>> Junior ROTC, Are they -- they're not here? 

>> [Inaudible] 

>> Okay. 

>> Plans to go. 

>> Okay, that's fine. I was just checking. 

>> [Inaudible]. 

>> It's a big building. Good evening, welcome to this joint meeting of the Pasadena City College Board and the Pasadena Unified School District Board. And I now call this meeting to order, I hit this again. We are officially at order. All right, now let's have the Pledge of Allegiance and sir, if you will -- we'll have our junior trustee -- are you a junior trustee or a full trustee? 

>> Student trustee. 

>> Our student trustee, [background talking] lead us off sir. 

>> [Background talking] And please repeat after me, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. 

>> [Background noise] Okay, do we -- [background talking], oh we should call roll, right? Diane [assumed spelling], you're not in your seat, are you going to call roll? Let's call roll of the Boards. Huh? You want -- well you're over there, so obviously you're not going to do it [laughter]. 

>> I can call the roll for PCC. 

>> And Diane, why don't you call roll for the School Board? Thank you. 

>> Pasadena Unified School District Board, Ronata Cooper [assumed spelling]. 

>> Here. 

>> Ed Honowitz [assumed spelling]. 

>> Here. 

>> Tom Solinsky [assumed spelling]. 

>> Here. 

>> Ramon Miramontes [assumed spelling]. 

>> Here. 

>> Scott Phelps [assumed spelling]. Elizabeth Pomeroy [assumed spelling]. 

>> Here. 

>> Kim Kinney [assumed spelling]. Edwin Diaz [assumed spelling], Superintendent. 

>> Here. 

>> Thank you. 

>> Thank you. 

>> Pasadena City College. Mr. Thompson [assumed spelling]. 

>> Here. 

>> Mr. Baum [assumed spelling]. 

>> Here. 

>> Mr. Martin [assumed spelling]. [Background talking] Ms. Brown [assumed spelling]. 

>> Here. 

>> Dr. Fellow [assumed spelling]. Dr. Mann [assumed spelling]. 

>> Present. 

>> Ms. Waugh [assumed spelling]. 

>> Here. 

>> Mr. Pack [assumed spelling]. 

>> Here. 

>> All right, so I want to welcome you all which I already did and now we've done our introductions. And Dr. Rocha [assumed spelling] and Mr. Diaz will be leading us through this meeting which I understand has been worked out by the staff. 

>> Yes it has. 

>> All right. Well let's go, let's get going. 

>> Okay, thank you President Cooper. I thank you to the Pasadena Unified School District Trustees and to the PCC Trustees. It's great to be here. We're just going to start, Edwin and I, we have an honored guest with us, our colleague the President of California State University of Los Angeles, James Rosser. So, if we could just recognize James [applause] and thank him. And actually we weren't going to speechify here and we're going to press President Rosser into service because what you see in front of you will be explicated during the course of the evening. But what you see in front of you is what we call President Rosser and Superintendent Diaz and I call the College Commitment. And it's a long story of hard staff work all this year but basically what it is, is a triad partnership between three great institutions: Pasadena Unified, PCC, and Cal State L.A. And we're calling it the College Commitment, the 2plus 2plus 2 program. Because we hope to make a seamless track from all the way back to the tenth grade of our district high schools through the college ready year, the freshman-sophomore year at PCC and on to the bachelor's degree at Cal State L.A. And all of this is in keeping with President Obama's call that we increase the graduation rate across the board by the year 2020. [Cough] So I won't explicate it further except to say that we did want to read out an administrative communique and Edwin and I will come to the table and join hands with President Rosser. And it reads as follows and it refers to the College Commitment: whereas Pasadena Unified School District, Pasadena City College and California State University of Los Angeles affirm their longstanding educational partnership for student success. And whereas PUSD, PCC, and CSU L.A. state their intent to continue and strengthen this partnership for the purposes of increasing the number of high school and college graduates. In keeping with President Obama's American Graduation Initiative, now therefore we resolve that PUSD, PCC, and CSU L.A. commit their institutions to implement the college commitment 2plus 2plus 2 initiative. And that's the resolution and Edwin, if perhaps if you and I can go to the table and shake hands with James. 

>> Sure. 

>> And we can sign this off ... 

>> Unify this. 

>> And have President Rosser say a word or two [background talking] so. 

[ Background talking ] 

>> Well, good evening. 

>> Good evening. 

>> Evening. 

>> I'd also like to introduce [throat clearing] the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Cal State L.A., Dr. Ashish Vaidya. 

[ Applause ] 

>> I'm very pleased to be here on behalf of Cal State Los Angeles and especially as relates to Superintendent Diaz and President Rocha. You know, PCC for years and years and years has been a significant piece of the life blood of Cal State L.A. PCC is a significantly largest sender of transfer students to Cal State L.A. and it has done so historically. We've also had a presence in Pasadena Unified over an extended period of time either through people who work in the district like Alice [assumed spelling] who's an alum of Cal State Los Angeles or Linda Waugh who is also an alum of Cal State Los Angeles. So we feel a special attachment to furthering and creating opportunity for youth to have a seamless path to a collegiate education and to do this in partnership with two institutions that have stood by us since our founding is extraordinarily important to us. And I want to assure you the people of Pasadena, students in Pasadena Unified and certainly the family at PCC, at Cal State Los Angeles will do all that it can to try to help to make this a success. I also want to thank Ramon Miramontes because he played a major role in getting us together initially and beginning discussions with respect to what is beginning to transpire. We're excited about this; I'm exhilarated though it's taken awhile for us to begin to realize what our obligations and responsibilities are to the future of this state. And certainly to the youth who will essentially be those who will follow in our footsteps, I hope that we will prepare them to do as well or better than we've done and we look forward to this exciting partnership. Thank you very much. 

[ Applause ] 

>> Can I add a word, please? 

>> [Laughter] first of all, I'd just like to thank Dr. Rosser for being here and I also want to compliment Dr. Rocha for taking the initiative to help formalize this partnership that's been going on with PCC, for the last couple of years. It's clear in all of our minds that in order to really make a difference in the number of high school graduates and college graduates, no one institution is going to be able to do it alone. And it's really through the type of partnership that exists in this room that those numbers can be increased and lives can be changed for students. And so, I appreciate the fact that through this agreement, the partnership has been formalized and there's some structure to it and now I think its time for all of us to get to work and fulfill it. Thank you. 

[ Applause ] 

>> Good evening members of the Board, staff, President Rocha, Superintendent Diaz, Dr. Rosser, who has been a mentor of mine for decades, and to everyone that has joined us this evening. Tonight we are here to present just a glimpse, if one could say the tip of the iceberg, of all the partnerships that exist with Pasadena Unified School District and Pasadena City College. There's so many partnerships that if we were to begin to share that information with you, you might be here till tomorrow morning and to save you that, we've taken just a sample of the quality of work that we have done together as staff. But I'll give you an example, just a week ago, we had Dean Hodges [assumed spelling] sit in with us on our alternative education planning, so that we could, again, have a seamless transition for all students even students with the greatest needs. So know that what we're about to present to you tonight, will be a sample of partnership, you will see most cases two people standing up here, one from the PUSD side and one from the PCC side. Because it does take a village to do the work we've done and behind each of these people there is a whole group of educators and leaders that have supported this. So, I'd like to extend my gratitude to a great partner in working together and that's Dean Bob Miller. [Applause]. 

>> That's very kind of you Alice, I won't take very long because I think Alice said it all. What is about to happen is a reporting out by a lot of very, very hard working staff members across a number of curricular areas and support areas. And it is the beginning and this effort has led to our Pasadena College Commitment and what you're going to see tonight is really the beginning of this whole, of this whole concept and approach. But a lot of good things so with that in mind, I'd like to just sort of keep this thing moving and bring up the first folks who will talk. Which is on our English instructional partnership and we have Amy Almer [assumed spelling] the Dean of English at PCC and Helen Chan-Hill [assumed spelling] who runs the Professional development for the Pasadena Unified District. 

>> [Background talking] Good evening and thank you for inviting us here. Helen is going to be my side kick here but she's allowed to let me do the talking and [background talking], you have a PowerPoint before you. But I'm going to give you a short narrative because I know you can read the slide without me reading it to you. So, two years ago, in March 2009 PCC and PUSD English faculty gathered to learn about each other's programs. And how to best prepare PUSD students to be successful in transfer level composition for English 1A. The slides up there, if you want to see it, it's up there okay. Everybody with me? We learned very [background noise] quickly that the high school English program was at odds with the Community College composition programs in most of California. With the support of both districts, we embarked on a collaborative project to train PUSD, 12th grade English instructors to teach the curriculum that PCC uses as it main prerequisite for English 1A and that course is called English 100 at PCC [background noise]. Our goal was that PUSD graduates would enter PCC having fully met the prerequisite for English 1A and would also understand what is expected in college level academic writing. Since that time, faculty from Muir, PHS, and Marshal have been trained in the Muir curriculum for English 100. Muir and PHS taught the [background talking] class in spring of 2010 and again this year. Marshal joined in summer 2010 and began the class this spring semester. Currently, five PUSD English faculty teach the course to more than 400 students, apparently 428. But who's counting. [Laughter] Throughout the year, PCC faculty and I work with the PUSD faculty on curriculum, assignments, and grading. Faculty from both districts have observed each other teach and on April 4th, I met with the PUSD teacher's early in the morning, for a discussion of student essays and the program. Next year we hope and expect that Blair will be included in the project and I can't help but say the Blair Which Project, W-H-I-C-H [laughter], sorry. This spring, PCC's first year experience counselors are meeting with the PUSD classes on campus, on your campuses, to discuss guaranteed enrollment with the students. We're also working to create a tracking system for the students who attend PCC so we can see that they are successful. Both the PCC faculty and the PUSD teachers are excited about the program, I've heard really good comments from the PUSD faculty, they're really enjoying it and they say that their students like the rigor of the program and they like the focus on argument and issues. Whereas before it was mostly based on literature. I'm very appreciative of the support from the teaching faculty in both districts and especially for the support of Alice Patrosian [assumed spelling] and Mike Seton [assumed spelling] at PUSD. It's been a great program and I think its going to continue to be such and thank you very much. We'll take questions. 

[ Applause ] 

>> Trustee Baum. 

>> Thank you for that. Tell me about how the curriculum that you're offering? It's primarily through Professional Development to the faculty at PUSD or how's it being delivered to the students? 

>> Well, we have an official course outline that... 

>> Could you come closer to the mic so we can hear you? 

>> Sorry, usually I speak too loudly and too quickly. 

>> We can't hear you well. 

>> Okay, can you hear me now? We -- can you hear me now? We have an official course outline that we gave to the PUSD faculty [coughing] and we went over it with them. This is two years ago, and explained how our program works. It's based on non-fiction expository writing and rhetorical mode and they're using our materials, our textbooks, and PUSD bought our textbooks. There are two, there's a handbook and there's a reader and we have worked with them on developing assignments but they are free to choose the different readings in the books. But they have to follow our course outline and our student learning outcomes. 

>> And then I'd just love to hear from the PUSD side, it's too early to have data but anecdotally, how's it going? 

>> Well, anecdotally as Amy [assumed spelling] was saying, our teachers are very interested in continuing this and making this actually a larger effort. Because they feel like the partnership that they've started with PCC has not only given them a lot more training and background on how to instruct with this rigorous curriculum but also they can see the benefits with their students. Raising the level of rigor in senior English and the students as well have given similar anecdotes. 

>> Thank you. 

>> And Dr. -- Elizabeth. 

>> Yes, oh could you give us an update about the teaching of English 1A sections in the high schools with the combination of high school students and the PCC level students? Is any of that taking place in PUSD schools right now? 

>> I have to think. We were at PHS, we're not there now. Let me think for a second. Blair, we're at Blair. 

>> There is a 1A class taught there? 

>> Right, we're at Blair. 

>> And it combines the Blair students and PCC? 

>> Well, what we do is we reserve seats for the high school students and we wait for the counselors to enroll them and then what ever is not filled by the high school students, and they have to take our placement test. 

>> Yes. 

>> We then fill with anybody who's eligible for the class, in what ever order that comes. Usually its just a handful of high school students, not a lot, its really up to the high school and the counselors to put them in. 

>> All right. Do you see that as something that is worthy of increasing and spreading it further to some of the other high schools? 

>> Yes and it just usually depends on how many sections we can offer and if the high school has a place for us. But there's no reason not to. 

>> [Background noise] Student Trustee Nolan Pack [assumed spelling]. 

>> [Background talking] Thank you, Trustee Thompson. I know that the California Education Code can sometimes be fairly prescriptive in what high schools have to teach. And so I'm interested in hearing a little bit about how this modification to the curriculum affects the preparation of students to do things like take the CASI or SAT or just meet California Education Code standards in general. How does that work for a high school students? 

>> I may not be the best person to answer that so I'm going to bring up our Chief Academic Officer. [Laughter] 

>> For high school seniors, they're at that point, most of them have passed the CASI if not that's being done concurrently in another setting but they don't have to take the CST. So changing the curriculum at that point in time seemed appropriate, we didn't venture to do it before that because, unfortunately, the California K-12 standards do not align. Especially the high school standards do not align with the instructional programs at our community college campuses and therefore, this was something that was caught by Mr. Seton early on. And he made me aware of it and we started discussing what might be a penalty if we dropped the curriculum that we were adhering to in this concept of the English standards in 12th grade. What we discovered is the penalty's greater if we don't because students may not pass and be ready for 1A. So that's why we made the choice or the decision to offer students the option and as you can hear from the presentation, we've had a great deal of interest [coughing] from the students in taking this course. But there's actually a win and not a loss for students who are enrolled. 

>> Great, thank you. 

>> [Coughing] Yes, Mr. Honowitz. 

>> I'm just wondering what kind of articulation agreement we have, we have one obviously with PCC but how transferable is this class if [cough] you're going somewhere other than PCC? If you go to GCC or you go to any number of other community colleges or other [cough] institutions? 

>> I know that GCC has a program with their high schools which is very similar. Our class, [coughing] the students from PUSD who decide to go to Glendale will probably be successful in their placement tests because they'll [nose blowing] have been prepared through this course. But beyond that, I don't know about any agreements. 

>> So, is that a possibility that we could look at some articulation agreements beyond just Pasadena City College because we do have students that go to Citrus that go to a variety of other places. 

>> Yeah, that's a great idea and we can definitely try. 

>> Okay, [coughing], I suppose that there's a pretty good correlation between this English 1A class across the different community colleges but I - I do think you're correct in that students who take this class are going to do well in their placement exams which they're going to have to take wherever they go. Be it a community college or four year institution and so I think it's a boon for them. But I wanted to ask, are we -- I have two questions. I want to know are we the only school district that PCC is doing this program with? And I'm also interested in knowing do you know yet if this is increasing the number of PUSD students who are going into PCC? 

>> Years ago we did this with Temple City's school district and it was a small program and we brought students in and just sort of faded away. I'm not too sure why and as yet, we don't have -- I'm sorry, the second question? [Laugh] 

>> Oh. 

>> [Coughing] Bob will take that. 

>> Thank you Amy. The answer is that we are piloting all of this activity with PUSD this year but the plan is in the '12-'13 academic year, to take this, our district wide. There's 11 high schools within Pasadena area Community College district and what we are learning here at PUSD probably around September-October, we will be going out to the other high schools in our district and the K-12 districts, who are high school districts in our area. And beginning to work with them to launch in the '12-'13 year. 

>> I just want to clarify... 

>> Oh. 

>> One thing, the English 1A is, just to go back, is a class that PCC offers for college credit on a high school campus and on campus as well. What we're talking about here is a high school class being taught with help or guidance from PCC faculty in conjunction. It's not really a class for credit that would articulate for college credit at PCC, it just prepares you for college work at PCC or any school. 

>> That is correct but... 

>> Right. 

>> The carrot for your students is that if they pass this class successfully, they do not take the English placement exam at PCC, they go right into 1A. 

>> Right, it just waves the placement exam. 

>> It waves the placement exam plus more importantly we feel that they're better qualified for the class because they're trained in the types of writing they're going to do in 1A [background talking]. 

>> [Background talking] Thank you very much Amy and Helen. [Background talking] I'd now like to bring up -- if I can get this thing to work. You see S.T.E.M. [assumed spelling] and you can't see it there but the red is S. So we're going to talk about science, technology and math, in that order. So the first one is Tim Sipple [assumed spelling] is going to come up and unfortunately, Dr. Dave Douglas, our Natural Science's Dean is out ill this afternoon, so Tim is going to go ahead and do this presentation for us and I'll help as needed. 

>> [Background noise] Please feel free to help as much as you'd like [laughter]. I was looking forward to connecting with Dave, just before I -- just as I arrived and was very disappointed to hear that he's not well. Good evening Board and Superintendent Diaz, President Rocha, staff. So, we have a series of slides and different angles around the issue of science, technology, engineering and mathematics that we're going to be talking about. Just so happens, science comes first in that acronym but probably it's a long with technology and engineering, one of the more recent forays into this partnership and we'll tell you where we're at, at the current time. Students in our, for PUSD high school are required to take three years of science for their diploma. Certainly many students who are college bound take a fourth year of science but some choose not to and adjusting that gap here in science classes is one objective of partnering together. We also, as you'll hear in greater detail from some of our colleagues, we have a middle school robotics initiative happening in Pasadena Unified School District, in all of our middle schools. We have an engineering [coughing] academy at John Muir High School where I work and we also have robotics and engineering at PCC. And we're exploring ways to create a path for students and to strengthen each of the stages along that path in robotics and engineering. And then just in general, wanting to support the development of college ready students with an interest in S.T.E.M. We had one very exciting development at Muir High School this past fall, which was we had a PCC professor actually teach an environmental science, environmental studies class to a cohort of john Muir students during our instructional day. And this was a pilot that was very, very exciting for us to be able to offer to our students and we had about, I believe it was about 27 students who took part in that class for the entire fall semester. And we're very excited about being able to work with a college professor on our campus as an alternative to an advanced placement course. We also have a couple of grants that PCC has been working on that Dean Douglas was going to speak in much greater detail than I'm prepared to do and Bob's going to. 

>> Yeah, sure and I'll bring the microphone down. [Laughter] Lisa [assumed spelling] I've got your problem up here. [Laughter] Okay, what Tim was referring to is a HSI S.T.E.M. grant, Hispanic Serving Institutions, science, technology, engineering, and math grant provided by Title V. And I'm very; very proud to say that a team of PCC, PUSD, and Cal Poly Pomona folks worked together to develop what I believe is an incredibly competitive grant that will provide pathways in the areas of geology and geography from PUSD and specifically, John Muir High School through PCC in our Natural Science's department. And then up to Cal Poly Pomona for the pathway to complete the four year degree. And we've actually had some folks read this grant, outside folks and they say that we're very, very competitive, so crossing fingers and toes regarding that, we are hopeful that. And then you see something called SASI grant awarded. Our Board of Trustees was kind enough to allocate a sum of money to support student access and a success initiative proposals and projects by our faculty. One of those that was recently awarded is a health sciences pathway which will, our faculty will be teaching and will be setting up, in order to help prepare our students for careers in the health education area. So those are two very -- so that's also very exciting and will also, we'll be working closely with PUSD students in that regard as well. So, a lot of good things happening. 

>> [Background talking] Thank you. 

>> [Inaudible]. 

>> Yeah, I had a question for PUSD. Could you give me a little more information about this middle school robotics that you're offering in, I guess, I think it's at Muir? How do thee students qualify and at what point in middle school and what has been the results? 

>> We have a proposal -- a presentation coming up. 

>> Oh. 

>> That's the TE. Sorry, [laughter] one minute, that's coming. 

>> Okay, I'll hold tight. 

>> [Laughter] Excuse me, Mr. Sipple, I'm wondering if you just -- Dr. Douglas just said what S.T.E.M. was, I wondered if -- I'm not sure that everybody understands -- does the audience kind of know what S.T.E.M. is? And what that emphasis is? If you could just take like 45 seconds and explain what that is because it is a new emphasis in education. And I really want people to know about it particularly people who might be watching us at home on television now or later, just so they get a sense of it. 

>> Thank you. S.T.E.M. is the acronym that's generally used referring to fields of science, technology and engineering and mathematics. And so, they're a host of disciplines within that umbrella that generally is sciences, technology, engineering, and math, those are the -- and a lot of literature, a lot of federal grants that are referred to as S.T.E.M. initiatives. 

>> And it's receiving heightened emphasis in education in this country because these are areas where our students are found to be lagging across the curriculum and so it's happened in K-12 and its happening in the college and university systems. And it's even happening in early childhood education and you all are doing an excellent job with your wonderful childcare center at PCC. And we are hoping to catch up with you in PUSD. 

>> So, if I could just conclude this portion anyway before the others come up. One important, next step is to continue to build and to develop relationships between faculties both with PUSD and PCC for strengthening the curriculum that we're delivering on our end. And also likewise in a symbiotic way to help PCC faculty work with our students as well when they arrive. And then we also, we have as I mentioned earlier, an engineering academy at Muir, we also have a health sciences academy at Blair and wanting to explore ways to establish more seamless transitions for students from those programs into PCC and beyond. And with that, any questions about this? Knowing that you're going to hear a lot more about the TE and the M in just a moment. [Laughter]. [Coughing] Thank you very much. 

>> We're now going to move to a program partnership that's truly at an infant stage yet so much has happened. You're going to hear it as a blossoming program and what we'd like to do now is have you learn about our robotics partnership and introduce Almond Avila [assumed spelling] and Eric Drayer [assumed spelling] to talk to you just about the question you just asked about. We knew you were going to ask that [laughter]. 

>> [Background talking] Thanks Alice. Members of the PUSD School Board, PCC Board, and staff thank you for having us here today. My name is Eric Drayer, I am the Director of the robotics program for the PUSD and I'll -- thanks for that question as the great lead-in to this discussion here. So, let me introduce -- sure, this -- it's been mentioned 2plus 2plus 2, reaching down to the tenth graders. In PUSD, although we have an obligation to reach all the way down to K, and this robotics program is something that students started with in the middle school starting with sixth grade. It is, right now, students from sixth through eighth grade get a chance to build a Lego , robot having it equipped with all kinds of sensors on it. And they spend a year learning how to program it to complete tasks autonomously, much like robots that go to the moon, go to mars, what have you. We teach these robotics classes in every middle school in PUSD, taught by PUSD teachers with training, supported by the Pasadena Educational Foundation. We have over 320 students currently in our robotics classes from grades sixth through eighth and we are looking forward to developing future courses. And as part of our program, we just started last year, we have a middle school robotics competition at the end of the year and this is a chance where -- I'm sorry? And it's a chance for students to show off their stuff and this year we're fortunate to be, we're starting to form this partnership with PCC and we're going to be holding the competition in the large PCC gym. And making it more of a S.T.E.M. expo, to really show students, our middle school students, what is available to them both in college and career. Late last year, I had the good fortune of meeting Solomon Babala, who's an engineering faculty member over at PCC and we've been forming a strong partnership. And I've learned of his strong interest in supporting the John Muir engineering academy. I'll turn it over to him. 

>> Good evening Board. I would like to continue with the developments of this partnership which has been, from the very get-go, something that very mutual agreement of what our outcome should become. Such that we've developed a strong understanding of what type of individual would have to be hired at John Muir. So, currently after Eric has spent all this effort with the middle schools, the development of the high school engineering program there at John Muir is a key step to be able to step into the developments at PCC. So different programs related to electronics, engineer and design, for that matter programming would be included. That individual that I'll be working with, that I personally vow to work with this particular person and even contribute to the hiring of this individual, in the terms of the Board, if I could put in my two cents. So that I can work with the individual and develop the curriculum appropriate for robotics including science, engineering, technology, and math for the development of students going into the PCC programs. So, that's a huge, I think development there. There was a grant awarded there at PCC, beneficiary of myself and another faculty member, through the grateful, visionary, sort of incentives President Rocha has put out there. Where we're trying to design a contextualized learning platform for students to actually learn how they're doing design, much of which the results of that particular grant in our studies, would actually be used in a lot of the robotics pathways developed at John Muir. So, I think it's going to be mutually beneficial for PCC developing this curriculum and benefiting the actual robotics academy that's to be developed. So, eventually -- excuse me, inevitably what we're trying to do here is just working together for the development of robotics academy from tenth through transfer. Where we're articulating to Cal State University programs into their mechanical and electrical and computer science programs through PCC and enticing students to continue all the way through [clearing throat] to transfer, through this pathway. In a very, sort of upbeat [coughing] projects based, a lot of competitions will be coming up so if you see a lot of students in your local parks around here in Pasadena, its probably going to be some students testing out one of their rockets or one of their off-road robotics vehicles that we're going to [laughter] go out there and test. Because these things can get larger and they, you know, they can -- we need more space for them, of course. So, we're going to use a lot of the parks around here in Pasadena and have a lot of fun. So, if there's any questions, we can answer them now. 

>> Trustee Brown. 

>> Please, so I just need to know, what is the criteria for the students to get in? How many students do you have and what have been the outcomes? 

>> This is for John Muir, correct? 

>> Yes, absolutely. The middle school is of my concern. 

>> Okay, John Muir is a high school. So... 

>> I think we mentioned here in our -- that we were reaching out to middle school and that was my question. 

>> Okay, great. So, we have 320 students in our classes right now, they're classes taught mostly during the day for credit, so it's part of the regular students curriculum. And, the program during the day just started up last year and so this year was the first year where we did a district wide implementation. And the outcome that we've seen so far is increased interest in continuing on in science and engineering. We've conducted surveys where we've asked students what they'd like to go into and they're very interested in continuing on with engineering. I get stopped in the halls of schools asking me [laughter], what are we going to offer next year? What are you going to offer next year? Tell me what high school they're going to go to and say, are you going to offer a lot of classes there? And so that was really -- it became, I've been in this position for a year and early on it became clear to me from parents of students, that they wanted that next level. And so, that's why we started working closely with the John Muir engineering academy to develop those opportunities at the high school level. 

>> Okay, good. I definitely believe this is a very good program but I need to ask the question again. You mentioned here that we were working with middle schools as well and I just wanted to know if anything actually was been done with the middle schools? 

>> [Inaudible]. 

>> In this -- No? 

>> [Inaudible] I think there's a little communication gap here. This program actually started at the middle school. 

>> It started. 

>> What's happening -- it started in the middle schools -- which one in particular Eric have you? 

>> It started at Elliot. 

>> At Elliot. 

>> At Elliot and McKinley and what's happening now is through this partnership, we're taking it up through John Muir and then tying in with PCC. So, we're basically growing from a middle school program all the way up through PCC and eventually Cal State as well. 

>> So, can I ask the question, what was the outcome? Did that work -- what did it do for students? 

>> [Background noise] At Elliot, we combined it with a mathematics algebra and I can only tell you what I've observed. The engagement of girls in the class versus watching them in any other math class was amazing. Because it was a hands-on, having to program and reprogram the robot until it worked or made the turns it was supposed to or followed the lines it did, it became a sense of I now understand why I need to learn math, I now understand what science will do for me. We got to the level where our middle school students at our science fair had the diplomas or the certificates or the ribbons delivered to Superintendent Diaz through a robot. [Laughter] And the middle school students had programmed those robots to deliver it and that's, you know, usually a human being to human being. Mr. Diaz was able to lean down, pick it up from a robot and give it to... 

>> Robot to robot [laughter]. 

>> Out of your mouth -- no, I', kidding boss. [Laughter] Seriously, the other one that is very effective is we allowed electives but if you see the same program PEF offers to students in the summer in elementary schools. And upper elementary grade students are energized by the sheer fact that what they think is play, we think is absolutely leading them to be turned on to mathematics and any field in science and technology. And we've been blessed to have a benefactor who believes in the use of technology and the earlier we start it the better. But I think what we're trying to say is, we know its successful in middle school, we know it's a part of our programs in middle school and every child who wants access to it, has access including our special education students, that participate in the program. What we're now looking to make sure is as they grow and improve, we will provide access for the high school, so they can take it deeper. And that's what we're looking for. Did that answer? 

>> Thank you, thank you. Yes. 

>> [Inaudible] Waugh. 

>> Yeah, I just want to say I think this is really an exciting program and I represent area five in PACCD which is -- so we have a strong robotics team in San Marino and as you said, I think its really exciting to see the young girls also be part of this team. In fact, the leader of our team is a young woman but as the robotics competition moves along, I know one of the things that we had looked at was also getting involved with PCC in a partnership for some assistance on the competition side. I can see how we might be a resource that would be highly competitive among all of the school districts, so. 

>> Absolutely, I think, well there's a couple of high schools that asked for some of our assistance. I think what I've concluded, is somehow that our cap stone courses there at PCC that are sort of graduating students that are about to transfer to engineering programs become the mentors for these particular students. That initially what I had proposed to Eric, in terms of having our students who are about to transfer, to be mentors to these students that are at the high schools. Whether it be for their particular competitions locally or for these national competitions, you're referring to. Just sort of service learning as well for our students. 

>> And just to follow up on that. On the middle school side, it is extremely important for our students at the middle school level to see where what they're doing in their classrooms, eventually expands into in college and in through career. So having the partnership with PCC and with PCC faculty and with Cal Tech, gives us -- it gives that wow factor to the students. Where they see that this isn't just playing around with Lego's , this is the foundation of a very real and valuable skill. 

>> [Inaudible]. 

>> So thank you very much for this partnership. 

>> May I have one other question, please? 

>> Well, can I have Mr. Pack go first and I'll come back to you? 

>> I just have a brief comment on this. I'm smiling throughout this whole presentation; I have a particular fondness for S.T.E.M. and particularly engineering. I don't know if any of the people from PCC or PUSD remember this program but I participated in Saturday Science Academy which was hosted at PCC when I was in middle school. And I can attest to the effectiveness and the importance of integrating S.T.E.M. into, you know, a kid's education. It completely changed my perception of what it means to be like a well rounded holistically developed student, really important to understanding the importance of inter-disciplinary studies. So, I'm really particularly thrilled to see this program being rolled out. 

>> Do you want to tell us where you went to middle school? 

>> Ah, I went to middle school at Norma Coombs Alternative School. 

>> All right. 

>> And we had a [inaudible]. 

>> A PUSD product. 

>> Yes. 

>> I think the comment made about other surrounding high schools is something that we would welcome. We thank PCC for allowing us to use the facilities because we believe that S.T.E.M. should have a direct connection to college and university as a career pathway. And so it would be wonderful to look and have neighboring school districts as a part of a competition but this is our very first and I'm sure we'll welcome other high schools [background noise] as we grow in this program. 

>> Trustee Brown, I have one more question for you [inaudible]. 

>> Oh, I just had one more quick question for PUSD. I am definitely -- I can see where this is really successful because what working and putting together a robot means that you are focusing your thinking, your -- think you're playing but you're not. And you're holding our students attention. My, my -- the problem that I have with this that we have, the 2plus 2plus 2 is that the students that I represent in the northwest Pasadena, most of them are not engaged. So it's not going to, they're really most of them will not benefit from this because they're drop out of school and what have you. So if we could work at the middle school, that's why I kept going back to middle school, to see if we can engage our students. This is not PCC I'm not suggesting to do this, I think we're doing an excellent job working for the pathway from the tenth, 11th and 12th but a lot of our students are not going to fit that mold. And I'm concerned of the one, the Latino's and the African-American males that are not fitting that mold. I would like for them to be able to fit it but for them to get to that point, they have to [coughing] receive intervention earlier. And that's why I keep going back to middle school so that maybe we can begin to offer things for middle school students. 

>> I don't think they're saying -- let's get a clarification. Are you suggesting it's going to be dropped to the middle schools? 

>> No, in fact the program began there and it's funded there [background talking] and we will continue. I think what might be exciting is inviting Trustee Brown, we'd love to take you and have you with Mr. Drayer visit the program, just so you can see how accessible it truly is to every student. And you're right, in order to maintain students within an academic, within an academic program, we need to incentivize and motivate and engage them. And we're finding that this program does do that but we are in our first year basically [background noise] so we're hoping you'll come visit and see that we are energizing as many students as possible. We're even looking to do some things before and after school activities, so please let us know at any time you'd like, we'd love to host you on a visit so you can see what goes on. 

>> Thanks. 

>> I have a question for Mr.Vaidya, as well Mr. Drayer. Since we live in a global society and a global market place. How are we comparing to our counterparts around the world? With robotics in the middle school grades? 

>> In the middle school grades I wouldn't know. 

>> [Inaudible]. 

>> I can just tell you sort of college wide, you probably don't want to know. 

>> Well, that's why we need to know, right? 

>> That's the reality, right? 

>> So we can prioritize so can you... 

>> Absolutely and that's one of the things that Eric and I do spend quite a bit of time talking about this and why I think we both are I agreement that this is something that really requires a hands-on approach to be able to address that particular issue. And that's what I do at PCC, to make sure that I keep on filling the pipeline to Cal State schools to transfer engineers out there. But the only result I've been able to come up with is I need to start working with middle schools to make sure there's enough people coming into [background talking] PCC so that I can continue fulfilling that. There's not enough, there's [inaudible]. 

>> There's a follow up question. 

>> Sure. 

>> The public needs to know at these times of shrinking budgets, right? The tax payer needs to know. This is totally tied in terms of number of students in the pipeline; it's totally tied to our competition around the world, in terms of producing more engineers. Correct? More scientists and the reason why we have these partnerships is because there is a segment of PUSD students that aren't representative within the pipeline. [Background talking] So do you believe by keeping to invest, because here are the policy makers. 

>> Absolutely. 

>> Right, we decide on the budget during these tough times by being the professionals on the ground, this is your time to lobby. 

>> Absolutely. 

>> This is your time to advocate. 

>> [Inaudible]. 

>> But if we do not invest now, we will not see an increase of all students... 

>> Right. 

>> In terms of our society represented in these fields. 

>> Absolutely. I can attest in many different ways. One, we cannot afford not to invest in these particular programs. It's not going to be a cash cow, it's not a cash cow at PCC, I know my program costs a lot of money to PCC to sustain just for the licenses, for the equipment that we use for electricity that we burn and running all the equipment. Yeah, definitely we're not a cash cow but the top ten out of the top eight careers in the State of California are high tech S.T.E.M. fields. And that's the driving economy here in the State of California so w cannot afford to not to. And the second thing I would say is I myself am a product of this particular program hence my personal commitment to this. I can stand here before you telling you this will work because that's what happened to me. 

>> Eric? 

>> Yeah, I just wanted to mention that this S.T.E.M. has really become a national priority. Obama's put it up as a national priority. I went to a talk recently at Cal Tech by Obama's chief science advisor and he cannot emphasize enough how much S.T.E.M. education was important for our economy, for healthcare, for national security, for just research and development. It really affects these broad national goals which have become a priority and I believe on the, also on a national level becoming a funding priority as well. And getting down to a really local level, what we're seeing with robotics is students in sixth grade who are still very curious, want to make things, want to do things. They build this robot and then they make it move by, you know, typing in some computer code and it just lights a fire [background talking] and at sixth grade we see, we have a lot of girls in our classes approximately 40-50% girls. And they're just as engaged as the boys, we see a lot of racial diversity, you know, so it's -- we're seeing just [coughing] a really broad range of students getting engaged and fired up by this curriculum. So it's really exciting and invigorating to see and I invite any of you to contact me and I would love to take you in to see some of our classes. 

>> Eric, one more, sorry. In light of Trustee Brown's original question, could you at next year's meeting of this joint meeting, maybe or the next year after that, talk about the number of Washington Middle School students and Elliot Middle School students who matriculate into the Muir Academy or such? She's looking for outcomes and I understand this is the first year and you've expanded the program tremendously, but I think that would be an outcome, right? There would be some growth in the pipeline? 

>> Yes, okay, okay. 

>> Dr. Pomeroy, do you have a question? 

>> Yes, just a quick question. Could you tell us the date of when this expo will be on PCC campus? Or will you be sure that we find out about it? 

>> Saturday, June 11th. [Laughter] [Background talking]. 

>> Yeah from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM. It's going to be a big S.T.E.M. bash [laughter] so and there's going to be a variety of activities for visitors. [Background talking] It's not just going to be a [background talking] spectator, there's [background talking] going to be interactive demo's, so welcome all of you. 

>> June 11th, thank you. 

>> I believe that one of the important things about S.T.E.M. is that robotics is just one manifestation of S.T.E.M. and I think to really begin to have some different educational outcomes for our students that we're going to have to infuse it throughout the curriculum. Which is I mentioned early childhood education, earlier because we have to -- because it is a more engaging way of teaching math and science where we are lagging nationally. So, I, you know, I appreciate the emphasis on robotics, I would like to -- I think maybe we need to know the demographics of who's actually participating in those courses. But I don't want us to think of S.T.E.M. only as robotics even though clearly that's your presentation but I think when we start looking at it as a school district, we need to look at the big picture and what are the other ways that we can infuse this throughout the curriculum. Mr. Diaz, you have a comment? 

>> Yeah, just give a little bit of context to the approach we're taking with middle school. The robotics program has produced such a huge amount of student interest, I mean it went from one class to, again, at every middle school a tremendous amount of engagement. The kid's having fun, the kids doing rigorous work and I think at this point, the outcomes as far as academic outcomes, are still to be determined but the outcome as far as interest, engagement, and participation in math and science I think has started. But within that context, it doesn't end at the middle school with just robotics, we have a career, college and career pathway initiative and we have six pathways and we'll soon expand to eight. And each of those pathways need to connect with our middle school, so that our middle school students are actually being exposed to opportunities in our high schools. And there's enough advisement and counseling so that they're connected with one of the pathways of which robotics is one and we have other that you'll hear about. 

>> Okay, are there any [inaudible]. [Background talking] All right. 

>> Thank you. I think everybody would agree that there's [cough] really nothing more exciting than to see excited, passionate faculty members who are on the ground everyday working with our students doing what they're doing. And certainly Eric and Solomon represent two of the best and Solomon is, may be not aware of this, but I was actually looking at statistics today and since Solomon's been on Board of PCC which I think has been three or four years now. The numbers, the completion rates in his programs are going way up, so he is doing a better job than I think that he's even aware of which is very exciting. So, as was mentioned earlier by Tim, there's a lot of things happening in science. We know from a technology point of view, we feature the robotics. Now I'd like to ask Dean Carl Main [assumed spelling], who is our mathematics Dean at PCC and Helen to again come up and this time talk about our partnership in the area of mathematics. 

>> Well, as we round out these instructional partnerships with math, I just want to reiterate what an enthusiastic partnership all of these have been as you've seen with English with S.T.E.M., that we've discussed so far. And this is no different with math. We began this year, based on the success of the English partnership; our math teachers were really interested in tapping into the expertise at PCC to see what we could do to support our students in mathematics for 12th grade. And we've had the fortune of working with Carl and his very strong team of instructors at PCC and a likewise strong team from PUSD. We noticed that there is a difference with, between English and math; they're both gatekeepers to a lot of classes once you get to the college level but whereas English is required throughout your four years in high school, math is not always taken in the 12th grade. And so we realized that there's a possibility that this gap year, as we came to term it, may be resulting in a lot of loss of information or retention of knowledge once they arrive at college. We actually had a brief look at some matriculation data with the PCC placement test and we noticed only about a quarter of our students, who matriculate to PCC, were placing into Math 131 which Carl let me know is the level four college, not college ready but associate degree math that's required. And so, we obviously want to raise that percentage much greater. So that led us to our brainstorming and this class Carl is now going to discuss with us, we have three objectives that we nailed it down to. We want to make sure that we raise the level of rigor for our math students who have been experiencing this gap in mathematics. [Background noise] And we want to make sure that they take math through their 12th grade year so that there is no loss or retention to loss time. And then the great carrot that Amy also discussed is that if they have success in this class that they could have guaranteed placement in Math 131 upon arrival at PCC. And without further ado, I'll leave it with Carl. 

>> [Background talking] Good evening and thank you for having us here. First thing I'd like to do is to compliment PUSD on hiring and having in their stable such an incredible person as Helen Chan. [Background talking] She has my faculty excited [laughter] and her [applause] -- I knew she would do that but her leadership and dedication really has this program going fantastically, so far. 

>> Its mutual, it's mutual. 

>> Yeah right [laughter]. Now, so now, we're here to put the M in S.T.E.M. [laughter], all those science and technology students and the English students as well, will eventually need a lot of mathematics. We want to make sure they get there. So looking at those objectives, the raised math rigor levels and the PUSD students coming to us is an important one but I don't think its half as important as the second objective there. We found a few areas where apparently California standards don't really quite treat some of the math topics the same way we do. That's the rigor question. But I was surprised when I got into this process, it was news to me that students didn't have to take math in their, you know, all the way through school. Which is kind of strange to me, I mean, you have to take English all the way through, it's a gatekeeper. Why don't you have to take math all the way through? It's also a gatekeeper and if we're going to solve some of our problems in this country about such things I think that's something we all are going to have think more about. [Background noise] But we do sense that students coming to us who did not take math in their senior year and sometimes even the last two years, [background talking] loose what they did know. And they come to us and place lower and are far less prepared but we think this is a very, very important issue. So what we're focusing on at this point, that we plan to expand this in the future once we get all this right and make it work well. But we're focusing right now are the students who complete geometry in the 11th grade which apparently in California high schools is the standard. You have to complete geometry and then you're done, you can graduate, [background talking] with the math part at least. So we wanted them to take more math so if they complete geometry in the 11th grade and we want to get them into some kind of math in 12th grade so they continue with their math experience, deepen their understanding and come to us better prepared. So, our two faculties have gotten together and developed a course, we're calling college preparatory mathematics. What it really is, is our Math 402, pre-algebra combined with our Math 125, beginning algebra and we want them to come out as if they had completed our Math 125 and will be moving on into Math 131, intermediate algebra. Intermediate algebra is equivalent of the high school Algebra II and so they would come to us having successfully completed such a course. They would come to us with guaranteed placement in Math 131 which would be, if they complete that, they would have completed their associates degree level mathematics and would be ready for transfer level mathematics. So, [clearing throat], let's see, well yeah, the first semester guaranteed placement to us with success here at PUSD and then, well we have five PCC people involved in this and we have -- it says there are five PUSD teachers confirmed but we now know that its six. So, the program is already growing as we speak [laughter]. We have gotten together, developed a common syllabus, common outcomes, a common final exam, this is one of the control issues here. We want them to see what we would expect our Math 125 students to pass so they should be dealing with the same kind of level of rigor and detail. We've met several times, notice February 7th and April 4th, April 4th was our last meeting except for a few of us got together just a few weeks ago or a couple of days ago actually. We've been doing a lot of curriculum development, we've agreed upon a course, we've agreed upon objectives and we're really kind of ready to go. So in fall 2011, there will be six such classes in PUSD high schools [coughing] and then in fall 2012, those students can come to PCC with their guaranteed placement in the intermediate algebra level, the Math 131. For the future, once we kind of get this right and make it work and make it work well, we'd like to expand this maybe to something like a similar treatment if Algebra II. So that when the student successfully completes that, comes to PUSD, they can go right on to transfer level and get college credit courses. But that kind of remains to be seen get this right first and then we can do that. Okay. Questions? 

>> [Background talking] To me this is where the engagement issue becomes very important that Trustee Brown was talking about earlier. I think that if you don't get students engaged in math at an early age to where they feel successful in mathematics, then we are not going to be able to convince them to take another grade level. If they haven't been passing it, they're not going to -- you know, they can't get out of where they're hung up. So I think that the -- it's really important I think that in order to really do what we need to be doing nationally in relationship to S.T.E.M., that it not just focus narrowly on the kids who are going to college anyway. I think the whole point is to really broaden the base, infuse it in the curriculum and get more kids involved and engaged because you really don't know where that next generation of adults -- of engineers is going to come from. And we need to really cast as wide as possible because we know we're not producing enough. So I think that, that's the real challenge for us and that's the real challenge in our mathematics courses. To make them more hands-on, to make them more relevant to the lives of the students all the way through, so that they see math as a successful experience and not just another -- and not just a time to be unsuccessful. And I think that is going to be the real challenge in S.T.E.M. because it is a hands-on model, has the potential for doing that. 

>> May I add too, that that's exactly what we are hoping to do with this course. I actually have been having great conversations with Tim Sipple and he said it so nicely, this is a remedial course but it's, we can't just do the same thing, the same way and expect different results. And so, the sixth [background noise] teacher that Carl was actually referring to that's been added on is actually our District math coach. She is going to take a section of the course at Blair High School and the reason why we decided to do this is because we realized that the hands-on and inc rebased and project based learning in this course was going to be essential. PCC graciously invited us to observe one of their instructors and so we came on and all at that time, actually all six of our PUSD instructors cam and observed, Dr. Chang. And we came away with this thought that wow if in college, we had had that kind of engagement and interaction in the math class, imagine what the learning would have been like. And so we took away from that, that we definitely need to instill this in our 12th graders and Nardero Nio [assumed spelling] is actually our District math coach and you're going to hear her name a lot. So she's taking this on as -- she's building the curriculum as we speak, making sure that matching the student learning objectives that we've come up with, with PCC. She has projects that our team is going to be practicing working on and making sure that the hands-on model is used consistently throughout the year. 

>> [Background talking] Mr. Phelps. 

>> Two questions, one for the presenters and one for Mr. Diaz. The two different early assessment tests; does one of them feed into one of your courses and feed into the other or? 

>> I'm sorry, can you repeat that? 

>> Early assessment -- you have two different early assessment in math tests, is that right? [Coughing]. [Background talking] thank you. 

>> [Walking] Hi, I think you're looking at a handout in your packet regarding the early assessment program and you notice there is a college algebra test and then there is a basic math section. And so the early assessment program which is a little different then the content curriculum alignment you've heard about here. The early assessment program is where 11th graders who are taking their California Standards test can answer additional questions that will provide us with a glimpse as to whether or not the student is prepared to go directly into college level math or English. And we [background noise] look at the college algebra information in order to make that determination. 

>> Oh, so these are extra questions on our tests? 

>> Correct. 

>> Okay, so it doesn't necessarily correspond to one of your courses then? Okay. 

>> Right. 

>> Okay and then the other question. Mr. Diaz, what is the status of funding for this wonderful person, this math coach? Is she on the list? 

>> She's on the list. 

>> Okay. 

>> Just like all of our instructional coaches are, so when we talked about, earlier when it was mentioned as far as the policy implications. You can see that we have personnel collaborating in a variety of [background noise] projects and so when we talk about coaches, they are usually the ones who are the most engaged in partnerships with PCC and partnerships with others, in order to improve math instruction and language arts and science and others. So, I think as we talk about our budget issues, we need to keep in mind that we have a core group of instructional coaches and leaders who's employment [laugh] is very critical to keeping these type of initiatives going. 

>> Mr. Honowitz? 

>> First of all I just wanted to comment that, you know, reflecting back on when we first met when Superintendent Diaz first joined us and we had a joint meeting and talked about, in very conceptual terms, we need to start thinking about partnering, we need to start thinking about programs that bring the community college and the school district together. I think what's exciting is now you're seeing the specifics of what's developed over the years of a lot of staff work and a lot of interaction and partnership. So, we've come a long ways over the last several years and I just wanted to thank you and PCC as well for the commitment to keep working on this process. I think it really benefits the community and its certainly a good use of tax dollars when we're all getting squeezed, this is exactly what we want, is not to have kids do remediation once they get back to -- begin at the community college. We want them prepared going in. [Background talking] But just a comment in terms of the hands-on nature of teaching math, my experience has been students that are not excited about math really get energized by things like taking a statistics class because it's very tangible and accessible. I mean, you deal with statistics [background talking] if you're a sports fan, if you're dealing with business, if you're dealing with science, almost everywhere, statistics is very [background talking] tangible and hands-on. Algebra II, I'm not sure you can say that excites kids in necessarily the same way so I think the challenge is to look at, how do you create sort of the real world application so that they're getting; what's the point of this thing anyway? Why am I grasping this and how does that translate into something that's going to mean anything to me? So, I just encourage that direction, I think that's really critical to students today and I'm sure you've got examples which maybe we can hear offline. I know the meetings getting long here. 

>> Yeah, we need to -- I'm struck by your expression of statistics as exciting and hands-on [laughter]. Well, that's not my memory of it but [laughter]. 

>> It's a relative thing. 

>> [Laughter] Okay. 

>> It's a relative term in relation to the other kinds of math; let me put it that way. 

>> But it was important and I did do it. I did Algebra II and lived to tell the tale but I think that there's a way to make it engaging. For me, as a student, I was very focused on going to college and I knew these were things I had to do to go to college. And that was enough to kind of discipline myself to get through stuff that I wasn't necessarily loving. It would have been much -- some other peers of mine who weren't in the college tract might have taken these classes if they represented as engaging and enjoyable and not like castor oil. But I think we have to find a way to open it up so they're appealing to all kinds of students whether you enjoy it or whether you're doing it because you have a very clear goal and a very clear focus. And this course is part of reaching that outcome. I think that that's really the challenge with S.T.E.M. and I think that's one of the goals is to open it up to -- is to get more students involved not just those who are very, very focused on what they want to do. And see this as applicable but I think we probably [clearing throat]. 

>> Trustee Brown has a question. 

>> I just have a quick question for PUSD. Is there a plan in place for to assess the students before they get into high school? So that they can get intervention if needed? Is there a plan and if so, what is it? 

>> Alice? Do you want to describe how we identify kids who are in need of intervention at middle school? 

>> Yes, yes a number of ways. Of course still, the most important judge for a student needing further support or intervention is the teacher in the classroom. Nothing can surpass what the knowledge of the teacher is however; the state of California has decided that state testing is what will also help. The California CST exams are crucial in letting us know and they can be disaggregated into a small subdivision as a question and what content area the student has not mastered. So we have the annual results which parents, teachers, all of us have an opportunity to see aggregated or disaggregated. But during the year, the Pasadena Unified School District, just as I'm willing to bet 99% of the districts in the state, has what's called quarterly's or benchmarks. And that means four times a year in that content area, they're being assessed to see if what was taught during that quarter has been mastered. And if not, we ask the teachers share with the student's the results and go back look for mastery. Does that help? 

>> Well, I'm a little confused because if our students are coming to PCC and they all are so far behind, are we correcting what we see or that's where I'm confused. 

>> Okay, Trustee Brown, we're a long way from perfecting the whole process of alleviating the gaps. As a state, as a nation, the gaps exist for any number of reasons certainly the quality of teaching, the rigor, some of the other factors that contribute. So I wish I could say to you that we are at the right spot but let me share something with you. Oh -- I thought I was doing it -- I think Board member Kinney has just entered the room [laugh]. But I will share with you a program that we just started that's very innovative. We've started a program for intervention in kindergarten, right now the intervention is strictly for English language arts and what we've discovered is we're having almost 100% success with children who should be on their grade level, able to sound out letters and words that weren't able to. They kind of moved on to the next grade, we've stopped that and said, uh huh, we're going to make sure you master this and we're going to try to do it if there's funding, knowing the crisis in the state and our budget. Our plans were to do it in first grade; we're also thinking that we need to do the same thing in math [background talking]. So if we're going to intervene, trust me middle school isn't where the intervention is needed. It's very, very early on, at the beginning stages of instruction, kindergarten, first grade because after that, each year the gap grow wider [background talking] and we need to intervene [background talking] just every year to make sure there is no gap. And we've got a long way to go and with less and less funding [background talking] it's going to be complicated. 

>> [Background talking] Just to wrap up the in portion of S.T.E.M. here, I'd like to react to two things that I heard. Is the mic not on? There we go, sorry. One of the big keys in having a successful math student is to get them into a course where they can actually achieve understanding and what's often referred to as mastery. Because at that point they realize they can do math and then all of a sudden they are turned on, being excited about their ability to do math. And then they're already turned on even if it's not terribly hands-on or anything else, they understand what they [background talking] can do. The other one is that statistics is a wonderful course, all right [laughter]. It is hands-on, I believe it's something that I think every [laughter] American citizen should have to take if they're going to [background talking] understand the modern world. Thank you. 

>> Some might call into question demographics with this conversation but I think we need to move forward. 

>> Yeah and I had the same debate with my statistics teacher too, President Cooper. [Laughter] I wanted to know more, how can I use this state as opposed to creating but that's a whole other story [laughter]. I'm going to let Alice introduce our next speaker here. 

>> I had a comment Ms. Cooper. 

>> We were told to have a hook ready and we've been holding the hook. 

>> A comment regarding the algebra. So here's my comments about algebra. I mean I could sit here and listen but this is interactive as well, if you want Board members to sit and just hear and not make a comment or observation, you should let me know beforehand. But some of us are also educators and we add something to the conversation. We know who's failing in fifth grade and fourth grade, we know it. There's not enough funds for intervention in the summer, so we know what it is, it doesn't -- I mean, education's doesn't develop that fast. So it is the priority of the funding of this state and this society, if we want to increase the number of people taking algebra, passing; we have to fund it at those critical ages. Now, my previous life I was Dean of Academic Affairs and during that time, you know, we have a program in Los Angeles called the Hime Escalante math academy which is non-credit, which is free. It's a partnership with Unified, Unified buys the books and we recruit the math instructors. I've probably mentioned this for as long as I've been on the Board that when you see these traditionally under represented students, lacking the ability to pass algebra in the critical ninth grade which is the gatekeeper. You don't pass it in ninth grade, tenth grade, they're not going to go to the four year, we know where [inaudible]. But what I've seen is the community college partner up with Unified, and these young children, who were otherwise turned off during the academic year, would volunteer enroll and spend all day at their local community college, 7:00 in the morning until 2:00 or what have you. The parents would line up; sign them up because the pedagogy of the approach of algebra or pre-algebra is different. It's the Jaime Escalante approach. I've mentioned it a couple of times. It seems like we don't want to engage new pedagogy or new models; but I would remiss by not stating that in public. That was...that's what I wanted to comment. Poor English learner kids do very well and pass algebra. 

>> That's true. 

>> Programs do succeed, but we're not looking at those programs and bringing them here to this service area. 

>> Thank you. 

>> Alice: Thank you, and hopefully we'll have a chance to speak about those programs and send our folks to visit. With that, the Trustees and the Board have both expressed their great interest in CTE. So because of it being as a top priority for all of you, we saved this presentation for nearly the end. It's interesting that the people presenting are former PUSD employee [laughter], and actually they are both former PUSD employees, but have continued to work together for the partnership of CTE. And this leads right into some of the questions you were asking on the previous agenda item, which is what motivates students to see how their instruction actually connects to their day-to-day life. With that I'd like to introduce Emma Sanchez and Mike Seaton. 

>> Mike Seaton: Thank you. Thank you, Alice. It's our pleasure today to -- let's see; I went the wrong way -- to be with you, and to share with you some information because throughout the evening's presentation you have heard in almost all of them some reference to Pathways. To how we are bringing rigor and relevance to students' education by connecting them to real world CTE-type strategies that make the reason for knowing the math, for being able to do the writing relevant for kids who have really grownup in a world very different than from the world that you and I were raised. So as Mr. Diaz mentioned, our Pathways Initiative is really built around six pathways, growing them to eight. And before the PCC Board Members, we've left our brochure on Pathways so that it will give you a little background to what we're doing to connect and bring this relevance to our students. And our goal is to have two-thirds of PUSD's students in a Pathway in the next three years. We have funding from the James Irvine Foundation. We have 1.4 million dollars for the past two years, and we anticipate another million dollars for the next two years from them in June. This initiative has really worked well in connecting our pathways with our CTE initiatives; and then there is a couple of those of which we use for funding. We have our Carl Perkins Vocational, our Career Technical Education Act funding, which has funded Tech Prep for many years. That brings about the articulation providing our students 2 Plus 2 Plus 2 programs. Our programs, our Capstone Programs, are articulated with your CTE programs at PCC; and then our students are also able, through articulation agreements, to go on to four-year institutions of which articulation agreements are made between you and them. We also have our SV70 Grants, and we really want to thank Jack Scott when he was a member of the Senate for introducing SV70 because it has provided us resources during these tight economic times to continue the articulation between K12 and the postsecondary institutions. SV70 is funding initiatives for the middle schools. It's for funding initiatives for our collaboration between PCC and PUSD; and it also has set up a regional collaborative, which includes GCC, PCC, and PUSD and Glendale and Burbank Unified School Districts. So working with these initiatives we have been able to work and we have set the goals, which are before you, to strengthen existing CTE sectors, of which we are working in it right now about eight industry sectors in PUSD. We're developing career exploration programs for middle schools; and, as I mentioned, we're working on a SV70 Grant for our middle school articulation of which PCC is a partner. We're providing professional development of which Emma will give more information. We continue to have articulation agreements between our programs so that students can get that advanced path or that advanced jump on college and getting credit for the classes they've taken in high school. Can I at least make this point with you: a recent change in PCC's policy which requires a student to be enrolled before they are granted -- in a CTE program before they are granted credit for that Capstone class really is a hindrance to our students being able to take advantage of it because many times a high school class that is articulated is the class that is the first class in your sequence of courses. So requiring them to enroll and complete a class usually means they've repeated the class that was articulated. So it's something for you to look at in the future. And our last goal is to prepare a future workforce for California with skills needed for emerging high scaled high wage jobs, which is really what we've been working on in our Pathways. From our engineering environmental sciences to our health careers, we are preparing kids for these opportunities and bringing that relevance, which we hope, as I've said, will make that reason for knowing the English, for doing the math, and answering the question you all asked at some point in your statistics class, where am I going to use this? [Laughter] 

>> Emma Sanchez: Oops. [Inaudible]. Here we go. Sorry, about that. Technology. All right. So the -- we are very excited to be working with you; and this collaborative, as he had mentioned, involves a number of collaborators. And we have two grants over two years, and you will see that we are currently focusing on six of the industry sectors. There are 15 in the state, and this is all based on labor market research. One of the areas in which we are addressing, as Mike had mentioned, is professional development. And in this area, we are very interested in contextualized teaching and project-based learning, which you've heard a little bit about with regards to robotics. The other area that we're also very interested in is stem and biotechnology. We conduct approximately six to eight workshops a year. We also have biotechnology cancer students over the summer. We also work in the area of articulation, and we do this through Tech Prep; and they are the leaders of the articulation agreements. And we've worked with PUSD and have held information meetings to help really articulate a more seamless way of creating the articulation agreements and having the students actually benefit by them from PUSD to PCC. And the other area that we're very interested in is really to increase counseling resources because as the Board you have also mentioned that we need to start doing this earlier and the state realizes this. That we do need to start this earlier, but this particular grant begins this work at the middle school area or at middle school. In fact, in one of the areas, the Teacher Grant Tip Writing Workshop, when we gave this workshop to the PUSD teachers, the teachers at John Muir actually received and were awarded a grant. And they sent us a really nice letter telling us it was based on their performance and their work at this particular workshop. We are also involved in program and event sponsorships, and the way that we do this is that we will support projects and big events that are held throughout the district and events that PCC might be sponsoring. So we purchase books. We will purchase facilities and buses so that your students can come to Girl Science Day, for example. That is Dean Douglas's event and his staff, and it's a very big event and many students come. And this is one way that we can support you so we, for example, pay for two buses so that your girls could come over to our school. We also pay for kits and parts of the kits. We work with Amgen; and we also work very closely with a Pasadena Bioscience Collaborative, and that would be Dr. Wendy Johnston, who is very big in biotechnology in the entire state, actually. And so we work closely with her and provide laboratory training to your teachers and to your students who come to the bioscience collaborative. We're also going to be paying for the Underwater Robotics Camp to sponsor 15 of your students to come to this camp that will be held over the summer, and it's being sponsored by the Iridescent Learning Corporation. And what's not mentioned is the city of Pasadena will be hosting four PUSD interns and the collaborative will be contributing $20,000 towards their salary over the summertime. The collaborative is also very interested in industry sector strengthening, and the way that we do this is that we will contribute towards the purchase of software and equipment. And at this time we've contributed over $10,000 in purchasing the Adobe Site Licenses. And I worked with Rosa Valdez, who's in charge of our OP; and she worked with her teachers to determine what is it that you needed at PUSD to bring your students to a higher level at an industry level. And so this was a determination that we made, and that's the purchase that we made. So the real gain is a counseling tool, and we made a purchase of software of seven of those so that your counselors could utilize that in their counseling sessions and in the classrooms. 

>> Middle school. 

>> That's middle school. 

>> Emma Sanchez: And that is a middle school activity, and then finally joint presentations. Under the leadership of Dean Hodge of CEC, we did a statewide presentation and in the area of Multiple Pathway Pipelines Strategic Alignment of K12 Business, Noncredit, Credit CTE: and that was Judy Turner from PUSD; Jan Swinton, Dean at Glendale Community College; Dean Hodge, and myself. And I'm sure that we will continue to do that. So we're very excited about this relationship because we do have nine K12 districts that we work with in addition to GCC and PCC. However, the strongest partnership is here, and I'm very excited to do that because actually I was an employee of PUSD last year. I was Project Manager of College and Career Pathways and worked with Mike Seaton; and Mike and I have worked since the 90s in Career Technical education. So we actually have a long history of having worked together in this field; and so we're very passionate about this work. Thank you. Are there any questions? 

>> Yes. Mr. Selinske. 

>> Mr. Selinske: As many of you know, I'm very excited about this in developing this career pathway. I think a couple of questions. I'm noticing the Building Trades and Construction Pathways and the Energy and Utilities Pathways. How engaged is perhaps city of Pasadena Water and Power in this process? And also, the different trade unions, how engaged are they in our current initiatives? 

>> Emma Sanchez: You know, I think that probably Dean Haines could speak best to that as he is the Dean of Engineering and that field. So, I believe, that he can probably speak to it because he has some relationships that he's been talking to me about actually just the other day. 

>> Dean Haines: Good evening. As far as our relationship with Pasadena Water and Power, we are this close to getting our Power Academy off the ground starting this summer. Our forecast is to have a pre-academy first electrical course to lead them into careers in the power distribution or in the mechanical side. Both requests are coming from the City of Pasadena and have been supported by the grant and [unclear] Tooling. So we were just about ready to kick that off. We're trying to get the city together and look forward to having that going in the summer. 

>> Mr. Selinske: And then the trade unions. [overlapping voices] 

>> Dean Haines: But let me go to the other part of that, which is our Muir Academy in Engineering has been partnering with Water and Power for the last three years and providing summer internships. So the students have been engaged in a number of community projects with Water and Power. 

>> As far as the trades, the trades are working through a pre-apprenticeship program through the Community Education Center; and they are introduced to the various trades, the unions, the responsibilities for working for unions and the skills that are needed. So that's a very strong program pre-apprenticeship going through the CEC right now. 

>> Mr. Selinske: Excellent. And I think that my hope...I think my hope in going through this campaigning process and getting a deeper understanding of what's available, I know the unions are very interested in developing deeper relationships throughout the community college system, as well as the K12 system, and I think the city as well. I'm also hearing discussions around what I call a Public Safety Academy with fire support and police support. So I'm encouraged by the potential for increased partnerships moving forward and it's very exciting. Thank you so much. 

>> Mr. Phelps. 

>> Mr. Phelps: Is there a...Dean...is the pre-apprenticeship program associated -- sorry. 

>> Sorry. 

>> Mr. Phelps: Is it associated or does it provide some way towards an AA? 

>> No. It's a noncredit program at this time. Unions really look at for our program to prequalify people and get them to that basic skill level or the basic work skill level so if they join a union they're going to succeed. Companies throughout, if you start investing in an individual and they can't cut it: they don't like the shovel; they don't like the long hours; they don't like the work, after a few months, you've thrown money away. So our program prepares them for the rigor and the understanding by touring unions, by hearing it from the entry level people this is what you need to work for us, and this is what you need to do as a career. 

>> Dr. Pomeroy. 

>> Dr. Pomeroy: Yes. Just a quick question. We are very fortunate to have the Pasadena Education Foundation bringing in financial support and moral support for some of these combinations; and I'm just wondering if the PCC Foundation takes part in any of this collaboration. I'm not sure just what their priorities are, but I know that it is an active foundation. So are they involved? 

>> Trustee Pomeroy, perhaps I would -- the short answer to your question is yes, and then now refer us over to Vice President Sugimoto, who will elaborate. 

>> Lisa Sugimoto: Thank you very much. Part of the Foundation's work is certainly scholarships, but the other part is bringing in grants and other programs that can support our various programs that are on campus. And a lot of the grant programs do come through another area that Ms. Chapman oversees. But we also do have programs that are generated by the Departments themselves, the divisions themselves; and they support a lot of these different programs. And I don't know if you would like to speak about some of the grants. 

>> Elaine Chapman: Well just to add to that we go after routinely, and on a consistent basis, both state grants as well as those coming though the federal government. And those, as you know, are the ones that entail a great deal of work for the initial proposals; but the rewards on the backend for those that we receive -- and it's millions of dollars a year that we do bring in through those federal programs -- do assist in supporting the many programs that we have on campus. So the answer, again, as Dr. Roche has said, is yes, most definitely. 

>> It doesn't quite fit here, but you all had a [overlapping voices] significant gift announced today. 

>> We appreciate the extent to which these benefit our PUSD students as well. So we appreciate that. 

>> Definitely. 

>> As PCC had a significant gift that was announced today I thought this might be a good time to allow you all to speak to that if you wanted to. 

>> It might be. I think it's very timely as we had a gift from the Westerbeck Trust or Estate, a nice four million dollar gift: a recognition of two alumni from PCC, and two very dedicated and very grateful people. So we are very, very pleased about that. We give a lot of credit to Dr. Sugimoto and Dr. Roche and Dr. Elaine Chapman, our PCC Foundation staff for pursuing this and making it happen; but this is a great day for Pasadena City College. 

>> And I believe it's the largest gift that was ever awarded to a community college. 

>> Well it's the fifth largest statewide. It's the largest for us. 

>> Right. 

>> By far. 

>> Yeah. 

>> Congratulations on it. 

>> Thank you very much, President Cooper. 

>> All right. Mrs. Kenne, did you have something? You look like you were getting ready to ask a question. Okay. So our... 

>> Okay. Moving on then, we want to now turn the spotlight on to the various partnerships and collaborations that have been developed between PUSD and PCC; and you actually have a handout in your folder about that. We're going to try to speed things up a little bit so we can try to make the best use of everyone's time here. Tanika Alexander is one of our PCC counselors and a member of our Outreach staff, and then Sharell Bailey is a member of PUSD staff and Outreach in Areas; and the two of them are going to make this presentation for us. 

>> Is Sylvia still there? 

>> Maria is. 

>> She's [inaudible]. 

>> Sharell Bailey: Thank you. Good evening, Board Members. My name is Sharell Bailey and I'm the Counselor with Pasadena Unified School District; and I would like to also introduce my colleague, Tanika Alexander, who works at PCC, and together we will discuss the collaboration and partnerships that we have with PUSD and PCC. I'm a Muir graduate. [Laughter] 

>> Tanika Alexander: She says she's a Muir graduate. I'm a PHS graduate. [Laughter] So I guess Bulldogs and Mustangs can work together. [Laughter] I'm going to highlight just a few of our outreach partnerships that we have. Application Day: on April 1st, 2011 we had PCC facilitators at all in district high schools, including CIS, Emerald City, and our goal was to assist students with the [background conversation] online application; and we are happy to report that over 300 students submitted the application to PCC on April 1. This step is very important because this is step one in getting them part of the enrollment process. So we're excited about that. PCC Ambassadors: the PCC Ambassadors are current college students that are at our in district high schools; and we're happy to report that the PUSD counselors have been wonderful in providing access to the students. And the great thing about this is the ambassadors conduct what we call lunchtime table setups. So a student let's say, for example, Marco is at John Muir High School in the quad with his table, and this is great because sometimes students don't want to come up to the Outreach Counselor or the High School Specialist, but maybe they'll talk with Marco to ask particular questions. What is PCC really like? And they're able to give that student perspective. Counselor Lunch and Learns: this is when we take PCC on the road. We have our outreach staff as well as the financial aid outreach team, and we meet with the high school counselors. This is their opportunity to say what's working, what's not working, provide updates, and this is a great way to open up the lines of communication. 

>> Sharell Bailey: Our annual PUSD PEF College Fair, which we have every year and we've -- it's been sponsored through PEF where we've actually had over 50 colleges and universities come and outreach to the students of Pasadena Unified. It's a Saturday event, and it's pretty much all day. We also have the young African American Women's Conference, which is hosted on PCC's campus and it's sponsored by Pasadena Alumni Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta. This is for students, for young girls, to come in and hear workshops about education, career, and lifelong goals. 

>> Tanika Alexander: The other thing that we provide is preadmissions counseling. There are some students who have lots of questions; and maybe they're not comfortable with coming down to the main PCC Campus, but they want to know how do I get started. What classes do I take? So as an Outreach Counselor, I'm at all the in district high schools assisting students with the enrollment process. 

>> Sharell Bailey: Another event that we had actually that passed on April 29th was our Middle and High School Counselor Day at PCC. This is where all Pasadena Unified School District Counselors got to go on PCC's Campus to hear about new programs and pertinent information that may be useful and helpful for counselors to take back to their school sites to pass on to our local PUSD students. We recently just had a major event. This past couple of weeks ago was the Adelante Mujer Latina Conference, which is actually more of an interdepartmental effort. So it's not just one particular program on PCC. It's actually a collaboration of Pasadena Youth Center with Stella Murga as well as PUSD students and PCC Departments as well. This event actually had over -- we're having a wrap-up meeting, but we're looking at about 300 students that were in attendance to this collaboration event. 

>> Tanika Alexander: And then the last program that I'm going to highlight is the Math Path Project, and one of the empowerment programs at PCC has partnered with Altadena Elementary, which is actually my alma mater [laughter], and these college students actually mentor the elementary school students. So there's staff and students and they do activities and projects; and then they come to the PCC Campus with their parents, and this is a great way to really get students engaged and excited and to really build that college-going culture. 

>> Sharell Bailey: Okay. And I really don't want to have to reiterate what was already spoken with Dr. Olivo, but we also have the EAP Program, I think, what Mr. Phelps was mentioning about the Early Assessment Program, and as mentioned before with Dr. Olivo this is an exam from the -- well the CST results that juniors take every year, as she indicated, that they would fill in a bubble and their score reports would be passed on to Pasadena City College. What we also utilize for our partnerships is the High School Diploma Program because we have a lot of students who wish to continue their diploma and they may have not succeeded in graduating. And so we also partner up with the CEC Center, which is the Community Education Center. And we refer students to the High School Diploma Program where students can complete their diploma, and they will be issued...it's a 170 credit program where they're issued a state diploma as opposed to the standard 220. Our Upward Bound Program, which is a federally funded program that assists our first generation or low income students and this is at select sites. I understand that it's stated out of four...on four PUSD school sites, but we wanted to correct it by stating that it's offered at right now we've calculated three of the four PUSD school sites. And then for instruction, our partnership as mentioned earlier by Mr. Seaton and Ms. Sanchez, the CTE Education Opportunity where articulation agreements are developed, and then also the English Project that Ms. Chan has discussed earlier, as well, regarding English and Math, the pilot program. 

>> Tanika Alexander: So this concludes our brief presentation on some of the partnerships that we have between PUSD and PCC. We'll go ahead and entertain questions if there are any at this time. 

>> Mr. Phelps. 

>> Mr. Phelps: Did you mention 300 applications? Was this an event or? 

>> 

[ Inaudible ] 

>> Tanika Alexander: Yes. It was a one day event where we had PCC facilitators at all of the schools on the same day at the same time allowing them, you know, the same opportunity to apply. And so we had over 300. 

>> Mr. Phelps: And the seniors at each of our high schools were helped through a like presumably online or some sort of application process? 

>> Tanika Alexander: Right. An online application. We had PCC facilitators who were trained by the admissions staff to ensure that the students actually answered the questions correctly. For example, there's a question that if they answer it incorrectly, it gives them the lowest registration date and time. 

>> Mr. Phelps: Oops. 

>> Tanika Alexander: So we wanted to ensure that the students filled it in properly. 

>> Mr. Phelps: So I would be interested in knowing, not this minute, but, you know, how these people that are applying or successfully applying apparently and getting a registration date, right, are they aligned with any, you know, Pathway or high school? I mean I know that we probably have more people from PHS. That's a pretty good educated guess. 

>> Tanika Alexander: And absolutely... 

>> Mr. Phelps: And that's not just because of you, but... 

>> Tanika Alexander: Right. 

>> Mr. Phelps: ...because it's our biggest high school. 

>> Tanika Alexander: And you're absolutely right. 

>> Mr. Phelps: But, you know, we're interested in, you know, Pipe Lines and Pathway outcomes. And I'm very encouraged by this because I think it's been a barrier for students and families to figure out the application and registration process is what I've heard. So... 

>> Tanika Alexander: Right. Absolutely. 

>> Mr. Phelps: ...I'm very encouraged. Thank you. 

>> Tanika Alexander: So they begin with the application, and then part two is the assessment process; and that's when the Assessment Team actually does the placement test on their high school campus, and then they continue on throughout the process. 

>> Thank you. 

>> Mr. Pack. 

>> Mr. Pack: Yeah. I know this might not be available data right now; but I would be interested in knowing, you know, we got 300 students to complete this process. About how many PUSD students actually applied to or attend PCC just to put that 300 number into perspective for me, and then are there projected growth rates for this program? Do we have goals that we're looking to, you know, increase the number by X amount? And I'm particularly interested in and, you know, hoping that this program will expand because in relation to that registration date, I know we have recently refocused our policies to help better serve in district students with a higher registration date. So I think it's of the utmost importance, especially right now when students are having trouble getting classes that we get as many PUSD students to register correctly as possible. 

>> I'll second that. 

>> Mr. Honowitz. 

>> Mr. Honowitz: Yeah. That was one of my questions was taking a look at the numbers and percentage of PUSD students enrolling to try and assess how is all of this activity impacting the numbers actually flowing into the community college. We may not have that yet. I mean I know this is sort of in the works, and you probably won't know ultimately until you see who's, you know, in September or August who's there. But I mean I think that's important for us to look at so we can really take a look at, you know, at the impacts. 

>> One thing we do know is that the vast majority of our students come from outside of the geographic area that we serve. So you take PUSD and put that as some percentage of -- it's what about 35 percent who come from within the district? 

>> Yes. It's about two-thirds, one-third. 

>> Yeah. 

>> Mr. Honowitz: Right. And we're only a portion of your whole district. 

>> Right. 

>> Gotcha. 

>> Mr. Honowitz: The other question I had was the degree to which when you're out on our campuses having discussions with student you're overtly talking about the value of an education at PCC. Because it is amazing to me the number of students and youth in the community that perceive that, you know, if I can get into Everest, and I can get this student loan, and I can saddle myself with a bunch of debt, and I can get something. And they could be getting a higher quality, higher value education going to PCC at a much lower price. So I'm wondering if you're having that discussion with students about the relative value of what's available. 

>> Tanika Alexander: We are. We also conduct what's called Presentations. I know PSH has allowed us to speak with all of the seniors. They were able to do that for us last year. John Muir has done the same. And basically I call it Motivational Presentation. One because not everyone is thinking college, and so one of the messages one give it a try; but number two, we offer a lot of those programs that they see on television, you know. So a lot of them are not aware that we have Medical Assisting, so on and so forth. So we have a one-page sheet that we give them that lists all of these programs. And it's amazing to see students. You know it's kind of like that little light bulb comes on of oh wow. I didn't know PCC had this program. So not only do staff share this information, but I think our Student Ambassadors are really able to sell it pretty well. 

>> Mr. Honowitz: That's great, and then just lastly, in terms of priority registration for our students, not only at the point where they are leaving our high schools to go into the next level and go to some kind of college situation, but also for our students to think about enrolling in classes that we don't offer. So, for instance, you know, we don't have a psychology class in a high school, but we have students that would love to, you know, take that that have enough credits. They have elective ability. Those are the kinds of things that I think we can really extend the opportunities for students. So are we offering some kind of priority enrollment for that kind of concurrent enrollment situation? 

>> Tanika Alexander: I actually serve as one of the counselors for the Fast Track Program and also the CAT Program, College Advantage Program. And so this is where students are able to take a college level class. So there's a number of students at PHS that participate, from time to time, students from John Muir, a number from Marshall; and probably the majority from Blair, who are made aware oftentimes by their high school counselor or they'll hear it in a presentation. But we do try to promote and push concurrent enrollment. 

>> I'm wondering, and maybe it's too soon to tell what the completion rate is like. Is that improving? Because I'm well aware that particularly for African American and Latino students coming out of Pasadena Unified School District going into PCC, their completion rate in terms of hitting their academic goal, hitting their target, is not really wonderful. They're not making it over to CAL State LA in very large numbers, Dr. Rosser. And so, I think, all this outreach is excellent; but, I think, unless this outreach is somehow connected to a successful completion rate for those students that you're doing outreach to, you know, there's a part of this that creates anxiety in me. Because if you're going to get them there, but they're not going to complete their goal and transfer or go on and complete the vocational technical education goal, whatever the goal is, if they're not completing it, then it's not such a great thing. So I am hopeful that that's being tracked in relationship to all of this outreach. 

>> Tanika Alexander: One of the things that we're looking to do is really connect them with a program because if they're not necessarily connected with a program there may be difficulty moving on to the next level. So that's one of the goals, and I know that with the Pathways we're going to be working with some of those individuals to make sure that students not only apply, but that they're connected with a team of individuals to ensure that they're successful. So we'll begin to track that I'm sure. 

>> Mr. Miramontes. 

>> Mr. Miramontes: Let me echo Ms. Cooper's statements and so forth. This is obviously a statewide trend in community colleges in terms of the persistent rates and the graduation rates of African American males and Latino males. Some research from CAL State Sacramento would put that respectively around 14 percent or 17 percent in a six-year span. So in six years those who identify themselves that they want an A or transfer of those 14 or 17 make it. It's like the hidden dropout that we don't talk about. We talk plenty about the high school, but I think this is kind of the common passion that one has. That's why I believe Dr. Rosser's here, and, again, I want to thank you, I think, on behalf of everyone for being here because you physically being here and you verbally saying that we need to make sure that everyone makes it through the pipeline makes it very incumbent upon us as two Boards that we ensure that. And that's why these conversations are very important. So it's not a criticism of PCC. Not at all, right? I mean we have great faculty, staff, student services, and the like. Part of PCC's very high transfer rate is the high number of high performing high schools in the service area. That's what it is. And so I want to take this opportunity among my colleagues to know that it's almost like a double negative to have such a great community college right here in the shadow of Northwest, right, where most of our remedial students when they assess are here. So the message is just, you know, kind of just reinforcing what staff does every day and faculty talking to each other because if those rates could move up, the persistence rates and the graduated rates, in California and the nation, it is here in Pasadena. It is here that it could happen. So clearly at least one of the policymaker and I'm echoing Ms. Cooper and others is this is the higher calling, I believe, between PUSD and PCC. Unlike any other place, we have riches here in terms of assets; and so I commend all of you for talking about it, but we've got to take it to the next level. A couple of other things just under this item...just questions under partnerships. They don't have to be answered right away, but it's under partnerships. I would like to at least get some feedback or response from both our CEOs, Dr. Roche and Mr. Diaz, as to...just remind me, whatever happened to Middle College, the Middle College Grant. Because a lot of what we're talking about is on the edges, and you know we have Middle College second. I'd like to know, again, during your time, have our respective staffs and facilities been talking to each other? We know we read and we talk to our colleagues that there's need for space, classroom space, at PCC. We have been talking for a couple of years now in terms of the ED Center, which is a stone throw away in terms of PCC. So I just want to get feedback or a comment regarding that, and that's all my questions. Thank you. 

>> To just answer one quickly. The early college high school program that was on the table...you're going to have a presentation right after this about a program that has similar elements; and then, I think, after that presentation, maybe we could have a little bit of discussion. But that initiative, the way it existed, was not something that we felt we could move on this year; and so, as a result of that, there was a lot of discussion, and you'll see an alternative to that. 

>> Dr. Mann. 

>> Dr. Mann: Yes, I just want to make a very brief comment, and we are going to the discussion of College Ready First Year Student Success Program. But, I think, to look at it in a broader perspective, all these programs that we have with English and math and giving and offering the courses and getting students ready so that they can go into college level English, college level math, college level science; all that is designed towards students' success because if students have to take the remedial courses, the probability of them finishing it and moving to the next level is very high. That's why we want to have the students in our district come in ready for college-level work. That will make all of these rates go up for all the students and will save us a great deal of money because we can offer college courses and not have to spend all of our time on the remedial courses. We're going to hear more about the program; but, I think, you know, you put your finger on a critical thing. And I just want to make sure, particularly for the people who are listening to this, that they understand that this is the point for the college being here and being involved is so that when the students come out and come to PCC or any other community college they're ready to do college-level work. 

>> Two points to make as long as we're tagging on to what Janet has said. Number one, as you're probably well aware, by law we have to admit anybody living anywhere... 

>> Yes. 

>> ...in the world to PCC. That's the way the law is, and we have to abide by that. But one of the reasons we are establishing this Pathways Project with PUSD, which we intend to our expect to be able to use with every other of the 11 schools in our district, our geographic area as well, is to be able to address the local needs of our students. Right now, we are experiencing at PCC...it's not unique to us...it's not unique to California, but across the country...approximately 70 percent of the students coming in need training in basic skills: reading, writing, and math. Now you can imagine if you're a college professor and you've got to deal with that. So we're hoping and one of the goals of the Pathways Project is to address those needs while students are still in high school. You may well be right. Probably reaching them at a much earlier age is going to be critical and required; but, at least, addressing it at this level we hope to have more efficiency, cut down the number of students coming into PCC who need these basic skills courses. So that's just something for all of us to keep in mind as we look at this. Mr. Pack. 

>> Mr. Pack: This is sort of just to tag on to or a thought that I had after Ms. Cooper's comment. I'm sort of disappointed in myself for waiting until the near end of the meeting to bring this up. As many of you know, I'm an advocate...or the people from PCC know, I'm an advocate for integrating technology as a resource for students. And I think that if we're talking about completion rates and, you know, this is not unique to any one group of students, but for all students, we would be remiss if we did not discuss the importance of offering technological resources in terms of online resources. If we look at the demand for what students are doing with their spare time and where they're going to get their information, everything is online. Not just like a program on their computer, but it's on the cloud out there and they can go access it from any device. I think that an educational plan from the PCC perspective is really important to sort of guide you through the PCC experience; and if perhaps someday, that could be a joint project between PUSD that maybe starts in like the junior year of high school where you can experiment with ED Plan Paths that will integrate and bridge you to PCC and so forth, that would be wonderful. I just think, you know, if I can go on Twitter right now and find out where my friend just had dinner, I don't see why I shouldn't be able to go onto PCC and figure out you know what classes I might need to take as a general direction. So I think if we're worried about losing students some way through PCC, the best way to keep them on track is to offer this online compass that they can check anywhere from any device. You know smart phones just finally surpassed regular phones in terms of the devices that everybody's using now. So everybody is wanting access to online information, and I think that, you know, if we offer that as a resource, I'm sure that students would greatly appreciate it. 

>> Thank you. 

>> All right. [Background conversation] Mr. Selinske. 

>> Mr. Selinske: Actually, Mr. Pack was reading my mind when it comes to the online resources. I guess the question I have is what possibilities are there for our students accessing online. We don't have to have an answer now, but it seems like that would be a tremendous resource. Our online capacity is limited at this point for online classes. And so if our students had access to online education through PCC, it would be, I think, a tremendous resource. 

>> Dr. Roche: Well, just a couple of things very, very quickly; but Trustee Selinske, we are working. Part of the Student Access and Success Initiative that our Board funded is where we are doing a huge ramp-up of online education and training for faculty. I know that we are in the middle of a High Mass [laughter], and that we started with that multicolored sheet and I think I wanted to come back to Trustee Miramontes's comment that as Edwin said that we're going to come back. The template for everything is this multicolored sheet that we're going to come back to, and Bob's going to talk about the green section in a moment. And then we'll try and put this all together because almost everything that we've talked about tonight fits onto this template. And just a quick response, I do want to thank Edwin and all the facility staff, everyone in Unified, because we have been working very, very closely together on facilities. Edwin, we worked together on the biotechnology giving us a site for our biotechnology program. We've been working on...actually we're working pretty hard on a possible option for our U Building situation. So, I think, and Vice President Van Pelt has been working very closely with your staff on this. So we'll continue to keep on that because it's to both our benefits. So now so Bob is going to come up and now talk on this multicolored sheet. 

>> This is the key. 

>> Dr. Roche: We've been talking mostly about the...you know, the first part of the two. Slowly but surely, we'll get up to the final two and Jim's been there and grades 10th, 11th and 12th. But Bob is going talk about this green column that what happens to students who do arrive at PCC and are not ready for college-ready courses. And thanks to Bob and other faculty here, we've been working under a Title V Grant to have a new program for that. 

>> Yes. Thank you Dr. Roche, and I would also say to Mr. Pack and others that not only are we doing online instruction and we're ramping that up, but part of what I'm going to talk about are relative to student portals and smart phone applications and ways in which to access students, where students live and breathe these days. And I'm proud to say that with our Title V Grant and a lot of the leadership of our faculty, we are looking into those things. And a year from now, we should have a lot of very exciting things to report to the Boards on this topic. But as Dr. Roche mentioned, we're...I'm going to talk a little bit about what we call the college-ready year; but before I do that, I just want to point out the top section of this graph. Part of our Title V Grant relates to three ways in which we are reaching out to our PUSD students and other students in our district. The first is through a variety of online interactions. We do a lot of outreach that way. We're doing virtual meetings with a lot of our first-year students, our counselors and case managers. There's a lot of activity that is reaching out into the high schools right now, and getting folks to interact with us in an online student portal kind of experience. And that's gearing up right now. Additionally, we've got our student mentoring activities, which includes a lot of peer interaction and campus visits, and Tanika and Sharell and others have talked about that. And then we have our traditional the PCC High School Bridge activities, which have existed, which were referenced earlier; but also is part of this English activity and math activity that's already been spoken to. So there are things happening that even before we get to the college-ready year. Now I'd like to bring your attention down to what we're calling Starting Right in a 300 PUSD student pilot. And, in fact, that number is about 320 actually. The way this is going to work we're going to start with a summer experience: a two-week no cost Math Jam experience to work with students to get them where they need to be. There will be an orientation to college activity, and then there'll be a lot of interaction with what we call Student Success Team members, again, those are case managers, tutors and what have you. Then when they're done with that, we will immediately move them into guaranteed enrollment in English ESL and math classes. And then they'll continue to have this access to our Student Success Team, and then finally in our spring activity they'll have guaranteed enrollment in English and math and continue the access to our Student Success team. Now let's talk about numbers for a second here. The first group, the 2011 PUSD English Collaborative Students, in that program that Dean Olmer and [loud noise] Ellen talked about earlier, there's about 220 students give or take in that program right now. We believe that of the 300 about 100 to 150 of those PUSD English Collaborative students will be part of our PUSD pilot. We're going after that group and we believe that will happen. There's somewhere I think between 1,800 and 2,000 PUSD high school graduates a year. Already, as of April 1...and I don't have the updated number...but as of April 1, we had 400 PUSD high school seniors apply to PCC. So a month later we know that's a greater number and Cynthia and her team are working to get as many of those PUSD students into PCC as possible; and we're going to get as many of those in the next bullet down, 2011 PUSD graduates, as many of those folks will be in this program as well. And then our third priority will be Pasadena Community College district graduates, and then finally 2011 grads who are financial-aid eligible. I will let you know that our Teaching and Learning Center deals with somewhere between 700 and 800 students a year right now; and of that group, 300 plus will be PUSD students as we grow this thing out. Now components of the College-Ready Year, as I mentioned: guaranteed enrollment, English ESL and math, the first-year experience, supplemental learning, counselors, case managers, mentoring programs, professional learning for participating faculty. This is a highly choreographed and highly engaged process that we are putting together not only for our students, but also for our faculty and staff. We're going to be part of this venture. In addition to that, this online environment that I was referencing earlier and Mr. Pack, has to do with what we're going to be doing online for our students...so significant matriculation activities online. Our Lancer Link is the name of our student portal right now, which will be enhanced. We're creating a certificate and degree status checks. You'd be amazed at how little we know about where our students are going. So one of the things that we will be investing in the very near future is an online degree and certificate status check program, if you will. And we've got a big presentation lined up next week thanks to Dean Callerus. And then it'll also track our transfer progress as one of the things. So the student portal is going to be a key way in which we maintain contact with our students in this pilot; and again, for our Board members, I remind you that all this is in preparation to roll out to the other districts in the 1213 year. So, as I mentioned, 300 in district students, typically first generation, ones with financial need will have this three unit first-year seminar. It will be a credit class. You'll see...you can see there what it will include: the Summer Math Jam Orientation and all the guaranteed courses and all the type of support team activities. Now the primary funding and support for this comes from the US Department of Education Title V Grant, the California Community College Chancellor's Office through what's known as the Basic Skills Initiatives, providing support for this, our Boards providing us our Student Access and Success Initiative funding; and then a lot of other college resources that exist because what we do is we network and we bring in as many people to the table as possible on this. So, quickly, we have an educational master plan, and of course everything we've talked about tonight aligns closely with our educational master plan in moving our student success targets forward: our transfer targets, our AA and AS degree targets, our basic skills continuation rate targets, and also our CT targets. So these are a couple of the priorities that align to our educational master plan; and you can see what the priorities are and what they do and this fits very well with those priorities. And as far as PUSD and your strategic plan, you can see here the priorities that are very much a part of your plan and that are very much a part of this program. And so that's...again, everything we do is focused on those two primary roadmaps, if you will, to how we move forward as institutions in support of our students. So with that said I'm now going to slow it down and ask Dr. Cynthia Olivo come in; and she's going to actually walk you through what is actually three separate and distinct paths on this 2 Plus 2 Plus 2 College Commitment. 

>> And, if I may, President Cooper, in introducing Dean Olivo, to just set it up with two brief comments. And now we've come full circle from what President Rosser, Superintendent Diaz and I referred to and signed at the beginning and this is the College Commitment...just two points. One is that the thing that certainly that I've been hearing since I've been Superintendent and President is that PCC is great, but we have high schools out here and we need to build a track. So the metaphor that we're using is building a track. You can have a great train and we do, but we have to lay down track between the high schools and PCC and to lay down the track between PCC and CAL State LA. The last point is on this multicolored sheet. At the bottom left, I asked Dean Olivo to head a team. We were one of the few colleges in the country to be invited by the Lumina Foundation to compete for a grant on Latino student success. And this is all about President Obama's Graduation Initiative; and so, again, what I'm very, very pleased about, especially with this great staff work, is that our application will go in as a joint application with Unified, PCC and CAL State LA. And I think that will make it one of the strongest applications in the country. So, thank you, Cynthia. 

>> Dr. Cynthia Olivo: No problem. [Laughter] Hi, everyone. I've been waiting anxiously over here to talk with all of you. So the Two Plus Two Plus Two College Commitment for Pasadena...I'm going to briefly highlight the points that have not already been discussed tonight, which include in grade 10, if you'll notice, there is an English and math boot camp. So we proposed to begin preparing students for English and math at the level that we need them to understand the curriculum. We will have a boot camp 10th grade. We will also infuse career counseling in the 10th grade because students need to begin formulating an idea about which goal they would like to achieve. Now at 15 years of age, I think, it's rather difficult to identify exactly which career a student will, you know, follow; but we just want to get students thinking about whether or not they'd like to transfer or if a career in technical education appeals to them. And if they do want to transfer, we'd like to explain the opportunities available to students with the UC and the CSU as well as private and independent colleges. We also plan to incorporate a mentor program. This is very similar to a federally funded program called Gear Up where a mentor is assigned to a student and will be with the student throughout getting a bachelor's degree. So in grade 10 you'll notice that that's where we begin to offer students the opportunity to identify which path they're going to be on, which option: Associate Degree with CSU [unclear] Transfer Certification or Associate Degree for Work Force Certificate. In the 12th grade we will focus on providing students with the opportunity to gain the knowledge that they need in order to bypass the assessment and placement test and go directly into college-level English or math. And in your packets, you have the Early Assessment Program results for this academic year; and, of course, we have begun the partnership. And so we're excited to see how many PUSD students actually enroll and go directly into college-level English or math. And we will begin to follow their progress to see if the students persist throughout the college-level courses. Then the student will in their freshman year...now Bob already explained the college-ready year. So I'm going to breeze right through that and go to freshman year. A student will be guaranteed a 20 course 60 unit sequence, and this is where the students will begin to take care of their requirements right when they enter PCC. They will do their two years with us, and then they'll transfer and go to CAL State Los Angeles. And CAL State LA will guarantee that the students will be able to graduate after completing 60 units at CSU LA without having to complete any additional surprise courses students sometimes encounter. So we feel that this seamless 2 Plus 2 Plus 2 Program offered with the support services that we have described this evening will be able to provide the outcomes that we're all looking for; and most especially we'll be able to allow students to achieve their dream of going to college. You know somebody I've been reading about as I prepared the Lumina Latino Success Initiative Grant application is the Jaime Escalante story. And Jaime Escalante is a PCC alumni; and he also transferred and graduated from CAL State LA. So this is a story and a narrative that we will be highlighting. We want many more students to have that type of experience where they're able to, you know, rise and beat the odds and achieve success. I can take any questions if you have them. 

>> Are there any questions? 

>> I just have a comment. I've seen this document: the 2 Plus 2 Plus 2 thing go through many stages, and I think right now it's just beautiful to look at. It's very nicely arranged, and I think that if we could just make that available online to students, something similar, so they could click through and choose their classes, and sort of at the end have this like here's what my educational result would look like. Maybe like a little graduation date panel based on how you change the stuff in between so you'll graduate in, you know, 2014 based on this. Or like a listing of majors that you'd be eligible for at CAL State LA based on how you change the stuff in between. I think all of that would be really great for students because you could play with a lot of different options and answer your own questions that, you know, maybe you wouldn't get in a time-constrained counseling appointment or something like that. 

>> Yeah. We're looking at that with the project that we are working on with the portal. So that's one the tools we will be incorporating into student portal. 

>> Dr. Mann [phonetic]. 

>> Dr. Mann: I just want to make a comment. I've been waiting to this point to make it because we have finally seen, you know, the whole sequence here. I'm on the Student Success Task Force, which the legislature mandated be appointed. At the end of the year we are to make recommendations on how to improve success, how to get them more quickly through college. And I think most people do not realize how over-enrolled the community college's are, and who has been, last year, kept out where the students who had just graduated from high school. So, for example, according to [inaudible] office, there are 150,000 students who had been admitted but could not be enrolled because there were no classes. 149,000 of those were students who had graduated from high school and could not start college. I think the key thing that this program has is a guarantee of that the classes will be there and there will be a place for you, you can take the classes you need and you can be through in four years. This is the way it used be back in the dark ages, when I was a student. Everyone did this. But, the classes were offered and you could enroll. And I think that is a tremendous benefit that we're offering the students of the district. If we can actually get this working so they can go in in four years, Dr. Rosso [inaudible] shaking their hand as they get their diploma and walk across the stage. 

>> And then they are guaranteed they get into CAL State L.A.? [Laughter] 

>> [Inaudible] again? 

>> I would just like to make one comment in that regard, because what's really unique about this, and it's different, the California master plan says that we have to provide admission to every eligible two-year college transfer student. But that only means be admitted to the university. We're talking in this partnership about admitting them -- a guarantee admission to the degree program of their choice and a commitment to graduate them within two years. As a part of the graduation initiative within the CSU system, it is our hope that we will be able to graduate over 60% of our entering freshman within six years. And we want to set a goal for graduating our, if you will, two year college transfer students in under four years. So, this is [inaudible] with what the national trend has been. For those of you who don't know, we are the most culturally rich university in the country, CAL State L.A., and we have been since 1970. The majority of our students have been women since 1970 and the majority of our students have been students of color since 1970, too. One of the other interesting things -- is it Mr. Pack [phonetic]? Every student who transfers from a two year college into CAL State now must declare a major. And one of our requirements is that you must now have a degree completion program on file in what we call Golden Eagle territory. And we have a degree audit program that's available online so you, as well as faculty members, can monitor your progress 24 hours [Laughter], 365, 7 by 24, you know. And we encourage students, by virtue of this. Every student who enters now must have an account, an email account. And email is the official means through which we communicate with our students at CAL State L.A. now. So through working in this partnership there are a lot of things that we will be doing collaboratively together that transcend just the other two piece of it, because a CSU has a program of beginning to try to encourage students as early as the sixth grade to prepare for college. And we have a poster that we share all across the state that says, "How to get to college," beginning in the sixth grade. Courses to take, A through G. We would hope that as a part of this partnership that every student [inaudible] unified would be encouraged to sit for the early assessment exam. That will tell them, before they enter the 12th grade, even before they go into the summer, we hope, as we work with ETS, whether they are college ready. And you can't take the math portion of the entry level math test as a component of the AAP [phonetic] unless you had Algebra II. So there's some other interesting requirements as it relates to this. The CSU also, as a part of its strategic plan, access to [inaudible], has a commitment to closing the achievement gap. And one of the things that you were talking about earlier in terms of [inaudible], the greatest threat long-term to this nation is its changing demography and the lack of people who are indigenous to this country, who are getting degrees in science, math, engineering and technology. We can't allow that continue to occur. We are excited about this partnership with Pasadena Unified and with PCC because we look a lot alike. And I think we share the same values relative to student success. Thank you. 

[ Clapping ] 

>> We actually have three requests to address the Board of Trustees with respect to [inaudible] on the agenda, which is audience participation-public comments. So if it's appropriate let's address [inaudible] Christopher Fennesy [phonetic]. 

>> Christopher Fennesy: Thank you. My name is Christopher Fennesy. I'm a student at Pasadena City College. I am the President of the Lancer Maulda [phonetic] United Nations Club there at the campus and I wanted to inform both the Board of Trustees and Dr. Rocha [phonetic] and the passing [inaudible] representatives here today about an upcoming event that we'll be hosting. On May 27th our club will be hosting, with the UNA-USA Pasadena Chapter [phonetic], a non-profit here in Pasadena, we will be hosting our third annual Maulda United Nations High School Conference at Pasadena City College. This will be our third one. Last year's conference had -- well, first all I will describe Maulda United Nations real quick for those who do not know it. Maulda United Nations is a competitive international program that -- where students will research and debate on international issues, representing countries in the United Nations itself. It helps students to gain insight on these international -- on international issues while building their own debate and diplomacy skills. And the difference of our conference is that we specifically go out to the high schools involved and we mentor the students. We help the teachers to train them and prepare them for the conference. And we help them become the best [inaudible] they can be, which is the way that no other conference in the country does. Last year's conference had over -- had almost 200 students from six local area high schools, including Mear [phonetic], Marshall, PHS and Blair. Last year's conference was also sponsored by State Senator Carol Lou [phonetic] and Mayor Bill Bogard and a representative of the Governor's office were both in attendance. This year's conference we're hoping to be bigger and better than last year's. We're expecting 250 to 300 students at least to debate on 10 different topics on our theme of global sustainability, which encompasses economics, social and environmental sustainability. So any topics ranging from oil and alternative energy to the crisis in Libya. And, so, I just wanted to send an open invitation to all members present and members of the community to come and enjoy our conference on May 27th at Pasadena City College. 

>> What time? 

>> It's -- opening ceremonies start at 8:30 a.m. in the Amphitheater, just south of the library. Closing ceremonies also at the Amphitheater at -- and that starts at 3:30 p.m. And, although debating will be happening all day, the first -- the debates will start at 9:00 -- the first time from 9 to 12 and then continue at 1 until 3:15. So we will have signs and more information on campus for those who would like to come and also watch students from the high schools to debate with each other. It's actually a really amazing conference and I hope this conference will be great and I hope to see anyone there. If you want any information you can contact me at -- I guess you can contact our club at pccmun@gmail.com. Or you can go to our website, a freestanding website we made specifically for this conference, which is at pasadenamun.org. 

>> Great, thank you very much. 

>> Thank you. 

>> Thank you. The next is Vilad Viski [phonetic]. 

>> Vilad Viski: I'm actually really glad that the community is present and the Pasadena [inaudible] high school district as well. I would like to remind the Board of Trustee, first, that a year ago a group on campus called Students for PCC was formed in order to inform students in regards to the budget cuts and in regards to the economic situation at PCC. And this group has been growing and growing. And today, at noon, the [inaudible] at PCC, there was a rally. A rally where almost 150 students were present. And they expressed their concerns in regards to the economic situation at PCC and possible decisions to be made by the Board. One of the discussions was questioning, actually, the student trustee and [coughing] the fact that he has not reached out to students yet in regards to specific elements. And, also, he hasn't provided enough information to the AS Board, [inaudible] students Board in regards to the current situation. And, also, he hasn't been asking the necessary questions. So we have to ask those questions. And those questions are in regards to the hiring of five new vice presidents and the college council at PCC, which would cost the college $500,000, which would mean almost 100 sections. And given the fact that next year one of the propositions is to cut 600 sections from PCC. I think this will affect the whole community, actually. And the -- according to President Rocha [phonetic], about 8,000 students that got accepted at PCC did not get into their classes. So that is a big concern. And we have been voicing our opinions in regards to the hiring of five new vice presidents. And it was a great forum for students to express themselves. It was kind of like a caucus, if you would like. And given the fact that PCC is facing a $9.6 million in budget cuts, we are concerned if the hiring of new vice presidents would be a smart move on behalf of the administration. Thank you. 

>> Next is Simon Fraser. 

>> Good evening. This will either be useful information for PUSD or a completely shameless plug for Pasadena City College's math department. Either way, [Laughter] take it as you will. So, one of the things that was talked about today was mathematics and sort of a general fear and a lack of success in mathematics for, you know, there are a multitude of reasons this exists. And I'm a product of what -- of Math Path, which is a program that's directly at PCC, which I don't think is directly connected to the high schools and it may not be able to be, but it something that I think you guys should be aware of . Math Path, in its first set, takes a normal 16 weeks [inaudible] at Pasadena City College and condenses what would normally be a one semester long math course, say, four or five, which is beginning mathematics, into eight weeks. And then the subsequent eight weeks you take the second [coughing] half, which would be beginning Algebra in that case. I, myself, started -- I hadn't taken math in a long time and I was a little rusty and afraid of it myself, and I took Math Path 125, which is beginning Algebra, and then followed that immediately in the same semester with 131. I came out of that with two A's in the courses and I'm currently now in my third semester of Math Path, having just finished my first semester of 5A, which is [inaudible] variable Calculus and moving into my second set of single variable Calculus. All of that with an A from the Math Path program. The success rates of the Math Path program are incredibly high. You have to have a C or above to [Background talking] continue in the program. And almost every student that starts will continue [coughing] onward into the next set. And I think that it's a fantastic way that Pasadena City College is sort of -- it's math boot camp. I mean, look at that way. We had a camping trip. We had, you know, there were different activities related to Math Path. And condensing it into this short period means that students were not only able to focus on the mathematics, but also able to complete their math in a really quick time. I started in beginning Algebra this time last year, the [coughing] last Spring semester, and now I'm almost done with my single variable Calculus series. And I'll be moving on now to Math Path 4, which is the multi-variable Calculus and advance [inaudible] Algebra into the Fall semester and I will be done with all of my [Laughter] requirements. And thanks to that program, I am a math major. I'm hoping to transfer to Caltech. I'm working on a computational mathematics and applied mathematics degree program. So that's my goal. And I've seen so many people from freshman high school students to returning veterans to a fantastic number of students from all sorts of various backgrounds who all had this common theme of a fear of math and just now knowing where to start. And, so many of them started at the beginning, 125 beginning Algebra, onward and are still in the Math Path program today, or at least they are now heading into Calculus, a semester, two semesters onward. So I would like to just let PUSD know that this is a fantastic program. And even if your students succeed and go into college level Algebra, there is a Math Path program for them too, which gets two semesters of college level Algebra done in one semester, again. So, if it is something that you guys may want to think about connecting to your students, I know that the Math Path program used to be funded by a National Science Foundation grant and is now being funded and supported exclusively by -- completely by PCC. And I personally want to see the program sort of explode because I think it's probably one of the best ways of teaching math that I have experienced. So that's the thrust of my comment. If it's useful, great, otherwise PCC's math department is pretty good. Thanks. [Laughter] 

>> Thank you very much. How did you do in statistics? [Laughter] 

>> No, I have seen, not necessarily the PCC Math Path program, but I have seen it on transcripts I've reviewed from my day job and I have seen tremendous success with students who are taking the condensed, focused courses and going from totally flunking to getting B's and completing -- and, most importantly, completing the course work. So that is -- that is important. So I suppose that's all the public comment. So it's a very enlightening -- you have a comment, Ed? 

>> I'm not sure if we had a moment for some kind of a wrap up, but I just wanted to invite all of the PCC Trustees, staff, [coughing] to join PUSD staff and community members May 10th at 7:30 in the morning on the corner of Lake and DelMar [phonetic] in order to make a visible [coughing] protest around the budget cuts that are happening across the board to education in the state of California. We talked about the education master plan; the reality is we are disassembling the education master plan in the state. And, so, we're all facing giant cuts. I think its incumbent on all of us to not take that lying down and at least to go down kicking and screaming. So, please join us on the 10th at 7:30 in the morning. It goes for the entire community. There will be a lot of parents out there as well. And, then, on the 13th, that's Friday the 13th, the Ed Coalition is sponsoring a set of budget protests. There will be buses leading from Hessina [phonetic] High School from 3 to 4 and going down to Pershing [phonetic] Square for a large rally, talking about the budget cuts and the impacts across the board, K-14 and beyond. So, again, I think the -- unless the community, unless voters across the state really understand the impact and all the things we discussed today, a huge number of those are going away in this next budget year. And, so we need to be the voice and ensure that the people in the state realize the damage we're doing to our future. So I hope everyone will join us for that. And, certainly the PCC students are more than welcome to come and lend their voice as well. 

>> In closing, I would like to thank the staff's from both Pasadena City College and Pasadena Unified School District for all the effort that you put into these presentations and the collaborations that you've modeled for us this evening. It is very heartening and enlightening and I am hopeful that we will see the positive outcomes of this in relationship with our students who are successfully transitioning between our school district and the institutions of Pasadena City College and [inaudible] L.A. I would like to thank you all for coming tonight. Thank you for hanging in. And I call this meeting adjourned. 

==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====