17 December 2024 PAUSD Board Meeting Comments

5 Open Forum

I’m speaking in reaction to the public reporting on the Escondido incident and potential systemic issues so we can do better going forward.

1. One of the questions that I asked our newly elected board members during the campaign about was elementary student suspensions which apparently occurred in this case There is clear disproportionality in these suspensions and we should ask what purpose they serve – at the very least, we are overdue to look at our suspension data. Suspensions rose by 50% in the last school year from 1% to 1.5% with substantial increases to virtually all of our disadvantaged groups.

2. The allegations of retaliation by both Contractor and School and or District staff speak to a culture problem that we have here and don’t talk about. Unfortunately, I have heard too many people talk about incidents of retaliation and widespread fear of retaliation to disregard the complaints. There is no easy answer, but we need to work on better communication by everyone for the health of our community.

3. The use/misuse of the Heritage School certification process (which was apparently raised in 2022) to use different rules for staffing and licensing looks like it was a trade off between serving more students for a given budget but with lower staffing. Is this still a good trade-off? Are there other ways to find resources to serve the same number (or more) students. I personally find the certification kind of a stretch – if we want to change the licensing process to provide adequate childcare – lets do that instead of some sort of end run.

4A. PAUSD Promise Update

* It is great to see the rumored Special Education District Advisory Committee announced – when is it going to get started and get to work?

* When are we going to see a plan or a plan for a plan or a schedule for a plan for a plan for implementing improvements to the special education program

* For MTSS – is the number of students at Tier 1 and 2 a baseline or is it a change from previous years? How many students are in Tier 3?

* Title 9 complaints, Suspensions, Disproportionality, and other actions and metrics are indicators of challenges for “Inclusive and Culturally Responsive Practices” – how are we doing by the numbers?

* Has the attendance gap improved between disadvantaged groups and others or is this just a reflection of an overall improvement in attendance?

* Has our graduation rate improved for our disadvantaged students? Is the gap closing between them and their peers?

* Emergency Preparedness Update – Site Safety Plans are supposed to include information to support Students With Disabilities and as far as I’ve seen, they don’t. Please review and report on this. Also, there should be a mechanism in the IEP process to review the site safety informmation to see if there is anything that is of potential concern.

4B – Career and AI

It is great to see the career readiness improvement for our 4 disadvantaged groups in the district, but there still remains a 20 to 40 plus percent performance gap between these groups and our top performing categories.

While I’m pleased that the district is paying attention to AI, it is a bit disconcerting to have grammar checkers banned in the district as I’ve been using them in Microsoft Word since the early 1990s at least – so probably longer than some of the committee members have been alive. We need to focus on teaching our kids to deal with radical changes in technology over their lives, not necessarily any specific tool. The TI-30 calculator was revolutionary when I was in middle school and now we all have iPhones and ChatGPT.

5. Consent Calendar

Contract Oversight – Presumably, Right at School contract was renewed this spring(!?), yet no mention of this incident was part of the Consent Agenda package (I’m pretty sure I would have noticed it). The board and district should be reviewing these contrasts based on performance and risks, not just approving spending.

C. Note that 3 of the 6 staff ending employment this month work in special education.

NOTE: Demographic Reports from School Census:

9. Information Items – Calendar

There are a number of important topics that are not on the calendar at all. The District proposed a presentation on Special Education for the October meeting which they decided to defer. It looks like there is no presentation on the Special Education program for the rest of the school year. Nor is there a presentation on Suspensions which have gotten notably worse or Absenteeism which has improved, but should still be considered problematic.