GO Board Watch: April 12, 2017
This week’s agenda includes:
- Day of the Teacher Proclamation
- Update on History/Social Studies
- Creation of Pathways and feeder patterns
- Professional Learning Communities and Continuous School Improvement
- 2017-18 LCAP and Budget
- Update on Business Operations Portal
- Proposed Enrollment Impact Analysis Policy
- Enrollment Stabilization Plan
- Update on Local Business Utilization
- Debt Issuance and Management Policy
- OUSD’s 2017 State Legislative Platform and Position on Certain State Legislative Bills
*Correction: In the previous Board Watch, we stated that 15 out of 16 charter schools had rejected their Prop 39 offers. In fact, 6 withdrew from the process, 6 have submitted extension letters, 2 are choosing “in lieus” offers, and 1 charter’s petition was not approved. There is more information available at the OUSD Office of Charter Schools site. Accuracy is important to us so please let us know about any issues.
1). Professional Culture
The Board will be voting to proclaim May 10, 2017 as the District’s Day of the Teacher.
2). Quality Schools Development
Update on History/Social Studies
The Board will hear a presentation (pg. 19 of Supt. Report) on the District’s strategies for improving history and social studies education across Oakland. Whereas before history education tended to focus on memorization and multiple-choice tests, OUSD schools are moving toward more critical thinking and student engagement with the material through Historical Writing Tasks.
The District’s proposal for 2017-18 is to strengthen the use of these practices across the district, adopt updated curricula, and continue developing history teacher leadership.
Creation of Pathways and Feeder Patterns
The Board will hear a presentation on the geographic and economic segregation reflected in patterns of choice for high-demand schools in Oakland and the District’s plan to address these problems. The presentation was originally scheduled for March 22, 2017 – for a more detailed explanation of the presentation, see the second item in our Board Watch for that meeting.
On April 15, Parents Organizing for Equity and Integration in Oakland Schools will be having a community forum and workshop on school segregation from 9 AM to 4 PM at Fremont High School.
Professional Learning Communities and Continuous School Improvement
The Board will hear a presentation on Professional Learning Communities and Instructional Leadership teams. These are educator-led systems for professional development. The Board will also hear how Key Performance Indicators, like high school readiness and chronic absence, are used for ongoing feedback/adjustments and annual goal setting.
3). Budget and Fiscal Management
On March 27, the District submitted a draft of the 2017-18 LCAP Plan and Budget to the Alameda County Office of Education. The LCAP Plan specifies how the District will spend Supplemental and Concentration funds for high-needs student groups like foster students and students receiving free/reduced lunch. The plan must also show how the use of these funds will help close performance gaps for those high-needs populations.
On March 15, the state of California released the California Schools Dashboard which includes multiple indicators like graduation rate, suspension, and reading proficiency for different student groups for every California school. OUSD will be using the California Schools Dashboard assessments to shape its LCAP goals for 2017-18.
According to the dashboard, OUSD needs to focus on closing the following gaps for the following groups of students:
- Graduation: Students with Disabilities, English Learners, Latinxs, Pacific Islanders, and White students.)
- Suspensions: African American, American Indian students.
- English Learner Progress
- Math proficiency: Students with Disabilities, English Learners, African American, and American Indian students).
- English Language Arts proficiency: Students with Disabilities, English Learners, Socio-economically Disadvantaged, African American, American Indian, and Filipino students.
The final LCAP and Budget will be presented to the Board in June.
Business Operations Portal – ESCAPE
The Board will hear a presentation (pg. 11 of Supt. Report) on the progress of implementing the business operations portal ESCAPE. For more information on what ESCAPE is and why the District needs to replace the business operations portal, check out our Board Watch from 8/23/16.
The District reports that implementation of the new business system is on track with budget, scope, and schedule.
According to the presentation, the new business system should increase efficiency, transparency, and accountability for payroll, employee onboarding, and budgeting processes.
The Board will hear a second reading of a proposed board policy – Enrollment Impact Analysis. This board policy would require that each time the District presents to the Board a programmatic change that could impact enrollment, they also present a detailed analysis of the reasoning and likely impact of the decision on enrollment.
Decisions that would require an Enrollment Impact Analysis would include (but not be limited to) the opening and closing of schools, charter school authorizations, transportation, relocations of programs (including Special Education programs), and Proposition 39 facilities offers.
The Enrollment Impact Analysis would include information like demographic trends in the attendance area, history of the site, anticipated housing projects in the area, and potential financial impacts for the District if the decision is made.
If the board policy is passed, the District will have 180 days to present a plan for how the policy will be implemented.
The Enrollment Stabilization Plan (ESP) was first discussed at the February 22, 2017 school board meeting. The ESP would require that within 180 days of passage, the District present to the Board a multi-faceted plan to stabilize and increase enrollment in Oakland Unified School District.
This week, the Board will hear a second reading of the resolution. The latest draft specifies that the plan will involve marketing and outreach to families most likely to leave the district and that the plan should include cross-functional teams (meaning district employees from different departments.)
Local Business Utilization Report
In 2008, the Board passed a policy that required that all district contracts had 20% local business utilization. In 2014, the policy was amended to increase the local business utilization requirement to 50% for all contracts in the Capital Program. The Board will hear a presentation on the District’s progress toward utilizing more local businesses, as well recommendations for further improvement.
The District’s goal is to extend the same Local Business Utilization requirement to Procurement, in addition to the Capital Program. Currently, 74% of Non-Capital Program spending goes to non-Oakland firms.
Debt Issuance and Management Policy
In compliance with State Bill 1029, OUSD is updating its policy on the issuance and management of debt. The new board policy will specify what kinds of debt can issued, for what purposes, and how those debts are structured. To read the policy, click here.
4). Board Development and Strategy
- No informational or action items presented.
5). Other
2017 State Legislative Platform
OUSD has engaged School Services of California to represent its interests at the state legislative level in Sacramento. The Ad Hoc Legislative Committee of the Board of Education has recommended the following policy priorities to serve as its platform for state-level advocacy:
- School Finance: “State and federal fiscal resources should recognize and accommodate regional cost differences and unique costs of student groups who need additional instructional and non-instructional support to attain educational parity.”
- Human Resources: OUSD supports policies that promote the recruitment and retention of a talented workforce, especially focusing on new teacher supports and hard-to-place subject matters like multi-lingual education and Special Education.
- School Facilities: “OUSD supports the continuation of a state facilities program . . . we believe the state must recognize the continuing need to retrofit existing schools for seismic safety and the need to address California’s oldest schools.”
- Early Education: “OUSD support policies that aim to achieve a coherent, high quality pre-kindergarten system with minimal application complexities and stable, meaningful funding.”
- Career Technical Education: “We support the continued investment in the three-year Career Technical Education Incentive (CTE) Grant Program that augments our local parcel tax and supports our effort to expand CTE opportunities to all students.”
- School Climate: “We support legislation and resources that allow the District to address both the physical and mental health needs of our students and allows the district to respond to student misconduct in a constructive, locally determined manner.”
- Accountability: “OUSD supports a multiple-measures accountability system that aligns with our continual improvement model catalyzed by the Local Control Accountability Plan and School Performance Framework, which we believe will propel us towards our five-year performance targets through a guided focus reliant on a careful evaluation of school and student performance data.”
District Position on Certain State Legislative Bills
Related to the platform described above, the Ad Hoc Legislative Committee has recommended that the Board take the following positions on state bills:
Support:
- AB 60 (Santiago) Subsidized Child Care and Development Services: Eligibility Periods
- AB 169 (O’Donnell) Teaching Credential: Teacher Recruitment: Golden State Teacher Grant Program
- AB 234 (Steinorth) Student Financial Aid: Assumption Program of Loans for Education
- AB 463 (Salas) Student Financial Aid: Assumption Program of Loans for Education
- AB 424 (McCarty) Possession of A Firearm In A School Zone
- SB 138 (McGuire) School Meal Programs: Free and Reduced-Price Meals: Universal Free MealService
- SB 557 (Hernandez) Food Donations: Schools
- AB 17 (Holden) Transit Pass Program: Free or Reduced-Fare Transit Passes
No Position (Neutral) (pending further developments/details):
- SB 808 (Mendoza) Charter Schools: Chartering Authorities and Approvals
- SB 765 (Wiener) Superintendent of Public Instruction: Powers and Duties
- AB 1220 (Weber) Certificated School Employees: Permanent Status
- AB 418 (Chau) Elementary and Secondary Education: Computer Science Education Grant Pilot Program
