Good morning. I am happy to welcome our board members, committee members, and the public to our children and families and early education committee. We are excited as always for today's discussion. As I share and try to remind everyone at the top of every meeting, um
our committee is intended to focus on the needs of our youngest learners and their families here in Los Angeles, um supporting their learning, their well-being, as well as recruiting, engaging, and supporting our families. Um at our last meeting, we covered enrollment trends in early education as
well as statewide trends to better understand how LUD fits into that broader context. In today's meeting, we're going to be focusing on our early numeracy program and hear from our EEC principles and teachers. We will also be hearing about our trauma infirmed early
enrichment program or the tree program. Um, and then finally, as always, we'll conclude with public comment at the end of the meeting. Um, for anyone who wishes to speak for public comment, you can sign up with the board secretariate staff in the back of the boardroom. Um, everyone here, I believe, has already
introduced themselves at previous meetings. Um, but we do have a couple of virtual participants. Mr. McClean, are the virtual folks with us? Um, so we will recognize that board member Melville is is here with us on Zoom.
Good morning. Hi. Hello. Good morning. Thanks, Chair Gomez. Yes, thanks for joining us, Mr. Meloine. Um, and then I I'll just check to see if um uh Miss Maria Miranda from UTLA is with us. I don't believe she's introduced herself previously with the committee. She isn't.
Okay. And we have Junhi who's joining us as well. Good morning, Junhi. Good morning. Good to see you. And do we have Miss Kinar Kinb? Not yet. Okay. Um, if they join us later, we will make sure that we call on them. Um before we
proceed to the first presentation and introduce our presenters, I will just make a public service announcement that obviously many of us are very focused on what's happening in Washington DC these days and on the topic of early childhood education. Um, besides the many proposed cuts that impact the families that we
serve in LA USD, um, I will just note that there has been a proposal to cut Head Start by the Trump administration. And, um, as I know the folks up here with me know that Head Start is a critically important early education program that supports young children and families for decades. It's one of the
most um, successful like evidence-based federal programs um, in the history of the US. and uh demolishing Head Start would be incredibly painful for the many families that rely on it um for the children, for the young children that they serve, um for their families and
for our broader communities because we know that early childhood education is an investment in our families in our economy. And so I would just uh as a point of personal privilege encourage everyone to reach out to their federal representatives, your congressional members um and make sure you you make it
clear that Head Start is important for our communities and we won't stand by for our young children and their parents to be short changed by this administration. Okay, with that um I would love to introduce our presenters here today. We have our early education
team um Dr. Dr. Dean Tagawa, uh, Pia and Emila Mendes, um, a principal at one of our early education centers, as well as one of our early education teachers. Um, and together they're going to be presenting on the importance of early
numeracy. Thank you all so much for being here. Um, and to our committee members, if you could just hold your questions to the end of the presentation, um, that would be great. Come on up. Let's give them a warm welcome. everybody and uh Chair Gomez, board
members Meloyne and Tanya Ortiz Franklin and all of our esteemed colleagues. We're really excited today and I'm going to get us started with a quick little math story. So, back when I was in first grade. Um the teacher put up a bunch of math problems on the chalkboard and so
as she put the problems up, she asked students to come up and we wrote our answers to the math problems. So I came up and the question was 6 + 3. So I thought I was going to be all fancy and just like in the textbooks the answer was nine. So I wrote my nine not with
the straight line but I put the little curve on it. And so as the teacher's going down the board she says 6 + 3. It is not g. And I thought what are you talking about? I I'm, you know, and then the
whole class laughed. And so I I say that because my math story I felt like affected me, you know, all the way through 9inth and through 12th grade. And so I was that kid who took eight years of math in high school. Um but not because I was gifted. It was because I
had to take it during the regular school year and then make it up in the summer. And so today um I'm excited to bring two math presentations or two presentations that I'm going to say bring me fear. One is math as you can and then the other
one is on feelings and and and it's really about trauma informed but I think you're going to enjoy both of them. So I know some people think when they hear early math skills they think you know uh we're trying to teach our preschoolers algebra and and get them ready for MIT.
And I want to say no, we're not prepping students for MIT or the SAT or whatever they're taking now, but we are really building those foundational math skills. So, I'm going to turn it over to uh Principal Mendes, who I've had the chance to work with over the years, and
she's an amazing she was an amazing teacher and now she's an amazing principal. And then Miss Hwan, who's one of her teachers who's you're going to see is just amazing, too. So, enjoy the presentations. And Miss Principal Mendes, it's all yours. Good morning board members and committee
members. Thank you for having us this morning. Um, Miss Hwan and I will be discussing building strong foundations and the importance of numeracy in early education programs. So when you walk into an early education classroom, you see math all over. You see it in throughout the
environment. You see it through learning activities that the teachers intentionally plan for their students. So students in each developmental area, they are working on sorting, they're working on number recognition, they're working on counting collections. We use our PTKF to not only
plan for instruction, but we also use it as a differentiation tool. When our class teams are their lesson planning and they're also planning for professional development, they use a rubric to make sure that everything's intentional for
the learning of our students. So currently at Alexandria, we are working on these early math skills where we find in the PTKF that we have onetoone correspondence. So the look for when we're working with our students is that the student is assigning a number to a particular object. Then when we're
looking at stable order, our teachers are using chants and songs. For example, five little monkeys jumping on the bed. They're using five green and speckled frogs to make sure that the students are counting in order from one to five. We're also looking at cardality where we
mostly use counting collections and for example a student may have a collection of 10 items and the question might be so can you count your collection for me and how many do you have in your collection? So that last number that the student may say which might be 10 is how we know
that the student define the quantity for our teacher support in the classroom. We don't only have the certificated staff but we also have our instructional aids. So within small groupoup activities when you walk into a classroom you really don't know which one is certificated which one is our
classified because everybody's providing these opportunities for our students. So when it comes to this or daily routines when they're doing health checks and they're asking students so how many friends are here today and how many friends are absent and then they also use games for example bingo games. They
use hands-on activities like flashcards. They use our counting collections. They use puppetry and also of course our books for our visuals and readalouds. We also have our main important thing that I mentioned before. It's our learning
activities within our centers. So the most important thing in the classroom environment are learning areas because this is where our students are not only initiating placebased activities but they're also initiating their learning. And here you see how it comes
to life. So you see different students in different areas. For example, you see in the first picture that the student is counting vehicles in the block area. Then you see another student in the discovery area counting pine cones and trying to fit them into the mirrorboard. You also see a student that is dressed
up as a construction worker and he's counting his collection of linking cubes and he's drawing a picture of how he counted his collection. And one of our most favorite activities that we have for like steam night is hex bugs and creating a maze which is also part of
coding. So the idea is that they count a number of hex bugs and they estimate how many of those hex bugs will make it outside of the actual maze. Here we see a counting collection activity but this is part of the differentiation process. So our teachers
even though the students are working on the same concept of counting you see how they're using different tools and different modalities of learning and counting. So the teacher has the same objective but she is differentiating different activities as the students are participating in counting and recording
their collections. And when we speak to mathrich classrooms, we're not only discussing our indoor activities, but we're also talking about our outdoor classrooms. So we see students using a sensory table and using log blocks. So a teacher might come and ask, "How many logs are you
using to build your tower?" And also we have recycling activity where it invites parents to also participate and it incorporates numerousy within that activity. We also have individualized activities that are relevant to our students personalization. So, how
awesome is it that you walk into your classroom and you have a chart and it says, "How many letters are in your name?" So, you get to compare not only the letters in your name, but also how many letters are in my best friend's name. Here we also see how teachers are incorporating different ways of
incorporating numerousy within their counting stations. So each classroom looks different. Each teacher creates their own objectives for students because every year we have different students and every year we have to differentiate in different ways. So here you see several pictures of that of how
teachers use relevant materials not only of everyday use but also activities that they pre-planned so that students can practice their numerousy. And this is a picture of Miss Hwan's data wall in her classroom. So when I first walked in her into her
classroom, I was so amazed because children are actually active participants of this data wall. They were actually asked, you know, oh, do you know what area you're in yet? And they would say, oh, responding, exploring, or building. And the way that this is introduced to students, it's not
as a good or bad. It means that you're working on these skills and we're all working together. So one developmental area is not better than the other. And we also use this tool when we have parent teacher conferences. So when the parents come in, they also understand
the assessment process. So we explain to parents that if their little one isn't exploring that that's okay. That just means we're working on that developmental area, but it does not mean that he won't move on forward to the next thing or he won't acrue additional skills.
And this is a sample of the PTK alongment with cardality. So even though PTKF is designed in a way that we go by age groups, sometimes we might have a four or 5year-old that is not there yet in terms of developmental skills. So
what we do is we take this opportunity to use it for differentiation. So, we use what the descriptor says in order for us to figure out what supports does the student need to be at in that developmental level regardless of age.
So, I always let teachers know that you know what, this is your guide, but by no means if a student is four or five and they're not in that category, that just means we need to take them to the next level and work on different things that we need to do for support.
And now I will hand it over to Miss Hwan and she would share how all this learning and instruction take you know gets live in her classroom. Thank you. Good morning board members and committee. My name is Hwan Nagusi and I'm a teacher at Alexandria ECC. In this
clip it shows how I conduct a CGI lesson that involves number talks in a group in a whole group setting. This will help me transition to small group then indiv individualization. This method not only helps me to check for understanding but is also a format for assessment. Before
I play this clip, I will be reading uh the three bullets. Matt Math talks can help students develop deeper thinking skills. Students are encouraged to make connections in mathematics and students are giving opportunities to reason about relationships between numbers.
Then the medium cup had 10. And then the bigger cup had 15 cups. So which one has more cups? Is 15 bigger than three or is three bigger
than 15? 15 is which one? What is that? It's bigger. That has more. That means that has more. Is 10 more than 15 or is 15 more than 10? 10. 10 is what? Is it more
or is 15 more? 15 more. 15 is more. That's right. Okay. I have another question. Is 10 more or is three more? Three more. Is three more than 10? 10.
10. 10 is more. 10 is more than three. Okay. So counting collection is an engaging way for children to develop foundational math skills by working with physical objects like the colorful plastic cups I used in my whole group. They not only learn number recognition
and one-to-one correspondent, but is also it also cultivates a different understanding of quantities. This hands-on approach makes abstract concept more tangible, allowing our students to explore and discover at their own pace. On the next slide, it shows how I work
one-on-one with one of my students um to help me check for understanding. Okay, Havana, can you give take out 12 cubes? Yes. Okay. One. [Music]
It's okay. You can continue. One, two, three, four, five. 6 7 8
9 10 11 12. Good job. Okay, now that you have 12, can you give me five of your cubes? Yeah. Okay. One, two,
three, four, and five. Yes. Five. Good job. Thank you for sharing. So, I have five cubes now that you gave me. So, how many cubes do you have left?
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Good job. Seven. So, who has more? Do I have more or do you have more? I have more. You have more. Why do you have more? Because when you told me to give you
five and I have seven. That's right. Good job. So, do you remember how much it was all together? Both. No. All together. Both together. How many do you have? Do you remember when I first told you to take the the
cubes off? How many did you have? You can count if you want. 12. That's right. And then you and I asked you how many to take out to give me. How many did you give me? Five. And then how many did you have left? Seven. Good
job. So not only does counting collection help support the development of math vocabularies like more, less, takeaway. It also encourage mathematical thinking, support counting skills, and develop early number sense. Thank you. And I'll pass it back to Miss Mendes.
Thank [Applause] you, Miss Hwan. So, um, as a progression, one of the activities that we do as a follow-up is counting and recording. So, students get to choose their own counting
collection and they get to decide what they're going to use to represent their collection. So it could be through a drawing or some of our students that you know their fine motor skills are not all there yet. They are able to verbally tell the teacher how they counted their
collection. I want to share this quote from one of the children's mathematics books that really when I read this quote it reminded me of how our teachers are doing their planning in the classroom and how much it means to really know your students. So, we do not provide
specific directions for how to organize a classroom or how to implement instruction. Teaching is a complex problem-solving endeavor. Because of the intimate knowledge that you have of your own students, you are most qualified to make immediate decisions about
supporting your students mathematical learning. And we also extend this learning to our parents. So we have monthly parent engagement activities that are geared towards either numeracy, literacy or steam events. And here you see how our children are also
participating along with their parents and counting collections in different ways. We recently had a ready set read activity where parents were coming in throughout the day. Um we kind of did a different twist to it where we had different sessions throughout the day because our parents do have different
work schedules. So throughout the day we did offer different sessions where parents can come in and join the sessions with their students. So this is just one of the many examples that we have on how we're also incorporating a culture of learning not only within our site but also within our school
community and that will conclude our presentation. Thank you very much. Thank you both so much. really appreciate um everything that you shared with us and it was great to see you in action, Miss Nagusi. Um we'll open it up now for questions from the committee. Any questions or comments for our
presenters? Yes, go ahead. Put on It's not a question, it's a compliment. Uh it looks like you guys are doing amazing things and um it looks like for me children learn better when they're
learning. I feel like when they're not being pressured to learn, it stays in their minds forever. And the way you're putting these activities, it shows that children are going to definitely um benefit from this uh all of this
organizations and activities. Um also um give me one second. When um when you do these kind of activities, do you guys talk to the families about what do they mean or what
can they do at home so they can take the um learning um to the their their home environment and benefit more of all of the content that you guys are showing to children. So we always provide um
resources before and after. So, we do have also monthly parent education um classes or workshops where parents are invited to experience what kind of curriculum we're working with and then of course we do practice. It's pretty much the same style that we use with our students. You know, we do whole group,
we're introducing a math activity and then we take it on to small group. So, we do use that same dynamic with our parents where we're first introducing them like, "Hey parents, we're working on numeracy. These are the different things we're doing with your child." And then the next day it's a follow-up. Hey, parents that come and practice with us.
So, we do not only provide on-site support, but we also have a lot of resources, not only online resources, but we do give them a lot of books. We do give them counting collections, and we also show them how they can find counting collections at home without having to purchase anything. Thank you.
Thank you. There questions. Oh, yes. Go ahead, Brenda. I really want to say that I love the fact that you recognize that learning is not a design. That is so important when it comes to learning. Also, um I really
enjoyed seeing the variety of collections that the students were actually using. Uh everybody didn't have the same materials. uh given uh children choices or very important that I saw also uh the
question I have uh do you provide materials for uh the families so at home uh they can take also these learning lessons at home because sometimes you know families just don't have the money the time to collect these so uh how does
this actually work so currently within um early ed we are working with a count play explore grant which is designated for math activities and math resources for parents. So in November we had an amazing steam night and it was open for the entire community not only for our
school and we provided math packs and we even had enough materials that we were able to provide some of those resources to our staff. You know our staff also have little ones within LUSD. So also they got to have resources so they can work with their own children at home. So
we do provide and in any case we also have a lot of ways that we provide resources where parents can find these things at home. So for example counting collection of hair ties at home and we do help parents to realize you know you
only need you know things that you find everyday items at home clothes pins and you can get a piece of paper and if they need paper we provide them paper from school so that their children can count and record. So we do proate a lot of materials like that and then we're also blessed that we have ready set read. So
scholastics provides a lot of those materials in terms of our math books or steam books. So um we are very blessed in that sense but if even if we didn't have these resources I know that our staff within EEC has that capacity to provide these ideas to parents so that
we can build that home connection. Thank you. Other questions or comments? Board member Lee Franklin. Sure. Thanks. just one for me and really appreciate the presentation the concrete examples I think help it come to life for us. I was just curious to what extent we cultivate
their math identity. I know in the secondary even through elementary we talk about you know you're a mathematician and sort of that culture of like I can do it kind of um preventing the the fear of math and maybe some of the story that Dean shared as well personally that impacts a lot of
uh adults remember you know their own experiences. So um any examples of kind of cultivating that identity or that culture around becoming a mathematician? So um like we showed in a presentation, our data wall is a perfect example because when you hear data,
you're like, "Oh my goodness, data." But the awesome thing is that our teachers such as Miss Hwan, they do incorporate our students and their active participants in their own data. So they're seeing how they are being assessed in terms of celebrating their accomplishments as they're moving
through the developmental continuum. The teachers are saying, "Oh, you know, look, now you learn this additional skill." And we present it in the same way to parents because the fear is that you want your kiddo to be amazing, right, all the time. But that fear of
data and assessment and also for our students, even though they're little, they don't want to sit next to a teacher where a teacher just has a checklist in front of them saying, "Oh, what letters do you know?" or "Can you recognize this?" This way with a data wall, they're seeing how they're growing together as a class because a teacher
builds that goal. So, it's everything's collaborative. Nothing is only, oh, it's only you that's down there at that level or it's only this one. It's always with partnership. and also with myself as administrator and with my teachers. It's an automatic partnership in everything we do, including our data and
assessment. I appreciate that growth mindset from a young age. I think it's really powerful and I was just thinking about like the dramatic play area where you can be a doctor or a vet or a princess and maybe there are other, you know, steam type professions that we can add into the
dramatic play area. Um I was just at a conference earlier today. The you know top 10 jobs that exist today that didn't you know 15 20 years ago are like data analyst and web developer and these things that maybe three four year olds don't know yet like what does that look like and feel like but it did make me
start to think like how do we help young kids even sort of visualize their career path of what it might mean to have a a steam career. Um so appreciate all that you all are doing. So one more thing I want just wanted to share one of those pictures where the child is dressed as a construction worker. So because we are going through the nature explorer
project. So he dressed up as a construction worker and you know he was actually looking at the contractor and that's how he was counting his little um cubes and recording his collection because he did see the contractor right
outside the window and the contractor was you know he was handling other materials but he was pretending that he was doing that. So when the teacher took that opportunity and said so how many cubes do you have? That's how it turned into a numerousy activity.
Great. Um, yes, Jen. Hi, good morning. Um, sorry I missed the first part of your presentation. Um, but what I caught was really interesting and engaging to um, learn about. I'm curious. I saw um I would assume maybe these are just examples of early math
skills, but I also just wonder, you know, um around the age of I I have two under two for just to give you a context there. And my daughter is really interested in grocery shopping um and incorporating things into using money to
purchase items at the grocery store or there's a kid at a cashier checking them out and this is $5. Can you give me five? One, two, three. Right. I'm just wondering like how um in this curriculum it's incorporating like everyday scenarios that our children witness
their parents engage in or they too right at the grocery store or wherever it may be um and understanding the purchasing power. So wondering how um everyday economics um put plays into perhaps these um early learning classroom settings if you can just share
more about that. So, for example, if we're in our learning area, so we have free choice time. So, the students are able to go into the different areas, usually in the dramatic play areas where you're going to find an activity such as the one you described. So, we always have somebody in the area to facilitate,
not to direct the play, but to facilitate. So, that would be our open-ended questions. So, if we have somebody in the dramatic play area and the child is trying to sell fruit or any other kind of groceries, then that's the opportunity the adult will take, whether it's an instructional aid or a teacher
to say, "Oh, so how much do you think that's going to cost?" And it's all about the open-ended questions because you're not giving children answers. You are creating spaces for them to have their own mathematical thinking. And actually, they're directing our sense of
instruction because we're going by the cues they give us. And then he might say, "I don't know, maybe a dollar." Then we can have a follow-up question and say, "Well, when you go to the grocery store, how much does mom pay for those bananas?" You know, you can have them critically think and and make it relevant to not only the space in the
classroom, but also the space that they share with mom, maybe at Target. So, how much did you pay for the socks? Do you remember that number? Or can you think of how much they would possibly cost? So, it it really has to do with the facilitation of the adults in the classroom as well. Thank you. and and
speaking to the adults in the classroom. Um just curious to learn more about how the instructional aids and other assistants in the classroom that are aiding with the teachers, how they're um professionally developed. What is what trainings do they attend? How does that look like for them? So they also are
able to attend Saturday PDs that are provided by the division. Right now, like I said earlier, we are working with Countplay Explorer and also at the site level. They are part of our instructional leadership team. And what I do on site is I rotate my instructional aids. So one week I have
two instructional aids participating with certificated in the ILT team along with our parent advisory committee and then the next week I rotate. So everybody on site including our parents has an opportunity to know what kind of instruction is happening in our site.
The Saturday trainings are those optional or those um what just is understood that staff attend? It's optional. And then of course the division does share the information with us. So that way in case teachers or assistants miss the material, we're able
to provide that PD on site because we're also trained. All administrators are trained with the materials and I've done multiple trainings throughout different regions. So the material is there and of course it's optional if teachers or teacher assistants want to participate on Saturdays, but that doesn't mean that
they're going to miss out on instruction or training. Okay? And um if the teach if the assistants decide to go on the Saturdays, is that paid through the district? Yes, it is. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions on this side? And I know our we'll turn to our Zoom
folks after that. Yes. It's not a question. Um it was really awesome to see what you're doing at your site, especially um Miss Yuan. Um how your environment, how you um do your instruction so the child feels safe to um give a response and be incorrect. but
you were very encouraging for your for your students both in the large group and in the individual one. And then uh Miss Mendes, I really um I'm more curious about how do you set up the time frames? Um because I like that idea of being able to offer parent workshops
throughout the day and not just at a set time because many of our parents are working at our sites. Um how did you develop like the scheduling that you're using for it? So what we do is we actually surveyed our parents. So, we do have some parents that do not start work
till 9:00 or 10:00. So, we divided it into three sessions. So, in the morning, we have parents that can come in from 9 to 10. Then the second session will be from 10:30 to 11:30 because then we cut into lunchtime. And then we have our evening one where for the working parents that don't get off till like
5:00, we do extend it from 4:00 to 5:30. And we make sure that all our parents receive the information even if they do not attend a session. And the way that it's captured in the classrooms is that the teachers already have the stations ready and we do have an instructional
aid or a teacher that directs the parents as they're coming in. They're welcoming them and showing them here's a station and it's totally hands off from the staff. That way the parent does get that experience just like the parents do to hey learn learn on their own and
create their own mindsets just like their children do throughout the day. Wonderful. Yes, principerian. Great presentation by the way uh from both of you. Um I I saw a lot of CGI mat embedded in your Were you guys a CGI
school prior to last year? Yes. Um so we were a CGI school, we're in second year. Um but like I said earlier, um even when we were not a CGI school, we were able to implement the strategies. So even though um some schools did partner with
CGI and others didn't, throughout our EEC division, we did provide those strategies through other um grants. For example, the California Math Initiative, which is now known as CPE. And again, it's all about the strategies and instructional supports that our teachers can come up with. So it's not
necessarily that you have to be a CGI school for our children to receive this quality instruction through numerousy. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, turning to our virtual participants. Um, let's start with board member Melvine. You have any questions or comments?
Thank you, Miss Gonz. And thanks to the presenters and it was fun watching those videos. Um, I was just in an EEC uh at Van Alden last week and it was uh seeing some of this in action. Um but I um wanted to just ask about kind of
family um how we're communicating with families about ready about numer um mathematic numerical readiness. I know we've talked a little bit about when it comes to uh word development and um and language acquisition and reading to kids. Math is a little different. And so
I'm curious kind of what info we give families about DRDP and PTKF and what the results mean and also how we communicate that across different languages, but also um what other ways can families know if their children are ready for kindergarten in terms of their
numeracy skills specifically. So we do advocate for full transparency and that's the reason why at our site we came up with the idea of class data walls so that parents as they're coming in they can visit that data wall and they can see. So we do have the PTK
alignment along with the DRDP alignment and we have it in English and Spanish as well. Um we're currently working on other languages because we do have diverse um families but our teachers do a very nice job of creating visuals. So,
we also have on our class dojo, we also send out resources. We send weekly resources out and we also have weekly newsletters. Um, we also, like we said earlier, we have monthly um parent night math activities where parents have the liberty to come in and join. And again,
if they're not able to join, then we make note of it and we do provide them that source. Um, teachers are also very open to having conferences, not necessarily because of the DRDP, but also just kind of check-ins to see, you know what, maybe we don't see a parent often or the teacher doesn't get to
communicate, you know, how's that parent doing or what do they feel their child needs at home. So, we also have that open communication. And then also the division does an amazing job to post things on their website and to also provide resources to our principles so
that we're also aware of current trends that are happening not only within our district but also through CDSS and also through camp explore and also with other initiatives within California. Great. Thank you. That's it for me.
Thank you Mr. Meline. Um, Junhi, did you have any questions you wanted to ask? Yes. Um, first appreciation for the presentation. I think I really enjoyed teacher Hwan making math fun and how experiential it was. So, just want to give appreciation for that and just
pointing out how the integration of DRDP in a way that is fun and it feels really welcoming for families. I think that's a wonderful idea that you have with the rocket shape and you know, three and four year olds are competitive and also really collaborative. So I just really
appreciate integrating maybe more uh these continuum of learning things in a way that's accessible for families. Um one question I had regarding that was as we think about a PTK like alignment um in terms of the PD that's provided um
and what we've been seeing in the presentation. How do you coordinate with TK and kinder teachers and is there learning communities or curious about just alignment So, let me jump in with that one, Junhi. It's um so we've created a schooly group
and and we have over,400 TK teachers in that group. So, a lot of what we do is communication through that group to get it out to the field. The other thing that's new this year and um it's exciting is that the creative curriculum is across all um whether it's an early
ed center, a state preschool or TK. So when we do trainings now, we can do them districtwide and invite TK, TKAS, early ed teachers, and we can be speaking the same language. And then as we kind of move forward, the idea of really looking at our PTKs and the alignment there with
our early ed programs is going to be um a big piece of this upcoming year. So a lot of alignment in that way now. Um that's different than before. So, it's pretty exciting uh because now when we talk about, you know, 30,000 kids in our early ed programs, we're talking about 30,000 kids that are using the same
progress monitoring tool, the same curriculum, and so it's a good piece to have now, but thank you for the question. Sorry. All right. Um I will uh wrap up with just a few comments and questions for myself. Thank you both so much. I thought that that was a
wonderful presentation. Um, and I love to see what it looks like at your school in a really um, tangible way. Uh, Miss Huan, I thought your interactions with your students were it just made f math fun and accessible. And I feel like so much of what u maybe our our adult
experiences with math have been is it's disconnected from your everyday life. It's intimidating. It's abstract. And I feel like what we saw from Alexandria EEC is the opposite of that. It's accessible. It's hands-on. it's connected to their everyday experience as students. So, I just wanted to
commend you both on on the work that you're doing on that front. Um, I know Principal Kazerin asked about CGI and I wonder if you all might share for because folks may be unfamiliar with what CGI is. If you could share what is CGI and like why is it important for the
math success of our students? So CGI is cognitively guided instruction and like mentioned earlier it's strategies and instruction based on children's perspective and mindsets and this is an invitation to step back and let the
children explore their own mathematical thinking without the adult disrupting their process. So it's that time and it's very hard for us as educator to sometimes not give away the answer or not give away too much. um like we saw in the presentation, it's about
facilitation. Um we stand back and we follow students cues. So that's what it is. CGI is an open invitation not only for our students but also for our teachers to think about their own mathematical mindset and how does that
benefit or how does that impact the student learning and instruction because remember you know we're educating them but we also have those fears. So it's also, you know, learning how to just be a little bit more flexible and a little more inviting and lose that fear and know that it's a process and that it's
there's no right or wrong answer. You are going through a developmental process. So that's the reason why I feel that CGI is very important because it's de developmentally appropriate in all cases in terms of not only the adults in the classroom, the families, but our students. They're learning and they're
learning at their own pace and they're learning to validate and honor their own experiences when it comes to math. It definitely speaks to, you know, what we know and I know Miss Ortiz Franklin mentioned this that the research shows it's not about just the technical and operational skills of math, but it's really about those mindsets, that
confidence um and the ability to learn independently and you all are building that from an early age so that they'll know how to count one through 10, but of but also they'll feel confident in their in their own learning and their ability to solve problems. Um, I also wanted to
ask just if you could share how you support our diverse learners like our emergent bilingual and our kiddos with disabilities um, in the math work that you all do at your school. So, um, the beauty of the strategies that we use are that they're very hands-on and we use a lot of visuals. So, even for our
non-verbal students, like we said before, it's more of like if we ask questions and they're not able to tell us verbally, they're able to show us with pictures, they're able to show us with their collection. Um, also we do have a very diverse community where you know we have Chinese speaking students
and Russian speaking students. I don't have staff that is able to speak those languages but they do an amazing job because of all the visuals that they do present and because they are going by the children's cues they it kind of lends itself when they're preparing
materials and when they're promoting all these different skills within the areas. That's why I said, you know, the most important part are outdoor and learning areas because that is what defines how teachers know their students best by the materials that they're incorporating in
each of the areas. And when you're watching your students, like the best time, I always say the best time to do assessment is during playtime because that's when you're even watching regardless of language, regardless of skill, regardless of disability, you're
watching the students in action and they find ways to collaborate with each other. If you take a look at some of our students that are non-verbal and they're engaging with verbal students, you see how the verbal students take the lead. So, it's all about the facilitation. It's not so much that oh the teacher is
going to do this for the student. It's how are you going to provide that space for the student to be the best that he or she can be. A lot of personalization and differentiation for our students. Um and then just one more kind of bigger picture question I think for Dr. Tagawa
is just this was a great snapshot about um how one center approaches early ed generally as a district. How are we tracking early numeracy success districtwide and and supporting these efforts? So within um within the division itself
with math efforts, we there's a few different ways and I'll kind of start with the easiest one is through the DRDPS. And so we kind of do a we do a district-wide collection of DRDPS to see where they are um and find out what are the areas of strength, what are the
areas of weakness, what do we need to provide training on. One of the big things was early numerousy and this was uh about two years ago which is why you see a lot of effort put behind counting collections to see are we moving the needle. The other part is that we also use those metrics within the district's
um plan strategic plan. And so within the district strategic plan, you'll see math goals and you'll see kind of where we're moving. The harder part about this is that in order to move the that needle and accelerate that learning, we really have to build the capacity of our
staffs. And so it's not just it's 75% this year we want kinder ready. Um because every student who comes into our centers generally starts at a similar place. So at the end of the year they may go to 65 let's say percent kinder
readiness but the next year the goal is for 75% kinder readiness and the only way to do that is investing in our staff to accelerate that learning. So the Saturday PDS the the bank time Tuesdays the giving the principles like the whole
module so that they can introduce it to their staff and and so there's a bigger picture. And then the last way is we do early education data digs with our principles. And so our principles will come in and speak to the data from their DRDP. And so we listen for trends and we
say like okay this is something that's coming up often as their principles are sharing about their data and then it's incumbent upon us as a division what are we going to do to pro you know to provide training in this area and build the PD in this area and so we start
looking for grants. we start looking for things that are related to that specific area. And then um um but those are kind of the three different ways that we address it divisionwide. And then but we really lean on our principles and our teachers to kind of get them the
training and build their toolkit so they have everything that they need to kind of accelerate that that learning. So uh that's a larger division yeah effort. But yeah, thank you so much. All right, we'll give one more round of applause to our first set of presenters. Thank you both so much. Really appreciate
it. And now let's turn to our second presentation um where we will be hearing about our traumainformed early education program here at LUSD. And I'd like to invite up Jose who is our executive director of school mental health and wellness services and Kzia Miller who is
our tree coordinator. Well, good afternoon everyone. Um board members and committee members. So glad to be here today and um be able to walk you through the story of TRIE, our trauma and resilience informed early
enrichment program. What initially started as a focused initiative. We um at five early education centers has evolved into a cornerstone of our district's unwavering commitment to early childhood mental health and wellness. Um in this presentation uh
we'll do three things. First, take a trip down memory lane and go over the history of tree. Um, second, we'll share some data that's informing our practice. Uh, three, uh, provide an outline of the various works that comprise this great
uh, program and Kyu Miller, our fantastic administrator over tree will go over that portion. But ultimately my objective for for today for you is that at the conclusion of this presentation and conversation you will have a deeper
understanding of how we are pioneering really pioneering early childhood mental health programs not only in the district but really across the country. Um and that most importantly when we intentionally bring together educators,
social workers, families and community partners, we create a safe and emotional supportive environment where every child has the opportunity to thrive. So with that tree, you know, launched in 2019. So, as you can see in this slide, a beautiful picture of all of our staff uh
in that first year uh with this strong interdisciplinary mental health team made up of 15 psychiatric social workers, two leads and one administrator. Um all of the the team members of this uh of tree program are all licensed clinical social workers
which means they are at the highest level of clinical care and training. Um, our founding team established the groundwork by providing direct care, consultation, and community support. And since then, this team has set the gold
standard for what integrated early childhood mental health look should look like in school settings. So, let's look a little bit at a program history timeline here. Um our journey spans six years uh dating back uh from you know around 2019 and
actually chairperson uh chair member Gonz was actually at the LA County board uh briefing to accept these dollars. So thank you for being just a supporter from the from day one. Um but what we looked at was that uh each year we've
expanded our reach and refined our model from strategic placement in high needs sites to launching a fullervice um you know resource fairs and building cross departmental partnerships not only internally in the district but externally. Um, and we've already
launched a a resource line dedicated for early childhood consultation, and that line is 213443165. Um, you know, we began at five centers, now we're up to 37 thanks to the strong partnerships that we've developed, not only with the county, but
also with research partners like UCLA. And our work, believe it or not, is guided through a community schools framework because the original funding that was awarded through DMH, the county department of mental health, required us to use a community school framework. So,
what we did is really kind of incorporated that framework to a deep understanding that school-based wellness is a key lever for equity and long-term success. So a little bit of the background of our
PSWs and the training. So every, like I already mentioned, every tree PSW is a licensed level clinician. U they have specialized trainings which include an evidence-based practices like seeds. You'll hear more of that in a moment and I think many of you have already
participated in this training as well to trauma-informed care and strategies for building safe and emotionally attuned classrooms. We've partnered with George Washington University, St. John's in Santa Monica, and just to name a few. Uh this team does more than provide
support. Uh they build capacity, helping our schools reduce risk factors and enhance resilience uh in children and families. Uh most import most most importantly, they are what I call our bridgeuilders between the homes, the school, and oftentimes the first entry
point into the mental health system. So here's some data that is guiding our work and informing our practice. Um as of you know this is through um March March 6. Okay. I was looking I thought it was April. So there's a kind
of a typo there but uh anyways that's the latest data that we have. It is uh what we see is we've we're at 37 early ed centers and what we see is that we have served over 3,300 students in this period of time across those centers. Um
we've worked you know with over 1500 parents uh across um working with 25 over 200 staff members in the various PDs and offerings that we provide. Um and this work is not siloed. it really, you know, we're working on building
early child mental health consultation models where this just really unique. Um, like I said, George Washington University has a whole curriculum that we adopted and and built off of uh with over 1,700 um consultations and um over
850 community kind of engagement opportunities where our staff are working along uh community partners offering various forms of presentations and fairs to to our community members. And with that, I'm going to pass it over
to my colleague, Katzia Miller, and she's going to walk us through pretty much every aspect of the program in much more detail. Um, and then we'll take questions after her portion of the presentation. Joel, good afternoon, board members and
committee members. It's a a pleasure for me to be here and to talk about a program that I feel so passionate about and so proud of and um staff members who I feel so proud of the work that they've been able to do in the past six years in this program. Um I want to as as Joel
mentioned this started as a prevention program and I think it's important to note that when we're talking about prevention programs with this age group we're often talking about supporting the adults in the child's life. Certainly it's important and and effective to
identify early issues and to identify um early uh interventions and that's super effective. However, if we can really support the adults in a child's life to help them build nurturing environments to help ch children um with healthy
social emotional development which is as we all know kind of the foundation of all learning. we can prevent some of those problems from happening in the first place. So, a lot of the work that TRE does is really working to support the adults in these children's lives.
That's parents, teachers, teachers assistants, building and grounds workers, office managers, cafeteria workers. We really believe in that sort of true traumainformed sense that it really is everybody should be included and everybody has an important
um impact on the child's life. Um I think and Joel sort of mentioned this, one of the things that is unique about this program is that we have psychiatric social workers, PSWs, who are specially trained and who are really
embedded into early education centers. So they become part of the fabric so to speak. Now, sometimes that can take some time as we know. Um, but that way they're able to really work with um staff members and that's staff members like I've said across the board and
family members as well. We certainly do SEAL trainings. WeCLA lessons in classrooms. We've actually postcoid increased that quite a lot. Always with the idea of trying to help build the capacity of the staff
members to be able to do it. Um but predominantly and I'd say one of our sort of foundational um interventions is early childhood mental health consultation. And as the slide says, this is really a problem-solving collaborative relationship between a
mental health professional with special training in early childhood mental health and caregivers. And those caregivers can be teaching staff or parents. And it's really working together collaboratively to begin to look at how we view children, how we view
problems, how we address issues in the classroom. Sometimes we're called in for early childhood consultation because of an issue. Little Johnny is really causing some wreaking some havoc in a classroom. And certainly that's fine. We
can talk about Johnny and we will and that can be very helpful. But I think where the magic is is when we have an ongoing relationship with the teacher and we can start looking at what early childhood mental health consultation aims for and that is what's happening in
that relationship between teacher and child and you have to have a trusting relationship with your consultant to be able to go there because it's really about building the reflective capacity of the adult. So we want to see what is it that's going on in that inner action
with Johnny that is the issue and that can take some time but it can be such a powerful thing for teachers in this case we'll use teachers as an example to say ah I realize that it's those rambunctious boys that make me feel a certain kind of way and I realize it's
because X now it's not therapy but you know it has that feeling where you're really looking at and checking it out or maybe it's that really passive little girl and I just it makes me feel like I don't know what I'm doing. What is that about? And when you feel trusting enough to be able to kind of look inside, you
might find a reason and then you can help realize what's happening with you and what's the child. So that's early childhood mental health consultation in a nutshell. I will say that research shows that it is um by engaging in early child and in the
research it's often called by the way infant in early childhood um consultation but we just um call it ECMHC for short. So ECMHC um has been shown to lead to fewer suspensions and expulsions in early childhood education centers. It has been
shown to reduce achievement gaps based on various um racial and other biases and um and to to change perceptions and attitudes. So I think it's can be a very powerful sometimes slow process but a
very powerful process. Um and we know just to sort of finish this piece up we know that early relationships matter so much. So, if there's anything we can do to shore up the teachers and the teaching staff and the parents so that they can then be engaged in a more um
positive and and powerful relationship. That's really important. And um I I'll just add that with parents often it is really about a problem, but we do engage in the same sort of consultation with parents as well. There's an issue, there's something they want to discuss and we can engage with them. It's it's
less likely we're going to have that ongoing relationship with them. that would be more if it was a in a therapeutic setting, but we certainly can engage multiple times about things that come up. [Music] Um, speaking of parents, additionally,
we um hold parent workshops and I think one of the beauties of the tree program is that we have been able to really tailor parent workshops based on the needs of the community. So for example, while we had a whole host of
presentations ready to go right when we started, grief and loss was not first among them. But you might imagine during co that became one of our most soughtafter areas where parents did not know how children express grief, how to
talk about grief and loss with children and so we were able to develop that. So we've been able to be very responsive to the community. Um and I think that that's been very powerful. I think we get each um workshop that we provide, we
do evaluations and we're very intentional in having a narrative portion because we really want to hear from parents. Is this meeting your needs? What would you like to see? In addition, um, in the past, uh, as Joel mentioned, when we were partnering with UCLA and they did some of our evaluations, we had exit interviews,
focus groups, and surveys to get a sense of what was working and what wasn't, so we could adapt and change our practice. um listed on the screen are just a few of the um presentations that we have and you can see it really sort of um spans
the gamut and we do those virtually and in person at sites and in later on in the presentation I'll talk about some centralized workshops that we have as well and I can talk about those in a in a minute but I would like to just highlight um you know that one parent said they gave examples and explained
situations that allowed me to realize I was doing simple things that could hinder my relationship with my child. And how powerful that, you know, in one presentation they were able to kind of see that, be reflective themselves and make some adjustments. And another parent just talking about how gathering
with community was such a powerful thing for that parent. We also offer a whole host of professional development and similarly we are able to tailor those based on the need of the sites. So our psychiatric social workers work very closely with
site administrators to sort of get a sense from the administrator what the needs are from and their staff but also through their early childhood mental health consultation with teachers. They sometimes get a sense from teachers that maybe the administrator didn't know or issues and so they can work
collaboratively to to create presentations wellness activities depending on the need. One example of that is I'd say it was one or two years after um uh the school closure and everybody who had returned to schools. Our PSWs were hearing from teachers uh
from principles that there was so much staff conflict at their sites and their normal ways of trying to help navigate that was not working. And when our PSWs came together in our reflective process because it is a a parallel process, we started realizing this is kind of a
trend. So, we put together presentations on conflict resolution, on um just basic communication skills, and for some that was plenty. There were a few sites that really felt they needed more and we did some structured dialogues where we went out to the sites, a whole bunch of us,
and really h created a format where we could talk about what are the issues and what are the staff's ideas about how to solve those issues. Now, none of this is a panacea, but we did get reports that all of those things were helpful in sort of bringing the tone down a little bit. And there are many others that we do,
and it doesn't have to be a trend. It can be done at an individual site basis. Um, again, I'll just read some of the quotes. PSW was very knowledgeable and helpful. She was respectful and respect other people's thoughts and opinions. The most helpful thing I found was to
take time to focus on myself and be well enough to support others. I think that is so powerful because as rewarding as working with young children can be, we also know how very taxing it can be, particularly young children who are
experiencing hardships and trauma. And if the adults aren't cared for and well, it's really hard for them to bring their best selves to help the children thrive. And then lastly, I really enjoyed the different perspective that was shown to me. Instead of asking what's wrong with
the child, we can ask what may have happened to the child to make them the way they are. And then one of our um another sort of hallmark of the work we do is the seeds PD. And seeds PD is an
18-hour six-part training. So it's three hours each. It's quite labor intensive certainly for the PSWs. Um it's a training that developed at UCLA and one of the UCLA um sort of philosophies for this training is that when somebody
walks in, you want them to think, "Huh, they've been waiting for me and I'm welcome here." So there's a big emphasis on setting it up and making it a welcome environment for teachers. But in addition to that, what's happening is that many times it's
honing skills that teachers already have in a play-based team activity so that it create it um encourages team building as well as honing skills that are really been shown through research to
um to be both assessing and and preparing children for school readiness. So um emotional regulation, behavioral control, and executive functioning are the three branches of self-regulation that seeds um highlights. And I'll say
that many SEAL programs kind of stop at emotional regulation, which is very important. But one of the things I think that's unique about seeds is that it really brings in the other two components as well. It's also a lot of fun. And so we get a lot of feedback
from staff saying, "Oh god, this was great. When's the last time that happened?" And our social workers work very hard to get community donations for food and snacks. And we all know that everybody feels really good when they are fed. And when we run out of places
to go and especially at post fires, donations are a little harder to come by. We find that staff then come together and they'll do, let's do a potluck. Hey, I'll bring this and I'll bring that. And then they bring food to share which is also beautiful. It's also a really time consuming and a burden on
principles. They have to figure out how do I get coverage for these for three hours a week. I mean that's huge and it's little guys. So you can't even if you could have a bunch of subs. You don't want all subs with all your little guys because they don't know them. So there's a lot of logistics that they
have have to work out. But principles some have gone through seats training. Some were trained by UCLA. Some have been trained by us. some sit in with their staff. They all really do see the benefit. And I'll just tell you a couple of little stories. One was we had one um
principal who divided her staff into half. So half had it first and the second half we're going to have it later. And one of the staff members was a little reluctant, grumbled a little bit and said, "What is this? Is this something? Is this a reflection on my performance? What's going on?" And the
principal said, "Everybody's doing it. You know, just go ahead and go." And after the first one, she went back to the principal in tears and thanked her for sending her and she said,"I get why you sent me like this was I felt very cared for." So I think that's an important piece because as I mentioned
before and I think I saw a lot of nods, our adults have to feel cared for and well in order to do their very best. So seeds is one of those things that can do that. And then the last story I'll tell about seeds, I don't get I've been trained in it, but I don't get to facilitate it, but I do get to go
observe my staff facilitating it. And just last week, I was in session six and that's the final session. And one of the activities is an art activity with a twig and you draw something or write something and then you go around the room saying what you either got from this or what you want to
learn more about or what how you're going to grow. I'm not kidding you, I was in tears hearing what the teachers were saying. One person had this elaborate with the sticks and a draw drew a very beautiful flower and she said, "But you'll notice that flower is
closed because you really helped us water our skills, but I I'm so excited for my blossom to open and I have more work to do." And it was just such a a a beautiful moment. I wished I could have recorded the whole thing to hear what they said.
Um, okay, that's seeds. We do also have um seeds training we do pre and post. So we are able to get data on not just how they liked it and what they thought about it but also knowledge checks where we can see um if
there was an increase in knowledge. Um and last but certainly not least is our community outreach. And um what we really do here is we try to bring as many resources as possible to
our early ed centers. So we have sometimes we call them tableabling events. That's when we have a few outside or internal um resources come to a center for parents to be able to participate in or our resource fairs which are larger where we have more
vendors coming. And what we've found is almost regardless of the size that they have become not just a resource event where there are these needed um services that parents can take advantage of and get information about, but they've become community engagement events too.
Partly I think because it's at early ed centers. So there's often there's food, there's entertainment. The ones that I've gone to that are small, you still get a real feeling of community. and some of the ones that have been quite big or on Saturdays. It truly is not
just the EEC community, but it is the entire community that comes to join. So, um in those we also of course are bringing um the community to the EEC, but also sometimes they're sort of
handpicked. If we know that there are particular needs in this community, we're going to work especially hard to get those resources in. And what I didn't mention is that through all of this, we also provide individual um linkage and referrals for needs. Doesn't
have to be uh mental health needs. It can be educational needs, daily living needs. Um that's some a service that we also provide um at the at the sites. Um, and then finally, I think that it is
really important that we want to make sure we get a lot of positive feedback from our sites. So, we know that we are liked and welcomed and that the services are helpful from those anecdotal um, information, but we want something a little more data driven as well. So,
when UCLA was doing our evaluations, as I mentioned, we had surveys and some exit interview focus groups. Um but additionally they looked at DRDP data and they did an analysis across years of the DRDP data and what they found and I'm going to just read this is that at
EEC's with tree in place children showed significantly greater gains across multiple developmental do domains compared to children at EEC's prior to tree being implemented. Based on the desired results developmental profile, children
at EEC's with tree showed significantly greater improvements in self-regulation and social and emotional development as well as and we were especially happy about this as well as in English language lit and literacy math and physical development compared to those
at EEC's without tree and we were especially happy about those things because so much is about social emotional for us but to hear to see that with that work we also saw an increase in those other domains was especially powerful. [Music]
Um so I think that to you know in conclusion but actually we're not concluding yet because this is also another piece I'm sorry I forgot is that this year new that we've had the early childhood mental health consultation line open since co as Joel mentioned new
this year however we have made um our staff development series and our professional our parent workshop series which is a virtual series once a month. We've made that available to all sites regardless of whether we are actually we
really wanted to make sure that every EEC had some access to some support, some social emotional support and some trauma-informed support. Additionally, with the early childhood mental health consultation line, we get calls from parents, from teachers, from aids, from
any so many people, community members just wanting to ask questions or to really hone in and dig in on certain um issues that they're having with a particular child. Um in the past, if somebody said, "Oh, could you come out and observe?" We weren't really able to do that. But this year we set it up so
that if there was a need, want to make sure that there is a need. But if there was a need, we could go out and do an observation and do a little bit deeper consultation with them than just over the phone. So that's something that um we were very excited to be able to offer again across all
sites. Um the virtual parent workshops we've been doing uh for a few years now and now that's open to everybody. And the staff professional development series is new this year. And again, we wanted to make sure that staff that weren't at a so-called tree site or a site that had a psychiatric social
worker could have access to that. So, in working with the ECED directors and figuring out good times, we um landed on a time when during nap time when the kids are sleeping and and teachers and aids can get on a a a Zoom in the classroom that they could join us. And
so, we have been offering those recently and that's very exciting for us. And then we have staff and family newsletters. The staff newsletters are in English and Spanish and the staff is in English. And again, this year newly we um that goes out to all principles so
they can distribute that to all of their sites. So we're excited about being able to have a little broader reach um to all of our EEC's. Um so now in conclusion I'll just say that I think that there has been a need and there continues to be a need for a
specialized kind of support at early education centers and this program has been able to do that in some kind of a unique way and and I think it you know is important to note that so much of what we do is rooted in research and that we have taken that research
Georgetown University St. John's UCLA and we have done what I would say we do best in LA USD and that is we've adapted it and made it our own. We've been able to do those adaptations so that we are better meeting the needs of our families and not you know some sort of textbook
case and that we are able to do that and I feel very proud of the work that we've done and um I think that it's exciting um that we have continued to you know increase and and reach more and more families. Thank you so much. Thank you both so much for highlighting
this amazing program. Uh we'll open it up to questions and comments from the committee members. Yes, Miss Corona. Thank you so much for the presentation. It's amazing to know because I was not aware about this program. It's amazing to know that now the families and
children have the opportunity to um have this support. And I have a couple of questions for you. How is the process um to get the services? Do you guys refer the families or the teachers suggest um
the families to um call you guys or you guys approach the family by uh the recommendation of the teachers or the principles? How how does that work? So I'll say yes, all of the above. So, at the sites where we are, so at our tree
sites, um, if there's a family that needs support, it might come from a referral from the principal, it might come from a referral from a teacher. Um, because like I was mentioning, it's so unique that that PSW is there on a regular basis. So, everybody knows, oh, Tuesday, you know, Ketszia is coming. We
can reach out to to them that day. So, it could come that way. Sometimes because our PSWs are just in the classrooms regularly, they sometimes say, "I've been noticing that Joel has been struggling a little bit more. Have you talked to the parents or sorry, my
boss um and and so it could come that way, but generally it's through either the teacher or the or the principal?" But because we do parent workshops, because we do in um welcoming events with parents, we try to go to coffee with the principles. Sometimes parents self-reer, hey, I could use a little
support. So, they could do that. If it's not, if it's a family that is not at a tree site, then if they call or if a staff member calls the early childhood mental health consultation line, we try to help them find services in their community um that might be helpful for
them. Another question, what are the ages or do you guys have a a limit for the ages of the children receiving these services? Is it is it 2 to five or 0 to five or Well, it's really zero to five. Um we are it it we're in early ed
centers only. So that kind of already is self-limiting, but in terms of our early ch early childhood consultation line, um we posted a zero to eight because we realize, you know, there's not a cut off at five or six. So really we're talking about early childhood. So, if somebody
has a question or some concerns with an 8-year-old, we'll certainly take that call. Thank you. Um, have you guys thought about the idea to include family chocolate providers into this program because, uh, we do spend sometimes we pick up children from
the early centers or we drop them off or we spend time over the weekend with them. Um, it will also be really good to include us. I know I've been taking I took the seed training. Oh yeah. And the TIC training as well, but I know that um
if you guys are also in touch with the family childare providers that care for some of the children um in this programs, it will be more um it will bring up more ideas because you know we can it's a different setting and
children they're in a home environment and they they react different. some to some activities. So, it will be also very very great to have the um input of the family childcare providers into this. Thank you. I think that's a really
good suggestion and such an important piece. Like we said, we have to include everybody that's in that child's life. Thank you so much. That would be Thank you. Right. Who's next? Yes. Go ahead. Thank you both for your uh your
passionate uh presentation. And I I felt the love there just hearing and just seeing that passion right there. Um I see that um there are five um early centers that you actually have service, correct? Is that correct? That's part of
the history. So we started at five. Um currently the tree program is at 37. We have a couple of different programs servicing early ed centers and tree is at 37. Okay. So at 37 um how can we incorporate more of the
centers to actually be serviced because we have so many more of our centers who are not being serviced and these students really need being serviced. The families is trauma childhood trauma as
we know is up on rise. is really uh moving really fast and we're not getting that support in the centers if we can't service all of our centers. So, how could we incorporate having all of our centers uh being serviced? Well, yes, I
agree with you 100% and I think that um couple of things. One, u we do have an a couple of programs that do service our centers with psychiatric social workers. tree is one of them and then one is our CEUS building bridges program and that's
not included in this data that we're talking about but so there are additional sites that are serviced um through that program but that still leaves some sites that don't have services at this point um we're looking at ways hence this year having more of
those centralized offerings we are looking at ways to try to be able to um provide supports to as many as we possibly can okay and uh what is like the process to get started um what is that process for
those of us who are not familiar with it? So we work very closely with the early um childhood education division directors who work with their principles to identify sites where they are saying there seems to be a need here's what's
going on here and they identified sites for us in that way. Our initial we initially when we got the grant there was this other sort of formula for um identifying those five sites but since then we've just worked very closely with the um Dr. Tagawa's uh department to
identify sites as we have the capacity to add more. And then we're working also to make sure that we're not just staying at ones, you know, for forever as much as sometimes I think my PSWs would love to because they do become such a part, but to say, okay, let's see now we could maybe leave here and provide some
support if as needed and be able to go um sort of more in depth in new sites. Okay. And how have you thought about how could we increase more PSWs that are licensed to work uh within um our early
ed centers or with the younger children? Well, you know, I think that's a good question. I think right now we have close to 800 psychiatric social workers in our entire department of school mental health. I think what we're constantly looking at is funding opportunities. If we have opportunities
to expand, we will. I think if there's also opportunities, like Katzia mentioned, what we do is also see if there's ways to just um spread out more of our social workers. So to provide coverage at some of those sites, recognizing that right now we don't, you
know, we're completely we don't have any vacancies. Every we have positions for everyone. And how do we do that? And then that's what we're doing programmatically. Okay. Thank you so much because you will need it. Thank you. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Um other
questions, comments from Yes. Okay. Go ahead. Looks like we're going in the same order as the first go around. Um I deeply appreciate all the work that you all do. I've participated personally in the hotline and the webinars and the inerson sessions. So I know the high quality and um it makes an
impact on my personal parenting. So you know attestation to how strong your work is. Um, I was just wondering if we could text families about the available workshops through the BBC. Um, because I find out through, you know, dojo posts from my school. Um, but families are
constantly getting voicemails and texts through BBC and um, it might even, you know, get a better turnout and I'm seeing head nods. Absolutely. Yeah. No, I think that's a great consideration. I know we try to leverage technology as much as possible and so that sounds pretty simple. Good. Yeah. Hopefully, I
think more people should be able to take advantage. And then, um, Jen asked earlier about classified staff being able to participate in PD and I wonder just particularly around seeds because it is such a intense program. Can the instructional aids or other classified staff members participate in in that
series? 100%. I mean, we we encourage it. Uh, ideally, we would have whole classroom teams trained together, but logistically that can be challenging because we need somebody to be in the classroom with the students. But 100% we want I mean we have office managers and
and the lunch sometimes they call them the lunch lady but you know the lunch person also participating. We encourage everybody to participate and in seeds for sure but in all of our PDs and that's one of the things during co that we really learned when there were some
limitations on the number of PDs for uh UTLA represented staff. We were able to tailor some specifically for classified staff and we got so much feedback about how important that was that we have very intentionally continued to uh to um
encourage that. You know there there needs that have to be weighed by from the administrator at any particular site but it's always geared for all the staff at the school. That's great. Yeah. And I would just encourage, you know, as we work with school leaders to figure out that scheduling challenge when some employees are three hours, four hours,
six hours, you know, when they get together, how they can, you know, talk about their own individual students. Um, I just am a big fan of the work you all do and want to be as supportive as possible. So, keep us posted if there's more we can do. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you, Principal Kazerian. Thank you so much. So my school is one
of the tree programs and I see it firsthand the impact it has on our students, the families, everything that they talked about about the resource fair, referring family, that all took place at my school. So I just want to say thank you Joel and thank you Miss Miller for the service that you guys
provide and thank you to the board for funding it this year because I know last there was a possibility of it being unfunded. So uh please continue funding it. we really uh um get the benefits of it. I want to ask u now that we're
getting more students, it's really hard to pull four or five individuals from the classroom during the uh during the day to go into the training. Have you guys thought about doing maybe Saturday PDs or even classroom embedded PDs while
the class is going on? So this way teachers can get hands-on learning in the classroom. Wow. We have not thought about the classroom embedded PDs. That's very interesting. I have to think about that one, but I think that's a great idea. We have thought about Saturdays and um you
know, as as you know, they're voluntary. So to it would be a six week in a row commitment for the for minimally two social workers, sometimes three. And and that has quite frankly been a little challenging. we have thought about doing it and then we
kind of go back to, huh, let's see if we can make it work. That said, I do have, you know, a handful of people who probably might be interested. It's something that this is the second year we've said, let's look into that and we we haven't been able to um operationalize it, but I think going
forward that is something that we would like to do. Um what we have done and I think as you know is we've sometimes combined schools now so it's not just an entire school which has lovely benefits because people are learning from each other not even at their same site but to your point as enrollment as is
increasing AC across the board it's it's hard to pull people away. So that's something that we certainly want to encourage our staff to do. Thank you. Uh yes Jen. Yeah, I just want to highlight um and plus one the
comments that uh board member Ortiz Franklin mentioned just around the inclusion of all support staff into these type of trainings. Um children don't differentiate between who their teachers are. They're everybody at the school site from every interaction they have. And so it's so important to just
um keep everyone informed uh because they can see something that perhaps those in the classroom do not. Um, and so it's just important that we figure that out of how we can support everyone at the school site in order to be um, trained to support our kids and the families that they serve. Um,
additionally, I I had some questions. Um, did you say that there are three PSWs for all 37 sites? No, there are there are we have a couple people on leave, but 13 PSWs for 37 sites. Yeah. Okay.
Um I do also echo um I'm sorry that we have we have leads too. So let me bet that there's 11 PSWs who are going out to the sites. Okay, great. Um so and how are the schools the the the tree sites? Is that it? How are they identified? Are
they in particular strategic locations um for where um we're focusing on for this program? How and how like where do you plan on identifying the next phase of schools to get these sorts of of the because there are a lot of um ECE centers that LUD has right that are not
currently served by this program and ideally they would all have it. Um so just wondering one how are these schools that have it chosen what strategies into that and was seni involved or any other data purposes there and then where are we going um just based off of what we
know currently. Yeah. So, Senny was involved in our initial choosing of of our first sites and then as we were adding sites, we did it in conjunction once again with um our early childhood uh education directors and looking at that time it was COVID and we looked at
SENI but also the um I forget what it was called now but the COVID vulnerability index where they listed certain zip codes where they had inordinate sort of negative outcomes of COVID and we used those to identify addition sites. So those were the the
two main ways we did initially. Since then, we've been adding sites in in collaboration with the early childhood education directors. Um they're more intimately involved with the sites and know where the needs are. Um and and so
we do based on that. And then of course we need to there needs to be buyin from the principal. So we haven't we've had principles calling and asking. I don't think we've had any principles who say no thank you. But that is something that's important. Do they have is this a good time for them? Would they rather wait? Because we don't want to bombard
anybody with services if they're not quite ready for them. But that's the way we've done it. And because at this point, you know, we aren't likely to have more social workers at the precise moment. Then we have to be sort of strategic in in the services that we
offer. and like I was mentioning, you know, maybe like start to sort of dwindle down with some when they've been getting sort of the full complement of our services so that we can be um more available to sites who haven't had us at all. One of the things about this program, however, is that it's not
really like, okay, go in, do it, and then come out. Even the DRDP data showed that it was over time that with each passing year then that those DRDP scores increased more. And I think that, and you know, I think you can speak to it. It really is about the relationships
that are built. So we see the the improvement and the progress I think over time. So we need to have a little bit of that time at a site before we think about pulling back. But there have been some sites who've kind of not just able at that moment for whatever reason and then we do pull back and then we're
able to go elsewhere. But currently we work most closely with the directors to identify sites that that have a need. Thank you. And something I appreciated you saying was this program isn't to like fix a child, but really supporting the adult um and how to be there um
through whatever is happening in that moment of time. And um I guess with that saying, I'm wondering, have you guys been able to look to see because we all come with our own biases um into every space that we occupy. Have you looked to pull any trends of who is being called
in for consultations? Are there any trends of the type of like with the child or the families or anything there to really kind of reflect on who we are coming in to to support um and maybe re-evaluating what that's looking like? So, we haven't done that in this program
and I'll tell you why. We actually are going into each classroom asking to consult on everybody because we see this as a capacity building experience. And like I was mentioning earlier, if we can form that kind of warm and meaningful relationship with the teacher, we think
that then as problems arise with sort of that more reflective capacity that they might have, they can deal with those in a different way. So it's really not so focused on the child for us. It's focused more on the on the staff. And so we don't want to keep it's not like, oh, you're being called in because there's
this problem child. What's the problem? We're kind of not doing it from the child's perspective in that way. We really want to make sure that it's more again adult focused. Okay. And then um last thing I swear um for the you mentioned the uh the
parent workshops, the community events. I wonder how you're incorporating community representatives at the school sites um who are often leading parent workshops and engaging the communities that they serve at the local school um into these events that you're doing into
the workshops that you're providing. also curious about the language accessibility um of these events and workshops that you have. Um, so the we do all of our workshops in English and in Spanish. Um, each one and we've tried different times at the same time,
different ones. We're trying to find our way um with that, but we do them and we do two separate ones. So, it's not translated. We have Spanish speakers and English speakers for the parent workshops. Um, for our community events, we absolutely our our PSWs pound the pavement, you know, in neighboring
community and certainly any that we hear about. So we bring try to bring them in and try to collaborate with them. We do sometimes help facilitate um presentations from outside community members, but we don't typically if we're doing an in-person um presentation, if
this was your question, I'm not sure if I understood it, but we don't typically invite outside partners because it is sort of more geared for that particular site. Did I misunderstand your question? Yes. So, LUSD has a hired position called community representative. Um, and
so they work at their local school site. Um, they they do provide parent trainings and workshop. So, I was just wondering how you incorporate this person. Got it. Sorry, I misunderstood. So, um, I'd say that it's a bit hit or miss. If it's very close to an elementary school, they try very hard to
have relationships, they being the PSWs, with everybody at that site. I think during um the COVID years especially, we were trying a little more actively to partner with the elementary schools. Um so I think that it varies sight by sight. Yeah, it makes sense for the for the
broader community events to integrate the elementary community just because we know our early ed centers don't don't have community reps. Um unfortunately we've got very limited staffing there. But um a good suggestion for the future. Um I know board member Melvinne um had a
question or comment. So call on you now. Thank you, Miss Gomez, and thanks to um the presenters. My question is just I I don't um how do families know if this program exists at their EEC? I don't see it on the school explorer website, and
um I know we're working to expand, which is great. Um but for now, how how are folks aware of whether this is available? Um so the principles introduce the program to families when they have the tree PSWs go
to back to school nights and open houses. Um everything's posted usually class dojo and various other um platforms that schools use. So the principal really takes the lead in in initially letting the school community know that tree is on the site and then
the PSWs are very active. they go to, you know, drop off in the morning and pick up in the afternoon to hand out flyers for our workshops and also just to um be a face with the name and to get to know folks. That's good feedback. Great. So, that's that's helpful for
those enrolled that just as we're thinking of expanding enrollment and promoting our programs. It might be something we consider adding to the explorer website um and and promoting because I think this could be a value. Well, we know it's a value ad and it could be helpful for parents to know that it exists before they en like as
part of their the hook. Yeah, thanks for that suggestion. Thank you, board member Melvinne. Um, any other questions or comments? Okay. Well, I will um I'll wrap us up here. Thank you. Thank you both so much. I I think that this is such an important
program um for our students, but also our staff and our families. And um I had the opportunity to sit in on the seeds training and I I mean I think we talk a lot about supporting our staff but the true level of support that I felt being
in that room. I feel like the PSWs who were facilitating made it such a safe and welcoming space where um truly as a staff member they're sitting with you and helping you work through whatever challenges you might be facing in your own in your own classroom in such a
caring and supportive way. I just I was really blown away and I thought that um I have my binder from the training and I think as a parent um I learned a lot and am trying to implement that in my own parenting. So I feel like it's really invaluable. I think the um what so many of our committee members brought up is
how do we how do we expand well part one how do we protect and how do we expand this program? So just um anything that you all want to share on how we can ensure um that the tree program continues in years to come and that we can get these needed supports um to our early ed school communities. Well well I
think having conversations like this one it's always really important being able to showcase the work and and hear from you all also like first you know kind of lived experience with the program how the benefits are in in your own professional and personal life. I think also over the last uh couple of years
we've been very intentional in partnering with uh with Dean Tagawa and his team and so as we've been working side by side to make sure that it's you know they're helping out with some of the the fiscal pieces they're helping with the promotion they're so it's just
now become really an integrated uh program as opposed to six years ago where it was just a pilot you know in the mental health department. So, so I think those are kind of a couple strategies that moving forward uh we will continue to implement and then with your support, you know, we'll continue
to advance. Thank you both so much. Let's give our presenters a round of applause. Thank you. Um well, now we'll turn to the final portion of our meeting, um public comment, and I'll ask that Mr. McClean um calls on the first speaker.
Okay, we have just two folks signed up for public comment. Is Mr. David Tokovski in the room. I don't see you from back here, but perhaps you are waiting in the wings. Mr. Tokovski. Uh, let's see. And I'm checking to see if he is online, which he is not. And then we
have Mr. Juan Mandi. Come on down. You'll have two minutes to speak once you begin. Mr. Mcandhi, I see you out there. Please come on up. Mr. Mcandi is going to speak in Spanish. So, if you'd like to hear what he's saying in English, my colleague Bert is handing out headsets, translation headsets.
The translation headsets uh turn on automatically once you put them ears and they should be set already channel. What torture hearing that you're giving mass to the
choir. What a beautiful environment that you believe in. And what planet are you talking about? Because what I see everything you're saying has nothing to do with reality that the students are living. Parents, the way in which you're
incorporating parents and getting them involved. This is the most terrible thing to do this whole hoopla. But we don't have responsibility. What are we doing to improve the educational
quality so that our kids can acquire certain intelligence qualities that don't have to do with bank data, right? So what is the responsibility that SEIU and
others when parents are mentioning the irresponsibility that's happening in the schools? You have everybody intimidated. What is UTLA doing when they have dirty campaigns with those parents that don't accept that there is
an irresponsibility on a social level? So the first they're doing is the the these unions that are the churches that you will that you abide by. So our kids
and the parents are are wrong. But you're all correct, right? That's beautiful talking about social justice and this open district because we're sanctuary places, but we have a pact in the schools that
are discrimin discriminatory against certain parents for certain services. So I ask myself, are you aware of what you're doing with the most in need community or are you here to do the same thing? just tell
yourself stories and pat yourselves on the back because nothing is working. Have a great day. Public comment. Thank you, Mr. McClean. That was our last speaker for public comment. I want to thank all of our committee members in the audience for joining us today. I look forward to our uh next meeting, which is also our final meeting for the
2425 school year. That's on May 29th at 10 a.m. right here in the boardroom or on Zoom. Thank you all so much and we'll see you then.