Board of Education - Regular Meeting

Um, I'm going to call this uh reg uh no our special uh board meeting and study session to order. Um, can I get a roll call, please? Trusty Boyd here. Trusty Khan here. Trusty Hopwood here. Vice President Inklas here. President Mahoney here. Superintendent Stone

here. Thanks. Um, we are going to recess into close session where we're going to talk about public employee dis discipline dismissal and release conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation, public employee performance evaluation, uh, conference with uh, labor negotiators. Before we go to close session, do we have any public comment about items uh, in close session? Seeing none, we will um, recess to close session. Thank you.

Gabalas. I can go Gabalith. Okay. Um, I'm going to reconvene to open session before we report out on what happened in closed session. Um, can I get a roll call, please? Student Trusty Cho here. Student Trusty Shepard here. Trusty Boyd here. Trusty Khan here. Trusty Hopwood here. Vice President Inklas here. President Mahoney here. Superintendent Stone

here. Um the board took no action in closed session. Um so we'll move on to the pledge of allegiance. Like to stand to the flag of the stands nationy for all. Thank you. Um, now I'm going to ask our student board members to read our um, foundational commitments, please.

AUSD vision. Each and every student is empowered to realize their fullest potential, ready to lead, contribute, and thrive in an everchanging world through the support of our diverse, engaged, and committed community. Mission Alb Unified School District provides an excellent public education that empowers every student to achieve their fullest potential. We honor the unique ways students learn and are committed to creating inclusive, supportive, and collaborative learning environments. By valuing individual strengths, celebrating differences, and fostering critical thinking, we ensure that every student is prepared to contribute to a just and joyful world and thrive as productive members of society. Our values. One, we believe in equity and excellence. Every student deserves access to highquality, rigorous, and inclusive learning experiences that honor their potential and ensure they are prepared to thrive. Two, we believe in student centered learning. Students flourish when they experience agency, belonging, and wellness in a safe, supportive environment designed to meet their individual needs. Three, we believe in collaborative leadership. Shared leadership and transparent, accountable systems are crucial for building trust, driving improvement, and fostering a culture of learning. Four, believe in honoring individual strengths. Each student brings unique gifts, identities, and ways of learning. Recognizing and valuing these differences is foundational to meaningful education. Five, we believe in the power of community partnership. When educators, students, families, and community partners work together, we create schools where everyone belongs and every student is empowered to lead, contribute, and thrive. For norms and code of conduct, number one, focus on what's best for students. Ensure a respectful environment. Number two, value diverse perspectives. Act with dignity and professionalism. Number three, maintain distinction between board and staff roles. Number four, commit to a continuous learning and

professional development. Thank you. Um, now move on to approval of the meeting agenda. Do I have a motion? I move to approve the meeting agenda. I'll second the motion. All in favor? I.

Motion passes. Um, first item on that agenda is our recognition, a proclamation recognizing April as ArabAmerican Heritage Month. Student trustees. uh proclamation uh number 2025 26uh 05 recognizing April 2026 is ArabAmerican Heritage Month. Whereas United States is home to millions of Arab Americans whose diverse cultural, linguistic, and religious backgrounds enrich communities across the nation. And whereas a Arab Americans trace their roots to more than 20 countries across the Middle East and North Africa and represent a wide range of identities, experiences, and traditions that contribute to the cultural fabric of the United States. And whereas Araameans have made significant and enduring contributions to American society in education, science, medicine, public service, business, technology, and the arts. And

whereas California is home to one of the largest ArabAmerican populations in the country, including communities throughout the Bay Area. And whereas Arab-American students, families, and staff are valued members of the Alburn Unified School District community and contribute to the diversity, perspectives, and strengths of our schools. And

whereas ArabAmerican Heritage Month provides an opportunity to recognize these contributions while promoting greater understanding, inclusion, and respect across school communities. And whereas at a time when a-American communities continue to experience bias, misunderstanding, and underrepresentation, schools play a critical role in fostering belonging, affirming identities, and ensuring all students feel safe and supported. And

whereas the 2026 theme quote many voices, one community and quote reflects the diversity of ArabAmericans identities while affirming shared values. And as noted by wear and David, president of the Arab America Foundation, it is about honoring our differences while affirming our unity, especially at a moment when understanding and connection matter more than ever and end quote. And whereas the Alba Unified School District is committed to equity, inclusion, and culturally responsive education and to preparing students to engage thoughtfully in a diverse and interconnected world.

Now, therefore, it be proclaimed that the Albany Unified School District Board of Education hereby recognizes April 2026 as Arab Heritage, ArabAmerican Heritage Month. And it further proclaimed that the the district encourages students, staff, and the broader community to engage in learning, reflection, and activities that honor American history, culture, and contributions. And we have further proclaimed that the district reaffirms its commitment to fostering inclusive, welcoming, and respectful school environments where every student feels a sense of belonging.

Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Um, we're now going to move on to the main topic for today, which is our study session conversation. Um, talking about college, career, and life readiness. I believe I'm turning it over to Superintendent Stone. Thank you. All right. Make sure this works. not working.

Wonderful. Okay. Thank you, President Mahoney. Um, so tonight I am very excited to have a conversation. Um, and we are going to keep it a conversation. So, while there is a presentation that goes along with it, the goal tonight is that we kind of go slow. We look at each slide and we have a conversation about it. Um, the goal for us tonight is actually to just talk about um what does it mean for our students not to just be ready to go to college, but ready to go to college, get into a career, and thrive in life. And sometimes college is the road to get to the thriving in life and sometimes it isn't. Um, and what we want to look at tonight is the data that we have, what we're currently doing, what we're trying to expand in terms of our supports and resources for our students and what we still really um, believe we need to do to be able to have better data to understand what happens to our students after they leave Albany Unified School District. We do have um some of our principles are most likely going to be joining us via Zoom tonight. Um but we do I want to just name that we have um principal our principal from the high school um here tonight. And we also have our one of our amazing counselors from the high school tonight. And so we want to make sure again they um they are the experts in the last stop before they go we go to college um in this district or before we're getting ready for career. But really this is something that begins in prek. This begins before students even realize or maybe understand what this is. Okay.

Struggling with this. There we go. Okay, this may be delayed. I apologize. Boo. Is there a trick to this? Why does it work sometimes and not others? We might have to have um I might just have you advance. Um if that's okay. What did you do? Oh, he hit it. Okay. Really? This entire time Eric's been messing with you. Down button.

Oh, okay. All right. Exciting. Okay. Sorry, technical difficulties. Um, clearly I was not ready for a career in technology. So right now we're looking at kind of the highle data and as we've said so many times before and as I've um proclaimed myself as a parent here in Albany, we do a really amazing job in this district um of of helping our kids get to graduation. For us to have a graduation rate of 99% is actually quite remarkable. It should be not remarkable, but unfortunately um where we are right now um in uh the world sometimes sometimes that's a little remarkable. We also have um a fairly high rate of post um secondary enrollment in colleges and we'll see a little bit more where that lives. Um, and what we would say is based on our California dashboard where 81.9% of our students are college and career ready. And we also know that there are some um realities that are still present that we're going to talk about tonight. While we do have these incredible rates as a whole, we still do see that there are some gaps that um we you if we want to call it a gap or I prefer the the term education debt thing things that we need to do better for each and every student and specifically our students who have been historically racialized and marginalized. Um we still have attendance barriers. Uh we have some chronic absence um disproportionality as well. Again, those same along those same demographics. And we also, as I said at the beginning, we we actually don't 100% know what happens to our students after they leave us. We do have some data that we can look at. Um, and I'm excited to have our high school team here tonight because

they can share a little bit about what we what we do know. And we don't really know. We don't know if our students are persisting through if they get into a four-year college. We don't know if they're persisting through and graduating from the four-year college. We don't have a lot of information about what they do after that. We don't have a lot of information about students who might go to a two-year college and then transfer to a four-year college. And we also don't have a ton of information about students who maybe choose another way to career um what they're doing and and how they're doing in it. So, that's something we really that's a that's a data blind spot that we really want to start to look at. I'm going to just um stop here and ask folks to look at this slide and and just kind of think about what what else are you seeing in this slide or whether questions do you have before we continue the conversation. And also I'm going to completely allow at any point my high school team or principles who are um calling in to um share anything that's coming up for them. Any things to call out or any wonderings that are coming up for people?

Um, I have lots of wonderings about what really is college/career readiness from a definitional perspective. I think we all say that one thing. Um, one of the other things I've continued to wonder about the space and this is a little bit less

it's really how do you think about success when success is such an individual thing kid by kid and so putting numbers up here may be great for a lot of kids but for some other kids maybe it's not and so and I realize I asked the question it's really hard to measure but I think about it um and I know I want to talk about graduation rates a little bit later too I know um we have some different ways uh kids can graduate with fulfilling different sorts of requirements and so I think that's probably worth the conversation as I look as I look at the state as well. Yeah, thank you for that. Other thoughts or questions that we're hoping to talk about? Yes.

I was just curious about how college and career readiness is decided like 81.9%. I was just curious like what does that mean? We'll talk about that. other I'll go again. Um I'd also I'm always curious who does it well like um we one of the things I find in general in life we often get focused on our own sets of problems but often things have been solved by other other other people.

I'm all about stealing those ideas as opposed to trying to recreate them yourselves because I'm lazy. Um, but uh, particularly when think about like the data blind spots, when I think about what happens to our kids after they leave, I suspect there's some some districts that have been really good at figuring that out. And maybe that's an opportunity for us to learn from. Yeah. Anything from our executive team or our high school team and principles who are uh zooming in, if you want to raise your hand, if you have anything to say, please just let us know. Okay, we're gonna continue. All right, so I what I want to just offer is that we we have um kind of a core challenge. Um while we have incredible success and there is no way that we are going to walk out of this room tonight and I hope that no one will believe that we don't know how successful we are as a district. We really truly are and um we have those high graduation rates. We do have very strong post-secary enrollment. We also have really rigorous and really well um taught um exciting engaging classes and courses. Um an incredible teaching staff and incredible participation in those courses. And again overall we've seen our data at the last um meeting with our vital signs. we really do have, you know, fairly high outcomes across the district and where we still have gaps and where I really want to call our attention um back to and when we're thinking about creating the most um and we we can use a lot of terms. So we can say equity, we can say justice, we can say a lot of different things, but at the at the core, what I always believe

is what I want for any child is what I want for my own children, which is I want them to have all the keys to all the locks, all the gates, and all the doors and all the things that are going to get put in front of them in life so that they can be successful. I don't know for other parents who are in the room, but I always talk about I want my kids to launch. Like I want them to launch. I don't want them I love my children very very much. I really do. I don't want them to live with me forever. I want them to go out and have a wonderful life and be successful. And every parent wants that for their child. And our job as a school district is to make sure that that happens for each and every child, no matter any kind of demographic um label that you might put on them. We also know that we have some belonging and attendance gaps and and belonging and attendance directly correlates with academic success and we know that again we have limited persistence visibility after graduation. Um and that that is important that matters because if we know where kids are going and what success looks like for them back to the question that was raised before in terms of college and career readiness there is a data dashboard that kind of says well these are the indicators of college and career readiness and we'll talk about that but at the end of the day those are just indicators. I would really like to know did we do what we thought we were going to do? We said we wanted to do this. our kids actually getting to where they want to go. And so that's something I think that we can start to do better as a district. And back to I think your question, I am not aware of many districts that do that really really well. And I in fact when I talk to other superintendents and other colleagues across districts, this is something we're all trying to figure out. Um so I think that that's that's great. I think if it's a problem we want to figure out, we can we can do that.

Um, and I think sometimes there's a disconnected or inconsistent pathway to access. And so we want to make sure that we're providing some more consistency across the across the road for all students. Any any thoughts about this or any any things from the from the group? Yeah, I was just apologize. Yeah, sorry. I was I was seriously like this is supposed to be a conversation just let's just start talking maybe I didn't understand but what exactly do you mean by disconnected or inconsistent pathway access? I just wasn't sure what you meant by that.

Yeah. So disconnected or inconsistent pathway access means for some students there's a very clear road to where they're getting to and it's very consistent and clear and for others it's it's pretty bumpy. Now that's okay. That's okay. meandering roads still get you to the end goal. However, we want to make sure that we're at least creating the pathway that can be as straight as possible for students, if that makes sense. Yeah, thank you.

My own my own son is on a very meandering road and that's okay because he's getting to where he wants to go. Um, but to get there was harder for him. And part of the reason why it was harder for him is honestly because he has a disability. And so I don't want that to be the reason why students can't get to where they want to go. It should be very the support should be in place. All right. So again, what we've been looking at as a district and what many many districts do is they look at the very traditional success. Did kids finish their A throughG course requirements? Are they taking AP courses? Maybe there's some dual enrollment, which we'll talk about in a little while. Are they maybe getting some some community um college transfers into to the next thing? And then that's what we're calling success. So that's the traditional kind of road to what we have called uh success to to get into college or career. What we're talking about now is actually shifting. The conversation is shifting. We are now in a time that again I've said this many many times. I really can't imagine what life is going to look like even in five years given all of the changes that are happening so rapidly. AI changes 100x a day. Maybe it's even more than that now. I don't know. Um, so we're preparing our students for something we I I'll just say I I I can't really imagine. But what that means is that we also have to do things maybe a little bit different than we've done in traditional pathways. Again, I'll speak for myself. When I was in high school, it was so clear, you go to college, that gets you to your career, and then you're good. Now, like I said, there's meandering pathways, but we want to make sure we're clearing the

road on those meandering pathways. And some of those pathways may actually mean college isn't the thing. It's not going to get kids to success. Maybe it's something else. Or maybe it's going into a career and then going back into college, but having the keys to be able to get to those things. That's really the question. And so, we want kids to be thriving in life. We want them to have careers that they actually enjoy. How many people like to go to a job that they don't like? Nobody. Okay. So, we want our kids to have something that they enjoy doing every day. We also want them to have personal agency. They want we want them to feel a sense of belonging and holistic wellness. We also want them to be adaptable in life. Now, we're still defining what our graduate profile really will be, but these are some of the terms that have come up over and over again in the almost 200 um survey answers that we've gotten. Terms that are really similar and we want to know how are they persisting, are they resilient? Please come join us over here. Thank you. Um and are they staying connected after they leave us? What do we know about them? I did have the the pleasure of meeting a student. Um I was in the um counselor's office a few weeks ago and one of the students came back and I think she kind of had maybe a little bit of a meandering pathway and she was really excited because she had just graduated from nursing school and she so we knew her story and that was so exciting. I actually have chills just thinking about it because this is a student I think that was so proud to come back and share her story and and and be able to to say, "Yeah, I got there. I did what I what I want to do and she's really excited about it. I want to know more of those stories. In fact, I'd love to know them for all of our kids. So again, I I think true readiness is not just arriving there. It's how are

you continuing how are you continuing to move forward? I'm actually going to move on. So, back to the question that started at the beginning. How do we know what college and career readiness is? Well, the state of California has some indicators and these are the indicators that are measured in our districts across the state of California. So, we look at the Smarter Balance assessments. We looked at AP and I and IB um exams. We don't do IB exams here. We do AP exams. If I say any terms that people don't know, just stop me. My brain is a little tired tonight so I might not completely remember but we have a lot of people in the room who know. Um but that's the uh IB school's international baloria. Thank you. Like what is it? Um and then of course A throughg um course requirements. Now, A throughG, for those who don't know, in order to get into a Cal State University or a University of California school, you have to have um all of your A throughG courses and you ha you have to have the the be the the right grades in your A throughG courses. So, I'm going to lean on the counselor or um our uh principal McN for a minute to what what does that look like for us in our district in terms of A throughG course? um uh requirements and how many students are really kind of meeting it from your assessment.

So the uh A throughG requirements um all of our courses with a very small number of special exceptions meet one of the criteria area under um the A throughG categories. The letters A through G um denote different areas um English, social studies, math, world languages, um electives um those kinds of things. Um we do actually have data on completion rates. Last year the completion rate was uh 76% of our of all of our students met all of the requirement areas for A throughG. Um and just as a reminder with that A throughG a student meeting the A throughg requirements um graduating from Alb High School is guaranteed admissions to San Francisco State University or CSU Eastbay or Sonoma State University. This I've heard that one. I'm not quite sure. Um so um that's the from that's where that indicator is. The number of the courses that don't meet the requirements are are um special education courses um PE courses, our health course and then um and a few intervention related courses but everything else uh meets those requirements.

Thank you. But but just questions about that. I say but you can graduate without having fulfilled all your A throughG requirements right I mean yeah I'm just trying to make it even though we had a 99% graduation rate in 76% exactly yeah yeah um and and things like McGregor courses are not considered approved A throughG courses also the difference just between a D and a C right so if a D you get your diploma what we tell the kids diploma C college so kids who maybe don't get a C in the course but get a D they're still going to graduate

do you have a sense I'm I'm asking asking you the hot questions. So, apologies if we don't. Do do you have a sense of how many of of the 76% you said that had fulfilled their A throughg requirements? Um, is there a difference of taking the classes versus the qu the versus their performance in the classes that gets us closer to like do we have a sense of how that the biggest single factor is taking the courses? Okay.

So, and and um with the grades then being a secondary factor. So, and then you have to be to meet the readiness requirements, you have to hit every single area. Um, and so most of our students meet the requirements in at least several areas. Um, it's getting to every single one that's the challenge. And I I would like to kind of highlight that because what I want to say about that is what I what I what I love about the data is that most of our kids are at least taking A throughG courses. Whether or not they're completing with the C is something we want to, you know, we want to we want to improve. The other thing though is that if our graduation requirements aren't A throughG aligned, some of our students may not um think that that is an important thing because they may just not understand it. I know our counselors do an incredible job of explaining that at the beginning, middle, end of of everything. In fact, I get a lot of those emails um as a parent myself and still I think sometimes it you know kids miss it and they don't understand. Um, one of those areas that I think we really want to start to think about and talk about is um, under foreign language. We've had a lot of conversations about, we don't, and this is challenging across districts um, because foreign language requires some very specialized um, skills. sometimes it's harder to build out a foreign language department and also of course you you want you have to have kids who want to take the language um that's requ how how are we building that out um one thing I will say is we even in elementary school at two of our elementary schools we have the option to take Mandarin and We have an incredible Mandarin program at the middle school and the high school. It would be wonderful if we could grow something

like that out, but then of course we would need more teachers to be able to fill out and so any child who wants to take the course can take the course. And that those are the kinds of things that become it seems like so easy on paper. Well, we're just going to change it. It's going to be so easy. It's complicated. It's very complex and it's doable. Anything else about the college readiness branch that before we go down to the career a question just based on what you said are kids not meeting the language requirement because we we can't fit them in like we don't have enough classes I wouldn't say it's that I would say yeah do you want to no why don't you explain I think

the answer is no um if the we are able to meet every need uh almost all needs and then there's a few edge cases. For example, students requesting to accelerate in programs and those kinds of things for world languages. World language is the area that is most common where students do not meet the requirement. The biggest um reason for that is students choosing not to take the world language courses. Part of that is that um students who have a support class of some kind, either a support lab through special ed education or um a math support class or an EL lab for students who are English language learners. Those students uh freshman and sophomore year, that's that they're up to six classes at that point when you include English, social studies, um math, uh you know, all those requirements. and they choose for their one elective to be a class that is a personal preference. So, if we do make world language a requirement, uh then our freshman and sophomores who are accessing support classes essentially wouldn't have an elective choice until they're juniors.

So, those are sort of the technical pieces that get in the way. Also, I think um again, I think learning another language is a whole other level of challenge. And so, I think some of our students think that they may not be good at it. And so, they don't they don't opt into it. And I think that's where I where we talk about preK all the way up. Learning a language when you're younger is much easier. We know that that's how the brain learns. Starting earlier helps. And so the more the more we can start bringing those things in across all of our schools um the better. And again, not every child has to take the language when they're younger, but the opportunity and option being there is is important. So going on to career readiness, again, the California state talks about three different areas um that would determine whether or not a student um is career ready. And I will say if you want to dig in and get excited and go into the California dashboard and you can look at the the matrix and you can see all the different um data points around this. We have students who are definitely college and career ready on multiple um areas and we have some students who are only college and career ready on one area. And then of course we have students who who aren't um uh college and career ready in any of the areas. Um so we do have um uh the CTE pathway at the high school. We have um and I'll again I'll let our our high school colleagues talk a little bit more about this but we do have some CTE courses which is college care to career college tech sorry thank you career technical education pathways um culinary arts photography we have a a growing um uh

computer education science pathway and we have students who are taking courses is in that in those and they're also in the college readiness branch which is great. We also have the opportunity and something we don't currently have to do more work-based learning. Um, and for those who might be interested, uh, military science, although I would say that my personal preference is to start with the career tech and the workbased learning, um, just because there's so much grant money out there, um, to support that. And we're going to talk a little bit later about a grant that we actually were able to get based on that. Um I don't know if my colleagues want to talk a little bit about that

what what you're offering anything.

Thanks. So the um career technical education programs that we have at the high school if you look at the the dashboards it reports a rate a completion rate for a pathway of around eight or nine%. That's low if you ask students what they've done and there's multiple reasons for that. A pathway according to the state of California has to be one of the adopted programs that they define as a pathway and it has to be that you've completed both years of the course sequence. Um and only when you've completed the second course are you considered a completer of the pathway. Um also none of our computer science programs or engineering and design programs are state sanctioned state stamp of approval for CTE. There's a few reasons for that. um most of which are technical um not because of the quality of the program. Um it's actually really common for schools like ours to have some of those programs actually considered part of CTE pathways. Um and then also our engineering and design class and then electronics workshop are homegrown courses. Um so they don't map easily to um some of the CTE pathways established by the state of California. And then also um we're not getting some of the money for those things anyway. So we haven't kind of done the extra work which require our teachers to do a lot of extra things um for that to be the kind of the official stamp of approval. But from our perspective we have currently essentially four different pathway programs. The only two in the eyes of the state of California and there's a another one coming next year thanks to a grant that we recently got.

And I do want to say that this is how the state is determining if we're college and career ready. I would I would argue that the courses that um Principal McN just talked about that maybe aren't California state regulated or approved are are also helping our kids to be career ready um and college ready. So, you know, I think again we we have these ways that we measure it and then we also have our anecdotal information and data. What are the two that are California sanctioned that we have

culinary arts and digital photography or photography One thing we've talked about a little bit too though is that some of the students are taking those more as electives and not as a pathway. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah. And part of that too is that all of our CTE courses meet either UC throughg requirements or they I mean they do meet A throughG, but they either meet the general elective requirement or the photography course actually meets the fine arts requirement as well um for both high school graduation purposes and um uh UC purposes. So some of our again I mean our students our programs serve multiple purposes um and similar to our culinary arts program both those courses count as UC approved elective classes. So students sometimes take those things out of a and if if you look at the two course sequence for all of them the first course is much more popular um than the second course mostly for students just doing it for enrichment purposes. Um, so and we don't lock students in. We don't tell them if they do the first course, they have to do the second course,

which is going to be my I guess was related to my question, which is like how should I think about um if students like it sounds like students are kind of possibly in both branches may not really know what branch they're in. I'm not trying to be negative, but like I'm taking courses here that actually career readiness, but I'm actually more focused on college readiness. So most of my courses are up here. How do we think about or how should we think about like our our our mix at the high school? Like am I make am I making it too black and white when the reality is just gray and and they should think about it differently?

I think the reality is really gray. Um and the uh if you there's actually we have data on this. Most of our students meet both or most of our students who meet one meet um most of our students who meet the CTE also meet the A throughG pathways. So that's actually pretty common. It's it's actually less common to have a student who only meets the CTE and doesn't meet the um uh uh UC A throughG. It's also really uncommon to have a student who has taken no courses within our applied tech department. So between the computer science and uh and all those it's it's actually most of our students dabble.

Yeah. The applied we we switched the requirements I think for applied for graduation. Has that shifted at all since that? I know historically we didn't we require like a couple applied arts for We used to have an applied arts graduation requirement. Um which I mean we talked about the history of that which Yeah. Yeah. morphed over time. Now it just got me curious. Enrollment trends didn't change. Okay. Great. They all seem to be pretty similar.

All right. Move on. Any any further questions? So I know that um Trusty Chock you had does this explain a little bit? Okay, great. Okay, so again we've talked about this already. We we definitely have high overall performance and this is just a a kind of a across the board where our students are um in demographic um world. Where are our students in terms of being prepared? And this is on both branches. And then um where are we seeing some of those gaps or the debt? And again, we know that academic success relies heavily on belonging. Um and again we're seeing similar sort of um gaps or debts across the demographics when we look at our suspension rates and our average daily attendance.

Can I call out one thing on that previous slide? Yes.

Just something I want to point out here is so this is this is from the career college readiness indicator. If you look at UC A throughG rates, it's pretty similar, but the UCA throughg rate for English learners is much lower. It's closer to the number for students with disabilities. And that's because certain introductory EL courses do not count as UC approved um courses. So, those students end up actually not meeting the um UC requirements for English um which is a significant barrier for English learners meeting um college readiness uh requirements. So, um, if we compare the college career readiness indicator with UCA throughg, that's actually a glaring, um,

place of difference between the two.

Yeah, thank you for that. That's that's really important because as we talk about how we're giving keys to students to open the doors. We also, again, I want to go back to now these might be students that are newer to the country, newer to us, um, and newer to learning English, but this is a a gatekeeper, um, being uh reclassifying is a gate. If you do not reclassify, there is a lot of data, especially if you're considered a long-term English learner, about not getting to college and for all of the reasons that we just heard. And so when we're thinking about reclassification, we really want to start thinking about at elementary school. We know it takes about 5 to seven years to learn a language. And if we have those students for 5 to seven years, we should be seeing them reclassify. I don't know um Karen if you want to say anything more about that because we've been having that conversation recently. Or did I say it?

I think you got it all. Thank you.

Okay. So, continuing to move on, I do want to just say, you know, again, I don't I don't want to be a Debbie. Oh, sorry for people named Deborah. I don't want to be a downer. Um, apologize for that. I actually there is a substitute teacher, little known fact that I worked with. Her name was Deborah Downer, but um so um we don't want um to say that our our growth and our success isn't amazing because it is. And it there's really an illusion of arrival. Getting to college, getting into the the four-year or even the two-year college is one thing. What happens next is the other. And that's what we want to start to really think about and we really want to grow.

I had a question on this slide. Um so, um I sort of originally asked a question about this several months ago and uh I had a conversation with the counselor burn, sorry. uh because she reached out to me and the numbers I held in my head and I realized it changes from year to year was like 55 4 year 30 2 year 15 something else. Um this is obviously shows a little bit of a shift which I'm not not doubting the day but like do we have a sense of is that a a shift that's happening because of things we're doing is it is a shift that's happening because of what's happening in culture uh other things I'm not thinking about like it seems like we're seeing more kids go go down this path than before from what the data I looked at.

Yeah, you're uh you're right. previous trends, we'd held pretty close to about a 55% four-year going rate and um a 25 to 30% two-year going rate. That had been pretty consistent. Last year was a uh significant increase in the four-year going rate. Um it does coincide with increases in UC throughg uh rates as well, but the A throughg rate has been way more than the actual four-year going rate for a while. Um we do have some initial data and it looks like a lot of the growth actually was in students choosing CSUs. Um though the the college going rate for for um UC's went up as well and also a little bit I privates are a little bit harder because that groups shifts a little bit and then we do actually consistently send five plus percent of students to universities outside of the country. Um, but it does seem that we are sending more students to to California state universities or to California universities and that seemed to jump with the class of 2025. And we um and I'm going to take full credit for that. Uh,

as well you as well you should.

Um, and just say that we we did some work last year to really target students who don't think of themselves as high performers or collegegoing. um to really make sure they were aware of opportunities that were available to them, especially the the CSU and East Bay and San Francisco State options. And it's one of the reasons why we now have the dedicated um college access coordinator position is specifically to really target resources towards first generation underrepresented populations because our counselors have case loads of 325, which means um any given year they have 75 plus students applying to seniors who are thinking about college. Um, and so now we actually have dedicated staff because we found it was really helpful to have a person who could sit there and help students navigate really basic things like where's the button to apply? Um, you know, can I pay for this? Um, and those questions early on because of the issue of us having significant lag between our students who are ready and our students who are choosing to go. And of course, we don't want to force students to do something they're not interested in. But that's always been a question for us is we have students who have the readiness but they're not making that choice. Is that something that we can address? And some initial steps look like that that maybe the answer is yes.

That's fantastic. Thank you for that answer. And then I guess the other thing I would say is like I'd love to do some awareness survey on the SFSU uh CSU Eastbay like like I sort of hear it through the grapevine. I'd love like everybody just to know that like the day they walk in the door just that you have an option especially because I think kids uh on the college path so many of them um even really smart bright kids are are fearful like they aren't going to have options and giving them the idea that if you just do the work you're going to have that option is a fantastic the more we can make that known I think it'll be great. We actually trained just my two cents.

Yeah, we trained all staff on that on Friday. Um, and uh, part of that conversation was getting our teachers more involved in some of the conversations leading up to course selection, which of course we just did, so 11 months from now. Um, and providing some of that information. Uh, the state of California has also created something called the California College Guidance Initiative, which uh, we are one of the initial groups with thanks to the superintendent signing on, which means we're ironing out the kinks early. um if it works in the fall, which we'll see. Um but definitely uh in two years. So for our kids who are freshman and sophomores, they will be able to log into a website, click a button, and get admissions decisions to 16 California State Universities. Unbelievable. Thank you.

Um which will really lower that barrier to the question of can I do it? Um because they will get that answer very quickly. And we're excited for that prospect. We're we're having to iron out quite a few things. As you can imagine, working with data systems of the state of California is not the simplest. Um but and that's and thankfully we also have staff to help work on with that for students as well. So we're building out those support systems now. I had no idea. That's terrific. Fantastic. Thank you. Can I just add like one piece?

Of course. think this is and we talked about this with the staff, but I also think having all your ears right now. Um, also knowing that part of it to me for like that awareness around that is there is still, you know, some stigma for some students around going to state school. Um, and helping to normalize that. I think one of the barriers we see in the counseling office is it's a $70 application and so students are bud, you know, they're applying to 10 schools, you're talking about $700 and that's a lot of money. So for some students it also becomes down to well if I'm going to have to be local I'd rather you know only commute to BCC instead of having to commute to SF State. So part of that is kind of like a housing thing. Um but also then not being willing to shell out the extra $140 to apply to both campuses or $70 to apply to one of those campuses. So I think one is helping to normalize SF State is an amazing school with great programming as well as Cal State East Bay and Sonoma State and all these wonderful places and having that be the community conversation. Um and then obviously like counselor wish would be like is there you know a way that we could find funding or something to help support to offset the costs for some of the students who may not be willing to hit that button and say here's my credit card number for $70 or my parents can't afford it.

Love that. I mean, I've I really want to figure out how do we normalize kind of all post-graduate options assuming that they are right for the right for the kid. Like for some kids, SF State is right. Some kids community college is the right answer, but I think in this community we sometimes we look down on that sort of thing. And so um yeah, I let me know what I can do to help normalize on uh and let's trade ideas back and forth. I think it's crucial.

Yeah, I really really appreciate that. Thank you. And I think that that also starts early. It goes back to um from when the kids are little and they're starting to talk about what are you going to do when you grow up and how are you going to get there? Because what you're going to do when you grow up is I want to be, you know, a teacher, a a doctor, a lawyer, a a ballerina, whatever. Um but okay, so how are you going to get there? And I think normalizing early on here are all the different ways you can get to the thing you want to do and helping them see that some of these options that are um like right at their fingertips literally are the right option and also I agree we do need to think about how can we support kids to be able to um do those applications and not and and and afford to be able to do it. So I appreciate that. Thank you so much. Other thoughts? Yeah.

Um so talking about other districts, um I know so of course the UC does have their own fee waiver um for low-inccome students um if you meet the requirements and it does let you apply to I think was it like four UC's. Um there are a lot of districts that will actually provide additional funding whether it be um what is it whether it be students at a slightly higher amount um than what the UC UC requires so like a slightly higher income or they provide more funding to apply to additional schools within the UC system. Um just something that schools do. That's great.

Thank you. Yeah. Okay. So, we definitely um as we've talked about the values um our student trustees read the values at the beginning of the meeting. We know that we want equity and excellence. We want things to be student centered. We want kids to to feel a sense of agency and wellness and belonging and we want to honor individual strengths. And I think that that's actually one of the things I really want to highlight today as we're having this conversation is that when we have these kind of big picture conversations, it gets very technical. It's like, well, this is what it means to be college and career ready and this is this is how our students can get there. And we have to remember that each and every student is on their own individual path. And we have incredible counselors, as we heard, who work with many, many, many, many, many, many students. and they do a phenomenal job really of of connecting with students and helping students and we all I know this sounds maybe a little corny but it takes a village um and we all need to kind of get involved in thinking about how are we honoring each student's individual desires strengths and where how are we supporting them to get where they want to go um and that that is that community partnership so part of that is as we talked about and I appreciate um is is normalizing the different ways that you can get to success in life for some of our students. And I'm going to just again I'll go back to my own experience as a as a young person. I thought that if I didn't get into the quote unquote best college that my life was going to be over. Um and I mean I I went to a UC I it was an amazing college. It was not my first choice college. My first choice college, we had this conversation earlier, was in Boston and I wasn't able to go because I couldn't afford it. Well, I don't think

my life ended. I'm actually and I mean to some, you know, to some I I, you know, have a pretty good career kind of I go to work happy every day. So, I was able to get to where I wanted to go, but in my mind at the time, if I didn't go to that college in Boston, my life was over. And I think I've heard that story many many many many times not just from our kids but from the adults in their lives. And so what I ask I'm humbly asking the adults across our system to help our kids understand that the meandering path is really about their individual growth and development and it may mean something a little bit different than what we have in our mind's eye. And I also am going to go back to that idea at the beginning. We actually don't know what life success is going to look like in 20 years. So it might be that we're thinking it's a certain thing that always was and it may be different than in the future. Any any thoughts on this? I'm telling a lot of my personal stories tonight, so other people can share theirs if they'd like. But I think it's important that we also again personalize this because this is about each and every kid. Yeah,

just share one thing. I mean, I I really appreciate so much what you just said about recognizing individual students are on their own paths and some of the the tricky um messages that we hear from the the older folks, not not just the younger folks. And in addition to everything that you're saying, the landscape for college admission is just so drastically different than it was when any the older folks on the the side of the, you know, were um were applying. And so even if that way of looking at it did work when, you know, 20 30 years ago, it just doesn't now. And it's it's really imperative that our um our families and our caregivers understand that so we can have emotionally healthy um kids who can get through to that, you know, the life place and all the the sustained well-being and and all of that.

Yeah, thank you for that. I

mean, it's interesting. I one of the things I've reflect I've I have a kid in college and I have a kid going through the process right now. And I think one of the things I've reflected on is um so I've also you know I've hired dozens if not hundreds of people in my career. I don't know where most if any of them went to college and uh I had I just looking at resumes and I look at the colleges usually if maybe I could make some small talk based on what I knew about the college I went to. It wasn't about like oh you went to college A versus college B. So I'm selecting person A versus college versus person B. And it's uh but it's amazing how and I get it like at this point in life that's not what they're thinking. Not only has the process changed but the visibility has changed and you know we think about social media and those sorts of things and watching videos about what happened on such and such colleges admissions today. So yeah, I think we have to continue to battle the at least for me as a hiring manager, where you went to college wasn't necessarily the thing. It was like what' you do, who you are, how did you show up.

There's actually a great book called where you go is not who you'll be. I I don't know if any other parents have uh gotten that for their child, but I had to get that for my older child. Okay. Um so moving on. Okay. Again, we've we've been talking about different ways to get to life um to a thriving life. And one of the things we've been talking about is college. And we do know that um we're all in the business here of education. That is why we are here. And I deeply believe that education is not just important to get to college and career, but it's also important to to be successful and have agency and be a critical thinker. And we also know that there is this persistence gap. Kids may get to college, they may be excited to go and then they don't finish. Now, for some students, again, going into my personal life for my son, that was that was the path he needed to go on. He went to college, decided it wasn't necessarily for him, certainly wasn't for him to get to the career he wanted, and so he made the decision to move on. That's okay. What I don't want though is for our students who get to college to have a persistence um drop off because they weren't prepared and they didn't know where they wanted to go and they they just couldn't do it. And so that's something that we're definitely wanting to have more information about for our kids. And I'd love to have more stories from from our students who thought maybe it wasn't going to work out and and what were their strategies for persistence? where did they go to for those um supports and what would have helped them along the way prek through 12 here to help them build up that resiliency. Definitely want to lean on our our counselor. Um I think you know some of the stories too. So if there's anything

you want to share about this slide, I would really appreciate it.

Sure. Um, so I think I mean there's a couple thoughts that initially jump in my head like part of it and this is no shade to California but um I do find that the the process by which the UC and CSU ask students to declare into a major from the jump is not sustainable. Like I don't believe that that's the way that we should be doing that. And I think you can't ask a 17-year-old or 16-year-old or 18-year-old to say what they think they want to study for ever. Um, so I think that sort of system makes it difficult. Um, and I think that, you know, we as a counseling department really stress and encourage students, you know, and as much as we can push the narrative of like please like find like choose something you're passionate about and that carries all of this other all of these other things. Um, and you know, the stories are, you know, I was never really one for data like Darren. I was always anecdotal. um or qualitative uh results type person. Um but you know even today actually just today a student came in during seventh period and uh was a student who's currently at UC Davis. Um really really really really struggled in high school. Um I'm going to get a little teeyed just thinking about you know the struggles that she had were you know it was a tough time for a while. Um, and by the grace of our mental health team, her teachers, the people who cared about her, the people who rallied around, came together, she's thriving. Um, she's actually working part-time in the mental health office at Davis and like shared that story. And like I think that her experience in high school got her to that place. So, she's someone who was able to go to that to that. Um, but then I also know, you know, there's a student currently, a former student, not mine, but a former student who's working at one of the after school programs who did declare a, you know, bio major, realized pretty quickly into the program, wait a minute,

I don't want to do this. Um, and was, you know, had the safety net to come home, do some community college, and is now transferring to do kind of education studies. So I think part of this is preparing them trying to instill and encourage a pursuit of like passion. Um you know I there's a slide earlier on and I think I made a note for myself sort of the resistance between like a holistic resilient passionate excuse me um kid. I don't know how well that can always align in within a community or within a society that really emphasizes four-year college going in these crazy admissions rates. Like how do you how do you really allow yourself to know yourself and pursue that and find that in high school when the thing coming down from the top is like 10% admissions rate at Cal and that's hard. Um, so I think there's a little bit of that. And so when I see like kind of think about persistence and drop off, I think there's some things we can be doing, I also feel a little bit of like they're there and how are you guys helping them? Like we got them there. Like how are you helping once they get there? So there's a little bit of that too and I wish we could have more time to work on the, you know, self-awareness piece and the, you know, internal, you know, what are you passionate about? what do you care about conversation?

And I and again I think that starts in our prek program all the way through because building that self-awareness and resiliency and all of those things those are our social emotional learning skills. And so when students have that kind of inner core strength that they can go back to and rely on when it gets hard in the first year like you said they know what they know what to do. It's not going to be easy. We know that um life is not easy. Don't know if anyone was told that before they went to college, but it's not simple. Um I have a question. Yeah,

I know that we don't have data for year one for Albany, but is it do we have do you know any data for percentage of kids who start college and drop out on the first year just generally? Um no idea. I don't have it off the top of my head. I can find it. And I do think we have some data for year one for our kids. Not all. We don't have enough that I would trust it to really okay

be for decision-m purposes, but we we do know that college persistent rates track many of the same equity gaps as other topics. Um the students not from who are first generation, from lower income backgrounds, uh with disabilities, um who don't go to schools with kids who look like them, um are much much more likely to leave. I don't know if you have any of that kind of off the top of your head data. How many kids do you think make it through the first year of college or don't? I wouldn't I wouldn't trust myself to give a number and sound like I knew what I was talking about, but happy to happy to find that because I think it's a good question and then once we know some of our persistence data, we can we can compare it.

Yeah, overall attrition rate is really quite high. I mean, it's shocking. So my kids are all either two of them are post college, one is finishing up at college now. Um I think it was somewhere like 20% in at SDSU and my youngest daughter is um which was shocking. So I don't know how Albany compares but lots of things that you've all said have really kind of resonated with me.

One thing Josh said was about not mattering really where you go. It's more like what you do when you get there. I could not agree with that more. I really firmly believe that in my kids experience. I have three who all have been to public colleges in California. One at Davis, one at Santa Barbara, one at SCSU. All fantastic. All have either changed majors or added a major or picked up a m minor. So, lots of flexibility. Um, and I think they were really wellprepared and I think I've been really lucky. They were so well prepared by their K12 experience in Albany. So, I feel like there is absolutely hope and to follow their passions is really Yeah. reassuring.

I think I mean there's like a million things coming to mind, but I think one of the first things I uh that came to mind uh to your point earlier um I actually went to a community college first and in my first semester I learned most college students regardless of what whether you go to CSU, UC, whatever um most students change their major three to five times. Wow. And for careers most people change anywhere between four to seven times. And like those were things that I didn't know

when I first like went to college. And like in that moment, I thought I needed to like figure out what I was going to be doing for the next 50 years of my life, you know? Like that's what I thought I needed to figure out. And it it like I think the level of pressure we place on students is insane. But also to Josh's point, and I think Becky, everybody's saying good things, like I don't know who said it, but um I think being a double bear, you know, I I transferred to Berkeley and then I'm doing my masters there as well, but like the one thing in all of these different experiences, whether it was community college, you know, Berkeley undergrad or or grad school, all of it comes down to what you make of the program. Like, and I think that's what nobody tells you. That's something you have to figure out when you get there. Um and I I feel like that that is a thing like you know and and there's tons of data that even for K12 and higher education what um we're finding is that the more time students are spending on site whether it's through extracurriculars whether it's clubs sports whatever it might be like that's kind of has a much higher rate of showing how successful student might be and successful as in defined more so as in like how happy they are how wellconed they feel um how much easier it is for them to navigate resources should they find themselves in a place where they need to navigate resources. Um, I think the other thing that also comes to mind is, um, and this was maybe a couple of slides earlier, but I taught as a supplemental instructor at the community college system, and one of the biggest things we were realizing there was that um, more than 90% of our students that were coming in um, could not read or write at a college level. And that was like the biggest shocker because, you know, at that point people the the assumption was that everybody was going to come in being able to read at that level. Um, most a good chunk of our students were actually anywhere between a fifth to eighth grade reading level. Um, and

obviously this is community college, it's a different setting. Um, you know, it's a lot more accessible for folks that may not have considered a four-year path. There's lots of lots of things that come up in there, but it it's not all that far off. Even at the UC system, you see a lot of math and English where people, you know, are not quite as prepared as they may have assumed they might be or like it's just a different level of rigor that nobody prepares you for. Um, don't know where I'm going with this, but just that um there's a lot of different things that we really need to consider. And I think half of this also comes with like being able to talk to people that have actually gone through it and like connect um early enough because once you know once you're in there you just have to like run with it assignments there's no time to pause and think and ask questions you know sometimes. So um there's a lot Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you. I was say I was going to u trusty con I was going to jump on her point of like I mean there was the recent uh study out of UCSD where 20% of kids are in remedial math going into that college so not just community colleges across the board. Um I have a I just came up with another question in my mind. apologies that I didn't think of it ahead of time, but like we have a so when I look at the Alby's uh district level stats around math and um ELA performance and so the numbers I hold in my head are one in four uh kids in Albany aren't at standard or above for ELA and one in three for math. Um and that may not be at the high school too. I guess that's that's an aggregate across the across the district. How should I think about that preparedness with the relationship between th those state standards and college readiness for those subjects? Does that make sense? In other words, if I'm at standard at math, am I going to be great or am I below if even if I'm below standard at math, I'm probably okay for college preparedness.

Yeah. So, the just to make a point, the high school numbers are a little different. And just remember when you're looking at statewide data that high school is one of seven grades in the data. So, high school gets kind of lost. the high school data from the most recent year, it's only 11th grade. Um, ELA, I believe, was 83% and math, I believe, was 76%. Um, we so in that one in four for math and one in four for ELA. So, we um I actually have some data around this.

Uh, I'm glad I asked the question then. Um so I mean interestingly if you look at the the students are considered ready for the college career um readiness that metric we actually have far more students meet that requirement based on completing A throughG courses and actually completing AP courses than we do through meeting both the at grade level in English and math. Um, so students who are who are maybe considered not quite at grade level at the end of 11th grade can still and many of them do um complete youth UCG requirements through either an AP course or AP courses or um by completing um the full UC3G requirements. So um if you want to break down, it's one of those actually really kind of garishly colored um spreadsheets that that the state has available. But um that I mean that's a big question for us too is then how does that how does some of those things all map together um and that also does create some interesting challenges around our English language learners who are not captured in the uh ELAP back numbers and therefore can't be considered ready on the ELA. Um but for example we found things like CSU Eastbay will be really forgiving on certain uh language learners and accept them even if they don't necessarily meet those minimum requirements. So, you know, we we had one student from the class of 2025 who's currently at CSU Eastbay who technically was not considered CSU eligible because of her ELA courses, but through working with CSU Eastbay, they decided that she was ready. Um, and she's she's there now.

Awesome.

Great. Okay. Hello. That's not working. It stopped working. Sorry. Okay. Next slide, please. Okay. All right. So, we want to think about um again, we've talked a lot about traditional um mechanisms to think about college, career, and life readiness. And something we want to talk a little bit more about um before we we end tonight is some other some other ideas um and some things that we're working on in our district. We talked a little bit about the current CTE uh pathways that we have at the high school and we do know that that's a again an indicator on the college and career dashboard for this for the state um that students who've completed their CTE courses are considered college and career ready. What's more exciting to me and what I want to talk a little bit more about is the opportunity with career technical education and dual enrollment. And this is something Darren and I have talked about. It's a challenge. It's not an easy fix. It's it's it's complex, but it is absolutely going back to what um President Mahoney said before. There are districts that do this really really well, and we can lean on the learning from those districts. What's exciting about dual enrollment is that a student who is in a CTE pathway who is also who with a dual enrollment piece of it can actually get college credit in high school towards going to college and also get their CTE

certification. Um, we have uh sister districts across our our county that do this incredibly well where some students actually graduate as seniors with almost um almost having completed sophomore year college credits in some cases. What that means for families who are on a a budget, you might be paying less money for college. What it also means for our students is um going back to the other that persistence drop off. Well, they've already done two years, only two years left. They know they're moving on to graduation. Now, I'm not saying that every single student in our district is now all of a sudden going to be able to do dual enrollment and we'll have a whole plan. But I do think when we're thinking about that education debt and we're thinking about our students who are um our most um historically marginalized vulnerable vulnerable communities, this is an incredibly interesting and exciting option that I want us to start to think about exploring more and more of. I'm going to also just I know we've had some passionate conversations about this, so I know you have a lot to say if you want to share anything. I'm sure everybody wants to hear me talk more about these programs, but I I do I I do want to provide one point of clarification. Um there's dual enrollment and there's concurrent enrollment. Those are two different things that are often spoke about uh kind of the same way. Concurrent enrollment means you're taking a community college course while you're also enrolled in a high school, but those two institutions are not talking to each other. That it's two separate things. Um, dual enrollment is when the community college and the high school have an agreement. And often in many dual enrollment situations, the community college course is taught at the high school um by community college faculty um and it it has a formal legal contract between the boards of the two

different institutions saying that they're doing this. We have a lot of students do concurrent enrollment where they choose to take community college courses um while enrolled at Alman High. We have not uh we've had one formal dual enrollment program with SF State um the steps to college program um previously which we no longer have. Um and we've actually several times tried to get dual enrollment off the ground and couldn't do it um for a few different reasons. Um so we're looking at moving forward with a dual enrollment program where we'll actually be doing the dual enrollment part in two years um because we're doing the first part of the pathway next year. Um and that will be and that's we're working on that agreement um right now. Thank you for that. I thought I had a slide that explained that. I apologize. But yes, that's a very important distinction. And I think it's important too because again, if you're in a dual enrollment course, you're getting your college, you're getting your um graduate requirements also completed. All right. So again, we're going to go to there's multiple pathways. There's the traditional academic college prep pathway. Then we're talking about our professional and technical training pathway which is that CTE pathway. Um the last one is the individualized and civic learning pathway. This is um a little bit more around work study um and community service and other things. And we're not really talking about that today. Um what we really want to focus on is that that green um arrow. The reality though is that as we start to really think about this and grow this out over time, we want to think about um some of the different ways um that are not in the academic college prep and professional technical training that also help our kids get to um college career and life readiness. So very excited. Um actually on our board agenda today um we're we're um asking later um to help uh pay for the

grant writer who helped us to get this grant. We'll talk about that later at the in the board agenda. But what's so exciting is we got um over a million dollar grant to start a new pathway. And this pathway is our public safety um pathway. Basically, what it means is that we will have students who um will be able not only uh to graduate from our high school uh college and career ready, but they will also graduate with their e if they choose with their EMT um and ready to move into other types of um public safety or medical um careers. So again, I'm going to let you talk a little bit more about this, but I'm very excited about this.

Yeah, this um so just give a a rundown. So in this uh program, students would be they would this is the dual enrollment program that we're talking about. So that second the or the what we're calling the third course. It's a little confusing. That EMT prep course is what is currently a six-unit course at Merit College. Um, and the students would simultaneously earn the credits from ALB High and then the Merit College credits and of course at the end we'll be prepared to pass the national certification exam to be an EMT. Um, we're offering what on there is is course two next year um to kind of get the the pipeline kickarted essentially. Um, and we've had actually uh very strong interest far more than I was anticipating for that program which is presenting some new good challenges. um that will be uh next year. And so that that course that the number two course will offer all of the prerequisites for the EMT course. Um and then at that point, the only requirement for the EMT course is a student be 16 years old when they start the program. So students will be able to then graduate from Albany High um with their EMT certifications. Um starting wage is $40 an hour these days in the Bay Area for that. Yes.

Um yeah. uh and um also the EMT preparation is considered very strong preparation for other healthcare fields uh like nursing um in particular. Um and so these students will actually be highly competitive for other healthcare related fields as well.

What I also want to say that's exciting about this is that this was actually the brainchild of our local um fire chief. He actually came to me at the beginning of my superintendency and said, "I've always wanted to partner with Albany Unified School District on this thing that they do in Berkeley. Would you be interested in talking to me about that?" And I said, "Yeah, that sounds great." And very, very fortunately, things just aligned and we were able to get somebody to help us get the grant and we were able and we got the grant. Um, so I have not met with the um, fire chief since then, but I know that principal McN has, and I know that he is extremely excited about our our our students even potentially being able to then go back and work in our city um, in public safety.

Yeah, just I I met with the chief and he was really excited. Um, and uh, they are uh, both really excited for the possibility. Um, actually a lot of the firefighters actually approach it from the perspective of what are their own kids going to going to do one day. Um, and Albany Fire Department and actually turns out quite a few local fire departments are having trouble getting enough qualified applicants. Um, because they require everyone to be certified EMTs and have gone through the full fire academy training process. Um and he was telling me they're actually having that that all of the local chiefs are growing really concerned about the training pipelines and um actually all through this portion of the East Bay, the fire chiefs are all talking to each other, actually building a much stronger consortium um to prepare people for firefighting careers um going forward. So um he's very excited to support us um and is you know offering ride along support and those kinds of things and uh was asking me what I need and I said mostly just just the opportunity for students to get the exposure and and he said he was very excited to do that. So um that's um really exciting and I mean one thing this came from too is I did start my as my time as an administrator in alternative education and one of the things I really saw in that uh is the number of students who were not successful in traditional academic environments who could really excel in especially first responder type careers. Um, we've had quite a few McGregor students who are now currently firefighters or EMTs um that I personally worked with. And so this was a field that we felt could really engage a wide swath of students um with a variety of different interests. And so far the initial numbers show some strong interest.

I feel obligated to say that every time I listen to the national job numbers, they say that the only segment of the of the economy that's growing is healthcare. And so from a job perspective, so

that is correct. And I'm going to say something snarky about AI, even though obviously AI was used to help me with this today. Um, but I do want to say that it's I think it's really hard for AI to put a fire out. Just saying. Maybe they'll figure out a way to do that. Okay. So, when we're thinking about um our our strategies, um I'm hoping that people are walking away today really understanding that there are multiple pathways to getting to success. Um and what we what we are tasked to do is really strengthen our supports and our um our container for students to be able to get to whichever pathway makes the most sense for them to go on. And that really means aligning our our systems and our resources. And so when we do that really well as a school district, we really will be able to I I believe strongly see our our data shift and pay back that education debt, give that ensure that those gaps start to close for um our different uh groups of students. And so part of the work that we're doing, I'm going to put in a plug again. Thank you for h we've had um I think it's over 130 maybe it's even more now people um complete the survey for the Alb the portrait of the Albany graduate which is exciting um want to continue to hear people's voices around this because while I'm very excited that our that our fire chief came and said hey what about this what do you think and I was able to then go and work with somebody to get a grant to do this that was I was flying a little bit by the seat of my pants. I mean, luckily, we do have many, many, many, many students who are super excited about it

and want to sign up. So, that's great. Um, but what would be even more important is if we actually have the information uh from our community about exactly what it is that we we want our graduates to be ready for. So, what are what do we want them to know, be able to do, be ready for, and what do and I I heard loud and clear um in order for us to ensure that our kids are resilient after they graduate. What do they have in their hearts? Um and and what are they able to um to do with that? So, this is a plug for I'm going to be I'm going to continue to send out. Please, please, please give your feedback. This is really important because it really will help us to design not just courses like what we're trying to put together, but also will help us with our strategic plan. We have a new LCAP. We're on our last year of our LCAP. We're going to be presenting that to you, our final year of this particular LCAP, and we're going to be writing a new LCAP, local control accountability plan. um next year we're going to be engaging around it and this is really going to be our northstar to help us to put a really good program together um for the future. We definitely do an incredible job right now. We we need to start thinking about what are we looking for in the future that we don't know. So I just said all of that and that's this slide. Questions, thoughts, ideas about that. Yeah,

I just I love so much the direction that this whole conversation is moving in and the program that you're talking about. I mean, I like I'm going to try not to sit here and get emotional, but I mean, if if when I was growing up, the one way for me to be successful was how fast I ran the mile or like what my physical sort of strength abilities were. If that were, okay, so in order to be successful, this is what you need to be. I would have felt like there was no possibility that I was ever going to be successful. And I have no idea what that would have done to my my drive, my, you know, my goal setting, what I imagine for myself. And I just absolutely love the idea of of um just really establishing and being very clear on all of these different pathways to to serving our community to being successful to to being proud to, you know, um to considering like to patting yourself on the back and say like, you know, that was a good job that you did. You got here. Like I just I really love that we're that what we're trying to do is figure out more ways to define what is successful for our students. And it just um thing that you can imagine for yourself where there's somewhere that you can aim to be that seems like reachable for you is um is revolutionary. So I just I really appreciate it. I appreciate all the work that's gone into this and all the work to come and and thinking about it and trying to grow in this way. I think the the one thing that's coming up for me is just um I'm wondering how much data or if we even have this um for our 9 through 12 uh students like it tracking from the moment they hit 9th grade all the way to 12 is what are our students actually interested in beyond high school? And I know I know you've mentioned it like I I I feel like I've

heard you say that before, but um it just it I think half of this is like the portrait of our students. Um it's great for us to come up with things that we want to see, but like do we even know what our students actually want? And also, is it shifting year to year? Because like I know like I at four I wanted to be a ballerina. I'm clearly not a ballerina. Um and then it was teacher and then it was this and it was that, right? But it wasn't like this the current path that I'm on is not would have never imagined it. Um but I do wonder how much that shifts between 9th grade to 12th grade and and possibly even beyond. And I wonder how much that would help us help our students more. Um because it's kind of hard to like push somebody forward if we don't even know what they want or need. Um, and I as a starting point, I would love for us to figure out a way to even start getting that kind of information in whatever form or shape that might look like. Um, I mean, you know, I hate that obviously like, you know, these are things that we're learning as we go, but like I can only imagine what that would have looked like if we had known that for, you know, the past couple of cohorts and been able to like build on that to figure out how to really support our students. Um, obviously we're doing a lot of great things, especially like the EMT program and um there's a number of things that we're able to figure out as we're going, but also sometimes you need more data to figure out what our students need.

So, I I feel the need to, you know, answer or respond. So, when I met when I No, no, no. When I when I met with um I met the counselor, I actually asked that question. I said, "Great. 55% of our kids go to four-year colleges when they came into high school. What did what was the number?" And the answer was she said basically 99% that they were going to go to a four-year college. And I think it points to a couple things. So it points to I want to drags me back to a conversation we had earlier in this conversation which is around we put a lot of pressure on our kids to have a certain mindset of what success looks like very early on. And the more we can normal like I I actually worry that kids couldn't even articulate some of those options because we put so much social pressure on them to do one thing. And so I think there's a real like I think I'm sort of looking at all of us adults to like how how do we relieve some of that pressure to give them the opportunity to say yeah I want to be X and that may involve a community college pathway or it may involve I want to be a mechanic and go straight into on the job training or something like that. So that's one of those things where the data piece is going to be I I would love if we could actually know. But I think we also have to be mindful that I think we as adults color a lot of the responses we end up getting for our kids at that age unfortunately.

Yeah. And and I should also add that when I think of this kind of data, I don't think about specifically like how many of our nth graders are wanting to go to a four-year or to a community college or whatever. like I'm actually thinking of like what are my actual interest areas that like spark, you know, like this is something I'm passionate about or wanting to learn more um about and I wonder how much that shifts.

Yeah, it's almost like you wish you could do like a passion map at at ninth grade or something like that. Trademark. I think I just made that up. All right. I will I I we have two students in this in the room and I am really curious just your thoughts about um not to put you both on the spot but you know in ninth grade if you were if you were to be asked that question versus where you are now towards um Concel is going to be graduating McKenzie you'll be graduating next year how would that have maybe helped or what would that look like? Wait, so which part helped? Sorry. Do you mean like the

just like what are you like not do you want to go to college or what what do you want to be when you grow up, but like if if we had a better sense of like what you're interested in, how would that help with our support of you along your your high school career? And if you don't have an answer, that's fine, too.

Do you understand the question? Pretend I think it's like pretend when you were entering nth grade you you filled out a survey that said what what are your passions? What are the things you want to learn about most of all in life? I don't know probably better frame than that. And then um how would that have shaped would that have shaped how would that have shaped um your where you've ended up in terms of uh where you've ended up consing up? Uh, McKenzie, if it's too theoretical, feel free to say, "Hey, yeah, we can talk about that later."

Um, so for ninth grade, um, I would say that I was kind of interested in medicine. Um, I did research on my own and realized, oh, that's a lot of education. Um, and not I I like education, don't get me wrong, but like that's a lot of it. Um, and so I did the research on my own time, but I do think that having research done like during school hours or having assistance with it um could have helped me make a decision faster or at the very least um start considering other pathways early on. Um, so I think it'd be helpful. Yeah. M

um when I was younger and even now I've always wanted to go into education. I come from a whole family of educators. So obviously I'm very familiar with it. With that I've also learned that education is very hard to be a part of especially because my family are teachers and they're not more administrators or high ranking members.

Yeah. So, I've definitely learned that aspect um since I've always wanted to go into education, but I know I've always wanted to go into um politics and like maybe pursuing law. And I don't know if there was something in particular at the high school that made me want to go into that. I just feel like I've always had that like passion that I've just like created growing up. And for when it comes to preparing for college, like being a high schooler in the Bay Area and in Albany, like obviously we all want something to do to take the pressure off of like students, but like there's honestly nothing you can do. The Bay Area is so competitive. like

every like not every single student, but like most students just like are so competitive and it is just like so hard to be seen as like like it's just hard to stand out in the Bay Area like compared to other states like we're all like incredible students and like we are that but compared to like each other like we just don't necessarily like view ourselves that way. And I don't think there's anything at the high school that could like really like like right now for me personally could really see like changing that mindset for me cuz it's just like more of like like how we are as an area

rather than just like at the high school. And I I think a lot of like students would agree that it's not necessarily like at the high school like we obviously have that mindset but like it's also just the entire Bay Area. Yeah. I ask you a question McKenzie. Um do you think this was my daughter's experience too that the competition the sort of pressure and that feeling of comes from like your peers more than from your parents? You know people often talk about Definitely definitely people often say oh you know the parents in they really put pressure on the kids and I'm not saying we slash they don't but I think the pressure really came from within. So that's been your experience do you think?

Um obviously my family has always wanted me to go to college but they've never cared about where I've gone to college. Like most of my family members started off at community colleges or didn't even go to college, but like they're super successful. But like just like I don't know just like growing up like everybody around you like I remember in elementary school like trying to like figure out where I wanted to go to college cuz like it was like already a thing you know and it's just like you grow up just like trying to determine and just work not even for like necessarily a career but like for a college like that's kind of how people like view you and like see you like it's kind of a social hierarchy just in Albany based off of like you are academically rather than like anything Wow.

Yeah.

Just in reaction to to what you're saying and not to put anyone on the spot or ask how people feel about it, but it's just making me think when I I believe it's in our I think it's in our maybe coral music at the end of the year when our students and everyone is flashing on the stage, where are you going to college? What are you doing? Every time I see that, I've always felt like, is this really what we want to be doing? And and I don't I'm just one person and it's just my impression, but I I do hope every time I see that, I really hope that our students feel very comfortable and at ease with with that being flashed about them. And it has always worried me. So, just in listening to you talk about that, I just wanted to say it in the space because it's been on my heart every single time that I've seen that.

I mean, I think what I'm hearing is that we create the culture, too. I hear what you're saying, McKenzie, and I you're as always the two of you are just they you blow me away um with your knowledge and understanding and it's the Bay Area. It's definitely I mean we we are in the vicinity of one of the top colleges in all of the country. Um and I think we also create a culture kind of to your point um Trusty Boyd that we can maybe think a little bit more thought be a little more thoughtful about. It's not that we don't want people to be proud or want to go to college. I mean, at the end of the day, every child should be able to go to college. Whether or not they want to go is a whole other story, but we need to prepare them to be able to go, but we don't want them to be pressured and have their mental health suffer along the way. And so, it's really that's that's powerful. Thank you.

I think anything else finish us off. I'll just say that that we have currently have some plans in place to collect some of the data. Um not to end us on a data note too much, but um actually Mr. Mes and I have talked about it with um the eighth graders before they even get to high school because this is a big question that I've had is is how are we how are we serving students from their own sense of what what they want um has been a big question as well. So we hope to have a lot more information about that um pretty soon. Yeah.

And I'd love and I know this is the unsolvable qu I actually will want to continue to hold that unsolvable question. And I asked at the beginning which is like how how do we think about success for students when each student success is actually sort of really individually noted and I think about that because I'm a big believer that the goals you set will shape the processes that you do and the the the education that we we we provide. Um and I'll tell an anecdote and apologies it's going to be really boring. So I used to work at a company called the GAP. Um, and I worked in the e-commerce business back in the stone age. And our warehouse used to set their goals based on how quickly they got the packages out the door. And I'd have a conversation with Chris Black who said, "I'm I'm at 99% of the time getting my boxes out the door within 24 to 48 hours." And I would say to Chris, "Customers are happy because they are are unhappy because they aren't getting their packages when they want it. They want it faster and what have you." And so what we did is we sh we shifted his goals. His goals were no longer about getting the boxes out the door. The goals were then become became getting 99% of the boxes in people's hands by the time that they we had promised them. And if we can and it's a it's kids are a lot harder than packages obviously, but as we think about if we can get to that and that shifted him and he so customers became much happier yada yada yada. So if you got your package on time, you're welcome. But um but it actually really shifted how he did business. has shifted how his entire team was oriented and if we can think about that. I'd love to figure out what that metric looks like for us and how that might even shape how we prepare kids for the broader world. So, I just been thinking about that. All right. I think I think we've we've we've had an I actually think this is kind of an amazing conversation about this topic. So, I want to thank everybody for participating. Um I learned a lot and I feel optimistic that we've got some opportunities to do some really great things. So, thank you everyone for all the time you put into that. Thank you. I just add one thing because it gives me

on the next slide, but I just would love to be able to kind of utilize our alumni network um in terms of well the tracking that we talked about earlier in terms of persistence but also just as McKenzie was just saying you know maybe thinking about politics and law now my oldest for example that has been her path and I think there must be many students at different colleges for example that we you know pair up with and partner with and just have them speak to current high school students who are pondering these things. Talk about that program. You look like, you know, you've already having a conversation. I just seems, you know, like it would just be super super helpful. And it's kids who understand Albany and the culture and a thought.

We actually also So, yes, I would love to to do that. We've actually talked a little bit about that too, having some alumni come back and talk um and give us information. And we're also trying to formalize a partnership um with an organization that it totally again blew me away. Young people blow me away. Um a a a group of young women in college um started their own program. Um and it came about because I don't know Tik Tok maybe. Was it Tik Tok? I think it was Tik Tok. Um so she was on Tik Tok talking about how she got into the college of her dreams and then she started getting all of these um followers asking well how did you do it? what did you do? What did you do? So, she basically out of her dorm room started her own program which is peer like a little bit older peers mentoring and supporting kids in high school to help them along the way to get to where they want to go. Um, and we've talked to them and they're they would love to have our alumni work with our students and support that. So, we're we're talking about it. we're not sure where we're going to go with it, but I think that that's a a brilliant next step and an idea. So, thank you.

Yeah, I agree. Thank you so much for the conversation and thank you for um jumping in and giving your perspective. I appreciate you. Great. Fantastic. Thank you so much. All right, now back to our regular scheduled program. Um we've got a couple of action items. Our first item is meouou with Anna Newman for some grant development work.

All right. So, um we talked a little bit tonight about um the uh two grants that we were able to receive. The um CIG grant and the school um to workforce grant um program grant. Both are incredible um huge uh supports to the conversation that we had tonight. And um we did have a grant writer support us with those. Um we actually there was a bit a bit of an error. This the um the agreement with this grant writer was supposed to go to board in August and because of a sort of a a few different people thinking it was getting onto the board agenda. It actually didn't get onto the board agenda. However, a different CIG um item got onto the board agenda that night. So when I reviewed the agenda, I thought, "Okay, it's on there." So I thought this had been approved. Um when we went to because we are we have now received um notification, we've been certified, this grant is coming, we're very excited. We did want to make sure that the person who helped support the grant um is able to um receive the payment for writing the grant. So we're asking tonight um to approve the invoice. Now again this is for two different grants that we received both the CIG grant um and the school to workforce program grant. The CIG grant is in addition to the already CIG grant that we have been receiving and supported with through um the Contraosta County um office of education.

Uh questions. I have feelings about this as you know already. Um so one question I have is so we applied for this uh the grant writer wrote this grant application just from Albany correct and this was something that previously we had funding through a consortium is that we did not have this funding at all in addition to a previous it's in addition to one that we still are receiving through a consortium.

Okay. Yeah. But that was exactly so that was through a consortium prior any grants that we've had from the state in this Right. Um, okay. So, obviously there's the issue with the timing, which is not great. Um, because I would not have approved this back in August. And I do appreciate that this person has successful in securing these grants and I appreciate that. This is an exorbitant sum 5%. Now, I've done a lot of digging in the last couple of days, and I've spoken to people who work in grants, and this is not usually the pricing structure when it comes to these kinds of funded these state funded grants. Um, I mean, this comes to $54,395.20. And I don't think we really have an option at this point. The work has been done. I do not want to approve theou for future grants with this person. Um, I think we need to look elsewhere. So my understanding having spoken to people who do this for a job who do work these specific grants is we should have been looking at more around 10 to 14,000 not 54. So usually what they'll do is an hourly rate um or a sort of project based fee. So that's really all I have to say about it. Um but I appreciate this has already been done now and we need to honor that. Other questions? Um, I'll go to public comment. Seeing none, seeing none on the thing. I I I do want to reiterate my I do I am frustrated. I I realize that mistakes happen. I am frustrated by timing. Um, it doesn't allow us to have the conversation we we like to have probably had. And I also would say that there's there's been a couple like we had to we relatively recently also had to approve

a field trip expose facto so to speak. So uh I don't while I I agree with trustee hapo that there's little that we can do at this point. I really don't want this is becoming this is I don't want this to become a habit in in terms of bringing things forward. So um I guess I feel I need to say my piece on that. Anything else from the Anything else from the board? Do I have a motion? Oh, I do have something. Trusty Boyd.

I guess I just I do want to be clear on the fact that during the entire time that I've been on the board, this current time and the previous time, there are always these sort of issues that pop up. So, I just I just want to be clear from a public perception standpoint and all of that that this is not something that this current administration or whatever you want to call it is like we've got to kind of nip this in the bud. It's a continuing struggle to try to make sure that we stay ahead of these things. I just want to be clear about that. Yeah, I think I think it's fair. I didn't mean to imply that this was different, but still I think we need to set set a a high standard.

Okay. I appreciate the superintendent explaining where the kind of you know confusion arose. So this is nothing personal at all and and again I would reiterate Trusty Boyd's point. Mine is my concern is more about the terms. Um but I'm wondering before we pose a motion. So thisou which is not on the screen right now. This is just the sort of but um but theou really talks about having a kind of relationship with this grant writer moving forward to any for any future grants. And so I'm not keen to um I don't want to just telling you before we go ahead and propose it that I won't be voting to approve it. But I do think we need to pay this person for the work that she's already done. So is it possible that we can amend if anybody is interested? I'm just proposing that as a as

well I think I think I would encourage you to make a motion and then we can go from there. Uh CBO, do you have something to say on this? Otherwise, I'll use your uh teacher voice apparently.

Okay. I just want to make one clarification that the funding code that I put up there actually should be corrected. The way that this is supposed to get paid is actually through the general fund via the indirect cost that comes through. And I just wanted to make sure I made that correction. I know that the backup says the code and it's not binding per se, but I just wanted to at least note that openly. I tried to decipher the codes yesterday and I couldn't figure out where it was coming from, but yes. Okay. It comes from general fund but via this mechanism of indirect cost just like many of our state and federal grants where we're allowed to actually charge a specific like indirect rate

although I don't think it's actually allowed to be used for grant writing 4% indirect cost. So that's just another point of consideration. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, so I think this person needs to get paid for better, for worse. Um, but I think anything in the space going forward, we should have another uh another conversation about. Um, Trusty Khan, you're looking like you're about to say something.

Yeah, sorry. I'm trying to figure out um I know you said, uh, Superintendent Stone that we've been approved for both grants. Um, you said the funding is on the way. Um, do we know when the funding gets here or Okay. Um, because I I'm trying to because I I'm also seeing that, you know, either party can um terminate theou with a 30-day written notice. And so that's I'm wondering if if that is something that the board may want to consider. Um, once the money's once the grant has been written and the money was awarded, then no, we're locked in. But it's more than

to actually terminate the agreement between us and Anna Newman. Yes, that's a 30-day. Yeah. So, that's what I'm kind of wondering is where would we fall in when the funding gets here? Um, can we terminate before the funding gets here or is it better to wait until after or whatever? Like, I mean, really, yeah, what we're trying to do is pay for the time of the grant writers. Um, and I I'm hearing from the board that we wouldn't want to pursue using this particular grant writer again. And so that that's fine. Um, I don't think or or I would say sorry to interrupt. I would say before moving forward again, we should before we moving forward, we'd have a conversation. Correct. For sure.

Um, but I but I would say that the point of this is really actually to pay for the work already provided. And that I and I hear loud and clear too that like these kinds of issues should not continue to come up. And again, I apologize um for for this happening. This was meant to go to the board in August. So, it's been it was last week when I realized it actually because it was a different CIG. It was the CIG grant to for the RO program that had gone to the board. So it was very uh a little bit confusing in the moment and moving forward we will definitely bring these forward and any future grants that we would um want to pursue we would want to make sure that the board approves the the full terms of it. So can I move to approve the invoice? Uh there are two invoices one for the CIG and one for the um S SWP K12 SWP. Move to approve payment of those two which total $54,39520 and that's it.

Second. Uh all in favor I I

The motion as stated passes. Uh next one up is the K through five ELA uh curriculum adoption recommendation. Director Shiner. Sorry, can I just jump in? Sorry. Trusty Khn has just mentioned a point of order which she thinks is that we need to actually approve theou in order to approve the invoice. I'm not entirely sure.

I should more of a question on Yeah, go ahead. Ask a question. I'm I'm I think we've got the intent, but let's let's let's make sure we do it. I just don't I don't want to approve theou, but I do want to approve the payment. So whether I don't really care how we go about doing that. Yeah. And I think the technicality is just based on the way the item is written is approval of memorandum of understanding. Right. So just for those reasons are we so can we amend theou stat like currently we could say that we approve uh theou um in order to pay but that we don't approve the ongoing partnership with Newman. I

Yeah. I mean I think I think this goes I mean from an intent perspective I think it's pretty clear what we want to have done. I think the question is how do we do that in the context of doing this now I'd prefer ideally if we can do this now as opposed to say go back rewrite the thing and come back in two weeks to do the thing that we already know what we want to do. Um, are I guess I'll I'll just like maybe this is not my right rules of order, but like if we need to approve theou to only pay this amount of amount and just restate how the motion. I'm I'm comfortable with that, but I don't want to um Yeah, I'm also I'm actually like I think the intent is clear.

Yeah. No, I I just want to make sure like that for the purposes of like board rules and everything that we're making the motion correctly. No, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. I see a confused face on the the uh from from Trusty Boyd, and I don't want to cold call her, but I also want to make sure she has says her piece.

I I mean, I don't know that I need to. I I'm just I struggle constantly with what is the functionality of what we're trying to do here and what is the but you can't do it this way. And so, I'm just trying to, you know, like it was agendaized. Everyone had, you know, full notice of what we were going to be deciding. we're being clear on what we're deciding and the reason for deciding it. So I the questioning which I wasn't going to say because I don't know that it's helpful but was just we not just do the thing that we've given everyone notice we're going to be doing and we had a discussion and we did the thing or like you know what exactly is standing in our way right now.

Let's let's let's I'll suggest we do this. I think I think we're all aligned but let's let's do let's do the parliamentary thing we need to do. Let's re feel free to do the motion again with a different stating. I'm fine with doing that and we'll just all vote the same way again or or as you would like to. Um, is that what you're is that what you're suggesting? Trusty Khan, perhaps I can amend amend the motion to say that I move to approve theou in order to um pay grant writer Anna Newman the invoiced amount but excluding the rest of the language in theou. Okay, second. Let's try this again. All in favor? I.

Motion passes. All right, let's uh a little drama there for uh Director Shriner, but get you all prepped up. Hopefully the techn is working and we'll move on to the English language arts curriculum adoption.

Excellent. Thank you all so much. Um excited to be here with you all forward and we've got a really phenomenal teacher with us today, Eleanor Castillo, is going to be joining me towards the end of my presentation. Um so, yay. Thanks for being here, Elanor. So happy you're here. Um I'm here today to share on behalf of our K5 um curriculum adoption committee to recommend uh the curriculum that our committee selected which is called Fish Tank ELA. And I'm going to share about our process um some more details for how we're going to support teachers and then we'll turn it over to the board to um hopefully approve the recommendation to adopt this curriculum. So our recommendation really starts with why we needed to engage in a K5 curriculum adoption process in the first place. Um, we've heard from teachers that they need materials that are aligned to research, specifically around building background knowledge, vocabulary, and providing explicit systematic instruction. The quotes you see on here are direct quotes from teachers from an empathy interview campaign that the committee engaged in. And our teachers also described a lack of coherence across our system that right now instruction is pieced together. It varies by classroom, requires teachers to spend a significant amount of time creating their own materials. And really at the core, this is about equity. Teachers were really clear that students deserve access to grade level highquality texts and materials with built-in supports and really diverse representative texts um without relying on teachers that need to fill in the gaps because they're not curriculum writers, nor should we expect them to be. And our process really grounded in equity from the start. We prioritized the needs of our multilingual learners, our students with IEPs, and our students who have been historically underserved and or have unfinished learning from prior grades. We made sure the committee was representative across grade levels, school sites, roles, so multiple perspectives are part of decision-making. And teacher voice was really central throughout the process.

We gathered input from empathy interviews, the feedback from our piloting teachers and really feedback loops with grade level um teachers who were not on the committee as well. So we can ensure that whatever we selected reflected yes the needs of Albany students of course but also met the needs of our Albany teachers too. These are just our amazing teachers who served on the committee. um probably the largest adoption committee I've ever led in my processes across the system, but teachers are really excited to be a part of it and we are really happy to have everyone's voices. In general, um we followed a process that comes from it's a pretty it's a pretty common process I think when people have a really good adoption process, which we did. Um and ours comes from a framework from Unbound Ed. Um and so we um we got really clear on our processes. We took feedback from the teachers along the way. Um, we looked at our student data and our empathy interviews from teachers to really get a sense of what our needs are. Um, and from there we explored the landscape of many different available curricula, narrowed it down. Um, engaged in a pretty thorough investigation, hands-on material, uh, hands-on with all the materials. Um, we piloted some options and then we went through a really structured evaluation process. And so in a more shortened version, these are sort of the phases that we toggled in and out of throughout our time as a committee when we met monthly. And we also really grounded in um the science of reading in our work which what it means I think it's a really buzzwordy type of word right now in in the mainstream culture but when we say science of reading what we mean is the large body of interdisciplinary research across cognitive psychology developmental psychology brain science that informs teachers um and all of us

about how the brain learns to read and that's through explicit and systematic instruction. Uh we've known this for years. It's what the National Reading Panel is based on. Um, but it's really only until recent times that curricula has begun to reflect what the reading science tells us. And um, for those of us that are really big reading nerds like me, um, we also want to be really clear about what the science of reading isn't. It's not a philosophy. It's not a trend. It's I would I would say it's not a pendulum swing. It's always what we've known in the research. Um, but it's really just become mainstream recently. And so throughout our um beginning of our process when we were exploring curricula, we really grounded in um what teachers are really familiar with is Scar Bro's reading rope, which is every single little strand that comes into play um in order to be a skilled reader. Um and each of these strands needs to be really intentionally developed and woven together without any fraying in order for students to have strong comprehension um and language development. So we grounded in three main pieces of research um from three reputable organizations. The first being the reading league which is sort of the gold standard research organization um across the country that has a lot of different functions but one of the pieces that they do is they evaluate uh published curricula um based on their alignment to the reading research. Um, Ed Reports is a similar organization. Um, though I would personally say that they are not as robust as the research that the reading league puts out. Um, and then the Minnesota Read Act curriculum review. Um, which the Minnesota Department of Education put together a really comprehensive um, series of reviews of curricula when their state was shifting towards um, using materials that were aligned with the reading research. So, our teachers um dug in some really fun reading this summer and had paid time to do that to

begin to review some of the curricular options and we um beginning the spring under the leadership of M Michelle Sinclair got really clear on what curricula we're not considering and that was really based on um the number of red flags the curriculum has um wherein particular instructional approaches are not aligned with the reading research. So, we started out with many different options and this fall we narrowed it down to four. Um, and those four options that we um studied as a team are core knowledge language arts, fish tank learning, being a reader, being a writer, and EL education. And we started together um with this set of criteria of what we wanted to be true for our students based on the needs in Albany. Um let's see. We really wanted to focus on curricula that systematically builds knowledge um in order to support our multilingual learners and also students who um perhaps don't come from as much privilege. Um it was also really important for there to be scaffolds within the curricula. So again, teachers are not needing to create all these different graphic organizers or other materials to support students. Um that it's super clear and usable for teachers. You can have everything shoved into a curriculum, but if it's teachers aren't going to use it, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. Um, and it was really important to our team that the text served as both windows and mirrors into students lives, their identities, their lived experiences. And it's got to be realistic. So, in terms of our instructional day and year, there are many curricula that have 200 lessons, um, but we've got 180 days. And so, it really needs to be usable for for for teachers and be realistic. So from there we very quickly eliminated EL education that was quite unanimous across the the team. Um and then we ended up with a tie. Fish tank was the clear uh preferred curriculum from the

beginning just from looking at the materials and reviewing them. Um and so to break the tie, we went back to our empathy interview data and we looked at the themes that teachers spoke about when we met with them one-on-one. Um, and based on these themes, which shockingly or not, they matched the what was important to the committee as well. Um, we ended up eliminating being a reader, being a writer because of it being lack of thematic units and lack of knowledge building. And so we narrowed it down to two options, fish tank, which we piloted this fall, and core knowledge, which we um are just wrapped the spring pilot on. and we followed the same process um to make sure that it was fair a fair comparison. There was an init an initial training from the curriculum companies. We had model lessons and support available through our partnership with core learning and teachers taught between one to two units. From there we developed um our Albany curriculum evaluation rubric um from a scale of 0 to three for each of the following indicators which again align with what those criteria were. um and how well the curricula demonstrated each of these components. From there, I love a Google spreadsheet. Um we pretty, you know, we systematically evaluated each of the components of the curricula. And so this is the scorecard for fish tank, which overall from a max score of three, um the average score from teachers was a 2.3 out of three. And we followed that exact same process for CKLA which had an overall score score of 1.76. So there was a really quantitatively preferred curriculum among the teachers and we sort of zoomed out thinking holistically about what our students and teachers needs um are and the committee is really proud to unanimously and

anonymously select uh fish tank as the recommended curriculum and I think we had two bouts of spontaneous applause during that meeting. It was very joyful. Um, and we're just so excited that the curriculum is um, has really strong alignment with standards and really systematically builds knowledge, but in a fun way. Really great balance of non-fiction and science and social studies, but also beautifully diverse stories um, that are really engaging books for kids. There's a couple teachers in our committee who talked about during conferences that parents came in and were like, "My kid can't stop talking about this book that you you guys are reading." and it was one of the books from the curriculum. Um, so that's really exciting. There's also really significant and varied supports um for students with different needs that teachers are excited about. Um, and we're hoping that this really reduces the planning burden um of our teachers. There's going to be, you know, the lift of it's a new curriculum and we all need to intellectually prepare to teach it and know the text. But we're really hopeful that teachers are not going to be put in the position where they're having to make all of their own worksheets or create all their graphic organizers because that is so time inensive. And so looking ahead, um we hope that by having a pretty easy to use curriculum that teachers are going to be excited to use it and get some time back. Um and also one of the core values of fish tank that also I think comes through in how the curriculum is set up um is actually teacher autonomy. They really believe as they are teachers are professionals and so it's not this heavily scripted curriculum that tells you word for word what to say on every page but it starts out with some really um beautiful and complex grade level text and some really great questions and some really meaty tasks. Um and we really trust teachers to bring that curriculum to life because the curriculum is the floor. We want the access to everybody, but it's not the ceiling. That's the real beauty of teaching.

And so, as we look ahead, this is not part of the recommendation, but I do want to preview with you where we're going. Um, this is a framework that I believe comes from the new teacher project um when it comes to implementation science and what it really takes to um create curricular shifts that result in um gains in academic outcomes. So we think now where we really are is at the bottom of this sort of pyramid creating a shared vision and alignment for what high-quality ELA instruction looks like. And what these next five years are about is next year really focusing on supporting teachers to use the curriculum. Um investing in ongoing professional learning for teachers and for leaders. um and really having systems and structures that support collaborative uh collaborative planning and internalization for teachers because it is I would say quite a different way to approach teaching. Um you can't really pick up the book and say I'm going to I'm going to teach it on the fly in the way that we could um in the in the era of Lucy Cawkins and at our elementary ILT a couple weeks ago last week time is a blur. Um, we talked about from feedback from teachers, we need a couple things to go well next year. We need materials in teachers hands this spring, not August 10th. That was an exact quote from a teacher from the survey I sent out. I see the chuckle. Thank you teachers in the room who are nodding. Um, and so as soon as you know, pending board approval, um, Michelle Sinclair and I have been in touch and we're going to be getting texts into teachers hands by April is the goal. um with our first time coming together to be April 22nd where we're going to our pilot teachers are going to support their colleagues to understand how to navigate the curriculum etc. Um and we are also working with our principles and our teacher leaders to really support a shift across the elementary schools next year where our

ILTs are really supporting their colleagues uh with instruction. Um, and sort of historically what I've come to learn through lots of conversations with teachers at the elementary schools is that our ILTs have often served as problem solving bodies or event planning bodies or operational bodies, which all of those things are important, but they're not the function of an instructional leadership team. And so I was part of a really um the beginning of a of a really fruitful conversation with one of our ILTs where they're sort of thinking about what are all the things we're doing during ILT and how are all those things going to live but not during ILT time because the function next year is really going to be how are we supporting our colleagues to feel supported to use this curriculum. Next year, we're going to continue our uh monthly cross-sight PD that's going to be focused on supporting teachers to use the curriculum. We're exploring some avenues with different organization organizations to support teachers through coaching. I surveyed our teachers and 60% of them want instructional coaching. Um, which is a really high percentage, especially in a district that is as experienced um as the teachers in Albany are. And um we've got a lot of folks who are super excited about this work. It might not be everybody's cup of tea, but we want to create some opportunities for our early adopters to get even more support um so they can support their colleagues. And so sort of big picture um and insummation this spring uh we'll have a launch with our teachers. This summer we're going to have an optional and paid curriculum institute for teachers who want to opt into that for some more deep planning. We're going to leverage our staff development days next year to go deep into the curriculum. Um throughout the year, we'll have ongoing space for PD and collaboration. Um and really investing in supporting our teacher leaders to support their colleagues during collaboration time um and really lean into their expertise.

So, I'm going to pause and hand it over to Eleanor, who I think has some things that she wants to share about her experience on the committee and what she's hoping for um with Fish Tank. Yeah, come on up.

Hi, good evening everyone. Uh, my name is Elellanar Castillo and I serve as a fifth grade teacher at Marin Elementary. Um, and I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you, Superintendent Stone, and all the board trustees and the members of our education community here about what was it like to experience this process under your leadership. I can speak that for many of us that when we first came um you could tell we weren't sure. Um and it was wonderful to be able to hear from veteran colleagues. I'm not new to education, but I'm newer to the school district. And so I really appreciated how under Karen's leadership really creating a space where we can talk about hearing from our veterans what worked but what didn't work in the past but for those of us who are newer in the district what would we perhaps bring or like to see and as Karen shared um the criteria that we looked at one of the things I want to share is the notion of access and the how. So, as Karen shared, I really appreciated that I was able to talk to veteran colleagues at my site about what they experienced from previous curricula adoptions and what they would hope moving forward in our school district. And part of that was, well, we want to be able to access the curriculum that we teach. How do we make sure that we're meeting the needs of our multilingual language learners? How do I make sure the students with my 504 plans, my IEPs can access that curriculum equitably like my students um who are at different levels in the learning process. So, as Karen shared,

that was a strong theme. And then also thinking about something I really want to share with you tonight is the cultural relevance of it. And where I got to see that most strongly was when I got to pilot this with my students. And fish tank allowed us to really explore both narrative historical fiction and then um informational text. And this is where we saw not only within myself but many of my colleagues in the committee talked about this. Sorry, I'm experiencing a lot of the pollen that I think a lot of our neighbors are. And these fans are great for air, but they're also moving around the dust. So, if you can bear with me tonight, but with the cultural relevance of both mirrors and windows in that classroom and how what we found powerful within my classroom learning community is that my students and we began with a historical fiction piece called Breadwinner. And in that piece, we began to wrestle with themes that we see mirroring and reflecting in our world, like what happens as a young person when you're in the midst of war and there's conflict. What does it mean to be a girl or a woman in a society and not judge what may be happening in another culture or society, but be able to potentially empathize, but also engage in critical conversations around what does it mean if that may be a different point of view, but thinking about history, culture, geography, and climate and how all those are part of the setting in which a character may make their decisions and be able to wrestle with

complexity of the lived experience again in breadwinner in the context of what does it mean to be in war as a young person and then thinking about how one of my students I remember at the beginning of the year she said to me Miss Castillo I'm not a reader and I was like oh really we're going to change that and how now when we finished that novel and went through so many complicated critical conversations. She asked, "Can we read the second book, Miss Castillo?" And that wasn't in the set, but one of my colleagues said, "Hey, Elellanor, take this. I have the set." And we've begun that. And to hear that joy in her voice of wanting to engage of why did that character make that decision and why did her sister do this and why did her mom do that and be able again to have very complicated conversations about huge themes. And then we moved intoformational text and this is where also children found their voice. Trash vortex allowed us to look at primary source documents as fifth graders and to be able to look at real data in the world and for us to take a step back and look at how us as a nation in the western world. Wait a minute. We have policies and systems where we're making decisions to create plastics and what's the impact of that on our oceans and on our climates. And again to take a step back and not just critique and criticize per se, but ask ourselves as a society, we're part of that. And so it tapped into the my students sense of stewardship and care for the environment, but yet what are the decisions that we're making? And then we connected it to how at our

school site we've got compost, we've got recycling, and we've got landfill containers. So what choices are we going to make knowing that we as a nation actually produce some of the most plastic waste? And so again, as Karen brought us through this process as teachers to think about, yes, there's the how, right? How do I technically teach this? But to me as an educator, what I find most powerful and inspirational is the why. Why do we teach this? Why did we choose fish tank as we looked at other curricula? And really for us, as Karen shared uh shared, it was unanimous. All of us talked about the high level of engagement. And we know as educators, if a child cares and they're engaged and they're passionate and they want to talk about books on so many different higher levels and they see reflections of themselves within the curricula. or if it's not a direct reflection, they can have empathy for that character or think about that societal issue that affects us in our larger community. And we you talked about being from the Bay Area and we're going to Nature Bridge soon. So to be able to think about how literature both informational text and narrative text can create a place where our children can be empowered to find the voice and the vocabulary. But also for me especially is can we engage in complex critical conversations that when they move on to the middle school and high school they're already engaging in that way. So that way if the university is where they see themselves going after graduation, then we've empowered them

with the tools to act with agency and with voice. And we felt as a committee that fish tank will be that floor for us. But then also empowering our colleagues to know that we can use our professional training, our judgment, our experience to be able to breathe even more life into that curricula so that it soarses beyond the books and the papers and and you know the short quicksites that we're going to do with our students. So, um, thanks for the opportunity to share with you what I experienced, but I also feel a lot of my colleagues echoed that within our, um, really deep conversations within the committee before we made a decision. So, thanks for this opportunity.

Thank you. Uh, clarifying questions from the board. Uh public comment seen that on Zoom. Um

I just want to appreciate you for the passion. Um watching you get excited about teaching makes me want to be a teacher again. So thank you. and just I appreciate um your and all of um the teachers who are part of um choosing the the the new curriculum and and I hope all of our kids have that same passion that you have when they get to be a part of um learning through it. So, thank you so much for being here tonight. Really appreciate you.

Also, especially being newer to this district that I wasn't sure if I could have a voice, but you really facilitated that and I appreciate it and I really appreciate that being a newer member of this community. Um, and also to be genuinely honest with the board as a teacher of color. really was something that you empowered I think the whole committee with and so thank you so much for your leadership leadership to have this issue

Jim uh comments from the board trustee trusty hood quick comment from me because I attended last week's ILT meeting um and just wanted to show my appreciation for your leadership in that conversation and it was so clear how supported all members of the ILT team felt uh by you when it comes to this curriculum implementation. So not only having you know gone through this entire process which I think they really um found so positive but but moving on now as well. So thank you for everything that you do.

Thanks so much. the comments from the board, board members. Um, I I appreciate the uh like you're going to hate me for this, but my favorite slide might have been the matrix of all the different people participating at all the different sites just to show that like how many people you had to bring on the journey. So really appreciate that. I have I have two two comments on the presentation. I I one call out on science of reading for me will be and I believe in science. Um but it is sort of the thing now and I want to be I want to always approach things with a sense the sense of humbleness and curiosity that that can become a loaded term and then and I want to be careful as we go forward that we continue to use evidence-based things and science of reading is becoming it strong overlaps right now may not always be the case and Lucy Cawkins was a big thing too for a while that everybody believed in so I want to just keep that open mind in this and then my only other comment or question would uh the earlier we can continue to get it uh PD for for for teachers the better. I know you've got some stuff in May and stuff in August. There's anything we can even do in April or even double down in May in any sort of way. I think that's going to be incredibly powerful. I was I was overhearing I was sitting in the room so it was completely obvious uh with a a teacher and a principal who were talking about the curriculum adoption and and the teacher made some comment to the effect of like I got to get here like I'm sure I'm going to get here like two days early and have to figure all this thing out right before the classroom. He said no they're actually planning on Pey this spring and what have you. So and I'm I think he he almost passed out. Um, so but the more we can do to kind of uh situate them with the the tools they need to be successful because change is hard uh the better. So I would just I I think you're try probably trying to do the best you can but I would double down if there's anything at all you can possibly do to do as much as possible now to get people ready the better. Yeah,

that's my comment. Can I respond? Of course. um that fancy graphic that I take no credit for um was made before the feedback that we got from teachers who gave that feedback. And so April 22nd is when we're officially starting, but I've spent maybe four hours today starting to scope out a bunch of documents based on what what the curriculum has and I've shared them with teachers to get some feedback. So definitely processes are underway for sure and I really appreciate the push. Fantastic. And uh it wasn't a plant. Uh okay, any other questions from the board? Um, do I have a motion?

I move to approve um to adopt fish tank as the K5 ELA curriculum. I'll second the motion. Oh, I'll second the motion. All in favor? I oppose. Yay. Thank you guys. Motion passes.

Thank you. and thank you for uh a thoroughly engrossing presentation on curriculum adoption and uh the energy was fantastic. Um okay um moving on to the consent calendar. Um before we go to motion, do we have any comments from the public on the consent calendar? Seeing none in the room, seeing none online. Can I have a motion to approve the consent calendar? I move to approve the consent calendar. Second. All in favor? I

opposed. Motion passes. Um, we do not need to recess to close session. Um, and so I'm going to move to adjurnn. Have a motion to adjurnn. I move to ajourn. I second. Meeting is adjourned. Oh. All in favor? I meetings adjourned. Thank you.