Board Workshop Meeting

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[0] Cary Knoop: So, you know, I see there the dual immersion program being a potential. I do have concerns about that. We're a small district. It for sure will take plenty of resources to support such a program. And we also have to make sure if such a program is implemented that, you know, you get sort of the A group, the students who can go in there. And then you get sort of the B class. And we just got to make sure that the B class gets just as much attention as the flagship A class. So again, I think they're a small district. And perhaps if we should wait and wait for Fremont. They just started it. What are their experiences? I just would take it easy with that. The other thing that I see is K-8. And again, there Fremont started with middle school. Most of the Alameda counties started working on middle school. Check out what's the best for our district. I know there are pros and cons, and research says K-8 is better, and then there's another research that says, no, it's middle school, and they're just playing tag right now. But at any rate, that decision, I believe, should be made for what's good for the kids, not because of politics of new schools or getting more kids in Schilling that's not a good reason to do that kind of stuff. It should be really this is the best for the kids. Another item is what I saw from the letter for the board. You know we're growing and things like that and we need to have a plan to deal with all this growth and I'm sorry I've started to become cynical but you understand you see the writing on the wall. We're not growing we're shrinking and we already have enough, the same amount of real estate as New Haven has, but New Haven has twice as many kids. So I think it's not very good idea to start thinking about, you know, building schools and growing because that's not, that's not the truth of the matter. So I hope that there will be a revision in that. And again, new schools and, you know, marble science that you're saying where steam is not really going to make a difference. It's all prestige. And prestige is great if you're Yale or Harvard and your education is already top and you put an icing on the cake. But if there's problems with your education and you can improve, then the icing on the cake is just not going to fit well. So these are my concerns. Thanks.

[159] Nancy Thomas: Thank you, Kerry. Would you like us to go down?

[162] SPEAKER_15: Yeah, I'd like to go down to the table down here. OK. Welcome, everyone. I want to clarify just for the audience as well, the posted strategic plan has not been updated at all. We had a late change in the agenda. We kind of put it in there because we knew we were going to be talking about it. So there's some edits we haven't made yet. So thanks for the comments. But this has not been touched because we kind of moved it up sooner. So I just want to clarify that. I want to walk you through a little PowerPoint which kind of represents the conversation we had recently, which was yesterday, right? Yesterday with the Enrollment Advisory Committee. So let me share kind of first of all who was there. Before we go into that slide on explaining that, this is a slide that represents our enrollment from September 4th to date. This is a live report that we run. It updates every night. And I wanted to show you a screenshot. We actually went up from one child from yesterday to today, just to show the board how closely we're monitoring that right now. And I think this is the kind of the big picture. Actually, what we heard somewhat in public comment is the question, are we really growing? Are we not growing? and what can we do about it is kind of what this committee's charge was to discuss yesterday. Also, other things on the horizon, the city is moving forward with planning of Area 3. This is what that's beginning to look like. This is kind of the site plan and you see the big darker blue section in the middle is the land allocation for new school if that's where things land. It's about six acres roughly, but that's another factor that we need to consider, especially as we start moving into conversations about facility master planning. So there's other balls at play, certainly with the city and being in the Silicon Valley, Facebook, etc. So our committee met yesterday and I'd like to thank the members. Dr. Wendy Leal, principal for Schilling, Amy Black, teaching and learning, Debbie Romero, Pachenta Ditto, principal of Birch Grove Primary, Tim Merritt, NTA president and one of our teachers, Angela Lee, CSCA board and librarian, Leti Salinas, associate superintendent, Sue Eustis, CSCA president, Adriana, parent partner, Sandra Acuna, parent, Angela Ehrlich, principal. I just want to, I'll come back to her in a minute. Bill Witten, Director of Pupil Services, Jodi Croce, and Char and myself had a meeting yesterday and I shared with the committee, I'm going to kind of share the conversation we had with the board and then see what recommendations the board thinks are going to be important for us to discuss. But as we go through, please feel free to stop me. This is not intended to be just a sit and get. But I wanted to kind of give you the stage of kind of where I got some of these ideas. And some of it also was pulled from prior community surveys and just things that we've heard from the board and superintendent's office. So today, even though we're talking about strategic plan, we're really going to focus in on imperative number three. which is we will increase our enrollment. That's kind of the big question of the day is if so, how much and how and what's the plan? So as we discussed this with the committee, these are the big themes that came up in our conversation. Communication, marketing, enrollment, customer services, things that kind of seem to be categories that we were capturing, you know, comments about in the room, and we think that all those things, if they're working correctly, will increase our enrollment. But there still needs to be some definition around what does that exactly mean, how many, what are we talking about. Certainly I'd like to at least be at or slightly above projections because of the negative impact it has on staffing. But these are the big themes that we discussed as a committee, and I kind of broke it out into each of those categories.

[503] Nancy Thomas: Did anything come up about parent involvement? Yes. And did anything come up about perception?

[512] SPEAKER_15: Yes. Yes, we're going to let's go through. The largest category, of course, is communication. So we'll start there. And I just kind of got bullet points of some of the conversations we had. And hopefully, we can get some more input from the board of other things we need to think about. But communication themes were really improving websites and updates of information. The conversation about that was really sometimes stuff's outdated on a website for a school or I go to the district looking for school information and it's not easy to find or it's outdated. And just the whole user friendliness of websites came up. And kind of improving our positive presence on social media. Developing some quality printed documents, brochures, etc. A lot of interest in developing some sort of a newsletter saying what's going right in Newark. We've talked about that as a board and also we had a little conversation about it yesterday. Newark days as an example of engaging with the community and people knowing what we're doing. So just different ways to communicate. Tour of schools, especially those transitional grades. There's a lot of fear from kids going from elementary into junior high, from junior high into high school, and how do we dispel some of that fear so kids and families don't feel apprehensive about going to a big system. There was a kind of conversation about how do I identify one person to really be the webmaster to make sure things are updated and that we really have a robust way to do that, because everything's so digitally oriented now. Exit interviews of departing families, We're going to get into that a little more later where we have some reports on the Inter and Intra District reports that Bill had provided for us. And just really in general getting to share what's going well in NUSD. Facility master planning, community engagement process, we need to communicate that out so people know when and how that's going to happen. And I got one more slide and then I would like to stop and listen to see are there other things we should be tracking to put in this category. Angela Erlich is the only principal that has an increase of 33 students roughly. And we pointed out some of the things that, she pointed out some of the things she felt was really helpful. One of the big ones she mentioned was community parent involvement. One of the big ones was just You know, this whole idea, they did a day in the life of the principal where they had somebody come in and kind of really do a tour of what's going on in the school. So just ways to build consumer confidence in the school by just being present and finding out what's going on. And a lot of her success, she would say, is just really the parents have now taken it on as their own and they kind of have their own little word of mouth campaign to benefit the school and to just say good things about the school and talk about what's going right there. The other area that was important was extended day opportunities. And that came more than just from Angela. Everyone kind of agreed that if we had further options for kids to stay longer, come earlier, that's very interesting to our parents. Internal-external communication. pretty much what it means. And just kind of moving towards a positive campaign, things that we can say like we have small elementary size, that's something that a lot of people don't know. Having a campaign saying we're still enrolling now, we can take, we have space. Leveraging our community resources, leveraging our partnership with the City of Newark. Taking the school spotlight we do here to the next level and put it out digitally and say, hey, this month's spotlight school is this, this is what it's about, and here's testimonials and videos of what they're excited about at that school. Positive articles and press releases. So in the category of communication, those are kind of the big themes that came up. And I don't know if you guys want to comment or wait until we get through all categories. I know some of the other stuff you're asking, is going to come up. But whatever you want to talk about, communication-wise, I'm happy to talk about.

[779] SPEAKER_20: I think one of the experiences that I had in our family was my son moved into a community that was a completely new community. It was Rivermark in Santa Clara. And the school district had six months where they had someone who was an organizer who went in and worked with the parents. And the parents, by the time school started, had $90,000 that they had raised. And the building of the community was a K-8 school. And I don't know that that was an important piece of it. But there was a great deal of community buy-in in the area, because that was their school. And they had all these social things that were happening before the first day of school. I mean, the kids could, the parents could hardly wait for the school to open. The kids could hardly wait for the school to open. And that was because they were very proactive. It was the first new school in Santa Clara in 25 years. And so everyone was excited about it. And in our case, we're similar. We have not had a new school being built for a long time. And it's a lovely school. It has a beautiful, it is an addition to the neighborhood in terms of it is, but it is, you know, it's a very practically built school too. So I think that using that approach, if we're gonna go ahead and have a school there, we need to be really proactive because that, get the buy-in of the people that are there. I'm not, how many homes are in that area three?

[861] SPEAKER_15: I couldn't tell you off the top of my head. Do you recall, Shore? How many homes were projected for Area 3? I want to say 1,500 for some reason. I don't know if it's that big.

[870] Nancy Thomas: I don't think that many, but yeah, there's hundreds. Yeah.

[873] SPEAKER_20: We could count.

[876] SPEAKER_15: Other comments about communication. We're going to hit those other categories too.

[879] Nancy Thomas: Other things that we should consider. Yeah, this resonates with me, and especially Angela, because I visited that campus several times last year. And I listened to her spotlight. And I was blown away by the amount of activities they had. There were parents getting volunteers or having kids sign up for a homework club that the parents organized, I think. And I thought, boy, this is really a happening place. And when you saw all the programs that they had, I'm not at all surprised. You hear about the Pals Club and all the good work they've done. They care about people when their crossing guard passed away, they planted a tree in his honor. They're just a very cohesive group and I think that's key. Then I look, similar to you, I have grandkids that go to elementary school across the bay. Every night there's something for them to do after school. And this isn't things that the district provides, it's things where they invite in non-profits. And those nonprofits, there's a homework club, there's a steel drum, there's a coding class, there's a math club. My grandson loves, he's a ham, he loves to act. Well, there was a performing arts or acting course. So they're just so rich with activities after school that don't cost the district. The parents have to pay for them, but they're reasonably priced. And of course, they have, They have child care after school that helps parents. So a lot of this resonates with me about why. And I noticed the increase in enrollment. And I said, you know, that's no accident. It's absolutely no accident. And if I were a principal at some of the other schools here, elementary schools, I'd be over visiting Newark, Lincoln, and trying to learn more about their magic. Because at 33, when everyone else lost, it was quite a big increase.

[1009] SPEAKER_20: There's a number of issues that are there, too. They have a number of people in the community that know your children that are very active. You've got Marion Seldo retired as a school secretary. She's back there working. So the community in that area has taken that school and said, we want to maintain that school. And that's something that we have To some degree, Birch Grove Primary also, the same kind of strong feeling. Kennedy's had a number of things. So I think we've got the beginnings of that in most of the schools. It's just how do we encourage without causing an increase in our cost. So what do we do that is enabling them to do it and do it well? Because people want to do it.

[1058] SPEAKER_15: Other comments on communication?

[1062] SPEAKER_22: I just want to echo the extended day opportunities. I think that is really important. And where it says improve internal communication and external communication, I think some more kind of, I think that's important to just see like specific, more specific goals would be helpful, like making sure that it happens so that folks know all the positive things that are happening, whether it's through improving internal and external communication through internally doing a quarterly newsletter that goes through each school site or figuring something out like that so that it's communicated. All the positives, as you outlined, are communicated.

[1106] Nancy Thomas: Also, I think the whole idea about getting a webmaster in the district, I'm thinking about the big push we've had for technology. and how much time that's taken the IT staff. Well, now we have all that technology, most of it in place. Are there resources such as Larry, you know, or in that department that can do, if not a, having one be a webmaster, can do a a survey of all of our websites as part of that department's responsibility to spot the out-of-date stuff and create a master list of problems that need to be updated and then, you know, is there a person at each school site that is a webmaster and can they be part of a group that maybe IT leads?

[1161] SPEAKER_15: And this is a stipend or something we do to incentivize that.

[1165] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, yeah. So many of our things, we say we want to do these things, but then no one's in charge. And so one of the things I was thinking about, it was on your previous slide, is having a template for every principal to call the students that didn't return and do an interview that then would using that template they would bring it up to the district level so that you would compile all those reasons from every school and then create a plan around the data that you learn and bring it to the board so we kind of, because I'm on the community and people, you know, people want to know, you know, are we losing kids because they're going to private schools? Are we losing kids because they're leaving the area? Are we losing teachers because they can't afford to live here? All of that data I think we can get if we If we split the work and have each principal be in charge, that's just an idea.

[1227] SPEAKER_15: Yeah, I think that's a good idea. One committee member mentioned, can we also look at the trends by grade level? Is there certain things we're seeing at certain grade levels that would be helpful? So we're going to provide that to the committee as well.

[1240] Nancy Thomas: But again, if there's no one in charge, it just doesn't happen. There's got to be someone there.

[1244] SPEAKER_15: You've got to build into a larger plan. Yeah. Let's go to the next section. Marketing, and this is an example from Lincoln, the image there. It's pretty simple. It's a positive postcard home. And it kind of aligns with the PBIS work that's been going on in the district. But that's something she sent me a text message of, hey, this is what we do. I had asked about that, so she sent it to me. But just really getting out there and developing really a stronger communication plan with realtors, identifying programs that we have, for choices and enrichment and extended day. Athletics is something that there's a lot going on in secondary that kids can get involved in. But we also need to talk about what we're doing to improve areas that need improvement. You know, what are we doing about a low score in a certain area? I don't think we have to, we can't hide from that. In addition to, like we talked earlier in the other slide, talk about what's going right, we also need to talk about what are we doing to make things better. All-day kindergarten, that's something that we can really market. I think that's important. The process for receiving constructive criticism, so beyond just exit interviews, how do we capture data about something that's constructive criticism that we need to be able to listen to and figure out a way to operationalize that so we hear it and we can make some adjustments based on what we see. Highlighting current involvement, that was a key thing that I think Angela felt was a really high leverage piece. And maybe even recognizing, not just highlight, but like really honoring that in a deep way. Intentional word of mouth, testimonials with our existing parents, videos, positive communication at home, and that was the postcard. Those are some of the things we talked about in marketing and just really trying to be more intentional about how we're developing these partnerships. What do you guys think we need to add or thoughts that come to mind with this category?

[1377] Nancy Thomas: I think, and I talked to Shara a little bit about this, the highlighting of parent involvement is, I think we have to encourage parent involvement and I'm not sure we're doing that. I'm not sure, you know, when I've gone into the high school and they point me to a terminal, and I don't know what it's all about because I've never had to do this before. We need people to stand up and say, hello, may I help you with a smile on your face. You're important. You're a customer. And so I think it goes beyond. I think we're in some ways, and I'm glad we're not on TV, I think we discourage parent involvement. And one of the things that I mentioned earlier was that a parent went in and said, I'd like to work in this teacher's classroom. And the office person said, oh, well, she hasn't requested anyone. And it was kind of like, we don't want you.

[1443] SPEAKER_15: I would say hold on to that, because that's the whole category of customer services we're going to get into. Good, good. So I'm going to try to keep to the, the model for now, specific to marketing, any other comments on marketing?

[1454] SPEAKER_20: Having someplace where you have a list, what can I do as a parent? How to accept that involvement? How to identify what would be something I could do that would be productive. I mean, I don't want to go in someone's classroom if I'm going to get in the way. If I don't have the skills or I don't have whatever it needs, the timing to be there and to be involved. But rather, if at home I can develop something, or if I can bring something in, or if I can be there. What do teachers need? And I think many teachers do that on a regular basis. This is parents, especially elementary, this is what we need. Junior high and high school, not so much. And I think that there's reasons for that, and there may be good reasons developmentally for the kids breaking away from the parents and being independent versus... But the kids still love the fact that the parents are doing something for the school. They love it, even when they're seniors. They love it. So we need to figure out ways, as a parent, what I can do to support.

[1517] Nancy Thomas: And invite, not just, you know. There was a teacher that was saying she has to rip out the pages and staple them together to send home, the consumables to send home for the kids. That's certainly something a parent can do if they're otherwise not able to be in the classroom, or would prefer to do something on the side. So there's probably a lot of those types of things, and I think if we encourage teachers to think a little bit outside the box, every teacher can find a way for a parent to volunteer, either in the classroom or... And they're one-time things versus continuing things.

[1554] SPEAKER_20: And they're different things. Different parents are able to do different things. So maybe you identify one-time things versus...

[1562] Nancy Thomas: I think music has had a program in the past with seniors in the schools. Do you know anything about that?

[1570] Marie dela Cruz: Sure, I believe so. I think a couple sites may have had some.

[1574] SPEAKER_20: Music hadn't. And the music for minors. Music for minors.

[1581] SPEAKER_20: And Officer Holland. Pardon me? And Officer Holland. Right, right. He was definitely a volunteer.

[1588] SPEAKER_15: Francisco, anything you would add?

[1591] SPEAKER_22: For me, it's more about, I guess, how we execute these pieces. Again, going back to Member Thomas' point that we need someone to run point, or else we can come up with great ideas. But if we don't have anyone who's going to execute it, then we're not moving forward.

[1607] SPEAKER_15: And I think we're going to come to that at the end. That's what I'm going to ask after we kind of go through another iteration of this. I want to have the committee and the board help me prioritize, where do these fall in the next three years? What are year one, what are year two, what are year three? and then how do we put some dollars and resources behind it to make it happen. Let's go to the next category. Enrollment is key. And I'm specifically talking about the system in which we take in kids and we enroll kids. And we identified kind of two categories. Returning students, the interest there, kind of where I got involved this summer, is just making it easier for returning parents and families to stay in the system. So the idea of online enrollment, make it easy to update your contact info, just like your bank statement you do through your phone. It should be pretty easy to update that. Explore centralized enrollment. I don't know if that makes it better or worse, but something we might want to think about. Certainly improving the response time was in both categories. Having kids wait forever to know if they're getting in the system or in the district is killing us. And the idea of priority for employee enrollment, if you have a child and you're an employee, you should have priority to get into our school system. I don't think there's better marketing than having our own employees send their kids to our school district. You can't buy a better advertising than that.

[1698] SPEAKER_20: Do any employees have a problem with that now?

[1701] SPEAKER_15: It's not a priority system. I think currently we don't have something in policy that says, and Bill, if I could chime in on how the law is structured, We can't change the policies and say that, okay, if you're an employee of the district, you're going to get priority points to get enrollment at the school of your choice. And I think that would matter when we're trying to recruit and retain people, that might be helpful. What would you add for that, Bill? I know that we talked about there's some parameters around it.

[1728] SPEAKER_16: There is a provision in law to use a parent's work address as a residence address.

[1740] SPEAKER_16: So it's a balancing out of need and where the board wants to go with it. We can certainly, many other districts do allow enrollment on the basis of where parents work. Fremont, I believe, in their negotiations about a year ago, offered to put in a contract that teachers would get preference in getting into the district. But actually, it's a throwaway. residents in the district, saying that you are employees to do that when we're already offering that for the entire district. It made a lot of juice, I guess, in the contract negotiations is my assumption. But I've seen quite a number of requests to leave from Fremont teachers who reside in newer Because I want to go, I want my child to go to school in Fremont because it was just passed and it's in the teacher contract that I can have my child go to school there. So it's, it's, it costs.

[1809] Nancy Thomas: I mean our students are going to Fremont because their parents. Because their parents were there.

[1813] SPEAKER_16: Changed there.

[1816] SPEAKER_15: Do I have that number? Is that a big number? We have some reports I'm going to share with you in a minute. The inter-district, intra-district transfer I'll share with you in a minute.

[1823] SPEAKER_22: You mentioned there's some cons or some negatives. Can you outline those?

[1828] SPEAKER_16: In very short order, I want to explain it greater to the Executive Cabinet, my personal experience, but if a person resides, they work, say, in Newark, and they work full-time in Newark, their student under the Allen Bill can attend here, as long as they maintain their full-time employment in the city of Newark. Under inter-district transfers, we have a chance to exit students works here, if they have an IEP, we have to service that IEP, whether it's a student who attends and only needs resource help or speech or some adaptive help in the classroom, or if it's a student that requires a $100,000 a year non-public school placement, we're on the hook. But it's a numbers game, and it's what the board feels is going to be the best way to market and move forward.

[1893] Nancy Thomas: It's difficult for us to absorb one student like that compared to Fremont, which has five times as many students. I'm just thinking about absorbing special needs students based on having an agreement like you mentioned.

[1913] SPEAKER_16: I'm not sure we might understand your question, I'm sorry.

[1916] SPEAKER_22: Yeah, I don't think we should frame it in that context.

[1918] SPEAKER_16: We need to.

[1920] SPEAKER_22: I want to see what the policy, that's what I was trying to get at, the policy ramifications from your perspective regarding any negative. So what I hear is in terms of certain requirements of attendance or discipline-related matters, then those are waived, or those are you automatically? I have no handle on the student. OK. So you wouldn't be able to suspend or expel someone, even for violating egregious?

[1956] SPEAKER_16: Well, for instance, now the board has a policy that I implement that if a student has poor behavior, they have a day of suspension or three non-suspension but significant dealings with an assistant principal principal. Three of those or one day of suspension is grounds to revoke a permit. I'm already going through that process today on the 18th day of the school year for people in this district on permit. If a person's here on an Allen bill, it's a means of establishing a residence. It's not a transfer.

[2000] SPEAKER_22: So you're saying you couldn't use that process to expel them?

[2004] SPEAKER_20: Correct. You can't expel them. You can't expel them. It's like living here. They can't kick you out of the school other than your due cause.

[2018] SPEAKER_22: Okay, so I guess that doesn't make any sense to me. I don't really see that as a negative for me because I'm not... There's a third way to go.

[2028] SPEAKER_16: Become a district of choice. which basically means it doesn't matter where you live.

[2041] SPEAKER_16: Because someone from San Francisco, or Nantica, or Fremont, Union City can say, oh, go to this elementary school. We may be impacted already from the local area. But it doesn't matter where they reside. And we have no control over them.

[2060] SPEAKER_16: They can say, we can't do anything. We can start them. And if they have trouble getting to class because of the distance they're coming to school, I don't recommend it.

[2071] SPEAKER_16: So I think it's wise to be aware of the choices, the positives and negatives of each one, and then make an educated decision based on what you feel is best for the district.

[2081] SPEAKER_15: And then we can carry it out. And a couple of things I want to comment on here. I think, first of all, There's a lot of research to support that 90% of the discipline comes from 10% of the population. So even though this is things we deal with, it's not the majority of kids that we have these issues with. I'd be very careful in framing a policy or a speed limit, if you will, around a few kids that might have some challenges. I do think the part of it that I like is the idea of an employee being able to bring their kids to our district if it's a teacher or a custodian or a principal, and we make that, facilitate that to be easy, I think that has some natural buy-in that is beneficial to us. Because not only are they invested in our kids, they're invested in their kids. I think there's some benefit to that. So I don't know if it's, you know, I don't think that's going to be probably a short-term, quick turnaround decision. But it's something that I think bears some exploring. especially when we're looking for other ways to incentivize people coming to our district. And I think that that combined with, can you get in, can I get extended daycare, can I get after school programming, those are things that resonate with all families. And I think that we may not be able to pay you like Palo Alto, but can we have a nice extended day opportunity before school care, after school care, those are things that might help us longer term.

[2171] SPEAKER_22: Maybe adult immersion after school.

[2174] SPEAKER_15: Yeah, they might be. We might do Mandarin and Spanish, or Arabic, or who knows what, taiko drumming. We could do all kinds of things. But I think I wanted to point out this one because we definitely have already made some steps, and I can share this with you, some things that we've worked on already, actions we've taken already this year to help us kind of shore this up. We're starting to expand the pile of online registration. We have some programs. And you can kind of see that these are some things that Bill's office and pupil services has been working on since this summer. So just some expediting of enrollments and getting kids in before they have to wait too long is really important.

[2220] SPEAKER_22: I think an important piece. Because we hear that as board members. It's a great first impression of customer service. For anybody who has the ability to be able to go anywhere they choose or choose private school instead, that is huge in terms of the great first impression customer service. So when you show up and you say, I have to enroll a student, like, I say, okay, like, leave me alone, or the first impression is like, what do you want, as opposed to like, welcome me here. And it's like, well, and I'll see you later. I'm going somewhere else.

[2254] SPEAKER_15: So I want to, and I got these reports I'm going to share with you here in a second. And the committee knows that we are going to be refreshing the demographic study. They can't really start looking at data until we get the C-BEDS data, but we already paid half of the retainer for the group Davis demographics. So we're moving forward with the second demographic study this year that should help inform not only this work, but the ADIS work that we're doing for facility mascot.

[2282] Nancy Thomas: Can I just say, let's make sure that we get the city information to them, because last year they just sat on it and said, oh, well, they haven't given us the information from the city. So the city had to respond. Could you track that for me, Shar? Yes.

[2294] SPEAKER_15: Did you get that? Okay. Customer service. Lots of conversation and ideas. I think we have to do this correctly. But the idea of secret shoppers and recognition of exemplary customer service is really an idea of we want to make sure that we're recognizing the behavior we want to see. It's not about trying to make other people feel bad or feel like less than. but maybe having parents show up and see how they get treated and then provide a way to really recognize those people are doing great. Influence, the digital president on Realtor.com, great schools, Nextdoor, those are all things that can help us promote our own district and ourselves. Positive competition for high quality customer service. What are some ways that we could do those things to really incentivize getting the customer service school of the month or the MOT or district office? How do we treat people better and have a positive first impression? And making sure that it goes from boardroom to classroom. I think that's important too, how we treat people matters. Having some common talking points for all employees about what's going right. And this is kind of behind that idea like two examples that I talked about. One was when you go into a McDonald's anywhere, there's a certain standard of service that you expect now. Or if you go to Disneyland, there's a certain way that you get treated. What's our standard? What's our kind of way of doing business? One-stop shop for parents. One of the things that I heard a lot this summer was, I want to register my kids, but I have elementary, middle, and high school. I don't want to fill out three packets. Can you help me not do that? And I think we're starting to move there. I think in the past we've had to fill out three separate packets. Everyone's a little different. So this idea of a welcome center where, hey, welcome. We're going to sit down with you. We have computers available here. We're going to help you make copies. We're going to try to really support you to get all your family enrolled. You're going to stop once. And when you leave, you're going to know what school you're at. You're going to know what else you need to do. That idea of a welcome center is something I think that we're pursuing. Customer service training for all employees. expanding partnership with city and you know this idea of a great city, great schools. When I say city, I also mean all the other entities here. There's a lot of organizations behind this, Rotary, Optimist, Love Newark, there's lots of folks that really want to help us raise the game in Newark. Additions or comments about customer service?

[2463] Nancy Thomas: Are there districts that have centralized registration?

[2468] SPEAKER_15: Larger districts generally. But yes, there's quite a few that do it.

[2472] Nancy Thomas: So have you thought about that?

[2474] SPEAKER_15: We have. I think part of it is we're trying to figure out, I would like to clean up the online registration first, because that's an easier, cheaper solution. Or looking at how we have employees that might be 12 months, how do they report here in the summer so we have a centralized registration. I've seen some models, but I want to go visit how it's done in other areas here locally. But we're not ready for prime time with anything like that yet. But it's something that I think is worth looking at. Because then you control the quality of that first impression. You control the quality of responsiveness. And you have everyone's there just for one reason, how we're going to get this family. And you could also pair it with resources. In the example I'm aware of that I worked with, Not only was there enrollment and registration, it was also, you know, the Lions Club provided eyeglasses. And there was another group that provided dentistry and medical opportunities. There was some legal advice for families. There was family counseling. There was all kinds of other, you know, things like Washington Hospital could have information there. So broader resources for families, allowing you to maybe have some opportunities to say, here's what we're offering for adults. So just a way to raise the families. But I'd like to take a little bit of time to really think about what that might look like.

[2565] SPEAKER_20: I think also we need to look at what strengths we have in our community. I think our community, by its nature of being small. I was looking around and thinking, the street hasn't changed in 50 years. a little bit, but not much. And that's kind of unique. We don't have high rises. We don't have crowded. We have some areas that are more crowded now than others. But as a community, it's the kind of community I still want to live in. And I think that that's part of, if people come to Newark, it's part of what is our strength, the fact that we are a small community. We are not going to change that much. We are not going into the multi-story kinds of things in the community. So as a parent, as a parent, I want my kid to be raised in a street where they can run and play ball in the street. I want my kid to know the neighbors. I want my kid to know... And so this to me is a strength. And we say we're small, we can't compete against with Fremont, but we've got things that Fremont doesn't have at all. And I don't think that we're saying that enough to people. And there are people, regardless of what their income is, and regardless of what their intellectual involvement is in work. They want their kids to be grounded in growing up. And they don't get grounded in a lot of communities. And I think this community has this ability to do this. And this is something that we need to sell.

[2648] Nancy Thomas: I think we have some really highly educated, highly skilled parents that have, because they're working in Silicon Valley, they really look at things project-oriented and stuff. If we could just tap into some of those folks that really want to help. We've had some come to board meetings and say, I'd like to help organize this or I'd like to help with that. I think we have some people in the community have skills that we could use and that we should capitalize on if they're making offers or we can ask.

[2688] SPEAKER_22: Great. I think the bottom line is that whether it's a welcome center or it stays on site, it's that folks are actually welcoming, one, and respectful, so that you actually want to enroll your child there. So regardless of whether it's one spot or the current structure, it's just that point that people need to be welcomed. Remember, Crocker's point, for me, in terms of the big picture, actually, I've been pushing this for a while now in terms of I would disagree about the high-rise piece, because from my perspective, it would be that we have to think big picture, so we're not stagnant, and we actually need to be visionary, ensuring that, of course, the community provides the direction, so if they don't want to go in this way, that's fine, but potentially thinking about affordable housing for our educators. on site, like what better way to attract folks than to address the number one issue facing everyone, which is affordable housing. So for me, with that, for those or for that specific purpose, I would be okay with having high rises for affordable housing for our educators. But I can see the city wouldn't necessarily agree with that.

[2769] Nancy Thomas: district surplus land for that purpose, I think would be a wise investment. And I hope we look into that as we do our facilities master plan. I know I digress, but I just... I agree.

[2781] SPEAKER_15: Those are marketing points to get people to come and stay here. Because that's the other piece.

[2785] SPEAKER_20: But I think we need to be aware that we have value in what we are right now. And we are into a shortfall. And it's marvelous to think about affordable housing, but we're not going to solve affordable housing in Newark. We're not going to solve that. I don't think we have the money. We don't have the access to it. Maybe someone's got a brilliant idea, and I would love to see it. But our job is to take care of the kids, make the best environment in the world for the kids, and to support the families as their kids are going through school. That is our primary thing. And I think that we need to take the pluses we have as a community and sell those pluses. There are a lot of people that feel, talk to a lot of long-term residents, newer from ones as you have, that have stayed there and raised in your family where you grew up. There's a reason why you're doing that. Right.

[2836] SPEAKER_15: That small-town feel is something that is remarkable.

[2839] Nancy Thomas: One of the wonderful things I'm seeing in my neighborhood is moms and dads going up and down the street with strollers. Real young kids that we're going to see in a few years in our school. It's just a whole new character. And from people my age, you know, leaving to these young families coming in. I have them on both sides of me for several houses over, you know.

[2865] SPEAKER_15: We're going to come into some of those things. I think that's where we go next. I ask the committee to next think about short-term, long-term. And they might not exactly fit in these four categories, but there's some short-term kind of things and there's long-term things that we talked about. I think it'll fit what we're talking about. We did really need to, short term, really think about how do we launch our communication and marketing efforts between now and October 3rd. So I asked the committee, we're going to meet again on Monday. I'm going to take some of the feedback you provided me. I'm going to beef this up a little bit more. And then we're going to meet Monday again to see, OK, what next? What's really doable? Just some even simple things like signage that we're enrolling now and getting that out. in social media and on the websites and maybe a couple of strategic places that have high traffic. Press releases, social media campaign, it's kind of a short-term communication plan. Like quick hits, what are the low-hanging fruit that we can do? Demographic study, that's, we're initiating it, even though it goes into long-term, we gotta get that going. Surveying, chilling community about interest in dual immersion. Program development, I mean, they've been talking about it, I think that we'll really see what do they mean exactly. I think that's something that we need to get more information about from people that have kids at Schilling. I think that's important. Developing these Realtor partnerships, you know, going back and circling back with Bay Shores and, hey, can we put some brochures here? Can we give you a link to some information? Updating Realtor.com, updating great school comments. Sometimes you get all those about a school and there's not any comments. Some of our parents would love to comment about the experience they're having at a Lincoln Elementary or wherever. leveraging next door. Continue working with the enrollment advisory committee for ongoing recommendations to the board. Develop communication video segments for internal and external communication. And I think my personal one is we need to identify someone And it doesn't have to be lots of money, but someone to help us with communication that's really got that expertise. That's not something that I'm trained in. And it's definitely a special skill set. And maybe some of it's what Nancy mentioned. There is some parents that said, hey, we might be able to help them with that. I just think between now and the 3rd, I need to get something moving quicker. But let me show the other ones, and we can come back and forth. I want to go through the long term. The long-term thing we talked about was we got to invest more in early childhood education. I know we've talked about that. Coming back to, let's talk about Cadango, let's talk about expanding TK and kindergarten at every site. Exploring the idea of employee housing. I think if you have a place where you have an option for employee housing and you get priority as an employee in the district, those are things that we can market when we're recruiting employees. developing some marquee programming if it's STEAM-centric or in that category. We have this area, this consideration of Area 3, what are the opportunities there? Is it magnet program? Is it K? Is it alignment, make sure it's aligned with Facility Master Plan? Is it school consolidation? Is there ways to do that? Explore middle college concept for junior high, that's something that's exciting to start really learning about college earlier. And just continuing with this implementation of continuous improvement model. So those are the two that I thought, let's go back. So short term, what do you think, is there something we could add or something that you think, and this is really like in the next six months or less that we're thinking and that comes to mind for the board.

[3084] SPEAKER_22: So I would say the city newsletter, having an article, talking about having an article, getting an article that highlights something positive about the district, whether it's like, hey, welcome, we're enrolling, or whatever message, something like that. There was another, I know, when Crocker had a bit of contact with another news, So it's making sure like you're leveraging these local publications to use that and that's a short-term thing that it's part of the community. And they'll do that for free for us.

[3117] SPEAKER_20: As long as it's written, I think. You get the information to them. If you write it, it's even better.

[3124] Nancy Thomas: There's public information messages free on the two big billboards, one on Dumbarton and one over here on 880. You could say schools are enrolling now. I mean, they do that, I think, for free.

[3147] SPEAKER_15: Is that the city that happens to have it?

[3148] Nancy Thomas: The city owns it, but I don't know. They can tell you. They would direct us? Yeah.

[3153] SPEAKER_22: Okay, that's good to know. Newark schools are enrolling now.

[3155] SPEAKER_15: That's awesome. On Del Mar, that's a little traffic. Every day. That's your on every day. Okay, what else?

[3165] Nancy Thomas: I'd like to echo what Francisco said about a quarterly newsletter to the entire community. We don't get the word out. People, you know, I steal stuff from Lettie's Friday Update and send it out to my cohort of people and it's really well received. You know, they didn't know that there was going to be free bus rides for kids. Geez, we should get the word out on it.

[3193] SPEAKER_15: That could be part of our newsletter.

[3197] SPEAKER_20: If you look at the board update, there's a number of things in the board update that could be automatically community update.

[3205] SPEAKER_15: You're right. That's a good point.

[3206] Nancy Thomas: And they are on social media, right? You put those out, Letty, don't you? Just Twitter. We're on Twitter. Yeah, on Twitter. What about getting a Facebook page and asking people to like it and share it? I mean, that stuff can be done pretty easily.

[3226] SPEAKER_15: So social media, okay.

[3229] SPEAKER_20: Anything else on short term? I think you need to prioritize it, because there's a lot of stuff.

[3233] SPEAKER_15: We're going to go through this exercise pretty soon. Not today, but I think that as I counted these, I'm going to ask the committee to go through an exercise with me to help prioritize. You put every one of the bullets on a card and help have them sort, like prioritize which ones we can do. Bring it to the board so you guys see what we're doing. So that frequent update to the board piece has got to happen.

[3255] SPEAKER_22: Well, I would say unless there's other, unless it's like a formal thing that you need approval on, then I would say whatever the committee comes up with as the next steps, to just get on it.

[3264] SPEAKER_22: Because then you skip the step of, hey.

[3267] SPEAKER_15: Well, I can still put it in Friday update.

[3269] SPEAKER_20: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

[3271] SPEAKER_15: So you don't have to come back. Yeah, it's nothing we'd vote on really, but yeah. Unless it's something over my threshold.

[3277] Nancy Thomas: There were a couple things that happened. The Democratic Party was giving endorsement interviews, and they were interviewing William McGee from Hayward on the board. And he had some real positive things to say about what they're doing. And I read the newsletter from Oakland, and they had a modest but significant increase in their graduation rates. And they really publicize that. So let's capitalize on the positive messages that we have. And like for Hayward, they were talking about their dual immersion starting in a kindergarten class. And then the next year, they'll be kindergarten grade one. We tend to just go whole hog and do the whole thing in one fell swoop. Let's talk about when we do these things to do them step-by-step until we learn how to do them well because I worry that we're going to start a new program and it's not going to be done well. And then my last idea is to meet with San Leandro. They have increased their enrollment with no housing like we have and they said it's specific things that they've done to bring back private school and charter school students to their schools. And a lot of it is they, some of these growth, they've had growth. Their demographics are very similar to ours. Their scores are not like Fremont's, but they had growth and they've gotten recognition from the state. And so the word is out that good things are happening in our district and it feeds on each other. And so, I mean, I think, and they had something about they were doing with parents. Anyway, I really think we have things that we can learn from districts that are similar to ours that have turn the corner or buck the train.

[3394] SPEAKER_22: Or talk to your rocketry club that goes international.

[3397] SPEAKER_15: Yes, there you go. The MAS program that we used to have. I mean, those are things that attract parents. Long-term, I know we're running out of time here, long-term things that you would add to this list.

[3408] SPEAKER_22: So I wouldn't add, but I want to echo the employee housing piece because for me, I feel like our priority is to educate our students, but if our educators are focused on whether or not they can pay rent, well, surprise, surprise. So that's why we need to really focus on explore employee housing because that would make us unique. It doesn't take away from what we have now in terms of our positives, but I think thinking long term and having this visionary plan of how we're moving forward. we want to commit to something like what San Diego did, we had a, talked about this maybe a couple years ago, where they leased the land to a developer for 99 years, which means that the district still owns the land, but it is developed, so at the end of 99, like, it goes back to the district so that the land isn't lost, but then that affordable housing, there was a mix of below market rate with market rate, but priority was, at least my understanding, educators and staff, but that would just want to echo for me for the long term.

[3476] SPEAKER_20: There's another piece in this too that they're talking about co-housing in terms of how many people have houses that are underutilized that might well be opening to educators in terms of rental, that type of thing. I don't know what kind of interests there are in terms of people doing it. I'm not sure what interest there is in terms of the teachers, but I think that That is one way of getting affordable. I worry about the teachers coming in that have big student loans, and I think it would be a way that we could help with that.

[3508] SPEAKER_15: Good idea.

[3510] Nancy Thomas: There was a big article in the paper about an organization that is doing, that they facilitate the rental of a room in your home to some of your other bedding.

[3522] SPEAKER_20: They go through and see if their personality goes well together, that type of thing, if it works. They do all the work.

[3527] Nancy Thomas: It's a city-led project, but it's in the Bay Area someplace.

[3531] Michael Milliken: Okay.

[3532] SPEAKER_20: That might be something the union might be interested in too. I don't know whether they're interested in that kind of thing or not.

[3539] SPEAKER_15: Okay. And I'm going to, let me share these reports with you so you have them. And as you see patterns, please email Char and I things to consider. And there's a handout for the audience too. The first one I'm going to route, this is the audience deck. I think the board stack was here, isn't it? Yes. So the green one is incoming. And the blue or the purplish one is outgoing. And it's sorry about the size of the font. But I couldn't fit it on. Oh, there's one of those. And I think that it helps us really dig in a little deeper and see. So let me point out a couple things on these reports. In the upper right-hand corner on the Total incoming requests, we had 94, 71 were approved. Now comparing that to the other total outgoing, we had 125 and 80 were approved. Yeah, it was 5, wasn't it 6? It was 6, 126. But that gives you kind of an idea. 126 and approved were 60. Yeah.

[3632] Nancy Thomas: Is this a spreadsheet? Could we get this emailed?

[3637] SPEAKER_15: We can get it. We'll get an email to you. Bill, can we email it to the board? Is that 80 or 60 on that?

[3644] SPEAKER_20: It's a 60. Outgoing. It's a 60. Is there a reason why we would not approve someone's request to come in?

[3657] SPEAKER_15: If it's a request coming in and there's disciplinary history or other things like that, there's certain factors that we would say no to. But most we would accept.

[3671] SPEAKER_20: And outgoing, why would we not allow them to go?

[3673] Nancy Thomas: The district wouldn't take them.

[3677] SPEAKER_15: Outgoing, what would you say, Bill? What are some reasons?

[3679] SPEAKER_16: Some of them is the receiving district refused to. Okay. That's the bigger number.

[3686] SPEAKER_15: Okay. So we'll get that to you electronically. It's not a great copy, but we'll send that to you. And if you think of other things, as I said, I'm meeting with the committee Monday. Just email Char and I. We're meeting Monday from 1 to 3 in the board library.

[3707] SPEAKER_15: one to three board library. That concludes the study session.

No minutes available.