you commissioner gupta here. Vice PRESIDENT Healey here. MR. Ray here. MR. Wise board PRESIDENT Kim. Thank you. I am removing action item number 3254-8 sb three which is the key to reading difficulties risk screener adoption from the agenda this evening. The board will not be taking action on this item at this meeting. Accessibility information translation services. Um and information to observe the meeting and participate virtually all available online. We do have one commissioner uh commissioner alicia fisher who will be joining this meeting by teleconference who I believe is on the zoom now as opposed to you will provide child care for regular board meetings and monitoring meetings on the first floor in the enrollment center at five by five franklin from 630 to 9 P.M. Where the close the meeting whichever one comes first child care for families who will be attending
the regular monitoring board meeting space is limited and will be provided on a first come first serve basis for ages 3 to 10. If you have any questions please contact the board office at (415) 241-6427 or board office at as if you see that edu. At this time before the board goes into closed session I call for any speakers to to the closed session items listed in the agenda. There will be a total of five minutes for speakers. Are there any speakers for public comment? They're not in person. There are no virtual participants. I now recessed this meeting at 5:05 P.M. And S.F. Gov tv san francisco governmental official S.F. Gov tv san francisco government television or
S.F. Gov tv san francisco government television and S.F. Gov tv san francisco government television S.F. Gov tv san francisco government television S.F. Gov tv san francisco government television installation go ahead please. Thank you. As it is the is offering interpretation services in spanish and cantonese. If you need interpretation please call the phone number after the link. Please continue to be number. This message will be repeated in spanish in cantonese when a saturday continues below the government corporate with the new celebrity interpreter with the google meet for our market is the figure that will not read the movie it is portable
units and no I will not say nobody to take one well I did not have japanese interpreter please thank you. Do you have have you been very drunk? We make a monday night away and when you take the money also you value our markets. We have a lot how things do up on that thing. Welcome. i say bye to say you say some some back to come to see how the yes look man go back out and thank t got thank you um I will read out the reports from closed session um in the matter of student li versus sfe usd the board by a vote of six eyes one commissioner recusal commissioner fisher gives direction to the general council in one matter of anticipated litigation the board by a vote of seven a's gives direction to general
counsel. I am removing action item number 3254-8 esp three which is key to reading difficulties risks greener adoption from the agenda this evening the board will not be taking action on this item at today's meeting we the san francisco board of education acknowledge that we are on the unseeded ancestral homeland of the rama alone. Aloni who are the original inhabitants the same school peninsula as the indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their traditions the raw material only have never ceded lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers of this place as well as for all peoples who reside in their traditional territory as guests we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland and we wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders and relatives, the dramatist community and by affirming their sovereign rights as first peoples. Item two approval of board minutes of the special meeting
of MARCH 4th 2025 the regular meeting of MARCH 11th 2025 and the regular monitoring meeting of MARCH 25th 2020 5th MAY have a motion and a second please. So moved. Second, are there any changes? Seeing none. Roll call vote MR. Steel thank you PRESIDENT Kim. Student delegate montgomery yes. Student delegate lamb yes. MR. Alexander. Yes. Commissioner fischer yes. Thank you. Commissioner gupta yes. Vice PRESIDENT Huling yes. MR. Ray yes. MR. Weissbourd yes. PRESIDENT Kim yes. Nice. Thank you. Thank you. Um that's of u is the board of education policy in arkansas focused governance model based on community input. The board has adopted our vision values, goals and guardrails in order to
increase the portion of board meeting time we spend on student outcomes. Every other regular meeting is a monitoring workshop. This model also calls on the board to empower the superintendent to take full ownership of the strategies used to reach these goals within the guardrails set by the board. As we implement this new governance framework the board will continue to adopt new systems, routines and policies that improve student outcomes. we encourage the public to follow this work on our website as opposed to edu slash governance as we commit to finding new and improved ways to more meaningfully engage with staff students and families. With that I welcome members of the public and will turn the attention to uh DR. Sue for the superintendent's report. thank you PRESIDENT Kim. Good evening everyone. First just happy tuesday. I want to invite oh, I don't
know if we're we're just I want to invite everyone to join me for a series of in-person town halls throughout the month of APRIL too just to join me in discussing and understanding more about services budget and our efforts to stabilize the district. I hope next slide please. I hope our families, staff, students and community partners will be able to attend and join me in deep dialog. I've had a few already and I just greatly appreciate the parents and staff who come who came out and and talked to me and we were able to build a clear understanding. I was able to to explain myself a little bit better to them. So please come on out and and join me in this conversation. Next slide please. I want to say that we were so excited to see all of the families who submitted applications to us in this last
round of enrollment that we recently mailed out 15,400 notices to students for next year. 90% of our students receive one of their choices and that means that over a thousand students were assigned to a choice that they made to us during their application. This is so fantastic for us as we're trying really hard to build up our enrollment for those applicants who were not assigned to your top choice they were automatically put on to a wait list for their top top choices. So this year families can be placed on up to five schools in their waitlist without having to reapply. Right now all of our families can join a waitlist or read or revise their waitlist. As as you're making your decisions.
The first batch of waitlist offers will be sent out on monday, APRIL 21st. The enrollment center plans to send out a new batch of offers every week after that. And we will conclude our offering to take people off the waitlist all the way until the end of AUGUST or as seats end up being filled. Next slide please. I am excited to participate in the 20th annual youth summit at fort mason this friday with our wonderful wonderful student advisory council leaders. This year's summit is a fully student led event highlighting the creativity leadership and dedication of our students who have worked tirelessly to bring this to life. I know this will be an inspiring day of youth driven discussions activities, workshops and engagement.
Thank you so much to our youth leaders. APRIL is also earth month in honor of earth month. Various S.F. Us schools would take will take a field trip to the san francisco environment department of environment where they will be hosting the youth climate summit on APRIL 18th. The theme this year is climate action across careers. It's about exploring students passion through an environmental lens. So for young people please come and learn about how your leadership can shape the future through activism, arts, science ,technology and much more. And I am so, so proud to announce the the. That we have for schools who were just named california distinguished schools for 2025. These goals are john yoo how can we can clap we can club. yes. Yes. John yoo how can francis scott
key sunset elementary I chinese immersion school at diablo this year 336 elementary schools across the state were selected for this extremely prestigious 2025 california distinguished schools program which recognizes two categories of exceptional schools those closing the achievement gap and those demonstrate reading exceptional student performance the distinguished schools program recognizes elementary school and middle and high school in alternate years middle and the following year so awardees will hold this title for two years. All distinguished schools will be recognized at a wonderful reception get this in anaheim at the disneyland resort. I know super super fun. I will have the pleasure of joining these four amazing schools in accepting this award and the end of MAY. So I'm very excited to go to
disneyland and then in bright spots on MARCH 18th I attended getting ready for kindergarten in the joy of effective strategies and the wonderful lola havard early education school educators working with our youngest children in san francisco build community and celebrate overall gains in kindergarten readiness over the last three years this was particularly important because we're doing this in partnership with our city partners the department of early education kindergarten readiness as measured by the kindergarten readiness inventory is on the rise in kindergarten readiness is on the rise. Arcade readiness skills are observed across four domains fine motor numeracy literacy and social emotional skills. I am so excited to continue to work with our teachers, our school boys and our city partners on this effort
and then also in MARCH our mayor mayor daniel lurie visited paul revere, our councilor pamela stein's and invited him to join her school and to to acknowledge students who were working in the who are participating in a service project at their school. And so we are so excited that these students got the opportunity to meet with the mayor, to talk with the mayor and to learn from the mayor what he did to get his start in his in his adult work life. So thank you, MR. Stein, for welcoming the mayor to your classroom. and then a couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of honoring this year's community advisory committee for special education our cacc at the advocates worthy of excellence award in this very room. It was amazing. The award is called the r award.
And I have to say when I was when I was there participating in this process and in delivering the awards, the energy in this room was amazing. We had parents we had young people, we had educators. We had state leaders in this room all celebrating the really great work that we as a school district are doing together to support our our young people in special ed disabilities young people with disabilities . So I'm so grateful for all of our leaders and I saw hava walking in here oh, there you go. Thank you so much hava for all the work that you did to put it on that amazing, amazing event. And julia to thank you and then oh, and that concludes my report. Thank you. Chocolate moving the student delegates report I call on sydney delegate montgomery and lamb to give an update on the sydney advisory council. thank you and good evening everyone.
We have a couple of things to get through for this report so I'll start with our sec survey progress. You've heard me talk about the survey a lot recently and all that's the work on getting the survey filled out is already done and we're starting to unpack and analyze the results that we got from that survey of all of our high school students . So we've been lucky to partner with some of these partners and uc berkeley to better grasp and analyze all of the data and how to affect meaningful change afterwards and we have a couple more means of them in the future in the coming months. So we're looking to use that information to give siac some data driven focus over the next couple of years, create some committees, allow align some of the questions we asked what we got from students as some of our goals for siac to really make sure that we have as I say working towards what students want and need. I'll pass it to isabel for talking about the next subject. Thank you. Delegate montgomery I think I'm
going to go off script for this one. Our youth summit, our annual sec youth summit is this friday, APRIL 11th and I would love to say that I'm excited and the council would love to say that they're excited and notably our cabinet would love to see that they're excited. but the days inching up to this event has been full of stress and chaos. Yesterday at our sec meeting we learned that no one was aware of the field trip slips, no one had chaperons, no one had substitute teachers placed. And a lot of this derives from the fact that we don't meet that often. We meet twice a month one of our meetings being online and another being in person and during these in-person meetings our progress is unclear because online meetings can only capture so much so we're usually catching up on stuff that should have been done in the previous meeting and because of that our planning process for our summit has been delayed and we're clearly seeing the effects
right now as we don't also have a permanent sec advisor. And with that in mind too because we don't have a permanent sec advisor we can't meet every week and that's what has occurred in the past the past sec cohorts have been able to meet every week and because of that their summits have been more organized and we're kind of getting the chaotic end of that stick. So with that said, we would like to get a resolution. We've had board members attend our sec meetings which I wholeheartedly appreciate and I know for a fact that you have made the effort to get a better understanding of how the sec has function without this crucial position. But we want to see a resolution and we want to see a difference in our sec and we represent students. And so in order to make effective change we need a permanent sec advisor and we want to hear from you guys.
We want to find a way to bridge these. We want to find a way to get organization back into the sec which is a cohort that is needed for this district to wrap. as someone who's been on the sec for multiple years, I have seen both sides of what sec was last year and what it's turned into now with the lack of support that we have as a as a group and as we go into next year since we're rounding out this year and we have a new opportunity next year, I want to remind us all to think about how we can be more student centered and how the sec is where our student leaders come and they those are the ones people that really want to get involved. They're the ones that really want to be in the system and affect change and if we're not giving them opportunities to do that then we're really failing our sec and our students. So I think we need to double
down and invest in sec and how we can create that process of learning and practicing being a leader which is really important in our world and make that as accessible and un chaotic as possible moving forward. And that concludes our report. Thank you so much. Student delegates and I know that vice PRESIDENT Huling and I look forward to our meeting tomorrow. I assume this is a little bit of a preview of the conversation that will have. We thank you for for sharing that here and commissioners I just I worth naming tomorrow at 5:00 we have a meeting with our student delegate leaders here to have a conversation around how we can best support both the sec and our students at large in the district itself. Thank you. Appreciate it. Um, moving on to item d seven our fiscal and operational update. There is no specific update at this time for this meeting but we have acknowledged the fact that report that will be
discussed today and moving on to item e public comment to align with our effective governance model public comment will last for one hour or until 8 P.M. Whichever is earlier. We aim to respect staff, family and community time by beginning board business no later than 8 P.M.. Our hope is to conduct board business in an efficient, effective and accessible manner during reasonable hours each participant MAY speak for up to one minute. Staff will think the participant at the one minute mark at one minute and five seconds. I've asked MR. Steel and mysterious to please turn off the mic and transition to the next speaker. I ask members of the public to please respect that one minute limit so that we can hear from as many speakers as possible. I encourage speakers who are speaking on the same topic to collaborate and combine their comments so that the board can hear all viewpoints during our limited time. Please also note that the board accepts written public comments via email to board office that
as opposed to edu we will hear first from students in person on agenda items then general public in person followed by students in person on non agenda items and general public in and non agenda items regardless of other in-person public comment is complete we will save 15 minutes for remote public comment taking commenters in the same order as in person if any time remains we will return to in-person public comment as a remote reminder board rules in california law do not allow us to respond to comments or attempt to answer questions during public comment time if appropriate the superintendent will ask that staff follow up with speakers. At this time I'll turn it over to MR. Steel to help us facilitate public comment. thank you. This lecture will start with our students here in person. I have two student cards. If there are any more students you can let me know if you didn't indicate that you were. You have one minute each. I have bella guzman and I'm sorry.
And then another j take you out . Do you have one minute each? You could light up at the podium and go ahead whenever you're ready. my nurse is appointed to me because she help me be strong and healthy with her help and help. We are able to get ice packs. Please don't take away my nurse . We need them at your our school loud. Thank you. oh yeah. If you want to do it, you don't . You got this thing out there stuck right here. My nurse is important because she makes sure you make sure I'm okay. I really need kids who are make you talk about the kids and the school kids.
Why they feeling good? Good kids. Kids who are diabetic. Diabetic won't get help with their their anymore medicine anymore. Kids with fevers and kids with fevers. I want to be able to be able to get checked more to get checked any more. Please don't please don't take away my nurse. We need her. If you. thank you. Thank you. Thank you so thank you. Are there any more students who like to speak this evening? Come on up.
Okay, go ahead. hello. My name is celine and I'm five years old and I want to come to this school because my teacher MS.. ma was here and and so my dad and ba and my sister is close by to this school and my dad can he can jump and and they and MS.. Marwa can help me and can help my dad pick me up and drop me off because I'm next to my sister and can I can I talk oh ,okay. Okay. yeah. Okay. Thank you very much. All right. I'm going to go to the next the next group the next group is agenda items. I will call your name so you have one minute to combine it with the podium. William patterson, brandy markman and havok kelly. My name is will patterson. I'm a former resource specialist with the district I come here many times and tonight I want to talk
about the ethics committee report. I have a few concerns. One is it never talks about student outcomes in the whole report and it is just insensible to me to have a report about fiscal policy without considering student outcomes. Number two, it keeps comparing us to things like the state average or these other normal districts but we know that special education is failing at state and other district levels so we're sort of normalizing failure and we need to do better than that. Number three, the resource specialist position which I care mostly about because that's a position I held is already that position with the highest turnover in the district I believe and it's taxing our human resources department. But there's a decision to push higher on our caseload limit that doesn't make sense to me and I have a lot of complaints about it but that's just my beginning.
Thank you. hello, my name is brandy markman. I am a public school parent and I agree with the speaker before me I thought the sick matt report on special education was one of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen in this docket. The idea that our caseload needs to be bigger is just asking to put our students and teachers and faculty in harm's way. I think quite frankly it is reckless and quite frankly I think that vic matt needs to be sued for it for issuing a report that that that demands such case loads that are absolutely ridiculous and make no sense at all. And I want to remind people that elliott drew sean took if you look in the covington post there is an article where at the beginning of the pandemic he agreed with betsy devos that we needed to have waivers for special education for our kids. Ieps during the pandemic and I think there needs to be an
independent audit of an organization other than fick matt because obviously they don't care about our kids with special education. thank you. hi, my name is harvey kelly am the cac chair and I'm also wanted to talk about the fact that first I can't cover all the areas of concern in one minute so my my ultimate is please don't implement all of these unilaterally without dialog collaboration not only with the cac and families but also with the union educators on the ground etc. When a report is designed according to best practices according to industry standards state standards etc. Really at times you're at risk. The impact on the ground does not align with those type of recommendations and you need to be thoughtful when you're going about this. So that's first.
Second in my last 15 seconds there was a recommendation for an empty asset system and multi-tiered right? I've been advocating for this for years. please ten five seconds agree it's crucial but the fact is we don't have that right now so we can't implement all these changes with vacancies in all this on the ground in this type of environment without diligence. Thank you. Call the next group of speakers for call your name please line up. These are not agenda items. Missy cato, bernice casey and follows a route. I'm very, very sorry for mispronouncing one from cornell and rene going you go when you're ready. okay. Good evening. My name is missy carroll and I'm the instructional coach at francis scott key elementary school just named one of california's distinguished
schools 2025. I'm here again tonight because the district has deemed our assistant principal a nonessential role in our school of 550 students and 75 staff per the district hiring guidelines, we are expected to ask our families to pay $350 per child per year to fund this position. Many of our families have multiple children here for seven years. That's $5,000 that we're asking your families to pay to attend a public school. It's unreasonable for families to fund this critical position a position currently held by the amazingly qualified karina mcgraw whose extensive spend and special ed background has enabled her to support our two moderate severe special day classrooms. Over 100 iep meetings are overloaded rsp teachers and understaffed perez her steadfast leadership, compassion and dedication to equity and inclusion are the qualities that truly make us distinguished. I know you care for students
and families if you truly can't find the funding you please take what talk to our city. get the funding please find it. Thank you. hi, my name is bernice casey. i'm a parent of two children and as of usd. I'm asking the board to please encourage the superintendent and her staff to respond to emails the pta has sent three emails since MARCH 16th to superintendent sue and her staff. No response. We need direction about what pta can fund and we need information in languages for our community in spanish. Absolutely no response. That's that's not okay in the 27 seconds as the other people have talked about the sped report, I don't see anything in here that talks about how much you have to pay for nps, how much you have to pay when families sue you because you are providing legal services. my child's iep he his trilingual iep was due in OCTOBER.
It's APRIL. It's still not done. That is against the law. Let's not talk about right or wrong it's against the law. So if you pass this you're going to have angry parents like me and others suing the district. thank you. How much that if you hi my name is for the roof I'm a member from local 87 seiu san francisco. I am a janitor working as a lead night nighttime so I understand the application they give us like a choices to choose the the schools where we are sending our our kids and at the end they don't give you any any choice. They give another choice and the think we make our our our choices based on our recommendation I cannot drive my daughter every day. Her sister she's a next to her school. She can help me. We have neighbors they can help me to drop drop her off to pick her up. So that's my problem now and now I'm in struggle with my wife. She doesn't work.
She doesn't drive. She was involved in an accident. She has a phobia so I'm in trouble. So I don't know how they they they give you this these choices. I don't understand why you you give me the choice and then you said no, this is not the choice you want. I give you whatever I want so that's my struggle. thank you. Thank you, thank you. And the things I that your thinking that me number one go to me we win what happens in dallas where like what I loop well I think I used to be a car is more important the bottom point to me important they go more it will seem like it went up out of a sort of thing got beat belongs to the aunties conquer your condo she nope will machinists who are competitors industries commerce on your barbering there their elite uma she's on the order of basis commuted being arche no la maria la espanol to get that I zendo location biennale of my
estrus seed not animals sufficient to support the maestro kimono to look what those that you look at you are going to get my professor is but I guess the communists yeah it that aquino's rule is out apply the latinos I came mujer persona my daughter basic and is eating a la boy you said I wouldn't come iraqi boy they must they squirrel kill or how you using I know so but I can no kidding on my estrus thank you very quick translation do I I'm a parent from what I know and I have one main point to talk about here and it's and this it's possible that a teacher in have 22 students in their classroom I mean I have two girls at home and it's and I did it and you know one of the things that it comes down to is all the stress that that being carrying around for
teaching all these students. And the other thing is how they're going to be this children that they come from different countries in the world to learn the language the best way they can as you can see I know there are a lot of people who don't speak spanish so they don't know what I'm saying and so what I really want that's the and and I don't I don't think that everybody sees the effects of what is happening and we need to understand that teachers are a very important part of our life for our children. And so all I'm asking and I one is for you to actually bring more teachers into the classroom and we need to have more equity in quality and we need more more teachers and also you understand that there's a lot of people that come from different countries that also need to help.
Thank you. When I started this we number rene gomez e bingo and represents you on the weather loop elementary then go when I had to say sign use katie stay and keep there is the total look a more says mendoza cortez must program us means me has it all beneficial going to those programs uh what other mutual mathematical lecturer you could okay is this program assume we fundamentalist but in this you then withdraws then the strong seahorse glasses translated oh hi my name is ben. I mean I'm also coming from well a little bit element this I have a six year old girl who attends kindergarten and one of the things that we ask is to do less cut in in with the staff and more programs I know that my daughter she's been benefited by these programs
in reading and math and so and I know that this is very fundamental for their development. thank you. Thank you. I'm called the next group of speakers roberto guzman, sylvia mason waller, lillian dietz, mabel jang one minute each please come up. good evening. My name is roberto smart rivera. I have three kids in the school district. They guadalupe elementary is a stop the harm. These budget cuts are costly to our causing to our schools and communities do not defund the programs that are working our look mentary that this tree is carrying a spring board and the school knows for the 20 fy 26 the school year this is happening even though 70% of our students are not reading at
the grade level and even we have two students with diabetes who need medical care 90% of our families are low income. They care deeply about their children and success but they can now for a private tutoring these costs are creating fear and stress. Indeed inequity and in the end is our black and brown communities who suffer the most. So we are asking what is the impact analysis of this part is especially being protected. Thank you. How many teachers will be hired to replace the 352 retired? Thank you. Well 90% of tragic you hobby qualified teachers this fall. thank you. on wednesdays we nominated sylvia galvis bingo they like other loopy so my mother when I mean the kinder a yeah is
asthmatic for instance is is school jane is agricultural information this is not must a quarter system of maestros in the symphony made us them in a little bit forward yeah you then it's going to put it I must say in guadalupe no lucky thing borges list are you that in my seattle make us that are gonna literally mathematica performer grass yes you know everyone you their elvis and I'm also going from elementary school I have a girl who attends kindergarten and i as you might know my daughter she has asthma and also I heard that at the school is cutting up the nerves and so we don't want more cuts. You know what we need more nurses and more teachers and please do not sign any of these programs. And when I look back my daughter has benefited greatly in math and reading because of these programs.
Thank you. good evening. I want to talk specifically about hillcrest after learning that none of the budget scenarios that the principal presented to our sc include funding for the elementary advisor. There have now been repeated calls from staff and families for a compromise that funds this position. Elementary advisor is clearly a big concern for the hillcrest community but please note that the call here is not to adopt any specific proposal simply for the sc to be able to vote on a proposal that includes funding for elementary advisor. This principal clearly has a vision for our community but this isn't the way for her to advance it. She's our sixth principal in less than three years and it is beyond disturbing that someone new should come into this position and be so resistant with a community that has endured so much turmoil with our own resolve, dedication and mutual care rather than include voices she's excluding them rather than lift voices and encourage
engagement she's suppressing these. She's literally told people not to talk and tried to prevent it as I'm sure you can imagine this is very disturbing to a lot of thinking even more unnerving is that something so one reason some reason that it's difficult. my name is lillian dennis and I'm a first year first grade teacher at francis scott key elementary. I'm here to talk about the assistant principal position. Recently francis scott key was recognized as one of two california's distinguished schools I celebrated earlier one of 336 schools to be recognized for reference california has over 10,000 public schools and one out of four schools to receive this recognition in sap usd which encompasses 121 schools. This achievement is attributed to our our incredible staff who are devoted to our students as individuals and as a community. We could not have achieved this without the support of our
entire staff. I repeat entire this is no coincidence but is evidence of why the position of assistant principal currently held by the indispensable carina mcgraw is more than necessary but is required for a school's optimum success. Our assistant principal gets teachers and staff the support they need to make our school distinguished. It could not be the same without her and the essential support she provides. let us keep what we have. thank you. okay. My name is mabel jang and I am a para educator at francis scott key as a graduate of our public schools and a former teacher with an adult autistic daughter that attended public schools, I understand the immense importance administrators are to students of special needs. Losing our assistant principal would be detrimental to our 550 plus students including 80 with ieps and 75 staff adversely affecting student safety and staff performance, the assistant principal role is now
even more crucial to ensure that our special ed students have meaningful access to general ed in the least restrictive environment. The ap is absolutely vital to increasing accountability and oversight, hiring and retaining sped staff, strengthening sped services and improving data systems. Eliminating apps shows a lack of insight by the board to the importance of an assistant principal to individual school operations. thank you. Thank you. All right. I'm calling the next group the final group m a jamie and then joanna tillery with us f representative. yes, hello. I've been coming here for the last quite a few meetings about the budget and staff cuts and haven't been allowed to speak. I have been wanting to completely reject your staff cuts and your dangerous ridiculous plan to balance the budget on a hard working staff at the expense of our child children's education and safety if this house is completely bursting at the seams with
unhappy community members you have a duty to listen to every one of us. I don't care if you stay if you have to stay here all night. The mayor has not released the erap funds and there have been zero independent audits. If we have money to fund a war on drugs we can fully stop our school and next year I don't even want to hear a whisper about closing a single school. We will MARCH in the streets. You are all public education privatize just we're allowing this to go on for so long and stop announcing that you accept public comment online because you absolutely do not. thank you. Hi. So I read that state report about speed and it broke my disabled heart of my neurodivergent physically disabled heart of a child who has an iep because I know what I see going on in the school district I see as a few as the not fulfilling in upholding
their current iep legal obligations currently right now. So I don't understand how you would put up more cases when you actually need to lower the cases. We need to fully fund sped it is not even being served fully right now. We know that if a student graduates as opposed to who has iep they're 50% less likely to be working to be able to sustain themselves. Why is that? Why are more more kids being put into special day class instead of doing inclusion because we're up in the classroom members instead of 22 now 33 that's wrong. Stop being able to be gen-x and stop the champion. What do you things these things need? This is our representative from usf who has opened at a time to speak. Thank you. Hey. Hey. Appreciate it. I appreciate it.
I am back again. Good evening, superintendent board education members committee member and when this here my name is hillary. okay. Okay. I'm the vice PRESIDENT Of the paraprofessionals with the united educators in san francisco tonight I'm not just here as a union leader but as a voice for hundreds of school workers who serve on the front lines of our campuses every single day para educators, school security aides and community relations specialist many who are now facing terrifying realities of layoff. These aren't just job titles. These are people who build relational trust that keeps our schools running and our students connected. They're the eyes and ears of our campuses. they're the mentors, mediators ,protectors and oftentimes the only consistent adult presence in the lives of the lives of our most vulnerable, vulnerable youth. Our educators support students
with disabilities, language learners and children navigating trauma students who are often overlooked but are the heart of our equity work. They come from students in crisis. They provide 1 to 1 attention that can't be replaced by any app or online module. The work isn't just important it's essential our schools security aides finally finally known as 10th often go beyond their job description. They de-escalate conflict. They build trust with students who struggle with authority and prevent fights and altercations before they even happen. And let me be clear they do this with minimal training but maximal heart in a time when we are investing in restorative practices in alternatives to policing while we eliminate the very staff who do who do that daily through relationships and presence. Our community relations specialist bridge gaps between
home and school there translate not just of language but of culture, of experience, of trust. They're often the first point of contact for families navigating school bureaucracy and the ones who make parents feel seen and heard. If you move forward with these layouts you're not just cutting budgets, you're cutting ties with the very people who anchor our most at risk students at their school communities. These staff members are trusted adults in environments where trust doesn't come easily their absence will create a ripple effect on safety, on learning, on school culture. We know these lives are not based on performance. They're based on reverse seniority on decisions made at a higher level. But I urge you to consider the real cost of these decisions because once these workers are gone, once students lose that connection, it's something you can't just rebuild overnight.
Our schools are already operating without enough resources and now we're about to take away the very people who show up every day with heart despite being underpaid, undervalued and your support a please we consider these layoffs protect the staff who protect our students invest in the people who make our schools feel like community and not just into institutions . thank you. That concludes in-person public comment at this time we will move to virtual public comment again. Each speaker will have one minute to speak and will automatically be muted after one minute. Can we please have that repeated in spanish and chinese service is the last participant is the most but my lesson plan in this opinion is you never
screw up at 30 minutes and can i ask you what do you guys like? I see there moms are fat, you speak GOD get them all we way yeah see that's what we're doing we are yes I'm drunk my bong I'm you are what it was you don't think I'm going to thank you calling the first speaker vanessa. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you okay. Good evening, commissioners. Good evening, superintendent and community. I want to just thank you all for your service to public schools. As you all know, public schools are being threatened across our country and it's important for us to continue to have dialog on how we can ensure we maintain diversity and intersectionality of all young people. And as a city I am I'm really concerned about the fact my and some of its recommendations
and you'll see will post board elevate where you can see all of my thoughts on that but what I'm asking of the board at this time is to not implement any recommendations from the special education report without having a third party additional independent audit as well as there is a need to really work with parents and allies of students with disabilities to ensure that they are given time to share what they feel. And I think some of the ideas that came up thank you when I said that is your time. Wendy, go ahead please. Hello? can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Thank you. I'm wendy rhodes. I'm the executive director at support for families of children with disabilities.
I'm also the proud parent of 60 students. You cannot do fiscal analysis in a vacuum. The point of all of this funding and a subsidy itself is to educate our kids. This includes students with disabilities and we know that the U.S. Is not currently doing this well and it's expensive when you don't do it right the first time. So as much money as it might cost a whole lot more when you have to do legal settlements and compensate for education and nps placements, this report is incomplete and inaccurate and imbalanced. It has insufficient analysis and I'm asking that you do not use that as an excuse to cut services and staffing for our kids. And then you get an independent analysis. I also have concerns about big understanding of and commitment to legally required special education since they were overseeing usd with 30 to $60 million of legally required state funding was never allocated. Thank you.
Thank you. That is your time sam. the thick mat report was released too late for the public to dig into. Quote industry standards often cited in the report lacks context of our school of our schools. 34 students in a class is too much with iep rates or sometimes over 20% with english language learners and children with five of four accommodations rsp case loads in another quote industry standard is unrealistic rsp workloads need to be based on iep minutes and the needs of children. We need to invest in staff fixed vacancies first. We need our board committees reinstated and I suggested sped committee to discuss solutions based on reality and real feedback from actual sped communities with real data and experience. This is ablest. Thank you. thank you bridget.
I. My name is bridget dyer and I'm a parent of two children and a city of city schools both of which have ieps. Neither of my children have received most of their allocated supports this year including things like speech therapy counseling or therapy or therapy occupational therapy and social skills groups and the list and behavioral analysis and behavioral support . This is because of my r's peers overloaded and because we don't actually have staff in many of the positions. We also have been asked to cut staff at the school sites council on the support that we give to teachers and to students for extra reading help and extra math help. that's the empty est model. But we're not even. We have been taking away from that model which makes it
really hard to keep kids out of ieps because there's not enough services for them. Thank you, abby. I can hear you. Yes, we can hear you. Hi, I'm from sutro elementary school. I have two questions and thoughts to share. Number one, I just want to know how the district plans on supporting teachers as they try to navigate having combo classes. I know that's been put on them and it's a very challenging thing to do and I'd like to know how they're being supported through that. And the second thing I'd like to bring up that's concerning for our school community is that the cancellation of spring board and springboard for the summer. And my understanding is that will make up of schools that are being allowed to have that and it's been a very effective program for our school community. We have a lot of data to show for that that we could share
and we would like to know talk to or what we could do to bring back that program, that summer program for our school community. So thank you. Thank you, charles. Hello. I just wanted to speak as a taxpayer and parent in san francisco. I predict before the end of the 2025 calendar year sfi usd will close from a measles outbreak even for mmr vaccinated individuals. And that will be how they permanently close schools by not reopening their 71% vaccination rate is a joke. So how is this being addressed? Secondly, as cepi was due we'll lose all federal funding soon. How is S.F. Swc planning for these losses? You can countersue with david chiu but between dti antisemitism investigations and trans advocacy there is
zero chance S.F. You will swc will keep these funds. So admit this sooner than later. Also if the sec can't get there a full time advisor how can you know and how can the public expect to get your attention? As far as the thick goes, how much is spent on npis? Another audit does look like it's needed. thank you for your time. Have a good evening. Thank you, kevin. Kevin? Hello? Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Thank you. Kevin robinson, parent and educator. After multiple requests for this information from the assistant superintendent of high schools to no avail. A recent finding revealed that the 35 to advanced placement courses offered this school year 34 or 97% were allocated to one school. On the other end of the spectrum two high schools had zero ap courses. This is not fair or equitable. Yet another hurdle that hampers
our students access to a quality education and something that should be looked into by the board. Thank you. Thank you, claire ending in zero three for color bending in zero three for my hello. Judges premium a product of our public schools here and I am calling I was one of the original student advisory committee members back in 1974 75 and I elevated endorse the recall by our student advisory committee members to have staff support. We had it back then even in very difficult budget times . If you're looking for a funding source I suggest looking at voting on a moratorium on severance packages for hard working but highly paid executives. Amy bear at a recent meeting said the school district is out of the norm in providing severance packages for highly paid executives. We always talk about equity.
Here's where the equity highly paid executives get severance packages they're not the paraprofessionals risking their jobs not sodium, not the nurses. I encourage you to use that as a funding source in the future and put a moratorium on executive packages. Thank you very much. Thank you, tina. I. Good evening. Thank you for taking my comment. I am a cic board member and just wanted to echo some of my colleague's comments about the concerns about the sick man report. I too have many concerns about the main one I would like to highlight as many others did is the recommendations for case load and what I hope the district will consider requesting is I'm very curious about what their industry standard reference is. I would like to know where they got that data. I also happen to be a come here as a parent of a student in special education in the
district but I also happen to be a school psychologist and I know for example that the recommended ratio of 1 to 972 is far above the recommendation of the national association of school psychologists which is 1 to 500. And I'm pleased that cisco unified is close to that ratio that's very admirable. And as others have mentioned, I really would like us to consider that we don't want to . Thank you, tina. I'm sorry that's your time. Thank you. Did. Hi there. I'm I share our tip that you quote eliminating all the awkward positions just more mismanagement. These cuts will not close the deficit. These positions have funding sources at town halls. Superintendent. One of the reasons is we have to ensure all the classrooms have teachers. You don't need to eliminate
positions to do that. You have the right to reassign us as needed at any time in the school year. You don't need to preemptively cut. You can be recruiting people for your open classroom positions. Now not filling them with people who don't want them. Once you know you can't hire somebody from a position that's already filled open, you're so desperate for classroom teachers, why are you extending the deadline for the third? But this doesn't make sense. Our tips are the tier two part of empty math that everyone's been talking about. Do not eliminate the position. Use the funds you have. State funds grant funds. Pto funds. Do not do more mismanagement. You going to use the money you have? Thank you. Thank you, sheryl. Sheryl. MISS Marshall. thank you, young sister.
I think the commissioner's opportunity delegate because I want to start with the great student delegate report. I've always thrilled by what I hear. I'm thrilled by your leadership and one day you have attended and I look forward to sitting in your meetings I up and round by that time I have the acp we have some concerns and what you heard tonight sadly is that many black and brown children are in special their classes. We request that the lieutenant and the staff work with the union to make sure that all of this class staff of special classes are appropriately filled and that students those with class don't at grade level. We're concerned about this addition because he was the person for the effort to be with us during the payroll debacle and for the next four things send him back again. And I thought to myself if there's someone else I could send to manager of san francisco we are concerned about the what we heard about
hillcrest elementary. Hillcrest is very fun to ask if they'll get a lot of children at that school and we hope this doesn't. I'm so sorry MR. Marshall. That is your time. Thank you so much for marty marty mace excuse me. Hi, this is marty mays. I am the parent liaison elementary advisor at longfellow elementary school in the outer mission. I'm here to advocate for the other apparently moms and elementary advisors that are have been served with a preliminary luminary layoff notice. We come in different colors. We speak chinese. We speak spanish. We speak english. We help so many of our communities, so many of our students who need help. You know, a lot of them are newcomers to this country. They're signing up for tech in our garden and they will be with us for years upon years
upon years and we are here to help them and we make we make it easier for them and also we want to advocate for all the school nurses. Our schools need nurses. We have a little girl who had a seizure last week and the nurse was there and you know it's a matter of life and death. So thank you for your time and I hope you'll, you know, consider my request to rescind the layoff notices. Thank you. Thank you, cheryl. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can hear you. Thank you. My name is cheryl so I'm the director of education and support for families of children with disabilities. In reviewing the report I have some concerns that eligibility enrollment in special education doesn't break down race, ethnicity or disability type or things that are important to intersectional issues such as english language, language learner status or foster care placement. It's my experience over two decades that what often drives special education eligibility
and later grades is a failure to identify disability early when intervention can be most effective. As a result, children begin to act out or act in the maladaptive ways and then are identified in the categories related to and secondary problems. Moreover it be helpful to have, as others have said, more information about what the district and special ed settlements to which the demographics of families and children how many compliant complaints have investigated and found valid and whether the corrective measures worked? How many children home instruction and how many families have given up entirely and are just home schooling their kids who are not getting support? There's also no mention in this report a five year plan which is special. thank you, cheryl. That is your time. PRESIDENT Kim that concludes a virtual public comment. Um thank you to members of the public for taking the time to share your thoughts and experiences with us today. And a friendly reminder that the public MAY continue to share their comments formally
by emailing the board office at board office at as if you see that edu tool to align with student focused governance. The superintendent and her team are tasked with providing a draft of each agenda 12 days in advance. One set draft is made public on our website. Board members have made a commitment to submit, clarifying and technical questions and staff have made a commitment to respond to those questions in advance of each board meeting. This q&a is linked into each board agenda on board docs today it is linked in item d three and we invite the public to review those questions and answers alongside our discussions today. Additionally to create more space focus on student outcomes we will be moving most items to a consent calendar and identifying only our highest priority agenda items to discuss. Board members are reminded to restate not to restate questions answered by staff in advance but to bring instead forward strategic questions that allow us to better understand our progress towards goals and the underlying strategies so that we can be
better informed in our decision making in partner with the superintendent as we hold to hold our accountable. Moving to item discussion items item one for that review of as opposed to special education I will turn it over to the superintendent. thank you PRESIDENT Kim at this time I'm going to invite regina piper, our assistant superintendent of special education as well as our slp director and DR. Carolyn benner ,the chief analysts to the dallas before before they dive in to actually before DR. Benno dives into her presentation. I do want to just take a moment to acknowledge what our community has said. We know that it is not okay to not serve our students and we want to serve our students. We want to particularly serve our highest needs students which are students that have been identified for special education. We are trying our best. We have actually started to make some changes within my administration to make sure that we do not make the
mistakes of the past. We need to make sure that the voice of our leaders are involved are included in high level decision making. We need to make sure that the voices of the community is also involved which is why I am so grateful for the partnership of the cac as well as many, many other families and educators in our school district. However, I know that we have to do better. There is so much more that we need to do. We need to do better at supporting our students which is why we need to do a good job at making sure that our general education programs and services are the best for our students so that we can then continue to provide the additional supports in tier two and if necessary in tier three categories. But that means that we need to
be persistent and focus in the work of educating our students. We need to be diligent in identifying when we allocate these resources and how we allocate these resources because it is going to be very difficult as we move into the future of this district with reductions in our in our budget . But I know that it's possible. I know that with the support of figment and of course with our leaders here it is possible for us to create a system that we can all be really proud of. So with that I'm going to hand it over to regina to introduce DR. Benno. good evening, DR. Sue. Commissioners and student delegates. It's very nice to be in front of you today and I'm honored to represent our department and our district as the assistant superintendent for special ed services.
I also have been listening very carefully to the input of our community members and I'm really thankful to all of you who are joining us in person and also remotely for this discussion. And while all of the attention that special ed services has been receiving since I started in this role in AUGUST has been a little unnerving. I'm also very grateful for the attention that we're receiving because these discussions are centering on some of our most vulnerable students in our system and it is really shaping and forming the way that we are working together across departments and as leaders in our district with parents as our partners to address the needs of our students and as DR. Su so eloquently said to do better. So I wanted to also thank carolyn bonneau who is here as our fiscal or our mat lead analyst and who conducted the the review that was done at the request of our former superintendent and special
education leaders at the time last spring. And just to uplift the fact that this was a voluntary process that this was at the request of our former superintendent and that this review of our continuum of services was really to look at a slice of the work related to the systems and structures that were in place that needed improvement. And these recommendations will be considered by our department along with our parent partners or community advisory committee. Our support for families, our parent empowerment committee and our other colleagues across the district. So carolyn, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to come this evening and share some of our findings and recommendations with you. I first just want to start by emphasizing the voluntary part of this process so your district is engaged with mat. But this particular study you
you voluntarily conducted. And we feel that that process, you know, is really brave to take a look at yourself and get outside perspective and ideas. It's it's healthy. And now these recommendations are yours to consider and determine which resonate for you and which MAY be spurred different ideas that might also help in your improvement efforts. So if you can go to the next slide I think everyone here is aware of who format is but I'll just briefly introduce myself. So I represent special ed program on our team. I also worked with a fiscal expert but I was a special education teacher. I taught resource and special day class and I became a special ed director and a self a director in northern california. So my background is experience is as a teacher. And so I want to just kind of start our presentation by sharing that if you can go to the next slide.
One of the things about our matt reports that can be difficult for districts is we don't highlight all of the amazing things districts are doing. It's not like the task process that our schools go through where we look at you know really the areas of strength and then areas for growth we really do highlight areas where we think improvement could be had and then make recommendations in those areas. So I think that's important to remember when consuming our reports and those recommendations. If you go to the next slide, I want to start just with a little context about your enrollment and tie that to special education funding. If you go to the next slide, we see a trend here in san francisco that is similar to what we see across the state in that you have decline enrollment of your general student population but you have an increase in special education population. And one of the reasons this is so challenging is that your special ed funding is tied to your general education enrollment. So I want to say that again
your funding is tied to general education enrollment not special education enrollment. Okay. so because you have this kind of inverse relationship of that general education population decreasing, you're actually receiving less funding because you're you're your population has gone down to serve those increasing number of students that are being identified for special ed. Now I will point out an area of strength for your district and really want to highlight an area where your staff is doing well so that special ed percentage that we look at 13.59% of your students enrolled in special ed is actually lower than the state average. And the reason that we like to kind of norm you against that is that we you know, we're always concerned about increasing decreasing stable. But it is a metric that can show that you're not over identifying for special education. And while it MAY seem that identification for special
education would be good in all cases it's it's not because we have finite resources finite number of educators who can provide those resources. You're all aware we have a statewide staffing shortage and students do lose access to their general education environment for parts of their day when they're in special education. So this is a very important support that students require it but we don't want to over identifier misidentify students for special education. So again I think that this is a testament to the good job your staff is doing. However one of the things we do want to look at in this district is that that rate is increasing as it is across the state. So if you go to the next slide this shows that comparison of you two to the state. If you go to the next slide, one of the things that we also looked at kind of was the proportion of students in special ed. It's come up throughout public comment. We do have this increase in students with autism that is a trend across the state and across the nation.
And I think it does cause some need to reflect on the way services are delivered and how programs are offered to support students. So there were recommendations in the report around looking at specialized classes for students with autism at different levels to just to make sure that you're meeting the needs of that population and given that it's growing across across the state and here if we go to the next slide to address this increasing percentage of students in special education, you've heard through the public comment some of this about empty assets. Right? And that's absolutely what we highlighted in the report as important to make sure is kind of uniformly implemented across the district. So if you go to the next slide we look at both the way that students are identified and supported and for different types of interventions whether that be social emotional, behavioral or academic supports
outside of special ed and then also we looked at kind of the eligibility determination process. So really important from our perspective that there are consistent practices across schools I think with really good intention this district has kind of let schools be creative and autonomous and responsive to the needs of the populations at those specific schools and I think there's a need to kind of mesh that with some parameters that all schools are following to make sure a child at one school is an identified for special ed when they wouldn't have been at a different school site in the district. So from our perspective that's the critical importance not that there can't be differences across schools but these common abilities that again prevent inappropriate identification or misidentification for special ed. So if you go to the next slide and actually two more slides forward I also want to talk about the eligibility determination process for special education. So one more slide please.
So when we look at whether or not a student qualifies for special education, we look at two different parts in the test do they have a disability that meets our education code criteria and then do they actually need specially designed instruction? what we learned from interviews that I think is really critically important for your district to consider is that certain students have a disability and the school teams were concerned that they really didn't need special education but there wasn't other support available at the school. So those students were placed in special education when really if there were other interventions and supports available at the school they could have access to those instead. So that's not the best use of your special ed resource again and I'm not just talking about the funding case loads right? We've heard about that throughout when we identify students appropriately for special ed that helps us manage caseload numbers and make sure that our specialists have a
reasonable number of students to serve and can provide that high quality service that we want for our students. So critically important that we're following this procedure because that is what the law requires but also that we have other options at the school sites so that students are able to access those outside of the special education program. So if you go to the next slide and then one more please and I want to highlight another strength in your district and something that needs to be considered as you go through a process of making any changes to the special ed program staffing would be to consider this idea of least restrictive environment. so this is this idea that students benefit from access to general education environments. I think you're probably aware of what this construct is and it's critically important for student outcomes, right? As our students transition outside of our school system we want them to live as independently and possible work as independently as possible and be able to access higher
education or training if that's appropriate. And this least restrictive environment report measures that this is again a real area of strength for the district. If you go to the next slide the first metric is based on preschool and I know this data is a little bit dated unfortunately this is our last available but you meet two of the three targets in your in your district and the biggest emphasis would be that regular program this has been a huge area of focus for your district over the past couple of years. It's an area of continued focus . You seek out grants and other supports and staff are working on really increasing access for preschool students to your general education environment which is critically important because when they have that first experience in preschool of being included it's much easier to include them as they go through your school system. If you go to the next slide we look at the school age least restrictive environment again this is the great success and something you should really celebrate as a district again you meet two of the three metrics and you're very close
to meeting that last target. So in some you really are doing an excellent job of looking at least restrictive environment for your students. If you can go to the next slide and one of the things that is a little bit unique about san francisco we have some single districts, single counties in the state but you're very large single district, single county and we feel that there MAY be some opportunity to differentiate district from county programs through this process we learned that there were some opportunities for better data management and governance practices around differentiating district from county because there's funding differences and also reporting differences that you know we kind of highlighted that we think MAY be helpful to you but also oftentimes as you're looking at keeping students in their least restrictive environment, you can create programs that have different class size ratios, different
types of supports from different specialists and maybe perhaps serve more students in a district program as opposed to a nonpublic school. So that's something we feel that could be considered here in san francisco. If you go to the next slide we'll actually go one more and one more please. I do want to address special ed staffing and I first want to talk a little bit about our industry standards. i know there are questions about those. So this is a statewide kind of average rate for staffing. It it does look at different areas and it was based on research that matt did to determine kind of what districts typically staff at and that could be a class size or a maximum caseload size. So if you go to the next slide we looked first at your special ed teacher staffing and for the resource specialist program we have an education code maximum. If you carefully read that section we actually recommended you don't use that maximum
maximum we recommended you use your ratio which is a 1 to 22. So if you go to the next slide we feel that's a very reasonable goal ratio to use as opposed to the education code maximum. We actually have a standard that we use that is 20 to 24 students that is based on maintaining students in their least restrictive environment which is what we believe your district is doing. So that would be the ratio that we we believe you should follow in this district not the education code maximum. So in my opinion our our report was trying to affirm that that is the ratio that should be used which is in your staffing guide. Okay. If you go to the next slide we did look at staffing for special day class programs. We do use a higher class size than your district has used. So accordingly our finding was that you have more teachers than we would expect based on those those ratios. So that's something you could could look at moving forward whether or not you could continue to meet student needs
if you did have higher class sizes and that's something that you would need to look at in terms of the types of supports for the programs. It might even be possible as you're looking at that district county continuum of classes that certain classes would maintain a very low student teacher ratio but then others might have a different student teacher ratio and different student needs would then, you know, be kind of accommodated in those different class sizes. If you go to the next slide and one more please. We also looked at para educator staffing and we feel that you would benefit from using an adult to student ratio so you have some class size guidelines and how many per educators are added to certain types of classes? We recommend the ratio because we feel that's more adaptive to both growing class sizes well as increasing. So that would be a recommendation we have. And then I also want to talk briefly about 1 to 1 parent educator staffing your district
has a large number of 1 to 1 para educators. This is a trend we've seen across the state post covid. We know that student need is high right now and I think one way that it's been addressed is adding 1 to 1 para educators and I think that this decision is well-meaning but I want to provide some additional information for consideration as part of that discussion. When you're looking at para educator you have a kind of a rubric that's used in an assessment process so if you go to the next slide there's been some really good research and one more please out of the university of denver that has looked at kind of some of the pros and cons of using 1 to 1 para educators and it's highlighted on the next slide where we summarize some of their research that basically shows that when you have a one on one educator, one of the consequences can be that the teacher can become less involved with that student. So if I'm sitting here next to
my students throughout the day the teacher becomes less likely according to this research to engage with the student and that doesn't mean that no student should have 1 to 1 peer educators. It doesn't mean they're a bad support but students can become very dependent on that adult and that can cause there to be social barriers between that student and other students in the room. So it's just an additional bit of research I think we should consider and you should look at when looking at your para educator staffing and your use of one to ones we have many recommendation ins around that assessment process and how certain students MAY be able to reduce support over time or only have that one on one support during certain parts of the school day whereas other students for medical reasons or behavioral reasons MAY need that support exclusively all all day and for the duration of their school years here in san francisco. So if you go to the next slide we also looked at related
service providers. So these are additional staff that support special education students with things like speech or motor skills or physical education. And we did find that your staffing is, you know, higher for these staff members than others according to our industry standards. And you know, we do these studies across the state. It is much higher than what we see in most most districts. So what would I feel like we tried to do in the report is just simply share what the standard is to give you more information as you consider next steps with how you might, you know, change the special education program here in san francisco. So if you go to the next slide and one more from that the last thing we looked at was your unrestricted general fund contribution to special education. So I think all of you probably know but I'll say it just in case you know for the public as well all districts make a
contribution to their special education program every single district special ed is underfunded. We do have never had full funding of the individuals with disabilities education act which is that federal money that we get it pays for a very small percentage of our special education costs. It should have paid for 40%. That was the original intent when congress passed the law. So it's very unfortunate that there's such a large contribution that all districts have to make but it isn't intended part of the special education funding that there would be this local contributor action. So that is your general purpose dollars from the local control funding formula, property taxes, things like that that make up this contribution. And so if you go to the next slide and then one more please. So your contribution is about 75% of the special education costs. It's actually trending down a little bit this year but it's something that should be tracked and looked at over time. Right. Because as I mentioned, you are
going to experience decrease in funding as you have fewer general education students and we've been very fortunate over the last few years the legislature has had large increases in the amount of funding we get per student but unfortunately those increases have now plateaued and so it's just something to be aware of in terms of your overall budget for the district we were seeing this large influx of special ed money which was very helpful and we are not going to be seeing that anymore and that is coupled with this decline in funding that you will see eventually because of your declining general education population. Okay. So if we go to the next slide and I appreciate the opportunity to share and I'd be happy to answer any questions thank you so much for your presentation and for all the work that went into this and thank you regina for your partnership in making sure we brought this report to the board and your leadership for
this team. I'll at this time open it up to the board for any questions but before that I know council has something to share just before we dig into this discussion, just a quick reminder we are talking about special education. It's completely fine to talk about the issues broadly but we should refrain from addressing specific cases, specific issues, specific students because we've got ferber related confidentiality provisions as well as litigation related confidentiality provisions. So I would just remind the commissioner that we just have to be mindful regarding student privacy. Thank you. And while this is a conversation about special education, this discussion is particularly based on this report and our understanding and on the report on the next steps coming from it, we didn't ask for there to be a full on presentation about special education services more broadly for the districts. I just want to name that before
we jump in here. Any questions from commissioners? Let's start with commissioner ray and we'll just go down this way. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your being here today and the information you've provided. I have a couple of procedural question and then I have a few substantive questions. There were some notes from the public about not having access to the report earlier. So I'm just wondering if it can be provided earlier in the future for public access and also for the time for us commissioners to be able to review as well. I don't know if there any obstacles to doing that. So that's a procedural thing I wanted to ask about and second whether it would be possible in the future to outline responses to the various recommendations. This would be from staff to the recommendations from public
matt this was done for instance at a prior report when the lack provided a report and that was really helpful to be able to see what the staff responses were. So those are my procedural questions and then do you want me to wait for an answer to those before I ask my substantive questions? Yeah, let's let's have okay. I yeah go for okay let's see if I can provide answers and if they're not complete I'll I'll follow up with you in terms of the access to to the report for the board I believe it was shared as soon as it became available to us. I don't recall the exact date but it was sometime earlier this winter when it was completed. Was it? I don't remember seeing it. What I'm thinking about is on the the agenda that was released initially like I think 12 days in advance I saw the presentation the slide presentation but not the report itself. Maybe I missed it. That's what I was wondering about. I see.
I apologize if it was not uploaded at the same time as the slides and it should have been so you know my apologies for that. And in terms of your recommendation or requests to outline our responses to the recommendations, I also appreciated the de lac presentation that we we saw several weeks ago and I think it was a really succinct way of accounting for the ways in which we would address recommendations based on this review. So again, as I said earlier, I think our team is as as I came on board in AUGUST and have begun really digging into the work that that our team is is doing that there are many aspects of of work and improvements underway some that align to recommendations that we've we've heard from the public tonight as well as aligned to this pick that review and report and so we at
a later time can come back and share more succinctly how we will engage with our partners to address some of these recommended ones that would that would be wonderful. It just be easier for folks to see what the district thinks is feasible and if it what it thinks can't be done for whatever reason that MAY be my substantive questions. I can ask all you know I can ask all three and you can answer them. I can go one by one whatever works better for you. Do you have a preference? Maybe I'll just start with one and then we'll go around to others. Might happen, of course. Absolutely. Okay. So okay the first thing I want to ask then relates to the I think matt is recommending consistency. You know, for instance among what we do and you know talking about tier two recommendations and obviously we also have student outcome goals around literacy and math and college and career readiness and so forth. Yeah, we've heard from members of the public and we know that
we will be concerned around losing our tiffs reading intervention s and so forth. So can you address what our plan or strategy MAY be on on how to actually achieve our student outcome goals and ensure that we continue to make progress, that students are able to make progress even if the district does in fact need to reduce its staffing in some of these areas that are normally associated with for instance artists with tier two interventions. Thank you commissioner ray that might require more time to respond to than is available tonight. I think that to to just uplift the significance of that question that that is truly part of the challenge that we'll face together as district leaders is really determining
how we will use the reduced resources that are available to us across the district in our schools to ensure that number one, we're providing access to high quality tier one instruction first and foremost for literacy and math. Additionally that for those students who aren't able to access that instruction as designed so that we have supports for teachers and staff through our instructional coaches and other teaching staff to address those learning needs and support teachers to be able to do so to the best of their ability and when they can't to understand how we might be able to layer on additional supports and resources and this aligns really closely to the recommendations in the fic map review that really compel us to look more closely at that multi-tiered system of support framework and make some hard decisions about how will that look, what are the strategies that we'll use and how will students needs be met in general education and how we'll provide that access. so I don't have all of the questions but what I can say with great confidence is that
my desire is to work in partnership with my colleagues and our curriculum and instruction departments in our student family services department and look at both the academic behavioral and social emotional learning needs of students and the strategies and supports that we're going to make available to teachers and staff in our classrooms who are struggling with this right now. So I don't believe this is a question that's solely situated in the special ed department but that our team provides knowledge and experience and expertise that we can lend to these discussions around that. So I think we'll have to come back to that probably with greater attention and detail. Hello. Good evening. I also have a couple quick clarifying questions and then a more substantive question. The clarifying questions are well first of all, MISS Bono's our open. Thank you so much for the presentation and also for clarifying, you know, some of
the points that you know, especially based on what we hear in public comment. One follow up question I had was on slide 34 the percentage of contributions you know our contribution is about 74% or 70. Yeah, about 74% of special ed costs. Do you know what that how that compares other districts so school services does calculate an average across the state it's about it previously was in the 60s it's now about 56% however I really caution and the reason we didn't use that percentage in our report is that people code expenditures very differently and depending on how you code those expenditures that influences that percentage. So we've actually stopped using that comparison in our report because we don't feel it's very accurate. For example, transportation costs are, you know, huge in special education. Certain districts leave that out entirely. Others add all of them and that
makes a huge difference even that one factor. Yeah. So I think that this high higher percentage than what we typically see but I don't think it's easy to compare them so it's you know no no no that's an important caution and we also obviously don't want to use that as a way to cut services or anything like that. So I really appreciate that. The second question I had just real quick for you was that there I didn't notice discussion and maybe I missed this in the report around the workload versus caseload. okay. Can you speak to that a little bit? Yes. We don't use the workload model and we don't analyze the iep minutes which was referenced in public comment and is absolutely a factor that needs to be taken into account. So one of the reasons we, you know, affirm your use of a 1 to 22 ratio instead of the education code maximum is because that kind of attempts to quantify some of that right.
But you know, workload differences are difficult to quantify also. So I was a special ed teacher the time it took me to provide a certain service for a student might be different than another teacher provides that another school and so due to those differences we haven't adopted that type of methodology. But that is another way you can look at caseload and class size. thank you and that's really helpful and then this paper I just wanted to follow up I had a similar question to my colleague commissioner ray so I won't ask that one but but I have a similar question and just to ditto that but my other one sort of substantive question was the was around the finding of the need for county type services. I'll put in quotes like like schools or programs that might meet the needs that a nps for example might meet or other. I was really intrigued by what what you said also around the you know the fact that maybe
there's lower case loads in certain types of classes and slightly higher caseload than other types of ctc classes maybe I'm imagining so to be able to like have more options what do we have? I know this is somewhat new but has there been thinking on that topic already where what are we thinking strategically in terms of how to really begin addressing those questions so that we have a better kind of portfolio of services because that's a need that has come up to the board a number of times in the last four years where it's like oh, you know as if you didn't have this service and so we had to look at an impact or worst case we didn't provide effective services and we ended up settling and so forth. So just curious about your thoughts on that. Yeah, I'm actually very energized around the idea of looking at our the data that we have available to us to make some determinations about the feasibility of initiating some of that work to especially when we look at we had a community
member reference the amount of money we might spend on nonpublic schools. So looking at that data we can see that there are trends and patterns and the types of schools that are currently we are currently contracting with to meet the needs of students that weren't successful in our own district. So again when we think about whether it's our autism focused programs or our counseling enriched settings where students can have more access to therapeutic and academic resources that those could be areas of need to investigate. I'm also as the alpa director now attending this alpa as the representative of our district which I've learned hasn't been done in some time and through that networking and having the opportunity to meet with other single districts, help other leaders to really learn from them about how they're addressing similar issues
in their regions and albeit they're much smaller in size but I think our our size does allow us some greater flexibility and latitude to potentially create some additional county programs within san francisco unified right now the closest that we have to a nonpublic school setting would be our macaulay program or even the way in which we partner with independence high school to have a counseling and rich program. Those are two examples for our middle or high school students where we are offering more nonpublic school like or county like programing and where smaller class sizes and additional resources are really meeting the needs of kids who otherwise would not be successful in our schools. So there's great energy around it from within our team, from our parent partners and from our board members. So you know, I think our next steps are looking at the feasibility of funding
and where to start and when just ballpark I mean when might we expect to take up some of those ideas so we have some sense of again not expecting a plan but timing in terms of when we might expect those conversations to happen, I, I have I imagine starting in this role in AUGUST very differently than it than it has materialized. And so I would I think I MAY need to come back to you again maybe in the coming months as we're thinking about again how we're organizing our own central office team to more effectively provide the support and services to our school teams across the district. I think focusing first on building the right having the right positions in the right place to ensure that we're able to support our students in our current placements in schools is a high priority. And while we're looking at building other county like programs, I also believe that there is a real need to focus
on recruitment and retention of support of the staff we have and to really uplift the strategies and evidence based practices that we're using in our in our programs right now. So I I'm hesitant to say when we'll initiate it. But in terms of my commitment to do so, I think our team is motivated to really look at partnerships with within our district and facilities within our district where we could begin to design and implement those types of programs. yeah, fair enough. And I think to the extent that you and the superintend are able to share strategic plans with the board and the public so so also so that we understand so you know it's like okay for the next period of time we're going to be focusing on staff support and retention and then at this point we anticipate being able to move toward looking at new programing, whatever it MAY be. I think the more that you can
keep us informed then we'll understand also that you're making important tradeoffs strategic decisions about tradeoffs in a thoughtful and intentional way that will be really helpful for us to understand. thank you and I really do feel the support of the board and appreciate the the interest and attention that each of you as commissioners have been giving to these important issues. So I, I feel like it's important for the public to know and understand that that there has been a lot of attention on special ed services and I think it's overdue and well deserved in many ways and that it really begins to sort of center this work in the places across the system where it belongs and needs to be discussed and attended to. well and I think as you've said or we've said that if we can serve our students iep as well we're going to actually do a better job of serving all our students. So it actually is a way of improving services for every kid in the in the district.
hello the report repeatedly references industry standards and I'd love to get some clarity about what exactly that means. Does that mean california averages national averages ideals ratios in districts where students with special education and special education programs are performing well. Could you provide some clarity on that? Yeah, it's based on a california average so it doesn't differentiate four program quality indicators. It simply looked at different school districts across the state and their staffing ratios whether that be class size or caseload size given the statewide problems that we have in special education, why would we want to conform our staffing to industry standards as opposed to benchmark against districts that are succeeding for their students in special education? Were you certainly could look at that as an additional metric.
I think that it's it's complex, right? We have a finite amount of funding. We have finite availability of certain classes of employees that we're able to access and I think these industry standards do reflect kind of those norms as we see them play out across the state. And I really look at it as one data point um as regina mentioned she's attending state school for there's no reason she couldn't look at some program quality indicators she's interested in or you're interested in and you know look at staffing in a similar size and type district that you feel like has the achievement for students with disabilities that you would like to see here. But that's not how we do our studies do but those other benchmarks weren't provided. it seemed to me like the entire report was really focused on bringing us in line with california averages. Um, so do you how do you know what for example ideal ratios
for stc classes that are performing well. So I don't know how you would define that. I think you'd first have to define what performing well looks like. Is that a measure of like, you know, combination of attendance rate suspension rate um the alternative assessment that students with disabilities take that are in specialized classes I think you'd first have to define that. But when we entered into the contract with the district it was to use our industry standards which is why we then use those for this study. So I hope that that's helpful is one metric and you certainly could bring in others but I think you would have to define how you measured kind of success program success I think least restrictive environment is one indicator. So I would encourage you to look at that if you were to try to identify different districts to compare to that were more based on like student outcomes ,I think that that would be helpful metric before any kind
of program policy changes come before the board to have data on what is working for students with ieps or like what for example staffing ratios might be in districts that are able to meet all of the iep requirements for their students and are not failing to provide iep accommodations to students? Um I have concerns that we're essentially that this report is essentially trying to benchmark us to a place we don't necessarily want to go. From a student outcomes perspective um one other question I have is when you talk about things for example like ratios of 22 students being within that 20 to 24 range is the suggestion that it should be a 22 to 1 ratio students to teacher or is it that based on perhaps the
amount of supports that different students need that the ratio would average out across the district 22 to 1 with you know some classes being smaller and some classes potentially being larger where allowed in higher grades based on what the actual needs of the specific students in those classes are. yeah, that's just right. So it would be an average across the district. The 22 to 1 is actually your district's I believe adopted staffing rate. It's in your staffing guide for special education and we just affirm that we believe it's appropriate for you to staff at that ratio. But that would include that certain schools would have lower caseload, others MAY have higher. Now along those lines, something your district hasn't done a lot in the past. You have some very small schools that have very, very low caseload numbers and you often haven't split a provider. Splitting a provider could allow you to have certain schools that have very high caseload numbers have lower caseload numbers. So we believe that's something
you should look at. Thanks. And then one other recommendation that I saw was about staffing to encode caseload maximums. Um, I guess to me I think of the ad code caseload maximum as the limit beyond which it becomes illegal to exceed because student needs cannot be met beyond that. So it seems to me that it shouldn't necessarily be a goal of ours to staff to encode caseload maximums if we're considering student outcomes rather than simply focused on budget. Do you have any thoughts about kind of what those benchmarks are based off of? so I can't speak to how the state developed those standards. But just to clarify again, we didn't recommend you use the rsp teacher caseload maximum of 1 to 28 that is in the education code we recommended you use your ratio of 1 to 22.
You MAY be referring to the speech and language therapist ratio that one we did recommend that and that that we do see districts across the state that can meet student needs using that ratio so I do think there's a lot of difference in how service is provided across the state. Um but you know that that would be our recommendation. Thank you. Um my question was about the multi tiered system of support but um this might be actually similar to what commissioner ray said that you said that you might need more time on. But I guess my question is given that the conversations around staffing with our district right now how are the how is this report informing let me put it this way how is this report informing the shifts that MAY or MAY not be happening and how we structure tier two and tier three
supports if at all? Does that make sense? Is that the same question? I think it's similar. I think um okay maybe there's some nuance to it and I, I think that I'm one of a number of folks who will have to weigh in and work on this together again as I'm going to go back to the idea that in a healthy robust system we would have um a very high quality impactful tier one instruction that teachers are delivering and then added to that for students who are having difficulty accessing that we would have additional strategies potentially supplemental curriculum and um resources available to address learning needs that weren't met in tier one. Sometimes those you know I'm part of the O.G. Of this is my 30th year as an educator in san francisco unified and back in the day you know we I was responsible for providing tier
two instruction and many of our teachers are actually doing that in classrooms across our system right now where they're pulling small groups of students with like learning needs to address those skill gaps or teaching to try to accelerate learning outcomes for kids with a new curriculum that becomes more challenging as teachers are learning a curriculum and then also trying to implement pedagogical strategies to address learning needs. So our teachers are going to continue to require support of coaches um assistance with professional learning and embedded professional learning where they're planning together and and really understanding the curriculum and strategies that are impactful for kids. The challenges I think we face without um other defined resources and services for kids at tier two and tier three are are the questions I think we're going to have to grapple with is how do we provide that level of support and service to kids who tell us they need it
because they aren't able to demonstrate proficiency in certain areas of their learning. So I think this is a much more complex uh conversation to be had and it requires other colleagues at the table table to put our heads together. How are we going to use the resources we do have available to support teams at school sites to to meet the needs of students? thank you. Maybe I'll just end with this of of you know, at a time where a lot of transitions are taking place, I would hope that there's clarity coming around what sites are expected to do versus central services supports that are coming to schools versus county functions that come into play and recognizing that uh, our resources are dwindling a bit maybe dwindling to an intense where teams were working and we're dwindling, our resources are dwindling and as they dwindle then you know at
that we need to do what we are going to say we're going to do well. And so what does that mean that in terms of leveraging the the the various levels of support that we have for our students, I will just then acknowledge given that you had mentioned the retention of educators that we do have and the possibility of growing our services in-house and I think the more that we can do that and see a multiyear plan around that, I think the more energized we can be around around what those services look like more sustainably internally for the district. Um so I'll just I'll leave it at that. Thank you. I thank you both. um, and to DR. Bennett really I appreciate the clarifications as part of your presentation and I'm hearing sort of the perspective and the vantage point and also the goals of this particular report what they were and what they weren't.
I had one follow one follow up question for you and then I think a question for you, MS.. Piper. So the follow up question relates to vice PRESIDENT Huling question about industry standards and I just want to make sure I was understanding it sounds when you it sounds like they are state averages. Is that right? So I guess yeah, correct. Okay. So I think one of the maybe the things that is catching some of us off guard is just a difference in sort of nomenclature. When I think of industry standards I think of intentional developed sort of quality assurance like we have created these on purpose because they are best practices versus what might just be an average for average sake. And so I do think that that language matters and I think that's why some of us are responding wait what I think of a benchmark as something that one would want to aim to and if it's just a general average for average sig then then then that language I think lands differently. So I think that might be why you're hearing some of these
questions. Yeah, I appreciate that feedback. I think the way that we think of it is we attempt to shine kind of a flashlight on areas of difference that you might want to delve into deeper given that you know best the unique context of your students that you serve. Right. So but I appreciate that feedback and I do think we're thinking of those two things differently. so that's good to make sure that we're thinking if we are going to have the conversation that we're we're thinking about it from the same perspective. So thank you for that clarification actually actually this that that substantive question might actually be for both of you is are there specific suggestions regarding county versus district resources allocated to sped services? Is a specific recommendation or suggestions? I mean we are we're unique in that way and I know that
there's I know that commissioner fisher this is one of these things that she's our in-house board expert on and all things sped but is really like how do we leverage the county in ways that are more effective and more efficient? So I'll just briefly say regina mentioned this earlier this idea of looking at your data. So are there clusters of students that are like need that are in nonpublic schools or in your own schools that are maybe on the cusp of needing a more supportive program where that would be then the program you would create? So I think it needs to be driven by your own data and the needs of your students. So we suggest doing that analysis that was suggest in thank you for that endorsement. Um I think one of the what I would say about that something that was very helpful about this process from my perspective as someone new coming into this role was the need to produce large datasets
and very varied data sets in response to the requests for from the reviewers. And what it highlighted for me is that there were very inconsistent and data sets and in some cases maybe not reliable datasets that informed our thinking about our staffing where the vacancies were um um you know the number of students we were serving in nonpublic schools, how much money we were spending on those services, where were we investing our funds related to nonpublic agency resources and things like that. And so this process has required us to look at our data to assemble that data and to be able to access data in useful ways to inform our thinking. So in terms of like both qualitative of data that we collect from the field from our families who give us feedback about where we are serving their students well or where we are not as well as the um the information we have about where our students are receiving
nonpublic service services outside of our district there's a lot of um information for us to use to begin to explore that um, you know that we're to get started with serving our students maybe in more robust ways with highly specialized evidence based practices that MAY be different staffing ratios that are more county like. And so again I look forward to coming back in the near future and providing maybe more details about how we're going to partner with others to get started on this and we'll keep you informed along the way. Great. Um it's hard to follow all the fellow commissioners. uh, I I would I would plus one to commissioner raise ask of uh of what are some of these actions and that be incredibly helpful I mean first of all assistant superintendent I appreciate the invitation and openness to understanding state average is looking
externally beyond san francisco uh in not being insular because I understand I mean that's somewhat gotten our school district in trouble before so I appreciate the openness and misspend. I appreciate you you being here to to help us understand some of the state data and hopefully this helps us to understand what programing as alternatives to nps is. We MAY have or where we MAY be able to reduce contracting that helps us with diminished because as you put it dwindling resources. So the diminished space I would be interested in some of the further literature around caseload versus workload and you know perhaps digging deeper into why the recommendation is caseload versus workload. Um I come at it with no background and so just having that understanding because I think what a lot of us heard from community is that difference and that really does make a difference. So just understanding the difference in perspective um would would be helpful in addition to I think to to
echo what vice PRESIDENT Huling and commissioner west ward shared understanding if there are benchmarks that you can share with us actual benchmarks versus averages where you've seen it well done well um that you'd point to as as for lack of a better word perhaps paragons of school districts that have been able to do more with less given the significantly underfunded area of special special ed um I guess my my final word my my question so that would be the at the general ask there there is no I mean if you haven't an answer I mean it's it's more a request for more information more than anything but if there's any I don't want to just keep on steamrolling with with my question if there was anything you wanted to comment on on that I'll just briefly kind of reiterate that we we don't use the workload model. Part of our contract was to use our industry standards which to just make sure our you know,
nomenclature is is accurate per your understanding those are statewide averages. They're not based on program quality indicators. One of the reasons I think it's so powerful that you know, you're now attending the state kalpa meetings is that's where the information is so for example when you know you're in attendance, if there is a question around let's say autism programs for elementary school, that question should be posed to the group and different different districts can share what they're doing and you know you can send groups out another group of districts I think that was powerful to collaborate are the core districts. Your district had this kind of unique opportunity to work with these other districts to better understand it's referenced in the report kind of how you could use data to look at student outcomes. You were doing alternative reporting back when we had kind of the csi and some of the other but those are all, you know, large school districts
in california that wanted to operate differently. I think that is a really great source of data as well. There's a piece brief the policy analysis for california education that's linked in the report that has those districts identified. I think any of those would be a really good starting point if you wanted to look at kind of different ways of doing things . You know, one of the things I want to highlight is one of our greatest assets and as a few estey are the committed highly qualified staff that we do have in the field serving our students with ieps right now. So from our para educators and teachers to our related service providers so investing in those staff and paying attention to what we hear from them about the demands of their caseload and how that impacts them in the field is important to us. And so again it sort of reflected in what carolyn's highlighting about how those ratios play out in terms of how we allocate resources to
schools for those providers serving those students. So we're trying to pay attention to that feedback that we receive and I think one of the ways that we can retain our staff and support them through the you know, I think one of the things that that I often hear case managers say and it's important to note is that a case manager of a child with an iep has to be both a highly qualified teacher and a highly qualified case manager who understands the nuances of compliance and writing compliant ieps and then implementing those plans and so supporting the staff that we have through again you know through in these ways is really critical and then working hard to ensure that we don't have unfilled positions that put further strain on existing staff is also an area of great importance. So when we think about what makes a case load more manageable is having a partner in the work where they're supposed to be to address the
caseload needs of students at the school and having adequate para educators or speech and language pathologists or school psychologists who are assisting. And so again that focus that we have on recruitment and retention and support of those staff members in our in our schools is really critical to also uplift those who are who are in place and holding the work important work of serving our students. So it's sort of a roundabout way of sort of answering your question about caseload and workload but um, you know, just really trying to uplift the the need for us to constantly be in touch with what our our staff are experiencing in the field so that we can be responsive as we're making recommendations for change. I appreciate that. Thank you. Uh, thank you both for those for those answers and I appreciate the idea of ostensibly a community of
practice that comes from attending cell phones and learning from peers. um that one. So the question I wanted to ask was what come I was on page 16 as we look at uh preschool less restrictive environments and you know this idea I if I'm picking up please correct me if I'm right picking up what what you're putting down it's um this idea of some of the, you know, pre-k interventions that MAY help as we seek to reduce the number of students and restrictive environments or in tier two needing tier two tier three supports. And I'm curious if you know this is one of the things that we continue to hear from community members is go to the city, ask for more support and it feels like this would be a natural way in which we could partner. So I'm wondering if you could perhaps shed a bit further light on if there are ways in which you see us being able
to utilize either you know, increasing pre-k k enrollment preschool or what other interventions we might be able to um either internally work on that our preschool or early childhood related or perhaps go to the city and and and seek assistance with I'll share just kind of the state intent behind that or it's based on a federal metric is that students with disabilities who are identified at preschool age would have access to a regular class program as opposed to being in a special day class where they don't have a general ed teacher or access to their typically developing peers. So I would just share that any efforts at that level should be aimed at increasing the number of co-taught classes where there is a general ed and a special ed teacher and both general ed and special ed students that are in the same class who uh I think it was two
weeks ago I attended and I was invited to attend a model center um, gathering of our early ed um early start providers in the community who are currently serving our students with iep or service plans for students with disabilities in our private preschool programs and we have a number of really um I would say innovative partnerships already in place with um groups like felton campus will ye um our mission neighborhood center across different parts of the city where we're um we are embedding supports and services in those locations rather than requiring students to come to a different location to be served in a special day class so their families have access to a full day program with related service providers or other provisions of services locally. And so those types of
partnerships really help to supplement the other public um services that we offer to students in our public preschool programs and t k programs in S.F. Usd. And so really thinking about like our city partnerships and how we continue to grow those and work to if if from what I hear families are very satisfied with having this range of options to meet our earliest learners needs. So that would be a place where we could continue to look to grow greater partnerships and provide greater access to students in their youngest years. And so I, I hope to be a regular those two meetings and I've started to to visit those schools of the field so I can see, you know, how they are providing those services and how students are experiencing them and what families think about them. I have a great partner and DR.
Kristi herrera who is our early ed um assistant superintendent for early education here and we are looking really closely together at how we can further builds those integrated service models so that our students have a rightful access to general education services and receive them with their typically developing peers and that we also have robust, robust special day class services for those students who need them. So we're really looking at trying to build that continuum. Um, so any support sum and ideas about how to continue to bolster those partnerships across the city are welcomed. Can I just add a plug for shoestring which is a fantastic like preschool t k program that supports our youngest students who have been identified as having needing additional services and they do have it's
a very focused model where students come to the lola harvard early ed school they provide they get very targeted one on one support but then they go back into their t k classroom or their kindergarten classroom and we have a support staff that follows the student into the classroom and there's just a beautiful model of of providing supports to the parents as well as supports to the teachers because it does take it's a system approach to support our students and we're seeing some really positive results from that program. I would love to take the commissioners out to see it because field trip yes and that's a great example of tier three services for our youngest learners where this these are students who are not identified for special education services but are indicating that they're not accessing their instructional program or demonstrating behaviors that are interfering with their access to their instruction.
And so this is a really beautiful example of how that can be structured to support those needs in within our districts. thank you. Before I turn it over to commissioner fisher, I wanted to ask if student delegates have any questions to ask for your 9:00 time. Yeah, I think I have a question. Okay. So on the note of special education services, one comment that was brought up during public comment was that special education students are more susceptible to being unemployed after high school graduation. And I was wondering how you plan on utilizing your partnerships as well as your focuses to mend this issue. Thank you. I, I let MS.. Benson know how impressive our student delegates are and to expect some thoughtful and robust questions from you so you did not disappoint. Thank you. Um, I, I appreciate that question.
One of the aspects of work that is newer to me as an educator because I, I was situated for the majority of my career in elementary is learning more about the experience of our students in middle and high schools and beyond. So in special education we serve students until they're 22 years of age and some of the really robust programing that that exists in san francisco unified really focuses for our older learners with ieps focuses on embedding interns shifts and access to work skills and learning programs that help them to both build independence but to develop skills that allow them to potentially um be get in an internship and then move on into paid employment as they age and in our program and in the community. So our goal is actually to both to support students with ieps to earn a diploma and to attend our community college our
universities depending on their goals and and desires or to pursue work. Um and independent living um based on their own personal goals. Um so I think this is an area of both strength where we have many great examples of those partnerships with uh local businesses and uh other um you know museums and organizations that employ our students as paid interns and there's absolutely places where we could grow and and improve on that as well. Um, some of our I would say one area I, I would say is really ensuring that we're preparing our students to be college and career ready. Right. And so again like paying attention to those markers along the way that help us to ensure that our students who have ieps have access to degree requirements so that they have access to advanced placement
classes or access to the types of additional supports that allow them to bolster skills where they are. You know not demonstrating success yet allows them then to have greater access to receive diplomas or certificates of completion or to be able to apply for jobs in the future. Yes. And in your response you mentioned that you've provided student or special education students in the past with paid internships. And I was wondering what were some examples of that? Yeah. So currently we have students who intern at um the different museums and in throughout the city are through um some similar to the college and technical career tracks where students are placed in internships for the summer or throughout the school year. Many of our students with ieps access those two. So they're not just located in our special ed services department but they they are offered to students with ieps
across the district so it could be, you know, a different grocery stores or retail stores or museums and things like that. Yeah. Nonprofit organizations or um. Thank you. Yeah. No, thank you for asking. I'll just quickly follow up on that last bit. Um, knowing a lot about um, the career and technical pathways that many students go to. Not every school has one of those and also not every school has a bunch of those programs that they can go into. So also what's the from the district perspective the strategies to then get more people that are available at those programs since not all of them are available at every school and some schools only have like one or none at all? Yeah. This is an excellent question. Part of what is um what feels sometimes unique about special ed services is that it's perceived as something separate from general education and one of the things that I think is really important to continue to
highlight is that our students who have ieps and receive special ed services are general education students first and so they should start with having access to all of the different resources those that are available to each and every student in our district. And those who require more to access those resources have more. So I, I think the best way to approach this question is to think about the ways in which I and our team in special ed services can better partner with our career and technical um our ctc departments to make sure that we're supporting their thinking around um advancing the number of internships wherever possible that include our students with ieps. We have we have both students who access those through the general ed realm but we also have students who access it through our special ed services
department or their department chairs at their own high school or through our access program who work um to support our students who are 18 to 22 years old. So I think there's better ways for us to partner together so that we're really looking holistically about all of the different internships and work programing and also uh career technical assistance that we could be providing to students a bit differently. And there are great examples of where there's a collaboration and I think there's more room to grow in that in that area. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for that question. Okay. Before we leave I have one more clarifying question I was kind of pondering on it. You mentioned that you make it a big goal to offer students with ieps or partnerships and paid opportunities but not all special education students have ieps as many are still in the process of being
evaluated and some are delayed as mentioned in public comment earlier. So how are you catering to those students who are not recognized for the support that they need but still need? So for for students who are demonstrating needs but MAY not yet be eligible eligible for yeah because yeah yeah because maybe there's a way in getting them assessed. I think again thinking about every every student belongs to a school and to a community. And when a student's demonstrating needs and their needs aren't being met it's it's incumbent on the school community to wrap ourselves around that student to figure out how to address those needs. So while students are being assessed to determine whether or not they are eligible for an iep, other supportive services should continue to be put in place to address those needs. You know I alone as a leader of the special ed services department aren't necessarily
the the person who can make changes necessarily to how a school um organizes themselves to do that. But I can work with my colleagues in the lead department that supervises schools to support teams and thinking about how do we address the needs of kids while we're assessing them to determine the needs so that they are successful in school before they receive an iep? So I think it's it's a process that requires both the special ed services department and others in a school to work together and think about it for students who are struggling. What can we do now while we're waiting for those assessments to be complete to make sure that those students are thriving and continuing to come to school and you know, making progress towards their goals. Got it. Thank you so much. Yeah, I don't I hope that I answered your question. It's a collaborative effort. That's what I would say. yeah. At the time. Thank you.
Student delegates for your thoughtful questions and for being here tonight. Good night. Thank you. Tomorrow. um, I would hate to go after those wonderful questions but I will pass it to commissioner fischer. Thank you very much. Good luck. Delegates have not left yet. Can you'll hear me by the way? Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. If the student delegates have not left yet. Director piper I believe we also have a partnership with jvs. Um, that very often pushes into the study skills classes in a lot of our high schools and help students get get jobs through work ability and other programs there as well. Um so that's a great program for our students to walk into if they're interested. we do and I can provide more details if you have questions about workability which exists across our high schools. okay.
But I think the jv's program they're somewhat intertwined but there's also a separate program for many. Anyway anyway I will get back to my questions. So first of all, thank you very much. I really appreciate um some of this information that's in this report being highlighted and I know this has been a lot of collaborative effort. So thank you for everyone who's taken the time to truly work through this. Um, I wanted to follow up first on that industry standards conversation. Um, and really put a student outcomes depend on it and frankly um put an I the band on it I mean special education comes from the individuals with disabilities education act. Um, that's older than me so it's really, really old. But the one of the standards in that of course well when we
talk about an iep we use the needs of a student to drive iep goals and then those goals drive services. And then once we understand what level of services a student needs then we should think about what an appropriate placement is. And director piper, thank you for mentioning that all students are sped student or all sped students or gen ed students first. Um the one of the standards we also have is the andrew f appropriate the ambitious standards within them. So when we talk about our students with ieps and what is an appropriate level of services, it's whatever helps that student that's where their least restrictive environment is gen ed. It's whatever helps them meet those gennett standards. So when we want to look at it from a student outcomes focused lens, what services are required ed to get a student to grade level and then that's how we should if we really want to be student outcomes focused that's the lens that we need to be using here to determine you
know, what standards we're going to be using. And so I'll take the example of dyslexia because we have the california dyslexia guidelines from 2017. Before then we very often didn't say the word dyslexia and iep. Now we do. All right. So if we've got a student that's identified with dyslexia and needs that specially designed instruction in san francisco unified that's going to be either the wilson program or the spier program. Those are the two curricula that we generally use at tier three. Both of those programs say that if you're going to implement them with fidelity if you look at the technical manuals for both then that's going to be 45 to 60 minutes. Each lesson is laid out for 45 or 60 minutes give or take 4 to 5 days a week in small group instruction. The manual says there's no more than 2 or 3 other students all grouped at the same level.
And so to implement this with fidelity and if you do that right you can really increase the student's reading proficiency and then help them build the skill set to you know so I won't say overcome their dyslexia but to accommodate it. So when we want to talk about industry standards and staffing and we really want to put the services in place, maybe that's how we should be looking at industry standard. Commissioner fisher I'll just encourage you to get to a question so we can there's a that's just one example. Okay. So I guess the thinking really is there is when we talk about industry standards there is a huge overlay with compliance as well. So are we looking at why are we not looking at industry standards more from the standpoint of these these best practices that we have from the curriculum that we're curricula that we're already using? You know, we've got best
standards in the speech and language. You know, asha is the speech sharing language association. I think it is. There's you know, the california association of school psychologists we have so many best practices that we could look at and utilize in determining what our what would be more appropriate for our students. And the beauty I'll go back to the the dyslexia example there because very often with dyslexia if you provide those high dosage of services you get a kid back to grade level and you can actually do meet them from special education. So that's not true with all kids and all disabilities but that is a really if we want to get away from over identification that's key. Commissioner fisher I'm just going to encourage you again to get to a question that was I asked the question oh, can you repeat the question please? why aren't we using some of these industry best standards
and the best practices that our own internal curriculum suggests that we should do in order to develop appropriate staffing levels? how about that? why don't we follow the guidelines set out inspire and wilson if those are the two curricula that we've chosen as far as identifying the number of minutes that should be in ieps and then therefore the case loads that are required if we really want to talk about student outcomes, let's focus on the student instead of staffing levels. Let's focus on the student outcomes instead of the adult output or the adult input. How about that? is that a fair question? Thank you. So for the purpose of the thick mat report, the study agreement stipulated that we were going to compare your staffing to our industry standards. So that's why we conducted our work in the way that we did. Okay. Then my question actually I appreciate that clarification. So my question is more for DR. Sue and director piper. Because the report here from
hickman it is a guideline and it's encouraging us to take a deeper dive and use this as part of our analysis. So I'm as I'm requesting that additional layer of analysis. So in regard to the question you asked related to wilson inspire and our ability to staff so that teachers can effectively address the guidelines that are standard standardized and those curriculum requires the thinking both of myself and special education services but also in general education services because the majority of teachers who were trained to to work with wilson as an example were general educators. They were artists. And so for our part really working with our case managers who have students who have dyslexia or dyslexic like
characteristics making sure number one that they have the training that allows them to implement spyr with fidelity but also that allows them to have the time to do so is a tremendous challenge and I don't disagree with you commissioner fisher this is an aspect of work that leaves us vulnerable in ways where we're not able to provide that systematic instruction that is recommended and agreed to in a student's iep. So I think that's absolutely an area of work for our special educators and is supporting our special educators. And there's an additional aspect of this that is situated in our ability to meet the needs of students with dyslexic like characteristics or dyslexia who are in general education and not yet identified for special education services and that is I think a more complex question that is going to require more time and attention to address and it goes back to
commissioner ray's initial question and how it was built on I think by each of you across this is how how will we address how will we implement the multi-tiered systems of support framework with fidelity and offer the services and supports to students that need that in general education ? And that is a I would say one question that I'm not going to be able to successfully answer alone tonight and so it requires us to come back together to do so. So in many of my commissioners book for me have have asked some very specific questions and I appreciate commissioner rey starting us off with you know, when will we get more specific you know, information timelines, things like this. So I am also in agreement on getting some more concrete action plans and timelines on a lot of this. My next question or question
slash comment on slide 15, 16 and 17, there was a lot of information about least restrictive environment and in the areas where we are meeting those objectives that's fantastic. But I also want to point out that least restrictive environment is designed is defined as gen ed with appropriate supports and services. So trying those para educators and in some cases the 1 to 1 pairs that are appropriate that is part of the least restrictive environment. And so when we look at and so where I'm struggling where I see tensions is on one hand we're doing a really great job in meeting some of these metrics but also in no small part because we do implement so much staff support in the form of para educators in the general environment in the least restrictive environment for example paras are built into the early ed environment. So when we talk about what staff is going to look like moving forward director sue
in or I'm sorry superintendent sue and director piper how are we accounting for our current success is as we're planning for next year? So that's one question and I don't know if you want me to ask all my questions or how you want me to move forward with this PRESIDENT Kim because I have a couple more related to this as well. why don't you go ahead and ask all your questions and then we'll give you an opportunity for staff in the superintendent to respond. Okay, great. Thank you. And then I think one of the other points I really want to make on slide 29 I would really caution us against some of those assumptions about para educators, some of that language that's used there and I haven't seen the I haven't seen the research that was referenced but frankly they're quite ablest to assume that having a para educator in a student's environment is going to make them more do more dependent on the person. Frankly, I find that offensive
not just to the student but to the para educator and the other adults in the room as well. If a para and the teacher they are working with are both highly trained and collaborative it can be miraculous environment for a student and in fact that para can model the appropriate skills that a student needs in order to gain the independence that we want them to gain. So I think a lot of it comes down to the training and support provided and I would caution us against making ableist assumptions in this report or how we we staff and I think that really the my colleagues have answered our ask the rest of the questions so I think that's it I'll go through my notes here real quickly but oh see we haven't talked at all about ccs although it is mentioned in the report it was not mentioned at all in the slide deck and one of our commenters brought up the disproportionality and I think it's very, very, very
important for us to talk about the fact that not only are we over identifying some students but we are also under identifying other students which leads to the disproportionality that is actually costing us part of our special education budget. 15% of it is being redirected back to gen ed in order to develop plans to prevent so in order to prevent that disproportionality so where do we stand with our current ccs action plan and what is the what is the action there? Where do we stand on that? And I think that's the last of my questions. So I'll I'll hold for your answers. Thank you. Commissioner fisher I think just very quickly in response to some of your questions regarding just the dwindling diminishing budgets that we are experiencing, one of the things that we have prioritized I have prioritize in this budget is to make sure that we do not lay
off teachers so that we can have teachers in every single classroom because we know that if we have a a strong tier one infrastructure that is going to be the basis of having a strong student population. So if we and this actually goes to your question around ccs as well because we need to make sure that we have the support the instructional supports in place in our in general education and that includes professional development for the teachers and standardized curriculum across all schools. Right? So that we can have teachers who have the supports to implement a curriculum to fidelity so that these students can can can succeed. So number one is that we're trying to make sure that there's going to be a teacher in every single classroom. Number two is for us to be better at identifying or supporting teachers to identify
students who need additional supports so that we can provide the the small group supports that help teachers differentiate within the classroom so that we can address and tackle all the additional needs that our students have before they then elevate to a higher level of need such as an actual pull out from the classroom. So we're trying to work towards that. It is very difficult within a shrinking budget but part of what we have shared already with the board is that number one, we're not making the layoffs to teachers. Number two, it's part of our budgeting strategy is to make sure that we continue to hire for special education teachers as well as paras because we know that's what our students need. So you know, while we're making these reductions, we're still actively trying to hire more para so that we can do a lot of the supports that our students need.
Um maybe I'll start with the second question first. Commissioner fischer about where are we with the case plan? We are in let's see about a month and a half ago I invited or volun told colleagues of mine from across different departments to join me at our road show convening where the california department of ed so I had representatives from our lead team who supervise our school principals, our assistant superintendent for student family services department crystal hawkins who leads our shoestrings department and early ed our ombudsperson, our data and compliance and operations folks from our team our current ccs team to join together to think about the revisions of the 2526 we're calling it sem four ccs plan for our signal of significant disproportionality for overrepresentation of african-american.
Students for special ed eligibility for emotional disability and other health impairments. So just convening a different group of leaders who represent different aspects of work across our system. Number one is critical to developing the next level of this plan that takes roots in decisions that are made about how we're going to serve our black and brown students across schools more effectively, consistently and successfully. And as you said as when needed ensure that they have the supports they need so that we are not we are not over referring them for eligibility where that's not necessary. So I think the first step is trying to convene the right people in the room to develop a plan. But part of the plan that we're centering on is really understanding some of the root causes that lead to these over representation over referrals for special ed services.
And one of the ideas that came from this work that's also sort of founded in in feedback from families that we've received over time is the need for us to focus in center on what does it truly mean to create inclusive environments where students have rightful access to general education, classroom and school communities? And so because of my involvement with sopa, I met the leaders of california supporting inclusive practices ,a nonprofit organization that that partner with districts to look at how district leaders at schools can organize themselves in terms of their planning and decision making around creating truly affirming and welcoming school environments that meet the needs of diverse students. So that's one difference in our case plan that we're pursuing to think about how do we work with school teams differently
to actually be on our coordinated care teams and other structures for supporting convenings with families? How do we truly organize ourselves differently to create those types of environments where students are welcomed and affirmed for who they are and what they bring to us? The plan or the next level of this plan has to be submitted or the first part of the plan has to be submitted in JULY. And so we're going through the process of engaging in file reviews of students and starting initiating that process to really revisit some of the root causes and types of issues that are leading to this over referral of students and overall representation of our black students for special ed services. So it's underway. DR. Carling aguilera ford isn't here to speak to that but I am definitely an active partner right now in the work
and trying to move that process in a way that really engages our our partners and our staff across different departments to help to develop a plan that results in the last plan for segue just thank you director piper oh, sorry. You know you're working on that. president kim is correct. I appreciate I appreciate the word developing a plan now moving forward but we've been under this pro and been required to put together a case plan for 12 years. Right. So where do we stand on previous action items? What would I mean like developing a plan isn't new. So yes, we have to develop a plan for next year. Where's the current work from years past in this year I, I, I would request that we have the team come back to speak to that because I don't believe that I'm the best equipped to answer
those questions but it definitely something I've taken note of and I'll defer to DR. Sue about how she wants to address that we can we can definitely regroup and think through the questions and how we can appropriately address them and we can come back at a later time to present it to present the success plan. Thank you. Thank you. Um at this time knowing the time and knowing that more information is coming I just in terms of the work ahead and he clarifying questions about the report before we wrap it up yes I had stopped earlier at PRESIDENT Kim's request that everyone have a chance but I just wanted to quickly go to my last question and just also say thank you. I was going to ask questions about that actually other commissioners covered commissioner alexander, commissioner huling about the caseload versus workload
and the industry standards thing. So I, I concur with those questions and would just encourage us not to do something that would functionally normalize failure. We want to be sure we're continuing to improve outcomes. My final question actually comes up somewhat in addition in connection to what you just mentioned about parents and families, a lot of people particularly parents and families have hoped to have more opportunities for their feedback to be incorporated. So I know that the cac which does tremendously good work are there is that our main mechanism? Are there other ways that parents and families can provide feedback and input? Thank you commissioner ray are you referring to feedback and input about the recommendations and the report or in general are there ways for parents? Well, with respect to this report I know a lot of people have had very strong reactions to it but also more generally are there good what are the best ways for parents and families to become engaged and provide feedback?
Thank you. Yeah, last night I had our cac board meeting and one of the requests at that meeting was to provide time for our cac board members to dissect their questions and have answers to some of those and that's pretty extensive list at that have been gathered not only from the board members themselves but other families who have been reaching out with questions about the review. Carolyn has agreed to meet with our cac board members and myself to go through their questions which sort of goes above and beyond what she's been asked to do. But I'm very appreciative because I think that that effort really means a lot to them and it means a lot to me and my work with them to be able to address some of the
specific things that we discussed tonight. So hopefully some of this discussion that families have been part of today will answer some of the questions and hopefully related to our cac board that extra time will also provide the opportunity to ask questions and give feedback in terms of our work ahead and how we'll address those to address the recommendations. I haven't yet I don't have a good answer yet about how I will seek more broad feedback but part of part I think part of those next steps is really thinking about of the recommendations that were offered and of the the different aspects of work that are not only high leverage in terms of yielding greater access for our students to successful services and outcomes in school. Those I think those guide my my thinking about how to sort of approach the recommendations but along the way each of those
each of the any any movement we make towards action will require us to pause and engage with our partners in the community to get feedback from families, to get your feedback as commissioners and board members before we proceed. So I think I'm going to proceed with caution knowing that there is a lot of question and intensity around this what was yielded in the recommendations but also understanding that you know, our students can't wait for for the improvements that are needed in terms of their outcomes. So I will I will that will be part of what I bring back to you is how how will we engage families in this important work to address that. Thank you. Yeah, no thank you. Sorry I don't mean to be rambling but I guess it's that time of night and for that reason I want to thank you, MS.. benno and thank you, MS.. Piper and your entire team for the report and the partnership. We look forward to hearing more on next steps. Thank you all.
Thank you. Okay. Moving to item f to superintendent response to student short term evaluation metrics. I'll turn it over to DR. Sue to present her response. Thank you. Thank you, DR. Kim. Well soon to talk about rambling PRESIDENT Kim I believe that all of the commissioners received my written more formulaic response to the metric a week ago and today what I wanted to do is to share with you a more verbal response not specifically highlighting the different metrics that I indicated in my my written response but more to talk about just the path ahead. So thank you so much for the opportunity and I just want to just express my gratitude to you as if the parents, educators, staff and students
for the privilege to serve as your superintendent. It has truly been an honor for me to be in this role. I truly believe that all of our children and young people deserve access to boundless opportunities regardless of their circumstances. This is the mission of public education. This is what I truly believe is the american dream. So once again thank you for the opportunity to respond to these short term metrics. I will note that these metrics represent our commitment to getting from our very difficult moment today where we all want to be a place where we can stand proud of what we've done to bring our public schools from merely surviving to fully thriving. When my family arrived in america as refugees from vietnam we had nothing. We lived in public housing in boston. I went to headstart. I entered kindergarten not knowing how to read nor speak
english but I had fantastic teachers who took me under their wings and really truly guided me. my parents fled war and devastation and placed their faith and their children into america's public education. It provided me with the opportunity to learn to grow, to be safe and to excel. I am where I am today because of public education and all the caring adults who supported me along the way. Now I have this wonderful opportunity to raise my own children here in san francisco a city where I love and cherish . As a former S.F. U.S. Parent and lifelong public servant in san francisco, I know that parents are deeply invested in in our thriving school district and they send their
students to us every day so that they can also succeed and achieve. After leading dcf for over 18 years with the vision of making san francisco a great place for children to grow up, I made the decision to transition into S.F. Usd so that I can stabilize the district. But as vice PRESIDENT Huling reminds me all the time. Our vision for this district cannot just to be for just for us to manage a crisis. Our work today must be one that is progressing towards a district of growth accountability and success. We are a city and a school district that truly cares. As if usd exist to improve the learning and lifelong outcomes of children and young people in this great city of san francisco.
And we can be a district that delivers for our students right now even in this really difficult time. More of our high school students are ready for uc schools than any other county in california. We can build on that and create a reputation of opportunity and excellence where families are attracted to our schools because they believe we will deliver for their children. Reflecting on the last six months there is still a great sense of uncertainty and you've heard from our sped speed report today. We have so much more work to do. Parents are nervous and worried that we are not doing enough for their children. Staff are grappling with tremendous stress and anxiety about their own livelihoods and their life's work. San francisco is not alone.
Declining student enrollment. Teacher shortages and budget deficits are plaguing other districts. Years of growing challenges have been exacerbated by a once in a lifetime pandemic layered upon the stubborn opportunity gaps. Federal government is creating instability across the country and unfortunately we have made many mistakes and blunder in the way we budget and allocate our resources. In san francisco we cannot lose focus of what we must do to continue to support our students. We cannot fall prey to this drumbeat of chaos. We must deliver on our promise to our students. We cannot extinguish their brilliance. In my first six months I've gone into fourth grade classrooms and have witnessed the beauty of students wanting to learn more.
I have joined schools actually guadalupe. I know that we had many guadalupe parents here. I participated as a judge at guadalupe spelling bee where I saw a student ans expressing so much joy and triumph in learning how to read and write. I was at betsy carmichael's science fair where we had middle school students telling me about the growth of mold. And and I know you are supposed to be with me. And how different music impacts your ability to learn. I was at giacchino watching and observing a group of high schools students debating each other about how self agency is the most important thing in a young person's life. And I got to watch with vp humility huling a few months ago. James like students performing at brava theater that spongebob squarepants the musical. There is magic happening
everywhere in our schools where our students are engaged and challenged. Our duty my duty actually know our duty is to make sure that every single one of our 50,000 students also feel that magic. It is a district not to be a district that delivers on every single one of our students. We need to be able to be committed and focused every single day. Despite the difficulties we are experiencing now, we are progressing on our path of growth, opportunity and success . One of the most consequential choice that a parent makes is where to enroll their child. And more and more parents are choosing a subsidized. We are seeing a significant increase in our enrollment application. Just this year we saw increases in kindergarten in sixth grade and in eighth grade application
but the largest increase we saw which was 700 additional transitional kindergarten applications this year. This is huge because these are students of our future. This is how we grow. Keeping these families engaged and enrolled is key. To do that we are bringing forward a tech feeder policy to strengthen our enrollment pipeline and provide predictability, clarity and ease for our families. Because as usd starts at tc. But this isn't just a sign of hope we're also leading to tangible results that we're seeing today. Just a few weeks ago we added back several kindergarten classrooms into several schools because of the increase in our kindergarten enrollment. And we're hoping to do more of that. We also must continue to deliver on a town ability to rebuild the trust our families and our educators deserve.
I have led this department, led this district through two interim budget reports and a successful audit. We are implementing our fiscal stabilization plan so that we can stand on our own two feet. We are meeting with families in community through a series of town halls in APRIL and I am directing our communications team to be more proactive out in the community. I am proud to be partnering with this board to deliver a balanced budget that is going to be in line with our fiscal stabilization plan in JUNE of this year. And as we focus on growth and accountability, we should never forget why we are here. Our students student outcome isn't just a metric. They are our north star. The result of our latest
climate culture climate survey that just came in a few weeks ago found that 7,073% of our elementary school students and 80% of our middle school middle and high school students felt that there was a close person at their school that they could rely on that they are happy at their school, that they feel like they are a part of their school and they feel that their teachers are treating them fairly. This is amazing particularly because a lot of teenagers don't respond in that way. But this is cause for joy and celebration in our district because it means we're moving in the right direction. We're doing something right where students see it, they feel it and they know that we
value them and we see them. so I am grateful to our educators and our staff who are making our schools welcoming, safe and supportive for all of our students. I am in awe of the tapestry of our S.F. Usd staff including our counselors, our nurses, our social workers are principals, teachers, community schools, coordinators all of our paraprofessionals. Because without them we cannot achieve this type of result. Together we can cultivate a district that delivers first choice schools in every single neighborhood in our in the city . We can radically reimagine our school district to be defined by possibility not constraint. A school district where every move is centered on improving student outcomes. You already know I am ready to fully take ownership of our vision, values, goals and guardrails. I am working very closely with
my leadership team to make sure that we present to you in a few short in a few short weeks our interim goals and guardrails so that we can continue the progress that we have all committed ourselves to. Additionally, we need to make sure that we regain our handle on the north star of delivering on our budget. I am committed to breaking down deep and entrenched silos between all of our divisions in departments and units. It is these types of divisions and silos that have prevented us from doing the work that our students and our families expect of us. these silos hurt our ability to deliver on that promise and we need to have internal alignment that will center the principal of our student outcomes.
We will redesign I will redesign our central office to function in service of schools, provide professional development to support our high quality teaching and learning and align our curriculum and instruction with research and data to ensure our greatest impact. We will remove barriers and increase opportune need for each and every student. Meaningful change is not some vague dream. It's a destination that a truly truly believe we can reach. My ask of you is that we do it together as a unified school district. I am committed to working with the board as a governance team to get there. To quote our very, very famous MISS George washington student DR. Maya angelou. Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better do better. Every day we focus on doing better.
This is how we grow how we hold ourselves accountable and how we make progress towards a successful thriving school district that serves all of our students, families and educator . I am grateful to be able to share this journey with you during this pivotal moment of our public school, our city and our future. Thank you very much for the opportunity. thank you, superintendent. Two and four members of the public attached onto that. This item is the superintendents response more formally to the metrics that were passed by the board at the last um actually two board meetings ago. Um I'll open it up for any uh reflections or questions from commissioners before we move on to our action items. No pressure. So I just had I guess I don't know if they're called friendly amendments or whatever it is
which included one recognizing that part of the metrics that I would seek all of us to accomplish would be to get to a qualified certification by DECEMBER of 2025. And I think yes, superintend to yes, I know that MR. Duchin is listening. Please make sure you take note of that. We will get to a qualified certification of our budget by DECEMBER 2025. And then I look forward to working with superintendent sue to put in some of the quality assurance and quality control pieces into interim guardrails um that that you'll be pushing putting forward in a few weeks as I understand. Um I think that I think that was it. Thank you. Anyone else? Um I know that encompasses with poor leadership. We've been actively discussing
the ways in which the board can support you in the coming coming ahead of us. so I look forward to that. Um, and I in our subsequent board meetings through our governance calendar work we've been incorporating some of these updates into our board meetings that are coming up so hopefully we will see some of those updates come in front of us soon. Any other comments? Okay. Thank you superintendent. Uh, moving on to item g. Action items g 1254-8p1 declaration of need for fully qualified teachers. Can I have a motion a second please? So moved o second. uh, I call on superintendent to introduce this item. Actually I'm just going to introduce associate superintendent of H.R. Amy bear. Good evening. So our item tonight is to approve the declaration of need
to allow some credentialing flexibility for hiring for next year. I just want to reiterate that our goal is to hire fully credentialed teachers but given the nationwide and locals teacher shortages staff is asking the board to approve a declaration of need for the 2526 school year. The declaration of need is an annual process that must be approved by the board and on file with the california commission on teaching credentials before we can submit any emergency or limited assignment permits. So the numbers projected for this year are estimates based on prior year application. The estimates are high so that we don't have to resubmit if we exceed the number of emergency or limited assignment permits. And I'd be happy to answer any questions and other questions from the board. Commissioner alexander. yeah. I had just asked in the written questions for the data that was used to arrive at the estimate and the response rates uh
didn't provide any data so I was just kind of following up again and I sent an email response to to that just like just because some of the numbers just seemed odd to me but I was I assume they were based on data but I just wanted to see what the data was from previous years or whatever and there was a response submitted yesterday but just to provide more clarity. The estimates are based on the numbers that we applied for this year so we compared the number of emergency permits with actually lower because we expect to hire fewer teachers. But the numbers are based on the estimate that this year's actual applications I think I did not receive that so thank you for clarifying. Any other comments or questions seeing general corbo please? MR. Steel thank you. Commissioner alexander. Yes. Commissioner fisher. Yes. MR. Gupta. Yes. Vice PRESIDENT Healey. Yes. Commissioner ray. yes. Commissioner wise one word. Yes. PRESIDENT Kim.
Yes. Item g2254-8 acp to approval of executive contracts kind of a motion and second to introduce this item. The second as I call the superintendent to introduce this item I also believe that commissioner huling has a remark to make for the board. I'd like to move to suspend the vote and move it potentially to another calendar . Do we have a second second which was commissioner steel? MR. Steel, can you run a vote on the move to suspend vote? Correct. MR. Alexander no. MR. Fisher no. MR. Gupta. No. Vice PRESIDENT Healy yes. Commissioner ray. Yes. Commissioner rice. No. PRESIDENT Kim no. All right. Five days to I thought bells thank you. Do.
Thank you, PRESIDENT Kim. Now I would like to introduce a contract for our general counsel. As many folks know, we've been very lucky to have namita brown as our interim counsel. Counsel? Yes. Interim counsel as well as diane bell as our interim counsel for the district. We have been in search for a general counsel for a while now and we are so fortunate to be able to present this particular contract for you for your approval. It is for manuel martinez. Manuel has been a partner at lozano smith for many, many years since 2012 and has actually worked with the district a few years ago as our interim general counsel and has supported us and the team on many, many issues. He has actually when he started actually I was just looking here.
He's started his his work as the deputy city attorney over at the city of los angeles. So you are not shy to to to anything that san francisco is going to throw at you. So I'm just really grateful that manuel is going to be hopefully will be approved and will be able to join the executive cabinet and to be able to provide the support to this board as well as to the district. So thank you. And council uh, I believe you have some language to introduce to. Yes. Pursuant to the california government code before the board votes on an executive contract, the board has an obligation to disclose the general terms and the scope the financial scope of the agreement. So the general counsel contract runs from 423 2025 through JUNE 30th 2027. It is going to be compensated at grade eight step eight of
the management salary schedule and the health benefits are going to be comparable to the health benefits that are given currently to management employees. The other term that is of relevance here is the buyout term should the parties agree to a buyout any term prior to 630 2026 will entail a three month buyout and four terms starting between seven 126 through JUNE 30th 2027. That would be a six month buyout. Those are the essential terms of the contract and now that it is publicly disclosed the board can actually take a vote on the contract. Thank you. Are there any comments from the board? A roll call vote MR. Steel. Thank you. On the executive contract. MR. Alexander. Yes. MR. Fisher. Yes, MR. Gupta. Abstain. Vice PRESIDENT Huling.
No. Commissioner ray. No. Commissioner wise one word. Yes. PRESIDENT Kim. Yes. Four eyes. Two nays. one abstention. Passes. Thank you. Yeah. If sentence allowed. Right. It's okay. Uh, the, uh, exact second time the abstention is counted as a no. Okay. Did you know that? I do. I did not. Okay. I'm sorry. The vote is done already. Think well now we know. Thank you. Um. Uh, moving on to item h consent calendar. Um, I also want to note commissioner fischer's note about recusing from an item due . I don't know what the order of operations are here for that. It's it's in the record. Okay. Oh, it's my great.
Oh, is it the same item? I don't see it in the readout. Should I for the consent? Yeah. Item 16 I believe I can double check if you need me to. Do we need to move to sever that from the consent calendar so we can be a separate vote on it? So we should move that away from the consent calendar and that should be taken up as a separate vote after the board votes on the consent calendar. Okay. And which item is that? Just I'm just so I'm clear I don't have the details. I'm going to defer to. She said 1616. Commissioner fisher so I'm double check. Okay. And I'm going to withdraw. Yeah. So and uh, council just so I'm clear on the process here i will motion to remove that item
once identified from the consent. Then we'll introduce the consent. Okay. Great. Commissioner fischer, when you're ready do you know which item? Item 16. Okay, great. Um, I motion to remove item 16 from the consent calendar so we can vote on it separately. Seconded. MR. Steel. Thank you. On removing the item. MR. Alexander? Yes. MR. Fischer. Yes. MR. Gupta. Yes. Vice PRESIDENT Huling. Yes. MR. Ray. Yes. MR. Weissbourd. Yes. PRESIDENT Kim. Yes. That passes. Thank you. Mm hmm. Um, then I motion uh or I'd like a motion in a second on the consent calendar right now is so moved seconded. Are there any items that were withdrawn and corrected by the superintendent? Yes, we would like to I would like to withdraw item 54.54.
I'm sorry, item 54. Um, great. Noted. We'll do roll call vote on consent calendar, please. thank you. Commissioner alexander? Yes. Commissioner fischer. Yes. Thank you, commissioner gupta. Yes. Vice PRESIDENT Huling. Yes. Commissioner ray. Yes. Commissioner. Wise word. Yes. PRESIDENT Kim. Yes. Seven and then we motion for. Okay. Can I have a motion second for the item 16 so move and I believe you need to be removed. Commissioner fischer, we put commissioner fischer in a separate waiting area. Please. You want to go in the waiting room or do you want me to just leave the meeting and come back later? I believe you're being oh. commissioner fischer, you MAY have to log back in. There is not a separate waiting room option available on the webinar. Okay. So we'll text you. Bye. Okay. Thank you. Bye.
A great no. Okay. Uh, now I'll move. Thank you. Do we have a second? Second. Thank you. Roll call. vote on item 16 on the consent calendar. MR. Alexander? Yes, commissioner gupta? Yes. Vice PRESIDENT Huling? Yes. Commissioner ray. Yes. Commissioner wise board. Yes. PRESIDENT Kim. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Oh geez. For sure. Okay. Come back. Uh huh uh huh. it was so close. Okay. We need to fix this whole thing after this meeting. What do you mean? It's 9:00? Um, moving moving to item I,
uh, board member reports. Are there any reports from board delegates to membership organizations? Seeing none, are there, uh, any reports by the board members? Seeing none. Are there any appointments by commissioners to any advisory committees? MR. Alexander. Yes. I would like to appoint sarah kern to the beefcake. Noted. Thank you. And uh, item four appointment of commissioners to city and school select committee. A meeting of the city and school school district joint select committee will be scheduled for APRIL 17th 2025 at 4 P.M. In the board of supervisors legislative chamber to hold a hearing on the status and implementation of the student success fund under board rule and procedure 9130I point the following three board members to serve on the joint select committee. Myself vice PRESIDENT Jamie huling and commissioner matt
alexander. My two minutes I'm so mad item j germany during this meeting at 10:02 P.M.