Good evening. I'd like to welcome everyone to the September. Mister Raikstra, can we call roll call to establish quorum, please? Yes, madam president. On the roll call to establish quorum, student director Simmons, Student director Smith? Here. Director Latta? Here. Director Williams? Director Hutchinson? Present. Director Barry? Director Thompson? Here. Vice president Bachelor? Here. And president Brohart? Here. If I could re present. Thank you. Sorry. If I could if the audience's attention, please.
We're about to start our meeting, and it makes it difficult if we can't hear. So if you could please curtail your conversations. And thank you to all the people who went I appreciate the help. Thank you. We have a lot to cover tonight. We wanna make sure we can hear everyone. Mister Hollis, can we do an interpretation check, please? Yes, madam president. For tonight's meeting, we have three languages available for live interpretation. They are Cantonese, Arabic, and Spanish. We also have a translation closed caption feature available on Zoom that you can use by clicking the closed caption icon on your Zoom taskbar. With that, we will move on to announcements for live interpretation.
I will start with Cantonese. I will lower all attendees' hands on Zoom. Please only raise your hand if you need the language being announced, which at this time is Cantonese. And if you are an attendant and need a translation laptop, you can see the gentleman to your left underneath the basketball court for a translation laptop. With that, I will ask miss Ho if she can come off the mute and do a an interpretation announcement for Cantonese. Mister Hollis, the Cantonese pronouncement is done. Thank you, miss Hope. Checking the attendees to see if there's any hands raised for Cantonese interpretation.
Seeing no hands on Zoom, no hands raised in the room. We will not start with Cantonese interpretation at this time. Moving forward to Arabic, I will lower all attendees hands on Zoom. Please only raise your hand if you need the language being announced at this time, which is Arabic. And if you are in attendance and need a translation laptop for Arabic interpretation, you can see the gentleman to your left underneath the basketball court with the laptop set up for a translation laptop. With that, I will ask miss Abdi if she can come off mute and do an interpretation
announcement for Arabic. Arabic announcement is done. Thank you, miss Abdi. Checking the attendees on Zoom to see if there's any hands raised for Arabic interpretation. Seeing no hands on Zoom, no hands in the room, I will move on to Spanish. Right. I will lower all attendees' hands on Zoom. Please only raise your hand if you need the language being announced, which at this time is Spanish. And if you are in attendance and need a translation laptop for Spanish interpretation, you can see the gentleman to your left underneath the basketball court with the laptop
set up for a translation laptop. With that, I will ask mister Copenhagen if he can come off mute and do the interpretation announcement for Spanish. Sure. Thank you, mister Hollis. Thank you, mister Copenhagen. Checking the attendees on Zoom to see if there's any hands raised for Spanish interpretation. Seeing if there's any hands raised in the room for Spanish interpretation. Seeing no hands, we will not start with any interpretation at this time. That concludes the interpretation announcement. At this point, we will make further announcements later on in this meeting,
and I pass it back to you, madam president. Thank you. At tonight's meeting, there will be ample opportunities for, public speaking, after each of the, different items, and I'll read those off in just a minute. We have four public hearings tonight. We have Education for Change Latitude 37.8 High School Petition and Charter, and this is a decision hearing. There will be ten minutes of public comment after the, presentation on this. And I'm going to stick to one minute per speaker so we can get as many of you in, as we can. After that, we will go into the Aspire, item c two twenty five dash two zero three seven,
Aspire Public Schools, Aspire College Academy petition and charter renewal, grades TK five. There will be after c three, we will have, Aspire Public Schools, Aspire College Academy, petition and request for charter material revision, grades t k five, enrollment increase effective 07/01/2026. And the final agenda item for the evening, c four twenty five dash two zero three nine, Aspire Public Schools, Aspire Golden State College Preparatory Academy Charter, petition and charter renewal. I'm sorry. There's one more.
C5 20Five-two92, Lighthouse Community Charter Public Schools, Lodestar, a Lighthouse Community Public School, petition and charter renewal, grades TK 12 yeah, TK through 12, July 20 07/01/2026 through 06/30/2031. Are there any modifications to the agenda? Okay. And with that, we will begin with item C1, Education for Change, Latitude 37.8, High School Petition and Charter Renewal, grades nine through 12. This is a decision public hearing.
The public hearing will be open. We have presentations by the Office of Charter Schools, OUSD. We will then have a petition a, excuse me, presentation by, Latitude followed by public comment and board comment. John? Okay. Great. Good evening. I'm Kelly Craig Arnold, director of the OUSD Office of Charter Schools. I'm here with Madison Thomas, our deputy director. As you know, this is a decision hearing for Latitude High School's renewal. We'll be providing a really brief summary of our staff report, which is included as an agenda item and was also published online fifteen days ago.
So first, we will be starting with some background on the legal framework of Charter Renewal. Then we'll give a overview of some of the highlights from our staff report, about Latitude itself. So just for a little bit of background, charter schools typically come up for renewal to their authorizer every five years. In the case of Latitude, it's been eight years because of a pandemic extension from the state legislature. And this whole, charter renewal process is governed by education code. There's a ninety day timeline, which is outlined here. And so we are now towards the end of that timeline.
Within ninety days, there must be a decision hearing. So there are specific statutory requirements, for charter renewal, which is how we organize the staff report, also how the slide and the rest of the presentation is organized. So the first criteria looks at the state school's educational program. This is a pretty data heavy piece, academic proficiency, NDFS, graduation rate, growth data, all of the, indicators on the dashboard, lots more. The second renewal criteria looks at the school's financial outlook, governance, teacher credentialing, etcetera.
And then the third and fourth criteria ask whether the legal petition requirements have been met and are included, and if there's any evidence that the school is not serving all students who wish to attend. So let's get into the specifics of Latitude's renewal. So you'll see a brief overview of the school here. A few things that I wanted to note. First, Latitude is actually currently authorized by the State Board of Education, but the State Board is phasing out of being an authorizer. And so Latitude is now required to come to us,
OUC, for their charter renewal. And then you'll also see here that the state has placed Latitude into the middle renewal tier based on their dashboard data from the last two years, which means that they are eligible for a five year renewal term. And then if you wanna see the full methodology for the charter renewal tiers, you could take a look at our staff report. And I believe I am now passing it to Madison. Good evening, everyone. So on this slide, you will see a summary of Latitude's California School Dashboard results for the,
two most recent years of available data. So I won't go into a lot of the specifics here because we are going to cover some of the indicators on the following slides. But just at a high level, as you can see, in 2324, Latitude did receive a green color on both the college and career indicator and the graduation rate indicator. And they also did receive a red color on the English language progress indicator for the past two years. So the following sets of slides, are going to cover renewal criterion one, which as miss Craig Arnold stated,
really focuses on the educational program of the school. So starting with English language arts, on the left hand side of this slide, you will see the average proficiency rate for Latitude students on the ELA state test. So as you can see represented by the orange line, Latitude has seen increases in their average proficiency rate over the past couple years. On the right side of the slide, you'll see the, ELA core growth results for Latitude. So if you look at the graph, the top shaded area that is green represents high growth. So you can see that Latitude students did have high growth compared to similar students
across the state in both '22, '23 and 2324. Sticking with ELA, on this slide, you will see ELA test results broken down specifically by subgroups. So as you can see, from '21, 22 to '23, 24, all student subgroups at Latitude did see a net increase, in their average DFS for ELA, with one exception. The English learner student subgroup did see decreases for the past two years. Switching to math. On the left side of the slide, again, you will see average proficiency rates for math.
Latitude's results are represented by the green line. So you can see that in 2223, Latitude did have an increase in their average proficiency rates, and a decrease in 2324. However, in the math core growth results, you will see again that in both 2223 and 2324, latitude students did have high growth compared to similar students across the state. Again, looking at student subgroups for math, you can see that it follows a similar trend to the average proficiency rate in which all student subgroups saw an increase in 2223,
and then a decrease in 2324. With one exception, the black or African American students at Latitude did see increases in both years. Switching to graduation metrics, on the left hand side of the slide, you can see the average four year graduation rate. So over the past three years, you can see that Latitude's graduation rate was high, at about ninety two percent in 2324. On the right hand side, you can see the a to g completion rate. And you can see that it was decreasing over the past two years, but does remain higher than the district average,
which is represented by the gray line. Finally, for renewal criterion one, we have the results from the English learner progress indicator. So on this slide, the dark green sections of the bars represents the percentage of students who saw an increase, towards English language proficiency. So as you can see, between, '21, '22 and 2223, there was a decrease in the percentage of students who were making progress. There was also a decrease between twenty eighteen-'nineteen and 'twenty one-'twenty two, but the sample size in twenty eighteen-'nineteen was very low,
which severely impacts those percentages. And with that, I will pass it back to Ms. Craig Arnold. Alright. And finally, for renewal criteria too, we're looking at both enrollment over the course of the charter term as well as projected enrollment in the next charter term if renewal is granted. So as you could see, they were phasing in the school for most of the current charter term, and their enrollment has now been stable for the last couple years. And they're predicting a or projecting a stable enrollment for the remainder of the charter term. So once again, there's a lot more detail in the staff report,
but this is a very brief overview of some of the school's fiscal data, over the course of the last charter term. So in conclusion, kind of, what this is showing is that they have had a strong ending fund balance. They've had good fiscal practices, no recent audit findings, and their budget has been based off of realistic enrollment projections. For criteria three and four, we found that they did include all of the legal requirements in the charter petition, and there is no evidence to show that they are not serving all students who wish to attend. And, again, our full analysis is in our staff report,
and there's a lot more information and data in there as well. But based on all that, we are recommending approval, for the school's charter for five years since we found that they did meet all of the criteria, for charter renewal. So that is all we have. Thank you, and we're happy to answer any questions. Are there any board questions? I believe, is there a representative from Latitude for their presentation? Good evening, members of the Board and OUSD staff. Thank you for this opportunity to share additional information and reflections related to the renewal of our charter. Next slide,
please. We'll start by addressing the questions that came up at the other hearing about our enrollment. Next slide, please. We pride ourselves on lowering barriers to enrollment through a high touch approach that supports many different kinds of students to enroll at Latitude. We intentionally use messaging that's welcoming and provide intensive training for a site based enrollment staff to meet the needs of special populations. Our enrollment stays open year round, so that we frequently see 16 and 17 year olds enroll midyear. The percentage of black students we serve did decline when we are no longer permitted
to present at OUSD middle school eighth graders, as this eliminated a key way to share information directly with students who are often the decision makers in terms of where they will enroll for high school. But we have since pivoted to doing greater outreach in neighborhoods that have a large black population. And this has helped to stabilize the percentage of black students we serve, but has not yet increased it to previously high levels. We are continuing to search for additional community partnerships that will allow us to directly interface with black eighth graders. Next slide, please. Our strategies focus not just on recruitment,
but also on cultivating a deep sense of belonging that leads students to stay at Latitude. Through our partnership with the Adel Center for Excellence, students receive comprehensive one on one and small group mentoring and have the opportunity to participate in a wide array of competitive sports teams. Partner programs such as divine radiance and girls leadership team up with us to foster racial and gender inclusiveness through affinity group work, while the Camino program empowers our migrant youth through specially designed mentorship, education, and support services. These are but a few of the partnerships that foster a sense of belonging and
community for our students and families and are instrumental to maintaining a diverse student body. Next slide please. Next we'd like to address the safety and culture related questions raised at the initial hearing. Next slide, please. You asked about our policies regarding undocumented students, and we are deeply committed to supporting our large immigrant population. Last year, our board reaffirmed EFC's existing sanctuary policy. We have clear org wide protocols in place and ensure that everyone is equipped to implement these protocols in the event of ICE presence in our neighborhoods. In the past nine months,
we provided multiple workshops to educate families about their rights and offered one on one support fam to families to develop plans in the event that ICE would tie target them. And finally, we partnered with organizations like Voses Maya to ensure that the support was accessible to our sizable Maya mom population, and this work is ongoing. And we appreciate director Bachelor's suggestion to ensure that our internship member mentors receive training in these protocols as well, and we will be incorporating that in this year's program. You also asked about oh, next slide, please.
You you also asked about a response to chronic absenteeism. The eleven percent decrease in chronic absenteeism in the past two years is the result of supportive multi tiered interventions. At tier one, we started using parent square reminders to keep strong attendant habits at the forefront of students and families. For tier two, student advisors leverage strong family relationships to engage in attendance focused meetings, partnering with students and their caregivers to address individual needs. And at tier three, SART and SARB meetings are utilized to provide additional supports and resources and to increase
accountability for all parties. This year, we're building on that process by supporting Latitude team to implement AFC's new attendance core practices, a data driven approach that was cobuilt with our site operations teams and enlist all school team members in owning attendance outcomes. In addition, Latitude is developing advisory attendance dashboards so that advisors and students can see real time attendance data that will support earlier intervention to address root causes. Next slide, please. Last month, you asked how we've managed to reduce suspensions. This progress reflects all staff leaning in to implement tier one supports in the classroom
and in common areas and our implementation of a classroom culture buddy system to support early career teachers. In terms of tiers two and three, we leverage the influence and support of our student advisors to partner with the student and their family to address the root causes of challenges. And our deans of culture consistently engage in proactive work to do restorative work when conflicts start to brew. By intervening early, we're able to prevent many issues from escalating to suspension level challenges. A key priority for this year is to continue refining school based PBIS systems to
proactively support student success. Next slide, please. Next, we're going to address some of the questions you raised at the initial public hearing about a few of our special populations. Next slide, please. One of the questions was about the breakdown of English learners by ELD level. We serve a diverse population of English learners as you can see from the graphic above. Next slide, please. Many of our students are in the earlier stages of English language development. Our English learners engage in explicit differentiated English language development that is targeted to their level of proficiency. The needs of our growing English learner population led us to make significant changes last
year. Next slide, please. Last year, we invested in all staff adoption of Zwyer's academic conversation strategies. Our Dean of ELD led professional development in such strategies as sentence unpacking, the five core collaborative conversation skills, and core target translation to all academic content lessons. Our staff engaged in collaborative cycles of inquiry throughout the year, supporting each other to hone their skills and making content accessible to multilingual learners and they participated in ELD coaching cycles to support consistent and effective instruction.
The impact of this investment was significant. Our ELPAC growth rose by 17% and English learners SBAC ELA distance from MET improved by 29 points. This year, we're working to further refine this approach determining how to differentiate the academic conversation strategies for specific subjects and further integrating these strategies into our existing lesson and unit planning process. Next slide, please. In addition to making academic content accessible, we also work hard to make internships universally accessible. Every internship journey starts with a collaboratively constructed plan for HSC student because we want
to ensure that all students thrive in these critical real world learning experiences. We connect the student, family, advisor and internship coordinator in a multi month process to find the best fit internship for each student. Students are empowered to connect with their passions, interests and life goals to choose the best internship for their personal and professional development. Next slide, please. For students with an IEP, this process receives even more individualized wrap around support as our special education team collaborates with the internship coordinator and classroom teachers to ensure that the learning needs of each
student can be accommodated in diverse work based scenarios. Many of our community partners actively seek out neurodiverse learners as interns to strengthen the reach of their own organizational mission. For English learners, we work with a team and the Dean of ELD to empower each student to connect to their passions, build the linguistic skills to network professionally, and navigate the job search process. For example, our dean supports students with applying the academic conversation skills they're learning in class to prepare for their interviews and internships. Next slide, please. We're excited about the progress we've made,
and we're continually working to sharpen our practices to achieve even stronger student engagement, agency, and life outcomes. Next slide, please. One big priority is to sustain and build on the positive growth we saw in our 2025 data. As a result of the investments we made in English learner support and math instruction, we engineered a significant turnaround from 2024. We need to build on that success and further accelerate growth. Next slide, please. The way we're doing that is to double down on our all minds on fire staff focus,
explicitly connecting every project and lesson to our core competencies and elevating the level of rigor while continuing to create consistent access for our multilingual learners. We're also refining the way data informs instruction, building our staff's muscle to effectively progress monitor and facilitate accelerated academic growth for our subgroups. And while it's not directly related to English learner and math growth, we're also excited about investing deeply this year in financial literacy for our students, not just as a standalone class, but connecting the subject to internships and career preparation.
For example, teaching students to do a financial analysis of different career options. When our graduates leave, they'll be empowered with a solid financial plan for the future. Next slide please. In closing, thank you for the opportunity to share additional information on our approach to prepare students for a meaningful and productive future beyond high school. Thank you to all of our amazing families, staff, and community partners who make this work possible and who are here tonight to support us. And finally, thank you to directors Bruhard, Williams, Lata, and Barry for visiting Latitude in the months leading up to our renewal hearing so
that our students and families could share firsthand what their experience has been. We extend an invitation to all Board members to come for your first or your follow-up visit. Thank you. Thank you. We now have ten minutes of public comment, and this will be at one minute each. How many speakers do we have, mister Secha? We have seven speakers. How many? Seven. Seven. K. If you could call those names if your name is called and just come up in the order that you hear your name. Yes. The speakers are Somali Diaz, Jasmine Siran, Mohandas Dewiwa,
Tomai Bea, John Overstreet, Jada Akins, and Deidre Akins. Those are the seven speakers. Thank you. Hi. My name is Amali. I'm cur currently in the living grade here in Latitude. I came to Latitude from Mexico with Lira to now English in 2024. And mainly after arriving on Latitude, I received tremendous support from many different adults in programs. Mister Torres and miss Kelly, supporting me so much with my language skills from morning pull out groups and ELD
classes in the afternoon. I feel supporting in every way. I really enjoyed that many of my teachers are able to communicate with me in Spanish when I need that support. It's make me feel calm and happy. It's it's mean a lot to me when they are able to explain information in Spanish and clearly. And I want to say thank you to Latitude for their support and opportunity. This community truly make me feel part of Latitude. Latitude deserves the chain the chance to stay open because it's provide provides so much
support whether you speak English or not. Please vote to keep this support going. Vote to keep Latitude open. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi. Oh, I'm sorry. Ugh. It didn't say you got hi. My name is Jasmine. I'm a junior at Latitude. I came to Oakland when there was a lot of uncertainty in education. Originally, my mom wanted me to go to Hayward High, but that school did not fit me and my personal growth. I am grateful my mom was referred to Latitude by another parent.
Entering Latitude, I was quiet and reserved. Not sure if I could trust the adults. From then to now, they have helped me gain confidence by allowing me to take risks like speaking up in class and becoming a project manager for our hands on projects. Latitude is not just a school. It's a community where I built friendships that came from different backgrounds. I have an IEP, and I have gained the support that I need in order to succeed. I've become confident enough to become a student ambassador. In that role, I can share my personal experiences
with students, parents, and board members like you all. That opportunity supported me in developing my leadership skills, and, ultimately, it has helped me secure an internship with the Oakland roots. So I say to you, vote yes to keep Latitude open to provide these opportunities for our future generations. Thank you for your listening. Good evening, board members and sick and community. My name is Taima Bea, and I come before you as a Latitude design team member, a parent, and a coach.
I urge you tonight to not let this decision be about politics. Let it be about truth. Latitude is serving its students and serving them well. In a system designed to produce workers, not thinkers, Latitude shows up every day to cultivate the next generation of the world's best thinkers and leaders. I've seen this impact personally. My daughter as a student with a four zero five zero four plan chose Latitude over Skyline because she dreamed of going to college. She knew that academic rigor and the deeper connection with teachers at Latitude would help
her get there. She was right. As a proud member of the class of 2025, she now in her first year is in her first year at the University of Puget Sound on a full tuition scholarship for academics and leadership. That is Latitude's promise fulfilled. So I ask you, follow the evidence, the recommendation of the charter office, and most importantly, follow the stories of our students who are thriving. Yield your power for good and approve Latitude's renewal, and stand on the side of the students who hold Oakland's future.
Good evening, board members and superintendent. My name is Jada Atkins. My husband Thank you. Keody Atkins and I are proud parents of a Latitude student, Cody Atkins. Our family made the intentional move from Georgia to Oakland during a very sensitive time, largely to support my father in law's health, but also still prioritizing our son's education and him having the best possible environment to grow. Latitude was not only recommended to us by my mother-in-law who is a long time OUSD educator, but became the answer to a prayer we didn't know how to articulate.
What we found at Latitude was far beyond a school. It was a launch pad. Cody immediately encountered educators who saw him, who spoke to his strengths, and who held him accountable with grace. The communication with the staff has been consistent, respectful, and responsive. The exposure to programs like Youth Beat and the Hidden Genius Project combined with the opportunity to complete his first college class at Berkeley City College has already shifted how Cody sees himself in his future. As a parent, there is no greater gift than watching your child begin to believe that they can
succeed and that they can lead. We have now we have not considered a plan b because latitude is our plan a and has not just met our expectations and prayers but exceeded them. That's why I want you to vote yes. Thank you. Greetings to the board. My name is Deitra Atkins, a proud product of Oakland Unified School District. After graduating from OUSD, I went on to serve the school district for fifty years. From classroom teacher to teacher on special assignment to principal at Glenview Elementary School and
now as a retired administrator who continues to support schools as a substitute principal and director of OFAS, Oakland Fine Arts Summer School. I have seen the full landscape of public education in this city, and I'm thankful for all that I have been blessed to experience during my tenure. Due to these invaluable times within the district, I confidently recommended Latitude to my grandson because I recognize something special here as well. Latitude reflects what progressive community rooted education should look like.
It meets students where they are, stretches them through relevant learning experiences, and creates pathways that connect them to their future. The leadership of principal Lillian is not only rare, but it is essential. Her vision is carried through the staff, through the families, and most importantly, through the students. What I have witnessed in my grandson's development is what we should hope for every student, the development of confidence, articulation, direction, and joy. Latitude deserves to not only have its charter renewed, but to be held up as an example of what's possible when innovation,
compassion, and purpose converge. That is why I ask you to vote yes for latitude. Thank you. Alright. My name is Mohandas Dweywa. I was in the second graduating class of Latitude, and what I want to present to you today is an issue I've always had with the traditional school experience, which is that I felt like a lot of schools didn't do a good job of preparing you for life after high school, preparing you for the job market. And this is where I feel like Latitude really shine. For example, in Latitude, we have two periods of extended internships during the high school experience,
and, you know, so you can get a good idea of what the day to day life looks like in different careers. And in my case, the internship I did in eleventh grade actually led to a job in personal training after high school. And as another example, a friend of mine actually got to fly a plane during his internship and is now in aviation school at Hampton. In addition to that, Latitude also did a lot of very practical projects. We did projects in debt management, basic coding, resume and cover letter practice, business finances, as well as interviews and,
a plethora of different site visits just to get a good idea of the scope of possible careers we could go into. And I think cases like mine or the friend I mentioned where experiences in high school directly led to opportunities after high school are we are why we should continue to invest and develop in Latitude. Thank you. Good afternoon, friends. Thank you for allowing me to speak here before you. My wife spoke last week not last week. The last time we were here, Christina. We have two sons who benefited from Latitude. One, Julian. He's a a sophomore excuse me.
A junior at Howard University. His brother, Cameron, is a junior here at Latitude. Let's talk about Latitude's sublime internship program. Julian chose to do business administration at Howard because of the internship program that he did at Latitude. And it's a wonderful program, and he's he's loving Howard. I wanna say that Latitude is the truth. It's a wonderful school. I've been a union man in the IOW for thirty years. Latitude has quality education. I back it all the way. Please vote yes for Latitude University College.
I mean, high school. Thank you very much. Thank you. And with that, are there any board comments? Yep. Okay. I appreciate everyone for coming out. I wanted to ask the presenters just two quick little questions. On the first slide, you mentioned that there was a specific amount of schools that said that you couldn't present Latitude High School to them, and I was wondering how that decision was made. And my second question is, how did you get an increase in SBAC scores as you're a high school? I know a lot of high schoolers do a lot of pushback on state tests,
so I was just wondering how you got that bump. So in terms of the first question, that was because of a a overall policy change, not any decision made by those specific schools, but it did result in the, you know, loss of the opportunity to, interface directly with those eighth graders. Yeah. Anything in terms of the question about SBAC growth, we're not a school that teaches to the test, but what we are is a school that really values making sure that the idea of like all minds on fire. And so what that looks like is teachers are not just lecturing at students, like students are always working together collaboratively, grappling with problems together.
Sometimes they're frustrated. I think they wish their teachers would just give them the answers, right? But I think we're really about like no, we want our students doing the heavy lifting in terms of grappling with their thinking so that they're really building that muscle themselves, and I think that translates into the growth in SBAC scores. Thank you for your question. Director Yana. I just wanna make a couple of comments. I just wanna appreciate, the team at Latitude for, answering my questions, sending me the specific data on attendance, and, you know, and making it very clear that no students were disenrolled based on your, truancy policy, which did concern me, so I wasn't very reassured with,
just the information that you gave. And then I just also want to, just appreciate the improvement in your, EL proficiency. Director Thompson. Thank you very much, President Brohard. First of all, I want to thank you for your presentation. Also the Office of Charter Schools, thank you very much, for your presentation. I noticed when the Office of Charter Schools talked about the graduation rate and the college career rate, there was an identification of green. So there was I'm assuming there was growth in that area. Also, as a practitioner, I understand the difficulty of
excuse me, I understand the difficulty of English learners actually being able to access, understanding that many times there's a silent period and then of course, you can get to the verbal period. And then, of course, the last thing is the writing. And that's what they're tested on. And so that's that makes it really difficult. But I really like the fact that when you look at the English learners and what's going on and then you look at the RFID, 20 something percent, it makes me feel again, as a practitioner,
it makes me feel really good that you don't allow the English learner acceleration rate pull down the RFEP rate. Therefore, you don't have as many LTELs who will actually suffer the consequence of going into further education behind the eight ball in terms of learning. So thank you very much for that. I do believe you were honored at the Raise the Bar event. Am I correct? So, we're talking, for me, it's a really good thing because we're talking about subgroups of students who are traditionally
marginalized, who are now, because of the educational growth that that they've attained, they speak for the school as moving forward and then giving them that opportunity to grow, academically, whether it be in reading, math or A to G requirements. And of course, all of us as college, you know, graduates, we know the importance of A to G requirements because when a student doesn't have those, what happens is you end up not having the opportunity to further your education unless
you decide to attend a school where you can get support classes and then enter a four year college or university. So, thank you very much for that. I do want to specifically talk about your alternative means of increasing your African American enrollment. I'm really proud that you didn't let something stop you, but you sought out other means of actually increasing the enrollment. And that's what we want to do for Oakland. We want to make sure that all students have an opportunity to learn.
That's really that's really great. And the other thing that that I really took notice too is the workshop for your teachers, in understanding ICE protocols. Thank you very much. That's very important, especially when we call ourselves a sanctuary city. So thank you very much. No further Board comments. Mr. Raikstra, can you do a roll call on the vote, please, to approve the charter for Latitude? No. It's interim. I would like to Yes. Should I Yes. Yes. Yes. I would like to motion the approval of Latitude
for a renewal. Second. I'm sorry. Can we have the roll call vote on that? Yes. Thanks. On the motion to approve the renewal of the Latitude High School Charter for the time period stated in the documents. On the roll call, student director Smith? Yes. Director Latta? Yes. Director Williams? Can you pass me? Director Hutchinson? Yes. Director Thompson? Yes. Director Williams? Yes. We still have two more votes. So, again, if we could hear our votes, please. Continuing with the roll call,
I'll note that, student director Simmons and director Berry are absent. Vice president, Bachelor? Yes. President Breaux Hart? Yes. The motion to approve the renewal of the Charter is approved. The decision hearing is now closed. We will now hear item c two. I appreciate all the cheering if you want to, we have a few more hearings to go. C225Dash2037. Again, we wanna give each of our hearings tonight ample time. Aspire Public Schools, Aspire College Academy.
Thank you to the audience who are quietly leaving. You got to close the presentation. I did. You did? Yeah. Yeah. Didn't hear me. Sorry. I actually do need it quiet because I actually have to open and close these and, hearings. Again, if you could leave quietly, celebrate outside. K. So this is the Aspire Public Schools, Aspire College Academy petition and charter renewal, grades t k five. And this is the initial hearing. The initial public hearing for Aspire Schools is now open. We'll have a presentation from Aspire Public
Schools. Again, Aspire needs it quiet so we can hear their presentation. Alright. Good evening, president Brohard, OUSC board of directors, student directors, OUSC staff. My name is Javier Cabral Walteros. I'm the executive director for Aspire Public Schools Bay Area. I have worked with Aspire Public Schools for nearly two decades. I'm in my seventeenth year with Aspire Public Schools. I've served the the Oakland and the Bay Area for for nearly two decades. Aspire Bay Area Public Schools in particular, we opened our first Oakland School in February. So we just finished our twenty fifth year of serving.
We've dedicated to Oakland in particular, and we opened our doors to Aspire College Academy in 02/2011. Our vision for Aspire and for Aspire College Academy is that scholars are prepared and empowered to build a fulfilling and liberated future for themselves and their communities. This is a little bit about our our student demographics in our school. So we're located in East Oakland right on Atherton Avenue. 93 Percent of our students are socioeconomically disadvantaged. 46% are English learners. 18% are students with IEPs, and you can see the the racial breakdown on the pie chart there.
Our largest two subgroups are our Latinx and our African American community. We have nearly 69 of our students are Latinx, identify as Latinx, and our second largest is 21%. And then we have also a multiracial, and native Hawaiian Pacific Islander group that's smaller, a little lower than 5%. I'm gonna turn it over to our wonderful ACA Aspire College Academy teammates. I'm gonna start with our our school leader, mister White. Thank you, executive director Cabra. Thank you,
OESD school board. I am Brian White. I am the campus director at Aspire College Academy and Aspire Triumph Technology Academy, here in Oakland. I have twenty two years of experience as an educator, seven years as a, in classroom special education teacher, fifth the last fifteen years, I've been an administrator. And the last in those, like, fifteen years, my best best best three years have been as the principal of Aspire College Academy. And one of the reasons why is because of what college Aspire stands for,
and that is inclusion, inclusion, inclusion. We have, we have a stance of all means all, which means we accept all, we educate all, we support all. And so I just really appreciate that approach as we build a relationship centered school in which we build a culture of confidence and success where our students expect to be successful each and every day in the class. This room. Thank you. Hi. My name is Ashley Robinson. I have been a special education teacher for eleven years as an education specialist, and now I'm an even prouder dean of special populations at Aspire College Academy,
where 18% of our students serve our students with special education needs. Even more so, one third of these students receive over four hundred and fifty minutes of support services each week. What I think makes us unique is our robust special education department where we have four dedicated education specialists. We have 11 instructional assistants. We have two occupational therapists, a speech and language pathologist, a speech and language pathologist assistant, and we have two mental health counselors, one who specializes in educationally related health mental health services.
I love ACA because we adapt to the needs of our students. We truly believe that behavior is a form of communication, and we have to adapt our teaching stance to how our students are learning. And you can see that when you walk through our hallways, through our SEL curriculum for our students who, at one point, felt othered. They are included. They feel included, and you can tell it for the data. And and based upon the data, our families are satisfied at ACA. They are getting the services they need, and they are very, very satisfied because of the services we we provide. We are truly a community school in which we make sure that we provide their
basics needs, their social, emotional needs, and their academic needs. And not only are our family satisfied, our teachers are satisfied. The data proves that. 90% of our teachers, our staff retained and came back this year, and that's on the heels of two consecutive years of a 100% retention. So that's three straight years of very, very high retention at our at our school site. And I truly believe that we have that high retention because we really focus on developing a joyous, environment in our school. We focus on making sure that we have targeted relevant professional development in our school,
and we make sure that, we have clearly aligned goals, a mission, and vision that align with our values. And because of this, we've had some of the best growth around. We've had double digit growth in both language arts and math three years in a row. And because of that, we are nearing our pre pandemic, numbers and measurements. And I wanna highlight our African American students who paced us in language arts last year with 33.5 growth in language arts.
And overall, we've had a lot of growth in language arts, and that's because we have focused on three things as making sure that we identify what good teaching is, and we identified that we were gonna focus on our graduate leads of educational responsibility model at our school site. We focused on our k two students, throwing a lot of resources at making sure they can, had phonology and phonemic awareness and make sure that they had decoding skills. And then we made sure that we had targeted small group reading instruction in ELA. And because of that,
we've grown tons and tons as we move on to our math. And in math, we had even more growth than in ELA. In math, we demonstrated, our Latin x population demonstrated 39.5 points in growth last year. We can clap it up for that. And we've demonstrated that growth because we've done a couple of things in our in our math instruction. First, we've implemented, culturally, relevant math tasks in our classrooms to make sure our students can speak, think critically and also speak to justifying their answers and also justify their answers in
writing. And then we also understood that our students had a lot of holes in their math background because of the pandemic, and so we partnered with outside agencies such as Zion Learning and Sylvan Learning to make sure we had after school interventions for basic numeracy. And we are very primed for a strong future ahead of us. We throw a lot of resources at our our t k two, students to make sure that we are getting all we can out of those grade levels, and it's paying dividends. 68% of our k through two students are performing at or above grade level on
m class. And furthermore, 90% of our kindergartners are performing at or above grade level on m class and I Ready. ACA is also an amazing place for English learners. Our English learners grew 29.5 points in ELA last year and 27.5 points in math. But above all, that makes it really, really special is that our English learners were number one in all of Oakland last year in LP growth. And a lot of that work has to do with the fact that we communicate
with our English language parents, it's make sure they understand what ELPAC's all about, and we provide ELPAC instruction after school for our students. And speaking of after school, we provide a lot of work in our after school to provide enrichment programs for our students, especially in science and science and the arts. In science, we want to uplift one program, and that is our partnership with UC Berkeley. We partner with the Beam program in UC Berkeley where their young engineers come and teach technology and engineering to our students.
And we also, in the arts, I wanna uplift our ukulele program. We have a third grade teacher who's an amazing, musician, and he teaches ukulele to our students. And he's also an amazing math teacher. He actually has the highest math scores for elementary school in our organization. But with all of our things that we do well, there are some things we really need to work on as an organization, and as a school, and attendance is one of those one of those items. And so we're really working hard to increase incentives for students and to for parents to bring their kids to school and make sure their kids kids are at school
on time. And then also, we make sure that we have provide them with supports, supports such as bus passes and clipper cards. And we also partner with a ride share organization that make sure students get to school. And so we're really focused on that. And and with that focus, we have decreased our chronic absenteeism by almost 30% since 2022. And so I'm very proud of that work, but we recognize that we have a lot more work to do. And with that, I'll pass it to our executive director,
Cabra. Alright. I just wanna say thank you for listening to us. We're open to any questions you have for us, but I just wanted to appreciate all of the people that have put so much work to improve and grow our school community and to ensure that our students' needs are being met. So much appreciation to you all. Also, we invite if you haven't visited ACA, we invite you to come and visit ACA. If you have visited, thank you for coming. Thank you very much. Okay. Again, I appreciate the energy, appreciate the enthusiasm. We have ten minutes for public comment. How many speakers do we have, mister Hollis? We have 13 speakers.
13. We will take the 13, but we will stick to a one minute. We speak who will have one minute to speak. For speakers, we have Maria Ramirez, Jimmy Choo, Devon Maynard, Jaleesa, Farell, Monica. Mr. Copenhagen, if you can come up and do a translation, please? When we need it. And my daughter saw a very high increase in her math mathematics results. The principal is excellent. He, always make sure to consult with the parents at the school before making any important decisions. Thank you, and good night.
Next speaker, please. Good afternoon, OUSD. My name is Allison, and I'm a student in ACA. And I am in fifth grade, and, ACA is the best because I've been here since kindergarten, and I never experienced anything but good. And every day I get here to school in the morning, the teachers always greet me with smiles. And every morning in a cafeteria, our principal always worries about us, always cares about us, always tells us that we're amazing, and I always feel like I'm family there. Thank you.
Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, OUSD board members. My name is. My son has Down syndrome and is verbally challenged, which makes having a safe and supportive school environment especially important for him. Before coming to Aspire, he attend four different OUSD schools. It was a stressful and painful experience both of him and me as a parent. He was scared to go to school. Since I transferred to Esparra College Academy, everything has changed. My son is happier, and he's making progress in trying to speak and express himself the same as other
kids. For the first time, he is in a regular classroom with all of his classmates. In in instead of being isolated, most importantly, he feels safe and looks forward in to going to school every day. As a parent, that is the greatest gift I could ask for. That is why I am here tonight to ask you to please support this charter renewal of Aspire College Academy. Every every child deserve a place where they feel safe, supported, and able to throw. And Aspire provide exactly that. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Thank you. Eight years ago, I started at Aspire College Academy as a substitute teacher. Since then, I taught countless scholars, brothers, sisters, and cousins. So now I feel a part of their family. My own two sons are here in kindergarten and second grade, and I trust their well-being and academics to my colleagues who are proven passionate and committed to excellence. I've been here through our lowest points, and I watched us climb year after year in our data, in our community, in our spirit. Aspire has been a lifeline. We poured our blood, sweat, and tears into these students, serving the whole child through extracurriculars like La Raza who needs us,
Black Student Union, EOP, ukulele, science, cooking, tutoring, SPED. That is who we are. That is why we're here. I don't return each year because because I could make a difference. I return because we are the difference. And as a leader reminds us, we will be the best school in Oakland. We just need you to keep the gate open so we can keep walking through. Thank you. Mister Copenhaican, if you can, come off mute to translate. Good evening, school. We're gonna have a translation of the previous one. Thank you. Bye. Bianca, I'm a mom of two, students,
one who's currently at Aspire. I'm here, on behalf of many parents, because we've seen the, impressive work that this school has accomplished, not only academically in my own personal case, but, even, socially. Our school is not just a school, it's also a community, where parents and staff work together. ACA is a home to us, and we hope that you can help keep it open. And we are accounting on your support. Thank you. Next speaker. Good evening, school board members. My name is Faticia Raza, and I'm a parent of six with many of my children attending Aspire Public Schools.
I currently have a granddaughter and third grader at Aspire College Academy and two children at other Aspire schools. ACA is a community school placed in East Oakland where many of our families reside. ACA is a small community where my children are able to build strong relationships with their teachers, staff, and other students. ACA is important to me because as a parent, I want all of my children to get the best education possible. ACA has been an extended family for me and my children, and they have worked to support my children and grandchildren so they are consistently making
progress. I'm hoping I can count on all board members to vote in favor of our school renewal. Thanks. Good evening, OUSD board members. My name is Miguel Segura. I am here today to help fight keep the Speyer College Academy open. My daughter started in an OUSD school, but she was not happy to go to school. Her teacher would say she had a tough day. Most of her day was then plain, and I felt the school wasn't teaching them much. I spoke with my wife. We decided to move her schools. We chose ACA because we already saw what the school can do because my goddaughter was a founding student at ACA. She is now a sophomore at Cal State East Bay University. My other goddaughter and nephew are both ACA graduates.
Now they are straight a students in high school. This school has been nothing but great to my family. I love this school so much. I even got a job here as a campus monitor and after school educator. Thank you so much for your time. I hope you vote yes so that Aspire College Academy can keep doing the great work for our community. Thank you. Good evening, board members. My name is Tamika Rogers. I am a parent of a first grader at Aspire College Academy and a grandparent of a eighth grader at Aspire College State I mean, Golden State Prep. My experience at ACA has been nothing but wonderful. My child has been attending there since February,
and it's been great. Principal White has been an outstanding leader. He is visible, approachable, and consistently engages with the students. Unlike many principals who remain in their offices, he is out on campus interacting with kids daily. He is always positive, supportive, and make himself available to address any concerns. At Golden State Prep, our experience has been positive also. Though my granddaughter faced some challenges with bullying at her previous school in Berkeley, GSP made her transfer and guidance real clear, and the transition was smooth.
My granddaughter has now is now thriving with straight a's, completing assignments, making up missed work, maintaining perfect attendance, and importantly, learning to advocate for herself. I'm asking you, can you please please keep the schools open? My name is Jimmy Chiu. I'm a first grade teacher at Aspire College Academy. I'm speaking to you today to affirm the board to say yes to our school. We are a community that is dedicated to its scholars and families. The work we're doing is impactful, and voting anything but yes is a disservice to our students and families who would
be the most harmed. The staff and teachers at work at ACA have committed themselves over the years. I started my journey as an educator with Aspire College Academy back in 2014. We do the work we do because we want to see our community thrive. Your yes for ACA is an affirmation for the community that we serve. That is to say, in order to arrive at a meaningful knowledge, in order to get beyond being stranded at the surface, you have to be compelled to go beyond what you already know just so towards something you have to respond to or try for yourself.
ACA deserves our community, and our community deserves ACA. Thank you for your attention and consideration. Good evening, board members. I have been proud to work at Aspire College Academy for the past seven years. And in that time, I've grown alongside with my students and my community. Aspire is more than just a school. It's a place where children are given the tools and and encouragement to believe in themselves and reach for opportunities they may not have thought possible. I've seen firsthand how the support and values we build here extend beyond the classroom, strengthening families and uplifting the neighborhood.
This work is deeply personal to me, and I want to continue being part of Aspire's mission because when our students succeed, our entire community grows stronger. Good evening. My name is Kristen Shilo, and I proudly served as Speyer Public Schools for almost fifteen years with over almost eight of those years here at ACA. I began as an educator in this very program. And for the past five years, I've had the privilege of serving as after school director. Our program has grown tremendously becoming a pillar of this community. We provide one on one tutoring and daily academic interventions in ELA,
math, science, and phonics. These efforts aren't separate from the school day. They strengthen it. Teachers consistently share the scholars who receive after school support, show improved confidence, higher performance, and stronger classroom participation. In other words, the learning we do after school lifts achievement during the regular day. We also enrich our scholars' lives with STEM projects led by UC Berkeley students, clubs and cooking, ROU, BSU, ELA intervention for our English learners, math club, ukulele, thriving sports teams that have won first place at the Aspire Jamboree two years running,
and unforgettable field trips to places like Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, Exploratorium, and Six Flags. Just as importantly, we celebrate and uplift our black families through events like Black Excellence Night and Black Family Nights, creating a space where every culture is honored and every child feels seen. This is why keeping ACA in the community is so vital. Without us, families lose a trusted partner, children lose a safe and enriching space, and enable that lose a foundation of unity, growth, and hope. Our school isn't just a place of learning. It's a home, a resource,
and a bridge to opportunity. That's why I stand here today to say ACA must remain open for our community, for our scholars, for our families, for our future. Thank you. Concludes our public speaking. Now take board questions, for the, ACA. Director Smith? No questions here. I just wanted to show my appreciation and gratitude to all of the community that showed out today. I really appreciate the mental health services that are provided at your school. I am a mental health advocate for all youth, so I truly appreciate that. And I love to hear that the president sorry.
That the principal is so active in your school, so I really, really appreciate that. So I really hope that whatever you're asking for gets renewed. Doctor Johnson. First of all, I want to thank you for a wonderful presentation. And secondly, I have to say, I'm so excited with the youth at your school because I was shown around, by several youth in the fourth and fifth grades, and they were outstanding. So I want to shout out those of you because they did a great job. Not only that, I saw how everything organically works at the school because as the student was walking
the students were walking by showing me the school, the different parts of the school, another student just just sort of joined the group and also started talking about what was happening at the school and expressing her real desire for other people to enjoy what she enjoys at, at Aspire College Academy. But I want to specifically address the fact that I I wanted to hear something about your SPED department, and I'm so excited to hear the things that you mentioned because it sounds like
there's a very robust SPED department. Also, Mr. White, you and I had a chance to talk and I discovered that you were a special education teacher. You have some experience there. So we were we were able to delve into that a bit. Of course, I am one that believes in academic growth because I realize that some people who have been traditionally marginalized are pushed out of the system. And so it makes me so happy to hear that there's double digit growth in many areas. I really, really appreciate that.
I I like also your discussion of actually working with the kids at the k two level because I think it's so important to establish vertical articulation. And if you can start with that with, I think, the younger kids, and you can actually move it up into the older kids. So so thank you very much for that. When I think about understanding phonics, understanding phonemic awareness, being aware of vocabulary, and then comprehension. I can understand why we see such tremendous growth in your K-two students.
So, that's that's really honorable. But I have one question. There was more growth in math than I mean, there was growth in both, but there was more growth in math than ELA. Can you explain that for me, please? So, yes, we we had more growth in math than ELA, but it was very, very close. In ELA and math, we're doing both things. So first, that whole, our tier one instruction, strengthen our tier one instruction, that goes both ways in terms of our graduate leads and educational responsibility, in terms of our, interventions that we are applying in math.
Again, we're focused on making sure our students are working on, culturally relevant math tasks in their classrooms, which directly correlates to the CAASPP assessment. And so that might be why there might be a little bit more of an uptick. We also put a lot of resources into our math instruction by, partnering with Zion Learning and Sylvan Learning, which they provided, during school and after school small intervention groups, to build up the kids' basic math skills. In ELA, we also showed a lot of growth, not quite as much as math, but, definitely a significant amount.
And that's because we really focused it we focused on making sure that we had gotten to our small groups. We use a program called SIPs, and we use the Orton Gilliam, program to provide small group instruction for those struggling students. We also make sure in language arts that we focus on our students who are performing at and above grade level. We wanna push our students who are already performing high. And so we have implemented last year literacy circles to where our students really truly took, ownership of the reading program in their classroom that had,
that academic discussion and discourse, amongst themselves within their literacy circles? Fifteen seconds more, president, if you'll allow me, please. Something that I know we are working on as OUSD, And it's something that you guys have actually addressed and that is chronic absenteeism. I'm excited that you looked at alternative ways of and additional ways to actually address that in order to create more attendance at school or higher level of attendance at school. I'm sure, those of us on the board,
we're going to look at that and then we're going to take into consideration how we can implement those processes also with OUSD. But again, thank you very kindly for all that you do. Yes, Liana. Yeah. I, I wanna thank you all, for welcoming me to your campus. I visited in the spring. I have, well, just one follow-up from director Thompson's question, which is that, I know that you have, you know, your, your chronic absenteeism rates are quite high. You know, there for disabled and black students, it was over fifty percent in 2024,
based on the dashboard. And so I just would be curious if you would, maybe as a follow-up, you could share, you could send it to our board staff and the charter committee. What specific because I know that you sought in your petition, you mentioned seeking, school site council input and have used some of those strategies to address that and that you did see some improvement. So I would just be curious if you could share those with us, to director Thompson's point. My question is actually for the board. Do you have, any board members here for the, Aspire organization? Yeah. I have a question about your last audit. If you could come up, please. Hi. And you're on the did you wanna introduce yourself?
Or My name is Beth Hunkepiller. I am chair of Aspire's board. I am also, in my history, an elected school board member twenty years in in San Carlos. Well, thank you for your service. So I just wanted to ask, your last audit had two, material weaknesses for financial controls. Can you just explain what steps your board has taken to address that, please? Our board, met with the auditors in closed session without staff and planned that it would apply a set of extra controls going forward. I personally talked to the CEO about additional staff.
And we added a board member who was on the finance committee, a former controller at Aspire to the audit committee. So that ongoing, we present to the board and react to these items. You know, in our past, we've hired outside firms to do risk management. And, in this case, we didn't do that, but it is always a possibility for our audit committee. Thank you. Thank you, President, Breaux Hart. Thank you for your presentation. Appreciate it. In your in your in your budget,
you show 24 teachers budgeted, but your teacher ethnicity chart submitted to OUSD shows that you have 20. Are you four teachers short at this point? And if so, what is your plan to address that, with fully qualified educators? We are fully staffed at our school. In looking at this, where would you find it? Give me a second. Yep. We are fully staffed, and all of our stew all of our teachers are, either have the credentialing or the permits to hold their positions. So there's no concern about staffing right now. Thank you. My research says that,
you have 51% teachers that have credentials. I'm just trying to make sure how many of them are fully credentialed and appropriately assigned. We'll find that information momentarily. I can answer the first the the set the latter of your questions so that they're all appropriately assigned, and then we're getting the data about the fully credential. So so we have three three positions out of all of our teaching staff are not fully credentialed, but they have the proper permits to hold their positions. That's two education specialists who are new to the profession,
and they are working on a, a GLAC, GLAP. And we have one dance teacher, who is working on a GLAP as well. Is this out of 24 or 20? How many teachers do you have? 20. Out of 20. Last question. You claim to prioritize hiring and developing educators who reflect community, cultural, and linguistic diversity, ensuring cultural culturally relevant instruction, and fostering a sense of belonging. Yet, 75% of your educators are white. If you prioritize hiring diversity staff,
why are you not finding success? My documentation says that only 12 of our, teachers are white. I don't think that those numbers are accurate. Yeah. Thank you. Yes. Thank you for the presentation and the public comments. I really appreciate it. I just want to give you one quick shout out for your EL student growth. That is really an amazing feat, and I really appreciate the intense support for the EL community. Along those lines, can you talk a little bit about what protections, you are putting into place to support Latino students and immigrant students in general in
your school community as well as LGBTQ students in this political environment? So I can speak to a number of things that we're doing at Aspire Public Schools, not only at Aspire College Academy, but Aspire across the board. So there essentially, there's two areas that we're focused on. One area is on school preparation and response efforts, and the other is direct supports to families. So under the category of school preparation response efforts, we develop, guiding toolkits for school leaders that cover topics like response to ICE activity if it's
in the neighborhood, near campuses. We have we offer teammate talking points to our teachers, our our administrators, and our support staff, and we also give updates regularly on state legislation. We've trained our principals, our business managers, our front office staff, our after school directors, our mental health clinicians, and our secondary teachers on crisis response, on on legal rights, and resource connections for families. We share tools and and timely updates to help leaders address urgent family questions. So, like, families come to us sometimes and they ask us about,
like, what are we doing if ICE is nearby? We draft we've drafted solidarity letters, statements, and created videos for schools to share with parents and students so they know that and they recognize that as an organization, we are in solidarity. We've conducted immigration climate surveys with school leaders to gather feedback and deepen, engagement efforts with teammates and families. We've secured pro bono immigration attorney to provide ongoing consultation on both org wide work and school specific immigration cases. We've partnered with Path to Path to Papers to help sponsor DACA teammates towards a
more permanent pathway, to status. And then when we think about actual direct support for families, we've launched a community based ambassador program to expand awareness of know your rights. We've coordinated family facing workshops on know your rights, preparedness plans, and available resources across the the state. We've we've sponsored with community based organizations to connect families to legal aid, mental health support, and food resources. We've launched an immigration relief fundraiser, raising $10,000 to support families directly impacted by ICE activity.
We've abdicated for and supported statewide immigration related legislation, including s b 98, a b 49, and recently signed into law by the government, which was recently signed by, by the governor. And then in about five days, we're offering a webinar to anyone in the public to continue to support our families to know their their rights. And so I can also share that with you. I'm I'm presenting three times tonight, so I'm more than happy to share that in the next one so that not only you all know, but the public knows that they should go on to that webinar to receive additional
information on how they can support our our immigrant community. Thank you so much. Please share that webinar with all of us. I'll name I'll name one more thing. Appreciate all the additional support. I I wanna name one more thing. So because people are really passionate as you can see. And we, unfortunately, have had situations where ICE has been close to our school communities, especially last year. We are we we try to organize as much as possible. We had, we have a a team of people on the regional team that actually has gone out into the community when there has been ICE activity and given people red cards
so that they know their rights as well. This is for strangers, like, people that we don't know, so that we can support the larger Oakland community. Thank you so much for that work. Everybody needs to be doing your fair share in that. My last two questions, and one is just in data and, data that's maybe missing, is can you provide your, pupil mobility data for the term of your charter that just happens to be missing from many of our charter school renewals this year? And then you also mentioned a partnership with a rideshare organization. Can you talk a little bit more about what that partnership looks like and, how its,
potential impact on your budget? Yes. We, partner with EverDriven, which is a rideshare organization with that specializes in giving, rides to students to and from school. And, those rides are, fluctuate from $35 to $45 per, to and from school, on a daily basis. And has that had an impact on your budget? Yes. It does impact our budget, but we, were proactive and made the space for it. Alright. Thank you for your presentation. Thank you to your enthusiastic supporters here.
I have a couple of questions, and then I do want to actually set up a time to come visit your school. You mentioned your that you partner with Sylvan for math. Do you partner with anybody else for your literacy? And I guess my question to both with Sylvan is how does that integrate with your math program, which I think you guys use Eureka? Are you Yes. Yeah. Yes. We use Eureka. So our Sylvan math partnership is to is specifically to build up the foundational skills for our students. Our actual teachers actually, we have a large number of teachers who actually stay after and and lead,
teacher led, intervention. And that's more on the on the grade level, on the actual, on the actual Eureka level where they're making sure homework's getting completed and then going back in maybe, like, a week or so and teaching some of the background stuff to catch kids up who may have been absent or may not have gotten it the first time, those type of things. We also partner with Sylvan. I only said that during the slide to talk about math, but we also partner with Sylvan for reading as well. So they do the reading and the math as well. So just to be clear, so they they do the teachers also do an after school intervention? Yes. We have several teachers that do after school intervention.
Yes, ma'am. Alright. Thank you. The other question I had I have a couple of you mentioned, clipper cards. Are those also available for families as well as students? Yes. Yes. We we provide the clipper card because mom or dad has to bring the child to school as well. And so we make sure that, they have the they have a clip card as well so they can bring the child to school safely. Okay. Thank you. Then again, I think on your your chronic absenteeism, and this was already, I think, answered a little bit, but you also, I think, if I read it correctly, I read a lot of those things today, talked about your student council. Mhmm. So can you explain a little bit how students were involved in,
comp I said they had some ideas for how to combat, chronic absenteeism. Yeah. So one of the things about our chronic absenteeism was there was a lot of absences on Fridays. And a lot of those absences had to do with the fact that Fridays were our shortened days or our professional development days, and so schools only, four hours, four hours and fifteen minutes. And so, there was a possibility that parents weren't feeling like bringing the child because it was such a short time and such a short turnaround. And so we met with student council to find out what can we do and what can we offer students to where they get so excited about coming to school
that they force their parents to bring them to school. And so our student council, said we should come up with a lot of rallies. They said, hey. Other schools do fun Fridays. These type of things for fun Fridays. They do class competitions. And so our student council, began to come up with and began to plan a lot of the activities we did on Fridays that excited kids about coming to school on Fridays, and it did increase our attendance on Fridays. K. I have a couple of questions on special education. One here, you have a large number of your disabled students are also chronically absent. Can you talk about what you think some of the issues are for your disabled
students in getting to, to school, including, do you offer transportation? I know you have the Ever what is it? EverDriven? Is that available also, through the IUP? So if a student needs the transportation, we are willing to figure that out with EverDriven and other organizations. I think, though, looking at our special education population, our students getting to school wasn't the issue. A lot of them had transportation, but due to the nature of their ability, parents had a hard time getting them to the school. And so we had to work with parents to figure out better ways to encourage
students to come, whether, reward based situations where you come to school three, four times. At this time, you're getting your LEGO bill choice, and it's not a big thing. It's a small thing. But for some of our other students where rewards didn't work, we also work with parents to partner up with things that their students might have really enjoyed at home or maybe fixated. For example, I have a student who really, really loves his iPad, and we would say, if we're not coming to school every day by this time, we're gonna have to tell mom you get thirty minutes less of the iPad today.
And that had an amazing effect on that student in which they were coming all the time. And so we really try to partner with our parents to see what things are happening within their environment, within the school, if there are any concerns with bullying or things like that so that we can have whole class communications and discussions about how we can better get there, and then our students and families work together so that we can get them there. Thank you. I appreciate that answer. My last question really has to do with, I know you mentioned in your introduction that I guess maybe this is more for
Javier. You mentioned that you're now looking at an Aspire Bay Area. Is that correct? Would I read that? I I I just say Aspire Bay Area because we're regional we have different regions, but we are looking to regionalize more formally over the next few years. We did have our Aspire board of directors approved a resolution to actively engage towards having separate five zero one c threes for each region so that we have, stronger local governance, and we we run independently. There still will be, like, an Aspire fourth entity,
which would provide shared services to each one of the regions. And so that's the intention over the next couple years. Yeah. I was just wondering what that meant for the support, since the schools are now supported by a larger organ organization. What does that mean, in terms of I mean, you kind of just answered it in terms of financial support or support for instruction, whatever ways that that the Aspire, organization supports in general, does that change, with this regionalization? So for for the vast majority of the work streams, it's just moving from the central model into the region. And and many of the work streams already are regionalized.
So for instance, special education, there that is all regional. Like, our entire special education programming is supported through our regional team. But there are some things that are are central that, we're going to be actively collaborating on over the next few years to determine what is going to be a shared service from the central team. Thank you. You're welcome. Are there any other questions? Okay. With that, the public hearing is closed. Thank you. Thank you very much. And with that, we'll move on to item c three twenty five dash two three two zero three eight, Aspire Public Schools, Aspire College Academy petition and request for charter material revision grades t k through five,
enrollment increase effective July 2026, and the public hearing is now open. Great. Thank you. I don't think I need to introduce myself again, but I am here now to discuss, our hopes for an approval of a formal merger between Aspire College Academy and Aspire Triumph Technology Academy. This would be part of a a two phased approach to in to ensure that we have a strong merger between the two school communities. We started this last spring when we came to the board and presented our case
for colocation. So Aspire Triumph Academy already moved to the Aspire College Academy campus. We do have a colocation operation at the moment, and, we ask for a formal merger for for next year. Now both programs, Aspire College Academy and Aspire Triumph Technology Academy are t k to five programs. So they mirror one another already. With this move to merger, we think this will support teachers, especially around co planning, observation, and feedback. It will help with our fiscal sustainability, and it allows for more more robust opportunities for our students because we have a
larger school. Here are student demographics for the shared campus at the moment. So what you'll see here is that, you see the pie graph on the right side is for OUSD. The pie graph on the left side is the shared campus. You'll see that my my eyes are failing me at the moment, but about 60 of our students are Latinx and about 31% are black African American. And then we have a smaller subset of of students that are multiracial or two or more races, and and then we have some students that have not reported their identities. When we look at other factors or other demographics,
when you see us as a shared campus, you'll see how it looks in comparison to OUSD, so it's very comparable. Our social our socioeconomically disadvantaged population is at 93%. Our multi language learners combined between the two schools is thirty four percent. Our foster and homeless youth is at four percent. And our students with disability is about is about eighteen percent across the two campuses. And you'll also see on the pie pie graphs to the right, you'll see a little bit more around, when it comes to special education, the types of disabilities that we have services for,
and then you'll also see the breakdown for English language acquisition. Now some of the benefits of having this merger, obviously, there's the long term fiscal sustainability for for the school, but there's also stability for our staff and students to be able to project out that we have a sustainable plan to ensure that we can continue to operate and support East Oakland. We also we think that one of the major benefits is both schools are already within Aspire Public Schools. So as a region, we can provide very targeted supports based on what we know about all of our
charter schools at Aspire Public Schools. And we wanna build on the strengths of each school site. So ACA, Aspire College Academy, has really strong strengths around some of the the data that you already saw. And then when we look at Aspire Triumph Academy, for an example, they they were recognized last year for their their work that they've done in bringing down the suspension rates for African American youth, and their chronic absenteeism rate has dropped the most out of all of our our schools across the Speyer Public Schools. Now when it comes to fiscal sustainability,
like I said, we could we with the phase two approach, if approved, this will allow us to streamline some of our operations. It would also allow us to have long term sustainability. We will have we we find ourselves we see ourselves as responsible partners to OUSD and the city of Oakland. We know we look at the two graphs that are on this slide that the the downward trend for enrollment in Oakland is very similar between the two schools and Oakland Unified. And so we are actively trying to both model, but also just be active participants in in trying to address this issue within the
Aspire network. For in terms of facilities plan, we have done some minor outdoor improvements. We just secured a funder to help build a second playground at at on campus. And if approved, then we will begin to discuss with the diocese, which we've started those conversations, but we'll continue those conversations around, adding a portable or two so that we have even more space for special education, for intervention, and for enrichment. Some of the academic benefits. So I think one of the biggest one benefits that we have is that, our teachers will have a partner teacher,
and so they can co plan together. They can observe one another. They can give each other feedback, and they can analyze data together. We also see that there's opportunity for cross collaboration for intervention. And with professional development in particular, there's some strengths from both school sites, so we wanna uplift to ensure that all of our educators across the campus will have strong professional development. Now we've learned a lot. So this is my third merger in my professional career. I oversaw a merger as a principal. I oversaw a merger when I was a part of a different organization,
where we merged two schools that were not part of the same charter management organization. So we saw that, and then this would be the third one. In my experience, I think it's always helpful to talk about what we've learned. And so these are the lessons that we've learned that I think are really important for the public to know. So the first one is that, when we announced that we were gonna formally go into colocation, we ensured that we had opportunities for our Aspire Triumph Technology Academy families to go and visit the school. They had tours. There were opportunities to go meet with the administration from the school site and with
teachers. That felt like a critical process to ensure that our families felt welcomed before they decided to enroll at on the shared campus. We also had individualized phone calls for each of our Aspire triumph, families. And that wasn't just with school leadership. It was also with our regional team. So we all made phone calls to ensure that if they didn't come to a town hall or if they had follow-up questions from the town hall, that they would have someone that would reach out and answer any question that they had about a colocation.
That was a really powerful experience to ensure that our families had enough information. We also had opportunities where we we brought together the two the two teams to have informal and formal, get togethers to start to begin to build relationships before they had the formal colocation. That was very helpful. And then we were really strategic around, the administration. So we wanted to bring administration from both school sites to lead the school, and we felt like that was critical to ensure that we had collaboration and we could honor the communities because they had someone or they had people that they were
familiar with. Additionally, we felt like and this is more symbolic than anything, but, I do think it's critical to really establish a shared name. So I've seen situations where that is not the case, where a school comes into a colocation or to a merger, and their their school name gets erased, their mascot gets erased, all of that. And so we wanted to be really intentional about having a shared campus name. So we've named it the Aspire College Triumph Academy. There's been it's like great symbols, there's t shirts,
all of that to ensure that everyone knows This is a joint collaborative effort where everyone has ownership. We also use the circle structure to ensure that our educators were building community with one another. We know that this is not easy work. This is incredibly difficult to bring people from different histories, from different cultures, different school cultures to come together and have shared responsibility and ownership for everyone on campus. And so we wanted to be intentional about circle structures to ensure that educators were
building relationships. And if there was conflict, they could always fall back on those structures to support them through that conflict. And the last thing, we were we were also strategic around not going to full enrollment. So we did make some conscientious decisions on the short term that meant under enrolling, especially at the lower grades, so that we could prioritize the Aspire Triumph students in acclimating into the campus. So for instance, we could have brought in a second TK into the onto the campus, but we decided not to, because we wanted to make sure that we were prioritizing the students at Aspire Triumph
Academy. And so those are some of the lessons learned. I'm more than happy to answer any of the questions that you have, but thank you for listening. Thank you. Are there any board questions? Director Lana? Yes. Thank you. And thank you for the presentation. And, you know, I reviewed the material revision and also your community impact questionnaire, which I found very helpful. I, my question, and maybe this gets at your underenrolling comment that you made, is that when I looked at the projected enrollment Yep. For the current year and kind of it looks like a ramp up process.
I was you know, I can you explain to me? Because the numbers don't seem to add up to the two schools last year enrollment. To so is there's still students enrolled in triumph only and or, you know, and also in ACA? Currently? Mhmm. Yes. Yeah. So we we have approximately a 130 to 40 students at in the triumph Mhmm. School, and then we have about two hundred two hundred and five students in the ACA community. And and maybe, you know, I just wanted to clarify. So are but you're essentially treating all students as part of a essentially,
you've already kind of merged in culture even though their enrollment is separate? Correct. Okay. Because I just when I read it, I it was not clear to me. I was like, how are we deciding, you know, which students go where? But that's helpful. Thank you. I just will, and and maybe this is a question again for your board member. I I just have a question again about when I looked at the enrollment projections, they're quite optimistic, post post merge, you know, over 400 students, pretty quickly. So can you explain to me, again, given the material weakness on financial controls in your audit,
how you're going to manage staffing for that? Are you anticipating deficit spending if you under, if you don't hit those enrollment projections? Yeah. So I don't I don't fully see the connection between an audit finding and and what you're naming. So can you maybe share a little bit more about what you're you're thinking? Yeah. So I think the you know, when with your audit finding around your financial controls, I you know, we haven't been presented with a a specific corrective action plan. And if you are basing your future budget on an enrollment that is overly optimistic,
I'm curious how your board will manage the finances of this, new co located campus. Okay. And if you're right, if you're because currently, if your enrollment is around three thirty five, let's say, but you're projecting, you know, 400 and I have to look, but it's, you know, over 400. That's a big difference. And, and not to say that you won't be able to do it, but if you don't, what is your how is your budget going to be adjusted? Yeah. So the so, ultimately, what we're looking for is to to to enroll, especially at the TK and kindergarten, at full capacity starting next year.
We didn't do that this year on purpose, but we do expect to see I mean, we could have had two cohorts at kindergarten and t k this year. We chose not to, but we we anticipate that we will as we continue to grow and and show our strength as a as an instructional program. Typically, when it comes to budgeting, we make decisions in the spring around projections for the following year. And then there's a usually a cutoff date in the fall where we would we need to relook at the the enrollment and our budget to ensure that we can
we can, have a balanced budget. Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, I, I will leave it at that, but I think whenever we, schedule the decision hearing, I think I would just be curious about how your budget kind of pencils out for a couple of years with post merger. Okay. Thank you very much. Director Beck? I have kind of a follow-up question to that. So if you add your TK and kinder next year, I assume what you're doing adding one grade at a time as they move up. I guess that is a question for me in terms of additional staffing and what that means years out.
How do how do you see budgeting? Because you you would be having an additional two, two teachers in first grade the following year. Right? An additional two in second and probably up to third. And then by fourth and fifth, it would be I I assume I don't know what your class size ratio is, but I would assume there would be not as many teachers in fourth and fifth. Yeah. So we've modeled for sustainability for the elementary school, and and the modeling is that we can reach sustainability between 350 to 400 students. And so that's largely the rationale for why we felt like it was necessary to
to go forward with the merger. For next year, let's say, if we add a second cohort, for TK, it would require if we had two twenty students, then it would require one full time teacher and one at least an instructional aide. So that would be two additional staff. But our cohorts will continue to be the same number until, like, until our second and third grade they graduate because that's where we have, a a smaller cohort size. Right. But you would be adding a teacher as the kindergartners move up, you'd be adding a teacher into first grade?
No. We current as they move up, we would add one more teacher. Yes. Right. Until you got to fourth grade where the the class size is is larger. Okay. Yeah. Thanks. Yep. Yeah. That that brought up another question for me. So you mentioned fundraising for the playground spaces. I didn't hear, though, how you would be financing the extra portables, that you were talking about. Can you talk a little bit more about that? And I'm also gonna welcome our our chief financial officer who can speak a little bit more in detail. And for the for the specific project for the
the new playground, we had a donor reach out to us and and asked us more generally, we wanna support Aspire Public Schools. Can you pick a school that we can build a playground, with? Because we have the money, and we're gonna and we're gonna partner with Kaboom to ensure that we could build the the playground over at ACA. Well, thank you for choosing Oakland. Good, good evening. I'm Michael Winbush, the chief financial officer for Aspire. Some regards to the portables, we're still investigating exactly, but we do have financing options that we can usually access to be able to
finance and fund construction projects. So those are the types of options we're looking at in terms of the portables and facilities expansion. Great. I think as a part of your renewal or a part of the conversation here, it would be great to have that some of that information for us so that we can make sure that that pencils out according to the budget projections as well. Thank you. If there are no further questions, the public hearing for the material revision for, Aspire President Brevard, I just want to state for the record that we have no public comment for this item. Okay. Sorry. Anyway,
the hearing is now closed. Thank you for your presentation. Okay. Moving on to he's back. Okay. Okay. Our next item is C4, Aspire Public Schools, Aspire Golden State College Preparatory Academy Charter, petition and charter renewal, grades six through 12. And the public hearing is now open. If you could state your name and position for the record, please. Alright. Good evening. Now we're gonna move on to Aspire Golden State College Preparatory Academy. One thing. Can you please state restate your name Okay. Great. And position. Thank you.
My name is Javier Cabral Walteros, and I'm the executive director for Aspire Public Schools Bay Area. I'm super excited to talk about Golden State Prep. This is a school that holds a special place in my heart because I was a founding administrator for Golden State Prep in '20 in back in 2012. I was a founding administrator with our principal, principal Thomas. And and and in particular, what I'll name is that, I am a son of immigrants from Colombia. And my father passed away when I was five years old, and my mom didn't know much about public school systems and how they worked.
And my brother had to intervene in my education to ensure that I had a path to college. I was in levels three and four when I was growing up. I was not on the path to go to college. And my my brother literally had to intervene in my school system to ensure that I had an opportunity to go to college. And today, as we talk about Golden State prep, I just wanna name that we have done this systematically to support our young people to ensure that they have an opportunity to go to college and to have a strong career pathway. Golden State Prep is located in East Oakland,
6060 Sixth Avenue. What I think is very special about GSP is that we have ninety five percent of our students are socioeconomically disadvantaged. We are one of the highest percentage when it comes to SED in the city of Oakland. In all the charters across the city of Oakland, we have the second highest socioeconomically disadvantaged population. We have twenty six percent English learners. We have seventeen percent students with disabilities, and you'll see our racial makeup there, pie chart there, with our largest two communities being Latinx and black African American.
I'm gonna turn it over to mister Thomas who's gonna talk a little bit more about the the program. Good evening. Oh, good evening. I'm principal Thomas. I've lived in Oakland for over twenty six years, and I've proudly served Oakland and Inspire Public School for twenty three of those years. I'm a former math teacher as well as a DEI organizational program manager and, a former math teacher coach. The GSP core elements are that we have in our program is an inclusion model where students who have IEPs are authentically integrated into mainstream classrooms.
We have a strong SEL and relationship component where every student has an advisor and is seen as an advocate, and we have a top rate college and career program. Next slide. Good evening, everyone. My name is Tina Ortega and I am our Special Populations Administrator. At GSP, we serve a wide spectrum of students with IEPs with a special education population of seventeen percent. We're proud to share seventy five percent of our students last year met a to g requirements, and one hundred percent of our students graduated within five years of entering high school.
Next slide. We have a career pathway at GSP that centers entrepreneurship. We are proud to, collaborate with OUSD, the Peralta Community Colleges, as well as BUILD, to center, students around business design. And this is especially important to me as a former build teacher for three years myself. Next slide. Good evening. My name is Natalie Valencia. I am the mentor principal at GSP. We have a wonderful after school after school program. 44% of our students are enrolled in after school. We have a great music program, a very popular driver's ed program as you can imagine in,
high school, among a diverse, menu of options, and we're also adding an Oakland Rotary Club this year, with a service, minded intention. Next slide. We are very proud of our family survey. We survey our families every year using the Panorama, which is a nationally normed, survey. We are proud to say that, when compared GSP is compared to other schools nationally, we rank at the eightieth percentile in, middle school and ninetieth percentile at the high school. Next slide. Our students also report feeling very safe at our school, which we are also very proud of.
When compared to other schools with similar populations, we ranked ninetieth percentile in the middle school nationally and eightieth percentile at the high school nationally. Next slide. We are also very proud to say that we invest in our staff. Over the last four years, we've had an average teaching retention of 75%, and we are actively looking for ways to continue to develop our teams. We have pipelines to strengthen our teacher retention. One program where our teammates can earn their college degree and another where they earn a teaching credential and a master simultaneously. And over the last eighteen months,
we've been very proud that two of our teammates have earned their bachelor's degree, and we've also hosted seven teacher residents at our site in math, English, and, social science. Next slide. I'm Valerie Estrella, the program manager for post secondary pathways, and we're incredibly proud of our college and career indicator being in the blue. Our college and career indicator measures a variety of factors, including state exams, AP exams, college courses, and career technical education. In 2025, we had 58 students take an AP exam. 39 of them had passing scores that which is above the national average for socioeconomically
disadvantaged students. We also had eighty percent of our students graduate Golden State Prep, passing at least one college course in the areas of business, marketing, and accounting. Next slide, please. Here you can see how our college and career indicator compares to different subgroups throughout the state and were outperforming in many areas. I'd like to highlight how eighty percent of our black African American students and over seventy percent of our Hispanic Latino students graduate Golden State Prep College and Career Ready. Next slide, please.
Additionally, in the most recent California dashboard, GSP was number one in the city of Oakland in graduation rates. And we know that high school graduation is a critical milestone, for college and career success. And our whole team, our admin, our teachers, and advisors are working with our families to support our scholars. Next slide. We are proud of our persistence from post pandemic and are very, excited to have our highest graduation rates in Oakland. Oakland. Next slide. Although in in in 2024, we dropped in ELA, we did have a yellow indicator in 2023.
And despite that, we did have some promising news in 2024, particularly with our eleventh grade. The longer our students are with us, the better they perform. And, again, while we did see a drop in 2024, we are confident overall in 2025. We're gonna move back into the yellow, and we are projecting to have double digit growth, from last year. Next slide. Across California, math has been a significant challenge area for us. It's no different. We have a strong plan in place that we're working to implement under my leadership. The foundation which is me personally leaning in to coach math pedagogy,
data analysis, as well as a targeted math intervention program. And as a black man, as a former math teacher, this is especially important to me, that we need to change this drastically as soon as possible. And some of the steps we're taking immediately to address this are biweekly math department meetings, weekly observations, and coaching by math team by myself. And we just completed our I Ready assessments, and we're looking to start a middle school, math intervention program very soon. Next slide. When we hired principal Thomas so when we hired principal Thomas,
we feel we we knew he was the right person for the job. We knew that math in particular was the area for growth, knowing his background as a math teacher, as a math coach. And in addition to that, he is someone who's been passionate to serve in the East Oakland community in particular as a former administrator for GSP. English language learner progress is also, what we're deeply proud of. You could see we have another blue indicator. Our our English learners are making tremendous progress with our, designated ELD teachers, And, our school has a wide focus on academic discourse as well as academic vocabulary.
And, we were continue to have development across, all our scholars who participate in this. Next slide. Our scholars, are formed in the state. In particular, we are second, in growth for long term English language learners in the city of Oakland. Next slide. And last, I'd just like to say thank you for hearing our presentation. We're open to your questions. I'm going to leave you with one data point that I think is critical and important to just acknowledge when it comes to Golden State prep. So when we look at the California dashboard for 2024, and we look across the state of California,
there are 9,626 schools that received at least one color on the the the for indicators on the California dashboard. Only 991 had similar or better percentage of blue indicators than Golden State prep. So we have three blue indicators, two of which are academic indicators in college and career college career and additionally in in English language progress. That's that puts GSP in the top 10.3%
in the entire state of California. We're really proud of that. We wanna welcome your questions, and we want to continue to serve the East Oakland community. Thank you. Again, I appreciate your enthusiasm. At this point, we have, public comments. Do we have any speakers at this time? Yes. President Breaux Hart, we have 11 speakers. Okay. Well, as your name is called, will you come up? And you have one minute each. Leonardo Garcia, Genesys, Genovese, Marco Siha. Again, we're gonna need to have a little quiet so we can hear the names. We have 11 people. So if you hear your name, could you, repeat that again? Yeah. Let me repeat those few names that that was just called.
Marcos Cixa, Genesis Genovese, Leonardo Garcia, Makira Moore, Marilu Del Carmen, Maribel Franco, Michelle Hernandez, Jorge Zepeda, Dwayne Dwayne McArthur, Daniela Magia, and Byron Lowe. Those are the 11 speakers. Your name was called, and you're in the line. Great. We're gonna ask I'm gonna ask that the students go first, if that's okay. I think so if you are a student you are. Alright. Go ahead, please. Good evening, board members. My name is Byron Lowe, and I'm a twelfth grader at Golden State Prep.
I've been here since I've been here since sixth grade, and I never thought I'd be here all these years. Yet here I am, advocating for my school even though I'm graduating soon. Despite the ups and downs, I stayed at this school for one reason and one reason only, the community and culture rebuild. GSP isn't just a school. It's a family. While other schools may be bigger or offer more classes, they don't provide the same individualized attention as GSP. Every teacher since I've had in middle school has been passionate, supportive, and invested in our future. They take the time to understand who we are as individuals,
and that's something that's rare in education. For me, a big part of that community is sports. I've been on the basketball team since I arrived at the school in sixth grade. It saw me teamwork, discipline, integrity, which are skills that will carry me far beyond the court after high school. Yes. Like any school, we have our challenges, but GSP is a place where students are prioritized, supported, and and prepared for life after graduation. Shutting this school down will rob future generations of the same opportunity to grow in such a meaningful environment. And today, I ask you to consider our voices and protect the future of GSP for students yet to come.
Thank you. Hello. My name is Danila Mejia, and I'm a current junior at Golden State Prep. Before I get started, I want to thank board president Jennifer Brohard and board members Cliff Thompson, Rachel Latta, and Patrice Berry for visiting our school, and we hope to have others visit soon as well. I joined Golden State middle of eighth grade because of an incident in my prior school. Since the very start, GSP has always been very welcoming towards me and has made me part of their ongoing family. GSP is preparing us for college and is a community where you build relationships that will grow further outside of high school.
I recall an instance in my freshman year when my teacher was not only there to support me academically, but also there emotionally. I was having a rough year and was struggling with many hardships that were difficult for me to endure. My teacher noticed this and asked me if there was anything she could do to support me. That same teacher also encouraged me to step into leadership. With her encouragement, I took on my role of president. This this opportunity not only allowed me to support my peers and my community, but also help me develop leadership skills that I know will carry me into college and beyond. I want to ask each board member to please support our charters charter renewal.
Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Jorge Pedera, and I'm a ninth grader as Golden State prep. My parents chose GSP because of the many positive experiences that previous family members have had with this school, and I can confidently say that I had a very positive experience myself. My time at GSP has been immensely meaningful because of the growth it has allowed me to experience and the welcoming environment it provides. Last year, I had teachers who supported me academically and introduced me to incredible programs to help me develop my leadership and collaboration skills. Beyond academics, one teacher in particular,
miss Cornett, helped me grow on a personal level. No matter the issue, I knew I could approach this teacher and be heard, not judged. I knew I could, express my feelings and thoughts, and they would offer me advice that truly would get me through tough times. Golden State prep has also given me some of my closest friends who have become a strong support system for me and who I hope to keep for life. The squad shaped me into the person I am today, and for that reason, I ask that you allow GSB to remain open so it can continue changing the lives of countless others just as it has changed mine. Thank you for your time.
Good evening, board members. My name is Makari Moore. I am in eighth grade, and I am 13 years old. I didn't choose GSB, but my father chose this school for me because he felt like it was the safest option out of the schools available. Being from a city like Oakland where we constantly hear about shootings or other incidents that put our community in danger, safety matters. Here at GSB, I feel safe, and I'm glad my father made this choice. He was right because this school has built a strong and supportive community among staff and students. My experience at GSB has been very positive. I have had little to no alter with other students,
and when I did, we were able to talk it out. What makes this school different is how much the staff support us. They stay after hours, they encourage us, and they are flexible enough to help each student succeed. At my old elementary schools, I help was usually only before school and during lunch, but here, teachers go above and beyond. I want to continue at GSP through high school to see all that it has to offer. From what I've heard from high schoolers, GSP provides many opportunities to prepare for life and for college. That's something I look forward to. Thank you. Good evening,
board members. My name is Michelle Hernandez. I am currently a senior at Golden State Prep. I've been part of this amazing community since the sixth grade. One of the main reasons I chose this school was because of the BUILD program. But I have given my siblings, who also attended GSP, so many opportunities that I wanted to experience it myself. Through this program, I learned not to be afraid to express my ideas, and I have found the freedom to do so. Along the way, I built close relationships with my teachers like miss Cornette. She has always been there for me whenever I needed to vent, whether it was about homework, classes, or even family matters. She's created a safe space for me to talk about anything,
including my mental health, which means so much to me. Even though there have been difficult moments during the course to coming to school because of the support of friends and teachers I found here at JSB. You're not just help with academics. We're supported in our personal lives too. That makes all the difference. Thank you for your time, and please support our school. Good evening. My name is Genesis Genovese Hardana, and I am a twelfth grader attending Aspire Golden State. It is an honor to have my testimony heard as GSP had been in my community for years, and I don't plan on leaving without repaying the kindness I've received here since the beginning. From the moment I first walked through the school gates,
I knew I wanted to be here. Compared to other schools I've gone through, GSB's harmonious atmosphere could be felt the moment you entered. This school has been my haven away from home, a place where I could confide in others when my private life was difficult. I met all of my closest friends here after a hard time in elementary school. I they took the time to know me and befriend me without expecting anything in return. When I'm at prior school, I had to fight to be acknowledged. The teachers at GFP were also an eye opener. Instead of demanding work, they truly supported us and taught us at a place where we could succeed. Growing up, I believed all schools were like prisons,
but GFP proved me otherwise. I actually will please keep this school open so that others going through tough times can find a place where they are understood, respected, and given the chance to drive. Thank you for your time. Good evening, board members. My name is Dwayne McArthur, and I'm a proud parent of a seventh grade at ASP rep. I'm here tonight to share my positive, uplifting experience about her school. Since Freedom began attending GSP, I have never had a negative experience. In fact, it has been quite the opposite. Our experiences has been full of growth,
support, and joy. Freedom has built many strong friendships here, and the fact that we live just four blocks away from the school truly makes us feel like we at home there. She or should I say Freedom McArthur is a four point o student. I'd like to repeat that. Freedom MacArthur is a four point o student, and I believe her success is a reflection of the of the excellent work the school is doing. GSP also provides so many opportunities for her to be involved in after school.
She is especially excited about her cheerleading class and her participating in Girl Scouts, which meets on campus. I am grateful to inspire Golden State Prep for creating such a a supportive and enriching environment for my daughter. I ask that you please consider renewing our school. Thank you. Go Mister Dela Torre, if you can come off mute and, translate, the last speaker. Okay. For a moment, I just want to say something. My kid is a is a is a sixth grader,
and for now, we haven't we have a we have had a very good experience at this school. It was a time that my family and I, we consider to move to a deep, out of the Bay Area, but my daughter wants to stay in this school, and she's happy with doing with the education she's receiving and also with the teacher. All the staff at the school, they give a good support at what what she needs, and I'm a happy father of CP of, GSP. I also like to mention that, the school is very new to my work, So it is easy for me to get involved with the school and with ed
with the education. And, also, I think the personal the person I better have doubts with the staff that we have and the teachers. The school is has good communication with the parents and has a strong communication with everything, keep us safe, and and I will tell tell the families what's going on. That's something that I really appreciate from GSP and also just here to support and to keep the school open. Thank you. Yes. Yes. Good evening, members of the board. My, my name is Maribel, and I'm Francisco's mom. And, actually, he is in g in GSP.
I feel very happy that my that my son is sitting here, and Francisco has autism and I would like to share that I'm very I'm very happy with the experience that I have, and also with all the rest of his classmates and that it has been a big difference in his life because he has been developed and grow academically and emotionally and also socially to receive all the support one on one that he has had. He also has one of the assistants that helping and to to grow and to try in his art class.
For example, Francisco in this class, he has a space where he can be express himself and he also has grown academically and he has grown so much. For all of these, I I ask you if you can renovate, TSP and keep the opportunity the same as Francisco to other students. Thank you, Paul. Thank you. And, mister mister Dela Torre, if you can, transfer for the last speaker, please. Yes. Of course. I apologize. I couldn't catch my, the parents' name. I am mom of the student in the twelfth grade and g and GSP.
And I'm here just to ask you to please vote the renovation for the school. My daughter is my daughter is in first grade, and that she has grown allowed in GSP. And, I see how she's growing every year. She has gained some trust. Thanks to the support that the that that my daughter has with the teachers. The experience has been very positive, and the teachers always communicate with me, and she has also she has like to make effort. Also, she has had good grades. She also had good grades.
And as a mother as a mother leader in this school, I also feel that I'm that I'm being seen, and I feel and I've been, and I think that communication with the family is excellent. For all this reason, I'm asking you to please, consider GSP, as a good experience and to please, so we can so we can continue with this. Thank you so much for all the students. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm forgetting something. She also say that the GSP is supporting the students to go to college. For this reason, she, she wants to please open keep the school open.
Good evening. My name is Leonardo Garcia. I'm currently a math teacher at GSP. This is my second year as a teacher. Before that, I was a resident. But even before that, I attended GSP from 2012 to 2019. I benefited from many of the programs such as after school, build, and dual enrollment, which let me succeed at UC Berkeley. It was at UC Berkeley where I was getting advice from mister Morgan and mister Dorenzi to pursue education. I did my residency at GSP where I met the wonderful Jenny Saar. This year as a teacher, I've also had the benefit of working with mister Thomas who has supported me in
weekly coaching, biweekly meetings in my department where I get a lot of ideas and support to support our students even better. This energy to support students, to support staff members, to support families is what really defines GSP, and it's for this reason that I ask that you vote yes for GSP. Thank you for your time. That concludes public comments. Are there any board questions? Director Thompson? Thank you, President Brouhan, and thank you for the presentation. I was quite impressed with a subgroup information that you provided to us. That makes me feel quite good,
but I do have a question. And my question is, your Sprint your SPED students, are they in a certificate program or are they actually receiving a diploma? Are they in a diploma program? And if so, do you mind telling us the percentage in each? At GSP, we do have a number of students that are what we would label as moderate to severe that are on alternative curriculum. I believe it is it makes up about 25% of our sped department. That said, we most of our students are on track to receive a regular diploma.
We have a very small number of students that are actually, only on the certificate of completion plan. Doctor. Latta? Yes. Thank you for the presentation. I have a couple of questions. I think the first is that, I have concerns about your suspension rate. So I in 2024, your rate was nine point seven, which had decreased slightly from the previous year for the whole school. But for disabled students, it was nineteen point eight, and African American students, it was twenty four point one percent, which is disproportionate. And I think you've had some am I correct that you've been in disproportionate analysis
for that? I'm I'm more than happy to answer that question. I also wanna go back to something earlier that a question you asked of us. I wanna make sure that I I share the correct information. So you shared that, you haven't seen a corrective action plan for the audit findings, and so I just wanted to share that we did provide our corrective action, plan to the office of charter schools. So they they the team has it, and it was the issue was closed out in July. So I just wanted to to just come back to that. In terms of suspension rates, I'll turn it over to mister Thomas, to speak to what it was like,
how this improves in 2425, and address your question. Yes. So we have noticed that, we have been reducing our suspension rates over time. And, yes, we are looking at particular subgroups to see how if they've been disproportionately suspended. We've been working a lot with our behavioral wellness team over, restorative practices, looking at what are actual suspendable offenses. In fact, we continue to have professional development around these areas. In fact, today, we even had, professional development and constant learning around zero tolerance versus zero indifference, in which we're constantly reflective and reevaluating,
like, how best we can serve our students before we get to a suspendable offense. And I'll also just say, because we have the 2425 data as well for suspension rates. So it decreased again, for the 2425 rate. And then for this the two student populations that you've named, we saw nearly a 75% decrease for our black African American Do you have the numbers? Can you tell me the first level of growth? 5% for for black African American and then 12% for special education. So it's decreased for both both subgroups as
well. Go ahead and ask your follow-up, please. Okay. Director Williams. Thank you for that. Question, how many, teachers do you have, at your academy? We currently have 20 teachers at our site. 20 teachers. Again, I I previously spoke to this, maybe I mixed up two schools, but, what was submitted to OUSD says that you have actually 24. Are you budgeting for 24? Is that correct? It could be if we include our ed specialist, then yes. We do have at 24, but 20 classroom teachers, if you include ed specialist,
we are at 24. And how many of those actually have a full credential? All all the people that are in our current positions are you have the proper, certification. We have a couple that are on GLAP. We have two on GLAP when we have two on emergency, permits, and the rest, are fully credentialed. And you're saying, 78 to 80% of your teachers have returned? Over four years, we have average, 75% retention rate for our teachers. Okay. And can you tell me a little bit about, what your demographics of your teachers look like? Yeah. Right now, which one we're looking at this one?
Okay. Yes. Right now we are, 22% of our teachers are Latinx descent, 44% are white, 16% are black, 16% are Asian and 5.6% are multiracial. Thank you very much. So first of all, I just want to start off with, the question around, the political environment that we're in and the protections around ICE enforcement. I know that you went through a thorough analysis, but is there anything particularly different that you're doing here since it's a six twelve school site? Yeah. So the everything that I named earlier is is true for GSP with one addition
and that all of our teachers in the secondary at GSP received professional development on how to respond to either families asking for support or if there is ICE activity locally, how they would respond to that. I also named earlier that we do have a webinar. I wanted to just share a little bit more information so you have that access you have access and this is publicly available to anyone. But on September 30, that's a Tuesday, we have an immigration webinar, preparing and protecting our communities. That's the name of it. We are sharing resources on immigrant preparedness plans,
school safety policies, and strategies to protect and support our communities. This is led by our director of advocacy and community engagement by the name of Maribel Saines, who's a a community organizer, has been a long standing community organizer in the Bay Area. And so she brings a lot of of wealth and knowledge and support to our community. It's going to be in both Spanish and in English. So the Spanish version will begin at 5PM, and the English version will begin at 6PM. I do have a QR code, so I'm more than happy I don't know the best way to to share this
with you all, but if you tell me or if I can send it to you to us, I think, would be Okay. Email if you actually email it to board staff and CCOCS staff as well, and then they'll distribute it to us. Okay. Perfect. Great. Thank you. So speaking, along those lines, what does your newcomer program look like at GSP? So we currently have 14 newcomers within, within GSP and so we we look at it from like a just like any MTSS program. We're looking at, first, they have the integrated, designated English language, development within all of our classrooms. In fact,
pretty soon we're gonna be doing a whole staff training with ensemble learning to make sure that's there. We have three instructional aids that are also bilingual, which we, have used to help facilitate some of their learning. And then, of course, those that need, a designated ELD class. It turns that we make sure that they're in a proper level, with other peers so they can, have, English language access. Wonderful. It'd be able it'd be great to just get that the second and add as to the I also wanted to add that we also know that some of those best practices also include, that family partnership piece. And so we do have ELAC, our English language advisory committee,
who participates in, will be offering workshops, understanding the criteria for reclassification, and they also give us their input around the LCAP. And so having their impact, input as well around how we're allocating our funds is also a critical piece as we're writing our plans. And how many community members are part of your ELAC? We are currently in the nomination process. So we are looking to recruit our leadership board, to have our leader but we're looking for president, vice president, secretary at the minimum as part of the leadership board. And then they'll be helping to facilitate with me our,
monthly ELAC meetings as well. Great. Thank you. I also wanna talk about your enrollment. So your enrollment for 2223 declined by a 130 students. Can you tell us, like, what happened to create that exodus, and what have you done to kinda slow that down? Alright. So we have seen a drop in attended or excuse me, in enrollment. I mean, I think this this is what we're seeing citywide. We what I will say is that what we're noticing this year in particular is that we've seen the stabilization of enrollment, especially at the middle school. So in previous years, we've seen an under enrollment,
at the middle school. So our two years ago, our seventh grade was under enrolled, and then that became, like, like, the opposite of a level class. And so that class is in the ninth grade, so it's we have an under enrolled ninth grade. We moved our program into a two cohort model. Our entire middle school is at capacity. So with the two cohort model, we have about 32 to 30, four students per class. And so we're at capacity for a middle school, which is encouraging because the long term sustainability for our program is is a two
cohort model going all the way up to twelfth grade. So we see ourselves within the next three years being at close to four fifty to four sixty five. So that's that's where we are right now in terms of stabilization for middle school enrollment. Great. It'd be also helpful to get information as to which grade level those a 130 students came from to see if that was from a specific class or if it was across the board. Okay. In English language arts, just 23% of your students are meeting standards, which is seven points down from last year. You also talked about your math scores have gone down,
just 6.89% of your students are meeting the state standard. It also looks like every subgroup has declined in your long term. English language learners have declined the most, which is over about 205 points below the state standard. How do you believe that that's progress towards, state standards? So I'll I'll speak a little bit to the the past, and then mister Thomas will speak to moving forward. We did see a dip for for ELA in 2024, but I do wanna recognize that in 2023,
we did see an increase double digit increase, when it comes to DFS, And we're projecting for 2025, we're gonna see a double digit increase as well for ELA. For eleventh grade in particular, one thing I did note earlier is that we have the second highest socioeconomic economically disadvantaged, school population in out of all the charter schools, t k to 12 in the city of Oakland. And so we also are paying attention to how we're seeing progress for our our s e SED group. With that said, we we we're in the sixty seventh percentile when it comes to ELA at the
eleventh grade. So we are seeing progress at the eleventh grade in particular. That's why mister Thomas said earlier that the longer they are in our school, the the better they perform. So we're in the sixty seventh percentile when it comes to ELA for the eleventh grade, in compared compared to all schools in Oakland that have a higher SED rate of 70% or higher, and we're at 95%. So it's a significant difference just to let you you understand the context. In terms of math, we do take responsibility for the the the data for math. We don't we're not proud of the math data.
Largely the the strategy right now is about addressing the math, and with under the leadership of mister Thomas. And I'll let mister Thomas speak a little bit more about that. Yeah. Like I like I mentioned before, it's, you know, we're no different from the rest of the state in terms of having it be, an area of challenge. But I will say at least for myself, I've worked in three different schools in Oakland. And when I served in in our home office, I also supported math teachers. In every single place, in every school that I worked at, we also always saw an increase in math performance over time. So I'm really confident in terms of what we can do especially as,
one of our our teachers, mister Garcia who was a a graduate from us, has mentioned there's a lot of intensive coaching that is happening like weekly coaching and observation in order to get that feedback. Again, we really we take ownership of that, but we really feel like we're we're poised to move into a positive direction. Thank you. I look forward to that if that happens. You also show a structural deficit each year for the next four years. What is your plan to address that given your very high chronic absenteeism, and that impact that it has on your ADA? I'm gonna welcome our chief financial officer. If we could come up here,
mister Wimbish. So I will say in the the current year, we do we have made some intentional decision to be able to support our programming in the short term. And the school is fortunate. We do have, solid reserves, our fund balance to be able to to support that in the short term. I do want to note for the subsequent years, that deficit is inclusive of depreciation, non cash charge. So when you if you were to add that back, we're actually a little bit above breakeven from an overall cash perspective. Overall expectation is, we do have the deficit spending, like, in the current term strategically,
and then we expect to be able to right size long term, to be able to to, support the needs of the school, the enrollment, and all the other things. And I know for our board policy, we have, like, a 3% reserve level. What is your, reserve level? So our, our internal target for our schools, it ends up being, around 20% or so, of, of expenses. And GSP is actually above that target. And so they that's where we felt comfortable to be able to to to provide that support in the short term, to support our programming. So Thank you. And lastly, just again, the, providing the data for the pupil mobility,
for the term of your charter as well. I have a couple of questions on curriculum. I'd like to let know a little bit more about how your programs for disabled students are organized. I know you have both inclusion. Do you have SEP classes? Do you have so what is the structure for that? And then, yes, go ahead. And then also, transportation for disabled students. Speak to the first part. Sorry, can you clarify just a little bit more about what you're Sure. You focused a lot on inclusion as well, but do you also have, self contained programs?
Or is there a mixture? Are there, students who are in both? Okay. Okay. Okay. Yes. So we are an an inclusion model. So all of our, supports do happen in the classroom. We do leave we do allot a certain percentage of time for each student to allow, time for them to be pulled from their gen ed peers. We do have a learning center. We have one downstairs. We have an additional classroom upstairs where high school instruction can happen. We also have a group of students that are, engaging in alternative curriculum. A lot of that does happen in the classroom space, with minimal pullout as well,
to the learning center for those students that are more highly impacted. So I guess a follow-up question. For the students who are in alternative curriculum, how does that work in the, general education class? So, it's kind of a a mixture. So the students are engaging with as much of the curriculum as they can on grade level with their gen ed peers. The students that are more heavily impacted tend to have one on one aids that are very close to them, and we'll help them do that. When it gets to a point where they're unable to engage with the material in the classroom, then they move to their individual teach town materials. So sometimes that happens in the classroom.
They're engaging that material in the classroom space, and then sometimes they're being pulled to the learning center or a separate space to do that. Okay. Sorry. One other follow-up. Because you mentioned teach town, which I believe is a computer program. Am I right? Yes. It is. It's based on a computer. Okay. And and again, I guess, how does that work in in the general class? Is is teach is TeachTown also used in that classroom? No. No. TeachTown is not used with their gen and peers. So, each student has their own Chromebook. Yeah. And then transportation. Do you provide transportation for students, who are disabled? I do know in the past, we have utilized the same,
transportation, system that ACA has used. I don't know, and I can't speak right now, but maybe someone else can to, if we're still utilizing that this school year. Yeah. So, any, family that that would need that type of, transportation, we would definitely provide. So far this year, we haven't had any parents say like we specifically need it, but if they need it, we will provide it. And then I have another question about your curriculum. I noticed there's a specific curriculum for math. There was a specific curriculum for, English language arts. There was a specific, curriculum for science.
And history social science looked a little like I wasn't sure what you used or what the training and and I didn't know that you did reference the, state frameworks, but I was just curious to know about your history curriculum. Yeah. So our our adopted, curriculum, we do use TCI, but as we all know that, curriculum is not, curriculum is just a tool and that, it's definitely something we feel that instruction in itself, is really the gonna be the way in which we can actually reach students and the learning can happen. But that is the basis which we use in the courses, you know, any teacher is gonna supplement any any curriculum that they feel is to give their
own flare. Questions. Go ahead, Director Alana. I just wanted to ask a couple of follow-up questions about your math scores. So, when I looked at the disaggregated data for middle and high school, it looks like you're at 6.67%, proficient in math, and it's been declining, for multiple years in a row. I understand that you're, you know, being brought on to attempt to address that, but I'm I do have concerns about, you know, you mentioned some, you know, intervention, but, what specifics can you give the board? First, I guess my first question is,
do you have the twenty twenty five data for your math? Because you had those suspensions. So do you have the math, results for 2025 as well? Yeah. So we we for suspensions, it's internal data. Oh, okay. So we do have for SBAC, we have projections for next year. So we're with 95%, we're seeing that we're about level from last year. So we're not seeing an increase from 24% to 25%. So I guess that my question is really twofold is, one, I'd like to understand, like, how your specific plan, if if you, you know,
kind of have a little bit more data. And you can send that to us, for you know, we you don't need to go into it right now, but I would like to I would like to, us to have some more data and a more kind of instructional information about how you're structuring your day, because I do think it's quite concerning for us to have, you know, kind of have that proficiency level. I think the other thing, and this is a follow-up, is just that if, you have a 98.5 graduation rate and you're saying, you know, you have a seventy one percent on your college and career indicators, yet only seven percent of your high school students are proficient at math.
Kind of what how do we interpret those? I just wonder how much weight we give to, to those. If if only 7% of the students are proficient, how are they then, know, a to g ready and college and career ready? I'm gonna have Valerie in a moment speak to just the AP exams, college classes that we take. But I also wanted to speak to, like, college persistence because I think that's important as well. So when we look at our our rates for college persistence, we see that, nationally, the average for college persistence in graduation for a six year cohort is sixty one
percent on a national level, and that's all students, right, across the board, regardless of socioeconomic status or race, ethnicity. At GSP, for the most recent data, we are at fifty nine percent. So we're slightly lower than this the average across the country. But keep in mind that we have a high socioeconomic disadvantaged population. Across the nation, the college graduation rate for for students that enter a two or four year, grad institution is forty six percent. So we are we're outpacing the the nation on the average for SCED,
and we're we're slightly below the average across the the nation at sixty one to fifty nine percent for GSP. And are how are you level then with students who are entering college from your from your so your graduates what percentage of them are entering a a two or four year college? I mean, you mentioned the persistence. I'm just curious what the percentage is overall of your Yep. Then? So across our our most let's say, let's track back to the three previous years, our, Valerie, you might wanna clarify this one for me, but, this one. Right?
Your I'm sorry. Your question is, matriculation. Correct? Yes. Because if you you mentioned persistence, so I'm just curious what the overall. Yeah. So if we go back for those couple of years, that, like, six years back, and even including the most recent class, we're averaging at about above 55% of our students are going to our four year. A little bit higher, in this past excuse me. This last year, we have 46% going to a four year college. And so just to clarify a little bit more.
So if we we look at let's say the most recent. So most recent 46% of our graduating class went to a four year university, 17% went to a two year institution, 6% went to a vocational or technical training institution, and 13% went straight into the workforce. Okay. Alright. Thank you. Yeah. And also, we wanna address the question about preparedness because we also Yeah. Sorry. We wanted to address the preparedness, the college and career preparedness. I think we think of it in multiple measures. So, state exams are one avenue in college and career preparedness.
At Golden State Prep, we're really looking at a broad picture of our AP exams. So as I mentioned earlier, we had 39 passing, scores, which is higher than the national average for socioeconomically disadvantaged students. And then we also think about our dual enrollment courses. So we have two courses each semester for our students to engage with the professor outside of our, regular school teachers. So they're really able to advocate for themselves, get that experience from a college professor. And we last year in 2025, we had eighty percent of our students pass at least one college class,
in business marketing and accounting. Thank you. And then one thing just for, if you can please send the specific oversight that your board is engaging in for the corrective action plan. You can, again, send that to the board staff and the office of charter schools. Okay. We can do that. Thank you very much. And are there any further board questions? With that, the public hearing is closed. Thank you. Thank you very much. Again, appreciate the enthusiasm. Next up, we have our last, of the night, which is C5. Excuse me. Again, if you could take your celebrations outside,
that would be great. It's now Lodestar's turn. I appreciate the Golden State teacher who is If our next item, C525Dash2092. Again, we wanna give Lodestar their opportunity. Again, it's Lodestar's turn. We'd like to continue with their public hearing. If you can hear me, clap once. If you can hear me, clap twice. And if you really wanna be cool, take a seat so we can hear Lodestar's presentation. We can also try waterfall. That one works too.
I like my elementary teachers out there. K. Our next our next item is C525Dash2092, Lighthouse Community Charter Public Schools, Lodestar, a Lighthouse Community Public School. Petition and charter renewal grades t k 12, 07/01/2026. The elementary school thing, we just keep talking. It's okay. July 2026 through 06/30/2031. The public hearing is now open, and if your first speaker could come,
introduce your name and your position, that would be great. Thank you. Okay. Good evening, honorable directors and superintendents. My name is Simon Griggs. I am a college bound senior and prayer forward leader at Low Star High School. I have been a student at Low Star since the sixth grade. On behalf of the 760 Low Star scholars and families and a 100 plus teachers and staff, we wanna thank you for giving us a chance to tell you what lodestar means to our community and to Boerne Park. Thank you, board, for considering renewing our charter for the next five years. Hello,
board members and superintendent. My name is Abigail Williams, and I'm in eighth grade at Lone Star. I've been a student at Lone Star since first grade. I'm in student leadership, and I'm a musician and member of the Black Student Union. At Lowstar, our mission is to prepare students for college and a career of their choice. Our core values are community, agency, integrity, social justice, and love are at the core of everything we do. Eighty eight percent of those star students were accepted to college last year, which is how I know I will be prepared for the college and career of my choice when I graduate.
Thank you for listening. Hello, distinguished board and superintendent. My name is Nathan Tee, and I'm an eighth grader here at All Star. I've been at All Star since first grade, and I'm a distinguished mathematician in All Stars math accelerator program. We are rooted in Deep East Oakland. 63% of our students come from our neighborhood, and 88% of our students are from the greater East Oakland community. All schools community school deeply within service. At Lone Star, we learn by serving and serve by learning. Through our crew initiatives, we celebrate and uplift our cultures while giving each student the opportunity to learn about
themselves and one another. Thank you for your time. Good evening, USD board directors. My name is Rich Harrison. I'm the CEO for Lighthouse Community Public Schools and a lifelong educator now in my twenty seventh year of public service. I'm grateful to partner with all of you on behalf of Oakland students and families. When Lodestar was last renewed its charter in 2020, it was the Zoom year of the pandemic and the first year of AB 15 o five, and we were in the low track. Today, we have elevated to the middle track,
eligible for a five year renewal. I wanna thank you for believing in our resilient students, our families, and staff, and for endorsing our shared priorities. Those priorities are still clear, a focused community school model, data driven practices using interim assessments, thoughtful t k 12 curriculum adoption and implementation, and intentional coaching and professional development. Because of our shared partnership, graduates from Oakland's newest high school are entering college and living wage career programs like
Cypress, Mandela, and Rising Sun with confidence and with purpose. Talented local staff are becoming credentialed teachers who reflect the brilliance and diversity of our neighborhoods. Today, 86% of our teachers are credentialed or an intern program. But most importantly, families now see Lodestar in Sobrani Park as a true community hub, safe, enriching spaces where partnerships with local organizations flourish alongside high quality instruction. Hello, esteemed directors.
I'm doctor b. I'm an Oakland born and Oakland raised educator. I love this city, and I love Love Star. I am honored to serve as Love Star's head of school. I started right after the COVID pandemic where this terrible disruption to teaching and learning, we have worked to ensure that two truths remains remain true on our campus. Number one, that our scholars graduate ready to pursue
campus. We have seen these two truths remain true on our campus. Our CCI has increased from 75% to 90%. We we are making steady year to year gains in math proficiency from 6% in 2122 to 24% in 2425. While that number is humbling, I would like to say we have quadrupled our students' math proficiency in three years.
As a principal, the pride that I felt watching my first two graduating classes graduate from Lone Star High School, Oakland's newest high school, was immense. Most of these young people were here at Lone Star since its founding year, and they graduated with college credit and were a through g eligible. They were, in fact, most of this graduating 2025 class, over half of those seniors already had college credit.
Additionally, ninety four percent of them were a through g eligible. Eighty eight percent. 88% were admitted to four year colleges. We are in partnership with the Peralta Community College System as well as Los Pasitas and Chabot Colleges to ensure that our students are ready to pursue college if that is their choice. We also have partnerships with DCAC, OneGoal, and the support of our full time college and career adviser. We make sure that our students know the the options that are in front of
them, the full range when they graduate. As a former special education teacher and a foster youth myself, It is a personal mission of mine that every student is served at our school. Lone Star does just that. We welcome every student, including special education students, and our families are choosing our program. 13% of our students are in special education, and 10% of our kindergarten class have IEPs. We safeguard the success of all of our students by ensuring the greatest asset in
our school, the teacher, is supported and retained, which is why 88% of our staff continue to stand with us. Moreover, we make intentional effort to recruit teachers of color who represent our community. 7777% of our staff identify as BIPOC. Representation is not a nice to have. It is a must have. It matters.
While we are extremely proud, we also acknowledge where we have areas of growth. ELA is our area of growth, and we commit to getting better. Today, 44% of our students are English language learners, and 14% of those students are newcomers. While we have redesignated 22% of our students last year, we still have work to do to ensure that we meet the needs of our English language learners and our long term English language learners.
So last spring, we rigorously evaluated and adopted a new ELD curriculum across our elementary and middle school. We also adopted a new process for professional development where we collaborate biweekly on new literacy and data practices to review student work and talk about best practices for literacy across our school to support all of our students and our English language learners.
Chronic absenteeism. Oh, sorry. Hello. My name is Vera Jaro. I am the founding CTE media arts teacher at Lodestar. I also started with the org over sixteen years ago. At Lodestar, we have been working with great momentum to build the CTE media arts pathway. Students are, learning and creating with semi professional equipment. They are learning from guest artists. They are attending film festivals, and they are also showcasing their work at the SFMOMA yearly, all while forming powerful connections through internships and externships with community partners.
Building on that foundation, we have launched a new CTE health pathway, expanding opportunities for students as they explore their future career possibilities. Okay. I'm honored mhmm. I'm honored to be part of that growth, and I'm grateful to continue to be opening doors and creating new possibilities for our students. Thank you. Alright. Now chronic absenteeism has been a systemic issue, and this is an issue that we are committed to tackle head on. We have partnered with Oakland Natives Give Back,
through learning, through Learning Communities for School Success program. We wanna understand the root cause of, attendance struggles and we wanna make sure that our students are in school every single day. This is a partnership that is new this year and one that has already launched very successfully. We're fortunate to have an increase in enrollment this last charter term and a 5% increase this past year. We really look forward to five years to strengthen our ELD newcomer and special education
program. We have meaningful opportunities to partner with programs. Our school has a variety and integrates a variety of internal and community supports to meet the needs of all of our learners. We partner with community organize organizations like Vision Quilt, Seneca, Higher Ground, and Youth Alive to support all of our students and have wrap around supports for students in and out of school. Our babies mean the world to us.
Good evening, board and superintendent. My name is Alberto Reyes, and I am a Lowstar graduate of the class of 2025. I attended Lowstar since I was in middle school when it was first opened at this location. Low Star holds a special place to me and has helped me get through some of my challenge most challenging times. Now I'm currently attending Chabot College where I was recruited to play for the soccer team, a dream of mine that Low Star coaches helped me fulfill. My sisters, Belinda and Ariana, that are in the tenth and second grade here at Lowstar are very happy at their school. I am also still connected personally to Lowstar because I decided to come back as
a soccer coach for the men's soccer team this year and hope to bring back a championship this year with them. Our family deserves a community school like Lowstar where we can build close friendships and where all students have a chance to graduate and be ready to take on the world with their next steps, like me with college. We are grateful for your consideration of a five year renewal and the opportunity to continue to grow and get better. Let's go, Cobras. Okay. With that, we will now open for public comment. How many speakers do we have, mister Homer? Or mister Sejal, sorry. No problem. We have 10 speakers. 10. Hey. We have 10 speakers,
one minute each. If you are a student and hear your name called, we're gonna have students go first. So mister Seichao is gonna read off the names. When you hear your name, come line up, please. K. For public speakers, we'll have Juana Martin, Norman Garcia's I mean, Garcia, Talia Gonzales, Ian Estrada, Joseon Cilic, Tunisia Harris, Gio Modrano, Ruben Gomez, Unifor of of Ralo, and Kendra Jones. Those are the 10 speakers. Alright. Go ahead.
Good evening, school school mem board members. My name is Juana, and I am in twelfth grade and have been at Losar since the seventh grade. Did you know that fifty one percent of our graduating class of 2025 graduated with college credits? My older sister graduated from Losar in 2024 and is now in her second year at Cal State East Bay. Because of the support I received at Losar, I was able to take seven college classes while enrolled in high school, which is over 20 credits and money saved. Lowstar staff constantly check-in with me around my progress and make sure I am not
overwhelmed with the extra credit I'm taking. They have high expectations of us, which motivates me to strive to be a top student. My youngest sister is in fifth grade at Lowstar, and I know she will follow our footsteps. I also had the opportunity to travel through Global Glympse and develop my leadership skills by being part of the Spanish honor society, where we promote the Spanish language and culture in the Sobrant Park community and host fundraisers to support our events, which we fund. Los Star is the school of my family's choice because the staff make sure we feel included in all of the events and in our in my academic progress.
I appreciate your cons consideration of our five year renewal. Thank you. Next speaker. Hello. My name is Chandri. I'm in I'm in the twelfth grade. I've been at Losar since the sixth grade. With my time here, I've I've developed phenomenally. I've had a great college counselor who's helped guide me through tough times and ensured that I selected the best college option for me. I'm proud to say I'll be applying to several state universities as well as UCs and HBCUs. My friend and fellow classmate who graduated in 2024 is currently at Clark Atlanta, and I'm inspired by her mission to attend a historically black university. This school has played a big role in who I've become.
Thanks to the support I received at Lowstar, I was able to take college courses at UC Berkeley and BCC. I was able to join programs like Global Glympse and PeerForward. These opportunities helped me grow as a leader. Lowstar has truly been a place that's prepared me for my future. Thank you for considering our five year renewal. Thank you. Next speaker, please. My name is Gio Maggiano, and I am in fourth grade. I have been a Lodestar COBRA since kindergarten. What I love most about Lodestar are the teachers we have, like mister Java and miss Anissa, mister Mike, and miss Holsinger. My teachers believe in me, and they encourage me to do hard things.
They teach me how to be to do my work, but they also teach me how to be a good person. Both of my brothers go to Lone Star High School, and I know that one day, I will go to Lone Star High. And I am excited for the classes like physics that my brother Damien talks about and photography that my brother Caesar told me about. Please renew my school for another five years so I could go to Lone Star High. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello, board of directors. My name is Tanisha Harris. I'm a native of Oakland and a mother of seven with three children and 10
in Lowstar. I'm here today to ask that you renew our school contract. One of my children just graduated this year, and another one will be graduating next year. My younger children will be graduating 2030 and 2031. I wanna make sure that when they graduate, they have options and opportunity to attend a university if they choose to in the future. The experience with the two with my two older children in previous school was horrible. My graduate previous teacher wanted to demote him and did not wanna teach him just because he was on a spectrum. I request that the principal retest him,
and he was right where he needed to be at. And I'm happy to share that with his hard work, he tested above the state standard EO in the eleventh grade, and now my twelfth grader is just as amazing. She holds a 3.63 GPA, is a part of tier four. You'd be going on a third year, participate in higher grounds for the school after school program to provide tutoring for kids, k through five students in Oakland and both charter school districts. And I hope today you see the importance of Lowstar stand in our community. Our children need schools like Lowstar that have a place for every student to reach
their full potential. Thank you. Please open the school. Thank you. We'll wait one minute for the translation. Hello. Mister Copenhagen, if you can come up with me and translate. Sure. Good good evening. My name is Jennifer Arevalo. I'm a parent of a student at Lodestar. Lodestar, has been doing great work with TK and in early education as well. They have been helping my daughter improving her English skills, as well as providing homework for her in reading every single night. And, she even gained and earned a certificate in, for her advanced work in mathematics.
I wanna thank, the school, for the way the teachers and, parents are able to collaborate so that students can meet their goals. They even, provided a great, reading event called Lit for Literacy last year. So, I really appreciate the communication between parents and teachers and, thank you for letting me share that with you tonight. Good evening to all. My name is Eliana Estrada, and I'm a proud parent to two Lodestar students that are in the ninth and fourth grade. I was born and raised in Oakland, and I struggled in my own school journey feeling invisible and unheard in bigger school
campuses. When raising my children, I worried about most Oakland schools because of the struggles I faced. After some research back in 02/2015, I fell in love with Lodestar because it offers a smaller class setting and campus. As a founding family, I have felt the community connection and respect for all parents and children since day one. Lodestar gives the guidance, education, care, and equal opportunities that many children need. They allow student voices to be heard and understood, allowing progress specifically in English and math. My son has had the opportunity of taking math accelerated sports and being part of
student council. My daughter was reading at a third grade level in first grade, and both had a huge growth in test scores with a four point o GPA. This wouldn't have been possible without the dedication and time Loadstar staff offers to all students. Please allow Loadstar to stay open for our community and the education of our children. Vote yes on our five year renewal. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Ruben Gomez. I'm one of the, high school Spanish teacher in at Lost Ark. I would like to thank our organization and leaders especially, Rich Harrison and Doctor.
B for their strong support. Their help has made possible project that truly benefit our student and our community. Two key example are are the Eugenio Maria de OSTOP chapter of the Hispanic Honor Society affiliated with the American Association for Teachers, Spanish and Portuguese, and the Delhi Testing Center in partnership with the Instituto Cervantes in Los Angeles. This program gives the student more opportunities, recognition, and connection to the wider world organization. The organization also support our ELL students and newcomer student to cultural activities and by
putting solid curriculum in place. This support help students feel welcome, improve learning, and strengthen our school. I am proud to be part of this work. Thank you for your consideration for five years. Hello. My name is Talia Gonzales. I'm an education specialist and boys and girls soccer coach at Lodestar High School. I strongly support Lodestar's charter renewal. Our school has been an incredible asset to our community, and I'd like to highlight the strong work Lodestar has done for our students with disabilities. President Brohard, thank you for visiting our classrooms last spring and speaking with us about our special education program.
Our IEP students at Lodestar are making academic growth, closing gaps in reading and math. The school's individualized supports, inclusive practices, and high expectations create a culture where all students, not just some, can thrive. The families of students with IEPs reports report that they feel heard, supported, and the data confirms progress and outcomes. Renewal means we can continue building on this progress, ensuring that every child, regardless of ability, has access to a high quality education. Through our Alder partnership, I'm also mentoring future education specialists,
helping prepare well trained teachers who are aligned with Lodestar's mission to prepare a diverse t k through 12 student population for the college and career of their choice. I urge you to approve those star's five year charter renewal so that this important work can continue. Thank you. Mister mister Copenhagen, if you can, translate for the last speaker, please. Yes. Good evening. My name is Norma Garcia. I'm a parent leader at Lodestar. I also have two students there, and I assist other parents so that they can become more involved in the school, because you see this is a fundamental pillar of our school,
having great communication between the family and the school staff. They do a great job of supporting families because it's part of their philosophy. I, am one of the founding mothers, at this school, a school that, serves students with diverse needs, and we consider diversity to be one of our most positive characteristics. And there's a lot of opportunities for parents to get involved at our school, like, Coffee Tuesdays, where parents can learn to become better leaders at, Lodestar. And so I wanna thank the board for listening to my story, and and I hope you visit us soon.
You will, have a good time. Alright. What's up, y'all? My name is Hussein Selick, and I'm the physical education teacher at Lowstar and the soccer coach. So at Lowstar, our students are not only leaders in the classroom, but they are also amazing athletes. Within a few years of our athletic programs, we've had college commitments, several championships across our sports, an increase in student athlete GPA, and our alumni coming back to coach. Our school is offering a year round sports program for all our kids. Our students have the opportunity to go from flag football,
soccer, basketball, to run track. And most importantly, our school is Title IX compliant, allowing a safe space for all our female athletes to be able to play the sports they want, to be able to have access to soccer, to have access to flag football, to access to track, volleyball, basketball, any sports you like. We will be able to offer that at Lone Star. Please consider our school for our charter renewal. God bless. Take care. I'm Hussein Selick. Thank you. Now we'll take any board questions. Director Latta? Hi. Thank you for the presentation. I wanna just,
I think, appreciate your, transparency around your, data. I think that that helps, you know, I think just illustrate the progress that you've made and also the ownership that you're taking. So I just wanna acknowledge that. I did have a, a follow-up question, around the chronic absenteeism, which, again, I think, you know, you made a comment of. When I was looking at the, you know, the data, it also looks like for disabled students, it's nearly fifty percent for chronic absenteeism as well. So can you just address what specifically has worked for that, in terms of improving that, and what is the most effective for your community?
Well, I'll say, specifically, we have done some data analysis on who are the students that we need to do more specific work with. We've had some students who were absent almost the entire year due to to some home health situations, and so that did really impact the data for that specific group. So things like home visits, things like exploring different options for these these individual families, and then the work that we're doing with Oakland Natives Give Back around,
like, you know, what are the options for our school and what are the creative ways that we can support both the family and the need for the school to continue to enroll because we're not gonna disenroll our students. We do wanna continue to serve them, but we can only allow two weeks of short term independent study. So at the at a certain point, we're just gonna take the hit with absenteeism, but we are still providing work for our students. We're still checking in with them. Some of our specialists are doing home visits, but it does impact our data. Yeah. Yeah. And I just one follow-up,
which is that when I was looking through your policies, you do have, an involuntary removal clause. I'm just curious, if you know how many students were disenrolled by that or if that's it's Okay. Sometimes I think it's, you know, it lives on in our policies that we don't clean up. And then one other, question which is not related to this, but is it's about serving the whole grade, you know, kind of TK to 12, the whole family, which I, you know, I think I heard from families when I visited how meaningful that is. I am curious, though, the challenges that that creates just in creating coherent academic program.
I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to how you have managed that at the school. I I wouldn't describe it as a challenge. I I I would describe it as a benefit because we get to see the connection between how students learn in elementary and what they need to learn in middle school. For instance, our middle school teachers really get to connect with our fifth grade teachers before our fifth graders promote to sixth grade. And that's something that we typically, you couldn't do.
They get to shadow fifth graders before they even get to sixth grade. They get to meet them. They get to know them. We get to share some of the same curriculum. We get to see how the curriculum, you know, works with even within the different grade levels. What could be challenging is space. That's challenging. But the the the t k 12 system is actually more of a benefit than it is a a challenge. So I I wouldn't see it that way. I don't see it that way. Yeah. Thank you. Mister Wayne? Doctor Smith? Thank you. I don't have any questions.
I just have a lot of acknowledgments to make things that I heard that were really interesting to me. One of your students mentioned that you guys had a fifty one percent rate of your graduates leaving and going on to college with college credit. I really, really appreciate that. You guys also mentioned that there was 88% rate for, the graduates to go on to four year colleges. That's a real accomplishment. I heard 87% of staff retention. Yes. I'm very interested in staff retention and making sure that staff and student relationships are thriving in the schools.
It was very refreshing to hear, from a post graduate student from the school so that they can really share their experience and how they're living their life now. So I really appreciate that. And I just wanted to appreciate all of you and your patience. I know that these meetings can run long, but you guys came back and advocated for your school. So yeah. Thank you. I appreciate your principal. Thank you. Bye. Doctor. Williams? Just want to thank you, for the presentation and just say it looks like you have a really good program. Congratulations. Keep it going. Thank you. Hello? Okay. So as I mentioned to the others,
the other folks that presented, can you talk to us a little bit about what your school campus is doing to protect immigrant students in this moment and their families? So we have updated our school policies to include policies around our safety if we do need to have a lockdown procedure. We've also had several meetings with our staff and our families around, policies around ICE, around, neighborhood safety. We've also had particular meetings with families around how they can get resources.
We've had staff members who have taken the initiative to hold these meetings with families who are most impacted. How can they get legal support? How can they have community support? What's their circle of support within Sobrani if something were to happen? What would happen to their children if their children were at school and something were to happen to their family? So not only did we have update our policy, written policy, train our staff, talk to our staff, talk to our families, push out the communication, but we also talk to the families who were most impacted,
and and offered a different level of support with them. We're also continuing to do that. This process is taking up a lot of our time and energy, but we are going to continue to do that and continue to talk to our families about how do we continue to support each other within our community because there are a lot of community resources. There are a lot of safe places to be if there were something to happen. In addition, you know, it's not just our students and families who may be impacted.
There may be staff members who have family members who are impacted. So we as a community have to support each other. We've had a lot of intentional conversations and talks and calling in of how do we who are least impacted step up to support if something were to happen. Unfortunately, you know, we've had moments where nothing ICE hasn't tried to come into our campus, and that's a, you you know, a fortunate moment. The unfortunate thing is the stress and impact of the what ifs always lives with
us in our community. And so our counseling team has done a lot of impact, and and and work around talking with our students around, you know, how does this impact you internally? What what can we do as a staff to support our students? We have we've done work in crew, which is our, advisory section around how do we support our students with the social emotional part of the stress and impact of the conditions that we're all living through. So comprehensively,
we've done the most that we've done. Thank you so much for that, and please continue to do that work. Two other questions I would also I seek support in that work. And I know, like, you know, there are many people who have different levels of resources and ideas and something that is a partnership that I would love, our community would love, especially in neighborhoods that are really impacted like the Sobrani neighborhood of, you know, how how do we continue to find additional resources for our students and families.
So outside of this, if you have additional resources, because I know this really means a lot to you personally, and I hear you ask this question. And I I appreciate you for asking. If you know additional resources for us, I I really do ask you for that. Sounds good. And I would love to work in partnership in that way. Thank you. So I have, some academic questions for you. Your EL progress is very low and declining with the number of students declining at least one ELPI level larger than the number of students progressing at least one level.
Can you give us more details as to why that's happening and what corrective plan you all have? I'll take the first round, and then you can take the second round. Well, I spoke to this a little bit in our slide, but we we reclassified a lot of students. And so that level of reclassification did, hurt our our, data point. If we hadn't reclassified students, then we could have seen a different outcome possibly. But that's not the best decision for students.
We don't want students, in ELD if they don't need to. We do want our students to be able to take other classes and especially if they're moving on to high school, we want them to take those college courses and whatever electives that we have to offer. And we do have A lot of students who are, you know, hearing about our school word-of-mouth. Like I said, we had a 5% increase in enrollment, and many of those students are English language learners or newcomer students. And so that did have, you know, a difference maker in our data from 2324 to 2526.
And so like I said, we we had to look at that data and say, okay. What what do we need to do differently to make sure that we're adjusting our program to the to the students that we have? Because what we did in '23, '24 worked well, didn't work as well in '20 in the next year. So this year, we have we have a different plan of action and and we're working we're rolling with it. Yeah. Just to reiterate doctor b's point, this is an area of growth for us. If you look at the last three years on the dashboard,
the data has been inconsistent from yellow to green to red, and we own it. And we talked about, in our presentation, we adopted curriculum that we did for ELD through a really strong process with teacher input. We also recognize that we have an increasing number of newcomers, and that's something that we wanna get right over the next charter term. Thank you. Along with that, the number of newcomers as it's increasing, it also is plateauing or decreasing to some extent because of the national picture.
So, with that, how does how do you believe that that's gonna affect your ADA, in the future years? Today, we have a 93.6 attendance rate, and so we haven't experienced that quite yet. You know, I think one of the things that's important and doctor b talked about this, we have a strong culture. And we want to make sure that our strong culture yields strong instruction in the classroom, especially for those students who are newcomers or special education students. And so, especially with our work with, Oakland Natives Gives Back,
we're really tracking the data on who are the kids that are most likely to become chronically absent so we can intervene sooner, because that's not something that we did in the previous two years. And so we've adjusted some of our systems for that. But, again, it just takes daily and weekly monitoring to ensure that, what you described, isn't the experience that our kids go through. Thank you. And if we could also just get data disaggregating your newcomer population, and what languages they speak as well, in a follow-up. And then, lastly, can we also get your pupil mobility data?
Because that is also missing from the PowerPoint. Say that again, please. The pupil mobility data, that's also missing from the application. Thank you. I just have two quick Oh, Director Thompson, I'm sorry. Thank you very much, President Bullhard, and thank you very much, the Losar team for your presentation. I think it was very good. It's very strong, very transparent. And I don't have a real question. Just want to comment on something that I believe in, and that is vertical articulation. And I'm so excited to hear you say that you have fifth graders or or
they're able to be shadowed and see exactly what's gonna be required of them in sixth grade. I do believe that that type of educational, practice actually carries over and plays into academic growth of students. So kudos to you for doing that, and I think I wanna use that data point as something to to substantiate my claim that vertical articulation does work. Well, I'd love to have you or any of you come to our passage ceremonies at
the end of this year. We can see our fifth graders present to our sixth graders, and our eighth graders present to our ninth graders. And our ninth graders present to our eighth graders around what is a through g requirements, why is it important in high school. You guys can also participate and be guest panelists. I will invite you, and I will expect you to come. I like how you guys all respond to your thinking. It's good. It's good. Then you must come to school tomorrow, guys. And I know it's 09:45. I'm gonna wrap this up today. I just have two quick questions. And I did appreciate the visit.
I I appreciated the time with the, special education parents and the, teachers. But two quick questions. One, you mentioned in your ELA, and maybe I confused this, but I was curious to know what reading program you were using as you address your ELA. And again, I did appreciate, excuse me, your transparency in dealing with your scores. And then my last one is just a shout out to the PE teacher because I'm really glad that you are implementing title nine. I look forward to seeing those women athletes. So, much like the district, in terms of, working with our youngest readers,
we adopted, You Fly. I was watching the board meeting. You guys talked about that, last night, I believe. And so, we, did a lot of training and adoption for our early literacy. We also use the EL modules k t k through eight. In high school, we use fish tank. And again, one of the things that we do is, especially in our middle school and high school, we do have ELD one through four, depending on the levels that our students are in. And in high school, because of our block scheduling and, director Williams, you had mentioned this in the Charter Matters Committee meeting.
We feel that we've been able to leverage our four by four block scheduling to provide those meaningful ELA, ELD, guided studies instruction for our language learners and our special education students so that they could also access the core curriculum and not miss out on our CTE pathways that we talked about, our dual credit classes, and so forth. So, doctor Biel, I'll have you talk a little bit more about the experience inside the classroom. So one of the biggest changes we've made to our model is the way that we do ELD instruction in our elementary, which is still a shift.
Previously, we did ELD instruction where students were being pulled out in a small group model. And what we noticed is that students were missing a lot of time. It took a lot of transition time. It depended on a particular teacher to get there. It it the the time and the the the system wasn't working. And so what we shifted was the ELD model would be a push in model through our win block. So our teachers have small group instruction where a teacher,
a specialist pushes in, and then we have our teacher, a teacher in training, and a specialist working in small groups with our students. It's we are still in a phase where we are fine tuning this process, and we are we adopted a new ELD curriculum called bridges where students can work at their ELD level. It uses their ELD, scores from ELPAC last year, and it personalizes their learning. And then we use the EL curriculum that the teacher uses.
And then we also trained our teachers in training on early literacy instruction. So they are are also literacy specialist, and they can support in the classroom versus just being an extra disciplinarian or someone to support, you know, with behavior. They are they are instructional teachers as well. So that's our elementary model. We've also done some differences with our curriculum in middle school. And then in high school, we use our our teacher leaders, our ILT, to really think about how we fine tune the curriculum in ELD,
and ensuring that our classroom, instruction and our model where we don't have as many kids in our ELD classes. So they're very small classes. Thank you. Are there any other further questions? Okay. With that, the public hearing is closed. Thank you. Tonight by, folding the chairs, picking up, some of the trash on the floor. We'd greatly appreciate that. Thank you. Carefully, please. Thank you. And with that, our meeting is adjourned.