Berkeley Unified School District School Board - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the June 10th meeting of the Berkeley School Board. I'm calling this meeting to order at 7.19 PM. Thanks for your patience. Let's see. All right, folks who are online, if you'd like to follow along on our online agenda, it's posted on the district website. Before moving on to roll call, we need a vote to approve the remote participation of President Chang. Is there a motion and a second? So moved. I'll second.

Director Vasudev? Yes. Director Brown? Yes. Vice President Corn? Yes. President Chang, you get to vote.

Yes, thank you.

Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Great.

Thank you. And Ms. Chires, can you please call the roll?

Director Vasudev?

Presente.

Director Brown? Present. Vice President Korn? Present. President Chang? And this evening, Director Janoski is excused. Thank you.

Thank you, President.

Okay, for those using the audible translation option, please wear headphones. Headsets are available for mischeides and must be returned after use. As a reminder, no person shall disturb the order of the meeting. Disruptive behaviors include booing, hissing, physical disturbances, speaking out of turn, interrupting speakers, blocking access or observation, entering restricted areas, or approaching the dais without permission. In line with our bylaws, if a member of the public is disruptive to the meeting, the individual shall be warned. And if they continue to disrupt the meeting, the board should decide to recess to help restore order. If you have complaints against specific district employees, we encourage you to use the district complaint process through complaints at berkeley.net as opposed to using public comment time to address these matters. And now we will approve the agenda for this evening's meeting. Are there any requested changes to the agenda?

No.

I do have a, you wanna make the motion? I move that we, sorry. I move that we move action item 15.4 to occur right after the consent calendar.

I second the motion to amend the agenda to move item 15.4 up the agenda right after the consent calendar.

And there's also a request to remove consent item 13. 7, thank you.

When we get to the consent calendar, we should take action on that, the consent item when we get to the consent calendar. But as it stands, the second has been made to move our, move that action item up. Great. We're ready for the roll call.

Ms. Chavez, will you take the roll call vote?

Director Vasudev? Yes. Director Brown? Yes. Vice President Corn? Yes. President Chang?

Yes.

Great. So the agenda is approved with the requested changes. And now we have our report out from closed session. Director Brown, will you please report out? Yes, I will.

For item 3.1.1, the board voted unanimously to approve. For item 3.2, the board did not hear an update at this time. And for item 3.3, the board discussed and provided direction. This ends the reading of the notes from closed session. Thank you.

Thank you, Director Brown. We will now move on to the public comment portion of our agenda. There are two opportunities for public comment at each meeting now and at the end of the meeting. If you do not get to speak right now at the beginning of the meeting, we encourage you to stay with us and speak your mind at the end of the meeting. Excuse me, you may also always email us your comments at boardofed.berkeley.net. And again, if you have complaints against specific district employees, we encourage you to use the district complaint process. The board does not respond directly to comments or questions made during public comment. Board members, the superintendent, and staff do take notes during public comment, and we may follow up with speakers after the meeting. This is a hybrid meeting, so we also have some public commenters online in addition to the commenters here in the boardroom. We have about 20 minutes of public commenters in person, and then we'll move to our online public commenters. We may not have time for everyone who has given us a speaker card to speak this evening, so we'll call certain topics, and we may ask you to decide amongst yourselves how you want to use the time allocated. We already talked about decorum expectations. Oh, that's right. My script is off. Superintendent, would you like to make your comments before we begin public comment?

Good evening, BUSD family. That's all I wanted to say. I had the opportunity to go around and say hello to so many of you all. Thank you all for being here. This is unusual. This is our meeting after school is out, and I typically don't see so many faces. And so I was just happy to see so many faces. Wanted to say good evening. And when I said it at our last meeting last week, I did not have the opportunity to say congratulations to all of our graduates. So wanted to say that. But to also wish, there you go, yes. And also didn't have the opportunity to wish you all a wonderful, restful, well-deserved summer. So that's it. Thank you, President.

Oh, Vice President. Thank you, Superintendent. Sorry about that. And I won't repeat all of that about public comment. I think we'll dive right in. We always start with our youngest public commenters. And tonight, we have a student named Morgan Tommen, I believe, who's here with his mom, Erin. Come on up. And Ms. Chires, each commenter will have one minute, given the quantity of commenters we have this evening.

My name is Morgan Tom, and I'm from the Sylvia Mendez School. And I'm here to support that we need a bilingual teacher for aftercare. and they need to be kind, they need to be respectful and they need to be able to solve problems and they need to be understanding and they need to be nice and they need to be friendly. Understanding. I'm done.

Thank you, Morgan. We'll call on you to help us write all of our job descriptions in the future. All right. I'm going to call up now a couple of speakers who are here to talk about our ELA curriculum agenda item this evening. There are three speakers. We'll give you one minute each. Lindsay Nofelt, Jamila Dunn, and Peggy Scott.

Good evening. My name is Lindsay Nofelt and I'm here to talk about the Literacy Improvement Report. When I look at these reports, I feel a lot of urgency. I'm grateful that future students will benefit from these reforms, but as a parent, it's really painful to watch the calendar tick by. My oldest child was just four years old when the literacy suit was filed, but at our current pace he will be halfway through high school before any critical ELA changes will happen in middle school. We can't wait longer. The report celebrates success tonight, but it relies on incredibly small sample size, just one physical visit and a series of zoom calls covering only two of the 14 schools affected by the improvement plan. While I appreciate the steps being taken, we cannot ethically accept this report as a finished job, while the immediate gaping needs of our middle school adolescents remain unaddressed. Thank you. Thank you, Lindsay.

Hi, good evening. I'm Jamila Dunn. I, oh, okay. I urge you to extend the structured literacy curriculum to middle school as well. In just one year, we've seen encouraging progress from the district's fish tank ELA adoption in elementary schools. Students are benefiting from phonics and morphology, from knowledge building, from high quality instructional materials. Our middle school students deserve the same opportunity. This issue is personal for me. My son struggles with reading. Sorry. And for the first time ever, I have the ability to front load the content he will learn in fifth grade English because there is a single curriculum that will be applied across all grades in all fifth grade classrooms his case manager shared with me that she often has to pull groups of kids to help understand this content before their classmates and therefore they're missing instructional time so please adopt this curriculum K-8 we already bought it thank you thank you Ms. Dunn

Good evening, board. My name is Peggy Scott. Congratulations, Berkeley Unified has completely replaced its old reading curriculum from TK through fifth grade. That's official. However, policy is not matching up with reality. We do not know how many teachers are actually using the new curriculum. I'm here tonight to request that you not call it quits on our kids by determining that BUSD is in full compliance with the 2020 Dyslexia Settlement because it isn't. Yes, there has been great progress, but there are huge gaps in the reporting. The settlement covered K through 8. The report, with its happy talk, completely ignores 100% of our middle school readers and over 80% of our elementary school readers. That is not a complete report. That's fully 1 third of the plaintiffs. I don't know. I'm no good at math, but that's about 90% of the plaintiffs. Thank you, Ms. Scott.

Thank you. I appreciate you. Next, I'm going to call up a group of folks who are here to talk about the LEARNS program at Emerson. And I'm going to give you five minutes collectively and ask you to sort of organize yourselves to use that five minutes. So this includes Rachel Rosengarten-Usser, Stephanie Yolish, I believe, Will Barton, Maddie Noonan. Hi, Maddie. Stacey Schesser, and Sarah Tarshis. is that okay am I allowed to say that great okay we're sharing five minutes can I start great hello I'm sorry it seems like you're not all Emerson but you are all learns is that right are you okay with organizing yourselves great thank you go ahead Maddie okay oh I lost my

I'm back. I'm Madeline Noonan. I'm a proud Emerson parent and our vice president of our PTA. And I'm here because we have 50 families at our small school who are without aftercare. Families who are returning to Learns, who have siblings at Learns, families who have been on the wait list for three and four years. we have an incredible high quality learns program that is a vital element of our school and exemplifies the vision for aftercare that was shared with this board on april 15th we understand that restructuring learns would result in it we understood it would result in an increase to access access we're here to tell you that is not the case at emerson we have families who as of today have still not heard about the status of their students and for emerson we don't have busing to any programs that currently have spots we have no options other than our high quality program and we are asking that you give it the support to enroll the students at our school who have been there and want to be there i am a child psychiatrist and you all are educators

Sorry, I get nervous. You and I know the research shows consistent relationships with caring and safe adults is critical to children achieving their full potential. Learns at Emerson's provides that, and under the management of Evan Adorador has been a model for the district. If we are in agreement that all of our children deserve equitable access to education at public schools, it follows that they are also entitled to equitable access to an after-school program that supports their academic, social, and emotional development, not for some, but for all. Yes, my family is personally affected. I have to tell my daughter to get back on the bus, or when she told an adult that students were making her feel uncomfortable, she was told essentially to sit down and be quiet. And she has to go back to an after school program that didn't have the structure and boundaries she needed as a student with ADHD. But I'm here on behalf of a community. I'm lucky to have the time and resources to provide her other options if Learns at Emerson isn't available. But many of her friends who attend school with us and those families do not have that option. I am not here to condemn, but to collaborate and to get more transparency on the process and demand that there be an increase in the number of spots available for our families.

Good evening, board members. My name is Stacy Schesser. I'm a Thousand Oaks parent. I've been there for 10 years. My daughter Ramona is now in high school. My son Ace is in third grade. He was one of the petitioners to appear and advocate on behalf of Dante Gallin. I'm here tonight to speak about the parent perspective about the learns enrollment process that happened last week. In brief, it's a mess. We truly appreciate that the board and admin found a workable solution to keep Dante at TO. He is a treasured part of our community. But the stress of the situation is not over still. Instead, it has shifted now to the caregivers in the community to have a summer full of uncertainty. BUSD promised better communication, which they may have thought that they accomplished here, but they haven't delivered on the result of expanded enrollment and put many families in a destabilizing care situation for the school year. The new waitlist rollout has created confusion, sent people back to the principal and the coordinator who have zero visibility into the problem at all. And I strongly recommend, in fact, that the BUSD admin actually lean on these coordinators who know their community best and how to manage this program efficiently. As somebody who's been involved with TO on the PTA, I've known Jen Corrin for years. I'm also a single mom. And if I can't have my kid and care, then I can't work. And then I'm going to leave Berkeley. And that would be devastating for my community, but also for me and my family. And so we're just here tonight to advocate, to do better, because it is a mess right now. And you are making parents and families feel so stressed out about what is to come for next year.

Good evening. My name is Will Barton. My daughter, Isabella, has been in the Learns program at Emerson Elementary for the past two years. She's entering third grade this fall, and as of today, she has not been offered a spot. She isn't alone. Expanded Learning staff has told us that even after factoring in increased TK and kindergarten enrollment, the net result at Emerson is a loss of 40 to 50 children, returning students whose families built their year around those spots. What we keep hearing is that the cause is no specific change. The site staff no longer permitted to use substitutes the way the program has relied on for years. I'm asking the board tonight to reinstate the use of substitutes so that the children who have previously had a spot in Learns, Isabella, and many others can attend again. Thank you.

Hi, I have a going into first and going into fourth grader at TO as well. We have been greatly impacted and as some of our friends said back here, it's about the community, not about me. My son, when he was in TK, was being transported to an aftercare and got left on the bus. And it was only because that I had an air tag on him that I found my son. And so for him to not be a part of the LEARNS program greatly affects this trauma, which will be a core memory for him. And my daughter was on the wait list for three years and just got in six months ago. And now we don't have an aftercare option. So families have been affected more so than just they have to find another option. And I hope you will then consider. Thank you all for your comments.

Next, I'm gonna call up a group of folks who are here to talk about our sustainability coordinator position. There's about 10 of you. Again, we'll give you five minutes and ask you to kind of organize yourselves. Mallory Barron, Kate Gallagher, Ginny Hanger, Linda Curry, Bethany Laurie, Martha Kane, Bobby Smith, Ben Schleifer, Jacqueline Omania, Susan Silber, and Kimberly Schroeder.

You start. Good evening. I'm Jacqueline Amania, and I've taught in Berkeley for 42 years since I was 20. I started farm and garden at Sylvia Mendez, which became the model garden for all the Berkeley garden programs, including Edible Schoolyard. When I became a classroom teacher in 2004, I used the environment as the key to teach all subjects with projects like joining Full Belly Farm and using farm fresh produce to teach second graders math and writing. For the past 11 years, my students have been a zero-waste classroom. Back in 2016, our school-wide efforts allowed our school, the smallest school in the BUSD, to reduce its landfill pickups, saving the district $2.50 a month. Sustainability saves money and the planet. For me, sustainability is everything. Berkeley has a sustainability plan and a climate literacy resolution, and we need to actively implement them with a sustainability coordinator. There's no need for education if we don't have a planet to live on. Children know of this danger. They need education where they're learning to make a difference and where they see a difference being made, like the reusable dishware that we've enrolled recently. Move on.

Hi, my name is Bethany Laurie. I teach science at Ruth Acty Elementary. Please reinstate the position of sustainability coordinator. The sustainability plan is a commitment, and we cannot follow through without devoted staff on the ground proposing, orchestrating, and supporting the changes we need to make in order to fulfill our duty to our students and to the world. One concrete example I'd like to share is the implementation of reusable dishes and cutlery in the lunchroom at Ruth Acty. There was a lot of anxiety and agonizing over how this would work. I would even say there was resistance and stalling. It's not that folks didn't care or believe it was important, it's that change is hard and new systems need thoughtful planning and support. Sophia met with Ruth Admin and lunch staff, shared best practices that she gleaned from her work at other sites. She had experience and expertise and she facilitated our transition to reusables. This whole process was a living lab for staff and students. Teaching about environmental issues and sustainable practices must go along with action. Students want and need to have agency and to believe that adults at school have integrity that we will follow through and fight for our future along with them. Please keep this precious position.

Good evening. I started working with Berkeley Unified in 2011, collaborating with the district. And at that time, there was very little infrastructure on waste reduction and other sustainability topics. We ended up working on all the schools focused on waste reduction and saved the district more than $60,000 because of our efforts over the past couple of years. And in 2018, I was hired to write the sustainability plan and spoke with hundreds of parents, teachers, and students who enthusiastically wanted to see a healthier and cleaner district. And then you all ended up hiring Sophia. But more than just saving money, the climate crisis there's so many benefits to sustainability when students are learning about climate solutions they're turning despair into action a 2022 poll of gen z youth found that 80 percent of california youth had experienced a mental health related issue like anxiety or stress because of reading or hearing about climate change so please we urge you to combine um sophia and ellen's position to continue to support students in schools for health and more resilient schools, thanks.

Hello, my name is Ben Schleifer. I am a reuse consultant. I've been working with BUSD for about four years and working with Sophia for about three. I'm proud to announce that BUSD has over 200,000 meals served on non-toxic reuse, but I am worried. I am worried that we cannot get all the schools in the district onto reusables, and that is your title. You deserve it. You've earned it. You've been working on it the longest. but other school districts are about to lap you. I think that includes San Leandro, Fremont, Alameda, and San Francisco Unified. If you all want to be the front of the spear, we need to have a sustainability coordinator because to get BHS onto reusables, which is very doable because we piloted it last year, we're going to need a sustainability coordinator to get it over the finish line. Thank you very much.

Hi, good evening. I'm Linda Curry, Transition Berkeley co-founder and part of the Fix It Fest collaborating team. Honestly, I cannot understand how the decision to cut both BUSD positions related to sustainability makes any sense. The district has made many climate resolutions, but two sustainability positions implemented those resolutions. Like a beautiful garden, without a gardener, successful programs will dry up and go to weeds. To my understanding, the climate literacy position, a 60% post, was eliminated due to funding cuts. But the other position under BUSD, facilities, has had support for Measure H since 2020 and goes through 2030. It seems that the decision to cut the position was decided because the person who had filled it recently resigned. Thank you so much. Please keep the sustainability coordinator position intact. Thank you. Thank you all so much.

I'm going to call up four people who are here to talk about cell phones and technology. And we're going to give you three minutes collectively. Vanessa Vega, Megan Warner, Grace .. Or I can just call three people. We don't have time to call every single person. So I'm trying to call people in groups and trying to allocate proportionally. And the last person is Rachy Lee.

So I'm a parent of a rising second grader. With heavy screen use and screen addiction, youth have a greater risk of insufficient sleep, depression, ADD, obesity, exposure to harmful content, and lower academic performance. I expect BUSD to provide an optimal learning environment and to protect our students when they are in school and in the online BUSD learning environment. I do not want my child or any of our students attention to be monetized by YouTube or third party apps during school or while using school devices. I don't want third party apps to harvest our students private information. I don't want my child to use addictive by design platforms during school. or to be shown harmful content at school or on a school device. Studies have shown that YouTube filters fail and that an account of a 13-year-old will be shown harmful content within three minutes. I don't want BUSD to enable my child or any students to use social media platforms where predators are increasingly known to approach and exploit youth, such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Roblox, and Discord. I think BUSD has lost control over what students can access and how much time they're spending online during school hours. Please implement, at least in the middle school, a lock-away phone ban for the entire school day as research and middle school parents and many teachers support. Please eliminate YouTube, Cloud Moon games, and third-party apps from devices and the BUSD network. Several studies have shown that these bans are going to help school climate and for struggling students' academic performance by improving the students' engagement during class. So finally, please stop recreational use of school devices and students recreational use of school devices and their phones, which is displacing activities that are more productive for their development. Thank you.

Cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Jared Horvath's research has found that students using laptops in class spend about 38 minutes for every hour off tasks. This also happens at home. I block YouTube on my teenager's laptop only to find out it also blocks Google Classroom. I block Roblox, but I have to block 13 different URLs just to stop access to a single gaming site. The distractions are endless. Solution? Bring back textbooks, paper, and pencils. Dr. Horvath warns, if you have a policy that says, cool, you can use your cell phones during breaks, during lunch, or keep your phones in your bag, we just don't want to see them. In which case, kids are going to use them during breaks. This extreme craving will be met within 30, 40 minutes. We call that a short delay. And when you know that there's only a certain amount of time until you can undertake that action, the dopamine increase and the habit cycle actually deepens. You make the habit worse. Solution? No phones in school period.

The district's acceptable use policy is outdated and obsolete. By perpetuating a policy that references netbooks and PDAs, you know, palm pilots, and ignores modern realities like generative AI and social media, the district is failing. You are leaving us vulnerable while ignoring the tools our kids navigate on a daily basis. Leadership requires foresight, not passive negligence. Thank you. Thank you.

We have just three more in-person public commenters, and then we're gonna go online. Christina Cole, Arianna Thompson-Lasted, and Versal Mitchell.

Good evening, I'm Christina Call. I'm a rising eighth year parent at Sylvia Mendez. My family does not use the LEARNS program currently, but I'm here to advocate strongly for the reclassification of a LEARNS position as a bilingual position. I was recently reading the current enrollment policy And Sylvia Mendez is to allocate up to two thirds of its seats to Spanish speaking English language learners. And that definition is specifically kids who are coming from homes where they're Spanish speakers. And as a monolingual English speaker, I cannot imagine coming to my school and not being able to communicate with the staff and professionals in my language. And it's so clear how Sylvia Mendez was set up.

Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Arianna. I am also a long time Sylvia Mendez parent. I have a third grader, but to be a fourth grader and also rising seventh grader at Longfellow. Like Christina, here to advocate on behalf of having a bilingual requirement for Learn Specialist at Sylvia Mendez. My kids have been in Learns for many years. And specifically, I want to read from the BUSD Master Plan for Multilingual Learners, which reads, quote, district resources will ensure all students, staff, administrators, and families in the Spanish TWI two-way immersion programs to be consistent and successful practitioners of the four pillars of dual language. We currently have a LEARNS coordinator who is bilingual. It makes a huge difference for families' ability to do things, basic things like sign up for LEARNS for the next year so their kids can access it and communicate daily with the people taking care of their children. And it's an absolute essential to align with this multilingual plan that we continue to have someone bilingual in that position. Thanks.

Hi, my name is Erin Egan. I'm a parent at Sylvia Mendez and I just wanted to share our support for the bilingual coordinator or specialist role. We also feel it's a safety issue given today's current environment. We're the only Spanish speaking school in Berkeley that is fully Spanish speaking. We feel that our families are at risk and we think it is critical to have a specialist slash coordinator that can communicate quickly and effectively with our community to ensure their safety. Thank you very much.

I didn't know I was going to play that tonight, but I was at our graduation recently, and every year our school at Willard gives a moment for people to speak in their language, for linguistics reasons. I'm Nick Siversal from Willard Middle School. Dear school board members, I hope you are taking a moment for yourself to breathe and clear your mind. I've been reflecting on how our purpose and the legacy we choose to leave behind. what our native people describe as leaving things behind for seven generations. Often, we work in fields where we believe we are the only ones capable of doing certain tasks. But it is important to look inward and consider our true intentions. Thank you so much. When faced with harmful situations, we must ask if we're going to stay as the right choice We're getting fight or flight. Your instinct is to do this for the students. We're here for the kids and the future generations.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Ms. Chavez, I believe we have seven folks online with hands raised. We're going to start with Shahram Arabi. And then next up will be Lena Magdisi.

Shoram, you can unmute yourself, please.

Apologies, I thought I did. Hi, everyone. My name is Shoram Harabi. I'm a parent of two Emerson Elementary School students and one of them is sitting here, Anahita. She wanted to say something to the group.

Hi, I'm Anahita. I really, really like all the games in Kids World and how it is. The snacks are really good and I just love all the teachers and how we could do a lot of fun stuff and I really don't want to leave it because this was my first year and it's so fun and I want to be in every year until I graduate and that's why.

and my uh her brother my son also wanted me to pass along uh does this really mean i won't be able to hang out with my friends at kids world anymore and my spouse wanted me to pass along also um based on a recent experience she had that uh okay thank you please email us the rest of your comments thank you thank you very much thank you so next up is lena mcdc

Hello. Hi. I'm an educator and parent of a rising third grader, and I'm here to demand transparency regarding our district's elementary technology practices. I've previously noted conflicting answers about screen time frequency. Even more alarming is the administration's cavalier attitude. Unsolicited, the principal joked about teachers needing to tell students to get off websites used for checking basketball scores, even as I was asking in earnest about the instructional justification for this screen time. This should not be a punchline. I have to ask, what are our children accessing? Most sports sites are rife with adult conversations and gambling advertisements. Why is this treated with such nonchalance? My child, like all elementary students, is at a critical developmental stage where her brain is rewiring. For neurodiverse children especially, this requires active human-led instruction. BUSD families are currently in the dark. We need a clear, accessible technology plan and transparency on what our children are being exposed to. I urge the board to prioritize human-centric learning and publish clear, transparent guidelines before the next board. Thank you so much.

We appreciate your comments. Alina Ball is up next, and then after Alina will be Nezahualcoyotl Romero.

Hello, my name is Alina Ball. My daughter is a rising third grader at Sylvia Mendez, and I'm here tonight to urge BUSD to mandate that the Learns After School Specialist position at Sylvia Mendez Elementary be an explicitly bilingual Spanish-English role. Sylvia Mendez is the only dedicated two-way immersion elementary school. Our entire educational model is built on a foundation of linguistic equity and bilingualism. However, the learning and community building does not stop when the bell rings at 3 at 2 30 or 1 30 on wednesdays i guess the learn program is learns program is not just after care it is a critical extension of the learning day as our current learns coordinator miss anita has demonstrated over the years that she's been with us uh this position is the primary she's the primary face of this program She managed our enrollment, coordinated enrichment, managed safety, and navigated student behavioral crisis. More importantly, she is a vital and direct bridge between families and the school.

Thank you so much, Ms. Ball. We appreciate your comment. You can email us if you have additional comments. is up next, and then after that will be Lauren Markovsky.

Hi, how are you? My name is Netzer Romero. And first of all, thank you for pronouncing my name correctly. I graduated from Berkeley High School in 2007. During my time there, I was part of the RISE program, which provided invaluable support as an immigrant student and helped create a pathway for me to attend college and build a successful career. Thanks to the guidance and encouragement of Miss Betty and the entire Rice team, I was able to pursue my dream of working in TV and radio, which eventually led me to my current career in the fashion industry. Today, I live in Los Angeles, and I often look back on my experience with Rice and the impact it had on my life. The support I received helped shape the person I am today, and I am incredibly grateful for that. I hope you will continue supporting this amazing program so that future students can benefit from the same opportunities and encouragement that helped me achieve my goals. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Lauren Markovsky will be our next speaker and then after Lauren will be Filippini Studio.

I thought you said Bonnie.

Lauren Markovsky is next.

Hi there. Oh.

We can hear you.

Go ahead. Oh, great. Thanks. Hi. Good evening. My name is Lauren Murkowski. I'm the parent of a rising third grader, Louisa, at Emerson Elementary. I want to speak to the disruption that the loss of access to the Learns Kids World program has caused for so many Emerson families like my own. Kids World is, simply put, fantastic, and so much more than just after-school care. It's tutoring. It's enrichment. It's community. It's a safe place for children to learn and grow. And for my daughter, it has meant reading support when she's struggled. It's meant friendships for a shy kid. It's meant connections to her school community that she hasn't had in the past. At Emerson, there are not comparative alternatives to Kids World. When families lose access, they're left scrambling for child care, enrichment, and transportation. Some families waited years for access to the program only to lose it. I understand the goal of expanding access for our youngest learners, but solving access for one problem is creating a problem in another area, and it's not a sustainable solution. Families shouldn't have to lose access to a program they've relied upon for years. Our ask is simple. Please explore every available pathway to restore capacity for affected families. We don't want spots taken away from kids. We just want enough spots for everyone. Thank you.

Thank you, Lauren. Our next online public speaker will be Filippini Studio, and then Bonnie Baruchi will be our last online speaker this evening. There's a couple more folks who raised their hands after we began the online public comment. If you would like to stay on, you can make a comment at the end of the meeting. Go ahead, Filippini.

Hi, my name is David Filippini. I'm a parent of Sylvia Mendez, a bilingual family. Thanks to the board and district staff for listening to hundreds of guardians, students, and children within our Sylvia Mendez community that petitioned. And we hope to instate a bilingual specialist position for Sylvia Mendez this coming June the 17th. Our community strongly recommends that the board vote to replace the current specialist position at our school with a bilingual specialist position. And this bilingual specialist position will allow our multi-lingual families like mine to have equitable access to after-school awareness leadership. Thank you so much.

Thank you, David. Bonnie Baruchi will be our final online public speaker this evening.

Thank you. Okay, audio on camera. Sorry. Okay, so my name is Bonnie Baruchi. I'm the current director of Transition Berkeley, and I'm a parent of a former BSD student, BUSD supporter, and I'm here to urge BSD to post and fill the sustainability coordinator for the 2026-27 school year. Transition Berkeley has collaborated with the Ecoliteracy Program and the Sustainability Coordinator to bring hundreds of volunteer hours and advocated for grants to support zero waste and repair activities at BUSD. Without someone to coordinate these activities, funds will be lost. I don't trust that the work of this important position funded by Measure 8 will be absorbed by the other departments. So please, continue the sustainability coordinator position. It's necessary. Thank you so much.

Thank you for your comments. at this time we will move on to item 10 on our agenda which is committee comments I believe we have a GSHAC commenter here this evening the gender equity and sexual harm advisory committee recent Berkeley high graduate October Harenstein

Good evening, board members. I'm October Hertenstein. You may remember me. And as of last Friday, as was mentioned, I'm a proud Berkeley High alumni. During my sophomore year, I spoke at nearly every school board meeting on behalf of the transgender students at Berkeley High School. I presented data on trans happiness. I shared testimonies of our experiences. I read poetry about my life. But most of all, I stood here and begged you to make change at VHS. That same year, I joined GSHAC as one of the student reps. I was the youngest person to ever join the committee. And when I graduated, I was the longest standing student member. In GSHAC, my fight against the district for trans rights was transformed into a battle we were fighting together. I met and befriended the superintendent. I met with school board members outside of the meetings. And I learned that nearly every single person in our district is making an effort every single day to make our schools better. In our district, there's an idea that admin is working against us. But the truth is, you work tirelessly to improve. In the time I've been at Berkeley High, GSAC has completed the first annual PRISM training for all certified staff 7th through 12th grade. We've introduced new gender neutral bathrooms in the new P building at Berkeley High School, the new gender neutral bathroom on M1, and the new gender neutral stalls at Oxford Elementary. We've renewed welcoming schools, we've scaled up Ms. Molly's consent presentations, we've expanded Green Dot, and we've passed resolutions supporting our queer and trans youth. I'm proud of what this district has accomplished, and I'm proud of my involvement in it. But we need to continue this progress. We need to have officials like our wonderful Title IX coordinator at our schools working to improve actively and available for students to discuss with and to make our voices heard. Without Yasmina, I would still view the district as something to be fought with rather than collaborated with. Without my discussions with her about policy and codes, about what we can do to make the school better, none of this change would have happened. Luckily for BUSD, I don't plan to go far. I have the unique opportunity to be a mere hour and a half drive away from BHS and I get to text my friends about the quality of the bathrooms and I will be refreshing the BUSD website just waiting for some new problem to pull me away from Stanford and right back into this meeting room. We need this progress to continue. Now more than ever, we need it. We need to continue funding positions for LGBTQ support like our LGBTQ liaison. We need to continue funding prevention programs like Green Dot and welcoming schools. We need to continue to increase access to gender neutral bathrooms. Yes, even more. And we need to continue professional development. One thing I especially would love to see is improved sex ed, comprehensive education when our students really need it, which means for upperclassmen. I did research last year that showed our students are not confident in basic essentials of their own bodies, that the sex ed they have received is not inclusive of disabled, aroace, trans, or generally queer bodies. I've left my notes with Yasmina, and now is the time to follow through. Last week, Rose was here, and she called you all green dots. I'm here to call you allies. I'll pass you a flag, but know that waving it means continuing progress. Pride isn't just a month, it's a promise. Thank you for everything. Please remember I will be back. May I approach the bench?

Are there other committees here this evening? Come on up.

Thank you for having us here tonight. I'm Vicki Davis and I, along with Nicole Chabot, co-chair the Policy and Oversight Committee of the Berkeley Schools Excellence Program, also known as the P&O. This committee provides oversight and advises on funds from Measure H and Measure E, Berkeley's local special taxes in support of our public schools. The P&O consists of 25 members representing 18 school sites. This year, we had 15 meetings for a total commitment of more than 45 hours spent to oversee and make recommendations to this school board. First, a deep thank you to the P&O staff, including Kathy Fleming, Danielle Perez, and Craig Hoffman. They are rock stars and diligently work to oversee taxpayer funds, ensuring dollars are always spent in accordance with the measure as passed by Berkeley voters and paid by Berkeley property owners. I would also like to thank the program managers for their careful creation of the many reports and proposals that are presented each year to the P&O committee in addition to filling our requests for additional data and thoughtfully answering our many questions. Finally, I would like to thank our members. In addition to the over 45 hours we spent together, there are countless hours spent outside of our meetings where members review district data and analytics, program reports, and budget proposals so that they can attend our meetings fully informed and ready to engage in meaningful discussions. To that end, the P&O has reviewed all budget proposals and voted to recommend the school board approve all budgets as presented. We do, however, feel it very important to note that this year, the BSEP and BARRA budgets have absorbed approximately $700,000 from the general fund, LCAP, and expiring grant expenses that will be used to help fund programs in a year of difficult budget reductions. Additionally, this year, due to both union negotiations and an increase in classrooms, our main expense, the funding of small class sizes for BUSD, has increased by over $1 million. It is important to note that these shifts in funds, while in accordance with the language of the measure, can affect BSEP's ability to fund our current programs or take on any new priorities. This year, three of the BSET programs have made 10% reductions to be able to absorb costs from the general fund, and we ask that the general fund see these savings as one-time dollars. Additionally, three other BSET programs are currently using their Measure E-1 fund balances to pay for core program activities to some degree. This means that those expenditures can only be sustained for two to three years before those programs will need to reduce their own budgets. It is important to note that the BSEP supported budgets do not have space to absorb more expenses from the general fund without making further cuts to BSEP supported programs. And most BSEP-supported budgets will have to carefully watch their current expenditures to stay in line with COLA increases to support the programs currently in place without having to make further reductions themselves. As we look to the 26-27 school year, in which we will inevitably have to make further reductions at the general fund level, BSEP will not have extra capacity to take on additional programs without making cuts in the same year. We look forward to continuing to work with you, the school board, and the district administration to navigate these difficult financial decisions in the coming years. Thank you.

Thank you, Vicki. Ms. Chires, it looks like Spencer Pritchard is here for the African-American Success Advisory Committee. Great. Great.

Hi there. You saw my introduction. Good evening, Superintendent, school board, and community members. My name is Spencer Pritchard. I'm part of, on behalf of the Superintendent's African American Success Advisory Committee. I'm also the co-chair of the African American Studies Department at Berkeley High School. So a few days ago, we celebrated commencements. I want to shout out Superintendent for her wonderful remarks at our 36th annual Celebration of Black Excellence at King Middle School. And across our community, students crossed stages, received diplomas, hugged their families, took pictures, and marked an important milestone in their lives. And they should be celebrated. Graduations and promotions matter. They represent perseverance, growth, sacrifice, and the collective effort of students, families, educators, and community members who helped make that moment possible. But we know that we call our graduations commencements because we know the diploma isn't the finish line, it is just the beginning. And while we should absolutely celebrate our graduates, we cannot rest on our laurels. As someone who works with students every day, as someone who has participated in this work in the classroom and across the school, across the district and community levels, I can tell you that we have and are still far from where we need to be. Far too many black students are still navigating barriers that affect their academic experiences and future opportunities. Far too many are graduating without the full range of post-secondary options we would want for our own children. And far too many continue to require supports that our systems are only beginning to learn how to provide consistently. That is why the African-American Success Framework matters. Several years ago, before the COVID lockdowns, the district made an important decision It acknowledged the long-standing disparities affecting Black students would not improve through good intentions alone. The district committed to a different approach, not a slogan or temporary initiative, a framework for action. The pandemic just exposed how urgent this commitment truly was. Despite the setbacks of one of the most disruptive periods in modern educational history, this district continued to work. And as someone who has had a front row seat, I can say that we are beginning to see the results of sustained effort. We see stronger transitions between schools, deeper family engagement, greater coordination between departments, programs, and community partners, educators building new skills and taking greater ownership of student success. And most importantly, though, we're beginning to see development of actual pipelines for Black student success. Students moving from elementary school to middle through step-up and transition supports, families becoming more connected to schools, middle schools engaging in culturally responsive learning labs, students receiving earlier interventions, more coordinated support. These are the kinds of systems that create lasting change. The outcomes reflect progress. Our mathematics dashboard improved from red to yellow. College and career readiness improved some 17.5% to nearly 47%. And more than 1,300 students and families participated in the transition fairs of targeted students and supports. And those gains matter, but they shouldn't make us comfortable. They should continue to make us committed. Because these numbers do not tell us the work is done, they tell us the work is beginning to take hold. As resources do become more limited, difficult decisions will continue to be made about what receives support and investment. I understand that reality, but I would encourage us to recognize that this is precisely the moment when sustained commitment matters the most. The framework is asking us to strengthen what is beginning to work, to deepen the pipelines being built, to reinforce that transitions are improving, to continue developing the systems that help students succeed. And to remember that every commencement ceremony represents not only what we accomplished, but also remains unfinished. The graduates we celebrated last week made me proud. The students coming behind them make me determined. Because the question for us is the same question that has guided us this work from the beginning and the question we ask ourselves at the beginning of every ASEC committee meeting. How are the children and are they well? The honest answer is we have made progress. The honest answer is also we have much more work to do. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Spencer. Are there any other committees here to speak this evening? How about our labor partners? Are there any union comments this evening? Are there any online? OK. Then we are ready to move on to board member comments. Director Brown, Director Vasudev, do you have comments?

No, no comments this evening.

Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for coming out to our board meeting. Thank you to those who took the time to speak to the Board of Education regarding the need for a bilingual specialist support position. At Sylvia Mendez, the need for the literacy report and the ongoing need for that extension to happen into our middle schools. Thank you to those who spoke about the LEARNS program, sustainability coordinator position, our technology practices in our school systems, and the need to actually update our antiquated technology policy. And thank you for the mention of Palm Pilots. Haven't heard that in a long time. And thank you to those who spoke on behalf of the RISE program and to our committees for your comments tonight, the African American Success Committee, P&O. Vicki, haven't seen you in a very long time, so it's good to see you this evening. And thank you to G-Shack for your comments. October, congratulations. We are so proud of you. And as much as we want to see you, we know that you need to be on the campus of Stanford, making a huge impact there. So come say hello and advocate when you can, but please make change on that campus in the way that you did on ours. I am actually going to cut my comment short tonight. I want to just say how happy I've been these last couple of days celebrating all of our graduations across all of our schools and also our Berkeley High graduation that concluded on Friday. And it's always so great to be up there and see all of our students and to be able to give them their diplomas and take pictures with them. But the thing that we don't talk about a lot is our families, our community members who helped our graduates to get to where they are. And so I want to take the opportunity to really just thank our Berkeley community, our Berkeley families, our Berkeley caregivers who helped our students get to that day. And just as much as it was our students' day, it was also the day for our community members as well, as well as our educators who helped our students get there. So congratulations to all of our stakeholders on a great job getting our students to the finish line. But also congratulations to all of our stakeholders are getting through the year because this was definitely a tough and a long and a difficult year. But it's one that all of us have gotten through. And so thank you for the opportunity to share.

Thank you, Director Brown. I will also keep my comments short. I echo all the gratitude to everyone who came out tonight to make public comment on a variety of issues and to the representatives of our committees who are here this evening. And I also want to echo the huge congratulations to all of our graduates. Excuse me. OK, I'll come back to you. Huge congratulations to all of our graduates and to their families. And I actually want to end on a bit of a somber note. I want to note, and Director Chinoski really asked me to make sure that I shared this this evening. She couldn't be here tonight. But everyone in BUSD, we are deeply saddened to share the news that Ms. Sophina Jones, who's our counselor at Berkeley Technology Academy. Her husband passed away suddenly this week. She's been a really valued member of the BUSD community for many years. She actually, when I was the principal at Oxford, her first role in BUSD was an intern with our school when she was getting her counseling credential. So I've known Safina for a really long time. They are parents of three children in BUSD, one at Berkeley High and twin daughters at Sylvia Mendez. Our thoughts are with her and her children. I know that I've shared on my Facebook page the GoFundMe that has been put together, and Director Chinoski has shared it as well. And we invite anyone in the community who'd like to support their family to contact any of us, and we can help you get access to that. And I'll pass it back to you, Director Brown.

That was actually my additional comment and so I thank you Vice President Corn for bringing that up and our hearts and prayers continue to stay with Sophina as well as her girls who are experiencing a difficult time. So thank you for sharing.

Thank you and President Chang is online. Do you have any comments to add President Chang?

Thank you so much. And I just wanted to say as well, condolences to Ms. Jones and her family and thanks everybody for bringing their hearts and minds to the board and congratulations on the graduates. Sorry, I can't make it today. And thank you so much board members, colleagues for providing support as well. I'm out of the, not there in person. And otherwise I want to give my time back. Thank you so much.

Great thank you president chain. Now's the time in our agenda where we approve our consent calendar. I would like to make a motion to approve the consent calendar with the exception of item 13.7 second. As chairs will you call the roll.

Yes, director Brown yes, vice president corn yes, president change.

Yes.

Thank you. Great and now we're going to move on to action item 15.4 which we earlier moved to this part of the agenda. This is a discussion of procedures for filling potential board vacancies. You will remember that we discussed this item at our meeting last week and we We discussed the need to form an ad hoc committee of two members of our board who can think through a procedure to, a timeline and a procedure to advertise, interview and fill any potential vacancy that may arise on the board. Do either of my board colleagues have any comments you'd like to make or discussion on this matter?

Yes, I do have a couple of comments. First, I want to recognize that we have Council Combs in the room with us just in case we need to ask him. And thank you so much for all of the advice that you've given us on this specific topic. In preparation for the vacancy that we will have on the board, I would like to volunteer as a member, to serve as a member of the ad hoc committee. I know that it does need to take a vote, but I would like to extend my, I'd like to volunteer as tribute at this time.

Thanks, Director Brown. What were you going to say? Okay. Director Vasudev.

I just have a question for Council Combs. I actually met recently with a board member at the County Office of Education, and when they had a vacancy, What that board member told me is that in there, as part of their policies, they have procedures for vacancies either for whatever reason, either resignation because you're moving on to a different office and there could be a conflict of interest. That's what likely happened here. or because maybe there's a passing. This actually happened at the county office when that trustee was elected. There was a board member who sadly passed away, and the board had a policy. Now, does BUSD have a formal policy on what to do as part of this process? And if not, can you just maybe speak to the kind of policies that exist in different boards?

Sure. Great question. And the short answer to the first part is no. You do not. And in general, it would be advisable for the governing board to adopt and formulate a policy. Obviously, well, it may not be obvious, but I think you have an existing policy committee, so that would be the perfect forum to have that discussion. and develop that policy. There are many examples out there because so much of this, at least the part that you're dealing with tonight, meaning how you decide whether or not to proceed with a provisional appointment or call for an election. Those two options are really up to you. And if you decide on the former, meaning an appointment, then that really is within your control how you do that. So that's why a policy would be helpful. And there are many samples out there. I won't go through them because I want to be mindful of your time. But the short answer is no, you don't have one. And yes, it would be advisable to have one.

Thank you, Councilmember. So I am happy to support whatever you'd also like to propose, Vice President Coyne, what the majority of the board wants. I will say that I think it's very important, especially after speaking to other trustees on other boards, that this goes back to the policy committee and becomes formalized as part of policies, because there are many reasons why there may be a vacancy on the board. But having something that the board can point out to as a matter of policy, I think, would be important in the future. I agree with you wholeheartedly.

Yeah I agree as well and I think it would be in the best interest of us that because there aren't any policy committee meetings coming up maybe it is the ad hoc committee that can make a recommendation So the policy committee and when the policy committee meets or decides to have a meeting, even if it's a special meeting, they at least have something to work with. And so I myself, if I'm given the opportunity to be on the ad hoc committee, will definitely work towards that because I think policy definitely helps us to drive good practice. And so it's important that we have a policy as we prepare for the vacancy.

Great. I will say there is a policy committee meeting coming up. I'm not suggesting that that's where this will be drafted, but there is. And I want to make sure that it really happens. I see Yasmina nodding her head. It will happen. There will be a policy committee meeting later this month.

Perfect great so given all of that it sounds like we're all on the same page that we'd like to form an ad hoc committee to sort of quickly propose a process for the. near term eventuality that there may be a vacancy and that we also want to make sure that the policy committee takes this up it probably in the fall. to establish a policy in perpetuity. I heard Director Brown volunteer herself. I would also like to volunteer myself as tribute for the Ad Hoc Committee. Did you want to make another comment before we? I suggest we make a motion.

Yes. I do want to make sure that I'm understanding correctly what we are giving the ad hoc committee to do, what work we're giving the ad hoc committee to do. So the last time we were in this session, we talked about moving forward with an appointment. We also received public comments. about maybe moving forward with an election but we didn't leave saying exactly what it is that we wanted to do as a board and I believe tonight's vote could be that we approve the ad hoc committee and that we give the ad hoc committee marching orders on what to focus on and Council comes, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that we could take that action tonight.

And I also believe, Council Combs, that you have some guidance about the viability of an election versus an appointment.

Yes. So why don't I take, if it's okay, that second part first. Given the timing of the expected vacancy on the board, The current timing, and there are a couple of assumptions here, so the current timing, if we assume the vacancy would arise on July 1st, then that would trigger the 60-day timeline for the Board to make a decision about the two options that we discussed. The appointment option, if that's what you were to choose, Because the vacancy occurs within, meaning not more than 130 days, but within 130 days of the next election, if you chose appointment, then that appointment would fill out the remainder of the term. And it's just a quirk in the statutory scheme. And if the vacancy occurred earlier, then you could appoint and then have an election. But at the moment, that's not the timeframe. that you are dealing with. So if you chose appointment, it would be appointment to complete the term. If you chose an election, then it would be at the next available election, which would be November. I hope I answered the question.

I think that answers the question. And how much time is there left on the term?

November 2028, I believe. Yes. So I don't know, Director Brown, if I answered your part of the question, which was, can you do both? You can. Sometimes it may be better

to separate the 2 actions in terms of 2 motions I would advise that but you certainly can absolutely yes yeah I think it is in our best interest to take them as a 2 different action items but my question originally was as we are forming the ad hoc committee and taking that vote tonight can we also give the direction to move forward with an appointment as was the conversation by the majority of the board last meeting and so definitely taking them as two different action items but wanting to ensure that we give the ad hoc committee something to actually work with absolutely yes you can yes Would you like to make a motion? I was going to say, with that being said, I'll make both motions. Maybe I'll begin with the first, which is to move forward with an appointment to fill out the rest of the term, which is two more years in the term that we will have the vacancy for. And then, so I'll make that motion. And I will second. Okay. Do we approve the ad hoc committee? We will get to the ad hoc committee next. We're just giving the ad hoc committee something to work on. So the first motion is around filling the vacancy that we will have for the next two years. And I made the motion. Director Korn seconded, and we are ready for the roll call vote.

Copy. Thank you. Director Vasudev? Yes. Director Brown? Yes. Vice President Korn? Yes. President Chang? Yes.

So the motion carries to give the ad hoc committee something to actually work on and at this time I would like to make a second motion to approve myself as well as Director Corn as the two members of the ad hoc committee.

And the purpose of the ad hoc committee will be to propose a process and a timeline for appointment to fill a vacancy on the board.

Yes, as well as providing information in preparation for the policy committee meeting to have a policy that is aligned with this vacancy as well as future vacancies. And so I gave the motion. Are you second? I will second. Wonderful.

Director Vasilev? Yes. Director Brown? Yes. Vice President Corn? Yes. President Chang?

Yes.

Motion carries unanimously. Thank you so much.

Thank you, everyone. And thank you, Council Combs. That completes our discussion of action item 15.4. And now we're going to transition to item 14.1, which is a presentation of our literacy and your targeted monitoring literacy action report.

All right. Good evening, Vice President Corn, members of the board, and superintendent. I'm Jill Hogan-Dyke, Associate Superintendent of the Educational Services Department here in BUSD. Our literacy work has focused on the key components of a strong literacy system, infrastructure, capacity building, and instructional resources. This is work that we have pursued intentionally, deliberately, and consistently over the last four years. The encouraging news is that we are seeing positive results as reflected in our 2526 Star and Dibbles data that's attached as an information item to tonight's agenda and also as reflected in recent findings from the Educational Opportunity Project. Good things are happening for teaching and learning in BUSD, and I am hashtag Berkeley proud of the work our teachers, our site specialists, literacy coaches, RTI TSAs, case managers, principals, and district staff have done and continue to do to strengthen instructional practices and better meet the needs of our Berkeley students. At the same time, we know that this work is not finished. As a learning organization, we continually examine what is working well and what we can improve. That commitment to continuous improvement is something that I hope you have seen in the work that we do in the Ed Services Department. and for our literacy work in particular. We are strengthening our practices by learning from what is working and what can be improved, by incorporating feedback from teachers and leaders, and by building systems for monitoring and support and making adjustments along the way. Under the 22-25 settlement agreement, Mr. George Ellis from UC Berkeley monitored BUSD's implementation of the Literacy Action Plan and presented his final program monitoring report to the board on August 20, 2025. In his final report, he recommended an additional year of targeted monitoring focused on observation and feedback practices, implementation of the adopted English language arts curriculum at our elementary schools, and specifically at the two identified target schools, in addition to general monitoring of Tier 1 implementation. of the new curriculum. To support this next phase of monitoring, BUSD contracted with Dr. Kim Gibbons, and Dr. Gibbons presented her mid-year report to the board in February, and she's joining us here virtually this evening to share her final monitoring report. So with that, I welcome you, Dr. Gibbons, from Minnesota.

Thank you so much. Good evening, President Chang, Vice President Korn, members of the board, Superintendent Gordon-Rothell, and members of the Berkeley Unified School District community. Thank you for the opportunity to share the findings from the final year of the literacy monitoring conducted as part of the Literacy Improvement Program and the Dyslexia Class Action Settlement Agreement. Before discussing the report, I really want to acknowledge the extraordinary amount of work that has occurred across Berkeley Unified School District over the past four years that I have been part of this journey. Meaningful systems change is never easy. And the progress reflected in this report is really the result of the collective efforts of the district leaders, the principals, the literacy coaches, the teachers, the specialists, and the support staff who have remained committed to improving literacy outcomes for students. I want to really lift up that throughout this process I have consistently observed a willingness to engage in reflection, address challenges directly, and remain focused on continuous improvement. In my dual role this year as both the consultant and the monitor, my role has been to collect and review evidence, conduct observations, facilitate monitoring discussions, analyze implementation and student outcome data, and provide an independent assessment regarding the district's progress. So the findings and conclusions that I'm presenting this evening represent my monitoring recommendations based on the evidence gathered throughout the 20, 25, 26 school years. I'd also just like to say that after reviewing district-wide implementation efforts, targeted school monitoring across two schools, classroom observations, leadership practices, coaching systems, and student outcome data. I found substantial evidence that Berkeley Unified has sustained and strengthened the literacy systems that have been established throughout the four years. And I think the most significant finding is that the conversations over the past four years have really evolved from conversations that were focused on compliance with monitoring requirements, getting instructional routines set up, discussions around why screening and progress monitoring are important, and ongoing work around the curriculum adoption. So we've moved from those set of questions and discussion items to really now the questions that I've been a part of in the district are about instructional effectiveness. How do we differentiate and engage all of our students? How are we going to respond to the needs of both lifting up outcomes for all students, as well as closing achievement gaps for different groups of students? So in my experience, I've been doing this for over 30 years. I work with a lot of schools around the country. The type of shift that I've seen in terms of the conversations along with my observations in the classrooms and looking at your data, This shift is one of the clearest indicators that improvement efforts have really started to become embedded within the district's culture and systems. So this evening, I'll just give you a brief overview. You have the full report. I'll give you an overview of what happened this year and highlight the major findings from the report and leave time for questions as well. Okay. So really, the purpose of this final year was to really work on strengthening the implementation, the consistency and the sustainability of the improvement plan that we've been working on the last four years so um as as you heard the real focus this year has been around high quality tier one literacy instruction at the elementary level with a strong focus on instructional leadership and coaching systems So, have spent a lot of time in various groups talking and looking at the evidence of all of the activities that have happened this year. And two schools that remain anonymous in the report, they're referred to as School A and School B, received target focused monitoring. due to a finding from Mr. Ellis that those two schools still didn't provide enough evidence of implementation. So, again, my final recommendation, and I'll share the highlights, are that both of the two focal schools met all of the expectations for the 2025-26 school year. I saw demonstrate a substantial evidence of sustained implementation and sufficient capacity to conclude focus monitoring. And that will be my recommendation. And of course, the final determination regarding settlement compliance doesn't rest with me. It's with legal counsel and the parties to the settlement agreement. So the activities, again, that took place this year, there were two site visits, October and April, that included a full day at the two target schools each. And I was in every classroom from K through five. We also had leadership meetings monthly with a focus on looking across the district at what was happening with the curriculum adoption of your two new programs. We had coaching discussions, we reviewed implementation, we looked at student outcomes, I should say, for the two focal schools. I was there on site at two different times and then in between months we met monthly and reviewed progress. Since the last meeting we reviewed and looked at progress monitoring data for all students. that had not reached grade level expectations. We did a lot of work around how to respond to the data when we were seeing that students weren't making enough progress, talked about changes that could be made in their instructional program to intensify instruction. So, you know, the major accomplishments is like the executive summary is that really we found I found a very strong infrastructure that's in place right now where we have. systems in place that really function as continuous improvement tools. So use of the bull's eye program where principal walkthroughs and coaching data are organized. looking at leadership calibration activities that have been going on across the district. I found consistent implementation of functional phonics and morphology. My observations at both schools were largely focused around the foundational skills program, functional phonics and morphology, but also reviewed implementation notes regarding fish tank. Every classroom that I visited in both of the two focal schools were implementing the curriculum. And I saw a lot of progress from the fall visit to the spring visit. I believe that I mentioned at the mid-year monitoring report that it's quite challenging to adopt one curriculum at a time and your teachers were learning two different curriculum that worked complementary together. That can be a larger lift than implementing just a single comprehensive curriculum. And I saw coherent coaching with professional learning opportunities that were offered to all of the literacy coaches across the district and a real intentional effort to really focus on support in the classroom, which was a big shift as in previous years, your literacy coaches were largely delivering intervention instruction to students. So it was a big shift this year and it was a needed shift to really support teachers in their first year of implementation. Looking at your student growth, your benchmark, your fall, winter, spring DIBELS screening benchmark period, you have a range of between 77% and 86% at or above proficiency across grades K through five. And as I said in my opening statement, the real significant finding is how the conversations have evolved from the first year that I set foot in your district to the end of this fourth year. The conversations are all about, it's not about compliance with a settlement agreement. It's about continuous improvement. and doing the work, improving instruction, and ultimately student outcomes. And I think the shift in those conversations has really reflected how your district's literacy system has matured over the years. So, um, you know, thinking about the last four years, we started with, um, a lot of new leader, uh, district leadership team, a real focus on trying to get some coherence and some consistency in place, um, developing an MTSS framework and really focusing on the infrastructure, um, moving towards, um, implementing systems. know delivering professional learning and really working on consistent instructional routine routines um to refining systems and you know i think you you are now at the point where you know the work is never finished it's all about continuous improvement and continuing you know to get better at getting better and really continue continue the practices that have happened over the past four years and maintain those practices through continuous improvement cycles. So at the district wide level, there were really five key district wide systems finding. And the first was really about the monitoring infrastructure. And so you had a lot of systems in place like bi-monthly instructional rounds, bullseye walkthroughs, coaching cycles, principal calibration activities. All of those happened and they were maintained across all of the schools. You have successfully adopted and began implementation of both functional phonics and morphology. and fish tank learning. Those have been, as I said, there's evidence in the focal schools through my observations that that's been implemented consistently. And the other data that I've reviewed in the monthly meetings that really focus on district wide has shown that those are, that the fish tank is also being implemented consistently. We have coherent coaching systems in place that with district-wide PD days, release days, weekly literacy collaboration opportunities and literacy teacher leader networks, principal learning opportunities and assessment and data-focused learning sessions. And then based coaching, I think principal instructional leadership has really, really emerged as a critical driver for implementation. Teachers tend to have the most impact on student achievement, but principals are right behind teachers in terms of their impact. on making sure that we have the systems and the infrastructure in place to support effective literacy practices. So, the data that I was provided from Bullseye observations were that the average number of principal walkthroughs this year across all sites was 27 classroom visits per principal. And then finally, database decision, thinking really moved from a period of adopting a new assessment system and most districts that are adopting a new system. The 1st, couple of years are really about how do you do it? How do you collect the data? How do you organize? Your system to to collect the data, how do you start to learn how to interpret new data reports? Um, and and now the shift is really, it's less about we, we know how to collect the data. Now it's using the data to really drive, um, decision making. So, if we take a look at the district wide student outcomes from fall to spring, so I looked at the percentage of kids that were at or above the grade level benchmark and looked at the students that were below and then students that were well below. And you had some pretty impressive gains in kindergarten. It was a 27% improvement from fall to spring. So it rose from 52% of students at or above benchmark to 79. And that was the largest single grade improvement district wide. And I should also note it's that kindergarten and 1st grade are really important years. And if you can get this right, and really get kids on a positive trajectory, you're going to, it's going to pay off dividends as kids continue to progress in their grades grade 1. Was at 86% district wide, which was up from 67% in the fall and across K through 5, the range was 77 to 86%. Our goal within an framework. is to have at least 80% at or above expectations. And that's due to resource allocation issues that most skill schools aren't equipped to provide instructional interventions to more than about 20% of the population. So kudos there, you're seeing a lot of good growth. This is just in the report and again, it's district wide looking at kindergarten through fifth grade. We see a slight little dip district wide at grade four. But again, those really good, really significant growth rates in kindergarten through second grade. Just looking at primary grades versus grades three through five. Benchmark attainment, reaching benchmark increased across nearly all of the student subgroups. Hispanic students demonstrated particularly strong growth across multiple grade levels. Black African American students showed improvement in benchmark attainment and reductions in intensive risk. And white, Asian, and multi-ethnic students consistently demonstrated the highest attainment rates. In grades three through five, most student groups demonstrated improvements and reduction in intervention needs. Hispanic students continued meaningful gains. There are still gaps with Black African American students. though they demonstrated improvement, there are still gaps that need to be attended to and continue to really provide intensive support at ensuring that we're closing some of those gaps. If we look at the two focused monitoring schools, School A and School B, School A, their benchmark attainment on DIBELS ranged from 76 to 81%. Approximately four out of five students met expectations across most grades. The strong K-2 growth mirrored the district-wide trends that I just shared with you. In grades four and five, school A slightly exceeded district averages, and the principal in that building conducted 31 literacy classroom observations that all followed an in-person debrief. At school B, grade one and grade three exceeded 80% benchmark attainment. Kindergarten grew from 41 to 68%. Principal the principal conducted 39 literacy classroom observation and a big culture shift did occur, where staff were increasingly viewing observations as growth opportunities. And, you know, kudos to both of the literacy coaches in both of those two focal schools. They really established a good partnership with the building principal and provided a great deal of support. At school B, grade two still warrants some continued attention. There's up 24% of students. that remain well below benchmark. So that is going to continue to warrant close attention. And I think that the principal there is committed to that and the district recognizes this and will continue providing the support that's needed. Um, so I think, you know, overall by spring, both of the schools performed at levels, largely comparable to district averages, which is compelling evidence that the supports that are in place in the district are effectively reaching those schools that require additional assistance. Um, so I think, you know, we're, we're getting to the point now where we really need to think about sustainability. And I think, I believe that there is evidence that literacy practices are embedded in the district systems, um, with a commitment to continue implementing those. So we've got the bullseye walkthroughs, the instructional rounds, the coaching cycles, implementation reviews. Those are functioning right now as internal accountability tools. and no longer dependent on external monitoring. I'm seeing a lot of distributed leadership that's happening across the district with principals, coaches, and teacher leaders assuming ownership of monitoring professional learning and instructional improvement. There is a very strong culture of continuous improvement in the district, and that is what most district conversations have been centered around. since the early years that I started working with the district. And I think that shift of really not viewing this as a compliance effort, but the work that all districts need to do to really ensure getting those strong outcomes. And then finally, you've made a lot of progress with your MTSS framework. and integrating an integration at the strong focus has been on literacy and I think that the work that you've done in literacy will really transfer well and the goal will be to try to include math and behavior and social emotional domains also well integrated within the MTSS framework. So really the conclusions again are There was substantial evidence of sustained implementation and continued improvement. Both school A and school B met all of the monitoring expectations. literacy practices are embedded within the district and school systems rather than dependent on external monitoring. So Mr. Ellis last year rated your district in full compliance with goals one, two, and three. This year the focus was on goal three around fidelity and the two focal schools. my determination is that you've met those as well. And I think going forward, what success continues to look like and should look like are really having the literacy systems embedded in district operations, along with expanding to math and social emotional behavior, really continuing the focus on supporting the leaders to really continue to monitor implementation independently so that drift doesn't start to occur, keeping those coaching and professional learning structures established, really focusing on not only maintaining the strong outcomes you have, for the students that are at or above expectations, recognizing that historically marginalized student groups have benefited, but there is still work that needs to be continued to close those gaps. And I believe that continued improvement will occur without external monitoring. With that said, the five things that I really believe need to continue are focusing on deepening instructional responsiveness and differentiation within Tier 1. I wasn't looking at full fidelity this year of Tier 1. I was looking for good progress, and there was good progress. But now, as teachers have a year under their belts of implementation, I would only expect that practices are even going to become more solidified and solid, but really keeping an eye on data and really knowing who those students are in our classrooms that are going to require more differentiation within Tier 1 than most students need. You need to continue strengthening database decision making and really looking at data and making decisions. When you see a number of consecutive data points on student graphs that are flat or trending downward, that's a strong signal that there needs to be changes and intensification. Continue developing your coaching and instructional leadership capacity. Really working on sustaining continuous improvement. As hard as it is sometimes to begin installing new practices and procedures and routines, it's often even more challenging to sustain those over time. And again, really work towards integrating literacy, math, behavior, and SEL. So I will stop there. Happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Dr. Brown.

Yes, I will begin. Thank you so much Dr. Gibbs for joining us and thank you for your report and for your update. I think the recommendation to conclude a focused literacy monitoring is definitely a celebratory moment for us and for the district and so I thank you for that and thank you also for these five priorities for the next phase. My questions are actually for our district staff but I'm sure that my colleagues may have some questions specifically for you. But I loved hearing about how some of the elements of the current monitoring system have already become institutionalized or maybe it was already institutionalized and was just something that was checked off by the monitoring system. So I was happy to hear that. But Associate Superintendent Hogan-Dyke, I am interested to know what internal accountability systems will replace the external oversight that the monitoring provided so that we can ensure that progress continues. That's my first question.

Yes, definitely appreciate the question. I think there's been a lot of work done. I do want to acknowledge Director Albeck, who is here this evening, along with Director Dean, our literacy coordinator, Rose James, and our TSA, Erica Carter, along with the literacy coaches and the principals. I think we've done a lot of work this year. There's a mantra that Chris has iterated that we adopted from CORE about learn it, support it, expect it, and this year was monitor it. And a lot of that had to do with building our instructional leadership capacity and alignment. So you heard Dr. Gibbons reference that in her report. We've been using some time during the Wednesday PD meeting days to really talk and calibrate on what instructional feedback looks like, specifically using the look fors that we have in our adopted curriculum. Those have been embedded into a platform that we call Bullseye, and there has been an expectation for our principals to be making regular observations. And you heard some reference to that tonight in Dr. Gibbons' report. Additionally, we were conducting bi-monthly instructional walkthroughs at our school sites. so that we were looking for instructional practices, but most specifically the use of materials, but also an opportunity to talk with the principals, teachers, and leaders about what's been happening in the classroom, what's been working well, where do they need support. also we have our bi-monthly literacy coach meetings and so we're getting a lot of feedback there as you also heard Dr. Gibbons mentioned and this was a push coming out of the literacy action plan was to shift the focus of our site-based specialists to more coaching and monitoring as opposed to spending all of their time on intervention right so that I think was a pretty significant shift but how we're working and supporting that. So I think that those are a lot of the routines that will continue. It's also an opportunity for us to get feedback and data to understand what we need to be thinking about for things like our district-wide PD days, our Wednesday staff meeting time that's been allocated to support this, and our district-wide PD and where we need to put resources. So those are some things.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Knowing that although we're at the end of monitoring, we are not at the end of the road for our work, right? So continuous improvement I believe helps It was mentioned earlier that continuous improvement helps us to lead to better instructional strategies, but I think that continuous improvement helps us to lead to excellence. There's so much more that we need to do. And I think on the heels of this evening's public comments, I would like to know what additional actions will take place to address the needs for our middle school students, as well as the report that we received tonight notes that black and African-American students showed improvement but continue to have lower benchmark attainment and higher intervention needs than other groups that were addressed this evening. And so I want to know what targeted strategies are planned to accelerate progress for these learners.

I'm gonna go ahead and take a stab at that, but if I'm missing anything, I'm gonna take a look back and make sure I didn't miss anything. I'm gonna take the second question first about focus on our black African American students. Our black and African American students are one of our focal groups. We have a district-wide target, which is, Three by five, yes. And so we're really looking at accelerating our progress for our focal student groups and that includes our African-American students. I think that we are getting better and stronger with the existing systems to be able to understand where our students are and how to progress monitor We are trying to build in these checks. Like if we say we need to be doing progress monitoring, how do we know that progress monitoring is happening? And I think that was a good learning for us this year. And I think that happens across the board with the folks that we have to be able to support that work. We've also been intentional on making sure that we're We're providing the training for the tier two and tier three supports that we've had, and we've invested in that tier two training, the primary one being Orton-Gillingham, but there's also curriculum embedded supports that are happening across the district. I think this next phase for us is really being able to pull that information out from Educlimber about that progress monitoring so that we understand is progress monitoring happening? for whom and where is that happening and how often is that happening? Dr. Gibbons has really been pushing us to make sure that for any of our below benchmark students that we're doing that with more frequency than we have been before, which is going to be giving us additional information. I also think that one of the things that we're going to see happening, and I think there was a lot of excitement on the part of teachers, is that as our students are matriculating into the next grade, there are a lot of systems and routines that are not going to be new learning for them. And that's going to lower all of the work that teachers have to do to be able to focus on where students need that additional support. our black African American students will remain a focus, we're going to track to see how our students are being progress monitored. And I will say, where are the bright spots happening, because we are seeing some places where there is acceleration for particular student groups. And we can in that continuous improvement model, learn from what are some of the strategies, routines or processes that teachers and principals are doing and those places that we can then share more broadly.

I appreciate the second part of your response, because while I know that our 3 by 5 target has really helped us to get some great outcomes, and we can see it on our California dashboard, we see it throughout our systems, throughout our schools, that our targeted focal groups have been making progress. And my question was really around acceleration for black and African-American students. And the reason I'm asking that is because if you think about it from a place of, equity and equality. Equity really is the three by five target. But within that target group, there's equality that's happening for the same thing that's happening for all of the targeted groups within that three by five target. But while those instructional shifts are being made, while those interventions are being made, the same thing is happening for all of the students within that target group. And so what happens is students begin to rise, and then our black and African American students, because they are not getting a different or tiered instruction that meets these unique needs then we're continuing to see those gaps and I think that it was addressed you know by Dr. Gibbons and so while I'm happy to hear that the 3x5 target is continuing I'm happy to hear that our focal groups are going to continue to get what they need My focus is really on how do we make a shift for accelerated progress that is specific to black and African-American students based on the need and there are bright spots that are happening like you mentioned and so I appreciate learning from those and I also would appreciate pausing and thinking about something different so that we can close that very wide gap.

Yeah and I do appreciate that and I'll see if Director Albeck has anything to add. I think what's important to know is that this was year one of implementation and you know as you know implementing curriculum for the first time and not one curriculum but two as Dr. Gibbons pointed out is going to be a learning curve. I think there are a number of supports that are embedded there that are going to help us with that acceleration that you're talking about. Because we saw that even in our CASP data with the distance from standards. How do we accelerate that? that gap that's growing, that gap that has been in existence and we're seeing some of that acceleration start to happen, right? So what we're looking for is that strong tier one and building those foundational skills for learning how to read and then being able to understand where those places of acceleration needed. And I think with the assessments that we have at this point in time, we're more able to identify the very specific skill sets that students are missing. And that's going to help with that acceleration too. Do you have anything you want to add?

I can add just a few comments so specifically for this year being year one of implementation just like Jill mentioned our questions were really around is it happening and I think Dr. Gibbons was able to speak to it very clearly this evening that implementation is happening not only at our two focal schools but across the board which we feel very positive about due to some of the internal monitoring systems that we've been able to create that will outlive Dr. Gibbons' work with us and Dr. Ellis. And now moving forward, is it happening often? And then past that, is it happening well? and when it's is it happening well is it happening well for our three by five students right our focal students because we chose this curriculum specifically with certain focal groups in mind and making sure that it met the needs of what what our community shared and what our teachers shared but moving into year two we're really taking a look at what those focal students need and how we could pull the resources that are built into the curriculum and making sure that that happens in the actual day-to-day teaching. So I'll bring up sort of just two examples. This year, year one, all of our educators were learning something brand new, and all of our PD was around, like, what is the curriculum at the most basic level? Year two is really focused on differentiation, both functional phonics, , have built in differentiation for students that are not yet at grade level or at grade level and to push to build further. So next year will be really tapping into what does that differentiation look like in our classes now that we understand the curriculum, what it can look like day to day, but how can we make sure that students are being pushed and how can we make sure that students that potentially are at below grade level are getting the differentiation that they need. And one way that we're gonna go about doing that next year is we're introducing learning labs. So next year, all of our teachers will be visiting colleague sites, classrooms across the district with a specific focus on differentiation practices, meeting the needs of some of our focal students. So that's one of our approaches moving into next year.

Do you want the middle school? All right, so in response to middle school, so we have been all in on elementary school, but I do wanna take us back a couple of years because as part of the settlement agreement, there were some components there relative to the curriculum and instruction in the middle grade, six through eight in particular. As part of that work within that three-year time span, we had worked with Mr. Ellis along with others to identify that where we needed to put our focus was on understanding the intervention that was being used. And Director Albeck along with Rose James worked with our middle schools to conduct a needs analysis on the reading support classes and we identified a need to shift the curriculum that was being used for that so that we were using a curriculum with a higher effect size and so that work has already happened. We know that we need to turn our attention to the secondary curriculum. But we had a pretty big lift at elementary school. And so as we move into next year, we're going to be taking a look at the instructional materials review for the middle grades. And we'll be able to start that work. So just want to recognize that that is gonna be a piece of the, it was always in the plan, but we have time capacity and resource issues that I'm trying to help manage to ensure that we have successful implementation and not spread ourselves too thin, but also recognize that in order to build an effective literacy system, then we need to be looking at our practices across the grade span.

And I'll just add one thing really quick around that, but it gets to the literacy systems change. One thing that was very powerful around elementary is that before we went to instructional materials, before we went to curriculum, we invested a lot in shared understanding and shared learning and professional learning. And we have been doing that work at the middle school level, so we haven't made a shift on tier one instructional materials at this point. but we have been making a shift in regards to our own understanding and preparation for why this shift is potentially needed so that when a shift does happen it's that we're being done with with one another rather than to one another right so for example like this year we we partner with core again we come together four times our middle schools throughout the year all King Willard and and Longfellow to come together to do shared learning. But this year we did shared learning around specific word instruction, word learning strategies, decoding multi-syllabic words. So these are components that our next curriculum will likely have. So that shared understanding and learning vocabulary, when we get to those conversations, they'll be like, yeah, and we need that because this is what we've learned. So hopefully that's getting us to the point where then when we transition, it'll make sense.

Can I jump in to ask a follow up there? That's sort of exactly the question that I was wondering about. It was really striking in this presentation, both in your comments and also Dr. Gibbons, It was about implementing a particular curriculum, but it's really much more than that. It's about a culture shift and building a system and building the capacity of everyone in the system to do their jobs more effectively. So I guess to your point about the work that's being done in middle school, I'm really interested in slide five, which names five different things that have been done to build the system, only one of which is the tier one curriculum. The others are about building coherent coaching systems, building principal's capacity to be instructional leaders, building everyone's muscle around database decision making. So I guess I'm wondering to what extent the work you're doing with CORE or other work that's being done in the middle school is helping to develop those systems in anticipation of the eventual adoption

new tier one curriculum yeah I could speak specifically to the work with our instructional leaders because I think that really did come through in Dr Gibbons presentation and again kudos to Miss Debbie Dean for her work with our site leaders for she really works with our site leaders so that they can carry the torch and they could support their educators back at the school site So although not mentioned in this evening's report, our middle school and also our high school teachers are participating in that instructional leadership, that documenting of instructional practice that are in classes and giving feedback to their teachers. So that building of that muscle, so when the shift does come, they're going to be very used to that practice. Also at our middle school, and we do have literacy coaches, so I think you heard a lot around what support looks like and what ongoing professional development looks like. and we are fortunate that our district continues to invest in literacy coaches and they are right by our side as it relates to any potential shifts, and we do have some shifts around assessment. Specifically, Dr. Sweeney could probably speak to it, but DIBELS being more accessible now, moving into middle school, not being paper and pencil anymore, so we can give it more on demand moving into next year. I hope I'm speaking correctly about that. It's something very close to that. So those literacy systems pieces are there. It's just a matter of putting it all together, similar to how we have year one at least done at the elementary level.

Yeah, and I would just double down on one of my favorite slides, which is around the key insights for organizational excellence. We've really been anchoring everything in this notion that ideal results require ideal behaviors, and purpose and systems drive behaviors. and mindsets and form behaviors. So yes, it was a culture shift, but it was also about us thinking about how to build and support a system that's going to be able to sustain this over time. That's an evaluation of existing resources. It's an evaluation of how easy or difficult it is to move through these different processes or implementation components that we have and how do we continuously think about How do we make this easier? How do we make this faster? How do we ensure that adults in the system are doing the things that we need them to do, but we're supporting them to do that well?

Colleagues, do we have any additional questions? No. Thank you very much for this report. With that, thank you so much. And I believe we are moving on to action item 15.1, approval of the 2627 BSEP annual plan. I have no idea what my BSEP is.

I moved my notes around. OK. All right. Yeah, I'll do it. OK. uh good evening again um we are going to turn our attention to the uh bsep and barra plans i'm joined here at the diocese by um miss kathy fleming our director of local resources um we just want to clarify that this is one single presentation with three parts. So Vice President Korn will stop at those stopping places to see if there is discussion for each of these sections and then we can take the vote as we move along because this is an action item. um we can go to the next slide um so of course we ground this work 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 and the resources that we receive through the generosity of the berkeley voters really enables us to do this work in a number of different avenues and i do want to acknowledge our P&O co-chairs, Ms. Vicki and Ms. Nicole, and all of the work that the P&O committee and our program managers, many of whom you are here in the audience to answer any particular questions you might have. have done this year to lead us to this plan. So we are going to share information on the annual plans and then ask for your approval for each of those plans. What you see here is a bit of a timeline of where we were coming from, how just a very high level The milestones that we have been looking at for this year, we are here on June 10th for these three items for approval, and then they would be incorporated into the final budget. The site-based BSEP allocations are included in the school plans for student achievement, which will also be on the agenda, the board agenda for next week. Right. Our BSIP and BARRA work is situated in this context of both our LCAP goals and our emerging strategic plan. Any one of the items that are supported by these resources can be directly linked to one of our four main district goals and our five strategic plan areas, which is inclusive of academic excellence, wellness and belonging, partnership and engagement. talent and culture, and system efficiency and fiscal responsibility. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Director Fleming.

Okay. I just wanted to add on the information on the previous slide that the full plans are attached to the items on the agenda. Also, we have more details on each program in the appendix of this presentation. And I'd also like to pause and thank the voters of Berkeley for their support of these critical funding sources that provide programs and supports that impact each one of our students and all of our schools. The planning and oversight committee is one of the key ways we monitor these measures. The group spends time in the fall meeting with managers and learning more about the programs. This group reviewed the plan drafts at least twice this spring and asked questions of managers and requested follow-up information and held discussions. And as you've heard earlier from co-chair Vicki Davis that the P&O has recommended that each of the plans for tonight be approved by the board. Sorry about my pages, it's a little windy. Okay. And previous slide, please. OK, thanks. So this year, we continue to implement the major changes to the fall schedule we did last year, revising the annual report process and program overview presentations. And during the spring, we monitored and adjusted our schedule for review of the plans and budgets for next year. And I just wanna point out that we appreciate our collaboration with our P&O co-chairs for navigating the unknowns this budget season and our work together to plan effectively to ensure committee members have as much time and as much information as possible to do their, to fulfill their role. I'd also like to take a moment and have a special thanks to the co-chairs for that work and the members and additionally thank our program managers, for their work on the plans and their work with the P&O. And lastly, to thank our budget analyst, Craig Kaufman, and our BSEP specialist, Danielle Perez, for their expertise and dedication to these two measures. They work with all school sites, program managers, and with me to plan, implement, and monitor and report out on these two very important measures. Next slide. This is just a quick view of the schedule that we had this year. And as you can see, we had to push some of the items later in the year for approval. And that's per my previous comments, trying to have the most complete budgets and plans possible. And next slide. And that brings us to item 15.1, which includes nine of our BSIP programs. Next slide. And as a reminder, this is our framework for Measure H. And another reminder that we have two Measure Hs now. One is BSEP, and the other is our maintenance tax. So we're making sure that we refer to each of these measures, not only by letter, but also by name. And we are presenting, of course, on the majority of these programs tonight. and some key information for the plans under this item. This is the second year of eight year measure for measure H and our COLA this year is 3%. The projected revenue is 3.3 1.3 million increase over the prior year and this year we included a staffing reserve of 6% as opposed to 5 in anticipation of planning for budget increase or salary increases and benefit increases and we also have included a approximate 10% reduction in the HQI program areas to create some capacity and for shifting in costs from other funding sources for budget balancing. And we also have an increased class size reduction cost as you've heard earlier from Vicki Davis. And this is due to salary and benefit increases and a slight increase in the number of classrooms. And some BSET program activities have been shifted, reduced or eliminated and new activities or activities from other funding sources have been shifted in.

Next slide, please.

Just a couple notes on the last slide. As you heard from Vicki Davis that are the capacity in BSEP measure H for year two and ongoing can be limited. It's generally we don't have any capacity for next year and that's something that we're monitoring ongoing and I have some comments on that on a subsequent slide. So I'll be addressing sustainability of funds. Okay, so the first set of programs is the HQI or high quality instruction program area, which includes professional development, program evaluation, which is our BRAEA department, classroom support, and expanded course offerings. And this slide offers some descriptions of those programs and Just a reminder that the first thing we do with this 66% of the funding is ensure that we meet our class size goals, which are smaller class sizes per the measure, as the measure outlines. And after we meet those class size goals, the remaining funding and allocation of that 66% can be dedicated to those four programs. This slide is a summary of the fiscal changes that happened this year. It's reviewing for the whole 66% of the main changes that we made. And again, program managers for these programs were asked to create capacity by reducing their expenditures by approximately 10%. This action generated around $1.12 million. And on the subsequent slides, we'll include a listing of the changes for each program. In addition to that, we shifted 230,000 into our Measure E1 fund balance for professional development activities such as workshops and trainings. And of those funds, 1.06 million was used for the adjustment to this class size reduction budget. As I mentioned, it's due to increases in salary benefits and a slight increase of the number of classrooms. I just want to note that this is not BSEP taking on a greater share of the cost of the classroom teachers. BSEP still is taking on about a third of the cost of the classroom teachers. Okay, next slide, please. Previous slide, please. Okay, so this slide is summarizing the professional development changes. And for all of the slides, there's two columns to note. The middle column includes a list of all of the items that were either reduced, shifted, or discontinued. And the column on the right includes items that we have either increased, shifted in from other BSIP programs, or shifted in from other funding sources, such as the general fund, LCAP or expiring grants. The main things to note here is that there was a change in the PD lead structure at BHS, resulting in a decrease of a .8 FTE in the aggregate. And this change will result in one teacher leader for each learning community program or department. And we also shifted in 1.3 FTE of literacy coaches from the BSEP Student Achievement Strategies Program to create some capacity in that program to shift in some OFI FTE, which we'll go over later. Note that there is no net change to the number of elementary or middle school literacy coaches. Additionally, we have partial reductions to TSAs, including 0.2 of the BHS Instructional Technology TSA and a 0.4 reduction of the Ethnic Studies TSA. And we shifted 0.5 of the K-8 Instructional Technology TSA into the Instructional Technology BSEP budget. Next slide. Sorry, my pages. We had a few changes in the classroom support program and mainly a reduction in the number of LEAP sections as part of the universal ninth grade program at BHS. This component of U9 was restructured to reduce the number of sections offered for LEAP based on the program need. Additionally, the math support classes for middle school continues at three sections per middle school. However, the funding has been shifted WHERE THE SITES ARE NOW PICKING UP ONE OF THE CLASSES, BSEP WILL COVER THE SECOND AND LCAP THE THIRD. SO THIS IS A NET CHANGES REDUCTION TO BSEP OF A .4 AND LCAP OF .2. NEXT PAGE. And this last slide on HQI programs for program evaluation, the main change was an exchange of a reduction of a 0.4 TSA for Brea and an increase of a 0.4 student assessment analyst that was shifted in from the general fund. That position is a full 1.0, but we're shifting in a 0.4. And no changes to expanded course offerings. And next slide. I'm gonna clip my papers for management, bear with me. Okay, the next group of programs is in the Essentials for Excellence portion of BSEP and these programs have specified funding percentages, 6.25 for music and 7.25% for libraries and 3.25% for instructional technology. Initially, we requested program managers to prepare budgets with 10% reductions. These budgets were prepared and presented to the P&O showing the impact that these reductions would have in the next year and ongoing. The P&O was able to review this information, ask questions, and provide feedback. After leadership review of the projected 10% reductions and potential impact and considering P&O feedback, it was decided to have no reductions in these programs. This is to ensure these programs can continue to provide key staffing and services per the BSET measure and to ensure fiscal sustainability. These programs will also utilize Measure E carryover to sustain some program activities and it is necessary for us to evaluate anticipated revenue versus expenditures ongoing to ensure that these program line items can be continued because the Measure E carryover will be expired for these programs in two to three years. That's something that we're continuously monitoring. Okay, and the next program section is the effective student support, which includes student achievement strategies and counseling and behavioral health. And these programs share 7% of the BSEP funding. Student achievement strategies provide RTI teachers, literacy coaches, middle school math coach, African American success framework support, and also support for Puente and the Be a Scientist program in the middle schools. The counseling program provides middle school counselors to support students and families. The biggest change, next slide please, The biggest change in this program area is in the student achievement strategies program. In order to create capacity for OFE staffing, we shifted out the 1.3 FTE of literacy coaches to the professional development program within BSEP, as I mentioned before. This enabled us to provide funding for a 1.0 OFI manager and a portion of the OFI specialist focused on Spanish bilingual support. There is additional support for that position in the communications budget, which we will review in a subsequent slide. There were no changes to the number of counselors for middle school. Next slide. This is gonna be animated. Yes, I'll tell you when to animate. Not yet. Well, that's fine. Okay, for our program metrics, we continuously work to broaden our program metrics for both implementation measures and outcome measures. And we continue to partner with the P&O, our BRAEA department, program managers and district leaderships in this work. We have logic models that are included in the plans which explore the relationship between a program's resources, activities, outputs, and intended outcomes. And it serves as a roadmap for understanding and communicating how our program aims to achieve its goals. The data identified in the logic model tells us how we're doing. And we intend to front load these a bit next year per the P&O feedback that we gathered this spring. And our BSEP program metrics include program goals and strategic plan alignment, performance measures for both implementation measures and outcome measures, equity measures, program level and district-wide, quality rubrics, research and supportive programs, comparisons, the state metrics, and or logic models, as I mentioned, that are added to plans. You can visit the link on this slide that takes you to, should be one more Liz, our annual report for the prior year, which includes all of the measures that we have collected and presented to the planning and oversight committee.

Next slide.

I'll just go ahead, sorry. Okay so this is a summary of the HQI program area and as you know we track our projected ending fund balance. The projected ending fund balance with all the changes that we've gone over is estimated to be $34,000 but it is important to note that For this year, year one, we are not projecting any fund balance as of yet for beginning fund balance because we are chewing up for salaries and benefits adjustments per the bargaining outcomes. We do anticipate to have some balances though and that our beginning fund balance will increase for next year. We review this information at the close and at first interim and generally we have more revenue available at that time. Additionally, on this slide, you can see that I've added the uses of the E1 carryover for the plans, the professional development, 230K, and the program evaluation contracts. There's a three-year commitment we've made with the E1 fund balance carryover for the BREA contracts, and this will be the second of three years. Okay, next slide, please. This is a summary of the second interim report, just so you know that we're tracking it. And you can see for this year that our anticipated ending fund balance is, I believe it says 1.3, and we've went ahead and put some placeholders in there for our intended uses. And that leaves us with a 749K estimated fund balance. And we will look at the close to review the actual amounts available and prepare our potential uses for these funds and have them reviewed by the planning and oversight committee. This slide is, the title is not correct. It's actually a summary of year two measure H plans. And again, you can see the projected beginning fund balance is zero. However, know that that will change. So the projected ending fund balance will be larger for these programs. And this is something we're keeping an eye on because in the first four years of the measure, we're trying to build up a fund balance for programs. And we're going to know a lot by the first interim of next year how we're doing in that regard. But as I stated before, there's generally no capacity for us to shift anything new in. Next slide. And this is the Measure E summary for the other programs other than HQI. And you can see the projected ending fund balance. And the managers for library, music, and instructional technology programs, as I mentioned, have used the Measure E fund balance to augment their regular budgets. And those fund balances will be exhausted in two to three years. But that gives us a little bit of a runway and a ramp to plan for that. to ensure that they can continue their core function and the last the last two mentioned the last two items on that we have potentially intended to use the student achievement strategies projected ending fund balance with for curriculum materials for the rollout of curriculum adoption and also for our mental health contract for counseling and behavioral health fund balance next okay that brings us to the end of this the longest of the three items for discussion back to you vice president corn colleagues any questions or discussion hey there i do i'm i'm sorry i'm online should um should i just raise my hand so we can do this in a go ahead yeah

Hi there, thank you so much. Thank you. I know P&O puts in a substantial amount of effort and I really appreciate the detailed presentation that has been provided tonight. One thing that I did want to raise is I know we have heard a lot of it, both at meetings, and I think board members have also received a significant number of emails on this. I do have concerns of the reduction of the Ethnic Studies TSA from 1.0 FTE to 0.6. I do appreciate that the TSA is not being eliminated and that you are making an attempt to reduce costs but still maintain the TSA function. I want to assert, however, that because that ethnic studies tsa i'm not talking about the particular person i'm talking about that position um is still uh really midway in process of building out a very important cadre of teachers and um uh a support framework around lesson planning i don't want to call it curriculum because that's not what really ethnic studies is um that tsa that has been in place for some time has navigated a number of years of controversial issues politicization of ethnic studies that has necessitated the time that it has taken. I don't think anyone disagrees with the critical value of ethnic studies in Berkeley. I do think that it is important to understand, however, that not only is it an important critical value to Berkeley, which is, and nationally, it is under an onslaught, a highly politicized onslaught and misrepresentation. It is also forward to Berkeley values, which is why we set out to push down ethnic studies in an age-appropriate manner and into the lower grades and support and create a teaching cadre. I think that reduction from a 1.0 to 0.6 is going to stall that. There is, some folks may know, a grant that's already been approved by the UC Berkeley Chancellor's Partnership Fund with a professor, Courtney Kawano, who is working with our Ethnic Studies TSA as the lead community researcher to roll out a number of professional development opportunities for teachers for the Ethnic Studies program that has been in place for some time. And this is really kind of the, to me, that's like the last phase of implementation. So reduction from a 1.0 to a 0.6, I think it's going to severely stall that process. There are also additional very likely funds coming from UC Berkeley if this partnership is to proceed, which is a historic critical partnership. We're a historic program in ethnic studies, first in the nation, decades here, working with UC Berkeley. We're trying to create a program that really I think respects that history and provides that framework for our students to engage on controversial issues in a way that is constructive and makes them knowledgeable and reasonable in their responses and understanding the complexity of these issues that we address. And these are intersectional, too. I'm talking a lot, but I want to make sure that folks recognize that ethics studies is not about race. It is about difference and inclusion. So it's intersectional. The lesson planning addresses race, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation. deeply inclusive in that manner. So if you were to look at the lesson planning, especially with the work that is being done here at Berkeley Unified, but also with engagement with the flagship ethnic studies program at UC Berkeley, It is not about purely one classification. It really pulls it all together. And I think it is really critical at a time when there is a lot of confusing politicization of issues that are really important to folks in Berkeley Unified. or our students to be able to understand how do we navigate these controversial issues. We do have an amazing high school ethics studies program. It is really not sufficient to have just one year of it or one class in one year. The rest of the state is going to have that. What we're doing as the flagship school district is to naturalize it younger to introduce it as age appropriate and you need to develop a cadre of teachers so i am very concerned about reducing that 1.0 to a 6.0 right when we are hitting a stride to try to get to that point of creating that cadre where there's a number of teachers who are really interested in teaching and have started to do so, and they need and they want and have been asking for that professional development, then now you have a partner at UC Berkeley to do so. Thank you.

I wonder if staff can speak to how that decision or recommendation to reduce that position was developed and what the thinking behind that is.

yeah i think i mean similar to all of the recommendations we had a charge we had a 10.4 million dollar target plus an additional three million dollars of expiring grants um and i you know again as i stated last week None of these decisions are easy. Nobody wants to slow down or reduce or stop some work altogether. But it is going to be really challenging for a district to make this level of reduction without experiencing some level of slow down. We engaged in a number of different avenues, really trying to identify where the priority action is, particularly around the core content. And you will see across our plans, inclusive of BSAP and LCAP from last week, that we were reducing on positions that were not part of the core. That said, do want to make it clear, programs like ethnic studies and our other affinity based programs are core to our BUSD identity. And so we are not saying that we are going to stop ethnic studies. We have invested in ethnic studies. We as a district have been implementing the minimum requirement for over decades. And that is a well run and supported program at Berkeley High. We have benefited from the work of the Ethnic Studies TSA over the last couple of years, along with our other teachers and leaders who have stepped up to develop, implement and pilot curriculum units and grade levels across the district. I think we fundamentally believe that experiences with ethnic studies is important for all of our students to have. It celebrates the diversity that we have in BUSD and I think there's a lot of support for that. We had to make hard decisions. This is a recommendation. It went through P&O to make that recommendation. And you want to be clear, we didn't say to reduce the position altogether. We did recognize that there's been a large amount of work that has been done. Some of that is going to require a little bit less work. Other pieces of that are going to require a little bit more work, and we're going to need to take direction from the board along with folks who have been involved in the work to say what's going to be the reasonable chunk that we can focus on given a reduced FTE. And we have to be okay that things might not be moving as fast as we would want them to be, but they are going to continue to move in a forward direction.

Can I add to that, and thank you so much, Associate Superintendent. Vice President Corn, you are a tiny postage-sized stamp. if you're a tiny image inside of a tiny posticide stamp on my screen. So I'm trying to see if you're nodding your head or whatnot. Go ahead. Okay, thank you. I feel like I've been speaking a lot, so I don't want to sit here and proselytize. I think everybody understands the importance of this. um and i do understand the importance of the reductions um we do have uh you know plan pillars and our superintendent has laid out a framework um that is grounded in equity um uh with an excellence with regard to our reductions and um you know there's this term deficit spending and um that is of course a challenging situation to be put in. Yes, I would love that we would have full funding, full public funding for public education. I do want to say also that as we make these decisions for what to cut and what not to cut, even recognizing that we're not entirely cutting the Ethnic Studies TSA, but it's going from 1.0 to 0.6, the harm that we can do to our system and structures and ultimately the implementation of core programs and services that are critical to what makes Berkeley unique. And sometimes you just have to, and I know this may not sound popular, sometimes you have to deficit spend. And in the meantime, you have to advocate to get those funds. So I'd like to get as close, of course, to where we can to stabilize our budget. The Ethnic Studies TSA, however, to me, it is midstream. And a reduction from 1.0 to 0.6 is going to stall that process. Just as we're linking into an important partnership with UC Berkeley, And as they're getting off the ground with getting to PDs, professional developments with teachers who are ready to go to engage on how to teach ethnic studies at a time when teaching ethnic studies can frankly be dangerous for teachers or a school district and want to understand how to do it properly so that our students understand how to engage on controversial issues. Thanks.

Thank you, President Chang. And I echo a lot of what you said about the importance of ethnic studies, especially in light of the national political rhetoric happening right now. My question for you, Associate Superintendent, will this change preclude us from being able to do that professional development work with the UC Berkeley grant that was referenced?

I am trying to remember my first read of the grant. And as I understand it, it's approximately a $15,000 grant coming in this year to support, I believe it's a quarterly engagement with teachers who are interested in pursuing this work with some data and needs analysis. I'm hoping I'm saying all of this correctly. So I will double check and get back to you with the intention of planning for a summer PD. So as I understand it, the grant was not intended to support part of the FTE, but rather the hours to support teachers participating in professional development after hours, along with planning for a summer PD, I believe for summer of 2026. So this would work that would begin next year. I might not be remembering all of the details, but that's what I'm remembering off the top of my head.

That's correct in the gist of it.

So just to build on that, I mean, it's possible that even with the reduction of FTE from 1.0 to 0.6 that some of the time within that 0.6 could focus on the work within this.

correct i mean there are a number of work streams that any one of our tsa's are responsible for and i think it's going to be incumbent upon us to understand where to put that priority i heard from president chang's comments the importance of building our teacher capacity to deliver units and ethnic studies and the grant with uc berkeley as an opportunity to provide a lever to do that and that could be the top priority for that 0.6 time. So we're going to have to take a look at what all those work streams are, what is reasonable within that time frame. And then building capacity of teacher leaders is always a great place to start because then you're expanding the capacity of us as a system to deliver on these instructional units that are important for our students and families.

And I just want to build on what you're saying, Associate Superintendent. I feel really lucky to be in a city like we are, so close, with many of the ethnic studies experts so closely aligned with our district. And they've served as amazing resources to us. I also know that other UCs, like UCLA, has put forth, and this was Both APISMA and the California Latino School Board Association had a session to highlight the foundations of the futures curriculum that emerged out of the state's work to stop hate in the AAPI community. But it's basically an open source ethnic studies curriculum that's available to teachers. And so I think that what you're saying around prioritizing that level of professional development and making use of the resources already publicly available by other UCs that were developed by experts in the field to ethnic studies professors makes a lot of sense to me as something that we should prioritize as a district. That train the trainer model and that train the trainer work makes a lot of sense to me to make sure that we are providing our educators with the support that they need to do ethnic studies work especially at the elementary and middle school level. I know that we have more robust work that we've done for many years at the high school level, but the gap seems to be, correct me if I'm wrong, elementary and middle school. So saying that we want to make use of those resources for that and prioritize that explicitly, as painful as this reduction is, makes a lot of sense to me.

Are there any other questions or comments about this item or would anyone like to make a motion?

I just have questions about or since the conversation has kind of gone on long, maybe I'll just ask one question about just in general HQI reduction and how we've thought about, I guess, the impact on student achievement over the next year and have we thought about the ways that we're going to just monitor that?

I mean, I think that there's a lot that we've been doing as a system apropos of our previous presentation to build a data platform that would allow for us to capture information on a number of different measures and be able to use that. I think that we, I'm looking at Dr. Sweeney behind me and her team have really been working to build data routines to understand that impact. I think we had a significant charge to our BSET program managers in particular this year about the reduction, which was very much needed in order to support our salary increases for negotiations and i think that the pno has been really clear that they do want to see activities and actions that are both aligned to the program measures but also that are aligned to measures that we as a district are trying to implement implement more broadly So you see their significant support for our literacy coaches and RTI TSAs, our counseling and behavioral health, which also comes up in a lot of our different surveys and needs assessments. and other classroom support. I want to acknowledge Principal Ragosa and Vice Principal Clegg who are both here today because they did a lot of work with their teacher leader teams to make some significant program shifts that haven't happened in a while really thinking about what's the role of our teacher leaders and how do we think about where We have not had teacher leaders and what that means for the high school as a system to be able to track monitor strategies and implementation on a number of different levels so again we're really. fortunate to have our BSAP funding supporting so many of these things that a lot of school districts don't benefit from and are really important and additional important additional services for each of our individual school sites. I hope that I don't know if that answered your question exactly. But

But it was a good segue to my next question. I think the last couple of board meetings, I have been kind of just sounding the bell on how much we're transferring into. into specifically into BSEP and also into specifically into BSEP and really my nervousness around BSEP's ability to kind of carry all of this. And I think that that was echoed by Vicky tonight in her comments from P&O. So I really appreciated the alignment and also the kind of confirmation there. And so I think when I'm What makes me nervous is, the running out of those funds, what makes me nervous is how reliant we kind of are becoming on BSEP. And so at what point will the board need to consider programmatic reductions or programmatic changes versus kind of where we are now, where we're just trying to do all of the things. I did ask that question last week, but I think hearing the response again would be great and then I'll go on to my next question.

Okay, great question. Two responses to that. One is mid-year next year we'll be able to know what our COLA will be for the coming year. So that will give us a sense of the revenue we can project and we can Project out over a number of years are anticipated cost based on our current budget at that time so we'll be able to look to the to the end of the measure using a very conservative parameters the cola and the the low cola and the average teacher raises over the years and then. increases for supplies materials and contracts and that enables us to do some forecasting hypothetically of course but this is basically what we do every year what we project out on that and we'll be able to adjust the budget for the coming year at that time secondly we also know that when we adjusted the teacher template for BSEP this year I believe that it's very accurate and I don't think that we're going to need much of a true up in the next year depending on, we'll have our COLA take care of the raises and benefits. So we'll be able to review that and we will have potentially a little bit more fund balance in the HQI to accommodate an increase there. So again, it is a track it as we go, we'll know more at the close, we'll see what revenue we have coming in for our fund balance for all the programs. and then at first interim when we true up for our actual costs for our staffing that will give us an indication as well and then that will be in december and then looking at the cola comes in mid-january so by the end of january we're going to have a pretty good picture of the coming year and be able to know if we need to do any changes

Thank you. My next question is really around small class size funding. It is a huge financial cost. And I was wondering, do we think that this is the largest long-term cost pressure, that pressuring, sorry, largest long-term cost that BSEP is facing over the next coming years? And is there a need in the future to make a shift? And what would that look like and mean for us?

Okay, so looking in the long term, thinking about the future and looking at past patterns, I don't think that the share that these classroom class size reduction cost is taking of the HQI is necessarily reducing the available dollars for the programs. But as the salaries and benefits increase, so does the COLA. So the COLA has, generally been keeping in pace with salaries and benefits, you know, when we look over the past 10, 15 years. But when we're talking about making a change, do you mean in terms of the formula that we use in terms of how much BSEP is contributing to the cost of having smaller class sizes and or changing something in the measure in terms of class size goals?

Yeah, I think, thank you for asking me that question. I think that for the second part of your question, my answer would be no, because the intention of the measure, one of the most important intentions of the measure is to be able to support small class sizes. And so I think that when I'm asking the question, I'm really more so thinking about the formula.

right okay one point with that that I will note is that and this is why I made a point earlier when I talked about the percentage that BSEP is contributing to the total cost of the class classroom teachers is around a third and right now we're using a ratio for k5 of 36 to 1 and previously we had it at 34 to 1 which decreased the contribution amount it was around 31 32 percent at that time but we did we had changed it uh to 34 to one because previous to that it had been changed 34 to 36 to one to generate funds for the general funds so the point of this is to say that there is a give and take in a back and forth I mean the challenge is going to come is if we need to go back to 34 to 1 and be set because we're you know, concerned about their ending fund balance in any one year or the end of the measure, then that means that the general fund would need to absorb that difference. So that's what I think you're getting at with the unknown is that we don't know what the status of the general fund is going to be in one, two, three years. So I hear you on that and that's something that, you know, we'll need to be monitoring as we go along. But in the end, if we have to keep it at 36 to one and we have increases in the cost of the teacher template for BSEP. That means the programs in that the HQI program area will need to be reduced further if the COLA doesn't outpace the salaries and benefits increase. So there's all these variables we need to monitor as we go along.

Thank you. I don't want to stay right here for too long, but I think that what I'm asking is not to do a decrease because that wouldn't be feasible and it would be different than kind of what we're asking to do, but if we thought about a potential increase. So moving up from 36 is more so my question, not at all moving down, because I don't think financially we'd be able to afford that.

Well, you mean moving up in the ratios that would assume a greater percentage or portion of the cost of the classroom teachers overall? Is that what you're saying? Or is it something else?

We're talking about increasing the class size. Increasing the class size.

The actual class size? Yes. That would be a matter of changing the measure. If we increase, say for example, at elementary K-5 from 23 to one to 25 to one, is that what you're just considering to explore? So that would be, we would need to go and change the measure language, which would mean we would need to go back to the voters, that's my understanding so unless there's there is a provision for a fiscal emergency in the measure and there's a number of parameters that need to be in place to enact that and that's one way you could exceed the class size ratios in the measure we also have contractual class sizes for the teacher's contract that align with what's in the BSET measure so there would be two AREAS TO ADDRESS IN CHANGING THE CLASS SIZE. ONE THING THAT COULD HAPPEN THOUGH IS WE COULD ANNUALLY LOOK AT THE ACTUAL CLASS SIZE AND THE LOWER GRADES TENDS TO BE LOWER THAN 23 TO 1 AND THAT'S AN AREA WHERE WE COULD LOOK AT INCREASING NOT NEXT YEAR BUT THE COMING YEAR. BUT THAT IS PROBABLY THE MOST VIABLE OPTION.

I think that that makes sense. I don't think that we're necessarily in that place where we should, one, go back and re-look at the measure, or two, go back to the place where we're at negotiations. But if we are in places, which you just named that we are, where we're not meeting that class size and we're thinking about the future, because again, my question was about the remaining years of Measure H and what projections we have for the future, then it's good to know that we have the space to be able to do that should we need to. Thank you for your response.

Is there any further discussion or would anyone like to make a motion?

Nothing further from me. Thank you.

I'm sorry, I'd like to make a motion to accept the recommendations with, and I want to find out if this is possible, and I know I've been talking a lot, but with the amendment for ethnic studies to not be reduced, to retain it at a 1.0, but to accept all other P&O recommendations.

Is there a second? It appears that there's not a second for this motion does anyone have a different motion they'd like to make. I will move that we accept the recommended the staff recommended actions for action item 15.1. I second.

We'll call Ms. Chavez. Director Vasilev?

Yes. Director Brown? Yes. Vice President Korn?

Yes. President Chang?

I respectfully decline to a no.

3 to 1 motion carries. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Charis. I believe we're now on to 15.2. Yes. 15.2.

Okay, item 15.2 is for one program, and that's for communications, translation, and measure oversight. This has funds from both BSEP and BARRA that contribute to the budget for this program. And in this budget, we were able to shift in portions of positions who work in the comms and oversight program. and these include portions of our district Spanish translator our comms manager and and 0.5 of our BSET budget analysts and all three of these positions are coming from the general fund for a savings there additionally we have capacity to shift in a 0.25 of the OFI specialists who focuses on Spanish bilingual support And we have not made reductions in this program. And the reason we are able to shift these positions in is due to capacity that was already present. And the reason why we have capacity for the main reason is that last year we had two comms specialists. And the end of last year, one of those comms specialist positions was eliminated, which created capacity. However, this year we did not utilize that capacity. And so we have that for action to use for next year. Additionally, we also have an increase of $11,000. You can go to the next slide, please, Liz, to fund our website, new website platform. And it's an additional cost of $11,000 on top of the funds we already have for some software that will be replaced by the platform. So it's a minor increase and is sustainable over time. And we will be utilizing the E-1 fund balance or carry over for this budget. And we'll be doing some journaling of expenditures from measure HBSEP for this year one into the measure E-1. fund balance to create a greater fund balance in age to support this budget moving forward. And just a reminder that both BSEP and Barra contribute to this budget and their support for the measure oversight planning and planning and the P&O support. support for our school site councils, communications, community engagement, and information for the district. And that's the summary for this item.

I'm happy to move the staff recommendation to approve the 2026-2027 annual plan for communications, translation, and measure oversight annual plan.

I'll second.

Director Vasudev?

Yes.

Director Brown? Yes. Vice President corn. Yes, President Chang.

Alright, so filling in for assistant Superintendent Tobias Espinosa. We have director Billet here this evening to review the Barrett plan.

Good evening, board members and superintendent. As you know, BARRA funds are a local resource to support recruitment and retention of our workforce here in BUSD. The majority of those funds have been used annually to support educator compensation. That's 95% approximately, and the remaining 5% has been focused on recruitment for hard-to-staff positions and increasing opportunities for staff development. Next slide, please. As in other areas that have been mentioned this evening we have been deficit spending and bear recruitment retention and development that 5% that I was just referring to. And the focus this budget season has been on right sizing the budget prioritizing funding for required programming for teacher induction and be par. That's our peer assistance program for teachers that have been supported on grants that are now expiring. This slide shows the reductions in the middle column, which shifts into BARRA funding on the column furthest to the right. The biggest line item there is the $195,000 needed to support teacher induction, and that was previously paid for on the now-expiring Educator Effectiveness Grant and is an allowable use of BARRA funds. Next slide, please. These three charts are basically a line by line item detail for the proposed changes year over year. It's the last slide with the details broken down piece by piece. Can we perhaps pause on that one for just a second if folks have more time to look at it? I think we can go on. Thanks.

Yeah, any questions and then we'll ask for a vote.

Just quickly, I know I would love to hear you just talk briefly about the teacher induction, the shifts in funding to teacher induction, which I know is such a critical function of our district that we need to provide. support for new teachers through the teacher induction program. And I know that some of the funding that was being used for that is no longer available. And so that had to be shifted into Barra. I just wonder if you could describe that a little bit more.

So our teacher induction program supports new teachers, I think, and I'm looking at Joya in the back, she might have the number, I think it's about 42 teachers this year. That is inclusive of a contract that we pay for the professional learning plan in addition to training for mentors and stipends for mentors, and then part of an FTE to manage that whole program. And so again, that's a required function of a school district to ensure that we can clear credentials for our teachers and that we've got highly qualified instructors in front of our students. And that has been covered by the Educator Effectiveness Block Grant for the last five or six years, which as you mentioned, it expires this June.

Any further discussion or would anyone like to make a motion? If not, I move that we approve item 15.3, the annual plan for bearer recruitment, retention, and development. I'll second your motion.

Director Vasudev? Yes. Director Brown? Yes. Vice President Quarn?

Yes.

President Chang? Yes. Motion carries.

All right, and then that last slide is just action item of some next steps as we prepare to close out the school year and enact the plans moving forward.

Thank you again, Ms. Fleming, and thank you to all of the P&O. I know that that committee works really hard all year long, and we really appreciate it. And echo your appreciation to the taxpayers of Berkeley for all of this funding.

Thank you.

All right. That brings us to the end of our action items. There are three information items for the board to consider. And I'm told by Ms. Charez that we do have an extended union comment.

Local 21.

okay good evening president chang and members of the board of education my name is paula phillips and i'm deeply concerned uh from the local as a local 21 member i am standing before you tonight to urge this board to rescind the elimination of the class 5 professional development coordinator position When a school district faces a multimillion dollar deficit, its budget ceases to be a mere spreadsheet of numbers. It becomes a moral document. It stands as a direct, unvarnished statement of our core values. right now the choices laid out in this budget balancing process fill a community whose actions are deeply out of alignment with its slated principles of excellence equity and engagement let us look honestly at the stark disparity in who is being asked to bear the weight of this fiscal crisis on one hand our executive cabinet members have emerged from recent labor alignment reports with proposed retroactive salary increases for the upcoming school year and beyond, followed by an additional increase for the next year. While executive compensation is shielded and enhanced, our frontline classified professionals, the literal backbone of our daily operations are watching the floor being pulled out from under their departments. The recent final layoff notices target 12 vital employees, wiping out nearly 12 full-time equivalent positions to include my position as a classified professional development coordinator. Among these cuts, the elimination of the classified PD coordinator is perhaps the most egregious. Let's be entirely transparent about the history of this role. From the very beginning, my position was systematically undermined and set up for failure. It was constructed as a one person show, an isolated individual tasked with single handedly coordinating PD specialized training and compliance pathways for the entirety of the district's vast and diverse classified staff. And my work got even more complicated when the current superintendent and the associate superintendent pulled the rug from under me by pulling resources that I relied on for years to provide classified PD to the district's special ed paraprofessionals. Instead of treating my role with the structural gravity it deserved, instead of providing a team resources and the institutional backing necessary to make it thrive, the district left it underfunded and isolated. And now in a moment of fiscal strain, the district is using that manufactured, predictable struggle as a convenient excuse to eliminate the position entirely. Stripping away the single supervisory role dedicated to the growth and safety of our support staff sends a devastating, clear message to the workers who keep this district afloat. your growth is expendable what makes this pill even more bitter to swallow is the glaring political hypocrisy surrounding how these positions are handled look no further than the funding of the personnel commission's administrative assistant which was recently approved by the P&O committee. The motion to fund the specific position was made by Nicole Chabot. Yes, the exact same Nicole Chabot who sits on the committee working to eliminate the personnel commission with the ballot measure in 2028. We are witnessing a calculated game of political musical chairs with district funding. And I'm using musical chairs because that's what the superintendent categorized the funding cuts as a game of musical chairs, only not all of us were able to jockey for a chair or a seat in that game. While these political maneuvers take place in committee rooms, our schools are experiencing the immediate cascading operational strain of these staffing shortages. We see it clearly on the campuses like Thousand Oaks and Emerson. Because transitional kindergarten in the LEARNS program and the expansions require a strict one to 10 adult to student ratio in the LEARNS program specifically, an influx of 38 to 50 early childhood students means we are forced to pull four to five staff members to cover those classrooms exclusively for the LEARNS program. We are leaving our school sites without enough remaining personnel to safely cover first through fifth grade classes in the LEARNS program. We are stretching our remaining frontline workers to a dangerous breaking point, compromising student safety and safe and staff morale. Deficit planning is undeniably difficult and it requires hard choices, but a true commitment to equity means that those who have the least do not lose the most. Budget balancing should never be achieved by undermining our classified workforce, gutting their professional infrastructure, or playing political games with commission seats while shielding executive level allocations. Thank you.

Thank you. We appreciate your comments. Are there any other extended public comments? We have one online also miss chairs.

So I learned today. Well I heard today something I hope that is not true but is deeply concerning to me if it is that the admin assistant position for the district registrar had been eliminated. The district registrar's office is at Berkeley High, but as the name would imply, she's not just the registrar for Berkeley High's 3,200 students, but for the district's over 9,000 students. I'm given to understand that the hope is that new technology will make some of this work easier or faster, given past experiences with the district adopting new technology in the hopes that it would make work easier or faster I remain skeptical of this and I don't think that this is a wise decision thank you our last public comment this evening will be Kelly Grinstaff who's online

Hi there. Thanks for taking my comment. I would be there in person if I could, but I'm out of town as my mother has had a stroke recently and I'm staying with my dad. It's a difficult time for my family for that reason, but also because of what I want to raise right now. My son was one of the graduates who walked in his red gown on Friday, but we are not celebrating because he is very stressed out that he has one PE credit short of getting his diploma. This is not because he hasn't completed the PE requirements. In fact, he has exceeded them, but that an outside His ice hockey coach and outside coach who's unfamiliar with the paperwork did not get it in on time. And I have asked for a administrative accommodation so that that paperwork could be accepted, which is the last thing he needs for his diploma, which is a condition of his admission to university. Thank you, Ms. Grinstaff.

That concludes public comment. Are there any extended board member comments? Hearing none, we adjourn at 1033 p.m. Thanks, everyone.