lot of questions. it track>> it might be helpful r everyone's questions, and then you can get information out to us. we are still on the development phase. >> i want to make sure i captured them. i will tell you the one thing we learned from everyone. you have to be flexible, and the reason is they are learning. they are finding what they needed to tweak along the way, and one of the major learning's is they did not know who would often to this process, the judge who would opt -- they did not know who would opt nil in this

process. there were three kids who qualified. if you are asking how many kids and who would show up, that was the one thing they were very clear about. they thought it would work certain ways, but they decided to keep it in preschools. you know who decided to do that? the ones who thought they could pay for it. there were a lot of learnings they had to be flexible about. we said, let's learn from our partners, but we will not have all the answers. >> one thing, how does this work with full inclusion? >> commissioner norton. >> i have a lot of the same questions, so i am not going to

go over that again, but i think the thing that is still bothering me is the idea of a kid said is essentially in a kindergarten classroom for two years, because most teachers i know have away they do kindergarten every year, and they have a lot of great stuff they do, but they do not necessarily change year to year, so that seems like a big expectation that teachers are going to do something different. it does not seem to be educationally sound to have kids do the same thing next year, and i am not a kindergarten teacher, but if i were, i would feel that would feel like a big undertaking to me. that concerns me.

smith i am still not clear on the student assignments. it may not even be that different, because we are going to take who comes and assign them. am i right that you are going to take who comes, assign them according to tiebreakers, and they land where they try to land? we will adjust based on who lands where. good >> we have even played around with if we assign them, we will hold slots, and parents are opting out of it. it adds another layer, so we want to see what is going to happen when this becomes a two- year program, and you are right.

parents can opt in, opt out, and we do not know how the different communities are going to see this process. they have the same concerns as you do, but you are saying, we have a model. are we saying we have concerns about preschool? we are looking at this as an opportunity to do some deep training with staff. we are looking at 13 days of training versus four. we have already been doing a core curriculum of work, and we are two years into for curriculum.

now last year-and-a-half -- last year the teachers spent a year aligning illiteracies, so this is not new work. we are saying, let's recognize there is work already. were those children left out of the mix? did we not consider them chairman and what we have to do this -- did we not consider them we need to go deeper. it's 13 days in addition to other training that we need to be very thoughtful with, making sure we are aligning with the work we are doing. it is the same concern you have.

good if you create a separate process, can you sustain it? you have to work within your current systems. this is how we are looking at how we can leverage this. commissioner maufas: i just think i have a couple of questions, and one is i want to support a question around what are the results of working with the labor partners? i am interested in that component, but i am also interested in what we are doing

in partnership with our labor partners, and the other question i haven'd -- let me ask. are we looking towards the los angeles -- how long have these been doing that? >> in los angeles is in their second year. san diego is in the second year. the program that has been doing it the longest was preschool. it was a preschool process. it was not a process in the district. >> it seems like for our purposes l.a. may have a more realistic model to look at in

regards to getting information that would maybe match. we are getting that component. it said net income families are least likely to participate -- new low income families are least likely to participate. did they express that they did a lot of professional development? what did they do with how to reach -- outreach? did you get a sense that maybe they were not as committed or maybe did a lot of assumptions around with the public would do? maybe this is for every one of these districts that maybe they

did not do as much out reach, because i think we need to do a lot more of that. this is from the ground up. we are starting from the ground up, not someone who knows our protocols, and this is just another way to work, but for parents this will be completely new, and it will be added to how do i understand the public- school system i will put my kids in? i am curious about how they outreach to folks and trying to explain from the ground upo, ths is complicated to us, but how do i explain to you? >> i think you are asking two huge questions.

the first has to do with no apparent out reach -- with parent outreach. they found that people had a different perception, so they learned along the way, and if you think about what everyone has said, there are parents who have opted into giving them more time to develop. that was a certain group of parents. it was a particular community. we need to make sure we are talking about this as truly a two-year program. is an opportunity for your child to have more time to develop some skills, and that is something they needed to do more

work in. i would not say they are necessarily using l.a. as a model. i would say they are also talking to oakland and san diego, but all of us are in the same group having the same conversations, so after a while you know. it is the same influence going on, but l.a. actually did something we are going to do, which is they created a study group, and they looked at how do they look at what they are doing in general. you start a conversation with what is it superior -- what is it. create a group with multiple stakeholders, and we are in the middle of trying to figure out how to peformed the study

group where we can have multiple conversations. most of their workers with specific teachers. gooremember that l.a. has 30,000 kids. people volunteered to go to this. these were teachers who normally had a background in preschool, so they were the ones who would be most successful, and they are using those 36 teachers to facilitate the conversation with new teachers, so it is almost like they created a trainer of trainers, but they were clear than most of their work was with the 36. goocommissioner wynns: i wantedo

make a few comments. there are reasons to do this. for decades we have been talking about changing kindergarten age, but most people who are experts in early childhood believe we should, that most kids in day age we now have in california, a quarter of them are too young for kindergarten, so this was put in place as a compromise so school districts would not lose money. one of the things that is most challenging about it is whatever the political motivation, this

is an enormously complex challenge, and this is not the time to engage in that because it costs money of. they are making this an even more difficult for us, so i have one practical question that comes to mind. if you look of the number of kids, i am presuming that next year there would be one classroom in the school. if that is true congress it seems like the only practical way to do this.

we are going to have parents complaining about schools. they are going to say i want the same access as before this was in place. go i want you to tell us what teachers are saying about that. it certainly is true. given the challenges, a different curriculum, it is not a good idea to have two kids in this classroom, three kids in that classroom when you could have a more reasonable program. there does not seem to be any other way to do it, so i am interested in those kinds of practical impacts. it is what comes to mind, and

every parent will have to think about that, and also the financial impact that we need your monitor, because it is not only impractical but really a bad idea to have this discussion as though it was not a budget crisis, and then when the budget is done to say, we cannot do that, even though that is what we need based on these earnings, so i am hoping the answers to all the questions will be in that context, that you will have the practical impact about what we think is

doable. nothing could explain how we could do more days of development and not take into account what we are going to do with kindergarten teachers, how they are going to cover all the other things the school is covering. i want to understand those things. one other question i have. i will e-mail you, but i really appreciate all the work. it is of huge challenge for everybody. i do not know how everyone can take on a huge challenge, so my

admiration is unfounded, but my practical lens is telling me we need this conversation, and this is what we are actually going to do, because i honestly do not see anywhere we cannot do what you appear to be recommending. at the curriculum meeting we talked a lot, and i would like to understand more. we talked lot arthur curriculum meeting -- at the curriculum meeting, so my limited ability

to understand instructions at an elementary school level or even high school level, i would like to understand more about this specific program and what we might expect it to look like and how it might be different, and i actually think one of the things we can and should do is the community and parent out reach, so we need to be talking about the two-year kindergarten program. i would like to see how about is developed.

i am sure we can come up with some strategies that might help with that, and these conversations held us a lot, because we understand more about it, but i think there is a lot more we need to know. >> you mentioned there was an unexpected consequence of meeting. what happens when parents want to move their kids straight into kindergarten? what happens when they cannot qualify?

>> with information the parent can request since it -- can request, and we need to understand what is the process. we need to make sure that is one thing we shore up. we already have the process. >> i have one other question. i was curious if in our next

presentation, i am hoping, because i thought it was interesting that they supported more noise than girls -- boys than girls, and i am curious about what is they age. our boys older -- are boys older? do they wait until 6? our data shows our families decide what time they decide to enroll. doesn't seem they are older?

>> in your presentation you mentioned a majority of the children were ell, and i was wondering how you would account for that. would you have to hire new teachers? i have been hearing about having difficulty with professional development, so would there be special teachers picked out. >> that was a particular program. that was their emphasis, ell students. >> that brings up a point tie-in cases where we have a bilingual strands and an english language development strand, we might need two classes with a tkk

component, because some children who are coming in may be enrolled in the bilingual program, and some may be enrolled in english development. >> i remember the question i wanted to ask you. you said they found the kids in these classrooms did better. i wonder how they knew that. >> they were just surprised that younger kids did just as well. >> would you tell us what assessments you plan to do? that is a whole different issue. commissioner fewer: how does

this work with our language e. immersion programs em? we are going to line the curriculum, but these kids in the two-year, learning the target of language, how are we going to adjust the curriculum? >> that is the same question we are asking around preschools, and i keep bringing back, this is work that is going on now. how are we aligning where we have three schools on the same site, and we have schools athat we want to make for preschool is

aligning with kindergarten, so this is going deeper. give we are looking up at work right now o. i think that is one part of the question. the other question is at issue of all of a sudden we are going to have to deal with people who want to enroll their children in a specific programs, and that is something we are going to have to think through. how do we do that when we are working on that with preschool? not creating a new process of trying to work with what we already have. we are going to have to learn. commissioner norton: i want to ask that this data if i can get it in a table format, i would like to see which schools have

more and which schools have less. >> i have a couple of questions. i am trying to wrap my head around this. i zoned out. i cannot deal with this. i will put out some of my bigger concerns. will this take seats away from our kids? that is my main concern, so i can already see families of set that kids coming in will get placement there, and they will automatically be placed if we take 10 kids, and that means we are only taking in ten, so i am really worried about about, and i am wondering how this will affect our pre-k classrooms, and

how much was the packard grant and? >> we have two now, so it totals 325. 325,000. >> that is going to be for professional development, and will that help to implementation? >> part of that your good >> what else will we be able to tap into? >> we will have to look into title 1, a general fund. good everyone was clear. it costs to do this, and it is probably the worst time. >> just to show how challenging this is to grasp, i started reading student assignment because it seemed more interesting to me, but i did

note it is in the enrollment drivguide for this year. we do not even know what is, so i am curious. that is due to go out soon, and we do not even have a policy on this, so i do not want to go back to we are doing this and we are not doing this and having to explain ourselves, so is it better to put it out there and think we are going to have to explain what it is? i want to avoid that, except that we do not have the money to produce this separate plea, so