an employee settlement potential employee settlement as well as direction given regarding labor negotiations and we had a short discussion also on superintendent rescheduled for the december sorry look for the december tenth september tenth board meeting september eleventh board meeting anyway our first meeting in december will be ready ok do i have anything on the consent calendar that is wish to be pulled mayle plan is not actually appointing anyone it's really a process and the second one that's being polled is three point three c which is the approval of additional support staff the larger elementary schools ok we are also as i said we are going to hold over three one p the safety audit and then the information item does anyone want to have a presentation on either the interdistrict permit report but the class size report it's here for information as part of our package ok because i haven't heard that anyone wanted to do that ok great so we will then we have a motion the second for the agenda with three point two c and three point three c pulled for comment and will be acted upon separately and the removal of three point one p the safety of it the the first the first meeting in december meeting  student directors eyes and also in favor i took a we have an agenda now i've got several cards a little bit more than ten essential i think we only have two different subjects large schools and the math curriculum so perhaps if you can think about the your speakers will be able to i will do i will go to into into in that way more people  good evening board members hello dr evans my name is lisa kelley and i'm a fourth grade teacher at malcolm x elementary where i've taught for three years i am also the b f t site rep at my school i'm here to talk to you about the needs of my large school so thank you so much for listening and for your consideration i want to start by saying how incredibly proud i am to work in my school among the very dedicated and collegial staff who do whatever it takes to support students in their success even as our school grows as it has every one of the three years i've been here  resources do not grow with us and we are still making things work this of course comes at a cost people are stretched very thin and children are being served the best that they could be i am also proud to work in a district like ours we are committed to closing the achievement gap for historically underserved students a principle that malcolm x holds dear every day that we work given this mission in mind i come to you with a question what level of support should we provide every student as my school classroom and demands grow as their standard for teacher support is there a plan for this as we all know school growth impacts every facet of the school of course this affects office staff who now have to meet the needs of hundreds more families every year of course this affects special education staff who have a growing caseload of course affects instructional aides who cannot serve children for more hours than they work if we don't take these things into consideration we are under serving our students plain and simple and this is the opposite of what i understand to be the mission to be u and just as important and possibly more so is the growing need for reading recovery literacy coach literacy intervention support my school it seems our funding for this position has not increased as our school sizes increased which means that our literacy coach has to find time and her point by a position to serve to support all five grades this limits literacy intervention at the crucial grades of kindergarten and first grade which likely contributes a larger case so it's not experience for special education staff literacy coaches across the district have had to make many similar difficult choices give the same amount of time to half as many students or give half as much time to same the same number of students that are served at small start sites either way students are coming up short as a classroom teacher i am most affected by the lack of instructional aides and an overworked special education team the model for inclusion simply does not work if students are not receiving the level of support they need to thrive in the general classroom right now at malcolm x i would say that my impact right impacted students are getting by but i would think that if we gave them the right support they could thrive this is a call for playing to support students teachers and schools in a way that makes sense a school size grows this is a call to take into consideration all the all the positions that a growing population of facts office staff special education staff and especially literacy coaching intervention staff thank you for your time good evening board members dr evans my name cynthia allman and i'm a first grade teacher at malcolm x where i've taught for fifteen years i'm here tonight to speak to you about the particular needs of berkeley's largest elementary schools first i'd like to thank you for the help you plan to provide for our front offices having extra stuff here there is a great beginning step towards addressing the impacts of our large moment but i hope we can convince you that there are other urgent steps that need to be taken as well i think the next two top priorities must be in the area of response to intervention we especially need increased time from literacy coaches and from special ed teachers i mentioned malcolm x we have about five hundred twenty students in twenty four classrooms thanks to our fabulous teachers support staff our principal and our students families most of those students are very successful but of course there are students who need something more than they can get during the course of regular instruction in our classrooms on the r t i pyramid you'd call them our tier two and three students and you'd expect them to be about twenty percent of the total students fifteen percent in tear to five percent in two or three a school the size of malcolm x that totals over one hundred children there are two main ways to meet the extra needs of these children one is when special ed teachers and literacy specialists provide direct support to the students through push in time in the classroom pull out small group work or one to one intensive teaching like reading recovery among other interventions another way to meet those students needs for intervention is when classroom teachers seek out those same specialists for ideas resources materials and coaching specific to their students who are below grade level and when those onsite r t i experts can raise the capacity of the general ed teachers the students benefit tremendously but these resources are simply stretched too thin we have two special ed teachers and a literacy coach just like all the elementary schools in berkeley even though it's half our size those three people are as talented and dedicated as we could ever wish but they can't adequately serve one hundred struggling students and twenty four teachers clamoring for more help when students and teachers can't get the help they need at the first steps of intervention children are much more likely to end up formally referred to special ed in the future the stigma cost and lost opportunities are heartbreaking and frustrating with extra time in these positions we could have an r t i coordinator to organize our efforts we could have more research into the best interventions to try we could have more coaching and p d to help us put those interventions to regular use we could say yes we have a plan to help your child with certainty when worried parents about their progress we squeeze our classroom space we've coped with one hundred clueless kindergartners we've dealt with the crowd the cafeteria and auditorium and play yard these are just inconveniences really and we've made do and we've made it work as smoothly as possible but when it comes to the needs of our most struggling students we can't in good conscience just make do we need to do our very best for them and we need your help to do it thank you so aaron no yes then after that would be  beard good evening board members and dr evans it's nice to talk to you i am here to talk about math in the middle schools in berkeley and i'm here supporting the idea of non excel aeration for middle school math students i come to you bearing three hats i am a product of the berkeley schools i was excel aerated two times in middle school i am a mother of an advanced learner in fifth grade at this year he scored perfect on a c s t's three years in a row and i'm a teacher at king middle school in the algebra math department teaching algebra i also worked this summer for the california board of education adopting textbooks for common core so i had a lot of time to look through the curriculum and see what our kids need to be successful long term learning math i feel strongly that they need three solid years of math with no excel aeration in order to be successful in math students and members of our society thank parent at both longfellow and at washington and i came to make a brief statement in support of the two things and i'll start with the accelerated math option at the high school level when i first heard about this proposal i had to really think about it because my eighth grade daughter has loved the accelerated math program at longfellow my concern was that if the accelerated math were taken away from the middle schools that it would possibly leave a vacuum of rigorous curriculum for those that were ready for it but i also understood the argument that delaying this until high school could really increase access to advanced math since more students would probably be ready by ninth grade and i strongly agree with that too so i decided to talk to some staff to get their take on it and i actually learned some things that made me want to support delaying the accelerated math until high school so with permission from a math teacher that i really respect who preferred to stay anonymous i'm going to read a statement that she wrote to me in response to my concerns so she said i am in support of not accelerating into high school largely because that's the place content wise where it makes the most sense in the new common core standards there is some overlap of content between grade eight grade eight math and grade nine math one that overlap actually creates an opportunity for acceleration in the eighth grade and the old state standards the content overlap was largely between grades five six and seven as a result middle school students experienced repetition because of that overlap with the new standards this problem doesn't exist in general i'm not in favor of skipping because faster is not smarter i prefer to challenge students at their grade level provided that the standards are well designed so back to me i said if there were no accelerated math at the middle school the only thing i would add is a request that that we ensure that all the students are engaged and one of the things that i really like to the k five level was the different that there was some support staff that was available on occasion for differentiated teaching teaching and break out groups and so i don't know if that would be necessary with the core standards but it seems like that might be useful i just don't want to see middle schoolers get short shrift when it's such a critical time to foster such a growing passion for learning so then the other thing that i wanted to endorse is the staffing proposal for the larger elementary schools as well as the full time safety monitor at washington i've been a parent  washington for nine years now and which is hard to believe and there was and i was there when the school had only just a few students over three hundred and now that number has escalated to about four seventy five  despite that increase in students the staff has the support staff has remained the same so anyway i'm just just to second what the what people have said before teachers tell me what a difficult how difficult it is for it to do their job when there's only one you know when you have the same literacy coaches and other support staff in key positions everyone's overstretched people are concerned about kids falling through the cracks so i just support that thank you guilt i think that is malcolm x we had three hundred sixty students we had three classes per grade and we now have i'm told by the principal about five hundred forty which thanks to the math curriculum here i can tell you about fifty percent the you know we came to the board we talked to the superintendent talked to to mr smith and we stand we had basically agreed this would be the wild boar moving through the anaconda you know we would digest this over time but it wouldn't be repeated and that there would be that there was a need capacity need in the district to there were more students and that we were going to hold it for classes per grade and a total of four hundred eighty students approximately in the school this year we suddenly had another great of one hundred and we have as i said something like five hundred forty students and seems to be climbing so the numbers have grown beyond what our understanding five years ago with the board and with the administration with what we thought would be a manageable cap you've heard from that the teachers are concerned i can tell you the administration of malcolm x is concerned i'm here to let you know the parents and malcolm x are concerned and we need your help thank you my kids have been going there since before when it was a smaller school at three hundred twenty and now it's at five hundred forty i've been a parent and i'm now working at the school so i've seen the needs grow on both sides i've seen the needs from the student perspective and a staffing perspective and to me the the essential differences that occur in the size growth are amazing and incredibly difficult to handle with a at the staff that is there and we do it and it's it's hard but we're there for the kids and so it's important to us to really make it work but we need your help and the students need your help and it needs to be equitable i feel if there are schools that are middle schools that have the same number of students or fewer students and yet their infrastructure which i consider this to be infrastructure if it's clerical if it's special ed assistance if it's instructional assistance those are infrastructure and for not supporting the infrastructure this is the success of the students i believe will be marred it will be difficult for them to succeed in the way that they have been in the past and so we're asking for your your support and it's greatly needed and it will be greatly appreciated especially as the district grows as it's been growing and it will continue to grow students love this this district people come here because we excel at what we do and we don't want to show them that we're failing and so it's important for you to help us show them that we can succeed and continue thank you good evening to our honorable board members and superintendent dr evans my name is laura babbitt and i am a proud parent of a two thousand and thirteen graduate at berkeley high school and two other children which are currently in b us d schools and a member pique had parents of children of african descent i'm here today in support of the teachers master proposal as presented to families at willard middle school for many years parents have told their children slow down take your time  i know you think you know it all but trust me there is so much more to learn then as our kids bring math homework home we say to our kids you're doing this type of math already why are you moving so fast when is tutoring and how much is it going to cost when hearing the teacher's proposal to reinforce the fundamentals of math before moving students to higher levels i thought finally the school is remembering that while students may have learned a lot there are still so much more to truly comprehend before moving on from personally having a student that wasn't danced in math well before the fundamentals were truly established i believe that this new proposal will help more students achieve in the long run my child with a student that understood the mechanics of math well enough to advance to the next level however when it came time for her to apply the mechanics as was needed in the higher level math and high school she ended up spending a lot of time in tutoring some free and some which require payment by her senior year she had met all of her math requirements for college and i decided to put her in the ib math class which reinforced fundamentals and still offered some advanced level math in preparation for the i exam she is now getting an a in math during her first semester at the university and without tutoring i also support this plan because it was devised from a cross functional team of seasoned math teachers including middle school teachers who taught the advanced level math and high school teachers one of which taught my daughter during her senior year i further support this plan as it includes equity strategies for everyone it has stamina richmond programs for more advanced students and a pathway for students to reach calculus a b or b c by their senior year in addition i believe the reinforcement during middle school will allow more kids to succeed with less intervention at the higher  of math offered in high school hopefully this plan will encourage more students to continue in math first is running from math so thank you to the teachers for putting this your experience and expertise together to create this plan and thank you to the board for considering their proposal and the testimony of one parent which reflects the story of so many b u s t student good evening i'm rebecca burke sixth grade math and science teacher and common core coach at king middle school and one of the leaders of the middle school common core math professional development i'm here tonight on behalf of the b u s d secondary math teachers to speak again in support of the proposal to provide acceleration options and high school rather than in middle school this proposal is supported by the b u s d secondary math teachers and by our communities esteemed math researchers and scholars professor allan schoenfeld and professor wu of university of u c berkeley both enterable in developing the u c stand the common core standards and both strongly recommending acceleration only in high school i want to summarize the main ideas behind our support of this proposal not long ago the us math curriculum was criticised for being a mile wide and an inch deep teachers were trained to move quickly through our many math standards to lead our students to the answer in order to show them their procedural knowledge on the c s t and other standardized tests with the common core standards there's a shift away from answer getting  approach that ensures students develop deep conceptual knowledge and mathematical habits of mind to do this the common core standards gave us a gift of time fewer standards that allow us to teach with rigor and depth students to grapple with and construct deep mathematical ideas the standards as students to persevered and make sense of mathematical problems to model and use mathematics in real world context to explain their thinking and the thinkings of others to defend their processes in answers to be precise and fluent in their calculations and to use mathematical tools appropriately and short students are asked to be mathematicians who struggle with mathematical ideas and math can be messy in the real world and they're rarely is an answer key what does this look like in a classroom students are asked to grapple with investigations or rich mathematical problems they're asked to make generalizations is this always true sometimes true and never true how can you prove that they are asked to work for words and backwards with an idea can you calculate the mean the mode the median and range that would be forward if i give you the main the mode the median and range can you make me a graph of the distribution of that data and yes there are multiple solutions can you find them all or formula or a pattern that might prove them all this is working backwards and definitely it's challenging students are asked to talk about math with partners groups make presentations to the class about their thinking view solutions from multiple perspectives this type of instruction was not into a whole part of the curriculum before why does it celebration in middle school make sense with the now common core standards in the past we thought about elementary school as being the foundation years for secondary math with common core standards both elementary and middle school are laying the foundation for advanced mathematics and high school and college these are not the years for acceleration or compaction of ideas acceleration of students a middle school has been based on the idea that math is just a set of skills to be churned through on the way to calculus rather than ideas to be explored understood and connected confuse speed with challenge the current acceleration is serving our very strong mass students well because they are looking for a challenge of new ideas to explore and the old standards were very repetitive the com core standards have plenty of new ideas for students to sink their teeth into giving them time in middle school to develop their ideas and to develop the mathematical practices that will set them up for greater success in high school and college how high achieving students be supported in the classroom we've already seen evidence of high achieving students break being challenged in the common core classrooms this year the middle school math teachers are using new curriculum lessons designed by the common core writers that provide multiple entry points levels and challenges high achieving students are asked to deep in their mathematical thinking as never before there is no room for board and teachers and schools are offering daily weekly monthly challenge problems we're exploring electives or after school options offering stem classes programming robotics math competitions teams and clubs and we're training teachers to integrate technology into classrooms and  berkeley middle school math teacher was hired as the t s a to lead this effort the middle school math teachers and our partner high school math teachers urge your support tonight of the proposal before you that creates rich and challenging options and opportunities for middle school students with chances for exhiliration at high school offering excel aeration only at the high school is known not only our recommendation but it is the recommendation of our communities math researchers and scholars thank you so much and i brought you a math problem and it's a sixth grade math good evening school board members and dr evans and for a listening audience my name is paula phillips i'm the president of the berkeley council classified employees we represent the district's classified  thank our certificated brothers and sisters in for the parents for supporting additional support staff for those and for supporting additional support staff for those elementary schools with larger student populations it's been something that our members have been asking for and we are excited to see that these are classified positions and that they're not parent volunteers they're not tutors they're not paid from p t a funds but they're actually going to be allocated from the general fund because what we have seen over time is a decrease in classified positions but an increase in positions that are being funded by school si and in the area of tutors in the area of supervisors who actually work more hours than our members do in supporting students in the learning environment i also want to talk to the district talk to school board members about the writ of mandate the settlement agreement between berkeley unified school district and b c c e that was signed in denver of twenty seven and i want to draw your attention to page seventeen or sixteen and seventeen of this board packet in this board packet are several limited term assignments that were approved or that were assigned by dell your release and classified personnel director randy paradis all in violation of the writ that we signed and agreed to back in two thousand and eleven according to the writ that was signed in two thousand and eleven the district's obligations are whenever the district receives reasonable nelda said a b c c e you know position in a limited term appointment position lasting not more than six months or not exceeding the duration of authorize absence of an employee will last more than fifteen working days the district shall within five working days of receiving said notice requests that the classified director on behalf of the personnel commission take the following actions and there are three items that are listed in this writ and i would encourage you board members if you have not read the writ to please become familiar with the writ and review the board documents because you will find as i have found that multiple occasions the district has violated the writ but more specifically item number three b states that except as allowed by the education make appointments of limited term employees from the list set forth in three and three a was what i read to you from the beginning of the writ several maybe about several weeks ago the personnel commission approve the hiring of a limited term clerical assistant one who is not on an eligibility list that clerical assistant was hired over at malcolm x although the union cautioned the book the personnel commission from approving this limited term assignment it went ahead and approved it anyway so just as i stated to the board before we took this to an outside agency i'm asking you i'm requesting that you please direct staff to adhere to the writ or else we have you leave us with no other choice but to go to an outside agency which means that we will be back in court spending dollars where dollars should be focused on supporting student needs thank good evening i'm janet levinson president of the union of berkeley administrators and i want to speak to two items tonight you have an agenda item that deals with the disparity and support for the larger elementary schools a few weeks ago you both sunshine the proposals for negotiations in that we asked for one point zero school service assistant for each elementary school with more than four hundred students this was a desperate ask and one that will hardly make a dent in the workload of the site administrators who schools have grown so much in recent years nine k five schools have grown in size since two thousand and ten between seven percent and twenty eight percent gains it's difficult to pinpoint what would help an administrator of a very large elementary school would it be a parent coordinator at every school to help with the lack of p t a parent conferences ip meetings and so on would it be more counseling services to alleviate the amount of on the fly counseling that the principals are asked to do would it more supervisors to help the principal keep the cafeteria and yard safely supervised would it be an r t i coordinator to schedule case management meetings pull data for these meetings review individualized learning plans and behavior plans follow up with outside resources such as berkeley public health department berkeley up tama tree clinic etc would it be a conflict resolution person to help with behavioral issues the answer to these questions is yes yes yes yes and even more we truly appreciate the board's commitment to  developing a formula for larger elementary schools however the current proposal is one that falls short it does not address the needs of our two schools with more than four hundred but fewer than four hundred fifty students i speak for the k five principles of the larger schools who are p t a meetings tonight when i say they're very grateful for any support that you will give however there is a point in which having a partial school service assistant position will likely require more work in terms of supervision than the than the position will reap in benefits you but would like to see the board fund our initial per request which is for a one point zero school service assistant but only as a stopgap measure until a formula can be put in place to balance the workload across the sites we recognise that the school service assistant will not be able to help with the heavy load of administrative tasks facing the principals however if some of the other work is covered the principals will be freed up to be the strong instructional leaders who can bring even stronger vision and leadership to their communities than the currently able to do and i will say that in the last several years three of us have moved from i think three of us have moved from elementary schools to middle schools and have recognized what an incredible freedom it was to to be able to spend most of our time on vision and leadership going from the elementary to the middle school principal ship and then the second item is the math acceleration i've spoken with many of you on the issue i've spoken at the mike on the issue and i just want to say i've said this before but this is the most exciting time in education for me in a lot of years i said i was going to get out of education when i could no longer walk the line between no child left behind and what i thought was good teaching and i think we crossed that line and i'm so excited about coming back now with project based learning and constructive approaches and all that all that we learned through no child left behind about looking at subgroups and having accountability and formative assessments but truly truly now an era of talking about learning looking at what kids are learning and taking some of the pressure off the teachers and it's phenomenal to me that the teachers the middle school math teachers who are exhausted right there here tonight they don't have textbooks they don't have curriculum they're making this all up on the fly and they're doing a phenomenal job and they're partnering with the other schools like i've never seen before the three middle schools are just i will be honest at the last professional development i said you guys it's three thirty the day is over and everybody ignored me and kept going and i tiptoed back of the room this is a huge cultural shift in berkeley this is the teachers are saying we want to do something even harder would be easy to just have kids accelerate they're saying no we want to have all of our students in our room and we want to meet all of their needs and we're prepared to do this and i've talked to kathy and i've talked to the teachers and said you realize what berkeley has arranged like no other district has and you're committing to teaching every kid in your class and i have seen in action the teachers working together to come up with strategies and to bring back structures that are that are structures that we haven't had in our classrooms for a long time which allow differentiation so i just want to say i'm really excited about the possibilities i think the teachers are up for it and they're providing tremendous tremendous leadership around this and i'm very proud of that and i think it's time to support that so thank you thank you in interest of time i was going to hold off on board because we did have an eight o'clock time and i know it almost eight thirty and so next is proposal for a high school curricular pathway it's all right so options in math aligned with common core state standards and thirty safety audit as was stated before has been pulled so we will then go back to board comments after this so by way of introduction i just want to say a couple of things i think you know what we've seen tonight is that commitment of our mathematics teachers at the secondary level to implement the proposal that's been outlined for you here in the board packet  you know and i think what we're seeing also is a two pronged approach to this a real desire to participate in more professional development as has been noted in our speaker's comments tonight both our teachers our parents and a principal and also an understanding that there's going to be a greater need for differentiation with the new common core state standards and the desire of teachers to meet the needs both to challenge students who are at the upper end who are or would be considered advanced in terms of their mathematical performance as well as to provide the supports for students who need that additional support i also want to say that our  i teacher leaders are aware that math is really the issue that they're looking at now and making that their priority as they are working with their schools so i'm going to turn it over to staff here and i think i want to give it to christina who will introduce other people at the table good evening members of the board i'm happy that we're back for the discussion tonight a lot has happened since i believe most of us were back at this table we have had two very successful professional development days  for the middle schools and the high school the elementary had one in october focused on common core very deep learning for teachers and very exciting we also conducted three parent events some of you were out a few of those well very well attended much more than we expected and i was a good turnout we were able to put together some f a q's or frequently asked questions for parents so that we could get down to the core questions that parents seem to have and i think we were able to answer most of those we feel very good about the support that we've gotten from parents and teachers are very excited i think that you know the commitment that the teachers and all of us have for meeting all of the needs of the students we do understand we will need lots more professional development will only time we will need to identify curriculum so there is work ahead of us but we are deep into it and it's very exciting work sighting we're excited to see the students being successful and excited about learning math i think that's probably one of the most exciting things that i hear across the board so we're here tonight to answer questions and i have obviously the team that has been a big part of this push back a year and i think you know every one of the teacher and i am also a coach for the common core and leading the professional development for middle school to answer any questions you have forward a conversation if that's what we have or just say blessing even better is that i get right to it just for those of maybe listening could someone give like a very short like minute or two overview of what the proposal is i know we've heard it before but if there's someone who's churning in that hasn't heard it sure so the proposal is two parts the first part is the is the definition decision about the curriculum for the high school the movement to end an international pathway of math one two and three at the high school that would be freshman sophomore and junior year which would replace over time the traditional algebra one geometry algebra two sequence that is more traditionally known in the united states that's one piece of the proposal the second piece is to focus on two options for acceleration those two options would be a ninth grade acceleration for students and an eleventh grade acceleration for students those two accelerations woodlouse students to participate in calculus at the high school but it and it but it would also eliminate the current practice of skipping a grade or excel or writing at the middle school so that students have a very deep understanding of mathematics as they move into math one two and three at the high school no  who i'll go first first i want to thank you and i think that our teachers our math teachers and our principles that have been supporting ours our teachers and our students along because it's been over a year now of professional development training w me teach me what i don't know about math and how i rely on excel to do my math for me and where our students are getting very much of a head start in knowing exactly what is happening and how it's happening and being able to articulate it so i could i could see it we could see that in action and i really appreciated that and which brought to mind the idea of having a model classrooms at our high schools where those are the classrooms that perhaps we can videotape for parents to see the math that is happening the exciting math that it's happening and the ways that teachers are teaching our students where there's a right answer and then there's another right answer and there's another way to approach it so i really  would hope that we could move towards that place because i know it's it's an exciting time it's a new time it's like a new frontier country in terms of what we can possibly do in how do we introduce this and roll it out to our families in our community about this new math because i'm sure it's very hard for students to go home and to explain to their parents what is just brand new to them and so on i'm hopeful that we can do that in in english and hopefully one day he soon in spanish too for families to understand which brings to mind the other part is having workshops for families too to introduce them to this new again how do we support our teachers who are coming year to really bring that focus on that and how we're teaching and how it breaks down for student special ed and for a second language speaker away from our new comers to our students who are making progress in their english and so we have currently there's several steps that obviously all teachers including special education teachers an instructional assistants have been receiving training in the math curriculum especially at the elementary level they've gotten actually talked about how to serve special education students with the story of units at least because we have a curriculum at the elementary when we have a curriculum that we can work with instead of inventing  and and developing on our own i think it'll be much easier for us to train and work with the special education and the teachers to make sure that we know how to address those students we have the model that the teachers work with the teachers in the classroom the instructional systems are working with the teachers in the classroom the professional development where you ongoing around the doubt that it will need to be happen for all students and i don't know exactly what you're looking for as an answer i mean ongoing  will keep happening so it actually has already begun to happen in the middle school at the last professional development day we had several instructional assistants that were participating with the seventh grade teachers and  at all the different part at all the grades and we have special ed teachers that have been part of our team and they have been since may and have been participating so they've been a part of the the core  of people that are developing and working so you know it has there hasn't been a separation they've been part of the regular classroom teacher particularly me in terms of its core this is core math and then there's this chart with the special specific goals that they may be working towards but the special teachers work with the general teachers to define the scope of those within the current year's math curriculum so that's one thing that's already been happening i did also convene a meeting just for the special ed teachers to come and talk with my colleague who's at t s a for a special lead to just talk together about what it looks like for their students and their caseload to be successful in common core math what is it like to work with a general a teacher and how are we measuring progress for those students so even as we've been working all together as general and special ed combined we also have begun the beginnings of a working group for the special teachers to really think through what this looks like and for us to figure what support they need as we go forward and i want to say one way thing is that i i think that the special what i've heard from special ed teachers is that this curriculum gives a lot more access for their students because they are actually working  so they're working on projects it isn't as abstract as it was before so i think they're feeling that it's a real world context so i think they're feeling that students have more access so our students are being well one of the things you have in front of you the math problem that i gave you is one of the things that we just gave in sixth grade it was part of something called a foul formative assessment lesson so there was a  pre test to that looked very similar to that we did in an activity and then students were given the post test so there are certain things that the common core has designed that we're using something that our district was part of for a lot of years is and we gave or mars tasks and this is from the noise foundation and we're using those i think as we go forward will we will have a lot more so we have a lot of local assessments which are being entered into a eliminate our data collection system at several points this year each of the three middle school grades have specific assessments that are being entered at those points so we will have some data to look at it it's not like what we had before because it's different but course i also want to extend extreme appreciation for all the work the staff and the teachers have been doing above and beyond you know the classroom that you're also engaged in i have i have a couple of questions and they kind of do group into two areas and i'm you know i'm thrilled that the enthusiasm and the motivation that it's just exudes hall of you guys i mean it for me to go home and be excited about the new math curriculum is kind of a huge issue because it's not my area of usually enthusiasm but i want to make sure that it's sustained and this is really new and it's demanding a tremendous amount of attention in five years when it's not so new and we've gotten into routines and patterns i'm concerned about issues of differentiation those are issues that we've been grappling with forever we were supposed to be doing it now and i know that teachers work really hard to do that and it's really challenging and while this curriculum might open more pathways to do that you still have the challenges of having a very  broad skill set in the classroom and in some ways that might be accentuated without the acceleration of the middle school level because you won't be taking the kids for the honors and having them go one place and able to concentrate with the other kids and so i really would like to i mean i don't know what i'm not looking for like a firm answer but it's more of like a caution that we really conscientious and that this be monitored constantly through the professional development and that we really look at what impact it has on the whole scale of kids because i don't want the high achieving kids to get bored and to lose the enthusiasm that they might be motivating and i really i keep hearing in the community meeting that i went to how challenging this new curriculum is and i don't want kids to get lost so i just applaud the teachers for getting trained in this and really being disciplined about new strategies but i don't want it to be a couple of years and then to fall into the other pattern so i don't know like what the long term projection is and christine it looks like you've got some well i just want to point out one of the things there's several things that are happening right now we have students in upper grades that didn't get the core foundation that in a few years students will come with so the challenge of having to bring students a huge distance to the common core at their grade level especially upper elementary middle school will be dissipated because they will have experienced several years of the foundation building but the other thing is we're getting better and better at using data r t i structures are becoming more solidified and more you common across the districts this year's focus as you know is middle school r t i implementation and if you are doing r t i you are noticing every student who is going beyond and needs challenging as well as those that are falling behind so i think the more that we say r t i is our focus that we are going to continue to better our work in r t i in the use of data those things can't happen if we're doing that well what no matter which curriculum we're using english language arts science or mathematics because we need to do that in every subject area ok and then i think also with the work that i think rebecca you talked about in your comments of the professor schoenfeld and in the work that they're doing again the fact that this is research based is exciting in the fact that both of those professors do a lot of work on differentiation and how to reach kids who are not typically performing in a lot of our schools is exciting and i have a couple of other and then also i think i just was at a forum yesterday on the gender gap in the stem area so really looking at how our girls are engaging in this and looking at the more project based approach i have a practical question i think at the high school and it has to do with  the international high school program and the acceleration what i don't know if you're going down the ib track it seems to me like you have to accelerate in order to be on track for that diploma with that do you have to have a calculus level at the senior year actually that you do not need to have a calculus level of the senior year  to get an ib diploma you need to get your six courses you take a test in three of those courses have to be in what are called higher level and three of those courses have to be it what are called standard level so you pick your higher level courses in the ones that are really your strengths and you pick your standard level courses that the ones are not that are not necessarily your strengths and you're not allowed to take six higher level you have to take three higher level three three standard level standard level math i currently teach standard level math and the prerequisite for that for math studies standard level is algebra two and i have kids coming out of algebra two with cs and they are able to take the test and pass it ok so that would not be a barrier to the ib diploma if they were taking calculus but if so it but it does the way that the new math will work forget the id part now the new math will work is that if you want to early acceleration of the late you have kids i know right now is i have a kid who did excel or a and i have a kid who didn't and the one who didn't is in calc in her senior year in she's doing ok so i'm just you are forcing an acceleration if you want to take calc in your senior year there is you could be a challenge for for some kids hopefully that foundation action and their depth of understanding and mathematics will allow them to reach that because they will have that sorry we feel at the high school again not one hundred percent of our students are currently making it to calculus in their senior year and it's actually less than fifty somewhere around forty percent of our students so we currently have a system that is set up for one hundred percent of our students to make it there and we're not getting the majority of our students up to that level either they are unprepared or they are dragging themselves sir and we are dragging them through so much that they hate it and they don't want to take math as soon as they don't have to so we're trying to provide here it is and that acceleration option or to accelerate in options but it's not a forced you have to go faster than you're ready to if you are really enjoying mapping you're feeling strong where here and we have two places that we want to support you up to that level so i don't like to make a comment and just to remind the board that up until about a dozen years ago taking algebra in eighth grade was considered acceleration it's only when the state made that change about a dozen years ago that it moved algebra down a year and i think the state board of education is now reconsidering the value of that decision as are other states throughout the nation and just the last thing i'd say is that i would hope that as we develop these we look at partnerships with the university around robotics and different kinds of activities and clubs that they've got where they could bring them down into the schools for the extra curricular activities for all levels of kids to engage in high so i'm going to start as i'm very transparent person by saying that i support the proposal and you all have done and i'm really incredible job both at preparing i think it's a clear structure for us a clear pathway and explaining it well to us and to the parents who i am really glad that there were three parent meetings before this this final decision so i feel like the process has been really believe that the process has been really good and i the appreciation and all of the the enthusiasm that's clear that's clear from the teaching staff and so it's really it's exciting it's commendable and i'm i'm well you know i'm always willing to think this is great and i also should i have a couple of questions about specifics and some of them i shared before hand with staff but i wanted to say them now because because there are things that are still a little unclear to me as we're moving forward so i guess it's more than anything it's kind of things that i'm wondering if you've thought about you probably have thought about and i'm i want to hear from the five of you what your responses are i before i get to the questions i did want to say that i had i also had the opportunity to visit i think i mentioned this once during board comments the i think i may be out of all of the sixth and seventh grade math classes at king was that all of them and i was really impressed by what i saw i mean everything from i walked into one class might have been your class i don't know where all the kids were standing up in the front of the room and they all had numbers and they had to group themselves by median and mean and all of the kids had the language they they understood i don't know there were other things they they were doing a bunch of different exercises with this timeline that they were this number line that they were creating with themselves and they were really thoughtful they all seemed to have the academic language which was really impressive and i remember one of one another to cheat as i also so i was really impressed by that and it was a real life example for me of everything that you're saying and it seemed like everyone was engaged and then the other classrooms they were doing i think they were doing a maybe a mars test they were doing some kind of exercise also in groups and it was very maybe the seventh grade i don't know they were all some of them were in groups some of them were doing these really active engagement tasks and they were all they all seemed to be with it and i don't know whether i just happen to walk in on a good day but i have to say that i was very encouraged by that i also had a chance my my daughter's math teacher is in the audience this crystal pasha and she's and talia is also having this great experience of math so i'm really encouraged by what i'm seeing and so that gives me a lot of hope so that's all a basis for you know you've you've sold me you have my vote so now i want to talk about a couple of questions that i have so one question that i at that i just i really just don't understand is what happens to the kid who is doesn't do well in eighth grade and i asked this question last time and i wasn't satisfied with the answer so they get a one in eighth grade math in way a math eight they get a one and then they move into ninth grade math and they're in math one and there's in my if i understand correctly some of the material is repeated and i'm concerned that they're in the if they go into math one and they are just teaching it to them again isn't necessarily going to get them to get it and then they're also to me in a class with although some of the kids will have accelerated at that point perhaps to the nine ten to the one to option so you know they're still going to range in the classroom so i'm i'm i'm still kind of stuck on what happens with the kids which you know where we what we had a lot long discussion last week about some of the kids who aren't doing well in ninth grade currently so i want to know what's the thought about supporting those kids who are doing well in either seventh and eighth grade what options do they have because there's fewer options available now so i'll stop asking that question and i want to hear what your thoughts are because i'm sure he discusses are you looking for the option for seventh and eighth grade or what happens if they go to map one at the high school and they didn't do well i think the math and i think i understand between seventh and eighth grade because it's not that different they still progress and they go into math a but what happens to the kid in eighth that does poorly in math  and then is explained what happens in high school they're expected to go on to math one that they haven't mastered those the whole idea is that they have more time to master the skills and it's a foundation so what happens if they haven't mastered the skills it's not a foundation and we don't want to we don't want to exacerbate that lack of i would not be in favor of having them be in a separate class i would want them to continue on and be and math one with all their peers and i would rather look into seeing that some support outside of class was targeted towards them in times in the past we've done some things with an algebra backup course and i would be more interested in approaching that although that would require some f t e put in that direction by thought certainly think that that would be the most appropriate thing to do for those students we are doing some of that in certain small community smaller communities for example dual role students in algebra one and in at the same time and they've had some degree of success with that so i would be interested in looking in that type of model sometimes an after school support could help but a lot of times getting the kids in after school is i'd rather see something during the during the actual school day i think that that would be the type of support that it does a bit if students are falling behind in eighth grade we need to catch them in eighth grade and we do provide seven period or after school intervention classes for students now as soon as the first quarter grades come out we've just been talking with the principals about setting up a schedule what they need to provide those intervention classes because we want them to finish that grade on grade level with those after school classes and we know if you remember a few years ago eliminated summer school because really wasn't bringing kids along we wanted to give them summer school during the year basically so that they could finish and be ready so our job is to catch them in eighth grade and make sure they are ready for math one i think that's really great and i appreciate those supports in seventh and eighth grade and there were and what about the kids who get a one in eighth grade because i'm also concerned about the experience of the other kids now in that one class the kids who aren't you know  who do want to move faster so how do you know i just want to go with want to cover the regular material of the regular pacing that they need that the teacher will need to engage to offer in order to complete the entire math one curriculum so i'm i'm still studying the end of the you kind of you had some suggestions and i just i want to ask this question because i think it gets i'm going to ask you a little bit more specifically about differentiation but this particular piece about how we make sure that those students do not continue to fall further behind is a real concern well i think it is you know there's no easy answer to that and i think there has to be a multiple of supports available to students and then i grade and i know after conversations with  principal scuderi that he is looking both at professional development and interventions as professional development for teachers and interventions for students who are falling behind to meet the range of needs that the ninth graders will bring to the math one class but i appreciate mike white's comment about the double enrollment in the class because i think that is a key intervention for kids as well as offering the afterschool support too while i do agree that you know everyone wouldn't come after school have a night is still something that you know would be good and i mean there are a couple of other ideas i have but i think i'd like to wait until we start discussing the al capp to throw out some other ideas around math one and the implementation of the c c s you know the common core standards at the high school the other thing is the summer bridge program has been  very successful and if we could expand that to have more students involved with the summer bridge program that really helps some of the ninth graders who are having difficulties and i think the most important thing is that we don't want these eighth graders to fall farther and farther behind so the intervention will have to be in eighth grade and so one option that we can explore is what we're doing in the summer and i was thinking about summer bridge as well in terms of catching the students ok so this i'm going to have i have three questions of the i want to go kind of follow up on that that because the question of differentiation and i know julie asked to this and i think that it's you know we just if we say professional development we need to have professional continue and i think it's really i don't want to underestimate how challenging it is particularly because where we've been kind of we've we really have narrowed the scope in the classrooms and most classrooms are one to twenty and middle school but they're still you know we in some schools even have worked we're kind of we have a lower the lower performing kids in one's class in the higher performing kids and so those really i'm more limited swath so i do i it's this isn't not so much a question as much just a cautionary note that i think your commitment to professional learning communities and the use of local assessments i just i think it's really easy to say we're going to do professional development and i just i it just seems like there are some teachers who seem you notice is that it's difficult and there's a different i think range of skill and experience in doing this because it's really hard i have you been thinking specifically about how you're going to train teachers to do that differentiation well i can speak to both it a little bit because this is part of my job this year and you know before i was a middle school teacher i was an elementary teacher for a long time and when i first came to middle school you know people told me oh we can't do those things in middle school and i kind of believed that for a while and then i figured out that you know you just have to do them in a different way and i think that one of the great parts about the common core is that some of the activities and tasks are have lots of levels they're there and when we talk about differentiation we call that tiered and so it means that somebody like the task that went along with the math problem that you have students had to match different kinds of graphs and and and so there were easier ones and the ones that were really challenging so that's an example of that everybody can be working together but there's lots of different levels of that another example is when you're doing project learning that students can be doing a project on various levels and you can really challenge somebody and you can have sort of a more basic level of that but beyond that then how do you begin to see groups in a middle school classroom and so you have to have something that students are working on and you know a big math person in in in our world is marilyn burns and some of you probably have heard of her and something that she does is what's called math menus and so there's just a variety of activities that kids are working on but it's like stations in a way but it allows the teacher to see groups of students so to learn to do that is is hard is just what you've said and i think that  part of our work is first learning how to teach them new math that we're doing but at the same time have sort of embed in that training some of these kind of differentiation activities and that's something that i've been trying to do it came and as a person leading the p d i've tried to sort of put that into what we're doing i think we're at a beginning level of that and just like our students that we have to different te for teachers and there are teachers that are willing to try things in that are at a higher level than that and there are some teachers that are really cautious and we have to kind of lead him into that so i think what you said is it's hard and there's definitely a commitment to doing that and is your is i'm sorry here hours i would just add to that that i think we've been sort of jokingly referencing how are making up this curriculum this year as we go from our polling from different places but i think that the hidden blessing in that is actually related directly to differentiation because a lot of the things that were purposely choosing to do are already structurally differentiated just like rebecca said so even for those who are more cautious and you know i taught math at the middle school before and often it was just what could i think of that i could do for my students today there wasn't anything structural for me to punt to i think now even for folks who might be a bit at a loss and would spend having a lot of their own time doing that there are these things that we're building and as we go that make that much ironically easier to do them and we actually had a curriculum that we were teaching from a book and i just want to be clear when i say differentiation i am really talking about it both charts ok so i will leave that because i know that it's talks about it a lot and i still i'm sure that neil and christina will come with a model of not just what to do it's really helpful to hear that what we're aiming for and the how to get there is where  also curious in this is maybe just a thought and a comment i'm curious to see what you're to hear your thoughts on kind of summer options in high school so i'm a little concerned we talked a little  also sent this to staff but i'm you know currently if students something happens and they have to drop out of algebra won or they have to drop out of algebra two or they something happen then they say or they wan accelerate in the summer time or something there are options in the community college or at the adult school there are options other places where they can go because there are classes that are you know their traditional and i'm wondering what the thoughts are if there are any thoughts about either working with the community college or with the adult school or with our at berkeley high about having math one two and three options for kids to kind of catch up  or accelerate it either way in the summertime and because i just i don't know if there's this is something that there's any conversations about of even think it's a good idea but i think there's a couple things happened over the last few years we've had to cut back dramatically on our summer options  sense seven zero eight when funding was cut and flexed and reduced and reduced and we focused on juniors and seniors who needed credits to recover basically and to graduate we do have an opportunity with the local control funding formula and the to look at how we provide interventions through summer or in some other way we haven't always seen that summer is the best that we get the best from students in the summer because of their being tired or this is their summer vacations and it's often hard to find quality staff so i think it's we need to find a solution i don't know if summer is what people would feel would always be the case but i think that all of this is open as we look to the l c f funding formula and look at what we want to do for kids across the board don't think that's a no i just i don't know what it would look like yet and what about collaboration with oh i think that's right and you know a lot about yes what i think we've had students take courses obviously i don't know there's a new president who i've met yes neil's met hers who's interested in working with us more closely so i think as we have more of those relationships we could definitely look to them to hopefully provide some support or work hand in hand with us thank you they're actually says in your item around the accelerated pathway that it should be noted this option would require significant time commitment from students during the summer and or during the eleventh grade so are i mean it doesn't mean   when we go next to the shura and so i just like to start off by saying that i'm really excited for this change and i'm actually wishing that i was a few years younger so that i get to experience it and i think it's really great because one of the most frequent questions that i have in my math class is how is this going to apply to something that i will do later in life and i think that's one of this curriculum strength that's and so that being said i have a few questions and so for in regards to i am p s i am going to be offered for small schools yes that's technically where they currently do now so both courses would still be offered and a few people spoke about dual enrollment as an intervention would that mean that math aid would be offered at the high school or how would that play out typically means that a student have a support class to help them complete or to get deeper into spend more time in the content that they want understanding so a bit like a double period or a block in some way so they'd have the ideal you would give students preschools that they would need to understand the lesson for that day and then they would go to them with others that's th applications anyone is going to see is in the statistics section of it and that has been woven into all the different levels now so it's not just put off put off put off and then take a piece stats when when you're a senior you're go see statistics and they're just like find me median a mode that's all the way through and statistics is going to is probably the most fundamental course that you want to know that you want to learn in math i'll give you an example so all the sixth graders in all the three middle schools finished up their unit in statistics by doing a project and it was called data quest and they had to design two questions that an adult at the school would be interested in and they had to go and ask sixty people the questions and they had to compile the data and they had to express it as a paragraph and also in box of whiskers which is what you saw my class and then they had to explain what the graph told them and so that would be a really good example right ok but your you know whenever you make decisions nowadays based on looking at data the decision you're about to make now is also based on you were looking at data at one point so it's constant it's always out there  dozen parents talk to them and their experiences and i talked to a couple college counselors and got information from them that was really helpful and it was it's just been a very impressive demonstration of how this decision was made i had written up a whole like page long summary of my thoughts because i thought this would be more contentious than it was i'm just going to basically deferred everyone else who spoke because they said it much better than i could i want to  said about statistics so i cannot we are this is like a six second digression so we're in a world of of big data and to understand big data you need to understand how statistics uses big data pretty to predict things to make meaningful choices and for all of the focus on calculus and what it does for college acceptance what is important to know in the life is what you learn in statistics particularly concepts of standard you know the variations because of an average doesn't mean that it's a very helpful average of the standard deviation is really really large but that is not a concept that is common in media articles or and so if i could you know if i was a dictator of california i o i want to take a step back and just use this because i think this is an example of how we as a district can make a positive change that improves what we believe to be the best in the best interests of students improves issues around equity and i really think you know this is this could have been a really contentious decision and it's not and so i think as we move forward and looking at  and other things that we that we believe will make a serious change in how we as a district operate this is the model that i think we want to use and i want to identify five keep pieces so the first is we start early driven you can always have more data but we saw the data and the justification for why we think that acceleration in middle school is not good for all of our students collaborative so we saw how th collaboration between teachers and administrators both site and district in district out of district you see i mean it was a true collaboration that was generated by the people involved not simply by a dictate by this board or you know by one administrator community outreach you can always do more community outreach but we did have three very effective opportunities to ask questions to hear the information it was in the a plus news  know it was put out there and so i think that that is another key piece of that community members have an opportunity to come and understand not what they hear from their neighbor or if they see in a list serv but from teachers and there are other parents there asking questions so that they can see what the other concerns of parents are so that's like the formal out reach and then there's the more informal outreach of you know board members and individual teachers talking to parents they know and i think that was done very effectively and then the last piece and i i mean this with all the best intentions to my fellow colleagues but there's board outrage and with something like this is so important to us as a district it is crucial the that staff this board outage that it not just assume that if we have questions we will come to you with with them but coming to us reaching out to us scheduling meetings you know sending us information having it you know come to us multiple times that that is really crucial so that we when a parent when i you know when i did my reach to talk to parents i can explain to them not as good as you can but i can explain to them why it is we're doing and why and without that piece of it we as a board are or left a little bit in in the lurch and so i think those five pieces are really important so then when we talk about making other fundamental structural changes that may be contentious if we follow and really do those five key pieces i think will we will be as successful as we've done been today to see you know we've heard from a principal you know teachers parents you know you see professors and we see how fun and exciting this can be as opposed to you know i'm dreading it i'm not sure how many people going to come yell at me but it's really exciting i mean it's really exciting that we're doing this and i think that the work that was done and hitting those five pieces really made it possible so thanks again for all so i just have a couple of questions most of my questions either have been addressed through some of the meetings that i've had with some of you all until thank you for doing that what outreach i went to director daniels it really is very helpful to board when rather than rush to make a decision that you know you give us the time to understand you know the reasons for for your recommendation the data that was behind your recommendation issues around differentiation was very helpful to have that amount of time to be able to you know make a decision that you felt well not that you wouldn't have been prepared to do on your own but kind of that we all felt that we were prepared in terms of being able to talk to our parents in in and talk to the broader community so the two questions that i wanted to have i'll do the small one first and that is that and i am supportive is that we will have new students coming into the district particularly at the high school we do have a lot of students that either did private k through eight and are then coming into the high school  also have students who transfer here from schools not just outside of the bay area but you know from oklahoma from new york you know from from from school districts that in some cases from states that may not even choose and chosen to do common core at all so i do want us to be thinking about how when we look at structuring the additional assistance that there is some way that we are reaching out to families that are coming from out of district particularly if they're coming in at the secondary school level whether it's the middle school level or the high school level because i think those students will need some additional assistance as you're seeing now with those older students that you know aren't having the benefit of story of units and they're going into math six or they're coming in they're doing it now in third or fourth grade but they didn't have k through two three behind their belt so i think that's going to be important thing and with that is i know that this is the plan but i do want to echo that  i have seen in the past some good programs that third and fourth year or good initiatives kind of fell by the wayside you know the original folks weren't there to kind of carry the charge money got tighter so the staff that was assigned  to it maybe went from credential to classified which might have been fine except that there wasn't then the professional development so that classified staff person could take on that that that that role that the credential staff had done before so  i also want to kind of throw out there that i think that's going to be something that i will a board member will be asking about and that is the continuing professional development the perfect the continuing working at our data i like i really appreciate what you said  partners and i really hope that that is something that while i really would like to see a little bit more about how that is going this year i think this is an issue that i like to see maybe some interim reports back on how it's going because it is a very major step that we're taking and i think you know for i think it is something that warrants kind of a little bit closer monitoring that we might do because they're going to be some things that we're still going to be figuring out you know that we didn't think of and one of them for me is where we are with our classified staff training particularly our i a s and our special ed and our  and our afterschool folks as well and the parent workshops i know that if my child can help with this luckily there beyond this point i would have to spend a little time myself before them so you know i don't know that they'll be a lot of parents that that this is just not how you know it's good but it's not how we were necessarily taught to do the problem and so we're going to need some help and having said that i just say one thing is that it's interesting that two of you mention this because at one of the exciting things that came out of this the group in sixth grade was it was generated from the teachers that we wanted to begin and some sort of website allison graz now as you know is working as the tech support and so we have several teachers that are very excited about working with her and creating that we're just kind of looking at what will work best but the idea of it is to begin to find videos and both of teachers teaching but also things that we have found on the web that will assist parents so this is already something that we came up with last friday and are planning to kind of go forward in a couple teachers really are driving that so i it's it will take while it's in the works but we also have to know that i want to thank the appreciation for all of you coming tonight it's really a sign of your dad yes i think the fact that you know the math department stood up and you know kind of as a department you know you went out there and you knew you were in your professional learning community you came up with this new you did the work i think was very very powerful and i also want to appreciate the fact that our teachers union stood behind their math teachers in this is well and it's nice that it's also math concept and what we're trying to do you modeled for us what we're trying to do with everything in the district and so i just want to thank you for that ok now we will go back to the board common student directors are leaving for the best part i just like to start off by acknowledging all the hard work that our staff at berkeley high put in on friday at their professional development day while we students got to take a break so thank you very much and i'd like to just take a moment to talk about what may be on your mind if you're in contact with any students at berkeley high and that is that a week or two ago the students took the matter of spirit week into their own hands even though the administration had said previously that it should not continue this year to safety concerns and this year it was carried out without any organization by the administration or student leadership and it ended up being pretty safe overall and continued to be a productive way of learning a day of learning so well see if that impacts the administrations this is a decision about reinstating or not next year and if you have any questions not that you can talk to me afterwards public health and mental health because we were three days together doing the alive and free training and it was an intense and great opportunity to learn how we can help  students become alive and free from violence and so i learned a lot and i was sharing earlier with leah how on friday night i got a text from a friend a young friend in hawaii a young man who was worked it worked so i think you know i think what helped us to give this broad vision in terms of how it impacts our students and how our students become infected with disease and violence through no you know sometimes it's not their proper it's not something they brought on but it is something that's in it so i look forward to continuing the work here in berkeley with the alive and free program that we are having that we are doing with our students  d tech and we're having at berkeley high and hopefully soon will have also something in our middle schools that addresses the we are in a great place here in berkeley where you actually can see our city staff our mental health special council ors our ministration coming together under one roof to say we have a problem and we want to work together on this i don't think there's another city like this personally  the opportunity to write a letter to the housing advisory commission on the priority in the need that we have a around our homeless part and of the city is asking for for community input in terms of what is the priority what are the priorities of our city regard you know homes population and we as a school district making a statement in terms of we have students and families who are homeless what they need to be part of the priority so we're than the letter i'm wanted to make sure that the letter gets included in our minutes so it's public and we share that and that we follow through with it there was hearings and none of us were able to make it but i  thank you i would like to kind of piggybacking off of what director live a color said i also think boca for doing their second evening walk in the neighborhoods around mcgee avenue baptist church they had about fifty people who came out and they walked the neighborhood and were looking at they're looking at doing another one possibly in december or january and we've actually been talking about maybe doing it in the south of campus area where there's been a real rise of robberies as well as crime due to young people walking around with their i phones hanging out in their ear buds and so i want to take this as an opportunity to tell everybody young and old alike do not walk around town with your buds in your eye phones out even in the afternoon in early evening because there's a rash of increased robberies really directly related to electronics i pads i phone things like that unfortunately i couldn't make a book about because i was doing my first open office hours with council member darrell moore in west berkeley and we had some great participants and i wanted to share one  family's story that they told me and kind of bring it as something that i'd like to for us to maybe explore in the future i know it was dealt with a couple of years ago but i had a family  of a preschooler with hearing impairments who attend the center for early intervention for deafness and they talked about how wonderful the program is and how wonderful the services are in the school district so there's been a lot of issues with the young children who are it's not appropriate necessarily for them to have a one on one aide and so they're being referred to the lay home and so i'm just going to flag that  and asked that we we talk about that but i know i said to you i think you've talked about it in the past so i just want to play it again also there an issue that came up recently  with the faculty members that was raised to me was that the school district that we don't have a policy or if we do i'm not sure what it is around berkeley residents who take a sabbatical and leave for four months for their study abroad and then bring their kids back into the district and whether they get to keep their place at their school of origin and so that's something that in the policy we might want to think about but it was something that a few is percolated around before faculty members their berkeley residents they're not visiting faculty they live here permanently full time but you know the faculty at the university are they travel a lot so anyway i promised that i would also raise that issue because they came out my next two community office hours which i don't have on the web yet because it took me a while to to get them organized will be saturday december fourteenth at ten in the morning and i'm doing that when together with council member susan one graph and on january eighteenth a saturday morning at north berkeley library i'm doing that one with council member kappa tele and have partnered up with our council members so that our residents can come together and both talk about issues that they might have in relation to the school district as well as issues that they might have in their district in their city and it was a very nice experience to be able to do that with council member moore and i look forward to doing it in the coming months also opportunity that i had this week to do a tour of the berkeley arts magnet classrooms and talk with their i guess which observes some of their teachers that we are implementing the welcoming schools program and this was a part of a tour that was put together for the name conference the national association for multicultural education which was hosted a national conference and it was hosted in oakland this this year and although the name is a little  a little bit outdated the the program of the name conferences really rich a lot of discussion of culture culturally relevant teaching and a lot of anti bias curriculum and climate work and a lot of people come from all over the country to participate in one of the things that we were at our family coalition that we were asked to do was to organize a tour of one of the schools in berkeley because berkeley is really be u s d is really at the forefront of implementing welcoming schools for the nation and i so it's i've been doing this work as a part of our family coalition for a long time and i have to admit it's been years since i've been in a classroom where teachers were  these lessons to the students and berkeley arts magnet has been a model not just this year in a renewed commitment to teaching the lessons are actually teaching nine lessons during the year three in each of one eat one of the three in the three which is family diversity all kinds of family diversity addressing gender roles and stereotypes and then kind of anti bowling it's really more like ally building that's consistent with our with the rules of our school and so it's they're great exercises and the thing that's so amazing about these these lessons is that they really in some ways have the teachers have a moment to pause and calm and talk with kids about things that they're thinking about all the time or they might be wondering about that they that they might not have a chance to teach with real respect and care for the kids and so we got to witness two teachers a teacher or observe two teachers one who was a kindergarten teacher and one who is a fifth grade teacher there was about ten people from different parts of the country who were who had never experience welcome in schools and i was blown away by the quality of the not by the quality of the teaching i mean i know we have great teachers but just the quality of the experience of the of the kids in this kindergarten class the teacher had all of and i'm sorry i can't remember her name she had all of the to kids say one of the things that they like to do so like they would say you know i like to play with trains or i like to you know whatever i like to dance like to draw and if they were girls she would put them under a column that said girls like it if they were a boy if you put them under a column of boys like and then she had each one of the kids had their post it and then she was sick so who here likes to draw and of course you know half all the kids raise their hand i guess that's not really a girl's activity that's that's what let's put that in the middle so she luckily went through every one of those twelve twenty post it's including you know play with dolls and a kid of each gender at least one of each gender raise their hands and so that she ended up having all the stick sticky notes in the middle and she asked them you know what what is what's another what can we call this because it's not girls or boys and some of the kids were how burls we call the girls and so they ended up saying kids like and and it was great because it was a way of teaching it was a way of talking with them about and they were all totally engaged even with these like twelve strangers in the back of their classroom large sunny classroom and and then they all made squares of the thing they like to do and they made a quilt so it was this great activity there's a bulletin boards in the hallway that talk about welcoming schools and explain how it adds to the school's  environment they have books in the library they have some parent activists who've created created a family now a group that is looking at all kinds of bias and and i'm just really impressed i was impressed by seeing how in bed it is in the classroom bias curriculum so i'm i just wanted to share that because i think it's something that's going on that's really important in the district it's really well aligned with the positive behavioral supports that we're doing and it really encourages kids to build deep caring human connections and to identify and fairness when it happens and call it out and not a call it out in a way that's going to be productive so i just wanted to share that with with folks i know that we're going to continue to do that in the district i really want to recognize the role that that neil smith has had in supporting this work we actually have a layers on in each one of the schools that brings us back to the teachers for professional development and and you've been the concept is really is awesome so maybe you can think about that moving forward hacking i just kind of looked up and they were gone anyway at first i want to apologize i needed to postpone my office hours last saturday for that till this saturday and i had thought that that was going to get on the website but it didn't so i want to apologise for that but i will be at kathleen this saturday from ten to eleven thirty my normal office hours however are still the  second saturday of the month however but you still my council member you and i going to look into maybe having some joint meetings as well because i think it sounds like it's a great use of the community's time to be able to so superintendent yes and i'll be pretty brief as well i just want to say thank you to the restaurants that participate in taste to berkeley last night the event sold out and the proceeds benefit our cooking and garden program and also what acknowledge all or keep our parents who came to the schools last week for parent teacher conferences and i just want to note that last week we attended a full day retreat with the at the dr marshall's live in free training as board member trustee living color talked about learned about the disease and how is it affected our young people and i think that's the training that we need to have more of our community people participate in this well as our teachers there's a lot to learn it's a lot to digest we have a lot of work to do throughout the district my understanding also they'll be another trainee in three day training that this district will be hosting is it in january january correct we have the dates already set so there's other board members or staff we're hoping there's going to be at least one is every day they still let me get out on friday  party i know it's a parent council bit how also to our students about the accountability so we're going to go two ways in that one we're going to work with our student board members and hopefully they will be going back to their response respective schools and having focus groups with students there and two we were going to go through the leadership classes definitely at berkeley high school and then if the tech has one also we could also go that way as well and christina faulkner all of us in cabinet talked about the different groups that we would work with so that we would all bring the information back to one central place and christina faulkner will be working with our students there are  forward by the piano but as for the regulations regarding the package self i think it is something that since we don't have all the details from the state yes i think that what we will be able to put out to them is the orientation we're doing a forum in december an orientation for all participants i think in january and then the dates of the meetings that we would want them to attend but in terms of members people have asked for their members for one or two years i think all of that remains pac with me so the two of us would be doing the parent advisory committee and as for board members you know we didn't put them on but they would could be liaison's my assumption is that in december when you choose when the board chooses  to be liaison sit different groups that this would be one of the groups that we would have board members as liaison but not necessarily voting participating members just the same way they do to be separate the piano and other committees as well and just to be which learners and accountability plan and what can we do to support that and one of the things i've been thinking about is the possibility of having a teacher on special assignment working with charity to work with those groups so that we can have that up front because it's taken a long time and i've been on the board five years now and we still have not had a strong d like group or relax at our school sites so i think that's a good idea the other thing we thought about as we were looking at the composition of the english learner parent advisory committee was not just the lack but perhaps adding some parents from the t w i schools and  particular looking at because there is a strong parent organization there as long as everyone understood that focus of that committee would really be addressing the needs of our english learners  that's pretty much my points in terms of concerns that i was having in terms of how this group was going to be formed and the representation also so also at the last meeting director l and i agree or volunteered or were volunteered to help put together a broader outreach strategy with staff and so we are meeting with superintendent evans and the tashi barry and i'm not sure who else this coming friday to began looking at beyond school board meetings and the official forums how do we reach out into the community to get feedback and i think along with the students it might be good to look at like the training of trainers for  facilitation and framing discussion in question so i think that might be something that we could really look at together so i just wanted to report to folks that we are moving forward on that and i too want to share  look forward to seeing the actual recommendations of the names and just i know this is stating the obvious we've stated a lot but i'll just state it again that very serious importance of having this be a diverse group and to have especially if we have a deal lack i don't want to silo our english language learners from the rest of our parent advisory group so also looking at where the synergy and connections could be between those two groups of you know bringing them together sometimes for conversation but the representation of that group along with the plant and so the superintendent has is going to be really important  most concerned about that as we come back with the recommendations you know and we will be bringing those to the board and we are looking at that and we are receiving at this point right now quite a few resumes in terms of people who are interested on the committee and i just wanted to remind you that we're going to have a were have a subcommittee that will be looking with you because i think we'll express that in an hour or charges to help make sure that that i had another thought which is i mean another comment i wanted to make and  director leyva cutler and i both found ourselves at this really inspiring town hall meeting that was put on in oakland for their schools to help start some plenty of conversations around the l c f and the cap and they had this real they had a lot of students participating and i think i just hope i think it's worth having a student forum that maybe not just through those individual groups but a broader school forum that we really organize well for that we ask to have these small table discussions where we ask some really well thought out questions that were put at put out that i know a lot of time went into putting those questions together so we can look at those questions and it very articulate they know what they wanted so what they wanted to see in their schools so i don't know how we build up to that but we definitely it was something to look at topic but i think they will want to see documentation about our efforts to show that it was truly a community effort so just as long as we are you know documenting you know contemporaneously what we're doing you know we sent out this e mail and it's in a folder somewhere or you know that way i think that would be at least this first year we may not have to do after this first year but the first year we should doctor everything second thing is i'm assuming that we're providing food  i would think that that would it as we've seen in other situations that would increase the availability of parents to come  so i had a question because i guess i'll start this just pretty much is that this is not the first time that we've seen this item and i think it came out of the last meeting that  there are needs that are being raised by the numbers of students that we have the district and how their comp they're not quite evenly distributed through all sites mainly because we have sites are not equal  themselves and so that really isn't just a matter of the office staff but it's also looking at the issues that were you so eloquently brought up this even whether it's new directors or special ed teachers or r t i assistan is a large range of of of us as we need to look and so i was convinced last time to i don't really like voting for things in pieces when i know that this is part of really going to be another which larger ask which i think is something that we're going to have to seriously consider that you cannot expect the same two teachers to have a caseload that's you know half the size and double the size from from school to school so i would like to get a sense of that work of kind of coming up with a standard that that's going to be developed before our budget process really kicks into high gear because otherwise we won't have that information to fold into the budget so again i want to go back to the process and one of the state board priorities has to do with basic services and so i would think that it would be one of the things that we would be looking at as a staff that we would bring early to you in terms of looking at what is the formula for our elementary schools what you know what when we propose as a cabinet to you and begin by doing it in friday notes before we've had and discussing it as well with with our parent advisory committee with with as the cap i developed this spring and i guess that's the the other part that in terms of this is that i well at some point the  cap process and our regular budget process have to meet and so i assume that the schedule that we are doing is thinking about that that because we have and the parent body but we also have our superintendent budget advisory body so just to make sure that the timing is such that they're you know they're not crossing paths or or they're not on on the same track  julie i actually pulled this for a very specific reason because i thought we had left the last school board meeting with a request to staff to look at moving the formula down to the schools of four hundred so i thought what we were looking at and cost you now was a four hundred to five hundred point four and then the five hundred point six and so when i saw this come back exactly the same as october twenty third i was confused and so i didn't know whether you ruled it out for a reason because it didn't say that and then also we had talked about possibly doing it based on your rationale that you articulated about they'll c f f and they'll cap of maybe doing this for a year so question i so i left believing that after the awareness of deficit spending that the board decided not to add the additional point eight but perhaps my memory is incorrect i looked in the minutes and since it's only action it didn't have anything specific and i didn't have time to go back and review the entire tape but you know i'm happy you know if the board wishes to spend additional dollars but i remembered that after much discussion the deficit spending was of concern to the board in the board said well just leave it as it is so i thought i thought there was a not agreement on that i think there was a board member or maybe them bers who felt strongly about that and there were others who i think had wanted i thought that we had left it that we were going to get a proposal back of some options so i haven't looked at the board i haven't looked at the board be there so i could be remembering that incorrectly but i also was surprised that it came back exactly the same and feel a little bit between a rock and a hard place because i don't want to we don't have another meeting ending till december  you know so i'm i don't want to i know schools really need the extra help and we heard from our you were president tonight i think we've heard consistently that you know we've added so many new kids and this really seems like a drop in the bucket for the number of new kids and we might not see it this year but next year we'll see the a b a for those kids so we'll get the money back and i'm really getting it back and a little bit and moving forward will so i'm i am less concerned about the deficit spending and more concerned about how our kids are there's just too much for those growing schools to handle in this environment i think that i wanted to look at the whole picture is that i think i would be more comfortable and i think that there's going to be a lot of needs are going to come out of that and and we have both money in our general fund as well as well it's all general fund but now we have money that's kind of outside of the process of of of of the cap is well as money within it and so to kind of so i guess i'm saying i don't mind doing some things for like this year you know you know to kind of get us through the processes that we're going to be doing in the spring and then have a bigger discussion about what is needed for basic service levels and for in the was that feed into our budget for the you know for next year so knight and i think that where we left it i don't know that i think there was some discussion about it being one time money versus not and one concern was consistency of staff but i think in most cases it's going to be adding adding hours to staff that's already there it's not going to be so much new hires that you might then be letting go in in the fall but i would suggest that with the couple questions that we had if we can i don't like to add action items to study sessions but if there are three folks on the board that would like what was requested you know the request and i know that that might be more than we can do and then i'm curious to know if we go down to four hundred and then you know if we start with kate so we have the two schools and what would it cost if we did point five point five and point i mean i still wonder if it's enough if if the staffing allocation that we're suggesting is enough to to really make a dent in the need right now particularly at i mean i'm just we've added so many kids at school and i am i mean maybe we just make an exception for that one school and that with that one school we go up to one point i don't know i just it seems worth it and it seems like we'll save some of the money through probably better tracking of attendance and other means but i'm just i'm just really concerned and then in the future what i'd like to see what the other my other concern is that this is just going to end up getting lost if we annualize it so it will just kind of go into the abyss of the of the budget and so if we do pass this either whether it's this week or next week i would like to have with that a commitment that we will come back and address this before these specific  specific positions even if we don't make them one time that we look at them again in the context of what i think karen's asking for from for about the needs of the larger schools because i i just am i'm concerned we're just going to do a deal and this is part of the largest question in terms of the resource formula that we need to develop in terms of you know how many literacy coaches do we need how many special ed teachers do we need that's part of a bigger i think this is just sort of this is just a band aid really for right now for  store teachers and principals need so i think it's something that we need to come back to it's not i don't think it's going to go away and i definitely don't want to go with what i'm hearing is that there's the immediate need right now we have to do something right away right now you know but this relates to the bigger picture but also not only just with this particular issue but also formulas for resource teachers and you know all these other people that we provide outside the classroom as well so why don't we bring this back if we can at the next session with a proposal that will get us through this year and that would give us time to look at the bigger picture as it relates to all the things that we have to do with you know al capp and so forth so i want i guess what i'm not sure we don't yet witness caution so that's what's wait one second i just want to be clear also because to get a sense i think one is what you've already given us i think one is looking at how to maybe serve those that are at the four hundred to four hundred fifty level what that would look like so kind of what it is that you gave us now what would it be to lower the assistance level to four hundred and what would it be to fully fund the requests that we had by our principles and to do this as a one year program while in the in the well we will staff develops the family incomes that the proposal because i think the other thing that janet levinson i think we talked about is that this is all about freeing up the principal to do some work that right now if if you know they're acting as the school nurse and they're acting as the you know the person who deals with the teacher who with the with the parent who's kid lost the jacket it's taking away from the be the instructional leader but other things that are also doing that they're also now having to step in deal with conflicts and back up the special ed teacher and doing other things to do so while ideally they would have full time everything added you know i know th resources only stretch but so far so i think that doing this is kind of the band aid approach with at least looking at what are all the needs and how do we come up with a funding strategy i have a question which is an h r question because i guess there's there's the challenge of increases increasing somebody is after he appoint for or putting  positions together that create you know whether it's increasing the point for point six is another staffing position to actually hire out full time a full time staff person where you're actually posting you know for one f t which is really a new person or a promotional or and so i guess part of me feels like with the time one is a reality check and i really appreciate the principles proposals that what they really need is a full time person i'm not sure that i'm willing to deficit spend that much at this point in time especially without the big picture that we want but i am willing to do an addition of a point so i'm just thinking if i well that's  it's kind of like you know well i guess what i'm wondering is why wait till next week and why we have staff do a bunch of work if we're basically going to end up proposing to add the two schools of the four hundred to five for fifty of the point four up and then decide we're not going to do that so i just i'm just going to reality to say what my reason was my reason for asking for that is because i want to know what i just i want i don't think that's hard to do right to figure out what to one point  i just wanted to i kind of wanted to know what i think it helps for the public to to know what the range of request is and i don't know i talked to one principal who said that appoint for positions sometimes can be more you know i think as janet was saying that it's a there's also work involved in a point for position so maybe we would decide to do a little more like i just i just it just i don't want to be in a situation where we're not letting this move anything move forward but if we could come back next week with some alternatives that was why i'm not i'm not sure that that so the impact is one hundred eighty thousand dollars and it's two f t e as it's coming proposed record whether it's today or in a week if a majority the board wants to go an amount above i mean i think for efficiency's sake well director paul i appreciate kind of the informational aspect of waiting for a week i think if there's a majority the board that's willing to add in additional f t e at an amount of money we can get that information they talk about any time without having to impact or study session next week which we just added thirty minutes to  so and it sounds like december eleventh is already packed so i so i would i would just urge just unless we really think we that additional information will be helpful for us not to ask staff to do know move on how much is a point eight i can tell you right now one second mid range would be about thirty two thousand dollars salary and benefits and i just and one point about thirty seven thousand five hundred how much about thirty seven thousand five hundred again these are just estimates we don't know whether an employee has already hired in the district and you know when we promote the employee whether they're in the employee is going to be at a higher range so i might i might suggest director that you just make a motion to amend as you suggest and see if there's a majority in that way if there is boom move on and if there's not we bring it back in a week with more information by the board that we brought an item for for custodial support due to facility expansion and we didn't approve all of the positions and in the spring we will need those custodians and so we were planning to also bring back in december our need for a custodian that's kind of based on square footage so we kind of have a formula for that and we held off until you know until we could get more idea of how much funding we would have available to us so that's going to be an immediate need for this year as well so i this want to be aware that and we are looking at noon duty right now we come up with a formula we haven't presented it to cabinet so that's another area so i'm not sure how you want to go see with you know other needs that may come forward  current school year in addition to this so you want to make a decision on this without knowing those other items so i just wanted to bring that to you so normally i would i would vote no on this just no matter what but because it is for that reason because we don't have a larger picture but we are hearing that is an urgent need and we need to address it now so that's why caveat that we really need this formula for what the schools need because otherwise we're just piecemeal and we're going to continue piecemealing for the next couple of months but in honor of what but director daniels just said around the urgency of this need i will make an amendment to the staff recommendation to include the two schools that are between four hundred and four fifty with the point for recommendation of staffing one i'm going to be voting against that measure because i kind of agreed to vote for for the one hundred eighty thousand based upon what i was hearing as the immediate need but i am very uneasy about starting to do piecemeal budgeting particularly when we know that there are quite a few staffing needs at our schools because of our larger population and that we have not yet seen what that looks like as a whole so it's not that i don't support the schools it just i just think this is a slippery path and and this is where i'm going to respect that's that staff just came forward with what they thought was the real kind of emergency band aid and will spend more time on developing  they're both approximately four hundred twenty students in terms of their moment but your eyes narrowed eyes i'm trying i'm to see because my i don't actually have a problem with the extra thirty thirty seven thousand dollars but is that what you said it was i have a question about how we're making the decision about where we are going to put those dollars because i feel like some schools have grown so it's to be a growth question not necessarily yeah and i i so i'm  do need the motion yes ok so the motion would be to amend the stack recommendation such that it would be four hundred m below gets zero four hundred to four ninety nine  four and the five hundred or above would say the same and whatever that cost would be that's that's the motion to amend and there's a second and our voting student directors us to add positions thank you for adding the others but here we have a nomination fortunately in one sense the position is a vacant and we find ourselves in a situation where again the learns budget  is at a point where we need to make some changes if we're to provide a more equitable program to the students depending on you know what's resources that we have available and as you know some schools bring in more parents than others with it with that in mind we still have to make sure that our students receive equitable programs so the learns program is requesting that we eliminate this point for f t and  the a part of my twenty thousand dollars in savings to reallocate how the money is used throughout the sites i asked about this position and it seems like the one position that will continue is through a grant from its founder of grants so the point one three after that is funded out at a middle school which is one hour per day this remember that we did this last year as well and i the board policy subcommittee has been meeting and we wanted to take an opportunity to find out what priorities are on your mind so that when we are kind of deciding where we're going to focus our time and attention we can we can we can know what the kind of what the scope is of people are thinking and we did notice that there's a lot of things that come up and people mention we should talk about that at the policy subcommittee but there's no comprehensive list so i thought i would start by telling you the things that we have been working on which i think you know so i'll be brief we i think you know we spent quite a bit of time in the first couple of spending time looking at the bylaws so we actually have divided that into two different tasks one of them is to look at the governance bylaws and to really take a look at what will be coming to you with some recommendations for amendments talking to you about protocols and the role of the board president so we talked about and we'll talk about that a little bit for a treat and then when the other part of it is to make sure it is a much bigger task which is to make sure that our bylaws are not just our byelaws but our policy manual is in compliance with all of the state law amendments that have taken place and there's actually quite a few areas where we have work to do there so where to working with the superintendent who's i  believe working with cabinet to figure out how we're going to go about doing that because we have to that's kind of an urgent and urgent task that we need to do to make sure that all of our our policy manual is completely up to date in addition to that there's a couple other things that we've looked at we've been looking in at the policy level at the policy subcommittee you have gotten the report at least once maybe twice on the community process for our capital improvement projects and so that's something that's all to come to the full board but we've also been trying to monitor that at the policies of committee level the superintendent has been working with with me on looking at policies to make sure that we're in compliance with the student success and opportunity act which is a b twelve sixty six which ensures that we are not discriminating against transgender students and then another issue that's come up asked to do that i think was on the list from last year was policies related to grading attendance and grading policies is something that's come up in the past so those are some of the things that are kind of on our running list and i think that director signing who sits on the we've also been it's been brought to our attention that we need to look at a career tech ed policy that aligns with a v thirteen thirty which authorizes us to add a c t e course and as a graduation requirement as an option of you could do language visual and performing arts or c t e and that would align with the common core standards so guthrie and kristi sure would like us to do that before january so they're bringing that to us to the policy committee we also have a request to look at our smoke free policy and look at the inclusion of east cigarettes  and what that would mean to add and i know that from working at the university were also we incorporated the cigarettes and our smoke free policy so there's language and then the one that just came up tonight around faculty members who are berkeley residents with kids and rolled in the school and when they go to a sabbatical can they reserve their right to come back to the same school so those are some of the emerging ones so i think we're then going to see if there's a yes so that i just wanted to open it up to anyone else if there's something else and if there's if there is another issue that you think we should be addressing them have to figure out how we're going to prioritize i was going to start with the student actually you know maybe i'll come back to  e i'm glad that we're looking at the school at the school governance but i also would like to make sure that we are also looking at a new board member or in how we also implement because i don't think we have a supporters of that the allocation of resources for new i think that that's something that's very important if it'll help us it'll think it'll set a tone in terms of what the expectations and what we need to go to that will get there at least we have something to visualise in terms of what we're trying to work to get our schools to have based on their population their square footage and their needs also there's something that in the past that's happened in th students who are suspended there's no requirement teachers are invited or asked to give students homework but it's not a requirement when students are suspended from  get on line right now but i would love to think about how we do our expulsions what policies govern not only just whether they get homework while they're expelled but just the whole process we've talked about it a bunch  i've been on the board but we've not actually made any changes and therefore staff has nothing to go on other than what the full so if you want to see a difference in how students are actually true you know the interaction the soon to the families during the expulsion process we need to i think the other ones are saying i just want to i guess reiterate that i really would like as a priority is to is our government our governance policy  think that's something that we've talked about as a board for a couple cycles now and it's one of those things that it could we could be talking about it still two years from now so i would like to put that at the top of something that i think is is is to get it  and that is looking at our suspension policy and i would like to see us move toward certainly you know toward limiting the use of suspension off campus suspension but i don't think we can it's not a policy you can pass until you have the proof until you know what the program is that you going to put in place so it's really not quite the policy subcommittee but that that is something i would like us to move forward on and i think that what i'm a little concerned about that's a very long list and it seems that the things that i think governance is just something that's basic to a board and i think that you know we are pretty cohesive board so this is the time to do that  d to get that done i also think that anything having to do with our legal obligations to make our policies consistent with that code has got to be a priority and of course it seems that you know  thread so i think that that would be the three things that i would focus on is anything related to our governance and then secondly what we need to be compliance either state law with some of the new mandates around common core and then trying to talk about too many different things that one ok so just i just want to add that you know these are things in the last five years in the last five years that i've been thinking about and will they ever come to the top i don't know hopefully but i think it's something that as a board that we should hand off if we're not here in two five years that we would make sure that we've done some work we've done some work and handed off to the next board but i think not to you know we need to keep this summer  not to do it and i'm saying i'm just saying that we need to keep it someplace where it's there and it doesn't get forgotten so i'm going to just in the interest of time i think it just so you're clear because i think we've talked about this that the governance the governance piece we have gone we spent quite a bit of time on it we've gone through the whole byelaws we've identified areas where we think we should change i think there's nothing that came up here today that we haven't talked about we're in the process of working on drafting some changes we have and in turn is helping out some with that and deborah turner feel assured that we're working on that the compliance piece is actually something that where i don't know if this is the place to talk about it if there is we really probably have to bring somebody in to help with that so that's something that i know the superintendent has experience with and we're trying to find a way to do that that's maybe not as onerous as the process he engaged and interested asked district so technical so yes i'm going to have to excuse myself as conversation at this point because offers services for wait out and i just wanted to also echo i'm very interested i'm really glad you're out of the suspension issue because this is that was not on i forgot to bring that up but i would also add that to the list maybe not this year but i'm very interested in looking at l a u s d s new policy on not suspending for a while for on the fines and also looking at a policy for how we would address students who are where they're  currently being suspended for possession only of substances because i think sending them home smoke is really not i think we can better invest maybe in some counts more something else like more counters at the like this year what do we think will get done and i think some other things that will recently have to wait for there to be a policy i think like for example canceling the trash cans i mean you know really i think you don't need a policy exactly just put some green bins out there and use them so i think what our goal is is to pull this together and come back with a posable but i also i just want to extend our appreciation i think i can speak for director of how  deborah turner and all the work that she does to she has been extremely supportive and getting this information and while we have been in turn who's helping us devers really the central you know that is helping us pull the information from damage and look at where the other resources can be so i want to thank the superintendent for her being able to work with us on that and i did want to say there's a couple of policies and then i will and there are three different tiers one is this governance and compliance piece that i agree is a priority there's some things that we already have the language for a policy that we can just bring and it doesn't have to be a big deal like this smoke like the cigarettes are and then there's and then there's other left board members now so that's it and i clearly don't see any other public here now so this meeting is a