so ok so i'm now going to call the fish they call the session to order at seven thirty six we started close session at six ten i like to remind everyone that we are broadcasting live over the radio on eighty nine point three f m and no on site translation will be available for this meeting when i'm not so we had a student one three one four zero nine one one zero seven zero zero the panel recommended is an expulsion is there a motion to consider this  recommendation was for a suspended expulsion is a motion on the on the floor o make a motion they don't want to second that motion hearing hearing no seconds the motion dies i will make a motion to reject the panel's recommendation and instead to recommend an expulsion for the student is there a second second by director before we approve the agenda i'd just like to note for the public that the start times next to some of the agenda items as well as the total times next to some agenda items are estimates rather than fixed times or requirements we try to hit these to keep ourselves on task and to end on time but if we do go over a little bit you know please forgive us so we will now move the agenda is there is there any request that changes for the agenda yes i would like to the board to consider putting the cooking gardening items off the agenda we'd like to bring it back at a later date that would give us some more time to lord some of the options that we can consider and i less information i don't but we will bring it back as if a nation item but it will give us some more time to explore some of your options yes with that include a proposal for a secondary school program as well yes thank you no one else was make changes just call it out to twelve when the consent calendar to the end of the meeting it should be a pretty short item it's the approval of superintendents appointed to the parent advisory committee that will give the superintendent opportunity to simply name who he would request a board approved for that that committee now would be at the end of our agenda and the other changes that people would like to make all right i will entertain a motion to consider the agenda with those two changes particularly by one of our two student board members i'll make a motion all right motion by director working feld is there a second for the unfortunately for reasons we don't understand are bylaws do not allow student broke members to second second right second by live a color and a discussion for the discussion hearing on without objection anyone the motion is approved all right so we begin the meter with two quick items the first thing we do is to remind ourselves of why we are here by asking member of the public prefer billy a student in our district to read the district's mission statement which is in the front of your packet do i have any student volunteers to do so all right please come up to the podium and if you would please just read the one sentence mission of our district since we have many people in the audience and thousands who are watching us on t v i'd like to provide a brief overview of tonight's meeting the focus of tonight's meeting is student outcomes so we try as much as we can to spend most of our time at this meeting on on with that in mind so we've asked for a presentation on the recent trip by our superintendent and others to cover city which is a district that has demonstrated remarkable progress in increasing the achievements the cheeseman of students of color in their district particularly african american students we're also going to review a demographics report that estimates the number of students who will enroll in berkeley in future years so many of you know that we have been seeing a large increase in our elementary school population and so this is really important to allow us to determine the needs moving forward and i would ask you know many people come for public comment and leave but if you are able and interested please stick around i this is a public meeting and we do welcome and we're certainly enjoying the audience as the night goes on the next item is public comment thank you all for being patient we've gone through these introductory pieces i will first call speakers who have indicated on the green cards that they want to speak on an open session agenda item if time allows we will then hear speakers have indicated if they want to speak on an issue that is not on tonight's open session agenda in addition it is gen the board's practice to hear from students on a particular issue i've organize speaking cards biogen to item and by whether the speaker supports opposes well wishes that the board modify the item i will rotate through the relevant agenda items so that we can hear from the least one person on each agenda item from and from each position if your name is called you may see you time to another speaker to do so please rise when it is your turn to speak state your name and indicate to whom you are saving your time by sitting your time you for your opportunity to speak at tonight's board meeting on that issue and no one can later see their time to you to speak on that issue speakers related to the minutes at the president's discretion extra time would be given to those who need translation or have other speech needs time is recorded on that clock and on that clock when there is one minute left be yellow light on that lectern will turn yellow when your time has elapsed the light on the lectern will turn red and you will hear a beeping if you are still speaking when the time is up to become starts you will be allowed to finish your sentence but please do not try to speak beyond that i understand that there are many really important issues about which many people feel very passionate however in order to be fair to ask because i will cut you off the rest of them might be turned off if it is necessary please don't take it personally i'm just trying to keep us moving you'll hear is menace because we can and thirty minutes for each green card i put i would call the name of the speaker and the agenda item on which they are speaking as well as the name of the following speaker to keep things moving i would ask the speaker who is next in line come forward and wait new near the lectern this will allow us to keep things moving and hear from as many speakers as possible i apologize in advance if i pronounce anyone's name incorrectly finally under state law the board is only allowed to discuss agenda items at the designated times on the agenda therefore other than thanking each member of the public for speaking the board is not generally respond directly to comments or questions made during public comment i understand that this can be difficult for some speakers who feel that the lack of response is an indication of the boards like of interest or lack of compassion i can assure you that we all take your comments very seriously and oftentimes we wish we could respond directly we can if you choose respond our comment time which is later in the agenda but not when you come speak all right with that we will move on wow good evening good evening i'm kathleen ripley i'm a resident of berkeley proud resident of berkeley and a teacher at the hopkins preschool i have been concerned about the possibility that our school might be closed to make room for the transitional kindergarten program and concern to the point that i wanted to explain thank you clinton i wanted to explain how important the stability of that program is for so many of the children in that in that facility we just moved back to the facility after it was remodeled a beautiful remodeling job the  children went to we went we all went to franklin preschool and the children said they were happy to come back to hopkins so we've been through a great deal of disturbance and we look forward to staying in that in that composite of the community because it is our home we visit the library to monterey market we go to the park and it's a consistent routine that the children know and love and i think you can see tonight most of the children here are from preschool because there's a passion and there's a legacy there's a legacy to that school we have brothers and sisters and cousins and nephews that have gone to that school and they come back to visit the teachers and hope and pray that they can get their child into a particular room or find a spot on the waiting list so we encourage you to please keep our school intact so that the little ones continue can continue to learn and thrive  so good evening and hello everyone especially good evening to our board members thank you so much for this opportunity to speak on behalf of all of our district preschool teachers instructional assistance our families and all of our preschool children were so proud of them for coming here tonight and standing strong my name is kim robinson and i'm a teacher at hopkins and i've been at hopkins for over two decades now i've seen this program touch and transform lives for young children and their families in profound ways hopkins is a preschool community that family seek out for their children we understand the urgency to find space in our district for transitional kindergarten classrooms but do not feel that shutting the doors of hopkins is a good solution but only a short term one preschools in my district were intentionally m thoughtfully placed in west berkeley south berkeley and north berkeley to serve young children and their families the loss of hopkins would be devastating to an entire community we are all extremely concerned that king and franklin preschool sites will be over impacted and the quality will be greatly compromised it is critical that the children not simply survive preschool but thrive grow and become introduced to their educational journey with confidence and emotional strength which we can give them we want to be able to continue to offer our families a stable thriving b u s t preschool we all know that if hopkins closes down the likelihood of it being resurrected is slim if at all and then we've lost a school forever we offer choices for our parents not limit or minimize these choices and most importantly we want this great be u s d institution to continue to serve our youngest children and their families now especially now but more importantly in the future when we might not be here to speak for them we want to keep seeing our berkeley high kids come back and visit hopkins as they do each summer just to say hi to their old teachers or their very first teacher in closing we want to say that we recognize that the u s d has always been a leader in the field of early childhood education by providing choices and high quality pre schools please allow us to continue leading in this way we would like to extend an open invitation for you the board members to please come to hopkins and spend some time and learn about the magic that happens there every day it will touch your heart from all  children under the age of eight i've heard from multiple parents in the community that hopkins is the place there are teachers there who love the children they care or they genuinely care and i trek across town so that my children can have that stability it's about planting roots oakland has their theme right they show the tree it's about planting the roots we're all here because we love children i have a lot of children in the berkeley unified school district six and i have a big investment on supporting wonderful schools that will help kids to continue to grow and i'm down here because it's all about the kids i want you know i don't even know if this stream can see them but it's all about the kids and i hope that you are able to see that maintaining hopkins keeping pretty case in the elementary school sites is the way thank and you can and followed by joe you heidi good evening thank you for your time this evening i'm candy canon long time welcome next teacher this year i am a teacher leader for the transitional kindergarten classes and i just want to tell transitional kindergarten classes at an interest sites you have to look at the board and staff to also to the long term plan stabilizing this program like a five sites because we have a two k is a critical component for lessening and eventually closing equity gap thirty hardy followed by a little e ha now good evening board members and dr evans i'm jodi hardy i'm the t k teacher at washington elementary school i'm here tonight to weapons and our trade kindergarten team the t k program began in washington school under their leadership of tall and fair shot and has been a part of our school for the last for years brooke the program began to expand in two thousand and twelve to two boxes at washington and one at john merrow this year at once again the take a program has had for classes at four different sites washington john lear pam and rosa parks each class serving up to twenty two to twenty three students which is an increase over the past four years i took a team would like to continue building this cohesive program but we're concerned that this will not be possible if the program keeps changing locations teachers and increasing class sizes we recommend that people are taking programs out our current force elementary sites as you prove you data collection from the demographic study the board and the school district were made to determine the size of eighteen students for the following reasons t k students and families participate in the p t a and school events take a student's relationship with kindergartners as well as the other grade levels from experiences if the teacher a program is at hopkins well isolated from the home school elementary experience that we're trying so desperately to help our kids transition into o is committed to include each of our students developmentally appropriate center and play based learning activities which prepare them for kindergarten batting that's ok team program is a critical part of the district elementary science and we are definitely willing to are willing to cooperate and work with you as a cohesive program thank you  every day to be part of hopkins and like to talk everybody out of closing that facility because it's definitely just a wonderful way to have far reaching impact for all of our lives who are part of it so moving on to new topics now our joy more followed by terman build their gardens with the help of parents and students and watch the cooking teachers improve their curriculum every year we now have an amazing program of course i want to see as much as possible be retained no no no cooking programs the only coaching that will go on would be in the gardens which is very possible i support this but i'm not going along with the recommendation that no p t a funds will be used as i say it is an equity issue i don't agree with that individual p t a s have a right and a duty to support whatever they care most about for instance gardens and cooking programs if they are passionate  them fundraise for what they care about and for what their students care about also i'm very glad to hear that you're going to address the problem of will load and longfellow getting no funding next year because it is absolutely just to think that those those schools would have no gardens longfellow will have a new garden in a new place and of course will it has a fantastic garden thank you very much from us later tonight i want to talk about the agenda item that thankfully you polled very thankful that you pulled that agenda item intitled of reinvention in the cooking and garden program i am glad you are tak a closer look at this proposal that does not ruin vision but instead dismantles a program that has been successful valuable and appreciated by berkeley students and families for over a decade i trust that you are as concerned as i am that district administrators are proposing to eliminate entirely the wrong and well respected cooking program and to make further drastic cuts to the already aggressively pro garden program i was particularly contact with students and provides no services to schools to time if the teacher is only had seven seven students to educate every day i'm not complaining that sounds like a pretty good garden preparing gradients washing dishes there's a lot of work more work i would dare say than in a classroom but this new proposal doesn't even meet that one to one ratio at the level of service been promised and that proposal to license per month for twenty eight hundred and eighty students with only two point seven seven staff is not possible it's a pipe dream i have prepared an alternate budget that could actually provide the level of service promised at virtually the same cost wrongly expand game so willard longfellow said it is not a perfect proposal it is in my opinion insufficient but i invite you to those are all words that are used every day in educating our children of birth unified but apparently there is no understanding of what they're really means because a continuity of care the cohesiveness all leads to the trust that our children need to grow because if they don't trust in the people who are teaching them they will not grow that's something you need to truly understand there's two different issues going on here tonight i'm here with my union who were actually here talking about how you guys want to shift us around multiple times during the day at will well a child can trust in us to be there if we're there for an hour sent to another site to work with another child or another group of children and then say to another site if they don't trust in us to be there they don't see a reason to be there they don't see and meet if we  properly short of these children how to grow invest in them we are the tools for their future but we keep taking that away from them you take away from your community that's important not just for our children but for all of us because together obsolete a cohesiveness and once again you still don't understand these words maybe we need to come in here with a lesson on what this really means we know you won't come to the schools to see our children are not all these papers expose sions you're not looking at the child you're not looking at the reason those children have expelled there's a reason they didn't trust because i know of a quite a few of them that you've kicked out of your system but you don't have the stassi you don't have the cohesiveness you don't care about the challenge because it's a challenge for them to trust in us and it's a challenge for us to gain their trust bowers yes good evening thank you for allowing me to speak i actually have talking about the cooking and gardening program i have held my thoughts to the boredom to the superintendent to nut so i won't take much more of your time  today would tell you how valuable cooking has been to them and that have has allowed them to have been successful students that they were my wife and i never once sat down with our children and told them to do their homework what we did is that and if you come into our schools you notice that there still is a big problem in our schools i know that you are very heavily on the curriculum and pushing the twenty twenty vision and i want you to know that many students in  schools cannot sit down long enough to absorb the curriculum that diet is filled with junk food and sugar all day so they are really web curriculum that you're pushing on that it was gonna be right by them we noticed that the same kids who were having problems in kindergarten also have writing so i want you to consider a cut in the cooking program in the book my schools because it's one of the things that helps families bond together i've had six thousand oaks explaining to me how with the cooking program has allowed the family to sit down for the first time at dinner and have their sit down together and have dinner together and what bonding with those with family bonding does is that the child is going to arrive at school more balanced more calm and less able to absorb that curriculum that you're pushing and i also want to point out that i've noticed that suddenly there was this talk about saving the middle school programs because of inequity there's a lot of the record of that goes on in our schools and especially cooking and garden programs the support that i right the cooking program was so important to them so please do not kill this cooking paragraph to not break the children's hearts now concludes this public comment period thank you to everyone who spoke and who came to speak if you did not get a chance to speak or did not get a chance to speak enough and extended public comment period schedule at the end of the meeting additionally you a school bus driver with the district for around seven years i am here today with my fellow classified educators to from the school board parents and the community that thank you and now there's an opportunity to hear comments my district committees that include members of the public a list of those committees is found in your book packet and each committee has five minutes to address the board under its preview for those who are leaving if you would be so kind as to walk slowly and quietly out the back door so we could continue with our meeting thank you very much so do we have anyone here from that committee a public member a community member of the audit committee so we're here to give us a brief overview of the audit for this year this is the fourth year that we've had the audit performed by cohort and by the same partner stephen westcott financial statements we've received what they now call an unmodified opinion which you speak called an unqualified opinion which means a clean opinion and there are three other areas covered by the audit that don't receive as much attention as a financial statements but which are important to the district compliance with state laws and regulations and district compliance with federal regulations on both of which we've also received unmodified opinions and those are important because they can impact funding that we receive the other area is of internal control and in this area the auditor stude have a comment which i say i will discuss in detail in a moment it's also worth remembering that  unmodified opinion and unmodified audit is not a judgment on our fiscal position it's simply an opinion that our financial reports fairly represent that position although that said the district is fiscally solvent and has met the three percent reserve requirement see b s d has been receiving clean audit and media reserve requirement for a number of years now although it wasn't always that way and industry into these achievements our deputy  fiscal services have also been working constantly to introduce clarity to the unified district reports and the management discussion and analysis in this audit booklet is is particularly a good example at the same time in governmental accounting there are new levels of complexity always arising and one thing we direct your attention to is the grid the accountants letter to the board provides of new significant accounting policies from gaspy the governmental accounting standards board the one that there are three that have been implemented with no material impact and the fourth which will probably catch your attention resulted in a two point three million restatement of our net position because it was a requirement that bond costs no longer be capitalized there are two further policies to be implemented in the next two years in the area of pension plans and pensions with the result that the district will be recognizing long term obligations in pensions for the first time is a liability on our balance sheet in addition under the l c s f l c f there will be at least one new level of documentation in our audit and possibly more complexity so that's just something to bear in mind and i say will discuss the findings thank you former audit committee member director be a translator cutler i and thank you for your dedication to the audit committee your attendance and all the good questions you always asked we appreciate it very  recommendations both from the grand jury and also from fic matt at a time that i'm sure many of you remember the finances of the purple unified school district were much different from what they are today the adopted budget the interim budgets the communications that come from the alameda county board of education and and then also the independent audit that we're doing today first i want to just go over some of the good news which is that the auditor found as far as the financial statements are concerned no immaterial weaknesses were identified no significant deficiencies were identified there were no  noncompliance issues when it came to federal awards there were again no material weaknesses found there were no significant deficiencies found and the same is true for the state awards and i think that the business office was identified is on page seventy one this is not a new finding this is something that has been on the audit some previous years it has to do with the associated student body funds these are funds that are collected the the accountability over the student body association funds thank you very much thank you both and thank you both for your service all right we now move on to your member reports go down the line control hi everyone i like to start off by saying that even though most of them have left the room i'm happy to see so many students of all ages here tonight and i'm hoping that this is a part of a growing trend of student participation  so at berkeley high we've just made it through a hard week of finals and we're back with a fresh master and a fresh start so i know that this item has been removed from the agenda but i'd just like to say that the issue the cooking gardening programs has been brought to the attention of the berkeley high student leadership team and i'm hoping that they're going to get a chance to discuss this issue and i'm also planning to across their presence when this issue is brought back to the board so that we can hear their opinions directly directly and additionally as the representative of berkeley high i'd like to say that the community at berkeley high stands behind be attacked in their need for a safer campus and healthier lunches some of the stuff was talking about with the student and not moving their facility to another campus or some sort i think it's really important for like kids look forward to coming to school look forward to coming to scene like their favorite teachers at the s and have a relationship and for students starting office pre k to twelve and still have them like still want that feeling to be able to go to something that they're familiar with because some kids might be at home in mind i have something cooking classes at some schools i know when i was at school i will lead and washer ten i love the cooking and garden class i went home every day after creating garden class trying to make the same recipes in i know it taught me really a lot about the organic and being healthy and i think is really valuable to kids nowadays i would also like to comment about the extra staffing and security as school again betake has had their better days i was s agree with having like more staff like they said the p t s system that could be working are just more security on campus are something are again like that show us what their classes are whatever if the student doesn't show us the school the school is doing about their education about what they're going to end up being in life later on i think the students think they sort of take it our ally not put their selves to their best effort and star slacking off and messing up and i just want to  d seniors and other students that second record second quarter grades are coming our graduation also coming up for the seniors and that means that i responsibilities are going to be coming your way song and that you should just be prepared in remember that you're one bad decision away and to just stay alive and free in two years keep positive hopefully things get better at school muir last friday it was really wonderful to go around and visit the different classrooms we visited all classrooms through kindergarten through fifth grade and it was really inspiring for me to see not only the teachers tremendously engaged with all of their kids in circle time in different activities but all the kids were on task at every grade level that we went through the kids were on task and then the morning culminated with a spelling bee the fourth and fifth graders and there were a lab in finalists who presented in front of all of their classmates and their parents and it was a rainbow of kids that represented all of the cultures and communities that are out john muir i wasn't able to stay to see who won but it was a really exciting event and all the kids were winners it was really special events i want to thank you who happens to be in the audience and i also want to thank my colleagues on the board and our city council members for having the joint session last night it was an extra meeting in our mouth but i think it was extremely valuable to have the city council on the school board talking together about issues of violence prevention and the twenty twenty vision for berkeley children and youth and hopefully there can be more opportunities to do that because we really did just touched the surface on a number of issues and these issues are issues that are really you know they're not just what goes on in the school day but they're what goes on throughout the community and so having the council on the school board be able to talk together about those things is really important and maybe next time we can make sure we invite our state representatives because a lot the issues are also are pertaining to funding opportunities i also want to give a shout out i didn't realize our principles were going to be here but i want to give a shout out to berkeley high principal scary and vice principal kristin glenn sure and the other staff there who been really working hard on college and career pathways at berkeley high it's been a really evolving area where we've done a lot of r o p and c t e over the years and we have the career california partnership academies but they're really looking at a new way to embed pathways into the entire curriculum for the whole school and it's extremely opportune right now because there's money coming down from the state and it takes kind of the added effort to be able to sit at these regional tables and these places where people are starting to basically jockey and divvy up who's going to apply for what grants and who can benefit from this and vice principal blanchard has really stepped up and has been present at these tables as have other staff at berkeley high and dr evans and the professional learning community and i think we're becoming very well positioned for being able to capitalize on the resources that are coming down and then the last thing i just wanted to say is around the gardening cooking i really want to thank the over fifty people who sent e mails many of whom were from willard but not all expressing their concerns around the middle school gardening cooking program and i think our ability to step back for a second and look at how the sustainability of the garden and cooking programs are not just building a foundation at or rather early grades but also how are looking at  retaining the programs in the middle schools will be a good opportunity and i lastly want to thank all the parents who showed up to smile at this evening with their little tykes and to be able to talk about the issues at hopkins in the t yes a couple of days when i will be having office hours on feb saturday feb eighth at ten o'clock at cafe lila so i just want to remind everyone about that if you want to come from my office hours also i want to just comment a little bit again on the joint the joint session that we had with the council yesterday i think one of the take ways that i came away with was the work that we were doing around with a live and free dr marshall spoke to the fact that he considered berkeley to be a model in adopting that program both in the city side as well as on the school district side in that was actually amazing to me given dr marshall and his work nationwide we are making a difference in terms of you know when we read the newspaper doesn't seem like it but actually violent crime is declining in  berkeley you know unfortunately it's a regional problem and unfortunately our students you know sometimes meet with violence or experience contact with violence outside of our boundaries but within our boundaries we are making a difference we are  fewer children are in the up in the juvenile justice system more curse rated we know we are making some progress and we talked about next steps in terms of more stories of justice well more diversion programs and the need from your mental health a lot of our students are suffering from point post dramatic post traumatic stress syndrome and as i said you know from violence that that goes beyond our borders and so that was a lot of interesting discussion around that and i know that the two by two committee i think will be discussing mental health issues our mayor has pledged to reactivate the east bay safety corridor so we can  deal with maybe in a lively free program that stretches from richmond through berkeley in real in oakland and take some other steps just very quickly i also want to say that i had the pleasure of being part of a panel on education  really really heartened that there are that many students who are considering teaching and teaching our other careers in education and we're really dedicated for making a difference on their campus as well as in our  public school system many of whom already are acting as mentors and as as tutors and in the last thing i wanted to say was around the betake lunch and this is come up a few times and i was hoping that it would have been addressed by now so i would like to know you know kind of when we can you know when this can be addressed and how the boys will be kept up to date so it doesn't be something that we thought was happening or maybe is in the process of happening but just the word isn't getting out and we're not being kept up to date in the students and staff don't know you know when to expect a change and that's all thank you i also agree in terms of the  a berkeley technology academy and the lunch program in the salad bar i think that that's something that should be addressed pretty media and i think it's just about them having the materials i also want to thank the early childhood community of families are coming out with young children i know it's hard you know we have dinner before or after so i really think all the families for coming out in our staff to have to go back to work tomorrow at seven thirty  wanted to to also say yesterday's meeting in terms i think the most important part for me was a take away the star mary mary is very interested in convening a regional conversation with the school boards and our elected around the issues of our students in the violence that is happening across district and across cities and so i'm really enthusiastic about the possibilities of things being better if once we start talking to each other as school districts and as cities i also want to thank our president josh daniels because there as you've noticed there's a little change in our structure and so i really like it's a little refreshing and it's new and it's great and  thank you for also providing that for us i also in terms of the you would be i don't know when this would come but in terms of the transitional in kindergarten conversation we're going to have that in also in light of s b two eighty seven  the legislation that's being proposed regarding all four year olds having childcare regardless of income and the proposed five year plan that there's been put out so i think our community needs to know more about s b two eighty seven but also what does it look like for a school district so it's a conversation to have nothing is decided yet but it's certainly something that we should start to think about and talk about when i also think they are the committee i really i i would i said to defend i think i enjoyed the audit committee because it was for me it was like a t a session before a board meeting before we discuss the big thing so was really helpful need for me to have that group so when when my fellow board members are not able to attend i would gladly substitute for you in there i just wanted to say that i have office hours also on feb thirteenth that council at the not from four to six o'clock also next week i'll be visiting thousand oaks rosa parks in con and visiting especially targeting the math programs and looking at the story of units i'm really excited about those visits also i am on saturday thousand oaks had an event about talking about history of thousand oaks i was really pleased to be there and to hear the stories about how thousand oaks over time has created and the stories of our own families about what that school mean what this school means to  them i look forward to cooking gardening in a more deeper discussion about how we could see that happening in our schools throughout our communities in the final note in terms of really prioritizing  the security system at p t a so thank you very much  so i am also in office hours on february eighth saturday but not the same time as karen at one o'clock at espresso roma on college an ash may not be confused with the express  on hopkins if you have a complaint about the district you should go to karen's office hours it's and if you're something good you like to say you can change scripture go to mine at one o'clock i also like to announce that the game v s is all about the stablish one of the automated external defibrillator program at b h s and the creation of the greg brown memorial fund for student athlete health and safety it is friday february seventh game google earth unified school district l capital bring up our page and the information should be there thank you for the audit committee for their work and for welcoming me to the group yes it's true that we do have that one finding related to a s b funs i would also like to note that there is no evidence whatsoever of any fraud or lost money so the point is that we don't have the best controls but that it's not as if we are losing lunch issue as well as the east bay quarter of violence prevention to see what we can do as part of board meetings we do have full agendas but with i'm sure we can fit in somewhere and then lastly i just would like to take a moment to think our staff i've been now on the boy this is beginning my fourth year and i think that you get a sense of how hard our staff work when you're on the board but as president now i understand  even more and i know that i have as board president wanted to make some changes and i know that staff has worked incredibly hard to try to adjust to those changes and i just want to publicly thank them for all of their patience and both in understanding what we're trying to do and also for their persistence in making it happen so i just wanted to make sure that i see the public who because i know that you all that i just want to say it was really nice to see so many people at the third annual martin luther king celebration it was my first time attending the event and it was an honor to present a few awards to our students and harris building auditorium in oakland this is at least our second time except in the ward and i understand it mark you'll be attending the event force so thank you for that this friday is seven o'clock p m it's my understanding king middle  school well known for their drama department is performing the two minute plays written by the students and we have our principal here so i just wanted now is here and i'm inviting everyone to come to yoshi's next tuesday february fourth to hear the berkeley high school jazz band and there will be performances at seven o'clock and nine o'clock p m and i know i will be attending one of those shows and i know it's going to be very exciting i hope to see there as well and finally i do want to thank our administrators for being here tonight and we will be hearing a little from them about their experience there is in culver city so thank you all right so we are a little bit behind our goal is going to be to end open session at ten thirty so we're now going to move to our eight thirty time certain item two on the discussion items report on culver city schools improving the academic achievement of african students we've allotted an estimated fifteen minutes for the presentation and thirty minutes for the discussion so that means we should be done by about nine forty so i just want to start out by saying to the board that one of my has to be an be like a world class district and there has been a focus on professional  communities and there are more questions that we ask ourselves what we're looking at a professional community you know what is it we want students to be able to know and do what do we do if they don't get it and what do we do when they don't get it and i'm very excited that this year we were able to have all of our and minister and professional in the communities and so that is a first and we are looking at becoming a world class district and so being a world class district we want to look at what are those best practices resources and support that we see that we can provide for all of our students and before you know you have a group of administrators that are in a professional learning community and what they're looking at studying is the achievement gap and so a couple of months ago and thinking outside the box this  opportunity to go to calls for city to look at what color city is doing because their demographics is very much like berkeley you know by school district and so they had a great experience and one of the things i want to say about the demographics  to berkeley is that they're african americans have eight hundred twenty four point a p i which is two points higher than our overall a p i so what is it called for city is doing down there that's making an impact on their students that we might be able to bring back to berkeley and so with that i'd like to turn it over to our professional learning community as they provide  wonderful this is our professional learning community for the acceleration of the cheapen of african american students a follow up from the work route from last year and we've been been able to study a repertoire of research and data and we're beginning our discussions and observations and so again thinking out of the box janet levinson our principal from king brought that culver city data from that we were looking at last year and really wanted to explore that that district so we took a one day visit there this is going to help us inform that repertoire research is a snapshot and in that one day visit we were able to meet with the high school principal the superintendent system principals counselors leadership teacher and and a group of students that were randomly selected by the principal to visit with us and so the principals here tonight will share their observations from so one of the things that i was most impressed by was the student forum and hearing the students voices and their own reflections on their their schooling experiences were high school students and we did spend a fair amount of time at the high school i mean no matter school pri do think that much of what i gathered from the students about one of the things that they thought was was important it's sort of the culture of learning within the school that it was it was cool to learn and it was cool to go to college it was cool to to help each other out in that way so there was a group of students who were seniors who had a club that later became a class called link crew and this was a group of students that chose freshman to mentor and sort of show them the ropes and i know as an adult that sometimes when we're talking as adults to kids it's kind of like like the charlie brown cartoon and and they may not hear us in the same way that they would hear a peer if you're a freshman and you're just finding your way words of wisdom from a senior can be  accessible and make it seem possible and also seniors are really cool so that i think was something that i thought was a structure that they had in place that really put students in a leadership position and and i felt like that it had some positive momentum so a wide variety of students were on link crew it was not just straight a students it wasn't you know just just one kind of student it was a really diverse group of students and talking to talking to the lower class lower class men about what they had done what they knew now that they wished they had known when they were a freshman  they had had a harder time going through was was a really powerful thing and it made me reflect as an elementary school principal about how we can build that sort of structure into all aspects of what we're doing schools we have structures like reading bodies and so forth is there a way that we can we can add some heft to that and really used the leadership that students have and their voice to to help other students so i thought that was something that they were doing pretty well thank you continuing on with that alex mentioned that we were sitting there and we were able to listen to about eight to ten high school students that had this panel and during the discussion of the things that came really clear was this feeling that the students had about this command of the chief there and at one cool so you really got the feeling and i think we all felt this and left this way with that with this feeling that the kids wanted to achieve but had high expectations for themself it was an internal kind of feeling a lot of times we say our teachers have high expectations for the kids but it's about the kids really feel what are they feeling and saw it and what i do they really want to achieve and i feel like somehow they had gotten this feeling that there was a community of in this district and they all got that and it was evident from elementary school all the way to high school because we were asking those kids questions and i was like well did you just get that when you were in high school when you were  they cared about them and they were easy to talk to some of them that i felt was a really college going culture that started in elementary school so it wasn't just in the high school that they started talking about college and really thought that that was something i was on their horizon all of a sudden it was something that they had been knowing about for many many years and they knew there was something they could achieve and finally something that struck you you know as they were talking about teacher here observations that teachers actually went out throughout the whole district so it wasn't just stopping in on a colleague's class at your school but you would find someone within the district that you really admired and going out and having the time to be with both and funds as a principal a the blind man and the elephant right there are each of us are different things depending on our lenses and so i'm trying to think what was the takeaway what were the takeaways that that really made a difference it's interesting because culver city hasn't studied itself so it's difficult for them to articulate what they're doing one of the things that stood out was the investment in their teachers so they've done a lot of work with tyrone how would it u c l a doing courageous conversations to have mike matt toes and anthony mohammad working with their staff now so there's been a deep investment the teachers and as audrey was saying you can hear it in the kids the kids said a lot of things like when i answer the teacher doesn't just say it's right or wrong they ask why do you think that way and helped me become a critical thinker one of the students on the panel said well that was an intentional strategy that was taught to the teachers and the kids can articulate it kids said it's a two way street but i didn't know that until the teacher initiated it that gesture from a teacher has to happen in the first few days the kids talked a lot about that relationship building it at the very beginning of school knowing whether the teachers were there for them or not there for them they had easy access to the teachers and counsellors after school or spare tutoring they definitely felt like potentials had high standards for them they talked a lot about the equity in classroom discussions making sure that you use your critical thinking and that everyone what everyone says matters in the classroom one student had come to culver city on a permit late in his fourth grade and he said he didn't know any math and the teacher matched out to him and he said it actually changed me as a person that to know that somebody cared about me in that way that he had never felt that experience that from somebody before there were a lot of stories like that the kids ask me talk to me ask me how am i doing am i safe to say anything i can try to help me how can i help you is everything ok at home and this kind of clinical read over and over again the importance of these relationships so that was one of the things that i took away and also that it wasn't just casual that it happened but there was really a deep investment in in professional development ongoing across the district mandatory we were talking to the students there and trying to say thanks levinson i'm always more comfortable when you're around that one of the one of the things that we got to with was trying to talk to kids openly about potential bias in their experience as students and i sort of in a clumsy way got around the question do you ever feel like their behaviors that are addressed differently in the classroom for you dillon the principal culver city cut right to the chase is that i think what he's trying to ask is how racist your teachers and i said that not to make light of the issue because kids were very responsive to that and they they frankly felt that there was an absence of bias in that there weren't a lot of clear indications whether it was through how discipline was assigned or how classrooms were managed so i think that just speaks to some of the work that they've done fairly intensively that's sort of manifested itself in some of the things my colleagues have already talked about there were some really clean lines to how they tracked students who potentially could get into trouble there was a way that they used email threads to sort of keep almost like a running record of students they called it hot lists and  the way that they were using that was not just to simply record discipline incidents or behavior issues it was also when positive things happened so that all of the teachers who were involved with that student and the counselors and the administrators essentially had access to sort of a running academic record i was encouraged because some of the stuff we're doing around our courts for prioritised intervention at berkeley high are a step in that direction and we plan to be in contact with them  as as we continue to develop that finally as we start looking at reviewing our curriculum at berkeley high to make sure that we are not just telling single stories when it comes to our student population particularly where their ancestry is concerned the idea being that everybody needs to hear more about their background and we need to move beyond just the units that are on slavery and civil rights and immigration where latino students are concerned and really take a hard look at what our content looks like  and they are doing some of that work through an intercultural literature class that is run by their very impressive teacher slash director of student activities dr bell very day and we're also planning on continued contact with him in fact  colleague our vice principal mr meadows is in contact with dr val very now and as you can see it's a very powerful professional learning community and we are having these conversations every two weeks of thank you for having  may riddell was not able to be here tonight she's not feeling well and she really wanted to add that the case management are ready they've alluded to this case management and how each student talked about everything they needed was available to them on campus direct services direct support and how this helped them to succeed the principal would it would speak to the teachers and teachers were quite requested to challenge their normal to look beyond their normal attributes to determine to turn around students that aren't succeeding and then just to continue on the college going culture really that links into what we're doing within berkeley high is doing and what a director signed i already mentioned and then linking back to the two thousand and twenty in the career and college readiness school but then when the superintendent opened he talked about all of us being a geisha in professional learning communities i think one of the things we saw when we were down there was that they too are very much engaged in ongoing learning as educators and they're using the connections with the university and others to bring in expertise to help their own learning as well looking in areas of cultural competence as well as teaching strategies they also the  just i can't stress enough the relationships how strongly that came across from students and also from the adults that we met with the importance of knowing from student perspective that connection with the adults on campus the college going culture was apparent everywhere there was college paraphernalia and where the classrooms teachers seem to be it seemed to be very apparent what college what colleges teachers had gone into and then that idea of identifying students early students who are at risk trying to do something for them with then before our failure happens this idea of hand in hand high expectations with high support that all of us left that day feeling like it was just one day we only had it a number of hours they were a short time but that it ended up being a valuable a very valuable experience for all of us thank you all very much and i also really appreciate you guys being both conveying a lot of information in a very short period of time so well out on the floor in no particular order you know i want to start us off questions comments evaluations and assessment and maggie read all and proxy you'll start i think i heard in a conversation when the superintendent was telling me about the school environment he also you know i think i believe you mentioned that you didn't see any students slouched in their  heads hats so there was also that that you that you saw in terms of how students were engaged you know for a better word in their classroom space in their lives space that's that's  that's a huge thing i think one of the things that we do see when students are not engaged and not intent of and teachers are there's a disconnect and for some of our students for me it's these are wonderful things but how do we connect it and bring it back to berkeley and create some real meaningful steps towards becoming you know improving what we have and making it real and meaningful for students and for teachers  and everybody else who supports our students so it's where do we go from here so as it's just good barry told you the connections that he made at the high school in terms of  the curriculum that he plans on using and have a conversation with some of the folks that he met and how we can take what they're doing down there and bring it back here that's one step and then also we were looking at the  e mail trail as well as some of the other things or just some of the strategies that we can use with our students in terms of preah done to find kids before they get into you know some  rough spots in the school so so those are some of the things but the idea that i feel is looking at those best practices and really bringing them back to our district and in also looking at you know i talked about becoming a world class district and just the fact that we are in a professional money community number one and number two that we're going outside of our district and looking at best practices and then looking at those best practices and bringing them back to our district so those are three things that i think that we've really ach d this time around and this is just the beginning of that and to answer it more specifically in our professional learning community we are discussing not only cover city but also looking at research looking at best practices we have pat saddler from longfellow who's in a doctoral program bringing back articles and all of the members here tonight and having these vital discussions and beginning to look deeper into our the work plan that that we began last year and looking at where we see the common threads as this is just one day but beginning to look at those connections and where we see the research is connecting to connecting to commonalities director s so i want to really extend my appreciation for you taking the group out of berkeley all the way down to southern california because i think it is important especially for those of us who've been here for a long time we get kind of stuck in our ways and you can read as much as you want but experiencing it as a different thing so i encourage us to do that more in different learning communities that we have and if we can find places that are closer so it's you know cheaper or whatever but i think getting out of the district and visiting other places is always beneficial i have a couple of questions and one is when you said that the kids were able i don't remember who said it the kids were able to find all the services and supports they needed onsite i'm curious to know what that means and then where there are cases when you say case managers where is that the teachers who are doing the case management where there are other people who are doing that did you get  and then the second part is around the deep connection that teachers had with the kids and that that seemed to have been some reflective of a very intensive professional development i assume there's also a very strong partnership with the teachers and i think janet you said it or one of you said it was mandatory training we have a cultural competency training that's been going on at this point it's been strongly encouraged i think not mandatory and so i'm just wondering what your thoughts are on how we can work together with the teachers to make sure that our training our professional development is more r is encouraged or mandatory or whatever again in partnership because i think you can't foster those deep connections unless you're putting the investment in there and that costs money and time and mutual commitment from both the district administration side and the teacher side to work together on that syme just curious did they talk about how they made that happen or like how long it took to kind of embed that it we asked that question and they say it was a process over time and i believe that's what janet's going to say too because she spoke ahead of time with the middle school principal last year and and it's been a process that they've built over time with in the ongoing staff development and to answer your case management question more specifically it's built into what everybody's doing what they do also have academic counselors and other specific support but  example of the e mail trail they'll say pass qualls staley news and they'll be sending it around to all teachers and every teachers responding to that hot list so to speak and have an ongoing email address so that every teacher and part of their culture so to speak or their environment and so there's just that it's it is embedded they spoke we asked how and and they spoke to the ongoing professional development and they've said it the superintendent that they answered that it was working on saturdays with kids working after school i assume they were being paid for that time somewhere i don't know if i saw this earlier i don't know if you guys remember this that they said the student didn't do well on a test they contacted the student the learning center contact right contacted the student so there were a lot of checks on making sure the kids were accessing those resources and then in terms of you referenced the cultural competency academies and teachers going through it in berkeley  steps i think yeah i think the teachers from what i'm hearing were just did a bunch of the work on this in our staff meeting today the teachers are ready for the next steps and having ongoing work and having  consistent practices that everybody's looking but you know they know are tried and true and i think jefferson and other schools are looking at some of the practices like wright is right and no opt out and things like that and looking for practices to put into place so i've seen some of these teaching strategies for some of the teachers that i've hired that have come from elsewhere who've been trained like this idea that you never say an answer is right or wrong you just keep prodding kids and it's pretty powerful to watch i think there's some training there that that our teachers i think would be interested in having and it sounds like we've got some internal capacity and that we've got some best practices that are going on and so well it's really good to look externally it's also important to find where those those strengths are internally and how do we really capture that and then take it to scale so this exciting other comments or question and i have a few comments so first of all i think that peer inspiration is really crucial and i think that there's a fine line between an environment that learning isn't cool and an environment of peer pressure in which you find your inspiration and i think the question though excuse me i think the question now is how do we foster an environment of pure inspiration and because we have control over our teaching methods and over our staff development but we can't directly change our students attitudes we don't have control over attitudes and so i think that's a actually a very difficult question that we're faced with so i'm interested in discussing that more and i also think that creating something similar to the link crew is a really great idea to implement at the high school level freshman year can be a huge turning point because it's a major shift in environment and in responsibility and independence and so i think having the opportunity for a freshman to be mentored and guided through that transition is really really beneficial and i think that's something that we should look into i also think that teacher as a lot of people have said teacher student relationships are key here and w creating these really strong relationships is important but i think we also have to talk about what we do know when that relationship isn't there and when a teacher isn't easy to talk to and where does the student go van and creating those resources and yet so i also think that having a similar panel to this within our own district would be really interesting because i think we know that the responses would be really different and we have to know how they're different in order to make a change so i think creating a similar panel would be really interesting and is actually a great first step to making the changes that we want to make within thought oh yeah going once but i mean i would agree i think the concept of linked through is is something worth implementing but again it's not simply a matter of comparing kids up with kids you know there is  course and they're getting we actually walked into a classroom where the kids were getting instruction in how it went talking to a group of freshman boys about a various issues so there's there is a significant investment making that happened so we would certainly i mean i think one of the places we're trending in our thinking at the high school is needing more you know forget the sports analogy but we need bodies on the kids that we're most concerned about and whether that's student advising or some additional mentoring an def definitely open to that i'd also like to say that in my experience at berkeley high i've seen some similar sorts of programs i know that ac has a program called ac mentors which isn't targeted at specific students it targets all freshmen any see it but i think it's a program that can be strengthened and expanded to the entire student body and it basically it pairs and upperclassmen anywhere from sophomores to seniors small piece of started though as we think about that my colleague mr wong that brought this up just recently is that when we look we often acknowledge our achievement gap issue which consistently focused obviously as a result on the focus of african american latino students but one of the resources that we've most underutilized at berkeley high is that core group of african american students that are succeeding and bringing their experience and their voices in to to impact the change that we're trying to so it's another way that link crew sort of inspired our director well one of the things to speak to what you were saying that i thought was really significant was that sensible talking about a particular student who he had thought had kind of been a turning point for the school in terms of student school culture this was a student that i guess was kind of quiet and unassuming and not you know like a big jock or anything like that and he had been working hard and you know was just kind of quiet unassuming kid but i think he had done something like gotten into harvard and kids like rallied around him they voted him homecoming king they were all so proud of him that someone from their community had done this and they meet like this had nothing to do with the adults it was came it came from the kids they just really be lionized him and and from that point on like the principal was saying that there had been a change in the school this was not someone who you know was mr popular or anything like that but he had become kind of the cause of a bunch of the kids and it sort of had come from them it seemed like there was a tipping point at a certain point that that the principal was describing to us which i thought was significant so i think that the power that the students have themselves is something that really you can't get make that happen but it is something that  relationships you know when you talk to african american parents and there's always this kind of if you ask it you know that the kind of the truism that if you ask administrator and teachers you know you know what's the beecher obstacles toward  eliminating the achievement gap and you know they'll talk about social economic issues and if you ask parents you know what's the obstacle and it's like i don't really want to hear about obstacles just teach my kid and this is not good at all put the burden on students but you know from the parents point of view that it's the administration you know it's the school district you know it's the educators that are supposed to figure out you know how to reach children and what we know just from time immemorial is that students will do anything you know  knows who they know cares about them and that will transcend almost anything and you know and we all know that i think inherently and we've certainly seen that in order to do you know in our own lives and so it's really interesting to hear you know going to a school in which you can you know they could be talking about tutoring they could talk about r t i you know they could be talking about you know all these kinds of systems change it really goes back to that that same truism you know that you know tomorrow for going down there for taking the time away from your personal lives to do so and also as director sign i said to being open to new ideas i think that one of the experiences that i have found most valuable as a board member is having worked in my day job with other school boards and seeing how they operate and seeing their customs and habits and what they focus on and what i might not take every single one of them i think it has given me a perspective that has that i have found to be helpful at least and i would go and it sounds very thing that you've talked about that not only were you did you come up with the idea of doing this but you went in with an open mind and so was that a defensive posture of like oh well we you know we don't do that but we do this and i think that that attitude was really reflected in how you presented what you saw and i only think i can you know is only to the good and terms of being open to what works down there or anywhere else and bringing that in here to make as our superintendent has a world class district so thank you again very much for your work and we look forward to seeing how it goes so we are now moving on all right we picked up eight minutes to nine fifteen time certain the second one in our action items this is the demographic study by davis demographics and  planning we have thirty minute set aside including a ten minute presentation we're getting set up so we're getting set up i will turn it over to our superintendent first introductory remarks yes so i just want to remind the board that the board authorized davis demographics to provide a study about projected student population numbers it was a first in five years and the last of it was accurate for that window but it proposing that we form a subcommittee to come back with some more specifics because this is a detailed report and we can come back as we discuss some of the implications of this study so with that i'd like to turn it over to our director of the celebes legions thank you i'm here with christy jacobs who is from davis demographics and planning and as you mentioned it's the first study we've done in five years and this last study didn't include transitional kindergarten so obviously that's a change in legislation there's some questions i think asked about does it include you know any proposed additional legislation for the what is currently proposed which is a half time four year old program and it does not include that as well so this is really just trying to say what are the numbers as we currently know with current legislation based upon numbers not just from our own cohort but also from what the cit predict of course is the transitional can the garden will grow because it is currently doesn't meet the numbers you would anticipate from you know the number of months of kids that are eligible to apply so i think that it will probably grow over time based on that district actually appears it's an interesting thing that we really were just discovered in trying to go through these numbers over the course of the last five or six years bump between our eighth grade and ninth grade classes is significantly smaller and so that may mean we're retaining more kids it may mean other things so and you know we're tracking the individual children we're only tracking the top total numbers so it doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't kids coming in and out of our system but we are it out much lower percentage bump than we've been in the past in the past we were getting somewhere close to forty percent more kids between eighth grade ninth grade this past year is about fifteen percent and that's a pretty radical change but it's happened in the last few years and i think it bears watching to be really sure about it so with that krist e again my name's christine to get some from david's demographic some plenty i'm basically just going to have a ten fifteen minute presentation here to go through our methodology how we came up with the numbers and then the numbers themselves i got it was on a technical air just a little bit about the company davis and demographics and planning i've been with the company says two thousand and two and i been a project manager for seven of those years we have about one hundred ninety school district cards throughout the u s and we've got a pretty good retention rate so we're pretty much the number one company that districts go to four k through twelve planning so here we are what we've done for the district that's far we have created a map geo database using j s software i don't know it's like mapping software give you a little bit of a synopsis of that as well we've got the student data from the district and we used the october seabeds twenty thirteen as the base and then projected from there out created a historical student data study called mobility factors that looks at the in out migration of the students throughout the district so and then we looked at of course any residential development and you do have some believe it or not things are starting to pick up again so we've got some development projects going on and i'll talk a little bit about that to this just gives you a really quick overview of what i'm talking about with this mapping stuff mapping you'll see in this in this map we've got each zone and then we've got the students colored by what zone that they attend school so you'll see that the at the at the north east northwest you'll see all those little blue reddish dots so those are students who are attending there in their home zone and then in the green you have the green dots of those students are attending their homes in other words they're going to their home school attendance area and then down at the bottom with the purple so same idea so it kind of gives you an idea but you see a spattering of dots students who are not going to their home attendance area so which is expected that's that's normal but it sort of kind of gives you an idea of how how that's going on in the district the severity of it this is just a real quick overview of what our software does it creates a projection for each individual planning area we actually break up your district into i think four hundred  forty planning areas sort of like census blocks made up of about one hundred students hundred twelve students each and we actually do a projection for each study area so and then of course you know we put them together for elementary elementary zones the middle school in the high school our methodology is in a nutshell we graduate your twelfth grade out move up your other grades of course we estimate over the next few years and then of course we modify that and woman based upon your mobility factor which can be a plus or minus a gain or a loss depending on what's going on in that in that particular  the zip code according to what you know sort of mixed up the district so unfortunately i don't give it to you by district so these are the zip codes that make up most of the zip codes that make up your district and you'll see in the yellow that your birth rates are dropping in other words you're getting fewer having fewer birth rates and the next few years which is going to translate into smaller kindergarten classes so of course not including any development  these are your mobility factors these are the factors i was talking about with the in out migration where we're looking at the trends and whether or not a attendance area or a zone is keeping students or if students are moving air moving out  these look pretty good so you've got in especially in your central zone it looks like you're hanging on to your kids so anything over one is or over one hundred percent is a good thing that's means you're you're gaining students or you're hanging onto him at least and anything in the red means you're losing students so you'll see by grade by grade it's a a mix but for the most part of looks like if you look at your district wide averages for the most part you're hanging on to students in fact you're gaining some at the high translates to good numbers which we'll talk about here in a second you know this is it just a real quick map of your residential development i it sounds fantastic you know over a thousand apartment condo this is expected to be built on its urban development though urban living which not doesn't usually translate to too many students so although it sounds you know it sounds great it probably won't yield you too many kids so because of the type of housing it is so this does not include any senior student housing this is housing that could potentially have families in it so but given our research it's determined that you won't probably yield as many student says he would in like a suburban single family detached home which is i think expected these are your studio factors so basically if you go all the way over to the right worse is k through twelve students what they are so in this is like you're said you're not san ramon or you know it's like this is you know we're in a urban area here so little bit different this is just a real quick view it's also i don't know if you noticed on is i have the page numbers in the report too if you happen to have a copy of their report this these are just your totals obviously we can't go through each individually and you can't hardly see it anyways but even nutshell it looks like  this year for next year you're looking at a gain of around hundred ninety k through twelve students most of that looks like it's going to be in the middle school a little bit in the elementary and teeny bit of a loss over at the high school level and then as you move forward the following year you'll have a little bit more of a gain so things are looking up so it doesn't sound like it was as good as it was but it's still up so  anyway so that that's that kind of gives you a bird's eye view of that just a real quick slide to give you kind of an idea of your historical romance this is just looking at your data from the last few years so i did i you know this is new to me the district hasn't been working with g d p for a few years so i just took these numbers you know from the c business and analyzed them so it looks like you're starting to grow again from last year last year you look looks like you had a little bit of a decline at the overall level the k through twelve and a little bit again over at elementary and this year we recovered a little so and with a two percent gain from last year that's just basically straight c that's numbers informational thing not anything that has nothing to do with the projections this is a demographic forecast from as is a third party demographic company that basically takes census data and projects it up so this isn't something that d d p came up with this is something as you came up with but it's general population information for the area so sort of backing up what we're saying with happening with the students so if you take a look at this if you this is population by age so you see we have our if five to five year olds to nine year olds and ten to fourteen year olds generally you're the student population and you'll see if you go from twenty thirteen to twenty eighteen that it bumps up a little so the percentage of the population stays about the same bumps up a little but the population is growing so that would you know it would make sense that we would show  good mobility factors or mobility factor showing again and then a population that's growing so that that makes sense in summary like i said we're projected to increase over the projection timeframe in fact if things progress as they as they currently are if the trends remain the same you could be up over fifteen hundred kids by two thousand and twenty so again that would be you know assuming that your mobility trend stay the same in everything also and this of course is from your higher mobility rates and then from the residential development that's expected so we do recommend that you look at this annually i know that's a lot but things do change and especially with the introduction of t k and the volatility of the economy especially over the last few years things have been changing drastically for a lot of districts so w so so again the purpose of tonight was to really just present the data the data that may cause other things to happen afterwards i think that you know in the future of we have to look at school capacity questions well have to look at class size reduction questions i think those are things that you know do need to be examined and and if and if you kind of think about what's happened the last couple years are kindergartens have gotten a lot larger we again we picked a lower one next year because of birth rates but they've gotten larger if you think about all those kids going migrating all the way through the system that kind of speaks to why we will end up with larger numbers it's along with some additional from the residential development but i think the prime primary changes we've gotten larger numbers at the very early ages and we expect to keep them through the rest of their careers so just for the thousands are watching i want to read from the summary that i think highlights what just said the berkeley u s d a student population is projected to increase by four hundred thirty three students in middle schools it's four hundred fifty three students and in the high school of seven hundred two which just as it anecdotally would put the district over ten thousand students in a moment for the first time certainly in my lifetime i believe it was back in there in the eighty's in the seventy's over ten thousand but well over ten thousand we haven't we haven't been there for a decade so it's it's definitely a trend that we need to be aware of so thank you for the presentation the floor is now open for questions and comments with think how via the superintendent that we're focused on the data and we don't want to get sidetracked at this point with the scotians about state law or you know what to do t k we're just trying to understand what's necessarily list the the residence is fluid so at any given time the residence might be berkeley but it might not be but yet they would they're still eligible to receive are to be educated in our district decrease in it so so they're just but they're starting from the number of kids we have at the different grade levels and then looking at what the future would be so they would be included in the basement the other question that i had was  i don't know how sensitive your model is for particular regional trends and so for example some of this is anecdotal and it's been the newspapers that there seems to be kind of a migration of of of couples who are of childbearing age or have very small kids from san francisco to the east bay in that you know that the cost of housing in san francisco no is so expensive that berkeley is considered a bargain and and the school district is sound you know so i don't know if you know that something that is you know it's only been a trend just for the past i think couple of years and i don't know if you're models that s well when you say sensitive i mean we don't we we look at the mobility factors so we basically compare movement from grade to grade specifically why the movement was you know  movement is and basically we looked at we did the we looked at the trends for the last four years so we but we went back to two thousand and eleven so we did it we looked at the difference between twenty eleven twenty i'm sorry twenty ten twenty eleven twenty twe thirty for three years are different but to the extent that students the changes happened in berkeley we would be she would be capturing is part of it the idea that now or in the next few years that accelerates it wouldn't be captured in you data right exactly so i think that that's a snapshot right and i'm a little concerned that there is you know the economy may make kind of normal projections a little different i mean i  think that you know our are keeping more students is partially because i think you know our schools are very very sound in people who are confidence where before some of those middle years there was some feeling that neal perhaps for among some families because of choices but i also think it's economics that certainly during the recession there were a lot of families that you know could no longer afford private schools an option sure and i think that maybe that's changing some i think in kind of once you've experienced it works for your kid why pay that private tuition and i think that lastly i think given the cost of housing now i mean the median housing cost in berkeley now is seven hundred thousand and you know if you're buying into that market to do that plus private tuition is is is a big stretch so i don't know i mean so these are some of the things i think a very you know i don't know if these are long term trends but i would expect that they would be pertinent to the time frame and that actually is again is captured in the mobility factor so any of that movement and again you sort of play into my my idea and my record recommendation that we keep looking at the trends because you're right they do change so and this is the scenario this year next year or the year after it may be a little different you know so maybe your mobility rates will be a little bit better so but everything that you're talking about all the issues you're taught are captured in the mobility in the mobility rates like i said i we don't get we don't have the time and the resources to delve into specifically why students are moving but we if they are moving we have captured it numerically that makes sense yeah so yeah thank you director sana a couple of questions and just trying to understand the map which i'm sorry because i think because it's black and white i don't know if this is one you had up there but it's the map of the elementary school attendance let me pull it back up this one yeah ok yeah it's a cool it's a very it's got a lot of good stuff in it and unfortunately i can't see that far but i'm just trying to get a sense and i'm having a hard time looking at this so maybe i'll just ask you is when you look at it i mean generally i think common knowledge is that we tend to have a density of children who live in southwest berkeley ok where going south and west berkeley not just south of us sorry south and west they're going  the spread from west to east in the sense of the zones but in looking at the population changes did you look i couldn't tell here if the birth rate changes whereby it's i'm trying to figure out where the growth rates in where the kids are in the neighborhoods and assess that would be that would show in your attendance area projections so which i didn't have time to show what is going on in each zone as far as far as population ages but i'm actually curious that's as far as we go down to the study area level oh i'm you're speaking i'm actually talking like neighborhood based like we report in the full report i don't know if you have a copy of the four parts anyways they're each individual planning or he has its own projection so if you were in if you were concerned about or want to know what's going on in certain regions you would have to figure out what city areas they are and there's a map in there as well that will tell you where the study is so i guess this is the smallest level that we don't we go down as ours summary projections so maybe i'll just go in and look because i would actually find that interesting to the area because i think it has an impact on whether or not one of the things we take into consideration is the exact geographic structure of the zone you know is based also on where kids mean that's why we put those in there so you can do that so lou could you talk briefly about the pressures that given that this isn't equal that the growth is not equally distributed throughout the district and we don't have equal facilities in not quite as large as the central zone but it is it is i think the second largest zone in terms of population and it has three elementary schools and not for elementary schools and so the south has four elementary schools one of which is quite large or it has a capacity to be quite large and so if you look at this sounds and if you remember the last time we did a demographic study and we made a decision where the board made a decision to share between the central and the south zone and decision to share the north to share band between the north and the central zone and it was a factor in the board's decision to expand jefferson because there was more pressure in that zone based upon these projections are we seeing equal pressures in all three seven of the course the study is opposed to one twelve and one thirteen in the two other zones and i didn't have it for the middle school the middle school if there really is about the same between the two there is growth in both so it's about the same and again of course with the middle schools you have zone is just for king and willard with longfellow being a choice school i just wanted to for the thousands who are watching us want to point that i just had one question in terms of when you're talking about the numbers and how it's do the numbers capture the inclusion of ethnicity in the mobility movement of particular thinking of hispanic latinos and and how why not can't you look at that or include that our study doesn't it doesn't look at ethnicity or anything like that birth rates in there's information on births is there as there is yeah we were just looking at a straight t k through twelve progression so we're not breaking it down any farther than that i guess is the reason that i'm asking for that because in terms of we've seen the population growth sure mannix in california and we're seeing it also in our schools and in terms of informing us also in terms of the potential that there will be more of a greater need for  bilingual programs to a mercian program that information is something that we can look at we didn't look at that in the study because this is a projection study but we can look at that using our software so it depends yes so that would be a little bit different of a project but that is definitely something that we have software that can assist districts on looking at or we can actually do studies herself more than my question to my fellow board members is that something that you would like to have included only because it gives us an idea we're projecting enrollment project facilities or we should also be looking at with the greater need also be for additional population but it's looking at that we would have to be looking at terms of the kinds of language programs that would provide one of the things i mean this is a little off the side but you know i don't think that even with our own current information and because when he is the word mobility we use the word coordinates really the same thing and you know we every year look at our numbers based upon what are either us or you know we use a three year and six year to look at our gross numbers but i'm not aware that you know we could i mean i don't know if  someone in the district could even look at our current role would help you maybe with the incoming with the with the new housing being built or wouldn't help you with the incoming case but you certainly could do it with the rest of your population even their services well that would be my other question too it raised less at last night's meeting in terms of the information that we've gotten from this in terms of a projection of our our increase of over a thousand children in our schools between now and twenty twenty is it that how are we sharing this information with the people that we tapped into the city of berkeley and happen and housing in terms of this is what we are seeing in the numbers and it's going to be increasing in terms of families and children coming in being born in berkeley going to berkeley schools how are we providing as a city affordable housing for families and looking at low income families  housing i think this is important for make sure that we've got we've gotten so that now we should be sharing this also information as them but as we're thinking about it we should also be thinking about the housing not just the the what is it the market rate of housing but also affordable housing for families right now i mean what we get in order to or i do but what she did is part of the study was to say what does the city currently have on the books as plan development and how the is i don't know if the information when you get from the city says this is a planned low cost you know or sometimes it does i was actually able to talk to the planners themselves and some of the projects have developers some don't i would say probably in the majority of them or not affordable housing that i could see or at least it wasn't mentioned i so i can't say you know that for sure it's not maybe they just in tell me it was but the ones that i did find out were there were a couple that were like most of them are are parked apartments and condos that they're you know hoping to sell i'm sure that this is not usual conversation that school districts take with their cities that because we have a close relationship with our city i think it would be important to share this information and how we as i know me as a board member would advocate for our city to really consider seriously in our as we look out as a lookout to housing to making affordable housing for ok thank you so i want to take up the superman suggestion on a mobility well i think part of the question around the challenge with the data is that we may be getting in flux of families coming over from san francisco or from wherever we've had an exodus of families from low income and i think it especially when the economy has tanked so what happened is people can afford to move here and they went into richmond and they went into poland they went up that way while at the same time we have people coming in young families who can afford to to move in here and so i think the challenge is that and if you look at the census data our demographics are changing in the city and so i'm not sure how you project out some of that information and the city has to do a policy whether you're going to try to you know create more affordable housing but i think i don't know how you get the trends to accurately assess  demographics of ethnicity and socio economic status when there's so much flux in and out it in and out of town in a sense that's why you just have to take the last few years and kind of deal an average so that's really the best you can do  and then and if you can if you can update it you know frequently or so on that point director of color would you be interested in being on the subject need to kind of delve into this issue more and not only address that issue but you know be equally interested in affordable housing for homeless teens and other interested board members is that a yes or no ok so the question on the table ok so director sign  how this information is going to be used it seems to me that there are several things and you know they're kind of summer i would seem like a short term in terms of the a one to two years you know intermediate which i would consider in terms of looking at maybe the need for a new classroom space that would be there was that what could be contained in our current founding capacity and then three more long term you know what might end up being part of you know what we need at a future bond because it seems that there's several things that this data begs the question of one is additional classroom and related to solidify space i think the other is the districts have already become unbalanced demographically in terms of low income students southeast zone you know the within the zones we're still pretty maintaining our balance between schools but across his own snow there's an imbalance with the southeast zone having a higher percentage of lower income students than the north in the middle school so i think at some point we're going to have to look at our our categorization of the geographic areas that we use for our integration plan and i also think we're going to have to look at kind of maybe some of the school assignment zones to maybe particularly at least in the short term do some flexing of where those lines are are drawn kind of similar to what was done before you know when when kind of the central zone could also go to to malcolm x and then i think you know we do have some classroom space jefferson for example but you know i know we're not going to sort of i don't think fifteen hundred students and you know it's true that the district was over ten thousand once but that was also when we didn't have twenty t one ratios in k through three and that is still a question mark because again because of the way the state formula has changed where they're only supporting it twenty four to one not twenty to one that i think that's part of this equation because if the district at some point chooses to do a twenty four to one you may have no capacity problems at all your own material you may still have the other issues but you may not have that i was going to say that i think that's part of what a study would do is that you know couple sudar is that if you are assuming twenty one it looks like this if you're assuming twenty four to one that it looks like that you know because i think you know that is part of the discussion that we have to have in order to do it to make those decisions right but in speaking i agree with the direction which is i think there is a look at what happens next year i mean we currently you know you had a whole host of people here are concerned about hopkins that we're at the open mike here because we had said that if the default was if we couldn't come up with another solution for next year was to look at transitional to garden and hopkins that came to borders and information item but with this data we make because it's actually slower than we would have predicted for next year we may be able to buy a little bit of time but i think that that is a still a question that we have to look at so i think the most immediate question is are we can we absorb our transitional kindergarten at our elementary schools in one fashion or another for next school year that is probably the first question as then you move into something that is a couple years out and something that might be in a future bond so i think that the structure of what how you laid out is exactly where you need to think about it so we're going to need to move on to other items but i know the superintendent want to weigh in quickly on kind of just the his vision for the kind of focus of the subcommittee of talking so i see the subcommittee as really delving deeper into this demographic study and its implications on t k zoning and some other factors that we need to consider as we move forward with that so what that being said and i think that i have two people now interested in going to subcommittee to help me delve into all these pages and we will be looking at those are two of the main things but there are some other things that we need to consider as well come back to the board ok thank you both very very much thank you for staying late so we're now going to move on to number one on means there are no audit adjustments or material findings and with that i'd like to turn over to greg good evening board members i'm going to try to keep this very very brief we met with the i met with the audit committee on monday and i want to thank the members of the  t committee who stuck around and did a great job of presenting to you the results of the audit report i'm going to try not to cover things that they are covered but just to say very briefly the audit process involves the audit of the financial statements the out of federal compliance the out of state compliance the document that we refer to as yada report includes all of the districts financial statements notes to the financial statements the management discussion analysis which is your narrative description of the financials fo different auditors reports and it's the audit committee members explain to you they're all would refer to as unmodified type opinions financial statements present fairly the financial condition of the district there are no exceptions not in any of the federal compliance areas no internal control deficiencies mature weaknesses or significant efficiencies the one exception it was noted was with respect to the student body at longfellow which was discussed their  district management i believe has a plan in process to try to help the staff at longfellow to improve their internal controls and it's an area that we continue to monitor every year as well as a district management there w accounting standards that were implemented this year that reflected in the financial statements we spent considerable time at the audit committee meeting the other night explaining those and walking through those they really didn't change any of your operations it's more reporting issues had to do with the costs associated with with debt and how they're how those costs were were counted for and being reported going forward so that's essentially what i really because we met with the audit committee and they did a great job of explaining it to you i really don't have a lot more to say but if you have any questions of me about either the audit process or the content of the other reporter we have an answer for you so overall to the good news we have had a couple of attendance issues in the past have gone away which is really great  and it means that the books back and the fact that we're doing and the books are really good and he questions or comments you know i just i want to just to comment in terms of the so should students and i know that has improved because i think it would it was more schools other activities funds collected for various club activities like said selling healthy snacks perhaps on t shirts or pencils or things like that and really our focus is on looking at the internal control environment to make sure that that money is being safeguarded from the time it's collected until the time it gets into the bank and then that the process for making payments is also properly documented and controlled again to try to do two things one is to protect district employees who are responsible for this money and also to make  having been on in that when i worked in the city on the audit committee there with the mayor's office it is rare to get i mean i don't want to be a little associate student body but it is rare to get a report that has very has so few findings and i just really want to commend the fiscal services staff under under this cleveland there i think it is really stellar performance and it's an honor to be on a board where the district is really being managed fiscally so responsibly and i just i want to thank you for the i don't want to thank the audit committee for all the work that you do and i polished as i couldn't make monday's meeting but i just think it's stellar to have a report come out with that being the only finding so thank you very quickly did you audit or partial tax as part of the audit we actually did that as part of the of the district go without objection without objection we're going to know it's unanimous all right item three discussion item information on governor's budget and then we will do consent we'll do see twelve and we will watching us on t v s and watching the time so first i just want to report that we've had good news lately i mean that's great i've been here six years and is also buying down the deferrals been getting our cash deferred from the state due to the poor economy so our cash has been coming in a lot slower and timely than it had in the past and so for all school districts now that cash will be submitted to school districts on time so that good for our districts where we will have to even consider any temporary loans to get through of improving prop ninety eight has skyrocketed mainly due to prop proposition thirty passing so that's very good news and the governor is continue to fund the new local control funding formula so  dollars in terms of what prop ninety eight was supporting and then you see that there's an incline so everything is as much as it relates to prop ninety eight impending for school districts with fourteen fifteen have an a pretty good jump there and and so there's four point five billion dollars that's going to go towards a tap and just so you know i presented the formula to our classified staff two hundred classified staff at the classify meeting monday it was pin drop quiet they were really listening so i was really impressed with them and they had a lot of good questions afterwards and a lot of them really retain basic grant supplemental grant some of the and the el cap so they were able to speak the language after that session and so the greatest news about the budget is that for those who've been involved with the new formulas the gap between where we were twelve thirteen and where the governor's going to get us twenty twenty one in this eight year period of time will receive additional revenue and so the main thing that came out of the january budget was that we're going to receive more of that gap funding in fourteen fifteen so as a substantial increased to twenty eight percent of that gap funding which means that in the two years the next two years will get one third of that gap funding in the next two years which is a really good for the school district and in two thousand and fourteen fifteen we should begin in about seven hundred fifty one dollars for eighty eight more than we got in the prior year for us is not quite that amount so we don't have as many free and we do send supplemental under the supplemental grant funding as other districts so we're not quite going to get that amount and here is just  new dollar amount so you have that on your power point there's a car low cost of living adjustment zero point eight six percent that's been added to the numbers you saw it first so this is the new numbers based grant money governor's proposed budget in january when we don't get concentration grant but those numbers as well and this is how it actually looks at berkeley so you may want to keep that so this is how much will fiscal impact of the government budget my last slide and it just shows you how much we're going to receive in increased pain spending each year and those are ongoing so that they add on each year so a million dollars in thirteen and then i include what was already reply to that person in our budget and what different the difference is so based on the governor's budget we get an additional one point five million dollars than what we projected if you would maybe see a little bit more about this chart because it's one that when i first looked at it you know it's to kind of realize that it's just one equation in the budget and i you know i want people to understand kind of what it means in terms of that doesn't mean that we are losing four hundred twenty two thousand dollars or over budgeted for it you know i mean just to kind of explain that part right the revenue side of this is our increased revenues over three years and what i'm showing based on the governor's recent january budget in the delta so that's i mean we're losing money it is means that what we projected is higher i mean what we projected first interim is actually lower than then first interim but it's still an overall increase in revenue and where that also is mentioned here is our expenses so this is just showing the impact of the government's budget our revenue and our expenses are not showing right just like  to make is that one i think you know given the uncertainty regarding prop thirty passing and what the revenue would look like he didn't amazing job and it was a pretty accurate prediction and you know you were you know four hundred thousand off but given it was a guesstimate that's very close but i think i just want to say again what you said at the end that this doesn't reflect the expenses they're attached to that restaurant and so we're not looking at a deficit based upon that revenue that's like a separate conversation and in fact if you look at thirteen fourteen you know in fourteen fifteen there is revenue coming in that we've not budgeted because we we know  haven't passed those budgets correct and then some of that money is subject to our local control accountability plan which we've been communicating to the community and school sites and there's  briefly is i don't want to be a wet blanket but i mean it's really wonderful that we've got this increased money and that finally things are on the upswing but i've also tried to communicate with that we went down you know to the bone to the knuckle when you look at eleven twelve and and what we're doing to verse we're slowly inching or you know a little bit more rapidly inching back up so it's not like all of a sudden we're flush with tons of money which is what actually some people think out there and in fact what we're doing is we're rebuilding things that we still were able to retain a foundation and we have an opportunity now with the supplemental funds to actually do some of the things we've been wanting to do with our most underserved communities and so i just i think it's important that people balance out the optimism with also the reality that were there were rebuilding things that we really had to slash over the last  making plans for their their budgets and what they will and they had all this e i a money they had money they had how does this look like in terms of the funding that we're going to get and for operate the program that's right so it's district why this part of the plan in terms of whether we allocated to the site or not i don't think we're there yet in that decision making and we've rolled e i a funding into this year that needs to be a decision we have to use that that same money for the targeted student group so the need to be is still sitting on how we roll that money to fourteen thousand and we definitely need to communicate to the s t c the about how we're planning to do that and then the supplemental grant money on top of that but it's district why we haven't really made a decision whether it'll go for savings or not they won't be getting numbers until it gets around april i think it's the i mean it's kind of going to you know they're they're meeting and we're meeting to figure out their budgets and they're going to have less money at least initially unless we as the district has tried to give school site some of the money that's come in and that it's an option all right sounds good thank you deputy superintendent we're going to move on to our concern calendar do i have a motion for the consent calend moved by director hempel second said by second director of color without objection all right without objection it's approved moving on to see twelve which is the superintendent's recommendation for the four spots on the parent advisory committee mr superintendent yes and i like to bring forward four names to complete the p a c and they are mark baylor laura babbitt bethany schoen field and christine morris and i had the opportunity to talk to all of them and really excited about them all being on our committee in they will add so much  our diverse group of parents that represent all of our targeted groups as well as the entire district and yes mark baylor laura bethany show builded and christine morris and all of them active parents at our schools in the represent all of our targeted groups and all of our as well as our entire district so that this will be that list will be posted on our website in terms of yes absolutely thank you the question is would anyone like to make a motion  the motion has been made to approve the superintendent's recommendations for his four spots in the p c is there a second second by director signing without objection it is approved  finished all of our agenda items as i don't that it's what the public comment ok with that our regular meeting is adjourned at ten thirty three and i will call to order our special meeting which has just a couple close session items we will adjourn to close session and hopefully be done by eleven thank you very much