it is usually the same body of students. the expectation is that we as a district work with principals that we use that data and having conversations with them and that as we evaluate damn, that the areas where they are strong, we support, in the areas where there is areas of growth, we identify those areas and have conversations. it assists us in moving towards them close in gaps where we see those gaps. that is my expectation. i will say though that one of the areas, one of -- incoming and, i will say this district is different than any other districts that i've worked in. in the fact that one of the things we have as a district is a three year contract. that is different than any other

districts that i've been in. every other place i've been in, administrators are year to year at work to the pleasure of the superintendent. we have a duty to work with people to grow them, but there's also an understanding that we have a contract process. >> i appreciate that. you know, so, kevin from coleman mentioned what this says to black families about whether or not you should be coming to the district versus going to a charter school. i think the thing that they mention is we actually had no idea how often chargers do this. it is off the charts. i think that the severity of the issue requires that we take a zero-tolerance approach, and

educational leaders that are constantly suspending students, that we have to -- [applause] that is how we hold people accountable. i understand that we have to be considerate of all the factors. but when we talk about saying that, you know, you are not best in this role as a school leader, you should be in another position, because your inability to do this for this community is unacceptable. and so we should be taking steps to move people out of those roles and elevate people who we think can lead around reducing suspensions and improving school climates. we know that we have administrators that are capable of doing that, as we highlighted it. year-over-year, the question for the district, is he is

successful because it is his leadership. i think there is only one of h him. it is hard for me to say that this is district leadership. and, you know, one of the reasons why i wanted to vote is to have you take this role, was because i trusted, i do trust that you can lead to the district to solve this issue. is not a knock on you, specifically, but i'm trying to get to is, you know, how do we make success like we had at mlk the norm, and not the exception? and that we don't hold schools up at mlk to say we at the district are succeeding when that is not the case happening across the district? that is the thing i want us to be able to reconcile. we haven't even talked about sats which is equally egregious.

if i am correct in looking at the data, out of 100% of all african-american students in the district, 44% are chronically absent? >> that is correct. >> nearly half of our students in the city are absent? >> that is correct. and most of those chronically absent, a large percentage of those chronically absent are severely chronically absent. which would be 15-20% of the school year. >> that sounds like a state of emergency. what are some of the top factors that are leading to students being chronically absent? before we get into that, there was a point where you talked about having the same questions. i wanted to better understand, you know, i know your team is

looking at these numbers over the course of the year, at the end of the year, at a time like this, what are some of the reasons that you are confused, or may not know the answers to some of these questions? >> i think some of the questions are as was -- i was referring to, are questions we need to have. i met with brad today and with it the deputy and, you know, it really opens up -- there's a lot of questions i need to ask school leaders. i need to ask these questions that the assistant superintendents are asking of the school leaders. when we talk about michael, he is one person, but he has penetrated that school. it is a schoolwide culture. is not a principal's program. it became a schoolwide culture. all the teachers are involved in this. that is one of the things that is really important. it has to penetrate the whole school. and i will say that, you know,

when people are trained, they need to go back and be supported to implement the things they were just trained in. one of the most frequent responses that we get back from my staff, people go to a training, they come back, and they say, i'm the only one doing it. no one is doing it at my school. is not a priority. those are one of the things that we need to change. we need to make sure it is a priority at that school and when we see some of the data where the calls -- it calls out specific schools, we need to ask ourselves some really urgent questions about, you know, what is specifically happening. i don't know, when you, for instance, people are renewing contracts. do you look at the suspension rates at that school? you ask, you know, what are we doing about that? i don't know if that is a factor that plays into when a person's contract is renewed. what are we asking ourselves when we do walk-throughs at the school? i've been part of instructional

walk-throughs. there are behavioral components to that which we. are we looking at the factors of safe and supportive schools that must be in place? when we do things like that, that is what brad was alluding to a, also. that has to be a group effort. you can't do walk-throughs of the school environment and leave climate and culture out of it and only give the teacher feedback about what is happening in that classroom. i think those are the questions that i have that i need to have with, you know, my colleagues, and have a deeper conversation with the principles at their school. as to what actually is going on. how can we make this part of the culture at that school? >> yeah, so, principles being able to lead around school climate. that is -- during one of our personnel meeting this, i asked for an update as to how it is

that our area superintendents are holding principles accountable and managing outcomes related to issues like this. and there was -- there seems to be a lot of confusion on who holds what and who is supposed to drive these numbers. and we own this policy. so that is problematic. how do we get area superintendents and principals on the same page about what type of interventions they should be working on over the course of the year? what type of things will be things that we really want to make sure that they hit? from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, how their trainings work? how do we get on the same page around that? is a training process you were talking about an effort to achieve that?

>> this is grounded in the balance. not as a compliance document, but actually a planning document and a support and accountability document. the superintendent has been modelling with the pitch initiative, which i believe we will hear something about later this evening. and interdepartmental approach grounding the best strategies for african-american students, and also identifying the qualities within a school that reflect the reflective implementation of those practices. what we will have is a common framework that can get everybody on the same page about what that looks like. one of my assessments coming in is that right now it is not a common understanding of those effective practices and there is not a common understanding of what constitutes an effective school, both at a social emotional climate at an academic

level. so without that common framework, it is very difficult for principals to learn from each other, because they attribute everything to idiosyncratic practices, oh, it is just that principle because he is him, or she is her and they are able to get those results. versus no list take a more systematic look at all the different strategies that they've been using on multiple fronts and how you get that all in a commitment? how you said measurable targets within a reasonable period of time so you can kak on your progress. if you're making progress, build a sense of efficacy which builds commitment and persistence that gets the result that they were able to get at martin luther king. there are concrete steps that we can take and we will take under the superintendent's leadership in the coming year to make a shift in how we've been practising. it has been in a more decentralized and atomized fashion. there's a lot of positives to that approach but we need some

of this common language to work for continuous improvement to close the equity gap. >> the district needs to be the driver of that work, and i am on the same page. that needs to happen. when it comes to the common factors related to chronic absenteeism kak can you elevate that a bit more? what are the things associated with that? how are we looking to mitigate that over the course of the coming year? >> good -- good evening everyone. so kak i have very limited information in regards to that. only because we've had a small

focus group that we've been using to try and identify what the barriers are. that was more controlled at our level than at the school level. not all schools had a functioning teams to analyse the data around attendance for our students. but what we've seen most commonly was for african-american students, that there was either academic frustration, the actual school climate where they didn't feel they were part of the school community, there are also discipline issues in elementary schools. i would often times hear from families that would say that they were asked to keep their kids at home. but they were still marked as, you know, absent. so that attributes to the chronic absenteeism. what we wanted to be able to do was to take that information and build interventions for those particular family is based on

what we were hearing, so when we -- when we were able to take it to the school as a whole kak next year, we can come to them and say kak this is what we found and this is what we try to. it works. list implemented schoolwide. for targeted groups. i don't have the information on larger scale just yet because this was our second year of implementing it at the district level. >> i want to be sensitive. to the time. [laughter] i do just want to close up by saying that, you know, i have a younger cousin in the district that is very much involved in the school and they were trying to intervene with him to redirect his behavior. i mentor a kid in -- and they assigned me to him, because they

wanted a positive male influence in his life. he is in elementary school. so, you know, in a very visceral and personal way, i see the effects and feel the effects of when this policy is being attempted and not succeeding, and, you know, it hurts. it hurts to be here as a graduate of the district, and preside over a district that has outcomes that look like this. so, i don't want to be here another year and say we did not fire anybody over --dash like this. i want to be in a position where we are sending a message to the city that we want to put people in place that can solve this issue. >> thank you. i don't want to belabour a lot of the points i already made. the one bright spot, i kak it ls

like that has been mentioned kak again after the presentation, is arrests were down. african-american students last year kak 30 students were arrested. this year kak 17. progress. everything else seems pretty depressing. the district is 6.4% african-american. if my memory serves when a research the district years and years ago, the district was almost 30% african-american. 6.4% and that's about 3,600 african-american students. and if the math is right kak less than -- i just want -- it just bewilders me and others dot with that few amount of students, that we have these amount of numbers. and even though we have bemoaned the fact we don't have enough resources in this district kak we do have resources. we do have resources and we are

not focusing the resources enough on the students that we are talking about to make sure we do not come up with these numbers year after year. and the fact that the commissioners brought up that we have reverted back to forum since before the initial resolution was passed kak i just feel that it is not necessarily about firing people. it is about a concerted effort that has never taken hold. prioritizing these schools, it is tier one schools. we can call them tier one. we need to focus the energy consistently. this was the first year of the pitch school program, so we can look forward to, you know, hopefully numbers in these categories getting better. when we talk about training and p.d. around safety kak and care kak attendance, implicit bias, are we not focusing on those schools for those trainings? are we casting a wide net and

saying, you know, first-come first serve? are we not going to the schools and saying this is the training we will afford to your entire staff? why would we not start at tier one and/or these schools to provide training to have the most african-american students in them? why are we not doing that? >> i believe there is a twice what they training for pitch schools and we are putting together a program that would include the key elements of special and supported schools. i have not quite seen the final piece of that. >> there is, you know, it is a big part of the bayview knight last year. that is how we focused on it years ago. the whole team embraced that school. they were the target of a lot of p.d. they actually, you know, gave it life and breath at that school. so there were several -- in the

last presentation that i gave you before kak i was limited in numbers but i pointed out all the different schools, and how many people participated from each school. i have that and what we did in that. >> if it is not already happening, i would suggest that we don't need to have implicit bias training for every single member throughout the entire district. we cannot afford it. we need to focus on the schools that need it the most that are having and driving these numbers in a negative way. just my suggestion. i would say that the numbers are probably a little more dire than we even know. you did mention that the

elementary school stoat report suspensions. i know that for first -- elementary schools don't report suspensions. i know that first hand. is many reasons for that. we also don't talk about kids being pushed out of a classroom. whether or not they were suspended or not. there are so many kids who are just not in class. they are finding a caring adult somewhere else to talk to. whether it is a school social worker, the nurse, the principal, the secretary, they're finding a warm place to be but they are not in the classroom getting their education. i think if you added up those numbers and he did a real profile of a typical african-american student and you added up the suspensions, their absenteeism, the referrals and time out of class for what ever it was, you would find out that we have a lodge of african-american students that are out of school more than 52% of the time. that would be a profile. i think it is shame on us.

it is a state of emergency. reverent ground -- reverend brown asked us to quote it as such. i feel like we have to have a revolution just say that. we can't do worse than this. i don't know. that's all i have to say right now. >> three quick points. in terms of the chronic absenteeism, that we get the data by elementary, middle and high? i find that elementary is the most alarming. it sort of suggests issues with the family on many levels. do we have a sense, surge of where most of the truancy is coming from? is at the upper grade or lower grade? >> you may not have seen it, but we did send this report to you

school by school. you want data for all elementary? this will give you, for each individual school. the total number -- total chronic absenteeism, i will tell you for cleveland. seventy-five -- i will tell you for cleveland. seventy-five, and i did not do that on purpose. chronically absent students. five african-american students are chronically absent. that is 75 -- that five is seven% of their school. we have that by school, but i don't think this provided a summary of elementary, middle, and high school. >> that would be helpful. i did not have that information. secondly, while i support the vice president and the sense of urgency around this, i worry

about zero-tolerance, because, already, we are seeing underreporting -- underreporting at the elementary school level. the feedback i get is there has been a recognition that this board, and the superintendent really want to see the numbers go down. in order to achieve lower numbers, people are not reporting. that is kind of an unintended consequence of having a really strongly articulated goal in this area. but i really want to be able to have honest conversations with the school and have them be able to say, we just can't handle this, or we need more training. or we need more staff or whatever it is. i think the underreporting is a significant issue. i don't want to drive it further to underreport. and then, finally, a mystic note, i've been working with the school board association.

they want to do something with our school district trauma informed care. and so, they have made arrangements for a daylong conference at the south city conference centre and our own kevin truant will be one of the keynote speakers. together with doctored joists. it is really targeting school community, stakeholders on trauma informed approaches to better meet the needs of all of our students at whatever level. >> any other questions or comments? just thank you for your continued work on this. these conversations are always hard. i mean, the question for me, is

more around and not what are we doing, but what is happening with our students? what is happening to them? what is our understanding of what it is that they are challenged by, and has that changed over the -- over the years. are the neighborhood that they are living and improving at all? are they getting the mental health support or the healthcare they need? are, you know, parents continuing to have, you know, their own social and emotional challenges that we are not identifying? because there is a lot of other support services that we certainly have access to that we should be thinking about. and so, you know, for me it is more, it is less about who keeps -- it is not even about less about your kids in addition to who is sending our kids out of the classroom in an unacceptable way, as much as it is about where -- what happens to them when they go home? when they are not in our sight,

where are they going and what are the improvements that we can do their, as well? i think, you know, over the many years we've been able to build partnerships with the city and our community-based organizations for us to think differently about that. i just don't want us to feel like we are in this alone or that we should be trying to do this by ourselves. we shouldn't. and there are challenges and issues that any of our kids are up a bit -- up against. and the better we understand those and think about the services we can provide them, you know, the better off we will be and the better off they will be. this is hard work. it is enough that we have -- may not be have not been able to crack but we have a lot of support to help us figure this out. you know, let's think about what other ways we can report this, beyond the, you know, changing

the behavior of adults and really thinking about what are the needs for our students that we can start having different conversations. anything else? okayed. great, thank you. all right. our next item is our 90 day progress report. and i noticed that your presentation is more than ten slides. which means it is likely more than 15 minutes as well? >> no. [laughter] >> i will do my best to hold it under 45 minutes. [laughter]

>> good evening everyone. that is on? >> it is on. [laughter] tonight i wanted to give you an update regarding, back in november, i actually did a 90 day listening and learning report to you as a board. and to the community, i wanted to give you an update. i will remind you of what the structure of the entry plan was. a brief reminder, and give you the progress on those areas. one of the parts of the report was we talked about pitch. i want to give you an update on pitch and how the folks -- we

made progress on the strategy matrix and the rubric to measure sites and the district office project -- progress and answer any questions you may have. a reminder that the structure of the entry plan was -- what i did was spend the first 90 days listening and learning. what i did then was gave you what my initial impressions were of the district. my observations and recommendations. they were the in these five areas. alignment of the district, how we analyse data, how we engage the community, and then what our operations and finance looked like. so, in giving you the initial impressions observations, i made recommendations. what i will do tonight just go over recommendations that i made and to let you know the progress that we meet over the last six months.

before i begin, or before i go any further, i want to thank the staff here essentially but staff at sights because none of this progress happens without the work of -- the hard work of the individuals who are here and date school district and they are working hard each and every day for our children and our families. a big thank you to you for the progress we have made on moving these recommendations forward. the first recommendation was around the governance team. the first three sets of recommendations. the first one was to continue the semiannual governance team meeting this. the retreat that we have. i am working currently with board leadership to establish a retrearetreat date for this sumr early fall. the board is considering exactly what type of data that they will review periodically, on the status is we -- one of the items for the retreat will be to finalize what those exact items

of data look like, and what we are expecting. [please standby]

. ease standby] >> so the deputy superintendent is focusing on creating clarity. i'm looking at aligning the frameworks at all levels, increasing equity. one of his goals, along with mine is to assist in implementing pitch and ensuring that the language pathway is of high quality for english learners, and then ensuring quality and support of the lead to our schools. continuing around organizational capacity, the recommendation was that the strategic plan should be reviewed and staffed. alignment should be modified as appropriate, and you can see with the status, we looked at our strategic plan, transform

learning, transform live. this is basically all the leaders from the district, and we spent the entire year looking at transform leaving, transform lives, and began aligning that and basically began an understanding process of the document and then beginning to see where the levels of implementation are throughout the district. the next recommendation is around organizational capacity. staff must address how we continue to support instructal rigor, support leadership by answering these questions. how are leadering held accountable, what data are we using year to year to assist to know where we are establishing our goals. you can see our transform ative leadership for new leader development, and we're

continuing our cohort meetings where it's the main vehicle for developing our administrators. site and central office leaders are held accountable through the evaluation process, which was commissioner cooke's question, and we're using academic results from state and district assessments, behavioral data and climate and s.e.l. data to assist us in evaluating the effectiveness of our administrators. so that's the area of organizational capacity and alignment, the second area. the third area is data analysis. these are the recommendations. there should be increased strategic district activity levels to aid our strategic plan. once again a district team with input and feedback from our site leaders have identified key strategics and progress measures for pitch. i'll be talking about that in a few minutes. the second recommendation was the district board needs to

establish a very clear picture of what data. we talked about that earlier. the community has the ability to access data through our links on our website, but the bigger picture here is we want to make sure the board is establishing what data we want year over year so we can actually measure the progress of the district and the progress of staff in meeting the needs of our students and families. the third recommendation in this area, there should be increased equity focus, professional development. you can see the status, a district team with feedback from site leaders has a design for strategics and continuum of effective practices for pitch, and as i said, i'll be talking about that in a minute, what that looks like. continuing on data analysis and document review, there should be a district level audit of interim benchmark practices and to answer -- and you can see the questions there we were trying to answer. and our status, this took off almost immediately after the

progress report in november , and you can see we had a resolution from our leadership from the teacher's union, leadership, family assessment committee came together. the committee made recommendations that can be clicked on that link, and you can see what those recommendations. the department of research, planning and assessments continues to conduct audits of benchmarks and data of reports, so this was immediately taken upon and acted upon. in the area of communitien gaugement, the district -- community engagement. the pitch team came together around those five areas of professional capacity, instructional capacity, transforming mindsets, collaborative culture and high capacity staff, and sites will set goals using a continuum and begin utilizing the pitch

strategies in 2018-19, this next school year. the second recommendation was the district needs to continue its administrative p.d. regarding instructional evaluation, and you can see lead and h.r. are partnering on the evaluation p.d. for site leaders, so this goes deeper into, once again, the questions that many of you asked, and you especially commissioner cooke. lead leaders have walk-throughs on-sites, and will receive training on given instructional and receiving feedback. the district needs to continue developing its strategy for attracting and retaining teachers. you can see the status there. h.r. is conducting exit surveys to gather data regarding the reasons employees leave the district. we've prioritized increasing salaries for attracting and retaining staff, and our

collective bargaining and budget priority. and we're also partnering successfully with the city to provide affordable housing with the city. continuing on community engagement, e.p.c. should continue working with the board committee to bring a well articulated policy recommendation to the board, and the status is the staff continues to work with and bring recommendations to the ad hoc committee on student assignment. the next recommendation is district sites, sf csd's office of family and community engagement and the communication division need to continue the development of communication policy and practices, and you see that's continuing to happen. the district's communications division and other support the districts work to increase our ability to communicate with families. and then finally in operations and finance, the district's leadership team should develop

plans to improve service to schools. this -- the three areas that were identified to use as a starting place to improve service to schools were to create an accessible one stop repo repository, and to establish a common set of service standards and operationalize those standards. you can see the progress that we made in those standards. we have developed an on-line principal's handbook. this will be rolled out when we return in august, so all administrators will have access to this information and be able to -- it's a one stop place where you can go so you know, as a site leader, you don't have to make phone calls to the central office, you can go on-line and get this information. and this will also help us in our development of our new leaders as well as leaders who

have been here for a while and just don't know where to find certain information. regarding the service standards, those have rolled out and we have started trainings for selected central office divisions and departments, and then, you can see the third areas that we've focused areas to prioritize curriculum and instructions for african american students as part of the pitch plan. continuing on operations and finance, create a district wide customer service standards and plan to train employees, and we talked about that communications led this effort, and those service standards have been developed and we have begun three hour service training. next steps in this are that in the fall, we'll roll out to more sites and central office teams. continuing on the operations

and finance, develop a plan to provide clarity and develop an equitiable and sustainable salary management schedule. in december, the board, acting on my recommendation approved a unified salary schedule for both classified and certificateed managers and all employees have been placed on the schedule in accordance with clear and consistent criteria. next recommendation was continue to use financial data in a transparent matter so that the district makes fiscally responsible decisions. in the district we have a team called the smart team. it meets twice a month, and through that team we've been able to make budgetary recommendations as well as budgetary cuts to make sure that we're staying fiscally responsible and to maintain the district's fiscal health. and then, you see the second

status report in this area is that school community -- school communities are engaged through the annual school planning and budget development process, and you heard that report earlier tonight. continuing under operations and finance, communicate clarity regarding revenues slowing and expenses growing, and the budget team makes presentations to the board and to the community, and we continue to, as we're putting out press releases, we attempt to get this information in some way, shape, or form into those press releases and into when we're having conversations with the press, as well as through the communication tools that we use to update our staff members. develop plan for increasing revenues at the local level. we work closely with community advocates and our labor partners to develop spending plans and a plan for the passage of proposition g, and

we're continuing efforts to generate private and philanthropic contributions through spark public schools. the district should continue to build a cohesive and reflective recruitment strategy. our human resources department continues to prioritize recruitment of teachers towards opening schools at 100% staffed, and this past monday, we were 80% of all classroom vacancies have been staffed. continue to leverage alternative staffing programs like pathway to teaching and the san francisco teacher residency and other teacher recruitment programs as solutions to our recruitment and retention issues, and then, you can see the status side what we've done. we continue to support sftr, and that'll have a cohort of 20 students.

the new york residency program, which has been funded by salesforce will support 20 residents and about half of those are people of color. i believe the number was approximately 80 who graduated from the first pathway and are currently in our classrooms. we have a partnership between sfusd, state -- san francisco state that's going to support teacher preparation for six science teachers. so this just gives you a sense of we're continuing that recommendation and moving that recommendation forward to make sure that we aren't just relying on san francisco state or the university of san francisco to provide us teachers. we know we have to find alternatives if we're going to continue to be fully staffed with the highest quality teachers possible. so that is an update on the progress on the areas from the

entry plan in the 90-day plan. and one of the areas, after i gave the 90-day progress report, then i talked about one strategy for addressing the needs of the district around or african american student population was the creation of a plan called pitch. pitch was -- is five areas: professional capacity, instructional guidance, transforming mindsets, collaborative culture, and making sure that we have a high quality staff in place, and this was because we wanted to make sure that we were interrupting or figuring out ways to interrupt racial barriers. we identified schools where there was a large gap between our african american students and our white and asian students. and so since that time, the

process that we moved forward was that a pitch design team was assembled. then, that team created outcomes for the team. two of the outcomes were to develop a matrix of strategies that we would implement -- be able to implement in our sites, and then a rubrick for how we would measure our progress. both of those are in those red folders. we tested the rubrick and matrix with site teams in april. so we brought them in, give us your feedback on this, how will this work? what are areas that you see weaknesses, strengths? do you believe this will assist you in addressing the needs of an can american students. with that feedback from the sites, we both redesigned both the rubrick and the matrix, and they retested with site teams in june. so this is the strategy matrix -- first of all, this is the team -- the design team

members, so a big thank you to all the people you see on this screen who all have put in many hours of time and in both the design of the strategy matrix and -- excuse me -- and in the design of the rubrick. and this is just some -- as i said, the full matrix is in your folders. this is just a summary or some high-level -- some of the strategies that we want to put in place in schools when we return in the fall. so you can see there's two areas. there is the schools and then what we will be doing at the central office. so this gives you a sense of some of those strategies. so in the area professional capacity, provide individualized new teacher supports is one of those strategies. provide p.d. that's focused on closing the gaps for african american students, so specific professional development around closing gaps, provide p.d. on

effective use of form ative data, so these are all strategies around professional capacity that we believe need to be in schools, especially our historically underserved schools. then you can see from the central office supports that will be provided for these schools, coordinate new teacher p.d. opportunities, provide p.d. for culturally and linguistically teaching practices. in the area of instructional guidance, some of the strategies that we want to put in place is to make sure that we have full literacy development around our literacy programs. you can see full math development -- professional development for our math core curriculum, so making sure that our teachers have a rich professional development around the curriculum models that we have in place but making sure that the p.d. is full and rich and gives them the skills that they need to be able to successfully teach in our

schools. use of culturally relevant student libraries. and then, after the balance score cards have been completed then schools go back and visit their balance score cards, and they ask the questions, have they identified strategies that will absolutely improve outcomes for african american students? what we found in asking and having conversations with our staff leaders and teachers is that often -- not often, but times, the score cards are created and they haven't specifically asked that question even though that's a goal of theirs. in the central office of providing and receiving p.d. on antiracist teaching, and being responsible for the purchase of culturally relevant teaching libraries. so as i said, these are just some of those stratgees, high level strategies. you have the full complement of the strategies that we want to implement. in the area of transforming mindsets, some of those strategies will be the culture

climate team. as the site utilizes the safe and supportive schools framework and curriculum, so you just heard that report, but fully utilizing that framework and the curriculum. customizing culturally responsibly teaching p.d. and strategies, utilizing the teacher attendance modules. i just heard a report around -- you just heard a report around the attendance and the lack there of and where we're having issues with attendance, so we've developed a teaching attendance model that we believe will dramatically improve attendance at our sites. and so it's just fully using this module. designing structures for african american student voice. so these are some of what we want to put in place at the sites around transforming mindsets at our schools. and then, for central office, providing training and ongoing support for the culture climate teams at the sites.

implicit bias training, i think you heard that several times this evening, that's app example of training we would like to provide, and providing safe and supportive schools professional learning from central office for our sites. the c in pitch is collaborative culture, so how do we put wraparound services at sites that are going to support our schools and give them what they need to make sure that students are receiving the -- the kind climate that they need to be successful? so you can see that we want to make -- some of the strategies we want to put in place is design -- having a design school staff team that builds activities and professional development especially around having hard conversations around african american teaching race. we know this is not just a struggle for the sites, but it's a struggle for this country. providing individualized mentoring for students, ensuring that we have two-way

feedback between site and home, and implementing community school strategies. these are just some of the strategies that we want to i ev ever -- implement at the sites, and then finally in the area of high quality staff, for some of the strategies we want to put in place at the schools, want to make sure that there's training on leading for equity at our sites. how do you conduct daily learning walks, but especially learning walks around equitiable practices and how to pod those equitiable practices in classrooms and also identify where those equitiable practices are missing. we want to make sure that there's weekly staffing calls with h.r. for the school that's have been identified, and there will be around making sure that if there are any issues, that h.r.'s providing support.

if changes need to be made, that h.r. is there as an assistance. and then, it's also support around doing effective evaluations, giving staff the feedback that they need. and then, making sure that these schools when they're hiring staff, that they are making sure that the incoming staff are demolessons or teaching videos for all new teaching candidates. so we're making sure that the teachers that we're hiring, especially at our pitch schools, are of the highest quality. central office will provide coaching and support for these sites, and so once again, this is just a sample of some of the strategies that we want to put in place at our pitch schools. so with that, i will stop and take questions on either the progress made in the areas or in the pitch strategy. i just shared the strategy

matrix with you, but in your folders is also the rubrick for measuring progress. >> thank you, sir. >> great. thank you so much, superintendent. all right. i have no public comment on this, but questions and comments on this? commissioner norton? >> commissioner norton: thank you. so i'm interested if you can talk a little bit more about the pitch plan. so i'm not clear -- so have we implemented any of the strategies at the -- at the pitch schools yet or some of them implemented in some

places? sort of what's the status of -- >> so a few of the strategies have been implemented at some of the schools on their own. we haven't as a district provide support to put strategies in place at all 20 of the schools. and the goal is that the -- what would happen is the schools working with their assistant supes are going to identify the strategies that they're most in need of to close the gap. they couldn't identify all of the strategies on that matrix, but what are the strategies that they're most in need of, and then we as the central office will provide the support to make those happen. our hope is, you know, a big part of the funding for pitch is wrapped up in measure g, also, so our hope is that things go well with whatever happens with the legislature and any kind of -- so we'll be

able to provide the funding that's needed to put the resources in place. >> remind me -- i know you've told the board this, and i just don't remember, but remind me why there aren't any high schools. >> so our goal is to focus in a small way on a set number of schools. so we picked 20 basically k through 8 schools. so we want to stay focused and then begin to spread out >> so is the plan -- so next year, schools will look at the strategies and sort of select which ones they need to implement with, i guess, guidance from the team and from central office. >> correct. >> and then, is -- how are we going to monitor -- i mean, i know you have the -- this is the -- the matrix is great, sort of how schools will be able to measure their progress. but how are we going to monitor the progress and make sure that we're -- that schools are, you know, making progress and are

moving hopefully along the continuum of improvement as defined in the matrix? >> yes, so you have the matrix there, but you also -- behind that, there is a full rubrick, and the rubrick is around measuring progress. so the matrix is a list of strategies -- exactly, right. so the rubrick is around measuring progress, but ultimately, the ultimate measure of progress for us is around -- is student achievement. so even if we believe that we're looking at observational data around the rubrick, and we believe that progress is being made or it looks like progress is being made, but then, the data comes back, and we don't see an increase in our african americans' students mastery of skills, that's the ultimate measure for us because that's what this is all about. >> other questions or comments? commissioner haney?

>> commissioner haney: so there's obviously a lot in there, a lot to process at this hour. i feel like, you know, this maybe should be something that we need to bring back for a committee as a whole or maybe a time we can dig in a little deeper. i was also wondering, and i don't know if this is the venue to discuss it, but what is the timeline for the superintendent's evaluation and how does this fit into it? and do we have a timeline for that yet? usually, that is also in the venue where we really get into, you know, directly sort of progress on -- and planning and that sort of thing on the real measures that we want to see improvement on and the plans that will get us there. so i don't know if -- >> so yeah. so he and i just met, and we want to get together with vice

president cooke to talk about the retreat and when that'll happen, so we're hoping to get a better sense of what else needs to happen in the retreat so that we can put some more information out there on that. but i agree that this -- this may be -- and i don't know, dr. matthews if there's going to be more information in the coming months that we can do a -- how you wanted to break this down so that we can see how the relevance of these particular schools and the strategies that you're putting in place. maybe there's just some thinking around how you could present this differently so that we're doing it in chunks and we're seeing the connections. >> so i would say for sure there will be more information because we will have the

information around what the strategies that schools are selecting, so we'll be able to see which schools are selecting which strategies, where we're putting information behind, and then, we'll begin to see data both -- it'll be a year before we have data regarding, you know, high stakes testing, but we'll have benchmark data, so we'll begin to see -- you know, my expectation is we'll begin to see, you know, the ultimate measure of what this is all about is making sure that students can successfully demonstrate that they've mastered -- that they can show that they have mastery of our standards. and so we want to make sure that we're able to do that, and my belief is that as we're moving into the school year, we'll definitely have more data. like you said, the hour's late, but i hope we can get into a much deeper answering session about these strategies. and then also the question about what's the plan for, you

know, moving this out. >> any other questions or comments? so i just had two questions for you. on the -- on page 28, you're referring to this professional capacity and coordinating new teacher p.d., so this is a little off subject, but relevant. i'm just wondering if the new -- if we've moved the teacher training place and have a new location for that? so this is the one that was located near the simone community development center and it's -- >> yeah, i'm not sure. so there's several different -- like, for instance, we just had one at o'connell, and that was the pathway. i'm not sure -- i'm trying to remember which one -- >> i think this one was the teacher residency one. >> do you know which one? >> it's the one that's located -- >> yeah, i