San Francisco Government SmartTranscripts:

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: For children ages three to 10, questions, please contact the board office at (415) 241-6427 or boardofficefusd dot edu. At this time, the board will go into closed session. I call for any speakers to the closed session items listed in the agenda. There will be a total of five minutes for speakers. Are there any speakers for public comment? No. I now recesses meeting at 05:08PM.

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[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: To type their name or handle and list the items on the agenda they would like to comment on. The attendee will need to have a functioning camera in order to communicate with the interpreter and board. When it is the attendees opportunity to provide comment, the Zoom host will promote the attendees to panelists and enable the attendees video. Any member of the public may email the comments with the agenda item identified in the comments to board office at sfusd dot edu by two pm the day of the meeting. If they do not wish to make the comments during the board meeting. The comments will be read into the record. SVZ will provide interpretation throughout today's board meeting. Go ahead interpreters.

[SFUSD Interpreter (Spanish/Cantonese)]: Thank you. SFUSD is offering interpretation services in Spanish and Cantonese. If you need interpretation, please dial the following phone number. After dialing, please introduce the PIN number. This message will be repeated in Spanish and Cantonese.

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: Thank you

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Thank you. As we reconvene, I would like to reorder two items on tonight's agenda. Without objection, I am moving item C, the reconvening to open session after item D, public comment. Any objections? Seeing none, I will move to item D, public comment. Hello and welcome to members of the public. Hi. To the regular meeting of the Board of Education of the San Francisco Unified School District. Our public comment period lasts for one hour today until seven I'll say 07:45PM. We look forward to hearing from the public before we conduct our board business. Our goal is to conduct board business in an efficient, effective, and accessible manner during reasonable hours. We aim to respect staff, family, and community time by ensuring we move to board business quickly. Each participant may speak for up to one minute. Staff will thank the participant at the one minute mark. At one minute and five seconds, I've asked Mr. Trujillo to please turn off the mic and transition to the next speaker. I ask members of the public to please respect that one minute limit so that we can hear from as many speakers as possible. I encourage speakers who are speaking on

[M (QTPAC Vice Chair; they/them)]: the same topic to collaborate and combine their comments so that

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: the Board can hear all viewpoints during our limited time. Please also note that the Board accepts written public comments via email to boardofficefusd dot edu. We will hear first from students in person, then members of the general public in person, beginning with agenda items, then moving to non agenda items. Regardless of whether in person public comment is complete, we will save fifteen minutes for remote public comment, taking commenters in the same order as in person. Today that will be no later than 07:30. To members of the public, on your right, you'll see signs that outline expectations for public comment and meeting conduct. We ask that all members of the public please model the kind of tone, language, and behavior that we hope to see from our young people, respecting different viewpoints and allowing for all members of the public to participate. As a reminder, board rules in California law do not allow us to respond to comments or attempt to answer questions during the public comment time. If appropriate, the superintendent will ask that staff follow-up with speakers. Mr. Trujillo?

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: Thank you, President Kim. We'll start with two students tonight. As I call your name, come up and line up. Angela Garcia, Camilla Martinez.

[Speaker 9.0]: Hello. I am in the in Guadalupe School, and I'm here to let you know that we want you to stop taking the funds from our school and that we would like more programs for our school. For example, we need more programs for our computing class and also support for my classmates in Spanish. They need a lot of help with reading. And in general, all of us need help with the reading. And we would like to have more support in the schools, in the, excuse me, the classrooms with the reading so that we can pass the test that we need to pass.

[M (QTPAC Vice Chair; they/them)]: Hello?

[Angela (Student, Guadalupe Elementary)]: Good. Okay, Luis. I'm gonna do it. Hello. My name is Angela, and I am in the second grade in Guadalupe Elementary School. I love my school because I'm always learning something new there. But I need you to know that we need more resources, and and I and my little sisters need more resources because we want to be able to continue learning two languages, and and that is important to us because we don't want to lose our culture.

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: We will now move to non agenda items. As I call your name, please line up. Translation, My go

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: name is

[SFUSD Interpreter (Spanish/Cantonese)]: Chris Bell, and I'm a mom here in Guadalupe. And I am here to ask for, we have a TK bilingual class, and it's important for the children to learn Spanish. And I know that at times they sent it to other schools because of the lack of space, but I know that we do have the space and we actually have a teacher that she is willing to take that position to teach children. And I don't understand why they don't need to have another year of Spanish. I think that it should be important for the children to have one more year of Spanish and actually go all the way from TK to second grade. Thank you.

[Roberto Guzman-Rivera (Parent, Guadalupe Elementary)]: Good evening. My name is Roberto Guzman- Rivera. I am a parent here at Guadalupe. For many years, we have been asking for a bilingual teacher for our TK classroom. And they always said it was very difficult to find a bilingual teacher, but we have found him. They told us that we should find the teacher and we found him. And then they told us we should find the students when we have them. This year, 30 students applied to Guadalupe for the bilingual TK. And only 20 students were accepted. 10 of the students are in a waiting list. So, that has kind of that this shows to you that we do have the teachers and the students.

[Public commenter (unidentified)]: Okay. I don't think that that's fair because she's taking time translating. Okay.

[Blanca Catalan (Parent; Organizer, Coleman Advocates)]: Thank you. Gracias. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Blanca Catalan. I am a parent from SFUSD, but also I'm an organizer from Colemon Advocates. And we are supporting families at Guadalupe Elementary. Our families are currently collecting signatures to demonstrate the urgent need for Spanish English bilingual TK program in our community. Early education is critical when the students receive support in their home language at an early age. They are more likely to succeed academically and stay engaged in school. For the school year twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven school year, 74 elementary school are going to offer the TK but general. And only two school in the whole school district are offering in the elementary school district are offering TK bilingual in Spanish. So currently, we have more than 100 students in their first language being Spanish in the waiting list. So we are preparing to bring out petitions soon and we're asking to keep this request in mind please.

[Julie Carnelia (Teacher, SFUSD)]: Hello board my name is Julie Carnelia. I'm a teacher in SFUSD for the last twenty years. I'm a national board BCLID multiple subject teacher. I've taught TK for ten years within San Francisco Unified and now I teach Spanish bilingual kindergarten at Guadalupe. Guadalupe needs a Spanish bilingual TK. Early exposure to literacy gives our youngest learners an edge in academic readiness. Currently, Guadalupe has an English only TK but not a Spanish bilingual TK. Our preschool classrooms at Guadalupe are full. We're having to send the preschoolers who apply for TK to other schools. Currently, none of my Spanish bilingual kindergartners attended TK. This has left them at an academic disadvantage compared to their English counterparts in the kindergarten class. The English kindergartners who enter

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: oh, I guess I'm done.

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: Interpretation?

[Speaker 9.0]: Yes. Yes. Hello. My name is Sandra. I have two children that should be going to the bilingual school.

[Sandra (Parent, Guadalupe Elementary)]: No, I have two children that didn't have the chance to go to bilingual school. And but now my daughter will have the opportunity to go. And she is a child that has been her she took she had a need for a therapy and the therapy was being given in Spanish, which was very good for her. But that therapy was taken away from her by the school district. And she is not being able to receive therapy in Spanish, and that is making her go back in her development in language and academically. They had offered a school because now she has a therapist, but she doesn't speak Spanish, so they can't really communicate. The school that they are offering me is in Chinatown, but I am a single parent. I am the head of household. I have a very hectic work schedule to be able to support my kids. And I have to tell you, I am very upset. And but and you need to know, I cannot go all over to the other side of town to take my kid to school. And and that what is making me so sad and upset is that I want my kid to learn Spanish. I want her to learn about my culture because my culture is her culture.

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: We'll go to the next five speakers. Please line up as I call your name. Ishita Verma, Dario Spagheri, Hazelwood, Kay Hazelwood, Mae Yin, Mason Waller.

[Isha Verma (Parent, Mission Bay)]: Hi, board. My name is Isha Verma. I'm I'm a mother of a three and a half year old who will be entering TK. And I'm a long term resident of the Mission Bay neighborhood where you started a new school, which seems to be very successful so far, because a whole lot of people have lined up for admissions. And that's what I want to talk to you about. The TK classroom seems to be having over 100 students in wait list. And from our own building, we noticed that even though we are in the attendance zone, all of our students were wait listed in the twenties, even though we are one of the buildings that have been there before Mission Bay even started out as a neighborhood. It was like all flat. I had previously emailed pictures of how we had been there since the shovel ceremony and also collected signatures of people in our own building. I didn't go beyond to collect people from Portrero, Mission Bay and Dogpatch, but yes, there is a high demand. And all I wanted to say is if you could temporarily please add one extra TK classroom for this year and for subsequent years. Thank you. Yeah, that's pretty much it because the

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: The school building is

[Isha Verma (Parent, Mission Bay)]: line empty and it's about finding one extra teacher. It's something we could help out with. It's some cost, and there's a lot of potential.

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: Would that go and close your time?

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Thank you for your time.

[Isha Verma (Parent, Mission Bay)]: Thank you so much. I can send in more.

[Public commenter (unidentified)]: Good evening, board. We apparently, we definitely need to hire some more teachers. So how much of our financial how much of our education budget is going to our finance operations? Errors, legacy systems, consultants, and overtime admins. Are we talking thousands or millions? And based on my experience when the small errors happens here over across thousands of employees and over multiple pay cycles. They tend to compound into significant financial impacts. And I actually ran some estimates, and currently we are spending somewhere between 4,000,000 to $6,000,000 just to manage our employees retirement savings. And but my question is do we want to keep spending our budget Thank you on for a the comment. Six

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: concludes your time.

[Public commenter (unidentified)]: Okay. Thank you.

[Kenna Hazelwood (District Coordinator, LGBTQ Student Services)]: Happy SFUSD Pride Month. Howdy y'all, my name is Hannah Hazelid. I'm the district coordinator for LGBTQ student services. I'm honored to be in this position that helped me when I was a student at Lowell find myself, find my voice, and find my community. Roughly one third of our students identify as queer, trans or questioning but this last year has been especially hard for those of us who hold queer identities. A recent survey found that almost fifty percent of LGBTQ people felt the need to go back into the closet in some way because of how hard things are for us right now. I am grateful to Doctor. Sue and the board for all the ways that you continue to support our community, whether it's through your read aloud, whether it's through youth pride. But it is not enough just to say these words. It is important that we continue to fund the systems and the projects and that we find new ways for our students to find themselves and to feel safe. It is truly the only way that we can ensure not just the safety and the well-being of our LGBTQ students but for all students. Because when we recognize that everybody belongs and can be their full selves and everybody is able to thrive. Thank you.

[Public commenter (unidentified)]: Good evening. I'm here tonight representing a lot of voices, and we have a very simple question for you. These are voices of families, staff, and other community members. And the question is this if you get rid of programs such as the newcomer programs, Mission Education Center, gutting the programs of Viz Valley Middle School and SFI, and lay off a bunch of support staff. Who's going to do this work? Because the needs of these programs and the people who are there to meet them, they aren't going anywhere. The structure is going away. The need remains. So the argument that we need to make sound financial decisions which prioritize resources for classroom instruction simply isn't good enough. You're not prioritizing equity. Thank you.

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: May Yin, I know you need an interpreter.

[May Yin (Counselor, Guadalupe Elementary)]: Hello, good evening Doctor. Su and Commissioners. My name is May. I've worked at Guadalupe Elementary for over twenty years as a counselor. And my, I want to share about the needs of a bilingual TK as some of our students and previous principals have tried hard to establish a bilingual class, but it was unfortunately a lot of circumstances that some of the students were transferred to West Portal School instead of staying here at the Guadalupe Elementary School. And in brief, I would really ask for our Guadalupe Elementary School really needs a bilingual TK class and thank you for your consideration.

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: Last speaker, Maria Ornelas. Interpretation.

[Maria de Lourdes Ornelas (Parent, Guadalupe Elementary)]: Thank you. Good evening, I'm Maria de Lourdes, and I'm here to say that I'm here representing, I'm here with my daughter, and she's here with me. And I wanna say that the year 2023 to 2024, my daughter, she was enrolled to TK in Guadalupe, and for her it was a very hard experience because she only had classes in English, and English is not her native language. Her native language is Spanish, And it was very impactful for her. It was very hard because she started the school year in a language that is not hers. And it's something similar to what is happening here. I mean, I'm speaking to you in a language that you don't know. And so this is exactly how my daughter felt. And I would like her to be in a bilingual TK class because I think it will be very beneficial for her to learn in her own language. And it's not only that, but it will complement in the future for her to learn both languages. And it will be a really good complement for her. And it's also been part to be able for her to help her with the academics, and also socially speaking. And so having TK class bilingual is to give support to our families, and so they can have a better future in Guadalupe Elementary School. Thank you.

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: Thank you. We will now move on to public comment from Zoom. We will start from students. If you are a student and would like to speak, please raise your hand. If you are a student. Okay, I see no students. We'll now go to members of the public. If you're a member of the public and would like to speak, raise your hand. We'll begin with Chris Claus. Go ahead and unmute.

[Chris Claus (SPED Department Head, Washington High School)]: I'm Chris Claus, the Sped Department Head at Washington High School. I'm concerned about the contract with partners in school innovation in the master agreements item in the consent calendar. It looks like it's coaching for principals, site instructional leaders, IRFs, instructional coaches and maybe teachers. I'm not opposed to coaching but I am opposed to contractors getting paid between $144 and $224 an hour depending on the role and the years to do that for three years. These should be in house union member positions which would be better connected to school communities, better understand SFUSD and who are more motivated to stick around and build real understanding of each site's needs. The neutral fact finding report from February 4 clearly identified that SFUSD has a big problem with overspending on contracted services and this three year agreement is clearly part of that. Please be sure that you have reviewed these often overlooked items for more hidden contracting costs before blindly approving the consent calendar items. This money should be in our schools with people regularly assigned to those schools.

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: Thank you for your comment. That concludes your time. We'll go now to Lisa Weissman. Go ahead and unmute.

[Lisa Weissman (Public commenter)]: Hi, I'm also here to comment on the contract for Partners in School Innovation, another consultant company hired for SFUSD admin and teachers to tell us how to do our jobs at 114 to $225 an hour to identify and unpack our equity challenges. The challenge to equity is paying private consultants $224 an hour. I'm happy to do this for free right now. You wanna solve these issues? Stop our spec classrooms, give teachers the time and the material that they need to do their jobs, balance the issue that some school PTAs are able to fundraise half $1,000,000 this school year and others can't, Open bilingual TK programs. Stop cutting school nurse and social work positions. And if we need more training, we have content specialists. Pay them more, hire more, give them resources. Please prove that you are a board of education that keeps public school dollars within public schools. Do not approve this contract with partners in school innovation. It's a waste of money.

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: Thank you. We'll now hear from Gloria. Gloria, go ahead and unmute.

[Gloria (Parent, Mission High School)]: Hi, I'm a parent at Mission High School. I'm also here to speak about partners and innovation. It's quite a contrast listening to all these parents from Guadalupe coming who were tasked with finding a teacher who did. And it seems like an easy fix. But when I look at a contract that's going to be paying people over $200 an hour, when we went through contract negotiations that led to a strike and we were being told we couldn't find the money to pay our teachers, but we're going to contract out like that, there's something very, very wrong here. The Caliphore's high school task force, I don't remember anything of the outcomes that came on that. I sat on a panel as a parent. So where is the baseline for this? And I really would like everybody on the board here I wrote you all letters yesterday to consider not voting that in. Because spending money on contracts instead of at the schools where the money belongs is inexcusable. Thank you.

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: Thank you. We'll now hear from Ms. Marshall. Go ahead and unmute.

[M (QTPAC Vice Chair; they/them)]: Yes.

[Ms. Marshall (NAACP & Alliance of Black School Educators)]: Thank you. To President Kim, Board Commissioners, Superintendent Sue, on behalf of the NAACP and the Alliance of Black School Educators, sadly today, we're here to share the passing of Reverend Roland Gordon, pastor of Ingleside Presbyterian Church. He was fondly called Reverend G, by the students, the parents, and the educators who walked through the welcoming door of Eagleside Presbyterian Church. For more than thirty, forty years, Reverend G welcomed our students. He had after school programs. He had Saturday programs, especially for African American boys. He will surely be missed. He was a bright star in the world of education. So we had our condolences go out to his family, his grandchildren, his wife, and all who loved him in the Ingleside OMI and throughout San Francisco. And lastly, when we hear about a contract where folks are getting paid from the outside, four times what a teacher would make in the after school program, That concerns the NAACP greatly. We ask that you reconsider that contract and give those funds to teachers and retired teachers. Thank you.

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: Thank you. We'll now hear from Rachel's Rachel, iPhone, Go ahead and unmute.

[Rachel Jones (Youth Justice Director, Coleman)]: Hello, and thank you so much. It's definitely hard to go after Ms. Marshall, but I definitely want to just reiterate those same sentiments. And I'm I apologize. I'm Rachel Jones. I am the youth justice director for Coleman, and my apologies for not being in person. Again, my sentiments follow behind miss Marshall. When we see that departments and and and our district is ready to throw down hundreds of thousands of dollars to outside contracts, when we can barely pay the teachers that we have now, when our teachers and children are being defunded of an education, that is a problem. That is a huge problem, and we need to understand why we have these deficiencies and why from data. It shows that we're defunding education to students, but funding and lining the pockets of contractors. I also would like to reiterate the call that Guadalupe Elementary is begging, these parents and students are begging for the assistance of a TK.

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: You for your That concludes your time. That concludes comment.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Thank you to members of the public for joining us tonight to share your experiences and perspectives. As a reminder, board rules in California law do not allow us to respond to comments or attempt to answer questions during our public comment time. But we appreciate you taking the time to be with us here today, both in person and virtually. The superintendent and her team are tasked with providing a draft agenda twelve days in advance for members to review. Once that draft agenda is made public on our website, board members have made a commitment to submit clarifying and tactical questions, and staff have made a commitment to respond to these questions in advance of each board meeting. That document is linked into each board agenda on board docs. We invite the public to review those questions and answers alongside our discussions today. Moving back to item C, report from closed session. In the matter of student GW versus SFUSD OAH case number 20000260106602, The board by a vote of six ayes with commissioner Lisa Weissman-Ward absent gives direction to the general counsel. In the matter of of Angelis, first SFUSC Superior Court case number CPF dash twenty four dash five hundred eighteen thousand four hundred and eighty. The board by six ayes with Commissioner Lisa Weissman-Ward absent gives direction to the general counsel. In one matter regarding employee discipline, dismissal, release by the board with a vote of seven ayes, agrees to accept the resignation of employee ninety one thousand seven hundred sixty five through a settlement agreement and gives direction to the superintendent. Moving Okay. To item e, opening items. We, the San Francisco Board of Education, acknowledge that we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramatush Ohlone who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. As the indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their traditions, the Ramotush Ohlone have never ceded, lost, nor forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers of this place, as well as for all peoples 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 acknowledging the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Ramadan community and by affirming their sovereign rights as First Peoples. I call on student delegates, Mon, to share a report if you have one.

[Mon (Student Delegate)]: I do. Thank you. Hi. Good morning. Good evening, everyone. First thing is we had our youth summit last Friday, which was really fun. We had a bunch of workshops. We had an opportunity fair during lunch. And also during lunch, student nutrition services was very kind enough to table and we got to taste some possible new menu items and also like give feedback on what we like and don't like. So that was pretty fun. And then thank you to superintendent Sue for coming to speak. To the students, it was such a great time to have you. We also had one adult speaker from the youth commission from city hall, and as well as one student speaker from Balboa. And of course, thank you to Commissioner Fisher for also being in attendance. It was such a joy to have you as well. And with that, we ended with a student delegate debate at the end of the youth summit, that's when voting opened. So voting will be closing on May 1, and then we'll see who's going to be the next us.

[Isha Verma (Parent, Mission Bay)]: Thank you.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Never replaceable. Did you know May

[Hongmei Peng (Governance/Strategic Planning Lead)]: I ask the question?

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Oh, technically, I don't think we're supposed to, but yeah. Sorry. Superintendent's report. Doctor. Sue?

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Thank you, President Kim. I have a short report for everyone today, and like Tina says, April is SFUSD Pride Month. Yay. Oh, yes. Next slide please. So our unique tradition of honoring the identities and history of our LGBTQ plus community in April represents our values as a community. There's that there's no wrong way, wrong month, wrong time to celebrate pride. We should actually be celebrating pride all the time. Beginning in 1990 with the inception of LGBTQ plus student services, we have been working to create policies, leverage existing citywide policies and practices to make sure that all of our schools are welcome for all of our students. And that students can show up in schools with their full representation of who they are. We are steadfast in our belief that our community of queer, transgender, and gender expansive students and staff enrich our schools and deserve to feel seen and safe. While our efforts are bolstered by SFUSD's Board of Education policies and the State of California laws, these policies are only meaningful if we as a collective community embrace the policies and embrace the fact that we all are one community. We are all one SFUSD. In SFUSD, we believe that every person deserves to be treated with kindness and respect no matter who they are, how they identify, and obviously who they love. We stand against all discrimination, and we are all unique and special in our own way. And that is why what makes SFUSD special, what makes our students special, what makes our staff and our community special. And we deserve to celebrate each other each and every single day. Next slide please. Along the lines of celebration and celebrating diversity, we also joined the nation in celebrating Arab American Heritage Month in April. Yes, a time to celebrate the rich culture and contributions of the diverse population of Arab Americans. National Arab American Heritage Month has been observed during the month of April since 2017. An estimated 3,700,000 Americans have Arab roots according to the Arab American Institute. The Arab heritage reflects a culture that is thousands of years old. In SFUSD, we honor our Arab American students and families and staff in this month and hopefully for many more months to come. Thank you. Next slide please. And then in terms of enrollment, the big, big thing. So wait list assignments start next Monday, April 20. But before that I just want to say that I'm so proud that we were able to offer many, many of our families, actually 94% of our families a spot on their application. And it's actually the first time that we were able to do that in a very long time. And that's because we have worked really hard to build up capacities in our schools. If your child is offered a spot at one of your wait list schools, the enrollment center will send an email, a text, and a robocall to all phone numbers that you listed on your application with the enrollment center to let you know. So offers are made each Monday and please accept the assignment by Friday once you receive the notice that you are next on the wait list or you are offered a position or a spot for your child in the twenty twenty six-twenty seven school year. To learn more about this please go on parent view or go into our website to learn about how you can what is the waitlist process and how you can accept a waitlist offer. Next slide please. And finally I just want to acknowledge how amazing our young people are. So the youth summit was amazing. They were organized. Our student advisory council leaders made sure that not only did young people get there on time and that there were also lots of different activities available to them, that the activities were meaningful. And I think that was just really amazing that there was so much intentionality in designing the activities, in designing the workshops, in making sure that our young people had the opportunity to truly voice their thoughts and opinions and really stepped into their power and into their leadership. And I'm just so honored to be able to stand right beside you. Yes, right beside you to see leadership happening in real time. This year's summit was called Build Bridges Not Borders which is as you can imagine a very powerful theme for us at this moment in time. And it really was about how we as a school community, as young leaders build bridges with each other. And I would imagine with the community and of course with adult allies. And I'm just so grateful to have that opportunity to speak to young people during that time. And thank you so much to Commissioner Fisher for supporting us always, but then also for participating in the budget workshop. So that was really, really cool. Thank you.

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: I learned a lot.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: And then finally, I want to share, yes, is really exciting, that the Community Advisory Committee for Special Education's Annual Advocates Worthy of Excellence Awards ceremony is happening next Thursday, April 23 from six to 8PM here in the boardroom. I think last year when I participated in this amazing celebration, It was the first time where there was so much joy coming from this boardroom in all areas. So it was wonderful to be able to celebrate and acknowledge and recognize all the amazing leaders within our school district as both teachers and administrators and community partners. So this year do I get to announce this? Okay. So this year the 2026 AWE, that's what they're called, the AWE Award winners are Meredith Branson, head counselor at Roosevelt Middle School. Nick Chandler, social worker at Brenda Visa Horseman. Yolanda Hernandez, special education teacher at Downtown High School. Miss Nene and Adriana Romero rock staff at Eldorado elementary school. And Martha Sullivan speech therapist at Balboa high school. Please go on the CAC website to see more about who all of these amazing amazing awardees are. You can read their bios. You can see what they are doing in real time for our students and supporting our young people each and every day. I am again beyond proud to be a part of this celebration. And with that, I do conclude this part of my presentation. I do want to just take a moment and close out my remarks with in memory of Reverend Gee. And I know that when I got the notice and the message from Mrs. Marshall of Reverend Gee's passing, it really hit hard because I have known Reverend G personally for, oh my goodness, almost twenty years. He has been a fixture in the Ingleside neighborhood. And I've worked with him at ICC, at Ingleside Community Center, for all of those years. His auditorium will forever be steered in my brain as the place that you go to learn about history of the black community in San Francisco. And I will always miss running into him on Ocean Ave as he's getting his dim sum, or he's running over to the Ingleside Library so that he can talk to young people. So I just, in memory of Reverend G, just want to close in celebration of all amazing people who support our young people in the city. Thank you. And that concludes my report. Report.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Thank you, Doctor. Sue. Moving to item F1, Queer Transparent Advisory Council, QTPAC presentation. I call in Doctor. Sue to introduce this item.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Thank you. And I invite our amazing team to come to the dais. Thank you. So I'm just going to hand this over to Kanesha. No? No. I'm just can I just hand it over to okay? Great. Kanesha Turner Pierce, Director of Student and sorry, Student and Family Team. And Georgina, no. I am not doing that. Okay. So thank you to the staff who are providing I know, I'm like why are you guys still back there? Thank you to the staff who provide the support to our amazing QT Pack Advisory body. And just thank you to parents who volunteer their time and energy to provide us with your guidance, your advice on how we can continue to do right by our students. So with that, I'm going to hand it over to you. Okay,

[Maggie McAdam (Chair, Queer & Trans Parent Advisory Council)]: thank you so much. We're delighted to be here. My name is Maggie McAdam and I am the very proud parent of a Flynn Elementary School student who's in the first grade. I'm And also the chairperson of the Queer and Transparent Advisory Council. And yes, we absolutely thank our incredible staff for all of their support. Georgia and Katrina, thank you guys. Tonight I'm here to share a brief history of QTPAC, some of the work we've been doing, and our recommendations for the board of education. Could you please go to the next slide? Thank you. The QTPAC was formed by resolution in 2022. We held our first meeting in November 2024 when we began to advocate for queer and trans students and families in the district. Could you please go to the next slide? Thank you. Over the 12 meetings we've convened, the QT PAC is focused on the greatest needs areas where students report the most difficulty and the most unsafe conditions. We will present to you three recommendations based on our conversations with students, teachers, staff, as well as district and board of education representatives. All of our recommendations can be boiled down to one ask, focused attention on our community's needs, including allocation of resources for queer and trans students and families. We're here asking the district to honor its commitment to serving the whole child by allowing queer and trans students to focus on their learning, self discovery, and development, not fighting for basic childhood experiences or sustaining mental and emotional harm in school hallways and classrooms. Facilities including restrooms and locker rooms have been a high priority focus of our efforts. We have heard directly from a facilities division representative as well as surveying QTAC students about their experiences in physical education. Queer and trans students experience verbal harassment far greater rates than cisgender straight peers based on their gender identity and sexual orientation. Queer and trans students in our district report skipping school at rates two to eight times higher than cisgender straight kids in the same cohorts. Supporting queer and trans students is an attendance issue. Additionally, three out of five LGBTQ plus youth say their home is not an affirming place. SFUSD could improve attendance by reaffirming its commitments to queer and trans students from all family backgrounds by making every school site a safe and affirming place. We as parents of queer and trans students have had mixed experiences with district teachers and staff. As a result of this, we also wanted to find out what, if anything, our teachers and staff need to adequately support queer and trans students. These discussions have led to an informal and anonymous survey of district educators which has received over 30 responses. With respect to restrooms, we celebrate that the district is working to comply with the legal mandate to have one all gender restroom at every school site. But the gap between legal compliance and lived experience is where students sense of safety and belonging lives or dies. If it requires special permission or special keys to use a gender neutral restroom or if it's not clean, it's not functionally accessible to students. This is true of how anti harassment policies are implemented as well. Merely complying with legal obligations is insufficient. Laws and ordinances are almost always outpaced by the needs of our community. We implore you not to look away from our kids. Could you please go to the next slide? Based on SFUSD surveys, 30% of the student body are queer. Somewhere around six percent of students identify as transgender or gender questioning. We are a sizable community in one of the clearest metropolitan cities in the country, and we need focused attention and resources now more than ever. The reality is we're in a moment of extreme anti trans and anti queer backlash nationwide. Since 02/2022, the legal landscape across our country has shifted dramatically. Many states and the federal government have been systematically and legally eliminating trans and non binary people from existence. Youth are the most impacted by these laws whose focus on educators' curriculum or a pass in the name of children's purported safety. Access to gender affirming health care is also threatened everywhere. Even in relatively safe places like California, the federal government is pressuring hospitals to stop providing gender affirming care, and hospitals are capitulating despite protective state laws. This terrifying political climate and the restrictions on access to care negatively impact youth's mental health and well-being and significantly increase the risk of suicide. These restrictions are not merely inconvenient. Sadly, thirty nine percent of queer and trans youth seriously considered attempting suicide in 2024. And because of these restrictions, the numbers will likely rise. Furthermore, since the twenty twenty four election, over 400,000 trans people and over a million cisgender queer people have left states enacting systematic legal erasure of queer and trans people. This includes new families seeking safe haven in our district. Our community is facing tremendous hardship even in this iconically queer city. And so we're here to ask you to do the hard work of making our schools safer, of implementing policy more consistently and effectively, and to stand with the queer trans community. And with that, my fellow QTPAC members will provide our recommendations and the staff responses. Next slide.

[Sasha Harris Cronin (QTPAC Member/Parent)]: Hello. My name is Sasha Harris Cronin. I'm a parent of a student at James Lake Middle School. In our educator and staff surveys, around 30% of the educators we surveyed did not know how to support students who express themselves as queer or trans or even where to find appropriate resources. We know that seventh to twelfth grade teachers will begin the statewide mandated providing relevant inclusive support that matters, PRISM, training for LGBTQ plus students this year. But kids know who they are a lot sooner than seventh grade. Having teachers with knowledge and skills backed up by consistent policy is necessary from TK on up. As a result, QTPAC has the following recommendations regarding staff training. We request that the district provide a mid year and end of year report on progress towards 100% compliance with California Ed Code requiring all SFUSD certificated staff serving seventh to twelfth grade to receive at least one hour of sexual orientation and gender identity training per year. We also request that the district provide an annual report at the beginning of each school year on the data from the previous school year, highlighting the progress towards 100% compliance. We look forward to hearing from the district on the reporting cadence once they structure how this information is captured, tracked, and reported. Next slide, please. Finally, we recommend that LGBTQ plus student services develop an optional training module with similar content for other SFUSD staff, including staff serving pre K through sixth. We were pleased to receive the response that LGBTQ plus student services is excited for the opportunity to create this training module.

[M (QTPAC Vice Chair; they/them)]: Next slide. I am M, pronouns theythem, vice chair of the QTPAC and SFUSD parent. I have been advocating around restrooms and changing rooms in this district for years alongside our queer and trans SFUSD students. And the reason why is because of these students who say things like this. The bathroom I chose, it felt safer. I didn't like using it. Anyone could see my body and know that I'm not a real, air quotes, this or that. This is why we are presenting recommendation number two. In addition to providing at least one ADA all gender restroom in schools per SB seven sixty, provide an all gender safe changing room slash space at every school site that offers physical education courses and currently has binary changing rooms. The staff have responded to this recommendation with information about the California signage law and new construction standards. We celebrate that our SFUSD facilities division states that we are finally in state compliance with all gender restroom signage. If completed, we want the date of completion for all the SFUSD sites. And if it's still not complete, we need a new timeline when all SFUSD school sites will be in completion with California signage laws for restrooms. We are glad to hear about the new district standards for all SFUSD school site construction. But currently, only three school sites in our district are slated for future all gender changing rooms. Buenavista Horace Mann k through eight, Burton High School, and Thurgood Marshall High School. And currently, there is not one site that meets this standard. This does not address our recommendation. What is the timeline for all school sites that offer physical education and require students to change to have safe all gender changing rooms? Next slide please.

[Celestina Pearl (Parent of trans student, SFUSD)]: Hello. My name is Celestina Pearl. I am a parent to a trans teenager in SFUSD. I want to talk to you about independent study physical education. My understanding, as was stated in the SFUSD response, is that kids can join JROCT as a PE alternative, and exceptions can be made for other situations. But eliminating even this option is being considered. My personal feelings aside about putting children in a paramilitary program, the military is not even an option for trans people. In San Francisco, we have a rich culture in the arts, including dance and more, and many have sliding scale and scholarships. The teachers may not have teaching credentials but could collaborate with an SFUSD teacher who could monitor the activities and sign off with less work than the in school options. PE is a place that is common for students to be bullied by classmates and others due to trans or queer phobia, ableism, racism, sexism, classism, and more, leading to low self esteem, poor mental health, and even suicide. Some children may be better served in a community environment that they feel more welcomed into with a culture that aligns more with their own. Trans kids are under attack, and we need to do more to support them. Please consider all the options and how we might be able to better serve our kids by accessing the resources of our communities. Thank you for hearing us tonight.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Oh, you can Please stay.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Please stay.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: We're not that scary. Thank you so much for your presentation. Thank you for your leadership. Happy SFUSD Pride Month. Yay. Go queers. I will open it up for

[Sasha Harris Cronin (QTPAC Member/Parent)]: It's the only sport you know.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Yes. I

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: despise it that it's now on the record. But yes. I would love to open it up for questions and comments from commissioners.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: Thank you so much. It's really wonderful to see the QTPAC getting going in such a strong way and making these recommendations. So thank you very much for your work. I'm confused and wanted to just ask the superintendent or designee, whoever's appropriate, around the staff responses because I guess I was confused a little bit by all of them. So the first one seems to say that we're still structuring how we report whether or not teachers got one hour of training. Like it seems like we would know pretty easily whether teachers got this training or not. Is there something I'm missing there?

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Can I invite staff to come up? But I think this is the difference between recommendation one and recommendation or the two parts is that there's a required training, right? The first part is the required training. And I think we're not at the required training point yet. We still need to have a lot of discussions with our yes, General Counsel.

[General Counsel (Name not stated)]: Thank you. Thank you Commissioner Alexander. And unfortunately this is a new process that's being required by the law that's not being facilitated by the district. So under the state law that was enacted and just as an aside, parts of the issues then matriculated their way up to the United States Supreme Court, came back. There's been a lot of questions even at the CDE level. The program itself is operated under something called PRISM, which was established by the state down in Southern California. So it's not training that's actually conducted by SFUSD staff. From my understanding, staff has been notified of this requirement, but it's something that we're that honestly, we're trying to figure out. How does FSUSD get information from this entity and how is it appropriately logged and tracked on our end? Honestly, I know it's going to sound rough, but I mean, we really are at the bare bones level of trying to figure out who tracks these kinds of things, who's left, who hasn't resigned or retired or whatever, and how can we, with Fidelity, track that. We are confident that we will get that by the deadline, which is months away. But we're just not there yet to understand structurally how are we collecting that information from an entity that we don't control.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: Could we maybe just explain to the public, like, what do we do? Right now, what is our strategy for training educators to ensure that they are trained to be able to support queer students well, especially in this moment.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Can I invite the staff to come up and help me with this answer?

[Maggie McAdam (Chair, Queer & Trans Parent Advisory Council)]: Our understanding, at least from the QT Pack, is that there is Kenna who provides is the student support services for queer and trans students, I believe. I'll let you guys come and speak more. Thank you, guys.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: So the question from Commissioner Alexander is what types of trainings are we providing now for our educators?

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: Can I also no, this is not my question and answer time, but this is an issue I've also raised when the APEC has been here presenting? It's not on our black educators nor should it be on our queer and trans educators to hold this work, right? So while I appreciate the work that you are doing, Mix Hazelwood, I'd actually prefer to hear from or C and I or someone because this is a bigger your work is critically important and it's not I'm interested in hearing more about like what system wide we're doing. Not opt in. We have this problem with special education. We have this and very many. There are certain opt in trainings. Everyone needs to be trained. It's everyone's responsibility to support our queer and trans kids. So I think this is a bigger issue, but I don't want to divert from your original question.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: No, I appreciate it. I don't want you to be put on the spot or any of you to be on the spot. Feel free to respond, but don't I guess my question really was a strategy question. Like, at a strategy level, I think we all ought to be able to answer that question. How are we training our educators to ensure that they're keeping queer students safe? So I guess that do you feel like we have such a strategy that's widely understood? Do we need more resources? I guess that was the spirit of the question.

[Kenna Hazelwood (District Coordinator, LGBTQ Student Services)]: I appreciate the opportunity to answer this question. Prism is designed for all certificated educators to take at least one hour of training every year. It is virtual. It is all the information about who has completed it is held by the San Joaquin Department of Education. And so that's who it is that we need to reach out to to see who's done that. That does not include anybody who teaches TK through six. It does not include any of our classified educators across all grades. So that is what we have as a mandate from the state. What we do here locally within SFUSD, part of my job is to do PDs. It is upon request. So I do let staff know. I do let lead know that I'm available to come in and do trainings whenever they'd like. But I cannot mandate. My not funny joke is that I'm a vampire. I can only go where I'm invited. But I leave at knowledge I do not take blood, in case that needed to be explicitly stated. And so part of what I'm really excited about is that because SFUSD does have a noted Pride Month in April, that is when my existence and the offerings that we have are surfaced. And we do see a lot more people opt in. And so it's really meaningful to hear the superintendent and have the board of ed and also have QD PAC now. I'm so excited that you all exist. Thank you for all the work that you're doing. Because we start to see more people opt in. I would very much appreciate to have more collaboration with LEAD, because they are the ones who are positioned to better identify which sites I have and have not worked with and which sites might need more support.

[Sasha Harris Cronin (QTPAC Member/Parent)]: Speaking from a parent perspective, how this often goes is that parents in a school will also advocate, whether it's for their children or whether it's for their school or through PTAs or whatever, for teachers to get that PD training. Unfortunately, this often comes up when there's a problem. This comes up when there's a bullying situation that a teacher doesn't know how to handle. This comes up when there's a teacher who doesn't know how to deal with a trans student. This comes up when there's a principal who insists that a kid not use the bathroom of their choice. And obviously, what we want to be is not reactive. We want to be proactive.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Well, I know that we have members of Ed Services in the back there. And I think that we do need to figure out a way to ensure that all of our educators are trained and that there is going to be regular trainings just like we want to make sure that all of our educators and site leaders are trained on special education issues. I think it does come down to building the system so that we can slot it in and make sure that there is a regularity to training because I do not want it to be a place where or a situation where it's like yes, Kenna came out. Check, we're done. Our school's done. Right? So we need to start building that muscle and building out the strategies for how we do it. Right now, it is on an ad hoc basis, which I don't think it's appropriate. And I don't think that's the right way to approach making sure that all of our community members understand, community, school community, understand the best ways to meet the needs of our young people. So to that larger question, I agree we do need to have a better system to do trainings and to do all trainings, but particularly trainings around how do we serve LGBTQ plus kids.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: Yeah, I appreciate that. And I think it's important from a board perspective in terms of guardrail two, I believe it is, educating the whole child. I mean, board made very clear that one of the values of our community was really looking at the social emotional education and support of children. And particularly we know, as you all eloquently said, in this moment, trans students, other queer students are experiencing so many attacks in this world. And you can't the other thing is we also know from educational research that students can't learn if they're not feeling safe. And so I think it also is directly impacting our goals and the achievement of our three academic goals. So I would love to see I don't know if we can get a report back in the fall or something. I would love to see a report sooner than a year from now, particularly on this point around training, because it feels like that's something we control. SFUSD

[Public commenter (unidentified)]: has

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: a long history of being a leader in this area. And if we're now to a point where it's sort of ad hoc, to me that's deeply concerning. We need to be the premier district in the country where LGBTQ students feel safe, supported, and proud. And we can't go around wearing pride shirts if we're not doing that. And so I just think I appreciate all the stuff around facilities, but to me this piece around culture is even more critical because the staff of a school make or break a student's experience in terms of this, and I see nodding there too. Because I mean we all know in a school that's the key. I mean we do need to get the bathrooms right as well, if teachers and other staff are not properly trained, those kind of issues you mentioned are going to come up. So don't know what's appropriate, but I would just put in a request that we get a report back sooner than a year on how this is going in terms of this.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Yes, I agree. And I believe that this is part of our strategy to update curriculum so that we can have curriculum that truly is updated to reflect the new times and that part of this curriculum has LGBT that includes LGBTQ plus history and identities of individuals who have led the movement so that our young people really can learn about it. I see all of our lead team moving, inching. They keep inching forward, inching closer, inching closer. I wonder, do any of you want to mention or say anything about integrations or the new curriculum and how it does have updated materials? Sure. Maybe that.

[Devin Krugman (Assistant Superintendent, Curriculum & Instruction)]: Good evening. My name is Devin Krugman. I'm the Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction. So just to build on the point that Doctor. Su just made, one of the things I wanted to highlight is that in April, it is April, at the April, we will be bringing forth a recommendation for new history social studies curriculum, both across elementary and high school. And one of the most important components of updated material not just the quality and alignment to standards, but also ensuring diverse representation of LGBTQ histories, identities, and communities. And so ensuring that the materials that students have in their classroom are representative not just of themselves, their families, their broader community, but also set the standard for an affirming representation, and one that in particular lifts up the histories of our city especially. And so while we want to make sure we address the school culture and climate, and I won't speak on behalf of my colleagues on that piece, I just want to name the importance of instructional materials as setting a foundation for affirming classrooms culture within a school, and especially beginning with our youngest learners in particular.

[Kenna Hazelwood (District Coordinator, LGBTQ Student Services)]: I would just very quickly add that we also have a brand new health ed curriculum that's just been updated to better reflect how to talk about gender and sexual orientations across all the spectrum of identity.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Commissioner Ray?

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for being here tonight and for your presentation. I just wanted to draw folks' attention. I don't know if folks are a lot of folks aren't very familiar with it, but we have an advanced question and answer process where commissioners can submit questions. I submitted several questions and you can see what the staff answered if you look at the question and answer document that's linked in the agenda. So I just wanted to make people aware of that. I try to make people aware where possible. I also sent some follow-up questions to staff earlier based on those responses. It's too late once we get the answers to get new published responses. So I just wanted to second Commissioner Alexander's question about the reports. One of the internal questions I asked was when we can expect the district to establish reporting cadence and provide reports. So if we get that information, if it's possible to add that to the Q and A responses to update, then folks can come back and check for that information. So just a couple of other things, one to let folks know. I had also submitted a follow-up question internally about the answer to the staff response for recommendation number two about the facilities team stating that it would partner with LEED to assess the feasibility of creating designated space for all gender changing rooms at older sites where there's not construction projects being planned, for instance. So I'd asked about whether there's a plan to do that and if for any reason it's beyond the district's capacity because the response was helpful, it didn't address that category of things. So hopefully, again, if that could be shared with the public, that would be great. The other thing that I wanted to note is there does seem to be a difference between the QTPAC recommendation number three and the district's thinking around PE independent study. So I also asked for some more information on that as to, you know, why staff has the recommendation that they do. So whatever response could be provided would be appreciated. But I wanted to thank you all.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Ms. Fisher?

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: Bless you, whoever's sneezing in the audience. First of all, thank you all for being here tonight. Thank you for volunteering your time on behalf of not just your students, but all of our students. I have a queer daughter, so thank you. I appreciate this work is personal to me, so thank you. I want to and I appreciate Commissioner Alexander for referencing guardrail two, and Commissioner Ray, I'm going follow-up on some of your questions as well. Guardrail four is also really, really relevant here, resource allocation. The superintendent will not allow resources to be allocated without transparently communicating how allocations are baseline sufficient to operate all schools while addressing inequitable inputs and creating more equity and excellence in student outcomes. And when we heard in our budget study session earlier this year that absenteeism and chronic absenteeism are more impactful to our structural deficit than in declining enrollment. Making sure that all of our students feel safe and welcoming seems paramount to closing that deficit. So with that in mind and targeted universalism, bathrooms and independent study for PE are the two issues that are top of mind right now, above and beyond staff training. Because for bathrooms, it's not just our queer and trans students who are complaining about bathrooms. Like, it's lot of knuckleheaded behavior that happens in our bathrooms, frankly. The bathrooms are problematic for so many students. Independent study would benefit more than just our queer and trans students. We have a lot of students who would. So I think really what resources would it take to address these? That's the frame I'd like to put to you, superintendent. What would it take? Like do we have facilities, bond funding? Like how could we appropriately direct the resources to address bathrooms? And what would be needed to adjust our board policy 6142.7 about independent study for PE? Because I think there's a lot of students who would benefit. So I know we would have to have more credentialed PE teachers who would be available to supervise. But is this the kind of strategic thinking that we are willing to undertake to better support our LGBTQIA plus student I've missed the two S in there too. Plus students.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Thank you Commissioner Fisher for that question. So let's see, first for facilities. Facilities, I know that's actually one of the things that we hear a lot, a lot. Bathrooms and elevators are the two biggest facility issues that we face on a regular basis. And we try our best. We have small but very mighty facilities team, buildings and grounds team. And they have to deal with a lot of tickets that come in, unfortunately, almost regularly. Because we do have pretty old buildings and we have a lot of young people running throughout all of our buildings. I love the idea of figuring out how we bring perhaps more revenues in the next bond to really focus in on some of these issues. And I would love to work with perhaps the QTPAC and others on thinking through how do we prioritize the best ways to use our bond to really meet the needs of our students. So stay tuned or invite me to one of your next meetings and let's start the conversation because that bond conversation is probably coming around the corner pretty soon. And then in terms of how do we ensure that social emotional learning is happening at every single corner and every single space of our buildings, and I daresay throughout the city. And that's where I know that Tony Payne, who is heading up that department, has been working really, really diligently on. And I think what I shared last year was that for the first time in a very long time SFUSD's student survey of sense of belonging was the highest we've ever seen. And that's because we are doing things like this. We're having these kind of conversations out in the open and really challenging each other about how do we ensure that our students are seen, loved, and feel like they belong. And like what Kenneth said, it's not just talking. We actually have to have those actions. And so I will say, yes, we need to do more. We need to do more. We need to put in place better trainings. We need to make sure that as we're building out social emotional programs and services for our students, we need to ask our students what they need, not just tell them what they will get. And so I commit to continuing to work with our parents and our school leaders to make sure that our students are getting the types of services that they need in the appropriate time and that we'll continue to work together to resource it. I know that I've been doing a lot of fundraising to bring additional resources into the district so that we can address the chronic absenteeism issue. And it is a big issue. We are nowhere near the levels of attendance that we had pre pandemic. Quite frankly, other school districts are not there either. So it is something that has now unfortunately seeped into the community and the system. And it will only take it will take the community and the system to get us out of it. But I know that we can get out of it because we had a 95% attendance rate six, seven years ago. It's unacceptable that we're at 90% now, but we can get back. And we will. Thank you.

[M (QTPAC Vice Chair; they/them)]: Superintendent Hsu, I notice you keep talking about conduct absenteeism. I would like to say all these recommendations would help you increase your attendance greatly. There are trans students, queer students, who many times just don't go to school that day because of what has happened with bullying, with restrooms, with bathrooms, or anything. Every week, at least one time a week, once a week, I get a call or a text message from a parent telling me about something that happened to their student, either in regards to homophobia, transphobia, cissexism. And sometimes the students aren't even queer or identify as queer. But because they broke a gender role, a gender norm, a gender stereotype, they are now attacked. And that is very, very serious. So I just want to make sure that these are solutions to chronic absenteeism. Thank you. I'm done speaking.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: And I wonder if any of our lead staff want to speak about all the different types of programs that we have in schools. I know that we have the wellness centers in schools. We have advisories in middle schools or middle grades. Thank you, Doctor.

[Jennifer Steiner (Assistant Superintendent, K–8 & Middle Schools)]: Steiner. Sure, happy to share. For those of you that don't know me, my name is Jennifer Steiner, I'm the Assistant Superintendent that supports K-eight and middle schools. I know many of you, but not all of you, so nice to meet you, and thanks for the presentation. You know, I think Commissioner Alexander, your question about how we do training and when we do training is one that we talk about all the time. How do we make sure that everyone gets access to this? So I will say in our advisory, you know, all six, eight students have access to advisory. I think we've talked about advisory a number of times when we're talking about other aspects of our education. And our advisory often includes different lessons that support students both around how to be an upstander, how not to be a bystander, how to recognize bullying when you see it, how to interrupt bullying for LGBTQ students and for students across different races and ethnicities and identities. And so I think that that is one space where we see that happening. At the beginning of each year, all of our administrators are required to take what's called boundary trainings and within those boundary trainings we talk about gender identity and so that is another place that actually administrators do are required and then they're required to do those trainings with their staff. I don't think it's enough, right, because it is all expansive and not specific to the place that you're talking about now, but it is happening and so we can get better together at doing that. And then to the point of the bathrooms, I definitely think we, I mean, I'm sure high school can speak even more to this, but like the bathrooms are a pain point for us. We want, we want bathrooms that are accessible for everyone and we find bathrooms that are single stall to be a place where we have to pay extra close attention to multiple people that might go into a bathroom and do things we don't want middle school youth doing. So we have to figure out both an opportunity to ensure everyone has access and a supervision plan to support students to be safe in those places. I think that's something. And then just a little bright spot, today I happened to be at Bessie during assembly for sixth grade students, that was a follow-up for all of their students yesterday. And one on the wall was like the come join our GSA and our Q group, was really lovely, and I asked a couple of kids about it and they told me about it. And then the whole lesson was about how do you recognize bullying and be an upstander, and specifically kids were talking to one another about this. And the group I was in was talking about hearing slurs that are about gender and gender non conforming and what they do about it. So it just was like a really beautiful moment of hearing kids helping each other. This is what you could say if you hear this. So thank you for being here and we look forward to partnering with you further.

[Davina Goldwasser (Assistant Superintendent, High Schools & College/Career)]: Hi, everyone. If I haven't met you yet, I'm Davina Goldwasser, and I am the assistant superintendent of high schools and college and career. And if you noticed us chatting in the back, it wasn't because we weren't listening as we were really kind of thinking about everything we were hearing together as lead and as curriculum instruction and thinking about possibilities of what we could do better and how we can think differently. And so at the high school level, most high schools have at least once a month kind of a series on student belonging. And many of our high schools have partnered with your group, partnered with SFSD around bringing in curriculum, speakers, and things like that at the high school level. But we don't have yet, which we need to get better at, is like what are all of those plans for every single high school so that we can say when it's happening and report back and make sure that it didn't get skipped one year and that it wasn't reactive and that it was truly proactive work together. But we know that the work is happening a lot in that space. Additionally, something that is really thriving in our high schools are our student clubs, like Jen mentioned. And so much of that partnership is around that student leadership coming forward and that allyship. But anyways, we were just really thinking about what that would look like and especially working with our building reps at our school that we partner with in terms of creating that professional development plan and how to do some more aligning around that so that it's not that opt in. And so we look forward to sharing some more ideas once we can collaborate more together. Thank you.

[Lisa Weissman-Ward (Commissioner)]: So I had a very specific question, but I'm going to start with a broader question that's sort of in response to the issues about chronic absenteeism and just sort of culture generally and making sure that we have safe spaces. So Doctor. Snyder, thank you for sharing sort of what's happening at the school site level. I, my concern, I have a middle schooler and I see what the social media algorithms are and it is terrifying. And we live in a house with my twin brother who's trans who is my son's favorite adult in the world and I still see the algorithms that are terrifying. And I'm like how is this coming into our home? And so not only it it seems like we need to be creating this space, but it's not it's not even like we're on a level playing field. Like, is an uphill battle with the social media, the memeification of everything. Charlie Kirk is funny. It, Epstein is funny. And it's everything has been memed. It's been joked. And so language and and and and demeaning sort of actions and demeaning language happens all the time with these prefrontal lobes that are not quite there, but the impact is there. The impact in those who are receiving it is absolutely there. And so I get, I'm like a little terrified about how do we continue to, how do we do this and then we need to do a million times more because it is an uphill battle given what they're exposed to and given the current climate. So I don't know what my question is but I'm like, oh lord. Thank you. And we, like it needs to be much more. Not the check the box. And having classrooms and having, we have these amazing classrooms, amazing teachers, amazing administrators and it's still happening. So I wanna figure out like how do we minimize it as much as possible. So I just, I wanna put that out there because I'm like if this is coming in through my WiFi, like what is happening and not my house? My specific question relates to recommendation two and really appreciate how the presentation flags the VVGGs. Think that's really useful for us as we're thinking about how to respond. And it's about the PE, the changing situation. So understanding that any time we're dealing with facilities it can be slow, it can be costly. My understanding is that there's not a requirement to have changing. Like you don't have to have a PE uniform. Not all schools do it. And I and I don't wanna say like, oh, let's this is the easier route, so let's not worry about the physical space. I think we have to do that. But also, are we considering policy changes around it being opt in for changing? And I wanna be mindful. Like, opt in, I see that, I also don't want opt in to be othering if you then decide to opt out. I know that there's, is that my three minutes? Because I spent my first two minutes talking about my life, midlife crisis. Okay, thank you. But yeah, are ways that we can think about some interim measures before we get to knowing that it is going to take a while to get those physical spaces done?

[Maggie McAdam (Chair, Queer & Trans Parent Advisory Council)]: May I please add? That would be a great harm reduction tactic. It would be something easily implemented. It is not part of the California Ed Code to have changing. The only thing would be kids would just have to come to school and clothes they can move in and choose that are appropriate for PE. But that would be a very easy lift, no cost, be very something that a superintendent you could implement very quickly, you know, even within this year or next year.

[M (QTPAC Vice Chair; they/them)]: We also bring that up with the QT pack as well.

[Lisa Weissman-Ward (Commissioner)]: And for our middle schoolers, maybe we just have some extra deodorant laying around. Not X.

[M (QTPAC Vice Chair; they/them)]: You can stock that at your wellness center.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Maybe I could follow-up with this with so I know you all hi. Hello. Yay, gays. Sorry, just you know, it's Friday. Okay. Can this is my month, so leave me alone. Know you

[Sasha Harris Cronin (QTPAC Member/Parent)]: all We're right there with you.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Yes. Yes, yes, yes. I know you all reached out to want to have a conversation around policy changes at the board level and I know that you had an opportunity to meet with Commissioner Fisher and Vice President Huling. And so maybe this is we'll just take this a step further of just asking the superintendent to partner with staff and QTPAC to actually bring some of those recommendations forward around policy changes that we want to see so that we can be greater in line with the recommendations that are being brought forward. I think it's a small but significant step that we can make from a policy standpoint. And I know that I drew other commissioners in, but that was my desire to try to spread the love to other commissioners here. So thank you for that. But I also I just wanted to say that one quick thing. If you all wanted to be able to respond to Vice President. Commissioner Weissman- Ward, please do so.

[Kenna Hazelwood (District Coordinator, LGBTQ Student Services)]: I would just very quickly say we do have advisory lessons available. They were designed specifically for middle school that are just plug and play. So I would love to continue to talk with our lead partners and to make sure that all of our middle schools are aware of those resources available to them. And they are very much designed to normalize all of us just existing and being able to be our full selves without worrying about that being judged. As far as the media piece, the new health ed curriculum does have more media literacy and more social media literacy in particular. And so hopefully that will I believe we're starting to pilot it now and will be disseminated to more of our health ed teachers moving forward. I will just say a quick plug. This is why certificated health ed teachers are so important, including at the middle school level.

[Sasha Harris Cronin (QTPAC Member/Parent)]: And if I can add, this also goes back to the training piece as well. And having seen firsthand how a teacher who felt like they understood how to interrupt that versus a teacher who didn't. My kid had a teacher who was from Spain and didn't understand the memes and didn't understand the jokes and such. And we didn't realize for months that my kid he didn't realize for months that my kid was being bullied because he just didn't understand that. Versus another teacher who looked over and said, that child has had the same name for four years. There is no excuse. I don't want to hear it again. And that was due to the teachers feeling like they understood how to react. So that really is a training piece.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: I got two minutes. I should have asked this in the Q and A, but do we have cue groups in every middle school?

[Kenna Hazelwood (District Coordinator, LGBTQ Student Services)]: We have Q groups at all middle schools that have the capacity to implement them.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Okay. And then for the schools that don't have Q groups, do they have a space for students?

[Kenna Hazelwood (District Coordinator, LGBTQ Student Services)]: So part of the model of Q Groups is that it's in partnership with wellness staff. And so Lyric puts one facilitator forward and then our staff are the other facilitator. And so where there is capacity for the CHOW or for the wellness coordinator to be that co facilitator, then we're able to have it. There's also a limitation for Lyric in terms of how many sites they can serve. But we are really excited that we already have been talking to new sites that have not had Q groups at the middle school level who are interested in implementing them in the fall.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Thank you. I was once on the board of Lyric years and years ago, so very pleased to hear their name come up again. I guess my wondering is for students so I'm trying to think through like how does a queer family, parent, guardian, or student like under like where would they go to get the information they need on at their school site for support and access to an adult who can be supportive?

[Kenna Hazelwood (District Coordinator, LGBTQ Student Services)]: Typically, right, when a new student enter or new family enters a school, they're connected to their admin, they're working with the clerk, and so those are the folks who have the information that we exist. I would love to work with EC to have posters, for instance, up for when we do enrollment to say, hey, LGBTQ student services also exists. Because a third of our students are LGBTQ identified, and we do not know which of those students are fitting in that third. And so the more that we can be transparent and just make it clear for everyone to access us, the better.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: So I recently had a chance to visit Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy. I think a model of organization, of a school that truly embodies desire for inclusion across their student body. And I'm wondering like do we for schools that we know are exemplary in their in their program services that they offer, the kind of culture that they're building, speaking of inclusion and building like a a safe community of families, Like is there what how do they all talk to each I mean, I'm trying to think of like a similar to like a professional learning community or some sort where they're building lifelines across each other to be able to quite literally support each other as they're building up these programs, perhaps things that we can learn from them in the practices that they're doing whether that's embedding it within instruction and curriculum or if that's something that they're doing standalone. Is there a network like that across our district and what well, guess I'll start with that. Is there something like that in the district?

[Kenna Hazelwood (District Coordinator, LGBTQ Student Services)]: So to start with we have school climate liaisons or private liaisons at the majority of our schools. And those are the folks who are holding the Rainbow Club. They're holding the GSAs. And so I hold meetings for them three times a year. A large portion of that meeting is just giving them time to talk amongst themselves and share best practices to share the ways that they're engaging their students. And they're helping to improve school climate. So that is kind of one space that we already have that is extant. As far as larger school wide initiatives, we don't have as formal a space. But our school climate coordinators as well as our private liaisons do do a lot of work at their sites to improve climate and to make sure that LGBTQ inclusion is at the center of their work.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Great. Because I think the strategic question I have as a system is just how do we elevate the good work that's taking place for schools that we know are on the front lines of doing this work? And what is that like what does it mean to disseminate those materials to get access to those folks who are in school communities who are asking themselves, I mean I'm sure every school community has someone who's like, hey I'm gay like what can I do to So support, I'm just I mean it's a similar question I think that we have to multiple communities across our district where what does it mean to kind of lift up those trends that we're seeing and be able to kind of point to that as a bright spot of ours that we can then highlight, showcase, and spread? So just kind of trying to think through that practice and what that means for not just our queer youth and staff, but for other populations too that we can learn from.

[Kenna Hazelwood (District Coordinator, LGBTQ Student Services)]: Just very quickly, so part of what I do with our liaisons is I do ask them to share their best practices and the materials that they create. And then I have a Google Classroom that they all have access to so they can learn from each other and implement the best practices that they see in their own schools.

[M (QTPAC Vice Chair; they/them)]: I also want to add, sometimes there's amazing queer programming at our school sites. So, for example, in the elementary portion of Buena Vista Horseman, we used to have a program called Ghana, which was talking about gender diversity for the elementary school level. And kids love, love Ghana. But the thing is the teacher has to volunteer to do it. And then so if the teacher's already overwhelmed with what's happening, all the teacher things they have to do, and they're not getting paid extra, whatever. They're giving up their lunch hour, all those things. So I would say is one other thing that you all could do, especially superintendent or whatever, is give some more money. Like, I'm being really real. I don't know. You said you were fundraising a little bit extra more. You know? I don't know. Maybe some of that because so, like, for teachers who have to, like, be the advisory person for their GSA or for the Q group or the or whatever for a Ghana program or whatever, they also need to get paid. Like, they're not they're taking up their lunch hour, their after school time, and they're not. And so, like, our elementary portion of Buenavie Sorce, man, it's so sad. Like, my kid is not doing Ghana, and I I really am always sad about that because they really need that. And there are trans students in the elementary school, at all elementary schools, and even in preschools, and in TK or whatever, and also queer students. As young as first or second grade, I've had young people tell me, like, hey, I'm lesbian. I'm bisexual. You know? And even younger than that, hey, I'm trans. You know? Blah blah blah. So I just wanted to throw that out there because I know everybody keeps talking about high school and middle school, but a lot of the bullying happens elementary school. A lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. And I know it's happened to my kid who's kind of bullied. Thank you.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: You. The gays are real efficient. So a little dollar will go a long way.

[Kenna Hazelwood (District Coordinator, LGBTQ Student Services)]: Yes. Say that I do know that it is a current priority of Spark SF to fundraise to have more of our rainbow liaisons across all of our elementary schools.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Thank you. I'll just put a quick plug in for so you think you can drag for Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy fundraiser this this this Saturday at 06:00. I'm just going to put that out there. Sorry. Yes? And then commissioner

[Celestina Pearl (Parent of trans student, SFUSD)]: I just wanted to say real quickly that the program that Mari is referring to called Ghana, my child, who also went to Buenavista Horace Mann, was a part of that, and it was hugely impactful in his life. He first came out as non binary within that group and had an excellent teacher leading it. And looking back, I'm sure that they were spending a lot of their own free time on doing this program. And it's hugely impactful for my child and many of the other kids that he was in Ghana with. And he's now a leader in our community, and he's currently in an apprenticeship with Huckleberry Youth right now.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: That's wonderful to hear. One question I had regarding the recommendations is, is a report required of the PRASM training? Or is that something separate that QTPAC is requesting? And I mean legally required because it's the required one year annual training. And I looked up the code that was cited, but I didn't find a I found a requirement for record keeping, but not for reporting. And I

[Mon (Student Delegate)]: was curious.

[Maggie McAdam (Chair, Queer & Trans Parent Advisory Council)]: We're really just asking for transparency and accountability from the district about that specific state mandated training. That's really what we want. And however that ends up looking legally, we would really like that transparency and accountability. Yeah.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: I'm curious whether our council knows the answer.

[General Counsel (Name not stated)]: Thank you. It's a little bit of both, right? It's a little bit of both. The the law requires the district, I believe, you know, without seeing it in front of me, just what I've seen recently. It does require the district to maintain the information and report out to it. I believe what is the transparency that is spoken of is a higher or more frequent clip or more frequent cadence. And I'm kind of going back to Commissioner Alexander's excellent point, which is I think the district right now is even more basic of like, how how do we do that? It's I know that it sounds in the age of technology that it's like a button or it's this or that. It really is not that simple. Every employee like, this would be something that would be tethered to someone's personnel file. Trying to make that a legitimate, valid thing that we're tracking with all sincerity and reporting out with fidelity, it does take some strategic planning. Now, if we're going to be doing it at a clip that is more frequent than what the law allows, we'll have to talk about that as well. Because I don't know there may be a possibility that we're reporting, oh, there's a gap in terms of how many people have been not taking the required training but yet they still have time on the clock to finish

[Maggie McAdam (Chair, Queer & Trans Parent Advisory Council)]: that's part of why we requested that because we understand seventh through twelfth grade teachers will have a year to complete it so we were hoping that the district could talk about the process the progress towards 100% accountability. That's why we requested that.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: Yeah the the reason that I ask is because I feel like to Commissioner Alexander's point earlier like the issue at base is making sure that it actually gets done. And I think sometimes we have a tendency to layer on like levels of bureaucracy and reports. But like my larger question is like what is the underlying goal? The goal is to make sure that all of our educators are trained with this information. And so is a report the strategy that is going to best accomplish that? Or is the strategy to assign it as one of the in service days or as part of a Wednesday early dismissal where it's like, this is the day that everybody in the district takes it. And so it's done. And so you don't even necessarily need a report. To Em's point, educators are stretched thin. You need to make space to have it happen and not have it be some extra thing that they feel like they need to sneak in on their own time. And so I just kind of want to uplift the larger underlying concern because often I think I know central office is stretched thin. And is the answer really putting something more on somebody in central office's plate? Or is the answer making space in people's calendars so that they actually get access to the information that they need in a timely way that we know is, like, fully disseminated throughout the district? Like, what is happening boots on the ground at our schools?

[Maggie McAdam (Chair, Queer & Trans Parent Advisory Council)]: You know? Whatever strategy is taken, we parents need to understand it. It needs to be something that is told to us because we have no way of knowing if our teachers have received that training otherwise. We have no we have no visibility into that at all. So that's what we're asking for the transparency and accountability. Whatever strategy ends up being, you know, gone after, that's great. But we need to tell us. We need to make sure that we know so we we can support our kids and make sure our kids are make sure our teachers are trained properly.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: That sounds like a very, very reasonable ask to me. And Commissioner Fisher and I really appreciate going to your meeting and hearing more about the PE issue. And one thing that we talked about in that meeting was how making schools more inclusive for some students makes them more inclusive for all students. And so I would like to have a further conversation or hear more from staff about what the constraints are about making independent study PE more broadly available for any multitude of reasons, whether it's to accommodate a student's devotion to gymnastics or ballet or to accommodate their gender identity or some other issue. It seems like it would be like it's a tall ask that a child have to transfer schools to the one school that will categorically allow independent study in order to access it. So I'm curious from staff what the barriers are to making it more broadly available.

[Sasha Harris Cronin (QTPAC Member/Parent)]: I'd also like to add that for students with disabilities, access to alternative PEs means PE having means that it's not just a, well, you get a waiver or you don't do PE. As you said, there are many, many reasons why students might benefit from a pathway to something else.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: I am very interested in continuing to explore this. Looking at our Ed Services folks in the back there but we can look into the laws, we can look into the rules. I know that in preparation for the strike we did have lots of conversations with CDE about expanding and broadening independent study options for families and for young people. So maybe we can just bring that back and continue the conversation.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: Male As the former principal of an alternative school of choice that had independence at AP, I can also say at the high school level, some of these questions around over packing schedules and not being able to take more electives, it also gives more flexibility around that. Like if you are doing PE in another way, it frees up two years of high school courses.

[General Counsel (Name not stated)]: I

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: didn't mean to ask it as a rhetorical question. I genuinely am curious if staff have an answer about if there are issues that would make it, that would have to be addressed in order to allow independent study PE beyond alternative high schools.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: As the team is coming up, again, we will look into that. But do you guys have thoughts now?

[Davina Goldwasser (Assistant Superintendent, High Schools & College/Career)]: Okay. Yeah, I agree with exploring this concept more and with what Commissioner Alexander was saying is first we need to look at just kind of the compliance pieces. I know that there's other high schools in other public school districts that have different ways that you can fulfill the requirements. So we can look into the compliance pieces. That's not a problem. As far as making it happen at the high school level, also not a problem. So we'll just look into the how and then report back on that piece. But yeah, I can see, know, and I know that students are also involved in a lot of athletics and other things outside of school, and there's other districts that count those hours in different ways through different sign off procedures so that we're still focusing on wellness and health and ensuring that students are accessing something in order to keep their physical health and activity up. So there's definitely things that we can learn from other districts that currently have this in place.

[Maggie McAdam (Chair, Queer & Trans Parent Advisory Council)]: We are delighted to hear that. Delighted. And the only other thing I would reiterate is to ensure this is about comprehensive high schools because we know that alternative high schools already have access. We really want to focus on comprehensive schools.

[Speaker 9.0]: Thank you.

[Jennifer Steiner (Assistant Superintendent, K–8 & Middle Schools)]: I think that was my question. Are we talking mostly about the high school level?

[Maggie McAdam (Chair, Queer & Trans Parent Advisory Council)]: Well, I mean, have primarily focused on high school because we understand that you have to have PE to achieve graduation. And because of this issue with queer and trans people maybe not being able to, there's lots of issues with PE, or for queer and trans people especially. So we have focused primarily on high school for graduation reasons, but we're open to discussing it for middle school as well.

[Jennifer Steiner (Assistant Superintendent, K–8 & Middle Schools)]: Yes. I think for elementary and middle school, the thing that we'll have to consider is supervision. At the high school level, I think that's less the issue because they could have an alternate that goes into place. I think at the middle school, and I mean definitely at the elementary level, like where they would go would be a question and I think that that is always a question of like how to ensure that kids are getting something robust when they're of an age where they need a little bit more guidance than once they're more independent. But I mean we're, sure, why not, let's look at it.

[Sasha Harris Cronin (QTPAC Member/Parent)]: Well, in elementary school, PE tends to be a lot

[M (QTPAC Vice Chair; they/them)]: They don't have to change.

[Sasha Harris Cronin (QTPAC Member/Parent)]: They don't have to change. It's a lot less gender based. It's a lot less weighted and fraught than the older grades.

[Maggie McAdam (Chair, Queer & Trans Parent Advisory Council)]: Yeah, and also your gender identity maybe is still not it's just different when you're in elementary school, think, or it can be different. So yeah, understood.

[Sasha Harris Cronin (QTPAC Member/Parent)]: Quickly.

[Devin Krugman (Assistant Superintendent, Curriculum & Instruction)]: Turned it off. A couple of things I just wanted to highlight while naming this as being a focus area for future investigation and policy updates is just to name explicitly the independent study is a part of a series of policies and regulations that are both one specific to the board policy that governs independent study and would require appropriate updates in allowance of what's being asked for is number one so a policy based change that would be required. But number two, wanted to flag that within the context of physical education, are some unique complexities. It is one of the very few state content areas where there are required not recommended minutes on a ten day cadence and so again there is some additional state compliance complexities that do make it a little bit different in order to make updates and changes to the preexisting policy.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: So all of that to say that we will continue to look into it. As you can tell there's lots of complications, There's lots of issues but also there's a lot of desires to figure out how to support our students better and I know all of our PE teachers want to support our students as well. So this is not about saying we don't need PE teachers anymore but how do we support our students so that they can continue to engage and participate in any type of physical activity education. Yeah, thanks.

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: Awesome. I love this conversation because it's just sort of when we all put our heads together, it's amazing kind of what happens. And I appreciate all of you for bringing these ideas forward. I appreciate our staff who've been thoughtful in the QD pack, as well as our educational services folks for being willing to step up and help us figure this out. I love particularly the curb cut equity approach to both independent PE as well as comfortable clothing so it benefits so many communities. I will be very brief. Had a question around following up on what President Kim was asking or mentioning. Do we have data? And one more, Ms. Hazelwood, I also want to appreciate you because I hear you in public comments sometimes and we can never respond, so thank you for all you do for our students. You carry a big load for so many, and we appreciate you. Yeah, let's clap for that. I do have a question following up on the school climate data, particularly around creating a sense of belonging for LGBTQ students. And do

[Isha Verma (Parent, Mission Bay)]: we

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: have data? Do we know where it's working well, where it's not, where we need to provide support?

[Kenna Hazelwood (District Coordinator, LGBTQ Student Services)]: Yes and no. We have CHECTS, which is the California Healthy Kids Survey. We have the YRBS, which is the Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Both are done every other year. They alternate. And we have limited questions that we can include on YRBS. 50 are required by the federal government, 50 are we can choose. And so the questions that we can choose get broad strokes in terms of experience of bullying maybe or experience of other areas of concern, but they're not very granular. Similar with checks, there's actually a module on school climate that we do not give because we don't have enough funding to do all of the analysis of those data. If we could have additional funding for surveillance, I know that could get us more granular data that could answer more of the questions, not just for LGBTQ students, but for all students. And literally because we were looking for more data, QTAC, which is the Queer Trans Advisory Council that I am the advisor of, and I'm very excited for them to present their findings to all of you, who are going to be joining us at Youth Pride, created their own survey. And so they did ask more specific questions like, what are the barriers to accessing all access restrooms? What are the students' experience of seeing inclusive curricula? Are they seeing themselves reflected in their classrooms? So we do have more data. Those data are currently being analyzed, and the report is currently being written. But I'd be happy to share those not just with QD Pack, which is already the plan, but with anybody else, especially you, the board, once those data are available.

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: I'd really appreciate that. And I think most importantly, how are we making sure that that's also permeating through our PA educational services and so forth so we provide continual improvement for our school communities, figure out where what's working well and how do continue to expand that. So that would be great. Then just to check for understanding, because I know we've kind of been a little circuitous, it feels, with that first piece and I think it started perhaps with Commissioner Alexander for checking for my understanding so we have just to mention all the layers so we have Prism which is the online system and I was just looking it up as I understand that will complete the mandated period. The first time was school year '25 to '26. So at the end of this year, that will be complete. And hopefully, we should have something because it is online. We've all taken online courses where it sort of hopefully says this has been completed or not. But we can and that's what we'll be looking into as I understand. Is that correct?

[General Counsel (Name not stated)]: The answer is yes. But like I stated before, it's not that simple.

[Kenna Hazelwood (District Coordinator, LGBTQ Student Services)]: If I could just add one piece. There have been technical difficulties with the rollout of Prism. And so as we are having our staff try to complete it, they've not always been able to save. So they can do various things to try and make sure that their completion is both captured and then reported to SFUSD, but it is very much the first year of a very ambitious initiative. And so there are a few bumps along the way.

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: Got it. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. Mandated year still being figured out, bumps being smoothed out. In the meantime, Ms. Hazelwood, as I understand, you offer professional development mix, sorry, mix Hazelwood, my sincere apologies. You offer professional development to educators who seek it, but you need to be invited to provide that. And then we have curricula that is coming, as I understand. That was stated earlier. And then we have a school climate survey that touches upon some of these. So these are the various layers that we have. Have I stated that correctly?

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Just for clarification, it's just updated curriculum? So it's the updated history and social science curriculum that will now have more updated sections around LGBTQ plus plus history. Got it.

[Kenna Hazelwood (District Coordinator, LGBTQ Student Services)]: Just very quickly, the mandate to have LGBTQ persons' contributions to history captured and included K through 12 is a Fair Act mandate, which was passed in 2012 excuse me, 2011 and implemented 2012. So it is an ongoing mandate that we have been meeting. This is just updating the resources and materials that our staff have available to them.

[Devin Krugman (Assistant Superintendent, Curriculum & Instruction)]: I was just going to build on that. That's just to name that, number one, the last adoption was twenty years ago. And so obviously the FEREC has come into place since then. But in addition to that, the curriculum has been reviewed explicitly for the inclusion of LGBTQIA plus identities and histories across the K-twelve spectrum. And so not just in a history perspective, but you'll see that show up interwoven, for example, in second grade by having the change from a family tree to a family quilt and having diverse representations of families within the text that students are reading at the class level. So we do consider, I know we always say this around floor and ceiling, but the Fair Act is sort of the floor for us of inclusion, and we definitely have reviewed and evaluated materials to go beyond that requirement.

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: Thank you for that.

[Mon (Student Delegate)]: Hi. I just wanted to give a quick appreciation. Thank you very much for this very fruitful conversation from everyone here. Like I always say from these presentations, it's always a joy to learn more about what's going on in our district. And I'm really grateful for this opportunity too. And thank you so much to you all for taking the time. I understand you all are parents, and I really appreciate that. I'm part of the PTSA at Lowell High School, my high school. And I've seen parents getting involved and really advocating for the people in their community. This is something that's very done on your own independent time. And that's very something that I admire very much. Thank you very much.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Before you leave, I do want to just clearly say to you and the other queer parents and families, students, guardians that may be listening on a Tuesday night to our board meeting. We see you, we support you, we're so grateful for your work and your leadership and unfortunately we live in a time when that has to be reaffirmed over and over again and please know that you have our full support, that our questions today and the long comments that we have are because it it feels motivating and exciting that we have things that we can do to support our queer kids today and I just want to reaffirm I think we want to see that work move forward we're excited to partner with you to do that whether that's a board policy or doing the harder work of culture change in the district So thank you for all your leadership and appreciate your presentation tonight. Thank you and happy pride.

[Hongmei Peng (Governance/Strategic Planning Lead)]: Thank you for having us. Thank

[Celestina Pearl (Parent of trans student, SFUSD)]: you so much.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Okay. Commissioners, I will be introducing actually a few items altogether so we can just talk about them all at once because they're all pretty related to each other. Item G1, board governance and strategic planning, alongside item H1, which is the adoption of our twenty five-twenty six governance calendar. All our materials are mostly in those two items and then our extension item H2, the resolution to extend BBGGs by one year is very related to the conversation we're having both around our governance and our calendaring. And so can I have a motion and a second to introduce the items H1 and H2 adoption of the updated twenty five-twenty six governance calendar and the resolution to extend VVGGs by one year?

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: I move item H1, adopt updated twenty five-twenty six governance calendar and item H2, resolution to extend the VVGGs by one year.

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: Second.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: I ask Doctor. Su to bring these items forward to the board.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Thank you, President Kim. Can I invite all of our staff that's connected to these few items to join us, to join me on the dais? So I, yes, so Hongmei, I think Moon Hawk. I don't anyone else? Maybe that's it. So, these items are connected because it does will plan out the path for the work of the district in the coming years. And actually honestly the simplest one is the adoption of the governance calendar where we are sharing all of the key dates for the remaining of this calendar year. And the other items which is the request from our governance team to extend the VVGG targets for or the goals for one more year. I know that I've heard many times from this board about us reaching these goals and particularly the goals of third grade literacy, eighth grade math, college career readiness, as well as our guardrails. And I know that in conversations with our leadership, the board leadership here, we have determined that we need more time to assess and to determine how we will get to these goals as well as allow a longer runway so that the board can engage in deep community engagement so that we can determine the next set of goals and the next metrics that we as a governance team will come together on. So with that, I am going to hand it over to first Houmei Peng to walk us through the board governance and

[Hongmei Peng (Governance/Strategic Planning Lead)]: Thank you, Superintendent Sue. And good evening, President Kim, Vice President Huling, Commissioner, and Student Delegates. I wanted to start off tonight's presentation by pointing you to the piece around inclusive decision making. So bringing us a little bit further back to October when the board has initiated the conversation around major decisions to really initiate that shift from really more the stabilization work, management of one off crisis to extend into a period of more strategic planning and deep multi year work with our community. And really since then, through the work of the Ad Hoc Committee on Progress Monitoring thank you, Chair Alexander and also the Ad Hoc on Community Engagement thank you, Chair Gupta being able to start lining up both in terms of the methodology of how we're going to set ourselves up as a school district to engage in deeper progress monitoring towards our goals, but also lining up some of the timelines and expectations and baseline around community engagement. So as part of that work, we've been working with AJ Cribble and the Council of Great City Schools to think through how do we really establish a scope and a sequence to be able to land on a multi year governance calendar. And so as part of this work, we looked at both the runways, the timelines around getting to the community engagement that would be necessary as part of the board's routine major decisions around renewing or establishing new goals and guardrails, the community engagement that would be necessary for that work to occur, and then lining that up against the timelines related to the major decisions. And so working with our colleagues in RPA, research planning and assessment, to really map out this work. So we are at the superintendent's direction bringing you a couple of items tonight. First is a revised governance calendar for 2526, the present governance calendar year, as well as a proposed recommended resolution to extend the VVGGs by one year. I do want to say that as part of our cyclical work and as part of board policy staff, we do prepare a governance calendar annually that will come to the board every June. And so we are preparing a multi year calendar that will go from 2026 to 2028 for the board's consideration at an upcoming meeting in June. So with that, I'm actually going to turn over to Moon Hawk, Doctor. Kim, to walk us through the presentation on the resolution to extend VVGGs by one year.

[Dr. Moonhawk Kim (Research, Planning & Assessment)]: Good evening, everyone. This will be a very brief presentation, and we'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have. Next slide, please, Marin. So just a bit background context. Obviously, as you all know, the Board of Education owns the goals and the guardrails. So you engage in the process to set the top level goals and guardrails for each of the cycles. Obviously, we are in the latter end of the current ones, which are set to end by the end of next school year. And it's been part of our learning. As you might have noticed, some of the warnings of the goals and the guardrails, the timeline is slightly different. I think goals one and two, they are targeted for October 2027. And the reason for that is back four year, four and a half, five years ago when we set them, we knew there was a timeline that the data would become available and public. So it's actually not lined up with the end of the school year, but by the time that we would know for sure, we would have the data to know whether we'd had met the goal or not. So you'd see that kind of the endpoint for each of the goals and guardrails might be slightly different, and that is the reason. Reestablishing new VBGGs is a routine major decision for the Board of Education. Presumably, if we were to stay engaged with VVGGs for many, many years to come, you would engage in this action every five years or so. It would be the cycle. But the important thing for our community to know is that the process for generating new VVGGs can take up to almost two years. And that is because we have to be mindful of the budget process that should be lined up with the launch of the new VVGGs. And because the budget process takes place a year in advance, and for the budget process to take into account what the new goals and guardrails are, the new goals and guardrails then have to be set way before the budget process starts, six months at the least, hopefully a year before the budget process. So it can take up to eighteen to twenty four months before the new VVTGs can be actually launched. Next slide, please. As Sangmei just mentioned, there are constraints on capacity and kind of the timeline issues with how we actually engage the community and carry out the process for all of these competing priorities and work streams for the district. So that's why we are bringing forward this potential proposal for the Board of Education to consider amending the current goals and guardrails to extend through 2028. Next slide. Some considerations. They are both for and against. Consideration for extending the goals and guardrails is that as we do this work, certainly it would be helpful, more helpful for the staff to have the budget stabilized so we know exactly which initiatives can be funded and by how much. So before we jump into new goals and guardrails, I think there is value in continuing with the current set until the district is in a more stable position physically to have a better sense of which initiatives to fund and how much. Second point is that adopting new VVGG should follow school reorganization so the board can set goals that are based on the configuration of school portfolio and that our available resources align with the strategic priorities that district has, and most importantly, align with student outcomes that are realistic with the resources and the budget. So that also goes back to the competing timelines that we have mentioned before. On the right side are some considerations against an extension. And this is coming from, especially from the last couple of years, and coming from the staff side. And one point is that overly ambitious levels of the goals create some large gaps, as you all know, as you have seen, as we have all witnessed, large gaps between the goals that exist on the one hand and the reality that we're living in. And something that we haven't really talked about much is that the continuation of these large gaps can actually create a decoupling between the goal setting activities and endeavors that we engage in, especially in this progress monitoring setting on the one hand, and the continuous improvement process that happens on the ground at school sites. As a concrete example of that, something that we have not I don't think we've explicitly mentioned is that RPA generates site level goals and targets every year at the end of summer based on the summative results that come out of the SBAC. We work on setting targets for each that's tailored to each school site, right, so that they have something, a concrete goal to work towards. Starting this current school year, let me take a step back. Those targets previously were designed explicitly with the district level goals and guardrails in mind so that if all the schools were to meet their individual targets, then the district would be well on its path to meet the district level targets for the VVGGs. The current school year was the first year where we actually decoupled them, because if we were to continue to aim to meet the VVGGs that was set by the 2027, that would imply that many school sites would have to aim for a double digit growth during the school year, which is not realistic. It is actually demoralizing to see those numbers on paper. So the RPA team actually opted to go for a separate approach that was a little bit more modest, which also implied that even if all the scores were to meet their individual goals, that wouldn't necessarily put the district on its path to meeting the VPGG targets. And that happened precisely because we had to manage the expectations and how sites feel about this endeavor of trying to meet the targets that have been set. Last point that's in the yellow box is that a longer extension, I think there have been some conversations about one year versus two years, right? But if we were to extend beyond one year of this extension, they would respectively increase both the pros as well as the cons of the risks and the benefits that have been laid out. And lastly, just as a graphical representation, this is what it looks like. We actually did not chart the current target path, which is set to expire in 2027. So there could have been a different line that had an even steeper slope but the orange line indicates if we were to extend by one year so that would make it a little bit less steep than this current path that we're on ending in 2027 And if we were to consider a two year extension, then the growth curve would be slightly less steep. But this is all to say that even if we were to extend by two years, we still would not be likely to meet the goals that have been set, right, because that would require growing somewhere between five and nine percentage points per year, which is not a rate that we really see elsewhere and certainly not given the current context that the district is going through. So let us pause here and we'd be happy to take any questions.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: I'll open it up for questions and comments. The one thing I'll name just before we jump into the questions part is that the governance calendar, while it does not need to be voted on, because of the significant changes post strike in the content of our meetings in addition to the addition of three new meeting times, I thought it was important to bring it to the board. So that's what you see in front of you today. And thank you also to the advisory councils and committees, Hongmei and her team who've worked with them to redistribute some of the missed presentations and that's partly why you see one closed session. I'm also cognizant it's almost nine and so I'm gonna thank student delegate Mon for being here. You should stay till the very last minute. I'm just kidding. You can leave it

[Hongmei Peng (Governance/Strategic Planning Lead)]: at end.

[Mon (Student Delegate)]: I was going to see if I can ask

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: some questions

[Mon (Student Delegate)]: Yes, before I absolutely. You. Thank you so much for the presentation. Always very insightful. I have two questions. The first one is you mentioned like the longer extension would respectively increase both the benefits and the risk. And I was just wondering what those benefits and risks are.

[Dr. Moonhawk Kim (Research, Planning & Assessment)]: The benefit would be that we'd have greater certainty in terms of the district's finances and have more information be in a better situation to start the new goals and guardrails. So the argument would be the longer we wait, the more information and the greater stability we would have, and we'll be in a stronger position to launch something new. On the other side, the longer that we keep going with the goals that many in the district feel are highly ambitious, it would continue that gap between the reality and the goals that we have and potentially risk people being even more disengaged from this process. So the extension of that argument would be it might be better to just move on to a slightly less ambitious and more realistic and more practical set of VBGGs rather than extending the current set.

[Mon (Student Delegate)]: Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking for my second question because I see the graph of the third grade literacy as an example, like the 47% to 52 or 50 four's. I think it is very ambitious. And I think those are huge numbers to climb to. And I was wondering if it does extend to one or two. So Okay, first of all, how would it be decided if it was extended for one versus two years? And would we be deciding that right now? And what exactly are, I guess, like the new tactics and strategies that will be employed to really raise the bar in terms of these numbers? And like how do we find the best practices for that even though we've been trying to do this for the past couple of years?

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: I'll take that. As always, wonderful questions. So, the proposal today is for the board to take a vote on whether or not we extend or not extend. And you're right, it is going to be a very, very big lift to go from where we are now to even getting on to the right path to get to the target. I think at one point I did share that if our students, if all of our third grade, if 70% of our third graders were reading at the third grade level, it would put SFUSD at the ninety ninth percentile in the state of California. It's not a bad thing to do. But we all have to fully recognize that that is a very, very ambitious goal and would require a lot of our time and energy and resources. But we have already taken some really significant steps towards that. One, we've upgraded our curriculum, our English language curriculum, and that's putting us on the right path. We are in this budget alone and the next budget, we are ensuring that we will have instructional coaches for all of our elementary schools so that our teachers, our educators will have the supports they need particularly to double down on getting third graders. But it starts in kindergarten. So having instructional coaches providing those supports to our educators as early as possible. So we're starting. But yes, you are absolutely right. What you are seeing here is that it is going to take a lot of effort to go from where we are now to even get to the base of 2026 to then get to the goal of achieving the 70%.

[Mon (Student Delegate)]: Thank you. Good night. Thank you.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: I'm going to pick up from here because I will say, we should have that conversation. I mean, don't know why we have targets that we're setting that we know right I mean, I will say, Doctor. Kim, it's been really helpful to hear you walk through the site based strategy, how that's changed in terms of goal setting, understand and I completely understand that having an unreachable target is a demoralizing situation to be in, right? I don't know why we're putting ourselves in that situation though. What?

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: I do. Yeah. I do. You guys sleep.

[Lisa Weissman-Ward (Commissioner)]: The board did this.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Well, so

[Lisa Weissman-Ward (Commissioner)]: And actually we were we were told to come like there was Just from the perspective of of how we got these numbers.

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: Yeah. I'm gonna follow you with this.

[Lisa Weissman-Ward (Commissioner)]: So after all of the, we did lots of engagement. And when we initially presented some thoughts, it was like this is the lowest bar you've ever set. And so it felt sort of in that moment it felt demoralizing like this is all you think like we could do. And in fact we even had higher numbers and we're told come down and and we probably didn't come down far enough. I think we were trying to find that balance which clearly we didn't. But it, there was a whole conversation around what is, are we aspirational but does that actually end up undermining us and feel demoralizing versus what is realistic and what does it mean if we're setting a target that feels realistic but still like not good?

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Yeah. But sorry, just to clarify, I'm not asking why we set the targets at the beginning. I think what I'm asking is I think in January part of our intent in bringing this forward to the board was to ask ourselves what do we need to do given this opportunity ahead of us to adjust course if we need to, right. And so I think that's my question, right. Because I mean this is the conversation we've been wanting to have since we asked the superintendent to bring this forward in January of do we extend and maintain? Do we extend by more than one year and maintain? Do we adjust because we need to? Like and and this is why I'm saying I I really welcomed your your narrative of, like, kind of how the goal setting has come up from sites and how that's informed, the ultimate goal setting, why that's been changed in terms of that strategy. It makes a lot of sense. I think I would like to have that conversation as a board if we're gonna go through the process of extending our VVGGs, right, because it doesn't I I still actually don't I don't know why we can change course if we need to change course given the data that we and the experience that we've had. I'm not suggesting that we lower the bar for ourselves. What I'm saying is we should have that conversation and it's a conversation I think we're ready and wanting to have. Commissioner Fisher?

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: Well, you, President Kim, for opening up the conversation. And thank you, Mr. Kim, for the level setting here. Doctor. Kim, I appreciate the where we started here. To follow-up on what Commissioner Weissman-Ward said, first of all, the VVG and I was a spectator at the time.

[Lisa Weissman-Ward (Commissioner)]: I was looking it. It's like, you remember?

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: Female remember because I was at all the meetings. There were a couple of meetings here in this room where I think I was the only community member in the well, there were a couple of us, not just me. But back in the prehistoric ages. But that was the largest community engagement process that the board had undertaken in who knows when. Like the thousands of comments and surveys and data points that were collected in order to inform that was amazing. And when the first draft of goals came back, universally the whole community responded saying, this is de minimis. This is not a no. We don't accept your goals being as low as they are. That was the single biggest feedback point from community is saying be more ambitious, set a higher target. Now, the way that the student outcomes focused governance process is supposed to work is we are, well, one, these are the three things that we're supposed to be focusing on above all others, third grade reading, eighth grade math, college and career readiness. And we are supposed to align our resources such that these are our highest focus, foci. So I would say, so I guess my real question in all of this is one, if we're not meeting the targets that we want to meet and now we've implemented a new curriculum, You know, we've got STAR testing. We didn't like we've done a lot of the right things. What else? What's the next step strategically? How do we get over the demoralization? And you know, like I mean, especially in that tension of budget cutting and taking RTIFs and tier two resources away from schools, how do we actually adjust our budget so it reflects that the things that we really want to focus on are third grade reading, eighth grade match, college and career readiness. Like that's the next step in the student outcomes focused governance is that strategic plan and that strategic focused budgeting to make sure that we're aligning all of our resources around that. So that's really my big question is how do we shift, you know, how do we what is the strategic plan to get us to that point? So that's one. But also when we actually do revise this, like in that we now do have star testing, we have new curriculum, we have things that we didn't have back then. I have said since day zero and I will keep saying our SPAC scores are not what we should be measuring. Our SPAC scores do not tell us how well our students read. They don't measure the things we need to know about our third grade readers. They don't measure their foundational reading skills. They don't measure the things that we need to measure for reading proficiency. And then the same thing with eighth grade math. But that's a conversation for when we do get to revamping this. I'll stop there.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Did you want to respond before I could have? I also had a minute left just saying on my clock. Well,

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: again, I thank President Kim and Commissioner Fisher and actually Weissman Ward for just the comments that was just said. What I just heard was that there is an opportunity for us to revisit and really think through given that we now have more information. And you're right, when we originally, when the board originally adopted these targets, we didn't have all the information. Now we have several years of information and we're seeing the reality of the growth that our schools are able to make. And I appreciate this conversation because we can now have a much deeper conversation about what real targets could look like. Achievable targets, targets that really speaks to the excellent teaching that our instructors, our educators have in the classroom and the supports that we can wrap around our students. Just looking at across other school districts, average annual growth and Doctor. Kim please correct me if I'm wrong, average annual growth for most schools is around three to 5%. No?

[Dr. Moonhawk Kim (Research, Planning & Assessment)]: That's on the very high end. The typical number that we have cited is across large urban school districts in California we very rarely see three or four percentage point growth and that's almost never repeated. So it's like a one off that happens in one year, not something that's sustained year after year. So typically, it's more one or two percentage points.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: One or 2%. And so with us asking our educators, our students to jump, this is way more than one or 2%, it does move into that realm of unrealistic expectations.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Commissioner

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Alex. Alexander. I did the same.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: As an along with Commissioner Weissman-Ward as the only other person responsible for this mess. No, I actually I think you explained it really well. The reason both of you explained it really well. The reason why we adopted such ambitious goals was because that did represent the vision of the community. Like just to be really clear like that's what we did. However I think we're mixing even in this conversation several different things. I think one is what are the goals like what is the area that we're measuring like third grade literacy for all students, eighth grade math for all students, graduation college career readiness for all students. Those are like the goal areas right? We could pick I don't know fifth grade science for English learner students right? That would be a different area of a goal. So that's but that's one thing. The second thing is like how are they being measured and you referred to SBAC right which I agree I think it's problematic and I would love when we redo the goals I've already started a conversation with AJ around this to think about like other assessment opportunities which is actually one reason why I do think I support extending them because I think if we're going to try to change the assessment measure it's going to take longer. We're going to need some ramp up time to do that. But the third one is then the achievement level, right? We can have the same three goals, you know, third grade or same three goal areas, third grade literacy, eighth grade math, college and career, same metric, SBAC, and we could change the target, right? So those are all different things, right? So when we're talking about readopting goals, we could change all of those. We could say we're not doing third grade literacy anymore, we're doing fourth grade literacy and we're only going to focus on EL students or whatever. I mean, because again, the idea of the goals isn't to measure everything. It's to pick some metrics that we think are going to drive system improvement. And so these obviously aren't the only things we care about in the district. We're picking them as a way to measure something to drive overall systems improvement. So I think I went back and forth on this but I will support extending them because again to me it's it's okay if we still have these really ambitious goals. What I wanna see is progress, right? Right now, if I look at that graph that's in the thing of third grade literacy, we don't even see progress. Like, if we start seeing the 2% a year progress, I think the as a board, we can say, we're really excited about that. We know we know we're still not gonna hit 70, but we we're seeing progress. And that actually is one of the questions in the monitoring reports. Right? It's not just are you meeting the goal? It's are you seeing documented progress? So I think for me, I'm less worried about the specific target. And I think there's a value in sticking with these three and then saying, well, we're not seeing progress, why not? What adjustments do we need to make? And then once we've seen a little bit of that, then I think we can have this conversation around, do we want to change the assessment? Do we want to change the areas? But I think I would have a I don't think it makes sense to change them until we start seeing some progress.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Yeah. And the resolution, just to be clear in front of us, is do we extend the deadline by a year or not? So that's what's being discussed currently. I think the and just to be clear, the ask was in January to understand what are the options ahead of us to change because we know we're going to miss it because I think in the maybe this is in October that we discussed this in the context of major decision making that AJ, who I know is on the call right now listening in crippling, that if we are having our goals sunset in 2027, we need to vote on new goals by, at the latest, October 2026. And we knew that we were not going to make that, right? So we have to extend regardless. The question was how do we extend it, right? Do we extend it by one year by maintaining? Do we extend it by two years and maintaining? Do we extend it by one year and go down? Do we right? So that was the kind of pressure testing we were needing to understand which is what led to this resolution today.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: Wait, so just to clarify, so you are offering the option of sticking with these three goal areas and three measurements but lowering the target. Is that a thing that an option you're putting on the table?

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: I think in January we broadly asked what are the options ahead of us because we know we're going to miss the target. And I think you've been working with AJ.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: But that's not being proposed right now. The proposal right now is just to extend it for a year, but leave everything the same and extend

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: That's it the staff's proposal.

[Hongmei Peng (Governance/Strategic Planning Lead)]: So President Kim, if I may. And this is to build off of well, thank you first for the conversation. I think it's a really important one and is one that we've been having with AJ as part of thinking through how we would implement the extension is that as part of this work, superintendent and staff, we would essentially do some resetting of interim goals and then cascading it down to initiatives, which in this case lines up with school reorganization. The question that Commissioner Fisher you had raised around what is strategic plan. The strategic plan is to be able to really calibrate the system so that we're able to articulate what are the necessary inputs both at the school site level, at the classroom level, and the student level, and also at a systems level that will enable us to get to the metrics that we would measure ourselves against, I. E. Interim goals, to be able to track eventually how we would get to the board's targets, I. E. The goals. Right. So I think there is a resolution in front of you where we are recommending a one year runway to 2027 so that we can line up the strategic planning that is necessary as part of the effort to roll out school reorganization and the strategic planning associated with that in conjunction with the community through collaboration with the board. Because it would be challenging for us to put in place a strategic plan around school reorganization without actually meaningfully and inclusively engaging with the community as part of this work. So I think there is also an opportunity for us to think about this runway, but also in relation to being able to come back to you and basically outline what would be an effective target now that we have a baseline that we can measure up against given the trajectory that we have undertaken in the last several years.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: In addition to the kind of time challenge around doing the board's engagement work in order to have newly adopted goals in advance of the appropriate budgeting cycle starting. I do also think that with the major decisions pending before the superintendent, if we were to even if we had the time, if we had the resources to do all of that public engagement now on this calendar and we would have had to already start probably. But even if we had that as a viable option before us, I still think it would make the most sense to extend these goals in time because I actually think one thing that's really important for us to do is to bring the community along with respect to our major decisions and why we're making major dis why the superintendent is making major decisions. And in particular with regards to school reorganization, I think there's been a muddying of the messaging around what the purpose of doing that would be. And it has been talked about publicly in the context of budget savings. And we know that it does not save the amount of money that we need to balance in our budget. But really, think that the reason to do it would be to improve student outcomes, to have students in more resourced schools, to have students with all the supports that they deserve, to have fully enrolled schools where teachers can learn from each other at the grade level and things like that. And to me, I think it actually would be incredibly muddying of the waters and confusing for the public to say that we're undertaking this initiative to achieve these goals at the same time that we're saying we should change the goals and what should our new goals be. And so I think that there's also just a logical sequencing of we're in the midst of really meaningful work to try and achieve these goals, to make progress toward these goals, and to just have it very clear that those goals are still in place and that that is what we're working toward. One thing I guess I'm a bit concerned about so I do support this. And I hope that we'll be able to, with one year extension, then do the appropriate engagement. I am a bit concerned about the just consideration slide and how the kind of framing of the budget needs to be stabilized in order to identify what initiatives to fund and how much. I'll just say I think that that's exactly backwards order of operations for student outcomes focused governance. Like we've set the goals and then we invest the we identify what is needed in terms of strategy to achieve those goals and then invest the resources necessary to enact that strategy. And so think that the goals may be unlikely to be met for various reasons related to them putting us at the top of all school districts in the state of California, for example. But I don't think that we should be setting goals or setting strategy based on like in that order. And so I just want to name that. But I don't think that that is a consideration that I would support in order to vote for this.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Sorry, just for clarification, I think what we were meaning when we said fiscal stabilization was just recognizing that last year was a kind of crisis management year and we had to stabilize the district financially first. Because of the really hard work that we did last year, we are in a place that we are much more stable. And we are in a place where we can now pivot to being really strategic about how we're going to double down on, again, things like our instructional coaches or improving or updating our curriculums. So it allows us now, because we did the hard work last year, to be able to be in a place where we are now moving towards more strategic planning work.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: And I do also just want to acknowledge since we did cut short our eighth grade math monitoring that although we didn't make progress from winter to winter year over year this year, we did actually go up five points from winter two years ago in eighth grade math. So all is not lost. We are not without progress. And I think it's been acknowledged there's been a lot of initiatives put into place including adoption of new curriculum that hopefully will continue to bear fruit toward these goals.

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: Thank you. I appreciate a lot of what folks have said here, especially Commissioner Huling's comment about the sequencing of things and the logical sequence of addressing things like our school portfolio before we go into changing our VBGGs. While I am troubled by moving out the goals by a year, I am willing to support that extension. There are a lot of concerns that I have around that or I guess maybe issues that I wanted to raise and draw out. I do think, I think Commissioner Alexander may have commented on this, that there is value in sticking with the goals and finding the ways to make progress. If we are making progress, that is a good thing. It is certainly discouraging to see what we've seen here with the implications that we have gone down for between 'twenty two and 'twenty five, and rather than up from the period when we hope to start making progress. We need to figure out why that is. And to me, a key question here is why this has happened and why it is happening. We do have some evidence and ideas of things that have worked. Like I think back to what we were told about what happened at Bret Hart with the tutoring that was done there and how significantly that raised kids' literacy levels in a period of I think it was about four months or so. So I don't feel like we don't actually have any sense of what will work. We do. And yet, for whatever reason, we don't seem to have really pursued that. I think that we should. Like, we have some sense of what works. And when we look at what we've seen in our recent progress monitoring reports, we have a problem with chronic absenteeism. But we frankly have almost like a problem not just of absenteeism of our students, but absenteeism of practice, absenteeism of the curriculum in our classes where we

[Isha Verma (Parent, Mission Bay)]: have a full

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: third of classes that are not getting the curriculum that we have invested in. It's like we've done some of these very important things like critical steps like changing the curriculum and investing in coaches. So why are we still having this problem where only two thirds of our classes are getting the literacy curriculum, where a significant number of folks aren't getting the math curriculum? I think we really need to look at why that is and what we're doing to hold people accountable in order to achieve results. It's like folks talk all the time about how fantastic things are and we want to be a world class school system, a world class district offering world class education. We should be able to do it. We are a wealthy, rich area. And so I feel like I don't want us to just go back to low expectations. I want us instead to strive to meet the higher expectations, to actually do the things that we know works and to hold people accountable for the things that we have put in place. So I hope we'll stick with high expectations. I think that's how we will get somewhere. Thank you.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: I agree. We should definitely continue to have very high expectations and work really hard to support our students to all of our students to achieve those expectations. And I truly do believe that all of us within SFUSD are working every single day to get there, including our families. And I know for sure our students are trying their best to embrace our curriculum and to really thrive in our schools. And as we just heard, there are some barriers to our students that is beyond their control. And I think we need to be very mindful of that. So just Commissioner Ray, you were talking about the wonderful program at Bret Hart. I absolutely agree. And it's called high dosage tutoring. And we actually partnered with Spark SF and with the Ed Fund and with the city to bring in additional funds so that we can expand that high dosage tutoring because we know a lot of our students would need that one on one support. And we're seeing the results as you just talked about. We are seeing the results but we just need to continue to do it. We need to continue to double down on it. We need to continue to make sure that as you say, fidelity to the curriculum and hold our educators and our school communities accountable to making sure that we're using the curriculum that we just adopted and that we're using it every day. But that also means that we need to invest in professional development for our educators as well as making sure that there are all those other resources that our students and families would need. So yes, again, a longer runway will allow us to continue to test out some of those really great efforts that we are using in some of our schools and expand that to more schools when possible.

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: So I also support this measure. I want to emphasize what Commissioner Alexander mentioned in terms of, I think, figuring out how do we arrest the downward decline in third grade literacy and then also push it back up. I'm struggling with the idea that we set the bar too high, particularly because we see large diverse school districts that do achieve better results, especially for focal populations that we see declining more in our district. And so even as we look at, say, truth of rising two or three percentage points, I am very curious as to how do we follow the momentum that we do see in best practices and others. I'd love to see more of that. To follow-up on what Commissioner Ray was saying, which I 100% agree with, I'd just add one more thing, is also understanding what the results are when we see implementation in, say, the twothree versus the onethree. And do we see the results? Do we see the outcomes differ? Because I remember that being a question in the last round, we didn't have an answer to that as far as were those that actually were implementing the curriculum doing better? Were we seeing the results that we would seek to see? I will say also one thing about the engagement piece of this which is if we look out eighteen to twenty four months I agree with the idea that right now our focus has to be on the two major initiatives. These are two major initiatives the board directed the superintendent to conduct back in October. We need to see those plans carried forward. We need to see the public engagement plans carried forward on those pieces. In addition to which, one of the things that we've heard in the ad hoc committee is the idea of doing further education information sessions on student outcome focused governance. So I think this works in our favor where if we do push this out another year or year and a half even that allows us to conduct our routine engagement as a board. And for example I know in the last ad hoc, best ad hoc meeting, Well done. Thank you. I just had to slide that in. We had great questions from our participants around what was student outcome focused governance. And that took actually a little bit of time. So I think the more our communities engage and I'm heartened to hear that we received thousands of comments, feedback pieces in the last round. So I look forward to matching that, if not doubling it.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: Know? Mystery ambitious goals over here.

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: So we can do better and actually get that feedback. And I think the public engagement plan that will be coming forth will hopefully allow that.

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: Can I just ask a quick question? And that's if AJ is on and whether he wants to comment.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: I was just going to call him after our comment is done. Hi, AJ.

[AJ Cribbill (Council of the Great City Schools; Governance Advisor)]: Good evening. Please. I would offer three points that have largely been spoken, but I want to summarize because I think board should be driven by these three ideas. The first is that our coaching is always that goals need to be attainable, just as a matter of respectfulness to your staff and the likelihood of actually operating from a place of reality rather than a place of delusion, that it is valuable for goals to actually be attainable. That would be the A in SMART for us, specific, measurable, attainable, results, focus, and time bound. And so I would encourage you to have your staff, if this is something that you're going to do, is move the dates, then I would encourage you to have your staff bring back a recommendation for alternative targets at next month's meeting, if they can bring it back that quickly, which I suspect they probably can. That's point number one. Point number two, keep in mind that, again, if you do this, that that does alter your timeline, but it doesn't alter the geometry of the timeline. Is that if the goals are now going to expire in in '27, then that means that if they were going to expire in the '27, you would want to have their replacements ready to go, by the '26. So now if they're going to expire in the '28, then you need their replacements ready to go by the '27, which means to have a healthy community listening process that's even more robust than what you did last time, that you'd need to start that, sometime in January, February, March year, that you need to start the listening in order to have the full process complete by the fall so that they could take place the following summer. So that's the second thing to just keep in mind is that that's the new timeline you'd be operating under if you make this call. And then the third thing is the goal setting is indistinguishable from resource allocation, that you can have as aggressive as a set of targets as you are willing to reallocate resources. And when I say resources, that's not just a financial thing. That's time, talent, and treasure. If you are willing to do more reallocation, understand that that will cause more disruption because you'll be moving resources from one part of the school system to another. But along with that more disruption affords more opportunity for growth. You can choose lower targets, and that would result in less reallocation, which will cause less disruption, but also affords less opportunity for growth. That if you want to see more results, the answer is never tell your educators you're just not working hard enough. The answer is tell your educators, we're going to provide you even more of the resources you need. We're gonna double down in these strategic areas. And so the question of how high or low your targets is isn't bounded by what other large urban have done. It isn't bounded by what you've done. It is largely bounded by what resource allocation does the board and, really, this is a decision that comes down to the board's judgment. What resource reallocation is the board willing to engage in? If you're will if you are willing to do more, then have higher targets and push for more growth. If you're willing to do less because you feel like it'd be too disruptive, then so be it. But understand that the savings and disruption also comes at a reduction in likely growth. Those are the three things I'd have you consider. Next month, come back and consider adopting targets. As you design your calendar, make sure that you're just planning plenty of time for community listening. And as you were thinking about what your targets are, just understand that there is a inextricably intertwined nature between the target setting and resource allocation. Higher targets, you need to expect your staff to have more resources moved, which will cause more disruption. Lower targets, less resources moved, less disruption.

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: May I ask a clarifying question? So this resolution, the be it further resolved section, names numbers in the goals and keeps the same targets that we have in the current goals. So should we potentially table this until our team can come back with more realistic numbers?

[AJ Cribbill (Council of the Great City Schools; Governance Advisor)]: If you're asking for my are you asking my guidance on this?

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: I'm asking anyone who wants to answer.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: Mr. Crabill. I personally would be concerned about changing target numbers outside of doing community listening. And I think it would be a change in goals to my mind and I think to many members in our community. And so for me, I feel more comfortable changing the timeline but not the targets.

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: Because I think the other point here that A. J. Has mentioned to us before but we haven't talked about yet is the fact that the superintendent's evaluation is supposed to be tied to these goals. And with numbers this high that we're being told the way that we're currently allocating our resources we cannot meet, does that mean we're setting the superintendent up for failure or are we willing to again set that aside like we have this year for next year?

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: Think I want to go back to the point I was making earlier. I totally understand what Ajay is saying and completely agree with it around the targets and allocation of resources. And I think there's in my mind, it would be really helpful to start to see progress to say, with the current allocation of resources, we can continue to get this type of progress. And then to make a judgment about how to adjust the numbers. Like right now, I feel like I don't have the information I need to say if we were to lower it from 70 to 65 or to 60, what would be reasonable because we're not even seeing progress. So I don't even see a path to 60, let alone 70. So I guess for me, I would prefer, and maybe this is another way of saying what you're saying, to just extend them for a year, to acknowledge that we're in we're going to have to adjust them potentially. But to do that based on actual data of you know like if our new curriculum and our coaches produce a 1% gain or a 2% gain then the board can say you know what we actually do want to get to 70 so you need to do more and more and more and this is what that's going to this is how that's going to be disruptive as Ajay is saying or we can say no actually we're okay with that growth and we're going to adjust the goals but without some know what I'm saying? Without better data it's

[Ms. Marshall (NAACP & Alliance of Black School Educators)]: hard to

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: I agree. And I just want to acknowledge I mean, well, I'll address the superintendent. So I think when we had asked for more data to understand what the implications are of changing our goals, I think that's the kind of conversation that we want to set ourselves up for. And so better understanding, like we should be able to look at the tools at our disposal, the data that we have, the projections that we believe are going to lead to any sort of target and consider that as part of our decision making around what we do. And in some ways, this is the exercise of reengaging with community to reset the vision and values, goals, and guardrails that we know we need to do as we consider revamping all of this work. And so it all comes full circle. I guess I'll just put it that way. For now, I will say, I mean, my understanding in this how this resolution was drafted that the current recommendation on the table from staff is to simply take the date and move it back one year. And my assumption here based on the resolution that was provided is that there won't be a change to the goals that are coming for next meeting, as Ajay mentioned.

[Hongmei Peng (Governance/Strategic Planning Lead)]: I'm happy to kick us off. So President Kim, we did prepare the resolution today to take into account the longer runway in an effort to line up to timelines. We as staff have also started to model out what a projection could look like assuming sustainable growth based on conditions that are status quo conditions and essentially the inputs through the different strategies that are put in place for us to be able to get to improve goals and prioritizing the baseline that we can scale from based on current strategies and then thinking through what our comparable school districts in California are doing. So we have begun that modeling. I think the question really, it's at the direction of the superintendent and the board. If that would be something that you would like for us to bring back, we would recommend that be a conversation that's also coupled with the alignment conversation that we're having around school reorganization and some of the major initiatives. Because these things are tied in terms of how we're going to build out the schools that we will be operating to be able to help us be in service of these improved student outcomes, including how do we resource them, what are the strategies, what are the systems that will scaffold these strategies in order for us to be able to implement some of the key initiatives that have seen gains with fidelity. So I think these are all pieces of work in progress. And we would recommend, if you are open to that, to be able to come back and share some of that work at an upcoming meeting on May 12.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: But just to be clear, so the recommendation is to continue to adopt this there

[Hongmei Peng (Governance/Strategic Planning Lead)]: Yes. So for purposes of lining up timelines, the resolution in front of you extends your current goals by one year to 2028. And to AJ's point, that would line up the timeline to engage and invest staff and district capacity and resources to do robust community engagement and inclusive decision making between January 2027 so that we can get to new goals and guardrails by 2027. That will line up with the timelines, right? But I think in terms of this question around the targets, that is something that we can bring back. And the recommendation is actually to couple some of that conversation with the strategic pieces around the visioning of school reorganization, the big why of what's driving the need for us to really engage in this kind of strategic planning.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Okay. And I will just acknowledge maybe I'll speak for the board. That is part of my job, I suppose. We are excited to have that conversation regardless of the timeline, I think, of where we are moving towards in terms of our revisioning for VPGGs because I think that that conversation around the vision of our schools, our school portfolio, and what it means for us to build towards something is something that regardless of when a new resolution comes forward is something that's critical for us. So yay, obviously, we'll say. Okay, so what I'm going to do is a couple of things. I'm going to close a comment and discussion. And I'm going to move to our first action here, which is to Sorry, what's that?

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: I thought you combined H1 and H2 in that last motion.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Yes. So what I'm going to do is

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: Can I ask you a quick question?

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Yes.

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: Sorry, just a quick question. So is there something that requires us to adopt a new timeline now versus just adopting a new timeline and new goals in that May 12 meeting?

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Can you say that one more time please?

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: Sure. So it sounds like Hongmei was suggesting we adopt this now so that we adopt a new timeline and then they're going to be potentially new recommended goals in the May 12 meeting. And I'm curious if there's no.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: No. I think what she's saying

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: New

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: targets. Targets. Sorry, not goals. New targets in the May 12 meeting. New targets. Apologies. It's late. My bad.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: To clarify, is that changing the end goal of 70% for goal one, or are we talking about interim targets?

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Extend the goals by one year.

[Hongmei Peng (Governance/Strategic Planning Lead)]: So sorry, can I clarify? So to Commissioner Alexander's point, the goals are made of several components. There is the goal area, which is what is it that we are looking at measuring up against, how we're measuring the assessment tool. We're not recommending changes to those two things. But what we are saying is given what we know now about how far we are from 70% and in light of the big plans around school reorganization, that we can model out new targets so that they are more attainable and realistic targets?

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: So that's, I think, where it gets confusing with what Commissioner Fisher was asking because this resolution does include targets. I guess the question because the target of

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: Wait. When you say target, are you talking interim goal? Help me understand. Make sure we're all

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: using the same verbiage. Seventy percent seventy five percent seventy So 5% by

[Hongmei Peng (Governance/Strategic Planning Lead)]: So we would apologies. So what we would bring amenable to that, is we would model out what a realistic projection would look like in place of the 70%. And we would propose amendments to that number.

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: So I'm not trying to get into whether or not I think we all may have different opinions on that. My question is more procedural one. Do we need to pass this to extend the timeline? Or can we do that at the same time we might have a conversation around whether we want new targets or not.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Yeah and actually that might be the better move here is to because I don't think there's any there's no pressure right now to move forward on this currently, correct?

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: Well, since we're discussing this resolution, I will just say I would not support and would not vote for a resolution that changed the targets. And so I'm actually curious to hear discussion from other commissioners about where they stand on that because I wouldn't want to ask staff to do a lot of work and to bring this back if there isn't actually direction from the board to do that. Because I think that at least speaking from my experience on board leadership, we explicitly did not ask

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: staff to do that.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: We asked for a resolution that extended timelines. And or options, and this is what came. We did not ask staff to actually to my mind, setting the goals is the board's job. It is not staff's job and does not come from a staff recommendation. It comes from board engagement with the community. And I don't want us to continue this conversation beyond when it needs to happen or ask staff to do work for something that is not going to have support of the board. So I actually would just ask that we extend discussion to hear where people are on that before we direct staff to do something if the board doesn't support it.

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: I would be really concerned about and find it hard to imagine myself supporting a change in now we're using the word targets instead of goals, which is actually kind of confusing to me because we literally call them goals we're talking about 70%, for instance without community engagement on that. Like, I am not comfortable changing the actual goals we set without community engagement. I think it's different to change the timeline. If folks are using which they don't seem to be here, but you could be using targets to mean like what the interim goals were or something, I don't particularly object to that. But changing the ultimate, the actual thing that was said in October 2022 by a prior version of the board as the goals without community engagement is something that is very troubling to me.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Yeah. Can I clarify something before I switch it over here? Because I think there are a few moving pieces that we should just take stock of. So what AJ had recommended was that a resolution come together to extend the timeline of our current goals by one year. And then what he recommended and AJ, I think you're still listening here. And then what he recommended was either in a subsequent meeting, we can either change the targets and or change the interims. And that's not our purview. That's the superintendent's purview.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: The interims.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Interims.

[Maggie McAdam (Chair, Queer & Trans Parent Advisory Council)]: Yes.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Right? Now what's, I think, complexifying this conversation is that we have a resolution in front of us that has both goals and targets. And so this is where the question I have for staff is this resolution created for us assumes both goal and target are remaining the same and the timeline has just moved back. Correct? And that is the recommendation from from staff. That is what I'm hearing is on the table. That is the resolution in front of us right now, right? So there's a question here of are we okay with that? And I will say I am fine with that. But if there's folks who disagree with that, we should talk about that. But no, what what my understanding is coming in May is a conversation about interims and whether that is is that not happening?

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: No. So I just based on what so the original resolution is to extend our VVGGs as is by one year. So it's the extent that the targets or the goals, whatever, however we want to call it, they're one Call and the

[Ms. Marshall (NAACP & Alliance of Black School Educators)]: them goals.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Extend the goals by one year. What AJ was adding a little bit more context to the conversation is that based on the data that staff now has seen over the last several years, the goal of achieving seventy percent of our third graders being proficient unattainable. That's the A that he was saying. And so the board at this point has this opportunity to perhaps change that goal. But that is not what the resolution is showing. Resolution that we are presenting based on conversation with board leadership is that we agree that we're just going to extend by one year. But

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: what's being suggested by staff right now is that on May 12, a change to the goal would also come from staff. And that is what I'm saying. If the board does not support staff recommending a change in goal on May 12, we should just direct staff in public that we don't want them to do that work because we're not open to entertaining that.

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: Well, also want to reiterate A. J. Had three things for us, right? One, attainability was a big part of it. I think we're all aligned in the timeline part that what A. J. Had just emphasized. But the fact that goal implementation needs to be also tied to resource allocation, I think, is the part that we can't forget here. If we want to get from a place where our our SBAC reading scores are dropping and we think it is realistic to stay with a goal of getting them up by 20 points now, 23 points, then we as a board also need to talk about some significant resource reallocation. I mean, we passed the budget, so that's us too. We can't have our cake and eat it. Like, we have to take our part, our responsibility in this part too. Like, what resources are we going to redirect or ask the superintendent to redirect in order to make this happen? Like, if this, if we're directing the superintendent to get to a reading goaltargetwhatever you want to call it of 70% by 2028, we've got to provide the resources to actually get there. Otherwise, we are setting her and all of our students up for failure. I mean, we gotta be real here guys. Otherwise, like what's the point? Otherwise this is just a shell game. Otherwise this is just performative.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: I think, I just wanna sort of reiterate what I tried to say earlier which is that I feel like I don't have enough information to get to be able to make that call. When we made these goals it was a very clear directive from the community that they wanted us to be super ambitious and to really think outside the box and to have high standards. So I tend to agree with Vice President Huling and Commissioner Ray that I would feel very uncomfortable reducing these targets without significant community input because I, as a board member, actually voted to increase them somewhat uncomfortably, but because everybody from all, know, from all angles of the community, like, it was really to me, it was sort of surprising. Like, I was my instinct was to have lower targets. And then folks were like, no, this is what we want from our school district. And so I think I would also oppose changing these without some significant community input. At the same time, I just want to go back and again say that happened in 2022. We did community engagement between March and October. We adopted the goals in October 2022. So the first year that the budget even began to reflect those goals was the 'twenty three-'twenty four school year. 'twenty four, 'twenty five was the second year. 'twenty five, 'twenty six, the year we're in now, is the third year. So to me, extending by a year really actually gets us to the full five years. Because it was the first implementation I mean, to AJ's point, we didn't have an eighteen months lead time. We had a six month lead time. And so really, twenty three, twenty four was even though we said 2027 because it was like five years from when we adopted them, it was really if we'd really been following the lead time thing, it would have been 2028. So I actually think 2028 is sort of a sensible time for us to extend to and to recalibrate. And in the meantime, I think if there's issues with morale, if staff's like, these are totally unattainable, think we could say, Okay, great. Come to us with let's talk. Let's have that conversation. I I guess what I'm trying to say is I think we can have the conversation without adjusting these right now. Like, we can say, look. In some

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: ways, RPA has already done this.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: Yeah. And and I think we should have that. I mean, I would love a presentation in May where you're like, look, here's what we think we can realistically achieve. Let's this is what happened at Bret Hart. If we were to resource schools at this level, we could do this. Here's what happened at John Muir where they had higher investments. This is what they did. This is what it would cost to get us there. I would love that conversation. I mean, that is the conversation I think we should be having.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Absolutely. And

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: then we can go back to these numbers and say, Well, what's realistic? Like, right now, we haven't even to me I think it's way too early to talk about adjusting these numbers when we haven't even had that conversation. I

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: agree and I will just say Commissioner Fisher like I mean knowing that these are five year goals whether we are on or off track does not change the direction of shifting our budget to try to meet our goals, right? So I mean that should be annually every year as we look at our budget, right? And so I think the questions that we ask of the superintendent during that budget cycle remain, right? Tell us how this budget reflects a movement towards the goals that we set, right? Whether that goal is 70% or 65% for any one goal, right? Like I think we can talk about whether or not we have the data that tells us that we are going to meet it or not. But it doesn't change the spirit of the conversation around our budgeting cycle, right? So I just want to acknowledge that.

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: And to be clear, I'm not advocating for lowering the gold I'm advocating for increasing resources to actually meet the goals as well. So I think we're all very, very much aligned in that. And I really if that's conversation we're going to have on May 12 I cannot wait for that conversation. I agree with Commissioner Alexander.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: So what I'm gonna do is bring us to a roll call vote for both items item h one and item h two for approval.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: I actually have a question about the governance calendar. Genuinely. Because I feel like we've been working on this in this governance calendar for a very long time, and it continues to see iteration and continues to improve. But what I don't see here is a meeting in order to approve hires

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: before they have

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: to start work on August 1, which we had on July. And and what I don't see is a meeting, like, on June 30 in case there needs to be more budget work. And if that is because we are so improved in our HR and hiring processes that everybody will have an offer accepted and a contract before us And the budget will be tied up because we have our study sessions by June 23, huzzah, to to everybody. But if that's not the case, I would actually like to see what the real governance calendar looks like. I am planning on leaving during recess, the country hopefully. And I think just we all need some clarity around planning and around setting realistic workflows. And so if realistically having people, educators contracted by August 1 requires something different, I just want to make sure that we have a governance calendar that actually accomplishes all of the operational needs of the district. So that's my question is, are we there? Or are we going to have a further revised governance calendar?

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: I've consulted with all of my executive team. And we believe that this is the right governance calendar.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Before we vote on the roll call, can we extend our meeting so this is a legitimate vote? I know I lost.

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: So moved.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Second.

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: Motion to extend past 10PM. Commissioner Ray. Yes. Commissioner Alexander. Yes. Vice President Huling.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: Yes.

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: President Kim? Yes. Commissioner Weissman-Ward? Yes. Commissioner Gupta? Yes. Commissioner Fisher?

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: Yes.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Can we do a roll call vote please on action items H1 and H2?

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: Motion to Commissioner Ray. At 08:45.

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: Okay, so we're voting one vote for both of them.

[AJ Cribbill (Council of the Great City Schools; Governance Advisor)]: Correct. Okay,

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: yes.

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: Commissioner Alexander? Yes. Vice President Huling?

[Mon (Student Delegate)]: Yes.

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: President Kim? Yes. Commissioner Weissman-Ward? Yes. Commissioner Gupta? Yes. Commissioner Fisher?

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Yes. Item h three, approval of PIPs and waivers. Oh, so sorry. I just moved so quickly. Thank you both so much. Appreciate your work here and excited to have those conversations. Thank you. Thank you. Moving to item H3, approval of PIPs and waivers. Can I have a motion or second?

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: I move that we approve the PIPs and waivers.

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: Second.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: It has been properly moved and seconded that the board approve this item. I ask Doctor. Su to bring this item forward.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: I'm going to hand it over to our Associated Superintendent of HR, Amy Bear.

[Sasha Harris Cronin (QTPAC Member/Parent)]: Thanks. I just have one waiver for a bilingual elementary education teacher.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Any comments or questions? Seeing none, debate is now closed on the motion to approve this item. Roll call vote, please.

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: Commissioner Ray? Yes. Commissioner Alexander? Yes. Vice President Huling?

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: Yes.

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: President Kim? Yes. Commissioner Weissman-Ward? Yes. Commissioner Gupta? Yes. Commissioner Fisher?

[Kenna Hazelwood (District Coordinator, LGBTQ Student Services)]: Yes.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: The next item on the agenda is the twenty twenty six-twenty twenty seven declaration of need for fully qualified teachers. Can I have a motion and a second?

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: I move the twenty six-twenty seven declaration of need for fully qualified teachers.

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: Second.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: It has been properly moved and seconded that the board approve this item. Doctor. Sue?

[Sasha Harris Cronin (QTPAC Member/Parent)]: So this is an annual declaration that the district needs to make with the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing in order to grant waivers and have some flexibility due to a lack of fully credentialed educators. There are two resolutions, one for the district and one for the county office of education.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Thank you. Are there any comments or questions from the board?

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: Yes, I do have a quick question. I actually had a question because I saw two attachments, and I didn't understand what the difference was. Is this what you just referred to? Because it is the county and the district.

[Sasha Harris Cronin (QTPAC Member/Parent)]: Yes. The CTC requires us to do it for both the county office and the district.

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: Okay, thank you.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Debate is now closed on the motion to approve this item, roll call vote please.

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: Commissioner Ray? Yes. Commissioner Alexander? Yes. Vice President Huling? Yes. President Kim? Yes. Commissioner Weissman-Ward?

[Lisa Weissman-Ward (Commissioner)]: Yes.

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: Commissioner Gupta? Yes. Commissioner Fisher?

[Alida Fisher (Commissioner)]: Yes.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: Thank you. President Kim has a standing recusal from the consent calendar due to his employment with the city and county of San Francisco to which is a frequent contractor with the district to avoid any appearance of a conflict. Superintendent, are there any alterations to the consent calendar tonight?

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: Yes. Staff would like to pull item 39 from consent.

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: And I believe that that is a construction contract Guadalupe for Elementary that needs to be re noticed under public contracting rules and will come back to us later? Yeah, it will.

[General Counsel (Name not stated)]: I'm smiling because there could be a variety of reasons. That might be one of many. I'm just saying that I don't know if that's

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: it. Okay.

[Dr. Hsu (Superintendent)]: But yes, Vice President Huling, item 39 is a contract for construction and we will bring it back at a later time. Thank you. So

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: I move the adoption of the consent calendar minus item 39. Second. Can we have a roll call vote please?

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: One second please. Who motioned sorry?

[Jaime Huling (Vice President)]: I did. Okay.

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: Thank

[Dr. Moonhawk Kim (Research, Planning & Assessment)]: you. I seconded it.

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: And you seconded it. Appreciate it. Okay. Commissioner Ray? Yes. Commissioner Alexander? Yes. Vice President Huling? Yes. President Kim? Commissioner Weissman-Ward? Yes. Commissioner Gupta? Yes. Commissioner Fisher?

[Speaker 9.0]: Yep.

[Mr. Trujillo (Board Staff/Meeting Facilitator)]: Thank you.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Any board member reports?

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: We'll do a brief one.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: You look so excited.

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: I am.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: Is this for the best ad hoc? Yes. Okay, go ahead.

[Ms. Marshall (NAACP & Alliance of Black School Educators)]: We're Make Exactly. The best all the

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: time that you need. Yeah.

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: So, for the just for you, Lisa.

[Lisa Weissman-Ward (Commissioner)]: Thank you.

[Parag Gupta (Commissioner)]: For the ad hoc, we had our meeting at Lafayette. Thank you Lafayette for hosting the ad hoc committee. We have taken in community input for what will be a final draft of our routine engagement for the major decision engagement we are waiting upon the staff recommendations as far as what staff will do for major decisions and how their public and how staff public engagement will work our community had recommendations for staff as well and we're very thankful for Superintendent Hsu, Hongmei and Christina joining us to take in that input. They'll provide a plan and once we have that plan then we'll be able to provide what board public engagement will look like based on staff public engagement. We will be in touch with board members individually to board members can see the routine engagement draft as it stands right now that will with some adjustments and input be brought forward come May so at the end of this year for implementation in the 2526 sorry, in the twenty six-twenty seven school year. So we're very excited for that.

[Matt Alexander (Commissioner)]: I wish that the second best ad hoc had a report, but our work is just so boring that you wouldn't even want to hear about it. So I'll wait till after our meeting.

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: That's great because you won't acknowledge anyone. So I believe we have a printout somewhere that talks about the recognition of commissioners in order to speak.

[Supryia Ray (Commissioner)]: We might need a coup here to

[Hongmei Peng (Governance/Strategic Planning Lead)]: oust

[Phil Kim (Board President)]: some Anyhoo, thank you all so much. I now, this meeting is adjourned at 10:10PM.