thank you this has been I'm assuming amazing middle and elementary school and I know it was kind of last minute too hold your hand [Music]
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good afternoon everyone and welcome to our school safety and climate committee of the board of education of LA Unified thanks so much for driving out through Dodger opening day traffic go Dodgers good luck today i'm Tanya Ortiz Franklin uh lucky to chair this meeting proud
board representative for district 7 South LA through the harbor area we'll do a quick round of intros so you all know who's on the committee and then we'll jump into two presentations one quick one from the district and then an amazing school site presentation with an elementary and middle school I'm excited
to introduce um so I'll uh start over here with Miss Newville just really briefly if everyone can share just your name your organization so we know who's on the committee good afternoon Sherlet Hendy Newell i am the representative board district 1 and proud constituent of board district 1
good afternoon joel Cisneros executive director for student mental health and wellness services here at Ali Unified good afternoon i'm Karen Lane i'm from the uh mayor's office in Los Angeles good afternoon andres Ch chief of school
operations uh hi I'm Mike McClean i work for the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education i help keep the train on the tracks hello I'm Carlos Vaya co-executive director at Cadre based in South Los Angeles
good afternoon Arthy Harper LA County Office of Violence Prevention thank you and we also have Carla Grego who represents board district 5 she will be here in just a few moments um this is our fourth committee meeting of the year where we look at data related to school safety
incidents on and around campus and we really try to be solutionsoriented and so today we're going to get an update from the team the operations team as we often do on school safety incidents over the last few years how we're trending and then I'm excited to bring up two of our schools who've been doing really
well with that data we've been looking at AR incidents the team will tell us exactly how we've figured this out but I want to celebrate Pinewood Elementary and Buroughs Middle School who've made some great progress and excited to hear from students and families and key folks on the campus uh who are helping our
families feel safer in and around campus so let's get into today's presentation we'll invite operations up i think we have Dr al Webb from the team to first kick us off with some data to ground our conversation welcome Al well thank you so much and appreciate you having me
join you today chair uh Ortiz Franklin and uh committee members um I'm a pleasure to be here i'm Alfonso Webb senior director for the division of school operations and I'll provide an update on the latest data trends uh within operations uh as you see here on
the chart this is overall IR data this is data that's um submitted by administrators that provides um multiple reports that you see here so they don't total out because there may be multiple incidents that are taking place that
would have multiple um um responses so there may be a fight that also has uh involved in a threat or illegal substance or or weapon so as you see here these total these actual data points do not total up they could be multiple um as we see here these are
comparing apples to apples as they are go through February 28th uh the district-wide overall counts as you see that first full year after COVID it was 22 23 um we had um a a increase there but then actually from excuse me an
increase from the 2223 year to the 23 24 in fighting and physical aggression uh slight increase this year in in those same particular counts as you look at the threats uh an increase there as well uh for this past year um as we look at
the illegal and controlled substances as well as weapons those particular areas have decreased as we look at onampus incidents onampus incidents um would be particular incidents that are involving uh folks that are or may be sightings of
different incidents but it's not necessarily um a a a bonafide situation it may be u a call or someone had reported something so in terms of the fighting and f physical aggressions you'll see that there's a slight increase there for this previous from
for last year to this year uh as well as for the threats um you'll see a a slight increase there um from 11:45 to 12200 um for substance um and illegal and controlled substances once again we're seeing a decrease there on campus as
well as for weapons uh you see a decrease there with regards to the percentages this looks at um comparing this in a way as we look at the changes in population we don't want to look at it and say oh we've seen big decrease in this
particular incident without necessarily taking into consideration that um there's a population decrease so based on these percentages this gives us the breakdown um comparing it in a way that gives us more uh realistic perspectives
so when you think about the uh changes from year to year uh for fighting and physical aggression um from last year to this year uh we see an slight increase of 3/10en of uh 300ths of a percent um for threats um it went uh increase by
200s of a percent um illegal and controlled substances we did see a decrease um once again uh for 300ths of a percent and weapons decreased by 300s of a percent when we look at onampus incidents uh
this trend follows um uh for for each of those particular areas those percentages uh pretty much uh you'll see the slight increases for fighting and threats and the decreases for illegal controlled substance substances and weapons being
reported now when you see this particular chart this shows the overall data um across over the year over the past three years but it looks at month-to-month data so these are onampus safety related incidents and we noticed that there are
spikes um or peaks in these peaks these have been traditional peaks around October September October um January February usually um you know February to March is where we see that peak and then again right before our school ends in May um what we do is try to get out in
front of these particular peaks um we work with our um teams to make sure that we are providing pro um different professional development um we provide monthly review of incidents we work with um folks to make sure that the safety reminders are going out so where we may
have an incident where we've had uh some a student that was hit by a vehicle we work with um getting those publications out to our students and staff um and so that they are more cognizant sometimes people are not paying attention as well so we want to make sure our folks know what to look for uh we also provide
enhanced safety measures so when we think about um efforts that are underway to um provide a safe environment for our students and staff we want to make sure that our teams are aware of what types of things that are involved in making it safer so the physical security of an
environment is really key we think about supervision plans those are all efforts that we want to make sure that everyone's on point they lock in and make sure that they know exactly what to do um to make our schools safer and make our events safer other things we look at we look at those trends we look at the
trends to get out in front of them and we conduct ongoing analysis so um lately we've seen the decrease in uh drug issues or or or in um that you see the decrease in drugs and weapons so that comes um as a result of root cause
analysis into some of those factors as to why students are using or we look at some of the factors as to why students are bringing weapons and it goes down into our partnerships with our uh external partners so with the city with our grid programs so we make sure that
we have uh various efforts underway uh to make sure that um our schools and our school communities are safer when we think about it we have to have our safe passages that's one of the things that's really been a key uh we've got team members that have really been um uh successful and really getting that going
um across the city and we want to make sure we continue to push that um and then additionally we we also push out our teams from the regions as well as from our um central office to support with supervision days like uh this tomorrow when we know that it's uh right
before a holiday we want to make sure that we know that there's a tendency for some some kids if you see it mean sometimes they want to handle uh whatever uh beefs that they may have right before the break so what we do is go out to help support with
supervision and that is it for my piece and we'll have uh an update on some of the other areas so I'll switch over oh super great super fast and I I'll maybe chat while the team is setting up because this is an add-on um but first I just want to appreciate the team for being so honest i know it's hard to say
sometimes that our incidents have increased but we've been hearing from families we've been seeing and again that's why we invited the schools because they're bucking the trends of some of the increase we've seen you know lots of conversations about mental health having contributed to this over time and I know we're trying to get to some of the root causes and uh really
meet the needs of kids and communities as it relates to school safety um so we'll open it up to questions from my colleagues in just a moment but I wanted to get the team an opportunity to share where they can also find some of this data because uh we've heard from public comment you know where do I find this kind of data that the team is providing
some is internal but some is public facing and so we'll invite the team to share for the public where they can find ongoing data uh that has been a result of uh resolution from this board to make sure that the public can access some of these incidents um with their own uh internet access so I'll invite the team
to transition us and show us how to get there sure yeah and what we're going to do is one of my team members is going to actually navigate while I kind of walk us through uh while he's getting ready a couple of things that I want to add in terms of context for ARS so for folks that may not live and breathe this the way some of us do i see a couple
principles in the audience i know that for them you know it's AR is is part of the daily job ar is the incident system tracking and accountability report it's something that we've had in the district at least as an electronic system for going on about 12 years prior to that believe it or not there was a time when
a principal would uh file an incident report via fax to their local district office yes believe it or not and yes I was one of those people because I am indeed old so we would send it that way we've had an electronic system now I said for about 12 years a couple of
things that I want to emphasize one in the last two or three years we have really emphasized to our principles to please please report and I say this as a former principal there are sometimes when incidents happen on your campus or you're kind of on the fence because the
rule of thumb that we give about when an AR is necessary is when something has impacted the operations of the school right has caused a jarring effect to what would normally happen at a school so it is a judgment call but we tell our principles to air on the side of caution and I'd rather they slightly over report
than under reportport so that's one thing I want to factor in the other is that when we talk about the categories right and as I look in the audience I see a fine elementary principal and I see a fine middle school principal they may on a given day both report a fight and at one school at the elementary
school that fight may consist of two kindergarten students that get into a brief physical altercation over something in the classroom at the middle school level it may involve a fight of six to eight students that have some kind of intergroup conflict that plays out during nutrition or lunch for the
purpose of AR those are both coded exactly the same a fight is a fight is a fight as far as AR now our teams go into that data and drill down and provide the appropriate supports but I wanted to clarify that particularly for our parents because I know you see oh my
goodness that many fights there is some nuance to it with that walking us through open data so open data is the district's platform that allows uh really any parent or any community member to go in and see some of our data so Steve if you don't mind clicking on the dashboard and there's actually a couple
of different places that I want to highlight in terms of how you can access some of the same data at home and just quickly what was that first website how do you get to it or what was the link lusd.org lusd.orgopen data or you can of course
just search for LUSD open data okay so again it gives you that general district view those are those blue tiles that you see in front of you you scroll down just a bit Steve there's about six different categories and you can find safety data in a couple of different places so let's go to all
indicators and then as this loads up we should see a bar that gives us different categories and one of them is school safety go ahead and climate and so this is where at the district level you can see data specific if you
can scroll down a a little bit Mr montes you can see year-to-year comparison there's also data in here based on if you keep going down there's data from the school experience survey their suspension data there's a number of key points that are held here but
what I want to highlight and I say this more so as a district parent than a district employee Steve if you can go back to the original dashboard and again appreciate the team for coming on because we just made this request a few minutes before the meeting started and we didn't have a chance to practice but it's authentic for how you
know simple it is with a few uh refreshes to access this while they tee that up what I'd like to emphasize is that you can actually see for those of us that are district parents or even district employees you can see your specific school and see the specific data for
your site because I know that for many of us as interesting as district-wide data may be we want to know what's going on at our school okay so let's go down to There we go and then go to the dashboard
perfect it just so happens 107th is a school that automatically populates but again you can select any school that you would like and put them in that field and you'll get the same data and if you scroll down you see some general demographic data about the school but you'll also see those same
categories that we saw earlier i think you might need to scroll up just a bit Mr montes usually the bar is right [Music] around it populates differently each time that you
click on there it is see it popped up okay so when you click on the student safety data that's where you see the results for this school for the school experience survey questions you see their single student suspension rate and you see a couple of other key metrics
around safety awesome thank you so much and uh maybe on our committee meeting follow-ups we'll have an easy like how-to for families who want to access this for their own school or for the districtwide data so appreciate you all showing us how fairly simple it is and since you mentioned school experience survey I'll also pitch that it is
currently open it's lousd.org org/take these sees school experience survey due April 11th to give us that data for the current year so let me pause there and open it up to committee um just for a few questions maybe for Dr webb and andess if you have a few uh responses as
well um but we definitely want to get to the schools soon so invite my colleagues to ask questions carlos we can start with you thank you uh thanks for sharing the information um it reminded me of a 2020 report that the black male institute at UCLA put out i think it was
keeping students safe in LA schools they looked at AR data from 2011 to 2019 then and from back in 2020 the thing that took away was them talking about from their analysis staff best equipped to respond to incidents were were
counseling so can you share some insights you shared a lot of data but where where are counselors navigating and helping you know support students mental health and all that's that's emerging that's well thank you and do you have enough staff for it too essentially we can
never have enough mental health support i can say if we had a tree if we can grow I mean we we need more and more of our mental health mental health uh support staff um to support our students and it shows up in our in any of our research if you look at the school
experience surveys you look at what kids say um we need folks to uh we need additional folks to be able to build that bond with the kids to be able to discuss various challenges with them so they know how to navigate uh different issues that they're experiencing um some
of our kids are experiencing some difficult um experience or different um they're exposed to some different um challenges and so we want them to know how to make the right decisions and I know Joel uh Cisneros is uh our point
from our um student uh mental health uh and wellness services and he may be able to chime in a little bit more in terms of um their role because they have been we're partners with us and used to be under DSO but now they've branched off to medical services but maybe if you
would like to share a little bit more in terms of the current efforts um to recruit and retain and um grow some more PSWs absolutely so you know it's a really good question because I think what we are trying to do is kind of
approach it from kind of three perspectives the first is what do we do recognizing that we don't there could always be more staff advocating for mental health and so recognizing that how do we build the
capacity of every adult in the school system that can provide light culture climate positive building you know efforts recognizing that that may not necessarily be mental health treatment but it certainly can create an
environment and a climate that's pro pro u supporting well-being so one of the things we do is work closely with with the DSO team to really look at various strategies around how to promote positive school climate they have a whole team that's dedicated towards that
but we work very you know in partnership i think the second thing and I think I at the last meeting you heard me talk about this is really through partnership you know we have over 60 uhus with various organizations recognizing that we can't
do this work alone and that we have to partner with some of our community agencies for two reasons first we recognize again that those organizations may have very culturally specific and culturally responsive practices that
they can bring into our school settings and then uh secondly that they perhaps bring some expertise clinical expertise that perhaps goes beyond what is can be offered in the school setting so I think that's another a good strategy that we
have thirdly is really embracing innovation so like how do we kind of just then bring more services to our families from the comfort of their home so one of the things we've been trying to really launch uh is our telemental health partnership just recognizing that
again sometimes from a stigma standpoint a parent may not want to go to the school and ask for mental health services but they're more likely to then log into a website and then ask for the support from the comfort of their home so I think doing those three things is I think a really good strategy that we're trying to do and and obviously
constantly trying to look at how to better our our efforts thank you appreciate that other questions from the committee yes Karen uh first I just wanted to acknowledge I appreciate that um the decrease in um
illegal and controlled substances has been small but I don't think that's a small thing to say as we sit in an opioid crisis um that uh in in particular because of the accessibility um of drugs for young people and so I
think even a small decline um is really important to acknowledge um so with that if you could remind us because I know we've talked about this before but you know every meeting is almost a new meeting because we're not sure who's in the the space just what have been the um
interventions that the district has adopted that is working as it relates um to you know drug abuse and alcohol abuse among young people um and then where do you see the gaps um and then I just would love to because I loved what you offered about um how do we center
families um and center parents and I know that the district has an active group of parents who want to be involved and so how do we create spaces um more for for parents to to be a part of these interventions so just would love to hear about what's working and uh where uh we
need to close gaps you know thank you so much for asking about that one of the biggest impacts I can say that um when we think about this opioid crisis that um has been rocking not only Los Angeles but the nation uh and other countries
this is something that really takes a team effort um and so it's been the collective effort of multiple entities uh part of it was establishing a nocostou with song for Charlie um that's been uh the uh organization that we partnered with around education for the
preventative me meth meth um preventative efforts um within that um we've provided training for staff parents and students that was engaging um and breaking down some of those rationale behind what's going on um
within uh the uh culture that's using uh on top of that we've partnered with UCLA um with their particular effort with our opioid task force we've looked at some of the reasons why some students have used uh drugs and part of it is for
experimentation another part is for um support around mental health or self-medication um so when we look at those types of things we look at who are the key people that are really instrumental in working with students and bringing them through those
particular challenging situations and so the PSWs those are the folks that are really key and we want to continue learning from those groups of uh individuals that can really support our students and connect one-on-one with students on top of that we've uh engaged
with other uh external agencies uh to review data review uh what some of the trends are um looking at um some of the specific areas um we've also made the lock zone available um and so that's been really one of the biggest efforts
that's been tremendous um for our uh school district and so we've seen so far from last year a 10% decrease in incidents where we've had to administer the lock zone so um that is something that is tremendous and we want to continue on with this effort um to
prevent um drug usage and drug overdose thank you appreciate that Mr will yes thanks again for the information that you've provided us um just so we're you know kind of have the same um
definition when you talk about onampus versus overall so that um we're kind of clear that those numbers are within that number that you share is that correct yes so overall would encompass off-campus like in the community where
let's say a fight took place a block down the street and students were involved that particular incident could possibly impact attendance um in the future days whatever the case may be due to the fight so as a result it gets reported as an incident now the other
thing to consider is that the fight may have other issues or uh may have a weapon so that it all depends on it could be multiple factors so it may seem inflated but we're counting each one individually and that's why the numbers are so large got it and then when we
talk about the illegal and controlled substances and I appreciate the comment made um in some of the trends have we been able to see where or what areas or is this just globally where the changes have happened or have we been able to
identify any of that uh yes so we have seen some trends and uh perhaps I can go even deeper into it after we complete our our initial analysis of this um um but we have seen some trends and what we'll what we've been doing is providing additional resources to those sites
where they've had uh incidents of um um drug usage among students um we've worked with uh parents we've provided additional um presentations webinars for parents uh we've had um LA County Department of Public Health to come out
and do presentations uh we've worked with various entities to ensure that parents students and employees know what to look for know what not to do um to prevent those types of crisis among students got it and then when you
mention here with the weapons are those just found weapons are those are weapons used what's defining weapons on here it's a combination of both it's it's basically if you have a report of someone coming in saying that Johnny
brought in a firearm yesterday we take a we make an AR he may have brought it or it may have been a BB gun may have been a Nerf gun um but we still have to report it and um so what you see is those reporting of what you see is
reporting of all of those incidents so the other thing to point out I want to flag for everyone is that in the incidents we have pushed for uh overcommunication rather than under communication so that's why you see um for this year yeah there's slight
increase in certain things and but there is a significant decrease in others so we want to make sure that um our folks are doing their part to report things that are taking place either on campus or off campus thank you
and welcome Miss CGO any other questions or comments for from the committee all right thank you so much Al really appreciate it uh like I said we're going to invite up two schools so we'll you know invite you to to gather your team starting with Pinewood Elementary we've
got principal Jessica Tjo and coordinator Maria Gomez but also students and families which we're so excited to have um and then we'll hear from Buroughs Middle School back toback uh again with students and families and big team here um we so we'll have Dr martinez start off the team over at Burroughs we'll do both schools and then
we'll do Q&A from the committee if that works so why don't we invite on up Pinewood and again these schools are bucking the trends on these uh incidents and so we welcome your experiences your expertise uh and just want to remind folks to try to keep the presentation short so we can have more of the interaction and of course we look
forward to hearing from all of your constituents so thanks so much for being here and I think the team is pulling up your presentation yeah let's start with a big round of [Applause] applause we're going to start with the elementary school with Pinewood i was
like thanks team while we I'm so sorry while we work on getting Pinewoods up why don't we go to Burrows just since that's what we have available and we'll have the team uh make sure we get Pinewoods up right away appreciate the flexibility education we're always uh good with that
rolling with the flow so let's welcome on up our Buroughs Middle School team and we'll put that presentation back on up they deserve a round of applause as [Applause] well let's go ahead and put their presentation back up please is this how you
and this is right welcome thanks for being with us all right good afternoon my name is Steve Martinez i am the principal of John Burroughs Middle School john Burroughs Middle School is located in Hancock Park however as you can see from
the slide we service over 55 zip codes so we have 1,36 students and families that make up the community of Burroughs we're here today to talk about incident data and as you can see here's a snapshot of some of the incidents that we've reduced since postcoid uh we have seen an increase in
a number of incidents and we've had to shift and um devote resources to certain systems at our school i do believe that there are three factors to that operational effectiveness having a good instructional program and engagement opportunities for our students i'd like
to introduce Angela Knap who will talk about our operational effectiveness good afternoon everyone my name is Angela Knap i'm one of the instructional coaches at John Burroughs Middle School um I'm going to tell you a little bit about the JB way three years ago we had a pretty basic PBIS program
no cell phones um in common areas lunchtime classrooms uh and presentations to students uh positive climate those kinds of things two years ago we launched the JB Way campaign and we made an effort to bring our students
into making sure that they are safe responsible and respectful every single day in all of the choices that they are making we expanded our opportunities for engagement we included a weekly raffle that continues to this day and the students uh get upset if we skip a day
so uh we make sure that we do that um this year we continue and we continue to build our spaces at lunchtime for our students we want them to have things to do at lunchtime and many of the things that we have for them to do are made possible by uh Amanda Hernandez who is
here with me today she is our climate advocate and she is responsible for a lot of the activities that you're seeing on the screen right now our student versus teacher games our Friday fun activities our college shirt Fridays um we do a lot of counselor recognition we bring in the LUSD food truck which is
very popular um for our students as an attendance incentive we had an art show recently we have an art club that meets regularly as well as lots of intend attendance incentives for the 100th day of school 125th all of those and we do a big kindness week activities um every
year in January supervision is a team effort at John Burroughs we uh make sure that throughout the day our campus is covered by our staff um this is an example of our supervision map where you can see all the green dots are all of us out
there in our vest this is the before school supervision map and we have a separate map for before school lunch after school and passing period so that we make sure that we are covering all of the high um the high traffic areas with our students one of those biggest areas
is restrooms we have campus aids uh who help us out at the restrooms throughout the day and that has been really helpful in lowering the number of incidents that we're seeing uh during class time and uh line of sight is also very important to us making sure that every team member
can see another team member so that in case someone needs assistance we are right there to help or give assistance as needed um one of the big changes that we made and then while I talk about this here is our staff out there in their vests um our vests are very important we always tell the students um look for
someone in a vest they will always help you or get you the assistance that you need um one of the biggest changes that we made this year was to our schedule we worked with our stakeholders to go from a two lunch to a three lunch schedule it's been a huge change for us um we
were seeing a lot of incidences and challenges and disruptions happening during our seventh and eighth grade lunch so we have split them into so that they each have their own lunch and as a result um over the past five or so months we've noticed a huge increase in the amount of just calmness that we have
throughout the afternoon including after lunch as well as a increase in the number of students actually eating lunch there are less lines um they have more time to just go through and eat and spend that time with their friends um so that's been really good uh this year for
us um some of our best practices for operations is consistency clear expectations and again that restroom coverage has been really key for us with our campus aids throughout the day one of the other things that we can't do without is our outside agencies coming
on site we um have a long uh a longtime partnership with Sharon Care through Cedar Cyani come they do group art therapy with our students they do individual counseling and they do parent meetings with our parents and that's been really helpful one of our new organizations that we're working on is
with is TUPE the tobacco use prevention education program because we have seen a big increase in students who are vaping on campus and so we want to uh help put a stop to that a strong operational system allows our students to thrive academically and I'm going to invite
Miss Lee to speak more on that good afternoon and thank you for this time so at John Burroughs Middle School obviously we have a very comprehensive approach to safety but we take the same approach for academic excellence our goal is to provide a rigorous and
engaging activities within the school day so we are a microcosm of Los Angeles and so we want to recognize a lot of the diverse cultures we have already represented at John Burroughs we offer two dual language programs one in Spanish and Korean various language
electives an ethnic studies elective and this year we're honored to actually acknowledge over 136 students who will be receiving the seal of bi literacy award at the end of the year in addition we all know that academics is not is not always the key
right we also need buyin in other places so students we all offer a drama program that is very student centered students put on the production from beginning to end um in addition we also understand that there is a gender gap in the
sciences and tech fields and therefore we have an all we offer an all girls robotics club as well we have continued funding in the arts in order to continue to provide rich learning experiences for our students so our music program we offer a jazz
ensemble band and a full-time orchestra we're also honored to offer a chapter of the National Junior Honor Society uh at this time over a third of our student body is eligible and
participating and we're also very proud to be offering the academic pentathlon we placed first in LA Unified for seventh and eighth grade last year uh fourth nationwide and our coach Missogram received coach of the year
however in essence quintessentially the JB way is a combination of operational efficiency quality instruction and opportunities for student engagement that has lowered our incident rates this has also enhanced safety on our campus
creating that culture of success for our students so that was a a short summary and I think you heard three important things there right operational effectiveness good quality instructional program and engaging opportunities for students
those three I think I believe are the uh are recipe for success and as you can see recently we received magnet schools of America award the California schools to watch and most importantly the California PBIS award as well which are has a fantastic framework uh to follow
and there's a couple other awards but we don't have time for that so I would like to thank the district for some systems that they have in place first and foremost is how we bridge that gap when we don't have enough funding to be able
to offer services so please thank you and know that we I as a principal and my school appreciates that they've also funded PSW support and PSA uh support that is key when you start getting to tier one tier two and tier three you
need those individuals to make those connections with those families and the arts funding has been very helpful as well too we appreciate it and of course we appreciate our local district operations coordinator ours is Mr cortez uh sometimes incidents occur at night and I have to call the team and tell them to be ready for the morning because
we have to offer support services so that's key however we would like to take it to that next level and we have some suggestions and some ideas uh innovative SLE supports help us bring it onto the school site for example like a dog
therapy program or a dog check-in program uh for tier 2 and tier three i think if you look tier three is one of the areas that we can build on increase allocations for campus aids physical supervision is important and it is key
fidelity of implementation to frameworks help protect the principles the resources and the time at the school site for us to develop relationship with our stakeholders so we can implement PBIS and TFI frameworks with fidelity
and then to give you an idea throw this out possible with Chicago School of Professional Psychology we've been having conversations with them mental health is key here and counseling is key here for example they can come in and offer additional services and help us
carry into tier 2 and tier three those are some of the growths that we have and suggestions for you increase attendance incentive funding you saw some of those pictures right it's fun and it's engaging students want to come when we have those raffle tickets are really important please increase that we need
the money we donate plenty already as it is uh but we need a little help with that flexibility with the use of the PC card we run into restrictions when that when we have to spend school money uh many of you know we have a PC card and sometimes trying to put on an event and
get excited and we get going and we get an error we can't purchase this item so everything's on hold and then continue to provide funding for PSW and PSA support um we do not sometimes get the full coverages and so we have to make up for that so I think other schools also
are in the same area they could use and benefit from additional funding on those areas but enough of us I'd like to bring up the parents to speak come on up and uh let's see introduce yourself my name is Jennifer Zassny this is my daughter Merrily she's in seventh grade burroughs
is our home school and she goes to the neighborhood program merrily has an IEP for dyslexia and um there's three things I wanted to highlight about Burroughs um number one the organization that you saw in this presentation is what you see when you drive up in the morning they're everyone here is out there in their vest
plus a host of many many more people and it's a pretty strict way to drop off so if it's strict for us it's strict for them they're pretty strict about the cell phone policy the uniforms everything so that is very reassuring as a parent I have never worried about her safety at at school i can honestly say I
feel she's as safe as she could be in any public school in America um so that's great and then number two the opportunities to be successful successful students are rarely misbehaving they don't need to misbehave because they're successful and the um
IEP support at her school the before school tutoring after school tutoring um that they have that's drop in so you don't have to have an appointment and if you had trouble with your homework the night before drop in for tutoring in the morning or stay after school for tutoring um they're just so organized so
um safe and then one little other plug that could help all the schools in LA Unified burroughs is a beautiful school and human beings behave well in beautiful settings so any beautifification programs that you can do for the schools across the city are helpful when you walk up to Burrows it's
it looks like Harry Potter's school and that feels good when you go there so that's what I wanted to say hi I'm Marily um I just want to say that I think John Bose is really safe because when I'm at lunch and it seems like two people you know they're really angry the
yard aids they're all there before anything happens and then the people are nice and calm and we have counselors that can talk to us it's just really nice also our theater program i'm in theater and I think it's
it's really good um teaches us improv which is a very good skill and yeah my name is Roda Gutierrez and this is my daughter Leah Gutierrez she is in the um enrolled at Burroughs in the uh
accelerated um program and um one of the reasons why we decided to enroll my daughter in Burroughs is just because we know it's a it's a safe school like you saw in the in the presentation there's a lot of staff constantly you know supervising making sure that that the
students you know are safe and you know um there to be successful so that's one of the reasons why we uh decided Burls hi my name is Leah and Burls is a really amazing school because the staff are
very supportive of the students from the heart sweet and we appreciate it absolutely thank you i think we have a few more welcome come on up hi my name is uh Paola Suarez and I actually me and my husband we happen to both be educators i'm a
neuroscychologist and professor at UCLA and he's a professor at San Diego State University sociologist and so of course academics is somewhat important to us not the most important thing but um with regards to academic we have my oldest son who went through jumpers and I just
saw a picture of him in the drama club um he's actually at Columbia University and uh his first foray in into leadership was was actually at John Boros and to this day he credits Mr lee in ninth grade for teaching him how to
write and um Matias is lucky enough to have u Mr as well and he just um took the the high school entrance exam and did just fantastically well but I I credit really the excellence in academics um at John Burroughs but
that's actually not why we decided to go to John Burrows and Mr martinez doesn't know the story but I'm going to tell it the day after the 2016 election the morning of I had the scheduled the first tour um for um schools that I was going to pick as uh for junior high and uh I
woke up and my son asked me like "Mama what happened last night?" And he was devastated and I had to have a conversation with him uh my students are are mostly Latina it was a pretty pretty stressful day for everybody and I went to the to the open house uh to the tour
and Mr martinez was there and he said "You know we have a tour schedule today i'm going to excuse myself i'm going to leave uh Dr around the magnet coordinator with all of you because I need to without making any political political statements but he said I need to take care of my staff and my students
i need to ch check in on them and right there and then I knew that this was the school where my kids were going to to be and uh and I have I I will tell anybody and everybody who would listen to go to John Boros and I tell them that story mr dr martinez
um yeah I just like to say that um I've been attending this school for three years i'm in eighth grade and I don't think there's been a single moment or like a single year that I felt that the teachers aren't engaged and every single class that I've had the teachers are engaged and genuinely want you to do
well and like when I was applying for high schools and needed recommendation letters everyone was on it my English teacher on it my math teacher on it principal Martinez on it so I think I just like to say that um yeah the engagement at this school has been like
incredible for me thank you amazing amazing i want to invite everyone from the Burough's team up together so we can see you all together and I'll have my team take a picture of you while you're here um I'll invite the committee to share a few comments or questions uh briefly because we also want to hear from our elementary school but thank you for sharing from the
bottom of your hearts how um safe the school feels and all of the pieces that really go into that so I appreciate you alexander come on this side and then take it from this way if you can um so committee members any questions or comments you'd like to share with the amazing John Burrow Middle School team of course yes charlotte should start of
course of course no we wanted to say just amazing thank you and I've been to visit and we'll come visit again and you guys have done this unbeknownst their campus has been under construction for quite some time and they have navigated
through all the construction and and we're hoping to finish the project soon but it has you know just in spite of you know obstacles you guys are still doing amazing work and so I just wanted to say thank you for doing that and for being
that pillar within our community to be able to stand up even against odds of confusion uh parking is crazy you know it it can be stressful but you guys still continue to bring excellence uh to the families and the students of that community so thank you for all that you
do and thank you Dr martinez awesome thank you yes Miss Lane just a a quick question thank you first of all wonderful presentation it was actually very very refreshing um to hear um just all the success that is have happened and this being specific around the
recommendations of what's working is really helpful just a a question to the parents um what have been the ways that the school have has involved you um not only just uh creating space for you but creating space for parents in terms of
the the safety of the school if you can um talk about some of those opportunities i have the uh coffee with the principal meetings and you know there obviously parents can you know are informed and shared you know how they can better be
supported not just at school but also at home so thank you yes Miss Rio if I can say about cover principle we do offer hybrid because in this day and age now we do zooming so that helps some parents who are at work and aren't able to come in
all right thank you so much for the presentation it was beautiful to hear the parents to hear the students and just and you know to hear all the wonderful things that you're doing at your school and the staff um so one I
took so many notes and um but one of the things that I heard is about the team effort in supervision right and I heard campus aids are part of it school climate advocate is part of it so I'm wondering did you train all of these
staff in PBIS how was it hard was it a a breeze to get them all on board for training did you need to get funding to be able to support that training was Is it after school give us more details how did you get your school involved and not
just campus aid but I'm wondering where custodians trained and cafeteria workers paint the picture sure so um like I said it's been a multi-year process um and it's been um we we figure out every day how to pivot and and change and grow um
but definitely um onboarding and getting everyone on board is key um and so at the beginning of the school year when we meet with the faculty as a whole so um that's not just the teachers that's the cafeteria that's the custodial that's everyone um we go over the PBIS um like
outline for the year of what it's going to look like what the expectations are for the students and everyone knows that um all of our staff gives out the tickets um our office uh staff gives out the tickets like if a student comes and turns in a lost item or something they'll make sure that a student gets a
ticket to thank them for that things like that um I don't think that it's been a challenge to get our staff um on board um we have a wonderful uh staff that um wants as the students said wants our students to be successful and so
this um managing expectations having things in place so that students know the parameters it really just helps them in the classroom and if everybody has the same expectations throughout the day then there's no question and it's just this is the JB way and this is what we
do at the school so it hasn't it it hasn't been a problem to get everyone on board everyone um everyone's very familiar with the process very familiar with what we do um everyone jumps in to help uh whenever we need it um there hasn't been a lot of extra training I
would say um more just um talking through the staff and and making sure that um you know our campus aids are only three-hour positions um and so we don't do a lot of extra training with them but we do a lot of work with them to know what their job is so if we find
that you know okay it's not working for you to be in this spot for this period of time let's go talk about why it's not working and what we're going to do instead and how we can make it better experience for you and for the students so it's been a lot of that kind of training so it sounds like there's feedback uh
and there's continuous review of what is taking place and changing things i also want to appreciate your suggestions principal uh coming here with some uh asks right that um to provide funds to
increase um elective offerings is that what I heard and then PSW and PSA support because although we can have um campus aids and school climate advocates we also need the experts in that mental health social emotional and the other
thing that I I want to uh point is the work of the school climate advocate during nutrition and lunch in setting up the activities for our students i think that sometimes we think that kids can just because they're in middle school or
high school they should be able to do things on their own and how to connect but what we've heard and learned since COVID we're all struggling with connecting and communicating so being able to get that support in these unstructured times like nutrition and
lunch really supports that so um thank you uh school climate advocate and then just one last thing um what a lot of the things you point to are things that we we have in a lot of our schools
so what do you think is the difference because a lot of our schools have those things so what is what is making the difference for you and how can other schools um what can they learn from your experience so that it can happen at
their schools um I think speaking as a principal and and from maybe from leadership theory it's it's having the why why we do our job and the the buyin um several years ago we read a book called That's Not How We Do It Here uh because we knew things
were changing um and maybe time time working as a team some of us have been working for 10 15 years plus so we've had opportunity stability we've had opportunity to grow as leaders amongst ourselves um for example Miss Nap is actually credentialed to be an
administrator um she was one of our Rift administrators from last year uh we encourage our our staff to go above we got our campus aides for road in college right now we have another parent who's trying to go and do uh more schooling um so the time to get together the why is
important um and and and having a a a operations uh coordinator and and director that is supportive is key because sometimes as a principal we can run fast and get in trouble but we get a lot of support from local district um for us as local
district west Dr collier and them um I think that's the key too that it's okay to make mistakes as you try to bring this into the school site and in making that mistake we'll learn from it and get back up and do it better um if you ever are able to hear our radio conversations
you will hear most of them are our campus aids who are on it i have students here i need backup here i think um allowing um people to take control and and make decisions is important as a principal to let that go and let them grow as leaders as well so the the
campus aids have just as much right to make a 911 call or call for additional support as an assistant principal does i think those kind of things are important and there's a lot of leadership theory based that would be another uh presentation to do that but um there's a lot behind that that goes into it
awesome uh Dr martinez will never give himself credit but it's because he leads by example so administrators were all there for three hours of supervision every day as is Dr martinez we're there in the morning we're there in the afternoon so when he's working harder than anybody
else there's no choice right because we are committed to this school it is our family my own daughter comes here to John Bber so there's a choice that we make but it's because of the dedication of everyone here so he he works hard they work just as hard i love that i
absolutely love that thank you so much team i want to invite you to come a little bit closer and turn that way for a photo as we get ready for the next school to come on up and I'll ask it to get that going now while we take this photo please go ahead and scoot a little bit more this way so you're a little bit more centered let's get the the PowerPoint up next
we can smile in the background amazing job John Burrows thank you so much let's welcome up Pinewood Elementary School thanks for your patience and flexibility and again I'll invite the team to keep it short we're so excited to hear from all of the stakeholders and then open it up for dialogue from the team
welcome they had to have an example they're like I don't want to go up and they had no choice okay well thank you for inviting us to be here today we're super excited to share with you what we're doing about building a positive and learning environment at
Pinewood so just a brief overview we have 228 students we just started a kindergarten dual language program uh we're about 95% title one and our uh special ed population is about 23% of our total
population uh we are mostly Hispanic at about 70% and our white population about 21% and a lot of that is our Armenian population um of our English learner population it's just note that over half of our English learner population are
newcomers so this is the data that we were uh that we're looking at today from our eyes we so we had a decrease of about eight and a half% in the categories that we were that have been discussed today so at Pinewood the three things
that we're focusing on are fostering positive relationships fostering a culture of respect inclusion and belonging at the school and enhancing the mental health support um for our students and staff and parents so first and foremost we're focusing on
that fostering positive relationships if we don't have that we can't have everything else so this is where we've be we begin everything so with our staff we every Tuesday we focus on good things or if we have all staff meetings it's we always ask what are some good things that are happening and
so they get to share their personal lives we get to know each other better or sometimes it's school and they get to share about their students and I get to bring that to the students sometimes like hey you were such and such is good thing today you did this and so I get to bring that back to the students and so that goes into that personal connections
with students right and we're building those the lady that's at the supervision aid that's at the the campus aid that's at the gate in the morning she knows all the students by name she knows who comes in late she just says good morning she writes their name down we do our tardies we chat my coordinator who was my AP last year
she knows all the students we a lot of our campus supervision they know the students by name and they feel that connection and then the data chats those personalized data chats with students getting to know them one came up to me today c guess what i improved can you come to my class and I can show you in
my folder i was like I'll try to stop by if I don't make it I'll come by tomorrow um and then those positive home visits really starting the school year off right before the school year even started um I know Joel has been with us some for some um home visits but we started the school year off by with
teachers going to the homes of looking at who were like chronically truent and stuff and really starting off on a positive uh positive school year right and then those positive phone calls home for students that may have some challenging days and let's say hey they had a great day today let's recognize
that or even just for other students having those positive phone calls home and then looking at the uh fostering a cult of culture of respect inclusion and belonging we want our staff and our students and our parents to feel like they belong at Pinewood it's very diverse we have a lot of
different cultures we're bringing together um and so really navigating that so with with our staff doing those those PBIS and bringing those together and so that it trickles down into everybody else um and then the home visit initiative um getting all all
stakeholders on board like "Hey let's go do a home visit." And getting them all on board and getting to know the families and then for students the ones I'm going to focus on uh today are the Panda Post so we have a it's we've done I think we've done about three or four this year uh one of my coordinators
takes care of it and the kids get to choose their topics what are they passionate about what do they want to share about what it so we're going to next slide we'll see a little bit about the students and what they get to share but it feel get they get to feel part of like hey I I am sharing this with the school and I get I'm an expert on this
um and then our clubs so we started clubs this year so currently we're doing science clubs after school but we want to expand that next year to include a varying uh degree of different clubs because every child is gifted in their own way and it is our responsibility to
find that child's talent and expound upon that talent so we plan on offering more and more next year to focus on that for the students um so this next uh slide is just a quick clip of different
uh panda post that we've put together for you and hopefully it'll start hi Candace today we are going to talk about the December events first off we have the Lacma field trip hi Mwood Pandas today we're going to be talking about Gordon Ramsay first she is 58
years old hi again welcome back to Art and Culture today we're going to talk about the Mona Lisa about how famous she is this is breaking news i am Aras and I am in fourth grade i'm 9 years old and I live hi welcome again to fashion i am
going to talk about winter fashion if it's going to be Hi today we're going to talk about earthquakes oh I know what to do when there's an earthquake well what should we do Aiden stop drop so that was that was just a brief uh
introduction of some of that so the the students get to choose their topic they write their own script and they do what they want to do and then they practice it and then once they're ready then they'll record it um but it gives them another way to participate um in the
school and then we focus on our parents so we're currently offering English classes for our students since we have such a diverse population and so many English learners and our the parents are so excited um and then those transparent communication channels whether it be
through Blackboard Connect uh Class Dojo and just they'll they'll send me a message hey can we meet i need to talk to you about this yeah come on in let's meet um and then cultural events so this next month we do our diia de los nños but it last year it turned into a much
bigger celebration where we celebrated multiple different cultures and we they brought in food and we did d you can see our kids dancing the parents were out there dancing um we also got a brand new mural and so they they had been out there painting it um and so they're just bringing the families in for different
in different ways and then the last part is mental health support so I encourage stu the staff and share wellness things with them because if they don't take care of themselves if we don't take care of ourselves we can't help others so I really push that with
the staff and then PSA and PSW support for students um so critical we only have one day a week love to have more and I think that's what everyone's sentiment um but who we the people we have are phenomenal we just need some more there
um ILT weekly meetings we check in when we check in we check in on the day that my PSA and PSW are there and that meeting right there is really for student check-in like we have conversations about brand new students that maybe are have challenging things going on or this something happened with
this student something happened in this group and we have those conversations so that we can share all of that um and then we also have anou with counseling for kids which is so essential because we only have uh PSW one day a week so counseling for kid comes in and they see over a dozen students right now on
campus um and those that's always increasing and then we offer lots of parent workshops um on mental health um supports to help them work with their students and also just know how to respond and then looking at board support and
scale for success so resource allocation I mean re research consistently shows a strong correlation between student social emotional well-being and academic success and we need to we're growing in the area of academic success but we knew we needed to start with the social
emotional well-being of our students first and so that's what really where we've been doing our work um currently schools I know you can get a PSW if you have over 600 but it doesn't take into account um the needs of of all schools
and so I think that we need to be proactive and think about how we invest in our younger students so that we are uh that we do prevention instead of having to um do more in middle school and high school um but I also understand that
there has to be some way to qualify but research also determines that there is a strong correlation um between a school's title one percentage and uh the prevalence of ACEs in students and so really considering that also um just
because I know so many of our students have so many ACEs in their lives um and then we current like I said we currently have uh one day of PSW we're going to increase to two but we had to cut other programs in order to do that but I do feel like that's where we have to go in order to help our students succeed
academically also um it would also be great for the community partnerships to expand some opportunities it would be nice if we if there was an e I don't know maybe there is and I don't know aware of it but just an easy way to know like what partnerships are out there what else can we bring in um to the
students and help the families out also um and then we do have one one housing area that we're working with jolan knows about this one and I think our biggest struggle with that one has just been transportation i have one kid that came up to the teacher "Is there any way a bus can pick me up my mom just isn't
getting up i want to come to school and it's just we're we're trying to solve those some of those problems." Um and then also know like Blackboard Connect we sent out messages we do have a large Armenian population i don't speak Armenian um but the the Blackboard
Connect doesn't translate into Armenian it only does English so I don't So that's an area of growth for me like for as a district like how can we do do that I spent I post a lot on class dojo because they can translate it themselves um so that's for me like another area of
growth and that's it so thank you so much for having us here today thank you i have tea yes we'd love to hear from your students and families any highlights of the school what makes you feel safer why do you like your school we'd love to hear from you and there
might be a stool down there um to help our our young scholars who uh would be willing to share yeah come on up share share your name what grade you're in and anything you'd like to share about your school my name
is Holder and I love my school be because we have so many activities we have math in math we learned for fra about time the last subject we did
was learning about fractions like quarter pass/ thirds or halves and then reading we we for math we do like 15 minutes of I ready math you know you're at the district huh
telling us you do I ready thanks Holder we love to hear what you love about school appreciate that oh let's give a round of applause and let's welcome up our other scholars yeah we're being very shy that's okay it's normal it's okay big adult space i can
help you hi I'm Angela and this is Alma Zlaya and um say we uh we very much love Pinewood um it's very welcoming um what I what we love about it is that uh we have lots of
different families and lots of us can't talk to each other because most of us don't speak the same languages but we all get together and we all feel like we're all part of it and are working towards the the language barrier with the English classes which has been kind
of an exciting development for us so there are some parents now in her class that now we can communicate it's very exciting but uh you love it huh science club [Laughter] it's okay do you want to say anything
what's your favorite part about going to school a It's okay baby thanks for coming down we appreciate you coming out it's a It's a bold step to come on up here hi my name is Grian Terosian i'm a
grandfather to Holder and his brother Abram who's autistic spectrum level three non-social non-verbal i mostly his dad and I we were thinking about uh getting Abraham out of LA USD and take him to Glendale
uh district but when you walk into that school and Marur is the security lady knows every kid by name and calls them out that shows that she's not only doing
her job she cares what she's doing uh I took my other grandson uh his cousin to school and Miss Gomez saw him and said "Are you new?" and like question was like how come I
don't know you that's called awareness that's called dedication that's called caring what they're doing uh Abraham's last year's teacher Miss Morales even this year which is not heruh teacher every time she sees me and
she says I'm so happy how Abraham is doing so well it's connection it's caring it's like it's or Miss Con Costales which is this year's teacher every time you see them they have something good to say about the children
uh and every time you walk into that campus the faculty what they do every day smile on their face they care and that I can you cannot take that away from anything so whether it's Glendel or Burbank School District nothing will
compare to what they have at Pinewood thank you thank you oh we had to get some of these stories in our enrollment campaign i'm a little sick sorry and finally uh I know Miss TJO is much too humble to say but I will say it for her um I my name
is Maria Gomez i am the current uh Title One TSP coordinator previous AP last year um but I've worn many hats throughout the district um teacher special education teacher RSP teacher coordinator for intervention um parent
uh and so I've worked at many different schools and I can tell you that the most important component of this success is the principal that makes herself available present um she is in at the
gate in the morning uh during dismissal um during drop off she's at the gate in the afternoon during dismissal she's at recess and lunch supervision she makes herself available and very present and very hands-on um and I as a very humble
employee can tell you that that is the difference thank you thank you thank you the heartfelt sentiments from the whole team we'll invite you to come on up so we can also take your picture while we're asking some questions or making comments i'll open it up to my
committee colleagues for any thoughts or questions for the Pinewood team oh Alexander is this look this way first and then she'll go back out yeah okay sorry we'll do another one here this way yeah any colleagues on the committee want to share some thoughts
missing opposing smiling we want you in the picture go for it thank you so again thank you so much and appreciate the the young ones here thank you for being here thank you uh wanted to ask because you mentioned
that you had started some clubs could you give us some example of the clubs that you started uh we recently started um science clubs uh that range anything from making slime uh to building Legos i mean they have to be student centered
right and it trust me they are very popular um uh high interest uh everybody wants to attend um and uh so far so good they've been a big success adventures inventors club uh a garden gardening
club um so so far they've been very very popular and now these afterchool clubs or when do they meet and who sponsors them twice a week and then I'm doing other stuff maybe
um okay so it's twice a week um we started where are we week three now and they'll go in through the end through the end of u May so it's 20 sessions 20 meetings and we got the funding through the science that's how we did the the elop science funds I applied for that
for the clubs after school awesome and then you said something about your staff and wellness and pushing them towards wellness what are some examples examples of the wellness for your staff so we were having a conversation about I just we do little
fun activities with them and stuff but also um I just encourage them they have to take care of themselves they're like "But I have to do this and I have this but I have to do I'm like you have to take care of yourself first." So I think that's the biggest part i don't know if there's anything you want to add to that
um but we just we'll play games and stuff during staff meetings just get to know you kind of things just building that collaboration and stuff too i want to say appreciate you and also Dr martinez because the leadership on the campus is imperative in order to move
any campus and to be excellent on those sites and so just appreciate that the work that you're doing um setting for your students and your families and your staff that's to you and Martinez as well because I think it's it's some at this in this space right now where we are
where so much is expected and asked of our administrators and both sites you guys share that there was once an administrator and now you guys took on different roles on your site um because you love where you were and you wanted
to be there despite the title you carried and so wanted to say I really appreciate that and I know it's the juggle of the funds to make it happen and you guys do the best that you can and just wanted to say thank you for that thank you thank you other
colleagues yep carla go ahead yeah thank you again um I love the videos of the kids oh my gosh that is so adorable and I know they loved it too right all kids want to shine they want to be there and this is not only helping them in that
moment but just in the future just becoming more confident um so I'm glad that you do that and I also want to appreciate the thoughts that you bring the ideas that you bring suggestions that you have for us um I really appreciate you saying that uh when we
are allocating PSWs and PSAs it cannot be just based on enrollment you know we have to look at everything and I um so thank you for that i think that gives us something something to think about and consider um the other I'm going to ask you the same question I asked the other
school because you're doing a lot of things that again we have them at all of our schools why is it working at your school what is it that I I I tr No I mean I truly believe it's the staff though i mean all of the
staff are there for the students and they it's not just me it's not just her it all of the supervision they know the students by name they know what they like they know and the stu like they'll listen to us and I like when we're
training new people they're like "Oh I need I need like we're on the yard i need you to take care of this." I'm like I'll step away and I said "If you have me take care of it every time you gave your power away we need to so I work on facilitating that conversation with them
um but they know the students i mean I think that's the biggest thing is just everyone has that friendly smile but also firm with the students too of like nope we're not doing that and just knowing those expectations thoughts for my colleagues it's so great to see the schoolside
experience i'll invite you now to turn around so that my teammate can catch you from the front side here um and as we're taking a final picture here we're going to turn it over to public comment in just a minute um but we'll all smile for this last photo great thank you so much Pinewood that
was amazing and you know I just really want to appreciate you know district operations school of mental health you know our school sites it is unfortunate that across the district our incidents are increasing and we have a lot of work to do around that and so I appreciate the collaboration and the solutions
orientation of the committee members and what you're doing in your individual roles um and to highlight some things that we've heard from the schools about caring relationships and uh those activities and clubs and things that make school exciting because if kids are involved then they are too busy to be doing other things right so appreciate
some of those really good concrete examples um with that we will turn it over to public comment to close us out you are all welcome to stay and hear from our public as we love to hear from them but also just want to thank the school teams for coming all the way out here um and our next meeting I believe is May 8th and that will be the last one
of this school year so with that Mr mcclean we will turn to public comment all right we have 10 folks signed up for public comment today as usual I'll call on the folks who are listed as speaking in person and then we will take those listed as speaking remotely so uh would
the first speaker please come on down maria Louisa Palma I see you out there come on down you have two minutes to speak once you begin and then after Miss Palma it's Roslin Broadn good afternoon my name is Mariel Lisa Palma i'm speaking today on behalf
of Ola Inc a nonprofit organization i'm glad to see that some incidents were reported in today's packages however I have some very serious concern with those incidents when I compare the incidents you reported today for the year 2324 first of all you're only
reporting part year on these but fine when I report the numbers let's say for illegal control substances 2324 3,173 incidents only through February 28th your last reporting that you all provided here to the board uh provided
September of 2024 shows illegal controlled substances for the entire year 2324 2004 so we had fewer total reports of illegal controlled substances in the entire year versus part of the year
about a thousand fewer part of the year you see how this doesn't make any sense there are other inconsistencies here and the issue is that once a data has a discrepancy one piece of data all the data suspect i know there was some discussion about the staff does
something with the data when it comes out of the system i'd like to know what that is where's the disclaimer on how the data was collected we need some footnotes down here what does it include what does it not include in addition to that there have been some reports that
have been done by the independent analysis unit to the board of education one of them was this a policy brief PBIS restorative practices uh positive behavior interventions and supports um might have great information all I have
is this policy brief that was provided to one of the task forces the reports are not there on the independent analysis unit website this was a whole big survey that was done of teachers administrators at school sites not there that's supposed to all be public we need consistent data and consistent
information now I understand that there are going to be some town hall safety town halls coming next week i heard from a parent those are not being promoted anywhere on the regional websites how are we supposed to know how's the public supposed to know these are going on please post those i think all of them
are happening at the same time same date in all the regions thank you very much for your time uh Roslin Broadnax Roslin come on down you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin hey don't do that okay guys have you have you noticed uh Edgar helped me guy
down uh I'm uh Rosin and Bronnex i've been a member of Kadre Community Access Development Redefining Education for 22 years uh since that I've been uh told I was legally blind but I must say I never seen so clear in my life um all the
beautiful stuff that was said about District 6 and I I take my hat off uh uh and uh as a parent in our community of South Central uh that's the way schools supposed to be ran uh they talked about counselors they talked about mental
health and how it's being uh uh dealt with they talk we don't have that in our schools it made me feel as though we in a third world uh compared to the things that's going on in these schools and it also helps me see even more that this is
if you want to call it red lining blue lining uh cuz that's all we're asking for is those things in our school if possible behavior was working in one school why other schools that's reporting what makes it feel won't work in all schools that's that's that's concerning um I can't help but say that
from the bottom and the top the fight that we have done in our communities we have to fight for everything instead of giving us counselors we get police how can police deal with mental health when the big thing that we're talking about is counseling human rights patient
passion and persistent some one person said very clearly kids come to school late or they take the name they try to find out what's going on but yet we had to fight that they don't get $250 tickets to their parents that have
minimum w uh uh minimum money to pay for their bills and have to quit school this is what our parents are experiencing and I can't help and I know some people don't want to hear it but we can't help but say one of the things they said too is about not about uh everything they
talked about was about we we don't get that in our schools it's you I and me but only thing I can want to leave you guys with please take off your hats and put on your parent hat we want the same thing for our children we can't help say this is John Jim Crow from the bottom up
and it's and and and that's all I that's what it is it's no I I I'm blind and I can see that so please consider us that's all we want let's make it about we we all all of our schools should have this and it's not hard as you saw as an example thank you for your parent power
okay latana Hull latana Hall all right miss Hull i believe we have a microphone stand down there for your use let me make sure it's on okay I'm gonna be a little loud can you hear me we sure can thank you hi
my name is Latana Hull i'm a senior core member court I mean cadre and I want to continue working with you all we all care about school safety and we've been fighting against bullying for years
but my experience is also about the school to prison pipeline my beginning story began on a regular morning when I received two letters in the mail one from Diamond Lee High School and another one from the
city of Los Angeles the letter from Diamond Lee said that Carl had been out of school for over 10 days the letter from the city was a warning stating I would be fined $1,000 and six months in jail this is
what criminalizing parents look like i fought hard to change that record and to prove that Carl was a good student another example of the school to prison pipeline was when a police officer named
Officer Lee would harass my son in the community and put him on gang injunction this harassment continued when the officer became a school police officer this mentally affected him my son Dante never
recovered if this happened to Dante this is happening to many other students when school don't have a relationship with the comm community community members they assume us to be bad parents
they stereotype us and criminalize parents and and our children division is a tool used to divide our communities and put black versus brown when I fought against bullying at Bread Hart my
recommendation and practice to listen to parents' stories and bring awareness to suicide we create hero day where we emphasize what it looks like when we are we good to each
other this is reimagining re-imagining school safety oh my time is up this is PBIS practice we need to reinvest our funds away from school police and move it to more counselors mental health
providers and community safe providers thank you okay so uh Thalia Carmona thalia come on down and after Thalia is Eddie Madison so first Thalia and then Eddie Madison come on down you'll have two minutes to
speak why don't you begin hi my name is Talia Carmona i'm a Gadre senior core member padre my experience with PBIS um started when I really realized the importance of solidarity with uh black families and brown families growing up in a prominent
Latino family I grew up with prejudice division and did not have relationship with black families the lack of engagement has always been based on fighting for resources language barriers and stereotypes among both com um communities bringing division and
dividing us putting parent against parent and communities against each other when we don't build relationships with one another we stereotype we create biases and we dehumanize families parents and students i gather we're
creating spaces where we can know each other and learn from each other it's my political education that makes me advocate for PBIS pb when PBIS is not implemented the pro um the procedures to address
anti-blackness are ignored anti-blackness is characteristic by prejudice collective hatred and discrimination and extreme adversion towards black uh people dismantling black voices in our
education system we don't know how to redirect behavior issues to positive behavior this limits the potential of how we can transform our schools this is why students fall in the school to prison pipeline just like Lata's story
mentioned schools need to include parents in decision-making progress we have sta we have asked staff members and they don't know what the purpose of PBI is pbi is only implemented in the surface level instead of having discussions looking at data and working
on the issues our school is facing instead we get in information in presentation and blaming or creating this culture parent blaming we know that the fear looks like and we've hope to work with you to create a safer um
school for our children thank you thank you for your time okay Mr eddie Madison eddie Madison chair says yes oh we Yeah we can't accommodate the same speaker twice my apologies
i'm so sorry well I'm going to speak then uh hello everybody my name is Eric Baria uh Wicadre uh the stories that we heard today are uh stories from our parents who are have been working for decades to
try to ensure that uh PBIS is fully implemented in our schools uh not only that but they have gone above and beyond trying to find alternative practices to seeing how we uh drive solutions to some of the issues that been affected them
directly not only from the sense of push out from a lot of our parents um children but also addressing the the bigger we and trying to transform our schools uh at the surface level as
Natalia was talking about uh uh PBIS uh is not fully being used to what it fully has the potential to do and the reason for that is because the lack of including parents in the decision-m process in the process where they could
also drive the recommendations Latana and Miss Rosalyn and Eddie's they have a lot of experience because of how the lack of PBIS has impacted them that they could provide alternative to uh solutions and then so when we limit that uh capacity or that limit the parents
that are mostly impacted uh be involved in the process of how to drive different recommendations different solutions to the issues that we're talking about then we are not u we're missing an opportunity and then so we appreciate these this these spaces because we are
trying to work to transform our schools uh but at the same time we're trying to see some authentic uh uh intentions to invite parents into the spaces and one of the things is that we want these PBIS meetings to be occurring on a monthly basis uh and not limit to just parents
uh at the same time also um we haven't given a process last month we heard that PBS and some of the folks are advocating for police has been used only 20% uh I'm not sure if that data is correct but if is that correct that we have to be better and make sure that it's pushing so that we are not looking at
police as a solution but also thinking about alternative practices thank you thank you for your time uh Diana Gen Miss Guen come on up you'll have two minutes to speak miss Guian I see you're out there come on up please um Oh we're
waiting for Miss Guen is Monica Razola here no Monica okay Miss Ken please come on up you have two minutes to speak once you begin Miss Guian's going to speak in Spanish so if you'd like to hear what she's saying in English please put your hands up and we'll get you these translation headsets so you can experience simultaneous translation
gracias good afternoon members of the board my name is Diana Gan and I represent the parents because of safety school we have collected more than 5,000 signatures we're parents uh would appreciate if you would change the district's policy and
allow the school allow school police to return to schools one of the things that I want to say is that they presented some schools presented very beautiful and everything but in these wonderful schools there are incident on November 17 John Burroughs a teacher was arrested
because she was abused of sexual abuse against a child and because she would give him drugs these things are happening at our schools how can you we defend all this this it is by involving parents inside the school so that these type of things don't happen and I know
these are this is one of the best schools in the area but also I want to say that I will what I would like for the schools to present is they should become better like Miguel Contras U La Community School Belmont Clinton Middle School John Ley
Middle School Santi High School Maya Angelo High School and these are the schools that you have a lot of funds because you invest in them and you are giving them everything that some people have mentioned they give him counselings they give them support logistical support they give them people who
supposedly help them outside and where is that better for that school we haven't seen that the parents haven't seen that also that you talk about PBIS program where less than 30% of the teachers and within the reports that you have given aren't using it and many
teachers don't want to use it why you should ask them why they don't want to use it maybe it's the technicals the tech uh the maybe it's what they're doing is working more than what you're doing allow school police to return back to school at least to the schools that need it if there's a school that is a wonderful school just like the ones that just presented if they don't need it
great for them great for them that they can manage it this is how all schools should be but there are schools that need to have necessities and they need school police so that to avoid crime not because they want to criminal criminalize school students but because we want to prevent drugs from coming in we want death to come in we
want students that are abusing children not to enter the schools this is what we need thank you okay now we'll go to call-in speakers i have Erinda Morita i see you on the line erinda Morita please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin erinda
Morita my name is Elinda and we want school police inside the schools and these are insecure moments and remember that the students are at the schools the majority of time therefore take in consideration the signatures that we gave
you why be so that because every signature is a message from all parents to the schools to obtain safety and in certain schools you don't follow protocols nor you inform parents to what's happening
inside the schools you should inform through writing and based on every emergency as what happens in every day so that parents can speak to the students and be informed and comment let
them let you know what the students see and what they hear also make sure that there aren't homeless drug people around the schools to where our children walk and
sell them drugs you I invite you all to take a walk through MacArthur Park so that you can know the streets that our children walk make conscience of the danger this is why we want officers inside the schools and around the
streets we want the police now to the students that have uh autism any autism condition treat them with respect and dignity don't forget that personnel and teachers don't forget about ethics and moral morale towards our children
because it hurts when you treat them bad it's enough of injustice thank you please let us know and we'll get you one gracias good afternoon my name is Monica i'm a mother of two students at a 10th
district and I believe it's incredible how school police officer participation on hear it it has to do with them they should be present within your agenda and as a parent as a mom I'm in favor of school police because I have lived and I
have had the experience that my school has been shot at or they've entered with firearms if it wasn't because of what I live through I wouldn't be here i've been here every time I can and this is something impossible to be able to leave other things to be here present with you
all and it is sad it is sad that you're not listening to the parents voice parents are want school police to go back to schools and I'm not sure what we need to do how many signatures we need to obtain how many times we need to come what is it that we need to do so that you can listen to us school is important
it's not a luxury it's a necessity it's an urgent necessity we ask for this at the schools therefore I do agree that elementary schools don't need it let's say but middle schools and high schools are the principal uh places where school police should be hollywood and high schools are Hollywood schools and high
schools are the last steps so that students can't graduate and enter a university or enter a short career or enter anything that any trade they'd like to do and we've seen that not many students are graduating they're not and going to schools and especially what we're living now things are even worse
this is something so important it was important for school police to be at the schools because of the violence that's happening we've seen that it's elevated violence has escalated 300% and it's rare it's rare that you're not approving
all this you're not approving everything that we're asking about safety and the security that you have safety with these kids with orange uh vest it's not much security being given you should see how much uh violence is adding to and
nothing is being given you should ask information on how where these employees from these organizations are coming from thank you for your time all right Isabelle Gonzalez I see you're online to speak remotely isabelle Gonzalez please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have two minutes to
speak once you begin isabelle Gonzalez good afternoon are you not mother i'm a mother or I'm one of the 5,000 mothers that are worried about safety inside the LCD schools what are you waiting for you
need to act in safe safety for our students isn't it enough to see how the incidents and violence inside the schools have escalated even double triple or even more in certain
schools haven't the fact that you've defunded school police hasn't it has it been a great advancement within education and well-being of the students and within attendance of course not this
is a joke within education we are at rank at 31 worldwide that means we're 31% less than other countries and in the well-being every day children are being
bullied they're being hidden um excuse me they're being hitten they're being stabbed they're being drugged or they're being they're dying like Melanie they took her life or Shelley Mahia do you remember or do you not remember her within attendance every time the
class we see classrooms being empty we ask for you to return the funds for school police because ever since that those funds were deviated to other organizations and support in academic success we haven't
seen it we have 2021 it is obvious that this has been the biggest fraud because it is discrimination because you only include students from one race have a great day
and our final uh public speaker is Vines Miron verice Miron please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin venice Miron attendance miss Von good afternoon committee members can you hear me we can now we
can hear you perfectly thank you okay good afternoon committee members thank you for these presentations uh Miss Ortiz Franklin I agree with you we still have a long way to go but I want to bring your attention to the district's ineffective response to bullying there
seems to be a confusion between central offices and schools on who on how bullying should be resolved appropriately i ask that you revise your policy so that schools know how to respond to bullying appropriately and in a timely manner the following is from
the dear colleague letter on bullying of dis students with disabilities number one students with disabilities are disproportionately affected by bullying two building on Other's 2013 guidance today's guidance explains that the bullying of a student
with a disability on any basis can similarly result in a denial of faith however the most important thing is that the LUSD needs to take seriously this this resolve because the impact that
bullying can have on a student could be catastrophic specifically for students with disabilities miss Vidon I see you're still on the line uh but we cannot hear you anymore oh that was the end of my comment thank you oh fantastic thank you so much that
concludes general public comment thank you all so much for joining us this afternoon we will see you on May 8th for our final meeting and we'll get together some recommendations to share back with the district staff as well at that time so have a good evening go Dodgers we're up 1 right now let's keep it going good night