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tv   SFUSD Board Of Education  SFGTV  January 30, 2024 7:00am-10:00am PST

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third, 2024 to order. roll call. mr. steele. thank you. president. commissioner alexander here, commissioner fisher here. commissioner lamb. president. motamedi here. commissioner sanchez. here commissioner. wiseman. ward. here commissioner boggess, here. thank you. and i wanted to add that there is one potential lawsuit that the board will discuss in closed session on january third, 2024. the district received a letter from scott j. rafferty regarding the cvra. i also want to mention that public comment will um, um on both items d and e of the public session of this meeting will take place immediately
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after item e during that time, the public can comment on those two items. uh, our general information on the website gives information about translation services, asl interpretive services, and closed captioning information, as well as accessibility information and virtual meeting information. at this time, before the board goes into closed session, i call for any speakers to the closed session items listed in the agenda. there will be a total of five minutes for speakers, seeing none in person. we have no virtual participants at this time. okay, so at this so it i think 5.02 we will recess report out from closedm closedm, and two mattersmattersmattersmaa litigation. the board, byard, be of sevenof sevenof sevenof seven to the general general general gee matt of anticipatedcipatedcipatr anticipated litigation. theon. boug by a vote ofvote ofvote ofd
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one recusal. commissioner fishei gives direction to then to thenl counselcounselcounselcounselcou, as as as as as as as as as is the norm fornorm fornorm g sessionsse, we will have publicp comment after agendar agendar ad e e e e during that timeat timeat timec can commentcommentcommentco on o items. weems. weems. weems. weee workshopworkshopworkshopworkshos item item item d d d d d d d d d , followed byowed byowed byowedd self-evaluation itemion itemiont this this this this point i invite the board to move to the table and for superintendent wayne to introduce the item. when he is so ready.
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all right. good evening everyone again. um, glad to be here for our progress monitoring workshop on goal two and our progress
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towards our interim goals around, uh, students achieving meeting standards in eighth grade math. we're starting to get into routine. i think of these progress monitoring. um uh, sessions. and so if you go to the next slide, um, you'll see i start off with sharing the goal and the data and interpretation, and then we share the evidence in the plan with the real focus on curriculum and instruction. then this time that we're going to stop for some board discussion. and then we do want to highlight some bright spots and lessons we're learning that will inform our district wide plan, um, around professional learning and direct student support. then we'll have get a chance for discussion there. so we thought it would be helpful to organize this where we could talk our district wide approaches and then hear directly from school sites about that, and then speak, speak with our school site representatives. um, so if we go to the next slide, um, so
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we again, the goal is as the, um, uh, overall goal is that we get to 65, uh, of students meeting standards by october 2027. in math, of eighth grade students, uh, and we are at 39.7% right now based on our star math performance and so we see we have a ways to go to meet the goal and even to make the progress that we need to make to be on track. and i just want to point out two things. as we start this workshop. um, one is want to recognize, uh, in the literacy one where we're off track. we did have a stronger foundation upon which to build, and some strategies and practices ready to accelerate. so like the work we're already doing with our curriculum, adoption work we've done around the literacy foundational skills and, um, you know, and that's
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been our focus for the last several years. and so we're building that up in math, but we don't have, um, haven't done yet as much work in those areas. and so, so, um, so our opportunity to accelerate is going to be a bit later than it's been for, uh, for literacy. the other thing i want to share that we'll make this goal, particularly challenging. we shared this. we noticed this trend when we were doing star data analysis. you see that? um, i'm sorry, the spark data analysis. you see that 55% of our third graders are meeting, uh, standards in math. but by eighth grade, only 39.7% are. and that's different than the trends in literacy, where. in literacy, where it's about half of the students meet standards. in third grade, that number stays the same, which is still not good because we need to have more kids meeting standards. but we're not having
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fewer kids meeting standards as the as they go through the grades. with math, we are and so really need to that's telling us i think we really need to work on the foundational skills in math, but then also thinking how we're setting them up to the to engage in higher level mathematics. and, um, and so that's uh, we're going to see in our audit ways where the, the audit, we're going to share of our curriculum as well as our instructional practice will give us some indication of how we can work in those areas. uh, and then if you go to the next slide , um, again, that shows. so we are significantly off track. and the targets were working towards between now and, and the, um, next administration of the star in in march to then prepare for the end of the year. and so we do have work to do if you go to the next slide. um, and so when we talk about having a foundation in literacy, what was really helpful is we did work with tnp to do an audit of our practices, and we know a lot of what's happening at schools and but the power of the audit is it
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is what it does is, is looking at our practices relative to what our best practices in language arts and math. and then we can start to identify where those gaps are and how to improve what we're doing. and so, um, our curriculum instruction, leadership team, doctor nicole presley and devon krugman had helped facilitate the process for our literacy. so i'm going to turn it over to them, um, to talk about the process we went through for math . thank you. thank you, superintendent wayne. as you just noted, we have been fortunate enough to work with tntp on a comprehensive audit and evolving our curriculum as well as our teaching and learning. with that said, we're going to turn it over to them to give us an overview of their the work that was done and the findings and a focus on the recommendations as.
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so while that's coming up, why don't you introduce who you can introduce who you are? okay. okay. great so good evening everyone. thank you for having us here. i'm jeff sang and this is my colleague krista beebe. we are both from tntp, a national education nonprofit that partners with schools, districts and states across the country to support a wide range of k12 initiatives. this includes things like academic strategy, teacher and leader development and recruitment, staffing and retention work. um, we have supported sfusd in a number of these areas over the past few years. uh, if you could go to the keep going to the green slide. there you go. so in addition to partnering with districts, ttp also engages in research that impacts both our
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own practices and the field in general. a few years ago, we published a research report called the opportunity myth that looked at students access to four key resources required for students to succeed academically . so great, appropriate assignments, strong instruction, deep engagement, and teachers with high expectations. next slide. and what we found was that most students don't have regular access to these resources, but especially students from traditionally marginalized groups, students of color, students from low income backgrounds, ell students and students with ieps. but what we also found was that when students did have access to one or more of these resources, it made a big difference. if you go to the next slide. and for students who started with start of the year substantially below grade level, it made an even bigger difference. so two examples here. you can see, um, these students who started far behind made 7.3 months more
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progress when they had access to grade appropriate assignments, and they made 7.9 months more progress when their teachers had high expectations for them. you'll note that in both cases, access to these two resources far outweighed the impact of student engagement, which runs contrary to what many educators tend to focus on in classrooms. next slide. so when we audit curriculum and instruction in districts, including in san francisco, we are generally assessing the extent to which students have access to these four resources. and to do this in sfusd, we did two things. we reviewed the district's k eight math curriculum materials, and we assessed instruction in k-8 math classrooms. christa is going to talk more in depth about the specific elements of the audit. when she talks about the findings, but just a few words about our process in the curriculum audit. so the part that we're looking at, curriculum materials, we reviewed selected samples of the curriculum from first, fifth and seventh grades. and we evaluated these materials using a rubric that combined elements from two
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nationally recognized review tools. and then for the instructional practices audit, we observed instruction in 90 k-8 math classrooms using a tool based on achieve the course instructional practice guide. we reviewed assignments. we reviewed about 200 assignments, and we interviewed and surveyed teachers, leaders, and families across those schools to get their perspective. so before i turn it over to krista to see if there's any questions about process, okay. all right. next slide, please. all right. so we're going to start by looking at the first of the two audits which is the math curriculum audit that focused exclusively on sfusd math materials. next slide please. so when evaluating curriculum we focus our attention in these five areas. the first three areas have to do more with math content. whereas the last two are about supports for students and teachers. we found when we reviewed the elementary materials that the large majority of the year was
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spent on the major work of the grade, or the most crucial concepts in math thematics. and we also found that that the materials provided in appropriate balance between a focus on understanding math concepts, its building efficiency with those concepts, and applying their knowledge to problem solving situations. however when we looked at seventh grade, our team found that the materials did not spend the large majority of the year on the major work or most critical concepts. and we also found that in the units that we reviewed, students did not have adequate process practice with number types such as fractions and multi-step word problems that are called for by the standards. the third indicator that we looked at here was the standards for mathematical practices. these are eight practices that span across k through 12. they are not content math content specific to certain concepts, or more broad about how kids engage with mathematics. so for example, one of the standards is a practices
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is around making sure that students have the opportunity to make sense of and persevere in solving problems. so when we looked at this, we noticed that the materials, um, do give students opportunities to practice some of these standards . however, there is not explicit guidance or support for teachers at the daily lesson level on how to effectively implement and monitor progress on these math practice standards. the fourth thing we looked at was accessibility for students, and here we're considering, um, what is in place in the curriculum that will help all students access grade level content? uh, we noticed that there were a strength of the curricula. um, was an emphasis on mindset that all student contributions were of value. however there was insufficient guidance in major areas around scaffolding, learning for multilingual learners and students with thinking and learning differences, which can limit students access to grade level content. the last aspect we
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evaluated was the overall usability for teachers. our team found that while there are some guidance for teachers in things like routines and structures for math classrooms, there was not sufficient support in important areas such as interpreting and using assessment data, and there was insufficient opportunities for teachers to build their own mathematical understanding around the content that they're teaching. when considering the age of ucsd's current math materials, these results are actually better in some areas than other materials that were developed during that same time period. with the rise of third party curriculum. evaluate such as ed reports, curriculum companies have been pushed to create stronger materials that align to standards and support teachers in meeting students needs. that resulting in a larger selection of high quality materials. today so that's i would going to pause here on the curriculum audit results. are there any questions before we move into the instructional audit. we're just going to do the perfect five more minutes. got it. yep yep. all right. so
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as jeff shared we when we do the instructional practices audit we use a representative sample of 15 schools across the district to consider students access to the four key resources outlined in the opportunity myth. next slide please. we found that currently students have access to some. but not all of these four resources. as we asked teachers at the 15 schools to submit assignments that they will use in their classroom, as well as examples of student work. and our team analyzed the work that was submitted and found that 68% were grade appropriate rate to determine access to strong instruction. our team went in and observed 93 lessons. math lessons across 15 schools and evaluated them in four areas culture of learning content, high quality instructional strategies, and student ownership. overall, 28% of lessons observed offers students strong instruction. we found scores were highest in
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culture and content, and were much lower in instructional strategies and student ownership . when we looked at deep engagement, we used analyze student surveys. we received 771 student surveys across 38 classrooms about their daily classroom experience. um students were asked about questions about their engagement level, of the content of the lesson, if they believe the lesson was worthwhile and if they felt a sense of belonging. overall, 39% of students were deeply engaged in the content of the lesson. um, 41% found the lesson to be worthwhile, and 51% felt a sense of belonging. we did notice that classrooms with higher proportions of english language learners and students of color tended to have significantly lower sense of belonging than classes with lower proportions of those same student groups. and finally, high expectations is measured by analyzing teacher surveys. we receive surveys from 76 teachers representing 76 classroom teams, teachers who had high expectations were those who
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believed that their students could be successful against rigorous grade level standards, while 74% of classes had teachers who supported those rigorous standards, only 47% of classes had teachers who believed their students could be successful on those standards. and when we look at these results overall, um, the overall range for each of these four resources falls in the low average range for what we would typically see in districts that we work with. uh, next slide please. we did, however, find some areas that were significantly below average for specific demographic groups. i already shared the data around sense of belonging, but we also found that classrooms with more students of color and english language learners were significantly more likely to have teachers with lower expectations. when compared to classes with lower proportions of those same student groups. next slide please. so based on those findings, we have some short and long firm recommendations for sfusd. next slide. tntp recommends that
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sfusd design and implement a strategy for identifying piloting, adopting and supporting the rollout of new k-8 math curriculum. while the results of the audit show the need for new curriculum, it's important to recognize that new curriculum alone will not guarantee a higher student achievement. after analyzing data from teacher and leader focus groups, we are recommending an investment in math curriculum based job embedded support that allows teachers to practice and get feedback on the implementation of new math materials. this combination of new materials and implementation support through coaching will set up the conditions needed to provide equitable access to high quality materials and high quality instructional strategies across the district. next slide please. we recognize that our recommendation will take time. so we are recommending including the using the results from the audit to address key issues with the seventh grade materials. as well as providing training and support for teachers and leaders in how to support multilingual learners and students with thinking and learning differences, as well as
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strategies that increase students sense of belonging and teacher expectations. as thank you. and then before we go into the discussion, if you can go back to the other presentation, i appreciate getting the overview of the audit and, you know, definitely have work to do . one, to allow our team to speak to. yeah, and wouldn't allow our team to speak to the next steps around this, particularly as it relates to our guardrail of curriculum and instruction. so in reality, based on this audit, i'm not honoring the guardrail, right. because the guardrail says the superintendent will not allow curriculum instruction that is not rooted in excellence, challenging and engaging, student centered and culturally responsive and differentiated to meet the academic needs of all students. so uh, when not in compliance with the guardrail, we need to do something differently. so if you can just show that slide and then i know we're out of time, then we'll share what we're doing differently, then we'll have our conversation.
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with you can share it. it's um, we're having some technical difficulties here. but for those who have the hard copy of the report, it is slide number. um six. is this one here? it has our guardrail on it. go ahead. so and following the recommendations from tntp, our next steps will include, um, moving forward with an evaluation this spring of, um, new curricula that we will be piloting beginning in the fall. and we know that the materials that the teachers have in hand are critical. so we are looking to have teachers as, um, pilot new curriculum, um, math materials for the entire year. so giving them the high quality
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key materials that they can use daily become very familiar with and engage with the students. our next. um opportunity, um, in terms of this work is around the major work of the grade and using some of our resources, such as dreambox and pairing it with our tier one and tier two, and instruction to give um students additional practice. um, as noted by tntp, that they need to um, have the experience they need with the different standards. and finally, we will be working to, um, go into our existing curriculum for the remainder of the year and create some, some guidance for teachers in terms of how they engage with the curriculum and the depth of the standard so they can begin using that immediately. those
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are the three, um, strategic moves that we plan to make based on the recommendations from ttp. all right. so we'll pause here. as i said, you'll actually hear more about dreambox and direct support for students from our presidio team as well as professional learning, but definitely wanted to focus on the curriculum aspect as well as the kind of instruction that's happening in the classroom . that's for far away. um thank you very much. and i just wanted to remind everyone these monitoring sessions are really an opportunity for us to hear from experts who have spent time learning about our districts, to hear from staff who is, um,
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working day in and day out to, um, get us to a place with goal two. but it's really about, um, making sure that we as a board can have the most generous discussion. so our students, um, can have the most successful outcomes as quickly as possible. and so i wanted to thank commissioner fisher, who's going to be monitoring our question, asking, um, so we can and we all have handouts in front of us around effective question asking . and for the purposes of this section, there's two superintendent wayne talked about that. there's we've heard from tntp who spent time in our classrooms, we've heard from staff. and then shortly after, we'll hear from, um, two different schools who have had and who have developed their own workarounds based upon the kinds of issues that we've just heard about. um, so i'll kick it off with my first question. and then i'll pass it around. um, and my focus is really about, you know,
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what next? and what do we do? because there's while this has been a calm presentation, there is an urgency, um, around what's happening with our curriculum. and i was particularly concerned when i saw that tables three and four in the report from tntp and i'm curious, given tntp your experience doing these audits with many, many districts, and i see your recommendations, what, um, what have you seen other places do to close the gaps most quickly? because curriculum adoption and training of teachers takes time. but we have an immediate need for intervention and improvement. and i've also just recently read today that we also i didn't hear see this in your report. um, our average student spends 180 minutes per week on math where other districts spend 300. so if
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you have any thoughts, there. um, sure. yes. so the recommendations that we had for the short termm, um, and what your team has shared around using some of the existing or programs such as dreambox to help fill those gaps, um, could fill that immediate need. so like we outlined some things that were missing in the seventh grade curriculum or that weren't focused on enough, it sounds like you have some materials that could supplement that, um, that people already have some training around. maybe that already have, you know, that you could leverage to use to fill some of those gaps. so instead of bringing in the curriculum, adoption will bring in new materials and new training and new support leaning on high quality, you know, stuff that you already have, such as dreambox, could help to fill some of those gaps, even some of those instructional gaps. as far as scaffolding, um, we found that people when they focus on what they have and use what
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they're currently there and make it better or better use of it, that that seems to help. okay superintended my question. i think to use if you could just maybe speak a little bit more specifically about about, i guess when we'll see less of a gap in outcomes for the respective student groups. i did feel like we got a good analysis from the audit of the places that we're falling short overall, as a district, and how it's disproportionately hurting students of color. but i don't think i heard anything that really clearly laid out. what is the intentional strategy to support those students in those schools sites? and also, i think being really clear about like when is a realistic time frame for families to expect equitable outcomes for black and brown students. thinking specifically in regards to the african american students and hispanic
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students that were kind of lifting up in some of the charts, um, and kind of the gaps that just exist there. and so if you could speak to that, that'd be super helpful. um i yes, as our colleague said from tnt p, we see, you know, some of the interventions we have in place right now are showing some results. i mean, particularly the use of dreambox. and what's good about the use of dreambox is we can see who's using it. so we're going to hear from presidio, where it's the most used in the district. and so i think as we move forward from this progress monitoring report, it is making sure that it's, um, both a program and you hear more than just a program, like an intervention, but that the practices within it are being used in the classrooms where there is the greatest need. and so this allows us the ability to see that as far as your broader question, i mean, i think, you know, this is we've set our goals and we're working towards meeting those goals. i think if we don't see the progress we
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need between the first star assessment and the second, then we need to we do need to come back with additional strategies that particularly target the, uh, groups we've identified who are not making that progress. yeah, i guess i don't feel like that's an answer to my question directly. i definitely hear what you're saying, but our goals aren't related to equitable outcomes for student groups. they're really staggered based on where folks are starting out from. and i guess it would be helpful if the software tool that we're using is going to be part of the strategies for us. i guess, to have quantifiable numbers of what we expect to see as far as the benefit from that strategy for the specific groups, because if not, it doesn't actually make it seem like it is a specific strategy for the specific communities. and it kind of, i think, breaks our universal target wide approach that we're using. so i guess if you could just provide a little bit more clarity, i guess if you have on, i guess,
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the specifics of that and the broader question around, like when families can expect to see equitable outcomes, knowing that we're still in the planning phases, but just kind of like what is our expectation around when that's possible or realistic, or if it isn't realistic for us to make that proclamation or projection right now. um yeah. no, i appreciate what you're asking. and can consider that in future monitoring reports. i was just looking at the team. if they have something more, they want to add to it, and then can get to your broader question. thank you for that question, commissioner. bogus. um, and speaking of dreambox, one of the things we have seen is for particularly african-american students and latinx students, those students have been making progress using those digital platforms. we've the school that's presenting presidio, their students perform significantly higher than the district average. um, based on, yes, high quality teaching, but also the use of these supplemental resources. so we want to continue to expand the
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those resources, um, to schools to make sure they are using the resource with fidelity. and i think if we can ensure, um, you know, appropriate, um, commitment to that, that we would see improvement in student outcomes specific in those, um, um, targeted groups. i'm also going to ask miss krugman to give just a little bit more additional detail. the second part, i want to talk about is related to one of the recommendations from ttp, and both one of our action items and relationship to the guardrail, which is about piloting. um, so one of the things that i want to name is that obviously in the curriculum audit, our highest area of need of the three grades reviewed is seventh grade. and i think we see that bear out in our student outcomes at the middle school level, particularly when we talk about like interim goal 3.3 or 2.3. sorry um, and so one of the strategies that we actually used when piloting middle grades, ela
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curriculum is two part one. is it deviated from elementary and that we did a full year pilot of the curriculum. and the second is we actually targeted pilot sites. and so those pilot sites have high percentages of focal populations of students that commissioner bogus just named. and we'd like to approach a similar strategy with math as well. um, so some of the things i want to name that we saw is while curriculum is not the end all be all, we do know that students are not likely to make progress towards grade level standards if not given grade level curriculum. and so one is that we want to move towards a full year pilot and two targeted pilot sites that have focal populations of students as named particularly because we know the curriculum that we will be piloting, not just meets grade level standards, but provide specific scaffolds and supports for multilingual learners. for students with ieps and for students who begin the year below grade level. um, obviously that's in august 2020 for start. so stage one would be what doctor priestley just named related to dreambox for the rest of the school year. and stage
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two would be the full year pilot of the curriculum starting in august. and then just i think to your particular question on, um, again, that's where i hear the feedback. you heard some general comments of how it's targeting, but i understand, um, you're saying, okay, well, if you have a third grade interim goal for african american students, what, what? you know, what specifically is being done in those those classrooms. and so, um, we'll make sure to share that. and i would say, i mean, here's what we're, you know, we're, um, expecting to improve. and then if not, you know, to being to get to more equitable outcomes. and if we're not reaching it, then we do need to revisit the strategies. thank you. i have a question for the tnt uh, team seeing the audit summary findings, particularly the seventh grade and the discussion so far we've been having about, um, really
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identifying within sixth grade. uh, i'm curious around, um, the curriculum audit, if that included interviews or focus groups with middle school educators was, um, because of the supplemental bill. and i think, um, in conversations with individual math teachers, classroom teachers, they are already utilizing some of those on their own, or maybe within their school or their collaborative team. so curious if you can shed light on what you learned through those educator interviews. focus groups. sure. so the audit itself, the curriculum audit was only on the written materials, but the instructional audit did have a teacher and leader focus group component point. um, and what was shared in in those sessions were ranged from i use the materials as they're given to me, or i have to supplement and find other things on my own to meet the needs of my
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students. um, we did hear that there was definitely a need for more, um, supports for students to who maybe are working above or below grade level, and the multilingual learner population. those things surfaced in the teacher focus groups. and so from that recommend or from those um findings. um, how would you then be able to guide or work with our team, the districts team, um, to fulfill that very question around the supports for the students that are either far, far behind that need the supplemental supports, as well as meeting the students who are, you know, um, so more of an individualized, um, student plan. are you referring to like short tum plans? so considering for this year, as opposed to thinking ahead about getting new curriculum and materials. short terme. short terme. okay yeah. so, um, they've talked about using dreambox to do some of that. you can use those types of supplemental resources very strategically so that they focus
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in and scaffold up to grade level instruction. so if teachers, um, have the training to use that tool to identify maybe gaps in understanding that have to do with the lesson that's being taught this week, then students can have some some learning in that system to prepare them for grade level instruction. and what about students who have fulfilled, let's say, for that unit, but then are ready for so how do how does a teacher meet those needs of each and every student in their classroom? um i don't know enough about dreambox to know the capabilities for students who are working above grade level. um, i would encourage them to the district to consider what those scaffolds and supports could be, um, that aren't already in the curriculum that they have. um, but you definitely want to have a way for teachers to know our kids are performing and where they need to be pushed just quickly. my understanding of dreambox and
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my experience with it is that there are two ways to use it. one, you can have it on autopilot so that the software is identifying students needs and serving them. and so if kids are ahead of grade level, it's going to give them material that's ahead of grade level. and same for kids who are below. and then the other way to use it is to be to for teachers to identify. and i think this is not the way that's used here, but for teachers to identify using the software, like where kids need help and then actually to assign work through dreambox. that is like specifically targeted for either what they're finding in the data or what they're about to teach in the classroom. so you can you can do it in different ways and typically, what i've seen is that, um, teachers use it in the kind of autopilot way, because that's super simple. um, so there there's opportunity there. i wanted to follow up on the dreambox question as well. um so we use it at my school. there's really no training on it. so it is on kind of autopilot, but i don't know how useful that is necessarily. but, um, do we have specific plans about rolling out? i think dreambox can be a
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valuable ancillary tool for students, but i don't know how powerful it is and what research has been done around it. but if we're going to, you know, tout it as something that's going to be utilized and utilized. well, i would like to know how we're going to do that, because if there's teachers are just putting it on autopilot, it probably isn't going to have the effectiveness that we would want. can we respond to that after hearing presidio's experience and then they're going to speak to that, and then i think they'll share some lessons because i said they're the ones that use it the most in the district. so we'll hear what was the difference. and you're right, there's there are some characteristics. what happened presidio, that just don't happen naturally. they required some leadership, um, to make it happen. okay, great. thank you. um, thank you to the pta, pt team. um, thanks to district staff for your work and putting together the materials. um i have a question. i think relates to adult behaviors and also timing. so we've been talking a
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lot about ancillary scaffolding interventions such elemental which which feels sort of like moments of crisis and playing catch up, which of course we need to do given the extensive and frankly, you know, horrific gaps that we've seen and that have been perpetuated for a long time. so i guess my question is, where is there a sense of when we're going to be less focused on these sort of crisis intervention mode moments and be able to make that that more long terme pedagogy shift, where we are just meeting students at grade level or above, um, and certainly there's always going to be moments where we need some scaffolding and some interventions, but that we're that the focus is less on that and that we're actually just, you know, cruising along at this at our speed or faster than, than maybe we want. so i'm wondering about timing on that. yeah. i mean i think that's why tnp shared the short terms and long terme, but that's where
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we're saying besides the curriculum, you heard tnp share how they did their classroom observations and you've heard us talk about it as well, using the core rubric. and as part of our 3.1, um, uh, a measure of the guardrail. and i think that's really, really where we start to see that foundation is by looking at what's happening daily with the materials as well as the instructional practices. and so the, um, we shared with the literacy progress monitoring report that we're actually getting into classrooms doing those observations. and then, um, starting to calibrate and provide feedback and ultimately, as we need the whole system to be engaged in that process and find it meaningful, because if teachers aren't finding that to be meaningful, then it's really not going to, uh, support the classroom, um, improvement. and we're going to hear from our team that speaks to lesson study. what kind of what it really means to look at a lesson. and, you know, not the intervention lesson, but just the regular lesson and how to make sure it's, uh, meeting the
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students needs in, in math. so we'll hear about that shortly as well. just as a clarifying question. um, is dreambox something that's intended to be used in school, or is it more homework work based? and then also what does scaffolding mean in this context? um sure. so scaffolding means like, uh, the extra support that's needed. so just how you put up scaffolding to be able to when, say, painting a wall, you know, reaching the high levels, this is the extra support that's provided to be able to reach those standards. so that's why we use that time in education. dreambox is used during the day as well as the supplement. correct dreambox can be used at home or at school. and so students have access through clever um, so they can access it at home. but it also can be assigned during the school day. so as a follow up, does dreambox
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tend to be used more in the classroom within our district as it's been used so far? does it tend to be more classroom based or homework and supplemental based. i'm not sure we have the answer to that question, but i want to say our dreambox team is here. um, and they're represented in the audience. so if we wanted to bring them forward for some of these questions related to that, their platform, they would be able to do that. i do want to wait for the studio. do you want to wait till the let's wait because presidio is going to talk about it. but i will say what we're sharing is we want it to be used more in school. yeah because that's what presidio is doing. and getting getting results. addition. last question. i promise. um is any of the work or concern focused around retention just because like
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retention from past grades, because i think that's an issue that i've seen myself and other students face, where sometimes it's like it's in one ear, it stays in your brain until you complete your final, and then it's kind of out the other. so then when you get to your next math, uh, some educators have to essentially reteach those basics. so is does dreambox combat that in a way or is our new curriculum or some of the auditory work? is that is that the right word? um, to, to help with retention as well. and you're saying retaining the knowledge that you learned from one class and going to the next? yeah um, so i'm going to talk about just sort of a few different things related to both dreambox and core curriculum. so one is that, as we've said, dreambox is a supplemental resource. so it's something that a teacher would use on top of or
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in addition to a core curriculum . um, i would say in particular, right now as a district, centered it as a strategy because we're in the process of replacing our core curriculum. um, and so ideally, what we would want is a different balance between those two resources. once a new curriculum has been adopted, the hope would be is that the expectation is that that new adopted curriculum would include the structures, the routines, the scaffolds and supports to support students to not just reengage with prior math learning from the previous grade, but also demonstrate proficiency in grade level standards. we would still expect to have supplemental tools. dreambox, for example, on top of that. but our reliance on it right now is to help with that stop gap between now and both piloting and adoption of a new curriculum. um, i don't know if that exactly answered. okay, cool. um i want to appreciate the audit. i think it was, um,
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while the results were disturbing, they were not surprising. i think to a lot of us that have been engaged in the system. and so i think it's really good to have that kind of laid out clearly. and i'm really excited that we're going to be adopting a new, um, curriculum. my question is around the pilot that has around curriculum specifically that's already been going on in, um, at john muir, where they saw and i know we're going to hear from them about lesson study later, but my understanding is they're also using japan math, which is a different curriculum from the district curriculum and from the one that tntp audited, and that between 2015, muir actually had just over 10% of its black students proficient in math, and now is nearly 50. so their results actually were worse when they started than the district results for black students, and now are much, much, much better. so to what extent superintendent is curriculum? i know lesson study is a is one piece, but to
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what extent is the using? what have we learned from using the japan math curriculum? um what are its strengths? what are, you know, what are we thinking of, including that in the pilot? like what have what has been learned from the mirror experience? there i'm going to also i'll let them them share. and then i think can we speak to that after we share a little bit more about what they've done at their school? sure. but my question was more around the district learnings rather than i guess i'm curious what the what you as district leaders have learned from your since they've been using this different curriculum, which clearly is getting better results than us. and it seems like maybe i mean, i don't i know tntp didn't look specifically at that because they were looking at our official curriculum, but i'm curious what what our math team and folks have learned from the mirror experience. yeah, i can talk about the curriculum piece in particular and feel free for you all if you have more specific data. um, so one of the things i want to talk about is related to timing, which tnt mentioned earlier. um, one is
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just to give an overview in terms of like the health of a district, we would expect ongoing curriculum adoption process on average, maybe once every ten years for each subject area depends on the state frameworks. when the additional program that we have in place was developed, there was very few to no options of published, nationally reviewed curriculum available. um, the curriculum has been in place for over ten years. we would expect it to be replaced, um, within that time period. since it was adopted, japan math was used by a number of schools. japan math also was used by a number of schools. i would say, before we saw additional published programs come out. and the field is much broader with with far more high quality instructional materials. now so, um, one thing i will say is that japan math does not meet expectations on ed reports, which is a nationally reviewed tool. um, i'm not sure if you all want to speak to that more in depth as to why or what specific components may not be there. um yeah. so when we're
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looking at at ed reports, ed reports looks for alignment to standards similar to the audit report that that we conducted. they look at similar things. um and it looks like they have a report released in 2019 that shows that it does not meet expectations. um, and you can when you're looking at the report, you can see there's areas in focus and coherence. and also actually there's areas in focus, in coherence that um, were so strong that they didn't continue to look at the rest of the curriculum because that's kind of a gateway. if it doesn't meet and focus and coherence. ed reports doesn't continue to evaluate the curriculum just as a follow up. so i guess then my question then that's more my confusion is what to what's your explanation of what happened at john muir? i guess i was asking more about your learnings from john muir rather than i mean, we can all look at what's online, but i'm curious what the learnings were. yeah, i know for
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the sake of this presentation, we've sort of bifurcated the curriculum and instruction components. um, and so that might be leading to a little bit of like the cognitive dissonance around it. obviously, we know high quality student outcomes come by strong curriculum paired with really strong instructional practices. um, so when we get to the portion where we're going to talk about the lesson study model, um, we have two schools that are going to be able to present year is one of those to talk a little bit about their system or site based professional learning and instructional strategies. curriculum is definitely one component of that, but i think they have a lot to share about the ways teachers plan together. the professional learning structures, the coaching and leadership structures at the site. um, and how that contributes to the use of the instructional materials. and i will just add, i mean, i understand what you're asking. so again, especially since they're here, we'll hear from them, but from, you know, observing it and hearing the talk around it, i know what seems to be critical. there's
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the instructional practices in the professional learning that to some extent is content agnostic, but the idea is, i know there is a lot of learning around students development of number sense. and, you know, having that foundational conceptual understanding of how and, you know, how, uh, numbers work and, you know, i mean, we went to the lesson study, you know, and heard a first grader talk about decomposing numbers. and so the thing i don't know, because i'm not familiar with it, is that exclusive to the japan math curriculum or japan math, you know, are there. but i think what we're bringing in and what's not in our curriculum, which our audit shows, is that depth of understanding we want our depth of conceptual knowledge. we want the kids to get, as well as the fluency with number sense and those pieces. but i can't speak to whether that was in, you know, exclusively or just the key to japan math or not. okay so i would suggest that, like we move to hearing from john muir and presidio, i'm doing a time check. it's a little bit before
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730. and if we could keep this section to like a half an hour, and then we have the board eval for like another half hour after that. but that said, i do have one closing question, ian. um, and it's really just clarification about the pilot that we keep referring to. how many schools, what grades, how many kids, because to be real clear, here's how. nothing in this report surprised me. nothing in this. and in dreambox . i'm glad we have it. it sounds like it's making improvements, but it almost feels like pretty much any supplemental will help at this point. would have results, especially since our curriculum does not meet standards. so what i'm. so i want to know how, who, how many will will receive improved curriculum and, you know, instructional experience is
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starting next year and for those who won't, um, i'm not i'm personally not okay. just going through another year of this knowing what we know. and so i'm, i'm wanting to know what can families expect their kids to experience knowing now what the deficit kits are and knowing also that we can't change things tomorrow. so yeah, clarification around the pilots and the interventions that all kids can expect to have and both remediation and acceleration, because, i mean, the other thing is anecdotally, and i know you can ding me for this commission, fisher, but like, you know, i have two, two kids that got all a's, high a's, all through math. i couldn't, you know, barely couldn't get a four on the s back and showed up. one of them showed up for high school a year behind in math, comparative to his colleagues. so it's and i
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hear that regularly and i know that we have kids who are eager to learn, who want to learn, who would who would like to be in environments where there were high expectations and opportunities to advance, to where they're capable of. so i'd like to have to have my temperature cooled a little bit by understanding what the pilot is and how the, um, how all kids are being served. thank you for that question. um, first of all, our pilot will cover grades k through eight, so, so, um, we wanted to be pretty expansive. we are going to, um, advertise and incentivize as much as possible. um, and it is voluntary. so we ask for participation. ideally we would like to have as many teachers as possible involved in the pilot and um, particularly in our middle schools where we would
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want to have the year long pilot, um, and so our, um, hope is and our work is around making sure that we can recruit as many teachers as possible to participate at, um, i think in addition to the pilot, some other items that we haven't mentioned at this time are around excel. we are bringing excel, which is another digital platform, into our system, and to our math environment. but that also comes with a tutoring component. so we are opening up 1500 seats, um, for tutoring in math, hopefully beginning in march of this year. um, so that is a component that we expect to offer. um, additionally, in terms of acceleration, i think we, um, are are relying on those platforms, excel and dreambox to provide opportunities. we are providing professional development, um, on both of
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those tools. we do so consistently right now with dreambox, with our middle school and looking at how we can, can, um, teach them how to utilize the tool to best meet the needs of students. um, no matter where, um, where they are performing at that moment. so just is it a what is the reasoning behind voluntary pilot at this point? superintendent high i. so we this is not something we can mandate is before adopting a i guess it's before adopting a full curriculum. once we have a full curriculum it can be mandated. um, and but if without replacing the full curriculum, i don't know that we have the ability to mandate. final au final question. okay well, i recognize
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that the focus on our goals is really to eighth grade proficiency and all the strategies we've been talking about is focused on k-8. um, a question that i do have for the team is then how do the foundations and clearly in the middle school years is really enormous gaps? how does this then? um, our approaches, the strategies that we're putting forward also going to be an approach or foundational to high school math. and that super intendant, while not as explicit it does have, goes into goal number three around college and career, which i've been pretty vocal about, particularly how that, um, is setting up our students who are interested in steam and how we know that those foundational building blocks from k through eight are going to be absolutely critical to, um, high school math and our offerings there. yeah. and as
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part of our college and career readiness goal, right. we want to have students meet the, um, like the recommended a to g requirements, not just the minimum ones. right. which includes additional, uh, i believe it includes additional math. and so really, i don't know the data off hand, but i know we have too many students who need to repeat algebra when they get into eighth grade. they then get them off track from doing that. so we do do you know this should be leading to more students than being able to be successful in algebra the first time they take it. and then being able to both access the higher level courses while also having the ability to take the stem courses and the other courses because they're not needing to repeat repeat math. okay i can't multitask. so i apologize for what the spreadsheets going to look like while i'm talking. okay, okay. um, uh, but a couple things. um,
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one on, i also want to recognize is that our current eighth graders went through a couple of years of online, uh, learning ing challenge during the pandemic challenges. i was trying to find another. anyway um, and i haven't really seen us figure out what that learning loss meant. you know, dig into the actual skill sets that our students have developed and not developed. um, and, and how that's impacting their learning as they get into middle school and high school. having a middle schooler myself who, um, was in fifth grade, you know, graduated on zoom, experienced sixth grade, um, on zoom. um, um, he tried mighty hard and thank goodness for the black star rising algebra lab this year as a ninth grader. um, that week and, uh, program was a game changer for him. we that
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targeted help, um, by a teacher at his high school has led to additional connection for him. and so thank you, ali. and dreamkeeper initiative for that program. um, which really leads into my question and i'll stop my hypothesizing and, um, but but what i'm excited to hear about dreambox, i'm excited to hear about japan math. um, do we have an do we have an overall knowledge of what other interventions our schools are using that are successful and why? i mean, thank you, tntp. you know, and thank you for the 15 schools that that were approached here. and part of this. but we have 120 schools and we have thousands of amazing teachers out there. um, so, so i would love to see us. to your point, take more of the bright spots and what's working and
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build on that. so do we. what else do we have that could be that foundational building blocks to move us forward? sure terme. so we don't have to wait for a brand new curriculum. um, so just so a couple of things is one, i feel like we're building great anticipation for the schools to present. um, and i think one of the things i just want to name is just the degree to which they're being highlighted for the strength of their sight based practices. and i think one of the things you're going to hear from them is they've really different staffing models. and so we're going to hear about the range of instructional practices that we can learn from based on different school types. um, some of the bright spots i want to lean on a little bit more outside of just curricular, um, in addition to that, um, are some of the structures that have been put in place, um, within the district, both related to math, but outside of as well? um, so one of the bright spots i want to lean on. and again, i'm
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not trying to steal presidio's thunder, but just to give like a little taster, um, is they're going to talk a little bit about common planning time and common planning time, particularly at the middle school level, as an opportunity for math department to come together in instructionally plan as a group. again, i'm not going to steal their thunder and speak to the strength of that, but that specific move within the middle grades instructional schedule is something that middle school lead has worked really hard on, and that we've seen increase over time and has been a real game changer in terms of instructional planning and a bright spot at a lot of school sites. um, that's number one. um, the second piece i want to name that we've built on in particular, that we're going to talk about, um, is one the utilization of lesson study structures. um, when we talk about professional learning models, again, i'm not going to steal from your and sanchez. they're going to speak to that. um, but that being, you know, math specific in this context but obviously usable across content areas and grade bands. the last piece i want to name, um, has to do specifically around some of the lessons learned we've had from our aligned pd structures. this year. um, and the degree to
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which we've boosted site based professional development by centrally organizing professional learning for all different cohorts within our system, for teachers, for cohorts, for coaches, for administrators around a set topic in this year, it's been focused predominantly on language and literacy. but how we can do that with math in order to lay the groundwork for the adoption of the curriculum, which is going to be part of our professional learning planning quickly, i just want to make an observation. did you want to add on to say, let's get to it? okay. i just wanted to i think context is important. also, when we look at the state average for third grade math performance on the s, the smarter balanced test , um, it's 45% proficiency who meet or exceed and we're at 55. so we're actually exceeding far exceeding the state average. and i think that's important for us to realize so and celebrate actually where we fall short. obviously is we have a 40% gap, 40 point gap between african american students and all the rest of our students. it's actually more than that. it's
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more than 40. so the context is, i think that we as and we have been for years, the highest performing urban district in the state, and that is to be celebrated because we are doing a lot of things right and correctly. and that's wonderful. and we should accept those kudos. and we at the same time have extreme gaps that are unmatched across the state, which is where we should be focused. okay. all right. we're going to get to part two. um, if you want to put back up the presentation, we'll bring up our colleagues. well, thank antp. uh, thank you, thank you. um, you two can stay or, you know, uh, yeah. and then let's bring up our. okay. there's four of them. our sanchez, mira, and presidio colleagues. come on up. okay. so you can hear how we set the expectations sky high for you. uh. no pressure when? uh, no. but, um. yeah, but in these
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progress monitoring reports, we appreciate that. uh, uh, again, we're starting to get a routine. and just hearing directly from school sites is, i think, helpful because there's a lot of talk about what's happening, uh, what we want to happen or what we think is happening at our schools. but we then have people from our schools to say what's going on in their schools. and there are bright spots to highlight. so, uh, we're going to give muir and sanchez about 5 to 6 minutes to, to share what they've been doing and some lessons learned. and then we'll hear from presidio. and if you could also just say your name and role to start. i'll introduce myself first. and sarah's working on her mic. i'm anne martin, i'm the principal at sanchez elementary school. um, i've been at sanchez since 2005, so like year 18, i think, and i've served the community as a special education teacher, as an instructional reform facilitator, and most recently
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as it's very proud principal. and i'm a parent at sanchez as well. uh, good evening, commissioners. my name is sarah liebert. i'm the principal at john muir. i've been at john muir for 13 years. i was a fourth and fifth grade teacher. um, and then i was an urf instructional reform facilitator. and this is my fifth year as principal at the site. sure. um, we're going to talk. to you about lesson study, which is a name that i think is really confusing because you think about lesson study, like, oh, i'm going to study a lesson, but that's not actually what it is. um, it's a cycle of continuous improvement based in inquiry, and we use it at our site as our main form of professional development with our teachers. um, we've been doing lesson study at john muir since i started. so my, my first year i tried to apply for the master teacher program and i was denied. and then i went back and applied again my second year. and i got in, and then i got to learn how to do lesson study.
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um, and then in eight years ago, i believe, we, um, decided to try to go whole school with lesson study because we had enough teachers that had now been on lesson study teams and found it really empowering and really useful. and we were seeing really drastic results between classrooms that had teachers that were on lesson study teams versus classrooms that had teachers that were not on lesson study teams. um, sean mandsager was the principal at the time at our site. um sorry. and um, yeah. so that's just a little bit of background. so we did it 3 or 4 years pre-pandemic . we obviously took a break during the pandemic. and then once we came back in person, we were right back into it. um, and so anne and i are going to kind of share these bullet points that you see on the screen. and and talk about some of, like the core components that, um, that we see as important to lesson study and why we do it at our sites. um, so the first is really thinking around this professional development structure and how does that empower and motivate teachers.
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and you heard, um, the past team talk about how important the curriculum is. and so we do use japan math curriculum. i don't know that we need to argue this evening about whether it's a good curriculum or not. um, but the important thing to note about japan math is that it is a teaching through problem solving curriculum. and so i think that is a pedagogy that we should take into consideration when we adopt a curriculum or when we consider adopting a curriculum. um, and so at john muir, in every single classroom, every teacher is comfortable facilitating a teaching through problem solving methodology with their students. and we've been able to align that and deepen our knowledge of what that looks like through these lesson study cycles of continuous improvement . um, and one of the things we wanted to highlight is that, um, we've done a better job over the last several years in sfusd of coming up with an aligned and shared vision about what we want for students in the classroom, what we want, the student
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experience to be, um, and a place that lesson study has been really supportive at sanchez. and i know at mira as well, um, through our collaboration as pilot schools, we get a network. so we get to collaborate with one another around the way that this is impacting our sites, um, which is how we can speak kind of to each other's experience as well. um, but the alignment between the professional learning structure of lesson study and the vision for what we want student learning to be in classrooms. if we're asking teachers to take on risks and create classroom environments where students have a really strong sense of agency and feel like they're in control of their learning, then it's really important to create professional learning spaces for our valuable and very capable teachers to experience that same kind of learning. and so the lesson study process allows them to engage in whatever curriculum happens to be in front of them. and we've been taught that kind of curriculum is like a medium sized shirt. and what really matters is what are teachers doing with that curriculum as they take it to students. and then even more than that, how are students responding to that?
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so the real learning for teachers, through the lesson study process and the way it really echoes that experience we want for students is it's not about did the teacher teach it? it's about did the students learn it? and what did the teacher learn about student learning and about their own teacher through this process and teachers have access to one another to engage in that work. so it's not the work of one coach. it's not held by one professional, one administrator at the district. this is the team of teachers who are working together on this, and that's how we want students to feel in their classroom. we want them to feel ownership over their learning, their classroom environment and giving teachers that experience in a professional learning structure makes it so much more likely for them to be engaged in bringing that experience to students. as um, and then i feel like you covered the next part. so for time, why don't you go with the glcs and i'll do the last one? great uh, sorry about that. um so the structures to support team collaboration, this is
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obviously one of the things that's really, really important. and this has been a focus, um, for our collaboration as admin raters who are working as part of this lesson study pilot. um, because it's so vital that teachers have time, they need what we realize is, yes, of course they need materials and they need a materials that give them access to this teaching through problem pedagogy. but more than that, they need access to one another. they need access to each other for support, for planning, for support, for looking at student work, for having their eyes on each other's teachers or on each other's students. excuse me. which is what happens in a public lesson. um, so the teacher has a support of their team to have eyes on students so that they can give feedback about what did we notice students learning. and that all takes time, right? so in we heard you talk a little bit about what's happening at some middle schools around common planning time and all of our elementary schools. we've also figured out ways to align those additional resources that come to our site from certificate
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staff members who are so vital to our communities for so many reasons, like classroom librarians, pe teachers, artists , and we've created master schedules that align time so that our grade level teams have common planning time. and that's been really vital to making sure that they have the time to do this work. in addition to using the wednesday early release and being able to have the ability to use that wednesday early release for engaging in these cycles of inquiry tells the teachers, we trust you. you've got this. it gives them that sense of efficacy that we're looking to build and allows them the time and space they need to make those changes to practice that we're seeing have impact on student learning. um, so the last thing i'm going to talk about is around the teacher culture and cohesion and, um, this was something that was like a welcomed surprise, guys, to learn. i think, um, when mira made the decision to try whole school lesson, study, it was really because and what i'm so
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appreciate so many of the commissioners bringing up this evening, we are a predominantly an almost exclusively black and brown school, and we had a massive achievement gap. our students were um, i, i thought it was like 13% proficient in math. our african american students, um, and so we thought, okay, if we can replicate what we've seen in a couple classrooms that are doing really, really well, we will see better achievement for our african american and latinx students. and we have seen that. but in addition to that, we had this welcome surprise of this, this collective efficacy that we see in our schools. and so the thing about lesson study is you start the school year building a vision on a common vision with your staff and a common theory of action that is really specific. for example, at mira, we've had a full year that we talked about building academic, academic conversations among students in math. we've had a full year of thinking about how do we make student thinking
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visible in our mathematics classroom, and when you can go really, really deep and you have a set of colleagues and you're all working towards the same goal, you build this like sense of, okay, we can do this and we can do it together. um, in addition to that, that mira is classified as a hard to staff school. i have no problem with turnover anymore for, um, as a principal, hiring is not one of the issues that i have. it's the opposite. i have a lot of people that want to work at mira. i don't know if that is just because of lesson study, but i think that it has a big part of the culture at my site. i think teachers ultimately really want to do their job well, and they want to be in a community where they feel supported and have people to plan with. and lesson study provides that for them. um, and then we've also seen and we're working with, um, the, the research and assessment department in san francisco to really analyze and uh, we have a whole assessment plan. and we have we gave students a survey this year to find out how they feel about mathematics and if they feel like they can make
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mistakes in their classroom. and we're finding that our students love math at mira, overwhelmingly in k through five. and also feel really, really comfortable and i think it was over 80% of our students felt i think it was over 90. i don't know, i don't have it in front of me. it was a lot, um, that felt like their teacher valued their ideas. um, and so this is. yeah, i just think that's really important to highlight and the only thing i would add is the piece about, um, teacher relationships. i think i talked a lot about the importance of the collaboration between teachers and, and one of the commissioners mentioned kind of this, this like the years of growth since covid and it's been rebuilding for everybody, and it's been rebuilding for the professional and the adults in our building as well. and we thought a lot about at sanchez, about how can we really remind people that there's joy in their learning, that they actually love coming to their job, that even there there has been fear over the last several years, like this is this is great. we
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actually like this. and we talked a lot about how to really intentionally get people connected with one another. and you can do that through building relational trust. or you can do that by building work teams that are aligned around a common goal for student outcomes, which is the reason we're all in the building. and then let them look at each other's growth as they go. and that has been really, really impactful in terms of connecting teachers back to the, you know, what they love about being there and also to one another and building that system of support. thank you. and i know we're eager to ask questions, but we're going to let presidio share. we got to hear at the elementary, um, some really powerful practices. and let's hear what's happening at middle school. great go first. hi everyone. my name is karina chiu. i'm a sixth grade math teacher at presidio. it's my fourth year there and seventh year overall teaching. good evening, commissioners, my name is kevin chiu. i've had the honor of serving the presidio community since 2019 as an assistant principal. and this
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year, my first year as principal . um, prior to being at presidio, i was a math teacher at burton high school. um, and it's just an honor to speak to you all today. um we are presidio. the data says it right there. we use dreambox. um more than more than any other middle school. um, there's a reason for that. you know, we started using dreambox pre pandemic in 2018. um, we were one of the earlier middle schools to utilize chromebooks in our classrooms. and so when we made that decision of like how do we utilize that technology? we had a really strong teacher leader, um, lead that charge to say, hey, let's utilize dreambox. let's make it a regular part of our classrooms. um, i'll have karina speak more about how we use it today. um, that teacher leader is still with us. she has since retired, but is now with us as a family. partnerships coordinator and has worked really closely with our math department. on the instructional side, um, really want to speak to common planning time. um, all of our departments this year and
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in previous years are, you know, from from math through pe to our department. um, are constantly engaging in these cycles of inquiry. and when i say cycles of inquiry, i really mean what how are we delivering content curriculum to our kids? how do we know it's working. right. and what kind of data are we collecting? um, from our kids. what are our kids showing us? so student work protocols, um, street data in the form of empathy interviews. we're we're heavily engaged in that work. um, and that work is made possible by the common planning time that we were able to build into our school day. um i take a ton of pride in the three year process that presidio engaged in to make a seven period day possible, not just to give access to enrichment and the arts, to all of our students. um, but also to be able to embed common planning time in the day. there is one period where every department has a common planning time. um, that's 140 minutes a week for our teacher teams to
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engage in things like curriculum, how we how we do, how we deliver curriculum, how we collect data from our kids. um and just really proud of that process. um, and all the work that it took to get us there. um, karina, do you want to speak about your cpt first up to you? okay, i guess i'll do dreambox. um so for dreambox, at least for me, i assign an hour a week and it's up to the kids of what they want to do. i assign lessons based on what we're learning. so for example, today, um, i'm looking at the expressions and equations standards, and i can review the lessons beforehand and see what questions they'll be asked and see if the kids is, um, if it's connected to what we've learned before and is related to what we're learning now, and if it is, then i assign those two lessons and i give them a week and it's actually up to the kids if they want to do lessons or not do them. um, for me, i'm looking at time spent because i do understand that
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there is less time spent on math than there was before. um, and that that percentage is just the kids. i feel like our school, we're lucky to have students who just really want to do well. and that's probably why it's so high . um, i'm looking into doing five lessons a week rather than an hour a week, and seeing if that will help me get a better idea of what they're understanding. because i do look at the reports and i do see what standards that they're hitting and what standards that they're still working on. um, and i do appreciate dream boxes feature where they tell me like, they like kind of flag the students that aren't understanding standards and might need a little bit more support. i do use the reports in that sense, and i kind of go to that student and talk to them. one on one. if they're not understanding the standard um, and might need more support from me. um, but otherwise i like that. i can see at a pretty easy glance who is understanding it. which standards specifically, and which students like and which students that might need more help, might need more help from
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me. um, for cpt, like kevin said, we do get one period a week with our whole departments. um, and i love that time because then we can talk about our goal for the semester, which is literacy across all the content areas. so how are kids showing think, how are they showing their thinking like what intelligences do they have and how do they have chances to show that in every class? um, so for math, we're trying to look at student work, um, trying to help each other, design lessons and design assignments. and i'm using what i've learned through unbound ed to see vertical alignment and seeing where standards are connected across all three grades. and seeing which are the most important standards and which one are maybe more supporting standards. and i'm trying to, um, maybe have more consistency in the structures of how we do assignments, because maybe if the less, maybe if like the, the requirements look familiar, then it won't be as scary to do like a new math topic, if that makes
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sense. um, yeah. okay. great um, so thank you both. i want to thank our school sites for presenting. if you go to the next slide, um, and, and so just up here, i guess i'll speak to this one. and just up here is a nexus for professional learning and, and seeing how we're trying to build on this idea of common planning and schools working teams, working in professional professional learning communities. um, and you. know, just i'm kind of reflecting on the previous discussion when we talked about the curriculum and, and, you know, there are times when we do need to mandate that, that everybody across the district does something and we shouldn't shy away from that. and as we go through the curriculum adoption, we'll make sure we're removing forward with that. but i think what you hear from both school sites is the power of taking an approach that really respects our teachers as professional and engaging in inquiry and looking at what their students are doing in
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front of them, and i mean, that's what we, you know, here can drive the work and, you know, that's something that we can't really mandate is we need to create the conditions in the district to do that. and then our job as district leaders is how to support schools and creating that district, that those conditions district wide. and so that's what you see around our guardrail, around curriculum and instruction. um, you see we want students, teachers to be reviewing data and progress monitoring for continuous improvement. so that's another way to say it to say what happens in in lesson study. and again you know, teachers getting feedback on their classroom practice from colleagues as well as their school leaders and so those will be these are just some ways that what we're learning from our schools that have had success, we can inform the district wide work. so if you go the next slide, i think i think we've talked about next steps. so we'll get to discussion. cool. thank you so much. thank you to all the presenters. and thank you for all the hard and great
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work you do in our schools. uh, i think my question is right to the superintend ended. i think i'm curious of how are the lessons and the best practices transferable. throughout the district? kind of given the variation, um, how do we expect to overcome some of our historical struggles with implementation and kind of the challenges of taking a pilot from a site to a district wide initiative? and if you could talk through a little bit about the specific data to related to the individual school sites that make them, i think good examples of what we're going to see across the district and what you feel like is projectable from, i guess, these individual schools, in regards to the data and the interim goals and how you kind of expect us to hit them. i think it's great to have school sites here, but really get in. i think your insight about how these school sites and their pilots and their work reflect the district for the whole reflects the vision for the whole district and how we're going to go about getting there,
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i think would be really helpful to provide some additional clarity about how we're going to be going to kind of equalize outcomes for students as we kind of move forward and kind of what the plan is for that. thank you. again, you're answering some about how high school as well. um yeah, just just a few small questions. you got commissioner boggess, but i think so when we think so, taking what we've heard today, i think when we're thinking about that district wide implementation question and how to make it effective, there's a few areas we need to look at. and i think that's the resources we have. the structure in in place and then as well as the culture and so for the resources, we're actually working with the lesson study team on what additional resources are like minimally required. and then what, you know, what does maybe the, you know, fancy version look like. and so they they've done their work and then they actually got a, um, got uh, we're able to
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bring in additional resources through a partnership with the city, uh, that has helped accelerate the process at the schools. you heard muir was doing it before those resources were there. and we've had examples throughout the district of it happening. and so that's part of our, frankly, part of our planning process. i don't have a definitive answer for you, um, yet. but knowing there there does. it's not going to happen just with, uh, you know, a principal trying to make this happen or one individual teacher trying to make this happen. so we do our committing to coaching , supported our schools and then how to support it. um, this kind of collaboration in terms of the structure as you hear about the common planning time, we have it at our schools and where i know, um, like muir has been really innovative. is using the um, um, the beacon program, their after school program, to help during the day with, with some of the, uh, of observations and as well as, you know, using the common, uh, the what do we call them,
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not the, the specials. do we call them specials? the, the pe math library to create those times. so again, as schools are working on their schedules, sharing, these are some of the expectations we have around how to organize your time to support that. the common planning time we figured out for, uh, middle school, there's ways to do it in elementary school. in high school, we do have an early release, uh, a release day. uh, you know, you get out early on wednesdays, and so that structure is there. um, and i think then it's providing the support in the high schools less than it's more through the department chairs that that collaboration happens. then through coaching support that that is more likely in, uh, particularly in the elementary school, um, and then, you know, the culture one is a hard one. and i think you're speaking to that as well. and that's really supporting the leadership. and the teacher leaders to, uh, create that space where, where, you know, kids can feel safe to make mistakes, but also teachers
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can feel safe to try something new and do something, um, different. and then to your point, in terms of, yeah, well, similar to when we brought glen park forward, we are looking at the data to see where, you know, where are we seeing progress in the bright spots and particularly, you know, where are we seeing progress in in the targeted groups that we've identified to make improvement for okay, i think that gets at some other parts of my question. i guess the thing i'm most interested, if you could just talk to and we could get more specific to a particular student group or just kind of students in general, but just like looking at the pilot sites, what what are we assessing from, i guess, out come gaps from we're seeing from different students. and how is that affecting kind of what comes next. where are there gaps in the pilots of where, like student groups or populations that we aren't seeing the results from it? i guess how is that affecting our thinking? like, i really appreciate the school sites coming, but i guess i'm worried that we're might get lost in what their individual successes are and the magic they're
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creating. and it's not actually really representative of us doing anything different as a district. and i just feel like i don't i don't feel that we have, i guess i don't feel that you've presented to me like a response of how this is going to become a part of a best practice around the district and what parts of it really ensure we get better outcomes for students, in addition to us just having what are identified as best practices, which i think are good, but i guess i'm not sure if you feel that that is enough for us to reach all of our goals and to kind of bring equity to the district, or if that is just the baseline for us not to be failing our audit so aggressively. we yeah. i mean, i at its core, you know, what i think the most important thing we need to be working on is the what's happening on a daily basis in the classroom, that classroom practice. and so i know we talk about our, you know, the different groups of students. we have. but, um, it's not it's not what we see. is
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there are classroom experiences are different. and so it's raising that's what the audit is showing. and it's raising that baseline expectation. it is for what's happening in the classroom. and we know that will meaningfully impact, uh, the students who we haven't served. and so yeah, it is i mean, it's ultimately, you know, our students spend 1000 hours in the classroom. it's how well those 1000 hours are being used. and what we're trying to do that i do feel, is building on what we learned from the school sites. but then that's different than we've done district wide, is to define clearly, like, what does that look like in terms of having good practice, where students are really engaged. and that's the key for me about it. going back to the core rubric, which gives us that common, uh, under it starts to build that common understanding of what kids are doing in the classroom that really leads to learning. and so even though i don't know that sanchez and muir are like,
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you know, the they're, um, using the core rubric to assess what's happening in the classroom, but they are looking at what their classroom practice and studying what's happening in the classroom. and that's, that's what's key. and so but for our district wide approach, it's the core rubric is the entry point for doing that for us. we'll go okay, here we go. um, thank you to our hard working principals and teachers. i know that tomorrow's an early morning for all of you. so appreciate it. and have the same year was one of the first schools that i visited, um, and was just so impressed. and, uh, i'm now now very excited about being able to visit sanchez and, um, go panthers because i'm a presidio family. um, yes. uh, so i have a question, and maybe it's slightly related to commissioner bogguss question, but it's actually for you all for our for
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our educators. um in terms of culture shifts, it seems like, you know, from, from a perspective of, of educators like that cycle of inquiry and, and wanting to engage and wanting to learn and wanting to study is what has drawn you all to this profession. and so it doesn't seem like there needs to be some major culture shift from the perspective, from the perspective of educators in terms of how do we how do we appreciate this core common planning time? how do we get into this aligned pedagogy and vertically aligned. curriculum? it sounds like this is something that you all are excited about, and that that your colleagues are excited about. so my question is what from from from a perspective of you all, what can the district do to better support you all? being able to lean into what i think is that that natural appreciation for being able to work together and learn together and grow together in order to support and teach our students and not to put you on the spot to be like y'all are
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doing a terrible job, but like, are there other things that that that we've done that worked well or other other supports that can come from the district to make that easier so that you all can can do the jobs that you're so great at. okay. um i think coming so wednesdays we have our district pds, right. so coming from the dreambox centered district, pds, i the feeling is that we don't want as teachers, we don't want to be given more. and we don't want to be told that we're not doing enough for our students. so i feel like the feelings around dreambox from other teachers is that like we're forced to do it, and if you don't do it, it's not a good thing and you're not doing enough for the student. i think it's more like we need to feel like the district is supporting us, like 100. and if with if we have like new curricula or new
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protocols, then i guess i just have to be packaged in a way that it's going to benefit you. it's going to benefit the students. it's and it's not going to be a huge lift and take more time than you're already giving to this profession. so i, i guess it's just the packaging of how you present things to us. we just don't want to feel like we're failing all the time. because i feel like as educators , we kind of put that on ourselves already. and then seeing seeing the numbers of like, um, students and what math levels they are at, like as a math educator, it's even more like we just don't feel like we're doing enough. and i would like support and just come from a place of like, we're here to we're here for you. so like, please, you know, trust this. i guess i have a i have a build on to that. um because i think that's really meaningful and i think a lot of teachers feel
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that way. and i think, um, the like lesson study specifically as different from a cycle of inquiry starts with teachers like sarah said, like thinking about what do we notice about our students? like, what do we notice them doing? and where's a place we can dig in on? um, and i think that when teachers are guiding their own learning, like teachers are developing that question, and we know that that question is related to overall performance. like we know that, we know that that's our job. but giving the space in collaboration, by adopting a professional learning structure that's based in inquiry that centers teachers and teacher leadership in the decision making around the question that they want to look into. yeah. and, you know, training administrators for what does that mean to support a team? it has happened where i had an idea about what i thought the kindergarten question should be, and they developed a different one, like, is that okay? and like, of course it's okay because it's about inquiry. and they're super engaged in their question and it's going to be great. they're going to learn and their students are going to learn and outcomes are going to improve. so i think there are
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ways that we do this. even when we set up collaborative spaces that clearly at a baseline, we need that time and space for teachers. and then we also need to know as administrators, how do we cultivate a culture in our schools where teachers know that we trust you to make those decisions about the learning that you need to engage in. thank you. commissioner weisman ward, for oh, sorry. sorry, principal liebert. no worries. you can call me sarah. um you know, i've been looking at one of the slides that tp, um, shared with the four. it was like grade appropriate assignments, strong instruction, deep engagement and high expectations. and we scored lowest in strong instruction. it was 28. and it says that that's teaching that asks students to do the intellectual heavy lifting in class. and so i think the that we need to consider and i'm including myself in this, we if we want teachers to
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facilitate classrooms where students are doing the intellectual heavy lifting, we have to consider the professional development that we ask our teachers to engage in, which means top down. you listen and you just do what i say isn't going to help them change their teaching practice. and so i think we as a district have to think about how can we model the kind of teaching that we want with our teachers so that we can bring them along to do that in their classroom? um that's my thought. sorry about that. it's very sorry about that. um, and that was a fantastic question. um and thank you, principal liebert, for opening up your school for lesson study for many of us to attend. that was actually that was a lot of fun for me. um, and to hear the lesson framed not from, um, who,
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you know, who jumped rope more, but what you know, what math concept are we going to use to figure just i mean, even that slight framing difference to me was just, you know, and i've started to use it with my own kids. so thank you. um and at the end of the day, we did a debrief and i asked that specific question in the, in the central office debrief of what resources do we need to bring to bear to take this from a pilot into something and scalable? we came up, you know, the need for coaching. one of the other things that came up was that this is partially funded through the board of supervisors right now, through supervisor hillary ronan's office now. so as we as we look at resource allocation, what are our plans as a district to make sure that these bright spots have the coaches, the pd time, the everything they need to help improving outcomes across the district? and as we think about, you know, um, some of our focal populations are students. you know, one of our,
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our, our inner, um, goals here is around, um, you know, students who are not proficient, you know, who are multilingual learners still. right? so, so when we talk about this professional development, are we including our english language development teachers? are we including our special education teachers in this? are we giving them the release time to for those students who are furthest from equity, 75% of our kids with disabilities actually sit in gen ed for the majority of their day. are there resource specialist teachers? are there study skills? teachers included in this professional development to and in middle school in particular to the way that we block. we have math and science together, right? so not any more. not any more. okay, i guess i'm an og. my kids are all in high school. we used to block it. you know, like at least in every middle school where my kids went, that it was the math and science teacher were the same block, right? none of the
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middle schools do that anymore. so we don't have to worry about how math impacts science anymore . all right. i'm an old i'm an og, i guess. all right. forget that question then. all right. but that's enough questions piled into one there. so i'll hand it over. yes, please. about. well it was more to. it was that was more to district leadership. and i think central office leadership. my questions around resource allocation, making sure that we've got resources aligned. for um, you know, not just talking to this, but actually implementing it appropriately. um, and everyone having the release time needed to participate. right. commissioner fisher, i can speak to just a couple things that maybe we do at presidio. um, we have a really robust, uh, resource program at presidio. um, we offer co-taught classes where where students are receiving specialized academic instruction in math and english.
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um, our our co-teacher is do have the same common planning time as our departments. and so we there's regular time where our resource teachers are collaborating with our math and english teachers. um, really, really happy we were able to do that. and fit that into our master schedule. um, i will also add that, uh, one of the big guiding questions for our science department is how to support students in reading graphs. and so, um, there's definitely that connection constantly. um, and, and similar connections between english and social studies as well. i really want to thank our site leaders for being here and our teacher for being here and presenting. it just makes my heart full of joy. and i just want to speak a little bit to glc since i helped to coordinate that at cleveland. we had that for my last three years there, and it was two and a half to three hours a day. so kindergarten on on mondays for two and a half to three hours
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consecutive time with each other. and i'm just pulling up my old google docs about how we structured that and how just to your point around trusting teachers, the teachers are in it for the right reason. the vast majority of teachers, um, but they need that support and they need that time with each other. and with that time with each other. they need the trust again to do the right thing. and with that time, um, so i would say, and i think we it was brought up with glen park when they were here too, that i think they have a glc component as well. um, that, that is a leverage point. i think that we should be if we're not already really diving deep in that for all of our elementary schools, uh, common planning time, obviously, for middle and high is equally as important that we do that because when especially as we're rolling out new curriculum for math and literacy, we need to have our, our teachers, all of our teachers really trusting the process. and this is one way that's that's motivating and gets buy in. and if done well, we'll get the results we want. so it's not a question. just thank you. um, so i do have a
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question. um, and i want to focus on the elementary, um, principals and um, pick up on the superintendent's comments around creating the conditions for schools, resources, structure and culture. so resources is obviously important . and, um, i think you both mentioned some of the strategies that you use to create at that time during the elementary day, which is more challenging maybe than in middle school. um, you just got some preliminary draft budgets this week with our baseline budgets that are supposed to adhere to our guardrail around resource allocation. and i want to really appreciate the superintendent and staff for getting those draft versions out super early. normally this happens in march, and there's no time to, um, talk about it. so i just want to take advantage of that. and in relation to our resource allocation guardrail, i want to ask about your comments on is your sense that those budgets are are baseline sufficient to operate your school while addressing inequitable inputs and creating more equity and
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excellence in student outcomes, which is our guardrail. and again, related to this work specifically, is it going to positively impact, negatively impact your efforts. um, well, i'll just speak to, um, we were just talking about grade level collaborations in that elementary schools have to think outside the box to create that time. um, and so the way that we do it at muir, and i believe the way that a lot of elementary schools have been doing it is we utilize, um, the time that the students are in art and pe and library to give teachers a 45 minute, twice a week grade level collaboration. so at muir, they have one for ela and one for math. and then we use our wednesday um, early release as a combination of professional development, mainly professional development and some grade level collaboration. but we embed most of the grade level collaboration during the day. um i don't know
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yet how that's going to be possible based off of our current, um, arts librarian and pe allocations, we don't have them enough time to continue it. i haven't played with it enough to see if i could figure it out, but, um, yeah. so there were reductions. you're saying that make it hard? yeah yeah. um, the changes to the library allocation and the arts allocation and the pe allocation are the most impactful for the grade level collaboration. for sure. and i think in terms of other things, we take the approach. i think that we know that coaches jobs are to work themselves out of a job. right. and so we like i really think right now the thing that we're most grappling with is just how to make sure that that grade level collaboration time is maintained. it's so vital. and we've been working really hard on using our coaching staff to support teacher leaders, to step up and support their grade levels and facilitate a lesson
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study team. and we know that over time, we can do that. the kind of shock of seeing it happen, like, right now is, has been a lot to kind of wrap our heads around and figure out, but we're committed to the work moving forward and this is helpful feedback as we figure out the budgeting. i mean, i will say at the systems level, we did commit to at elementary coach positions. so that's one that, um, um, you know, that's a typically has been up to the discretion of the school or maybe part of an mts allocation, but schools still had choices, i think in these other areas that's as we go through the process of the budget development and then what we are challenged, you know, we are both, i guess, challenging. i'll put it in the affirmative, challenging our schools to do is there's some of what's the what we're allocating. and then there are other funds that are available and doing the same thing we're doing as a district thinking through where, where is the most important area to invest those funds, you know,
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and, and so if a you know, how to support these kind of activity is, um, if a school, you know, uh, uh, when schools, the schools see the value of them to improving, improving instruction. i do think it also goes to back to some of these questions my colleagues asked about systems. right. so like if we think systemically, i guess my question would be kind of like systemic. if we've made a decision, i don't it sounds like this is a draft. so we haven't. but if we made a decision to cut art, pe and libraries that arts that has impact on kids, obviously and services, but it sounds like it also has an impact on teacher collaboration, which i didn't wasn't necessarily obvious to me as someone who hadn't worked in elementary school. so i just think it would be good to hear as we think about the resource allocation question, what's the strategic thinking? not necessarily now, but if that decision goes forward, how are we going to maintain? when we heard tonight that the teacher collaboration is a core part of your strategy on that, right. yeah, yeah, i think the, you
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know, but what i can share is the strategic thinking that we said, not this. yeah, i guess it is strategic thinking, but the budgeting plan was around more staffing to contract. but so then this is why we wanted to get them out early. because what are the implications to doing that. because if you're staffing to the enrollment more it could. we're not intending to cut you know, the slam, but it could result in fewer sections available that then make. and that's what it sounds like at least at these two schools happening. then that's what can make it challenging to organize this. i have like a string of questions, sort of, um, you you mentioned that you used to work at burton. um, how transferable do you think this work is to the high school level? and if it is transferable to, like, a good extent, how how soon do you
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think it would be reasonable to expect the district to push for that? i love talking about my time as a teacher at burton. um burton has a seven period day, so it makes it offers a ton of different opportunities for students. um, really want to highlight just all of the different career technical pathways that burton offers as well as many of our other high schools. um, when i joined the burton faculty in 2014, we had common planning time embedded in the day. and so we spent a ton of time, you know, in, in whole departments, in curricular teams . i taught everything from algebra one through the pre-calculus, compression course. um, i always had somebody to work with. it made our lives easier in terms of planning and implementation. um, what are some of our partners said about, you know, really strengthening the curriculum, taking what we had and really finding ways to supplement it, right, to provide extra practice for students. um to make things more relevant. when we needed
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to, we had the opportunity to do that because of common planning time. um, i took a lot of those ideas to presidio. um, when we began to engage in this process, i was really, really excited. um, because i just said, hey, this is we could do something similar. um, and we were able to do that. and so i think it's absolutely transferable. um, i leave it up to the superintendent, however, to, to figure out the system to make that happen. and then kind of adding on to that, this is something that a lot of high school students are concerned with. is part of that common planning time able to be used or like has it been used to have deadline alignment to ensure that like really big deadline lines aren't happening all at the same time? that was something we worked on. i remember 2016 was a really big year where grade level teams, um , got to meet up a little bit and we talked about how to
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support students. um, developed sort of a focal student list. some things that we do at presidio as well. um, and yeah, absolutely. talking about when we talk about tests, um, how, how, how we don't want to, you know, schedule social studies, history, english, math at the same time. absolutely. okay. and then last is specifically focused towards, um, john muir because, because, um, i've gone to a mix of, like, primarily white institutions and then like majority minority institutions. so what was your sense of belonging like before for a lot of this, um, common planning work and then how did you see it change. um. i'm trying to think how i want to. as a principal, i've been principal for five
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years at muir, and i was a teacher prior to that, so i've been there a while. um, and i don't know exactly if this. i do think this speaks to a sense of belonging, because i think if students feel physically and intellectually safe and they feel cared for, for, um, they can focus on on making friends and they're learning and what's for lunch that day and they're not in a fight or flight mode. and so at muir, we my first year as principal, um, i did a lot of behavior calls, a lot of splitting up of fights. i'm just i'm being transparent. um there were a lot of black students out of the classroom. there were a lot of black students in my office, and that that's not the case anymore. um i assume that that means that they feel a better sense of belonging at that site. um students rarely get sent to my office. students are rarely out of the classroom
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anymore. um, they seem really happy. they seem joyful. um, but i don't have, like, data in front of me to name that. i can precisely say that they have a higher sense of belonging, but from like, my perspective of the person that has the kids sent to their office, there's been a dramatic change. do you think there's room within common planning. time to do parts of that equity work that a lot of people have been working towards and has that been implemented to any extent? yeah, that's a great question. so this year we started having two, uh, research questions. so we have an academic focused research question. and we have a equity research question. our equity research question this year is whose voices are we uplifting and honoring in the class when we teach and then in public lessons? technically, when we teach the lesson and we observe each other, we bring in an outside specialist. and we've always brought in a math content specialist. and this year we're
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also working with a professor out of san jose state that is focused on ethnic studies and english language learners. and he's going to do knowledgeable other common theory and help us like unpack what he saw in relation to our english language learners and our african american learners. and that equity question around whose voice are we uplifting and honoring? yeah, of course. thank you. to our site leaders and to our educator for being here tonight. um, i have a question for principal chou. particularly, i'm honing in since my colleagues have asked about the elementary cohort. um, similar to the elementary cohort and what we've heard, the benefits when your cross collaborating across sites and might be cross collaborating across the city. um, kevin, if you can share on opportunities that you think either, um, are occurring or could be occurring between the middle school cohort
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because some editorial from my perspective, i would love to learn more about the opportunities around the middle school as specifically around this math. um, goal and what we're seeing in, in, um, the audit, what we're hearing directly from students and their families and their experience overall. so i'd like to just give you a chance to share. i want to echo something that devin just devin's here. um, devin talked a lot about central pd and that third wednesday of the month being dedicated to, um, teacher teams coming together across sites, um, all of our math teachers for example, attend those central pd to talk about, um, instruction. and lately dreambox, um, we are also part of an ell curriculum rollout. um, we're piloting the new, uh, ela curriculum for grade six through eight. and so that's another opportunity where
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our team of teachers goes every third wednesday to, i believe, 2020 fifth. um to all the same place. and they, they come together, um, i also want to speak to my own experience as a teacher, you know, being able to cross collaborate. but, um, i was part of a of an early, complex instruction cohort, which is the set of practices that that are meant to really interrupt status in the classroom, especially in the math classroom. um, and it provides structures that really help students develop those math practices that we talked about earlier. um i really i felt like i had i had the opportunity to grow my practice through those cross site cohorts . um, i know that it's not always available. i know that it's not what it used to be. um, but when i came to presidio, you know, complex instruction was something that i really. i was a big proponent of, um, and made sure that our entire department was trained. so our entire department is trained. um, i would love to send i would love
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to send my department back to complex instruction cohort to do things like video study. um to do things like doing math together, finding opportunities in the curriculum to write, create multiple access points for students, things like that. thank you. and i'll just comment. i raised this amongst my colleagues and to the superintendent. we through these workshops, we get to learn and go a little bit deeper about the bright spots. but i think one thing that we're have so much growth in is the scale. like, how are we going to scale, how are we going to monitor? and this is why we've built in this governance approach, um, student outcomes governance. so i think that's a continued question on a really how we're going to be able to scale this. and retain it over time. and i think i'm leaving here like really being reflective. i feel like what's actually coming out of this workshop, i'm going to add on to what you're saying is, how do we
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scale in a way that supports the kind of teacher learning and ultimately student learning that we see is necessary. and so, you know, hearing from our teacher, we hear, you know, so we like one of the ways we're scaling. we're trying something new is having this district wide district aligned professional development. so i think as the system leaders, we all see the appeal in that, because when we talk about having some common practices across the school that that accomplishes that, but how are we doing it in a way that, as you said, doesn't, you know, isn't just come to this meeting and learn one more thing to do, but we're here, you know, come to this meeting because we collectively care about our students math progress in this case. and particularly, um, you know, the students who have not served well. and how do we explore this tool together. and so figuring out at scale that creates that engagement and commitment is what i'm leaving here is, is we're going to have, you know, we continue to have to think through that kind of top down, bottom up or bottom up,
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top down approach, where to find that that balance. and i would also just name kind of what i'm hearing around. the power is also. so when it comes as a complete school site environment and so some of the discussion tonight has been about the educators in the individual classrooms. but that's one of my question around the middle school cohort is around the identity that it is happening as a school culture and i think that's where we've we've heard tonight. we've heard time and time again, both at the student level and at the site level, that that's where, um, that joy, that engagement, that influence really happens. so i think when i say to scale, not to scale for scalability, but scale at like as like the entire school community, we. um, is all right. if this is the last question and. okay. and it actually and i was our next agenda item is our board eval and when this the
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this, um, exchange made me think about one of the things that we're asked to do as we approach student outcomes focused governance and start to master, that is how we recognize the accomplishments of students and staff regarding progress towards goals and interim goals. um, and i, i part we intentional. we brought you all as representatives of the um you know, math educators who have really gone above and beyond to identify where there are gaps, how we how we want to serve our students, what our students are capable and also fostering, um, a environment of learning in the whole school. and the other thing i'd like to thank staff for part of part of why we knew to invite you and particular presidio is because we now are starting to look at data and see
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where we do see those bright spots and to exhibit curiosity about what is happening there. and how we can learn from you, as opposed to one way communication at you. when you are mandated to go to a particular room on a particular day. and so as we scale and are looking to because we do want to have standard experiences, you know, we want to have an experience where if a student needs to leave john muir for whatever reason and go to another elementary school in our district, that they're going to have a same great experience and be able to walk into that classroom prepared and understanding what is happening. um, and so but fostering the two way communication, not just within school sites or within departments, but with the district. so that, um, we are as we monitor, we're getting feedback about how a pilot is rolling out what you like about it, what where there are gaps that you need extra support and so forth. so, um, i know i'm
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personally interested in that. and i'm wondering, superintendent, if you have, um, thoughts of how that is as we scale and how that two way community is already being built out or, um, you know, how you intend to hold to, um, both. you know, the guardrail around curriculum instruction and also around baseline allocation as well as achieving these goals? yeah yeah. and i think, um, we, we, i think what we're doing with the literacy pilot is a curriculum pilot is a good example where we're getting the feedback from the teachers about how, you know, how it's working and what support will be needed for that. and i think, you know, model using that as a model as we move forward with other areas is will be important. and then i do think the other area, uh, particularly around the curriculum instruction guardrails, like, you know, we
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collect data, data from our surveys, we're expanding that and like, you know, that and that's where we get the system wide feedback. and then following up with that on on the, um, you know, hearing from our sites about, okay, we're seeing this, then how do we adjust what we're doing to, um, to be able to get that buy in or make sure it's being responsive to the needs? there was a question about what to. oh, yeah. sorry, cutesy excuse. we use so many acronyms and that's the quality teacher education act. and it's a survey we do. but our rpa team has expanded it to try to get us more information during the year. so we know how how things are going . well with that, i would close out this agenda item unless there's anybody who would like to make some parting remarks and say, thank you very much for taking time. yeah. yeah. thank
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you to our school leaders. and i do want to thank our district leadership team. you know, they, uh, you saw the same team here for literacy and math and but in the audience, too, we have, uh, you know, curriculum and instruction leaders, lead leaders. and just thank you for, for all your efforts to make this a system wide effort. thank you. yes um. it was a two hour conversation. all right, i know. okay so this one, i'm going to make a little. and vice president alex sander, if you would tell me if this is comfortable for you because you and i talked about this agenda item. so when we put. at the end. yeah yeah. and i said that, yeah, i sent that a couple different times. so public comment will come at the end for both agenda items. um, board eval. we are suggested to do this quarterly. um, but that does not mean we're going to go through the exhaustive like go over all the points and all of
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this. what we were thinking of doing is going through and really pulling out the places where we've made progress and areas we want to focus and identify. if there's priorities. there was also an email that was sent to you all from aj earlier today that contains very similar information. and so i frankly would be fine pushing out to that a little bit and shortening this discussion to an extent. but um, that said, if you do have your, um, your governance framework, um, sheets, we can can just really quickly go through and highlight, um, and you may have already done this before, um, highlight progress or areas of next steps and this isn't, you know, i think we've, we have accomplished a lot since the last. so does that make sense to you, vice president alexander, are you fine with that? um yeah, i'll just add on.
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i mean, when we were in agenda review, we knew, you know, these are these workshops are, uh, substantive discussions and there's only, um, but it just it did feel important to at least publicly share how we are looking at this. and you people might not have picked up on it, but what commissioner fisher is doing is tracking our conversation and just, you know, really being transparent about our efforts to, uh, continue to implement the council of great city schools student outcome focused governance framework. right. it's been over a year and an and i appreciate that this is not like, okay, we did that. now let's move on. but i agree i think and as one who supports the governance team, maybe just everybody sharing one, i don't even need to go through the presentation. you saw the materials, but like one area where you feel like, oh, we've made progress. and then one area, um, for, for growth. and then with board leadership, we can determine how to integrate that into, into our meetings and the other practices we have. okay. i like that. so if people
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are prepared, we could go round robin or i could add, um, i could kick us off with some some positives or. take it away. okay all right. um, so, so we okay. so i'm just going to really quickly vision and vision and goals. we've gone we have adopted most everything that we've set out to do in there. we still have work to do around smart goals. um we values and um values and guardrails. we are working on here. let me i did make notes and i am pivoting a little bit. so hold on just a second. we've gone through the guardrail process. the areas that i were i was more focused on was really, um, highlighting
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that we are tracking time more regularly and there are last two meetings. commissioner fischer has been tracking time. and at our 1st february meeting, we'll have a report out about that. um, we have this is an easy one, but we have really good attendance. guys um, we also, though, had the ethics and conflicts, um, ad hoc committee that and we adopted and signed, um, those at the last meeting. we have um, the big deltas that i see. um, and again, we can circle back to this, um, in other ways and through our communications with aj, are really around community engagement. we did see in the presentation, um, that's attached to this agenda, that there has been big improvements in our use of board meeting time and having these monitoring sessions. um, but i think that, in my opinion, there are ways to improve how we do our public
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facing community engagement. we have gone out and had those. but i think there's time for reflection on how we want to do those better. um and, and i'm going to leave it at that and let other people bubble up. what they've seen from our last, um, our last time doing this and a full scoring. oh yeah. i think that last discussion showed a lot of progress, at least from what i've been able to see. i think, like everybody kept their time, like commenting and questions like to a reasonable extent. and also like everybody was very effective, like following the guidelines for effective question asking like with their stuff. um, in including me, like specifically as a student delegate, um, like
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getting those guidelines was helpful. and i think like that discussion in and of itself was a vast improvement. and it might have helped that we had like really great people answering questions. um, i think that's that's a good, positive. agreed. um, i think obviously you were mentioning the time spent on student outcomes is that is a positive. obviously, if going from. 5.7% to 31.7% from last year to this, or 2223 to 2324, i think that that's a very obvious improvement. obviously we want to get to 50% plus, um, and then you mentioned kind of our, our outreach going into the community and presenting on our governance, etc. math attendance and literacy and college and career readiness. we're in the middle of that. but i feel that because we haven't been unable
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for myriad reasons, to attract the kind of attendance that we need, that it's i'm glad you said like it's we need to reflect and figure out, you know , what we can do. if anything, i'm hoping we can to make sure that we are attracting not just more people from our community, but and not the right people, but people that you know, are the parents and guardians of our students. we've we've seen that we do. and i value it too. we it's a lot of nonprofit folks that are coming out that partner with our district. and that's great. um, and they will continue to come, but we need to reflect and figure out how we can make this worthwhile and get more folks out. i i'm actually very impressed with us as a whole. um, for our how align we've been to student outcomes,
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to holding ourselves accountable to it as a group. i have to say, i appreciate how boring we've made these meetings in so many ways. so thank you all for that. um, um, and i hope when we do our full evaluation, we will get a higher score than zero. i think the work we've put in will definitely get us to a higher score than zero this time. so yay! we can't go down. um, i think my specific one, we look at the rubric here, um, some of my specific quick comments and areas. uh aspirationally. where i would like to see us do some work this year. um, uh, looking at the vision and or the values and the guardrails, i'm not sure that all of our interim guardrails are predictive of their respective guardrails. so i think we have some i would love to see us have some more conversations. there from community engagement. i think this is district work, um, leadership work as well as board work, you know, aligned around what an overarching, um,
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community engagement strategy looks like. you know, especially i, i mean, i'm really proud of us for, um, scheduling community feedback sessions, but when we have six people showing up based on the amount of work that our district staff has put into, you know that i don't think that's a the best use of everyone's time. how do we reach more people more effectively? um, you know, after all, our job is to reflect back the what the values of the community. so we've got to hear those values from the community. right as far as the monitoring calendar goes, i'd love to see us. you know, there's a lot of there's a lot that we need to be monitoring from a governance standpoint. and i'm not sure that one workshop session a month does that. so coming up with, you know, maybe some other not necessarily more meetings, but, you know, some interim reports between meetings, you know, some more public facing
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documents that not just shows us as a, as a board, but also helps build trust in the community by sharing more of the work that we're doing in a public facing way. um, we've heard time and time again that we have a lot of trust building to do. um, within the community. so um, and just the, the communication and collaboration are consent agenda is getting better. um, but holy guacamole, it's still a beast. um, i don't know if for our contracts, especially some of our really meaty contracts, there's some way to put an executive summary in there so that not only do we understand them better, but the public and anyone who's interested and really understands, like, you shouldn't have to get to page 85 before you understand what the contract is really about. um, uh , i don't know. i mean, i keep some people in business, i guess, but, um, i'd rather it not be that hard. um, and, um.
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so. yeah, just. yeah go us wants to go next. um. or did you. yeah. you meant. um yes. i tend to agree that i think we are, um , have leaned into the growth mindset and are willing to hold ourselves accountable and be really honest when we're not where we want to be, and then push ourselves to be better. um, and i also agree that we, um, there's we have a lot of, of growth to continue to do. i think where um, i think that we probably see, at least from my perspective, have the most growth is i think, consistent with others around the community and collaboration. and i don't know that it's necessarily for lack of trying, but it's, um, we need to meet folks where they are in a meaningful way and engage in conversations that, um, are welcomed. and, um, you useful. so thinking about the
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content and the how and the why and the when and the where. um, yeah, that would be, i think, where, where i would want to see us to probably grow the most at this point. yeah, i think i'd echo a lot of the statements that other commission hours, um, have said. i think we've made a lot of progress, but i think still a little bit more progress to move forward. and i think a lot of this is us demonstrating to the rest of staff and to the district, to the san francisco community, um, that we are committed to improving and that we aren't satisfied with our status quo or the other status quo in the district. and so i think the fact that we've been modeling that has been really helpful and that as we continue to push forward, we'll continue to improve. um, but those are, i think the key things i would say that are echoing what everyone else has lifted up. uh, check. do you want to. i wanted to raise, um, the work that i think
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we need to deepen on for vision and goals is, um, particularly looking at our interim goals while we have set major goals, we know that we are far off track on a couple of them. and i think it's worth, as a board and talking with the superintendent around as part of monitoring what's realistic. certainly, i think the board was being responsive to what we heard directly in community. now that we've had about 18 months under our belt, so to speak. um, we have some clear, um, of the ending point. and just from like tonight's discussion, right. as an example, we are far off track. but at the same time, we
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want to celebrate the progress that we are making. um but also the acceleration that are necessary. so i think that's going to be worth some further discussion. i also want to, um, raise that we don't have, um, monitoring of all of our interim goals, including my fake one, even though we're not supposed to have favorites, strategic partnerships, guardrail number five has not been, um, included in our governance calendar. as an example and just deepen kind of the fidelity around, um, the goals and guardrails monitoring. um i agree, there's a lot of a lot of where i'm personally digging in is on the monitoring and accountability work. and, um
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, one of the things that board leadership is working on right now is developing a monitoring calendar that will include operational and compliance components, as well as goals and guardrails and add clarify board responsibilities. so that's a big part of why we're having this conversation today. um, and asking for increase ist, um, engage with aj around governance , training and governance resources. this is to help us, um operationalize the work that we're doing and keep track of all the things that we want to keep track of. um on on a bright spot. we're also looking i couldn't find it in here. i know it's in here, but we are looking to post our goals and guardrails and interim progress publicly here in this room. as a reminder of where we are and the progress we are making and want to make. so, you know, really being
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helping to do the work. um, as our student delegate was saying, of keeping us anchored on what it is that we are here to do. um, so, so. yeah. i think two areas where i feel like there's room for growth. one one is the accessibility of the meetings themselves in terms of like the content. i'm like, for example, this is like a very picky thing, but it's just an example. like when i'm looking at these two graphs, i just don't know why the color changed of like each section, like it makes it like really as like for example, i can attest, like as somebody with like a developmental disability, like it's i'm like immediately lost and i think that that's something we need to consider considering. like the student population who might want to engage. and then also know adult populations. and i think part of that is the
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language that we use sometimes i hear a lot of really big words and acronyms that either like it's s, it's it can be more considerate to just like you use an acronym and then you just say what the acronym is, or there are some words that can just be replaced with simpler words. it's something that like we get taught in ap language, in composition, where it's like, you don't need to use the biggest word you can think of. it is like it's usually easier and like more persuasive if you just use the word that you mean. and then i think that kind of ties into community engagement. i feel in these workshop meetings, we feel a lot more productive than when then in the regular board meetings, because there we can see visibly how our community is feeling very unseen and unheard, and even with the amount of time we spend with
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public comment, they still feel unheard. and i think that that is a deficit. and putting a lot of work. i don't know if that's necessarily i don't know where that work lies or with who, but i think there is a lot of it does lie with us as board members. how we can engage with the specific communities that feel unseen. um, that's a very large and daunting task. but i think we can put more work to our immediate community, just like there feelings. instead of being completely, not completely, instead of being more numbers focused. i think there can be more. for example, like sense of belonging as a statistic. um i agree with pretty much everything everybody's been saying, and i've been taking notes also. um, the only thing i might add is,
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um. well, maybe commissioner fisher said it, or maybe you're just doing it, which is the monitoring, the question monitoring and time monitoring. i think, which i think we're on our way to doing, but it's something i feel like i want to get better at. and i think, um, especially the question part of like, how do we keep i agree with i think you said that we did a better job tonight, and i think we really did. and i think just keeping up with that work so that we're modeling and creating the kind of space we want to create. um, but yeah, so in terms of process, we the, um, president muhammadu and i were going to take these and, um, reflect back. uh, well, we already have some pieces of it and we'll get it out and then we want to also encourage our colleagues to, to tell us what they're interested in working on , and that each of you hopefully will want to work on something. one of these pieces. and we can
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then think about structuring some some ad hoc committees. right. i don't know if there's more you. uh, basically taking the feedback and the work that we want to do and figuring out how to put it into bite size pieces, whatever that may look like. um and so that's the homework that, uh, vice president alexander and i committed to doing. so so and, um, expressing your interests and volunteering is welcome. or, you know, it's great if you just hang back and then just want us to volunteer. you um, that's that's an option as well. so um, anyway, but thank you, i think. yeah. this is really just a check in board eval and, um, at the six month mark, we'll do a deeper dive. um, but the quarterlies are just kind of progress monitoring, and, you know, the door is open to if you, whenever you want to have these conversations. and with that, i'm ready to close out this agenda item and then move into public comment. um, how many cards do we have? judson we
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have five for in-person. okay, so we'll do in person here. and then move to online. great thank you. so everyone who gave me a card come in. line up right now. supriya, ray jeff lucas, patrick, wolf. michael, wait. do we want to take a we usually move to do. yeah i'm sorry. yeah yeah. let us sorry. yeah. let us move so we can actually see you. and you don't. you're not talking to people's backs. sorry about that. thank you for your patience. please tell me what you .
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okay so i'm sorry. you can come up now. other folks are called supriya, jeff, patrick, michael and meredith. one minute each. uh, president motamedi one minute each. yeah. sounds great. great. whenever you're ready. thanks. hi um, supriya, ray and i want to thank you all for holding this, um, meeting, both for monitoring the math outcomes and for monitoring board governance. it's such such a great thing that we're doing these things that nobody was engaging in even a couple of years ago. so i thank you for
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doing that. um, one point i really wanted to emphasize is high expectations. tnp has repeatedly, both in the literacy and math audits, now, talked about how important expectations are. and i find it really distressing that in both audits, uh, tnp found that many, many teachers did not have high expectations for their students with that sort of viewpoint, it's not surprising that, you know that students aren't necessarily doing well in classes. and interestingly, tnp pointed out that high expectations was actually the biggest factor actor in terms of improving the performance of students who started out substantially below average. so i just wanted to say i think that is something to keep in mind and something we should look at why that is the case and how to change that. thank you. good evening, i'm jeff lucas. um teaching and learning is both an art and a science. tonight we
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heard from a lot of what i would portray as artists who are perfecting their craft and being great teachers and leaders, but the science part is building a better system, a system that works without a lot of personal ingenuity and leadership. but that works across the system. uh, one example that we did in october is we looked at a root cause analysis for attendance and came up with a great strategy and a fishbone diagram for attendance. and we haven't done that for math. where is the root cause analysis for math? two specific things haven't been mentioned tonight that might lead into that is one is attendance. we know attendance affects outcomes, but there's no mention of that in the tnt report. they don't look at attendance that could affect student outcomes. and that could get tied into the math goal. the second one is pacing. how much curriculum do students actually complete in a year? in a year of content? my experience is they don't get a full year of instruction. thank you. hi. good
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evening, patrick wolff. i have two comments to make. i'll try to be succinct. uh, the first is i think we could benefit quite a lot from more aggressively looking at other districts. we believe are high performing, um, and trying to learn from them. long beach, for example, is a district we like to compare ourselves to. why don't we invite them down here? we could make a trip to long beach. it's not tokyo, i understand, but it's fairly. it's fairly, um, nearby. um, and on a serious note, i think it would be very good culturally for us to check our egos at the door and learn as much as we possibly can from districts we think are doing well. the second point i'll make briefly, i want to amplify what jeff just said about attendance before the pandemic. our chronic absentee ism levels among black and brown students were as much as 50% higher than the california average. and post pandemic, it's a calamity and i
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think we should really be exerting as much energy as possible as we can on that across it will affect all different subjects. thank you. uh. good evening, i'm mikhail, thank you all for your work and your service here. um delegate simpson brought up retention in math as a challenge for students . i think that's a common problem in math. and it's specifically in math. a challenge because math builds so much from year to year over the curriculum. and that's probably related to the drop off between third and eighth grade and the meeting standard percentages. uh, this also, um, this challenge amplifies inequity because those, uh, kids who forget stuff they learned or didn't quite absorb it can get help from parents at home or from other resources they have. unless they don't. and uh, um, and so it's sad, but not surprising that this problem was worse in the communities of concern. um there's also an assessment gap between third and eighth grade. um and, uh,
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retention isn't something in the audit, and it's not something that's emphasized in the curriculum or that teachers have explicit time for. we trust the teachers, and we have to create opportunities for them to do this work. thank you. hi. good evening, meredith dodson with san francisco parent coalition. we advocate for excellent, equitable public schools. um, there was a lot of great discussion tonight. it was great to hear about the bright spots again from muir and presidio, um, schools that are beating the odds and showing what's possible for our students and simultaneous, we can't turn away from the significantly off track . um, and i don't think that we heard enough in terms of solutions and what we're doing and how we're reaching each and every child, each and every student who's behind, um, falling further behind, about to fall behind. what is the plan? we don't have one. um, it's great to plan ahead. it's great to hear about the bright spots.
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we know we need to get more of those bright spots out there and heard by the community. um, but also each and every one of those students deserves your attention. you're accountable to them. and you're accountable for a solution to meet all of their needs. and i don't think there are enough solutions. um, being offered tonight. um, so please do better. we're looking to you. thanks thank you. that concludes in person. we currently have two hands raised for virtual. one minute each. okay. at this time we will hear public comment from our virtual participants. each speaker will have one minute. can we please have that repeated in spanish and chinese? mr. cada persona tendra derecho a un minuto. muchas gracias. chinese hai hai. a motion. now, uh, you
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can. go. thank you. thank you. so i see aaron brandy and vanessa. um, we'll start with aaron and aaron. you'll have one minute to speak. yes thank you. my name is aaron from parents for public schools of san francisco. and i really appreciate what what the auditors presented and the inputs and the teachers on how this, um, decision on changing algebra is working. um, one question i have is how has the dreambox program been assessed for accessibility for students who are blind or visually impaired, or students who may have, uh, mobility issues with their hands for typing and needing to use different software programs that are not always compatible with different
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programs. they might be, um, excelling in math, but not being able to use that specific program or application of dreambox. thank you. thank you. brandy. brandy markman. um i'm a public school parent. we are the san francisco education alliance . um, a while ago wrote a statement about dreambox, how we really need teachers working with our students instead of silicon valley. editor uh, edtech funded programs. um, i'm also a former teacher, so i work with adults. i worked with adults most of them quoted by initial local just about billionaire billionaire money in schools. uh keep in mind that tntp is funded by charter school billionaires, was founded by michelle rhee, who was behind
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the documentary the anti-union anti-teacher documentary waiting for superman. i just also want to talk about three of the public commenters we had who are connected with sf guardians family for san francisco and the s.f. parent coalition, all backed by charter school billionaires. either mark arthur rock and or michael moritz. so, um, i just hope everybody keeps that in mind when, um, when they're listening to public commenters is that there's a lot of billionaire pro privatization school money. um, that has been thank you. brandy, i'm so sorry to have to interrupt you. that is your time. thank you. vanessa . hi. good evening. can you hear me? yes, we can hear you. thank you. happy new year, everybody. vanessa from parents of public schools of san francisco. i'm a parent of three children, two with ieps and i serve san
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francisco for a number of years. mark sanchez was my principal back in the day. i am excited about all of this, um, strategy, scaffolding, differentiation supports thinking about resources. i'm going to encourage you to have a well delineated plan for target population, such as students with disabilities, students of limited english proficiency, and also african american and latino students. i'm not seeing that. not seeing it doesn't exist. but please have a plan because we don't want these students to get further behind. have a good evening. thank you. and catch. and it's actually kelly from the cac. um, i just wanted to just request beyond dreambox, which is not not all students take to
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it. and please strengthen your tier two and tier three interventions. it's crucial all along with the curriculum changes and also i'd like to know specifics about, uh, specifically what you're doing for students with ieps and monitoring learners. and perhaps the next presentation, because i didn't hear a lot about that. beyond that, thank you very much for your time. thank you. that does conclude our virtual public comment. okay. the meeting is adjourned at 915. meeting is adjourned at 915.
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♪♪ >> san francisco! ♪♪
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>> this is an exhibition across departments highlighting different artworks from our collection. gender is an important part of the dialogue. in many ways, this exhibition is contemporary. all of this artwork is from the 9th century and spans all the way to the 21st century. the exhibition is organized into seven different groupings or themes such as activities, symbolism, transformation and others. it's not by culture or time period, but different affinities between the artwork. activities, for example, looks at the role of gender and how certain activities are placed as feminine or masculine. we have a print by uharo that looks at different activities
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that derisionly performed by men. it's looking at the theme of music. we have three women playing traditional japanese instruments that would otherwise be played by men at that time. we have pairings so that is looking within the context of gender in relationships. also with how people are questioning the whole idea of pairing in the first place. we have three from three different cultures, tibet, china and japan. this is sell vanity stot relevar has been fluid in different time periods in cultures. sometimes being female in china but often male and evoking features associated with gender binaries and sometimes in between. it's a lovely way of tying all
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the themes together in this collection. gender and sexuality, speaking from my culture specifically, is something at that hasn't been recently widely discussed. this exhibition shows that it's gender and sexuality are actually have been considered and complicated by dialogue through the work of artists and thinking specifically, a sculpture we have of the hindu deities because it's half pee male and half male. it turns into a different theme in a way and is a beautiful representation of how gender hasn't been seen as one thing or a binary. we see that it isn't a modest concept. in a way, i feel we have a lot
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of historical references and touch points throughout all the ages and in asian cultures. i believe san francisco has close to 40% asian. it's a huge representation here in the bay area. it's important that we awk abouk about this and open up the discussion around gender. what we've learned from organizing this exhibition at the museum is that gender has been something that has come up in all of these cultures through all the time periods as something that is important and relevant. especially here in the san francisco bay area we feel that it's relevant to the conversations that people are having today. we hope that people can carry that outside of the museum into their daily lives.
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>> the bicycle coalition was giving away 33 bicycles so i applied. i was happy to receive one of them. >> the community bike build program is the san francisco coalition's way of spreading the joy of biking and freedom of biking to residents who may not have access to affordable transportation. the city has an ordinance that we worked with them on back in 2014 that requires city agency
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goes to give organizations like the san francisco bicycle organization a chance to take bicycles abandoned and put them to good use or find new homes for them. the partnerships with organizations generally with organizations that are working with low income individuals or families or people who are transportation dependent. we ask them to identify individuals who would greatly benefit from a bicycle. we make a list of people and their heights to match them to a bicycle that would suit their lifestyle and age and height. >> bicycle i received has impacted my life so greatly. it is not only a form of recreation. it is also a means of getting connected with the community through bike rides and it is also just a feeling of freedom. i really appreciate it. i am very thankful.
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>> we teach a class. they have to attend a one hour class. things like how to change lanes, how to make a left turn, right turn, how to ride around cars. after that class, then we would give everyone a test chance -- chance to test ride. >> we are giving them as a way to get around the city. >> just the joy of like seeing people test drive the bicycles in the small area, there is no real word. i guess enjoyable is a word i could use. that doesn't describe the kind of warm feelings you feel in your heart giving someone that sense of freedom and maybe they haven't ridden a bike in years. these folks are older than the
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normal crowd of people we give bicycles away to. take my picture on my bike. that was a great experience. there were smiles all around. the recipients, myself, supervisor, everyone was happy to be a part of this joyous occasion. at the end we normally do a group ride to see people ride off with these huge smiles on their faces is a great experience. >> if someone is interested in volunteering, we have a special section on the website sf bike.org/volunteer you can sign up for both events. we have given away 855 bicycles, 376 last year. we are growing each and every year. i hope to top that 376 this
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year. we frequently do events in bayview. the spaces are for people to come and work on their own bikes or learn skills and give them access to something that they may not have had access to. >> for me this is a fun way to get outside and be active. most of the time the kids will be in the house. this is a fun way to do something. >> you get fresh air and you don't just stay in the house all day. it is a good way to exercise. >> the bicycle coalition has a bicycle program for every community in san francisco. it is connecting the young, older community. it is a wonderful outlet for the community to come together to have some good clean fun. it has opened to many doors to the young people that will usually might not have a bicycle.
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i have seen them and they are thankful and i am thankful for this program. >> i think a lot of times we get in adult lives we are afraid to follow our passions and think life can't be that easy. but i truly do believe i followed my heart this time in my journal in city government i did not know that is where my passion lied. i kept following it and ltd. to great opportunity to serve the city. [music] >> i'm katy tang the executive director of the office of small business. >> small business contributes to
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san francisco's economy. they provide the bulk of employment in the city and employing a million people in san francisco. and roughly 90% of the businesses are defined as small businesses. so, they contribute to the economy but also just the quality of life. small businesses are more then and there a place of transaction it is a community center. a play where people gather. know each other and form memories about the city. >> at the office of mall business i run a team this helps report all mall businesses in san francisco whether they are looking to stfrt a new business or expand or perhaps they are feeling with issues. our office is here as a point of information for anyone with a business that has 100 or nower employees. >> i was growing up i had many
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ideas of when i wanted to do. i wanted to being an olympic swimmer. and i wanted to men be an architect, you name it i had many ideas for what i wanted do when i grew up. and i never anticipated entering in politics. this opportunity came along wh started working for former supervisor carmen chu and she became the district 4 sunset district supervisor. that was my firstent row in politics and government in a different level. and so when i was finishing up my time working for legislative aid i thought, i will go off and do something else. may be explore opportunity outside of city government what was then approached by this opportunity to also serve as a district 4 supervisor. if not the traditional route that many people think of when
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you enter in politics. a lot know that is manage than i want to do and run for office. that was not part of my culture and upbringing with manage my parents were wondering why i wanted to go in that role this legislation and important because so many women when have it return to work after having a child feel embarrassed or don't feel comfortable asking their supervisor for will any lactation accommodations. i saw it as an opportunity you could use the position where you have tools creating legislation and pass laws and where people listen to to you help the community and pass cause catharsis important to the city and individuals. my family immigrated to the united states from taiwan. and they came here in pronl probably late 20's almost 30.
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and so, they came also in the knowing english limp barely read or write but had to quickly understand english to i can't haveigate services and find a job in america. i grew up in the san francisco sunset district i spent most of my childed hoo up until i went off to college. so when i started working in city government, i think i had mixed reactions about my involvement working government because for some of our parents generation, there is i bit of distrust in government. i think there are questions about why i was entering in this field of work. i think you know when i went in city government i thought about my parents like so many other who is have to navigate city services and resources english first language and help the individuals both navigate,
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intercept that is on an application approximate signage. it is fulfilling to mow to help people like my parent and feel like government is there to support them and not to harm them. my parents are happy that i retired early from politics and being a district 4 supervisor i could have continued on for a couple more years approximate decided to leave early. i think that over all they were able to see some of my work appear in the chinese newspaper. through that they were able to see i was able to help communities in a tangible way. >> the member of the board of supervisors. >> transportation authority. for the city and county of san francisco. congratulations. >> i think about one importance when i was worn in as district 4 supervisor. years ago, and someone actually came up to me during the swear nothing ceremony and said, wow, i'm traveling here from canada,
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and i just i could not believe i saw an asian female worn in in this role a leadership role this meant so much that someone would say that and felt they were inspired by the scene. so -- i hope that as more people see people that look like them and more women coming in positions of leadership than i feel they can doing the same. person this inpyred me is carmen chu who is our city add administrator but also was district 4 supervisor when i worked with her as a legislative aid. at this point, i too, was skeptical of going in politics. i saw someone who had herself never seen herself in politics. got thrown into it and put her heart and soul and dedication to serve people. and it gave me the confidence to pursue that same job and i
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honestly would not have either chosen or accepted or considered serving on the board of supervisors were not for carmen. >> if you want to make your business accessible. >> in my role in city government where i have seen the most challenge is people who don't know you and you are here to serve and help them that they classify you as our city government and here to hurt you. so, people will talk to you and -- and just you know treat you disrespectfully. and sometimes i noticed that they might do more to me as a female compared to my male colleagues. but you know i try to be empathetic. one of the most significant barriers to female empowerment we feel like we have to be 100% meeting all of the qualifications before we think that we are qualified to do a
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job. if we look at a job description or an opportunity to come your way well is self doubt about whether you can fulfill the obligations of that role. i think that the confidence is huge and sometimes i think we make up for it by trying to gain more experience. more and more and more in whatever we can put under our belts we'll feel better. that may not be the case. we might be qualified with when we have already accomplished. i started rock climbing indoors a couple years ago as an activity to try to spends time with my husband and also to try something new and i finds that rock climbing there are so many parallels to life. you know when i'm on the wall i'm concentrating and trying to make it to the next piece
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without falling. there are daying you think i'm not making progress. you come back and wow, i hit another level. and so i feel like in our daily lives and w we think we are not making enough of i change in the city. and sometimes we have to take out time to reflect every day as long as you try and give it your all and you look back you will have made a significant contribution there is no limit to where you go in terms of rock climbing. i want to reminds myself of that in terms of daily life. >> follow what it is you are interested in, what makes you feel excited about wake up every day. you never know and be open to all the possibilities and opportunity. [music]
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>> good morning. welcome to the january 24, 2024 meeting of the budget and finance committee. i'm supervisor chan chair i'm joined by vice chair mandelman. and horly by supervisor melgar. our clerk is brent jalipa i would like to thank sfgov.org for broadcasting the meeting. >>o those in attendance silence electronic device to not interrupt. should you have documents to be included as part of the