have learned so much and to be able to join the cce because that's what i want to do when i grow up and supporting districts who are struggling and taking all of the great work from cde and helping them and so i thank you for all of your support and guidance over the past years and i will look forward to working with all of you in my new role thank you so much thank you dr gregson um again congratulations we're looking forward to working with you in your new role one of the things that i learned from dr gregson is that the needs of the department of education are great many of them

148go unseen but they are important to how we support districts and how we show up for districts and it is for that purpose and for that reason that in august i named mary nicely as a co-chief deputy superintendent now i'm teeing up uh mary for you to come to the podium so that i can present you uh to the state board uh for uh the board to take action on the item related to approval of a chief deputy superintendent elect or designee mary nicely you know the workload is intense and so in the next days and weeks i'll also be sharing with you updates about two new positions that we will be creating on the executive team at the department of education there will be grant funded positions that allow us to have additional deputies

149who can work on many many of the challenges that our districts are facing as they continue to work so hard to serve our kids to stay open and keep them open safely and i want to make sure to acknowledge our incredible communications director maria clayton uh who's been helping uh you know those dozen districts that we get to the media is in tow chasing us down every step of the way dr escobado can attest to that getting the message out about the importance of vaccines has been our communications team and of course our incredible uh government affairs team now led by a veteran cde member in amy paterno 13 years working on fiscal policy at cde um we have big challenges ahead um obviously managing covid providing supports and emotional supports to our students and

150closing learning gaps gratefully we have a budget that has millions for mental health for community schools for universal tk for universal meals for professional development and diversifying our workforce and for expanded learning and of course record and historic investments for special education and our ability to serve students with disabilities i'm pleased to present to you someone who i've had the pleasure of knowing for more than a decade who has supported me in every aspect of my public service um and who is just committed to young people mary nicely has served at the department of education first as senior advisor to me and also leading our office of superintendents initiatives um again in the work to close the digital divide again in the work to help close the opportunity gap and our work to diversify our

151workforce especially our efforts to expand the number of male educators of color who work in our schools i'm very proud of a bill that we sponsored this year on mail expanding male educators of color that has now become part of the state budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars available for teacher recruitment and we look forward to speaking with you about those and so we have many tools to help us build that better than we've ever done before and build an education system that works for all of our students that cuts across equity gaps and envisions ways to help all of our students and i'm pleased to present to you a special leader uh who can help us and join our executive team in leadership and work closely with our state board on many

152of the aspects in addition to having worked at cde mary nicely has served with me when i was in the state assembly first is my district director and as my chief of staff before that mary nicely ran a data management company that specializes in supporting schools in how they manage their data and has worked for many years in the technology sector and so it is amazing and exciting to see the vision that she has for helping cde and schools in california to close the digital divide i borrow this phrase from her that she often says that internet connectivity should flow like electricity and she is right mary nicely is a compassionate leader who is detailed oriented who finds a way in her trademark way to gsd get stuff done she's an incredible leader who is

153compassionate and it is a pleasure to present her to you now members of the state board for your action as it relates to the item related to appointing a chief deputy superintendent i present to you mary nicely and mary before you speak i have to do a moment of a protocol vote because we need to vote twice this item was added to the agenda on september 7th and because the need for action came to the attention of the board after the agenda was posted on august 30th we need to take these two votes first we have to vote to allow ourselves to vote on mary and i do want to hear mary's comments before we vote on her but uh we do need to unfortunately take a minute open up the phone line for public

154comment for this item so that if somebody could put the public comments slide up we will be able to allow for that to happen i'll ask board members if they have any comments they wish to make then we're going to vote to make the determination that there is a need to take immediate action on this item and then we'll hear from mary and then we will be able to vote on her and so are there any comments from board members while we're waiting for public comment if there is any to queue up i'm not seeing any hands raised on that so i will ask is there any public comment there is not at this time all right thank you please interrupt me if there is anyone who comes to the forum and so now i

155want to ask if there's a motion for the state board to make a determination that there's a need to take immediate action on this item and that the need came to the attention of the cde and the state board after the posting of the agenda this motion requires a two-thirds vote so we need eight affirming votes of the state board of education do i have a motion so moved thank you very much do i have a second i will second thank you very much we'll now hold a roll call vote brooks would you please call the roll number son i vice president strauss yes member rucker yes remember rodriguez yes remember patello bronson yes member mcquillen yes remember glover woods yes president darling hammond yes number burr hi member banaca hi motion passes unanimously thank

156you so much and mary we are delighted to hear from you before we take a vote on your appointment uh and i'm going to go back to the drum roll that the superintendent has so nicely queued up and please come to the podium and address us thank you board members and dr darling hammond and superintendent thurman for this opportunity i am very excited to be able to take on these challenges and look forward to working with you all in the future so um thank you very much for this opportunity thank you uh and we're excited to be able to hold this vote and i now need a motion to approve cd's recommendation to appoint mary nicely as chief deputy superintendent i have an emotion so moved removed oh i'll say all right thank you very

157much we have a motion in a second uh we'll now hold a roll call vote remember son aye vice president strauss yes member rucker yes remember rodriguez yes remember patilla brownson yes remember yes president darling hammond yes member aye remember bananaka hi what's up now i'm sorry all right congratulations uh mary thanks for um joining the team thank you superintendent thurman for those wonderful remarks we're now going to take a 10 minute break um and i'll ask you to please turn off your cameras and microphones and turn your cameras back on after the break to reestablish the quorum it's 1106 um why don't we be a little bit generous and give you until 11 20. just 14 minutes um we will move expeditiously after that we're about an hour behind our planned schedule so we're

158going to be very very efficient in our business during the rest of the day and i'll see you in 14 minutes ask that the state board provide feedback regarding the draft lcap template and instructions that incorporate the requirements outlined in sb98 and ab130 as well as the draft for the 2021-22 supplement template and instructions and the item will be presented by lindsey turnatore and josh strong of the cde lindsey and josh please begin thank you very much soundcheck good okay good morning president darling hammond vice president strauss chief deputies gregson and nicely and members of the board my name is lindsay tornatori and i am the director of the student achievement and support division i am joined today by my colleague josh strong who is the administrator of the local agency system support office otherwise

159known as lasso josh and i are here today to present five proposed revisions to the local control and accountability plan as prescribed by sb 98 and av130 but before we dive into today's item i want to take a few minutes to acknowledge and appreciate two great leaders who have made a strong positive impact on the lcap and have been instrumental in helping all of us get to where we are today with the lcap so as superintendent thurman shared earlier our former deputy superintendent of the instruction and measurement branch rachel mays left the cde last month to pursue an opportunity with the tennessee department of education rachel came to us from a county office of education and prior to that as a superintendent of a rural district where she was the author of her district's l-cap

160rachel's experience and respect for the lcap and the process helped my team and i get the initial engagement period with our educational partners off to a productive start and the lessons learned from working with rachel inspire us inspire our commitment to make the lcap a process that is accessible and achievable for all leas and i also want to acknowledge and appreciate dr gregson stephanie thank you for your leadership you have called all of us to action by challenging everyone at the cde to approach our work with compassion in every process and procedure that we implement you will be missed and we look forward to working continuing to work with you as we know you will continue to identify and close gaps that are keeping our students from reaching their fullest potentials and so with that

161the purpose of today's item so the purpose of today's item as president darling hammond mentioned is not action but discussion and feedback this is the first of two meetings that we will discuss this the lcap revised revisions today and also at the november 2021 meeting the state board discussion and feedback will inform our ongoing revisions that we will continue to make between now and november during the november meeting we will ask the state board to take action to adopt the revised lcap template instructions and also the one-time supplement to the annual update to the 2122 lcap our educational partner input will continue to be collected throughout this process and will continue to inform the proposed revisions we will bring to the board in november a timeline of significant events that brought us here today in

162june of 2020 sb 98 was chaptered and in july of 2021 ab130 was chaptered these two bills brought forth four of the five proposed revisions that we are bringing to the board today uh we also brought the lcap advisory group together wednesday july 28 of 2021 and we will again uh reconvene later this month to continue to discuss the revisions being proposed to the template and instructions we held a tuesday at 2 on august 10th of 2021 and we have another one scheduled for october 5th we presented these proposed revisions that we will discuss today at the california practitioners advisory group meeting on august 20th of 2021 their their input feedback informed our approach to this presentation today we also are continuing with ongoing uh partner educational partner engagement continuously collecting input and feedback and

163also reaching out to meet with parker organizations at we will bring this item back to the november meeting and once adopted the anticipated adoption in november we will then roll out comprehensive guidance to the field to navigate the new requirements so let's just take a few seconds and ground ourselves in the lcap itself so adopted in 2014 the local control and accountability plan is a three year plan that describes the goals actions services and expenditures to support positive student outcomes that address state and local priorities the lcap provides an opportunity for leas to share their stories of how what and why programs and services are selected to meet their local needs prior improvements that have been made to the lcap template since its adoption include the addition of the annual update a move to a

164three-year template and the addition of summary tables displayed in a database format so for those of you who are following along at home we have several items posted and linked to this agenda so of course we have our actual item and then we have four attachments the first attachment is a summary or sort of a primer of the required and proposed changes the why when who what how attachment two is the current lcap template and instructions provided for reference attachment three and four are the proposed drafts the attachment three is the lcap template and instructions and attachment for the proposed draft of the one-time annual one-time supplement to the annual update to the 2122l cap in attachments three and four you'll notice that highlighted in yellow throughout the document are our proposed changes so the

165summary of revisions we have five revisions that we're going to discuss today we're going to take one at a time and talk through them in a subsection during each of these subsections we're going to answer five big questions why is this revision being proposed when does the requirement begin who will this impact what do they need to do and how will they do it in the house sections josh will walk us through the proposed revisions to the lcap template and instructions which again can be found in attachments three and four after we discuss each of the five revisions we will close out the presentation of this item by sharing what is next for cd's efforts to continue to engage with our educational partners until the november board meeting and beyond we also have a crosswalk

166of all lea required plans to share today and we hope that this crosswalk will show how the one-time supplement to the annual update is intended to give lease an opportunity to share their story of how they are spending their lcsf and federal emergency relief funds in a manner that is consistent with their 22l cap all right so revision number one requirement to include specific goals in the lcap let's start with the y the y is twofold first to ensure that lease are addressing the needs of consistently low performing student groups and to ensure that higher performing leas are addressing the needs of low performing schools within the lea so when does this requirement take place for eligible leas and coes the specific required goals will be included beginning with the 2223 lcap cde staff will

167annually prepare files that indicate for all applicable leas which student groups and schools will be required to have goals based on these new instructions so there are two groups of who because this requirement is twofold so the first group is the least that have received technical assistance for the same student group or groups for three or more consecutive years as reported on the dashboard the leas who meet the above criteria must include a goal in the lcap focused on improving the performance of that student group or groups the second group that this requirement impacts are high performing leas with low performing schools specifically it's uh leas who for two consecutive consecutive years have a school or schools that have received the two lowest performance levels on the dashboard on all but one of the state

168indicators for which the school receives performance levels and the all student student group for the lea is at least one performance level higher than the school's performance level what this grouping of leas needs to do is to write a goal in the lcap focused on improving the performance of the school or schools that meet this criteria and so the proposed instructions for these requirements can be found on pages 21 and 22 of attachment three and i'm going to turn it over to josh strong to walk us through the how for the requirement oh sorry excuse me mr page um and i'm going to 21 to 22 of attachment three and i'm going to turn it over to josh to walk us through the attachment of the requirement to include specific goals in the old cat

169so we can stop screen share and allow josh to share a screen please thank you lindsay good morning board president and board members i'm joshua strong administrator of the local agc system support office um and here is the attachment three um showing the current proposed lcap template and instructions as as many of you are aware within the lcap template and instructions uh an lea provides it presents its goals in the goals and actions section uh utilizing this template and and so in terms of addressing this particular requirement to add these two required goals uh to the instructions of the plan we didn't feel that there was a need to provide specific goals sections for those requirements within the template itself rather those are expressly provided within the instructions as lindsay has already stated on pages

17021 and 22. and the approach that we've taken or that we're suggesting at this point in time um is to within the instructions first provide what the criteria are related to each of the goal each of the requirements and then to provide specific instructions for how the lea would would then create that goal and what the goal should address so in terms of the first requirement related to the leas that have been identified for assistance based on the performance of one or more student subgroups for three consecutive years we've provided that criteria here at the beginning for the consistently low performing student groups and then the instructions related to the specific goal noting that there have the focus of the goal needs to be on improving performance of the student group of groups that led

171to the lea's eligibility and specifying that the goal must include metrics outcomes actions and expenditures that are specific to addressing these needs to be identified needs and improving outcomes for these uh the student group or groups that led to that eligibility and then similarly we have we were providing criteria related to the low-performing school um component and then as before the specific instructions related to what that goal needs to focus on and include within um the lcap and then as part of of implementing these goals the lcap the lea would include uh one of the the goal in which they're eligible for or required to include in their lcap as a regular as a goal along with the other goals within the plan so that's the proposal at this point in time and i'll turn

172it back over to lindsay and allow her to move forward thank you josh okay so now at this we get the sound so at this time we can pause uh president darling hammond for clarifying questions about this specific requirement all right uh are there any um we also should probably put up the public comment slide so that we can queue up and we'll take clarifying questions while we do that if you're at the point for um for public comment we actually will i think that we have four more revisions so we could if it's okay we'll wait for public housing we'll wait for that okay so we can take some clarifying questions it appears that we may have a connection issue so let's start with our first uh clarifying question looks like member mcquillen your

173first stop okay thank you just uh wondering about the timeline if this amendment is approved what would be the rollout timeline on it thank you so the as far as far as the timeline um sb98 has prescribed that leas who fall into either of these two criteria must include a specific goal in their lcap starting with the 2223 lcap so we will include this in the instructions and template for the 2223 lcap as far as um one piece to add is as far as notifying leas who will be required to add these goals we plan to have that data pulled around the time of the november board meeting um cindy cazanes and her team will be working on that data set well i'm going to take over because dr darlene hamilton went until she's back

174on again remember you're next remember you're muted thank you um so my question really relates to not only this item but the item that we talked about around assessments if i understand this correctly the these specific goals have to be included in the case of sort of persistently under performance over three years and so can you talk about and maybe this is a question for cindy um what indicators will be used to determine whether a district and or an lea within a district is persistently underperforming if we don't have any assessment data that's comparable over three years so we are using historical data um for this first data poll and then moving forward once we have a full dashboard with um all of the state indicators we'll use the dashboard so for this first year

175we'll use historical data so we'll be using test scores that are how old i think 2017 18 and 19. yes um remember glover woods just a question as far as when the goal or goals are put in the template how will a reader differentiate or know that that specific goal or goals is aligned to this particular requirement since all of the goals are going to be in the same area on the template you know what can i pass this over to josh to address sure thank you um remember glover woods that would be something that would be explained as part of the why statement for why the lea has developed the goal within the goals and actions section so as part of that explanation of why the lea developed the goal the lea would include

176the identification that this is a required goal so josh just another follow-up question on that is the um is it going to be required that the lea put that information in the explanation is that in the directions that they must put that in the explanation so that again it can be clear that this goal is developed for this particular requirement um that's not currently in the instructions however that's certainly something that we can include um if you have a desire for the board has that desire thank you member ricker thank you i i i have so many questions about the instructions and the information is template but i'll start with this particular clarifying question on setting the who do the goals need to set differentiated growth targets for these student subgroups as a way for

177these specific student subgroups for example if i'm sorry for example if african american students are consistently the lowest performing student subgroup for all grades tested in all of the areas tested and we also have uh hispanic students who are also underperforming do the goal statements have to differentiate what may be done for african american students as a subgroup and latino students as a subgroup or do they get to say all underperformance will be addressed in this way so board member to your question there is currently in the statute it is not prescriptive as far as making a clear distinction between the different student groups so then i don't understand how this is going to actually address i don't understand that i'm glad you answered the question that way because i read the statute and the

178statute doesn't clarify that so i'm not clear with these questions or these statements that you're saying will be added to the lcap i'm not clear how we will get to a greater level of clarity or subgroup identification without that prescription so are you saying that you're going to be moving beyond that description or prescription and adding to what districts have to address our districts still because of the statute it's still not going to actually be required to identify or name those names i believe the legislative intention is truly to ensure that districts are addressing their low performing student the consistently low performing student groups in their lcap with specific goals as far as where we are right now based on statute is how we have framed most of the revisions that we bring to you

179and that being said we're open to recommendations and direction from the board as far as clarifying this to make sure that it is accessible and achievable for all of our lease okay so i'm going to stop right there but when we come back to a broader board discussion i do want to come back to this concern thank you member wrecker just remember we have several more parts and these are clarifying questions and as member rucker said after our public comments we're going to have a robust discussion about this and this is a not an action but um an information and some comments from the board today and it's you can imagine that cpeg had a very complicated discussion about this as well so um lindsay are we ready to go to the i like the

180neck the way you organize it i think we have the next part now yes thank you yes so the second requirement is the requirement to calculate carryover so let's start with the why the why is to ensure an lea is implementing and not just planning to meet its full proportionality obligation to increase or improve services for students who are low-income english learners and or foster youth over and above the level of services provided to all students as we enter so here we go when when will this requirement take place these new requirements to education code sections 42238.07 and 52064 were signed into law on july 9 2021 through ab130 and will be implemented beginning with the 2223 lcap this requirement is applicable to all leas so as we enter into the what and how this

181requirement i want to acknowledge that the steps to calculate carryover are very complex and technical but we know that it is worth work it is worth working through this complexity to achieve a clear and transparent accounting of how students who are low-income english learners and our foster youth are being served over and above the level of services provided to all students so the what has three parts the first one is looking at education code section 42238.07 which says that it will ensure lease are implementing and not just planning to meet their full proportionality obligation lease are required to document differences between planned and implemented actions and services and any shortfall between the implemented level of actions and services and the proportionality obligation will be carried over into the future year to continue to serve our

182unduplicated students this statute also establishes that any shortfall between the implemented level of actions and services and the proportionality obligation can be carried over into the future year to serve its unduplicated students in the how section josh will walk you through this requirement as it appears in the template and instructions i also want to note here that there have been questions raised about whether actions stemming from carryover can be either qualitative or quantitative we believe that consistent with the original charge for increase increasing and improving services for our unduplicated students the nature of carryover dollars would be the same allowing for both qualitative and quantitative actions but i do want to make sure it's very clear we have requested clarification from our cde legal team to ensure we're interpreting this statute correctly so a second

183part of this requirement is that with this new requirement the need to introduce new terminology to make a distinction between actions that utilize lcff funds and actions that do not utilize lcf funds was necessary so since the inception of lcff leas have had the opportunity to meet their minimum proportionality percentage in a number of ways that do not only require spending money we have historically used the terms increasing or improving services but these terms do not fully encompass the nuances we need to consider for carryover the new terminology quantitative and qualitative provides an opportunity for leas to categorize their actions in two ways actions that have an associated expenditure and actions that do not have an associated expenditure the reason that these two terms were developed in statute is to make sure that when districts

184are calculating their carryover there is a way to capture both of these types of actions that meet the objectives of increasing or improving services for unduplicated pupils under lcff so again leas can utilize both types of actions to meet the proportionality obligation and the distinction between the actions is that a quantitative action has associated lcff expenditures they're considered to be increases they're expressed as dollar figures so an example of a quantitative action could be the lea will spend three million dollars to maintain increased staffing ratios of counselors school nurses and classroom aides at sites serving a majority of students who are expelled foster youth while on the other hand a qualitative action do not have associate expenditures these are commonly thought of as improvements and are often expressed as percentages so an example of a

185qualitative action could be a community-based organization sends volunteers two days a week to a school to offer one-to-one reading practice with english learners in the third grade this is a qualitative action because the district does not pay for this one-to-one reading support and this action provides targeted services to an unduplicated student group so to align with statute we also need to make some changes to the titles of the tables in the current lcap template so provided on this slide is a list of the changes to the tables in the next section when we turn it back over to josh he'll point out these changes which are in attachment 3. the proposed revisions to the template instructions are listed on the table in this slide and i will turn it back over to josh to share

186screen and walk us through the how for the requirement to calculate carryover thank you lindsay so as as many of you are aware the increased re-improved services for foster youth english learners and low-income students page provides uh or asks leas to provide the percentage uh to increase or improve services and the increase the amount of the increased apportionment um based on the enrollment to foster youth english learner and low-income students um in order to address some of these requirements in terms of this carryover the the majority of those changes or those proposed changes are within the lcap um summary tables uh that were adopted to go along with them this is the data entry table um and it's uh very wide and so i'll make it a little bit larger um all of the data

187that's on this page is entered by the lea and then all of this then populates into the additional um tabs on on the workbook in order to generate the the required reports we're proposing to add three data elements on this data entry table in order to meet this require their requirements within statute the first is to ask leas to provide the increased uh apportionment amount and the percentage to increase your improved services which are already reported in the template within the expenditure tables we're also asking that they then include a qualitative percentage of improved services for any action that is both contributing but does not have funding associated with it so in an instance where there is a contributing action that does have funding associated with it so for example this action here you would

188have a zero percent percentage to improve service whereas for this action here because there are no funds associated with that the lea would then provide a qualitative percentage of improved services then within the expenditure summary table there are no proposed changes within the contributing summary table there are six proposed changes two of those changes are to include the estimated apportionment amount and the percentage to increase your improved services um also in terms of addressing statutory requirements the total planned percentage to increase your improved services so that those looking at the expenditure tables can have a a comparison between what the required percentage is and what the planned percentage based on the lcap for the coming year is the contributing actions table only provides those actions that are identified as contributing towards meeting the requirement to

189increase or improve services as part of this table we are proposing to include the a expenditure quantitative percentage to play forward from the data entry table into the contributing summary table a qualitative percentage of the qualitative percentage of increased services and then to sum those to create a total percentage of increased or improved services these percentages here are actually reflective of how much they are contributing the percentages that are here uh are in reference to their proportion of this six point three four percent um and so this is that when it says 20.62 that means that it's making up 20.26 percent towards the 6.34 the the sum total of the funding and the qualitative percentages then are calculated to provide this 7.83 that is the planned percentage so that here in this example we have

190a percentage a required percentage to increase or improve services of 6.34 a planned percentage to increase or improve services by 7.83 then within the annual update portion of the template where the estimated actual expenditures from the prior year are provided this is the only piece of data that the leas actually have to enter and there are no changes being proposed to this page and then the contributing update table which is completely new is is um being proposed this is similar to the annual update table this takes the contributing actions and compares both the prior year the planned expenditures from the prior year with the estimated actual expenditures as well as the planned qualitative improvements and the estimated actual improvements in order to generate the total estimated actual percentage of improved services so that here's the

191required percentage by which the lea must increase or improve services for the year here's what they had planned to do here's what they are reporting they actually did the difference between what they had planned to do and what they actually did and then the difference between the what they actually did and the required percentage so that if the amount if the percentage difference is is less than what the required percentage is then there's no carryover that's required if if this amount change if the percentage changes and is in the positive then there would be a carryover amount that would be generated here so um if if the estimated actual amount here was changed to say then there's a 4.5 difference between what was actually done and what was required and there's and then the funding

192the required carryover funding generates within this field and is then reported here in terms of in addition to what the lea must the proportion percentage that they must meet in the coming year so so the lea here would report what the any any carryover amount that would be required for the 2020 to 23 lcap in addition to the percentage to increase or improve services uh based on their fund their their estimated funding within 2020 to 23. so it's really simple and easy for everyone to understand so at this point in time i'll turn it back over to lindsay thank you josh so we'll pause and ask for clarifying questions about this requirement if we have any more clarifying questions i see member rutgers hand up why don't you kick us off i'm just going to

193say you had me at the differentiation between qualitative and quantitative so let me begin by saying my qualitative interest in this particular section has jumped 100 i don't see can you show me in the directions where it explains how to calculate this qualitative increase or qualitative percentage because that's the part i i couldn't understand and i'm not sure i saw it in the direction i hope that's a clarifying question absolutely um can you please screen with josh one more time well actually if i could uh we don't need to do that at this point in time member rucker there aren't any instructions within the lcap template related specifically to how to work how to calculate that percentage um in part because that's something that we're asking for seeking input on we've already received a fair

194amount of input on various uh ways in which that could then be calculated part of of of the struggle is to look at the various ways that a qualitative improvement could be that that requirement could be met okay so i'll say my second question for the more detailed discuss all right uh are there any other clarifying questions i don't see any hands raised seeing none i would encourage you to proceed ahead okay thank you so the third requirement is to use a concentration grant add-on for increased staffing so the why behind this requirement is to ensure leas who receive concentration grant funding have additional resources to hire staff who will provide direct services to students at schools for students who are low-income english learners and our foster youth make up 55 percent or more of

195the student body this requirement takes place because the 2122 budget was signed into law on july 9th of 2021 and it provides applicable leas with an additional 15 percent concentration grant add-on and this cont 15 concentration grant add-on will be ongoing into future budget years this requirement is uh applicable to all leas who receive concentration grant funding and the what behind this this requirement is that leas who receive these funds are required to demonstrate that the additional funding received as a result of the increased concentration grant add-on percent will be used to increase the number of credentialed staff classified staff or both of those that provide direct services to pupils including this includes custodial staff on school campuses who with greater than 55 percent unduplicated people enrollment in the prior year as compared to the

196staff to pupil ratios at schools within the local educational agency with any with an unduplicated people enrollment in the year of 50 in the prior year 55 or less so i'll just pause there for a second to process that slide will there be a quiz so in other words the leas who receive concentration funds are required to demonstrate how they use these funds to increase the number of credentialed staff and or classified staff or both that provide direct services at high needs schools so for the how of this requirement the proposed changes in the template can be found on page seven and the instructions related to this proposed revision can be found on page 29. so josh go ahead can we please kick it back over to josh one more time oh thank you lindsay

197um so as as lindsey uh has already shared the the prompt related to this uh is is proposed at this point in time to be included in the increased or improved services section and to provide a specific prompt here the instructions that are specifically tied to this then are in the increased or improved services section and and specifically on page 29 as it relates to describing the specifics of how that funding is being used as well as including the number of staff members that are either hired or transferred and the type of direct services that are provided to students part of the caveat and and you know maybe to address some of the questions that i hear remember running around in member rutgers head at this point in time this is kind of a moving

198target in fact there's even some uh proposed changes to this particular piece of ed code included in assembly bill senate bill related to this carryover to this additional 15 concentration grant it's something that we've received a lot of input from both in terms of providing more clarity of related to the requirement itself but then also in terms of a couple of different proposals for how this information could be captured that might be cleaner than simply a narrative prompt and so those are things that we're looking into but are are also interested in receiving the feedback that the board might have related to this requirement as well uh lindsey thank you josh okay so we'll pause for clarifying questions all right do we have any clarifying questions at this juncture i think our brains are full

199[Laughter] okay please continue okay so the fourth revision that out of five that we bring to everyone uh to discuss about the lcap is the requirement to add a one-time supplement to the annual update to the 2122 lcap so the reason behind this one-time supplement is to pro to provide local governing boards or bodies parents families and other educational partners with additional information related to the additional funds provided to leas in the 21 22 school year these additional funds of course are the additional lcff funds and the elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds also known as esser funds and also to show for leas to share their story of how they are using these funds in a manner that is consistent with other applicable plans and in alignment with their 21 22 lcaps this

200requirement will take place so the there are a couple pieces the state board must adopt the template for this one-time supplement on or before november 30th of 2021. following the anticipated adoption at the november meeting the cde will post the one-time supplement template and instructions to the cde website leas must present the one-time supplement to the annual update to the 2122 lcap at a regularly scheduled meeting of the governing board or body of the lea on or before february 28 2022 and i just want to note that this supplement once it is presented and completed in february it will be included in the 2223 lcap that will be submitted on or before july 1st of 2022 this requirement is applicable to all leas and the what behind it is leas must use the one time

201supplement template to present an update at the uh at a regularly scheduled meeting of the governing border body on or before february 28th of 2022. the proposed draft of this one-time supplement is attached as attachment number four and i will turn it over to josh to talk more about the how um thank you lindsay so in terms of the one-time supplemental template to the lcap um this is providing a mid-year update to local governing boards and to the leas community as a whole of how stakeholders were engaged in um and consulted as part of the use of various funds as well as a way this way of description of how the additional 15 concentration grant funding is is being used to increase uh staffing at schools that serve greater than 55 of of low-income english

202learner or foster youth students um in in an effort to really streamline this uh the approach that we're proposing is is to keep it as simple as possible um allow leas to be able to provide relevant information to their governing boards and their communities without um having to use something that's overly complicated or or complex um obviously there's not a whole lot of time between when the supplemental template is is released and the time in which leas have to use it as part of the report in terms of the instructions uh we begin the instructions related to the supplemental template with the requirement to provide that update to the local governing board in the community uh what that needs to include as well as some specif specificity related to how the supplement then is also

203included within the lcap for 2022-23 and then in the instructions related to the prompts themselves providing some description of how that should be done what it should cover we've already received some some requests to provide additional information to provide some clarity about what funds are provided through the budget act of 2021 are being referred to within the prompts so that there's more clarity for both leas and for their communities and that's something that will be including um moving forward as well as the way in which some of these prompts uh provide additional information on on what needs to be included and so again this is is something that we're open to feedback on and and interested in hearing um thoughts and and ways that this could be improved while uh providing clarity for both the

204community the governing board and as much as possible reducing that duplication of effort for leas lindsey thank you josh and i think also to build on josh's last point you know we acknowledge there's there's work to be done still on this lcap template and the instructions and the one-time supplement and um so we are very excited to be able to bring this uh item to all of you board members today for your input and we'll be using that to inform the hard work we're going to be doing over the next two months so we'll pause for clarifying questions i don't see any hands raised at this juncture so let's care oh is there is it one nope carry on okay we have made it to the fifth revision so the fifth revision is um actually

205not prescribed by statute but is an important one um we would like to uh ask the board to if we may replace the term stakeholder throughout the lcap template and instructions we have received some feedback in speaking with some of our lea partners that the term stakeholder is offensive to some some people and is creating a barrier on participation for some of our community members particularly our native american communities and the reason behind this is that this term connotates the practice of staking a claim to land during colonial times which was used as a justification for not recognizing the rights of native american communities to their land this term does not acknowledge the fact that native american tribes are sovereign nations with constitutionally protected rights and therefore the use of this term in the lcap

206template and instructions has created a barrier to engagement for some of our native american communities and members so again this this who is uh the cv cd had received some feedback from various educational partners throughout the state now for the one of this the cde has begun to receive some recommendations for new terminology to replace this term however we don't have a recommendation for a new term today um we would like to continue to collect terminology recommendations uh throughout the revision process uh before to bring back to all of you at the november meeting and um we actually have a couple of um educational partner meetings coming up one in particular is we have the american indian education oversight committee coming up which is an advisory group to the superintendent that is next week and

207i want to thank board member mcquillen who who attends those meetings and provides a board update and is going to work with us to summarize the discussion that happens today to those members and we will be asking for them to give input of recommendations we also will be creating a snap survey which will be live during the month of october of 2021 and the link to access the survey will be posted to the lcap webpage we will also send it out through our list serves and all members of the public will be invited to submit recommendations for a new term great and so the what of this is again to remove the barrier cde is recommending that throughout the template we replace the term um just as statute requires that school districts and county offices

208consult with parents students teachers principals administrators other school personnel local bargaining units and the local community and charter schools are required to consult with teachers principals administrators other school personnel parents and students so um so we we are definitely seeking all of your of the board members feedback on on our tentative next steps for choosing and recommending to you a new phrase um we also for all of you watching we invite members of the public to submit suggestions for new phrases um by emailing us at lcff cde.ca.gov and then again or if you would prefer to wait for the survey link we will have that live during the month of october and with that we will pause for clarifying questions now is this the point at which we are going to shortly go to public

209comment we have um just two more pieces of content to share [Laughter] and then we'll go to public comment okay well we'll pause and for anyone who dares to have a clarifying question [Laughter] all right let's continue please okay so we want to take just a moment and acknowledge that we know the pandemic has shaken our system upside down and inside out we have all had to innovate and collaborate to develop new ways of thinking and doing that will support our students in schools our leas have been and continue to be champions for continuous improvement in putting students first while navigating new state and federal requirements and constantly changing public health guidelines so to all of our leas who are watching this presentation we applaud you we acknowledge you and we appreciate you and we

210the cde want to make sure that we are doing everything we can to to collaborate with our leas and support these new their implementation of these new requirements that impact the lcap amidst all the other requirements they are currently juggling so in this next section i want to show how the cde plans to engage with our partners in the field to inform the revisions of the revisions that we're working on and also to provide comprehensive support and guidance so before we got here today we met with the lcap advisory group we held a tuesday two webinar we presented at the california practitioners advisory group we met with educational partners and state board staff throughout that period and we also received some written comments and recommendations after this board meeting we're going to host another tuesday

211at two in october to discuss the revisions uh that that are proposed today um we are continuing to meet with our partner organizations and advisory groups we are going to bring the lcap advisory group together again we are going to uh outline and launch our snap survey to collect recommendations for a new term to replace stakeholder and as always everyone is always welcome to send input through an email to our lcff inbox at the anticipated adoption of the lcap template instructions and the one-time supplement for the annual update in the at the november board meeting following that we will host another two we will host a tuesday to webinar series um lasso is available for office hours and technical assistance upon request and also we are very proud to say that we are working closely

212with the region 15 comprehensive center at west we are going to be rolling out some examples of well-written lcap sections inclusive of new requirements as two-page handouts we're also going to be releasing some guidance that is how to use your local data more than your state data as a metric in the lcap and also to support in timely posting of additional guidance documents to accompany our tuesday to webinar series we acknowledge those are very content heavy and that the slides are very technical and so we're going to have some translation documents to summarize them that are going to accompany these uh these webinars and then finally um just to show that again we all know elias have a lot going on right now we want to acknowledge all the plans that our leas have created

213and are implementing in a crosswalk format so that you can see the intersection of these plans so each of the plans listed down the left-hand column are all playing critical roles in safe return to impress person instruction and ongoing in-person instruction amidst our ongoing pandemic this crosswalk is organized that each row identifies the plan and then the columns the adoption date the implementation time time frame and any required revision dates of that plan the one-time supplement to the annual update will give leas an opportunity to bring all of these plants together to share their story of how they are spending their lcff and federal emergency relief funds in a manner that is consistent with their 2122 lcap and we are working on making this 508 accessible and posting it on our web page on the

214lcap webpage so i'm going to just jump here and then we'll go to public comment so for more information i have some listed commonly used webinars or sites i just want to highlight the fourth bullet our government affairs team created a coveted emergency relief funding summary chart and it is fantastic it lays out similar to the crosswalk of plans it is a crosswalk of funding so i highly recommend it you can find it via search in our cd webpage by typing covid emergency relief funding summary chart so now that is the end of our presentation of this item and i'll pull this up for public comment or turn it back over to uh president darling hammond thank you very much for that very thorough presentation and thank you for all the uh incredible work you've

215done on this revision of the template as you said the revision of the revision and um for all the work you are yet to do uh after we give you our advice and you hear from many others uh in our education partnerships um so we are while we're waiting for members of the public to call in uh who can provide comment on this item i'm going to remind you this is for item three you could do so by calling the telephone number and using the access code provided on the slide that is shown now and while we're waiting for members of the public to call in i want to ask vice president strauss and member burr as our accountability liaisons if they have initial comments so vice president strauss um so lindsay and josh thank

216you so much i just think josh um did an amazing job at cpac walking through this detail by tea tale just like he did now and it was a really thoughtful very deep um conversation and the comments generally obviously this is complicated this is generated by the need to address legislative requirements um the general comments are that a lot of the prompts and guidance are improving in the lcap template but i will say many many people see the lcap template as guiding all the work and decisions and so so many people still want to put more and more in the lcap template so let me just say i think the work has really improved it but i'm making a request that lindsay and josh and the team come back to us in november with with

217areas they believe are redundant that they can reduce the lcap template so again i think the improvements are clear the wordings the stakeholder groups have helped us in a lot of the prompts but i think it has gotten so long the intent is to be transparent to help people understand what we're doing to meet the needs of students with the funding and actions that districts take but i feel like we've gotten the point now where it's longer and longer and it is just i'm not sure it's meeting all the needs by the length of it and the complexity so i would like you through your next meetings to come back to us with some recommendations of areas you believe could be shortened and wouldn't compromise the intent and would help the public and the staff

218really use this as a planning tool as it is intended so again i want to thank you so much for the thorough lindsay i really liked how you laid out who what why i think that was really helpful in the process i'll turn it over to member thank you vice president charles i too want to express my appreciation i i said to lindsay and josh when we did our review of the item when i read the draft it made my head explode and i was really worried about how we were going to have this conversation but you did a magnificent job of taking the comments we had at the liaison call and putting in the who what why where to clarify why these changes are needed i just also want to echo everything that vice

219president strauss said and and sort of take us back to the very beginning as the historian of the group here when i think about what the lcap was intended to do to be a strategic document to guide instructional planning and provide services to our most needy students i'm afraid that it has turned into a complex accounting document that only cpas can understand and only cpas can fill out so i really want to take vice president strauss's comments to heart about how can we make how can we return to what the original intent was while still keeping the needed accountability thank you so much i think with that we will turn to public comment and i understand we have a number of callers in the queue is our public comment moderator available yes there is hello

220caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now uh good afternoon uh board members this is luke gian with public advocates i'm wanting to underscore the letter that we submitted with the lcss equity coalition the changes and transparency required by the budget trailer bill addresses a real life scenario it's not a hypothetical problem and it's intended to ensure that leas fully plan and actually deliver on their equity obligations under lcss and when they don't the shortfall and increased or improved services is calculated and carried over to the next year as unused supplemental and concentration grant funds we don't see how qualitative improvement can make up a large proportion of the proportionality obligation but the explicit directions in statute concerning carryover are important to get right so

221that when it's present how many students will get the full benefit of lcss what i heard josh present is a proposal to track qualitative imprisonment's action by action and we thank the department of staff are making that change up and advocate that carryover funds to be limited to quantitative hello caller please state your name and your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now jessica sacco on behalf of children now i'd like to thank member rucker for her clarifying question regarding how to calculate the qualitative percentage of improved services this is indeed the million dollar question that is critical to be answered before november when the board is set to take action on the lcap template in addition education code 42238.07 is clear carryover funds must be expended and

222therefore their use is limited to those quantitative actions which were previously described i would like to thank uh josh and the team in lasso for their welcoming of our comments um over these past couple of months and we look forward to continuing working together in order to ensure that this document serves the needs of families community members and the schools they are designed to support thank you hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now good afternoon i'm jennifer hicks assistant superintendent of educational services with the foster county office of education and the 2021 fifth chair and sharing these comments on behalf of this concept president we support the cbe's recommendation recommended timeline for adoption and appreciate bringing the draft revisions up in september within

223an intent to adopt in november this timeline allows both county offices and lease the necessary time to understand the new requirements prepare for the changes and provide thoughtful and comprehensive training and calibration additionally we advocate for the revised template and supplement to include only the components required by statute it's essential that the revisions not require additional items beyond what's required by statute and that the lcap continue to be used as a tool for strategic planning in order to best serve students i appreciate both member comments about returning the lcap to its original intent to something that is not overly complex or burdensome i also want to thank the cde class for the opposition partnership and with county offices hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time

224begins now my name is lexi lopez from edvoice the current template is not clear that leas must report on specific actions funded with carryover resources for the ensuing year edvoice urges the board to provide explicit direction to lea that aligns with ab-130 to ensure unused lcfs carryover funds are additive and expended to benefit targeted students edvoice also recommends the board insured districts report by school the staff position supported by the 1.1 billion in targeted funding to ensure staffing levels at schools with a higher concentration of unduplicated students have improved please refer to attachments one and two from the alliance for students letter for an example lastly we recommend guidance on specific actions resulting in qualitative improvements and detailed instructions on how to calculate the benefit to targeted students thank you hello caller please state your

225name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now caller ending in four three three nine your time begins now hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now caller ending in two six one nine your time begins now are you there caller hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now my name is lorraine richards i'm a classroom teacher representing california teachers association cta is part of a coalition of labor and education management organizations that supports the changes made in av-130 that would ensure leas are following through on the commitment made to our most vulnerable students we urge the board to consider that the owl cap should be strategic planning

226document and our state's accountability system is intended to focus on outcomes and continuous improvement efforts to further evolve the owlcat into compliance documents should be disregarded we appreciate that the template provides options for alias to increase or improve services for unjust unduplicated students either qualitatively or quantitatively as outlined in statute we also urge the board to simplify the template as much as possible and not include additional requirements beyond current law with this school year underway the pandemic continues to place substantial stress on family students teachers and administrators thank you hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now hi leticia garcia on behalf of the riverside county superintendent of schools and the 23 school districts in riverside county we're here today as part of the

227coalition of leas and education organization we thank jeff's work on the proposed template and emphasize the following points our districts embrace accountability for student outcomes the templates meet ab-130 requirements and maintain the original lcsf intent that the ltf is a tool for strategic planning to search students needs and not an accounting document the templates also hold districts accountable for their lcss obligations and allow for qualitative action to meet these obligations we do believe leasing communities could benefit from additional guidance on how to calculate the percentage of qualitative actions that contribute to meeting these obligations lastly the one-time supplement could be enhanced by including a table for lea to demonstrate how they have met the concentration grant funding requirement thank you and we look forward to working with you hello caller please state your name and

228affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now good afternoon my name is melissa elder i'm calling from the recon indian education center located in san diego county which is a county with the most reservations in the country and i'm calling and to support the change of requiring specific goals and measures for specific subgroups when their member wrecker eluded and additionally i'd like to express that native american indian students need to also be included as a subgroup because otherwise they will be intentionally left out the subgroup communities need to be directly consulted and included in the conversations regarding the activities plan to address the goals to make sure that these will be effective and meet the needs of those communities they're intended on helping while changing work to be more inclusive is

229important even more so is making concrete steps to actively reduce trauma in our communities by being specific to include our native communities and subgroups and specific goals for them as a requirement thank you hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now caller ending in 2619 your time is now hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now hello madam president this is brian revis calling on behalf of the education trust west wanted to comment on the changes relative to qualitative improvements we think that many communities are going to be surprised and unhappy to learn that the law permits leas to draw down money for unduplicated students but the law permits lease to forego spending

230those monies and we think that you could mitigate possibly some of the negative reaction by making sure that the elf cap uses language that is clear that it's easy to understand what a qualitative improvement is how it will help students and why it's a better choice of action than actually spending the money so i would ask try to think about it from the point of view of a low-income parent whose child is counted among students to draw down funds and then think about how you would feel when you find out the district isn't actually using the money so the recommendations data hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now we're not hearing anything um there appears to be a problem with the line i'll

231see if i can get it to work hello hello caller appreciate your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now my name is kim kenny and i'm a board member in pasadena and the board member rep on the cpac in the interest of helping ltaps be clear and understandable to their readers i have the following concerns which are detailed in more uh clear language in the late correspondence folder number one six new fields for showing carryover are called out specifically in ed code section 52064 b8a but are not included in this template thereby making it non-compliant number two for the new calculations for qualitative improvements and transforming dollars to percentages it is important that there is public guidance on how these calculations should be done either in the lcap

232template itself or the instruction number three it would be beneficial to include all elements of calculations in the tables for instance a minus b equals c one example is that it's not clear how the proportionality obligation is calculated since one component the lcfs base amount is not shown transparency is key to building the trust of the community in our education system and in truly implementing local control i appreciate the modifications and clarifications that have been made in response to the feedback from this hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now good afternoon le'angela reed on behalf of the humboldt county office of education and the small school districts association greatly appreciate the comments of members burns grouse while we embrace accountability we believe the

233lcamp must stay a planning document if anything's become clear over the last two years is that we don't know what the future might bring so we need to be able to adjust in addition we would greatly appreciate the addition of a table allowing us to describe the actions taken because while folks will be working to meet the requirements that we need to meet um they may not be able to find the staff but in an early time and we want to be able to show demonstrating that they are attempting to do so thank you and for your consideration and look forward to working with you hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now my name is honestly with the parent organization network thank you

234to cde staff and board members for your commitment to continuing to improve the lcap conflict overall the template doesn't address what parents have been requesting for a while reporting the budget and expenditures at the school site level because financial information is primarily available at the district level it is unclear if district funding trickles down to schools with more high need students also we advocate for more meaningful guidance for everyone to understand quantitative and qualitative actions or services for high new students providing more rules and mailcap templates without building capacity to qualify and quantify services or implement them is not likely to yield better results so we agree with the idea of providing more examples as well as different ways to calculate qualitative action or concern qualitative funds may become a loophole or casual category for

235districts if not fully explained thank you hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now good afternoon this is sarah lolas with peach press uh we want to associate our comments with those of the ltf equity coalition and the alliance for students we appreciate all the work that the department staff has done over the last several weeks and beyond that in in incorporating many of our uh of our feedback and the feedback from the cpag unfortunately we don't believe that the new template goes quite far enough to really allow local local families students and educators to engage in a meaningful way in the planning and accountability processes locally to that end we think that there needs to be additional instructions and reporting on the qualitative

236improvements as well as we're concerned about um how the guidelines around the carryover funds um do not follow the law on abh 130 and really it's required that those carryover funds be expanded in the following year to benefit targeted students thank you thank you caller hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now good afternoon uh carlos machado with california school boards association i echo the comments made by our fellow members in the education management and mega coalition specifically we request the board ensure that the revisions in the template and update updates implement only those requirements specified in statutes to ensure the most effective transparency for each community we appreciate your recognition and the expense of work that districts and community leaders are engaged in

237with the return to in-person learning the recommendations made by our coalition will ensure that uh they're able to focus on this important work we appreciate your uh your effort on this and uh thank you for your time thank you hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now hello this is shelley siebel coleman from californians together we appreciate the quantity of work the department has put together in all of the attachments that we were reviewing in the template we believe clarifying language is needed as to how districts report the user carry over funds on one hand the ad code section we reference indicates that carryover funds need to be extended to improve or increase services the word expended leads us to conclude money spent on

238the other hand there's a reference to a process that districts can use to meet the proportional obligation through qualitative improvements that do not require funding we are concerned that districts could deliver could deliver all of their improved services needing the proportionality obligation and not expend any of their carryover money we recommend that all carryover monies be spent quantitatively we'd also like to reinforce with board member record rates in reference to the new new specific goals that emanate from legislation differentiated hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now good afternoon dr darling hammond and board members diana du with association of california school administrators axel would encourage the state to develop a tool for county superintendents to use when reviewing district outcasts to ensure calibration

239and consistency around the state for lcap reviews in addition access part of the coalition education management and labor groups continue to underscore the points of transparency at a local and state level we believe a template with some minor adjustments will meet with goals the coalition's recommendations include appreciation for the draft focused on implementing statute and consistency in allowing la's the ability to demonstrate how they are using the proportionality obligation quantitatively and qualitatively requested guidance on calculating the percentage for qualitative action inclusion of a table referenced in our letter to provide additional information regarding how additional concentration current dollars are invested and to provide clarity and increase usability thank you thank you caller hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now tim taylor executive director

240of california small school district association representing 60 of the school districts in california and we agree with the labor administration associations and we have no interest in stripping our responsibility to be transparent and accountable to our students and families in small districts our students and parents are family and we don't feel we'll be more accountable to them on paper than we are in person we're providing a more useful document many of our families are overwhelmed by the lcap and we want to be open and accessible as possible the majority of small districts use infographics to help summarize their funding to improve student achievement they do not use a 50-plus page document we request the department continue to work with small district leaders to continue to create a more usable and family-friendly document that parents and

241the community will leave we also appreciate cd and the board for working together on this document thank you thank you caller hello caller please state your name at affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now good afternoon madam chair john athel from public advocates to address member rutgers question there is a standard and direction in ab130 for how to establish the percentage for a qualitative improvement 52070 makes clear that le l caps need to demonstrate and counties need to verify that the degree of quality improvement claims is commensurate with the amount of s c funds apportioned that that claim percentage represents so in other words if you have 100 million dollar mpp and you're claiming a one percent qualitative percentage you need to show how that action is contributing roughly a

242million dollars worth of quality to highlight students over and above what all students are receiving secondly the single catch-all prompt asking lease what you did with your carry-over doesn't cut it those actions need to be separately identified and justified thank you hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now thank you good afternoon president darling hammond and members of the board patty herrera on behalf of the oakland and corona norco unified school district who join a coalition of education organizations to support and offer improvements to the proposed lcap template and one-time supplemental template we want to underscore our commitment to transparency and accountability to the state and our community partners to ensure optimal use of resources for the benefit of our students in this spirit

243we believe at the proposed table describing how leas are using their increased concentration grant funds to staff their high property schools achieve transparency without making the lcap an unreality strategic planning and engagement tool we'd also like to restate the importance of retaining the value of qualitative service improvements some of which may not be monetized for students when calculating any portion of unimplemented or partially implemented actions for unduplicated students the state has long recognized that the quality of the services we provide students is just as important as the quantity of the services we provide thank you that concludes our public comment all right thank you very much i'm aware that we were uh anticipating a break for lunch after this item but it is 12 51 and some of you may really need to eat in

244order to be able to have a good discussion so i suggest we take a 10-minute break so you can grab food we can eat during our discussion as we have many times in this board and reconvene at about one o'clock to pick up our portion of the discussion because i know there's a lot that people may want to contribute so take a moment grab whatever you would be sustaining yourself with uh and we will see you back at one turn off your a video camera and mute your mic but do not leave thank you okay so um we are now ready to really um dig in and discuss and provide feedback to our team on the lcap template and um i apologize would you like me to re-establish the quorum yes i would like you

245to do that happy happy to do so uh member statements present vice president strauss number rucker present remember rodriguez here member patello bronson here member mcquillen here amber glover woods here number escobaro all right now we are ready to dig in and discuss and i see that member rucker is ready to go so kick us off please pat oh joy okay well first of all i do want to thank the staff for their effort in presenting this uh document and i appreciate that this is for conversational purposes so for that reason my comment my compliment is going to be well that was a good start so here's my what mike i have a couple of questions and some concerns that i want to share here that i hope can inform how the staff what the

246staff does in their continuing conversations not only with their technical design team but with our very savvy staff of legal advisors as well as the stakeholders i think first and foremost the ques we need to begin with the pivotal question what do you want and you know there's a difference between what is needed and what do you want the statute clearly defines what needs to be included in the lcap template but as was pointed out by board member burr this document is changing in both scope and aspect to be something that i'm not sure is clearly what is wanted and so that's the reason why i asked the question you know where are the directions that define how you compute this qualitative input the staff must have had some idea about what that meant by

247putting the charts together that they offered as an example for illustrative purposes in today's presentation so somehow or other there was some magic some computation some thought put into the numbers that were in that column about qualitative improvements and so let me begin by asking you to define what do you want actually represented when you talk about quality just like any number quality has a number of facets to it is uh is the quality you're asking districts to evaluate about their program inputs a peculiar or essential character so if it's going to be that then you have to target students because there is some peculiarity about decisions districts will make about their programs and where they direct those funds based on the students they want to target is there some inherent feature about the district

248that these funds or these expenditures are supposed to have an impact on based on what cindy kozana said earlier in going forward to not only implement the recommendations for identifying schools and districts who would continue to be referred for the system of support but also in ways that will inform how we compute the growth metric there's going to be some historical data included so are we actually surprised that we have historical data that goes even beyond 2017 that says we have a lot of underperforming student groups that can be easily identified by ethnicity and in that case i'm particularly talking about african american students so is there some inherent feature about school districts who cannot for some reason figure out that they're under their african-american students are specifically underperforming other student subgroups across all grade

249levels in mathematics and they cannot for some reason feel compelled to call that out in their qualitative evaluation of their program what i did see in the examples given really did address the next two facets about quality one was capacity and role in the example that was given by the staff it was a qualitative investment in staffing and in particular ways that staff would provide specific direct services so that's one element but that's the only element that was shown and the directions or at least the information that i saw in the template don't quite align with that example is there something about the degree of excellence the investment in professional learning or professional development that's an example of a qualitative investment that is that but that's not a direct service yet those were things that

250were that also were talked about or called out there is there needs to be some attention paid to what are the distinguishing attributes about this program that are going to be different from previous efforts because that is a recognition that what we've done before hasn't worked and here's what we're going to take a look at and that takes us to the why so that's both the what and the why and linking those things together but quality also comes down to leadership and the work that has to be done to in the stakeholder engagement process and i'm very mindful of that fifth amendment that's going to be made to address stakeholders because this is the same thing that continues to be called out with every successive meeting we have it's about stakeholder engagement it was painfully

251pointed out by the complaint of district leadership at the july meeting when they were complaining about the requirement to sit in their office by themselves and to write a plan concerning school reopening and the use of the federal esser funds we're still stuck in this loop where stakeholder engagement is an afterthought or something that happens after the plan is drafted and then presented in some ways stakeholders or at least that's the feedback i heard very clearly from district leaders who called in and spoke to us in july so these qualitative investments have to be based on a conversation that genuinely comes from the discussion with stakeholders yet the opportunity for this department and this board to exert some leadership to make sure that is the kind of conversation that happens is not a or evident

252in this draft so i offer those criticisms as gently as i can but as harshly as i believe needs to be offered so that we again can see and say this is our board's opportunity to show leadership in this space about school improvement but in particular i need to know that for the school districts that i have been following ever since we implemented the lcap they have there's only six districts in this county and for all i mean there's only six and for all six of these leas african-american students are underperforming in every single state test that is offered far below the other three larger school student subgroups for this entire county yet if i go through the program section of for all six of these districts i can't count where african-american students are identified

253as the priority in all six of those districts even six times i do not see where what you have written here is going to improve the attention these six school districts in this single county will be paying for their underperforming african-american students thank you um remember escobado then member son i see your hands up member escobado some suggestions i i do believe i mean thank you for the presentation it was an elegant way of seeing where the monies are being concentrated however i think it's very important to have some ability to include an academic return upon investment again this pretty much connected to what trustee rucker stated is that we have to ensure somehow that we don't repeat strategies that do not work or have historically failed and and is there any type of research

254and development there no especially you know we've identified these positive outliers so what you know how can we ensure that some of these research-based practices that have demonstrated significant growth with either african-american or english learners how do we we make sure that's part of this conversation and i do know that a lot of this conversation occurs between the district and the county level however my experience there's a significant amount of time that focuses on just on the formatting of the lcap document and it is my hope that that conversation shifts and because this i mean i'm a huge fan of the lcap and and really the lcap has enhanced uh parent engagement it has been a great tool if if used properly i i think we need to tweak in in the area of how

255it's being used that really focuses on on those populations that have not historically uh improved thank you all right members fun thank you i just want to preface um these comments first by saying that this is not a direct critique to the cde staff who worked very hard to put something together trying to meet legislative requirements and various uh groups that have wanted various things to be tweaked within the lcap but i think that we have completely lost the force for the trees we really lost our way on lcff i appreciate member burs and member strauss's comments um at the very beginning this is not what the intent of the lcap was supposed to be and we just continue to go down this road of complexity uh you know i completed l-caps for my school

256and worked with other schools in nail cap and in the what is it now seven years that we've had um the lcap it has become more tedious and repetitive and completely taken us off the track of the strategic instructional plan that that board member referred to if i think about my own parents who did not speak english and we're not educated in the united states they may have been able to understand the lcap in the first maybe three editions of it if it had been translated into chinese at this point in time it doesn't matter if it's translated or not they would not be able to understand it and know why would understand the purpose of it so i i just think that we need to kind of relook at it structurally and i'm hearing

257comments from member rucker as well is that we just really kind of need to step back and look at the whys of this um first of all i you know so i just offer a couple of things one is that we still are using a one size fits all template for so many such a diversity of leas within california we pride ourselves on diversity and equity in this state and yet we've created this one template that's for all sizes of of districts which does not make sense for me and then where i now identify certain districts to have complete different parts of the lcap that just makes it even more complex the second is that and i think i mentioned this three versions ago when we were working on the lcap is that i think

258we have evolved because of the nuances and because of the details we it's it doesn't fit into a 2d template we need something that's more 3d 4d whatever it might be so that to get to some of the nuances and details it isn't a matter of looking at 100 page document that it needs to be more interactive in some way so that's a technology piece and that's something that that we really need to consider uh moving forward the fourth is um operational agreements or principles i believe that we when we developed i believe it was the assessments we had some operational principles uh that we wanted to adhere to as we were developing the assessments it may have been accountability but we used to get michelle center used to remind us of that all the

259time what are our principles are we haven't developed that for the lcap i think we really need to develop some operational principles around this el cap before it gets further and further away from us and then the last piece is the quality piece that that member rucker was speaking to i don't think that we get at quality through a form or template we get at quality through coaching technical assistance professional development and that kind of work and we we don't emphasize that enough when we say that lease are not uh adhering to accounting for all their funds and all that i think that is a role for the county offices and cde staff to provide those types of technical assistance rather than try to cram more and more things into this 2d template that doesn't

260fit what the intent and purposes were in the first place so that's my comments thanks thank you okay vice president strauss and then member bananka so um i want to build on what uh member song and member rucker talked about and talk about first i think it's too complicated i think i made that comment in the beginning and i would like some guidance and recommendations from cde staff and the input sessions they're going to get about areas we can improve and reduce the redundancy and make this more useful but once we get this template approved which we have to do by the end of november my question is then how does it get translated and as we know we have more than a thousand leas half of which are 2500 or less which means they

261have a very small staff in the district office and we have 58 counties and we know that everything is a little different based on size one la county 25 percent of all the kids in california some counties one district so how we translate this now then back to school districts through county offices is going to be incredibly important that we're consistent and so i'm hoping that through cd and successor we can build a support and a communications tool which gives clear messaging on how do you complete this based on the intent to meet the intent of the law and the guidance of what we did and so again i think that would be something else i would request for our november meeting which is once we get it to a point where we've met the

262legal requirements and we've done the best we can this round how does that now get communicated to leas through county offices so that the communications on how to complete it are clear and the review process is fair because my understanding from the field is county offices do this review differently that based on staffing and how they approach it so i think it's a whole system issue and i don't want to deal just with the template and then have all the frustration at the district level which is already there and how we and maybe remember glover woods as a county office administrator could help us think about how do we communicate this and get some continuity and some fairness and consistency across the process as we go forward thank you thank you member uh bananka and

263then member glover woods thank you so before i begin i'd like to thank the cdc uh the cde staff yet again for breaking this item down so well through your presentation um beginning with the first part of this item regarding the underperforming student groups and underperforming schools i completely agree with memo rucker's comments that educational partners engagement should not be considered as an afterthought when it comes to lcap so i would recommend that we stipulate somewhere in there that leas must consult students who are either members of the lowest performing groups or the students at those low performing schools when writing their goal because i think it's so important just because of the fact that those students are in the schools more than likely they understand what their school is missing out on better than

264arguably anyone else because they're actually living that system um and also i think we should make sure that students aren't there just to check a box but their input is actually noted and listened to i know that on my lcap committee it sometimes does feel like we're just there to fulfill a requirement and that we're not necessarily being listened to or adults aren't making room the conversation for us so i think we need to include their input in these decisions for how to write these goals addressing the underperforming student groups in schools and then in regards to the second part regarding uh qualitative improvements and turning those into percentages um i completely agree with the many members that are stating that we need to clarify this a lot more there needs to be more direct

265and explicit instructions on how to do this because it's extremely subjective and it's definitely not something that you know an lea can just think of off the top of their head um and i also think that um we really do need to make trainings accessible we need to provide context give examples when we're explaining this so that it makes sense and i want to echo vice president strauss and member burr's comments on ensuring that we don't convolute lcap to the point where it only makes sense to the experts and not to the community members because the whole point of lcap is to include the community it's to include the people that are living the education system or being affected by it and so when it gets to the point where it's way too convoluted then

266the entire purpose of lcap kind of fails to to be realized um so i think that the easier it is to understand the easier that we can make it to understand for just the common person the more accessible it is and the more leas can truly receive community feedback and engagement and i can just say as someone who did start on their lcap community not our committee not really understanding um all that much about it i felt like when i started it felt like i was reading a whole another language like a foreign language because there's so many technical terms it's very confusing to someone especially students who are busy have extracurriculars maybe applying to college this isn't what they do for a living and so we have to keep that in mind when developing

267uh these instructions on how to uh necessarily uh translate these qualitative improvements into percentages thank you um we have in the queue um remember glover woods member burr and member patio brownson uh member glover woods thank you um just a couple of points and not to rehash a lot of what has already been said by my fellow board members but i think there are two key areas that we have talked about and i'm thinking about what has been asked in this item which is to provide feedback one of the areas is to look at the recent requirements and see how to best represent that in the template format the larger looming question which is not necessarily called for in this item but which has been echoed by many of the board members especially those who've

268been there from the onset is how to ensure that the lcap retains its original purpose and i remember the first template um reviewing and all of those different things and it has evolved into quite a different document than what was originally intended and quite a complicated document and i don't think it's of any fault of anyone who's provided feedback and input or the hard work of the staff the cde staff and the educational partners who provided input it's been a result of a lot of different requests and requirements and it's just taken on a life of its own but at the end of the day if it's to be a strategic planning document if no one can understand what it is i'm not quite sure how it helps to direct the strategic plans that are

269to actually be implemented so what i would just encourage under the lane of feedback is that as a staff goes into conversation between now and the next november state board meeting one is to grapple with again the requirements and there were two things that were really brought forward how to represent those qualitative supports and services for unduplicated pupils in a way that um maintains the qualitative aspect of it but also is able to address some of the needs on how do we know that um funds that were expended for quantitative purposes don't get lost in the shuffle the other is really again i'm going to go back to one of the first ones which was clarifying goals and for those requirements related to student groups that are performing below their peers or schools within an

270lea it really seems that there should be something very clearly called out in the goals section so that it is clear that those two areas are being addressed or the lease in which that requirement would apply and then i just encourage moving forward i don't know that it can happen between now and november but it seems like a very larger piece which is just convening more conversation and more groups around what was the original intent of the lcap how does the story and how does it maintain its purpose as a strategic planning document that's easily understood and into and really contains the feedback from all educational partners that's a larger conversation but i encourage that that conversation take place i think we can get back to the original purpose it's just going to take all

271of the educational partners together engaging in that conversation to do so thank you um i have member burr member patio bronson i remember mcquillen uh in the lineup remember burr thank you so i won't repeat what has been so eloquently said by my fellow board members about returning to the original intent and having that conversation but i want to take a little bit of a different tack here because one of the things i'm concerned about is um knowing the context in which these requirements were enacted and i want to return to i think our very start of this meeting and something that president darlingham and said when we put the budget together this year we thought the school environment was going to look very different and we thought the pandemic was going to be over

272and we were all celebrating that has changed a lot and the requirements that we have put on school districts with respect to the pandemic all rightfully done and in the interest of public health and our especially the health of our students and our staff are good ones but i worry a little bit that these requirements about all of this very specific accounting and what's happening and are you going to spend all your money were put on in a time when we thought things were going to be a lot better in terms of the educational environment so i would just ask both our staff and the department staff to sort of go back and think about that a little bit and also talk to legislative staff about what was your intent here and i'll just give

273you a very specific example every time i heard the conversation about carryover i thought oh my gosh these school districts just got a boatload of money which they deserved and they but they're having a heck of a time hiring staff and they're going to find themselves in the middle of the year with half a boatload of money because they can't hire the staff they need especially staff counselors nurses folks who are in short supply anyway and if i heard the details correctly we're going to expect them to expend all that money in the year we're in right now or next year so i again i just i worry that we're setting our lease up for failure by a circumstance that has changed and i so appreciated president darling hammond's comment about we have been humbled

274by this and i feel like we are we've had legislation that is still in a place where we're not and we're not going to be for a long time so i don't want to be implementing things i feel like we're trying to hit a moving target here a little bit that really are not workable and i think that's a lot of what you were hearing especially from our lea partners in the feedback so i i just want to think about that a little bit and i just want to circle back to one thing that member sun said about operating principles what are our operating principles here and maybe if we set some up in the content context of the environment in which we know we're going to be operating in for some number of months

275and as president darling hammond said we don't know what were going to happen as these additional variants come on on board so i just don't want to put our leas and all of our education stakeholder partners in a circumstance that's just not doable and make things even harder than they already are well said remember patio brownson i also wanted to thank um the team for the eloquent presentation and also for being really in the midst of so many people who have such high aspirations for how this document can work um it's only i think really a testament to how important it is that people are um sort of giving this level of feedback and interest and really giving voice to the aspiration that we get it right i also wanted to align myself with the

276comments earlier from board member rucker and escobado around the importance of actually naming the student populations where we are seeing chronic performance and also naming the specific interventions and why we think they will work this is i think been a continuing thread and it is it is the perfect place to sort of shine a light on this and help leas actually think through how to actually break through and actually see some progress where we know there have been pockets of progress in some districts and where we have seen either a plateau or a lack of attention in other districts um the other theme i think that that has come across consistently is a desire for greater clarification as to what a qualitative improvement should be defined as i think the percentage designation that's on some

277of the charts gets to this idea but also sort of flattens the idea of what a qualitative improvement might look like it doesn't get to or yet address the idea of what a more effective intervention might look like or necessarily urge that conversation to think about effectiveness beyond sort of what a percentage calculation of on a chart might look like i'd also recommend that folks consider some of the sample um templates that have been offered in public comments the lcff equity coalition offered um what i think are actually quite helpful sort of back-to-back tables as suggestions for how you could actually draw attention to what is different and what the change of strategy could be um and then the last thing i just wanted to raise which is is actually less than a part of

278the conversation um of the five uh amendments that that cde has presented for our consideration and is more in the the bucket of general improvement and clarification potential for the lcap so as as was mentioned earlier by the superintendent with the universal tk budget and legislation that was enacted this year there is an opportunity i think to help districts understand what that means through the lcap process i recall when um the original simian legislation was passed back in 2010 which created the first cohort of transitional kindergarten eligibility and i as then an advocate working with several school districts recall hearing administrators superintendents tell me directly that tk students didn't generate ada once we got to lcff i recall people directly saying tk students didn't need to or couldn't be incorporated within a district's lcff lcap

279plan that they didn't generate supplemental grants that they didn't count towards concentration configurations and all of that obviously is patently false and yet this is a prime document that could actually communicate that tk to 12 is the grade span so i would encourage as as we think about clarifying um uh moments um where we can actually put in language to reference the tk to 12 grade spans to call the district's attention to the opportunities that are before them thank you member mcquillen and then member rodriguez thank you i won't i'll be brief i know we're way over time now and uh we gave up our lunch i'm feeling that uh thank you for all the great comments and thank you uh to our staff members for presenting a very complicated uh uh the uh changes

280uh amendments uh to uh the lcap that has become very complicated and really should not be i i really appreciated our student the members comments in that the lcap has become very daunting and really should be a document that communities can understand and can be made more succinct and and understandable but i i also agree with the comments that the low-performing subgroups there needs to be a mechanism that those groups are mentioned in the planning process in this planning document you know in our areas of the north state we have many american indian students that are performing very low in terms of their their scores across the board and many districts are not uh setting goals or mentioning the subgroups there i know one of the callers pointed that out also so i agree that

281we need a mechanism to ensure that those subgroups are a part of the plan and being addressed within the plan and then the other part i will carry this forward to the american indian oversight committee um i think it was amendment number five where some changes in the language moving away from uh the stakeholder words um and and looking for suggestions there of maybe partners or interested parties or looking for other uh wording there you know we we do live in a more compassionate world now and you know the changes that we're undergoing when we look at the mascot issue or sports professional sports teams that are changing and dropping their names and or even ski resorts that need to look at their names and changing those that are insensitive to the first peoples and

282the indigenous peoples of of the land here so i appreciate that that component and that uh um possible amendment also thank you thank you remember rodriguez yes thank you um and i want to thank everybody um and especially the cd for this very complete um presentation and you know i echo everything that's been said especially naming the students um and one of the things that that really struck me because this has been on my mind a lot member bananka your very articulate um exposition about the experience with the lcap and just how um it feels like a foreign language um and so i i'm all for more clarity and making it understandable and digestible too so that people feel like they can contribute you said something that really struck me because i've been thinking about

283this a lot and that's the checklist and i think that what happens is you know because of nclb districts are still kind of in that mindset of very compliance oriented and so there's this checklist instead of thinking we have these students right that we've named that we really need to give extra supports to how can we creatively do that and as opposed to like oh they all came to the meeting and so we met that requirement um so i really hope that we as a board look a lot more at those students and um name them and see how we can best serve them so that they can achieve uh their academic goals and dreams because they they do have them you know just for they they they start letting go of them when when

284our schools can't serve them um or won't serve them and lastly i want to comment on the stakeholder um expression i've always found that to be very aggressive and violent and for that reason like i i pictured like oh i'm laying my stake here and so i was really excited to hear hear um us looking for another word uh for to express the the partners the communities that come together for the betterment of our schools thank you thank you and i think everyone has commented i will simply uh associate myself with a lot of the comments that have been made i want to thank the staff again for the enormous work that's gone into the process i think we have some clear [Music] goals in mind and i know that it's challenging when on the

285one hand we have legislation asking for you know much more specificity of certain kinds and on the other end we still want to preserve the nature of this document as a strategic planning tool and as something that is both understandable by constituencies and manageable by educators i want to hold up member burr's comments about you know how much adjustment and readjustment and re-readjustment educators have had to do over this last year and we'll need to do over this next year and that we need to have that frame of mind and we need not to box people in so that they feel like they have to do things that are sub-optimal you know because they're trying to meet a compliance requirement um you know educators across the state for the most part are focused on trying

286to serve you know children and families i think there's a strong message from the board that uh students who are um struggling and performing less well in any respect uh need to be explicitly attended to uh in the thinking about the strategic planning and in the communication on the tool um and then you know we need to make ways for that tool to be useful and legible i also uh want to affirm the thanks to the staff for raising up the issue of changing the language around stakeholders and for that sensitivity and look forward to the new language that will emerge and finally i want to recognize that member mcquilla noted that he gave up lunch and i don't want anyone giving up lunch so let me suggest to you that if you need a

287personal break as i said at the beginning just text brooks when you have to go off camera and take a personal break get food if you need to eat it off camera that you know do what you need to do to be fortified because we are only halfway through i need you strong and engaged and um no one should be hangry here because they had to give up lunch so we do want you to take care of yourselves a little self-care here and with that we are going to conclude this item and it's an information item i i'm sure that the staff has taken away a great deal to ponder and to work on and we will work with them um in a collaborative spirit to get to the to the goal um we are

288not going to take a break formally because we are about an hour behind where we had thought we might be so i do encourage you if you did not grab some food to take a personal break if you need to grab it don't be embarrassed about eating on camera whoever's talking is actually i think spotlighted so if you're not talking you're probably safe to eat your lunch and we will go on to item number four which is the new targets for state performance plan indicators in the annual performance report for part b of the individuals with disabilities education act of 2004 and the cde is recommending that we review and provide the department with feedback on the proposed new targets and they'll return in november to present the final targets for consideration for approval and

289the item will be presented by heather calamis of the cde so heather please begin thank you so much and good afternoon um president linda darling hammond and sbe members i'm glad to see you all and hope all that is well today's agenda item tells an exciting story of the trajectory of the special education in california the state performance plan which is part of the apr is much more than a required federal submission to the office of special education programs it is the heart and soul of our special education system it's our north star it's why we do the work that we do the presentation of this material is a culmination of many meetings many hours and many discussions over the past several years the efforts by our community led by cde special education staff and

290our partners to meaningfully make changes to our system are heroic the spp targets are key levers of improvement to systems which ultimately result in improvement to student outcomes our new proposed targets reflect input from a wide variety of the special education community here in california and it is an honor and an opportunity to present our roadmap as we believe our paths will continue to get brighter in the days and weeks and months to come in regards to the timeline that has been mentioned previously the cde is required to submit the spp targets and the 2020 apr in february of in order to meet the required deadline you will be reviewing and providing feedback on the proposed targets in this presentation in november you will be voting to approve the proposed spp targets in january of

2912022 you will be reviewing and approving the 2020 annual performance report which is known as the apr in february both are submitted for review and approval by os uh by osa once submitted the cde staff meets with our osep assigned contact for comments questions and clarifications and the typical process concludes by april of may of each year in terms of the experience for students with disabilities in california the next slides will walk through some basic demographic information for our students and about our students so that you can get to know them a little bit better you have seen these slides before in previous presentations but i think it's important for us to ground ourselves in uh the demographic specifically of who we're referencing in this presentation and we know that the numbers in the in

292the next slide present the faces of our students in our communities and in our schools and in our families but the numbers tell a story of a system in need of intervention we have identified a need and we have provided support our education system is deeply complex and deeply rooted in social justice our society chose not to educate students with disabilities in the 1970s and instead we chose institutionalizing and pathologizing our students with just our students with disabilities special education remains an issue of social justice and equity and invisibility and the state of california has made significant historic and visionary investments in special education the education experience of students with disabilities is just one of the foundational experiences that frame and shape and influence who our students will become the experience is much more than

293a series of academic events or progressing from grade to grade the experience includes making meaning of living life with a disability developing skills to navigate the world and knowing that disability includes a stigma in part of our society and also the pursuit of access full access and opportunity is our ultimate end game so in 2020 2019 and 2020 school year there are just north of 804 000 students with disabilities ages 0-22 0-22 served in the california public school system are k-12 students with disabilities which represent 12.2 percent of california's k-12 population of just over 6 million the numbers in terms of the representation of percentage of students with disabilities in the state of california is on par with many of the other states across the country in terms of a portion of students with disabilities

294identified in their total student population the next slides in which you've seen before point out specifically students with within each group who are identified as having ieps in the local control funding formula from 2019 to 2020. so the first pie chart that you see before you outlines that 13 of our students with ieps are also identified as socioeconomically disadvantaged students that also have ieps in the local control funding formula there are 27 percent of foster youth with ieps and then there are 17 percent of english learners with ieps as well the next pie chart here outlines out of the students with disabilities total how many students actually are identified in one or more lcff student groups in 2019 2020. so in this pie chart here you will see that 70 percent of our student groups

295are 70 70 of students with ieps are also located or found or identified as also being identified in the lcsf student groups in terms of our demographics and how we monitor and support students with disabilities across the state of california in the special education division we tier our leas in terms of needing support direct support from the cde and our technical assistance partners and so on the right hand side you will see i'm sorry the left-hand side you will see the the levels of one intensity in which we engage with our leas across the state and two the number of leas that are found that have been identified in each tier by the cde so in our intensive targets there are 204 leas identified in our targeted tier there are 1400 just over 1400 leas

296and then in our universal tier there are just over 500 and the corresponding inverted triangle that you see is an indication or visual representation of how the cde and our technical assistance partners provide support to our lease across across the state directive support assistance and and then resources it is also important to note that there are 203 leas as noted that have been identified for differentiated assistance for student outcomes so in that left hand triangle that you see somewhere along the line those 203 leas are somewhere either in an intensive targeted or universal tier as we walk through the rest of the presentation and the rest of the data here today it's important to note the conditions that are placed or or actually upon our system that present challenges and barriers to alignment of our

297systems and ensuring more inclusive efforts across the state first and foremost the teacher shortage which many of which you've heard about today severely impacts the field of students the field of special education and the impact is felt at the student level for students with disabilities not only as a teacher shortage you know at the teacher level but we also are experiencing shortages of related service providers paraprofessionals and special education administrators there's a need for additional access to the general education environment and then we'll talk a little bit more later about inclusion inclusive environments through one of our indicators indicator 5. the need for additional universal design for learning resources and training across the state of california in talking with one of our self improvement leads the one of the number one requests for our teachers

298by our teachers across the state of california additional opportunities to learn more about implementing udl in the classroom the conditions also in terms of having two side load systems that run parallel both and at the lea level and also the state level as well we know that special education is part of the general education system however over time those two systems have existed and cross paths only when necessary or needed and more intentional efforts are needed to bring greater alignment to both of those systems statewide and also the need to examine and address the implication of inherent bias and systemic racism in our systems of identification placement and discipline as well as i mentioned in the opening slide the annual performance report contains the state performance plan so the apr consists of 17 indicators indicators

299are categorized as either compliance or performance and then there's one indicator that has a both compliance and performance elements the state performance plan that you will be hearing about today is about setting the state targets for the next six year cycle the annual performance report that is also part of the package is merely our annual reporting on how california is progressing towards those targets as well the combination of these two activities is known as the spp apr so the past cycle started in 2013 and ended in 2019 and our new targets will be set from 2020 to 2025. over a two-year period uh nine meetings were held in terms of uh engagement in the feedback and the development of the new targets as well the meetings began in august of 2019 and included a diverse

300educational partnership group that you see before you today these meetings were designed to engage community members from various backgrounds they included educators included parents school administrators policy advisors school psychologists family empowerment centers and early education and advocacy groups these meetings were held in person prior to covet and then virtually during the pandemic in terms of the feedback timeline mapping from august of 2019 to now the associate director shiloh duncan besserillin said staff presented the performance indicators to our community the presentations included an explanation of how each indicator is defined measured and calculated and an in-depth history of the statewide performance trends over the past five years along with data forecasting these media these meetings provided time for the community to discuss statewide data target setting and and how the cde can provide supports for leas

301to meet the more rigorous targets the community was actively engaged and asked critical questions in their pursuit of developing the suggested targets and that community members also brought their unique perspective and also worked in small groups to discuss and develop the suggested targets the i'll first walk through the compliance indicators and rather quickly and then move on to the performance indicators which is the meat really of this conversation today i want to recognize that compliance is certainly important and the foundation of the work that we do to ensure that there are appropriate services timely services and timely assessments for students with disabilities but however in 2014 osap shifted their focus from compliance to results to work with states to develop their systems to mirror the the fact that compliance is is one measure but really

302looking at results is is the direction that the state and the federal government will go the first of our compliance indicators are 4b 9 and 10. these targets are set by osap not by the state of california or our community group and the follow the following indicators also comprise what we know or what or what are typically referred to as the disproportionality indicators 4b is rates of suspension and expulsion by rate race and ethnicity that target is set at zero as are all the other compliance targets that are set by osip as well and so this target measures the percentage of leas that have a significant discrepancy in uh by race their ethnicity and the rate of suspension expulsions greater than 10 days in a school year and also include policies and practices and procedures

303that contribute to that discrepancy as well the second of those is what we call disproportionate representation this compliance indicator also set at zero uh measures the percent of leas that have the disproportionate representation of racial ethnic groups in special education and related services the third compliance indicator is what we refer to as indicator 10 which is again disproportionate representation in race and ethnic groups in specific disability categories indicators 12 13. and 14 are also considered compliance indicators and those targets are set at child find comprises indicator 11 ensuring that students have an appropriate evaluation within 60 days of receiving parental consent for that initial evaluation to be conducted early childhood transition in terms of part receiving students receiving part c transitioning to part b services and those who were found eligible prior to prior to

304age three must have an iep developed and implemented by their third birthday the third compliance indicator comprising this group is secondary transition and again this compliance indicator measures the percent of students with disabilities ages 16 and above with an iep that includes measurable post-secondary goals it's important to note that the age of transition in california is the age of 16 which is the federal sort of bar that is set though many states often choose grades lower than 16 but california currently at 16 a student must have a transition plan with appropriate goals in their iep as we move on to the performance indicators we know that a healthy start to education begins before birth we know it starts with high quality prenatal care early learning experience experiences that develop the whole child that really set

305up young learners for success we know that timely assessment is critical for students suspected of having a disability so that interventions can be provided at an early age to mitigate the impact of the identified disability second to that is timely assessment accurate assessments performed by qualified staff and conducted in a collaborative manner lead to identification of the right supports for students so that instruction can be aligned to the goals set forth within the student's iep moving along on our road in terms of the pathway of success is notated in the in the indicators ensuring the appropriate supports and services are provided in the right setting also ensures access to the general education curriculum most appropriate to student need in order to maximize impact lre or least restrictive environment is more than just a description of

306the supports and services that often encompasses a belief and a mindset about students with disabilities while a continuum exists for a reason it's critical that iep teams discuss ways to support challenge and foster growth and independence for our students moving along on our roadway or highway the right evaluation in setting ensures that students are also supported from a social emotional standpoint including behavioral needs too often students that are receiving the right types of supports can be can become disengaged which often result in being placed in more restrictive settings or disproportionately being disciplined and or suspended which includes then of course missing instructional valuable instructional moments in the classroom setting statewide assessments play a critical role on the roadmap as well ensuring the best possible result on assessments are the result of many of the other

307factors and indicators that you will see before you and so that some some of it compromises um but not compromises comprises the result of timely assessments identification and the right provision of supports to students as students prepare for the off-ramp of education with graduation and the on-ramp towards independence graduation plays a huge role in ensuring that students have full access to a post-secondary experience that is most appropriate for our students after leaving the formal k-12 setting our goal is to ensure that students are able to meaningfully participate participate in our communities this means continued partnerships with our partners at the department of rehabilitation and others because whether students are seeking a college experience a technical trade experience or an employment experience we must ensure that options exist that do not relegate our students to narrow

308pathways of what it means to be an adult with a disability starting with the first of our performance indicators we begin with our preschool indicators and they're comprised of six sub indicators and so preschool lre as we call it is essentially where a child ages three to five receives the majority of their special education uh supports and services the notable changes that have been implemented by osep for this round of this cycle means that five-year-old kindergartners are excluded from the calculation and that there is a new sub-indicator succeed that measures home settings and services being provided in the home indicator 6a is essentially as stated before the percentage in which where students three through five are receiving the majority of their special education supports and services in a regular early childhood program so you see

309here before you and in your packet the performance on the old targets from 2013 with the top column in row indicating the new targets that have been set by our community and our community engagement california would like to see better growth in this indicator no universal pre-k this is a challenge that california is trying to address the national mean for this indicator in particular is about 50 percent and we are performing way below but we have set our targets closer um in the in the coming years to get closer to that result as a comparison to other sort of like states in terms of demographic and size to california uh texas's results indicate 27 26.7 percent in new york right at 42 6b the other sub indicator for preschool lre is children's children with disabilities

310three through five in a separate special education class separate school or residential facility and you see the targets here the california has not been meeting the indicator for the past few years and with fiscal supports and additional technical assistance cde expects the result for this indicator to improve over time the national mean for this indicator is and again in other state comparison in terms of texas and new york texas is right at 26 percent new york is right at the last which is the new indicator that i mentioned before is the percentage of students three to five receiving special education services in the home the guidance obviously is that this target um in the indicator is supposed to decrease um it's important to note that our community members that engaged around this target setting activity

311felt very strongly that this indicator should that parents should not be discouraged from having their children receive services in the home and that leas should not be disincentivized for providing this option our community believed that the target should stay stagnant with the 0.1 percent drop in the last year to meet the osap requirement the next indicator is indicator 7 which is uh centering preschool assessment the assessment indicators measure preschool assessment across several indicator areas and so you will see a 7a 7b in a 7c 7a essentially measures um the social emotional progress for our students with disabilities um seven and so 7a i'll just um actually go through the the table now um shows that the of those children entering into preschool program below age below age expectation in each outcome the percent who substantially

312increased their rate of growth by the time they turned six or exited the program the seven a2 that you see below 7a1 is the percentage of children who are functioning with age expectations in each outcome by the time they turn six or exited the program and again we have varied results over the years in terms of this indicator 7b measures the percent of children with disabilities who demonstrate improvement in essentially learning communication and literacy and so looking at these targets and the previous target performance summary 7b1 which you see in the first row and column indicates the children who entered preschool below age expectations in each outcome and the percent who substantially increased their rate of growth by the time they turned six and two seven b two is the percent of children who are

313functioning within age expectations in each outcome by the time they turn six or exited the program again and again you see mixed results in this indicator and 7c is really centers behavior for students with disabilities and so the improvement in the use and appropriate behaviors really to meet their needs and so again um statement one entering and below the age expectations and then who substantially increased the rate of growth and then the summary statement two which is the same across all uh who are functioning with age expectations in each outcome by the time they turn six or exit to the program as well that takes care of our preschool indicators moving along on our roadmap that you saw earlier centering students assessments for school-age students this indicator saw the most significant changes at the federal

314level hence why states are now pivoting to really begin a substantial or substantive discussion on this indicator as well focusing on these three grade levels grade four grade 8 and grade 11 will provide the following advantages that should be seen and felt in the state of california one it mitigates or prevents the masking of high performance low performance or no improvement or improvement that would occur if all grades were combined to generate an average it focuses on the effectiveness effectiveness of early elementary education or instruction i you know ie k-3 literacy programs which is a critical time in literacy development and then also focuses on a successful transition to high school from middle to their junior high school to high school and then also continues to focus on high school with the post-secondary outcomes and

315students transitioning into adult life it's important to note that the dashboard assessment rate is different than this assessment calculation here and so the dashboard combines the smarter balanced summative assessments and the california alternative assessments for grade 3 through 8 and 11 to determine determine performance and the opposite here where student groups are are broken out staying with indicator 3 wanted to provide a few or a couple slides in terms of just the performance and talk about the achievement gap of students with disabilities this data was pre-covered in 2018-2019 the blue bar that you see to the left indicates the proficiency level for students with disabilities and the percentage of students who tested proficient compared to to all students this chart really meant to show the the the visually the physical gap between proficiency levels and

316students with disabilities for all students moving into the sub indicators of 3a 3a measures the participation rate and it's quite simple is is that did the child sit and take the assessment and it's important to note why this indicator is is important and why we still measure it at the state level because historically students with disabilities were excluded and not given opportunities to to take or access statewide assessments so it's important to ensure that our students have equal access to take the assessments to learn more about their growth moving forward so that's we can continue to provide improved supports and services to them as well in terms of our participation performance you will see here that again broken out the grades 4 8 and 11. that we are our targets were at 95 previously and

317our targets will continue to be 95 moving forward as well and to keep in line 95 was chosen to keep in line with the recommendation um that with the by the essa and the cde is maintaining the the targets at 95 percent indicator 3b discusses the proficiency level against the grade level standards 3b measures the rate for children against the grade level standards again calculated separately in ages four eight and eleven and as you can see by these target charts the profits proficiency has been grouped by lea type and while some of these targets are low particularly in grade 8 and 11 the benefit of setting targets by grade is it enables cde to see where to focus our resources lower than what we had before we recalculated the prior years with the new calculation

318and the grade 8 and 11 were lower performing so again it allows an lea you know to to see where they might be able to focus their resources a little bit with a little bit more intention and a little bit more specificity as well previously the old targets were clumped together by district and again it's it's you know much more beneficial to really look at these grade bands to provide additional opportunities for for growth and learning indicator 3c again measures the proficiency in terms of the california alternate assessment and again we're referencing a group of students that have the most significant disabilities and aren't are unable to take the traditional standard statewide assessment um and typically in california that number hovers near one percent as it does nationally at the national level and this is

319new again because the apr previously combined the grade level and alternate standards assessment and again we have a great breakout which again mitigates the high low performance and also provides i think real-time information for the state and the lea to to respond and react to and as you can see by these target charts the proficiency again has been grouped by lea type um and again the the targets were set by the community groups um and then used by recalculating data from from prior years as well 3d proficiency gap rates [Music] this does not include data for the students that take the california alternative assessment but 3d measures the proficiency rates for students against those grade level academic achievement standards as well and the gap that remains in between so this visual is meant to you

320know visually represent the the achievement gap in that indicator that goes along with 3d each chart is what the gap is for that year so how the data will be represented in the future obviously we want the gap to close as you see and take a look from the right to the left and grade grades 4 grades 8 and grades 11 in terms of the gap of the proficiency gap for students with disabilities we still have much work to do to ensure that our students are decreasing over time and that we are sure that you know students are receiving the right supports and services as well and again this is entirely new indicator for the state of california so our targets are set as such indicator 4 suspension expulsion measures the rate of suspense suspension

321expulsion um again there were no notable changes um however it is important to note two things one the way this calculated is is different than the dashboard calculation and that this data is lag year data which means it's one year behind in terms of reporting in terms of the difference between the dashboard and special education the year this indicator 4 measures the percentage of leas that have a significant discrepancy in the rate of suspension expulsions that's greater than 10 days and the dashboard captures the numbers of students suspended for the aggregate of a total of one day and then moving on to indicator five um indicator five is is what we call our lre our least restrictive environment indicator again this is measuring um sort of how and where the students are receiving their supports

322um in you know in terms of accessing the the general education curriculum to put a perspective in moving the needle and changing this indicator to see a one percent change in this indicator would nearly be the equivalent of moving the needle for seven thousand students this traditionally is a very slow growing indicator nationally the average rate of change at the national national level is 0.21 in 5a as well so [Music] lre is is slow growing for a variety of reasons as it calls in philosophies beliefs mindsets programming um it touches on teacher shortage it touches on all the sort of considerations that that we mapped and talked about before and so again you know i think that uh wow california um and and you see here the current placement of students with disabilities you see

323um that you know we are here in terms of uh students receiving their their performance or their receiving their education in the general education classroom with 80 or more of the day you see our performance targets here previously and then the new targets for the coming years while we have met our targets california lags behind other states in this indicator we have seen consistent growth over the past six years but we would like to see increased numbers for this indicator over time which is reflected in the targets the national mean for this same time period is 65 percent and we're getting closer but we're not that here not that not yet there other states in the comparison again texas and new york texas 71 new york 58 the other sub indicator 5b measures the students

324that are served in a regular class less than 40 percent of the day california has been meeting um the the targets for this indicator uh has and has seen a steady decline over the past seven years um and so with additional t and supports california can make poor progress in this area the national mean for this indicator hovers around 11 percent and we've set our targets uh closer to get us to that number a comparison of texas and new york new york uh it's at 19 and texas is at 14. it's important to note that this sort of band of supports and services that students receive um oftentimes includes students that um sometimes are close to progressing to being educated in lesser restrictive environments in the in the next sort of category or 5a category

325moving forward so there's a very i think sort of strategic um conversation that should happen regarding within lre in terms of how we're supporting our students as sort of each sort of band of the way and this group here i think is critical to to part of that discussion indicator 5c is the percentage of students that are placed in a completely separate environment that could be a separate school that could be a separate facility that could be homebound or a hospital setting like the rest of this indicator 5a and 5b california has seen a steady decrease and has been consistently meeting the target every year the national mean is 2.8 percent and california is is seeing some progress but we'd like for this indicator to continue to improve as well that takes care of it

326for our lre indicators next we move into graduation and we are winding down our indicator tour indicator one is a graduation indicator and the one change is that the osep is requiring that states use a one-year calculation not a four-year adjusted cohort rate this graduation indicator is different than the dashboard graduation indicator calculation and again this is lag your data as well our data um from 2015 um to 2016 um is a is is a little uh looks a little interesting i should just say it that way um but the again this is lag year data this is calculated from exit data and the one year calculation could make the results from graduation subject to more volatility we may see more ups and downs as well 14 post school outcomes so here we come at

327the end of the road of the road map and so it's important to note in terms of whether students are enrolled in higher education employed or enrolled in other post-secondary education within one year there was no change and so there are there's a small change that actually i think will produce i think big results and interesting conversation to follow is that states now must choose to get two categories to to measure the representative of respondents to the survey critical to this conversation the cde will use not only disability category in terms of the survey but also collect race and ethnicity data and i think it's really important for us to in order to address our continual issues of equity within special education to ensure you know that students that fall within various race and ethnicity

328categories are represented in the survey so that we see um if they're enrolled in higher ed if they're employed or enrolled in other some sort of post-secondary education within that one year window 14a again is another sub-indicator role and students enrolled in higher education within the one year and we see our targets here that we do see increased growth over time for these students 14b is students are students that are educated in higher ed or competitively employed within the one year and here we see the results again we continue to see steady growth i would like to see continued growth in the future and 14c measures the the percent of youth no longer in secondary school and are enrolled in some sort of education or training program or competitively employed and again here we do

329see an increase i would like to see that increase over time as well last but not least is our com as our combo indicator which is the state systemic improvement plan or essep as we call it it is a combination of performance and compliance um the sf was developed in phases and was evolved to align um with our statewide economies accountability system and statewide system of support and again the goal is to obviously can achieve coherence and alignment across our systems in order to better meet the needs of our students our theory of action for essep as we call it is our sort of state identified measurable measure result you know is is the performance as looking at the performance of all students with disabilities who took the california assessment of student performance and progress

330in both ela and math and so our essa is focused on creating systemic and sustainable change including the necessary alignment as well prior to 2016 as we look for continual efforts to align accountability systems between general education and special education the accountability accountability system was largely separate the inclusion of students with disabilities in the dashboard including d.a and the statewide system of support has really i think for us elevated um some of the the gaps that we need to address in terms of improving the outcomes not only for all of our students but also students with disabilities as well the spp and apr is part of the general supervision system it's a requirement of our federal government as well the you know the shift to compliance to results you know is is important and i

331think it's an improvement to ensure that our approaches remain structurally sound and really rooted and integrated into our local state and federal accountability measures and again discussing some of the alignment activities between our accountability systems for students with disabilities is we've invested um 10 million dollars per year through our self a lead and ourself a lead grant we have moved from a separate system from casements to calpads and then we use in the special education department our dashboard data to select leas to ensure alignment in terms of our state systemic improvement plan and our targets there's some notable changes here but osep only allows one target for the essip and so our community group that gave input into our targets indicated and agreed to keep the target similar to our 3b math and ela targets

332on the same trajectory in terms of next steps in where we go over the next six years um really i think you know in terms of our efforts starts and and ends at the classroom level everything that we do from the state the county to lea to the school selpa relief rolls upwards and and down and back and forth in terms of ensuring that our efforts our system of support our state funded technical assistance the idea funded technical assistance that we receive along with our legislative investments that you will hear about in just a moment are aligned and and focused on our students with disabilities as well so our self-elite contents focus on getting training into the classroom into the teachers our golden state teacher grants around 486 were awarded last year totaling 7.5 million

333we have our supporting inclusive practices project which again promotes and fosters inclusive inclusive environments for our students and then obviously mtss our mtss system ensuring that both the academic and social emotional needs of our students are met and supported from from early identification in terms of the pathway forward you see another roadmap in front of you with some key levers i think that we think are sort of the cornerstone of change lre being one of them as you see increasing you know inclusive practices at the pre-k level including universal pre-k with dedicated slots for students with disabilities addressing some of the teacher shortages and credentialing issues ensuring that we have teaching staff that is appropriate credentialed high quality in the classroom in addition to ensuring that there is effective communication between community and school and

334also addressing equity and disproportionality as we know that many of our students are excluded or are suspended are students of color located within special education and so focusing on um addressing some of those impacts to the system along with some of the other measures here will provide i think a solid robot moving forward some of the investments that you see on the right hand side are are the vehicles to to move this work you will see 260 million of early intervention special education funding we've got 500 million in the golden state teacher grants 350 million in the residencies 125 million in the classified school employee teacher pro teacher credentialing program 450 million in the special education learning recovery grant which provides opportunities for leas to ensure that the the the impact of covet is mitigated

335and students are receiving and progressing and growing as they return to in-person instruction there's 100 million in alternative dispute resolution grants which is meant to provide additional opportunities to solve and resolve issues at the iep table versus progressing through um a more serious uh sort of progression in terms of resolving disputes and then a notable increase to our supporting inclusive practices which will allow to expand sipp's reach throughout the state almost doubling the amount of grantees that they will be able to work with to improve support and prove inclusion across the state as well that concludes today's presentation and a tour through our indicators thank you very much and happy to take questions at this time thank you oh wow what a very very comprehensive tour we really appreciate it um and we'll start by

336getting folks queued up for public comment um the members of the published public who are wishing to provide comment on this item can do so by calling the telephone number uh listed on this slide and using the participant access code while we're waiting for members of the public to call in i want to ask vice president strauss if she has any initial comments uh then we'll take any clarifying questions public comment and come back for discussion thank you so um heather i just want to thank you for a really clear presentation on a lot of indicators and i think um what i want to say is this really gives us a big picture of the many many complexities that special needs students that we have to consider for them what school districts need to take

337into account and i appreciated earlier in the presentation the conditions that you discussed which really impact our ability to meet some of these goals so my understanding is this is comprehensive and it's required at the federal level but as you said it is guidance for us that can actually help guide our work forward to improve practices for students i just think we have to remember that we're focusing on an inclusive environment which wasn't the way it always was and you said that i think actually as of 2016 so this is a big change both in teacher skill sets and strategies and the issue of capacity building for teachers at a time when we have a huge shortage of teachers particularly in the area of special education i appreciate it on all the investments that you

338had toward the end of the presentation and the commitment by the governor and the legislature to really dedicate but putting the money there we still have to get the staff and the support to do the work um the other thing i would say is that as we look at what the needs are this document is sort of the top down and then changes the bottom up sort of how do you get the pressure to pay attention to these issues and then build the capacity and i appreciated the second to the last slide which showed how the system of support is connected and i actually would like a little bit more enhancement on the on the role of the simple leads because as you said it's a very siloed system and these are our students who

339need so much support in a variety of ways and how we actually move to build capacity and get the system i would say when you listed the numbers of leas who qualify for assistance in a variety of areas i would say most districts identify the need to support special needs students so um with the goal of coherence and alignment if you did all these goals you would never make progress you really have to help districts stay focused to make some progress toward their goals so i'm interested just as the state lead on this how you see the system of support and the self beliefs guiding it and then i'll turn it over for any clarifying questions to more members before we go to the public comment um thank you sure thank you vice chair strauss

340uh in terms of the the sopa improvement leads um that you that you mentioned um the the our supper leads are tasked um with with ensuring that um the the data use and data governance they're focusing on continuous improvement um also the implementation of high level practices um are instituted implemented um across across the state as well um the the the work that they do is is foundational and critical along with our content leads to ensure that we are addressing a multi-faceted group of students as students with disabilities and empowering our teachers and educational staff across the state to ensure that they are equipped and resourced to address teaching and learning um the way it looks now and moving forward as well and you know the shift that happened during the the covet 19 pandemic

341amongst our leads and amongst our content leads is is monumental taking many in-person trainings taking them online having maximum capacity and maximum reach and so you know we are pleased to continue the work with our with our improvement leads but we are also increasingly um excited to begin to sort of take that what what is could be considered or somewhat feels like a siloed system in our state system of support and also look for those alignment opportunities within our larger statewide system of support as well as we know again our students with disabilities are not separate and siloed in in terms of their educational experience so all the sort of mechanisms and arms that we have across the state should be in operating and coordination and includes our self-improvement leads and our content leads and

342so we're looking forward to you know taking some time out and carving some time out in terms of discussion about how sort of this sort of subset or specialized subset of system of support fits into the larger system um you know for the for the benefit of all students that's great uh i don't see any other hands raised for clarifying questions at this moment so we will go to public comment and then we'll come back for discussion all right we have several public commenters hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now good afternoon my name is cami martin on behalf of the california county superintendent educational services association in general we believe the new targets are attainable set appropriate expectations and have captured much

343of the stakeholder feedback an area of concern we raised on our letter is the new target for indicator 5a while we believe ambitious targets will encourage better placement and earlier interventions for students with disabilities 12 percent growth over six years may be unattainable the cde may want to examine the technical help to help provided to support leas to improve policies and practices in this area thank you for your important work on this item thank you caller hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now good afternoon my name is deborah schlegel i'm a parent and i want to thank director columbus for the wonderful presentation of the strategic plan um including where we have been in the past i think that is very important when

344uh delivering this type of information um i just hope that going forward we can really concentrate on literacy for tk through three and consider targeted grants to improve teacher education in that area and consider aligning the data that we take in for ieps across all platforms including those needed for the lcap information iep information i think alignment of those data inputs would be very useful down to the lea level thank you thank you caller that concludes our public comment for this item okay um so we're open for discussion both about the targets themselves and about the thinking that goes behind where we're going uh maybe i will kick us off with a few uh comments and again kudos to heather for the presentation um you know my my favorite uh slide was your path forward

345for special education funding and policy that might get us to the targets i think that's so critically important i'm excited that we are where we are and thinking systemically about this with so many elements of policy uh coming online to help us you know really make a change in the in the outcomes for our students it was about five or six years ago that when mike cursed was the chair of the state board and i was chairing the commission on teacher credentialing that we joined forces to try to get resources for a special education task force and some of you will remember that that task force really came out with a set of proposals for how do we get to one system from what had been you know a dual very segregated system um that

346was not making progress you know going forward and it began to identify some of the needs and i think we're making progress every year on addressing more and more of those needs so it is exciting to see it coming together and to have the targets presented with you know something of a road map for how we could actually meet them i do want to flag as what our caller flagged as well the challenges of target 5a which is the target to get more and more students in mainstream classrooms we all want that to be accomplished in a way that supports teachers in those classrooms with the knowledge skills and supports that they will need to serve the kids well that supports the kids well with all of those um knowledge skills and supports and we

347know that we have particular challenges uh in that area we also know that when children are in mainstream settings without adequate support often some of the other dysfunctional consequences happen including exclusion suspension expulsion and so on so i think that's the place where we're going to have to dig in the most intensely uh on both uh ensuring that we end the teacher shortages that have played this state for so long you know with two-thirds of people coming into and specialist positions being unprepared underprepared when they get there that means that kids have you know teachers who want to help them and don't know how those teachers then also need to be able to help the general ed teachers we're going to need a system in which we can authorize generalist teachers and special ed teachers

348to work together in teaching teams where they can both work with all the kids in the in the classroom with the knowledge bases that are needed there is credentialing reform underway at the ctc to help us get there but we don't have programs yet in the state in adequate numbers to train up all the people who will be needed to meet those those requirements and to be knowledgeable that's the key thing the most important thing that a student in special education needs is knowledgeable teaching everything else you know all the other things that get talked about in terms of services and so on all rest on whether we have people who have that very very extraordinary set of knowledge and skills and that we support those people we know that getting and keeping those folks

349is going to depend on the right kind of preparation right now support for them to be able to afford to be prepared the right kind of credentialing programs uh the right kind of student loads and working conditions that allow them to do their jobs well and it's also going to depend on the kind of training we can give to educators around social emotional learning and restorative practices because students with disabilities and african-american students followed by native american students are the ones that are most often to be excluded and there's a big overlap in african-american students and students with ieps in that circumstance so um i just want to be sure that we have a really strong full complete picture of what we will need to do to achieve those targets in a way that really

350works for children so that they are well served in those classrooms by educators who have the knowledge skills and supports to serve them well and i would like to suggest that because so much of this is the interaction between cde's work in in the field and the credentialing commission's work are getting the preparation programs and authorizations to line up that we might even want to consider inviting a joint presentation next time around that component because it is going to be one of the most important and challenging pieces of the work it's something we all want to lean into those goals and we want to lean into them in the right way that really works for for children and for for the educators who want to serve them and with that i will go to the

351member rucker who has raised her hand and anyone else who wants to join in the discussion thank you so much and first of all i do want to say thank you to the department and the staff for this very comprehensive presentation i look forward to seeing the overview on this particular report every year and i always learn more not only about the challenge of providing appropriate support for special education programs to our district but really understanding what the instructional challenges are to meet those to meet the targets that are articulated here dr darlingham and thank you also for the suggestion about the uh joint presentation with the commission because that was something i was going to suggest but i also think that there's a need for us to talk about what is the level of

352a type of planning and the scope and depth of planning that has to happen at the school level to address these targets in my experience as a classroom teacher and working at a school campus discussion about special education programs and planning for those programs was often separate and segregated from planning for the jet for the general school program itself special education students are general ed students first and how are they reflected in the planning that we are now tasking school districts to do in the lcap we're going irregard regardless of whatever the form the lcap template takes how is the needs of these students as reflected in the expectations of these targets also being reflected in the lcap and i think that's also a worthy conversation to pursue because frankly in the meetings i've gone

353to in several board meetings and at several sites where i've listened in on their lcap discussions special education programs don't come up it's always a focus on the general education and we don't pay attention to these students but those outcomes are not only integral but they directly overlap on the accountability outcomes that are tied to the lcap as well thank you are there other folks who want to weigh in this is an information item so we have been well informed and we really thank heather for that we've made a couple of suggestions um for uh looking towards uh potentially towards the next meeting and towards our adoption of the um of the targets and with that uh we are in a position to take a 10 minute break uh and we will be almost caught

354up with our timing so good work and we'll see you in uh 10 minutes at 3 o'clock and continue from there remember to turn off your microphone and your video but don't leave the room all right welcome back and thank you to all of my feather fellow board members for your stamina and your uh diligent participation with so few breaks i want to move us to agenda item five which is a public hearing regarding an appeal from an action of the riverside county committee on school district organization to approve a petition to transfer territory from the coachelli valley unified school district to the desert sands unified school district the cde recommends that the state board reverse the action of the county committee to approve the proposal to transfer territory from the coachella valley usd to

355the desert sands usd and this item is presented by larry shirey of the cde larry please begin excuse me president hammond i apologize but uh can we reestablish the quorum oh thank you please do all right uh member son president vice president strauss president member rucker remember rodriguez member patillo brownson president member mcquillen here remember glover woods here president darling hammond here number burr here i'm robonaka here we have a quorum right sorry larry take it away larry no larry shirley school fiscal a school facilities division uh i'm here to present as president hammond darling hammond indicated the cde analysis and recommendations regarding an appeal from an action of the riverside county committee to transfer territory from coachella valley unified to desert sands unified i want to put again our recommendation up front we'll come

356back to this at the end but again we're as indicated we're recommending that the state board reverse the actions of the riverside county committee to approve the transfer although the transfer substantially meets all the standards in statute we determined that there's no compelling reason to transfer the territory but we do find a significant concern with with the with the issue the proposed transfer area is 124 single-family homes located in the northwest corner of the coachella valley school district the petition began with or the proposal began with a petition signed by 25 percent of the voters in that area again in that in that red shaded area uh i'm this is the rationale that was in the petition provided by the petitioners i'm going to skip that slide in the interest of time because i'm going

357to come back to that information in a moment and i want first to start with just kind of a reminder of what is involved in approving a territory transfer it's a two-step process there is a legal requirement to determine that the proposal substantially meets nine minimum threshold standards that are in statute if those standards are substantially met then the county committee and the state board has can take discretionary action to approve the transfer the statute education code does provide that the legislative intent that that reorganization should be based on local educational needs and concerns and the courts have established that simply meeting the minimum standards step one is not a compelling reason for approval the riverside county committee took that first step determined that all minimum threshold standards are substantially met however that they did

358not provide any information regarding the merits of the proposal the you know the reason behind their discretionary action other than it meets minimum thresholds you know we reviewed all the actions through minutes and uh and audio tapes of the meetings and and it was our opinion it is our opinion that the county committee granted approval solely on the basis of the proposal meeting the minimum threshold standards coachella valley uh this is is opposed to the transfer the desert sands unified school district is neutral and retains that neutral stance uh here are the reasons for the appeal of coachella valley again i'm going to skip over this because i'll come back to it in the next slide those appeal issues are part of the minimum standards and i i mentioned there are nine the coachella valley

359school district unified school district brought up four in their appeal the first one is that the transfer would have a negative effect on the district's ability to educate students in an integrated environment the district position is that even though only one student currently is affected right now with a district that has a 99 percent minority student enrollment the loss of any non-minority student is substantial you know we disagree we believe that the removal of one student is not going to have a substantial negative effect on either the district or any school to ensure that it can educate students in an integrated environment that the district states that the loss of the assessed valuation of this transfer plus other transfers that might be spurred by approval of this would increase state cost in terms of financial

360hardship assistance when it comes to building schools or getting getting funds for renovating schools we disagree again we find that the loss of less than one percent of assessed valuation will not increase state cost the district had planned at the time the proposal was considered locally to build a school close to the transfer area to serve that that subdivision and also other students in the surrounding areas and they felt that if this transfer is approved and other transfers follow that would lead to relocation of that school and that would have a negative effect on educational program currently there's no funding for that proposed new school and and the project has been shelved so the appeal concern is really a non-issue at this point and the district also claims that they believe that the petitioners primarily

361brought forward the the proposal to increase their property values there is no evidence of that during the local consideration and we found no evidence in our so we don't think that's an issue now moving on to the petitioners reasons again this was step one that was just step one finding that all the minimum conditions are substantially met now we move on to finding a reason to approve the proposal we look first at the petitioners reasons they claim that the desert sands schools are closer to their area than our coachella valley schools in reality the elementary and middle schools there's not a whole lot of difference so there's not a significant difference in terms of the distance from the schools for the transfer area in fact the elementary school in coachella valley is closer than the

362desert sand schools however the high school the coachella valley high school is significantly farther away from the area than are the two desert sands high schools that are that are closest to the area a difference about eight miles to two or three miles however we also found that those two high schools are on the opposite side of highway 111 which is a primary north-south route through this coachella valley and it's also a primary retail corridor for the area so there are safety concerns that that kind of mitigate the proximity of the schools there is a misstatement in the in the item we indicated in the item that the two middle schools in desert stands also were on the opposite side of the of the freeway the highway but actually only one of the middle schools

363are on the opposite side along with the with the two high schools at the time the proposal was considered locally no area student ever had attended the coachella valley unified school district that's not true now there are a few students that are have attended and currently attend coachella valley but regardless we don't see that as a compelling reason to change school district boundaries the petitioners also state that desert sands has higher test scores in coachella valley and they want their students in those schools with the higher test scores though true it's still not a compelling reason to arrange school district boundaries in our opinion so we don't find any compelling reasons and what the petitioners offer us to recommend approval we also note as i indicated before that the county committee provided no reason for

364its actions other than that the transfer proposal meets minimum threshold standards but we do have a concern that approval of the transfer will set a precedent for future transfers out of coachella valley in the desert sands there's been a history of those transfers and there's also been hysteric hysterical historical statewide concern that such attempts would continue the riverside county committee approved the transfer this was undeveloped land that has since been developed into an upscale resort area india springs in 1995 uh there was another transfer proposal that was approved by the riverside county committee and this case the coachella valley unified district did appeal to the state board there was some interesting there's an interesting situation at that time because coachella valley had a emergency state loan and the state superintendent had taken over control of

365district from the state board so it actually the department could not analyze and make a recommendation because of its relationship with the district to the state board so the state board's executive director actually analyzed the proposal and made a recommendation that the state board reversed the county county committee's decision the department did go on record with concerns about the transfer and the state board eventually unanimously reversed the county committee's approval 1998 there was another one that contained all the area that was in the 94 uh petition in this case the county committee did disapprove it and there was no subsequent appeal about that time the legislature became concerned that these attempts to pull territory and assess valuation and students out of coachella valley would would have a negative effect on that district um in in

366terms of it trying to get out from under the the financial concerns that prompted it to get an emergency loan so it notified it it listed a number of conditions that if met a territory territory could not be transferred out of a district unless the governing board approved it that moratorium stayed in effect for 10 years after the district repaid its loan so that was about 2012. so in summary we find that the territory transfer proposal substantially meets all nine minimum threshold standards we find no compelling reason to transfer the territory as i indicated before the petitioners reason for the transfers are in our opinion not compelling local educational needs or concerns and again the riverside county committee didn't help us here and and we also find a reason to disapprove the transfer in other

367words uphold the appeal of the coachella valley unified school district because it would establish a precedent for future efforts transfer territory from from that district again our recommendation is that based on our findings we recommend that the state board reverse the actions of the riverside county committee approving a territory transfer from the coachella valley unified school district to the desert sands unified school district i can take any clarifying questions now and i certainly will be here after the public hearing that that will follow uh i don't see any hands being raised for clarifying questions at this time uh so i will uh hereby open the public hearing at 3 15 pm and first we will hear from the petitioners in favor of the territory transfer then we'll hear from the coachella valley usd in opposition

368to the transfer and each side will have 12 minutes after each side makes their presentations will then open up the phone lines for public comment from members of the public who are not part of the presentation each speaker will have one minute for their public comment so the petitioners in favor of the territory transfer you may begin good afternoon honorable president and members of the board coachella valley unified school district and members of the public my name is michaela wilke and i'm here today as a parent that resides in the bridge at jefferson community and are asking for the approved district boundaries to be honored for our community to be in desert sands unified school district the first thing i would like to point out is that the state's educational code has been met in

369approval of the district boundaries all nine conditions were passed unanimously by the riverside county board of education in june of 2016 report by a third party place works district boundaries were established in before population growth and community developments took over our development of 124 homes was not completed until 2013 and the petition was signed by 107 registered voters in the community in 2015. this process has been taking place since with no other community coming forward trying to establish new boundaries so i asked the question if the claim has been made that this would open more district rezoning wouldn't that have taken place when we were approved back in 2016. it has been five years and no other applications this leads me to my next point coachella valley unified school district promised a new school closer

370to our development we know that proposed land has been leased for profit during the coachella valley music and stagecoach festivals the festivals just signed a 20-year deal with the city of indio and do you really think a new school is going to be built at this site that was promised six years ago with much of the surrounding communities having far more vacation rentals than families who live in them i don't think so the 1994 district transfer request was never approved by the county it is a mute point it was asked for by a developer and contained a long stretch of corridor on avenue 48. this is not brought forth by the voters or the people who reside in these communities the community encourages the board for the betterment of our children to transfer the territory

371to better balance student populations and accommodate growth in the future with minimal disruptions to our families according to a document obtained by the city of coachella general plan update from february of 20 2012 coachella valley unified school district had a total of 13 schools exceeding capacity by a total of 1 562 students and this number has continued to increase along with their enrollment totals through the last few years also contained in this document is a section called out for desert desert sands unified stating the schools serving the planning area meaning closest to our community had a total two enrollment of fifty two students with a capacity for four thousand hundred and twelve presently none of these schools exceed capacity and there's space for 858 new students currently the schools we are zoned for in the

372bridge at jefferson are all over capacity some by as much as four to six hundred students this was extremely evident when we went to one of our hearings and we're sitting at the elementary school and there are modulars out on the playground where kids are supposed to play so i ask you would you want your child going someplace where there's modulars and not enough room for them to even have outdoor activity in 2015 there were 15 new residential developments that are within the coachella valley unified school district borders that have come to completion or are close to completion furthermore increasing the growth and the overcrowding in the coachella valley unified school district there is also potential for more growth as there is much more open space yet to be developed in coachella valley unified school

373district this is not the case in desert sands unified with these new developments and the funding fees for local schools in the coachella valley unified school district our community does not feel that transferring our territory would be any sort of financial hardship for the coachella valley unified school district the bridge at jefferson is the furthest most community of the coachella valley unified school district distances to the schools in the tilla valley unified greatly restrict student involvement and extracurricular activities in essence by honoring the district transfer you are disenfranchising our children in our community as quoted in an article from the desert sun from june 21st of 2015 from the director of technology from coachella valley unified school district some of these students spend nearly four hours on a bus each day these are our children

374as they are the furthest away attending desert sands unified school district our children are able to walk and ride bikes home this also helps with global warming and taking care of our environment the big point here is 90 percent of indio is located in the desert sands unified school district it makes sense that our community should be able to identify with the city that they live in and attend the schools that 90 percent of the city attend the community members that support our city we want to be able to identify and attend public schools in the community for which we have the closest ties currently my husband is a coach at indio high school in desert sands unified and i volunteer at desert stands unified this is due in part because india is where we

375live it is the community to which we identify with keeping children away from where they live and where parents commute to and from work is a detriment not only to the children but to our district this is the norm in our community we are not only the community members who have the same route to them from work but we are the ones who give back to the community in which we reside safety is another major concern of the community when we discuss transportation and safe walking distances to and from school there is no safe walking route for the community to use in coachella valley unified school district as the schools are just too far away from our community coachella valley unified school district prepared a document back in 2011 of may for the board meeting

376to discuss why change needed to happen in school boundaries their main concerns were to relieve student overcrowding live within walking distance enforce walking walking distance policies and reduce transportation costs by honoring our community to transfer territory you are providing coachella valley unified school districts with the changes that they have been asking for in regards to fiscal solvency and providing our community with a positive and safe environment the schools that we our community would attend in desert sands unified are all within safe walking distance and provided lighted soft sidewalks and safe routes for our children to bike and walk as a parent we want what is best for our children honoring the boundary transfer is not only what is best for our children but we feel is best for both districts involved the evidence has been

377presented as to why honoring approved district transfers is beneficial for all the bridge at jefferson community is asking to be the standard not the exception the community is asking for consistency and community identity we want to thank you for this time for your time this afternoon at the bridge and everybody at the community watching we recognize how difficult this process is and we hope that we can offer stability going forward we know that this is that the board's responsibility is to make sure quality education is available and we do appreciate you taking that time i'll now turn it over to glenn cavallaro for some additional comments thank you you're muted there we go is that better yes yes okay um thank you all very much for allowing us the time to state our case here

378and especially me i'm just i'm a resident of the bridge of jefferson i've been here for 13 years i do not have i'm retired and i did not have any children that attend the schools and that was one of the points that was made was that with such a low number of students that were in the district that were looking to transfer why were there so many people that signed the petition and that had to be that the primary concern really was to increase our property values which is totally untrue the bridge of jefferson is a little bit different than a lot of communities i think almost everybody here knows everybody else everyone's out walking in the evening and sees each other and if there's a community concern everyone is going to jump on board

379you just don't have to have children to see that as a need for the community and it's good for the community is good for us i want to make a couple of uh comments also in what was presented earlier about highway 111 um high 111 is an east and west corridor it's really just called ohio 111 as it was never given a name if you look at highway 74 that's monterey avenue that runs through palm desert and up into the mountains uh it's really no different than jefferson street which is where uh the street we live on high 111 is three lanes in each direction running east and west jefferson is six lanes three lanes in either direction running north and south crossing highway 111 is just a daily fact in a matter of everyone

380that lives in the area so that being a safety issue is really not a safety issue at all and i guess you'd really have to just come down and take a look at it to see that it's not on not unlike any other intersection anywhere and again from the bridge of jefferson you know i attend all the friday night football games at laquita high school and i walk there it doesn't take very long so that's basically it there's one one other thing that was brought up and it's kind of a touchy situation and i don't even like to bring it up it's just that there's the comments that are put into the presentation that was put out about this encouraging white flight and when i hear the term white flight that kind of brings the

381racial overtones into it which is really a shame you know i'm a second generation mexican-american whose family came to the united states from monterey mexico and i am that that that type of thing never enters my mind no matter what the situation is and i hate when that when it comes down to in some cases desperation on the on on one side or the other that uh that has to be brought up into it because that really really does need to stay out of this 100 percent the only thing we're looking for here is for our children that live in the neighborhood to be able to go to a a school that they identify with and if you think about why they identify with this because if you go out from my house go two

382tenths of a mile to jefferson street and look across that's the coachella that's the desert sands unified school district that's where our fri our children's friends live so they should be able to go to school where their friends go to school and sir i'm sorry your time is up thank you i think we want to move at this point to the coachella valley usd um representatives yes thank you um good afternoon president darling hammond and members of the state board of education my name is luis valentino and i am the superintendent of the coachella valley unified school district we are here today to request that you support the appeal from the action by the riverside county committee on school district organization to approve a transfer of territory from the coachella valley unified school district to

383the desert sands unified school district as you have heard of the california department of education's recommendation that the state board of education reversed the action by the riverside county committee after finding no compelling reason to transfer the subdivision we hope the additional comments shared with you today by our leaders including our board president mr and our council mr barankowitz another speaking through public comment as well as the comments submitted to you via email earlier we'll demonstrate the importance of your decision in concluding that it is critical to protect the existing territory and keep our school district whole and with that i would ask mr barankowicz to address the board yes and i will go ahead and share my screen with you and uh again uh you just heard from dr valentino our superintendent and i'm

384legal counsel for the district and then last up will be joey kuna who is the board president again we so we support coachella valley usd or coachella valley usd supports the cde recommendation but we also wanted to discuss why we believe that conditions 4 9 5 and 8 are not substantially met first a little bit different depiction of the bridge territory it contains 37 acres and 124 parcels as you can see here the aerial on the right and the parcel layout on the left this development is gated it's well appointed and very high end this is a picture of its entrance into the into this gated community here is another picture of the bridge showing a pocket park of the bridge that again is gated and very well appointed contrast these with uh pictures of

385with a picture of what's a typical subdivision and coachella valley has they've got very meager homes uh people are working class and there's nothing like that in in the bridge and it's true that the areas adjacent to the bridge are similar to them but they are not representative of the coachella coachella valley as a whole coachella valley as a whole is it's got much more mere uh housing housing subdivisions here is the boundaries of the coachella valley district as you can see here in the dark outline you can see the indian palms cut out here on the left hand side or the west hand side of the property or the boundaries and then off to the west a little bit is the is the the bridge portion what we do agree with with cde is

386that there is no compelling reason for the transfer and there's no rationale provided and none was addressed by the county committee the although desert sands has has higher test scores than coachella valley this is due in large part is found by cde that there's a higher population of of english language learners in coachella valley than there is in desert sands but what's really key and important that was i think missed out of cd's presentation is that that that was found that both districts have sound educational programs between the between both districts both desert sands and coachella valley the precedent for future harmful petitions cde notes that there were three different attempts prior to the transfer these were in 85 which was the indian palms transfer that did happen and then the 1994 and the 1998

387ones that were re rejected and uh and all all of these areas except the the the first one went through and the other two got rejected but the other two that were ejected also and included the the bridge territory at the time and what's important is staff cd recognizes and acknowledges that there are racial ethnic and socio-economic disparity disparities between the districts this was so evident that as mentioned by cde the legislator acknowledged that the harm to coachella valley uh from potential transfers that it actually had to adopt education code 35706.5 which at the time was senate bill 997 which had the 10-year moratorium to free coachella valley's usd boundaries to allow an acceptable bond program to move forward with what must be highlighted is that c cd also applying that this transfer goes through

388others will follow and could exacerbate the already existing racial and ethnic and socio-economic disparities between the districts and would have substantial negative effects on coachella valley usd so with that where we reach this agreement with the cde is that we believe that conditions four nine five and eight are not met and we we bring them in order of importance and condition four talks about preserving an integrated environment and will not promote racial or ethnic discrimination or segregation based on cde's opinion above that the future potential transfers will exacerbate racial ethnic and socioeconomic disparities this condition cannot be substantially met this is demonstrated by looking at the extreme high minority extreme high minority rates within coachella valley as opposed to desert sands you can see that uh coachella valley is 99 over 99 minority less than

389one percent white yet desert sands usd is only you know not not as quite it has 18 percent white population and then the rest minorities so far less integrated it has a far more integrated environment in desert sands than than certainly in coachella valley also here is the slides showing the the schools the the amount of uh the percentages of minorities from coachella valley at district serving schools versus what would serve at desert sands again still very high and and tracking what what i just mentioned earlier is very high minority rates uh in coachella valley as opposed to desert sands and what's important about this is that we're talking about coachella valley only has in its enrollment 177 white students out of its 18 000 in enrollment whereas desert sands has 5788 white students the

390bridge area has an enrollment of 17 and 15 of them are are white now that means that the 15 white students that amounts to eight percent of the total white population of coachella valley that gets transferred as a result of this and if you just look at the number of students that are now attending desert sands which is seven students that's four percent of coachella valley's white students that is a substantial amount of white students percentage-wise that are being transferred out would be transferred out of coachella valley to desert sands and such a large portion of white students transferring does not preserve an integrated environment but it does promote racial and ethnic segregation and discrimination even cd's regulation on condition 4 talks in terms of future impacts under uh title v ccr section 18573 a4

391it says to determine whether new districts will promote racial or ethnic discrimination or segregation the effects of the following factors will be considered and b it states that the trend and rates of present and possible future growth or change in the total population and the districts affected in each racial and ethnic group within the total district and in each school of the affected areas so this is talking about terms of of future potential transfers so with that there cannot be that condition 4 cannot be met because of these potential future transfers and the wide disparities between the districts also condition nine is not met because you can see based on the assessed values that desert sands has over almost four percent more or 400 percent more assessed value over over coachella valley also we have

392declining enrollment which further exacerbates the the fiscal impact of the district and then the increase cost the state the cde we did not see them look at the potential costs of desert sands having to house 80 students from the bridge also this is primarily designed to increase property values as you can see by just looking at the inferential information from it that only 17 students are from the bridge seven are attending desert sands yet more than 25 percent of bridge residents signed the petition i'm now turning this over to our board president joey coda go ahead join uh am i on now yes yes uh good afternoon chair and members of the board my name is joey acuna i'm the current president of coachella valley unified school district um i gotta tell you um this

393has been happening since 1985 30 plus years now uh that initial board i don't think understood that they could stand up and fight this is my personally my third one i am more than willing to stand up and fight for our districts from these attacks and please these are attacks these are not requests these are attacks and they've been going on for 30 years now and i say enough is enough additionally i i was going to say something else but in lieu of what they said you know they came up and said look this is just about us wanting to be in our community in the city of india you know we want our kids to go to community schools the problem is that last year seven of their middle and high school students that

394transferred did not go to india high school or indian middle school they went to la quinta high school and john glenn twice as far as the current community schools this isn't about yes you only have 10 seconds remaining if you'd like to wrap up so again we can go on and on i want to thank the board for their time we request that you uphold the request or the um the uh uh the staffs uh a decision to uh accept our appeal and deny their request thank you very much all right thank you very much uh at this point um we will have the phone line open for public comments so we need to have the public comment card there we go members of the public who were not part of either presentation wishing to

395provide comment on this public hearing may do so by calling the telephone number and using the access code provided on the slide that is being shown members of the public we do encourage you to please state 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 and speakers will be limited to one minute each and we also ask as always the callers be respectful comments at this time must be related to the item before the board and that is item number five uh are there any public comments yes we have several all right hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now good afternoon my name is luca ramos ahmed

396i am council member and mayor for the city of india i've lived in india for 60 years and have lived in this district that is served by both cacao valley unified and district cents unified district for the past 20 years i represent district five of the city of india which is two-thirds located in coachella valley unified and one-third located in desert sam's unified school district we're here today to talk about the local needs and education of our students not to talk about race not to talk about property values but what is in the best interest of our children back in the late 1980s this area was not a part of india so back in 1964 when the boundaries were drawn this was in the sphere of coachella so the area that is now part of

397the channel valley unified sister that sits in the city of india is all one community i have the demographic follow your time is up hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now hello caller please state your name and affiliation for the record you have one minute your time begins now we have no more callers okay um that's it for public comment given that there's no other public comment i hereby close the public hearing at 3 43 p.m and we will now begin with board discussion and i'd first like to ask member sue burr if she would like to make some initial comments uh thank you president darlingham and um as those of you who have been on the board a long time now these

398are never easy discussions uh particularly when there are strong feelings from local communities about their school children i will have to say i you know i spent a lot of time with larry shirey and as usual the department has done i think a really thorough job of reviewing all of the components and the statutory requirements relative to um a territory transfer and i think in this case they've come to the correct conclusion that the action of the county committee which we normally will affirm because they have the best finger on the pulse in the community but in this case the county community or i'm sorry the county committee for riverside county um really didn't find a compelling reason to approve the transfer and the department is recommending that we reverse the action of the county

399committee and based on my review and discussion with larry and cde staff i would concur with that so i will if board members have other questions and course comments we i'd like to hear from those but i'm prepared to support the department's recommendation thank you so much and we do have some comments from vice president strauss member rucker and members son so vice president strauss please carry us forward thank you um so i just want to um um thank um the presentation i have a couple of questions so larry if you're available um i have two different questions i want to clarify i kind of know this area and um my question is first do we know the number of students who live in the bridge of jefferson area and where they currently attend school

400that's my first question yes there have been i think they're over the past five or six years the numbers have ranged from i don't have the report in front of me between 17 and 7. um one or two attend five years ago they all were granted inter-district transfers to if they've if they requested them to attend desert sands or some other school district uh the the coachella valley school district when they realized they were were losing more of than of their non-minority students that they thought was good for the educational program they cut down on inner district transfers that they that they were approving so as of right now we do have i think there's one student who is from the area who is attending coachella valley and i believe the number who are attending

401desert sands at the last number we had was seven for the 1920 school year 1819 it was 10 and for 17 18 it was 16. thank you so my second question is and i don't know if you have this on a map but based on where the bridge of jefferson is i'm interested on where the coachella valley schools are that students would attend and where the schools for desert stands are because what i heard was coachella was going to build a school but then there are no funds that they're not going to and um and i hear about the distance of getting to school and what i heard at least in the petitioners was that the kids are much closer to desert sands but then i heard coachella saying no i understand the difference in

402the communities just my question is the location of the school students would attend from this area where they are in coachella valley and where they are in desert sands location wise patella valley schools are are all located south and east of the community uh the desert sand schools are for the most part located north of the community you know the the distances are you know i could go through the distances i believe i have that here if you want to do the specific distances or isn't there really a substantial difference in the elementary and middle school in terms of the the the how far away they are from from the proposed transfer area but there is a significant difference between the high schools the coachella valley high school is eight miles southeast both both the

403desert sands and or sorry both the indio and la quinta high schools are are between two and three miles north of the uh of the proposed transfer area and are you saying that the elementary and middle are similar in distance right the elementary actually the coachella valley elementary school is closer but uh and in terms of the numbers the distance for elementary school valley is 2.2 miles versus 2.3 miles in desert sands very similar but slightly closer in coachella valley the middle schools for coachella valley is four and a half miles and the two two desert sands missile schools are two and three miles thank you that takes care of those uh i remember rucker member son remember rucker you're next yes um larry i just wanted to get a clarification on exactly what would

404be the result of what is being recommended so the county found no compelling reason to approve the request and your recommendation is that we reverse the decision of the county so what would be the outcome from taking that action i want to make sure i'm clear on that i i just want to verify your comment uh it's not that excuse me it's not that the county committee did not find a compelling reason again there's a two-step process look at the nine required minimum threshold standards in statute if those are substantially met then the county committee could have taken the discretionary action to approve as i stated the legislature said that should be based on local educational needs and concerns it's not that they didn't find actively they did not consider any reasons or any they

405did not take that second step at all which led to us not having any information from the county committee regarding why they took the action they did other than it seemed very clear to us that they took the they they assumed they approved the territory transfer because they found the nine conditions substantially met in terms of this yeah yeah please go ahead so in terms of what happens if if the if the appeal is disapproved the state board allows the transfer to take place because coachella valley um is opposed to it it will be required to go to a local election if you allow the transfer to go forward then we'll have to take another step which is to set the election area for the uh for for this proposal yeah just okay just be

406clear i i think the question is if we approve the cde recommendation then the territory will stay in coachella valley where it is now and the children will continue to go to school in coachella valley usd that's correct there will be no change that's that's what i was trying to get clear yeah thank you dr doc thank you dr darling hammond you're welcome uh member son yes so uh all right so for the county committee are they required by law to do that second step to find the compelling reason there's no requirement to find a compelling reason in statute or in regulation what we have is the intent of the legislature which states that any reorganization needs to be based on educational needs and concerns there's also the excuse me i'm suffering from allergies right

407now um the courts have told us that uh you know just meeting these nine minimum standards is not a reason that compels approval and the our interpretation of that has been two-fold one is that the courts have established a legal standard um and the second thing is that you know this is just in line with with what boards do on on a regular basis in terms of taking discretionary action you need to find make a value judgment on the uh on the proposal on the on the petitioner's reason for the future for the proposal if they don't if those reasons do not compel you to vote for them then then it should you shouldn't be voting to approve the territory transfer okay and then in the comments um between the two the two groups the

408coachella valley is saying that by the transfer they would lose a large percentage of their white students um is but then in the cde presentation you said that there was really just one student so you didn't feel that that was a compelling that was not a we look and shade this uh threshold we look only at the merits of the uh at the individual transfer in the circumstances there currently though there may be 17 students uh in the area and only one attends coachella valley the transfer is only going to result in the loss of that one student it's not going to result for our purposes in the loss of all 17 students because those students are gone not part of the district as it is so we look at the direct effect of the

409territory transfer which in this case is one student and we don't see that as a as a substantial or a significant negative effect on the ability of the district or any school in the district to provide an integrated educational environment okay very good so the the reason that the cde's recommendation to to prove the appeal and overturn the county committee is based on one that the county even though they were not required to should have done the compelling reason and then the second is there's been some history sort of uh our our rationale as twofold is that we didn't find any compelling reason to uh to recommend that the transfer be approved you know we when we do these things we typically look to what the county uh circumstances are what the county's issues are

410and they didn't take that action so they didn't provide us anything to help us in our determination and then secondly of course so is the issue that we're concerned that this would be a precedent-setting event a setting event you know we've seen it in similar circumstances across the state uh these things i should i should add it's not within a very short time frame these issues go on for decades yes you know i like to point to the ravenswood school district in san mateo county when territory transfers out of that district uh started again about the same time frame in 1985 and they just and they're continuing to this day efforts to transfer territory out i understand i it's just it is a little bit for on this one for us to overturn a local

411decision um i'm not sure i'm finding a really really strong reason so i have to kind of think a little bit more on this okay yeah we basically give great weight to the local decision it's just that we really didn't have anything here so we needed to go with our uh with what we thought the issue was with these and that that's where that question of compelling rationale comes in it was hard to know why they made the decision because they didn't state a rationale i'm going to go to vice president strauss and then i'm going to ask member rucker is your hand up on purpose or did you forget to take it down i forgot to take it down i'm sorry so vice president strauss thank you so much of the there's one student

412currently in this area who goes to coachella valley the other students who live in there do not attend they attend desert stands on a permit so my first question is if if we if the board supports the cd recommendation the students then will can continue their attendance pattern and in fact continue to attend the schools they currently attend is that correct that's uh that's up to the coachella valley school district in terms of its approval of inter-district transfer requests and extensions of current you know my assumption is and perhaps if the district could provide more information is that since we do have continuing students on inter-district transfers that they are grandfathering in the previously approved transfers but as with any school district the school district has the authority to deny or approve a inter-district transfer

413request my second question is if the board was to support the riverside county decision the local decision and not support the cd recommendation overturn it what would be the next steps next step is that we would have to ask you to determine who's going to vote on the issue since coachella valley is opposed that requires an election to finalize transfer of the territory so if the board votes to uphold the riverside county decision we will need we would need to then to move into a a a recommend or not a recommendation but an establishment of the election area by the board we recommend that because there are really this territory transfer itself has no direct effects that the election area would just be the the territory proposed for transfer should should the board decide to

414go with the riverside county approval thank you are there any other questions comments any further discussion from members of the board before we solicit a motion remember burr you look like you're gearing up to say something no well i'm ready to make a motion if you're ready for that i just don't want to shut down discussion okay now i think i think this is a good time for emotion okay um so i am also going to point folks to page three of the item because i think that this one is a little bit confusing not completely consistent with the way we are usually we usually hear these recommendations and act on them i think remember rutgers nodding her head because it did cause some confusion but the finding and recommendations i think are very clearly

415articulated here um that the cds making this recommendation or that we should consider that although all minimum threshold standards are met there is no compelling reason to transfer the bridge at just jefferson subdivision and further and this is what i think is important the cde finds that the approval of the transfer could promote future transfers from coachella valley based on previous efforts as larry articulated and i think we heard from coachella valley the lack of alignment among city and school district boundaries in the area which as we know exists throughout the state districts are not concurrent with cities and and this is the most compelling thing to me the racial ethnic and socio-economic disparities between the coachella valley school district and desert sands so for those reasons i would move approval of the department's recommendation

416that the board the state board reversed the action of the county committee to approve the proposal to transfer territory thank you do i have a second i'll second it thank you very much uh any further discussion all right i think we'll do a roll call both so brooks can you please call the roll remember son uh yeah i i will say i will go i vice president strauss abstain member rucker yes member rodriguez yes number patilla brownson yes member mcquillen yes remember glover woods yes i'm bresco yes president darlene hammond yes remember the motion passes all right thank you very much uh and you have earned another 10-minute break we are almost through the major items when we come back we'll be dealing with the consent calendar and our consent agenda and our state board

417priorities so we'll see you back why don't we give ourselves until 4 15. see you then turn off your camera and your microphone but do not leave the room i think we need brooks to re-establish the quorum and call the roll number son present vice president strauss member rucker i am here remember rodriguez here remember patilla brownson here remember mcquillen here amber glover woods here number escobedo here president darling hammond i am here remember here amber bananka here everyone's present all right i want to be uh i don't know what pat did over the break that made her so enthusiastic i want some of that i've got my green tea latte so [Laughter] all right folks uh we're going to get into public comment now on our waiver consent calendar the phone loan will be

418open for public comment other 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 shown now um and so we're ready for that are there any public comments on waiver items w1 through w15 we encourage you to state your name and affiliation for the record and the waiver item and district name to which you are speaking please remember to turn down your speaker volume on your computer if you're following the live feed and the speakers will be limited to one minute each there there are no people on the line for public comment at this point all right given that there is no public comment i'll now ask for a motion on waivers w1 through w15

419i would move approval of the consent calendar for waivers thank you a second thank you very much we'll now hold a roll call vote brooks please call the roll number son hi vice president strauss yes member rucker yes remember rodriguez remember rodriguez oh i thought i said yes i'm sorry i must have been muted yes a member patella bronson yes member mcquillen yes amber glover woods yes members cabello yes president darling yes member okay now we're going to take up the regular consent items which are items six through nine and we'll open the phone line again for the queue for public comment on consent items six through nine 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

420slide that is being shown are there any public comments on regular consent items six through nine there are not all right given that there's no public comment i'll ask for a motion on consent items six through nine remove the consent items thank you is there a second i'll second thank you very much for now hold a roll call vote brooks please call the roll number son hi vice president strauss yes number rucker yes remember rodriguez yes member patella bronson yes member mcquillen yes remember glover woods yes yes president darling hammond yes remember i all right um we're now going to move to agenda item one which is our state board priorities item we're reopening item one to take action on the preliminary report of the actions draft july 2021 meeting minutes and to report on

421our liaison assignments so while we're waiting for any members of the public to call in and once again we need that public comment slide up there um terrific do i have a motion from a board member to approve the july 2021 state board of education draft preliminary report of action and meeting minutes i'll move to approve that thank you is there a second a second thank you very much are there any public comments i know we're doing a little wait time okay there are no public comments um any further discussion okay board members would you please raise your hand in the participant panel of the zoom and brooks will keep track of the raised hands oh that's if there's discussion it's like what is what is that about uh we'll now hold our usual roll

422call vote brooks please call the roll yeah and just for the record i will i'll do a roll call of those members who were present for that meeting remember thank you did you call my name brooks um i abstain i was not at that meeting thank you uh president darling hammond yes remember glover woods yes member mcquillen yes remember patilla brownson yes and i appreciate that you gave member a trick question [Laughter] i appreciate the appreciation uh remember rodriguez yes member rucker yes vice president strauss yes number son yes motion passes okay um so we're going to invite uh state board members to report on any liaison activities that are not related to any items on our agenda let us begin by calling on board members uh based on we're going to go back to

423reverse order and start with member son hi yeah so the california workforce joint advisory committee is meeting sorry when i'm first i don't have all my information together yet okay on the 29th of september where we will continue working on our um health the the cte plan for california it's been quite a few years in the making but i think we are starting to really get some momentum on that um i just wanted to note too that we have two grant application deadlines out there right now for um for ccte the strong workforce k-12 program is um the application went out on august 16th and is due by august 15th by 5 pm the sea tig program there was a modification in the requirements for that program so cd had submitted or had released an

424rfa that has been modified a bit and so there will be out um the week of september 20th so i think next week sometime and um it will have a quick turnaround so those who have already started applying will be notified um but just wanted to note that that application has been modified a bit and there will be um that the next due date will be october 15th and i think that was all i had um there's a number of charter um you didn't have really any charter items in this on this meeting but there are a number of charter issues and um that we're having and um conversations that we're having with um especially with regards to non-site-based and independent study uh laws and how that applies and works with charter schools and i

425think that is all i have all right vice president strauss so i'll just follow up i have a couple things to talk about um and thank uh president darling hammond for reminding people at the beginning of the meeting that we are recruiting for a bunch of our commissions for the instructional quality commission for the advisory commission on charter schools and the california practitioners advisory group we are looking for a lot of different people and then for the student board member as well as the student member of iqc so please if you know people who would really help and serve have a strong voice that would help us and inform and advise the board i just encourage you to reach out the applications are due later this month the screening committee already has the dates for

426screening and interviews and we plan to bring our recommendations to the board at the november board meeting um also the iqc had a actually pretty quick public hearing on the world languages and arts education instructional materials adoptions a couple of my colleagues member glover woods and member recorder also heard that so i might be able to make a few comments on that the advisory commission on special education you know um our item today talked about the need for inclusive practices and the advisory commission recognized the orange county special ed preschool program for incredible model of inclusive practices so i just think it's wonderful to see these great programs that are actually implementing what our vision is for student engagement and inclusive practices and improving for all they're really sharing they had a wonderful early childhood

427program i just wanted to acknowledge that as well there was the state budget update which you heard um director calamis list all the money that's being invested in special education um state superintendent thurman was present at axi and did engage with the members on a variety of issues was very very helpful and i think much appreciated so there's two different reports um one the special education funding and governance report update which um cde had contact with the west ed to look at improvements um to ensure transparency um there's a lot of systemic work that's necessary they talked a lot about inclusive vision and communication some key takeaways um on the need for longevity on teachers and instructional staff and administrators which those of us who try to lead improvement in schools know that that's really

428important there's a report that report will go to the legislature in november and really was had some focus on aligning the roles of selpas and county offices and reducing redundancy so i'm sure we'll hear more after that goes to the legislature a second report was on the iep and alternative diploma work group update that report is actually going to the legislature in october they had a number of recommendations on ways to improve um the iep process the template training so we'll hear a lot more about that but again this worker did a lot of work if you're interested you can go to the axi link and watch that meeting i think you'll find it very very helpful um and then the last comment was that um nasby which is the national association of state school

429boards which many of us were part of um has office hours and actually they had a an input session um on september 2nd of which there was a guidance for how to use ester funds and there was some highlights of lpi's work which i thought was actually quite helpful i wanted to comment that because as people think about how to use these funds i think the guidance is quite helpful and so i did want to share that as well and they talked a lot about how state boards of education can help school districts in the year going forward so um i think that that was really quite helpful so that ends my report thank you terrific thank you member rucker i want to thank board member son for her report about the uh california workforce

430pathways joint advisory committee and asked on his tank member strauss for her report about the iqc i'm just going to report about the military in military interstate children's contact while the board was meeting today a component project of that collaboration was also having a meeting and i could this is a picture of me being in two places at once i think that's the reason why i suddenly felt energetic right after our break dr darling today's meeting focused on continuing issues related to the special education system of support for military connected children i also want to note that the compact the california state compact submitted an end of the year report earlier this month there were multiple accomplishments noted in the annual report activities listed included the fact that the state council met four times this

431year um also that we there's the panel attended and supported uh multiple presentations virtually about the pandemic and the impact on schools there have been multiple training activities and workshops provided for the interstate compact that took place six times school personnel from highly impacted areas were invited to the trainings that were held between january and may we also had created a lot of new positive professional relationships with multiple organizations including the coast guard the governor's military advisory council the space force the national guard the california reserve forces noaa the national oceanic and atmospheric association the military child education coalition and multiple mc3 compacts from around the country it's also worth noting and i did report on this earlier the department of education and the state superintendent have approved and adopted the purple star school recognition

432program that i reported on that back in the summer the first schools and districts will be announced in and we also i also do want to report that the department of education has increased its support to the to the compact and accountability to the public by updating the military family support webpage and providing digital resources to schools families and the public that ends my report awesome member rodriguez yes thank you all right so even though the august commission for teacher credentialing meeting was light uh there were very meaty items on the agenda um the ctc adopted the smrs the subject matter requirements for art music and multiple subjects subtest 3 to align with the california arts standards for public schools approved by this body in the rica was discussed and there continue to be concerns

433remaining uh the past rates especially for teachers of color and there is a need to have the assessment updated um as ctc does with all assessments uh one of the one of the things that director sandy said that doesn't mean that the test is lacking in validity or reliability at the moment it just needs to be brought up to date so it's not irrelevant and i'm quoting her it needs to be brought into its next iteration to address the needs of the current concepts of literacy with regard to our english language learners and english language arts staff is closely examining the specifications of this assessment it will take at least a year to develop new requirements there are new frameworks um ctc staff now has a lot of experience and knowledge developing performance assessments and

434the minimum time required for these assessments is two years so there's a 2025 projected update for the rica ctc staff is incredibly appreciative to the uh for the inclusion of two million dollars in the 2021-22 governor's state budget for a complete review and revision of the rica staff will develop a statement to work for a new contract and without these funds this could not have been possible on august 31st ctc leadership attended the universal transitional kindergarten utk i knew that was going to happen design team launch meeting the meeting discussed the planned collaborative efforts across multiple agencies to prepare and promote implementation of the utk state effort and also looking for [Music] applicants for to fill a vacancy for the public member position on the committee of credentials the application can be found on the

435committee of credentials page and the final filing date is september 15th so if you know any public members this is truly a labor of love and it's incredibly important work that the committee of credentials does and then my next and final update the summer session ended for the california summer school for the arts congratulations class of 2021. it was very exciting uh because the students had this amazing program and it was all online and their commitment didn't falter they continued working hard this um cssa foundation supported students by providing rental laptops for those who had technology needs so thank you to the foundation for their support they were really happy that they were returned in great condition um the executive directors in the third round of negotiations with cal arts for the summer summer school

436site which is where they've always been but there's a little bit of an increase in price and it's um they're hoping that they can make it happen um the diverse uh diversity uh and inclusion subcommittee will meet at the end of this month to strategize outreach um and a student satisfaction survey will be shared in october with the trustees and i will pass it on to um two board members uh and lastly matthew gallagher the executive director is working on a data dashboard to collect relevant data it's a longitudinal six year history although he's relatively new i don't i don't even know that he's been there for a year yet and it includes information on feeder schools race ethnicity statistics admission data and more his hope is that this information will be useful as we

437strategize throughout the school year ahead so um thank you and i would also like to say that a big shout out to my students who are walking with their masks in 113 degree heat and they are not complaining and they are walking like almost half a mile from my class to other classes and they come in and their old faces are sweating and they just sit down and um you know and are our absolute troopers and uh and we've been doing this for a month and a half now so um i'm waiting for cooler weather so thank you that's awesome um remember patio bronson i'm going to build off of the last report and share a little bit about the upk constellation group that the department of education has been convening they are basically looking

438at the implementation roadmap and have convened a number a number of design teams to look at local implementation and promising practices uh research workforce development and then also partnerships which is the design team that i'll be supporting the liaison work with the state board um in addition the early childhood policy council met twice earlier this month um the first was around uh shared services which is sort of back on and function sharing among the cbo organizations that provide that pipeline into pre-k and eventually tk and the k-12 system um and then the uh most recent early childhood policy council meeting focused on racial equity um which was very exciting and um actually had a lot of alignment with our conversation today we heard from dr lee about equity and early education and the department of

439ed's plans to bring that into the fold in terms of community schools in terms of behavioral health and of course obviously utk and um i think that's it otherwise i just want to say happy california admissions day belatedly anyone else who's got school children who celebrated that holiday there you go uh remember mcquillen all right not a whole lot to report on i do i do also serve on the california joint pathways committee for career technical education um i was asked to give some recommendations of folks who can serve on focus groups because of their developing the plan the california statewide plan so we came up with quite a number of folks that could give a voice to american indian tribes of california as well as rural communities rural counties to give a voice to

440these focus groups that's on a short turnaround over the next couple of months to develop this california plan so tribes have something called tarot offices or tribal employment rights offices and they develop lots of different career pathways for tribal members in throughout northern california so some of those officers were recommended to serve on these uh on the committee to come up with the plan and have a voice so that was good for me and that's it thank you terrific remember glover woods thank you and thanks to vice president strauss for talking about the iqc and the world languages public hearing and also what's coming up for the screening committee i have um just one other item to share with everyone today and that's in regards to the virtual convening that took place last month on

441p3 stem policy um the education commission of the states did convene that um gathering in august and i had an opportunity to engage in conversation with educators from across the state tennessee colorado arkansas and as participants we also had educators from georgia michigan vermont and virginia the topic again was how to ensure that robust stem instruction takes place for our younger learners and how to make sure that that doesn't put on the back burner as students return to in-person instruction and we really focus on accelerating learning so it was very robust um a couple of thoughts that came through was just the necessity and importance of networking professionals that are working in that area and especially for those that are in smaller areas and rural areas and also ensuring again just professional learning support and

442keeping the authenticity with stem instruction so that was quite exciting and thank you for allowing me to share today that's wonderful oh we'll go to member burr thank you um because i wasn't here in july i didn't have the opportunity to congratulate matt navo on being selected as executive director for the ccee i think all of you who had the pleasure of working with matt on the board know how fortunate we are to have an educational leader of his stature to take over the organization it probably also won't surprise you that he's only been on board a few weeks and he's already met with over 50 of our educational partners to learn more about what our organization cce can do with those educational partners to help support learning in all of our schools and i

443especially want to thank on behalf of matt and i said this this morning the cooperation and collaboration with the department of education is absolutely critical as is the collaboration with the county offices of education so you know just a big appreciation to all of those folks and as we also heard this morning matt's busy building his leadership team which will now include dr gregson um as the deputy executive director of the collaborative i just want to highlight two pieces of work by the collaborative um the playbook for accelerated learning is out and available on their website if you haven't seen it yet i encourage you to take a look at it it lays out current research on how best to improve student outcomes identifies models that practitioners can use to accelerate learning in their systems

444and proposes ways in which they can plan with their teams and it suggests ways in which leas can leverage community-based organizations and engage families as partners in this work related to that the state budget included funding for learning acceleration grants and the ccee in collaboration with our administrative partner marin county office of education or has issued an rfp for those grants and they will be holding a a webinar tomorrow friday september 10th from 11 30 to 12 15 to provide an overview of the requirements specifically it would these grants will provide professional learning for educators to support again learning acceleration particularly in mathematics literacy and language development so i encourage you to get the word out people who are listening please sign up for the webinar on the cce's website and the last thing i

445will say back to the leadership transition is um to say express my deep appreciation to tom armelino who retired and served the cce with great distinction at our next board meeting which is october 28th we will have a little celebration of tom's leadership so i hope everybody will tune in thank you uh and remember recently i've been kissing publicizing the student board member recruitment for the 2022 to 2023 position so i'm currently working with generation up to publicize it through their social media accounts uh additionally i'm working with the california association of student councils to begin the preparations for the save conference which will be held from october 30th to november 1st where we will be narrowing down the semi-finalist group of potential student board members to a finalist group and then finally before the

446school year began i collaborated with superintendent thurman to moderate a webinar aimed at promoting vaccine awareness among students and discussing essentially what a safe return to campus would look like uh and that'll be all that's terrific you're off to a roaring start i love it uh and i'll just add a few of my own comments you know in the summer time there's a lot of important business that the state board gets involved in of course you heard about the state budget when it was passed and the additional 20 billion dollars that the governor and the legislature allocated for a variety of really important programs so state board staff and i want to particularly recognize brooks allen and of course all the staff who work with them have been busy not only moving those programs forward

447and thinking about implementation with the department particularly around tk and particularly around community schools some of the big investments that are coming that really will reshape the nature of the public school system in california many many details to be worked on but also the trailer bill which um you know has just been announced this week um you know clarifying and extending some of those um initial uh parts of the budget uh you know that we've been working hard on safe school reopening as i mentioned earlier all of the policy elements that lead to you know the excellent work i-day students are doing wearing their masks recognize that on behalf of all the students in california and rana i'm sure that you are in that number and all of your classmates uh the vaccinating that is

448going on around the state the schools that are taking up the testing programs that the state's been offering the um swift uh the team that responds to um concerns from local schools when there are needs for more testing or vaccinating so all of that has been going on this summer so it's been a very very busy summer i think um you know the state board staff along with the cde staff have been just critical to the position we find ourselves in today which is uh well uh one that has a lot of challenge and complexity to it also has gotten us off to a really good start i just saw come across the transom and announcement in the papers that sfusd announced this afternoon that there have been zero outbreaks or transmissions in schools since

449they've been going and we you know see this um happening in in our districts across the state because they're taking advantage of all of the supports that have been made available so we're all thrilled about that we i just want to both thank all the people who made it possible and encourage everyone to keep up the good work so that at our next meeting we can really be even happier about how healthy our state is and how successful the start of school has been for all of our students and with that i'm going to move to taking up agenda item number 10 which is general public comment which is invited on any matter not included on the printed agenda and will open the phone line for the public comment queue once again members of the

450public wishing to provide comment on this item may do so by calling the number uh shown on the public comments slide and using the access code that is there and we're going to give a little wait time because there is a lag for folks who are trying to call in so we'll give it a minute to see if there is any public comment and if you do call in we urge you to state your name and affiliation for the record remember to turn down the volume on your computer if you're following the live feed and speakers will be limited to one minute each are there any further public comments yes we do have public comment all right hello caller please state your name and affiliation through the record you have one minute your time begins

451now thank you for the opportunity medina resident for the central valley parent of freshman unified school district student um honorable board members and committee this year has been a very trying one for all of us understanding the pandemia obviously has not prepared us for anyone with what's going on i would just ask for us to be more inclusive of communities who are not fluent in english and who do not have the resources or the community systems to reach out for help unfortunately in the central valley with the is independent studies this has been quite an ordeal for our community they want the well-being of their children they want them to be educated and they want to follow the rules and the recommendations from the state and the government however they're not being addressed they're not

452being helped not nationally not locally and definitely not through the media i would suggest and i would urge for this board to seek to promote more spanish language um media via the videos via social media so that they can help all you understand better thank you so much for that comment are there any others there are no others all right uh with that close of public comments uh i will hereby adjourn our september 2021 state board of education meeting at 4 52 p.m good work got yourselves on the back we'll see you soon thank you bye everyone bye everyone have a great day bye take care