{"date":"2024-04-17","type":"Board Meeting","videoId":"PUpafjd1GoQ","audioDuration":8340,"speakers":{"A":{"name":"Janet Lawson","role":"Board President"},"B":{"name":"Cecilia I. Márquez","role":"Trustee"},"C":{"name":"Evelyn Sanchez","role":"Executive Assistant to Superintendent / Board Secretary"},"D":{"name":"David Weekly","role":"Trustee"},"E":{"name":"John Baker","role":"Superintendent"},"F":{"name":"Alisa MacAvoy","role":"Trustee"},"G":{"name":"Mike Wells","role":"Vice President / Clerk"},"H":{"name":"Rick Edson","role":"Chief Business Official"}},"utterances":[{"start":4320,"end":12240,"speaker":"A","text":"We're going to go ahead and get started. Evelyn, can we have a roll call, please? Trustee Marquez?"},{"start":12720,"end":13120,"speaker":"B","text":"Here."},{"start":13280,"end":14240,"speaker":"C","text":"Trustee Weekley?"},{"start":14400,"end":14800,"speaker":"D","text":"Present."},{"start":14960,"end":16040,"speaker":"E","text":"Trustee McEvoy."},{"start":16040,"end":16960,"speaker":"F","text":"I'm present, too."},{"start":17040,"end":18120,"speaker":"B","text":"Vice President Wells?"},{"start":18120,"end":18400,"speaker":"G","text":"Here."},{"start":18480,"end":19360,"speaker":"A","text":"President Lawson?"},{"start":19360,"end":19760,"speaker":"C","text":"Here."},{"start":20960,"end":93940,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay. We have a report out on closed session from April 17th. This item was not on the agenda. However, ED code 3549 1D allows the board to meet at any time to discuss issues related to negotiations. The board met this evening to discuss ongoing negotiations with RCTA and provide a direction to staff. Si. Necessita traduxion en espanol, por favor. Llama al nueve, siete, ocho, nueve, nueve. Cerro cinco uno, tres, siete y precione. Ocho, tres, siete, siete. Cerro cuatro uno. El signo de numero para la contresena. Don't think we have anybody in the room that needs Spanish translation. If you wish to speak to the board on a subject listed on the agenda, you'll be called on at the time that. Hi, I skipped a paragraph. The public is encouraged to speak to the board on issues of concern, whether or not the issue is on the agenda. To address the board, please complete a speaker's card available at the entrance to the room and you can hand it to Evelyn. Or if you are online, you can fill out a Google Doc that's attached. It's on the agenda, I think."},{"start":93940,"end":94220,"speaker":"H","text":"Right."},{"start":96700,"end":97340,"speaker":"E","text":"Okay."},{"start":98540,"end":106860,"speaker":"A","text":"Do we have any changes to the agenda? Then we need a motion to approve."},{"start":107510,"end":109030,"speaker":"E","text":"I'll move to approve the agenda."},{"start":109110,"end":109830,"speaker":"D","text":"Seconded."},{"start":109830,"end":110470,"speaker":"C","text":"Thank you."},{"start":111190,"end":112190,"speaker":"A","text":"All those in favor?"},{"start":112190,"end":113270,"speaker":"B","text":"Aye, aye."},{"start":114230,"end":116070,"speaker":"A","text":"Evelyn, do we have any oral communication?"},{"start":117270,"end":118550,"speaker":"E","text":"No oral communication."},{"start":118550,"end":126230,"speaker":"A","text":"Thank you. So that brings us to bond program action, item 6.1, measure S. Program update."},{"start":128150,"end":158000,"speaker":"E","text":"Good evening. Tonight we have Eric Van Pelt from Van Pelt Construction Services who has prepared a presentation on the status of Mazer S. Where we're at, where we've been where we're at, and where we're going as well. To talk about, briefly, key analytics as our bond tracking software program moving forward. So with that, I will turn it over to Eric and I'm going to share my screen. There we go."},{"start":158000,"end":348150,"speaker":"G","text":"Thank you. Good evening, board. Good evening, staff, superintendent and public. I will thank you for the introduction, Rick. I appreciate that. So we're going to run through the slide deck here and we'll talk a little bit about exactly what Rick was talking about. So, Rick, if you can go to the next slide. The agenda tonight is we're going to look and I'm going to talk a little bit about the team that you're going to see here at Redwood, what progress we've made since we've last meet the bond financial system that we'll be talking about with which is keystone and then the education educating our community through the master planning process and the next steps. We can go to the next slide, please. Awesome. So my name as I stated and has Rick introduced me as Eric Van Pelt. I'm the vice president of Van Pelt Construction Services. Our firm has been in business for over 27 years now doing construction management almost exclusively for K12 school districts in the state of California. So we're very excited to be a part of the bond program. You will see Kelly Jurgensen, Jennifer Gibb, Ben Kerr and Andy Angie as the key members of the team. As we get more construction projects going, the team will ebb and flow and increase with staff. So th those are the folks from our team that you will see on a regular basis. Rick, if you can go to the next slide. So since we've last met, we put in some some work with Rick and his team and other members of the district. We had our kickoff meeting for the bond where we discussed procedures, processes and plans for how we're going to kick the bond off and get projects moving. We're having bi weekly meetings where we're reviewing with the team, mainly Martin and Rick at this point and discussing all of these items as well. Additionally, we reviewed the financial system which we'll be presenting tonight as well and we talked about Quick Start projects. We are currently walking all the sites in your district looking at energy efficiency projects related to lighting with Martin and his team as potentially one of the Quick Start projects. We've also issued an RFP. We received over 23 responses to that RFP from architectural firms around the state and we've narrowed that down. And at the next board meeting you will see the pool for those architects coming to coming in front of you for approval. We also have had a procedures workshop with Rick and his team where we've talked about different bond procedures to make sure that we stay on track and make sure that we stay in line with current laws and regulate regulations related to the bond program and Prop 39. And then we've done campus site reviews with Martin and his team where we've reviewed the good work that's been done with Measure T already and what the status of the current campuses are. And then we've also had the pleasure of attending our first Citizens Bond Oversight Committee meeting where we met with the committee there and discussed processes going forward for measure S and spoke with all the staff that attend that meeting as well."},{"start":348390,"end":349110,"speaker":"E","text":"Next slide."},{"start":350550,"end":711410,"speaker":"G","text":"So when I'm going to talk a little bit about the financial system and process which is part of this item as well, the first thing I'll say is that the, the selection of the financial software that we are presenting to the board for approval tonight is Keystone Systems. That financial software is a. It's a robust piece of software that manages bond programs that, that helps manage the financial side of bond programs, also the document control and workflow systems. So not only will this manage the finance and, and the key thing, one of the key things about key analytics, which is the product that Keystone makes that they do extremely well is their integration with your existing financial software system. So your Financial SoftW Financial 2000 right now, it does not necessarily provide all the information that you need in a construction or a bond program environment. So what this system does is it integrates that with that and it pulls the information from that and translate it translates it into this multi year bond program and allows us to see that track provide different reporting mechanisms. And also the biggest thing is it's a risk reduction for the team and for the district because making this automated reduces risk of double input data entry. All those things that happen when you work off spreadsheets that are, are tough when you have a bond of this size. If you were to, if you were to do something manually like that, you would have issues. The other thing that comes up with the software is it also has some great workflow, workflow pieces where we can put in different documents, do approvals through the software. It will house all the documents for your bond. So when audit time comes around, we'll have them all easily accessible for the auditor. Also when we go for state funding money and we need to submit financials and backgrounds for all of those projects, it'll also house all that information. We'll also be able to do cash flow projections to know when the next sale of bonds is going to be required and when we as a team are going to start initiating that process. That those were the key factors in the selection of Keystone. They have. There's several different softwares out there that do this. Keystone is one of the only ones that has the automated process that doesn't require the double input. That was one of the big selling points to, to the group that reviewed the different options. That risk reduction piece is really huge for the group. They also do a, at the end of each month they do a reconciliation process too. And that's another key Piece, yes, that does reduce risk to do do it automated. But there's also errors sometimes in data when it transfers from program to program. So Keystone, they go through it manually. Their firm does line item by line item and confirms that the data transferred over properly and completely. So that's really a really important piece for compliance related to the audits and our state funding submissions when that time comes. So the next piece is we're going to, we're going to talk about where we're going. So really a lot of the talk over the next month is going to be about community engagement. We're bringing the firm, the, the, the Firms for the Architecture pool to you at the next board meeting for approval. From that pool, we'll be also selecting a architect to perform the master plan update. Your, your district has not had a master plan Update in over 5 years and we recommend that you do that at that, that interval because things change with your facilities. Things change with not only your facilities, but it also things change with education and things change with laws and regulations. So when those laws and regulations come, sometimes your master plan process needs, sometimes your facilities needs to morph with those laws and regulations. Sometimes the changes in your facilities require different facilities projects. So part of that this is going to be a huge effort over the next, the coming months to get out, engage the community, engage the staff, make sure that everybody's voice is heard so we can develop a facilities master plan that is helpful to the district in, in executing their educational process. That, because that, that, that's what we're looking at. You know, the next slide. Rick, these are some of the examples of what we've done at other districts. And you can see engagement with staff there. You can see updated websites talking about the projects that we're performing in other districts. You can see the group meetings that we're holding where we're doing presentations on it. And that is actually a master planning process where we engaged community, public staff, students even to get input from all of those staff members. And what we really like to like to do here is we like to let data drive the decisions. We can go out and we can get this information from staff, we can go get it from administrators, we can go get it from anybody in the community. And then we'll have data to help provide decision making processes for the facilities for the facilities committee and the board. And also we're, we're going to, we're will. You will see some consistent messaging and some active outreach. So what that means is we want to stay on task as A team and make sure that that messaging for the master plan is consistent throughout the entire, the entire district. One of the things that always causes problems is school X, School Y. They hear different things in their meeting. Then we've got. Then we create some kind of panic and some difference of opinions. We want to make sure everybody's hearing the same thing. And that's why in that previous slide, when you saw those different communication tools that we're going to use, we're going to blitz people with communication. We're going to let people know what we're doing, where we're at at all times. Be available to talk through this process with our architectural partners. Next slide."},{"start":711410,"end":711730,"speaker":"H","text":"Rick."},{"start":713890,"end":736690,"speaker":"G","text":"Again, these are just some examples of the, the community engagement. You'll see even when we get into the construction process, we'll also be engaging with the community. You'll see in the bottom left and in the upper right those are some examples of some implementation plans and what an implementation plan is. Undoubtedly when we do the master plan, there will be more needs in the district than there will be money available in the bond."},{"start":736690,"end":737530,"speaker":"E","text":"That's that."},{"start":737530,"end":843060,"speaker":"G","text":"Every school district in the state of Calif. Has that problem. But we will then take the master plan and develop what's called an implementation plan. And we will use the implementation plan to prioritize the projects in the master plan to the funding that is available with the bond measure. The next slide. Rick, thank you. So next steps, like I said tonight, we're asking for approval of the financial system for the bond program. And there's also, and without diving too deep into an agenda item that you guys have had in front of you, but there were some pretty significant discounts of about $40,000 that we were able to work, work with the team and negotiate throughout the life of this software package. So we were asking for approval of that tonight. And that will allow us to start the foundation for the financial record keeping for the bond program. At the May 8 board meeting, we will bring forward the pool of architects and we will also bring forward the proposal for the master plan for the architects to perform the master plan. Alongside with our team, we're also working with the Citizens Bond Oversight Committee. One of the items that they asked us in the first meeting that we attended was to bring some best past best practices from other districts that we work in forward to the team. So we will be doing that. And then we're going to do some summer. Summer. We've got the summer that's going to come up. It's going to be big. So we'll be doing master planning all through the summer and then engaging that community. Engaging the community that way and before the summer because we'll get a little bit in prior to the summer ending and then we'll also be executing any quick start projects that the board approves as we continue working with Martin and Rick."},{"start":844980,"end":845700,"speaker":"E","text":"Next slide."},{"start":847300,"end":855040,"speaker":"G","text":"So with that, I know I give a lot of questions in a short amount of time, but I was trying to be concise for you. If you have any questions, please feel free."},{"start":860400,"end":893070,"speaker":"E","text":"Thanks, Eric, for coming tonight. And also for your you and your team being at the bond oversight committee meeting, that was really, really informative there. So, yeah, just on the accounting program, since that's the one that we're the financial system, since that's the one we're actually looking to approve. Rick, you were involved in the selection process for this. Can you just like how, how is it an upgrade from accountability and maybe what's the how does it compare both in cost and functionality? I guess? Yeah, yeah. Costs roughly probably the same over the"},{"start":893070,"end":900230,"speaker":"G","text":"period of time, maybe a little less expensive compared to the last couple of contracts with accountability, really."},{"start":900390,"end":902230,"speaker":"E","text":"And Eric touched on it, there's a"},{"start":902230,"end":904030,"speaker":"G","text":"lot of double entry between accountability and"},{"start":904030,"end":906870,"speaker":"E","text":"then our own system where our financial"},{"start":906870,"end":913630,"speaker":"G","text":"system now will continue to be the authority, funneling data into key analytics for"},{"start":914830,"end":920830,"speaker":"E","text":"slicing and dicing and being able to provide accurate information for what we'll need"},{"start":920830,"end":924270,"speaker":"G","text":"on the district and bond program side,"},{"start":924430,"end":943810,"speaker":"E","text":"as well as what goes to the CBOC and to the board of trustees. Another thing with accountability is it was, for lack of a better term, it was very archaic. It was an old system built on Excel 97, I believe, and then just on top, on top, on top, on top."},{"start":944530,"end":948290,"speaker":"G","text":"And it wasn't fully integrated with other platforms."},{"start":949810,"end":958770,"speaker":"E","text":"Dr. Baker can certainly attest to getting emails with, you know, five to 40 attachments for signature because there was no automated process."},{"start":960210,"end":965770,"speaker":"G","text":"And the reason why I know he got those because I got them as well. And having to go through that where"},{"start":965770,"end":980569,"speaker":"E","text":"we can facilitate a different way of doing business in order to streamline process and procedure and key analytics will allow us to do that right now. It doesn't talk as well as we"},{"start":980569,"end":982850,"speaker":"G","text":"would like it to with financial 2000."},{"start":984770,"end":987250,"speaker":"E","text":"The others certainly didn't talk at all with it."},{"start":987890,"end":989690,"speaker":"G","text":"The county, as you may or may"},{"start":989690,"end":1000620,"speaker":"E","text":"not necessarily, you probably know, is moving to Escape or the frontline ERP solution on 7-1-25, where this product will integrate"},{"start":1000620,"end":1003220,"speaker":"G","text":"even more with that in a more"},{"start":1003220,"end":1005380,"speaker":"E","text":"automated fashion than we can do now."},{"start":1005780,"end":1009220,"speaker":"G","text":"So we're really looking at this as a key tracking component of the bond"},{"start":1009220,"end":1038980,"speaker":"E","text":"program, but also trying to alleviate some of the strain on different departments within the district who have had to manually enter and reconcile through the other system. Yeah, that's really helpful. Just to have that frame of reference of like, is this a fair contract price? And things like that is. Great. Cool. Great. Thanks. I'm really looking forward, Eric, to working with Van Pelt and seeing the community engagement and sort of the facility master plan being revisited and getting these construction projects underway. Thanks."},{"start":1044990,"end":1045710,"speaker":"A","text":"Hello, Eric."},{"start":1045710,"end":1046550,"speaker":"F","text":"Thank you for being here."},{"start":1046550,"end":1047390,"speaker":"E","text":"Hey, Dawn."},{"start":1048750,"end":1067310,"speaker":"F","text":"Yeah, thanks for the additional information on keyed analytics. And I would say also, I mean, you sort of said this, but it's worth saying again. It sounds like there'll be a lot of cost savings just from our staff. Right. And then they can be using that time on higher priority items. So that's awesome because, you know, looking for those wins."},{"start":1067790,"end":1071070,"speaker":"C","text":"I did have a question. Have, have Eric, have you used the"},{"start":1071070,"end":1075910,"speaker":"F","text":"key analytics or the. You were calling it Keystone, you're calling it Key and it's Key Analytic."},{"start":1076950,"end":1077430,"speaker":"E","text":"Yeah."},{"start":1077590,"end":1078070,"speaker":"F","text":"Okay."},{"start":1078070,"end":1079190,"speaker":"G","text":"The name, changed the company."},{"start":1079350,"end":1081110,"speaker":"F","text":"Have you actually used the system?"},{"start":1081270,"end":1081790,"speaker":"G","text":"Yes, ma'."},{"start":1081790,"end":1081870,"speaker":"E","text":"Am."},{"start":1081870,"end":1102410,"speaker":"G","text":"We're using it and I believe we're in a 28 districts right now, and I believe we're using it in nine of our 28 districts. So we, we and members of the actual team that are working at Redwood do have experience with the software. And we, it's. It's one of the top ones that we like to use and around for exactly the reasons that Rick and I said."},{"start":1102570,"end":1104010,"speaker":"C","text":"Great, great, thank you."},{"start":1104250,"end":1152790,"speaker":"F","text":"And then my other kind of comments are around the facility master plan. It sounds like a great process. It's kind of similar to what we did. I was trying to remember what year that was. Was it 2013, 2014? Because we did it. We did a very big facility. But it even sounds like you have more community involvement, which is great. I really feel like, particularly the neighbors around our school sites, they have a lot to say about what's going on there. So I think it is important to get the put not just the parents and students and staff, which is also really important. So that's great. Anyway, I really like the way you talked about it and I agree. I think it's time to fully update it because we kind of did a minor update five years ago. We certainly did, you know, a look at it prior to going forward with the bond, but it's time to sort of do more details, particularly with all the new, you know, everything going on, so."},{"start":1152950,"end":1153590,"speaker":"G","text":"Absolutely."},{"start":1153590,"end":1163240,"speaker":"F","text":"So that'll be money well spent, I think, and time well spent. I did have a question just about do you have a completion time frame? You have a start time frame, I think in the sun or working through the summer."},{"start":1163240,"end":1169560,"speaker":"G","text":"But so when we come to you with the proposal from the architect, it's one of the things we work hand in hand with the architect."},{"start":1169560,"end":1170080,"speaker":"F","text":"Okay."},{"start":1170160,"end":1184060,"speaker":"G","text":"So I, I hesitate to give you an exact date right here until we've been able to work with them and chat with them and put together a schedule. But we will definitely bring that with the item that we bring for their selection at the next board. Item Board meeting. Excuse me."},{"start":1184450,"end":1184690,"speaker":"H","text":"Great."},{"start":1184690,"end":1231640,"speaker":"F","text":"And then my only other comment is on Quick Start projects. I'm curious if, you know, a couple of our schools got some outdoor classrooms right towards the end because we had the reserve money. And then of course, some of our schools got the bigger, nice outdoor amphitheaters and other things through the last bond measure. So I only bring that up if there's opportunities for some of these smaller outdoor classrooms that may be good. Right. For quick starts. Because the big issue, of course, is the California dsa. D. Yeah, dsa. Yeah, dsa. And so, you know, anything that's physical, that's just going to take a longer time. We know that. So. Because you have to get all these approvals. So anyway, I just bring that up. I don't know if there's some things like, you know, whether it's the foundation for the gardens or the outdoor classrooms or things like that."},{"start":1232280,"end":1234080,"speaker":"G","text":"Okay, we'll take a look at those. Thank you, ma'."},{"start":1234080,"end":1234160,"speaker":"F","text":"Am."},{"start":1234160,"end":1234760,"speaker":"E","text":"Yeah, sure."},{"start":1235560,"end":1250500,"speaker":"D","text":"A little bit of random pleasure, but I noticed that the contract is with Seed Financial Investment Incorporated, which is DBA Key analytics. And I could find precious little online about C Financial Investment Incorporated. Could you tell me a little bit more about the entity that's behind Key Analytics?"},{"start":1251300,"end":1267060,"speaker":"G","text":"I cannot, I mean, I can tell you that I've worked with Key analytics in Keystone, the product for, for a while, but the C Financial Corp. I did know that they, that was their, their name, but I do not know too much more about them. I, I could not give you any, any great information about them."},{"start":1267780,"end":1268460,"speaker":"D","text":"Rick can."},{"start":1268460,"end":1270580,"speaker":"G","text":"Yeah, I was going to say Rick. Rick probably can."},{"start":1270980,"end":1286600,"speaker":"E","text":"And just so I, I have worked with Key analytics previously, although some of this, some of the stuff that they have now was not available when I worked with them, especially the document management and the automation. So that's new that I'm eager to use with them."},{"start":1287720,"end":1291680,"speaker":"G","text":"C Financial is California Financial Services that"},{"start":1291680,"end":1302140,"speaker":"E","text":"does a lot of bond consultation and municipality, municipal work, and they're based out of Northern California."},{"start":1302220,"end":1320740,"speaker":"D","text":"It's part of the reason why I ask is just like if I could imagine if we get like halfway through this program and then the vendor evaporates in a puff of smoke, like that could leave us in a very awkward position. So do we have any like, assurances, are there escrow procedures, like if they go, if they were to go under, that we have some way of going forward and just don't end up holding"},{"start":1320740,"end":1324060,"speaker":"E","text":"the bag in terms of just the financial software?"},{"start":1324140,"end":1324940,"speaker":"D","text":"Yeah, that's right."},{"start":1325260,"end":1341780,"speaker":"E","text":"No, I think, I think California Financial Services, I think they've been around since the late 70s and certainly knowing the company, I know them somewhat, not extensively. I don't think they'd leave us hanging"},{"start":1341780,"end":1346020,"speaker":"D","text":"if they've been around. This is not like some random, right?"},{"start":1346020,"end":1346900,"speaker":"E","text":"It's not a random."},{"start":1346900,"end":1347460,"speaker":"G","text":"Okay, great."},{"start":1347540,"end":1351620,"speaker":"D","text":"I was just curious because I was looking at the corporate entity, I could find so little. So appreciate that. Thank you."},{"start":1355150,"end":1357110,"speaker":"A","text":"Cecilia, did you have any comments or questions?"},{"start":1357110,"end":1372110,"speaker":"B","text":"I don't have any questions, just a comment. Same as Mike and Alyssa mentioned, communication is a big thing. So I do really feel confident that you guys are doing, you know, starting with the right foot. So I really appreciate it. So looking forward to doing business with you."},{"start":1372190,"end":1372790,"speaker":"G","text":"Thank you, ma'."},{"start":1372790,"end":1372990,"speaker":"B","text":"Am."},{"start":1373950,"end":1423610,"speaker":"A","text":"Thank you for being here, Eric. I think, I mean, if we're talking about the software alone, it's. Thank you for the information on it. It sounds like it's the same price or cheaper, it's modernized, it's time saving for the staff. So it's like a no brainer. And I appreciate the, the work on that. Regarding the facilities master plan, Eric, you were talking about some of the things that have changed over time and you talked about laws and whatnot. You didn't mention climate. And I. That's a huge one from when the facilities master plan was done in 2014. I wasn't on the board at the time, but I was a parent and I did go to those meetings and I know safety was number one. Every parent said we want gates around our schools, we want locks on the doors that lock from the inside. That was the whole focus. Climate wasn't really talked about at all. And I know that that's a huge issue now for parents. And so that's going to come up a lot."},{"start":1423850,"end":1442390,"speaker":"G","text":"Absolutely. Especially in this region we had, there was this, the same warm, safe and dry. That's the first thing that we want. It's now changed to cool, warm, safe and dry because of the times that we live in right now. So I absolutely agree with you and that will make sure that. That' of the discussion whenever we meet."},{"start":1442550,"end":1444390,"speaker":"A","text":"Yeah, go ahead."},{"start":1444630,"end":1479070,"speaker":"F","text":"You know, just real quick on that. I don't know if you want to speak to it because I know it's something that parents and students and teachers. Well, all our staff have gotten to us about cooling because, you know, we are going to come up to the hotter time frame and I think we had hoped to do some more quick start around that, but I think in talking to you, it may not happen as quickly as we want. So I don't know if you want to speak to that because I'm sure the public will be interested, particularly the people in the classrooms, because come May, we're going to be hearing from everybody and we had hoped to maybe have done something by now, but I know it was more complicated than we thought."},{"start":1479150,"end":1482390,"speaker":"G","text":"It definitely is. And you touched a little bit on it with the DSA portion."},{"start":1482390,"end":1482830,"speaker":"F","text":"Yeah."},{"start":1482910,"end":1531920,"speaker":"G","text":"Adding cooling to classrooms and to buildings throughout your district is going to require DSA approval. And that, that is a process. So that is a process that, that's kind of what prevents you from doing that really quickly and, and getting that out in front. But like I said, it's. This isn't the end of the quick start discussion. The master plan. I, I told you I didn't have a hard time frame, but it's going to take months. But as we discuss it, there's going to be these ideas that cultivate their way to the top of the list. And it's just like there's going to be ideas like cooling that are going to be like, that's definitely going to be a part of this bond program. Let's start designing it, let's start getting ready to get into DSA and let's start moving that, moving it forward. So those type of ideas, they're definitely going to cultivate to the top of that process. And I think it's going to be. I think it'll. It'll be good and we'll be able to roll it out as fast as possible to get. To get that out."},{"start":1532080,"end":1532560,"speaker":"B","text":"Okay."},{"start":1532560,"end":1534480,"speaker":"F","text":"Sorry. It was just on the same idea."},{"start":1534960,"end":1535760,"speaker":"A","text":"That was all I had."},{"start":1535920,"end":1538000,"speaker":"F","text":"Okay. Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up."},{"start":1538800,"end":1594730,"speaker":"E","text":"Go ahead. Thank you. Eric, my question, as you move forward with the architects, you know, all school districts, I, I should say 3K. Well, now it's TK through 8th grade. We're all worried. Not worried, but we're working with preschool kids now. Absolutely. And it's a mandate. And many of our class, and we are increasing in TK And I do not. We do not have classrooms with bathrooms. So I'm sure you're going to hear about that. As far as with our staff, they have been saying, aren't we supposed to be in a classroom with the bathroom? Yeah, eventually, yes. But right now, we're not able to do that. So we're getting you to a close proximity to a bathroom. So just keep that in your mind, because I know you're going to hear about it."},{"start":1595290,"end":1614230,"speaker":"G","text":"Absolutely. And when I. When I mentioned laws and regulations, that was. The one that was in my head was the TK mandate. So. And it's not. You're not in a different position than all 29 of the other school districts that we work in. It's a major part of everybody's master plan. It's a major discussion that's happening on all levels."},{"start":1614630,"end":1616510,"speaker":"D","text":"Okay. AC solar batteries."},{"start":1616510,"end":1618870,"speaker":"E","text":"And you got it."},{"start":1622150,"end":1628470,"speaker":"A","text":"There's no other comments or questions. This is an action item, so we would need a motion to approve."},{"start":1629040,"end":1629520,"speaker":"B","text":"In favor."},{"start":1630320,"end":1631600,"speaker":"D","text":"I move to approve."},{"start":1633200,"end":1633840,"speaker":"H","text":"I'll second."},{"start":1634000,"end":1638160,"speaker":"A","text":"All those in favor. Thank you, Eric. Thank you very much for being here."},{"start":1638240,"end":1639520,"speaker":"G","text":"Thank you very much for the work."},{"start":1642800,"end":1646720,"speaker":"A","text":"On to item 7.1, Special Education Study report presentation."},{"start":1648320,"end":1670380,"speaker":"E","text":"Very good. Come on up. And Zanjanette Pitzer. We're fortunate to have Angenette Pulitzer with us tonight. And you know, she has now, she used to be the director of SELPA for the San Mateo county of Education for many years. And then she left us for better. Bigger and better things and different things. Okay. Different things."},{"start":1670380,"end":1673340,"speaker":"A","text":"Microphone's off. If you can press the button on the right."},{"start":1673820,"end":1674380,"speaker":"C","text":"Okay."},{"start":1674380,"end":1701170,"speaker":"E","text":"And she is going to present us with a study that she did. And during the fall. Early fall, I would say during the early fall. And so, Angenette, thank you so much again for coming this evening and also preparing the study and meeting with us after you had meetings with special ed, of course, with a cabinet and us moving forward now with our next steps."},{"start":1701650,"end":3564710,"speaker":"C","text":"Thank you, Dr. Baker. I'm really happy to be here. I got an invitation to join as a panelist, and I was like, I'm going in person. I hope that's okay. So I'm glad to be here in person. It's an honor to be here with you today. Nice to see you all. Hello, trustees. Thank you for having me today. I'm here representing myself and my colleague, Lynette Hodson. We were here to do the special education study with your staff, as Dr. B. Baker noted. And we really, really enjoyed being Here not only because I had been to many, so many of your schools before the pandemic, but also because it is just lovely to, to see the great work continuing. And so, so many of the initiatives that you had started when I was here and was aware of what you're doing and how they they and starting to show results. So thank you for the invitation and introduction. I am Anjanette Pelletier and I'm working at School Services of California now. And we were invited to come to the district to do a special education study. First, Mr. Edson contacted us and, and talked with us about that. And then we quickly spoke with cabinet members and with your special education team about what were your goals and what were your areas of interest for that special education study. And like all LEAs, you all have been faced with the fiscal challenges of operating high quality special education programs along with the people challenges of operating high quality special education programs. And for many of us, those are going hand in hand. It's been very challenging to find staff to keep staff and the costs of hiring staff outside of employees contracted and service providers has become necessary across the state and it's quite costly. So we were here to look with your team at where they're headed, where they want to be and what might be some of the recommendations along that journey in terms of the scope and methodology. We gathered more data than I think your district realized that they could generate about their program and costs and expenditures and activities and people. And then we also looked at statewide comparative data to a group of districts that were like yours, so basic aid districts with similar UPP similar enrollment. So I'm sorry I said UPP similar unduplicated pupil population percentage and similar enrollment size so that we could have comparable closer to comparing apples to apples. And then we also engaged in both site visits and interviews with a broad variety of interest holders from the staff on sites in the classrooms with your students to members of your septar so your special education parent teacher group first for, for the district. So we're really happy to have so much excellent input. We organize our report in these five areas, sort of looking at organization and effectiveness and how all aspects of the district leadership and culture lead into how your special education department leaders can support the program. And then we also look at revenues and expenditures because that's usually one of the drivers for why we're here. And then we look at cost drivers for special education expenditure because often here is where we find that our work is not just solely focused on special ed because of the systemic nature of our educational programs. That means we need to look at pre referral early intervention, your best teaching that's going on in your. In your classrooms, implementation of the curriculum that you've sold, selected your multi tiered system of support and all the way through the variety of supports and resources that could be available to students as they exit special education. So we ended up not just looking at special ed, but also what happens before, how students are referred and also what other resources are available on campuses. And then we look at opportunities for alignment as well. Because we're all doing so much work, we no longer can be doing all those works in isolation. We need to really be having our LCAP drive our and our LCAP and which is also your strategic plan sort of drive all of the work and or monitoring that must occur for a district. And then we look at special education staffing as well. So for us I'm just going to tilt this way a little bit because my. I've got my glasses on and this is like a weird angle. So for us we really took a look at your LCAP and all of the different compliance monitoring that you have been participants in to see where those opportunities for alignment exist or where they're already in evidence. And we know that you have, you know these mission and core values language as a deeply embedded part of what your staff believe and what you as a board support and what we really really wanted to start with as a. As an acknowledgement or kudos to the district is you really are farther along in many ways in many components of those various aspects of ensuring equitable access to educational opportunities. In really a commitment to your multi tiered systems of support. You have made efforts to make those commitments to social, emotional, learning and behavioral health health within your systems for all students, which includes your students with disabilities. And we. It was really clear to us that everyone, even as everyone said Covid has put us behind. There are some things we need to redo, some things we might need to re. Engage with or because of staff we've lost. We need to have a. Have a re ramp up with new staff. Even though we had all of those things, there still was evidence that, that, that the. That your students are receiving high quality instruction and that there are lots of initiatives underway. In many ways we were sort of worried that the special ed team might not have enough hands to keep all those balls in the air because there's a lot of things going on and the amount of systemic focus and agreement that we focus on students first we do it needs to be done. We are here to make sure that they get those supplemental supports and services with was was a, was a constant theme. And one of the things that we heard over and over was, oh, we're so busy. There's so much to do. Like I'm having to prioritize and sometimes things get left behind. But we never heard anybody say, we can't do this. It can't be done. And so that was really lovely to be here. In terms of special education program strengths, I I It's a light bulb, so it's yellow. It's kind of hard to read. But in that light bulb are words that your parents, your staff, your principals, people within your system used to describe your special education program. So the, the system itself is reflecting and grateful for those within the special education department and the implementers of that program that they are coming to that with so many positive qualities. There are many strengths and assets noted. You, you have veteran staff who are really committed supports to others. You have a tremendous amount of collegiality and people who love working together. And there was really just a lot of excellence and, and thankfulness for the, the skills of your leaders that people were like, you know, we know that they're. At the time we were here, some of them were very new and there was just a lot of, of noticing that people were here being in trying, working with us, coming to our sites, getting to know our students. So that's really great. We also noticed that many of the sites have very strong inclusive practices in their system and that they have many of the sites where you have history, we have people who've been around, they say, you know, I know where to get what I want and how to get and I know who to contact. And so your system has really strong foundations. So little bit bit backwards to the district data as we get into areas where we did some analysis and things we found. Your district, as you know, has been experiencing some declining enrollment over the past 11 years. And it hasn't been precipitous, but it's definitely impacted you in terms of the number of students you have. And what is interesting about that is your enrollment with students, students with disabilities count has also actually inched down during that time. Not as dramatic of a decrease as your enrollment, but in many places where we're going, we are seeing the number of students with disabilities count rise as your enrollment declines. I can't do it from here. But we're seeing the enrollment decline and a rise in students with disabilities. And so there are many things that there are positives about your referrals and your assessments that mean that your, your staff are ensuring that they're only making eligible those students who really, truly need to be eligible for special education. And you have resources available to support learners who need additional things outside of special ed. And that's one of the main things we're often looking for. As you can see here, your percent of enrollment is higher than the statewide average. And for 2122 that was 13.44% was the average percentage of enrollment were students with disabilities. And your district has been outpacing that average since 1718. But again, as you can see, your percentage actually has declined some from 1920. And it's, you know, it's not, it's not growing exponentially. So it's something we want to monitor and keep an eye on. But it is, doesn't seem to be out of control in terms of comparative to other districts. So here is for, I'm not going to read all these words, but we start these, we have on these presentations sort of the standard of what we're looking for when we're looking in each area of study and assessment. And so for organizational effectiveness, we're really looking for all those things that must be true so that the program can do their job and do their job well. And that is, is the curriculum and materials and supplies and it's the staff members themselves and support at the site. It's also the support from the department and the program leaders, but it also includes the support they get from the other members of your departments, your HR departments, partnership, your, the business services, transportation, curriculum and instruction, ED services. All of those components must be available and within your and everyone has to be kind of pointed in the same direction to really implement what we call a culture of inclusion. And so these are the things that we're, we're really looking for. And so when we looked into and interviewed so many people within your system, we did find that there's a lot of student focused, student centered work going on. There were a lot of new staff this year especially you had, you know, you achieved what many districts were jealous of. You were fully staffed. But many of them were new to the country or new to California and so therefore had some learning to do about IEPs or the safe system or your, you know, requirements for educating. But in terms of, you know, filling vacancies, you had many, many, many of your vacancies filled quite early. So those are both opportunities and challenges. I think way better than having tons of classrooms with, with 20 day subs right. We don't want substitutes. So you had consistent educators. So what we noted really was that with so many new people and you had new leadership that people were saying, I'm not really sure where, where to get information about what I'm supposed to do. Policies and procedures were things that people said they, they wish they knew where to find them sooner. And with more clarity. There also was. Although there have been efforts to increase communication, many people by the. When we were here were sort of like, I still haven't heard what I'm to be doing. So people were clamoring for some of that communication that I know your special education team had put into place and had planned. Everyone at the time we were here and I believe up until the time we wrote the report, everyone was saying that there was just so many behavioral and behavioral health and social emotional needs, not just within special education, but within your system. And in special education, they were especially at a crisis level. So those were the, the things that people really were ask. They noted that there was so much work being done to give them curriculum, to give them resources, to give them strategies, and that they really just needed time for implementation. So what we recommended was, you know, you had had a set of district policies in the in that were in the process of being updated and just really making sure that people know where to get them and that they're implemented consistently, especially around getting individualized behavioral support. At the time we were here, you, you were in a little bit of a crisis situation with new, new educators, students coming back to school, a really consistent repetitive demand for new aids that they were asking HR to generate people. We need more, more staff in the classroom, but does seem that there needs to really be a really clear policy and practice that and then making sure that everyone has good training. We want everybody to be able to support the behavioral needs of students, not just an aid or a contractor. Again, in, in the area of revenue and expenditure, we really are sort of looking big picture about how LCFF has changed the landscape in, in, in education. The way the special education is being funded has shifted in the last five years. You are a, you know, a basic aid district. So you have, you know, your, your level of funding, but you still receive special education funding based on your total funded ada, your average daily attendance, and so that those revenues have increased but have not kept pace with costs. And so how do we make sure that you are being the most efficient, effective and fiscally responsible and ensuring you have a sustainable program? And so when we looked at your revenue and expenditures we see that you were the second highest in program revenue with your comparable group. So you can see here that we use some regional districts and some a little bit farther away. We also did all elementary districts in the state just so that you could see there, that's the all elementary district line. And so overall your revenue, which is that, that blue, dark blue bar is, this is, was the second in the compare. Second highest in the comparable group. But then your contribution was also the second highest. And so that we believe is likely due to the fact that your contracted cost ended up being so high. If you had been able to function at the budgeted amount of staff and had employees instead of contractors, then your contribution would likely have been lower. Contractors are much more costly than employees. And your HR department, just like many others, was just not able to find some of those critical positions as employees, psychologists, speech specialists, behavior aides. So, and those, those are costs that increased your contribution in terms of expenditure. You can see here that, you know, comparatively you're right around the statewide average for certificated salaries spending, you're a little bit higher than the comparative district and the statewide average for classified salaries. You have more aids than many of the other comparable districts. There definitely is something we worked with this, the leadership team on a perception of I need more adults in my room, even though maybe all those adults aren't getting the results that we want for our students. And so we talked with the team about some ways to really think about mitigating that sense of scarcity or demand even when there's five people in that room. So, you know, what we noted is that you, like everyone else, spend the majority of your money on people in your district. You are spending a lot of money on people who are not your employees. Services is contracted service providers. And so it's much higher than your comparative group and the statewide average. And it, it is something that definitely needs close attention and hopefully building capacity of your employees so that you don't rely on contractors. And one of the things that appears to be happening is your parents and maybe even your site principals and your classroom teachers are like, well, I need an aide who's trained. And so then you're paying 60, $70 for an aide who's trained. But what we're realizing is that training is not worth 70 or 60 or $60 or $70. And you could do that training. And so I've seen Maeve and the team talking about how we can train the people that we, that we hire so that we can be that excellence, so that when a Parent says, I need a trained aid with my child. You can say, everyone in your classroom has that specialty training. And we believe that that will help reduce that feeling of that feeling and demand in terms of outcomes. As we now see you are spending more. At the time we were here, though, it didn't feel like it was out of control in that there were not extra people everywhere. Every person that you have was. Was busy working with students. And so it just really felt like it was a little bit of a. Of a pivot point for you. And then again, as you put some plans into place, you hopefully will be able to reduce some of that demand and release. Release some of those contractors and return to having excellent employees with enough training to fill that need. We know that HR and the depart and the department have a lot of meetings to monitor and figure out where all those people are. And so we want to encourage that to continue. And also with the business department as most new leaders, we don't get a lot of training before we become special education leaders about budget. And so it's a great idea for your team to sort of understand and learn not just how much things cost and where revenue comes from, but also understand every aspect of that process. Knowing that as a board, if you approve a $500,000amount of spending for a vendor doesn't mean that if I am spending $300,000, that I have approval for $200,000 worth of positions. Right? That's an approval. So we don't have to come keep coming back. But we need to make sure those positions are also appropriately threaded through the process every step of the way. So making sure that that communication is really tight and we recommend regular meetings for that because it's really easy to lose track of time and not. Not make that time. And then all of a sudden three months has gone by and some things that happen at the program side that other departments don't know about. So we recommend that to be really regular, regular practice. And then we know it's really challenging to recommend, but we really appreciate the work that you are. You seem to be doing and looking at how do we keep the people we're training. So if we're going to invest in them and train them, then we might need to be ensuring that we make our jobs attractive by having the right kind of pay and the right kind of benefits. And that can be a little costly. But we think that it's if you. If when we know when we do the math and we see that big, huge services column, if we invest some of that in our people, maybe pay them a little bit more but then we keep them and they're highly trained that that will be a really good trade off for you. In terms of cost drivers, again our standards of investigation, what we find is that if you don't have really good pre referral intervention and pre referral prevention then you end up with everyone who has something unique in special education and that is not cost effective way to work. And not every child who has a need is a student with disability. So I know that your system has been very sensitive to the issues of ensuring that you know English multi language learners, English learners are carefully assessed, that you know you have in some areas high percentage of poverty and that we're making sure that we're not identifying educational experience or poverty as a disability, that we're making sure we're providing those interventions across our system. And you do have components of an MTSS and what we believe for you is that as you continually ensure that you're implementing, monitoring progress and really making sure that you're doing the right thing for the groups of children you're serving, that you will probably see more and more positive impact there. One of the things again to highlight that you have already invested in reading specialist literally literacy support curriculum across the board for students with literacy challenges and ongoing PD to be sure to reinforce the importance of universal design for learning and and things related to challenges for students with reading difficulties. And those are all excellent building blocks that sometimes are our recommendation. And so you're already there poising you to continue to get funded. Good good outcomes. We also know that you have some, some behavioral supports built into your LCAP that are still being a little overwhelmed by the needs of your system and that's on the special ed side and the general ed side. And so again in the, in the concept of looking at that big high services bar and thinking about how can we bring those services into our district and be available for the support of our all students instead of just being a special ed cost is the direction that would be really, really helpful. So you can read the recommendations here but the two that I'll highlight are really thinking about how to implement something that the department has already started working with HR and business about is to think about how do we hire and retain more staff who have behavioral specialization since everyone says that they need that. And then making sure that the curriculum you've purchased and the training you provided are being implemented across the board, not just special ed for general education as well. Oops, went one too far. In terms of comparative analysis for staffing, these are the staffing numbers you had in the data set that we use, which is, which is a fall earlier than the year we were here. But these are the numbers of specialists that you had supporting your program. And really our thoughts were given the needs of your program at the time we were here. This did not feel overstaffed. Some of these are driven by caseload. Speech specialists have a mandated caseload. But in terms of the psychologists and behavior technicians, it seemed as if most of them were being very well utilized. What we would be interested to see is possibly again bringing those in house rather than having them be contractors. And then in terms of your department staff, you would. Were undergoing some changes with department leadership. And so you had currently four people that really were department leaders for the. And then one behavior program specialist. And really we would say that the one thing we did did note is that because you had some vacancies at the time, we really look forward to what it will look like when you have those vacancies filled. Because the staff were like, we need this back. We need. Rob can't do this himself. So, so Rob never said anything like that. But your team is stretched then. And at the time we were here, I think there were three vacancies. So I know that there are plans to, you know, to backfill some of those positions. In terms of your teaching staff, when we looked at your FTE compared to the number of students with disabilities and we looked at your class size averages, they were reasonable and within the average for the comparable group. And believe it or not, even though it does seem like you have a lot of paras, when we compared to some of the other districts you were with, you were within, you were not the highest. And so, you know, within the average range for those classroom instructional staff where you had many more was behavioral contractors. Again, that's something that your system has really been clamoring for. And so we definitely would, would continue to highlight that as, as a need for your system. And then the, the last thing I'll say about, about things we heard was that every single person we talked to said the onboarding process needs to be more coordinated, that they sometimes get some information from here, information from there, but there's no like. And then, but then if I come on board two, two weeks later, my onboarding experience could be different. And if I'm a contractor, my onboarding experience could be a lot different. So some consistency of staff who are going to be with your children. Understanding here's our standard here's where you get information, here's what we expect of you, here's what you should expect of us. To a site, every site principal and every teacher we talk to who did get an extra aid, whether it was an employee or a contracted person, said I would prefer to have them be an observer for a whole week week, to get some training, to work with the behaviorist specialist, to work with the psychologist, to maybe go see someone who's really good at their job before they just come here and get dropped in. Which I know is not the message that they were reporting when they asked for those aids, but when we asked them to really reflect on that the power of capacity and trained skills rose to the surface is something they would prioritize. I did look at about, I would say maybe 40 IEPs. I looked at a couple extra ones because I followed a couple of rabbit holes for how students got some of those instructional assistance. And so I didn't do all of the compliance items for every IEP I did. But what I did find was that the IEPs are largely looking really great, timely, complete, developed to ensure meaningful educational benefit. Goals tied to grade instructional standards. Standards, lots of evidence of parental engagement and parent input. All the right people in all the right places. The one thing that we didn't really see is there's not really anybody whose job it is to make sure of all that stuff, except for one of your classified administrative support staff. And so we would like to encourage the staff to sort of inch that closer to the IEP table and instead of having it be the secretary who's checking for data entry and finalizing those documents, documents, have the sites do it. Give it a, a run through before they say it's finished. Have the psychologists check some things while they're at the table. Make sure that the, the classroom teachers are, are checking for a standard or common compliance challenges. And then the other thing that we really recommended was at the time we were here, which was early in the year, there still was a lot of inconsistency in the use of something called service track tracker, which tracks the delivery of your services. So students have goals and then there's a number of minutes that need to be met. And then the teachers need to go in and say, I delivered those minutes. I was with them for these, these, this time period. And that is going to be really critically important in two weeks because the state of California has started monitoring service delivery minutes. And so we did share these recommendations a little earlier so they could make sure that they were really talking to staff about the importance of that, because monitoring window opens. I think it's May 1st. So really you have a lot of strengths. There's a lot of things underway, a lot of things that have show a lot of promise or that are really consistent with the kinds of recommendations we normally would make for a special education program. Those are all excellent, excellent things. And you also have a department that's still a little bit in transition and a department that's working with an MTSS that's still under, you know, growth and implementation. And so we, what we really hope for you is that as you move forward and have your implementation and improve communication and improve skills and capacity of staff, that all of the outcomes that you're hoping for, better programs, better communication, lower services, costs, that all of those things will really come come into being at the same time. So that's, that's what we found. I'd be happy to answer any questions if you have any. And I'm also going to stay for the second next report."},{"start":3565750,"end":3569670,"speaker":"A","text":"That was great information. Thank you very much. I'll open it up for questions or comments."},{"start":3571830,"end":3586340,"speaker":"E","text":"I mean, did we. I'll leave it up to you. But do we want to hear Maeve and Jude's presentation first? Because I think that they actually, if I read the slides right, you're addressing a lot of the recommendations that are in there. So, so it's up to everybody else questions."},{"start":3590420,"end":3600740,"speaker":"C","text":"Okay, I'm happy to stay around. And I agree the, the, the presentation they've put together really addresses so many of the recommendations we made. So I'll just wait here."},{"start":3602260,"end":3602740,"speaker":"E","text":"Thanks."},{"start":3606580,"end":3607020,"speaker":"B","text":"Okay."},{"start":3607020,"end":3615930,"speaker":"H","text":"Thanks Anet. And Good evening. I'm Dr. Maeve Mulholland. I'm the director of Special Education services in the school district and I have with me this evening my colleague."},{"start":3616410,"end":3619930,"speaker":"B","text":"Hi, I'm Jude Noyes, Associate Director of Special Education."},{"start":3620970,"end":3679110,"speaker":"H","text":"So thank you for the opportunity to present to the board trustees this evening and to Superintendent Dr. Baker. We're really, really pleased to be here. And we feel it's a privilege and fairly unusual for a department to have an opportunity in the course of working to pause and take stock. We're incredibly grateful to Anjeanette and the California School Services team for their work and for the specific recommendations that they've made. Our presentation today is focused on providing some proposed next steps based on the recommendations. Let's see. Oh, how do I get the. Sorry, I'm waiting for the presentation and. Yeah, I start. I preempted the presentation. Okay, go ahead, Jude."},{"start":3681430,"end":4146650,"speaker":"B","text":"Thank you, Maeve. Good evening, President Lawson Members of the board, Superintendent Dr. Baker and members of the community. My name is Jude Noyes and I serve as the Associate Director of Special Education. I'm very grateful for this opportunity to work with you all and with Angenette and Maeve. And I'm excited to talk tonight about our findings and our support of this study. The study recommendation areas are vital for aligning to our mission and promoting continuous improvement. For tonight's presentation, we have organized all the recommendation areas into four key areas for clarity to clearly demonstrate our planned initiatives and objectives. Objectives. Please refer to the legend there on the bottom corner and you'll see the classification recommendations of short term is one year. Long term up to three years. And the green check mark indicates recommendations that are implemented or ready to be implemented. And there is a circular arrow signifies improvements. As they as there are many items that will be part of a continuous cycle of improvements. Improvement. So this section of the study recommendation is a focus on policies and procedures. Here you can see our department has a special education manual that is active and continually updated. It serves as an internal document for the arts Redwood City School District staff and administrators for all our internal Redwood State employees. And the manual serves as a direct outcome of the recent study recommendation and is fully operational and we'll be happy to share it with you. In the area of behavioral support that was mentioned a few times in Anjeanette's presentation, we are refining our practices and policies to better define eligibility criteria and create effective goals for students. This effort is aimed at supporting their journey. Journey toward independence and self determination. Specifically, we have developed a fading goal which means a strategy that's designed to decrease students dependence on adults and to increase their self determination as that is a need for their growth and continued development as young people in our world. The final bullet point is in regards to the transportation plan. We have a developed comprehensive transportation plan that includes clear guidelines for eligibility and detailed policies and procedures for this service. We plan to have this completed for Your review on June 1, 2024. In the next area we have communication. We are committed to ongoing communication. That's something I think our department does really well. We're good communicators and that updates the policies and procedures that are consistently conveyed and discussed among all staff members and administrators. Additionally, we recently organized an internal transition fair that was very exciting and it was great to see teachers connected and communicating and talking about the things they love when they work with students. And so we pulled them together at Hoover School to meet and discuss students that are are going to be in Transition from preschool to elementary, elementary to middle, and so on and so forth. And it really gave them an opportunity to talk to each other about the kids and get some really good information about preparing the transition for these students. It was super successful. And based on the feedback that after we met with them, they really appreciated that opportunity to have that time to work with each other. And it helps us proactively plan for students as they move forward. Forward. Additionally, we worked with our special education pta. We appreciate them so much as they inform us as much as we inform them, and we help guide each other through their children's process because, you know, we share the love of their kids as much as we love them. Our some of our special ed teachers in Redwood City had the opportunity to provide a learning session for our families with a focus on the process of transitions from like again, preschool to elementary, elementary to middle, and middle to high school. Our teachers did an amazing job, presented slideshows, and were able to really discuss the transition process and get feedback from the parents around, you know, some of the things they didn't know and, and answer some of their questions. The partnership with SEPTAR has been crucial in refining and enhancing our transition strategies with their feedback, while also providing valuable insights and support to families who are navigating some of these very difficult transitions from, especially from middle school to high school. It's a whole world of difference. We're not a high school district, so that's diving into a big unknown. So that's been really helpful. All right, so in this area of recommendation, we have a focus on IEP compliance as well as formalized and collaborative budget plans. Planning. We are focused on strengthening our internal capacity to ensure consistent, regular monitoring for compliance. We recognize that IE compliance is an area of growth for us. So service tracking was mentioned earlier by and Jeanette, and that's sort of my, my, my area of work, particularly in, in doing this, I conduct quarterly reviews aligning with the state requirements that measure our performance. And the state provides a list of students to us to pull data from to ensure that we're providing the services that are in the iep. So what I'm doing is I'm going through sace, which is our database, looking at the deliverable services to make sure that students are getting the services inputted into the service tracker so that they're compliant and we're ensuring that they're getting the services. And so I monitor that, work with teachers and help them, you know, get the time to do that work and answer their questions because it is New for a lot of our teachers. Teachers. In this area. We as we pursue long term planning and sustainable change in our department, MA and I engage in weekly meetings with the human resources department. Their weekly meeting with Wendy and Patricia. Our collaboration is geared toward enhancing and hiring and recruiting and training teachers or special education teachers. And a key focus is this is to transition away from contractors and to build capacity of Redwood City staff. It's really important part. So I'm, I'm pleased to report a significant progress in this area. Actually, among the 12 school psychologists that we have, only one is a contractor. The rest are district employees, which is great. Additionally, in the 2223 school year we had six contracted teachers and by the start of the 2324, we had five. And then as we approach 24, 25, I am so excited to tell you that we are in a position to, to be fully filled by district employees, which is amazing. Our commitment to enhancing quality IEPs continues to be the central focus of our ongoing professional development. And Maeve will speak a little bit to this in a little bit. There you go, MA Yeah."},{"start":4146730,"end":4147290,"speaker":"E","text":"Thank you."},{"start":4147450,"end":4293180,"speaker":"H","text":"Okay. See Multi, multi tiered system. Self support. And was a little surprising to see the focus on this in the special ed study report because one would think that it might be more focused on special ed alone. And MTSS is typically a function of the general ed side of the house. However, it does relate to our work very, very greatly and reminds us that all of our students are general education students first, although some of them receive special education services. So building a robust MTSS system really supports success for all of our students. So that's one of the really strong connections the MTSS work in the district and special education services. The second part is when we have a robust MTSS system, children get what they need in general education and are not needing to go to special education to get additional services. I want to emphasize that this doesn't imply a reduction in services. It really supports providing children what they need earlier and in a more efficient manner. So there's a very, very strong connection and tie between MTSs, general education and special education. I'm really pleased to report that Jude and I and special ed leaders participate in all of the MTSS leadership work, including extensive training on UDL practices this year and thank Assistant Superintendent Herrera. Two other ways that we'd like to suggest and where we can partnership more closely in this work and in this area and follow up on the recommendations are with regard to tracking and identifying how we can best serve our students across the tiers before they get referred. So we feel we're in a strong position to do a deep dive on data at each site. We propose to do this at the beginning of next school year, over the summer, probably in preparation for next school year so that we can identify if there are any trends or areas for focus. So we're seeing the result. But what we're hoping to is we can get to the. I feel like I'm cutting in and out. Am I cutting in and out?"},{"start":4293180,"end":4293540,"speaker":"B","text":"No."},{"start":4294500,"end":4295060,"speaker":"A","text":"Thank you."},{"start":4295060,"end":4970890,"speaker":"H","text":"Thank you. Crystal clear. So that we can get to some of those pre referral chat challenges. So I'll give a specific example and this is not, this is just not related to any school in our district. But it's very common for young children who are English learners to be referred to be evaluated to determine if they're eligible for speech language impairment category of disability. We know that dual language learners have a different language progression than English only learners. So if we saw that in our data we'd be able to ask our speech language pathologists to provide some professional development to the staff. All staff are doing their best to support students. So maybe a knowledge deficit would result in over referral. That's what we're hoping to unpack a little bit with looking at the data more closely. A second way we hope we can support MTSS is with the SST process at sites. So want to pause and acknowledge that the sites are expert on their MTS MTSS process and on the SST process. We have MTSS ptosis at each site. Michelle Griffith in collaboration with Erica Ng from the county office have done tremendous work in this area this year. What we're thinking about is if you think of children moving through the MTSS process towards assessment that we can look at that from the special education side of the house and from our last lens to give some feedback about criteria that we'd like to see met to increase efficiency and increase consistency Consistency across sites. We see our instructional leaders at each site principals and our school psychologists as being really key in this work. And I have again another specific example. So if a child is missing, missing a substantial amount of school, anything close to 5 to 10%, that would kind of be a indicator that learning challenges may be a result of missed opportunity rather than a suspected disability. So just making sure that this information is really widely distributed and understood as a norm when we look at children moving through our system. System. Okay, here's my very, very favorite effective instructional programs. So we know that the goal of special education services is to support Students to make progress on IEP goals and to receive educational benefit. And this aligns with the goal of all of the work in the district. We want to support student success social, emotionally, behaviorally and academically across their educational career at Redwood City School District. So we have been working on two areas this year. Antoinette referred to this and part of this has been really supported or pointed out by Wendy Kelly, our deputy superintendent in terms of what are we doing to build a more robust onboarding system for our para educators. So we do have some stuff in place. What we're learning is it's not consistently place. And so it's an area for continuous improvement. And the second area is for our teachers and having what we see we get teachers from. They're all in different places. But we know that there's a core kit of skills, a core kit of tools that we want to ensure everybody has before they walk into one of our classrooms. So that's what the second bullet point really relates to. Again, this will be an area for continuous improvement because as we we build internal skill sets, this core kit will also increase. So in the long term, Jude had said we're looking at kind of a three year plan for our para educators. We identify, we know that we do want to focus on building capacity for positive behavior interventions and supports. We do want to come up with a more long term plan. But we want a little bit of time to develop that. We want to get feedback from our para educators because they can also really provide a lot of guidance in this area. And we just didn't have that ready for this evening for our teachers. We have conducted surveys over the last couple of years and we feel we have a. A a better understanding of what is needed in terms of a three year plan for instruction for professional development. So this year our focus was on the science of reading. We implemented SIPs, Read180 and Linda Mood Bell strategies. We proposed propose that next year we would focus on math instruction. We're always going to have a secondary focus or maybe several secondary focuses. And based on the results from the study, we believe that IEP compliance is going to always be an ongoing area that we need to keep continually focusing on. And then we talk about typically a spiral focus. And this is a very popular term in California about the last 10 years. So we want to continue our spiral focus. Returning to the science of reading. This is the three year plan I would say is tentative right now because we want to be aware of changing priorities as we move through it. But we're feeling pretty Confident and that this is the direction we want to head. Kind of of balance of academics, but an increasing focus on inclusive practices. Jude will speak a little bit later to that. We know that's very important to our family. Community, our, our families. And we heard from Anjanette that our principals and many of our school site staff are also committed to that. You know, I, I realized that I, I forgot one thing. I had been talking to Dr. Baker about this earlier. Just so the board and the public and every understands a little bit more about professional development and special education. We're serving over 1,000 students, well over 1,000 students across 11 grade levels. Because we have K8. We also have TK and pre K right now. And we're serving a real diversity of learner profiles. We have 50 teachers, 175 para educators. We have a team of school psychologists, psychologists, speech language pathologists, occupational therapists and other adaptive physical educators. These teams work collaboratively across multiple environments. So it could be general education, a specialized learning center, resource learning center, therapeutic learning center, a pre K inclusion classroom. So this complicates the puzzle that is professional development. We're really confident that we're going to be able to do it. But I felt it important to share that this is DY very dynamic. Big, big task and, and I feel very excited about what we're going to do. Two final points that Anette also highlighted a little bit also relating to this shifting from what we might think of of services to district and building capacity. Building capacity. So all of our professional development is around building capacity. We have spent the last year articulating our mental health services for students with IEPs. So these are called educationally related mental health services. We acknowledge that the district, especially since COVID has made a huge commitment to supporting students social and emotional well being. And returning to the MTSS system, all of our students with IEPs have access to the school counselors. Right? The school counselors are serving in everybody, not just general ed, only students. For students who qualify for services through their iep, these services are maybe a little, I don't want to say more specialized, but more integrated into the IEP and really necessary for the child to make progress on their IEP goals. We have different tiers and we feel many of them are successful. However, the highest level of services, which includes individual, group and family counseling is currently provided by contractors and we would love to bring that back in house and build our internal capacity. So we are working on a proposal for that to give to you. We anticipate not a Change in the quality of services, but more ownership of our services and maybe a little bit more flexibility in what that looks like when we have internal services providers. In terms of the in house behavioral support, part of me feels this is the biggest theme of the evening. I'm not sure if that was intentional. I want to pause and say all of our teachers and para educators are doing amazing work with complicated students. We're incredibly grateful. Many of our students present with levels of dysregulation that really impede their ability to access instruction, sometimes interrupt the instruction of others. So we do identify the need, agree with the need recommended in the report to build internal capacity in this area. We have a board certified behavior analyst in our special education department who's a phenomenal resource. We'd like to leverage her skills to direct and support building internal capacity. And eventually our vision is an itinerant team of paraeducators who can really support support behavior crises. I would note here that a primary role often of a paraeducator supporting a child with behavioral challenges is to implement a behavior intervention plan. So what you'll notice with our slideshow here, there's many overlapping themes. And if we think of the earlier referral process for behavior support and the emphasis that we feel we've been missing on fading that support support, increasing independence, increasing pro social behaviors, we feel that having a team, a more dedicated, focused team will be able to accomplish that and eventually reduce the need for some of these services. Again, it's not a reduction in services. It's a measure of efficiency and student agency. Okay, I think we're on to just about our last next slide."},{"start":4975690,"end":5203820,"speaker":"B","text":"Thank you, Maeve. So culture of inclusion, which is another one of our recommendation areas of growth. This is a long term goal and as we all know in education, education evolves over time always. And so it will always be an ongoing progress towards, towards you know, the best, best outcomes. But in we are reinforcing a collective responsibility for all of our students. It's not that that students theirs and those students belong there. It's these students are all of our students. And to build capacity which involves a collective responsibility, all of us are accountable for the success of all of our our students. So this work really requires a belief and mindset shift. And as a former inclusion teacher, I taught for two years in 4th and 5th grade legit co teaching in a general education classroom with students who would have otherwise been in a special day class segregated. So I have experience as an inclusion teacher and a principal of a school here in Redwood city that championed inclusion practice practices. So I've witnessed firsthand positive outcomes and impact that inclusion has on our students. And I actually did a cycle of inquiry at San Francisco State and with the district around the data around the success of that implementation. So this is not just a shift for special ed, but it's really a shift for the district. It's an lea wide mind shift of include to change towards inclusive practices. Inclusion is not just about doing the right great thing, but it's, it's effective and benefits all students. Good teaching goes beyond the classroom and it doesn't mean separate programs or separate classrooms. And this movement is ongoing and vital. On a personal note, I am a parent of a child with a disability. He's 26 years old right now. And so I bring a personal perspective to this table and to really be able to understand those strategies and understand the importance of inclusive education. With my personal experience having a child with a disability. In the other area, we have technical skills, which is a three year plan. We are concentrating on advancing professional development as Maeve was referencing earlier, specifically in promoting inclusive practices. This effort corresponds with the port's observations and many of our principals right now and staff already have embrace inclusive practices and are already, they're really trying, many of them are already attempting to do some of this work right now. So we're really in a good place to refine this practice and get bigger, bigger work done. So if you think about a student, just a random student who's a fourth grader who reads at a first grade level and they're in a gener education classroom, you know, what would, what would English Language arts look like for that student? How. What do we need to do instructionally, pedagogically and systematically to make sure that the student is able to make progress and access the general education curriculum. But providing the training and skills and technical skills and the strategies to the teachers will really help effectively equip them, you know, to meet these students needs. So again, we are committed to ensuring that our practices meet the required monitoring criteria. And by aligning our efforts across these various dimensions, we are dedicated to fostering an educational environment where every student thrives and that directly aligns with the district's vision and mission."},{"start":5210300,"end":5212700,"speaker":"C","text":"Can I say on inclusion, just very"},{"start":5212700,"end":5244000,"speaker":"H","text":"quickly, I want to highlight that we do have a wonderful inclusive preschool program in partnership with our child Development center and that the district is a recipient of the special no, the SIP supporting inclusive practices. So this is under the auspices of CDE. The district has been awarded a $25,000 grant to support the implementation of inclusive practices. And we've been recognized by the SIPP for our work so far."},{"start":5245210,"end":5270510,"speaker":"B","text":"Thank you for bringing that up. I specifically oversee preschool in general in my department, and I have been a part of planning meetings and, you know, the tough times and the great times. And we're really in a nice space where, you know, everybody in the inclusion preschools are really excited about, you know, learning more and doing more of this work. So it's been really exciting. So let me switch this lines."},{"start":5270510,"end":5270910,"speaker":"H","text":"Okay, go ahead."},{"start":5270910,"end":5271390,"speaker":"F","text":"Thank you."},{"start":5274110,"end":5314820,"speaker":"B","text":"We're stuck on inclusion. There we go. All right, so in closing, here's a recap of the four areas of recommendation that we discussed this evening. But most specifically, we want to sincerely thank our teachers, our students, our families, our administrators, our community, and everybody that works with our students in any way. We want to thank you so much for supporting our work and collaboration and sincerely appreciate, you know, the work. I sincerely appreciate your support and the work, you know, moving forward. So thank you so much. Appreciate it."},{"start":5315940,"end":5317540,"speaker":"E","text":"Yeah, that."},{"start":5319060,"end":5319700,"speaker":"B","text":"Questions,"},{"start":5322830,"end":5323630,"speaker":"E","text":"do you want to come up?"},{"start":5326190,"end":5328190,"speaker":"B","text":"Yeah, our friend."},{"start":5329470,"end":5330350,"speaker":"E","text":"That's very nice."},{"start":5332350,"end":5333230,"speaker":"C","text":"Thank you, guys."},{"start":5334110,"end":5340870,"speaker":"B","text":"I really don't have questions more, you know, an overall comment, of course, just like the report said."},{"start":5340870,"end":5343150,"speaker":"C","text":"I applaud you guys, the entire department,"},{"start":5343390,"end":5344990,"speaker":"B","text":"and obviously the entire district."},{"start":5345870,"end":5346980,"speaker":"C","text":"I want to say, you know, thank"},{"start":5346980,"end":5350960,"speaker":"B","text":"you, you to the district for reaching"},{"start":5350960,"end":5355640,"speaker":"C","text":"out to doing this study, because obviously we are moving the needle, right?"},{"start":5355640,"end":5361760,"speaker":"B","text":"And so the entire special ed department, from the leadership, support staff, teachers, and"},{"start":5361760,"end":5363600,"speaker":"C","text":"of course, the paraprofessionals that work day"},{"start":5363600,"end":5364840,"speaker":"B","text":"in and day out with our students,"},{"start":5365800,"end":5378750,"speaker":"C","text":"we do see, even on the report, that we have hardworking and dedicated department staff. And so, just like Maeve just said, she's very excited. Notice she didn't say other words."},{"start":5378830,"end":5384710,"speaker":"B","text":"So I. I just want to say I'm. I'm just really honored to be part"},{"start":5384710,"end":5388390,"speaker":"C","text":"of the Redwood City School District, because again, I've said it many times, you"},{"start":5388390,"end":5390910,"speaker":"B","text":"guys work, wear so many hats, and"},{"start":5390910,"end":5391710,"speaker":"C","text":"always so"},{"start":5393470,"end":5405770,"speaker":"B","text":"enthusiastic about moving forward and helping our students. So I really, really appreciate it. So those are my only comments again. I know just like every other district special, it is always, you know,"},{"start":5407850,"end":5413130,"speaker":"C","text":"you really have to work with the students, moving them forward. And I think, again, little by little,"},{"start":5413130,"end":5416490,"speaker":"B","text":"but the needle is moving and so that that's what matters, the progress."},{"start":5416490,"end":5418170,"speaker":"C","text":"So I really want to thank you guys."},{"start":5418490,"end":5419130,"speaker":"B","text":"Thank you."},{"start":5423930,"end":5587660,"speaker":"D","text":"Thanks so much. Obviously, lots of work represented here, both by a third party coming in to go and take a look at it, effectively audit our program and then a chance for the program to respond. And I think just even having this kind of level of dialogue is helpful for us to see like what's working, what's not working, how are we refining our plans which I think is terrific on the, on the report. Really appreciated having the comparable districts. In particular, I made a note of what those comparable districts are like. If a fair amount of research was done as to like this is the bar to which we be we should be holding ourselves the peloton in which we exist. There may be other areas than just special ed where we want to go and see like how are we stacking up against these in which ways are our practices different? So highlighting for instance that services was wildly different than our peers. Really helpful to go and like focus the discussion. Look what are we going to go and do there and then produce the action items that we're seeing coming out of the district. So just like I really enjoyed that. You know, everyone knows I'm sort of the data driven guy here and just if that's a lens we can bring to other discussions that we're having of like where are we on off access from some of these peer districts, the specific districts that were identified here. Super interesting to look at. So thank you. I really appreciated that. Overall I'm hearing we got a third party review, very detailed audit. Audits are lots of fun. Everyone knows around the compliance of our program. It sounds like basically our program is compliant with lots and lots of hard work by all the people who are in the department. Which is awesome. Modulo is spending way, way, way too much on contractors. But that's addressed and we're focusing on moving that towards employment employees. Awesome. But what I'm struggling with still after that is kind of what Jude said the poll quote is all of us are accountable for the success of our students. Right. And how are we measuring student success and having them thrive? Merely versus I say merely. That's way too glib. Having a program that's compliant. Now I want to acknowledge the incredible amount of effort that it takes to have a program this size be compliant. It's great that we have a compliance client program. Is it a good program? Are we serving our students? None of the numbers that I saw here. Maybe I missed them. I'm not wearing my proper glasses tonight. But I really had a benchmark for us to look at in terms of thriving academic attainment, graduation from special ed into general ed. And I really would love to see us take a look at that to evaluate the success of our programs. And then what are Some of the things that we're going to be trying to go and drive that up so that we know that these programs are doing a good job serving these students and that we're continuing to iterate on that to. To better serve these students. That's a lot of me talking, so I just love the response."},{"start":5587660,"end":5609310,"speaker":"B","text":"I'm sure MA may have something to say as well, but I think what we hope to see is the outcome of these efforts in a measurable way. We haven't really done that deep dive yet, but I think Maeve had mentioned earlier that we planned to look at what those measurable outcomes are to determine if those students are making success and thriving. That's one area."},{"start":5609390,"end":5613830,"speaker":"D","text":"So that'll be part of the June presentation is like setting the yardstick for what success looks like."},{"start":5613830,"end":5656270,"speaker":"B","text":"We could develop a baseline around those and then monitor as we go. I mean, I think it's helpful to have some metric to use to discuss our work and determine progress or not. And I think that it's important for. For us to do that work. The other. The other is that we have. Our district does surveys of students. That's another measure to look at of how our students with disabilities may be feeling and sensing of their own identities as students and how that may be evolving and changing with more inclusive practices and, you know, surveying the staff around those. So we have to decide what the specific work we're going to be doing and what we'll be measuring and what we hope to see of those outcomes. I think that we need to set a precedent for it, for sure."},{"start":5656270,"end":5666430,"speaker":"D","text":"Awesome. I. I'd be very eager to see that. And my hope would be things like seeing regular forward academic progress, being able to mainline these students into a classroom, successfully."},{"start":5666590,"end":5667630,"speaker":"B","text":"Reduce referrals."},{"start":5667630,"end":5675230,"speaker":"D","text":"Reduce referrals, for sure. Absolutely. Yeah. So those all seem like nice yardsticks. I'd love to see those. So if that. If that becomes part of the June presentation, I'll be very happy."},{"start":5675230,"end":5675870,"speaker":"B","text":"I'll. Let me."},{"start":5676270,"end":5763340,"speaker":"H","text":"Yeah. So the metrics that we're going to use to measure were included in this slide show. Like all students in the district, we do use the state standardized assessments. Many of the metrics will be reported as part of the LCAP goals. So that's where really the. The. Where we see that the LCAP is. Is developed to support all of our students, including students with IEPs. So, for example, some of the metrics that we referenced. I didn't actually reference them. They were. They were on the presentation would be reclassification of English language Learners. To fluent English proficiency would be LCAP goal number three. We're committed to all of our students making one year's academic progress every year in ELA and math. So when we measure those goals, we have a subset always for students with disabilities. So my preference would probably be to not create a new metric, but maybe take a snapshot of our current metrics. I think that's probably what you're asking for because we didn't have that in the report this evening. Yep, I thought of anyhow that that's all I'll say. But we agree that we have to have a measurement besides. Oh, I know. The other measurement will be the number of referrals to special education. So that's a really, really big metric in terms of measuring a system. A systems efficacy."},{"start":5763660,"end":5815970,"speaker":"D","text":"Fantastic. Thank you. I noticed one of the themes also in the report featured the secular growth rate of sped referrals. Now obviously this would be partially mitigated as the thesis here with better teacher education and the like, which is great, but it seems like there's more than that going on. So we can mitigate it somewhat. But we're seeing this sort of like overall rise like across the state. It's not particular to our district and part of our job is to take a long view. Like what is the district becoming? How do we do a good job serving our students not just this year, next year, you know, rick, with the three year budget plans, but like 10 years, 20 years down the line. Do we see the, the face of special ed changing? Do we see these dotted line numbers continuing to the point where Maybe we have 20% of our students in, in special ed, like what's driving this? Where do we think things are going?"},{"start":5816930,"end":5819250,"speaker":"H","text":"Going to ask Antoinette to comment on that."},{"start":5819250,"end":5820210,"speaker":"B","text":"Oh, thanks."},{"start":5821170,"end":5998070,"speaker":"C","text":"I get the easy question. So I, I would say that in the educational field, I think we're of two minds. We do unfortunately sort of, if you want to prognosticate and sort of look at trend lines, do see statewide the percentage of students with disabilities, students identified with disabilities as, as increasing. There are districts that I'm working with that are up to 25% range. And if we don't shift our practice in education, then we are going to keep getting more of what we've been getting. And right now what we're getting is a upward trend of parents especially and especially right now in this, I hate to say post pandemic, but as we move through pandemic, you know, existence, that so many of the children that we have right now that are needing service are needing service for things that may not necessarily be disabilities specific. So it does appear that many of the things that are in this report that your team is identified for addressing things that are part of your LCAP for the service of all students are the things that could again like I said, we're have two minds could prevent that continuous stratospheric rise. If we focus on science of reading and have better earlier literacy programming, focus on quality instruction and you know, for all students using your curriculum with fidelity and monitoring implementation using the data. You know, you were talking about metrics and data. Every single one of the new programs your team has rolled out has a benchmarking and then progress monitoring component. It's a major part of mtss. And where we see systems preventing that stratospheric rise, they are having systematic, consistent, continuous improvement conversations about what the data stands telling them. And when the data is telling them that they're not doing the right thing, they change what they're doing. And that really is the big difference is that if we just say, well, we bought all this curriculum and we trained everybody and then we. It's open. I like, I see there's some books open. Like if we just assume it's happening, then we might not get the results we want. But if we continually reinforce and reinvest in making sure that we're implementing that and then that accountability all people and accountable for all students, then our assumption is that you will also see if not a continuing flattened pattern, but possibly a reduced identification for disabilities because you will be serving students earlier in pre referral intervention. More of the services for all students will be part of your LCAP rather than just in special education. And so you'll be effectively meeting yourself students needs without having to also meet all the compliance requirements."},{"start":5999030,"end":5999670,"speaker":"D","text":"Thank you."},{"start":6005270,"end":6005830,"speaker":"H","text":"All right."},{"start":6006150,"end":6126270,"speaker":"F","text":"Thank you so much for having the survey. I know that you had conversations with others and I'm, I'm proud that our district is one that's willing to take a hard look at what we're doing and to not get defensive about it and just to say that we're all about continuous learning and we want to do a better job. Right. So I really appreciate the openness from our staff, you know, our leadership and all of the staff to really, you know, taking a good look at that and really coming up with the plan. I mean the, a lot of the plan you already had, but kind of refining it some I would imagine from the study. And Angenette, it was great to see you again. Always. I love that you Know, you said supported us through the county work that you did and then took a little hiatus from looking at us. And really, truly, we're kind of a third party with probably a little more internal knowledge of kind of where we had been and where we are now and where we want to go. Right. So I just, I, I appreciated the, the positive kind of criticism, the positive nature of what we're looking at. And I'm really happy to see that we're talking about the service of all students and the better consistent job we do there helps all students, including our special ed and then maybe even just helps with some of the needs of the special ed in their program. Right. If we're doing a better job with mtss and onboarding and, you know, just classroom management, all the mental health and behavioral stuff we're doing. So anyway, it was great to kind of see the reinforcement of what we've been talking about as a board. And I think the prioritization that we've made is a, a district in many of these areas is really helping and we just need to continue to do, you know, more of it and, and deepen our work, particularly in some of the MTSs and other areas. And I just wanted to give a special shout out because I see a number of our SEPTAR leaders and parents in the audience virtually. Thank you so much for being here and just, you know, thank you for the collaboration that we have with September. I mean, I don't."},{"start":6126270,"end":6126470,"speaker":"H","text":"You."},{"start":6126470,"end":6156040,"speaker":"F","text":"You can't really see Maeve and Jude and Anjo, but they were all giving a nice wave of thank you. And really we, you know, we couldn't do the work without our parents as well and our students. And then I just want to say thank you so much to our leadership. Really appreciate all the work that you're doing. You guys are a great collaborative leadership team. And then thank you to all the staff who, both in general ed and special ed, who are working hard, hard every day for our kids."},{"start":6157560,"end":6158200,"speaker":"B","text":"Thank you."},{"start":6158920,"end":6242320,"speaker":"E","text":"Yeah, thanks. I'm really glad that this report was requested. This is, this audit and they'll look for it. It really demonstrates a commitment, as you said, to continuous learning. And I really appreciated the follow up and the ownership of the recommendations that Jude and Maeve that you presented here, both with these are the completed items or these are the dates by which we expect to have a plan in place. Place. It just shows a real ownership of, you know, of that improvement of trying to put it in there that I thought, you know, I think we can all strive for those kinds of things in our lives. I fully on board with supporting the inclusive, inclusive behaviors and really expanding that here. I think that's a really, really important direction that education's been going. Not, you know, for quite some time now and the concept of like sort of shifting the practice, moving things into tier one. And so I guess what I was wondering is where do we as the board look for those kind of plans coming in? It doesn't seem like it's special education should be the one talking about what are these general education things? Are we looking for those in the, in like the lcap? Is that the right, right place for us to see it? Like what's the place that we should be poking at to say, hey, are we building out inclusive practices in there? Are we doing the, the right thing to help, you know, make, make all education universally accessible for students no matter what their learning divergence might be?"},{"start":6245040,"end":6246960,"speaker":"H","text":"Do you want to give some guidance?"},{"start":6246960,"end":6248320,"speaker":"A","text":"Yeah, I have some ideas."},{"start":6248480,"end":6248840,"speaker":"B","text":"Good."},{"start":6248840,"end":6349380,"speaker":"C","text":"Good. And. Well, I guess what I'll say is in, in most of the places you're you, you do have a cabinet level leadership team that includes, you know, the leadership for educational services, instructional practices, curriculum and instruction. And, and so those, those team members together often are, you know, aligning with your LCAP and your strategic initia around what they're going to focus on. And so sometimes it does require a maeve to really just say, don't forget that one of our new goals is to make sure that we're also saying, you know, including students with disabilities at every turn. It's not that your team is not in the mindset of including them, but explicitly calling that out makes it really clear to all of your interest holders in your community and your, in your general education staff. And you know, every district is faced with the broad variety of things that need to be done every year. And so you know, as they said, like this year we're focusing on science of reading and next year we're going to focus on math, but we're still going to, it's going to be a secondary focus. And that same is true for your district. I know last year you were really invested in the issues related to multi language learners, right? So you have, you have things that are on your fire hose and of activities. And I think that it just will be your teams through these meetings and collaboration, really realizing that they just have to explicitly say that it's really important for us to prioritize students with disabilities and see them as general education learners first and how we add a service rather than A place where they go or a person that they receive that from."},{"start":6352510,"end":6385950,"speaker":"B","text":"Just a side note, I find it a very honorable seat in the LCAP with Maeve. And so we're both double teamed in that LCAP meeting and we definitely share feedback, recommendations and to collaborate with general ed and parents and really ensure that we are keeping that language active and, you know, really intentional around our plans and thoughts and ideas and seeing if those things can happen. And then when we meet again as El Capri review our progress again and looking for those measures to report out on and change if we need to pivot some way. So"},{"start":6387710,"end":6453530,"speaker":"H","text":"thank you. I just say finally, nothing really happens in our department in isolation, unlike other systems where I worked. So for example, even when we meet with Anna constantly and we talk to her constantly about all our professional development, our likewise human resources and increasing connections, connections with fiscal services. So we have a pretty integrated team as compared to other systems I've worked in. And Dr. Baker specifically, I feel pays attention to our diverse learners and how they're doing and checks in on a very personal level about how things are going, how can our organization support the work so that everybody can increase their efficacy and their success. So maybe as part of our LCAP work, we can take a closer look at the language, but certainly the systems are in place and a lot of the intentions are in place to respond to your question. And maybe we're just looking at some more explicit language."},{"start":6454970,"end":6485220,"speaker":"E","text":"Got it. Thanks. Thanks for the answer. Jude, you mentioned two things that I just wanted to get a little bit more details about. One was you mentioned the transition, transition fair and was that kids in Redwood City moving from one grade to the next. And I'm asking this because at the Septar meeting last night, one of the parents had asked, I think it was a parent asked a question about how does knowledge about their child transition from one grade to the next? Or was this really transition like into the school district or out? Like what? Maybe a little more details about the transition fair?"},{"start":6485220,"end":6588850,"speaker":"B","text":"Yeah, of course. So the intention behind it was to. To get teachers together to talk about students who may be moving from site or to program and, you know, bringing that knowledge about those students just in preparation for a transition meeting. So after, you know, teachers plan and there's a lot of background work going on around transition, there's like eight spreadsheets and tons of meetings. But in the end what is happening is hopefully the teachers have had a chance to really talk about a student and their needs. What triggers them, what do they love? Like what do they need to learn, learn getting this, those organic conversations going. And so then that teacher knows the student that they're getting. And then in the meeting, you know, there's this opportunity to say, like, I. I learned that your student really loves butterflies. And so I really want to make sure that I highlight that in my classroom so they feel welcome. Like just small things like that really, I think make a parent feel, you know, safer and comfortable that they know that their student has already been discussed. And like, there's like this, they're coming and they're going to be your fun little kiddo in your class next year. And I think the teachers really love to get that feedback too, from their current teacher. Like, what do they need? What worked? What didn't work? What have you tried, like, to really understand where the student has come from? And so the transition meeting is that important time where parents meet with all of the different groups from both sides and just discuss the student and set up a good plan for them starting. So it was just teachers and there were some service providers there as well, school psychologists, and they all met at tables and moved around and it was. They loved it. They really appreciated the time in order to do that really important work. Hope that answers your question."},{"start":6588850,"end":6627940,"speaker":"E","text":"Yeah, no, it sounds super valuable. Like the students go through lots of transitions. I can imagine that being applicable in a bunch of different situations. The other one that you'd mentioned were fading strategies. And I remember that the report, report was talking about how the district should be focusing. I think fading strategies and exiting strategies are the synonyms there is that right? And that part of it was the capacity that, you know, everyone was just so busy that nobody could actually, at least that's the way I kind of interpreted from the report and I wasn't sure if that was right. So how is that going to develop? What are you looking at that? Because I think it's. It's great to get people back out, you know, all the kids into the least restrictive environment possible."},{"start":6628660,"end":6722660,"speaker":"H","text":"So children generally, or students generally have dedicated support to. So that a behavior intervention, if they have support for behaviour, so that a behavior intervention plan can be implemented. And the purpose of a behavior intervention plan is generally threefold. One is to reduce challenging behaviors and the second is to increase replacement behaviors, pro social behaviors, appropriate behaviors. And the third is to increase student independence and student agency around getting what they need. Because the function of the behavior is going to be some level of communication. So we have, we, we have our behavior plans in place, we have our referral processes to get additional Support. What we need to focus more on is feeding the support. This requires a level of skill in terms of understanding how behavior works and managing and tracking data that we feel and we get from some outside service providers, but not completely. We want to build that internal capacity because the true measure of success in implementation of a behavior plan is the increase of independence and the decrease of adult dependence. So that's really what we're looking at at a micro level. And then we, we can measure it for individual students. That's a very detailed, detailed measurement. And then we can also measure it in terms of our staff having a more flexible, dynamic staffing model so that services are there when they're needed and then they're faded when they're not needed."},{"start":6723780,"end":6763230,"speaker":"B","text":"Just, I just want to say, just a personal note. I had a student that was so dependent on an adult that they wouldn't pick up their own pencil like. And that's just a legitimately true story. And that concerned me to no end. And that's so unfair to that child to not be given the opportunities to take risks to, you know, extend who they are out in the world as their own as, as their own person. And so that sticks with me forever is ensuring that students really want to be independent and they have self determination about what they want to know and what they want to do when they grow up and, and they want to be a learner. It's so important in their development."},{"start":6763870,"end":6798130,"speaker":"E","text":"So just. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. That makes it really much more concrete. I really appreciate that. And last thing, and maybe I know you just talked about this, but I'm just going to ask for clarity again. In the report it talked about the multi language learners and maybe that many districts suffer from. Many districts over identify or over refer and that Redwood City School District was also doing the same sort of thing. I think you said that that's being looked at and sort of a plan is being put in place. I wasn't sure what's kind of the state of that in the action item because I didn't really get that out of the report. What was happening there."},{"start":6798210,"end":6836880,"speaker":"H","text":"Yeah, I used that as an example for how we can use data to change practice and pre referral practice. So I can't speak to specifics across a site or a grade level. But that's our intention that over the summer we'll do the deep data dive. We'll meet with principals and site leadership teams, teams to discuss patterns that we see so that we can make sure we're, we're giving sites what they need to kind of understand where children are so that we can reduce our referrals and increase our efficiency in general education."},{"start":6839040,"end":6937620,"speaker":"C","text":"And here's where my historical knowledge is going to come into play. When I was the Selpa leader here, we had, there's 33 districts in San Mateo county and we had 23 of them suffering from this challenge. We had a lot of children who were multi language learners being referred and identified for special education. And so we undertook a two year training cycle for every single speech pathologist in the county to both increase their own knowledge about language acquisition and differentiating language difference from a disability. Really quick, high quality assessment practices. Also consultation and supporting the general educators to make sure that those students can use their language skills. And this county has a very robust English language development cohort at the county office that works with your local people as well. And after that training series across our entire county, the number of English language learners who are over identified dropped dramatically. And so I'm still close with the SELP leader, the numbers inching up again. And so they've been talking about re engineering, engaging with that. Because what's different, so many people, so many people who have now joined us who did not get that training, so many teachers who were not part of the consultation. So it is the kind of data where you can see a challenge, identify a solution, implement it and then monitor and actually see a difference. And I believe that you'll see that, that impact again with many of your other programs as well. It's just you're so early in the implementation cycle that the impact data is, is still brewing."},{"start":6940180,"end":6954980,"speaker":"E","text":"Great, thanks. That's, that's great, great to hear the past experience and looking forward to seeing that kind of repeated. Really appreciate the report. I'm really grateful that this was done and, and the engagement with it and staying here late answering our questions. I, I super appreciate it."},{"start":6955540,"end":6957380,"speaker":"C","text":"I, I live in Fremont, it's not that far."},{"start":6961140,"end":7006400,"speaker":"A","text":"I thank you very much everyone for both of your presentations. I really appreciate the way you presented to together both the audit and then the, this is what we're going to do moving forward. And Dr. Baker, thank you for supporting that. The survey, the audit, I think that's really important to do. I know Elisa already mentioned this, but I just want to acknowledge there's a lot of special ed staff and parents that are attending via Zoom. So thank you for being here and the support from Septar as well. Basically everything I took notes on and had questions on has already been talked about. So to just kind of briefly run through all this. I did have one question on the special education manual. I, I know you said it, but I missed what the answer was. That's available just for special ed or does that go to general ed staff as well?"},{"start":7007040,"end":7023710,"speaker":"B","text":"So it's just for all internal Red City staff. So it'll be, it's, it's, it'll be a live Google handbook that it will be in the administrator's handbook and then also shared with teachers and paraprofessionals. It'll be like an all inclusive manual that's available to all staff."},{"start":7024030,"end":7024590,"speaker":"C","text":"Thank you."},{"start":7028350,"end":7209660,"speaker":"A","text":"Super excited. I love the fading goal. I think that's really important. I love the transition fair that you had. I think it's so important for the student to be handed off properly to the next, to the next next teacher because their current teacher has learned so much about them. Right. What does and what doesn't work? Don't have the next teacher have to start over. As a parent, I know what that is like and it is so difficult to have feel like you're having the same conversation again. Like why isn't, why, why am I not being heard? Why are you not learning about myself, student? How come this information didn't get passed on and my student having to start over, trying to advocate for themselves but being set back because they didn't get handed off properly. So I, I love that. Thank you. Yes, we had a running theme of building internal capacity and I, I love that you guys are focusing on that, especially the counsel counseling services to become internal. I know we were really excited when we had those, the, the family counseling and the individual counseling come via contract because we didn't have it right. But if we can build the capacity within our district, I think that would be huge. Okay, I can do this without crying. It frs. Jude, you and I have had hours and hours of conversation just around the culture of inclusion MTSS supports. You know, I too have a student with a disability and I think that if those had been in place at the beginning of his journey, things would have been very, very different. And I know that you know that, Jude. Yes, it was and still continues to be very difficult. But if, if those supports had been in place early on, you know, his early years in education, we wouldn't have gone through seven school placements, I know, in a matter of nine years. And so personally I am so supportive of building that culture of inclusion in this district. It is like you said, an LEA mind shift, not just in special ed but as a whole. And I just applaud the work that you guys are working on and are looking forward to doing. I think it will positively impact our students going forward. So thank you."},{"start":7210220,"end":7214540,"speaker":"B","text":"Thank you, Janet. I cherish our times together that we've had in conversation."},{"start":7214780,"end":7217820,"speaker":"A","text":"I was actually just thinking about your son today while I was driving."},{"start":7219740,"end":7220460,"speaker":"B","text":"Thank you."},{"start":7224060,"end":7227580,"speaker":"E","text":"Number one, Angenette, thank you so much for coming and doing the study."},{"start":7227740,"end":7228940,"speaker":"C","text":"Thank you for having me again."},{"start":7229020,"end":7301900,"speaker":"E","text":"Appreciate it. When I had talked to Rick and he had some experience with school services, I said school services. And then we talked to school services and she's, oh, I know her, yes, we're going to go with school services. But thank you so much. It was very much detailed. It showed what we have been doing where we definitely have a positive, positive impact and where some things need to move forward and do them better and smarter. I want to thank Maeve and Jude for moving forward with this study and having the short term and the long term goals. That's something that this district has needed in for a while. The pieces in regard to the fading of services is definitely something, something that we have talked about a lot and maybe you've embraced and you have had experience with that and to see that moving forward will be wonderful. The piece about the whole mind shift has got to take place in this district. As we all know. We all have gone through the MTSS training and we continue to go through the MTS training."},{"start":7303580,"end":7303900,"speaker":"G","text":"Right."},{"start":7303900,"end":7367390,"speaker":"E","text":"Ana continuing on. But it's a true mind shift that we have to somehow embed that that these kids belong to all of us. They deserve the best education that we can provide them and we are there to support, but at the same time we want them to progress and move on. The other piece that's really outstanding in this report is about our dual language learners, which I know for years has been a piece where why is it that I see so many Latino kids receiving speech it's nothing to do with again, a speech impediment. They need to be time in the this country. They need to be listening to English. They need to be taught the right way and manner. Speaking English has nothing to do with the second language, the first language that they're coming to this country with. So I'm glad that we so glad that we're going to put in place something to really look at that. So, so kudos to all of you and I'm so looking forward to us moving forward in this direction."},{"start":7369790,"end":7392170,"speaker":"C","text":"Thank you very much for having me and thank you for being a champion of equity and inclusion. Your teams can't do it without your Leadership making that possible and your support, you know, all the support they get from the rest of the cabinet leaders. So that's really critically important and it doesn't exist everywhere. And so you're fortunate to, to have this team. So thank you very much."},{"start":7394330,"end":7395690,"speaker":"H","text":"Thank you for the opportunity."},{"start":7396170,"end":7397450,"speaker":"B","text":"Thank you, everybody. Good night."},{"start":7400970,"end":7407610,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay, I just want to, I want to recognize that we're after nine. I think we're. How do we feel? Do we need a break?"},{"start":7407610,"end":7410490,"speaker":"F","text":"We want to go grab that bottle of water."},{"start":7411050,"end":7411930,"speaker":"E","text":"Yeah, should be quite."},{"start":7411930,"end":7413450,"speaker":"A","text":"Yeah, I think so too, but I"},{"start":7413450,"end":7414130,"speaker":"H","text":"just wanted to check."},{"start":7414130,"end":7415050,"speaker":"F","text":"Yeah, good idea."},{"start":7416250,"end":7422670,"speaker":"A","text":"Where are we? So we are on 8.1 discussion on graduation promotion."},{"start":7426190,"end":7427550,"speaker":"E","text":"My assignments work for me."},{"start":7428750,"end":7432870,"speaker":"D","text":"I just wanted to make sure that I could actually get from point A to point B as I was in back to backs."},{"start":7432870,"end":7433190,"speaker":"B","text":"Yeah."},{"start":7433190,"end":7442710,"speaker":"F","text":"So sometimes they don't work and I know I, I am not able to do June 7th. I actually have a wedding that I. Good friends are going to be married that afternoon."},{"start":7442710,"end":7444910,"speaker":"E","text":"So. Is there one seven? There is one."},{"start":7444910,"end":7453000,"speaker":"F","text":"There's. It's just, it's a eighth grade Roosevelt actually. And there's a, there's, there's also an Orion one that Janet has."},{"start":7453560,"end":7457840,"speaker":"A","text":"Oh, I was happy to. I was just about to say I can take that one for you, but no, I can't."},{"start":7457840,"end":7458040,"speaker":"B","text":"No."},{"start":7458040,"end":7474450,"speaker":"F","text":"And I'm happy to take another one if I think but like on June 11th or you know, I can swap if somebody so. And, and I'm bummed because I love going to Roosevelt. Well, I like to go going to them all, but for some reason I've gone to Roosevelt's a number of times. I think I've seen switched with others."},{"start":7476770,"end":7480370,"speaker":"D","text":"So you're, you're gone that whole day on the 7th, just in the afternoon,"},{"start":7480770,"end":7482450,"speaker":"F","text":"I think the wedding starts."},{"start":7483010,"end":7483490,"speaker":"D","text":"Yeah."},{"start":7483490,"end":7484290,"speaker":"E","text":"Four or something."},{"start":7484370,"end":7488770,"speaker":"D","text":"I think I can do June 7th, 5pm Yeah, I could pick that up."},{"start":7488770,"end":7489130,"speaker":"G","text":"Okay."},{"start":7489130,"end":7489650,"speaker":"H","text":"That'd be great."},{"start":7490050,"end":7493090,"speaker":"F","text":"Okay. So that's David Rose."},{"start":7493650,"end":7494130,"speaker":"B","text":"Yeah."},{"start":7495490,"end":7501740,"speaker":"F","text":"Does anybody want to give me one of theirs? Do they. David, do you have too many? Oh, no, you have two and you only have three. And I'll do."},{"start":7501740,"end":7505500,"speaker":"E","text":"So rest work for everybody."},{"start":7505500,"end":7507100,"speaker":"C","text":"Yep, mine work."},{"start":7507180,"end":7508380,"speaker":"A","text":"Cecilia, are you good?"},{"start":7508380,"end":7509140,"speaker":"C","text":"Yeah. Okay."},{"start":7509140,"end":7509820,"speaker":"B","text":"Okay, great."},{"start":7509820,"end":7513020,"speaker":"F","text":"That's why I needed to agendize it because I told Evelyn I can't make that."},{"start":7513260,"end":7514100,"speaker":"C","text":"Okay, great."},{"start":7514100,"end":7514500,"speaker":"B","text":"All right."},{"start":7514500,"end":7515180,"speaker":"A","text":"Thank you, David."},{"start":7515420,"end":7515900,"speaker":"B","text":"All right."},{"start":7516060,"end":7517340,"speaker":"A","text":"You'll like Roosevelt's fun."},{"start":7520060,"end":7521820,"speaker":"F","text":"It feels like a real family community there."},{"start":7521820,"end":7524930,"speaker":"A","text":"Well, Roosevelt is special too, because it's their last eighth grade class."},{"start":7525000,"end":7526120,"speaker":"C","text":"Oh, that's a good point."},{"start":7526120,"end":7526600,"speaker":"B","text":"Yeah."},{"start":7527080,"end":7527520,"speaker":"C","text":"Yeah."},{"start":7527520,"end":7528200,"speaker":"B","text":"Can't be too."},{"start":7529000,"end":7529960,"speaker":"E","text":"My friends would be."},{"start":7530920,"end":7531960,"speaker":"A","text":"You need to go to the wedding."},{"start":7531960,"end":7533080,"speaker":"E","text":"You need to go to the wedding."},{"start":7534440,"end":7535080,"speaker":"B","text":"Okay."},{"start":7535880,"end":7536720,"speaker":"A","text":"We're all good on that."},{"start":7536720,"end":7536920,"speaker":"H","text":"Y."},{"start":7536920,"end":7538440,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay. We can move on to consent."},{"start":7539240,"end":7540600,"speaker":"E","text":"I'll make a motion to approve."},{"start":7541880,"end":7542600,"speaker":"D","text":"Seconded."},{"start":7542680,"end":7543800,"speaker":"A","text":"All those in favor?"},{"start":7543800,"end":7544360,"speaker":"G","text":"Aye."},{"start":7544680,"end":7545320,"speaker":"B","text":"Thank you."},{"start":7546360,"end":7554250,"speaker":"A","text":"10.1. Adoption of resolution number 10. Resolution to approve standards for local certifications of universal TK teachers."},{"start":7555210,"end":7555850,"speaker":"H","text":"Thank you."},{"start":7556170,"end":7563370,"speaker":"C","text":"Similar to other waivers that we've brought to the board, this is an opportunity as we move into the last year."},{"start":7563450,"end":7565690,"speaker":"B","text":"Actually there was a."},{"start":7565850,"end":7583580,"speaker":"C","text":"Essentially a 10 year window to change into credentialing components, so forth. Regarding TK New credentials that came to be. So in working with assistant superintendent on Herrera, we discussed the opportunity, if needed in the future"},{"start":7585340,"end":7586940,"speaker":"A","text":"for recruitment purposes and"},{"start":7586940,"end":7593140,"speaker":"C","text":"really retainment purposes to allow for another option. Many districts have done this around the"},{"start":7593140,"end":7594339,"speaker":"B","text":"county, which is how I got the"},{"start":7594339,"end":7598220,"speaker":"C","text":"idea to be honest, to allow for"},{"start":7599980,"end":7607190,"speaker":"A","text":"those that still hold appropriate credentials to serve 1 year working with 3 and"},{"start":7607190,"end":7609390,"speaker":"C","text":"4 year old children and 12 units"},{"start":7609390,"end":7614390,"speaker":"B","text":"of early childhood education, which would be"},{"start":7614390,"end":7633370,"speaker":"C","text":"different than as a waiver, the current practice, which must be in place by August 1, 2025. We still have one more year in which all of our TK teachers need to have 24 units or the equivalent, which usually can run about two years."},{"start":7634090,"end":7635690,"speaker":"B","text":"So here's a good example."},{"start":7635690,"end":7653570,"speaker":"C","text":"I have a kinder teacher that may have some TK age kids from the past in. In their experience, like a TK kinder combo, for example. But actually after 2025 would not be eligible to teach TK. So that would be a good example"},{"start":7653570,"end":7654850,"speaker":"B","text":"of a waiver that might come."},{"start":7654850,"end":7661240,"speaker":"C","text":"And so then HR would have the authority after, should this resolution be approved to allow that to occur."},{"start":7661960,"end":7664920,"speaker":"A","text":"So it'd be a case by case basis. I'm not sure how often I'd even"},{"start":7664920,"end":7667720,"speaker":"C","text":"use it, but if we need it in our back pocket, it would be helpful."},{"start":7668840,"end":7671880,"speaker":"E","text":"Y Any questions on this one?"},{"start":7677000,"end":7677560,"speaker":"C","text":"Thank you."},{"start":7677800,"end":7680640,"speaker":"A","text":"It is an action item, so I'll"},{"start":7680640,"end":7682360,"speaker":"F","text":"make a motion to approve it."},{"start":7685330,"end":7685810,"speaker":"E","text":"I'll second."},{"start":7686610,"end":7687970,"speaker":"A","text":"Thank you. All those in favor."},{"start":7690290,"end":7690690,"speaker":"H","text":"Great."},{"start":7690850,"end":7694850,"speaker":"A","text":"On to reports from board members and superintendent."},{"start":7699650,"end":7736970,"speaker":"E","text":"I attended the SEPTAR meeting last night where they had a presentation from the county office on udl. Super important. Really good. And then the LCAP was on Monday. And I will say Sarah presented it like this great student voice component. It was super. It was awesome to hear about it. And like all the. I mean the kids were. There was meetings at each site. I think at each site might have been definitely in person. I think they might have done a virtual one then too. And then they did an all district meeting where the sites got to like nominate some kids that would. Came in it. It was just lots of good information that came out of it. It wasn't all about pizza, which was good."},{"start":7737370,"end":7739130,"speaker":"A","text":"So I'm sorry, was that."},{"start":7739130,"end":7740090,"speaker":"H","text":"Was that lcap?"},{"start":7740090,"end":7740970,"speaker":"E","text":"Lcap, yeah."},{"start":7741050,"end":7741450,"speaker":"G","text":"Student."},{"start":7741450,"end":7744020,"speaker":"E","text":"Student voice. Yeah, Student voice is a requirement for."},{"start":7744810,"end":7745930,"speaker":"F","text":"I understood which program."},{"start":7746650,"end":7754810,"speaker":"E","text":"Yeah, yeah. Sarah was the one who presented on it. But I want to acknowledge Whitney was. Whitney Aiken was definitely involved in putting that whole program together. That's awesome."},{"start":7756730,"end":7758330,"speaker":"D","text":"I was at the same EL cap."},{"start":7760170,"end":7776060,"speaker":"F","text":"Yeah, the LCAP committee is a good one. Right? I mean, I've always enjoyed being on it because you learn a lot about what's going on. I was wondering, do you know on the UW DL, was that. Is there a PowerPoint available or did they record that? Because I couldn't make it last night,"},{"start":7776060,"end":7782060,"speaker":"E","text":"but I believe yes. I believe yes to. But there was definitely a PowerPoint and I believe they recorded it as well."},{"start":7782060,"end":7782460,"speaker":"F","text":"Session."},{"start":7782460,"end":7782900,"speaker":"G","text":"Okay."},{"start":7782900,"end":7840090,"speaker":"F","text":"All right, I'll just follow up with them on that. So thank you. So let's see, my couple reports are that I did attend the CSBA board meeting, which was March 23rd and 24th up and sign Sacramento. And we had a lot on the budget, on legislative advocacy, because we're getting ready for a whole another legislative session. There's a lot of good stuff on there for schools. There's also going to be some bills that we'll be needing to advocate against, I'm sure, but there's some really good ones, including, you know, our own Diane Papin is running, um, a couple of things that'll be good for education. So that's great. And then I also had a CSBA PACER meeting. I meet with Rita, who's our public affairs person for csba, and we just talk a lot about, again, legislative issues and other things. So I meet with her about every other. Well, about every month, I guess that's it."},{"start":7842410,"end":7843730,"speaker":"B","text":"And the only thing I have to"},{"start":7843730,"end":7845810,"speaker":"C","text":"report is I attended the R City"},{"start":7845810,"end":7860580,"speaker":"B","text":"Together, Community Impact and Celebration Night at Sequoias and ub. So that was really nice. Lots of people, it was a full house. And so it was great, as always. I mean, this was my second time going, actually, but it's really, you know,"},{"start":7860580,"end":7861540,"speaker":"C","text":"great to see there."},{"start":7861620,"end":7862740,"speaker":"E","text":"Yeah, everyone there."},{"start":7862740,"end":7864180,"speaker":"B","text":"So that's it."},{"start":7865540,"end":7887290,"speaker":"A","text":"The only thing I did was some of us attended the memorial service for Lupe Torres at Garfield, and it was really, really nice. And I think they had three students, student speakers. They all did a wonderful Job and the pastor from the local church announced that they would be donating $25,000 to Garfield next school year."},{"start":7888330,"end":7888650,"speaker":"E","text":"So."},{"start":7888650,"end":7891050,"speaker":"A","text":"And I brought the program for everyone."},{"start":7891930,"end":7985150,"speaker":"E","text":"Yeah, Al Cap already did that. Also went to the memorial for Lupe. The other thing I attended was. Was our cef and Rick did a great report to them regarding our budget so that we can work more collaboratively together and how they can support. Yes. Our Bayside. Well, actually the three Bayside schools. But now we have another two priority and also the rest of the school district. So there is a. Is it a wine walk coming up? Anyway, I'm going to send you all the information regarding it. I'm going to ask a lot of my colleagues to join me on that evening as we support this event. It's going to give. It's going to be here in Redwood City. And you start out, you pay. And I need to find out more about it because I didn't have the cost. What the cost is when you sign up for this wine walk at different restaurants in Redwood City and portions of the profits go to rcf. So I'm going to put it in the communique out to all of our parents, all of our staff members and I believe it's on. Is it. Thank you. May 15th. I think it is. May 15th. Yeah. Yeah. So it'll be in the communique. I get. I did get all the information from the group and Sarah sent me the."},{"start":7986830,"end":7987230,"speaker":"C","text":"The."},{"start":7989550,"end":8000990,"speaker":"E","text":"I don't want to say the little piece that they put together that's very prominent. It's. I forget. I think it was. I'm not sure who made that. I think Anna. Elisa. Her last name. Honeycheck."},{"start":8002510,"end":8002830,"speaker":"F","text":"Yeah."},{"start":8002830,"end":8011490,"speaker":"E","text":"Yeah. She. She made the flyer that's gonna. That's going out. So I'm now going to send it to our own community. But I'm gonna give to my colleagues, the superintendents too, to push it out."},{"start":8012770,"end":8013250,"speaker":"B","text":"Yeah."},{"start":8013490,"end":8014770,"speaker":"E","text":"So that was. It was a good meeting."},{"start":8017170,"end":8041500,"speaker":"A","text":"I think the library foundation did something similar to before or just a restaurant walk around. Yeah, that's fun. Let's see. 12.1. Contract update information and credit card summary. Any questions? 12.2 quarterly Williams Report Court. No complaints. 13.1. Correspondence,"},{"start":8045980,"end":8049340,"speaker":"F","text":"Emails from community members who are unhappy."},{"start":8049660,"end":8050260,"speaker":"E","text":"Just a couple."},{"start":8050260,"end":8052220,"speaker":"A","text":"Oh, your mic's not on, but that's okay."},{"start":8054220,"end":8091260,"speaker":"D","text":"I got a pretty cool email from Megan O'Reilly Green who pointed out a couple different things. One was some data that their team had gathered bothered about the number of families who had moved to Redwood City for the programs that we have Here, which is pretty awesome. Also there was a speech competition at which a number of different Redwood City children pupils placed pretty well actually. So that was pretty cool to see our award winning students kicking some butt. So a bunch of them from Kennedy Middles"},{"start":8094780,"end":8111660,"speaker":"A","text":"14 One possible other business suggested items for future. We actually do have a speaker's card on this, so I don't know if you guys have anything to input. Okay, so we have. Mike Swire has got his hand raised. Hi Mike. You have three minutes."},{"start":8112780,"end":8116300,"speaker":"E","text":"Yeah, hi. Can you hear me? Hello?"},{"start":8116710,"end":8117350,"speaker":"A","text":"Yeah, go ahead."},{"start":8117510,"end":8118190,"speaker":"D","text":"Loud and clear."},{"start":8118190,"end":8300329,"speaker":"E","text":"Awesome. Yeah, thank you. Members of the Redwood City School District Board of trustees for your service to the educational needs of students in Redwood City. I rise tonight to ask the school district board immediate to immediately agendize removing the name Henry Ford from said name school. Per your website, the mission of the Redwood City School district is quote, to create a safe and supportive, inspirational and rigorous, joyful and inclusive environment for all learners. This is a laudable mission and I'm sure that the board administrators and educators attempt to incorporate these goals into the daily curriculum. We cannot simply teach our kids these principles. However, we need to walk the talk and incorporate these principles into our daily actions. Sadly, we're failing in this respect by naming one of the district schools after an individual who without question advocated for a world that was the opposite of inclusive, safe and supportive for Jewish Americans. I hope that you had a chance to read Mark Simon's excellent op ed in the April 4th edition of our local newspaper, the San Mateo Darley Journal. Mr. Simon criticizes the school district for naming the school after a known anti Semite and maintaining the name for 70 years. He recounts several well documented and anti Semitic actions taken by Henry Ford. By blaming Jewish bankers for World War I, calling Jews, quote, evil and publishing articles based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated text reporting to the detail a Jewish plot for global domination. Ford's anti Semitism was so well known at the time that even Adolf Hitler praised Ford's quote, anti Jewish policy. I'm disappointed that the district and board have taken no actions to change the school's name. A year ago I reached out to then board president Cecilia Marquez asking whether the district considered changing the school's name to one that better aligns with its values. Ms. Marquez responded with a copy of Policy 73310 and recommended that I reach out to the board to the school principal. While the policy might push the burden onto the school, I had hoped that the board or its president elected by the people of Redwood City would have shown some interest in no longer naming one of its schools after a Nazi collaborator. In his article, Mark Simon details a similar quote. Blow off and unwillingness of the board to initiate action to cease naming one of its elect elementary schools after one of the most famous Jew haters in American history. Wide the inaction. If our elected officials and educational leaders aren't willing to speak up against the rising tide of anti Semitism in our area, who will? A Redwood City teenager recently spoke to the city council about the anti Semitism that she's placed. Mayor Jeff G. Recently addressed anti Semitic zoom bombings at city council meetings. And surveys suggest that 61% of area Jews feel less safe in recent months. And 36% have personally experienced anti the school district and board of trustees. Silence and inaction to date on this issue are akin to complicity with those who attack others who are empowered by the belief that no one will stick their necks out for them. I hope that you'll think about the Jewish members of your communities and immediately remove the anti Semite and Nazi collaborator Henry Ford's name from the school. Thank you."},{"start":8302249,"end":8303129,"speaker":"A","text":"Thank you, Mike."},{"start":8305140,"end":8305540,"speaker":"B","text":"Okay,"},{"start":8307540,"end":8316740,"speaker":"A","text":"were there any other Items to add? 15.1 changes to the board meeting calendar."},{"start":8317380,"end":8317860,"speaker":"E","text":"Nothing."},{"start":8317860,"end":8322980,"speaker":"A","text":"No changes. Okay, that brings us to the end of our meeting. We have a motion to adjourn."}]}