r close session update we discussed received an update and gave direction on negotiations with b f t b c c e and yuba we will be recessing into closed session at the end of open two and is now on the floor for a motion so i am abstaining so before we preview genda for all of you who have it i just like to note for the public that the start times next to the agenda items as well as the total times next to the agenda items are estimates rather than fixed limits so they are there to help guide us through the day or through the evening so that we can stay on time and on time so we will now consider the agenda for approval are there any request that changes is none is there anyone who would like to make a motion also move move by a vice president to tell and he seconds second by director sign it without objection the agenda is approved ok we begin with two quick items the first thing we do is to remind ourselves of why we are here by asking a member of the public prefer blue student to read the district's mission statement either any volunteers it's in the contributions to our world yet it perfect thank you very  the major things are going to be focusing on that topic so that in mind we have an update on common core which is a huge transformation in our primary curriculum in our district and really throughout the state so if you do if you're able to stick around to do really interesting too to witness the superintendent will be proposing his new saturday science program which is really exciting and for those of you who don't have a chance to read the packet to know what that's about what we're doing some other things that could you do that stick around and check it out because it will really has the potential to be really impressive for a district and then lastly we're going to be hearing an update on to a motion consolidation and the bilingual expansion again this is an issue that has been working on for a long time so all of this usual really important and so if you're able to stick around either in person on the radio or on t v i definitely encourage you to do that before the public comment i believe we have a recognition yes  so now you're ready to face so i'd like to ask linda lewis and michelle shannon to come to the podium and we're going to read from up here and then we're going to come down and so when contest and amazing high school students who unfortunately couldn't be there at the morning you know it's early in the morning and so what we wanted to do is recognize michelle here tonight in front of the school present the awards to you and come down in a minute and then you could say something in for a couple minutes but the next generation high school awards the students were nominated by their school administrators and they were selected based on three criteria organizational your principal said about you says michelle shannon is a passionate leader on the berkeley technology cademy campus she is committed to ensuring all students have a voice and that's really important this commitment is exemplified through her appointment as a student member on the school governance council there she effectively communicate the student point of view with adult committee members she has earned their respect as she has played an instrumental role in determining the resource priorities needed to improve school y student achievement as a junior machine in a ride to berkeley academy's ready to tackle the academic challenges of getting on track to a four year university it is my understanding  that you have been accepted to two c s use and your decision is to attend sacramento state and we want to thank you for your commitment to supporting your fellow students and the entire school community while embarking upon your journey congratulations artistic expression according to berkeley high student director director senior leadership john yeah thank you artistic expression does not stop at drama for luna she's a poet and a dancer she's been active with modern dance under the direction of instructor linda carr her choreography resume includes a jazz piece a tribute piece to james bond co choreography of a hip hop piece dedicated to women's empowerment she's also put in time to help other dance students learn the basics by leading daily stretches for beginning dance for the last two years luna has created such a range of work that it leads to the question is there anything that she isn't passionate about she's never doubted her purpose while using the arts as a lens through which to understand the world whether it is a poem about her distaste of the use of the n word a dance piece dedicated to women's empowerment or other dramatic performances she is holding up a mirror for us to understand our current and cultural norms each of her pieces is a statement crafted carefully to have the audience mentally debating its significance and its role that they may person and their role and they may have at any prevailing stereotypes revolutionary minds do not always have to use written words to affect great positive change as luna lewis is demonstrating the stage is also a dynamic place where passion can fuel inspiration to transform minds into new modes of thought we would like to thank you well enough for her passion and applying her craft to reach her fellow students and the broader community ok the next item on the agenda is public comments i will first called speakers who have indicated on the green cards that they want to speak on an open session agenda item if time allows we will then hear speakers who have indicated that they want to speak on an issue that is not on tonight's open session agenda in addition it is generally the generally the board's practice to first hear from our students on a particular issue they speaking requests have been organized by agenda item and by whether the speaker supports or opposes well wishes of the board modify the item i will rotate through the relevant agenda items so that we can hear from at least one person on each agenda item and from each position if your name sending your time you first go to opportunity to speak at tonight's probing on that issue and no one can later see the time to speak on that issue speakers are limited to three minutes at the president's discretion extra time will be given to those who need translation or of other speech needs time is required on the two rock clocks there and there when one minute is left you'll hear sometimes you'll hear a little beep and the light on the lectern will turn yellow when your time has elapsed the light at the lectern will turn red and you will hear peeping beat beat beat like that if you are still speaking your time is up you will be allowed to finish your sentence but please do not try to speak beyond that i understand that there are really important issues about which people feel very very passionate however in order to be fair to all speakers if you continue to talk i will cut off the mike and basically ask you to stop talking please don't take it personally it really is just to keep things moving speakers as we can in about thirty minutes for each green card i will call the name of the speaker and his agenda item on which they're speaking as well as the name of the following speaker to keep things moving i would ask the speaker who is next in line come forward and wait near the lectern this will allow us to keep things moving and hear from as many speakers as possible i apologize in advance if i pronounce anyone's name in correctly finally under state law the board is only allowed to discuss agenda items at their designated time on the agenda therefore i do the thanking each member of the public for speaking to produce not generally respond directly to comments or questions in the public comment i understand that this can be difficult for some spe who find that their lack of response so no indication of the boys like of interest or lack of compassion i can assure you that we all take your comments very seriously and oftentimes wish that we could respond directly to members can and sometimes we do  respond it during our public comment which is during the break comments and that is scheduled after committee comments so goes public comment committee comments board comments if you want to stick around sometimes we will be i'm sorry gardening program means so much to us and the students students get experience hands on education fund dedicated teachers kids also get exercise about maintaining a healthy diet she can be out enjoying nature get their and we should keep it that way this is the highlight of the day for us and the rest of the community could give students the time to get to know each other better and allow students to make new friends new friends students as well as teachers to expand the social life if we eliminated cooking gardening from our schedule students wouldn't get to learn all the things that teaches us students wouldn't get to learn about the world around them cooking gardening gives us so much that could never be replaced by regular school lessons the truth is and i'm especially delighted with your decision to consolidate the program outlook on elementary for the k through five last year i worked with the district to help plan this transition for the first year of all connect our ninety to be like classes being placed at the cot and i'm really happy to see the that we did coming to fruition a great principal smooth transition of staff and three fully balance kindergarten classes are just a few of the preliminary steps taken towards creating a program that provides ample opportunity for teachers to collaborate focus language instruction for all students and support for a community of parents who share the common goal of course of aiding bilingualism among their children as a middle school teacher i'm really excited to welcome these future students who will show even higher proficiency in english and spanish parents who will have the chance to learn each other's languages together and greater numbers of african american students staying and excelling in our program i also appreciate that my colleagues at both rosa parks and pragma will continue to do excellent work with  contributions just tremendously so i want to thank you for supporting the consolidation t w i'm really thank you and i also want to thank you for supporting our music classified stuff ok this is a poem that i wrote at the end of sixth grade after i learned that the gardening program was in danger of not coming back next year i wrote this together with a friend of mine's  so here do is to make concern there were three friends joe bob and friend fred they were friends for real but bobby never learned to cook a halfway decent meal joey never cook and freddie to plant but joe and bob still to this day can't joey that and can hardly move bobby is limited to take out food fred went to willard he's healthy and fit this wonderful program is great so keep it excellence and fun of the farm and garden and cooking programs my boys routinely bring home nutrition information and recipes that they put to use at home i find great joy in seeing them excited and inspired by what they learned in these classes in my professional experience as a nutrition coach i have seen first hand the ill effects that the standard american junk and processed food diet has upon many in our community we as a community need these programs that the school board would ever consider axing them is appallingly short sighted especially while the centers for disease control and prevention states on its website that childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and tripled in adolescence in the past thirty years furthermore they report on the findings of one study that seventy percent of obese youth had at least one risk factor for cardiovascular disease obesity also increases these kids risks of type two diabetes which the new york times noted in an april twenty ninth two thousand and twelve article progress is more rapidly in children than in adults and is harder to treat we as a community could acces flaps flagship programs in favor of ever more focused attention on worksheets test prep and myopic cost cutting or we could do the right thing and do whatever it takes to teach our kids about nutritional self reliance and lifelong health i urge the school board to find a way to fund the farm and garden and cooking programs as a lifelong health of our kids must be our very top priority thank you and i just want to express what a change it's been since the consolidation this year to begin with having balance classrooms for the first time is amazing where we have a balance of gender we have a balance of language with the english dominant spanish dong dominant students and the bilinguals and balance of kids that need extra academic and behavior support  addition the support for the english language learners i feel has greatly increased due to our new language lab program we have more like english language learners with the three  kindergarten classrooms and so we are able to create groups that target their specific language needs and that's making a big difference i see a big just achievement in the  playground we intervene we rotate groups we share kids so there's so much more exposure to high level academic spanish that the children are receiving and i think that for the spanish speakers and the english language learners they're getting a very strong foundation in their native language more so than me myself alone was able to do in my classroom just within the walls of my classroom in the past  the next thing i think that's been amazing is that the teacher collaboration we meet weekly to plan all of our core academics and then we in general have less prep overall because we divide the work we say you're going to plan this you're going to you know prep for that and then we rotate materials we also modify for spanish so for instance story of units we do not have in spanish so we need to translate  the homework and things like that that we need to modify for the spanish language and then today for instance we were doing our writing scoring our writing and then we were able to look and compare and have colleagues to work with if the so that we can really improve our instruction for language arts the final thing is just that now we have a single community i think all of the families and the children feel impressed by  the efforts to become bilingual and i think that that's the single community is really thriving thank you important when we look at equity which we all know is a very big issue and specifically at the district and the city's twenty twenty plan it seems to me that not everyone has access to a garden you know where they live how everyone if not everyone does have a kitchen and social emotional performance finally i would like to share with you the results of a recent stuff survey at times so much that was put out by administration specifically in regards to cooking and gardening and the classified certificate  when i was downsized last year i am here again tonight to challenge factual and mathematical errors in the agenda item entitled reinvention in the cooking and gardening program well i appreciate that tonight's proposal explains in greater detail how certain budget numbers were arrived at i am so greatly concerned that this proposal eliminates entirely the well loved and well respected cooking program and makes further drastic cuts to the garden program as i remarked last time the idea of spending thirty five percent it actually went up from the last proposal class was thirty two percent now it's thirty five percent of personnel costs in option one and thirty percent of personal cost in option two on management  when the program historically ran with an only fifteen percent budget for management is an insult to the mission of this district which puts students first and those of us proposal is a greater than sixty seven percent reduction in the amount of prep time allowed for each class prep time is reduced to just fifteen minutes for every forty five minutes of instruction fifteen minutes is barely enough time to wipe down tables swap out tours and assemble teaching materials it certainly isn't enough time to plan a coherent academically rigorous and thoroughly encouraging garden lesson this proposal also suggests an idea i don't object to fifty two and a half minutes per week for maintenance of the garden for allowing an hour of maintenance for every fifty square feet of garden this budget presumes the tio hardiman is only forty three point seven five square feet but it's not it's sixty eight times that or three thousand square feet the cookie link i mean program has been successful because of the hard work and dedication seasoned professionals who bring joy to light knowledge and memorable experiences to our students every day this program has been successful because of the time we have devoted to making them it this proposal cuts our prep time by more than sixty seven percent please don't just in this program can still be successful if we only put one third of the time into it thank you good evening we have some some pictures of the willard gardening program and cooking program i just want to start out by saying i have two children the berkeley five school district when i first moved to berkeley i thought cooking and gardening was something you do at your leisure i was wrong it is absolutely essential to the educational demick not just academic but the social education of our students when my daughter was born sure arms were like this and she couldn't use her two hands together years of physical therapy and occupational therapy didn't do it but when we got volunteered at the jefferson garden i looked around there was a shot she went right for it my daughter berkeley high and attended willard and so many people have spoken so passionately and eloquently about the achievement gap and the connection to the gardening program and hands on learning and obesity and diabetes i feel you've heard so much about that i just want to say from my heart i hope you can find a way to save our cooking and gardening programs and i hope you can find a way to keep some of it at willard i'd really like you to do the right thing for willard we feel as cindy said we're not a priority for the district we look at king we see everything with a half we see there we see their brand new track we're happy for them that they have it we don't begrudge it but we'd like to have more willard it's a wonderful vibrant school with wonderful teachers i feel so grateful that my son went there a big part of what made it wonderful him for him was that cooking gardening program and we don't want to lose that think of willard and do the right thing for willard and i'm going to leave the rest of my time for and i'm going to share the time with katherine we have eight hundred sixty move on signatures i apologize for how much it's clogged up your mailboxes we want you to know that there are a lot of us and the comments are very heartfelt we also had last word student done by students no parent went around no teacher went around signed this petition to save the program you can't get middle schoolers and middle schoolers at any school to do anything all together ever depend on cooking and going to get their fresh produce during a school where another forty three percent depend on what mode and home those are compelling very compelling stats this program is the best thing since sliced bread there is no time like the present from middle school i'll leave you with this eight hundred sixty signatures on the wonderful comments thank you equity is to bring up fantasy it's not about equality and when i look at these proposals i see the money is spread out unfairly through the schools now i think every school and every child should have this program hi i came here with a little speech that i'm going to because everybody has said it and some people so passionately much more dramatically than i can do but i know that you understand how supervisor is that one proposal doesn't have a supervisor at all for the case to seven classes and this is really unacceptable you need a supervisor to plan and to  see that everything's followed through so you can't just leave it to the principals they've got too much on their plate the other thing i want to say is that no one's talked about the p t a money very schools have raised their own money through p t a is to supplement garden teacher this year or cooking teacher you can't really deny a school to support what they want if they want to support their gardening  cooking programs by raising money that's for them to decide that in an above what you are allocated for them it's it's not an equity thing which i have heard people say oh you have to have absolutely people around the district you know if a school says i want to support this garden program with these twenty thousand dollars they have a right to do that they have a right and duty to do that secretaries bus drivers and support staff the work we do is essential to keeping i'm sorry our schools safe and running most of our members are women african american or latino and earn less than twenty eight thousand per year as we reported last night we have to clear impasse in our negotiations with addition for a new contract after three years of negotiations the dishes that we agree to eliminate basic protections  g costs of living many of our members have been forced to take second and third jobs to make meat when the cost of benefit goes classified workers are the ones who get hurt the most our members are investment teachers and ministered to are expected to be at the same increases many of our members cannot afford to cover their spouses or children those who do have seen a dramatic decline in their take home pay barbra's in premiums we want parents committee members to know that we have not taken the know you have been a district bus driver for six years these are my comments were just using union time ok so last week my colleague johnny used the word oppressors while describing how he's come to feel about this board a couple of days later he asked me if i thought that might have been too strong a word and i said well yes maybe a little strong but upon reflection i think perhaps you could be however i don't think it's intentional i think perhaps it's because you're uninformed or underwear perhaps you do not understand this district has a management problem as in poor black and silent perhaps you hear otherwise from management especially about recent and commendable improvements in some departments perhaps you rely too heavily on rosy reports such as the high we care scores transportation just got for services delivered by classifying employees yeah we care we can a lot about the services we deliver but be very very clear we do this every day in spite of management not because of it and i am sure you're not witness to the numerous insidious ways that management conveys their utter disregard for us for our time for our contract rights for our requests and input even when they ask us for them and make no mistake to give management the right to involuntary transfers would be to codified and condoned that disregard it would grant them free reign to make arbitrary transfers because what's the difference with your blessing to him and that right will move you into the realm of many employers in this country who are seeking to erode union rights to dignified treatment from management it will move you from being possibly uninformed oppressors to being will for once and i'll be the first in line for the strike sign if that ha i believe that chris basket yes a good evening by members and superintendent evans my name is chris basket and i'm here tonight representing the berkeley federation of teachers i'm a speech language pathologist a berkeley highway i've worked for nine years in the district and i'm here tonight to express the solidarity of a bluff to me with a classified brothers and sisters in my job i'm fortunate to work closely with many classified employees they have come to my aid and assistance if not rescue on any number of occasions when i'm in a classroom working with a student who they serve imo struggling students and i see that firsthand through their support work in special ed and rich the days of all of our students and cooking and gardening keep our hands in campuses safe for students fed with healthy meals and a myriad about the duties that make this district function i have no doubt members of the we have to know the value of our classified employees we know they make our schools function they make our students lives better they make our work more effective for our students we recognize their value are we being the do we have to and we stand behind them fully thank so now there's an opportunity here for my district committees that include members of the public the list is in your blood packet or any committee members here to speak to the board getting to discuss the issues on tonight tonight's agenda i know they're really important both of us as a board and the members of our community so i'm just going to keep it really prefer and say that our berkeley high girls vice city soccer team is across the street right now playing  look forward to being invited over for dinner one night so good evening i wanted to start by thinking all of the parents and particularly the students as well as the classified and  certificated staff who came out tonight and the community members i know how it i know how impassioned people feel about the items that are on our agenda tonight cooking and gardening the two immersion program as well as the common core math program we're going to hear about tonight so i know there's a lot of issues that are near and dear to people's hearts and i really really appreciate the kind of caring commitment and  passion that we've seen not just here tonight but also in communicating with us and i really want to encourage people to if you didn't have a chance to speak tonight or if you didn't have a chance to come tonight please feel free to e mail me at judy  at berkeley judy appellate berkely dot net because i really do want to hear from you i also wanted to make sure to think lori mcdonald who's one of our math coaches who has who took a lot of time with me over the last few weeks to help invite me to classrooms and talk to me about the k through five math curriculum which we're going to hear about tonight story of units and a special thanks also to cynthia allman who teaches first grade at malcolm x and lauren boy who teaches fourth grade at oxford i got to sit through their entire entire lessons from beginning to end in each of their classrooms and i was really impressed by what i saw and also recognized both the strengths and some of the challenges that i think we're going to hear about later tonight of that curriculum was very impressed by the teaching that i saw and i was really impressed by the students and how fun and engaging the work was and really the high level of critical thinking that these little that these i mean these first graders were engaged in this really amazing lesson and then we're able to engage for over an hour without losing attention so that both speaks to the high quality class management skills but also i think speaks to the the students and i also thought it was really taken by the fact that in both of those classes there were also other adults in the classroom i think each in each classroom there was at least one instructional assistant and one student teacher and i think at least in malcolm x was also a parent so there was a large adult to teacher ratio adult to student ratio which i i think we should consider and take into account when we're looking at the at the at the common core curriculum and and the quality of the experience of our kids so i want to think the thank all of those volunteers who are also helping to to to move our move our schools along finally i wanted to give my condolences to the family of jim schroeder who's a longtime teacher at berkeley adult school i know will probably be hearing more about that and i also wanted to announce that i am going to be canceling my office hours this week i'm supposed to have office hours on saturday and due to family commitments i just discovered that i'm going to have to cancel them for this week but i will reschedule them and let you all know in the meantime if you want to reach me for any reason you can feel free to email me hours good evening i would also like to thank everybody for coming out this evening especially our students who have to get back home in order to do their homework and get a good night's rest but i'd like to also thank the b f t and the b c c e folks  coming out i know after a long day of work it's hard and i appreciate it i also wanted to congratulate the berkeley high soccer both the braves and the girls were both in the n c f playoff playoffs tournament whatever you call it and the won this evening and i just got a text from my family that the girls also won so they're on to the next stage of the game go jackets and i just wanted to just say that my office  hours for february are tomorrow night from five to seven at cafe la i'm sam pavel ave at francisco and i'll be there together with council member linda mio who represents that district district one so if you have any questions or comments or discussion you want to have about school district issues or city issues please swing by anytime between five and i know that a lot of you think that when you speak that we are not listening but in fact nothing could be further from the truth it does help oftentimes to hear the different perspectives that people have we do rely upon staff as well as our own  es and knowledge but also hearing from community members hearing from union leaders hearing from rank and file you know is incredibly important and incredibly helpful you know there are there are times when you think about the hundreds of e mails that you received and certainly we can't respond to them all but that doesn't mean that we haven't heard loud and clear what many of you have to say and i think i particularly appreciate it when people do take the time to not just kind of be part of a large group of e mails but you know give a little bit of personal insight or personal knowledge that i may not have received through other venues and that's very helpful and in fact has helped shape some of my thinking in the past and currently and in the future so is what let people know that you are heard at least by me and i'm sure but my other board members as well and we all want pretty much the same things in that we want to have our kids be happy healthy fulfilled and lifelong learners we want our we want to value our teachers and our classified staff and we want as a community to put these things as for most in what we value so i think we share all of those things it's just a matter of the details and you know and that really is i think where we are on a lot of these issues is you know how do we take the common things that we value and player tries and make some decisions that you can't do everything when one said to me you can do everything was it you can you can do anything you want you just can't do everything you want and i think that that's going to be a lot of what's going to be flavoring some of our discussions this evening thank you i want to just to also in the appreciation that we have be all  listen we're listening carefully and i think not only through the public comment but also in our e mails i know that i personally read as many as i can and respond to as many as i can and i can't respond to the eight hundred petitions but i do see the number growing i think we all see it and we see the concern we see the priorities that our community is saying to us but then we have to all make these hard decisions about how do we make it fit make it work for us so i appreciate certainly the time commitment that everyone our staff are classified our parents our community and even our students who have been through our schools have grown up and come back or are far away and still bloodiness know what matters to them most in our schools here in berkeley so thank you very much and again my condolences to the schroeder family given that last board meeting recognized it is retirement so it's very sad to know thank you be for three weeks not until march twelfth we have currently scheduled a march fifth board meeting but brawling some unforeseen circumstance we will not be having a board meeting on the fifth  just to let everyone know who tracks this very closely due to work and family and the schedule of my wife i'll have to cancel my office hours i try i want to try to schedule to a different saturday but every single saturday in march is basically booked or i'm on available for various reasons so i apologize i'm going to look into having a teleconference office hour and if i can do that i'll blast that out and we'll put that on the website i can impressive and i'll just say this the score of the game was eleven to nothing i will let you figure out who scored eleven and who didn't score at all  four to five of our schools on the breakfast and lunch program and i understand it went really well and people were pleasantly surprised about how strict our guidelines are on the food that we serve every day  items i encourage parents to check out the menu of our school lunches if your child hasn't had the opportunity to try our scratch cookie so that's all i have so we move on to our agenda we have to time to items we will start will come back to the consent we will start with our eight fifteen i don't presentation on implementation of common core standards in math k eight as we get set up a lot it forty five minutes for this presentation let's try if we can move things along and why don't we say it will be done by nine forty five so i hear there are six of you seven seven all right teachers as well as you can see we have quite a few people here tonight to talk about the challenges and also the program and here to answer any of the questions that the board might have so with that i'm  core math coach my name is mike white so i am the math team lead at berkeley high school my name is michelle sinclair and i am the coordinator of professional development i'm tracey eagle heard i'm a first grade teacher rosa parks elementary school and i'm also a math teacher leader for rosa parks my name is elizabeth carter and i'm a fifth grade teacher at malcolm x elementary school and i'm also a math teacher later there i invited these people here tonight to talk with beginning of this year all the elementary schools agreed to pilot the story of units curriculum developed by common core incorporated the teachers started off by receiving professional development in a before school started and then continued with professional development during and during strict white stop staff development days during district collaboration days during site club aeration days they and they've also received training by pill davidson who's one of the program's developers  implementation has proven challenging but not just with the new curriculum also with the common core standards overall district math coaches have supported the new curriculum by meeting regularly with math teacher leaders by planning professional development by supporting teachers and adjusting materials pay scene assessments and report cards parent guides were created to help parents to understand the curriculum by one of our math coaches and then they were translated into  spanish we've held in collaboration with family engagement and equity parent workshops that have been very well attended sixth and seventh grade teachers have started using the story of ratios which is the middle school version of that program and i also just wanted to speak a little bit to next year that we are planning to continue the implementation using the story of units and the story of ratios and then we are going to start an official adoption committee next year hope to choose the curriculum by january two thousand and fifteen and then implement the following year so i'm going to speak a little bit to a story of units in the upper elementary grades one of the biggest strengths that i've seen coming through is the consistent and prominent use of visual models so they move from concrete models which is actually working with your hands to pick torah which is things like tape diagrams number lines area models and then ultimately to the abstract which is your equations this is the first curriculum that i've really seen that goes as in depth and as consistently with all of those models those models are huge in the common core standards so this isn't just the curriculum it is really something that comes through there but more importantly they truly build students conceptual understanding kids that struggle with those number concepts earlier on gravitate towards those models and are able to use them to engage in more complex problem solving one of the challenges we've had is that the pieces for differentiation aren't quite as readily available yet in the curriculum it is a brand new curriculum so some of the homeworks and the end of module assessments having excellent regular don't always for students to do math year one they have to have had common core eight so we have a graduate well planned for next year we want to have students coming into berkeley high school that it will have that com eight so our plan for next year is to pilot several chapters from the different curriculum that are available including story of functions which is slowly being written and it's about you know it's there's a fair amount of the algebra or the  teachers kind of spearhead or lead that piloting in the classrooms in the classrooms that we would target would be in my mind heterogeneous classrooms so that would be our algebra two courses and our geometry courses i think would be the ideal place to test new materials and then in the spring of next year we would start to consider narrow down which which curriculum we would like to use and then begin training our staff in that material in the spring of next year then the following year that would be two thousand and fifteen fall two thousand and fifteen that will be the first class of students that will have had common core eight and so we plan to have a for implementation of math one and also will have to have math to ready as well because we will have accelerated student accelerating to be able to take part of that course in their freshman year so it is a gradual release but we are really focusing on piloting different chapters from what's available next year ok for the middle school implementation it was for sixth and seventh grade and we started out in may with an initial p and when we met this summer for three days we were very different place then elementary because we didn't really have a curriculum and so there's a very i would say that that was one of the strengths for us is that we have become a very vibrant professional learning community and what cake grew out of that is that we we created a wiki and i would be glad for you to look at our wiki we can invite you to but it's a place where we have our curriculum we have links and we use this is a regular way that we communicate as well as with you know so i think i was sixth grade and seventh grade teachers do a lot of talking across the district as i don't think we've ever done before  elementary that it was a great curriculum but i want to say that it is the end of the job the list curriculum is amazing and probably the biggest take away there were several teachers that were here before that are mass teachers having success in math and so if we ever had before and i think it really has to do with the modeling and just that the focus on real life problems and a focus on  conceptual knowledge so you know it's a it's an amazing thing when we look forward to piling on every single one of the six and seven great teachers are using it and our eighth grade teachers are very happy to know that they have something to begin to use its parts out there at the moment we don't know what we're going to give us ourselves some time to look at what might become available but it's a very strong curriculum that we're using hi thank you for even being awake still because i know it's small i've been here i know i just feel for you that's like i'm going home i've been in the district twenty six years now and i've actually never been i've told me all this this is the most excited i felt in twenty six years i've never seen such coherence i've never seen such rigor in the classrooms across the level children are still struggling and a much higher level they are doing math that no one believed they could do the teachers didn't realize they could do it i happen to have any of you or surveyed my teachers today because i want to make sure they have the support they need because this is key this is why i think you're hearing articles now about why wait a minute what is this common core stuff we have had a very supported release of this math in berkeley a very thoughtful in my info release of this curriculum and and math and writing and writing were doing very mindfully and other places i think are piling too much on and that's why people are feeling overwhelmed and one of my teachers just said there's a lot of struggle for students in the beginning of a unit however student understanding at the end of each unit is phenomenal the biggest challenges they face are the one that teachers always face which is time time to get everything prepared time to get it done there's a lot of rancor and another thing is to prepare everything i said that already and pacing that's the other there's a lot to cover the time to get it ready and to cover it within a day and the pace throughout the year are the biggest challenges we're facing so but really i've never seen my teachers so excited about teaching math any any final comments before i open the floor the floors open hemphill thank you for your presentation and it's you know it's great to see our teachers so excited about the new curriculum and i have a few questions so anyway i am interested to at some point have a little bit more information about your assessments in how various subgroups in our in our students are doing i will say that i went to a recent meeting with peak had parents with children of african descent and while there were many who liked conceptually the new curriculum there were some concerns raised and so i'm going to kind of give you those because i think that there is a recognition that the hands on part of the of the of the curriculum is something that is more relevant to a lot of students in fact quite honestly the more i know and see about at least the story of units the more reminds me of a montessori approach to teaching math which both my kids went to preschool and there were kids that could do multiplication in preschool because of you know the exact the type of thing the conceptual way that it's taught and so there's a lot of that in of course  to me kind of the basis of a lot of what's behind come in the story of units has come and that like montessori it's different kids are different age levels assessing similar materials at different levels so it's very similar to me having said that these are the questions that these are the issues that got raised there and one was that there is some concern that for students that are al so struggling in literacy that the focus on the story of the focus on the curriculum on word problems and that such make supporting students around literacy even more important and there were some concerns about that so that's why i'm interested in kind of once we start having some data to delve deep to see you know sometimes anecdotal evidence is not the same as real data so i'm interested to know if if if that feeling is in fact supported by the data that we see there was also concern about that particularly kids that fall behind that because our new curriculum builds upon each other as opposed to particularly in middle school when it's more more repetitive and looping back in kind of sixth and seventh grade there's not a whole lot of differences and that also and you get into eighth grade that for students that say that after fifth grade haven't kind of mastered the story of units what's the you know what's the plan for them to be successful and six great similarily the students that you know in the past were not at grade level in eighth grade you know taking you know that was not taking algebra one in eighth grade we've not seen that still but an issue that we've not challenge we've not successfully addressed is you know we still have of those students not passing it in ninth grade so i'm real concerned again you know where there was concern expressed again is you know what what's the plan and what are going to be the interventions with the curriculum that builds when you're upon the next that students don't get further and further and further behind and this is particularly expressed at those transition years fifth to six and eight through ninth but i think you know it's of course from year to year the other issue that i heard in i know that there have been parent workshops so that's been great but you know parents expressed concerns about help being able to help their students at home and you know some i think for some it might be that they're not use the kind of academic language that he used and so if you're not used to that as a parent you might have been able to help more easily when it was kind of the you know the problems that were you know the you know the the multiplication table so to speak but you know you're not used to yourself is not the way you learn math and so you know what problems is not your forte either sometimes and so when is just you know i think to  do more parent can't do enough parent workshops in looking at doing it in innovative ways in maybe not just doing them at school sites because the other issue that i've heard was elated to this is that for many of our students and this is across income levels you know and you know that homework is done not at home sometimes but in afterschool programs and so now is there a need to make sure that our parents who are working their kids at home are comfortable with helping their kid in the lesson you want as a parent is to help your kid turns out you're helping them to understand less but that there is a real need to make sure that our classified staff in afterschool programs are instructional aides that they are very comfortable in assisting and supporting students that are cow in our cow volunteer tutors again they have to be comfortable  knowledgeable the city's afterschool programs you know we need to find a way to to to get them trained in how to support students and as i said our nonprofits you know we've got students that are in including even faith community faith community programs either after school or on saturdays and you know for many of our students you know that's really where a lot of the homework is getting done because if you're not getting picked up until six o'clock and you still have to have dinner you know it's hard to start that homework at seven seven thirty and still get the kid particularly the younger aides at bed on time so i think for all of those reasons you know i'm i'm kind of you know interested in and hoping  that this is a place that our district put some time and the last thing i just have was that i hear this being a pilot but it certainly sounds like a pilot to me i mean it could mean and i remember when the theory the story of units came to the district it was to embrace this curriculum and so i guess my my it seems that the way that you're planning and professional development is going is what i would call a slow roll out as opposed to a pilot when i think of a pilot i think something that there's been no decision upon and we're trying out to see if it works and that there's alternatives also being considered and so i don't really see that this other alternative being considered which i'm not faulting that but just it doesn't really sound like a pilot so i thought i'd like to speak to that i've spent a great deal of time looking for materials partly it has to do with as we started to for sixth grade and seventh grade we didn't we weren't sure where to start we're in of it we're in kind of an exciting time because  materials are being developed nationwide so we have a lot more to choose from even though the state has now come out with a list mostly what has happened is the big publishers have rearranged they haven't done anything different and it doesn't have the rigor it doesn't have the death it doesn't in many cases even address the standards in the way that they should be doing that it's the same pages moved to different places this is what we found at the moment and i think the reason that it sounds like that we are adopting it is it's hard to start learning new standards without a curriculum and one of the beauties of what common core inc has done is that they have a really laid out the math in such it is it is very well done that is not to say that we aren't going to keep looking if we find something different we are in middle school the math teacher leaders have begun to go down the list of the things that the state has given i am going to the national math conference in new orleans and i'm going to be looking at all the materials that are there this is a very big event and all the publishers will be there so i'm hoping that we will begin to see other materials but we are very much wanting to look at everything that's there so i'm actually not suggesting i'm not and i actually maybe i'm coming from a different point of view you know i would i'm not so sure that it's a benefit to anyone if this is a curriculum that the teachers are excited about the students are excited about were addressing some of the challenges that you've mentioned and you know some that i've been hearing and there are some and when we get some data i mean to kind of back up you know what we believe right to change horses in the middle  strain you know i would have to it would be one thing if we have data to show that this curriculum is not working and teachers are unhappy with the curriculum and none of the issues that have been raised can be addressed and that to me is a reason to do something else otherwise my concern is will be in january two thousand and fifteen that's when we're about to roll it out to the high school we'll have students now then spent several years in essentially this curriculum i don't you know i don't think at that time it would you know kind of start all over again with teachers learning something new and transitioning students again so that's why i'm saying is that i know the sloan well to me is actually i think in some respects preferable you know if this is a curriculum that you know there seems to be a lot of excitement about and some of the one piece that i would like to see is some data because i think that's the piece that we don't have yet  thank you all for your presentation and i think most of you know this is something that i've been paying some attention to and i really appreciate i know how much i can really begin to see how much work it  is has been in invested on the part of our teaching of our teachers and of course our math coaches and so i really am excited about what i see and so i want to make sure that i that you all know that because i know there are there have been asking a lot of questions and i think i hear what you say what you're saying director hemphill and i agree for the most part although i do think it's really i take very seriously our responsibility to its us who adopt a curriculum and that's one of our key responsibilities to the district and i think we're very lucky here to have such a strong and committed teaching staff who are looking so hard at this and feel so committed and so and are leading us and so i think we are very happy to to have that leadership and at the same time i think it is important that we do an assessment of what you're beginning to do but i think we plan on doing so i wanted to i was hoping we could actually speak to this a little bit to do a little bit of an assessment at the end of year how the first year has gone with a story of units look and it's great that now we're starting to look at the middle school if it were possible for us to have a cohesive curriculum k through twelve that's all developed by one that you know that's cohesive that moves our kids from one to the next if that work which it seems like it very promising that it could that would be a really exciting development for our district and so i'm excited to look at that and to adopt that if that's what ends up being the recommendation and at the same time i do want to make sure that we're not kind of adopting a curriculum by without giving it the proper attention and i think that you all i think i know that people are committed to that and we've talked about it quite a bit so i was wondering floor you could talk assessments that we've entered in but we don't have anything to compare them against and traces example would show that's pretty rigorous for first grade so we can look at those results but we can't compare them to anything else so we're going to ask teachers to give some feedback about what they're seeing that will be jaded that we have for this year for the most part the great thing about the common core is that it really a focused and coherent set of standards the great thing about a story if you know it's a story of ratios and history functions that is that they follow the common core standards so that if we are diligent about adopting curriculum next year that is really does for the common core i don't think we're going to have the problem that we would anticipate that is after two years going to a different curriculum and having the students fall off  especially during those transition years the goal is to make sure that we have curriculum that is really aligned to the common core and at this point this was the best thing that that we that we saw were seeing a little bit of other things come up but  i have another question up there so then there have been some concerns that have come forward i think karen mentioned a few of them which have to do with the homework i've been talking with the teachers would and i really appreciate they've been there's been a lot of so i haven't just gotten the rosy colored glasses vision of view of what's going on i think from the teacher's perspective but i do understand that you mentioned pace it was a you susan a mentor and so it's you know in each of the classes that i went to they didn't finish the lesson next day they have to get to the next lesson so i know this is all new and so i'm guessing that your what are you thinking about how are we going to deal with this and what we're learning this year so that next year we're tweaking so that it's you know teachers can get through the lessons and the kids can because you know what i mean that's what i feel like they're constantly catching up and then they go home and the parents don't really know how to help them and then they come back i think what we're finding is we had thought at the beginning of the year that the more that we learned and the more the students learned that we would be able to fit everything in in an hour and i'm not sure that that's possible with with history of units to it there is a lot packed in every lesson and the time almost everyone you ask says it does seem a bit unreasonable so it's so we're giving it our best shot to be as precise as we teach as we can not there's nothing else that we're doing except teaching the math at the time but i do think some adjustments to the curriculum  necessary in order to be able to fit everything in so we'll have the same attitude curriculum next year and i think it will be a little easier because we will know more but we're having to make strategic decisions so that we can fit everything in but one thing i do know is that teachers are making really good decisions they're collaborating at grade levels and making decisions about how to fit everything in in a way that works so sometimes think they have to do a lesson in two days sometimes they can get it done in one so they're making strategic decisions themselves you know together in collaborative groups there's really no other way to do this in terms of the other the homework and other things we are hoping that will have something better developed an extra to be able to give to parents so that there are some explanations on the pages so that they can help their students thank you and i did and i do appreciate and support the idea of waiting until next  formal adoptions that was a really smart and i want to appreciate everybody and actually the class i visit everybody did went right to the exit so they were moved along so i think it's it varies in different classrooms and different but i think you know you see teachers really really working hard and following that i'm thinking along this discussion about pilot then i think the decision and the explanation needs to come from the school district in terms of where we see our process and explaining to our parent community our process of where we are at with the pilot you know the curriculum is still not there where we're making copies about the story of units in from the other i think story ratios also so we're making copies of cricket they still haven't caught up to that so i think it from our school district having an explanation to our families in our community would articulate a little bit better where we're seeing ourselves and also that we're making a commitment to that this is i don't feel that this is something that's going to go away and change in two years so i think for us it's important for for everybody to know we're not going to shift on this one we  going full speed ahead and following the process and this is our process i think that might help everybody know that this is we're not wavering on this and i don't know why the father fellow board members would agree to this but i think our because we're waiting for the curriculum we're waiting to we're creating a baseline right now and seen our students and so on next year we're going to see or so so there's things in place but i think it's important message not coming from our teachers but coming from our district and our board in terms of where we're seeing this that our plan is to eventual adoption so i'm just hopefully everybody will with that my my concern comes in terms of i even with students who are and you know learning we have a tremendous amount we have students who are english language learners who are mainstream we have students who are special ed and you know we have instructional specialists that need to know how to support these students and sometimes the students are not getting the support they should be getting and so i'm concerned about that population of children who are not proficiency in math in literacy and what are we doing to support those students with those fift minutes an hour of instruction that they're having as we move along whether it's one child in that classroom and somebody sitting alongside them or you know i'm hoping that they're not going that whole hour without support because those are the students that we're concerned about to those a students that in need additional support so students in two ways solutions who are getting this instruction in english not spanish are they the english and english so how just so i too want to appreciate you all for coming out the c evening but actually more so for all the work that you're doing every single day and rolling out this new curriculum i guess i haven't and i also want to appreciate my fellow board members because we all you know in relation to our work we've all made it out to the school sites to actually visit some of the classrooms and try to see how it it works in practice which is exciting and exhilarating and scary i mean honestly it i am i'm nervous about it and frankly i'm not as nervous about it at the elementary school level because i feel especially in what i have in the conversations i've had in the early grades they really are look this is what they're learning and it becomes the foundation and i appreciate the fact that you're drawing out the differentiation because there's been a lot of discussion about how this is really accessible to all levels of learners that you know the kids who might be struggling can go up in the kids who are high achieving and i hadn't really heard kind of the attention to differentiation until this evening and i appreciate that a lot because i don't think it naturally happens i think you really have to look at that my concerns are really surrounding around the middle so you know kind of the upper primary grades and the middle and and i'm actually frankly pretty concerned about the high school and because i don't know how you take kids who have kind of been you know six years or so of other curriculum begin to shift them and risk them not meeting standards as as they're hitting the secondary level so particularly with the eighth graders who are eighth graders now and are going to be moving into the high school and transitioning into the story of functions how we make sure that they stay vibrant in their math and that the learning curve doesn't see to be so steep that they can't catch up or they can't adapt i don't know if i'm making myself clear but it's a big shift and their brain is kind of functioning on one level and were shifting and what i when i saw in the fifth grade is that that was hard for kids in the fifth grade who'd been through the other so if it gets to the point in the eighth in the ninth in the tenth grade where they really you know there's a gap in there in the sense that the kids who start in kindergarten and first grade and second grade now and and where they're at by the time they are you know high school is going to be just in the next two years we're going to be rolling it out so maybe you could talk a little bit about how you think  y absorption in the high school will work with the kids you know one of the major differences i see it just from what i've heard from the middle schools about this curriculum the students have and from what i've seen from my daughter who's in seventh grade the students have time to really delve into the topic so rather than work on a topic for one or two days kind of memorize a process you don't fully understand the going to something different is not related to it and just be inundated going from topic to topic  topic to they're spending six weeks just on ratios and they're just looking at it in a lot greater depth and i think that the students who typically struggle have more time to really let that sink  in i know there's some concern about the first couple waves of students are coming through but again by the time they're high school they'll have had two years of working with common core materials because their current seventh graders old will have an eighth grade year and so that'll be at least two years of working with these materials before we see them and again and again i really think that the time spent on you know just one topic and learning that really well  part that carries over that's one of the mathematical practices is modeling and so there are certain models and you'll probably hear us talk a lot about diagrams take diagrams go all the way through it's a huge piece of the common  or way of representing and so students will come with that you know we know that this year we have to introduce some of the representations because they haven't had them before his sixth grade but that will not be the case and they will come in with a lot of strength and one of the things about the concerns about students that are behind i think one of the the reasons we're seeing those students be successful is that they actually had the tools to catch up and the interventions are built in it's not to say that we still don't have to do the kinds of interventions that we do normally in any curriculum but the beauty of it is that because of the mathematical practices having to justify what you do using the models you're much more engaged in the mathematics of mathematics isn't abstract you're not you you're just can't sit there you eventually go there but that's not how you began and that's true in all of the greats so i'm hoping that that is what will help make the transition better and we've already seen that we were pretty worried about that ourselves and  we're looking forward to next year having all these fifth graders come to us that have things that we didn't know and i want to say something about secondary math teachers you know it's our credential we're trained to be math teachers but we were trained in the way that all of us were trained to get the answers we're really good at that of of teaching kids to get the answers but that is not what this is about this is about understanding the math and so for us as math teachers it's been a big struggle this year that would be our challenge is we know the math we don't know the math in this way and so that's probably been the hardest part for us it will be the hardest part for the high school teacher and but it makes us much better math teachers so i have a couple a couple more questions sorry could you talk a little bit about whether there is any communication between the literacy teachers or the literacy coaches in the math coaches due to this  integration of literacy with math has there been any dialogue across the disciplines you know i've i've talked with tom prince and i have been working with him a little bit this year to so that he can have his lip coaches work with students and teachers in reading the boy problems mostly so and we're approaching we had a long conversation the other day about close reading of the text and how that's necessary for these application problems so we want to come at this with as much the same approach as possible so we're working together in you know to be able to  and the work that's happening here as classrooms as the president and at staff meetings so yes that is happening great and i mean i actually thought about that in relation to the high school and all the constructive meeting that they're doing at the high school probably by the end of this month  i can deal with those offline too i do want to just kind of echo and i won't go into great detail the issues around training of the community based afterschool programs and the communication with parents and i think we know that but we really need  i think the communication around this i think that i think our staff have really done an excellent job with the resources that we have to get as most in as much information out there as we can know where we are but i think there's a lot of nervousness out there because we're learning as we go and were a few steps ahead of the kids and so how we articulate that and stress of confidence i think we have the confidence in our math teachers and our staff and our administrators to know that we're on a good track but the more we can communicate that with clarity and messaging on what it is we're actually doing and benchmarks will be really important and then also how assessments happen because one of the things i felt when i went into the classrooms because there it wasn't like this right answer it was a process how do you assess that and how do those assessments become data driven indicators for the district to use and so i'm really curious on how the smarter balanced assessments going to be and how weighty those assessments may be in determining you know the course of the district and and so it be exciting to see that as it rolls out a lot of dialogue around student members any questions or comments i've said this before but i just want to say that i wish i had been fortunate enough to have this when i was younger because my biggest question in math was always how does this apply to real life and i think this really answers that and i'm also really excited to see data after th us as an item on june fourth which is currently scheduled as christina faulkner said this is the most important structural issue facing our district right now and so it's coming to us three times this year and the next time will be june fourth so thank you very much thank you board know we have an hour and five minutes or so so this is to the broader scuse me everybody thank you so so we have an hour and five minutes left we have a thirty minute item a action item i think we might maybe we can i don't know if the people have questions on the action item most thinking maybe we could get through that very quickly well we might be able to win but i just get the larger picture just to people in the know you had a video that was playing and updated video about the content our program on that day we had a really good turnout we had a lot of parents support grandparents who have children in the t w i program as well as teachers teachers who actually did the tours showed up our kindergarten teachers then we've also created the current brochures and posters in november and that was really to go her and i went to those three preschools during pick up and drop off time several times to make sure that we talked to parents about our program and the current and men in addition to that we  distributing brochures and posters throughout the community and then on yes we had conned kindergarten information night which was also a good success and  so their literacy coach from our school from la concha as well as the principals from thousand oaks and the contour there and several teachers from both schools were available for parents  and it was conducted all in spanish so i also just to create a greater sense of parent involvement at our site is that we are in partnership with berkeley adult school and as of december twelfth we're offering weekly evening spanish and english classes to parents who want to learn how to speak english but then who also want to learn how to speak spanish so that yes our classes are offered free of charge at le comte and the spanish classes are charged for a cost of forty one dollars per course and so each class is one and a half hours huge win is actually researching a test that's age appropriate that's developmentally appropriate that is valid to use with students of that age and so we'll be using the pretty less and will be administrators by kindergarten teachers as opposed to in the past it was administered by various staff members and so i think to really help the students as well as the parents feel comfortable in taking the test so i  just want to clarify it's fifty five families who indicated that they are spanish speaking it's not a total of fifty five selected t w i and thousand oaks it's fifty seven families who are into canada or spanish speaking ok so out of those fifty seven yes yes yes and so the next step for us is that of course we are going to need your support we're going to providing spanish common core based mathematics and curriculum to maintain fidelity to the ninety ten model providing p t two to the right teachers across the district and then also focusing on the transferable skills and common core line i emailed an updated power point which doesn't seem to have made it here and i didn't print it out can you know i emailed it to mark and the below of the soft so let me just talk off of my slides that i made this afternoon and then i'll you mail them to you later so i had one slide that was an update on sort of and numbers so as you as i think you know at the same time that we are consolidating the two in the program on a cot we're also changing the structure of the bilingual program and thousand oaks and extending spanish instruction into fourth and fifth grades instead of transitioning kids after third grade into mainstream english only classes so this year we have a four five bilingual class that has sixteen fifth graders and ten fourth graders in it seventy percent of those kids are english learners and the rest are kids who are either doesn't mated or they were classified as i initially fluent english proficiency their bilingual kids essential but the majority are native spanish speakers and english learners the structure of that program is that we we have this one class that has twenty six kids in it that's a bilingual four five class and the next door we have an english only four five class and so for about an hour a day twenty percent of their instructional time the bilingual kids are learning in spanish and their next door neighbors are learning in english and then for the rest of the day the kids shuffled back around and we have a fourth grade class and a fifth grade class that are all taught in english by making sense so the hour a day of spanish instruction is really focused on spanish reading writing and grammar and is taught through the content areas there's a lot of science and social study that's that's being used as kind of the vehicle for that spanish language instruction trying to remember and trying to remember my slides that i created today  so the second slide was just i kind of wanted to reiterate a bunch of the things that went on to and the below already said about needs for professional development curriculum assessments in spanish there's the a lot of the needs units we also need professional development and transfer ability we need assessments in spanish a lot of the i and we've started working together more and more to really look at how the two programs are more similar than they are different and how we can really work together and support each other thank you very much you're welcome additional comments questions coming when i want to thank you all and i know there's a lot of behind you there's a lot of teachers in the our staff in our classified who have oral supporting both our bilingual and our two immersion program but the economy and we still have cracked and we still have rosa parks so my question goes into this in terms of how do we continue to support those programs while we're doing the consolidation that also we're holding and holding up also pregnant and rosa parks and also our bilingual program so transportation of students from like khant to from west berkeley where some of the families are are we providing transportation from west berkeley to yes and it's already planned for that  desirable and so our lottery system right now was for kindergarten so in order to set that up we are we are going to encourage all of the spanish speaking families who applied for t but it doesn't guarantee them spaced out like on in the program the following year well my concern continues to be with the children are losing a whole year of language when they go to an english only and so what are we doing to support especially those children who later wrong will be screened by our staff in terms of their first language and they've already had one year of spanish english only so that's my concern in terms of how we are addressing that district wide for those students who are native speakers bilingual  and it doesn't take long for those young children to be exposed to english to make a preference for english only in lose you lose a whole valuable year so i'm hoping that we can do something we can start to really seriously look at how we can that i think it is a serious issue that we have to look at as i mean look at the lottery and went around to families to begin to choose which elementary school they'll be assigned to and i mean i think all your points practical are very well taken and i think that when we discussed kind of the long term t k issues that we face i think that is that along with you know facility issues along with a lot of the issues a lot you know all have to be in the mix and hopefully our demographic committee will you know look at that before a real wake of the other other questions or comments from the board director have thought i would like to hear a little bit of two things when i'd like to hear a little bit more about  it and rosa parks you know that there's i guess five more years of teach both of those schools and so you know i know that some of the challenges of you know looking at enrollment looking at the fact that you know understandably a lot of energy is being put into building up look current and thousand oaks because those are the two programs that we know with the long term programs but one of the issues when we started this discussion was a recognition that that consolidation was part of the answer but strength in the curriculum was as important and so i like to hear a little bit more about how rosa parks and craig what are being supported in terms of curriculum in terms of professional development you know just you know their what they have what first through fifth grade of d to be lived ok i think one of the biggest things as you said fully agree that if we provide appropriate curriculum in spanish for teachers and the professional development that they deserve and have have been asking for years then it will strengthen not only the look on program but it will also support the other programs such as rosa parks and pragma i brought this as an example to show you guys this is the new w p writing curriculum not one page of it is in spanish so teachers are having to translate the information and i have a list if you're interested i have things that are essential this is k five that those teachers are having to do without getting a bad stipend without getting any you know other extra pay aside aside from their teaching they're having to do this and i think that if you guys can really allocate some support and funding for that t w i coordinator who can also help find appropriate curriculum can bring the teachers together because right that would be a huge huge service i think that's critical because you look it's kind of evolving organically right you know that they're adding a great right well rosa parks and mont they're already you're above you right while you have can do gardeners you could start work on first grade well rosa parks and private already have first graders and those first graders will be second graders  will still have the luxury of working with first graders and who's paying attention to the second graders and i'm really concerned that two things can happen when you do we have kind of in equities in our t w i program program as it is at at le con and that would be a shame too because it's not the ability for those students to transfer to look can't because those great you know you know because at this point those grades haven't come into fruition teacher program so i really think this is a major issue that needs to be addressed i think you're doing great work at work in in thousand oaks but you know we have five years of students that you know we need to address those issues and then this question about the additional funding the staff has come up and so one of my questions was is how how integrated is kind of what you're finding are the needs for t w i into r l kept process because because one of the target populations is english language learners you know for our our l c f of funds think that has come up for principals it's come up at the parent advisory committee it's come up with the d l x so i think people are well aware of the need for our services for english learning so i think it's high on the list  earlier that you know fifty seven spanish speaking families or indicated spanish speaking families we have yet to test them to see how many of those fifty seven actually english money was going into the program  it is the english learners that are the focus on the el capitan not necessarily end up you either a majority of our students are in just typical english primary saddam i right still the majority of your students yeah but a couple clarification questions on the last comment but the t w i a still a fifty fifty participation of english speakers with the sp speaking english learners fifty percent english speakers say and fifty percent spanish speaking english learners not fifty percent you know that fifty percent reserved for spanish speaking english learners is often filled with by mean well students who write it was for moment and spanish fluent so assuming we honor the integrity that the fifty percent are supposed to be english learners we still have fifty percent of the t w i who are native english speakers act therefore they may not be qualified for the supplemental funds so i think that's what part of the question was they don't qualify as a supplemental funds but  it because the program that at least nationwide is said to be very effective with english language learners this is the program that can be funded or do you actually have to kind of split when we go ahead vice president i mean i think that you're asking exactly i mean that's a question really that the regulations and my understanding in the template are not clear there's been a lot of discussion about that of a school wide program can be covered so that's i think a decision we're all going to have well it's going to have to make you so if  you are a new book a population is i believe thirty percent or above and i would assume that look for example would meet that threshold you i've been allowed to use supplemental funds on a school wide program activity as long as you meet a couple of what basically are explanatory criteria so you then have to articulate why spending the supplemental funds on a school wide program at what cost for example serves the underpaid student population which i think one could do we as a boy or bay decided we don't want to get credit you know for every dollar spent we don't want to get for like that for students who have credit we may decide you know what it's benefiting no good students to say i mean so we have to struggle with that as do you know the thousand other school districts in the state about where we are comfortable with crediting for the use of those funds i would hope this part of the process that staff and legal counsel  provide some guidance to the cap process on this because it's you know it may be one answer for the economy but we're not going to have thirty percent at thousand oaks and we say you know we're not going to have thirty percent at  or or or rosa parks and i'm not saying this to say that we wouldn't support the need but it's a matter of you know what can be funded through what and you know the list of things that the general fund is wanted for is growing and so i think you know i like to get you know picture of what that looks like so you know when we go through a budget process were clear about what can be supported by supplemental funds in l c f f and what may need to be supported with general fund money if we see it as a priority so most of our schools actually on about the thirty percent threshold remember so t v right and bilingual t o don't include the majority of our of our young students so the non bilingual you know students at you know many of them are yellow many of them are you know either foster youth or low income so most of elementary school students most of elementary school students actually will most of us your schools will meet that thirty or thirty five percent threshold and i'm making an incorrect statement or if you read in socio economically disadvantaged that's correct yeah not just by themselves but the threshold is generated by the under book a good amount combined if you have a school in which it's over thirty percent low income but most of those low income students are not are not english language learners i mean how do you then decide you know you still get f event it's different intervention so that to me is no but let's say you have one english language learner at a school site but thirty percent low income and in theory there it's all one duplicated student so you could spend all of your supplemental funds on serving that one student and you would satisfy the ok now we may not like that but that's i mean that satisfies the condition of the supplemental fun us back to the t w i the presentation have two quick questions one of them is very easy is the video on the website ok great so it's on the main page we can find it easily for those of us who want to watch it or those of all on the main b u s d website because i think it is mark copeland our public information officer saying yes great that was an easy question and then the other question i have is when are we going to get a budget update for the investments that we've the best investment  been great to get this program matic updated to really exciting and i'm you know i to be honest i haven't if i didn't know i didn't know kind of the current information so it's really great to get this and i'm curious to see how to get kind of a budget but i believe that there were but there was an a budget of one hundred eighteen usually nation and i'm just curious to know and as well as budget the budget needs and what that kind of both what we spent and then kind of going forward you have this list of needs and i'd like to know what what they're have if we could have kind of an overview of what additional funds we spent on two way immersion is that ok and then and so as your as your continue to put together a budget for your needs that be good no one is all around  way i mean i guess is and if other people want to see this i would i would like to i would like to see the budget because i think we just have this conversation about whether all or some of it or part of it would be covered by all caps so if you just just just so i can be clear so if staff decides if the l crap that comes before us does not include any supplemental funds being used towards either bilingual expansion or to a immersion consolidation where we want that information before september or october we being asked whether or not it's covered by there was a kind of as is always the case and as we want to the ask and so i'm curious to know what the ask is that i think those are the ask but the doesn't even exist in spanish as far as i know it does not insist in spanish this is brand new hot off the press so teachers are creating the spanish version best as they can but there is no  is not translated currently it's as far as i know some other districts are in the same boat because this is common core aligned curriculum and car common core aligned curriculum is not necessarily coming out in spanish the first thing so they're having to the same struggles but i will say that they have more support so for example they have to be like coordinators who bring the teachers together and they do in this work together rather than in isolation so that makes a huge difference that was planted question to get hurt so i can ask can i just make a quick comment along these lines and kind of directing directed to some of the comments the director has been making i don't know if you all know but i was a teacher for several years and then i became the literacy coach at rosa parks and these are issues that we've been facing an r t w i am bilingual programs for years we've this lack of support and isolation and teachers working at different sites being the only teacher at your site who's teaching in spanish having to develop materials all on your own having to translate stuff it's been something that teachers have been struggling with in this district for a really long time so the good news is that this consolidation means that we're creating kind of ground zero where there's a critical mass of people who can work together week in and week out to develop the materials in spanish to collaborate with each other and for example my kindergarten teacher just asked if i will send her to look hot for to to work with your kindergarten team for the professional development day district wide that's coming up in march and i said yes of course i'd be happy to so you know i think that even though so thousand oaks and rosa parks and krugman are still kind of a little bit peripheral and the the center of the work right now is really applicant there's an opportunity there to to hot the center and then to pull the rest of us into the work if that makes sense and i think that really adequately supporting the work at le cot and then with with a we recorded nato will help us not only like kong or old teachers and the three schools so can i finish my last question so i think it's a both my kids went through the two immersion at rosa parks and i think having them was a challenge even from the kid perspective of having two tracks so i think having the consolidation is great i think maybe short of having the t w i coordinator in the short term i would hope that the literacy coaches and the math coaches would be bringing some of those teachers together district wide when they're looking at curriculum so your thousand oaks road i mean rosa parks well cotton pregnant would be coming together around subject matter just the way they're doing i mean and if not that might be something we want to encourage or make sure i have one just question could community and kind of culture was that look kind is i completely agree with the issues around  parks and and the upper grades as they transition i'm curious to know how you're keeping cohesion outlook katu so that it doesn't become siloed or bifurcated where you've got the upper grades who are feeling like they're not getting the love and the t w i folks who are getting all this you know wonderful new exciting it adventure has there been discussion attempts to make sure that the community at large as the transition happens  cohesive i have to be really honest and tell you that i have not seen any kind of division within our side at all i mean within the community i'm you know when we actually had the tkinter night in january one of the parents did ask that and there were several parents who were also prospective parents for the fourteen fifteen year and they all stepped up and they said you know we don't we don't have that here we work together we talk you know we come we come together as a community we support each other as much as we possibly can to organize play dates on the weekend and you know we ran into each other at the coffee shop i mean there is no division right you know at that we can tell and the parents about testified to that so i can't really say that there is a division or that i haven't noticed it i mean we're very very inclusive the doors are open to anybody who walks through and you know we treat everybody like their family and we respect everybody so you know honestly i can say that we do not see any divisions at all thank you completely fluent and i just it's an incredible program and i'm seeing it at a very high level and it's really great to see so i want to thank you for all of your work in creating such a strong program  comments that we need to make on that one any board members including student members if not would just get it done but i don't want to i don't want to force it so if you have a question or comment that's fine we'll just put it so this is information i don't and no decision is required at this time we realize that this is a great program over the years and when the program was fully funded we could do so many things but now we have to scale back and this has been a painful process for all of us currently we have about two hundred twenty six thousand i was a lever that from the jonah find that we can use for next year tonight we're bringing forward some ideas of options for the board to consider and with that i'd like to turn it students and family members staff and community here tonight showing support but also want to think i also want to acknowledge the numerous committee members and staff of lay the foundation for one of the only school district programs of its kind i know the school board is very familiar with this program and it struggles which is formally presented to you all last spring by the superintendent advisory committee i also know that several board members care very deeply about this program and have supported it in various ways throughout the twelve plus years the program is being presented to you once again true visit many of the questions or concerns that were brought up this last may when the sec outlined the program's value in alignment with the district twenty twenty vision the sec also outlined the dire financial hardship the program faced when it lost one point nine million of federal funding and offered four options for a scaled back program all options relied on and vicious fundraising efforts and asked the board to support the program with bridge funding for two years i want to spend my limited time with you now repeating what you've already heard you know the community and students are passionate about this program you know that the district has been asked to support it in a way it never has before once it lost its robust federal funding rather tonight i'm presenting t additional information about how the district can support a sustainable program with realistic expectations for building a fiscally responsible model that supports students and the school community in the ten minutes that i've been a lot it which who are presently operating with all also talk about the goals and framework for moving forward with this proposal which will luminance the pros and cons of the three options and their budgets that are being presented to the board tonight as i mentioned before and it's cause for mention again because this is really why i'm here before you tonight the program has lost all of its federal funding as of last year last me a synopsis of the funding landscape for those programs for this program was presented to you it was not at all programs of this nature have lost funding and that the federal funding landscape does not have a but future and is not guaranteed additionally the smaller grant landscape was discussed and it was represented as an opportunity to fund specific projects that enrich those programs such as quick healing and communication projects rather than fund a budget that primarily supports personnel i was with this assessment was several of the same folks that assessed the financial feasibility of funding hearts and i welcome any comments and i look forward to your questions thank you anything you want to add ok before i open the floor i just wanted to say thank you for all of your work on this how long you've been with the district or no since october ok so not even six months and we asked you to come in and propose something that means cutting jobs reducing a program that is as you saw by the  turnout strongly supported by the public that has been in the district district for twelve years and that has put us on the national map has brought out the duke of cambridge prince charles isn't the duke of cambridge thank you so basically you've been asked to come in and the board has tasked you with this incredibly difficult task and i can only imagine that it has made your experience here not necessarily the easiest and i just want to say that part of my day job i work for the california schools association and one of things i've learned is that a good board support staff when they provide the board with what they ask for and even if it means that you are funny as unpopular and so we don't know how and up but i just wanted to say that for those who have come out tonight and those who are watching this is what we asked staff to do so this is not something that you own your own house have created and said this is be great to get this program this is what we as a board did now we have to decide whether we still want to know how we want to respond to what information provided us but the situation we've been put in by the feds and the way we've chosen to chosen to approach it by asking for this has been our choice and so i i wanted to just provide that public support for you because we have asked a lot and i think the information the framework the struck she provided gives us a really good template to have that discussion so the floor is now open i'm going to start now with student directors because i don't want you to feel like you have to go at the end and the question do you think you have to comment but are there any questions or comments that you would like to offer from ok i just like to thank you for your presentation and for all the information you provided but it's ok members yes i want to echo what president daniel said i think you didn't really introduce yourself and talk at all about because you only had ten minutes but where you came from and you really come from in your heart as well as your professional and your education as a passionate person for food systems garden based curriculum so i and i'm sure it's very sobering both the enthusiasm of coming to berkeley that's the flagship for this work and then having to look at what you're facing and so i want to really echo the appreciation i do want to ask a couple of questions and clarify and mention a couple things then when are we targeting here so i'll be quick i'll try to be quick i do want to just i mean in theory we're going to come back and ask for them to staff to bring us the specific action item we may not get there tonight so we may have to come back as the second information item just given given the time and given this could be an hour long discussion let's do we can and then we'll see where we are at a ok i'll try to be very tight i do want to clarify on one of the slides where you list the number of schools in programs that exist in the district we do have three middle school programs it's just that the district is funding to the king program vibrant program funded by the edible schoolyard project it so we really are a district wide program but the funding is for longfellow and willard so i want to clarify that i also just want to say from my perspective i really see i've been saying you know garden based nutrition programs are garden and nutrition and not just garden and cooking but i'm because i really think it's a question is what are the goals we're trying to achieve and so what i see is this program is really it's a living classroom for applying the curriculum and so it's not a god program or cooking program it's an opportunity in which to deliver the curriculum in a way that we think kids can really respond to it and learn other things as they go so to me it's really three overall objectives and it's applying the curriculum both math science and in many places language arts is healthy lifestyles that somebody mentioned in public comment that it should be about nutrition and obesity prevention which it was originally and then is community building you know is a way to bring people together and to share parts of our culture through food and those experiences i think we're we've got a horrible situation where we've lost close to two million dollars there is no way in anybody's world we can keep the program as it was so i really appreciate all the parents and all the petitions that show up that say don't cut but there's no way to replace one point nine million dollars so i mean i  appreciate the challenge that we're all facing where i'm kind of coming from is what's the baseline program that we want to make sure every kid in the district gets and then how do we build on that as we raise more money down the line but that we have to create a baseline that is that is equitable across the district and the other part to me is a combination of what's the baseline program we want to offer and how do we not undermine the infrastructure that we've developed over thirteen years so for example we had a lot of people came from willard you can't you if you don't fund garden like willard that infrastructure is really hard to replace in the long run so i think we need to think about those kinds of things and i think again it kind of goes back to me with a baseline so what would be the baseline program we want to assure at the middle schools and what is the baseline program we want to ensure at the pre k through through fifth grade so i'm not going to talk about all three options right now or say what i think about all three but i have some questions about option three because i'm a little concerned about some of the language that shews and i don't know it's actually probably more a question for you dr evans and then you but it really has to do with what do we mean by district wide support because how i perceive option three potentially is that what we might lose is district wide supervision of staff but that we would potentially maintain district wide coordination of curriculum development of professional development through our ed services so if we're looking at the gardens being a living classroom for the next generation science standards or the math then our math lead teachers would be working with the garden coordinators and the teaching staff on how do you deliver that curriculum so i guess i'm concerned about saying we're a lim option three would be a limb an eighteen district wide support because i think it eliminates the supervisor oriel role and that passes to the principal so i would like to hear some clarification of it my interpretation is shared by you so i would see it as cutting other district wide things i think that if i'm looking for a wrong term fundraising strategy that needs to be somebody's job and i think it needs to be somebody at the district level i this as well and ensure that curriculum is consistent throughout and i guess that's a possibility but right now to talk about just can't get into the classrooms often enough to serve teachers and to guide and stay out of that they're going to start experience there might require some type of coronation at the central level and i know one of the things that i talked about you know bringing to the board is actually some type of restructuring of the district office in terms of possibly putting someone over like special projects and having that fall under special projects but i have not brought that to the board yet so so i guess the thing that i would just want us as a board to think about i think it's we have this challenge with a lot of different programs not just this i mean we just heard that we lack coordination in the t w i we lack coordination with r t i you know and so i think this challenge of how do  coordinate our programs so that the programs that are expected to be delivered with goals and achievable outcomes at every school site how do we coordinate that i guess what i don't want to see is the garden nutrition program isolated from that process that if it's part of delivery of the curriculum then we need to look at how do we support it and so i guess you know maybe we decide that the only way it can happen is to be supported by a staff person and i'm not opposed to that i'm really kind of open minded about this right now because i'm trying to really see how can we best deliver the program to our students in a way that also supports the staff and the principals and doesn't isn't siloed but also you know isn't just another layer of like now you've got to add this on so i'd like to consider what that coordination question means because i don't think it's just we've eliminated district wide coordination so it's eleven o'clock  scuse me i was corrected by an esteemed member of our audience it is ten fifty nine thank you missed more we probably need to push this off we could do be ten more minutes if you wanted to and then the superintendent and i will try to find the time to put this back on which may be the march  fifth there's a collective like nobody's watching t v anymore so so we'll see there may be some time but we obviously need to give us some more discussion not action just extend the open session of the meeting to levinson we still haven't done the accent oh no so i would say i'll take a friendly amendment to eleven fifteen vice president to tell you what we just know almost two million dollars went away and i think that on national level we missed an opportunity to be very vocal about the form bill and that it's the way it's trickle down to all of us the funding that we receive from c this bill and it was signed this is a five year plan correct that is now it took two years to develop this in its bill that continues to subsidize who we should be eating less of meat and processed foods and in the out not the foods our children should be in and our community should be eating more and that is fruits and vegetables obviously and that our schools across the country are working very hard to have cooking gardening programs and even having local community gardens that feed communities to feed families and so i think for us we missed us our school district missed an opportunity and uniting with other school districts about it's going to take five years another five years for us to really make make it local this is a plan that was created in one nine hundred thirty something and it needs to change in a look like what we needed to look like in our schools in our communities so i'm hoping after we  envision rian vision our cooking guarding that we also take an active stance on rewriting this farm bill so that it does reflect and it's something that we can really use in our schools in terms of cooking and gardening tricia because now it's going it's been it's funding that's gone into our public health departments it's going to communities yes that have not been funded before but it's certainly something that school districts have been of an open mind about where we should land you know everyone loves the cooking garding program my son certainly did when they were in school i'm not the gardener in my family but i am the cook most of the time and you know so and i really appreciate being in a city and in a region where you know fresh organic vegetables are available to many and there are programs to try to make it available to many more my son actually  worked on a program that delivered i had produce tables throughout south and west berkeley and learned a lot from that experience in fact got a job at a farmer's market because of that experience so it had a whole lot of benefits in terms of  his learning in even in many different ways i also i'm interested in making sure i think that the long term sustainability of this program is to embed it in our common core curriculum i agree with the statements about it being a living a living classroom and i think that's the part that i would like to see a little bit maybe more staff discussion about when this comes back on how that could happen in different ways but i looked at some of the options i thought i wasn't clear a bit like the difference between the program  coordinator and what might be available through neil kind of your office as it is now or maybe when our superintendent has restructured so i think that's a piece that i would like to see i also was a little concerned about the additional time for me it's a larger gardens will need to be considered so i would like a little bit more information on what's the square footage that is you know under in the garden program now per site and to get a sense of what that would look like because if we don't want to lose those resources we need to plan to at least you know keep it i mean you know where we're going to do that to get to kind of not lose those resources i think any little bit more information about that so that would be helpful next time so you know having said that you know the other piece of this too is this is not a decision that the board can make in isolation they were all advocates for those things that are particularly hit our passion but you know we've already know that we are in labor negotiations and we want to value our teachers in our classified staff and nothing says value like compensation and you know and that's a real issue you know that is an ongoing cost we have costs related to common core not all of which are being picked up by the state particularly our tech not technology needs have not even started to be addressed when we have seen that as our school enrollment has grown that because of the cuts over the past years before prop thirty passed and you know we have reached significantly reduced support at this at the site levels clerical support new direction support cafeteria support you know you know support for teachers in the classroom from classified staff and those are all things that we also have had many many people come here around those issues as well most notably melco and you know so and i could go on and on but in but you get my point is that that those are all ongoing and right now the bridge money that we also ongoing costs and there's a limit to how many ongoing costs that we can put in our budget it's just reality and so you know as i said we can do anything we want but we can't do everything that we want and so i really am looking when this comes back is to be able to have discussion of you know given these other needs that are you know are are serious needs you know how are we going to be able to do what we all want and certainly the community has been extremely vocal in expressing that this is something that is dear to our district and we don't want to lose it and i would just let in by saying i do think we have to look at how do we scaffold this you know what can we do to not lose it that is not a full but then maybe a base for as money becomes more known in the future you know there's been discussion in the community about alternative funding for community gardens and that would include school gardens which may or may not come to pass but there is that discussion taking place you know i think that as this gets imbedded into our common core curriculum that's another avenue i think particularly at the high school level there are some potential out of these or around using r o education money there's been talk about stand a bill agriculture nutrition and dietary services as being a career college path at the high school and these are all part of the mix i think right now there's a lot of things that we still need to work out to kind of come up with the program that will be the next generation of this program build upon what's already been working in the reality of where we are in terms of having to education things are all you know to me balls in the air and so i look forward to i don't expect staff to kind of have all those answers at the next meeting but this is just your kind of my thoughts about it some of it if it can be addressed somewhat when we come back it would be helpful to me it where to land thank you it is eleven ten so i'm going to exercise my presidential prerogative and move ron thank you very much we will see you soon we just don't know when to who stayed thank you as well sorry we're able to get to more of it but we will let you all know when it's come back next we move on to our only action item which is we'll get there in the superintendent's super science to saturday program dr evans so i know it's getting really really late and so everything all the information is pretty much in intervention programs for at risk students but a lot of the same thing taught at a different time the same way but this program is really exciting because it's  taking all the things that we know work and having this program on a saturday and teaching kids through computers hands on science all these wonderful things that we know work  having this done on saturday and also i want to say about this program that it's a pilot program and we thought about where this program could be and the first thing that came to mind was rosa parks because rosa parks has the infrastructure already in place for this program they have a collaborative with life line that has done some amazing things with kids and they produce great results and so i wanted to partner with them because we could extend what they're doing to include science in this program as you can see the cost of the program about a little about around forty two thousand dollars and if we're looking at quality programs resources to support systems for el cap this program is it this is what al capp is all about program support and resources going to targeted populations that's going to that's going to make a difference in student achievement and as you read in the packet the program has three learn design technology robotics skills second components field trips and the third component is simply and workshops that are going to be given by lawrence solow science that are hands on  there's a component that includes payment support and so we're going to do there's going to be a bio by literacy program also teaching parents how to access information on the computer and there's also one session for our outgoing fifth grade parents as they transition to sixth grade and that's pretty much all i want to say about the program so far i know you have lots of questions but yes the questions i'm going to move the item i just wanted to know if you're still requesting the entire forty two thousand or do you possibly have some other funds that you may be accessing so i am requesting over forty two thousand however i do have the potential of outside funders funding the entire program about it and i'm supportive of going ahead and saying yes to the forty to one because i think as a pilot it potentially will launch into potentially a summer or a future program so with commitments from other private funders or philanthropic funders and being able to leverage it and learn from it to then carry it on so that it's not we don't hit the end and june and then have to scramble to figure out how to continue and so  superintendent is out there not just looking at our own funds bitters actively out there talking to the private sector talking to nonprofits and talking to others to try to leverage as much money as that we can so i'm more than i'm very glad to to vote for providing the forty two thousand but i just want people to know that you weren't just that you are expecting to bring in some additional monies yes and you were in the middle of another motion but i think i need to scuse me public comment for those of us who have stayed this long would anyone like to make public comment mr room but you and i am joshua president putin and malcolm x want to say th the rollout of the process for the adoption of it parents are very hungry for information about this and we have had a couple presentations sort of hosted by teachers and p t a we have miss cutter is going to do another one in march but it would be very great very helpful to have district down messaging about the curriculum but the main reason i want to talk today is to support both jazzer thompson and the classified teachers and i think i can do both of those things because i think as president  without jazzer thompson with task with an incredibly difficult task i want to stand here as someone who supports her and is a friend to her even though i understand that what she is doing is very unpopular and in fact i hope that the board will go above and beyond what we're thompson has asked for i echo all those people who think that the board ought to and can make a commitment to this program that reflects the commitment the community has asked for and has supported with the program but i term job but i think that would be a huge mistake to eliminate that position for some of the reasons that my own mentioned which is that this program needs an advocate at the district level this program needs someone to create the story they can then go out to fundraisers this in this program need someone to lead and spearhead that fundraising effort in the event that these hoped for alternative funding sources do not materialize i do have some questions about the reality of the budget that's been proposed and whether the program can actually be delivered i ask you some of the comments that daria ruble has made a repeatedly about whether the program can be delivered based on the numbers that are presented here specifically with regard to malcolm x receiving the same level of t some of the smaller schools exacerbating some of the issues we've already talked about about knox mix being under resourced so i do think there are some questions and some constructive criticism made but i do not believe that that should any way undermine the importance of the step that does or thompson took here tonight and b i credit her for having the wherewithal in the fortitude to take on this incredibly difficult task with all the slings and arrows that are undoubtedly being thrown at her  was ok for me to cede my time to someone else and when i did see it my time i was that person was stopped in the middle of their speech so it's confusing when we're told we can see time and then told to stop in the middle because there wasn't enough time for everyone the whole entire agenda was taken up with public comment about the cooking and gardening program and while it is important because our members do work in the cooking and gardening program we had a lot of members here who wanted or we had some who wanted to speak on negotiations between b c c and b u s d so it's important that our voices are heard and that we're not silence during public comment and the way the board the way the public comment was run tonight we felt like we were being silenced intentionally also to address there were a lot of very good proposals that was put forth to the board tonight around student support and curriculum development and i do want to say i do want to say thank you for all of your hard work and on the hard decisions that you have to make but i still don't see where we're doing enough for african american students i heard the discussion on the two way immersion program and it's a ninety split and i'm thinking that ninety ten means it's ta all of the curriculum is taught ninety percent in spanish and ten percent in english and while there has been while it was reported that there's no division amongst the parents there is a division amongst the staff and the staff are feeling isolated and segregated and being treated less than because they're not bilingual and they feel as if it's a it's a way for them to be ousted from their positions at le cot so there is some division w i thing and about the master plan and the elk out so just to quickly just then can reiterate what everybody who was here talking about the consolidation said i just want to point out one thing that wasn't mentioned which is that running you know as a gesture coming in the first year doing having this sort of lead in her lap run it had to start the new school as a new principal and you know having a principal transition in the first year of a consolidated program is not ideal but you know i think that sort of just makes it all the more impressive how well that program is going and she deserves a lot of credit for that and cathy singh who is the principal last year and mar patterson deserve a lot of credit for doing a ton of work to lay the groundwork for that success so i just wanted to sort of appreciate them i think the point i guess what i want to say about the master plan was that you know a lot of us who worked on the master plan last year wanted to keep sort of pushing for something in the plan about implementation and accountability so that the plan would actually you know be implemented fully and i think the appropriate response to that was well that process is the place for that because english learners are part of the you know students are supposed to get the supplemental funding so i think some of the questions that director help was asking about  you know how this programs you know programs that reza parts and pregnant but also the you know programs all across the district how those are going to be funded i think the answer is in the what needs to be done is in the master plan which which the board just   support that suggestion i think that it doesn't necessarily have to be that it feeds into like current right it could be a spanish class that is either a mixture or if there's twenty monolingual spanish  kids they could be in that and then they would probably get into account but they wouldn't necessarily have to so i think there's a lot of different models there's a lot of different issues that have to go into the expansion the t k program but i hope on the tape i hope it's kept on the table the possibility of a spanish t