>> we

>> good evening, commissioners in. we have have lengthy powerpoint. we will try to get through it as quickly as we can to save questions. we also want to thank our community partners and our parent partners for all of their hard work for -- their hard work was greatly appreciated and at times they took a beating but always kept smiling and kept a positive attitude so we definitely appreciate their hard work. what we would like to do is give you some updates regarding the assignment in the quality middle school path way as you have already heard, there has been a lot of information that has come from the community and what we would like to do is starting on that, in your power point o page 12 is where we're going to start talking a little bit about

the staff's recommendations and where it was going from here. so on page 12, community forums, as i dimensioned there was an extremely collaborative effort between the parent advisory count. >> we're kind of overwhelmed with a lot of different -- >> sure. sorry. >> right. informational updates. thank you for the clarification. again, our collaborative efforts with the parents advisory council, the public schools, middle school principals and everyone that was involved to gather input in the appendix you'll see the final presentation for community forums and what that looks like. the community forums also were a forum for clarifying questions from various forums regarding the middle schools, language

pathways and we have addressed many of those questions. also there is a document attached in the appendix. a common theme is that patterns are a good concept in families want quality schools. some questions that linger are what is the district's plan to develop quality middle schools and what is the connection between the quality middle school and feeder patterns? what we would like to do is give you some information along that regard. the outcomes for this presentation are to first and foremost discuss what the district's vision in developing quality middle schools, what that vision is, review and discuss inventory, you'll see a chart, it is very small print. we also want to discuss the district's plan to improve

middle schools and review how a feeder pattern affects quality middle schools and a staff proposal -- what are the characteristics of quality middle school? at this point ilt like to ask superintendent to take us through the next few slides and then i'll come back. >> thank you department superintendent. superintendent garcia and commissioners, good evening, i also want to thank our partners, for all of their hard work in terms of coordinating and helping to facilitate the community forum for the past few months. what are the characteristics of a quality middle school? i surveyed all the middle school principals. i'm not going to go through

every bullet but the middle school principal is saying that in quality middle schools, happy and joyful learners in the schools. they are supporting students to maximize their individual potential, helping students and parents nation transition from the elementary on to high school. a quality middle school is always on the continual path of reflection and self improvement. committed to serving all students as they come to us. that's for my middle school principles. believe it or not, we do have a vision for our middle school in the san francisco unified school district. some may seem very familiar to you. according to the national middle school association, successful schools for young adolescents provide the following curriculum that is relevant and rigorous.

that there is a variety of teaching strategies to help students learn. that there is informative and -- that would tell us what students are learning or not learning. structures in place that support meaningful relationships and learning and that there is policies that foster health, wellness and safety. and the support services and guidance for all students to help them be empowered and prepared for high school and beyond. i also want to say that the district is committed to ensuring that -- in all of our middle schools. we have already embarked on this journey of improvement but incorporating the

recommendations from the findings and you'll see these attachments in the handoff here. one is from the california department of education, 12 recommendations for middle grade success and from the framework taking center stage. act two, secondly we used recommendations from the stanford university study gaining ground in the middle grades and why some schools do better. our mission is that we are determined to help middle school educators ensure success and to close the achievement gap for every middle school student. the department superintendent pointed to that huge chart there. that is the inventory matrix of a working draft, includes effort and i.s.a. on this matrix as

everything you wanted to know about middle schools and more. and so -- we described at the community forum. from that work, we developed an inventory of the current conditions in our middle schools. what i can say is that all the middle schools in our district offer the following. five core classes. at least one elective course and the elective courses are determined by historical choice patterns, student demand and the slight capacity to maintain that program and our english learners may not have an opportunity to take an elective because of the massive schedule and resources at the site. currently we do have language programs at three middle

schools. hoover, james -- and everett. in terms of english language development, each school site places english learners into e.l.d. classes by their self-levels. all gate items by students are served in middle schools in hom genius or heterogenius groupings. currently staff have begun using mass assessments or measure of academic progress. this is our induction year. g, i want to just point out i.s.a. it is a 6-12 school currently under the super vision of the high school area team but they do receive some support from the middle school area team.

h. incoming student achievement levels. we have done a lot of research in terms of our incoming sixth graders. a good percentage are identified as far below basic and basic on math. and those charts are also as -- located as handouts for e.l.a. and math. measure of performance -- there are formative assessments. the district developed formative assessments. >> district -- formative assessments aligned to state

standards. so we do have a strategic plan to improve the middle schools, again using the findings from gaining ground in the middle grades and the recommend tations, the following are the components of our strategic plan to improve all middle schools along with high leverage actions that currently are being implemented. number one, a school wide focus on improving academic outcomes. we have already implemented online support programs in all of our middle schools for students coming into sixth grade, who are below proficient in mathematics to they will be ready to take algebra.

>> just quickly -- i can't find where it is. >> the handout. that's correct. >> achievement levels? >> that's correct. >> thank you. >> so again, administering math assessments for e.l.a. and math. number two, criminal lunchtime closely in line with academic standards. we are going to be implementing the common core curriculum in e.l.a. and math and making sure that all the middle schools are implementing the math assessments in the current school year. enhance post secondary opportunities for our students and such programs as a.c.t.

explorer. and we are -- generation. number three, the use of assessments and other data to improve student learning and teacher practice is very important. we have a list of all the different informative and substantive assessments administered to our middle school students to individualize and differentiate instruction. and number four, emphasis our early identification, address student's academic needs. as students come into middle school, we need to make sure we know who they are. we need to look at all of their data, in a record that will help us to develop support plans for our students who need that support and they are called

individual learning plans and that is already in place in the middle schools. number five, recognize that it is really important for our teachers and principals that they have opportunities or times to talk about the best practices, to talk about student achievement so everybody middle school right now has common planning time and from the common planning time we're going to be growing our professional learning communities to really look at data, again, looking at student work, looking at best practices. we'll have a plan for next year, -- we will continue the provide support for our administrative teams at all the middle schools. number six, recognizing that the leadership of the superintendent and support from the district are strongly associated with hire student outcomes. the strategic plan really, i was

going to include a slide on scorecards. that provides a road map for the work that we are currently doing right now this year. so we definitely have very high expectations for our -- all of our schools. in terms of meeting those outcomes. seventh. >> clarify. >> uh-huh. >> you don't mean every three years. you queen quarterly, three times a year. >> -- you mean quarterly, thr times a year. >> yes. thank you. i'm glad you guys are alert. that was just a test. ok. >> so we meet quarterly. so number seven, recognize the role of principal is critical in any school's success as an

instructional leader of that school and so how we're going to continue to provide support and coaching for our principals and assistant principals is going to be evidenced by their leadership action plan, the school balance scorecard, principal expectations. all of these documents are going to be in line with the strategic plan that i'm presenting tonight and then lastly, we're going to continue as a district to recruit and retain highly qualified teachers in our school districts. we recognize that teachers are critical to the work that we're doing so that we can have those student outcomes and teachers are currently using student data to improve learning. they do have knowledge of the

state standards and more so when we have the common core curriculum in a k-12 for next year that they do have strong subject knowledge and they really enjoy teaching at middle schools. that is really important. to understand the whole adolescent development issue. that concludes our strategic plan. i just have to preface by saying that the working draft, whether you pass the feeder patterns or not, we have work to do and we will continue the do that work to close the achievement gap in the middle schools. thank you. >> i want to ask whether you would like to have discussion -- i know it might be difficult for the public. be happy to welcome public testimony if people actually want to comment on the presentation that was just made and not on the feeder patterns.

if you want to talk about the feeder patterns, you might wait until we talk about that. this was a lot of very dense stuff. the board wants to ask questions or have discussions about this, i think we should do it now. unless anybody objects. we'll do it now. i prefer that we just do this, just what was presented by the staff basically, middle school plans, but if you -- then we'll talk about the staff recommendations for the feeder, for the student assignment and then we can have testimony what everybody came to talk about. commissioner norton? >> i think my question mainly is the -- where are we with

implementing these specific steps that you have outlined. you know, i have to say it is sort of strains credibility to me that we have all of these things in emplementation at every single middle school. i know you don't want to call out specific schools to go to that level of detail but really where are we with these steps in general? system-wise? >> i think they are at varying levels throughout the 11 middle school sites currently supervised but the gaining grounds in middle grades, we have been using that as i work this entire school year. it really is happening in our middle schools. every middle school has to document. we reference that at all of our

principal meetings and eplc's. there is not one principal who should not be familiar with the work that we're doing here. i am actually going to be convening their leadership conferences starting this week and that is going to be part of their evaluation. >> if it is possible to share with the board in a confidential way where there are specific concerns, i think that would be helpful because, you know, i mean -- i think sometimes people say they are doing certain things and say they are doing certain things but they are not being fully implemented. that is my concern. >> thank you. i think my concern is pretty much along the lines of commercial norton, particularly in step four. the emphasis on early identification. intervention.

the first one, review the record. i'm pretty much -- yes. that would be great. but the idea that that can happen considering, you know the transitions that we're going through economically and further broadening school sites and leadership but also, i mean i'm really looking for practicality. i want these things to be done and we need to do these things. everything that is listed here. go to number four. i'm trying figure out in my mind the perspective, how that can occur on a regular basis and become embedded in the school site. i'm really trying to think pragmatically what we are capable of doing without having

people run away from us. i want to be really clear -- incredibly ambitious, considering this particularly considering what we are up against and so with that context, i mean, can you give me -- very much along the lines of trying to figure out how that can possibly be that we were going to be doing these things. >> so commissioner moff at, one of the things that we do have in place in collaboration with student support services is there is a list that students have been identified by their classroom teachers or the student advisor are students that we need to be aware of as they transition into the next

grade. like fifth grade students transitioning into sixth grade. those lists are sent to student support services and then -- so already, we have a working list of students who we feel need to really focus support as they transition to the sixth grade. one of the things -- that has really been really helpful to help us identify students or groups of students who may need that support as they transition from sixth grade to the -- data sheet that we gave to you on the c.s.t., that was to generate just from data -- we did it manually but it is definitely very doable. i think also as students transition into the sixth grade, so we depend on those two mechanisms to identify students who need support and sometimes

parents will come up and let staff know at the school site that their child may need support too. as students go into that first quarter of the school year, teachers will start identifying students who may need support. so there is a number of ways that -- where we can do all of that work and the individualized -- learning plan, that is a template that we developed and that was disseminated to all of the principals and assistant principals to do more deep work for students who have needs. it is ongoing. it is ongoing work. >> i appreciate that and then maybe at a later time i would like to see a couple of models for that that would look like for students because i fear -- and this is just possibly me projecting but as we -- as

school sites sometimes layer a bunch of things on themselves, not really having the time to decide this particular program which is going to help save and turn us around. i almost see that happening to students. without us finding out or spending that time to see -- that it has been identified, to see if the incorporated support works and if they are helpful. i want to give -- to see if this is working for the students so they are not feeling like they are guinea pigs in our laboratory. >> thank you very much for the presentation. i think this is a really very important piece of our work. i received criticism from

parents who say not much of the school board's business is focused on quality instruction so i'm really glad to have this discussion tonight. i was part of the communications community for quality schools and i think the feedback from principals would resonate very well from feed back from that record report even though it was a couple of years from all the schools. i really support this direction. i think in terms of the five core classes, when i was shopping around for the middle schools, i found that consistently, i think that is very positive for the district. i just want to point out two areas of concern. i think your inventory of current conditions in middle schools really points to a need to strategicically think about our language pathways and i know we're going to talk about middle

school feeder patterns but the inventory really demonstrates that it is kind of haphazard, that it doesn't really recognize that people are -- in emergent programs, bilingual programs. so i really appreciate that and i think it really is telling about the area that we need to focus on. secondly, i did want to ask about gifted and talented gate because i know that we have not had the resources to invest very much in that in the elementary level and there is differentiation in the middle school level and i received a lot of concern about what is going on with gate in the middle schools. some have it. some don't. so i kind of challenge the statement that all students are served in the middle schools because that is not the impression that i'm getting. >> can i make a comment about

that? i am -- i actually bringing the beginning of the discussion about gate and honors differentiation, homogenius and hetero genius. i'm not sure what day that is going to be yet but i think it is time to start having that discussion a little bit as to what are we saying about which is better? what guidens are we giving schools? what approach is better? how to implement this approach? we're going to start that discussion there and you're very welcome to come. >> all right. thank you. i actually have a couple of questions with regards to teaching and leadership. there was an effort to recruit leadership to the middle schools and i just wondered what that looks like. i know that we have had several principals that have been in

several of our middle schools for a while and i'm wondering if you're looking at principals from other schools that are kind of similar to what we're doing. for looking at recruiting principals that have done a really great job at some of our other schools that are ready to take on a middle school and how you're pulling for -- i know that we're really limited also on the number of candidates for principalships. if you can speak to that a little bit? >> just for clarification, terms of leadership recruitment, we have a couple of principals who have long tenures at their current school site. so maybe reassigning them or reappointing them? >> not necessarily. they continue to stay strong. there have also been sites that