{"date":"2022-04-20","type":"Special Meeting","videoId":"TnMWnUVFiAk","audioDuration":8156,"speakers":{"A":{"name":"Mike Wells","role":"Trustee"},"B":{"name":"María Díaz-Slocum","role":"President"},"C":{"name":"Cecilia I. Márquez","role":"Clerk / Trustee"},"D":{"name":"Alisa MacAvoy","role":"Trustee"},"E":{"name":"Janet Lawson","role":"Trustee / Vice President (per ASR; agenda lists Díaz-Slocum as VP)"},"F":{"name":"Sarah Shackle","role":"Principal, North Star Academy"},"G":{"name":"John Baker","role":"Superintendent"}},"utterances":[{"start":51400,"end":84780,"speaker":"A","text":"Rat. Carlos."},{"start":358520,"end":363080,"speaker":"B","text":"Okay, let's start the meeting. Roll call. Ellie."},{"start":365880,"end":366920,"speaker":"C","text":"Trustee McAvoy."},{"start":367320,"end":367720,"speaker":"D","text":"Present."},{"start":367880,"end":368840,"speaker":"C","text":"Trustee Walls."},{"start":368840,"end":369160,"speaker":"A","text":"Here."},{"start":369320,"end":372520,"speaker":"C","text":"Trustee Lawson. Here. Vice President Marquez."},{"start":372680,"end":373080,"speaker":"E","text":"Here."},{"start":373080,"end":374400,"speaker":"C","text":"President Diazlocum."},{"start":374400,"end":407170,"speaker":"B","text":"Here. Welcome, everybody, to this special session of the board meeting. We have lots of cards this evening, so if you like to speak to the board, please complete a card and if you're in the boardroom, turn it into Eliana. If you're online, please complete or sign up on the Google Doc. Because There are over 20 speakers this evening, we're going to follow the board"},{"start":407250,"end":407650,"speaker":"F","text":"policy"},{"start":409740,"end":433340,"speaker":"B","text":"9323C, which says that if there are over 20 speakers, we will allow one minute per speaker this evening. Okay. Do I have any changes to the agenda this evening? None. Can I have a motion to approve the agenda?"},{"start":435910,"end":436150,"speaker":"C","text":"Second."},{"start":437190,"end":439590,"speaker":"B","text":"All in favor? Aye."},{"start":439670,"end":440550,"speaker":"A","text":"Oh, it's."},{"start":441110,"end":442870,"speaker":"B","text":"I was looking for Elisa."},{"start":443430,"end":448550,"speaker":"C","text":"There she is. I was looking over here. Yay."},{"start":449990,"end":458150,"speaker":"B","text":"Okay, over to 5.1. Do we have any general oral communication this evening, Ellie?"},{"start":460080,"end":460640,"speaker":"C","text":"We do not."},{"start":461200,"end":476560,"speaker":"B","text":"Okay, then let's move on to discussion. Item 6.1, Recommendation Regarding. Regarding review of preliminary ideas generated by the North Star Forward Committee. Okay, John."},{"start":476720,"end":573720,"speaker":"A","text":"All right. Perfect. Good evening, everyone. Board members and community members. It's. It's great to be here this evening and seems like we have quite a few people that are participating this evening in this. At this board meeting. Before I get started with the presentation, just wanted to let you all know that all the items that were in on the agenda were listed and were. Everyone was able to open them up and all the ideas were there. Late this afternoon, we did put up the presentation that I'm going to go through right now with Ms. Sarah Shackle and you have access to it. As I go through the presentation on my portion, I will be looking at three particular slides to ask the board members to really discuss, give feedback, and then we will listen to our community because we have is it 21 cards, 22 cards at this point, point in time, Oral communication. The question to all of you right now, because there are 22 cards. Would you like to hear the comments now or should we go through the presentation? When I complete the last slide, the last of the three, we could have oral communication then and then get into a discussion. So either communication now, presentation or presentation. Communication, Comments, then discussion."},{"start":574840,"end":588520,"speaker":"B","text":"I would say we would like to see your presentation first because it would probably answer a lot of the questions that people might have. And then after, let's hear from the speakers."},{"start":588840,"end":612290,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay, let's do that. All right, so this evening, Liz Wolf is going to be take Is going to do the slide presentation for us. And so we're on the slide number one. And Wendy Kelly will be taking notes feverishly for us to take back to our committee. Yes, Liz. Whoa."},{"start":615730,"end":617810,"speaker":"B","text":"That will be fixed shortly."},{"start":619160,"end":620040,"speaker":"A","text":"No, I can do that."},{"start":625720,"end":626360,"speaker":"E","text":"Thank you."},{"start":627320,"end":1103610,"speaker":"A","text":"Perfect. So we should be on the. There we go. Gotta make sure that I get. All right. So this is our first slide. It's the preview of our. It's actually the review of our preliminary ideas. And this was generated by the North Star Forward Committee. And as we got this meeting started, I would like to thank the North Star Forward Committee for their diligence in doing a very good job coming to meetings, participating, definitely working with us, vis a vis zoom. And a big thank you to Sarah Shackle, who helped disperse us all into different rooms and get us all back on time. If all of a sudden you were zipped back and there you went. But it was great that people were at the meetings all the time and definitely collaborating and giving ideas and also asking a lot of questions. And we do have. I think Lily's in the. In the audience. And Lily participated in the committee on the committee. So some of you started working with us in 2020. And that work, unfortunately, it got interrupted due to the lockdown caused by COVID 19. I want to thank you for returning and for welcoming new committee members to the committee because we put a call out to new members because some of our members that were with us prior one were unable to come back to the meeting, were unable to come back and rejoin us, and others had moved on to high school and others had left the community. All of you have sat through several meetings, listened to presentations, absorbed a great deal of information and studied many pieces of data. The information that you reviewed help you analyze the situation and also generate the ideas that the board will discuss this evening. While I want to really remind you there are no recommendations moving forward, this is discussion. Listening to comments, discussion among board members and next steps for us to take. The comments that we hear this evening from board and community will help us to continue our work to present recommendations in June to the board of education. I want to thank all the committee members again for your willingness to serve on the committee and for many hours of work that you have done dedicated to our district. Next slide. Committee's purpose. Number three. Number two. Number two. Go back one. It's the agenda. There we go. Thank you. So this week, this evening's agenda, you can see before you. It's a review of the purpose and the charge of the committee. How we got here and the reason for forming North Star. Forward. This work has been several years in the making and will quickly revisit the timeline, considering that we now have many new families in the Redwood City School District and they may not be familiar with this work. Ms. Shackle will join me to present a quick snapshot of North Star, including instructional program, mission and philosophy. Finally, we will discuss the ideas which have been grouped into themes. If you'll notice, in the attachments and board members who received items prior, you had a thick packet where there are many ideas. And so those ideas have all been shared with our community during the presentation. If a trustee would like to see a specific idea, let us know and we can move to that slide. Next one, please. Let's go on to three. Let's go to. Go to number five, please. So, as you see on this slide here, it's interesting because these are not in the order of my. As you see on the slide that you have in front of you at this point in time. This was what was discussed with our committee members and was also discussed at a board meeting back in 2020 when we were just beginning moving our putting our community together. And as you can see, when we were doing this, there were items that the committee would need to understand that North Star would not be shut down and that changes would need to occur. So those were two premises that we started with. However, we do need to find ways to mitigate the impact of North Star on other schools and increase access to students from all backgrounds and honor the school's mission of providing an environment designed to meet the unique needs of high achieving and gifted students. Therefore, I have given the committee these parameters. North Star will not close and North Star will move forward with changes that need to be made. The school cannot continue as it is. Access was a priority since the committee was formed. However, we didn't use the word equity much since revising our mission. And that's what we did last year. Our mission, our vision and values are now intentionally focused on equity, which means we need to provide access to North Star for all students within the Redwood City School district. Next slide, Liz. Which is a timeline. Okay, next one. So looking back on how we got here, as I stated in 2018, during a different process in our school district, which many of you were here and participated in the planning of our future, we received a great amount of comments about North Star. The board listened to our community and approved to further study the impact of North Star on other schools. Next slide, please. The committee was approved by the board in early 2020, but the work was interrupted by Covid. Next slide, please. We brought an update. We brought an updated report to the board in late 2021 with the intention of reconvening the committee this year. Next slide, please. The committee has been working since January. We will incorporate comments from this evening to create a formal recommendation or recommendations that will bring. That we will bring to you all in June at one of our June meetings. I have not determined which one it will be at this time, but during the month of June, we do have three board meetings. Next slide. And we now begin with Ms. Sarah Shackle. Welcome, Sarah."},{"start":1103610,"end":1104250,"speaker":"C","text":"Thank you."},{"start":1104250,"end":1521770,"speaker":"F","text":"Thank you so much for letting me join tonight. As you know, I'm Sarah Shackle and I am the principal of North Star. Just a little bit of background on me. I actually started my teaching career at McKinley. So my first 10 years were teaching at McKinley. And it was interesting at that point to share a campus with North Star. And then I actually went and taught at Clifford for a couple of years and taught second grade. So I have also been in the position of being a teacher who was working with students who are making the decision. And then I actually was also an assistant principal up at Roy Cloud. So I have seen firsthand the experience of families where students leave to go to North Star and the difficulties that that sort of can. Can have on a school. So I like to think that I have a pretty well rounded perspective from a district point of view about the impact that Northstar has on the community. So as we started to tackle the vision and mission for this project, it's been really important for me to help narrate why Northstar is as a school and what we're here to do and what we're trying to serve in our community and with our students. And for those of you who know me, you know, I could talk for hours about North Star because I love it so much. But I will try and keep it short today. So as Northstar is defined, there's a lot of ideas about what North Star is in many ways. There's a lot of talk about giftedness and if we're a gifted and talented school. And I always have to kind of explain. The model of Northstar is what's called an accelerated learning model, meaning it was built on the foundation of Joseph Renzulli and his work around giftedness. But what he talks about is that when you're looking at that, you're not just looking at a title, you're looking at traits for the way that students learn. So he Incorporates three really important elements, obviously a sense of intellect or higher intelligence. But then. And these are the important pieces about North Star. He also talks a lot about creativity and about task commitment. And so I always kind of joke that when I run into a child, I can very quickly tell if they're somebody who would potentially be a candidate for Northstar, if they can tell me a lot about Legos or train schedules or any number of things that they're passionate about. And so that's the child that we really look at when we're looking at who is meant to be successful at Northstar. So this is the learning environment. We look at students, students who are capable of learning in this quick compacted curriculum. So as I said, Renzulli's model of task commitment, creativity and high academic rigor is sort of the foundation. We do a lot of work with our core curriculum or what they study throughout the day with creative thinking skills, logic. And as I said, we use the compacted curriculum. The idea behind compacted curriculum is that for certain students, they don't need a lot of repetition. And so there's a lot of things that if you sort of explain that to them once they pick it up and they can move on. And so in a compacted curriculum model, students can learn something and then apply, apply it in a relatively quick manner. This gives us time then throughout the day for enrichment activities, which we have every day, for field trips, for the sort of more creative elements. And that's again where this Renzulli model comes in, because they can spend time in their day doing these things that they're passionate about. So we have that built in throughout all of our grade levels for us that also culminates in our 8th grade 20% time project, where they're able to actually dedicate 20% of their time in the school day to working on a personal passion project. And so that's something that kind of is an example of what this compacted curriculum can do for our scholars. And then of course, enrichment, which the students love. I think we've seen that at a lot of the schools be successful. Enrichment at North Star means basically an hour every day where they get to pick a topic that they're passionate about and they get to have sort of an in depth study into it. So our philosophy falls into these same buckets and categories. At our school, we use three terms when we're looking at sort of everything. Depth, complexity, and rigorous. This is what we're trying to bring to our students. We want the curriculum to be rigorous. We want Them to think in complex ways about the topics that they're studying. And we want them to take deep dives into things so that they're not just sort of studying the surface, but they're able to really get into the why and the how and the, you know, creative thinking and analytics behind any given topic, whether that's a history topic, a science topic, math, or even writing and English. Students need to pick things up quickly in order to be successful. At North Star. We do have a little bit of remediation available, but it generally tends to be more around organization, executive functioning skills and things like that, as opposed to trying to teach them how to learn. They come to us with those skills already and so we're able to go farther because we're not trying to teach them sort of the basics. Currently we are using the cogap, which is the assessment that we use in second grade, that tests part of that Renzulli model. But we also use report cards. We have points for students that are second language learners. And just a little bit of clarification on the cogat. The COGAT that we use is pictorial, so that it can be administered in either English or Spanish. And when we gave the testing this year, we were able to let students choose which language they wanted to take the test in. And that's been an improvement since I've been there. As we've been able to administer the test in a digital format, it gives"},{"start":1521770,"end":1525410,"speaker":"A","text":"us more flexibility with that next slide."},{"start":1527330,"end":1626030,"speaker":"F","text":"Okay, so this is the last slide. So we work with what's called differentiated instruction. A few years ago we hired a coach named Dr. Richard Cash and we've used his work even since then. And a lot of what we worked on with him, and we've been working on since is the notion of even at Northstar, this idea of differentiation, so allowing student voice and choice, it overlaps actually beautifully with the NUA work, which I know much of the district is using as well. So we're able to find a way to integrate all of those things together and our school wide focus. I know a lot of people sort of think that maybe, oh, it's just they're learning at the next grade level or that's not the model that we use. That's called acceleration. And we don't use that as a general rule. Sometimes kids will come to us and they say, well, my teacher had me. If they're third graders, they say, my teacher had me learning fourth grade math. That's not what we use. We use the enrichment model. We want students to study the same topics that their grade level peers are studying. But again, getting back to that idea of enrichment of depth and complexity as they're studying in hopes that that activates their creativity and task commitment and something that they're passionate about. Just a differentiation between the Gate pull out program which we had in Redwood City for a long time. That's a different model than the one that we use at Northstar. That was a great program too, but those were two separate programs. I think that's it for me."},{"start":1626830,"end":2102729,"speaker":"A","text":"All right, great. Sarah, thank you. And I also wanted to make sure that you were introduced to Kelly Noriega. She is the assistant principal at Northstar. Thank you, Kelly, for being here. So Liz, if we could go on to the next. Well, you're there with the preliminary ideas. And so what I'm going to talk about are the committee's charges that were given. And there were three charges. There was, number one, the exodus of rising third grade students from other schools. Then there was the admission testing that leads to a sense of elitism and social emotional impact on students who attend as well as those who do not meet qualifications and the lack of access from students attending the Bayside schools. So as you look at the challenge which is charge number one here, charge number one. Challenge number one. This is the exits of students from other schools in third grade. The ideas that were coming through from many of the committee members when this was put together and you can see see all the ideas in the other documents that were provided on the attached to the agenda item was to provide gifted programming at other schools, change grade configuration, change school of choice rules to limit third grade migration. And we had talked about that already and paused it several board meetings ago at the beginning of winter, offer enrollment to equal percentages from each school, close the resource gap between the schools. And when we're talking about resource gaps, resource gaps that PTA and PTO have, that was not a charge of this committee. So if there is another committee down the future that would like to look at that, that was not a charge. But this was something that was was brought forward. When you look at these items that are before you right now, items that are here are items that we see that could be generated and could possibly feasibly exist over the next few years. You have change grade level configurations. Sarah and I have talked a lot about that. She has been doing some research about that. But we would need to bring another expert in to give us additional sources. What we should be doing differently if we're going in that direction. Provide the Gifted programming at other schools. That could occur, but it's again, over the period of time, training our teachers on how to do that. What would that look like in a school setting? What grade levels would we do this at? Would we do it at all grade levels or would you start at certain grade levels and move forward? It's more training, more research involved. I already talked about the third grade migration. Offer enrollment to equal percentages from each school. That could be done. We would need to look also at some more research to determine the percentages and then what that would look like, what criteria would go to move us in that direction. And as I said, the last one is not a charge for this committee to close that resource gap among PTAs or PTOs, that is something that if that is something the board would like to look at later, that takes a period of time. It took Palo Alto 10 years and they are still having some concerns about it. So that's challenge number one or charge number one that the committee had. The next challenge was the admission testing. That leads to a sense of elitism. So use a different method of assessment. I think Sarah spoke a bit about assessments that we're using right at this point in time. We could use a different assessment. We would need to talk to an expert and see what that other assessment would be. Change the admission criteria. Yes, we could do that. But how beneficial would that be? Eliminate testing. There are some schools that. There's a neighboring one not far away that's a private school, doesn't do any testing when they started preschool. So we would need to see what that's like. So these are themes that we definitely could look at. We need to do some research and we need to bring someone with expertise to assist us in that fashion. And the last challenge. There we go. The last challenge or charge is the lack of access of students attending Bayside schools. Increase the outreach to schools with lower representation at Northstar. Change the name and location of North Star. Offer transportation to nsa. Hire Spanish speaking and Latino staff. Provide after school care. We can definitely increase our outreach to the Bayside community. We would definitely need to put together a communication plan with a timeline and how often we are going to make information available to our Bayside community. Change the name and the location of North Star. Changing the name is a process, but changing the location is a longer process for us to go in that direction. If that was a desire, offer transportation to North Star, we could do that. Ms. Wolf has been working very tirelessly on the expanded Learning Opportunity Program, which you're going to hear about at next board meeting. And there would be dollars possibly from that budget that we could use for transportation for unduplicated students, higher Spanish speaking and Latino staff. That will occur next fall. And Sarah can talk more about that once we have it's in place. It's just going to start in the fall and provide after school care. That's another thing that can be done with the funding from the elop, the Extended learning Opportunity program grant that she's working on for our unduplicated students at this time. I would say there are things we can do and there are things that definitely would take over a period of time to do it. Things that you could do right away is increase the outreach. That's something that we could do. Come up with a timeline, work with Jorge and his staff. Probably have to hire another person part time to help us with that because he only has Michel Ramon. The offering of transportation, that's a possibility. Like I said, we've already hired the Spanish speaking and Latino staff member that'll be with us next year. And the providing of the after school care, we could definitely work on something with our partners to see what that would look like for our students who would be coming that are those students who are unduplicated. Let's go back because that's where I stop. That's where I stop because the rest of these slides have the rest of the ideas of where they were taken from for these three. So now do you want to take comments from the community and then we in turn have a discussion? Okay, you can. No, why don't you leave it up in case we have to go back?"},{"start":2105449,"end":2111289,"speaker":"B","text":"Okay. So do we have any speakers in person here or are they all remote?"},{"start":2111769,"end":2116169,"speaker":"A","text":"They're speakers in person, but I think Ellie has them according to how they came in. Okay. Is that correct?"},{"start":2116169,"end":2118769,"speaker":"C","text":"I think we had a conversation about"},{"start":2118769,"end":2120969,"speaker":"D","text":"taking in person speakers first."},{"start":2125060,"end":2127540,"speaker":"C","text":"I don't know how to rest. But I thought we had that conversation."},{"start":2128180,"end":2161630,"speaker":"A","text":"I don't know. It's not going. It's not in the board policy. So what's your desire? Doesn't matter to me. Okay. All right. So. So Lily signed up. Lily signed up. So, Lily. I saw her name on there. So, Lily, why don't you come up and then we'll take. I'm sorry. David Weekley is the first. Is David Weekly here? There, There."},{"start":2161950,"end":2162550,"speaker":"G","text":"I can't see."},{"start":2162550,"end":2181240,"speaker":"A","text":"Yeah, I see him. Take the mask off. I don't know who he is. David, come on up. Now remember, because there are more than 20. It's only a minute. I won't do that. Check, check Mike on my comment will be brief."},{"start":2181320,"end":2192720,"speaker":"G","text":"I just want to make sure that this process centers the students and make sure that we're helping to maximize the potential of every student in the district. And if North Star is not serving"},{"start":2192720,"end":2195720,"speaker":"A","text":"Northstar's students well, then North Star needs to change."},{"start":2196200,"end":2207440,"speaker":"G","text":"And if North Star's existence is harming non North Star students, then we need to find a way to ameliorate that. But I really want to make sure that the focus here is about unlocking"},{"start":2207440,"end":2209320,"speaker":"A","text":"the potential of each of the students"},{"start":2209720,"end":2211680,"speaker":"G","text":"and doing what is measurably best for"},{"start":2211680,"end":2227720,"speaker":"A","text":"them is going to create the best outcome for them. That's all. Thank you, Lily Milton."},{"start":2231170,"end":2233810,"speaker":"C","text":"Kind of exciting and nerve wracking to be back here after all these years"},{"start":2234290,"end":2235490,"speaker":"D","text":"having a little bit of, I don't"},{"start":2235490,"end":2318380,"speaker":"C","text":"know, PTSD or excitement. I'm not sure. But anyways, nice to see you all. My name is Lily Milton. I'm an Orion parent and I'm, you know, I am happy to be here and I really appreciate the presentation and I appreciate all of you. I wanted to bring a joint statement with from a couple committee members. I had the privilege of being on the North Star committee. I'm still on the North Star committee. We're still doing our work and have really wanted to formally express like just our appreciation for the process for Dr. Baker and the board for putting this process into motion, for restarting it after all this time. So as members of the committee, we wanted to formally express key recommendations that came directly out of our committee. Our subcommittee was charged with the Address the problem Addressing the problem of third grade attrition, a detrimental issue that has deep and lasting consequences within the school community. The negative impact of the attrition has been widely discussed and I believe we are all in agreement that something must change in order to address the problem of third grade attrition. Our subcommittee came up with two main ideas. One, change grade configurations that North Star no longer begins at third grade and instead is implemented as a K5 or a true middle and two, bring compacted curriculum enrichment opportunities to all schools that all students have the same opportunities. Neither of these ideas can be implemented in a vacuum and a key challenge the district must also face is a concentration of resources in a few schools which fueled inequality and attrition. In addition to tackling the structural issues of the North Star program, we urge"},{"start":2318380,"end":2319380,"speaker":"D","text":"the board to look at the broader"},{"start":2319380,"end":2373760,"speaker":"C","text":"equity issues which are not caused by North Star's existence, but are absolutely exasperated by it while big structural change may seem daunting, we urge the board to act with urgency and courage to make the necessary changes for the health of our district and for all students. And I just wanted to also bring attention. I think my timer did go off. I appreciated what Ms. Jackal was sharing about the Renzulli method. And the Renzulli method is also a school ride enrichment model that can be brought to all students because all students do believe, like do deserve to have the same opportunities and access. I'll just say thank you. Before I start my time, I just wanted to ask, it seems that you are allowing a little bit of extra time. So if a minute and a half would be okay."},{"start":2375600,"end":2376080,"speaker":"A","text":"Yeah."},{"start":2377520,"end":2496510,"speaker":"C","text":"Good. One for zoom. Okay. Three points. The Bayside access data is misleading. Few students transfer in from Bayside schools, yet many Bayside students are at Northstar. Look at the map dots and particularly the light purple dots that show the Latino students and you will see that Bayside families who want the academic rigor of Northstar are accessing Northstar. They're just not arriving via the Bayside schools. So they're instead using school of choice, charter or private, before they arrive at Northstar. We should absolutely strive for more docs, lots more dots over here. We all agree on that, right? But we should be accurate that North Star is currently serving families throughout the district, including the Bayside. Second, North Star is not broken. Its curriculum is perfect for the special needs students it serves who would otherwise go private. It's loved and well supported by its family community and it's well located and perfectly sized for this district. Third, there's no extra funding for North Star. It's on the district, same per student funding and is cheaper actually for the district because of the high student to teacher ratios. A GATE program would cost millions extra each year for added teachers to do the one time a week pull out where we currently have full time gifted education at no extra cost. The GATE models are for wealthy districts. North Star was purpose built for Redwood City as a community. I would hope that we will focus on the 70% of district students that are one to three years behind academically right now and not chatter for an extended time about a well designed, purpose built school that has served this district effectively and for free for the last 25 years. Thank you."},{"start":2502590,"end":2594290,"speaker":"A","text":"It is on. This is john. Mr. Kensal, Hi, my name is John Kinsel. I'm a big supporter of Northstar. My eldest daughter is attending there right now. It's my belief that the fundamental goal of education is to challenge students is to keep them engaged. Because when students are not challenged, they become bored and they disengage and they detach. And Northstar is absolutely the best solution to that problem that we have. It challenges students who need a little bit. A little bit more curriculum, a little bit faster curriculum, and keeps them engaged and causes them to thrive. And my daughter at Northstar is indeed thriving. She is doing very well. She is engaged, she's interested, and North Star is what's providing that. And I kind of agree. North Star is not broken. Northstar is fine. Now, I understand that there's impact on other schools, and I think the real focus needs to be to figure out how to improve the situation at those other schools. Thanks. All right, now we'll go to our speakers who are virtual. I think I've got"},{"start":2596530,"end":2616180,"speaker":"C","text":"Gloria Irlamba. Gloria."},{"start":2616180,"end":2617100,"speaker":"D","text":"Irlanda."},{"start":2644070,"end":2648390,"speaker":"C","text":"I think you unmuted the wrong person. My name is Gloria, but I'm not the one you were looking for."},{"start":2652960,"end":2653200,"speaker":"A","text":"Here."},{"start":2658000,"end":2660640,"speaker":"B","text":"Okay, so the next speaker is Anthony Webel."},{"start":2669680,"end":2702250,"speaker":"A","text":"Could it be tomi? Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Both my son Owen, who is a North Star graduate, and I, we both filled out speaker cards. He was. Had trouble connecting for some reason. So he's here with me. Can I have him take his minute first and then I'll go? Yes. I think Northstar is important for a number of reasons. When I was at my first school,"},{"start":2702250,"end":2704920,"speaker":"D","text":"before I transferred to Northstar, it was"},{"start":2705640,"end":2750700,"speaker":"A","text":"kind of hard to stay engaged in class because the teacher would spend lots of amounts of time on stuff that was pretty easy for some of us to understand. So we just kind of sat around in class and didn't have anything to do. And it was also a little bit hard to make friends because there wasn't very many people on your same level that you could interact with the same way at the same speed. And so I felt like I wasn't really learning that much or having that good of an experience. But when I went to North Star, I was able to make friends a lot easier because there are people with the same ideas on the same pace. And we progressed a lot farther in our learning than we did at the school I was at before. All right, so I'll go now. My name is Tony Webel."},{"start":2750940,"end":2751980,"speaker":"G","text":"My wife and I have lived in"},{"start":2751980,"end":2825080,"speaker":"A","text":"redwood City for 15 years. We have five kids. Owen, who you just heard from, he just graduated from Northstar last year. Our neighborhood school is Roosevelt. So I have one. I have a daughter at Roosevelt right now in the first grade. And I have another son who's at Northstar in the fourth grade. And then I have two other kids who are not yet in school but will be soon. And so we have a vested interest in making sure that Redwood City succeeds as a district. I was fortunate to serve on the committee this past two years and grateful for Dr. Baker and Ms. Shackle for their efforts on that committee. I had three observations I wanted to point out quickly from serving on the committee. The first is the primary objective, and this has been mentioned before, the primary objective should be that we're creating the best learning environment for all our students equitably and with the resources that we have. And I noticed that many of the ideas that were generated by the committee actually conflict with that objective or wouldn't be fulfilled by it. So, for example, if we were to eliminate testing altogether for North Star, that would. Yeah. Another minute. Go ahead."},{"start":2833080,"end":2835880,"speaker":"B","text":"Okay. Go ahead."},{"start":2835960,"end":2866060,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay. If I can finish. So, yeah, just the other thought I wanted to point out is I know there was a document generated by the committee called the jamboard document, I think that should be stricken from our materials. It was committed. The last created, the last meeting. It was rushed. The committee members didn't have a sense of what they were doing. We had to rush to the slides. And I think it's misleading in the way it both presents the ideas and the committee's position on those. So I feel like the best document to look at would be the more lengthy document with the pros and cons. That's it for me. Thank you."},{"start":2872060,"end":2874300,"speaker":"B","text":"Next speaker is jessica nodi."},{"start":2882300,"end":2883340,"speaker":"C","text":"Hi, can you hear me?"},{"start":2883900,"end":2884460,"speaker":"A","text":"Yes."},{"start":2885180,"end":2885580,"speaker":"E","text":"Hi."},{"start":2885580,"end":2934440,"speaker":"C","text":"I just wanted to say thank you so much for having courageous conversations about equity and support, supports for all students. I'm a Roy Cloud parent and an educator. The disruption of the community at Roy Cloud in third grade was concerning when we know relationship building is so key to social development. I want to just agree and share support with earlier comments about the focus on all students. It sounds like a good idea to start North Star at kindergarten. The enrichment model should be brought to all students at all sites. And I like the idea of offering enrollment equal percentages for all schools and offer again the gifted to all sites. Thank you so much for having these conversations and the work that the families and the educators have done in the board to talk about this. I really. It was informative to better understand what's going on and ideas moving forward. I appreciate you."},{"start":2939240,"end":2941800,"speaker":"B","text":"Next speaker is vas grotna."},{"start":2946220,"end":2963420,"speaker":"C","text":"Next speaker, katie morello. Can you guys hear. Can you guys hear me?"},{"start":2963900,"end":2964380,"speaker":"A","text":"Yes."},{"start":2967260,"end":2990150,"speaker":"C","text":"Hi there. My name is Katie. I Have a second grader at Henry Ford as well as a kindergartner. This is kind of the first time I'm actually learning more about this school. And for me it's more of the emotional side of everything for the children and the impact on the community. I know my daughter is devastated that she's losing kids this year. A whole 15 to be exact."},{"start":2990310,"end":2992070,"speaker":"D","text":"And she's very close with all of them."},{"start":2992230,"end":3028860,"speaker":"C","text":"We felt a really strong community and I know we're still going to stay strong, but it'd be nice if it was possibly a different grade. I feel like if it's a really good accelerated school, middle school might be more beneficial. Sorry, my dog speak to might be in the future. Also, didn't we just close three elementary schools around town? So I just feel like that's just opening up again. And now we have budget stuff and everything and just the whole well rounded being of the child. I just want to make sure that they all continue to grow and support one another."},{"start":3029260,"end":3029820,"speaker":"E","text":"Thank you."},{"start":3034540,"end":3036620,"speaker":"B","text":"Next speaker is kaylee vega."},{"start":3043420,"end":3121700,"speaker":"C","text":"Hi. I am the mom of two kids at Henry Ford. So my family and many others that I know chose to attend this district after touring all of the local private schools in very large part because of the opportunity to attend Northstar at the third grade level. And the possibility that that may change is really, really concerning. I absolutely love so much about our neighborhood school, but I worry that my child's academic needs are not being met. For him, differentiated learning just means extra iPad time, and that's not acceptable. But North Star is not the issue. The issue is that the other district schools are under resourced and underperforming, which leads parents like me to look for solutions elsewhere. There's no dispute that the North Star programming is well regarded and for what it's worth, was recently ranked the number one elementary school in all of California. So I encourage the board to not make changes that dismantle that, but instead to turn this critical eye to the other schools and how they can be improved. Thank you for taking the time to consider this very important issue. Loan hin. Good evening. Can you hear me?"},{"start":3122020,"end":3122500,"speaker":"A","text":"Yes."},{"start":3123540,"end":3217420,"speaker":"C","text":"My name is Loan. I am the parent of a first grader at Henry Ford. Like Keely and many other parents, we chose to enroll our child in this district mainly because of the opportunity to attend Northstar. And though I love his teachers and believe that they, along with his new principal, are doing an amazing job, it has become clear to our family that our neighborhood school can no longer meet our child's academic needs. Our family is already in the process of considering alternatives outside the district if North Star is not available at third grade. And I would also like to mention that as I myself am a child who transferred, I mean, as a child transferred to a magnet school from an east side San Jose school where most of the students predominantly spoke Spanish and Vietnamese. So I do have some firsthand, I guess, experience with what some of the Bayside parents are going through. When I read the interviews from the Bayside parents, it sounded exactly like what my parents were considering. And, you know, I do believe that a program, a magnet program like North Star is the best opportunity for a lot of these students to achieve the economic mobility through education. Because that. That is exactly, you know, the only way I was able to attend an elite university and law school was having this opportunity. And while I absolutely agree that we need to increase access and equity, these are issues that can be addressed without blowing up the North Star format."},{"start":3222460,"end":3224300,"speaker":"B","text":"Next speaker is elle kolikar."},{"start":3231420,"end":3233180,"speaker":"C","text":"Hi, can you hear me?"},{"start":3233580,"end":3234060,"speaker":"A","text":"Yes."},{"start":3234940,"end":3293540,"speaker":"C","text":"My family lives on the Bayside and attends Hillside schools, including Northstar. We know many other Bayside families that also attend Northstar and other Hillside schools. The committee document with preliminary ideas for board discussion states that the committee is concerned about equity for families attending Bayside schools. This issue of equity doesn't start at Northstar, but is a much deeper foundational issue for the district. This committee is attacking the symptoms of inequity rather than the underlying disease. North Star is problematic for the district, but so is having a neighborhood school essentially segregated because families with more, more means are able to attend other schools farther away. My family is part of the problem, but the board needs to step up and address the ways it has contributed to and encouraged inequity Pour into the Bayside Encourage vibrant, diverse, inclusive community schools. Thank you."},{"start":3298740,"end":3300740,"speaker":"B","text":"Next speaker is alice harkey."},{"start":3304830,"end":3418870,"speaker":"C","text":"Can you hear me? Thank you. My name is Alice Harkey. I am Northstar's parent club president. Northstar has made a huge difference in my children's lives, and it is the single reason we stayed in the public school system. It's been transformational for them. In particular, my son. I had no idea he wasn't thriving at his neighborhood school until he got to NSA and just blossomed. I am all for equal opportunity to attest and apply. As far as the Bayside students who attend Bayside schools, I'd love to see more there. Leaps and bounds were done with universal testing this year and the outreach that Sarah, our office manager, Camellia, who's amazing, and Kelly did. I'VE heard them on the phone talking specifically to families and encouraging them to come and educating them. That's wonderful. It will only continue to improve and busing and after school support for those students would be amazing. I am also all for expanding the middle school if there are enough qualified students and I do think we have some pretty lengthy wait lists. I do ask the board to preserve the curriculum and the enrichment opportunities at NSA and ensure students who can handle the rigor, the ones that are accepted. I am not sold on starting in kindergarten, but as this is a preliminary idea discussion, I certainly think it's worth the evaluation. I can say certainly I didn't really realize my kids were bored in school really until second grade. As far as talking about kids losing friends, I think really kids are way more resilient about making and losing friends and flowing through life just as we all have. It's really the parents that are staying at the neighborhood schools that really have the hard feeling. Next speaker is Shonda Stewart. Hello."},{"start":3420230,"end":3421510,"speaker":"E","text":"Yes, can you hear me?"},{"start":3421830,"end":3502600,"speaker":"C","text":"Yes, hi. So I have a child at Northstar and I also have a child at Orion. And I feel like Northstar's holding of resources via parent fundraising is like akin to generational educational wealth being passed down. And you know, some of the Bayside funding fundraising is zero. They literally have zero. And I support what Lily, the findings of Lilly's committee. But I just wanted to point out one other thing which is the school culture at Northstar, which my child goes to, is not supportive of a diversity of socioeconomic backgrounds. I myself socioeconomically don't fit the profile of the average North Star parent and I personally don't feel that comfortable. I can't imagine what it's like to be a, you know, non English speaking family and feel comfortable and you know, you know, look at some of the findings. I think they just don't feel comfortable there. The outreach to the MI community at my school, the Mandarin immersion community, was pretty extensive, but I don't feel like there was any Bayside School outreach whatsoever. And when I pick up my child at Orion, it's a diversity of backgrounds, socioeconomic and abilities. And I really feel like when you take that out you have a less rich tapestry of education. And it's sort of like a"},{"start":3505560,"end":3505880,"speaker":"E","text":"child"},{"start":3505880,"end":3512600,"speaker":"C","text":"here, a private, you know, we're subsidizing private education from public age school kids and."},{"start":3517400,"end":3518520,"speaker":"B","text":"Katie getz."},{"start":3528210,"end":3597410,"speaker":"C","text":"Greetings Redwood City School District Board of Trustees. My name is Katie Goetz and I am the parent of two RCSD students. I also serve on the North STAR Forward Committee and was part of the subcommittee addressing third grade attrition to nsa. While I cannot speak for our whole subcommittee, as we worked together I realized we couldn't just focus on third grade attrition without also naming the recognized problems of testing students to determine who is gifted, therefore suggesting that other students are not gifted as well as NSA's geographic location making it a more appealing option for some families, hillside ones especially over others Bayside ones especially if we are to be a school district that values equity and the inherent worth and ability of all students, we have an obligation to make NSA style enriched programming available to all RCISD students. Those identified through testing as gifted are no more in need of enrichment than every other student in the district. I recognize that the Board has difficult work to do in the upcoming weeks. I thank you for considering all of the ways that doing this work will bring greater equity and justice to all students in the Redwood City School District. Thank you."},{"start":3601650,"end":3603170,"speaker":"B","text":"Nicole kowaki."},{"start":3608380,"end":3673450,"speaker":"C","text":"Hi, thank you. In respect for time, I'm going to read a condensed version of a letter which I sent to the Board today co signed by 20 district parents from six district schools including North Star. The inequity among schools in the district and the glaring disparity across socioeconomic and race distribution perpetrated by North Star as shown in the committee report is astounding. From the report 50% of students at North Star minority, whereas 81% of the students in the district are minority, 49% of students at NorthStar are white, whereas 19% of the district students are white and 14% of students at NorthStar are Latinx where 70% of students in the district are Latinx. Additionally, 6% of NorthStar students opposed to 57% of district students are economically disadvantaged and 90% of Garfield, Hoover and Taft students are economically disadvantaged. And in 2021, only 20 out of 236 students at Northstar were from the Bayside schools. These numbers make it clear that Northstar exists for the direct benefit of the more wealthy schools in the district. Keeping North Star as a publicly funded school for the affluent of Redwood City is completely unethical and wrong. Like you, I want a district which provides and supports an equitable and amazing education for all. I would urge you to support the equitable solutions proposed by the North Star Forward Committee. Thank you."},{"start":3677690,"end":3684990,"speaker":"B","text":"Daryl Norcott"},{"start":3686820,"end":3688100,"speaker":"A","text":"I'm a parent at Clifford."},{"start":3688420,"end":3732300,"speaker":"G","text":"I'm disheartened by a lot of what I'm hearing tonight. Inherently, North Star enhances an achievement gap between those students whose parents have the time, education and self advocacy to get their children into a special school versus those that don't. It requires standardized testing to qualify for eligibility. Standardized testing that has been shown time after time to be biased against people of color, thereby racially segregating our school communities. Many of the children who do not test into North Star feel left behind. So I really have to disagree with a previous comment about students not being affected. They feel as if something is wrong with them. We've heard at Clifford children say this very thing. By giving the perception that our community schools aren't good enough to teach the brightest of our children. It encourages other families with high achieving"},{"start":3732300,"end":3733900,"speaker":"A","text":"students who don't get into North Star"},{"start":3733900,"end":3773380,"speaker":"G","text":"to pull their children from public schools. It takes enrichment resources from other schools and concentrates them into one location. I think the question of what happened to GATE is an appropriate one. It's ironic that it was in the school presentation. And finally, North Star divides communities by pulling the brightest students from the neighborhood schools. Leaving behind children who may have otherwise been challenged to achieve more. Should those top 20% of children stayed behind. That truly is a community model. Bring the model, bring the method to the students instead of creating this this division. It seems inappropriate, unethical. I have to agree with the previous speaker and wrong."},{"start":3779700,"end":3781540,"speaker":"B","text":"Heidi von brielle,"},{"start":3787060,"end":3788180,"speaker":"C","text":"Can you hear me okay?"},{"start":3788980,"end":3789460,"speaker":"A","text":"Yes."},{"start":3791140,"end":3882450,"speaker":"C","text":"Happy Earth Week everyone. The culture of musical chairs that exists in the Redwood City school district is tremendously affecting the environment. While the earth is on fire. North star alone with two car trips of its 500 some families needs 500 acres of forest to offset the carbon produced by those trips. What is wrong with attending the neighborhood schools that you can walk to the finish line for? All of the Redwood City schools is the same. Accelerated math has been aligned across the district. The state of California defines the minimum amount of instructions for math and ela. So what defines the difference in the education is how much parent engagement and money the school can raise in order to subsidize those programs. Now, how much time and effort would you invest in a school if you're already eyeing with moving to another school? Adding that layer of musical chairs in third grade also is making it extremely difficult to find enough funds and volunteers to follow through. Please implement either option 2 or 3 on the list as these are the only ones that will help. Not to make every single neighborhood school a victim of this race to nowhere. If the program continues in some regefrochom a bayside hub, allowing kids to join without having to join a us would help. Having emergence programs as part of a different regular school has already been implemented successfully."},{"start":3886610,"end":3887650,"speaker":"D","text":"Mike beebe."},{"start":3893090,"end":3987070,"speaker":"A","text":"Hello everyone, can you hear me? Yes. I'm a parent of a third grader at Northstar right now and it's been an absolute joy to watch my son really spread his wings for the first time and really flourish at Northstar. It's been an incredible experience for him and it's one that I would love for all kids who would benefit from it to enjoy. I'd like to speak specifically to the concept of the percent method by district of residents for a way to re level or mitigate some of the impacts both the STEM exodus and expanding access with STEM exodus as a goal. We've heard already from several speakers that if you did that you'd have a lot of kids simply go private. They would also, for instance, if you wanted to really take that as the stemming of an exodus and keeping kids in their district schools, you should take a close look at Adelante, the Mandarin Immersion school and of course Orion if you want to expand that access. I would charge the board and everyone to take a look carefully as to whether it is an admissions process problem or it's an information and logistics problems. People have spoke frequently about the idea that a shuttle for instance, and the ability to get more information to people, for instance, in other district, in other schools like some of the Bayside schools, would benefit greatly from expanded information. We should consider those very carefully before we just switch to a hard percent admit model."},{"start":3992990,"end":4081710,"speaker":"C","text":"Last speaker ann hinesek. Hello. Hi. I'm serving on the North Star Forward Committee. I wanted to highlight a few of the ideas that I believe promote equity in the district. First being bring the Renzulli method to all schools so that students can stay engaged and offered enrichment in their neighborhood schools. And the second is the funding issue. Bring more equity equality to the distribution of PTO fundraising in the district. I think that this speaks directly to the sense of perceived elitism that our committee was tasked with solving and this 100% deserves a bigger discussion. These two are both changes that actually involve the entire district, not North Star alone. Without a doubt things will need to change at Northstar as well. One of the ideas that the committee presented alone will not solve the problem. It will have to be a configuration of multiple ideas. Some of those that I think could possibly work are to change the grade configuration, bring in more Spanish speaking teachers and administrators, placing a cap on each school admittance, and also think about moving North Star to the Bayside. I know some of these are big changes, but we're capable of big things. And our committee, our community, is ready for some big changes. Thanks so much."},{"start":4091880,"end":4096360,"speaker":"B","text":"Okay, so now it's time for the board discussion."},{"start":4096760,"end":4135050,"speaker":"A","text":"It's time for board discussion. You've heard comments from the community, comments from people that are here in the audience. So now what? As you've seen the three challenges, you've seen the themes in each of those challenges, and you have received all the information that was presented alongside the board agenda item. I need to understand where you're feeling, in which manner you're thinking, or need more information on any of these ideas so they could be moved forward with the committee."},{"start":4136650,"end":4163499,"speaker":"B","text":"It's also. Sorry, John. We have two board members who served on the committee. I would like to know if. First of all, thank you for doing that. It takes a lot of time, so I'm really appreciative of you spending all that time and participating. And I wanted to know if you had any comments before we begin our discussion with the rest of the board."},{"start":4168539,"end":4294410,"speaker":"E","text":"Good evening, everyone. This definitely is a really. And I know there's no decisions that are being made tonight. I do want to appreciate everyone's commitment to the committee for the last two years. What I just want to say is definitely things need to change when we talk about equity and equitable. We as a district based on our mission and vision, we have a support the collective responsibility to make a change for all Redwood City school kids. And so with the ideas, and there's so many of them, and maybe I'll have to speak later. The great configuration, whether it's going to be starting in kindergarten, whether we want to discuss whether we're going to continue with the testing or no testing. Definitely like John said in the slides, the communication and by all means, I believe Redwood City is doing an excellent way of communicating with the entire community, whether it's text, emails, website, and however people are reaching that information. But definitely we have known that Bayside students need perhaps a little bit more. A little bit more of a push in this case with communication. We found out that in fact a lot of our parents are not necessarily getting the information what's happening. But definitely we need to do more outreach to have all Rabbit City school kids join and make sure that they know that we all have options. I know there's a lot. I just. I wanted to start talking since you mentioned as being in the board and the committee. So I'll go ahead and let Janet speak on that."},{"start":4297050,"end":4342710,"speaker":"C","text":"So it's been. It's been really good serving on that committee. I've enjoyed It a lot. There have been a lot of very thoughtful conversations and hard conversations and all the subcommittee breakouts that I sat in. I felt like everybody was very respectful of each other, even if they disagreed with some of the ideas that were put out. I want to say thank you. Some of you are in this room, too. For the people who sit on that committee. It's been more hours than we originally thought was going to be. I think we were going to have a couple of two hour meetings that are now two and a half hour meetings. But we've also added additional subcommittee meetings throughout the month too, to make sure that everybody has their chance to get the important information together."},{"start":4342710,"end":4343070,"speaker":"B","text":"And"},{"start":4344830,"end":4389900,"speaker":"C","text":"I really appreciate just the investment that all of our parents and our staff and everybody who's on that committee have put into it. And I did want to make one comment that we heard in one of the public speakers about the jam board. And I just wanted to say that the jamboard was actually left open after the meeting ended so that people could keep working on it. And I know I spent an hour after the meeting working on it and I saw other people. I could see the little sticky notes going around. So I do think that that document is valuable. Just as, just so you guys know, I think that there was an opportunity for it to be worked on later. It wasn't as rushed as it sounded. I'll stop there and then we can. I'll share my other thoughts later."},{"start":4392300,"end":4440490,"speaker":"B","text":"Also, I do want to acknowledge all the emails that we've received as board members and the superintendent. We have read them. There's just a lot to digest and try to answer them all. But I want you all to know that we have read them, we have received them. So thank you for sharing your thoughts with us this evening. And I would also like to thank the members of the committee because you guys have spent a lot of time on it. Sarah, thank you. You are an invaluable asset to our district and our students and everyone. To the parents that are here and everyone, the staff. Thank you for all your work on this. And Mike or Lisa, do you want to start?"},{"start":4442810,"end":4443290,"speaker":"A","text":"All right."},{"start":4443690,"end":4608990,"speaker":"G","text":"Yeah. 28 members on this committee, students, alums from NSA, principals, district administrators, our two trustees. Thank you for the work that went into. Was a lot to digest, read through and get through. I also wanted to call out a thank you to our community liaison, Michelle Ramond, who did the interviews that were part of that, to be able to go out and really try and pull in some voice that wasn't coming through on the survey. And get some of that. That was a valuable artifact and I was glad that it was in there. I think that people talked about the Renzoli program and it reminded me of the pedagogy of confidence because we were talking about NUA earlier today. And Yvette Jackson talks about how a critical ingredient that's in all gifted programs is belief and high expectations. And her argument, her thesis through the whole book is that that's what you bring to every school. That's what we should have for all of our students that are there. And that's a critical agreement. Even Renzulli felt that. Notice that gifted traits, they're just not manifested or obvious in every area of the student that's labeled gifted and is selected into these gift gifted programs. And therefore it's not obvious in the ones that aren't labeled that way. And so rather than looking for, you know, the school wide enrichment model says that look, you don't actually go for this binary labeling of a gifted student or a non gifted student. You actually look for gifted behaviors and you try and find ways to be able to educate that. And I think that that's a really good guiding principle there and kind of fits into David's comments of let's be student focused on this as we pull in. I did have a couple of questions about each of the challenges that I was going to ask Dr. Baker to help sort of clarify here. You know, in the first challenge that was talking about the exodus in third grade, some people had mentioned that there used to be a pull out gate program. I think that stopped just pre pandemic. And the plan was to actually replace it with something that was more on site, that was more accessible to more students. You know, I've heard from parents, I've heard from teachers and administrators that it is actually valuable to have that program because it does differentiate. Some kids leave and go to the GATE program, but then the teacher has a smaller classroom to be able to do more targeted differentiated instruction in there. Is there a plan to replace that? Is there something coming to all the sites? What's the status of that GATE program or whatever the new model would be?"},{"start":4609150,"end":4639120,"speaker":"A","text":"Well, the status right now is that we have not looked at it yet. We haven't. And that's, you know, just to be upfront with all of you, we have not looked at the what used to be a pull out program. And if you recall, it was at a certain school site according to the grade level of the children. Children from throughout the district say it was for fourth grade. They all went a couple days per month, if I'm not mistaken. And then at one time, Wendy, wasn't it even more than that when you were running the program, fifth grade, A"},{"start":4639600,"end":4642800,"speaker":"C","text":"program on the base side and a program on the whole side."},{"start":4643520,"end":4753070,"speaker":"A","text":"So. And at that time, we wrote a grant. We wrote a grant. There were grants that were from the state of California, and the grants were written, you know, every year, and the state determined, you know, if you were going to receive the dollars or not. The grants no longer exist. And so what we have been looking at is what type of enrichment program we can provide. And we have been providing an enrichment program on the Bayside, which started this year. And that's the program that Ms. Wolf put together with our partners. And we use the dollars that we received for the extended learning opportunities to do that with our students, the unduplicated population. And it works with Hoover, Garfield and Tat Cor. Correct. And so that is existing there right now. That was this school year. We just started it. And we utilize the dollars that came from the state to utilize with the unduplicated population. We're going in that direction again, which Ms. Wolf will address at the next board meeting. And it seems that there's more dollars coming, provided that the governor's budget is approved normally in June, but sometimes, you know, there's a delay and it gets improved in July. So that will continue in a larger fashion than what it is right now. And after you have made your unduplicated population aware of this additional programming, then the seats that are left over is opened up to the remainder of the district. You do not have to be in that unduplicated population."},{"start":4755390,"end":4835880,"speaker":"G","text":"Okay, that's good to hear on the challenge number two for the testing. I mean, one of the reasons that we put the North Star together, it's in the materials there. But I don't think it's actually not North Star together. North Star Forward Committee together was that people have referenced the California Dashboard site. And it's just the demographics of the school are just dramatically different than other schools in Redwood City, as you look through that. And so one of the questions is, you know, is there something wrong in the system that is creating this disparity in who has the opportunity to that Remember, it's not about. It's not really about the students shouldn't have that opportunity, but it's. Who's not getting access to that? On the testing part, for the sense of elitism, some of the suggestions were around removing it. By the way, I really dislike the Phrase about lowering the bar. I think it should be really about raising the bar and elevating students to reach it. That should be the attitude all the time. But even eliminating testing. What I wanted to ask was, if we eliminated testing and nothing else changed, what would we be. What would. What would be like the, you know, the demographics, the enrollment didn't change. What, what would be left there? What, what would it be now?"},{"start":4835880,"end":4847360,"speaker":"A","text":"When we started the program 25 years ago, the testing was very important at that time. And Sarah was the matrix. Yeah, Wendy matrix."},{"start":4847560,"end":4859880,"speaker":"C","text":"Yeah. So it was the matrix for academic testing. And then there were letters of recommendation. I was there in 1999. I had the first eighth grade class. So that was the inception."},{"start":4860120,"end":4877010,"speaker":"A","text":"And then there were. There were points given if the student was receiving free and reduced lunch. And there were also points given at that time because we had program improvement schools. If you came from program improvement school, that, that added to your score. If I'm not correct on the points."},{"start":4877170,"end":4879490,"speaker":"C","text":"Right. But that, that was a total later."},{"start":4882050,"end":4921630,"speaker":"A","text":"So you're asking if we had no testing whatsoall whatsoever. The school was built based on students that are gifted and talented. And the only manner in that point 25 years ago to identify those students was to utilize some type of assessment. And as we said previously, the assessment was a matrix along with the point system and so forth that Wendy had just mentioned. And now we have another test that we're using. So if we use no test whatsoever, then it's similar to just another neighborhood"},{"start":4921630,"end":4927070,"speaker":"G","text":"school with a selected population as opposed to the neighborhood."},{"start":4928200,"end":4928600,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay."},{"start":4930520,"end":4950760,"speaker":"G","text":"And then on the lack of access, I think that is clear from the interviews and things like that. There's definitely outreach. People have talked about that that could be improved. I think a few of the ideas came in there. But if we do. So let's say we actually did increase"},{"start":4950840,"end":4951240,"speaker":"A","text":"the"},{"start":4953560,"end":4993040,"speaker":"G","text":"geographic representation of the students that come to North Star even farther than they are now, as pointed out. Is that, is that then reinforcing? Is that spreading the problem from number one, the exodus? And would that be spreading the exodus in third grade problem now to more, more schools? Is it just making that problem larger? Like, that's what I was trying to figure out. Like, is there a circle here? That's a problem? Like if, if, if we expand the access and more people come, then now more schools are negatively impacted. I'm not trying to say we shouldn't expand it. I'm just curious, like, is that, you know, when we look at the system, right. If you press one side of a system, something Else changes over there."},{"start":4993040,"end":4995440,"speaker":"A","text":"Is that one of the things It's a possibility? Yes."},{"start":4997280,"end":5088170,"speaker":"G","text":"I mean, I think, like, the ideas that resonated to me that. That seem strong. And also, Sarah, thank you so much for explaining the program so concisely here and what and how it's about. You know, it's about the enrichment opportunities, the additional enrichment opportunities that students have. And it's not really about accelerating the academic progress because we are getting students, not just at our middle schools, but now at many of our schools into, you know, have the opportunity to take Algebra one and they're given the support to be able to do that. I think one of the speakers had mentioned that as well. There's probably more opportunities for more accelerated learning. And I think that we should be looking at those kind of metrics of how are we getting more students across the district into these advanced learning opportunities. I've said this before at board meetings before Kennedy offers a wide variety of enrichment opportunities. In fact, I've spoken to parents of students that have gone through Kennedy and also gone through North Star, and they're quite frank in saying that they chose North Star because they were worried about Kennedy when their kids were younger. But now having gone through Kennedy and seeing how it can work with the enrichment and with addressing the advancement for their students, they said that works very well. I think there is something here. There's a theme from. I don't want to. Also, I want to say, like,"},{"start":5091370,"end":5091650,"speaker":"C","text":"I"},{"start":5091650,"end":5208180,"speaker":"G","text":"think one person had made a comment about how, like, how invested are North Star parents going to be when they're in the K through two grades and then they know they're going to leave the school. But honestly, many of these parents and families are super active in their neighborhood schools for the duration of time that they're there. They have more than one kid oftentimes coming through and they're going to be involved there. It's sad to see them leave when they do finally have their youngest one graduate, but that's a problem. What I wanted to get at was that the thing that resonates to me is I think the access is the ideas that I liked were bringing more to students where they are, meeting them where they are, and helping them elevate their school experience there have bringing that belief from the program, even if it's not the compacted curriculum, but that belief that these students are high achievers and being able to help them through. We got emails, we had comments here about how families that went to North Star felt that their children weren't challenged in K12 and that is something that would be interesting to see more ideas about how to help that. On differentiated learning then, as I've said, we didn't have any comments here tonight, but I've heard that parents feel like their kids do get challenged as they get into the upper grades. How can we, how can we bring the things that are just awesome about this program to more students where they are? Those are the ideas that resonated with me that I'd like to see. I think that potentially looking at metrics about reach and not necessarily attendance at a specific school might be one way"},{"start":5208180,"end":5208860,"speaker":"F","text":"to look at it."},{"start":5210100,"end":5227140,"speaker":"G","text":"The reach of the enrichment, the reach of the academic engagement and how that happens. Now, obviously there's funding issues there and we'll see how that works. But meeting students where they are"},{"start":5229940,"end":5230340,"speaker":"A","text":"and"},{"start":5230500,"end":5242500,"speaker":"G","text":"physically where they are, as well as academically and emotionally and all the support that they may need, that's those are the ideas that kind of those themes resonated with me."},{"start":5245620,"end":5246340,"speaker":"B","text":"LISA"},{"start":5249540,"end":5249940,"speaker":"C","text":"all right."},{"start":5249940,"end":5490150,"speaker":"D","text":"Well, first of all, I want to say thank you very much to the committee members, as others have said, really appreciate Janet and Cecilia and all the committee members and thank you to those who supported the committee. I know that Sarah and Michelle and Jorge and John and others. So a tremendous amount of information. So I spent the weekend reviewing everything that was in the board packet that I think a lot of others did in the community. In fact, I was noticing online tonight we have probably the most participants we've had in a while. So clearly this is a real of interest topic for our community. Certainly as many people as we had is when we were talking about vaccines or in person or that sort of thing. Clearly this resonates with a lot of people that this is important. I did want to say thank you very much to all the email comments we got. I really appreciate the thoughts that went through there. And I just want to say I feel like in the comments that we were, well, all the data we were given and comments we were given and the comments that we received, everybody's being very respectful and thoughtful and really trying to see it from all sides. And I appreciate that. And I think what we can see is there are some competing interests here, right? And so no matter what we decide to do as a board, I'm sure we're going to make some people happy and some people unhappy. Some AHA's that came up for there's so much here. So, you know, I'm not going to comment on everything right now because we need to have a conversation, but One of the AHAs for me is that if you look at the data 2022 package that was in the board package and you look at page eight, which says impact of North Star versus other choice schools, K through 5. And if you look at our boundary neighborhood schools, Clifford Garfield, Henry Ford Hoover, Roy Cloud, Roosevelt and Taft, and you look at the number of students in those boundaries that are attending Northstar or attending Orion Mandarin Immersion or Adelante Selby Lane, what pops out for me is that we actually have more students attending Orion Mandarin Immersion and Adelante Selby Lane schools than we do Northstar. Except for Roy Cloud, all the other neighborhood schools, there's actually more students that attend those schools than there is North Star. We don't hear about the impact of Orion Mandarin Immersion or Adelante Selby on our neighborhood schools in the same way that we hear about North Star. Right. And you know, you might hear a little bit. Some people have looked at it from a resource standpoint or whatever, but we sort of. You don't hear about it. And I believe that's because those students start in TK or kindergarten. And so most people don't even know initially where they live, where they came from. They haven't created communities. There's not the tension at the neighborhood school sites because those kids are already going to these schools. Right. So it's pretty clear to me that one of our major issues, and this is highlighted in a lot of places and in comments we got, is that it's the entry at third grade that is very disruptive and hurtful for some students and families and staff and school communities. So whatever we do, I'd really like for us to address that. I don't think think we can leave it as is. I think that that's. That is in some ways our biggest issue, because if it started at kindergarten or if it started at sixth grade, I think some of the. The hurt and the pain and the tension in the community would go away. Because we look at Orion Mandarin Immersion and Adelante Selby and we know that we have those schools, and we're not. We're not getting the same negative comments about them. I think. I mean, please. And I want to hear from other board members or John, if you think I'm not understanding this correctly from looking at this data. So then I struggle with. Then the other thing is I want to be very student focused."},{"start":5490150,"end":5490430,"speaker":"C","text":"Right?"},{"start":5490430,"end":5505870,"speaker":"D","text":"I think we all want to be student focused. And I loved, you know, one of the comments that one of our speakers made. You know, we want to Provide the best learning environment possible for each individual child equitably and within the resources available."},{"start":5506490,"end":5506610,"speaker":"C","text":"Right."},{"start":5506610,"end":5603070,"speaker":"D","text":"And we talk about that a lot and a lot of what we do. And so how do we do that? And you know, we've heard that some of the students who wind up at Northstar, they were not getting their needs met at their neighborhood school, which is why they go to North Star. And so, you know, we have a variety of options here. One we do need to, I love the comments of. Are there other things we can bring to the neighborhood schools that would help with that? Right. I was today at Clifford and I got to witness, I know that some other board members, you've already been there. I got to visit some of the classrooms with the nua, the National Urban alliance work that we're doing, and some of the pedagogy and the strategies that are being used in the class. Extraordinary. And I know some of you already talked about this at a previous meeting, but for our audience and others, the level of student voice engagement, high level thinking, high expectations that all students were getting with this, the way the curriculum was being accessed in the classroom was extraordinary. And I think, Sarah, you mentioned that this Renzeli method along with NUA are very compatible. So I think we heard from some of the people commenting, you know, how can we bring more of that to all of our schools? Right. To ensure that kids are getting that. I do think there is a group of students who absolutely benefit from the North Star programming and school, as Sarah described, as we've heard tonight in comments. So how do we, how do we continue to provide that without creating hurt"},{"start":5603070,"end":5603470,"speaker":"C","text":"or,"},{"start":5605470,"end":5672580,"speaker":"D","text":"you know, inequities with our other school sites? So, so I don't, I don't have the answer tonight, but it's something that I'm sure we've all been thinking a lot about. So one of the questions that I have as a follow up would be what would it look like if we started at kindergarten? What are some options there that would align us with our other elementary schools that we have and our other K8s. It would align with our few other choice programs, the Orion Mannered Immersion, the Adelante, Selby Lane. I personally have concerns with how you identify those students at such a young age. But we know that Nueva School, which actually is a private school in our area, that they describe themselves more for gifted and talented students. However, I know that early on North Star did have a lot of conversations and even some joint training with Nueva staff. So I think some of the programming is similar I don't know to date, you know, what nueva looks like and how it relates. But I went on their website today trying to figure out how do they identify their tk."},{"start":5672820,"end":5673620,"speaker":"C","text":"Their preschool."},{"start":5673620,"end":5685980,"speaker":"D","text":"Sorry, I think they have preschool students. And so one of the follow ups would be, depending upon what this, you know, what we decide is, could you dig a little deeper into what would that look like?"},{"start":5685980,"end":5686500,"speaker":"F","text":"How could."},{"start":5687220,"end":5744110,"speaker":"D","text":"Is it possible for us to do. What would it cost us to do? What would it look like, you know, if we were running a K5 or a K8? I do have concerns. If you just went to a 6, 8, then those students who have not been thriving at their neighborhood schools, who are choosing North Star, then do we let them, you know, be in these schools where they're not being challenged K through 5? And I think. I think we'll lose some of those students in terms of being engaged unless we figure out how to. How to better address their needs at their school sites, which is another option, of course. So there's more that I can say, but I think I want to give other people time. I think that's my biggest."},{"start":5745460,"end":5972059,"speaker":"B","text":"Well, this is one more step in trying to figure out what is best for the students. To me, the students always have to be at the center. And the concern that I have, well, I have several. But we have tried outreach, we have tried doing the testing, we got a few more families and we've tried changing some of the staff because that was another barrier. But there's still this problem that persists. The. I have concerns with students not being challenged in the classroom, being bored. I really think that every student deserves to have the best possible education that we can provide and they deserved. It is true, if you speak to some of the children, that in some schools we spend a lot of time in the classroom going over things that are boring to them, whereas in other schools, we go right to it and they're engaged and they're focused. So I think I was hoping that more of the differentiated instruction would be helping with some of this, but some of these changes take so many years. For a child, that's an eternity to wait. The other concern I have is with the testing. Some of the universities now are not, you know, considering the SATs and other things to their entrance exam. However, when you start so young again, how do you achieve that goal of figuring out who would be for whom? This would be a good fit. And I would like to have more information, as you said, Elisa, on how do we go about doing that? Because I have seen the devastating effects that it has on a child whose family wants them to apply and they don't get in for whatever reason, they feel their self esteem is hurt, they feel less. It's like they weren't good enough. And I don't think that's the message we need to send to children. I think that as Mike said, we should hold the bar up high and, you know, have high expectations and cheer them on. So that was one. John throughout the years we removed several of the barriers. I mean, the teacher recommendation, that was another huge barrier that the teacher, if the teacher didn't feel Mike and go, well, they weren't going to recommend Mike, only Janet. But that again, you know, is something that we've made little progress in there. But again, the problem remains. But I do agree with you that with you all on, we have to do something more. We can't just leave it as is. So I'm interested to hear from the rest of you now that we're having this conversation and see what other alternatives we come up with and direction for Dr. Baker. John also, if you have questions or want to tell us stuff, please."},{"start":5972460,"end":5982410,"speaker":"A","text":"Right now I'm not looking at, I am looking at my phone, but they're the notes that Wendy's doing. I'm reading a message that she's typing out. It's great because I can't use my, my screen."},{"start":5989050,"end":6303760,"speaker":"C","text":"My notes are kind of all over the place. So bear with me as I'm trying to follow what I was going to say. I want to start out by saying that we heard from a number of speakers that Northstar is not broken. And I want to say North Star is not broken. And that's not why we're here. We're here to talk about mitigating the negative impacts that Northstar has on other schools. And so I just want to put that out there to begin with that I don't think anybody here is saying that North Star is broken. That said, and Elisa, you said exactly. What I wanted to point out was that we do have these other schools. We've got Orion, we have Manner and Immersion. We have Adelante Selby, that all of our neighborhood schools, they go there. They're completely made up of students from our neighborhood schools is what I mean. We don't talk about that because there isn't that sense of loss in the middle of your K5 or K8 experience because these schools are starting at kindergarten. I do think that if Northstar started in kindergarten, we wouldn't be talking about this. It wouldn't be an issue. On the other hand, Orion Mandarin Immersion, Adelante Selby are impacted by the loss of students in third grade. They see the same thing that our neighborhood schools are seen, but it's even harder for them because especially for the language immersion, it's really hard to fill those seats in third, fourth, fifth grade. And so their loss is felt, I think, even larger than our neighborhood schools. We've heard from people saying that North Star does not negatively, negatively impact our other schools. But the only people I'm hearing that from, our North Star families, I personally have experienced it as a Henry Ford parent. I was, you know, when my oldest, who's now in eighth grade at Kennedy, was in kindergarten at Henry Ford. I saw it immediately and I said, wait, what's going on with the school? Like, why do we lose an entire classroom of students going from second to third grade? And it's not just that they're going to North Star. You know, you might lose, you know, 15, which is big, to Northstar, but then when Roy Cloud loses 20, they have 20 open spots. And so students from the other neighborhood schools are then going up the hill. So you're losing even more at our neighborhood schools. You're losing the students, you're losing the. Mike, you said these are involved parents. They are involved From K to 2 and then they leave. And so that impact is felt in the parent involvement side. You lose teachers when you have to reduce classrooms. Let me follow my notes here. I wanted to say too, I heard that it's only parents who are feeling this loss. It's not. It's the students. I hear it from my own kids. I hear it from their friends. I don't know how many of you know this, but students at many other schools have a nickname for North Star. I am not going to repeat it, but it's indicative of their sense of this elitism and a sense of loss that they have from their friends going away. It's not. I don't see this division between any other schools in our district. It's just North Star. When I was a student at McKinley, there was that division between Kennedy and McKinley. There was that sense of like, we're better than you. That doesn't happen anymore. It's just through North Star. And so I want to see that change. I really think that changing the grade configuration would have a huge impact on that. One more thing I wanted to say regarding eliminating testing, Dr. Baker, you said it would just be another neighborhood school. I would argue that if compacted curriculum is what makes North Star North Star. It's not just a neighborhood school then, because we don't have that at our neighborhood schools. So I would like to see what we can do to, especially for bringing it down to starting in kindergarten. That would be my first. That's what I would advocate for. I think that having, you know, some of the ideas I had, you know, if you have a North Star info night, like you have the meet or CSD night for the incoming kindergarten families and really talk about the type of students that you have at North Star, that would help parents self select whether or not it's a good fit for their students. And you might not need that testing in order to see will this be a good fit. So I'll stop there."},{"start":6305440,"end":6307440,"speaker":"D","text":"Janet, can I just add to that one thought?"},{"start":6308800,"end":6309120,"speaker":"C","text":"Yeah."},{"start":6309120,"end":6393580,"speaker":"D","text":"Because one of the things I was thinking about is if we were to go to kindergarten, how would you identify those students? And I did have, and we've also talked about wanting more equity in terms of ethnicity and race of who's going to the school. Many of our Bayside families who do fit that criteria of English learner or free and reduced lunch, you know, student, they go to our, our preschool program. So 1 thought I had, and this is where I'd like for, you know, professionals to research this, because I'm not an educator like you guys are, but could you have, you know, teachers who are in the preschool program for our preschool school, which we do have, you know, I don't know how many kids we have now, but in, in the preschool program, but it's hundreds. Right. So it's a good percentage that would be entering. Could some of those teachers help identify the kids? So, yeah, maybe you're not doing it through a test, but you're doing it through the teachers. I mean, that would be the best. Right? The teachers just spent a whole year with the kids and could identify, help identify anyway. Potentially, again, you as a professional would need to figure out if that's one option. I think it would be harder for private preschools, like what other families are doing, because we don't have the same level of accountability with them that was we do with our own preschool. So anyway, that was just one other thought, kind of building on what you were saying."},{"start":6393580,"end":6408940,"speaker":"C","text":"Janet, I found one more thing in my notes. I wanted to say I do like the idea of capping the number of students that can leave from each school to go to Northstar if it remains at like the third grade."},{"start":6410380,"end":6410780,"speaker":"F","text":"However,"},{"start":6412620,"end":6447340,"speaker":"C","text":"unless we build access for the Bayside students, that's going to negatively impact North Star because they're not currently getting a whole bunch of students from the Bayside schools. We need to figure out transportation and aftercare for those Bayside students to be able to have them come. Otherwise we're capping, you know, Roy Cloud, Roosevelt, Clifford, Henry Ford, but not increasing the student population at North Star. So that's something to consider too."},{"start":6455340,"end":6460600,"speaker":"G","text":"I'm sorry, I don't mean to, I don't mean to cut you off, but since we're talking about the great conversation. It's a conversation, right?"},{"start":6461790,"end":6462110,"speaker":"C","text":"Okay."},{"start":6462110,"end":6568840,"speaker":"G","text":"But just since we're talking about configurate grade configuration and then the draw of the other school of choice programs out of it, I think even if you started at kindergarten a little bit, is because of the way that charge number one is about the exodus in third grade and what that impact is. I think even if you change the grade configuration, if we looked at the demographics, look, our very first page of the LCAP shows double digit percentage of unduplicated students at every single school site except for north star, which is 6%. We would still have to look at it if nothing changed and say, why not 12% at Roy Cloud? Why is it that every, why is it that every school, like, why is this school different? What is missing? What is in the system? Look, in private industry, many, many industries are going through a diversity problem now and they're looking at it saying, what is wrong in the system? Are we not casting our net wide enough? Are we using the wrong criteria? Are we looking for the same things that we looked for yesterday and using that as the benchmark for what we want tomorrow when that's not really the future learner that we need to have around here. These things have to change. That's gotta be part of the conversation. So I get it. Yeah. Spanish immersion, parent participation and Mandarin immersion might pull more students from those schools, but it might seem more invisible. But I think even if we hid when those students were taken and selected into North Star, we'd still look at it. Every year that we reviewed that LCAP and say there is a problem here that needs to be addressed and that's really got to be part of the underlying discussion is how do we improve that access of the enriching, the challenging program that comes in. I just wanted to make sure that we didn't lose sight of that."},{"start":6569640,"end":6624730,"speaker":"B","text":"I'm glad you brought that up because again, I'm always thinking of the student and I know several students who were very well, doing very well in their home school. Then they went to Northstar and they just didn't fit in. And while they were many others who could potentially be benefiting from the same curriculum, they don't. So are we then letting them be bored there? I think that's another thing that we need to really look at. How do we make that equitable for all of them? Whether your parents are advocating for you to go to Northstar or wherever or wherever you're sitting, that you are challenged to your fullest potential. That is what I think our students deserve."},{"start":6630080,"end":6677170,"speaker":"D","text":"Yeah, I mean, I was just going to say that I think, you know, one of the things that was telling in some of the comments that were in the information were received in the board packet, and then some of the emails that came in and then just conversations I've had with parents over the years is we know that, you know, most parents and students are really happy with their school site. And so some of what we see at some of the Bayside schools and other schools, and you can see it in the numbers, is that many students don't even apply or even if, you know, we did the universal testing and they were accepted. They didn't choose to go there. And some of that's because they said, you know, we like the teachers, we like our school, we like the community, we like to be able to walk to it. And so there's a lot that parents and families look at when they're evaluating a school."},{"start":6677400,"end":6677600,"speaker":"C","text":"School."},{"start":6677600,"end":6712140,"speaker":"D","text":"Right. And community is a big piece of that. I will say that the numbers at North Star, I think if we looked back, they have. We have seen a decline in the unduplicated counts. And some of that had to do is we had an amazing staff person in third grade who was Latina, and she was a mentor, I think, you know, to the students, to the families. She was a real draw for them. I think we're already going to see some changes next year at the school in that regard. I don't know if some of that's public, so I won't say it yet."},{"start":6712300,"end":6712900,"speaker":"F","text":"Not yet."},{"start":6712900,"end":6794160,"speaker":"D","text":"Okay, good. But we are going to. I know that Sarah has been actively. And John have been actively working on thinking about that. Like, how do we have more Latina Latino teachers, staff at the school site who represent and look like the families that we'd like to see more of going there. So. So, yes, I just want to say I agree with that. I think that that is something that we need to continue to work on. The only other thought, too is, and again, we need more data. If we could even start at kindergarten. But that Seems like it would help the issue around the third grade. I still think we'd probably have to have some onboarding in kind of that second to third grade. I mean, one, there'd be attrition, so there'd be some kind of a wait list. But two, we know that teachers and parents do begin to identify some of their kids who are the ones who would benefit from a North Star program. So that's just another thing. John and Sarah, as you think about what a program might look like that's different than it is today, that would help with all the things, all the challenges we've been talking about, how might that look? And Janet, that kind of goes to what you said is you could cap that number. So if it's just a few from each school site, that's very different than if it's 15 or 30 or 35 from a school site. Right. That's almost like the kind of attrition and change you see from year to year, no matter what."},{"start":6796480,"end":6798320,"speaker":"B","text":"Cecilia, I think you've been waiting."},{"start":6799520,"end":7117120,"speaker":"E","text":"I know there's so much as you guys are talking, I'm like, here's another one. So when Alyssa talked about kids in preschool and having maybe their teachers again, oh, my God, I just lost. Identified the students again, it would be perhaps going back to the teacher recommendation, where are we really looking at sending the kid or the right kid to that program? I think with all this, and again, like Janet said, we know North Star is not broken. We just need to, as a district, look into bringing that type of program perhaps to all the school sites. Now differentiated instruction is working. Are we really doing that at all of our school sites? Are we really engaging our students again with the NUA lab? I mean, we got to see firsthand the teacher has all of the students engaged. And back in the day, when I went to school, you only saw the hand of maybe three to five kids. We're talking in this classroom, there was like more than 15 students. That was more than half of a class. I was just like, wow, if we have this. And then. I know back pre pandemic, when Sarah did her North Star presentation, that was, I don't know, I think my first or second year as a board member. And I was like, oh, my God. I. I knew about North Star, but not really. And going back to what the people at the Bayside. And again, this is just my personal opinion. It may not be, you know, just stereotyping or Latin X, I think, is who you talk to. And it's your network. When you so My my home school is Garfield. Back in the day when my 25 year old daughter now was going to go to school, I was told that school was not a good school. It used to be a charter school. So I went to where my friends went to, which was Roosevelt. They had a bilingual program. I wanted my daughter to learn more Spanish than just what I was going to provide to her. Then after that, my son came within Roosevelt bilingual program closed. And I had never heard of Adelante in my life. And somebody said, that's Spanish immersion. Why don't you go try it? And I remember my kids being afraid because we took the little la cross or hard cross street and they're like, mommy, I don't think I like this school. But once we're there. So my son had a test, my daughter had a test stand because she was already leaving second grade. Roosevelt got in. Back then the waiting list was not as big. Anyway, I could tell you my story and I will never finish. But what I'm saying is it's what you hear is who your friends are, is who your circle of friends are. So again, when we talk about communication, we do need to, and I know this is a board and a district issue that we need to do better. And again, by all means, our communication people here are excellent. I just think we do need to do, I don't know what we want to call it, more outreach. I mean, I'm willing to talk to the Latino parents. And again, as a board member, it's not just about who I served on the North Star or I'm sorry, on the North Fair Oaks side. As a board member, we are told we are here for all of our students. And again, we do need to challenge. We need to challenge everybody. There may be some students that we don't know. I mean, maybe they don't test well, but they're artistic. Artistic, they're very bright. It's just we don't know it because a test just didn't work for them. Whether they suffer from anxiety or, you know, there's just several things that kids have issues with. And again, not everybody learns the same way. We understand. Not necessarily to say maybe a question, but one of the things that came up as Alyssa was talking, again, we have the NUA strategies and then we have the accelerated program that North Star has when it comes down to budget what is beneficial for our students. Maybe some schools would have one, maybe the other schools will have something. But at this point, I think, and my respect to all teachers and administrators, but maybe we need to really focus on what our school sites are doing and how they are actually teaching our kids. Because if we are hearing from parents saying that their kids were not engaged, we need to have them engaged because that is how they learn. And again, if the enrichment program is what's helping some kids, then we need to open that pathway to a lot more students so that we could. So that they can all benefit,"},{"start":7122800,"end":7123240,"speaker":"D","text":"You know."},{"start":7123240,"end":7123560,"speaker":"C","text":"Yeah."},{"start":7123560,"end":7312280,"speaker":"D","text":"One other kind of. Thank you, Cecilia. I appreciate your comments. I was thinking in line with that, how do we. Because some of the themes that we've heard, too, is the concern about where you have a few of the schools that have more resources, maybe more electives or enrichment opportunities. Although it wasn't a charge of the group, I actually do think that it could behoove us to. Look, we haven't done this in a while. And I know when I was PTO president of Clifford way back when, we actually had a roundtable of PTA and PTO presidents and vice presidents and rcef, and we would get together and share best practices and have these conversations. And at that point, we looked at data, because what you can look at is every school is getting money from different places. And so some of our Bayside schools, as an example, may get Title 1 funds or private donations from foundations because of the students they serve. And then you've got some hillside schools that may be not getting those funds, but they're raising funds from the parents. And at that point, this is now, I don't know how many years ago, John, 15 years ago. I'd have to do the math, start dating myself here, that it was kind of even actually in terms of the different pots of money. And I think, Wendy, you may have been involved with this as well. I see you kind of nodding your head. That may or may not be the case now. But I think what we see is that we know that some of our students have more needs. And so what I would like to see is, and this is something that I know we've been able to implement more of with the Esser funds. And, Liz, you've taken the lead on ensuring that we were providing additional electives at Garfield, Taft and Hoover this year. We actually got to see some of the mariachi musicians and some of the fruits of our labor there and the excitement that the kids had. Could we look at our different schools and ensuring that kids are getting visual arts, performing arts, music, robotics, field trips, those opportunities? We know that every school has some of that, but we know that some schools have more. And so that Is an equity issue, a fairness issue. So how can we as a district, you know, think about that? And then maybe with discretionary funds or something, we could try to help, you know, uplift some of those or work with RCEF as an example, our education foundation, could they help supplement some of this? Because, you know, this is something we've talked about for a long time that we want to see that. And I know my kids had the benefit of getting performing arts as an example. Not every school has that. That is an amazing gift to students who have that ability or that robotics or whatever. So I would like us to. I know that that was a piece not necessarily with the PTA PTO money, but I think we need to look at the whole bucket and just think about are there opportunities for us to do some shifting of our resources to help with this? And I know we have done some of that, but there may be opportunities to do more."},{"start":7312280,"end":7326360,"speaker":"A","text":"So what I hear you saying is you want to look the whole, the budget as a whole and to look the different buckets that exist. You're going to see one bucket next week of what's being planned for the expanded learning,"},{"start":7328360,"end":7328640,"speaker":"F","text":"Right."},{"start":7328640,"end":7332840,"speaker":"A","text":"It'll be in the lcap. Not necessarily next week, but if you're talking buckets."},{"start":7332840,"end":7333960,"speaker":"D","text":"Yeah, it doesn't have to be."},{"start":7334120,"end":7348840,"speaker":"A","text":"We can do that. What is lcap? What is categorical funding that's coming in? What is grant funding that's coming in? We can do that and share, show you that you can have that experience. Then the decision is there's some strings tied to some of that, right?"},{"start":7349160,"end":7350360,"speaker":"D","text":"No, it gets very complicated."},{"start":7350440,"end":7371390,"speaker":"A","text":"Have to spend it in that manner. You write your report at the end of the year, it goes, it gets blessed and you're fine, you don't have to pay it back. So that's one option we can do. So you can see what it's all, what it all entails. The other piece that I hear you talking about is the PTOs and the PTAs. We don't have the bandwidth at this point in time to take that on."},{"start":7371470,"end":7373230,"speaker":"C","text":"Yeah. And actually what I would say, first"},{"start":7373230,"end":7392710,"speaker":"D","text":"of all about the resources. I don't even. I don't know that that has to be tied to. I'm sorry if I implied that that's tied to this decision making. I actually don't think it's tied to this decision making. I think we can move forward on what we're doing with North Star and so more I just meant I want to kind of put. What do we call that where you Put it on a. We don't forget that. I do think that's an important thing for us to deal with."},{"start":7392710,"end":7393070,"speaker":"C","text":"And I agree."},{"start":7393070,"end":7399410,"speaker":"D","text":"You don't have the bandwidth and there is so much going on. So that doesn't have to be done in the next month or two even. You know, let's just."},{"start":7399410,"end":7399810,"speaker":"F","text":"Right."},{"start":7399810,"end":7402290,"speaker":"D","text":"Can we just. Parking lot. Let's put that in a parking lot"},{"start":7402290,"end":7406130,"speaker":"A","text":"and make sure we circle back the budgets that. You know, Priscilla can do that."},{"start":7406130,"end":7407250,"speaker":"D","text":"Yeah, the budget stuff. Right."},{"start":7407330,"end":7516530,"speaker":"A","text":"You can get. We have that. We have access to it. Or just put it in the different buckets, I should say the categories and then the strings that are tied to it. What's required that you do to maintain those dollars and not send them back and. And show you that some of it is the elop. Nunnies. And if this is true, as we move down the pike year after year, we should be receiving like $6 million if it comes to fruition. I know I'm taking away your thunder, but I. We read every. Well, you sent me the report. I read it. So anyway. And that's for your unduplicated fund students. So as I said that hopefully the state continues and it will continue in a fashion that you can expect a dollar amount similar to that. So there's one bucket. Then you've got the bucket from the feds and what that looks like. Then you've got the bucket from the different grants that we have in this district. And let's look at that. So that's easier for us to do that. That's a given. The other piece that I heard was that because I would like you to cross some things out of this that we, that we don't. We don't have to do. Definitely. I heard the increasing of the outreach to the Bayside put together a plan and a timeline and what that's going to look like for the next school year, you know, for the remainder of the school and school year and next. The other thing in regard. I think one thing to take off this list is change the name and the location of North Star. Agreed. Okay. Yeah, for now. For now. That the other."},{"start":7516610,"end":7525650,"speaker":"C","text":"I'll just say on that note, I mean maybe in the future talking about changing location, but I don't think changing the name is going to impact any of these challenges that we're talking about."},{"start":7527020,"end":7531740,"speaker":"B","text":"Yeah. And I don't think we have to worry about the kindergartners being in with the middle schoolers just yet."},{"start":7531740,"end":7578180,"speaker":"A","text":"So the offer of transportation for those students that need the transportation that are coming from the base side, we can look into that. That's a given. And then we're already working on the Spanish staff. That's a given. And with. I won't take any more thunder away from Liz, but the after school program, that's probably a given also. All right. Okay with that. All right. The piece about the testing and Sarah, this is where I'm going to need your help. Use a different method of assessment. It all depends what it's going to look like if we start at kindergarten. Correct. You want to come up and use the mic because people in the. They want to hear me."},{"start":7579710,"end":7579950,"speaker":"E","text":"I."},{"start":7580030,"end":7650400,"speaker":"F","text":"As I talked to you about Dr. Baker, I think there's a lot of research that we can do if we are going to move to starting in kindergarten. I want to reach out to other schools that are doing it. I think the notion of a test and the notion of identifying students or helping families identify students can be two different things. Right. I don't. It's always important to me, as you keep saying, to keep the children first. And I want to make sure that we're not setting kids up for failure. And so I think that we can be thoughtful about how we're going to do that. And that will require reaching out. I've already started to reach out to some contacts, but reaching out to more contacts about how we do that equitably. I was just reading an article today, today about how to identify children, Latinx children and black children who are historically underrepresented in all GATE programs across the country. And so there's definitely a lot of research and information out there. So I would want some time to"},{"start":7650400,"end":7655600,"speaker":"A","text":"find that information and also to bring in mostly a consultant. Yeah, yeah. Someone who's the expert in the field."},{"start":7655600,"end":7657970,"speaker":"F","text":"Yeah, absolutely."},{"start":7658130,"end":7686580,"speaker":"A","text":"Perfect. So with the testing piece at this point in time, using a different method of assessment, we're going to have to, you know, just wait. Changing the admission criteria, that's another thing that's going to have to be looked at. Okay. And eliminate testing. Depending on what our research indicates and also what the expert opinion would be. We'd come back to you with that questions."},{"start":7689060,"end":7721040,"speaker":"B","text":"Well, I just want to say that again, you know, to your point, Sarah, that we don't want to set up children for failure. I've known of children whose parents have decided that North Star was the place for them to go, and for the child, that was just not the place to be. So again, I think that we need to. To make sure that we do what's best for the children whichever way we Go. Because I think that's why we're here, to make sure that they're the ones that are served and educated."},{"start":7722400,"end":7780100,"speaker":"A","text":"So the next challenge is the exodus of students from other schools in third grade. So looking at gifted programs, programming at other school sites, we talked about NUA strategies, we talked about accelerated curriculum piece. We can go in that direction, make sure if we are going. We've already started with nua. We've already started. We have, as I pointed out to you in our individual meetings, the amount of dollars we have spent already, it does not behoove us to start another program at this point in time. I don't believe so. And we have plans on how to kind of handle this at each school site with staffing without, you know, hiring additional staff, but supporting our staff that are at these school sites that are doing a great job. But we haven't brought it up to them yet. Surprise"},{"start":7782500,"end":7784660,"speaker":"B","text":"with you, Liz. I'm sure they will."},{"start":7788990,"end":7840830,"speaker":"D","text":"You know, one of the things that we heard, and I'm sure you guys heard this too, is, you know, a couple of the teachers that we talked to are veteran teachers. They've been, you know, they've been at Clifford for 20 years. And what's been great for them, they said, is they're. They're just sort of reinvigorated. Like they're at this point in their career where they, they really appreciate something new. And then they've just seen the growth in their students. And one of the things that's amazing this year, if you think about it, is that these kids are coming to them, many of them having been online the year before, you know, all the COVID stuff. And so the growth they've seen, they're thinking, wow, once we get into more regular cycle, if, you know, the younger grades are doing it, by the time they get to them in fourth grade or fifth grade or sixth grade, they're already going to know all these strategies and stuff. I mean, it's truly an amazing program."},{"start":7841400,"end":7841720,"speaker":"C","text":"Yeah."},{"start":7845000,"end":7921100,"speaker":"A","text":"So we talked about the grade level configuration. We'll look into that. That's. That's one thing that you want us to look into. The piece about third grade mitigation, we went migration, I should say. We talked about that months ago and we paused it, you know, and there was a lot of concern in our community and going in that direction, and that's why we paused. And we wanted to wait and see when we come back in June what the recommendations are. I do not believe we should go forward with that. I did not hear anyone say that. Okay. We talked about offering enrollment to the equal percentages from each school site. We can see what that looks like. We can bring that back up. See what that looks like. I heard you talk about that. And then of course the resource gap between schools. We can bring back what the district is receiving so that you can see what the amount of dollars are. And I will do it district wide, category wide. And then we'll go school by school. All right. Would that meet some of the needs?"},{"start":7923390,"end":7924310,"speaker":"D","text":"I don't want to create a lot"},{"start":7924310,"end":7926230,"speaker":"C","text":"of extra work for you on that."},{"start":7926230,"end":7953870,"speaker":"A","text":"No, we can. I'm sure Priscilla's on the call, so I'm sure I will talk tomorrow. I'm sure she's. You haven't seen it school by school and you have not seen. What am I saying? You see it every, every year what we receive. But it's not in the bucket form that we're going to show. Show you. It's going to be a little different and it'll be. And it also tell what's. What you're responsible to do with these dollars."},{"start":7953870,"end":7989219,"speaker":"G","text":"Yeah, I mean the, the thing that's tough is I. The only indicator of need that we have really right now is just unduplicated pupil count. And I guess that's enough. But that, that's really going to be part of it because dollars to dollars for school site without understanding the need underneath it. Because remember the title PTO and PTA funds are advantage based funding while title one is is need based funding. Right. And so we just. The dollars aren't the same. You know, we need to, we need to understand what that need is. I don't know how we want to represent that. Maybe it is just unduplicated people count. It's a course number. But you know, understanding the mental health need like that."},{"start":7989219,"end":7989860,"speaker":"A","text":"That, that's."},{"start":7989860,"end":8007240,"speaker":"G","text":"That's the only thing I worry about if we're looking at pure funding. Because you'd even mentioned it before how years ago the PTA roundtable looked at it and said hey, actually the schools are all kind of equally funded because PTAs are making up for. For it what the Title 1 funds are. But they're from totally different sources and for totally different targets."},{"start":8007480,"end":8008840,"speaker":"D","text":"But it wasn't this title 1."},{"start":8008840,"end":8011800,"speaker":"C","text":"It was actually private donations and other things. So."},{"start":8014360,"end":8041410,"speaker":"D","text":"Yeah, so no, but I think the point I was trying to make after that is recognizing that some students have more needs. So some schools should be getting more money. Right. Because if we want all kids to have these enriching elective opportunities that does take some kind of money. Right. And one of the things we've been able to do with Esser is we did. We did try to make sure that every school site was getting the PE coaching as an. As an example. Right. Whereas before, we had some school sites that had more hours than others."},{"start":8041410,"end":8041770,"speaker":"C","text":"So."},{"start":8041770,"end":8061990,"speaker":"D","text":"So I know we've done a lot to try to provide more equity at every school site, but I think the point is there's still more work to be done. So if we start to look at that, maybe we can start to identify, and that might be, you know, grant opportunities or when we do get these private funders to help them get the money where it needs to go, or to work with our Ed Foundation."},{"start":8063190,"end":8063750,"speaker":"C","text":"Yeah."},{"start":8068310,"end":8121600,"speaker":"A","text":"All right. I think that that was the last one. So I think we have. I have direction, so. And to meet with our consultants, you know, we have Naomi Hunter, and then we also have Heather. I can't remember Heather's last name. Is it McGowan? McGowan, I believe, who is also one of our consultants, who is our facilitators during our committee work. So I'll be meeting with them. And also Jorge, I think it's on Friday. Yeah, Friday. To debrief this and then next steps. So I want to, number one, thank Wendy very much. Thank you so much for these notes. They're fantastic. They are, compared to my scribbling here. She has exactly what everyone said. It's perfect. So are there any other questions?"},{"start":8125200,"end":8142770,"speaker":"B","text":"Hearing None. I want to thank everybody for the conversation. My fellow trustees, John, people in the audience, for everyone that participated, thank you very much. And can I have a motion to adjourn this meeting?"},{"start":8145090,"end":8145970,"speaker":"D","text":"So moved."},{"start":8148370,"end":8154050,"speaker":"B","text":"Second, all in favor? Hi. Thank you, everybody. Good night."}]}