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The SRVUSD Board of Education is gathering this week for its final meeting before graduation season in which it will discuss a number of annual reports and other items as the school year winds down.
The May 19 agenda includes annual reports from the district’s technology and special education departments, as well as student and expulsion data and an annual proclamation recognizing June as LGBTQ+ Pride Month.
The technology department update is set to include information on existing uses of education within the district as well as the goals of its comprehensive technology plan, including topics such as cybersecurity, AI, and average screentime by grade level.
The department is set to discuss the status of a $250,000 cybersecurity grant, as well the findings released last year for a cybersecurity audit and the district’s responses since then. District officials are also set to discuss the current availability and use of AI tools in the district, with offerings in the past school year including Google Gemini for high school students and staff, Google Classroom for teacher templates, Microsoft Co-Pilot for staff, and other internal tools.
Between April 13 and May 11, 6,000 out of 9,823 eligible high school students were actively using Google Gemini, as were 1,123 out of 4,288 eligible staff, according to a presentation prepared for the upcoming meeting.
Overall, the technology department’s current strategic focus areas are embracing AI, data governance, and cybersecurity.
In the special education department update, staff note that while the district’s special education student population remains below the state average at 13.9%, the number is steadily increasing due to a number of factors, including increased capacity for early identification and intervention, as well as increased acceptability and awareness of special education needs.
Among the department’s top goals are providing special education students with as much time as possible to interact with general education peers, and to develop effective individualized education plans (IEPs).
“The district has made strides in promoting inclusive education, with more students with disabilities being included in general education classrooms,” SELPA Executive Director Linda Rowley-Thom wrote in a staff report for the meeting.
Over the past school year, nearly 71% of students on IEPs spent more than 80% of their time in general education environments.
“While these numbers continue to remain fairly consistent, we have not hit our target of fewer than 13.5% of our special education students spending less than 40% of their time with general education peers,” Rowley-Thom wrote.
She added that the work is ongoing, and that the department believes refinements over the past few years will allow staff to better coordinate general education experiences as a first priority before transferring students to fullly special education settings. But some challenges remain.
“However, we have seen an increase in behavior among our more significantly disabled students which has led to fewer opportunities for those students to be with their typically developing peers,” Rowley-Thom wrote. “We are working to address through targeted behavior support and training.”
Looking ahead, the department is also seeking to facilitate increased peer-learning and professional development opportunities for staff.
“This comprehensive work is even more critical as we move into the Significant Disproportionality work with the California Department of Education where in addition to the above, we will be examining our new monitoring indicator of overidentification of African American students for special education under specific learning disability,” Rowley-Thom wrote.
In the suspension and expulsion update, the district also saw overall favorable numbers – including a 0.9% suspension rate in the previous school year, maintaining its “blue” status according to the state dashboard – that varied across student populations.
“The data also highlights subgroup trends, noting that while many student groups perform within the Green or Blue performance categories, Long-Term English Learners and Foster Youth remain areas for continued focus and support,” Hong Nguyen, director of student services and educational equity wrote in a staff report for that item.
Special education students also saw higher than average expulsion rates according to the most recent data collected from the current school year, a trend that has been ongoing over at least the past four school years. Their suspension rates ranged from 3.1% to 3.6% since 2022, compared with an average of 1.1% to 1.5% across the district. Foster youth and homeless students saw even higher variances, ranging from 10.5% to 22.7% between 2022 and 2024 for the former – but zero this year – and from 4.3% to 7.1% for the latter.
The district’s expulsion rate was at zero over the past four years. However, two stipulated expulsions and one stipulated suspended expulsion were reported during the last school year.
“Historical trend data demonstrates that SRVUSD’s overall suspension and expulsion rates remain relatively low and stable over the past four years,” Nguyen wrote.
The SRVUSD Board of Education is set to meet at 6 p.m. Tuesday (May 19). The agenda is available here.
In a closed session ahead of the public meeting, the board is set to discuss a pending Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) case, one case of anticipated litigation, and an employee discipline/dismissal/release item. It is also poised for labor negotiations, discussions on appointments for directors of human resources and special education, and assistant principals for Monte Vista High School and Diablo Vista Middle School, and performance evaluations for the superintendent and assistant superintendents.
