MR. Alexander here. MR. Fisher here MR. Gupta. Vice PRESIDENT Huling here MR. Ray here. Commissioner wiseman we're here present here. Thank you. I would like to announce that I am moving item I number one the fiscal and operational update to follow item e public hearing and adoption. Um and and um at this time before the board goes into closed session I call for any speakers 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? There are none in person. I do see some virtual participants. Please raise your hand if you care to speak to any of a closed session items seeing no hands raised. Great. Thank you at this time before the well I'm repeating that over again. Um I know this meeting at 5:03
P.M. Sorry S.F. Gov tv san francisco government television no 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 oh S.F. Gov tv san francisco government television and S.F. Gov tv san francisco
government television found here h t t p s colon forward slash forward slash w w w dot stream text dot net port search player question mark event equal sign s of usd dashboard. Attendees who would like to provide public comment to the board and would like an acl interpreter can use the q&a box in the zoom app to type their name or handle and list the item or items on the agenda they would like to comment on. The attendee will need to have a functioning camera in order to communicate with the interpreter and the board when it is the attendees opportunity to provide comment. The zoom hosts will promote the attendees to panelists and enable the attendees video translation go ahead please. thank you. As of use these offering interpretation services in spanish cantonese in any interpretation please share the following phone number. After dialing number is methods will be repeated in spanish and cantonese and it'll apply only
because of the between interpreters implemented google meet for the world market the internet and telephony put together by the good owner verizon and whether it is or also those who say you possess or power in those days they think well we never say never see the things the people had interpret it please thank you. I'll go away. I'm going to watch a little more get your going now. So you think you are not getting my home that you want? hi yeah say about say that say something about so you can see how many how you see I'm the link go back out to 18 and GOD thank you thank you that concludes translation services thank you very much I now reconvene the regular meeting at 6:41 P.M.. Thank you for everyone's
patience as we wrapped up our closed session where we were required to take some action on legal matters I will go ahead and move to item c one report from our close out from our closed session in one matter of anticipated litigation the board by a vote of seven eyes gives direction to the general council in a matter of n versus S.F. U s sd as the superior court case number of cgc-222-601980 by the board by a vote of seven eyes gives the authority of the district to pay up to the stipulated amount in one matter of public employee discipline release the board by a vote of seven I approved a resignation agreement for permanent classified employee of the district. The board also released a temporary certificated employees and non-elected certificated probationary employees unanimously. The s of U.S. Board of education follows the student outcomes 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 meeting is a regular is a monitoring workshop. This model also calls on the board to empower the superintendent, 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 and as a fuzed edu slash governance and we commit to finding new and improved ways to more meaningfully engage with staff, students and families. I would also like to announce that I'm moving item I one the fiscal and operational update ahead in the agenda to follow item e public hearing and adoption moving to our item d public comments 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 up for what up to excuse me one minute staff will take to participate at the one minute mark at one minute and five seconds I have asked MR. Steel and MS. Various to please turn off the mic and transition to the next speaker. I ask members of the public to please respect the 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 at board office as if you ask that you do we will hear first from students in person on agenda items then general public in person on agenda items followed by students in person on non agenda items in general public in person on non agenda items regardless of whether in-person comment is complete we will save 15 minutes for a remote public comment taking commenters in the same order as in person. If any time remains we will then return to in-person public
comment. As a reminder board rules and california law do not allow the board to respond to comments or attempt to answer questions during public comment time if appropriate the superintendent MAY ask staff follow up with speakers MR. Steel thank you PRESIDENT Kim I'm going to call the first five students up so when you hear your name please come to the dais and we have one minute each deal diaz myself okay deal. diaz luciano alvarez lanai molina. Esther marroquin and shane west . That's it. but a minute. Okay. another witness that is I thought was present is me. Nobody's 18 years and as I said, those ballots so the entries he misspoke is impressive. I was not the only one that has some but like I say, key islamiyah has something like a stand to stay as a key than the ballot is my opposed to the entries so I keep an eye out for me for 3 or 4 times companeros courtright respuesta
so those in that upper limits economic hospital I can cost they then my husband it is apparent that the cost owners of the casinos local money that H.A. Is less costly and I assume those grammars would be imperator and nosotros econo strata location in futuro los joven is noiseless epsilon quarter last class the secretary the staff is called are opportunities quarter conocimiento cortana circle money that when I came was installed on three in the canal team commodore problem I even solution so so what do I get the 100 those who come online and commonly that podemos will get out and control the solution one not going to think okay he'll see lots of agencies for the enters into that I want only would see that he demonstrate look it's almost capacity so for tourists the bicycle movement there better but of this agenda so much more potential this is done mozilla put in a specific the distrito was yesterday I rise you estados in sandinista moment but I will look at your carioca
case correct which addresses positive zoning as I said i don't know if it is much duplicate for myself and for the future and for the future of my classmates. Why do you are cutting the budget? Do you think this is going to solve all the all of the economical problems but what cost? Let me answer this question to the cost of our future the cost of our community, the cost of our schools, of our education. We all want the benefit for all of us and when it's about education and the future of the young people, there is no exception to cut out classes, to cut out the staff is cut out opportunities knowledge canal our community that we have been building over time with all of our problems there is an solution and I'm sure that working together as a big community we can encounter
a solution not a solution that has to reduce our opportunity years as students that we're entering a university so that we can show that we're capable of it is our future of this country, of the whole world. But for us to show our maximum potential we need the support of our chiefs in the district. I have a voice, a chiefs have a voice in district. So I'm really grateful for these voice that we have in this moment. Is it on? all right. Hi, my name is luciano. I'm a sophomore I mission high school and I'm here about here to talk about teachers being laid off in my geometry class. The class is already crowded and it makes it harder for the teacher to support the whole class. I know that teachers are getting laid off and the teachers that are still going to be here they are going to be overwhelmed and overworked. I mission high school. I really feel connected to my teachers.
I feel like they are my family and if I lose one of my teachers it feels like I'm losing one of my family members and I would like the members of the board to know laying off teachers will impact the students futures a quote from tupac shakur if I know of the youth I know hope for the future. thank you for your time. I'm lynn. I'm only 16 years old and attending mission high school. I want to stand here right here in front of you today and tell you that this is not a mistake, that you're making it is a crime a crime that affects the crisis of our generation to kids and future generations are ap are an elective classes are what make each kid stand out in their own way and gives them the opportunity to explore something that they might interested you're trying to minimize you're trying to minimalize the amount of counselors and security but
what is the impact counselors working harder or counselors working more hard in what feels like labor? How will kids get help? How will kids get the help they need from their school counselor? if the counselor is busy with ten other people, forget about changing her schedules. If you don't like what classes you get you're most likely going to have to stay with them. Same with security. Security is what's supposed to keep children safe in schools making sure things don't happen in the hallways and kids getting to class on time. Thank you for your thought. oh, okay. So that's it. Okay. When I start is miembros de la detective superintendent issue so is there marking is there anything me you're in high school. Let us on break a story a key is particularly impactful the recorded personality in us as well as is the area in a study leader para las personas give a
b and is that in a school as in get them in parentheses to the end this less well and as a solitary but a gang member drop down miembro and then I start iguala as in this empanada entry for the scholars but you see I'm little masahiro you're going to sell the possible in the personnel exam tribunals that only center them is going to me yelling at them yet any more just experiences in say orders and central evidence that I was gallo give me be the same I say would I email without ordering the masa the online you control rispetto is illogical carlos nancy olson does not think I can recall reading all right look at important to common as well your guests almost all of this now is vertigo yeah but in this case in less dumb was being emotional meant the only way academic or temporal instead of sorry. That's okay. I'm going to finish your thought. Sorry. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Oh zika dificil I remained a pirate inspired by many settings aliens la maestro
futuro especialmente the parallels is still young. Yes but if I were considering when the naira toll st rose again is that in recording I lost person as as as aquila you increasingly and here here today is because I want to declare the impact of the assured of step that the schools are suffering this instability is not only for the people who are looking for our wellness in the school but also the students the school not only basis it's homeworks and and task in every member of the community but they also do a higher worksheet in the schools so that we are all safe and organize personally in the wellness center then my school have I have encountered instability especially in the mental health that I have have and so many other students that had experiences that are
insecure. The wellness center has been in my life a place where I can feel safe. More than a year. With all due respect, I ask why is it illogical for the children and adults sense that have a place to recruit in every single day and no longer is there? Please, we need to be emotionally well caring and we also also need a level of academic now that we also feel safe our future especially for all of the students is in jeopardy. Please keep in mind all of us and especially the wellness being centers because we know one step being short of that the people can help us in the wellness center. my name is shane west. I'm a junior at mission high school. These budget cuts of our teachers and eight courses will negatively impact me and my classmates. School is a unit because more
everyone is crucial to the success of us the students teachers are a backbone of isaf usd losing even just a few just means losing mentors who genuinely care about the successes of students and the lasting relationships that come with it. The recent teacher shortages have been quite detrimental to our learning and growth. Now laying off teachers and enlarging class sizes is counterproductive to the investment of our future students. Edu edu g courses prepared prepare for college if we as students aspire to be admitted to a U.S. Or c. S u how will we how how will we be sure to be eligible? Cutting these courses limits our options. Blocking us from higher education and preventing us from reaching our full potential. Putting necessary disadvantage to be greater to the greater funding private schools. Strong adult leadership quality innovative courses and strong teacher presence are key to our success as students. We cannot allow these budget cuts that thank you.
thank you campbell. To call the next group carla pour us lead mariana martinez relator excuse me allan teo AUGUST white and alejandro role model. and I just want to want to remind everybody that it's one minute and you can kind of see where you're at to try to keep your remarks in the one minute you can go ahead. Okay. Hello. My name is carlo. I am from DR. William earl cobb elementary school. I understand why our school board managers choose to combine our class. It would be hard for a teacher to have a combo class with 30 plus kids in each classroom especially with two grade levels. I also know that without support teachers it's worse on teachers and students. For example, my sister was not able to read and so third grade. One of our support teachers MS.. garibaldi taught her and gave her support for middle school and we quote which we need MS..
garibaldi to stay at cobb for other students who don't have as much opportunities as us. In summary, I understand why the school board wants to cut costs but we have to do it in other ways. hello my name is marlena martinez. Hi, my name is malina martinez and I'm a fifth grader. Our doctor, DR. William l cobb elementary school. We should not have carbo classes at cobb. I think this because it would put a lot of pressure on the teacher because they will have to always teach to greater at once teaching more kids in all academic areas. Another reason why is that the teacher might not be able to help a student they are helping because another student or a group of people there is most likely going to be a group of one through 413 kids that will probably need help at any time. A combo class will also put teachers out of job. That would be really sad
because we adore them and wish that they could stay longer. In summary we should not have chromebooks classes at cobb. hello. Hello. My name's MR. Abc teacher. My limit is I'm a part of the student council. I came here to express my opinion about the issue of those cruelly affecting our schools. The district is considering a decision that will prevent our school nurse from continue to work at our school. This is a zero concern because our news plays a role to keeping students healthy and safe and supportive. What of her? Many of us will struggle to get the care we need especially in emergencies or if we feel well. It's unfair that the district is planning to remove the nurse while you're bringing additional teachers. While I understand that the need for more teachers especially to maintain small classes, I think it's important to considered her role the nurse plays in the school. The nurse isn't just there for me. She is a resource for students
who might feel sick during the day or need mental health support even though when you need to talk to her she will be a safe place to talk with her. thank you. hello. Good evening. My name is alan harlow and I'm a junior a junior in school for equity. I'm going to be speaking a little fast because I only have a minute so excuse me if you can understand me. I'm here tonight to speak on the on the impacts that cutting staff will have on students. As a student who meets with a therapist at school, it is baffling to me that the board along with our superintendent would ever consider cutting staff who work directly with our students on a daily basis. A lot of us including myself heavily rely on staff like our school therapist, nurse counselor for resources and support that we MAY not be able to receive anywhere else. And in a time where our political climate has made things unstable for some of us, we as students deserve to have fully a fully funded education with the support that we need
to make it through these trying times. I spent nine years advocating for myself to be able to get five for accommodations. It took me nine years to be able to receive the help that I needed. And sadly this is not a unique experience and a bunch of students aren't able to receive the support that they need because of underfunded schools and understaffing. This is going to directly impact so many students, especially those who haven't received the support they need yet. Support staff are essential. Please remember that. Thank you so much. thank you. go ahead. Hello. I am AUGUST and I MISS Junior balboa high school and I have an iep and I don't really and my b has like no services for you. no. Oh, my GOD. There's my b has no nursing services and but that doesn't mean like I don't need nurses like in my middle school my anxiety was like really bad to the point of breakdown and
sometimes well most times I had a hard time being at school and would try to go home and sick. My school nurse was there to help me get calmed down and back to class. If she wasn't there for me I would not be in school in high school the school nurse helped me get through my father's death. Nurses are more important to students in this district. Seems to think the district is acting like the only thing nurses do are give medicine and check vision. But this is not true. They take care of us every day. They know the students and they know how to help like nobody else does. They can't help us if they are not our schools. We need nurses at our schools. Thank you. I have two more. I'm so what's your name? I'm and ava. Okay. I also want to call two more people evelyn and kilani parks williams. You can come up as well. yeah, right.
But keep candle possession for lgbtq kids. why? I do not make it an actual solution instead of cutting staff keep kenneth position protect trans kids. My name is evelyn bernal rosas and I wanted to explain my experience with this school system this horrid school system. You MAY not like what I have to say but it's my truth. I've been in school communities with low education budgets because you guys continue to keep cutting budgets on many schools that need extreme support for the students that are there. I have talked to teachers and had a meeting experience with them but they had to tell me that they're no longer going to show up to school because they're not longer being here because the budgets cut. I know that you do take test scores seriously and you support the schools that have the best test scores out of all of them but down it's the only reason test scores are down is because you guys keep cutting our budgets that support our teachers, that support education. but the only reason they're tied for third down is because education is low and dropping
because you guys don't support schools that need them. Oh these students if you went to their class you would know that they're incredibly kind, creative and intelligent. thank you. My name is kim parks williams and I am a junior at mission high school. Your proposal for budget cuts would do nothing for your motto of keeping the lights on by taking away integral parts of school districts and as if you as d you're not only limiting the opportunities that our public schools have to offer but these cuts will also become detrimental to students safety ,health and learning. Firstly, your proposal for less staff is careless. What if they are already small staff and have to do nothing but harm the student body? Less security would mean less protection and less protection from outside threats putting students directly in harm's way. Secondly, less counseling of any kind limits outside school resources for kids whether that be academic, academic, personal or personal making it harder for kids to seek help they need to plan for the future but cutting staff isn't the only concern. Getting rid of apps, apps and core classes is abysmal.
How and where do you expect kids to get the required credit credits or expect them to retire? Levels of education cuts like these will affect life plans after graduation such as college or university. Without these credits how do we stand a chance to get to private schools and institutions? How do you expect me to succeed in my school year? thank thank you. hi my name is lily and I am a fifth grader at DR. William l cobb elementary school. We should not combine fourth and fifth grade because in fifth grade we already have learned the whole curriculum for fourth grade we would have to relearned the lessons from fourth grade instead of learning the things we needed to know to get ready for middle school if I had to if I had to go to middle school not knowing the things I would have already learned then I would feel super nervous and feel like I couldn't do it since the fifth graders have already been through fourth grade. It will it will be old and boring worked for them and they will not learn everything they need to know for a whole year. Also there will be a lot of
students for the teachers for the teachers to handle and sometimes students do not have but have behavior challenges that would affect my learning because I would not be getting the help that I needed for lessons if that happens I could fail my tests. Most graders including me will not be ready for or prepared for middle school because we did not get the education that we needed. And so my fourth and fifth grade classes should not be put together because that concludes the speaker cards we have for students in person. Moving on to agenda items. Okay mccall the first five names please come louder but the dice are the podium. Excuse me. You have one minute each. David lanham tori letterman. Joanna lynn. Michelle. Michelle where are you? Frank laura hello board member is superintendent MRS. Steele thank you. I'm david lanham department of technology and I'm here to
stress the importance of keeping our staff whole as whole as possible because in order for us to do to better do our job and continue to do our job, we need we've always been understaffed and any further cuts would really jeopardize the district's ability and funding and to be able to meet current compliance and education standards. Superintendent, we need you to engage in a meaningful way with our frontline staff. I know you talk to managers and what have you but frontline staff has decades of experience and knowledge and can really help in budget discussion and decision making. We request a formal response to our letter which I'd like to deliver to you now. okay. Good evening commissioners. I'm a parent at harvey milk civil rights academy. You've said you want to cut as
far away from students as possible but that's not what your proposed budget does. Why aren't you selling or leasing unused property? Why are you still using high interest high fees, short term loans? Where are the central office cuts we've been talking about? You should do all of this before you cut any student facing staff we need this summer our full time social worker of five years. We need MS.. Sara, our full time librarian of 14 years. We need coach glen, our full time student advisor of 26 years. These are critical support staff who support our children and their families face to face every day they create stability and belonging that allow our school to serve the whole child. We cannot attract and retain families that sfd so desperately needs without the support staff our schools need . I understand you need to make cuts so let us choose where to make them allow us to have a part time instructional coach and a full time social worker allow sight discretion to increase librarian hours. Allow our pto to continue
funding our student advisor if you won't do so yourself prescribing all of us the same staff is consistent but it is not equitable. Equity does not mean we each get the same thing it means we each get what we need. We please let us find what we need. thanks. Thank you. Hello. My name is tori landsman. I'm a teacher currently on sabbatical. I am here to speak in support of our social workers nurses, counselors and family liaisons. The importance of prioritizing support staff in our schools is paramount. As a teacher on sabbatical I have serious concerns about the future of our school community is what will I be returning to next year? What will my students and their families be returning to? How will my students, their families and my colleagues be supported? Our school social worker is an integral part to our school community. In addition to leading coordinated care teams viable for student success team meetings coordinated meant coordinating mental health services they are simply the glue that holds us all together.
how can we be a student centered district if we do not prioritize these essential positions? thank you. evening, commissioners. Evening, DR. Sue. I'm speaking today frank lauderdale, executive vice PRESIDENT Of unicef. I'm not the official guest speaker so I only have a minute. But I will say like hopefully after the budget discussion today we will stop seeing in the headlines that as of view is is not managing its funds and that I'm sorry I can't oh a little bit more loud okay so we get past those headlines that keep mischaracterizing us have used the inequality of as of usda and its budget and actually start talking about the quality of education. But the message I want to tell for our members and families because whatever decision happens here you need to know this you are not responsible for this mess, this mess is two decades in the making. You did not create empower rates went from $3 million contract to a $60 million contract continues charging us
you did not deal with the fact that an organization doesn't do reimbursements when the state of california doesn't have a county office that doesn't know how to apply for grants. You also are not the one dealing with an unaccountable enrollment center that has created the worst segregation since desegregation. Think about sizes. So that's going to continue and our members here keep fighting . hi my name is michelle schnell and I'm a parent educator at san francisco international high school and we have finally been able to staff our wellness center with our chiles, our community health organ outreach workers along with our school social workers, counselors, school nurses that provide critical preventative health resources coordinate and implement student leadership opportunities, provide health and vision screenings and also helps educators and families identifying other health needs to access our students learnings and that's just some some of the examples of what
these critical educators play at our site when our student has been having medical and health issues like our student was really having trouble finding out what was happening with him and being able to advocate for himself. We're in the access program and we teach them life skills. If we did not have our school site nurse and our social worker on our staff full time, we would not have been able to communicate for him and for his health needs. We can't tell when a medical emergency happens but if we don't have a center we won't be able to help. I'm going to call the next group of speakers sarah kern, diana buehler, lisa salvador. Forgive me if I'm mispronouncing names. Alan teo reyna teo you have one minute each. that's too hard. Okay thanks. All right. I'm sarah kern, teacher librarian at harvey milk civil
rights academy. I am concerned about the proposed cuts to student facing positions at elementary schools that do not take into account individual programs and needs. The loss of our elementary advisor would be devastating to our students as would the reduction of our social worker to half time. I've already spoken to this board about what teacher librarians do and what a full library program can look like which is something that my school has valued and prioritized but was clearly not considered when proposing the new allocations for teacher librarians. My question for you now is why the restriction on pta and other state funds to increase librarian fte is if that is something that the school community wishes and is able to do and I mean I can't even believe that there is the possibility of even considering cutting cutting the lgbtq plus
student services position. that's that's horrifying and embarrassing. Thank you. hi. My name is diana mueller. I am a mom of four as a few sd graduates a usaf member and a 17 year veteran special education para professional in this district. when I think about what it means to have fully staffed schools, it doesn't just mean classroom teachers and classroom paras fully staffed schools for the education and support of our students also mean family liaisons, instructional aides, student advisors, security aides as well as school social workers, school district nurses, counselors and more. I am reminded of what california state representative mia bonta shared at a recent statewide classified union convention. Mia bonta said it was the support she also received from union staff outside the classroom that helped her to succeed in school. For the sake of our students, please remember that.
thank you. my name is lisa and I'm an s10 sped para at delores wata. The world is in utter chaos and there's much anxiety streaming through people's veins. It can be difficult to remain levelheaded as it seems as though everyone else is falling victim to the anxiety. The school board doesn't have the answers. The state doesn't have the answers or the country definitely doesn't have the answers. I just completed my first year. I started as ars para and have now the opportunity. I've worked in different roles and it gives me the opportunity to work in a wide ranges of students. It is also in my first year that I have noticed instability that art schools have. I started as a sub and got a chance to work at a lot of schools for three months of employment. I knew I found my calling with a child call me maestra. I will never forget that day. Now I learned that the district is going through a deficit but I didn't know what that meant until I saw the lack of resources our student needed. Kids have cried to me because
they needed academic support. They need our annual threes. They need our t t tends to feel secure. They need counselors too. They need nurses to feel better when I need their community you try to dismantle. We need our thank you together. thank you. Thank you. Important I I can you hear me okay. good evening. my name is nato. Been here many times before. all I can say. Superintendent su you said that you were going to keep the kids away from the kids and this is exactly the opposite. I think that we need to look more than what's on paper in black and white and you really need to understand what these positions are. My kid struggled for nine years to get a5o4 form that's criminal. My 12 year old in sixth grade right now we finally got a rhythm we're going into a middle school. It's hard. Those wellness centers are the difference between criminalizing a kid and a kid staying in school.
I I'm frustrated that we have to be here to explain this because those thoughtful decisions that you promise to make we really need you to make them. We really need you to have conversations and really understand what it is that the school needs in order for the kids to thrive because really that's the next generation of san franciscans that are going to be supporting you and your elder years. I really need you to really consider what it is that you're cutting because without social emotional stability you cannot education. thank you. Thank you. We'll call the next group. please come to the dais. Why not tell martha room although salida I'm sorry I can't read this name. I'll come back to it. Valerie ferrero. Laura simon. go ahead. good evening. My name is one of theo and I'm here because I believe the children in our city are
relying on us to be bold and creative in solving district budget dynamics in ways that protect the district staff who play vital roles in the classroom and who provide the support and consistency that our children deserve. Decades of mismanagement and a lack of solution oriented vision. It is what has gotten us to normalize the yearly budget cut threats until we build a multiyear strategy to get out of this yearly threat. we need a clear and bold commitment from this board to chop from the top and that means central office. I'm concerned about the disproportionate impacts to small schools and vulnerable student populations such as the jordans school of equity which would be disproportionately impacted with a high percentage of ieps and english language learners. Students. I'm concerned and highly empathized with our students who not only navigate national politics and attacks on immigrant and trans youth but also that our students are worried about pink slips whether they'll have a school therapist, whether the counselors will be here next year.
Nurses and health centers be impacted. So I ask you listen to the students and the parents who came to me to vote. Before you go before you go, I just know that if you're speaking over your time there are like 70 cards here that just means other people are going to be able to speak. So please stick within your minute. You can go ahead. When I noticed my daughter yelled at me has alejandro a student somali middle school or just like you represent mi familia? Yeah. MR. Howard racking up at this time when we could palpable proximo I nikolaj I know but I want them for man well let me at you know I p l m for mirror about your fundamentally my be like are they still imminent king as with me and I said I hope they are the math and I squarely intermarium I still see how sarcomere thing in our lesson pamphlet number more to proceed and this land for tomatoes when I borrow classic purcell main thing is was the
important and sierra epistle maintain a community that well isabel barcelona this is cyril even in that boyle his since sent not an errand and for me venezuela born areas going to civil revival been a style of their maestros e-health necessity government and arista records of fundamental unless that I will that I still when I am a mother and I will like to know how is our school I have in this report with I serve them especially with the community that it is having a lot of evaluations to say and I bring special word gabriel. I'm so sorry to interrupt your coming in muffled oh, I'm sorry . it is better but much better. thank you so much. Absolutely. So mom was saying I have a student who is in school and
how are teenagers students are going to be facing all of the pressures that they are having. Nurses are a key element especially in these times of anxiety and especially with the evaluations which we say to raise these support especially with suicidal rates is something that the nurses are able to provide because it represents a real risk to our community and to our children children who need these resources to be fundamental in our schools. Thank you very. hi, my name is julieta anastasia nana and I've been in the district since 2004. I'm a teacher, librarian and I've been an english teacher. And right now I'm at mission high school where I think is super special place. And I work in the library where stories are not only housed but they are shared. And I wanted to share a few
more stories from mission high students who couldn't be here tonight. Here's the first. I am a high school junior and I'm here to state I'm deeply upset and to express my concern with the fragility of my education and the political climate we are living in now. My education to me is something I want to have pride in but I don't believe these cuts will give me access to one. Whether it is the removal of adg requirements to lessen my competitiveness or the resources I use weekly in order for my mental health and well-being to be at its best for learning. here's another I think you are not being reasonable because you are implying the schools cannot choose what we spend the money on. Therefore I believe the school should be able to choose because they know what they need. Most. thank you for. hello my name is laura simon and I'm a teacher at visitation valley middle school. A lot of folks think that school nurses is just ice packs and band-aids but they are so much more. I've got over 150 notes from
our students telling you why we need a full time school nurse at our site. many students also write about counselors because we're losing a counselor allocation as well. I'd like to read a few of them to you now. My school nurses help me get vaccinated so that I could come to school. She helped my family find a clinic so that we could go see a doctor. So many of our newcomers students wrote that same thing. The nurse is always there for me. She talked to me about substance abuse and my feelings. She makes my school feel safe. The nurse helps me a lot physically and emotionally. She was there for me at my lowest and helped me when I was having a panic attack. The nurse helped my brother get a physical so he could be on the baseball team. She help me feel better by asking how I'm feeling and help me get new glasses. My school nurse helps me when I feel bad and gives me good advice and honestly if it wasn't for her I wouldn't come to school at all. Our nurses cannot build the relationships and trust with students and families needed to provide these services if they are not on site every day. please keep school nurses at
our schools. Thank you. Can I give this up? good evening superintendent sue and board members. So my name is valerie and I am the principal currently at mission high school. I've been with the district's until 2001 and I understand layoffs. I was part of that. I present that tonight. You listen to our students. you have to listen to our students. What I'm going to say is a mission high school is we offer so many opportunities like many of the other high schools. Without these opportunities our students will not have access to post-secondary and college opportunities. We need our students to have these classes and in order to have those classes we need money. We proposed cuts are cutting or taking away that reality from us. Our cte classes are upper classes, our ap classes and access to the supports needed will be cut. Therefore cutting our chances to post-secondary success.
Mission high school is an anti-racist school with dedicated teachers and staff. These cuts are taking away those opportunities. I also want to be here to support our continuation schools. please consider staffing them appropriately. Thank you. I'm calling the next group. please come up to the dais. Lauren schwartz and a branding josh davidson. Katie nunez and kira hazelwood . good evening. My name is lauren schwartz and I worked at the west valley middle school for 22 years. We are a title one school. We are a newcomers school. It's been brought to our attention that the district is no longer funding positions for nurses at school sites. I'm here on behalf of our entire community to advocate for our school nurse to remain at our site next year. Besides the everyday tasks of a school nurse including developing health plans for estes five old boys and I p's our nurses are lifelong and for our newcomer and vocal student
population families at our school do not trust and are not experienced with our health care system. Our nurses spent years building relationships and trust with our families through being present and embedded in our community. Her work has been vital to our families gaining initial access to medical care and understanding when and how to access care and other resources that we use. We hear you speak about equity and being student driven. Show us that you mean it. in essence, this is a profound public safety issue not only for students but for the surrounding school nurses and school. hi, my name is anna browning. i'm a teacher at visitation valley middle school. I'm reading this on behalf of a parent. I would like to share that nurse michelle and her capacity to work with my children has been an amazing journey. She's been very consistent and my two middle schoolers one now
in high school lives and from the time my son arrived at this valley middle school she was very open to helping him find his niche and his way around and to provide any type of medical treatment that would help that would be accessible to him. She helped her get him on the right path and and when it came to his learning style and supported him with an individualized education plan, my son really was able to get to know her, trust her and be fond of her. Shortly after my husband passed my daughter moved in with me full time and started that visitation valley. Then she also began a relationship and rapport with MS.. Michelle. Getting familiar with the support she provides not only has she been encouraging around health care and mental health and even with extracurricular activities such as softball. My daughter has grown to respect and be fond of her. Please reconsider keeping this position at beth valley. thank you. Thank you. hi, my name is josh davidson. I cook for kids and make it to your kitchen.
Uh, real quick because we have such limited time. If you ask the managers to make the cuts, the managers aren't going to cut themselves. But the real reality is that my team would be fine without me but I could not do my job without them. thanks. good evening. My name is kind of hazelwood. I use amateur pronouns. I am the district coordinator for lgbtq student services. I'm one of 20 or 30 fives that your proposal looks to cut tonight. As a black student at lowell. The gsa helped me recognize that I was okay, that I was valid, that I deserved to be celebrated and have a place on this earth. It is important that we continue to do this work. In fact it's my honor that I get to sit in that role that helped me continue to survive and be successful as an active U.S. Student. More than one third of our students identify as lgbtq. 83% of them as students of color.
These are students who are truly needing help and support. The work that we have done in fact we are the oldest program of its kind in the world is innovative, has been saving lives and is helping people understand that we all deserve a place to be here. I hope that you recognize that this current craven attempt to dehumanize and vilify your community cannot continue with you. do not let your vision, values and guardrails think you are not really. good evening. My name is richard miller. I'm a third grade teacher at DR. William l cobb elementary school. The first point I want to bring up tonight pertains to one of the district's guardrails that was actually mentioned at the onset of tonight's meeting. That district guardrails specifically states that the district will communicate with administrators at these schools communicate, collaborate, engage in a meaningful way. After having spoke with my administrators, that's not really happening at all. They're not getting the communication when they are
they're not getting in a timely fashion. So that's the first thing that needs to change first and foremost. The second point that I have this evening pertains to the combo classes that the district is proposing. Based on the proposal the cap number for combo classes would be 28 with potentially five more putting that number at 33 at cobb. Our 4 or 5 combo would be at 37. So that goes against right there. What the district is proposing. So we would have to put four students in the 4 or 5 combo down into a 3 or 4 combo which puts all kinds of undue stress on those students on the teachers. it doesn't work. Not to mention the fact that in that 4 or 5 combo there would be 39% of that class with ieps that's 13 students with ieps. Thank you. We're making progress at cobb. Our test scores are going up. We feel like the rug is getting pulled out from under it. district needs to go back to rethink the plan and come back with something better before it's too late. thank you. I'm calling the next group of speakers. Please come up to the podium.
Krystal sokolov ruby singh. rebecca hendler, lily guerin. richard miller. my name is crystal sokoloff. I have been a school nurse at mlk middle school for six years. No schools were allocated a site based nurse and this year school budgets. Here's why that matters. On a wednesday in DECEMBER at 10:05 A.M. A sixth grade teacher, a student with a high heart rate while at rest. I know my heart rate is 60 to 100 beats a minute. His heart rate was 230. My nurse brain suspected he was experiencing supraventricular tachycardia. As I calmly walked him through a big maneuver site called 911 paramedics arrived within minutes. Within seconds he and I were in the ambulance in the E.R. We all stood by holding our breath waiting for his heart to convert. Just before 11 when the meds kicked in he finally fell to the 120 oh no man yet so I company to him to his recovery
room and made sure spanish translation was set up for her when she came. Once they reunited excused myself took an uber back to my school. Arriving just in time to give insulin to my medically fragile seventh grade student. This is the third time in two years I've experienced a student with svt. What if this was your child? Thank you for your time. Thank you. Nurses table five. thank you. Hi. My name is ruby sang and I'm a parent and I work at lincoln high school. One we had no dean. Two students are out of control. Three if we don't have enough coverage, we parents get injured. I myself have been punched bodyslam and pulled down. I've seen other parents that with my own eyes within three feet of me get attacked pummeled and choked and we don't have enough security to attend. I don't feel safe in the school. The kids roam around the halls and disrupt classes I've seen gambling and I smell drugs often.
Not enough behaviors to help with the kids. And arts as disease and we just need help. And I do get personal cause people are asking what time is your lunch time? Because I don't want to be anywhere near 12 hours straight because they're afraid of the students. What do I want? I want fully staffed schools. Yeah. I'm rebecca ensler, coed counselor denman where I worked for 22 years. Tonight I speak on behalf of our counseling team and wellness program. My team wanted me to share with you what we do as counselors because we don't think you know what counseling means to students safety and wellness to school climate to our students futures. We don't think you know what we do but a list of only a 10th of what we do wouldn't fit in an hour much less a minute. So let me tell you this instead. How dare you cut counselors in the lgbtq support program when our trans students are seeing their futures ripped away? How dare you pink slip our bilingual counselors when our immigrant students are living in fear?
How dare you destroy our wellness program when risk of hate violence and suicide is exploding? This will lead to disaster. And you will say how could this happen? thank you. This is thank you. Thank you. hi. My name is katie nunez. I am the fifth grade teacher at DR. William cobb elementary school. rich miller and I switch spots. So just a few things I want to add. What combo classes used to look like at our school? What combo classes used to look like was low test scores. What combo classes used to look like was our wellness center being full with children who were suffering and having issues? We got rid of combo classes two years ago. If you go on to star testing and you look at my fifth grade reading scores you will see almost every single one of them green. My kids can learn. They understand what is happening that is not going to happen when you stick me with 39% of kids with ieps and 3436
kids in my class, it's not going to happen. I'm going to have kids back in that wellness center all the time suffering. This is not student centered. I also want to push you to think outside the box. I'm assuming that they hired you so you could think outside the box. One idea would be to go to pg. We ask them why we pay for electricity. It doesn't cost them anything to give us free electricity. Have you thought to even go outside the box and find other insane ways that might not work before you're giving us combo classes? think outside the box. Find better ways. Thank you. they have called the next group luke look. Lee scarlett jones. benjamin menendez. sandra rey. Please come to the dome or the podium. good evening everyone.
My name is starla jones and I've been at paul revere school for 37 years as a student advisor I got cut and I'm now I'm the attendance clerk slash para. Far too long this district has mismanaged funds. When will they prioritize school students and educators who work tirelessly to prepare them for success in this challenging world? Again, I have dedicated 37 years to one school because I love my students. Yet instead of investing in what truly matters, budget cuts continue to target essential school programs and critical positions. Meanwhile, district employees receive high salaries yet they remain inaccessible. You can't even reach them by phone without submitting a ticket. Instead of cutting paraprofessionals we need to be hiring more parents play a vital role in ensuring classrooms run effectively and efficiently. Without us teachers struggle to provide the level of support students deserve.
I have seen this firsthand and I am not alone. No more layoffs invest in our schools and people who make them work. thank you. greetings my name is benjamin cole menendez. I am a student at mission high school and I just want to say that we should keep the aid to the requirement classes and opportunities that allow making applying to college far more easier to me and to many other students. It's very important for our futures to have some classes like ap or world language classes which are basically subjects that make applying to uses far more easier for us. And it's very important. I'm currently in an ap class and I took it because I had hopes to have a better chance to get into college and now this could be impacted and ruined if this decision is to be made. It's not just the classes that I find important but every class that I believe it is important to have students to be educated in many different things whether it be art
history, math music etc. All of these classes are valuable to me and to the students since it can give us an opportunity to learn of our passions. And I just want to end this by asking of you to please reconsider your your decisions as it can never negatively impact the school and its communities. Thank you for your time. thank you. Hello. Good evening board commissioners. My name is show drama school district social worker at longfellow elementary school. So the proposed base allocations will have a devastating impact on our students eliminating essential ap positions, eliminating artists who provide critical reading intervention for our students and moving to a cohort model for nursing is an academic and a safety issue. 450 students on a campus with minimal adult support is a disaster waiting to happen. Do not expect social workers to become defacto admin either. yeah right. To support our students we need a robust ap model that prioritizes students physical and emotional safety and academic success.
What you have proposed what you have proposed does neither do better. all of these people in this room deserve it. The kids who are not here deserve it. The families who can make it here tonight deserve it. do better. good evening. My name is lou and lee. I have been a school district nurse in this city for the past 25 years. I'm also nationally certified school nurse which is an extra certification. On top of going to school to get the credential I'm here to talk about school nurses being in schools full time not and not having to share screens. Have you heard from chris that schools have very sick kids and we cannot we don't know when someone's going to have an emergency at school. Since he was the whole child model which means it's not just their illness or their condition but we also care for the family, the school community and the outside
community where we get resources. so we need nurses. Kim calling the next group positive. Ferguson. John I'm sorry but didn't knepper say no? I'm sorry if I missed it. I'm sorry about that. Lisa bishop phillip von furstenberg and then jason danielson. So hello. My name is vashti and I teach kindergarten at harvey milk. I'm here to demand that this board protect our student facing services. I don't even like calling it services. These are human beings. These are people essential people that work with our babies every day. Please allow our sites to choose which services we need rather than forcing sites to comply with a one size fits all plan. We need our social worker. We need our student advisor and our teacher librarian and our teacher and the fact that you want us to get by with having
just a fraction of time each week with these essential members of our school community is the moralizing and it's infuriating minimizing the need for these educators is not student centered. It is not diversity driven. It absolutely goes against our core values and it's social injustice. it's shameful that the bar is so low for the district that you simply want to focus on keeping the lights on. Please do better. Don't be in favor of this proposal. all right. How y'all doing? Good evening, DR. Su board commissioners. My name is john from central jordan. Call me depot assistant principal double high school ten years strong, ten toes down. I'm also the assistant principal in the board of directors for us so I'm here to talk about cuts and I know you all heard it but apps play an indispensable role. A lot of it behind the scenes to cut one is it's it's tough to cut to is impossible for assistant principals who are
the only ones in their schools. I know it can be really hard for a principal to run that school properly. At the end of the day we're talking about focus student population money. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are getting cut at almost every school that needs it about 70% chattery right. It's about 460,000 from our school. That's too much I could fund fte that can directly impact students staff so I'm just gonna just tell you straight up just be really considered about that usf, usf, seiu we are counting on y'all because for real the math math in think excellent speakers tonight. hi my name is lisa bishop. i'm a teacher librarian at aptos middle school. I've been teaching for 34 years half in the classroom and half in the school libraries. If we want to improve student outcomes which you said at the beginning of this meeting you kept saying student outcomes improve student outcomes. We need all of us all of us to make sure that our students are safe and cared for. We need our teachers, our crossing guards, our paras, our custodians, our counselors, our social workers, our speech
therapist, occupational therapists, our nurses, our school librarians and student advisors like mary lavallee and starlet jones who are in the house. It's extremely embarrassing and probably criminal. The mismanagement of our space used funds leading us to these drastic austerity cuts. I'm particularly concerned about the diminishing of critical literacy services as well in our elementary schools. It's hypocritical to say improve student outcomes with these horrifying cuts. thank you. good evening. My name is phillip en furstenberg. I'm a school social worker at sheridan elementary school. I've been working there full time for the last ten years. For the first eight years of my career I worked in two schools part time a school. social workers effectiveness relies on the relationships they build with parents and children. the only way to do that is by being there every day so the community has access to you social workers, social workers conduct suicide assessments,
provide intensive case management for parents, help families in crisis, refer students and families to service providers, support families dealing with cps lead coordinated care teams support students with their emotional needs. Increase attendance by reducing complex barriers. Manage the entire five and four and assist process manage onsite mental health programs, supervise mental health interns and collaborate with spread staff and teachers. These are things that are very hard to accomplish in two and a half days per week. We really need to be at every site every day of the week. Please find a full social worker at every site at minimum think think you. Good evening to all board members and superintendent. Hello my name is jason singh and I'm an 11th grader at mission high school. I used has put the support for the plan to remove eight
trujillo choir courses which are the first things that make a student eligible to apply for college. and so if you as the also wants to move ap courses which are already lacking at michigan high school in comparison to other S.F. U.S. High schools if these budget cuts happen students will not be able to meet their trujillo requirements who will not not even be college ready which is outside of us. number third goal right there college readiness. it is also proposed to remove teaching staff and paraprofessionals. This is result in overcrowding classes and by removing paraprofessionals teachers who find themselves not able to provide the individualized attention that many students require for academic success. as I've used guardrail number two saving the whole child states the superintendent will not take approaches to neglect cognitive and academic development, social and emotional development moving teachers and their assistants will record overcrowded classrooms and this will
neglect the academic development of many students. thank you. Our PRESIDENT Kim we've reached 745 we moved to virtual public comment on oh boy. Oh look at the rate at this time we will hear virtual public comment from our students. can we please each student will have one minute to speak. If you're a student please raise your hand again, we are hearing from students at this time can we please have that repeated in spanish and chinese when an audience live I want to be I want to start I thought the button is new and at the moment that's the student is the student didn't mean it so like I need to hijack almost I'm following so I'm all right I would hang george zynga and seeing like I mean we had a fun drawing I second your one I sense our most important iguala gala hamilton goes out I'm
going sara hi my name is sarah wilson. I'm a parent of a fifth grader in the district but I also need to cut sara I'm sorry to cut you off right now we're hearing from students are there any students who would like to speak? Sorry if you're naughty. These apologies to have to cut you off if there are any students participating virtual please raise your hand for now. this group sarah family soda I look to the end this particular freshman this is this comment that is a student only but this is a comment that is granted and then students have a one minute to express their comments. Okay. I'm seeing no student's hand hands raised so no real and unison. They live under my law and I love to describe you also. Josephine, go ahead please. 9123. I think that even if I get high sorry this is josephine. I just came back from our
schools town hall for the semester meeting and I'm still wearing the radio. I couldn't come in and I have to talk over the phone in my peer family liaison is still there you know closing up shop of six parents of student in attendance here are the input fresh from two of the african american parents from from parent number one I would like my grand I'd like for my grandson school to keep cece's program with MISS Josephine jo as somebody to be in classroom with my grandson. Ever since this program started it has helped my grandson in a big way with his achievement from african american parent number two MISS Josephine has been working with our grandson and has improved lots of areas. She's the type of person our school needs when it comes to students with difficulties learning family liaisons are the ones that are in the front line supporting students and connecting families to partner with schools. We are everything and everywhere including putting out food for events and getting parents to come.
Please don't sarah. Hi, I'm sarah wilson, parent of a fifth grader in the district. My day job is working for seiu local 10 to 1 so I work for people who are not on the agenda to get pink slips tonight. But we know that the custodians and school nutrition workers and school clerks and many other workers who make our schools run are next on the chopping block and the main thing I wanted to say is that our concerns are that all of these pink slips all of these layoffs are being essentially threatened while the district really doesn't have a handle on its finances but nonetheless is just going ahead with putting out these layoff notices to meet the MARCH 15th statutory deadline and it's kind of terrorizing to students as well as families before all the reasons that you just heard students and families and teachers and other school staff talking about the district
needs to focus as has been said for time. thank you but your time I phone caller guess calling from an iphone. Hi yes thank you for. My name is matt hellier and I'm a parent and I'm part and I was just calling to urge reconsider adoration of two things that I think really keep kids in the public schools and not switching to private in the first would be allowing pta is to fund positions as they see fit. And the second would be all of the work around the app classes in high school. I think as a parent with two kids, one in public schools and one where we're making them decision right now I think it's really important that ps are allowed to fund positions and that looking ahead there's a path to stay in the public schools with ap classes. So I really urge reconsideration of those and urge consideration of other things that I think can be politically challenging like sites and real estate and some of the the bigger decisions that would be ways to save
money instead of teachers. Thank you. Thank you. So you. hi. My name's celia. I'm from lafayette elementary school. I've been a teacher there for almost ten years. At our school alone these cuts threaten to take our assistant principal to classroom teachers. Our steam teacher, our ld45 combo support teacher decrease our librarians days and add more combination classrooms. These losses will impact every student, staff and family at our site. The fact that our site was given zero say in how budget cuts would head us shows that the district does not want school communities to give their input. I implore you to work with not against pta financial support. There are equitable ways we can use the funds from the pta of some schools to support students at all schools. The families and staff of that usd love our public schools. We're fighting against every logical reason you've given us to leave. But eventually it will be too much to take and you will lose us. We are here because of the fiscal mismanagement and
political games that district and city have played for years. do better make changes. Thank you, erin. good evening. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. thank you. I'm erin with parents for public schools. Just go and I very much appreciate what all of the youth and school staff and parents have been expressing about the dangers of cuts and staff at schools. And I know you understand. I don't think any of you want to cut these positions but I please urge you to first look inside the districts for school spending and start there rather than just jumping to cutting staff and teacher positions at schools. Especially if we are wanting to improve make progress on the interim goals and guardrails. Nothing is going to improve those without all of the support staff that have been mentioned such as social workers, counselors, parent professionals. Please just take a step back before jumping to budget cuts or staff cuts which is always the first step.
But let's try another way in order to keep our district. thank you, erin. That's your time. Andy. Hi, superintendent sue and board commissioners. my name is andy hilinski. I'm the supervisor of psychological services with special ed department and I'm also the secretary of the united administrators of san francisco. I'm here tonight to share that we are deeply saddened at the lack of involvement of school leaders in the budget development process. We acknowledge that unprecedented unprecedented cuts are required to ensure fiscal solvency and maintain local control. We have been begging for months to partner with district leadership to ensure that required reductions are individualized to meet the unique needs of each school community. We have even provided as if us budget leaders with multiple sample budgets with deep reductions and asked for a seat at the table in making the
tough decisions in ways that best support each school community. A lateral one size fits all allocation harms students. usf leaders know best. Trust us and partner with us. thank you tara. Hi. My name is tara ramos. I'm a teacher librarian at sanchez elementary school and I want to talk a little bit about the pif funds. so the voters of san francisco approved this separate parcel tax that homeowners pay to fund for arts and libraries and physical education in san francisco unified schools. The voters decided to do this because they wanted to protect those areas should budget cuts ever become a reality in our school district they always wanted to guarantee that every child in our city would have access to libraries and art and physical education. And so this budget is contravening what the voters voted for twice. The san francisco unified school district does not have
the right to go against what the voters have voted for and this the money is not coming from the school district. It's coming from the city. It's coming from home owners parcel taxes that they pay. So that all of our students can have art in libraries. and I just wanted to make that comment so that everyone can hear that that is the reality of what this budget is. that is your time. Thank you berniece. thank you. My name is bernice. We have two students at usd usc last month. All of you accept commissioner rey approved a $270,000 position for phi phi phi franklin. There is no reason phi phi phi franklin should keep hiring people when you are doing these cuts. Please do not get rid of one of the only advocates are you are going to have think about the input. Sorry think about how you're you cutting social workers is going to hurt the most vulnerable.
Thank you. thank you chris. Hi, I'm chris close special education teacher at washington high school. And unfortunately my phone is freaking out. Oh, here we go. And also the department head there. I'm going to try to keep this brief. You've already heard my concerns about cuts to school size. Our students in washington need more time with their counselors ,not less because the counselor caseload will be forced to go up. They need all of our deans and security guards to keep them safe and supported. They need all of our clerks and site admin to keep the school running. They need all of their electives and ap class options to keep them motivated to come to school and more keep the cuts away from our schools and show that you actually care about our students. thank you jalen. hello. My name is galen and I'm a parent and PRESIDENT Of the parent action council at san francisco community school. And you have heard so many
incredible voices tonight. I just want to say I heard about elliot du meeting today with S.F. Parent coalition and he was so out of touch. It is galling he said the cdc can veto both decisions. Why haven't they vetoed all paying that way in a full year salary after he's been let go he already has a new job. Why haven't they vetoed you paid pgd when that should be free. I love that idea. Oh why can't anybody making over 120 or $150,000 a year take a 20% cut a 10 to 20% pay cut until we're in the green? You say that you're in it for the students but you're not doing it. I loved what the chef from mcateer said the managers do not the students will not notice that the managers are gone and that is where so much of our money goes. We have the most highest paid admin in the state and you're killing your time. Aisling hi my name is ashlyn praying I'm a seventh grade english teacher at roosevelt middle school.
oftentimes when people ask me what I do and I tell them, they ask why or how. And really the answer is because of our wellness team at roosevelt all three of our counselors, our school social worker, our community health outreach worker, our school nurse and so many others impacted by these cuts. there is not a class period in the day that happens where one of these incredible already incredibly overworked educators do not support my students. I could not do this without them and my students will not succeed without a fully staffed school and especially a fully staffed wallacea. thank you. Thank you, molly. oh, my name's molly shapiro and I'm a classified employee of S.F. Sd and a proud usaf member. I'm so an 11th grader and naturalist. I'm here today to fight for my role in the dust. I am so proud of the work that we do but I am also here to fight for those other classified and student facing staff whose jobs are at stake. These folks are essential programing and stu students school snot and bare minimum. This only results in fewer opportunities and lower
outcomes for students. For instance, if myself and my coworkers were to be laid off, the environmental science center that encourages so many students connection to land and local parks would be unable to run. to give more context to our work at the sc we work with third, fourth and fifth graders in the district to provide free programing to over 1000 students annually. Our work is invaluable to so many students and at a time of climate crisis our mental injustice, our work connecting students to nature is of the utmost importance and cannot be defunded. thank you. Thank you. that's. The PRESIDENT Can that does conclude the amount of time allowed for a virtual public comment at this time. At this time we'll be inviting usf's representative to speak. uh, gianna tillery. Thank you. top black history month tour . Oh, that's not about that. Oh. all right. Good.
Good evening, board members, superintendent and committee members. My name is sienna tillery. I'm the vice PRESIDENT Of parent educators with united educators of san francisco. I've been a parent educator with usc for many years and have been laid off by this district four times. In order for the district to as you stated at the last meeting keep the lights on for the. For the past four years I've stood in this very spot as a usf officer and I've given one minute speeches about how important it is to preserve the power of educators. so if you see this sign I'm speaking a little bit longer so you can hear what I've got to say. I'm here tonight to speak on behalf of the educators the usf but in particular the dedicated class for staff who serve the students and families as a few as the outstanding strong opposition to the reduction of hours or layoffs of our members particularly our parent educators. These cuts are not just numbers on a spreadsheet.
They are people. They're educators and they are the backbone of our schools. Their educators are some of the lowest paid workers in svod. Yet they dedicate their time, energy and passion to our students every single day. The majority of these employees are women and people of color, many of whom have spent decades serving our schools and communities. We have one member who has been here since 1970 consistently working with students for over 50 years. That kind of dedication is priceless. The positions that you're proposing to cut or reduce work directly with students and families particularly from our most disadvantaged communities. These are our employees who provide critical one on one support to students who help bridge the gap between families and the school staff. And who is sure that students especially those with the highest needs receive the care and attention they deserve? These these workers build relationships that foster trust, stability and success in our schools beyond their daily work. Our classified staff also hold historical knowledge of families that they serve.
They understand the struggles and challenges that our students face because they have been supportive of year after year when a child is struggling, when a family is in crisis. It is often a parent educator who steps in not just as an employee but as a trusted advocate who knows exactly what the family needs. This is not just a job to them. It's appalling and they should not be punished for their commitment. When I work the central office I take my job seriously. I hold myself accountable for the support that I provide at the school sites and I hold myself to a higher standard because that's what the school sites expected of me as a representative of the educators in san francisco unified. I have those same expectations of myself and now I hold you as obviously leadership to those same expectations of higher standards. Not knowing if we have a job for months every year because the leaders that we expect to do their job do not meet those expectations is unacceptable. The board not holding those leaders accountable is unacceptable.
Balancing the budget on the backs of students and their educators is unacceptable. As of tuesday you're being put on notice no longer what S.F. Utilities should be able to hide in plain sight with their catchy slogans, acronyms and really nice slide decks that are created to present to our students families the community with little to no accountability. No longer will this be a place where you do little work for a lot of pay and then retire with an impressive compensation package. While repairs excuse me while parents livelihoods are in limbo we are holding you to the highest standards and expectations on behalf of the students, families and educators and communities as of U.S.. If we truly value equity, if we truly believe in serving our students and families then we can not balance the budget on the backs of our lowest paid the most dedicated workers. these cuts will not only hurt our employees they were
hurt our students, our families and the entire entire school community. I urge you to find another way. Do not take away the critical support that our students rely on. Do not strip our schools of the very people who make them feel at home. Stand with the workers who have stood with our students for decades. Reject these cuts. Protect these jobs and sell this community that you value the people who make our schools thrive. thank you. thank you to usf. item one I open the public hearing on initial proposals to united educators the san francisco usf certificated and classified units and united educators of san francisco. Certificate and classified initial proposal to san francisco unified school district. I call on DR. Su to introduce designee amy bear to report our initial proposals. Apologies conrad to math to chuck how I do that? I think so. Tenacity. Tenacity chuck associate associate. Good evening. School board PRESIDENT Kim vice
PRESIDENT Huling commissioners superintendent sue and community. My name is conrad tenacity and I'm the assistant superintendent of labor relations for san francisco unified school district. the purpose of my presentation this evening is in accordance with government section 3547 the sun shining of the initial proposals of the exclusive representatives united educators of san francisco and san francisco unified school district which relate to the matters within the scope of representation and presented at the public hearing this evening. As we are a public school employer and thereafter shall be public record the current collective bargaining agreement between the san francisco unified school district and the united educators of san francisco for both the certificated and classified units expire on JUNE 30th 2025. The united educators of san francisco certificated and classified units are proposing changes to the san francisco
unified district to the following contractual articles for the certificated contract article six professional rights article seven days and hours of employment. Article nine class size article ten leaves parental and child bonding leaves. Article 11 salaries increments and classification changes. Article 12 fringe benefits. Article 14 health and safety. Article 15 staffing and assignment. Article 21 student discipline. Article 25 early education department. Article 26 day to day substitute teachers. Article 28 disciplinary action. Article 29 special education. Article 31 council first deans and have councilors. Article 33 librarians library media teachers. Article 38 itinerant teachers for the classified contract they are opening up. Article two definitions. Article nine hours of work and work year.
Article 13 pay and allowance and fringe benefits. Article 15 health and safety. And article 17 united support personnel professionalization the san francisco unified school district is also proposing contractual changes to the following articles for the usf certificated contract. Article six professional rights. article seven days and hours of employment. Article nine class size. Article ten leaves. Article 11 salaries increments and classification changes. Article 15 staffing and assignment. Article 16 evaluation. Article 18 professional development. Article 23. Union education department. Article 25. Early education department. Article 26 day to day substitutes. Article 29 special education. Article 31 counselors, deans and head counselors. Article 40 pearson students review. Article 43 duration. And article 44 reopened hours for the unclassified contract the district is proposing
changes to the following articles. Article nine hours of work and work here. Article 11 leaves. Article 13 pay allowance and fringe benefits. and article 30 duration and article 31 re openers. Accordingly I respectfully request a for a motion to approve the presentation of the initial proposals from both the united educators of san francisco and the san francisco unified school district as it relates to the proposals discussed this evening and also for the board to adopt the district's proposals as their own in accordance with section 3547 c of the government code. Thank you. thank you. At this time I invite the petitioners to make a presentation regarding the material revision if they would like. Um okay. Uh do we have any comments from the board or the superintendent? Uh, in which case we'll do a roll cover please. MR. Steel. Actually, we need to do independent public comment
here. Sorry about that. Yes. Yeah. I didn't receive any speaker cards for this but if there is a few minutes of public comment on this specific hearing if you care to speak to it right now seeing none. We'll do a roll call vote. Thank you, MR. Steel. Thank you. Sorry, just can we check for virtual public comment? Sure. And before we do that really quickly from a process question MR. Steel, do and perhaps this is for general counsel as well do we need to accept the motion ? Oh, yes. Thank you. We'll take public comment in the moment. At this time we will take public comment on the public hearing. And this was to adopt the as of us the initial proposals to us staff certified certificated and classified units and united educators of san francisco certificated classified units initial proposals to assist us. Can we please have that repeated in spanish and chinese that we're taking public comment on the public hearing
and adoption only? When I started I was just out of my local interest because in cuando I lost the most dangerous. E the last person knows about their own minuto pineapple express and comentarios. But an alert of a direct and honest crisis going on daily. I recall on JULY 14 guessing and gives a highball and it's like hey how big all I care to think oh my goodness my goodness I can predict quality hurt I guess I was so tired I guess I I to give you an answer. I know how you are going to thank you dorian. Dorian go ahead please. So cynthia, moving on to vanessa.
Vanessa that was for an earlier comment. Oh, okay. Thank you. Thank you. No virtual public comment for the public hearing and adoption. Thank you. Is there a motion on the floor ? oh, it's like so moved. Seconded. Thank you. Can we do a roll call vote MR. Steel? Yes. Thank you. Student delegate langston delegate montgomery. I'm sorry. Yes. student delegate is well. Thank you, MR. Alexander. That's commissioner matt. Yes. Yes, commissioner fisher? Yes. Commissioner gupta. Yes. Vice PRESIDENT Huling. Yes. Commissioner ray. Yes. Commissioner weissbourd yes. PRESIDENT Kim yes sir. Bruce thank you. As before I mentioned before we previously had moved up item I
to fiscal an operational update I call on DR. Soo to introduce this item. thank you PRESIDENT Kim I'm going to be joined by melissa smith, our executive director of special initiatives and all things budget. So these are very quick slides just to give our board members here and the public an update on where we are in our budget. Next slide please. Great. So as a reminder that are the our budget balancing principles that I've I've presented and will be taken on is that we will remain student centered so that we will continue to try our best to keep cuts away from our students and away from the classroom, ensure that there's operational efficiency is meaning that we will do our best to make sure that the programs and services that we are going to continue to deliver will deliver in the most efficient way possible while we meet our obligations
for both our contractual obligations as well as our state obligations. And we do all of this so that we can continue to prioritize stability in the district. At the end of the day what we want to see is that we get out of our the california department of education oversight where they solvent school district that has a healthy reserve. When we do this we will be able to continue to provide all of those amazing things that our students need but more importantly where our students and our staff can can have predictability and stability in the out years in this district. So next slide please. I'm going to hand this over to MS.. Smith to share with you some more details about what our schools recently received in their budget forms. Thank you. DR. Su and good evening commissioners and thank you for the opportunity to present tonight. As DR. Sue shared one of our
budget balancing principles is operational efficiency which includes reimagine learning how we use our resources so that we can deliver results and deliver on our promise to students to move towards this operational efficiency we will strategically leverage both restricted and unrestricted resources to fund our schools. And when I say restricted, what resources what I mean is it's those funds that are either for very specific services or programs or a time limited or both both specific services and time limited if we strategically maximize those restricted resources we are better able to more effectively meet the needs of our diverse school. So what I want to do is walk you through the chart that is up there and I think in front of you and in the chart what we have tried to do is have mapped the position and school site discretionary funds that make up a school site budget to get and so that you can see the restricted resources and the unrestricted resources that we are leveraging to fund each category. So you can see kind of in the top left the blue represents
our unrestricted general funds and add ons as well as the pta funds. That's quality teacher education act I think funds that specifically support our educator salaries. So that's what the blue represents the maroon red at the top which says lcf supplemental concentrate funds those are the positions that we fund through our lcf supplemental and concentration funds. Then when you look at the bottom right the maroon also that's our local state and federal restricted funds and so those are the funds that we're leveraging to also add positions at our school sites to support the whole school budget. And then on the left which is the green, it's the restricted funds that are very restricted the slam the sports library arts and music and the career technical education funds. so that's not all that a school site is but that's looking at where positions are funded. Now when we go to the next chart kind of on the right
there the top yellow that is the lcf f supplemental and concentration and our pif other general uses funds. So you can see we're leveraging our lcf supplemental concentration funds both for positions and for district discretionary moneys and the discretionary moneys that that a school receives from the lcf supplemental is directly tied to the students enrolled in that school and that allocation is discretionary and those are the funds that a school site while developing their sips can look to to decide and think about strategic strategic initiatives that they would like to fund then below that it's kind of red you'll see restricted school site specific grants these are grants and other restricted funds that come directly to school site. It could be that a school applied for a grant and they receive that money. They receive title one money. So different types of monies that it's coming to a school. And again these are discretionary funds that a school community while developing their sips a can
think about can how do they use those funds strategically you will notice that you don't see any pta, ptsa or pto funds in the chart and that's because those funds are held individually at the the pta, ptsa and pto. So those are funds that that community along with the schools decides how to use. We will be providing supplemental hiring guidance to provide direction on how site level discretionary funds both the ones that you see in the orange and the red plus pto or any other funds can be used to support the strategic sips, the development of the sips at a school site. The other thing I have next slide sorry molly. Yes? Can I can I just I know that there were some comments about making sure that parents have the opportunity to provide feedback into the budgets. Parents will have the opportunity. Parents have the opportunity to provide feedback through their school site council meetings that should be happening in MARCH as well as a the the el cap family forum that is going
to have that will happen on MARCH 8th and that's where all of our school site council leaders will come together to get ready for the conversation at their schools around allocation of these very restricted site based dollars. Yeah and I'll talk a little bit that side about that as well and then so thank you for the preview. I appreciate it. What we did want to share that last week we did principals did receive their preliminary school budgets. Typically we share these these budgets in mid-FEBRUARY. So we are on track for sharing those numbers. This information can certainly be shared with school site councils and school communities to begin their conversations. As DR. Sue mentioned around their sips and the school site budgets, the school site councils will officially kick off their school site planning as she mentioned on MARCH 8th with our school planning summit or the week after schools how the schools can decide if they start on the eighth or the week after that's a local decision and we definitely encourage all
schools to engage in the process. You will notice though while some of you MAY or not but as we shift to frontline we we have shared in the past budgets in excel spreadsheet but we shared them differently. These budgets are being loaded into the frontline system. We hope to have those up next week and then the budget office can pressure test them so that we can have the budgets ready in the front line system by mid-MARCH. Secondly, we got a lot of feedback between when we shared these last week with site leaders there's a tracker where they work with their community or their lead and they put questions into the tracker. We got a lot of feedback on the supplemental hiring guide. That's why we haven't shared it yet. We're finalizing based on a lot of comments and questions we got. You can see on the third page we have the allocation methodology of how fees were calculated and identified. So all of that was shared last week and now we're sort of in the process of getting a lot of feedback, getting through it and going to the next step of
school budgets. So that is the process where we are today and I'll turn it back to DR. Soon. Great. Thank you. Actually maybe I can do I'll skip this slide because there's a video on the slide and maybe I'll go to the last slide and then we can come back. I'm katrina from the communications too. Okay, never mind. We'll watch the video that thank you. Okay, let's just go because I just it's the it's the the timeline slide. I just want to once again remind everyone of where we are on our budget timeline so we the supplemental employee retirement plan closed last friday FEBRUARY 21st and I'm very happy to share that we had a really positive response to that and thankfully we met our minimum number of the minimum requirement so that that's really good news because now next month I will be sharing with commissioners a proposal for approval for us to move forward with those serp
applications today where we're having this very hard conversation about seeking your resolution our approval for a resolution for layoffs next month MARCH 11th we will be sharing with the commission and of course the public our second interim which is our second check up for the budget and how we are doing in managing the budget and living within our means as well as providing our multi-year projection for as we are managing our budget and living inside our means. How does that what does that impact the out years and then and then of course on MARCH 15th is when the legal requirements for us to to issue the layoffs once again this process is very long in MAY we will look again and see where the governor's MAY revise will impact our district and then also with the calculation of the annual attrition rate that we have in the district along
with the serp we will then have final numbers on layoffs and and other budgetary details and then of course in JUNE we hope to have a final approved budget. So now we go back to the previous slide. You know in my conversation as I go to site visits and talk to families, what I've realized is that a lot of our families don't really understand the full details or what does it mean for us as a district to make these cuts. Why did we how did we get here so with our communications team they created this really amazing video. It's 90s so I ask everyone to just indulge us for 90s I'm sorry I did take time katrina from the communications department at the district and I'm going to explain what's happening with the budget as a district we have to address the significant deficit of $114 million for fiscal year 2025 2026. We've been experiencing trends in declining enrollment for the past decade and since our revenue is based off of our enrollment it means we've been getting less money but our
expenses has increased. This means that we've been spending more than we've been making which is called deficit spending. We're also running out of one time funds such as the covid relief fund. So as we're running out of those we do have to reduce our expenses if we don't balance our budget so that we're spending less than we receive, we do risk getting taken over by the state. But if we make cuts to make sure that we are spending within our means we will be able to get out of the deficit. 80% of our expenses are currently allocated for our workforce. We must reduce our workforce to ensure that we are responsibly allocating resources to both student services and district staffing. here's what we're doing to ensure that we are actively talking with principals as part of the budget planning process . We've also offered eligible employees a retirement incentive as a way to hopefully minimize the amount of layoffs we MAY need to do. We're also preparing to make significant reductions in central office staffing
contracts and non staff expenses. for more information on our budget process please go to sep usd.Edu/budget. so we also have created a special page where families and community members can go on to our website to learn more about the budget and there is an faa queue there so that people can learn more about the budget. Thank you. Thank you. At the time I open up to comments from the board if there are any so thank you for that presentation and DR. See I'm curious have sites been given guidance on what they can or cannot spend their funding on with as it relates to pta funding and some of the seed funding? It's a great question. That was what MISS Smith was referring to as the supplemental hiring guide. We are in the middle of finalizing that document and we hope to share that document with our sites by meli by next week next week we're hoping the end of this week or very in the
very beginning of next week so they can have that for their discussions. Michelle I had two questions one to follow up on that one. Do we know that the local funds that that will include guidance on local funds and that schools can actually use to hire people ? It's not there's not going to be a hiring freeze any more on those. Have we figure that out yet? I know we're making progress in that area but I just want to because I know that's been a pain point for schools. We heard that valley middle school was here today talking about the impact of potential cuts in their budget. They have a student success fund grant. I know they haven't been able to hire for it. They have, you know, over $100,000 sitting there that they can't use for a staff position because there was a hiring freeze. So I guess have we work or where are we in working that out? that's a great question and the supplemental hiring guide will definitely address that I think as a goal and I would say that our cda advisors agree we
do not want to leave restricted moneys on the table when we can hire staff or support our school sites. So we're actively working them to identify how that works. Like if if you have a position that used to be funded through the allocation and maybe now we can't fund as much and you have the funds to keep that position then we would want to be in a place where you just switch this funding resource and you keep that position. So that's the type of detail that we're working out. And then how would you do that in front line if you wanted to change the resource or at a position we will still as I understand it will still be under a hiring freeze but it will be under advisement and we will be working with our our new our advisors and it is mostly going to be focused on new positions, not existing positions. So you have a person in a position that you're going to switch out funding that wouldn't be part of a hiring freeze that wouldn't even be discussed. It would just go forward. So that's am I making sense? You're like you are but
ultimately no, I'm just running. But but so then schools let's just as a hypothetical let's say that a school doesn't have a nurse and based on their academic plan their their sips and their analysis of the goals they really feel like they need a nurse and they have grant funding. Yeah pta student access fund new position will they be able to do that or will they not be able to do that? So we don't know yet. We we would probably keep the same process that you could do that but we would first meet the needs of our staffing model . We've been doing this with social workers when we had to assess and make sure we've fulfilled all of those positions and then after that if you wanted a new position and you had the you had the restricted funds to pay for the position wholly the answer would probably be yes. That's what we're working towards and that's the type of detail we're trying to get to. I think that's really helpful. And then my other question was just a timing question on I know we've talked a lot about the central office and
contracts cuts and that was mentioned in the video and I know one of the concerns I think people have legitimately raised with me around the layoffs is here we are making this really huge number of layoffs that is is frankly very likely to be way over noticing we're going to risk losing people who are going to get layoff notices, find other jobs and we're going to have needing them. but so if we knew more about our other budget cuts we could then reduce the number of layoffs. Right. So I guess I'm interested in the timing of when are we going to have a concrete proposal around cuts to central office and cuts to contracts? That's a great question and you and I are turning all of our attention next week to that. So we're really pushing to get that. I mean our first priority was getting that information to schools last week which we did and now getting the supplemental hiring guide and really getting them on their way so they can do the planning at the community level and now
we need to turn to the central office really do some really strong resource mapping on what are the resources or the resources that are ending, what are the ones that are creating and we've got the second interim which is really going to help us because we need to know the fund balances on all those restricted resources is it one year is a two year so we're being very strategic. We have a fund balance. I'll give you an example like we know the learning and recovery funds are ending and we might have one more year of say $12 million of it and that could pay for our instructional coaches. So we're like great, we're solid. We're going to do that. We've got the instructional block grant I think it's called prop 28 not to be confused with art one but that is we have a fund balance we're doing a math curriculum and we have to be have a big purchase of curriculum so we're making sure we've taken care of that which will then help us know our fund balance for that going into
next year making up numbers is 20 million and we can use some of that money to cover what was funded in the central office. I'll give you an example translation interpretation to fund that because we we're not going to cut them. We need funding. So is that type of mapping I've been meeting with central offices for the last two weeks to understand what is the funding that you central office no you can use because it's a grant to your school. Can we talk to the funder and use it for this instead of that? So it's all like this sort of everything has to start this gets this is this so and going to have like a picture in our head of how it's supposed to come together but we do have to spend some time digging into it and then the second interim or will they help us because we'll know fund balances going into next year does it expire 27 six? Does it expire 27 so we can have a shortfall since we're doing a multi-year plan, we want to skew that out. that's really helpful. Thank you. And my last one just real quick is a comment on again the need
for meaningful consultation and we heard again in public comment zero input there's a smell of smoke. Yeah do other not smoke or something I'll take it out okay anyway just to just my comment was again to note I know we've been playing catch up for past mismanagement so this is not at all blaming but just again to emphasize the need for that meaningful consultation with school communities before we finish the budget process at least for this commissioner to vote yes, I need to make sure that as we're meeting that guardrail got rolling. Thank you, commissioner ray thank you so much. I have a few questions as well. First of all, I thank you both for the information about pitas and about our efforts to use grant funds that instead of you know, using it losing the money to use these restricted funds for whatever we can possibly fund to improve the school experience for our kids. and so I'm so sorry to interrupt. Yeah, I was getting very strong. Okay.
We just make sure that everyone's going to be supporting. Okay. Can we take a recess so it is eight 41 let's take up let's take a four minute recess and come back at 45 after and we'll just make sure everything's okay. Thank you. Yes. Yes. It's really pungent. Yes . S.F. Gov tv san francisco government television . Thank you and apologies. I appreciate everyone's understanding. Source of said smell has not been found so we are going to move on for that. Yeah. Yeah yeah. Luckily all of this is recorded so I'm okay already. Thank you so much. I will have commissioner ready if you can just resume your question that would be great. thank you. Thank you. Okay.
Before that little interruption I was just appreciating that we are getting more information about the pitas and pitas ability to use funds and you know, work toward making sure we can use our restricted money in grants and other things and not actually lose those. My I have a few questions. My first one is around administrative input MR. Alexander was referring to, you know, community input. We were hearing about that from the community. We also heard from administrate staffers both this time and previously about a concern that they did not have sufficient opportunity to provide input into this process. So that's the first thing that I wanted to ask about like what provisions are we making now to to you know, to ensure that they have opportunities for input and are we making changes going forward to try to work more closely with the administrators? Yeah. Thank you for that question. Budget development is always a very iterative process so there are always opportunities to go back and forth. So sort of the I guess formal
structure I would say that we're following right now is we presented we met with all the administrators on FEBRUARY 19th. They're all in the room together then they broke out into their cohorts so each of their cohorts and there was a lead staff plus a central office staff who met and talked through the template the strategic staffing model, the allocations and the supplemental hiring guide to get there first reactions to it to hear what their questions were. So in that moment there was that that type of feedback and I will have to say the cohort I was in had some really great ideas. A lot of it was about leveraging restricted resources and really good questions about operation like scenarios like if I sort of how commissioner alexander is like if I'm this and I want to do that, can I do that? So it was really helpful for us to be like oh yes we think so or we have to sort of look through that. So we did all that. Then we have a tracker which is another place where if you're thinking about something late in the middle of the night
you're like oh shoot, I wanted to ask that question. They they have been emailing but we're all saying can you put it in the tracker? So we then have a tracker which on first glance I was just reviewing it this morning a lot of questions about the supplemental hiring guide because school sites are saying you know we get where we're at today. We want to be part of the solution. We have restricted resources to leverage to support what is happening, how can we do that? So it's been really great. Question so we're hoping I mean we know that the next iteration of the guide is much better than it was the first time we've had questions particularly from high school like where is there a through g courses how you know what's the app prep? So being able to sit down with them and say this is how we calculated did we MISS Something? So we're doing another set of meetings with the lead their lead rep tomorrow to this tuesday on thursday and then we'll be continuing presenting it. So it's a very iterative and we
sometimes it's we'll do it through lead weekly and just say here's the new guide you can all know this sometimes will meet directly with the school site because there needs we're not we're not able to do it individually. So those are that is how we plan to continue to engage with the site administrators and it will continue to change as DR. Sue said and I our adopted budget comes before you in JUNE. It's going to have some changes based on the MAY revise. So it's always an iterative process through budget development. Okay. Thank you. My second question actually follows on something you were just saying mentioning the energy requirements. There were quite a few students today who mentioned concern about energy classes being cut in some fashion concerned about ap classes being taken away, concerned about language classes and so forth. Can you give us an update on you know, on the status of those things are are those areas where you know, will we be able to continue to offer all of all of those things? Yes, and that's a perfect example of why when we shared with site leaders it was preliminary because sometimes they're going to discover
things that we missed. So if you will see we on on the template we had advanced placement under the blue and we had what we called additional teachers for a through g and we had middle school in this initiate wonder. So those three the areas where we were trying to make sure that a school can meet its master schedule to provide the students the supports the courses that they need particularly in high school through a through g. So again we we passed it out we explained all that for some sites are like you got it right this is good for some they're like no you didn't so that's our next work sorry that we're doing is sitting down and mapping all the schools so it is every intention that we must meet the energy requirements for our high school students. We must be able to have our site leaders build master schedules that provide the courses so and the eighth through the advanced placement we've been really trying to think about what is the best way to put that in a budget.
Is it as an fte as so we're kind of working through those so that's where we are in that process anyway, before you go on to your next question, I, I do want to acknowledge student delegates if you do have questions I know you have to leave in about five minutes. Um, but do you have any questions that you want to ask ? Okay. I think you go ahead and commission of the the next thing I wanted to ask about or perhaps the last thing on this topic it's more around communication and making sure that we are providing accessible or understandable communication to everyone from our site leaders to our families and students and staff and so forth and any other partners that we work with. I feel like a lot of people are wondering what's going on and really people get very worried about what might happen and conjure up all kinds of ideas and threats and so forth and some of those are real and some of them MAY actually be worked out to everyone's satisfaction but without a clear sense of of
where we're going, it's hard to have confidence in that and I think that creates more anxiety than we need to have. This is a difficult situation for all of us is tremendously difficult but the more we can be transpo print and clear and comprehensible in the information we deliver and make sure that we are working with people and trying to incorporate their ideas as we go along and their feedback. It just seems like that would be a better path all around for all of us and I'm hoping that we can do more on the communication front. I'm wondering what plans and thoughts we have. I saw here today there was a short video that was produced. There was apparently a fake q and some information on the website. But is there a way that that you know, we're disseminating information to school communities? Is there any type of of network or effort like I kind of wonder how many people will see the 92nd video. Is that something that is being shared in some broad fashion? Is that the most helpful way to
communicate with people? How how do we help people understand what's going on so that we can all move forward as productively and effectively as possible? We're in a hard situation of figuring out what we can afford and I think almost nobody would prefer state take over. It's difficult enough as it is and if we had a full state take over we would be making none of these decisions locally. So how can we share out information most effectively? What is what are some of the ways we're thinking about doing that if we have the capacity to do that? Thanks. Well thank you commissioner ray for that question. Our first step is to make sure that there's the website that families can can use. The video will be posted through our social media channels. So trying to get that message out to as many people as possible. Our communications team is working on a communication toolkit that will then be shared with families and community members as well as school sites so that they can
then have the tools and the information necessary to share that then out to even more people. The goal is to provide accurate timely information in multiple formats so that we can get the information out to as many people as possible so that they can all understand what we're grappling with the direction that we're trying to head towards and using all different types of tools to get that information out. We also want to make sure that it is going to be language accessible so we're also making sure that the information is in multiple languages. commissioner fischer, thank you very much for this information. I know and we had many of our public commenters references that well that we're just we're in very tough times. These none of these choices we have to make are easy choices. And so I really want to thank those in the public who acknowledge that I thank you to my fellow commissioners. You've already asked your questions. They are some of mine I just we heard so much from school site
leaders and community members who really, really value that local control that has been such a huge, huge, huge part of how we've put together budgets and a big part of our equity. I mean if we value equity as many folks have said, that doesn't mean the same thing for every school site. And so I really appreciate the way that slide was put together to to show those different you know, the supplemental and concentration. So thank you for that. I think one of the questions I'm hoping to tease out is where do our compliance mandates fit into this? I saw some of the special education I know that most of our special education funds are central not site based but we have other programs that support kids with disabilities like five of four plans we heard that mentioned a lot, right? And our nurses and our social workers are the folks who implement those plans. So how are we going to be able to meet our ada 5 or 4 requirements section and rehab
the rehab act requirements if we don't have those staff members in place to is so not just disability access but I'm also thinking about some of our other legal compliance mandates like language access in many schools you know we have the obligation to make sure that our families can communicate with staff and in many places it's the family liaisons that do that and we're talking about cutting a lot of them. You know, our students have gender expression protections and we're talking about cutting those positions ag requirements. We have that was a lot of that was already covered. But if we talk about keeping the lights on but does that how are we also taking our legal mandates and our are protected and we have citizen students who are protected classes and so where are their rights being considered in this staffing model is a big, big question I have right now. So I would say that keeping the lights on means we're meeting our mandated requirements. I mean that is a part of it.
The staffing many much as you as you mentioned many of our staffing our mandates come centrally like the special ed allocations. So I think they're going to be released from school soon. i'm I know assistant superintendent regina perry can talk a little bit more about that but piper, when I compare how am I guys and then around nursing yes that is the whole idea of really thinking about how are we ensuring that school sites and we're meeting the 5 or 4 and the iep points there so I just point and so on what you were saying sorry let me just correct myself for a second. so those we because we haven't finished our central office that is what is critical in our restricted resources like that is where we are. A lot of our funding like I mentioned our translation interpretation unit is on esser funding right now. It must be on new funding. So that is sort of the turn to make sure we're meeting that we have our nurses who are providing mandated services for ieps in private for pine.
So we're working on how do we ensure those services continue there are no reductions in our nursing allocations that we're planning. We're only trying to look to be more efficient and not rely on agency contract nurses as much so those types of things. So it's absolutely in there. I think the bigger picture will be built and we can come back with the central office and you can see the cuts that are made to non mandated services to make sure we're preserving that. I want to just thank our student delegates and excuse them as it's 9:00. Thank you so much. thank you. And I just I really want to appreciate all of our students who came out first and foremost and I'm hoping that our sjc members are reaching out to mission high school in particular because we heard so much from the mission high school students. I remembered what I wanted to say is like that little interlude. So one of the things that an assistant associate superintendent there we'll talk about this more but just
remembering we are doing preliminary notification right now and a lot of the central staff positions are on restricted resources and because we are in the process of really ensuring of mapping of our resources, that's part of the reason that some positions are listed and we'll talk more about that. But it's really we we are we are a very we have a lot of we're very resource rich and restricted resources and our goal emory eyes is for us to move in a direction where we're strategically losing using them and not losing them and that should really ensure that either we can do some extra counselors out of high school paid for that not through our lcf so we can make sure we're meeting our mandated services. So it's all of that type of mapping I call it mapping. I think other people might call other things but I that is really our goal. any remaining comments before we move on I just to note this item is a regularly occurring item for our for our meetings and in the MARCH 11th meeting we'll have a much more comprehensive report on the budget given second interim
report. And thank you very much. I really appreciate you clarifying that the notices that are going out do not mean that people are going to actually be laid off nor does it mean that that is the number of people who are going to totally separate with at the end. And I really appreciate the patience of our all of our educators and staff and labor partners in understanding that we regret that we're in the situation that creates a lot of uncertainty and we really hope that you stick with us because we do not intend to separate all of the folks who receive notices and I would like to just ask as we're going into see season and the schools are going to have the opportunity coming up soon at the c summits to make decisions about how to allocate particular restricted funds for their schools.
How are we ensuring that each c has adequate accurate disaggregated data to make informed armed decisions about where those resources can have the most impact on student outcomes because we have not seen that level of data at the board and I know as a cs have not gotten in in the past but this year it is absolutely vital because of the situation that we are in financially that those funds be put to great use where they are most needed closest to the students who can benefit most from additional services so is there a plan to look at the data that the c's get so that they can tell not just for example this is how students in each grade are doing this is how you know multilingual learners versus home english speakers are doing but this is how this is broken down each year. This is how it's broken down for students on ieps in each year so we can actually focus and identify where we can best use our resources. I can speak kind of a very high level but I think that's related to all of the data conferences that the research planning and assessment
department the the data they put together for school sites and meet with them in the beginning of the year to explore that data, to go through that data. So that's that should be where the data comes from. On the other on the budget side of it like we're trying to have the templates name the restricted ad resources that are available in the amounts for each school so that schools are aware of it. You will see sort of the top big if you on the template that they already received and then we're working with school sites if we've missed some like we just named like ones that we know many schools have that many schools have individualized ones so those should be added for those schools to be sharing with their communities. Is the budget department working with the data department together to prepare information for the school sites for the ce summit so that that information can be married and used effectively? That's a really great question. I will double check to make sure.
Thank you our a associate superintendent of research policy and accountability is shaking is nodding back there so she will be able to provide the data for our schools particularly at this sec summit. any final remarks before we move on from this item? Okay. And to that point that you just made, vice PRESIDENT Huling in the past that el cap has and I know we'll hear more from the el cap later but we've had evening events like data data walks, deep dives into data connecting the dots between all of this and those events to the need for community engagement in this process they have been super helpful and so and I know MS. Love smith you have been critically involved in in planning some of those in the past so right so I, I look forward to more opportunities for that in the future. Thank you. We look forward to the MARCH 11th presentation so thank you for all your work. Um MS. La smith. Moving to item action or sorry item f action items to align with effective governance
practices, the superintendent and her team are tasked with providing a draft each of each agenda 12 days in advance when that draft agenda is made public on our website board members have have made a commitment to submit, clarifying and tactical questions and staff have made a commitment to respond to those questions in advance of each board meeting. This q&a doc is linked into the into each board agenda on board docs we invite the public to review those questions and answers um alongside our discussions today additionally to create more space focus and student outcomes we will be moving most items to our consent calendar and identifying only our highest priority agenda items to discuss. Board members are reminded not to restate questions answered by staff in advance but instead to bring forward strategic questions in today's discussion that allow us to better understand our progress towards goals and the underlying strategies so that we can better so that we can be better informed in our decision making in partner with the superintendent as we hold our accountable.
Item one overview of personnel actions um I will turn to the superintendent to introduce this into the record. thank you PRESIDENT Kim. Before I introduce our associate superintendent of H.R. Amy bear I want to take a moment to express my sincere gratitude to S.F. Usg families, staff and partners for your continued support as we navigate these really challenging times every day. our district serves over 50,000 students none of which would be possible without the dedication of nearly 9000 employees who work tirelessly every day in our community to each and every one of you. I thank you. As you are aware, the district is facing a significant financial challenge. Our expenses are growing much faster than our revenues and in order to balance our budget and ensure the district's fiscal responsibility, we are faced
with the task of making very painful reductions of upwards of $113 million. as part of this process we are working very closely with our california department of education cde fiscal advisors to maximize available resources as well as explore ways to leverage restricted funds which was just the discussion we just had. Please note that even though we're going through the magnitude of restricted resources and of course spending down every single penny of our unrestricted resources our total budget 80% of our total budget is comprised of work of our workforce. And so because of that the process of getting ourselves to a point of reduction of $130 million is quite painful although it is painful. It is extremely necessary for us to make these reductions because when we do we will get to a place where our district will be solvent. Please note that these reductions will come from our
central office as well as unfortunately our schools. but as we continue to prioritize our students, our programs, our services, our staff we need to make sure that we keep our focus on the reductions that are necessary. Moving forward with the recommendation and the request that MS.. Bear is going to share with us right now. So with that I'm going to hand this over to amy baer, our associate superintendent of H.R. Thank you, DR. Su. good evening, commissioners. Tonight staff has four personal items that we'll be bringing for the board's approval. And this presentation is intended to give the board and the public an overview of the actions and the process for staff reductions. I want to join DR. Sue in recognizing this is a really difficult time for our employees, our students and our community. Layoffs are never an easy decision and we we're approaching this process with careful consideration and care
for those that are affected. Next slide please. So MARCH 15th is a very important deadline in human resources education code requires that we notify certificated and classified employees that teachers, administrators, counselors or educators by MARCH 15th if they it's not my mike try again by MARCH 15th that they MAY be reassigned, released or laid off. let's try this one. So again, this is only a preliminary notice if we are to make a final layoff decision we would need to issue a final layoff notice by MAY 15th and in most school districts MAY 15th and MARCH 15th are the deadline for notifying all employees as opposed is unique in that we have civil service employees and they do not follow the education code. So we'll be talking a little bit more about that group and when cuts in those areas might be expected. Next slide please. Okay. So tonight's recommendations
are part of a larger effort to make staff reductions to help balance our budget. As a reminder, on FEBRUARY 11th the board directed staff to release temporary certificate employees who are on a one year contract that expires in JUNE. We are also issuing notices to 149 certificated administrators that they MAY be released or reassigned to another position for the 2526 school year. The district also noticed some probationary certificated employees that they could be there would be released at the end of their probationary period at the end of the school year. tonight we are requesting that the board issue preliminary layoff notices to certificated and classified employees. Earlier I mentioned that san francisco unified has a civil service employees who are not subject to the MARCH 15th deadline and staff anticipates bringing recommendations to issue layoff notices to civil service management and non-management at the APRIL board meeting.
Next slide. so staff is seeking approval to issue 395 preliminary notices to certificate and staff certificated employees or those that hold state issued teaching or administrative credentials. And they're responsible for instructional or leadership roles in our schools. The chart on this slide outlines how we arrived 395. the first heading shows the reduction in our staffing allocation from 2425 to 2526. And you can see from this chart that we are allocating 115 less certificate rated staff for the 2526 school year through our staffing allocation and the next heading labeled discretionary funded identify staff that is currently funded outside the general fund. This is the group that melillo smith spent a considerable time in her presentation discussing. These are positions funded from grants or other restricted resources. And because decisions have not yet been made about which positions will be funded with these dollars we are recommending to notice these positions. so you can see this is a total of 280 certificated
employees who are in this discretionary funded category. And that's what brings the total to 395. Preliminary notices. Next slide please. moving to classified para educators these are our employees who support positions but they don't require a state credential a-series para educators or instructional assistants. Our series para educators include community relations specialists, child welfare and attendance liaison aides and community health workers and t-series para educators provide campus security. So as you can see there is a reduction of 14 hour series staff due to the reduction in the staffing allocation. And the bulk of the reductions are due to uncertainty and discretionary funded positions. So positions that we're not sure which funding will be used for those positions yet. Next slide. So the process for certificated layoffs if the board takes action to reduce particular kinds of services also called picks they would identify and you would identify reductions by credential areas. It's important to note these
are reductions in positions not people. The next step would be for our staff to determine who would get a notice. First we would process any separations so any resignations ,any retirements, any of the people who are taking our serp any leaves. And we would do that by credential area. Those reductions would then reduce the number of notices that we would need to be delivered. The remaining notices will be issued by seniority. And again these are preliminary notices and the board would needed to issue final notices prior to MAY 15th in determining who would be noticed for certificated staff. we also consider skipping and tiebreaker criteria. Skipping allows employees to be skipped when we're issuing layoffs if they have authorization for special education, transitional kindergarten or they are bilingual. And then tiebreaker criteria is used to determine seniority when employees have the same date of hire. Since we have many teachers every year who start on the
same day each year, tiebreaker criteria is used to determine who's the most senior. So we would consider multiple credentials bilingual authorization and placement in a special education position or at a high potential school either this year or in the previous year. and just as a side note, this criteria is part is developed in partnership with our labor partners at usf. And then the classified layoffs process would be very similar to the certificated if the board takes action to reduce the positions by job classification. H.R would then process any separations from the district and if necessary issue preliminary notices by seniority. And then classified staff would also need to receive a final notice prior to MAY 15th. so from the process from the perspective of our employees we are required to provide the preliminary layoff notices prior to MARCH 15th. They're based on seniority and employees would receive a letter outlining the layoff process. As part of that process.
Employees MAY request a hearing to contest the layoff as attrition or funding is confirmed we will rescind notices and confirm placements as possible for the 2526 school year. Employees will be offered support from human resources and from their unions during the process. And then again any final notices need to be issued by MAY 15th. These final notices can still be rescinded if a position becomes available for the next year if the layoff is not rescinded then employees will be placed on a rehire list and eligible for positions that become available at a later date. So to summarize on FEBRUARY 14th the board took action to release temporary employees and to notice some certificated administrators that they MAY be reassigned. Tonight we're asking the board to issue preliminary notices to certificated and classified staff. And at a future board meeting will be asking commissioners to approve layoffs for civil
service management and non-management employees. I'd be happy to take any questions or other questions from the board. Commissioner ray. Hi. I just have a question following up on one of the questions that I asked earlier that I don't I don't think got addressed in the responses. Do we have a sense of to what extent the district can or does use funding to cover personnel costs for areas of need? Is it the we've identified specific areas of need and there are also apparently some hard to staff areas in addition to the ones that were identified like you know, math and science in addition to special education, bilingual and early education. So do we have a sense of how much we can use funding to cover personnel costs for those areas? I don't have an answer to that question. I would have to work with my partners in the business office to get back to you about that. Okay. My other question relates to do we have a list of the areas that we consider to be hard to
staff areas or classes? Every year we bring a declaration in for the board of it's a determination of need for hard to staff positions. It's typically special education, early education, bilingual positions, math science. So part of my question before had been if had been whether math and science were considered areas of need and that was mentioned. Is there a reason that I mean in the answer it says that they are. Is there a reason why they weren't included in the list? Because we were just given three things. That's why I'm wondering if there are there are other categories of need that we don't know about for instance or those the five. So for the areas of need are you referring to the skipping or tiebreaker criteria? Is that what you're. I think it was in the it's either in the skipping or the tiebreaker criteria but there's one of the resolutions lists I think it's in the skipping criteria list three specific areas special education, bilingual education and early education. And that had caused me to
wonder about math and science being I think also hard to staff in areas of need. And so I was wondering why or why are there those three are there other things? And is there something else? Are there is there a list of what those areas would be? so I think for the skipping criteria we're looking at those three as add ons to other credentials. Typically people don't have a math and science credential and the specialist I mean if they do we'd like to hire them immediately but math and science are their own standalone category, right? Like if you were going to lay off a math teacher you would go to everyone with a math credential. Think of the skipping criteria as we're looking at people with a multiple subject credential. If you have a multiple subject credential you would get a notice if you have a multiple subject credential and the special ed authorization you would be skipped. So the skipping criteria is really specific to lay offs and it isn't intended to be a
comprehensive list of all of the areas of need. Okay. Just for the public to understand and can you explain what a multiple subject credential is? Sure. Multiple subject credential authorizes teaching in the 2k5 age range. Okay. So there wouldn't be a need for instance if math and science are hard to staff there wouldn't be a need for somebody to have some additional credential. That's why only the three that are listed that would require this additional credential. Right. And you'll see that on the authorization for layoffs. The next item that I'll bring for approval there is no math or science credential credentialed teachers on the left list. Thank you. Can I just very sorry. Can I just very quickly respond to commissioner ray's question regarding using p funds? Yes, we are using p funds to to the max to the best of its eligibility. So there are two parts to p. There's the sports libraries, arts and music part two and we
will fully exhaust that. There is the discretionary side to pif. And at this moment in time we're proposing to use pretty much all that discretionary side of pif to um to find all eligible programs and services that fall under the the our basic priority needs of our schools. This MAY be a question for the superintendent or someone else because I'm not sure that it falls exactly as in your question. But with respect to the classified para educators of our series you described those as including attendance folks in attendance clerks and that classification I did not see on MR. Smith's um kind of description of how different funds are allocated. I see some of these like tens curity aides for example. I see where that's coming to schools. Um, is there an intention to remove that as a category of employees at the school and if
so have we done an analysis of how much money they bring in by increasing our reported attendance and therefore our reported average daily attendance funding? I don't know that there's there's no effort to remove that as a as a group. I think traditionally that that group has been funded with restricted funding and not through the general fund. So these are fall within the category of we just don't exactly know which restricted funding source is going to fund them and that's why they're being noticed not because they're not going to be filled category next year. I think there's a reduction of 14 as I recall in that in the staffing model allocation and there are there are different categories of our series pairs. So I'm not sure if that's a parent liaison or if that's a community relations specialist or a health outreach worker or the um attendance liaison. But those are just some
examples of categories in our series. Thank you commissioner fisher. So I have to say the community events that have been happening this month around lunar new year and black history month have been a lot more fun than this subject. So um, it it's nice to have bright spots and thank you for the the hardest of the work that we have to do as a district. It's not easy work to hold but thank you for doing it MISS Bear um, my question is I'm on the employee perspective slide I believe that slide nine um, item number three rescinding notices if there is a bright spot I'd love to just like grab on to that one. Can you give us a little bit more information about that? I what would that look like? I mean because we are going to be getting more information about the serp. Um you know we have our next interim coming up in MARCH. Um there are a ton of dependencies we're still trying to figure out centrally what we can cut what contracts, how quickly looking into your crystal ball, how quickly can
we are there any assurance is or can we talk a little bit more about what rescinding these layoffs would look like and what an ideal timeline and perhaps percentage would look like? I can talk a little bit about last year how how it worked. The timeline is a little bit unclear still but when we were able to rescind notices we did reach out to the employees immediately. They do have to come to the board for approval but we took the step of notifying the employee that we would be bringing it for board action at the next meeting so they would immediately know that they had a position. You know I'm doing layoffs now but you know H.R. Is also responsible for staffing and so I don't want to lose people if they if we have a position to offer them so we'll be working as quickly as possible when a vacancy is confirmed or you know funding is identified to notify staff and make sure that they're committed for 2526 thank you. And to follow up on that I
believe superintendent sue, if I understood what you and MS.. Smith said in our last we will also be trying to identify other contract areas where we could potentially discontinue that contract and instead convert staff to employees and then potentially reduce layoffs that way. That's correct, yes. Okay. Um I'm there are no other questions. i, uh, I well, I want to make a comment before we vote but it's not a question. Okay. Can you make it very quickly? Sure. yeah. That again is now the right time? Better time with that. okay. I just wanted to say I totally understand our need to make these reductions. It is essential and as the superintendent said, the majority of our budget is in staffing so we're going to have to cut staff. but and I'm and I'm going to support this resolution but I'm really uncomfortable doing so because as some of the public commenters said it is our mismanagement that made us need to over notice so many of these
positions, right? I mean if we had really had our ducks in a row and done the work we needed to do as a district earlier and I include us on the board all of it well not the new people but those of us who have been on the board right with all of our responsibility. And so I really appreciate the hard work and the progress we've made. But again, I do want to emphasize we haven't we need to see the central office reductions. We need to see the contract reductions. We need to look at creative ideas like the need for electricity. I mean I don't know what's possible but we need to show the community that we've done everything we can to keep the cuts away from our students and I know that's been our stated commitment but I just want to say that we as a board need to keep that pressure up staffing to keep the work up and because if we get to MAY 15th I'm not going to vote for this same number of layoffs like any unless there's you know unless the data shows that that's what needs to happen.
But there needs to be a lot more evidence that this is really connected that we've done all that other work and that what remains has been chosen to advance our progress toward the goals in respect to our guardrails. And so I just wanted to sort of say that but also at the same time I appreciate the work that's been done to get us to this point. Thank you. MR. Lisa lisa weissman ward, please. Thank you. And I know that hours I will also but I'm feeling inspired by commissioner alexander and I am also going to vote for the resolution because I think we are in a position where we don't have a choice. That being said, it also feels uncomfortable to me and I think one of the things that we are we are relying we are putting our faith and trust in district leadership that you in fact are going to bring us cuts to the central office that are meaningful that you are in fact going to bring us cuts to the budget and and we are being told that that's going to
happen and I believe it's going to happen. but if it doesn't I think we're going to be in a really, really, really awkward not good position for anyone. It's not going to be good for the district. It's not going to be good for the schools. It's not going to be good for the board. So that would be my plea that the next time we are having this conversation we actually start to see those numbers and we can see how that offsets and really in fact minimizes we know that the cuts are not going to be entirely away from our classrooms just because of the numbers but that we can see that there's some offsetting and really minimizing what is happening at the school sites so if I MAY I just want to remind commissioners that at our last board meeting you all did authorize us to move forward with noticing 149 central certificated administrators, some of which are in central office and then in the APRIL board meeting we are going to bring another I can't do quick math but another 150 positions for authorized sessions for noticed as well. I think just also to be clear
of what I'm asking for is like also the big picture that like yes those numbers are good but it's like how much have we reduce central office again commissioner ray and I at the last meeting of the meeting before we're talking about the the biela report, you know, so how have we strategically done that right? how much are we spending on contracts right now and how much have we reduced it those kind of things with numbers. I mean and just to be clear, I will vote no on the next round of layoffs and I will vote no on the budget if I if I'm not convinced on that like I have to and that's our guidance from council great city schools if we aren't convinced that it's meeting that it's aligned with our progress toward our goals, our responsibility is to vote now I'm voting yes tonight because I have faith in our new superintendent and I have faith that we're going to get there. But I just want to say that I will vote no next time around if we're not there. Can I also if we're going to editorialize here and not as clarifying questions, I I'm
going to jump in next. I think it's also important to recognize especially when it comes to contracts a lot of the huge expenditures we're making that we really are over if we had unionized employees in-house doing the same work we could cut those expensive bigly hugely in all ways. I did not believe I cannot believe I use that word. I think that means that we need to move forward. Commissioner fischer the term bigly is my sign that we should probably move forward. okay. Well no, but I it's really I mean and we have students who are not being served appropriately outside of our district because we don't have the appropriate programs we don't have we have a lot of students who to vice PRESIDENT Rulings comment earlier about attendance we have a lot of students who cannot attend in person and we don't have a virtual program. So where those those students are just missing there's a lot of things that we need to be
looking at as ways to make sure that we are being good stewards of these public dollars and serving our students better. And I really, really hope that that is going to be part of of this next work. thank you. I do think that we will I just to be clear, I think there has been a resounding expectation from the board that as these layoffs and cuts come, we need to also see a plan for what we are doing with the resources that we do have so we can be really clear with the public and ourselves around what it is we are doing for the next year and so and beyond. So just to acknowledge that the next four items that we have on the agenda are all related to what we just discussed. We do procedurally we have to move forward with introducing a motion and a second calling on the superintendent to read this into the record. We will by procedure have space for comments on the board but I hope that we have gotten all our comments out and then we will do a roll call vote for each one so for each of these
next four items just know that that is our procedure. So for item 2 to 5 2-25 esp one consider approve resolution reducing layoff certificate it employee services for the 2526 school year can have a motion and second please submit second and I'll call on the superintendent to read this into the record or designee do we need to read this and figured okay seeing no comments from the board roll call book please MR. Seal thank you. MR. Alexander. Yes. Commissioner fisher. Yes. Commissioner gupta. Yes. Vice PRESIDENT Huling. Yes. Commissioner ray yes. Commissioner wiseman ward yes. PRESIDENT Kim yes. Seven hours item 3252-25 as to consider approved resolution reducing layoffs sort of classified employee services for the 2526 school year can have a motion and second please so move second no comments from
the board. Roll call. Vote please. MR. Steel. Thank you, MR. Alexander. Yes, MR. Fisher. Yes. MR. Gupta. Yes. Vice PRESIDENT Huling. Yes. MR. Ray. Yes. Commissioner wiseman ward yes. PRESIDENT Kim yes, sir. Item 4252-253 consider approve resolution to determine tiebreaker criteria. Can I have a motion a second, please? So moved second seeing no comments. roll call. vote please. MR. Steel. Thank you. Commissioner alexander. Yes, MR. Fisher? Yes, MR. Gupta. Yes, vice PRESIDENT Healing yes. Commissioner ray. Yes. Commissioner wise one word. Yes. PRESIDENT Kim yes. Seventh and finally item 5252-254 consider approve resolution to determine skipping criteria of a motion and second please so moved I second see no comments from the board. roll call vote please MR. Steel to MR. Alexander. Yes to MR. Fisher. Yes, MR. Gupta. Yes. Vice PRESIDENT Healing yes. Commissioner ray.
Yes. Commissioner wiseman ward. Yes. PRESIDENT Kim yes sir. Thank you. Moving forward to item g workshop on student outcomes interim guardrail one the monitoring of interim guardrail one was previously on the governance calendar but is not on the agenda this evening. Um oh, I'm so sorry. Thank you so much, MISS Bear for your presentation. I'll be going again. The monitoring of interim guardrail wellness previously on the governance calendar. But it's not on the agenda this evening. We are committed to monitoring our interim guardrails. however, the superintendent and the governance team are working towards working together to revise the interim guardrails for guardrail one guardrail one itself will not change. Only the interim guardrails are being revised as the superintendent is transitioning will be working with her to set new interim goals, interim guardrails and board priorities which will be bringing to an upcoming board meeting coming soon moving forward then to item one progress monitoring report goal three college and career readiness.
I call on the superintendent to present this item. thank you PRESIDENT Kim before I hand this over to our assistant superintendent of high schools david goldwasser and our director our executive director of college career and readiness patrick west. I would like to say that I've received a lot of feedback from commissioners and quite frankly from the community about the quality of tonight's presentation and we are taking them very, very seriously. I would like to invoke a jay's quote of student outcomes the do not change until adult behaviors change and I want to say that I acknowledge that we have fallen short in recent months in our presentation in preparation for the presentations and clarity of our presentations and in the appropriate level of information and details on our presentation. And I commit to working very closely with our team to set higher standards and enforce these expectations for our student outcome governance work
that I hold for myself and I know that this board is holding for my for me and our team. And so in terms of corrective action first I will be putting in place a set of internal protocols aimed at improving our quality control. This includes communicating our expectations and holding ourselves accountable to high standards. Second, we will be assessing our internal systems and procedures that include standardized seeing our progress monitoring report cadence and review. I just want again thank you to our commissioners for holding me accountable and more importantly it's making sure that we are accountable to our public, making sure that all the information that we deliver are clear, accurate, concise and I just want to commit that I will continue to do that and work closely with our staff to make sure that that happens. With that I'm going to hand it over to devina and patrick, I'm sorry is going to go through
your whole title again but there's 19. Good evening. Thank you. All right. To get us started. Goal three has many components and we appreciate that it has so many different components because it's really a window into our high school students experience goal three starts with really an eighth grade measure looking at our early warning indicator of where our eighth grade students are at before they even come to high school and then all of the other elements of goal three take us through the different checkmarks along the way so that we can be intervening whenever our students need support and being ready to support them to be college and career ready. Now looking at this through the lens of data, I turn it over to patrick thank you divina. So I'm going to review the data points that are related to goal three which are the college and career readiness measure.
The cci is a complex measure that was approved by the board. The state board of education and it's one measure that's used to gauge post-high school preparation. I'm in the packet that you received is is a paper copy of the attachments that we have in the addendum on the slide and I just want to draw your attention to the two documents. One has a picture of a school on it and the other one has a picture of a group of people representing various careers. To really understand the cci you have to understand that there's two separate measures a college and a career and so this gives you more information around what it means to be prepared or how a student gets designated as prepared or approaching prepared. So if we want to start with the first data set goal three of the overall goal at the end of the 2324 school year the seniors that graduated according to the department of education, 58% were considered to be prepared according to the measures that are on the sheets
there in front of you. And one thing to remember about the cci is that it is school or district data. We don't get student level data. They designate that a certain student who graduated but we don't it doesn't dig down into the actual student level so we get we get higher level school and our district data. Another thing about the cci to kind of know is that it's not necessarily a predictor of post-secondary success. I see that as an example 58% of our students were considered to be prepared but 74% of our students enrolled in college after they graduated last year. Compare that to the national average of 62%. So it's not necessarily a predictor but it is a measure that is used for us to determine whether we are preparing our students for college and or career. Moving on to one of the to the other interim goal 3.1 at the end of the fall semester that
we just finished, we have 30% of our students who have exited the early warning indicator status or early warning indicator means that they were in eighth grade. They had a low gpa and a high absence rate. And so in ninth grade we determined that they need extra supports interventions to help kind of change that trajectory . And so at the end of the fall semester we had 30% who exited the goal was for 25% exit by the end of the school year interim goal 3.2 at the end of the fall semester that was an interim goal 3.2 is on track for 10th grade. So at the end of their 10th grade school year we determine if they're on track. Are they earning enough ag credits to graduate from high school within two more years when they're a senior? So at the end of the fall semester our current sophomores 69% of our current sophomores were on track to graduate in two years or two and a half years from now. Our goal is at the end of the school year 70% are on or on track to graduate. Something to note about the
10th grade on track is that if you look at the year 2022 when our seniors were sophomores, the seniors who just graduated when they were sophomores, they're about 66% 87% of our of those students they all they went on to graduate. So it's not necessarily a predictor of if you're going to graduate in two years or not it's more of a sign for us to say we need to intervene. The students is not on track. So what what kind of steps do we need to take in order to help the student then change that trajectory and be able to graduate in two years? So from that time lastly I highlight interim goal 3.3 this is focusing on our focal population as our focal populations that are enrolled in three types of courses cte, college credit and ap courses at the end of the fall semester 45% of our focus students had met the goal. Now one thing to note about this one is that it's also a little misleading because it's only halfway through the school year. The spring semester provides
numerous opportunities for students to earn a c or higher in one of those three courses. So looking back at our past we can predict that that number will increase from 45%. Our goal is to be at 56%. One final thing I'll note about the goal interim goal 3.3 is that we have seen an increase in the number of vocal students that are enrolling in one of these three courses. The next step now is now that we're getting them enrolled in those courses, what do we what strategies and supports do we provide so that they can be successful in the course? And I'll end by saying we I there's a request for disaggregated data which I'm glad that's being asked. If you click on each one of those it will take you to the disaggregated data that was that breaks down each one of those by focal populations and so forth. Thank you, patrick. All right. So next slide. so I want to talk about some of our bright spots. I want to highlight two schools
that are going beyond our a through g requirements in their programing and how this is affecting their college and career measure. So the first school is one of our small schools and this is academy academy went through a redesign process and through that redesign process they designed a program very connected to the college and career dashboard. So 100% of academy students are enrolled in city college courses, internships and work based learning. And because of that 100% and not trying to recruit certain students and doing that level of work they are seeing, you know, a huge gain in their college and career measure. another school one of our more medium to larger size schools is burton and burton is another example where 100% of 11th and 12th grade students are in a cte pathway. so through that work and through their refining of that they are able to have their students meet this indicator the college and career indicator not just through a through g but through these
other measures and providing more opportunities for that and you can see how this relates to their programmatic design not a student by student measure but how their entire school program influences that data set and some of the initiatives that we are engaging in to help us reach our goals are instructional walkthroughs, our professional learning, our alliance counselor guidance and also our strong partnership with fsd and the college and career team and lead okay next slide. Okay so then how do we scale these bright spots? So the work that we're doing is really around mindset and we talked about mindset of adults as our school principals and assistant principals so that they are able to exit high numbers of pwi students or have these different successes that they have been brought in to highlight those practices, break those down, share this with other leaders and then that work inspires our other leaders to try those practices out at their school.
So they're looking for what do I have in common with this other school that's able to do this? And as they see those successes we can scale those practices. Other work that we're doing that's very intentional is bringing together our small schools. Who have you know, less options with courses and bringing that group together of leaders to really support one another in their programing. and an example of that is for city college courses for us to part for a school to partner and offer a city college course you need a minimum enrollment. Now some of our smaller schools wouldn't be able to meet that but if they align their bell schedules then they actually could fill a city college class. So it's a real kind of tangible way where we're bringing and working with college and career in order to bring those sites together and make sure that we're offering the best programing for our students and the other work that we're engaging in is recognizing that goal three is not just focused on high school.
Goal three is about all of our work together and so as we look through the system p k through elementary through middle school we have broken down and looked at who are these students that are coming to high school and are struggling and gone back and actually looked at which elementary schools did they go to at which middle schools did they go to collaborating with one another and trying to intervene earlier and share awareness around these practices of what is going to make our students high school ready when they come in? So we're really excited about that collaborative work that we're now doing as we understand this measure I'm really across the system. We are also engaging in one on one support sessions with our college and career team where like I showed you those two programmatic models it really takes a customized approach where you look at a school, you come in and you have lead and ccr there and we say okay what is it that you want to expand
in order for you to grow you know your success on the college and career readiness indicator for one school it might be ap classes because there's many ways for our schools to provide the programing and for another school it might be doubling down on internships. And so with college and career and lead and the school principals together and their sites, we've developed a customized plan for every single school of what they can do to grow in this area so that work is also really exciting and moving forward where we're looking at how we can improve our partnerships with families as part of this we know that there's more awareness that we need to bring to our families around these measures. The measures are new and the landscape of high school has changed a lot so we're working on that. We are focusing our professional development moving forward on grading for equity which we feel will help to improve our gpa which is a foundational piece of you know how that affects every every
one of these goals and also maximizing our shift to seven periods at most of our high schools because that offers an additional period for them to earn credits for advanced courses for tutoring and so looking at all of those things. So those are some of that kind of specifics of how we are moving along on this journey to grow in this area. Um I'm going to open it up for questions clarifying questions and comments from the board. Um, we'll start with commissioner gupta. um, thank you for coming tonight. I know it's late and david and patrick, I I know what it's like to be in your shoes. As a matter of fact, it's going to be me tomorrow morning when I right after this I'm flying to a board meeting that I have to present at on the east coast. So that being said, you know, one of the things that's concerning me when we originally received this
presentation is the level of data analysis and you know, we kind of went through this with the outcomes in the last outcome workshop. And so you know, I want to get at the heart of this because you know we're in the middle of layoffs and we have you know, we're we have to justify why every single person is here. Right? We heard how much our community needs its frontline staff whether that be assistant principals, whether that be um our educators, our paras and so forth. And so I'm trying to understand where this breakdown happened, right? I mean did you all feel like the level of analysis provided originally was adequate for for the public? So when we reported to the board back in SEPTEMBER, um we gave a different report the same report that we gave you here but it had more analysis in it and we it was going to be the exact same report and so
our original plan was that that today's report was going to focus on educating around some of the topics like the cc, the cci and get deeper into what that measure is. And so our original intent was to provide a quick measure of where we are at this point in the school year because we had already done the deep analysis in SEPTEMBER and that analysis hadn't really changed all that much. So it was it was an oversight on our part to not recognize that there's a lot there's new board members and we should have stepped back in and brought that analysis back into this report. Got it. I mean and I guess the question also extends to DR. Cunha um, you know, we like you you saw this report presumably in that this is coming to the board and to the public. Did I mean did this ring alarm bells for you or are you are you referring to sorry yes. DR. Can I mean I guess the same question with DR. Goglia for I mean, you know, this is this is sort of going up the chain
presumably where, you know, this has to go through, you know, multiple sources. So I'm kind of wondering how did this document get to be public where this is what we're supposed to be basing our outcomes on? So yes, I do agree that, you know, as a progress monitoring report the full data had to be included in it and it is included right now on the slides in terms of how much alarm it said as of patrick was saying they did try to focus more on the successes and on you know, providing data that had just got released in terms of the college and career ready data. Also if you look at the interims maybe we do need to tweak them a bit because they do refer a lot to end of year metrics. So we do have to now change them to some of the midyear metrics, you know, so there are those tweaks that we are trying to make but we made sure that in today's presentation there was the media metrics included yeah, I sorry did you in point well taken full responsibility .
We will work with the team in making sure that these pieces of data I included in every single report we trusted that the information that was going to be presented was going to be really highlighting what the team is at right now. So we are taking it. I do not think anything about it. I appreciate that. I mean. Mm hmm. Pardon me in one of the pieces I would like to see coming coming out of this even you know, taking it to that next step is I appreciate the click in where we can go into those subpopulations but connecting that those focal populations because it is broken down by you know the focal populations by demographic but with schools and recommendations you know again getting to that so what of the data? Um you know right here I think you know it's great to highlight some of the bright spots and I appreciate the voice over on being able to sort of say hey here's here's where we MAY be able to take this particular bright spot but then being able to kind of
focus that back to you know, if we have a limited budget then where should we be making these investments would be incredibly helpful as the next step. And I feel like that's that's sort of what was shared in the last outcome workshop as well as far as where we need to go with some of this data. so it isn't just here's where we are and analysis sort of stating what's already on that graph I'll I'll pass along questions. Thank you. Uh, commissioner alexander yeah thank you. I really appreciate the the responses to the follow up questions. I do think there was clearly an effort to add some analysis to it and in response to the to the feedback but I share similar concerns with my colleague commissioner gupta. But I also I think for me the other piece of it that I just wanted to build on that was was the lack of analysis. So there was data in the report but it didn't know where in the report and I'm still not clear as to what is our best thinking on why are we getting the results were getting now.
Right there's a lot of focus here on what we're doing which is which is great but it feels honestly a little bit with with the goal three like we're throwing spaghetti at a wall and trying to see what sticks and I as a high school educator know some of this stuff is really good so I'm not I'm not trying to denigrate any of the work that's happening but I guess what I don't see is what's our overall theory of action, right? Is it for I mean just to use an example, the academy in burton's strategy here is that every student going to participate in cte pathways right. A root cause analysis might be that the that the reason kids aren't the reason only only what is it 59% of our students are meeting this goal is because they're not enrolling in classes. Therefore our theory of action is we're going to make every kid enroll in the classes and then that's going to result, right? that's it's like looking at the data thinking about why is this happening and then making
having an initiative that's designed to address that right? so there's like a logical theory of action. So I guess that's I think how this is supposed to work is the point of these monitoring reports is to say what's happening right now, what are we doing in what's our analysis as to why which I think was for me the missing piece and then what are we doing in response? So that we can iterate right because again we could be doing there's so many things we could be doing and to my colleague's point we now have to do fewer of them. Right? And even in your responses to questions you say well we're going to have to cut this and so we MAY not be able to do that. So how are we deciding what we're cutting and what we're not cutting? How are we deciding what's the thing that we have to maintain in high schools? what's the thing that we are doing in high schools? And so I think that's where my deeper concern is like what's our strategic theory of action around high schools? and I feel like we you know, we spent over half $1 million I think on this high school task
force. There was a lot of good stuff that came out of that. but again I don't to me it's still just feels like there's a million things happening and it's not clear what is our analysis of why we're getting the results were getting and based on that analysis what is our strategy so any I'm not if there's not an answer we don't have to I don't want to put people on the spot. I just want to sort of express that that was my concern around this. I do want to give you a moment to respond. We do need a vote to move our meeting past 10:00. So if we can do that and give you maybe a moment just to plan a response, can we do a quick motion PRESIDENT Keep you're moving it in the new so move the second yes right you're moving and I'm seconding or I just moved it yes second thank you. All right I'm moving keeping the meeting going past ten. Which alexander? Yes, MR. Fischer. MR. Gupta? Yes. Vice PRESIDENT Huling. Yes. Commissioner ray? Yes. Commissioner. Wise word. Yes.
What was that? Yes. Read it again. Yeah. we all get to see best in school. Thank you. Thank you. Would staff like to respond to that? Yes. Thank you so for each of the different aspects of this school there is definitely a theory of action and a whole learning trajectory that we've gone through. So when the college and career measure came out we have been in an awareness building time so making sure that state leaders that counselors and everyone really understands what is the college and career dashboard which has gone through any changes and iterations when we get to kind of going deeper down into it for early warning indicators, what we noticed is for many years we were giving school leaders a list of who these eighth graders were and then they had that list and schools were doing different things but it wasn't yet this was before it was a board goal and there was an all of the focus around it and so we realized that we
really needed to be learning from those practices that are happening and happening at each site and have the site leaders that are seeing that success have that be backed up with evidence and so through that and in meeting with site leaders realize that they can't just get this list and then not get any support after that and so they have a coordinated care team where they're looking at these lists of students but they needed to have regular professional development where at every grading period or giving them back that data and then we're looking at those practices is refining what's in place, bringing it back to the coordinated care team. So for the ewg data point we realized that not being able to have regular support and touch points at each grading period was having that sites were not focusing completely on that they were going to the next thing in the next thing and that we needed to have a more honed in focus on that and for
the on track and off track we also realized that there were some inconsistent practices across our high schools and some counselors were meeting with students 100% of the time and in other schools you know it wasn't that way and so we beefed up with working with self-study the standardized training for counselors. They have a script that they use when they meet. We look at we log every single conference. So I think a lot of this sort of the pattern across is getting much tighter with practices across every high school and so each component is in a different place. The on track off track conferences are now in a good place around logging that what is an effective conference look like and our why you know that's this is our first year of doing that intensive professional development and those college and career conferences also came from realizing that just doing a whole group meeting at city college we used to do a breakfast at city college and
kind of bring awareness to all the courses that then when principals got back to their school they still couldn't figure out which courses were available what was I going to do so then we went to this model working with the ccr team a really custom size support for each school understanding why did I fall this way on this measure and then what are the ways with my resources, my staff, the assets I have in my program that I can grow? And like I said for some that was internships. For others it was the courses they offer so it was different. So I think the learning here is that we needed to use this customized approach, have some standard practices but really get deep into what were the barriers at each school and working with each school on that like a personalized basis . I want I'm just going to go now. Can I go? Okay I'm going to go so I think my question is is in some ways building off of what I'm reading in front of me around evidence so like advanced placement exams receiving a score of three or higher on two
exams, what evidence do we have that the programs that we are running now in our high schools are contributing to students receiving a score of three or higher on an ap exam? Yes. Thank you. So the first thing is is that our schools offer you know, varied amounts of of ap classes. So most students you know, anyone can take the ap exam but you know, hopefully you're most prepared if you've taken the course and at school. So when they take those courses principals with their staff they do grade level analysis and they also do an analysis on pass rates. And so then they do that work that influences which cheat which are the teachers to learn from who's having the most success. We look at that through demographic data as well. What are we noticing? So first you have to be this is an example of a programmatic piece is depending on how many courses or if you can offer courses, ap courses then that MAY be a way that at that school you would meet that measure at another school you don't have to take an ap class
but you might be doubling down on city college courses. So we do look at what is the best route that we can offer at every school site and then from there what are we learning about, you know, the courses that also students are choosing and which students are most successful in those courses? So in that example I think part of what I know I sound like a broken record. I keep bring this up around this the stark contrast between strategies and high school strategies. But in that example there when we talk about college or pass rates for students getting a three or higher on an ap test, you've talked about students entering a course and in students who come out the other side of that course. My question is do we know what's happening in between? Is there any sort of insight on the quality of what's happening as soon as a student enters into that course to result to yield a three or higher and what do we know about that right now? I think this is also some of the exciting work p k-12 across our system and so our work
using the core rubric as our instruction tool rubric that we're using for instructional walkthroughs so we're in those classrooms and when we are going into those and we're giving teachers feedback when we go into a classroom that has high pass rates and has you know, all of the students engaged and we're doing that walk through by principals being at each other's schools in assistant principals they right away say oh, I need to you know, I need to hook my teacher up and get the contact info for that class that I was just in. And we have students that are on all of these walkthroughs and they are talking about their experience. So in terms of their actual experience in the class are saying you know I took that class and this is what it was like for me. So a lot of our work with professional development and working with our instructional leadership teams and our students has been around our instructional walkthroughs so and just to continue extrapolating down this path you're right like if instructional walkthroughs then
are one of our primary levers to move practice for adult behaviors, what do we know about the actual act of doing an instructional walk too that yields I guess outcomes for students and so you know, not to belabor the point and just continue to go down this path here but I think that some of the it's some of the kind of throughline wondering that I have around our high school strategy more broadly. I mean if you look at k-8, I feel like one of the very clear levers that we have is there's research that shows common shared core curriculum demands that really impacts student learning and so you have something to anchor through to I'm trying to understand what in high school that would be in the classroom that is anchoring us in our strategies around instructional practices that we believe is going to actually move outcomes for kids. Now I think that's the part that I don't know quite yet and what I do here is like instructional like things are happening. I think that sounds great and and so I think that level of that's the kind of I don't know if I and maybe if I missed it
somewhere but what is the analysis to understand what about those walkthroughs are actually resulting in changes? Yeah yeah and I think maybe that helps me clarify what I was trying to say too like so in when you were talking earlier around like the counselor's doing a better job of doing the conferences it's it's like yes that makes technical sense that we have to do a better job of supporting students but like what's our act? What is happening, what is our analysis of what is happening in our classrooms and in our schools right now that's creating an environment where 30% of our kids are getting f's every semester or whatever and that has to do with sure it has to do with offering courses but also has to do with what's happening in those courses and what how teachers are interacting with them and how they feel in the classes. I mean we had heard tonight from these phenomenal high school students from michigan talking about their desire for challenging and engaging coursework right? Like our vision for high school has to be like it has to be rooted in student's lived
experience and it's not just like oh, did the counselor do a good job of having a meeting with them and telling them to pass their classes like everyone every high school student knows they should pass their class like that's not a that's not a thing that they need help knowing you know what I mean? Like that I guess that's where it just feels like this is very disconnected from students. Like my question is why are students not being college and career ready? Like what's our what is our analysis of the root cause of this data from a student perspective not what the adults are doing starting not with the adults but with the students you know those somewhat rhetorical I guess so yeah it was yeah but yeah I, I, I don't think we're necessarily expecting a whole vision to be unveiled today around high school strategies and supports but I do think there is a I think what I will say is I think the the report was what it prompted in me are questions around what we know to be true and not true about the work
that we were doing in high school that moves outcomes for kids and I think that is the kind of that was the analysis that I was curious about and wanting to read in the report of what it what would that be because that ultimately then helps to inform what we invest in with the resources that we have. It's very clear in k-8 we are investing deeply in our curriculum. There's a cost associated with that. There's an ask there in front of us. I don't know what I don't know what we're investing in and maybe it's it maybe it's just more walk thrus or yeah so I think that's what I'm struggling and grappling with right now. Again like not nothing you have to respond to right now in the moment but that's just kind of where my where I'm not understanding how to connect to what we're seeing with the very real kind of challenges that we have in front of us is that helpful? Okay. Okay. I think one thing I would say is what's different maybe from pre-k to eight and high school
and what we're investing in. So what we're investing in is that we're providing a2g for every single student and that's not that. Not all school districts in california provide that 80 do opportunity for all our students. so sorry to interrupt but we've been doing that for 25 years so that that's not a new strategy. Oh no, no. I think we've been getting this strategy. I'm just results. I'm just mentioning what we're investing our money and is making sure there's energy, making sure that we have ap courses, making sure that we have providing student cte courses, providing students with dual enrollment opportunities with our partnership with city college. but again we've been doing that for 25 years and right now 59% of our students are college and credit is that the 58 so I guess that's and it's not to expect that we don't expect you all to produce miracles overnight. Well, I think what we're asking is what's our strategy to change the current system is creating is producing the results. Every system produces the
results it's designed to produce. Right? so our system is producing these results. What's our analysis of why we've been saying that for 25 years and we're getting the results we're getting in fact they've been going down a little bit over the last the data shows it's tailing off. So what are we going to do differently? But but based on our analysis of what's actually happening, that's the question I think the board's asking and we're not trying to you don't have to answer this right now because that's because as as PRESIDENT Kim said, we're not trying to put you on the spot. But I think that's our at least I think that's the frustration you're hearing is not hearing a strategy. It doesn't have to be we don't expect it to necessarily even work. We want there to be a strategy that the theory of action that then gets adjusted if it doesn't work we're saying oh look, we tried that. The data shows us it's not working. We're going to try something else right? It's not so but it's right. I think we're not even hearing
a strategy right now. Just I would go so I will just say that staff have heard this from us. I don't know if the public has heard but the board is very, very, very displeased by the quality of the analysis in this report. And I would just encourage the public to understand that we are adopting a new governance model and our questions were sent to staff in advance and are linked at item eight six in the agenda. If you go to that click into that item on board you can click into a link and you can see 20 pages of questions and answers that happened as a back and forth between the board and staff before this meeting. And I will say I'm I'm just very concerned about this report for many reasons because I think that it it's kind of the perfect storm of exposing many of the problems that we're having in our district. I you know, I don't envy being
in your position like commissioner gupta. I also presented my day job to boards and in my case an elected board and have, you know, done so pretty regularly recently and I don't think a document like this should ever go to a board and I think that it's it was just it's completely half baked and it exposes that there was on an internal process for catching it revising it, stopping it it exposes that you know if it was not appropriate to be on the agenda because there was not new data to present and the data happened and the analysis happened in SEPTEMBER that we have issues with our governance calendar that need to change. Um, I think that there are many of the issues about I think it it exposes a profound misunderstanding of what the purpose of these monitoring workshops is and that we are trying to monitor what is driving the student outcomes
that we are getting and is supposed to be focused on the students and this as well as many of the other reports that we've gotten are focused on the adults. They talk about what are the adults doing and that's great but that is not ultimately what we care about. We care about what is happening at the student level. So it's not really whether you know, whether there was a you know, professional development event doesn't matter unless that professional development event affected the students ability to get a three on the ap and that is what we need to determine from the analysis because if it didn't then that is an important thing for us to know as a board and we need to do something different because our outcomes for students haven't changed. So I think that this, you know, is something that we're going to be taking back as a board to think about what we are going to do in terms of setting up our governance calendar and
making sure that these are we're not setting you up for failure by having you present when you don't have any to present. But also I think that some of the answers to the questions are really concerning. Um, just to start at the top one of the concerns that was expressed by one of my fellow commissioners was that you know this says that we're doing well because we're doing better than the state but we are not making progress toward meeting our goal on track. And so that to me raises whether the district is bought in to the goals that we have set because what the state average is is irrelevant to whether our students are meeting the goals that we have set for them based on the vision and values of this community. And then the answer talks about well this cri measure is not really related to college success because we've got mission high school where the cry rate is actually pretty low but the uc acceptance for
berkeley was really great so then why is it our interim goal we should not be setting interim goals that do not actually move the needle for students so that is one thing that we're looking at is evaluating what our interim goals are and that we have the right goals and that we have the right measures. But it's not enough to say look, what are we doing here if the answer is oh will this measure doesn't actually affect the outcomes for our kids because the only thing that we care about is the outcomes for our kids. So we shouldn't be talking about anything else anything that doesn't determine those outcomes when we're monitoring whether our students are actually getting this educational outcomes that they deserve from this district commissioner fisher that I really appreciate this conversation. Thank you so much and thank you for the work that has gone into all of this. I know there's a lot of data collection to piggyback on on
what has already been said. I question not just the interims but the goal itself. Right? I mean for me saying that 75% of our students enrolled in college great. That's 174% enrolled in college. How many actually graduate saying that we're preparing our students to be career ready? How many can actually afford to come back and live in san francisco and work in san francisco without like my oldest is still living in my house. Um, she's an S.F. Graduate who graduated college and career ready and went off to college. She's still living at home with me now just going back to the issue about who you know, what's working to meet these goals having had three graduates from mission high school now where to piggyback on vice PRESIDENT Huling in your most recent comments I would argue that it wasn't the instructional walkthroughs that made my kids successful at mission. It was the ap classes. It was the dual enrollment
pathways. It was the things that we're talking about cutting right now in our budget. Those are the things that were made that made my children successful graduates from mission the dual enrollment pathway that we're talking about cutting the ap class and honestly it's not to me even to the grade of three that matters. i got a great score on my ap calculus class. I could have tested out of of my freshman level calculus when I went to engineering school. Would that have set me up for career to to skip freshman calculus as an engineering major? That would have been the worst decision ever even though I could have tested out of it. Right. So I think we really need to make sure we as a board and a leadership team are asking the right questions about what we're doing to set our kids up for college and career success . I also want to point out I appreciate the disaggregate data. I like that we have the focal populations included in the
goal three cci level data interim goal 3.1 interim goal 3.2 interim goal 3.3. The focus populations are still all missing from that disaggregated data so please can we be consistent with our data analysis as well? Um I'll wrap up there. Thank you. I'll pass it over to commissioner ray but at I think it's probably just worth acknowledging you appreciated the conversation. I know this is a lot of just reflecting back to you kind of the discomfort that we were at when we received the report and I just I just think it's worth just acknowledging for a moment like I think it's okay to sit in a little bit of discomfort right now because I do think that the report was was a i think we all felt a little bit of discomfort when we read the report frankly around what exactly was being presented to us. And and I and I would hope that this is more of an invitation or a call to action, if you will, of like how can we work together here to set really clear expectations around what goes into a progress monitoring report and what an analysis looks like for for the things that we want to see as a board
that is also just transparent and clear for staff. I mean I just want to acknowledge that it's a conversation that had has already begun with with the board around what are our expectations around progress monitoring and as vice PRESIDENT Hu mentioned, there is work to do in in better articulating interim goals too that help us clarify what exactly is it that we're working towards right now. So I think like if anything I just want to acknowledge this is like a there's a desire to have kind of clear expectations around what exactly it is that we are working towards because we want to be held accountable by the public for the very same things that we're progressing on. And so I, I just want to say that before I pass it over to commissioner ray, um, because I, I, I do think that it is if there's ever a time for us to air some of that discomfort that we have it's probably now in a progress monitoring meeting where we can vulnerably
talk about the things that we are moving towards not moving towards and so I, I I, I just kind of offer that as a reflection as we're just kind of sharing all of our thoughts that don't necessarily don't necessarily require and an exact response in this moment but um but I will say I mean we have had these honest conversations with you from other commissioners as well and and and so just to be able to see that right now and and to that end we realize that there has not been enough and kind of deep enough into the organization training and supports for you to understand what it is that we are looking for. And so we are also looking into providing that training because it's not fair for us to, you know, hold you accountable to expectations that have not been communicated properly or you've not been given the supports to meet. I just want to thank you all and also thank my fellow commissioners for this discussion tonight. I think it is really, really
important. Oh, we are in such a you wanted to meet I I we're in such challenging times and we are all challenged and I think we all want to do the best for kids and that can sometimes put us when we realize that we haven't been doing what we've been doing, hasn't been working or things we haven't been doing that we should have been doing that's very difficult especially when we're trying to do the right thing and putting all of our energy and effort in you know, into trying to make the school system work for everybody so I just want to acknowledge that I know it can be really difficult to hear some of these things and I think it's true for all of us that we all need to work to improve how we're doing things. And so my questions also I just want to say come out of that perspective. I'm trying to have them come out of that perspective so that we actually can move forward
productively. So I share my fellow commissioners concerns and I really appreciate their having voiced them. I think it is important that we be clear instead of trying to tiptoe around issues if we actually want to see change and that we want to see change we all want to see better outcomes for our kids so some of my particular questions or concerns that I'm going to try not to repeat specific things that already that other folks have already mentioned but um I think perhaps commissioner huling might have been somebody who expressed concern about responses that were given. That was one of my major takeaways reading answers here was that they raised a huge number of questions and concerns for me and a number of the responses troubled me tremendously like I and other commissioners essentially asked questions around the fact that our college and career readiness rate has been 58% for several years now and the response given back in various ways was basically the same which was to say that it's a complex measure that takes into
account a student's 4 to 5 year how school career the strategies and implementations we're currently implementing will take time to make a meaningful impact etc. We don't expect to see a significant rate increase until people graduate but all of these different indicators they span quite a wide range including aspect scores including people you know taking ap classes. We're not just looking at, you know, ninth graders with early warning indicators. We're actually looking at a bunch of things that our 11th and 12th graders are doing right now and you know, some students even younger 10th graders taking an ap course in world history or whatever. right. I don't think that the answer back should or can be we can't tell you for a few years. We don't know what the results will be if that's the answer then we are actually looking at the wrong stuff. It MAY not be the answer. It MAY be that someone thought that was the answer but it's it's not because there are other things we can be looking
at and we should be able to identify why we're flatlining. You know the fact that we're doing something in ninth grade or doing something in 10th grade we can't just rely on that and say therefore we can't. We can't figure out what we should do in the next few years, how we can make adjustments. so one way or another we need to make sure that that we are actually analyzing things on a regular basis so that we can have meaningful data to look at and draw meaningful conclusions so we can make adjustments that are necessary to improve our student outcomes. We can't just say we won't know that for a few years. Okay that's sort of like a an overarching theme when I was reading answers to these questions that troubled me a few other things I wanted to raise specifically and some of these you MAY know the answers to now some of them you might need to look into but again in reading these questions the response is these questions come up. I wondered why don't we have an
adopted ela curriculum or an adopted history curriculum? Why aren't we reviewing our curricula regularly? What is the cadence with which we review curricula? So there was a note in you know in responses that we need a math curriculum update when was that last done? You know, is there any process or schedule for doing that? How do we monitor our credit recovery programs? There was an answer that indicated that credit recovery programs serve nearly 50% of our graduates 50% and that was astonishing to me. Frankly. It's very interesting and very concerning that that many of our students are doing credit recovery programs that also makes those programs unbelievably important. and are we able to know, monitor, determine assess in some way whether those programs are actually effective? One of the things I think of is a student I talked to who had been to what he called night school at S.W.A.T. And how he said that is really it did not paint a good picture basically that these were just places where students were part.
So that nothing substantive was going on in the courses students were part there so they could gain credit recovery so that the district's graduation rate would look better. That is what was actually said to me and explained in depth by a student who was in a number of these classes. So I would hope that that is not a typical experience but yeah but it really makes me wonder I don't want to be papering over the district's failures and our failures. What are we doing with these and are students actually learning in them? I'm also concerned when I hear language like you know, we need to raise, you know, gpas and there was a reference to equitable grading, you know, helping to maximize gpas. I don't personally know a lot about equal grading. I would like to know more about it. But if equitable grading is a strategy to maximize our gpas that is not the same thing as actually ensuring that students are competent that they know
what they're doing and I would certainly like to learn more about this and what the district considers to be equal grading and if this is a strategy that we are adopting in some way, what evidence is there behind this to show that it will actually help students to learn? Okay. The other thing was a kind of a pattern in this is that just because there's a measure of graduation for instance or even enrollment again is not the same thing as success or competence or knowledge. So we have a very high percentage of our students graduating from us of usd but our college and career readiness indicator is 58%. That's there's a huge discrepancy there and if you look at it and say okay well 74% are going to college so the college readiness indicator might not be accurate. Are they just enrolling in college or as somebody had mentioned, are they actually succeeding there that makes a huge difference. It doesn't matter how many people enroll in an ap course
or in community college if they can't actually succeed there because they haven't learned to read and do math in our school system. So you know how many people go to a you see that was mentioned to at mission high school? It's wonderful that a lot of students are going to use these but in general how does that actually compare to the students at large can't just kind of like you know, cherry pick a number and say because we have a high success rate of getting kids into berkeley or somewhere else, that means that kids are college ready admission it doesn't that's like that's a small group or a comparatively small group of students so and I want to give them an opportunity. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So I think my comments are intended more to provide like a context and examples for like forward but any comment you have I appreciate thank you. I'm happy to give you some time to respond to some of the more specific questions that commissioner ray brought up. But I also wanted to just give
staff a chance to just say the last word before we wrap up here. I know we're kind of approaching late on time so so I want to give you the floor to be able to respond to questions if you do want to respond to those right now but also just give you all space to kind of share your last reflections here before we before we close this item out and can you give high commissioner fisher if you can make your comment really quick right now and then we'll leave it for the staff to have last word. Yeah. And so the other just one last point I know for especially our our students who have graduated over the past couple of years some of the data collection can be very challenging because they were high schoolers during the pandemic right. And so a lot of you referenced data collected in 2020. Those students were doing distance learning and to paraphrase jim gaffigan, my kids were very distant from learning during distance learning. Right?
So I think we also need to make sure that we're actually we we've got the solid data from when our students have been in the class and and also some of the recovery strategies needed as well. I'll stop there. Yeah, I will leave the floor to you all. I would respond to the question related to the adoption and of instructional curriculum for high school right now instructional curriculum for high school is scheduled to be evaluated within two years. Every adoption of curriculum will be based on math, english and then the other areas the only one that we have right now that is current is social science and ethnic studies. Every adoption at the middle school and at the elementary school the cost of it is close to 10 to $11 million each content area. So the team as I arrived last year the team already had the
sequence programing planned first to complete the adoption of the elementary level middle school level and then move into the high school level. Those adoptions have not been evaluated for at least 20 years and that team for the last three years was even before I came on board that the team had developed that schedule. So that that is the concrete answer for the adoption of any of the other content areas. Science is a little bit more flexible because the team has partner with other agencies that are providing engineers new generation science and remember high school has so many different kind of sciences as well. So right now this schedule is within the next two years that the team will be looking into those and I'm sure yeah. so I just wanted to end on a slightly more positive note and and suggest that I think what I've got to okay PRESIDENT Kim clearly don't want those of us
on this side to be speaking which is fine I'm kidding I'm getting there was a technical problem the the board obviously there's people are the board is displeased with what's going on but I think what I would offer is that this is really an opportunity and what we're saying to you we want to give you the whatever cover you need to go to folks in the schools and say things need to be different, things need to be better like this is the moment, right? This is your opportunity to lead and to say and again to work with folks and build a vision that is about a better way to do high school. And we know that they're out there. We know that there's examples of examples in us of you as d we have examples of other districts. I mean this is this is I think the board is saying we've set really ambitious standards. We want you to lead that work and so it's sort of a call to action in the not in an opportunity if that's exciting to you, let's do it. I mean this is the moment to reinvent high school and I
suppose d and make it a place where every single kid can succeed and build on those beautiful examples of success that we have in every single one of our high schools and make that the norm. And I know there's been conversations like I said that those were the kind of conversations that were happening in the high school task force where you know again where let's let's do it. Let's that's I think what we're trying to say it's not we don't want to it's not about blaming it's not about saying we expect everyone to have the answers but we know that something better is possible and we want to offer that that we're we're ready to back you up and that and that MAY mean and it will mean stopping doing certain things. It will mean making some folks uncomfortable in schools who have been doing things the same way forever. this is the moment and we're ready to back you up on that too. No, just just thank you for the conversation. I took a lot of notes. I do understand that we have a lot of work ahead of us and I know that with a very committed
team here we're going to get that work done and bring that level of expectation and standard to not only the monitoring reports but for our students because I want at the end of the day our students and families to know that the reason why we're having these really difficult, uncomfortable conversations is because we care and we want to make sure that the curriculum and the programs that that families and students engage in in our high schools are going to be at the highest level of quality and clearly has been vetted by all of us because we care and we want the best for our students. So thank you. Just one last comment again sincere apologies for the report as well as the questions we have submitted a new format to you with what the new reports would look like so it would be great to get your feedback on that. That was some thank you. thank you so much.
I appreciate your time and and we look forward to partnering with you more as we move forward. Thank you. Moving on to item h consent calendar are there any items withdrawn or corrected by the superintendent? there are none. Okay. Uh yes. any recusals I have to recuse from item number 12. thank you. If we can note that. Good noted MR. Steele. Thank you. Um, do I have a motion in a second. So moved. I'll second my own. Okay. Well, got real copies, MR. Steele. thank you. Commissioner alexander. yes, MR. Fisher. with the exception of number 12. Yes. Excluding number 12. Thank you, MR. Gupta. Yes, vice PRESIDENT Ewing. Yes, MR. Ray. Yes, commissioner wise one word. Yes. PRESIDENT Him. Yes, it's exactly moving on to item I information items uh, number two I'll get mid-year update. I have a I have a readout that
I'll just name in uh for this information item and it is listed as an information item so we will not engage in a discussion about it um largely procedural attached to the 20 2425 local control accountability plan or el cap mid-year report senate bill 114 in 2023 added a requirement for eighth to present a mid-year report on the annual update to the local control and accountability plan or el cap and budget overview for parents on or before FEBRUARY 28th at a regularly scheduled meeting of the governing body or body of the lra in the spring of 2024 as if you sd and as if used as if county of office of ed revises longstanding el cap goals to the following goals in alignment with the vgs as established by the board of education one student achievement literacy math college and career readiness two serving the whole child three strategic partnerships for anti-racist culture and equitable supports five operational coherence in spring 2025 the el cap community engagement uh as we head into
steps of planning the spring kicking off of school planning summit on MARCH 8th schools like council's english learner advisory councils and our educational partner organizations will reflect on what is working well and what can be sustained and what and where are there opportunities for improvement especially in service of services focal populations that include american indian students, african american black students foster youth homeless youth. English language learners. Latin students low socioeconomic status students. Native hawaiian pacific islander students and students at ieps. The all kipp advisory committee will present the first reading of the el cap at our JUNE 10th meeting and in the second reading along with the budget on JUNE 24th. With that I adjourn today's meeting at 10:47 P.M.