Berkeley Unified School District School Board - Regular Meeting

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Good evening, folks. We're going to be starting in a few minutes. If you are here to participate in public comment, please be sure to fill out a green card in the back and turn it in as soon as possible. Thank you. Are we all here?

Thank you so much. We're going to get started. Um we're going to wait for a minute to so the staff and administrators can can get back up here. But um I'm going to call it in about one minute. Um, good evening. Uh, good to see everybody. Welcome to the January 7th, 2026 meeting of the Berkeley School Board. Um, we're going to call the meeting to order now. It's 7:08. Um, happy new year. Is there anyone here for public comment? I have one card relating to the I'm sorry. Rel, excuse me. I'm calling it to order for the open session. So, um, first, uh, I'd like to share that we have a new tool today, and we're very excited about this, um, to support language access, and inclusion at our public meetings. Um, as part of the district's continued commitment to transparency, equity, and meaningful engagement, we have partnered with Worldly Worldly, apologies, an AI based translation and captioning platform. This technology allows students, families, and members of the community access to real time translation. Uh the tool is available to both in-person and virtual attendees. So, if you're online, you have access to it, too. Um in-person participants can

access Wordly by scanning the QR code that's been posted on the wall. I think it's on the sides there. Cool. Um, virtual attendees can access Worldly via the link on the website as well. Users have the option to either read the captioned transcript. Bless you. Thank you.

Or listen to the audible translation. Um, in-person users who opt for the audible option must wear headphones. You can borrow a set from Miss Chavez up here at the front. Cool. Please be sure to return it when you're done, though. Um and uh thanks so much for board members and administrators uh folks staff for putting this in place. Um director of acadev was in particular as a board member very instrumental in getting worldly off the ground for us. Um so as usual I would like to remind you of the quorum expectations during this and all parts of tonight's meeting. No person shall disturb the order of this meeting. Such behavior includes, but is not limited to booing, hissing, creating, or participating in a physical disturbance, speaking out of turn in violation of applicable rules, preventing or attempting to prevent others who have the floor from speaking, preventing others from observing the meeting, entering into or remaining in the area of the meeting room that is not open to the public, or approaching the dis without permission. So, this is in line with bylaws on meeting conduct that we have. Um, in in addition, if you have complaints against specific district employees, we encourage you to use the district complaint process via complaints atber berkeley.net versus public comment to address these matters. Okay. We will now approve the agenda for this evening's meeting. Um, are there any requested changes?

I move that we approve the agenda. Excellent. Do we have a second? Right. Second. Cool. Don't we have Can we do the roll call just for the record? Excellent. Director Anna Vasv, yes. Director Jennifer Shamoski, here. Student director Armana Ardam, present. Vice President Jennifer Korn, present. President Mike Cheng, uh, yes. Thank you. Roll call. Thank you. Present. Um, so now can I move to approve the agenda? Yeah. Would you do that, please? Now, can someone second to move? Uh, call second. Great. Um, Miss Chavez, should we do a roll call for the approval? No, no, we can do it. Great. We don't need a roll call.

I eyes. I I It is unanimous for those of us who are present. Is Dr. Schnazi is I as well. Cool. Um, so now we have a report out of the closed session from our vice president. Thank you. One moment. There it is. Um, thank you. Cold, uh, close session was called to order at 5:35. Um, Chang, directors Chang, Korn, Shinoski, and Vasuv were present. Um, and the board received an update on collective bargaining. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you, Vice President Korn. Um, Superintendent Forml, would you like to provide comments? I always have comments. Good evening, B USD family. Good evening. Listen, y'all done had two weeks off. Good evening, B USD family. New year and happy new year, y'all. Happy new year.

Um, I hope that each and every one of you had a restful, restorative winter break and found moments of joy, connection, and renewal with the people and places that fill you up. As we step into 2026 together, I'm grateful to be back with you in community and grounded in our shared commitment to all of our babies here in BUSD. January, you might know, is not just the beginning of the new year, but it is disability awareness and history month in Berkeley Unified. This is a time to honor the stories, histories, contributions, and lived experiences of people with disabilities and to continue strengthening our commitment to inclusion, access, and belonging across our district. Throughout the month, we are honored to share sound advice. If you look around the room, you'll see um black what are those? Black poster like thing panels. They're called panels. Black panels around the room and those panels will be in our boardroom throughout the entirety of this month. Um those panels actually are an exhibit called Sound Advice and it's a powerful exhibit by artist and photographer Nancy Rubin that's been on display for the last week and again will be here for the rest of the month. The exhibit centers the experiences of people with hearing loss and invites reflection on communication, connection, and visibility. So, while you're here engaging in the board meeting, don't get up while we're talking. But for sure, before you leave and come back for more, please take a time to see the stories um and to recognize the ways that folks who may not have the same hearing that we might have, still have incredible, amazing stories to tell, of resilience, of contribution, and of um being involved in our community. Later this month, our disability and special education advisory committee or DC will host a virtual conversation with members of the Bay Area deaf and heart of hearing community with ASL interpretation provided. That particular event is a complement to the panel installation that you see here. Um we're going to also host a screening of Left Behind, which is a documentary on literacy justice and advocacy for students with dyslexia, followed by a conversation

with literacy advocate Kareem Weaver and other experts. I'm also proud to echo what director what President Chang said, which is tonight is the first night that we are launching our live interpretation and closed captioning at the board meeting through Wordley. It's a live caption captioning and translation service and is now available for not just this board meeting, but every board meeting and we are thinking about expanding it to other district meetings as well. Again, increasing access to information and opportunities for us to collaborate across languages throughout our BUSD community. this evening. I know you all are here for our two presentations and they are exciting. We will hear um an update from our Latinx uh resolution adilante as well as information about our multilingual learner plan um an update for both of those groups. So, if you are here for that, we say welcome. If you're not here for that and you didn't know what's coming, now you know. So, we expect you to stay. Um, I invite our families and our community members who want to stay um, connected to what's going on in B USD to not only visit our website and come to these meetings, but also go to our website and sign up for our B USD A+ News. How many of y'all in here get the A+ news? Raise your hand. You all to be shamed. So, the A+ news is the is a big deal. Y'all think Times and and and the Tribune and Inquirer or some stuff. Mm- We got stories to tell here in B USD. So, if you go to our website and click and you write in um, A+ News, you'll actually be able to sign up by just giving your email. We only give it to folks who give us their emails. We will not spam you, I promise. But about once a month, we send information about things that are going on in B USD. And so, if you didn't know, now you know. Please sign up so that you can stay tuned to all the amazing things that are happening in our district this year. And finally, I just want to say um thank you for all the work we did in 2025. Um, we've done some amazing things together and I personally am excited and inspired by all the work that we're going to do ahead in 2026 and I look forward to the care, collaboration, and possibility of this district um that will be brought to this district this year in collaboration with you. With that, President Chang, I

am done. Good night, family.

All right. Thank you so much. Um, okay. Now, we're shifting on over to the public comment uh part of our day today, which I assume some of you folks are here for, too. Um we will now um there are two opportunities for public comments. Um now and at the end of the meeting. If you don't get a chance to speak at the beginning of the meeting, we encourage you to stay and speak at the end of the meeting. You may also email us are your com your comments at board of edberkeley.net. If you have complaints about specific district employees, again, please use the complaint email. Um we don't respond directly to comments or questions made during public comment. um board members, the superintendent and staff. We do take notes of course during the public comment and we might follow up with the speaker after the meeting. Um this is a hybrid meeting. Uh so we have public commenters in the boardroom and online. Um and uh in general uh we provide for one or two minutes. I think today in person I only have two cards. Um, do we have folks online as well? I'm just trying to only just one. So, how about we give two minutes for each of the two in person and then two minutes for the person who's online. Um, so again, you remember the decorum expectations. Obviously, that applies during public comment. So, I don't need to remind you about that uh in specificity. Um, can we have So, there's no student commenters out there. Is that correct? I don't see any. They're all busy working hard at school. Um, Sabrina Cabella, can you come on up? And then or right after that, Dan Brownson.

Good evening. Um, happy new year. My name is Sabrina. I'm a parent in the district. I grew up in the district and I've been a teacher with the district since 2005. And I've been subbing this last year at all the schools and all of these people even though I don't know their names and a couple I know some of their names because I've been teaching with them for a while but even if I don't know their names they are the backbone of our schools and we could not do what we do as teachers without them. And I know you know this. I don't have to sing their praises, but I am. Our IAS, my Oxford IAS, it was, you know, seeing you here tonight. I can't say enough good things about them. myself firsthand. I see firsthand what they do and how they're with our students for years and they grow with our students and our students couldn't function without I have my own son who's a senior and he had an IIA for eight years and there's no way he could have gotten through school without them. Our our custodians, I don't want to tell you all the gnarly things they deal with, but I know what they deal with. And um but thank you. I want to thank all of you, Walter and Raphael and all of them. And and our oies, you know, they make sure our most vulnerable students receive support and services and food and gas money to get the kids to school. I mean, there's a lot we don't know what they do cuz it's really private, but there's families that depend on them. And our bus drivers, God bless them. I know what it's like to be one of those kids on the bus and I want to applaud you guys too and our our food service and our school support systems and anybody that I didn't

mention. I see you in the crevices of Berkeley High, of Malcolm X, of Oxford. Thank you. So, I just want to give you a round of applause.

Thank you, Mr. Mr. Brownson. two minutes. Well, um, on the consent calendar, uh, what do I see but another contract for a marriage's healthc care staffing who, as I've pointed out earlier, charges us a 50% markup what they pay their actual hourly employees. 40% if you include our benefits. to fill classified positions. The district will often say, "Oh, these positions are hard to fill." Well, maybe that's because it's a bunch of positions with like 2 or.3 FTE. Or maybe it's a signal that the pay rate is is too low. If you are not getting enough applicants, that is an actual price signal in economics that the price you are offering for labor is too low. And that's just for these positions. So, I would ask that the district agree to our very reasonable economic proposals so that we can at least try to close the gap between, you know, the the pay rates for BCCE staff and the rampant cost of living increases that we have all experienced just in the time that I've been working here at Berkeley Unified. Thank you.

Thanks a lot. And um next on up, we don't have other students. We have Anna Perez and then after that, Marina Cruz. Anna and Marina, are you in the audience? Yeah. Hello. You're going to pass. Anna's going to pass. How about Marina? Both of you going to pass? Okay, great. So, um, Miss Tades, shall we go on to the online folks? Let's see. We got We had one person. Is there another one?

Just one. So, just one. That's going to be Maline. Meline Roberts Rich. Maline, are you ready? Hi. Sure. Pardon my uh raspy voice and some of the sounds of my young children in the background. Um my name is Maline Roberts Rich. I was Berkeley High class of 2012 and um pleased to be calling in today. Thank you for all that you do. Berkeley school board

as well as um certainly the staff and faculty all throughout BUSD. Um it's close to heart because my um late godmother, the late great Caroline Ran was the cooking teacher at Berkeley High for three decades. Um and for that reason, I wanted to once again, because you've heard from me before, advocate very strongly for more thorough and comprehensive nutritional education um through the school program, but primarily in high school. Um I as an attendee at Berkeley High, I was um I think really affected personally by a dir of nutritional education. And what happens is is if you don't teach young people, particularly girls in this case, about the importance of things like protein, iron, healthy fats, vitamins, etc. it can create a whole lot of inequity between the sexes and certainly um a lot a whole lot of economic inequality as well given the differentiated access to food and food choices. Um, so I'm just really encouraging you as you look to revamp the curriculum for physical education for next fall for the freshmen, I believe, please, please, please consult nutritionist to include much more comprehensive nutritional education to ensure that students can know more about how what they feed themselves affects their health outcomes later in life or more immediately affects how they feel and how they how they're able to think. Um, please incorporate more nutritional education into the PE program. I really appreciate it and good luck.

Thank you so much. Um, all right. I don't think we have any other public commenters at this time. So, we're going to move to committee comments. Um, each committee will have five minutes. Do we have committee comments? Yes, we have a written comment from death. Okay, director Bad's going to read it. Are you sending that to me via email?

All right, one second as I get the email. Don't start the clock yet. came ready, Miss Turus. Uh, dear superintendent, members of the board, teachers, and parents, wishing you a wonderful new year. I feel delighted to represent ELAC students and their families as the DAC chair at BUSD. As a professor in education and a mother of an eighth grader at King Middle School, I feel privileged to receive generous support from BUSD, specifically regarding the ELLL ELLL support and services. I personally appreciated the professionalism regarding the exam accommodations provided for IEP students by the case managers. What is important in this approach is that ELLL coordinators and case managers

collaborate with families through the structured guidance they received from the district. I was impressed to witness this from the very from the very firstand experience when going over the needs and accommodations for my son. As the DAC team, we also had the opportunity to hear positive reflections and experiences of parents in multiple instances and meetings at the schools. The synergy created between BUD and the schools created the ripple effect in which families voices were heard and met with the most effective ways. Our DAC meetings, both in person and online, became a social setting for families to share and reflect their experiences while creating alternative pathways for newcomer students and their families. We feel excited to hear about the updates to the ML master plan. Both students and their families appreciate this. Ozgi and I'm sorry I can't pronounce the last name uh but it is from our B USD DAC chair um professor of practice Brookley School of Education. Thank you.

Thank you so much. And do we have any other committee comments?

I don't think so. Do we have union comments? Ecc good evening school board members, superintendent, and members of the community. My name is Frank Hernandez and I am the president of Berkeley Council of Classified Employees. We are here tonight because a district is already discussing possible layoffs and we believe those conversations are happening without first addressing how district resources are being used. We remember the last time layoff occurred and we remember who was impacted the most. BCCE was. Classified positions were eliminated, workloads increased, essential staff paid the price. That is why we are here early before decisions are made. BCCE is in currently in negotiations and when it comes to finances, there has been no meaningful movement. We continue to hear that there is no money. At the same time, the district continues to spend significant amount of legal costs, including ongoing per cases that should have been resolved long ago. One example is per decision 2959E retaliation case. Regardless of how this that case began, the reality is that it has continued far beyond what is reasonable, consuming district resources that could have been used to retain classified staff and protected positions. Now the court has to decide whether or not to impose monetary sanctions on the district for continuing the case far

beyond what is reasonable. Another example is per case SFCE 3635E involving the contractor RFI which also requires legal resources in district time to address. The district receives a a judge's decision in July 2025 and still has not fully complied. The district has spent so much money on contractors performing work that BCCE members could have done. We are trying to work with the district to make sure that money is not being wasted, but the district is fighting against us when we are really on the same side. As a result of this unnecessary conflict, BCCE had to go to PERB, which further required the unnecessary expenditure of district funds of legal and legal fees. There is no reason for the district to lay off BCC employees and continue to use contractors. This violates the ED code and the rights of BCCE members. Every dollar spent on extended legal conflict is a dollar not spent on staffing stability, retention, or studentf facing services. Be before layoffs are even discussed, this board must examine whether current legal expenses reflect its stated priorities. And with that, I want to turn it over to Vice President Notre Sher. Thank you. What you just heard are fact. Legal decisions, years of litigation, and significant district resources spent. And the question now is simple. Who pays for that? Because when the district spends heavily on prolonged legal disputes, those costs don't disappear. They show up somewhere else. They show up as layoffs. They show up as

frozen positions. They show up as BCCE staff being told there is no money. And we've seen how this story ends. The last time layoffs happened, BCCE was the only union hit. Not because our work wasn't needed, but because BCCE members were treated as expendable. But not this time. If there is no fun extended legal battles, if there is money to fight cases that should have been resolved long ago, then there is money to retain BCC staff. This is not a financial mystery. It is a set of choices. And this board has a choice right now. You can continue down the path where legal costs grow while classified position shrink. Or you can decide right now that layoffs will not be used to clean up the consequences of unnecessary legal costs. BCCE members are not numbers on a spreadsheet. BCCE are the people who keep this district functioning every single day. And we are watching you closely. We are here early. We are united and we are not going anywhere. I'll end with this. When classified professionals show up like this, we when we stand together, when we refuse to be the default solution to budget problems, it sends a clear message. Enough is enough. Thank you.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. ENOUGH is enough. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. Enough is enough.

Thank you so much. Do we have Matt for BFT? Thank you.

Am I on? Okay, great. Thank you. I'll just wait a second.

Okay, it's been a long day. I only had a few moments to put some words together, but here we are. Hello, Superintendent Ford Morell and Berkeley School Board. I am Matt Meyer, president of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers. I'd like to wish everyone a happy new year and the beginning of a new semester. Although the new year is often seen as a time for new beginnings and progress, the lack of progress in negotiations remains disheartening. BFT began negotiations with the district last April. There have been 22 schoolboard meetings since we began negotiating. Even after today's mediation, the district and the union continue to remain far apart on compensation and benefits. Publicly available data shows B USD veteran teachers have the least competitive salaries in the county. This is just a fact, right? This is the district's numbers. This is the Alama County's numbers. This is what's on the J90 report. Uh and at every other part of our salary schedule, we are also either far below average or below average. Districts across the state start hiring in March and many educators, including our new hires, will start shopping around. This is known. Okay, it is known that our salaries are not competitive and specifically the way that our district handles health care um makes it very difficult especially for families to remain in this district. We look forward to the factf finding process where we can demonstrate how outofcontrol spending on private contractors has come at the expense of investments in our educators and students. Additionally, between 2018-19 and 2324, BUD increased spending per student in our special education program by 42%.

The county average was 20%. There the program did not change. I want to be really clear. We didn't change our program in any of that time period, right? Um but something is happening there. What's the explanation? I already mentioned in a previous speech how our um how out of line our non-public school and non-public agency spending is compared with neighboring districts and I've sent you all that information previously. In the fall of 2025, the district said they couldn't commit to any dollars for educators. Yet, the district had enough knowledge of its general funds to approve private contractors back in June and again in September. Over the summer, the district received 2.7 million in one-time funding and and through increased enrollment, another 2 million in ongoing funds. The district also continues to save money by hiring classified employees instead of relying on contractors. There's still a lot of room for growth there, but for every person who's hired, that is a savings. The district needs to re-evaluate priorities so we can move towards an agreement. BFT calls for the district to navigate financial challenges through collaboration, transparency, and innovative planning. That is really what we haven't seen in and just being super frank and honest that we've even last year, year and a half ago, we said negotiations coming up. We need to plan for this. We need to be in discussion. We need to talk about how we're going to, you know, make sure that the budgets in a place where there can be, you know, some kind of offering of competitive salaries. Our jobs need to be sustainable for the sake of our students and families, and our educators expect the district to come up with a plan to make this happen. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Um, next on up we will have board member comments. Um, would our student director like to go first? Hi everyone. Happy new year and congrats on the end of the first semester and second quarter to all of our B USD teachers, staff, and teacher or students. I'm super excited to share that in partnership with the African-American Studies Department and the Black Student Union that I've been working to promote increased representation in the leadership program at Berkeley High. With student body elections coming up in late March, new leaders of Berkeley High like the Associated Student Body President and vice president, class presidents, and the new student school board rep will be elected. In this partnership, I hope to increase the amount of students running for elected positions to include a broader range of student perspectives in the advocacy that impacts Berkeley High. I will be speaking to students at the club leader meeting on January 22nd to promote ASB leadership to those already involved on campus, but we'll also be going to freshman ethnic studies classes throughout the next couple of weeks to make sure that our freshmen are staying involved. So, I hope to see that within the next few board meetings, we'll have increased student engagement, but also to make sure that you will be seeing a lot more student voices in the future. So, I can't wait to see what this next year will hold. So, thank you everyone.

Thank you so much. Um, do we have another volunteer who would like to go next?

Vice President Korn. Um, happy new year and welcome back everyone. Um, I'm very happy to be here tonight together in community to discuss our programs and supports for our Latinx and multilingual students tonight. Um, but to be honest, the weight of the world is heavy on my heart tonight. Um, the news of ICE killing a 37year-old mom named Renee Nicole Good who was trying to protect her immigrant neighbors is devastating. Um, it comes on the heels of our country's illegal acts of war in Venezuela. And my holiday break began um in the aftermath of a mass shooting on my daughter's college campus that took the lives of two young people, Ella Cook and Muhammad Aziz Marzakov. So tonight, I turn my attention to supporting our students and their learning. and I'm dedicating my work tonight to the memories of Nicole Ella and Muhammad Aziz. Thanks.

Thank you. That was well spoken. Um, other directors would like to go next. Director Based, would you like to go? Oh, I'm sorry. Director, I thought you said can you go? Director Schnowski, please.

Uh, I will keep it short. Um, I just want to start by thanking Director Korn. that was really kind and thoughtful and touching. Um I think we all have heavy hearts um as we start on 2026 and we know it's going to be a difficult year here um in B USD because of um many of our budgetary constraints and uh nation and worldwide. Um so I'd like to invite you to two uh upcoming events. Uh my office hours tomorrow from 3:00 to 5:00 at Kasa Latina. Um, so if you have any issues or want to just come by and chat, please stop by. And also the MLK breakfast. Uh, this is a Berkeley tradition. Um, make sure you get your tickets. Our very own student director will be um, announcing some of the awards. Um, and it's always just a really good time to be um, a Berkeley community member and to see all the good work that many of the um, many of our residents do even in the face of tragedy and difficulty. So that's it.

Thank you so much um, Director Based. Uh, thanks, Director Ching. And also, I wanted just to echo my appreciation for Director K's comments and centering tonight. Um, gun violence has no place in our schools, nor does it have any place in our communities. Thank you to everyone who came to give public comment tonight. I want to especially thank our education workers, our DAC committee members, and union leaders. As Director Chang and Superintendent Ford Morell have already stated, we're excited to increase language access for our monilingual families through the worldly tool here tonight. I'm particularly excited that monilingual Spanish speaking families and members of our community can fully understand the discussion and presentation tonight about the Latinx resolution and our district's multilingual learner master plan. As one of the few board members that speak Spanish, it's really nice not to be the interpreter tonight. So, I appreciate that on a personal level. I'm sure Miss Chyus also appreciates that. Um, and uh, I, you know, for me, increasing language access and culturally responsive community engagement within our district and in our community continues to be incredibly important. So, um, more of this and more of this citywide. And, uh, furthermore, our most vulnerable families, especially now and especially given the political situation, need to be fully aware of how we're making decisions that impact their children's education and protecting them in our schools. So, thank you for being here.

Thank you so much. And I I want to also reflect on my uh colleagues um and vice president Korn, all of our colleagues and this uh superintendent's team for centering our work on students. um also reminding us of the important um value that uh education has in our society and part of that is uh education about um uh the nature of violence. Um, and as the superintendent noted, this month is disabilities awareness month, and we've just kicked off our worldly program to provide full inclusive access um for our uh diverse language speakers. And I want to remind folks that disabilities and English learner inclusivity um are both intersectional and have a shared history under civil rights law. In fact, um I don't want to go through the specifics of it, but uh I think many of us are aware of this and uh disabilities awareness month and I think also the recognition of the importance of our English learner and language quoteunquote minority um diversity in our district is very very important. So um thank you director Basv for for um directing us to the worldly program as well. And of course, this district has always been very um centered on providing uh services, inclusive services. Um and uh I also want to congratulate our student director on her admission to and selection of her choice university.

Um it's always a season of change when we have our directors, which which I want to let her disclose if she's comfortable with it. Yeah. I will be going to Columbia University in the fall to study political science and philosophy.

Awesome. Great job. That's a great university and New York City is amazing as well. Um you're going to have lots of fun out there. Um and thanks everyone for sharing your hearts and minds. Um uh really rapidly director and myself have been working with the superintendent and her team with Yasminzek um on moving policy through. You're going to see some of that in the consent calendar. Um, prior to the break, there was also uh work done by the superintendent and her team that some of us um um monitored or observed as board members uh with implementation of district cell phone policy. Um I was really impressed by the energy and thought that went into the work um by both the super and her team and uh all who engage including parents. is a um an issue uh that's important to uh parents um in terms of their engagement with their children and navigating the complexity around screen time um and the the concerns around alienation and also um uh focus in school and disruptive uh screen use. So we're taking that very seriously and I was really excited to see that engagement. Um and uh I want to thank everyone for coming and happy new year as well. I know um there's a lot of news out there that can be very challenging. Um you know we as a board and myself as a president in particular uh are really focused on continuing to support Berkeley values here and we want you to know that um uh that you can have faith in us and to continuing to to center uh on our students and focus on our mission uh with Berkeley values in mind. Um, all righty. Um, thank you. I guess we're off to the consent calendar next. Um, are there any questions on the consent calendar?

Yes. Hold on. I'm I'm sorry, but I want to pull an item from consent. Luckily, we have a paper copy right here. Apologize. Uh, I'd like to pull 12.2 2 um from the consent calendar for discussion um it can be after the two um discussion items 12.2 which is approval of after school e emerges healthcare staffing incorporated we could do it after as directors noted the two discussion items which are 13.1 and 13.2 do um director uh sorry Miss Chavez and M and then I'd like to move motion

um I'd like to move to approve the consent calendar with the exception of item 12.2 second should do a roll call no just eyes do we have the eyes

I unanimous um 12.2 is kicked down after 13.2 do. Um, and is there a motion? Director uh Schnowski, can you remind me your motion approved everything else? Would that change? Okay. With that amendment? Great. We're off to item 13.1 then with the discussion for the Atlante Latinx success resolution update. Woo! WOO! Turn them on here. That's right.

We have the fans going at sold. Oh, they're showing up.

We have a great group up here. Yeah,

there's a giant band. Um, so good evening, uh, members of the public, uh, board members, and superintendent. Uh, we are excited to be here at the first meeting of 2026 to share with you an update on our Latinx resolution. Um, if you go to the next slide, um, we do want to make sure that we ground, uh, this presentation and the one following it on our multilingual learner master plan progress in our district's mission that we enable and inspire our diverse student body to achieve academic excellence and make positive contributions to the world. Um, on the next slide, I we're going to make some quick introductions, but you're going to hear from most people who are listed here. Um we're excited um to be joined by two of our uh parent leaders. Marina Cruz is listed there on the slide and our new ad, Miss Anna Perez has also joined us today along with members of our Opie team, Alejandra uh Frias Gonzalez and Carol Perez. And we're also joined by our Poente teachers from both uh Berkeley High and Longfellow. We have Miss Dues, Mr. Kowalsski, and Miss Patton here. Miss Mel Goza was not able to join us this evening. And then Oh, wait. Where is she?

Wait a minute. Surprise. You're You're hiding back there.

We're We're going to make room for you. I'm going to switch out. A's here. She She goes between both schools, so she gets extra credit. Now she's here in the boardroom. Good job, Aud. Um and both two of our directors from the ed services department, Mr. Chris Elbeck and Dr. Elena Sweeney. Um on the next slide, there are a number of things that we're going to be going over in the course of this presentation. We want to share with you some of the work that we are doing to support academics, the work that we're doing to support and encourage and grow our parent and student leaders, and the work that we are doing um through our affinity programs uh of some of our college um and career readiness data. Next slide. All of this is grounded in the Latinx resolution that was adopted by the board in 2021 that really called on us and left uh and gave us the charge to ensure that we were prioritizing Latinx student achievement in the work that we are doing. Um in the next slide you can see that there has been some we we know that there's alignment between the Latinx resolution and the goals that we have in our district's LCAP along with the strategic plan. um priorities of academic uh academic excellence, wellness and belonging, partnership and engagement in particular. Um we are going to share our Latinx resolution update in three parts on the next uh slide. Um starting uh with C Soy. Well, we're actually going to start with some data and then after we look at the data, we'll connect that to these um components of the work that we've been doing in these three sections. C Soy, yes I am, which really is focused on Latinx culture, history, and language. C PUBO, yes I can. Um, for Latinx student and family empowerment and CEO, yes, I am going for Latinx college and career readiness. Um, so to take a look sort of big picture on the next slide, you will

see that our Hispanic Latinx population is about 22% of our total district's population, which has been relatively stable over the last couple of years. Um, and you can see also the breakdown here of our English language learners and our Latinx English language learners in particular. Um, again, that data over the course of the last three years. On the next slide, um, we have uh the Latin uh the next few slides we're going to be sharing our state data from the spring 2025 testing season. These data represent the percent of students who are at or above benchmark. And you see here the proficiency rates for English language arts, that's ELA, and math for three years. We have seen some growth for our Latinx student population on the CASP test. So remember, this is grades 3 through 8 and grade 11 in ELA and math with a slight decrease in our Latinx multilingual language learners in ELA this year. I think it is important to note that as our multilingual language learners reclassify into fluent English proficient, they are then removed from that subgroup um they are part of that larger um uh Hispanic Latinx um subgroup. Um but that's important to note because students are taking a test in English although they may not be redesated as fluent English proficient in English. So we would expect to see lower scores for that subgroup just given the context of the assessment that they are participating in. We did do a breakdown by grade level for this presentation. So on the next slide you see that as we look across look at these data across grades span we see that while proficiency rates have been relatively stable for our elementary cohort there was a decrease in proficiency for our multilingual language learners in ELA in the

elementary grades and an increase in proficiency in math with uh us meeting that 3x5 target the 5% growth in particular um for our multil- language learners ers in middle school. Uh we see positive gains overall for our Latinx subgroup over this three-year trend in both ELA and math, meeting a 3x5 target in math. Um and here the proficiency rates are much lower for our multilingual language learners. You see a similar trend on the next slide um with our high school cohort. So remember this is 11th grade and as we shared with you in October, we did a lot of work to get more 11th graders taking the test and we've increased our participation rate there. So that's good. Um we met our 3x5 target um in spring of 2025 in both ELA or math but not um for our Spanish speakaking English learner population specifically. Um, and while and on the next slide, while our 11th grade Latinx eelss did not show students at or above benchmark, when we turn our attention to the distance from standards data that we introduced in October, we do see that there has been some growth in in math. And I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Sweeney who's going to talk a little bit about um how this translates onto the dashboard data and a new um data set that the state released in December which is our growth data. Thank you Jill and good evening board of directors. I'm glad to be here. So on this next slide please. Okay, so on this slide, we observed the English language arts indicator dials for our Hispanic Latinx students from 2023, 2024, and 2025. Importantly, in 2025, for the first time

in the history of the California State Dashboard, our Hispanic Latinx students moved to blue on the indicator, the highest indicator color and range possible. So I'll take a minute to celebrate that. Um this was driven by a 20.2 point increase which is a meaningful gain and caused a level jump from the yellow indicator which was reflected in 2023 and 2024 to now 2025 at the highest level. So so we're we're um we're noticing that. Next slide. Oh, there it is. Okay. Um this slide introduces the new growth cut scores on the California state dashboard. Growth looks at year-to-year improvement for our fourth through 8th grade students, comparing a students current score to what we would expect based on their prior performance and their similar peers throughout the state of California. For example, if students score above their expected outcome, that shows accelerated or exceptional growth. And conversely, if they score below, that growth will be considered minimal or moderate. So this is a different way of looking at our data. Once again, what is very important is that growth is separate from achievement. It tells us how much progress students made, not just where they landed. This allows us to recognize schools and student groups making strong games gains, excuse me, even when they're still working toward proficiency. So we'll be talking about this more in this next slide. This slide highlights how different student groups have performed on the new English language arts growth measure. Overall, 71% of students in B USD improved their English language arts scores from the prior year. And this and this places students in the district overall in the accelerated growth category in Berkeley

Unified School District. Hispanic Latinx students also demonstrated accelerated growth in 2025, aligning with the overall district trend. Students who are learning English met the average growth category, while long-term English language learners showed moderate growth. Importantly, no student groups fell into the minimal growth category. Next slide, please. This slide demonstrates Hispanic Latinx performance in mathematics over the last three years. In 2025, again, we see progress from both 2023 and 2024 as Latinx students demonstrated a 24 point increase since 2024 and moved from orange all the way to green, effectively skipping the yellow category on this metric since 2024. performance and we we'll talk about this more a bit later is based on two factors. Current year data for the measure which is known as status as well as the difference between the current year growth and the prior year growth data which is known as change. In other words, districts are evaluated based on how well we do in terms of student scores and how well well we're able to move or grow students according to distance from standard. And next slide please. Here we observe the new growth measure for mathematics disagregated by student group. Overall 75.3% of BUSD students improved their math scores from the prior year. And the district is in the accelerated growth category here as well. Growth again reflects whether students improved from one year to the next compared to their similar peers statewide in grades four through eight. and

our sorry just one in in 2025 our focal groups including Hispanic Latinx students English learners and long-term English language learners demonstrated accelerated growth in in mathematics and um I'll pass back to you Joe.

Thank you. Thank you Dr. Sweeney. Um we know that to achieve academic excellence we need strong tier one instruction to support culturally and linguistically responsive instruction. Director Albeck is going to be sharing about our two-way immersion elementary curriculum pilot launch at Sylvia Mendes this year. And our OFI specialist Alejandra Fiest will be sharing information about how we're supporting that literacy effort with parent workshops in addition to other events to celebrate our Latinx communities. So I'll turn that over to Director Albec. Can you use that? Is it okay if I try this? Yeah.

Okay. Um good evening. Next slide. This slide's fine. Um, on the on the slide before you, you see our TWWI Elementary Literacy Instructional Vision. This vision aligns with the commitments outlined in our Latinx success resolution. Both the resolution and this vision are grounded in an assetbased approach that affirms bilingualism, biiteracy, and cultural identity as strengths rather than deficits. Our TWWI instructional vision intends to translate our resolution's values into classroom practice by ensuring that Latinx students have access to rigorous grade level instruction in both English and Spanish while also seeing their identities and languages reflected and honored in their way of learning. In this way, TWWI serves as a concrete example of how this resolution moves from aspiration to instruction. Next slide, please. Uh, one more. Thanks. As we have begun implementing our new literacy program at Sylvia Mendes this school year, our work has centered on building educator capacity through a structured training plan that you see before you. Paired with ongoing coaching and feedback from our educators to ensure the instructional materials are implemented as designed. We are closely monitoring how the language allocation model that we in B USD have at Sylvia Mendes is working in practice to ensure it is supporting students development in both English and Spanish. This approach reflects the Latinx resolution emphasis on sustained highquality implementation rather than a one-time adoption. Next slide please. Uh one more click please. Another one. There we go. As a commitment to our

Latinx resolution is ensuring that Latinx students have access to rigorous affirming instruction that builds knowledge over time. A strong knowledgebuilding literacy program is essential through the commitment because it allows students to develop language through meaningful content rather than isolated skills. Through our new knowledge building program, Ariiba leakura, we are centering culturally relevant topics and building background knowledge in Spanish. This work supporting comprehension, vocabulary development, and academic identity. This approach aligns directly with our resolution's emphasis on culturally and linguistically responsive instruction that prepares students for long-term academic success. Next slide, please. Uh, one more click. One more. You got to give me that clicker. Foundational skills are another critical component of our Latinx success resolution because high, excuse me, because strong literacy outcomes depend on students having explicit systematic instruction in how language works. High quality foundational skills instruction in Spanish supports accurate decoding, fluency, and confidence as readers while also strengthening transfer to English by investing in culturally and linguistically appropriate foundational skills instruction. At Menddees Esparanza, we are ensuring that Latinx students are not only developing language, but are also being equipped with the tools they need to fully access grade level content. Next slide, please. This work culminates in our intentional focus on lang language transfer at the upper grades which is central to developing true bilingualism and biiteracy. Rather than treating English and Spanish as separate or competing systems, we explicitly support students in making connections across languages, applying vocabulary, comprehension

strategies, and language skills from one language to another. A lot of internal work was done to make sure this happened where we knew there was no perfect curriculum and we needed to make sure that our language program matched our English program at the upper grades and kudos to the Sylvia Mendes upper grade teachers who did a lot of that language transfer work over the summer. Next slide please. Good evening. Um, I want to let you all know that we were able to bridge um everything that um is happening right now with the new curriculum with our families. We did partner with Words in the Wild. I was happy to know that we were able to get some funds to be able to have three workshops um dedicated to Spanish-speaking families in support of them and also bridging with teachers and supporting teachers but also in supporting at home with the kids literacy. Um and we do have English translation. Um so it is for both but it is in Spanish. Um and so we did have one on the 17th of December. It was great. We had 20 parent participants um and we can only hope to get more. Our next one is going to be um January 27th. Next we can go next. Okay. All right. Do you want to go over the community events on that last slide or no? Um,

can you go back one more slide, please? I think it's in the Oh, sorry. I did not realize that it had changed. Um, we are also

sorry. Um, so we also do have our community events in partnership with Latino Sunnidos at Berkeley. Um, which is the parent group for the city of Berkeley. Um and so we um partner B USD partners with them um for uh la de la placita um for lion heritage month. We also do Camino Salon University, although this year we're um switching it up to um Camino Selex, which is pathways to success because we understand that not everybody's pathway is to a university and we want to make sure that we um let our families and students know um that they can design their future and it could still be successful um in the way that they can. Um and then we also have um another yearly event that we do um with um the celebration of the commemoration of Cev Chavez and Dolores Gorta. All right. Thank you. Um so parent and student engagement is critical to the success of our Latinx students. Uh we definitely appreciate members of the Latinos Unidos de Berkeley um who are here uh both in person and virtually this evening. This partnership has been a productive one over many years and there are a number of events as you saw um that Alejandra shared um that we're collaborating on um on an annual basis. We also want to recognize the important role that our ELAC and DAX play in providing important input to support our multilingual language learners including our Spanish-sp speakaking ELELS and we'll be hearing an update on this work in the next presentation. Um, and we're also excited about the way that the Wordlely platform will be providing access to our families and definitely want to hear feedback on how that worked in this inaugural evening um for that platform. In this next section for CUBO, we're going to highlight examples of how we engage our families, build community,

and support leadership growth. I'm going to turn this section over to our OFI team, Alejandra Frizz and Carol Perez, along with our parent leader and poet, Marina Cruz and parent leader, Anna Perez. Thank you. Marina, system public school found Latinas Fore! Foreign! Foreign! for certific Padreso.

I will introduce after this or um translate it. Mayor facilitative. Sylvia Mendesc. Um so um on the previous um slide we had a map and it's just going over um how we started in fall of 2022 when the district decided to hire Cave for sessions of Project to Inspire which um helped families understand what the school system is all about and how to better support the students. um and they were in Spanish. And then in um the f the fall of 2022 um OIE staff members um decided to apply for for a grant and and we got it and to continue with those sessions of GAB so that our parent um so we can create an affinity group of parent leaders, excuse me. Um by 2025 they did graduate, got a certificate so they can facilitate the workshops um that they were um taught. And so, um, we're really excited, um, because this is the first year. The last two years it

was OPI staff members who did the workshops and now it's the actual parents who are leading and facilitating these workshops this year. So, we hope you can join us for our next one. It's January 20th at Sylvia Mendes, 5:30 p.m. Child care and Food Provided. Um, good evening. My name is Carol Perez and I'm also a member of OPI and I'm acting as um U mental health care navigator also and I wanted to speak specifically around our collaboration. So, as part of OPHI's efforts to improve engagement with Latinx parents, we have partnered with several local agencies, including but not limited to the mayor's office and other city departments, Latinos Unidos de Berkeley, the Eastbay Sanctuary Covenant, the Multicultural Institute, Alama County Immigration and Legal Education Partnership. Some of our projects we have more recently collaborated on include two know your rights workshops for B USD families focusing on understanding their rights, understanding B USD's policies to protect immigrant students as well as the policies of the city and of Berkeley and Alama County to protect immigrant residents. We were also trained and collaborated on family preparedness planning for families to create emergency plans for safe care of their minor children in the event that they are no longer able to provide direct care. Thank you. Oh, you know what? It's okay. Um for this one it's a special shout out um to these different um stu student leadership groups. Um we have the Rasa

Concilio artwork by Santana which is a student. This is a a student group at Longfellow Middle School funded by Berkeley Public Schools fund in the city of Berkeley. Huge support uh for this group from Aron Lechuga Leslie Limmerman and allied staff. Um and so they work together to decolonize their learning spaces and celebrate their diverse cultures. They have over 140 students who celebrate diversity, practice public speaking, coordinate schoolwide events, fund raise and practice leadership in a context that um uh delegates and decentralizes decision-making power. I also want to shout out um Latinos um actually Latino's club from King Middle School led by EA Moran, Tanya, Jacqueline Sandoval and their club members. Um they fundra in order to have events and they give students a space to be seen, heard, and themselves without judgment. And they also celebrate culture, cook together, honor traditions, and fund raise to represent their club. Um we also have the Latino Club at BHS led by Susie Lopez and Allied staff. Um Rehab Rasa at Willard led by Bernie Garcia and Altas at Thousand Oaks led by Ernesto Maren who do similar things. All right, as we turn our attention to the third and final section of this presentation, Civ Voy, we know that the resolution calls for BSD to launch culturally affirming academic programs to address Latinx student achievement and promote college and career readiness for our students. So, we're definitely happy to have our point teachers and counselor here this evening to share the work that we've been doing at both Longfellow and Berkeley High. But first, we're going to start with Dr. Sweeney who will share some of our college and career readiness data.

Okay, thank you. Um so here we share graduation rates from 2022 through 2025 with percentages showing students who graduated as disagregated by BUD overall are Hispanic Latinx students and our English language learners who identify as um as Latino as as Latinx as well. Um, and as you can see, if you can just go back for one moment, we had relative progress through 2024 in um in our Hispanic, Latinx, and BSD overall graduation rates with stagnation, a slight decline in 2025. And um, next slide. Okay, so this slide shows college and career readiness for the graduating class of 2025. Col college and career readiness is a state defined measure that looks at whether students completed coursework and pathways that indicate that they are prepared for post-secary options including college career or both. Readiness is determined in three ways. Completion of an academic pathway, completion of a technical pathway or a combination that the state defines as prepared. So this is not generally limited to a single test score. It reflects p patterns in coursework and pathway completion across high school. On this chart we see three groups reflected. All stu all B USD graduates students in red and Hispanic Latinx students as reflected in blue. The bars show the percentage of students in each group who met the state's college and career readiness criteria in 2025. At the district level, just under 3/4 of graduates met the readiness standard. Quente students show a similar rate

slightly above 70% which reflects participation in a structured collegegoing pathway. We typically use this measure alongside graduation rates and achievement data to better understand how well students are being positioned not just to finish high school but to leave high school with options. And next slide please. Okay. So I've put a key uh on this slide as as you can see on the graphic itself there are many abbreviations. Um, this slide breaks down college and career readiness for Poente students in 2025 by their pathway type. Students may be represented in more than one column. The first bar in red shows the overall percentage of students who met the state's college and career readiness measure and the remaining bars show how students met that measure through the Smarter Balance assessment proficiency as represented in yellow. the advanced placement culmination of assessments represented in green international balora tests, the completion of the A throughG coursework plus an additional criterion or a career technical education pathway plus additional criterion. This view helps us see the distribution of readiness pathways for point students rather than just the overall rate. And with that, I will pass to some of our amazing 20 colleagues.

Here you want. Yeah. Maybe I can just move myself. How about that? Yeah. Okay. I think we Oh, wait.

No. Let me Hi. Uh, good evening. Um, my name is Leo Kowalsski. Um, Poente English teacher, uh, current 10th grade cohort of Berkeley High. Uh, I'm just going to talk a little bit about the history of Poente. So, Poente, it's a UC sponsored program. Uh it was started in 1981 at Shabbo Community College in Hayward. Uh and they were looking at how to uh address the issue of low college completion rates among Latino students. uh and they found that the biggest obstacle was uh not having access to um necessary English education, counseling services, and uh kind of like the insider knowledge um due to being firstgen. Uh and so because of that, Pente really critically focuses on the teacher coun counselor, student and family uh partnership. Sorry, excuse me. Uh it's really all about like rigorous culturally relevant English instruction, uh college counseling, college prep, and identity exploration. Uh at Berkeley Unified, um it looks a little different uh at the high school level and that usually Pente is 9th and 10th. Uh but at BHS, it's within just academic choice. uh world literature 10th grade and then uh AP Lang in comp for 11th grade. Uh and then at Longfellow it's uh seventh grade and eighth grade English. Uh and yeah, at Berkeley High Point Pente students uh definitely have access to the special community. Um we go on field trips, we have parent conferences,

uh workshops for parents and students. Uh yeah, just like overall great community to be part of. Sure. Next. Yeah. No, it's okay. I think we're back to Okay. Good evening everyone. Nice to see you. Uh my name is Soil Dues. I am also a Buente English teacher at Berkeley High School. Um I have a couple things to review on this slide, but first I want to direct your attention to that photo on the bottom right hand corner of your screen. That those cute faces are the first graduating class of Buenistas, which walked this who walked the stage in May of last year. Shout out to them. Um, and within that class, we have some data to look at here. But I want to acknowledge that while this data is for the some of this data is for the class of 25, you know, I think this slide will give us a good understanding of of who we serve in general. Um, and so for class of 2025, uh 60% of them uh were identified as socioeconomically disadvantaged. Uh 33% had an IEP over or a 504 and 75% were firstgen. Um, if we look at the racial makeup of it, I I think it's worth noting that point is for everyone. Bu can uh reflect the racial and ethnic demographics of the school. This is obviously different from what we were just talking about and looking at in previous slides. But again, I think this this shows us that we are targeting Chuco Latino students and alongside them, we have students from other groups that are equally benefiting from this program, which is culturally affirming, culturally responsive, and just a beautiful community to be a part of. Um, since then, since those 24 students that you see in that photo, uh, I started with them in 2022 and since then we've grown to 135 students at Berkeley High School between grades 10 through 12, which is a huge accomplishment. And I I want to be honest in that I think there's room for

growth there. Both within the structure that we have of having only AC, right? You can imagine what what it might do to expand this to the other small learning communities. Um but also within this within the structure that we have right now too, we look forward to seeing more growth.

Good evening. My name is Miss Patton and I am the Poente instructor over at Longfellow Middle School. This is my second year uh teaching point and we currently have a cohort of about 90 students, seventh and eighth grade ELA over at Longfellow Middle School. We serve about 60% um socioeconomically disadvantaged students. First gen 47% also sped 19%. And 504s for 7th grade 9% and eighth grade 4%. If you look at that pie right there, we serve about 50% Latinos and Chicanos um for our cohort. And those two pictures down below, that is our cohort from last year. We're always writing. We're always reading um books with uh Latino, Chico authors, uh women authors, queer authors, black authors. That's really the core of what we do because we also know that when kids see themselves in the curriculum, in the text, it gives them a pathway to activate their genius. Next slide. As you can see right here, these are some of our highlights from last year. Um, and just so y'all know, when when Poente students come into our program, we give them a survey. So they get a survey when they come in and they also are surveyed when they leave. And so this data right here is based on the survey when they left. And so from our end at Longfellow Middle School, 86% stated that their participation in Poente better prepared them for high school. 95% stated that Pointe English greatly improved their reading. 95% said that visiting colleges and universities

in person helped them decide if they wanted to go to college at all. And then last but not least, 90% said that after participating in Poente, going to college was very important to them.

Oh, tell them they six field trips. Yep, we went on six field trips.

That's a big accomplishment. Okay. Uh, so taking you back to that photo that I kind of pointed out a couple slides ago, uh, I mentioned that we had our first graduating class of Buisas back in May. Yes, shout out to them. That photo brings me immense pride. I was tearing up earlier just kind of reflecting on that. Um, we can go back to two slides. Yep. Perfect. Um, so from that group, 92% were admitted to a 4-year university. 90% of the class at that point that contributed to their college knowledge and prep in preparation for that journey. Uh 75% stated that Latino literature greatly shaped their experience. And 75% said that leadership and community service activities had a great uh impact on their collegegoing journey. And when I look at these numbers, I do feel proud because it is difficult to to establish a program, especially at Berkeley High that has so many amazing programs um and groups and and learning communities and things like that. Um and I also I also recognize the room for growth that we have here. And so I just especially want to point out that while these numbers are while we have some room for growth, right, the 75% and the 75% um I do think that with Gosh, I'm blanking here. I'm so sorry. Um let me look at my notes. So sorry. I do think that this is reflective of kind of the the roadblocks, right, of having to kind of establish ourselves there. Uh, like I mentioned earlier, we're only an AC and so we can imagine what kind of growth can be done there. And also recognizing that within our unique structure of Pointe at Berkeley High School, being that we're 10th through 11th grade and not 9th through 10th grade, uh, we've had to work right as a team to develop and refine our culturally responsive curriculum and what does that look like for an advanced placement AP lane class. Um, and also

think about how do we motivate and really integrate a service opportunity experience for these students when traditionally that's done outside of the classroom. And so really building out a program that works to uh grow the student in all of these aspects as community is a valued component of this program I think has been a challenge but one that our community has has really um taken on and we look forward to expanding upon in the future. Oh. Oh. Oh, and I can't I have to say number of field trips since October of 2024, nine, which was amazing. So many memories in the books there. Um, and shout out to Miss Nela who has been present at both schools, Longfellow and Berkeley High School. You can imagine what it's like to split campuses, right? Like, and No, sorry. Go, go, go.

Yes. And imagine if we had a full-time counselor at both of those schools to magnify our population and our demographic. Not to mention, we are building up geniuses at Longfellow. That gap, we lose those kids when they don't get that ninth grade year with Poente. Thank you. Yeah.

And then uh some exciting stuff that we have coming up. So on the 16th in a couple weeks, uh Berkeley High School will be making a trip to the Alamita Food Bank to do uh to involve ourselves in a service learning opportunity. Uh in February, we'll be headed to our annual student leadership conference. The location of this changes every year from university to university. This year it'll be at CSU Eastbay. In February, 7th graders at Longfellow will be attending a STEM field trip. And at the very end of the year in May on May 20th, we'll be having our second end of the year celebration and graduation. And we invite all of you to attend. We'd love to see you there. Thank you.

All right. Just almost done. Just to close out, uh we wanted to put a couple of links here. Um if you are interested in getting connected um with the work that we are doing with um our parent leadership and workshop, there are QR codes there. There are a number of resources available on our district website page. And we also just wanted to highlight um some of the events that you heard about in the course of this presentation um that are coming up uh that are listed there. Um the next couple of parent workshops um along with a community event celebrating um stories from the Latinx um community on January 24th um and then Camino Al Exido which will be next week. And all of this information is also on the district website. And with that, we'll I just want to acknowledge and appreciate all the folks who are here today um who represent a lot of hard work um to operationalize both the resolution but also just demonstrate the hashtag Berkeley proud and the ways that we support our Latinx community. So, um want to acknowledge all the work. Um and I also see people in the audience who are doing that too. I see Luda and I see Ed and and Kathy and everybody out there too. All right. Yes, Navaro. Yes, all of it.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. Question. No, no, I am. There's questions. Thank you so much. That's right. We got the discussion and questions. Um, board members, anyone have a uh questions or comments? Director Vaset.

Well, yeah. I just want to say thank you so much for all the growth. I think it was really great um to see the data. So, shout out to the staff. Love seeing all the literacy and math growth and want to celebrate that work. Um I have a couple questions. One is really basic just about the family literacy workshops at Sylvia Mendes. And um wanted to know if that literacy workshop I'm glad that there's like two more of those workshops coming up, the session at the end of January and the one in April. Are those also open to middle school families and secondary families or is it just elementary school focused?

It's open to everyone. Um, we are focusing on our elementary school families doing more targeted outreach. I think it might be good to consider um for middle school those uh like a if possible to have one of those workshops also be tailored to to middle school cuz I know that um as kids become more independent have to become more indep independent readers and the workload increases from elementary to middle school. would love um to see if there could be some engagement around that for our families as they're especially those fifth grade parents as they're transitioning to that big shift. Also, um just wanted to I'm glad to see the progression with project with cabab like having gone to some of those cab I think we used to have like the cabab graduations like at the end when the parents would get recognized loved uh being invited to those um and I'm glad to see that the parents are now leading what's and this is a great example of how you bring in a contractor they empower your parents and then you continue the model right like you're not keeping the contractor forever in the district that you're really um building those resources from within and would love to see that more in general for all our our affinity based projects. But when uh we have parents that like are graduating that are leaving the district, how are we uh increasing the number of parent leaders for parents that didn't go through like are we able to share that knowledge and bring along new parent leaders?

um and then if you could translate that'd be great. Thanks. Latinos You too. goal. particip Mike Mike Gracias.

um so um Um so in English um so she was saying um that um thank you um they've received a lot of support with this opportunity to become um parents leaders and to be trained to be facilitators and to getting to understand um the way that the school system works. It's really hard for families to really come through and so one of the things that we're really proud of this year is that we are recording um all of these sessions and so our parents are the ones that are recording it and we are sending it to our B USD communications team. It is being uploaded on YouTube and so we will be sharing those so that families who cannot participate can learn from home.

That's great. Yeah, I remember that session that Mania's referring to. It was like three years ago, Mike, maybe when we went to that listening session um with Latino families at Sylvia Mendes and it was well attended. I thought it was really great that we had board members there and district staff, right? and we all kind of divided ourselves amongst like the leadership of the district, the parents and the teachers at the site. Thought that was really powerful. Um I think if it happens again, I think it's a great idea again to invite to kind of do it in the same way and invite the board members to be there. Um, I know only two of us can show up at a time, but it it would be great to to have us in the room, too, because there were a lot of questions about how the district makes budgeting decisions for families and a lot of the kind of like our nitty-gritty process for getting to the final budget. And so, I think it it would be great to bring the parents and the board members again. Um, then my other question has to do with the field trips for Poente. I I think on one of the point uh data summary decks there was a what where it says college and career pathways the help me understand this missing we see 0% for IB because the IB students can't participate in point right like at Berkeley High we wouldn't have any IB participants because it's only open to academic choice correct

so I don't know do we have to report that to is that like a metric from the UC's that they want to see that or is it our because it wouldn't make can't we just take that out since we there's no way that

and then um I'm glad to see I was glad to go to the first graduation of Buenthia along with our associate superintendent um last spring I thought it was really wonderful to see how many students were going to so many different kinds of universities too like how many of them were going to state schools I know there were a couple students that went to the to Berkeley's program the engineering business program so it was really great to see that a lot of kids were also O attending the UC's and I know um I'd be I'd love to learn about which of the field trips are especially for the high school cohort and maybe even for the middle school are at UC campuses having myself participated in a program that came from like the Buene family. I was a member of their EAOP program and at that time 90s dating myself but we used to go to a lot of like city colleges and UC campuses and meet professors and meet other students. So I'm wondering if that's still happening and I know that Davis for example has the CS Chavis youth leadership conference and as you're as a parent of you know now a high schooler but as you're checking in the box to go to that conference they do ask you explicitly if you're a Buista and so I know that that conference for example brings a lot of point students from other public high schools would be curious if we're also participating at those conferences at the UC's that are really aimed uh towards addressing college and career opportunities specifically for bentistas.

Um I I would be happy to answer that. So um even though we are sponsored by University of California, we are actually required to take our students to different types of four-year universities. So we do go to CSUs, privates, and UC's. Um, and then something that I also want to add is, uh, something that's really great about being part of a UC program is that there is also annual reports that UC will produce specifically to compare our students. um also in comparison to Berkeley Unified and they also check in the fall even though we may be very very proud of how many kids were admitted to universities. UC will still confirm after the first semester of the fall term for the after the first semester of the freshman year of the college student to confirm that they actually enrolled. Um so we are under other very strict guidelines that we also need to follow. And for the middle school and the high school, all our field trips are not just about to look at a beautiful campus. We always have a theme. So, for example, um our San Jose State, uh we did that for our high school students last year. Our theme was looking at STEM programs and we had Poente alum from other high schools because we don't haveistas there yet quite yet until this year. Um they are the ones that are talking to the kids student to student. Um last year we also did for example uh UCSF even though that's a graduate school level. Um we had a very focused tailored approach on understanding health careers and they did a brain uh experiment where they got to actually look at a real brain. So anyways, all of our um field trips have a theme not just about looking at a beautiful campus and we are required to look at both um at all kinds of systems and we are also um required and we love doing this part is doing culturally relevant field trips where for example we'll go into the mission district to learn about art or Miss Pan

and I have been trying to work on creating um a field trip uh to learn about the Black Panther Party in Oakland. So those are the kinds of things that the point office expects from us and we also enjoy doing that.

I would just say just to add sorry just to add to that you mentioned the conference I think it's like April May that happens at UC Davis Chavez that is something that we've offered to our families in the past too and like I think year to year try and figure out how can we get more families to go and you know have access to that. I think in previous years we've had a field trip like a student leadership conference that point throws was at UC Davis the same year and so many families thought well we've been there already. So anyway, all to say it's something that's on our radar and um we always kind of invite and include families in on that information.

One last question now that I have the point counselors here. This is the rare opportunity that I have the the middle school and high school counselors. My question is I heard kind of through the presentation how you would like additional support to grow the program and it sounds like the scheduling issue has always been an issue with the high school like trying to figure out how to open it to the other smaller schools. Um but in addition to that I know we're facing like tough budgetary decisions. So I just want to hear from you though as now that the program's been in the district for several years and we have an idea of how to run at the middle school and the high school level. What kind of support um from the board would would help strengthen the program in your opinion just from the counselors?

We got one counselor. We got one counselor. So that's

counselors. Um I you know I I think every when you look at all the point programs in California if you look at the success the most successful programs whether you look at Pittsburgh High, James Logan High School, just to name local schools um all the Hayward Unified Schools, they all have their full-time uh credentialed uh high school counselor as well as their teachers have an additional prep to just do the planning um around parent engagement and field trips. They also have a robust uh financial support. Um on average, I would say uh Bue high schools in California have around a 15 to 20,000 budget for field trips because as you know a bus I mean we are you know we do try to do a lot of things that are within our budget like taking BART uh to San Francisco State. We did B USD buses obviously, but I think in if there's um a wonderful wish list out there, I would say we really do need to look carefully at having a full-time counselor, especially when our kids, they have crisises, crisis all the time. Parents have crisis, not just on a Monday when I'm at Berkeley High, for example. It can happen any day of the week. Um and I think that does put a stressor on my colleagues um at both sides. So, um I would love um to see that ongoing support of you. Our district does understand the beauty of counseling, you know, that it's the social emotional support and the academic and I think those two things are just key at all all of our schools uh all of our schools and I I hope to cons to see keep seeing that support from the district.

Thank you.

Thanks so much. We have a question from Director Schnowski. I just have one question about the data, my data friends. um on slide number 12 specifically. Um so this 0% proficiency rate I'm obviously that's really troubling to me for English language learners and I'm just wondering is what's the n like what's the how many students is that is you know this is slides 11 and 12. I'm just wondering if it's like a product of the statistics of small numbers or like we didn't spend a lot of time talking about that piece and it's kind of troubling on the surface. So I'm just wondering if there's more to that data than what I'm seeing just on the surface.

Yeah, it's a great question. I do have all of the numbers disagregated by school site um of all of our Latinx eles. I would need to pull it up to give you the exact percent. That's okay. I I think my my question is really I mean you know I always say that it's like what what is happening there right like yeah

it's an end number and I think for the high school you realize that that's only 11 right. So for this slide, we also have to remember that this is only the tested grade, which is 11th grade. And I think at Berkeley High, we have about 50 Spanish speaking eels, right? That's not inclusive of the other languages. Elena can check me. So, but this is this is only represented the group that tests. So, I don't know what the breakdown is there of how many 11th graders, but that end count is really small. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. And you also have to realize that one of the things and you're going to hear in the next presentation, we are focusing some attention on our long-term English learners. So, how many of those students are long-term English learners? Because again, they're taking an English and math assessment at grade level proficiency in English. And so if there's something there that has been happening that has prevented them from gaining English proficiency, um that is going to be a a challenge to to overcome.

Great. And then I just have one quick comment and that is that I I am a um faculty member at Merit College, the birthplace of the Black Panthers and we also have a really robust point program with some um amazing amazing directors. I would say I think the merit college point program is the jewel of the Peralta system and so I would just encourage just because some of the items that you said and a lot of our students you know start off in the community college system because it's so um accessible you know that's close to their families and it is very affordable. So I just wanted to sort of throw that out there too. Thanks.

Thank you all so much. also. Thank you, Vice President Korn.

Yeah, thanks everyone. That was an amazing presentation. It was really great to hear about all of your work. Um, I was going to ask some similar questions about those slides 10 through 12. So, thanks for speaking to those a little more. Um, I just have a couple of other comments and questions. One is um on slide 22 um director Albec, you sort of glossed over this amazing quote um in the margin about with from a TWWI teacher at Mendes saying, "This is the first time in 10 years that I've gotten a Spanish- speakaking presenter for professional development and how powerful that is for teachers who are teaching in Spanish." As a former TWWI teacher, I was really excited to see that. Um and just excited to see the really positive feedback from teachers. Um and similarly the next couple slides later, the the work that Jessica Fas and Erica England are doing to adapt fish tank and make it work in a TWWI context for their students is really hard work. And it's really awesome to see what they've been able to do in a short amount of time. And I just want to honor that. Um, Alejandra, I was so excited when you said, "And we provide English translation." Um, when I was a principal, often when I was hosting meetings that were really targeting Spanish- speaking families, I would try to lead the meeting in Spanish and provide English translation. And so, I just think that's a really important practice that um, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? that that honors and lifts up the voices that we most want to honor and lift up in these spaces. So, I was excited to hear you call that out in a little

little way. Um, I guess the only I have a question about Poente in addition to all the other awesome things we've talked about about Poente. I'm curious about how students get identified or selected for Poente. And I'm also curious about some of the other programs like I'm thinking about AVID at Longfellow and I'm thinking about Bridge and Rise and Collegebound and all the other programs at Berkeley High. Are students in Poente are there some students who are in more than one program like in Poente and in something else or are there students who are particularly good candidates for Poente? and how is that determined and sort of who's who's making those decisions and how are how are kids identified?

Um uh at Longfellow um we actually again keep in mind that Miss Pan and I are a new team together. Um so what we decided to do with the full support of our principal at um Longfellow and as well as our fellow co counselor colleagues is we decided to actually present when at every at all ELA classes in sixth grade um because we cannot make the mistake or or assume that just because your last name is something or your last name doesn't sound like something um that you might not feel like you can identify with the program. We also had our eighth grade uh pointistas also speak on what their experience was like in Poente to our sixth graders. And that had I think um great success, a bigger impact than them hearing Miss Pan and I talk about Poente. Um and so uh that is how Longfellow um does the recruitment. Um we are required by UC to have parent consent even though this child is a full-time Longfellow student. The University of California requires that both parent and student consent to participation. So there is an application that our students have to fill out and a consent form. Um at Berkeley High, I would say um again, I'm the newest member of the team. Miss Langas is the the seasoned pro there. Um it's been u my understanding um uh a process that has developed. Um last year was the first time that we were allowed to present at uh 9th grade English classes where we again our approach and our attitude was we need to present to all students. Uh because we are partners with OI and with Camino Salon University and tableabling at community events in the city of Berkeley with Latinos Unidos that has helped us tremendously grow the number of students that want to participate. For example, last year we

had over 160 families and children that wanted to be at the high school program, but out of those students, only about 30 something actually qualified to be enrolled in academic choice. So that is why our cohort um remains to just be a group of about 32 with Mr. Kowalsski's uh class this year. Um it is still a growing pain in terms of how we can effectively outreach because Berkeley High does have many amazing programs as you mentioned. Um board member Korn um Bridge and Rise are excellent programs as well, but ours does have very specific criteria that we must target our Latino firstgen uh community. But of course, as you heard from all of our colleagues here, um we do take a wide group of students. Um there are specific guidelines that UC requires that we follow and we do have to again at the high school there's also an application. Um there's supposed to be an interview process but at Berkeley High we do not do that piece because um we're trying to just focus on open access um and give our students the application and consent form. Would you like to add something missing? Um I think the only thing that I would add would be that previously we've had a couple students that have been both uh bridge and point but that's something that we try to avoid. We don't do that because of you know duplication of services and the concern around that. Um rise is a little bit different. I mean they're after school but I mean same sort of thing. We are looking at all of those factors when we consider these students. Um and like we said we'd love to grow the program but we have some parameters and and barriers that kind of limit our ability right now. Can I ask just one more follow-up question to

I'll just add that um we have at Berkeley High School there are seven students who are both in rise and in point um and no students are in in bridge and also in point just we just are there any students who are in AVID and at middle school? No. Um oh actually I'm so sorry at the middle school uh we have a couple eighth graders because they could be in Poente as their English class and AVID as their elective, right? Yeah. Yeah. And is that like are there a lot of them? Does that work well for them?

No. Eighth grade we have very few and we're trying um with my understanding Miss Pan from our conversation last year with Miss Mitchell is we're trying to uh not duplicate services. Um sometimes we do do partnership field trips with AVID at Longfellow, but we are trying to work um it's a different curriculum. AVID has theirs and we have ours and we really are trying to give the students um you know Yeah. Yeah. Try to pick one

because we're we're basically centered in um we're a ELA cohort. So we're we're centered in, you know, reading, writing, speaking, community building, and then whereas AVID is really trying to give them the the skill, note takingaking skills and things of that nature. So they're like cousins, but they're not quite the same. Yeah. My my last quick question on this topic of identifying students are students who are in AVID at Longfellow then are they prioritized to be an AVID at Berkeley High are they like what is is there a bridge between the Longfellow program and the Berkeley High program

for AVID specifically or No, I didn't mean I meant sorry I had the

that's a pain point for us cuz you would think then goes right into high school in 9th grade, right? You have from one community that's familiar to the next. Um unfortunately we have a break in the nth grade and so it's 7th 8th but we were told um I guess when the when the program was established the agreement was that we would be different from other point programs at the high school and we would begin in 10th and then continue into 11th. However, I would just add that that makes a job extra hard right to to really well and ours too to really establish and build that relationship with these students. It looks different. Um, so no, unfortunately we have a break in between at the ninth grade right now. Y

because if you think about it, we're building community from seventh to 8th grade, right? So that's like built-in recruitment already. They're locked in. They're invested and then they get to 9th grade and they're like, "Yo, we can't go do." So that bridge, right? You're asking about a bridge like that funnel system. There's a funnel system there, but the faucet is turned off in ninth grade and then we have to turn it back on in 10th grade and rerecruit. Thank you so much. Any other questions or direct uh student director?

Um I have a really quick question. It's very similar. Um, I was really interested in what the Ponte program was talking about at Berkeley High and how it's like only available to students in AC. And I was wondering if that's because of the strict restrictions in other small schools. Um, and how would that fit in with like I'm very familiar with like the IBO and like is that like would the English class be able to work within a different program that's like not AP or with the 10th grade like global lit class? Like how would that fit in or is that a possibility at all? Other high schools have I? Yeah, that's a wonderful question. And other point high schools or other high schools that have point do have an IB program where that fits in perfectly. So, it would work. It would work.

Um, but we are required. Um, again, because we are a UC program, we are required to to encourage your students to take AP or IB classes. So, that is something that UC will have an expectation in the data that they're looking on. The way I advise students and the way that our teachers are preparing them for higher level. So, is that like a requirement? Like there's one year of regular and then one year of like a higher level class or like what is the requirement like in high school for Poente? Um, University of California Pente requires our students to be in ninth grade college prep and 10th grade college prep. The reason being is that they believe and we do as well that we must recruit students who have uh D range GPA and also A students the wide gamut. So in order to to have more access and success for our students to see themselves as college students, we are required to have students across four they they call it quadrants but we have a wide range of GPA requirements that we must um hold our recruitment standards to.

Thank you so much. Um I also appreciate the hard work that you've put in and uh thanks for this presentation as well. Um next on up uh we have 13.2 um with multilang multilingual language learner plan update which is also a discussion item.

Thank you. Thank you. Good.

Good evening, B USD board and Superintendent Ford Morell. Um, special shout out to student director. You know how incredibly proud you're you make of your community. Um, very proud of you. Uh, we come to you this evening excited to share our annual multilingual learner master plan update. As an important champion of this work, I'm glad to be joined this evening by BUD's English language development TSA, Miss Kathleen Marte. In addition to us, I'm proud to represent all the important work being done by BUSD staff to support and uplift the brilliance of BUD's multilingual learners. Shout out to our EL coordinators, to our site English language advisory council leads, and to our district advisory council members who participate much in this work. Uh, our district's mission is to enable and inspire our diverse student body to achieve academic excellence and make positive contributions to the world. In this evening's discussion, we'll provide an over overview of each of our master plan six goals, share with you our progress and areas of continuous improvement, and then open it up for your questions and comments. Next slide, please. To begin our discussion this evening, we want to reorient our community to our multilingual learner master plan. This plan which was first published in 2022 through collective work of through teachers, support staff, community members, administrators, and our board was our northstar and continues to be our path towards what we dedicated ourselves to do. When we presented to our community and you all in February of 2025, we shared with you some important updates either from CDE or regional guidance. These updates have now been included in the document which sits before you, which is the second edition of our 2022 plan. Next slide, please.

Further narrowing into the second edition, you will find section 8.1 on page 88, which outlines how we evaluate progress on the six goals of our multilingual learner master plan. Each goal has a clearly defined progress measure drawn from state and local sources and is reviewed annually as part of this evening's presentation. However, this presentation and all the ongoing work to lift the brilliance and potential of every BUD multilingual learner is one of commitment and not of compliance. As a district, we have committed ourselves to a 3x5 target for our multilingual learners. This presentation includes metrics to determine how we are making progress towards this important target. Next slide, please. The graph that you see before you helps ground our understanding of the term multilingual learner by showing the different student categories this term represents and how those students are distributed across BUSD's grapes. This is a new way of looking at this term for I believe it provides much more in-depth understanding of the groups that are within this umbrella term and allows us to track their progress. Multilingual learners include students who are currently classified as English learners, students in identified as newcomers, long-term English learning or ELELS, students have been as reclassified as fluent English proficient, and those who are duly identified as ELEL's with identified learning differences reflecting a spectrum of language development rather than using a single category. Understanding the spectrum is important as we think about our diverse instructional and social emotional needs of our STO students who fall within this term. Moving into the data that follows, CDE reports only on English learners and

long-term English learners on the dashboard. However, I want to make sure that you all know that we're thinking about these other subgroups equally and tracking their data as well. Next slide, please. In addition to making sure that our multilingual learners feel safe, seen, and heard every day in BUD schools, our primary instructional goal is to ensure progress towards overall language proficiency. To measure this, we use the English language progress indicator, ELPI, which tracks yearover-year progress towards English proficiency using the ELPAC assessment. The expectation is that students make at least one ELPI level of progress growth each year, allowing us to monitor growth over time rather than rely on a single point in time score. This is a point of distinction from just looking at SBA proficiency rates, which we will later do. But I really want us to always remember that when we're thinking about our multilingual learners and students that are not yet at English language proficiency, we are looking for growth. and ELPI is the metric that we can and use to track that. Next slide, please. As a way of tracking progress on English language progress indicator, the state dashboard annually reports on how English language and long-term English language learners are progressing. Here we see BUD's results in this measure. In the most recent year, 50% of English learners and 57% of long-term English language learners made expected annual progress towards English language proficiency, meeting the growth expectation of one year's worth of growth. Next slide, please. Another way of monitoring our first goal of English language proficiency is by looking at reclassification rates. While

ELPI can be thought of as a measuring stick along the path, reclassification marks when a student reaches the destination of English language proficiency. As you can see, reclassification rates for both English learners and Spanish-speaking English learners increased compared to prior school year. To share with you some of our ongoing work to improve grade level proficiency, I will turn it over to Miss Marte.

Good evening. Um it's a pleasure to be here. So um with our long-term English learners, these are students who have been in public education for uh six or more years. And our goal is for students to be reclassified and exit the ELD program by six years. And so we uh for continuous improvement, we formed a uh long-term English learner committee uh comprised of director Albeck uh a Brea teacher on special assignment, a lead ELD teacher at each of the school levels, elementary, middle, and high school and myself. And the team has been participating in a community of practice at the regional level and uh going to meetings throughout the years. And the work is driven by inquiry cycles which focus on how we can ensure equitable opportunities and course offerings for our um long-term English learners and uh with the ultimate goal of increasing reclassification rates. And um one of our first projects is conducting empathy interviews because we look at a lot of uh quantitative data but to really understand like why are these uh long-term English learners what's going on? Sometimes students who have been born here are not exiting the program as quickly as newcomers. So what's going on? These empathy interviews as a way of gathering qualitative data to add to our quantitative data to help us better understand how to improve um services and student outcomes.

Next slide, please. While language development is foundational, goal two of our plan helps us understand how students are performing academically while they are developing English. This slide shows English language arts results on the Smarter Balance assessment while showing year-over-year increases for both groups. BUSD's long-term English learners scored an average of 95 points below standard and English learners scored an average of 36 points below standard on ELA. Next slide, please. This slide shows mathematics results for the Smarter Balance Assessment while showing year-over-year increases again for both groups. Long-term English learners scored 140 points below standard and English learners scored 43 points below standard. These roles these results reflect students who are still developing English proficiency. Remember, progress, not proficiency. Next slide please.

So for our continuous improvement um we've last year we discussed that we are training our teachers in constructing meaning which is to um ensure effective tier one instruction. But what's different this year what we've done instead of offering it just to uh opt in stu um teachers to opt in and being small cohorts we are offering we're providing constructing meeting professional development to all of our secondary teachers um during the district-wide PD days in October and January. And um so while constructing meaning is designed to provide academic language and grammatical forms necessary for accessing grade level content and engaging in grade level content. These strategies benefit all of our students. And so we even have our sped students and our IAS participating. Um, and so teachers are becoming skilled at backward designing lessons centered around a precise learning goal that contains a content and a language objective. So the language including a langu language objective is what's really new for a lot of the teachers. And so in addition to that um we are um focusing on our dy identified students by uh having a multidisciplinary approach. And so this year, instead of having collaboration meetings with SPED and and EL staff separately, we're meeting with them together. And during these meetings, we are doing a deep dive on the accessibility resources to ensure that our students with learning differences have the universal tools and designated supports that are necessary to really demonstrate what they know on these tests on the CASP and ELPAC. And um these accessibility resources examples are for example the pause and replay the audio. So if a student for

example has u problems with uh attention and if they don't hear some key content they will not be able to answer the question if they're not able to replay. So um this is just like one example and these types of accommodations and supports are key for these students demonstrating their proficiency on the ac um on the test and um for their academic success. And next slide, please. Goal three focuses on parent and family engagement as a key component of multilingual learner success. We monitor this goal through ELAC and DAC representation, involvement in school and district events, and annual survey feedback to ensure families have meaningful opportunities to engage in BUSD decision-making. All BUSD sites with 21 or more multilingual learners, excuse me, English learners have active ELACs and our DAC meetings are consistently well attended, covering a wide range of topics as shown on the right. In addition, DAC plays an active role in choosing the topics to discuss, the ones that are asterisk on the right, and also each year providing LCAP recommendations. Next slide, please. This slide highlights one example of how family engagement connects to student outcomes. In the 2425 school year, 132 BUSD multilingual learners were reclassified as fluent English proficients and the district marked this milestone through the English fluency and multilingualism celebration. This event serves as both a recognition of student achievement and as an opportunity to engage families, reinforce the reclassification process, and build shared understanding of language development milestones. Next slide, please. Goal four focuses on college and career readiness, which we

monitor using state graduation data and the college career prepared indicator. This slide shows outcomes for English learners. Among English learners, 86% graduated within 5 years and 28% of graduates met the college and career prepared indicator. Looking at these measures together allows us to understand not only whether students are completing high school, but also how prepared they are for postsecary options. Next slide, please. For long-term English language learners, ELTELS, 96% of this group graduated within five years and 34% met the college and career prepared indicator providing a complimentary view of completion and preparedness. So, uh, for part of our continuous improvement of goal number four, college and career readiness, Berkeley Unified, um, prepares our m multilingual learners for college and careers through a variety of efforts and programs, which we heard a lot about in the previous uh, presentation, but I do want to point out that when um, newcomer students arrive, Berkeley High School counselors complete transcript reviews to ensure that our newcomers get credit for courses completed in their home country. and they provide presentations on career and college opportunities. Um they the students as you know um multilingual learners start going to tours of colleges uh starting in uh middle school and they continue every year through high school and attend um the Berkeley city UC systems and they go to fairs and I'd like to provide like an anecdotal um story that was shared with me that for example when they went to one of the colleges there was a fair happening and uh students um were connected to talk to counselors and there's a program called

the student transition and academic retention teams for foster youth and there was a foster youth there and he was relieved to find out that he would qualify for um uh financial assistance to attend college. And so these are just some examples of how our district is providing students with the experiences, resources, and support needed to enter college and career pathways. Next slide, please. Goal five focuses on the implementation of programs with fidelity. This goal recognizes that equitable outcomes depend not only on our plan, but how consistency consistently our plans are implemented across USD schools. In effort to ensure all the time, resources, and intentions behind our change efforts are implemented, we have put systems into place to ensure accountability through annual reviews of master schedules, counting instructional minutes, and making sure that integrated and designated EL is happening for our students. In addition, we are now using informal observation and feedback processes and protocols to ensure that our classroom educators are getting feedback and are supported in their implementation of new curriculum sets. Such and the slides that you see before you are an artifact of our secondary leadership classroom visits to ensure alignment between what we have as instructional expectations and then classroom experiences. Next slide, please. This slide highlights our continuous improvement around implementation fidelity. We are using evidence from schedule reviews, classroom observations, and feedback to reflect on what we are seeing in classrooms, analyze the impact on instruction, how to determine support for our educators, and identify areas of refinements. This

process allows us to move beyond compliance and use implementation data to guide future professional learning and instructional support for BUSD's multilingual learners. Next slide, please. The final goal of our multil multilingual learner master plan focuses on bilingualism and biiteracy which represents some of the most meaningful outcomes of this work in today's global and multilingual society. Biiteracy supports academic success, affirms identity, and expands future opportunity for students. The data on this slide shows how we monitor progress towards this goal by tracking student participation in biiteracy pathways performance in courses taught in Spanish and English and outcomes such as the biiteracy pathways award and the state seal of biiteracy. Together these measures help us understand how students are progressing towards bilingual and biliterate development across BUD's grade levels. Next slide, please. So um for our ongoing effort uh we are committed to providing a dual language program but in addition to that an assetbased education for all of our students. So for example, I was met with the TK teachers today at the collaboration meeting and we were talking about the as that the language and the culture that the students bring to their classroom are assets and how can we celebrate and leverage those assets and um so it's starting all the way at TK and going all the way through the high school and now we're adding uh new strategies to increase the number of recipients of the sealed by literacy and so in addition to the student family information night that has been a success that we've been doing over the last few years and we're going to um have another one on March 3rd. Uh we've been the ELD department has been

collaborating with Brea to use our student information systems to look and see which students have met the criteria for the state seal of bi literacy and they're going to receive a personal invitation to apply. We want to make sure that they um know about the program and are able to demonstrate the proficiency and we are also targeting our multilingual learners to make sure that they are aware of the program and so um the state seal of biiteracy you know values um affirms uh biiteracy and also opens up more pathways for students once they leave high school.

Next slide please. So with that, we'll close out. We thank you for your ongoing work and support of all the resources that go towards our multilingual learners and their families. And we welcome your questions. Thank you so much. Board members, questions, comments, the director, I have a couple. Vice President,

um, thank you so much for all that information. There was a lot there. um was really great. I one thing I just want to shout out is how wonderful it is to see reclassification rates increasing substantially. Um really grateful to all the work that you've done to make that happen. Um I'm curious about our the the graph that you showed at the beginning that sort of um pulled apart different kinds of English learners. Um I'm curious about our newcomers and whether we're seeing any change in our numbers of newcomers given the um federal immigration context whether whether that's having an impact on our student population. Yeah. Um so we've had an overall each year we're having a overall decrease in our number of um students who are identified as English learners. Uh I think there are fewer newcomers and I'm noticing of the newcomers like we just I just did an intake of a family today and I'm doing one tomorrow and both families are uh uh visiting scholars so they're only going to be here temporarily. So yes, I would say um there is a decrease in the number of newcomers

and relatedly I'm curious about the multilingual program at um Berkeley High. Okay. I went to that graduation last year and it was beautiful with all the flags. Um, are the majority of the students in that program usually newcomers or are they long-term English learners? Are they together?

So, the program the graduation you went to, those were students who are newcomers or were newcomers. So, newcomers is defined as being in public education for three or less years, right? So they graduate maybe some of them have been uh four years but it's students who at least have started out in what they call the MLP program the newcomer program and so our long-term English learners do not are not that's like a separate Yeah. Okay. Um I also was really struck at that DAC meeting when families were talking about how they do feel there. I was there. Yes. It was really powerful.

We were in breakout rooms. So, were they also cuz I was like so relieved to hear them say, "My kid feels safe to come to school." I'm like, "Oh, yeah. Thank goodness." Same in my breakout room. People really feel safe and they feel a sense of belonging and they feel welcomed in their school communities. Um, and I think on that same slide you were talking about the work that we're doing to prepare in the event of immigration raids. I'm curious about any you you mentioned identifying an like an immigrant rights ambassador, correct? Who would um who would coordinate with community members?

Are there are there other conversations happening? I I just know there's a lot of chatter. There's a lot of people come to me like community members who might not even have kids in our schools and say, "I want to help. I want to be useful if something bad happens." Um, are we having a do have we figured out a way to like sort of channel community energy in a positive productive way?

Yeah, I just want to be careful. So, we do have a number of strategies that we um have in place to support our our community that is in partnership with the city as well as other folks that are internal and external. We want to be careful just to not yeah display them publicly, but just know that that is our um intention and for sure the ambassador program is an example of that. And some of the things that were explained um in this presentation are are B USD things as well as some things are outside. So I want to make sure we make that distinction but thank you Miss Marte. I'm sorry to cut you off. No problem.

Um the last question I had is just about seal of biiteracy and you sort of mentioned I'm wondering about benefits to students of getting a seal of biiteracy. Does it give them like does do they get out of having to take foreign language credits in college if they attend a college in California if they have a seal of biiteracy? Is there any like really tangible benefit besides just getting to say I have a seal of biiteracy? High school. He didn't take Spanish but he was fully biiterate uh in Spanish and then he wanted to apply to a college abroad program and they said, "Oh, where's the coursework that shows that you're by biiterate in Spanish?" I don't have the coursework but I had the seal of biiteracy and he had to give like a you know send the seal of biiteracy to get into the college abroad program. So there are concrete examples that's what I can think of. Thank you so much uh for the presentation. I had um just a couple questions. One is are we still I know when we've had previous presentations we've like dug in a little deeper on the reclassification rates by site. Are we still seeing like a lot of variation in reclassification rates like at at a school like Sylvia Mendes or Longfellow versus like the other middle schools other elementary schools? That's one question. And then um if we are and why, right? And then two uh when we say el can you remind me again how many years is that without being reclassified

six after they've had uh six they've completed six years in B USD or they could have come from Oakland just public education okay they could have come from another district not have been reclassified and then we start the clock like the it's from whenever they it's based on um the date US entry date. Oh, I see. I see. Okay. And is there still like a lot of variation by sight or is it pretty consistent? Like how has it kind of played out by site? The reclassification rates.

We do have some variation by site and our our immersion program is one of the um sites in which we do see some um and this has to do with the language allocation model. Right? So if we have a a 9010 model where students are are learning predominantly Spanish and then they're moving towards English. um we are seeing English proficiency rates and reclassification stagger a little bit further be behind but that's based on the model that we have the expectation and uh and we need to do a further study of this but the expectation is that students that are in our immersion program are that are that our English language learners are going to reclassify it might be a little bit later based on the allocation model and based on one of the factors of reclassification which is what we're currently using as dibbles Um, but we do need to do a study like longer term to make sure that all of our students in in our programs are reclassifying at similar rates because we are seeing a little a question mark there.

And could that be like may like to do a study like that? How long do districts take like is that something that we could do in like two years, next year? Just curious like what's our timeline for from my perspective? it is um setting some time aside and and pulling the data um for the past few years and looking at it longitudinally. Um so I believe that is something that we could do.

All right. I would I would also add that this is year one of a new curriculum and so we are going to need a little bit of time to make sure that those processes in place um before we can make any kind of definitive assessment about that too. So that would be another factor. And then I had a um question just about um let me open up the slides. Um for the for the goals around college and career readiness. Just wanted to know how how do we work with like the for especially for the students in high school. How are we working or making use of resources like the undocumented community resource center at BCC to provide students and families with additional support? Like do we partner with with the local um community colleges so students understand their options and support systems past BUD?

I would have to look into that to get more information. director of acade I know of uh one example uh there's definitely partnerships going on because I know for example um if a newcomer comes and they're not able to finish all of their coursework um like say they come in 11th grade um then there's partnerships for example with the multicultural institute to take a GED class um it's like a sixe class in Spanish and they can even take the GE test in Spanish so there are different partners partnerships happening. Um they definitely work close with the Berkeley uh City College and um they can start uh taking classes at Berkeley City College while they're at high school. And there's there's more, but those are only just a couple examples I can think of right now. I'd be curious maybe if the board could get information from the MLP program to see how we um have those partnerships are increasing those partnerships to make sure that we can increase uh the the college career readiness rates for our ELS and our ELELS. Thank you. But also just wanted to say thank you and kudos to the work for the dy identified students. I think it's great to see that strong partnership with the sped team. Um so really proud of the district's work to do that and um in full support. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Um and you know I really appreciate your emphasis on growth um versus quote unquote proficiency. You know that there's different levels of meaning behind that. But I I'm I'm understanding your focus on educational mission versus like testing outcomes for example. But um of course uh the um the six-year mark is a important one and so that's something that um is important for our district as well and and I I also appreciate your emphasis on that too. So your hard work on this is is much appreciated and you've got some really great outcomes. Um are there other questions or comments before we Nope. Okay. Thank you so much. appreciate it the presentation, not just the hard work. Thanks.

Thank you. Good evening. Thank you. And so, um, I know it's it's been a long night and people are back from the holidays and and we're all slightly dazed. Um, so we have 12.2 that was formerly on consent and was shifted down to a discussion item. This is approval of afterchool emerges healthc care staffing incorporated. Um so we'd like to have a conversation about that. Would would director Schnowki like to start off?

Yeah. So, I'm pulling this again so that we can have the conversation about these contractor positions. And I know that the district has worked hard to fill some of these vacancies, but I'd just like an update on the progress of filling these vacancies, what additional um work we're doing to ensure that we're filling these vacancies with district staff. And um I know that the original contract was for $500,000. We approved $125,000 and this is an additional $125,000. Do we anticipate an additional request later on? So those are those are my two questions to start please. Um thank you.

All right. Uh thank you for the questions. Um, so in terms of filling it, I want to be clear on what these positions are that are represented by this contract, which these are positions that are um approximately 0.53 FTE um special education assistants that are working in our afterchool program. These are not um the same positions that we have been working to fill previously in other um uh discussions. Um these are positions that have not been created because um there's a lot of question about whether or not they should really exist as they current format that they are. Um so we are working on um a plan to analyze at the students IEPs, analyze the students needs and make sure that we're providing access but it is not a guaranteed service like an IEP service. And so we have to um go into a deeper dive on these. These are not the instructional assistants or the instructional technicians that we've been working on in our other contracts that we've been creating FTE to fill. That being said, we also already approved tonight. Um, one of the other um, consent calendar items was to create some FTE so that we can start to um, temporarily fill these jobs with employees rather than contractors. But currently um, these positions have been um, very temporary and moving around quite a bit and so we were trying to figure out what we could do and what we couldn't. We're still continuing to work on that. Um, in terms of the other positions, the the IT positions, we have currently, I believe, 14 positions that are vacant and seven of them are in process of onboarding at this very

moment. Um, some of those positions are tiny like a 04 and so that one's being combined with another position. Um, so there aren't going to be 14 hires, it'll be more like 10. um that when we fill all of those jobs and those are the ones that you guys created in the last meeting um in I believe it was November. Um and then in terms of a special ed assistance during the work during the school day uh we have been working to fill those. We are still working to figure out and make sure that we have identified all of the positions so that we can fill them um as opposed to having contractors. Um, but it is been a um long process of trying to do that audit um to figure that out where these positions are um and make sure that they're actually required and before we create the FTE and if they're not required to get rid of the contractors um quicker than having to wait for a hire. Um that being said, we are working on filling those. We do still have I believe something around um 15 to 20 positions that we are currently working on filling. So this is the we had about 30 um at the end of last school year. We created an additional 47 and now we've we're back down to another uh uh core group of about 15 to 20 that we're still working to fill. So, we filled quite a bit already this fall and um this late um late fall. We are we filled two hiring events to try to fill them. Um both hiring events were very successful. One we filled um at least 30 positions, the other one around 20 and we are um continuing to do that and looking at a possible date in February for another hiring event. So, I have a couple of follow-up questions if that's okay. Um, it's really troubling to me to hear that we don't have vacancies for these

positions. So, we're going to hire, we're going to spend $125,000, allocate $125,000 for contractors to fill positions. And we don't even have those positions open and available to fill by BUD employees. And that's a lot of pos I mean that's just just the notion that we don't know that we don't know that we need those is problematic for me. Um I I don't want to approve contractor positions that should be filled by employees of the district and so that's just my comment. Um, my questions are, have we looked into the possibility of I understand this is a 0.53 FT and that's that's hard to fill, especially with the wages that we provide. Um, but have we looked at the possibility of combining that with other positions so that it's not a 0.53 and it's more, you know, and what's the progress on that? We we have looked at that. um it we have to work within the merit system and within the job descriptions and the other positions that exist within that same job description are generally point8s or 1.0's so they're not able to be combined in the same way but we have been at Malcolm X doing a pilot program where we've been offering overtime and extra time to the people who do work during the day at that site in those positions to fill those. We've already gotten rid of some of the contractors. That's why we're only coming back asking for 125. Um, and then we're continuing to try to cut down and get rid of the contractors. Um,

so at what point will we expand that pilot beyond just Malcolm X to the other? plan this month is to work on trying to expand it beyond um we're working very closely with Kelly DTORES um the union and um the principles to try to work on making sure that we're expanding it. One of the pieces that we had to put in place first was making sure that these positions actually needed to exist. Okay. And my last question is um are we as we're onboarding all of these new staff um into our schools, are we providing suffic sufficient supports um for them and also the people that work with them to make sure that they're successful and we're not just getting people into these positions and quick turnover because they you know we are attempting to do that. We are working with our sites um and our administrators to make sure that there's support in place. Um it is difficult because it is hitting the ground running type of job. Um and every school site is different, but we are working to make sure that that support is there. We are having conversations with people when they do express that they don't feel like it's the right job for them or they're unhappy to make sure that we are addressing whatever their needs are and helping to reduce the turnover.

And finally, just I I would like to give some board direction. And I don't know if this is the right way to do it, but that we identify those positions. We make sure that we have vacancies for those positions as soon as possible. And that first we identify if we actually need these positions and then we identify the vacancies so that we can fill those positions with BCCE employees instead of more contractors. Agreed. Thank you. So, is that is that a

I guess before we get another update to this contract because it's I I I'm just I'm shocked that we're hiring contractors for positions that don't even have vacancies now because we've talked about it so much.

So, I mean I I hear what you're saying and the needs that come up are not always I mean so any at any given time we can be identifying newly identified needs particularly for students with IEPs, right? So, it's not a stagnant number that is going to stay the same the whole time. What I will say is the $125,000 that was approved was short of the total cost of the semester. So, we're already behind the ball on what it costs to cover those services. I will say that particularly for the afterchool program, our afterchool staff has done work inclusive of communicating with parents who have had ongoing support about what that step down and the cohort model is going to look like. We have hired two people into the afterchool program who have not yet completed onboarding. So while we are hiring people, it still takes at least four to six weeks for that onboarding to happen. And because these are students who are have higher needs, we need to make sure that we've got adults in place to be they're often oneon- ons and we need adults in place to make sure that those services are covered um in these afterchool programs particularly for the students who have been um provided those services since the beginning of the school year. So we are doing the work to do that. Um we are also trying to chunk out the amount that we're needing and you know so we've hired two but in the event that we don't get two right we still have to cover for the rest of the year. So the to answer your question about are we going to get another contract? I I can't answer that question right now because I also don't know of the staff that we have are the two going to move all the way through and are we going to lose anybody in

between now and March, right? Like so th those staffing fluctuations are a little bit hard tricky to predict. But I do want to be clear that staff understands that that is the priority and they have been making concerted efforts to ensure that we're doing what's within our locus of control to be able to hire our own people. Um, and I do think that we've done some work to be able to reduce that, but these are positions with a lot of complications we're not going to be able to correct within a year. So, we're we're doing the work to chunk that down. I just want to clarify that we're not talking about providing services because this is after school program. We're talking about providing support and access for students. Um two different laws apply here during the school day. It's I for IEPs it's um IDA. When we're talking about after school program access, it's ADA um the Americans with Disabilities Act. And it's um a very different measure of of whether or not a student needs um support. When we did look at this, I do want to be very clear that the students that we're providing this support for are students who have issues such as loping or um injurous behaviors, things like that where we definitely need an additional adult to be um focused on that student to make sure that they're safe as well as other students. Just for clarity, I do want to appreciate the work that has gone into to addressing this and I know that, you know, we keep bringing it up and and and you you are everyone is making a concerted effort to make a difference. So, I I hope that my comments were not taken as as a denial of that because I do appreciate the work. I just also have real concerns about the continued use of of consultants in this way and especially hearing that there aren't vacancies. Also, I want to say I hate

consultants as you know and I pull this every time and I also understand that from time to time we will need that flexibility because of that fluctuation. But there's a difference for me between, you know, that flexibility, the amount of flexibility that we need and what we're approving year after year. So that that's where the disconnect is for me. So thank you. I'll stop. Thank you. So Director Shinaskki, you've provided some um direction previously. Um uh is there a motion required for this? Yeah, Mr. Tres. So would I move that we approve the contract

and that we also direct staff to as quickly as possible create vacancies that can be um filled by district employees. Okay. It was it was moved to discussion. I'm sorry. Say it was moved from consent to discussion. Yeah. So there's no vote attached to it. No, we still have to vote to approve it as an action item. So, we moved it from consent to action. I'm sorry. It's still an action item. We just moved it to after the discussion item. So, it's it should still be an action item because it was an action item on the original agenda. I'll make that. Thank you. Cool. Masters. Everyone agree with that? Yeah, I agree with that as well. We'll maintain it as an action item.

Yeah. And is there a second on a vice president? A second. Okay. And uh are there the eyes? I I I because unanimous eyes for those I abstain. You you'll abstain. So it's uh Dr. Shinoski is abstaining and then there's the three. So that is but is an abstension point of clarity. Is an abstension only if there's a conflict of in of interest with the vote. Uh voice secretary.

Sorry. Secretary Chz, can you say that into the mic? I can't hear you. I'll change my vote to no. That's fine. You don't need to quibble about it, but that's not true. You can abstain from a vote. I think there's guidance on it because it was discussed in the policy committee, but maybe uh the board secretary can send it to the board again. Yeah, we'll have to review that guidance with regard to whether or not it's conflict and or we need to state we'll have to review that as well. Um but we have a no and we have three yeses. So that means the motion has passed. Is that correct? Yeah. Thank you. Okay, great. Um we're we are now moving on to um uh extended public comment. Is anyone online? No.

Okay. Nobody is there. If I guess we we're adjourned. No. No. Because I'd like to make an extended board comment. Extended board comment. Okay. Director Shinowski. Just really quickly, something that I forgot before I wanted to announce that there's a community meeting next week, Wednesday, from 5:30 to 7:30 at Berkeley Technical Academy um to continue the community discussion about Mullering Field and the use of Mullering Field. So, this is the first of two um community listening sessions and I just want to be sure that that is in the public record and invite folks who are interested or impacted to join us. Thank you.

Great. Thanks for that reminder. Um, we're ready to adjourn. Thank you.