initiative process began in one thousand nine hundred seventy when one angry parent challenged the school superintendent to completely overhaul the berkeley school lunch program we knew we wanted to get fresh organic nutritious food into our food services but without the distribution without the suppliers how were we going to do that most of the people who came were like interested in one issue there was someone who wore a t shirt that said friends don't let friends eat meat and there were the people who were the antis bovine growth hormone people and the waste management recycling zealots and you took note of all the issues and at the end a group of people who were like one note one issue pretty angry people became joint authors of a ten point school food policy which turned out to be the first one in the entire nation schools to figure out where the problems were and what needed to get done the food service budget was a mass the director at the time blocked every suggestion they came up with the lunch menus were awful and there were no as is started as a superintendent and reviewing policy is i came across this very ambitious for food and nutrition policy and frankly when i saw these guys are mad what are they doing here they can't be doing that when she first came here she didn't she thought this was berkeley and i had a couple of very contentious meetings with her about this had a policy name to it but  it wasn't implementable there there wasn't a way that i could immediately say well i'm going to hold anybody accountable for implementing this or even violating it after i think it was her first year there was a kid over the summer who was a middle school student at longfellow who died of complications related to diabetes and she was shocked by that so she went to children's hospital to talk to their diabetes people and they said look it's about nutrition you know it's about what we feed our kids and i think the death plus the statistics made the circumstances and my obligation much more much more apparent and so the idea of my now pulling out this this food policy that at one point in time i thought seemed to me to be nonsense made much more sense and context this was a big turning point now the political well was in place they had a real dollars to build a central kitchen and all berkeley schools had cooking and gardening classes yet it still took another two years of hard work and organizing by two thousand and five alice waters and the shape in its foundation after took on the salary of one of the few people in the country equipped to turn the food policy words into action chef fructose corn syrup salad bars every school every day all whole grains organic milk and watch no chocolate milk no desserts and kids eat the food so i think that success i don't think anybody in food services would want to return to the old days of opening up cans and serving prosecute and i don't think but i don't i can't imagine anybody would want to do that i mean even the british government adopted a food in two thousand and nine first lady michelle obama unveiled a kitchen garden on the white house line she talked about planting a new name patch to balls to combat obesity and she said no child in america should go hungry since the food i started in the spring early two thousand and one and teachers were reluctant to give up that time for another enrichment class this is another hour out of the week that we're going to they're going to be in here cooking is just a life skill  so i was really searching for a way to connect it with the standard curriculum for the elementary school all right we are going to start the meeting in a minute before we do you know i'd like everyone to check their cell phones and please turn it off or vibrate  friends and if you for some reason take a call please do so in the hallway in the hallway that you also find bathrooms as well as what packets for tonight's meeting up and if you have to exit please exit and enter the back door rather than the front door that's that's helpful for us thank you and does anyone in the audience need a board pocket who does not have one so i guess i will formally call the meeting to order seven thirty three for the record close session began at any one record time a chance i thirty five thirty two i like that i'd like to remind everyone that we're broadcasting live with the radio at eighty nine point three f m and on t v on cable channel thirty three unfortunately our translator is about as out sick today our policies to anyone who is here for translation and right my five years of berkeley spanish just all right but the high spanish would be broader quarter please take the roll   and the other item on close session was a student expulsion student case number one one one two one five zero five two five nine six the staff recommendation is to readmit the  times next to some of your agenda items as well as the total times next to some of your agenda items are estimates rather than fixed limits or requirements they are here simply to help us understand the overall progression of the meeting and to help us stay on task and on time i would like to announce that we sadly will be joining tonight's meeting in memory of two former employees of the district there a bomb see who was and and then at the end of open session we will be going back in the close session to continue the additional discussion all right we will now consider tonight's agenda whether any requested changes ok so do you want to do you want to pull or the only thing i wanted to say was i wanted to maybe highlight a little bit because i think it's something that otherwise would not kind of get publicly known ok and what this is is a approval of a new course at berkeley high called applied medical english it is a college prep course and in other words it's not just it's part of the eighth it serves as a three d requirement and unlike many of our o b classes it's not a no it doesn't serve as an elective requirement it actually serves as a b requirement it serves as an english requirement and what this courses is a course that use is is more of an applied english course which is very much in line with our common core standards and which  by high school now seventy percent of what students readers is supposed to be nonfiction so this takes this weaves through what a student might be interested in is a medical career and uses that kind of i would say to riff on english class so it's not just kind of alerting medical terminology it is reading about issues related to medical ethics it uses both fiction and nonfiction so for example i noticed that death be not proud was fiction but of course that is a book that is a lot about medical ethics and uses medical terminology so i wanted to highlight this because i think it's an example of where i think common core at its best could go in how and how the link between college and career can go and which there is a class that may be more relevant to some students certainly more linked to what a student might want to do after school whether it's a doctor a nurse a dental assistant and it's something that is meeting a requirement for four year college admission so this to me is kind of the trifecta of the kind of classes that i am very glad to see berkeley high bringing for our approval president daniel which ones to pull consent item ten just ten not nine just ten ok so any other changes all right so we have the agenda as amended as follows  member a levin is pulled from consent and will be at the end of the meeting and item number ten is taken off the agenda entirely begin the meeting with two quick items the first thing we do is remind ourselves why we're here by asking a member of the public prefer a student to read the district's mission statement i see a couple of students in the audience either of them be so bold and so brave as to come up and read our mission statement that's in the front of your packet to enable and inspire our diverse student body to achieve academic excellence and make positive contributions to our world thank you very much next i'd like to provide a brief overview of tonight's meeting the focus the topic of tonight's meeting is student and family engagement so with that in mind that the main item on tonight's agenda is a presentation on the family engagement pilot program that was first approved by this board back in two thousand and twelve so this is a this is a program that we have invested a lot of staff time in the lot of resources in and we were setting an update on how well it's been doing and recommendations for moving forward that's a pretty exciting item that we're all for those of us who've been on the board when i was approved it's really nice to hear it come back to us we're also going to consider the two thousand and thirteen be set in your report and the plan for transitional kindergarten for the fourteen fifteen year if you are able we hope that you are able to stick around and listen to these important items or if you're watching or listening on t v or radio we hope that you are able to stick around as well the next item on the agenda is public comment i will first call speakers have indicated on these green cards that they want to speak on an open session item if time allows we will then hear speakers have indicated that they want to speak on issues that are not on tonight's agenda we only have one item that people are speaking about tonight it is not on the agenda so we'll go straight to you it is also generally our practice to hear from students first so the calling them first of all the rest of this is actually not a talk about since we only have one item speakers a limited to three minutes at the president's discretion extra time will be given to those who need translation or have other speech needs time is recorded on these two ball clocks when there is one minute left the light right there will turn yellow  and then when your time has elapsed the light will turn red and you'll hear beeping if you are still speaking when your time is up you will be allowed to finish your sentence but please do not speak beyond that i understand that there are many important issues about which we all feel very passionate however in order to be fair to all speakers i will cut you off and ask the might be turned off if necessary please don't take it personally it really is just to keep us moving well he was missed because we can for thirty minutes for each green card i pull  the name of the speaker and to keep things moving i will also call the name of the next speaker in line if you would wait in the lectern so you can keep things going and i apologize in advance if i pronounce your name incorrectly finally under state law the board is not allowed s only allowed to discuss agenda items at their designated time on the agenda therefore other than thanking each member of the public for speaking the board does not generally respond to comments or questions made during public comment i understand that this can be difficult for some speakers who find that the lack of a response on our behalf is somehow an indication that we're not interested or don't feel compelled or tried and by your statement but i can assure you that we all take the comments seriously and that oftentimes we do wish we could respond we can respond during our public comments which is our board comments and that happens later in the agenda so if you want to stick around you're more than willing to to be here for that  oh thank you so much i my steam supercenter reminded me that we had recognitions i apologize for going through that my script i felt i didn't do it right this time so we're go public comments rather quickly until we have recognition and then we'll come back to people comments and just so you know the students who are up are going to be tailored tailor holland fisk and  those are the first two but we're going to go to the recognition first ok great thank you board of trustees our audience interviewing audience tonight we are  recognizing berkeley high school board trustee pell will make a few comments about the award and we have principals kaderi who will speak after that thank you i'm just going to do it so i'm honored to be able to acknowledge this recognition of a berkeley high school but the high school athletics have been recognized last month by the north coast section of the california interscholastic federation for athletic program c i s twice if i'm correct once first and foremost the north coast section is celebrating its hundred years of existence as an interest plastic athletic body and berkeley high was recognized on january twenty tell us a little bit more about about this this author and i think we're going to have a picture with the blacks that's why i came down here thank you yeah it was it was just an honor and i think director of summarized what the word is one hundred years one hundred years for berkeley high school as a charter member of the north coast section i think this comes at a time i thought a program is field be filled with baseball players freshman baseball players last night trying out it would look cost team etc it looks like we're going to have another eleven hundred athletes one thousand eight hundred to be exact participate in our athletic program this  year we've cobbled together some funds and we have an assistant athletic director who's working the sure who's really working on the academic side of things and he wore enough one of our former math teachers so again this recognition has been one of the six original members of the north coast section comes at a time very proud of the athletic program at berkeley high school so thank you for this recognition  a man named charles alibied and baku was the principal of berkeley high school i mean the papers for other details i know he was the principal from berkeley high school from nine hundred twelve until nine hundred thirty two that's a twenty year run and i memorized that right became them so he was also the principal at what was then mckinley turned it into a junior high school and is largely seen as the first person to organize a junior high school rest of the mississippi he was a math teacher at oakland high before that and tied down in santa cruz if there's anybody out there in the viewing audience or listening audience that is a descendent a relative a family friend of charles bach we would love to pass this recognition of this award on to you but it was it was really great to learn a bit about berkeley high school history robbie honored someone whose principal again from one thousand nine hundred thirty two and it felt great to spend part of the morning taking credit for the work that was done by some one hundred years ago hi i'm taylor the vertically high tennis team has been a part of my life for about ten years now my mom liz holland became the coach for the girls team in two thousand and four when i was six i went to almost every single practice and almost every single match i love the group of girls so much it was like having twenty to thirty extra older sisters who thought the world of me i want to nothing more than to be like them i remember watching matches from a tree that overlooked the king courts thinking i can't wait to be on the team and i am being a sophomore this fall mark my second year on the team although my mom stopped coaching in two thousand and eight and things are a little different i still love it just the same but as a kid i never really understood how difficult it was to commute from berkeley high to the king courts during my mom's run as coach park says it was my job to take attendance a job i took very seriously girls would slowly trickle in within the first half hour of practice and i recall my mom having conversations with girls saying things like you've been late three times this week and coming this late cut into your practice time and the girls are respond with things like i had to talk to my teacher or the bus came super late as a six year old i was out there slacking until i got on the team my freshman year the most efficient way to get to practice is a ride however many of our parents have work and next to none of us have our license we can walk to practice which takes about twenty five to thirty minutes meaning we have to leave right after school this leaves no time for going to lockers or stopping by any class to talk to a teacher there's public transportation however the buses that run close to the courts arrive after proctor should've started getting and starting practice on time is crucial part of growing and improving as a team if we had courts on or close to berkeley i campus it would greatly increase our practice time we also do not have a community way to change we usually chain side a shed where we keep tennis quitman it's uncomfortable dark with very little privacy from the outside world at four we can go to the king pool but this leaves no time for hitting at the beginning of practice  because at four ten we start running if we had access to a locker room or even a decent bathroom it make our lives so much easier being in high school most students have a lot going on outside of sports work and grades are a huge part of our lives every person on the girl's team last year received a scholar athlete award this demonstrates how heart dedication to the sport didn't get in the way of obtaining a good g p s but it wasn't easy i never had time to talk to a teacher after school i also had a missed class for not only away matches but also home i know that was especially hard for most of my teammates i believe that a team that works hard to achieve excellence not be denied resources such as the onsite tennis courts beaches has great amounts of spends a great amount of money and on sports facilities none of them including tennis courts a new gym is built a athletic building with new locker rooms were was built just last year we did and that we don't have any access to you know we have to haven't had tennis courts for thirteen years it's been long enough please give them back thank y i too have been working on this issue for for a decade and we've talked about it many times i've been here many times and i think we've established it's a great sport it's a great lifelong sport something very distinct from a lot of the other sports that at berkeley high i don't know any people that play football into their eighty's you know soccer sometimes maybe but you need a team with tennis you need another person and i we have established already we have fifty kids fifty plus kids that play on our high school teams the boys and the girls teams the two seasons and they're nobody knows about them because they go across town and kids say all the time that they're that their friends say there's a tennis team and you know it's a it's something that's established we've got these highly driven academic kids that are doing a really good job at managing the situation for over a decade but it's not working and it's not much to get there we don't need millions of dollars to get there we need the real estate back and we believe that there is lots of solutions that can accommodate teacher parking we recognise that that's a really important thing but i have architect friends that are tennis in doozie s and developers that have great ideas of how to develop the space so that there's parking and there's a money making opportunity for the school for the city and there so there are solutions and we have the u s d a i have the executive director all over this wants it so bad the executive director of u s d a nor cal and now i have taken it to a national level of u s d a national i have national c e o of community tennis getting involved to make this happen for our kids for our school for our city if we can't just do the right thing for the kids then perhaps we can look at is a bigger win for our city we can't let such a sport like tennis fall through the cracks in the lim it and have it only be accessible to the rich that forward country clubs we need community tennis in this city it's a community built city and it's so important to have our public courts taken care of and high school courts are a big center of public courts we need all the courts and berkeley taken care of frankly but we won't talk about that and i have a vision for that but and it could include some all but you know we can be  the the stand for this great sport and for these kids and and just giving the real estate back this tennis community that comes out and comes to these meetings meeting after meeting after meeting will donate the time and the money and the resources to make it happen all right thank you the good evening my name is sure eking i'm a graduate of berkeley high school thousand nine hundred sixty six when i was here there were tennis courts there was a representation of all the sports on the campus as a result of that what you've got is you've got a composite of total diversity when you separate tennis and put it out in an area where no one is able to see it then what happens is you have people who are left out of the game who will not become inclusive because of that having those chords right across the street from the girls jail where i learned how to swim why learn how to dance where i learned how to play tennis i am now a tournament director i now do tournaments here in the city at  also have a contract with the city where as what i do is i do a tennis program for ten and under and what i try to do is bring in diversity because it's so important for these children to learn the game the game of tennis allows the child to number one follow instruction build self esteem it also allows them to learn how to manage their anger and that allows them in the sport to be a team player because they are the princess and the prince of the sport so i am very enthusiastic about finding a way where a partnership may be gained with the school district where you find a way to build the courts i'm also a referee and when i go around all to all the others sandals a when i go to monterey when i go to car every campus has a set of tennis courts they have every sport right there on the campus and as a result of that what it does is allows for appropriate behavior so i would like to say that i am totally behind supporting this i also do tournaments so if you would like me to apply for tournament as a fundraiser for the city to allow the students to see how a turn on it is and what the next steps are in tennis it will be greatly appreciated tennis has a lot of income streams and some students may be they can be instructors they can be referees they may also just work a turn i'm a desk and these positions pay good catch so what happens is when a child is working at a tournaments on a high school they learn these skills and when they go to college they have the opportunity to pull from one hundred to two hundred dollars a week in so i would say make that investment get those courts up and you will find that what you will see is you will see a composite of everyone around the world because tennis has changed everyone is involved it's the biggest sport outside of soccer so i would like to say we're rob rob get tennis on board thank you very much thank you good evening my name is gabriel zeldin i graduated from berkeley high school in two thousand and one my four years of spanish with joel hildebrand made me understand everything you said i was asked to speak today because i have i think a bit of a unique perspective for two reasons number one i was the team captain of the boys team in two thousand and one when the courts were paved over to create a temporary parking space for the teachers i also after graduating from high school and college returned to the bay area to work for several years for the united states tennis association the national governing body of tennis i by the way would have never had that job if it weren't for berkeley high school tennis so it's easy to look back on what happened in two thousand and one and to be bitter about the way that it was handled or mishandled but that's really not what this whole group of people are here for today we're here to look forward and i think the comments that you've heard reflect that we really want to know what we can do and you know despite the debate that goes on it's really not an adversarial issue everybody here i think is in it together and everybody wins if the tennis courts come back to berkeley high we recognize that there is an issue with parking for teachers and frankly we support that we support the teachers there everybody knows they're underpaid already and we want to work with you to find a solution and i think that that's really the key and what you see here today is really a group of people who are dedicated who are interested in helping we have the manpower we have the time we have the energy we have the connections in the community and frankly something that the school board probably doesn't see very often this is one of those rare opportunities where we have some funding as well and so it's really a win win for everybody and what we're here to do what we're here to ask is how can we help certainly we request the school boards help and assistance in making this happen but we're here as well and we want you to know that and please just reach out to any of us because there's a whole team there's a whole army of people who are ready to help thank you thank you kenyon hall followed by julia chin hi my name is kenyon hall i am a fully certified tennis teaching professional i'm a graduate of u c berkeley i've lived in berkeley for over forty years i play tennis tournaments in berkeley i've played tennis hermit's on the courts there were once the berkeley high school courts and  i believe that other parking facilities can be for created for the faculty and i don't think berkeley high needs any more outdoor basketball facilities  i think that could probably restore all six of those courts to what something similar to what they had formally been in past meetings i've stated that i went to a high school in southern california not in the same gabriel valley that had twenty two hundred students and checking the google satellite map that high school had two am the current girls coach the girls but they had girls tennis team and they are tremendous bunch of girls and what they go through to get to the courts to deal with no bathrooms no changing room nothing except  shed is just amazing and incredible bunch of girls and i'm honored to work with them all these years and they really deserve to have tennis courts it's an embarrassment to play a king court which are not maintained it's their dangerous there's debris on the courts we have to sweep them try to clear them there's no maintenance whatsoever and other teams from all you know all over the area come there and it's just it's awful i'm we're fortunate nobody has brought legal action for the condition of the court we've had no major accidents nobody's gotten hurt but they are in very bad condition and it's unsafe for our girls and it's just embarrassing we need to do better berkeley high is an incredible school incredible academically and the sports programs are amazing and we just need to do something for the tennis teams and i think that's basically it thank you thank you very much generation berkeley high alert and committee member to restore the berkeley high tennis courts we thought the taking of the tennis courts in two thousand and one for parking was going to be temporary here we are tonight still talking about the tennis courts can this issue be resolved the answer is yes we are asking for four tennis courts to be restored at berkeley high three tennis courts on the parking lot on and leaving half of the lot for parking there are two outdoor basketball courts on campus we are asking for one court to be built strictly for tennis leaving the other for basketball the next question how do we address the parking issue of sixty six cars being displaced the solution park some around the perimeter of the school and some on the campus during school hours only along channing way you can park twenty one cars on martin luther king thirty five to forty cars north of the football field where bancroft intersects the campus you can put twelve to fifteen cars and in previous years cars were parked there this is going to be a team effort i'm confident we're strong leadership leading the way we can get this done with other stakeholders we need you to do this for the students starting this evening their teen years is way too long it's time for all of us to get to work thank you very much and we'll be thank you very much last but not least doug in a few couple accidents i personally i think i like slipped on a leaf and i kind of hurt myself so if we had the tennis courts that are at berkeley high they could be maintained there wouldn't be debris everywhere where people could slip and get hurt also i wanted to talk about just trying to get to the tennis courts every day on time practice starts officially a about four and then we start running on the courts at four ten and school gets out at three thirty so we only have about half an hour to get there and you have the choices of walking taking public transportation or getting a ride but many times you can't rely on them sometimes there's no one to drive you or you have like your school bag so it takes you a long time to get there i personally i walk really slowly even if i try to walk fast so i was get there late and also the public transportation is very bad you can never rely on them often buses are very late and also i wanted to talk about how it's very hard that we don't have like  nice area where we can like change for practice we have to go in this like really smaller shed and they can only fit about three people and it's completely dark and like you don't know your surroundings and it's very uncomfortable and unpleasant for us while most other sports they have like a girls locker room with the bathroom and little lockers that they can use and they get to move around freely  d finally just i really hope that we can get our tennis courts back thank you thank you very much so that now concludes this public comment period thank you to everyone who spoke and who came to speak there is additional public comment period at the end of open session you can always email the board directly at the board of ed at berkeley dot net each party member also has office hours which are listed in the board packet that you have as well as online at www dot berkeley net sorry  dot dot perfectly dot net slash school board and school board is school board do i have any union representatives in the audience ok do i have any district committee representatives in the audience ok moving on we will now hear comments from board members and our superintendent who will start with our student board members and with our  superintendent i just have two quick comments tonight the first of which is that last thursday night we had a really successful open house at berkeley high which is always a really fun event to see all the parents looking like last freshmen on their first day of school  all role reversal it's just a really great event for parents to understand what their kids go through every day and trying to get to all the classes on time it's really funny to watch but it was a really great yeah it's the six minute passing period is really really tough and and second of all i just like take knowledge the berkeley high jazz ensemble which is a really tremendous program they are leaving for cuba tomorrow night so i'm happy to be back i miss the last board meeting and i did miss it i love to be here i wanted to talk about a couple of meetings that i've had over the last week or two first of all superintendent evans and i met with principal hunt in a group of malcolm x parents on monday morning and we were following up on bunch of tests quite a bit of testimony that we heard here a little bit under a month ago i think and quite a bit of correspondence that we received from parents with expressing some concerns about the size of the school and the growth of the school and what they see as a shortage of staff and how that's impacting the kids learning in the experience at school so we did have an opportunity to meet with with several of the parents and i wanted to think the parents who did particularly josh joshua broome for organizing it but i really felt like the parents came with an attitude of problem solving and a really productive spirit in how we could really work with them to and they could work with us to help address a couple of very specific problems so the two things that we focused on were  think there are some concerns about there are some concerns about their lunch the lunch time staffing and the the need for some more noontime supervision and supervision in the lunch room as well as what  what they're experiencing as a very large caseload for the r t i specialists at the schools so we are it was really great that superintendent evans took the time to meet directly with the parents and we're going to be looking into some both short and long term solutions to address those concerns the school is has grown quite a bit and it's a great school i don't know if you've seen there's been some it recognition of how vibrant and rich the school is for the students and at the same time i think there are some very some real concerns about the about these two areas and we look forward to addressing them so we should be hearing more about that soon here i also have had an opportunity to have been to  visit i've been talking to some of the math coaches and some of the teachers about the story of units i know next week we're going to have a broader presentation about the story of unit which is the math curriculum the common core aligne math curriculum that has been piloted district wide this year and the reason why i wanted to bring it up today is because i was i had a chance this morning to go and see one of the teachers at oxford teaching to a fourth grade class and i was looking for a lot of different things and we're going to talk more about this next week looking to see how all children were engaged all students were engaged and whether it seemed as if all of the students were able to follow the curriculum and what i thought was really exciting i'll save some of my more specific next week but i did want to say that in observing now some of the elementary school classes and the middle school classes you know the parents are experiencing some frustration because they're not getting the materials that they need to kind of support our students when we get home and i include myself in this and i'm just going to ask that i think we're headed in a really positive direction and this is a transition year i know it can be really frustrating and i'm just hoping that we'll all learn more next week about the potential we're going to be ceci in this this this curriculum and just you know help your students in any way they came in and stick with it because i think that overall we're going to see a very it's a very positive shift in what our kids are experiencing in the  classroom and then finally just blast night i went to the superintendent's budget advisory committee meeting where we were one of the many groups that are they are one of the many groups that's in gauged in helping to develop the priority of the programs are the priorities that will be building into our local or local local control accountability plan and so i was excited to it was great to be in that room for kind of a representative body of different different interests and different  constituents and i just i'm concurring everybody to find a way to be engaged in the cap process the next aspect meeting is next is on march eleventh and they're held at the seventh at seven twenty organ street and there are open to  craig well i want to echo what director pell said i went to have gone to two schools in the last month john muir and berkeley arts magnet and have observed the stories of units in the classrooms in both the second grade and fifth grade particularly at  and i found that all of the students at both second grade and fifth grade that i observed were completely engaged and were much more adept actually at what was going on then i could completely figure out what was going on so i actually  really resonated the challenge the parents might be having because it is a different kind of math it is not the math i did when i was a kid or even as an adult and i think that the interaction that the kids had with the teachers was it really wasn't gauging they were really actively engaged and i really watched to see if anybody had their head down was kind of tuned out and all of the kids are engaged and they do a lot of peer share so they all talk so there's a lot of opportunity but i can see where it's a big challenge i just want to say we're great timing with principal secretary here and getting the north coast section award because what i wanted to do tonight was really thank all the coaches at our high schools at  middle schools for the valiant effort that you all do because i know that the coaches do not get compensated very well and except through personal reward and my daughter was at the soccer game tonight she's playing and a lot of the seniors are getting recognized this semester because it's their last semester in high school and so i want to do a shout out to the same years at the high schools that are engaged in sports and the coaches for all of their their dedication  i also want to thank primarily i think it's the willard families though some other folks too who have sent us hundreds of e mails and petitions in support of the garden in nutrition and cooking programs and know that that issue will be coming back to the board and that there's a lot of discussion and dialogue going on on how to reinvest in that program and i do appreciate the hundreds of e mails that have come through our e mail box and i also wanted to give a shout out to the jazz ban went to the yoshi's concert last week and that's a sit with our wonderful superintendent and president's principal secretary and they are just an amazing group of performers they're extremely professional to see them on the  concert venue was really a joy a wonderful experience and i want to give a shout out to also sarah klein our teacher for the jazz band i want to just thank the tennis folks for coming out tonight i know this has been a long and significantly challenging issue i've been engaged in a sense i worked in the mayor's office in the city so i know it's been a long a long road i feel like it's a complicated solution as as i've had conversations with some  folks before and i know as a parent how challenging it is to shuttle your kids because actually there's a number of sports that are not in book that perfectly hi my daughter play softball she has to walk down to grove to every game and every practice my son played baseball at sam paddler park and so fortunately we now have crew derby in the morning field but i would love for our high school to be able to have all of a sports team contained on the school we have challenges with having a high school of thirty two thirty three thirty four hundred kids in an urban high dense neighborhood it's not the same as san ramon when i go to my daughter's soccer games or my son's baseball games well i don't go to as his games anymore because he's gone but they have land you know and they have a different dynamic so i am confident that we can bring a solution to this situation but i think we need some really creative thinking because i think we just have some constrictions and some challenges that we have to figure out how to overcome so i thank you for your persistence and i think we need to work with the city because i don't think it's a solution that the school district is going to be able to solve all by itself and lastly my office hours for the month of february are on feb twentieth i will be at cafe layla at five o'clock to seven o'clock with council member linda mio and you can come and talk to me about school district issues and you can talk to council member my about issues in district one and then i'll have another set of office hours on march first at ten thirty til noon at a special room and upon college in ashby with council member gordon was  i forgot one thing and that was that i meant to say and i meant to congratulate our principal alex hunt who is going to be leaving i think on february twenty fourth for a couple of months of parental leave my youngest is eighteen i still don't know different reasons i had office hours on feb first and just to kind of echo i'm looking forward also to hearing update on the story of units i think the thing that i heard from the person who came to my office hours who was someone who worked in our nonprofit community in a tutoring program is that for particularly for our students who are low income many of our students of color there's a particular challenge in this transitional time it's not just their parent you know in some cases for these students it is the tutors that they're receiving after school maybe not school district even tutors but tutors who are in the city programs are in our non profits programs in our you know in our in our faith community programs that are really the folks that are helping them with their homework and helping them to understand as they go from the way they used to learn math and told the way that math is going to be taught in the future and so i'll really be looking at kind of be interested in hearing staffs thoughts about how we can do a better job to make sure that those people in the front lines are are are trained and i was thinking of something like maybe having a couple of community kind of train the phone so to speak in which parents as well as volunteers including new york are cal berkeley students you know that these are all people that i think really really need to not just talk about it be nice but to really see as being critical to making this transition work for our students my next office hours are on march first also from ten to eleven thirty i may be leaving about eleven fifteen that day cafe lila which is that sam pablo right across pretty much from our adult school  and please join me there i also that same day on february first went to a meeting parents children of african descent and the superintendent one of the superintendents appointees to our local  local control accountability plan our parents group was there soliciting support as parents with children of african descent and there was a very lively conversation about  the specific programs and initiatives that parents either thought were working and should be expanded or were maybe not working or where they saw were gaps i think the biggest thing that was mentioned was the need for more mental health and emotional support we have quite a few students who really are in post traumatic stress syndrome in terms of either what's going on in the family or what's going on in the community where they live and that was really identified is something that i think our students have raised as well is  for more mental health services and our superintendent has volunteered to attend the next meeting on march first which is sort of my office hours are not march first they're the second saturday so i'm getting a little confused but office hours were on february eighth and will be on march eighth peak at is on march first right used to have them the same day and that got to be too much and peak had meets in the berkeley high career and college center from ten to twelve i also attended a wonderful celebration for african american history month that was co sponsored by the african american studies department at berkeley high and the berkeley juneteenth festival it was from one to eight p m so it was a kind of all day thing it was really some of the best music best food great time steady stream of people and for those of you that weren't able to attend you really missed a lot of wonderful cultural a wonderful cultural celebration and hopefully will be even bigger next year and lastly  touch upon that i was able because i was able to attend the planning and oversight meeting yesterday and it's something that i'm going to try to do a bit more often because it's nothing like hearing in person  what some of our advisory committees talk about and not just receiving kind of the the summary as good as those summaries are that are given and got definitely an earful it's not a shy committee and it will definitely be part of my deliberation process has been go for it in we talk about some of these issues ok thank you very much i want to also thank the teachers at thousand oaks like conti and at rosa parks that i visit third grade and fifth grade classrooms and looking at the story of units is really helped as you can see it's helped the board to really see the dynamics of the classroom gaijin of the students and our teachers and our principals and everybody that's there to support our students and being successful in this first year as we pilot story of units but certainly making a commitment to our students being more proficient in math i saw it personally because our we in my in my after school program where we saw our students in their proficiency in math it's gone down but it's understandable because  this is a first year with new math and so again how do we continue to support both in school in afterschool our students and i think our teachers you know had me engaged in had me learning also at the same time and it's a whole new vocabulary students and of course the rally that was there also to support the work that she's doing i will have office oversee the now tomorrow from four to six and that's at eighteen zero five it'll mine is every second thursday of the month in terms of the presentation and the comments that we've had on the tennis court at what point do we see that we can because we had a discussion last year about tennis courts but then i haven't we haven't anything else in terms of how our city in our district perhaps talking about this and can we schedule something so maybe they'll be a discussion between a board president and our superintendent soon about when we can put this either an agenda item or or have a separate meeting to discuss so thank you i also want to recognize or our employees there's two individuals a lot of people are doing some great work and are leaving our district  retiring but i did notice a james schroeder is retiring as since one thousand nine hundred eighty has been an employee his wife janice schroeder and she's taking time out and i know she's retiring but it just so happens that i've known them for many years there are children went to the same elementary school phillips raised before when we entered in closed session so there's a possibility to follow up with some of the concerns raised facilities at berkeley high it's the building you weren't here the superintendent was here here see one twenty four and one twenty four yeah so there could be a follow up with that ask to sing happy birthday because i would want that done to me but how do birthday and i'm sorry that we scheduled the board meeting on your way i also happened on my off hours to visit the preschool that is run by batteries something of you and i was quite impressed and you run a really impressive program and who knows where my son will end up but if he ends up there he would do really really well thank you everyone to come for coming to my office hours my next one is until march so now to the next board meeting for all of you baseball fans out there we are having our annual alumni game the first baseball game to be played fields and i just would like to say as an aside so last year i hit a ball to the deep left center of part of sam palko park and all i got was a triple so on monday my goal was to hit a home run i'll probably strike out four times for everyone who's interested in who's watching the cooking and gardening item the information items and be coming back next week february nineteenth so please spread the word it's not a decision it's simply information the proposals we've forward and in terms of the hundreds and hundreds and in terms of the ending on a sad note so we in berkeley have been fortunate both this year and in the this year we have not had no homicides that affected directly our use our young people and we did have a few last year but i feel like as a board member it is one of my responsibilities to  try to help us recognize the way in which we are connected with other communities and even if we in berkeley have not experienced the direct impact of those horrific events our our larger community has and even if it may not be a bookie resident there are berkeley residents who who are friends with their family members with or know the people who have been affected by this and oftentimes we at least for me i oftentimes think of berkeley and then you know other cities and that we're distinct somehow and that and that what happens there doesn't happen here because we're berkeley and there oakland or there richmond and i have found that as a board member i'm doing a disservice to myself and to my district and to my community to kind of think about it in such a destroying to way so i just wanted to acknowledge that to people under the age of twenty five in our stride and communities have been killed since our last board meeting denzel jones fifteen years old was killed in february third and could be just stewart nineteen years old was killed on january thirty first then joe was in oakland and kadija was in richmond and you know we like i said we in berkeley are lucky that we don't experience directly what are our neighbors our friends and our families in those communities do but that doesn't mean that there's not an impact on us and it doesn't mean that we can simply ignore it and pretend like somehow our community is separate so i just i think on an ongoing basis i'm just kind of big knowledge in that and trying to remind myself remind all  of us that we are connected even if they are technically different cities and i think it's important to keep that in mind as we go forward and really try to make a difference as our mission states to you know make this world a better place so and i don't want to end on such a sad note but i have felt like it's important for me to acknowledge that and so i want to bring that thank you that was pretty sad but  you know we really do have to work together because you know the kids in richmond oakland here they're all our kids and they all affect their lives affect our lives in some way or another last week was pretty amazing i have to say i never heard the berkeley jazz ensemble and they were really really amazing we sat in a crowded booth trusty sign i crashed our booth sarah klein what an amazing director she did a great job leading her students and i'm really proud of what she's done and really proud of what our kids come to just one of everybody know that is well underway we had quite a few meetings last week and we had a few meetings this week we're getting some really good ideas in terms of how we can move the district forward everybody has something to say and everybody knows how to move this district forward but unfortunately have to listen to everybody and bringing everybody together is pretty difficult especially we want everybody to agree what we want to do for our students but we are working together with everywhere i just want to say something about your reply for two thousand and twelve two thousand and thirteen was reported to the board in december on the consent calendar and at the bird's request we pulled that for discussion to look at trends in expenditures for me and to the director is returning to discuss this item also in addition to that she will bring to us the first interim report for the current year and with that i'd like to turn it over to tashi berry thanks great thank you for this really thank you for this opportunity i wanted to just begin with a very brief overview of help for those in our audience who may not know as much as the directors i hope do know about be set up just a very quick overview stands for the berkeley schools excellent educational excellence program or brooklyn schools excellence program also known as measure  through two thousand and sixteen seventeen and we are also going to be in the process of looking towards planning for to the next measure i'll be returning to in march to discuss that one of the key aspects of this measure is that it includes  citizens oversight group and that's the group to which director hempel was referring the p and o committee the planning and oversight committee it monitors the funds and we're always doing three things at once we are looking back so that we're reporting on the year that we've just completed and that's the annual report that i brought to previously the report for twenty twelve thirteen we're also monitoring current expenditures for the year that were in and that is represented by the first in  beginning to do our planning for the next school year two thousand and fourteen fifteen and this year we're also extending our look beyond this current year as i mentioned on to thinking about how  we can maintain the funds that are currently in this measure next year will represent the eighth year of the ten year measure and we need to ensure that the funds in the measure are sustainable for that period and that's the focus of my presentation this evening  there's much i would love to tell you about all that these funds that have been provided to us by the taxpayers of berkeley are doing for the kids in our schools there's outlines in the in your board package of the accomplishments of the various resources over the past year but my focus tonight is on the budget again just very briefly the measure stipulates the ways in which the funds are allocated the very first thing is this is what's mentioned at the bottom of the slide and that is after we pave a few items that need to be taken care of for our tax preparation for example that we take two percent of the net and that goes to  public information translation and support of the piano committee after that one hundred percent of the remainder is distributed with the bulk of it going to class size reduction sixty six percent goes to class size reduction although we call it class size reduction for short there are actually multiple purposes within that one resource the primary objective is to reduce class sizes as you might guess by the name but after the target numbers have been achieved and that those are currently at k through three a class ratio of one to twenty four and five one to twenty six one to twenty eight in secondary schools one to eighteen in the continuation high school after that's been achieved we then can allocate funds towards middle school counselors expand of course offerings at the secondary schools and to program support after the class size reduction fund the size of the next  largest chunk is called by the measure enhanced student learning twenty five percent goes to that the largest piece of that slice of the pie is the school site discretionary funds about ten percent of those are allocated on a per student basis to each school and they're used in accordance with their school site plan we give about seven percent to school libraries about six percent and change to music visual and performing arts and about one point two five percent to parents outreach that's the plan the program you'll be hearing about later tonight from provides or charity to martin and then last but not least we have the what we call affectionately the nine percent budget accounts for professional the budget one is that unlike say state funding that comes to us based on so it's linked to enrolment separate from the comes to us from a special tax that is not at all connected to a woman it's connected to the properties that pay taxes in the city and the only way in which we can increase our revenues is through a clear adjustment of cost of living adjustment each year last year it was one point five six five the share expected will be less and so the only other way is if some new properties come online and actually that did happen in the past year we did have some new tax paying properties contribute which which really helped other big thing to  closely linked in regiment and those are the ones where we're seeing greater expenditures as the berkeley schools and roman has been increasing so obviously in class size reduction the calculations that are made to icing on the cake really part of the cake so it's really one of the exciting things about the process this year with the new state local control funding formula is a provides us an opportunity to really take a good look at the ways in which we're allocating our funds district wide and think about the best ways to use our various resources in service our students there are certain state funding priorities that are actually very closely linked to the priorities as well class size reduction as a part of the local control funding formula all speak to very briefly parent outreach is one of the state priorities public information  sort of part of and and then the school site discretionary funds hold although they are not explicitly part of the state priorities the ways in which the school site council or the school governance councils allocate their funds  is to some extent dependent on knowing what the district is going to be doing globally so what you would ask me to do was to a highlight for you some of the key issues in the for you to be considering as we move forward in trying to not only plan for peace out but also plan for our other resources i don't have and i'll just show you i have a few slides and we don't have in your pocket the actual numbers from our current first interim and we can look at those if we do have time but i know i only have a few minutes to present so i thought i would just use words to begin with and  you know where i think some of the key issues are so first of all with class size reduction that's one where we are in at this point deficit spending at a rate that would not be sustainable to take us through the end of the measure so if we were to maintain the current structure of the overall fund and again that's not just reducing class sizes it's the middle school counseling in the life of the measure we can start to look at our reserve fund we have to set aside three percent reserves and as long as the general fund is able to maintain a three percent reserve without counting the th ree percent in the out where we could spend began to allocate some of the funds that are in reserve and help sustain the fund balance somewhat that was included in not in your pocket actually but in these in these slides and those will become part of the public record and we can mention that later on if you want to look at it this way here's an example class size reduction currently deficit spending at about five hundred ninety three hundred sixty thousand dollar funding balance that means next year were ok but not for the following years again if we maintain the same structure of spending now one of the things to look out of course isn't something we can always count on every year but that's a possibility other thing i wanted to mention with the new local control funding formula class size reduction funds have shifted and used to be about being given to four one to twenty four so whereas in the past we had been receiving two point six million dollars reward for maintaining low class sizes when because one point nine million dollars  that are specifically for that purpose and rewarded for one to twenty four we can of course maintain one to twenty and that's not my word to advise you on that as you know those of you who attended last night's peanut meeting you know there was a very lively discussion  in interpretation of the measure that is one that is an important well for the planning and oversight committee it was simply an advisory committee but one thing that it does seriously is story of the measure so we spend some time looking at the wording and trying to determine what the measure tells us we are supposed to do when in a situation such as this the consensus there was not consensus on every point but there was i believe the consensus mouth that state funding has shifted there is no longer an obligation to stay at want to twenty but there is certainly the possibility of staying at one to twenty and the question is how to to fund that seven hundred thousand dollars difference which is now in the fund so those are the key issues for class size reduction i think going forward i will be returning in march to talk to you in more detail about another of the be separate sources which has been deficit spending substantial rate over the past few repairs and i know we've heard from the planning and oversight committee before they're concerned about this so we'll be spending some extended time on the twenty six to look into the way that the music vapid fund is structured in the way that the program is structured so that we can see whether there are some opportunities to the pressures on that fund one of as i mentioned this is one of the funds where a major issue and we've seen quite a bubble in fourth and fifth grade and that's where the percent funds are provided so there's been for example about eighteen percent increase the past three years that's exactly paralleled by the increase in expenditures in that fund there are a couple of other issues and again we'll go into it more detail on the twenty six that has to do with the way the fund is structured where  that's primarily due to the fact that in both cases the funds were those programs went through a period of restructuring and we stopped playing during which time the expenditures were much less however now that they are fully staffed the part time positions there i know there are couple at berkeley high that were not filled this year so that's that's frequently what happens but going for the school side discretionary funds i'm expecting to have to make allocations which again are on a per pupil basis i don't know or dollar amount we've been able to give about two hundred thirty three dollars per student per year i'm expect it's going to have to be less than that going forward in order to maintain this fund and what's difficult for the  really make a pinch in some of the decisions they had to made about what they can fund for the school site discretionary funds what i've been hearing a lot of at the piano and elsewhere is concerns about how they can then use school governance councils can go about developing their site plans when there are still a lot of unknowns about the ways in which the local cop the local control accountability plan will go last but not least the library professional development evaluation technology i just lump those all together because those are funds that i are bringing expanded rates and i think are essentially sustainable although we're going to have to be quite careful we have increas because there is a change that happened between first and second which is not unusual but it happened this year technology seems to be doing fine and again there was some flexibility and there's a lot of funds technology professional development and program  we can we can ship a little bit of money back and forth between those so i thought i would just said going forward we want to keep our eye on ensuring that we can sustain the funds to the end of the measure think about which programs need to stay in place confront  challenge of managing the planning for both piece up and up simultaneously and always keep the needs of the students first things thank you so let's try to end at nine twenty if we can  keep the meeting moving on and just a note that we will be discussing vapid in a couple weeks so we don't need to necessarily address it now all right questions comments the floor is open one question in terms of you mentioned cap and he said how are these two interface seen in terms of hearing some of the issues discussions questions you know and how we can you know supporting and then superintendent evans lead an exercise with the piano which is very much parallel to what's being done with the parent visor council with the focus groups and so on so they're their input is being interwoven as far as the timing of of the budget so it's a little trickier what we've been telling the school governance councils is that what they probably need to be doing is developing some kind of a prioritized list since we won't be able to tell them as early as they might like what exactly will be funded from el sure you know there are many many hopes and expectations about what can be done with what really isn't a whole lot more money over this next year but then there's going to be a did i think it's going to be tricky this year it's going to require a lot of communication so the other thing we heard last night at the piano committee is that the schools are either gearing up or implementing their school service so hopefully those surveys can also per inform and provide additional information and exactly there seem to be some challenges with that and one of the things that was interesting about the translation issue that i heard the need for arabic translation at john muir and that we don't have the capacity at this point to do that looking for that so  anybody out there i have actually drawn upon someone that we have on the staff at the berkeley adult school and that is an increasing need i have an eye because this is coming up quite a bit and then we can outsource with something called language line it's clear that they were building towards a greater need unfortunately there is some room within the budget so i'm hoping we can do not capacity that's great so the other thing that wasn't discussed a whole lot last night and i just want to know as we're looking at this issue deficit projections which is extremely concerning is you know salary increases and that last year the district actually general fund actually back filled the salary increases that to ok but that's as we look at these projected deficit increases and salaries aren't included yet that's not as we don't have them that's so that's something that we have to take into account as we move forward with that that's right o of the things that struck me as i was listening to the life really conversation last night was to some degree it's what pot of money you take things from assuming that these are still services and programs that we as a community and we as a district see thing still see as priorities for state outcomes in education our kids but i remember a few years ago when the general fund in sad shape and the state was taking more and more money and i think was probably when i first came on the board and like the i think one year that it was kind of like a normal budget in the bottom fell out and at but at the same time be sup was fairly healthy and there were decisions that previous boards made with the more or less agreement of the planning and oversight committee to shift money that legally could be shifted in to be set up they had previously been a general fund expenditure and i would kind of like to know kind of what those were because i think to some degree that was done as an emergency kind of action to to address a specific funding issue that the general fund was experiencing and i think that as we look at the fact that there are some parts of the set now that are feeling the i would like when we have our budget discussion you know we oftentimes have kind of a list of things that staff may or may not be recommending butter issues right and i would like least for me and i don't know if there's anyone on the board well to get a sense of what those are because i think there's as even though it's at the end of the day there may not be any cuts it may be just a matter of kind of writing kind of where things are located in for example the r t i it was an example that is very very very much allowable as a special letter expenditure and so to the extent there's room there maybe that's where we put that which you know which i think it just makes and also i think going in to be set up renewal you know while i think there's a general understanding by most people that the measure was what they agreed to was made to be flexible to the extent that you can kind of make the case that you know there are you know that that may be makes it a little clearer you know kind of what is be set funded in what is journal fun funded i think might be a thing for us to consider as  well president appelle it just a brief brief question thank you for that i know this was a lot of work and it was really very helpful especially the second seeing it for the second time i've gotten a chance to really get familiar with it so i wanted to follow up a little and others might know this with the with the program support and the particularly and some of the other expenses that are covered by that and so i i don't know if you i don't know if you want to do that here and i'm sure i but i would i would like to get a little bit more detail for example which extended course expanded course offerings are covered through this i have some questions about the expenses now that we've shifted our model  exactly how that how we're funding existing the local you know our consolidated t w i program at qantas and then how that that corresponds with the one point eight that's a part of the program expenses and there's other things that it might be that other board members who've been on been here longer know but i think that as we're aligning you know i think it's going to be a dance a very short timeline and a dance between the seppo making sure that the sept is  to be set funds i'm hoping and assuming that the committee is interested in supporting the process and the plans that come out as a part of the al capp process i guess i should as i question it as so part of that looks of where we get to take some of that where take it but where is that going to come from and how does that correspond with what we're doing so for me it would be helpful to get a little bit more information and maybe we can do that in friday notes about this page sixty eight of your report and more specifically what that's covering and a conversation about what i think what's essential what's supplemental what is what is be set for what is something that should be provided at every school site what's appropriate for school site this cautionary funs you know those kinds of conversations are are happening and i think we need to keep them really really focused but they could be very fruitful for us not just for this coming year but for you know moving towards the next piece of measure as we get some greater clarity and i also wanted to make i'm sorry just add one i know i said one but this is the second part of my one which is completely unrelated to the  first it has to do with the site funds discretionary funds because i also wanted to draw attention to the fact that it's kind of related to what directors i was saying is that if there are if if we have an increase in in salaries or in  do the same with less and do more with less or however that goes i just i wanted to close with to do that i guess to do less with less and but actually do more with less so i just wanted to bookmark that because i don't i think that is a little bit that's of concern to me the idea that we would be clarification that was a lot of discussion last night at the piano committee around language particularly the discussion around the reduction of the class size reduction c s r funding that basically we've lost or there are seven hundred thousand dollars less in c s r funding but the thing that i think is important to clarify is that we as a district have not lost that seven hundred thousand dollars it is in our base fund money now so the discussion that the piano committee had a lot was well whether or not we should be dedicating you know continuing to dedicate that for c s r and they did not take an advisory position on that but it was a lot of discussion but i just want to clarify because when we say it's been it's been reduced by seven hundred thousand and we as a district haven't lost it it's just no longer earmarked for c s r is that accurate that's accurate yes seeing no other so no i don't i just in terms of you you're saying you're coming back in march yes i'll be coming back they're going to march so between now and march when you come back these are questions that the things that keep rolling in our mind we can't afford to you that way again when presentations made will have some of those bush absolutely and i can provide a great deal of this in front and that's his well thank you before we let you go i just thought to be good for everyone to know that after spanish in english the most frequently spoken language at home and berkeley unified is arabic that's actually one of the cool statistics that i learned on my campaign and after arabic is to is way up there or do next now and after that it fluctuates oh i just realized that was an action item number one i back up is there a motion to accept the twenty thirteen and be said in your report and i will entertain a motion from one of our student directors much right motion by director more is there a second second by director sinai without objection it's passed with director work and felt absen ok move by vice president to tell second by director of a color with our thanks for your continued service deep gratitude with it without objection we now have first but this is a really really exciting opportunity for all of you out there who would like to serve so if you're interested in being your personal physician it's so important and if you can make a  real change so if if they're interested if people are interested how would they go about applying for this application that's on our website but they can also call me or e mail me and i will gladly explain what the commissioner rol ranked and we establish eligibility list and the district then hires on the basis of qualifications the boy department personnel commissioner although he is he or she is appointed by the board is to be a neutral member on the board and look at what is the district's best interest that will also be promoting classified  personnel commission hears the cases and makes a determination thank you so the motion had been made and seconded without objection it's been approved unanimously moving on to have number three on our agenda proposal for a transitional kindergarten classroom program for two thousand and fourteen fifteen we set aside thirty minutes let's try to be efficient and good at nine forty five i want take us ten minutes for discussion all right we're already on our way ok so i just want to remind the board that we said if in rome it was high that we would need to utilize the hopkins facilities for t two for next year so with the opening of jefferson in lower numbers for next year case class make it possible to keep hopkins a preschool next year i mean order to maintain flexibility  so with that i'd like to turn it over to director lee jones and he will make a brief presentation thank you and you've covered most of the comments i think it's important to realize we're not really trying to look at the long term viability or location of transitional kindergarten that's not what this item is about it's really exclusively about next year so some of these options have been discussed made very well be on the table for a future year but we feel as if next year would be problematic to make that change not only for the hopkins program but terms of what trends if there was at hopkins what it what a transitional kindergarten program would look like there as well as trying to ensure that we would be able to get king in franklin where we're doing some expansion of our preschools done and licensed properly by the time school would open so there's a number of factors going into the decision on this and this is really two things are being put forward one is we had come to the board in october saying our default choice was going to be to have transitional  located at hopkins next year and so we're coming now saying we no longer believe that's necessary the second thing is as superintendent evans mentioned it would be to create just the base bit of what would be exist for the washington  school when you determine a base bid all that ultimately determines is how are you going to determine the low bidder on a project it doesn't it won't change you still have the option at the meeting of able to twenty third when we're becoming for the award alternate to deduct that portable if you chose to do but the way bidding law works is it can't be something that's discretionary because it could be the board or staff trying to determine who the low bidder would be so you have to set what your basis of bid would be so it's our recommendation that would be having the seven portables at washington so those are the two things that are being recommended director happily so i have a question so if that would come to the board able to twenty four let's suppose that we agree to that we say we'll do it as a base bin and then come april twenty fourth we have more information based upon by now you know who is actually have chosen to come to our district or for other reasons that we decide that we don't need to go through that because as you remember there's quite a bit of debate about that and i think we have several schools who have concerns about the number of students that are are are being assigned to the school and it's you know it's complicated because you know there's issues around having flex spaces issues  about you know we have classrooms are in place so to speak in terms of that will be built so it's really complicated but on what basis i guess my question is why if you decided at the end of the day that you did not need that that that to not go forward with that seven portable how's that deducted from the bid so the way it works is that you have to determine your methodology of determining a lot better when you go out to bid so what can happen is the low bit on seven portables may or may not be the low bidder on six portable so the deductive value they give you may not be as beneficial but you you can't you have to determine before the out we all know there's a lot of discussion and concern from the washington community about the portables and i remember that we had there been a lot of back and forth about how many and so i'm wondering is there a new is there a design for seven portables do we have a lot i mean and i'm a little confused because there had been some conversation about there being six which would allow for some other things and i might be remember when it came to the board in september we showed seven portables and said if you were going to because that was the that was the recommendation at the time that and we said if you were not going to do that here's the portable that you would remove so so it is part of the design that's come to the board and as director hempel said this is a complicated question because to the extent you know there's a need for space if you don't have if you don't have there if it moves somewhere else and so you may have the need to have now can be larger or other or less flex rooms or a whole host of other choices that might have to be made i just i forgot that we had i have a question in relation to i mean when i see flex room i interpret that as literally a flex room a room that can be used for different things so based on the discussion that we had in september and the really strong response about adding the seven portable of washington i mean my my thought is the community is if we build it they were come so if we build it there now i think that's a perception that could exist so i'm just wondering if there is any other analysis that spend and placing a portable i know malcolm has the built space issue of expansion but have we looked at any other elementary sites that could afford the installation of a portable so that it's not an automatic washington or malcolm well i mean i think that you would be looking at for next year that's that's part of the problem so you could look at doing lots of things there's lots of choices could be made but it wouldn't be something that you would be looking at for opening a school next year why because you got to design it you've got to get it through the state architects you've got to do all that so right now with the washington project and the bam project both of them have been submitted have already been completely design have been submitted to the state and i don't know i can't remember if they're quite out or not but they're not out they'll be out within a within probably the next two or three weeks so you would be able  do it now there are other places you could look at and in the longer term that you could do i mean look condit different times has talked about where there used to be a couple portables kind of on the what is the northwest corner of the property but again if you were to look at that i don't think you'd use the portables we currently own to do that because you'd probably want to have restrooms be a part of it where you have to put in a western unit as part of that project because they're isolated enough from the rest of the school that you'd probably want to do that as part of it so that wouldn't be it would opportunity to use the current quarter which but you could in the future decide to do so then and kind of the integrity of the term flex room the idea could be that we do use it we we put in or if we deem it necessary to put in a seventh portable  use it as a t k that doesn't prevent us from looking at the demographic study and as we look at our growth pattern deciding that we actually might want to do growth somewhere else that's right i mean there's lots of options that exist again you can look at whether or not i mean if you went from twenty to to twenty four to one in the in these lower grades it would have a huge impact in terms of the number of classrooms you nee other questions coming i'm just curious about the numbers that we had last year for transitional kindergarden for entry thirteen fourteen in this first round and what they changed to when actually we opened up i'll try to do enough of a memory and maybe neal  my memory was that the first the first go round our first thought was i have about seventy at the beginning of this year and we ended up with eighty eight as my memory isn't right and then seventy nine when i was at seventeen planned for expected that a few more but we didn't expect we get as many as eighty nine and so so our current thinking is i think that there is somewhere just under one hundred that have applied right now and that we would expect there be some growth between now and when school would open so we're current our current thinking is that we need to plan for the potential for up to about one hundred forty kids as i think that that's going from four classroom to seven classrooms that's right that's correct and  efore you know we're not really achieve in our class size goals right now either so that's part of the thing i also wanted to make sure i mean at least i know the answer to this and i know we're stretch for time but i think it's important to talk about what when we say flex room what that means and what that provides for the students experience maybe neal you even want to talk about that because i i don't think everybody knows what that flex means like oh we could put a class in there or not and i think there's a lot of things that the that a lot of the flex rooms create opportunities for programs that i think a lot of parents really support so i'm wondering if you could just sure just like just talk about a lot of flexeril we call a flex round the one at elementary schools that does not is not used at every moment for a class where a teacher and a class do not meet all day long and usually in those classrooms drink music for fourth and fifth grade when the music class size is reduced one of the music teachers operates out of that room that room is also used for science instruction for fourth and fifth grade when we have science release and sometimes the resource teachers at the school sites the r t i teacher or the moderate severe special education support teacher have their desks in that room and when classes are not being held in that room those teachers will see whether a small group or individual students so in addition it's not it's absolutely not an extra it's not an extra room and there is some in equities in terms of what school such some school sites have no flex rooms and some school sites have quite a few felt from the visual look just it i think that was a little concerned so i know that it's possible to send another you know what it looks like with this with the seven so you can see it again because it felt that's what originally what when i saw the design that's what came out and popped up in that area so i mean the as i understand it right the technical item before us is is an action is just to take note that we will not be using hopkins right that's hopkins wouldn't be used for next year and it is the basis of the low bid on washington so is there a desire of the board in general the last few years we as a board have not approved specifically the locations of the t k sites because of the context this year we actually will be asked by staff to do that no no that's not true it basically they would then be located at the elementary school site so would not be a specific decision that here is where t k would be so that would not be our plan to come to the board o but but at the same time you'll need to come back to us for washington right so if we for example decided at the day not to do a seven portable even if we needed it that would impact where staff can put students correct correct yes will impact where we put students and i think the board will know that that if they can't go to washington because it's also balancing t k and the it will not come back to us and so whether it's located at one school site or another is typically staff decision that will continue i don't know why anyone would think differently and so i do want to be clear for both for both staff and for the board that right now at least our part of that decision is limited really only to deciding no for hopkins and then later on deciding the seven point zero four portable for washington and even then they couldn't theory decide to put a t k there and move a kindergarten somewhere else so i would just say that yes but i think from what i understand what this is really about next year i think there is a greater policy question about t k in terms of the model that that we as a district follow and to some degree the citing of t k as a program is a side issue in that there's one model in which you put all of t k under one roof or under two rules but essentially that it's a t k school so to speak and there's another model in which you link t k to elementary school and so rather than having k through five schools you have t k through five schools and i think that's a policy decision that may be driven by facility constraints right now but but over time if if if there was you know that policy direction would  inform our facility long range plans so i think that's not something that is a staff decision that something that's a board decision but that's not what we're being asked to do right now before i go to a school site and there's no connection that they will necessarily go on into that schools that's another policy question that and that was that was part of my next question too in terms of treating it separately and you know families going to different schools and not necessary going not going to the school that they will go at kindergarden so what point do we as a district target start to see ourselves not not not just t k but pre k to twelve or even our  l so that's a policy decision but it's also for one of the questions it's been raised to me as the school board member is at one point also we're having a t k bilingual or a t k two a merging program where children are losing a whole year of language instruction in their first language and then we place them someplace else we you know so i would really like us and i don't know if it's this part of this discussion or by april twenty third that we have the board get from staff some kind of recommendation in terms of what we could see the potential to see that perhaps not know this form this coming year i would hope but how can we start to incorporate ourselves and see ourselves as as this kind of district we also have legislation that's potentially can change that so it is a wait and see in terms of what are in rome it will look like for t k and four year olds so before we have the superintendent i have talked about putting that long term t k discussion on the agenda i have it down for being sometime in march although we may need to push that back because we're still developing so it is it is there and it will focus not on where the t k sites are but on the policy questions a d i'm even thinking in this is probably do that as well as the superintendent evans or a deputy superintendent cleveland in superintended evans question  is whether to have whether it makes sense to have that conversation before the may revise because i think you know there's oftentimes a lot of political negotiation between the governor and the legislature and it certainly has and there are certainly legislators who are interested in putting universal preschool into the budget and that may end up being the maybe vies all right i was just glad that i was going to recommend that maybe clarify around a motion because i think it's a little bit confusing with the title of the item and the actual motion that's required because the title of the item was planned to house transitional kindergarten for the next year which was a component of it so i'd like to have the staff recommendation in the section where it says to well determine the transitional kindergarten will not be located relocate at hopkins for the school year direct staff to proceed with the seventh portable at washington bit with the final decision on the number of portables to be made when the board approves the bid in april that way it's clear that the decision is the number of portables not what goes in them right  i'll move that i just offer a friendly minor change to take out the month just in case it gives us some flexibility when the bid comes back to the board for the board for final approval of the motion has been made and second seeded any further discussion hearing and i think that the other thing that has been talked about is that overall i think we all agree that portables  not the best solution in terms of housing or students and one of the things that has also been talked about is through the demographic study through particular maybe particularly through changing zones this is how the zones are and also as we get new classrooms you know is there a plan or what would it take to phase out the use of portables over time and so i think that that's something that we're certainly not going to be i'm sure staff will not be able to put all that together this year but i think that as we talk about this subject that's an important thing to kind of continue to to continue to point out is something in our plan because i think without that that's going to cause a lot more  you know what really upsets people the most is thinking that the portables will be here for another forty years like the ones that have been here already are you know and not necessarily as much that it's a temporary thing while we build more classrooms why we adjust student you know student enrollment through our sites so i think it's really important to keep that in mind that we are to to not lose the fact that our goal in my opinion and i think it's something that's been talked about in general is not is not to have portables as being like some schools still districts that portables is just what it is i think for us you know looking at a particular point of looking at a process by which we're housing students in permanent buildings is key all right thank you without objection all right the motion has been approved thank you very much lou we are four minutes of schedule our final item of the night and our most important out of the of the night of the notice specked anybody else is the report on site based family average and i gave him program we have set aside a approximately forty five minutes let's try to be even more effective since we have to go back and to close session and argue over stuff so let's try to be done by ten twenty if you can do that thank you so just to remind the board that this is a preliminary progress report on our accomplishments as well as some of our challenges while there may not be a whole lot of qualitative data  quantitative data in this report we are bringing you some qualitative data also at this time we will we will be coming back with far their proposals  so my name's charity tomorrow it's good to be here a good way to report back i do have a lot of qualitative it looks like that and i just want to start this off just saying that we're not done with the two year pilot yet will be giving you that but i'll just start off with a little brief history if you don't know about it in april in two thousand and twelve the board of education approved a new model for a pair outreach the two year pilot program was designed to focus on a gay gene families by strengthening the connection between home and school the pilot was six elementary schools there were four criteria to pick those schools number of students enrolled in free and reduced lunch number of english learners number of students below basic in achievement in math and or english and also the school's program improvement status i was hired in september of two thousand and twelve as a supervisor and then after that we will we were fully staffed at the end of last year with three site corners and this year we began with all  so the pilot evaluation there's different components that we are working on we are not tracking but we have ten to twelve focused students at each elementary site that we work  those are decided by if the student is far below basic or below basic also students are identified at the r t i medians a response to intervention meetings that my staff attend those meetings also by teacher or principal behavior referrals will reach out to families homeless and make an event to families also students that are socio economically disadvantaged we are working with  developing and we have a lumen a database like i was mentioning before that we track all of our focus students and any students our families that we ever talk to we're documenting everything that said every topic that we talk about in the database so let's see and we look forward to seeing the information after the trimester two and three to get the data  we didn't have this capability until half of last year we were using paper really documentary and so at the end of last year we started using aluminite with a special debbie created counselor todd for us and so that's what we're using we will be giving you not only the data that we get from a lumen a but we're also doing a pair of focus groups that will be able to give the qualitative and quantitative to you all and also a report on s g c and a lack of nomination and election data without our pilot sites compared to our non profits sites so just talking about accomplishments we had three goals going into the pilot which was creating a welcoming school environment for all families providing support to families of students in need of academic behavioral and emotional support and lastly to increase involvement of marginalized and under representative families which were african american latino and families who were not profession and english so the site staff really worked to improve pair and gauge went school climate and communication all of their sites the  my job and the site coordinators varied we varied our strategy in the areas that were specific to the school sites and needs we had overall themes that ran through all of our sites but but i have to say each site was unique in its own parent population that would come to us but principals or teachers were coming to ask for support for they all varied definitely our accomplishments included improved overall definitely built capacity at two sites with already high parent participation rates by focusing on communication through overall communication with bolton boards newsletters kind of infusing ourself into the site we partnered with site teacher leaders and principals to design for well attended math and common core nights that were really successful and really exciting as a model to go forward with parents have reported to our site staff and myself that they feel increased since of comfort with coming to school to ask for support and resources so i think the biggest point to point out is last year we're really trying to look for a model and doing a lot of district events and more case management this year feels more of looking at system change how do we get more communication out to our sites who is coming to events how do we have a style that we're providing parents with  skills to do the meetings on their own instead of just going with them and doing it for them so so our challenge is like any pilot there are some challenges the delay in finding and hiring a bilingual site coordinator throws off a lot not having a eligibility list for long term subs was an issue because last year we had a staff who had a medical issue so two sites didn't have someone for a while because we didn't have a sublist we were lucky this year with the maternity leave but we we still didn't didn't have  a a list i actually had to search for someone to fill that position that was already working in the district which is not a good model to to go from and also it was difficult to really support sites without a site coordinator you know we did a not lead we partnered with oxford for a math night it was hard we couldn't get that many parents it was kind of on them we didn't know the community and it was not as well attended as our other sites for sure so what we really did positive things that we did learn is that site based services are really meaningful we're able to build relationships at those sites we know the communities we know the programs it's we know the integration into the school infrastructure that's been a big help also having a systematic frame so talking about attendance and working on attendance at the school site was a good frame to come from instead of just looking at well last year we got that data really saw that that's what parents were coming to us for as well by using those what the community was saying and then also using our frame we have more of a focused we have more measurable and outcomes that we could we can shoot for that way  we definitely found that the style is the way to go we've prepped parents before and assessed t before and i write down questions have them go to the meeting and then follow up with them afterwards parents feel more like they're prepared so and we're really working with sophina jones with making events or she's doing the same things with our homeless population really setting them up to be able to go and ask for what they won their own giving them those those skills so we really found two there was four main components of support we were giving or give from our office and ideally if you know a parent outreach program house all four with the multiple levels which is at the site level at the district level at the family level and also at the community level and these are just some of the things that we do and i just want to point out that the models that i presented to you were are not proposals by any means they're just ideas to start thinking about with the process with the pack in principles means in the community everyone's saying that they want a  corner every site so we wanted to just do a really quick analysis like how how much is that like really what models would could we propose in the future and what would it look like so these are not definitely not proposals but just want to look at so having a site ordinator with an f t depending on the school size and need of the school every elementary school and then a site chordate or for all three elementary schools and then a high school one point five  still the f t by school size and need of the school all of the the levels of support would be for k through fifth we wouldn't be able to really provide the site based for middle school or high at each school site which has been popped problematic even as of now being out of site two days a week trying to find a space and office space was really difficult and so i'm sure five days a week in a space would be difficult as well this i really want to point out that what i'm proposing is not going back to central office model that we had before it definitely would be focused on creating a plan for each school and then the site corner following up with the principal and the teachers and staff and kind of monitoring and supporting the school to make it happen for themselves so it's still a different model than we had before and this we could fund this through the piece of for  the remainder of the major with this model ideally though in my in my dream we would have a welcome center somewhere in the district that we could house us and then also provide have a public health nurse there two days a week be able to you know refer and admissions of parents had questions they could come over we'd have a computer lab that parents could say and do were fill out there as you see surveys with us but that's definitely in the future but those of those three models and funding and then just next steps we are through you know going through a big change with  process and going into the community and really getting it and put so i think you know giving dot time as well before i do my formal proposal is going to be meaningful also our evaluation will really see you know with academic attendance and behavior data if we did make a change at our pilot sites even though there is a lot of factors with that as well and then definitely i'll bring specific proposals to my next board meeting and man and then also my staff wanted to be here but one sick ones on maternity leave so this i was willing to come and so i gave him the night off but they did all say that they wanted to thank you thank you i do have a couple questions and a couple thoughts one is i have some concerns about model three and and and i would like to have more details about how that would be that would work because based upon the challenges and lessons learned that you numerated you know is building infrastructure and in relations for changing because you're splitting your time between two schools if you're splitting your time between four or five schools i'm not quite sure that that challenge would be lessened and so just kind of what would you know in reality what school site services are being  what services are being provided under the zone model because of school site services are not being provided and you're developed but you're developing plans for a side begs the question who at the school site is actually implementing that plan know who is the staff that's doing this so my gut is saying that i'd like i have to you know it's kind of show me how that would be you know a model that was workable i mean other than saying we have a program but it's not one that's really impacting families and students the way that i think your qualitative lessons from the pile are saying that it is it does seem that when there is that connection at the school site you know that's where the that's where stuff is happening and you made that example of you know when there was some was kind of brought in so to speak who didn't have the connection you know the of it wasn't as successful so that's why i mean kind of real doubts about model three unless it's you know explain more specifically to me the other question that i had was when the board originally approved this pilot  question not only about the question about secondary school came up and one of the in part of the discussion then was that it wasn't clear if it would be the same let's say job description or the same duties for a family outreach worker at the secondary school you know partly secondary schools have counselors in elementary schools don't so there is some role that would have to happen you know so what would be the role in the relationship between the family outreach worker and the counsellor there were some issues around the nature some of the issues with students particularly in the high school level it's not necessarily you talk to the parent you know it's that you have to talk to the student because if you've got a fifteen year old or sixteen year old good luck the parent has limited right and so it may be there are more of a need to beef up resources that are directly to students at that level as opposed to the families and the families may have needs but nansen are addressed in a different kind of way so so so that's to say that while i do think all of you know all of our grade levels need more support for families and more support for kids i don't know that i think it's maybe a little premature or it would take a lot more analysis to kind of determine what that would look like at the secondary school so i'm myself more focused on looking at the elementary school level and and it being somewhat of a school site program i also think facilities are real you know we just had this discussion about you know or so i don't know how that plays into it settled think when we were looking at the six schools that we chose and we're looking at them based upon you know students at risk and that kind of thing we didn't look at did they have a space to put this to put the outreach workers so you know that to me is something that is real but outside but i think that you know that is one of the things as are in rome it grows and we want to keep down our class sizes and you know we're adding t k it is you know and the process by which you can build something new particularly if the findings are already in place you know even the findings in place it's a it's a it's a timeline so so i think that that's what that it that's one question the other question that i had was when this was also approved we saw a a  a list of duties and responsibilities that family coordinators were supposed to do so i'm interested to know is based upon your experience in the lessons learned is that still the correct job description you know it's kind of staffs i mean i understand that you know kind of that you know but but but the boy does usually look at if it's a new if it's a new position what is that position being tasked to do so i'm interested in kind of looking at that as well and is part of that is you know i mean i'm sure you would do this but an analysis of this is what we said this is what we thought they would do did they do it and did they not do it but they should have done it or they not do it because in fact we found they found out that really wasn't what they should be doing you know which is kind of two different questions you know they might not have done it because they didn't get hired to the middle of the year or they might not have done it because they got pulled in a whole lot of other directions but it was still important  important work and it might be they didn't do it because as they got there they realized that before they got into it it seemed to make sense for them to do it but it really was what they should be spending their time on so i think that would be important to but i think in terms of you know kind of a mid term report would you're still crunching the numbers and still doing the analysis i i thank you for this it's a lot of food for thought in and also has our el cap process has our  parent advisory council seen this they haven't this because i think we just had the first pack meeting last week because i think some of these questions are ones that they might be asking because i know think their input into you know those are parent you know how is that how is the existing model worked at their school might in help inform you but also and also that was my last question too but also i think when we're looking to find whatever we fund i would be very surprised if through that the l can't process this isn't high on the list and the last thing i want to talk well i mean it's a required component but a list of the right well hiring a list of how we meet that component of well cap i think having that site based family we try i think will be high and the last thing kind of in where we are in that right now where we're using the bridge the african american bridge student parent group sort of as an advisory group now because i think the original model was really supposed to be a city and community and district based and not really district based and i've read through all the information that's it was it's a fruitful idea but it just seemed like there was no leadership unless it would it be through the district and i think when al capp came onto it just kind of took over so we are having an african american bridge parent advisory group and we've had one meeting this year so far and then are planning to more me beans and have a retreat planned for them me and pam with berkeley alliance are planned and when you come back i would be interested to get home sense of kind of what either of you have time to discuss it packed what they've got to say and what the bridge group is saying because you know oftentimes know i really want to thank you for the report too in the beginning that creative thinking about how we can look at sustaining the program i share director hempel's concerned with model three i don't think it's the ideal model and i do think because of the al capp process we have the ability to look at something more creative that can meet the needs of our students more robust the one of the questions i have around the kind of the lessons learned and what's looked working is i think the other place we can get good information is the focus group discussions that we're going to be doing with boca berkeley youth alternatives the homeless community to see from their perspective how family support can help or hasn't in the in the schools that they've been engaged with and i'm assuming we're also looking at family engagement while the model is a k ok five model looking at what our pretty kids are doing and and i think what's really key about the attendance and i'm really glad you're looking at that is because of all the data that shows attendance patterns start so early so the fact that we're having a hyper focus around attendance i'm curious to know like when you look at that what are the interventions or what are the discussions you're having with families as an ombudsman type role to impact attendance i mean attendance this year has been our big focus as well and at sites like bam and emerson and we're doing weekly phone calls to parents so you know the secretaries will give us data on letters that are about to go out because they've had three  absences we're making about ten to twelve calls a week and so we're doing direct outreach to the parents and just saying you know i'm not saying that these are all people that have chronic absenteeism there they just were out for the three days summer  vacation you know for away for a while but some families really need more services so we've been doing home visits connecting with with student services dr craig's office to kind of look at how do we  district do wrap around services that were really you know because our parents are coming in with a lot of different you know where we want academic outcomes but they have a lot of barriers a lot of barriers so attendance is a big one we have a lot of families that are in transition that's really difficult to get to school and also you know dependency issues are so the i think the direct calling parents has made a big impact of that someone really does care we're not just getting a letter or we're not just of you know it having them come to a star or a star but we're actually trying to say like are you ok we haven't seen you so i think that was the biggest intervention with attendance and i've been really working with  victoria lopez with the city looking meeting with oakland unified to really look at how do we build an incentive program and a pair education piece that will really a fact and messaging about chronic absenteeism because it is such a you know we want to know it's not a da that we're worried about we're not do we not because we get money from you we're really as a district concerned so we're really looking at how do we shift that messaging to our families so that they know we care so that's been the biggest intervention rate and i'm also very curious about the shifting from kind of the case you know we hear a lot that we need more case management and yet what i'm hearing from you is the ombudsman type role seems to be more effective and i don't know if that's based on the staffing capacity or based on an empowered in a capacity building you know role and so it be good to maybe again when you come back and you get more evaluation and and data what you think those shifts are due to and what the greatest impact is and then the last thing is this is really focused it appears to be really focused based on what the district is paying for with be set up and i know that there's a lot of other funding that is going on at school sites around family in ajman i know rosa parks had a program that i just heard last night that the funding is decreased or lost through their outside grant krag money has been funding their family's support the separate berkeley high funds their parent so i really to see a holistic picture of our family engagement and not see it siloed as this is what the set pays for and it's like the other stuff doesn't exist and somehow there needs to be a district view of it and even though funding might come from different places that it's a common this is a common program with objectives and goals that we're trying to achieve and the funding stream might come from different places so i feel like the report is lacking this little wing over here of family support that sinned and funded by other funds and i think that that's a lot of what last year and the beginning of this year has been for us is really defining what family gauged by means as a district and as our office because to us with the families that we work with all of our families are involved they really are they come when we call them they come to any trainings that we ask them to it's really about the the climate shifting out the sites and building the capacity with teachers and principals to really utilize it to really see the benefit of parents as partners so  i think that it needs to be a district view of what family and gauge right as in the point of partnering with our parents thank you charity and thank you for all the work that you do with all of the our site coordinators  it's true i think we do need a district view but i also would like to hear from the community members that we've touched the parents that we've touched in terms of what they see or work being for the district this this all began with these six schools because we were concerned about their role in the attendance their their their proficiency in just getting basic math where were we were in two thousand what would have been eleven twelve and where these students where is th school now of course and the school and population is change because children have moved up in grade where are they and that's for me would be really point has it really made a difference i know it has in many individual ways but more looking at the things that we were looking at back in two thousand and eleven ten eleven where's the difference and where is the shift for us i also believe that this is what we're proposing here and what's being proposed to the board should be vetted with the parents that were surveyed in terms of these are the models and is there something else that's been missed is there something else that we should be looking at as we move forward and presented out and both put it both within your psych ward maters and with the parents that we serve in some way or form i think we need to have it shown and this is what we're thinking about there might be something else that that's missing i also agree in terms of building our capacity within i think both with our parent volunteers that we have throughout our school district and through our classified there are people there that are very interested in doing this kind of work so how do we build that from with in our from within the unified to be able to say when someone's out o maternity leave to be able to go to a meeting and because they know the school community i think we have a tremendous amount of people that might be interested in something so we might have to perhaps within this budget such set aside this to begin this yourself in terms of time and dedication to what school side so you know i would i would definitely would like to see where we were we were right now in terms of  i love the idea of having some of the parents come and talk about what you know how you supported them and how they feel that there's been an impact on their they're feeling that their schools are places where they are welcome and can come and engage an advocate because i think part of it is part of it is the individual parents and helping them advocate and part of it is also think broader culture and climate work so that all parents particularly parents who have it who have consideration really not felt welcome at schools and therefore not necessarily engaged or felt like they could come i mean i know there's a lot of barriers and i think one of the barriers has to do with the culture and climate of some of our school sites and so i really appreciate that you're including that in your in your work it seems to me that i want to thank you for the presentation but often also for the work it seems to me that you've you've been able to do an incredible amount of work with relatively limited resources and so i really i see that and i think and i really appreciate that i'm actually not surprised that the model has worked better than the case management model i think  management can be really great it can also when you're talking about trying to kind of shift power dynamics in schools that parents feel engaged and like they have the power to really be their kids you know they were every parent loves their kid and want to do the best for them and  so sometimes case management models can be the power dynamic there can be very unintentionally but we're serving you instead of here let's help you you want to be everyone want to be a great parent to their kids to help providing the resources so that doesn't surprise me and i'm interested in glad that that's borne out to be that that's been the case i will echo concerns about the about model three i think that everything i'm hearing from you would say to me that model three actually we could be throwing good money after bad so i not after bad bad bad bad bad word but not after the most effective model because everything you're saying that i'm hearing at least is that what's really working is being a part of the school community and really engaging in a way that's changing the shift in the culture in climates that people are parents are coming and sometimes in order to get parents to come to a parent teacher conference they also have to feel comfortable coming to the harvest fair and not just coming to participate but coming as i think you know coming as one of the leaders you know helping to you know collect the collect the tickets collect the money do that you know the whole thing so it's not just there's not like this dual school population  i was wondering i do have some questions after all of those thoughts i'm wondering how much you've been working with teachers and how much you've been working both with teachers to help get parents in the door but also again as part of this climate culture change so what role have the teachers and the classified staff played in the work that you've done with the parent communities in the scott pelley a lot of barry's from site to site it has been difficult because you have someone there two days a week that's trying to build relationships with the teachers and staff when they have our meeting to go to so i find that that's something that we focus more of our work on is more of that of how do we how do we set up and train teachers or provide support for teachers to be more inclusive to the families and i think we have a lot of ideas and been working on a little lot of different things but i think it's that relationship you know you have staff coming in and kind of asking you well why why are you doing this have you tried this and you know it hasn't been completely received all the time but it's also been supported on a lot of sites so we do need that's what i think we need to focus a lot of time on so some sites we have a lot of teacher and principal like partnerships and somewhere briley just trying to build relationships right now and i would just add the classified stuff in the after school that yes i think they're really important they have a lot loughlin time to have connections to families as well yeah as you definitely and and i wanted to say it seems like you kind of have found this balance if i understand correctly between kind of the focus families which isn't really case management but it's it is i working with so it's not just all school the whole school community but you are a tard targeting certain students and their parents or their families is that yeah that was our focus families we call them we have  on with them every week so it could be a tax a phone call or e mail home visit but we at least reach out to them not that we always get contact with them but we try at least once a week then the final thing i wanted to speak to something that director said so i and i remember when you guys voted on this i was i remember sitting right there and i think that i appreciated what you said about really every school site wants to any if we're going to do this it has to be district wide and i actually take a little bit of a myth about this the idea that we would some schools are paying for this through paying first family engagement through p t a funds and i just think that we should have an equitable i mean it has to be in a model that's fair across the board then where we have a set of principles and values that they were engaged that were adopting across the board or not but i do think that that's i think it's good to look at some of the resources but i also feel like it's  i don't i just think we have maybe we can help but i think we have to be creative with how we fund it and it's also think we have to be careful about making sure that we're providing that same kind of support because sometimes if you have i mean i'm not going to say i don't know if this is true but i would just be concerned if it's not a common vision that in the schools sometimes we want to make sure that that that stickiness and that engagement is happening for all families in a way that's kind of been so that you know it took a while to really say this is why we're here is to really help students and families and you but i think it kind of came yeah i agree but i do think looking for public funds that i know rosa is not going to have its person fractures a monarchist they are but i think i just heard about it yesterday or the day before about how i understand that some of the funding from the afterschool program and part of  the parent center hours would be cut so it was basically i think it was one other grants is not being funded for this year so it would lead to about seventeen thousand dollars make sure that the budget you proposed to us wherever process it comes you know includes whether or not we would be taking over the payments equipment or not it's not clear to me whether those numbers it is them or not yet it also grows as well also for rosa there would how that would work great i mean they may not want to tell me they may not want us this they would want the funding i'm sure well so we'd have to think about yeah so the budget need to address those two unique situations  you mentioned at one point in your converse in your presentation that having a non full time staff member at a site is difficult but if we assign staffing and one of your model one model two to sites on a range of point four to one point zero you're going to have sites where people are there two days a week so my idea was more of like two to three hours a day however you want to i just think that whatever you lessons you've learned about that should be reflected because a point four doesn't necessarily mean two hours a day it could mean two days a week so just just to be clear that it's spread out and we need to you know make that make that clear and whether or not two hours a day really can be effective i mean it may be that position like this you can't scale up in the same way that you can you know a school you know secretary or teacher you know when it like it may be that like a principal you need a full time principal at every site no matter the size or at least you know within some with the main show again i'm not saying how to do it just in the thinking about when you come back to us  that i mean first of all because they are middle school yeah but they do have some we have some semblance of but i just i just think that if we're having if we had talked about previously an advisory group of as your committee that's going to work with what you're doing we need to have parents who are you're working with on that advisory group because it may be that the the experiences of the parents are the same they may be that they're different and so while may be helpful we want to make sure that if we go if we do agree to do that advisory committee for this circumstances at times with a lot of limited resources a lot of interviews with limited resources i really appreciate the focus i think that's a model that we see you know at berkeley high and i think it makes a lot of intuitive sense you know  and i just think that it's quite impressive what you've done i also want to and this is not to contradict what i just said but to throw a little bit of cold water on  process so if we're doing our job as a board i feel like we can't and we adopt these pilot projects we can't expand every single one of them because not all of them will be effective some  and some will not be and so if if if we expand every single pilot program the not pilots the just the first step in expansion and expanding project and so while it seems to me like we have a lot of  mostly anecdotal and qualitative evidence that you're doing an amazing job certainly the l x is a great thing to tell at this point in the process i just want to for the record kind of go on record of saying i still need to see the data to feel like it's worth investing the time and you have been an incredible job of being honest and transparent with your successes and your challenges and in some sense that makes you more vulnerable pretty you know to this analysis than another program that is not being as transparent and so i want to commend you for it but also note that for me that makes you more vulnerable to same time and that's not a silly fair but it's just you doing your job in such a really impressive way you know the c s p a which i work for them they they had this slide in the presentations and it's talked with the four things that help you make decisions and one is what you want to do you're kind of community preferences one is what you need to do your legal requirements what you ought to do the advice we have from experts and what you're able to do the reality of what you can do and it's always hard to negotiate those four pressures and figure out what do so i'd certainly hope that this fits in with our oil cap in our future model intuitive intuitively makes a lot of sense to me but i do you know want to see that it actually is making a difference qualitative but also quantitative because we will have to make a decision about how we spend the money that we have and you know we had a lot of resources sure why not but we have a lot of other potential programs that could that i'm not very impressed and appreciative of what the work that you're doing because i really think it's so that any final comments all right thank you very much appreciating celebrating in valuing this african american students and recognizes the importance of acknowledging the history culture and struggles of our african american community during this month of february as well as throughout the year so i think one of the it's important that we have black history month but it is not the only time we should be recognizing the history of our african american community so i would just like to add that so i would