001all right good evening everyone uh first i would ask um that you bear with me as this is my first time as president in in four years i'm very rusty and i might need a lot of help from ricardo and raymer as uh as i conduct the meeting so um you know blame me for for any mistakes in in this uh this board meeting um and i i have to i'm following i'm trying to go by the script that that ricardo uh nicely gave to me so tonight leading us in the pledge of allegiance will be anthony brady please rise and put your right hand over your heart i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty
002and justice for all all right tonight's closed session included the following items it was 3.1 personnel public employee appointments and i have a script to announce the results so in closed session the board voted unanimously in favor of the appointment of the new beryl elementary school principal mr dan elder was able to join the board and vote in closed session but he's unable to join us during open session so the board is pleased to announce the hiring of mr joshua stern as the new principal of barrel elementary school effective july 1st mr stern comes to us from beverly hills unified school district where he has been serving as an assistant principal for the last three years at the middle school level prior to that he was the assistant principal for four years at animo venice
003charter high school he began his education career as a middle school social science teacher for nine years six of which he served as the yearbook and student council advisor we also thank mr stern for his 10 years of service in the united states navy he earned his undergrad degree in social science from san diego state university and a master of arts degree in educational leadership from cal state northridge mr stern looks forward to meeting and working with the barrel staff students and parent community and will visit beryl prior to the end of this school year the board also approved the following administrative changes washington elementary currently has an interim principle as their previous principal miss biddick accepted a new position in the private sector in closed session the board voted unanimously in favor of the
004appointment of the new washington elementary school principal who is mira bascaron effective july 1st for the last seven years ms bascarone has served as principal of bernie elementary she's enthusiastic about a new challenge at a larger school the now open position at principal position at bernie will be advertised both internally and externally starting tomorrow on ed join now many of you may know that bill dargan our uhs assistant principal is retiring at the end of this school year this leaves an open assistant principal position in closed session the board voted unanimously in favor of the appointment of brienne nakayama as the new ruhs assistant principal brienne who is the current lincoln principal will serve as ruhs's new assistant principal effective july 1st she comes with secondary experience as a previous assistant principal at adams and
005began in rbusd as a special education teacher she's excited about working with our high school community if you are now wondering who is going to lincoln you're on the right track in closed session the board voted four to one in favor of the appointment of the new lincoln principal with the dissenting vote from mr strutzenberg so so marvin brown current assistant principal at ruhs is excited to serve as principal of lincoln effective july 1st mr brown has been wanting to work with elementary school age students and is eager to begin this new opportunity prior prior to our uhs mr brown served as a tosa at adams and came to rbusd as a special education teacher this now leaves an open ap position at our uhs first round interviews are this thursday may 12th as the
006position was advertised when we received bill dargan's retirement all of the administrators will officially begin on july 1st however a soft transition to their new role will begin immediately we are pleased to still have ms bascaron miss nakayama and mr brown on the rb usd leadership team and wish them continues continued success in their new positions on behalf of the school board and dr keller we would also like to congratulate mr stern and welcome him to the rbusd family so congratulations to all [Applause] so moving on to approval of the minutes may have a motion second for approval of the april 26th board of education minutes all those in favor say aye all right um the agenda for tonight was approved at the 4 30 session with the motion by ramer flynn seconded by rachel
007unanimously approved [Music] reports to the board let's start with our uhs mr breedy good afternoon aboard president witkin members of the board dr keller and cabinet um david uh i want you to know that this is my first formal presentation for redondo union high school so um you can blame me if something goes right as well so thank you for having redonna union high school present this afternoon we would like to highlight our new health and wellness center that's become a welcoming and popular destination for our seahawks coming out of the pandemic is a one-time funding grants that have become available such as sr2 which has allowed us to make our wellness center a reality for redondo union our wellness center is a product of this funding and a welcomed addition to our campus so
008i'd like to introduce mrs rachel andrews our health and wellness counselor and two amazing seahawks asher's son and kai rawls to share their experiences about the new redondo union high school wellness center thank you mr brady thank you to the board thank you to everyone for making this amazing dream become a reality for us my name is rachel andrews i've been a counselor in this district for 15 years and i'm also a licensed therapist so this is really just the merging of two amazing things for me and i'm just so grateful to have the opportunity to do this amazing thing and have a wellness center at ruhs so the ruhs wellness center is a place where students can come for social emotional support for counseling to get connected with therapy to do group counseling and
009to attend a variety of different supportive workshops it really is a model for supporting the whole teen in redondo beach and now i'd like to introduce you to one of my favorite human beings asher's son uh hi i'm asher and i'm a sophomore redondo union uh this is the wellness center which looks a lot better than when it used to just be a corner of like beanbags and spiders i've been going to the wellness center since probably really early in the year it's always been a really good source for support over time and has evolved greatly the staff are really easy to talk to and the environment creates a really comfortable space to find the support you can you need i spend a lot of time in the wellness center probably a little too much
010i go during snack and lunch along with workshops group sessions and i make appointments the purpose of the wellness center is to provide a good safe space on campus to to support student health and their well-being thank you all right so how do we accomplish this right it's pretty big task having 3 000 students and we know the surgeon general came out with this warning about student mental health and how serious it is and how we need to do something so how do we meet the needs of a campus so large so first of all we have individual services so we do psychological first aid where if a student is in crisis they can make an appointment and i will see them same day or one of my interns will see them same day to
011help figure out what to do and to support them we also have ongoing social emotional counseling as needed and we do brief intervention to help support students who want to stop with drug use or alcohol abuse we also do referrals so we refer we use care solace and other resources to refer families and students out to community partners who can support our students with their mental health and well-being if it becomes beyond the scope of what we can manage in the wellness center we have group counseling activities we have process and skill-based groups so process-based groups are really focusing on talking about your feelings it's a little more therapeutic and then skill-based groups we actually do drop-in groups so we have a stress management group that's every monday it's very well attended we have an
012attendance group that's been really successful a lot of our students who've done our group have started coming to school more which we're really excited about and then of course friendship group because we did see that loneliness was on the rise with a lot of our students we also provide parent support we had for the first time ever which was like a long-term dream of mine which i could never make happen before in my previous role and now i could do it we got to do a parent book club this year with like a therapeutic supportive parenting book and it was so amazing we had about anywhere from 20 to 40 parents who attended on a weekly basis we just go over how to create supportive strategies for your teen um head just keep them you
013know going to class living their dreams finding their passion and their purpose we also have workshops and events so as we hear from students on what they need we put together workshops to meet those needs so we've done yoga we've done nutrition and mental health we've done a poetry slam where kids can just come and talk about their feelings stress management workshops anxiety management workshops kind of the sky's the limit anything you can think of we've been we've been trying to do it we also coordinate school-based services and by we i mean me i do it so so i coordinate all of our school-based services i have interns that come and volunteer with me for free to help our students um and then i also work with our contract with clear recovery for 20 hours
014a week and our 30-hour week contract with south bay children's health center so on the bridge between the school counselors and the therapists to get those students assigned to support on our campus and now my other favorite student kai hello my name oh hello my name is kai and i'm a sophomore at redondo and i'm here to talk about how you can access counseling at the wellness center to set up an appointment there is a form that a student can fill out and if you're having a crisis you'll be seen the same day this form can be found on the ruhs website or the qr code on the door of the wellness center or on the instagram bio at our uhs wellness center please follow it after filling out a form student can meet with
015one of our one of the four interns that work with miss andrews and if a student needs a greater level of support she will refer to them to a licensed therapist through clear recovery or through south bay children's health center who will meet with a student on campus you don't need to set up an appointment to go to the wellness center it is open during snack at lunch to come and hang out get hot chocolate or coffee i personally go to hang out with people i feel really comfortable with and trust but i also go there for some of the groups like stress management where i can talk about my week and attendance group to talk about strategies to help me get through the day on the screen is actually a picture from the slam
016poetry event that we had earlier in the year and it just it was a really cool way for students to express themselves through art and to say what's really on their mind uh and that's andrew's thank you kai so so far what our data is showing us is that we have about 40 to 50 students who visit the wellness center per day right now we're at about just over 700 students who have received individual social emotional counseling support from myself and my interns at the wellness center and we are on track to hit about a thousand students by the end of the school year this you know it's a really tough time right now with testing and spring as you know um and then in terms of referring students through our therapeutic services we're at
017200 plus students and hopefully growing and right back to ash this resource is used primarily by students but also by parents and staff who are concerned about their kids about 69 are students self-referring 17 are parents referring their child and 14 are staff referring their students for support and again we just like to say thank you so much for all of your support and making this happen for our students we couldn't do it without you guys so we really appreciate it and now a semi-related slide all right so i was i was asked to put a slide together for ruhs college acceptance now there is a bridge with social emotional um wellness and our students that are going to be thriving on campus those that are comfortable are going to do really really well so
018that's my bridge and so the college acceptance for our seniors this year you can see that out of the 705 that are currently enrolled we have 364 that have been accepted to various colleges without putting all the colleges up there and you can look at the numbers we're going to be sending you a friday report of all those colleges that our students have been accepted and then upcoming and a friday report of those students that have decided so right now this is the acceptance but the students still some of them are on the fence of where they really want to attend and we're going to be getting that list very very soon especially right after aps this week and yeah it's really exciting time on campus students have a lot of stories and a lot
019of decisions to make which are pretty tough decisions so life decisions so with that do you have any questions for us and thank you [Applause] are we under do we make it under seven minutes i don't know [Laughter] is that what you were given that's the unofficial reports and that's an awful lot of information to pack in um i guess i i have a question for for both rachel and your your students which is like how do you define success in in counseling is it kind of an alleviation of of some of the problems that brought you there or concerns that brought you there in the first place or is it better grades or better friendships like because obviously like it seems with 50 people going every day it seems like they are having success
020like otherwise they wouldn't go every day so i'm just wondering like how you view you know what what are you there to achieve like if do you understand what i'm trying to ask um personally i had maybe one or two sessions and it really just helped me open up about what i'm like dealing with and be able to have and to talk about it which is what i'm what i was personally struggling with and for the success part it's being able to deal with what's happening around you because you don't have control over anyone else but yourself and learning how to deal with what you're struggling with is a huge part of it for sure i mean i could add to that too i mean i think what we want for our students right is
021for them to be able to go out in the world and like live really happy and successful lives so like what's impeding that what's getting in the way of that and what can we do to help them remove that barrier whatever it is so i think they come and they come because there's a barrier and then they don't even know what it is sometimes so we just work at trying to figure out what is it how do we remove it and how do we get you where you want to go or how do we teach you to climb over that barrier i don't know right so it sounds simple but obviously yeah i mean it's clear from just like reading articles about even college students level of stress and anxiety that like the vast majority
022of high school and college students could benefit from counseling so it's great that you know there's 69 self referrals because that's the first step towards you know jumping those barriers that that you're talking about and the hot cocoa helps too i'm sure [Laughter] can i ask just make a comment about the wellness center i know you this has been a dream for a long time to have as a reality at redondo and it now is and you've taken on a huge lift and i love that you've included parents support because i think there are a lot of parents that are struggling with how to support their kids with in a competitive environment and just bravo for doing this and being willing to share that help with our high schoolers and the community definitely thank you
023so much i think the numbers are going to go up because we you know more people find out about it learn about it and then also we didn't really get going for a while because we were waiting on furniture and as everything you start and you gotta you know sort of develop it and you know now the word's gonna be out so i worry somehow that you might be flooded in the last few weeks of school but i i think it's an amazing program i would like to see on the slides where you had the 14 percent i would like to see the number of staff referrals because i think that our staff they see these kids and they know the kids that are struggling not only the teachers but our counselors and maybe in
024a way to kind of try to reach out to the teachers and the staff and get them also involved because i have to believe there's a lot more than 14 percent of them and in some ways maybe they are holding back and it would be great to see them buy into it as well because it's priceless what you have going on i mean just listening to the girls um i love it and i have questions of mr brady also if we can switch back to college for a second of in related to the college talk when we were back in february and we approved those new classes i'm just wondering of those classes do we now know what's been approved for a through g and ncaa yes were the on on the ones that we
025approved were they all have they all now been approved so i i believe one class that was not approved for ncaa was the business and finance class is that accurate dr karate okay um and then what has been the interest on link is that security can you come you want to just come up to the diocese sorry i'm glad i brought them it's always good for you too yeah the the um the interest on all the new courses has been very high and like the intro to business class where i think we're gonna probably have five sections originally we were thinking two now we're probably five given that and then the uh philosophies have close to mid 40s the 50s students the link crew has over 100 students that are interested we have about 20-ish
026that can do the class but that's growing every day so we'll probably that'll be closer to 30 or 40 in the class base after we kind of settle that through culinary arts ii is packed all the culinary classes are packed so their business class really took off more than we had thought so yeah that's great so just to clarify um the business pathway and the culinary arts pass site anyone taking those classes it will not be ncaa approved for athletes yeah and that's that's about what the ins that they kind of do i mean if you look at they're only mainly approving core courses generally right well just in terms of when our i think that only affects our assets based on yeah as long as they know that before they go down that path
027let's be the important yes as long as we're on the topic will link are we going to have a club for that as well given the okay yes i saw a bunch or not um that's great that's great okay thank you very much thank you all thanks for coming okay next is going to be the darts which stands for dignity and respect towards students award presentation which will be done by dr keller and our uhs student body members yep the team in red is going to take the lead here but i just want to let you know each year i visit asb we want to focus on acknowledging and recognizing local business in redondo beach has to be in redondo beach that has certainly provided support and care to our students they when they see
028students walk into their business they smile they don't cringe and they welcome them as part of the community and we have just the business to recognize tonight so ladies take it away good afternoon board president witkin members of board our superintendent dr keller members of cabinet and mr gallegos my name is yaro hessen and i am the incoming sophomore vice president at redondo union high school my name is gia quiron and i'm the incoming sophomore president and i'm chloe ko the current freshman treasurer today we are here representing the whole asb student body to rep for to present a dignity and respect towards students award to this phenomenal local business that showed nothing but kindness towards all of our students beach bowls aside cafe located on pacific coast highway has provided students with job opportunities
029donations to redondo union high school asb as well as a welcoming environment and delicious acai bowls for all to enjoy these and so many more reasons are why our redondo union asb class voted for beach bowl's acai cafe to win this award we are so grateful for such an amazing local business and we are beyond excited to present beach balls acai cafe with the darts award thank you so much to the beach bowls acai cafe team [Applause] we want to present you this beautiful plaque and what we did is could you we know you have other stores we gave you [Laughter] [Music] yeah okay i was thinking of speaking off the cuff but instead i'm going to read something i wrote from the heart um so uh nasserine and i um and the entire beach
030bowls acai cafe staff uh thank you for this honor um beach bowls opened in south redondo about nine and a half years ago we employ about 60 plus people at our three stores many of them have been redondo high students and graduates including some of our shift leaders and we live in redondo and three of our kids have attended redondo schools um nastrite and i have attended many redondo awards ceremonies uh usually for our kids this is the first time we are actually getting our own award we've we've attended a lot of the events we've attended plays my former high school uh math teacher at hawthorne high mr baumgartner todd at redondo and i actually reconnected with him in redondo out of play and we ended up having organizing a dinner for a bunch of
031us hawthorne high students uh several years ago so that was actually kind of nice and and a surprise for us we've been privileged to participate in redondo fundraisers and have given away uh acai bowls to redondo teachers and administrators this is a great school district and community and we are happy to be part of it so thank you again for this honor [Applause] all right thank you very much um next is going to be the elementary english language arts adoption committee recommendation presentation uh by lisa veale shaking at the guard here all right good evening board president wiccan members of the board members of the cabinet and dr keller thank you for the opportun opportunity to present on the rbusdk5 english language arts curriculum adoption recommendation instructional materials matter students learn primarily through interactions with
032teachers and instruction materials in fact a 2010 study from researchers at johns hopkins university found that high quality instructional materials have an effect size equivalent to adding 20 between 25 to 50 additional days of learning each year classroom teachers in rbsc echo the need for high quality materials as well as our current adoption is from 2007 without access to great materials teachers can spend anywhere from 7 to 12 hours per week searching for and creating instructional resources drawing from a variety of sources many of them unvetted this need was further identified in collaboration with the lcap committee during the spring of 2021 and is a key component of the board approved expanded learning opportunities grant the process to form a committee began in the summer of 2021 it was important as we began this process
033that all stakeholder groups were represented with the majority being teachers in fact california educational code requires curriculum adoption committees to have teachers as a majority stakeholder group who are content area experts and teaching those grades we partnered we partnered with the redondo beach teachers association to select their committee members as well in addition to several gen ed excuse me general education teachers there is an el psi specialist a gay coordinator a dual immersion teacher and several special special education teachers on the committee there was a north and south principle as well both of whom who have specialized knowledge and background in elementary literacy and instructional practices we also worked with the pta who provided us their representatives and then lastly we'd like to thank our board members for being on the committee since day one
034your time was highly appreciated this is a snapshot of the committee's process this year tonight we will share with you how we built expertise how we customized rbusd's rating tool to evaluate materials how we practiced the norming process and then evaluated the curricular options we provide an opportunity for stakeholder input and the final step in the process is the recommendation to the board and now i would like to introduce eileen leckenby our educational services coordinator who will share some of the work we did in our retreat days hi everyone um so we met first on september 30th um our kickoff retreat we established values and norms we brainstormed a vision statement to guide our work and we started to look at the research on literacy instruction and best practices after each day of our three
035day retreats we posted artifacts to the website on day two we came back and clarified our value statements as a committee our values were to be student-centered open-minded respectful innovative and to work as a team these value statements were key for how we operated through this entire process we also dug into some of the research we looked at text complexity which isn't about how hard a text is to read but what we're asking students to engage with is it worthy of rereading of discussion is it really rich we also looked at the science of reading which puts a strong emphasis on foundational skills like phonological awareness and phonics which really sets students up to read from meaning on day three we looked at building knowledge so strong literacy instruction is going to systematically and strategically
036build knowledge and ask students to engage in meaningful evidence-based writing and discussion we came back to our vision statement over these three days together to craft it and to refine it so that it reflected our highest aspirations for the adoption process i'd like to take a minute to read it to you now because this really did drive our work in rbusd students will experience literacy instruction that includes complex knowledge building texts explicit and systematic foundational skills instruction and many opportunities for evidence-based writing and discussion all students deserve access to rigorous reading writing and speaking and listening opportunities to be college and career ready leaders must provide high quality valuable training for staff so that teachers will have the tools resources and skills they need to be successful teachers will engage as professional learners taking in
037new information shifting practice as necessary and aligning and adjusting curriculum as needed while prioritizing challenging and grade level work for students as students parents teachers and leaders work together we will accomplish the building of literate engaged and joyful students who contribute positively to our society no small feat in our vision statements but in all seriousness this gives me goosebumps to stand here and read to you i have a first grade or rising first grader at washington and an incoming kinder student and this is what i want for them at schools in redondo beach and for all students in redondo beach i was thrilled to be a part of this process so we wrote this vision statement based on our shared values and the research that we engaged in after those three retreat days committee members
038were asked to review ed reports and submit highly rated materials that they would like our committee to evaluate ed reports is an independent nonprofit committed to ensuring all students have access to high quality instructional materials they publish free reviews of k-12 instructional materials using an educator-led approach that measures standards alignment usability and other quality criteria so from that process we had four curriculum options that were submitted to be reviewed by the committee these screenshots indicate that they met expectations on ed reports and this was an amazing place for for us to start because we had four great options that were in the green on ed reports the committee at this point had spent three days together we could not wait to get our hands on actual materials and so for this next part of our
039process i'd like to introduce kathleen shaw our secondary teacher on special assignment to review how we study the materials the next step in our process was a very purposeful decision based on committee input seeing all four curriculum options was identified as an important need by all stakeholders and our committee members also wanted to be in person for a full day with hard copies of the materials so that's what we did we broke into three subcommittees and each subcommittee focused on one non-negotiable for a full day and analyzed all four options from the lens of their specialized focus in order to ensure consistency in our rating we needed a standardized tool similar to teachers grading on a rubric the instructional materials evaluation tool referred to as the imet which you'll hear throughout the presentation was developed
040by writers of the common core standards and customized based on committee input for rbusd each day we began with some refinement of our expertise in that non-negotiable and some calibrating and when we look at the ratings you'll see that a two indicates that that curriculum met the expectation outlined in our imet and threes were reserved to indicate that the curriculum really stood out as exceeding our expectations in that indicator i'll give you an overview of each non-negotiable and some of the key indicators but i want to point out that the imet rating tool along with all of the committee's ratings are available on the rbusd website all right let's look at some numbers so non-negotiable one these are the committee's ratings non-negotiable one is about providing students with opportunities to engage in rich engaging and
041challenging texts we know that the texts within a curriculum are essential in working towards our vision of building literate engaged and enjoyable students overall we found great selections of text that are appropriately challenging for each grade level that's indicator 1a we found that these texts were worthy of study and worthy of rereading to fully understand the ideas the themes the characters and the concepts within that text that's indicator 1b we looked for a high volume of reading and a good balance of both informational texts that build world knowledge especially in social studies and science and in literary text that's indicator 1e non-negotiable 2 is about what we ask students to do with their knowledge from the text so we know that all students benefit from engaging in complex grade level tasks that are meaningful and
042relevant to them we looked for opportunities for meaningful collaboration and discussion we looked for a very structured approach to supporting students and making meaning from increasingly complex vocabulary and syntax and we also had a very keen eye on explicit writing instruction that helps students process new information refine their thinking and communicate it to others can i can i interrupt the questions yes which indicator is the writing instruction i thought you'd never ask they're actually a couple so 2d is about evidence-based writing assignments and 2e is about explicit writing instruction so those are like targeted meaning mini lessons in writing techniques and supporting students in their writing okay thank you non-negotiable 3 is about foundational skills in reading from the research we know we have to explicitly teach reading skills so indicators 3a through 3d we
043were looking for a systematic approach to developing those skills which includes phonological awareness or awareness in each unique sound in a language phonics which is connecting those sounds to letters building fluency in reading and ongoing assessments to guide instruction and help teachers provide additional support to students as needed indicator 3e is about ensuring students have opportunities to practice all those skills within the context of meaningful texts all right so you may have been noticing some trends these are the summative scores for each curriculum we use these scores to narrow our options down to two to walk you through the next steps in the process i'd like to introduce the wonderful elise hertz she is our elementary teacher on special assignment so once the committee narrowed it down to those two final options we took the
044materials out to the school sites so we essentially set up the equivalent of a scholastic book fair at each school with all the materials for teachers to go in and the community members to go in and view these materials we'd like to thank our elementary principals and assistant principal for providing us with that space and also time for teachers to look at the materials during their planning time so principals emailed the flyer you see on the screen there out to their communities and parents and community members were invited to attend one of those open houses they could attend an open house at any school and at those open houses they were invited to complete a survey to provide feedback on the curriculum and the purpose of that survey was to evaluate the usability of the
045curriculum to anticipate professional development needs and to receive just general feedback from those outside of the adoption committee i also went out to all eight elementary schools and met with grade level teams individually to help facilitate that process and answer questions and i don't know how much time you all have spent with elementary teachers but like our students we tend to have a lot of questions and so there was a lot of meeting there and discussing but they had a lot of time to talk about and review the materials some committee members also tried out lessons with their students so they were able to see their students reaction to the materials and then at the end of this process these site ela committee reps synthesize the feedback from their parents and community and teachers at
046their sites to share back to the committee we also met with our most important stakeholder group our students i want to thank charles for allowing us to come out and take over one of your young leaders of rbusd meetings on such short notice and meet with your extraordinary group of young people they shared a lot of really great insights about what they value in language arts instruction so some of the things they shared with us are that they value reading and writing about topics that are interesting to them they value reading whole books as opposed to just excerpts from textbooks they value learning about important global issues having a variety of ways to demonstrate their learning such as group discussions on a class novel group work writing and socratic seminars they also value having a
047diversity of genres and perspectives to read about and then reading about issues that affect them toward the end of this focus group we ask them a question we ask them is it important for you to see yourselves in the materials that you read and a lot of students agreed with that and they shared reasons why they like seeing themselves in their reading and there was one student who spoke up and he had a different perspective on this question and i'm not a big crier but i actually teared up at the quote i'm going to show you next on the screen so kaiden a fourth grader from alta vista shared with us that he likes seeing people different from him do extraordinary things when he's reading and i feel like that just really represents what this
048whole process has been about so we also completed five reference checks for each curriculum from a variety of districts so we reached out to large and small districts urban and rural districts from different part of the united states so we reached out to districts in california ohio louisiana to hear how it was implemented in their different contexts we asked about their implementation experiences logistics the professional development provided by the companies the quality of the materials they received and then the ongoing support from those companies all districts we spoke with had positive experiences with both the publishers and most importantly they were all able to provide us with unique insights into how to best implement the curriculum so we can plan ahead and think toward the future the screenshot you see on the screen is our
049meeting with baltimore city public schools they actually put together a whole panel to meet with us and invited us to come visit to see their implementation of the curriculum so we have a field trip planned for the future and then after this whole process our ela adoption committee came back together to go over all of this feedback teachers shared their site survey feedback we reviewed the reference checks the student input and just reflected on the whole process so of course since we're a language arts adoption committee we had to use a book to reflect on our process so the important book is by the author of goodnight moon and it's a series of poems about what's important about different items so we each wrote a short poem about what was important about the process for
050us so some of the different themes that stood out were that it was transparent that it was an objective process it was all grounded in the research and then you can read some of the other ideas on the screen i'm going to read the last one for you that one stood out to us that member said the most important thing about the ela adoption process is that we had ownership of the process and were able to collaborate with teachers across the district so now for the moment you've all been waiting for i'm going to pass it back to lisa veal who's going to share our recommendation with you all thank you elise i love that i get to do the exciting part i know drumroll right we would like to recommend to our board written
051wisdom and to share with you just a little bit about white and wisdom the curriculum is comprised of three components written wisdom is the core knowledge component foundations is explicit systematic foundational skills instruction in grades k through three geos is the bridge between the two components in k2 where students practice foundational skills in context of the topics they are studying in the knowledge building lessons based on the feedback from teachers and the reference checks we want to provide teacher professional development on the science of reading as well as the implementation of the curriculum it's important our site leaders have provided professional development as well so they'll have opportunity to engage in pd2 there'll be both summer and fall pd options which is another piece our teachers felt very strongly about lastly we will be generating
052a three-year implementation plan and will solicit ongoing feedback to meet teachers needs we recognize any shift in instruction as a massive lift for our teachers and we want to be thoughtful in planning change takes time and we will just as necessary to meet their needs we would like to remind our community that all of the artifacts from the curriculum adoption committee are available on the rbusd's website for public viewing we have uploaded them on an ongoing basis this year and they can be found on the page listed here what we have heard from stu from the student focus group is that students want to study global issues and topics that are engaging and relevant the science of reading tells us that students need opportunities to learn deeply and build comprehensive knowledge about complex topics i
053invite you to take a moment to review some essential questions from the whitten wisdom curriculum here these questions show one way that wooden wisdom will engage our students rich complex questions such as these are designed to spark student curiosity and to apply the learning to grapple with complex ideas we believe written wisdom will move us towards our vision of high quality literacy instruction by building literate engaged and joyful students who contribute positively to our society we'd like to provide the board an opportunity to ask any questions both of the process or this presentation tonight and thank you for allowing us to present um so i i have a question which is just in real life like if someone for example has a second grader at tulita how would that child's ela education differ next year
054when we have written wisdom versus this year that's a good question and i'm going to invite elise up here she has she not only has taught elementary but she knows exactly what the curriculum looks like and she's our expertise to be very honest and so she can share a little snapshot of what that looks like yeah so the main thing that makes this different from what we've been doing is that first of all i think all schools will be kind of on the same page now which will be a nice shift so the witt and wisdom curriculum is all centered around real text real published texts and so the students spend a lot of time diving into those questions that you saw on the screen so they look at art pieces they read poems they
055listen to songs they'll read books all connected to those themes and then throughout the unit they respond to increasingly complex questions and then at the end of that process they'll respond to these questions at the end so they kind of build up to that process of being able to craft a response to one of these questions so so right now is it really up to like each school site and each grade level at that school site and it's just standardized one grade one site whereas next year it'll be standardized like across the district okay and that's one thing thank you elise that's one thing our teachers have done they're experts and they have cultivated resources over the years and they worked hard to enhance the curriculum that we currently have which is from 2007 and
056so that's one thing you will see with the new adoption is that consistency across our campuses in terms of the experience that our students will have do we want to hold this for the public hearing part of it or does it make a difference yeah and our discussion of it is i'm not sure if it makes a difference um and we can do both like i i want the chance to ask questions now okay um so one more question from me which is looking at slide in the in our pdf slide eight like has these articles elementary education has gone terribly wrong the neglected r and the writing revolution like writing is very important to me and having quality explicit writing instruction so can you just talk more about whitten wisdom's right like how is
057it going to make our kids better writers yeah sure absolutely can you go i think he's looking at the day three this one yeah it's the day three retreats so one thing i reflected on on this day of the retreat is that sometimes i was a very good assigner of writing but didn't always know exactly how to explicitly teach writing and i think what a really high quality curriculum can do is it gives teachers lessons that they can use to turnkey deliver to their students and so i think it does take a lot of like cognitive lift off of teachers like what exactly does second grade writing instruction need to look like and so wit wisdom the way it's designed is there's lesson sets about one through five lessons that are gearing towards a focus
058question and so students are practicing writing in every single lesson every single day and they're learning different skills of revising editing there's deep dives into different writing skills and so it does have a really strong explicit writing instruction piece and then along the module those focusing question tasks build for students writing a response to the essentials questions that you saw on the screen so they're writing every single day and there's deliverables from the teacher to support that right can i ask a few questions yes um okay i just wanted to add on a little bit more to that um just coming from an elementary's perspective and teaching a lot of writers workshop a lot of times i would have students who didn't have anything to write about or didn't feel like they had had experiences
059to write about and so another great thing about witt wit wisdom is that because the students are building that shared knowledge as a class like it gives everybody something to write about and they've learned so much about the topic that they really become experts and it gives them something to say and allows them to be successful great that's exciting okay um a couple questions you just referenced readers and writer's workshop and i was the benefit of miss hurt's great teaching and misleading so does this mean and yes i remember lisa does this mean readers and writers workshop is gone so all of our level reading libraries that we have in our classrooms are gone or are they skin yes no i'm asking yes i think we should be transparent about yes and that's why it
060will be important to spend a lot of time in the science of reading because what we know is that keeping kids at a level that may be significantly below where the grade level is is actually a detriment and that's what we learned and that was something that was very hard as someone who was trained in column at teacher's college yes i i had to spend some time reflecting on that and saying oh sorry sorry kids um it it's when we know better we do we do better absolutely and that will imply with the writing too david to talk about what our kids some of our younger kids may have been taught writing before too um i the question regarding when you said you wanted all the materials together and you gathered you wanted to see
061it touch it in your process and two board members can elaborate as well did that include all of the books that the kids would actually be reading no they sent us samples but they are texts that are um they're easily accessible to be very honest and so they sent us a sample of them and then they sent a list of all of them and so the teachers if they had interest they could you know peruse further either on epic which is one of our databases or the public library but they did send samples and how many parents actually attended the open houses that were offered at all of our elementary schools do we know that's a good question i went to three of them um one that i went to had about five parents and
062then one had about 20 while i was there so it varied based on the sites yeah it was anonymous we did send it out reminders and invited parents repeatedly so we had people come at each other absolutely they were definitely parents who participated and we had some come here as well um not everybody filled out the form not everybody filled out the google form many people would come look and then leave they didn't only i'll fill out the form yeah so and then this is probably for more for the board members you mentioned everybody wrote a poem about their experience did our board members want to share their poetry writing i just um but less about the poem and more about the most important part so it's just about sharing their experience during this whole
063process and just to clarify we're not voting today on this we are just opening up the review but it seems like there were hours upon hours of work that there were two of the our colleagues here did and a lot of people in this district and i appreciate the time and care and effort that you guys clearly put in to picking such an important foundational and the idea of all of us being on the same page reading the same things you know i think that's going to help everybody in the long term and yes it is going to be an adjusted for those of us that have a lot of level reading and we're going to support them though and it was exciting to be a part of the process it absolutely was i don't
064think there's anyone on the committee who doesn't agree well thank you that's all i have for questions absolutely anyone else okay thank you very much i'll leave this here uh student board member report charles all right hello everyone i have a few updates from our asb at the high school so asb is planning for our annual middle school asb mixer this thursday this is where students from adams and paris middle school will be able to give will be able to participate in multiple activities that are going to be led by the redonda union asb and it's basically it's going to give them an introduction to how certain student council activities are run in high school and get them interested in that additionally asp has finalized our election process so we have the finalized members for
065our upcoming school year for asb next year uh and then also as i uh i put in my report from our last board meeting i want to give a reminder that the young leaders program will be hosting the districtwide spirit week which will be held from may 23rd through the 27th and the following themes for the week will be monday pajama day tuesday group day this is where groups of friends can wear the same color clothes to school wednesday is our annual unity blue day uh and blue represents the color of unity in our district uh and then thursday is jersey day so any sports or school jersey and then lastly friday is gonna be college day and then we have all of the young leaders working on a flyer that will eventually be pushed
066out to all of the elementary schools and middle schools to publicize the dates for the week and this will be occurring during the same time that um the same week as our asb senior spirit week as well and i'll come with more information on that uh and uh i will now have to be leaving early to prepare for my ap exam tomorrow so thank you do well thank you thank you charles dr keller just a quick congratulations to mr brown miss nakayama uh mr stern and miss bascaron we're all excited for them to begin their their new pursuit and their new roles here just a reminder we are this week providing our 1300 employees plus employees [Music] just a big round of thanks we're providing them a morning morning breakfast small light breakfast with beverages
067you know you kind of reflect on the last couple years we could not have done any of this without the support and care of each and every staff member so i want to thank our our board and our leadership team for um really um just uh continuing to push this message out not just during you know the week of the you know teacher the week of the administrator the week of the classified employee um you know if we had it our way it'd be every day we'd be appreciating we wanted them to know that and so the entire month of may we're just going to do our best to continue to thank our staff members who've gotten us to where we are today um uh and then we are uh you know very mindful covet
06819 still remains threatening our schools in our community l.a county department of public health last week provided us new guidance and directives we have implemented those our community has been very supportive thus far you know we're seeing a you know a little uptick in our cases for sure uh but i think we are a district that has done a terrific job managing it keeping our kids safe keeping our kids at school as much as possible um and of course keeping our staff members and and therefore our families safe so want to thank everybody for supporting uh this uh new language we're hoping to get to the end of the year without any changes keep your fingers crossed from l.a county department of public health but i think so far so good and a reminder that
069we still have covet testing at beach city health district monday through friday two to five pm i think everybody knows that um we had our final race and equity equity meeting two weeks ago we will provide a summary to the board we'll do a presentation to you is sometime in june and we uploaded all the information from our last meeting online on our website you can go to rbusd.org and i believe it's under our story or yeah our story our story and it's all there the notes the about us thank you there it is about us i couldn't get again yeah yeah yeah um so it has the agenda it has the notes and it has the um kind of what we're calling you know you know the outcomes uh from our experience over the
070last two years and it was our last race and equity committee meeting and we'll explain um what's next in that process the work does uh continues uh the committee discontinues and i think it's the best way to say it i think you'll be impressed with what our next steps are governor may revise uh budget is supposed to drop later this week dr albert and i were talking this week i'm sure she'll be the first to provide any updates we receive we'll have multiple spins from this from our various sources so hopefully some good news by the end of the week and finally i know mr whitkin has a special recognition to honor our previous board of education president sure so ramer i'm going to embarrass you a little bit i saw you in the parking
071lot on the way into the meeting and you looked so not stressed so you know congratulations on making it through the year i have to say i really admired how you handled the last year uh you know i was privileged enough to be your vice president and see behind the scenes but also the last year really brought into like sharp relief that board meetings are a number of things like they're opportunities for the public to come and give their opinion and input on on important issues there are opportunities for board members to learn there are it's it's a form for board members to debate um tough topics and it's also just the time where we have to conduct the business of the district and and check boxes that need to get checked so so the
072trains run on time and i thought you did a great job of balancing all of that in in a very difficult year and so hopefully i can live you know begin to measure up to your standards and i want to give you this as our appreciation you i feel like i'm retiring but thank you very much but i'm still here i'm definitely still here i've much appreciated and i know you're going to lead us athlete i'm happy to be on your team so all right thank you i'm not sure it looks like a box let's see cigars golden gavel am i supposed to open it oh my god are you kidding i love it i'm going to have more fun with my home gavel my children look out here they come i'm calling the house
073to order oh thank you very very much oh i appreciate that a lot all right okay enough for that great all right hearing section so i'll read the guidelines um members of the audience may address the the board on any topic regardless of whether it's on the agenda or not however as you know due to brown act regulations the board cannot engage in public discussion on items that are not on the agenda topics not on the agenda that are brought to the board's attention may be investigated by the administration and a report made to the board either publicly or privately at a future meeting comments shall not exceed three minutes unless the time limit is waived by a majority of the board the board shall limit the total time for public input on each item
074to 20 minutes with board consent the president may increase or decrease the time allowed for public presentation depending on the topic and the number of people wishing to be heard so we do have two advanced written requests the first is from sheila garcia so it looks like you have two agenda topic agenda related topics is that right well dr wilds is here she was a part of it so you can certainly bring the hearing aid okay oh got it so if you have questions about witt and wisdom you can ask during that public hearing okay so do you have anything else that you want to bring up besides that in regards to well because i was going to do my non-agenda item sure just because i was checking the box sure so you have three
075three three minutes for your non-agenda item before you start i'm still learning this process so give me grace good so do we have a buzzer all right you're on okay the truth is like a lion it does not have to be defended it defends itself so mr whitkin i have a call to action for you and this is dear to my heart i want us to adopt a constitutional class and i want us to adopt the constitution pamphlet i had shared it with dr keller he was very gracious in meeting with me i'm sorry i didn't get back to you but the information that you wanted i actually have it today i'm kind of a busy mom sometimes and so actually all of the board i would like you all to help me with this
076because it is part of our educational code to support the constitution i want you all to get on the bang wed bandwagon and support me on this okay so i'm just putting it out there the constitution our constitutional rights our children if they're good citizens are going to be good for the community because we're here in the community right and we want good people and good citizens so in the next week i'll be giving you guys information and i was going to eat invite each of you individually but i'm doing it publicly where i want you guys to be on board if you aren't on board with me and the constitution i'm going to have a question is if you're the board we're supposed to promote you know civic engagement i'll be surprised however i
077trust you guys and i know that you are going to support me in the constitution and what it offers right because it helps our kids and helps everybody um so i don't know and i i'm going to be honest with you when i brought it up a couple of weeks ago i was hoping somebody would take the ball and run with it and actually say hey this is a good idea let's do this but i don't see it on the agenda this time so either if i wasn't clear i wasn't taken seriously or it wasn't important enough to you so help me with that was it important or is it not important because i know everyone has the ability to put it on the agenda anyone could take it and run with it if it
078was important so i do have a following that is important to them so in the next week i will be reaching out to you and i'm hoping somebody will support me um okay so it's very important to me so i don't know what else how else to get it on the agenda um my other whoever gives heed to instruction prospers and blessed and he who trusts in the lord from proverbs so please whoever gives heed to instruction prospers and blessed and he who trusts in the lord okay god bless america okay so that was that now do we start it over for the next one this is the witten wisdom yes part uh we i think we have one more public comment oh okay that is for a non-agenda item then we'll get to the
079whitten wisdom got it thank you okay uh next is pam kaplan hi i'm pam kaplan and i have three kids um one of which is at uc santa barbara and actually attended costa one is a junior at um redondo high and um my son who is an eighth grader at adams but in independent study program right now um and he has a disability and we are trying to work through the his iep and the various aspects of that with the transition meeting to get there and it's been a very difficult road as i've been here before kind of alluding to that fact and i guess different people in the district have attended and participated um besides miss pollard and with the learning resource center teacher went once to club 21 i know miss wilde is
080familiar from hearing about it with different people from the district and mr dr keller you've talked with um other um people who are familiar with that no one on benji's team besides a third grade teacher and first grade has ever attended that so um what i end up with in the iep is a lot of is he going to attend redondo union um is asked almost every time we're in a meeting which is confusing to me because we live in redondo i don't know where else he's going to be attending and one of the campaigns and just i guess approach that club 21 took this past year was that we all deserve a seat at the table who's at your table and um sorry i had you and wrote it down because i get nervous
081um everyone deserves to see its table we deserve a table big enough to fit everybody and we all belong at the table and it's very difficult to feel that way if you would sit through my iep meetings related to the curriculum what was i just walked happened to walk in on um definitely sounds much more accommodating for the modifications and that type of stuff that should be happening in gen ed that generally doesn't um so one thing i've heard is just having like a wider range for the wider range if we're all using the same materials that's what we've been asking for that's a big chunk it's just modifying if it needs sounds like we'd be getting some suggestions and it's just modifying benji would definitely have a place at that table and i just
082want to encourage everyone here in this room and in the district the pta is having a um inclusion diversity and equity i forget what the third thing is on monday and we need to get as many people as we can there um board members definitely leadership from redondo and our teachers educators and of course parents and everyone else so i hope to see you guys all there thank you okay now i'll open the public hearing concerning the adoption of the witten wisdom ela curriculum are you able to respond to me or you just hear me and nod ricardo yeah so so basically what what i'll say is we probably will just sit here stone-faced but susan wilds is extremely responsive on this issue so all of whatever you're going to say we will be listening
083very closely and if you want to engage with susan after the board meeting that's fine and outside of the board meeting you can engage with us do we need a motion a second to vote to open the public hearing no okay so three three minutes thank you okay so i did review um some of the curriculum and my big burning question is how were we able to come to just two choices maybe i missed something i'm an avid reader but i want to know the rationale of out of everything that's available in the state of california and the country how the district was able to narrow it down to just two if susan can legally respond like i'm happy if she does it now if she if there's a doubt whether she can legally respond
084she'll give you the answer offline you know i respect that because this is a big thing and she may need time to go back so i don't want you to perjure yourself you know what i mean like i mean okay well it was part of the presentation wasn't it we just heard it yeah but the what i'm asking is like from way back when they first came to the conclusion of the two i mean look yeah just call her after speak to her right after this is over and she'll tell you yeah because i want to okay that's it um yeah that's it and so i had a 12.2 and a 12.1 so this the salaries was 12.2 salaries is 12.1 got it okay thank you so i'll make a motion to close the public
085hearing my understanding that the public hearing is our main time for as a discussion yeah oh okay so uh yeah report to the board is normally minimal kind of response and the public doesn't participate but the hearing is really the the core item okay so uh mr stratzenberg you have uh go ahead and discuss thank you okay um throughout that process the ela process the teachers were the key that's who i really listened to i was i was interested in seeing the process to see what the process was like but the key was really meeting with the teachers listening to the teachers talking with them and finding out what was important to them because they're the ones that really know miss whitney you've talked about the writing having a writing element have a really important
086aspect i didn't see that in really any of the curriculums that we went over they all had something about it and i think i had forwarded actually one example of an outside entity that had really pushed a force to create a white heavily focused on writing program that did really well but that's not what we were looking for here was just something that was so focused on writing while i agree that it's extremely important it's in there um is it emphasized debatable but it's it's there and then the phonics aspect was something i definitely learned about that phonics is seems to be more focused on at the younger grades and then as we get into fourth and fifth the fourth and fifth grade teachers said wow we we really do need to continue phonics and
087we just don't have it in what we've been doing so i think that will come out of this um then that goes along with the other note ahead of there's seem to be big differences you know from the k1 up to the the 4-5 the needs are different and i think what came out of this was even a recommendation from the outside references that you got to maybe focus on certain aspects either geodes or the i don't remember which ones was which but i thought that was really important that that came out of this is that fair to say absolutely one of the things we learned from every school site is that because of their the three components that it's important to have a plan for not not initiating all three at the same time
088it's important to get one up and going foundations at the primary grade and then start layering them in as teachers become comfortable so that was something i definitely learned that you know how that layered approach would come into play um the feedback from the references from the outside uh i found to be extremely balanced i was very happy with that that they all were willing to say pros and cons and it wasn't that just one column of the pros where everything and the cons were just a few it was really well balanced and that was good to see because it led to things like you know solid recommendations of how to deal with it going forward because the implementation the next phase is going to be a really hard part for the teachers and for
089the students in some cases too but just going through the ela process was just a starter um i'm curious to know how would we judge in the future if this was successful is there an element of testing or something that would show up that we'd say wow we saw a marked improvement in these scores that something existing that will continue throughout the years as we progress through this i wouldn't expect it the first year necessarily but three years into it we should be pretty comfortable and be able to look back and say we're about the same or we actually went down or we really have improved is it yes absolutely in addition we could look at statewide testing that's always one that we can look at that tends to be an end of the year
090measure map growth does provide these types of reports for us and it will break them down into instructional categories such as those foundational skills and we'll be able to see pre-curriculum what students growth were as it was in a given year post-curriculum so we can start seeing that over time and that growth of students and we don't have map prior to covid so covert is such a sketchy time that but we have a pre-curriculum so this year would be the pre would be what we would consider our baseline data in terms of we have casp data pre-curriculum but we don't test in the k2 realm third grade's the first grade that statewide testing starts okay so that would help because you get into this and you don't know our you know and the other thing
091that's come up i'll mention right here this is an eight-year commitment is that correct because that's not really mentioned anywhere not even a couple of teachers that i talked with didn't realize it was an eight-year commitment but i think that we had talked about it at one point and for example with amplify science we actually reduced that the board reduced that at that time to a five year to kick it off and then we just did another three year extension i believe that was for eureka math eureka that was for your command okay amplify was an eight year adoption so typical adoptions are about eight years you can see the the length of this process you don't want to engage have to re-engage with this every few years and that's one of the things in
092talking to the the teachers that i talked to about that was like yeah you think about in the big picture that five years from now you're not going to be ready to go through this again and try to start over that five years goes really quick and the research shows that any sort of implementation takes a minimum of a full three years to fully implement anything the other thing that really stood out it came in early on there was uh some presentation on how ela and teaching ela has changed over the decades and the big impression i got from that was that you know we're just kind of in the next best thing phase because 10 years from now what we're doing may or may not be the great thing at 10 years from now
093so we just had to realize that but it was really interesting to see how the focus had changed from 60s 70s 80s and you know even in the 90s things have shifted so no good or bad from that which is very interesting i've talked about the eight-year commitment so how i will address the question that came up because i think it's important a question to address that is that how did we get down to just two because i've gotten this from some other parents also that the initial look was by the teachers from a very broad spectrum of qualified curriculums there is a lot out there and there's a lot out there that isn't even on it was it source or reports reports there's a ton of these out there but it was a good
094place to start with you describe ed reports it's kind of like a consumer reports consumer reports doesn't evaluate every gas grill out there it evaluates some of the popular ones and some of you'll find someplace and it goes from there and then gives you some criteria to pick one which one's going to be the best fit for you getting down to the final four was basically out of that ed reports suggestions from teachers from teachers yep and again teachers were the key to this and then the selection down to the two from the four to me was it was pretty straightforward the scoring on that aspect was pretty fair even as i looked through the curriculum products those two that were picked are the ones that stood out to me as well and i tried
095not to focus on product early on i wanted to focus more on the process that's what was important to me and not to have a bias towards one product coming out of it until now and the two they're pretty different they have a lot of similarities the ckla is at the correct amplify it seemed like a good main stream fit it wasn't bad uh it had a lot of positive aspects my very first impression i remember when i looked very first time i saw the materials but the written wisdom seemed like something you would see at a private school it seemed more upscale which i thought was great it had this kind of artistic flair to it and to really make kids think and go beyond just boom boom boom this is reading this is
096writing but really getting to think and it had a lot of aspects to that i've discussed with a few teachers how would that adapt to some of the kids that are are struggling and that's going to be a challenge i think i don't know what wisdom specifically you've looked into i haven't dove into it but is there aspects to help with that does that come into the online support or that's going to be a challenge there's a significant amount of differentiation and entry points for all students to be able to engage with the curriculum lots of opportunities for students to work collaboratively turn and talk reading together working together students being able to just engage in a socratic seminar about their thinking um supports then students having to go and write students are talking to
097each other they're become experts in a topic it supports them and then through the use of graphic organizers and really kind of the layering of like the writing curriculum it's um it's available we've seen it um being able to engage everyone everyone can be successful yet i remember seeing some example videos of how raising the bar for all the kids raised all the kids the rising tide lifts all boats kind of things it didn't seem to leave behind more which was good i think that could still be a challenge in ways we have a wide variety of kids especially now coming out of kova there's things associated with that but i don't have a there's no final say on that it was just an observation that you know something is we're gonna have to learn
098that we the teachers are gonna have to learn as they get through it and learn through the adoption process of how will they deal with that and what fits what kids well because that there's definitely going to be material there for the the very top i absolutely saw that mainstream will pick it up it's the i say lower echelons but that's just the reality of it the kids that are struggling a little bit more how to get them engaging with that material so but i saw the example of how it can work and that was very enlightening to me i wouldn't have thought that the whole process was really enlightening the scoring i felt there was a little bit of bias in it because there was examples of times where we had voted as a
099different subgroups this is in that that final session where we split it into three subgroups and there would have been say four twos out of five groups and one three and it was taken back to say well hey the group three why did you think this was a three to give the other chance to see for the other groups to see well maybe i didn't think about that but there was a that tended to happen more with a wit and wisdom from what i saw may not have been at the other ones i didn't see those but it was just one aspect of it that that seemed to come out to me was that was there a bias i don't know i don't have proof of that it just felt like it a little bit
100and i'm not it wouldn't change how i feel about anything in the end i think i want to clarify i don't believe in any way there was bias oftentimes some certain teachers found evidence that other teachers didn't find so in that process sharing a teacher may say i didn't find that and other teachers could say oh i found that it was here i found it here i found it in the in this curriculum so i would say it was more about in the time we asked teachers to give ratings they had to have evidence to show of that behind that rating and oftentimes a pair of teachers may not have just found what another pair of teachers found so sharing their evidence that would yeah my perception of it how it seemed to me from
101uninitiated and unexperienced that but again i would go back and just thank the teachers were this was a lot of work for them they were very involved and it's now going to fall to them to help implement this at each site and that's a burden for them as well but they were just absolutely the key to this and can't thank them enough the it's it's a drawn out process i understand the need for each one of them i think it was a little maybe a little front end loaded and then it always feels like it gets rushed at the end but i think that's just the way these things go in general there is no perfect way to it so those are my observations overall i the process was in the end good and the
102key thing was the teachers got that time to think about what they wanted what they saw how would they implement it and from a variety of second we had special ed teachers we had main you know gen ed teachers all different grade levels different schools everybody was represented and that was great so i'll leave it at that which which of the non-negotiables were you did you do of the three because maybe that had i was in group three i believe i don't remember what foundational skills okay i was thinking maybe that is where the writing portion was missed because for the non-negotiable that i did and and the others i think the writing really was clearly there with witten wisdom more so than any of the other three that we looked at and certainly i
103think more so than ckla which was the next one that was closest but the whole evidence-based reading gives way for example to teaching the kids you know here here is your reading assignment which by the way is never made up in written wisdom it's always from real texts real novels real poems it's not written for the curriculum which was really important to me at least when we were looking at it and and then there are exercises that the teachers can do to expand on the writing skills and i thought that those exercises and the way they were connected to what they read but then pushed them to think in different directions about what they had read and almost teaching the creativity and giving students at different levels chances and reasons to write about what they
104read and interpret what they read so i i definitely felt that written wisdom was by far in terms of the writing the better curriculum i actually really liked it for everything you know one of the things i said was kids want a book they want to see a book they want to know that they've read a whole book they don't want excerpts and texts and a big textbook with just different things and um i think we saw that on one of the slides that's what the kids said as well and that's what witten wisdom does is it gives them the pride and the knowledge of knowing look we can read this book i've read this book it's pushing kids which is what the research has showed us is that you know kids should be challenged
105and they can all read it at the higher levels um and we can make adjustments and do that but kids across the board need to feel success and i really feel like this wouldn't wisdom is is the building block on teaching kids success in reading and literacy and writing listening hearing speaking it kind of combines the the big picture of of what it was for so um as a board member i was really behind the written wisdom i'm happy that that's kind of what came out on top because that was my my personal feeling of it um but all in all i enjoyed being on this committee so much and working with these teachers and the admin i think that dr wilds your team was amazing um and you saw tonight just from lisa and
106the three that spoke i mean that that's who was leading us throughout the whole process and they put together amazing programs and tonight i thought their presentation was really spot on as to what we accomplished so thank you i agree this is all them yeah and i would agree with that creative aspect that's a good way to capture what wisdom wisdom had that creative aspect to it and i'm going to thank rachel for serving on this with me we learned early on that we are very different in our reading styles there was one class one of the things as any student would be in a classroom you'd have very different styles we had two different reading samples that we had to evaluate one was very artistic and thoughtful and flowery kind of thing and the
107other one was very technical and you know detailed and we came out of that and talked had to talk about it afterwards and rachel was like i could not i could barely get through that technical one i said that's the one i loved i couldn't i had struggled with the other one it just didn't mean anything but that technical one meant a lot to me so it's good to have that balanced aspect from you know we have two very different perspectives and that was great to have through this and that through that i think we both support this final decision at least at this point and i would have been comfortable with either of the final two and because the teachers pretty overwhelmingly it wasn't a landslide but it was an overwhelming support of the
108witten wisdom that's that's what i would go with is supporting them because they're the ones that will have to live with it and make it work and if they don't feel good about it they they will struggle to do that even more so in the end it all works and i'm glad to see that we we both saw that same ending point the only question i have dr wells that i'll add is socratic seminar you've mentioned that a couple times i know that my children i thought learned that in middle school yes so bringing that to an elementary level but what if they did it in first grade oh my gosh that actually makes me so excited because the socratic seminar is something i know they'll carry all the way through college something that i
109watched my children really learn how to articulate a point you know engage in conversation when you've got somebody that maybe doesn't have the same opinion as you do but keeping it fact fact based and i just i've seen it really come alive in classrooms and i absolutely love that it will be going starting at the youngest possible level because i think that's when you give our kids something worthy of reading and worthy of rereading and giving them something meaty to discuss anybody can do it and i've been able to see first and second graders engage in dialogue where they have to go back to a text and cite their evidence and then um then turn around into a writing piece um it's it's life-changing and i think i know for myself and my team if
110there were an elementary opening we'd be back in it right now because we'd be dying to teach this i think the socratic the socratic part of it is really key with the written wisdom as well and kind of like they they weave in the writing they weave in the socratic seminar and you know there's different days that that they that they will do it but the key thing that excited me is it builds on itself throughout the lesson and throughout the unit so they're very you know the blocks are building their way up of knowledge and it's exciting it makes you want to go back and which is only going to make everything higher at the middle school and high school level because that's by the time they get there it's going to change the
111game as far as like the experience level so that notion of raising all boats seems very exciting and important so yeah the other aspect of this this the teachers i think in general feel very relieved that they're going to have something to go to they're not going to have to create it on their own they're not going to have to borrow from whoever they can to struggle to get you know it takes time to put all that together and i think this once they get through that adoption process the early time they're really appreciate just like you're with eureka math eureka math i don't it's not perfect but it's it works and it's common the final aspect is that this will be great because our kids from the eight different elementaries go to two middle
112schools and then to one high school and especially to get to those two middle schools it's gonna put them on common ground whereas they from different sites each site has its own flavor and character each teacher does and that's fine but they will have this common ground underneath them so that when they get to middle school better for the kids better for the teachers at the middle school that they're going to be able to pick it up from there and run with it so great aspect just i know it's been delayed because of cove and everything but to finally get this going is fantastic okay anyone else okay i have nothing more so i'll make a motion to close the public hearing second okay i do we need to vote on this yeah all those
113in favor say aye all right great okay communications um we do we have anyone from rbta looks like we do good evening board president witkin board members dr keller members of cabinet my name is sarah robinson i am the president of the redondo beach teachers association and i am a spanish teacher at ruhs um so as many of you may or may not know tomorrow may 11th is california day of the teacher um the day has been sponsored by the california teachers association and the association of mexican american educators and was first recognized by our legislature in 1982 and california has patterned their celebration after the traditional el dia del maestro festivities observed in mexico and other places in latin america and the day of the teacher should be a day for school districts parents
114public officials and community members to recognize the dedication and commitment of teachers who are educating our children may 11th is also national school nurse day this day recognizes the contribution school nurses make every day to improve the safety health and academic success of all students so on behalf of the redondo beach teachers association i would like to wish all of our members and all of the members of our educational community a happy day of the teacher and day of the school nurse thank you all right thank you uh do we have anyone from csca no aft no pta i have an email that was sent to me to read on behalf of pta okay um monday may 16th at 6 30 pm in the ruh auditorium redondo beach council pta proudly presents the first annual
115diversity equity and inclusion forum please join us as we hear from top experts on diversity inclusion and follow inc diversity and inclusion and follow with an it follow with an audience q a session admission is completely free and will be at the redondo beach high school redondo beach council pta's annual awards night will be monday may 23rd we're extremely excited to celebrate and honor our reflections artists senior scholarship recipients and honorary service award winners the reception begins at 5 30 pm followed by the ceremony at 6 pm in the ruh ruhs auditorium as well thank you and hope to see you at all of our events thank you do we have anyone from rbef no all right moving to general consent does anyone have any items they would like to pull okay may i get
116a motion and second to approve items 10.1 through 10.4 second all those in favor say aye motion passes action items may have a motion second to discuss 12.1 so moved dr wesley yes thank you so 12.1 adopted a resolution to modify salaries this is a resolution that we bring to the board each time this year it declares our ability to open negotiations in good faith with all three of our bargaining units and our unrepresented staff without a state adopted budget which includes negotiating salaries and health and welfare and so staff is recommending that you do indeed adopt this resolution any questions okay all those in favor say aye aye motion and second for twelve point two wesley um so this is uh what we call our declaration of need and there are rare instances when
117we when we may need to hire a certificated staff member with an intern credential or a short-term staff permit or an emergency permit while that candidate finalizes their credential process in a subject area where we find that there's a shortage of credentialed applicants such as like having the clad or b clad or speech and language these are some historically single subject science sometimes is difficult music and so what we do is we look at our anticipated needs teachers who may be going on leaves and we think to ourselves how hard will it be to fill this position and so staff is recommending that we declare the need for fully qualified educators with minimal exceptions should there be a shortage of fully credentialed applicants within a specific position it allows us to get a waiver as
118someone finishes their credential if we do hire them on an intern permit or a short-term permit any questions i do have a question just in general about when teachers are hired for the next year is that process going now or does it start after i'm just curious yeah so the process includes us looking at their projected enrollment for next year and then looking at what that staffing relation is and so each of the principals actually will be meeting with our leadership team our our executive leadership team on monday and that's when we go over the staffing and we we make decisions and we approve the staffing for next year but it also takes an account teachers who are resigning or are retiring and then may requesting a leave and once we figure out what the
119staffing needs are then we submit a request to advertise on ed join the goal is to finish all hiring before the school year ends so we're going to start seeing a lot of advertisements going out next week and then we will hopefully get through the process around uh before school ends or middle of june very busy time of year yes it is for hiring yes anything else okay um all those in favor say aye aye motion passes um does anyone have any correspondence that they'd like to share no uh board member reports mr strutzenberg yeah just during multiple closed sessions i had participated in discussions to replace the superintendent and it's my opinion this was a violation of the brown act and i apologize to the public for that okay uh ramer okay um i
120just want to say congratulations to mr brown miss bascaron miss nakayama and mr stern to the parents teachers and staff of each of those school states you're lucky to have them welcome to redondo beach i also want to echo dr keller's thanks overall to the entire redondo beach staff it's amazing that we're already in may and i feel like it's always we've been going going going and not even had a moment to stop and just thank all of our teachers for the amazing work they've done in our staff members and appreciate that we've made it through the school year not and more more than just made it succeeded way more than we would than we expected and it's appreciated so pre really enjoyed going to the paris open house looking forward to elementary school open
121houses and that's it great rachel yes i wanted to congratulate the high school on the six-year wasc accreditation um i know how much work went into that and how hard it was and congratulations to mr breedy but also mr brandt who really pre-covered and and before this got delayed had really set out to have the team together and his teachers and everyone that was supporting that process so um i was really really happy to see that they had been given the six years i also wanted to thank ramer for the last year and had that kind of in my notes before david was going to present her with this but everything happened so quickly at our last meeting that it was it was really hard to transition but i just want you to know that
122not only did she have to deal with three new board members but with covid and everything else that was happening um this past year we had an amazing leader and um you know thank you for everything you did and i'm looking forward to going forward and working with david i think you know we're we're ready we're we're not as new anymore so hopefully we're we're there and supporting you um and i think that's all i have okay i have no report so we'll move to the calendar of events our next board meeting is may 24th we have on may 26th open house at the elementary schools may 30th is memorial day and our last day of school is june 8th um does anyone have any future items for an agenda yes first one is to
123set an annual review to assess the participation of pupils in grade 11 and 12 in regional occupation centers and programs this is an edcode requirement i've been here a year and i haven't seen it happen it's 52 304.1 if anybody wants to jot that one down states the governing board of each school district maintaining a high school shall annually review and assess the partitioning of pupils in grades 11 and 12 in regional occupation centers and programs the governing board shall prepare an annual plan to increase the participation of these pupils unless it determines that there will be no additional pupils enrolled in the district who would benefit from this participation and the governing board shall conduct public hearings for purposes of reviewing the participation of these pupils and for the adoption of the plan required
124under this section i don't believe that's happened in the first year that i've been here so we okay there's more i'd like to set a discussion um an agenda item to ban leaf blowers use on school property in alignment with the city just to be clear we're talking about a discussion item a discussion item initially it could lead to an action item yeah okay just want to be clear let's skip the next one for now i'd like to set a discussion in perhaps it'd be i think a discussion would be better the status of the 8070 committee i i think we need to hear a little bit of if there's anything going on with that because august will be here before we know it so a discussion item for that i'd like to bring back
125board policy 9150 that was recently changed when during that change the superintendent eliminated language that we shall have a student board member that was in there and i think it'd be good to put that back in say that again sorry board policy 9150 yeah i got that bring that back for discussion the recent change to that that the vote board adopted uh dropped the verbiage that we shall have a student board member and i think it'd be good to put that back in there so what does it say now it says may it just it's just uh it's there but the only means to accomplish it is to have the i believe it's like a vote and something from the students okay to initiate it yeah and i was going to bring it back anyway
126to update it so okay yeah we just updated it recently yeah yeah but there's another tweak um i think that i'm i think it's the same board policy that i think i have a tweak so there may be a line so maybe great to bring it back for both issues yeah it'd just be it'd be cleaner to put that language back in this if we've already decided that we shall have a student board member and i'd like to see that continued and supported and very clear i also we talked several months about go about setting a date for a board annual self evaluation per board bylaw 9 400. when can we look to do that and would we do it during a normal session or create a separate session it's a board decision mr president
127yeah i i don't know the answer to that i'll follow up with you yeah we did we talked about it it's been several months ago it was mentioned i think we'd have to have a discussion and then vote as a board if we want to do it and then process you guys can talk about it later yeah because we we changed that verbiage in the bylaws it used to say shell but it had never happened right and we did change it to may but i just think it's a great idea to actually utilize that going forward it was an annual requirement that was probably never done but i'd like to definitely see one happen and then we can decide from there whether or not it is a may now whether or not we do it
128annually or by you know every two years and i think the way i understood it is it's a board decision that we would discuss as a board but you can figure that out moving forward right and that's it okay anyone else agenda items i have a request for our friday update can you just tell us do we have a constitution class and if if not like what education is there at the high school and i guess there's a graduation requirement that i've been dying to sort of say out loud every senior must take government in order to graduate from redondo union so every student is required at least for that yeah like how how does how do our students interact and learn about the constitution and at what grade level specifically yep um great may
129i get a motion and second to adjourn the meeting motion to adjourn all those in favor say aye aye meeting is adjourned you