Work Study Meeting

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[5] Elisa Martinez: Member Crocker? Present. Member Rodriguez? Member Nguyen? Present.

[13] Nancy Thomas: Do you think we should wait for a little while until Tom gets here, or should we begin? Tom is here. I'm sorry, Ray.

[20] SPEAKER_18: I think Ray's not coming till 6.

[22] Nancy Thomas: Oh, he isn't?

[23] SPEAKER_18: I don't think he's coming till 6.

[25] Nancy Thomas: OK, then we move ahead.

[26] SPEAKER_18: Please. I'd like to move down here for the study session when you're ready.

[84] SPEAKER_25: At least it is our people. OK, that's great. Our kids. That's great.

[99] Nancy Thomas: The graduation from a cell phone?

[101] SPEAKER_18: It's from our recent graduation, yes. Recent graduation. Yes, from Saturday.

[105] Nancy Thomas: Wow.

[108] SPEAKER_18: Hi, Tom. How are you? Wow.

[113] SPEAKER_18: Oh, good for you. So you didn't have to fly to this place.

[118] SPEAKER_18: I want to do a, I think before we go into the presentation, I want to kind of share with you a framework just for us to start mapping out staff reports and workshops. Nancy and I kind of spent some time just putting together a simple matrix, if you will. So this isn't like really for right now in the session, but if you have a place to take notes, it might be helpful. And so that's kind of the training. This is a kind of a laundry list of stuff we already talked about. And remember the sticky note that was attached? I've embedded that in here. So everything's on one page. So there's some for instance type of examples of things that you've asked for or you might want to see. So we'll come back to that after I walk you through the strategic plan, at least the framework. So part of what we've done is really tried to clean up the strategic plan. and make it really more our voice of what is NUSD. Certainly it's not a finished product. We have a few more iterations to get through, but it's starting to take more shape of what really sounds like what's going on in Newark Unified. So I'm going to go through, we have a superintendent message, just a letter to the community about the strategic plan. I'm holding a spot for a letter from Board President, which I think is just a good, nice way to, for someone from the board to.

[214] SPEAKER_18: No, I know, it's no, it doesn't, that's why we don't do it. Yeah, exactly, that's why we're here, to help me tweak it a little more. Yeah, I think. That's fine. From the board. Yeah.

[222] SPEAKER_25: It would be a much stronger thing.

[223] SPEAKER_18: Okay, great. So, Levy's taking notes for us on the slides.

[227] Nancy Thomas: Do you agree with that, Tom?

[236] SPEAKER_18: Great. That's easy. So when will we have that letter? I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

[244] SPEAKER_25: No, I'd like to have something by the end of July. Okay. I think that that's something that Nancy can draft and then we can agree to it. Okay. You know, whatever it might be, or someone else can choose to draft.

[255] Nancy Thomas: With everyone's help.

[256] SPEAKER_25: With everyone's help. Right. Okay. I don't want to take it away from you, Nancy. It's just, I think it needs to be.

[262] SPEAKER_18: This does have the revised mission and vision. The core values that were kind of a product of the workshops we've had on the tree with not only from last year but also, you know, the one we did with Sally Frazier and also CCEE. And then we have our strategic comparatives. We did the cleanup on some of the language that we caught when we kind of previewed this in agenda setting. Three strategic comparatives, those are the accurate strategic comparatives. I'm just talking about how we're trying to align all of our things into those kind of three major change levers, if you will. Strategy. This slide, we'll get into more detail. This is just kind of talking a little bit about the idea of continuous improvement. We're not trying to throw everything out and start over. We're trying to refine what we have, keep what's working, and work on what needs to be improved. which is really a large part of what the CCEE is supporting us to do, and I'll talk more about that in an upcoming slide. This is something that was added after board input, which was kind of having a, starting to form a strategic plan steering committee and kind of casting a wide net of representation from around the community. And also, helping with recommendations and improvements and helping not only guide the plan but also communication around the plan. And at any time, please stop if you want to make edits or an idea. We want to capture that. Do you have any idea about the size of this committee? It has to be probably at least 12 people and probably don't want it to be more than 30. Will it be around that? Depending on how we structure it, I think what would make sense is to make it a like a superintendent advisory committee, but I would ask two board members to be representative on it. Or we could make it a Brown Act committee. I just think that that adds another layer of responsibility that I don't know if there's a lot of upside to that.

[396] SPEAKER_25: So what is the purpose of this committee? To give you input, or is it to direct?

[400] SPEAKER_18: Well, to help us with the plan, to help advise me and the board on, hey, have you built a partnership with this entity? Or maybe there's a connection to Google.

[409] SPEAKER_25: So they're not in the business of constructing the plan?

[413] SPEAKER_18: No, no, but they're kind of a place where we would vet some of the ideas and concepts and kind of a sounding board, but let's talk about it. I mean, what do you think?

[420] SPEAKER_25: I think it needs to be really clear with the people that do this because sometimes people get on committees and they think that they have a different level of responsibility.

[429] SPEAKER_18: Generally, a steering committee, their role would be how do we market this or how do we frame this with the community? For example, are we on the right track with technology, is that kind of the industry standard. It's almost like the old career technical ed advisory council, advisory committees. That's kind of how I see it, but I'm open to whatever ideas you can think of.

[455] Nancy Thomas: How big are those committees usually?

[457] SPEAKER_18: Usually 10 to 15 people from different sections of, cross sections of industry. But I think it's wide open. I think our unique thing here is I could envision someone from UCCU, you know, from universities and colleges. I think that certainly NVROP. I don't think this is a group that meets every month, but I think that we need, but there's also could be some maybe Tesla or Facebook or so.

[494] Nancy Thomas: I don't know. I think of the Ohlone President's Advisory Committee. That's a big committee, but it's It's structured well to get input. Then I think of the 7-11 committee, and that's more like a no fewer than 7, no more than 11. People that are really rolling up their sleeves and working.

[518] SPEAKER_25: Well, are we looking for this to be a working committee, or is this an oversight committee? Because there's a difference. Yeah.

[523] Nancy Thomas: And I think we need to be really clear.

[524] SPEAKER_18: In my mind, more of an oversight, making sure we're on the right path, making sure that we're kind of In my mind, this group would have a more view to the future and be able to guide us, you know, are we headed in the right direction? Is this something that you think would be palatable? In terms of what we saw at our meeting, was it yesterday with the city? Yes. In the development of New Park Mall and the development of the Civic Center, This committee kind of would stay with us for a while. It's just kind of a community, a larger scale advisory committee to help us make sure that we're kind of listening to the community and help us modulate communication at minimum. I don't know if it would be a full-on decision-making committee. I really think it's more about input and guidance and having the board think about, you know, help us think about the things that we might not have considered

[587] SPEAKER_25: But we had a strategic plan steering committee years ago, if I remember correctly, in the beginning of the 20th century. And there was a lot of work that was being done, a lot of down-to-earth nitty-gritty work. And I think that using this term, people are going to assume that this is a working committee rather than oversight. So I think that whatever we set up in terms of expectations, you're going to create more frustration if it's not clear exactly what their role is.

[620] SPEAKER_22: I agree, if I can offer, because I'm sure we'll have to be able to be very cognizant of the LCAP committee, which is really kind of more of a, you know, coming to consensus, but, and so will that run parallel? I mean, I think those are all questions to consider.

[636] Nancy Thomas: What do you think, Tom?

[640] SPEAKER_19: So this is sort of a check in just to make sure that we're, the committee is not necessarily a working type of committee where the strategic plan needs to be revised every single year. But just to make sure that it doesn't get forgotten. And that this document is created and five years later, you know, we revisit it, right? So the committee I think is supposed to keep it honest to make sure that we're constantly,

[669] SPEAKER_18: And maybe it is more of a Congress type committee, maybe there's a different name.

[675] SPEAKER_25: I don't know. I didn't know about the history with that term. And there was a lot of people who were involved with it. So there was a lot of work that was done in terms of setting up expectations.

[689] Nancy Thomas: And that's where our original mission and vision came from.

[696] SPEAKER_25: A lot of good things came from it, but it was almost a four or five year kind of endeavor. And there were a lot of people in the community that were involved with it. So I think that if we are looking at a group of people to look and see what staff has designed and what school district has designed, and say that, yes, this is imperatively an important thing to me. No, this is not. As a community, I think that may be more We got more into the nitty-gritty of a lot of stuff. We did a lot of composing of visions and missions and that kind of thing.

[735] SPEAKER_18: And I like Tom's idea of just kind of a, almost like an oversight, but to some degree a sounding board, a kind of vetting of plans, a transparent, another transparent way to actually kind of communicate. Part of the goal of this committee, too, is that whoever's on it would carry some of this information back to the organization and let them know what we're doing.

[756] SPEAKER_25: Well, I think that's really what's really good about the Ohlone president's advisory thing is the fact that you're there one day and you give input. And then they work on that. So you're not following up with what they're doing as much as they're telling you how the input was impacted and what they did. And because of this input, we're going this direction. And so she's very, very good about every four months, three or four months, keeping the people that they're up to date and saying, yes, we heard you. And this is how we see it. your suggestion works or doesn't work, or it's not in the direction that we're going. And it keeps the, I hate to say the power, but it keeps the direction in the school with the staff and the board, which I think is where it needs to be. And I think the input from the community is really important, but it can run away with you.

[806] Nancy Thomas: And I think it engages everyone that's there and because of the feedback, you keep wanting to come back because you're not just being lectured at. You're really, they really are seeking your input and they're synthesizing it and they're working on it and then telling you what, like you said, what they did with it. It feels like the kind of committee that I want to be on because it does something and it means something.

[831] SPEAKER_18: I mean we could call it superintendent's advisory committee and use those alone structures and how we run the meetings.

[838] SPEAKER_25: The structures, I think, are very, very good. And they have a lot of very involved people from the whole area. So it's not just Newark. It's Fremont also.

[851] Nancy Thomas: And it communicates about Newark. It really is like a marketing committee.

[855] SPEAKER_25: Well, it is.

[855] Nancy Thomas: It is, yeah.

[856] SPEAKER_18: I mean, we call it NUSD Advisory Committee. I don't like to be just for one person.

[861] SPEAKER_25: Well, maybe we can come up with something.

[865] SPEAKER_18: Let us play with that idea a little bit. and give you some ideas. We're going to wrestle with this a little bit more, but I at least have an idea that we want to follow the baloney type protocols. I could talk with Dr. Browning about kind of how did they come to their name, and she might have some ideas, won't make sense. In the original iteration, I think, I'm trying to remember from remembering what Francisco had said, he was kind of thinking in terms of a group that would be kind of the, sort of the, I guess watchdog is the best word I can come up with right now, around STEAM. Are we heading in the right direction with this? The STEAM Advisory Committee or something. Maybe there's some aspect of that that makes sense here. Because that's part of the challenges, you know, sometimes in public ed, we don't always have our finger on the cutting edge technology where we see it going in five to ten years or even six months. Let me wrestle with that a little bit.

[926] SPEAKER_25: So if our goal and our purpose is to refine what the academic program is, then it should be whatever the goal of this committee is, whatever area we want to give input, we need to be really clear about what we're looking for before we ask people to come tell us.

[944] SPEAKER_18: Because this conversation came up on the heels of us passing the resolution. It was that night when we had the conversation, but we wanted to see something like this in the plan, and maybe that's kind of part of the role is you guys are kind of, this group would be the one to help us champion that resolution and give us advice on how we can best do that.

[968] SPEAKER_25: And so that means that we are looking at industry in the area as well as parents. When you talk about stakeholders, we're talking about, you know, a lot of stakeholders, and I think that The direction or the leadership of the group, you need to make a decision about who's going to be in the leadership role. Traditionally, the things we've had, we've had stakeholders in the leadership role. I'm not sure that's what we're looking for. So we need to be really clear what the purpose of the committee is, what input is important for getting back. I don't care what the organization is. It just is a matter of let's be true to what it is we're looking for the outcome.

[1011] SPEAKER_18: And not waste people's time when they shouldn't.

[1012] SPEAKER_25: Don't want to waste people's time.

[1014] SPEAKER_18: And I think that... Have meaningful input.

[1016] SPEAKER_25: And having it be a place where staff... I think I liked your term, synthesize. You know, getting things down to understandable stuff. I mean, I'm looking at the LCAP, 180 pages. No parent's going to be there. Well, Nancy would not talk about you. I did not. I mean, so I think that there are things that are there for us to drill down and check. There's also, there's got to be levels of, I don't want to say difficulty, but complexity.

[1052] SPEAKER_18: Let us take that back, and I'll meet with Dr. Browning. and get her kind of advice on it and bring it back with some kind of suggestions. I want to go through the next segment. This is the continuous improvement model that we've developed with the CCEE. It's still kind of under construction. Lettie and I are working with CCEE right now to refine some next steps, and it sounds like there's going to be some dollars behind it. How many dollars, they won't tell me yet, But we are scheduled to go with the team to San Diego in July. And unfortunately, it conflicts with the CSBA thing we wanted, that I was thinking I was going to be able to do. It's like this. In December? July.

[1097] Nancy Thomas: The strategic, what's it called? It's not a workshop. Leadership Institute. Right. Yeah. I'm going to go to that.

[1109] SPEAKER_18: So, I wanted to go to, but this conflict, so I have to go to the CCEE. But the good news is, as we've been talking with them, part of it is how do we take continuous improvement model, which is what this is, to scale. And they, we've been talking with them about starting somewhere, which would be math. Alignment of math, progress monitoring of math, professional development around math. And how are we moving in that direction in a way that's going to be more successful getting people to work in a team? And we have a unique opportunity now that we're moving to Big Ideas Math. So we've just kind of been, they're trying to get us to pick one or two very simple things. But it sounds like they're willing to fund it. And I'm still pushing with funding for communication. And they sound like it resonated with them. And then also some additional board workshops for the board to think about this idea of continuous improvement. Would you add anything to that conversation? Because you were in that conversation too.

[1171] SPEAKER_22: I think what was important in education, we see it a lot also, how do we get better at getting better? And it's something that can transcend departments, transcend school sites. And it's just the board can look at it as well. It's a model that's the way we do business in Newark. And what I particularly liked was the conversation around the action part, where you do it, you try it, then you evaluate it, and then you kind of, you know, you make the adjustments or the changes that you have to make.

[1202] Nancy Thomas: So it was a good conversation. The bottom line doesn't come out on the... It's not on the printout either?

[1227] SPEAKER_22: PWs. And so part of, as he's getting that, what we're looking at is that at the administrator's retreat, we would really start to unveil this with the administrators as we start to have them set, look at their goals and their success, and then how are they taking it back. You know, MOT, how are you going to work on this through the MOT department? Ed Tech, how are you doing this through the technology department of this whole, what we said was Plan, Do, Study, Act, but the Analyze, Develop, Goal, Action, and Evaluate?

[1264] SPEAKER_18: So getting people used to this improvement cycle, but also getting used to kind of not being fearful of data and that it's just something that we use in our work. It's not personal.

[1276] SPEAKER_25: Most everyone gets really frustrated with programs that start and you don't know what they're doing.

[1281] SPEAKER_18: And that's been good for education for as long as I've been in education. And also, at the board level, this is kind of what you guys have been wanting to do with the strategic imperatives. How are we analyzing them? How are we getting that return on investment? Is it working? Is it not working? Those are kind of recurring. And this would be a safe thing to adopt system-wide. But it's still, if they're putting some money behind it, it might be helpful for us to really develop it. But we'll have more.

[1314] SPEAKER_25: But you're setting up a culture of people approaching problems this way. And I think that's, so whatever it is that allows you to set up that culture. Right.

[1322] SPEAKER_18: It's really important. What I like about this model is that it requires teams. It requires people to work in teams, not isolation. And, you know, that's, that was, Nancy will laugh at this, that throws me back to total quality management. Remember when we called that? Oh yeah, TQM, oh my gosh. Back in, God, early 90s? I was part of that in Colorado. So now we're getting more into, let me go to the next one. We're getting into the more of the meat of it. This is just kind of the preamble. Strategic imperative one, and we talked, and I haven't done this yet, but the sequencing of the rationale and practice, we need to look at that a little more closely. We fixed a couple of typos on this slide. So if you want to walk through these, Leti's team really worked deeply on this one.

[1372] SPEAKER_22: So what we thought was important to have this underpinning of really what is the work, but we're also kind of struggling with, you don't want to completely bake this whole thing, but you want to have a starting point. That's what I heard from the board that it wasn't about having it all completely written, but as we start to unpack this and take this on the road. We thought as we look at certainly the achievement gap and opportunity gap for our kids, how do we challenge students on both ends of the scale? Our kids who are still working at the standard and our kids who are certainly above standard. And also looking towards the social emotional and how it ties in with academic achievement. And so I'm not gonna read every bullet, but essentially it's looking at our curriculum and then how do we structure it as the underpinning of the research and the rationale that goes under strategic imperative one.

[1422] SPEAKER_18: So these are in a large way an extract from the LCAP. You'll see where we can go deeper later, but we wanted to show you that much. And then the next slide is more on If you want to talk about this next one, too.

[1436] SPEAKER_22: Sure. And so it's looking at the work around PBIS, but it's looking at how do we strengthen it to really look at the academic. What I heard from folks was how do we tie it to academics, right? So the way we do it is establishing this MTSS model, the multi-tier systems of support, where we look at If a child is at a certain tier or level, how do we intervene at the school site? How do we intervene at the district? And we see that the majority of our kids don't need that high, high intervention. And it could be enough with just PBIS and first teaching in the classroom. But we are going to have some students that are going to need second teaching, are going to need some more targeted support. And then there's going to be other options in terms of working with a counselor on site for mental health or what have you. And so this kind of teases out. how to do this so that in classrooms, teachers are able to teach, principals are able to lead at their schools.

[1491] SPEAKER_25: What does the MTSS look like?

[1494] SPEAKER_22: So it's still in development, but looking at what school districts, many districts have unveiled this. So essentially, it is a model that's developed where you tier the work of students. So if there's a student who is at need or of intervention, they're going to be at a certain tier. And what do you offer at a school site? What do you offer at district level to meet the needs of that child? So for example, it may be working in groups with the on-site counselor because there's some social emotional needs there. It may be that this child is referred to more academic support. We don't know. But it goes through a referral process of what we currently have, which is the cost teams. And then we look at tying in more of the academics. What we've been doing, I think, for a good time here now is the cost teams is really looking at the social emotional support kids, which is needed. and intervention for families, but we haven't quite tied in the academic support and what we're doing. And so with the multi-tiered systems, the support is basically tiers, a group of students, so you can kind of see almost like a pyramid graphic.

[1557] SPEAKER_25: So if you're at the junior high where they don't have vocal classes, how does that look?

[1562] SPEAKER_22: So we were actually just talking with Mark Needle today. We look at how how do his ELD classes look in terms of are they true newcomers and how are we staffing that class within the sections that it currently has? How do we do an extended day for kids who may need the Think Together program after school? Or how do we establish another after school program? It's kind of looking at, look at your data and then how are we gonna tier out the support you already have. I know that Pat had shared, as we're looking at counseling support, for example, and we saw that we've got a dynamo there with Heather or Ryan there in terms of social emotional, but it's a lot of kids to support. So do we look at district-wide? How do we give counseling support district-wide? And I think we're looking at adding some more counseling time to the junior high.

[1610] Nancy Thomas: Well, if I look at the LCAP, though, I see a lot of work in that middle group of of goals, I see a lot of things that haven't materialized in the academic, and that's the first and last goal. And so it seems to me that the social-emotional and the things you're talking about, they're feel-good things, but if we don't start putting more resources into the academic goals in goal one and the A to G and, you know, goals in the last goal. That's what the public sees. And I think that it's at least what I hear Frankie saying. I don't know if the rest of the board says it, but how are we going to get all those circles to green? Those are usually measured academically.

[1672] SPEAKER_22: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, We have to support the whole child, and I think the district has done a very good job with putting the support under, with PBIS training, with mental health counselors. But I will tell you that across the county, our kids are in crisis. Not all of our kids, absolutely. But unfortunately, it just takes one child that's having such an emotional or psychotic break in the classroom that everyone's learning stops. And if we don't have the support for the teacher and for the school at that moment to work with that child so that the rest of the of the students can keep learning, then you see that impact there with academics. But your point is taken.

[1711] Nancy Thomas: It's a whole thing. Yeah, absolutely.

[1714] SPEAKER_18: And one of the benefits of the district having to go on so deep in PBIS is that the same structures are present for academic intervention. And so those skills should translate over to the academic intervention side. And I think that's the piece we want to go to next, is how are you intervening when kids are off track? My tired old thing of ninth graders being on track and off track, that's an example of that, as well as junior high. And you'll see more of that as we go further into this. So there's an understanding of PLCs that's pretty deep, but I think now we need to translate it into academic intervention.

[1762] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, we need to measure it. If the PLC's working, How often are they meeting? What kind of reports are they doing? Who at the administrative level is overseeing and reporting back to Leti and her team that this is, they're making progress?

[1779] SPEAKER_18: And that's the piece of the continuous improvement model is are we evaluating? Because sometimes we go to action and then we start some other new thing and we don't evaluate the action we just had, to your point.

[1789] Nancy Thomas: Absolutely, yeah. Or we develop tools to measure and then there's no evidence of the measurement being worked on by a PLC and put into the update or the, what is it, you know, the adjust.

[1806] SPEAKER_18: Right. Adjust and analyze, or analyze and reflect. Yeah. We're still wrestling with those names. So instructional model, career pathways, college career, really large scale feedback from WASC on both high schools is moving more towards a standards-based instructional model. That's not a big surprise. And now we get into kind of what Francisco and board members had mentioned they wanted to see. So within this document in the final iteration or the iteration you'll see next, it'll be in a PDF format and off to the right you'll see the column that says link to plans. That'll be a hyperlink and they click on and they go right to the LCAP. This example here is the district. And it shows the ratings, and in the next iteration I'd like to see the actual, the slices of pie with the orange, how many slices is it. We just had fought with some graphic pieces on that, but making that look different, and those are the reporting, monitoring timeframes, which are all linked to LCAP. Do you want to speak a little bit to that?

[1873] SPEAKER_22: Yes, and so what we're building on is that this year we had kind of a more robust assessment calendar for the district. And you're seeing some of the progress monitoring pieces that we have there because we also need our local data. That's the only, we can't just wait for the MS-BAP once a year. And so what we're going to work with now is adding a secondary schools assessment calendar. and working with the recommendations of WASC to do that. So in the middle you see all the progress monitoring and that's the data that schools and principals during DLT will be using to do the PLCs and to really see is it being implemented. What we're also looking at is and you know we're very, very beginning stages of it. We're trying to close out the year, but looking at how do we revamp also the principal evaluation tool and really tying more of the progress monitoring, going back to your point of who oversees that this is taking place? Well, it's the principal at the school sites. But then how do we support the principal and see what the progress monitoring is as the supervisors of the schools? How do we do that? And so these are some of the progress monitoring pieces.

[1942] Nancy Thomas: I haven't looked at the DRAs. for a while but I remember looking at them and saying if I were a school site they don't help because every school site has the same VRA percentages and They don't seem to mean much. What do those DRAs do for you?

[1958] SPEAKER_22: So we actually, what we're in the middle of doing is retraining school sites to calibrate again with DRAs. So the DRA is actually measuring the reading for students at the elementary. And so what we found was this past year we did a training at BGP, I believe, where we did a training around DRA and just how to use it. And so this district had not done a lot of that in a few years. So we're going to revamp it, we're going to use it and calibrate it, and then look towards the report card and how that information is reported on the report card.

[1990] SPEAKER_25: ERA again is?

[1992] SPEAKER_22: Oh, it's the... It's a reading assessment. It's a reading assessment.

[1996] SPEAKER_19: Is that what it is? Developmental reading assessment. Thank you. Elementary? Developmental.

[2007] SPEAKER_18: So then we drill down into the school level where these are their metrics and dashboard ratings, baseline target, progress monitoring should be the same, but then a direct link to their SPSA. So someone that wants to go deep, you can go to the 200 page document. But if you want the 40,000 foot view, that's what this will provide.

[2031] Nancy Thomas: Since PGP is not tested by the SBAC, what do the numbers mean for baseline and the targets? What are those the measure of?

[2041] SPEAKER_22: So we're actually pulling off of their local assessment. I can't tell you right now what that is. I apologize. We can get that clarity in there. And you put an asterisk because they don't have the SBAC.

[2053] SPEAKER_18: They're not tested?

[2054] SPEAKER_22: Yeah. Well, they'll have the English Learner, but they won't have the other SBAC stuff.

[2062] SPEAKER_18: And then as we drill further. So that's kind of the template, if you will, Kennedy Lincoln Music, but now you start seeing the color on the dashboard rating, which was something that the board wanted to see. And some of the grad rate stuff is still not being released on the metrics, the new metrics. Have you heard anything about that, Tom?

[2101] SPEAKER_19: They're tweaking it, so all the grad rates are going to go down a little bit because of this tweak. I don't know what that entails yet, but it's about two months behind. Yeah.

[2112] Nancy Thomas: Most people I talk to, they don't put any stake in that grad rate. They don't think it's a legitimate.

[2117] SPEAKER_18: The current one, I agree. I think it's, I don't know what the new one's going to look like, They're pretty tight-lipped about it. I haven't even seen a version of it. Usually they have a lot of beta versions. No one's seen that.

[2127] Nancy Thomas: Doesn't every student have a student number that they can call them?

[2130] SPEAKER_24: Oh, absolutely.

[2131] Nancy Thomas: State ministry number. Yeah, so is that being used for Gregory?

[2137] SPEAKER_18: I don't believe so.

[2139] Nancy Thomas: I mean, you know.

[2140] SPEAKER_18: Yeah. Then I added these components, and this is just a placeholder from a discussion I had with certainly with Francisco and Nancy about just really getting clear about how we're developing articulation in grades 6 through 12. These are kind of the secondary focus areas. District, I want to continue the meetings with principals and counselors to make sure that we are stopping kids falling through the cracks and keeping that collaboration going. We have to move towards start moving to a graduation policy committee and with all the policy and development there. District-level grading policy is another piece of district work that's coming. The high school, I want them to start with the master schedule committee in September and meet monthly and start moving towards some planning to come up with a ninth grade core team structure for 2019.

[2198] SPEAKER_25: When are you talking about?

[2200] SPEAKER_18: That should be 2020. So I'll, would you guys, there's that typo on that page for me, let me, should be 19-20, 19 to 20-20, not 20-10. I thought I caught it, I think I was just tired. Which is really a structured way to make sure we're keeping worn out years on track with no F's authentically into 10th grade. And then the next one is keeping really strong metrics around how little progress monitoring that and improving A through G. And I'm running reports right now. I haven't seen them. Larry's working on a report for me though. I'll probably have for you guys mid-July on kids, all kids at the high school who sorted by credit, by student number. They'll also continue developing STEAM programming at the junior high and focus on math as well. So that math articulation is probably the best place to start because that should lift a lot of boats quickly, but that's kind of some focus areas that I think are pretty important for secondary.

[2271] Nancy Thomas: Oh, we're going to ensure that the secondary, at the secondary level, especially the high school, that the PLCs are there and they're working on the minimum days early release days. I've heard a lot about teachers going home, working on their own, not collaborating, not spending that time for professional development among themselves.

[2295] SPEAKER_18: I think that part of the conversation I've had with Paul Bretz is we need to really spend time building a sense of team at the high school. And I think that we have to do some work on culture and climate so that people Usually teachers do that when they don't feel the meeting is valuable, and they don't feel that what they're doing is, that their voices aren't heard. So I think that's kind of where I think they're starting. Or they have to coach. Right, right. And I think they really need to look at what time of day are they meeting. And I think having a structured PLC is important. And what's the plan for PD day? How is that based on your performance data? So I think that it's just really getting a little hands on deck. and do a better job of listening to what teachers are asking for. Most of the teachers want to have time to, it's meaningful, but then they show up and it ends up being driven by just a handful. I think that's what I see at the high school is the dilemma. They've got to start working more as a team and get used to that. And then as they start having success, then I think the data will help affirm that success.

[2366] SPEAKER_25: When you talk about the ninth grade, You were talking about the ninth grade core kind of thing. Were you talking about a two-hour block?

[2374] SPEAKER_18: Ideally, I really would like it to look more like a junior high or middle school model, where there's four cores that have a common planning period together, and they would work with the same group of kids for a year. And then while they're in electives, those teachers can do some common planning together, case management. So really kind of a middle school model of how it's structured. Because you'll have more successful kids that way.

[2399] SPEAKER_25: We lose kids at 9th grade because they get lost and no one sees them.

[2402] SPEAKER_18: And this does a little bit more of the embedded AVID, the kind of homeroom, hand-holding. It's been pretty, but those are some things I want the committee to do some work on.

[2413] SPEAKER_25: Well, invariably, people, school districts go to that and then it becomes expensive. Or people move around and they become disenchanted and move away. You know, rather than letting it work its way to a point where You're going to have some things where it doesn't work. But if you have 80 kids that you know pretty well versus 120, you're going to have a greater chance that you're going to be in the pack with those 80 kids that are doing it. And they're going to come to you. And I think that you need to have that as a teacher, have that kind of structure.

[2444] SPEAKER_18: And part of it is there needs to be incentives for teachers to want to teach ninth grade. Ninth grade is the most challenging grade in many ways to teach, and I think that If teachers know that they could have more planning time, or more of something to teach ninth, there's not a lot of incentives. And I think that's part of it, too, is we try to incentivize so there's interest in teachers wanting to teach ninth grade because they want to be part of the team. Even something as simple as having teachers propose their own team for ninth grade. And who do they want on the team? I think that that'll go a long way. At least my experience has gone a long way. Imperative two, you'll see a similar structure. This one's largely about implementing the FCMAT recommendations and stopping deficit spending and building reserves. I don't think there's any surprises there. I like the little graphic of the pig for some reason. It makes me laugh. And that's just probably because I'm tired. But it's a cool pig. So this is kind of, and we have some of these completed. I just haven't populated it yet. left-hand column are the exact themes of recommendations and the exact recommendations. I'll have anticipated completion date and or if it's completed and, you know, or the status of it. And the hyperlink will be the full 200-plus page FICMAT report if somebody wants that. That's the 2017 report. So the big themes are one-time funding for ongoing expenses, budget development, budget monitoring, position control, purchasing, accounts payable, accounts receivable payroll, ASB oversight, and bond oversight. So all of those are kind of, this is kind of our polished laundry sheet for all of those. So make sure they don't fall off the grid as is mentioned.

[2575] Nancy Thomas: place for facilities?

[2578] SPEAKER_18: I thought it might go here. I'm not sure where to put it exactly yet. It might be communications. It might be, so that's the question I have too.

[2588] Nancy Thomas: Yeah because you know we supposedly did a fit report for every school. Do they exist? Is anyone following?

[2596] SPEAKER_18: Would you mark down fit report for the schools? I remember that.

[2598] Nancy Thomas: Yeah and but the The LCAP seems to say there's only one for the schools they come dotted. So I'd like to know if there is a fit report and that we set aside money for, in the LCAP, I believe.

[2615] SPEAKER_18: So I think this might be the place to put that.

[2618] Nancy Thomas: Yeah. Because that all goes to student environment. It all goes to safety.

[2623] SPEAKER_18: And I will tell you that, and kind of for you to be aware, Tom, too, and Jan, because I think it shows with you. As we look at the Avis proposal and kind of the framework of when they plan to have an ultimate delivery date of approximately May 2019, I want to align this work as well so those plans come into completion in the same time frame so that we can blend them into one large document. But I agree, I think that the facility master planning would fit underneath this goal pretty easily. So we can, and the fit reports, we can look at where we are with that. And maybe a similar kind of grid that says where are we with those? And what are the big ticket items? But I'll be working on this through July. And number three is really, this is probably the most drafty one, but we do know We have an agreement with NTA to establish an enrollment committee as part of collecting bargaining. And I want to include other groups and have a committee to help really guide how are we, what are the strategies around that, how are we going to develop communication plan, school marketing plans, district marketing, identify strengths, celebrate what's going right, communication plan. And that last one is really more of a communication piece about facility master plan. So part of what we're thinking as we look at this kind of plan here, excuse my third grade graphics, but that's about as good as I could do in the time frame I had. But just showing that as we go through strategic planning and vetting of this, there's also going to be a process going with facilities master plan and communication, public engagement. And all those things should come to conclusion and some agreement by May is the target. So that can be a really nice kind of symbolic transition and do, here's our real comprehensive plan, and if it's in three elements or however we're going to frame that, we'll have communication people help us with that. But that's kind of the overarching thinking that I took away from the board input on these items. So one of the things, if you want to talk about the book and some of this, Leni, with the planning for administrators.

[2767] SPEAKER_22: So we were looking at, as we're doing the planning now for our August retreat with our administrators, we were looking at how do How do we support our principals with starting to prepare and really focusing their work around increasing support for their enrollments and all of that? If you recall this last year, we did something as simple as a brochure that went out and said, this is when we're doing school visits. And yeah, we had parents that came out. I mean, we get messaged on Twitter all the time and through our email saying, hey, can I go visit a school? Or can I go to the open house? And so a lot of our families that are moving in may not have school-age children yet, but they want to know more about the school. So that's great news for us, right, as we're starting to build our enrollment. So what we're looking at right now is using these tools around developing your website, maintaining a good image for your school site, and creating a marketing plan. We're going to do kind of a fun little shark tank activity at the administrator's retreat. We're going to give them, yes, so we're going to group them. in PLCs, but we're going to be grouped. And so we're going to have principals come back with a plan or a draft of a plan and then shark tank it, you know, and they'll get feedback from their peers and from other administrators as to how to, like, what else is missing from here and, like, how do we roll this out? And we think hearing directly from the folks who are in the schools, in the classrooms really doing a lot of this work How do we support them? But then how do they roll out their plan to increase enrollment in our district?

[2865] Nancy Thomas: We kind of got away from it, but the board was always very much involved in going to the first few hours or even half day of when the superintendent gave his report, when you gave your report. And everything was, you know, not being targeted and not being encouraged to go to that.

[2886] SPEAKER_18: We haven't had a location yet. I was thinking about a loaning just because the price is right.

[2891] SPEAKER_22: Does it know?

[2892] Terrence Grindall: Is it full? It's a no.

[2893] SPEAKER_22: They're full for both days. So we're lucky now. And we do. So we will send an invitation, absolutely, for you to join us. But we're still looking for a place.

[2903] SPEAKER_18: So these are all elements of the book that we found. Actually, I'll send it to you, Tom. You probably don't need it. But it's a free book that's online that I found.

[2914] SPEAKER_18: It's just for schools, which is really kind of a cool thing. And it walks them through every step of that grid that I shared with you. The other pieces were these established series of town hall meetings for purpose of communication and input relevant to strategic plan and facilities master plan. Those are kind of the two lines of arrows we talked about. And this might lead back to the one we talked about earlier, STEAM steering committee that will advise and guide the superintendent on implementation and communication of overarching strategic plan implementations in there twice. We've got to fix that. Develop a status report relative to the remaining funds of Russian sales. I think this is something we can do very soon in our workshops and staff reports. But Russian, what's left? Measure G, what's left? And then seeking board direction on what they want to do with that. And what we have in front of you, back to what we started this session with, was a draft board study session calendar that we can start to populate. And even if you don't have the energy to give us, I want to map out the whole year, if you could at least give us what do you want to see in the next six meetings, that would be very helpful. And you have a pick list, or you could have things that you want to add from your own mind. What would you say about that, Nancy?

[2995] Nancy Thomas: Well, I think Char went through all of the meeting, you know, request at the end of the meeting, plus the stuff that I put forward, plus.

[3005] SPEAKER_18: And it's all in that sheet now.

[3006] Nancy Thomas: So it's all kind of on the sheet. So I would think the next, the next step would be staff, your staff, saying, okay, which of these are study sessions, which of these are, or workshops, which of these are staff reports, and then putting them in there. Others may not belong in here because they are, they are, Just, you know, like, first thing in the morning or part of the second, but those are standard, you know, so they don't need to be in here.

[3036] SPEAKER_18: So we'll let us, we'll take a stab in January at sequencing those and then bringing it to the board to react to. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Okay. And communication plan, that's something that I'm hoping we can get CCEE to fund is either dollars or some resources to have an outside expert help us with that. We're not big enough to have our own communication team or a full position for that, but that's something that I think if they want to give us some dollars for something, that would be helpful. These are just some conclusion slides. Just trying to define some things and also, you know, saying that the last one I think is the one that I think is really important, which is really the belief that the point of change is the classroom and the unit of change is the school. And the district exists to support those, not the other way around. I didn't say that in there, but I mean, you've all heard me say it. And we're still working towards that. And I think it's a good goal to have. You know, when a school calls, we need to answer the phone. Kind of a thing. Yeah. So that is the current draft. I'm going to be refining it through July. I hope to have another iteration to you probably for sure on the 31st, but probably prior to that. In July, you'll see another updated version, and we'll incorporate some of the feedback you gave us today. If you have other ideas, just email us. Hey, think about this. I know Tom said, hey, here's a great sample of something you might want to think about for that. Send those to Leti and I, and we'll take another stab at it. But that's, unless you have other input, that's really what we had to ship. That sounds great.

[3145] Nancy Thomas: Well, I'll have a listen to closed session.

[3149] SPEAKER_24: OK.

[3156] SPEAKER_18: What's six o'clock? Oh, it's at 6. We have an hour and six minutes. No, it's 10 to 6. Right. Closed is at 6, isn't it?

[3165] SPEAKER_25: We had for closed session, we only had six minutes. No, no. We have a break time. We have a small window.

[3175] SPEAKER_18: I guess I'm the only one with coffee.

[3180] Nancy Thomas: I sure love my coffee, yeah.

[3184] SPEAKER_18: Thank you, Shar.

No minutes available.