slide six that you all have that shows african-american students enrolment versus suspensions as a percentage of total enrolment. i think this really indicates the place we are at right now as a district. we have some progress and we have seen things kind of change for the better from the dark places that they were at when we passed a resolution. we were spending what seems like thousands of african-american students for no real apparent reason. we have to figure out how we will get over the finish line. we've been able to successfully change the policy and reallocate dollars to go into better places and helped create this change. we are still not seeing the results we want to see. at this moment when our public school system is under attack from charter schools, data like this makes it really difficult to encourage black families or latino families to send their kids to s.f. usd to get a high

quality education. i would say that we appreciate the work that you have done. we appreciate the efforts that you put forward, but we want to see more. we want to see this be successful. we do not want this to be an example of a good policy that never came to be a reality for families and schools. us at coleman kak we are working with the close the correct -- close the gap group and committed to make this change happen and be an equal partner to continue to push forward. what we really want to see is we want to see this change. we understand this isn't just an s.f. usd issue, but it's a regional issue and as a national issue. whether you're looking at oakland, across the county, other states. we are seeing black students are not getting the quality education they deserve. what my call is for you, is to join us at the next school year

and be at school sites throughout that first week and getting the word out this is a priority for the district. that we are committed to that and black families. we will do what it takes to get us there, even though we know we have a long road ahead of us. i wanted to share with you some graphics that we created about black lives in san francisco and in the region. i will pass these for you. thank you so much. >> okay. that ends public comment on questions. any comments or questions by the commissioners? thank you for that very -- did you want to come up? do you guys have comments cree. >> okay. thank you for your presentation

and for your work and to the whole team who is here and everybody i know. it is very difficult and important work. thank you for advocates for everybody here who has been part of this. you know, obviously this is a very, very concerning. i think this is the second year in a row where we have seen very dramatic progression almost to where we were when we started this resolution, at least in terms of the policy. and in terms of where the numbers are. i just want to impress on the superintendent and on everyone that this is, you know, we need dramatic intervention for ourselves in terms of how this is working, and what sort of resources are needed, and structural changes are needed. the first thing i wanted to ask is, what is the next steps?

i'm aware there are some structural changes in how we are thinking about and implementing this in the central office. what does that look like and what happens now? because we really are seeing a regression that basically is almost back to the norm of where we were, at least in terms of what the numbers look like. the suspensions, in many ways are even worse than that because we eliminated suspensions in a wilful defiance, which were, at the time, 40% of the overall suspensions or roughly there. even despite eliminating that as a category for suspensions, to get almost back to where the numbers were at that time, what are these suspensions for at this point? you know, we were operating from a foundation that suspensions are not an effective intervention. all of the data shows that they

don't actually help a student or help a school. so why are we back to a point where we are suspending that many students? what are we suspending them for? if we have a behavioural intervention matrix that is supposed to have suspensions or even referrals as a much lower option after a number of interventions that are supposed to have taken place, why is that not happening cree where is the disconnect there? and with that, when suspensions are happening and referrals are happening, we want to make sure that it's not just a suspension. it is not just a punishment. there is actually something positive happening for the students. whether they are receiving additional counselling kak whether they are being put into some sort of other types of

support or program, saturday school, there was a whole range of other interventions that were supposed to occur, even if the numbers are up. is not happening and are we seeing some type of positive results from that or are they still just mostly punishments that don't have any other associated piece to it? i will stop there because i have a couple of other things. >> with respect to the data, i want to point out the 1213 data since we are reverting back to that, we know that that data was highly underreported in all aspects. we don't know what our 1213 data was. we are very confident in the middle school and high school data as being recorded because we paid so much attention. we are not finding those cases of unreported that we used to. the data is more accurate for middle school and high school. i don't think we really can't compare and say we are almost at

the 1719 mark. it was not anywhere near accurate. that being said, i think that the past couple years, the day to be more accurate and us showing an increase. so we have, you know, these we need to have some individual conversations with several of the schools that we see things happening with, you know? i could bring up some examples, you know, where we are looking at bay since and looking at the interventions and we see other punitive measures and not one intervention. that's a conversation we need to have with the school. i'm not calling out any particular schools, but interventions going down at the elementary school level is increasing quite a bit. using base is quite a bit to record exactly what you are doing. not so much later on. we see students coming in, and thomas can speak to this too. one of the things for instance

he mentions the other day. it was in reference to something else, but we were noticing for african-americans there were several african-american boys who had failed every class in high school. i pulled up the data on every african-american boy in high school with a gpa below 1.5 knowing that, these were students who had significant discipline issues. and we looked at what was in place for these particular students. so they should have an individual learning plan. while at the query that happened at close session prompted me to ask, what is happening with these particular students? if they are failing all of their classes, and they are -- discipline is stacking up and they are just the next expulsion waiting to happen? what are we doing about that? we are digging a little deeper into some of these issues where we see individual cases where there is no interventions at all and having to ask those

questions. when we see students, one after another with a very low gpa failing every class in high school, at the junior level, but very -- only with freshmen critics, what are we doing with those students? we look at the fact that they have significant behaviour interventions. we are just kind of, in other words stacking up one incident after another and being asked, you know, how many things does this kid have to do before we transfer him? and we need to shift the conversation. not to transferring the students to another school, back to actually changing the interventions. trying different strategies. i've had, you know, we are reorganizing and we are doing some reorganization of people services, locate? and i've surveyed all of the staff there. they given me feedback over what is working effectively with the schools, and also where their challenges are. i have all that feedback. i also surveyed principles as to

-- and asked them. several principles responded and asked, what is working at people services? what does working most effectively and where do you find the challenges? i'm not going to share the results of those right now in open session, but i will tell you they are very enlightening. what the staff are staying at people services with respect to discipline and behaviour strategies and safe and supportive schools and what the schools are expecting from people services are very different narratives right now. we need to be more clear about what people services an is providing and what we can provide. in response to -- i wanted to mention, in response to susan solomon's inquiry, she is absolutely correct. if we call it a cult -- we will fix the language of culture and climate change. it could -- it should be the

safe and supported schools team. we cannot provide a whole school professional development to every single school in this district. we can't. and our teams are finding that the culture climate, we can discuss this with you in more detail. we have found that that culture and climate team, or the safe and supportive schools team, we need to get clear with the language, are the most effective people as feeling the pulse of what is happening at that school and telling us what is happening. that was an approach to actually penetrate more schools with a significant team. saying that we will train a whole schools, all schools, every year and with the turnover we have, is crazy. we have also had several professional development trainings and the number that we shared tonight, the 1,051 for de-escalation and safety care, that is just this year. it was 2,000 the year before and 1500 the year before that. there's been thousands of people trained in de-escalation.

we do have a lot of turnover. we had a couple professional developments this year with a staff telling me that due to the shortage, we can have trainings of 35 people and we have subs that only showed up for five. meanwhile we have two trainers. >> i also want to add that we don't see this as solely the responsibility of students of community services. this is the responsibility of other departments to make sure we are offering culturally relevant curriculum, engaging and culturally responsive and structural strategies and also support and accountability for schools to make sure they are collecting accurate data. we're looking at data on a regular basis and in a granular way at the school level and not just rolling it up into district level data as well. my commitment is to work closely with others on this next year as

part of a more coordinated approach. >> the question about what the suspensions are for but we had the break down to the referrals but you didn't share it for the suspension. >> we had a limit to the projects that we have there but i can get that for you. >> do you have any sense of what the biggest category was for suspension? >> nobody should be suspended for anything. are they just being suspended for a different category that is basically the same thing? >> i would defer on this and get back to you on this. it is a very controversial area. i suspect that is an element of what you're talking about but i would kak for it and prefer to get the complete analysis for you. >> in terms of the structural changes, and how we, you know,

to move forward, i do hope that we are, you know, really working closely with groups and others who have it, you know, very deep knowledge of what is happening on the ground here, and what is needed to address what we've seen and what is the challenge here. the other thing i wanted to raise is the support and training that's given to new principles. it seems that some of the, just looking at the school by numbers, some of the more dramatic changes in the numbers maybe because we are bringing in new school leaders that are necessarily, you know, deeply trained or supported in this approach. and you showed the principle that he has been here a while and he has not worked closely with the staff and sort of note was the program. that may not be the case for

other school leaders. it seems that where you see these huge jumps from year-to-year, you know, is that a part of it and what are we going to do, what do they need to do to be supported? there's a certain way we do things and they may come from another school or another district where you suspend when you have -- when someone does something wrong you are going home for three days. we've come to the understanding as a school district that that is not how we create a safe and supportive environments and there is a lot of bias in that in certain students are targeted with that. and our educators also have agreed this is not the way to create classrooms that are well-functioning in schools and support educators in ensuring students are having their needs met, and not being cycled in and out without getting the supports they need.

you know, what are we doing? in that sense, i do think we nude -- that does not just on you all. when you bring in a new principal and they come in and their first or second year and they quadruple the number of suspensions, clearly they are not coming in with a good philosophy about how we operate here. >> we are putting in place a two year curriculum for new assistant principals and building upon good work that has already been done with very experienced educators providing that support and consolidating that support from a network of 26 mentors to four so we will have greater coordination and greater -- greater quality control. there are some mandatory trainings for all site administrators that we are looking at forms of certification as well so we can assess the knowledge that they

have. and in addition within each of the cohorts of schools, principles are, will be engaging in databased improvement projects around specific targets, goals and targets and arenas of culture and climate as well as academics. there are significant disparities and that would be a focus for the assistant superintendent and directors and also where we've seen significant part positive progress, is models to be studied about exactly what were the strategies kak like the pushing strategy and a significant reduction in referrals pick what were the conditions that need to be put in place at the leadership level and ongoing support for that to be effective? that will be some of the areas of what i described as a coordinated approach. >> thank you. you mentioned the challenges of collecting data from the

elementary schools and the majority of our schools or elementary schools. why have we had a challenge with that? and are we suspending first-graders, what are the numbers looking like for very young children? this is a huge concern if we are sending these children home and we are not keeping the data. it is also a big part of this. how are we changing that, anyway? >> so the biggest issue for elementary schools is the interface, the synergy interface where you do suspensions. the middle school and high school folks do more suspensions so they are more comfortable with the system but it requires a lot of windows opening and closing and understanding of the flaws. i think the fact that they don't have dedicated folks to do

discipline at elementary schools, for obvious reasons. they only do one suspension every so often and what we have found is typical. one suspension is not done correctly. if they started we can pick it up and fix it. we can see that they started it. sometimes they don't even startestartit and we find out lt something happened. we see the kid was suspended three times. so we go and fix it. that is how we came to this understanding. is a difficult line because essentially you are training people on something that is something they want to use very often. and it is something so confident -- complicated you kind of have to use it often. we use it in order to get good at it. that is one of the issues that comes up. we are trying to figure out a way to provide direct support and give them the understanding that they must put in the system, even if they don't do it

correctly, they have to call us so we can fix it. >> last one. you know, we are five years now from when the policy passed, you know, there is obviously the snapshot of what these numbers look like and that kind of thing. there's also a tremendous amount of data we've been able to collect that i'm sure, on a day-to-day basis, can't be fully analysed or reviewed. for example, the idea was always would be able to look at what interventions we were using in a positive way and see what was working and replicate those. do we have the capacity or a plan to more deeply analyse that and implement the learnings from that? and who would do that? i feel like, you know, from

years now of having individual students who we have tracked what we've done for them and now many students, what has worked and what has not worked and how are we using what we are learning not just into the immediate pull the data of who wears the need and what is happening for one student in our school, but now as a way to improve. >> i will just say, we have members of the people services team here right now. i will definitely definitely say that their knowledge base of intervention, they are looking and focusing on the basis on the intervention with schools and looking at case after case of individual students. i think that their knowledge base about effective strategies is certainly one that i -- the feedback i get about the staff

from schools, and the support is that they are great. they are wonderful. i need the more, i need them every day. they can't be at every school every day. so i think that building the knowledge base of the intervention centre, i believe the stop is looking at that data and is building that knowledge base. they are able to identify key strategies and interventions that are working and they provide that advice and guidance to the school. >> so, one success that is very good is there are -- they are using the system to track interventions across the system. kevin mentioned a few state -- few cases where we are disappointed with people not using it. in general, the usage of the system is up and i don't know other districts that have a sophisticated system like this. when we have a case like this, we can exceed what the schools tried in realtime, and in some cases we can follow it day by

day. we have a good system for that, commissioner. more and more people are using it. the only thought that occurs to me is when you see schools with radical drops in disciplinary disproportionality, it's about a full-scale commitment of that school led by the principal, and it is priority number 1 that they get it sorted out. you do see that commitment. or something in the collective commitment to the work that makes a larger effect. >> yeah. i just wanted to disclose that we are concerned about the numbers because of what is underneath that, and we know of the relationship that it has two creating safe and supportive

environments for our students and our educators, particularly when it comes to equity, you know, to the experience of african-american students specifically in our schools. this is telling us more than just the fact that a number of students missed a lot of class time, which is also in and of itself, a damaging thing to their education and adamic -- damaging thing to the school climate. just to be clear, we are not saying lower the numbers for anyway. that is not what this is about. you know, it's about the experience of real teachers and kids and families, and, you know, that's what we want to get right. thank you again for everybody who was a part of this. it was not easy. you all do incredible work. it is a lot of pain and trauma and all of that that you all are experiencing. i want to thank you for that. i know that we want to see -- we

want to do better and we want to support you in doing better. >> first i want to start with a follow-up question. a question around accountability. i know that we talk about plans and matrix and support. and the it is in the affirmative. when we look at data like this it is always in a deficit mode. you know, i want to know how you are thinking about relieving people of working at sfusd over these numbers? how are we thinking about people who have a long-standing track record of not being able to lead around to reducing suspensions? what are the steps we're taking to fire them from those positions?

>> i will say that one of the things that my expectation is is in working with principals around the data both in the expectation of increasing academics for students in areas where we in the district have struggled, as well as in reducing the numbers of discipline referrals, and discipline suspensions. 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