Unified's twenty four percent decline, it lags behind some destination districts that show 15% to 20% growth. A positive trend for Oakland is that primary grade enrollment is exceeding graduating senior enrollment. However, Oakland Unified is unable to retain primary school enrollment at the middle school level, thus losing the potential for sustainability. When students promote from grade five to grade six, the district is losing about 700 students per year.
Charter school students promote and enroll at higher rates in the charter middle schools and high schools than the district middle and high schools. The charters are showing gains of four fifty students per year. The data demonstrates that the charters are not the only reason for the shift. Other factors must be in play as students are leaving at a pace of $700 per year and shifting to charters at four fifty students per year. This slide shows I think we're one slide ahead at the moment.
Oh, I did. There we go. This slide shows the constant stable percentage of 75% of available students choosing Oakland Unified and 25% choosing Charters, despite the overall growth or the overall decline in enrollment in both districts and charters. This slide shows only two districts have more charter competition than Oakland, LA Unified and Twin Rivers. To understand the magnitude of the amount of site and charters the districts must oversee,
only 10 of the 58 counties have more charters in total than Oakland. Oakland is creating more responsibility and more complexity than most the educational program of its own students and increasing administration and legal costs. K-twelve financial experts agree that the following sizes are optimal for schools: 500 students per elementary site, about 800 middle school students per site, and approximately 1,500 students per comprehensive high school. However, only six Oakland sites operate above these optimal financial metrics.
Administrative costs, utilities and insurance costs escalate with the number of sites. General obligation bond dollars must be spread over more sites, lessening their impact. The other area to turn attention to is student attendance. Oakland Unified could gain $5,250,000 of total revenue per year for every 1% student attendance gain. The district must achieve 95% attendance rates per student enrollment to stay fiscally solvent. This slide demonstrates the impact of labor unrest and the pandemic on attendance.
Oakland has not recovered sufficiently from these events. Again, the district cannot lose more than $0.05 on every dollar. Attendance under 95% is not a fiscally sustainable model. Our firm has provided detailed analysis of every grade in sight for fall and spring for the district to address areas of attendance weakness. The previous slide was for regular program attendance. This slide is for special education attendance. Special education attendance pre pandemic used to be an area of strength for California districts.
Post pandemic, it is an area to strengthen. In conclusion, the district is in its strongest historical position to depart receivership with respect to process, procedures, and leadership. However, the district must do the following: increase student attendance, address the number of sites and charters it supervises, recapture students from competition. The other solutions are insufficient and incomplete. The district must reimagine itself to operate within the financial model of California public schools. Again, thank you very much,
Oakland team. I appreciate your courtesy and attendance, and I welcome any questions. So, president Burhardt, if you wanna open, for any questions. I'm gonna open for, public comment first, I think. Can the board please comment first since we we had a role in this and I would like the community to hear from the board before they speak? Alright. Board comments first. Director Hutchinson, you wanna start? Wow. You know, I I can't believe that we're here for the first public announcement that we're leaving receivership. But I sure didn't imagine it feeling like it feels right now today. We should be popping champagne in here.
That's how historic this achievement is. And when I first joined the board a little over four years ago, didn't think we could ever get to this point, let alone get here earlier than we even planned. And it is the status of ironies that on the same day we're announcing this historic accomplishment of paying off the biggest state loan in California history. After twenty two years, when we see the districts around us going into the tank and we maneuvered our way out of the darkness.
Of course, we wouldn't have been able to do that without Doctor. Kyler Johnson Trammell. And and of course, we wouldn't have been able to do it without our chief business officer, Lisa Grant Dawson. And I could have never imagined at the same time we're announcing leaving receivership, at the same meeting, a majority of the school board would vote to remove our superintendent. And, so when I first heard about this news a little over a week ago, I didn't even believe it till I talked to the trustee myself. And, you know, I know now, like they say in Avengers, we're actually in the end gaming now,
y'all. We're finally free of the oversight of the colonial model that we've had to operate under for almost a quarter of a century. And we did it with our homegrown Black and Brown leadership here in OUSD. And now at that point, I can't even be smile today because we have four directors who are risking all of the gains that we made. Forcing out the superintendent and don't be confused. The reason she's getting a payout is because she didn't resign. This wasn't her plan.
It hasn't been decided just like the other votes that happened in closed session. Now, this is now a fight y'all, because I don't know how we reopen our schools in August with what they're doing now. Forcing the superintendent out, I assume many of our senior staff, like miss Grant Dawson, will follow our superintendent out the door, because of how nasty school board directors have been to some of us. And please know, and I'm gonna say it here in the open mic, they're openly colluding with OEA leadership. And so today, they also refuse to vote to protect the district against the strike.
Thank you, director. And instead, they voted to protect OEA. The same four directors forcing our superintendent out are colluding with other people. So nobody's gonna come save us y'all. It is up to us as a community. We elect the school board. And if they don't reflect our will, it's our job to force them out. So as of today, they have declared Thank you, director Hutchinson. For them. It is me or them. And I don't care who you are. If you come and try to destroy my community, if you come and try to hurt us,
I guarantee you I will stand up every time till the end. So these people have been calling me liars out there in the public. Excuse me, doctor. Your indulgence and your time is up. That's what I'm here for. Other members. Today it starts. I wanna appreciate a really thorough auditing comment. I got a lot from this. I understand those remarks were directed at me. No, it's not directed at all four of us. Excuse me. Now and when election time comes, that can happen. But what I would like to really commend my commend I'd like to ask the
question, I guess. There were some things in here that I thought were really I thought were really thorough. I thought the memo was as thorough. I got through, highlighted all of it under there. I think, again, as someone who taught, whose kid went to school during her whole time as many of the people in our community has, that to leave this, right now is huge. And, I think again so some of the questions I had, I wanted to just, double check on some of these things. To me, I thought, I, Bailey, was very clear on charters. And the number when I looked at the number of charters that we have 27
charters and we have 80 schools, that number was really shocking to me. And I think, again, in terms of our enrollment, I know there are people here tonight from a charter school and I can appreciate their comments, but this really has been something detrimental to our district. And I'm not sure how to work together on that, but I think those numbers don't lie. I think the other thing that was really interesting to me, and I thought a lot about this was the thing that Oakland thinks of itself as the top seven school districts.
And even if we got all the charter people back, students' students back, we still would not be in that top seven. So I think as I started to think about our resources, I started to think about we can't spend like we're L. A. Unified. We can't we're not L. A. Unified as much as I would like to, you know, think about that. So I really appreciated the particularly the things we had to think about as potential risks. I think as we go forward in our budget work that I'm really keeping those things in mind and I appreciated the way that they were clearly laid out and
your explanation tonight, is Carolyn, your last name. So, again, I really appreciate this, and I think this really sets the tone for our work forward and our budget work and in setting our priorities. So thank you. I just wanna give you a shout out, Lisa, and give the superintendent a shout out for your leadership. It is quite impressive. And I know I'm not had nothing to do with all the work, but appreciate that I get to step into leadership at a time when we get to, you know, benefit from all that labor. This is I know it was not the mandate of the auditor's report to do
this, so this is not a critique. I'm naming it just for the record, for the benefit of my colleague, that I noticed that in the report over a hundred pages long, that student outcome isn't really addressed explicitly right. And so as we move into work planning and establishing the budget for 2627, that rooting some of the future decisions, all of our future decisions and students and outcomes and how we wanna leverage resources to improve outcomes is gonna be really important. We have the opportunity to take a step back and do that.
Director Simmons? I've known miss Johnson Trammell for a while. Through her son, we went to middle school together. She's a she's a great lady. You know? And especially, sitting on the board next to her, she always offered her help and insights and knowledge and wisdom. It was very open to ask her questions. She always made a safe space. You know, like a mom. She was she was a mom. She is a mom. So, you know, it works out great. But, you know, y'all y'all know I like to get up here and preach about,
you know, what we gotta do. But, honestly, right now, it's really you know, my my voice is trembling, and it's hard to speak because, you know, we did just have a major accomplishment, but it's real hard to speak on that accomplishment when you had to leave someone behind. You know? We got to the treasure, but we lost some we lost some some soldiers on the way along. So, you know, it's real it's real saddening because I was just I've been told not to leave anyone behind.
You know? So I really don't know how to how to process it. I'm at a crossroads right now because I didn't have a lot of information to go off of. And then it's just put all on me. So I really I'm really feeling for y'all because I don't I really don't know how y'all feel because because y'all ain't getting no information. I know I know y'all not getting no information because I don't I don't have any information. So so I just I want y'all to know that the student directors are we right there with y'all.
You know, I'm a I'm a always do my we're gonna always do our best to to speak out and to update y'all with what's going on and to keep y'all in loop. And but we really do have to find a better way of communicating. And there there is a lot of stuff that goes on behind that, that, you know, they might use it as an excuse as to not tell our community. But we wouldn't be here without our community. So I it just don't feel it's not fair.
You know? So I'm a just leave it there, but I'm really feeling for y'all right now. Director Batson. Thank you. Yeah. I think to your point around the presentation, I appreciate the thoroughness of the report and I, appreciate the presentation as well, since it summarized a lot of it. But something that has continuously come up in, my engagement to my community is the number of charter schools and the number of public schools that we have open in Oakland. And to really see it in this report, really thinking about the slide that said the current if we had the current Oakland
School District and charter enrollment combined, we would be at a higher rate than 45,000 students that we had in school year, 02/2003 when we went into receivership. And to me, that really showcases that we almost have, dare I say, 35 to 30 different school districts that we're trying to function within one jurisdiction. And that means millions of dollars are going towards things that are not supporting any student, regardless of whether they're in charter schools or in public schools. So, to me,
that's really a calling to figure out how do we, ensure that those public dollars, those are taxpayer, my dollars, all of our dollars, are being used in the most strategic way to support every single one of our students in Oakland. And having 35 different systems within one jurisdiction just does not have that, sentiment in mind. That doesn't include the amount of attrition that we lose, or the amount of folks that we lose to Berkeley,
to San Leandro, to Alameda, and to charters in those districts and in those areas as well. So, it's really concerning to me because I know when I, talk to folks in my neighborhood, when Parker closed, they sent their kids to San Leandro. They're like, I'm done with y'all, y'all are a mess, I can't do this. So, I know that we're losing students not only to, as the presentations that are competing charters, but also now that we are having low enrollment throughout California, specifically in the Bay Area, because of the cost of living, because there is lack of housing,
because there is income insecurity amongst our immigrant communities, because of the Trump administration and everything the federal government is doing, that is going to be making it even more difficult, to establish the enrollment and attendance that we need to. So, I think Director Brohart and I, in our meeting with, Senator Jesse Ataguine, really expressed upon them that we need to move from an attendance and enrollment to, like, give us the money for our enrollment. Because that is really, really key. We cannot do any of the work that you are asking us to do as
LEAs if we do not have the funds to actually go grab those students and bring them into our classrooms and make sure that they are learning. And so, again, it's I think those things are really the things that came out to me in this report, and are things that I've continuously heard from members of my community that have engaged with me. Doctor. Moore. Thank you President Brohart. I just wanted to first begin by, thanking Ms. Larson and her team for putting together this report. Secondly, wanted to publicly, appreciate CBO Grant Dawson for, not only your expertise but just your thoughtful leadership over the course of the five
years that you've been here with the district. And of course to appreciate, superintendent doctor Johnson Trammell, who's not here with us tonight on a prescheduled, commitment. I wanted to share, the, the report is is 88 pages dense and so I wanted to just share four, key highlights from the report that, I feel like are important to just articulate out loud and, there's a a message on our website that that talks about some of those main points too. So, the first key finding is that the district is in its best fiscal condition in twenty two years, including a reliable general ledger and budget practices and minimal audit findings,
plus the use of county treasury and financial Systems. The second is stable leadership with the same superintendent and, doctor Johnson Trammell, since 2017 along with, our chief business officer, Lisa Grant Dawson, and her accounting team. The third is no risky financial practices, especially, no no no non voter approved debt, no post retirement health benefits, no excessive no excessive executive perks, and no self dealing. And And then the last one is effective community engagement and responsible bond issuance.
So just wanted to make sure that some of those key findings, were elevated from the report. So thank you again. Are there any other Board comments? Director White? Sure. Just wanna say, miss Larson, thank you and miss Grant Dawson, thank you and and superintendent, thank you for the work that you've been doing over the years that you've been here. Just wanted to thank you again for just being so thorough and using this, audit report as a way of giving us an overall overview of the the district's registered. Mhmm. Hello. Hello. Hello. How we doing? Okay.
Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah. Oh. Did you wanna continue? Hello. Hello. Once again, I just, you know, we've come a long way, and, you know, with your leadership, you have put us in a good position. And just wanna thank you for, the authentic conversations in regards to how we need to move as a district, how we need to move as a board. I think that, you know, miss Grant Dawson, what you brought to us is, very good, perspective in, putting our students first. And it hasn't been easy. It has been back and forth struggle,
but, your solid leadership in moving this forward and getting the audit done, really says to your professionalism, that you brought to this particular position and to our district. Just wanna thank you. There's I think that we have, you know, ways to go, but you have brought us, to this point of paying off the load, which has taken some shackles off. Thank you again. Your leadership is, unquestioned. Thank you. Thank you, director, Vasquez. Yes. Thank you. I would like to first start off by thanking you guys for the presentation.
I also like to thank, former doctor Johnson Trammell. For the short time that I worked with her, she was really sweet and amazing and someone I could really rely on. And I couldn't and Max said it Doctor Simmons said exactly what I was thinking as well. But I also wanna address that I also feel a lot of disappointment just like all of you guys right now. Right now, we just hit a major milestone, and instead of celebrating it, we're disappointed and far more disappointed. I think just saying this the word disappointment is not enough to describe how we're
feeling right now, especially how I'm feeling right now. And just seeing the board behave the way that they just did a couple minutes ago is even more disappointing because we're here for answers and we're here for clarity, but we're not receiving that. We're receiving more disappointment and more confusion. So just my ask is for not just clarity for this not just the student directors because we also have we don't have a lot of information to work on and also to report back on the students, but also just more maturity in a way and just how you all are interacting with each
other. Like I said, we're all confused and we're all wanting answers. And we're and the more we see you guys interact with each other and just not really respecting each other just doesn't help all of us at all. So I hope moving forward, we could see you guys acting better or just communicating way better and just setting an example for future leaders. Thank you. Director Thompson. President Breaux Hart, thank you very much. It would be remiss of me not to thank miss Larson for a wonderful presentation. So thank you very kindly.
Also, for doctor Johnson Trammell and also miss Lisa Grant Dawson, I thank both of you for your leadership. It was absolutely wonderful. Miss Larson, speaking directly to your report, it's going to allow us, I think, to write the triangle. I've been saying for several years that our triangle is somewhat inverted. And what I mean by that is instead of, placing our academics at the forefront, making certain that our schools are providing our kids to be productive citizens in post secondary education,
I think we sometimes, and I use this expression, we minor in the majors and we major in the minors. And so I think once we turn things around, then we'll be able to continue the progress that we all want to see. And so, again, miss Larson, I wanna thank you for that report because you've identified salient points that actually point to the necessity of our writing the triangle and actually making certain that we put at the apex our student achievement.
Thank you very much. Thank you, Director Thompson. Public comments? Do we have any speakers? Yes. We currently have three speakers, Kim Davis, Ben Tapscott and Asado Lobala. Two minutes each, please. First, I wanna, repeat that a lot is going on. Oh, it's not on. It's on. It's the result of the superintendent's work. And they said that her work was due to this, she created stability and incompetence in her work.
One of the things that, stood out for me, of course, she talked about the charter schools. You can't do nothing about the charter school. That's a mandate. They have no ability to do anything. But you can do something about the recognitions that you have too many too many buildings. You have to do something about that. You have 20 over 20 schools with 300 students or less. You have to do something about that. I saw in the document that you're dealing with $72,500,000 and you have to do something to eliminate that.
And next year, then I was concerned with the federal revenue of over $53,000,000. We know possibly we're not gonna get that because you are a sanctuary city, and they are targeting sanctuary cities. I don't understand the indirect, 2526, a deficit a deficit of $12,563,578. Somebody needs to explain to me what does it mean by saying indirect funds. Where what does that mean for the public to understand,
please? You need to have some more accountability as it relates to how you approve agenda items. Do you have an agenda item for which you are putting money into a school that has, 300 and something students tonight. You can't be investing in schools with 300 students or less. But you're doing that tonight and I'll identify it when we get to the consent agenda. Thank you. Next speaker, please. I don't understand what's going on. I don't understand it. Because just a short while ago,
you extended her contract, gave her a raise, and then you're gonna go up there and discriminate and get rid of her? It doesn't make any sense. And I'll tell you one thing. I'm gonna call for a team out here to get rid of you, Jennifer. We can recall you. We can recall you. You should be ashamed of yourself. And the other four of you, Valerie, I don't understand it. I don't understand. All the work, we disagreed on a lot. That woman worked hard to get us where we are. And they just dismiss her?
I don't understand it. And it doesn't smell good or look good, and you should be ashamed of yourself. Ronald Mohammed and Kim Davis. Greeting. My name is Ronald Mohammed. I am a alumni at OUSD. I have two students in OUSD, and I'm on the alumni board from Highlands High School. What the superintendent was able to do hasn't been done. So she was one of the first to bring us out, of receivership. And then to have her to be in a hostile situation to where there's a parting of the ways,
I think that you're cutting your face off to spite your nose. Not cutting your nose off the butt to spite your face. You're killing your whole self. Everyone talks about her income that was she was, receiving from the district, but you never talked about what she was bringing in. The Salesforce, the Chase, the Warriors, the eat, learn, play. So her income is really minimum to what she brought in. She didn't have anything egregious on her record. She didn't steal money.
She didn't have any sexual get that. Anything that should be dismissive. This doesn't seem right this is the definition of an oxymoron. This is a paradox. This is a statement that contradicts itself. Congratulations. You're fired. That don't make sense. What kind of shit I mean, what kind of stuff is that? It makes no sense at all. But I don't as a representative, you should represent the people, and not your own not your own thoughts. So that means you you must have went to the people. I don't know what people that would be.
And talk to us first, and then you were to convey our thoughts. That's what you do as our representative, or you're doing your own thing. And this just doesn't go well. Kim Davis. Kim Davis, AV online, please raise your hand. President Brujor, Deque Coupe, registered speakers. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is Student Report. Thank you. Good evening to all the community members, students, teachers, board members. Here's our student director report for today. So we're going over student voice.
We'll be talking about the Oakland Youth Vote allocation meetings, student leadership at Fremont High School and their Arab American Heritage Month celebration, and student events. We're gonna be covering our youth action summit that happened last week on Thursday. So for student voice, the Oakland Youth vote, students met with president Brohard and shared updates on the Oakland Youth Vote implementation after their first youth voting this past year. They asked questions and tried to learn more about the school board and how OESD
plans supporting youth, voting in the future as this was the first time that youth were able to go and vote for the upcoming district leaders. For student leadership at Fremont High, students celebrate the air the Arab American Heritage Month celebration. This event was done by students with cultural performances, music, henna, and poetry. The students from all backgrounds participated and enjoyed all the festivities. And this was also the first started this event was started at Fremont seven years ago,
and it continues to be student led, which is amazing, and we love seeing that. Hi, everybody. So last Friday, we held our youth action summit where we come up with priorities that all that the All City Council governing board, which is composed of 11 students. Our priorities at this event, we come with our priorities for next year, and we also elect our new governing board for the following year. So we we did elect a new board, but we have to turn in our report on Wednesday.
And given was Friday. So we'll tell you guys who the new board is with a picture of them. A formal introduction. Yeah. Next next board meeting. And we came up The students told us some issues at their school site and some things that they believe we should prioritize for next year. So once we go over with our current governing board and come with priorities for next year, we will share that you with you guys at our next board meeting. But overall, the event was really great. It had a really good turnout. A lot of students and a lot of representatives from each school showed up from
each high school showed up. It was a very good day. The students became very comfortable. You know it was one of those things where you see sometimes people will be a little shy and a little nervous to start the day off. But then they're really they're really loose and they're really excited when the day is over and they don't really want to go home. So it was just very good to see that. And especially every year, more and more students want to be a part of All City Council. Which is such an amazing thing. Because that means students
are finally beginning to see the power that they truly hold. And they're beginning to understand the importance of telling your own story and being able to speak out and understanding yourself, but also the people around you and your community. We'd like to thank CCPA, Fremont, Claremont, Mont, MetWest, Oakland High, Oakland Tech, Skyline for showing up and just coming and being a part of these action summit. We also had new members from, all these different schools to be a part of now.
We're going forward. So it's really nice seeing these schools that used to not be represented or represented as much, now being equally a part of our team and now being able to share their voices. It was really nice to meet everybody and seeing everybody follow along, participate, share their opinion, share their voices. And I can't wait to see this new governing group of students, govern for the upcoming school year as well. So it was really nice, and I really enjoyed that day as it was my last, time being a part of this event since I am a senior.
So I feel very happy to see everybody getting along. And and that concludes our report. And thank you so much to everybody for listening, being patient as this meeting goes on. Thank you. Are there any board comments? Just shout out to the Youth Action Summit. That was awesome. I was only able to be there for a hot minute, but it was amazing. I did hear some really good feedback. I don't know if you all can share any of it. But one thing I will call out that I did here was transparency was something
that I heard from every student in the group that I spoke with. And so the fact that y'all mentioned it tonight, it's sitting with me. And, you know, let's keep talking about. I don't even wanna talk about it. We should do some we should do we should be better. So let's connect about how we can do that. Yes. Thank you for showing up and also for director Williams for showing up as well. I feel like transparency have been said a lot, but at the same time, not enough since we keep on seeing current patterns just keep happening and happening again. And I'm glad that you were also able to talk to students in here that
it's not just something that we are seeing. It's also something that students outside are seeing as well. So hopefully we can also work about that and make sure that this issue gets resolved as well. I actually enjoyed it too. It was, I think with both the, the Get the Vote group, I think it was, a really, different experience for me to really just listen. And I think that just hearing what the students were saying, the issues they were talking about, and just their real honesty with that in the, small group. I also like the walk through, the gallery,
thing of the different events that were, different movements that were student led I thought was was also, really good. So and I appreciate it. And then congratulations on your end of year moving on to college. Thank you. And also thank you so much for coming to the Youth Action Summit as well. Thank you. I first wanna start off by apologizing for missing the ACC meeting. I don't know what happened in my schedule, but I was unable to attend with Director Brohard, which was my plan. I do want to give Fremont a huge shout out. I was honored to speak at the Arab American Heritage Month celebration.
It was such a wonderful event with a diverse group of students. And there were middle schoolers, high school students, which I thought was really great. And then they were enjoying music, dance, performances, food. I want to give Sana a big shout out. They have some amazing chai that I was able to try out, and I have yet, and I have purchased much of it. And one of the best things that I saw there was the showcase of the robotics, team. They were able to take down a wall with the robotics, that they had created, and it was just like such a beautiful, joyful experience. And I want to thank the students and their adult allies for continuing to host
events like that at our school site. And I look forward to, many more events like that throughout the next year. Thank you, president Brohart. I think one of the things that we wanna do is when we have our next retreat is to make sure that young folks is a part of that so we can actually set out, like, our agenda and set out our code of conduct, rules for engagement, you know, and opportunities to see where all these transparent conversations can happen. I think one of the things that we've been struggling with on this board over my last four years is that our board orientation has not been very strong at
all. And so, a lot of board members get elected and then they're given a responsibility to be a Board member without actually the onboarding and the training and the orientation to really actually be fully engaged in how their behaviors on this board affect young folks and how it projects out. And so what I've been hearing time and time again from you is that, there's a level of expectation of Student Directors you have of us, And I think we all just need to come to the space and just really
kinda lay it out and figure out where where we need to be, so you can feel supported. I think that would be, you know, a little disheartening when you show up every board meeting and you kinda like, you know, I'm not understanding what's going on, what the dynamics are in play here. And I think that one way to really address that is to have that meeting for us all to kinda see how these relationships are and and what do we actually are standing on, but also to get what your expectations are as student directors. Right?
What would make you feel like, this would be, a a better experience for you. Because I think what what what tends to take place is there are conversations that happen in closed session. It's sealed by the Brown Act. But when we come out there, it's still folks are still affected by it. Right? And so it creates this type of energy, and and it sounds like y'all, you know, y'all look at it and be like, what's going on here? And it doesn't actually it doesn't really, you know, make sense. So I think we really need to have those conversations to be like,
you know, how do things roll out and what is our expectations, all of us together as a board. And I think that begins with with the restorative justice that you've been talking about. Right? Like, that's phase one. You came in. We did phase one. We should have one that's just constantly regularly going so we can get some, understanding of how, our joint cooperation of working together will actually make for a better forward experience for Student Directors. I look forward to doing that. I appreciate, attending the youth summit. I just really like the democracy in that.
I like how y'all engaged. The students made speeches. You killed it. Congratulations. Congratulations, Michelle. Can't wait to see what you're doing in your life because you're doing some big things. Congratulations. Look forward to working with you next year, brother Matt. Thank you. Are there any other board comments? Have ten minutes of public comment. Are there any speakers on this item? Yes. We have Ben Tapscott and Asolo Lobala. Okay. Thank you. Two minutes each. I wanna know why president Thomas hasn't been fired. He knew about lead in the water. 40 schools. And he didn't say anything for nine months while those kids are drinking that water?
And he hasn't been fired? And, Ben Cedrick, I'm not happy with you even a little bit. Took the boiler away from the Clemens and took it to another school that had a brand new boiler, and we have no warm water and back the discrimination continues. Even this issue we're talking about, is it race? What is it? And it doesn't look good. How can he do a charter school four weekends by my house painting, Saturday and Sunday overtime? Who authorized that? And we got a black garbage bag over a drinking fountain for two months,
Saturday and Sunday. And it goes on and on. You have closed seven schools. You have destroyed the pattern that parents put their child in a elementary school, then they go to middle school. You keep lying. Not you, the board keeps lying about schools. They lied about Lakeview, said the air is not healthy for children. They moved over for a short period of time, and then they turned around and moved all those people out, and now it's a charter school. I guess the air got better when it was a charter school there,
not a public school. How do you close seven schools in one part of the city? Seven. And you call yourself a board. Preston Thomas needs to be fired. Nine. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Yes. Next speaker, Salo de Bala. She said no. Okay. Is there anyone else? Yes. That could be public speakers. Thank you. And the next item is the superintendent's report. And doctor Moore, who is filling in for the superintendent, will be giving that report along with, I believe, some guest speakers. Thank you, president Brohart. Good evening, board, community, staff. Beginning this evening,
through the next four, board meetings and superintendent reports, we will be having, some updates presented by our network superintendent leadership teams. Each of those, teams will have about seven minutes to present. They'll present, together. So there'll be one presentation followed by another and then followed by board comment and question. So tonight, we're pleased to welcome, our network three and our middle school network team. And so at the podium, we have, doctor Monica Thomas, deputy chief of continuous school improvement, and Kate, I'm sorry, Kate Sigerman, our deputy network superintendent of,
network three. And And then we'll have, Cliff Hong, our middle school network superintendent, following that. So, we'll go ahead and kick it over to you. Would you like the Okay. Thank you so much. Good evening, board. Nice to see you all this evening. We are here representing Network three and excited to talk to you just for a very short amount of time about the incredible work that our teachers, our principals, our support staff, our students, our families are doing across our network. I do wanna do a special shout out for our, support staff in our in our front office as today is Administrative Professionals Day.
And I encourage everybody, if you have not spent a day or even just an hour, running a elementary school office, that you should do that. It's a really amazing experience and we have just we are so blessed to have incredible staff across Network three. So, who do we serve in Network three? We are, the leadership responsible for supervision of schools. 17 out of our 49 elementary schools, and 5,600 students out of our 17,000. 15 are TK five k. And two are TK eight. We have three dual language schools, and we have schools across our across the city,
of course, in Districts 2356, And 7. We serve 63% Latino students and 18% black African American students, eighty seven % of students receiving free or reduced lunch, 17% of students with IEPs, 44% English language learners, and 18.5% newcomers, the highest in the city. Our North Star as a network is really student outcomes and the student experience. And our both our vision and our values aligned to our district vision and values showcase that. We are focused on students first,
on equity, on integrity, and joy. And as we think about how we're serving and supporting our schools, as network superintendents, we do a lot of things. But the majority of our work falls in three big buckets. Bucket one is providing on-site side by side coaching and leadership development for principals one on one, but also for their teams. Instructional leadership teams, culture and climate teams, attendance teams, school site councils. And we do not do this work alone. We our second bucket is the work that we do alongside our network partners where
we strategically align our central services to the support that is needed at schools across networks and departments. We work with academic partners as well as operations partners to deploy support as needed to schools based on the needs that they have around their vision and their own values, mission, goals, priorities. And finally, we act as daily first responders to all of our network schools for safety and community concerns. As we think about the work that schools do around improving student outcomes, their own North Stars around instructional improvement,
we set goals annually, which we call lagging indicators, indicators that are only experienced once a year. And we set goals to progress monitor students across the year, which we call leading indicators. We help schools set goals for these lagging indicators to show year over year progress and also grade level proficiency, as well as setting goals for leading indicators to monitor progress along the way. Our implementation framework is how we are organized to help schools implement their own vision, mission, values, and priorities.
And it's grounded in the moral imperative that schools have about what should be right for students and the student experience. It's also bridging the gap between the experience that is happening now and where we wanna go and the priorities that are needed at a school in order to achieve that. So for the leadership work, that's about ensuring high quality systems of standards based instruction, developing teams, strengthening multi tiered systems of support, and leading for effective operation organization. These are the priorities that we develop across leadership with our network principles in order
to help them achieve their vision, mission, outcomes for their students. I'm gonna pass to Kate now to share a little bit about some of the progress that we're making and highlight also some of the challenges we're facing. Okay. Hi. So first I wanna talk a little bit about early literacy. And our leaders and teachers are so deeply invested in this particular strand of the strategic work plan around building strong readers by the third grade. We are excited that in the network, we have more than half of the first and second grade students on track to meet their growth goals this year,
which is an improvement over the past. And we have seen a lot of good progress from our tiered reading support system that we've been using around providing small group tutoring and one to one tutoring to help accelerate students who are not getting what they need in the classroom experience. We are really leading the way in this network with five schools who have been piloting different foundational skills programs to help bring our district towards a place where we can adopt a new foundational skills program. And in all of these schools, the teachers have been really invigorated by what they've learned through implementing and also the
improvement they've seen for students. Another area that we're looking at is joyful schools, really focusing on a joyful experience for staff as well as families and, of course, students. And we have a great partnership with Yale Education at Burkhalter and Hoover where the staff has been engaged in some deep professional learning that has been really invigorating to those communities. And they have become lab schools that other schools can visit and learn from, which has been a great inspiration for other teachers. The family engagement work we are doing with community schools has really brought parents in
to be partners with schools in focusing on their student learning. And a great example of that has been these exhibitions of student learning that have taken place across our network, where families are invited to see the amazing work that teachers and students are doing and really appreciate and celebrate their students as scholars and artists and researchers. And lastly, I really wanna emphasize the importance of professional staff. This is something we've been caring deeply about. We know that we cannot achieve results for our students without the adults who serve
them. And so two times a year, we've been holding ILT summits, bringing together leadership teams from schools across the network to meet together to make sure that we're aligned aligned on common vision, common values, common goals, and really build a shared sense of efficacy. Sometimes it can be very lonely in your own classroom or as a principal of your own school, and really being in the work together and feeling like you have community with other schools has been a great experience. This year at the midyear, we honored 40 teachers whose students had made more than the average growth at midyear
in ELA and I Ready. And we know that these teachers accomplish this through deep relationships with their students, high expectations, and just incredible planning and execution every day, and we really wanna celebrate them. And lastly, we have, a really unique and special community of principals in our network. We have a very high principal retention rate around 90% year over year that has really built a very deep community amongst our principals, and allowed them to feel that sense of shared purpose and shared community and has
really led to some stability in the communities that those principals serve and building trust with parents so that they are willing to send their children year after year and build relationships with those principals. So Monica mentioned our leading indicators, and I just wanna lift up some of the progress we've made in the network has really been around growth, and growth reflects students' learning across the year. And so we're proud of a lot of the growth that we've seen. However, students are still not proficient at grade level, and that is something that we must still be focused on.
It's wonderful to see growth, but we need to help all students reach the goal of being college and career ready. We are seeing a great, improvement in our attendance in this network, which is really encouraging that students are at school to get the benefit of the strong programming that's there for them. And the low suspension rate just really speaks to the strong culture and restorative practices in our schools. The only other thing to note here is that curriculum embedded assessments were really a priority this year that teachers have really been leaning into and have been a authentic
way to monitor the student learning based on the content that they're teaching and adjust and make changes based on that data. This last slide here is really just to say that everything we've been focused on in the network and across all the elementary schools is, of course, connected to the LCAP. And all the priorities that we have across our schools connect to the priorities that the district has as a whole, but every school is still able to personalize them for the students that they serve and the communities that they're in. Alright. Thank you. I'm going to pass it over to Cliff. Okay. Good evening,
directors and citizens of Oakland. Nice to chat with you all. My name is Cliff Hong, and and I am the Middle School Network Superintendent with the Oakland Unified School District. So many of you know me, but for context, this is my nineteenth year in Oakland Unified School District. I was a teacher, I was an assistant principal and a principal for ten years at Roosevelt Middle School, and this is my fifth year in this role. I also have a sixth grader and a ninth grader enrolled in our schools. And a fun fact, I taught President Brohard's daughter and she taught my son in school as well. So I'm pleased tonight to present on Middle School Network,
and I will be addressing intended outcomes, our theory of action, and our results so far. So firstly, I wanna give a little bit of context for how I think about the work. I start and end with student outcomes as we all should. We are here for students and society, and our city, our city of Oakland, is that unit of change. We defeat fascism by ensuring that all of our students can read, write, and do math. We beat racism and oppression when our students can think critically so they can see through false and hateful narratives,
and and we win when our students collectively adopt a higher purpose and a beautiful vision, which is to ensure that the earth is healthy and all people thrive, especially those who are disempowered and have been historically marginalized. That is what this work is about. That is what the middle school network is about, and that's what our district should be about. So with that context, let me tell you about the work that we've been doing. So, our mission. So let me start with our our headline here. The Middle School Network holds a laser like focus on student outcomes and uses an MTSS framework of strategies to deliver results.
Here are the three takeaways. Number one, student outcomes should drive all of our decisions. Every decision we make here should be about student outcomes. Equity means all student groups which achieve at world class levels and have a joyful experience, and success requires a commitment to the collective, a focus on student outcomes and alignment of all stakeholders. A brief so our our mission here is to provide all students with a world class education of a joyful experience. So every student, all students, that's where the equity comes in with a world class education and a joyful experience. And our vision is that each year,
the middle school network is the best we've ever been. The only way we can do that is if we know what we mean by being better. These are our metrics. So our key performance indicators are these ones that you see here. So we have a few under world class education. We have a few under joyful experience. We measure each one of these so that we know we're better every year. So, here's some more details around our leading and lagging indicators. Happy to go into more detail at a at a future time. Our framework. So here's our basic theory of action. So for every one of these key performance indicators,
every site has a team. For for example, the cost team for student wellness, culture team for suspensions, IOT for instruction, we have an attendance team as well. Each of these teams sets metrics and goals, they set strategies and they progress monitor. It's just a basic cycle of improvement. So we have that for every one of our KPIs, every one of our schools. For instruction, because we know that, again, we're all here for students and the most important staff members are the teachers. So we all exist for the teachers and students to have that great relationship. And so the focus of our instructional priorities are what's happening in the classrooms,
specifically with that relationship. So standards based lessons every day, every class. Student to student talk at least once every 15 minutes. Students shouldn't be talked to, they should be talking to each other to construct knowledge. Also, frequent checks for understanding and feedback. And every every teacher is part of a improvement cycle, through professional learning communities using student data to know if the students are actually learning something. And then finally, for 2025, we're adding scaffolding for rigor, which is about keeping standards high and providing support so that all students can meet
those high standards. Alignment to district initiatives, so joyful schools. You'll see that up here, we've got some examples of activities that we're doing at some of our schools. Every month at our principals meetings, we feature some of the the joyful activities happening at every school to make sure that we encourage and, and, we expect that our schools are joyful places for all of our schools. We also have an alignment to district initiatives around the empowered graduates section of of the plan. So the focus on math, the math KPI is about empowering graduates.
Finally, we want alignment with the state of California as well. That's why most of our our KPIs are actually, indicators that are on the California dashboard so that we hope we can deliver on those as well. Vertical alignment. So we already heard from one of our elementary networks and then you'll hear from high school next time as well as the other elementary networks. We are aligned with them as well because this has to be a TK 12 experience. We're all in this together and we're all in a partnership with each other. So impact data. So before I get to some instructional impact data,
just want to share about suspensions. And I actually didn't have slides for this because I wanted to give you the freshest data. So as of today, so this is compared to April twenty three of last year. So our network has had 45 fewer students suspended compared to last year that's an 11% reduction. We've also had 95 fewer suspension incidents compared to last year, a 15% reduction. Attendance, at the end of last year, we had a 34% chronic absence rate. Our goal was to drop that down to 31% and as of today, we're at twenty eight percent. So we feel like we're making progress and we're very excited about that progress even
though there's a lot more to go. Finally, instructional progress. This is our, fall interim math progress from comparing last fall to this past fall, last year fall last year to fall of this year and you'll see that we have scored more proficiency in every one of our grade levels compared to last year. So as you can see with the commitment to the collective, a clear mission built on equity student outcomes enjoy, a commitment to collaboration and kindness, a mindset of teams not factions and with hard work and accountability,
we can, we are and we will be successful. Oakland should be a model and a proof point for the nation of what works because we build our society on love, respect and kindness. Let's do it. Public comment? Do you have any speakers? Yes, we do. We have Ben Tapscott and Nasado Lobala. Excuse me. We have parents who've been waiting for hours to speak. You have moved this agenda around. We have little kids. We have students. This is so disrespectful. Put non agendized public comments on the agenda. Respect the public.
This is their opportunity to speak to you as a board. Let us speak. Do we have public comment on the superintendent's report? For superintendents for public comment, we have Ben Tapscott. I won't speak, so you can I won't speak so you can move to, just allow these parents to speak who are here with their children? So could you do that and move forward with with it? What item y'all talking about? Jay? Okay. Could we move to Jay, madam there? I'll check with the board. I understand they're making reports about our schools. So we'll, is the board in agreement?
It is the next item. With the board right now. Wait. In the audit report, it it says something about, people are not in enrolling in the middle schools. They are leaving the district and not enrolling in the middle schools. So I hope we address that issue that was brought up in the audit report. Thank you. We're going to continue at the, comments on the, superintendent's report. Further public speakers? Thank you. Okay. I'm sorry. I thought Mr. Tapscott had signed up as well. Are there any Board comments on the idea superintendents report?
So, a month ago, I started sounding the alarm about what was happening in Closed Session. Two weeks ago, I went public after and I appreciate the media in the Bay Area putting it on. When I went public, some of my colleagues on the Board were actually out there publicly calling me a liar. Now, I don't really care if some of the people up here call me a liar because I know the reputation that I've earned with the community that I come from. Mr. Hutchinson, we're talking about I know exactly what we're speaking about.
And I think in respect to our network superintendent's report, I think, again, you can try to cut me off, but this is the only director that you've done this to all night, and all of y'all talk off topic. So I have two minutes and nine seconds left. Now it is offensive to have a superintendent's report tonight when everyone up here knows exactly what just went down a couple of hours ago. So let's not get this twisted here. And so if if if the union leadership in the back wants to yell voluntary, then I'm gonna say, then why did the board pay her out? So there ain't no way around this.
And it is offensive today when we came downstairs, as we're talking about the superintendent's report, not one announcement from anyone up here on the board about what they just did. They think they can hide it from us. They think because they've been telling everyone, no. It's not true. That now when it finally happened, people are just not saying, oh, they said it wasn't true. Now there is there is a real racial context to what's been going on. And there's a real attack on those of us actually from here, invested here in what's going on. Now I'm gonna tell everyone the truth and I got my first interview lined up
tomorrow morning at KTVU at 10:30. So let's be real about what's been happening. We have four school board directors who don't belong here on the board. These four school board directors have been so disrespectful to our superintendent that the superintendent would rather just get paid out than to deal with it anymore. And so, unfortunately, it is up to the community to address the board because we elect them. Nobody else is gonna come in and save us. You didn't hear anyone up here announce a plan for what happens next.
They have no plan. You didn't hear them talk about the other staff that are gonna follow Kyla out the door because they have no plan. Because these folks are trying to hurt us and set up an indefinite strike for their teacher union allies. So let's just be real. Starting tomorrow morning, I ain't holding back none of the truth no more. Because it's me or them. I am from here, and I know my people elected me to do just this. So I don't really care what the rest of them do. It's up to us. And if we take it Take your direct messages and your time is up.
So tomorrow, it's on. Thank you. I'd like to be respectful to the folks that just presented and speak to the item that's on the agenda. So, I would really appreciate If if I'm allowed to speak to the truth, I'm at the last Excuse me. So let them help you in their lives. Excuse me, director Hutchinson. Director Hutchinson, you're out of order. Thank well, there we are then. So yes, I'd like to thank the presenters that spoke earlier. I guess I just have, like, a quick naive question around how the elementary school networks are put together.
Because I do know that some of my school sites are in Network three, but like I said, two, three, five, six, and seven are all put together. So, if I could just get a quick answer to that question. And I would really like to thank, Director Hong for, for his words. Not only around, like, the meticulous work that your network is able to do with our middle schools. And I can't wait to continue to showcase that because I think families would really understand the supports that they have in our middle schools if they knew more about those programs. And I've seen that firsthand at Urban Promise Academy,
at OOPA, and at other places, so that's the same school at United for Success and other places. So, I really wanna appreciate you for that and just bringing that, perspective to the work that you have going on. So, yeah, if you could answer my quick question about the networks. Hi, everyone. I'm Sandra Aguilar. I'm the chief academic officer for our district. And, the networks are three elementary networks. They have been historically formed in the way that they are formed now. We wanted to make sure that there was a mixture of schools in each of the networks. And so
I've got you. So that's how they have been historically formed. We do make changes. A couple years ago, when we had some leadership changes at the network level, I did, you know, make the change to have a couple of the networks, move into a different network, because we needed more stability and some, more support for certain schools. So because we had a vacancy, I did, recommend to our superintendent to move a couple of schools around. So, it's usually not, done like that, but we have traditionally wanted to have networks be,
a set of diverse schools. So it just has been And just one last question. I see that, are CCPA Life and the other, like, six twelve included in the middle school network, or are they part of the high school network? High school network. Okay. I'd like to see how our middle school network can support them as well, because again, I just love the energy so much and, like, all of the different pieces that, Director Hong, presented, and I think it would really strengthen their networks or their school sites if they were able to have some of that support. But I'm sure when the high school network comes up Yeah. Yep. Are there any other board comments?
Yeah. I just wanted to congratulate you all for the work that you shared today. I know there's a lot of work to do, but we can't do the work we have to do ahead without acknowledging and celebrating the the wins and, you know, leveraging the those Lessons for future. I I have a question along the same lines, which is how do the networks collaborate with one another given that elementary schools and middle schools and high schools are represented through each network? And, specifically, I noticed in the slides that there are different set of priorities for every network.
And so, how do you sorry. You were gonna say something. No. You I was jumping in before you finished your sentence, so I apologize. Just wondering how you, maintain alignment when there's you know, it seems like there's a different focus for each network. Just one, piece for the last part of your question. These are different grade span. So you you'll see for our k five networks, they'll have the same priorities. And then middle school is more particular to the middle school context and the same for high school. So you will see differences in running the grade spans,
same general areas, but different targets because they have a different context. But all of our elementary have the same, priorities that you saw today. The the same, essentially. We have the same priorities, we have the same coherence framework, and we do we deliver the same professional learning, but it is a little differentiated depending on what schools need across our elementary networks. We do a lot of work to align TK 12 PK 12, actually, where we, do alignment with both, cascading priorities or thinking about, like, what would this look like at kinder entry level,
a fifth grade leaving middle school, an eighth grader leaving middle I'm sorry. A fifth grader leaving elementary, an eighth grader leaving middle school, and then a twelfth grader. So we try to cascade it all the way down through work around our graduate profile. And that's the work that all the network team does together to try to have that coherence and also consistency for the student experience. One last area is that I do have some, particular structures in place, to work on these alignment, efforts. So I have what's called a division meeting that brings all of our, networks and central partners together to ensure that we're all furthering the work around the
strategic plan. So many of the updates that you receive from in the superintendent's report come from, that work, and we have to have some intentional structures in place. So that happens on Mondays, with the CSI division meeting. And then I also meet with the network superintendents to ensure that we're furthering the work, addressing any issue that's coming up, in our schools. And that's where, we tend to do the most collaboration, to ensure that our network suits are aligned in what they're doing. Director Thompson?
Yes. I'll make this as quick as I possibly can. I just appreciate, the report necessarily and especially the concentration on the north the North Star being academic outcomes. I really, really appreciate that. I noticed on slide 12, you showed, a great, great, piece of data as far as I'm concerned. It talked about half of the first and second graders actually making, tremendous progress and so I really, I really appreciate that. And, many individuals talked about something that I really believe in that's vertical alignment.
Well, I call it vertical alignment, but, I think someone just called it alignment. But but we all we know what we're talking about. And the fact that you're actually preparing elementary student to actually be successful in middle school, middle school students to be successful in high school, high school students to have a positive experience in post high school academics. And so I really appreciate that. I'm kind of dating myself a bit, but one of the one of the, the best books I've ever read was Good to Green. And I appreciate, Superintendent Hong when he talked about the fact that there's more movement that has to
take place. And so we never want to stop at good. We always want to be great. And we're talking about strategies to, entice people to come to our district. I think if we move or if we have that mindset, that would be part of what we would do, and that would be the guiding light that would propel us forward and then would also entice more students to come to the district. So thank you very much for leading a wonderful department. Director Lai. Yeah. I think I wanna, also just, appreciate the very clear,
outline about, like, leading and lagging indicators and kind of where we're at in terms of progress in the elementary school and looking forward to seeing more from the other networks. I also wanna, you know, shout out the middle school network. I have a seventh grader at West Oakland Middle who I have seen the changes over the last two years, at that school. And we've had a huge decrease at that school in chronic absenteeism, which I think has, really made a huge difference in, kind of, just the cohesion in that, school. And, having been at the Taste of the Black Diaspora event, and a bunch of the other events, I think it's also a great,
example of a lot of the work that is happening, at a lot of our schools that is really, not highlighted enough. So I appreciate, you all bringing that some of those specifics. I'm I'm looking forward to more, and thank you all for the work. I just wanna say thank you. I think, having more of these presentations, I think, really brings out not only highlights our work, but highlights our thinking about the work. And I think hearing from the network superintendents and the I know Kate Sugarman, I think really centers the work. I think it's something we've been working on in teaching and learning and something we
hope to bring to the board as more discussion about student achievement. So, thank you. I really appreciate it. And, Cliff, I do actually see that my daughter is a teacher at Brewer, and I think she's been pretty excited about some of the things that are happening as well, so great work, thank you. And with that, we will move on to J, which is public comments. And I understand that you have a group of speakers. How many speakers do we have, Mr. Hals, for public I'm sorry, Mr. Sejia? We have 24 speakers. How many? 24. We can give a minute each.
Yes, a minute each for the speakers. Thank you. The first five speakers are Oliver Brennan, Kim Davis, Sheila Haines, Cecilia Perez, and Diamond Craig's. Can can I ask I know that that they've waited, so would it be possible to have the speakers? Yeah. Yeah. Miss Keane, if you have can garner your speakers together, then if you guys wanna come up first, that's fine. And again, I'm looking forward to hearing I'm hoping that these presentations also highlight the work that OUSD is doing as well. Thank you. First speaker, please. Good evening.
My name is Cecilia Perez Cervantes, and I was born and raised in the town, and my family have no plans to leave anytime soon. We are here as FEA, Families in Action for Quality Education. President Brohard, when I reached out to you to give a courtesy heads up on what we were planning to come tonight, you told me not that it would be inappropriate for us to come as a united community of hundreds of Oakland parents, grandparents, students who are concerned about the quality of our kids' education because there were other important things on the agenda. We came anyways because 80% of our black and brown students are getting left behind.
They can't read or do math at grade level, and we're calling for that to stop now. This is deeply rooted for us as many of us did not get a quality education, and the same remains true for our kids that give up on school, feel left out and not seen because the education system is not set up for them to succeed. We are called to lead because our kids are brilliant, but they deserve to be able to read and do math at grade level and to be prepared to go to college when they leave Oakland schools. Board members, we need your courage and your leadership and your willpower to reach these goals. If we continue improving at our current rate,
it will take four generations for all of our kids to be at grade level. We cannot wait. We will not wait. I'm really gonna ask that people honor the one minute so that we can entertain all speakers. Thank you. Okay. I My name is Diamond Griggs. I am an eleventh grade student leader with PHEAA for two years, and I worked on the resolution to advance black and brown student achievement last year. Last year, we worked with you to pass a resolution for black and brown student achievement, which promises that OUSD will double proficiency in math, ELA, and increase A G for our students to 80% from 50% currently.
We thank you for your support of these goals. This year, our leadership team conducted research action meetings with six policy makers and school system leaders to understand what is needed to reach these goals and what is getting in the way. This year, we also studied the very difficult academic budget facilities and enrollment challenges that we are facing in OUSD, as well as the recent actions to prematurely remove superintendent Kyla Johnson Trammell. We want to be clear, we support keeping stability in the district and keeping superintendent Johnson Trammell in her role.
So after all of our research, we came up with solutions and evaluated them for how much impact and effort each takes. Tonight, we are here to share our top solutions with you and ask for your support. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening. Good morning, members. My name is Corin Foster, and I'm a father of four students in OUSD. As a parent in elementary school, I have dedicated myself to making sure my daughters and son receive a different experience than I did. Yet I did not know much about my child or how my child's school is performing through literacy and programs like FEA. I've learned so much more and learned how to help them and help the school
help them succeed. That is vital information that should be easily available to every parent, and this is why I support demand number one. Parents must know. Four, we call on you to adopt the policy so that all open schools have an expectation system and supports for establishing parent teacher relationships and home school collaborations. Our schools also need data transparency. We ask that all schools post data on their front doors or school website pages. None of us can do it alone, and we can take act we can't take action unless we know the reality. Or we need you to set this policy so that all schools can put their attention towards helping every parent become a parent,
a partner in their child's education. Hello. My name is Tanisha Harris. I'm a native of Oakland, a parent, and a product of OUSD. President Breaux Hart. We as families expect all schools in Oakland, traditional district, or charter to discuss academic outcomes in math, ELA, and a through g outcomes every month. You know you value by how you spend your time. Our school board does not spend enough time on what parents care about. Our students reading, writing, math, and a through g. This is why we are we as families support demands too.
Transparency and accountability. We call on you to make sure that the board is publicly discussing our district academics every month. That is the only way to be transparent in how we are getting or how we're gonna get to our goals. And last year, I was here advocating for the advancement of black and brown students, and I didn't feel welcomed by some of the board members. Matter of fact, you and the vice president and mister Van Sedgwick both said no to the advancement of black and brown students. Transparency as well is not in making decisions behind closed doors.
Transparency is including us in your decisions. And I need all the adults in this board and in this room to get comfortable with being uncomfortable because that's the only freaking way we're gonna have change. And you gotta go, lady, because you're not for our babies. I'm done with y'all. Good evening, board members. My name is Sofia Allgood, and I'm a single mom of three black and brown sons. Four, did you know that there are 28 schools in Oakland that are in single digits
in their math performance? Bet you didn't know that. As a parent, I think it's crazy that students are not performing well, and the district admin and staff are not being held accountable. But here we are to bring solutions, And that is why we're demanding, too, transparency and accountability is key. Last year, my son's school had to go through a renewal process and prove that we are serving all our schools equitably and providing quality education. We are demanding that Oakland Unified School District schools,
especially underperforming schools, go through a renewal process. For schools that are not providing quality education, they should be redesigned and or merged. As a parent, we know our kids only have one chance to get their education, and we won't wait for generations for all these schools to be improved. I call on you as a board as a as a school board to hold all schools accountable for the student outcomes. Thank you. Can I have a translation, please? Just a minute. We're going to have a translation.
Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Good evening. I am a parent leader. My name is Katya Caballero, and I am a parent leader my mother leader in Community High School in Greenleaf Green Lead. And I know that, we need to we need to establish and I apologize. We need to we have students at Fremont. We have schools at Fremont. Fremont, or is the school district in Fremont has 40 schools. Meanwhile, Oakland has 80. And so and yet, they have the same funding. And so today, we need to sorry. The interpreter has a little bit of technical issues.
I apologize. Okay. So we need to establish then we need the board to consider a realistic number of schools so that we can obtain the funds that we need. Our district budget is in a deficit, and we are spending more than we earn every month. In order for our students to be benefit, we need a system that is, more realistic. Only to I work in my school. And in order for our students to read at a grade level, we need to do something. We really need to change things at a different level.
I I work as a parent leader in my school, and I inform parents about how only less than 20% of our students are leading at reading at grade level. And so we really need you at a higher level to do to do something, to take action. Because if we continue having this system and the same number of schools, things are not gonna work. We really need to recognize and make changes. Thank you. Next speaker. Thank you. Good evening, Ward. I'm not even gonna bother introducing myself. This minute is not for me.
It's for one of my students that didn't have a chance to speak tonight because of changes to the schedule. And I will wanna say, I appreciate most board members at least looking up at us while we're speaking. Valerie's been on her laptop this whole time while we have parents up here speaking. Hello. My name is Sarah Raines and I'm a senior at Oakland Tech. I am here because I care deeply about making sure every student in Oakland has access to a high quality education. I've been fortunate to be part of programs like PeerForward that help students prepare for college and those supports have made a big difference in my life. But I know too many students who haven't had the same access to resources and
that's not fair. That's why I stand with Demand three: We Can't Wait. Redesign for the Present and Future. Imagine if every OUSD school had 400 students. That would mean $16,000,000 in funding. With that, our schools could have could finally have, things students need. More mental health support, restorative justice programs, college and career guidance, after school programs, art, music, and sports, and better paper staff who show up for us every single day. We're asking you to re redesign the system not just for the future but for right now because students like me and so many others can't wait. Thank you.
Thank you. Next speaker, please. And quick translation, please. One moment. We're gonna have translation. Hello. I am a model leader at CCPA, and, we really we have been studying this subject for more than two years. A a couple of year ago years ago, you approved the resolution for improving the outcome academic outcome of black and brown students. And I congratulate you for the improvement in the results for of A to G requirements. However, math is still stuck for black and brown students. And tonight,
I ask you to be brave and to prioritize reading and math for students and the a to g outcomes for students. And tonight, we I ask you to support our demands and to improve, the collaboration between parents and teachers in all the schools and also provide parents with all the data. We need to work together, and you need to have these conversations on a monthly basis. If you want change, we need to change. Next speaker, please. This is a call to action. I am Leila Wiley Booker,
a product of Oakland Public Schools including Emory, Cox, Amherst, and CasaMonte, And I thank each of you for your service. However, it's time to make a change. As a mom, I'm coming to you, ensuring that I'm making a change and getting more involved in my kids' education. Can you make a change and put your kids' reading our kids' reading math and college access first? Making a change is hard, but you can do it. We call on you to implement a renewal process for all schools, especially ones that are not doing well.
Merge and redesign schools so they can better serve student, except that Oakland needs less schools than it has today. Why are we starving and cutting school budgets when we could increase resources if we have fewer schools. Additionally, we are in support of prioritize prioritizing as much stability as possible at OUSD and keeping superintendent Johnson Trammell in her position and being transparent with families and communities when
decisions like this are being made. Board members, tonight tonight can be the night. For board members to change the benefits for all all kids. Do the right thing. When family rise Open rise. When family rise. Open rise. When family rise. Open rise. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello, board. Thank you so much for your time. My name is Vivica Ekoy Walton. I am a parent, community member, and a family and community organizer with Families in Action for Quality Education. I'm speaking today as a very concerned member of this community,
deeply upset by the recent decisions made by the school board to force out the superintendent without any form of public transparency or input. This decision made behind closed doors raises serious questions about the integrity of this board's process and the trust that we all as constituents have placed in you as public officials. Removing a superintendent, which is who is a key figure in shaping the direction of the district, should not be done lightly. It is an action that impacts not just this administration, but the entire educational experience of our children in Oakland.
You owe it to us to justify your actions thoroughly and openly. Without this transparency, it's hard not to question the motivations behind this decision or the allies that are in the community should have a voice in this process. To operate The community should have a voice in this process. To operate without our input is a disservice to the people who voted you all into leadership. We deserve clarity, honesty, and above all, accountability in all decisions that impact our children's education. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Thank you, OUSD, parent of two. Last August, when superintendent Johnson Strumel signed a three year contract, which was a two year extension from this school year,
we were fortunate that we could use these two years to do a deep and wide search to find a successor, a robust succession plan. What is happening now? The joint statement email arriving in inboxes all over the community right now is a load of baloney. It's sugarcoating determination of a three year contract we signed just nine months ago as if it's all a happy agreement. Will we find a new property qualified person to succeed our superintendent by July 1
in two months instead of two years. What does an interim superintendent mean? Will this person become the actual contracted superintendent? When? Will it be a three year contract? Will you terminate it after nine months? Will we stay solvent after July 1 with lots of challenges still remaining as mentioned just now in the physical systems audit report? If we do not because of instability, we can look back to a very poor decision taken tonight behind closed doors. Thank you.
Are there any other speakers? Yes. Next speaker, are Kim Davis, Sheila Haines, Carmen Jimenez, Stefisha Eko Walton, Jorge Lerma, Ben Tapscott, Carrie Kaufman, Ronald Mohammed, Asolo Lobala, Ivy Ranger, Martel Price, JD Willison, and Jack Nelson. I will go ahead and allow Sheila Haines to speak. If you can unmute yourself. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes. We can hear you. Hi. My son and all children like him, they have suffered so much. They're they're not even allowed the opportunity available to them.
He still hasn't recovered from the board's actions a decade ago, learning online for five years. Miss Bachelor, although I appreciate that you returned my email, what I wasn't told was that the $1,000,000 block grant for music was actually taken and used already. The fact that this grant was intended for music and arts funding and you found a way to use it for lead abatement, I'm upset at the board for passing this. The funds could have been taken from another source. This is a serious attack against our students. As this marks autism awareness,
the actions of the board continues to prove most harmful to our students with autism and other disabilities who rely on music for learning with the pathway to gain other skills, and I'm still waiting to hear back about my resolution. A million in funding could have funded several schools and serviced hundreds, if not thousands, of students who can greatly benefit and help with the consistency that they desperately need. My son and children like him have suffered enough. They should be able to get the services that they need available to them without the need of an IEP.
Prop 28 funding funds for so much, but to not provide the surf resorts to my to not provide the supports necessary to our students when the funding is there. You keep taking, and to take in this way is very harmful. I hope surely hope that the board does better. We need a board that's not gonna keep causing harm to our most vulnerable students. Stephisha Ekoy Walton. If you can unmute yourself to speak. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Stephisha Ekoy Walton, and I'll just start by saying that, it's already widely known that black women in executive leadership positions are held to a
higher scrutiny and that they face, like, harsher perceived shortcomings. But, like, now it's y'all turn. Jennifer, Valerie, Cedric, Rachel, there's gonna be a lot of faces on signs. Y'all said y'all didn't like y'all faces on signs last time we came, but we coming. I would like to say that, like, your actions are weak, but, like, that's a little bit too kind. I'm realizing that it's really your character that's weak. And the necessity, like, for you guys to remove Kyla, it really just perpetuates the cycle of the presence of a black woman being perceived as a threatening power to a white supremacist plan.
Oh, yeah. And for me, that's a plan that, at this point, includes an uncle Tom. And so I'm sorry for my harsh words, but I gotta point out the fact that less than 2% of superintendents are black women. And before y'all spoke today, that 2% number, we just had to deal with. After y'all spoke today, that number went down a little bit more. This me. Look how pioneers like September Clark and like Mary McLeod Bethune were, like, dismissed and marginalized despite all of their historic contributions.
That's exactly what you guys are doing. And, like, the last thing that I'd like to say to you guys is that, like, the representation of black women in leadership, it really does lead to the improved outcomes of our students, especially our black students. So you gotta ask yourself if what you have just done is truly equitable. And when you go to sleep tonight, I want you to ask yourself, do you really care about black kids? Do you really care about brown kids? Because your actions don't say that you do. Next speaker, please. Hi. My name is Gary Kaufman. I'm the President of the United Administrators of Oakland School.
I come here to speak to you guys concerns UAS members have been experiencing all year. It has persisted and it has gotten worse. OEA leadership has consistently and inappropriately targeted site administrators in serious and unsafe ways. Site administrators have been intimidated, retaliated against, had campaigns targeting them, providing false and inflammatory information and threatened them with physical harm by OEA leadership. Our members have been targeted with language such as, I'm gonna kick her ass. We will find you in the community.
And more recently, we control the Board. We got Kyla fired. We can get you fired. These behaviors have been conducted and encouraged by OEA leadership. It has led to multiple complaints being filed, multiple workplace violence claims being filed and has created unsafe working conditions for our members who don't feel safe walking to their cars at times due to this. They make threats and then they return to our sites and intimidate our site administrators. It happens over and over and over again. It is wrong and it takes the focus off of our students. OEA leadership has asked for deescalation,
but all they have done is escalate it. OEA leadership has targeted our Black administrators at an inequitable rate in an attempt to intimidate them. This has been pervasive and it has been ongoing. The district leaders have not responded to the complaints. OEA has made it clear that they have control of the board so the board won't support our principles. Today is just another day. Nothing will be done by this, by the school board. Nothing will be done by senior leadership, partly because they don't have the board support. It is a very sad state of affairs and the ones who suffer are the
students. Finally, UAWS is very concerned about the firing of Kyla. We are very concerned about the negative impacts this will have on our students and the lack of clarity of a plan for transition and generally no transparency at all. Thank you. I am deeply concerned and disturbed, about the actions and behaviors of adults on oh, Carmen Jimenez speaking as Carmen Jimenez. I am deeply concerned and disturbed about the actions and behaviors of adults on our campuses. As a former student leader who has sat on the school board, I am well aware of the actions and behaviors of adults that manifest during times
of great stress and uncertainty like now. But even so, this does not justify them. In my senior year of high school, I was grabbed by a school board member when their emotions got the best of them. Luckily, I had a community school manager who made me feel safe. It was a traumatizing event and, in all honesty, made me want to never return to this space. I am noticing similarities and recent altercations, and I am disappointed at how adult colleagues are choosing to act. It is important to protect all staff, including our principals. I do not want to normalize this behavior because it is not normal.
And we as adults need to model how to navigate through conflict respectfully and safely. Just as we continue to hold our students accountable for their actions, we need to hold ourselves, the adults, accountable as well. I choose to return to this space because I do not want anyone to attack, threaten, harm anyone. We need to do better. How dare we encroach in the safe spaces of our young people? I do not want OUSD to become a space where students and adults feel unsafe and belittled. It is not normal to want to threaten people. Thank you. Praise god. Thank you. Greetings. My name is Martell Price,
and I'd like to say that I've been associated with OUSD for thirty eight years, thirteen years as a student, seventeen years as a teacher, and the last eight as an administrator at Oakland Technical High School. I came here this evening to state today or this evening to express my dismay and sadness around the attacks on one of Oakland, OUSD's own Nydia Baez, the current principal at Fremont High School, who I personally believe is one of the best principals in OUSD. It saddens me that one of Oakland's own principals,
a former student at Fremont, a former teacher at Fremont, is being vilified around the decision that was made in the best interest of our children and the school. The fact is Nydia Baez bleeds green and gold and cares more about that community more than anybody I know except for this man. And to hear her motives and decisions be questioned is sad and upsetting. As a former teacher in OUSD and a current parent and administrator, I would rather see those who are selling her abilities and job performance to focus on ensuring that all of its members are fully and properly credentialed.
As we all know, this is such an important requirement for teaching as it is a profession where training and professional development and growth and success are critical for success. Please stop or cease with the attacks and let's focus our energy elsewhere, like on our rogue president, or on how we can improve literacy rates for all of our students across OUSD, not tearing down one of our own. Let's go, OUSD. Appreciate y'all for being here and taking it all. I I really appreciate that people wanna be fair.
And so in being fair, we quite often say we wanna take care of our black and brown students, and we really do wanna do that. But we have some inequity going on related to our Black and Brown students. So you have a department of English Language Learner Administrators. We have 23 administrators related to serving our Brown students. You have five language specialists. You have a director coordinator in multilingual programs. You have seven newcomers focus administrators.
You have an interpreter. You have a Spanish lit lit literature specialist, a business manager, an executive director, all related to our Brown students. You have an unaccompanied immigrant youth specialist. You have a curriculum for newcomers. You have schools for newcomers. And you don't have anything for black kids that are specific to their needs. So we can't say black and brown because there is no sharing of the issues. Black and Brown students have needs, but you're not addressing the needs of Black students in this district.
Next speaker please. Hi, thank you. I think one thing that allows for any public body to maintain its legitimacy is for that body to be able to explain its its decisions to the public, especially a major decision like separation with the superintendent, especially when that contradicts a recent board decision just nine months ago. So can we expect an explanation? Because I'm trying to figure it out, right? I mean, I don't think it's because of performance. All the numbers that we see continued bend upward. The report from the financial auditor specifically mentioned, you know, long standing and stable leadership is one of the attractions of of this district.
When you read the report from the bond agencies, the same thing that they mentioned, that's an attraction, you know, that keeps our borrowing costs lower. It's actually the capriciousness of the board that raises the borrowing costs. And just from a common sense perspective, I mean, there's a huge complex organization that seem like institutional knowledge and, you know, long standing relationships are essential. So I can't figure it out. We had one director up here saying that it was for the political expediency of some of the board members. That's the only explanation we've heard. Please disabuse me of that. You know, I hope that that is not the reason.
That would be a shock. That would be a scandal. And don't, you know, don't let us leave here today thinking that, please. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi. I'm JD Woloshen. I'm a parent of two, sixth graders in OUSD. And, I know there's obviously a lot of people here that are believing the narrative that's been weaved by the board member who violated the Brown Act and manipulated the press. And the announcement tonight of a voluntary separation and the joint statement sent out on Parent Square tells me that there was indeed no actual ousting,
but a voluntary separation. And, I I am also wanting more information, but I think that this accusation that this board has been nasty, coming from the one person on the board who has displayed nastiness and disrespect, is, laughable. And so, I just wanna say that, you all should be proud of yourselves for, bearing this with such grace and non reaction, because I'm not sure I could do the same. Thank you. This is our last speaker.
Bye. Tough meeting tonight, but, at least, mine's mostly positive. I wanna thank, he's not here, Mike Hutchison, John Sosaki, and mister Dexter Moore, and, of course, miss Skyla Trammell Johnson for, she wrote me a thank you day. I got money sent from one school where it didn't belong to McClimans, Castlemont, Skyline, and Oakland Tech. And I'm very happy about that. Very happy that it came out that way because I lost a lot of sleep over it. This took over a year, but it's done, and I'm very happy.
I'm also, as parent and bachelor, appreciate the facilities meeting last week. It was really good. And I hope that you guys talk over the Beam John Beam, Fardella possibility for the naming of the, complex up at Skyline And, look forward to, to, hopefully do a presentation maybe May 13 or twenty seventh. Thank you. Thank you. Checking if Ben Tabscott is still here. Okay. Thank you. That concludes public comment. Our next item is the, vote on the student consent report.
Do we have a motion to accept the student consent report? I mean, student, discipline report. Sorry. Yes. I motion that we accept the student, discipline report. Second? I'm assuming there are no there's a public comment on this. Do we have any speakers on this? Yes. We have Asolo Lobala and Bim Tapscott. We have two facility items, L1, which is for Urban Promise. It's 371 students. L three is Emerson with 332 students. And for that one, that's a roof replacement. That's and that's over that's a half a million dollars.
So I I'm I don't know if you are considering at least before you vote, or should we be investing in schools with low numbers of students if we're gonna have to eventually close those schools? I'm looking at item l 12, which is a service agreement, which will, generate, solutions related to, disparities and disagreements. I don't know what that's about. I would love to know. L 13 is from a Climates, about bias training. I don't know what that's about, what what kind of bias training we need at McLimates.
In other words, I'm trying to get to the point. You are proving stuff, but you're never having a discussion that asks questions on why or when or is it enough. You don't say anything. You just rubber stamp, and you got the nerve to talk about the superintendent. You do the worst job. You do the worst job when you automatically approve all of these items and you don't ever vet anything concerning any of them to any subs any substance. Then you have, Ruggsdale and, that's L 27 and L 37 in Richmond at the international school.
That goes back to my point. You spend a lot of time embracing, helping our newcomers, our refugees, but you don't ever have anything of substance that collaboratively looks at what we can do to have help African American students. Then you have the proposition 39. That school, Jefferson, an excellent school. Why don't we have a school for the placement of Bush students? Why do we not have a place for them? That school was supposedly closed on March thirty first of twenty twenty. You never officially closed that school.
But you have on paper that the school has been closed. I wanna apologize. I think I said consent items, and I meant the student discipline. I I apologize. So we're actually on item k. I I I that was my fault. I said consent items, so I apologize. Item k. And and I said instead of discipline. So are there any comments on item k, which is student discipline? Yes. We have Salo Lobala. Mr. Lobala, do you have a comment on item K? For item K, we have Asado Lobala and Ben Tabzka. So that's the expulsions,
Madam? Okay. And I apologize. That was my fault entirely for saying consent items. That's okay. I cannot I will repeat myself. It is absolutely necessary that you consider that students who are being expelled have an opportunity to set up at Sojourner Truth online, classes. That that is something that can happen, And we did not we should not be turning these students over to the Probation County of Alameda Probation Department to handle helping our students be their best,
have an opportunity to come back. We are not working on that. And we did have it at the community school, and we dropped it. So for whatever reason, you need to reconsider helping students being expelled have something that of substance so that they can return back to the district. And if you're not doing that, you're not, you can't say all students because they they are part of this no matter what behavior, what circumstances got them in that consequences. We give them a chance. Give them a chance and they're not having the best opportunity to come back
and be successful. Thank you. Are there any other speakers on this? No. President Deacon Cooper will be speakers. Thank you. Can we have a roll call on the vote, please? Yes. On the motion to adopt the pupil discipline consent report, moved by director Thompson, seconded by director Barry. Student directors, would be recused of their absence. Director Latta? Okay. Alright. Sorry. Alright. Director Williams? Abstain. Okay. Thank you. Director Hutchinson is absent. Director Berry? Yes. Director Thompson? Yes. Vice president Bashford? Yes. President Brohart?
Yes. Motion's adopted. Thank you. I'm gonna pass this over to director or, sorry, vice president Bachelor. Thank you. We do still have quorum, so we are all set. And I believe before we move on to item l, which is the adoption of the general consent, we do have a translation plan. Is that correct? Wonderful. Let's do that. Yes. So trans or interpretation announcement for this part of the meeting. We do have two languages available. I will start with Arabic. I will lower all attendees' hands.
Please only raise your hand if you need the languages being announced, which is Arabic. And I will ask miss Abdi if she can come up on mute and give the interpretation announcement for Arabic. Yes. Thank you, miss Abdi. Checking the attendees on Zoom to see if there's any hands raised for Arabic interpretation. Seeing no hands, we will not start with or we will not yeah. We will not start with Arabic interpretation at this time. Moving forward to Spanish. I will lower all attendees' hands. Please raise your hand if you need a language which is being announced at this
time, which is Spanish. And I will ask mister Copenhagen if he could come up mute and give the interpretation announcement for Spanish. Thank you, Mr. Thank you. Thank you, mister Copenhagen. Checking the attendees to see if there's any hands raised for Spanish interpretation. Seeing no hands, we will not start with Spanish interpretation. We will not have any interpretation at this point of the meeting. And that concludes our interpretation check. And I pass it back to mister or Madam President. Thank you. So now moving on to l, the adoption of the general consent report.
Is there a motion to move this item forward? Yes. I move the adoption of the general consent report. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Great. Thank you. I think that's minus item 11, l dot 25 and l dot 30. Yes. Thank you so much for that. Yeah. So that is minus l 25 and l 30. Are there any public speakers on this item, mister Pollard? Yes. We have Fisalo Lobala and Ben Tapscott. Alright. Missus Sada, come on up. I needed to know I had I was gonna speak on those two items you just pulled.
So should I wait until they come up? We'll do public comment on those items when they come up. Thank you. So, I wanted to direct your attention to L6, which is the personnel report. And within the personnel report, it it has a new assignment to the central culture climate as a central culture climate administrator at Cole administration. And I I thought culture keepers were supposed to be at schools with children, And I'm I might be wrong with that. But and the other part of the report,
it identifies 71 people going on leave and 70 people separation from the district. And when you look at reports like that, it needs to be discussion. We need to have some kind of, discussion on why out we're losing people, why are we putting people on leave, for what reasons, and just stop rubber stamping stuff. L 12, a service agreement, proactive generating, creative solutions on special education disputes. This is absolutely necessary because we have too many parents who are saying their special
education children are not getting their services or IEPs are not being, correctly dealt with. And so we need to have this in place, and somebody needs to speak to that. The next one is It's l okay. That proposition, but I talked about that already. I don't wanna repeat myself. And I'll wait for the other two items to come up. Let me see. L 37, enrichment academies, academic support, and mental health resources during the summer for the international school. Can we get the same thing for my climbers?
That would be great if we could have, academic support, mental health resources during the summer. Thank you. Like I said, y'all doing a lot and that's beautiful to help our students who are newcomers create that balance for Black students as well. Thank you. Any other public comments on this agenda item? No. That include public speakers. Wonderful. Any board comments on any, of the adoption of the general consent report? Alright. Can we get a roll call for a vote on l? Yes. On the adoption of the general consent report minus the item stated.
Director, Thompson? Yes. Director Berry? Yes. Director Hutchinson is absent. Director Williams? Yes, sir. And director Latta? Absent? Okay. Vice president, Bachelor? Yes. And president, Brohard. Okay. The, general consent report minus the two items are is adopted. Thank you. Now we'll go to each individual item. So that's l twenty five first. Any, is there a motion to move this item forward? Make a motion to move, to pass this item. To move it forward. To move it forward. Great. I second the motion to
adopt the item. Great. And then does that second still hold up? Great. And then I believe, director Williams, you also were the one to pull this item? Yes. I actually, sent in my questions to the, to the chief academic officer, and they were answered. And so, satisfied with that, and I just rather move it forward. My concern, again, is that, as a district, we're trying to create best practices. And one of the best practices is to to to look at our in house labor and really use the labor that is actually doing the job to move our
work forward than actually contracting out. We have, many times, there's many instances that we quickly contract to a vendor where that money can be actually saved and used, in house and within our district as well. Those are many opportunities, and we just have to actually be more conscious and aware as a district of what our practices are. And so I really wanna talk to board members about, a policy that says we should be working in house when there actually are,
opportunities to work in house then contract out. Thank you very much. Thank you. And I'll just say as well, when I met with the principals the other day, there was concerns around, or not concerns. There were they would like to be a part of these conversations when we talk about contracting out because they are intimately aware as to the reasons why they do contract out some of these positions. But I also do agree with you that we need to have this in house. So there needs to be some sort of combination there or some sort of conversation, and I'm hoping that the task force that we've established can have part of that
conversation, can bring something to us, and that we can have further conversations around this. Because I do feel the tension. We heard it today, even, between some of our staff around specific issues, and I wanna make sure that, we're listening to folks, but we are also ultimately using our public dollars for public good while also supporting, you know, the working class people of Oakland, making sure that their salaries and their wages, as a part of our school district are, are kept up. Any other board comments on, L25 before we move to public comment? I would say same exact thing.
Thank you. Miss Assata, you wanted to speak on this item? Is there anybody else? I would recommend extending the, invitation for speakers because this item was pulled. Yes. So any other speakers I would also like to speak to on this item? I apologize. I didn't make that clear earlier. Missus Sada, go ahead. My concern with l l twenty five is that this is online one on one, opportunity. And I think it's been demonstrated that online, teaching or relating is is not work has not worked well. And so did we have an opportunity to have in person rather than online?
The other concern is that, you have the identification of the number of students, I think 60, but you don't identify how these students will be chosen from what school. And we wanna make sure that everything that happens has a equity component, that we don't repeatedly have the same schools having opportunities and other schools not. Those are my concerns. Thank you. Any other public speakers on L 25? Congratulations. No complete. Full of contract. Thank you, miss Assata. Alright. I don't see anyone in the room.
Is there anyone in the Zoom room? No speaker. Great. Thank you. Let's take a roll call for this item. Yeah. On the roll call to adopt, item l dot dash 25. Student directors are absent. Director Lauda is absent. Director Hutchinson is absent, and president Brohart is absent doing the roll call for this item. Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Berry? Yes. Director Thompson? Yes. Vice president Bachelor? Yes. Motion is adopted. Thank you. Now moving on to l 30. Same deal, everyone. Is there a motion to,
adopt this item? Or a motion to do something with this item? I motion to adopt. I second. Wonderful. Any board comment? I believe, director Williams, do you also pull this as well? Yes. You know, my question really is about, again, you know, late contracts coming to the board. I think what we're really talking about again is starting to move to our best practices. And if we if we don't call out these late contracts, then, they will continue to happen. All I ask is district staff to, submit the contracts on time so we can actually do,
the job of the Board. Thank you very much. I concur. Any public comment on this agenda item? Oh, I'm sorry. Any other colleagues? Any public comment? Miss Assata, I know you wanna speak to this item. Good. Two points of concern. The Spanish speaking Unity Council. Spanish speaking Unity Council was accused in '20, '11, I think, of misusing funds. Neighborhood Works America, the funds were supposed to be used for, opportunity with housing. They had problems with, paying off their, maintenance and rental,
whatever it was, and they used that money. They had to pay back over $500,000 to the Neighborhood Works America. And, that that kind of said to me, why are we not holding them accountable? We never were held accountable by the city. The other thing is this is a, subcontract. They are dealing with, Head Start as a concentration. This is preschool. I understand. But, what are you what have you determined that they're doing that you agree that you wanna see it being done with them and in charge?
I don't understand. And I do know that they have Spanish speaking unity council. I've met with black parents who are saying they are not letting them into the head start program. They're denied, opportunities for black parents to be. They concentrate on the Hispanic key community. So it's just a lot of stuff that has to be considered, and I don't see you guys betting, items. And I understand what you're talking about, but there's more in-depth to this. They they they have, head start programs in Concord that they run too.
So I'll I'll just, Thank you. Any other public comments on item l 30 in the room or on the Zoom room? No Zoom room. I don't see anyone rushing to the front of the room. So, let's go ahead and take a vote on this item. Alright. The roll call to adopt l dot dash 30, it is noted that, student directors are absent. Director Hutchinson is absent and president Brohart is absent during this roll call. Director Latta? Yes. Okay. Director Thompson? Yes. Director Berry?
Yes. Director Williams? Yes, sir. And vice president, bachelor? Yes. Motion's adopted. Great. Now moving on to m, which is the adoption of the general consent report, general obligation bond measure b j y. Is there a motion to, move this item forward? I motion that we adopt general consent report, general obligation bond measures b j and y. Is there a second? Second? Wonderful. Public comment on this agenda item? Yes. We have Sala Lobala and Ben Tapscott. Is coach Tapscott online by any chance?
I think at some point, you need to make it clear. No. He's not. Okay. You ready? Yes. Go ahead. Okay. You need to make it clear when you have identified renovation funds, a specific amount of money, and then schools who are in a an agendized item to get more more money. Where is that money coming from? Fund 21 and Measure Y. Extra money. But what you say, oh that's the money. Some people say it's the money that was already there. If the money was already there, why did they have to come to you?
This is extra money that you're giving to Garfield Roosevelt. Going to the three items that are related to the turf. And you have, M, ten, eleven, and 12 that is design architectural services for turf and field replacement projects. Now if you're just at the stage of designing an architectural service for my clients, we need that football field ready for September. We need to be able to play on that field. And you, approved the money some time ago timely enough to get that project started.
We do not need to have that turf put down there on contaminated soil. The soil is contaminated. That the turf has to go down. If you found it necessary to do coals, elimination of the contaminated soil, you have to do it for McClimans. You can't do coal, the soil has to be eliminated of its contamination. And the climbings, we're not gonna do it. We're just gonna lay this turf down on contaminated soil and the kids can play
because the mat is gonna catch the contamination. That's crap. You have to move to remove the contamination and got get that feel done. Is anybody gonna address that, mister Williams? Are we gonna address that, sir? You talk to him. Okay, yeah. You see, you did talk to him about it. You're right. But they're not doing nothing. Somebody's gotta do it. We will not accept you putting a turf down on contaminated soil at McClellan. Somebody speak up and address it. Thank you. Any other public comment on, them? No. That include public speakers.
Okay. Any board comments on, the general consent, measure b j y? Okay. Let's go ahead and take a roll call for a vote. Alright. On the roll call to adopt the, general consent report on general obligation bonds, measures b j and y. It is noted that the direct student director Simmons and Vasquez are absent. Director Hutchins is absent, and president Brohart is absent doing this roll call. Director Ladder? Yeah. Director, Williams? Yes, sir. Director Thompson? About anything. That's why this it's not the superintendent.
It's you. Director Thompson? Yes. Okay. Director Barry? Director Barry? Your vote on the general obligation bond consent? Yes. K. Vice president, Bachelor? Yes. Motion's adopted. Okay. And thanks for everybody hanging in there. I see you, Killian. I I see you here. And the SCIU folks. So collective bargaining units are up next. And AFSCMEED. I can't forget AFSCMEED. So folks wanna line up and come on up for a collective bargaining unit report. Okay. Good evening, board. My name is Dana Wood, and I am the president for AFNI.
And I'm coming this evening because we spent nearly two years in bargaining, back and forth, and we finally, get our TA turned in. We get it back from the county, and now we hear that it has been pulled. I don't understand how we get this far. And all of a sudden, now our CA had been pulled. The county sent it back. That means that it had to come here. Somebody had it, and it got pulled. The sad part about this is we didn't find out about it
till tonight from another bargaining unit. We were so disrespected that no one had the decency to reach out to AFNI and say, look. Y'all's TA have been pulled. So we've been sitting here all this evening so we can get a chance to figure out what is going on. I was told that that the, county did it, but then I heard that's not true. One of the things, and I've listened to it, there is just too many lies coming,
and it just looks like it's coming from you all. This is not fair. We worked hard. We worked tirelessly to get this thing done. And here we are two and a half almost two years later, and we still fooling with the same foolishness. When are we going to hold people accountable for their actions? This doesn't make sense. Now we gotta go back and talk to our members. We ratified it. We voted on it. We approved it. Look at where we are now.
Who got the answers? We got the question. Who got the answers? When are we gonna stop this? I heard everything everybody said. And the common denominator is, there's too many folk lying. And we need to get the liars out. They need to be checked out of this system. It's not fair. What are y'all gonna do about it? Now do I have to do we have to just everybody coming in at one time? Because the labor coalition is real. And I am tired. This is new for me, but I'm tired of being screwed over
because folks are not doing their jobs. I hope we don't have to wait till the next board meeting to be pushed off again. Because if that's the case, there's gonna be problems. I promise my people are ready. This is not going to we're not gonna stand for this anymore. You all have dick assed me around too long. I'm here to tell you all tonight it stops now. But you all will be cleaning schools on your own, wiping kids behind
because we're not gonna take this no more. This is it. Figure it out. Again, I don't wanna have to come back here at the next board meeting. We shouldn't be I shouldn't be having this conversation right now. We should be in here excited about our TA and what's going on. Now Go home and get ready to go to a to a school site knowing that the work we do is unappreciated because look at where we are. Thank you for your time. Thank you. And I'm I'm sure General Counsel will be will be in touch with Joe Bates,
soon. Next. Hi. Good evening, board. Trish Bellinson, SEIU Chapter President, here with our leadership team. Contract negotiations have finally commenced. The SEIU bargaining team formally met with OUSD last week to establish norms and presented a few of our opening proposals for the Oakland School Employees Association and Oakland Childhood Development Paraprofessional Association contracts. The proposals center around nondiscrimination, including honoring free speech and compliance with the First Amendment rights, and increasing new hire engagement with the union.
Despite the district's roadblocks to start our overdue contract negotiations, the ball is finally starting to roll. The SEIU bargaining team is united and focused and we will continue to prepare, plan, show up at the table and fight for what our members deserve. We offered the district seven bargaining dates and the district only agreed to two and a half. SEIU has been working with an expired contract since October 2024. We seek a robust calendar that demonstrates the district's intent to bargain in good faith,
and we want a contract that addresses the long standing needs of our members in a timely fashion. We will not tolerate delay tactics, unresponsiveness, and any actions that disrespect our members. We wish the board had pulled item L 17, a service agreement '24 2024 through 2025 with JCC of the East Bay under Community Schools and Student Services Department. This agreement is coming before the board late as contract work was initiated on 04/01/2025. Will OUSD ever have their own after school programming complete with district staff who know
our kids? There are many safety gaps in outsourcing after school staff. It also seems strange that OUSD, a public school district, would be willing to contract with a religious affiliated organization, especially one who has their own agenda and provides their own school opportunities. Not to mention the exclusionary nature of this particular organization with its unwavering support for Israel. Lastly, this part of the contract was concerning considering a contractor would be able to decide on current and future staffing. Many district employees take on work with after school programs to make ends meet.
As indicated in the contract, JCC will consider hiring current staff for employment with their agency offering pay ranges, job descriptions, benefits, personnel manual, professional development existing staff have experienced, and determine with the principal which stakeholders should be involved in the selection of site coordinator as well as the hiring protocols. L25 is a series, agreement, for open literacy and summer learning programs under the Community Schools and Student Service department. One on one tutoring services are already provided for free through the Oakham Public Library and tutoring.com.
Why spend money on this when we are cutting District jobs elsewhere because of lack of funds? L30 is a Service Agreement for the Spanish speaking Unity Council of Alameda County and Early Childhood Education. The contract would subcontract the Spanish speaking Unity Council of Alameda County with a portion of the District's fiscal year twenty twenty four-twenty five, Child Development Funding for the provision of Child Development Services in an amount not to exceed $381,067 for the term of 07/01/2024 through 06/30/2025.
Late. This contract comes before the Board almost one year late. Why can't our district Spanish translators and interpreters do this work? With this school board, we are hopeful that we'll be able to not have to endure what our previous bargaining team had to endure to reach an agreement or what our union siblings and ask me, though, whose TA is being voted on or was supposed to be voted on by this board today, but has not been voted on. Thank you. Just wanna make it really clear. We stand with AFSCME,
and we find that this is super disrespectful considering how long they've been at the table with the district and how hard their members have worked for well overdue raises. And now those retro payments are gonna be pushed back for a lot of, workers and their families. So as you digest that, please consider, you know, maybe hosting a special meeting to get their TA ratified. It is it's an injustice to AFSCME employees.
Like they said, like, these are our custodians who clean our schools. These are folks who take care of our, kids and make sure that their safety and health needs are are, take care of taken care of and that their IEPs are being implemented. There is no reason whatsoever that TA should have been pulled. It's unacceptable and we stand in solidarity with AFSCME. Are there any of the bargaining units online? That concludes the bargaining collect I collected bargaining units. Okay. Moving on to new business. Item S1,
report board policy. Students b, board policy 05/2015, enrollment stabilization. And I believe we have a presentation from Helene Betlanch. Okay. Evening, Board, President, Brohard, Doctor. Moore. It's great to be here this evening to present to you the annual report of enrollment stabilization, Board Policy 05/2015. How much time are we allocating for this? Because I can give you short, medium, long, depending on your mood, your appetite, the hour of the day. Oh, goodness. Alright. So my name is Killian Bedlock.
I'm the executive director of enrollment, for the Oakland Unified School District. I've been in this role for three years. I've been in the district since 02/2009. Prior to that, I worked as the proud principal of Elmhurst Middle School. I have two children who attend school in district five. So we are here to talk about the enrollment stabilization board policy. This is a portion of the work that the enrollment department does, which we'll talk a little bit about. We wanna cover kind of five overall topics. The enrollment stabilization generally, three strategies that our team is undertaking pursuant to this board policy,
and then some challenges and and kind of forward and future thinking. So just kind of grounding us with what the enrollment stabilization, you know, says and what the policy is. It it came out about in in April 2021 and just positioned and reminded and grounded all of us in that enrollment as a as a chief driver of revenue for the district. We need we love children and they're, absolutely more than dollar signs and they are also part of our revenue and how we have funding from the state. Right? And the and the, board policy is really clear on that.
It also said that we, board policy also called for funding to engage in, promoting and supporting enrollment work. Right? And to not just kind of turn maybe, a blind eye to the fact that schools were deeply engaged in this work, and instead to help them from the central office perspective and to engage centrally with funding and with support. And there are kind of four, you know, categories. Right? That it said that we all have a collective responsibility, all of the stakeholders in the district, to engage in enrollment and to promote and support it,
that there's gonna be direct support from the central office to schools to support them in their enrollment efforts, that we're gonna increase accessibility for families in our enrollment system, and that we're going to stop giving resources for competing systems. Right? And this kind of seems like a little bit of a, of a long time ago, but we used to have this, like, joint enrollment system with the charter schools. We used to advertise them in our systems and we used to talk about them. And there were some attempts to, kind of have a unified system with competing systems. We don't do that anymore pursuant to this policy.
So, I also wanted to name that when I came into this work, there were people would talk about, How's the enrollment office? And I would say, Which one? There's nine. Because there were all of these different teams that were directly enrolling kids into schools. And there's not that there's anything wrong with any of these teams or people. They were working hard and they loved kids. However, when we think about accessibility for families and we think about a quality experience, it is impossible to have anything like a unified experience if all of these different teams are doing that work, disparately and on the side and over here and over here.
Right? And this is actually one of the root causes of some of the complaints and concerns that came out of the enrollment that came through the enrollment department because there were so many different folks that were doing enrollment with kids. Right? And so some of the work that came out of the board's passing of attachment a and then over interdepartmental collaboration and cooperation, and just bringing this back together to say, if we're gonna have an enrollment department, we should have enrollment department and not many, many,
many enrollment departments. Right? We now have primarily one enrollment department with collaboration with the DHP office for obvious reasons. Right? And then a very, very deep collaboration with part of the ELMA office called the Refugee and Asyle office that works with students seeking refugee and asyle status that is located in the main enrollment office at Lakeview. Deep collaboration, we work together. It's almost a part of, you know, enrollment proper. Right? What just just as a quick aside, what this gives us, particularly when it comes to the special education part,
and I just wanna lift this up briefly. When Special Education and other departments like it are running a shadow enrollment office, they're not attending to quality, right, because they're running enrollment. And so, when we were able to kind of shift our systems and be able to say, Special Ed And with them, right? It was in partnership. You don't have to do that anymore. We would then say, What did you get back? And one of the things that they self reported was like, Look, from a coordinator to a director, it was anywhere from thirty to three hundred hours each of time that they didn't have to do enrollment and could then do quality.
Right? And that's what you want. You want the folks that are doing program and student support to do that. Program and student support because you have enrollment. Right? And so that was one of the things that I was really looking at, like, Where can we do this? And where can the department that you want doing the work does the work? And other folks do their work. So, we have three teams. We have the Student Welcome Centre, which is doing, TK-twelve enrollment and you see, kind of, their core operations there as well as the FTE and the change going into twenty fivetwenty six. We have the Early Childhood Enrollment work,
which also includes our family navigators who are amazing team that are that are working both at Lakeview and then often the sites and supporting families, as well as the the change in FTE going 2526. And then we have our, their strategic outreach team, our enrollment marketing team, that is really working on board policy 05/2015 all the time. And so there's there's portions of BP 5,115 that everybody works on, but I really wanted to talk a lot about the enrollment marketing team today. So I just wanted to ground us in in that kind of structure and orientation of, of the enrollment department. These are some enrollment,
just kind of also, trajectory and and numbers. I'm not gonna read through them and belabor them, but I am gonna call your attention to the elementary enrollment number for 2425 because it is higher than the elementary enrollment number for 2324 and I think that that is significant. Right? We have been struggling with, declining enrollment as a City, a Region, a State, and a Country. And if we're able to start gaining that enrollment back, collectively and at a level of an entire grade span,
not just an individual grade like TK, that is significant. Okay? And you do see the five year change and the one year change. It doesn't represent a line going up, but it does represent, a stabilization, which is, you know, the name of this model. I am showing you the numbers of TK, which has been an important driver of enrollment stabilization, and we've been very aggressive and thoughtful about making TK accessible to families. And you see the five year change both as a number and a percent and then the one year change both as a number and a percent. And then also just to name, and you've been in some of these conversations, that we are fast running out of the spaces that align with demand.
In other words, the places where families are asking to go to Teekay, we can't offer spaces in those places. And that's going to limit our ability to continue to offer TK. So let's talk about these strategies. So the first strategy I wanna lift up is just is this idea of fostering an attitude of yes. So we know that in in education, in Oakland, in in across the nation, and in the enrollment department, so much of our work is driven by this this kind of reliance on on middle class, English literate, tech dominant values.
And we said, look, in the enrollment world, what if we just, like, said no to that? And what if we said, let's just orient and center, multilingual, lower income, working class, tech timid families and say, Let's build a system out from there, as opposed to maybe thinking about those folks as an afterthought because that's who our community is and that's who's growing the enrollment of this district, and that's also who's asking to use our services. It seems like a no brainer. It's not always who we center. Right? And so when we do that, we make different choices. Right? And so some of the choices we did around this this idea of an attitude
of yes is we moved out of our old enrollment platform into a newer one. Some of the key things about this platform, it's mobile enhanced. Why does that matter? We found from the pandemic, lower income families, they're not sitting in a well appointed den in a plush leather chair, getting on a device, they're gonna be on their phones. So we need tools that are always mobile enhanced so folks are getting on the Internet there. It has special features where it's like, if you need to pull up a document, it's gonna go right to your your, your your photo library. Right? Because that may be where your birth certificate is, not, like, in your pocket because who walks around with your kid's birth certificate in your pocket.
Right? So just those are just some really key things that we're talking about access. Right? Lakeview is is an interesting place to have an office. It's, you know, I don't know how many months or years have been taken off my life being that close to the five eighty fumes. But the it's also not terribly accessible for lots of our community members who rely on public transportation. So we established four satellite offices across the district that are open from December until May. They're currently at West Oakland Middle School, Urban Promise Academy in the Fruitvale, Coliseum College Prep on the Havens Court campus, and Elmhurst in the nineties.
And so what these are is bringing enrollment services closer to where the community who needs those services are. They're also selectively chosen because those campuses are very, very close to the places where we see families enrolling in charter schools for elementary and coming back into our district for middle schools. And so if we're putting the satellite offices there, we're facilitating that move. Right? Because we're not we're asking people just to, like, be right there and we're maybe growing that, right? And helping gain and bring back that in there. Significantly increased training and communication. This is not about just enrollment staff.
We have to have all the stakeholders know how to do stuff. Because families are still gonna talk to people in the front office and the front offices have to be experts. So we're just training, training, training, training, training. And we're training across lots of job classes. So clerical, community school managers, school counselors, principals. Right? And doing it multiple times per year. Okay. Enrollment window's opening. Here's what you gotta know. Offers are going out. Here's what you gotta know. Intent to return's coming. Here's what you gotta know. I'm always showing up at people, showing up on the Zooms, and then trying to be available so that folks can get this information, so that they can be expert too.
And that we're not just holding this on our team or me, but that, like, as families are going to the people they trust, those people have the information. And then just removing arbitrary barriers. I think one of the key things we've done is we have the two step process where we're not saying to a family, have every single document perfectly ready and ready to go before you can submit an application. Because that's a barrier. First, we're saying, look, submit your application. You can't get an offer till everything's perfect because there's some legal stuff, but we have your application. We can case manage you to then get your stuff.
Right? So we're not gonna say, you if you don't have an IEP, you can't submit an application. Mark that your child needs IEP services. We'll help track that down from the school district that you're coming from or the other community or the preschool. Right? And that really makes a difference because it brings people in, and then we can help solve and finish their application. Right? We're not putting up those barriers. We're looking at alternatives for birth certificates for communities for where those are not common or where folks have lost them, instead of saying pound sand, go find them. Right? We're not asking people to, pay money to pick up like,
there's there's still school districts. I think this is actually illegal in California, but in other states, folks have to pay to get their their documents, to get their transcripts. Right? We buy those for folks if they're in our office and sellers they can't afford them. Right? It's like, what do we need to get to yes? What are the impacts? We just have more applications. Right? We're just seeing more folks apply because they can, because it's easier, because we're showing up to where they are. And the people that they talk to who aren't the enrollment staff know how to help because they've been trained. Right? So even where we have fewer kids in our system sometimes,
we're getting more applications and we're getting more on time. We're also seeing our stakeholders tell us that we're doing a better job. Right? So every year there's this quality services to schools survey that goes out to, all the stakeholders in the in the district. And what we're seeing is the green bars represent people saying good job. Right? And we're seeing that over the last three years, those green bars are going up. Right? So that's the that is the the OUSD, community saying you're doing a good job. And that's important because, those folks don't don't hesitate to tell you that you're not doing a good job
when you're not doing a good job. And, you know, look, there's some orange on there and there's some red and some of that feedback is actually, like, the the good job is nice, but, like, the where you messed up is better feedback to grow. Right? And one of the things we took is there were some newer principles that gave really good feedback and it was clear they weren't kind of understanding what this did. And so then we got in front of them and we helped them. And then we had some we had some press. Right? We had some some good press and that's always edifying. So strategy two, increase visibility and brand awareness. And this subtext is, like, OUSG needs to be a first thought,
not an afterthought in all of our schools. And so there are things that we do literally better than everybody else. Right? Like, we have to name those and be proud of them. There's stuff that we can do better. There's places where we can be self critical, but we can't be, like, so self critical that we fail to acknowledge the places that we're great and growing and even better. Right? So it's diverse and inclusive schools. It's our early literacy support, dual language instruction, the the vast expanse of opportunity that exists in middle school. Right? People think about middle school as this, like, as this opportunity wasteland. In OUSC, there are arts and athletics and computer science.
The the world class college and career pathways that we have. We need to say these things and we need to not wait for someone to tell us tell us about ourselves. We need to tell our own stories. Right? And we need to keep telling our own stories. And we need to get better at that and more better at it and help our schools get better at it. Right? So, what do we do? We broadly, you know, promote our enrollment deadlines, right? And we do that through the lenses of those things. Right? We table at events, we get out in the community and we say, like, look, we're OUSD and we're not, like, gonna apologize for that. We're gonna be out there and we're gonna be proud. We're at all these events, we're connecting back to to to the world.
We established our social media brands to help tell those stories, right? So Town Sprouts for elementary, Open the Middle for middle, the link for high school. One of the the innovations that we did this year is we we started bringing in interns at the high school level to to help tell those stories. Particularly, it's, you know, Skyline and Castlemont. They were doing amazing jobs. Because also, like, they they're there. So of course they know the stuff, right? So we're expanding to Madison Park 612 and, and the Climates next year. And those are just like the nuanced stuff that like, is not gonna show up in like the media.
But it's the good stuff. And then, you know, we have our podcast which is both super fun but also another way to tell stories, like that's the way people get their news, that's the way people get information And being able to kind of, like, curate those stories around the things we do well, super critical. And then we're just using new tools to get our message out. We have some tools that are really letting us map to where people live who may not be in our system, by ZIP code, by census block, by tenants boundaries, and we're really upping the amount of direct mail that we're putting out.
And so what are our impacts here? This this data is not yet up to not yet it's a little bit it's one year old because we're waiting for, like, official data to come out. But what you're looking at is is, like, a pie chart by different systems. And what we're seeing is that over time, the size of the pie chart is shrinking, but OUSD's share of the enrollment is growing. Right? So we're reclaiming enrollment as we are growing by 1.5 percentage points. Right? And so that's not, like, massively changing, but these are big these are these are big numbers. So 1.5 percentage points, we're talking about 55,000
53,000 kids, that's a lot. Right? And we're getting it back from charters and we're getting it back from privates. And that matters. Right? Because in the context where fewer kids are born and people are moving out of our city, how do we how do we understand growth? This is one way. Because we're gaining back the total share of enrollment that's available to us. Right? You can understand this on a line graph if you want. We're the green going up. Charters are the purple going down. Their share of enrollment is going down. I do wanna point out it's stabilized. Right?
Now we'll we're gonna have another year of data we can add to this, and I you might see another another, another, data point there. The gold is inter district transfers. Right? So that's families who live in our city, who are leaving our city to go to other school districts. That's going up in part because those cities, one, are advertising hard, and, two, they have their own declining enrollment issues. And where they said no for two generations, all of a sudden they're saying yes. The other thing we're seeing, and this is oh my gosh. There's a lot of lines. I'm like, it's like midnight already, and you're like, I can't believe we're looking at all these lines and data. So what we're seeing is each line represents a year of enrollment and the percentage
change of enrollment for big urban school districts, school districts our size, California as a whole. And what should draw your attention to it is the big dip where everybody goes down. And at the very, very top is a green line where Oakland where we basically just kind of go a little bit flat across the top. But what you're seeing is about the time that we started investing in enrollment stabilization, all of these other school districts and the state and the county took this massive drop and OUSD stabilized. Yes, we went down a little bit, but we didn't fall off a cliff, right? And that matters because huge drops in enrollment are incredibly destabilizing,
right? That means that that many more people are getting dreaded pink slips, Right? That means that many more people are scrambling to figure out where the money's coming from. And we didn't. If you wanted to see that in another way, you could look at it in this bar graph. So this is the cumulative enrollment change during the enrollment stabilization era. Right? Relative to some other you know, I picked some school districts. You can pick lots of them. And they're all gonna look similar if as long as they have a a reasonable urban core and a reasonable number of charter schools. Right? Then they're going to look like this. So, like, we could include other we could Elk Grove or San Jose Unified or,
you know, etcetera, etcetera. They're all going to look in a similar pattern. And the pattern shows that OUSD, in part because of these investments, stabilized its enrollment, declined less while everyone else was falling off of cliffs. And then we have a couple of other graphs I just want to lift up that you're basically seeing a line of enrolment and then you see the line split. And the line splits where the enrollment stabilization started. And so the bottom line is where we were headed. And then the top line is where we started to go after enrollment stabilization started. Right?
And so had we continued on the same trajectory, that's where we would have kept going. And then enrollment stabilization started, and this is where we started to go. And so it takes us on a difference of about 992 students. Now some of this is, like, is projecting. Right? So this is not all actuals. I wanna be, you know, very transparent about that. But I know we've all done the kind of the student math on our fingers of, like, nine ninety two students multiplied by x x x, $12,000 It starts to that looks like a large amount of money. Right? TK played a big role in that. If we wanna take TK out,
those bars shrink together, but they're still in effect. Right? So it's not just TK. It's part of it, but it's not just. I'm sure you're gonna have some questions on this, so I'm just moving. Strategy three, our Enrollment Focal Schools. So this is a huge part of our work. What we do here is and our focus here is just to focus on the fact that our schools are better than people know. And our schools are working towards excellence and almost everywhere, they are better than the public perception. Right? And what we believe is that if we tell those school stories and we promote
them to the public, we can bring a greater awareness and therefore greater enrolment to those schools. Right? And what we also hope to be true is to not have inclusion in this group be permanent. That there's lots of interventions in the education world where, like, you get into the intervention group and you just never ever get out. And that's not what this is designed to be. Right? And so there have been some schools that have exited the, enrollment focal work and that's not a punishment. Right? That's like, good. Right? We don't want to be in this work permanently. So how did this work?
We built an enrollment health dashboard because if you're gonna give some schools something more or different than others, you have to have a reason. And you have to be able to defend it. And I imagine some of my former principal colleagues come to me and be like, why didn't I get that? And I needed to be able to have, like, a reason. So we have the data that's there, one year enrollment health change, three year enrollment health change. What's the rate at which a kid starts in kids start in kinder and stay till fifth grade, start in ninth grade, stay till twelfth grade? What's the percentage of kids who go to charter schools in the attendance boundary?
And then we put all that together and give those things point values, and then we take the schools that need the help. And I I defined these in the appendix so you can you can look at them, a little bit. And then we look at the schools that need more help. And originally, I was thinking, like, let's do 10 and then we saw the numbers and we're like, we can't do 10. We have to do, like, more. Because we had to figure out how do we do how do we get how do we do 20? How do we do 25? How do we stretch? How do we how do we give more supports? Right? And so this is the list of our enrollment focal schools by by board member district, as well as some of the ones that we that we exited,
either because they were receiving supports in another way, or because they were they were reaching enrollment goals and we wanted to give support to other schools and make room for that. Right? So what happens when you're an enrollment focal school? We give that school assets. So tangible assets to support with enrollment. Right? So branded materials, the pencils, the stickers. Right? When families accept their offers, we send those families. I chose Prescott. Right? So that they can they put those up on the refrigerator, put it on the car. We give we've helped schools make new logos because some of the logos that we had were old.
Some of them were clip art. Some of them were trademarked by other organizations, and we should not have been using them. Then we, like, put up murals on the walls of those new logos, like the ones at Horace Mann. We've put up, or the ones at MLK. We've helped schools, brand for curb appeal. Like, if you look at you drive on MacArthur, it wasn't clear that that building was Bret Hart maybe. And now when you drive by, you see Bret Hart's new logo, like, bam, you can't help but no. My wife was like, oh, that's where Bret Hart I was like, yes. That's and, you know, we've done site specific advertising, like billboards that are up,
choose this school, you know. I'll never forget, like, when we did our first one and it was it was a Prescott Student. And afterwards, the the the young lady who was on the billboard told us, her mom told us that. She said, mama, we got to go to go to school every day and drive past my billboard. Right? And I was just, and so doing those things to to, you know, to be out in the world and make sure people are seeing our schools and seeing seeing, you know, see and promoting them and knowing that we are proud of those schools. We've done some promotional videos. We've done social media promotions. We also provide technical support. So this is some of the back end stuff that's not always visible.
Right? If you're if if families get offers to go to our focal schools, our staff is helping call those families. Hey, you got an offer. Can we help you accept? Do you wanna know more about that school? Going on? Right? We also, you know, we provide curated lists for the help with recruitment or families. If they get if they miss their offer and it's expired, we're gonna send those out to the to those focal schools so they can just reengage with those families to try to get that enrollment back. Right? So there's some technical stuff in the back end. And then adaptive support. Engaging with the leaders of the schools around,
let's talk about your enrollment. Right? So everything from how are we going to think about, you know, recruitment strategies? What's working in your community? What did we try last year? Did you actually do that thing I suggested? You didn't? Cool. Let's try it this year. To things like more nuanced conversations, like the one I had with a high school principal yesterday where we were looking at enrollment data and she said, look, we're getting kids in eleventh and twelfth, we're losing kids in ninth grade, so let's talk about what do we do. I need to change my staffing in ninth grade, I need to change the ninth grade experience, I maybe need to be the ninth grade administrator,
I need to watch the ninth grade thing because I don't wanna lose any more ninth graders. And I want them to have a better experience. Right? We provide coaching at three schools, to those principals about stuff that's actually more than enrollment, but kinda everything's enrollment. And and helping them. And then we also provide stipends and a PLC to a a principal selected, staff member at every school to do social media work. Right? So not just saying, like, go put stuff on the Internet, but also giving them support on both the technical stuff, what makes a good story, what have we seen people pick up on,
what are our messages, what are your messages, what do you wanna say about your school, how can we help. Right? Right? So this is the one of the things that we track is is first choice rank. Right? And and and and kind of a long time ago, this demand rate got a bad name because we were only looking at the on time rate, which was not representative of the community. We now track that for when the on time window opens all the way to the last day of school. Right? So it is much more of a wider range, more representative of who's applying. Right? And so these show,
what is the change in families' first choice ratings for the schools when they join and when they become an enrollment focal school? And these are, like, the ratings of our highest growth. Right? And so what we're seeing is that when schools come into this work and we give them that stuff, the assets, the technical support, the adaptive support, families are choosing those schools and ranking them first at much higher rates than when they were. Right? And you can see some of the examples, the top I think I gave you the top two, four, six, eight, 10, that were there. Right?
So Horace Mann, Ridge, Allendale, Highland, Castlemont, Oak, McClymonds, Hoover. These are significant percentage point growth, right? The unweighted average is about eight percentage points. You know, there's some schools that got caught in, like, a TK thing and and and, you know, they were a little bit flat, but it's a significant change. And when your families it is such a difference and I know this is a principle. When I be my first year as a principle, I looked at this data and I had, like, thirty percent first choice, which is I'm walking the hallways and one out of three kids wanted to be there and I was like, no. Like, that's that's a no. Right?
And worked for years and years and years to get that up to 80. Right? And I think the school I left is now at a hundred and two, and that's great. There's such a difference when families are choosing a school as their first choice. They're gonna volunteer. They're gonna say, Can I be on the SSC? They're gonna go to the field trip. They're gonna be tolerant of, like, when a school stubs its toe on something because they chose it. Right? So, this is super significant. We've also seen I wanna give you a case study of a school that was an enrollment focal school. So I know a lot of our schools are in Deep East Oakland and they're
in West Oakland, but I wanna just show Laurel for a second. This was a school that was an enrollment focal school who we exited. Right? So in 2016, you know, a long time ago there 700 kid elementary school in 2016, that was kind of a high point for them. They had five fifty nine kids. When we brought them in as an enrollment focal school, they had four twenty four students, right? So that's significantly lower, right? They had three straight years of decline. Some of the key actions. Deep engagement with the principal, he asked me 47 questions and was like, I don't even know if I'm gonna do this. But once he committed, they committed,
did all the stuff, we gave them the full range of assets, they really said I'm doing this thing, We gave them a new logo. We engaged with a corresponding beautiful mural on the wall. They also had some other things that were adjacent to this work with, a new playground from e EatLearn Play, the Curry Foundation, their CDC, beautiful CDC open. Right? And then we start seeing some, like, calendar things. Right? They had a t shirt consolidation before we started. Their first choice kinder rate was 52%, then started growing up to sixty nine percent, then it started growing up to seventy six percent.
They added a second t k because demand was so high. They added a fourth and fifth grade teacher because demand rate was so high. Right? Now we're, like, barely into the enrollment window. Both t k's were full right away. They're on pace to exceed their projection. And we had and we and the principal was like, when do we get more stuff? I'm like, you're out. Like, you have gotten everything and you've done everything and, like, now you're just gonna go. And so what we see when we have this, right, like, their the net gain of 51 students and two teachers, right, they have the highest,
they have the highest enrollment since 2018. Their first choice kinder rate, 52 to 76. TK rate, 67 to 208% of capacity, right, which means they're turning people away. Their neighborhood enrollment rate, so that the percentage of families who live in the neighborhood who are going went from from 30%, a little 31%, you know, up to 35.8. So, like, this work is not also about not it's also not not about neighborhood schools. Right? So it was bringing more folks from the neighborhood into this. So I just think that's a really and that's a story that we could tell
about about other schools is what we tell it about reach. We could tell it about Frick. Right? We could tell it is a story that's ongoing at Prescott. Right? It's a story we could tell by now and others. I really love your enthusiasm. And I gotta be quiet because we gotta go. Alright. Because you are such a middle school. You you and Cliff were like, you know, it's like, woah. Alright. Let me give you let me just give you a couple of things. So I'm gonna pass through this. Birth rates are going down. People aren't having babies. That's a problem. Everyone's enrollment is going down everywhere. What I do wanna point out in this is if you look at this thing very, very carefully, you see that that enrollment in the state is going down,
but charter and private enrollment is going up. But we know in our city, we're working to reverse that trend and that's significant. Right? And that's part of our work. These are some staffing, and budget things which you guys can look at later. But I think what's significant about that is that we are we are running out of dedicated funding, and the funding that we are kind of running on has been curated carryover because kind of the context in which I've been working is you never know when the money's gone. And so I've been trying to to kind of put it together, keep it together, find some grants. We have a federal we have a grant with the federal Department of Education that
has a name that had the word diversity in it that they changed that word and the money could get gone at any moment. And so I think there's just there's some things that we need to think about for the future around potentially this is new work. And when we have new work, we sometimes need new job descriptions, to keep up with the evolving work. We've done that when we did African American male achievement and we needed new job descriptions, when we did community school manager, when we did restorative justice. We haven't done it to date, and it is a challenge. Also just naming and I recognize maybe the situational irony that when we have all
these controversies and unstableness, we hear it from families. And the things that collectively as leaders on the board, in labor, senior leadership can do to support enrollment stabilization is to seek stabilization, in our interpersonal relationships, in our leadership, because that type of safe and stable district is what families want, and they want it replicated at every level. And if we can, that is another thing. So, I really appreciate this time. I'd love to answer questions. I also recognize the hour. So thank you so much. I really appreciate your enthusiasm. Are there any questions from the board?
Thank you. Yeah, I really appreciate it and I will save some of my questions but a couple things that or one thing that I noticed, was your need for multilingual staff. Mhmm. And can you express, like, specific languages or specific communities that you are unable to tap into at the moment, because of that lack of diversity? So we have we've we've right now we have, bilingual staff who are bilingual native speakers of of Spanish, Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Vietnamese, in our office as well as mom.
And that's great. And that feels like super fortunate because none of those positions have a bilingual add to them. So I'm just naming that, like, in the absence of that, that's not necessarily something that is is a guarantee to always continue. I'm proud of that and I'm glad it's there and I want that I I want us to always be able to to offer that and to never be in a place where we're like, we can't serve you because of limitations. Right? Because that shouldn't that's a part of that's a part of this, of this board policy that says provide access.
And one thing I was also gonna ask about, because it's been named a couple times when we talk about, school enrollment, is the, phrase that school is full Yeah. When it's a low enrolled school and we know it. Yep. So what has your office done to change language Sure. Think about, you know, enrollment differently to support those school sites? Yep. I mean, I'm gonna draw your attention back to just, like, that slide all the way back here is, like, one, when we centralized the enrollment office, we have a lot easier time
providing training and giving information out. When you had nine different groups giving that information to families, your chances of giving inaccurate information about the status of the school went through the roof. So I think that we are giving much more accurate information. We have internal documents that have every school and every grade level at every school classified green, yellow, red. Green means you can an enrollment specialist can enroll a family with at that school, at that grade level without checking because there's enough space. Yellow means we might have one or two seats, so you check-in with myself or the director,
and red means that that grade level is full. We also have, there have also been, like I can't tell you how many times I get asked, what's the class size match for my school? Right? And so, like, that's not you'd think that'd be common knowledge, but, like, there's a lot of misunderstandings and misknowledge and and miss so, like, what somebody may think something is or what it was once or what is is and and so that drives misunderstandings too. I think also, I put the slide fostering attitude of yes. It's like, if we had an enrollment office that starts with no,
and I'm not saying we did, but I'm saying that this enrollment office starts with yes. And that's deliberate, and it's said, and that's an attitude, and that's the one that we're gonna continue doing. Two questions. You don't have to answer them right away. I'm embarrassed that I have not met with you one on one, especially because I think this presentation was amazing, and I wanna know know more, learn more, and do more on behalf of enrollment. My first question is around how you might measure, or share with us some, stories around the impact of focusing on enrollment in local schools,
like the potential unintended positive impact it might have on outcomes. Culture is really important. I do think there's a direct relationship between school culture and outcomes. And just if you're spending all this time with communities designing logos and doing murals, I know that that affects how people feel in a place, and so I'm just very curious how that shows up in the data or just even in your conversations with folks. And then the second question is around one of the slides you presented around cost.
And because thing there is a little bit of, like, uncertainty around budget, revenue, and how we might continue to cover the cost of these things, I'm curious what parts of what you're doing that are essential, and how much everything costs, but especially the things that we're thinking. But as we continue doing budget, you know, having budget conversations, we can be mindful of that because this seems like work that we want. I think the I I really I really like your first question. I really agree with it. I have some I have some opinions, you know, with my old principal hat on, but I think that what you're sparking in me is a desire to loop back
with some of those schools and ask those questions. Right? And to be intellectually honest, some of my statements have them tell their story. Right? Because I do think yeah. Because I think the story about the Prescott Student who said, mama, we're gonna drive by my billboard every day to school. That does more than just enroll, right, to a community. And and, there was a principal when we put the mural up at at her school. She came to me and said, I can't remember the last time someone did what they said they were gonna.
Do. Right? And one, that should be rare, but also that matters. Right? And and I had another their front office person said, I love seeing this. Right? And so, yes, I think those things really matter. And, of course, we're not the only team that does stuff like that that and nowhere near. So I don't wanna position ourselves anywhere near. To your second point, I would love to to to really do some thinking about that and and and get back to you if, like, you know, if we were we were kind of posed with that. I think we've reduced staff, and you can see that in the slide,
by by more than 50%. And so that's also constrained some of the things that we can do. That often we're asked, why aren't you beating the bushes and knocking the doors? And, you know, we have we have one staff member on this team who's doing a lot of social media, and we have one staff member who's doing literally everything else, like graphic designer or graphic designer supervision, strategy, data, implementation. You know what I mean? And then there's whatever portion of my time when I'm not managing all the other teams plus the larger department. And so there is some trade offs there around that,
but I'd love some opportunities to give you a a more nuanced answer, particularly if we wanted to, like, be very, very cool. But I think the last thing I'll say is when we look at the behavior of our competing systems, they also tell us what matters too. Right? Like, drive down 880. And we'll be up there in a second. Like, we've we've actually been delaying based on what we know about our family's enrollment patterns. Like, when they spent money was I was fine with that because that's not when I wanted to spend money, like, I'm because I have the data. But when you see what they do,
they're telling us what part of our playbook they wanted to emulate. And I do think it's our playbook that they're emulating. And I'm happy with them spending money. I think that's good. But I think that also gives us data back, right, about what we should continue to do. And it also gives us data back on what parts of this initiative that we were out ahead of and we were innovators around, we shouldn't back away from. Right? Because other folks have filled the space. I'll just make a couple of quick comments. I mean, I'm you know, I think I also really appreciate the work, and I,
you know, as you know, full disclosure, a person who was on the enrollment working group where this work grew out of and a person whose kids are at focal schools that I've seen grow from this work and, a person who enrolled my kids on my phone and my friends, you know, on their phone, I and follow Town Sprouts and open in the middle of the link. I just wanna say that I think that this work is important for two reasons. One is it is revenue generating. Like, as much as we sometimes I think, like, they're my kids in these schools,
it's also that those kids make schools more stable. Right? And they make and they and it's every kid that comes into our schools and the family that joins our schools makes the school better and stronger. And, and I think this work is also just so important because it stabilizes our budget, but it stabilizes our school. And I, also, full disclosure, like, last meeting, introduced the, you know, the resolution to fund enrollment stabilization because
that while we didn't, you know, kind of break all of the odds and grow our enrollment by 10%, those graphs tell a story about whether where we the much harder decisions even harder decisions we would have to make if this work didn't exist. And so, to your point, Director Berry, that's the the ongoing funding, at least in the resolution, that I think is that it should live in the base because this work is, is really, I think, really fundamental to the future of our district. It feels really,
and and again, I think the capacity building is huge, but also the ways in which it has changed our framework in our own minds as OUSD around, you know, we're the place where you send your kids. Like, we are the best system. We don't have to apologize. So, again, I don't, you know, probably let this go on for, like, two more hours. But thank you for the work, and, and I look forward to the conversation with my colleagues around, the resolution when it comes back. Thanks. Thank you. Are there any other director Williams? Director Killian, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Really like the data.
It's all coming together now, so really appreciate it. Love the engagement you've been doing with the schools and just really, spreading that message. I think the the one to one conversations as you're checking in with the administrators and really trying to get a sense of what they need, has really been helpful. I've heard that from a number of administrators in District three that you, you pick up the phone and you talk to them, and that hasn't happened. So you brought, like, a real fresh approach, to our enrollment policy, and so I just wanna thank you for that.
Secondly, I just really want to, continue to to push us in communicating with our parents. One of the things we do have is Parent Square, which goes out to our school community. But there's also a community of parents out there that don't have Parent Square. And, I've talked to administrators. They don't have a good idea of how to make that connection. Right? And so I think that's something that either schools and the school sites have to really, incentivize, staff and teachers to go door to door to talk to individuals.
Or, you know, I think you did mention there's some direct communication that is going out from now on. So that trying to connect those two is gonna be really, really important because I think that, again, we tend from what I've noticed is that parents want to, chase the best opportunity for their child, and they have every right to do so. But sometimes, they just don't know right within their neighborhood is a good opportunity. And so making sure that they know that there's an option there,
not just filling out the enrollment, but actually know, like, you can go visit, you can talk to folks, this is what we're doing. And looking at the, profile of schools, being able to gather that data and then directly send it to parents so they know what actually is happening at the school would be really helpful. I know you've been working on that. We've talked about it a couple times, and I definitely wanna finish up on that conversation. And lastly, knowing that you're doing a fantastic job even though we have this kind of school choice policy.
You know, I continue to, you know, prod you a little bit about that. I think there's a conversation there, because what you've done is you've looked at the data. You created the reflections. I think we need to look at the policy and do the reflection. Look at the data and see how successful it has been and what the original intent is, and then see if it actually, accomplished what the intent was, or do we need to actually make some, adjustments, a little reflection. So I wanna keep that on your radar as well. I'll be coming to you, soon about that.
Thank you, sir, for a great job. Appreciate you. Yeah. I just wanna say thank you for coming. I remember doing the fifth grade enrollment in paper, handing over notebooks and making triple copies because they got lost. So, moving to a phone, I think, is, like, amazing. But I also really appreciate the focus in switching that around to looking at our students that need the most, that that being the focal part of our enrollment. And, you know, I'll be talking to you about a lot of school lead that too. Thank you. The last thing we have on here is, the application for,
provisional consent. We have public comment, President Brouwer. Sorry, and you waited. Sorry. I know it's late and I won't take too much of your time. I don't know why everyone else isn't still here. Obviously, this is a very important issue. For public speaker, we have Ben Tabscott, Asolo Rubala, Avi Ringer, and Shiona Mohammed. I just wanted to it does seem like money well spent. I mean, right? This is these are people that are that are bringing revenue into the district. So I wanna thank thank you for that presentation. I just wanted to highlight one piece of data that I've been exploring that that was brought up in the presentation.
And it's the percentage of kids in an attendance area that are going to that neighborhood school. Okay? And it was mentioned, the data I was able to kinda construct through the Libgo, data that's out there include can include charter schools in that. And when you do that, there are over 20 elementary schools with fewer than a third of the eligible kids in that neighborhood going to that school. So, you know, seems that from an enrollment perspective, we wanna target those neighborhoods and understand why it is that those parents,
those families have lost so much faith in those those schools. I'm a parent at Laurel, of a kindergartner, so I guess we were, you know, some of the ones brought in by that by that focal policy. But I'll tell you why we're there. It's because, you know, we're in one of those neighborhoods where, the number that that spit out of this analysis is about 20% of my neighborhood actually goes to our neighborhood school. That's global family. So that's why we're at Laurel. I mean, we're very happy to be at Laurel, but it's not because of the new logo or the the new mural. It's because there are neighborhoods very close by where people,
for whatever reason, don't wanna go to those schools. So I wanna thank, thank you guys and I'll I'll leave it there. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello. My name is Shayanna Muhammad. I'm a parent, former commissioner with OUSD, and former director of North Oakland Community Charter School where both of my children were students there at some point of their education. We experienced an unethical closure at that time. Much of the fumbles regarding the voluntary separation of miss Trammell echoes what happened to us last year. A lot of those things,
like the violation of Brown Act, the improper votes and discussions and announcements to the public that was happening is happening again. So it's rather disappointing to know that this is still a behavior that's being encouraged and overlooked amongst leaders. There was no transition plan that happened with us as well. So our school records, we had to go figure out how to get it to OUSD. There was no proper pass off from Office of Charter Schools, nor no oversight from anyone that was within the Charter Matters Committee.
During the time that you all were still in active committee, we reached out to you personally, Clifford Thompson, and Valerie, and Burchard. And it was flipping behavior amongst Valerie and Burchard during that time in a complete overlooking of a direct request from you, Mr. Clifford Thompson. It's very disappointing that these things are still happening. You can shake your head and say you didn't, but records don't lie. Recordings don't lie. And at the end of the day, it's very disappointing that these things continue to happen. And it's like, things are on record,
and it's still like, oh, well, we can roll our eyes, we can sip our water, and no one does any follow-up later. And then when you get a bunch of mad family members, then you don't know what to do. So at some point, someone should take the charge, and it shouldn't be a disjointed effort of who's on what side and what looks good to the public. And then for people like Lisa Grant Dawson to continue to do little side comments and huffing and puffing and just being funny. Janelle Ruhly, same thing. It's just very disappointing that this is still a behavior amongst OUSD when you all
are teaching children to be educated, inquisitive, and informative individuals that are supposed to respect each other. It just makes no sense. Thank you. Alright. Next item on the agenda is S-two 250,889, application for provisional internship permit, California Commission on Teaching Credentialing, named employees for the school year twenty four-twenty five. Is there a motion to adopt this? So moved. And is there a second? Second. Thank you. Is there any public comment on this? Yes. Ms. Salo Lobala.
Melissa's just not here. That include public speakers. Okay. And can we take a roll call on the vote, please? Student directors are absent. Director Hutchinson is also absent. On the remaining roll call, director Latta? Yes. Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Berry? Yes. Director Thompson? Yes. Vice president Bachelor? Yes. And president Burlhardt? Yes. A motion to adopt. So do anything else I suggest a motion to extend? Is there a motion to extend clock? Motion to extend for ten minutes. Second. And On the motion to extend the meeting,
seven, Student directors are absent. Director Hutchinson absent. Director Ladder? Yes. Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Berry? Yes. Director Thompson? Yes. Vice President Bachelet? Yes. President Groher? Yes. Motions extended to I mean, meetings extended to, 11:10. Next item on the agenda is a u, which is the president's report. I will make it really short. I had a longer statement, but I'll shorten it. We received a letter from the County Office of Education certifying our second interim budget
as qualified. And while the certification reflects progress, the letter also outlines several concerns that we as a Board must address in our upcoming budget development process. I strongly encourage everyone to read the letter carefully. It's attached to the agenda. This past week, Vice Vice President Bachelor and I had the opportunity to meet in person with our elementary principals at Brookfield as well as virtually with elementary, middle and high school principals. These meetings were candid and at times difficult. Our principals expressed, several pressing concerns, including district leadership stability,
SAP conflict at school sites, budget uncertainties for the next year and the critical need to address literacy challenges, equitable access to curriculum, and effective literacy instruction. These conversations were painful but necessary and as Board Directors, it is our responsibility to listen and act with empathy and integrity and purpose. As Board President, I want to emphasize that for our students to learn and thrive in a joyful school environment, we adults must model the behavior that we expect from our students. Respecting our collective bargaining agreements is not only a legal obligation, but it is foundational to a strong and functioning school system.
These contracts are living documents that shape the working conditions of all of our employees and when honored they make our schools stronger. There has been much attention in the media regarding the superintendent's contract and a joint statement has been issued to address many of the concerns. Unfortunately, confidential closed discussions were inappropriately shared publicly on the dais, social media and the press. This breach of trust created confusion and distress among our staff, students, families and community members. Due to Brown Act limitations, we were unable to respond as openly as we would have liked,
but still I must clearly state the illegal release of closed session information undermines the stability that our community depends on from this Board. What we owe to our staff, our students, our parents and our community is steady, responsible leadership leadership that ensures every student in OUSD graduates career, college, and community ready. Another note, I'd really like to close celebrating again, once again tonight, a historic milestone and the return of local control to our district. Thank you. And are there any Board reports? Director Thompson? Yeah, I just want to mention,
that the annual, Marcia Rhymes, writing, scholarship has been extended to April 30. And so if there are any principals online who are listening or counselors, you can let your high school students know, juniors and seniors, that that scholarship is available. First place is $5,000 second place is $3,000 Third place is $1,800 Also, honorable mentions, and there's a special outstanding, $1,000
award given to a junior who writes an outstanding essay. So we want to make sure that our schools know about this. Could you Oh my goodness. Could you text us that that information? Yeah. Yeah. I can. Yeah. I'll send it. Yeah. I I'm yielding my, report time just to say shout out to the GOAT, superintendent Kyla Johnson Trammell. This meeting was chock full of things to celebrate. And leadership makes things like that possible. Obviously, it's a team effort, a village effort,
but I just wanna give her a shout out today. I remember the first time that I saw her in a room. I was staffing the mayor at that time, and she's just always been so big to me. Big heart, superpower grace, holding a lot of challenging situations with poise. And, you know, I just I just wanna lift up the awesome work. Someone send the superintendent a highlight reel of tonight's celebrations because I think, you know, we owe her a great deal of gratitude.
That's it. Yeah. Just super quickly wanna acknowledge, the graduation ceremonies that are happening sooner rather than later. So I have them booked on my calendar, so I will be there. I am also asking specifically our elementaries and middles, any promotions and graduations you have coming up in my district. Please, please, please let me know because I would love to celebrate our littlest to our not so littlest anymore, folks. And yeah. And that's it. Yeah. Alright. And with that, we're adjourned.