San Francisco Government SmartTranscripts:

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Commissioner Alexander? Here. Vice President Huling?

[Vice President Jaime Huling]: Here.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: President Kim? Here. Commissioner Weissman-Ward? Here. Commissioner Gupta? Here. Commissioner Fisher?

[Vice President Jaime Huling]: Here.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Sound impressive.

[President Phil Kim]: SIFU will provide child care for regular board meetings and monitoring meetings on the 1st Floor in the Enrollment Center at 555 Franklin Street from 06:30PM to 9PM, or the close of the meeting, whichever comes first. Child care is for families who will be attending the regular and monitoring board meetings. Space is limited and will be provided on a first come, served basis for children ages three to 10. Questions, please contact the Board of Education office at (415) 241-6427 or boardofficefust dot edu. At this time, before the board goes into closed session, I call for any speakers to the closed session items listed in the agenda. There will be a total of five minutes for speakers. Are there any speakers for public comment?

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Not at this time.

[President Phil Kim]: I now recess this meeting at 05:06PM.

[Assistant Superintendent Divina Goldwasser (High School & College and Career Readiness)]: SFGov TV,

[SFGovTV Announcer]: San Francisco government television.

[SFGovTV Announcer]: SFGov TV, San Francisco government television. SFGov TV, San Francisco Government Television.

[SFGovTV Announcer]: SFGov TV, San Francisco Government Television.

[SFGovTV Announcer]: SFGov TV, San Francisco government television.

[SFGovTV Announcer]: SFGov TV, San Francisco government television.

[David Martinez (John O’Connell HS student)]: SFGov TV, San Francisco government television.

[President Phil Kim]: Public comment period lasts for one hour. Today, let's say, 06:45PM. We look forward to hearing from the public before we conduct board business. Our goal is to conduct board business in an efficient, effective, and accessible manner during reasonable hours. We aim to respect staff, family, and community time by ensuring we move to board business as soon as possible. Each participant may speak for up to one minute. Staff will thank the participant at the one minute mark. At one minute and five seconds, I've asked Mr. Trujillo to please turn off the mic and transition to the next speaker. I ask members of the public to please respect that one minute limit so that we

[Amber Lynn Martinez (John O’Connell HS student)]: can hear from as many speakers as possible.

[President Phil Kim]: Speakers who are speaking on the same topic are encouraged to collaborate and combine their comments so that the board can hear all viewpoints during our limited time. Please also note that the board accepts written public comments via email to boardofficefusd dot edu. We will hear first from students in person, then members of the general public in person, beginning with agenda items and moving to non agenda items. Regardless of whether in person public comment is complete, we will save fifteen minutes for remote public comment, taking commenters in the same order as in person. To members of the public, on your right, you'll see signs that outline expectations for public comment and meeting conduct. We ask that all members of the public please model the kind of tone, language, and behavior that we hope to see from our young people, respecting different viewpoints and allowing for all members of the public to participate. As a reminder, board rules and California law do not allow us to respond to comments or attempt to answer questions during the public comment time. If appropriate, the superintendent will ask that staff follow-up with speakers. And I'm very sorry to our translator interpreter sign language. I was speaking very fast, so apologies. I'll turn it over to Mr. Trujillo.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Thank you, President Kim. We have four students. Please line up as I call your name. Noemi Flores, Twine Gatard, David Martinez, Amberly Martinez, I think.

[Amber Lynn Martinez (John O’Connell HS student)]: Hello, my name is Amber Lynn Martinez. I'm a senior in the entrepreneurship and culinary arts pathway at John O'Connell High School. I've had multiple experiences where they have changed me as a person. Some examples are my two internships, the capstone pop ups, as well as the lunches we prepare for the whole school and events. These experiences have helped me grow and become more confident in speaking with people and also learn how to be a leader in the kitchen and outside. I also gained some daily skills like cooking that I feel are very valuable. These pathways help me learn some valuable knowledge about the world and the workforce. We also learn historical roots of food through history and English. I would want the board to understand that these pathways are like family and a valuable part of the school. And, the teachers need common planning time to make the pathway happen. Thank you for listening to my speech.

[Naomi (Noemi) Flores (John O’Connell HS student)]: Yeah. Good evening school board. My name is Naomi Flores and I am a senior at John O'Connell High School in the entrepreneurial and culinary arts pathway. Through my ECA pathway, I participated in hands on learning alongside my teachers and industry professionals, including chef Daniel, chef Veronica from the Culinary Institute of America. My ECA experience helped me build soft skills like communication, collaboration, problem solving, and thinking like an entrepreneur, and to recognize the problem as an opportunity. I also gained real world experience including setting up and managing a pop pop restaurant. If teachers lose common planning time, it may become harder to sustain these partnerships and online projects. As a student who has directly benefited, I urge you to consider how this decision impacts our real world learning opportunities. Thank you for listening.

[Twine [last name unknown] (Student)]: Hi, my name is Twine. I'm a senior in the public service pathway. Public service is one of my favorite places to be. I love the pathway system, and it really makes school feel more comfortable and like somewhere I really like being. Having the pathway system means that all of my afternoon classes are connected to each other, so it feels like I get to learn about things from a lot of different perspectives and from a lot of different viewpoints. So if we're talking about like the history of education in America, I get to learn about that in three different classes, in three different ways, and from three different points of view. And it means that I have a much better viewpoint of the things that I learn about. And the reason that my teachers are able to do that is because they have the time to plan it with each other. Thank

[Commissioner Lisa Weissman-Ward]: you.

[Alena Rayal (Special Education Department Head, John O’Connell HS)]: It'll translate.

[David Martinez (John O’Connell HS student)]: Hi, my name is David Martinez. Hi, good evening. My name is David Martinez, and I'm a junior at John O'Connell High School. I'm here to ask you to not reduce or offset or trim any of the programming and time at our high school. I'm currently in the service pathway, and I've learned a lot about social issues, the environment. But I've learned a lot more about myself as a person and about my future. The time that teachers are allotted to work on planning is what helps make the school function properly. This planning time allows teachers to work on creating more opportunities for students. And it allows us to do classes, for example, at CCSF. It's understandable and needed. And the value that I've been able to earn from participating in the pathway that I'm in has helped me understand problems, but it's also helped me how to plan and take action for solutions. It's also helped me with public speaking, and that's the reason I'm here. So I urge you to please reconsider your decision. This doesn't just help me, but it helps future generations of students. Thank you.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Thank you. We'll now continue with members of the public on agenda items. As I call your name, please line up. Roberto Guzman Rivera, Olivia Clark, Elena Royale, Juliana Mululu, Sam Nelson, Michael Stafford.

[Commissioner Matt Alexander]: Okay.

[David Martinez (John O’Connell HS student)]: Hi. My name is Roberto Guzman and I have three kids at Guadalupe Elementary. The California school dashboard is clear. Our Latino students are performing below standards in ELA by 78.6%. Our socioeconomically disadvantaged students are at below 42.4. And our African American students are at under a 107.1%. These are not just numbers. These are children. They are lost opportunities, and they are futures that are falling behind. For years, these gaps have persisted. And now, as layoffs of instructional aids and language program educators are being proposed, the very staff that support our English language learners, the message our communities receive is that their support is negotiable. But our children are not negotiable. This board sets policy. This board approves a budget. This board adopts the LCAP. So I ask you, where is the urgency to fill these gaps? Fiscal stability is important, but stability without academic justice is not enough. Our students cannot wait another year. Our children deserve much better. Thank you.

[Olivia Clark]: Good evening, Board of Education and Superintendent. My name is Olivia Clark, and I will be speaking in support of protecting common planning time for our teachers. I am currently in my first year of law school at the University of San Francisco, and I can confidently say that I am in this position because of the career technical pathway system at John O'Connell High School. I graduated from O'Connell with the class of 2020. Being a part of the public service pathway offered by O'Connell taught me valuable skills on research and writing that I use in law school today. One of the most impactful projects that we had was to follow the case of a child asylum seeker who was being denied his right to a fair trial. We attended one of his court proceedings and conjunctively learned about due process, which is a topic that I learned now in law school. My teachers later connected me with Santa Maria law firm, inspired me to continue working in immigration. I owe much of my success to the experiences and opportunities I was given by this pathway. I ask that you please protect common planning time and protect the valuable opportunities pathways provide for students. Thank you.

[Alena Rayal (Special Education Department Head, John O’Connell HS)]: Hello, Board of Education superintendent. My name is Alena Ray Al. I am a product of SFUSD. I've worked in the school district for twenty two years. I currently stand as the head department head of special education at John O'Connell High School. I'm here to talk about our common planning time. Goal three states that college and career is important. As a special education teacher who watches the board meetings often, I realize there are not many opportunities for our students to have real life experiences for school to career, for internships. And at John O'Connell, a 100% of our students get access, gets integrated classes with a special educator in their classroom so they have full access to the entire program. And our graduates are so proud to know that they got to do the whole program. It's a 100%. And I just want this board to understand if your goal is to get 6% and currently only 16% of our twelfth graders are in a full day of school, we have all of our kids in school for a full day, a 100%. And the way that we do that is by integrating our planning and really caring for our kids. Our student assistance program, which is students' real needs, comes out in those meetings. We support our kids with love, and we're given the time, the support to do the playing that we need, and I hope that continues.

[Juliana Malulu (Health & Behavioral Sciences Pathway, John O’Connell HS)]: Evening Board of Education and Superintendent. My name is Juliana Malulu. I'm a part of the Health and Behavioral Sciences Pathway at John O'Connell. I would like to encourage you to reserve our common planning time because it is very valuable time for us. Being new to the pathway after filling in some shoes from someone who was there over almost thirty years in the district, I see the importance of it. It's time to plan, time to prep, allows us to assess lessons. Not only that, it allows for integrated projects to occur. Without this time, we would not be able to meet as a team with a health science teacher, with an English teacher. Allows

[Commissioner Supryia Ray]: us

[Juliana Malulu (Health & Behavioral Sciences Pathway, John O’Connell HS)]: to discuss students with real time ability to help them. So I would just urge you to please preserve this time for us because it is more valuable than what you see. It allows us to plan for field trips as well and outside extracurricular activities and guests speakers and all these things. Thank you.

[Sam Nelson (Health Sciences teacher, John O’Connell HS)]: Commissioners and Doctor. Sue, thank you for your time this evening. My name is Sam Nelson. I'm a registered nurse many years at the Veterans Affairs and then here in our backyard at SF General in the medical ICUs. But more importantly, I'm the health sciences teacher at John O'Connell High School, serving in the health sciences health and behavioral sciences pathway. Echoing the common thread that you're hearing tonight in advocating for the common planning time, the preparation time, In this model, it is essential for that coordinated effort. The classes function together as a single coordinated pathway. Educational projects and timelines are integrated across subjects, And all of us teachers meet every single day, in our case, in second period of the day, to discuss the academic progress of our students, the behavioral needs of our students, and the learning needs of our students, many of whom have 504s and IEPs and other undiagnosed needs additionally this time is essential for that planning and implemented those coordinated projects but also the months long real world internships that our students utilize every week. So please consider maintaining that common planning time. Thank you.

[Mike (Michael) Stafford]: Good evening Doctor. Sue and commissioners. My name is Mike Stafford. I have two children in the SFUSD pre k through high school currently at Marina Middle School and Lowell High School. I am here concerned about the future of FTE for arts programs. If we're committed to building the values in our children like creativity, community and mental health, then arts programs are absolutely essential. It's so common that when districts tighten their belts arts programs get cut but that's really shortsighted. Unlike math and English and science when arts teachers when arts teacher positions get cut, the programs die. And it's prohibitively difficult to bring them back. I know that the band program, for example, at Marina is threatened by this very problem. A program that both my kids participated in and have benefited from. I am here to advocate for the superintendent and board to fully fund FTEs for music and arts teachers to maintain these essential arts programs. Thank you.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Thank you. We'll now move to members of the public on non agenda items. Please line up as I call your name. Erica G, Andrea Pereira, Sarah Grossman, Eliana Studley, Frank Lara, and Tiana Taylor.

[Erica G. (Parent and arts educator)]: Hello, thank you. My name is Erica. I'm a public school parent and an arts educator and I am also here to advocate for arts funding, specifically a proposal that I've seen circulating to unrestrict SLAM funding, that's sports libraries, arts, and music for general use. Arts aren't extra. They are existential. Arts are wellness. Arts are special education. We are at a time when the region is hemorrhaging opportunities for young artists to find their voice, to find their place, to find means of self expression, to find self esteem. As you know, next year, we will be without a standalone nonprofit art school in Northern California. We don't have many arts teaching opportunities left in this region, and I implore you to do your part to preserve arts education here in this great city. Thank you so much.

[Andrea Pereira]: Hi. I'm Andrea Pereira. I have two kids at Sunnyside. And I just I wanted to say that, you know, the parents and community members, you know, we stood in support of our educators during the strike because we believe in fully funded, fully staffed schools. We've heard again and again that our schools are already stretched too thin, and if there isn't enough now, the answer cannot be cuts. Our children deserve more than the bare minimum. They deserve art. They deserve music, counseling. These are not extras. They're essential to a well rounded education, to students' mental health, and to their success. Those positions must be protected. You saw how San Francisco showed up for our educators. Now we'll continue to show up for our students. You need to use those 400,000,000 in reserves now and figure it out with the state how to fund the rest of the essentials at our schools. No cuts, fully staffed, fully supported schools. Thank you.

[Sarah Grossman Swenson]: Good evening. My name is Sarah Grossman Swenson. I'm a parent at Gratton Elementary and AP Giannini. I, along with hundreds of other parents, walked the picket lines at Grattan and APG, supporting our educators in their fight for fully staffed, fully funded schools. It's very clear to me that there is broad momentum right now for increasing funding for our district. And I think we need to pursue changes at the state level to the way that ADA is being done, and changes at the city level to direct excess ERAP funding back to our school district. And so I would urge you all to be leaders. I think this is a great way to bring our communities together. We can't sustain additional cuts at our schools. We need more money. Thank you.

[David Martinez (John O’Connell HS student)]: Hi. I'm Nina. And I'm Aliana. We supported the educator strike because we believe in fully funded, fully staffed, and fully supported schools. Schools are already understaffed and cuts will only make existing problems worse. Please don't lay off our teachers. Thank you.

[Sarah Grossman Swenson]: Good evening,

[Tiana Tiller (UESF VP for Paraeducators)]: everyone. My name is Tiana Tiller. I'm the vice president for paraeducators with UESF. And I urge you not to approve the recommendation for workforce reduction. Yes. Enrollment has inclined has declined. Yes. The district faced a deficit, but the answer cannot be to balance the budget off the backs of the very educators who hold our schools together. When you reduce positions, you are not reducing numbers on a spreadsheet. You are reducing reading support for a struggling third grader. You're reducing behavioral support for a student in crisis. You're reducing the trusted adult a newcomer student depends on to feel safe and seen. We cannot claim equity as a priority while cutting the people who deliver equity every single day. Preliminary layoffs create instability, fear, and turnover. They harm morale and drive talented educators out of our district at a time when students need consistency the most. If we are serious about financial recovery and exiting state oversight, then we must also be serious about protecting classroom stability and student support. Fiscal responsibility should not come at the cost of educational responsibility. I urge you to explore alternatives, phase adjustments thoughtfully, advocate for additional revenue, but do not approve workforce reduction that will deepen inequities and harm students. Our children deserve stability, our educators deserve respect, and our district deserves solutions that don't sacrifice the people who make our schools work. Thank you.

[Frank Lara (UESF Executive Vice President)]: Evening, everyone. Evening, board. Evening, superintendent. Evening her crowd. And also to the folks listening, my name is Frank Lada. I am the executive vice president of United Educators of San Francisco representing over the 6,000 members who just recently and I think that's why it's important to make a statement here on the board, recently carried out the first strike in over fifty years. And it's a strike that it's important that we note in this room, in this recording what we just lived through because it was not only in the history making of what we mean when we say we fight for the schools our students deserve but also shows I think a path forward. We had a parent just mentioned right now how she felt that energy and we felt it over a 120 school sites. What exists out there for us to actually expand SFUSD instead of the constant conversation we hear about the need for cuts? So for the folks who weren't probably paying attention, which were few because everything we've been hearing about bringing back an old San Francisco, a San Francisco that people remember fighting for justice, for equity in an authentic way, not in a moderated maybe yes, maybe no, maybe I can figure it out. But for four days, we had almost a super majority maintain at the picket line of our educators with our families passing out donuts, roses, music, leading yoga classes. We had four days of action one day at City Hall with 10,000 folks coming out. We're only 6,000. So you can imagine the level of support that was. On Tuesday, we marched from Dolores Park down to Civic Center with over 15,000 people. Then we came out in the thousands on Wednesday to the beach to note on a historical San Francisco minor what it meant for us to be out on strike. And finally, and it wasn't necessary to go to the fourth day, but there we were, 20,000 people taking over Market Street in order to show the level of unity, the level of imagery of what it means to support public schools. A lot of our families are wondering what are the next steps. And when the next steps are around what SFUSD can't do instead of what it can do, is what we're saying to you tonight is your educators showed you the power they have and we are leaving none of that. We said back in November, until we offer a vision for what public schools should look like, until we offer a vision of how to expand enrollment, use enrollment at every corner, particularly in the Southeast Side, which is our largest growing district, we won't actually be talking in the same language of what it means to support SFUSD. I know today's conversation, the presentation here by UESF because we are not done. We said in January, our members are ready to walk the picket line in support of public schools and we weren't listened to. We spent eleven months negotiating and we weren't listening to. We're telling you now, we have the vision. We know that what it means to expand SFUSD, that families want to invest in SFUSD. And the first step to take this seriously is we have to deal with enrollment. The fact that we still have an enrollment process that loses 40% of families, when we get a thousand families and lose 400 sorry, and lose 400 of them, that is unacceptable. The fact that we're still figuring out whether we should have bilingual programs, dual language programs, the fact that we haven't figured out how to redesign the high school portfolio, these are long term things. And so we're telling you to our members here having to find out what the cuts are gonna look like, what cuts are necessary. You don't build a district based on cuts. And we're going to fight. We're going to continue that same level of energy. Now that we're back, I know that folks are back in the report cards. I know that folks are back in the grind. But remember that hope. Remember those values because your union, the educators, which we have 90% of educators in their union, so you cannot separate the union and the educators. Because the ones who paid attention was when we were organized, that's when we finally got a call from a mayor who gave who we spent a whole year waiting. Right? And if they wanna support public education, we welcome them, but they'll do so in collaboration with their educators and their families. Have an opportunity to grow the district and if folks are not ready to jump on board on a district that expands instead of cuts, then we got to make sure we organize ourselves and show the power that we had in the strike. It's also the power we used to expand this district.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: We will now move to public comment from in Zoom. We will hear from students who wish to speak first. If you are a student and would like to speak, please raise your hand. If you are a student, please raise your hand. I see one hand. Rachel Jones. Oh, no, I take that back. Okay, we don't have any students at this time. We will now move to members of the public. If you would like to speak in Zoom, please raise your hand. Okay, we'll go with Kina. Go ahead and unmute.

[Kana Hazelid (Coordinator, LGBTQ Student Services)]: Good evening, Superintendent Hsu and the Commissioners. My name is Kana Hazelid. I use amirs pronouns. I'm the coordinator for LGBTQ student services. I want to commend doctor Sue for the leadership that you have shown in galvanizing superintendents across the state to levy pressure against that state to address the very real need of our students for more funding. Our schools need it now. We need to shift the way the formula is happening, and thank you for leading the charge on this. These funds are not just needed for abstract future, but to protect and uplift the quality education of SFUSD's current students. If we wanna make sure that families like mine for over three generations continue to choose SFUSD from t k through 12, we need to provide vibrant classrooms, health, arts, integrated classrooms, sanctuary schools with fully staffed wellness centers is how we do not only keep these students we currently have but bring in more. Instead of focusing on cuts, I call on you all to dream and vision and fight for the schools our students deserve. You can do it with us. You have the power. We can do it together.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Thank you. We'll now hear from Sarah. Sarah, go ahead and unmute.

[Sarah Wilson]: Hi, commissioners. My name is Sarah Wilson. I am a parent of a sixth grader at James Lake Middle School and I was so excited to support our educators and the rest of the staff from the district who were striking two weeks ago. And the reason I was excited was because I know that those staff and educators are fighting to make sure that our kids get the education that they need. We are you are seeing layoffs. I'm gonna be voting on them tonight. And I just wanna make the point that the people who are putting these layoffs on the table, whether it's Chris Mount Benitez or superintendent Sue, are not educators and not thinking as educators. And we need you school board, people who have the power to say yes or no

[Naomi (Noemi) Flores (John O’Connell HS student)]: to these

[Sarah Wilson]: things to focus on our kids' education and what the schools actually need to be schools, which is what you started to do back in December when you voted down that fiscal stabilization plan. And we need you, the students in this district need you to continue to stand up for them.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Thank you for your comment. We'll now hear from Erin. Erin Dumont, go ahead and unmute.

[Sarah Wilson]: I'm sure I did. I always do.

[Erin Dumont]: Good evening, Commissioners and Doctor. Sue. It's March, almost. We're here again, and we're talking about cuts again. I think it's important to note that we have said this. We've said it for years. No cuts, no closures, no compromises. These cuts do not benefit our students. They in fact have the alternative effect on them. And I would also like to add focus on the seventh period where losing that seventh period affects black and brown students and disadvantaged students and Spanish speaking students because not only would they lose an additional period for electives it also affects our sped students. So in considering this, do what you did in December, vote no on these cuts, and I'd also like to advocate again for a moratorium on school closures. Thank you.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: We'll now hear from Virginia Marshall. Ms. Marshall, go ahead and unmute.

[Virginia Marshall (NAACP)]: Thank you so much. To President Kim, Board Commissioner, Superintendent Hsu, on behalf of the NAACP, we're so happy that the strike was settled and our teachers and students are back in the classroom because the the students were you can't you saw how happy the students were to see their teachers. We are advocating tonight for no cuts of a seven period day. Electors are so important for the full education of our students. We always advocate for our paraeducators. I don't know how they managed to live in the San Francisco Bay Area on their salaries. We're so happy they got the increase that they so well deserve. And please remember that when you make cuts, it already further put behind black and brown students, particularly African American students who are already behind in reading and math. Thank you so much.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: We'll now hear from Karen Bailey. Go ahead and unmute.

[Terren (Teren) Bailey (Orchestra Teacher, Presidio MS)]: Good evening. My name is Terren Bailey, and I'm the orchestra teacher at Presidio Middle School. I'm also on the board of directors of the Association of Instructors in Music. We're a volunteer organization of music educators in the district. Your proposed cuts again target the arts first, which is unfortunately normal in this district. By cutting a music teacher at Marina Middle School, you are effectively canceling the band program completely. The band teacher has worked in the district for twelve years and has built the band program over nine years up to five classes. If you approve these cuts, there is not going to be a band program at Marina Middle School. One music teacher cannot sustain a band and orchestra program alone. A 120 students will no longer have a place of belonging at school, as many if not all music students feel connected to their music teacher, peers, the classroom. They will not be able to create their art form anymore. This is not equity. This is not student centered. Use your 400,000,000 in reserves to fully staff our schools. Cutting 13 t 10 FTEs is beyond upsetting. My second week as a teacher at Babola High School, a gun went off in my room. The t tens were there almost instantly. What would have happened if they were not there? We need more t tens.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Thank you for your comment. That concludes your time. We'll now hear from Kevin Robinson. Ms. Robinson, go ahead and unmute. Kevin, can you hear us? Okay, we'll come back to you. We'll go to Rachel Jones. Rachel, go ahead and unmute.

[David Martinez (John O’Connell HS student)]: Well, good

[Rachel Jones]: evening for members in the gallery. So sorry I had to miss this in person, but I did wanna come on this Zoom and implore everyone that's sitting at these tables. We cannot do let we cannot do more with less. Like, when we look at numbers, when we look at what we're taking away from students, what we've already taken away from students, Our students coming out of SFUSD, our African American students, only 27.9 are accepted into UCs or CSU systems. And only 36% of our Hispanic students are accepted into CSUs and UCs. So if we want to be more attractive to not just teachers, students, and parents, why don't we do the math and understand that we cannot do more with less? We cannot keep having our students and our future walking out unprepared and unmotivated and uneducated with the less that we're giving them. We cannot keep talking about how much less we can give them.

[Carrie [last name unknown] (Parent)]: Thank you.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: We'll now go to Kevin Robinson. Kevin, go ahead and unmute.

[Kevin Robinson (Public Commenter)]: Thank you. Can

[Commissioner Matt Alexander]: you hear me okay guys?

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: We can hear you.

[Kevin Robinson (Public Commenter)]: Yes. Great. Good evening, superintendent and board members. How ironic that it's now SF music week and our school district is looking at cutting music positions among others. What's hard to fathom, and I hope folks from the media are listening, is that this is not a money shit shortage issue. I was in the district's public education enrichment fund committee for the better part of two years. During that time, I saw close to $200,000,000 coming from the city to fund everything from sports and libraries to arts and music. Where'd that money go? This is at the very least a case of fiscal malfeasance, and you wonder why the district's in the situation it's in. We can't continue on this course as we're headed toward disaster. Someone, maybe me, and others need to right the ship before it sinks. I'm Kevin Robinson, and I thank you for your time.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: We'll now hear from Galen. Go ahead and unmute.

[Galen [last name unknown] (Parent)]: Hello. Sorry. Stepping away from my family eating dinner to speak to you all tonight. I'm a San Francisco Unified parent, and I wanna echo what so many wonderful people have been saying tonight, which is keep up the good work, with pressuring the state, but you have to do it with what we have. We gotta, not balance this budget on the backs of our students. The money that is going into the rainy day fund is money you did not spend on our children today. It's money that needs to be spent on our children today, and that means fully funding arts, PE, music, all of that. I agree so much that, we need to be doing more and not less. So please again repeat your performance where you voted no and vote no on tonight's cuts. Thanks. I'm going to go back to dinner.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Thank you. We'll now hear from Carrie. Carrie, go ahead and unmute.

[Carrie [last name unknown] (Parent)]: Hi. I'm Carrie, also an SFUSD parent. I am a kindergartner at New Traditions and I'm I feel like I'm just gonna echo a lot of what the other parents have already said. We actually chose New Traditions because it has a pretty strong art program and I think that's very important. So to hear that these things might be cut, I think it's very concerning. I think, you know, math and science is what people always look at, but art is very important to the growth of children. And it just feels like, how do you say it? I as a new parent, just to learn that, like, each year there has been extra money left over, it feels like that means the children for that year got shortchanged, and we shouldn't do this to our children. School is a fundamental right I think in even in the UN Charter so we should be doing our best to give the children the best they can at school and knowing that there's extra money left over and it's something that could be spent to make our school better and a better school would draw in more students which would help with the problem of not having enough money. I do implore the board

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: to That for your concludes your time. We'll now hear from Anna Aviles. Anna, go ahead and unmute.

[Anna Aviles]: Hello. Hi. My name is Anna Aviles. I am a parent of eighth grader at James Lake Middle School and fifth grader at Daniel Western Livingstone Elementary School. I also graduated from SFUSD many moons ago, and I am here to advocate for our children and our families. And I was standing with our educators in the PICC Alliance every day that I could and I will continue to stand beside them, behind them, and in front of them to protect our children. They are necessarily doing what your job is supposed to be doing, is protecting our children. Instead of removing access to classes, arts classes, PE, those are things that our students deserve and need in order to have a little break during math and academics reading and writing. And also we want to make sure that we are advocating for the seventh period course versus the sixth because once again you're targeting our students, our Spanish immersion track and students with special education. So I don't understand what equity means to you guys. Can you guys define equity for us, please? Because I think we have the wrong definition, or maybe you have the wrong definition. Thank you for your time. And also, invite you to actually, if you have kids, put them in our schools and stop taking them to private schools because this is the real deal here.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Thank you for your comment. That concludes your time. We'll now hear from Chris Clouse. Go ahead and unmute.

[Chris Clouse (SPED Department Head, Washington HS)]: I'm Chris Clouse, the Sped department head at Washington High School. The bottom line is that SFUSD does not understand its own budget. This has been evident for years now with constant projected deficits leading to tens of millions and more in surpluses. Added to that, the enrollment center is trying to kill so many fantastic programs by simply not publicizing and pitching those programs to families or sending families there when there are openings and then lowering enrollment expectations for those programs slowly killing them over time. I'm encouraging you so strongly now board of ed to vote against layoffs, to vote against this budget plan. This is not appropriate. This is not helping our students. You need to do what's right by them. Thank you.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Thank you. We'll hear now from Laura SF. Go ahead and unmute.

[SFGovTV Announcer]: Hello, can you hear me now?

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Yes, go ahead.

[Laura Kennedy (Parent, Yick Wo Elementary)]: Great. Hello, Doctor. Sue and commissioners. My name is Laura Kennedy. I'm a parent to a first grader at Yukuo Elementary. This is a non agenda item. I just want to be clear about that. I want to first just extend tremendous gratitude to Doctor. Sue and her team, to UESF leadership for the work and coming together to an agreement. There's a lot that I think went wrong, but I want to focus on are some things that went right and some bright spots that I hope that we could continue and some of what we heard tonight. Number one is just awareness about California education being under invested and underfunded. Despite being the fourth largest economy on the planet, 20 other states fund their schools on a per capita basis more than California schools do. We also saw great collaboration across the district and with city government including mayor Laurie. My understanding is pre COVID there used to be more integration and collaboration and regular meetings with supervisors. We'd love to see that continue. And the best thing of all I think is just a mindset shift. Starting to believe that our schools can grow, enrollment can grow, funding can grow with the fiscal plan and to continue to push on as a community and coming together to have a growth mindset as opposed to just continued cost cutting. Thank you very much.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: President Kim, that concludes public comment.

[President Phil Kim]: Thank you to members of the public, especially our students, joining us tonight to share your experiences and perspectives. As a reminder, board rules in California law do not allow us to respond to comments or attempt to answer questions during the public time. But we appreciate you taking the time to be with us here today in person and virtually. The superintendent and her team are tasked with providing a draft of each agenda twelve days in advance for board members to review. Once that draft is made public on our website, board members have made a commitment to submit clarifying and tactical questions and staff have made a commitment to respond to those questions in advance of each board meeting. This document is linked into each board agenda on board docs. We invite the members of the public to review those questions and answers alongside our discussions today. Additionally, to create more space focused on outcomes, we will be moving most items to our consent calendar and identifying only our highest priority agenda items to discuss. Board members are reminded not to restate questions answered by staff in advance, but instead to bring forward strategic questions that allow us better understand our progress towards goals and the underlying strategies so that we can be better informed in our decision making and partner with the superintendent as we hold our accountable. Item D, report from closed session. On matter one, grade challenge appeal, matter number 20252026GCA1, in one student matter regarding a grade challenge to the Board by a vote of seven ayes, give direction to the General Counsel. There are a number of anticipated litigation items: student AM, AG, BL, HB, JC, JCL, KC, LT, Doctor, MB, and TG versus SFUSD. In the matters of litigation concerning AM, TG, Doctor, and MB, the Board by a vote of seven ayes gives direction to the General Counsel. In the matters of anticipated litigation concerning AG, HB, JCL, and KC, the Board by a vote of six ayes with Commissioner Fisher voting nay, gives direction to the General Counsel. In the matters of anticipated litigation concerning BL and JC, the Board by a vote of four ayes, with Commissioners Fisher, Ray, and Huling voting nay, the Board gives direction to the General Counsel. In the matter of anticipated litigation concerning LT, the Board by a vote of seven ayes gives direction to the general counsel. Counsel that is it for this report out correct?

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: No president there's one there's three more items. Okay For

[President Phil Kim]: public employee discipline, dismissal, and release for non reelect names. In a vote of seven ayes, the board gives a vote to authorize staff to release two ninety seven temporary certificated at the end of the twenty five-twenty six school year. In a vote of seven ayes, the board voted to non reelect three certificated employees during the probationary period. In a vote of seven ayes, the board voted to non reelect 28 certificated employees due to credential requirements. The board will resume closed session later tonight to address the remaining matters. The SPUC Board of Education is committed to effective school board governance that centers student learning based on community input. The board has adopted our vision, values, goals, guardrails in order to increase the portion of time we spend on student outcomes. Every other regular meeting is a monitoring workshop. Our approach to this governance calls on the board to empower the superintendent to take full ownership of the strategies used to reach those goals within the guardrail set by the board. As we implement our governance framework, the board will continue to adopt new systems, routines, and policies aimed at improving student outcomes. We encourage the public to follow this work on our website at sfusd.edu/governance as we commit to finding new and improved ways to more meaningfully engage with staff, students, and families. E, opening items, land acknowledgement. We, the San Francisco Board of Education, acknowledge that we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramatushaloni who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. As the indigenous stewards of this land accordance with their traditions, the Ramatushaloni have never ceded, lost, nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place as well as for all peoples who reside in their traditional territory. As guests, we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. We wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Rau Matoche community and by affirming their sovereign rights as First Peoples. The Q and A doc regarding agenda items may be found in Item two. I call now on student delegates Cruz and Mon to share a

[Chief Financial Officer (SFUSD)]: report if you have one.

[Student Delegate Melanie Cruz]: So, yeah, right now, we were able to get started with the youth summit planning, which is on April 10 at Fort Mason. We were able to get that settled down after a few weeks of stressfulness throughout the district, and we pretty much just kind of settled workshops and opportunities that we were gonna have during lunch as well as settling down with some speakers that we're gonna have. We were we were gonna ask if miss superintendent, doctor Maria Sue, would be willing to be there, Our star present there because I know a lot of people would wanna have you there for our youth summit. So, yeah, if you and any, anybody else, any board commissioners, let us know. We will have we're open, and the more the merrier, honestly. We love having you guys, and we know a lot of students would love enjoying having, like, one to one talks with you guys there, especially for the youth summit. We are gonna have a lot of people there, so that's what we have started with so far. We did recently get a speaker yesterday, which he kind of spoke about this AI being partially involved in SFUSD, and he kind of gave us an insight of him potentially wanting some SAC students being participating and giving intake and a point of view on how they can improve that and maybe kind of implement it and make it something that can be better for teachers and students at the same time. So we are still working on that. We are going to see who students would want to be willing to do that, but it's a really good opportunity because a lot of students There's been a lot of mixed opinions on that with AI usage and overall how it's a good way to use it and how it's not. So that's that's something that we have so far. I'm gonna pass it to again. Sure.

[Student Delegate Mon [last name unknown]]: Hi. Long time busy. Good to see everyone. Yeah. Like Melanie said, we had a meeting yesterday, the AI thing, and we've we've been planning a lot for the youth summit. And yes, at Fort Mason, April 10. We're doing we're working on workshops right now. We're thinking like student government, district budget, UCSF, like STEM, medical, pre med students, building bridges and cultural art. And our theme this year is build bridges, not borders. So exciting. And yeah, we're trying to coordinate speakers at an opportunity fair during lunch where organizations all throughout the city would come and just showcase opportunities that students could participate in. And then right now we're in the phase of just like planning and finalizing and also reaching out to site leaders and all of the student governments and the general student body at each high school. And then, yeah, as Melanie asked, we would love for you to be their superintendent Sue, and we're wondering if you could do the opening remarks just to welcome everyone and if anyone else interested to attend to speak, to to to shake some hands, to talk to to some kids, please let us know and we would love to have you there. And, yeah, the last thing is our student delegate nomination form. Sadly, we won't be here forever. We're graduating soon. Very sad. And therefore, we're gonna have to start looking for some new student delegates. And usually, we send out a nomination form, and people get nominated. They run a campaign online, in person, whatnot, and then we'll have a student delegate debate at the youth summit. We I remember last year we got asked a bunch of questions. We take turns answering it, and then we also take questions from the crowd. And the process of it is just like getting nominated through the form, attending youth summit, and then the voting form will open after. And then you guys will have new student oh my god. You guys will have new student delegates. So sad. But exciting for the next generation. Okay that's it for my report. Thank you.

[President Phil Kim]: Thank you very much. Superintendent Hsu.

[Dr. Hsu, Superintendent]: Thank you President Kim and yes student delegates I was just checking my calendar and it's in my calendar. It's very prominent. I will be there. I would also strongly encourage all commissioners to come and see the brilliance of our high school students. They put a lot of work into being leaders at their school site, in galvanizing and bringing their peers along and it culminates in this amazing student summit where they really curate everything from start to end. And this is how and this is why we will increase enrollment at SFUSD because we're producing our futures right here. Because you guys are going to be the future leaders in the city and I have no doubt, no doubt that you will be amazing. Okay, so speaking about amazingness, I've got a few updates for the board. So I want to I know it's been referenced already, but I want to begin by acknowledging this really, really monumental moment in our city. Nearly two weeks ago, we reached a two year tentative agreement with our labor partner, United Educators of San Francisco, which represents thousands of amazing employees throughout our district. That includes our teachers, our paraeducators, our nurses, social workers, counselors, amazing security aids and many, many other fantastic leaders and support staff throughout our district. This agreement honors our educators and their contribution to our district that they provide each and every day. And it also really helps support them to be and live in Francisco. Shortly after reaching this tentative agreement, we welcomed our students back to school on Wednesday, February 18. I want to thank Visitation Valley Elementary School and Principal Sarah Seton for hosting me that morning as we greeted students and families at school. I was overjoyed to see all the hugs and well wishes from students to each other and to their educators. And it really truly, you know, this moment of the students making the school feel complete. And it really did feel very much complete for me. I want to call out a really, really important milestone here at SFUSD. For the first time in our district's history, we will now be offering fully funded dependent or family health care. This is an important tool for us to exactly, attract and retain talented educators and support them not just as professionals in our schools, but as parents and as caregivers in our community. We know that students do well when they have consistent educators in their lives. And the way for us to have consistent educators here is by providing benefits that really meet their needs. At the same time, I want our community to know that we take our fiscal responsibility extremely seriously. We are developing a clear plan to demonstrate long term stability which will be shared with the public at our next meeting in March, on March 10. That is where we will be providing our second interim update as well as our multi projection. I know that the strike created a lot of uncertainty and concern for families and for staff alike. Today we published a set of frequently asked questions to our community. And I want to assure everyone that we are working very closely with the California Department of Education to figure out next steps on what to do with those additional days that we lost. SFUSD is working to determine how we can address those days and please stay tuned because we will be sharing more information as we sit down with our labor partners to figure out how we can address those days along with our Board of Education. Next slide, please. You know, the month of February is amazing and I truly love it because we celebrate two really, really important cultures in the month of February. First, I want to wish everyone a happy Black History Month. As district that a celebrates diversity, we recognize the importance, relevance, and origin of Black History Month. And we aim to uplift the rich history of African Americans and black Americans and their brilliance of our students schools. Although we have made progress in an effort to educate and support each other, to support our students, we know that there is persistent gaps in access opportunities and outcomes for our black students in our district, in the city, and in the country. As a district, we remain committed to closing those gaps by ensuring each and every student have access to high quality teaching and learning. Throughout this month, our schools are holding a number of events to celebrate Black History Month. And I welcome everyone. And I actually know many of you have participated in some of those events. But I welcome everyone to please join your school communities in celebrating our African American students. Next slide, please. Am also really excited to attend the Tea House Ceremony at Sutro Elementary School in celebration of Lunar New Year. So thank you so much to Principal Beth Bonfiglio for inviting me and allowing me to participate in this time honored tradition. I believe that they've, Sutro has been doing this for well over thirty years now. It was wonderful to watch our students perform and sing and share in a meal that delivered and made with care by the parent community at Sutro. I want to wish everyone a happy Lunar New Year as we enter the year of the fire horse. I look forward to embracing boldness and strength, especially in service of our students. And then next, I am really excited to announce that we have launched the 2026 Superintendent's twenty first Century Scholarship Awards application. The scholarship will be granted to six graduating SFUSD seniors who exemplify a particular strength in one or more of the characteristics of SFUSD's graduate profile. Winners will each receive a $2,000 scholarship and be honored at an event in May. The deadline to apply is this Friday, February 27 at five p. M. Students, please, please, please speak to your counselors, your teachers, your principal if you have any questions. And I hope you all apply. And then it's that time of year again, enrollment season. So thank you to everyone who submitted your application for school year. Assignments for the twenty six-twenty seven school year will be shared with families on parent view and by mail on March 16. Families will also be able to see their positions on a wait list. This year we're moving down to three school wait lists as opposed to what we had before, which was a five school waitlist. Students not currently enrolled in SFUSD will need to accept or decline their main round assignment by 03/26/2026. Current SFUSD students will automatically be enrolled in their assigned schools and do not need to take any action. So any families who have not applied for the twenty six-twenty seven school year, we are still open to allowing you to apply. So please apply. Please go on to our website sfusd.edu/apply. And then finally, I am really, really proud to share that next week SFUSD will welcome and host the California Association of Bilingual Education, also called CABE. We are doing this. This is the first time in over ten years that SFUSD will be hosting CABE here. So hosting CABE reflects SFUSD's renewed commitment to multilingual education, equity and academic excellence for our multilingual learners. It is also a powerful recognition of the district's leadership in dual language, immersion and biliteracy pathways across all of our schools. We are honored to open up our classrooms and learning communities to educators from across the state and to showcase the innovation that we have here. And I want to extend an appreciation to the district staff who have been working really, really hard to set up all of the school tours, to participate in the development and the design of Kabe, and to make sure that all of our visitors will have a really wonderful time here visiting our schools, visiting the city. I do want to just do a special call out to our wonderful principal over at Jose Ortega, Paula Atrum, who has graciously volunteered a lot of her time to help us, as well as our associate superintendent Christy Herrera who has also provided a lot of support for this work. Because it is so important. It's so important for us to really show off all of our wonderful educators as well as the pathways that we have and of course our amazing students. So with that I conclude my report. Thank you.

[President Phil Kim]: You. Item six for leadership report. This is our first meeting after the conclusion of a historic strike in our city and I want to congratulate UESF in reaching this tentative agreement and appreciate the board in coming together in service of our educators and students. Our city loves our educators. We are proud of our educators. As a former teacher myself and now serving alongside my colleagues here on the board, I know that everyone believes that teachers and educators deserve more, more respect, more pay, and more support. And so as we continue working towards long term stability we will remain disciplined and transparent and focused on improving student outcomes. In one of the richest cities in the world we must invest in our public schools and we will work with UESF and with local and state leaders who are committed to making the investments necessary for SFUSD and for every district in the state to be the district that any world class city like San Francisco deserves. We invite everyone including our partners at UESF to work with this board to build a stronger and more resilient district that shifts the way we fundamentally think about investments in our students in ways that deepen our investments in the strategies we know will retain our teachers, support our students, and protect our most vulnerable communities. And so with that I say thank you to our partners, thank you to this board, thank you to staff, thank you to our communities for showing up and being with us during this time. We'll now move on to item F, workshop on student outcomes, goal three progress monitoring. I call on the superintendent to introduce this item.

[Dr. Hsu, Superintendent]: Thank you President Kim. As staff comes up to the dais, I do want to just acknowledge how hard staff has worked over the past several months now since the start of school in really trying to embrace the notion of continuity and coherence across different divisions. And so hopefully you'll see that coherence and support across divisions in the presentation. And I just really am super proud of the work that we've done. Obviously there's a lot more work to be done. But we're seeing the coordination, the collaboration, and the coherence paying off because we're slowly seeing the positive momentum moving towards the outcomes. So with that, I am going to hand it over to you all and you can introduce yourself when you speak.

[Deputy Superintendent (LEAD) [name not stated]]: Thank you Doctor. Sue, thank you President Kim, Vice President Huling and Commissioners. Tonight we are bringing forward the progress monitoring report for goal three focused on college and career readiness. The report is grounded in our vision, values, goals and guardrails framework and reflects our commitment to student outcomes, governance and really focusing our students. Tonight's presentation will walk through the data, the interpretation, the evidence of the implementation and the plan moving forward so we can continue strengthening outcomes for our students and keeping students at the center. I will now hand it over to Assistant Superintendent Goldwasser.

[Assistant Superintendent Divina Goldwasser (High School & College and Career Readiness)]: Sure, we're going to start actually with Patrick and I'll let him introduce himself.

[Patrick West (Executive Director, College & Career Readiness)]: Hi everyone, Patrick West, Executive Director of College and Career Readiness. Before we jump into the data, I just think it's important for us to recognize that we are here but we are representing countless individuals and teams across our schools and central office that are involved in this work deeply involved in this work. So when you hear us say we just remember that we are referring site leaders teachers counselors paras our CBOs our central office lead CCR, Ali, C and I, RPA staff and many many more but most importantly we want to recognize our students because they're the ones that are behind all the numbers that we're going to be going through with you today. Alright next slide please. So this is the overall goal the college and career readiness goal that the board and the superintendent have set. As a reminder this is a measure that was set by the CDE and it does encompass the entire four years that a student is in high school. It is a complex measure that includes multiple factors such as grades and A to G courses, SBAC scores, AP course grades and AP exam scores, dual enrollment, CTE and many other factors. We are excited to say that we have left the flat line that we were on 58% we have moved up to 60% so sixty percent of our twenty twenty five graduates graduated with a marker of being college and or career ready due to the complex nature of this particular measure we are pursuing a more systematic and multi pronged and long term approach For example, we're focusing on early interventions both in the ninth and the tenth grade because we believe as well as focusing on math because we believe that will have a long term impact on the continued growth.

[Assistant Superintendent Divina Goldwasser (High School & College and Career Readiness)]: Thank you. And just to introduce myself, I'm Divina Goldbosser, Assistant Superintendent of High School and College and Career Readiness. So I'm going to share with you on the next slide. Next slide. Great, thank you. So this represents our early warning indicator. And so this measure is our proactive, all hands on deck measure where we look at how our eighth graders ended the year, and then we wrap around and support this group of focal students to ensure their success in high school with this theory that if we wrap around them very quickly in ninth grade, that this will increase their graduation rate and their success overall in high school. So at this point in the year, we are at the twenty four percent of exiting students. So that group, that focal group, twenty four percent of them have exited. And so that EWI marker represents their GPA and it represents their attendance where we have concerns. And that is where we are now. And the measure goes towards the end of the year in June where our target is 28%. The GPA threshold for this is a two point zero and the attendance marker is below 87.5. Something that I want to mention is that this year we had twenty five percent more ninth graders that came in with this indicator than we did last school year. And so it's important to note and that represents a subset of three ninety three students just to give everyone some perspective.

[Patrick West (Executive Director, College & Career Readiness)]: All right, goal 3.2 is our tenth grade end of year on track to graduation measure. We are at the halfway point of the current sophomores in school. So this measure reflects are they on track to earn the necessary credits and earn the necessary credits in this particular case they would need to get a D or higher in any of their ninth and tenth grade required courses. So, they're three semesters in and we are at 74% which is 4% higher than our end of the year goal. So, we are confident that we at the end of this particular semester we will at least reach or exceed our goal in this particular measure.

[Moonhawk Kim (Executive Director, Research, Planning & Assessment)]: Next slide please. Interim goal 3.3 focuses on grade nine and grade 10 STAR math proficiency. This is a new interim goal for this goal three at the high school level. This is only the second year of STAR administration in high schools. And it's important to note two improvements compared to last year, which was the first year of STAR in high school. One, the proficiency rates are higher for both windows of administration for both fall and winter. And perhaps more importantly, the trajectory is positive. Positive. And as it was mentioned in the report, for various reasons, not just high school but across all grade bands, we have typically tended to witness a decline from fall to winter, especially in math. So even though the gain looks small, just one percentage point, it is actually a notable improvement in our outcomes from 38% to 39%. And unlike last year, there will be a third assessment window, which is the first time in high school at the end of the year in spring. And the target for that is 41% proficiency. And we generally attribute this improvement to many things, but one example might be just overall greater focus in math, not just in high school but also in middle grades. Specifically an example might be teams of high school administrators taking turns and rotating among sites to observe classrooms focusing on math and giving feedback to teachers in order to improve instruction and student outcomes.

[Assistant Superintendent Divina Goldwasser (High School & College and Career Readiness)]: So how we're supporting this more broadly and deeply? We are involving staff across roles at each site to support students. And what this looks like is administrators regularly engaging in professional learning together. And so this professional learning has been designed to match up exactly with all of the timelines of goal three. So having a very specific meeting right when the grading period comes out to do a grades analysis. Having a meeting very specifically timed to do a data dive after a star report happens. And the same goes for our early warning indicator. Everything is timed to wrap around that, where we look at the data of how each school is going, we share bright spots around which schools are having success, and those sites share more about what is leading to that success so that that can build across the whole division. The other piece is having ninth grade teachers really know who are students that are coming in with this indicator so that they can, in their own teams, figure out what are the appropriate supports and ways that they're going to connect personally with these students and ensure that they are really wrapping around that support. Counselors taking on a case management support, this happens a lot also through our coordinated care teamwork that we've talked about in the past. And how they support students with the early warning indicator marker is one of the agenda items that is regularly looked at in those coordinated care meetings. And providing professional development to all of our ninth and tenth grade math teachers. This was a new feature this year as we embarked on our new edia.aimath support platform for students. We also provided that professional development for teachers to start piloting and working on with students. So on the topic of how our students are doing, I want to celebrate two personal stories of students. These students come from O'Connell High School and they are very excited to be brought into the room, as is their families, to have them represented. So the first student is And Javonte came to us as an eighth grader with a GPA of 1.6 and an 82% attendance. And that was what Javonte's experience was in middle school. But high school is time for a fresh start. And so that's kind of where we started with Javonte. And LOEs came to us with an 86% attendance coming from middle school. And now, Javonte has a 2.3 GPA, which allows Javonte to exit that EWI marker and a 96% attendance rate. And going to Eloise, incredible now, at a 99% attendance rate. And so this is really showing an example of how high school, you know, even though it's a hard transition, we know that, if we all provide the support that's necessary, it is a fresh start. And so we want to really lift these students up. And so we've really been trying to really share these student stories across peer groups also at school. And when these students were interviewed, they talked about a myriad of things. It's not just a one thing that this is what made the difference for me. They talked about the support of going to wellness and the structure that exists in the school for them to understand how to access that support on a regular basis. They talked about the mindset of teachers to affirm their identity and how they could speak both of them very specifically to what that looks like in the classroom experience. They talked about the relationship with administrators who were constantly, you know, noting when they were attending school and when they were not attending school. And just this generalized support. So this is what it means when we have a focal group of students and we can, you know, kind of be these cheerleaders in partnership, what results we can have. So I'm really excited about this growth and for these students in particular, the assistant principal from, one of the assistant principals from O'Connell was able to highlight these practices in greater depth through one of our professional learning meetings and share all of this learning for her colleagues and have them really interrogate what practices might be replicable at their school.

[Patrick West (Executive Director, College & Career Readiness)]: Next slide please, thanks. So continuing on with the idea of early engagement, we have been working to engage families and students earlier in their high school career knowing that the goal three spans from ninth grade all the way to their senior year. So, we've been engaging in the parent ninth graders. We had a family night in December we had about three fifty families participate and the idea was that they would be able to learn more about what it means to be college and career ready and also graduation requirements right away during their first semester of ninth grade year. We got a lot of very positive feedback from the parents and families and the students who participated in that event and so our plan is to continue to build upon that idea and grow it and continue it in the future. Also our counselors do a lot of one both small group and also individual work with our students in the ninth and the tenth grade year. They'll go into advisories, they'll into homerooms and do lessons on A to G work, what it means to be college and career ready and then also having those individual off track meetings if a student is already off track in their ninth or tenth grade year, they get that one on one time with their counselor in order to make a plan to get back on track. And then we like I said mentioned earlier, we really do believe that early investment will pay off in the long term because we need our ninth and tenth graders to be on track and to be earning those CSER hires so they can be ready during their junior and senior year. So our plan is early investment for longer term payoff.

[Moonhawk Kim (Executive Director, Research, Planning & Assessment)]: Slide. Thank you. The third category of high level strategy that the high school team has been relying on is deep utilization of diverse types and forms of data. The EWI story that Davina shared on the back end it relied heavily on increased frequent monitoring of students' EWI progress. So in collaboration with RPA, the frequency of reporting has increased and high school team is regularly engaging to match with the six week period reporting to analyze the data and share best practices with one another to support students. Second aspect is the off track conferences which have been taking place for a while. And believe one of you, actually one of the commissioners, suggested, can we look at the impact of having those conferences on eventual graduation? It is something that is on our plate to do. And as it was noted in the report, unfortunately, we are building the muscles improve our data collection and entry practices. Because at many high schools, even though the conferences themselves are taking place, we do not yet have good collection and entry of the data, which would be necessary and essential for us to actually study the impact of those conferences on eventual graduation. So we're working specifically with identified sites to provide them support to build those muscles, which is not limited just to off track conferences, but those are muscles that we're trying to throughout the district in terms of collecting implementation data. The third bullet point is about STAR assessment. So again, this is the second year for high schools. RPA team is working very closely with administrators and teachers to build their muscles in looking at star reports and to be able to adjust instruction accordingly to cater to students' needs as represented in the data. Idea partnership, which I will talk about a little bit more in the next slide, has been another example of deep data dive in collaboration. So Idea, it's an app company. They've been very, very collaborative in providing lots of different data in order for us to make sense of the usage patterns and to support teachers based on that data and supporting really deeply at the site level and having office hours, making the company representatives available for teachers to really dig into and then utilize the tools again to be able to support students deeply using the tool. A couple of different types of data round out the list. So as I mentioned before, walk throughs have been really crucial and walk throughs are not necessarily quantitative data. Right? So these are administrators walking together through various classrooms and sites, observing classrooms and focusing on math classrooms and instruction, and providing real time feedback to teachers. And the very last item on the list is what we call a syllabi study, which is systematic collection of syllabi from various courses to examine their structure and and expectations and mindset that are embodied in it to make sure that they are designed to be equitable, to to be able to better support students, and to make sure that from the get go that the courses are designed in such ways that are fair and equitable to students' success. Next slide, please. Let me talk a little bit more about Idea, which has been an example of very strong collaboration internally between LEAD and CNI and externally with strong partnership involving Idea, the developer, the app developer, Gates Foundation which provided the funding for this year and WestEd which is going to which is a research organization that will be conducting the overall implementation and impact study at the end of the year. Idea is an AI based math tutor that has been offered to ninth and tenth grader students, and students have been big fans. Right? So we can actually read through the various comments. Top row, second one from the left goes into deep. I like the interface, and the one on one AI system didn't give away any of the answers. Please keep using it. Bottom row, second one from the right, really fun, actual helpful AI for hints but not answers, easier tools, UI than Khan Academy. Fun one in the bottom left, right, this website is pretty cool, NGO. I'm not young enough to know the acronym. I actually

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Thank you commissioner Fisher.

[Moonhawk Kim (Executive Director, Research, Planning & Assessment)]: I get it all planned and lined up to actually prompt you, excluding the student delegates, to see who would know the acronym. Those were those were the younger kids, potentially.

[Chief Financial Officer (SFUSD)]: Yes. Yes. I

[Moonhawk Kim (Executive Director, Research, Planning & Assessment)]: I would say that the the use of, you know, the the colloquial language, I think, is a genuine appreciation expression of of the the app. It's how I'm interpreting it. So In addition to the positive reception that students have expressed, we've seen some positive impact on student outcomes as well. Students who use EDM more EDM grew more on Star Math from fall to winter winter than similar students that did not use ZDIA, which is a promising sign. Again, as I mentioned, WestEd will be doing a more extensive and rigorous analysis at the end of the year using all the year's data. And one really positive thing is that it appears to be that among African American students who used EDIA, there seems to have been a larger gain among that population of students on STAR Math than some of the other groups, which was I actually had not checked until Devin asked me to look into it. And I did. I go, wow, this is amazing. So more to come. And we look forward to sharing further results on this really helpful and useful app support that we have been able to provide to high school students. And I'll turn over to my colleagues to discuss the plans for moving forward. Forward.

[Patrick West (Executive Director, College & Career Readiness)]: Alright so moving forward we want to continue to build upon the successes we've had with exiting EWI students by continuing to reflect on our learnings and also provide opportunities for our site leaders to collaborate together in professional development and learn from one another. We also want to build upon and strengthen the connections we have with our families and our partners. And also in our college and career readiness and graduation, we had some learnings around this as well because the goal three focuses on being prepared, being A to G ready, but graduation is not necessarily necessarily the same thing. And so we wanted to make it clear. So we've been making clarifying for our families and our students the difference between graduation and also being UC or CSU eligible. And so in our latest family communications around this, we've updated the language so that it is much more clear and we're giving them more agency over understanding the differences so they can support their students. We're also continuing to prioritize our credit recovery programs for students that need it and also building upon and we've mentioned counselors a lot in this presentation so just reminding that our counselors are the ones that are engaging with our students in so many ways to help them also stay on track especially in the early years in their ninth and their tenth grade year.

[Student Delegate Mon [last name unknown]]: Next slide.

[Assistant Superintendent Divina Goldwasser (High School & College and Career Readiness)]: And we're continuing to evaluate our impact in some of the ways that you've heard, analyzing the effectiveness of everything that we're doing. We are also focused on our math improvement, and I'll also let Devin jump in there if there's questions. But excited about what's to come. We're currently in our audit with TNTP looking at our current math instruction, seeing what we can do moving forward with a potential curriculum in the future once we do all of this work that we're engaged in right now. So really excited about what's to come in the future. But right now, we're really kind of looking at what's in place, what's needed, why are we getting the results that we have, where are there gaps, and really digging into that. And overall, I mean, this is a journey for us. This is about learning. So we are showing, you know, some level of improvement. But we are a learning organization. We're always trying to get better. We're working also with UC Berkeley, with a professor in particularly in particular that is studying our practices around early warning indicators and bringing him actually right to our site leaders to also engage their questions. We know that this work is not unique to SFUSD, so there's lots of different practices out there. There's of other students that are having, you know, similar experiences in school. So we're really trying to make sure that we are learning from all of the resources that we have to kind of move on this journey together towards the outcomes that we want to see for our students. And that's all we have. Can take questions.

[President Phil Kim]: Thank you. I'll open it up for comments and questions from commissioners. Oh right not comments strategic questions.

[Commissioner Alida Fisher]: Well I do have one comment though I would like to apologize to Mr. Kim for standing your thunder.

[Commissioner Lisa Weissman-Ward]: Thank you. Thank you all for the detailed information. I have two questions. One is about interim goal 3.2 and the other is about the EDIA. So for 3.2, yay that we have already exceeded the target of 70%. And I don't want to be a Debbie downer here. I have a question. Does this suggest, like do you all have an opinion about whether this suggests that our target was too conservative? Or I know that there was a suggestion that sometimes we see a backslide between fall and winter. Do we expect to see a backslide between February and June that might account for this, like, is this a peak that we hope stays up or are we expecting it to go back down?

[Commissioner Supryia Ray]: Excuse me, that's my first question.

[President Phil Kim]: So to

[Patrick West (Executive Director, College & Career Readiness)]: answer the first part of your question around the 70%, if you look from, you know, 2022 on, we were staying pretty flat 66, 65, 66 you know so we didn't think 70 was too high of a you know a marker and we're happy that we are above 70 at this point but yes we do anticipate maybe a slight dip during the spring semester because there's classes students haven't finished yet this particular semester that we don't account for. Thing about that is we have our summer program that many of those students will then be enrolled in that could help keep that number up.

[Commissioner Lisa Weissman-Ward]: Okay, if they haven't I guess maybe maybe and apologies if I'm being a dunce about this.

[President Phil Kim]: No.

[Commissioner Lisa Weissman-Ward]: It's alright. If they haven't already taken the class, wouldn't we expect them the numbers to be lower and continue to go up? Am I miss did I misunder misunderstand that?

[Patrick West (Executive Director, College & Career Readiness)]: So they they take a class each semester. So they're that's a full year class, but they're graded by semester. So these are sophomores that have taken a full year of their freshman year and then one semester of their sophomore year. They're in the middle of the back half of their sophomore year right now so we don't and some of those students might not pass that class but all the students who are in it and pass are on track and will stay on track but there might be a few that might not pass through spring semester and then that means they would be not on track.

[Assistant Superintendent Divina Goldwasser (High School & College and Career Readiness)]: The challenge isn't enrollment, what Patrick's saying. Challenge in the numbers is around the pass rate. It's not that the students aren't enrolled appropriately into the courses.

[Commissioner Lisa Weissman-Ward]: My other question had to do let me find it.

[Patrick West (Executive Director, College & Career Readiness)]: It was Edia, right?

[Commissioner Lisa Weissman-Ward]: Yeah. And it had to do with the what see, like, generally, like, 444% of students logging on means that a lot of students never logged on. And I'm I'm wondering, and that's a huge percentage that didn't, what what thoughts are on on because it does seem NGL that Mhmm. That when students are are logging on, it's effective. And so wondering about sort of how to why do we know why there was such a relatively small portion logging on and such a big portion not? And and what plans are to try to get those numbers up?

[Assistant Superintendent Divina Goldwasser (High School & College and Career Readiness)]: Yeah. So I can start and if anyone wants to chime in. So this was just a pilot program and so this was completely optional for teachers to take this up. And so part of the student participation rate also matches kind of the teacher mindset of what they felt at this at the time that they were exposed to it. Did they have enough information at that time to feel like this was really what was best for their class because it was something new. And so this was not like a curriculum that was a mandated curriculum for everyone where we have this, you know, oh, why do we have this participation rate? And we were not in a position you know, we really wanted to be very open minded about it and supportive because I didn't have the relationship, My team didn't have the relationship with Idea in August. And so to make all these promises, you know, of do this, do this, all we could say was, we hear how this is going in other districts. This is what we can offer. Try it out if this is a match for you. And so it really depended a lot on kind of the teacher mindset and where they were at, but it was very optional. So that participation rate matches a lot. And then also with students, students have different learning styles as well. And so for some students, I mean, this was brought up in prior conversations, they may have like an aversion to focusing on, you know, an AI app or they may love that. And so we also wanna be studying, you know, what is the kind of profile of students that really enjoy this and do that. And so to address that teacher variance, we've had Idea go actually on-site and dig in with teachers to say, you know, what's holding you back and what could we do? And they've constantly revamped their program based on teacher feedback. And then we've had the teachers themselves present to other teachers. We've looked at where is the highest participation rate for a teacher. And so then those teachers have gone to those department meetings across the division and said, this is why it's really working for me and this is what I'm finding. And so that's kind of where we are but it is what we would expect for a new initiative that was a pilot.

[Student Delegate Mon [last name unknown]]: Hi, thank you so much for the presentation. Always really insightful to learn about all of this. I have two questions. My first one is I read in the report something about because the indicator is based on the entirety of the student's high school career, it's not highly responsive to concerted efforts in the short run. And I was wondering, I see things about tenth graders being on track, what we just talked about, and also ninth getting college presentations. And I'm wondering what about students who are in early eleventh grade or even late junior year, early senior year? Because I have seen in my experience, at least in high school, that students tend to log in. By the way, that's also a big term that we use, lock in. Yeah, we tend to like lock in and like junior or senior year for like college applications and such. So I'm wondering is there a process or something that makes sure that those students also have access to these resources and it's not like too late for them to ask for help. Yeah,

[Assistant Superintendent Divina Goldwasser (High School & College and Career Readiness)]: thank you so much for the question. So we do the on track, off track conferences in eleventh grade as well. It's just that these particular kind of data points were chosen so that it maps out, like, the entire experience. So we have, if you notice, like, the overall goal that we started with, which was what goes on the dashboard that encompasses everything of a student's experience, that represents the students that, you know, have completed their four years of high school. So then for a 3.1, when you break it down, like that's focusing in on ninth graders. 3.2 is focusing in on tenth graders. And 3.3, is really focused on math in general, but more that ninth and tenth grade year of, those progress markers. But the conferences actually do happen in eleventh grade as well. And there's other programming, it depends on your high school, but it sounds like maybe the school that you're at or for your friends, like we could do even more. So, you know, love to hear more ideas around that. But there are markers along the way, it's just that for the progress monitoring we're reporting on it was focused on those grades.

[Patrick West (Executive Director, College & Career Readiness)]: And I would just add the overall goal three point zero focuses a lot on eleventh and twelfth grade year because that's when students can take dual enrollment courses and they can be in CTE pathways taking AP classes. That's the aspect test is given as well. So there's a lot in the eleventh and twelfth grade that goes into the overall goal three.

[Student Delegate Mon [last name unknown]]: Thank you. I go to Lowell, I'm a senior so I'm very fortunate to have access to a lot of resources. Our college center is amazing. College reps come in in the fall. I talk to the college center volunteers all the time. And, yeah, I just wanted to make sure that, like, other schools also have the same access to the resources that I was fortunate enough to have at law. So, yeah, thank you. My second question is about IDA. Like what has been the process of kind of rolling it out? You mentioned that like teach it wasn't mandatory for the teachers to use, but were there like specific school sites or like teachers that were like kind of received this and like was asked to use this or like what was really the process of this because I have never heard of this Yeah. Before NGL. You have never heard of this, I'm sorry.

[Assistant Superintendent Divina Goldwasser (High School & College and Career Readiness)]: Yes. So this was targeted to ninth and tenth grade, again to try to be, to have that proactive response of trying to get students right away to really get their math proficiency up. And so the process was that over the summer, teachers come back before students come back. And so they have a professional development day, we call it a buyback day. And so the curriculum and instruction department led in partnership with EDIA professional development for all of those ninth and tenth grade teachers so that they could decide after they went through kind of exposure. Like the exposure part was mandatory as part of their professional development. But then after they went through that, kind of what their comfort level was, if at that point because school was starting right away, could they integrate this into their class? And so that is kind of where the optional part. And then so it wasn't like particular schools were targeted. And then we have students that, you know, really dived into this both at our county schools, at our larger comprehensive schools, at our alternative schools. So it was pretty mixed. It really was more about whether the teacher felt that when they were exposed to it, it was something that they felt prepared or ready or would be meaningful for their students to do. Don't Devin, do you want to add anything about the professional development?

[Devin [last name unknown] (Curriculum & Instruction)]: Yep, so I can add just one piece of broader context which I think was already spoken to, but just to name that this in particular is a supplemental instructional resource that's meant to provide additional academic support while we engage in a multi year curriculum adoption process. So I wanted to just sort of like name that difference between its role as an optional supplemental tool as opposed to core curriculum. And so one of the things that I'll also just say is I think this is like one of the strongest examples of really strong partnership between lead and curriculum and instruction in terms of like the entry and the rollout. So at the very beginning, we were able to launch the partnership, engage EDIA through funding via Gates and WestEd to start this launch PD that Devina just described. And Devina stepped in with just incredibly strong partnership and taking that initial introduction, which was then kind of like carried out through C and I's math high school department chair meetings and other initiatives to provide supplemental training while Devina worked very extensively with EDIA, with principals, to build on some of the initial momentum to gain more users and more usage with students over time, particularly in some targeted schools and grade levels and with different student groups.

[Student Delegate Mon [last name unknown]]: Thank you. That sounds like a great resource. I might have to get on that tonight for my math homework. Thank you.

[President Phil Kim]: I would love to pick up on that question or kind of conversation really quickly. So I very much appreciate the attention around tutoring and is it idea As a tool, I also recognize that like EWI is something that's tracked by the state. And it's something that has been very top of mind. This is not a question around necessarily changing interim guardrails or interim goals. I know that this is not the space for that. I guess my highest level, more strategic question is, are these the highest leverage strategies that we feel are going to prepare students for life after high school? My question there is coming from a wondering around, we have these clear in classroom strategies that we're talking about for k eight. And I can't help but feel that these conversations at the high school level just aren't that. And I do appreciate the math curriculum search. I think that's exciting. I'm glad we're doing it. We also have many subjects at the high school level that we're not doing that for. Can you help me just understand why these strategies as being I mean, have to assume that these are the highest leverage ones that we believe if these are the ones that we're tracking and talking about.

[Devin [last name unknown] (Curriculum & Instruction)]: Thank you for that question, President Kim. So I do just want to start with a little bit of a broader state of the state, which is to name really explicitly in the last, I would say, three years in particular and I'll speak specifically for C and I in this instance C and I has disproportionately allocated our resources towards K-eight by necessity. Necessity. And that has been because at the beginning of this process we were in what I would call across K-twelve deferred maintenance. We had gone ten to fifteen years adopted high quality instructional materials, without really clear things like learning walk indicators, some of the practices that you're naming. And we just, to be completely direct about it, did not have resources to equally address K-twelve all at the same time. And so we've gone through this staggered approach. So where you see some of that disproportionality in the last couple of years with the K-eight multi year adoption process, with some of the instructional coach work and professional development has meant a decreased focus on high school. And so I just want to name that really explicitly and not at the behest of LEAD or anyone else, but just to say where we've devoted our time and resources. I think what I am incredibly excited about is we are able to be in a position with the launch of this math process then into ELA, into history social studies, and other content areas to redistribute that attention and focus to more appropriately address high quality curriculum and instruction in high school. And so in terms of strategy, obviously one component of that is a multi year adoption process. To begin with math in that case, the first step which Davina spoke to is the instructional instructional audit is incredibly important and includes, similar to what we did in K-eight, classroom observations, surveys, focus groups, student work analysis to help us identify the highest need areas of instructional quality in high school math which tells us how we need to design our professional development in addition to all of the components associated with curriculum evaluation piloting and adoption. So I would say in terms of strategy selection, we are very much at the point where we're redistributing our attention towards high school in order to have that focus. Certainly, EDIA as an interim is sort of an interim supplement to help provide some support while we get those audit results and can redesign professional learning, staffing, resources. But I just want to name that within the state of the state as to why that has looked differently in the last year or two between K-eight and 12.

[Assistant Superintendent Divina Goldwasser (High School & College and Career Readiness)]: And I would add that beyond not resourcing sort of like additionally high school around curriculum, we've also decreased many resources in the high school division. We've cut instructional coaches, there used to be instructional reform facilitators that were at targeted schools that were doing data cycles, that were doing a lot of instructional coaching. And so that was wiped out. We have decreased a lot of the things that are a part of goal three and are really continuing in that trajectory for next year. So that is, you know, a resource issue is a big big piece of it. And the resources that we put into instruction have not been present for a long time.

[President Phil Kim]: Thank you for that. So there are things that I wonder about in terms of non monetary things. And then there's other things that I do worry about in terms of monetary things, like instructional walks. I presume they still take place at the high school level. I assume that we are doing them because we feel that they help produce meaningful shifts in teacher practice. I mean, I guess this is where I'm still wondering, if that is something that we're investing our time and resources, time and people at primarily. Like why is that not something that's captured here and that we discuss if we I mean just again I don't mean to totally blow the report. I I appreciate all the stuff that's going into this right now. So, like, that's from, like, a non monetary kind of wondering that I have. And and and from a from a human capital people personnel cost investments question, I guess I'm I don't know. As we engage in conversations around our budget, would like to see a plan in which we actually invest in our high schools. I don't know if that's wild to ask for. But I think that's partly my wondering. And again, not to suggest that EWI's are not something that we should track and not something that's important. But I think if we can so meaningfully and confidently say that coaches at the K-eight level are so impactful and important and necessary to the work of our schools and K-8s, I don't know why that's not translating or why those decisions have been made at the high school level and why we're not investing our resources and people in

[Chief Financial Officer (SFUSD)]: that time.

[Assistant Superintendent Divina Goldwasser (High School & College and Career Readiness)]: I want to say something about instructional walkthroughs because this is really something that we have developed very deeply and authentically in the high school division over many years. And also, you know, invite any of you to join me on them. We have our next round this Thursday. And so why why invest in instructional walk throughs? So all of our instructional walk throughs include students at the center. So our students, and I don't know if either of you have ever participated in any of our instructional walk throughs, but that is kind of our mandate is that there's no purpose in doing the instructional walk through if the students are not in the room with us. And so they actually go with us from classroom to classroom. And that has been the most transformative part because then the students tell us firsthand, oh, I had that math teacher. I had that other teacher. And then we're using the core rubric to look at academic engagement, all of these different factors, and we're getting real time feedback right there. And then what we also do, which is different than how most instructional walk throughs happen, we partnered with Stanford a few years ago to look at what is the impact of our walkthroughs on teacher practice and instruction. And so through that research with Stanford, we found that even those small, because I had my own questions and the team had their own questions of what are just these drop in moments in a classroom, Does it really change anything? And so the teachers reported that the feedback that they were getting was significant but they wanted more of it. So now built into the instructional walk through time, the site administrator actually does feedback to the teacher in that time and we actually ensure that it gets sent in that moment to the teacher. So that we can track that none of that was a waste of time and that everyone's morning was spent in a way that will have direct, you know, impact on, you know, where we're headed. And so in those walk throughs, when we focus on math classrooms, we're trying to address that variance from site to site. And we're also trying to address where do we have teacher practices where we can highlight a teacher at a department meeting in curriculum instruction because we may not have a supervisor in a role in curriculum instruction, but how can we boost up a teacher leader at one school to actually present to their colleagues kind of how they're engaging students and what outcomes they're getting. So we feel very strongly about our walk through practice really being worth the time. And to your second point, yes we should invest in high school more.

[President Phil Kim]: Yeah and just to clarify I wasn't suggesting that we not do the I walk think my question is why are they not included in a monitoring report around goal three if we know that that practice is meaningful. Right I think so I think there's that and again I don't want to open up the whole can of worms around interim goals and why we have them the way that we do. But the one thing I would add here then is if there's ever a time for us to reinvest in our coaching, feels like the time to do that is no better time than now or yesterday.

[Moonhawk Kim (Executive Director, Research, Planning & Assessment)]: Yeah. I would just add a quick comment about why learning walks are not included at the high school level. It goes back to the data collection issue. So high school team, as Devina mentioned, has long had a strong practice of doing walk throughs. That also means there are a lot of locally grown solutions for capturing and collecting data, which makes it challenging to centrally collect and extract data for us to process and look at. Same challenge at the K-eight level that we're working through. Totally understand.

[Deputy Superintendent (LEAD) [name not stated]]: And I just want to add, President Kim, that exactly what Moon Hawk was just sharing, it's a data collection. So we have amazing, amazing practices happening across our high schools, as you know, that are net neutral for our fiscal impacts. But we do need to have a way to collect the data for them. And we are growing that, especially with our work through the ad hoc committee and really looking at the through line. You know, if this is the goal, how are we collecting it and how are we reporting out. So more to come on that

[Kana Hazelid (Coordinator, LGBTQ Student Services)]: and some

[Deputy Superintendent (LEAD) [name not stated]]: exciting things to share soon.

[President Phil Kim]: Mr. Alexander?

[Commissioner Matt Alexander]: Thanks, President Kim. Yeah, I would just love to pick up on your question around the resource commitments and resource allocations. And so I guess my question is, what is the plan for investing in meeting goal three? I guess that's around the resource. What's the connection between what's laid out here and the resource allocation moving forward for the district?

[Dr. Hsu, Superintendent]: I'll take that. Well, it's us making sure we continue to provide social workers and counselors because we know that in order for a student to get off the EWI list, they need to feel a connection to school community. So there are two major indicators to EWI. One is a GPA that's over two point zero and for a student to have a GPA over two point zero, they need to feel that their learning is meaningful and that they want want to be there. The other part to getting off an EWI list is to have an attendance rate of 85, 87, that and above. And in order for that to happen, you also need to create an environment where our students feel that they are seen, welcomed and belonged. And I know that last year we shared with the board that based on our student wellness data that we had really, really high rates of students saying that they do feel that they belong and welcomed in their schools, particularly in high schools. So us continuing to invest in that is really important. Invest in professional development. I know that at the start of the school year, Davina brought all of the principals together to really emphasize math. I remember being a part of that and the importance of math because we know that core foundational understanding in math and reading and writing is going to be really beneficial for students to have a successful college career life outcome. And so it's us continuing to double down and provide additional supports and funding for professional development, for our educators, for our school community.

[Chief Human Resources Officer (SFUSD) [name not stated]]: Examples.

[President Phil Kim]: Thank

[Commissioner Supryia Ray]: you everyone for all of your work on this report. Really appreciate it. I'm going direct my questions to Superintendent Hsu in keeping with what we've been seeing in our progress monitoring committee meetings and what other folks have been recommending to us.

[Commissioner Alida Fisher]: Okay.

[Commissioner Supryia Ray]: Sorry, I have to kind of lean forward and look this way at the same time. So my first question is around credit recovery. And I know I asked a number of questions about that in the Q and A, so I don't just want to repeat those questions, but I want to go more deeply in this and ask what is our thinking and strategy around offering credit recovery? What do we think that we are doing? What do we think we're achieving? Are we trying to achieve, for instance, better graduation rates or actual college and career readiness? Because those are different things. I guess I'd like to hear from you what you think our program is doing, what we want it to do, and how we can narrow the gap between those things. Particularly narrow the gap between just graduating and being actually college and career ready. That's excellent question,

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Commissioner Ray. I do think that Lisa

[Dr. Hsu, Superintendent]: so one, we know that in order for a young person to be successful in life, they need to be able to graduate high school. We know the importance of a high school diploma because research has shown that a young person with a high school diploma has a significant leg up in terms of opportunities for career stability as well as life stability. So I personally believe that that really, really important for a young person. In order for a young person to be able to graduate on time with a high school diploma, we need to provide additional supports for some of our young people. There are some young people who do need some extra supports during the summer, extra supports perhaps during the school hours so that they can catch up. I also firmly believe that every young person has great potential to be successful and fantastic. And so this is why we partner with a lot of our nonprofit agencies to provide that support. That's why we have summer programming for credit recovery because we know that those are the times where young people can catch up and get additional credits and particularly during graduation time for seniors so they can graduate. In terms of being ready for college and career, I don't believe it's different and that far apart from graduation. I think in terms of being prepared for preparing our students for college and career means we have to provide more exposure to our young people so that they can see all the different opportunities for them to then engage in. So that they know what is available to them. Having those mentors come into schools and provide the types of exposures and the opportunities for our young people to really engage in perhaps a work experience, perhaps an internship, perhaps some type of career exposure that's what Patrick does so well. So I do feel like they are connected. But honestly, graduation rate is really what I believe is the indicator for success so that a young person will be able to apply to job opportunities in the future. I don't know if staff has any other comments about that.

[Commissioner Supryia Ray]: So did any of you want to comment further? I can ask my next question if you don't want to do that. But if you do, I welcome that.

[Patrick West (Executive Director, College & Career Readiness)]: I would just add about the credit recovery pieces that we do emphasize in our program that we want our students to a C or higher, which would help them be able to be college or career ready. So it's not just about passing the course, but it's passing it at a high enough rate where you would be able to get that marker.

[Deputy Superintendent (LEAD) [name not stated]]: Just to add also under Doctor. Sue's direction, I met with Vice Chancellor Yi from City College this last week to really strengthen our opportunities for our students for credit recovery. They have a TRST program, they have ways in which our students can enroll in City College to also get the credits. Doctor. Sue has been really clear to strengthen the partnerships not only through our own College and Career Readiness Department, but also through opportunities with City College.

[Commissioner Supryia Ray]: Okay, thank you. I will probably have some follow on questions about the credit recovery stuff, but I'll save those right now so I can just focus on the higher level strategic things. My second question relates to fostering accountability and responsibility, which I think are absolutely critical to students developing agency and being able to have a life where they have choices in front of them and more choices rather than fewer choices. I asked a bit about responsibility and so forth here and accountability and it was one of the shortest answers that was given to questions and so I'd like to hear from you, Superintendent Hsu, about how you feel we are doing that as a district.

[Dr. Hsu, Superintendent]: Can you clarify? I believe all of our students know that there is a code of conduct in our schools. There is expectations for our students to perform. There is an expectation for young people to participate, to engage and to have meaningful dialogue within their schools, within their class, with their educators, with

[Moonhawk Kim (Executive Director, Research, Planning & Assessment)]: their

[Dr. Hsu, Superintendent]: teachers. If you're talking about accountability in terms of making sure that as a school, we are holding ourselves accountable or as a district we are holding ourselves accountable. I do believe that it does start at the top and I do believe that that means that I have to set and we as a board of a team of governance leaders set the metrics and goals. And then I work with our executive cabinet to make sure that we are allocating resources and funds so that then the leadership team can then make sure that we are allocating those resources to move the needle on the goals that we as a governance body are setting. In terms of then bringing it down into the schools itself, it starts with professional development with our principals, our administrators, so that they have clear understanding of what the expectations are that we as a governance team is setting for ourselves and our students. And then it continues to trickle down. I do believe that the walk throughs are a great example of how we are holding each other accountable where within the instructional walk throughs we are observing educators delivering and providing the curriculum. And so it is an iterative process and I know that it will take time but you are seeing the results of that process right now in this presentation. You're seeing that we are moving our students in their outcomes. Small, but there is a growth. And I think it's a growth that we need to continue to push forward. But it's a growth because you are seeing coordination across different systems and a greater emphasis on accountability and oversight so that we can work together to move the needle for our students.

[Commissioner Supryia Ray]: I just like to follow-up on that a bit. I definitely care a great deal about accountability from the broader perspective of what we do too but I would like to get as good a sense as I can of what we feel as a district. And I am not by asking this implying that students don't work hard. There are many students who work extremely hard. But I want to know what our sense is of what it is that we think students should be responsible for. What we think that students, like, that we want them to get from being educated in SFUSD so that they will be independent agents able to have a choice filled life in essence. So what is it that we think students should be responsible for, need to do? What skills or abilities do we want to help inculcate in students? What do we expect them to do? Thank you.

[Dr. Hsu, Superintendent]: Well, my personal view is as a world class city, I do believe that our students should avail themselves to all the different opportunities that the city provides. I think as young people, I firmly believe that every young person wants to do well and wants to further their life. So would like to believe that within, particularly high school as we're talking now, our educators are promoting that sense of curiosity in our young people. We were just talking about this just a few minutes ago where we had thousands of young people, thousands of people out supporting their teachers, their community. So this sense of civic engagement and social responsibility I think is really important. But we also have young people who right now are under a lot of pressure to get all of their GPAs together so that they can hear back from their schools. So we also know that young people are thriving and working really hard to earn and achieve the grades and know that they want to further themselves within their education or academic career. At the end of the day, I think our responsibility as a school district is to provide the tools necessary for young people to be rational thinkers. To be able to think for themselves but be given the tools and the information so that they can make up their own minds. To be truly the masters of their future. I think we would fail as a school district and as a society if we tell young people how to think and what to think. I think it is really important that we're teaching young people and giving them the tools to be critical thinkers and make decisions for themselves.

[Commissioner Alida Fisher]: Thank you. Appreciate it. I do appreciate this conversation and the data that's not only in the report, but I had asked the question about the EDIA data, and I really, really appreciate seeing the breakout. And this is really, really exciting data. So thank you very much. We appreciate the increase in the data analysis and the collaboration between groups. Thank you so much for pointing that out. That's really exciting to hear. A couple of things I heard that I wanted to follow-up on, particularly when we talk about the early warning indicators, and I saw that on the presentation and here in the report as well. The importance of the coordinated team, the wellness centers, the counselors, attendance support, all of that was mentioned by you as speakers here as well as in the materials we have and in what was presented. But the question I really have is how do we keep this work going with the cuts that we're proposing? Like we see, you know, in H1 an upcoming agenda item that we're going to cut six counselor positions, right? So how are we making sure that we're aligning our resources with the recommendations that are coming out of this progress monitoring session? So that's one of the big questions I have. Also with EDIA, right now it's being covered by the Foundation and WestEd. I'm assuming that this is the kind of thing that we want to keep going. Do we have any plans or resources to keep going after the grant runs out? Like, so I think my next step for me is seeing the resources tied to making sure that, to President Kim's point, we continue to, you know, invest in the work that is really driving change. And as far as credit recovery, two of my kids have unfortunately had to participate in credit recovery. One both in ninth or tenth grade. One without it, by the way, she would not have qualified for her CSU, so thank you to the credit recovery team. And the other, it lit a fire under his butt to realize that mom was serious about accountability. So it has so I do appreciate the work that's being done there and having this as an option for our students. Thank you. Yes. The resource question I would love for you to answer. Taking my soapbox out, just standing out of the question.

[Dr. Hsu, Superintendent]: Yes, so you made reference to an item that is coming up after this agenda is over. And the staffing reduction item is really around positions that's connected to the number of students that we have in the district. So that's a very separate type of conversation. In terms of making sure that we continue to have resources to support the really great work of our high school team, you're going to this is hearing a combination of things. One is that we are writing grants to try to supplement. It is unfortunate a lot of our career tech career technological and education, career tech ed work, CTE work, unfortunately it's funded through grants. And so it requires us to either re up those grants or find new grants to continue to supplement. And we are very much committed to doing that. And it would be great to see how EDIA really pans out. As you have heard, this is the first year of this. So far it looks like it's going really well. And let's see what, you know, with more data, semester, another year of this will yield. And if it is something that's really positive that is moving the needle for our students, then absolutely we should continue to fundraise for it to make sure that it's available for our students.

[Assistant Superintendent Divina Goldwasser (High School & College and Career Readiness)]: Can I add something? Can add a response. So I don't want to only focus on the counseling piece and I really appreciate all of the questions about resources. So this goal also encompasses our support to CTE teachers, and that is the work that the College and Career division has really been holding. And so there's over 100 teachers? Yeah, so over 100 teachers through that department get professional development. We have grants that are managed. There's audits. There's, you know, a ton of work that happens to support that. Being able to maintain that is a really big piece of goal three. And then also our advanced placement courses are a heavier resource for a school site. So school sites will be making decisions right now as they do their schedule. If they can afford to have an additional duty free prep period for teachers. And that will impact how many advanced placement courses each school can give. And both of those two factors play into indicator on the dashboard. So these are like structural things about a school that aren't about whether a student wants to be in the program or kind of even their success, but it's kind of the baseline of what we can even provide. So it's important to kind of look at beyond just the counseling piece.

[President Phil Kim]: Actually, before you begin, student delegates, you for your time. You are welcome to leave when it hits 09:00. Thank you. Oh, can they? Okay.

[Student Delegate Melanie Cruz]: So I believe this is such a good idea overall because coming from, like, personal experience, when, like, you give a lot of opportunities in working or internships for students, they get on responsibilities and accountabilities because usually internships require them to be responsible and be able to, like, time management overall. And that worked really much for me. Sophomore year, I was not really, like, could say, on my grind. And after a summer internship, I was not locked in. I was really not you know, attendance wasn't the best. And then I had a summer internship at UCSF, and I saw that, you know, everything doesn't always have to be so negative. And when you have those opportunities, you kind of like you could say, like, revamp or, like, update your software. You're like, okay. You know what? Like, this is something that I like. This is something that I have an opportunity to do that I didn't know before. And then the next year, I was doing all these things, and I'm like, there's so many opportunities. So I do really believe that when you are given an opportunity, it really opens high schoolers' eyes. And you're like, you know what? Like, I have a chance at this, and I feel like a lot of high school students don't think like that, especially because during budget cuts, a lot of opportunities for internships are really, really low. And I knew that a lot of students were like, oh, there's nothing I can do. Everything's filled up. Everything is either really, like, you could say, like, really small, like like, availability, and they're like, oh, you know, this is what like, this can so much, like, of a simple like, you could say, like, experience role can lead to so much more, and I feel like that's so important because it it can really show a student, like, responsibility. And if they wanna do this college, and it gives them, like,

[Twine [last name unknown] (Student)]: oh, maybe I do wanna

[Student Delegate Melanie Cruz]: do this. Maybe they'll do it at first. I get this amount of money, but I actually like this. You know? And it's, like, a really good overall like, it would lead to so many good results coming from personal experience. I feel like it just gives that professional environment for students that aren't really familiar with it and haven't really heard about it. So I really think this is a really good idea, and I know a lot of high school students would really love this. I also believe they'll go more to school, because it also kinda gives the student, like, you know what? I have an opportunity. Like, I can be in these fields and not feel like I'm not smart enough for them. So when they get those, like, experiences and, like, kind of open out, they feel more confident in their in themselves and, like, overall, like, you know what? I'm not dumb. I'm smart, and I can do things, and I can come to school more often and actually try in schoolwork and get my stuff together. So I feel like it's really important, and I think it's something that should be funded more and I'm really, really appreciate that this is happening because I used to go to Mission and we didn't like have as much but the opportunities we had were really, really good and they make a really big difference. So thank you so much. Yeah.

[Assistant Superintendent Divina Goldwasser (High School & College and Career Readiness)]: Melanie, thanks so much for sharing your experience, and I'm so glad that you had that opportunity and that you're advocating for other students to be able to have the same.

[Deputy Superintendent (LEAD) [name not stated]]: I also just want to add, we would be remiss if we didn't mention the fact that Mission Bay Hub is going live very soon, is a huge resource allocation that the organization has really quadrupled down on, I would say. And so the idea is that there will be over 200 students enrolled in the Mission Bay hub, not only and then that's separate from Mission Bay Elementary, right? One of our top requested schools for next year. But very, very exciting and I just really want to name that because that is kind of that will be coming in more future reports, right? Because that is opening and that is a resource allocation that Doctor. Sue has been really clear about.

[Dr. Hsu, Superintendent]: Mission Bay, ladies. Thank you. But the Mission Bay Hub is a great example of a private public partnership because it's a partnership with our local hospital, UCSF, and I believe some of our and then of course some of the private companies around the Mission Bay Area. But then it's also jointly funded with some philanthropic funds. So it's just such a wonderful way for our community to come together to support our young people to offer those internships and career exposures so that they can figure out what it is that they want to do when they grow up.

[Commissioner Parag Gupta]: Love it. Thank you all for this. You mentioned the California dashboard in the report so I started doing more digging going down that rabbit hole as I learned always check on links in the reports and so forth. Looking at the California school board, so first of all it's great that we've increased by two points. I noticed that you know when we look at peer districts and even California, California went up seven points from 45% to 52% in the last year. Long Beach often a peer district that we look to similar sized demographics went up 10 points from 4059% and even a place like Fresno with greater focal populations and over 65% socioeconomically disadvantaged went from 43 to 50%. And so my question, you know, some of this may be macro trends and and so, you know, I'm I'm kinda keeping that in mind. We're getting farther away from COVID, but we also have greater concentration of focal populations within our school districts. I think across the state. And so I'm curious what are other comparable school districts doing that you feel we may learn from in terms of significantly raising our college and career readiness?

[Assistant Superintendent Divina Goldwasser (High School & College and Career Readiness)]: So Oakland, for example, has a dual enrollment partnership where they have, you know, almost all of their high school students are in dual enrollment. And so they have a coordinator at every single school site. It is built into all of their master schedule. They have, you know, that coordinator who is supporting the students in their class. And so I think some of the growth of other districts is more districts taking on those partnerships that maybe didn't exist before. SFUSD is more of an early adopter of those things. And so there's a point where, you know, we either need to do a major more, you know, investment in terms of either growing our CTE courses, our AP courses, or all of these different levels that are structures and opportunities that we provide to students. I think for some other districts they were not, know, maybe didn't have all of that in place and are growing that little by little. So that's part of the reason. Don't know if you want to jump in Patrick.

[President Phil Kim]: I was just going to

[Patrick West (Executive Director, College & Career Readiness)]: say we've also noticed that other districts are doing more work around grading practices as a district and so that also has an impact on students being college and career ready based on their A to G course success rates.

[Commissioner Parag Gupta]: Got it. I appreciate it. So are there any things and I think this kind of builds on what Commissioner Alexander and President Kim were talking about where are there any practices that you're seeing that we have not yet adapted that may lead to even greater gains like we're seeing in some of these other regions?

[Devin [last name unknown] (Curriculum & Instruction)]: I would just go back to some of the work around high quality curriculum instruction. And so, you know, one piece I would say about that, again, not to be a bit of a broken record, but, you know, high school has had ten, fifteen years or more depending on the content area since the adoption of new materials. High quality instructional materials are the floor, not the ceiling of curriculum and instruction. And so, you know, however, we wouldn't like have a home without brace and bolt or doing some seismic retrofitting. And so it is really important that is one specific initiative. We've partnered with a number of different districts who have begun high school adoption process. It's not uncommon to sort of start in K-eight and then go into high school. I would say that's one piece. Another additional piece is increasing the scope and the content of professional learning. We have a really robust system for working with high school department chairs at the high school level across content areas. However, we have not had as robust engagement with high school teachers as a cohort, similar to what we've done in middle school with things like common planning time and grade level release days. The other piece that I would say is the work around high quality instructional practices that Devina has spoken to with between the materials, coaching and professional development, and then classroom indicators that we're leaning into. We've reported on that work in K-eight associated with guardrail three and we'll continue to do so with goal one and goal two. But I think that's another area that other districts have leaned into at the high school level that is a growth area for us. So I think the combination of all of those pieces would complement the work that Davina spoke to around the programmatic aspects of course offerings, program offerings, and some of the counseling and supervision work.

[Dr. Hsu, Superintendent]: Sorry, can I just add that I also think that Devina and the entire high school team has done a really good job in supporting principals as well? And so you see our high school principals, we actually don't have a very high turnover at all in high school. And so I think that is really significant. It speaks to Devina and the team's leadership in terms of supporting our principals, making sure that they have the resources to be able support their entire school community. And I think that's why we're moving towards the goals that you're seeing today.

[Commissioner Parag Gupta]: Thank you. So I didn't think of it earlier so I apologize for not putting in questions. But can we receive this information disaggregated by the focal populations that we have? It helps to understand actual gains made as I suspect some of the demographic shifts that we see within our district, especially over the last three or four years, may mask some of the gains due to shrinking number of non focal populations and non socioeconomically disadvantaged students so you know we've gained three points in terms of socioeconomically disadvantaged students which we know you know we don't see the same results as non SED so for future reports it would be interesting because I think we might actually see more gains you know so that would be request and then one other thing actually superintendent I'm curious related to that what are we doing to increase enrollment and bring back the 3,000 students that we've lost because you know if you follow the work of say renowned Harvard inequality economist Raj Chetty he knows that you know related to this goal, low income students and socioeconomically integrated high schools have higher college attendance rates primarily due to increased economic connectedness, access to social capital, higher aspiration and norms, better school resources.

[Dr. Hsu, Superintendent]: Yeah, so Davina started talking about that. We started last year and really doubling down on our partnership with City College opportunities. So that there are more AP classes that our young people can participate in. So that there are more dual enrollment classes in all of our high schools. So that it's not just a concentration of academically rigorous classes in only a subset of our schools but now we can have our young people, access these programs and these classes across all of our schools. And then number two, we partnered with Francisco State to say every high school student has an opportunity to go to SF State, because we now have guaranteed admissions. So it's constantly pushing towards this notion that you can do it, we believe in you and we will have the support systems in place to get you there. I really it goes back to this notion of what Commissioner Ray was talking about in terms of having expectations, giving our young people the belief that they can do this. And so us putting in place these types of programs will get us closer there. Partnering with our city departments and our nonprofit agencies to expand internship and career exposure opportunities is also another way for us to support our students as they are engaging in CTE programs.

[Commissioner Parag Gupta]: Sorry, apologies for miscommunicating. I meant getting, you know, we lost 3,000 students in terms of enrollment in SFUSD. And so a lot of those students voted with their feet or left for whatever reason went to independent schools. And, you know, a lot of what we hear in public comment as well as you know what I reference when I when I refer to the economist Raj Chetty is the idea of if we bring those students back you know we talk about the high cost of some of these interventions which is great and well worthwhile but there's almost this passive ability to increase scores by making sure we still maintain a very diverse population of students. So a free, if you will, a free intervention is if we can bring back those students that we've lost over the last three or four years or attract students, then that offers another way in which we're not paying anything.

[Dr. Hsu, Superintendent]: Absolutely. I think we need to, well there's two parts to enrollment. So we need to definitely increase our enrollment by having different programs that our young people can see value in. So that's either more academic rigorous classes so that young people can see the trajectory to go into college, career and life. I think there's also in terms of enrollment is just to have programs to get people back in the class room. So we really need to focus on chronic absenteeism and getting our students back into the classroom so that they can have those instructional minutes and then can avail themselves all of these other different opportunities. So if we're talking about filling our classrooms, making sure that our schools are vibrant places, then there's the bringing students back and then continuing to have programs that families will want to choose. And then in terms of just declining enrollment in general, we as a city are experiencing or just a decline in the number of children. We as a state, as a country, are experiencing that. And so I think unfortunately this is impacting all of us. But I do definitely hear your push for us to think outside the box to see if there's other programs that we can create particularly for high schools so that we can attract and make sure that we keep our SFUSD middle schoolers so that they can go to high school or attract other students to come back to SFUSD. Thank

[Vice President Jaime Huling]: you so much. I have a couple of questions that are kind of follow ups on parts of the discussion earlier. I really appreciate that we're going to be investing in new high quality instructional materials for high school math and I recall at an earlier meeting last year, there was a larger schedule for reviewing and updating all of our curriculum. And on that, high school history and social studies were among the priority curricula. Is that still also a prioritized update to our curriculum, and what is the schedule for that? That is.

[Devin [last name unknown] (Curriculum & Instruction)]: The schedule for that is we are preparing to bring forth to the board a recommendation for adoption at the April. We are anticipating a recommendation for adoption for historysocial studies for elementary school and for high school. Unfortunately, after much review and evaluation, we have not identified a high quality middle school curricula. So we do not yet feel at this point that there is a program that we would like to bring before the board. So for elementary and for high school and we're anticipating the April.

[Vice President Jaime Huling]: Great. Will that be for all high school curricula, like world history, US history, etcetera?

[Devin [last name unknown] (Curriculum & Instruction)]: Yes. For high school, we're anticipating US history, world history, ethnic studies. And then the final course is an economics and government course, the one caveat to that being the state's updated requirements associated with financial financial literacy does have the ability to replace economics. And so in that piece, we're finalizing the recommendation associated with that pairing of courses in particular.

[Vice President Jaime Huling]: Great. Thank you. And I know in our best ad hoc committee, we talk about not having the throat clearing comments, but our recommendations haven't come out yet, so I can't help myself. I just wanted to say I really was really, really heartened to see a 5% year over year increase in math proficiency for ninth and tenth graders winter to winter, and I feel like that is just really great to see monitor reports where numbers are moving in the right direction and we're seeing significant increases in student achievement. I do have my strategic questions for the superintendent. One thing that I noted is on the written report at the bottom of page nine to follow-up on the conversations around credit recovery. To me, it did seem like credit recovery courses were one of the district's main strategies for getting students back on track and reaching interim goal 3.2. And the written report notes next year a reduction in funding will impact the number of courses offered as well as the number of students enrolled. Students will need to be prioritized based on those with highest need. My understanding of student outcomes focused governance is that the kind of entire point is to protect and invest in difficult budget times in those things that will move the numbers toward our goals. And this interim goal 3.2 specifically is a superintendent selected interim goal. And so my question to the superintendent is what is your strategy around budgeting to protect and even expand credit recovery opportunities that are already showing improvements in your chosen interim goal 3.2?

[Dr. Hsu, Superintendent]: Thank you for the question. And as I shared, a lot of the work within the high school team or the high school unit is really comes from mixed funding sources. And so credit recovery is one of those areas where we have to aggressively write grants for and fundraise for. And so we will continue do that.

[Vice President Jaime Huling]: That's great but if grant funding is not forthcoming there's also always the opportunity to reallocate unrestricted funds to invest in meeting our student outcome goals. So is there a backup strategy on the timeline that fits our budget for that?

[Dr. Hsu, Superintendent]: I will have to come back and share with you the strategy.

[President Phil Kim]: We all said it. It's okay. Thank you Vice President Huling. Sorry with all due respect. Much appreciated.

[Vice President Jaime Huling]: I think President Alexander has two minutes to really

[President Phil Kim]: He certainly does not have If two minutes to would like to ask a question I'm kidding. Would you like to ask a final question before we wrap up?

[Vice President Jaime Huling]: I would. I'm curious what our strategy beyond professional development is to increase use with fidelity of Edea now that we're seeing it working. There's been a lot of conversations around scheduling and instructional minutes. And so beyond just educating teachers that it works, what are our strategies for making time in the day for students to make sure that they are able to use it?

[Dr. Hsu, Superintendent]: So currently, EDIA is a voluntary tool. And so I think what the team needs to do now is go back and continue to look at the data and see if it is truly yielding. Because it could just, we don't want it to be just an initial excitement of a new tool. We actually want it to actually yield long term results. And if that is what it is yielding then we can pivot from a voluntary tool to something that we can continue to ask our teachers to use and integrate into their school day.

[Assistant Superintendent Divina Goldwasser (High School & College and Career Readiness)]: First students, increasing student use, the most important thing that's going to drive students to use it is their peer group and hearing from other students, oh, this really helped me do better in math. And so part of the process and kind of the excitement of working with EDIA is that research is currently taking place. So there's student focus groups and teacher focus groups, and we're collecting all of this information. And in a pilot, we didn't dictate, because I had this question in the beginning, can students do it for homework, do they have to do it in class? And what we're studying is what are the variances if this teacher gives protected time versus another teacher who it's a homework. And so we're in this really exciting learning phase where then we can kind of present all of this. And I think that our teachers will be really excited once we actually can show SFUSD examples because when we launched this, we shared examples from other districts and it's always kind of hard to get on board with something that you hear about in another district even if the outcomes are good. But what we find in SFUSD, people get much more on board with something when it's like a homegrown thing and we can say, well, we've adapted this, you know, for our use. So next steps moving forward would be to kind of analyze all of these inputs coming in and then figure out how we're going to, you know, have really the students be the spokespeople for this, have those teachers digging in, and then be able to share back. Because some of the teachers that didn't dive in, you know, we get new things all the time. And so I really do understand where they're coming from. There's only so much that you can take in and you have to make decisions. And risking kind of your instructional time on something that you know nothing about yet that hasn't shown proven results in SFUSD may not have been something that they wanted to do. But I think all of that's going to shift once we're able to share more around how it's going.

[President Phil Kim]: Thank you so much for your presentation. I appreciate all your leadership and work. We look forward to picking the conversation back up soon. Thank you very much. Colleagues as we move to item G I do want to just frame up these next few items because they're all related to each other. So we're going to begin with item G1, fiscal and operational health update. As was in the background on BoardDocs, this update will serve as a study session for us to dive deeper into the relationship between enrollment, budget, physician control, and staffing reductions. In this discussion will hopefully provide, kind of our our first deep dive into this conversation. What you see as well under item g two is an LCAP mid year report. This was an informational item that at the request of commissioner Fisher I pulled up to be a discussion item in part to recognize the importance of this but to also be able to articulate a commitment that I've made both to her and this board around introducing a study session for the budget that was just announced, will be taking place next Wednesday, May March. Definitely not May. March 4. And so thank you to staff who are helping to put that together. And so our discussion on that will be limited hopefully if at all but I did want to just elevate that to respect the fact that LCAP is a significant item that is related to our budget. The subsequent action items that you see are all coming strategically after our discussion items so that we can have a conversation about enrollment, budget, etc. That leads into our actions and so I just I wanted to frame up these next few items so that we have minimal discussion at the time. We should have all those conversations in the context of our fiscal and operational health update. Does that make sense? Any questions? Okay, great. With now, yeah, okay because they're all related to budget. So I will yes, Commissioner Fisher?

[Commissioner Alida Fisher]: Yeah, really appreciate that framing President Kim. And I recognize the tension of the LCAP report. It is required to be done this month and so thank you. And I know we have a lot of folks like Christina Wong who is covering the LCAP right now even though it's one of 20 other jobs that she's working while we hire someone responsible for LCAP. Just to me it didn't sit right to be on the consent agenda when it is our LCAP stands for Local Control Accountability Plan, right? And so if we're going to be transparent and accountable with community, I think we need to have a conversation around it. Although I recognize now is not the time. We don't have the staff or the, you know, like we're not in a place right now to really do it justice. I do appreciate bringing it forward and look forward to having a more robust discussion. Later.

[President Phil Kim]: With that, I will turn it over to the superintendent and staff to introduce this item.

[Dr. Hsu, Superintendent]: I'm sorry, for point of clarity, are you saying that you don't want to have an LCAP presentation?

[Commissioner Alida Fisher]: Well, my understanding was it was going to be part of the larger fiscal update, right? That we am I misunderstanding?

[Sarah Grossman Swenson]: Well,

[Commissioner Alida Fisher]: just a a discussion. It's no action. There's no action for us, but just it it didn't, you know, like from the standpoint of accountability and transparency, my understanding is it was gonna be rolled into the larger fiscal conversation and not a separate review of the is that correct? Am I understanding that correct, That

[President Phil Kim]: was our conversation for next week.

[Dr. Hsu, Superintendent]: For next week. Right. Right. And then so for today for the LCAP present

[President Phil Kim]: Oh no, it looks like

[Dr. Hsu, Superintendent]: the LCAP presentation, are we going to have a presentation or are you just going to accept the midyear report?

[President Phil Kim]: Well, there's no action to accept. So I was not anticipating there being presentation on LCAP that there was just gonna be an acknowledgement in this meeting. Well, that that was the conversation that we had. And so if that is not gonna be the case, Yes?

[Deputy Superintendent (LEAD) [name not stated]]: There's a couple of things here. The first one is that an LCAP Midterm Report has to be given to the board meeting before February 28. I'm going to look to General Counsel at this point to see if our item that's been loaded into Board Docs will meet that requirement or if you need a couple minutes. I apologize General Counsel for asking that question. That's why it was originally just

[Commissioner Matt Alexander]: And it was given to us at the last meeting.

[Chief Human Resources Officer (SFUSD) [name not stated]]: It was.

[Commissioner Matt Alexander]: Actually, so that's already happened.

[Deputy Superintendent (LEAD) [name not stated]]: Well, but we cancelled that meeting, friend. Commissioner Alexander.

[Commissioner Alida Fisher]: It was on the February 3,

[Commissioner Matt Alexander]: Oh, I see. Okay, but it's been given to us. Correct. It's been submitted and published.

[Deputy Superintendent (LEAD) [name not stated]]: I just want to make sure we are meeting our February 28 deadline for our LCAP midterm. Whether we give a slide deck presentation or not, that part will whatever makes everyone happy. I just want to make sure we're meeting that deadline.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: It's my opinion that you're meeting the deadline.

[Deputy Superintendent (LEAD) [name not stated]]: Well, that is all I need to mind.

[President Phil Kim]: Great. And so the conversation that we have been having that I think we recently had in leadership team was I was simply bringing this item up out of informational just to acknowledge the fact that it was significant item this was a conversation again from Commissioner Fisher and I explicitly asked her that we not spend a ton of time on it and go into a huge discussion or presentation but just simply to acknowledge it with the recognition that LCAP has to be part of our conversation because it is such a huge part of our budget. So if that's the part that did not make its way around, that's what I want to make sure. Well

[Commissioner Alida Fisher]: and I would also like to acknowledge and thank staff for there were a lot of questions around the LCAP report last week and this week. I think staff did a great job of answering a lot of those. So thank you.

[Dr. Hsu, Superintendent]: Okay. So internally, staff is going to we're going to have to regroup a little bit and we'll figure out what we will do next week at the budget study session. But right now, we are going to move into fiscal and operation health update where we want to share with the board all the steps and necessary systems and procedures that have led us to develop the staffing reduction plan, also known as the particular kinds of reductions. So I'm going to hand this over to our Deputy Superintendent of Business Services, Chris Mopenitez, as well as our CFO,

[Chief Financial Officer (SFUSD)]: Good evening. So we are going to start by sort of highlighting some of the annual tasks that districts complete every February and March. This is a collaboration we've been working very closely between HR and the business services department. And annually, need to go through the process of balancing their enrollment and their staffing. So tonight, in closed session, the board already approved the probationary release of 31 certificated employees and the release of two ninety seven temporary certificated employees at the end of this school year. Later this evening, we'll be asking the board to provide initial layoff notices to 10 certificated and 32 classified employees. Next week, we will notice all central office administrators that they may be released or reassigned for the twenty six-twenty seven school year. And then in May, we will come back to the board if any final layoff notices, also known as PKS notices, are required before May 15. And that will be the time if there are any civil service management or non management reductions, those will come in May as well. Next slide, please. March 15 is a big deadline for human resources. The education code requires us to notify certificated and classified employees, so that's our teachers, counselors, administrators, paraeducators, by March 15 if they may be released, reassigned, or laid off. So this is only a preliminary notice. A final note layoff decision needs to be made by May 15. San Francisco is a little bit unique in this situation as we are in many situations, but we have civil service employees as well, and the March 15 deadline does not apply to civil service employees. So that is something that's unique to San Francisco. Next slide, please. So I wanted to point out that our staff reduction notices are much lower than last year. Our PKS, or our particular kinds of service reductions, contains 42 full time equivalents, 42 employees, compared to the two ninety eight that we issued preliminary notices for last year. And I'm going to turn it over to Chris to talk about some of the reasons why. But number one, we have increased position control. And number two, we strategically hired temporary staff across credential areas in anticipation of this sort of action. So Chris, I'm going let you talk a little bit about the position control.

[Chris Mont Benitez (Deputy Superintendent of Business Services)]: Sure. Position control in and of itself is just a helpful tool to cross reference for HR all the positions that are needed as we get enrollment numbers in and we get principal selections in and very quickly, much more quickly than in the past and accurately cross reference those with how many folks we actually have. And so this allows us to not over notice as much as we've had to in past. We can be much more, excuse me, real time accurate in finding every position that we have on the books and quickly cross referencing it with every single school request and every single central office request and get a much more targeted potential PKS rather than a much broader one.

[Chief Financial Officer (SFUSD)]: And if we could move to the next slide. And Chris, this will be your slide as well.

[Chris Mont Benitez (Deputy Superintendent of Business Services)]: So the steps to do that what I was just outlining, is using projected enrollment, which in this district it's helpful because we get a lot of those assignments done by this time in the year. And we give sites their allocations, central allocations as well as selected allocations at each of the sites. Excuse me. Should probably water with me. My big mug got left upstairs. And then cross referencing that with everybody's budget, and then cross referencing it with position control. So in other words, if there's 40 of a particular kind of position needed, do we have those 40? Are they at the right sites? How many of them are filled? How many of them are left to be filled? And very quickly, that allows us to cross reference with HR what the delta is. Right? So do we have have to hire five more of that thing? Or do we have three more people already in those positions than we actually need next year? So we've gotten much better this year at doing that and doing it in a quick and accurate manner.

[Chief Financial Officer (SFUSD)]: So how do we determine the number of layoffs? Annually, we need to determine the number of classes that we'll need based on enrollment. And that will inform how many teachers we need. We then have to consider the number of teachers who are returning from leave. We have a significant number of teachers that take leave for or all employee groups that take leave for a variety of reasons. And so when people are on leave, their position needs to be backfilled with a temporary employee because they're entitled to come back to that position. So part of the noticing that you'll see tonight is about people returning from leaves, and we will highlight that as we get there. Next slide. So unfortunately, we are asking for some limited reductions. For certificated staff, we are requesting to issue preliminary layoff notices to 10 total certificated employees. Two single subject art, two single subject music, and six counselors. And just to be clear from some of the public comment, I want to clear this up, we are not reducing allocations in arts, music, or counseling. These notices are requested to accommodate reductions due programmatic changes, or employees returning from leaves in these areas. Specifically, the art and music are because there are two employees in each of those credential areas on leave that will bump people that are filling their positions right now. So and this number of 10 for a district of our size is very, very small. So moving on to the next slide, this is classified reductions that recommending. We are recommending that eight A Series paraeducators, these are paraeducators that provide classroom support, two C Series paraeducators that work with child development programs, six R Series paraeducators, they provide community support, and 16 T series paraeducators that provide student support and behavior management. So a total of 32 employees on the classified side. As a reminder, these would just be preliminary notices and the board would be required to take action by May 15 if we were going to issue a final notice.

[Chris Mont Benitez (Deputy Superintendent of Business Services)]: Would you just help folks understand preliminary notices and what might happen between now?

[Chief Financial Officer (SFUSD)]: Yeah, I'm going go into that. So what is not included tonight? All central office administrators, as I referenced earlier, will receive a notice of release or reassignment. And management and non management civil service positions can be reduced with a sixty day notice. So we still are planning district office reductions in these both of these employee groups. They are not included in this PKS tonight. And so the next slide, we can talk a little bit about the certificated layoffs process. So if the board takes action tonight to reduce these particular kinds of services by credential area, as I spelled out, arts to art, to music, six counselor. These would be reductions in positions, not people at this point. If you take action, then HR staff would determine who actually does get noticed. We would first process resignations. We haven't accounted for any resignations or retirements yet for next year. So as soon as someone resigns, that's one less person to issue a layoff notice to. Notices are issued by seniority. We have seniority list that we update annually. It would again be a preliminary notice, and the board would need we'd need to come back to the board if we were to issue a final notice prior to May 15. One of the things that's specific to certificated employees is skipping and tiebreaker criteria. We would allow employees to be skipped if they have special education, math is listed there twice.

[Chris Mont Benitez (Deputy Superintendent of Business Services)]: We

[Chief Financial Officer (SFUSD)]: really want to emphasize math math is really important. If they have a BCLAD credential, which is a bilingual credential, or TK authorization. So if the first art teacher on the list also had a BCLAD or math or TK, that person would be skipped and we would go to the next employee. Tiebreaker determines who's the most senior when they're hired on the same day, which is very common for educators because we all have the same start date every year, right? So everybody's first day is August 18, whatever year. We would then look to see who has multiple credentials or who has bilingual credentials or if they've recently been placed in special education or in a high potential school. And this criteria is developed in partnership with our labor partners at UESF. Moving on to the classified layoffs process, very similar. Instead of by credential area, we would take action to reduce by job classification. These, again, tonight are reductions in positions, not people. But, unfortunately, then the next step would be HR determining who would actually get a notice. And, again, that's by job classification. We would process leaves, resignations, retirements, and notices are issued by seniority. Again, preliminary notice, and I would need to come back to you before May 15 to request a final notice. So what does this look like from the employee perspective? We would be required to give a layoff notice, a preliminary layoff notice prior to March 15. Again, based on seniority, all employees would get a letter that outlines the legal process for layoffs. They would work with their unions and likely request a hearing. That's we went through the hearing process last year when we issued notices. We would have a hearing for an administrative law judge to make sure that we had done this properly, that people were noticed properly, that we had a valid seniority list. As any attrition is accounted for, if people resign, if they retire, if they take leave of absence, we can revoke those preliminary notices, and so we would do that as quickly as possible. Or if funding is confirmed and a principal decides, hey, I have funding, I want to hire a t 10 or another employee on that list, we would be able to rescind a notice. HR would be available to provide support and answer questions. We would work with our employee unions, UESF in this case, to ensure that they knew who was on the list and could support those employees as well. And again, in order to make this a final notice, would need to come back to the board prior to May 15. And even at that point, after a final notice is issued, if there's a resignation, that notice can still be rescinded. And if someone is ultimately laid off, they remain on a rehire list, and we are required to reach out to them before we hire new employees in those categories. So that is a lot of information, but we are happy to take questions.

[President Phil Kim]: Questions from commissioners? Commissioner Fisher? Oh, God.

[Commissioner Supryia Ray]: Ray? I have a quick question. It's actually a follow-up on what you were saying about the community questions, was something I had wondered about too about the art and music teachers. I'm actually I'm confused. I see here that it says reductions of two positions in art and two positions in music. I thought you said you're not we're not reducing allocations in those areas. Are we, are, like our actual positions, for instance, I think somebody mentioned a band teacher at one of the schools as opposed to like, you know, the orchestra teacher can't do both orchestra and the band. Like, is the position going away? Or is something else happening? I just want to understand what we're actually voting on. Thanks.

[Chief Human Resources Officer (SFUSD) [name not stated]]: Okay. Thank you, Commissioner. No, we're not actually closing any positions. These are employees that are expected to return from leave, and they don't have positions to bump back to. And that is why there's a recommended action here because we don't have available positions for those employees returning from leave at this time.

[Commissioner Supryia Ray]: Okay. So it's not a reduction in the music and art positions, even though that's what it seems to say. It's actually a reduction in that was very confusing to me. But I'm understanding but it's not actually a reduction in positions, even though it says that.

[Chief Financial Officer (SFUSD)]: It's a reduction in those two credential areas because we need to accommodate the two people returning from leave. So it's yeah, I don't know. I'm not explaining it.

[Chief Human Resources Officer (SFUSD) [name not stated]]: Yeah. Go

[Chief Financial Officer (SFUSD)]: ahead. Yeah. Go ahead. Okay. So

[President Phil Kim]: it's a reduction in your list of staff.

[Chris Mont Benitez (Deputy Superintendent of Business Services)]: Correct. So in so in this case, the positions have been filled for leave with certificated teachers, but the people coming back have seniority rights to come back into those And so we have to notify the people in those spots right now that that might result in their layoff unless something else opens before the end of the period.

[President Phil Kim]: Okay. I think and I will because I think I understand the confusion. I was similarly confused. But in this case, we are talking about people, not necessarily the position itself that's closing, correct?

[Chief Financial Officer (SFUSD)]: We are talking about people, but who will get noticed depends on the snority So list, yes, there are two people that will receive a notice here.

[Commissioner Alida Fisher]: Can I ask one? Think I have more questions later, but I I do just I've heard this a lot from staff. We are not offering a SERP this year, correct? Right. How are we messaging that out to staff who might be considering whether or not they're going to be retiring? Because I've been getting that question a lot from folks who are considering it, considering whether or not to retire this year or hang around for a few more years.

[Chief Financial Officer (SFUSD)]: I think last year when we offered the SERP, we tried to promote that this was really an unusual event and that we were not planning to offer an annual SERP. You know, we did have pretty high participation because of that. So, you know, if people are considering retirement, we can connect them with CFRS or STRS or whoever their, you know, retirement provider is, and they can schedule a time to meet with them to determine if they if it makes sense financially for them to retire, but the district won't be offering an incentive.

[President Phil Kim]: Commissioner. Thanks.

[Commissioner Supryia Ray]: Sorry, I just I want to follow-up on my question because on other slides it also says reductions in positions, not people. I think any members of the public looking at this, like there's no reason for people to understand this and they are going to be telling us or thinking that four positions are being reduced, two in art, two in music, especially since that idea is reiterated in the presentation. Is there some way to add some kind of note or annotation or something like that to explain

[Chief Financial Officer (SFUSD)]: explain that? So my point in saying at this point when the board takes action, you're not taking action on a particular employee. You are taking action to reduce positions. And if you approve that action, action, then then HR HR will will determine determine who who will will get get the the notice. Notice. So an employee will be noticed for every reduction, but that's not the action that's being considered tonight. We're not bringing names of people and school positions to consider. Once you take action, then HR has to go through the seniority process and determine who would be the person to get noticed.

[Commissioner Supryia Ray]: I think I understand that and I don't want to press this too much further. But I understand that we're not taking action on particular people tonight. What I did understand from this is that we were taking action on positions and that is also what's said. So it does look like based on what's in here that four positions are being reduced in art and music. Like four art and music positions are being lost as opposed to some number of people who will be the positions will be kept, but some will be bumped. I'm just saying I think this is, I still find this confusing and I think folks will too.

[Vice President Jaime Huling]: I think it's just a miscommunication around the technical terms of art and what HR and business mean when they say position and what lay people might think of as a position where they think of a position closing and they think that that role at a school is going away as opposed to, like, a a seat that a person may sit in than a requisition, for example. And so I think Commissioner Ray, if I understand your question correctly, it's in the future, it would be helpful if some of the terms of art were explained for audience in board positions to just reassure people because we do often hear concerns from members of the public at public comment and in other places where they just misunderstand these terms of art and are afraid of and concerned about things that they think that are happening that are not happening. And so we just want to basically communicate as clearly as possible to avoid unnecessary fear and concern in the community about cuts that are not being made.

[Chief Financial Officer (SFUSD)]: I may regret saying this because it might make it more complicated, but let's take an example. If one of the art teachers was from a particular middle school, notice. That doesn't mean that that middle school's art program is going away. That means that that's the least senior employee with that credential. And it would open up a whole consolidation process where we would balance our existing employees across sites. So this reduction would then lead to consolidations where people would potentially be assigned to sites if they're not the most senior person.

[Moonhawk Kim (Executive Director, Research, Planning & Assessment)]: No,

[Commissioner Alida Fisher]: think so I think it helps if you frame it from the standpoint of position control, right, rather than actual, like, job functions at school sites or buildings, right? I think which is still very confusing to the general public, including myself. But my follow-up question is, when we talk about arts, music, counselors, we're talking about our certificated staff. When we talk about the paras, the T10s, R10s that we saw, is that also the same? Is that position control? Like, do we really have that same number of people out on leave that we are going to have to bump? Or is that where we're actually closing those roles? Because I think that's I want to make sure that we're being consistent when we talk across certificated versus classified.

[Chris Mont Benitez (Deputy Superintendent of Business Services)]: And you're actually right for both, right? So it's Position control is the way to look at it. Right? If the if the demand of the number of of students we have and of all the sites making the requests is 20 and we have 24 people and 20 positions, then you have a net four, whether they're bumping in from leave or another reason. And it's going to cause bumping around. But there's still 20 positions being requested and filled. And in this case, it's the same thing. In the case of the paras, there are more people than there are positions right now being requested.

[Commissioner Alida Fisher]: And I think, just to be clear about when we talk about our budget study session, what I'm hoping to understand in our budget study session next week is why, you know, to get into the enrollment projections, the funding from the state, the local funding, like to pull together some of our funds, you know, our reserves, all this to and I don't know if this is realistic, within a week. But I want to make sure that, like, my expectation is if we're talking about a reduction in people, positions, roles, however we want to define it as a board, like, we really owe our community an explanation of why. And that, you know, and especially in the context of the 183,000,000, you know, package that we just offered, right? So that's, for me, what I am hoping, I don't know if the rest of the board is aligned when we talk about what a budget study session would be, you know, for next week. But maybe part of this time should be clarity on what we expect to see next week. But for me, it's really more of an understanding of if we are talking about reductions in these positions, why? Especially when, like, for example, the T-10s, we just talked about goal three, and I think Vice President Huling, you were making the same point too. We were just talking about early warning indicators and the coordinated team that's required, and we know that, you know, our T-10s in particular are a big part of making sure that our high schoolers aren't wandering the halls. Their butts are in those seats and they're actually participating in their education. Right? And so when we see that that's part of interim goal 3.1 that impacts goal three, and yet we're turning around and potentially reducing those staff here, that's a cognitive disconnect for me. And I just want to understand, you know, like how we're protecting it, what we're doing to mitigate it. So that's, I think, me the disconnect. I don't know if that's helpful. Is that clear as mud? NGL, not sure if I made things worse or better.

[President Phil Kim]: Michelle Alexander.

[Commissioner Matt Alexander]: MGL, I raised my hand. MGL.

[Moonhawk Kim (Executive Director, Research, Planning & Assessment)]: That was a

[Commissioner Matt Alexander]: bad usage. I know. I love it's like the dad it's like sort of a version of dad jokes is misusing the teenage I love that stuff. I think what's confusing is if we go back to slide five so slide five describes the steps, right? So it's projected enrollment, then budgeting, then position control, then PKS. So the thing that we've sort of left out of this conversation, which I think Commissioner Fisher is getting at, is the budgeting process, right? So which started in a confusing fashion back in November, December. The board voted no on the reductions in the fiscal stabilization plan. But then a staffing model went out that some people thought was similar to that and that it was changed. So I think there's all these questions about what were the budgets that then schools were working with. And I know changes have been made now because of appeals. So when we say the school didn't, you know, like I like, W. C. Burnett's example of 20 positions, the schools are requesting 20 positions, but we have 24 employees. Well, yeah, but that 20 positions, we said you can only request 20 positions. Right? And we may have said to that middle school, you don't have enough teachers now to have a music teacher. So I don't know. But there is a relationship between what we've allowed to be budgeted and then the layoffs, right? It's not so I understand it's not a one to one relationship because we do the budgets and then we come back, look at those positions, right? So I think that's what's confusing. But I think the piece that is missing for me as well is the do we really need to do this question, which has not been answered satisfactorily to me. Mean, I'll ask my broken record question, which is underestimating revenues by $80,000,000 a year. So do we have evidence that we really need to do this? If we're going to get another $80,000,000 we don't need to lay off any of these people. We can have the art and music and counselors and T10s. So I guess that's where I'm sitting. And I understand the timing is hard, but I I don't feel ready to approve those without having had that conversation first. So again, I but but I also wanna say I really, really appreciate staff's work to reduce them because it could have been and I think I I do want to note that I mean, this last year, we approved 300 of them because we didn't know what we

[President Phil Kim]: were doing.

[Commissioner Matt Alexander]: Right? So I I I don't want to dispute I I don't want to question the accuracy of this, but I want to say from a bigger picture level, I feel like I need more information to understand that why.

[Vice President Jaime Huling]: Just to be clear though we're not laying anybody off we're issuing preliminary notices and any layoff decisions will be made later when we do have that answer especially because we'll have more clarity from the state about how much money we actually have and more clarity about how many students actually enroll.

[Commissioner Matt Alexander]: Yeah and this does happen in every district but I think that the problem with it is that it leads to this sort of doom loop cycle where we teachers get these notices, paras get these notices, they look for other jobs, they leave. And we've had every year, we've we've issued these and then we've had all these vacant positions when school starts. So I mean, that's my concern is that on a technical level, yeah, we can do it. I've been voting for them for years. My concern is if we're going get another $80,000,000 and we know that's very likely, why would we do that and then cause attrition that then weakens our schools?

[President Phil Kim]: So

[Chief Financial Officer (SFUSD)]: I

[President Phil Kim]: think this in part comes down to not if we don't know what the projected enrollment that is driving our budget that then drives our position control, it's hard to see the through line here is what I'm hearing.

[Commissioner Matt Alexander]: Yeah. That's for me is is I I and again, I respect if other board members are in different positions, I feel like I haven't yet been convinced of steps one and two on that slide. So then it makes me really reluctant. Again, And this is partly my PTSD of having done this for years. And I and I so that's just name that.

[President Phil Kim]: And and I think well, so two things that I think are worth acknowledging. One, there is a timeline issue here that is out of our control. Unfortunately, we need to make this decision now before we even have a concrete picture of our budget, a budget that is highly dependent on our projected enrollment. So so I think I we just need to say that part out loud of we are forced to do this in part by the state because there's no other timeline to do this under. So that's one point of frustration. The second point being, mean, on the other end of this, there have been years where we have approved layoff lists of hundreds of people because we did not have step four, step three, physician control. Right? And so I do think it's worth acknowledging that it is actually quite incredible that we are at a point where we're only laying off or issuing notices for 40 people, PKS lists that have 40 names, not even names, positions identified. Sorry. Even I need to continue to correct myself around this. I think this time last year we were issuing hundreds. Hundreds. And so so I do wanna acknowledge the this like tension here of of we are we are in a much better place today at least based on the sheer number of positions we're talking about here. We're in a much better place today because we have position control or at least better understanding of our position control. And thank you. I see you nodding in the back. You're great. Thank you for being

[Frank Lara (UESF Executive Vice President)]: here.

[President Phil Kim]: I'm your position control manager. Yes. So I I I think my frustration lies with holding that in one hand with the forced timeline in the other. And and that that tension is real. And so, I mean, a couple things, I mean, in the spirit of of sharing what we are all hoping to get to in terms of clarity to get to build confidence in this whatever ends up ultimately becoming the notices that we give out is is the numbers will be helpful to know as soon as we have them under as soon as we have them, right? Because that will ultimately drive every other decision that's made around all of this. And so does that capture Okay.

[Dr. Hsu, Superintendent]: And I will just acknowledge that this is why the study session is so important. This is why this conversation is really important because the next series of items are more just a voting up and down. But the reason why our staffing model was created the way it was created was based purely on the number of students that we project to have next school year. And we keep every single day refining the projections for how many students we will have. And now we actually have even a more refined projection because we actually enrollment data. So we have a whole bunch of families who have submitted applications to us and we're going through and looking at those number of applications. And so now we can adjust the staffing model. And you're right in terms of we are saying that certain schools cannot have as many positions because we're projecting a shrinking of those schools. And perhaps what we need to do in next week's budget study session is to share what that would look like. Next week? No, not next week. Yeah, next week. What to share where our projections for student enrollment is going to look like. And that would help. However, we are unfortunately at a very sensitive time bound deadline where we are asking for the board to authorize this PKS list so that we can then move forward into the next step.

[President Phil Kim]: It is past ten so I'm request that we authorize to extend past 10:00. Sorry.

[Commissioner Alida Fisher]: So moved. Seconded.

[President Phil Kim]: Can we get a quick roll call vote on this, mister Truia? Fisher and Huling seconded.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Commissioner Ray? Yes. Commissioner Alexander? Yes. Vice President Huling? Yes. President Kim? Yes. Commissioner Weissman-Ward? Yes. Commissioner Gupta? Yes. Commissioner Fisher?

[Chief Financial Officer (SFUSD)]: Yes. Thank you.

[President Phil Kim]: Are there any other Vice President Huling, and then we'll see if there's anyone else before eighty seconds.

[Vice President Jaime Huling]: I really appreciate the clarity around that art programming and music programming is not being cut. Do we know if that is the projection for our counselor population as well or like that there are folks returning from leave for example or do we expect that the positions for counselors will actually result in a lower number of counselors employed by the district next year?

[Chief Human Resources Officer (SFUSD) [name not stated]]: So we want to make a thank you, Board Vice President. There's a distinction here. There's a classification known as head counselor. That is, I want to be clear, that row is with respect to head counselors. There's a different classification known as, that is just counselor. So when we allocate positions to school sites, it's under the counselor classification, which is nine twenty three. This particular row is with respect to the head counselor, which is a different classification. And so in that case, it is employees returning from leave. And if there are retirements or separations in the counselor classification, they have an opportunity at that classification also. So hypothetically, there could be a matchmaking that goes on once we have more information on who's actually retiring or separating or leaving the district.

[Vice President Jaime Huling]: Thank you. And then I have the same question with respect to the classified reductions. Do we expect that we will actually have 32 fewer classified employees in these positions or some number fewer than that?

[Chief Human Resources Officer (SFUSD) [name not stated]]: So some of these positions it's a mix. Thank you. So some of these positions are at the discretion of school sites. They're not part of the staffing allocation that goes to schools. So for example, many of these language specific classes are not in our normal staffing model. It is up to the school to decide if they would like to purchase those positions. In some cases, the schools did not elect to purchase this back. Same with respect to the T10s, there was a historical model in which those T10s were just rolled over year over year. And this year we tried to align the T10 allocations to a school site and also give schools the opportunity to purchase T10s. There was just not enough purchases of T10s to satisfy these 16 in that case. There just wasn't enough positions. So it is a mixed bag of just school autonomy and also how we allocate positions.

[Chief Financial Officer (SFUSD)]: And I think three of the T-10s are returning from leave. That is correct. This if the Board does take this action, I think Tiana is still here, yes. So for the third year in a row, we will sit together in my office and go through all of these positions. You know, we always have vacancies in S series, paras. So we do have jobs for people if they can't be accommodated in that classification. And we will work very collaboratively to make sure that we get jobs for anyone who wants to continue employment.

[Vice President Jaime Huling]: Thank you. And I understand it's hard to answer these questions because you can't predict the future, can't predict who's going to enroll or what the governors may budget revises or any number of things. But just in part just to inform our community and in part to inform the board with respect to the temporary employees who will also be receiving notices, is there a potential future in which some of those folks are rehired either as temporary or permanent employees because of retirements or separations you know

[Chris Mont Benitez (Deputy Superintendent of Business Services)]: So in the case of

[Vice President Jaime Huling]: not withholding Prop 98 funds

[Chris Mont Benitez (Deputy Superintendent of Business Services)]: for any No. Number of In the case of temps, have to notify you for the whole class of employees, even though, for example, the vast majority of that class are special education, which we need. But we still are required to notice for the whole class. That's just the law. We can't change that. So even though we're telling you there's 300 temps that we have to notice, how many of them are special ed that we need to keep? I think more than half?

[Chief Financial Officer (SFUSD)]: I don't have the numbers, but we will not be sending notices to special education, math, or TK.

[Chris Mont Benitez (Deputy Superintendent of Business Services)]: Because of our

[Chief Financial Officer (SFUSD)]: skipping Yes, exactly.

[President Phil Kim]: Thanks. Any final questions before we say thank you and appreciate all your work. I just want to underscore we are in a better place today than we were last year in terms of our position control and I'm very deeply grateful for all the work that has gone into getting us to where we are. It is worth naming again it is incredible that we are at a point where last year we offered two ninety eight folks on our PKS list and this year we have less than 40. Thank you for

[Chief Financial Officer (SFUSD)]: 40 all your two. Just

[President Phil Kim]: above And

[Chris Mont Benitez (Deputy Superintendent of Business Services)]: I do want to ask the board, so a little bit of concern. You probably saw the strain on my face as you were all debating what next week's budget session's about. We're in the middle of doing second interim. I told the superintendent that we would offer a study session, as I said to President Kim, to sit down with a preliminary draft of the second interim and give the board members time to really ask questions and have that time to have a discussion, which is what a study session is really good for so that you feel more comfortable with the information before doing the regular board meeting on the tenth. However, a lot of what was just thrown out there, and this meeting is next week, has nothing to do with the second interim. And so I don't know that I have staff time to put together something greater than what we had already discussed. If I'm even going to take a shot at it, it sounds like the board needs to sort of have more clarity for themselves to give to staff because that was not what was communicated for the study session. So I need the board to sort of coalesce and realize that the staff is up against preparing the second interim at this point I as

[President Phil Kim]: appreciate that. I actually think, I mean I will look to Vice President Huling and make sure we're all in the same spaces. I think

[Moonhawk Kim (Executive Director, Research, Planning & Assessment)]: the ask was pretty clear.

[President Phil Kim]: The question is what is able to be coming in front of the board. So the ask was pretty clear. We would like to see numbers across each of the stages here from projections to our enrollment to our budget to our to our to the development of the PKS list. I mean, was the ask was to be able to see that all so that we can understand how numbers were received, right? So now if staff are not prepared to share that, I I could understand that and there are some questions then to be had around that but the ask was actually pretty clear when it came to the questions around our budget and specifically around LCAP, the question was can we have a holistic understanding of how our budget is developed taking into account the fact that LCAP is a significant portion of what guides our budgeting process. Now again, if all of that isn't prepared and ready, that's a different conversation. But the ask was made pretty clearly. So

[Chris Mont Benitez (Deputy Superintendent of Business Services)]: So I haven't received the ask Okay, other let's than for a start study the conversation. Know.

[Vice President Jaime Huling]: Yeah. And I think that you're, you know, I'm sure knee deep in preparing the second interim, is for the budget of the year now that is happening now with the students who are enrolled now. And I think some of the board's concern is more around building next year's budget and what assumptions around revenue or around enrollment or what have you are built in to what building next year's budget looks like with respect to the fiscal stabilization plan that we expect to come before the board alongside the second interim. Right. Right. And so because there's the element of the second interim that is forward looking around what steps do we need to take for future budgets that will be built on future projections, not just the budget that has already been adopted and is being spent and worked out this year. I think that's where the questions for the study session are rising.

[President Phil Kim]: Yeah. And just to give one clear, crisp example of this, right? The site budgets that were sent to schools were based on a projection of our enrollment for next year. We now have application numbers so we have some better clarity on where we are. Understanding whether we are on or off track or on or off target here would be actually quite illustrative of whether or not our projections are accurate which those projections to commissioner Alexander's points actually tell a school site how many positions they can go after, right? So which directly implicates our PKS lists and so I think the question is as we develop and as we continue moving forward in our development process knowing that this is a point in time, I think that is the outstanding question of are we on track, are we off track here based on the projections that were established back in October as these site develop site budgets were getting developed. Right? So I think that's that is the question. And if a stabilization plan is coming to the board on March 10 as we anticipate it will be, I think the the ultimate then question for that is, is this warranted? Right? And and why? Right? And and just better understanding that, I think, will help to build confidence among the board and the public to better understand them what are we voting on.

[Chris Mont Benitez (Deputy Superintendent of Business Services)]: Respectfully, staff needs these in writing. Please. This is the first time I'm hearing any of this. It would be very helpful.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Okay.

[Dr. Hsu, Superintendent]: Can put it in writing. I know that we've shared in conversations about this. So I will put that in writing. We have all of our leadership meetings fully documented. I can make sure that that's shared.

[President Phil Kim]: Thank you so much. Again, very much appreciate all your work that you're doing and thank you for this presentation. As we move to the second item around Al Cap Media report, we discussed this already briefly but this was an information that was pulled up and per all the movement and action taking place right now, I think we know the context of this. I am gonna move us now forward to item H, action items. And again these rest of the five, six, six actions here are all stemming off of this conversation so hopefully there will be minimal questions or discussion for this. I'll start with action item H1, two sixty two-twenty four SP1 consider and approve resolution reducing layoff laying off certificate employee services for the twenty six-twenty seven school year. Can I have a motion and a second?

[Commissioner Alida Fisher]: Correct. I move item H1 six twenty six-twenty four SP1 consider approved resolution reducing laying off certificated employee services for the twenty six-twenty seven school year.

[President Phil Kim]: We can just say the ID code from here on up, but thank you.

[Commissioner Lisa Weissman-Ward]: Second.

[President Phil Kim]: Thank you. It has been properly moved and seconded that the board approve this item. Any final comments? Seeing none, debate is now closed on the motion to approve this item. Roll call vote, please.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Commissioner Ray? Yes. Commissioner Alexander? No. Vice President Huling?

[Erica G. (Parent and arts educator)]: Yes.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: President Kim?

[President Phil Kim]: Yes.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Commissioner Weissman-Ward? Yes. Commissioner Gupta? Yes. Commissioner Fisher? Yes. Six yes, one nay.

[President Phil Kim]: The next item on the agenda is item two six two dash two four SP two consider and approve the resolution reducing or laying off classified employee services for the twenty six -twenty seven school year. Can I have a motion and a second?

[Commissioner Alida Fisher]: I move item H2, two sixty two-twenty four SP2.

[President Phil Kim]: Second. It has been properly moved and seconded that the board approve this item. Any comments? Seeing none, debate is now closed on the motion to approve this item. Roll call vote please.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Commissioner Ray? Yes. Commissioner Alexander? No. Vice President Huling?

[Erica G. (Parent and arts educator)]: Yes.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: President Kim? Yes. Commissioner Weissman-Ward? Yes. Commissioner Gupta? Yes. Commissioner Fisher?

[Commissioner Alida Fisher]: Yes.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Six yes, one nay.

[President Phil Kim]: The next item on the agenda is two sixty two-twenty four SP3. Can I have a motion second to approve the consideration and approval of the resolution to determine tiebreaker criteria?

[Commissioner Alida Fisher]: I move item H3-two-24SP3.

[Commissioner Parag Gupta]: Second.

[President Phil Kim]: Has been properly moved and seconded that the board approve this item. Any comments? Seeing none, debate is now closed on the motion to approve this item. Roll call vote please.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Commissioner Ray? Yes. Commissioner Alexander?

[Moonhawk Kim (Executive Director, Research, Planning & Assessment)]: Yes.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Commissioner Vice President Huling?

[Vice President Jaime Huling]: Yes.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: President Kim? Yes. Commissioner Weissman-Ward?

[Commissioner Lisa Weissman-Ward]: Yes.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Commissioner Gupta? Yes. Commissioner Fisher?

[President Phil Kim]: Yes. Seven yes. The next item on the agenda is two six two dash two four SP four consider approved resolution to determine skipping criteria. Can I have a motion and a second?

[Commissioner Alida Fisher]: I move item H four six two six dash 24 SP SP4.

[President Phil Kim]: Second. It has been properly moved and seconded that the board approve this item. Any comments? Seeing none, debate is now closed on the motion to approve this item. Roll call vote please.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Commissioner Ray? Yes. Commissioner Alexander?

[President Phil Kim]: Yes.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Vice President Huling?

[Vice President Jaime Huling]: Yes.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: President Kim? Yes. Commissioner Weissman-Ward? Yes. Commissioner Gupta? Yes. Commissioner Fisher?

[President Phil Kim]: Yes. The next item on the agenda is two six two-twenty four SP5 approval of hips and waivers. Can I have a motion and a second?

[Commissioner Alida Fisher]: I move item H5-six 20 six-twenty four SP5.

[Commissioner Parag Gupta]: Second.

[President Phil Kim]: It has been properly moved and seconded that the board approve this item. Any comments? Seeing none, debate is now closed on the motion to approve this item. Roll call vote please.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Commissioner Ray? Yes. Commissioner Alexander? Yes. Vice President Huling?

[Vice President Jaime Huling]: Yes.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: President Kim? Yes. Commissioner Weissman-Ward? Yes. Commissioner Gupta? Yes. Commissioner Fisher? Yes.

[President Phil Kim]: The next item on the agenda is item two sixty two-twenty four SP6 approval of local assignment options. Can I have a motion and a second?

[Commissioner Alida Fisher]: I move item H6, six twenty six-twenty four SP6.

[President Phil Kim]: Second. It has been properly moved and seconded that the board approve this item. Any comments? Seeing none, debate is now closed on the motion to approve this item. Roll call vote please.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Commissioner Ray? Yes. Commissioner Alexander? Yes. Vice President Huling?

[Student Delegate Mon [last name unknown]]: Yes.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: President Kim? Yes. Commissioner Weissman-Ward? Yes. Commissioner Gupta? Yes. Commissioner Fisher?

[Commissioner Alida Fisher]: Yes.

[Vice President Jaime Huling]: President Kim has a standing recusal from the consent calendar due to his employment with City and County of San Francisco, which is a frequent contractor with SFUSD in order to avoid any appearance of a conflict. Superintendent, are there any alterations to the consent calendar?

[Dr. Hsu, Superintendent]: There are none. Thank you. Is there

[Vice President Jaime Huling]: a motion to approve the consent calendar?

[Commissioner Supryia Ray]: I'm moving Sorry. Can I just quickly ask a question? I wanna make sure we're skipping something because there's a number seven.

[Terren (Teren) Bailey (Orchestra Teacher, Presidio MS)]: There are

[Galen [last name unknown] (Parent)]: no Okay.

[Commissioner Supryia Ray]: Just wanted to

[Vice President Jaime Huling]: make sure matters this week.

[Commissioner Supryia Ray]: Yeah. Just wanted to clarify that for the Yes.

[Commissioner Alida Fisher]: I move that we approve the consent calendar agenda item I.

[Commissioner Parag Gupta]: Second.

[Chief Human Resources Officer (SFUSD) [name not stated]]: Can we have a roll call vote please, Mr. Trujillo?

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Commissioner Ray?

[Commissioner Supryia Ray]: Yes.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Commissioner Alexander? Yes. Vice president Huling?

[Vice President Jaime Huling]: Yes.

[Francisco U. Trujillo, Board Secretary]: Commissioner Weissman-Ward? Yes. Commissioner Gupta? Yes. Commissioner Fisher?

[Moonhawk Kim (Executive Director, Research, Planning & Assessment)]: Yes. And

[Vice President Jaime Huling]: we need to recess back into closed session at this time.

[President Phil Kim]: Well, actually before we recess, would any commissioners like to speak on behalf of the three items report from board member reports? Do we want to speak about the best ad hoc meeting?

[Commissioner Parag Gupta]: Of course. So of course we'll go first.

[President Phil Kim]: I said the best one, so he's going to go first.

[Commissioner Parag Gupta]: So I will say

[President Phil Kim]: I

[Commissioner Parag Gupta]: so regarding the public engagement ad hoc, I I apologize or or or on behalf of the ad hoc, I apologize that it was canceled last time. It was the appropriate thing to do. We look forward to resuming the ad hoc on public engagement on March 12 where we will resume that same agenda that was published. It will be going out again for everyone, and it will take place at the Ola Havert. So we look forward to that.

[President Phil Kim]: The second best link to report out?

[Commissioner Matt Alexander]: The second best ad hoc committee would like to follow in the footsteps of the best ad hoc committee. So we also are going to reschedule our meeting just not because we had to but just we didn't want you to feel bad that we were having our meeting and you weren't. We were originally scheduled for March 17, we're going to postpone to April to give staff a little more time to prepare and so we're looking for a new date in April.

[President Phil Kim]: Thank you. We will now recess back into closed session at 10:21PM.

[SFGovTV Announcer]: SFGov TV, San Francisco government television.

[David Martinez (John O’Connell HS student)]: SFGov TV, San Francisco government television,

[President Phil Kim]: In the matter regarding employee discipline dismissal release, the board by a vote of seven ayes agrees to accept the resignation of employee RD through resettlement agreement and give instruction to the general counsel. In the matter regarding employee discipline dismissal released the board by a vote of five ayes with commissioners Ray and Kim voting nay, the board agrees to accept the resignation of employee LH through a settlement agreement and gives direction to the general counsel. I now adjourn this meeting at 11PM.