San Francisco Unified School District Board - workshop

The meeting of the board of the regular meeting for the board of education for August 25 2026 is now called to order at 501 PM roll call please.

Commissioner Ray. Commissioner Alexander. Vice President Hewing? President Kim?

Here.

Commissioner Weisman-Ward?

Here.

Here. Commissioner Gupta? Commissioner Fischer? Here.

Uh, as if you see, we'll provide child care for regular board meetings and monitor meetings on the 1st floor in the enrollment center 555 Franklin street from 630 to 9. Pm. Or the close of the meeting, whichever comes first. Unfortunately, we do not have child care tonight as if USD staff will be working with our providers to ensure child care is available in upcoming meetings. Typically, space would be limited and be provided on a first come first serve basis for children ages 4 to 10 if you have any questions, please contact the board off board of education office at 415-241-6427. or at board office at SF usd.edu at this time before the board goes into closed session I call for any speakers to the closed session items listed in the agenda, maybe a total of five minutes for speakers, I think, because for public comment.

No, there's no speakers.

Thank you. I now recess meeting at 503pm.

Okay, translators and interpreters, you may begin.

Thank you. SFUSD is offering interpretation services in Spanish and Cantonese. If you need interpretation, please dial the following phone number. After dialing, please introduce the PIN number. This message will be repeated in Spanish and Cantonese. Thank you. Cantonese interpreter, please.

Thank you

All righty. Moving to item C, reconvene to open session. The board met in closed session, so that's a good question. The Board met in closed session and voted unanimously to approve a settlement agreement between student HTW versus SFUSD OAH case number 2026070849 in the amount of $166,851.71. Moving to item D public comments hello and welcome to members of the public to the regular meeting of the board of education of the San Francisco unified school district our public comment period last for one hour today or until 740pm. We look forward to hearing from the public before we conduct for business, our goal is to conduct our work, our poor business in an efficient effective. and accessible manner during reasonable hours we aim to respect staff family and community time. by ensuring we move to board business as soon as possible. Each participant may speak for up to one minute. Staff will date the participant at the one-minute mark. At one minute and five seconds, I've asked Clerk Chang 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 boardoffice at sfusd.edu. We will hear first from students in person, the members of the general public in person, beginning with agenda items, then moving to non-agenda items. Regardless of whether in-person public comment is complete, we will save 15 minutes for remote public comment today at 725 p.m., taking commenters in the same order as in-person. To members of the public, on your right, you'll see signs that outline expectations for public comment and meeting conduct. We ask that you 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 public comment time, if appropriate, the superintendent will ask that staff follow up with speakers, Mr.

Yes. So welcome. We do not have any student public comment cards. We have three speaking on agenda items. Blanca, I will call out your names. And you can line up behind the dais over here. Emery Lowe. Well, go ahead. Come on, Emery.

And where you can also use the mic at the dais at the front here. Yes.

Your name. It's okay. You can keep your eyes closed.

But I can't.

Okay.

My name is Emery.

And where do you go to school?

The Avila Chinese Immersion School.

And how old?

Five and a half.

And what grade? kindergarten and what would you like to tell everybody here today i forgot you want to tell them tell them something important i would like to tell you something important uh

Thank you for listening to me.

Thank you for listening to me.

Thank you.

Thank you, Emory. Okay, we have Blanca Catalan, Jenny Garcia, Roberto Guzman.

And Ms. Chang, can we get the timer up so folks can follow?

Good evening, board members. A happy new school year. My name is Blanca Catalan, parent organizer with Coleman Advocates and an SFUSD parent. That literacy data we are discussing tonight represents real children and real families. Only 49% of our third graders are reading at grade level, and our English learners and students experiencing homelessness continue to face some of the largest gaps. We appreciate the district effort to strengthen literacy instruction, but we need stronger systems to identify students who are struggling and provide timely interventions. A strong MTSS approach must ensure every child receives the support they need to become a confident reader. Families must be also included as partners with resources and meaningful opportunities to support literacy at home. Every child deserves the opportunity to succeed. We urge the board to prioritize literacy equity and invest in the support of our students' needs.

Hello.

I am Jenny. My daughter goes to Guadalupe Elementary and I came before the board months ago with the request to have a bilingual TK class approved and was disappointed with the denial. My daughter has started what continues to be the struggling journey of English TK only. However, now I'm hearing that we don't have a teacher for an already active class for TK Kinder. This class was designed to provide the support that fit their needs. It's upsetting and once again, very disappointing. I want to ask the Board of Education to please let us know when we will be provided with a special education teacher. Thank you.

Buenas tardes, comisionados y su pre-intendente Su. Mi nombre es Roberto Guzman Rivera. Soy padre de tres estudiantes en la Escuela Guadalupe. Esta noche están revisando si los salones de C10D cuentan con todo el personal necesario. Aunque el distrito reportó aproximadamente el 95% de los puestos de maestros están cubiertos, escuelas como Guadalupe estamos viviendo las consecuencias del 5% restante. Guadalupe todavía no cuenta con un maestro de educación especial para nuestro programa de TKK. Un porcentaje general de personal a nivel del distrito no cuenta toda la historia cuando los estudiantes con discapacidades comienzan el año escolar sin los educadores calificados necesarios para proporcionar los servicios requeridos por su IEP. Le pido al distrito que explique públicamente están incluidas las vacantes de educación especial en el carril 4.1 Quantas escuelas actualmente no tienen maestros de educación especial y cuando recibieran Guadalupe nuestro maestro o maestra. Que un puesto este financiado no significa que este cubierto y que este cubierto no significa que los servicios hayan sido proporcionados. Nuestros estudiantes necesitan estos servicios ahora.

Good evening Commissioners and superintendent Sue my name is Roberto who's man Rivera and i'm a parent of three students at guadalupe elementary. Tonight you're reviewing whether classrooms at the district are fully staff, while the district may report approximately 95% of positions are filled. In classrooms, Guadalupe and other schools are living the consequences of the remaining 5%. Guadalupe still does not have a special education teacher for our TK to K and PK programs. The district-wide staffing does not tell the complete story when students with disabilities begin the school year without the qualified educators they need to provide services required by their IEPs. i asked the district to publicly explain our special education vacancies included in guardrail 4.1 how many schools are currently missing special education teachers and when will guadalupe receive our teacher funded does not mean filled and filled does not mean services are delivered our students need these services now thank you

Thank you, we will move on to non agenda items. We have jake stucco. Ashley ahern Sarah. kirsten Lawrence Lee. I will our our timer is working now. Okay.

Hi, my name is Jake Stuckey. I'm a former employee and I have retired. Uh, good evening. I want to thank the superintendent's office and commissioner Fisher for responding to me yesterday and confirming that the legal department has received my reimbursement package. Thank you. This matter began with an error in my retirement status that resulted in the loss of my retiree health coverage and significant out of pocket expenses. Although my retirement status was eventually corrected. There were further breakdowns and communications and follow through among HR legal and SF, which prolonged the issue considerably. My health benefits have now been restored, for which I am very grateful and dependent upon. What remains unresolved are the financial losses I incurred while the coverage was unavailable to me. I submitted my reimbursement request on July nine, and i now know that the package has been with the legal department for approximately a month and a half i'm encouraged that associate superintendent james harrell and his team have now been asked to review it and i hope this will help move the matter forward i'm simply asking the district to complete the review address my documented reimbursement request and clarify what happened with the formal claim submitted my by my attorney in september of 2025. okay thank you after 23

yeah.

Hi, good evening. My name is Ashley Ahern. I am the parent of a first grader in SFUSD, and I'm here along with other members of Tech in Check to urge the board to take action regarding the crisis of excessive screen use in our schools. Look, it's no secret that excessive screen time is bad for kids. We all know the data about brain development, negative effects on attention span, cognitive performance, and mental health. but limiting screen time and helping kids establish a healthy relationship with technology has long been seen as the sole responsibility of parents well we're here tonight because we are doing our part we're setting and enforcing limits around screen time at home and in some cases committing to delaying giving our kids smartphones and access to social media we're doing all the things Only to feel in many ways, like our efforts are undermined when our kids go to school, where the guardrails and limits around technology are in many ways insufficient and ineffective. This is by far one of the biggest challenges of our parenting generation, but this burden needs to be shared by policymakers and educators to so please do you your part by revamping the district's tech policies, thank you.

Good evening. So when the Giants play the Dodgers, we see beat LA signs all over town. But when it comes to intentional tech in schools, we need join LA signs all over town. LA created the nation's first screen time resolution. One of their biggest wins is that student access to YouTube is now prohibited TK through 12th grades. Our group, Tech and Check, wrote a petition with around 500 signatures and growing, proposing reforms like grade level limits on one-to-one devices and social media free schools. Read our petition at tinyurl.com backslash TIC petition. So when it comes to sports yes let's absolutely beat la but when it comes to intentional tech let's be brave and join la Thank you.

Hi, I'm a parent, educator, and member of Tech and Check. We know students need to be prepared for a digital future. They need stamina, focus, and critical thinking. Giving students one-to-one devices without intention and a screen time framework leads to this. Cognitive offloading by copying and pasting test questions into Google search to find the answer. Elementary school students who are in the infinite scroll of gaming websites and streaming content through YouTube. Cyberbullying and passing notes through shared docs in Google Classroom. Students who take images offline without considering ethical use practices. When students are online, they interact with a product that was designed to keep them coming back, making a profit off their attention. Even our youngest students enter school knowing how to passively use devices. We need to introduce technology thoughtfully, create clear guardrails and learning goals and ask, is it safe? Does it benefit learning? And is the device letting students do something they couldn't do without it? Without purpose, we are displacing learning. Let's create an intentional technology and screen framework. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Lawrence Lee. I'm speaking on an agenda item, but first I want to plus one to what Emery said. I'm a professional chemist, and I know that lead paint in the air is not good for students. I'm speaking about literacy, and I'm happy that we have made an increase of two points over the last year. We still have a goal of 21 points in the next two years. how are we going to get there we like the fact that we have a lot of learning walks and other things but i'm not sure if this is where we are going to really help the students i am at a school in the bayview where it's 23 at grade level and it's very hard to see how we're going to get there So this is something where we have to do more than just having learning walks. We're really happy that we're at 96% of teachers in the classroom. But are we taking away coaches and literacy people because that's what we know happened before. And this is where we know that we need to have extra help with these teachers to get this to happen. So let's really make sure that this year, we can make big increases on literacy by doing the right thing. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Randall Lowe, Catherine Bacci, Tim Tong, Nancy Chang.

Order a little bit.

Thank you, Superintendent, Sue, and the Board for giving us this important public comment time. I am Catherine Bache, the Pt. President of the Chinese Immersion School at Davila, and the mother of three children there, fifth, third, and first grade. you'd think these children would be able to not touch the playground and then eat food without washing their hands in between. But it's a problem this year. Our school is undergoing renovation that includes removal of lead paint. Our parents are understandably concerned about lead exposure on our campus. In our meeting last Friday, the independent consultant demonstrated no extra concern that there are children at our school, only the workers. there is no trust between the parent community and this consultant information on this project was not provided before our students arrived for the first day of school we've all we have had to demand that information we are still waiting for answers to all our safety questions and to schedule a second meeting with the parent community thank you

board members and superintendent sue i'm tim tung i'm the chair of the school site council at cis and also the father to the students there i urge the district to view the issues around the lead-based paint removal project at our school as a crisis of confidence rather than purely a technical issue our families including our monolingual chinese community are deeply concerned about lead exposure for young developing children When district communications mask this issue under the subject line waterproofing project, it downplays our primary concerns. When we went to last Friday's information session with hopes of understanding what was happening at the school. Unfortunately, many parents felt the presentation was dismissive and disrespectful and left feeling more frustrated. I urge you all to think about how you can work to regain our trust. I look forward to working hand in hand with you as we move forward safely together. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Nancy Chang and I'm a CISDA parent. I'm asking the board to help ensure that SFUSD does what they originally promised, remove lead only when vulnerable children are not present. My daughter is six, and right now she's all about the handstands. So you can imagine my horror when the latest lab results showed readings including 72 micrograms per square foot in one yard, 34 in another, the rubber play pad, i.e. handstand central. These were characterized as well below safety standards, but that's only according to a very outdated threshold from 1994 that was not designed with messy, rambunctious kids in mind. I asked the board to help us require, one, better preventative measures, clean up the mess and keep the kids away from it, two, testing protocols that we all agree are appropriate using the right standards for kids, and three, if it's not safe, just wait till summer to do the work like they planned. In other words, protect our kids or postpone the work. Thank you so much.

Good evening, Superintendent Su and board members. My name is Randall Lowe and I'm the proud father of Emery who spoke earlier. He just started kindergarten at Chinese Immersion School at Dia Villa. Our core request is clear tonight. SFUSD must mandate independent daily testing of all indoor, outdoor, and conduct certified daily lead decontamination cleaning of our play yards and provide complete public visibility of those results every day. For five-year-olds like Emory, or let alone our TKers at the school, there's no level of safe lead exposure. Minimal guidelines by the EPA do not protect developing brains, and according to the Academy of Pediatrics, there's no safe level exposure, and I know the San Francisco Unified School District can do better. We need daily wet cleaning specifically for lead daily independent testing and complete transparency, thank you.

That concludes our in person public comment we'll move to the virtual. All right, thank you very much. For those attending virtually, we will start with students first. If you're not a student, please lower your hands. If you are a student, please raise your hands. And then we will move to agenda items and then non agenda. Okay, so Eva Moss. Go ahead.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Hi, I'm here today on behalf of my four-year-old son. We are a new family at Valores Huerta Elementary. And I joined in today because I have tremendous concern that there's no policy currently in place around the use of technology. It's SFUST. I understand that, you know, LA has already got their policy formalized. Yes.

I'm going to interrupt you. This section is for students first.

Oh, okay. Okay. Oh, my son. I'll let my son speak about it. One second. One, two, three.

I don't want to see TV in the school.

Okay, that was for my son.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. All right, so we are focused on students first, so if your hand is raised where will. Only students raise your hands at this point. Okay. No more students, so we will move to agenda items. OK, Virginia Marshall.

Good evening, Board Commissioner, Superintendent Hsu, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of the NAACP San Francisco branch, we were so excited on August 17 to go to several schools to see our students come back to school, including my three grandchildren. We are concerned, though, as always, about literacy for all students in SFUSD. I think it's about 49 plus students, especially the African-American students. Our goal, your goal, should be this school year to get all children reading at least two years above grade level, including math. We want to thank Superintendent Sue for coming, her staff for coming to our community meeting last Sunday at Third Baptist Church. And we look forward to working with you as well. Again, we will come in early for an excellent summer program, a Saturday program. And our goal next school year should be to have Freedom School as a year-round school. We are concerned about some staffing of African-Americans, staff people who were not maintained for this school year, they lost their jobs, and some of them who are highly qualified were even given an interview. so again we look forward to working swsd this year and we also can we heard about the lead and while the elementary schools the work should have been doing the work should have been done done during the summer thank you thank you virginia marshall uh kristen hi

Sorry, Kristen, go ahead.

Hi, can you hear me? Yeah. Great, thank you. I'm a member of Tech and Check, and I'm urging the district to adopt a policy that meaningfully reduces unnecessary screen exposure in our schools. So specifically, I'm asking the district to prohibit recreational screen use during the school day, prohibit AI-based instruction, and eliminate one-to-one device use in elementary school. I have a first grader and a third grader at Lafayette, and I'm increasingly concerned by how much screen exposure they are experiencing every day at school. And it's not just occasional technology used to enhance a lesson. It's gamified math apps, AI-based reading instruction, video game-like brain breaks, TV shows during rainy day recess, and movies during aftercare. I work at an independent school as a teacher, and we don't assign homework on Chromebooks or iPads before seventh grade. Yet at Lafayette, students begin taking one-to-one Chromebooks home for homework in fourth grade, and I've seen consequences. When I pick my own children up from school, I see groups of kids huddled around a Chromebook, watching one child play a video game instead of them running around on the playground. It's too much to ask 10 and 11-year-olds to regulate their own use of these addictive devices. So I'm urging SFUSD to lead by putting children and not devices at the center of learning. Thank you.

Thank you. Autumn?

Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Autumn Brown-Garibay, and I am a parent at Flynn Elementary, a Title I school in the Mission Bernal neighborhood. Tonight, as you monitor student outcomes, I want to name something very basic. We cannot expect students to make meaningful academic gains without a consistent classroom teacher. We are still missing several teachers at Flynn Elementary, even though candidates were selected by our principal before the end of last school year. Families returned to fall this year with inconsistent substitutes and still do not have clear answers about what is holding up these hires or when the permanent teachers will be in place. i know the district has made real progress filling our vacancies but if we are serious about improving our students outcomes staffing our classrooms must be foundational our students need their teachers and our families need clear answers and our expectation is to have consistent communication always thank you thank you um ms delu

Hi, can you hear me now?

Yes.

Thank you, sorry. So I'm entering my 28th year for SFUSD as a primary school teacher. I'm at ER Taylor Elementary School. I have some serious concerns about the K-1 splits that are happening across the district. I think they reflect a mismanagement of the schools, and we know that our enrollment overall has been dropping. And I think we just need to really think about the future of our students when we are going to be filling our classrooms. It sounds like there's still a lot of teacher shortages in very critical areas. And I think if we really look at how to consolidate our cohorts so that we're filling all the schools at grade level and not doing split classes. It'll really help our children. We have a really robust curriculum right now. We have our new math, which is a new approach to math. We have all of our new HMH language arts, plus the foundational skills and the science of reading. And when we compromise in these areas, and plus our social studies, when we compromise the instruction for students by doing split classes, it impacts them for their entire educational experience. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, Brandy Markman.

Hi, Brandy Markman, parent with the SF Ed Alliance. I'm in full agreement with so many folks here saying that SFUSD needs to catch up to LAUSD. And if the district is worried about low enrollment, get rid of tech because a lot of parents are putting their kids in private schools due to use of AI in our public schools. And I just want to say an overarching theme with all this dysfunction I've heard in public comment, retirement benefit issues, lead at school sites, tech and pedagogy low step is the result of student outcomes focused governance that governance model was for those of you who don't know instituted four years ago and what that did was get rid of monthly oversight committees the hr and personnel where we could talk about payroll concerns the monthly building in grounds where we could talk about lead in schools and monthly programming curriculum where we could um would talk about tech. And the National Director of the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools writes, the ultimate goal of the student outcomes-focused governance model is to dismantle public education through realignment and transformation, school closures, privatization, and less oversight. We desperately need more oversight. Please reinstate these monthly committees. We need to have more oversight of our district. Thank you.

Okay. Isabel, if you still want to speak, you're the last one.

Fantastic. Thank you. I'm happy my daughter finally gained the energy to say something. So she would like to speak.

My name is Valentina. I'm in second grade. And when I was in kindergarten at after school, I... There was a girl that every day she brought her phone and in after school she had a game that was called Granny and it was very scary and at night I had nightmares. So I don't want anybody to bring their phones or laptops to school.

Or after school. Or after school. Thank you. And Valentina goes to Daniel Webster. Thank you so much.

Thank you. We do have one more recap. Ranjit Chakal.

Hello? Hi, I'm a parent at CIS at Davila. I'm asking the district to stop telling parents that our campus is safe in spite of positive lead tests and to delay the waterproofing work that is causing lead contamination until school is not in session. The CDC, EPA, and the California Department of Public Health all agree there is no safe level of lead exposure for children. And the report the district shared with us shows that there is, in fact, lead in the play yards where children spend a substantial amount of time. No containment system can ever be 100% effective, so the most responsible course of action is to stop any lead generating work while school is in session, remediate the lead contamination that is there now, and resume lead generating work only during a break. Thank you.

Hello.

Yes.

Hi. Hi. I'm Karen, a parent of the Chinese Immersion School at Diavila. I have a second grader. I'm asking the board to intervene to pause the construction project at our school because lead has been detected on the playground. The construction work has been delayed from the summer and is now risking exposure for our students and staff to lead as well as other harmful materials and chemicals. When we returned to school, the playground and floors had dust and debris all over. The kids have been seen picking up paint chips and calling them shark teeth. My second grader eats and plays in the same playground where lead has been detected. Please help us move children away from the affected yards. Get the school cleaned properly and put a pause on all construction work until the summer when the children are not present. There's no level of safe lead exposure for children. Please protect our children by pausing the project and remediate the exposure that has happened already. Thank you.

Thank you, Lori.

Hi, I'm Lori, a parent of a third grader at CISDA. We are calling on the district to move all lead-related work to summer break as originally scheduled, get children off the affected play yards immediately, and clean up the lead found in testing. My daughter and her friends spend hours doing handstands, cartwheels, and gymnastics on those play yards. Their hands are on the ground, and then they eat their snacks and touch their faces, which is a primary route of lead exposure. There is... known safe level of lead exposure in children. And lead can cause permanent and irreversible harm to children's developing brains and nervous systems. More than 200 CIS parents have signed a petition requesting SFUSD to pause destructive lead work until summer. Please listen to our community. Stop calling detected lead safe, protect our children from unnecessary exposure, and move this work back to summer when our children are not there.

Hello. Yes. Hi, my name is Amy Bacharach. I am a parent of a fourth grader at CIS and an alum. And I just want to reiterate what everybody's saying that there's no safe levels of lead for children and for whatever reason, the work had not been finished in the summer when it was supposed to be. So I just wanna reiterate the request to please be responsible and help our kids stay safe and healthy and do all of the cleanup and then pause any lead work until the summer when children are not in session anymore.

Thank you.

Thank you, Eva Moss.

Hi, I'm the parent of the four year old who spoke earlier and I was so inspired by the first grader who spoke. I wanted to also note my first impressions as a new parent in the SFUSD system. It was my second week and I've been going to early, early drop off and hanging out with my kiddo while he has his breakfast. And there's a YMCA early drop off where there's children being cared for by the YMCA staff. And I found that a lot of the staff members were just on their phones. They're supposed to be watching the kids. I would hope engaging with them. I also saw children that were there with their phones and devices out while they were having breakfast. And I would rather not fight every single afterschool program, especially that my child is not enrolled in. I think there's just needs to be a policy. It's clearly like children need to be supervised, engaged. These are role models. My own son is in that space. Even if he's not in that afterschool program, these are role models that are in the space. And it was like just really underwhelming, really underwhelming to be entering a whole adventure together of his education and seeing. you know, his role models and educators and classmates just, you know, sucked into devices. And so really want to ask SFUSD to create a policy. Tech and Check has great suggestions on what that policy could look like.

Thank you. That concludes. Oh, Alicia, do you?

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Hi. Hi, good evening. My name is Alicia June. I'm a parent at Chinese Emergent School at the Avila. I'm also asking the board to intervene in how SWSD is managing lead related construction at our school. I'm deeply concerned that lead has been detected in common areas that our children continue to use every day. There's about 400 students at our school, and they're on campus from 7 to 11 hours a day, including before and after school care. And yet the district is planning to continue lead related construction, creating further unnecessary risk of lead exposure. Just today I saw a ball get kicked into a garden area that has tested positive for lead and zoned off for construction. The children gathered around the fence and was tempted to climb over to retrieve it. That's how easily a child can come into contact with an area we already know is contaminated. There's more than 200 parents that have signed a petition asking SFUSD to pause lead-related construction until summer. I'm asking the board to intervene to help stopping the usage of play yards adjacent to active scaffolding and construction, ensure thorough cleanup of existing lead contamination, and pause further lead-related construction until summer. Thank you.

Thank you. Kate's iPhone. Kate, you're allowed to speak.

Sorry, can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, great. I'll start over. My name is Kate Freeman. I am a parent at the Chinese Immersion School. Can you still hear me?

Yes.

Yes. Okay, great. I have a first grader and a third grader. As y'all have heard, we walked into school on Monday with a containment area that was right next to the children's play yard.

I can't hear you because I'm listening to something important.

Wait, hold on, Kate. Alicia, hold on.

Sorry, am I not being heard?

You were being interrupted. Hold on one moment.

Okay, go ahead. okay sorry um kate freeman parent of a first grader and a third gator at the chinese immersion school we all walked into school on monday with 99 of us having no idea that there was construction going on from the from the gecko no idea that there was lead paint that was being stripped from the school and this has been a very frustrating two weeks to try to figure out what we can do for our children the ucsf department of pediatrics occupational and environmental um a system has said that there is no safe lead level and that these values that we have that are being measured in the play yard is not safe for children this is unfortunately something that is infecting all of us and our kids and has potential long-term damage for our children. We urge the board to please get this construction project stopped. It is not something that has to happen right now. There is an ability to stop this project and waterproof the building and continue this at another time. And we are urging everyone to please hear our concerns and protect our children.

Thank you, Kate. That concludes our virtual.

Thank you to the members of the public, um, and our students for joining and our 1 student. Future student, a young person for joining us tonight. Several many students, um. For joining us tonight to share your experiences and perspectives as a reminder board rules in California law do not allow us. To respond to comments or attempt to answer questions during this time, but we appreciate you taking. The time to be with us here today in person and virtually to create more space focus on student outcomes we are being we will and are moving. Most items for a consent calendar and identifying only our highest priority items to discuss with that i'll pass it device present healing to move to section eight consent calendar.

The next item on the agenda is the consent calendar President Kim has a standing recusal from the consent calendar due to his employment with the city and county of San Francisco, which is a frequent contractor with to avoid any appearance of impropriety. Do any board members have any personal professional or business relationship with any individual who is the subject of or has an ownership or financial interest in. The subject of any consent items or as a result of the relationship, the ability of the board member to act for the benefit of the public could reasonably be questioned, and thus the relationship should be disclosed in the minutes. Hearing none superintendent suit. Do you have any changes to the consent calendar? I have none. Can I have a motion and a second on the consent calendar? So move second has been properly moved and seconded that the board approved the consent calendar. Could we please have a roll call vote on the consent calendar?

Student delegate Nellie folks men.

Yes, I approve.

Student Delegate Anna Nguyen? Yes. Commissioner Ray? Yes. Commissioner Alexander?

Yes.

Vice President Hewling? Yes. Commissioner Weissman-Warren? Yes. Commissioner Gupta?

Yes.

Commissioner Fisher? Yes.

Thank you retrieve President Kim.

Okay, um. Moving to item F action items, the next item on the agenda is 268 dash 25 approval of pips and waivers can have emotion a 2nd.

I move item two, six, eight dash twenty-five Sp. Two approval of pips and ways of waivers.

Second, it's been properly moved and seconded to the board approve this item. Ah, two, six, eight dash two, five Sp. Two.

Um, Superintendent Sue, and this is a usual item for us. Um, so we request that you approve it so that we can hire teachers.

Any comments from the board? Seeing none, debate is now closed on the motion to approve item 268-25-SP2. Approval is in the way. First, we'll call the vote, please.

Student Delegate Nellie Fuchsman? Yes. Student Delegate Anna Nguyen? Yes. Commissioner Ray? Yes. Commissioner Alexander?

Yes.

Vice President Hewling? Yes. President Kim?

Yes.

Commissioner Weisman-Ward? Yes. Commissioner Gupta?

Yes.

Commissioner Fisher? Yes.

Thank you very much. Moving to item G discussion items. The superintendent and our team are tasked with providing a draft of each agenda 12 days in advance for board members to review. Once that draft agenda is made public on our website, board members have made a commitment to submit clarifying and tactical questions and staff have made a commitment to respond to these questions in advance of each board meeting. This Q. and a doc is linked into each board agenda on board docs today in item. E. 2. We invite the public to review those questions questions and answers alongside our discussion today. Board members, this is our. 1st monitoring meeting of the year, and please note that we have a upcoming. Board retreat, where the second best ad hoc will lead us through an exercise to freshen up on our search to question asking yes, that is a formal title of the ad hoc and. For today, um, I will be reminding folks to not restate questions answered by staff in advance, but instead to bring forward strategic questions that allow us to better understand our progress towards our goals and the underlying strategies. So that we can be better informed in our decision making and partner with the superintendent as we hold her accountable. After our board retreat, we will officially begin a lot of the practices that have come out through the recommendations such as the voting. I think today around not having the tables in the center were more of a technical issue because of our Mike's situation. Um, but moving forward, we will be sitting in the center. to have a conversation uh for our uh monitoring reports um and members of the public and the board can follow along our schedule on the governance calendar that was approved at our first meeting before we get started any questions about any of that from commissioners commissioner fisher just uh oh my god these microphones are gonna kill me y'all um uh um

Okay, we'll try that maybe the feedback was my computer anyway anyway um okay. Christopher McConkey- i'm just a procedural question I reckon I appreciate the that we're going to start voting after we do our retreat. Christopher McConkey- But part of the process to hold ourselves accountable and the way that through student outcomes focus governance we're supposed to scribe our questions and then rate them, you know how we did answering we're not doing that part yet either right.

Not yet. We are not holding ourselves or staff necessarily superintendent accountable to the ad hoc recommendations until after our training and our retreat.

Okay that's I appreciate that clarification and if we are actually going to be doing that part of it, we need to think about maybe assigning roles for that i'm happy to continue timekeeping until our new staff member is on board, but. I just want to name for everyone, I can't scribe and participate that's so i'm not committing to that Thank you.

Okay, seeing none, we'll start with item one workshop and student outcomes. Goal one progress monitoring report, and I'll move it over to Dr. Sue.

Thank you President Kim and I'm going to be very mindful of the mic. So I'm going to try to figure out how to project my voice and not have feedback on it. So, good evening commissioners and as we start the school year, and we start the progress monitoring workshop, I'm really excited about the us moving into the next iteration of this work. As many of you know, we are governed by the student outcomes focused governance framework. And for those of you who do not know yet, we are going to, based on the recommendation of the only ad hoc that was student focused. I know, I don't know. I'm just going to get, I'm going to lose my job.

That is one way to start a board meeting. That is wow.

Okay. Focusing on students.

Great student outcome focus. That's how we're supposed to be. Thank you, Superintendent Hsu.

You're welcome, Commissioner Alexander.

I'll move on to item two.

There were lots of recommendations from that ad hoc. I'm sorry, Steph. I had to. There were lots of recommendations from that ad hoc, which I actually greatly appreciated. And this board has already accepted many of those recommendations. Thank you so much, President Kim. Like making sure that as we agenda is our board meetings, we are going to prioritize having more board meetings that is focused on progress, monitoring reports that we ensure commissioners have more time and opportunity to focus and spend in conversation with staff around student outcomes, particularly goals 1, 2 and 3. And this is our first attempt into implementing some of the ad hoc recommendations, which is to move from having a progress monitoring report into having a progress monitoring slide deck so that we can demonstrate and put information out in a way that is more easily digestible. I do acknowledge that this slide deck is quite dense still. But we're going to have the first part of the slide deck be the report part. And then the remaining parts of the slide deck is primarily the appendix, which are more of the technical and tactical information for those of you who really want to geek out on this work. I, and I just, I also want to acknowledge that, you know, in the last board meeting, I did share that what I'm hoping for us as a governance team and us as a school community to really approach this year being fearless and united, meaning that we come together to really look at the data that hurts our heart, hurts our soul, and act upon it. And knowing and recognizing that no educator, no site leader, no commissioner can change the student outcomes alone. We have to do this together. So I ask all of us to come together and work together in trying to move the needle for our students. The only way that our student outcomes will improve is when we adults in the system change the way we behave. and change the way we prioritize student success. So with that, tonight, we as a team will be presenting to you a summative review of our progress on goals one, goal one, third grade literacy for last school year, as well as share our preliminary grade three, SBAC, which is the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium assessment tool, ELA results, which is our English language arts results. And I'm really happy that I am joined by John Davis, our Deputy Superintendent of Ed Services, as well as Dr. Moon Ha Kim, Director of Research Planning and Assessment, Jess Reyes, Senior Executive Director of Research Planning and Assessment, Dr. Jen Steiner, our Assistant SOUP of PK-8 schools, as well as Devin Krugman, our Assistant SOUP of Curriculum and Instruction. we will show you what we learned last year about our instructional system where we are making progress where we need additional supports and then we'll show you the plans for how we are going to strengthen the instructional systems and practices that support literacy across our schools what we are going to do differently this year and how we will monitor ourselves to make sure that it's working Next slide, please. So before I dive and hand this over to our team, well, before I dive into Goal 1 data, I want families and our community to know that you also have access to this data that we are seeing here. So therefore, starting today, the public can go onto our website at www.sfusd.edu and click under the about us, the about button, and then you'll find a link called SFUSD Public Data Dashboard. There you can click into it and then you can see the public data, the information that we are looking at that is informing how we are making our moves to support our students. This dashboard summarizes all of our key student enrollment and outcomes data. So that folks don't have to search the state website and it also includes disaggregation to the ethnicity level. Our public dashboard will contain the most up to date official data for each of our metric. The remainder of the 2526 data will be available this fall when the state officially releases that result. So currently you'll have a mix of data, some 2526 data, which is more of the aggregate level, and then some of the 2425 data, which the reason is because we don't have access to that yet, publicly access to it yet. And we are actively undergoing prototypes to develop a better user-friendly interface for the public. But I wanted to make sure that we share the information that we have with our public so that you can also see it at the same time. Next slide. Dr. Hsu, can you clarify where that is? You said under the About tab? Yes. So www.edu.

You can click on the about so it's it's not, but if you click about on the left hand side you'll see it oh i'm there right now i'm I just did it so if you go to. Yes, so it's not in the drop down when you hover over about, but if you click about on the left hand side you'll see SF usd public data dashboard on the left, thank you for that clarification sorry I just.

So again, it's our desire to be as transparent with families as possible. We want to put the data out there. And again, I need us all to be fearless as we look at the data and to be brave and to be vulnerable because some of the some some of the data like I said hurts our heart. Moving on to the next slide. We are going to be talking about goal one and goal one focuses on increasing third grade literacy proficiency as measured by s back la. So the goal is to move where we are currently 52% in 2022 to 70% by 2028. Oh, okay, we've moved several slides over. Sorry, can you go to slide five? Yep, here we go. So when reviewing our preliminary 25-26 results for grade three SBAC ELA, we saw a two percentage point increase compared to last year. This is an encouraging sign that we are beginning to turn the corner on third grade literacy. Looking back from pandemic learning recovery to establishing conditions for success, including our new ELA curriculum, more robust professional development for our educators and intentional coaching at all of our school sites, we are looking to continue building on this momentum this year and into the future years. Looking across school student groups, we noticed that most groups have remained relatively steady over the past three years, but most notable gains are seen for Pacific islander students are Latin next students and our Filipino students. When looking at our program groups, the data also points to areas where we need to provide more targeted support for students. In particular, our English learner students and students experiencing homelessness continues to show a need for additional supports to accelerate their literacy outcomes. We shared results for interim goals 1.1 1.2 and 1.3 and last year's progress monitoring reports and we are resharing them here to show how our within year measurements help us monitor our progress throughout the year. The results have consistently shown increase for our African American and Pacific islander kinders. And first grade students, while at the same time, the outcomes continue to show, unfortunately, that our English learner students need additional supports. Now I will turn this over to john Davis and our esteemed team here to talk about what we learned last year about our our instructional ecosystem and what that means for the next stage of our journey this coming year john.

thank you superintendent soon good evening everyone we're going to start with the slide that really talks about our instructional ecosystem and it's a great place to start because when you see a teacher teaching i want the public and everyone to know of just everything that goes on behind the scenes that folks don't see when you see a teacher working with a child or working with a group of students There are standards that define the level of rigor and what students need to accomplish. There's the curriculum that takes those standards and makes it more doable on a day by day lesson for teachers. And then inside the classroom, there's different pedagogical strategies and different parts of the curriculum or what we are calling core actions that if they're done well, then students will learn more. James Rattling Leafs- We put all of this out here in one system, because our ability to get really good at this is going to determine if our students can become proficient readers and that's why you see that on the left hand side, the right hand side, where it says enabling conditions. Those are all of the times we get to work with teachers, either in 1 on 1 coaching or professional development activities. And you see the learning walks in the back are what we have to do well as a district. So we can see, are we making progress inside the classroom from an observational standpoint? right superintendent sue just talked about where we are from a percentage and about half of our students are grade level proficient in reading but we know that if we can get i'll say get better and improve in many of these areas especially around the enabling conditions and then allowing our principals to do more and more learning walks If we can get good at that, right, our teachers will get better feedback, our professional development will get better. And and in the end, as Superintendent Sue, when the adults get better at their jobs, the students will end up being better educated. so this is what we really pay attention to even though when you see a teacher teaching it looks like they're very you know very natural but there's a lot that goes in the background and we need to get good at this and that's what we're committed to let's keep going I'm gonna um ask assistant superintendent Krugman to talk through examples of this so it's not just abstract

Thank you so much. So in order to understand how our plan was developed, we examine this ecosystem, and I'm going to highlight two specific examples one for kindergarten in relationship to interim goal 1.1, and then one for first grade in relationship to interim goal 1.2. So for the first one, if we think about our kindergarten proficiency rate, that overall proficiency rate is built by five separate domains. So on the slide right here, you can see for spring 2026 on the STAR early literacy assessment, this is our kindergarten proficiency rate across each domain. so for the purpose of this example we're going to focus on one of our domains most in need of development which is foundational skills phonics we can go to the next slide So using that foundational skills phonics example, we are gonna start with the student outcome, which currently in that spring 2026 is at 48.8%. For this specific example, I just wanna highlight, we've pulled out a couple of example standards and example lesson and example classroom practices. This is not the whole suite of standards or curriculum, but to highlight how this ecosystem functions, we've pulled out some examples. So in order for students to demonstrate proficiency in this domain of foundational skills phonics, they have to demonstrate proficiency on kindergarten phonics standards. So in this case, 3 and 3A have been pulled out as examples of what students actually have to demonstrate proficiency on. The curriculum is designed in order to build that proficiency of standard so in this example lesson from kindergarten module three lesson one students are working on consonant are. And throughout this lesson outline you can see the ways in which they work on things like continuous blending handwriting spelling and practice with decodable text. And as Deputy Superintendent Davis just spoke to, there are a series of classroom practices which are the ways in which teachers work with students to engage in the content. So if we consider these three things as a continuous cycle, they are intended when done well to have students build proficiency on the standards and therefore on STAR. one of the things that we want to highlight are the ways in which the site enabling conditions either improve the interactions across the standard the curriculum and the classroom or if we think of it as a pipe where they might be leaky and not done so well um so in the case of enabling posit conditions we look at the degree to which for example the professional learning that teachers experience addresses phonics and the way it interacts with the standards in the curriculum potentially how much things like teacher collaboration and grade level teams focus on lesson internalization so students are interacting with consonant r and the weights described in the curriculum how much the one-to-one coaching will focus on for example the use of decodable text in the classroom So our goal is to understand how to improve these enabling conditions to make this cycle flow so that the pipe is not leaky from one step to another. That was probably five different metaphors altogether. My apologies. So that's the kindergarten example. If we can go to the next one. so similar but different we're highlighting a first grade example so again on star reading in first grade we have a series of domains i'm focusing in on one of our areas most in need of improvement it's craft and structure related to literature we can go to the next one So again, we've highlighted a very specific example. So we have that specific domain and the current proficiency rate, the standard that students are being asked to demonstrate proficiency on, how that might show up in the curriculum. So we've pulled a lesson example. with a piece of text and some sample text-dependent questions that get at that standard. And again, our classroom indicators that we're looking for, so the degree to which the questions and tasks are actually asking students to evaluate the text and demonstrate proficiency in this specific area of craft and structure. And so yet again, the ways in which the enabling conditions engage educators in that cycle with focus and with consistency or not in order to move students towards proficiency. So as we move into the plan section, we've deeply evaluated this ecosystem in order to consider how best to improve upon it and support sites in order to strengthen the relationship between these different components.

Thank you, Devin. So in the plan section, the data and evidence lead directly to informing our 2026-27 school year improvement plan. The plan is designed to create greater consistency between district guidance, school instructional systems, teacher practice, and the student experience. So we'll monitor both implementation and student outcomes so we can make timely adjustments. Next slide, please. So before we walk through the specific elements of our plan, I want to ground us in the way we're thinking about improvement this year. Then we're looking at our instructional ecosystem as a whole, and we start with student outcomes and what we see in classrooms through learning walks. And we see that evidence to understand how well our students and curriculum are translating into classroom teaching and learning. So we then look at the enabling conditions that support that teaching and learning, including professional learning coaching and teacher collaboration that allow these practices to take root. So it's really about strengthening the parts of the system that work together to produce stronger teaching and learning next slide please.

Good evening, commissioners. It's nice to be back and seeing you again. I want to remind us of this theory of action. I feel like we went over this a ton last year, but I just want to ground us in the fact that when we start, we start by thinking about students. What is it that we want the students to get better at? We want them to get better at reading. We want them to be literate. And so far, about half of them are. So we have some work to do. And so when we think about that, what we know about the student outcomes is that student outcomes change only when adult practices change. So when we're going backwards, we need teachers to do some of the things differently right we need pedagogical practice to improve and we spent all this time this past year thinking about as we look at our what we previously were thinking of as a core rubric as we look at our core actions we want to separate that into what are the student actions and what are the adult actions and so in the core rubric previously we were just looking at what students were doing and new researchers come out to say Guess what? We also need to look at what the adults are doing. And so we spent a long time this past year with groups of educators, principals, teachers, curriculum and instruction. Assistant Superintendent Krugman led a group of people alongside of other folks from LEAD and from school sites to say, all right, can we look at this learning walk tool and get better at this? And I'm really excited about this. And I know I get really dorky about these things, but I'm really excited because what we're doing better is inside of what we're doing, both with the teachers, but also with the school leaders. We as RPA, CNI and LEAD spent a lot of time this summer saying, how can we get better? How can we get even more aligned than what we did last year? Last year, we learned some things in what we did with principals. And we said, all right, if we can help principals to better understand what they're looking for with this tool, and we can give them a handbook, and we can give them ways to take notes, then we can look at that ecosystem and say, oh, across my school, I see that students aren't talking about the evidence-based text. I see that teachers aren't giving enough time with practice. And so this theory of action helps to guide us in order to do that. So I'm gonna explain the plan a little bit and break it down. You can go to the next slide. And I'm not going to read you all of this. You can read it if you want to. But I'm just going to tell you that in each one of these interim goals, we have three things that we're trying to do. And over and over again, one of the things we're trying to get better at is the instructional instructional walks, right? The learning walks. And the reason why we're trying to get better at those is because they're broken down in 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 alongside of the areas where we think if we get better at this, if teachers get better at this, then students will ultimately get better at this. So in 1.1, we're really looking at those foundational skills. That was the first one that Assistant Superintendent Krugman talked about, those phonics, phonics, phonemic awareness, etc. We're saying, all right, we need to get better at that. We want to make sure that specifically for our African-American and Pacific Islander students that we're doing all of the things that we said we think are going to get get those students to proficiency. And then finally, we're gonna really focus on a few schools. We're gonna say, we're gonna look at these schools and we're gonna get, we're gonna call them lab schools. We're gonna work with our partners in TNCP who helped us get better at the learning walks last year. Last year, you heard a lot about learning walks from them. This year, you're gonna hear about us doing learning walks and how we calibrated and ensure that our principals can really look for that. You go to the next slide. In 1.2, you'll see again, the learning walks are there and the learning walks now are focused on language arts instruction on the comprehension part. And then in this piece, what I want to highlight is that what we really think is true in 1.2, which really looks at the whole of the students, is that in order to get better, we have to go back to what are we doing with teachers in professional learning? How are we assigning coaches to where we need to get more focused in particular areas, how are we internalizing lessons, right? And we're doing that by looking at the data from those learning walks. We can go to the next slide. And then in 1.3, we're looking at our English learners. What we know about our English learners is that they need additional support, so we want to also look I like to think about ELD, I always say it's like the on ramp to the highway. So if we're all on the highway, we're giving the English learners the on ramp so that they can get those language practices and structures in ELD so that they can get onto the on ramp and the freeway of language arts. And so that's what the one I want to highlight there.

I'm going to conclude this by just saying a couple more couple more things. One is coming from a different district and walking in and seeing the vision and the coherence that was shown here was awesome. Honestly, I have not seen this in many school systems. This just level of standards to student outcomes and the learning walks and trying to tie it all together. So it makes sense because it is very complex. So that was a wonderful thing to walk into at the same time. The implementation is very, very hard. Our principles have a lot on their plate. It is something that I have. heard from them even before I started literally in focus groups. And so I don't want to act like just because we have a plan that we're going to snap our fingers and everything's going to be nice. The implementation is going to be very hard. It's going to take time. We're going to have to follow up with our leaders and figure out where the obstacles are and pivoted different in different ways this year and then going into next year as well. But that fundamental way of thinking about instruction and supporting our teachers through those enabling conditions is what is eventually going to lead us to success so we'll take questions now great thank you and we'll start with uh commissioner gupta

Christopher McConkey- So I really appreciate the presentation i'm a huge fan of theories of change theories of action really appreciate this really appreciate your comments deputy Secretary or deputy superintendent sorry. Christopher McConkey- So that's a there you go. Christopher McConkey- I am curious to the point of implementation seems to be key here. If you know, when we look at this data, and we disaggregated, especially because I know there are some questions around in the question answer document around what are we seeing between, uh, you know, our students different bodies of students. And I'm curious if there are any. School sites that stand out either in terms of what's going well, or what's not because ultimately, I mean, this is all just a compilation of our sites put together. So, where, where do you know, is it is there something there in terms of where we see this well implemented and we're seeing the, the change that we seek or not implemented? Well, we're not seeing that change or it's implemented. Well, we're not seeing any difference. Is that clear?

It's a fair question. I'm going to start it off, but Dr. Steiner, you might have additional thoughts. We were literally just talking about the fact that we made some expectations for principals between the beginning of the year and their first cohort meeting. We want them to try the tool and to come ready to talk through it. And we have already seen some schools in the tool because we can see the dashboard, we can see the aggregated data, and we will follow up with the schools that are in this and doing this well and to figure out right how they were able to frankly manage their time and get to instruction first. But then also, we have to layer on the actual student outcomes and norm a bit. Because if, say, 20% of the kids are reading at grade level and we see through the dashboard that we're rating everyone really high, we know there's going to be a disconnect. And so we're going to look at that beginning data and follow up with schools that are either struggling or if there are models for this, we'll do that. I don't know if there's any from last year you might want to point out, because I think that was more or less what Commissioner Gupta was getting to.

That was my question. Do you want us to name particular sites or you want to talk about how we're identifying sites? I guess that was my clarifying question.

I mean, I'm more interested in if there are identified sites and practices or challenges where sites have done what we've asked with this great theory of action and we're still not seeing the results, you know, in the aggregate when you look at those individual sites, what exactly is happening?

Yeah, I think both Devin and I will have something to say about this. What I'll say is like from the perspective of in my new expanded role, right? I mean, I only had a few elementary schools that were under my purview last year, only eight of them, right? And it's part of the K-8s. And in this month that I've been able to work with the early elementary sites and the elementary sites, I'm getting to know the depth and breadth of what we're we're doing, and I'm doing it in a couple of ways. Like one, I'm working directly with the executive directors, some who are returning and some who are also brand new and recently site leaders. And then also just going to schools. I mean, I've been saying like, how do I really get to know 98 schools? It's going to be quite the interesting endeavor to say, where do we see this going well? And so some of the things we're looking at is where are the structures that exist? Not just like, are there grade level collaboration meetings? Yeah, lots of schools have grade level collaboration, but are the grade level collaborations really focused on lesson internalization? Are they looking at what's happening with students and are they breaking it down by focal students? Are the principals in those schools regularly going into classrooms and what are they seeing and how are they discussing that both with if they have an admin partner, the admin partner, the coach, the lead team, the instructional leadership team, and then how are we seeing that then come to fruition in the star test, which I think is what John was referring to. So we are identifying those what we'll call bright spots. And what we'd like to do this year is not have the bright spots just be bright, but also go like what in those bright spots can we spread and scale? And we're doing that right through the principal the principal learning opportunities both through citywide and cohort meetings there's also the coaching network and this year um devon's team and our team are working really closely together to say last year we had the coaches come to principal citywide twice right 3 times and this year we're having them every other month because what we know is that while we want the principal to be regularly in classrooms and that is our goal. We also know that there are many operational tasks that take the principal away from just focusing on classroom instruction. And so that coordination between the coach and the principal is going to be really. paramount. And so, yes, we've identified particular schools where we think it's working and we want to capitalize on that. And then to your second question around, are there schools where they're doing everything right, but it doesn't seem to be working sometimes? Yeah. And then we have to dig underneath the root cause and get at why, like what is happening in particular places where we need to give additional supports to particular communities to particular students, particular teachers, right? There's lots of reasons why. And they're not, you know, it's a complex question. So there's not a simple answer, I guess, is my, my first answer. And I'll pass it to Devon, who I'm sure has something to say about this.

The only additional thing that I would add is that one of the things that we did at the end of last school year in evaluating some of the early data that we had back and some of the trends that we saw in student outcomes in particular bright spots was that in the development of some of the tools and systems that Dr. Steiner spoke to, we actually held focus groups both with administrators and instructional coaches. to have them look at early versions to give us feedback on whether or not this would be helpful to them. And so what we want to make sure is the tools and systems that we have are actually of use to support the enabling conditions at sites. So when we did, for example, a mock-up of the learning walk dashboard or some of the core actions and indicators, administrators and coaches gave us a ton of feedback. on what worked and what didn't work and what they wanted to see changed. And we made a lot of revisions along the way in response to that feedback. Paying particular attention to schools of various like performance levels, areas of need, growth, student groups, etc. So we want to make sure that the tools and systems are responsive to what we're seeing play out and that we're taking those different perspectives into consideration.

Can I just add that what you're hearing here from the team strategically is us being very intentional and focusing on the coordination, so the coordination of what the enabling conditions that the team has talked about so. We do have standards that we have to follow. We have new curriculum that we are also using, but it's the interaction between following the standards, implementing the curriculum, and really understanding the student's experience of that curriculum in the classroom. And I think this is where we as a team are diving deeper into the learning walks and making sure that we are looking for that because we believe the hypothesis is that that is what's going to lead to having the conditions for students to learn.

I can just ask one follow-up question and taking a step back. Is there a correlation, maybe a causal relationship between the sites that we don't see the results that we'd like to see and them not executing or implementing versus those who are? fundamentally just an implementation piece or not adoption of standards and executing on or implementing the curriculum?

No, we feel pretty strongly that implementation is the key to a lot of the work that we'll do for student outcomes to increase. Ultimately, in the end, one of the main things that we did as a learning organization is to think about where we see the bright spots that are happening. So one of the things that we did at the All Admin Institute in the spirit again of being a learning organization was to identify schools, not just for goal one, but across all the goals in the guardrails around who might be succeeding based off of last year's results and what were those practices. And I would say in a lot of ways, what we're doing is allowing those practices to be shared with others that they may think about what that might mean. But I think on the larger scale of things, as we start to get a little better at building our muscles around implementation, is to think about what that means across like common things and common threads that we are seeing so that we're able to amp up the investments where they need to be in terms of scaling them.

John Potter, got it and i'm just trying to think of that answer my that's that's helpful but. John Potter, fundamentally i'm just curious if there is, if the team sees an implementation challenge in terms of curriculum being implemented implemented or some of the practices superintendent that you were talking about being implemented.

I, I think it might be, it's still early in the year to be able to answer that. Question what we do know is that again, our theory is that if we follow the standard. If we implement the curriculum, and we ensure that the students receiving that information, that curriculum. that's the secret sauce that's how we're going to be able to create the conditions for our students to learn we do see that when all three of those conditions are met that we do see in a a positive impact Now, there are, like what Dr. Siner was referencing, lots of reasons why sometimes a student might not be available to the curriculum or might not be able to grasp whatever that is being taught in the classroom. And that's where we have to be in the classroom. We have to have a little bit more of the nuances. I believe that as we start practicing and implementing this new way of monitoring ourselves, we'll be able to answer your question at a later time.

I would even go so far as to say we should we must answer that question right like we will need way more data to say that but to compare the use of the tools and the I'll say the observable outcomes from the tools versus any student progress yes is it correlated or not we need to answer that question

I, I appreciate that. And that I was, I was going to say, I mean, if there's a dashboard that could be developed, that basically answers that question, I would really appreciate that.

Not another dashboard. I don't know. I love dashboards sometimes. I have two questions, and I'll ask the one and then pause, and then after that one's answered, ask the second, because they're very different questions. So my first question relates to slides 11 and 13. And I'm wondering if, so for slide 11, there's a huge difference in percentage of secured mastery. Like the range, is it range? Math has been a long time, but like from 83.4 down to 48, like that's a really, really, that's a huge difference. And so I'm wondering if you can walk me through that and what we're attributing to that and how to get those other numbers up to the 80s. um and then the second question which is related is slide 13 i know it's looking at different it's assessing different domains but here the percentage of secured mastery is generally lower um there's two there's three that are above 50 but nothing that's close to 70 or 80. um and the range is smaller so i know it's k versus first grade like what why um and are is there anything that we've learned about that that can help us

um get all of the numbers consistently higher so that's my first question i can start and i will also turn to my colleagues in rpa for additional i figured this would be a cni and rpa yeah tag team um is it possible actually to go to slide 11 real quickly so we can talk through it So I would say the short answer is that it's complicated. But the sort of more detailed behind that is that so if we start with K in the STAR early literacy, the piece I would begin with is just to say that not all domains are created equal. And by that I mean not all domains are the same sort of like lift, They are not of the same comfort level for educators. So we expect to see some variance. The one thing I will say just in particular about STAR early literacy for kindergarten is that in this area, we would generally expect to see, in particular for print concepts, a pretty high proficiency rate. We do have a fair number of students who enter kindergarten with a fairly high proficiency in print concepts. So that's not particularly unusual. I would also say that phonics and phonological awareness close towards each other and do have a pretty interdependent relationship, especially in kindergarten. And those are like pretty massive lifts in terms of kindergarten phonics and phonological awareness and the standards associated with them. And they are the focus of kindergarten instruction. The foundational skills block is the longest block in kindergarten as opposed to other grade levels. because of sort of like the cognitive lift and requirements. So I would say in general, those are fairly expected. And for us in terms of, you know, the work of coaching with kindergarten teachers, the way that we think about, you know, structured literacy in kindergarten all focuses on those two specific domains around phonics and phonological awareness. So that is what we're laser focused on in order to move proficiency. I would say you know similar but somewhat different if we scooch over to the first grade example on slide 13. This is always an interesting one again not all domains are created equal. I would say just to give a different example from a teacher perspective there are I would say like probably historically some more teacher comfort with things like potentially key ideas We have had a lot of like laughs around craft and structure. I would say in general, from a teacher perspective, that may not be the strongest area of comfort when we think about text dependent questions in the classroom. We might see teachers leaning more on text dependent questions that ask for key ideas as opposed to craft and structure. And one of the things I would also just kind of flag is that one of the shifts of the Common Core is a rebalancing of how much time is spent on informational text versus literature. And so for some educators, again, that is a balance that they're working on. So there's not sort of like a clean or simple answer towards it, so much to say we pay attention to the domains and we respond by shifting our professional development and supports in order to address the areas that are most in need of support.

I would only add to that that when we think about the trajectory of learning within the course of a school year that the emphasis on where something might be weighted more specifically when we think about the standards is where that might focus and the complexity of that starts to really ramp up when we think through um the domains and how they're treated also similarly when we think about lessons that happen in the classroom we typically think about that when a lesson happens sometimes there are multiple standards that are being attended to within a specific lesson similarly when we're thinking about assessments and assessment items a lot of times they're very interconnected and interrelated items that address multiple standards. And so therefore some of the ways that you might see some of the numbers kind of clustering together might kind of peek into some of that interrelatedness.

And I was just going to build on that with one additional example because I unfortunately can't hold myself back. If we go to the next slide after this. One of the things that I just really wanted to highlight just to drill into that one specific example around craft and structure related to literature. So if you look from the student outcomes and you see the proficiency on that domain, and then we look at the first grade standard attached to that, which is, and I just clicked off and I will click right back, but identify words and phrases and stories or poems that suggest feelings or appeal to the senses. That's the actual language of the standard. And then if we look in the example, and this is not the full lesson, but one small example of the text in these sample text dependent questions, what I would just highlight is just the level of focus and precision of these questions. And so from the work of the teacher, it is not just asking questions with this level of focus and precision, but if we also consider How students engage with them is it 100% of students in the classroom are they're providing evidence from the text in order to support their answer to this focused question so again just to highlight. The precision, the focus and the consistency that is required of the relationship between the content, the student and the teacher in order to address the reaching of proficiency on that standard.

Thank you, well, I appreciate understanding that not all domains are created equal. And that you all are aware of this and are responding accordingly, I think that's really important, so my second question shifting. It relates to an answer that was provided in the Q amp a there's a question about what to what do we attribute the falling scores for African American students and the. First sentence reads, we attribute our African-American students falling scores to both systemic and personal racism that leads to low expectations held for students and uneven access to rigorous and culturally responsive instruction opportunities to learn and supports. That's staff answer. I appreciate the honesty and I appreciate naming it. And I think if you ask most, African American scholars and or their families, this would absolutely be like, yes, this is our lived reality. I think my question, and maybe this is to you, and the response was, you know, so we're going to continue to examine how our practices and institutional conditions may contribute I mean, I feel like there's been like decades to be, you know, the world, the country certainly to be examining this. And what else? Because there's a lot about enabling conditions. There's a lot about adult behaviors. Like this is that. And so do we have more concrete ways Because if this is, I know it says this isn't the only factor, but if this is a big factor, this is what our staff who are experts in this are saying, this is what we're leading with. Like, what is the response? Because I don't know how we move forward without taking this on in a meaningful way.

Oh, perfect.

Great advice.

And, and this is part of us being fearless this year it's about us looking at the data being honest with ourselves and fully recognizing how. We are a school district that serves all of our students, not some and that if we are truly about serving all of our students, we need to recognize why some of our students are not succeeding. And it is a very long time systemic problem within our district, but it is our problem now. And because it is our problem now, we are going to face it head on by one, looking at the data and calling out the inequities in the data. Two, really, really talking to the leaders, talking to our educators, talking to our families about what would it make, what should we do to make things better? The second best ad hoc that we have is community engagement. Oh no, first best. Oh, I'm sorry. What am I doing? I keep getting myself into trouble here. Okay, first back on. Requires us to have deep engagement in our communities with parents. And I think that's a very, very important requirement and mandate for staff. So as we are talking about trying to move the needle, changing conditions in the classroom, we also need to acknowledge that we need to support our families as well. and that we can't just talk about students without talking about families and acknowledging that it is a entire system. So as we support educators and train them up to support our students to teach our students, I think it requires all of us to also acknowledge that there are external forces that are pushing on our students as well. So I commit to have all of us work on this together. And I see John itching to say something. But it is a systemic issue. And I know that, for me, I want to approach it as a we are all in this together, and we're going to hold ourselves accountable to it. John.

Part of the fearlessness is to call it out and to call it out when you're in the schools and when you're either see it in the classroom or when you even think it might be the case that one of the standards is not being taught up to the rigor that it is supposed to be. That is what most of the data nationally will always say is that the standards are not being taught to the rigor and that too many black and brown kids do not have the opportunity to learn at grade level. And so we have to look for that and have those conversations, either if we see it, or, frankly, if the data tells us that with our school leaders, and it's, you know, while there are difficult conversations like Superintendent Sue, you have to face it. I think we're also going to have to go down the path of what more we can provide. Um, and I think those are conversations that we have to have with principals and just understand the different communities that Superintendent Sue was referencing, um, as to what is needed at a specific site that is beyond what the current budget is. Um, so I think we are going to have to go down that path sometime.

If I, oh, okay.

Because I never usually use my whole time. So this is like making up for it, right? I've got hours.

There's no banking of minutes here. I just want to be clear.

So thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And I think, I guess, to you, Superintendent, too, yes, there are so many external factors. And I guess what I want is to be able to not ignore them, but to the extent that we can, like, what can we focus on? And if that is our educators in the classroom, and ensuring because I am sure a lot of it is subconscious, but ensuring that folks are not having low expectations for certain demographics like that seems like that's where we can focus and we do have some control over that versus

yeah other things so absolutely and part of what the stuff we've been talking about today about the enabling conditions is to really go hard on one-on-one coaching and professional development grade level collaborations really having the cross training having the deeper supports for our educators to to be able to to learn how to support our students.

Can I just give an example too? Because I had one this week, right? I had a team invite me to help them with a dilemma that they were having. They asked me if I could come and give them a little one on one. And so I went to the team and I sat down with them and they said, you know, we really think that what's going on is that this particular team is having low expectations, especially for our black and brown kids. And what do we do? And this was the first week of school. They had a lot of other things going on, but they said, we know that we need to address this. We feel like we saw it last year and we didn't name it well enough. And so we had an entire hour of conversation during the first week of school where we said, how do we know that that's what's happening? What's the evidence that's telling you that? What conversations have you already had? Why do you think it's happening? And what was interesting is that in this particular case, the team, is mostly black and brown staff. And so it is not unique to I'm a white person. I'm going to have implicit bias. That's true. And I have to examine the skin that I'm in and the privilege that I have and the implicit biases I carry around. We all do right. And so this particular admin group was saying we can do better, but we need help to think about it. We need help to get questions out of the right questions so that we're calling people in and that we're not calling people out because we can say, you know, the cows come home, that's implicit bias or those standards aren't high enough, but then defensiveness will set in and then you're not having the conversation with educators because ultimately I would say every educator that I meet in SFUSD wants kids to succeed and if they're saying that, oh, these kids can't, it's not because they don't want them to succeed. It's because they are literally like, I don't know what else to do. And so this bias kicks in. And so I think this idea of how do we continue to notice these open opportunities to get in there, our executive directors, our coaches, you know, all of us, the curriculum and instruction team, like the the data teams who can say, here's the data and let's like really do a five wise on what this data is telling us. We have the opportunity to do that. And if we can also then say which ones of our schools, which I think that Commissioner Huling said last year, like, where are we trying to Like change the way we're funding particular places so that we can give schools what they need in order to better serve populations that have been historically underserved mate just maybe we can get better at this this year and I and I have faith in us that we can do that, but I don't think it's going to be like tomorrow right, so I think we're we have our work cut out for us.

I do. I know I need to bring it over to Commissioner. I'm just going to insert myself here if that's okay. Sorry. Because I do, I want to take a moment to just kind of sink our teeth in a little bit more in this area because I think it's really, really important. And I'm going to tie it actually to the conversations we're having in the resource conversations with, okay, so gotcha. I because I have a I have a lot of stuff I just want to celebrate and praise because I am you know, this is my most of my life, so I love talking about curriculum instruction but. The enabling conditions, I think it was it's worth unpacking a bit more of what those are what our assumptions or. our positions are around those enabling conditions and how does that translate then to expectations we have around a school, right? Because what you named around one-on-one coaching, professional learning, I would throw in there, principal pipeline leadership development, right? Like what is our perspective around those things, right? Because if we are, you mentioned grade level GLCs or grade level meetings, I would argue throw in their departmental meetings, right? But if we're gonna say, for example, that coaching is so inherently important for a teacher to deconstruct their own biases and to be able to internalize a lesson fully so that they can teach most effectively, My question is, like, I feel like we're tracking the wrong things. Then the question that I would want to know is how many of our teachers have a 1 on 1 coach. Right and so, like, I think I think my brain starts to shift a little bit and I appreciate the where this is all going because then my question becomes if our system, if that's our orientation that. That, um, and let's pick something else. Um, we believe that, um. you know let's say department meetings are essential to this work right to in order for us to deepen the rigor of of teacher content expertise and skill set development we need we need them to meet with other teachers in their grade level who are teaching that same lesson and internalize that fully my question would be how are we ensuring like how many teachers do we have who can do that at a school site Right. And how many schools do we have that can actually do that? Right. And then and then you because then we start to see where do we we talk about the enabling systems and how important they are. but I would like to start to see where are the gaps in our current beautiful schools that we have so that we can start to ask some of the questions around, do we need to resource differently in order for us to meet those commitments that we are saying are necessary for our students and therefore our educators, right? So it's a little bit of an open-ended question here, but I would love to be able to understand

what are specifically those enabling conditions and how are we thinking about that in the context of the schools that we have right now before staff answers I have a very similar question but kind of a different frame would it it's a so you don't end up answering the same question can I just build on that is that okay or do you want to hear the answer first okay

I mean, school resourcing is something that actually the team and we were just talking about. But again, we're at the start of the school year and we're trying to build this new muscle, the muscle of looking at data, calling it out, making sure that we are intentional enough to identify trends, to make some strategic moves and shifts before it becomes a habit. So we're still working on building that out. I think that as we start thinking through how do we create grade level collaborations among and between teachers and educators, what we're seeing is that as long as we create space for our educators to come and work together, because at the end of the day, we have students in the same school building. that we can create a change in the culture of that school. If we can ensure that we have instructional coaches that are well-trained and that meets the needs of that particular school community, they can then support the educators on that school site. So we are still in the process of looking through and identifying those pieces. But you are absolutely correct, President Kim, that there are some schools that we already know that would need additional resources. And additional resources could come in the frame of having additional more coaching time, perhaps maybe even additional professional development that is offsite with other grade level cohorts. or maybe basic things that a school would need so that their principal and their site leader could then just take those duties off their plate so that they can then focus on supporting their educators. And those are things that I'm going to be working with the team on to develop as we start planning for our budget, because we are building and starting to plan for the budget much sooner than previous years.

John, I see. Oh, go ahead.

So you're right. President Kim is a bit open ended when you asked it. But one of the things you said is you might be measuring the wrong thing. And I want to be clear. We are measuring coaching law. We do have coaching logs. And so we are going to measure how many times teachers go through specific coaching cycles. We're also measuring how often the grade level collaborations happen. Michael Meitner- teachers that are going to professional development, so we have some of that you know we didn't put it in the slides just because we can't necessarily put everything. Michael Meitner- But my instinct is when we come back for progress monitoring will have some of that data as well. um and at the same point i want to be super honest saying you had it is a lot of diff is a lot different than saying you had it and it was really effective and so you know as my colleagues have said we have a ways to go to be able to do that really well um but we are having we are measuring some of those things you said and i just want to say one more thing like when you said principal professional development as well or pipeline development i was like oh yes like they need to like I feel like we can have a lot of enabling conditions, right? We put these three on there. They are super important. But you could easily put teacher professional, or excuse me, principal or AP professional development on there as well. I want to acknowledge that. And maybe we'll go down that path as we iterate over the months and years. But yes.

I appreciate that. And, and I thank you for the reframing. I'm, I'm sure there's a lot that y'all are looking at. So and this is probably the ones that are just rising to the top here for the sake of this conversation. I think, you know, and I have a whole set of other questions around, like, you know, what are the improvement ratings that we have? And is it an approval metric versus an evaluation metric and all this other stuff that I won't go into right now. But I think what I would insist on is for us to, I think it's okay that we have a handful that we're looking at, but let's draw those out completely and really understand what that looks like. And and I think the biggest thing is is is doing them. Well, whatever it is that we're selecting that we're saying that we're going to do. But I think I think my reflection here is I I'm just not quite. I'm trying to tie this like rich conversation on enabling conditions to. the system response we want to have and we can continue to talk about institutionalize this and this and that i mean to be clear we are we are quite literally the institution here so so like right so like what are we doing about those things and and how are we going to make our moves based on that i think is is my bigger question yeah yeah commissioner fisher

Oh, I love this conversation. Thank you so much. I really appreciate this updated monitoring report and I love the focus on enabling conditions and the resource allocation. I'm going to build on that. And I think I'll start with just reminding us of the public comment we heard from our ER Taylor teacher, who is a veteran teacher who's been here more than 20 years talking about her concern with K1 splits. and how if uh you know to go back to resource allocation right and the slides that commissioner weisman ward mentioned like if you've got you can't do both curriculum and you can't matter everything in the like just some basic resource allocation some basic enabling conditions there um i appreciated seeing in the Q&A document how we need to increase attendance. We need to work with the SAFE team. And we've talked about all the resources we've cut around chronic absenteeism. So I have some real foundational questions about like, yes, this is all great. This is fantastic. And to me, there's some parts of this that are still very much a word salad and not actually like differentiation, MTSS. Our teachers are telling us, our educators are telling us they don't have time to do it all in the classroom. Where's that? Where's the support? Where's the pullout? Where's the I mean, we still have teachers who are telling us, hey, I was trained by the Lucy Calkins, Columbia University, the Columbia teachers, you know, The teachers college at Columbia right that's heavily msv that's three queuing that's like as far opposite as you can get from the science of reading and the curriculum that we're now implementing so I appreciate hearing that. folks are being offered professional development, but. You know what you know, and you use the strategies that you know and a lot of what our educators have learned is very different than what we're expecting them to do now, so I just there's so so much I think that goes into this that i'm still wondering. Are are we still curious above and beyond what we've got here, and I think what i'm hearing is yes, very much so. But I think. I've used the analogy of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, but I think like fundamentally the the like the school resourcing issue of making sure that we've got the resources in place to get kids to school. So they're there to learn that we've got our educator set up for success in their classroom size and load, and they've got the right support until we do that. This almost feels secondary to me. I mean it's important. But it's a huge yes and to me. So I'd love to hear more about your thoughts on that and where that fits into the overall strategies that we're working on here when it comes to Goal 1.

I'll start and the team can chime in. Again, being fearless, I think it would be fair to say that This is the first time where we are even more coordinated than ever before. And when I say we, I'm talking central office we. And it's not to say that we have not worked closely together, but this year I definitely feel that we're having very much aligned conversation. And so when we as central office leaders are changing our own behaviors, I really do feel that it does trickle down and and that message of we are working together we're going to be honest with each other about what we're seeing. and helping each other leads to what Dr Stein at the example that Dr sign and brought to the table, which is. actual site leader saying, I need help, I want help work with me. So I think that's one, first and foremost, and, and I know it sounds so simple, and so obvious. And, of course, you all need to work together. But I think it does, it requires us to change the culture of working together. And that working together isn't punitive, and that we are actually coming together to support each other.

Let me rephrase and be more specific about my question then. So, and I appreciate their response and yes, yes to all of it. I am saying right here, right now, if we've got classrooms that are K-1 splits, I don't think that we're setting them up for success this year. And I don't think it's fair to expect the same outcomes in those classroom as K classrooms versus one classroom. I think we have some fundamental And let's name it, a lot of those classrooms are in schools that are predominantly are black and brown students. And so when we see outcomes like this and we talk about the racism and we talk about, thank you for naming that, but let's take it to that next step. Like what can we do right now to split those K ones to make sure that all kids are being taught at their grade level like now we're a week into the school year, for God's sakes. Why do we have K one if this is like I don't mean to get, but this is crazy frustrating to me that we're sitting here saying we want to do better, we know that our practices are racist. And yet we continue to do it. Change it. Hire more teachers. Break up those classrooms. They're in schools where we've got the room to do it. Like, seriously, make changes now. Now. Not wait until we monitor again at our next report. Do it now. Why can't we? If we think we're setting kids up for failure, make changes. Now. Change practices.

I'm off my soapbox.

For now.

No, no, no, I appreciate that soapbox. And definitely something that John and I have been talking about. And we are very into... I really do want to look into that. And there's a mix of, do we have enough students in those classrooms? And if we were to split it, what would that look like? Are we okay for some of our classrooms to have 10 students per teacher? And if we are, then how would that look like for our entire school portfolio? But I agree that we need to do better, particularly for K-1s. We need to do better and that we can commit to looking at it, particularly after our 10-day count, to see where the numbers land.

um I want to try to um bring together some of this conversation around enabling conditions and perhaps suggest a reframing because I don't I don't think the board is asking you to immediately um get rid of k1 splits although I know that one board member is doing that but I just think I think the role of the board here is really to ask strategic questions so I think what I'm hearing I'm going to try to reframe this as a question that I think I'm hearing from the board is of these enabling conditions based on your data analysis, which of them are most important, right? So if your analysis shows that you've looked at the data and K-1 splits are the thing that is causing lower achievement, investing in another teacher, might might improve then come to us with the data and say we're making these investments based on the data if principal pipe if it's actual principal turnover is the thing based on the data this is our theory come to us and tell us at the next meeting we're investing in This principle pipeline, because we believe X, Y, Z. I think that's what is really our board is the role of the board is to ask you all to do that analysis. And what I hear is that it's in process. It's not there yet. I think we all know. I just want to repeat this because I was frustrated with this. I expressed my frustration in June that the MTSS system we used to have got sort of vanished over the past several years and hasn't yet been replaced, but it's an opportunity, I think. And what I hear from the superintendent is that you all are engaged in a process of figuring that out. And so I think that is the question sort of like, yeah, which of those makes sense based on data and then need to be invested in, am I? Is that what's right?

yes and again um we need time and we're going to invest uh into looking into that data um but you're absolutely right that we need to be more strategic in how we allocate resources into schools there are schools um well And we need to look at student outcomes to figure out how we allocate. We need to look at student makeup. So focal population students, students with high needs, we have to look at that. We have to look at neighborhoods. So we are going to start building that matrix so that we can then come to the board with a proposal for strategic investments in schools. Hopefully soon, because that is definitely something that John and I have been in deep conversations around, and we do have resources set aside in the budget for it.

So. Okay. So my other question, which was my original question was, I really want to ask about English learners, and so I want to know what your thoughts are about what's causing the decline in performance. And I'm curious if there's any additional context around the Goal 1.3 plan. I mean, to me, I know the slide's a summary, but it does seem like it's kind of generic in terms of saying that the instructional leadership elements and professional learning that's occurring for every student is going to occur for EL students. Are there other strategies that are designed specifically to address the factors you've identified in terms of the declining performance of EL students?

So I do know that there is a school that has a very high number of of English learner students, and they have used very strategically high dosage tutoring. To provide additional augmentation supports for their students, so the the the opportunity for students to practice what they're learning in the classroom. The opportunity for students to have a tutor sitting with them in the classroom while they're receiving instruction we're seeing some significant improvements in those students. So again we're trying to see the the combination of if we have clear standards. have clear expectations high expectations of our students we're implementing the curriculum and we're evaluating how students are receiving the instruction we believe that those three combinations are going to create that condition for improvements but that is a one example and we're going to have to continue to focus in and try to see if there are other ways that our students um are improving. I see you inching towards the mic. You want to take this?

No, I really appreciate it. Just to clarify my question. Sorry, I didn't ask it very clearly. But I really was also curious in asking about do we have any idea of what caused what is causing the decline as well? And maybe we don't. But which is fine. I'm just curious.

So, Commissioner Alexander, I'm going to do a clarification on the stickiness of the data and how tricky it is to look at EL data before I turn it over to colleagues to talk about strategies. So, when we think about English learner students and snapshots in time, and I actually think Commissioner Heuling, you brought this up, VP Heuling, you brought this up several times as well, but I just want to talk about how tricky it is to look at English learner achievement data. And part of that is because at any given point of the year, what ends up happening is you have essentially what's a very fluid population where you have students that are newer to the district that are coming in, becoming English learners and then being added to a population. And therefore, the profile of that group is different than what it was earlier in the year. Similarly, you have students at that same point of the year that are also reclassifying. You know this, right? And so they start dropping out of that group. And so when we look at English learners at any point in time, it starts to give us at an aggregate level a certain look of it or certain profile of it at the middle of the year versus at the beginning of the year when a lot of these processes and changes in population are taking place. but what it is kind of like allowing us to kind of think through a little bit more deeply is how we might be able to disaggregate the data to tell the story a little bit more deeply and that's something that we're committing to do for the future like 1.3 el ones we've been thinking about that how do we layer in to make it more apples to apples the rfeps or reclassified students, sorry about the acronym, the reclassified students that might have gone out of a group from the fall and are no longer in the winter data to see what the ever EL status might look like and how that plays with the more apples to apples comparison so that we're able to see that. Then there's the other very real piece around like EL typologies and how they're tied to a student's date in which they become an English learner. And sometimes even within a school year, a student can move EL typologies within a school year and not just at the beginning or end of a school year. So I just want to clarify that from a data perspective, it is really tricky to talk about EL data in isolation. And then just to add one more layer to this is When we think about adequate progress for English learners, it is not just in the context of looking at reading, but also looking at their movement in ELPAC. I know that a lot of times the state has the English learner proficiency indicator, or progress indicator, which basically indicates their movement within ELPAC across the different levels as another gauge of how students are progressing. I say all this to say that English learner data is very tough to look at, but that we are committing to understanding more deeply under the hood to get a sense of more full, complete picture of that.

that's great i would just say if like if there's lpac data for example that's showing or other data that's showing that english learners are actually doing better then it should be in the report right i mean so that so that we know or if the if the data that we're seeing is accurate and they're doing worse then what's the cause and what's the strategy so again i think that's the that's what we're looking for absolutely thank you i want to open it up for student delegates i know you have to hop at nine if there are any questions please feel free to

yeah i had a question i think it was cycled around like 10 minutes ago sorry i was just like i don't know if i if i'm like is it okay to speak but um i had a question about the k um and one uh split grades i was just wondering um how are they like inherently racist and how are they um like Super bad for students. I mean, I personally went to like a split like four and five and I had a great experience, but I understand like those kids are really small. So I was just some clarification on that.

I can start and you guys can continue. So I think, are you referring to Commissioner Fisher's concerns? Yeah, so I think what Commissioner Fisher is saying is, well, I don't want to interpret for Commissioner Fisher. What I took from that is that in order for our students to really thrive, they need to have a teacher that is, again, trained on the standards and the curriculum to teach them in that particular grade. The problem is that due to our low and under enrollment at some of our schools we don't have enough kindergarten students and sometimes not enough first graders and so as a result, what we do is we ask our teachers to combine both of those grades and have our teachers teach both of them. Our teachers are. are amazing and they do know how to differentiate, which means that they can. provide a lesson to the entire class and say, actually, for our first graders, you do this one extra thing. And for our kindergarteners, you do this, right? Similar to what you were saying that when you were in your fourth, four, five combo. So there's that. But I think what ends up happening is that a lot of our under enrollment schools happen to be in our predominantly minority schools and minority population. And so the request is for us to have a closer look at how we can support those students to succeed and thrive and have access to perhaps a single subject, a single teacher, as opposed to a combo class. Staff, do you want to take that a step further?

I appreciate that, Dr. Sue. Yes. And I think it's not just that our under-resourced schools are in some of our minority communities, historically black neighborhoods, for example. But we have a history. The whole city has a history of redlining, and we have a history of under resourcing those schools in those neighborhoods. And so we see that in the programs that are there in the families that choose to show up, and specifically your four or five split versus K. the curriculum and the the standards that are taught in k1 are much much different from a foundational level whereas the four or five curriculum is a lot more similar and it's a um so it's a more traditional place that we generally see in our in our elementary schools not to speak i feel like i'm um okay let me step back and actually let the experts deal with this part you're doing so great staff would you like to respond to a question that was geared towards staff thank you

Mission official is going to get a glass of water and take a nice nap in the back.

Yes.

Oh, it's turned on. Okay, great. Yay. So this low key question asked like earlier by Commissioner Gupta and by Commissioner Westman-Ward, but I kind of wanted to get like a more clear answer on this. Based off of what we're looking at so far, a lot of it requires a lot of implementation. A lot of it is like sort of new and sort of the question I think I had was because SFUSD has a lot of students that come from disadvantaged backgrounds, has a lot of students that are like homeless or like living in double housing, are sped, have like ELD. I guess my question was more so Because it feels like there's a lot of implementation, how are we ensuring that this curriculum that we're implementing has like, is already like, let me rephrase it differently, but sort of already has like, or is made to accommodate these students, and how have we worked with, I know you mentioned we worked with like school staff, how have we worked with them and made sure that the curriculum has the program meant for them to help them grow, and also how do we plan on looking at students from these backgrounds and looking at how they improve from these and how we plan on revising the curriculum based off their responses as well as everyone else.

Thank you so much for that question. I can start with the curriculum part. So one of the things that I'll just say as a baseline is that when we go through the adoption process, we have a rigorous evaluation process where we evaluate the degree to which the curriculum provides for guidance on how to differentiate, guidance on how to run small group instruction, guidance on how to support multilingual learners and students with IEPs. So we want to make sure that we have high quality instructional materials that have a robust set of resources for teachers to make use of. What I would say in addition to that, and I know that I'm particularly a little bit of a broken record around these two statements, but one is the curriculum is the floor, not the ceiling. And that the second part of that is we are really specific in talking about the idea that curriculum should be implemented with integrity and not fidelity. And what that means is not that we don't do it. What it means is that we need to consider the ways in which we implement in response to the students and their needs in the classroom. So as we engage in lesson and unit internalization, implementing with integrity would be that we would consider how we would lift up or expand or think about how our small groups are designed in order to be responsive to the students in the classroom.

Christopher McConkey- So I just want to encourage you both if you ever wanted to ask a question you're you can raise your hand and i'll just add you on stack you don't need to wait until I I call on you yeah just wanted to make sure I said that. Christopher McConkey- I will pass this on looking over to the side of the House. Christopher McConkey- Vice President healing.

Janet Callahan- Less student delegates have more questions. I appreciate the earlier conversation about English learners and how the data is not necessarily always reliable and can be variable because the population that we're measuring is changing so rapidly. But I was really concerned to see that essentially over the last two years, our grade three English learner proficiency has dropped by half, which does indicate that there is a pattern at some level. And so, and similarly with homeless students. And so one of my questions, and also just overall with socioeconomically disadvantaged students, that implies to me that even though our numbers are the same as two years ago overall, that what's happened is that students with maybe more advantages have seen gains while students with fewer advantages have seen losses, and we've actually increased our achievement gaps. So one question I have is, are there things we've done over the last two years that are strategies we should abandon? Have we made errors? For example, we've moved to the 50-50 model, expecting that that would better support our English learners in Spanish immersion schools. Is that not working? Or are there other things that maybe we're doing that are not working for those students?

Well, can I I'll start gives you guys a little bit more time to think here. I going back to the 5050 I think just giving students more opportunities to learn and practice English is always beneficial for our students. And I know that that was part of the reason for us making that change. It was actually part of the request from our I think Latinx families for that change. We can we can I wonder if we can pull up data from those from like a comparison data for when that point of change happen to see if maybe there was something in there. And we can get back to the board on that.

I would appreciate that because I feel like part of the purpose of progress monitoring is to monitor the specific strategies that we're using. And if those are working, double down on them. And if they're not working, abandon them and try something else. I'm glad to see that we've turned the corner in terms of having an increase of 2% last year, but we're still not even at pre-pandemic levels and have essentially been flat for a decade. So my kind of City Council Chambers L' Next question is, and perhaps to new associate assistant superintendent. City Council Chambers L' deputy superintendent sorry I don't want to give you a demotion. City Council Chambers L' Davis and. You know, for the last 2 years, I think we've improved our progress monitoring practices. I think this presentation is, you know, drastically improved from some of the first ones that I saw on the board. But the fundamental strategies that we're discussing are the same in terms of learning walks, the new curriculum. working on implementation. Certainly that implementation is a core, I think, struggle for us. But are there new strategies that we should expect to see? Because it seems like the strategy we've been relying on for the last couple of years are not seeing the improvements at the scale that we've hoped to see.

I mean, the short answer, I think, is going to be yes. I think if we just sit with, I mean, we have to get good at what we talked about because this is how you develop adults and we have to get good at that. At the same point, we're gonna have to spend time to think what else is out there and in my opinion, have more initiatives. not a plethora of more where we inundate people, but we're gonna have to be a bit more strategic and probably add something on. I'll use President Kim's quick thought of principle of professional development, right? you could go down that path in a really big way around literacy because it's been my experience in both districts i've been in that principles literacy develop understanding is not at a very high level right they can read the curriculum and they can understand how a curriculum itself can be implemented but do they really understand the difference between fluency and vocabulary and close reading and how all that fits together. So like we could go down that path. I'm using that as an example because I will take the newbie privilege and say after seven weeks, I don't know what those initiatives would be, but I do feel like we have to entertain the idea of what else we can be doing in this space. So that's why I mean the short answer I think is yes. What it's going to be, I think there's a little bit more analysis and what we can pull off as a team and what we think is right based on our schools. And it might be different from school to school, quite frankly.

And to that end I was heartened to see the lab schools but i'd love to hear more about the lab school strategy and, specifically, what is the strategy. behind the selection of those schools, because we did talk about the fact that our African American students are 30% are concentrated across six schools, there are six lab schools is that meant to correlate or is there another strategy for selecting which six schools are going to be lab schools.

I could talk a bit about that. So the first piece I'll talk about is sort of the identification of schools, and then the second piece I can talk about is supports and services. So the first piece is that in terms of identification of schools, we did collectively across C&I, LEAD, and RPA work to identify schools that had high populations of focal students, both in this case in relationship to Interim Goal 1.1 and 1.3. So the schools that you'll see have higher populations of African-American and Pacific Islander students as well as multilingual learners. So that is intentional. I would say the other piece that we do take into consideration are identifying schools where this would be not in competition with other initiatives. So we do not want a situation where there's so many cooks in the kitchen And we do have schools that are identified across multiple initiatives. So we want to make sure that we're not increasing the operational burden on a site leadership team. So there is not just a question of focal students, but also some not to reuse enabling conditions that we're also looking to make sure it's the right fit based on whatever other programs are running at the school. In terms of the supports, the idea is really to take and reuse the same language, but provide intensified supports and services in alignment with the enabling conditions that we named. So this is additional external supports from TNTP to work with the instructional leadership team. So the principal, if there isn't a system principal, the instructional coach to support things like grade level collaboration, learning walk structures, and to build the professional capacity of the staff at that site. So, for example, to Deputy Superintendent Davis's point, to have TNTP staff who can conduct learning walks with the instructional leadership team to make sure that team is developing professionally in their calibration on high quality practices and how to respond to them. by shifting the professional development calendar or shifting the focus of one-to-one coaching. So the idea is to be like the wind in the sails and then in addition to watch how those school sites shift student outcomes so that we can codify some of those best practices and integrate them into our system-wide structures.

Also with the elementary ones that we have chosen, one, actually, as I'm looking at them, none of them are brand new principles. So to the earlier question, we have some theories around what kind of enabling conditions are going to make things improve. But if you think about like the principal or the principal AP team is like a circle and then the next kind of layer around being like the instructional coach and the next layer being the ILT and then the next layer being the staff with the professional development. If all of that is not really coordinated, then there's sort of like a spaghetti at the wall. And so if TNTP is both supporting this infrastructure but studying it and we see something, we can be like, oh, wait, that's something we want to adopt. Or here's where we're saying, you know, one school looks like, you know, this school here that has a high percentage of English learners and an immersion program is different than this school that is largely African-American and gen ed. And we're noticing a difference. What are we noticing and how can we look at that? And like, do we want to apply the same strategy in these two typologies of schools or do we need to do something different? So I think that like the fact that we only have six elementary schools and when we get to goal two, we can talk about the middle schools. I think that will help us learn better about what we're saying we want to adopt, abandon or or adapt.

I appreciate that and I just to the point of there being many initiatives and you know the question of throwing spaghetti at the wall for future progress monitoring I personally would really appreciate seeing student results and growth comparative growth broken down by initiative like these schools have this initiative and they saw this amount of growth or these schools had this initiative and they didn't see growth so that we can evaluate our strategies better and reinvest in the ones that are working the most.

Student delegates, it's nine o'clock. So, well, technically it's past nine. So sorry, but thank you so much for being here tonight. And please come with your questions at any time. Thanks.

Have a great second week of school.

Time flies when you're having fun, right? Yeah. Um, any commissioner go for it.

Good evening everyone and, uh, I just, there's a. So much interesting stuff and discussion going on tonight. I wanted to just make a couple of comments and then I have some questions as well. Um, 1st, I wanted to say, I really appreciated seeing superintendent Sue present starting by presenting results today. I think that's the 1st time that at any rate, I very much appreciated that shift. and really appreciated hearing lots of folks here using our student outcomes focused governance sort of framework and terminology. and the dashboard, like the fact that we have this dashboard now. So those are fantastic. Also, very much welcome, John Davis. It's fantastic to have you here with us and to be hearing your thoughts on these issues as well. So I'm very appreciative of how much folks have been calling out the importance of changing adult practices tonight in order to see changes in student outcomes. So I have questions around a few different topics. I'll start with the first one and then continue on. But my first question relates to something that I can't remember who it was who mentioned it earlier, but someone had referenced that. maybe commissioner healing maybe somebody else that we are still uh behind where we were uh in fact when we started in 2022 since we're at 49 percentage uh 49 percent proficient now in goal one and we were at 52 in 2022 and also at 52 prior to the pandemic So I'm glad to see that we're seeing a two percentage point increase. But I guess I want to ask, generally speaking, why do we think that we're still below where we started before? And since we've sort of seen like 5252 4947 49, In some sense, is that meaningful in a statistically significant sense? Or is it more just like we're kind of seeing a flat line rather than being able to say that we're turning the corner? How meaningful is that? I guess I want to ask from an analysis perspective.

Okay, I'll start. Well, I think that Just given the year that our students and our faculty, our staff have gone through last year, the fact that we were able to see the 2% growth is quite significant. I do feel that with our budget crisis, the way it was, and then asking staff to learn a new curriculum and implementing that curriculum under a lot of shifting sand. is significant. And so for me, I see this as the potential for our students and our staff to even continue. So I'm taking the 2% growth as an indicator that we are able, if we have that level of stability, and as our staff develop confidence in the curriculum, and as we're building out the coordination here, we're going to be able to see and continue to see the growth. And I think that in order for us to be able to see that growth, we need to be able to really double down on all the different strategic moves that we've been talking about today, and perhaps even more as we dive into the data and see what it's yielding us. um but but i i do personally think that we are moving in the right direction i do believe that it is significant um but i would love for our data team to to uh provide some some comments into this um but again with all of the different shifts that we've made um for us to see us no longer dropping um and that we're we're ticking up um is in my mind significant

I will just quickly add that yes, the difference between the spring 2025, 3rd grade result and the spring 2026 3rd grade results are, in fact, statistically significantly different. Um. it is an increase it's a small relatively small increase uh it is not significant at the most restrictive level that we can think about but still it is something that we wouldn't have observed just by as a fluke uh and i should also point out that um we talk about two percentage point changes here and there in different contexts the size of the group matters right so when we talk about the third grade as a whole two percentage point Two percentage point change in that large group means something different from same amount of change in a smaller group, which might have actually resulted from as a as a chance outcome.

That actually, if folks want to continue, your point actually leads into something I also wanted to ask about. On some of the groups there were such small numbers that I wondered whether the information we had could actually be meaningful. I had asked about the numbers. And so, for instance, on Pacific Islander students, we learned that it's really, really tiny, like five out of 10 or five out of 11, or there are 17 students in a particular group. With that level, things that might otherwise look like an increase. I'm not sure how much we can take from that with such a small group. So if you could comment further on that, that would be really helpful to know what can we draw from that? And if we can't draw much from the small numbers, is there some other way to assess?

You're absolutely correct. When the numbers are that small, it's definitely not at all possible to establish any statistical significance on the changes that are happening. And the same approach that we generally recommend to sites when the numbers are small is to Really approach it from a case management perspective, right? So we're really talking about, uh, students on an individual level, right? Supporting each individual students to to grow, um, as opposed to taking like, oh, let's have a five or ten percentage point increase here. Um, so in the response, I think in the staff response, we pointed out that, uh, what we really care about is kind of the raw number of students, right? We want to keep supporting the small group of students to make progress as the new courts keep coming through. Right? We're obviously not talking about the same group of students, the different cohorts as they're going through the grades. And we want to make sure that we have systems and structures in place to continuously provide, um, strong supports to these students as the new crop comes in every year.

I just want to check if anyone wants to add on either of those. Otherwise, I'll move on to my other questions. Okay. I wanted to check on, kind of ask about two other things. The first is opportunities to practice, which I believe Ms. Steiner had. That was among, I think, the examples that you had cited, and that's something we've seen in past reports. fairly quite low numbers for in general between about zero and roughly a third in past reports involving opportunities to practice. So I'm wondering what our strategies are this year, like how we will be able to encourage people to do more of that. And my second question, my other specific question, it relates to instructional minutes. I've raised this periodically over the last year and a half or a little more than that. I'm not quite sure how to phrase this because we're not looking at instructional minutes specifically but uh the amount of time people have in a class would would seem to be clearly relevant um and uh are we thinking about that and what we can do to move towards more minutes in the subjects we consider most important like in terms of our our calls our goals one and two around literacy and math what are we doing to in that regard thank you

I just want to know if you were listening to our conversation before we got here.

Absolutely not.

Because we had a really robust conversation about that. You've heard me raise instructional minutes before, so I promised you I was not listening. I'm going to let Assistant Superintendent Krugman start, but we literally had this conversation upstairs before the board meeting.

So I'll start by addressing the question related to opportunities to practice. And I want to start by just sort of calling out some of the very specific indicators that we have in relationship to this. So, for example, I'll start with pieces related to foundational skills. In Core Action 2, for foundational skills, which is around teacher instructional practice. 2C asks that the lesson includes time for direct teacher instruction and student practice of targeted skill. In Core Action 3, which is around student ownership and foundational skills. 3B, students practice target skills in the context of decodable text. We also have 3C students engaged in multiple opportunities to work out of context. So one of the things that I'll just name that's inherent in the redesign of the core actions and the indicators associated with them is that they are intentionally targeting the work that is not just the rigor of the standards, but also the practices that we want to see in the classroom in order to engage students in the rigor of those standards. The previous iteration of the core rubric focused on student identifiers. And so this is a pretty significant shift that we're moving into the instructional core of the content, the teacher and the student. So by having these indicators that focus on opportunities for practice, the ones that I gave are specific to foundational skills, but they also exist within language arts, math, designated ELD. but by focusing on these indicators we are focusing the time the attention and the professional learning of teachers coaches and administrators on opportunities for practice so for example we might see in a learning walk administrators are looking for example on this specific this is my personal point of focus students practicing target skills in the context of decodable text we're focusing their attention on that they're entering that into a learning walk dashboard where they can see which practices are showing up with increased frequency we want to shout out and affirm staff in these celebrate this work and which need additional growth or focus so if they're not seeing for example that student practice with decodable text Ideally, we would then see, number one, that practice show up as a focus of one-to-one coaching. We're in the coaching cycle. It's an identified focal area. The coach is working with the teacher on lesson planning to emphasize practice with decodable text, observing for that in the focus cycle, giving them feedback on it. We would want to see a shift in how GLCs or grade-level collaboration spends its time. So we might see practice with decodable text become a focus of lesson planning or module planning as a GLC. So the idea behind these indicators is not just to lift up them as important for students to develop proficiency, but also to use them as a conduit to focus time and attention of educators.

That seems that's great.

Thank you. I'll just add to the, um, the minutes conversation that we were having this conversation upstairs right before and the conversation around, um, how much time is spent on language arts versus on other subjects. And there is a guidance document. There's a recommendation document and, you know, as a newly. formed member of the Pre K, 5 team, um, you know, we've been talking about as a Pre K, 8 group, right? Who the folks that do the K, 8 and the Pre K, 5. How do we collect instructional schedules and how do we examine those instructional schedules? And how do we use the learning walks both as a way to say, oh, if I'm looking at this instructional schedule, and I think I'm going in to see X, am I going in to see X? And if not, why not? And, like, how do I know how much time people are spending? And, like, what are the obstacles for spending the quantity of time that that people need to get to the kinds of practice they have. So I think that as John and I work together with the executive directors to say, what are the common practices that executive directors do with principals? What we're going to find is that we can better understand where minutes are correlated. Are the schools where we're seeing more practice in particular core actions do they actually have more time in language arts if so let's look at that and so I think that um well I can't yet say that because I'm only a month into like working with the elementary schools I look forward to having that conversation with our team and I know that there's really robust interest in examining that and like what what are the prevent what are the obstacles that get in the way of having schedules that really serve students to be able to robustly practice thank you

Can I ask a specific follow-up question here? I'm sorry. I know I've gone way over with everything. But digging into the decodable text as an example, right? So if we're going to measure folks on decodable text, this time last year we talked about the fact that not all classrooms have decodable text. So is it fair to assume that all classrooms do have the curriculum-aligned decodable text? Is that baseline sufficient right now?

That was my wrath coming in and saying, if it's not a strategic question, if we can follow up with an email, that would be really helpful.

So the reason I ask is because then the question is like, is there a path to ensure that the resource is aligned so that what we're actually measuring is relevant? Or are we going to have a bunch of data points that say NA because we don't actually have the materials necessary to measure this?

that sounds like a great question that staff can follow up with afterwards if that's okay okay thank you we're gonna I would encourage Commissioners who have additional questions that are strategic in nature or not to follow up with the superintendent so she can direct those questions to the appropriate staff folks so we can move on to our next item on our agenda to hopefully be done by 10 o'clock are we okay with that thank you wonderful look at that amazing Um, staff, thank you so much for your, um, hard work that went into this report. Uh, really excited for us to continue the conversation with the next, um, well, are you all staying here for the next one?

Are you staying for the next one? No, it's, it's James.

Oh, okay.

Thank you all so much. Appreciate you. Yes. James, how dare they say just James? It is.

Well, I do say James.

Thank you very much, team. We will move on. And thank you for your understanding, everyone. We will move. are we all good okay great um moving on to item two workshop on student outcomes interim guardrail 4.1 progress monitoring report and i'll pass it to james

Uh, good evening commissioners. My name is Dr. James. Harold. I'm the new associate superintendent of human resources for the district. I'm joined tonight sitting behind me by my senior leadership team. Jen, moon, Douglas and Stacy Affleck as well as 1 of our phenomenal analysts who stayed all the way. So, Lydia allow is also here and we're also joined virtually by many HR folks tonight. So I represent a very large team that's really committed to making sure our schools are fully staffed. And I'm excited to tell you about the forward progress that we have started. Um, so if you could advance the next slide, uh, you can see what our guard rail was for this 1st year. So, uh, our, the district's intent, um, was to make sure that our, our general education classrooms were at 95% staffed on the 1st day of school in August 2026, which would have represented an increase from the August 2025 timeline, um, continuing to build on the success that the district has shown. Uh, we're working to, uh, increase that percentage. for next year. So making sure that our guardrail starts at 97% on the first day of school for August 2027. So, the next slide shows the historical data of how far the district has come, uh, on the 1st, day of school, uh, you'll see that we were at 96.7% staff. Um. I want to be clear that this is tremendous growth from where the district was, especially in the 2022 23 school year. Uh, and internally what I have understood is that there has been a phenomenal improvements in position control, um, and, uh, onboarding, uh, in shifting to new. But I also want to be clear headed that as we heard from parents today that any vacancy does impact our classrooms and we very much view the guardrail as the floor that we have to meet rather than kind of an aspirational goal to do. So, meeting the guardrail today doesn't mean that the work is finished. It just means that we have evidence to show that we're moving in the right direction as a whole district. Um, the next 2 slides, uh, are important to understand the focus on credentials. Um, so the district, uh, is appropriately using the emergency waiver issue. So, tonight, the district voted on, um, provisional intern permits. Uh, and we will continue to use what were traditionally called emergency waivers. So these are for folks who aren't yet fully credentialed, um, through the California commission. California Teacher Commission of credentialing, and we're down to about 86, representing a high of 203. Because of shortage needs in transitional kindergarten, in special education, there'll always be a leverage of some type of emergency waiver to make sure that we can have people in the classroom as they're finishing their credential. But this shows that more of our teachers are coming into the classroom with the appropriate certification. The next slide talks to the alignment between the individual teacher's credential and what they're actually teaching. So every year we're audited through CALSTAS. CALSTAS stands for the California Statewide Assignment Accountability System. Uh, and it audits all of our records and master schedules to make sure that the teacher who is teaching the class has the appropriate credential to do. So, um, so, uh, at a kind of core function, this means that your math teacher math classroom is being taught by a math teacher. Uh, we have, um, appropriately aligned our work and we have a 50% reduction in the exceptions or the audit findings from year over year. which shows that our HR team and our principals are appropriately building out their master schedule and assigning teachers to teach the appropriate content. I think the most exciting thing that I would highlight for you all today is that an SFUSD TK to 12th grade student this year is more likely to start with an appropriately credentialed teacher from the first day of school than any time since COVID. Yeah, yeah, there was that wasn't a plot line. So there has been really tremendous growth. We know that there's a lot more to do, but we're really excited to see all of that forward work. The other note that we have had, uh, just a very turnaround story on has been our sub coverage. So, the 1st, day of school, we were at 98%. Um, this represented 3 jobs that were not filled. Um, and since then, we have had multiple days of 100% coverage for a TK through 12 students. So, ensuring that there's a caring adult who is helping to lead those classrooms. Um, most of our sub population are also certified teachers. So making sure that they're supporting that classroom, uh, and leaving that work. Uh, so, as I mentioned, I'm relatively new to my role and so all of that success has really been built on the foundation of previous leadership and the team that has, um, uh, been building this for for quite a long time. Since I started in July 1st, we have built out a department theory of action that has really been guiding the leadership team's work. And we're working to slowly transition this to the whole department. It is a harder time for human resources to do kind of the pullback step aside work in the summer. But the HR leadership team has really dove in. And now that school has started, uh, we will be introducing all of these topics to our frontline staff. Um. So, in an ideal context, in a few months, whenever you talk to, uh, anyone in HR from a clerk to an analyst to an associate superintendent, um, we'll be using shared language around key performance indicators. Uh, really cognizant of our goals and guardrails and understanding how we're changing our internal operation. So that way we can better partner with principals and schools. Um, the 3 big notes that I would flag for us is that we really want to focus on earlier hiring and stronger workforce planning. This is. not glamorous um but the uh we made tremendous growth in the past few weeks for hiring and onboarding and that growth should have happened in June or even better in April um so we need to really be mindful that we need to hire earliest the teachers that we're hiring in April or May are often the strongest teachers they have the the strongest drive for student outcomes Uh, coming in fully credentialed, and they're more likely to stay. Um, so really being intentional about how we're hiring and thinking through that work. Um, the other part is thinking through key performance indicators. Um, staffing is the most visible work as it's provided in a guard rail to you all. Um, but we have multiple teams that are supporting schools and so making sure that through all of them. that we are improving our services and thinking more deeply about how we're supporting schools and our employees. And then finally, just really communicating our employee value proposition. So making sure that we're telling people how great SFUSD is. So, how we've started this, um, for improved communication, I have appreciated partnering with lead, uh, and deputy superintendent Davis, um, really closely and kind of thinking through how we can better support our principles, um, through either professional development through, uh, more targeted intervention, especially with the new executive directors. Um, we have a weekly newsletter, uh, we have already started professional development and we're looking at our internal practices to see, um, what makes sense. Uh, I have worked in HR and a number of school districts, uh, and so. And I'm humble enough to know that I don't know or understand things. So it can ask a lot of questions and help us to improve our process. So that way the end user is experiencing something as seamless as possible. Um, we're also being mindful that we can't solve this alone. Uh, so we'll be looking at new partnerships, um, and what that work looks like, uh, every year special education runs a shortage. And so we need to be much more intentional about how we can onboard and bring new special education teachers into the classroom. Uh, as soon as possible, the practice that we're currently doing for this year is to onboard J. 1 teachers. These are visiting international teachers who have at least, uh, 2 years of experience in their home country, and will be coming to us through a cultural exchange be sponsored by the Department of state, uh, and making sure that they're strong. We're investigating other partnerships, uh, so that we can consider what works. Um, and then we're also aggressively marketing. So, I don't know if any of you actually saw this ad, um, but this is a meta ad that we started to run on Instagram. Uh, so we're really trying to tell people to consider. The work that I always say is that any job that you would want in a big city is a role that you can have at SFUSD. And so it's so crucial that we start to market ourselves as an employer of choice within the region. Um, and then finally, our ultimate goal is to make sure that we have, um, uh, fewer 1st, day of school vacancies. Uh, and while teachers are the world role that is most important, um, we'll also be doing a lot more intentional work with our para educators, uh, with clerks, making sure that some of the high leverage vacancies, um, are being filled, uh, appropriately. All of our labor partners have mentioned the importance of clerks, and we know the importance of paraeducators in fulfilling all of our promises. And so just being very mindful of how to best support that group. And with that, I welcome any questions.

Thank you. have four oh okay so we have several folks i'm just i'll kick this off i don't want to do that um oh my gosh my time is done um um yeah wow taste my own medicine wow that's too bad well maybe when you're president one day you can make a decision there yeah yeah yeah Yeah, chairing an ad hoc just isn't the same, I will say. Okay, so I have four questions. Thank you for waiting to start that clock. And I'm trying to use specific examples to try to create a more strategic kind of question that I'm trying to ask about. One is around credentialing. I appreciate seeing the data around. I mean, it's really great that we're tracking whether or not people who are credentialed in their field are actually teaching that credentialed subject area, which is great. My concern is actually more around what we are doing to support folks to gain a credential or to access that credential. And I'm partly basing this off my own experience of the, I think the conundrum that I shared with you earlier of oftentimes folks need an offer letter to show that they are about to enter a position that requires a credential, but the credentialing system needs the offer letter, but we can't give the offer letter unless we have a good, so It is a thing that I am going to be so annoying about because it is the thing that I think. Holds us back for some reason, and there's this always like, tug and pull and fight between the district and credentialing systems. So do we have a, what's your take on that? And how do. How many is that impacting at the scale that. I'm concerned it's impacting our educators app.

so um are you you for your example you were specifically talking about an admin credential and not a teacher yeah exactly so um uh what i can say now is that with our principal pipeline um we are leveraging several interim principal assignments but all of our campuses have principals um and we do leverage uh different pathways for folks so we are able to extend depending on what the role looks like And what we index because we want to reduce and move away from the use of emergency credential. We do use the ctc's recommended, um. CREDENTIAL GUIDANCE WHERE WE FIRST LOOK AT PEOPLE WHO ALREADY HAVE THEIR CREDENTIAL AND THEN FROM THERE WORK DOWN THE POOL FOR PEOPLE WHO WOULD QUALIFY AND BE ELIGIBLE. SO WE DO SEND OUT FOR FOLKS. THERE ARE OUT OF STATE INDIVIDUALS WHO ARE APPLYING FOR THEIR CREDENTIAL. THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO THE BOARD HAS ALREADY APPROVED FOR PIP'S AND SHORT-TERM STAFFING PERMITS. BUT IN GENERAL, WE TEND TO INDEX ON THE INDIVIDUALS WHO ALREADY HAVE who have that credential.

That's fair. That makes total sense. I think my the other kind of beyond admin We have this whole journey last year with TK teachers and their challenges with with TK authorizations. And so, um, you know, I'll just, because of time, we'll just leave it at at. I think there's something about credentialing that's a system. I wonder what we need to do to adjust, make more flexible, or what have you to work with the state, or if we need to advocate in some way. Um. I don't want to leave our TK folks behind because I know that that was a big point of conversation last year.

Yes, it remains a big point. Would love advocacy towards Sacramento around the guidelines for TK. Right now, internally, if you have been a 20-year multiple subject kindergarten teacher but didn't take the appropriate amount of early childhood classes, it would count as a misassignment. It would show up as one of these errors. Um, for that work, so, uh, we are leveraging emergency permits for folks as they're working to clear their credential. We have been very fortunate that there has been an increase in applications of, uh, early childhood, um, educators who have studied or currently working at charters and transitioning over. Um, so we have. this has been fortunate, but especially as we continue to emerge, it's something that we are intentionally building pipelines for now. So that way, next year, we're minimizing any opportunity about there being vacancies.

The other thing now is I really appreciate you articulating the desire to build out KPIs for certain kind of things, including the hiring process. Do you know when we can get those KPIs or when you'll have them formed?

Yes. So my team, this is very in the weeds and Lydia doesn't know this. But so, uh, 831, all the department goals are coming, uh, 9, 2, we're training all of the staff on 923. They're sending small goals. So, by December, all of my team will have done their internal progress monitoring for the 1st time. Um, so we'd be happy to share out our improvement journey there. The thing I would note, um, is that we are starting this journey, uh, and that data, uh, are in different stages of completeness, uh, as well as some of the processes. So, uh, it will not be perfect. Um, but, you know, we shouldn't let. Good be the enemy of great, um, and we can happily share things, um, as the board requests around, uh, what we're seeing and then how we're working to optimize that.

I really appreciate that and and I think those to me, um. 1 from a, I have a lot of questions, but I think the bigger 1 is, um. Like how we are are thinking critically about our hiring process and the kind of metrics that we set our goals and targets that we set around the speed by which folks come into the district. The ability for this for our own staff to be able to validate credentials and all that work. I know some of it's a little out of our control, but they would be really interesting to see how that improves year over year for us. If we can set consistent goals around each of those. I know that there's a dashboard getting created. I know that information's coming around staffing. I know that we've started the year quite high. And there is a question that I have around, I know that there's a small percentage of classrooms that don't have a teacher, but those small classrooms oftentimes then have the highest negative impact then in terms of their ability to start strong at the beginning of the year. And so I I hope that some of the Kpis are around addressing, or maybe it's not even the Kpi issue, but I hope that there is i'm curious what the plan is to support the smaller percentage of classes that we know are vacant. And is there a standardized process for that? What what does that look like to make sure that those classrooms that we we know need a teacher have some support and plan around that.

Yeah. So we're so and I would say that with some degree of certainty, you can look year over year at schools that are struggling and they remain struggling. And so how I approach the work is there should be Everyone should kind of have some degree of early hiring, but not all schools should have the same amount of support from my team. Um, I think 1 of the most tangible examples is that, uh, like, in the spring will likely to start advertise earlier for individual schools and make sure that they're being seen, uh, as visible, make sure that there are earlier job fairs, make sure that there's. uh more intentional hiring for folks around that um the stronger that we can build out our our workforce planning and it it does take time for the district to build the muscle and for both um like our staffing leads and all the other kind of interconnected opponents uh components to to build the muscle but once you're there you can internalize like how approximately how many at what sites I think the best example of that is actually, um, a principal who, uh, is not filling a vacancy because the enrollment isn't there. And so, uh, they're already flagging like, well, actually, this unit isn't going to be enough. So I'm not going to fill it. Uh, it has been working with us. That's a, that's actually a really strong principle who knows, um, has internalized enough of the process to know what that work looks like. Um, and I think we'll continue to build that over time.

Awesome. Yeah. And I think the trend of that is what I'm most curious about. Like, if there are schools that we know year over year, as you just named, have a consistent staffing level of vacancies. It would be interesting to see what is contributing to that. I mean, there's a ton think of both research and experience that we know contribute to that, but. I think my question would be, what are we doing about those schools that we know and have data around year over year are experiencing vacancies in that way?

Just really quickly, I know this is something that both John and James have started talking about because it is the connection between what's happening in schools and building the school culture and so that we can then create the support for our staff so that they can feel like they are also going to be successful in the school setting. And so it is the partnership between LEAD and schools and HR. So we are trying to build that type of culture as well so that families, so that staff who join us actually stay because it's one thing to recruit, it's another thing to retain. And I think that's going to be something that I know both have been working on or have started the conversation.

Thanks so much for this update and it's really great to see, like, all indicators moving in the right direction and also to see a theory of action built out around our HR practices. And the 1 question I wanted to. Issue that I wanted to uplift is. Common feedback that I get is that. Our HR onboarding and hiring process takes such a long time that we lose top applicants and that people who are motivated to and want to and have applied and even been offered positions in SFUSD end up leaving us for competitor districts because they actually just are uncertain whether they will be onboarded in time for school to start and other districts are able to interview and onboard them while they're waiting to basically be cleared to start at SFUSD. And so around the theory of action, I see standardized and simplified HR processes, So they're predictable and clear and helping employees experience timely and supportive HR services. Are any of those specifically focused around just speed of turnaround? And is there any thought as to one of the KPIs being, you know, lowering the number of days between offer and confirmation of onboarding, for example?

Yeah, so the So whenever we think about it, it depends a bit on the position. So for your classified civil service, your more executive leadership, the metric that you tend to use in the industry is time to post to time to onboard and thinking through what that is. So within 45 to 60 days, ideally, once the post is up, the person is starting within that time period. The answer right now for how long we're taking is that I don't know. And so we need to build out both a consistent understanding of what each of those metrics are. And then once we do that, identify the root causes within it. A few that we know to be true are the TB tests, the fingerprinting, the I-9 appointment, Uh, and these are also the same processes that every large urban or every district in California has to do. Um, and so we can work to, to streamline a number of those, uh, and improve our communication along the way. Um. i i did just start uh but whenever i was in san antonio in my last district um we had an onboarding process with similar challenges uh whenever we looked at the data it was taking 18 to 24 days to onboard and we were able to shrink it down to five um but it takes a lot of process mapping it takes like very boring tech i mean No, it's boring like it's boring process mapping and looking at stuff and saying, like, okay, maybe this is an automatic thing. Like, how do we automate our work? How do we think through this? So that way it's not reliant on 1 person, but the whole system is. automatically orienting that. Red Rover starts that for a part of us, where if you started the application in Red Rover but didn't finish, you'll get a reminder to actually do it. And I would say as we move from Red Rover into Frontline, which is our ERP, how do we automate that so that way there's consistent processes throughout? And it's not reliant on one person. And we know whenever there are problems so that we can call folks and then troubleshoot to get the right answers. So the short answer is I don't know how long it takes currently, but that absolutely is something that we're planning to improve or curious to learn more about.

Thank you. I think this board is very interested in boring things like making sure that payroll deductions are accurate and lowering onboarding times and things like that. So it's great to hear about that. Yes, very frequent issues that we have. um another question i have it was great to hear about workforce planning earlier um in the past we've had a lot of issues with principals requesting positions and maybe they're denied in the initial staffing model and then their appeals and their they have identified applicants that they're unable to move forward with because They're waiting to find out whether that position is going to be approved. Is there a role for HR in providing site leaders with clarity earlier so that they can move forward with their preferred candidates, entertain them?

What I think is great is that we're moving towards an earlier budget cycle and 1 of the 1st things that deputy superintendent has flagged was the appeals process for staffing. So, just making sure that it was clear and transparent and advanced. Um, uh, and I will say, as someone coming in externally, who has an experience budgeting with an yet, um, having it done in January does set you up really opportunity, um, to allow for the internal rollovers that are like the technical things that have to happen. Um, but then building out what that looks like. Um, so we haven't yet defined. Any of that yet, uh, but I think that we're actively kind of considering, um, what that is and know that it's a challenge for the district.

Thank you and then the other thing I want to say, which is. Admittedly more of a comment than a question, but, um, just a plug for the, um, governance calendar to make sure that, um, any. Issues that will affect staffing planning, such as. changing middle school math or other curriculum changes that might change staffing needs are brought to the board sufficiently in advance so that we can address those issues to allow you ample time and leeway to plan so that we're not trying to make midstream changes after budget decisions have been made or staffing decisions have been made. We'd love to move toward further advanced planning and fewer emergencies on that end as well.

Thank you very much. This is excellent data. It's so exciting to see the staffing. And I appreciate how you framed it as gen ed. But I also want to recognize with it when what we're celebrating is our gen ed staffing levels, and we're not talking about spend staffing levels, and we're not talking about bilingual staffing levels. We have a lot of families out there who are saying, and what about us? Right. And by the math that I have, we have about a 90% staffing rate in special education and that doesn't include that's just classroom teachers that doesn't include our related service special our related service providers it doesn't include um uh our para educators i understand there's about 300 para educator openings so um what are the staffing plans um what are the are we still continuing to try and hire for those positions this year first of all

Yes.

Okay. Thank you. All right. And then secondly, the J1, that's great. That's exciting. I know that that's been work that our current head of special education has been trying to undertake for years. So I'm so glad to see that. And that's a two-year program, correct?

The initial visa is for three years, but you can extend it. It's up to two years currently, although the federal government may change it to one year.

Okay, that's fantastic. Where we've seen a lot of success in staffing in the past is like our pathway programs, our build your own, our Pareta educator pathway, because that also a lot of our urban teacher residency programs, things like that are where we see not only a lot of retention over multiple years, but also a lot of places how we recruit our educators of color. And that's where we see the highest retention as well. Are it does any part of the strategy, especially for these harder to staff positions include building out or revamping those programs at all to to focus on retention.

So, we're, we're currently looking at partners who can better provide those services. Um, we are. Not staffed, uh, to have the, the, the level of wrap around support that's needed for individuals, um, to get, you know, to, and through their preliminary credential. It is very challenging to pass the CSET. It's very challenging to do the level of compliance. And so I think especially if you're a person who is already facing some headwinds, you need someone to be able to kind of like sit and help you through all of those steps. It's my understanding that at one point the district had similar things to that. In our current stage, we don't. So where we can leverage is to think through how we can partner with known providers in the industry around what that work looks like. I had exploratory calls with two of my team and finances working on Friday to begin to think through a vendor who would be cost neutral, but able to provide the kind of tighter support to those individuals. And we've already flagged exactly what you're mentioning. The 3 highest credentials are our bilingual folks, our special education, and then traditional kindergarten as well. Just making sure that we're. Getting people into the door and then once they're there. that we're not losing them through the process um the the challenging part about any of the the the pips or the pips or the short-term staffing permits um is that they're only one year in in nature and if you don't complete everything within that year there's no other escape patch for you there's nothing else that we can do and that's incredibly frustrating especially if you're you're teaching your heart out every day because if you don't pass the test, there's nothing that HR can do. We don't have kind of another option. And so working really closely with vendors who will be able to coach and provide that type of support, I think is something that we're aware of the need and also aware of our limitations on how we can effectively do it.

I appreciate that context. Thank you so much. I think my follow up question and hopefully I will less ask it less aggressively than last time. Um, but is is more about also, like, the resourcing I, I respect that you're working within the resources you have, but I'm wondering strategically, are there resources that you think you need additionally to fully to get us to commensurate special education, bilingual credential, TK staffing levels as we have in gen ed.

So, I think 1 of the shifts that has been made prior to my start, so I joined on July 1st, uh, since we started, we've, uh, my team has hired 9 folks. So we had 9 vacancies for it. Uh, 1 of those vacancies that has already been budgeted is an analyst specifically dedicated to special education. So we are working with the city to get an analyst into that role. That role is a civil service role. So we partner really closely with them to make sure it's happening. I will always want more resources, but that is just because I think we can do more and do better work if we have more folks doing it. And I want to respect our budget and where we are right now and work to see within the current constraints of our staffing and my allocations, like how we can build something better. There are a number of low hanging fruit that we can do better to improve the experience and to hire earlier. Um, I think at a core level, even just our marketing, even just sharing that we're, we're hiring. I know that that seems. Like. But with that little ad that we had, over 2000 people clicked the link. So a lot of people are interested in working for us. A lot of people also don't realize the benefits that roles like our paraeducators have had, especially following the most recent contract negotiations. So just working to tell our story and making sure that people are aware of how strong we are as an employer and how you can

both launch and grow a really strong career here um but I do love resources so feel free to direct you know thank you I appreciate that the last point I'll make is just that our special education we have I think about half of um Yeah, I appreciate you so much, President Kim. Our last, the retention data, you know, our SPED staff and our special education educators, we have about twice the turnover, half the tenure on average in special education. And so this is not a question just for you, Deputy Superintendent, Dr. Harrell. Associate. Associate Superintendent. Okay, Dr. Harrell, how about that? But a big part of it and we've had this conversation over and over again in many spaces, is the workload versus the caseload model right because. PB, Sarah Silver, That when we assign caseloads to our educators. PB, Sarah Silver, So in the strategy that we're talking about as far as retaining our educators, you know and looking at whether or not we're actually looking at the right things i'm wondering if there's any consideration strategically at looking at whether or not. PB, Sarah Silver, caseload impacts retention and if there's something we can do there to help retain our educators.

so we're um we're partnering with the new teacher center i think uh my team behind me hopefully isn't yes they're giving me a thumbs up yes so we're partnering with the new teacher center to answer questions just like that um so data uh should be driving all of our retention strategy, should be driving our recruitment and onboarding. And so right now we don't have the most robust answers for those questions. But I think that those are things that we're working to explore. For retention, I'm always curious who and under what conditions. Who are the individuals who are going to stay? In many districts, especially with special ed, you'll see that there's a group that are lifers. They'll stay for 20-25 years because they love the work so much, but it's that window within the first five years that really determines if someone's going to stay. And that's reliant on, you know, caseload, workload, commute, principal. There's kind of all of these intermediate things. And so working to understand, I think, some of that complexity. And I would say that's another example of working with a partner to help us better understand how we can ask the right questions and get actionable insights around that work.

Thank you.

It's 9.57. Do we have any other questions or comments? Go for it, Commissioner Weisman-Warden.

Thank you. I'm going to be very brief, because 2 of the points were made by my colleague, Commissioner Fisher. So, but I just want to underscore them. One of them being that. You know, the interim guardrail doesn't say maintain that percentage of class general like classrooms. It just says classroom. So I do appreciate you calling out that we're talking about general ed and I think to be honest and transparent not to be to be transparent. It would be worth. Tracking I mean, I'm sure you are, but try showing to the public what, at the start of the year, our general classrooms are in terms of fill rate, but also our spend. Classrooms, so I think that would just want to underscore that. The other thing I want to underscore is the, um. My colleagues. asking about certain pipelines and for positions. Every time we have an advisory committee that comes to us, we hear most of them. We hear, we want educators that look like our students, and there's a dearth of that. And so how do we build a more robust pipeline so that we have folks in the classrooms that look like our students. And so just it is come up. I know that you've said that this is something that will that's important, that matters. And I just want to make sure that that doesn't get lost in the things. And then my final comment is is about I'm thrilled. I'm excited about the J-1 opportunities being an immigration attorney. I'm also wary. And we know that things are Hellscape currently I don't expect that to go away anytime soon and we're seeing these big changes to J one visas, where it's duration of status and just if it is a. I want to call it a bandaid that feels like i'm being demeaning if it is like a temporary. fix i think really being honest with ourselves that it could be very temporary and if someone chooses to go home and visit family during winter break we need to plan that they may not be back in the country january whatever that this so just keeping in mind those issues that um i'm seeing in my day-to-day work play out every day multiple times a day so yes oh my gosh it's 9 59.

And seeing no other questions, thank you so much for your time and your presentation. Uh, very grateful for that. And this meeting is now adjourned at exactly 10 PM. Thank you.