Workshop Meeting

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[10] SPEAKER_19: President Thomas.

[11] Nancy Thomas: Here.

[13] SPEAKER_19: President, I'm sorry, Member Crocker.

[15] SPEAKER_30: Present.

[16] SPEAKER_19: Member Rodriguez.

[17] Ray Rodriguez: Here.

[18] Nancy Thomas: Member Nguyen. The next item of business is that we will be going into a board workshop to cover several items that are in our strategic plan. Is there anyone from the public that would like to address this issue before we meet? Seeing none, I would like to invite our board members-elect to join us at the table for this discussion. Please, Ms. Elisa and Lucia.

[77] SPEAKER_27: Yeah, come down here. No, no.

[81] Ray Rodriguez: I guess we didn't tell you. New board members have to bring their keys. You guys didn't. Oh, man. And I had them ready at the house. We said the same thing to Frankie. Oh, here.

[103] SPEAKER_30: Welcome, everyone.

[132] SPEAKER_13: This evening we wanted to kind of touch base on the strategic plan, but also kind of share some new information and kind of an update in each of the categories of, you know, kind of what's current things happening, current changes from kind of the county and state level, what we've been doing relative to budget, as well as what's been going on with communication and marketing in our enrollment. So it will be kind of framed underneath comparative one, imperative two, imperative three. And just to remind you, strategic imperative one is really about improving academic performance and achievement. Imperative two is about stabilizing the budget and being fiscally sound. And imperative three is about increasing our enrollment. So just kind of easy to remember it that way. But I'm going to have Leti Salinas, Associate Superintendent of Educational Services, and Amy Black kind of start with the first imperative and share some new information with you. But as we have this conversation and as you all take notes, be thinking about kind of what are some really big priorities. And as we look forward to a new board sitting in, I would like you to start thinking in terms of what would you like to see accomplished and focused on in the next 12 months so we can start looking at coming back and really refining the strategic plan into what are some really short-term goals. but also start thinking about what are some longer-term things we need to think about. And Kyle will touch on some of that relative to budget as he updates you on what the work has been with the budget advisory committee. So just kind of have that in mind. So we're not there yet. And I'll also be sharing with you later in my formal report that I did set aside some money for board training, board team building, board attendances to conferences. And so we're going to have a little bit of money that isn't general fund to really get together as a team and really focus our energies on the right things and come to some agreement around what our priorities are going forward, with the understanding that even if we have one new board member, that changes the team. We have two new board members. So we're going to work on reestablishing a sense of team and getting back to serving the kids. But I'll go ahead and turn it over to Leti, if you want to start with the parity one, Leti. Thank you.

[272] SPEAKER_33: Good afternoon. I wanted to set the stage and give a little context. And if our current school board members would excuse some of the historical context that I'm going to provide. Essentially, we have a new accountability system for the state of California, for the Department of Education. And that's called the California School Dashboard. And so what the California Department of Ed moved towards was away from the punitive. So you may have seen the newspapers in the past where it would say, like, are you a 10 school? Are you an 8 school? The Department of Ed and educators believe that we really need to have a growth mindset as it relates to teaching and learning. And so with that growth mindset, what it says is that we have to look at the whole child and we also have to look at progress that students are making and that we are making as a school district. And so this week, the California School Dashboard will be public. It's currently under embargo. You did receive a couple of emails that gave you some information as we're starting to move forward. But I wanted to kind of give that context as we're moving. The data that we're using is based on last year's testing data, so last spring. So we're also kind of working in arrears in some ways. But then we also have some current year data as we start to set our goals as we move forward. the state of California came up with a new indicator. And so although school districts have always tracked absenteeism and truancy, what we are now being measured against is chronic absenteeism. And we're going to have Amy Black give a little bit of context. And the reason why it's important as it relates to our strategic imperative is one, kids have to be in class for them to learn. And two, with us, as we generate income, we also lose a lot of revenue if kids aren't coming to school. So I'm going to turn it over to Amy to give a little bit of that information. And the data she's sharing is not under embargo. This is current data that's available to the public. What's still under embargo is the actual dashboard and some of the next steps that will come with that. And that will be free on Thursday.

[392] SPEAKER_27: If you want to take my seat, you can take my seat and I'm going to sit over here. Perfect. Is that what I'm doing? Okay, so I'm going to talk to you about Chronic absentee, and as you mentioned, there's a new indicator on the dashboard. So we're actually at two new indicators that we're going to be reporting on, and it's tied to our report card that's going to come out this week. One is chronic absenteeism, and the other is calling and career readiness. So we'll get two new indicators that tell us how we're best serving kids and where we need to grow. So is this right?

[431] SPEAKER_33: Right there.

[435] SPEAKER_27: What do you want? So what does it mean to be chronically absent and what does the data tell us? So we hear that term, chronically absent, what does it mean? So the state of California has a code around chronic absentees. I just wanted to frame kind of your thinking and understanding around how kids qualify for chronic absenteeism. This is basically a long-winded law that says essentially that students that miss 10% or more of the school year are then labeled chronically absent.

[465] SPEAKER_13: So how many days is that? 18. 18 days. Yeah, 18 days.

[469] SPEAKER_27: And it adds up quickly, right? Like if you take a little extra vacation, or you're sick a few days, or you know, didn't feel like sleeping in. So there's stuff like that, and there's also families that have some so it's time to know. So I want to share with you, this is two years of data that is public, it's through, you can look it up right now, it's at DataQuest. And essentially, unfortunately, we only have two years of data because that's when California decided in the dashboard that chronic health and TB is gonna be an indicator, and so then they officially started collecting data through CalPADS. So this data represents 2016-17, Well actually this is 2017-18, but I'm going to show you two year comparative data. So something to note is that we always look at where are we in relation to county average and where are we statewide. This is concerning. When we look at Newark, we're almost 20%. Plotting absentee, oh and it's important to note that it's a K-8 indicator, high school's not included. And the reason why the state of California decided to do that is because high school has so many indicators on the dashboard, they didn't want to continue to potentially penalize our high school students. So they're not part of, I will show you what our data looks like at the high school. It's actually really good. But this tells us that in our histogram that we create, we need to take a closer look at the data.

[565] Ray Rodriguez: From the way I look at it, that is 20% of our kids. These are just a number of children that we know who they are. And then it comes up to that percent.

[581] SPEAKER_27: It'll help you understand when we kind of tweeze down the data further. So I wanted to show you a year-over-year comparison. Where were we in 2016-17 when the state started to collect chronic absentee data, and then where we are as of last year?

[598] SPEAKER_30: What's the enrollment down?

[602] SPEAKER_27: It has to do with the capture day too, like when they capture it.

[610] SPEAKER_33: And we also very briefly looked at, just historically, we have had this pattern, even though the state wasn't tracking it.

[621] SPEAKER_27: something that's been systemic over time. So when we look at our student groups, and the reason why we're looking at these particular students groups, because these are the groups we look at on the California dashboard, and there's a lot of data around that. So for our last year, you can look at the populations of our English learner, our foster youth, our homeless youth, our socioeconomic disadvantage, and students with disability. This data I'm showing, but it won't be a factor for us on the dashboard. You have to have 30. or more for it to be a cohort. But this is data for us to look at. We think, OK, who are these new students? And we want to also personalize it with our students and our families and understand what the need is. OK, this is our school breakdown. So if you look at each individual school, if we're thinking, do we have schools that are outliers? I would say across the board, it's pretty similar. You do see some that have a higher, above our district average at 31%. snow 27%, Lincoln was just below our district average. Something to celebrate would be our junior high and our high school. So when kids are, I would factor that to parent involvement or I would say students being more independent, that they're able to get themselves to school more when they're older than When they're at the elementary school, they're very reliant on their parents to get them to school. So that might be something, too, in terms of education that we talk about parents and what kind of support do they need to get their little ones to school. And then Bridgepoint, which is our continuation school, that's something that's a big concern. I don't want to go too fast.

[726] SPEAKER_30: There's no chance that part of this is the actual counting of the absentees, and there's no glitch in how the absentees are recorded.

[737] SPEAKER_27: That's a really great question, and that's something we're going to look at. So we have already scheduled time, so through our Synergy program, which is our student information system, we're going to do a training with our principals, as well as our office managers, to just make sure that we're capturing the absences correctly, and then how are we handling If you want a student absent, but they're really tardy, are we going back and making sure that we're marking it appropriately? So where are our systems in place? So that's absolutely part of the questions and the work that we want to do. How can we be at 96, 97% on ABA and have this?

[773] Ray Rodriguez: It doesn't seem to jump. Right, yeah.

[780] SPEAKER_27: Yeah, and we have questions around that as well.

[782] SPEAKER_33: We do, but also you have to also remember it's a certain subset of kids, and that subset is chronically absent. So, you know, if you're looking at, I don't think BridgePoint's probably a good example, but let's say, let's look at BGP. out of all their whole enrollment, those 86 students have just at least 10% of the school year, they've been absent. And so, and I will say this, you know, I'm thinking back to a conversation last year with one of the principals and talking with parent groups and, you know, candidly having a little bit of pushback as to, well, you know, we scheduled a family vacation. It's like, oh, I really wish you would have done it around spring break when kids can be absent and, you know, but of course, we have to work with our community to see Like, maybe we have to look at our school calendar, and maybe our school calendar is not responsive to the needs of families. I don't know. I mean, there's going to be a lot of work that we have to do with this, because it's got to change. The other piece is, if this wasn't historically kind of aligned, that I think would be a bigger flag for me. But because it looks like it has been a pattern for a number of years, that's another question. But we are going to look at it.

[850] Nancy Thomas: What about, you know, contracts for students that are gone for five days? Aren't they allowed to do the work outside? And are we enabling and promoting contracts for those students? Independent study, you mean? Independent study, yeah. I mean, they sign it, right?

[867] Elisa Martinez: But I think it's the point around, that was my question as well, in terms of whether we're proactively encouraging it, you know? So yes, ideally I should take my kids out, you know, around the holidays, but when I don't, you know, if it makes a difference whether I take the minimum of five days versus the four days. And it's typically, it's been my experience, because I've done that, that unless I ask, it's not encouraged. Right? So I think that's an opportunity. Absolutely. Yeah.

[894] Ray Rodriguez: You know, what's frustrating is, if this has been something that's been ongoing, then it sure doesn't make us look good. Because if you know, if we knew we had this issue, let's say, five years ago, or four years ago, And then you've got to look at what measures have we taken over those years to improve it, and has it improved? And then this is not a kid issue as much as it is a parent issue. And I remember years ago when I tried to get contracts for my kids when we were going to go back east as a family. The whole process was not easy. And it should be pretty easy for parents to say, hey, are they going to be out three, five days? Can I get the homework and stuff? And some teachers participated, or some, and then others, it was more difficult. And it should be driven by us, because we're the ones that take the heat on this stuff.

[952] SPEAKER_33: Absolutely.

[953] Ray Rodriguez: To make sure it's happening.

[955] SPEAKER_13: And one of the things that I really want to dig into, Ridgepoint should be the master of independent study. And Crossroads, that's really what they're So I think that's part of that. I do think it's a combination of how we're inputting data, it's how we're communicating, how the process works, and you know, knowing that if we do a dependent study, how does it work, and do we still capture EDA? Just really demystifying how it works. But on the other side, you know, kind of decoying what you're saying, that we've known this, or if we've known this for a while. We definitely haven't communicated about this to anybody. And I think most parents, if they knew, they'd be, oh, you know what? I think we need to kind of be more thoughtful about that. So I'm thinking in terms of what might be part of our communication campaign to help with a specific component of the indicator. But BridgePoint is a surprise to me. And I think there's got to be more of a technical issue there.

[1025] Ray Rodriguez: We haven't dug in. Well, you're looking at a total population of what, 100, 110, and then you get to 75, where I'm more concerned about the elementary, because I think Bridgepoint, it's a small number of students that should be able to be identified. And a lot of these kids, they get confused with the independent study and then being at an alternative school. where they get out of noon.

[1049] SPEAKER_13: But what's impressive is look at Newark Memorial. I know. They've got 1,900 students.

[1053] Ray Rodriguez: So apparently they're 4%. So I guess something happened and the kids grew up and now they're coming to school, right? But no, the elementary thing is very frustrating.

[1063] Nancy Thomas: You know, you might even ask about Newark Memorial if that's accurate. Are we keeping accurate attendance? It's almost too good. It's the other side. And the same thing with the junior high school. I mean, it shouldn't, from the elementary to junior high, we shouldn't see that. And if it wasn't because it's a K-8 indicator, that 5.4% is making this look good. But if it's not accurate, we're even worse than we think.

[1094] SPEAKER_13: So I want to kind of stop just for a second. What's your impression, Kai, of the implications on this for ADA?

[1102] SPEAKER_14: Yeah, a huge implication. Right now, we're sitting at, like you said, Ray, at 96.76%. So it's our number of days students attend classes divided by the number of days students attend school, so 180 school days. So we're at 96.6%. If we can increase that 88 to 97.5, That would make a significant increase in our revenue.

[1131] Nancy Thomas: About three or four years ago, we were at about one percentage point higher. And we steadily declined from that. And I kept asking, you know, when we went that high from 94%, I said, what are we doing? Look, everything's good. And I know we were sending home notices about every day your child's down here, we lose $23 or whatever it is. And I don't know if that continued. But then I'm thinking, now that we're not capturing, you know, we're not capturing the fact that it's not just chronic absenteeism, it's regular absenteeism too.

[1172] SPEAKER_13: But a 1% increase, when you talk about this in budget, 1% is equal to, what was it, $300,000, $500,000?

[1187] Ray Rodriguez: to excuse that.

[1189] SPEAKER_30: Excuse doesn't make any difference. So it still would be chronic if it's excused? Because they have, it's seek time. It used to be we could excuse for sickness.

[1197] SPEAKER_27: So even excuse absence go towards chronic absentee number.

[1203] Toni Stone: So if they're doing the contract or the additional work, it's still fee and time.

[1207] SPEAKER_30: It doesn't make a difference? If they do the contract, then it's considered except they're there, they're doing the work. But it has to be five days or more. And so if you're taking your child up for two days, there's no way to contact, we'll help the child with work, but we'll not help the district with money.

[1222] SPEAKER_14: So that's your answer. Back to Patrick's answer, I think a 1% increase would be like about 40 to 50 students, 88 increase, that's like about $400,000.

[1238] SPEAKER_27: So I wanted to give you another snapshot of who are, if we tweeze down even further, who are the students that we need to target in terms of if we're campaigning with our parents and communicating. So you see our babies. And part of that is a little bit, too, about how the law is written. So kindergarten, technically in California, students don't have to attend kindergarten. They can just start in first grade. So we're not able to legally, we're not able to officially track them or count them in SARD until they turn six. So it kind of, we're a little bit in a kind of a conundrum right now trying to talk with our principals about what will be our campaign around our five-year-olds and our parents. For them to really understand, because there's also, and I'm going to get to the research behind it, there's a lot of research around how critical it is for kids to come to school TKK first grade, and it significantly impacts their academic achievement in school.

[1300] Ray Rodriguez: My grandkids are not part of this. Well, I'm going to check.

[1308] SPEAKER_27: The next item, and we've already kind of talked about it, and so I don't know if you want to get more thoughts about it. What else, maybe this question, what else do you need to know? What additional data would you like to see about this? You kind of talked about it.

[1320] Nancy Thomas: I think there's a lot that surprised you. I'd like to see some kind of an audit, because there's more than double the average in Alameda County. That's really what stood out to me. And being more than double, I would I would like to see if there is some kind of analysis with our calendar compared to other districts. I'd like to see some kind of analysis of what other districts are doing differently than us.

[1354] Ray Rodriguez: No, no, I agree. Because culturally, we're the same, very similar to, let's say, A, we're unified. And, you know, what are they doing with their ethnic population that makes it such to where their advocacy doesn't show up that much, that it's lower, okay?

[1377] Elisa Martinez: So, you know. Or, you know, by grades. I think that just to drill down, I think the comparison, you know, I think we can make assumptions about, you know, other contributing factors that even just by I think that will be important to see. At some point I imagine I can get home learning, but one of the things I'd be interested to see is besides letters and phone calls, what's our resource? Who do I look to when I write in terms of, hey Pat, who do you got working on this? Who's going to be doing the outreach? So I would be interested to see what is our mechanism for that. Absolutely.

[1414] SPEAKER_33: And I think especially when you compare yourself to larger districts that candidly have a team. Like here we have, you know, we have Mr. Whitten who served, he will do home visits. I always say, oh my God, how did you have time to do a home visit? And he does. But he wears many other hats. Where you look at larger districts that also have looked at grants and other possibilities, They actually have child welfare attendance officers, they call them officers, but really they're going to homes, knocking on the door and saying, hey, do you need help getting to school? Those kinds of things.

[1444] Nancy Thomas: But yeah, definitely we can look at that. Maybe there's a cost benefit in an office to pay office managers or to go and visit families after school.

[1458] Elisa Martinez: So why would you... A great percentage.

[1461] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah. More than 500,000. I'm not saying that I disagree with that totally, but if you identify, let's say, let's say you're talking about snow inventory and you're talking about, let's say, the K-3. I like breaking it down into K-3 and 4, 5, 6, okay? And you schedule a meeting with the parents. As board members, it's okay if we show up to some of these meetings. I'd like to see if that's something that, you know, staff feels that can be done so we can have these and let the parents know how important it is for them to.

[1499] SPEAKER_33: And we are doing them. I think I will share, you know, our principals have started to do some of this work. And we remember at the end of last year, we received a Prop 47 grant. So we got some extra funds to start to do this. So we started to do an incentive. At that time, I think it was for spring break. We did a raffle and kids were, it was all kind of science focused things. And it was, must be present to win the day before spring break and the day after spring break. And so we saw a little bit of an uptick in kids coming to school. I'll say, you know, Amanda Gallagher next door at music, she actually, during the parent teacher conferences, had all the staff that wasn't working on a conference. They started to phone bank all of the littles that hadn't been to school that month and just checking in. And so, our principals have some great creative ideas. I think it's also talking with our attendance clerks. I mean, they're on the front lines. They're the ones actually talking to the folks and hearing from them what their ideas are.

[1555] Ray Rodriguez: Well, you see that Graham and Schilling have the highest numbers. Absentee numbers. Okay. And they're the ones, that's where we have our largest, you know, ELD population. the larger percentage of Latino kids. So if I was a principal, when do I get to a point where I say, you know, it's not happening, and I need help? And I want to make sure that that avenue is open, where the principal feels open enough to say, hey, I need some help, because it's just not happening for me.

[1594] Elisa Martinez: I'm sorry. I think, though, I mean, given that it this is a trend and assuming that we validate this data, I don't know that, you know, I guess, you know, as I think about from an administration perspective, I don't know that we have to wait for, you know, to be asked given the implications to the revenue stream. So I think, you know, I'm actually looking to you guys to say it's not, the onus isn't on the principals, it should be, but, you know, raising the issue.

[1626] SPEAKER_33: I mean, I think, you know, we meet with principals every Thursday, and they know it's an issue. And so now it's, and it's always been an issue. But again, I think, again, as we're looking at this kind of growth model, growth mindset, like how do we intervene? I think here, I mean, candidly, I think we're at a crisis, because it's double what the county has. So, yes, I mean, I think they truly recognize that's what we need.

[1651] Ray Rodriguez: So as a board, as a board of education, then our question would be, What can we do to make this happen?

[1660] SPEAKER_30: There's also a little piece in that is, if you set up the culture of a school, the kids want to be in school. The parents are responsible to do it. And that's your parent group. And so it's getting the volunteers. And it doesn't cost us anything with the volunteers. Give them some sort of help to help change the culture of the family saying, gee, I'm going skiing this weekend. Oh, your kids are going to school. Oh, it looks like fun. You know, there's a whole different approach to it, and I think that you can do, and I don't know, and I'm not sure how you work that, but that's something that the principal and the PT president, this kind of thing, because it's money. It's a matter of whether we have lower class sizes, it's a matter of whether we have more supplies in the classroom, whether we have field trips. These are all things that are paid for or not, depending upon the money that comes in from ADA.

[1710] Ray Rodriguez: Don't they have, and I know with my, Grandkids, they have the STAR system, right, where they get starved every time they do it?

[1718] SPEAKER_33: Yes. So we do have attendance campaigns. We do have the SARB process, where families are contacted after letters, after communication, then actually going to a SARB hearing. Because there could be other factors. Because in this mix, we have certain types of students, right? We may have kids who are chronically ill. we may have students in this mix who are homeless and can't get to school. So how are we doing that? So we are gonna work with the cost teams and the cost teams at each school site that really look at wraparound services, how do we support our family to get kids to school. So there's many factors, but I think, back to your point, Ms. Thomas and Ms. Crocker, it's the work that we all do together. This is gonna be a community effort. I mean, when you see neighboring cities, I remember in Hayward, we actually, we got the chamber involved, because it was a high school there. And so we'd actually put stickers and all the businesses like, call this number if you see our lovely kids at your shop. But it was something where it was more of a reward, right? And then we started to do these kind of gold cards where kids would get incentives and all this really good stuff. But everybody got involved, the chamber, the city, nonprofits, and school district.

[1790] SPEAKER_30: Based on the meetings that you guys have with the principals, do they give you factors or reasons

[1797] Toni Stone: especially like Shelly and Graham, as to what. So you guys are, they are pointing out certain reasons why.

[1802] SPEAKER_33: Oh yes, yes, because we know, I mean we can't talk about it here, but we know which, we know who the kids are. And so that's part of our strategy. And as we're starting to make the plan and look at what, going back to the point of is there extra funding that's needed, that's going to be the other thing we look at.

[1820] Nancy Thomas: Have we broken it down to see how many of the chronic absentees in five-day blocks where they could have a independent study or contract? We'll do that. We have not yet done that.

[1832] SPEAKER_33: That's a good one.

[1834] SPEAKER_13: I think a couple of them. One is we also... Four days.

[1837] Elisa Martinez: I would say four or five because I think we tip them over the edge because we don't... Sorry, again, my observation. Yeah, right. Not that we don't. No, I agree.

[1854] SPEAKER_13: But we had also received some money for incentives for tenants. Yes, that's a Prop 47 grant. Just briefly to talk about that and what that does.

[1865] SPEAKER_33: So at the end of last year, we received a grant for three years to look at how to improve attendance. With that Prop 47, what we looked at for the high school that time was incentive assemblies. We did some raffle prizes for the little kids. We saw a little bit of an uptick, but not enough. And so we're actually right now in the planning stages with the counties on how to roll it out. So very targeted in looking at it. And we're actually going to meet with the county in two weeks to look at that data. Leveraging that, we also were able to leverage that grant to pay for the automated call out that we use and also find some additional services with the attention to attendance program so that letters can go out also for tardies. And so we're buying some extras that we haven't been able to support in the past and to also replace some general fund expenses.

[1918] Nancy Thomas: I think it would also be interesting to analyze the data by by the chronic absentee students. Of the chronic absentee students, how many, you know, like a chart of how many are absent 10%, how many are absent 11, how many, you know what I mean? So you do that, and also maybe the same thing for the non-chronic absentee students. You know, what, how much is chronic absenteeism actually costing us compared to, if we took the chronic absentees out, are our kids doing okay? So if we really concentrate on the chronic absentees, everything else is still okay.

[1963] SPEAKER_13: A couple things, and I know we've got to move to the next imperative, but one is, I think the first step, in my opinion, now that we're getting the data in, is to have principals go through a root cause analysis kind of protocol with their sites and have that conversation. They know the kids best, they're the best connected with those families. That's one thing. I think the other thing that I've seen work in my experience is incentives. We used to do something really simple, which you described, where all kids with a certain threshold of attendance got an all-access pass to a carnival that the parents brought in, and it was really a big deal every year, and they did one or two, and it really kind of rewarding the right kids for doing the right thing and making it really hard to... Like a gift card. So the kids don't want to be at home, they want to be at school. Most of them do. So I think just a positive incentive. Reward what's right. I think that what isn't being said, I need to say is, you know, as we have more of this data, it's just embargoed still until, when is it? Until Thursday. So after Thursday, that won't be in Barbara, and then staff will be able to look at a lot more of that and dig deeper. But I think before we really bring in somebody outside to help us with analysis, I want the staff to kind of come to some conclusions. And I'll be with the county tomorrow to hear more about this as we go forward.

[2044] Ray Rodriguez: Just feel traumatized a little bit. Yeah, it's a surprise. Because we just talk about ADL all the time, and we're so happy that it's 97%. I wrote it.

[2054] SPEAKER_33: We've got a plan. I mean, I think, and I appreciate the suggestions for data. And we can analyze this ourselves and really work with our teams and principals to address it.

[2064] SPEAKER_27: I'm going to have a super fast-forward video. I have another presentation. So I just think this is also important when we think about our, like, campaigning with Karen. So they really understand that You know, 83% of students who are chronically abstinent in first grade, they're unable to read at grade level by third grade. Students who can't read by third grade are four times more likely to drop out of school. And kids that don't have diplomas are eight times more likely to be incarcerated. And I know we've talked about it at the principal's meeting. The state actually looks at what's the reading level of third graders to determine how much space they're going to need in prison. So it is a really, really important topic. and educating our parents, especially that are new, like kindergarten, like they're new families, and new parents are understanding how critical it is to send their kids to school. Well, this is gonna fit suspensions and crime, guns, and tea, so we're looking at that as well. And then, you know, it's a loss of revenue, and when you don't have revenue, we're not able to put programs in place to support our most neediest students.

[2120] Leonor Rebosura: Good question. Since suspensions do exacerbate

[2127] Toni Stone: Is there other options that schools are considering? We're like just keeping them in?

[2131] SPEAKER_27: So yeah, so we're doing, and that can be something actually Mr. Whitman can also talk about, and then the principals as well. But the work that we've done with PBIS, and then also at the secondary level of talking about looking at alternatives. Yeah, sending kids home, and then same with the elementary school. So that's also a community. education, because I think parents sometimes have an expectation that kids should be suspended. So also explaining to parents that suspension is not always the answer for discipline, especially when we're working with littles. So that's going to be conversations that we have at the elementary level, and then also educating our parents on that, that little kids don't know what suspension means, so to be suspending them, it's not going to scale. So that's, yes, we talk about that, and it is part of our plan. So how do we back them up? And these are just recommendations and things that we're already doing and continuing to look even closely, like improve our video tracking, focus on early attendance. So thinking about an initiative around that. What's our tiered approach for supporting our students at risk? It's LCAP season, so where is it in our LCAP and what resources are we putting towards it? really taking a look at our discipline policies, how are we communicating with parents positively, so it's not always feeling like it's punitive, you know, so they might need help. And then partnerships, are we utilizing all the services in our community, in the community of Newark, to support our families, and is there more that we can do? So those are just recommendations, and I'm gonna switch over to strategic planning. Well, I, yes, I have, you didn't get in one still, sorry.

[2237] Diego Torres: Can I fast track that?

[2240] SPEAKER_27: Sorry. Sure. OK, so I told the new board members that they're going to get used to seeing me and having to listen to my presentations. I speak often. I wear a lot of hats, so just a little bit of background for the new members. I support all TK through 12 curriculum and instruction, as well as local and state assessment, and any other thing that comes my way. So anything data related, or curriculum, or materials, or professional development, it all falls in my office. So part of the strategic imperative goal that the board has established is around academic achievement. So the goal specifically states that Newark Unified School District will provide academic excellence via equity and opportunity for all students. And then a sub-goal of that is that we, as a community, are responsible for the future success of all NUSD students and we will close the gap and raise the bar simultaneously. So within our strategic plan, We have specific objectives. This doesn't capture all the objectives. These are just the objectives I'm gonna speak to tonight. So we have an academic growth bar that's connected to a continuous improvement model and also the work that we do with, I don't know how familiar you are with CCEE. So that partnership over the last two years, we've been a pilot school district working with them in order to build our capacity and understanding and how we can support continuous improvement in our schools. And that's been a really powerful partnership that we've had over the last two years. And through that partnership, it evolved into the work that we're doing this year around professional learning communities. And I'll speak a little bit more about our cycles this year. Obviously, continuing to work on clear, systematic, common core standards-based curriculum that's aligned for a college of career readiness. We're continuing to update our curricula. Most recently, it's a new math option. and so I've been continuing to work at looking at social studies and science as we move forward and then create a common thing time for our PLCs and I'll talk a little bit about that. So I mentioned CCEE and we've been working with them the last two years. We were fortunate enough that once we had kind of our, what do we call it? I have all these acronyms in my head. What's our, like our fit then, our problem practice. Yes. Our promo practice through that work with CECC last year, we thought, oh my gosh, we are really primed to come together and work with our staff with the new math adoption and really a critical need in the area of mathematics to make some change and support our teachers and students. So I don't know if you're familiar with the professional learning community model. by DeFore, they wrote these books, Learning by Doing, a million years ago, and it's a really powerful movement around how you create collaborative teams within schools or grade levels or departments to really look at what are our essential standards, what is it that kids should be able to know and understand when they leave And how are we going to ensure that those standards have been met? And you do that through, obviously, instruction. You have to have a progress monitoring piece, meaning you're giving summative or formative assessments throughout your cycle. And then responding to the data that you collect on students and adjusting your teaching so that you can match the learning needs.

[2457] Nancy Thomas: How are we measuring this professional learning? I'm going to get to that.

[2463] SPEAKER_27: I promise you. So we were fortunate enough to take our entire admin team in June for a three-day solution tree professional learning community so that we could all have the same message. We've all had the pieces of understanding our past professional development to get on the same page, have the same language, and really commit to this work, which is the work that we're doing this year. We also did it with our new, we rolled it out in our two-day management retreat in August with our new administrators, so we can get them on board. This is our commitment this year. We're doing four cycles of professional learning community around the area of mathematics, and I'm going to talk about our cycles. So our first cycle was, our focus was looking at, so overall our whole focus is around student achievement in math. and implementing a continuous improvement model with specific focus on math via the implementation of the Big Ideas Math Program. So this is brand new, right? PLC is brand new, the curriculum is brand new, and we wanted to frame it within professional learning communities. So the first part is that you have to establish your norm, teachers have to understand what PLC means, so the principals did intensive PD on their Friday release, as well as on their first day in August, so teachers can understand what the PLC process is, the work that they're doing this year. And then they went through a timeline. The first timeline was September 17th through October 18th, and teachers are actually creating a learning, what do we call it, a learning progress plan. where they identify what are the standards in this unit, in this new curriculum, what is it that kids need to really understand, how are we going to teach it, how are we going to check it along the way, and how do we know if it worked, and then what do we need to adjust going into the next unit. And so we actually then came together in our admin team to look at and the feedback under cycle one was, we need more time. That's usually the case, right? We need more time. We don't have enough time. I was able to visit a couple schools, including BGI, when they were analyzing their student data, and it was super powerful for them to be able to look at their grade level team, see what's working, collect. They were using a chapter test to kind of see how the kids did within that unit. So that's local data on the school site. And then they kind of all came to a realization when they did their share out that, wow, our kids really need work in problem solving and learning language problem solving. And what are we doing collectively as a site? to address that. We're currently in cycle two and so we're going to continue to implement it. Also the feedback from principals is that some of our grade levels are struggling with the term collaboration versus collaboration. And so PLC and DeFore talks about this idea of collaboration, like are you coming together to talk about your field trips and your business and Is there this schedule of, I have an assembly next week, and I have yard duty. Is that what your meetings are about? Or are they truly about student learning and looking at student data? And for some schools, that's a big shift. They're used to having that grade level time to plan their logistics. And so we're asking them to use their grade level planning time for true collaboration.

[2670] Nancy Thomas: How much grade level planning time or release time, early release days, how much of that time is really set aside for our teachers to collaborate? Because I think in the contract, a lot of it is that they get 30 minutes here and 30 minutes there. I mean, that's not enough to collaborate.

[2690] SPEAKER_27: So at minimum, our principals are doing it on their Friday at mid-time, so at the elementary level. So based on the contract, depending on the month, so if it's three Fridays a month, the principals get one Friday. If it's four Fridays a month, they get two Fridays. So depending, and we've mapped out with the principals, so everybody's on the same schedule, the same Friday, so that we're able also as Ed Services to push in and provide additional support or do district-wide support and we also did a training on our reading assessment as well as writing calibration. So it's not all math, we have other subjects we have to support. But by aligning everybody's Friday, we're able to ensure that we're getting the support that we can.

[2735] SPEAKER_33: And if we want the teachers, and the teachers also have some additional time that they use on their own. So school gets out at 2.30, but they're still by contract there until 3.30. But that's time that school maybe needs for an IEP. So there's other things that's happening during that time. But true professional development time is basically two Fridays that are principal-directed a month, is what it comes out to.

[2759] Nancy Thomas: In addition to- Is that an hour and a half? Oh, I'm sorry.

[2762] SPEAKER_33: Yeah, so it's early release, so it's about an hour and a half.

[2767] Elisa Martinez: Sorry, so just so that I understand, cycle one focus. does every school have exact same goal?

[2778] SPEAKER_27: So the theory behind the professional learning community is this idea of loose and tight. So we're tight in saying that it has to be math, and that you need to focus on math, but we're loose in allowing our grade levels to identify based on what their, because every school has different student data based on their population, so their needs are gonna be different. So they would, as a grade level, need to look at their current class, what is their current data, and then make adjustments. So that's where they meet. Yeah, I agree.

[2806] Elisa Martinez: So they all would have a different baseline, for example. But are we looking for a, what's my measurable? Am I looking for a 5%?

[2813] SPEAKER_27: Am I looking, like, to your original question is... So all schools have a 10% growth, the kind of standard that they're looking for based on state testing. What I can show you is a little bit of one of our local assessments. We're using iReady. And so this is a snapshot last year at the beginning of the year. So iReady is a progress monitoring tool that we use at a district. We collect it three times a year, but a teacher can use it at any time to collect data on their students. So at the beginning of the year, and then also pay attention to, we don't always have good data in terms of how many kids are actually being, you know, total numbers of students versus how many actually. So that's always a factor when we're looking at percentages. But it was also new last year district-wide. So that gives you a snapshot at the beginning of the year. And then to see where we are this year.

[2866] Nancy Thomas: So this is not being assessed?

[2869] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah, I thought all of them had to be assessed.

[2871] SPEAKER_33: So we're working with our schools. And so as you can see, we did intervene. I don't know how to go back. So when we looked at that, we had to intervene. We did intervene. As you can see, we're getting closer.

[2886] SPEAKER_27: to the number of students that are... Yeah, so this year, I think it's a better picture of where we are in terms of we have total participation. Kindergarten is always an area where, you know, they're not, they're not waiting on computers all the time, so I usually give them a pass at the the beginning of the year, and we'll all need to continue to work on that. We see that trend also with DRA and with writing. And it also kind of makes sense in terms of our littles coming in at kindergarten. Really, the January window is the time that I really want to collect data. So to see kind of, I think this is a more accurate baseline of where we are at the beginning of the year. Tomorrow, I'm actually going to present growth over time at our LCAP meetings, and I'm going to dig very deeply into local data. So if you're free tomorrow night, you're welcome to come on over to the LCAP meeting, and I'm going to go very deeply into writing and our reading and math scores and I-Ready. The purpose of my share today was not really to dive into data, but just to share where we are in terms of our goal.

[2947] SPEAKER_33: And I think it's connecting it to our work with CCEE, with the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence. Last year when the superintendent brought this opportunity, we saw that as an opportunity to partner with this parallel organization that is working with the Department of Ed. And what we're hopeful is around resources, because what we see is that while our teachers are great, you know, they have this time, they can collaborate, but then we need data coaches. We need math coaches to really support them. And so we're hoping that Once we hear of the official ask coming back from CCEE, then we will have some additional resources and what we're looking at is two math coaches and two data coaches to support our teachers in the classroom and at our school sites.

[2991] SPEAKER_27: So us continuing to rise, we're going to be rolling into cycle three and four of our math work and then mention our CCEE coming up with an opportunity hopefully to add math and data coaches that will help us dig even deeper in the math and work with teacher teams for them to really understand how to analyze data and make adjustments to their instruction and then we continue to collect a lot of data local and state and analyze and look at it a different way and update it. Data is a regular conversation at our principal meetings weekly. There's a lot of data and we process it and really inform decisions and supporting our students and our teachers.

[3037] SPEAKER_13: And it's okay that we went long on this, because this is the most important work. So I would not worry about that. What I would say to the board is we should pick math intentionally. So the fact that we're zeroing in on math to implement this protocol is by design. We're researchers in the UK, and that's the bigger gatekeeper and the bigger predictor in third grade and in third, fifth, eighth, ninth, are really big predictors and help raise all scores, so we pick math intentionally. Part of what we're looking to do, in a normal, well, in a traditional system, they use the state test, which is kind of a summative assessment. And the best way I would describe a summative assessment is like an autopsy. It's already too late to learn about it, it's just the final grade, that's what you got. It doesn't inform a lot of how you help kids in the process. What we use iReady for is the common formative assessment, which is more of a blood test. So we're going to do something for nine or six weeks. We're going to dose and try something. We're going to collect that data. We're going to see what it says in iReady. And then together, we're going to get into our PLC, and let's talk about our grade level. Let's talk about, are these kids on standard? Are they on grade level? and then let's decide what we're going to do as a team and try another dose, but try another approach. So when we start talking about those cycle and assessments, we're trying to, we are, we have aligned pretty well when the assessments are completed so that once they're in the queue to be used, that now we can provide that data for when, as soon as we have that, we're planning the time with the principal and PLCs So they have that data with them in the room. So that's the refinement of the process we're working on to get it to where as soon as the cycle ends, and within a day or two, we're ready to go into the PLC and look at the data, analyze it, make some adjustments, and try another cycle to help get those kids to grade level.

[3159] Nancy Thomas: Do we have a critical enough math? Because I assume you're talking about grade level PLCs. And when you have only two teachers teaching at a grade level, I mean, what kind of collaboration can they really effectively do compared to maybe a BGI that has four classes at grade level?

[3179] SPEAKER_13: Well, the schools have to construct it based on what they they can do. What I will tell you is even if it's two teachers looking at all of a grade level's data and how they're doing towards the most frequently tested items in math, there's nothing wrong with that. And I think that's part of, when you start seeing the real collaboration is after they get used to, you know, kind of dispelling the fear of using a data cycle, they start talking to each other and say, well, how did you guys do it? Or maybe we get first and second grade together so there's a larger group. Then you start talking about scope and sequence of those standards. But I think that also is an opportunity for us. If we know there's a group that's really small, we might pull them together with two schools or four schools. But part of the goal right now in going deep with the cycle assessments is really what we're going to use CCE resources for. And the model that we want to do, if we bring in these data coach and math coach would be for them to train our own teachers in a train-to-trainer model. So it's not somebody that comes in from out of town and then they leave and then no one's around to help ask the question or help answer the question. So I think that those are kind of the nuances we're trying to work through. But I'd rather have two teachers talking about it in a structured protocol with time that is held sacred if only for that than not have it. but those are some things we're working through right now. We can wrap, actually you're going to hit all yours in your presentation. I can catch mine in my report to the board. I was going to update on a few things I saw relative to the imperial logistic framework. No, actually I'm glad that we spent most of our time

[3307] Nancy Thomas: So we would invite the two board members to come into the other room with us for a moment or two.

[3312] Ray Rodriguez: Yeah, but I need to know how that will stand because they're not board members yet and we're talking about confidentiality.

[3318] Nancy Thomas: We have something to take care of that. Yeah, it's a process we're going to follow.

[3326] Nancy Thomas: OK? Thanks.

No minutes available.