20 August 2024 PAUSD Board Meeting Comments

(Chris, Josh, Alison, Nicole late )

CLOSED SESSION

Terminate an employee

Board member reports

Student members – Gunn

Paly

Superintendent 70 classified and certificated staff members… only one new staff member (not from another school district)…4 things – connections to Palo Alto, reputation of district, salary and benefits, working conditions, 3^rd high school (Middle College)…. Want to be there and they think it is a good fit… eclectic group, welcome Sharon (new CBO)…. She came over to talk to me,

4 Open Forum

I would like to ask a favor – again. Last year, I asked that the district and board help spread the word about CalABLE accounts and you did. Thank you. As of earlier this month, there are only around 12,000 CalABLE account holders in the entire state of California. In 2023, there were 765,169 students with disabilities in California and it is likely that more than half are eligible. We probably have around 600 eligible children in our school district alone. This program is critical when our kids become adults as it is key to protecting their eligibility for state and federal disability services. It is also an excellent savings and investment vehicle – like a ROTH IRA for disabled people. I hope you’ll help get the word out again. Thank you.

Calable.ca.gov

Ken Horowitz – Health Advisor for the County… teens energy drink habit … excess caffeine…and energy drinks… concerns

Ezra Rosenberg – (zoom) – …. no success

Alison Kamhi – “BSMART”? on secure gun storage – this BSMART WEEK…

3A. Spring 2024 California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) Results Update

“This is our report card” Todd Collins, Board Member

Concerns about the Decline in Math scores in general and 8^th graders partiicularly from both Collins and Segal

There is no meaningful improvement for SWD and SWIFT group over the grades and the matched cohorts seem to show a growing gap between these groups and other groups in PAUSD and in some cases actual declining performance by student cohorts over time… and no plan provided about what PAUSD is going to do to close these gaps.

…English Language Arts – no improvement for Students with Disabilities for English Language arts from 2018-19 to 2023-24. Page 8 of the report, it would be much better to group results by school type (Elementary, Middle, High School) than alphabetically. No charts only data tables for Students with Disabilities … only broken out by ethnic groups. No data provided on other areas for Students with Disabilties and Socio-Economically Disadvantages Students for achievement levels. Disturbing trend – declining achievement level by grade… is this a cohort problem or a grade problem? Mathematics – math scores flat or declining overall, most notable for students with disabilities, SED Hispanic, and SWIFT focus group. Math achievement by grade seems to be declining, just like ELA, Match Cohort Analysis seems to show a growing gap between SWD and SWIFT focus group and other groups (actual numbers would be helpful)….and, even worse, declining performance over longer periods of time.

3B – Update on Heating, Ventilation, and Cooling (HVAC) Systems Upgrade.

National power supply problems, city of Palo Alto Utilities problems, Construction problems. Gettign a dedicated engineer from the city Utility.

Sounds very sensible contract/program management.

Check out slide 6 for the details. No data on high schools?!?

5. Consent Agenda –

Item C – I’d like to highlight the board assignments to schools for everyone to see and in particular, thank the board for adding a Board Representative for the Cubberley programs. However, I’m curious how the Middle College program will be supported. Item G – I appreciate that the district is reporting to the board and public on the performance of the district’s law firms as part of their contract renewals. I hope that the district continues to report on vendor performance and expands it for all of its contracts. Item O – it is great that the district is getting a grant to improve outreach for the Middle College program to help make it more accessible.

Board Assignments

Who get’s your school

Certificated Staff (teachers + SPED teachers – education specialists)

Credentialed Staff (other staff)

7 SPED resignations

Summer Staff

Legal Services

Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Ruud & Romo

Dannis Wolliver Kelley

Warrents and Purchase Orders

Things to look for for SPED – Contracted Para ed aides, NPS, Parent/Guardian

Action Items

6. Increasing Basic Aid reserve to 13%

This was discussed in June … up from 10%. Aligns with state level recommendations. It will remain in the general fund. And cost of 2 months worth of payroll (Sharon)

In response to the structural deficit concern, this increases the reserve. Concern raised by T. Collins.

??? Perhaps this is effectively reducing the used budget by the district?

According to Collins – no year since 1980 that the assessed value has gone down in PAUSD. His concern is that this is unnecessary… intersting argument. It will be hard to lose him from the board.

Enrollment down by 20% over the past 10 years.

33k here per student.

Concern we are a target, more concerned that we have “unprecedented” revenue that will likely go up.

Student rep asked where the funds are coming from in the budget.

(it is unclear what it was previously)

8D – Calendar for Board for 2024-5

I’m concerned that there is no visible agenda item to discuss the serious 8^th grade failure problem that was shared at the last board meeting in June in an information item. 15.3% of students ended with a D or F at JLS up from 11% at mid-year. 7.3% at Fletcher up from 2.9%, and 14.7% at the end of the year for Greene up from 10.5% at mid-year. It looks like this had been flagged at mid-year, but the interventions did not succeed as the end of the year numbers were notably worse… and that the problems were highligh concentrated in Algebra 1. I’m also concerned about overloading the 8 October meeting with both Math Placement and Special Education as we all know math presentations have a lot of public interest.

Notable items:

No visible discussion of 8^th grade math problems

8 October – Math Placement + Special Ed (both – OUCH)

BOARD REPORTS

Ribbon Cutting for Middle College (Shounak, Segal) Collin

Segal visit to Ohlone

Collins