SCSD Regular Board Meeting 10-07-2021

001I think we're ready. Whenever you're ready. Okay. I don't know if somebody has the slides. Yes. Hi, everyone. I thought, I think Teresa is joining us, but it looks like she's not here yet. And I'm not seeing slides, but I don't know. Maybe we have, we can see the slides, Wendy. Yes. Okay. Now we can't. Oh, there we go. Oh, no, I can't. Okay. Hi, everyone. Teresa and I were going to do this together. I'm not sure what is happening for her, but I will just jump on in. With a spotlight on our upper elementaries. Arroyo and Mariposa. We have been off to a great start. Our kids are so, so happy to be back in school and with their peers and with their friends and learning from their teachers in person and all of

002the things that go along with upper elementary and learning to, to, to. Kind of making new friends from the other feeder schools. I know just this past week with our parent teachers, we've had a lot of fun. We've been hearing from a lot of parents that, you know, students were feeling, kids were feeling like, you know, it was great to be back in school and with their friends, but there were definitely people they weren't so familiar with. And now they're starting to come home and reporting new friends. And, and that's what it's all about as we transition into fourth grade in particular, but also our fifth graders who had a really, a really good relationship with their parents and their teachers. And that's what it's all about as we transition into fourth grade in particular,

003but also our fifth graders who had a really limited pool of, of peers last year with our hybrid model, even when we were back. So it's been great to have all that time and, and especially great this week to be able to interact with parents a little bit more and finally let them onto campus to see our classrooms and meet the teachers in person. And that's been great. You can go on to the next slide. At our upper elementaries, we have a really big focus on increasing student ownership and helping them really helping kids really feel like they know who they are as learners and begin to self advocate and build on their strengths and develop a growth mindset and really have some say in their school and our student leadership opportunities. So all of

004that is starting to get in place and I'll tell you a little bit more about that as we go. Next slide. Both Arroyo and Mariposa use PBIS, Positive Behavioral Intervention and Support where we really lay out some core values for the school and talk about what that looks like and feels like and sounds like around the campus. At Mariposa, they talk a lot about safety, ownership, acceptance and rearing. And at Arroyo, we talk about being responsible, respectful and safe. I think Teresa might have jumped in, but I don't hear her. I'll just keep talking. On top of those school-wide core values, a lot of classrooms took time to really develop a class constitution and rules that students came up with and expectations of what they wanted their class to be like and what they agreed

005to. Really giving kids some voice and choice in the school climate and culture and across the school, but also in their classroom. And then we do a lot of positive reinforcement. So both Arroyo and Mariposa give SOAR cards. At Arroyo, their Eagle SOAR cards and at Mariposa, their Monarch SOAR cards, but we all fly together. I'll jump in for just a second. Thank you so much, Mindy. I would just share that at Mariposa, our SOAR cards actually spell out the word SOAR. So the S is for safety, O is for ownership, A is for acceptance and R is for rearing. So it's really nice to be able to reinforce those through our SOAR cards, as well as see them displayed throughout the classrooms. So this is from one of our fourth grade classrooms who work

006together with students in the classroom. And so we do a lot of positive reinforcement. So this is from one of our fourth grade classrooms who work together with students to see what do those core values look like within our classroom itself, as well as the school at large. Great. So lots, lots of positive reinforcement. And I know we at both schools, we've been doing weekly assemblies where Teresa and I zoom into the classrooms and are projected on the screen. And we're involving student leaders in those, those assembly presentations, but also acknowledging the great work students are doing. So you can see here, one of the slides that I shared with students were in the first two months of school, we've already given out 420 SOAR cards, recognizing students who've been responsible, respectful, and safe around

007campus. And also acknowledging that the lots of times students are doing those things without recognition. But we, we really want to catch those positive things and reinforce that. Yeah. And the students love getting the SOAR cards, love turning them in. They're always so proud and they're so excited when their name is drawn as well. Thank you. So next slide. Great. And I'll jump in here. Apologies for being late. I was sitting in the waiting room, but I think I was on a wrong week. So I'm really grateful to be here tonight. And thank you for giving us a chance to highlight our programs at Mariposa too. So one of the pieces that we've been working on related to student ownership is that goal setting piece, right? It's the hallmark of our goal setting conferences this

008week, but it's also something that we are able to use through the sown to grow tool. So students are able to set their goals using the tool. And one of the pieces I really love about it is that it's very specific in the goal setting steps. So students go through and outline specific strategies that they'll use to achieve their goal. And then they go in and do reflections on their goal at periodic intervals to be able to check in and say, like, great, we've set a goal. We know how we're going to do it. Now, how are you doing? How's that progress going? So this particular goal we've had here says my writing goal is to add more dialogue. And my goal is to think of how characters react to physical things. So giving a

009very concrete strategy for how the child's going to work towards that goal. And it's been great this last week to have students really leading their conferences and talking about their goals, doing some self assessment on how things are going for them at school so far, both academically and social, emotionally and social, emotionally and setting some goals outside of school to acknowledging like their, their whole self of who they are as not just as a student, but as a person and the things that they want to do outside of school too. And then the other piece that we use sewn to grow the same software program actually is our social emotional learning. We've, we've enhanced our second step lessons with sewn to grows SEL module. Where we have units in six different areas that align with

010CASEL, which is the organization that sort of a big blanket organization that really defines social emotional learning. And so we look at six different areas of SEL self awareness, social awareness, self regulation, perseverance, self efficacy and sense of belonging. And all of the students start with kind of a self assessment of where they are right now. And then each week there's a 10 or 15 minute research based lesson provided by sewn to grow, where the class really discusses what that particular component that week is and then does a self assessment of how, how they're feeling that week and what's going on and has some kind of question they're prompted to answer that aligns with that week's topic. And so we're seeing students really learn to identify what they're feeling and emotions and put some action

011behind those feelings and emotions and start to recognize things about themselves and their strengths and their areas of growth and things like that. Next slide. All right. So I'd love to just highlight another area of, of student ownership, which is getting our student councils up and running again for our fourth and fifth graders. And our Monarch council consists of two students from each class to representatives. And we've been coming together weekly on Fridays to begin to think about ideas for the coming school year, getting ready for spirit days and spirit weeks. And also starting to think about just some school improvement projects that we want to work on. Next slide. So I'd love to just highlight another area of, of student ownership, which is getting our student councils up and running again for our fourth

012and fifth graders. And also starting to think about just some school improvement projects that we want to work on. Next slide. I wanted to share a couple of quotes because I love hearing the students voices and they, their applications for Monarch council. Really demonstrated. The. What makes fourth and fifth grade such a unique age group. They still have so much compassion, so much understanding and such a desire to do. Good work at their school. So I want to make sure that kids at the school don't get excluded. I would love to bring back the green team and I would like to have a day where we pick up trash near the lunch tables. I want to help kids feel more welcome to the Mariposa community. I want everybody to be kind to each other and

013help out everybody. You can see lots of great intentions and aspirations for the coming year. Next slide. Thank you. And I thought you might want to hear from a couple of our representatives directly. I did a short interview with Rosemary and Azra from Ms. Nelson's fifth grade class about why they wanted to be part of Monarch council. So you both are on Monarch council. Why did you want to be a part of Monarch council this year? So. I want to be a part of Monarch council because I just really want to help the school improve. And. How about you? First of all, I love talking. And. I love working with other people. And. The student council can really help me voice their opinion. And how fiscal. Be a better school in many different ways. So

014I love that. And I love helping people. So that's also a great benefit to be. Okay. So you hear it straight from Oscar and Monarch council is about giving students voice and helping them feel that ownership. In the school, both in. Finding solutions. generating school spirit and just being that representative back to their classes and representing the voice of their classes. On to you. Thank you. You can go ahead to the next one. You both are on our council. Why did you want to be a part of it? We need to pause. Yep. Sorry. There we go. Great. And then at Arroyo, we have a very similar group, our Eagle Council, with two representatives from each class and the students. Each class chooses their representative slightly differently depending on the teacher and the how many

015students are interested. We had some great debates in some of our classes about why they wanted to, kind of sharing their platform of what they wanted to accomplish as a class representative. We had some classes get iVoted stickers and just kind of had some fun with it. So we also have, we have 24 representatives between fourth and fifth grade. We'll focus again on three different areas, school spirit, school improvement, and community service. We've had two meetings so far and we started really just getting to know each other and why we wanted to be on the Eagle Council and developing some teamwork and bonding. And already they can't wait to like share their ideas and things they want to do and have ways to keep our school clean and ways to involve more students and do

016different things. And next up, we will be talking a lot about how we want to celebrate Halloween as a community and different spirit activities for that week to really make it fun for the students and giving our student leaders a chance to really drive that as opposed to just parents setting the agenda or staff setting the agenda, really letting kids have some say in how they want to celebrate those holidays. Next slide. Again, hearing from some of the our students themselves about why they wanted to be Eagle Council representatives, I want to help our school be even better than it already is. I love helping people and I want to help our school and community. I want to make sure everyone feels welcome at Arroyo and I want to help everyone at Arroyo be responsible,

017respectful, and safe, already taking ownership of those core values that we talked so much about at school. Next slide. And then finally, we just want to highlight, it's still early, we've really been enjoying jumping back into some of these fundamental programs of the four or five school, but there's more to come and more good stuff on the horizon and that includes getting back to our project based learning roots. And now that we're back in person again, that's much easier to implement together. So we're looking forward to that. And really getting back to the fundamentals of that, including driving questions and inquiry based approach, voice and choice and authentic products. We're already seeing all of these elements throughout all of our classrooms in the various work and projects that they're doing, but we're excited to dig

018deeper and get back to some actual PBL units. And I think the question I hear most around Arroyo is when do clubs start? Agreed. I am so excited to get our student led clubs going. They truly are student led. We let students decide what clubs they want to hold each year and who wants to be leaders. So kids get a chance to fill out an application that talks about what club they want to start and then kind of do some planning within that. How many people can be a part of their club? How often is their club going to meet and when? What kinds of supplies and space do they need? What do they need to make their club successful? We really want them to put some thought and planning into how they're going to

019run their club. Last year, even through distance learning, we were able to continue our student led clubs. They happen over Zoom, sometimes during lunch, sometimes after school. And that was really, really successful. So we're going to give students some opportunity to have some say in whether they want to have their club in person during lunch or whether they want to do a Zoom based club after school. That worked really well for some groups and it let us have clubs that we might not have been able to do during school. Last year, we had some video game based clubs that were super popular with kids and let them really form community around things that kids love to do. We often have performance based clubs or art based clubs, sports clubs, technology clubs. Often we end up

020with an active green team. Royale has a school newspaper that I know the kids who were participated in last year can't wait to get going again. So that's really exciting. And then in addition to our clubs, we will be training student ambassadors. And in the spring, when it comes time to give campus tours and show off our school to third grader incoming, incoming Royale students and families, our students really are the best spokespeople for our schools and can really share their experiences and brag about their school. And even through the pandemic, we were able to turn some of our ambassadors into virtual tour guides. And that worked out really well. One thing we want to add this year is a little bit more outreach throughout the year with our P3 schools. We've heard from parents

021that they really are looking for a little more connection between the P3s and the four fives. And so letting our students be the voice of that and writing articles that can go in the P3 newsletters and things like that about what's happening at a Royale and Mariposa share that with people who are looking ahead to upper elementary. And that is what we have for you tonight. Thanks for letting us have some time to spotlight our programs. And really it is amazing to be able to work with the fourth and fifth graders and give them so much voice and ownership in their school and a chance to really be a strong part in their community. Yeah, I completely agree. Thank you so much. Thank you. I just wanted to say thank you to both of our

022principals for that presentation and for all their work this year. Thank you, Teresa, for the hard work on that as well, but also putting everything together for us tonight with all the other responsibilities and tasks that we have. So we do greatly appreciate it and think about everything that you do in there. So keep up the good work and thanks to both of you for it. I will move us on then to our consent agenda. As a reminder, for the public, the consent agenda are items that we find routine and major or not requiring a lot of faith. Therefore, we approve them as a whole. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? I move to approve the consent agenda. Thank you, Sarah. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Irene. All in favor,

023please state by saying aye. Aye. Any opposition? Hearing and seeing none, that will carry 5-0. I'll move us on then to section five, our informational items. These are items of information for the board that we can ask clarifying questions for at the end, but don't have necessary discussion or direction being provided. So I will have Christine starts off with the first one of the 5A St. Carlos Charter Invention Center Unaudited Actuals. So good evening. I'll be giving a recap of charters and audited actuals for 2021. So they ended the year with revenues of $5.6 million. Their expenditures was $4.9 million. So they have an excess of $656,000. So their fund balance increased to by $656,000, giving them an ending fund balance of $1.7 million. Their unaudited actual balance is $93,000 higher than their estimated actuals,

024and that's from savings in consulting work from special ed contractors, their custodial services and utilities. So the reserves at the end of the year was 35%. Charter petition is up for renewal this fiscal year. They'll be working on their internal process, and they'll be bringing back to the district and MOU in the spring. All right. Thank you, Christine. Trustee, any clarifying questions for Christine regarding charters on audited actuals? Just to confirm, the renewal of their charter is summer of 2022, June of 2020. That's the date that they asked to it by us. Correct. And they would submit a renewal process on it, and our board would have to approve that in the spring. That's right. Yes. Okay. Can I ask a follow-up question? How long is that contract done for, like that renewal? That two,

025three years? Five years. Yeah, there were some changes to the charter reauthorization process last summer. However, it is still a renewal process for five years, correct, Christine? Trustee, any other questions? Okay. Thank you, Christine. In that case, Hans, this goes to you 5B, the SCTA negotiation sunshine proposal for 21-22. Thank you, Neil. Yeah, so this is SCTA's proposal to the district as far as the articles that they want to open. For the current contract that is completely open, in fact, expired on June 30th of 2021, and just so you all know, when that happens, the current contract is still the one that's in effect, even though it's technically expired. And so their proposal is something just for your review. It's not something that you are required to take action on. It's just simply to take

026a look at. And you'll notice that there are usually many areas of overlap between the district's proposal, sunshine proposal, and the proposal that we might receive from the teachers, or from CSCA, which would happen. That'll be happening in November. And believe it or not, not everything is open. It looks like a lot of things are open, but it's not everything. I think there's 22 or 23 articles in this contract. So I'm happy to take any other questions. Trustees, any questions for Hans regarding SCTA sunshine proposal? Hans, us, and then now Mr. Domer and Mindy Sheldon, or Ms. Sheldon, excuse me, are back online. We can unmute them, and they're going to do their diversity equity solution and belongings update. Good evening, everybody. This is Mr. Domer. I think we have some slides, too. Are we

027going to show those slides? All right. They're coming. They're coming. Okay. So I'm going to start, and I'll do the first slide, and then Mindy will jump in, and then I'll do the last slide. So. From just a question, can you see them from your computer? Are we sharing them, or are you just going off of your own personal? I don't see them. There we go. There we go. So we are here to talk about the diversity equity inclusion and belonging committee. And I want to start by talking about the why behind this. Dr. Frentress asked if we could go over why we have this subcommittee in the first place. So I'm going to start talking about that. Basically, I'm going to share some good news, and I'm going to share some bad news. So

028first, I'm going to start with the bad news. And the bad news is that San Carlos, we felt like San Carlos schools needed a diversity equity and inclusion and belonging committee in the first place. And sometimes it's hard to take a hard look at yourself in the mirror, but that's what we did because of some events that happened. But I'm going to start just kind of with the demographics of San Carlos. We're all aware that San Carlos is not as diverse as maybe the state of California as a whole. And there's lots of reasons for that. Probably the main thing that we point to is the cost of living in San Carlos. But the reason I bring this up is because families have shared with me that when their child is sitting in a classroom

029and nobody else in the classroom looks like them, it's very difficult for that child or very few kids look like them. And these children experience maybe a lot of microaggressions throughout the day. So I can give you an example of an eighth grade class where the teacher was teaching about the slave trade, and all the students were looking at the one African American student in the classroom. That felt really bad for that child. So then in speaking to these families, I've heard them say that they're moving out of San Carlos and that they liked everything about San Carlos except the sense of feeling that they were just such a small minority in the community and that was just too hard on them. So that's kind of a heartbreaking thing to hear that some of our

030families didn't feel a sense of belonging in San Carlos schools. And I'll share another story. We had a family whose child was the victim of some hate speech and we went through the process of the restorative justice and the discipline and all that. And afterwards, I was debriefing with this family and I was asking them how they felt about the process. And they said, Mr. Nomer, it doesn't matter how we feel because nothing's going to change. And that is a really, really hard thing to hear, particularly as an educator. So that's kind of one aspect. The other aspect is taking a look at our suspension data. We had a very high disproportionate rate of suspensions based on racist incidents. It could be hate speech or children drawing swastikas or we had an incident where a

031kid was intentionally playing a racist song in the quad. And I think some of our students have been inundated with racist content on the internet and they've been a little desensitized to it, I think. But we don't want to be making any excuses as to why this is happening. So that's kind of part of the why behind why we have a diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging committee. And that's the bad news. The good news is that we are San Carlos and we decided that we were going to do something about it. And we set out to prove that the hate speech that happened and the things that happened actually aren't going to continue to happen, that as a school district and as a community, we are going to do something about it and that we

032are committed to this work. So the first thing we did is we looked for help because this is hard stuff. And we didn't want to just do it on our own because we bring our own biases and stuff like that. So we found this incredible organization called Inclusion Counts and they have helped us with this work. I think everyone that has worked with them so far has been extremely impressed with the level of work they do and the level of integrity they bring with this work. So the first thing they did is they launched a listening campaign. So went out to the community and listened to what people had to say. And fortunately, they actually found some people who were choosing to move out of San Carlos School District because of some incidents that happened.

033And they were able to hear what they had to say. So the second thing we did is we took a deep dive in looking in our policies, our procedures, and our systems to see what we could be doing better systemically to address this issue. Then what they did is created an equity report and basically took the information they got from looking at our systems and listening to the people during the listening campaign. Then we took this equity report and started a steering committee. And that's another thing that I think is incredibly good news. The interest in our families that wanted to join the steering committee was incredible. We had so many people interested in doing this work with us that there was no way we could take even a fraction of the people on the

034steering committee. And people were trying to pull strings to get on. I mean, it was pretty amazing. And I think that speaks very highly of our community that they wanted to really help us through this. So let's see. Oh, and then the last thing I want to talk about, we started this work calling it the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion DEI committee. And through conversations with the committee members, we decided to add the belonging on there. Shout out to Mindy Shelton. I think that was her idea. I think it came from inclusion counts, actually. But I'll take credit. It's okay. Actually, I thought it was my idea. Anyway, so yeah, but we kind of, I mean, it was a great conversation about how belonging is at the core of all of this work. And how, if

035we had community members or families in our school say they're leaving because they don't feel like they belong, then that's the work that we need to do. So we started this, we added the belonging piece to it. And then, yeah, I think that's it. I'll finish up with the last slide. Mindy, you're up. Next slide. All right. Thank you. So thanks, Tom, for giving all of that context of kind of how we got here and what we did through the committee last year. I'm going to jump in with what we've been doing so far this year and kind of where we're headed. So we started the school year, the very first day that we had all of our teachers back on staff was our August PD day. And we spent three hours with inclusion counts,

036doing some training around the basics of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. We talked a lot about unconscious bias and how to recognize our biases as a staff and how to see it in other people. We talked about what makes an inclusive classroom and how to really make sure that we're creating that sense for students, like they belong and whether that's providing books that show windows and mirrors to the world. We talk about windows that let you see the world beyond yourself and mirrors that help you see other people like you and think about yourself in different ways. And it's really important that we use books that show that, that we can bring in multiple perspectives, especially because San Carlos is not as diverse as some places. Our diversity is definitely changing and increasing, which is

037great to see, but it's also still somewhat limited and very diverse in terms of there not being large groups of students who look similar but different from others. So how do we make sure that everyone from any subgroup at all can feel included and feel like they belong at school? And then we spent some time talking about how do we respond to the challenges. We actually had some real life scenarios that have happened in San Carlos School District and our surrounding community and kind of gotten breakout rooms on Zoom and talked about, how do we respond to those challenges? How do we answer those questions? How do we support students who are going through those challenges? So it was a really great time as a staff to work through that together and brainstorm and look

038at some resources. And Inclusion Counts provided some great follow-up resources as well that are available to teachers to use throughout the year, including literature lists and not just lists of books, but lists of kind of how to critically look at a book and decide if it's a valuable resource and what to look for as we build our classroom libraries and other resources that are used in the classroom. So that was our August PD day. And then throughout this year, we have lots of follow-up planned with Inclusion Counts specifically for our staff. So I mentioned that we have a resource section on our staff website. Of resources provided by Inclusion Counts and other things that have been found to be valuable. In January, we'll have more professional development with Inclusion Counts during our PD day. And

039then one thing that we've added this year, which is really great is site consultation and support. So each principal has a set amount of time with Inclusion Counts to use whether it's consultation on curriculum or working with them on a particular challenge or social situation around our campuses. But to have that one-on-one support available is really great. Next slide. I wanted to share some teacher feedback from that professional development day. I think we heard a lot of really, really positive feedback from staff. So I wanted you to see some of their voices in here too. And a Rundle teacher said the entire session was great. I learned so much. I love that we were given actual prompts and situations to work through. And a Royo teacher shared, I loved all the scenarios we discussed at

040the end. It was super helpful to get to brainstorm ways to address these issues and then get guidance at the end if we needed more support. I love this entire session. So thank you endlessly for guiding us through this. And then from a TL and Mariposa teacher, I'd like to continue to have conversations around district-wide practices and how we can improve students' experiences. So I think this is work that our staff really values and appreciates. And it's great to see their voice too. And good to see Emma. Next slide. So our steering committee is made up of district and site administrators, teachers, classified staff, and parents around the community. It was, we didn't necessarily intend for it to be, but it ended up being almost a competitive process to get on the steering committee. The

041great news about that is that the steering committee is just the first step. And the next step, which we'll talk about in a moment, is forming some subcommittees to actually dig in and do the work. And so already we have a huge list of people who are interested in being on those subcommittees. I know there's more interest as well beyond even people who've signed up, but staff is interested in doing that work. We've got a lot of parents interested, even some former students, and potentially some current students as well. So that's great. Our first step as a steering committee really was building some community amongst the committee because this is hard work and it really takes trust and honesty and openness. And so we started last year building that community and building that trust and

042getting to know one another and learning kind of our own backgrounds and where we were coming from and why we were coming to this work. And now this year we've been, towards the end of last year and the beginning of this year, we've been diving into creating a mission and vision around our work. So the mission is a statement that concisely conveys the purpose of our committee and the district as a whole. We had some great discussion about is it the mission of the committee or the mission of the district that we're trying to define. And really we sort of decided the mission of the committee is to support the mission of the district around this work. So that's been more our focus. Our vision is sort of a declaration of the possibilities we aspire

043to. So I know Dr. Frentress likes to say if we could kind of wildly dream and imagine what we want, that would be our vision. So we've been through multiple iterations already. We started with a padlet where people were kind of just dropping ideas and brainstorms. It's been a really thoughtful and inclusive process, making sure all the voices on the steering committee are heard. I think we're on our third or fourth iteration and getting very close to a final product. I know a little subcommittee of us met the other day and hammered out a draft that we'll be sharing at the next meeting. Next slide. All right. So that's me. So Mindy talked about step one here. We're finalizing the mission and vision statement. It took us a lot longer than we thought it would,

044as Mindy mentioned. We're still working on it. But it was important for us to get it right. And it's important for us to take the time to get it right. And as Mindy mentioned, we wanted the vision and mission statement to represent our entire community, not just the people on the subcommittee or the steering committee. So we're doing that work. So we will then identify group facilitators to go through, form some subcommittees, and then for do the work. The one thing I want to say about doing the work is that we've talked a lot about the work that we have to do around this is something that we need to do every day. It's not going to be a report that we create and put it on a shelf that gets dusted off once a

045year. It's not going to be this is Black History Month or anything like this. It's stuff that we are committed to working on every single day. And yeah, it's been wonderful. I actually feel like it feels like there's been a change in the atmosphere a little bit around Central, my school, just from the PD we did, just raising awareness with our staff. To me, it feels like we're starting down the right path and that the work we're doing, it matters. And if I could just add, I think one of the real things I appreciate about inclusion counts is that they don't just want to help guide us through this work, they really want to build our capacity in being able to do the work independently as well. So rather than their facilitators guiding all of

046our steering committee meetings, we're identifying people on the steering committee who will take over as facilitators and inclusion counts will actually guide them in setting agendas and leading the work and then step out of the way so that they can do it. And that will help us make sure that this work is sustainable beyond our contract with them. And then the second piece I would add is just that while the steering committee is doing a lot of great work district-wide, there's also a lot of work happening at individual schools and in classrooms around enhancing classroom libraries and bringing in different resources and really being mindful of what we're sharing with students and how we are opening up those windows and mirrors to students across the district. I think that concludes our report. Thank you, Mindy.

047Thank you, Tom. Trustees, questions regarding the DEI work that we're doing? Clarifying questions for Tom or Min? Do you have some comments? I can phrase your comments in the forum. Okay. In the phrase of the question, I'll share my comments with Dr. Frentress after this. Let me feel free to have informative questions that could be there. We'll see where it goes. It's just top of mind is just how we can continue to build the capacity to make the work sustainable. So I was just delighted to hear that was already front of mind and very intentional. And how might we just continue to build that trust in community because this is such hard work. So again, I was just thrilled to hear that that was so front of mind. And I think very good to have

048that mindset to sustain the work. I think one thing I would add, Irene, is in addition to finding group facilitators to help set the agendas and run the meetings, we also have a DEIB leadership team that includes Tom and I and Hans and other district leaders so that we are meeting monthly in addition. And Sarah and Wendy have been a part of that as well. Meeting monthly to kind of talk about what's going on in the background and how that impacts the work of the steering committee and how the work of the steering committee impacts the district and really kind of keeping both the steering committee work and other work going on around the district aligned and moving together and keeping that work sustainable. That's awesome. Thank you. Trustee, any other questions? I had a

049quick question. I really appreciated the addition of belonging. And I was sad to hear about families moving or leaving. I guess this is a relative novice question and happy to take more answers offline. But how have you thought about what's for engaging kindergartners all the way to eighth graders in conversations about diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging? Do you have the resources and supports that you need to kind of differentiate that for all of those different age groups? I mean, I can speak to middle school. We have restorative justice process. But I think the challenge with that is that we felt like we were reacting. We were being too reactive. Something would happen and we would react to it, which is why we felt like we needed some help around this so that we can be

050proactive and be able to facilitate conversations with students. And middle school kids are old enough to do that and have opinions and sometimes strong opinions around this. But it's complicated. I mean, every event that happened that resulted in a suspension, it wasn't just like a clear cut like this kid is what did something racist or this kid was just a victim. So yeah, we have a lot of work to do. I don't know if that answers your question. But well, and I would just add kind of piggybacking on my earlier presentation about our upper elementary student leadership opportunities, really using those student leadership groups too to be involved in this work. I was very happy to see at Arroyo, and I had plans to kind of make it intentional if it didn't happen naturally, but

051it did happen naturally that our group of Eagle Council representatives is fairly diverse and representative of different groups across our campus, both ethnically and in other ways. We have some students who are part of special education and students who maybe have different identity things who are all a part of our Eagle Council. So elevating those voices as we plan our school improvement and school spirit and community service throughout the year. And then also allowing other students who maybe aren't a part of that group to have a voice in things as well and making sure that we're staying on the pulse of how they're feeling and what's happening, what their experience is like. Just to add on to that, I think my son's in kindergarten and then I have another son in Mariposa. And so I

052think a lot of parents wonder what does diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging look like for my children at these different levels. So I'll just take the other comments of that offline, but would love to learn more about that work and support in any way I can or we can as a parent or a board member. I can tell you that that came up at our PTA Coordinating Council this month too, and various principals were sharing just different things that are happening, whether it's book clubs around campus or a lot of it happens through literature in the classroom, whether it's picture books or chapter books at the appropriate level. So there's a lot happening in classrooms all around and then also other ways to share that around the school, as well as PTA involvement in parent

053discussion groups and parent book clubs and other ways to help support community building through DEIB work. And I would actually add, our art teacher did exactly what you're talking about then. She said she gave them an assignment to draw what diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging looks like. And if you're interested, I invite all of you to stop into our main office because we have them displayed. And it's pretty cool to see what the kids came up with. And it's shockingly good. Tom, I have one question for you. As us, the board is a policymaking group, obviously. What is their timeline or what is the timeline, I guess, of reviewing our policies to see if any need to be changed at the board level based off the work you're doing? I think that's definitely as we

054get working and digging into the equity report that inclusion counts put together, that'll be a big part of the subcommittee work that we do. I think we've got a little bit to do before we get there, but within this year, I would expect to be able to come back to you with some ideas and suggestions and ways to move that policy work forward. Wendy, Sarah, anything else? I just want to say thank you to Tom Doemer and Mindy Shelton for your leadership and really tonight for taking a really much deeper dive into the why, which I think was super helpful for our community to be here because we really haven't been able to sort of, yeah, talk about the why as much. So I really appreciate your leadership and it was very informative. And obviously,

055I've been attending these steering committee meetings and it's been a great opportunity to build community. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Mindy. Both for the time and effort and being here tonight as well. I'll move on then to 5D, serving students with disabilities. Yeah, this is a great segue after talking about diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, because when I hear that, I always think about students who have diverse abilities. It's a nice segue into my community. Yeah. So tonight, I'm going to give some information about serving students with disabilities in San Carlos and I'm going to start with just a little bit of an overview about how students with disabilities receive support in a school setting. Okay, so when students are identified for needing extra support, they typically receive that support either

056through a Section 504 plan, which is part of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, or through an individualized education plan. So Section 504 plan is really for a student that has any disability. And that plan really comes along with accommodations so that they can be successful in a general education setting. The disability really just needs to limit one basic life need is how it's identified. And really, this 504 plan is a function of general education, so students receive support in general education, usually mostly through accommodations. So for example, if a student has diabetes, they might need to take some extra breaks, they might need some nurse support to monitor their levels, they might need to have extra snacks in their backpack. So the school team would work with the parents to develop a plan for that

057child. An individualized education plan that falls under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Students qualify for this. There's 13 disabilities listed in the IDEA under which students can qualify for an IEP. Really, students must have, it must be affecting their educational performance or ability to learn in the general education curriculum. And an IEP allows the student to have specialized goals and services so they can make progress in school. So what guides are supportive students with disabilities? So IDEA really has school districts focus on a free appropriate public education. That can look different for every child. You know, kind of the key point is appropriate. So the school teams, our experts work with the parents to determine what is appropriate for the student to make progress on their goals and through the general education curriculum. We're

058also guided to always keep in mind the least restrictive environment. And that means whenever possible, we're trying to educate students with their general education peers. I think what San Carlos does really well compared to other districts I've worked in is the inclusion piece. We do, you know, really try to keep least restrictive environment at the front of mind. And I would say our general education teachers are very supportive. Our principals are very supportive of developing programs where we can include our students as much as possible. The other thing I'm really proud of San Carlos for is our early intervention. We have our elite program, which I'll talk more about later, but we are serving students as young as three years old and identifying them early so they can get the supports they need to be

059successful throughout their career with us. Okay, so these are a few examples of services that we provide for students with an IEP. Students go through an assessment process. Teachers, parents, other staff identify areas of concern, and then students are assessed in those areas to determine if they need services and goals in those specific areas. So these are just some examples of the kinds of support students can receive under an individualized education plan. One of the really key components of an individualized education plan is the specialized academic instruction. And which most students with an IEP receive, they can receive speech only, but most of our students will receive specialized academic instruction. And that we have a couple of different models to provide that support. So we have more of what's called the resource model, and that's

060where students have less than 50% of their day is identified as having special education minutes. So we have our education specialists. It's really targeted to each student and what goals they're working on. The teacher could be pushing into the general education classroom. They could be pulling the student out to another room to work individually with them or in a small group. And it's typically really targeted to work on their goals. We also have learning center models that's for our students who require more than 50% of their day to be receiving specialized academic instruction with an education specialist. These students are pulled out for most, more than half of their day, but they, as I said, are always looking to educate them in the least restrictive environment. So we're always looking for time to push in

061to some academic classes or include students in PE or electives whenever we can. When students are pulled out into the learning center, they're doing targeted work on goals and generally working on modified general education curriculum. These classrooms are pretty small. They typically have five to 10 students with three to four adults in the room. Okay, so what does that look like on each school site? As I said, we have our LEAP program. That's our language, early education, art and play program. That's our preschool program. So we have two classrooms. We currently serving 14 students in LEAP and it's located at Heather. The nice thing is it's right there with the other preschool classrooms. So they share the playground. Also this year we have our brown bears and our gray squirrels. Those are the names of

062the classrooms and our gray squirrels is actually a mixture of general education students and students that have an IEP. So we have four general education students this year in that classroom. Okay, and then at our TK3 schools, we have resource model at all of the sites. So we have an education specialist and paraeducators working at each site serving those students that need just a little bit of extra support, whether that's pushing into the classroom or pulling them into small groups or individually to work on their goals. And then Heather is the school that has our learning centers. So we have three learning center classrooms at Heather. We have one that is a K4. That's for students that spend most of their day in the classroom and have a lot of needs that are required to

063be supported all day in that classroom. And then we have two other classrooms. We have a K1 and then a 23 and those students are able to go into other classes for some of their academic periods and for PE, library, electives and sorts of classes. At Arroyo Mariposa, we also have a resource model and then at both schools, we also have learning center classrooms. We get to middle school, which has to be a little bit different because we have a very different schedule, as you all know, if you've had middle schoolers already. So the way we support students at middle school is there's a few different options. We have intensive English and intensive math classes for students that need to have a modified general education curriculum. So they're able to take those classes if they

064need that level of support. For students that need just a little bit of support in English and math, we have co-teaching. That's where an education specialist and a general ed teacher teach together in a general education setting. We also have paraeducators that support students in science, history, PE and electives when needed. So not all students receive that support, but some students need that extra adult to help them access the curriculum. And then we also have study skills at each grade level. So that's taught by an education specialist. There's usually about eight to 13 students in the classroom and that's where they can get some extra support to work on their goals. They get extra help with homework so that they can really be successful in middle school and be in the least restrictive environment as

065much as possible. And then at Tiara Linda, we have a program for students that need more support. So we have a teacher that's also teaching an intensive science, history and life skills class. So her students stay with her for most of the day. Okay, so here is kind of our program by the numbers. So we have 258 students receiving special education services. It was actually census day yesterday for us in our big computer system. So Teresa Burgess, our SACE skewer was very busy. They were getting that exact count for the state yesterday. So there's 258 students receiving services. 72 of those receive speech only. Yeah, and then right now we have 17 pending evaluations. So those are students that are currently being assessed to determine if they need to have IEP services. And what that

066looks like, we have six school psychologists and they're the ones that are creating that assessment plan and working with a team of specialists. And then our school psychologists do a psychoeducational evaluation in collaboration with our education specialists. And then any service providers that have been identified to also assess. And then there's me and my SACE guru. That's our special education information system. We have a whole computer system to monitor these IEPs. There's legal timelines and all sorts of requirements. So Teresa keeps us all on track and in compliance with that. And then just here's a little bit of a breakdown of our number of students and the staff that are supporting those students. So as you can see, we have a lot of students that receive specialized academic instruction. And we do have 20 education

067specialists that are providing that service. We have 37 paraeducators. They work 30 hours a week. So they're three fourths of a full-time employee. So we have a lot of them working in all of our programs throughout the district. We have nine speech and language pathologists serving 176 students total. Three occupational therapists. Counseling, we do have our mental health coordinator and we have eight mental health associates. This 47 is students who receive mental health counseling whether it's individual or parent counseling on their IEP. We also have these same mental health associates and our mental health coordinator serving students in general education as well. So that's a lot of staff for 47 kids, but they're serving the general population as well. This year, unfortunately, Mr. Scott Green left us. So we are contracting with the county to

068provide our adaptive PE services. And then we have intensive individual services. Those are one of paraeducators working one-on-one with the students. So we have very few students that actually need that support of having one adult assigned to them directly for part of their day. We also have behavior services. So we have a board certified behavior analyst on our staff and she supervises two behavior techs. And then this year we are contracting an additional 10 hours a week of support. Some of that 10 hours a week goes to supporting students in general education as well. We have a deaf and hard of hearing teacher. She's actually an education specialist as well. So she can do four days a week of working with students as an education specialist. And then she does one day a week serving

069as our deaf and hard of hearing teacher. And then we have contracts for a few students that need physical therapy, specialized orthopedic services or audiology. So family engagement is a very important part of serving students with IEPs. The way we do that is we have annual IEP meetings where parents are invited, encouraged, pretty much required to attend. We try to get them there, meet their needs to make it happen so that they can participate and contribute to developing the plan for their student. I think the great thing about having an IEP is the student gets a case manager. So that person really develops a good relationship with the families and the student and they're their go-to person. So parents, kids know they can go to that person if they're having any concerns, questions and that

070case manager is really their identified person to give that support. They provide that frequent communication with the family. We also have CDAC, that's our Special Education District Advisory Council. It's a group of parents. We do meet weekly and this group sponsors Parent Education Nights, Ability Awareness Week and they offer parent support. All right, so I just had to mention that following the past two school years, it's really important that we implement these tiers of support. I know we've shown this pyramid many times at board meetings. It's just a reminder that there's really a lot of layers that go into providing support to students at our school sites. The tier three is really that students with IEPs. So we really try to provide universal supports and then targeted intervention before we look at assessing students for

071having a disability. And I think especially after the two school years we've had, it's incredibly important to kind of keep in mind that we do have these supports. Our teachers are really working hard to determine areas of growth for their classes this year. We've returned to in-person school. The teachers are constantly monitoring students to guide their teaching. And this week has been especially important time to collaborate with parents to set goals for their students. And then through this process, teachers are able to identify students who might have extra needs and that's where the tier two can come in where the schools can provide that additional support to students. So it's just really important that we work through this system so we can properly identify students who might qualify for an IEP. All right, any questions?

072All right, thank you very much. I did see online there was one public comment asking for part of a record. So we will add it to the agenda as part of the past year. So questions? I have a question for a family that receives, for a student who receives specialized services at one site where it may not be offered at other sites, is the other child or children in the family, do they get any preference around switching campuses? So for example, if I was a student that if my child needed specialized services at TRLinda and I needed to transfer my children from maybe Arroyo or something like that over to Mariposa or from Central over to TRLinda, would I be able to, my non-special ed services provided child, would I get any flexibility to do

073that? So it all depends on if we have openings at the other school, but yes, that would be a priority to try to keep the siblings together. So we would try to do that. There's very, very rarely are we maxed out in a grade level where that can happen. Yeah, I think what I've heard from people as I've gotten involved is that it's a fan, like we think of children individually, but often it's a family unit that is taking advantage of our services and making sure that we serve the whole family as well as the whole child is something pretty important. Yeah, thank you. I can add a question just out of curiosity. First, thanks for your presentation. That was very helpful. I'm curious, how do families find out about the LEAP program or how

074do people get channeled into that given that their kids are too young to be? That's a great question. So we get a lot of referrals when families go to their pediatrician. The pediatricians will say, your student might need some services, you should contact the school district where you live. We also get a lot of referrals from the local preschools. So they know that we operate LEAP. So when there are students in their preschool that they're having concerns about, they will contact Emily LaPage Wu. She is our coordinator of LEAP and she will often go do an observation or call the parents and gather information before doing that and then determine, yeah, we should probably do an assessment to determine if your student needs more supports. Yeah, their assessments are pretty cool too. They bring the

075student and the parent in and they do a very collaborative assessment where all the service providers are really watching the student play and interact with their parents and siblings so they can really look at those developmental milestones and see if the students are progressing. Can I just ask about staffing? It was good to see numbers and I know that that's something that there's always movement from year to year and I just wondered if you feel like it sort of leveled off in terms of staffing, in terms of movement or because in the last year and two years, I think given the situation we were in, there was just a lot of movement. You mentioned you referenced there are some specialized service providers that we can contact too. I don't think I realized that our adaptive

076PE teacher had left so that's unfortunate because I hear it was wonderful but I also know that there are lots of resources in our county so I just wanted to get a general sense on staffing in terms of stability, I guess. In terms of our staff staying with us or in terms of our numbers? Having adequate staffing that we need, if there's been, we see some of that movement in the personnel report but I just wanted a sense of... We do have adequate staffing this year. We were fortunate to be able to hire all of our education specialists. It was getting tense there at the start of school but we did hire a veteran teacher. She started the day school started so we filled that Mariposa Learning Center spot but what I would say is

077that our education specialists do have fairly low caseloads when you compare them to neighboring districts and what that really allows us to do is to provide really great service to our students and families because our case managers, as I said, are really able to give that attention to each and every student and provide that frequent communication with their family. This was just a great overview. So really appreciate it. Thank you. I have one question maybe just along the same thing. Can you give me maybe what our pipeline is? I know everything is special and it's hard to recruit part of the team but we're kind of on a typical path in the season of men's special education or how would you define it? Well, we did recruit a couple of paraeducators. I was a paraeducator

078myself that was recruited to become an education specialist. It's great when we have people that come in and they already have a degree. We have a couple that have just graduated from college and they are thinking of special education as a possible career whether it's speech pathology or being a teacher. So those are people I look to hire as paras and then to start mentoring them and talking to them about becoming teachers. I guess my final question I want to take one which you said though in terms of like men person things you can do better. I think that goes along with any career path. Yeah, it's hard. I think we do a good job of pairing our new teachers with mentors. I know it's always hard for the mentors and the teachers to really

079get enough time. That's always challenging to do when you're teaching and then trying to mentor someone but we do always match our new teachers and our interns with mentors. And I think one of kind of our selling points is keeping the caseloads lower. It makes it a little bit more manageable. All of their jobs are incredibly difficult. They're very demanding jobs. So it is a very tough job but I think if we can continue to keep their caseloads lower than the county average that is a big selling point for our district. Relatedly, do you expect an increase in our special ed staffing and needs with universal TK? Would that affect the LEAP program and things like that or given that we're already serving LEAP it would be more of a static? It would depend on

080how many students in the TK program would need an IEP because it would shift that LEAP program to then the TK3 program. So yeah, that's an unanticipated kind of change that could happen. I don't see it being a significant amount of students though where it would really impact our staffing a lot. Trustees, anything else? All right, Megan, thank you very much. Thank you. That was great Alex. I hope it's informative for us and also informative for things. Okay, thank you. Okay, I'll move on to 5E, our student outcomes for summer and fall relates to LCAP goal 1 and 3. And I believe we can start a conference. I am, sorry. I think Hans is and then we have our summer school principles too. That we do. It's just a matter of whether I can find

081the correct. One of many open browsers sometimes when you share the browser you want is on another screen. So there's that too. That's the one. Before, I would be remiss if I didn't recognize Megan for that. It was a great presentation, really knowledgeable. And I just want to address too that, you know, special education staffing is a moving target. It's the best way to describe it. And we really got lucky with one of the teachers at the last moment, just to be honest. And I will say Megan's done a fantastic job of recruiting some great pair of educators this year. So we've been very fortunate. I've been going, that's the one. We're ready. Generally, in October for the last several years prior to my arrival, this has been kind of a standard issue item that

082we go over together. It usually highlights CAS scores exclusively. It's quite a long presentation. You know, 20, 25 slides just on SBAC and CAS, et cetera. And it's a little different for a variety of reasons. And a lot of what we want you to take from this is, you know, this is kind of a large view. It's kind of a macro, if you will. And we're going to end our presentation today with some help from my colleagues. Our summer school principals, Kim Norgard, Diane McGuigan, and Charu Galati. And they're going to really highlight what we're doing kind of on a micro level, which is really the important work that we're doing at this point in time. So I want to start with that. I'm not going to go over a whole lot of what we'll

083be talking about. I think you have a good sense for, you know, I like to do this for the public as much as anything else. So they kind of know what we're going to be talking about. This is a big slide right here. You know, like I said, usually we look at this, we put a lot of stock in it. We have a long discussion. And honestly, CASPIN 2021 was so different than anything we've ever done before. You know, the testing blueprint was completely augmented, shortened, which means, in short, that means, you know, if we're looking at a certain domain and we had seven questions that were going to tell us about how a student did in that domain, they basically pared it down and it was three questions. The state board said, let's use

084these three questions. It'll give us an idea of kind of how the kids did. We will not be able to give a domain score of any type. It's just sort of an overview. Overall, you seem to understand this based on these three questions as opposed to the seven that we had before. It was great because it made it more manageable. During the pandemic, there was a lot of flexibility offered. You could offer this in person. You could do it remotely, right? And it made it just a more manageable task regardless of whether you were back in a hybrid situation, back full-time or never came back at all. It allowed you to participate. That said, school districts did not have to participate at all. They could use an alternative assessment that they had in place. Several

085of the larger districts have, especially Title I districts, have comprehensive assessment systems that they use throughout the year. And they may have used that rather than taking CASP at all. They may not have any scores whatsoever. Normally, 95% is required participation or you kind of get dinged as a district. That was also freed up and taken off the dashboard requirements. And last but not least, the CASP test, which was new in 1920, you might recall, was a field test. They still had field test items on it. And they refined it, but it did not get shorter. It was exactly the same length and it was very challenging. On a lot of levels, doing that remotely, doing that in person, it was a really challenging task. So for us, what's important for us is we had

086great participation. This is fantastic that we had this many students take it. So we met the 95% in language arts. And of that, almost 93% of the kids took it in person. And almost met 95% for math, which is amazing as well. This shows that, first of all, our students were in person. A lot of our students were in person. This took a lot of instructional time during some days when they only had two or three hours of instructional time period. So you did have to prioritize it on some level, but these are impressive numbers that this many students were able to complete the exams. Tell me, what did that number totalize for our population? So how many students did 95% several times? I think it was about 2,100 students that took it last year,

087something around those lines. So 90% of that subtract 200 from that around 1900, 1890, something like that. And similar for math. This is a really important piece. The state has not yet publicly released the results. So everything we're reporting tonight is based on the data file that we were provided through the Testing Operations Management System, known as TONS. And thanks to Alejandro and a lot of work from Alejandro, we extracted some of this data. It also means that the data that we sometimes look at together isn't available, right? And it's important to note that it may not be reliable. Based on all the things we just talked about, we generally will say, well, how do we do it compared to our surrounding districts? What we don't know about our surrounding districts are the first two

088bullets here. We don't know how many kids took it in person. We don't know how many kids took it overall. And all of that participation rate stuff, that's not even going to be published at all. So it's really difficult to make any kinds of comparisons, either statewide or locally, without knowing those first two bullets of data, OK? And above all, that's, you know, so taking large stock in this, this is really just for local use. And that's kind of what the state advertised it as when they said, last year, let's do this together and realize that it's really not going to be necessarily something we can use for comparison sake, for all the reasons we've talked about. You've all received your student score reports. I know there are, you know, we had a technical glitch

089with that, unfortunately, this year, but Alejandro got that worked out, too, and eventually everybody received those. And we're still compiling CAS data, and it's not complete. So Alejandro has been in touch with the states, asking a variety of questions about that and other students that we have no records for that took the exam. Undoubtedly, if we're experiencing that and we had a very low number of students that took it remotely, you can imagine statewide what's going on in the state. So I just, I have a quick screenshot of the sample school student report. You know, I think the most important pieces on here are that there's no claims data. And normally you get that long arrow there points to, oh, and these four areas in reading and writing and listening, your student did the following

090based on how they answered the questions. We don't have that data, as I explained, that the claims were too small, the number of questions. So it will not allow the state to produce that data. So that's a key piece that's missing. Pointing out, you know, those three bars that are, if you look on the second to the right, and there's three bars, one of them says your student's achievement, the other one says the state, the school-wide achievement, and the other one says the state achievement. And what's interesting, as I said, is they put the state achievement there, but we don't have that level. They have not advertised that level publicly. So, you know, I don't know if that was a preliminary look at it, but they have a dedication and an obligation to get those

091student score reports out in a timely manner. In fact, we have to have them to families within 15 days of the sort of school. So it doesn't give a lot of time for the state to publish it. So they have to produce something. How reliable that is is unknown at this point. We have our own internal reports that sites and teachers can go in and look at their class. This is a class level. This is the overall level report for CMS on the left. And then on the right is just a snapshot of what a teacher might see for their class. And again, what's missing, normally, all the domains would also be listed next to that. And color code as green, blue, yellow, or red to give an indication of how the student did in

092each claim. And obviously that's not available. That's why you're only seeing those limited columns. So what's great about San Carlos? What's great about us this year? You know, again, we have to be really careful with comparison because, as we said, for all the reasons we've talked about, we need to be careful with this because it's not the same exam. And we just came out of a pandemic. And you'll notice that 2020 is totally missing, right? We have to be really careful about that because it didn't exist. That was completely canceled. And what you see is, gosh, there were some slight drops weren't there. And I want to write the word pandemic across the entire histogram there and say for achievement for students there, school districts would die to have this data to see these types

093of, you know, yeah, there were a few drops. There were also a few maintained. I think one of those bars might actually have grown a little bit. I mean, it's amazing. Okay. And, you know, granted, this is math data. Our next slide is about ELA data. You see similar trends. We had a larger drop in math than we did in ELA, which statewide was what's happening. All of the colleagues that I've talked to have reported, well, we didn't do as badly in language arts as we did compared to math. And again, considering all of the different variables, it's hard to know how reliable that data is or those comparisons are. But I would venture to guess that the statewide data is going to be quite a bit stark compared to this one they finally do

094publish it. So this is fantastic. It's something to celebrate for our teachers and for our community. The high level of participation and then really the, you know, we almost maintained achievement in language arts. Literally, we're like a percent and a half less in math. We went down five points. And again, I just want to put pandemic on the slide, right? I mean, it's just amazing. So, yeah, go ahead, Irene. I just wanted to say what I was really looked at right away, too, was the third grade level of achievement, because I ended up with that, you know, using the learn to read by nerd, because after that, you kind of relearn. So it's really, really just shut out. That is an increase from 19 to 21. That was an increase bar. That is amazing. Granted,

095it's not the same test. It's not as long as all of that being said, that's amazing. So, you know, again, some of our takeaways, I've already mentioned these. You know, obviously, we talked about the overall achievement. And I said some districts, and by some districts, what I want to say is that's colleagues of mine that I've talked to throughout the state. So it's anecdotal, it's not factual, because we don't have the factual data. But they're anecdotal since, you know, what they're reporting to me is, wow, did you struggle as much in math as we did, was generally the question. And as a former math teacher, it's natural that they would ask me that, right? They want to go directly to math. It's like, well, how did you do? Well, then I'd kind of smile and

096go, okay, well, it wasn't as bad as I thought. And, you know, again, the correlation is an issue. And, you know, we don't have a lot of data that we would normally have yet. So we are definitely planning to extract, you know, student group data on all levels that we normally would report. You know, English learners, our students with disabilities, you know, our students experiencing, you know, economic challenges. So we will be extracting that over the next, you know, month or two, and be happy to share that with you once we have it. Remember that it's just very preliminary data at this point in time. So all of this is to say we did wonderfully. And even I want to now segue, if my colleagues want to head over to the podium, I'll segue into

097summer school. And, you know, this is the first time we've had a summer program in forever, basically, other than our extended school year program. And we spotlighted it on the 15th, on August 5th. You might remember a little video that they did. They also put that together. We served 126 or so, you know, plus or minus general ed students. Every student took an assessment reading, writing, and math, regardless of grade level. You know, did we have a lot of students turn down this patient? Not really. Just those that were kind of like, hey, we already have a vacation plan, right? And it's important to point out that some students missed a few days because they had a vacation plan, and we encourage them to come anyway. Please come and take part and learn. And this

098is all surrounding our LCAP goal number one, which I have here for you, if you're interested. Remember, that's just all about learning recovery. So this is fantastic data as well. And I'll turn it over to, I believe, Kim Norgard, third grade teacher at White Oaks and current interim principal at White Oaks. Hi. Thank you so much. Can you go back one? I can. Let's skip that. There we go. Well, we were given a great opportunity to offer summer school as support for those students that needed a little extra boost to accelerate not only their academic growth, but their social emotional growth that the pandemic really put a spotlight on. So we had about, I don't know, five weeks to get it together. And that's part of why, you know, Hans was saying that some people

099weren't able to go or had to take a couple days off because they already had plans when they were notified. We started out in and finished in person. And it was a full half day of in-person learning for four weeks. And the parents were thrilled. If you take a look at the graphs there, you can see that they really stated that their child had a good experience in summer school. It's not that summer school of the past in my day were like, you have to go to summer school. And it was like a punishment. They were cheering to go to summer school. They were so excited. And as principals, you know, there was no discipline because they were so happy to be there. And the parents showed that in the survey. Also, would they go

100again next year? Well, we're hoping as principals to be there again next year, but we're also hoping that these students had such an accelerated boost in their academics and social emotional time, but they won't need to go again next year. But, you know, given the opportunity, they'll want to come back. So I'm going to hand over the data to Diane. Hi. So as Han said, we did give pre and post assessments to all of our students in reading, writing, and math. And as you can see, looking at the charts there, the teachers did give some diagnostic reading assessments at the beginning. In the younger grades, it was a letter sound correspondence, some sight words, then you're going up the grades. We're working on fluency and comprehension. The goal is to get to a three. That's

101our goal. So you can see there in the beginning, we had a lot of twos, some ones, not very many threes. And then at the end, we had a lot more twos and threes there. Next slide. We also did another writing assessment as well. Teachers were looking at a combination of skills. Some things were just like the amount of writing that was on a page, spacing between words, using punctuation, and then going up to skills like looking at sentence structure. Are they able to edit and revise their work as well? Again, the goal is to get up to a three there. And you can see the post assessment data, we have a lot more threes than we did in the beginning assessment data. And in math, same thing. We started out with our lower grades

102doing some one-to-one correspondence, looking at combinations of 10, working on fact families. Then we're moving up the grades and regrouping larger numbers, working on multiplication division facts, some word problems. And again, pre and post assessments, working on getting to a three. You can see so many of our ones are now have become twos or threes by the end of summer school. So we were super excited and very proud of all the hard work the teachers put in and the classroom working with the students. Every time Kim and I walked into a classroom, students were engaged. They were up out of their seats. They were doing things that were fun. There were many times we looked at each other and was like, I want to be in this class. So they really did. They did some

103great work this summer and the end results, the data shows how well they did. And then I believe Sharil has some middle school. Good evening, everyone. So middle school data looks slightly different than elementary school data, rightly so. Students wanted their summer break. We invited 98 families. 78 families showed interest, asked questions. So what is it all about? What are the kids going to learn? And then finally, we had 46 students who came for summer school. We focused on just like elementary school, we really focused on English, language arts, and math. And teachers had the opportunity to check in with colleagues and peers what is the unfinished learning that we need to focus on. If we can go to the next slide. In English, lots of reading. So reading aloud, focusing on vocabulary through a

104lot of fun games, trying to engage these middle schoolers, focusing on the summer reading books, which was a huge gain for our students. Some of the students, even eighth graders, who had never ever done summer reading or didn't even know, oh, there's summer reading. And when we check in with them, the teachers do see a difference that the students really gained from the summer school, whether they did it happily or not very eagerly. Writing focused on a lot of note-taking, organizing, developing, synthesizing ideas. And our goal is to get to a three. But most importantly, it was about giving students the structure and just the encouragement. We are here to support you. You have some unfinished learning. We know you don't want to be here, but let's make the most of it. And I think

105we were able to do that. Matt, by the time we had our summer school, honestly, the students were tired of testing. In the short amount of time they were on campus, during the hybrid time, we had spent so much time. So we did keep our pre-diagnostic testing to a very minimal. But that gave teachers a pretty good sense of what needs to be done. And the basic idea was to focus on the basic number, sense, and starting from whatever the pre-diagnostic tests showed us, using games, using manipulatives, again, developing that love of learning. And most importantly, as I visited the classrooms and I saw students in the quad during break time, it was like, oh, I never wanted to come to summer school. But at least I made new friends. And I saw a lot

106of joy and a lot of establishing new relationships. And it was fun to have central middle school students on Tierra Linda campus and our kids engaging with each other, having a teacher from central at our campus. It was a really nice community building as well. So very grateful to have the opportunity to be a summer school principal and to share all of this with you. Thank you. All right, well, thank you all. A huge shout out to these three folks. And Sarah Orton and Lisa Zazzario, who really helped get summer school off the ground, partially because I was out with a surgery and Lisa had experience with it, Sarah had experience with it, and they just took it and ran with it. They did a fantastic job. And the results, the students reap the benefits.

107And that's really what we wanted. We always talk about next steps. None of this is going to come as any surprise to you. We know that the gaps that we experienced last year between student groups and distance from standard we talked about, we know that those still exist. On a lot of levels. And we are diving deeply into that. Sites are looking at this data with their site councils, with their teachers and analyzing it with staffs. An important piece of just overall assessment that we didn't even do last year is reclassification of our English learners. We literally had nobody, pretty much no young student took the summit of LPAC in 2020, which automatically they don't qualify for reclassification. This year, last year, we were able to get everybody completed, some of them remotely, some of

108them in person. And we had 60 plus students who scored a four or greater and are eligible. Maybe, you know, they'll take a close look with their teachers at whether they actually will be reclassified. So that's an important piece. Obviously, we've talked about Conference Week in a number of different ways. Providing some of this data prior to that was important. There's a lot of assessment happening. And that was a lot of what was being reported out to some degree at conferences. And we didn't want to overburden parents with, here's the data for your student. When really what we wanted to say was, here's how your student is. And here's how they're doing in class. And here are their friends. And here are, and they're smiling. And, you know, or are they struggling? What kind of,

109you know, supports do they need? Instead of throwing a lot of data at parents. But know that that data is being collected. And our teachers are working really hard to, you know, get ready to do progress monitoring, as we say. You know, flexible grouping in the classrooms, intervening with students that need it. They've been doing just a fantastic job with that. And led by our principals, obviously. We're really excited to relaunch the K-5 literacy program. A literacy intervention program that we, again, took a hiatus during the pandemic. And it's just been a wonderful addition back to our campuses. We've never really had a formal 4-5 intervention program. We've had pieces of it. But we actually have people at the 4 and the 5 doing some of that intervention this year. So that's exciting. That some

110of it started this week. It will start for sure next week on all six campuses. And then obviously, you know, teachers always clamor for professional development. And particularly in kind of the, you know, there's the now, the now what and the so what. And then the so what is, all right, I know that the student is struggling in these areas. What am I going to do about it? And that's some of the PD will be doing this month. And then we will be conducting some short surveys with staff and parents really on kind of an SEL level. And we didn't want to do that before conferences. Dr. Frencherson and I talked about it. We figured, you know, let's wait. Let's let folks have conferences, get us a sense for how students are doing and really

111understanding what's happening in class. And then we'll do the survey to find out how, kind of how the temperature check that we normally do this time of year. And that's it. Any questions that you have? First question for you, Kim Banger. You were the first in our rules. You sit post-pandemic and she was the first. So now, Tessie. Ben, I'm staring at you. I just say congratulations on these amazing results. And also I want to give gratitude to all the educators who, you know, it was a marathon last year and the year before. And then to run an extra couple laps in the summer, five weeks. Having been an educator myself and having taught summer school, you know, that summer is that time to recharge the battery. And so I'm just really grateful that you

112dedicated that time to some joyful learners and help them, you know, for the fall. And one question that I did have was what were the ratio of students to teachers? One of the things I'm trying to pay attention to is, you know, we're a special district in that every child gets a personalized or tailored education to their needs. And I just want to understand, are these like bigger groups? Are they smaller groups? And just a little bit more of the academic learning model. For middle school, it was small groups. We had 14 students in sixth grade. I think 15 in seventh and 19 in eighth grade. So our eighth grade was the biggest class. And each with one teacher. Each with one teacher. Yeah. Yeah. It was similar numbers in the K-5. We ranged from

113one class had only 11 and then the largest class was 17 with one. So they were relatively small classes. Thank you so much. May I? I had the good fortune to spend time visiting classrooms with each of these folks. But importantly, I also got to be at the table working with children, those two of them. And I was wondering if you could share with everybody, what is something you learned that you would recommend for next year? Just as you reflect now on the program, because obviously we'd like to do it again, but what would we do differently? I, one of the biggest pieces that I know we all know is starting early. So if we are planning, if we are proposing a summer school program, giving families enough advance notice. So the communication piece is

114really important. I know for middle school, you know, when families expressed interest, their first question was, so what are our kids going to do? And honestly, we didn't have much idea of what we are going to do because we hadn't recruited teachers. We knew we are going to focus on unfinished learning and boosting some of the things that are missing. But having a really clear vision statement and communicating as early as possible and reaching out to individual families. And we found a lot of success last year, even last year, asking the teachers to reach out to families. So instead of it coming from me, for example, for central parents, they don't even know who am I. And a summer school principal asking to, okay, give up your summer or part of your summer and join

115summer school was kind of, you know, not very good way of. So if we were to do it, I would say those are a couple of things that come to mind quickly. Either you have some suggestions or things you've reflected on. Well, definitely the earlier start. Yeah, definitely. Another thought I had, we had the good fortune of having a school counselor available to us. She was there just part time, but wow, that made a big difference. It really helps some students who just, they were fine one day and then all of a sudden they didn't want to come anymore. And it wasn't necessarily school, maybe something was going on at home and she was able to kind of have conversations with them and help them come into class. That was really helpful. That was lovely.

116Starting earlier would be wonderful as well, too. Again, just to, I think, get more students or just to have their schedules free so they're not taking a week in the middle of a four week program. We also, we provided school lunches for the students and it would be great to have a little more time to research that because the families were just very enthusiastic about getting these big bags of groceries. But we think that there's probably a better way to get food to the families. So we'll have that time to offer that. And I also think keeping those class size small were very, very beneficial. You're pulling kids in for four weeks and it's kind of a very short session. Keeping the numbers small is key to, I think, our success. Questions? I just want

117to thank you for documenting it so well, too. I mean, we saw the videos in the earlier board meeting and I think for something that hasn't been done in so long, I just commend you all, too, for just documenting the whole process. And those videos really just showed the fun that kids were having. I remember that from watching that. So because that is one element, too, I think, of summer learning, which you already touched on. It's also about the socialization and the fun. So thank you for bringing that to it. And again, I really hope we can do it again. I mean, obviously, we'll be looking at the budget for that. But you've set up a great model and we have all of this data. So thank you for that. And I really appreciate all

118your effort. Thank you so much. I have a question for Hans. But I also wanted to say thank you to you all for all your hard work and for being here tonight to share with us. And I think just thank you to all of our educators. The fact that the numbers do look like they look is a testament to our incredible staff. And Hans, my question for you is about looking at the data over several years. You see a fairly consistent drop at fifth and sixth grades. And I'm just curious for my own benefit to understand why that is. Yeah, happy to. Glad, thank you for asking that question. It's really important. And you'll find that phenomenon statewide. You look at data statewide, you'll see these dips in fifth and sixth grade. And there's a

119variety of reasons, the main of which are the questions in complexity. They become much more complex at those two grade levels. And in both language arts and math. And we like to call that depth of knowledge that's required for a student. So they're really trying to get students to think at a higher level. And it's a challenge, regardless of your academic program that you're offering in your school. It's a challenge. And you'll see students starting to catch up like we do in our schools. You know, in seventh and eighth grade, you'll see those scores rise. As students kind of get used to that. Okay, I get it now. I have to kind of think. I can't just give the two word answer anymore, right? Or, you know, they've talked about volume of writing even in

120summer school, right? And there are writing samples required as part of the CASP. And that, you know, you're not going to get a very good score if you write a paragraph, right? Whereas in third grade, you write a paragraph that you're probably going to do okay. You go to fourth grade and you write a paragraph, they're going to say, we need a little more than that, right? Not to mention what the content that is, you know, in that paragraph. So, but really it is, it's a study in depth of knowledge, if you will, that's required from students. And, you know, I will say many school districts don't see the launch that we do for math in particular. Language arts is fairly similar to our, you know, growth data that we have in seventh and eighth,

121but we have a really strong curve that happens in seventh and eighth grade math. And I think that's a testament to, partially to our students, obviously. That goes without saying, but another piece is our program that we use for, you know, we use CPM in seventh and eighth grade for, you know, for non geometry cohort, if you will, and everybody's using CPM, which is a really complex program that really emphasizes depth of knowledge and word problems and problem solving. So that's a testament again to our program and our teachers. Thank you. I just want to pick up on the data. So I just, I, you mentioned that you don't have all the, you know, data sort of to be able to analyze. So I am very interested in having you bring back the disaggregated data

122for the different groups. So English learners, facilities. And I, the one point I just wanted to make is, I think it would be really helpful for us to be able to look at the data in terms of growth. And you mentioned distance from standards, right? So there are some subgroups that might, you know, they're farther, they're below, they're not meeting standards. You know, we need to look at those groups. And then, you know, as far as being able to compare data, across years, you know, maybe you can help us understand, like, you know, to be able to look at growth, like what is comparable data that we can use? I, you know, I don't know if it's the iReady data or what it is, but for me, that's what I'm, you know, looking for. It's

123not just, you know, are we on average at 85% this year? Or, you know, the numbers were more down to 70%. But the reason some of those numbers are lower is because there are groups that are just, you know, they're not meeting the standards. So that's what is of particular interest to me. And again, I think my ask is, like, if we can, if you can help us to understand, like, the growth of those different groups, that'd be great. I wonder if you could ask me some of that, because it's on the same topic of the comments and statements I've got for it. I think the first one is along the lines of, first of all, I think data is fantastic in terms of results for the main reasons that nothing about the last, you

124know, 18 months was easy in education. All we heard leading up to the board members to this was how learning loss was going to be substantial, how my child is going to win things, how, you know, we have lost the kind of individual touch that St. Croix has had the precedent for. To be, you know, in these numbers of the ballpark, the numbers we've had before, it is astronomical, in my opinion, and it goes to show the resilience of our staff, our teachers, our curriculum, also resilience for our parent community, right? Because everyone knows that you could not do this alone last year. So we are all part of the same team. So I think that's kind of my first comment in that regards. The second comment is, and I think in terms of where

125we want to go as a board and what we're looking at is along the same line, but with the setup, what I think would be ideal for a study session for us is really breaking down this data for us as a board and then how it relates to kind of our expenditures and how our spending and expenditures would be. So to give you some examples of that would be really, you know, a lot of this data when you're small, you learn the statistics of it, right? If 10 kids did better, we may be 85%. If this cohort of people had grown or not falling backwards, maybe English learners, then that puts us in a much higher level of district. The reason I think it's incredibly important for us now to focus on that and dive

126deeper into it is my opinion that has changed as a board member over time is now this is perception data for us at this point in time as a district and it drives a lot of factors in those regards. So the more we can understand how people are going to perceive us to either change the narrative of what, you know, the example I think most people would use is, oh, well, if we drop in fifth grade, I clearly need to leave the district in sixth grade at the national transition. But as you pointed out, your kid is going to launch later on in our district more compared to others. We need to start highlighting that data, understanding that data, knowing it as a district so we can have those answers for people to show, you

127know, like I said, I believe we do it better. I believe we do it better than almost everybody. And we do that as a district that has historically not really ever focused on data being the driver, or I'm sorry, test scores being the driver of our decision that we put more of the whole child. So that launch plus all this understanding data together I think shows why we're such a great district and why our teaching philosophy is so valuable. So the more we can dive into that at the board or the study session, more decisions on, for example, hey, maybe we do want to find a way to fundraise or ask or have students have the ability to have someone to program because of what we saw in that focus. So I think that's just

128kind of a big comment in those regards. So my question, I'm asking you, what do you think about that? There is an answer. Irene, see, he got you on that. I think, first of all, we are planning on having a summer program in 22 and it is budgeted now. And, you know, barring some strange thing happening, we will be having that program and getting started. Obviously we'll have the opportunity to a normal summer school timeline starts in January, believe it or not. And so that's when we'll start planning summer schools in January, just like we start planning next year in February, right? And so we definitely have the opportunity to do that. And then, you know, they express an interest in coming back to be principals again. That's something we have to figure out, obviously.

129And it's fantastic that they want to do that. And I know some of our staff that taught this year in summer school have said the same. Like I really, it was a little scary at first. You know, having, first of all, mixed kids from all over. I mean, you talk about the middle schools mixing, the elementary schools had kids from all four schools going to school together. And it was a unique challenge. Our teachers are not used to having, you know, 11, 12, 17, whatever the numbers were, you know, learners who need help. They're not used to that environment at all, right? It's maybe two or three in my classroom or four or five. Whereas in the summer school environment, it's all 17 were identified for some reason or another for needing extra intervention. And,

130you know, they had some sort of recovery needs. And that was a challenge at first. And boy, did they rise to that challenge. So we certainly plan on doing that. And then, you know, Neil, as far as, you know, the data, I'm sure we can do that. And, you know, I really want to go back to the beauty of the summer school data that it's not macro, it's micro, right? And it really talks about how do these groups do. And that's really our challenge this year is to go back to that identified student group list that we made back in March, April of this year. And going back to that and continuously monitoring that list, how are the kids doing? How are they progressing? Are there new students that need to be on, you know,

131on kind of that list? And were there students that have risen and they're done? Right. That's really that that's the micro data that we want to continue to talk about. I would just, Neil, when I heard you talk about telling the story of St. Kralos and why our kids are getting such a good education here, I thought Diane, Sheru, and Kim just did such a great role model because they were so transparent with the data, like, you know, love those pie charts and the before and after, but they just talk about the whole child and about how they formed like new friendships and relationships and bringing out the joy and learning. And to me, that really is such the same color as legs, right? You're really thinking about the whole kid and we're going to

132be transparent about our data, which really just bolsters the story. One more question for future conversation. Are there, I think, building on what we've all said is there is huge success that came out of summer school and, you know, there are still these kids who, you know, we know aren't meeting standard. Are there additional supports or things that we can do as a board to help apply what was learned at summer school to those, you know, that 20 or 25 percent of kids who need that additional support during the year? Part of those pieces are the things that we're doing. You know, in general, our class sizes are quite small this year. And there are, sure, there are a few classrooms that are full at the K-3 level, but for the most part, our class

133sizes, you know, that's, we invested money in that for a reason because it does end up getting results. And, you know, especially if you look at our fourth and fifth grade classes, they're at 23s and 24s. So normally they're up at 28, 29. Bringing back the literacy intervention program is huge because that allows that tier two intervention to happen for students that are identified that need it and so that they can get to that point in third grade where they can read, right? They're not learning to read anymore. They're reading to learn. And that's why we focus so heavily on that. The reason we put the support at fourth and fifth grade was that we knew we would have struggling learners who were second and third graders that didn't have real school years for two

134years in a row and would now be suddenly your fourth grader. And so we knew that would be necessary and needed for both fourth and fifth graders. Whereas in the past, it's been a very small number of students that needed that level of intervention. So we're doing a lot of things to help that already. That's where we used our identified money last year in our LCAP process to really identify what were the right things that we needed to do with the money that we're receiving. And so I'm confident. And as things come up, we're discussing. There are ideas out there about can we do this? Can we do that? I get them daily. I've got a couple today that I'll be bringing up at the cabinet next week. Could we do this? Can we find

135the dollars to support this? And we'll just continue to do that. So know that a lot of that is happening. The other piece is the interventions in classes. And our teachers, as I said, summer school is a kind of a microcosm. You know, when you have a whole classroom full of struggling learners, it's different and it's hard. And there are more struggling learners in our classrooms than normal. And, you know, so equipping our teachers with even simple tools, you know, that they wouldn't necessarily normally have or need is another focus that we're going to have over the next two months. So just one other kind of question comment. Have you gotten the formative assessment data? You know, we talked about in the LCAP process that in October, there would be formative assessments that would be

136completed across all grades. And, you know, just echoing the request for looking at data. For me, like that kind of data is a little bit more actionable than the three questions on the state test. And, but if you crosswalk, though sometimes you also can see patterns have we done formative assessments comprehensively around English and math proficiency? Yes, and lots of them. And that is where we are now at the point where we're at the so what? Like, okay, I got all the data, but now what am I going to do that I have this data? Help me, right? And so that's where our principal's mindset is right now. Yeah. That's where our teachers' mindsets are. Like, all right, I've got data. I see it. Not that I didn't have it before. I just have more

137now than I've ever had. And what is it? And now that I have it, what am I going to do? And so, yeah, I mean, I think we drove that home really soundly. I mean, all of us, not just, you know, all the board, but, you know, the leaders, the teachers hear it. And I don't want them to hear it at such a level that it feels like, you know, a threat is coming upon me. It's more, you know, we need to respond to the needs of our kids. And, you know, so as I said, equipping them with the tools that they need is the next step. That with tools that they may never have needed before. So we're there and we'll continue to do that. So we can bring back, you know, I really

138am. I, as I said, that we had that identified group of students. Not all of them were able to go to summer program. Understood. That doesn't mean that we're not keeping a really close eye on that identified group of students. And that's really that micro data that we need. We're collecting it for all students, but that's a group of students we really need to keep an eye on. One last question. Your last bullet point on next steps is survey parents and staff regarding teaching and learning and mental health. Does that include the mental health of our staff? Okay, great. I just wanted to say again, same thing. We said it at the beginning of the school year, many schools still care about, so we know. Last comments, questions, concerns. Before we dive into the next

139section here, I'll pick up, we've been at it for about two hours. Do you think we need a break? Five minutes? Can I come back? All right. I'll take a break. All right. Yes, it is. Thank you so much. You'll recall that part of our COVID response team process is when a positive COVID case is brought to our attention by a family member, we conduct contact tracing. And contact tracing involves six pages of questions that you ask of the case to determine all the different persons who were impacted. It's very time consuming and yet a super important part of our process to ensure that we get the appropriate number of students in modified quarantine and staying in school, but still testing. Because that's so time consuming, the county office of Ed heard our plea. We

140need some help with this. They identified worksite labs as a support mechanism for all of the school districts, and we're able to contract or subcontract through the county office of Ed for hours as needed for contact tracing. Thankfully, our need for that is pretty limited at this point, but just to be prepared so that nurse Paige can attend to other things, we're asking that the board approve this subcontract for the county office of Ed for this contact tracing work. Trustees, questions first? Could you just clarify for the public, again, if this does involve extension? No, sorry, this is the contact tracing. I am grateful that our county is making these services available to us. It's a really smart way to consolidate this expertise. So I'm happy to make a motion or do you want me

141to take a vote? I don't see no other comments. I move approval of 6A, approval of agreements with contact tracing, or contact tracing services with SMCOE and worksite labs. That means there's a second? Second. Sarah, all clear to say aye? Aye. Any opposition? Carried and seeing none, that will carry 5-0. Great. Then we move on to 6B, which is to discuss a change in our hourly substitute salaries. All right, thank you, Neil. As you are aware, as we've been talking about in our memos, it has been challenging to find substitutes. We are not alone. This is a nationwide crisis, particularly exacerbated here on the peninsula. And fortunately or unfortunately, we do compete for the same subs with our partner districts to the south, to the north, and east and west for that matter. And it's

142funny because this always starts with the anecdotal data. We generally will say, you know, are you interested in subbing? And we have a really great pool of people that really only sub in St. Carlos. So we're very fortunate to have that. And we sometimes need more than what's in that little pool. So we go over this larger pool, and the larger pool is the one that we're competing with for the rest of the districts around us. And they are generally the ones that will say, do you know that you're paying X dollars less than so-and-so? Or such-and-such just decided that they're going to raise their rates of blank. Can you maybe, you know, pass that along? Because it generally comes through Molly, who's our sub caller amongst many other things. And so she gives us

143that. And I said, all right, well, let me get started on this. I did a quick, we did a quick comparison study of the districts around us. And sure enough, we were paying the lowest amount pretty much in the South County for our elementary, which was 175. Nobody was paying anywhere lower than 180. So that was obvious. And then a lot of the districts had raised significantly, 20 to $25. So, you know, this makes us more competitive. What we're asking for is a $15 raise for all levels. So that would go, you know, commensurate for each. So 185 and 195 and 215 to get us in a more competitive realm with, you know, our neighbors to the North, South, East and West. Will this fix all of our ails of our substitute issue? No, it

144certainly won't. But it will help, as I said, with that pool that we have to go to, that we share. It will help us make, help make us more competitive. And in a lot of ways, substitutes may find our district more desirable. So just even for a few dollars less, they'll say, well, okay, it's a job at St. Carlos will take it. So with your approval, we will move forward with this on Monday, which is holiday. So it'll be Tuesday. All right. I agree with someone comment just to say, it's definitely the focus of many of you stories recently. So I'm sure it won't be the end of part of this, but I would like to say, if anyone knows a friend who's around, we're raising rates and we're looking for people. So there's other

145ways. So make sure you tell people as well. They qualify if you'd like to have. I will take a motion. I move to approve 6B, revised hourly and substitute salary schedule. All right. Sir, is there a second? I second. Thank you, Wendy. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposition? Hearing and seeing none. That will carry by zero. Okay. Back to Megan then to discuss the resolution for 21-22. So I'm bringing the SELPA local plan back to you this month with the resolution. So I presented it last board meeting. And so for tonight, I'm just seeking your approval. All right. Trustee, last month we had the conversations and it comes back to us. Policy change. Any comments or any further discussion needed before a motion to approve? Okay. Is there a motion to approve 6C?

146Move to approve 6C. Resolution for 21-22 SELPA local plan. Thank you, Wendy. Is there a second? A second. Thank you, Sarah. All in favor state by saying aye. Any opposition? Hearing and seeing none. That will also carry by zero. All right. We'll respond to 6D, approval of student activity special revenue fund. And I believe this goes to Christine. So yes, at the last board meeting I spoke about this new gas be 84 requirement and that I would be bringing back the resolution in October. So I'm asking the board to approve establishing fund eight for the student activity special revenue fund. One question for Christine. Just because I had time to bury it on this after a broad lot of time. Are other districts having just like giant student funds to cause this kind of change?

147Or was there something that tripped this? It's more for transparency so that we can track activity. What's the common activity that I guess may encourage it? It's any kind of student body activity in clubs. In high school, it's driving a lot of inequitable resource allocation. And so it's an equity issue in high schools that drove them. Got it. Okay. So it's not necessarily an elementary school thing. You're seeing that at the high schools where high schools drove those. Is there a motion to approve 6D? I move to approve 6D student activity special revenue fund resolution. Thank you, Sarah. Is there a second? All seconded. All in here appreciate by saying aye. Any opposition? Well, okay. We have, I will then gavel us in to our public hearing for textbook sufficiency. The purpose of public hearings

148is to allow for comment regarding the assurance of textbook sufficiency based off of the resolution that would be in 6F. So now I will check to see if there is any public comment. Seeing none listed. We're in a new rules like to raise their hand via Zoom. I can take that as well. Seeing no hands raised and no one in the room. I will then close and gavel us out of the public hearing for textbook sufficiency. Approval of resolution number 62122 for textbook instructional materials sufficiency. And it's you, Hans. That it is. This is a standard item. Each year we have to have, we just completed our public hearing and now we're just formalizing that, that we did not have any public comment and no issues around instructional materials that we ask you to adopt

149this resolution. Any questions? Members, is there a motion to approve the resolution number 62122 for textbook instructional materials sufficiency? So moved. Thank you, Irene. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Sarah. All in favor please state by saying aye. Aye. Any opposition? Hearing and seeing none, that will also carry 5-0. All right, on to 6G. Approval of the ESSER3 expenditure plan and this will be Hans and Christine. Yeah, I'll start and if Christine has anything she wants to add, she certainly can chime in. Affectionately known as ESSER, as we call it. Just yet another new acronym in our mini acronym system. And last year, you'll remember the American Rescue Plan from, this is federal government. This is money that's coming from the federal government that we qualified for last year because we were qualified for

150Title I. Any new federal money that was to come down this school year, we would not receive. We are no longer eligible for Title I. You kind of remember this in and out that we're in. And we were not eligible in 1920, then we were eligible in 2021, and now we're not eligible again in 2122. Thankfully, in a lot of ways, we were eligible last year when both ESSER2 and ESSER3 were allocated. ESSER3 allows us to, the dollars that we expend on this can be used through the end of the 2023 school year. So our proposal is actually not about this school year. This proposal is about 2022-23. To continue a couple of the additional programs that we have going on this year. You recall, we talked about ESSER3 last May when we talked about

151the ELO grant. You might remember the ELOG as we called it. We actually, you approved ESSER3 at that time. This formalizes that approval. This is a plan required by the state, really is required by the federal government because these are the federal dollars. And what it highlights is aspects that are not. It's kind of like the federal addendum that we'll bring to you yearly. It includes pieces that were not included in the LCAP. So this plan actually speaks just to the ESSER3 dollars. It speaks to what's not in our LCAP specifically. 20% of these dollars are required to be basically in student intervention. And we're actually asking you to approve all of them going to student intervention. So a large portion of it would go in order to keep our libraries and our library text

152open for access to extended learning opportunities and tutoring. And then also to continue the literacy program for another year. Which otherwise, we may, both programs may be in jeopardy in 2022-23 without these dollars being allocated for it. It was extremely clear in our engagement process last year, as you recall. We included ESSER2 and 3 in that engagement process. And it was abundantly clear that the libraries were a fabric of San Carlos and having access to libraries and access for tutoring before, during, after school was super important, as was our bringing back our literacy programs. And so I bring this to you for approval tonight. Happy to take any questions. Christine, did I leave anything out? These are 110 tons, even though we're spending them in 2022-23. Trustee, any questions regarding the ESSER3 fund? One other

153thing I left out. So you'll approve, assuming you approve tonight, we'll move this forward to the county. This is another plan that has been approved. You just said that the programs that we're funding this year, we would use, we've sort of already allocated funds as well to keep those programs going in the following school year. So all of the money has essentially been allocated? Correct. Okay. I just think it's interesting. I want to note that there's been news about this lately about, you know, use it or lose it because it's federal dollars and some districts have had such a windfall, if you would like to call it that, that they don't know how to spend this money. We are not in that situation at all, but I am very glad to hear that it is

154all being allocated for intervention kind of, you know, because honestly, some have so much money they don't know what to do with it. Like they might, I don't know, go build a new playground. I don't know what the restrictions are, but what I'm saying is that we're using it for what it's intended for and it's going to, it's great. I can tell you some school districts are using a large allocation of this for PPE or testing or those types of things, also allowable expense. And, you know, and they have generally those districts have much more money to spend and or their general fund is it better, you know, they just have a very large reserve. Yeah, I think I would just like to point out it was enlightening to see how some of the money

155was allocated in the sense for one-time costs, but it wasn't necessarily long-term investments in education, which is frustrating for districts like ours. But I think it's frustrating for everyone in general that is at the line that the consultants will win. Let's come on up. Is there an approval for the 6G or more questions? I remember approving this earlier, so happy to continue the formalization of the plan that we formalized in our formal book. Yeah, so I am happy to move approval of 6G approval of the ESSER III Expenditure Plan. All right. Thank you, Irene, for the second motion. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, sir. Volunteer, please say if I say aye. Aye. Any opposition? Hearing and seeing none, don't carry five. Zero. Right. I will take H. So as the form you're aware

156is, when we went into the pandemic, the Brown Act rules were altered to allow for easier teleconferencing by the governor. We came back earlier, last year in June, to meetings in person. And then his executive order was expiring September 30th. Some districts, some cities probably still have not returned to good person's money like us. So recently it was passed, I believe it was October 1st. What was passed was the rules that would allow for continued teleconferencing. The good news is, between when this was posted and now, we did get some legal clarification. So we can continue meeting like this in a hybrid fashion regarding public comment and how we take it in that regard. Since we are here, people can still come to the district office for public comment. However, what would change for us

157is we have used some meetings where we are all seated via Zoom, and those would go away. So we kind of have to meet in person if we are going to meet. Or if we wanted to have meet via Zoom, we'd have to do it completely via Zoom in that regard. We still have some ability to have telephonic, what the Brown Act legally called it, to do Zoom for one of us to be remote, although it's not suggested for a variety of reasons. One of which is there's just a natural delay with Zoom. So it makes it a lot harder to communicate to be a part. So there are things that are maybe intent just voting. You don't want to be behind in the conversation, or as we've had a couple of times, just forget

158to hear or turn on the mute to know what's going on. So it is suggested people are here. Additionally, for us, the reminder is always is that you have to basically make your space wherever you are available for public comment, which I would say is even though most people may not think that someone's going to show up at your house the day it does happen, it would be a problem for you. So it's something to consider and think about as we go through. But if we wanted, before I unilaterally decided, I felt it should be brought to the board to have the first question of if we wanted to explore or have the resolution go back to remote meetings, we could do that. We just have to make the finding that was proposed currently to

159be under that third problem. That's why we would have to basically find a majority vote that there would be some risk to help having attendees in person. I think that may be hard given me personally, the comment would be that may be hard given the fact of having kids in school and saying everyone else there. But like I said, I can't do it all by myself. So I'd open up to anyone else if they'd like to make comment or advocate one way or the other. And so, Neal, are you recommending we accept this resolution or are you recommending we reject it? I would recommend we reject the resolution and not vote on the resolution because if we approve the resolution, then we could be going back to Zoom meeting. So I would recommend we reject

160the resolution. Agreed. One other thing I guess I would also add is we fortunately have had a, our meetings are not like a recent SNL sketch that you may have seen. So we fortunately have had the ability to. Can we add that to the record to the notes, the link to this SNL sketch? So we are able to maintain the public comment. I think there's a hybrid fashion. I think it's probably something we should always think about and go forward with, make sure it's working, that we can really do the business appropriately in the districts without interruptions. County Council has recommended that you may think against it. I think we as a board historically have always been very pro, the more people show up, the better we run as a district. So far, I believe

161it's been doing that. I'm open to obviously being able to have a difference of opinion, but I would like to continue to do it this way. It's kind of a hybrid fashion. I mean, if we didn't have Alejandro and Veronica, it would never work. But thank God they're still here with us in the meantime. But that's something we'll probably continue to evaluate throughout the rest of the year, just so everyone is aware in that regard. But I just hope this is an opportunity to talk about it, discuss it any matter if anyone wants to make any changes to what we're doing or have anything else that you're left on the bench for that as well. So, Neil, I think you're recommending that we continue meeting as we are now, which is we're here in person.

162Folks can attend via Zoom and make presentations and we can take public comments in probably a couple formats, right? We can continue to take them online or folks can show up here. Correct. Yeah. What I like about that is that it does kind of maximize public participation. It's stressful to come here with kids and dinner hour and stuff like that. I like the way we're operating now. My thoughts on it are I think it'd be healthy to commit to a timeline to doing it and revisiting. The last thing you'd want is something comes up in a public comment and then you say, we're not doing this anymore. It's better to really set a clear guideline. Six months or the rest of the school year or some sort of thing like that I think would be

163fair. And then the second is when people come here physically, are they able to get up at the lectern and voice their public comment rather than have us read it? We will not read public comment anymore. Someone tonight, people, we still even give one more option for those who it can be posted to the agenda so others can follow up and see what was said as well. But yes, people can come in. And on Zoom, can they now voice their own public comment? Correct. We still allow people on Zoom to voice their own public comment. Okay. The issues that may occur, we still have a policy about timing on topics. So if there's a large crowd that shows up here and large crowd, so the decisions may have to be made on how long or

164who goes first or who goes second in those regards. We haven't had that issue yet, but it's something just to be evangelized. You know, I think the history has shown that for sometimes when we've had a lot of people, but the sentiment, the comments were becoming like we did set a time limit. Sometimes public comment would have to be limited to 20 minutes in total. Sometimes you'd hear back down to like a minute or two just so we could hear as many people as possible. Yeah. The example just would be if 40 people are here and there's 50 people online, we're probably not going to get to 90 people. Yeah. But you know, if someone online feels like they were slighted because they weren't here, it just makes sense. Oh, do we alternate or something

165like that? It's just something to think about if you go forward. So I'm in favor of continuing status quo. And you know, I think that the remote, the ability for the board members to remotely participate in the case of like an extenuating circumstance, I would want to be able to enable that. Like if you have a parent who's in the hospital and you need to fly where they are or things like that, so long as we're defaulting to being here like this group in person and then others can participate both ways, that's what that's my view of what would be optimal. And in terms of other trustees or other board members? Yeah. We can always look at it. I guess that's the point. I would default to if something is going on in your life,

166probably attend to that first than doing the other way around. But given certain, I don't want to say that's a set rule given the things we talk about. More of a norm rather than a rule. Yeah. More of a norm that you would not necessarily take the time through personal matters. But if there is things that require all of our attention, that's to make sure that everyone's here at some capacity or other. I have one comment. I agree with what has been said and I understand the reasoning behind having the timeline for review, but I also think that it's important for us to reserve the right to given the, what can happen with online comments and the legal limits on what people can do and say and how they, not having to identify themselves or

167keep their cameras on. If that became an issue in a meeting, I think we would have to reserve the right to change that for the next meeting if it's at the point that we couldn't do our business because we have 30 people online named Mickey Mouse without their cameras on and saying a bunch of stuff, which legally, that was the example she gave as something that people could do. So I think it would be reasonable of us to change course or something like that. I wouldn't expect, but. I think the good news is we can put it on our agenda as well for next week in our topic for the government to trees on, knowing that these issues will come up as we go forward. All right. So do we need to vote to not

168approve this one? No, if there's no, I'm going to assume there's not going to be a motion to approve the resolution. So it will be marked down as not as no motion. I'll then move on to 7th, a perspective on the side letter of the SCCA of regarding. All right. Thank you, Neal. As we talked about a number of times at this point, maybe 130, it's the most recent update. I'm happy to say that we kind of were on the right track. And we are providing students that have often intended to study, which at this point is seven students program. They've been working with our special assignment to engage with the students daily, make sure that they are, this side letter allows us to change teacher of record from their current future. So these students

169are still enrolled in their class technically. So they were supposed to have Mr. Barber on day one, technically in power school. So they have Mr. Barber now, even though this side letter allows us to hire records to take the screen program that will then become their true teacher of record. I'm happy to say that we've got the majority of them. We have four positions for a one position for third graders to be loans at this moment. And like Doris teacher, we really like to hire a math teacher. To no one's surprise, probably in this room is that I would have a math teacher post that for someone like myself. This side letter allows us to pay a little higher than our normal hourly rate, $40 raises the question daily. Any questions for Hans in regards

170to the side letter? Hans, thank you for working on this and thank you for the negotiating team. I'm always a big fan of when you can offer more ways to be involved in each salad and tape, but I do appreciate, I think let's work together on that. I always think those are big parts of our district. So I appreciate your comment. Is there a motion for 7A? Move to approve 7A. Thank you, Wendy. I'll second it. Here we stay by saying aye. Aye. Any opposition? Hearing and seeing none, that will carry by zero. Okay. Back to you, Hans. I believe for the other side of the assignment side. Fair enough. That's correct. As I said earlier, this is our Sunshine's proposal to SCPA. Does require formal approval by the President. Any questions regarding the proposal's

171partner is going to bring it. The motion 7B, the SCSE Sunshine proposal. I move approval of 7B, SCSE negotiation sunshine proposal. Is there a second? Second. Sarah, all in favor, we stay by saying aye. Aye. Any opposition? Hearing and seeing none, that will carry by 12. Okay. And now on to 7C, quote AB1240, CSEA public disclosure of what's important. At the last board meeting, the board approved the tentative agreement between CSEA and the school district. Okay. The agreement was pending the CSEA ratification, which happened at 5 p.m. that night. So this is the final process, the final step for the CSEA agreement. So we're asking the board to approve the AB1200 CSEA public disclosure of the collective bargaining agreement. Thank you, Christine. Any questions for Christine regarding the agreement? And just Christine and I, for

172the people at home, nothing has changed since the last approval. It's just now the final formal step after the ratification. All right. Seeing and hearing no questions, is there approval for 7C? Can I ask a quick question? Go ahead. So what, this is the public disclosure. Then does this document get posted somewhere or what? It goes to the county office. Okay. And then they post this information and do this. Basically, they're saying, yes, you have the dollars to do this. Got it. Thanks. All right. Any other questions? Okay. Is there a motion to approve 7C? I'll move to approve 7C, the AB1200 for the CSEA public disclosure collective bargaining agreement. Second. Thank you, Wendy. All in favor, please state by saying aye. Aye. Any opposition? Hearing and seeing none, that will carry 5-0-12. All right.

173We are on to agenda setting. Christine's moving. Coming back, obviously, we gave Hans some guidance to guide and keep in the data. I'm sure he'll bring it back to us probably not anytime soon, but at some later point in the year. But anything else that you'd like to see come up? Obviously, as we're meeting once a month, anything that may be top of mind as well, it's good so we can add it to the agenda at the appropriate time. Next case, we will go on to our communications section. We're going to have a public comment. As you know, we can make public comments to know that the board cannot engage with the public or answer questions. We can only direct staff to potentially answer questions or look into a topic to bring back. I do

174not see any public comment on the spreadsheet to discuss. And then next up, we'll give a minute for any hands to be raised via Zoom. Seeing them there and having them here tonight, we will then move on to employee group comments. And then Dan. Good evening. I'm Dan Lanier, president of the SCTA. Angela Norton and I would like to appreciate Hans Barber and Dr. Frentress for our bi-monthly meetings. It's sometimes been weekly to problem solve and to build a great working relationship. And we really appreciate open, honest communication. And we've been able to solve some problems on the fly, which has been great. So we really appreciate that. And I want to applaud all of the teachers for their efforts. And over time, preparing for October parent-teacher conferences, goal-setting conferences. It's been rewarding, I know,

175for teachers to meet with parents both in person and on Zoom and to have our kids back in person. Just personally, I'm always surprised how intimate it is to talk to people about their children and to share about their unique personalities and their learning styles. And I'm often reminded that parents are pretty uncomfortable to come meet with a teacher sometimes. Like, what is my teacher going to say? And but it's been very rewarding and parents have been very kind. And I feel that after our third year of a pandemic school year, that there's lots of hope ahead. And it's been fun to have the kids back in person. And I know that teachers, principals, classified staff, district office staff, administrators are all working hard to do the best for our kids and their families. So

176I appreciate that. Thank you. Thanks, Dan. And I would like to say it's also as well as the parent-teachers and teacher conferences now, they're intimidating because just no one thinks better than I do. Okay, Lisa, are you out there? Lisa was unable to speak. Okay, well, Lisa, we'll meet you next time. In that case, I will move us on then to more comments. Anyone want to start us off? So tonight, I wanted to recognize Indigenous Peoples Day, which is on Monday. So next Monday is not just a local school holiday, it's Indigenous Peoples Day. There are 574 federally recognized Native American tribes in the U.S. and at least, I think, 200 other tribes that do not have federal recognition. So one of the many ways that there is to observe Indigenous Peoples Day is with

177the land acknowledgement. So tonight, I wanted to acknowledge that we are on the ancestral homeland of the Ramaytish Ohlone, who are the original people of the San Francisco Peninsula. Some ancestors of the Ohlone lived in villages along the peninsula for more than 10,000 years, and when the Spanish arrived on the peninsula in the 18th century, the area that's now called San Carlos was inhabited by the Lambchin tribe of the Ramaytish Ohlone. I wanted to honor and recognize our Indigenous community members, past, present, and future, and particularly among our staff, students, and families. All right, thank you, Sarah. Trustees, anyone else for comments? I'll go ahead and go. I'm reminded of why in-person learning is so special with the updates that we started out with today. Things like joining student government and participating in on-campus activities,

178clubs, et cetera, are just really hard to do when you're all virtual. So much of schooling happens in the outside hours, not just in the classroom, in the core subjects, and so when we talk about our commitment to whole child learning, I just noticed that our principals really embodied that in what they were talking about and in how they described their program, and I'm especially excited because many of the things we offer are rare for fourth and fifth graders, and I believe that we have a duty to explain to the elementary families how unique that four or five program can be for their kids. So I want to give a kudos to those four or five school leaders that spoke today, as well as the many people, the core educators, but also all of the

179people providing extracurricular wraparound support, et cetera, for the learners. And then the last thing I would say is October, when I was a teacher, was nicknamed Sucktober. It's a time with, it's the long run where Thanksgiving is too far away and there aren't that many vacations. We've got Indigenous Peoples Day, but that's about it. It's a really, really long run. And after a long summer, a long, like a hard period with COVID, I just want to give a shout out to our teachers who are really going the distance here in October to deliver great learning opportunities for our kids, especially given everything that Hans described about learning differences and kids being behind. So kudos to our staff, kudos to our family, to our learners. It just makes me very excited about where we are today

180and the future here in St. Carlos School District. I'll just go down the road. I think my theme that I wanted to touch on is just about the learning we had from last year going through COVID and what we're doing maybe differently this year. And how, you know, we had to adapt and try different things, and some things worked that we're continuing to do this year. And I just want to say I had, thanks to Dr. Frentress and Teresa Fox, I got to visit Mariposa and sort of tour around and see what it was like for kids to be back on campus. And like everyone's been saying, just, you know, to see the joy and the laughter and being there in person was wonderful. And I'm picking up, too, on the four or five schools

181just to kind of highlight their uniqueness. And one thing that on the learning, I think maybe Mindy had mentioned it, but they were doing weekly assemblies by Zoom. And they're still doing that this year. And it allows the leaders to partner and work together and collaborate and do these Zoom assemblies, and it seems to be going really well. And that's when, I guess, the kids that get the store cards, they get the store cards, you know, get recognized. And so that's just one learning. And that's like one way of, you know, again, just demonstrating how the leadership are collaborating. And it's just great. It's just great to see these examples. And so I just wanted to say that and the other piece I want to say as far as what's different or where we're sort

182of doubling down coming out of COVID is sort of the personalized learning piece. And I just, as a parent participating in the parent-teacher conferences this week, I just wanted to say, you know, how grateful I am to the teachers. I really feel like they know my kid, you know, like in a very short amount of time. Hans has talked about it tonight, the amount of assessments that's been happening and them talking to the parents about that. You know, we talked about some of the data. Have you seen that? I already test. Yes. And anyway, so I just felt so confident and just reassured that the teachers are taking that extra time and effort. I mean, they always do, but I just feel like there's been extra effort to really get, you know, understand where kids

183are at, what their strengths are, where they need to work. So, yeah, so I think there's been a lot of learning and sort of doing things a little differently this year. And I really appreciate that. Thank you to all your extra effort to the teachers and our leadership. So well said, so I won't duplicate everything because I just plus plus all those sentiments. I will say that I think tonight, I think you just saw like why like getting an education in San Carlos is so special. You know, Megan, I think about how we support our students with IEPs and, you know, my child had an IEP here and I can say that they were just so well supported. And I know that, you know, it's very distinctive that some of the educators who joined San

184Carlos and, hey, they didn't actually, it wasn't so there's so much more collaboration here between our general education program and, you know, our special education teachers. It's really distinctive. And then so I think all of that and then just, for example, the report out from the diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging committee, I loved, please give kudos to the whole team, of course. But I thought Tom and Mindy did such a great job in just starting out with the stories and the why. And it was so clear that they were just like so committed to that. And I thought that emphasis on capacity building to make it sustainable. So I think that's something we can bring back. We should figure out the right tempo, like whether it's like two or three times a year, because I

185think that's something we want to stay abreast on. But throughout, no, thank you. Please thank the whole team. And to the teachers there, I don't get teacher parent conferences in high school. So wherever I think you'll always be the teachers in St. Carlos that I kind of remember when I think about all conferences, you know. Well, I like, you know, I said I'm getting time to always focus on why we do better here at St. Carlos. I think my theme this month is going to be like, you know, everyone always talks about how their school is a community. But I think what's different about St. Carlos is that it's not that the schools are communities. Most of the system of schools we have here are communities. And I think nothing highlighted that more than Dr.

186Prentice Hans and I met with a group of parents as well as doctors, medical professionals in St. Carlos to discuss our response, but also to discuss vaccines, specifically because many people are aware of the news. Vaccines are coming for kids 5 to 12. And they have agreed to help us start planning for it ahead of time. So to help with wordings that we get from parents who may be on the fence, to help with understanding the process, it's going to be dictated through the county. It's going to be dictated through the county. We have signed up to be a vaccination site here in St. Carlos. It's going to take volunteers, it's going to take help. But it's a goal of ours to make sure that, you know, you have access to it one way or

187the other. Maybe you can't get it at the speed you want for your health care provider. But we'll be able to, hopefully, one of our sites in town will be as difficult like it was with the adult vaccination before. To have that type of community where it wasn't just parents from one school, it was parents from multiple schools who interacted and discussed and met each other just makes it so much different. Right. And I think that's always what I like to highlight. And that's kind of also the themes I've seen throughout the night with our meeting as well in terms of how we support each other at different locations with our IEPs, how we do it through, you know, learning best practices through student councils, whether it be our student meetings we have or sword

188parties, things like that. We're a community. And I think that's the best part about it. We're a community that's going to have a couple things that are dictated down to us by the state a lot of the time, which drives a lot of things for us. As we work through some of the mandates in regards to vaccines, there'll be more information that comes about that. But I think it's something to always celebrate about why you want to be a student here and why you want to be a parent here and why you want to be educated here as we're a community. And I want to think I would appreciate that. So, Dr. Fentress, to you for the last word. Yes, I do have two things I want to point up. I know that we talked

189a lot about the statewide test scores and summer school scores, but I don't think it can be said enough that last year when faced with testing that many of our colleagues were really, really nervous about doing tests because of the experience that the students were having and how that might reflect on the community and what pride I have that we tested everybody we could. And we got nearly 95% participating. And yet those results are pretty strong. Now, it is true that going into that testing, you knew through your LCAP that there was a distance from standard that you needed to address for different groups of kids. But to look at what the teachers, the paraprofessionals, and the parents pulled off last year, it's pretty remarkable. And then if you look at the summer school data,

190it shows that we know what to do when we find some gaps. So I feel really excited about that and I think it's a lot to build on. And my second comment, I know a lot of people have talked about parent-teacher conferences, but as a former teacher, that week is so exhausting. As Dan Lanier said, those are intimate conversations. They're stressful conversations. Not all parents are comfortable that you know their children better than they do. And yet our teachers are bringing it. Our custodians are making sure that things are spic and span. Secretaries are stopping me and saying, hey, listen to this email that I got from a parent about how excited they are about this year. And I feel like these are real things to celebrate about our community. And I just want to

191give a tip of the hat to my colleagues out there, the teachers, the teaching staff, who not only brought it last year and continue to bring it and are pulling in really long days to meet with each and every parent in any way that they will so that we can continue to do the good work. And thank Carlos. All right. Okay. I will then take any public comment for closed session items. I've seen any public comment in request forms. No public comment here. I'll take a minute if there's any public comment to raise your hand. See no public comment on Zoom. I will then adjourn us into closed session. Thank you, everyone, for being with us tonight. I'll bring us back from closed session. We have two items to report out from closed session. In

192closed session, the board unanimously approved a settlement agreement in the case of parents, the San Carlos School District OAH case number 2021080246. The terms of the agreement include that parents release all past and future claims against the district in exchange for reimbursement of up to $50,000 in incurred educational related expenses. Additionally, in closed session, the board unanimously approved a settlement agreement in the case of parents, the San Carlos School District OAH case number 2021080292. The terms of the agreement include that parents will release all past and future claims against the district in exchange for reimbursement of up to $40,000 in incurred educational related expenses. Those are the only two items to report out of closed session, and therefore, I will adjourn us until our November regular week. Thank you.