San Francisco Unified School District Board - Regular Meeting

The regular meeting of the board of education for March 24th, 2026 is now called to order at 50:03 p.m. Roll call, please. Commissioner Ray here. Commissioner Alexander here. Vice President Healing here. President Kim here. Commissioner Weiss Ward here. Commissioner Gupta. Commissioner Fischer here. Six brother.

PFUSD will provide child care for regular board meetings and monitoring meetings on the first floor in the enrollment center at 555 Franklin Street from 6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. or the close of the meeting, whichever comes first. childc cares for families who will be attending the regular and monitoring board meetings. Space is limited and will be provided on a first come first- serve basis for children ages 3 to 10. Please contact the board office uh at 415241-6427 or board office sfusd.edu for any questions. At this time before the board goes into close session I call for any speakers to the close session items listed in the agenda. There will be a total of five minutes for speakers. Are there any speakers for public comment? No. I now resist this meeting at 5:04 p.m.

Good evening. We'll start with closed captioning American Sign Language translation services announcement. SFUSD will provide closed captioning American Sign Language ASL interpreter services throughout today's board meeting. Live transcription can be found here at sfusd.edu/board transcript. Attendees who wish to provide public comment to the board and would like an ASL interpreter can use the Q&A box in the Zoom app to type their name or handle and list the items on the agenda they would like to comment on. The attendee will need to have a functioning camera in order to communicate with the interpreter and board. When it is the attendees opportunity to provide comment, the Zoom host will promote the attendee to panelist and enable the attendees video. Any member of the public may email their comment with the agenda items identified in the comment to the board office at susd.edu edu by 2 pm the day of the meeting. If they do not wish to make the comment during the board meeting, the comments will be read into the record.

Interpretation. Go ahead.

Thank you. SFUD is offering interpretation services in Spanish and Cantonese. If you need interpretation, please dial the following phone number. After dialing, please use the P number. This message will be repeated in Spanish and Cantonese. Gracias canon interpreter please. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Hello and welcome to members of the public to the regular meeting of the board of education for San Francisco Unified School District. Um uh we will begin with item C, public comment. Our public comment period lasts for 1 hour today until uh let's do a little over 1 hour at 6 uh 7:45 p.m. We look forward to hearing from our public from the public before we conduct board business. Our goal is to conduct our work in an efficient, effective, and accessible manner during reasonable hours. We aim to respect staff, family, and community time by ensuring a move to board business as soon as possible. Each participant may speak for up to one minute. Staff will take the participant at the 1 minute mark. At 1 minute and 5 seconds, I've asked Mr. Trujillo to please turn off the mic and transition to the next speaker. I ask members of the public to please respect that one minute limit so we can hear from as many speakers as possible. I encourage speakers who are speaking on the same topic to collaborate and combine their comments so the board can hear all viewpoints during our limited time. Please also note that the board accepts written public comments via email to board office sfusd.edu. Um having connected with Mr. Trujillo. Uh before the meeting, I I it's my understanding we already have a significant number of comment cards. Um so if there are folks who would like to group their comments together, please do so. Um so that we can hear from as many people as possible. Um we will first hear from students in

person, the members of the general public in person, beginning with agenda items, then moving to non-aggenda items. Regardless of whether inerson public comment is complete, we will save 15 minutes for remote public comment to 7:30 p.m. taking commenters in the same order as in person. To the members of the public, on the right, you'll see signs that outline expectations for public comment and meeting conduct. We ask that all members uh uh of the public model the kind of tone, language, and behavior that we hope to see from our young people, respecting different viewpoints, and allowing for all members of the public to participate. As a reminder, board rules in California law do not allow us to respond to comments or attempt to answer questions during the public comment time. If appropriate, the superintendent will ask that staff follow up with speakers. Today, we also have representatives from United Educators of San Francisco who will be speaking um at the end of our public comment. Mr. Trio,

thank you, President Kim. We'll start with students. Please line up as I call your name. Emberly Garibi, Martha, Rafael, Jarius, Siknion, Angelo Ginto, press the button. Hi, my name is Emberly and I'm a fifth grader at Flynn Elementary. I have a math learning disability called disalculia. That means that sometimes math can be harder for my brain to understand. The teacher that helps me with math takes a lot of time to help understand me and how I learn. When I go to middle school next year, I hope to have someone else to keep me on track. I hope to get ahead in math with the extra help that I get in my IEP. Thank you. Uh, good evening. My name is Raphael and I'm with Johanna and I'm a student at Galileo. Uh, we are here because every student deserves to learn in an environment free from the fear of immigration enforcement. We're calling on super the superintendent Maria Sue and the board of education to meet with us youth parents and community groups to commit time of SFUSD collaborately create a school safety plan adopt the school safety plan in the board policy and then have all those school sites implement the school safety plan. Johanna has been collecting postcards from students, teachers, parents, and community leaders all across the city of San Francisco. So far, we've only gathered only a thousand to deliver to the board today. Uh, each of these postcards carries

personal messages, stories, fears, and hopes from students, parents, and community members explaining why we need safer schools. And these are real voices from our community, and they deserve to be heard. I I urge the board of education to meet with your Hana. Oh, thank you. Good evening. My name is Jay and I attend Galileo High School and I'm with Johanna. I'm here today to call on the board to establish all SFUSD schools as safe havens. Every students deserve to learn in an environment where they feel safe and supported without fear of immigr immigration enforcement. Right now many families and students are living with fear and uncertainty. This affects students mental health, participation, and ability to focus in school. Personally, this matters to me because I see how fear impacts students in our community. School should be a place where we feel safe and supported. We ask SFUSD to commit time to collaboratively create a school safety plan with youth, parents, and community groups. Adopt this plan into board policy and ensure all schools sites implement it. I urge the board to prioritize the safety and well-being of all students. Thank you.

Hello. Good evening everyone. My name is Angelo. I am also from Johanna. I am here because I want every student and their family to feel free from the fear of ICE and immigration enforcement. Many families and students are struck with fear and uncertainty towards ICE and this anxiety affects their daily life. Parents and students feel that their ordinary school routine might lead them to unexpected interactions against immigration authorities. And so I urge Superintendent Maria Sue to meet with Johanna safety youth parents and community groups to discuss about a school safety plan that we can adapt, implement, and commit to. Thank you.

Please line up as I call the next group of students. Sahari, Katherine, and then the group of eight that starts with Jalissa. So teacher, I don't know where you are, but that's the group that's coming up. Sahari.

Um, good evening board members. My name is Sahori. I'm a YAC member and I go to Jun Jordan High School. I am I am here today because our schools are lacking safety when our immigrant community is being attacked. Schools should be safe should be a safe place for us to learn. We already are going through a lot by getting educated in school districts that continues to put more money into the central office and cutting from our schools. We need to make a change and provide more services for our community to ensure they can succeed. I ask you to commit time to create a school safety plan to yan youth parents and community groups for our community to learn in a space that is supposed to celebrate diversity. Please fail Kim meet with the youth to ensure protection for the immigrant community. Thank you.

Good evening board members. My name is Katherine. I am a YAC member and I go to June Jordan School for Equity. I'm here today because across the school district, families and students are struggling with the increasing fear of uncertainty surrounding immigration enforcement. We watch the news and it makes me nervous. I know if it makes me nervous as a citizen, I cannot imagine how it feels for the rest of the undocumented community. This anxiety is not just an abstract concern. It's affecting daily lives in deepen and personal ways. Parents worry about dropping off their students off to school, fearing that the ordinary routine might lead to unexpected interactions with in with immigration authorities. We the youth worry about being racially profiled and being grabbed at our spaces such as school, safe spaces such as school. Please work with us and make school safety plan. Thank you. Hi dear Phil um Phil Kims. We are student from San Francisco International High School and we are tired about Yeah, we are tired about Maria Sue ignoring us. On January 13th for student from our school spoke at the board of education meeting. We're here to explain the impact of implementing the budget cut for immigrant students. On January 25th we come back for the same reasons. 40 student from our school spoke here and asked Maria Sue and the board to pass budget cuts and develop a plan together. And our classmate write hundred of emails and sent to you guys and there has been no response.

Hi, my name is Gabriella from San Francisco International High School. On January 27, 300 students, parents, neighbors, and teachers come to our school library and show their support of our school. We explaining why newcomers program are important for our education. We asked Maria Su and Bill Kim for a one-year P of the budget cuts and they were no answers. Hi, I am I am a student from San Francisco International High School and I am here today to for my school. Um, we invited Maria Su to our event last Thursday and conduct a solution with newcomer education in San Francisco, USD, but she ignored ignor us and didn't come. So we want to know if there is a plan for immigrant students because we have not here any plan for that and we are worried about how they make impact our public school. So we want you to pass the project cost to newcomer education and can make a plan together for newcomers students. Thank you.

Hi, I am Valyria. Um, as a newcomer student, I deeply understand that for newcomer students, it is very important to have a bilingual and well-trained teachers who can p patiently introduce a new language to the students. It's very scary to be in a new school, in a new country with a new language and come into a classroom where no one can understand you. In our school, you can learn together with English another English learners. We have group work that helps improve our English and there are always different translations for the keywords in class so everyone can understand moving to another country's challenge as support that helps you feel comfortable in The San Francisco International also the wellness center is a safe space where some students exclude including myself can you to tell to some when we meet

please remember to give us your name. Okay you start. Hi, my name is Melanie Gomez, a student at San Francisco International High School. Being in the United State always has been easy, would join sport and clubs has helped me feel comfortable and welcome. I had meet people from different countries, cultures and language and that make me feel proud. My school support student like me and that is very important. I will keep coming back and speak up for my school and for new immigrants students until we get the support we need. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Julisa and we are here again for advocate for budget cuts. Being a student in San Francisco International High School we has a big impact of my life has been I receive support from all the teacher counselor and other adults in a very special way. Thanks to them my knowledge and skills have been developed has ensured that we receive our strong foundation or education especially as the new arai immigrant students. It is difficult for us to adapt to a new environment has learning English and what makes SFI special is that our teacher have uh experience teaching in a multiple languages and we are learning together. I feel confident in in my academic purpose in this environment that provides me with everything I need emotional and academic support. I also want to share that I participate in programs where I learn about multicolorism and leadership. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Steven. Especially newcomers who need resource such as legal support or help with our housing. Many students come to the US without having a place to stay. SFI helped students who come to us be being homeless or can afford a lawyer to help them with their migratories process. We trust our teachers and counselors and we can talk to them in our language to get help. And in a a in SUSD, the enrollment center is making it difficult for new students to come to our school and to other newcomers programs, saying that we don't have any space or not telling families about schools for newcomers. We heard from a mom at Mission Education Center that the enrollment center tried to transfer her kid out of that program without her permission. We know that immigrants families value newcomers programs when they are giving good information and not misled. Thank you. Um, our school SF International has been recognized across California and the US as a model school, but now SFUSD is not helping immigrants when we need your support the most. NBC, Fox, Telmundo, Univision, Michel local, the Frisk and Elote are coming to our events because people want to know what is happening with immigrant students. We know that San Francisco community support us and we will not give up fighting for immigrant students. Phil Kim, since Maria Sue is ignoring us, we call on you to help us stop this attack on immigrant students. We invite you to meet with a small group of students at San Francisco

International High School on April 16 at 5:00 PM. We will also send you a formal email invitation and we hope you want to listen to us. Thank you.

Please line up the following students so I call your name. Estrea Flores and Mark Good evening. My name is Mark and I'm with Johanna. We are here because every student deserves to learn in an environment free from the fear of immigration enforcement. We're calling on Superintendent Maria Sue to meet with Johanna, youth, parents, and community groups to commit, adopt, and implement the school safety plan. Many students are scared to fully participate in school activities because of fears that they could be targeted or identified based on their immigration status. Again, I urge Superintendent Maria Su to Yana, youth, parents, and community groups. Thank you. Hello, I'm Mr. Flores Colleen, an eighth grader at BBHM. How many times have I been here? How many times have I been here fighting for my community, for my family? You ripped us away from the mission, saying that you were going to modernize our building, which we still don't know anything about that. And now when we barely got back on our knees, you came to our community and said, "We're taking away your money. We're taking away your people. We're taking away your family." And now, how am I supposed to feel knowing that next year another girl like me who had to learn English from scratch, not because I was an immigrant, but because I was born to immigrant parents. How am I supposed to feel knowing that there's another kid over there that is learning the bare minimum? How am I supposed to feel? You know, you don't get to do this. You don't get to

come to our community and tell us, "Oh, we're losing staff." No, you don't get to do that. You don't get to do that unless you come here. You come to our school and you're going to tell us why. You're going to look at our faces and tell us why and how. You're not going to get away from this scot-free.

We will now move to adults. Uh members of the public, uh please line up as I call your name. Mandi Rahimi, Autumn Brown, Garibai, I think, Denanisha Joy Coleman, Maya K, Paul Gallagher, Chanel Batwell, I think. I apologize.

Um, hi commissioners. My name is Mari Rahimi. I am the parent of an SFUSD kindergartener. Uh it is encouraging to see this board finally prioritizing literacy. We know that illiteracy is a policy choice. Uh success requires three pillars. A science-based phonics curriculum, comprehensive train teacher training on that curriculum, and rigorous accountability for all. The data presented tonight is deeply concerning. Onethird of our teachers are still not using the curriculum this board has spent millions on. My son is fortunate to have an incredible teacher this year and is thriving on reading. But a child's ability to read should not be luck of the draw based on which classroom they happen to be in. Our teachers work hard but they need the clarity and support of a unified system. That is why I support SF parents kids can't wait campaign. My question to the board is this. What is the specific plan to ensure every principal and every teacher is held accountable for using the approved curriculum consistently across every school? Our students cannot afford to wait. Thank you.

Good evening, commissioners. My name is Autumn Brown Gottibby. I am the parent of three SFUSD students and I'm here to talk about goal two for math. Um, I want to share my perspective on math math outcomes for students with learning disabilities like dcalculia. Discalcula is a learning disability that affects how people understand numbers and basic math concepts. It's not about effort. It's about how the brain processes math. I also want to say that the teachers and RSP staff at my child's school are doing an incredible job with the resources that they have and I see that every day. I also have dcalculia. I know what it's like to be given interventions that do not match how you learn. You keep trying but you don't make progress and you're left with gaps in your understanding. We know from the district's recent report that math outcomes have remained mostly flat and strong instruction isn't consistent across our classrooms. For students with learning disabilities, students like me and my child, that matters even more. What is needed is more consistent core instruction and support for teachers and RSP staff to better understand Discalculia. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Maya. I first stood here in the fall of 2013 pleading with the district not to delay algebra 1. The then superintendent would insult people during public comment. No, I'm not an elite Tiger mom who only cares about Ivy education. Fast forward, my kids graduated from a strong STEM college, not an Ivy or top 10. They moved back to the city and living their best lives. My concern was and remains equity. This means access to opportunities for the underresourced. District talks a good game which has done nothing to move the needle for the kids who depend on you. Every year, people have to stand here and beg for basics. You've left generations of talent behind. Yet, there's no sense of urgency, just a lot of performative grandstanding. The budget mess and associated enrollment decline as a result of years of foolish choices. Making more will not solve anything. Finally, to the 2013 board and central office, I told you so. Thank you.

Good evening, commissioners. My name is Miss Coleman and I'm a parent of a third grader in elementary school. For me, this is really about reading. However, I know there's a ton of things going on in the district. Um, third grade is such an important milestone and it's hard to hear that we are off track and that not all classrooms are using the curriculum consistently. If we know what works to teach kids to read, then every child should be getting that instruction, especially students who need the most support. I also know teachers need time and support to make that happen. This isn't about putting pressure on teachers. is about making sure the system is set up so they can succeed and so students can succeed. That's why I'm also supporting SF parents kids SF parents kids can't wait campaign. It focuses on making sure strong instruction is actually happening in classrooms not just planned at at the district level because our kids especially in the elementary school these years really matter.

Good evening. My name is Paul Gallagher and I've been teaching eighth grade math in SFUSD for 10 years. For the past two years at my school, about half our eighth graders have taken both math 8 and algebra 1. I had doubts going in, but what I've seen matches the Stanford research. Students make significant gains when they take both courses because they have more time, more support, and a stronger foundation. That's why I strongly support the expanded math model. But I want to be clear. This model works because students take math 8 and algebra together. If the students skip math 8, the model breaks. Math 8 includes essential topics like solving linear equations, slope, exponents, staging theorem, content algebra, algebra builds on but does not retach. So skipping math 8 is not acceleration. It's missing the foundation. I urge the board to adopt extended expanded math and ensure all students receive the full math aid experience. Thank you.

Hi Chanel Blackwell. It's been a minute and what that guy just said and also I just want to add it about the um the eighth grade math. Um it showed that the math data show that increasing curriculum use loan is not improving student outcome. The core issue is the students are not consistently experienced through math instruction, especially opportunity explain their thinking, engage in problem solving and work with grade level and contact. But um personally, I just want to say my son took eighth grade math last um year in um in middle school. And I realized that this year he had he struggled because he he skipped most he didn't get all the math that it should be. It should have been he should had some in sixth and seventh grade and then had the eighth grade math. So I urge you that to slow it down because I know there's a lot of kinks in the math but just to slow it down and have it in six and seven and then in eighth grade that child will be prepared and um so my son won't be the kids like my son did that he doesn't have to suffer this time and also I want to address additionally about the third grade um I noticed that the third grade is um the reader is not doing I mean is is decreasing and and if you don't have third grade math I mean you don't have third grade literacy how can you do eighth grade math so please get on the ball with that thank you

okay we will now move to non-aggenda items uh please line up as I call your name Jessica Agnos Dr. Christina Velasco, Harini Ada, Christopher Pepper, Naja Ahmed.

Hi, my name is Jessica Agnos. I'm a parent of two and a community schools coordinator at Star King as well as an SEIU steward. I want to stand in full support of newcomer programs, especially since they are overwhelmingly recipients of the student success fund to implement the community schools model. These sites are receiving voterapproved grant money because they serve our most vulnerable students. To undermine schools and programs identified to be recipients of this grant is also undermining the will of San Francisco voters. The questionable practices surrounding the enrollment of these programs is alarming for several reasons. Not the least of which is the climate of fear created by the federal administration now being upheld by the district. This is San Francisco. Our newcomer programs make SFUSD a shining example for the country and the world. It's a testament to the values we hold dear. These programs are highly specialized and designed to support students and families who need it desperately so they can thrive. We need these programs now more than ever to stand against the cruelty we see happening all around us. Thank you.

Good evening board. Dr. Sue, my name is Christina Velasco and I've served this district for 28 years as a teacher, coach, principal, and Tely leadership coach. I'm here to ask for a strong support to fully fund TEL. Tiele is not just a program. It's our leadership pipeline, a coherent strategy. If we are to honor our guardrail of inclusive decision-making, we must ask, have we actually included the voices of our leaders? Because if you ask 143 leaders that are currently serving at our schools, they would tell you that Tely matters. That Tely grounds itself and our leaders in an equity focused induction coaching program that is centered around our district's VBGs. Without it, ASFD would be the only Bay Area county without an equity centered leader induction program. This is not progress, it's a risk. And from a fiscal lens, research shows that replacing a single leader can cost over $75,000. And we know that this is not just a financial expense, it's an academic su uh expense. So, please consider inviting us to a conversation to fully fund our program.

Good evening. We start. My name is Hari Ara. This is my 18th year in this district and I am also a leadership coach with the Tele program which is a county program that provides coaching, professional development and clearing credentials to leaders that are new. Recently, we were told by executive cabinet member that funding for a program has been cut. I believe this is a detriment to the district reaching its goals for academic um for student academic achievement. Our program provides coaching around instructional leadership, strong team development, and we have um we have data that shows high impact on student achievement with a low cost. I ask that you follow guard rail one of inclusive decision-making by inviting us to learn about um to a conversation to learn about the program to invite teley leaders to talk about their experience with the program. We ask that you fully fund teley public records show county fund 5 has money. Thank you.

Hello. Welcome. Uh thank you for having us here. Uh my name is Christopher Pepper. I'm a teacher on special assignment in health education. Uh and I've been working for San Francisco Unified for 24 years. Um as a ninth grade health education teacher at Lincoln High School and at Balboa High School, um I often found that students were arriving in my class. Um having not had much if any formal health education at that point. So they were coming into 9th grade and some of them had never had any anyone actually tell them how puberty happens. um explain facts about pregnancy, explain menration, um talk about substance use. So they were learning those that information from their peers, from um from the the environment around them. Um we have made great strides to incorporate that into middle school health classes at this point. But I'm here to say um that we are facing a crisis where right now we have 11 middle schools that have formal health classes on their schedule and next year we're looking at having two two schools that have health classes. Please address that issue. It feels like a crisis. Please line up as I call your name. Katrina Killo Darius Ram Chris Chilson Mason Waller. Hi, my name is Katrina Kabiler. I'm also a health teacher on special assignment as well as an SFUSD parent. Um I'm here to continue talking about um the proposed cuts to middle grade health education. While they may not be formally on paper, um there is no funding to support our health education in middle school. The vast majority of our dedicated middle school credentialed health teachers have been told that

there's no room in their school site budget for them next year. Um, additionally, the the district recently shared that they're keeping the seventh period in middle grades, meaning that there is space in the agenda for a middle-grade health course, but there is not budget at those sites to keep those teachers. So, if there is an extra period, where is the funding to support that extra period? Are the kids just going to sit around for a period? Um, so without a dedicated health course, young people will get their health education from somewhere. I just went to the common sense summit. Kids are going to get false information from AI chat bots if they don't have adequate people to talk to. That's how kids die. Hello board. Good evening. My name is Darius. My parents were both teachers. They couldn't afford to buy a house. They had to build their own house. And I couldn't understand why until years later after the payroll debacle in 2022, I joined SFUSD as a data engineer to help with taxes and retirement data. What I saw from inside was outrageous. Expensive systems spitting out wrong paychecks, consultants that don't deliver, and payroll leadership that gives overtime just to lay off our teachers. Here is an audit report from state retirement system from seven years ago. And until this moment, we haven't even fixed one of the audit issues we found. The next one is my co-founder actually. So I

thank you for your comment. That concludes your time here. This is my co-founder. Come here. Is the next person. Is that him? Yeah, that's him. Run. Okay. Yeah. So how much how are I'm sorry if he gets to speak. So, one person. Sorry. Yeah. Okay, we're good. Thank you.

Good evening, Dr. Sue. Board members. Uh my name is Chris Chisum. I'm a teacher at Galileo High School and I'm here to advocate for the retention of Dr. Rogers as site supervisor at Galileo. She's the foresight supervisor that I've seen at the school and she's by far the best. She's a powerful leader, educator, and a fierce advocate for students, for staff, and for the school in general. Uh, every time I hear about Galileo, including the outstanding students that spoke before you today, I'm filled with pride knowing that uh there at least in part due to the outstanding leadership of Dr. Rogers. and uh I hope that you will have the uh the good sense to retain her. Thank you very much.

Good evening. I think it's time people in this district stop saying that they actually care about transparency and inclusion. President Kim, you responded at public comments the last board meeting by saying people were confused if they were concerned about losing the support of their bilingual staff because bilingual staff wasn't on the agenda for that meeting and the district doesn't intend to get rid of any. And Dr. Sue, you agreed. Dr. Sue, you are literally planning to cut newcomer programs. That's bilingual support. And it doesn't take much imagination to see that it's at least related. And when it comes to it's not the district's intent, was it the district's intent to agree to an 8-hour workday for T10 security and then turn around and send a bunch of layoff notices to T10 security? All this says is you and admin want to be the ultimate arbiters of every decision. You have the power to do just that. And everyone else who doesn't have that power can just pound sand. Stop pretending. You don't genuinely value transparency or inclusion. You just don't include anyone in any information or any decision unless you're forced to or you already agree with them.

Please line up as I call your name. Ja Ortiz, Claudia, uh, Baldivia, Blanca,

Roberto G or Roberto G, I'm not sure. Uh, Dina Pluck. Hi, my name is Hilma Ortiz and I am a retired teacher of 38 years in this district. I worked my first year at Newcomer Center at Mission Education Center. I was also proud to finish my career my last four years there and I'm here because the district is dismantling this newcomer program. This newcomer program had hundreds of students. Uh this year has 11 and the projection is zero for next year. This is unacceptable. MEC is a place where students can receive uh I'm sorry, I'm just emotional. receive the resources that they need to transition into the system educational system and also to acclimate to this city and to this educational system. I asked the district to restore these services and actually provide a safe haven at this very critical time in our history, especially here in San Francisco where we claim to be supporters of immigrants. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Claudia Olivia. I'm a speech language pathologist and I'm here to also represent the coalition of the safe schools committee. So I hope everyone on this board already knows that the district has uh proposed to close MEC and slash the budgets of SF International and Viz Valley Middle. At our meeting uh two weeks ago or so uh you said that it was because parents are no longer choosing to attend newcomer schools. That's been the justification. However, we have numerous accounts of the following. Many parents have told us this that they are not told about MEC or other uh newcomer schools when they come. Um and so you know that's not parent choice if they don't know it exists that we're full. We have 11 students. We're not full. That we're not good schools. Actually when they tried like oh I want to go to MEC. Oh that's a bad school. You shouldn't go there. We have multiple accounts of that. And also in October on a Wednesday, suddenly EPC called the 15 students that we had at that time that they were uh suddenly unenrolled at MEC. I don't know if you board members know that that happened, but our our parents received a phone call. That's not transparency. Phil Kim, I'll I'll be g- chatting you a message. Uh there'll be a studentled conversation where we hope to get your support uh in trying to get these budget cuts stopped. Good evening, Board of Education members and superintendent Dr. Maria Su. My name is Blanca Catalan and I'm a I'm a mother of three students at SFUSD. My little one has an IP and I'm here today in support of having a strong safety plan for students and family regarding immigration inforcement. As parents, we need clear two-way communication between the district and our communities because when students and families feel safe, they show up to school. They engage and they succeed. Families across the district are already facing fear and

uncert uncertainty uncertainity. Schools should be safe spaces where every child feels protected and welcomed regardless of immigration status. I also want to highlight the importance of the program like Tilly. Tie is a mentorship is is essential especially in our city as a diverse and culturally rich as ours. Through this program principles have received support from them. Please adopt a heaven um safety plan. Many principles have gone through the TI program and 143 of them have remained in in the district. With the great need that we have for teachers, it's essential that we continue working arduously for more programs like this one to continue growing and becoming stronger. My name is Roberto Guusman and I'm a parent of three students at Guadalupe Elementary. You are presenting a monitoring workshop, but monitoring is not taking action. Under guardrail one,

you say student outcomes for the most undeserved students are the priority. So I ask, what is changing tomorrow for Latino students who are 78 points below standard and for students with disabilities who are over 100% 100 points below standard? under guardrail 5. You say that families are being engaged, but where is the proof that our input is actually changing your decisions? under LCAP, you are required to increase or improve services for those priority students. So, how are services improving when schools are losing bilingual staff and access to programs?

Because here's the reality. Funding does not mean implementing. You approve positions that remain vacant. You approve services that never reach students. So I ask you directly, what corrective action will you take and when to ensure these services are actually delivered because our students cannot wait. Their education is right now.

Thank you. My name is Dana Pluck. I'm a parent of a former SFUSD High School student, class of 2024. She has a open legal Title 9 case against the district and her former coach. To date, it has not been discussed. It has not been listed as a closed session agenda item with the board. The SFUSD legal team has not responded to many attempts to resolve this matter and I would like to know why this has been ignored and when it will be addressed. Thank you. Please line up as I call your name. Uh oops, sorry. Suvia Dolan, I think Manuel de LaRosa, Genesis Sanchez. Uh, Raman, Ramen or Damon, I think. Ahelica Cavande, Maria Moreno, and Tana Tiller.

Hi. First of all, thank you for taking the time to listen to us. Um, I'll try to make this quick. Uh, I hope that you have received a number of letters from parents at Bryant. Uh, we received the horrible news that essentially the heart of our community is being ripped out of our school. During the strike, I worked with mission grads to help make sure that kids were taken care of. Hearing people talk about ICE, that's who we would work with. And I'm sorry, I'm getting a little emotional. I also am uh quite scared of talking publicly about this. There is a culture of fear at the school that needs to change. I want to acknowledge how brave it is of all the parents who are showing up. A lot of them are on Zoom. It's hard to get here in person. Um, but this is the tip of an iceberg. Um, I I want to take a minute to say how much I love my community, how grateful I am. I'm I'm sorry. My name is Siobhan Dolan. I'm a parent of a second grader who has been there since preK in the biliteracy program. I want to say thank you to all the teachers. He's receiving a wonderful education. I'm grateful for the opportunity that he's had in a public system. However, outside your comment that concludes your time. struggle Bryant. Hi, my name is Manuel Dear Rosa. I'm a parent of a student at Bryant in the second grade. I'm here to express my concern regarding um the community

involvement in the process by which the selection was made for the new provider of the uh Beacon program at the school. The community was excluded from this process. Families deserve to know what decision was being made and to participate in the process. None of this happened. Bacon. Beacon. was done by the district and the school was a single survey emailed that made no mention of Beacon and it was decided on a contract. It was deciding on a contract for a relevant extracurricular. This is not participation by the community. This is the appearance of it. Confidential.

When parents asked questions about and shared their concerns during the school site council meeting, the response was historically this is not shared. It's a confidential process. This raises serious doubts regarding participation by the community at a school that is significant significant and was not supported adequately. We respectfully ask that there is a revision made in the evaluation of participation in the community at at Bryant. Buenos is Hennessy Sanchez and Brian Elementary School.

Good evening. My name is Hennes Hennessy Sanchez and I have three children at Bryant Elementary School. I'm here because I am concerned about the security of my children because um I spoke out related to immigration issues. My children have been harassed. Brian, I've spoken with the principal twice and I don't feel like I'm being heard as a mother. I'm afraid for the security of my children. Uh, we'll see. It's okay. I'm also afraid for my children's safety because the people who have targeted my children have relatives that work at the school And I feel like that is the reason why I have not been listened to as a mother. I feel that my rights have been violated.

That's everything. Thank you.

Good evening. U my name is Ramon and I'm with Johanna and as well as Sans of Market Community Action Network. Again, we just want to remind you Yana has been collecting postcards from students, teachers, parents, and community members all across the city. So far, they have gathered over thousands of postcards to deliver to you today. So, please would love for you guys to read the message from our uh from the students, teachers, parents, and community members. Each of those postcards carry personal message, stories, fears, and hope from students, parents, and community members explaining why we need a safer school. Those real those are the real voice from our community. They deserve to be heard. Again, we are all here because every student is deserve to learn in an environment free from fear of immigration enforcement. where calling superintendent Maria Sue to meet with the ask the youth uh Maria the parents and community groups to commute time to SF USA to collaboratively create a school safety plan adapt school safety plan in the board policy and have all school sites implement the school safety plan. So again please respond to our email we have been emailing you for months now. Thank you for your time.

Good evening. My name is Angelo Kabani. I'm the director of SAM CAN. Since 2007, the board of education has adopted numerous resolutions, including the commitment to the education of all immigrant children and opposition to recent ICE raids. For 19 years to date, there has been little to no clear comm communications to families and staff about how these policies are being implemented in practice from the staff level to student level. That is why we are demanding superintendent Maria Sue to meet with and commit time of uh the school district to collaboratively create a school safety plan with our youth group Yuana students, parents and community groups. And after we collectively create a detailed plan, we want to come back here and have you board of education members to adopt the school safety plan. And after that's voted, we want to have the uh that all implemented in all across the school site. Let's not wait until another plan of massive ICE deployment in San Francisco for us to act. Prioritizing safety of our immigrant students is prioritizing the safety of all students, their families, and all the staff of SFUSD. Thank you. Hi. Um, good evening. My name is Maria and I'm the campaign director with Jobs of Justice San Francisco and I'm working with organizations like Saman and unions like United Educators of San Francisco across um the city. I've been helping family schools and concerned community members organize school patrols to keep eyes watch at different schools in an effort to help students and their families feel safe. I'm here because this is only one part of a safety plan that many schools have had to figure out themselves in the absence of a more structured plan. The district of a sanctuary city should be guiding the

way. We demand the district to meet with Johanna and other community groups to figure out a real plan and implementation across the district to help schools feel like safe havens. And separately, I also want to ask for full funding for newcomer programs since our families have enough to worry about with ICE on the street. Their kids should their kids should get the resources they need at school. Thank you. Tiana, Tiana, I'm sorry. Can we go to online public comment and have you come at the end? Oh, that'd be great. Thank you.

My apologies. Okay. We will now move to Zoom public comment. If you are a student and would like to speak in Zoom, please raise your hand. Once again, if you are a student and would like to speak, please raise your hand. Interpretation, go ahead. Thank you.

Okay, Julieta, we'll hear from you. Go ahead and unmute. Pleta Miranda, we can't hear you if you're speaking. Okay, Julita, we'll have to come back. We'll now move to members of the public on Zoom that would like to speak. Please raise your hand if you're a member of the public and would like to speak. We'll start with Miss Marshall. Miss Marshall, go ahead and unmute.

Thank you so much to President Kim, Commissioners, Dr. Sue, on behalf of the San Francisco branch of the NACP, we strongly urge and encourage you to make sure the uh to use equity as a center and make sure every student SFUSD concurrently enroll in math and algebra. Of course, they'll need to have a credential math teacher and support for those who might need the extra help. In the words of the Reverend late Jesse Jackson, he taught us, he taught us to say this mantra. I am somebody. Our students can say that mantra because they can learn mathematics. It's not just for one ethnic group. It's for every child in SFUSD. But they will need support. And also I'm dist we are disturbed to hear that health is only taught in two schools. You must provide health classes for every SFUSD high school student. Thank you so much.

Thank you. We'll go back to Julieta. Julieta microphone. Julieta. Okay, sorry. We'll go with Gina Cargus. Go ahead, Gina.

Hi. Um, my name is Gina Cargus. I am the teacher librarian at Aptos Middle School. Um, and I wanted to talk about the new proposal to increase instructional minutes in middle school to 220. Um, at my school and at most others, the only way to make this happen is to cut lunch to 30 minutes. This does a huge disservice to our students, their physical, their academic, their social, emotional development and well-being. It already takes them like 15 minutes to get through the lunch line. So, that is giving them almost no time to eat and almost no break for the entire day. I don't know if you've ever tried to teach a 13-year-old who hasn't had time to like run around, play, or socialize for hours, but it is not an easy task. This proposal completely neglects the needs of our students, especially those who are neurode divergent um and need a break from the intensity of what will now be maybe four straight hours of classes. Um please reconsider. Um I know the board does not vote on this, but you do have the power district. Thank you. We'll now hear from Erin Ancliffe. Erin, go ahead and unmute. Erin, can you

uh can you hear me? Yes. Go ahead.

Great. Thank you. Uh my name is Aaron and I'm an SFUSD parent and I'm here to speak about the proposed elimination of the KTO to five Spanish newcomer program at Mission Ed Center. Um and more importantly, how that decision is being handled. Um, so MEC has served Spanish speaking families for over 50 years and yet staff and families only learned that the program was being cut when the preliminary budget arrived with zero teachers budgeted. So I think this was not just a process failure, it was deeply disrespectful to the community at MEC and especially to the staff that were working with these families every day. So, we are left trying to piece together what's happening without a clear understanding of any of the reasons and rationale behind these decisions. Um, I did some public data analysis which suggested that eliminating this program may actually lose the district over a million dollars annually in grants and funding. So, it doesn't seem like we're eliminating the program for budget reasons. We're being told that declining enrollment is the reason for closing it, but there's been no transparent investigation into why. Thank you for a comment. That concludes your time.

Thank you. We'll now hear from Bernice Casey. Bernice, go ahead and unmute.

Hello, my name is Bernice Casey. I'm a parent of two SFUSD schools students. Um, unlike the other people who have come, I really applaud them coming. I'm just asking you to be honest and quit saying things that you are allocating your resources effectively, that you are effectively working with communities, that you are being transparent. You are not you are not prioritizing the children that need the most protection. Visitation Valley kids have shown up multiple times. I started crying today seeing the San Francisco International kids here again. Dr. Sue is not engaging with them. What are you as seated board members doing to ensure that you're actually living up to these guard rails, these vision you've heard from all of these communities that are being ignored by your administrator that you put in position of power. And I don't hear any of you saying what you're going to do to meet the

need for a comment. That concludes your time. You think they entered on purpose? No. We'll now go to Elliot. Um, Kent, please go ahead and unmute. Are you going into work tomorrow? Yeah. Elliot. Uh, my name is Elliot Kheram and I'm speaking on behalf of the SF Parent Coalition. We've seen the data. SFUSD is off track in both reading and math and the pattern is clear. The district has taken important steps by adopting new curriculum and investing screen. You can play battleship.

But these efforts are not yet reaching students consistently across classrooms. We know that access to highquality instructional materials is important part of the solution, but it's not enough on its own. What's needed is greater coherence, clear expectations for instruction, consistent implementation across all schools, and strong ongoing support for teachers to deliver high quality instruction every day. We also need a complete picture. The math report included elementary classroom observations, but all data was not shared. Families deserve transparency across grades. Parents are ready to be partners in this work, but we need but we need clarity, consistency, and urgency. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now hear from Maria Angie Moreno. Maria, go ahead and unmute.

Hello. Uh my name is Angie Moreno and I am the wellness health education youth leadership coordinator. Uh I work supporting secondary schools and I really just want to uh emphasize the importance of saving our health classes in our middle schools uh and the impact that it would be if we are not able to fund those classes and um have teachers uh support students who are going through this very very very important transition in their lives uh in adolescence from puberty to questioning and all these different things that our students go through and not having somebody that can provide them the proper information and them getting it elsewhere is very dangerous and is very irresponsible from the district honestly as as educators. So, I really want to emphasize the importance of saving our health teachers in middle schools and making sure we find some sort of funding. I also want to emphasize the importance of saving all our newcomer programs. As somebody from the Latinx community, it is very important that we have these resources and we have all these programs to support our students and our families that are being targeted by the government. And I feel like the district's doing the same that they're targeting our families because of underdocumentation and not understanding how the systems and the structures of this country works.

Thank you for your comment. That is your time. We'll now hear from Sara Mezin as a last comment on public. Sarah Meskin, go ahead and unmute.

Hi, my name is Sarah Mezcin. Um, I am a educator myself and I'm also the president um the PTSA president at James Lake. Um, first of all, I want to thank SFUSD for um, you know, kind of reinstating the seven period schedule. I think it's important for kids to have access to electives. I'm here to speak on the new math placement policy. I think this is a really good step um in the right direction in terms of attempting to expand access to algebra, but I have concerns um with the roll out and how it's going to work. Um the plan seems really convoluted. It seems really complicated. I'm someone who pays attention to this stuff and understands the public system and I think that it is going to be hard for people to access information and to kind of figure out what path they want to take. Um, I think that access to algebra in middle school should not be um, you know, only for kids whose parents are able to navigate the system. Um, I think parents really need a clear and transparent explanation of how this is going to work. I also have concerns about how this is going to impact kids in terms of scheduling. Um, and so I would personally like to hear more from San Francisco Unified about how they're going to roll.

Thank you for your comment. That concludes your time. 74. Hey y'all. Hey. Good to see everybody here tonight. So, for those of you who don't know me know my name is Tiana Tilly. I'm the vice president of PAR educators. I'm also a longtime uh PAR educator here at SFUSD and I'm here tonight not just frustrated, I'm exhausted. This is my fifth year standing at the podium talking about PAR educator layoffs. The fifth year the same conversation, the fifth year of the same fear. Fifth year of preliminary layoff notices being sent to the lowest paid workers in this district. And this year, the frustration is even greater because the wrong pair of educators received layoff notices based on seniority. People with more seniority received notices while people with lessen seniority did not. That mistake has caused panic, confusion, real emotional harm at school sites across this district. But tonight, I also want to talk about something that is not being talked about enough. the impact on students. When a PAR educator receives a layoff notice, it is not it does not just affect the one adult. It affects the students they work with every single day. PAR educators are often the adults who work with our most vulnerable students. Students who need extra help learning to read, extra help in math, extra help managing their behavior, extra help feeling safe at school. They

run small groups. They provide one-on-one support. They step in when a student is overwhelmed. They build relationships with students who sometimes trust them more than anyone else on campus. At Charles Brown, excuse me, at Charles Drew, educators are running small group learning centers with well-developed lesson plans, site words, and interactive boards. They're providing targeted instruction and intervention to students who are behind and trying to catch up. So when you send those preliminary layoff notices to PAR educators, you're not just sending a letter to an employee. You're sending a message to the students who depend on them that the support they receive might disappear. And let's talk about what happens when par educators leave because they do leave. This constant cycle of preliminary notices is causing what we call layoff notice fatigue. And experienced PAR educators are leaving this district for more stable jobs. When they leave, students lose small groupoup instruction, one-on-one academic support, behavior support, relationshipbased support from adults that they trust. um safe campuses supported by security. And those losses show up in classrooms. They show up in behavior. They show up in attendance. They show up in academic outcomes. So when we talk about layoffs, we cannot just talk about budgets. We have to talk about students because the real impact of these uh potential layoffs will be felt by students first and hardest. And now on top of all this, we have PAR educators who received preliminary notices who should not have received them based on seniority. And we're telling them to go through the

hearings to fix a mistake that they did not make. Yes, we're recommending for our PAR educators to request a hearing because they have the right to defend their jobs. But let's be honest, many of these hearings should not even be necessary. So tonight, I'm asking the board and the district fix the seniority list, fix the mistakes, resend the layoff notices for the PAR educators because this is not just about employees. This is about students. This is about stability. This is the kind of school system we want to be. Once again, this is my fifth year standing here asking you to protect our PAR educators and the students they serve. And I'm asking you again tonight, please do the right thing and resend these notices. Thank you. Thank you to members of the public um and especially our students for joining us tonight to share your experiences and perspectives. Um, as a reminder, board rules in California law do not allow us to respond to comments or enter or answer questions during public comment time, but we thank you for taking the time to be with us here today, both in person and virtually. The superintendent and her team are tasked with providing a draft of each agenda 12 days in advance for board members to review. Once that agenda is made public on our website, board members have submitted clarifying and technical questions, and staff have responded to those questions in advance of each board meeting. This Q&A doc is linked into each board agenda on board docs today linked in item H1. We invite the public to view these questions and answers alongside our discussions today. Additionally, to create more space focused on student outcomes, we will be moving most of our items to consent and identifying our highest priority agendas to discuss. Uh board members are reminded not to restate questions in advance uh answered in advance by staff, but instead to bring forward strategic questions that allow us to better

understand our progress towards goals and the underlying strategy so we can better be better informed in our decision-m and partner with the superintendent as we hold her accountable. Moving to item D, report from close session. In the matters of anticipated litigation concerning KW and the board by a vote of five eyes, the commissioners and commissioners Fischer and Huang voting nay. The board gives direction to the general counsel. In two matters regarding employee discipline, dismissal and release. The board by a vote of seven eyes agrees to accept the resignation of employees 17147 and 041074 through settle settlement agreement that gives direction to the general counsel. Okay. Moving to item E1 uh workshop on student outcomes goal one third grade literacy and interimm guardrail 3.2 use of data for instructional improvement. And I call on the superintendent uh to bring this item forward.

What's up? I'm listening to this meeting. Sarah, can you Sorry.

Uh I'm sorry. This is the interpreter, I believe. Oh, okay. Uh Sarah Maskin was still uh with her mic on, but it seems that she's done. Thank you. That's okay. Yes, we muted them now. Sorry about that.

Thank you, President Kim. Um as the team starts to approach the dis um I want to to introduce the the uh presentation of goal three. Um, in tonight's presentation, it's a little bit longer than our usual goal three presentation because we want to spend some time diving deeper into where I'm sorry, goal one. Oh, third grade. Third grade goal one. This is why math is so important. Sorry. Um, yes. uh we wanted to spend um a little extra time diving into the data really looking at where we are doing well and trying to understand and learn on where we can do better. um as as we've heard from public comments, there are lots of lots of room to grow and I just want to start to acknowledge that and I know that um there's a lot of willingness and a strong desire for us to continue to push the needle forward to grow to make sure that we reach uh the targets that we have laid for ourselves um and and more importantly to fulfill the promise that we've made to our families and to our young people. Um, so with that, I'm going to hand it over to the team to to Jeff Ray.

Dr. S, is this Dr. Herrera presenting on this item as well? Is this the one? Okay. Okay. So, let me spotlight. Give me one second, please. Sorry. And uh Dr. um Christy Herrera is um on Zoom. So, she we'll have a virtual person and then we'll have um the rest of our team here.

But maybe Jess, you can just start. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Sue, and good evening, board commissioners and members of the public. My name is Jess Reyes in research planning and assessment. On behalf of the team here, we're grateful for the opportunity to share this goal one progress monitoring report. Next slide, please. Great. So, we begin with our vision, values, goals, and guardrails grounding this update in goal one, grade three literacy, and in interim guardrail 3.2, two which is around the use of data. This report brings together three key data resources. The winter star results, December educator survey data and January instructional walkthrough observations. The intent is to connect um instructional practice to student outcomes by examining patterns in classroom practice and how they align with student literacy results. A side note, interimm guardrail 3.2 two sits within guard rail 3 but is reported separately based on the data availability. Moreover, this work is directly aligned with goal one through PD and data cycles tied to the star assessment windows. And with that, I will hand it over to my colleague Moonhawk Kim to walk through the data. Thank you, Jess. Good evening, commissioners and good evening superintendent Sue. Um following the usual structure, we will start with data but we'll be more intentional uh next slide please actually in displaying the theory of action to connect the dots across our narrative as we go through the presentation. So we're starting from the far right side of the theory of action with the impact on student outcomes and we will work backwards and you will see this slide pop up throughout the presentation to anchor us. Next slide please. Overall we have mixed results. Um as you can see uh the overall goal one on the far left

decreased slightly um as did interim goal 1.3 for third grade eelss. Uh on the other hand we have uh noticeable gains for 1.1 uh which is a kindergarten African-American and Pacific Islander students star early literacy assessment as well as for goal one point interim goal 1.2 uh for first graders. um grade one uh is especially to celebrate given not only the the continued growth but um uh we can actually see the the parallel lines compared to the previous cohort's uh progress through last year. One thing to note uh as we noted in the report is that the teacher strike in February uh likely affected student learning and certainly interrupted the assessment administration. uh but of course trying to understand exactly the amount uh of that impact in that counterfactual is is challenging since we don't have that alternate scenario of what might have happened. Next slide please. This is uh the infringard rail 3.2 that that just talked about. Uh so it's measured through a by-anual survey asking teachers throughout the district and what this shows is the percentage of teachers who responded that they independently reviewed data and monitored progress for continuous improvement of instruction um at least a few times a month or more frequently. So uh the data coming at data from at the end of last school year June 2025 we came in at 57% uh districtwide and that increase notably uh in the December 2025 data uh to 67% of teachers responding in that manner. The target that we have set for the end of this year is 62%. So yes, we are already higher, but of course depending on how the survey results come back in June, uh we might be lower or

higher, but we are uh seeing some good gains. And as Jess will talk about more later, um our continued PD implementation has been very um fruitful. So we expect to see continued growth. And next slide. And with that, I will actually hand it off to Deon. Thank you. Good evening, commissioners. Um, as previously spoken to by my colleagues in research planning and assessment for this progress monitoring report, we wanted to make clear and more transparent for the audience and for the commissioners the relationship between each component of the theory of action and how our work associated um with organizational change and building consistency and coherence impacts student outcomes. Um so as was just spoken to um the team highlighted the current data that we have with regards to winter administration and the impact on goals one 1.1 1.2 and 1.3 um as we talk about often and student outcomes focused governance um student outcomes are are a result of adult behaviors and so we wanted to start by explicitly building the connection between highquality instructional practice and its relationship to our student outcomes. So in this section um we are going to start by highlighting data from our um January round of learning walks. So as a quick reminder SFUSD contracts with TNTP for a series of external learning walks across K8 classrooms in language and literacy and math. Um those learning walks are conducted in September, in January and just concluded in March. Um, we do run these external learning walks concurrently to district-ledd learning walks with SFUSD staff. And the purpose of this is having two systems that can support our understanding of calibration, how well our site educators are aligned to what

we might consider our external auditors to help us understand how better to support professional learning and instructional practice in classrooms. Next slide, please. Um so the first series of data points and I apologize for the very small text even though that slide is quite large. Um is a series of data points related to essential content um both in the areas of reading foundational skills and comprehension. Um year one is the sum of last year's 2425 learning walk data and year two refers to the sum of the September in addition to January learning walk data. Um so across both of these from year one to year two it's meant to demonstrate how implementation and high quality instructional practice has tracked over time. Um in these areas you can see both some relative areas of strength as well as growth in the areas of essential content. Um we have seen especially in comparison to our initial audit um some significant growth in the foundational skills observed in the lesson making sense for the grade and time of year. um we do want to build that connection to some of the growth we've seen in goals 1.1 with kindergarteners and 1.2 with first graders. Um and similarly where students spend the majority of time reading, listening, speaking and writing about mentor focal texts. Um similarly we do see that is related to highquality instructional materials with the adoption. We can go to the next slide. However, there is significant growth needed within the areas related to academic ownership both across reading foundational skills and reading comprehension. Um, as noted in the slide, these were not observed and the data was not collected in the 2425 school year. So, this is um the first year in which we are comprehensively collecting this data. Um, as you can see across almost every indicator, there is need for significant growth. Um, and just as sort of the background to keep

in mind, academic ownership refers to students having opportunities to carry the cognitive load in the classroom. Also rece referred to as opportunities for practice. Um, in prior presentations, this has also been referred to as significant opportunities for students to have at bats. Um, where they can demonstrate that practice and receive corrective feedback as appropriate. If we can go to the next slide. So, in order to even deeper articulate the relationship between student outcomes and these highquality instructional practices that we want to improve within the classroom, um we wanted to start by focusing in on our third graders both in terms of overarching goal three as well as 3.3 third grade multilingual learners. Um so within the STAR assessment, we wanted to first start by demonstrating the difference in proficiency for these groups across the various language and literacy domains within STAR. Um and these refer to the different components of the standards in this case specific um to language and reading comprehension. Um so we are looking at our current third graders their winter their fall and then actually their second grade data as well. And you can see both overall and then multilingual learners. Um so if we start by identifying those two domains where the proficiency lands um either below or significantly below the overall proficiency rate those two domains are both related to the comprehension offormational text um so non-fiction um and then specifically related to student depth of understanding in terms of craft and structure and then integration of knowledge and ideas. We can go to the next slide. When we compare this relationship between student proficiency on these domains to high quality instructional practices, oh, I'm sorry, going too fast. Um, we begin to see the ways in which instructional practice can impact student outcomes. So, these are some of

our lowest indicators um specifically related to academic ownership. So the idea of text dependent questions and tasks, students having the opportunity to share explanation and understanding um and again really that emphasis on students carrying the cognitive load within the classroom. We can go to the next slide. And when we consider um how this is related to use of data, we want to make sure that we highlight not just the ways in which teachers are disagregating and understanding student proficiency, but using that at a site level to inform instructional practice. Yeah. So connecting adult actions to student outcomes is a key leadership skill. And for the third year, RPA and LEAD have led uh use of data PDS which occur when the star results are available and focus on collecting implementation data, linking practice to results and informing next steps. The working assumption here is that strengthening leaders data use supports stronger teacher practice which in turn contributes to improved instruction. And as part of this work, leaders engage their ILTs in data review cycles, sharing their artifacts and reflections. And the percentage of sites that were submitting their data analysis artifacts has increased from 41% in the fall of 2324 to 53% in fall 2526. So a nice increase. Next slide, please. So again, to continue down with our theory of action, in order to change student outcomes, we want to see increases specifically in the highquality instructional practices that our students need most in order to shift that proficiency. Um shifting those instructional practices means number one

use of data but it also means ensuring that the site conditions are present in order to make the work of instructional coherence, instructional vision um and instructional consistency happen. And so that is related to not just centralized opportunities for professional learning but also site-based instructional leadership, instructional leadership teams, teacher collaboration, individual coaching and again as named using student data for progress monitoring. If we can go to the next slide. So if we take a deeper look um at our site implementation tracking in relationship to goal one, we do see some inconsistency in terms of ensuring that the conditions are present across all sites for teachers to focus on high quality instructional practices through things like teacher collaboration, one-to-one coaching, having sufficient instructional minutes or engaging in lesson and unit internalization. Um where we see inconsistency in these implementation actions, we do realize that we need to shift our centralized systems support and organizational coherence in order to improve the quality of implementation and the site conditions necessary for teachers to improve the quality of their practice and therefore shift student outcomes. And so with that, I'm going to turn it over to my colleague um to speak to the plan section. Awesome. Thanks, Devin. Next slide, please. Um, so Jen and I are going to talk a little bit about now what now what do we do given this data as two leaders who support schools? Uh, we want to kind of talk about what we would do and what we will do around this implementation. So when we go back to our theory of action, if we do these things as a department, establishing data as in that red box, providing robust professional learning

and engage in highquality supervision and coaching and feedback and cycles with our educator groups, then our output will be highquality implementation, highquality implementation of the curriculum, professional development. Our leaders and coaches can support teachers in the classrooms. Next slide, please. So with that in mind, uh our the first plan that I'll talk about uh number one is actually completely aligned to the work that we're doing right now. Last week we held our second leader and coach citywide prek through 5. When asking them for feedback, they shared the following which was completely aligned to the next steps and plans that we've had listed on this slide. Across the cohorts, there was a request for support on site-based implementation structures around GLC's, ILTS, learning walks, and unit lesson internalization. While many teams are engaging in this quality work, some leaders and coaches are asking for examples on what strong practice looks like with an example of schools with this strong implementation along with practical tools and models to support this. Uh, additional feedback from our citywide highlights this shift that's happening from planning to action, ensuring that datadriven instruction, focal student work are aligned with the coaching and ILT systems, which then links directly to professional learning. So, it's consistently implemented in the classroom. And finally, um there's an opportunity to codify how supervisors, so leaders operationalize expectations through structures and protocols that reinforce the shared ownership across the central teams. So lead, CNI, principles, and coaches. So, we're all working together to help define what these non-negotiables are around regular data cycles, protected collaboration, alignment, instructional priorities, which will all lead back to academic

ownership for our students, speaking up in class, sharing their thoughts, talking to a partner, um really showing what they know so that the teacher talk gets replaced with the student implementation of what the curriculum is happening to them in their classroom, how they're receiving the information, and they're knowing. Um, and I'll pass it over to Jen for number two.

Good evening, Dr. Sue and commissioners. Nice to see everyone again. Um, you're going to get real nice and sick of us this evening. We have all night. Um, I'm going to talk a little bit about the last part, which is expanding our partnerships and increasing our coherence. I think one of the things that we're realizing right now is we knew that when we when we began implementing a math curriculum the year after we implemented a literacy curriculum that there might be some things that we needed to do better. Um teachers are going to learn something then as they learn something new they might forget the first thing. Um and so now what we need to do is figure out all right what next. So our plan for this upcoming um spring season is to conduct a series of focus groups among the administrators to better understand and deeper understanding what is the role of the administrator? How does the administrator, especially veteran, new, etc. Um, how do they develop instructional leadership in their school? How do they make sure that they're aligned? How do they invest folks in that process? Um, and then also, I think the second thing is around roles and and clarity of roles. Where there's a principal and an assistant principal and a coach, who's holding what? Um, if the if the principal is holding the instructional vision, what does that mean for the principal? What does that mean for the assistant principal? If there is one, what does that mean for the coach? and then what does that mean for the leadership team and I think as we get clearer on that we'll begin to see improvements in literacy and in math when we get there. Um so we want to use those focus groups to increase the guidance to coaches increase the guidance to coach principal partnerships and continue to bring them together. And then I think finally um really working side by side with CNI and special education to think about all right what is the tier one instruction for everyone for our multilingual learners for our students with IEPs for every single student in the classroom and then what do we do um when that's not working and then how do we look at growth right we're we're often talking in this meeting about whether or not we're meeting our proficiency goals and I think that um we miss the opportunity to talk about how kids are incrementally improving with this new curriculum and where we see it serving our most

vulnerable able students in those improvements. Thanks. And now I think we open it up to your questions. Sorry, I'm supposed to say that's it. Thank you. Um, I'll open it up to questions from commissioners. Okay. So, go for it, Commissioner Weissard. Well, I have a question. Yeah. Can I go first?

Oh, thank you. Um, I was just looking through the slides. Oh, thank you so much for this very detailed 19 slide presentation. Um, uh, the evidence and the plan and all the numbers are very helpful and I think third grade literacy is obviously very important. I have I did not attend third grade in SFUSD but my I know my little sister did. So very full circle moment. Um the only question I have as of right now is like what exactly is the difference between the star test and the sback test and how does that like measuring because I noticed like in the first couple of slides um that it those two were the ones where it was red and negative and like specifically for grade three. Okay. So, I was just wondering how does each one of them measure um third grade literacy and why do we have two? No, thank you for the question. Um so, the difference between the ESPback and the star math or the star assessments is basically that well the similarities first is that they both test um the common core standards uh the California standards um and the ESBACK assessment is done at the end of the year. So it's more summitative in nature. Whereas the STAR assessment is an interim assessment and allows for us to know along the way throughout the course of the school year how students are doing towards their proficiency in the standards. And so that distinguishes the two of them. Um and because they are both we've done studies to basically determine whether they're highly correlated, which they are. Um and that allows for us to have um a sense of whether or not students across the course of the year are on track or the extent to which they're on track um to do well on the ESPback assessment.

Thank you. Um, and quick followup. Um, since one of them is like middle of the year whereas to one being like summitive, um, are there adjustments being made in real time based on the star test since it is middle of the year or is it more of like a like end of the year reflection type of thing that we're doing right now?

Okay, if I respond. Okay. Um, yeah, absolutely. That's a perfect question. We do a couple of things with the star assessments along the way. Um first we invite our research planning and accountability colleagues to our cohort meetings. So we ask first principles to engage in examining their STAR test and to better understand what's happening what's happening at the global level and then how to drill down and then in theory what we're asking principles to do and we do the same thing with the coaches is to then go back and do the same thing with their leadership teams and then to do the same thing at their grade levels. Um all so that they can really say all right what are we going to do differently? how are we going to adjust? Um so that that is the theory and I think that like as people get better at looking at data we get better at that. So um if you remember the slide that um Jess showed us where we what slide was it? Slide 14 where it said that we were looking at data at 41% and now we're looking at data at 53% of the time. We're slowly incrementally incrementally seeing that people are getting more comfortable with looking at that data and that's what we hope to be true um is that they understand what to do with the data. Thanks for that question.

Thank you.

Thank you. Um I'm always impressed by that I feel like the quality of these reports has really shifted in a way that um I just want to acknowledge it's a lot of time and it's really labor intensive but I think it um is really helpful to us to the public to really understand sort of what's happening what's working not what shifts are happening what shifts are not yet happening so thank you I think that's partly because of the second best ad hoc I just want to name that correct correct I'm sorry speaker was not recognized. So if I can just

point of order. Um so my qu so thank you um to student delegate Mon for the question on sort of data usage. I had a similar question. I'm going to move to my second question um which is about like implementation integrity and we see that you know 67% of classrooms are using the adopted materials um but ratings for the essential content and academic ownership remain low um or are dropping and so like does this are we does this suggest that like just using the materials is just insufficient and there needs to be some deeper shift in pedagogy like what what where do you go if if folks are using these these materials the way at least 67% are we want them higher that doesn't seem to be enough. Um so what are what are the recommendations around moving from there to actually seeing results for the students because it seems like there's this notable gap between the adult behaviors which seem to be on track um and the student outcomes which are significantly off track.

Yes, I'm happy to answer that question. Um so one of the things I'll say just to start with is that um use of materials well let me say this one of the phrases that we often say is that curriculum is the floor not the ceiling um of high quality instructional practice. However you especially in the Bay Area like would not build a house on a weak foundation. Um, and so when we talk about use of materials, we're talking about I would say like the lowest step of that, which is observers seeing the materials in use in the classroom. However, high quality instructional materials, particularly in language and literacy, have sort of a just a ton of complexity. Um, so for example, within language and literacy, there's multiple components. We're looking at foundational skills, at vocabulary instruction, at reading comprehension, at writing instruction. Um and so the quality of use for an individual teacher might vary across all of those components. Um in addition, if it for example um a teacher is not, you know, regularly engaging in unit or lesson internalization protocols, they're not deeply studying the materials and so they might introduce the complex text but miss the text dependent questions that are built into that teacher guide and so therefore not use them within the classroom. Um and so when we look at these different measures of academic ownership and essential content as well, um we can sort of think of them as the various components of high quality which are um curriculum related but sort of have to do with how much the materials translate into practice with that individual teacher. um where we see really strong examples of those materials translating into high quality practice are often at sites with really strong enabling conditions for instructional leadership or instructional vision. So if we think of um some of our really strong sites where

the instructional coach for example does a release day and pulls the third grade teachers together for a full day of instructional planning. They do unit internalization. They plan out the pacing of their lessons. they have a deep understanding of the design and the complexity of the materials and so they know both how to look at the data and be responsive to their students but also you know not to skip this really important part of the lesson because that's the heart and it's sort of like Django blocks if you pull it out the kids are going to miss the main idea of the text. Um so it could be that strong you know instructional coaching and release day. It could be a site with a really strong practice around teacher collaboration where the grade level team meets every single week to look at student work together and understand okay to go back to the slide we really need to focus in on craft and structure and like let's look at all the text dependent questions related to craft and structure and really figure out where to expand or get different routines in place for students to engage with those questions. Um and so so that complexity is is both related to depth of teacher understanding but very much related to enabling conditions at the site and all of those instructional systems that kind of give them room to breathe.

Can I also add that um we're getting better at supporting our um site leaders, our administrators in understanding the content of the curriculum. So we we are having regular PD professional development trainings with site leaders so that they can on a regular basis look for certain things when they're walking into their classrooms and observing um our educators um administering or delivering the the curriculum. So I think just consistency in training, consistency in monitoring um and supporting our educators in delivering on um the different aspects of the curriculum is really really key. um at the same time making sure that we are clear on the expectations um that we're trying to achieve and and I think these components come together will then create greater coherence um across classrooms across educators um in throughout the entire school and then across schools.

I'm like I have a minute 29 left. Don't worry, I'm not going to use it all. No, no, no. I never use all my time. Shh. Um,

no. But no, thank you. And I just want to underscore like the idea that that you have to have these instructional systems in place. Like you can have all of the best materials in the world. If if those systems are not in place, we're just like throwing things out the window. So, I mean, and that seems to be, you know, where this space this space comes in to make sure that that um school leadership and our educators really have the support and the space and the time. Um which I know there's it's fleeting. Okay.

Um so I'm going to pick up right there because um you you stole my questions. Um I look at the 65 67% in year one and year two. So, I feel like there's a couple ways this could go down. Assuming that 65% of our classrooms are utilizing the curricula and have the materials in front of them, there's a question of is it that the materials are not demanding this kind of work that we would want to see in their essential content or is it that the the delivery of that curricula is not actually matching what the curricula is asking for? What which one is it? Do we know?

I mean, I I think the curriculum is very high quality and if folks use the curriculum as intended and get familiar with it, I do think we're going to start to see an increase there. I think there's a a couple of things and Devon and I have talked a lot about this that like this particular curriculum and the way we're now teaching language and literacy is a shift for for folks and so it's a big it's a big shift from what we've been doing for a very long time. So for veteran folks anytime we implement a change it like you know it costs us to let go of what we've always known and it takes some time to say I believe in this new thing. Maybe sometimes people are like, I'm gonna pick this piece up because this this feels familiar to me, but I'm not going to pick this piece up. And so to Devon's point, we're not seeing some consistency. And then I think the second piece of that is like if there aren't the structures on the campus for people to deeply dive in, there are so many components that often times we're missing the most the pieces that are going to support the kids the most. So I do think over time we will see an increase of this. I also think that anytime we have a turnover of a leader, anytime we have a turnover of a coach or anytime we have a turnover of a teacher on a team that there are some discrepancies there or where we don't have teachers that are fully credentialed. So there's some places there where we have more um investment to do and in order to see that number go up. But I do think it's not related to the quality of the curriculum, but rather to how we help people to get to be using it consistently.

Great. Um and Dr. Here you mentioned I mean you mentioned lead CNI principles and coaches. Lead primarily oversees principles CNI. No. Oh wait. So lead lead principles CNI coaches. No.

What's that? So I guess I'm trying to figure out like what what is the gap here that we're trying to close. When we mentioned lead CNI principles, coaches, those are all groups of people who are doing enormous work in our schools. And when we talk about the alignment and coherence that need to come with focusing on something as something like internalization, right? Like when we talk about lead CNI principles and coaches, what is the role that each of them have in supporting internalization at a site?

Yeah. I mean I think as far as the work that's happening lead and CNI we work collaboratively around supporting leaders and coaches as both teams to make sure that when we're doing our learning walks with the coaches when we're doing our learning walks with the principles that we're looking for these indicators around internalization. So to me it's one large collaboration effort between CNI and lead to support what's happening at the school sites. I think a big piece of what we've been implementing this year that I mentioned is citywide where coaches and principles are coming together three times a year of uninterrupted spaces to be planning and it's all aligned to the star. So the fall literacy star, the winter, and then the spring, uh we come together, we look at those results, we have RPA in the room. um they're able to really look and do a deep dive of their data, make a plan, bring it back to the school. And our job as lead is to make sure that principles and coaches are having that time together back at the site that they're doing those walkthroughs, they're implementing strong ILTs and GLC's and then collaboration with CNI who's doing coaching uh training with the coaches. I think it's twice a month if I'm not wrong. Um Devon making sure that whatever we're talking about in citywide is then following the coaching meetings which is then leading back into the classroom which is then leading back into the schools. Um so for us it's one large collaboration that we are doing together um so that teachers coaches feel supported but also have high expectations when they are completing their learning walks ILTs and GLC's. Um so I can talk a little bit about specifically to CNI. Um so CNI does not supervise instructional coaches but does provide professional learning and guidance to coaches on their work. Um so you can think of that relationship as being sort of like a coach of coaches um

but is not a formal supervisor or evaluator of the coaches. And I'll just add that I think um you know I'll talk specifically about the middle school co K cohort for a second. Um in the middle school K cohort there are eight new principles and all of them attend TI and part of what they do in TI is they they better understand their their curriculum. So I Emma and I have time with them. They attend monthly meetings with us. Devon and Renee from curriculum instruction come and do work during those meetings to help them understand the curricula. And then during teley they watch videos they collaborate with one another they try to figure out what does a good ILT look like so that there is some cross collaboration. And then I think that something that came about this year that I don't think we were doing as as well last year. So I think that there's like still room for improvement is so what is it if if CNI is doing X and LED is doing Y and TI is doing Z how do we make sure that they're all collaborating and cohering versus like everyone's doing something separate. And I think that that is something that we have a consistent team that we're getting better at. Um and I do think that like again to give one specific example at the beginning of this year when we instituted the learning walks um K5 right away picked up the learning walks and picked up the tool that was developed in conjunction with CNI and RPA and the K8s did not because we had been using something else. And so it took us a while to make sure that hey, if we're going to pick up this learning walk tool, we have to give something else up. And we need time in order to make sure that we're not just giving something to someone for compliance purposes, but that people see the purpose. So now the real the focus is every month when we're coming together, we're looking at a specific component of the curricula, the new curricula, and we're saying we're going to internalize as principles around this, and then this month you're going to go and you're going to look for that, and you're going to use that part of the tool to see if you saw it. Um, and so I think that that is slowly improving um, implementation internalization over time.

And I wonder if this is partly what you were talking about with creating more tools and protocols for the internalization process itself. But I'm like, do we have a concrete picture of just what excellent coaching looks like? And is that a like a a shared expectation across all the teams of what what excellent coaching looks like?

I can respond to that. Um I think yes and so there is clarity around the roles and responsibility of a coach. There's clarity on the expectations for um a coaching cycle. Um what that looks like, how much time, the specific actions associated with it each step. What I would say is I think there is significant room for growth around um the consistency of implementation of those expectations. Um and so by that I mean if we set an expectation on how often a coach might be facilitating their teacher collaboration time. Um and one school has a weekly standard for that, another school has a monthly standard for that. Um we see inconsistency in that. Um what I would also say is that I think there is a component related um to the quality of coaching that is um sort of the nuanced relationship between the support provided by CNI and then the relationship with the principal who supervises the coach and our coordination with lead. Um what I would say is that one of our primary focuses coming out of this primary this progress monitoring report on goal one as well as planning for 2627 um is improving and codifying like the specificity of instructional coach expectations. Um, I think the current standard in place um can be I was gonna say specified again can be further detailed um in order to like more clearly communicate the expectations um in in a way that I hope would build more consistency over time. Um, so for example, one of the pieces that we're doing is as part of our partnership with TNTP, we're working on them with them on revising the guidelines around coaching cycles, the time spent, and the expectations, revising the guidelines on teacher collaboration and the frequency and the content of those meetings. Um,

we've worked with research planning and assessment on revising the coaching log so we can get a better sense um of which actions need more support or or not. um where I think there has been a really high degree of training and specificity um is around culture of coaching and coaching stances um and understanding um how to mediate conversations, how to like coach into challenge. Um so I think those pieces are really strong. I think the pieces around instructional systems are where some of our revision work and coaching expectations currently exists.

Okay, that's really helpful. I mean I think that's the area where I'm most interested in, right? Right? Because if we're talking about the curriculum itself is not there's no concern around the quality of that curricula then what we're talking about is understanding how do we know that teacher practice is changing which we can look at I mean this evidence here is really interesting but it's all kind of downstream from what we actually want to see shifting in our systems which is the quality of the coaching that we believe if it's getting better and better then presumably the quality of teaching is improving And presumably if the quality of teaching is improving then we can see this these indicators improving. But I guess my question would be how are we understanding how the quality of our coaching is improving and then as a consequence of that how are we understanding whether or not teacher practice and behavior is improving so that these things go up you know does that make sense? So, so I guess I I'll just end with that. I think it's just you know the assuming that we have and the reason I asked about like do we have a point of view on coaching is like if we want internalization to improve then in many ways in order for you know humans are humans in order for you to change your practice and behavior oftentimes we need to model that and so then this is where the power of coaching comes in and so then I'm just most curious like do we have any indicators that would suggest that coaching is improving right like and and and and who is responsible for that and what how do we how do we show that in our system you know

I'm happy to speak at least a piece to that um so so one of the things I will say and we've touched on this I think in various ways in some of our progress monitoring reports but maybe not at sort of the depth you're speaking to or asking which is um how do we understand the relationship between various levels of the system such that If we identify, you know, via our coaching logs, via our focus groups, um, via the supervision or the coaching of coaches, high quality coaching, do we then see measurable shifts in teacher practice at those sites? Do we then see measurable shifts in student outcomes at those sites? And so I think what we have done um some strong work in is highlighting high quality examples where I know we keep coming back to this but where the pipe isn't leaking um and that system is in relationship with one another such that in student outcomes are moving. Um so I think we do have you know very strong examples of highquality coaching. Um, I will say a key component of that is not just the quality of the coaching, but at those sites we tend to also see really strong positive relationships between the coach and the administrators where they're very much in sync with one another with shared expectations, shared messaging. Um, one of the pieces that I will say which I think is true not just for instructional coaching but when we talk about enabling conditions at sites um is moving sort of beyond the big picture vision into like very clearly measurable expectations that folks are held accountable for that are clearly articulated and codified. Um, and I think that is sort of a growing muscle in SFUSD. Um certainly with relationship to coaching but you know similarly with relationship to like instructional leadership um some of our site systems we see it come up a lot with you know classroom schedules or with frequency of teacher meeting um and so I think for us the more consistent and explicit we can

be um you know some folks say like what's clear is kind um you know we are able to improve that consistency when we're like explicit and clear with the codification of best practices. is

uh student delegate Cruz.

So actually President Kim actually took one of my questions which was how will increased data actually be used to like instruct and improve students outcomes which did answer already but my main question is how will like concrete changes how will it be like seen or translated in as a result of like how the seed is being used. So pretty much how will we actually see and how will these be like shown through mutually by instructor and students which was something we kind of all kind of been asking. So yeah that's kind of pretty much my question just to get a better understanding of how the actual concrete change will affect students and how that would look like. Um so one of the areas um in student so I'll sort of zero in on some of the student instructional experiences that we named in the report. Um but I think specifically where um I'm going to focus in on is like high quality instructional practice and sort of the thinking and doing that's asked of students. Um so one of the pieces that we highlighted in the report um was some of the components related to student proficiency in reading comprehension onformational text. Um and so the two areas we highlighted were around craft and structure um and integration of knowledge and ideas and then name some of those practices that um we had lower frequency of that we needed to improve around like text dependent questions. Um and so to sort of zero in on those um what they're asking students to do in a classroom to demonstrate proficiency on those standards um include like determine I'm just going to read from it a little bit, but determine the meaning of general academic and domain specific words and phrases in a text relevant to a grade three topic or subject area. Use text features and search tools to locate information. Distinguish their own point

of view from that of the author of a text. if you can imagine for third graders. Um so when we think about a student's experience in the classroom, they're being asked to take on those kinds of actions. Um so it could be the teacher changing the kind of questions that they ask. It could be students working in pairs or in small groups um in order to determine the meaning of academic vocabulary. Um it could be that they have a writing task um where they're asked to do that piece around distinguishing their own point of view from that of the author of a text. Um so when we talk about what's different for students, it's the kinds of tasks they're being asked to do in the classroom shifting.

Okay, thank you.

I love our questions, you guys. I love this is such a great conversation. Um, and thank you all for the work. You know, I I think um, Commissioner Weissman Ward, I really wanted to follow up on your appreciations that you started with. I mean, the the fact that we're using data this way, like, you know, I'm an old dinosaur who remembers years worth of pilots that collected tons of data that absolutely went nowhere. So, the fact that we're actually using data to inform practices, I think, is just gives makes me warm and fuzzy. Um, uh, I think my question and Miss Steiner, you kind of touched on it when you stated what a huge shift this is, right? And these like the fact that we're using a structured literacy curriculum, you know, like this is a huge shift. And also related to that is a lot of our educators like you only know what you know when you know it. And we have a lot of educators who went through college in the days of balanced literacy, right? in the days of we teach students by three queuing, right? And so I'm wondering, it's great that we have instructional coaching and that we're doing, but what are we doing to build our instruction our our teachers foundational skills and what are we doing to build their why and making sure that they understand like the phmic awareness themsel like all of these we can't build the academic ownership if our educators and a lot of them have to their credit done out gone out and done a lot of skill building on their right? You know, and we see what's going on at Drew and how much training they're doing, for example, and how that's really like a spec test scores increased by 40 points last year because of all their work. So, I think really beyond coaching, what pathways do we have for our educators themselves to actually build their knowledge of what structured literacy is and and the these

foundational leading reading skills that we're asking them to teach our kids? I'm happy to speak to that. Um, so one of the pieces I'll say and I just tried to remember the exact school year and then it went out of my head, but um, 2324 23. Okay. starting in the 2324 school year. Um, prior to the final adoption and implementation of the newly adopted curriculum, um, we actually started by doing a full year, it was the first year of aligned PD, but a full year of professional learning on the instructional shifts associated with the common core. One pillar of which is foundational skills. Um, so we did a sequence of professional learning on foundational skills. Um, phmic awareness, phonics, fluency like threw on. Um since then throughout um summer January institute incrementally across the year we've continued to do ongoing workshops and institutes specifically targeting foundational skills and specifically related to K2. Um what I would say just to clarify is foundational skills are true across K5. Um we have focused in however on K2 in particular. Um, one of the pieces that I will see related to that is, um, I think shows up in the data where that intentional focus of foundational skills professional learning has both related to some of the bumps we see in um, explicit se and appropriately sequenced foundational skills instruction. Um I think we see some growth in what we would call um like out of context practice where students are doing letter letter cards and rugtime. Where we definitely have room for growth is in that academic ownership where students have appropriate opportunities for fluency practice for small group instruction. Um, and I think that piece is like the current sort of zone of proximal development growth area for

teachers where they're starting to feel more comfortable in the explicit instruction. Um, however, they need to then transition that comfort into students academic ownership in in a gradual release model. And so, you know, when we observe lessons, what we might see is teachers, you know, feeling more confident with the front of room components and sort of struggling a little bit with the pacing and not getting to the gradual release time or not having built in significant time for small groupoup instruction. So, students don't have enough opportunities for independent practice with decodable text. Um, and so that transitional piece, um, is what I would say is like our next stage of professional learning. um after the you know two to three years we've done. However um as we know you know we introduced to our system a significantly sized cohort of new teachers and administrators and coaches every year. And so um foundational skills professional learning and understanding the science of reading will continue to be core um for educators as they enter the system as a baseline expectation. Um, but we have started to shift some of that professional learning towards supporting student independent practice, especially with decodable text, which I cannot emphasize enough. Well, I appreciate that because my next question was the the data around the usage of decodable text is scary bad. you know 0% um uh for students independently practicing targeted skills in the context of decodable text and then student practicing newly acquired text within decodable newly acquired skills within decodable text in nine so I mean in gradual release of responsibility I do we do you do right so if if we're not doing that gradual release of responsibility how are the students going like so what is the plan to increase the use of decodable texts I think in that gradual release of

responsibility is my follow-up question.

Yes, I can definitely speak to that. I I can keep talking. I just wanted to Okay. So, I'll I'll say sort of two parts that are materialsbased. Um so one piece is I would say you know SFUSD is not unique in this being a primary focus area since the adoption um of inter reading and arba um but specifically because of the way foundational skills work into reading I'll speak to um number one I would say is that HMH has revised their foundational skills component um there is there was sort of an incremental step towards structured literacy and then a next step towards a California edition specifically um in alignment with state guidelines. And so we have gradually transitioned um staff onto that or staff um sites onto that which does in comparison to the initial program increase the amount of time and direction um for student independent practice and use of decodable text. The next piece is they've actually done um an increased release of decodable text sets to go with the modules that we have as funding has become available continue to do waves of purchasing of. Um I think one of the things that we still see is to Dr. Steiner's point some of these kind of older habits and mindsets around volume of reading and leveled text libraries and folks sort of struggling with understanding what replaces that. Um and so you know as more decodable text have been released we've made those purchases so that teachers have you know stronger text sets to work with for more student independent practice. Um, one of the other pieces that is, you know, exciting for that independent practice component in the both, um, California, forthcoming California edition, but also in structured literacy, um, is decodable text printables that can be backpacked home to increase practice, um, and guidance for families, not just in

fluency practice, but also in text dependent questions with decodable text. Um, so there have been some new materials releases that we've picked up in order to support that in addition to some of the professional learning that um, when it comes to that, I would say number one has focused on independent practice um, and having teachers understand, you know, how to appropriately pace so that they save enough time for that. How to set up small group instruction as an integral component of their day so that they're seeing fluency practice happen with kids. Um, so that has also been a part of both the materials and professional learning. Thank you. And I didn't mean to mistitle you, Dr. Steiner. Apologies for that. Commissioner Ray, I'm gonna I will acknowledge you in in President Gim's absence. Okay. Thank you. I also just want to thank you all for the data that's provided and for the you know the specific addition of information that we didn't have before. I think that is um really valuable to be adding this additional uh information about academic ownership for instance because that is so critical to our students actually being able to improve their skills and outcomes. So, um, I am in accordance with what we have been learning in our progress monitoring subcommittee going to address my questions again to Superintendent Sue. So, you're off the hot seat for now, unless she decides to turn to you. So, um, Superintendent Sue. So, I also want to nod to Commissioner Fischer here because she asked about two specific things that I had on my list, including the stuff about decodable texts and teacher preparation programs because for quite a long time, those programs were not

actually instructing teachers in the foundational skills that kids need and most kids need in order to be able to succeed in literacy. So that is a big and difficult uh gap for all of us to struggle with and figure out how to address. Um so um Dr. Sue, a couple things that I wanted to ask here. Um sort of following up on what Commissioner Fischer was asking about practice opportunities. If kids don't get the opportunity to practice, it's very very hard to actually internalize the skill that you're being taught. I am wondering as a practical matter how we can promote more practice opportunities especially given the instructional minutes that we currently have. What is our current minimum for instructional minutes um in uh in reading and does that time allow for adequate practice and if it doesn't how can we help to promote that? It's my first question.

Um thank you Commissioner Ray. Actually, that's a quite quite a technical question about how many instructional minutes um our students have. However, um I I just want to first address the the teacher prep question. I think that that is a really really important question. Sorry, maybe you c can you shut your turn your Okay, there was an echo. Um because in order for us to to continue to lift the quality of instruction, we need to continue to double down on supporting our educators. But in order for us to do that, we need to have evidence-based practices that will then move the needle. And one of which we've already talked about, which is moving to a new curriculum. So this is a brand new curriculum uh for ELA that has now been in place for two years. And as Dr. Siner has already alluded to, teachers are slowly learning it, embracing it, and feeling confident in it. I think as we continue to support our educators and our teachers in delivering the curriculum um and also providing supports and guidance to our administrators in going in and and looking for key components um to see how students um are progressing in classrooms um as they're receiving the the information. that's going to then build uh the the muscles to get better at delivering the curriculum. So in terms of teacher preparation, it is a very iterative process um where we have to just continue to provide that support, continue to keep going back um and working with people throughout our entire system. Um and so that is what the second part of effective practice is which are the um instructional coach component. So having instructional coach

available to our educators to our um administrators and the learning community that's on school site that is what helps um build this new this culture of learning and culture of of improvement um in schools. So I believe that those components together um will then move the needle for student outcomes. Um and part of that is uh ensuring that there is coherence across uh uh supports for educators from room to room from classroom to classroom. And so those are the components that are really important for us and and then of course for us to stay consistent. Um if we keep changing our effective practices, if we keep changing our uh goals and and desired outcomes, um that's not going to get us to the end target of proficiency by third grade. Um so in terms of of teacher prep, that is definitely where um I see where the district needs to double down on. we need to stay focused on on providing those types of professional development um supports and opportunities uh for for our teachers um for practice opportunities. I think that there's two types of practice opportunities. One is in the classroom. So helping our teachers uh uh have more engaging uh uh question and answer based uh opportunities for students. when I go into classrooms, I observe I actually observe this um this beautiful engagement and interaction between the teacher at the front of the classroom and and talking to students. Um and I can actually see the curriculum in action. Um and you see actually students being able to play with and engage and think through the questions or or complex um activities that teachers are are giving students. Um, but I think the other part of your question is are students do students have enough time um

in the classroom to really engage in that curriculum? So, I'm going to ask the team here, how many minutes um do students have in elementary school? Roughly 120 minutes daily slight distribution changes for every grade level in the balance of foundational skills, reading comprehension or other areas. So 120 minutes. Um and these are young students. Um so I believe that uh with the curriculum that we have there are some very clear piece and guidance in there um that um allocates different times and different sequencing in how we deliver the curriculum. Um now in if you if the question is is that enough time would should we expand opportunities for our young people to really crystallize learning then yes we need to do that and we could do that in the before school hours or even in the afterchool hours. Um you've heard me talk about how um our classrooms are not contained by the four walls of our schools. Our classrooms are really uh broad and open throughout the entire city. So there is lots of opportunities for us to continue the education of our students well beyond the four walls of our classroom. Um, okay. Do you think that we do need to add instructional minutes or is there or or can sufficient practice be worked in in the 120 minutes that exists at this moment in time based on the curriculum that we have. I don't see us changing the instructional minutes in elementary school. I'm going to ask our team right now.

I'm happy to talk a little bit about um this component. So um instructional schedules at elementary function pretty differently than they do at secondary um because there is one classroom teacher and so the best way to consider it is that um there's a set number of minutes in the day and every every content area has a trade-off with another. Um so if we devote minutes to one area that means it's not going to another. Um generally um just to sort of dig in a little bit deeper when we talk about this roughly 120 minutes um that difference shifts over time. So we might see kindergarteners with a recommended 45 minute daily block of foundational skills instruction. Um that might be a recommended 30 minutes at second grade, 20 minutes at third grade and 15 minutes at fifth grade. um where the balance and the trade-off there is then from kindergarten to fifth grade the amount of time devoted to reading comprehension is going to increase over time. So those minutes are a trade-off with one another and meant to balance in response to the standards. Um what I would say is that one of the pieces when we talk about highquality instructional practice is um maximizing the quality of those minutes. Um and so where we see strong culture of learning for example where there's clear routines and transitions where those minutes have been maximized with high quality practice um I would say matter as much oftent times you know maybe we'll just say would matter as much as the quantity of minutes um and so minutes in and of themselves are one measure but how well they're utilized in the classroom is related to the quality of instructional practice. I I just want to add that, you know, we follow this the state guidelines for instructional minutes for elementary. So, we're required by law to like turn in how many minutes on shortened days, how many minutes it is and how do we make that up for the rest of the week. So, in terms of like instructional

minutes in a day, we're meeting those minutes. I think the complication comes in when you actually enter into a school building and you think about all right, law also requires us to have a minimum of EL minutes per day for students that have ELD. We have to do a required number of minutes for PE for elementary school that's 200 minutes every 10 days or something like that and 400 minutes every 10 days for 6 through 8. So like those things put constraints on the recommendations for other subject areas. We have 120 minutes for literacy and 60 minutes for math and then you have 30 minutes for EL and then you have the PE which is every 10 days but in actuality that's just not how school days work. What about science and social studies? So I think that like when you when you think about this as a puzzle piece, there are some complications that come into play, especially when you think about kids who learn in multiple languages or opportunities for electives or opportunities for as concerts and things like that that come into a school day and that might disrupt a regular block of ELA. To answer your question, do they have enough time? Yes and no is the real answer, right? Because if we want kids to have full robust whole experiences that include them engaging with one another and that include them developing their sense of belonging and that include community circles and we give them 120 minutes, but we can't we don't want to shorten lunch too much. There is a conundrum with how much time we have and and different schools approach it differently, but we're really attempting to make sure that we're staying on pace with what's recommended so that they can get that practice time. Um, so I mean I think I just I just want to be real that like we recommend a certain quantity of time and when you go to make your schedule you're like, "Oh shoot, on Wednesdays I run out of time before I get to everything I want to get to. So what do I do?" Or there's a fire drill. Guess what? A fire drill that happens once a month at every single elementary school. For some reason at my school, it always happened at 10:00 a.m. right smack in the middle

of my literacy block. But like it was always. So, I think I just want to be real about these are children and they and real schedules and real things. Kids get nosebleleeds and we're not talking about that, but I just wanted to name that that like it's even if we have the exact rate of minutes on the schedule, it doesn't always work out that way. So, just a little side note,

right? Um I just want to note I'm not fixated on the number of minutes so much as whether or not it is adequate to provide practice time, which is critical. So, thank you. Okay. Um, my other questions relate to um how uh absenteeism figures into this and I' I've asked this at points in the past, but whether we're looking at this and um trying to figure out how much of a correlation or how much we could improve by improving absenteeism and then also with regard to how the teacher expectations factor in to the results. Thank you. Christie, you want to talk about absenteeism or would you like me to?

Just because you're not physically here, I can't make eyes at you. No, you're okay. Go ahead, Jen.

Um, I I will say absenteeism is a is a hot topic. Christy and I attend the elementary, we call it like the tier three meeting each week where we talk about students um that need additional supports. And we have one member of our team that is the attendance department team. She's the the attendance team. Um and we talk specifically about like who are we noticing isn't coming to school? why are they not coming to school? We have the same structure for middle school for middle school as well. So I I get to have the opportunity to attend it twice in a week. Um but it's a really important factor, right? We're trying to identify like why kids might not be coming. Is it a safety factor? Do we need to give them a different um school? Is there something happening in their neighborhood that makes it hard for them to get to school? Is there something happening at home? Is it something happening at school that's making it challenging? And so, especially at the elementary level, like oftentimes when kids aren't coming to school, it's not because they're like going to the beach. That might be a middle school, high school problem. Um, at the elementary level, it often is a transportation issue or it's a work issue or it's a um, you know, lots of kids and let's get us out the house issue. So, trying to really get underneath what's happening in each particular case both at the school level and then at the at the district level can help us. But absolutely, if kids are not in school, we cannot instruct them. So absenteeism definitely factors in and we partner closely with our colleagues in student family student family school division. It keeps changing the SFSD um support division. Thank you. Um and so we work really closely with them around attendance and trying to figure out what works best. Um and and it's a work in progress.

I'd like to weigh in as well. Um, so on our school's data discs, we also provide that same crosstab analysis as a way of just giving schools a sense of what happens when students aren't able to make it to school. And so what we have when we look at it across any measure for any grade for any grade span is that what happens if students are we we basically break down the attendance by different gradations from exceptional to satisfactory and then you have chronic and then you have severely chronic. And basically what happens is the percent of students in each of those categories that are proficient decrease as you go down in the attendance categories. Um so that is definitely a concern and one that we uplift with our school communities as a way of just um emphasizing the point that attending school does matter and it does have an impact on um student outcomes. just to just to emphasize um chronic absenteeism. Um so just last year or the over the last several years uh the district has seen a significant loss in number of students who attend school on a regular basis. Um I think the last number that we calculated was close to up to four million hours of instruction lost when students don't come on a regular basis. If we were to calculate back to pre prepandemic days, um we're talking about almost five million instructional hours lost by our students not coming. And then of course there's a financial side to this as well, right? So there's like 50 to 60 million lost. But more importantly, when students don't have and they they're not attending school, they don't have the opportunities to learn from their teachers to build relationships with their stu uh with their colleagues and friends. There's there's there's a

well-being loss as well. Um, and so that is equally significant and something that you've heard our team talk about that in order for our students to fully embrace the experience at school, they need to feel welcomed and seen and loved and cared for so that they can then open themselves to receive the the the language arts and math and social science and all of those things. So, um, thank you, Commissioner Ray, for bringing up the the topic of of chronic absenteeism because it's definitely something that we need to spend more time in. Um uh as I shared with the board, sorry I'm like looking over here only. as I shared with the board uh in the last budget session or budget year um we're working with uh uh philanthropic leaders to help us um identify ways to either one uh incentivize for sure but also figure out how to do better a better job at at um assessing the the value the data of the number of students who are not in school. um and then trying to figure out ways to engage our students to come back to school. Um so I can definitely share with you more at a a different time um on what we've learned so far through our be be here campaign. Um but then also uh where where where we're going next because it's definitely something that we need to address. um having students lose five million hours of instruction per year is not okay.

Thanks. Um I don't want to take more time but I had mentioned I'd asked about teacher expectations. I don't think anyone addressed that. If someone would mind addressing that.

Yeah. Um I would say that uh while um I think the the answer will be too long for this evening but I think the the idea of teacher expectation is a good one. Right. We've we do expect all teachers to engage in using the curriculum and we expect principles to regularly um visit classrooms, observe what they're seeing and provide feedback to to teachers around the use of the curriculum. Similarly, when people are on evaluation schedule, we want them to to exa examine their practice on the new curriculum in ELA and in math. And we expect that principles are doing that with teachers. Additionally, we've asked principles to add to their principal expectations that everyone use the required curriculum. So that those are all pieces that are there and then the um implementation of that we can talk about at length at some point.

I would love to do that. Um on the flip side of the expectations, what about the teacher expectations for the students? Oh yes, also that um yeah, I mean I I think that you're asking whether or not teachers have expectations for students or asking about just like with absenteeism, right? There's yeah, there's an impact there. TNTP had previously um in the material they had provided said the teacher expectations was the most important factor in moving the most disadvantaged students or the folks I should say more precisely the students who are most behind the proficiency up and uh what work are we doing around that or how can we encourage teachers to have higher expectations? Thank you.

I mean I I definitely think that's a very big conversation. We'll come back to it for sure just in light of it being nine. But I I will say that um I'll just give you one little anecdote today. I had somebody shadowing me um that's in a principal preparation program and we went to um three schools together and we went into classrooms in three schools and she and I had this discussion around oh wow it's we should be going across schools more often to see the different expectations that teachers have for kids and what it looked like even among the same in the same school. what it looked like in three different second grade classrooms. So I think that this idea of educator mindset of teach of expectations for students is a hot topic and as people get more comfortable with curriculum the part of academic ownership that we're not seeing could be indeed related to mindset and teacher expectations that we want to pick up for sure.

Uh it is 10 o'clock so I want to thank and excuse student delegates. Appreciate you. Thank you for your questions. Um, Commissioner Gupta.

Hey folks, I want to also share my appreciation. I really like this format with the theory of change just going down each one. It just connects really well. So, well done. Second best ad hoc. Sorry, had to get that in. Well done u to you all. So, uh, so the the only question I mean, I think I think a lot of the questions that were asked here, um, covered most of it and funny enough, Commissioner Ray, I was looking for that very TNTP report around expectations to understand how were you doing and I couldn't find it. So, I may reach out to you if you if you have it or anyone has it. I'd love to go back and and look at that because I wanted to see how we were doing with student expectations. Um, I also really appreciate the followup on the Q&A because I thought um the the the answers there that were provided including in some in the next session that section that we're going to uh were somewhat instructive for this section particularly the difference between math and what we see in in third grade literacy and eighth grade math and where we might see some of those challenges. So for folks here that may not have seen it, I highly recommend going through the Q&A. There was something in the Q&A that I was curious to follow up on and it is in the next section, but I was curious how it might pertain to here, which is um you mentioned the tracker when talking about eighth grade math. And I see there is um similarly this on page what page is 16 um action tracking. And I was curious, you know, in the Q&A it mentions baseline conditions were incredibly important for eighth grade math. And I was curious if that was also true. Um, you know, there I I see a lot that are very similar between the baseline conditions for third grade

literacy and eighth grade math. And I was curious if he found that to be sorry, I guess I should be addressing the superintendent to follow the recommendations of the second best ad hoc. So, um, do do you find that the baseline conditions also follow suit for goal one as we look at that and that being incredibly important?

Um, thank you, Commissioner Gupta for the question. I I will have to say that the the tracker is pretty new um for us and um I know that there are uh again uh a lot of our um teams are learning how to enter in and use it. Um so I think this is a good start for us as we start providing the um accountability part of this work uh for our entire system. Um so I think as we start building more and more data and information uh we will then be able to tell a more complete picture of the number of instructional coaches that are meeting on a regular basis with our school community. Uh the number of check-ins they have with um teachers, the number of observations our our coaches are making. Um the number of our administrators um entering in or doing the walkthroughs. So I think as we get better at um putting together um the the uh the components of uh high quality coherence. Um I think that's it's going to it's going to you're we're going to start seeing that through our student outcomes data. Um you talked about uh teacher expectation and student expectation. I just want to go back and say that um I to me the components of high quality coherent instruction is for us to have clear expectations for both our educators and our students. Extremely important. We also need to make sure that particularly for this uh implementation action tracking making sure that we are using the right um evidence-based uh practices because without that without constant improvement and evaluation and assessment, we're not going to know that

we're using the right tools. And as we're using the right tools, we need to continue to monitor how it is being used and implemented to move the needle for our students. And if these are the right tools, if we're using the right uh ways to monitor our students, then how are we supporting our educators and how are we supporting our administrators to continue to stay focused on doing that? I think these are the components of uh that we need to use in order for us to move the needle um at the end goal, these these big audacious goals that we have for our our students. Devon, do you have anything else? Oh, sorry. It looked like you were gonna say something and Okay,

thanks. And and the reason I ask is, you know, when I look at, you know, returning principal, returning instructional coach, fully staffed teaching teams, whether it be gened and special ed, those those feel like components that we as a board can actually then look to prioritize. So if we hear from staff, hey, this is really critical, then you know, as we go through budget and so forth, and that that actually is is is a great guiding principle to know if if that is in fact important. So thank you. Thank you, team. Thank you, Superintendent. You have 9 seconds. Numbers don't lie. I know I I really appreciate this conversation. The one thing I just wanted to add is we haven't had any similarly related conversation around MTSS and um you know um I'd be curious to know if we have any data or even anecdotally around um you know the change to our RTIF networks and other things that have really impacted um some of our children's ability to get differentiated instruction. That's not ne I'm not expecting an answer right now in our limited time. That's just uh putting a pin in that.

Great. And I just I know I know I know but I I do I I agree and I think we do need to strengthen our gen our general education um teaching and by by really focusing in on this action implementation plan. we're going to lift the quality of education um for our students, which means our general ed um students are going to benefit, which includes students who need additional supports like special ed students. So, I think if we do it right, we're going to be able to support the full spectrum of students.

I'm going to just roll this into goal to 8th grade math conversation. Um, and commissioners, if uh there's no objection here, I'm going to introduce and uh I think I cleared this with council before. I'm going to introduce um item E, goal 2, 8th grade math with item F 3 263-24 SP2, the 2026 math policy. So we can have a conversation together about math and then end with an action at the end. Any objections? Okay,

that's just going to throw off, just to warn you, it's going to throw off my time monitoring if we're doing both together, but we'll figure that out later when we report out minutes. Just FYI. Okay. Uh that being said, um with that combination here, can I have a motion in a second to introduce this item? So moved. Second. It has been properly moved and seconded that the board approve item 263-24 SP2 2026 math placement policy. Uh in addition to the discussion for student workshop item goal 2 8th grade math.

I'm sorry uh President Kim for clarification. Are you wanting to do the goal two presentation first? Yes. Okay. Well, then I'm just gonna hand it over to just take it away team.

Thank you again, Dr. Sue. We are in round two. Um this time shifting from literacy to math as we share the progress uh report monitoring report for goal two. Um next uh can we get slides up? Next slide please. So, similar to the goal one presentation, we ground this update in the vision, values, goals, and guardrails, focusing here on grade on goal two, which is grade 8 math. Um, now this report brings together some key data sources, including the winter star results and the January instructional walkthrough observations. As with goal one, the intent in goal two is to connect instructional practice to student outcomes by examining patterns in classroom practice and how they align with student performance in math. The report also highlights key learnings and concrete next steps for the remainder of this of this year and into next year. And so with that, I will hand it off to my colleague once again, Moonhawk.

Thank you, Jess. Uh so yeah, this is round two. So we're now talking about math data and as with goal one presentation we anchor our presentation with the the theory of action throughout and thank you commissioner Gupta for specifically calling out the the value of uh including theory of action consistently. Um so we're starting with the student impact on outcomes and then we'll work backwards as we did with goal one. Uh next slide please. And as with goal one we see some mixed results in in goal two. So, we see small increases for overall goal two on the far left and interim goal 2.3 and small dips um sorry the the no that's right small increases on the the far left and then the far right and then uh small dips for interim goal 2.1 and 2.2 too um and vice president Huing uh these are within margins of error. So um meaning they're not statistically significant. Um so you know these are potentially just kind of random flukes that we observe um as we go through these times. Um and more specifically for goal 2.2 two, this cohort last year when they were in sixth grade had a similar pattern of dipping from 42% in the fall to 41 in the winter and then ended up uh going up to 43% on the aspect at the end of the year. Um so we might expect a similar pattern which we've talked about before, right? um for reasons that we're still uh trying to understand as you go through these, there tends to be a dip from fall to winter uh especially in math uh that most cohorts tend to seem to recover from by the end of the year. So uh we're expecting the similar similar uh pattern to happen by the end of the year. Um and again uh as with start reading we can't quite dismiss the potential adverse impact of the teacher strike on these interim outcomes that we

have uh documented and I'll pass it on to Devon.

Thank you so much. Um so similarly to goal one if we can go to the next slide we are going to make a direct connection between student outcomes and highquality instructional practice in the classroom as measured by the TNTP learning walks that have occurred. Um if we can go to the next slide. Um however, we're going to look at a couple different data points. Um we are currently in our first year of um official implementation of the newly adopted K8 math curriculum. Um so we're going to look across three separate data points in evaluating the learning walk data. Um the first data point is from the 2023 um instructional audit and diagnostic that was done by TNTP. Um we're then going to compare the January 2025 and or sorry September 2025 and January 2026 learning walk data. And as similarly was just named in goal one um there was in March another set of walks that did occur. Um so again uh we see relatively um in September similar use of materials um to goal one. However, we did see significant increases um both in use of curriculum materials but also also in culture of learning from September to January um across the measures of essential content of focus, coherence and rigor um which are primarily related to use of materials. Um we do see similar increases over time. If we can go to the next set. Um so slightly differently organized from goal one. Um but in focusing in on instructional practice and then academic ownership um we do see some relative strengths and growth areas. So as highlighted um we do see especially in comparison to the 2023 diagnostic really strong increase in teacher providing opportunities for students to work with and practice um grade and course level problems with

appropriate numbers and number types um as one of our strengths in instructional practice. Um however again in thinking about students carrying the cognitive load in the classroom um we do see a significant growth area around teacher deliberately posing questions and tasks to make students current thinking or current understanding including misconceptions of the mass visual but visible um and adapting the lesson to support student understanding. If we can go to the next one and again in further evaluating some of these components of academic ownership um where you see some of this um relative strength however we would still consider you know something below 50% um or even 40% as um a growth area. Um we do see significant need associated with again some of these components of students carrying the cognitive load. So in this case, students talking about and asking questions about each other's thinking. Um, relative need also associated with students explaining and justifying their thinking beyond just stating answers. So again, zeroing in on this question of how much are students asked to practice, have those at bats, carry the cognitive load, demonstrate their understanding, and have academic ownership in the classroom. If we can go to the next slide. So again, similar to goal one, um these high quality instructional practices are present when there are enabling conditions across professional learning and site structures. Um and not just you know use of curriculum with integrity, but again these same things we've been naming around teacher collaboration um highquality instructional leadership at the site. And then if we go to the next slide, we wanted to provide um two specific callouts of how student outcomes lead to these practices and how these practices are addressed across a series of um school and department systems. Um so the first one is just a highlight of the teacher professional learning. So at the

middle grade level um different than at the elementary level um we centrally pull teachers together. So at the elementary level, these cohorts are significant in size. Um so we work primarily through administrators and instructional coaches somewhat differently than we do at middle school. Um in middle school we do pull both general ed and special education math teachers um including RSPS and mildmod SDC teachers um for release days both for full day in-person learning but also for virtual engagements. Um you can see from some of the topics listed that the focus of these days has been in alignment to some of the practices that we have identified as growth areas within the learning walks. Um so for example some of this work around like oral language production explaining and justifying these thinking thinking is not just a math practice um but related to math language routines and support for multilingual learners. So we have highlighted these components across professional learning. If we can go to the next slide. Similarly, we have focused on identifying the enabling conditions at sites and this through site implementation tracking um which measures we need to improve upon in order to significantly grow instructional practice and therefore student outcomes. Um so again, similar to goal one in looking at the implementation tracker, um you can see some of these areas of need, um the percentage of teachers at a school site attending release days, the percentage of classrooms on pace, um as focus areas for us in improving the enabling conditions that grow instructional practice and therefore student outcomes. Um so in the plan section, our hope is to address these areas in our strategic department activities. And I'm going to go ahead and pass it on to my colleague for that section.

Um, you can go to the next slide. So, continuing back along our theory of action, right? If we hope that students are going to do something, then we hope that the teachers are going to be changing their practice to the earlier the earlier comments, then we have to have schools organized in a certain way. And then in the central office, we as departments need to support this practice so that practice can actually change and systems can change at the school level. So I'm going to talk a little bit about what we've been doing and what we plan to do going forward. You can go to the next slide. So one of the things I'll talk about is this idea of the lesson internalization with leaders and teams. Um I think you know the K5 structure of Citywide brings every K5 principal together. Um and the middle school cohort and the K8 cohort, there's 21 of them, 13 middle schools, eight um K8 leaders. They come together separately from the elementary folks. And we last year didn't have a great way of making sure that leaders were really internalizing the new curricula. And so this year curriculum and instruction and lead Kate Middle School Kate lead got together and said let's fix that. Um and we tried something that initially didn't work. We tried some virtual meetings and we tried to bring everybody together. We said let's bring the K leaders together um on one Thursday virtually and then let's bring the middle school leaders together on another Thursday. And it just was like not working. And so then we put our heads back together and said, "All right, let's try something else." And so for the last couple of months, curriculum and instruction has been joining lead in our assistant principal meetings and really going into deep. We've been separating the K8 and the middle school leaders into two groups because K8 leaders do have some unique um specific things. They have two sets of curriculum in nine grades, 10 grades sometimes, sometimes 11 grades. And so they need a little bit of a different space and really diving into one specific part of the curriculum curricula area that I mentioned earlier and then trying out these internalization protocols themselves and then we're asking them to go back. So um during that you've seen in the implementation tracker that they have a journal. We were realizing people weren't really using the journal. So then we put our heads together and said

why aren't they using the journal? Because they saw it as a compliance task. And so now we've adjusted once again and we said all right what if we have them start with the journal and say what did you do last month and then end with the journal and say what are you going to do next month and then after curriculum instruction takes their leave m and I who have them for the rest of the afternoon say okay now we want you to get together with your critical friends and make a plan we want you to calendar out on your calendar when are you going into classrooms to try this out with the learning walk tool when are you meeting with your principal to bring this back when are you meeting with your ILT so this idea of you know ensuring that we can deepen the common learning walk tool that we can make the space for reflection and that we can then hold them uh responsible for their actions. Um, we then added one other layer which was now when I go to schools, I did it this week. I did it for the first time. I said, tell me to the principal, tell me about what your AP taught you from the instructional coherence meetings. I got a lot of blank stairs this week, but next time I go, I'm not going to get that because then we came up with a plan that if if on uh the second or the third Thursday APS get this input, when is your admin meeting the following week and how will you incorporate that into your admin meeting? So this idea of like how do we backwards map into the systems we're we're starting to get better at that at all the all the levels and we think that that will then lead to better department meetings at the sites and then in turn that will lead to um instruction being higher quality and then I think I have one more slide that's not specifically about the schools but rather about the professional developments and this is not unsimilar to what I said during the goal one presentation right we want to continue to get better at working really should have brought my water up with me um we want to get better at working with our multilingual uh our English learner multilingual department to ensure that we're supporting our emerging bilingual and our multilingual learners that we're thinking about tier one instruction but also tier 2 and tier three instruction and how to support students with IEPs. Um and that we're thinking about how to relate what we're doing with coaches to

what we're doing with principles to what we're doing with teachers. Um and so as we get better at aligning um our expectations and clarifying whose role is what, we know that the implementation is going to continue to improve. Um and that really the piece of this both the academic ownership and the pacing is what we really want to focus on. Thanks. That was really nice of you. Um and thanks. And then I and I think that that's the end of this part of the two-part presentation. Thanks. love that. Oh, sorry.

Um, why don't we go into the math placement uh presentation for algebra as well and we'll just talk about that all all together. Sure. If that's the case, I would love to invite um Professor Tom D to the DAS as well. Do you all want to stay just in case or no? Oh, you're gonna stay there.

You're in the hot seat, professor. Sorry. Um, can I just just really quickly just just say like tonight really marks a major milestone um for for many many people in the room um started the room out with and remaining in the room and the people who are watching online um of just all the work that folks have done um over the years um for more than 10 10 years for for over a decade now San Francisco started out with a really well-intentioned plan um regarding uh supporting our our students um to gain better math proficiency. Um unfortunately the unintended consequence of that meant that we actually uh limited or reduced or took away um opportunities from our students which is not what we wanted. Um and so uh last year uh on in February of 2024 the board voted to bring back algebra 1. We spent the past two years um looking at different models to bring back permanently algebra into um 8th grade. And thanks to the support of Stanford researchers um as well as our amazing um administrative team and teachers and educators throughout the entire district, particularly in middle school and K8 schools. Um, we tonight are proud to present a revised math placement policy option that will bring back um, algebra 1 in all of our middle school and K8 schools starting in 2627. I know that the road to get to this place has not been easy, has not been simple. Uh we've had many many conversations with um uh our community,

our administrators, our educators, our parents, our young people. Um, and at the end of the day, the decision for this math policy change, which essentially is a sequencing change for how we administer our math uh uh coursework, is is really again uh continues to be rooted in equity, continues to be rooted in what is best for our students. Um, and so I am just really really proud of the team that we have that's been working on this. Um, and I'm really proud of the fact that we are at a place where we will be able to bring this uh bring algebra 1 back into um eighth grade for um students um and and that we're doing it in a very thoughtful way. Um so with that, I just again thank the community for coming and joining and working together with us, with me to make sure that this opportunity is provided for our students. Um, so I'm going to hand it over first to Professor D for No, I'm going to hand it over.

Yeah, that'd be great. I'm gonna hand it over to Professor D from Stanford University. Take it away, Professor.

Thank you so much, uh, Superintendent Sue and Commissioners for having me here. I'm really pleased for the opportunity to discuss the results of the algebra pilots I conducted in collaboration with Dr. for Elizabeth Huffer who I see is online here and also available uh to answer questions. You know in my work at Stanford as a professor my research and teaching focuses largely on how do we do genuinely credible evaluations of programs and policies and by and large that positions me uh more often than I would like to be the bearer of bad news to folks. So I have to say uh tonight I feel a sense of sort of joy and a cause for celebration frankly um in terms of what we've seen from the out the the first round of uh algebra pilots. And I say that particularly being mindful of the long historical arc that superintendent Sue described um and that has brought us to this point. Um and really I mean what's underscoring that for me is that our research on the two major pilots found um that there was no clear academic harm of universal algebra participation at the select middle schools that adopted the algebra for all model. And at the schools where students were able to take algebra as an elective, we saw genuinely substantial learning gains both in the spring espec gains into the current academic year. And while I would encourage you and others to to join me in feeling good about the success of those pilots, I also recognize that there's really important work uh going ahead. And I guess I would like to underscore what I see as four critical needs uh for the path ahead in light of what we've learned from these pilots. One, I think it's particularly important to bring the

same kind of research and learning agenda to what's uh being proposed for next year. In particular, my own personal view is that the braided compression pilot that has been proposed is eminently a sensible one, but that doesn't guarantee it'll work or that it'll be implemented well. So, I would love to see a learning agenda like the one we brought to these 1.0 pilots occur for that next round. two, um, in light of what we're seeing in these pilot results, I think the imperative to make sure parents are well equipped for the informed consent procedure you articulated is really critical because parent, you're asking parents to confront some very serious tradeoffs if they forego taking math 8. The comparative results across the two pilots suggests they're leaving potential learning gains in math on the table for their students while gaining in other domains in terms of an opportunity for example to take an additional elective. um making sure parents understand that and also the fact that there may be implications for the risk of having to repeat algebra in ninth grade and for other outcomes that may matter to them such as the strength of their child's candidacy uh for elite admissions to uh uh exam schools to low school uh in particular. Um, the third imperative I think is really important involves the equity issue. Superintendent Sue mentioned, you know, so much of the national discourse around algebra, you know, I find to be sort of crude and reductive because it focuses so narrowly on when and with whom students take algebra, but not the path towards algebra readiness that students take. And what we see in the data um is uh too few of um SFUSD's minoritized

students are represented in the algebra pilot. And I um I think we should take seriously the the uh opportunity to help them realize their math potential. And I could talk and I mentioned some in the slides what some of those avenues might be involving earlier instructional time instructional supports and some of the you know discussion about around pedagogy I see you're already having and actually I see some parallels with the needs there and the earlier discussion around literacy pedagogy as well. I mean there are national discussions around math pedagogy that parallel those occurring around the science of reading. So again, um, thinking seriously about the path towards broader algebra readiness among SFUSD students is the third encouragement I would offer you. And the fourth is really recommitting to implementing automatic enrollment. Well, so for those of you who don't recall, automatic enrollment is a classic behavioral economics nudge, an opt out default where instead of allowing um placements into a course like algebra to depend on parent requests or teacher recommendations, we identify uh academically qualified students and place them in those courses by default from which they're free to opt out. no one is being constrained. But that kind of automatic placement is a really compelling signal to students about where they belong. And it could also be another powerful arrow in the quiver in terms of achieving equity goals. We saw evidence of this in the pilot where um automatic enrollment wasn't implemented at the sites where it should have been. But at three of the six, algebra as an elective school, um there was encouragement of students who met the automatic enrollment criteria to take algebra. And we saw that drive

participation in the course. Um and and it had dramatic effects among focal students, underrepresented minorities who were academically qualified and encouraged them to actually take algebra. So algebra readiness gets you to the door. uh but or the goal line and I think automatic enrollment can help take students across the goal line by making sure they're in the courses for which they're qualified. So there are a number of dimensions I think to building on the early success and insights of these pilots. Um the summitive results are on the slide that's in front of you now and um I'd be happy along with Dr. Dr. Hoffer who's online to answer any questions you may have around our interpretation of the re these results or the research design that substantiates those claims. Thank you.

Uh Commissioner Gupta.

Yeah. Uh happy to go first. So thank you so much for completing the study. Um I question on the design. I was surprised to learn that middle schools self- selected into models. Uh I I think that would potentially create a bias sample and we saw one of the uh models didn't have enough in terms of the the compression model for rooftop. Um was there a reason that we didn't explore that that you saw that we didn't explore compression or braided model earlier? Well, I can't speak to that exact choice around uh but my understanding of the sort of governance structure in the school is that school sites often have some degree of autonomy. So there was discussions with them about which of these models might suit your needs and that led to the character of uptake. As an evaluation researcher, I see that as a lemonade, not a lemon because there's an apherism in evaluation research. Evaluate no program until it's proud. And so you want people to take up the program that they think is best suited to their capacities and serves their communities well. And that's why um you know the the algebra for all was was also taken by a very select set of middle schools that I think on on average were higher achieving at baseline. So I would be I was very glad to not see negative effects of universal algebra for there there because there there was evidence of negative effects from the statewide experience with algebra for all earlier uh in earlier decades and the fact that there wasn't in the pilot might reflect the exact uh sight selection of models that you're describing. Yeah, I I 100% agree. Which, you know, as in it would it would have been great to well would have been better to see across the diversity of different middle

schools what each model did or didn't do and so forth. So I I totally but I am I am kind of curious. So when we see math as an elective and that model um I would think well we we're giving twice the number of minutes of instruction to students. So is that what from your perspective accounts for that tremendous increase that we see the fact that we have double the minutes?

Yeah. While we can't be exactly sure, I mean, that's an eminently reasonable conjecture. And sometimes when I've spoken with people about these results, they'll say, "Well, how is that surprising if we double the amount of instructional time that we would see these gains?" And and certainly there's reason in that. But I sometimes would caution people, the field of education research is littered with well-intentioned interventions that everyone thought would work exante only to be disappointed exposed. And I would also stress that even if you're in a world where you expect this model, the additional algebra as an elective model to drive achievement gains um through additional instructional time. Um those gains are still real and transformative in the lives of students and map into other outcomes that matter. In particular, I want to underscore that um on those campuses where kids were taking algebra as an elective, they had half the rate of repeating algebra in nth grade as the kids at on the algebra for all campuses. And I think that's another complicating factor in thinking about um the fact that they also lost an elective. I think viewing it over a longer time horizon is going to be important both for policy makers and for parents who are engaging responsibly in your informed consent procedure 100%. I mean, that actually leads to my next question, which is in other school districts that are larger than us, say Elkrove or Long Beach, which have better math outcomes, larger districts, uh more low-income students, uh more focal populations than we do that that are still doing better. I noticed they do more compression models. In fact, Long Beach seems to have two accelerated paths. one where students can jump in in middle school, one where they can jump in into 10th grade. And I'm curious, I mean, you

know, so they're not necessarily skipping math 8. It's just they're compressing things to a point where then students can complete math 8 and get in and do algebra in 8th grade in in these models. So, um, that that's that's kind of where I'm I was curious about the compression model and, you know, yeah, kind of ruing that we didn't have that in the initial pilot.

Um, I share your curiosity about that and I'm I'm hopeful that there will will be an opportunity to study it next year in part because my understanding of the proposed version of this braided compression model is one that it's really thoughtful in how it does that compression. It's not just dropping some things and slapping them all together, but really being thoughtful about the scope and sequence of lesson plans uh within those courses. Um, and certainly the additional math course, the algebra as an elective model. I'm not here to tell you it's nature's final word on how this should be constructed and uh and look forward to learning from, you know, a different model and seeing whe whether it's better and might come with fewer tradeoffs and maybe uh putting less of a decision-making burden on parents who might be unsure how to navigate these spaces.

Yeah. No, I I appreciate that. I mean in in in all to say based on the fact that we do have it site um sites select the model that they seek. I mean I hope parents will um appreciate principles who you know are allowing one of the things we have to balance of course is if a student is ready we also don't want to hold them back. Um, I understand the the caution against if a student is not ready, if a student, you know, would benefit from math a, we certainly don't want them to potentially skip that and have to repeat it. Um, and I, you know, there are num number of families who unfortunately over the last 10 years have chosen tutors or whatever it might be on the side because they didn't feel like there was that option for them and and so forth. So, I hope parents will express their appreciation for their site leaders and then also if they do want to see another model potentially raise that as well.

Thank you,

Mr. Alexander. Um, I had a question. You mentioned briefly uh you made a comment about um admission to exam schools. So, I'm curious um what the data shows on that. I know that is that a reference to the winter star scores. Yeah.

Am spring the spring uh grade eight uh star scores. They weren't something we uh centered in our analysis, but we did examine the effects there and found um as an aside, I wanted to mention our analysis was based on a pre-registration as well. This is not a standard of practice in this field, but it's one that I feel that should exist where before doing the analysis, we articulated our research questions, the focal outcomes, and the research designs we would consider and then opened up the data and examined them. We didn't pre-register the spring scores as a focal outcome because the course was still in progress. um and instead pre-registered the fall uh you know grade nine star scores but we examined them and found effects and that matters because I believe student performance on those measures feeds into their band designation for admission to LOL. So that's just another element of informed consent that I think will matter to parents confronting the these decisions. So, so to clarify, you're saying that the students that took just algebra on average scored lower.

I had no no effect on their um uh spring grade 8 star scores, whereas the kids who took algebra as an elective along with math 8 saw large gains. Oops. Sorry. And so then they would presumably have a higher chance of getting into that's that was positional.

Got it. I just wanted to make sure I understood that point. Um, my other question I think was just I wanted to raise a question I'd received from a number of middle school educators. Um, and it has to do with the change in the staff recommendation because the original staff recommendation, my understanding was it did not include an option for opting out of math 8 and then there was a change to um allow for opting out of math 8. And again, I think there what I've heard from educators is there some level of concern that that parents might do that not understanding kind of the implications given the the strength of the data. Yeah.

So I'm curious like why this maybe is a question more for superintendent as to why why was that shift made in spite of the concerns of educators? Um well I I know that there were concerns from educators um although and then I also know that there were um um questions from from parents who who also know their children well um who believe that their children um you know who's monitoring their students uh or their child's performance through their elementary and middle school years and feel strongly that um perhaps skipping math 8 was going to be the best route for their child so that their child could continue to um to take rigorously academic classes as well as other um electives and options that's available at schools. Um so when I asked the team to look at you know what were some um ways for us to consider um students proficiency and readiness uh for a path where they would opt out of math 8. That was when we started to look at perhaps proficiency on STAR testing. Um and um and then also needing to make sure that families understood that if they did choose to opt out of math 8 then um they understood that the ramifications of that um which is why we're asking families to make sure that their students talk to their counselor um and that we want to make sure that parents sign off on consent for this because as what Professor D is saying there's significant benefits to having a student have uh take what we are now calling expanded math which is math 8 and algebra 1 at the same time. Um but we heard I heard a lot from families who said that they truly believed that their child was ready to

go straight into algebra 1 and we did not want to take that opportunity away from that student. And so um we created this other additional path um so that uh students who met the proficiency benchmark would be able to opt out um and and we will continue to of course provide supports to our students. Um but give give students another avenue to take algebra 1. But so it sounds like there will be some process for to make sure that families are informed about the fact that there may be a higher chance of having to repeat algebra in 9th grade. There may be a lower chance of getting into low things like that so that they don't so they understand those. There will be some kind of a process for that.

Yes. So that is part of the conversation with the counselor. So, we're asking that students who um and their families have to come to this convers you know this this decision together um have that conversation with the counselor to make sure that they fully are aware of what this means. Um we do have two schools that we are proposing to have the braided compression model and we want to see how that yields and that what that pans out. um we are working very closely with our new mass curriculum um provider to change the course and sequence of the curriculum and so I think we're trying to be very very thoughtful on how we're implementing both um strands here. Yeah, I appreciate that. And um I think the cho family choice is important. Um but I do think it's also important that it's informed choice. And I think um you know, we heard earlier tonight also again about the problem with newcomer families being um apparently directed away from programs that that were specially designed to support their kids. I wouldn't want the same thing to happen with middle school students being directed away from math 8 and algebra being taken together. So I guess I just I want to be really cautious about this point around what does informed choice look like, right? And how do we make sure that families actually understand that the from educators the implications of their options, right? Because the educators are the experts here. And again, it it may well be that a parent says, "I know my kid better than you do." And I I as an educator absolutely respect that. And I've had that conversation with families when I was an educator. But I want but but it does require that informed, you know, like look, here's the here are the options, right? With a newcomer family, here are specialized programs that will benefit your kid. If you opt out, great, but you need to understand what's offered. Same with with middle school math. I just want to we don't always have a great track record with that. So, I just want

to make sure that that point is followed up on with families. Commissioner Wes,

thank you. Um, I'm going to follow up with uh my colleague Commissioner Alexander's point. Um, and also just start full disclosure. I have a kiddo in 8th grade at Prescidio who's doing math 8 and algebra and we're thrilled. Um, and and and I don't know. I mean, he said, "I'm going to take math as an elective." I said, "Right on." Um, I think that in that moment, if he had been like, "Oh, I think I can just take algebra." I probably would have been like, "Cool, take algebra." Right. And I I am but I am seeing as a parent and now I'm also seeing thanks to this this amazing work of all of you up here um just how important it is that he is also taking a math eight. Like sure he probably could have been okay in algebra probably but maybe not. And I think he's going to be better off because he's had the opportunity to take two. So I just want to reiterate the idea of this informed consent seems so so so key. And um, Superintendent Sue, I appreciate that the the counselors are brilliant and they're amazing and they're doing, you know, God's work at the school. And um, I I also want to make sure that they have the information because if it's being held here and here, that's not helpful. And if it's just like sort of, you know, the sort of it's not actually it's trickling down little bit by little bit, then you may have one counselor who's got it all and is able to really give all of this information so that the kiddo and their parent, their guardian can make that decision. And another school where maybe the counselor doesn't have access to that information, that's what I worry about. So I think if there is going to be this opt out, it needs to be really intentional and it needs to be really really consistent in terms of what information is being given so that the same information is being given at every school site so that everyone has the same access to that information as they make their decisions because I don't had I not sort of read the report I wouldn't have known as much and had I not sort of been watching my kid do

these things I wouldn't have known as much. So, I'd like to add on this point of doing informed consent. Well, it it really underscores the value of having automatic enrollment, having some automaticity in making sure manifestly capable students are placed there initially and then have that opt out because that's going to be a signal and that's going to I think um um shape decisions in powerful and appropriate ways.

Thank you. I I have I guess that that I wasn't ask I would not do have done well on our scoring because that didn't I didn't ask a question but I just want to underscore like to just I mean to to use superintendent okay like no yet yeah but please can we make sure that there is a process that is consistent that is clear so that folks actually have the information to be able to make that decision. Um and then my qu my question um professor G I think is is for you about the study. So it um one of the slides notes that or what the study notes that um even some students who didn't necessarily meet the eligibility criteria s experienced significant learning gains when taking algebra as the elective. I want to stop calling it elective because I feel like that's part of our problem but whatever. Um does expanded math do you think that this like is there any indication that like student motivation um might be a powerful predictor rather than prior test scores and maybe the motivation is I mean I I hear you saying like if you're the opt out versus opt-in but I could see it sort of working both ways a student saying yes I'm going to do this or a student saying really my know student being like, "Oh, my school believes I can do this."

Yeah. Right. And that also seems like a good predictor of or potentially a predictor of I want to do well.

It absolutely does. And in in the in the take up of automatic enrollment that we're seeing across the country um typically uh test scores are used and and that's in part because they're powerfully predictive of success and in later academic courses, but they're universally available too. And I think um I think you're right to to point out that there are other metrics that could conceivably you be used like motivation that are relevant to future success and could be used in an automatic enrollment criteria. I just worry about the logistical impediments to that I think are non-trivial um uh in terms of uh you know get just getting access to the data in a timely way. We could talk about the company that fields the surveys that are often used, but um uh so I so I think that's one of the reasons you see just the the logistical ease and the and the and the wellestablished validity of test scores and sometimes grades. Uh but it's not that other metrics aren't appropriate.

Sorry. And can I cut in real quick if I was also hearing that maybe part of you're thinking maybe part of the mechanism that's like inducing those larger gains, right? we see that the students who were above the threshold gained even more. All of the students who opted in also saw benefits from the additional math class. You know, if we're seeing this program implemented at more campuses next year, um there's another design that we'd hope to use that would um potentially be available to us next year where we really are looking at effects of those students who are just barely above that automatic enrollment threshold. Um, so hopefully there is will be an opportunity in the future to look at those students who maybe just get that nudge and get nudged into the uh algebra 1 as an expanded math class. So we might be able to say more about that kind of marginal student uh in future study. Can I just share that um in talking to uh the principal over at Aptos um he actually said that initially he was only prepared for one I think one session of um of expanded math h but but at the end of the enrollment period he ended up having to open up several more sessions five total classes um for expanded math just because I know exactly it means that our students with that gentle nudge where there's someone in school says, "I believe that you could do this." Yeah.

I I actually I know you can do this. So do it. Just try it. And then when they do, they excel. And then they can see they can they build the confidence and they see the potential inside them. And I think that's what that's what education that's what we're we're tasked to do. Um is to help students see the fullest potential of themselves. We vote to extend please. 10. I move to extend the meeting past 10 p.m. Seconded.

Okay. So, bro, uh, Commissioner Ray. Yes. Can I think other people have their mics on that we could trim. Commissioner Alexander? Yes. Vice President Healing? Yes. President Kim? Yes. Commissioner Weiss Mort? Yes. Commissioner Gupta? Yes. Commissioner Fischer? Yes. Vice President Healing.

Thank you. Um, I'm so glad that we're, you know, celebrating the vast number of students who want access to algebra and are clamoring for it in SFUSD. But I'll say I looked at your data and I interpreted it a bit differently. I saw, for example, that at schools with algebra for all, 89% of students enrolled in algebra. And at schools uh with algebra as an elective, only 29% of students did. if you include all uh groups of students, I think you have 36% but that excludes students who are in some more um remedial courses. Um and even with the higher um repeat rate of algebra 1 in nth grade overall in algebra for all schools 72% of all students in those schools succeeded in going straight to algebra 1 in 8th grade and then to algebra 2 in nth grade. Whereas a huge number of students were did not take algebra at all in the algebra as an elective classes such that only even with the lower kind of fail rate or repeat rate um with algebra as an elective only 26% of all students at algebra as an elective schools had success in algebra in nth grade and didn't have to repeat. So that's a difference of 46% of students who didn't have access to algebra 2 in nth grade and therefore are not going to be able to get to calculus for their college applications. And the absolute difference in that percentage, the effect of that is that 603 kids at the algebra as an elective schools did not have access to algebra at all. So, while I understand Commissioner Alexander's

concern that students might be directed away from algebra as an elective toward just directly taking algebra if they're given an opt out, my concern is for the much much larger portion of students who won't have access to algebra at all if they have to take it as an elective. We have two schools where students won't be able to take algebra plus any other elective. and if they have SDC or ELD, they won't be able to take even algebra. And then we have many, I believe half, like 10 or 11 of our 21 middle schools have language pathways. So if kids in those language pathway programs want to take algebra, all of those kids are going to be prevented from taking arts, which then also prevents them from accessing a selective exam school, which is soda, where they need a portfolio. So my question is, you know, if there's no academic harm to taking algebra 1 directly, why would we restrict any student who is so motivated to be able to take art and algebra and language from doing so? Yeah, I really appreciate that question and share your interest in how well um that particular group of students is being served and that's why I underscore it as one of what I see as a key step going forward. It's how do we support their preparedness for algebra? But I think to your other questions of well if there was no harm why didn't we extend it to these kids who didn't have it there. We we find no evidence of harm at the campuses that selected into the algebra for all pilot. We can't necessarily infer that the absence of harm would generalize to the campuses that didn't choose that model into the group of students uh about whom you've

right rightfully underscored our shared concern. So um so you know that's why I really think it's important to think about their pathways towards the readiness decision particularly in an environment where parents are going to be are going to have more latitude to help guide that decision for their children. But I would be cautious about ex generalizing from the evaluation results from the three select schools that quite intentionally chose universal algebra to the sites that didn't.

And and I suspect that those schools probably have higher star scores going in. And so my question is would we be able to tell of the 81% of students in algebra for all who didn't have to repeat algebra who had success what a predictive star assessment in seventh grade would be that would predict which of the which of those students are in that 81%. like is there a threshold where above a certain star score in seventh grade going in you'd be likely to have success with that model?

Uh there may well be and I think my recommendation around that would be to adopt a kind of continuous improvement mindset like if you we have let's get good ideas about what those kinds of assessments might be pilot them and evaluate them in terms of their efficacy. Um I'm a committed empiricist in that regard. And I think anyone who's making broad exante conjectures about it um you know can't really point to data that substantiates those claims. Professor D. What is exante? I'm sorry I'm not a Latin major. Sorry. Meaning before. Thank you. Yeah. As opposed to expost which is after. Thank you.

Your timer is going. Sure. Would you like to tempest tempest fugit is time flies?

I'm not done but my time is. Ju just so commissioners know I know that we combined two topics so after this first round if there are additional questions do a second round. Commissioner Ray,

thank you so much. Um, first I just want to say a giant plus one to Commissioner Huing's comments. Um, I really appreciate what she's pointing out there. And I I'm also interested, Professor D, and what your responses were, but I think it's critical how many more students were reached through the algebra for all than through Algebra as an elective. Um I have a couple of questions um some comments as well but I want to start with the questions first. One is around compression versus compaction. I've uh spoken to some folks who've told me that there is a difference between those two. Can you um and that what many other schools do is actually a compaction taking say mass sixth, seventh and eighth and putting it keeping all those standards within those but putting it into two years whereas a compression model actually skips some number of standards. Can you just can you comment on that or anyone who knows about that?

Thank you so much. I'm happy to answer that question if we can go to the appendix. We're going to start on slide 40 of which the mathology deck. That's the one.

Thank you. Um so one of the things that I want to start with is just the concept of compression and course compression in general which um is a fairly generalized term. Um simply what course compression refers to is the idea that students would be covering and teachers would be covering content for more than one grade level set of standards within a year. Um what's highlighted on the screen right now is for amplified desmos math. The scope and sequence for unit design across um what is commonly referred to as math 6, math 7, math 8 and algebra 1. Um what I would say is that universal umbrella and the concept of compression is not used in the same way across all districts and across all compression models. um the design of that compression course or whichever courses they may be, it could be math 6, math 7, math 8 and algebra 1 is going to vary district by district. Not just in terms of the design of the curriculum, but also the design of the compression. So in some cases, you might see a design where if we're talking about the compression of math 8 and algebra 1, you might see four units of math 8 followed by four units of algebra 1. um another district might have a similar math titled similarly math 8 algebra 1 compression but they might alternate between math 8 and algebra 1 units. Um so I want to just name specifically um this concept of compression is not you know defined named and executed in the same way across all courses across all districts. If we can go to the next slide. So in this case just to highlight our adopted curriculum middle school is amplified desmos math um which provides a publisher ready compression course um that is a 2year sequence so essentially three courses across two years. The accelerated six refers to a compression of math 6 and math 7 and the accelerated

seven refers to a compression of math 7 and math 8. within the design of amplified Desmos math compression courses, they have utilized what we would have been commonly referred to as a braided model where within a unit of instruction, they have linked together standards across grade levels that are sequenced and meant to coherently build on one another. So you'll see within, for example, unit one of accelerated 7, content related to math 6 and math 7. That is a specific design for amplified desmos math that is provided by the publisher. Okay, just to clarify, would would we be able to use this amplify desmos sequence? Is this what we would plan to use in the 678 compression that's referenced in the policy? And would that cover all of the standards in maths 6th, 7th and eighth or would it omit some?

It is the curriculum that we would use within the piloting of compression. What I would say is that within compression design there will always be the skipping of something whether that is a lesson whether that is a standard whether that is a unit. It is impossible to cover 100% of math 6 plus 50% of math 7 in one school year. So there will always be something skipped within compression. What is skipped and how much is skipped depends on the design of that compression. Thank you. Uh my next question is about um transfer students. So in the policy as currently drafted, it's not clear to me how that would cover transfer students.

Can you just say more about that question so we better understand what at what grade level are you talking about transfer and what specifically is the concern? Um sure. Let's say students transfer into SFUSD at 8th grade. What do they do in terms of getting into algebra just based on what's currently in the policy? For example, if they don't have a STAR assessment from math 7, then how would we determine whether they're eligible to opt out of math 8?

I'm happy to address um the curriculum and instruction question if you want to talk about the assessment question. With students transferring in, I I think we'd have to consider when they're transferring in. So, if they're transferring in at the beginning of the year, uh particularly when we're um administering assessments, we can certainly do an offbook or off the window type of assessment for that student and then be able to look at it from that perspective based on whatever thresholds are uh currently applied. I would imagine that students would be transferring in with grades um from their previous school district that we could also um enter in because the current criteria to get into um the automatic enrollment pieces that uh Professor D talked about is to have uh basically a grade of C or better in the math course um and then basically the assessment score. And so then we'd have to think about what the proxy for the assessment score would be. Um, okay. Uh, so, okay. So, it's not addressed here, but we would figure something out as the basic answer. Okay. So, speaking of the assessment score, what's currently in the policy refers to demonstrating an overall score of level four and quote unquote secure in all the CCSS math standards, etc., etc. And this would be on the fall and winter uh score reports. This seems like an extremely high standard to be applying. And it really makes me wonder how many students would even qualify based on that. When I look at the fact that, you know, students who have a D in algebra 8, I mean, excuse me, in math 8 go on to algebra 1 in nth grade, I'm a little puzzled by the extreme what seems to be a very, very perhaps exceptionally defined level for students to reach to get into math one, I mean to algebra 1.

Can anyone comment on that? Um, Commissioner Ray, can I can I just I'll take that first and then staff, you can um the team can can add more. Actually, uh, tonight I was going to recommend um a change in that B board policy around the words and secure because we are I would like to propose to remove th that those two words from the board policy because when we ran the data, we did see exactly that commissioner Ray that it was extremely restrictive. um it would have prevented students from accessing the opt out option. Um so that's why we were um recommending to remove those words. We are still recommending to to move forward with keeping um the other criteria um to establish um eligibility for opting out though. But for for those two words um and secure we we are recommending to remove Okay, thank you for that um additional information. Speaking of the other parts which folks were raising here on uh informed consent, the language here also causes me some concern. There's a reference to students and parents and guardians or guardians must meet with their counselor to obtain signed parent guardian consent for the exemption. that strikes me as a pretty significant potential obstacle especially for many working parents um and especially given our counselor to student ratios which are quite high.

So I'll start and then I would love to maybe hand it off to Jen uh Dr. Steiner to finish. But uh again, this is um in the spirit of of having um parents and young people be fully fully aware of what it means for them to to take on the opt out um option um if again if they're eligible for it. Um so we just want to make sure that young people are making decisions based on accurate information and data that's in front of them. um in terms of having um the opportunity to sit down with their counselors and and uh hear this information from counselors, it's very important. Um and then from there, it's making sure that parents um sign off on this. The way that we engage parents to sign off on this, I am going to hand it back to the team to explain because I think we were back and forth on what would that actually look like. taking into consideration that parents and families have very restricted time um availabilities as well as our um counselors. Dr. Siner,

I mean, my bias is going to come out here. I I disagree with the informed consent and the opting out. So, I'm just going to start by saying I don't think academically this is going to be good for students and operationalizing it is going to be a challenge because not only will counselors need to meet and we'll have to ensure that counselors have informed consent to the point that somebody earlier made that we need to make sure that they're robustly informed which is going to be a challenge um and will likely fall on principles already very full plates. I also think it's going to be an operational challenge of what we're offering because when we build a master schedule, right, the the idea behind the seven period day was that there was a period of elective and a period of acceleration, not two electives. Over time, that shifted, right, because we didn't have enough academic courses to offer kids and we had more electives because of the way funding sources um developed and because there was a shift in leadership and we paused on initiate wonder. And so while we were moving toward everybody getting a seven period day, we did slow that down and pause it and we stopped having as many acceleration courses. In an ideal world, every student would have one acceleration course and one elective course and we'd all be seven period days. But in actuality, that's not operationally possible currently in our fiscal fiscal situation. So to answer your operational question, it is going to be challenging because when they build the schedule, if you're in a school, let's take APG for example, and there are 300 or 400 eighth grade students and 90 of them are meeting the academic threshold to opt out. That's an operational challenge to meet with 90 students. But a bigger actual operational challenge is what elective are they going to have during the math 8 period? Because when we build a master schedule, we actually build it so that math 8, ELA, social studies, etc. are there and that their electives are in other periods because they don't need an elective during that block. So, it is

going to require a lot of operational work between now and the end of the year to make this feasible. Um, this wasn't part of our original policy. So, having an exact answer right now isn't possible because I haven't actually met with the principles about this yet. um principles are going to need to think collectively with one another about how to make this work um and how to do this in a way that also doesn't um segregate students into particular classes by racial demographics. And we're going to need to be really careful about that when when this comes to play. and we're going to have to take it into consideration as we look at each student that meets the academic threshold to opt out, the informed consent process, and then what the options are. Um, because all of that will impact their master schedules and their FTEEs for electives as well. Um, so I don't have an exact answer of what it will look like yet because I'm going to need to work with the principles to figure that out, but we will we will do that. Uh, Commissioner Fer. Sure.

I think I already used three seconds of my time asking my Latin question, but it was before. Okay.

Um, yeah, I uh, Dr. Steiner, I appreciate because I think that the barrier to opting out should be very, very, very high. what we're hearing from all of our principles, all of their our teachers, all of our central office staff, our researchers are is that math aid is critical. Um, and uh, we had some great webinars and I appreciate Principal Schuman from APG really highlighting the fact that there's certain parts that the students at APG who took the course miss like and and it's not just algebra algebra 1, but what they're seeing there is students in geometry now who opted out of math 8 even like there's so many repercussions that we're seeing after the fact. So that informed consent is really really key. Um, and I also want to point out not all students want to get to AP calculus. I mean, we shouldn't make the I we shouldn't prevent students from getting to AP calculus for sure, but not all students want to get to AP calculus. Um, and in fact, AP statistics or probability and statistics are even more real world relevant for a lot of our kids. Um, even as a mechanical engineer, I can't tell you how many times I used my calculus in my real world life. So, um, but I use statistics every day. Um, uh, so doesn't mean you shouldn't take it. If you want to be an engineer, you absolutely should. Um, but I also really just appreciate everything we've heard from our community and around this. And I'm I'm really really grateful for this policy coming forward now and the fact that we're addressing it. Um what I think I'm really most appreciative is um I think um Professor D you mentioned it is that you know just the continue with a research and learning agenda right the the fact that we will do a much larger pilot of compression I mean like as

we're seeing as we just saw with our um our um guardrails or our um goal one and goal two conversations we're actually taking data and we're using it to make adjustments. I think that's that is a big change I think in practices that I'm seeing in our district and gives me a lot more confidence moving forward that we are actually going to take the data from the compression pilot over the next year, two years um and actually use it to drive programming that works better for our students. Um so my real question here is though moving forward um especially braided expanded whatever it is like do we have enough credentialed math teachers to do this? Um like what we talk about strong implementation but like what pivots do we need to make to really do this with fidelity?

It's a fantastic question. Uh, Commissioner Fischer, uh, as you asked that, um, our associate superintendent of HR just walked out of the room. Um, I know that this is something that she's very concerned about and we are we, you know, we had a a budget meeting with our with our ED services team today. We're sitting down with um with our our uh staff again tomorrow morning to really map through map out um what are the number of of of teachers we would need um to make this a reality. Um again this was how we realized that having the words and secure was too restrictive because they didn't allow enough students the option to opt out. Um and and so we are um regularly going through and running the data to make sure that we um allow students who have de who've demonstrated the proficiency to to be able to um to take the opt out um and students who need the additional supports to be able to stay and get that um additional supports in expanded math. Um but we are working very hard to make sure that we have enough math teachers um in order to fully implement this minister.

Okay.

Okay. Um so uh there are well first and foremost thank you so much for presenting your research um and uh and thank you to staff for um for for bringing forward a plan that um that I'm really excited by and I'll say this uh so there are a number of factors changing for next year for math in our schools. uh we have an increase in minutes, we have curriculum, new curriculum being implemented, we have professional learning that's a core focus and and and coaching. The course progression is changing across our schools. The um and then we talked a little bit about motivation and and students ability to to opt in, opt out. Um and so that motivation, choice, and investment from students is changing. How are we understanding what will actually improve outcomes next year as all of those factors change? Like c can you walk us through just how are we thinking through because there's a level of change management here that is quite significant for our schools and our students and families. How do we know what works? Well, I think I could uh answer that because I think there are some really compelling uh design opportunities to generate credible evidence around key design features of the expanded math pilot. And um my collaborator Dr. Huffer referenced one of them which is that um our expectation is that if automatic enrollment is properly implemented that creates a uniquely compelling research design because you have students who are likely to fall on either side of a threshold where they'll be strongly encouraged through the opt- out default to participate in algebra and that'll be happening at a larger scale throughout the district under this proposal. So

that is a really unique opportunity to see whether the substantial gains we saw in this 1.0 pilot schools that had the algebra elective will generalize across the district and particularly that uh that evidence of impact will be defined for students who are right at the margin of the threshold. So there's also a compelling learning agenda around around whether we have the threshold right because at some level if you see students on just one side of a threshold are thriving relative to students on just the other side there's a case to be made for lowering that threshold in a way that um expands you know the takeup of math. So, so I think that's really important. And then also on the braided compression pilot, um, two schools will create some opportunity for learning there. Uh, and in particular, I think the work that researchers like Dr. Huffer and I and I would undertake would be how do you construct a credible comparison group for the change you observe among students participating in the braided compression model uh you know and um and those who don't and so we would have to look to other campuses uh and maybe among subgroups of students who for whatever reason aren't participating in algebra and try to identify something that um meets high research standards for a comparison group. So I think around those two key features of the proposal, there are really compelling learning opportunities um that I know we and I'm sure other researchers would love to take up.

I I was just also going to build on that. Yeah.

Briefly by naming um a little bit about um what hasn't changed. Um so just one of the points of comparison um that I don't actually believe we included in the slides but I wanted to name is that um as folks may remember while this is technically our first year of implementation of amplified desmos math we did have a pretty expansive pilot of amplified desmos math in the 2425 school year and one of the requirements was actually that all teachers across all of the algebra 1 pilots all used amplified desmos math. So whether they were concurrently enrolled in math 8 and algebra 1 or skipped math 8 or were in the math 8 and algebra 1 um compression course at rooftop all of those teachers of algebra 1 all used amplified desmos math. So they actually did experience some level of consistency across. And then the one other piece that I did want to build on and just to go back um to that compression scope in sequence um that we are very excited about um is that um one of the benefits in this case is that while it is a compression course that makes use of um materials across two courses, it does maintain the same lesson and unit design as the math 6, math 7, math 8, algebra 1. And so um within the context of professional learning and teacher collaboration, it does provide us a shared um consistent starting point for understanding um design and instructional practice as related to goal two. Can I also piggyback real quick um on the the level setting um question? So, uh, obviously when we were putting these slides together, the, um, option to opt into opting out of the expanded mass. So, I can already tell we're going to need to refine our language a little talking about this if we have an opt- out threshold and an optin in to opt out threshold. U, but we didn't talk about

that in the uh, slides because that was a newer edition. Um, but I can share since it does seem like that other level, that star winter uh score potentially determining that secondary threshold to only take algebra 1 may be relevant. Um, just descriptively because uh it maybe speaks to I think some of these broader questions. We do see very low algebra repetition rates among students that meet about 8% and exceed that's at level four about 3%. But among students at the algebra for all campuses that were only at that approaching so level two it was about 27% and up to 53% among students who are at that level one. So not yet banned or below level one I suppose that not yet banned. So it does seem like the level setting on that other threshold that is being introduced um is also going to be something that has to be a part of the learning agenda. Thanks.

Very interesting. Um I want to ask about algebra preparedness and foundational math. So we've talked a lot about algebra itself. Um beyond the implementation of curricula and all the kind of more obvious things around talk about coaching again like can we can we just briefly touch on what what is taking place around our efforts around foundational math because I think there's so much attention on what's happening in 8th grade and in the middle years. But I'm I'm very much interested in understanding what is our strategy on ensuring foundational math um and and strengthening that in our model.

Just as one clarification in referencing foundational math are you just want to are we talking about a grade band standard sequence? I am mostly thinking about uh K12.

Thank you so much for that. I just wanted to clarify. Um so one of the pieces that I will just name is um while within the context of the goal two report, we've really focused because of goal two um on middle school data. Um we have continued to collect that same data across K5 for math as well. Um so we have all of the learning walk data in both essential content and academic ownership also present for K5 math. Um apologies for having not included. Um so one of the things I wanted to just name was that um as one part but also to say we do deeply analyze that data um as part of our work in instructional cabinet as part of professional development and then to name specifically again apologies for sort of the backend from the progress monitoring is that at the elementary level in K5 um for example our instructional coaches actually attend two coach network days a month um one with a math focus and one with a language and literacy focus. So at the elementary level, instructional coaches do support in those two content areas. Um what I would say for better or worse um is that at the elementary level, I think in the realm of academic ownership, we do see somewhat similar trends in terms of need to strengthen the practices related to academic ownership, students explaining and justifying their thinking. Um and I would say at the elementary level there is sort of this additional component um that has two different pieces. One certainly our elementary educators have gone now through two back-toback curriculum adoptions um which is not nothing. Um and so there is a fair bit of work in the realm of instructional coaches around how do you balance time and energy in year one year two. um how do we you know certainly within the case of elementary and

imagine learning illustrative math um that is I don't want to say simple but it is a simpler curriculum design than language and literacy because it doesn't have the same set of components um and so you know what I would say is a fair bit of instructional work is trying to both you know build curriculum specific practice while also you know supporting some of the same trends around internalization um and inquiry cycles and coaching. Um I would say the one other piece that does show up a little bit more um in the elementary realm which I think is not a unique to San Francisco situation um is building teacher content expertise um in math. Um I would say specifically at the upper grades in 345 we do find our teachers to be I think somewhat less comfortable um with the content and depth of knowledge in the standards. And so there is a component related to that support that is around specifically building um teacher content expertise as part of the work of supporting implementation and professional learning.

I have feelings about that but mostly rooted in no surprise internalization but I will talk about that in a second. Um so I want to acknowledge just kind of two things that I'm hearing in this uh and going back to algebra a little bit. Um that I just want to acknowledge. one I I feel like one of the we talked about this last time you presented Mr. uh Dr. um around part of this challenge with access to algebra was that was that in previous years, previous models, previous generations, there used to be someone at a young age for a student who told them that they could not do math, right? And so there is something really amazing about the proposal in front of us today where this autoenroll future allows for a student without some adult randomly telling them that they can't do math being told that they can. Right? So I I think that's a really amazing um innovation perhaps of this model here where we're telling students no some random adult in your kinder first second years is not telling you whether or not you can do math. If you can demonstrate mastery to a certain extent by a certain time you should be able to have access to algebra and that makes sense. And I'm really excited to hear that and and perhaps most excited then about this auto roll future that's part of our part of our work. The second thing I want to hold is also and I'm going to just take on the liberty of being president right now. Um the second thing the the second thing I'm going to just like hold as a tension is our city made a very clear statement about wanting access to algebra for all kids who are ready. Right. And and I think we can reasonably hold that desire alongside this other desire of agency for a student to choose what course they take and and what it means to to offer a

course progression model that honors that, right? Um and we have put a stake in the ground already, just to be really clear around 8th grade algebra success being a huge milestone for ourselves. uh so much so that it's a goal one of three. Um, and uh, in the same way that we think of the brilliance of telling a student that no, you can do math, I think there's there's a there's a future here in our proposal where we can allow a student to say and I want to to just do this so I can do this other thing, whether that's a language or an additional elective, art, what have you, that I do think is worth exploring, right? um and and and in this case offering. So I I just want to acknowledge there's that tension and desire that like is being solved for I think in what's being proposed which which I can appreciate as as something that um to your point is something to be studied this coming year, right? Um, which goes back to this informed consent of as long as families are are aware and as long as students are informed of what it means to navigate this trade-off, it makes sense to me that we would allow them to make that trade-off, right? Um, but I'll I'll get off my little soap box here and say, um, any other questions? Oh, okay. So many. Okay. Vice President.

Well, to to that point, I would like to move to make an amendment to the 8th grade math board policy. Um, and I've got language um that I've provided to um Manuel, to our council, Mr. Martinez, and to Mr. Trillo that perhaps they could help me by projecting So everyone can follow along. Um yeah, I think you need I don't have prints. Um one second.

I can Are we doing the motion first before presenting or the motion? I Oh, sorry. Okay. We also need a Commissioner Ray second it. Did someone mo do you motioned for the amendment? Yeah, I'd like to move to introduce the amendment and hopefully explain its content and also if we could get printouts that would be Oh. Uh we put on board.

I can uh Well, can I add it to Boardogs right now? Yeah. Can we give me three minutes, please? So I can organize. Yeah. I mean, normally we would we don't do that. So while we're waiting to get the I'd like to just give it Yeah. normally.

I'm happy to share. May I'm wondering considering we're waiting for printouts and it looked like a bunch of us had hands raised. Is there could we withdraw the motion for now or table it for now and let the rest of us ask our questions while we wait? Yeah, happy. Otherwise, I could you know me, I could give you I've got a bunch of bad mom jokes I can tell y'all while we wait, but So, I don't think I need to Why don't we just move on to while the there's a print out being made. Is that right? Yeah. Okay. So, while we wait for that, why don't we move to Commissioner Ray to answer any You had a question.

Oh, uh I do, but if Commissioner Fischer wants to go first, it's fine with me. I either's fine.

Regardless of the I I don't think it's related to your um your motion. So I it's more just my my last question is really the going back to the intent of moving to math 678. A big part of it was to reduce the tracking of algebra in 8th grade and the huge disparities that we had. So, um, Superintendent Sue and team, but Superintendent Sue, what are we doing with the implementation of this new math policy to ensure we don't just end up back on a two-tier tracked system?

Um, well, as you heard from the team, this is technically the first year of us transitioning into a new curriculum, a new math curriculum. Um, from what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing, there's there's a lot of excitement about it. Um, I think I well, I don't think I believe um that uh educators are our teachers are are learning it and using it. Um, I think that there's still um more professional development that we would need to provide so that um our teachers will continue to build um their toolkit um to to to implement it. Um, but honestly, um, in all of the observations that I've gone into, uh, classroom observations that I've gone into, um, students are really, really engaged. They're they're, um, they're using all the different tools that come with Imagine Math. Um, so because of that, because our students are really engaging in our new math curriculum, I firmly believe that over time we're going to build lifelong math learners. Um and so we're going to slowly roll into a world where um you you're we're going to have a lot of students who are very confident and competent and are able to go right into um algebra one um at a later time. Um and and we're going to continue to improve um uh the needle for all of our students. I believe that we need to continue to focus on delivering highquality instructions. Um, and that is how we're going to not move into tracking. Having said that, I also know that students and families who choose to really focus on um the arts, they're going to make decisions for their students. Um that is

going to emphasize having more opportunities in engaging in the arts. um or students um who and their families who are going to make a decision that's focused on particular academics or a particular type of um a class by the time of their high school year. They're going to then focus their energy into getting into that particular pathway. Um those are options in my mind. Those are how families get to choose and those are the options that we're going to make available to our students and to our student community. Um, having options within SFUSD will lift all boats and in those options means that we need to continue to provide high quality instruction. A rising tide only lifts the boats that don't have holes in them. So I think that to to so hence the importance on a high quality curriculum in the early grades to make sure that everyone is ready and as we discussed earlier a robust MTSS system to ensure that everyone has acceleration options if they're not where they need to be. So I think the the last part of my question is really in the spirit of learning what will be our inflection points to make sure that we're not creating this two-tiered system.

I could I could take that if you want. Sure.

Um I mean I think Commissioner Fischer, you bring up a really good point that's very interesting to all of us that are sitting here. I mean, I think we're really interested to um to Professor D's point of like what are the questions around continuous improvement that we want to put into place to study the effects of this new policy on our students um as they go forward. And um I mean part of the spirit of this to go back to what I said earlier around the seventh period day is acceleration and elective. And so if we fund um if we pass this math policy and then we fund the FTEES related, one of the things that I think Devon did a really good job in thinking about is we don't give a school the 02 they might need for who's meeting the minimum threshold or whatever we're calling it criteria for for automatic enrollment, but rather when you get a point 2, you get the 1.0. And that 1.0 then offers opportunities for acceleration in sixth grade and seventh grade. so that more and more students are able to access algebra in the eighth grade. Um, and that similarly as we continue to get better at illustrative math at the at the TK5 level that we're hoping more and more students are going to be prepared as they get into middle school, right? If we're just focused on algebra, we're missing the the point completely because by the time kids are ready for algeb ready for algebra in the eighth grade, we've already tracked them. And so, we really want to pay attention to that way earlier from my perspective. And I know that um Professor D also might have had something to add.

I just briefly wanted to add the um the embrace of district-wide automatic enrollment in the proposal also speaks directly to this concern uh because it helps ensure academically qualified students regardless of their background and you know the other biases and factors that might exist are going to be nudged into taking algebra. And we got a a kind of lowerbound proof on the power of that just by looking across the six algebbras and elective classes. I mentioned three of them did something weaker than automatic enrollment. They encourage students who met the criterion to take algebra. And we saw um as we looked across the three campuses that offered no encouragement to the three that did that um academically qualified focal students participation in algebra increased from 59% to 85%. And so I think that's a lower bound on that kind of last mile problem we often have with with innovations. Even if we we do all the hard work of getting kids to where they should be in algebra readiness, automatic enrollment can help ensure they they end up in the class for which they're qualified.

Thank you. That helps. Um, and a data point that goes to that is, um, Principal Roseboro said during the the conversation about Aptose that out of the two years of their pilot and they were one of the schools that highly encouraged or auto I think autoenrolled actually, they only had three students who enrolled who ended up leaving the class or opting out through. So, I thought that was really fascinating and wonderful to hear. I'm starting over with three, right? Oh, okay. Okay. I wasn't sure if we had a limit or not, but Okay. Um, I would like to follow up on the question I asked earlier. Uh, Superintendent Sue, you mentioned deleting two of the words that restricted the pool too much. Can I ask uh what number do you believe of students would be enrolling or would be eligible with those words deleted? You were indicating that you read some type of thing to determine. Well, it it just pro it was too restrictive um of a criteria and so that's why we were proposing to re remove those two words from the original board policy or from the board policy that I had um issued um uh last week. Um what my my goal is to make sure that we allow students who are proficient um to be able to opt out. We want to make sure that students have the the the confidence and the skill sets in order to be successful. We do not want to set up students to be frustrated and to fail. Um what you've heard from Professor D is that if students miss out on fundamental components of math 8, they're going to struggle um not only in

algebra but also in their high school career. um for subsequent math classes. And I know that um we all think our our our child can can do amazing things. Um but unfortunately it's it is going to be based on some level of proficiency. And so um we were looking at the star test. Um I am looking at this as well now, but we're looking we were looking at um STAR test results um in the seventh grade in the fall and the winter test results because that is going to give us a glimpse into a student's ability to really grasp complex um concepts that will then set them up to to enter into algebra 1 um at a minimum with with with baseline skills and baseline knowledge. We do not want to set them up to fail.

Was there so I mean just to get a ballpark was there a ballpark figure of how many students you felt would qualify if you took out those words? No, there there was no there's no cap. Um I'm sure you guys there's no cap, but there was definitely a minimum. I think with the words in it, I think we only we would only qualify like 23 students, which just it doesn't seem appropriate without the words in it. Um there's a much larger percentage of students. Josh, do you want to add more? Yeah. Um when you look at level four for both STAR assessments in the seventh grade, it would be about 499 students is what we've modeled at this point.

Thank you. Okay. So, um my next question on to follow up on that. Do you know what percentage of uh students in a given grade level that is in middle school?

It's about 17 18% 20% at most. appreciate that. So without without the um and secure um as part of the implementation strategy, we're looking at around 500 students that would qualify. So it's 500 out of approximately 4,000 eighth graders. Is that correct, Renee? Someone took expanding that

12 and a half%. So, as of March 18th, there's 3,286 um seventh graders currently. Um so, that would be 15%. I just did the calculation. Okay. That have the level four in both fall and winter star for seventh grade.

Okay. Um that's still a quite high threshold, especially since it's fall and winter of seventh grade, but I appreciate the information. I have a couple of other questions as well. Uh, I wanted to follow up on something that Commissioner Fischer was saying, um, you know, about equity and so forth and avoiding a two-tier system and just note that the, um, there was legislation introduced a while back by, um, uh, Senator Booker and Representative Castro around this type of problem is aimed at increasing um, access to, you know, access to historically disadvantaged groups, for instance, to algebra. and they were pointing out the lack of algebra actually is what disadvantages students who are from those groups. The lack of algebra in eighth grade, it's if they don't get these opportunities in our public schools, many kids tend not to get them at all. So, I think that's actually a really important thing and the autoenrollment strategy really helps to boost in that um in that respect. So okay, something else I was concerned about around this is actually the impact on our um on our arts programs on arts and music and various other things. If we are essentially forcing kids who want to take algebra into taking two math classes in order to do that, we are putting people to a choice that I feel is not appropriate for personally for the school district to make. I feel that we should leave that to uh individual students and families to decide what's best for them. But I also worry a great deal that this will have a heavy impact. We are it's actually a very positive thing. It's one of the major draws in our school district that we have such good arts and music programs and pitting those two things against each other is really troubling to me. So, you know, having the opportunity for kids to decide to take algebra instead of math 8

means that they could continue to take those other elective courses and that we could continue to have strong programs in those areas which I think are significant strengths of our school system. So, I wanted to ask if anybody had looked at this aspect like analyzed what the impact would be on our arts and music programs um uh you know in a more like forced choice system versus where folks could choose to take algebra uh instead of math 8. I mean, I can just speak to what it looks like right now in the schools that have algebra what we called as an elective versus expanded math is what we'll call it now. We're not seeing a reduction in arts participation in places like Aptose where Mr. Roseboro has now named renamed his school affectionately the ATOS school of performing arts. Um you know kids have seven periods. Um and there are times where a student needs to take an like as I mentioned before an acceleration or an intervention class during one of those seven periods and then the other class they have open to take any number of courses that sometimes are artsbased and sometimes are otherbased. Right? There are kids who choose not to take an arts elective in all three years of their of their middle school. They take a an extra computer science class or a steam class or a STEM class. So that's true. And in some cases, they take multiple electives because they don't require an acceleration or an intervention class. So we haven't seen a reduction in arts participation in the places where the elective exists right now.

That could be true in a seven period day class. I can't really speak to that, but my daughter goes to APGini. Yeah. where there is not seven period days. There's no question that if she were in this situation, which she we will be deciding, she'll be deciding what she wants to do. Um, and you know, we will probably defer to what she would like to do on that. She would either have to choose choir or algebra. There wouldn't be another way that I know of for her to be able to take that.

Yeah. I mean, I think at APG, it's a particularly interesting situation, right? Students at APG right now, not all of them have access to an elective, right? because in the sixth period day, students that are required to take an EL course don't get an option to take um a choir course or an elective. They have to take their EL course. Um so right now with Principal Schuman, we're talking about how to add a zero period so that students who want to take the algebra elective still have the opportunity to have an elective and also the algebra course. Um and so we we haven't yet figured that out, right? Because again, this this conversation is is nent. and so forth. We need to ensure that we have proper funding which we um once this math policy will have in place and that we need to work on the master schedule and the implications on those master schedule. But we're looking to schools like Hoover who run a who run a six period plus a zero period. And one of the reasons we chose Hoover for the braided compression is because not only do they have a six period plus a zero period, but they also have a language program that imp impacts threearters of their school. So even with the zero period and and the language program, they were still having a forced choice to Commissioner Huling's point about language versus versus algebra. Whereas in other places, they don't have that forced choice because they actually have the seven periods. So we want to model what we're going to do at APG after what we're thinking about in Hoover and ensure that there's access for students in eighth grade to take both if they want to. We just don't yet have that planned out, but we will.

Thank you for the info. I think my last question at least that I can think of for now is um I guess maybe more of a comment is also building I think on Commissioner Fischer I think you were the one who mentioned it but about you know building a better early learning experience. I can't imagine that anybody would design a math system to say that the way that we're going to fix our problems in math is by having kids take two math classes in 8th grade. like this is not this seems to be a like an SFUSD thing, a solution to a problem that that we ourselves have created over the years, however well-intentioned people's um you know, people's ideas may have been, they didn't actually work out. They didn't actually produce a more equitable system or reduce the achievement or opportunity gap. So, you know, I would very much like to see us build a much better foundation on the way up and frankly catch up with other school districts that are around us. And like we we are behind. We are disadvantaging our kids by what we're doing compared to many other school districts right around us and certainly compared to the rest of the world. I'm always kind of surprised by how people think about algebra here as if it's some terribly difficult thing. Like I feel like in my own experience and in many other places around the world, this is a normal part of a math sequence. It's not viewed as some tremendous thing. And along with the expectations idea, it's like if if that's the way that you treat it and you build up to it and teach people to do it, it's just part of what they do. Thanks,

Commissioner Alexander.

I I'm struggling with this conversation because I feel like we have seriously deviated from student outcomes focused governance. Um, I feel like we're having a a conversation that is trying to micromanage staff on how to meet our goal too. And it's deeply concerning to me. Um, because I think that if we're going to do that, like if we're going to and and respectfully, I think this amendment, you know, exemplifies that. Like I think if we're going to govern from the dis and and mandate how they do algebra that's that is that's the board running our schools. And so if we're deciding as a board that we want to abandon student outcomes focus governance and say you know what superintendent we got this. You you don't have to figure this out anymore because we're going to make the decisions. Then let's just say that. And I've got lots of issues as an educator. I got lots of opinions that I would love to give and I'd be happy to engage in these debates, but I thought that we said we weren't going to do this. I thought we said we were going to set academic goals and trust the superintendent to come up with strategies and then vote them up or down. And she's come to us with a strategy which frankly my understanding is board members already influenced the process because the educators said they didn't want to have an opt out. Correct me if I'm wrong, uh, Assistant Superintendent Steiner, but based on your comments earlier, it sounded like that our educators who are the experts who were developing an educational strategy to meet goal two said we don't want to have an apt out because we looked at the data from Stanford and we said that the best way to serve our kids is to have expanded math, have the have the two periods. So now we've already based on behind the scenes board pressure said okay we've pressured the superintendent to change her mind. So now she's sh she shifted and had an opt

out which okay fine you know that's made that was her decision and now we're we're looking at an amendment. We're we're criticizing the the decision. So again, if if what we're saying is we want to abandon student outcomes focus governance, but but if we're going to do this, I think it also is it's hard to hold our superintendent accountable for results because we're not allowing her to to try the strategy and look at the data. She's presented us with data. She's brought a professor from Stanford saying, "Look, this is my database strategy and we as the board are saying we want to we know better." I have real concerns with this. Commissioner Healey.

So I if now that everyone does have a written copy, I would like to just describe the amendment and the purpose and respond I think to Commissioner Alexander's concerns. So my goal is not to micromanage the superintendent and I have specifically drafted an amendment that does not actually describe any particular cuto off for eligibility to opt out. My goal is to represent community values on the board. And what I have heard very loud and clear and what I see reflected in the data is that more students will access algebra if they are able to make the choice of what is best for them and that there is no harm to student outcomes in doing that. And so this amendment rather than requiring students to have both a four on the fall and winter star assessment which we heard I believe from professor um uh Huffer uh was not predictive of success in the algebra for all pilot. But I believe she said that actually students who had threes were also successful in directly accessing algebra in the algebra for all pilot. Um, and we know students learn throughout the year. And I wouldn't want to require students to essentially come into seventh grade already knowing all of seventh grade math. Like that's what a three means. A three means that you're proficient in the end ofear standards. but to say for students who are able to meet proficiency standards in seventh grade that the district determines based on the data that they've collected is predictive of them having success in algebra 1. those are the students who should be able to opt out. Which I think to to my mind what I tried to accomplish

is balancing the community desire for students to have flexibility with the staff uh subject area knowledge about what the appropriate thresholds are and flexibility for them to determine that. And then the other things that it does um are allow students to have students and parents to have that counselor meeting before 8th grade because if those STAR and ESPback assessments come back in seventh grade and our counselors are heavily impacted, it seems to me that students might want to have those begin having those conversations in seventh grade and not have a rush. I've heard concerns from families that if students are all autoenrolled, the students who seek to opt out then won't actually have any classes that they can enroll in or by the time they all try and meet with counselors, it'll be too late to enroll in other classes or from an educator's perspective, they might not have an idea of how many students seek to opt out because those opt outs won't be approved until weeks into the school year. So, just giving more flexibility for all parties there. Um, also another community concern we heard was that there was no kind of threshold for students who enter SFUSD in 8th grade to determine whether they're eligible if they don't have a seventh grade star assessment. So, this just simply says staff should determine what the opt out mechanism is for students who come in in eighth grade who don't have a STAR assessment. um and that it shall be interpreted in a manner that expands rather than restricts students ability to access algebra 1. I think there's a history in SFUSD of parents being asked to take classes outside or being asked to take tests and then the test isn't recognized and having to jump through hoops and really inequitable practices that

require knowledge, deep knowledge of systems and how to navigate them and how to advocate. Um, and we want to just make sure that this is just this is a cut off. If your ESPback score is whatever, you can go to your counselor, get your informed counseling consent, and make your choice. And everyone should have that option. They shouldn't have to, you know, jump through additional hoops. So, that that's my goal. It's very high level and I think keeping with the policy role of the board but also to my mind better reflecting the diverse students we have across schools who are successful at um who are able to access algebra 1 successfully. Um, and I do have real concerns that, you know, we only had 29% of students take up algebra in when we required them to take an elective and we had 72% when we didn't. And I I just want us to be able to reach as many students as possible, especially because, you know, our goal 2.3, our interim goal 2.3 or the superintendent's interim goal 2.3 is specifically about Latinx students and many of our Latinx students are in dual language immersion programs. Like they may not want to and students who are in my to my understanding dual language programs don't have the option to opt out of that pathway in eighth grade. they've selected it for their entire middle school. So, I don't want us to adopt a policy that has an unintended consequence of excluding the very people we're trying to include in access to algebra because we haven't thought through how it's coherent with all of the other things that we ask students to do and other thresholds for decision points and things like that. So, that that is the goal. Um and um there was also a typo that I couldn't stop myself from fixing because I am compulsive

editor.

I just want to say vice president I really respect all of that. I never want to be opposing you in court as a if you were you're you're you're I mean no it's all makes everything you said makes perfect sense. I think my point was more around the process and that the clear intention of this and it says it in the last bullet point of the proposed amendment is to expand access to algebra 1 without taking math 8 right so it's it's essentially doing the opposite of what staff is recommending which is again fine like I think you have a lot of good arguments for that my point is if we're going to start doing that as a board that is I think saying we don't we no longer are going to stick to this student outcomes focused governance where we let them let the superintendent set the strategy and then evaluate right and then hold her accountable if it doesn't work. So I think that that was my issue is more I think your arguments make sense. I may have different ones, but that's and I guess what I'm saying is if that's what we're doing as a board, I would love to hear from other colleagues like if that's what we're going to do, let's do it. But if but if we're going to stick to student outcomes, focus governance, I think we need to support the superintendent's recommendation if only to let her do it and see what the results are. And we have people offering to Stanford offering to evaluate, come back in a year, and then let's make another decision as a board based on the data. That would be my request. I mean, I certainly would have, you know, brought this forward earlier if we had gotten the policy earlier. We didn't see it until 72 hours before this meeting, the final policy. And I will say, I think you and I maybe just have a slight disagreement about how student outcomes focus governance works because to my mind, it it's really like a separation of powers analogy and the board policy is the boards. it is not for the superintendent to actually dictate board policy. And so I

think that that is firmly within our view especially as it goes to reflecting community desires and values around these types of things.

I think also just to acknowledge I mean the the last three weeks were different into how we got here. Um and and we you know in an ideal situation we would have had this come with the draft materials. There would have been questions, opportunities for conversation and amendment. We would have briefed on the policy etc. Uh it just it did not happen in that way. Um and so I think that is just worth recognizing that the process change there. Um I'll do let's just go down here. Yep. Commissioner Weiss word. I'll just say I I um I agree with Commissioner Alexander. I do appreciate that this is board policy. However, the language that is in there is so in the weeds and so outside of what our scope and expertise is supposed to be for me for that reason, it feels really inappropriate. Um, so that's that that's just where I am on that and and would not support the amendment.

So, so I'll I'll I'll I'll name Commissioner Alexander. I struggle with this for a bit, but I I think where I where I landed was the critical part of student outcome focused governance is making sure we have proper proper public engagement. And when I look at the survey that was released, when I look at other metrics, other if you will polls, actual data from, you know, Prop G last year, if I look at, you know, the last survey that SFUSD did, if I look at other surveys that were done, we don't have a majority of people who support this. We also have a lot of folks who said they value their electives. we have um you know it it does feel a little like we're trying to make a decision for a family. I like the idea of informed consent much like when you go to a doctor a doctor should give you all the information but ultimately it is up to a family and a student. Um a lot of the conversation here I'll just name I mean you know we've talked about site selecting what model they seek we've talked about will we have enough staff we've talked about master of class schedule. If I'm a student, if I'm a parent, if I'm a family, what I'm looking at is what is the math course that my child will take, right? I'm not looking at it from the perspective of the adult inputs that go into it. I want to know what is that math course that I will take. And so when we don't have proper public engagement, that is where we then have to be unfortunately a little more directive. I'm not saying in what that academic piece should be. And if anything, you know, um I I would love, you know, and and also I mean related to the outcomes where if we want to talk about outcomes, we see other models that have for example compression. Unfortunately, we don't have data around the compression model. Otherwise, we have Elkrove, we have Long Beach that do well with those models and unfortunately we don't have what that

would look like in in SFUSD. um our mouth out our mouth outcomes for focal populations are worse than areas in the south for example. So I I think we just need to be open to what are other models that we can try. I appreciate that this is not dictating but rather asking uh for staff to share what they think it should be. Um I will also say that you know what one of the one of the outstanding questions I have is you know what are our metrics for evaluation as we look through these um what are we looking for when we try the new model of 43 compression um when we look at and we as we learn uh around algebra as an elective or those who do take eighth grade math alone the only one that I've heard so far is the number of repeats for nth grade algebra. And I I fear that if we're only looking at that metric, it may become a bit of a I I don't know. it it's sort of predicting, you know, if we're just taking that raw number, I worry we're already biasing against models that um you know, to to Commissioner to Vice President Huing's point, you know, we may encourage more people um and perhaps people are ready, but if we're only looking at that. So I guess my question to staff and then also uh professor D as well as professor Huffacher if there are metrics that you would recommend I would love to hear them and at what frequency so that we can really objectively evaluate this to see what is successful what is working um both from an academic outcome perspective but also from you know what works for our families in terms of them opting to stay in SFUSD because I don't want to create

segregation where students are leaving the school district because they're not getting what they seek in terms of us meeting their students where they are. Are there metrics that that you all have?

Yeah, I mean I'll jump in. I think the ones that interest us are unfortunately the ones that will take time to become available to us. I mean, we really want to follow these cohorts um beyond this current academic year. I mean, these pilot the pilot cohorts are currently in ninth grade and it's going to take a while to observe their other long run indicators through high school and beyond. um you know in the national student clearing house for example we could track post-secary outcomes but um we do always try to include district retention as an outcome measure both because it's instrumentally relevant to the district but also important for assessing um threats to causal inference because if there's a differential attrition from say a treated versus a control group that's a potential threat to the inferences we make. But unfortunately there's no way to do this in the um given the need for outcomes to mature to do it in the more rapid cycle way. I sense um folks here might want right now.

So mentioned attendance we do see on attendance. Have Commissioner Fischer ask the last question here and we can do a vote on the amendment itself. Oh, I'm so sorry. I thought I I thought you did. Um, Commissioner Fischer, Commissioner Ray, and then we'll do the vote on the amendment and then we'll vote on the actual well, whatever the outcomes of that. Go ahead.

My apologies, Commissioner Gupta. You had mentioned staff's perspective on this as well. So, thank you, Professor D, for for sharing that. And I want to underscore the piece that Dr. D kind of spoke to, and that is kind of the time bound aspect of this. Um, and I'm also going to kind of go back to something that Commissioner Alexander said earlier, and that is that this option only became available to us very recently, and the ability to think through the kinds of criteria that would allow for us to know that um, a student is proficient in math 8 in the ways that we would have to kind of think through all the different variables and things of that nature. That takes time to do. We don't have currently a faximile for this in that kind of way to be able to replicate something and then do a deep study which quite frankly I'm looking to our colleagues here to actually help us with. So I feel like in the in the context of all this I just want to say from the staff's perspective we're providing some ideas of what some of what some criteria could look like in the order of expediency for a request that we're being asked to fulfill to make this option work. But if I were to tell you that I have full confidence that these are all the things that allow for us to know that a student has command of math 8 which is what we're trying to guard against given the algebra for all kind of lessons that we learned previously then I think that's the part where I'm feeling slightly uncomfortable about that because I would love to be able to look and model that a little bit more but also to be able to for the various ways that we look at it do the kinds of longitudinal analyses that are really required to have a better sense of that. That's not to say that if this ends up passing that we wouldn't start with something and then have a way to kind of study that and kind of have that evolve in the future. But, you know, the the the turnaround of this is is attention for us to try to think of something that makes sense while we're trying to attend to the multiple layers of guard rails for

ensuring that students have command of math 8, which I think is an important part of the purpose of the exercise and why originally it was level four. Again, that is without having had a ton of time to do all the studying that we need to do. So, I just I want to put that caveat out there because you asked for staff's perspective and I'm sitting in the seat of the person that is actually trying to think through that and just understanding how monumental of a challenge it is in 3 days time to try to think about that.

I app I appreciate that and I appreciate you bringing forth a policy in a very short period of time. I think this was more of a condensed process than almost anyone here would have liked for sure and I think it's more just an assurance that should this pass there will be thought that is going to be put put at that. So thank you. So sorry the clarification when you said the this passing is that the one that was on board docs or the amendment if the amendment does got thank you so much okay

I clarification I I was just I wasn't even talking about the amendment I just mean the general policy but I assume this the answer is the same in terms of whether this amendment passes yes I mean it's it's tied to kind of the expediency of how things have been moving in a way that we want to we want to feel confident that what we're looking at is going to give us the sense of students having that command. And I think that's an important part of lessons learned and having been a former math teacher myself that I kind of really internalize um as I try to think through this work. Commissioner Fischer,

thank you. Um yeah, I I have to say I agree with Commissioner Alexander. Um our goal number two is around eighth grade math. The percentage of eighth grade students performing at math performing math at grade level is measured by the state test aspect math will increase from 42% proficiency rate in October 2022 to 65% proficiency by October 2027. That is what we are measuring the superintendent on. that um and in fact to tie it back further to student outcomes focused governance um as someone who went through the whole year-long SBI cohort in this um we actually have not done the work we need to do to be fully implementing like we don't have board guard rails and frankly something like this should be covered by a board guardrail and two we have not done the policy diet that we should uh a big part of the policy diet that we should be doing our own board work as part of this student outcomes focused government would actually be to remove things like this because it is overreach. So um and I understand that AJ's actually online. And I don't know if he has more to say if we want to let him say it but if we really want to follow this process with Fidel and the the last point I will make when we talk about technical tactical and strategic conversations all of this is technical and tactical and those are not conversations we should be having here at the dis those um I recognize and so I do appreciate 72hour like we didn't have enough time to have this conversation fully Um, so by default, we're having it here. But I I agree like this is not this is not our work. This is not board work. This is superintendent work. Um, frankly, a whole lot of this policy is not board work. A whole lot of this policy is superintendent work. But when it comes

to reflecting the values of the community, and here we are. So, um, I'll stop there.

Thanks everyone. Um, I just want to say I really appreciate the discussion that's being had here because I think it is really useful for us to be able to um express what we think so the community can hear, you know, how we're thinking about this, how we think about it individually, how we discuss it as a board and so forth. So, I I greatly appreciate that. Um, on this amendment, I actually I had uh been thinking about an amendment to offer myself. I I because I was so concerned about the language. I asked a lot of a lot of questions about the specific languages in this policy. Um just reading it and seeing things like level four and secure and so forth really made me wonder like how many students could this possibly qualify. So I was already planning to do something and I'm I'm happy since uh Commissioner Heing has drafted language here. I don't want to complicate this matter. I'm happy to defer to the language that she has here. Um, but I was already inclined to do something along these lines myself and probably go further. Like the thing around the parent and guardian thing for instance, if we've already concluded that students are proficient, why would we need people to come for a counselor's meeting? I don't disagree with providing information. I think that's great, but asking parents to come in for a counselor's meeting seems really like an obstacle we should not be putting in the way. We could easily be sending this type of information or analysis in some kind of explainer to people that they could then read and sign off on and they they wanted to meet with the counselor or the teacher. They could request that. So like I don't want to put all these extra burdens and and you know hurdles in front of people who just want to be able to you know you know to choose a path in their education. And there is a paternalistic strand in all of this that bothers me because I don't think that we have seen evidence in what's happened that we do always know best. And so for us to impose our view on other people as

to what they should do is just fundamentally troubling to me. Like the history of what we've done in math has shown that we created a math curriculum that didn't work, that our students performed worse under. We took out algebra which was grossly unpopular and didn't lead to better results for people and led to fewer people taking advanced math courses. Like I I understand and I empathize with, you know, the difficulties that staff faces, the difficulties that teachers face, but I don't think that we're historically in a good position, nor we are we in a good position from a trust perspective of telling people that we know what's best for them. So I personally think that it is better for us to leave these decisions up to folks and um to the extent that we can this was very prescriptive what was given to us was very prescriptive and very concerning to me. So I'm actually glad to see what I think is a less prescriptive formulation of it that gives the district some more flexibility to figure out what the appropriate uh threshold is rather than what had been in here. Um, thank you.

Thanks, um, President K. Just real quick, I want to agree with um part of what you're saying, Commissioner Ray, because I think and disagree with another part, and I agree with you. This is a I also agree that this is a good conversation. Um, the the piece you were just talking about around the failures of historical failures of SFUSD with respect to math, I strongly agree with. I think I think where I disagree is that just offering families more choice, you know, may solve a problem for an individual in a moment, but it doesn't but our job is to is to build a better system. And I think that's I think there's some tension there, right? I mean, I I agree, you know, families need choice and students need choice. Um, and I think the job of the educators and our is to is to build a better better system and our job is to hold them accountable to doing so. And so that's where I feel like what we're struggling with here as a board is we're getting all this legitimate feedback from community members who are like, well, it's not working right and I think the question then though for us is how do we best move it forward? And that's that's my concern around theu student outcomes focused governance and micromanagement just because I've seen where that goes and not even if these are good ideas, it's like then where do we go? And so I I just I I just want to say that but I really respect to the intention of of where this is coming from and the and the reflection of values of community members. Can we do a roll call vote please on the amendment? on the amendment. Roll call. Uh, Commissioner Ray,

yes. Commissioner Alexander, no. Vice President Healing, yes. President Kim, yes. Commissioner Weissman Ward, no. Commissioner Gupta, yes. Commissioner Fischer, no. or yes, three nos. Now, we need to vote on the math placement policy as a whole considering the amendment that has been passed. And so, the this motion had already properly been moved and seconded to approve 263-24 SP2.

Can I ask a point of privilege because the superintendent at one point had mentioned she wanted to make an amendment. Did we The language is now gone. Okay. All right. Thanks. Um so I will officially close this debate. Uh and mot Okay. Debate is now closed on the motion to approve this item. We'll do a roll call vote on the policy as a whole, please. Okay. Commissioner Ray, yes. Commissioner Alexander, no. Vice President Healing, yes. President Kim, yes. Commissioner Weissman Ward, no.

Commissioner Gupta, yes. Commissioner Fischer, no. Four yes. Three nos. Thank you.

Um, thank you staff for your presentation and your work. U deep appreciation for your time tonight and thank you to our Stanford professors who are here this evening as well. Thank you. We are moving to action item F1, vote on student expulsion matters. I move the approval of a sip expulsion agreement for one middle school student matter number 2025-202618 for oneyear expulsion period until March 24th 2027. During the suspended expulsion period, the student will continue to attend MLK Junior Middle School. Can I have a second?

Second. Roll call, please. Sorry. Point of uh information. Which which uh student are we voting on right now? This is Is this 18? 18. Okay, thank you. Commissioner Ray, yes. Commissioner Alexander, yes. Vice President Healing, yes. President Kim, yes. Commissioner Weiss Ward. Commissioner Gupta, yes. Commissioner Fischer,

yes. I move approval of the stipulated expulsion agreement for one high school student matter number 202520619 for a one-year expulsion period until March 24th, 2027. During this suspended expulsion period, the student will attend a comprehensive high school from two school options provided by SFUSD. Can I have a second? Seconded. Roll call, please. Commissioner Ray, Commissioner Alexander, yes. Vice President Healing, yes. President Kim, yes. Commissioner Weiss Ward, Commissioner Gupta, yes.

Commissioner Fischer, yes. I move approval of the stipulated expulsion agreement for 1K8 student school student matter number 2025202620 for the remainder of the current spring 2026 semester during the suspended expulsion period the student will continue to attend Paul River K8. Can I have a second? Second. Roll call, please. Commissioner Ray, yes. Commissioner Alexander, yes. Vice President Healing, yes. President Kim, yes. Commissioner Weissman Ward. Commissioner Gupta, yes. Commissioner Fischer, yes.

I move approval of a stipulated expulsion agreement for 1K8 school student matter number 2025202621 for one-year expulsion period beginning the summer of 2026 until March 24th, 2027. during the suspended point of we only have one K8 on the one is a high school student. That's my typo. I apologize.

That all good for one high school student. Uh same matter number 20252026-21 beginning the summer of 2026 until March 24th, 2027. During the suspended expulsion period, the student will attend a comprehensive high school. That's corrected from two school options provided by SFUSD. Can I have a second? Second roll call, please. Commissioner Ray, no. Commissioner Alexander, yes. Vice President Healing, yes. President Kim, yes. Commissioner Weissman Ward, Commissioner Gupta, yes. Commissioner Fischer,

yes. I move approval of the stipulated expulsion agreement for one elementary school student matter number 202520622 for one expulsion period until March 24th, 2027. During the suspended expulsion period, the student will continue to attend Yiloa Elementary. Can I have a second?

Yeah. The motion does not carry. The move doesn't happen. Yeah. Moving on. Okay. Point of information. What happens in this situation? Council, under the law, you are required, the board specifically is required to adjudicate these matters within a particular timeline. In this case, if we don't meet the timeline, the board fails to meet its obligations into the law and we lose jurisdiction and the matter evaporates. In that case, I will second so that we can have an up and down vote on it.

Yep. Great. Give me a roll call vote, please. Commissioner Ray, yes. Commissioner Alexander, no. Vice President Healing, no. President Kim, you want to come back? Yes, please. Okay. Uh, Commissioner Weissart, Commissioner Gupta, no. Commissioner Fischer, no. President Kim, no. It fails.

Okay. Um, moving to item two, 263-24SP1, amendment to the 202526 academic calendar. Uh, can I have a motion and a second? Um, I move action item 263-24 SP1 academic calendar amendment.

It has been properly moved and seconded that the board approve item 26324 SP1. I ask Dr. Sue to bring this item forward. Um, I'm I have no more words left, so I'm gonna hand this over to um our associate soup of HR, um, Amy Bear, as well as our executive director of labor relations, um, Apollo Casada.

Good evening, everyone. Um, President Kim, board commissioners, Dr. Sue. Tonight, we're bringing forward a proposed amendment, our adjustment to the 2526 academic calendar. The proposed calendar change calls for the addition of five instructional days in June. This will allow our students to make up the lost instructional days that occurred during the labor action strike that took place the week of February 9th through the 13th earlier this year. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Commissioner Gupta. So based on the information provided here in uh this public document um first of all I I appreciate your work. Uh the five days at the end of this year feels like it's a whammy for our families. Um you know everyone was expecting to get out at least that week to extend it is not student fally is not studentfriendly is not familyfriendly. Uh the UASF proposal seemed a lot more reasonable to spread that out over time. Uh however, if we do not vote on this or if we vote it down, it does not sound like SEIU and UESF will go with it, which would mean that we would lose a lot of money. Uh which would then mean we would probably have to cut educators. So given that, even though I don't think this is a familyfriendly uh amendment to the academic calendar, I will be voting for it because we do not want more cuts than we already have. and it is unfortunate but seems like that's the situation.

I have some questions about this. Uh my first question is whether or not since um this is uh uh was a a UEE proposal whether or not the UEI's membership voted on this. I am not familiar if they've voted on it yet. Um I I could not answer that. I it's typically ratified after the board takes correct. Usually it's ratified after the board takes action. Correct. Can you tell us um whether or not there's any indication of whether UEI's membership itself supports this? I've heard from a number of educators that they are concerned about this addition of 5 days at the end of the year.

Yeah, the district's obligation is to work with the UEE leadership. um we don't um have a a routine practice of talking to individual members. We work with their leadership. They have representatives on the calendar committee and that's who we've um who's proposed this calendar and the majority of our calendar committee participants support the five days at the end of the school year. Can I also ask what the impact would be on the administrators, the principles? For instance, this proposal would bring the last day to the 10th and that is their normal last working day which suggests that they don't have any time to close schools. I'm wondering what the impact will be on them and what the impact will be if anything budgetarily if we need to I don't know if we need to keep them on to close schools or what else needs to be done uh that they would normally be doing in the last week. So once uh it assuming that uh the adjustments or the adjustment to the academic calendar is approved uh that would be one of the next steps and that would be to bargain and negotiate the impacts of the new adjusted uh instructional calendar with our labor units including UA US UASF. So we would have to negotiate that with them.

What about with SEIU? What would the impacts be there? the same uh for folks that are school term. Folks that are year round, there are no impacts, but folks that are school term, we would have to bargain that with them as well. Do we have any sense of what the financial impacts would be with UA and SEIU?

I don't have that available. No. Uh we would have to get that from our business services folks. Okay. Um, I also have a question that um, I'm trying to remember. I believe that I raised internally, but I don't think I forgot an answer to. I could be misremembering. There is a discrepancy on the document that was provided that indicates that the 6th is the last day for teachers while the schools extended till the 10th. I'm guessing that that is a typo or error of some sort, but can you clarify?

Uh, yes. No, it's not an error yet. Uh it's it it is correct based on how we're proposing the adjustment to the change. Uh again, once it's approved, then my role is to negotiate with UEE SA SEIU UA the impacts of the new calendar at which point then we would update their working calendar. So right now we're here to discuss uh the instructional calendar, the academic calendar for students. Once that's done, then our role is to negotiate with our labor partners what those impacts are. So then an adjustment would be made at that point.

Can I ask then because that is I had not understood that before. Does that mean that we would be uh providing an additional 5 days of compensation beyond the UEE members whatever their you know normal salary is. It's like you know the certificated salary for instance.

Uh no not necessarily. Uh and and the reason for that is because the five days that uh or the excuse me the four days that were uh missed for the labor action uh are technically uh docked because they did not work uh for those days. folks that did show up to employment centers that uh did work for those four days, we would have to compensate those folks. And then also the fifth day of instruction, because that was a transition day for them, we would have to identify compensation for that day. Um I'm going to just reserve my time while I think for a minute. I'm not sure if anyone else has questions. Thank you, Commissioner Ray.

Commissioner Wismore. So, just um quick clarification. So, um the individuals who um educators who participated in the strike um normally get paid for 180 days of work. this year. 180 student days, 184 days for them. Okay. 180 student days. Yes.

Um but because students were out Monday through Friday, 5 days, but educators were back at transition day Friday, they would be paid for 181 student days. No. Uh because the purpose of having the five days is so that we can have 180 calendar days. Uh if we don't, we're at 175. So the students would still get their 180 days, right? But the teachers would be paid for an extra day. Teachers, correct? Extra 185 on their work days, not 184. It's the student days are still going to be the same at 180. Right. Right. Right. Right. I understand that there's net one extra day of pay. Okay.

Any other comments or questions? Uh yeah, I would like to continue. So I think I had a minute and a half left for mine. Um can you identify uh to the extent that you know what the what if any impacts there would be on um our sped programs or our extended school year?

Uh yes uh those uh impacts were discussed during the uh committee meeting and we had representatives from those various departments present to address those. A lot of them had to do with the buildings and grounds, making sure that the facilities were ready. Uh both options had those impacts because uh regardless, they would not be able to set up the school over the weekend to be ready to go on Monday. Um so either way, they still need the two days to be able to set up, clean, get ready. Um our ESY folks and our summer uh school program folks also need a couple of days to be able to prepare and be ready to receive students. Um, so everything is basically being pushed back by the week. I really really appreciate um your answers to my questions and I'm just going to note um I guess make a comment here to explain my vote. I'm also going to vote no on this. This is fundamentally not family and studentfriendly and I am very very concerned about the message that this sends to our students and families in fact to our entire school communities um everybody who works and comes and you know attends in our schools that making a shift like this um at this stage where especially actually I was mentioning chronic absenteeism earlier. We tell students it's important to come to school every day, but from the sort of just conversations I've had from all the input that I've taken in talking to different fam, you know, different groups, educators, families, students, etc., it's a lot of concern that many students won't even show up and a lot of concern over um uh what you know instruction will be provided in this extra time. I feel like this is a highly

problematic message to be sending for us as an educational institution. And it it feels to me it feels to me like a do what I say, not what I do type of uh situation where we're telling our kids that it's incredibly important for them to intend, that it's incredibly important we prioritize instruction. And like many of the middle school families that I've talked to, the high school families say that they don't even expect their kids will be showing up in these extra days. Um it's more a half and half for students in the younger grades if the families will be here. But this whole thing to me is very troubling and portends problems for us in the future as well. So I will vote no on this. Thank you. I think that's well said, Commissioner Ray. I I really do have concerns that um you know there there could have been options that would have increased attendance, increased the actual amount of instruction that students were going to get to get. you know, respected the um obligations of all of our labor units and extra days that they require to shut down schools. Not just so that they can leave for the summer, but so that our community partners can run summer programs um which will probably now have to be cancelled for that the week um that school will be extended. There might have been there would have been summer camps that students were relying on um and income that our community based nonprofits were relying on after they went above and beyond and provided free child care during the strike to many of our students as a double financial hit. Um, and you know, I think it would have been ideal if we could have had two extra days at the end of this year, three days next year, two days, you know, beyond the end of school, and then one take it

from the extra day of spring break or indigenous people's day or something. Um, and I I will say that that was my understanding of what was going to be discussed with labor partners. And so it was very shocking to me to um hear that that was not what was initially proposed um by the district to our labor partners. Um, and I think puts us um as a board in a really difficult situation because my understanding is that if um that this is the only proposal that has the possibility of being ratified by all of our labor partners, which is an absolute requirement to changing the abs the academic calendar. um and that if it is not ratified that we would have 175 instructional days which would um essentially reduce the denominator of our um calculator for ADA and have very significant financial impacts much greater than the impacts of low attendance on the three days kind of beyond the last week of school. um that would carry on not just this year but for three years to come as we have a rolling three-year average of ADA um at a time when we have made significant commitments to all of our labor partners um that we need to make sure that we bring in as much money as we can um to meet those. So because of our role as fiduciary to the district, I will be voting yes. But um I'm very disappointed for our students um for many of our educators and staff um for our families that we are in the situation um of having this be the recommendation. Ditto.

Roll call vote, please. Commissioner Ray, no. Commissioner Alexander, yes. Vice President Healing, yes. President Kim, yes. Commissioner Weissman Ward, yes. Commissioner Gupta, yes. Commissioner Fischer, yes. The next item on the agenda is 263-24 SP3 of approval of CIS and waivers. Can I have a motion in a second? I move that we approve item 263-24 SP3. It has been proper second.

It is proper. It's been properly moved and seconded that the board approve this item. Dr. too. We just have for approval the uh one provisional internship permit for a special educator who teaches in early education. Any comments or questions of the board? Seeing none, debate is now closed on the motion to approve this item. Roll call vote, please. Commissioner Ray, yes. Commissioner Alexander, yes. Vice President Healing, yes. President Kimp, yes. Commissioner Weiss Ward. Yes. Commissioner Gupta. Yes. Commissioner Fischer.

Yes. Um, President Kim has a standing or recusal from the consent calendar due to his employment with the city and county of San Francisco, which is a frequent contractor with SFUSD in order to avoid any appearance of a conflict. Um, superintendent, are there any uh changes to the consent calendar? There are none. Thank you. Is there a motion to approve the consent calendar? I move to approve the consent calendar. Second. Could we have a roll call vote, please, Mr. Trillo?

Commissioner Ray, yes. Commissioner Alexander, yes. Vice President Healing, yes. Uh, President Kim, Commissioner Weiss Ward, yes. Commissioner Gupta, yes. Commissioner Fischer, yes. Uh, this meeting is adjourned at 11:57 p.m.