Assembly Standing Committee on Education

Okay, there we go. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Calling this informational hearing of the Assembly Education Committee to order. First of all, I'd like to welcome all of the new Members of this Committee, one of which is present at this time. Ms. Darshana Patel. Dr. Darshana Patel. I don't see the PhD on the letterhead here, but that is correct, right? You are a Ph.D.

That is correct. Former Poway School Board Member.

that is correct.

That's correct. Eight years on the Poway Unified School. District Board of Education, as well as served on the California School Boards Association Leadership Committees.

Very good. All right. Well, really excited to have you join this Committee. Thank you very much. And of course, we have our chair of the Assembly budget Subcommitee number three, Mr. David Alvarez, returning for another tour of duty. Thanks, sir, for being here for this very important and hopefully very informative discussion we're going to have today.

I know I saw our new Vice Chair, Assemblymember Josh Hoover, earlier at lunch, and so I expect him to be joining us soon and would like to invite any of our other Committee Members if they can join us. We have a great lineup of speakers for this informational hearing.

So I asked our Education Committee to host this informational hearing, which we've entitled Five Years after the COVID 19 Pandemic. How are our students and schools faring? We all don't need to be reminded of the global pandemic and all of the direct impacts on our students, not only during the pandemic, but the effects continuing to be felt to this day.

And so, five years after the beginning of the pandemic, I wanted to convene this hearing to ask some basic questions of how are we, the State of California, K through 12, public education students, as well as schools? How are we doing? Who is doing well?

Who is not doing well, and what is working in terms of our interventions, in terms of our supports? We've spent billions of dollars, not only in federal, but state dollars, for the COVID pandemic relief support and intervention efforts. What's working, what's not? We're looking forward to hearing from a great group of speakers today to address some of those basic questions.

We know that, you know, the issues that we are dealing with are not only the learning loss that too many of our students suffered during the pandemic, but the ongoing challenges of chronic absenteeism, skyrocketing mental health concerns, ongoing public health challenges, our families continuing to deal with the ongoing effects of the pandemic, and Most recently, we saw the latest evidence of at least the learning loss aspect of the ongoing effects of the pandemic with the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as NAEP scores, looking not only at the State of California, but across the country again to answer those basic questions of how are we doing?

Who's doing well and who is not. We have a great lineup of speakers today and we'll be hearing not only about the current State of students academic progress, but also the current State of their attendance at school as well as their overall mental health and well being.

We're going to hear today, I think it was just released yesterday, findings from the Education Recovery Project based at Stanford and Harvard Universities. This includes analyses of students recovery as well as findings about the most effective ways that schools have been spending Covid relief funding to support those learning recovery efforts.

And of course, we're going to be hearing from some of our school leaders and teachers from the frontline that have been part of the recovery effort, showcasing some of the promising results that we've been seeing from Compton Unified, Castro Valley Unified, as well as focusing on the community schools and the San Diego Unified School District.

So thank you to all of the panelists for coming to our State Capitol to share your perspectives and recommendations with with us today. At the end of the hearing, we will be taking public comment in person. We ask that Members of the public limit their comment to 1 minute each.

Comments may also be submitted in writing through our Committee website. And last but certainly not least, we have a new script that I need to I think all of our the Committee chairs are being asked to read out before every hearing. And so here we go.

We are seeking to protect the rights of all who participate in the legislative process so that we can have effective deliberation and decisions on the critical issues facing California.

As we proceed with the witnesses and public comment, I want to make sure everyone understands that the Assembly has rules to ensure we maintain order and run an efficient and fair hearing. We apply these rules consistently to all people who participate in our proceedings, regardless of the viewpoint they express.

In order to facilitate the hearing as much from the public. Within the limits of our time, we will not permit conduct that disrupts, disturbs or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of legislative proceedings. We will not accept disruptive behavior or behavior that incites or threatens violence.

As you came into the hearing room today, the sergeants directed your attention to the rules for public attendance and participation which were posted outside the door. The rules for today's hearing include no talking or loud noises from the audience. Public comment may be provided only at the designated time and place and as permitted by the Chair.

Public comment must relate to the subject being discussed today. No engaging in conduct that disturbs or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of this hearing. And please be aware that violations of these rules may subject you to removal or other enforcement actions. Let me open it up to see if Committee Members have any opening comments. No saying no.

I want to welcome Ms. Mia Bonta for another tour of duty with the Education Committee. Thank you very much for being here for this important hearing. And so with that, I'd like to invite to the witness table our first panel. I'd like to welcome Dr. Sean Reardon, Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education at Stanford University, Hedy Chang, Executive Director of Attendance Works, and Lishuan Francis, the Senior Director for Behavioral Health at Children Now. And when you're ready, Dr. Reardon, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Mr.

Test.

Testing it now.

I wonder if there's a red light that turns on there.

How about now?

Oh, there we go.

There we go. It's the opposite of what I thought. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee. I'm here today to talk about the academic recovery from the pandemic. My colleagues at Stanford and Harvard and I have been working on studying this for the last few years and we just put out a. A national report yesterday. But I'm going to speak today about the results in California specifically. If you could go to the first slide, please.

Next slide, next slide. So this is the trends in academic performance and math and reading both nationally and in California. The blue line is the US Average and the red line is California. And there are sort of a couple of things to pay attention to here.

One is that both the national and California scores fell substantially after 2019 and have recovered slightly in math, but have continued to fall in reading. Next slide. However, the decline was smaller in California in both math and reading than it was nationally.

And I think it's worth also looking at the longer term trend that California has been catching up to the US average since 2003. In math, California was about 0.7 grade levels behind in 2003 and now is about 0.4 grade levels behind the US next slide.

In reading, the catch up of California is even more pronounced, going from one grade level in 2003 to a third of a grade level in 2019 and now only a fifth of a grade level in 2024. So while California has both seen learning loss as a result of the Pandemic and not a complete recovery.

Its learning loss was a little bit less than the US Average, and its recovery was a little bit more than the US Average. Next slide, please. Next slide. Because I already said that. All right, the next thing we looked at is what happened to patterns of inequality in California over this time period.

So this is the trend for California students by economic disadvantaged status. The red line is economically disadvantaged students trend. The blue line is economically advantaged students trend. And you can see, obviously that there's an enormous gap between their average test scores, but that gap has been getting larger over time. Next slide, please.

So in math, that gap was 2.3 grade levels in 2003, was 2.9 grade levels in 2019, and it's 3.1 grade levels in 2024. The gap in reading has not grown so much. It's been relatively stable over this time period. If we next turn to look at the trends by race and ethnicity. Next slide.

The four lines here represent the scores of Asian students, white students, Hispanic students, and black students in California. Again, you see large disparities between racial and ethnic groups, but those disparities have been widening over time as well. Next slide.

In math, for example, the white Hispanic gap has grown during the pandemic from 2.3 grade levels to 2.5 grade levels. Next slide. And the white black gap has grown from 3.1 grade levels to 3.4 grade levels during the pandemic. The next slide, we have the disparities by gender in California.

So the red line is girls test scores and the blue line is boys test scores. And if you go to the next slide, the trend in math is particularly striking. I think the boys and girls were at relative parity in Math skills from 2003 through 2019. In fact, girls had a slight advantage in California.

But during the pandemic, the math scores of girls fell very sharply and the math scores of boys didn't fall nearly as far. So that now there's a 0.4 grade level gap between boys and girls in California. I should note that that also is true nationally.

So if you look at the NAEP results nationally, you see the same thing. This is not unique to California. I don't know if that makes it better or worse, but that's the situation.

So if you go to the next slide, in summary of the gaps, the gap between economically advantaged and disadvantaged students has grown by about 6% since the start of the pandemic. The white, Hispanic and white black caps have grown by about 10% since the start of the pandemic.

And girls haven't fallen about 4/10 of a grade level behind boys in math after being equal to boys for more than a decade. The next thing we looked at, if you go to the next slide, was how these patterns vary by school district.

We looked at 8,700 school districts across the country, including all the school districts in California. Next slide, please. And so this figure shows you, on the horizontal axis is the percent of students in a district who are free lunch eligible. And the vertical axis shows you the district's average test scores relative to where they were in 2019.

And so you can see in both math and reading, students in Low income districts fell further behind during the pandemic than students in high income districts. In fact, in math, the high income districts on average didn't lose any ground at all. But the poorest districts in California lost a half grade level or more in math.

There was of course, lots of variation among that. So, for example, Oakland didn't lose nearly as much ground in math and actually went up in reading in the three years after the pandemic. But other, other districts had some substantial declines. The next slide shows the recovery period. So what happened in two districts?

Test scores between 22 and 24. And you can see that in, in math, most districts in California showed some recovery. And that recovery was most pronounced among the highest and lowest income districts in the state, with the least recovery in the middle income districts in reading.

Basically every district in the state fell further behind in 2024 than it had been in 2022. That also reflects a national pattern. So if we look at the next slide, we see the sort of total effect since the pandemic started. So this is sort of the sum of those first two pictures.

And this shows where today where districts are relative to where they were in 2019. And the Low income districts and middle income districts in large part remain well behind where they were in 2019 in both math and reading. In math, the affluent districts in California have actually surpassed where they were in 2019.

So there's been a complete recovery in most of those districts and even a surpassing of 2019 levels. But that isn't true in the higher poverty districts. The last thing I want to share with you. Next slide, please. Is how much we can attribute these changes to the Esser Fund.

So the Federal Government dispersed $290 billion to school districts around the country over the four year period from 2020 to 2024. $190 billion is about 6% of national spending on education during that period. So it's a lot of money, but it's not a particularly sizable increase relative to the total spending in the country.

Some people wonder whether that money was well spent or whether it had any effect, given that we don't see a substantial recovery from the pandemic.

So in our analysis, we look at districts across the country, and I'll show you the California specific results now to see whether districts that received more money and spent more money during the 22 to 24 period showed higher recovery during that period. Districts received money according to the Title 1 formula.

And the Title 1 formula has a lot of idiosyncrasies that mean even a two districts that have equal poverty levels but are in different states might receive different amounts of money or because of different estimates of the poverty that come from the census and so on, there can be variation in the amount of money.

And so we look at places that were similar in terms of their poverty rate and other characteristics, but that for idiosyncratic reasons. In the Title I formula, one district got more money than another, and we're trying to see whether the ones that got more money than the other had higher outcomes.

So if you go to the next slide. So our national analysis showed that the esser spending during 22 to 24 improved test scores, and it improved them by about as much as prior research says that money increases test scores.

A lot of states at different times change their funding formulas and raise the amount of money that school districts get. And so researchers have estimated for every $1000, how much extra academic performance do you get? And our estimates of the ESSER effects are very similar to what that prior literature says.

So the ESSER money had about the same effect as a typical increase in General revenues would have. But in California, unlike most states, there's more detailed ESSER spending data available, in particular the data on Esser 3. So Esser 3 was the third and biggest chunk of the ESSER funding, as you know.

And 20% of the Esser funds were required to be spent on academic recovery efforts. The 80% could be spent on pretty much whatever districts needed to infrastructure, mental health resources, and so on. But in California, we know how much each district spent on academic recovery efforts.

And so we're able to look and see where those 20% spent on academic recovery is particularly effective, since they were targeted specifically at academic recovery. And so I'm going to show you those results now.

So the next slide just shows that the amount of average ESSER allocations for California districts, the 10 bars reflect districts of different poverty levels. So the most affluent districts on the left, the highest poverty districts on the right, because it was dispersed by title one, the highest poverty districts got a lot more.

Almost $6,000 per pupil on average. In the poorest districts, about two thirds of that was ESSER 3 funds. About 1/3 of that was ESSER 2 funds. ESSER 1 was much smaller, and we don't include it here because it was mostly spent before 2022. The next slide shows how much districts spent of those different funds at different periods.

So the bottom gray part of these bars shows what they spent prior to 2022. The blue parts show what they spent during 22 to 24. That's the part that we're interested in. We want to know whether that had an effect on test scores between 22 and 24.

And that light gray part at the top is what they had not spent yet by spring of 2024. And so that couldn't have any effect on students test scores in 2024 because it hadn't yet been spent.

Of the blue part, we break it down into ESSER 2 spending, ESSER 3 spending that wasn't spent on academic recovery efforts, and ESSER 3 spending that was. So the bright blue part is the part that we hope had the largest effect because it's the part that was directed specifically at academic recovery.

And the short answer is we find that the money spent on academic recovery efforts had an effect about four to five times larger than money spent on other things. That is the ESSER money that was directed specifically at academic recovery. And typically that was things like tutoring, summer school after school programs, hiring more teaching staff.

I think there were some other categories of things that districts were allowed to do with it focused on academic recovery. So the money spent on those things had a much bigger effect than the money spent on other things.

Not to say money spent on other things did not matter, just it might have mattered for things other than math and reading scores. So the next slide shows the sort of magnitude of these effects. So this is the average test scores in 2022 for districts Low poverty to high poverty from right to left or left to right.

So the scores were much lower in 22 for the highest poverty districts. The next slide shows what the effect of the ESSER spending was. So the red part is the total effect of the 80% of funds that were not spent on academic recovery.

And the blue part is the effect that was spent on academic recovery efforts, Even though only 20% was spent on academic recovery in the typical district. In fact, less was spent during this specific time window. Those 20% of funds had as much effect as the 80% of other funding that was spent.

So the red and blue show you what we think test scores would have been in 2024 had ESSER been the only thing that affected test scores. The next slide shows what the test scores actually were in 2020. And you can see for the low and middle income districts. Next slide, please.

The ESSER funding accounts for virtually all of the recovery in math that California students experience. But in affluent districts, ESSER didn't have much effect because districts didn't receive much ESSER funding. But those districts were covered a lot for reasons that had something to do with something other than the ESSER funds.

Those districts typically have lots of other resources, social and political and economic capital that might benefit schools. And so there might be other things going on there. But for the middle and high poverty districts in California, ESSER funds really account for the entire recovery we saw in math.

We did not find as large effects of the ESSER funds on reading in California, though we did nationally. And it's unclear exactly why this results aren't the same nationally as in California. Nationally we have 8,700 districts, so there's a lot more precision in the estimate. So it may just be a precision issue, but.

So I think the conclusion there is that the ESSER funds really did make a difference in California as well as across the country. And in particular, if you go to the next slide, it was the money spent on academic recovery that mattered. So I'll close with a few recommendations that I think are implied by our report.

One is that the academic recovery efforts really worked. And so it would be important for California and other states to focus on evidence based academic efforts to help districts continue the recovery.

Secondly, the growing inequality during the pandemic suggests that California and other states should target additional resources towards the highest poverty districts above and beyond the already additional resources that the state provides. I won't, I didn't say much about absenteeism because Hetty will.

But we also found that absenteeism contributes to some of the, contributed to some of the learning loss and the failure of districts to fully recover. But Hetty will have more to say about that. The last thing is, one of the frustrating things is we don't know exactly what every district did, right?

We know that if they spent money on something that was supposed to lead to academic recovery, it did. But we don't know whether that was because they did tutoring or after school programs or hired more staff, or did different kinds of professional development or summer school, because we don't really have any way of systematically knowing what every district in the country, much less in. In California, did.

But I think it would be useful for California to figure out ways to collect better information on what different districts are doing so that the state can actually learn the most effective strategies in California and then support district's adoption of those kinds of policies.

And finally, I'll close just with the last slide showing where folks can get more information. So on our website, we have a report for every single district in California. California, as well as 8,700 districts across the country.

So you can download a report specific to any district that will show you the patterns of learning loss and recovery by subgroup and so on for. For each district in the state. And so if you want to drill down into more detail, those are all available to download at our. At our website. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much, Professor. Let me, before I go any further, I want to welcome Mr. Lowenthal, also one of our new Members of our education Committee, and so gave an opportunity to everyone. No one spoke, but. All right, thank you. All right. All right.

What I'd like to do with your permission, is to folks give everyone an opportunity to ask questions after each speaker so that we can try to focus in on each one of your presentations. And so I want to see. I have questions, but. Ms. Bonta. Yeah, please.

Thank you so much, Dr. Reardon. This is really helpful to be able to have. I think my question focuses a little bit on your last statement there.

Having been a school board Member during COVID in one school district and working very closely with another school district during the same period, as a partner, I know what we were doing on the ground in terms of things to support and really utilize those ESSER dollars.

One thing that I know for sure was that the level of flexibility that there was with the ESSER Dollars was incredibly critical.

So I'm wondering if it was the money or if it was the nature of the money and the kind of flexibility it afforded school districts to be able to essentially kind of offer rapid response in determining what they needed for their particular communities around both academic recovery. So that's just one question maybe you can address.

And then the other is what I'm trying to understand, the kind of the academic recovery dollars in comparison to the other ESSER dollars.

Is it a fair statement to say that because of the 80% of spending in that other category, there was a stronger foundation set for the academic recovery dollars to actually have Meaning in what was happening in those kinds of interventions. Right.

So if we were able to focus on basic needs, mental health, direct outreach, check ins like home, all the things that happened during those time frames, making sure that everyone had access to the Internet and a laptop and one to one recovery or hybrid learning or all the things that were kind of in that bucket that might not have been categorized as the academic recovery portion, what's the interplay between that 80% and that 20%?

Thank you. Great questions, both. So to the first question, was it the money or the flexibility? It's a little hard to disentangle, but in many of the other studies that look at the effects of raising resources for schools, those are often either legislative changes that change funding formulas and raise funding or they're sometimes the result of a court order that says a state's funding formulas is unfair and needs to be changed.

But in many of those cases it's also a relatively unstructured change. That is, it's sort of more money, but not necessarily with lots of strings about exactly how it has to be spent. So I think the results with Esser are sort of consistent with that.

Some cynics, I think if you give school districts lots of money and don't give them guidance on how to use it, it will be wasted. But I think what the data show is that when you give school districts a 6% increase in their money, they use it in ways that are effective at raising students achievement.

They also probably was effective at doing other things like food security and infrastructure and things like that. But some of those you wouldn't expect to have immediate effects on students achievement, but might sort of, as you say, sort of build a foundation for that to continue. So I don't think it's clear.

I don't think our data alone can say was it the flexibility or was it the money or the academic recovery efforts. What it can say is that the money that was specifically directed towards helping kids learn math or learn reading skills better, that that actually helped them learn math and reading skills better, which on its face makes a lot of sense. But that's not to say that the other money didn't also help that.

I mean, we do find that the 80% has a smaller effect but a positive effect on reading, I mean on math. So it's probably sort of some of both that's happening. I think.

Thank you, Dr. Patel.

Hi. Thank you, Mr. Reardon, for your presentation today. I enjoyed seeing all this data. It's good to see, I think, for Californians that our learning loss was less than the national average, considering how much criticism we face here in California from those in other states, as well as seeing that our recovery was stronger.

So that's also very reassuring. That headline is very reassuring. What I would like to know is we haven't included in this demographic breakdown students with disabilities. And as we know in public education, it's an increasing student population and they had a particularly high level of struggle with remote learning.

And also we know that black students are over identified in this population. Is there enough data in this collection of data that you have that could help us break that down to understand it a little bit better?

I believe so. We haven't looked at it. We get data from every State Department of Education or from their public websites or from requests, and then we sort of try to put it onto a common national scale by using the NAEP. And so we end up with an enormous amount of data that we haven't fully mined yet.

So in some states, and I believe California is one of them, we do have data broken down by disability status and could potentially look at that, but we haven't had a chance to look at that.

Thank you. Can I ask a follow up? Of course. I kind of would like to echo what my Assembly colleague over there at the end of the dais was saying about the flexibility of the ESSER funds.

I think some of that flexibility would be hard to really pinpoint down if we're trying to look for a state unified model. As we know, communities across California, whether unified, Small Micro Urban districts, self funded, et cetera, they're all very, very different. And having that flexibility really helped school districts, you know, target their solutions to what met the needs of their students best.

So perhaps hunting for some kind of unified themes might be difficult and might actually not help us deliver high quality public education in a very strategic, personalized way, which is really what we need to be doing here in California.

Yeah, I appreciate that. I think there's some inherent tension between local control and flexibility and the public desire to see that funds are spent on evidence based, effective strategies. And I don't think it's reasonable to affect each school district to be able to do its own studies and figure out what's effective.

I think that's where the kind of research community in the body of scientific evidence comes in. But any, any reasonable scientist will tell you that things don't have the same effect everywhere. And so there's a sort of a.

Ideally, what you want to look for is things that have a proven track record of being on average effective and ideally have some evidence that they're effective in places like your own district. But we don't always have that.

And so sometimes a good place to start is just places that on average are effective, because that's going to be a good bet. But I think often local leaders might have a good sense of what specifically is needed. But I think there has to be some sort of balance between generalizable research evidence and the local knowledge and sort of bringing those together.

Thank you for that. I'm particularly intrigued by the downward trend before the spike in your. If you look at the slide titled Effect of Esser Funds on Math Recovery, and it's the same in Reading recovery as well. There's that dip. That dip is right around where we switch from concentration funding, supplemental funding, to concentration funding. And I'm curious to know whether we can gather some data.

The dip around the 60 to 70%. Yeah.

Between the 40 and 60.

So I think the anomaly there is the 70 to 80 jump. That's Los Angeles. So this data is weighted by district size and Los Angeles sits in the 70 to 80 bucket. Thank you. And it had a higher than average recovery. And so it, it sort of has an outsize effect.

And because, as you know, Los Angeles is quite large, it drives that trend upwards. So I don't think it's down in the 60, 70. I think it's. I think it's perfect. Los Angeles. Looking, looking.

Thank you for bringing that to my awareness. Thank you. That explains everything.

Maybe not everything.

Thank you. Let me join my colleagues in following up with some questions. So, Dr. Reardon. Yeah. Let me start with the comment that Dr. Patel started the top line, that California students on average declined less than the national average from 2019 to 2024 and improved more than the national average from 2003.

So that was prior to the pandemic. But the recovery since the pandemic, how would you. Would you agree with Dr. Patel that there was a higher than average recovery?

Yes. There was both a smaller decline and at least in math, a larger recovery in California than nationally. In Reading, there was a smaller decline from 19 to 22, but actually a bigger decline from 22 to 24. So in reading, California looks like the total decline since 2019 is about the same as nationally.

But in math, we look. I say we because I live here. We look better than the national average.

All right, so let me. Well, first, do you have any, any explanation for why our scores decline less than the national average from 2019 to 2024?

I don't. There's a lot of variation among states and we haven't found any sort of consistent pattern that sort of says why some more than others.

Okay. And while we recovered more in math, we were about. Did you say we were about the national average in terms of our reading scores? In terms of the recovery since the pandemic?

Since 2019, our decline has been about the same as the national average, Maybe a little bit less, but not substantially less.

Okay. Now on that point, your recommendations from the Education Recovery scorecard that you just released, one of your recommendations is that states and districts should double down on academic catch up efforts previously funded by federal relief.

So overall, you conclude that the ESSER funds, despite all those critics, the Esser funds did make a difference and that states and districts should continue to focus on the evidence based approaches that, that have made the biggest differences. In your recommendations, you highlight specifically interventions such as tutoring and summer learning. Can you talk more about why you highlight those two particular interventions?

I think both particularly tutoring, but both have been shown in many, many studies to have large and relatively rapid positive impacts on students learning. And so especially when done well, like high intensity, well done tutoring has very large and very quick effects on students learning.

And so we know that many districts did some version of tutoring, some more intensive than others, and we think that was part of what led, led to it. And it's partly why, you see, I think the academic spending leading to bigger effects because it's very targeted on learning math and literacy skills.

So that's why I think we've highlighted those. Those aren't the only things schools should do, obviously.

Okay, what other evidence based interventions did you identify? You know, what would you recommend that the State of California and our districts focus on?

So we didn't discuss any other ones in the report and I don't have a sort of list here, I could get back to you. But I don't have a kind of a quick list to tell you.

Okay. All right. But at least tutoring and summer learning are on there..Okay. And I know that here in California we allocated $4 billion toward our expanded learning opportunities program as one of our major post pandemic state level efforts that would certainly fall into the summer learning as well as after school programs.

You talked about how while we did better in math recovery, but not as much in reading and in Your recommendations, you highlight the national conversations around the so called science of reading reforms. Your recommendations highlight 40 states have implemented science of reading reforms.

Some people would argue that California should be one of those 40 states given that our English language arts English Language development framework since 2014 have incorporated the principles of foundational reading of evidence based literacy instruction and that we have been training all of our new teachers in the principles of science of reading.

But I mean, did you have an opportunity to review California's framework, instructional materials, professional development practices, D.C. that being as another example of, you know, the evidence based interventions that we should be focusing on.

We did not. What we noted in the report was that lots of states have something they call or think of as science of reading. It's not always the same thing and it's very hard to say what its effects are at the sort of aggregate scale in the recovery because we don't know which states are doing a different kind of teacher training or a different kind of curriculum or there's a lot of pieces and some states that say they're doing it didn't have very good results in reading and some that said they weren't doing it did.

And you can find an example of any case you would like? I think so. I am not a reading instruction expert, so I will not advise you one way or the other on that. But I don't think the evidence in our report speaks one way or the other to the science of reading.

Uh huh. Was there a reason why you specifically called out the science of reading reforms in your list of recommendations?

Only because it's been sort of talked about lots lately and there is some evidence, I believe, that, that something that some people call science of reading is effective. But again, it's not my area of expertise.

Okay, but it sounds like, I mean there's, like you said, there's some states where evidence suggests that it's making a difference, others where it may make the contrary point and that the evidence is what mixed at best.

I wouldn't look to our data to to get guidance on whether to adopt science of reading. I would look to the research that's specifically on the kinds of instructional practices and teacher training practices that people call science of reading. And I'm not an expert in that literature, so I shouldn't speak to it.

Okay. Your study also seems to highlight what I think the NAEP scores also show that that the recovery rate has been much higher in the higher income school districts than in the lower income school districts.

In fact, I think your report found the rate of Recovery in the highest income districts are four times the rate of recovery in the lowest income districts, which, you know, we're showcasing.

One of the districts that you called out as making one of the biggest post pandemic progress, Compton Unified School District from Southern California, as kind of like an outlier in terms of how well they did in terms of the pandemic recovery. Can you identify themes that you observed in terms of these districts that beat the odds?

Not in the specificity with which I think the gentleman from Compton could speak about it. I mean, Compton was one among a number of maybe 100 or so medium to large sized districts around the country. We saw that had made a recovery in both math and reading. Many of them were districts with relatively high poverty rates.

Some were affluent districts. And so I think it's useful to learn from them. And one Member of our team wrote a case study about Compton, but I'm not an expert on that, and I think we have an expert here.

But what we can say is that more money spent on academic recovery benefited school district districts, lower absenteeism benefited students recovery. I mean, those are the two kind of clear patterns. But I think ideally we can learn a lot more from looking at and talking to folks in those districts that made a big recovery.

All right. And I think in response to Ms. Bonta's earlier questions, I want to confirm. I heard you right. I mean, basically you were saying that while there's evidence that the more ESSER funds that were spent directly on academic interventions appear to be reflected in the test scores that you reviewed, but it's hard to do an apples to apples comparison with funds spent on mental health or on free meals or on after school. That's right.

I mean, I think it's useful to remember what we're looking at is did the funds have an effect on math and reading scores? But. But obviously we want our schools to benefit our children in lots of ways, not just math and reading skills.

You know, we want kids to be healthy and happy and collaborative and have friends and, you know, we want. We want to be good at lots of stuff, not just math and reading. And so we shouldn't say that because some money didn't have an effect on math and reading. It didn't have any effect at all.

It might well have had an effect on some of those other things or might have sort of longer term delayed effects because some things don't sort of manifest their benefits instantly.

So what we can say is that the money spent on academic efforts had a much bigger effect on math and reading scores than the money not spent on academic efforts. But we can't say that the money not spent on academic efforts didn't have an effect on anything else.

It may well have because that's not what you were measuring.

That's not what we were measuring. Yeah.

Okay. Other than the difference that the ESSER funds made in terms of the math and reading scores as it relates to the academic intervention, I mean, any other themes that you observed in terms of, you know, the, the outliers like Compton that, that, that, that did. Well, no.

I mean, one of the things that's frustrating about doing the kind of work I do is we have data on, you know, eight or 9000 districts around the country. And all of them seem interesting in some way, but, but I don't have the capacity to, to go learn about each of them.

And so we often try to pick out a few and learn from them. And so Compton was one of the ones we highlighted and had some folks go to. And, but, but I don't know enough about enough of them to generalize at this point.

Okay. And my, my last question for now, you know, see if my colleagues have any other questions, is, so our federal Covid relief funds have expired or are expiring, what spending would you recommend that the State of California and our school districts try to sustain above all to continue the progress that the ESSER funds have demonstrated?

I think, I think in some ways I think of it as a longer term question than a Covid recovery question. And so if you look back at last 15 or more years of data, you can see California making progress relative to the country.

And there's certainly evidence that suggests some of that is the change to the Local Control Funding Formula, the implementation, implementation of TK for English learners. There's been lots of progress in California over the longer period that seems to be consistent with the bilingual education changes, the TK benefiting English learners.

So there's, I think there's lots we can learn in California and have learned about the kind of things that have led to substantial gains in California. And I think looking to those and sort of continuing some of the efforts that have been shown to be effective in California is a good way to think about it. Rather than just thinking about we want to get back to 2019 levels. I think we should get, do better than that. Right.

But California in the long term has been on that, the right trajectory and certainly the pandemic, you know, put a, put a divot in that trend, but ideally by kind of continuing to invest in the kinds of things that California has been investing in and going in more on some of the things that have been quite effective, high quality early childhood education, you know, the TK expansion and so on.

So I think I would think of it that way. Specific to the pandemic, I think the lasting things are mental health, which my panel mate will speak of, and absenteeism. Both of those seem to be, haven't gone away when the pandemic ended, and those remain as challenges for lots of our schools and students.

And so I think not just continuing sort of the good stuff that California has been doing, but trying to find ways to sort of address these new challenges.

All right, I'd like to welcome.

Sorry, Chair. Can I just, I wanted to just clarify a little bit my, my theory of the case here from the data that we've reviewed. And I actually won't hold us up too long because I think that Ms. Chang and, and Ms. Francis are going to likely speak to a lot of this.

My theory of the case around why we have been able to see the kind of recovery that we have in California is not an either or.

Not that because we spent money on academic recovery, we were able to see greater gains, but it is because, and therefore because we actually had the most significant interaction between home and school, a recognition of because our homes were our schools for part of that time, because we had the most significant interventions in recognition of the mental health needs that children had while they were going through Covid, because we were more tuned into the kind of the basic circumstance of children as they were trying to also not only survive, but learn that we had to get much more in tune as school districts with the, the impacts of those other foundational issues for children on their learning.

And so for me, because we did that just in terms of thinking about future spending, because we were able to have flexibility in how we structured and integrated our supports for students that were non academic. We were able to have a strong foundation for children to then be able to do the basic thing of learning and being prepared to learn even in a time of crisis.

So I would hate to kind of walk away from that presentation or anything that I said that put anything into a frame of anything but the fact that I actually believe we had a terrible and golden opportunity in the first time in our educational history to have a reckoning with the realities of seeing the whole child and supporting the whole child in their needs so that they would have the ability to learn.

And I would hope that we structure our recovery efforts, ongoing recovery efforts, and long term, with that mindset as the terrible silver lining from the pandemic that we experienced.

Yes, absolutely. And I would completely agree with that. And I think that's a good segue to our next two speakers who are going to be addressing the whole child needs. But before I do that, I wanted to welcome Mr. Garcia, another one of our new Members, to the Education Committee, a career educator.

We are very excited to have you join us. Is it Dr. Garcia or do he. No. Okay. All right. Did you have any questions? No. No questions. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Appreciate it. Okay. All right. Thank you for joining us. And Mr. Lowenthal, good to go. Good to go. Okay. If I may, Dr.

Reardon, one last question. I couldn't, you know, didn't want to pass this opportunity to ask the question that you highlighted on the California test, core trends by gender, how, you know, women were scoring pretty much not only at parity, but slightly higher than men and boys until 2019. And then we saw that dramatic drop. Do you have any quick observations on that?

Only that it's not unique to California that you see this in every state's data. You see it in the NAEP data. You actually see it on the international assessments, the TIMSS international assessment. You see it in lots of. So it is not sort of a local phenomenon. Why? It is.

I mean, one hypothesis I've heard people talk about is that girls were sort of asked to do more caretaking and work at home during the pandemic than boys were, and that that may have disrupted their learning more than boys.

The same pattern is slightly true in reading, but not as pronounced that as girls aren't as far ahead of boys now as they were in 2019. So it seems to have been some shift in the gender patterns both in math and reading. But I have not yet seen research that's been able to sort of explain why that.

That's happened virtually everywhere.

Okay, thank you. I'd like to welcome our Vice Chair, Mr. Hoover. Mr. Hoover, did you have any questions? We just had our first panelist, Dr. Reardon, give his presentation. Not yet. Okay. All right. Thank you. All right. Seeing no further questions, thank you very much, Dr. Reardon. We'd like to next welcome Hedy Chang, Executive Director of Attendance Works. Welcome, Ms. Chang.

Thank you so much. Very much appreciate the opportunity to be here. Just a word about Attendance Works. We do operate nationally, but I live in California, and California is one of the states where we've worked most deeply. I want to start by going to the second slide, if you will. So. Nope, one before that. Thank you.

So, just to give context, during the pandemic, chronic absence went from about 16% pre pandemic to almost 30% nationwide. The data from 22-23, which is the last time we have data from across the country, showed we started to decrease, but not a rapid drop, only a couple percentage points.

And the emerging data from last year, 23-24, suggests that it's still highly elevated. I would guess we'll get another 34%, but still significantly higher. And then if you go to the next slide, what you can see is that for California, we actually had a higher increase in chronic absence from Pre Covid to 21-22, which is when we really have reliable data again.

And then we've also had a slightly steeper decrease in our chronic absence levels, which is good news, and I think correlates to we're getting more recovery. But it's also a lot easier to help recover when kids are actually showing up to school so they can benefit from what's being there.

And then if you go to the next slide, what you can also see is that chronic absence, it's always been a little bit higher, starting in kindergarten. But during the pandemic, our kindergarten chronic absence rates escalated tremendously. And I want you to think about the fourth grade NAEP scores.

The kids whose NAEP scores we're looking at now were the kids who were in kindergarten when the pandemic hit. So they had a disrupted kindergarten, they had an incredibly disrupted first grade, and now you're looking at what their reading scores are later. And it's not that chronic absence tends to have a delayed effect.

If you, in your first two years of school, don't end up getting the literacy basics, don't get the habits of attendance, that actually has ripple effects out to when you're in third grade or fourth grade. And by the way, we should be prepared next year's.

It's a little hard to say what's going to happen next year with NAEP scores, but our reading scores are going to be the kids who are actually now in kindergarten during that 2020-21 school year.

So I also think you may want to think about, we have some cohort effects that we're going to have to think about because kids in transition grades were extremely hard hit by the pandemic. And high school chronic absence, by the way, is also extremely high.

And in fact, in California, it may be more elevated than what we know because we tend to count kids as showing up to school as long as they show up one period. It's one of the challenges of average daily attendance. But it means we've probably underestimated some of the levels of absenteeism that are happening in high school.

And then if you go to the next slide, I want to call attention to the fact that what we're now seeing because chronic absence reached such elevated levels is that when you have a high level of chronic absence, let's say 20% of an entire school, the impact is not just on the kids who are chronically absent, it's on all of the kids in a classroom because it makes it harder for teachers to teach, set classroom norms.

Kids get distracted by the disruption. Prior to the pandemic, maybe 20%, 18% of all schools had 20% or higher. That level at which I'm really worried about the effects on all kids in the pandemic, it rose to 75%, then 60 something percent. And the end of last year, it was still 52% of all, all schools had such a high level of chronic absenteeism that was likely affecting the learning for all the kids in the school.

And if you go to the next slide, I think this starts to explain so you know that what, what, what Tom and Sean were able to show is that the higher a level of chronic absenteeism in a district, the more it disrupted the disrupt the recovery of that district.

And they showed that you have much worse recovery happening in high poverty districts. This is data on California. What you can see is that schools, the data at the far left where it's the highest, those were the schools where you have 75% or higher levels of kids in free and reduced price lunch. Those are highest poverty schools.

The levels of chronic absenteeism are extraordinary. We had 86% in the 22-21, the 22-23 school year and still at 72% of all of those extremely high poverty schools having 20% or more levels of chronic absence in the 23-24 school year, which is just last year. So that explains some of the challenges of why it's so hard to recovery in our high, to get recovery in our highest poverty schools.

Now if you go to the next slide, I just want to again sort of reiterate, I know you all have heard this from me before, but to reduce chronic absence, the key is finding out and addressing why kids are missing in the first place. Is it barriers?

And those barriers of chronic acute illness, trauma, poor transportation, housing and food security, community violence, those are really concentrated in our high poverty schools. Now some things cut across more folks. Aversion. I know you'll talk about some of the anxiety issues, the social and peer challenges.

I'm going to add in the aversion one, if caregivers have negative experiences in school, that can also cause kids and families not to show up. And we are certainly facing that right now. It's also issues of disengagement.

So if you have and we had a lot of churn happening, the issue of having relationships to adults, to peers, and then there are the misconceptions. So we already had a challenge before the pandemic of folks thinking just missing two days a month doesn't really matter. My kid will be fine.

But then when you add to the pandemic when we went virtual for so long and people think, zero my kid can make up virtually when that may not be the case because there's a lot that you learn in classrooms that require being there in person, a teacher to understand why a kid really isn't understanding being engaged in project learning, learning from your peers.

But folks may not fully appreciate that. And at the same time, though I do think California's Department of Public Health did an admiral job of issuing guidance to say, you know, by and large kids can show back up to school and here's the new changed conditions. I still think that has not gotten out to folks.

We spent two years telling everyone stay home for any symptom of illness, telling them to come back and say, well, sniffles or stomach aches, those may not be Covid. And really you should show up to school. And even with COVID you don't have the same same protocols anymore. That has been a real challenge.

And I think families are missing unnecessarily. And if you combine that with anxiety issues which lead to stomach aches, which then can be falsely misunderstood, misunderstood as a reason to stay home, school from school, those are real challenges.

So we Know if you go to the next slide, that when you have high levels of chronic absence, it reflects an erosion in those positive conditions of learning. And I think, speaking to Representative Bonta's point, you have to invest in these things for kids to be able to learn.

You have to invest in schools being physically emotionally healthy and safe places. School where you have a belonging, connection and support. Academic challenge and engagement is also part of it. And adult and student well being.

And investing in our staff so they have the relationships or have the capacity and the strength to have the relationships that are so essential to all of this. This requires, if you go to the next slide, really investing in multi tiered systems of supports that begin with prevention, start with those positive conditions for learning.

And then we add tier one, tier two, tier three. I will mention again, elementary schools were among the ones that were most affected by huge escalating levels of chronic absence. And one of the challenges with the pandemic is, I think before the pandemic, we kind of thought, if I just hire a social worker, they'll handle the attendance issues.

When you have such large scale attendance issues, it means you actually have a system in place and a lot of elementary schools, which are slimly staffed, you have teachers and a principal and not much else. That's been a real struggle.

So if you go to the next slide, what we know is these key ingredients for change are what helps to improve attendance. You need actionable data, positive engagement, strategic partnerships, adequate and equitable resources, shared responsibility and capacity building to do all that.

I will say what California has really improved on has been the actionable data part, and that has really helped. But we still are struggling to put in place all of these elements. I will, when, if you go to the next slide.

One of the things we did have an opportunity to do with the Collaborate California Collaborative for Educational Excellence was to go and take a look at which are the districts that actually have better attendance. They had better or lower kindergarten, chronic absence, pre and post pandemic.

And then we found 20 districts that actually fit that mold across California. And then we were able to visit three of them. When we looked at the three of them, we saw these common characteristics, these. There was an incredible investment in trust and engagement. And this sometimes took real creativity.

One of the districts where I visited, you know, they had. Because on top of the pandemic, we had school shootings escalate in this country. So a lot of our schools now are surrounded by these big fences that make it much harder for teachers and families to connect.

So in this district, they posted people outside the fence in the beginning of the morning, so they greeted families. They used technology to have ongoing connection with families. They made sure that they were really communicating with families on an ongoing basis. They also invested in schools, climates.

So again, in this district, it was a real investment in making sure that kids never needed to worry about feeling embarrassed if they made a mistake in class. Classes where you're supposed to be able to make a mistake, but you just have to correct and that's fine. And then they really invested in clear health and attendance guidance.

And one of the things I do think folks used this during the pandemic was to invest in school nurses, which have historically not been that well funded. And school nurses made a huge difference. zero, I don't know whether Sean should come to school because he's got sniffles.

I'll take him to school and they'll tell me whether he should be there or not, you know, or lashawn shows up with a stomachache, I'll tell you to go talk to a school nurse and they'll tell you whether you can stay in class or you need to go home.

That keeps kids in schools and in the routine of being in school. And then if you go to the next slide.

The other thing we saw is that each of these, in each of these districts, they had a team led by the district that was data informed, that was constantly using their data to understand who needed more support, do additional outreach and actually assess what's working and what's not working.

If you go to the next slide, there are a couple of action steps that I'd like to suggest. One is, even though I know right now conditions are challenging, we have to have a long term goal for reducing chronic absence by 50%. We have to get to at least pre pandemic levels, if not below.

We can do that by emphasizing health well being, safety, family engagement and student connectedness. These are three of five routes that Attendance Works has announced as part of what we see as a roadmap to reducing chronic absence by 50%.

There needs to be a cross departmental attendance task force at the California Department of Education to support this because this is not just a student support services area of work.

This is something that really requires cutting across all the major departments and sometimes collaboration with other departments like the Department of Public Health, so that we can help equip districts and schools to achieve this goal. And we can also make available, easy to use resources to families in multiple languages.

We also can ensure that chronic absence is used to prioritize and coordinate existing resources.

We have a number you already mentioned, elop, Expanded Learning, Community Schools, Transitional Kindergarten, High Impact Family Engagement, School Based Health and Mental Health services have a number of initiatives, in fact in many more than many other states that can be used to address this.

But I don't think we're using the data and always making sure that that work is happening in coordination so it can really have the kind of impact. And that's also why you need a cross departmental approach so we can make sure this gets infused within all of our initiatives.

And if you go to the next slide, this is also about investing in professional development, peer learning, communities of practice. We can do that through cde, through the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence, through other statewide organizations, through county offices of education. Especially since we do this can be part of our LCAPs, our whole local control accountability process.

I also think we have an easy win, which is to start by making sure that that when we issue notices of truancy.

Chair Maritzachi I think that last year I remember this issue came up in this Committee where there was concerns about the kind of messaging that we use with families when kids miss school and families actually being offended because they felt that their parenting was actually being questioned rather than when absences occur.

We are starting with a message of compassion care, letting them know we noticed and an offer of help. The good news is we've passed legislation that actually changes what had been historically pretty punitive legislation wording that was required as part of our notice of truancy.

We could be equipping more people to take advantage of that because I think it's so important for making sure that families feel cared for and supported and not blamed.

And it's also incredibly important for making sure that families feel that schools care about them and don't feel alienated by schools because the first interaction they have with a school is getting a letter or a notification of truancy that they think really misrepresents who they are as families and doesn't understand or respect who they are as parents.

My final point would be I think it's really important for us to continue to think about how do we keep kids learning if they face significant barriers to school. And unfortunately, we know this can come from lots of reasons, whether it's concerns about immigration or wildfires or floods. Unfortunately, in California we experience many things that make it extremely difficult for kids to come to school every day.

When that happens, the question is how do we use all our resources to make sure kids can keep learning both at home online in summer through our expanded learning programs, because that's the only way we can make sure they have the resources to make up for what they miss when they aren't in school. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, questions from the Committee?

If not, I can. Yes, Dr. Patel. Okay. Thank you, Ms. Chang. You know, I know I've heard you speak before and you know, we want to recognize you as one of the country's leading experts on this national challenge of chronic absenteeism.

You know, I'm especially focusing on your slide on page seven highlighting all the underlying causes of that's driving the chronic absenteeism and how rather than like you close your presentation, rather than blaming or judging parents, that we need to recognize that especially those in Low income communities, you know, are facing a lot of the barriers that you highlight that we need to be mindful of what kind of support we need to provide rather than just playing, you know, blame games or finger pointing.

I also want to especially take away your point about turning to your slide on page four, the delayed impacts, you know, whether it's reflected in test scores or, you know, in any other measures of a child's success and well, being the spike in the chronic absenteeism in kindergarten and how that would have like that it would be kind of like a, maybe like a moving spike on the longitudinal studies in terms of its impact on the test scores that Dr.

Reardon is documenting in his reports. I wanted to ask, on your slide on page four, you highlight the chronic absenteeism being the highest in kindergarten as well as in high school. And I was wondering if you had any theories or explanations for the book ending of.

Yeah, well, I think there are different reasons for younger kids versus older kids. So amongst our younger kids, this happened. And historically kindergarten's been a little more challenging because parents are worried about their kids. This issue of parents thinking, zero, I have a stomachache and maybe I should keep my kid home. Unfortunately, that's not new.

It's just that before the pandemic, the message was we'll send them to school anyway. And during the pandemic we said keep them home. And so then that contributes to those challenges. I think the issues.

So in the youngest and among our youngest kids, they're much more vulnerable to not getting to school if there are challenges facing their adults because they depend on adults to get to school.

Among our older kids, one of the challenges we saw is, and again, it's almost like the pandemic exacerbated existing issues, which is we kids are often feeling that they have to work, they have to take on family responsibilities.

If mom or dad can't go to school, maybe I have to stay home to take care of my younger siblings. Or maybe if, especially if you lost a family Member, I'm going to make. You may feel that you have to actually earn income and you're trying to balance being in school with actually having an income.

I think there's also another challenge which is making sure that older kids see the relevance of school to what they want to be and their hopes and dreams. And this is actually one of the reasons why CTE here in California. The data suggests that CTE actually has better outcomes.

And if you think about it, it's because it's clear there's a connection to a goal and a career goal. You have opportunities to work in internships that might allow you to see how what you're learning actually applies.

But also you have an adult, usually a faculty Member, who's so that relationship to a caring adult who's seeing how a kid is and relationship to a cohort of peers.

So I do think with older kids, we got to think about what makes them feel that school's a place where they want to be and is going to get them to a better life.

Yeah, excellent point. I know when I was on the board of trustees of a CTE regional occupational center, we always saw how students were much more engaged when they saw the relevance of what they were studying to actual career paths and outcomes.

And this might be where we can use data. So who gets into the CTE programs? How do we make sure that the kids most need that engagement, actually have access and are encouraged to be there? I don't think we always use our data like expanded learning can also improve attendance.

But is it first come, first serve and so then the kids who already are sort of doing better get access or do we use our data to identify who needs it most?

Good point. I Before I turn it over to see if others have questions, I wanted to direct your attention to page 3 of your slide deck showing California's chronic absentee trend decreasing faster, which is a good thing. And wanted to see if again, it may be summarized in your subsequent slides.

But what do you attribute the steeper getting our kids back into our schools at a faster rate than the rest of the country.

I don't have scientific evidence of this, but I do have a sense of some of the things that were underway. One, California has been really excellent at using data, publicizing data, getting people to understand both publicly but also through the LCAP process. You know, whether they have challenges related to chronic absence.

I also think that the county office of ed, many of them started stepping up and building into their school improvement processes attention to chronic absence. But then I also think it is connected to possibly some of the other investments we were making at the time. We invested in community schools, we invested in transitional K. We invested.

And while I'm saying we could do a better job of coordinating those efforts, I also think those efforts might have already begun to have some impact, but they could have even more extensive impact if we were more intentional with them.

All right, thank you. Any other questions? I want to welcome another new Member to our education Committee, Ms. Castillo. Welcome, ma'am. Did you have any questions or comments at this point or not at this time? Okay. Any other questions? Dr.

Patel, thank you for your presentation today. Having just come out of school board world, I can tell you chronic absenteeism is genuinely still a problem. And I really appreciate that you broke out some of the underlying causes into these four categories of barriers. Aversion, disengagement and misconceptions. I know misconceptions are definitely still a problem.

I think any cough parents are keeping their kids at home. They were programmed for that. The kids themselves also still feel a little hesitant to go to school with lots of coughing and things like that.

So I think encouraging schools to go back through and put out that messaging will be helpful in bringing our kids back to school. But school refusal is also on the rise and school refusal in our students with disabilities population is also a huge component of some of that chronic absenteeism.

So that's something I would like to highlight as well. And it's all different kinds of disabilities. What I would also thirdly like to understand a little bit better is, is in those high achiever of recovering attendance, were any of those self funded or Basic Aid Districts? Were those?

Yeah, I don't. I think one of them might have been, but I'd have to double check on that. By the way, I have seen Basic Aid Districts address chronic absence. So I don't think you just have to have average daily attendance to motivate addressing it because people see the impact on achievement.

But I'd have to double check on the self funded. I think they either there was none at all or maybe there was one. I'm not remembering exactly. Then with the issue of school refusal. I think that is a key thing that we're hearing about across the country and it'll probably get addressed in your comments.

I think it makes it even more important one to for example, we really recommend people do relationship mapping. Kids having relationships to an adult, kids having relationships to other kids. Those are all really important for school refusal.

It also might be that when kids have school refusal you have to take A thoughtful approach to how do you bring a child back to school? Sometimes it's not a all at once. You actually have to have a planful process of kids showing back to school. Couple periods, then a half day, then a full day.

And so that ability for people to understand when that's happening. And that's also about the relationship to parents.

Cause I think sometimes parents feel really frustrated when they feel like they're struggling and the school is not understanding they're struggling and that they actually need to have a different kind of partnership with the school, ideally supported by mental health professionals, to actually come up with a plan for a kid showing up to school.

But I do think that's been a real consequence from the pandemic.

Yeah. And I would have to agree with you. I think our schools are capable of tackling all of these things with adequate resourcing. And my concern is that we're going to now layer on additional responsibilities and intensities of responsibilities without those additional resources.

And I would love to see nurses come back to school, I would love to see social workers, I would love to see staff dedicated to mental health services and supports, but I don't see us having the capacity for those resources. And so that. That really kind of breaks my heart looking forward at the future.

The other question I had, or I could give someone else time while I gather my thoughts on my last question.

Okay, Mr. Hoover, Vice Chair, that might.

Have been a mistake. I don't know. We'll see. I appreciate your presentation. You know, I made a few comments about the pandemic and I fully agree with your assessment in terms of the challenges that it created. I know you are putting it diplomatically and I understand that.

I think in a lot of ways, a lot of these problems were state sanctioned. Right? We state sanctioned chronic absenteeism with the longest school shutdowns in the entire country. And I think that that is, we're continuing to see the effect of that amongst our students.

And while I appreciate your comments about the California Department of Health, I think they could have done a vastly better job. And I know they're not on trial here, but a vastly better job during the pandemic, helping us get back to in person instruction far sooner.

And I think they failed in a lot of ways that, you know, hopefully we can continue to analyze and look at as well to make sure that doesn't ever happen again in the way that it did.

I know being on a school board during the pandemic, that was probably one of my biggest frustrations is the Lack of local control, the lack of the ability for districts to make decisions that they wanted to make for their students that they were barred from making because of the State of California.

But one question I did want to ask you specifically about. One of your key action steps here is, is establishing a cross departmental attendance task force at CDE to support attendance. I kind of wanted to get a little better idea from you on what that would look like.

I think a lot of your recommendations are really good here and I love your goal. I would love to even make a more aggressive goal personally beyond that 50% number. But what would the task force look like? What would it accomplish? And is that something we should be putting resources into?

You know, in the sense of, you know, I think a lot of this does. These best practices are already being developed by a lot of different school districts. And are there other, maybe more affordable ways to share those best practices than creating a new task force?

So I actually think some of this work is starting to be underway. We've actually been working with the Department and a couple key Members of the Department. Richard Barrera, who is right now a special advisor to Tony Thurman, is helping to chair that. We have Dominic Robinson over the whole child division.

Michael Funk, who's involved in the expanded learning programs. Cindy Kazanis as part of this. We have someone coming in from the CTE programs. So I think it's actually started. But we had our first meeting on January 27th, so that's a start.

And we also have to figure out how to bring in the County Office of Education, the systems of support. CCE is at the table. So I think there, there is a. Beginnings of that task force starting to emerge. And so I don't know that you.

This is actually not something I my hope you could keep asking the Department what they're doing and how that task force is functioning. I don't think you actually need to pass legislation to make it happen. And I think it would be fair to ask the Department to submit.

What's your plan for reducing chronic absence and how are we going to do it? We have as part of that also taken on the idea of we need to have attendance guidance offered up, particularly aimed at district leadership. And this could also involve a collaboration with the California School Boards Association with axa. So that super.

I guess what I'm trying to do is raise up a notch who thinks they're in charge and responsible for improving attendance. It got relegated for the longest time to sort of student support services and attendance clerks.

It has to be elevated to the level of principals, superintendents and districts really thinking about a cross departmental approach with CDE helping to forge what that looks like.

But also since so much of the capacity building in California happens in the county office of Ed and is already we can build upon what's happening with Lcff, lcaps and school improvement because I don't think we have the energy to do something new.

What we can do is take the existing processes that we have now and make them better and make them more explicit.

Yeah, I appreciate that clarification. That's actually really helpful and I agree with you. I think we do need to elevate that, you know, and this responsibility has to be shared about across everyone on that school campus in that school Administration.

I think the districts that are really making gains on absenteeism are doing that where everyone is a part of making sure those students are at school and. Yeah. So really appreciate that. Thank you. I'll pass the mic to my colleague.

Thank you. You know, if I may, it was brought to my attention that Dr. Brawley has a flight to catch and Superintendent Amadi has a school board meeting tonight. And so I just want to throw that out for the Committee for time considerations. With that, Dr.

Patel, just a quick question. Do you know whether there's any correlation with any of this chronic absenteeism and late start? Because that was also rolled out around the same time.

I think this is an emerging piece of research. We just heard from some of the folks who had moved for the related that they saw some, but I haven't had a chance to look at it. I think this is something where there's emerging research. I would also, if you do bring in Dr.

Brawley and I believe these districts that are about to present also have specifics about how they've been addressing attendance and chronic absence that might be useful to the deliberation of the Committee.

Thank you.

All right, thank you very much, Ms. Chang. Next we have Lashawn Francis with Children Now. Welcome.

Thank you so much. Chair and Committee Members, really happy to be here today. I do not have a PowerPoint like my colleague, so I'm just the unprepared student talking to you today about student mental health and how we are doing since the pandemic.

I don't know how many of you are familiar, but Children Now is a statewide research policy and advocacy group. I specifically lead our behavioral health portfolio and we focus on the whole child. So we have staff that cover early learning, education, child welfare and of course.

And one of the things that I say to My colleagues, all the time, those in the education team is students cannot add if they're sad. And then they will always respond, yeah, but if they don't know how to add, they'll eventually be sad.

And I think it really does reflect the bi directional relationship that mental health and emotional wellness has with academic achievement. And that's why I'm here today. We put out recently our 2025 county scorecard. And this is a scorecard that we release every two years.

We included some information in your packets and essentially what it does is it tracks 40 key indicators of child well being over time and by race and ethnicity. And it lets you quickly compare how students are doing by county. And you can pull up your county, you can compare it to another county if you're interested.

And it gives you a, a really high level picture of how students are doing or how kids are doing because it includes young people who are not necessarily in school. And since the pandemic, educators have raised the alarm of learning loss, pointing to the impact it'll have on the long term outcomes of children as they age.

And my colleagues today talked about that a little bit. However, mental health and academic achievement are not independent of each other. Parents whose children have fallen behind academically are a third more likely to report concerns about the emotional well being of their child.

National statewide reports show a decline in emotional well being since the start of the pandemic, with nearly 35% of parents reporting extreme concern about their child's social emotional well being and increasing cases of anxiety and depression among their children.

Just to give you some perspective on what this looks like, just before the pandemic, high schoolers who did not report chronic Sadness ranged between 55 and 76% across counties. During the pandemic years, those numbers plummeted to the range of 40 to 72%. And we have seen improvement in recent years of 2021 to 2023.

We see better numbers of those students not reporting chronic sadness at 51 to 70%. But that still is worse than the pre pandemic numbers.

So if you don't remember anything I say today, to answer the question of how kids are doing, just remember they're doing better than they were during the pandemic, but they're not doing as well as they were pre pandemic. And pre pandemic, they weren't doing that well to begin with. So that is the summary of the story.

Now we see similar students, we talked a lot about school connectedness. Just now. We see similar reports for students who feel connected to school in the pre versus post pandemic era.

And school connectedness, as you know, is important because it really has some high level outcomes about how children operate, how students operate, how they treat themselves, their body, their likelihood of using drugs, their likelihood of talking about what's going on with them emotionally, of connecting with their with their families, with their parents, with their students, with their peers, and how well they feel loved on campus.

We saw that the reports for students who feel connected to school in the pre versus post pandemic years were 42 to 68% across counties who felt connected to school pre pandemic and only 39 to 66% across counties who feel connected to school post pandemic.

So again, real changes on how students are feeling, having a relationship to whether or not they are doing well emotionally, whether or not they're considering suicides, and whether or not they're reporting chronic sadness.

A little bit about what the state has done and most of this has been that I'm going to talk about has been on the health side. So you would have heard about this in Health Committee, for example. We've done a bunch of stuff that would have impacted student mental health financially.

The biggest and probably most talked about is what we've done in the children and youth behavioral health initiative. And this is a five year initiative with nearly $4 billion. And most of that funding was one time. There's a piece of it that's not one time though. And that is what's called the school fee schedule.

And this fee schedule really is welcoming. Health plans to pay for services on campus, mental health services on campus. And it's structured to be a consistent feature in schools, allowing school based mental health services to Bill health plans and having the ability to expand access for students beyond those students who are on Medi Cal.

So pre children and youth behavioral health initiative. We heard a lot of complaints about the fact that schools felt that they could only serve those students who were on Medi Cal because they just had a funding stream through Medi Cal to provide services. But that's not really a realistic way to look at mental health, is it? Right.

We know that mental health affects all students, regardless of income level. And so now you've got the school fee schedule that is really supposed to take care of this. It's not something that is completely up and running. They've rolled out three cohorts to date in order to try to see how this is going to go.

I'm hearing there's still some snags on the rollout but it's going to be a consistent feature.

So if they can get this right, if we can get school districts and health plans to get this right, what you'll end up seeing is that students have someplace to go on campus and parents don't have to worry about a Bill later on.

We also made some really big changes on how students who are on Medi Cal are able to access services. So within Medi California, we started allowing mental health services without the need for a diagnosis. So prior to, I want to say 2023, you couldn't really get mental health services without a diagnosis.

First somebody, a provider had to say, you have X and therefore you now can get medication or you now can get a provider and see this many have this many treatment services. We now have a process where that's not necessarily needed. Young people really talked about how that was stigmatizing towards them.

And because of the fact that they're so young, a lot of experts were saying we're not really sure it's necessary to attach a diagnosis to a young person at this age, as opposed to just talking to them and seeing, you know, how they're doing and whether or not we can work this out without the requirement of a diagnosis.

We also have some recent additional investments for those in the child welfare system, providing some just additional funds to ensure a more well rounded expense experience for those in the system.

And then changes to Proposition 1, which passed last spring formally the Mental Health Services act, really could substantially change how counties prioritize the mental health of students in each county. So a lot of counties contracted with their either local school or school district to do to have some mental health programming.

So we might see some changes there with Proposition one. So these investments are interesting. They've been controversial. Children Now has had a lot to say about some of them and they can really change how students experience mental health on campus and outside of campus.

But what I will flag is that even with all of these changes, the thing that has been consistent is that the workforce availability has really hindered the ability for this to kind of move forward and be the driving force of change that we need. So I'll give you an example.

I spoke to a school district that was really excited because they got a lot of money to hire new staff to support the mental health of their students. And they said, lashawn, we're so excited. We hired 100 new staff between social workers, counselors, maybe a couple psychologists for the district. And I said, that's great.

Where did you find 100 new staff? And they said, zero, well, we largely got them from the county. Now, as someone who works in the whole child space, that's actually a really big problem because what essentially happened was we shifted the workforce from the county to schools.

We didn't add new people, we didn't graduate a bunch of students to now take on these new jobs. We didn't recruit anybody from out of state. We've essentially left this county really with a huge deficit to shift them into the school system. And I understand the school system was really excited about that.

But the reality is if we want to make sure that our students are going to do well in the long term, we have to make sure that no matter where they are, whether they're at home, whether they're in the community or whether they're at school, we have enough resources to support them.

So I'll wrap up and say really quickly that while I know that we are talking about pre post pandemic, one thing that I'll highlight is for kids in the LA and surrounding areas impacted by the recent fires, we're probably going to see even a slower rebound than other parts of the state.

One of the things that I get really disappointed to see is that usually when we talk about natural disasters, we don't talk about the fact that kids who experience disaster report post traumatic stress symptoms at really high levels. Hypervigilance, difficulty sleeping, difficulty concentrating.

We know that they have a higher risk of depression, anxiety and constant fears about their safety because of how random a natural disaster feels. Something that they couldn't even predict.

So we understand that there's just this common thread of instability that happens when the pandemic hit and now the recent wildfires that really threaten a student's connection to not just their school but also their community.

One of the things, one of the last thing that I'll say before I wrap up because I know that we're stressed for time. We are really moving forward to get the Legislature to think about a few things.

One, how they deploy the added $2.5 billion for fire response to make sure that there is money set aside specifically to support the mental health and health well being of children in particular. We also want to prioritize human connection and that's been alluded to today. But here's what I'll say about that.

I get asked a lot, what kind of programs should we be implementing for students? What are the evidence based programs? Right, that's. That is something that's talked about a lot. The evidence based program is human connection and it's become more and more apparent as young people spend more time on social media, the importance of human connection.

So we should be funding those services, those activities, those programs that connect young people with their peers and other caring adults. Right. So I don't walk around with a list of which evidence based programs work best. What I do know is that I'm going to immediately prioritize those programs that stress human connection between peers and caring adults.

We really want to think about expanding our workforce by increasing partnerships with community based organizations. I know that's been talked about quite a bit. We talk about increasing the number of crisis mobile clinics to meet the physical and mental health needs of youth have been displaced.

And then one last thing that I will note is in settings like these where we are meeting with Assembly Ed, it would be great if we were having joint hearings with health and education to talk about this, to really think through how funds are being used. How can we blend and braid, how can we overlay programming?

Because as someone who sits kind of squarely in the health space, it is true that oftentimes we're speaking different languages, but we want the same outcomes for our students. And so how do we bridge that gap in a real way in the building?

I appreciate your care and consideration on how we tackle this issue pre and post pandemic on the mental health and well being of our students. And I'm happy to answer any questions.

All right, thank you, Ms. Francis. And your last suggestion we were just talking about sounds like an excellent idea that we need to explore. Any questions from the Committee, Mr. Vice Chair Hoover?

I'll keep it brief. I just want to start by saying thank you. I 100% agree with so many of your comments. And I think, you know, we definitely need to make sure we're listening and implementing some of this, particularly on social media. And, you know, really appreciate the work this Committee did on phones in schools.

You know, obviously the pandemic and the school shutdowns were really difficult on our students because of the social isolation they led to. And what I worry about a lot now is we're almost like voluntarily allowing social isolation with these devices. Right? We're continuing that social isolation into, you know, even when school is back in person.

And so that's, that's a really hard thing to watch. But I just wanted to ask you really quickly because you did mention the fires.

And I think that is something that is going to be a challenge for a lot of schools in those areas that have been impacted in the same way that I think we saw a Lot of harms come from the social isolation, from the school shutdowns, from the pandemic.

Is it important that we're finding ways to emphasize and maintain in person instruction and social interaction for these students that have been impacted by the fires? And what are some of the best ways that we can maybe do that? And I can ask the next panel too, but wanted to ask you as well.

Yes, And I think what's a little unique is that when we talk about fires, we're usually saying that there's no phys structure for folks to meet anymore. Right. So I think that's the main difference between what's happening now versus what happens during the pandemic.

What, what I will say is for those spaces that are not completely burnt out and they do want to rebuild, we, obviously, we, we are weighing the benefits of human connection with the fact that if the air isn't clean enough, then we're going to have a different issue. Right.

So I also don't want, you know, a bunch of happy kids who can't breathe.

So there is, there is a balance here that I think we're thinking about is how do we reopen safely so that there's clean air and clean, you know, an H vac system that works to combat whatever fumes that were in the air from the fires.

So I don't have a good answer for that, but it is just an acknowledgment that there's a little bit more to it than what we were seeing in 2020.

All right, thank you. Any. No questions. Okay. Ms. Francis, I could ask you a lot more questions, but out of respect to our next panel, I want to thank you and as well as Ms. Chang and Dr. Reardon, thank you very much for your excellent presentations.

And this will all inform our decision making as we move forward with our legislative year this year and going forward. So with that, I'd like to welcome and thank you for your patience. Our next panel, the Superintendent of Compton Unified School District, Dr. Darren Brawley. The Superintendent of the Castro Valley Unified School District, Parvin Ahmadi.

And the Community School Central Office Resource teacher for San Diego Unified, Kelly Hagan. Welcome. And we will begin with Dr. Brawley. Superintendent Love here. Yeah. Dr. Or Superintendent Amadi, are you going to be.

Can you hear me? I'm on.

If you can speak in the microphone. Yes. Thank you.

Yes. All right. So I sent some notes before and going to try to be as quick as possible, hoping to share with you some information. So Castro Valley School District, unified school districts of the area, and the very diverse, beautifully diverse school district. We have about 9,500 students.

Even though our districts around us are declining enrollment, we've actually have been getting more students. So we have about 350 more students in the past couple of years. So just major challenges. During COVID I think the virtual instruction obviously was a huge, you know, just a challenge to tackle as far as materials, pedagogy, staffing shortage.

When we closed our school thinking it was going to be a week and turned out to be over, you know, about a couple of years, that really was a huge challenge to have our staff back.

Technology and resources, obviously, because once we went to virtual instruction, even though we made sure that every single one of our students had a device and a MIFI if they need it, we all know that it wasn't the same for every student. We knew that our multilingual learners, our students in special day class, are economically challenged students.

It just wasn't the same between a student who had their own room, a parent who could help them, all the technology that they had versus three kids in a garage. So and. And then food scarcity.

Even though we had, you know, we were serving meals, there were kids that were stuck at home that we had to find other ways to. To get them to the nutrition.

But some of the other challenges, I would say, and I'm going through this really quickly, but conflicting information and directives that we had, like about opening schools in person versus not in person. And I think one of the things, we always want local control, and we love that.

But there were times where that local control actually didn't help us out at that time, as we were hearing, just work with your, you know, your staff to see if they would come in.

And then actually some of the other issues that we faced were just documentation and independent study and things like that, that we had conflicting information and just not as clear. The other piece was the directive from the Health Department, which was. And our county, who was absolutely helpful, wonderful.

We met with them every week going through things, but versus Cal OSHA requirements that I think just went away a couple of days ago. So that created a lot of challenges for us.

And then of course, fear and health issues going back to in person, which required us to have a hybrid model which Then meant we have to have two different.

We had to have more staff and we didn't have them to have for the students that would come in after we opened, and then students who were still not ready to actually join us to be back. And then purchasing materials. Even that was an issue like the mask, the air purifiers and so forth.

So just a lot of challenges. I'm sure I'm leaving a whole bunch behind, including the fact that our staff, our teachers, actually had to also teach kids online, but had their own children at home as well. And for students, the health issues that they faced, but also their concerns about their families.

And again, we heard from all three speakers here. And I really appreciate the comments around just the increase and exponential impact, negative impact on students of color and students who are economically disadvantaged. Some of the things that we did, I think it was really important for us.

We knew from day one we never closed as district staff and offices, never closed our schools, never closed our office and had our schools open with Hubs, which then meant we had to have people. And that was when it was all hands on deck. And our classified Members were then able to help us out.

As our teachers were doing virtual teaching, we started doing what we called playbooks with materials. And I can't tell you how amazing it was to watch educators get in there and just kind of create all of this, the materials that they could use virtually. We did a lot of professional development.

That was an opportunity for us to do a lot of professional development. We had to find new. Since then, we've had to find new materials for our students, especially our multilingual learners. And then just different programs, new literacy programs that we have actually put in place. We had online tutoring.

We Talked about tutoring 24 hours in multiple languages anytime. But again, there was a huge cost that we used some of our Esser funds for. And then it went away because we can't afford it. But it also taught us that we could actually do things differently.

So the intervention or tutoring that we did, maybe in person before now, could be done online and at the time that's really useful for students and not how just focusing on students versus adults needs reducing class sizes in some cases summer school.

And I think something that was also helpful was the great grading policy change that we were allowed to have. We're continuing to work on our grading policy, but the fact that we were that our teachers knew that they didn't have to grade the same way they did. I think that was really helpful.

And then one of the things that was difficult to make work, but we did. And I think in some places, and I think is an area that we could do more of, it was the synchronous learning where some of our students were in person, some at home.

But that asynchronous I'll give you work to do at home doesn't work the same way as I'm teaching and you're watching me, whether you're in person or not. As far as, well, being our wellness centers, we have wellness centers at all of our secondary sites. We have about 11 social workers and 10 interns.

It's been absolutely phenomenal and a game changer. Then all our elementary schools also have social workers. I think that was absolutely critical.

As we faced as we knew our students were suffering and their work, the home visits that we did, the outreach to families was absolutely essential because we had lots of students who were at home and the support that they needed was not their families had lost jobs.

We had high school, many of our high school students who worked to make ends meet. And then of course, the food and the fact that we had that we were able to feed everybody in the community. Although then I worried about kids over the weekend, in the evening and all of that.

So as far as outcomes post pandemic, post Covid, our attendance obviously dipped. Our attendance was about 96.7% before and it went to 93%. And I'm happy to report we're back at 96% again finally this year. But academic outcomes, I think you've heard it dipped. We're still climbing back up.

Regardless, I think all of us have the same concern that we continue. And it's not just since the pandemic. This has been historically true, unfortunately, that our students of color and our students who are economically disadvantaged and our English learners are still not at the level that they need to be. Their outcomes are concerning.

And that's not on the kids, it's on us. But our graduation rate was, is. Was 93%, 94% in 2019. But that is, you know, with all of the supports that we've put in place and students back, obviously it's 96%.

I know that many of us in our districts saw a huge increase in the need for special education identification of students, especially younger students in TKK1, which also is concerning for me. I know there's more need, but I'm wondering if we're just identifying a whole bunch more students.

And of course, last but not least absolutely, was the social emotional toll on students that we continue to see, I think anxiety, depression, all of those things. Worrying about family, worrying about themselves, peer relationships are continuing to be issues that we're dealing with even today. But it was absolutely magnified when students came back. Lessons learned.

I would say adaptability is key. We can make things happen fast when there's urgency and there's support. It had to be all hands on deck. We went through a lot and I think it was impossible to make everybody happy. As our Board Meetings went online and we streamed and continued to stream.

We had hundreds of people online, you know, and everybody had a different opinion. But you know, we. That was another thing that we learned. We improved our communication. We've learned new ways to actually communicate, not just at Board Meetings, but just throughout our system.

We did a lot of professional development and we've learned new ways to do that. I think I see a lot more technology use in the classroom. I think we had teachers who were not equipped, had not, didn't have the support and the professional development and that changed. You had to learn, we had to dive in.

And now I see more and more of that in classrooms. I think the free meals was an absolute game changer, not just students. I think our students who even before were not qualified for free meals would tell you that it was a real struggle when they didn't make it. So it's been amazing.

As far as policy recommendations, I would say it's always really important to have clear statewide mandates focused on equitable outcomes for all students. We have got to get better at this. And then the balance between, like I said, local control and state mandate during emergencies.

I keep thinking about right now, our students who are afraid to come to school and if we were able to have, for example, synchronous learning, we could meet some of their needs at time and then clear and easy direction on documentation. It was really a challenge with independent study back and forth.

How do we document, what are the audit requirements? A couple of other things that really were absolutely essential and helped us was extending the substitute flexibility to 60 days that we have more need each day. And that was extremely helpful.

And then kind of this multi pronged strategy to actively seek better reciprocity for out of state social workers, educators and just more ways to prove their competency would be really helpful as we know we have a huge shortage in staffing. And then obviously I can't, you know, present without saying adequate funding. Obviously that's ongoing.

A couple of other things, as I was listening to folks up here, is one of the ways that we really Kept that connection and are able to hear from kids even more now about what they need. I think we need to not forget to ask children what they need. I think we often.

It's as if they are on the menu but not at the table. So we need to ask them, what do you need? How do we serve you better? One of the ways that we are actually doing more of it's called Kelvin Survey. And we're constantly asking them just a couple of questions, tell us how we're doing.

Then the fee schedule that was mentioned here, I think could be an extremely helpful thing. It's. And we're a part of the Cohort 1. I know that you are as well. It's taken a long time to get. Get it actually working and a lot of work.

But I think once it starts and we are now beginning has been. Is going to be a really helpful support for us. So I'll stop there. And now you have presentation.

Actually, let me ask the panel. I mean, we can go through all of your presentations, but I do know you have a school board meeting. And, you know, and so I'm gonna check my.

I think here's the best thing. When you're a Superintendent, you build capacity. And I have amazing teams that support me and an amazing board who know that I might be late. So I'm good.

Okay. All right, then we'll ask all of the panelists to speak and they will collectively ask you questions. Thank you, Dr. Brawley.

All right, so challenges faced during the pandemic in Compton. We faced severe learning loss. I mean, it was significant, especially among underserved students. Our special education students, our foster youth, our homeless, our LTELS is experienced the most significant learning loss that we're still recovering from. With those specific student groups, chronic absenteeism rose significantly.

We were a model school district prior to the pandemic with chronic absenteeism. Very good results within the organization. But I will say this. The shift on the dashboard indicator did not help anyone. So July 12019 you took away every school district's.

I won't say you, but the California Department of Education took away every single school district's ability to recover Saturday school to eliminate absences that told into the chronic absenteeism. So chronic absenteeism would have increased regardless of COVID Not to the extent it did, but it would have increased nonetheless. And so that's problematic.

Prior to July 12019 we were able to claim Saturday school to eliminate the absences contributing to chronic absenteeism. So we can't have a shifting Dashboard that keeps moving. When people get better, you make it more difficult for them to be successful. That has to stop. In addition to that, technology was an issue.

Even though we were well prepared to go one to one, the coverage within our city was terrible. Verizon worked here at and T worked there. T mobile worked over here. So we had to figure all that out. That was a mess. And it's still a mess in terms of coverage.

So depending on which carrier you have, you have blind spots. In cities like Compton, school closures led to increased mental health issues and students experiencing all sorts of issues around depression, ADHD issues, bipolar, whatever, whatever they had manifested even more with school closures. Teachers required significant training to adapt to virtual instruction. So that was the challenge.

When we talk about the actions and initiatives to address the challenges, we implemented key strategies to address pandemic related challenges. In Compton Unified School District academic recovery Recovery efforts included a hybrid learning model. Our teachers were in the classroom teaching from their smart boards and their roving cams to the students at home.

Personalized online instructional tools were implemented to make that a little easier for the students as well as teachers. We expanded tutoring and targeted support for our neediest students or most vulnerable students. Attendance initiatives were implemented and re engagement plans were drafted to get students back and engaged in learning that were not logging in.

Learning centers were created and a lot of family outreach occurred during that time. Mental health supports were huge in Compton.

I think right before the pandemic we had about 10 wellness centers and we've expanded to 30 wellness centers throughout Compton Unified to address mental health and and social emotional needs of the students that we have within our community and to enhance instruction. I'm sorry. Teachers receive continuous training in virtual and hybrid learning.

There's a lot of collaboration networks that were developed for teachers to learn and we focused on specialized instruction for our English language learners and students with disabilities during that time. Since COVID where are we now? We've made significant progress in overcoming the pandemic related learning loss. Last year we actually recovered both in math and ela.

We were above our levels prior to the pandemic and we've since continued both years together. For students. Excuse me. For school districts. Of an unduplicated pupil count that exceeds 90% and more than 10,000 students. We've had the largest gains in math and ELA two years in a row. So we're very proud of that accomplishment.

Math proficiency has increased. What? From a Low of 26 to 34.66%. Graduation rates climbed from 88% to 93%. A through G course completion is now at 60% of all students in Compton Unified School District, which is a leader once again.

Chronic absenteeism has dropped from 23.6% in 23 to 15.2% as of last year and is on track to drop below 8% this year, or was until parents started Fearing immigration rates. Right. So that's impacting chronic absenteeism all of a sudden. In 2024, we increased mentoring programs and extracurricular activities for the students that we served within Compton.

And we provided academic and social supports and expanded our mental health piece to an advisory period as well. Where personalized focus is on SEL technology integration is now permanent one to one devices. Even though we were ready then, we continue to maintain that and upgrade the devices and the infrastructure.

Mental health initiatives continue to grow and as you heard me say, with about 10 or 11 around 2019, currently 30 wellness centers and a heightened awareness about mental health and trauma that kids go through and the various manifestations that interrupt their ability to come to school and making sure that we provide the necessary supports to address those.

So what are some of the lessons we learned? We learned some key lessons from the pandemic that has assisted us in terms of how we do things now. Even though we don't say equity much, it's a focus. We don't call it out, but we do it.

There's a lot of people that talk about it and don't get the results. We don't talk much about it, but we produce the results. It's a priority within our organization. And we have continued the investments in technology, language support as well, and targeted intervention supports for the student groups that are in need of them.

Our schools have flexible instructional models that are able to adapt to what the intervention needs are of the students, students that we're serving. And we have a whole child approach that is not just about the academics, but it's about the mental health and social emotional well being of the students.

We have strong family and community partnerships that enhance student engagement through collaboration. And we have a sustained innovation in technology. I challenge you to find a school district that is doing for kids in the area of technology what Compton Unified School District is doing. Doing.

Our goal was to eliminate that opportunity gap for the students that we serve so that when they enter into the workforce or continue their education at the college and University level, they will be just as prepared as any kid from anywhere.

And targeted interventions drive the instructional outcomes in terms of what we're producing within Compton, lots of interventions being delivered by teachers, by tutors, by specialists in the classroom, as well as administrators that are supporting those interventions in the classroom.

And through these lessons, we believe that we have a better equipped school district to provide a resilient and equitable educational experience for the students that we serve. As far as flexibility, why is ELOP only after school? Your neediest kids are not going to stay after school. You need to serve them when you have them.

ELAP needs to be flexible, not just before after school or on the weekend. The best interventions happen when students are in school, so flexibility around that. And yes, increased funding does make a difference when used the right way.

All right, thank you very much.

Last but certainly not least, Kelly Hagan. Talking about their community schools and from San Diego unified.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Assembly Members. Hello. My name is Kelly Hagan and I've been a teacher in San Diego for the past six years. I began my career as a special education teacher at Sherman elementary and now I am a resource teacher for multiple community schools.

The pandemic didn't create inequities in education, but it brought them to the surface, making them undeniably visible. During that time, school staff took on multiple roles. We became tech support, food distributors, therapists, social workers, and crisis responders.

When students return to in person instruction, we face heightened mental health struggles, attention needs, behavioral challenges, and learning gaps, reinforcing the need for social emotional support. The COVID 19 crisis disrupted what we knew as a normal school day, but it also reshaped the role of schools, expanding their purpose beyond academics.

Schools became not just places of learning, but hubs of community support, addressing broader neighborhood challenges and offering an opportunity to reinvent re envision education. As students returned from isolation and increased screen time, many exhibited higher levels of anxiety and struggles, and they needed more than just academic instruction.

They needed a school that could support them and their families. Despite the challenges, my school community has grown stronger.

It has been a story of transformation, resilience and change, and I credit that to my colleagues and Becoming Community School San Diego Unified Community School Initiative has been key to recovery, transforming schools into centers of support and resources, all tailored to the specific needs of each community. This transformation is guided by our thorough needs and assets assessment.

In the first year since 2022, our district has expanded from five to 25 community schools guided by four key pillars and we're adding 10 more community schools next year. The first key pillar is family engagement, rebuilding trust and inviting families back into schools, ensuring that they feel welcome and have a voice in decision making.

The second Integrated student supports Bringing in more mental health services, health care and essential resources for basic needs so students can get the support without missing school. Third, expanded and enriched learning opportunities Increasing before and after school programs Compensating educators for their extra time, community based learning and academic support to close the learning gaps.

The last pillar is collaborative leadership and shared decision making. We have site governance teams of teachers, the principal, staff and families at every community school, empowering them to make key resource and budget decisions based on their school needs.

I now work alongside teachers, families and community partners to build these wraparound support systems and I'm seeing the positive growth, change and impact firsthand at SH. @ Sherman elementary, students now have access to more tutoring clubs and a dedicated community schools coordinator and site coach who connect families with resources.

Sherman has reduced their chronic absentee rates each year for the past four years. At Carson elementary, the school counselor has also seen improved attendance rates and and credits that added credits that to the added support structures provided by the community schools model this year. Of course, challenges remain. Staffing shortages, underfunded schools, underfunded special education and teacher burnout.

But despite those obstacles, educators remain deeply committed to their students. Community schools help ensure those of us on the front lines in our classrooms have the support to continue our work more effectively. Investing big in schools as the heart of our communities doesn't just help students and it strengthens entire neighborhoods.

It lifts us up, empowers us and provides lasting solutions. On another note, thanks to efforts of SDA during our Covid during the COVID 19 pandemic, our schools now have improved air filtration systems, ensuring cleaner air, better ventilation and a healthier learning environment for students and staff. A benefit that will last for years to come.

I ask you to continue to prioritize public education and community schools. Every child, regardless of zip code, income or ability, deserves the support they need to thrive. I invite you to visit us in San Diego to see firsthand how we are rebuilding from the pandemic with a bold, transformative vision for education.

And thank you for allowing me to share our story. A story of recovery, resilience and the power of community schools.

All right, thank you very much. Questions from the Committee.

Don't want to make anyone miss their flight, so I'll keep it brief. So just on that topic of community schools, you know, obviously love the comments earlier about our Universal Meals program. Very supportive of that effort and obviously nutrition a huge part of learning.

Our presenter earlier about mental health, I love the you know it's hard to add when you're Sad. I have trouble adding even when I'm not sad. But that's just. That's a whole nother issue. But, you know, so definitely on board with all of that and want to support programs to do that.

I guess my question for you, and then maybe also the superintendents, if they want to chime in, is I do worry sometimes that we're spreading ourselves a little too thin.

And when you look at the latest report card for the nation's test scores, we have seen our investments in California go up pretty much every year for a decade, maybe with a couple exceptions. And we've seen our scores go down. We obviously, I think legislators, lawmakers and parents and teachers really want to see that change.

So, you know, is there something to be said for. Do we need to get back to the basics a little bit sometimes and really focus in on math and reading and what are the ways that we can do that?

And our community schools, are we spreading ourselves a little too thin with some of the things that we're working on? So just would love to hear your perspective on that.

Yeah, I think part of community schools is building that capacity, so bringing in families, nonprofits, community partners so that the basic needs are met so that they can start instruction. Because you can't teach math, English, all these things if, you know, kids are having anxiety struggles or behavioral challenges.

So the hope is to get there, to start with math and English and just do that. But I think if you're in the reality of the schools, the other needs need to be met first in order to get to the academics.

And I think I would completely agree. I think having community schools and like, for example, when we talk about social, emotional support for kids, having families and engaged is really a part of having that, the conditions of learning that kids need to actually do learn. I don't think it's spreading us too thin.

I think it's looking at education in a different way to make sure that our students actually feel welcome, supported, and are learning math and science. So I. It's a part of the whole picture. I think.

I'm going to take a little different bend on that. You heard a lot about the differences between Asians, whites, blacks, Latinos, etc. Right. Well, when you really focus on what's the defining factor, it's usually social economics. Okay. And what do all of those people that are Asian or white or higher socioeconomic have in common?

Their kids have preschool. Their kids have kindergarten. Kindergarten in California is optional. We don't have universal preschool. So you're trying to fix A problem where a vast part of our population doesn't have the same start that other people have.

And until we provide them with that same start, until we make kindergarten mandatory and not optional because Das are not going to prosecute parents that won't send their kids to school because parents know they don't have to send them to school, it's optional.

Until we start addressing those kind of things that start the gap early on that then becomes harder and harder to close later on, we're not going to solve the issue.

And I'll have to add to that because I was on the blue ribbon Commission that did the preschool and I would say our biggest recommendation in that blue ribbon Commission report was free preschool for all. It's exactly what you just mentioned. And we don't have that. I completely agree.

You're trying to solve problems that you can't solve unless everybody is off to the same foot. And certain people, based upon their economics, have higher footing, higher level kids starting with much more vocabulary because of the exposure that they have.

So we can talk about blacks, we can talk about Latinos, we can talk about whatever student group that is not performing that you want until you put the basics in place that other people are getting by virtue of their economics, you're not going to solve that issue.

Thank you. And yeah, you know, I've actually, I think you raised a lot of valid points.

I also think, you know, one of my frustrations with kind of the preschool focus, because I do think it's an important part of the equation is, you know, in a lot of cases, we still don't have full day kindergarten in a lot of our districts. Right.

And so as a working parent, you know, I was a working parent when I had littles. I still am. I guess they're just not little anymore. You know, that's always a challenge. Right.

And making, you know, part of that, you know, part of the reason kindergarten is oftentimes less attractive to working parents is because you have to figure out what you do with your kids the rest of the day. And, and it can be a real challenge. So I did. My last question was going to be to Dr.

Brawley, your point about Elop and making it more flexible and available, the funding at least for those things. Would love to hear just a little more about that if you could. And also thank you for sharing your experiences and all the work and successes you've had. I think there's a lot we can learn from you.

Yeah. So right now ELOP has to be spent either before school, after school or on the weekends. Okay. The neediest kids often are not going to attend after school services for anything. Unless it's sports based. You'll pull some in, and so you have them during the instructional day.

So why isn't that funding flexible to bring in the intervention supports that are necessary? The same kind of supports you're going to be giving after school, why can't you give those during the school day?

So you have a lot of districts sitting on a lot of this money, and the state's becoming more and more creative in figuring out how to take it back. And if they take it back, it's not going to accomplish what it was originally approved for. So it needs to be flexible.

It does not need to be relegated to before school, after school and on the weekends. You can still incorporate that, but make it flexible during the day.

All right, thank you. If I. Dr. Patel, do you have any questions? Okay, let me jump in then. Well, first of all, let me follow up, Dr. Brawley, with your comments. You know, last year I worked with our Committee staff to try to make kindergarten mandatory.

Unfortunately, the Department of Finance, you know, keeps saying that we're working toward universal transitional kindergarten, but we don't have the money to make kindergarten mandatory, which doesn't make sense to me. And so we're going to keep fighting to get all kids into kindergarten.

And to build on your point about the most important way that we can close the gaps among the, the different groups in our diverse state is to get everyone at that same, you know, the same starting point, investing in universal preschool.

Again, we're, you know, we're working toward that goal with our continued expansion of universal access to universal transitional kindergarten. But, you know, what about the 0 to 3? Those continue to be the big challenge that we also have some ideas that we're working on in that respect. I wanted to take this opportunity.

First of all, I mean, acknowledging all of our speakers, the community schools with the wraparound services, recognizing that we're dealing with children with not just, you know, who are not just test taking machines, but, you know, with all of their needs, you know, that it just makes sense to me that we need to have these community hubs that schools can provide to provide those wraparound supports.

Castro Valley, I mean, you know, I just asked, you know, to check on your demographics. I mean, it sounds like your demographics are very similar to my old school district, Torrance Unified.

We have about almost 40% unduplicated, which, you know, I know it's, you know, may not be as challenging as Compton's student population, but it still, you know, has your pockets of students that have the needs. So let me start first with Ms. Superintendent Ahmadi.

What I mean, we know that community schools, you know, is a major initiative with, you know, the $4 billion multi year effort that we're, you know, investing in. But beyond that, as far as Castor Valley is concerned, what we heard Dr.

Reardon speak in the first panel, how we need to, especially with the ESSER funds expiring, focus on the most effective evidence based interventions. And so, you know, he mentioned tutoring and after school programs. We got to work on that flexibility with the ELAW program.

But what would be your, you know, at the top of your list in terms of the most effective evidence based program or funding initiatives that we need to continue?

Well, I think tutoring and all of that is important, but I have to say what happens during the day that best first instruction is key. We have our multi tiered system of support which we have in place. I think continuing to really improve that at all times. The literacy programs that we've adopted actually have been really effective.

As I watch in classrooms, I see the difference. Math is another area we need to continue to look at professional development because I think especially for elementary teachers, it's really difficult when you're a multiple subject teacher and the skills that you need to teach mathematics at a very really fundamental level.

The other piece I think is professional development. We used to. I remember a time when I was a teacher many, many years back. We had eight professional development days. All we have is two days. So we've got to come up with ways of actually doing ongoing professional development for our teachers and classified.

And I think that's an area that we continue to find ways to address without any. I mean, the funding isn't there. And that's another piece. The Esser funds were actually used in many different ways to put in place things that we were lacking. Now it's obviously not there anymore.

So we've got to find new ways to actually have time for our teachers to work collaboratively together to have time for professional learning communities for professional development.

And I completely agree with Elop being after school, even during lunch, there are kids that could be getting a lot of support at that time and during the day that we could put in place. So we've. I think I've seen a huge improvement in literacy the last couple of years and I think we keep getting better.

And then I have to say making sure that the curriculum that we have selected, for example, social studies and history, social science, is culturally relevant and reflective of our diverse population, has been really key because I think when I think about the value of ethnic studies and the importance of having that not just as a requirement, that is extremely important, but understanding why it is important to be in place.

Kids need to feel like they understand and they belong. So all of those things have been efforts that we put in place. And I think it's been really helping our students to achieve at a different level than they did before.

Okay, so I just want to make sure I heard you right. Tutors, professional development, literacy programs. Are you referring to any particular types of literacy programs?

Well, we use what's called ufly. It's. I know Science of Reading is a. Is a touchy subject in places, but I think just that the materials, but also the pedagogy that our teachers use the other piece is our long term English learners.

I mean, we have students who have been here for a long time and are still not proficient. I know it takes about seven years, having been an English learner myself, but I think we can do a better job. And some of the new materials and pedagogy that we've developed I think are.

Really key that are also aligned with the so called science of reading approach.

Not necessarily, but for English learners, it's really to create environments and teach in a way that it's not just English language, but it's learning English as a second language.

Okay. All right. And more flexibility in terms of elop and ethnic studies. So I know that there's conversations taking place in terms of, you know, districts that are debating whether or not to move forward with ethnic studies, given that there wasn't a specific budget line item for ethnic studies.

But Castro Valley is moving forward by providing ethnic studies for your.

I think there are many districts that are. Because we've been in development for many years, we've created our curriculum, and I think it's really important that we continue. I think the requirement in the Bill actually has to do with funding.

And I would say it's really critically important that there is funding attached to it so that there's no excuse for anybody not to develop and actually implement ethnic studies.

Okay. All right. And Dr. Prouty, again, your Compton unified is highlighted in this Stanford Harvard report that just came out yesterday. We wanted to join Kendrick Lamar on the bigger stage. That's right, Kendrick, give a shout out for Compton. That's right. But I mean, you're like we talked about earlier.

It seems like your district is bucking the trend. And so let me ask you the same question. I mean, what. I mean, you talked about a lot of the different investments and interventions.

Some of the things that I noted, you're lamenting the loss of the Saturday schools, the importance of tutoring, the importance of targeted family outreach, wellness centers, targeted interventions with tutors and specialists, and most importantly, your comments wrapping up about the importance of universal preschool programs to get all the kids at the same starting line.

But you know, as. Again, same question. As the federal Covid dollars, you know, are expiring, what are the most important initiatives, you know, to make the difference that you have made, your district has made for your kids?

Well, it's one thing to say the most important initiatives, it's really a process that we use.

And I'm not sure that that's the purpose of this meeting, but in terms of what we do is we really have implemented Malcolm Baldrige performance excellence standards within the organization and benchmarking our performance against surrounding school districts, which we call our surrounding competitors.

Because if we're not going to do right by our kids, they will, and they will take them from us and the decline will speed up. Right? And so we implement that process. We develop smart goals, and we hold Superintendent data chats around all the dashboard indicators.

So whether we're talking about chronic absenteeism, you're going to see Compton as a leader in that. Whether we're talking about graduation rates, you're going to see us as a leader in that. Or A through G completion rates, or college and career indicators suspensions, you name it. Because we're benchmarking our performance, we're developing smart goals to get better.

And then every administrator is meeting with me every six weeks in a Superintendent data chat to talk about how they're progressing towards the smart goals that they've developed, the action plans that they've put in place, and the interventions that they've put in place to get better. So that's really how Compton has gotten better.

But I'm not sure that all of you guys really understand what happened with Saturday school. So we can still claim Saturday school for Ada, but we can't claim it to offset the absent anymore in terms of that absence counting towards chronic absenteeism.

So that statement that I made earlier, whether Covid happened or not, chronic absenteeism was going to rise in California because of that shift that they made with the accountability dashboard by eliminating that as counting towards removing absences towards chronic absenteeism. Why the state did that, I have no idea.

So you shifted the game on us and it was going to increase regardless. And that shift needs to go back to what it was prior to 2019.

Okay, I'll follow up on that. But I mean, so rather than focusing on, you know, any programmatic priorities, intervention.

Priorities, learning recovery block grant needs to stick around. That's a good source that will be helpful in the process. When we look at the overall performance of students with disabilities, any district, certainly at the state level, it's horrendous. It's not great. In our district, there has to be a greater focus in terms of interventions for them.

When you look at the model that exists in most school districts, you have your neediest student population with the most horrific combination class ever established. A K through two, a 35 a six through eight. We got to provide more funding to students with special needs.

And our ask at the state level of the Federal Government has never prioritized that need. When I got an education, 9% of students with special needs, an average district right now, 16% and growing. We've got to do right by our neediest population. Long term English language learners.

Another population not doing well at the state level, not doing well in Compton. And so we've got to do better by them. We've got to provide better supports and develop better systems in terms of serving their instructional needs. A we call them LTELs long term English Language learner.

A student that does not transition out of English language courses by eighth grade becomes a ninth grader. And now the avenue for A through G courses is interrupted because they're still taking EL courses. So they're on a different track. And the ability to provide them everything that you provide all the other students, it's drastically different.

So we've got to do a better job of transitioning kids out of EL services prior to them going to high school so that they have better graduation rates, so that they have better A G completion rate, so that they have better CTE pathway completion. Those are things that need to be addressed.

All right, thank you very much. Any questions? Okay. All right. Well, thank you very much for sharing your experiences, your leadership on the front lines in your communities. And we really appreciate you sharing your your insights as we move forward in trying to do the right thing up here. So thank you very much.

Like to open up now for public comments. Each public comment can be up to a minute. Please line up at the microphone for public comments.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Members. Dorothy Johnson, behalf of Acts of the Association of California School Administrators.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk about this very important topic that I know educators will continue to look at for years to come as we talk about the ripple effect and how different cohorts will be able to grow and recover from what had happened over the last five years. Now, so.

So being specific to highlight quickly some of the things that were mentioned earlier. Wanted to express our support for flexibility and instructional continuity to limit absences through either synchronous and hybrid models when circumstances make it necessary, be it an emergency, a man made threat or students simply not feeling safe to come to school. Unfortunately.

Also wanted to uplift Superintendent Ahmadi's comment in support of universal meals for nutrition and addressing food insecurity. Also appreciate the comments from Children Now and Dr.

Patel regarding staff shortages and the need to make sure we have more flexibility and options for our school counselors, our psychologists and our social workers and of course AXA does fully support the return of the 60 day substitute allowance that was provided for during COVID And then finally uplifting the comments about Cal OSHA and making sure that those workplace requirements work for both our educators as a work site, but also again, as a school site where our kiddos, our students, come to learn and grow.

So thank you so much. Again, that concludes my comments.

Thank you.

Good afternoon Mr. Chair and Committee Members. My name is Amy Cash Vanik and I represent ampact, a nonprofit organization that provides high impact tutoring in reading and math. Our programs, Reading Corps and Math Corps partner with school districts statewide, primarily in the Central Valley.

We really appreciate today's discussion on the pandemic's lasting effects on students and we really recognize the importance of supplemental instruction. So as we heard a lot of times today, research really does highlight that high impact tutoring is an effective intervention for addressing COVID 19 learning loss.

Our tutors undergo extensive training, receive ongoing coaching, collaborate closely with school leaders and teachers to deliver in person evidence based high dosage tutoring that really does drive academic improvement. So each day our program witnesses the positive impact that tutoring can have on student outcomes.

This year alone we're serving over 4,500 students across the state and we have 65% of those on track to reach grade level targets. And the data shows that there's much work that still remains to be done. And so we'll be following up with Committee staff to share details on our programs and student outcomes.

And we really look forward to being part of the solution. So thank you. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Bob McCullough, Hazel Health we're the largest physical and mental health telehealth provider across the country, including serving 1.6 million youth in California. And just wanted to echo a lot of what you heard today from the testimony with regards to the impact of mental health on learning.

You heard from Lashawn Francis and several other just talking about the impact that we've seen, which includes increased anxiety, depression, sadness, disconnectedness and including absenteeism, and wanted to be able to highlight just one independent study that we've actually been part of.

And in Paramount School District in Southern California where they were having such an issue with absenteeism that they introduced the comprehensive mental health program that the state has been introducing over the last several years.

And by introducing that mental health program they were able to see a 68% reduction in absenteeism over a six month period, including 44% of those students that were referred. Did not miss another day following the referral. So being Able to really target that mental health approach can certainly improve the attendance and the learning opportunities.

And so we would just like to encourage you to continue to Fund the services that you've already started. You heard about that with Cybhi and then the Sbhip program as well. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and Committee. I'm Ashley Lugo on behalf of the California county superintendents. So we really appreciate the Committee dedicating. Time to discuss the post pandemic needs. Of our students, especially our most vulnerable students.

The California county superintendents echo the comments of the presenters on instructional capacity, serving the mental health needs of our students, and rebuilding family and community relationships and. Trust in our educational system. Flexibility and trust in our local educators. And leaders remains just as important today.

As always, we look forward to working with you on the recommendations discussed today. Thank you.

Thank you. Hi, good afternoon. My name is Elle Grant. I'm with the California alliance of Child and Family services. We represent 165 community based organizations across California, all of whom provide child, youth and family services. We want to thank the Committee for analyzing the issues that impact our youth and their mental health.

Our Members are on right there experiencing this firsthand and we see that our youth are in a behavioral health crisis right now.

So I want to support the sentiments of the panelists and thank Children Now for mentioning that we need to have resources available to students wherever they are in the community and for raising that we need to increase partnerships with community based organizations to care for the whole child.

It's important to consider partners outside of the school walls and we want to share that our Members are willing and eager to partner on any work that improves mental health for students.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Can you hear me? Okay.

I'm Rachel Murphy with Public Advocates, which is an anchor organization in the California Partnership for the Future of Learning, which is a statewide alliance of community organizing and advocacy groups. When schools shut down in 2020, the California Partnership conducted a needs assessment with over 600 students and families.

Led us to advocate in 2021 and 2022 for the state to invest $4.1 billion in the California Community Schools Partnership program, which now benefits students and families at more than 2000 highest need public schools across the state.

Community schools move us away from one size fits all learning towards schools that meet the unique needs and strengths of students. During the pandemic, this approach supported students returning to school through a powerful combination of partnerships with community organizations, trusting relationships with students, families and educators, expanded learning opportunities, and whole child student supports.

As we consider the Complex needs and experiences of students from academic to social, emotional and mental health, transportation and attendance. Especially in this challenging and uncertain time, community schools are an effective strategy to help all students thrive. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon chair Members and staff. My name is Debra Sanders. I'm the Catalyst California, another one of the anchor organizations for the California Partnership for the Future of Learning.

I wanted to start by highlighting the extensive research that has shown that community schools reduce racial and economic equity gaps by improving academic achievement, graduation rates, student attendance, adult and peer to peer relationships serving adult and student attitudes towards school.