>> here. >> call you again commissioner alexander. >> i'm here. thank you. >> commissioner fisher. >> commissioner lamb.

>> here. >> commissioner mogannam. >> sanchez. >> here. >> vice president ward. >> president bog us. >> here. at this time before the board guess on closed session, i call for any speakers to the closed session items list instead agenda will be a total of 5 minutes for speakers do we have card in person? >> we don't have in person speakers >> do we have virtual speakers? >> we don't have virtual speakers. >> okay. so now, at this time, i resisz this meeting at 5:03 p.m. we'll also acknowledge that we have commissioner fisher joining

us remotely. and with that, i will read read the readout from closed session in five matters of anticipated litigation. the board by a vote of seven yeses, gives direction to the general counsel in the matter of student rem versus sf usd. oh h case. number (202)!a309-0594. the boad , by a vote of seven yeses, gives the authority of the district to pay up to the stipulated amount in the matter of student cl versus sf usd d o a h. case. number (202)!a309-0418. the board, by a vote of seven yeses, gives the authority of the district to pay up to the stipulated amount in the matter of student arcs versus sf usd o h case. number

(202)!a308-0399. the board by a vote of seven yeses gives the authority of the district to pay up to the stipulated amount. and that concludes the readout from closed session. before we move forward, i'm going to read our land, acknowledge ment and then we'll proceed with our meeting. we, the board of san francisco, we, the san francisco board of education, acknowledge that we are on the unseated ancestral homeland of the ramaytush ohlone , who are the original inhabitants of the san francisco peninsula, as the indigenous stewards of this land, and in accordance with their traditional laws, the ramaytush ohlone have never ceded loss nor forgotten their responsibility as the caretakers of this place, as well as for all people who

reside in their traditional territory as guests, we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. we wish to pay our respects by acknowledge urging the ancestors elders and relatives of the ramaytush community and by affirming their sovereign rights as first people . and now we will move to item d on our agenda. and we will begin our program monitoring work shop. and the board will transmit mission seats.

i know we're. you see these ones? yeah. all right. well, that's good. good all right.

okay good evening, commissioners . good evening. so tonight is one of our progress monitoring work shops, and i'm excited about tonight. this is our first progress monitoring workshop on a guardrail instead of a goal. so just as a reminder to all of us and for the public that's listening, when the board adopted, we adopted, we say for shorthand our vgs, our vision, values, goals and guardrails. and the goals are a way to represent what the vision of the community is in terms of how we would demonstrate progress towards that vision. it's not all encompassing, but it identifies in particular what students know and are able to do. so those goals are in smart format. our guardrails represent what the values of our community. so the guardrails themselves are actually more

statements about what what we will not do in order to ensure we're not violating our guardrails and then as part of this process though, for our guardrails, it's still the superintendents responsibility to identify interim guardrails which are in the smart goal format to represent meant what it is, how we think we might measure progress in honoring that value. so tonight, we're talking about our guardrail related to serving the whole child. and i think this is the measure we've used around chronic absenteeism, i think is one that's definitely representative of how we're serving the whole child and important to our community. and i say that because i just want to remind the board of our conversations. and i remember being out in community with you all when talking about what should we focus on? and this was now a year ago coming, you know, still recovering from the effects of the pandemic and attendance came up time and again at every meeting and

chronic absenteeism and even ourselves, we had to continually question our council of great city schools facilitator like, why are we not looking at why can't we identify a goal around attendance? but as we've learned , attendance is not a measure of what students know are able to do. it's really a measure of what adults are doing, either by supporting students to get to school or at school, making sure we're keeping them engaged. and so they they continue to come to school. but it felt really appropriate to make this an interim guardrail and have a smart goal because it did come up so often as as an issue. and it is a way to show that we're serving the whole child by ensuring that the child comes to school. because if a child is not in school, they're not learning. and so this is our progress monitoring report around interim guardrail 2.1. and what i'm going to do is share a little bit of the data and the interpretation and then turn it over to associate superintend of schools.

demetrius rice, mitchell to speak a little bit more in depth about our interpretation particularly the root cause analysis we did well pause just if there's any questions just about the data and root cause analysis and then we'll share what's the evidence and plan. so what are we doing and what's the evidence that we think this plan will help help us meet our target? so that's the plan for and then we'll have a discussion on it. that's the plan for this evening. so you can see that for interim guardrail 2.1 is around reducing chronic absenteeism from 29% from 21 to 20 2 to 24% in 23, 24. we did actually make progress last year in reducing chronic absenteeism, but we still need to get make more progress to get down to our goal of 24. and we you look at our data and disaggregated by our student groups you see there are some student groups that we're going to need to make significant more progress if we're going to meet that overall

goal of reducing chronic absentees. and that's at targeted universalism approach. we have a universal goal of reducing it by 2. but to meet that goal, we need to take a targeted approach to ensure that more of our pacific islander students are attending school more regularly. more of our african-american students or our foster youth students are here in our schools on a daily basis. we did include data on the sense of belonging. that's a separate guardrail in our calendar. we're going to share progress in march. so our apologies if there was any confusion about why we included this data in attendance when we did include it. just because we want we want to recognize that a student sense of belonging can greatly impact their their desire and interest in coming to school, particularly as students get older and, you know, and while they're expected to be in school every day, you know, they have more agency and may feel like

this isn't a place for them. and so you can see the sense of belonging has gone down similarly to how our chronic absenteeism has overall gone down in the last several years. and so we see that related and you'll hear us speak to that in some of our strategies. but this this report is focused on improving the outcomes and improving our improving, i guess it is the outcomes around chronic absenteeism, not sense of belonging. so with that being said, looking at this, we are off track. although we made progress, we're not where we need to be. and so we wanted to understand a little bit more of what's impacting chronic absenteeism and how it affects our students progress towards our academic goals. and so on page two, you see some of that analysis as well. and we speak to the sense of belonging again

and why we see that as related. what i want to move to though, is, is turn it over to associate superinten of schools to meet this rice mitchell to talk a little bit more about our root cause analysis as well as what we learned about how we are systematically taking attendance and tracking attendance in the district. so i'll turn it over. miss rice. mitchell all right. good evening, commissioners and everyone here. good to see you all this evening. so as dr. wayne said, i'm going to talk a little bit about our process of root, root cause analysis is what we discovered. talk a little bit about process flow chart. you see that and then do a little discussion around our theory of action. and then assistant superintendent eric gethers will be more specific about some of the activities that we're doing and outcomes. so as we embarked on developing this strategic district wide plan to reduce chronic absenteeism, we started by seeking out individual input from both students families and

staff perspectives. we conducted some interviews to better understand the experience that individuals were having as it related to chronic absenteeism. and so what you see on figure two is a fishbone diagram. and so what emerged from there were six, i guess, six different themes that came from there. so this was right after the pandemic cites lack clarity on what to do to improve attendance. the quality of attendance data was inconsistent. there was a decrease in resources and infrastructure to address attendance patterns and after the pandemic, families were returning to in-person with with a lot of increased needs, students sense of belonging had decreased and mindsets had shifted around and the quality the continuity of taking daily attendance and so what we see here, you see the diagram on

fig. three. so i just want to kind of walk you through what the boxes mean, the yellow boxes are like the daily process. what should happen when we do like daily attendance? the blue is just daily, daily reporting. the pink boxes where we really want to focus and to shift our attention is really looking at ways that we can intervene early and begin to have conversations. so it's not the same and we see the same outcomes. and so from this we started to develop our theory of action. but before that, we know that the council of great city school called us to cascade the interim guardrails, reducing chronic absenteeism. you then the board gave us gave governance to the superintendent in managing this process through various district systems in school district systems. the superintendent, using a logic model, then charged us where cascading it all the way down until we get to the school sites, he articulated

to the line to us, our staff to create this logic model using four i lost my word. i don't know what it is. criteria. that's what he did really looking at inputs activities, outputs and outcomes. i want to direct your attention now to figure four. and so really looking at this is the work that we've developed in the inception of school really looking at the activities and then looking at the outputs to date. and so four things that we're really, really focusing on and this is the invest ing in building capacity and individualized school supports in cohorts and meetings and principal check ins, committing to research based messaging and administrative nudge letters, automatizing monthly truancy notices, and applying additional supports for african-american and native hawaiian pacific islander students. and so with those

activities, putting those into place, what schools have begun to do, schools have completed. and mr. guthridge will talk more about that ct attendance plans to support positive culture and a whole school wide attendance strategies, schools have also begun to reflect on student data and attendance data in their weekly cctv meetings. and then finally, mr. guthridge will go into more detail. we have a cohort of schools in high school and middle schools who are meeting as a community of practice, utilizing street data to focus on secondary attendance. i'm going to turn it over to mr. guthries to talk more about some activities and measures and some outputs to date. good evening, everybody. great to be here with you all. and so i'm going to talk a little bit about some of the key strategies and activities and then the outputs. and when we think about activities, think about what's happening both centrally and in collaboration with sites and then with the outputs. it's more site focused

and i'm not going to say them all because there's a whole litany of them. and i know you've got the documents here, but we're going to upload them up, uplift some of them, and i'm going to do the activities in three categories. the first category is around cascading capacity to capacity building for central and site staff. and that's really critical. so this work has to have the buy in and the knowledge and the support of all of us together collectively in order to shift practices and to shift outcomes for students. and so capacity building is key to highlights or three highlights from the capacity building that i'd like to talk about. and number one, in the summer we held for the first time that i can think of in my 23 years in this district at all admin, which is when all the admin come together, mandatory attendance trainings and they were really robust and really well received in which we, we, we shared our updated attendance manuals. we talked about best practices as we talked about changes in the law around

excused and unexcused absences and went really deep and then really started to create connections between sites and central so that they knew who to go to and who to reach out to. and we did that over the course of those several days, and we've continued building on that that foundation. in in addition to that, we have ongoing citywide. that's the k to eight pds for all site leaders and ongoing cohort for middle school and high school as well, where we're really staying focused on our attendance practices and around how do we how do we make visible the issues that we see at all levels so that students come to school ultimately so that students can academically succeed? and then finally, really building the capacity of all of the folks that are both at the central level and at the site level on the ground. so working with our seawalls, our child welfare attendance liaisons rep really monthly and actually a little bit more frequently than that, our school social workers and our family liaisons to do trainings and

supports as well so that everybody has this focus. the second area is around research based strategies and we've got two that i wanted to uplift. one is around our attendance awareness month that we started in september, and i'm just going to read a little bit to you from that, which is you know, we celebrated attendance awareness month in september. we created new outreach resources to families founded on research from attendance works, and we tailored them to our district. this included family letters to welcome and make connections, shared presentations for school sites, and gave a lot of resources to both families and the schools around the understanding of chronic absentee ism and its connection to academic success. one aside that i didn't have in here is because it just came out today is we also had an art contest for our students around attendance and why it's so important. and we use the tagline of you belong here and you should see some of the artwork. it's quite gorgeous. the other research based strategy we've been using and we just started on october fourth is our nudge letters. now we do

our truancy letters that's mandated by the state. we have to do those. but we also know that those truancy letters can land a little hard because they're very legalese and very, very like. matter of fact, our nudge letters are different. they're texts and there's letters just reminding families of the importance of coming to school, offering resources and supports to both sites and families around the attendance and we are strategically having those come out during the year, but particularly at holiday times, because we know that those are major times when families sometimes miss school as well, both before and after. and what we target are students and students that have from 5% absentee rate to 95. and so that's been really critical for our work. and again, as i said, our first nudge letters were on the october fourth, the third strategy. i want to talk about is around targeted universal ism. and we've got several strategies around that, but two that i want to highlight. one is particularly around our case, a think tank, monthly meetings, which is our comprehensive, coordinated, early intervening

services. and that team meets regularly to think about across all sorts of divisions. you've got cni there, you've got sfd there, you've got lead there, rpa just special ed really thinking about focus on our african american and our and our pacific islander students across divisionally with how are we creating action plans and follow up at the site level to support students and families in in the highest level that we can particular really focused on the guardrail over the serving the whole child, which includes attendance. the one that we're talking about today and sense of belonging. this week alone, we just had a meeting around student discipline and we looked at how attendance is involved in that as well. and then the second round targeted universalism. i'm going to talk more in just a moment around the ct attendance plans. but many of our ct attendance site plans that every site created have an area of focus for african american and pacific islander students as well. these activities in many others

support systemic change. we believe both for our sites and centrally and lead us to our outputs. thinking about what's happening at the site level. so to that i'll end with here. one is around the street data community of practice for our pilot, middle school and high school sites, which is focused on equity centered inquiry. question all of them, and i just reviewed all of them today, recently. all of them are focused on supports for african american and pacific islander students and families as well, which is really we're really excited to see how that goes. and then very, very importantly, something that i'm super personally proud of is the fact that this is the first time that i know of that we've actually had every single site create very detailed, very thoughtful and rich, created by them at the site level. their ct site attendance plans, which includes their tier one strategies, their tier two strategies, and some of their tier three strategies, as it includes focus on focal students as well. and the piece that i'm very proud of is not only do we have sites do that,

but we want a feedback loop. so we created collectively a rubric that we created in the schools division between the sfd and lead together and then lead and eds and lead assistance groups are coaching and working with site leaders to really monitor those giving feedback on the site plans and giving resources regularly as well. so that we continue to uplift the need for focus on on chronic absenteeism as as a key driver in the ct work and the weekly ct attendance plans as well. and then finally, i just wanted to add that one of the major outputs that i'm seeing, one of the major pieces here is that by the creation in of the schools division in which you have lead and sfd now being family, we're able to much more thought fully and reflectively and collectively work together. so to work more collectively and strategically in service of serving the whole child, which is the guardrail that we're focused on. so thank you. mr.

guthertz, and thank you, ms. rice. mitchell so that's an overview of our report and what's exciting to see is, is the system wide approach to supporting our students with that taking, though, also. so that sense of targeting where there's the greatest need. so with that, we'll turn it over to the commissioners for discussion . well hello. hello. okay cool. i think we'll have members of the board prepare their questions and i think we will give a courtesy to our remote commissioner if they want to get us started, then we can go to our student delegate and then kind of go around the board with additional questions, whether they're related to clarifying questions or about the strategy or the things that are presented . commissioner fisher, did you want to go first or would you

rather kind of wait and join the stack. if you don't mind? i'd rather wait and join the stack. i'm happy to go first. no, no, you can gladly wait. no worries. okay. i'm going to go first, and then we'll. we'll pass it around. i think one thing i was curious about is for the initial chart on chronic absenteeism, just, i guess, wondering if we had any, like, raw numbers versus the percentages of like how many actual students are we talking about to kind of get a better feel? both across the district as a whole as well as for the individual student groups, commissioner, we added that based on your request. so it's there as a link. the attendance report for three accounts and percentages as so it's not in the written, it's there in the written, but it's not on here. yeah, right there.

oh no it's a link right. but so, so for him it's in and can you click on the link and maybe and share just what some of the numbers are. so for example, i mean, i've talked about the fact that when we're serving our pacific islander and black students that, you know, our our mission is that each and every child receives a quality instruction. they need to thrive in the 21st century, and that we should know each and every kindergarten student who's coming into the district because we have about 225 black and pacific islander students with about 200 black students at each grade level. so then, you know, if this is district wide, you know, what is that? so how many? so in the district we have 3229 african american students and their average attendance. is 80.3. right. so 59% of them were are chronically absent. that's

about 2000. yes. yeah. i guess i would ask if we could maybe update the presentation with charts that reflect that. just so that it will be, i guess, more accessible, understand it is available via the link and i'm going through the links now trying to find it, but i think having that as a part of the presentation would be really helpful to understand and also to be available for the public. so i'll be happy to do the updates on just the bar charts. but otherwise there are 72 rows is because, because that's how we've disaggregated it by grade, by ethnicity, by the ethnicity that wants, you know. and so we've got 72 rows based on previous board. well and i would love to see 72 rows. i feel like that would be very exciting. it's right here. it's on a it's on a link in your thing. but i'm going to ask commissioner, president bogus question to your question, just maybe share a little bit why you think that's

important to note and in what ways that's helpful. yeah it just seems that the students who have the highest amount of chronic absenteeism are our smallest student group population nations. and so i think just trying to get an idea of how prevalent the problem is for those smaller groups versus other groups. and just kind of how appropriate the resources are. i don't know if in the additional information there is information also about zip codes and kind of how this issue breaks down by zip code, because i think that's a key part of the analysis piece that i think would also be helpful in the presentation. but those conclude, i think my initial comments, i think we'll ask commissioners, if you could stick to one question or so as we go around. i'm going to go commissioner alexander, then commissioner sanchez, and then we'll kind of keep going. and yes, zip codes is there, too. yeah and i was going to i raised my hand cause i was actually going to build on that comment, if that's okay. just i'm i want to say first, thank you so much for this this plan. i feel like

this is, in my opinion, our best to date around the goals and guardrails in terms of having like a real root cause analysis and then a plan that's linked to that, which i think is an area we've been working on and so just thank you to staff in general for the continued improvement around that. and i know that's something that we're all learning together. so, so thank you. i'm curious and i see i see in here the building on president bogusz question around black students and pacific islander students, which clearly is alarming the rates. if we look at that chart on the first at the beginning, that two thirds, nearly are over. let's say 60% of our black students and our pacific islander students are chronically absent. and i see the focus in the plan. but what i don't see as clearly and i'm curious if staff have thoughts on this, is what what is your root cause analysis of that, of why or why are black students in our pacific islander students specifically, why are their rates so high? and i know

you know what i mean. i saw that general root cause analysis, but i'm curious if you have any anything that's coming up around those two particular student populations. okay i think it's a myriad of reasons. and when we looking at the work that the high school and middle schools are doing and the questions that they're asking, it is that like am i in places where i'm seeing where i'm loved and where i feel like i belong? and then even coming back from the pandemic, we saw even more, you know, mindset shifting around coming. and so we wanted to start with the base with just the attendance and making sure that we had basic systems. but many in the plans folks are doing home visits, doing empathy interviews and asking that question, not making assumptions about all black families are not coming to school because of this. but specifically, why aren't you coming? we did find a lot of families moved after the pandemic or they live far away. you know, it's a myriad of reasons. so we don't want to

give one answer. all black families are not coming because of this. and so what we're doing is asking families, why aren't you coming? why haven't we created places where you you feel like you're seeing in love? and so this will allow us to at cctv meetings, to ask those questions and to create plans based on individuals, but not lumping all black families. i just want to add on to i think that that conversation piece is important. i was looking around. we don't have ursula here, but we heard from the matua advisory committee and they've helped with outreach to like talk to families. so i can't speak to what you know, again, what they said, but that that is a notion of we need to hear from the families. like what's the roadblocks as well? and to commissioner bogguss point, we didn't see a huge variation around zip code in terms of attendance related to zip codes. but i think it's, you know, it's a fair question to ask. how much is transportation contributing to this? anecdotally, we know

that. i mean, i've talked to students who have talked about the frustrations with the bus, both public transportation as well as our our bussing system, but our bussing systems within our control, the public transportation is less within our control. so it's not emphasized here. and the data was, on paper inconclusive about whether like that's a key factor, like, oh, we see if we're transporting all these kids from here that there's an attendance issue. but it is something to, you know, to consider in terms of supporting our students. and i know megan was nodding, so i don't know if you wanted to speak to that point. you talk to students all the time. yes no, definitely. i can agree with the transportation issue with like unreliable muni like system in certain areas of the city. they're not as frequent. i know like definitely like in the richmond we have the 38 which comes like every ten minutes or so. but in some areas the busses might come every 40 minutes. and

if you're just a little bit late or you're not exactly like right on time with the bus schedule or it just runs differently that day, you will be marked absent for your first period class. and that's just something that is not preventable for many students. and so that definitely contributes to absenteeism. and it's no excuse for many teachers. and i think another reason is definitely like related to the fishbowl analysis with teacher is lacking clarity on what to do because cause if you miss class due to illness or something, some teachers might be understanding of that. but there's also a lot of training issues and some, some teachers will come in and be like, oh, you have this whole stack of work to do and you have a test and you just have to learn this on your own. and that just makes a student feel really behind. and it's really difficult to catch up on all this work that you've missed and to really learn and absorb the material under this short amount of time. and with this pressure, oh, i'll go next. i want to thank you all

for the this monitoring report. it is in-depth. and i really appreciate it. i just wanted to ask a question around the root cause analysis you've been talking about actually seeking comments from individual students and families regarding attendance and sense of belonging and i'm just wondering if you have the data on how many families you were able to reach, how many students you talked with, and what exactly you found from those comments. and if you feel like you actually were able to reach enough to get a sample size that is relevant enough for making some conclusions, i know that you said to me just about obviously it's not a monolithic community that has one reason for being absent. my sense over my decades in this district is that black families do not feel that they belong in our schools. and so that encompasses a lot of issues that are happening within our schools and amongst our schools and even in our central

office. we haven't gotten it down prior to the pandemic. the chronic absenteeism for african-americ and pacific islander students i think was around 35, 36. and now it's in 60% range. and it was one of our goals actually for our last superintendent was to work on this issue. and then the pandemic hit and it's gotten worse. so i feel like at the site level, we need to just you have a lot in here about what we're doing at the state level. i don't know if all of it can be done, but if there are certain specific site level, straight edges that can be done that we could leverage the most out of to make sure like one thing that i did when i was a principal in grant said my school was predominantly latinx families was that if a student was absent , the phone call that went home was a very nice phone call and we called every single family every single day that a kid was absent. and we said we missed your child and we really want your child at school. and it

wasn't punitive. it was something that was said in a loving way. and over time, actually, the attendance did increase every year at the school, not just because of that, but you could walk into school, you could feel like that there was a sense of belonging. so we're lacking that in so many of our schools, particularly for african-american families. and i'm just you know, i'm rambling a bit, but i really feel like we need to identify some specific strategies that will that we can leverage the most. so first, about who you talk to and then second, about those strategies. we'll get the exact numbers for you, exactly how many families, but you absolutely named it. rita was just sharon. she had a data conference today and talking to one of the schools. and there are chronic absenteeism has gone down and just that someone's making phone calls. there's a first round of it. teachers are making it. and then at actually at their cctv meetings, they get out. if they haven't seen the students before they start, they're actually calling right then. but with the script calling with, hey, we missed you, billy bob, we haven't seen you or to the families, you know, when are you

when are you able to come back and when can we talk? just humanizing it and really expressing what you missed. and then small things when babies are late and are coming in, hey, glad you made it. just go get the class and set up to a 6 or 7 year old. why are you late? or you just got here. you were late yesterday. okay. so really trying to humanize the experience for families and for students as well. can i can i just add to the strategies question part? so and i agree with you, by the way, i think sense of belonging is critical here. and i think that idea of being loved, seen, nurtured, cared for at a site level every single day is makes the difference. one of the great one of the things that we've done is we've created this tracker that i told you about for the attendance plans. we literally have everybody's plan in there. and then what we've gone is we've combed and combed and combed. and what we found is common strategies and we've highlighted those. and then we found a unique strategies. and so what we're going to be working on is how do we share those with each other in citywide meetings, in cohort

meetings and like create lists and trainings around these strategies and how do we monitor the strategies to see, well, did that one work or this one work? but the first first thing for us to do was, well, what were the strategies? and so actually we now have a tracker that's got every school's got at least a couple of strategies that are common across the district. and then several that are unique as well. thank you. thank you so much for the really thorough presentation and slides and thank you for commissioner sanchez for raising up this sort of the human aspect of it. so i actually did get a call two weeks ago, but it was it was automated. so the automated doesn't quite feel like that nice touch. but at least they let me know that my child wasn't there. and i fortunately i knew that he wasn't there. he was home sick. um, but yeah, there is something about, you know, engaging with one another for as the babies, as the humans, as

the parents, as the caregivers that we are, that i think this we talk about the educational system, we talk about the district and it feels yes, it is obviously systems based, but like we have to remember like who the humans are in this system and so i am glad to hear that at that one school site they're seeing changes by actually having someone call and express compassion and interest in care. so that's great. um, my question is about table two activities and measures. and i guess i would love just to understand a little bit more what you all are referring to and what you when you reference research based communication strategies and what they're, what is, what is that research such that we're relying on to develop these measures. so, for example, there's a welcome letters and presentation schools, uh, presentations and poster contests, all of which sound fun tastic and is this, did this come from other

districts that have said, we've tried this and it worked? like when it says research based communication strategies? i guess i'm just wondering what that research looked like and why we should feel confident that we're relying on on these measurements as as things to consider and look forward to learning more about. yeah. so in terms of the attendance awareness month, i think is what you're referring to. we worked with a lot of the, the, the work from attendance work, which is a really famous and important group that does incredible trainings around the connecting chronic absenteeism with sense of belonging. and they just had another training that i didn't get to go to, but i got to see it, you know, asynchronously. and it was very powerful. and so we're working with research and resources from them and they are well researched nationally and something we haven't mentioned is this chronic absenteeism is a national this isn't just an sfusd and post pandemic. it's quite, quite serious across across the country. but we were

working with research based materials from attendance works and then were you all i know, for example, that la unified, maybe it was last year embarked on a new process. there was some allegedly very i won't say allegedly they lauded it as a creative, new, ambitious way to reduce chronic absenteeism. i don't know if it's working, but like, are we looking to other districts as well to the extent that since this is a national problem, if any districts are making changes and are seeing results, are we monitoring that as well? and instead of reinvent the wheel in some places able to learn and use what they're doing , we hadn't started there, but we started with this company because of their background, but could definitely look at other folks too, if they're able to do that. but we started here with this this company. but that could definitely be something we look at as well. thank you. i

was wondering if staff could direct me where in the presentations, the links to the zip code data is in the other data looking through what's available on board docs. i only saw a link to a document with proficiency rates kind of broken down by ethnicities, but i didn't see the other ones, so i don't know if there is a so it's not a link, it's the actual wording in the presentation with the description. okay so when i go to the link under our interim guardrail 2.1 that says here, does it takes me to a link of. attendance report for three grades down in percentages. okay, i'm going to pull it up and show folks what i have. and if this is right, then we can.

but that's not what i was asking for. i think it's on page two. president bogus. and see, yes. we have also analyzed patterns of attendance by student zip codes. it's like three lines down in that in that paragraph, half on page two, under chronic absenteeism. okay. sorry about this. under the chronic absenteeism. second paragraph, we have also analyzed patterns of attendance by student zip codes. i don't see that on mine. i'm sorry. so you know what? i think it's not been updated. maybe. okay sorry. no, no worries. no worries. so if we can just update that, that'll be great. and then i think we can refer to that. well, i think if you click on the main subgroups are available here, that blue link, there's some more or is it included in there? it is not. no, it's a separate link. yeah so if we can just make sure we get that update. we appreciate it. i think the concern that i

have, i think everything in here makes a lot of sense and reflects. i think, the best information about how we can solve the problem. what i guess i'm struggling with is to see how we are going to implement this with the staffing crisis that we're having and some of those kind of existing challenges. and i guess if someone could, i guess, speak a little bit to that, because i think everything on here is good, but i don't really see how this takes account of the staffing dynamics that we have and kind of the current situation at our school sites, which makes me wonder how do we plan for this to be kind of successful as we move forward? yeah, i can start there. first of all, i don't want to undermine the staffing crisis because it's real and it's a challenge and we know we see that centrally on site and for sure sites. and so but i will say that one of the great outcomes of this work and i think we just have to stay there, is that we now know that there are working teams at every site and so we i believe that

through that that lever staffing shortages are know unfortunately unfortunately for them. but we will continue to be able to stay with that teams and build those up because that is something that's now not just become an expectation, but i believe that at a site level, it's something that folks look forward to in terms of working together because we got into this business to really serve the whole child. right. and the cctv is where you do that. i mean, you do it everywhere, right? but that's where you come together and you talk about, hey, why is eric not here? he was here or eric's not here. he was here this morning. well he didn't come to my class, right? and so i think that despite those challenges, we're going to be able to stay stay here and keep working forward with. with with with that through our fact that we have established cctv teams at the site level. and then conversely, i think now that we our schools division and we're working together, we can we can support each other and say, hey, can you send some folks over to do some consultation with so-and-so school because maybe

they're down a little bit and they need some additional help or they need resources so that that back and forth flow i think is a little bit stronger at this moment. i appreciate that. just one follow up. even though i said no follows. my apologies, board members, is i guess if you could, i guess, talk about whether or not each site has a fully staffed cctv and i guess at what intervals are we monitoring and tracking that as well as just for all of the things that we identified as strategies, what is the frequency that that's tracked and monitored at a district level and how do we gauge the effectiveness? so i think we lifted up the automated calls for attendance. where are we tracking how effective that is in bringing families back? and like what does the data internally say about that or are we not tracking that? or i guess i'm interested in how much data are we tracking at the school site level and how much we are aware of what is happening at day to day at individual sites across the district. so i'll start. oh, and i just want to say, because we use a lot of

acronyms in education, so even just maybe stepping back, saying what a coordinated care team is. and i will say there's going to be different staffing configurations at schools based on who they have available. but there does need to be a minimum core. and maybe you can speak to that. that's what i was going to identify in the plan. we asked who's on your team? and so people do a variety based on division, based on the different supports that they have of, you know, a nurse, a social worker. if you have that, if it's just classroom teachers as well. and i think to your point, president boggess, this is our first attempt, like we wanted to get the plan first, like let's see, you know, what are you going to be doing? eds and assistant supes are working directly with principals to kind of monitor that. look at that. what did you say? what were some of your plans? we're asking them for their goals as well. what are your goals for this year? what would it look like for you specifically even provide specific targets for schools as well. so we can monitor that with the target. and so they're

talking about specific students at the meeting to kind of progress monitor on their own, you know, who are the i think they gave like numbers, but the sites know the exact names. did billy bob come? did the second grade? have we seen that different? and so having the weekly meeting allows them to have the data conversations and then we can then in turn look at it on a more larger scale as well. does that answer your question? yeah, just are all of the teams currently fully staffed at every school site and are they all trained to do the things that they need to do to support around attendance? so two things. gotham plan. first, doing it at cohort meetings, discussing it, having conversations about now the teams look different because it's based on who's at your site, not whether you're staffed or not based on who's at your school and the divisions that they're in as well. it's not a cookie cutter model. we gave some ideas of who should be on the team, but it's not every school may have a different configuration as well. no, i

understand that. but like if i go to lakeshore elementary school and i'm like, show me who is on your team, they would say, we have a team and it's in place and someone from the central office is verifying that for all of our schools that they're prepared and doing. yes, that's what the. yes. and so and then on the team, i don't think we met on the team. there should be an administrator and then there will be some what schools different configurations of a support staff like a social worker that might have the intervention teacher might have a family liaison, might have a seawall, child welfare and attendance liaison think that's where there's going to be a the community schools coordinator if they have that. so that's where it's going to be be a little different. but to your point and yes, like we should at this point say there is a functioning care team and so the school might say, well, you know, we're still we have a coordinated care team, but we're missing our social worker. right. that's that is going to exist. but there's enough critical mass of all those different groups. we said that a care team is meeting

at each school and at least following up on with the with the attendance plans. can i add one thing to that which is that we also centrally have a ct working group which is made up of folks from sfd, from the superintendents team, and we're getting folks on lead there too. and what we're doing is we're creating resources and materials for sites and checking in with sites. so actually we've already done surveys of social workers that are on the ct's and community school coordinators that are on there asking them, what do you need, how it's going, what else? and we're doing that for principals as well. we take that back and the ct workgroup works through it and thinks like, what are the next things that we need to do to support? and then we bring it back to the schools division meetings as well. so we are trying to create that ongoing feedback loop with the ct at the site level. is anyone wanting to follow up on this? i was going to change the subject. no is that okay? okay. so my. yeah, yeah. okay yeah. yeah yeah. i just want to add a little bit

about school staffing. so something that the student advisory council has been talking a lot about is definitely like having fully staffed wellness centers and having wellness centers that have of that are open throughout the entire school day and also the entire school week because at many of our schools, our wellness center is closed, at least like two days a week and aren't open during like times where students need to go to and get the help that they need. so definitely, like with sfusd focused on the entire student and not just on like academics and just like the entire student's experience, i think one thing that contributes to absenteeism is definitely like the lack of wellness support, whether it's mental health support or getting like painkillers during the school day. it's just something that's really important to make sure that students feel that they have that support with their wellness while at school. know i appreciate that. yeah she she

meant advil. we're clarifying. okay. no, go ahead. all right. i'm going to change the subject. thank you for that. i think that's really the staffing of wellness is really important. the um, to i want to ask about bright spots, which i probably should have asked about in a pre question, but i think it's an important strategic question for all of these monitoring reports is what's working so specifically, do we know are there schools where kids that have higher than average attendance for black students or pacific islander students for foster youth or for any of the groups that are particularly low in these areas? and what's working in those cases? i i gave the one example that we learned about today. i think we're really just trying to collect it all and to do, but we'll definitely be able to. i think for me, what the really bright spot is, we asked for something in july and we got it. and so

for me, just the baseline, we have something to do. and it's not just we. it wasn't just a checklist. people are looking at it. there's going to be times where we can have conversations as well. and as eric said, we'll be able to share because we have all that and we can give that information. i didn't say this. i forgot to say this to their lunch and learns where people can come and get different ideas. secretaries are being trained. there's meetings for them as well. so i think for me, the bright spot is that we asked for a systemic change and we're seeing throughout our system that we're talking about this and then we can go to the next step of sense of belonging. but i think that's the bright spot that i think this is major. we had a whole department come together and you see some of those folks in the way to the people who came. so just that we're committed to this and that this is important. and so we're excited about that. i think that's a bright spot. just to start. and then we can permeate and cascade it down into the rest of the system. but i appreciate i do want to say, because commissioner alexander, you spoke to like how we're still in a learning process here. this is our first full

year of implementing these reports. and it's interesting because, you know, i think it's just a reflection. i'm going to take away from this is as we're doing our progress monitoring, how do we focus on the system while also highlighting the bright spots and, you know, being being aware of them? because at the last progress, monitoring, we did bring in some bright spots around. and you know what we were doing at for literacy. but then it also highlighted how. okay, but how is that happening systemically? right. and so i think we're working to figure out that that balance. but but so i don't have necessarily an answer just to say like i think we need to keep both things in mind for each report, like what's the systemic efforts and lifting those up, but then how do we integrate bright spots so they support the system and not seem like anomalies, right? a lot of times they feel like outliers or so we'll think that one through. can i share a bright spot? actually for my african-american

middle school son? when at denman he so when he started at denman well actually when my older daughter was at denman, it was a late start. school students weren't let in early students would wait outside. but by the time my younger son got to denman, he was actually excited to get to school early. i finally found out that the reason behind that was they opened the basketball court early in the morning and let all the kids come out and play on the yard and so that was one of his best times to go hang out with his buddies. was before school shooting hoops. and it was a great way to make sure that the kids were there on time as well. so. that i think, goes very much to the sense of belonging, giving kids activity that they want before school is a great way to ensure they're there. so i don't know if i can lead into my questions now or if you want me to wait. commissioner, president bogus.

let's have you wait a moment and let's have commissioner lamb jump in and we'll come right back to you. commissioner fisher, thank you. thank you for this plan and the presentation. i think just responding to the superintendent. yes, i think we want both. no surprise. we want it all to be able to understand both the progress that's being made at the system level. but what does it actually how does it live? you know, how is it living right on the ground and making that difference so that we can take those examples at scale? i have a couple of questions. one is specifically about the cctv structure. i'm really excited. we've been talking about the structure for years, even before the pandemic, and particularly as we are recovering from their i'm curious around while certainly i know we're in year one and just launching any reflections that the team wants to share about what we're learning so far from

the cctv structure and the consistency of meeting on a regular basis. and we in the plan, we gave guidance and we just gave suggestions as well and we did say weekly, i think for the most part people are meeting weekly. it's a couple of sites that are doing bi weekly, but you know, that's a start for that as well. i think what we're learning is that sites had a lot of different ideas as well. and so we're eager to do this as well. i mean. well, sort of eager to, but but understood that this was a focus. and i think for me, what has been really, really important, like attaching it to the guardrail so that we can talk about we did, i think we showed it to you as well. really matching attendance with academics. so i think this is going to be helpful for sites. i think folks know that. but by meeting weekly and having the conversation and specifically not just naming numbers, but looking at specific students and then attaching that

to and then attach that to their families as well. and then really looking at as a as a whole child, as well. and so i think that's that's one thing that i'm excited about. and i can't say this enough for me as well, that we're all doing this. this is not a high school thing. this is not early editor. this is sfusd pre k to 12. we're doing this as a system and this will be something that's expected that attendance is important and can i just add that? so one of my supervisors for social workers has been texting because she wants to make sure we're not missing some pieces. and i just want to emphasize again that that you know, this is an ongoing cycle of inquiry for us, right? we're going we're going to keep it's like a massive pdsa cycle that we want to keep iterating and learning on from. and then so they are the working group which is a central group is actually creating this survey that i mentioned. it's going to every single cctv and we're going to glean. we're going to learn from them what's working, where the implementations are, where the barriers are, where it may be

that it's understaffed and they need more support, where where wellness centers may come involved. and in fact, they are supposed to be open all the time except for once a month. we need to find out more about that. but but i do want to just say that this is an opportunity for continuous learning across the entire system. thank you. i'm looking at the fishbone analysis and one of the problems that was identified is around inconsistent attendance data quality. so no surprise, i'm going to go for it into the operations and systems building. how are you all thinking about through both at the executive level as well as at the ct site structure for what are you anticipating or hearing so far of what's needed and necessary in addition to the pd and training which was very outlined very clearly, i think i'm inquiring more about that. reporting systems. sure. so that it can feed up, you know, both

centrally and back to sites and all around. sure. so what was happening was the data was being entered in synergy and, you know, and we would then create reports in illuminate, which were updated every day. and at the same time, there were the reports that were cumulative were lagging because, you know, they were not like done every day. now we have created it where we've made it a leading indicator. so attendance is one of our leading indicators where every single day you can get both a cumulative and a student by student report. so that's the change that we have made as a system. it's active. so, you know, any social worker or seawall can actually go and see current data. as of yesterday takes 24 hours to update. that's super helpful. thank you for shedding some light around that system shift. the other question i have is in the fishbone

analysis is also how we're hearing or supporting our families and recognizing that, you know, particularly families in the earlier years are also needing some more messaging or consistency around the importance of attendance. and i notice on the overall reports, we don't necessarily break down by, let's say, elementary or secondary. so i'm curious if there's anything you also want to share of what we're seeing around absenteeism and possible interventions between the early years and to secondary. and of course, i have a follow up to that. i'm so sorry. but now the report has been updated. actually, you do have a breakdown by school level, but maybe from an aggregate or the analysis that you all if you

have looked at between, let's say, pre kindergarten 2k3, you know, just or secondary, are we seeing any particular trends then that will inform or is informing how the kts or the approaches that you are looking at? i think i think if you ask me for trends, number one is definitely at the kindergarten level. we always have the highest absenteeism rate. so the kindergarten and you'll see as the grade advances, you'll see the rates go below. so so kindergarten is one of the highest rates. the second trend that i would point out, too, is during that holiday period, which is from october to december, you almost see the absentee isms go real high and students that, you know, miss 4 to 5 days during that time then adds to the chronic absenteeism rate for the school and for the district. so that is a very

critical time that, you know, we can intervene and put strategies to reduce the chronic absenteeism during that time. and if i can also just. oh, go ahead. no, no, go ahead. i was just going to add to that. we did ask our early ed sites to do ct plans as well. the beauty of early ed, we see someone every day, they pick up the students, they drop them off. and so that you can you can really form individual relationships with those families as well. but now we can have early ed sites are having the same conversation about the ct plans as well. and so that's one of the things and hopefully what we're looking for to reach this point that we that's been a long standing point with kindergarten having a high absenteeism rate. but if we're talking about it with our early ed families about the importance of it as well. so we're hoping that that will be a trend that we can kind of dispel. and then folks understanding to inform in kindergarten families why everyday school is important and

what you're creating as well, and why the baby should come to school on a daily basis. there's one more data point. yes something that was just fresh off the presses, literally as we were walking down here, because you were asking about some bright spots around data every monday, john holmes, who helps us with our attendance and tracks it for every school site, said something called a missing sections report, which tells you how many how many sections are missing where kids weren't accounted for, for attendance. and then the job is to clean those up. and last year at this time, we had 3000 missing sections. and this year it's 1000. so we've cut that by about 2000, which is huge. and i think that goes to this idea that we're really working with sites. we like i said earlier, we did recreate and republish a brand new attendance manual with updated practices, and we're sharing that and getting the hands of folks so that that not just the kids, but also the site attendance folks that are that are doing the daily work as well, have that that information. and i think that attention so we actually see

that in that bright spot in action right now. thank you. and just a point that i wanted to share is i think there's also a great opportunity fauci now with universal pre kindergarten and that table starting to convene between the school district, the city through the department of early childhood and the field, the mixed delivery system. um, we often hear from the providers we have over 400 early ed providers in the city and county of san francisco. that's funded by the city. and we often hear from the early educators that they are very much open and want to share the quote, warm handoff to sfusd because they've been with the family since the babies were infants until they are leave them for care or their center when they're 4 or 5 years old. so i do think that this actually around addressing absentee and attendance overall and the positivity of why it's

so important for our earliest our youngest learners and their families to understand the importance of attendance, that that could be a part of the upk working group. now we're going to go to commissioner fisher, then we'll go to commissioner motamedi. thank you all. i'm really excited to see this work. back in 2019, we had a month long attendance working group that was run out of sf, csd at the time and it was a huge effort that led to, i think it was we had over 700 stakeholders who we engaged with. it was people at all levels of the district. it was wonderful and it distilled down into we had we asked people what their best hopes were. well, what were their worst fears, what were their best hopes, and how should we get to what were their advice to get to the best hopes and the

worst fear was that things would stay the same. we'd go through all of this work and nothing would change. this would just be an exercise to be in motion rather than in action. nothing would happen. all these recommendations would go nowhere. so it's actually really exciting to see a lot of them that were highlighted like creating coherent and cohesive plan to see that happening here, to be student centered and family centered in our approach. strong data collection systems, making operational changes. but i think one of the things that was highlighted there that's really impactful here is the wraparound services student delegates mentioned wellness. i think that's a big part of it too. so i live in the south side of the city. that's 29 is really impactful as to whether or not kids are going to get to school on time. so we have things that we can do in our parameters and

things that we can't. but i think my real question above and beyond the monologuing there is, is going back to the root cause analysis that was mentioned a little bit before in the questions. one of the responses to some of the deeper dive questions was that the city doesn't have the capacity to delve into some of these more complex questions. so i'm wondering what it what would it take to get us that data? you know, as i've heard our task force coordinator, tim burke say, is the juice worth the squeeze? would it be helpful to have some more information about some of these root causes to really drive programmatic change ? and i'm really excited to see how far we've come with this understanding that it's new and we're in a pdsa cycle. so i'm wondering what else does the team need to really take it that next step forward? and i'll stop there. thank you. commissioner

fisher when i look at the six, they're not like i think it's things that we know that we've seen before. i think it's us paying attention to it, putting really highlighting, having conversations. i don't think it's anything that's like rocket science, but i think i'm like, we see mindsets. we see having systems where you talk about attendance as well. i don't see for me personally, i don't see anything. families needs have increased, but like how we might support that might be in a different way. but these six things are not like very, very we don't you know, this is something that we've never seen before. so i think it's us. if this is really important and we're going to really live out. this guardrail is staying true to it and really honing in on it, paying attention, providing supports to sites, us talking about it as a district leadership team, as well, and keeping this the main thing

attendance. but we know that we have to move to a sense of belonging as well and we have to include we cannot say we're not going to include families in this work and so i think that's the thing that we're really learning, that we have to really see these babies as whole and that they come from communities and not see it as in a deficit. it. um, i was just curious and going through this process, which i understand and is new, are there are areas where you are surprised that maybe some assumptions you didn't realize you had going in as far as the underlying causes of why students were are chronically absent? what what surprise has surprised you going through this ? if anything, maybe you knew it all. well, i'll say one thing. i mean, i'm it's both surprise and not it's just an area of great

need in the district is just the root cause of the inconsistent data you know, because we've obviously been collecting attendance data for a really, really long time. but you know, but just seeing that, you know, it's been being able to really rely on like what's coming out of the system to understand where to target the support was a little surprising around this, but i say not totally surprising because this is as we're trying to rebuild the system and, you know, and we talk about what's happening in our financial systems and everything we're seeing that that the inconsistency of data is really a struggle. but attendance we've done for a long time. so i feel like that was a little bit of a of a surprise. i'm going to represent the voice of a principal that i heard today in terms of one of the frustrations that was expressed is students sometimes leave the district, go to another district, but then

they don't file the paperwork for to be dropped from that school. and then that school gets the chronic absent addition to their calculation. so that was expressed in terms of like at what point would it not be a school's risk ability to then mark that student? and there's some thing other than the school that takes over. so when the principal said that that was so real and, you know, said there's nothing i can do because the student has actually left the school. but you know, since the student was has been there 30 days and then left or was marked only after the 30 days, they have been credited to that school as a chronically absent count. can i add one surprise because i just and we've said it a lot here and i just i want to reiterate, i know that we'll be presenting on it in march, but i am i was a little surprised when

i looked at the root cause. and then when i look at the data, that sense of belonging has dropped so much. and i and i do wonder about that because we've put so much effort in countering that at school sites. and when you look at the data, you see that during the pandemic it was actually higher and it dropped and dropped. and i know because i'm doing a lot of violence interruption work in the city, there's a lot going on. so it's surprising and it's not surprising. but i do think that's an area where i look at that and it kind of tugs here because it is something that we can shift and figuring out how to do that is going to be important. last surprise, i'm going to share in the data now. you've made us do this is around attendance and academics and the data shows it. but the contrast and the comparisons are so, so disparate that, you know, it's really eye opening that if you are in the group that is not chronically absent, that your percentage of proficiency being

on grade level, it's like 70% of that group is on grade level as compared to those who are chronically absent. so the contrast is so vast that we have to make a huge focus on attendance. um, so i guess i do have a follow up question and it's around if you're when you're looking at the sel and you're looking at attendance and academics, um, and then thinking through how we might allocate it particular sites or systemwide differently, how and how are you beginning to track and assess that work? because there's some things that are going to be specific to a site and then there's things that are external , either with the family or just within the system. and i'm thinking of things like transportation, going to commissioner fisher's example about before school, our kids that are bussed on sfusd busses

don't get to do before school or get to do after school. so already there's a whole whole part of belonging the fun stuff before and after. for that we are we have designed our system to actually exclude specific neighborhoods, kids from participating in those kinds of activities. so are we really looking at the whole system wide elements and proximity, transportation safety on our campuses and then early intervention? so like with the academics and i'm going to stop my monologue really quick, but with academics, which comes first? is it the falling behind comes first? and so, so and not having access to support and not feeling like there's someone there to help you consistently? or is it the absenteeism? i mean , i think both of those are probably true. but if we're if

we're not identifying early interventions, we're not monitoring kids staying on grade level or joining grade level, then we're inviting them to feel not engaged. and that is true both for remediation and accelerate ation. so as we gather this data, i am asking how we're looking both at the individual all and the unique circumstances to the individual, but also stepping back and seeing the trend data and what we have, we might want to that we assume is natural to how a district operates. but there's actually different ways of doing things. i think we've been saying a lot that the we've been talking about the attendance, but that's exactly what the cctv team should look at. you're looking at the whole child like, what's the reason when you have that conversation about children, is it academic because

it could be a baby who does not have any attendance? concern can be there every day and still not doing well academically. so it's twofold. it's us looking at students, but it's also examining the site as well. a good cctv will say, if we've seen this flux of students or this concerns, what are some things that we need to adjust or change in our practices as well? and then the next double click is and then how are we supporting schools if they can at least have that data to be able to say that as well. and so we just said cctv was supposed to do all of those things, but we influx the part about attendance because we know that consistently it doesn't happen across the board where we're looking at attendance as well. and so when you bring a concern or an issue to a team, it should be if i'm bringing this student, we're talking about, you know, a grade level or different students. and so it's all of those things as well. it's academics and social, emotional. it's attendance, it's our climate. what is our what is our climate and culture provide. so that students feel welcome. so if we have a group of students

who don't get to access anything before school or after school, and what do we do on the school day if we know? but you need those. you need to have those conversations. so then you can say, how many numbers is it? where or where do these kids live? is it something that they can do it in other communities, not at school? so that's you're examining the students, but you're also examining yourself as well. so it's not just the students we have to take a critical look at our ourselves as well. i think we're getting close maybe to wrapping up our conversation. i have two more question and comments and then if other folks have, we'll let you jump in and then we'll transition to public comment and move forward. i guess for me, one thing that i'm curious about is if superintend if you could talk a little bit about what does it look like for a site that is having issues around chronic absenteeism and doesn't seem to be able to, i guess, address the issue locally? like

what additional supports and like, i guess, what would the time of additional supports or push in to like help them address those issues, reach out to the families and pull them back in? i guess i'm a little bit curious if things do break down at a site, what does it look like for the district to step in and provide some relief to support to bring students back in? yeah i'm looking at the team and, and as demetrius shared, we have school supervisor hours who are here who just want to appreciate their efforts. they they looked at every single plan and they they serve as that liaison to make sure we're, you know, we that the work is being followed through on. but then what the what is the support that is needed from us to work there and then and then look at eric about what what when we start to see if we're not making that progress. what are the steps we're going to take? yeah i

really appreciate the question. i think it's several. i'm thinking number one, we're trying to get feedback between the sites and us as a schools division to figure out where we can support. is it a consultation? you need? do you want to talk to somebody in the social work, what we call the wellness and health team? do you need? is there concerns around health or health services like in terms of medical issues? so we're trying to figure those things out and troubleshoot and triage as much as we can on a daily basis. we're also taking a lot of information from the sites back to our teams, particularly on the team that i get to work with with sfd and thinking about what we can do differently and what else needs to happen in order to really increase those supports. when and of course the coaching that the eds, the executive directors do weekly with their sites i think is really, really invaluable when things are really reaching a level where it's like a tier three, particularly around attendance, right? we have a central coordinated care team and with an amazing folks, i'm thinking of phoenicia, particularly and

the team that she works with to make sure that we're actually connecting directly with the families that are most struggling and finding out what those root causes are and trying to support them. and so we are creating we've got a referral form that's actually about to go out to every single site that will actually say who are some of the most struggling students that you need additional supports with. and we will be reaching out to each one of those sites to offer those supports. thank you for that. i think that that's helpful to hear, just knowing that sites get overwhelmed and sometimes are kind of left to do more without the resource pieces. and so i think the commitment from the district to provide additional support and to help them fill those gaps and provide extra information is really helpful. one other thing i wanted to go back to was just the data that we shared around the additional attendance in the zip codes, just getting a chance to look at it. i guess i was actually hoping for something that was a little bit more broken down that would give me the ability to look by ethnicity and just see how how chronic absenteeism and the attendance

numbers were affecting per se, like african american students through the various grade levels as well as how that related to whether they're foster students or some of the other statuses that we lifted up just to kind of see the intersectionality of where the issue is, the data that's provided is really good and i'm able to do some calculations to get to the raw numbers, but i do think a chart like the one that was, i think the first chart that you created with the percentages, with raw numbers there together would be just really helpful. and just thinking about board members as we go out and engage in the public around this and engage in conversations and being able to talk a little bit more about what's happening at school levels and grade levels for folks, i think would be really helpful as well as having an understanding of where people live versus where they go to school. and if there's any transportation aspect that we can calculate that might impact why some students are more chronically absentee from some neighborhoods to certain school sites. i'm assuming that we're looking at all this and considering this in lots of

different ways, but i think having that data for us as the board, as we go out and talk about this with the public will be helpful. and i think also to kind of show the validity of kind of our theory of change and kind of what we see is happening. and so hopefully that's something that we can figure out how we can work in and both to reshare maybe at an upcoming board meeting as well as at our public community conversations. i guess if is that something that we can do superintend yeah, yeah. thank you for the reminder to the community you're going to be out there next month reporting on this progress report so we can get that additional information to help help you in those conversations. i just had a random loose end that i wanted to say, so i just wanted to report back that i have seen a big change around the attendance reporting, even at just anecdotally at my own school.

and i will say like having a google doc is really great. and to your point earlier about dropping out of there's no easy two way to drop out of a school. you can't. so i think there are systems of collecting information from families that have just not existed. it's not even like there's a phone number that's hard to reach. like you can't drop out of a school if you there's no way to do that as a parent unless there's no way like i've tried. so anyways, i just want to say like there are and there's also no way to give feedback about why you are making a change either for which is something that has been asked about you know, like, why are you declining? why are you asking for second round? why are you doing these things to gather? like, is it proximity, is it we're very unhappy. is it whatever it may be like there's these touch points that we

expect that families know how to interact with the district that actually are completely absent or just complete anecdotal. so i just wanted to add that since that was a principal frustration , it's not it doesn't exist in the system. but someone should know. well, i can't i can't just to that i mean, i can't speak to this this specific issue. but i do think, you know, a challenge we've had is defining the roles and responsibilities between the district office central office. so, you know, we've shared like even something as part of the enrollment process around immunization there of students. right. that was where we saw it raised a big issue because we weren't clear on like who does what. and how then do we monitor all of that. and so i don't know. it sounds like this might fall into that, but whether it does or it doesn't, that's definitely a takeaway from how we make this systemic improvement. if you are you

wanting us to go back to the seats for students so then i can end, maybe i can. oh, in terms of anecdotes. okay because i just i like the loud. yes yes. no, we're ending on it. no ending on the first point that commissioner motamedi made about seeing actual changes in real life being a parent to two now at two different schools, we had a whole newsletter from clarendon elementary about attendance and about some really, really important stuff. happy to share with you. probably helped draft it. it was fantastic. and i and i as sitting on the school board was like, oh, i know what this is about, but i'd never seen it before, anything like it. so that was something new. and then the regular for my sixth grader had covid, and it was early on and so correspondence with the school about that. and then we might have gotten a letter. i was like, dang, for since then, he's already on the list. but you know, okay, folks are tracking and letting me know. so

those are things that are i hadn't seen before. so i see the i can see concrete changes trickling down to not even trickling coming into the space of parents and caregivers. so yay, thank you. i appreciate one more positive. okay our public data dashboard has been updated for 2223 data. so now you can see any school, any data measure right. updated for by 2020. it's a public data dashboard. okay yeah. and see, but it's good to have that level of awareness. one thing i don't think the team mentioned, but we saw in the data analysis so hopefully you're aware then. so then if you were tempted, say between thanksgiving and winter break to take an extra day to do something. thank you. because we do see that that's a big period of time and your child could end up being chronically absent when you can't control covid. but you can't control that. so just put

that plug in there for all our families listening, including including lunar new year. yes. as well. i guess at this time i would want to ask if commissioners could return back to you. we can make a final comment. okay. yeah. okay why don't we do that? yeah, well, then we'll just say yeah. no, no , i'm not sure if you want to say this. we'll have two final comments for demetrius and then myself. go ahead. okay we're going to work on that. just wanted to show in the first six weeks, we did see a difference. six weeks last year, 44% of our african-american students were chronically absent. this year is 41. and so and then overall, 22, 22.5 for district wide and 21. so we are thinking that the things that we put into place, we've been able to see it in the first six weeks. okay just as we end, i wanted to just share a reflection. i was i was listening to our team talk and we really want to thank the team

that put together this report and, you know, we can give them a round of applause. thank you. work and thank you. and you can hear their excitement, you know, and when you said the bright spot like, oh, we have a plan. so i was trying to put myself like, imagine if i were just, you know, never watching a school board meeting and then watching tuning in to a school board meeting and saying, wait, they're excited about having a plan. and they got it back from every school. but i say that to say because it you know, why are we excited about that? and it's really because as we're starting to see accountability, fauci, which we've talked about a lot and the board of education has talked about a lot and not accountability in a sense of, you know, we need to punish people right? but in that we say we're going to do things and we follow up. so i want to highlight again here our executive director, some of whom have 17 schools. you know, are sitting and talking with principals to make sure it comes in. and i want to also recognize what tamika said when tamika said that, you know, schools

were kind of excited and not totally, but because we we're getting this level of accountability because of the focus we have now and what the lack of excitement comes from is the fact that schools also have, you know, a plan to submit and a pitch plan to submit and, you know, plan to submit and this and that and all those individual really, you know, are important. but for a principal and for a site, they collectively become like, what are we focusing on? are we just being driven by the plans that we need to submit? and this is we're being driven by the outcomes we want for our students. and that's what really feels like the shift in this conversation. so i just want to appreciate that. like to me, this is what accountability looks like. and then it does trickle throughout the organization because you're asking us to report. we asked schools to report. they ask their kids to report. and so i do feel like there's that shift. and i do want to end not to be like this. this is not it's just highlighting that shift and not

to be overly self-congratulatory , because in the end, we still have, you know, even though it was an improvement, 41% for the first part of the year of our black students who are ready, you know, showing significant absences. and we've not had the wins we want in terms of the change in outcomes. but it is did want to highlight the shift in culture that we know is so important to get those those successes. right. if we could ask board members to return to their seats and if we could start the process of announcing public comment in all the respective languages and asking people to raise their hands. when as much as you said is to in virtual un comentario publico por favor levante suma. chong you mexican i. heard you diversity. you know i mean how

you do you terrified but i fucking. so at this time are there any cards for public comment in person? yes. we have two. okay. why don't we start at our in-person public comment? certainly. jeff and supriya. go ahead. hi, jeff lucas, i appreciate all the work that

went into this. just have a couple of comment. s so this was the first monitoring session of the year, as i understand that we should have more than one monitoring session a year, especially on attendance, because attendance is taken every day and i don't see it on the monitoring schedule. maybe i just am missing it. um, second is that attendance is going to impact all three goals. is the data was as we see in the data attendance is related to academic outcomes especially. and so it is going to affect all three of our goals. and as it says here on the top of the slide school success starts with good attendance. i'm i mean, that's fantastic to see that and i hope that the plan works and that we can learn from the plan when it if there are things that aren't working with the plan that can be modified. so we can get better attendance and better

outcomes. thank you. thanks, adam. hi. good evening, everyone . on supriya ray here. i wanted to thank you as well for holding these meetings. it's so useful for us in the public to be able to get some kind of handle on what's actually going beyond what we going on, beyond what we see at our school sites and on that personal note, i want to say a couple of things. first, i also have noticed calls coming through. i got one for my son, for instance. it turned out to be incorrect, but i got one and it had the unfortunate difficulty of the fact that they told me to call back. but i repeatedly tried to call back and i could never get through to a number. so it was kind of it was actually very difficult to clear that. so something to keep in mind is how hard it is for parents to address these when they get calls. the second thing is, i wonder how much impact, if any, bullying has on students attendance. i didn't see that called out specifically in the materials that were presented

when i was looking at the little yellow stickies. there are references to issues students may have are not feeling like they belong, but there may be a good part of that that has to do with feeling unsafe at school. so thank you. thank you. that concludes in-person public comment. all right. do we have any virtual public comment? we do. we have two hands raised. gentle reminder that each speaker will have one minute to speak. can we please have that repeated in spanish and chinese. gracias. yes, ma'am. i also have one against second. thank you, aaron. aaron.

dr. nunley. okay can you hear me? yes, we can hear you. bobby belts protecting some children and unprotected others smacks of a flavor of racism that gets mixed. missed because of intentional inclusion. a black mother of a seven year old came to the school to get help for a child that was being bullied by other black and brown children. she was told that a school who knows how to create intention, safe spaces that allow a boy to wear a dress did not know what to do with their black and brown students. after not only volunteering her services, but offering free professional resources for seven year old daughter was held down by other ten year olds. so 110 year old could beat her. the principal

then offered her a safety transfer. we the association of black psychologists, see you and join this mothers and others in demand that you protect our black children and all children regardless of their multiple identities. given the increase in incidents of school violence, you are fortunate that this time one of your young students was not fatally injured. what does the school plan to do about the spirit of the seven year old that was physically anymore? thank you, dr. nunley. that is your time. thank you. okay. okay just want to remind and public commenters that all comments need to be on the workshop item. just a reminder for folks that they need to be about attendance and what was presented today. can can we please have that repeated in spanish and chinese that we are commenting now on the workshop item, which is attendance is that los comentarios acerca de la distancia is why don't you come back when you have your fun is

you can have out through your phone, your phone because how come the phones. okay, okay. i'm currently seeing three hands raised. i will call parents for public schools. jose and. oh aaron. aaron, go ahead, please. yes, thank you. um, i am from fashion public schools in san francisco and i wanted to you know, we've been talking in recent months at these meetings about absenteeism. is i wonder if we can flip the script around and look at not that i blame any teachers and school staff for this, but what could be happening on that side that could reinforce children wanting to show up for school like, you know, sure. we all had a favorite teacher who greeted us at the door. you know, how can

we support our teachers and staff so that they have energy to be there and be present and loving towards their students when they might have contributed long ways they had to afford housing and francisco or other various reasons coming back with covid and the stress of managing the healthy classroom. i just want to promote that. there's we don't want to just blame families or chronic absenteeism. we want to look at all sides of how we can make children want to be at school and learning. thank you for your time. thank you. parents for public schools. hi there. this is vanessa calling on the ed for parents of public schools. i think there's a lot to mention here, but one is i'm searching the report that was on

the internet and i'm seeing the word parent partnership only come up as a reference to dr. karen artwork around due capacity framework. so i guess they want to have more conversation nation about how families are engaged as partners is the other. i was interested instructional minutes. i also storm surge that word so you know instructional minutes in the report as well and we know that that goes hand in hand so i'm going to encourage the district to look at how are we looking at students and their instructional time in the classroom versus is this and ambiguous set of interventions that we may not be tracking as as thoroughly as we can? thank you. thank you. jose hi. my name

is jose guevara. i'm a student advisor and for the last ten years, one thing i wanted to add to this discussion is what are we doing in teaching our families this attendance system, our going to school with a lot of newcomer families who are coming into the united states for the first time. they don't know what the word truancy is. they don't know what the laws are around attendance. what are we doing as a district to teach our families what it means? what is this system mean? what does it entail? what are the consequences? does this mean that now this letter will be presented when i have the immigration court case, i have to fight? these are all questions. families have when they receive a truancy letter, and it causes a lot of panic. i am very grateful that my site lets me address every single family that walks into the building with questions around truancy letters, and i can only imagine in a school where it's not fully staffed, a parent walks in stress and panic and no

one can talk to her over this truancy letter because everyone did it covering the class, dealing with an emergency or whatever the case might be. so what are we doing as a district to teach our families about this attendance system as a and in the united states, especially? thank you, jose. that's your time. thank you. rebecca hi. can you hear me? yes, we can hear you. great. thank you. hi. my name is rebecca fedorko. i'm a special ed teacher for early education. i just want to i really appreciate the presentation on, but i do want to add that when we give these extra assignments to educators at sites, especially at our small sites, they feel like, oh, only some sites do like weekly meetings. yeah that's because the same three people are on like every team at that site level because there are not that

many people. and as a special educator like i appreciate we're doing all these things. i appreciate things like cctv, but the more responsibility we push on to the site level, the less days i have and the less time i have to have iep meetings. we've got mandatory pds, we've got like our staff meetings, we've got ccp meetings, we've got meetings. when on earth are we supposed to be having iep meetings? and that has become increasingly hard. these things are wonderful, but i really do want to caution us to continue to push responsibility on staff members, especially at small sites. when these people are already shouldering a ton of responsibility. thank you. thank you. jasmine.

jasmine. that concludes our virtual public comment. okay. thank you so much to everyone for providing in public comment at this time. we will go to item e, which is just making reference to questions and answers regarding agenda items that are linked in board docs with the board agenda. and with that we will adjourn our meeting. at 8:25 p.m.

nsf.gov tv san francisco echo government television >> what we're trying to approach is bringing more diversity to our food.

it's not just the old european style food. we are seeing a lot of influences, and all of this is because of our students. all we ask is make it flavorful. [♪♪♪] >> we are the first two-year culinary hospitality school in the united states. the first year was 1936, and it was started by two graduates from cornell. i'm a graduate of this program, and very proud of that. so students can expect to learn under the three degrees. culinary arts management degree, food service management degree, and hotel management degree. we're not a cooking school. even though we're not teaching you how to cook, we're teaching

you how to manage, how to supervise employees, how to manage a hotel, and plus you're getting an associate of science degree. >> my name is vince, and i'm a faculty member of the hospitality arts and culinary school here in san francisco. this is my 11th year. the program is very, very rich in what this industry demands. cooking, health, safety, and sanitation issues are included in it. it's quite a complete program to prepare them for what's happening out in the real world. >> the first time i heard about this program, i was working in a restaurant, and the sous chef had graduated from this

program. he was very young to be a sous chef, and i want to be like him, basically, in the future. this program, it's awesome. >> it's another world when you're here. it's another world. you get to be who you are, a person get to be who they are. you get to explore different things, and then, you get to explore and they encourage you to bring your background to the kitchen, too. >> i've been in the program for about a year. two-year program, and i'm about halfway through. before, i was studying behavioral genetics and dance. i had few injuries, and i couldn't pursue the things that i needed to to dance, so i pursued my other passion, cooking. when i stopped dance, i was deprived of my creative outlet, and cooking has been that for

me, specifically pastry. >> the good thing is we have students everywhere from places like the ritz to -- >> we have kids from every area. >> facebook and google. >> kids from everywhere. >> they are all over the bay area, and they're thriving. >> my name is jeff, and i'm a coowner of nopa restaurant, nopalito restaurant in san francisco. i attended city college of san francisco, the culinary arts program, where it was called hotel and restaurant back then in the early 90's. nopalito on broderick street, it's based on no specific region in mexico.

all our masa is hand made. we cook our own corn in house. everything is pretty much hand made on a daily basis, so day and night, we're making hand made tortillas, carnitas, salsas. a lot of love put into this. [♪♪♪] >> used to be very easy to define casual dining, fine dining, quick service. now, it's shades of gray, and we're trying to define that experience through that spectrum of service. fine dining calls into white table cloths. the cafeteria is large production kitchen, understanding vast production kitchens, the googles and the facebooks of the world that have those types of kitchens. and the ideas that change every

year, again, it's the notion and the venue. >> one of the things i love about vince is one of our outlets is a concept restaurant, and he changes the concept every year to show students how to do a startup restaurant. it's been a pizzeria, a taco bar. it's been a mediterranean bar, it's been a noodle bar. people choose ccsf over other hospitality programs because the industry recognizes that we instill the work ethic. we, again, serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner. other culinary hospitality programs may open two days a week for breakfast service. we're open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner five days a

week. >> the menu's always interesting. they change it every semester, maybe more. there's always a good variety of foods. the preparation is always beautiful. the students are really sincere, and they work so hard here, and they're so proud of their work. >> i've had people coming in to town, and i, like, bring them here for a special treat, so it's more, like, not so much every day, but as often as i can for a special treat. >> when i have my interns in their final semester of the program go out in the industry, 80 to 90% of the students get hired in the industry, well above the industry average in the culinary program. >> we do have internals continually coming into our restaurants from city college of san francisco, and most of the time that people doing

internships with us realize this is what they want to do for a living. we hired many interns into employees from our restaurants. my partner is also a graduate of city college. >> so my goal is actually to travel and try to do some pastry in maybe italy or france, along those lines. i actually have developed a few connections through this program in italy, which i am excited to support. >> i'm thinking about going to go work on a cruise ship for about two, three year so i can save some money and then hopefully venture out on my own. >> yeah, i want to go back to china. i want to bring something that i learned here, the french cooking, the western system,

back to china. >> so we want them to have a full toolkit. we're trying to make them ready for the world out there. i cur emergency medical services rescue paramedic captain i work for the san francisco fire department. i'm first generation mexican-american my parents lived in l.a. and migrateed san francisco. mow and my older brother and young are sister were born in the city what got me here was to be honest, i made a lot of mistakes when i was younger. grew up in a house that this h a lot of people in i small house. fell throughout critics.

my mother and family were -- really big on taking care of others. this fell first ticking care of each other attitude helped mold me to the person i am now. with this said a let of the things from my culture bled in to what i do in the fire service. as far as you know things like having a strong work ethic. working hard. trying to be a good person they are thing this is were instill in the me at a young age with my household. when i got hired i was the look the department. all right. i know this does in the make a huge impact when you look at it on paper. for me as a person i never saw it as a negative. i don't look to how many numbers of people we have i look to equality of the people we have. right? i had lieutenant that told me

[inaudible] he was like, you know 20 years ago that would not be tellerated. well, every step is a step forward. for me, having that officer see this moment and know this we are making strides in the right direction that's how i can make change. i can live in both worlds. right? for me, one of the best feeling in thes world on the ambulance was having someone who we did not have a translator and look at me i would go. -- and just to look at their face and go, well, i made a difference there today opposed to not having the skills or watching people had can't translate and watching how a strug they'll is to speak their language or abling to community i think brings people a lot of

comfort and a terrible situation. my son means a lot to me. my -- family means a lot to me this job has given me the means to take care of them. it has allowed my son the opportunity to have someone to lockup to. and my wife machine to be prud to call their spouse. i think those are all thing this is this department really should be what it is like to put the needs of others before you. latino heritage is about helping others. right. and it is about being charitiable and a sense of family. >> hi, friends i'm pria here

with heather knights. heather, you wanted to bring to the greenwich street steps. why >> i just love the san francisco hills sport hundreds of staircases like these mpts anybody wantish to get exercise in before the conference days can come here or any number of neighborhoods and go up and down a few times and your claws will be burning. it is beautiful here, great views of the skyline, the bay, treasure island, alcatraz and exploy coit tower. >> at the top of this particular set of stairs is telegraph hill, and there used to be wild parrots thatd flew around and thrfs a film made about them once you were fascinated by those parrots. >> there is wild parents here, nobody knows where they started. the main idea is maybe they were pets that escaped from a wendo and started mating and have a huge family.

in my previous job at the san francisco chronicle we name the city official animal and the board of supervisors declared the wild parrots. >> in san francisco we think of the sea lions at the animal. but i love the wild parrots. when i first moved to san francisco this is my neighborhood and catch a glimpse of the colored feathers. tell us now that you are at the new york times after a long time columnist for the san francisco chronicle. >> it is complicated city. a lot of good, and bad. drug use, homelessness and also a lot of good. look around, it is stunning place. there is new businesses opening, new restaurants, signs of the start of recovery so let's hope that continues. >> come on out and check out one of these many many sets of stairs there are throughout the city when you visit san francisco next. thank you, heather. >> thank you.

>> so quiet in here, huh? well first of all, today is a very exciting day for san francisco. i'm san francisco mayor london breed and i'm excited be here with all of you and the folks joining us today. to prepare for apec the asian pacific economic co operation that will happen in san francisco this major summit of 21 economies with some of our leaders around the world and san francisco was chosen by our president joe biden, who selected our city as the place to show off the united states of america. this is