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The San Ramon Valley Unified School District Board of Education is poised to resume discussions on the district’s personalized learning initiative offerings at its upcoming board meeting — this time as a formalized presentation after numerous questions and concerns about the topic have come up in the context of previous board meetings this year.
The informational presentation slated for discussion Tuesday is set to answer some of those questions and provide a lay of the land on the current PLI system at the district, with information about what classes, reasons and outcomes from personalized learning offerings are most common.
While the PLI program has been around since 2018, the topic has been a particularly hot one in the district since the board’s February meeting, in which it tentatively approved a series of teacher layoffs that further impacted the district’s dwindling world language offerings – and which could increase the number of students taking language classes outside of the district, if their languages of choice cease to be available at their schools.
The board is scheduled to vote on a final list of teacher and classified staff layoffs Tuesday night, which includes two French language teachers, a Korean language teacher, a Japanese language teacher and a Chinese language teacher, as well as math, theater, culinary and CTE teachers.
As it stands, the district’s language school program allows students to study languages not offered within the district at a selection of approved institutions, provided that language is not offered at their home schools, with graduation credit offered.
In the previous school year, one student studying Hindi, two students studying Hebrew, six students studying Tamil and 12 students studying Telugu took advantage of that opportunity, according to the presentation prepared for the upcoming meeting.
A separate but related component of the district’s overall PLI initiatives is its non-district course offerings. Overall, up to 40 units of non-district classwork can be included in students’ transcripts from the district, with a limit of 20 units in any one subject or in a single academic year.
According to data from the past three years, 47% of students taking non-district courses did so for advancement reasons, with 24% doing so to fulfill a graduation requirement, 21% for enrichment and 8% for remediation.
A total of 9,316 NDCs were taken by SRVUSD students over the past three years, with 3,128 in the past academic year, down slightly from the three-year high of 3,246 in the 2023 to 2024 school year.
The most frequently taken classes in the last academic year fell into the “other” category, many of which include “specialized electives” not offered in the district catalog, such as music and cinema classes. Other frequently taken classes in the “other” category include AP and introductory computer science, introductory film and business classes, and college reading and composition.
While the presentation at this week’s board meeting is set to be informational, it is also poised to serve as an opportunity for the board to further explore the program, answer questions and explore concerns brought up by teachers, students and family members at previous meetings.
Trustees will have the option to ask staff to return with further discussion or an action item on the topic at a future meeting.
The SRVUSD board is set to meet at 6 p.m. Tuesday (April 21). The agenda is available here.
In other business
*The board is set to discuss multiple assistant principal appointments and the superintendent’s performance evaluation in closed session ahead of the public meeting.
*The board is set to publicly announce the major provisions of a tentative agreement with SRVEA, and to vote on providing members with a one-time, off-salary payment of 0.53% of their base salaries from a discretionary block grant.
*The board is set to vote on a final list of layoffs for the end of the school year, consisting of a total of 6.9 FTE teaching positions and 26.5 FTE classified positions.
*The board is set to hear an update on the district’s ethnic studies curriculum.
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