Work Study Meeting

No content available.

[5] SPEAKER_31: But we also, excuse me, roll call I think is the first thing we do.

[10] SPEAKER_29: President Thomas. Here. Vice President Preciado.

[15] SPEAKER_31: Here.

[15] SPEAKER_29: Member Crocker.

[16] SPEAKER_31: Present.

[17] SPEAKER_29: Member Rodriguez. Member Nguyen.

[20] SPEAKER_31: Present. Great. I will be the acting president tonight. Ms. Thomas is on location. I think in Florida, is that correct? That's right, and so she'll be here during this session, closed session, and not during the actual meeting itself. The same thing is true for Mr. Rodriguez, Member Rodriguez. He will be here for, is it closed? Is he on there now? Okay, so we are waiting for him to call in then. Okay, sounds great. The first item that we have is the public comment on board We have two people that would like to make a comment. First one is Mr. Knoop.

[74] Cary Knoop: Good evening. You know, first of all, I just have a comment, just my personal thing, that the description is not very helpful for the public. I'm sure that board members know exactly, you know, if it's going to be about LCAP or other things. just sees imperative number one, and, you know, it's kind of vague. You know, can't make it any better than that. Okay, so when we talk about improving the academic performance, you know, I see a lot of resolutions, acronyms, things like that. In the future, we're going to do this. In the 21st century, we're going to do that. And at the same time, we've got to get all these things that are basically coming in front of the table, like, for instance, the LCAP plan. So in my, I must be very naive, but I would think that the LCAP plan will start looking a lot different than last year because we have now these priorities shifted. I know we want to focus on math. We want to make sure that our performance goes up. So, I mean, I hope that that is reflected in the LCAP plan, that we don't get a situation where we're always saying, no, we want to, we want to have big changes in this, this district, but in the future. So I want to, I would hope to see that reflected in the LCAP plan. What I've seen in the last few years, it's been pretty much the same. It's like about 95% is on AIDS. And then the rest is money. And some of that money is for bonuses or other cash incentives. I think it's very important that we look at that. And that we look, when we want to look strategically, we want to look at what are the you know, the weapons we have to attack this. And it's not just professional development. And I see a lot of focus on professional development, and professional development is very important, but it's not the all-encompassing solution. It starts with the kids, you know, teaching the kids to work hard. Nothing wrong with that. You know, rather than having a PBIS saying, like, well, you were not running today, or you were walking, or you were breathing normally, we give you a price. What about shifting that, saying that We really want you to work hard. We want to create a culture where that's respected, where people can achieve things. Everybody to their own level. It starts with the kids. The kids have to do the scores. We can have 100 teachers or 100 people experts, but the kids have to do it. So create a culture where you say academic excellence is important. I think that's one aspect. Professional development is important too. See where the problems are. My son, to just give an example, I don't want to talk about my son in general, but he's a fifth grader. He's doing great in math, but his class is one of 49 kids who get math in the library every day. 49, just a combined class. What worries me is that if you ask around, a lot of teachers or other educational experts say, well, that's OK. That's pretty normal. There's nothing wrong with that. That's where it starts. I think that's a problem. Yeah?

[261] SPEAKER_31: Okay. Second speaker before the workshop is Ms. Cindy Parks.

[275] Cindy Parks: Thank you. I would also like to echo Mr. Newt's comments regarding the vagueness in the agenda. It's also on my item to bring up is that it doesn't really tell you what it is. I know there's been other times where you've had workshops and you've had attached documents. I'm assuming that there are. that are going to be handed out, because they're on the table here. And it would have been nice to have that ahead of time. In line with that, I would hope that you would entertain comments and questions at the end of the discussion, because we don't know what is even being presented. Along those lines, though, just dealing with what is imperative one, it does speak about the excellence of teachers. And in line with that, I would like to address your guest teachers. They are your teachers when your full-time staff are absent. And you have an issue with getting guest teachers. And you have a lot of absences. I think that that was addressed in other meetings where teachers have a voice or concern because they're having to give up their preps and because there aren't enough guest teachers. And I think that for the health of that regular teacher, that they get their preps, that they're not overly burdened with having to teach during their prep to accommodate somebody else's class and then having to do their prep work at the end of the day, that perhaps when the LCAP is being formulated, I know you're working on getting a draft put together for this Thursday's meeting, but that in line with that, if you can give retention bonuses to staff like you did last year to the tune of $705,000, perhaps a portion of that can be set aside to augment the guest teacher salary because your pool has been down because New Haven and Fremont pay better. And I know from experience because my, we have family that has actually just gone into subbing and I've spoken with her a couple of times and she did sub here. But she definitely now is just working for Fremont. She has four sites that just continually call her back. And she can make better wages there. And I think that that's what you run into. And that's why your pool is low. So just something to consider that perhaps augmenting the guest teachers through wanting to have excellent teaching, it's not conducive for a classroom to be seeing videos when they just have subs. And that's what happens a lot of times. So thank you.

[430] SPEAKER_31: Thank you. Is there anybody else that would like to speak to the board before the workshop? Hearing none, we will go ahead to the workshop. You want us to go down the front?

[461] SPEAKER_08: Hi, Nancy.

[505] SPEAKER_20: OK, so is that all the types that you have, or you have mathematics?

[529] Maria Huffer: Does it say anything?

[556] SPEAKER_20: You should have a PowerPoint, you should have a math, a science, a language arts. So good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today. We're very excited as part of Educational Services to share some of the work that we've been spending a lot of time on and I think also hopefully building on your last study session. And so we're hoping to make some connections to that. But really take the time for the Board of Education to really start to look at some of the work that we started. So I have a PowerPoint that we're going to look at right here to the right. And you also have some handouts that we're going to dig a little deeper. So the first thing I want to really kind of center our work around is that, you know, what is at the top of all of this work? It's student success. But in order to have student success, we need to start with the underpinnings, which is really are the board direction to us. And so at the very bottom of this pyramid, you see our strategic imperatives. And our strategic imperatives are our underpinnings for all of the work that we do in Newark Unified. Above it, you see how the strategic imperatives are really feeding into the LCAP, the local control accountability and accountability plan. And that's a document and a living document that has community and parent input. It has staff input, but really, is also going to be the board of making the final approval on this and also giving input at the time of the public hearing. And of course, you know, the board is also invited to any of our public meetings as well to see how we've been moving around along. And I know that we've had some board members joining us over the last two years as we're building our LCAP. And then you see kind of like this little puzzle piece of the Single Plan for Student Achievement, or SPSA, as you may have heard folks call them. And you see how it's connected to the LCAP. Because the SPSA is really at the site, and that's really where the rubber meets the road. And you see how school teams, school site council teams, working with their principal and their co-chairs, typically a teacher, sometimes a parent. where they're looking at their site funds and ensuring that they are meeting their targets as aligned to the dashboard. So sometimes folks are saying it's kind of like little mini LCAPs, and I guess you could say that, but it's this puzzle that fits hand in hand with the LCAP for the district and then the site plans that are really digging deep on individual And we're going to go through the data to really show you what our targets will be.

[727] SPEAKER_15: And again, student SPSA.

[728] Penny DeLeon: These plans are SSC?

[729] SPEAKER_20: Yes. These are SSC approved. And the SIPSAs will actually be coming to the board for final approval in June. Yeah. And it's an annual document that comes forward. So strategic imperative one, providing academic excellence via equity and opportunities for all students. So I want to share that. As educational services came to be, so just a very brief history, I'm mindful also of the clock. In the summer of 2017, educational services came forward as a new team. So although the work has been deep and a lot of work to do, we are a fairly new team that's working to do this work. What we did was essentially, as soon as we started to form in the summer of 2017, we knew that we had to look at the current data that we had that was disposable to us and also have an inventory of programs and services. What we identified at that time was that mathematics was an area of focus for Newark Unified School District. And we felt that while we had to go, as the expression goes, go slow to go fast, there were some immediate stop gaps that we had to put into play. We could not wait another year of not having interventions or stop gaps in the area of mathematics. And so one of the things that we did was we immediately met with the department chair of the math department at the high school. And it was a new chair for the math department. We went with the principal as well. And we did an assessment as to the materials that they were using for math at Newark Memorial High School. And so at that time, we made some decisions internally and with the department chair. And we stopped using accelerated math. And we also made some decisions around springboard. Because as we saw, we didn't have complete data. We had incomplete use. And at the same time, we had students that had been struggling for many years in the area of math. And we also saw how It wasn't that all of a sudden the failures or the difficulties happened at the high school. We saw that we also had a commitment to supporting students since they were kindergarten. It wasn't a high school problem. Now deal with it. We needed to look at it as a K-12. So the stop gaps we put in was that. The other thing we looked at was our mathematical practices. And we felt that as a district leadership team that that's where we were going to get the most of the changes and change of trajectory in the area of mathematics. So we restructured our district leadership team meetings. So in years past, our DLT meetings were held every Thursday here at the district office. We were focused certainly in a lot of business that has to happen for our administrators. We did some professional development, but we knew that that wasn't getting to the math and the mathematical practices. So we immediately restructured the DLTs so that one of the meetings of the month, we were at school sites and we were doing instructional walkthroughs to support our administrators with understanding what are the mathematical practices. And so we learned from the teachers, to be quite frank, and our teachers We're already grappling with the mathematical practices, but a lot of times our principals, us as site leaders or district leaders, we weren't as well aware as to what those practices could look like. So we did some learning. We partnered with Silicon Valley Math Initiative, and we also looked at how to increase mathematical practices used at the school sites. And as you all know, parallel work was we started to do the math adoption process. And so there were a lot of different things that were happening, but most of the critical move was in the area of math. The other thing we did in 2017 is that we had educational services all get in the room and say we need to come up with what is really our commitment to the school sites. And you may have seen this posted around the district and we certainly put it on all of our agendas and we really lead our work through this statement. That if we as educational services focus on the four C's, collaboration, critical thinking, communication, and creativity, we ensure engaging rigorous instruction, we build capacity of our teachers and our leaders, we hold each other accountable as administrators, and we recognize that we're all learners together. Then our students will be high-achieving, responsible global citizens who possess critical thinking skills to successfully navigate the 21st century world. This is the commitment that Amy and Jessica, Bill Whitten, Leonore and myself, we have this commitment statement that we held ourselves accountable to in order to be of service to the school sites. So I want to share a build on what the superintendent has been sharing with you all. And this is our partnership with CCE. And I'm going to ask Amy to lead us through what our leadership team did last week. I know we've got one of our team members in the audience. Oh, wonderful, yeah. Two of our, two members in the audience. And I want, you know, we had a team go out and meet in Anaheim with CCEE. And what the superintendent asked was that we build on this continuous improvement model. And so you may have seen this. It looked a little bit thinner before. And so what Superintendent Sanchez asked the team to do was to really start to define what each of these areas really need to focus on. And that this will be the protocol that Newark Unified School District employees will use in all of our work.

[1075] SPEAKER_28: Working with CCEE has been really a wonderful experience for our team to come together. A continuous improvement model or a continuous improvement plan is not a new idea. There's a lot of research around kind of a plan, act, do, analyze model. So we're not creating anything that's brand new or It's innovative to us in the sense that we've made it our own, but it really does build on the work that Newark has done in the past with professional learning communities. And so that was actually the lens that we had. So PLCs, or professional learning communities, work that has kind of been implemented throughout the district in, you know, different capacities. So definitely there are certain departments at the secondary or even grade levels at the elementary that have taken it to heart and run with it and follow a similar model. This is the model that we used at our district leadership team with our goals that we developed. We developed SMART goals this year in mathematics and got into Java-like teams and analyzed our data and that also helped us with our walkthroughs and our study this year when we visited classrooms. So with our CCE team last week, we went ahead, so we had the structure, the analyze, reflect, develop a goal, action, evaluate. We like the idea of it being in a circle because it is a continuous model and we're constantly in continuous improvement. So that's just the work that education needs to do. That's our, kind of our living, charge. So we wanted to kind of structure a little bit though so like in thinking about how do we roll this out if we think of any organization so the school board what might be in the middle would be your solar initiative you're going to analyze and collect data You're gonna, based on that data, you're gonna develop a goal, hopefully a SMART goal that's measurable, that's time sensitive. You're gonna have an action plan, it's like, what are you gonna do? And then you're gonna evaluate, is it working? Do we wanna do this? Or do we need to analyze and reflect again? You can insert anything. One example that we used last week was bullying. So bullying at the site, like if we're gonna analyze local data at a school site, like that's an issue. What data are we collecting? we can put academic language in the middle. Facilities could put their facility plan. So thinking really not just about our academic goals but throughout the entire organization if we're always in a continuous improvement model and we have common language that we're using and that will help propel our district to continue to grow and move forward. So a couple pieces to add.

[1232] SPEAKER_08: The first one is really just having kind of an a mental model for the district to kind of refer to in how we do business. The other piece that's an assumption of this model is that we do everything in teams. That's kind of how schools and districts should work. And this whole idea of collaboration and the team part's important because one of the key elements of the improvement model is that we build capacity. And this is not somebody flying in for a day telling us what to do, but how do we wrestle with it ourselves? The intention of that is to have more capacity within. But I wanted to just mention those two pieces. Thank you.

[1271] SPEAKER_31: I have a thought here, too, just in terms of visual things. This seems very static. I think the spring is being dramatic or active, so that you are going and you're going. In my mind, I saw this, I thought, slinky. It just goes and goes and goes. Yeah, it's never ending.

[1290] SPEAKER_28: That's perfect.

[1290] SPEAKER_31: Right, right. And it hopefully improves. Each time you do, it improves in terms of the process.

[1295] SPEAKER_28: Great, thank you.

[1302] SPEAKER_20: So we're going to be building on this, and this is going to be how we drive our work, as you said, in all facets of the school district.

[1309] SPEAKER_15: So, in terms of that, this improvement model, Maybe it would be helpful if we're going to be kind of moving to this model that when we have presentations in terms of goals that it's kind of outlined in this way, like here's our goal, or here's what we analyzed and reflected, here's the main points, here's our goal, here's the action steps, and then this is the date by which we're going to have the evaluation. At least from our perspective, here's the program. Especially when we're investing resources and making sure. So then that way it's outlined and we have this document that we hold ourselves accountable to.

[1347] SPEAKER_08: It could easily be a school report. around this and they walk us through how they did it. It's a good process.

[1354] Nicole Izant: Okay.

[1356] SPEAKER_20: So as we look at strategic imperative one, we certainly adhere spelling out what a SMART goal is. And I know a lot of us have seen SMART goals, so I'm not going to belabor it. But what I think is the most important point here is that it's measurable and it's time limited, right? But it's also relevant. What we're going to bring forward and share in a little bit is around really our work plan. And I know the last time you all met, you were looking at a blueprint and how that could also get the message out. And of course, in a few weeks, you'll be seeing the LCAP. And I think what we'll do at the end, talk about what all of these documents and how they're serving and communicating within the district. So what I'm going to share with you next is that we have a work plan, and we're going to probably start with ELA. Oh, excuse me. We're going to start actually with the dashboard. But in a little bit, so we're going to show you ELA Mathematics and Science. And what's in progress right now is our Social Science and our College and Career Readiness. So I'm going to have Amy walk us very briefly through the dashboard. And I want to recognize. It's so easy to understand. Laura Forrest is very creative and inventive. She supports ed services and came up with, as you see on the right hand side, this tree. that speaks to the pies and the colors. And so as we start to get more familiar with the dashboard, we're gonna try to also kind of start using some of the same symbols with presentations and to really make sure that our audience and our communities is getting better and stronger first in it.

[1447] SPEAKER_28: So I'm gonna let Amy take it away for the next part. Okay, so yeah, we'll come back to it. Do you wanna do it along with it? Okay. So let me just talk to you really quick, because this is actually like an hour workshop, the dashboard. So let me try to give you a quick little understanding. We're gonna start. So with the academic indicators, of course, they're not the same in terms of the metrics. So ELA has a different metrics than the mathematics. And there's two areas that, or two kind of parts on the chart that we need to pay attention to. We need to pay attention to the level, and they call it distance from three. So distance from three is where we're trying to achieve, and that equals zero. So that's standard. So we're trying to just, okay, so if you're thinking about distance from three, and we're gonna start, and I'm gonna talk to you about that, because that's where our goals are centered around. Distance from three is zero, meaning standard, that all students have met standard. We want to be three.

[1507] Rachel Bloom: At least three.

[1510] SPEAKER_28: At least three or above. So we're gonna talk about kind of where, we're just looking at Newark Unified District and all schools have their own data points. But we're going to look at where we fall in status. And the status are very low, low, medium, high, and very high. So we have to pay attention to that column. We also have to pay attention to the change action. Because I think the shift at California and the new California way is that we're moving away from API. or having one score or a ranking of a 10 school because the feedback from that old model enhanced our testing was that it felt punitive to school districts. So it didn't really show the growth or change that were happening in all the school districts. So they're trying to show us in each category where there's growth or celebration that we can build upon. So the change rate, so we'll look at depending on where we fall in status, and then if we increase or decrease, it identifies a color. Now, we definitely don't want to be in the red, and if we're in the red in two indicators, then that puts us in differentiated assistance, and we work very closely with the county. If you're here for a while, you can relate to program improvement. And fortunately that's not where we are, but we definitely have some categories that we're taking a really close look at and having to address because orange is very close to red.

[1597] SPEAKER_08: So we weren't selected by the county to be a differentiated system? We were not. Which is a positive thing.

[1602] SPEAKER_20: There were seven districts in Alameda County that were identified.

[1606] SPEAKER_28: So I'm going to talk a little bit about ELA. Can I have a little cheat sheet here? Okay, so what we decided to do, so also keep in mind that the indicator is new and not all the indicators are out or released yet, and the state is also trying to decide how they want to show cohort growth among students or school districts. So there's still a lot that we're trying to understand about the dashboard and then how to identify goals ourselves. Also keep in mind the goals that are on this plan are 2016, which are now outdated, right? Because our students are currently taking the CASP and we're very soon gonna have new data on our students and probably need to adjust our goals. So it's, you know, know that it's kind of in pencil, right? So if we look at 2016. I'm sorry, this is ELA. Oh, thank you. When I look at 2016, and if you guys could follow along, it's under our Beliefs and Research. Do you want me to click to the next slide? Oh yeah, that'd be great. Thank you, that way the audience can see. So, it shows that we are negative 21 points to three. So remember I told you, zero is where we want to be, so we're 21 points below zero. That puts us in the status low category. So we're in orange. You also, so when you go on the California dashboard, it'll also tell us our change rate, so if we dropped in status, so like if we maintained, like we didn't change at all from the year before, or we dropped, then that can affect our color, okay? So I'm just using a baseline, and we're currently at orange in ELA for all students. So when we were developing our goal, we know that five points is a pretty, pretty significant, rigorous goal. And we wanted to also mark a multi-year goal, so change over time. So we kind of re-approached it by looking at, at the end of three years, if we had an average of five points increase in that score, what color would we be? So we're almost green. If we were to maintain the score over three years, we would be six points below. The next status would be medium, which is five points below. So then you might ask, well why wouldn't you put another point to get us to green? We're also wanting to be sensitive about what is attainable and make sure that we have a clear understanding before we really dig deeply into the goals. This is a new indicator and we want to see what our current scores are and then make appropriate adjustments. But we also felt that it was important for us to set a high standard of what we would like to achieve so that we see movement over time. So moving from orange to yellow is a positive thing. and we would be on track over time to continue to hopefully reach green and blue.

[1777] SPEAKER_20: And I want to insert here that as you see the SIPSAs that are going to come forward, every elementary school is going to have their distinct targets. So you'll see that some schools are already at green and they're moving to blue. You'll see other schools have ways to go. But these are the district targets for the incoming year.

[1799] SPEAKER_28: So we have all our significant student groups.

[1802] SPEAKER_08: Oh, sorry. President Thomas, did you want to say something?

[1807] SPEAKER_32: Well, yeah, I have a question. When did homelessness get added? I never knew that homelessness was part of it.

[1813] SPEAKER_28: This year. Yeah, this year it's a new indicator that was added. And it is a red indicator for us in graduation rates. So when we met with the county, they were really adamant about us making sure that we are identifying that student group and addressing it in our indicators.

[1833] SPEAKER_31: Do we have a number in that student group?

[1836] SPEAKER_28: I don't have it at the top of my head. I can look it up for you. So you'll see, and I know we're short on time because we started a little bit late, but I wanted to also just point out that for our EL group, our homeless students, you know, socioeconomic disadvantaged students. We also pulled out our African-American data because that was an outlier being, you know, a significant group that we needed to look at, as well as our special ed population, which is, and I've talked about this with you guys before at the beginning of the year, about that's an area that we need to take a really, really close look in how we're supporting our special ed students. So you'll also notice, though, that we had a really rigorous goal that we've added because we want to show that Tremendous improvement needs to happen in these student groups. So we did five points for all students. We put a pretty high goal of 10 points for our student groups and then for special ed 13, which doesn't get us near to where we need to be, but we also wanted to show that this is a really important charge and also want to be able to celebrate growth over time. So like I said, this is a new process for us and I know new for all of you. So this is where we'd like to start and then we'll continue a dialogue with you and getting feedback as well. I have a question. Stakeholders, yeah.

[1916] SPEAKER_32: If we use 10 points for the subgroups, won't that have an impact on all students getting that more than 5 points?

[1929] SPEAKER_20: for years? Yeah, it could. It should. And I want to stress that what we're doing is that we're also building our baseline. So I envision that although these are our targets for the next two or three years, when we go through this process again and we get the new data, because kids are testing right now, I would envision that we would make some adjustments as well.

[1955] Bowen Zhang: So can you, under all students, where it's negative 21 points, which is orange.

[1962] SPEAKER_28: But I'm not sure. Don't look at math. It's this one, ELA. Oh. It's different, yeah.

[1967] SPEAKER_20: Sorry. They're different. I know. I know.

[1969] SPEAKER_28: Sorry. We did it as well. And actually, I was like, oh, we're all green. I'm like, no, we're not. I thought it was math.

[1976] SPEAKER_20: So I know. But your point is well taken, Member Thomas. I would foresee and hope that if we're really focusing on some of these lower achieving groups and if we make that push and make those targets, that will help the all students and then we will recalibrate again. And I think that's important about reporting to the board, reporting to the community that It's that continuous improvement model and saying, okay, what did we do to get those wonderful results? Okay, let's go through the continuous improvement model again and let's reset targets and let's keep moving. It can't be just, okay, we're going to put this on the shelf and not look at it again until we test again. We're going to have to keep looking at ongoing assessments, what's working and making changes.

[2021] SPEAKER_28: Am I talking about, are we going over all the data and then going over the work? Yes. Okay. Okay, so math. And know that this is an area that we've identified and are targeting this year to do a lot of research and identifying programs moving forward. So you'll see our all students know this is a different chart. So we're now looking at this one. It's not the same change rate and the levels are different. In some ways, it's a little more forgiving than ELA. I don't know if that's good or bad. And then we're hoping that the state doesn't change the status rates again, because they changed it from the spring to the fall, so we can't compare that data. But we shall see. So all students 29 points below zero, that puts us at status low. And that puts us in the orange range. And then we set a higher goal for all students, because we needed to see aggressive success rates in math over time. So we put a seven point goal. And at the end of three years, we would be 8.7 if we met our matrix. And that will put us at green. You'll see the different student groups. our ELD, homeless, socioeconomic, our African American students, and our special ed. Again, we did a 10 points for our student group with a 13 point target for special ed. And in all of those, there would be celebration of movement, but still, we need to continue to close the gap. Questions on that indicator?

[2133] SPEAKER_20: Okay. In terms of science, this is right now one of the areas of focus for us and also I think fairly important as we look at our district as a STEAM district. And so I wanted to share, and we will be coming back with more information for the next school year on this, is that we have a science leadership team. And some of the folks come up at board meetings and I think have been giving some updates and sharing. You've also seen Dan from the high school, the department chair of the high school, as they rewrote their science pathways. We came earlier to you. All of this is the work that we do with Bayside, with UC Berkeley. And as we did our science vision statement, the leadership team really is now in the midst of unpacking this and looking at a communication plan as we do this work. So an example is that one of the next to-dos is that for the administrators' retreat in August, as administrators come back, we're actually going to have our science teachers help to present what some of the work will be for the next school year. And again, that continuous improvement model, we are all learners, but we're learning from the content experts who are our teachers. And also I should say that, do you want to talk about the CAST test that we don't have scores for?

[2210] SPEAKER_28: Oh yeah, so we're going to have, so we're in our first, they keep changing the title, pilot, field test, we're in field test, and so our 5th, 7th, and 11th grade students are currently being tested in CAST, which is the New California Science Test, it's aligned with the NJSS. science next generation science standards so we'll have a baseline data for the first time this year on those assessments which we've been really hungry to have so that we have an understanding of what where are the gaps that we have in our science program that we need to fill and just have a better understanding of how our students are scoring in order to build a program for them.

[2249] SPEAKER_20: And next year we'll be going through the science, hopefully, so kind of a pilot adoption process, but building on what we currently have with FOSS and with the partnership with Bayside continuing for our teachers to get support on lesson planning and alignment and looking at new courses at high school.

[2267] SPEAKER_31: Tell me how the Makerspace involves itself in this.

[2270] SPEAKER_20: Yes, so the maker space will actually be... Well, right now, what I'm looking at, it's probably going to live in two areas. It's going to live in the science goals and targets, but it's also going to live in what we're still trying to develop, which is the college career readiness. And so we're still kind of, we want to meet with our teachers to really see where we take off from there. I know that part of the resolution is to also get a work group of sorts, so we have some experts around the table with our teachers, some of the businesses, and hopefully some Silicon Valley we're going to have a lot of people that are going to be able to participate.

[2309] SPEAKER_31: Folks around the table. So that will also inform the writing of of of this plan.

[2319] SPEAKER_20: But the question now is some are more well-equipped than others, some are more defined than others, depending on the expertise of the science resource teacher and perhaps the principal. So what you'll see in the LCAP and what you'll see also in this plan as we start to flesh it out is ensuring that they all have a base, but then looking at what the focus is. And in fact, today you'll see an item from Apple that we're going to build on the creativity strand of a Makerspace. So we're using Chromebooks for productivity, but what we needed was more creativity for these Makerspaces. So we're looking at iPads and the crayon, what they call these crayons and pencils that are coming, to be able to have the creativity modules that Apple puts out so that our teachers can have our kids be more creative in these Makerspaces. And highlighting the A in STEAM as well.

[2374] SPEAKER_31: So the maker space is all connected to tablets, to electronics?

[2378] SPEAKER_20: It's going to have different, so if I can paint a picture and I think, I know I heard that maybe we can even schedule some visits next year for the board to come see the spaces. They're all different. I will say that at Snow Elementary they have a green screen and they do more like movie clips and stuff. I know that at At RAM, it's more of the robotics and the little bits, and so she's doing more. It almost depends more on the expertise of the science resource teacher. So we're trying to kind of level the field of this is the base, but then what is it that students want? So tonight's item that's on the board is kind of the base for creativity, and it'll be a focus on iPads, but it'll be more clips, garage band, and there's the other two Apple parts that come with the iPads. And I can talk more about it as the item comes up at the open session, but that's what we're in the middle of doing right now is establishing the base, having our teachers inform what that should look like, but then bringing in this perhaps a work group or a council of some sort to really tell us how far do we go. But right now, it's uneven. It really is.

[2447] SPEAKER_15: And is that planned for all schools?

[2449] SPEAKER_20: That's planned for all schools, yes. Yeah.

[2456] SPEAKER_31: In my mind, the maker movement involves a lot more than electronics. Correct. I mean, if you look at what's happening in the general population in terms of fabrics, in terms of creating things. And so I'm wondering if that's something that you are interested in doing. And I'm not sure how comfortable the science teachers are in doing this, because it's a different set of skills, working with electronics versus working with things in your hands.

[2479] SPEAKER_20: Correct. And I think, you know, what we're also hoping to do is not just kind of lay this on the shoulders of the science resource teachers.

[2490] SPEAKER_20: to get more access or more support around this area but there may be a teacher who will say hey it's more about you know and in fact I'm thinking right now snow and I'm yes but I'm thinking about how snow elementary she actually literally has boxes of different stuff and it's like fabric squares and pipe cleaners and and it's and they're using it as they start to build Replicas or of a project and then I'm thinking about like the BG schools at BGI in particular where it's more project-based learning and there are a lot further ahead than the other sites, but they use their space to do more like kids around a computer certainly, but I think also building replicas and having some kind of a demonstration of a project, a culminating activity. So it does look different. More than anything, I think it's a dedicated space for classes to come in and to do work that really can't happen in their regular classroom or a special time to do that.

[2549] SPEAKER_31: There's the raft. I'm sure you're familiar with that.

[2556] SPEAKER_28: So, well, let's talk about this though a little bit. So before we get to next steps. So at the beginning, Ms. Salinas talked about, you know, kind of that pyramid of our work, right? Strategic impairment and strategic imperatives. We have the LCAP, you know, the CIPSAs and how that all drives our work. And we look at that as the what and why. and our job is the how. How are we going to make those goals come to fruition so that our students are successful? So we really struggled with how much information to give you in terms of our three year plan, because we don't want you to get lost in the weeds and the details. We just give you a snapshot in all of the three areas. I think it's also important, we're gonna start talking to you more about, we really need to shift away from Segregating the content areas, because if we're really going to be moving to being a STEAM or project-based focused district, and if you really have a deep understanding of Common Core and GSS standards, science standards, they're all integrated. and having really thoughtful conversations within the continuous improvement model about how we're integrating those skills and strategies and standards around student learning and outcomes. So we wanted to give you a little bit of a snapshot of some of the work. We started this work in summer 2017 in developing our plan in Readers and Writers Workshop. And then it's also expanded to our work with John Hattie's work, Invisible Learning, at the secondary level, where junior high and high school are coming together.

[2652] SPEAKER_20: So maybe we can have everyone just... Do you want to go through each one? No, not through each one, but I think if we look at the English language arts. So what, essentially, as you saw there, the targets are up above. We, you know, we have our... We're focused on writing. We're focused on writing. And then as you turn to the next page, it starts to outline, really, what the work plan is. And what you'll also see at the very end of it is also the communication and updates on progress and to the Board of Education. So maybe you can highlight a little bit about the coring work at the high school.

[2687] SPEAKER_28: Yeah. So the beginning of the document talks about our work with K through 6 teachers. And I've spoken to the board in my past reports around really creating a foundation because there's been an unequal implementation of Readers and Writers Workshop and how do we level the playing field and give access of really high level rigorous writing standards to all of our students through professional development and resources and ongoing support. So that's outlined in the first part. But I also want to make sure that we highlight the work that we're doing at the secondary level. So our ELA and ELD departments came together this year. They've done a lot of work around essential standards. and progress monitoring and benchmarking with their students. And so doing work around John Hattie's visible learning and identifying high-impact strategies for students is really the next level in that work. So they're a really great model of PLC. So that's why we started with that department. And the intent is for that to be a cycle of inquiry that continues beyond just one year. So they worked with identifying strategies they wanted to implement in their classroom and collecting data. coming back and sharing their data and making adjustments. It's actually been really powerful conversations to have the middle school or the junior high with high school to be able to start talking about common language, what novels and powerful instruction strategies they're using with their students so that they can support each other. So that's been a really great experience for our teachers this year and it will continue next year. They'll do year two of their inquiry cycle, and then we'll look at bringing on social sciences, as well as probably math. And then year three will be math and science, so we'll look at phasing in. We'd love to do everybody at one time, but our subs shortage and also being cognizant of the many wonderful things that are happening in our district. So that's something. And then really wanting to focus on what we know for college and career readiness is our students need to be powerful writers. So in Ed Services perspective, and that's really the culmination of having mastered, and that's true for our EL students as well, to have mastery in writing in all content areas is going to set our students up for success beyond our K-12 system. So that's why we selected that as a target. And then we talk about just kind of some of the other things that we need to do. We're working on designing a lab classroom, so where can we take our teachers that can watch their colleagues that have really mastered writing strategies and writer's workshop. We're also looking at what parent education do we need to do, and that's something that we're going to tackle in the fall, as well as how can we incorporate digital tools or a project-based model into writing and looking at, you know, an inquiry of study, as well as communicating to you in the public of what we're doing to support our students to be successful. So that's just a snapshot of some of the work that we're doing. Any clarifying questions?

[2888] SPEAKER_28: We highlighted just some of the things that we've been working on in terms of really focusing on mathematical practices and that's something that SVMI has really done a really nice job in supporting our teachers and understanding that that's a critical shift in common core math and that's something that Newark Unified hasn't taken on until this year. So it was really, really important that we kind of go back to the foundational work and the shifts in, so our teachers really understand the significant shifts in mathematics, and that's through the mathematical practices. And that's been our lens at DLT. So our lens is evidence of mathematical practices when we go into classrooms, and we've been collecting data on what we see in our observations and having conversations about developing next modules that they can do to train their teachers to take it to the next level next year. And we've seen great evidence of math talks, teachers dabbling in the problem of the month, which is equatable to a performance task that you might see in SBAC, as well as, what was I gonna say? Oh, and then also dabbling in the Mac and Mars assessment, so we get another way that we can get a snapshot of how our students are doing in math. And then obviously the math adoption, that's been a hot topic, and really looking at being really thoughtful in that process and identifying a program. Now that's a base program. We're still gonna need to do supplement, extensions, as well as support, depending on our student group, but we're really excited that you agreed with us in identifying a comprehensive K through 12 math program to have a base foundation of curriculum for our students. And we're really excited to roll that out and then see how that affects our scores in a positive way over time. I think that's it for that. And then the science.

[3011] SPEAKER_20: So, and the science document, as I said, is also in front of you. And really what this has really become, this is our work plan. This is, we go back to our commitment, as Ed Services, we go here to check, we ensure that we're communicating, but then, like, what are the next steps? What we're in the middle of doing right now is planning for the communication plan for certainly our continuous improvement model and how that really will permeate all work, right? But at the same time, also ensuring that we have this growth mindset, this is the new California way, the new California dashboard, and so it's going to be a lot of learning, but at the same time, we have to keep to implementing. We can't say, okay, we're going to plan all year and then we're not going to do it. And so what you'll see here is a work plan where, unfortunately, we cannot afford to plan all year. So you're seeing a lot of intervening steps that are all along the way. What you don't see here are kind of like the regular things, right? So you don't see here that we have to make sure that we have training around SBAC testing. That's something that we have to do every year. What you don't see here is some of the more compliance items that we do as a district. you don't see some of the everyday work of like, we're in the middle of our registration. So that's kind of our other work that we do, but what we thought it would be important is ensuring that we have more of the academic pieces that are here to ensure that we are implementing strategic imperative one. So there's that. What I wanted to talk a little bit about, and I don't have, I can't see the clock in here, but maybe it's better to leave some questions and comments, but I do want to share that we really see that we have about three documents, you know. This document is really our work plan that we share with the board, that keeps us on track, that is a monitoring plan, and that we're also keeping true to ensuring that we're presenting and updating the Board of Education, right? And also making sure that we're fulfilling our work plan. The other piece is certainly the LCAP. And the LCAP really gets to the dollars and cents. It's all in service of the same benchmark target. So you're going to see these same targets in the LCAP. You see them here. And what I'm hoping is that you're also going to see them in our blueprints, right, if that's where we decide to also drop them in. And then the CPSAs, the site plans, will have their own individual targets that are all in service of the district targets. In terms of the blueprint, I know that you all had a session around, I apologize I wasn't here for that, but I was able to watch and get a little bit of a flavor of perhaps how we can look at it. One of the things we were looking at is the audience, right? So what I'm hoping to see and hear from the board is getting direction on if the blueprint were to kind of be more the big picture for community members where it really speaks to these are the imperatives, This is the letter from the board of education president that shares like kind of the vision for the district. The letter from the superintendent. And also speaks to, I remember I heard a board member share that, how do we give the high level strategies in service of that? So I had another sample to, not to further, but I think to give more information for you all to look at and consider. And I'm going to pass this out. Did you send that to me by email? Yes, I did. I don't think it was part of my attachment, so I will do it as soon as I finish here.

[3234] SPEAKER_32: Yeah, I think it would have been helpful to have some of this information ahead of time for me anyway.

[3239] SPEAKER_20: Yeah, and I wanted the work session to be more also to allow some more time for communication and to get kind of some feedback. So we're done with this part and we can certainly go to questions and comments.

[3253] SPEAKER_31: I would like to have people in the audience that have questions at the last page on the back of the general thing. If that's where you would put your questions, I think it might be helpful. We are late in terms of getting to closed session. So if you would put those things and then give them to you.

[3271] SPEAKER_31: Okay. And then they would be addressed the next time. Okay.

[3275] SPEAKER_20: Yes. And I also, but I'm very, I'm very I really want to hear from the board also as in terms of direction for us as this is your work session. So if there's anything else that you would like to say.

[3288] SPEAKER_15: So I like, so two things. Maybe we should just be consistent in terms of language. We're using strategic plans. So if we say blueprint just because then So to define, so a blueprint is a document that, at least from my estimation, is like a 10 page document that is a big picture

[3318] SPEAKER_20: it has vision, it's got mission in there, it's got strategies.

[3322] SPEAKER_28: It's kind of more of a brochure of the work that we're already doing and it kind of encapsulizes and in a really nice way for the public to understand these are our goals, this is our imperative. Strategic plan tends to be a committee-based process where it would be multiple stakeholders, community leaders, and develop it together and that's essentially our LCAP. So That's why we were wanting from you what direction and what your audience is. If your audience is more PR for the district and saying, these are our goals, this is the work, this is what we're doing, then a blueprint would be the direction that you would go. But if you wanted to have another document that was really rigorous and comprehensive, ties in the LCAP, that would be usually a year-long process of a strategic plan.

[3372] SPEAKER_31: You have a lot of completed things. That's marvelous. But let's highlight the fact, maybe gray it, or some sort of thing, so that these are complete. And so these are things that we're building the other things on. So it becomes, where if I look at this, three-quarters of them are complete. And that's good. That's good. And so that would help direct people to what is not being complete, what needs to be addressed. So I think that's Anything that we can do to make it easier to read and comprehend where it is, what we've done, and what we need to be doing I think is really going to be helpful for people that don't know education.

[3409] SPEAKER_20: work plan that, and it doesn't have the, it's got some details that really is our work, but we thought it was important to share it with the board, because I think that also helps to give you a more complete picture as to when are you going to come present about, you know, the SBAC data, or when are you going to come present about summer school and how many kids we served, and did we have growth in summer school. So that's what we see.

[3433] SPEAKER_15: So my thoughts on that piece too are just I didn't see that when we were going to go over that data or come back to the board of these pieces, but to the point of the strategic plan, I see the strategic plan the way we've been discussing it. It incorporates all of our three strategic imperatives, not just the LCAP, because the LCAP is how we support the imperatives, right, as we outlined. So, and including the facilities master plan piece because the strategic plan is how we're moving forward everything with the district. And then what I would see this as would be kind of, and this is where my thought would be, this is the summary of those pieces from the strategic plan. So the strategic plan would be more of kind of the detail of, and a friendlier way of saying, We are now orange with the plan is for 2024, whatever the plan is for us to be green. And this is how we're going to, these are the high level things that we're going to get into. And then summarizing those pieces would be something like this, like a one sheet page, or at least that's what I expressed for my thoughts. I don't know, folks, because we need to have a 200 or 300 page strategic plan that outlines the specific goals that people can hold us accountable to. And then the one page for each section of like kind of I like this format, but just maybe like the color, like the dashboard, like this is where we're at, and then here's the goal for the next three years, and then kind of this looking format to read. Okay.

[3522] SPEAKER_33: Yeah, this is just number one.

[3527] SPEAKER_32: You know, the three documents you gave us, the one for finance, the one for math, the thing I find missing is To what extent, what is our success measure? To what extent are we measuring that goal? So if the thing we spent, we could do this the way we wanted to, or is it completed, you know? And where is it if it isn't? Let's see, that pathway plan, is that on his website someplace?

[3561] SPEAKER_28: So that's usually, so that's the local data information that I've been sharing along the way, like when I did the highlighting, the writing work that we're doing with the coaches. So we are collecting local data around that. So that's something that I think would be really, I appreciate that feedback because that's something we can add to the plan in terms of what assessments we're using to collect completion, because that would be confusing when you looked at this, that we didn't note that specifically. So it is actually on our PLC document. We have another working document that we do that outlines all our assessments. So that's what I was saying, too, about how much do we show you in terms of our, you know, all our work, because it's It's a lot, and it's multiple pages. So we have our own, as Ed Services, our own PLC goal that goes through all of these action items, as well as the assessment that we need and benchmarking we're collecting along the way to analyze. Because we always go back to our if-then statement and our continuous improvement model. That's a longer session for us to go through with you.

[3628] SPEAKER_32: Are they encapsulated in SMART goals?

[3632] SPEAKER_28: Yeah, we're happy to show you our SPARC goal. We actually grappled with that about, do we show you that? Because it's a lot of information, but we're happy to share it.

[3641] SPEAKER_15: We have a SPARC goal. So the last one, because we have for the strategic plan, based off of the sample that you provided, it had a format for saying, these are the goals, right? So if we, I guess for me, if we can stay with that because then it feels like we keep on changing and if we're changing here like every meeting, like how are we going to expect anybody on the other side to read it who's not engaged in these meetings? So let's have the goals outlined in in a consistent format, hopefully like the strategic plan that we kind of outlined like that, then you can add the colors and say the goal is to make sure all students are at standard, which means that you would be at green and where we're at. I don't know how to exactly do it, but I'm thinking like.

[3697] SPEAKER_08: I think, well, we have a little bit to process with this, but my general comment is The challenge with strategic imperative one is there's so much dense data. So perhaps the strategic plan continues as we are, and it might be linked to this. But this maybe is a deeper, or what we're looking for here is kind of an executive summary. And maybe it's more for academics, because that's our core work. Maybe we have this blueprint for learning that is an executive summary of all these multiple documents that kind of goes a little deeper. But I don't know. We need to wrestle with it a little bit. because this is really 90% of our work. So it makes sense this be more dense. But I think what we were after is just to let us process the feedback and we'll come back around again. I think part of what we liked with this was not so much the title in my mind, but kind of saying here's the problem, here's the strategy, here's the action we're taking. That's kind of the same rhythm that you wanted to see. And I think the other thing I'm hearing is We'd like to see the color coding making sense and what are we doing about that. And the idea relative to is it completed. This is really kind of a management action plan is what I'm seeing here. So let us take the feedback. I know we're out of time.

[3772] SPEAKER_15: So this would be like the summary of strategic imperative one, and then you have one for two, and then one for three. But the actual details of that would be more fleshed out in the strategic plan. Yeah.

[3782] SPEAKER_08: Or in this case, LCAP.

[3784] SPEAKER_08: It's the LCAP. Right. OK. Anything else?

[3797] SPEAKER_29: You just stay on the bridge. I'm going to hang up in this room and I'll recall you from closed session.

[3826] SPEAKER_31: At this point, we are going to close session. We should be back at 7 o'clock. That's our plan. Is there anyone that wants to speak to close session before we go? I will read them for you. Thank you. The closed session, we're going to be discussing 3.1, public employee, discipline, dismissal, and release. 3.2, conference with labor negotiator. 0.3, conference with labor negotiator. 0.4. a conference with labor negotiator, 3.5 conference with legal counsel regarding anticipated litigation, and 3.6 conference with legal counsel regarding existing litigation. We are now going to convene to closed session.

No minutes available.