We are seeing a really high chronic absenteeism rate prek and kindergarten. If i were doing this i would say lets start looking at kindergartners at least, those families are reaching out to them. Those are going to be the same kids in fourth and fifth grade are not going to school. I know the Early Department is doing work around prek but im not familiar with it. And kindergarten that is one of the strategies that we are trying to adopt a more preventative strategy. If you reach families, early before they are chronically absent than we have an opportunity to have them not become chronically absent as we build that muscle for school attendance. Those are some of the things were looking at the sharon partnering with rpa and looking at the six week periods of are we impacting that and kindergarten is one of the areas we are really wanting to focus more on prevention as you know that is a pretty high area, chronic absenteeism. I was smiling not because we have a survey but because we are starting to ask those questions. All of the schools in every cohort has a focus on chronic absenteeism. Looking at the date that she was actually going down to the name, who are the students that are chronically absent and engage in the culture and climate teams to understand the folks on their experiences and understand how we, as a system to give better support. No we dont have a survey that we are starting to ask those questions and couple that with research on best practices to figure out how to address it. Thank you very much. I have the dropout rate. 41718 the dropout rate for San Francisco was 7 . Africanamerican 91. 1 . The last thing i would request so we can get some comparisons with other districts statewide so far chronically absenteeism again, as an example for africanamerican students what is it look like statewide what is it look like districts. Thank you. Commissioner lopez . Commissioner lopez thank you for presenting. I was wondering about the e. L. A. And math scores on slide six. Just looking at the bright spots and specifically the focus on presidio middle school. What are the measurements that you used outside of the test scores . We used our inventory. In the middle schools and also for pitch we had a focus on literacy. It was implemented from october to february, and then in may as well. For math . We didnt specifically focus on math, but the literacy strategies that each department used. Each department was reading the same book, the teacher selected one strategy in a department they tried it out to see if it worked. There was a cycle to see if there were shifts in the practice it was more of a qualitative indicator. The literacy strategy supported the math as well. Okay. All right. I will have more questions. Commissioner moliga . Thank you for the presentation. For the longest time, in the School District, folks have been saying that Pacific Islanders were not able to receive the support they needed because of the lack of numbers, right . Which i think is not an excuse to serve any community we had this conversation already, in terms of Pacific Islander in sfusd. When we ran the numbers last month it was around 400 or something, right . We ran those numbers again last week, the numbers were triple that, right . So the School District has been supporting Pacific Islander students based on the population that is three times less then what is actually here in the School District. There is some reasons why we brought up that explains this. You know, i guess i am highlighting that and i also want to have this conversation. Not only are Pacific Islanders impacted by this, a lot of other underserved communities, they call themselves invisible. They are also impacted. I would like to have this conversation on how do we move forward and accurately count data in terms of our folks and then what if folks think are the current hiccups that are preventing this and we can talk through this. I will start. Supposedly there is a default in the county is what im hearing, right . Also i am doing the data right now. I am hearing, you know, school sites are changing numbers, changing data. For example they are changing so to native hawaiians. Im looking at now, on seeing this and it says native hawaiian with language spoken is samoan. The majority of these islands speak a different language. Whoever is changing the stated needs to stop. They need to stop. Its just not okay. Going back to the default, would you speak on that a little bit . I will speak to the default. As im going to repeat, as i said even on friday. I dont know about the changing in the data, because it is from the time of enrollment that a parent fills in all of the groups and that is what goes into the system. In terms of the form, the enrollment form actually has a question that says, are you latin or not . Based on your response, yes or no, you get to the other questions which is, if you are a yes then you get put into that category. Only when you say no do you get the default of the other categories. In the other categories the way it works is that if i say i am Pacific Islander so both of those categories are Pacific Islander i will get marked as a Pacific Islander. If i say i am both of those and i say chinese, or i say i am trying and chinese i get marked as multiple races. So what happens is, if you ask the question of how many students in the district within the ethnic groups have marked a Pacific Islander ethnicity. There are around, you know, over 1,000. The result of ethnic groups for the state to come up to approximately 470. That is what we could do with the multiple races. We did find at least 412 Pacific Islanders with multiple races that got resolved as multiple races, because they had marked more than two races on the form. All of these ethnicities can be seen by not only district, you know, people, but also by schools. If i can just chime in a little bit. To get to your question. One of the problems with reports, because that is what it comes down to. If you think of the resolved ethnicity as being an unduplicated count we need to count each child wants this is how the state results we get into the out the way the data was given and just spoke about it. Did a parent check hawaiian . Does it matter else they selected. It doesnt matter if they checked hispanic, or any other races on that enrollment form, did they check hawaiian . Then we have a duplicate account because its actually in the resolved ethnicity. They might be hispanic latinos. As we saw in the data we gave you there was many who chose Pacific Islander reported being latin x. For the state to resolve latin x. If we want to look at just hawaiians we can look at hawaiian separate based on the 20 categories that we have on our enrollment form. Technically then you get into duplicate account. Parents to choose more than one. That, i think is probably traditionally why it is getting reported. Schools have access to it. Learning how to access it and what that means is probably one of the bigger difficulties that we are running into. I appreciate that. My followup is, i feel like we need some kind of method. To really be able to hone in and collect the data, we talk about the arabic community, we can go on and on and on. I will put that on as something to work through. The second is, i have literally had educators come to me and say hey, my principle is changing data. Because they need to meet some kind of code or something . I know we talked about, you guys are just receiving the data. If there is practices happening that isnt ethical, i would like to zero in on those. It is really detrimental to a group like Pacific Islanders. Commissioner lam . Go ahead. Vice president sanchez . A concern around principles changing data. Im not aware as a former principal, anyway that i can do that. Im pretty sure whatever data that the parents give i dont even know how i would access that to be able to manipulate it. I dont know if that is happening unless data change in the last three years. I have never seen that and ive never talked to a site administrator who had that concern that they were able to manipulate data in that way. May you all can speak to that, too. That is my own experience. And also be good before we chime in if at a later date, commissioner moliga can circle back around with the person he spoke to to get more details and have a longer conversation i make sure everyone is on the same page. We all know what we are looking at. Thank you for the presentation pray to have a couple of followup questions. Related to the cohort graduati graduation . Similar to what commissioner moliga has brought up. It is often said, you know, there is a small number, and it is actually an invisible population. I would love to understand what those trends are, what the characteristics are. Are they newcomers, spanish speakers are they also chinese or that would be helpful. I think ive mentioned that a couple of times. The request is that anytime there is high level data we would like to see it broken out by language. So we can really hone in on the community and bringing up any type of supports community engagement, around how we are looking and advancing our development. For the els in general, any time during her high school career, so the definition is there. As Bill Sanderson said earlier the state is defining these. We do have better access to who they are now. We should be doing a better job. Related to the middle school and High School Readiness, i wanted to understand a bit more around what are the steps to address the one third of students on how we are transitioning them between middle and high school . I brought this up, as well. I would really love to continue to understand the work for the transition planning between the middle school redesign. I am really excited about the redesign. What that transition looks like into high school. Do you want to comment now . Or is that top design . Tran21 of the things i think we can respond is getting some of the highlevel practices that high schools are doing. We have been working with these Early Warning indicators for a number of years. I cannot say that there is one that is across the district. I can say that there are things that high schools are doing and we can get you some of the ideas and things that high schools are doing across the district. I will be glad to follow up with that. They are varied. But because of the different climates at the schools they found different practices that work better. The main thing is that it was really great. I came from the High School Team so a lot of the practices that we started on the High School Team is continuing in the middle school team. Specifically literacy and focusing on literacy. The other part here is that we are also honing in on attendance and chronic absenteeism. We are looking at missing sections, sending that information out weekly. We have systems in place to look at attendance. Right at this moment we are looking at grades and that is a practice in meeting with all of my principles today, and then tomorrow they are sharing that they are looking at the best practices as well. For me, just highlighting and reminding that there is a High School Readiness measure that connects to the Early Warning indicator. One of the things that is really important i was just in a meeting earlier eighth feeling connected to a class that makes and having them come to school, you know, having this strong sense of belonging actually leads them to graduate high school. Really having that arc and being really clear about that arc is something we can message as well. Related to chronic absenteeism. I know you all every day are tackling this and trying to come up with what possible Pathway Solutions that as a district we are embracing. I just have to stress for my colleagues and myself. I know working with dr. Matthews that we have to be able to address this with acceleration and urgency. It has been persistent for too long. I am glad that they are looking at this. At the same time, i think there are some good practices that we do know of. That has been highlighted here on the sidebar. I would love to be able to leave that sharing and cohort modeling. I know it is actively happening. Just have to stress that we need more immediate action to see with the plan is, and how we are really going to address this over time. I know there is a lot of experts and you are tackling this on a daily basis. Again, honing in on where that moderate absentee before it actually gets to chronic, right . At chronic it is going to take us much longer to overcome that. I wont belabor it. I would just stressed that this board is really anxious about what is the plan and what are we doing about it across the board from prek on the way through 12th grade. My final comment, or question is around the social and emotional learning. I am less familiar about the curriculum instruction. Given the results, i wanted to understand what that journey looks like. This might be highlevel, but happy to hear any thoughts around that. Around that part of our curriculum. I cannot speak to the curriculum piece of it. In terms of what curriculum or instruction, or adults fostering the competencies and i know a lot in the mouth work that is being done. On the Student Family Community Support Division side of things we have a number of Elementary Schools that are implementing the second step curriculum. There are some curriculums that are being implemented at school sites and also doing some work, a dose response. The afterschool programs also implementing second steps boosters from what is happening in the school day. Looking at at work, and then a lot of is really focusing on adult practices. Have a question for dr. Matthews and i also want to hear from some members of the team these scores come out every year and im interested in hearing, you know, how you prioritize them in terms of this year success are not . I know as a district we value more data than just the california data. If you could speak briefly to that. How are you measuring your success based on e. L. A. And math data yearoveryear . Overall, if you look at our data. One of the things that commissioner sanchez asked about, talking about absenteeism data he mentioned looking at other districts. If you look over all proficiency rates we are out other districts in the state. For me personally, as we talked with the staff. Ultimately what our mission is that each and every student, from my perspective, i know many Staff Members share the same. You talking about success. We will not feel successful until we increase the proficiency rates of our students. We have students who the outcome data, because i dont want to say student performance, but the outcome data from the students is nowhere near where we wanted to be. To your question, to we feel successful . I will speak for me, no. I dont. I know when you look at the data and closing the gap, we have closed a very slightly. Its nowhere near where we want to be. I also know that the programs we put in place like pitch. Thats only been in place and for months now. We want students to be successful as a skill that they need. Ultimately,. Okay. I mean, like these numbers for african amerian students, they make me want to cry. It is so staggering. It feels like a way to downplay something that is unacceptable. Its easy for me to use this time to talk about everybody else not doing well. Im not out there with people moving this on a daily basis. I cant go back to and say, this is a place where, you know, black kids are going to excel. I dont have to say that. The data says that. When the gap is this wide and its this persistent, you know, i mean, personally i am disgusted. I mean, you know, you guys of the practitioners and you are there everyday. I respect dr. Matthews and his leadership. I just want to start with that as a baseline. When i hear about things that we say we do well like graduating students, and it is compared to achievement data that is not even at 15 for math, you know, that just feels like it is insulting my intelligence. Why are we saying we are getting kids to high school when they cannot do math . 15 cant. So, you know, we talked about growth. This marginal 1 , 2 growth. Can you speak to this e. L. A. And math, what that represents in terms of numbers . We have more asian students the census will be different from africanamerican students. What does that mean in terms of a numeric increase from 20 in e. L. A. Last year. Numerically, there were 1700 africanamerican students who were tested this year. When you say 21 of them are proficient that rounds to about 370 students out of 1700. What was the number last ye year . The number last year that was tested was also in the same range. We have about 30 students more that are proficient to share. 2021 is 30 more students . Yes. We rounded it so it is actually 19. 6 last year and 21. 4 this year. We rounded both ways. That is how you got the 2021 . It is approximately around 3040 students. So we are saying it went from 300 up to 330 . 340 up to 370. Approximately. Out of 1700 . Yes. There were 1700 students, exactly 1700 africanamerican students that were tested. About 1400 were not okay. So the exact amount has not changed. It is not like a 60 students left the district and its the same number. S. All right. It is hard for me to say that that is growth. I dont think we should be talking about Growth Growth unless were talking about about double digit percentages. Personally. For chronic absenteeism, like jesus, we are talking about this over and over and over again. I met the team working on it and, you know, at least in that discussion my impression was that the work that happened it not necessarily connected. The interventions happening are not connected to all of the people that could be driving because of varying. Personnel is so different site to site. When we talk about john muir, for example, one of these bright spots, and the principal is telling me the way that she approached the last three years to talk about math differently while she was at the school. I know at least that one school site these scores somebody went in the year and since im going to do something about these scores and, you know, i think there were like 60 in e. L. A. 68 proficient in e. L. A. It is pretty much the percentage for asian students in the district. At one school site someone is performing at the same level. I know that person i dont know what this team did to do that. I know she did that. You know, or her and that team. When we talk about these bright spots its hard for me to see how this team is responsible for it . I think, at the end of the day, the question becomes, you know, who needs to be elevated, who needs to get out of the way . To make sure that more of the gains we want to see happen. That, you know, that is where we hold ourselves accountable. I mean, ive been thinking about that around my own service here. How can i go back out to people and say them doing something here when everything im talking about before is going in the wrong direction . Chronic absenteeism being an example. I am ashamed. Our results overall for africanamerican students and polynesian students and latino students. I am super proud of sites like john muir that are finding a way to do it. That is why am interested in hearing about, you know, how we are going to talk about this over the course of the year. We have former principals and former teachers, im going to stop i dont have questions im just kinda talking right now. There is a whirlwind when that happens when the School Year Starts that can really take someones attention off whatever the market is. If there is a philosophy of school that, you know, we want to make sure we have a Safe School Climate staying on top of e. L. A. Scores may not happen that year. That may be something that happens at a school site. Or, theres a bunch of incidents where parents find each other. I get the incident reports, right . There is a lot of things i can take a school off of focus of Something Like e. L. A. But in a school like john muir has all the same issues and students are performing above the average. I want to give it sort of acknowledgment that things take us off the market. If it is not a priority, out of school, we are going to move e. L. A. 10 this year, i know its not going to happen. That is why i was about how important is it compared to Everything Else that we talk about . Is this the top gauge of what we want to move . Or, are there other things as a district that we are saying we want to move more . It is really priority one for us, as a. It is a mission that has been established and we say that we will make sure that we will ensure each and every day for every student that they will receive quality instruction and equitable support. Number one is making sure they receive quality instruction. For us, it is around all of their subject matter and having core knowledge. Ultimately its around making sure during the the same Language Arts skills and their math skills are at a place where they will be able to thrive in the 21st century. We want to hold wellrounded students, quality instruction and equitable support. Ultimately that is why we exist. Is this indicator . One of the things, like i said, we will be successful when we do that for each and every student. As i said, you know, for every student we are not there yet great absolutely you call it out we see it. That is why we are attempting many of the initiatives. For many of our students, they are actually receiving the skills. Like i said we wont be satisfied, will be successful until it is each and every. Okay. What i wanted to do was better understand what students are looking at. I mention this to dr. Matthews when they are being tested ela. I know i cant see all of the questions what the Testing Process looks like. If im going to come back next year and im going to have this conversation about, you know, some sites there is a lot of stuff that surrounded this test. I want to have more conversations about how we are looking on how to improve scores over the course of the year. And, honest conversation about if it is a back burner thing, and other things take priority. That helps give me context for what i see. Looking at these marginal gains i can even really call them gains year over. It is not acceptable to me. Commissioner lopez . I dont disagree with what was being said. To my earlier point as far as what we are using to measure to do success. They really dont do that for me. I feel like its urgent for us to get out of a space where that is our focus as far as if students are successful. If any of you have ever been in a third thirdgrade classroom classroom about to administer this computerbased test its emotionally taxing, even for adults. I feel like if there are measurements that we are using and trying to figure out what it means for students to be successful for each and every one of the students to be successful, than it needs to be laid out unless on this highstakes testing. This is the only data that we see. This is the only data that people prioritize. We know we have gains, we have been in these classrooms, i have seen the work that teachers do. We need to be able to highlight that in a way that, outside of these tests. Im even thinking about the alpaca and how difficult and draining that process is for english language learners. It is the only thing that parents asked me the first time they come to my classroom. I appreciate that. I think the priorities need to be outside of these results. They have to be. We are not going to be in a place where our students are going to be successful if it is based off of this. We know that. And were going to be looking at data, i do want us to continue to measure it in other ways. [video playing] just just getting into a space, this is not what we are highlighting. That is what i would really like to see. I did have a question as far as the measurements and the dashboard, and how we got to english learner progress from re designations. If that is a district thing or a state. It is a state thing. The state has moved from re designation to learner progress. Within that, is there sort of less priority around the alpaca or what was the conversation about that . You know, english learner redesignation is kind of the ultimate, with english learner progress, its all going to be based on alpaca so youre either progressing a level on alpaca every year during the year, are you getting redesignated. They just change the name but nothing came of the actual process. Had to be redesignated or n not. At least with this new measure with english learner progress you can look and see are the students making progress based on the alpaca results. You are not redesignated, so even the kindergartners and first graders right. Now kindergarten and first grader cannot show some progress on the school gets credit for that. Like i said thats another example of a highstakes testing that keeps us behind. They have still not released the lpac. Im not waiting for them. The other point i do have to make is that we also tried to do a correlation between the elementary results and its almost like a correlation of. 8 which is very high between the two. Whatever level was predicted by reading elementary, 80 you will get the same thing on the spac. Students have opportunities to show that versus the window of time that they are being tested. Commissioner lopez, you are correct. I meant to say through high school we are implementing the reading inventory. That is a measure we are losing. Using perry last year from period one of two period 2 we saw a sevenpoint gain. The same africanamerican student from the period one administration reading to the period to administration reading inventory. It is a shortterm thing that we cant apply measures to interrupt and to help the student succeed. We have done that, they share, all high schools have adopted a plan to implement one of four researchbased practices to improve reading and those are teachers from multiple disciplines. Not just teachers from the English Department as my colleague mentioned earlier. One question, is it for all grades are just 11th grade . No, we do the reading Inventory Administration was one ninth and tenth grade. That is where we are doing administration. We are not waiting until 11th grade. Even though the success we saw in spac was predictable because we have seen the growth from reading inventory over the years. We are not waiting until 11th grade. That is another point that you have made. We cant wait until 11th grad grade, because that is too late for us. We need to start something immediately. We have already administered reading inventory for period one this year. We have already given that information to schools. Teachers already know. We can actually use that to help us address the needs of students. The other thing we are looking at, in the middle grad grades, looking at performancebased assessment. You have heard us say all seventh grade students, in the middle grades, in the middle schools, by spring will have a conference where they reflect about their growth and strength areas. They will upload and have a portfolio where they look at their artifacts to see where they have grown, and you know, reflect back to their parents. Their voices being lifted. I think you can hear a pattern that it is really important for us to lift the voice of our students and really flip it around. Instead of having parent conferences. We are pushing to have student led conferences. That is a performancebased assessment as well. One thing to add as we think about the spac in the state it was always challenging for those of us in classes. This data shows absolute proficiency. Our goal is for each student to demonstrate their brilliance and to show themselves on this gra graph. What we know as teachers and educators, there is a lot of growth that happens that theres not show off on this graph. We appreciate the california dashboard says that and chose not students who are proficient but students that are making growth and progress. When we are showing data and talking about it, you want to look at absolute proficiency. That is where we are trying to go. You also want to look at growth. As you talk about closing gaps. That is the piece that will help schools see what they are doing the other thing that i want to highlight i want to respond to is, it is disappointing and upsetting. It is not enough and this is not the only metric. For me, its more about the predictability. It bothers me to the core that i could guess who is where on these assessments based on ethnicity and language, right . I want to say that and acknowledge that that is what we are trying to do an undo. It is systemic and deep and bigger than all of us. Not just sfusd issue. It doesnt remove from us any sense of responsibility or accountability. We are struggling with things that districts a whole bunch of folks are struggling with. What were trying to to do as a system, is to work with our leaders and not have these schools here or there that are experiencing bright spots. How do we learn from those bright spots and spread them and scale them . We are trying to be much more data informed. Both high school and middle school, and actually several middle schools did create parity targets for student outcome. We are trying to make this much growth and creative plans around that with their lead teams in support of that. Not waiting until the end of the year to look at the data. Where will be our metrics to let us know if we are making progress or not. It doesnt really help a teacher to change practice, right . Us getting a savvy at formative assessment is one of the things we not to burden the teacher, or to make the baby feel ashamed or sad. Are we moving where we want to move and are we making the right moves to get there . In terms of what we are doing is a system . We are really trying to think about how we can be more strategic. How can we understand that thi this this will being successful. [inaudible] what did they do . What were the conditions that were established and how did that happen . We are learning from that. Each School Leader sat with us at the beginning of the year and looked at the dashboard data. Who are the subgroups . Where are they . Did they move . Identify not just what the targets are, but what is the plan to move towards our target . We are really focusing on helping the principals understand that the Research Says that it is the instructional moves of the teacher that leads to outcomes. It is not enough to teach teachers the curriculum. How are they getting ongoing feedback after being collaborated on improving the practices i moved to an outcome that is a focus of ours this year. I would say lee can speak to all of the things that didnt happen in schools. We are trying to be more aligned and coherent as a system, as a lead team to call out targets and create plans. To support them them implement in those plants. The final thing i would say, even though they gains are not where we want them to be. I said slight. I made sure to enunciate slight, because i am bothered, too. There is a lot that is happening in terms of practice, implementation that we think if we stick to it, and if we really monitor and make sure we are being consistent with that we will ultimately lead to the outcomes for our babies. That is where the hope comes from. Want to thank you for all of the research you guys have done. Personally, i want to say this doesnt show Accurate Information on students intelligence rate im going to be very honest, i never took the spac seriously. I just wanted to get it over with. I just circled the most random things ever. I just remember i hated it. I know everyone in my class hated it and we just wanted to get over with. Tests do not show Accurate Information on students especially black and brown, immigrant students. We dont understand what it is saying because we were not taught how to take tests. Tests were made institutionally to oppress students of color. That is a fact. Im not going to fight against it because that is just how it is. We can expect these students to know what is going on in these tests, because they dont understand the language. My little cousin has to take the sat and shes only had two months here in the united states. She doesnt speak english better alone know how to read it. Shes going test score. I dont want to be defined by this test score. I appreciate the work you have done. This does not show Accurate Information. Students on the how to take tests. We are expected to. And we are defined by this test score and i dont agree with her. I think there are other ways we can show students are smart and capable. I dont think this is an achievement gap. Saying i have to do good on a test score to prove i am smart and i am able to achieve things. Its more of an opportunity gap. We are not given the opportunities being taught on how to take tests prate how to do our homework. How to focus in school or even being tutored in general. Thank you. I agree with those sentiments. This has been an ongoing discussion for decades around highstakes testing, the validity of this type of test that our state has chosen to use who define who we are. It is really backwards. Along the lines of what we can use to help round out who our students are, and how they are performing. It would be good to see definite data. A tool that is being used throughout the district. The integrative writing assessment which is now used at multiple grade levels. I would like to see the students gpas. At the middle and high school levels. What are the gpas that our students have . That would help me see, you know, a more clear picture of how our students are doing. I agree everything president cook said around essentially what is a crisis in our city, and our district for a number of our groups of students, particularly the groups of africanamerican and Pacific Islander students. It is absolutely urgent that we move ahead with purpose, and with measured goals. If they make slight gains, granted its just on the spac. How many years would it take without amount of gain to close the gap . I would say it would take 100 years before those gains were made. Everybody else is going up as well. This is a conversation i think we had in 2,001 2001. I want to know, and you cant answer right now i think we, as a board, deserve to know exactly what we are going to be doing. Im going to take the lead from commissioner lam on this. Exactly what were doing doing on chronic absenteeism and to president cooks point if there are people getting in the way we need to do something about that. If there are people getting in the way of dealing with chronic absenteeism we need to do something about that. We need to elevate and amplify the work to the people that are doing that work that are committed to making sure that this absenteeism rate starts going backwards oregon to reiterate, it was 30 for African Americans two years ago, 36 last year and 39 this year. That is almost impossible to try to do. This board needs to know what the plan is. Todd 1020 last comment. Last comment. I was working with two students. Both had below a 1. 0. This was in made. Now one has a 3. 0 and the other one has a fourpoint average. I say that because, you know, we held a group we were just talking about the issue. A lot of the stuff is coming from the home. So like im just really curious around like what are our sentiments, you know, for identifying, you know, emotional, you know, addiction. All of this family stuff. The work i was doing with these kids was in academics. It was around like stability, at the end of the day, right . I just wanted to throw that out there in terms of, you know, how we calculate that information and what our approaches and like what are the benefits we have seen so far . You know, as a district we talk about creating an office for africanamerican students. We raise money to address this achievement gap. This is the number we are using. When we talk about the number we talk about all of the things, why the number is what it is. It is really confusing to the public. I think if we are saying this is why we need your help, and then to say, its the same as it was last year. Or, we are showing growth measurements that dont speak to all of the indicators of growth that we care about. If this isnt the data that we care about, as a district, that im willing to support with the educators feel should be focused on the most. We are speaking to someone years ago, when she showed me the gains that happen in literacy and how attendance affected the gains. Or how winter break affected the gains. Or the summer affected the gains. And then a kid it being for a month on top of that. Growth happens when they are here, and when they are not here. We cant help them grow. She is using something to measure that. There is something she using. We use these measurements. We use something to let us know if people are going in the right direction. What is that thing that we want to say . This is why we are standing out. This is what we care about. If it is not this, let it not be this. But or, let it in addition to this. Whatever. We have to understand like, you know, like this is confusing to people. We say we care about the opportunity gap and these numbers dont change. We try to engage 1 milliondollar donors and these numbers dont change. Im confused. I know somebody looking at this district and trying to decide where can i entrust the future my child, do i want to test an experiment or do i want Proven Results . These are how people are making decisions about public education. They are using it based on this. We have to care about it. If we need to show different data to have a better picture of what is happening. I hope we do that in the coming presentations. I do think we should commit to Something Real when it comes to growth in the coming year that we can rally behind. We want to see something, like whatever it is, you all decide. If we are here next year and i see a 1 gain and were talking about thats improvement like, im, you know, im rolling my eyes. Any other questions . Thank you for your comments. Thank you for the presentation. Section j discussion and vote on constant calendar items removed of the previous meeting. There are none tonight. Section k introduction a proposal and assignment to committee. Number one public and board comment on proposals. We were introducing these for First Reading. Board policy 1100, communication with the public. Board policy 6153, School Sponsored trips. Superintendents proposal, First Reading of authorization to grant or in the alternative deny the renewal petition for one purpose school. Looks like we have one card for public comment. Miss aleta fisher. Good evening again. Im here to share my personal story. My now eighth grader when he was in the fifth grade went to a nature we spent two nights at the fantastic experience. As you all know, because i say it all of the time, that paraprofessional, at the time, was the caretaker to his ailing grandmother as well. So, my son could not attend a field trip without his pera. There was no he could engage and stay on task without the assistance of his jiminy cricket on his shoulder for lack of a better term. My husband and i moved mountains to make it happen. My husband would go up after work. He worked in palo alto at the time. He would drop up to the headlands, spend the night in the dorm, on the cots with my kid, get them up in the morning, get him showered, get him ready. He would