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so but um now I'm going to go back and do my hash marks for the first one you know what I'm gonna go fix it well because the first the second one was great for the hash marks I loved it isn't it yeah yeah it's great yep but I'm gonna go back and do the same thing for the first one I'm gonna go back to my house until our next one so can I can I can I ask a question so regarding like um the uh the candidates our current candidates so which candidates the candidates oh no school board candidates like having a um a focus group just for them I'm just I'm just asking a question like is that I meeting or or my only question was did he say in a closed session yes he did well I welcome him I didn't do anything closed session I meant just like a focus group where they bring them in just like they would definitely community members whether they're parents or students I think he said closed session I think we should do it again yeah oh for sure um I'm I'm in favor of that I think that it for our perspective I mean it it also gives us a security that for those of us that are leaving we can't talk in closed sections at the same time as the new board members if they're new to being a board member so it gives everybody a chance to and I think that's correct yeah and I think it sets the um superintendent up for Success because they may have the voice of those who are coming on the board that being said I believe that I am done no later than May 3rd 2023 so feel free to exclude me after that how many days and hours is that I think we're down to 90.
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the second time portion of my Rochelle seconded by Bridget any discussion all those in favor of abstentials good don't forget presentation and superintendent support flying through this house E15 yeah I should put on it good evening everyone some exciting news to share I've had a number of items under these superintendents update but first I'd like to start with recent news I know our board members just recently received an email I don't know if everyone has had enough opportunity to see the email s that I received a email from the mayor's office early this afternoon there will be a groundbreaking ceremony at Descartes site and they have their Career Academy on Monday afternoon at 1pm so we will be there with the construction hats and shovels and for some photo opportunities and quite frankly an exciting time for us as a school district that's good the city is actually Broken Ground on the side already with this economy ceremonial opportunity for us to talk about next steps and it'll be a nice press conference can I take a picture for the Kate they were asking for pictures of our schools can I do that for Monday let me take a picture of these sites the breaking ground sure sure and there will be pictures taken as well that I'm sure we'll have available of course yeah well no about uh they want School teachers or it wasn't today's thing school events in school yeah school events and happenings they wanted pictures that'll be a great opportunity yeah okay sorry so the the next item and really this is a request one we've um I believe it was two days ago we spoke with the chair of the finance committee requesting a meeting for February 7th at 5 00 PM I don't know if we make the rest of the committee you know the board is aware of that but we were hoping to get one more finance committee in before our board meeting next week and so that's why the meeting on the 7th has been requested the board Might Recall every year typically we have a book submitted to the council that book is of course been updated we've decided last year you might recall there's a book behind the book with all the line items we had our PowerPoint as part of our presentation that we had done this year we've kind of made the book one big story and so it's the Powerpoints with the line items to tell one story versus mine items and then an addendum has a PowerPoint I feel pretty good about that kind of tweak that we made this year and so just physically I'm sorry visually just looks better so the content is not really changing but the story is more cohesive now so one we want to walk the committee through that but also we want to make sure there's an opportunity for any to ask any questions that might still be outstanding I'm gonna be just assume that the finance committee would be the most important going into the board meeting next week [Music] no no so that that's my that's my other item I wanted to respectfully ask Miss Russo and the board um if we can change the date of the 14th given that it's Valentine's Day and see if we can either back that up to a board meeting we don't have to necessarily do it right now but I just wanted to just wanted to avoid to understand why are we making the requests we realized afterwards that the meeting was actually on the 14th we know a lot of folks right even at this table might have commitments for Valentine's Day and we don't want to be the reason why you don't get to have the data it would kick me out of the dog house yes yes excuse me through the chair to the superintendent uh we're changing the um Finance committed me on the 7th so February 7th has been is an added date at 5 p.m very special meeting at City Hall at seven o'clock this meeting is at five yeah but she's scheduled excuse me is it going to be Zoom or is it going to be in person is assuming and we're canceling the 14th correct rescheduling the 14th because we won't have an opportunity to go over the financials excuse me you said the one on the seventh is the soon meeting yes [Music] do you anticipate of being the one leader who's using their meanings are about half an hour 45 minutes for the finance I anticipate at least an I would imagine the committee would want at least an hour of our questions but I guess it really depends on the questions that might be coming from the YouTube Community Center thank you and so the next item is an update on open Choice program and so CES which is our risk in Trumbull Connecticut CES is in charge of the open Choice program in Clearfield we do have a couple of other districts that have open choice after a lot of hard work this last year uh to be clear we are not facilitating the open Choice process that is actually address which is CES they have found a partner and that partner is region nine in Reading region 9 has agreed to at the minimum have eight seats available for Danbury public school students that number is will be in kindergarten grade to start and again they have committed to at the minimum of eight seats I don't anticipate that will be much more than eight I know in previous discussions kind of in the community I think some folks I think inappropriately thought that this would be a solution or possible solution to our overcrowding it was it frankly was never going to be a solution to our crowded none of our neighborhood schools have the capacity unless you go to a bigger Urban like nowhere to Stanford but it's but it does provide choice for our families and so I know there were also some questions about funding and transportation so Transportation the receiving school will be responsible for transportation there is an ECS formula that will be calculated we still continue to receive 50 of our ECS formula they're receiving the school will also receive the other 50 of that ECS form last but not least the receiving District owns all of the financial responsibilities of a student however in the event one of our students who are now in region 9 in Reading if for some reason that child is recommended to be placed in the out of this replacement Kelly and likely someone also from our office will be part of that PPT that placement team meeting and if it's determined that that child is going to be outplaced we would then be responsible for the cost of the outplacement because that will be over and Beyond but outside of that agreement the entire responsibility of Education childhood vehicle so this has been a initiative of the state for some time they were called to try to find Partners in our region and region 9 has stepped up we have placed on our website and opportunity for families to learn more about Open choice I believe it is on the ticker that continues to switch over this location there very kind of simple straightforward application I would leave the application ends at the end of March that positive way I do have it in my paperwork here so again for our families it's on our website we will include it and the correspondence to families inviting them in but I just wanted to share that with the board also understand it might be some questions also let me answer anything there's yeah just so who chooses the students to go there there was a lottery and so our families would apply that there was a lottery that's um conducted outside of Danbury public schools um and then those families are informed and they have a a similar waiting list like we have for aisles and it is it just so there are kindergarten students going out so are they just there for kindergartners this are they there so it's incoming kindergarten students and the kindergarten students the idea is they would become part of the school community so it's important to start with kindergarten Grace so they'd be a running student correct right first yeah next year they may have another eight students and we'll continue to bring more students assuming things excuse me I'm not here in his office thanks so are we calling about just eight students or he's a member associated with those students yeah so I I was a little vague and that's because I don't have any more clarity on this mystery so the number is a minimum of eight students okay I do not anticipate it's going to be more of the name of students and honestly and I'm sharing it with you the same way Eric can see as shared it with me possibility may have more than eight it's a minimum of eight you don't expect it's going to be really more than eight somewhere around there yes somewhere around eight is the number I continue to go and I guess my final question is since it's going to be a lottery it could just be one-sided of one part of the community on one side a part of another the other part of the community am I right very possible depending on the applicants so the first thing we want to make sure the entire Community is aware of so here in Denver we've worked hard to make sure our AIS Families Our West Side families have access to the application process and so that's why we will push out and make our families aware of the open Choice application opportunity as well so the first barrier for us is to make sure everyone has access to the pool once they get to the pool it very much it very well could [Music] you welcome and then our next speaking of Lottery our next update is an update on the AIS Lottery and AIS they just their Lottery just closed on January 23rd we had over a thousand applicants for the school I'm sorry so we had 1148 applicants for the school 1086 were Danbury and we had I believe it was 62 that was outside of Danbury and so I don't know if the board is aware but we have seats from our neighborhood schools like those partner schools have a certain amount of seats that kind of they can apply on we can accept it to the district um Chris and Mel Jackson principal at AIS Chris wrote to our chief of schools on as in which he's responsible for they've worked hard going out to the respective communities and trying to drum up interests and the death to apply it AIS we certainly got folks in Danbury excited about AIS and got a little bit of traction for our neighborhood school we also have a couple of schools that are not partnered with us and so no walk we have one applicant from Norwalk one apple came from Waterbury one African but Woodbury three applicants from Jumbo two applicants from Stanford and I mentioned in those districts because those are non-party districts which again will invite in additional Revenue to the district if they do indeed get accepted and so the lottery was drawn on January 23rd we will be mailing out letters next week to families and families we'll have until March 1st to confirm the seats at AIS Le so we are excited about that and our families are typically this is an exciting time of year for us as families or applying to get into the building and we are excited too provide those updates for them so just to get back to I'm sorry I was there a question about you guys um so are they served so many seats for the outside district and then so many seats for our district yes right yes we have to maintain a 70 30 ratio in order to maintain our magnet school Monday yes how many seats all together or the entire School makeup so our next item I can find out we can get the entire number the next update is the 2023 legislative update I'm going to ask Mike to provide the update Mike before you do I just want to say worked with our lobbyists who's also lobbyist for the city of Danbury as well uh Brian Bingham and also worked with Erica Haynes works with the state finance project the idea boys who live with Heritage the two of them have been talking behind the scenes would be quite a bit appreciate both their their respect their work together we have put together a letter with the city of Danbury by testimony to the to connect to the to provide testimony on behalf of our district in support of the bill to fully fund ECS formula so we're excited we are going to a press conference this Friday in support of that bill with the mayor's office in hopes that we will have a different outcome this year like I know we have some other updates according to build and I just want to thank the board aware of locally kind of what's Happening yeah thanks that's uh that's probably the big big new um has representative mentioned it's it's the busy time it's still early in the session um we're very excited to see February 8th when the governor's budget is released we'll have a better sense of what funding for education is going to look like at that point um all bills have to be dropped by the 15th of February so we'll see which ones um sort of get subtraction uh in committee the one that's of course made the most guarded the most attentive so far has been this HB 5003 which is a reiteration of last year's bill that I was going to accelerate the ECS funding as we know last year it didn't it didn't pass but uh it's it seems to have some momentum coming out of the gates here early so we're very optimistic in multiple as Kevin mentioned uh Erica Haynes from the Connecticut state school Finance project has been working with us as well as Ryan and Zach himself in the Shane obviously with his testimony everyone will be up there with a group of superintendents fishing report passes and depending on the way it's written and the way the rules are set up we can see anywhere from 1.5 to 2.7 million dollars in accelerated ECS funding coming to us next year they'll be on top of the standard Alliance Grant so it would be really good news if this passed so we're going to push hard on it thank you Mark and last but not least school is a distinction so to make the board aware that we were notified recently from the state of Connecticut for the 2122 school year we had five schools of Distinction in that athletic share the private schools so Ellsworth Avenue School case Town Avenue School Morris Street School South Street school and AIS Le so you will hear from Carowinds and momentarily a part of the superintendent goldstalk date of the teaching and learning that these five schools and only one other District in the state of Connecticut has had is two other districts in the state of Connecticut has had as many schools of Distinction as we have had here in America so once again we're really proud of that fact continues to speak highly of our staff and Leadership across the district just want to also say before we ask Carol to come up over the last couple of months as we've had enough so Cara is Carowinds is going to speak to this evening is an update on the accountability report for Danbury public schools I.E our report card which you can write an overview of kind of crosswalk kind of what we know a Park would look like and what the accountability report looks like from the state of Connecticut and why we've had five schools of Distinction and just kind of speak to some of the work that's so Karen we are ready for you marawanza thank you foreign ER I'm the director for data assessment and research for the district um tonight we're going to talk a little bit about the Next Generation accountability index um this is also a part of the update on our goal one of teaching and learning and it gives a very holistic view of how things are going in the district and the schools so this particular capability system is done through the Connecticut State Department of Education they are every District in the state of Connecticut participates every school in our district receives an index score as well as a district it's an important piece that we use to track strikes in our districts as well in our district as well as areas that we find might need Improvement or more support so it really is an idea to promote transparency across the state but also within our own District of where we might need to make them adjustable um each district is a part of it and these systems kind of assist all of us in developing this transparency and what we're really working on is developing that culture at the school level as well and kind of take the guesswork out of everything we all are on the same measuring stick every school every District so the next train is accountability system was developed in the year of 2014 and 15. um so we've been tracking it for quite a bit and so the board and Veteran members have heard this presentation before but it was interrupted for two school years due to the fact that some of it summative testing was canceled within the pandemic so when that was suspended we weren't able to receive scoring around growth so that was suspended the accountability system or Court was suspended by the state of Connecticut as well so that was from 1920 and 20 21 school years um and so Kevin and I have talked a lot about this and I can go deep into a lot of data speak so I'm going to try to keep this a little late because there are a lot of formulas associated with it but there will be a ton of her questions at the end basically this is our district report card it's a holistic way to look at all different parts of all different parts of the district as well as the school most importantly around the growth of students so we say all the time we accept every student who comes in we make a promise to do as well as we can for the student to help them grow and and and graduate within our district so that being said the 12 indicators that are part of our report card are academic achievement and that's our performance index in each one of these indicators if you see an H that means it's also measured for our high needs students separately so those of you who have heard of presentations by me before are high needs students are categorized as multilingual learners students who receive free emergency smudge as well as students with disabilities so if you're a demographic if that's checked off even just one box you're considered a high lead student you can be all three or just once one of those identifications okay so in the academic achievement for example we get a score for all students and we get a score for high needs students okay you're not in one or the other I need students are in both operations academic growth and progress towards English proficiency that includes highly students as well as all students both one and two are our Ela and math scores in espa sats ngss are a Next Generation science standards assessment as well as the last things for our multilingual Learners who have not exited that status yet number three is our assessment and participation rate so that is the district is accountable to at least assess 95 of their students so if you don't hit that you are dropped a category in your school designation and there's a couple other things you can't be considered School of Distinction but you are rated on your participation rate as well for all students of Chinese students chronic absenteeism for all students and timeline students chronic absenteeism is whether or not a student is absent for 10 or more of their enroll days if they are asking for 10 or more of their normal days they're considered chronically accent um preparation for post-secondary and career Readiness is really around the courses our students are taking in the high school if you think two AP courses two in dual enrollment courses two cge courses or two work experience courses we get credit for that so that's the percentage of students who are enrolled in those courses number six is a little different that's our high school students and what is considered career readiness um that are related to those courses that they take so how do they score an AP exam how do they score on the Benchmark for the SAT and whether that they received three dual enrollment credits so number seven is pretty easy it's just our graduation rate um or I'm sorry number seven is our on track and 9th grade that means how many ninth graders what percentage earn six credits or more that keeps us on track that's an adjustment it used to be five but as they change the um the amount of required credits for high school graduation we now have to hit six for that so you'll see a little change on that in the index um our graduation rate for four year uh within four years as well as our graduation rate for six years that's our hiding students our post-secondary entrance is how students how many students enter within a year of graduating high school second or four-year College institutions physical fitness scores you gotta get all of them a meeting standards so there's different parts of the subtasks everybody has to ask all parts and then artifacts is how many students are enrolled in arts classes at our high school okay so moving on to the next one I know whether you have this so it doesn't look right here right now on is by far away um but as a part of our Danbury district report um if you look at your available um BF that you probably received prior to the meeting you'll see each indicator and what the score is when you look at the white area that's up there being Fancy with like winter this way area here is how they've come up with this score okay so that's how we're created essentially and then the blue part is what our grade was or what our score is all the way to the right in the column is what the um the state earned so it's a comparison of where we are in the state average as well so the first piece is for ELA our Ela performance index for all students for example the index rate is 57.9 that's the formula of the average performance of students the target is what the state says they want us to be at 75.
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so we know it's been effective and hopefully this helps with our math scores and hopefully we're just trying to catch all those kiddos who are not mastering those standards I apologize what was it that you gave them where they jumped ahead from 2 out of 12 to 11 out of 12. it was the same state interim test that they're given at the beginning so we are required to give Force State interim assessments we pull that data when they're they've completed that interim test if they're below standard they get four weeks five weeks six weeks of tutoring and then they're required to take that same test at the end of their tutoring round to compare to set check for growth and comprehension and these State interim tests are practice tests for our Smarter Balance are they a lot shorter or they are they're standard based so for example one interim could be going over two standards while another nrm could be going over four standards so when David McKay said that he gives students uh practice test questions how would that be different from what you're describing I think it's the same thing the interim that they were practicing it's there's interims for all grade levels third through 12th grade this is just an idea I had uh sitting up here that I would have asked about in our workshops Tim Carris but um could there be a company out there or somebody who would like just basically sit around trying to predict a version of what the test will look like you know like in its full Glory you know the the just just a just a preview version well weather forecasts so to speak of what this thing is going to look like for your kids that you could you know if you wanted to really geek out on this and teach to a test you could you know hit the kids with a basically an exact prediction of what they were going to get in in a couple of weeks um no companies that I'm aware of but smarterbalance itself does have a full length interim comprehensive assessment which takes the same amount of time as smarter balanced and it's a huge undertaking to administer smarter balance out of sight due to scheduling and you know it takes takes a long time these interims are that assessment cut up into little bite-sized pieces and so that we've seen that work well here we have um teachers using them in all different kinds of ways at all all different grade levels that's really the closest we can come I don't see anybody out here jumping up and down at the idea of us doing like a test run full length uh smarter balance test no I would I'm not comfortable asking anybody to do that thank you so most importantly I want to stress that we also know the importance of supporting our teachers they are the ones who are doing the hard work and doing it together collaboratively with their grade levels so um we have just some things that we do at Neil Dao to help support the items that we do in the classroom we'll have teachers push in and help during administering the assessments go in and teach i-Ready lessons have those data chats and then on the other side we have professional development that we have done at our site specifically to help our teachers really understand the programs that we've been using we have been using the ready math curriculum at our site now for three years and additionally um have you been using iready for much longer so at our site we are lucky enough have a little bit of time with the program and have seen excellent results we are I'm so excited about our growth and we're hoping that that continues we are certainly doing all the same things we have been doing um lastly we have a culture of growth on our campus that involves all of our students and our teachers some of the things that we have is we have a brag board we have achievement certificates assembly we started positive office referrals that's the background there the kids come up we take a picture we put it on the board and then we call home last week I made two parent phone calls and had two moms crying because their kiddos are the ones who don't normally get those kinds of phone calls home so to be able to share that with those families has been great most importantly we have a data driven Culture by all all of our students are engaged in their growth recently we just gave the i-Ready diagnostic the window just closed on Friday and students were aware of their their growth and were asked and shown their results and had the option to re-take the diagnostic which is no small feat um if they chose to so we had about 20 students or so on Friday morning doing it again and they wanted to see their immediate growth right afterwards and so just really having the students invested in our culture of growth has been um really powerful as well yes for those two 20 so students um was that definitely specifically student driven or were is there probability that any parents were like you will retake this kind of thing no it's all student driven it's all student driven and the teacher's taking the time to have that data chat and show them iready is I'm very nice and has it shows you growth so it will show them their previous scores and their new scores and how much growth that they have so it makes me think of you know kids are excited to grow physically yes I got taller I I'm stronger I can do more push-ups um so I imagine what the way I'm imagining it which it probably is the case since y'all are Elementary School teachers is is you know relating that to students look how much your brain grew that's exactly um Melinda this week is taking pictures of students with their growth on a uh abroad on a brag board and it's going to be displayed in the office and they're so into it you yes it hasn't been a topic for board discussion in a few years but one of the things that I've been in favor of is getting away from grades and sticking with what you guys are doing which is showing growth showing progress celebrating learning rather than you know oh I got all A's I get a five to you know five dollars for each a I'm so excited about what you guys are doing and the results that you're showing academically but I can imagine the social emotional charge to your kiddos has got to be evident in fewer discipline problems better attendance um just yay thank you thank you it has not been without the hard work and dedication of a staff those that are here really have been impactful but it has been it's been really encouraging the relationship building between students and staff as a result has been really powerful um that's our suspensions are down our behavior is down and it's been it's been really wonderful to be a part of thank you congratulations thank you and board member Lando you asked about kind of like filtering it out to other schools also and these guys have been the leads for it but the things that they're talking about right now are totally filtering out to their schools and their leadership they're they're on that DLC group The District Leadership Council so that becomes a pervasive conversation about how do we put these structures in place at other schools etc etc so the things that they have created and put in place now you're seeing versions of it maybe not quite as honed yet but these things are happening throughout all the elementary schools right now which we love seeing with those things as well I was about to ask about that thank you very much uh Tim before you go on to the next topic because I see we're going into kind of the Deep dive on some of the student groups um a question that I had that came up during that presentation is um I'd imagine it's hard because we're starting with a new Baseline but I'm curious if the interim tests are are turning out to be a good indication those formative tests are they turning out to be a good indication of how the summative is going to end up being the the interim tests are such a small sampling that it would be hard to say to call that an indicator of the entire test it absolutely does help you know staff and students get Mastery on a certain set of standards and also important is it builds familiarity with the testing system for both students and teachers yeah but it's really narrow narrowly focused when we get to the interims one two like I feel there is a a big value in the interim test because you can't it is it is you know formative and you can see growth and you can go back and you still are with that student but really with the the final end of year testing and you get that below or at standard you know that really rigid Mark um I'm just I'm curious if you know there's going to be we should be able to see a trend or a relationship when we as we you know attain more data in the next few years that will that will demonstrate that the growth translates into um exceeding or or growing overall with that standard marker right that makes sense right that is the Hope and that's what we've seen over the years you see where I'm stuck on growth versus like this like line to pass okay thanks um before we go on also um at the beginning of that discussion we looked at um there were some schools in California it's similar that did really well that a positive growth or that have students above above standard on average um have we reached out to those schools do we have any means of or plans to do so to find out what's going on over there at the district level we talk about reaching out particularly around suspension rate to other districts and that's that's coming um site principles were given this Viewpoint and they can see every school and they can see what schools are above them and what schools are below them so they're certainly free to do that um I'm unsure if people have contacted those sites I hope we could encourage them to do that in some way I know it's uh like I said the same way that classrooms are often kind of you know this is my my kids and my dad I feel like schools are often the same way for principals but if there's people who are doing it well out there already right principals have done that in the past I know I'm sure and I would expect got to continue okay moving on to the third academic indicator this is the English learner progress indicator so what this percentage is telling us so we are at 40 54.9 percent what that means is that of our English learners over half of them either grew one performance level on the lpac test over the previous two years or maintain the highest level okay and we are historically chica unified has had good performance on measures like this and also reclassification rate and we're glad to see that continue of course we want to we want to be blue um on all of these things but um we are doing well in comparison to other similar districts so now we're going to get into the priority five people engagement data and the first thing we're going to look at is graduation rate and on this one you can see Chico Unified more towards the bottom obviously than the the academic indicators and you can see us at the medium level okay this is lower than what we've seen in the past both of our Comprehensive High Schools our grad rates are good Chico highs would be in the green if they were up here they're not 94.1 percent and PV would be in the blue they're at 96 percent so where we see that grad rate dropping is that our alternative education campus with our Oakdale and Fairview classes of of students coming out last year um obviously there's a lot of talk talk about this and reasons why and that will continue one of the things that we we've seen is not necessarily an increase in the number of behaviors but an increase in the severity of behaviors and we will continue to support that that campus with all four of our alt-head schools with additional support staff and essentially do do whatever it takes to to support that team it's a great team over there of teachers and administrators and counselors and support staff and we'll we'll continue to support them and work towards bettering that so when we look at graduation rate by student group you can see all students up there in the Big Blue Bar again and this time we see Asian and white students above all students and we see Foster youth at the lowest performing level and that's actually very common across the state with that student group moving on to Chronic absenteeism it's probably no surprise that every District on her is red um that's the lowest performing level and the reason is quarantine essentially the rules around the pandemic Force students out of school more than I've ever seen and hopefully I ever will see it again you can see we're at 27.1 percent and a mid-range or a little bit above mid-range with our comparables but still very very high so that's uh probably roughly a three three hundred percent increase from from uh 19.
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tonight I said four more meetings till we added three more well I was gonna probably be more we'll have a few more meetings no yeah why not we want to see you guys more instead of before you leave I'll wave at you as I drive by e well I mean there is wrestling on campus so all right Ally I really appreciate the question that you've been asking because I think depending on what you might be reading you're not getting the full story so I think it's so important because I think everybody does a social media search or an internet search and um Even in our own team own Community I've sometimes tried to answer questions when I've seen things that are really um to use one way or another and don't prevent what no I just it was on it was in our board packet one day like when this first started yeah yeah you want it can't have it why'd you ask her then yeah right yeah um you know I forgot where all the others were and then Ursula reminded me that it was in the board Docs no it was do you want it I'm serious you can have it Eugene were you at that West game I think that certain two of them gave paper yeah presentations were you at that game I was there how was it it was electric yeah man I was bummed I missed that one great game well I yeah they didn't uh they didn't drop in ranking at all they're still like fourth in the state but but they lost to us I still think these can take Bolingbrook they just for some reason they've got them in their head we absolutely can take Yorkville so we didn't beat them by much last time no my team's going down State for the first time since I've stopped coaching Junior High I'm excited yeah I'm excited for them they beat Yorkville by I want to say six the other night wow that's good yeah what I don't miss is going down state and dealing with those hotels don't miss that dealing with who uh the hotel always the same weekend as uh cheerleading statement yeah don't miss that well and I do not miss a surcharge yeah so we go surcharge I think that I oh no that's true and I have really good kids something that Laurie heard of it's something that happens if if you got to pay a premium for something because it's it's not necessary applications I have access to access good evening how are you wonderful how about you okay all right yeah nice to meet you yeah you look slightly familiar yeah you look familiar as well yeah I'm Jared you remember how you've been good yeah a long time no long time no you've been well I see yeah Center we'll see we'll just do another one stop it I have to do odle up considering she's familiar with my doodling hello bwp hello good evening to our district um we are ready to start when you are would you guys all like to introduce yourself go ahead uh Jared blogger Dominic Cerrone Alex Swanson Latonya simultane Eugene Gatewood and there's one person on the phone maybe Jennifer Johnson hi Jennifer Johnson hi Jennifer I decided not to spread my uh germ to you guys tonight so I appreciate it thank you all right take it away thank you very much on behalf of bwp thank you for having us here this evening us to present our proposal to you as you can see is the slide going up yeah ah right there behind you okay God fooled me there for a minute we have the uh mission of providing direction for outstanding leadership which we think is very important in that we will provide you leadership and collaboration with you which is very important so we'll be working hand in hand with you throughout the process we're now going to introduce the four of us and I want to say up front you'll be seeing the four of us we're the ones who will be working this search we thought it was important to have four people for a couple reasons due to the size of your community and also due to the time frame that we have for so for example if we're doing community engagements we can get a lot done with four people here and can do those simultaneously or pair up and twos and that type of thing so I'd like to start off by introducing Steve thank you my name is Steve griesbach and I've been with bwp now for a decade I've done over 40 searches in Illinois Wisconsin Indiana and Minnesota I've also during the time worked the last 10 years worked as an interim superintendent in a couple districts one was a pre-k through eight district and the other one was a high school district prior to all that I had a long career in public education I was 10 years as a high school teacher three years in as a middle school assistant principal 11 years as an elementary school principal and 11 years as a superintendent assistant superintendent in DuPage County I share those experiences because as we talk about schools I have my roots in the classroom in leading buildings engaging with families and and students and staff and and that never left me when I went to the superintendent and I don't think it's left any of my colleagues either so with that I'm going to let Phil talk introduce himself thank you Steve my name is Phil Earhart and I'm also a partner with the firm I have been in education in the states of Indiana suburbs of Indianapolis suburbs of Cincinnati and then came to Illinois in 2007.
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so the points earned is that we earned 38.6 points out of 50 so we got a 77.2 all right so it goes by how many points we earned compared to what you could have earned and then your score is in the blue so if we look at the LA for Heidi students we were at 71.6 relatively close to the state percentage points our math was at 68.8 and as well as the high needs students at 63.6 which matched this state um which matched the state percentage of coins earned science we were at 72.2 with our Heidi students at 66.8 the next piece is really where you will see a lot of change within if you compare pre-pandemic to our kind of post-pandemic results and that we'll talk about a little bit on the next slide but where we shine really is around our academic growth for all students and 90s students so our Austin Ela growth we've had 50 years 59.3 with high knees at 57.2 math at 61 and math Heidi students at 16.5 so with those being said that's really looking at the kids who are included in the growth as well as other parts of any part of this index you have to be enrolled with us October 1st of the reporting year so for this they had to be a student with us October in 2021.
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it's a significant increase we see that across States or I'm sorry schools districts and student groups um it's no surprise our our attendance is better this year but it's still not back to normal so we we have some work to do there um a lot of kids sick this this fall especially and you can see here that all but two of our student groups including all students were in the lowest performing at the lowest performing level moving on to school climate a suspension rate is the only indicator here we saw a slight increase from 2019 here you can see we're towards the middle of our comparisons in the medium category we are seeing this overall you know year-long suspension rate go up and this year we're even seeing a little bit more of a of a continuance of moving that up so that's what I mentioned earlier about visiting other schools that are up in the green you know what what are they doing right now what are alternatives to suspension what are the practices that keeps kids from escalating to committing suspendable offenses so that's that's in the works as well this is our student group breakdown you kind of see all students fall down the list there so we have more student groups with better doing better than all students and other indicators but we still have our handful of student groups at the bottom and in some cases those are actually in this for this measure all of those you've seen before in the red box and other indicators and I'll talk more about that in a moment this again is socioeconomically disadvantage versus not and you can see the big spread all but one student group we see socioeconomically disadvantaged being suspended at a much higher rate than than not so overall the celebrations are our academic performance when compared to similar districts including that English learner progress indicator um and then site level performances such as Bidwell and Neil Dao who you heard here tonight but there's lots more successes Junior highs in particular were very strong in English it's just we could be here all night if we went through all the all the site level data but uh principals were given that data I think it was right after uh break a way to look at their comparables and things like that so some nice celebrations even on those celebrations we still have work to do we're always in a growth mindset like we need to keep growing and getting better and that's reflected in our lcap so challenges Rising suspension rate like I mentioned before we went up last year and we're still seeing it creep up not drastically year year to date this year compared to year to date last year but it's not going down so that's that's a challenge chronic absenteeism we expect that to be better but so far right now we we don't expect it to be back to normal pre you know 2018-19 numbers this year yet um math I mentioned we have kind of flatlined over the years and we took a little dip this year um and so so that's a big topic of conversation with our DLC group and Ed Services we said the graduation rate particularly at all dead we're looking for ways to address that and in general the achievement gaps between certain student groups and the all students student group and you'll hear more about all of that through the lcap process and the lcap itself so where accountability comes in for at a district level is through what's called differentiated assistance and I'm going to show you we are in differentiated assistants this year um and what that means is we have a county team come in and essentially make sure that we're addressing those challenges and helping us if needed they're working with I think all but two or three districts in in Butte County right now who are in differentiated assistants I apologize for not having Statewide numbers on that but I'm working on it right now I will say that the vast majority of our comparable schools are also in differentiated assistance and in addition if we have a student group that falls into differentiated assistance criteria for three additional years we need to write an additional lcap goal so this year that student group is um Foster so we will be writing a separate El capitol for how we are addressing the needs of our foster students so right here you can see in the student groups that met the criteria to put us in differentiated assistance these you'll recognize from the red boxes at the bottom of the student group displays on a number of measures that it's it's I'm not going to describe it and nor is it important for you to know but um there's there's a variety of criteria to qualify for differentiated assistance all based on very low performance for this year and then you can see the indicators that they perform very low on to qualify them yes Tim I don't remember seeing um I'm thinking about our all dead programs have we been able to break out their performance in English math that are separate so that we know where are their most significant deficits that that's what the staff does absolutely the staff is is highly data driven particularly they started off mostly with English language arts and they're they're watching their kids they haven't they have extra assessment licenses and they're very diligent about seeing where their kids are um and those kids you know bring challenges from outside into into the classroom but I I feel very comfortable that they are tracking those kids where they are and what they need and all you know aspects of school so at the school level there's a or let me back up to differentiate assistance again differentiated assistance is a state level accountability program at the school level there there's Federal accountability and there's what's called comprehensive support and Improvement or we call it CSI and that's Title One schools only also based on student group performance and then additional targeted support and Improvement atsi or just plain targeted support and Improvement those official identifications will come out mid-march so I don't want to make any projections because it's still a little mysterious to me there's something new they threw in there so um we'll have more news on that in March and so I just threw a bunch of data at you kind of a lot and really what it what it points to is the whole the whole child the whole student and how are we supporting them and the way we do that systematically is through mtss multi-tor system of supports and the building of that program from where it started years ago to where we want to go where everything is much better coordinated and we're documenting you know what interventions are working what interventions or not so I want uh Christy Banks and to come on up and talk a little bit about mtss she's our mtss coordinator sites as well as Tim this evening that there's a lot of passion in the room I think everybody here is here for students we want to provide the best supports with for our students every day and we know that it takes a team effort and so whether it's at Bidwell or Neil Dow or across the district we know it takes a team of educators of counselors of Title One teachers of Administrators that really work together to support all of our students with their needs that they may have on any given day or week when they're on our school sites um in my role as the mtss coordinator I work with a group of teachers on every School site the staff that you heard tonight have all been or are currently the mtss site lead at their site at their School site and their job really is to be that point person for data discussions looking at the data working with their admin working with their the team of counselors the targeted case manager the reading teacher if needed to really look at what is the data telling us how can we provide supports for the student they work with teachers to look at what are some practices that can be put in place for the classroom or a course they also help coordinate and run the school-based intervention teams so if there are students or is a student who needs extra supports it's pulling that team together and really looking at what is the data telling us and how can we best support this student so their role is absolutely integral and ensuring that the students academic behavioral and social emotional needs are being met and I want to point out just a few items on this image of the student's head the first one is looking at the staff as I just mentioned it takes a team it takes a team on our School site it takes all of us as a district to really look at the data what are our kids needing and how do we provide those supports I also want to point out the assessment actually the curriculum and the interventions one when we think about curriculum and interventions every single student has the opportunity to participate and receive that intervention and or curriculum it's really the data that's driving how do we support these students how do we support this group of students when I say group of students we're really looking at that data of the students and then speaking about the data you know the data we were looking at tonight was from assessments that were from last school year and so in Chico Unified we really look at the data that we have throughout our K-12 assessment plans to look at all along the way throughout the school year how are our students doing because our goal is to be proactive and preventative so if we see a student who's you know needing the support or who is you know failing some courses or who is not doing well on a you know a third grade reading test how can we provide supports for them so that they can be successful and continue moving towards standard if that's the support that they need throughout the school year um I get to interrupt you anytime soon anytime anytime Christy um one of the things I see missing is who's helping to coordinate parent support and parent involvement in what you're doing at the school site because we all know that students that have good parent support do better and um yeah there is there what are the pieces family and Community engagement I think that comes from our administrators our teachers reaching out but also our foster homeless youth liaison and our targeted case managers and our and our counselors the targeted case managers I know are doing that reach I um when you talked about you know teams that are meeting to discuss what the student needs you know I hope that that that's going Beyond just the school site um uh because I know parents want their kids to be successful and oftentimes just don't know how to help exactly and so I think when we think about you know when teams come together there's a variety of teams so it might be a team saying hey let's look at our reading data how can we support this like Neil Dao mentioned through our professional learning communities that's a team of teachers and other supports looking at how do we support our third graders if we are looking at data and we're saying oh my goodness the student really needs some extra support we might pull them into a meeting and we're going to invite the family and or the or the parents because we want them to be a part of that as well we want them to be informed hey we've got this you know idea of how we can support your student and we just want we want to bring you into the loop and here's some things that you can do at home here are some things that we're doing at the school site and just continuing to keep that communication open and I use reading as an example because part of my role is also working with Elementary teachers Elementary reading teachers but when we think about you know supporting our students the the backpack image again of it could be an academic need it could be a behavioral support it could be a social emotional support it could be two or all three of those things for our students and so um over on the on the side of this slide I've just listed some of the supports and staff that we have to help support those areas based again on the data that we're getting throughout the school year and then also thinking about um you know how we provide these supports so when you think about multi-tier system of supports we have different tiers or levels so that that top tier is all students so this is what every single student in Chico Unified you know has gets to receive so that's the coursework classrooms you know the music PE all of those pieces every single student has access to that and then when we look at the sum and few students which is students who may need extra supports again that's all based on the data that we have from our assessments here in Chico Unified and again that team approach of looking to see how do we best support these students you know maybe this group of six students at an elementary example you know could work with a reading teacher maybe this group maybe needs some more intense instruction and maybe we support those students with you know this intervention and then how do we monitor that and that's a an integral part of our mtss site leads as well is continuing to look at that data is our data changing with the interventions that we put in place at our school sites I think another really big role of our site leads throughout the conversation tonight I heard was you know we've got really amazing things happening at all of our school sites and I think one of the powerful things about our mtss site leads and even our district Leadership Council who meet separately but also meet together is to share those ideas you know this really amazing thing is happening over at Bidwell Junior how can we we recreate it for marsh and or chico Jr you know this really you know for example a few a few years ago our Fairview site had created QR codes for students to request to speak to a counselor and um and so at one of our first mtss meetings last year the previous school year that was shared and how easy was it for several of our other sites to create a QR code just to hang up around campus and a student could walk by you know just click it and say Hey I want to speak to a counselor so it's those ideas that we have in our district of how can we continue to take those pieces that we know are working at our sites and level them up or you know create them and have them being used at our at all of our school sites to best support the needs of our students see and then again just the um the the staff on the side there who are there to support all of our students and really our mtss leads not just supporting the sum or the few students the students who might need extra supports we're really all supporting all different levels of students we're supporting all the students every day we're constantly looking at the data seeing how can we provide interventions for students is the student ready to move out of that intervention maybe there's another student who could move move into that intervention if needed and you know one of the pieces that we've done this school year is that top bullet is really focusing on the tier one instruction because we know if our students receive that solid tier one instruction in their class or in their courses that's going to help support um and you know be proactive and preventative for students needing to receive extra those additional interventions so really a big push this year with our K-12 to look at tier one instruction during all of our district five days and then we have all of these other supports that support in a variety of ways again all students down to students who might need those extra supports on our campuses did you did you want me to snuck up on her I'm such a little guy okay well thank you for your time thank you board members conken and and Tennis for your uh meeting a couple weeks ago um the California dashboard website is linked on your on the slides and also there's a ton of information about the dashboard on the CD website link there you can email me or Christy with any questions concerns etc etc but thank you for your time this really is kind of a not kind of this this data is a huge huge measure of how we're doing and it influences so much in Chico Unified so thanks for taking the time and if I can jump in here just a minute while we're talking about student achievement last year the board approved for Chico Unified the state seal of Civic engagement and here tonight we have two students that are actually working towards that state seal of Civic engagement in one of their requirements is to be at a board meeting so I'm going to ask them both to come on up and if you would tell us your name the school that you attend and the grade that you're in and we just really appreciate you taking this on hi thank you um my name is Riley Hurd I'm a senior at PV high school and I also went to Bidwell Junior High baby as well so just wanted to see your uh the work that you did as a board in action with our students here and thank you for being here um so the workshop's informational um I would like to invite the board to ask any additional questions about the workshop topic if we have any at this time I have questions for later probably but go ahead um it's it's not so much a question as a thank you to our team which is everybody in Chico Unified who have um become singularly focused on our mtss our goals in our lcap and the scene to it that we're you know we all have the our oars in the Water Rowing in the same direction and um this shows us that we have a lot of work to do in some areas and I appreciate the fact that we get to know that if if all the work that you did Tim and Christy to put this together didn't show where our problems were challenges rather than problems let's say it wouldn't be worth our time sitting through this so I appreciate the fact that we know where we need to work harder and I I so appreciate what everybody in this district is doing for the love of our kids thank you um I want to thank you also for the presentation I think it was very informative and um Echo what what Ms Robinson just said um my only other I think it's not really a question at this time but it's just an acknowledgment that um uh we we're going to need to take an a deeper dive on the on the students with the disabilities too and I don't think that we really talked about that enough in this in this in this space but I think that there is a time and space for that to to have um that conversation um so that you know talking about a lot of our students who fell in those under the the line and were in the red box and that came up every single time and I think that we it it would not be um to our benefit to not acknowledge that right now and to say that we will continue that conversation sooner than later um great um is there any public comment on tonight's board Workshop perfect we'll move on to our discussion action calendar this is item 5.1.1 under Business Services Fairview High School restrooms modernization and I will have Julie Kissel come on up hi good evening thanks for good everybody for being here for this presentation everybody did a great job sorry really I thought you were gonna I thought you were gonna have a crowd Julie I thought you were gonna have a crowd gosh they don't know how much of a comedian you are apparently thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight um I bring forward a request for Fairview High School to renovate their student restrooms and move the project into the master plan in the phasing schedule um the board previously approved shade structures for multiple campuses as part of the Esser spending a year ago and we've been working on the planning and the engineering and approval by the state for those projects when we got to Fairview High School we sent in our plan and they said no can do you cannot build those shade structures because you need to upgrade these restrooms as part of it so they will not approve our plan for the shade structures without us renovating the restrooms Fairview High School really needs the shade structures they don't have much room for physical activities that is covered during hot sun or rainy weather and they have a a very diverse um groups of students that go to school there so they need to be able to have two of them so they can have different activities in separate spaces Additionally the restrooms in question definitely need renovation like many of the restrooms in our district do I inserted some photographs of the boys restroom which is the really the biggest concern you can see that I'm going to talk really loud over here for a minute so I can point by The Doors and that's this occurs in the boys restroom and in the girls restroom and there's not enough clearance here for a wheelchair to go in and turn and then go into the restroom I'm sure students with wheelchairs have utilized this before and fit through there but it is not code compliant it was co-compliant when it was constructed but it is no longer so that is the main Ada issue as well as the urinals the urinals are too close together there's not clearance there's no room for private private Greening uh the principal reports as I said in my cover uh that the students refuse to use them so they'll queue up here and wait for that one stall and they and they have very short passing periods between classes and sometimes students either they're late for class or they just have to hold it until they get another opportunity um this wall is the back side of this wall so it has the sink on it so Fairview High School is currently in Phase five of the master plan we're in the middle of phase four right now we have enough money to complete McManus Elementary School and we have a little bit more the next project and the master plan would be one of our elementary schools because we're just working our way through them but we don't have enough funds left in measure e or k at this time to tackle one of those projects so I met with the facilities committee Ms dalby and Miss Robinson to discuss this movement of prioritizing this project and the master plan on January 13th so tonight we're bringing it forward for your review to request that you move this project into the master plan immediately for phasing and my current estimate is four hundred thousand dollars for the project can I answer any questions you might have can you put the picture back on the urinals this is a common installation this school is replicated a few times in the district some of them have a little more space between them but the in the floor um urinal is difficult because oftentimes we find asbestos in you know in the construction it's it's encapsulated it's not a hazard but if we start to dig into it and do demolition we will have to Abate it so making Minor Adjustments is just not possible so if I was to look at those urinals and say in my opinion there's nothing wrong with them you're telling me that that from an ada standpoint there's no problem with those urinals they do not have the clearance between them that is required is that right correct for new construction for new construction yes um what is required do you know green so privacy screen for Center of urinal to privacy screen so I would say 34 inches minimum and there's no privacy screen here correct there's no room for prices right it was an elementary school before remember and that we do have this at elementary schools it's not as much of a privacy issue with the younger children still an issue certainly still an issue but definitely issue with older students at Fairview so um I've traveled a lot in developing countries and so my standards for male urinal a accommodations is fairly low I can just intervene and say it does not even just mail urinals in some countries it's any any toilet so is there a like the the doorway that leads to a stall right that's narrow yes too narrow right and that's obviously you know a concern um significant concern if somebody in a wheelchair can't get to the bathroom right and that is the case correct there's not like right next door a a bathroom that's that's suitable for somebody in a wheelchair no and so and there's not a way to it looks like that might be a supporting column there on that doorway also like maybe you can't just uh take it out yeah the entire wall I don't imagine that you've priced that out to see what it would cost to just do that the state will not allow us to just do that we don't have to bring the restrooms up to ADA compliance everywhere within the room and the doorways in and the thresholds going in and out and what's the price tag on this remodel well we haven't designed it yet asking for permission to move it into a priority in the master plan I've taken some recent historical information from other districts that have did projects for restroom Renovations and doubled it for boys and girls for the estimate for today but it certainly will come back to you after it's designed and we have a more accurate cost estimate four hundred thousand correct um and there's nowhere just to confirm if somebody was in a wheelchair that needed that extra space to get in is there no accommodation for them on the on the Fairview campus right now no there are not um current code compliant accessible restrooms for students on the Fairview campus right now how short Justin we'll give me this one more Caitlyn um how short are are we on that opening right there do you know how many inches it is versus what it's supposed to be I don't know exactly but it's supposed to be 60 inches and it looks to be maybe four feet so it looks about a foot short and I do want to add in here the driving factor that got us here is not being able to do the shade structure as well correct correct okay I've answered I mean thank you thank you um so my question is just this is kind of forward thinking now at this point is the intention for the for the the remodel on the boys restroom to add stalls also toilets with stalls not just spread out urinals we're not sure yet because we haven't got into design but it would certainly be a material a material similar to the the stall material that goes in between the urinals and it sticks out from the wall enough to create privacy for the individual but no additional toilets it would only be urinals it would it would remain with one toilet what we'll have to do is take a fixture count on the campus for students and make sure we're complying with the number of fixtures for the number of student occupants on campus so there'll be a study completed as part of the project and then we will comply with the needed fixtures it seems almost like an equity thing to me more than a an ADA compliance I know it's ADA compliance thing so that we can do the extra construction but there's another layer of this which is an equity piece and that is making sure that everybody has sufficient and respectable facilities to use and so I my personal preference is to encourage you know as many of the fully private toilets as possible for all people and so I just I guess I just wanted to put that little little tidbit in there in my comments I guess thank you for that and and we agree completely um when the state looks at a shade structure they consider it a building and even if it's out in the middle of the field it's considered a building so it triggers these kinds of upgrades from time to time when we were notified of this instance where this was triggered we said well this is a big need at this campus we just as a part of doing the master planning we visited the site we walked with the site principal this was identified as a big issue so we said we don't want to cancel our shade structure project because they really need it and we know that their restrooms are a big need as well so we decided at that time to bring it forward as a master plan project my two cents worth I I agree with what member dalby said about needing to provide um what's normal in the world um but I'm remembering back to what we just looked at in the way of statistics on what school is pulling down our scores and it's our all dead program and if we can't show our alt-head program that we respect their needs and provide what we absolutely understand is a need shame on us do any other questions for clarification or technical questions from the board what's the relationship between the this bathroom project and the um the shade structures why are they linked together we submitted approval part of that is an accessibility review the reviewer at the state level said we will not approve your shade structure project unless you also upgrade these restrooms to ADA compliance thank you sure um do we have public comment on this item folks um so um uh this time I will call for a motion on this on this item just really do I move authorized to have to continue to planning phase and let Julia do what he needs to do um all right we have a Motion in a second any discussion any additional comments to make my conscience is telling me to abstain on this and just because I I do we have a picture of the um the shade structure a mock-up of the shade structures to see I get a sense of how big they are or what I mean I'm sorry I didn't include that I will share it with you after the board meeting tomorrow but there are two large um shade structures that have six posts and they're large enough to put a pickleball court under meat so that the students can do Court activities badminton pickleball those sorts of things say about one pickleball court per and there's gonna be two yes so I'm gonna it's just the point of discussion say that the reason I'm gonna support this why I'm in support of this and encourage you to bring this item to the board is because not only is it a compliance issue to make sure that we're ADA Compliant so that we can provide this structure for our students but it does demonstrate our willingness as a board to set our alt ed students as a priority and knowing that especially seeing the data as member Robinson pointed out that that our graduation rates at this school have slipped it seems maybe to some people like a menial thing a bathroom how does a bathroom correlate to a graduation rate but bathrooms are really important facilities to make students feel like they are respected and that they are in a learning environment that they are comfortable in and I think that this this should become a priority and and that we should continue to look at our bathroom facilities at all sites to make sure that our students are feeling like they're in a learning environment where their bodies are respected and if we don't want to use their restrooms or we can't get from class to class how are we supposed to focus on our academics or feel like we should even stay at that school site so that's that's why I'm in support of this piece yeah I'm sorry to interrupt I wanted to mention one more thing I kind of covered it but I want to say it one more time so Fairview High School is currently in the master plan in Phase five when we get to phase five with Fairview High School we'll be renovating their entire campus and this restroom would be a part of that renovation so I'm simply asking to Move It Up in priorities so it can be tackled sooner and rather than later because it's a definite need and we can get the shade structure project approved as well yeah thank you I'm going to say that we have to do this somewhere anyhow it's a compliance you think we can't build anything at Fairview without this triggering again and coming up so we might as well just bite the bullet and get it done yeah and again of course I'm supportive for all the reasons that I was going to say that's yeah biting the bullet just to get it done is not the attitude that I want to take with this I know I know but you do it at some point it's demonstrating a yes vote here demonstrates that we're prioritizing our all ed students and their comfortability on their campus yes thank you all right um we'll do a voice note because we haven't voted in a really long time so let's start with we'll start on the other end we'll start with Rebecca it's all bi tennis eye Orlando Eye all right unanimous great thanks thanks Julie all right moving on to we are at number six board member request to agendaize an item so are there any board members who would ask to have a topic that they would like to bring forward for consideration as a future agenda item at this time um I have one so um this is something that was already brought to my attention um and it was a good reminder and then during this this presentation another good reminder that um it would be great to have an update about how our Outreach is going our engagement is going with our special education parents um so I know that last year we asked for there to be more recurring meetings with parents for engagement on our special education program um and so I would like to get an update on how that's going and ideally maybe even have some of the the participants parent participants involved in those to be part of that discussion as well just informational but that's that's my ask Sarah a second yes I will second that absolutely do we need a read back on that from anybody for clarification on what we're voting on here it's an informational item s okay an informational item for a presentation on how how the engagement with our special education families is going the the engagement in these in these more frequent meetings with our special education families are going up an update on that thanks sorry I don't sometimes I just don't know if I'm talking clear enough I just yeah it's been a couple hours without a break too so I start to get a little fatigued um great is are there any questions from staff or concerns I've got a question about how long would it be about the the I don't know an informational item an update on how it's going probably you know yeah that's kind of what I was thinking too okay um and I mean and it would also be open for for public comment as well so however long you know the public comment can take and I would encourage any of that as well I asked my question just because I want to be mindful of how long our meetings are I think it's a valuable topic but um we do get updates annually on the sped program and so so yeah I would support that [Music] um okay so those in favor please say aye aye any opposed fantastic any other items to agendas I don't think so I think it was just an S request for an estimate that's that's a good question there yeah yeah it was to give me a general idea because if they said oh it's going to take an hour and a half then I might vote no because we have you know lives and yeah and in that case we could have uh you know we could have amended it to to set a specific time limit yeah no yeah no you're good um and it's decent timing so any other items to agenda is for folks nope all right um with that we're moving on to item seven closed session um if there's any public comment on closed session items now is the time to step on up to the microphone before we head out to closed session all right so I will come back out to announce if the board has made any actions in closed session um otherwise we will see everybody on the next third Wednesday just forget which date that was February 15th oh thanks I'm not ready all right um the board has uh concluded its closed session um the board voted three to two in closed session to compensate a former staff member for back wages that excuse me were 2 348.50 less that required by the collective bargaining agreement and the California Education Code I have no additional actions were taken during closed session and that concludes the meeting for February 1st 2023.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
I followed my kids up here and have been a superintendent in DuPage County and also did an interim Superintendent at Evanston with that as well I've been with the firm now this is my 12th year I've done about 50 searches in the Midwestern states with that I also serve as the executive director for the Midwest Suburban superintendents Association which involves eight different states and 10 superintendents who are invited from those States I mentioned that that's a rich source that I have of looking at superintendents and I had one call me last night who's interested in moving to Illinois and looking at different districts there in addition we also host an aspiring superintendents conference as well at this time I'll turn it over to Deb Hill who's our managing partner who also has a teacher voice so I'm sure that the people uh who are viewing at home or in other places will be able to hear me as mentioned I'm Dr Deborah Hill I'm the managing director of bwp and Associates I've been with the firm for about 16 years and managing director for the last seven I'm a retired school superintendent but more importantly I'm a teacher continuing to be a teacher a faculty member at two different universities my children tell me that I really have failed one thing and that's retirement and so consequently I'm still working as a consultant doing professional development in various locations in addition to that again having served as a university um College faculty member I was also president of ascd which is the largest Professional Organization in education with the exception of the teachers union and served there for about 12 years in their leadership role which included legislative activities as well as traveling to about 17 countries to look at what their educational programs look like and so I bring a Global Perspective to the table in terms of when looking and evaluating superintendents again Dr Deborah Hill and I get to manage this team tough job uh but um but delighted to be here and appreciate the opportunity to speak with you face to face uh covet presented some challenges in terms of superintendent searches and so again it's it's really good to be in the field uh and I'll continually not apologize for being a teacher uh when I share some other information Omar good evening I'm Dr Omar Castillo and I'm very happy to be here this is my second year with bwp but I have known them for over 10 years now as they placed me for both of my superintendencies I'm currently a superintendent in DuPage County for the keaneyville school district but I spend a lot of my time in on this side of town I was an administrator for Valley View School District for 10 years then moved to Mokena as superintendent and now currently at DuPage County um love this area love my time I lived in Bolingbrook for 15 years um it's just a great opportunity to come back and uh you know rekindle some of those friendships or some of those people I've known from the past so I'm happy to work with the team here to find you your next superintendent thank you Omar if we could go to the next slide what I wanted to do is just to set the stage for you that our presentation will include responses to the eight topics that you had provided us we want to make sure we address those and secondly you'll see a topic number there so you can see exactly that we've included those in that and if you would like feel free to ask questions throughout the process that's fine with us as Deb said we're all teachers so we're very much in tune of doing that or if you don't wait to the end that's entirely up to you on doing that I'll turn it over to Deb is going to talk about and I'm going to speak briefly because we want to get to some of the other aspects in our both our proposal and then the slides you can see that bwp is a consolidation of three organizations and then it became bwp the fourth organization and it caused us to become National each of the previous organizations sort of had their own little Regional territory but once we merged then we became a National Organization uh and bwp in and of itself was founded in 2002 so we've had um quite a bit of time in this Arena our basic offices in Libertyville Illinois although I live in Evanston Illinois however we do have uh branches in um the in the south in Texas South Carolina a couple of other places I want to talk a little bit about the history of our searches we've had over 600 successful searches throughout the years our directorate our board is 45 minority and women we were 50 and then one of our directors retired so kind of stued that um we focus on personalized local service each district is unique there are some similarities with districts but every district has the unique qualities that make you want to have a good superintendent a good leader leadership comes from the top and so we take a look at through a transparent process what you're looking for what are your needs and then try to make that match We Believe In match and fit so we not only do recruiting uh but we also take a look at those who have applied for the position um we believe that students are the Keystone this is all about providing them with the best possible education and again my Global background comes into being in terms of looking for candidates who have that perspective as well it's not just about Illinois it's not just about United States it's about the world and our students need to be well prepared and we need to have a leader that believes in that and believes in students and will provide the best opportunities for them in the past five years we've done about 27 searches for districts with 10 000 students about 16 searches with 20 000 or more students and I had the pleasure of leading the search for Chicago Public School CEO which is my hometown I'm Chicago native Chicagoland so I was very delighted to kind of help them change their focus in terms of their educational leader in marrying both the political aspect as well as the educational aspect uh in the last three to five years we've presented 46 women or minorities to be placed in superintendent positions I just attended the National Alliance of school educators of black school educators conference um and it was wonderful to see a number of the the superintendents that have been placed through us being very successful in their District so we're very proud of that record we have about a 95 percent um rate of success of superintendents who complete their first contract typically three years and then about a 90 of those superintendents also are received successive uh contracts so we feel very very good about our process in terms of match and fit uh the only other thing I want to want to share with you is the notion of why we are special we personalize we don't have a Cadre of superintendents out there that we're looking to find jobs for we are looking to find the best fit and the best match for you and so therefore we may be tapping people on the shoulder that didn't know they were looking for this job but that will be based on what you and the community have told us that you're looking for and I think that that makes us maybe a little bit more unique than some of the other firms in that we don't have a pool we start from scratch with every search and then we utilize the resources that you've heard my colleagues talk about representing in order to be able to successfully do that so we know that in some situations um we start off well and it just doesn't work out in spite of all that we do it just doesn't work out so we guarantee that if the search doesn't work out within the first two years we will redo the search for cost that is a Supportive Services cost as opposed to the actual fee so that's one component the other component is that we um Mentor we believe in the successful relationship between the board and the incoming superintendent so we're available for that first year for anything that you need we do not assume that you're going to need some help but we are available by phone or in this case being in the state in an hour away uh in person if we need if need be so we make that available and that's it no additional cost as well um we do not pilfer trying to think I was trying to think of a better professional word we don't feel we don't take a superintendent that we've placed someplace else and then move them um because it it might they might be a better fit here at least for that first contract now that does not mean that other people might be in a position and decide they want to come here but it will not be because we've recruited them and so we think that that professional um more and some longevity for the superintendent that you may be seeking Insurance process right as as Deb has said no searches actually the same because we tailor that to your needs and what needs to be done here in the work that needs to be done here and so what I'd like to do is take you through our process that's typical and when I say typical this is kind of what it looks like and I'll try to make certain that I'm clear on the work when you guys will be heavily involved and the times when we are heavily involved so you can see that what we'd like to think is that our search is number one people can see and know what's happening when and that's not just you but that's your community as well we think that's important in terms of transparency we think the process that we talk about builds credibility in the decision that you ultimately make because people see the steps and the diligence and how their voices and their input has been used by you and we think that's important too and so when I say that let's talk about those steps right now and I'll take through the the nine of them very quickly one through seven are really directed and more heavily involved with us the last two steps really become more of your responsibility because we will not be in the position of choosing your next superintendent you will and that's something that the state expects in your your voters expect here but we will help you and guide you and support you and so that you feel comfortable in that role as school board members making an important decision for your community um in our in our in our first step we would want to meet with you after um if you choose us to kind of outline that search to talk about how your search is going to be conducted in the ways that you want it to be and we will guide you through a number of questions that we have you know will it be done in person will it be done virtually will it be done um confidential that you know the only people involved in is the board we have a few clients who have asked us to do it that way for a variety of different reasons that's not typical but that's also worked and been very successful as well we'll look at timelines and Milestones and and most important we're going to talk about how we're going to communicate with each other around this process when we move on to step two we work into our Recruitment and our recruitment goes far and wide and it isn't just typical you know IESA or aasa we reach out to to groups with around the country that offer the opportunity for for Educators to come together and work together especially leaders and so we do that and we've also begun working in areas with social media like LinkedIn or and and then the um indeed we've had experience with both of those and we can guide you where to do those as well as where to where to promote your position so we get that recruitment positioned going and then we do work with you and we create an audit of your community we want to know what your community thinks and so we ask people in your community and board members staff members and even we often include high school students three basic questions um what are the best things going on in your in your school district and we ask that because candidates ask us and we want to be able to respond with their actual words the second thing we ask is okay what are the challenges facing your school district because we get asked that by candidates as well and we want to be honest with them about what's happening and the third question we ask is what are those personal qualities experiences and skills the next superintendent will need to lead your school district successfully and we ask those questions in a survey an online survey that's available to all stakeholders in stakeholder groups typically that we'll work with you to set up and often we often want to run a community forum and sometimes we do that online because people have gotten real comfortable attending those things um and and so anybody in the community who wants to have a chance to participate can do it through the survey and do it through the community forums and so when you get to the end we have a lot of data which we then present back to you along with a leadership profile um one thing Phil just whispered me we also talk to you you know that's probably the place we start we interview all of you individually so thanks Phil for reminding me it's in my notes but somehow I missed it um and then we start recruiting and and I think recruitment is one of our strengths as a firm and I was telling them a story about doing a search two years ago for a a high school district where we looked at the demographic Graphics of the district and then I looked at the demographics of other school districts around this around the area and I said who are the who are the great super assistant superintendents in those areas because they're the rising stars and then I talked to some of our colleagues and said okay talk to me about these people and actually called people kind of calm the cold just to see if they were interested we got a terrific candidate out of that process didn't get many but all you need is one and I just want to let you know that we just don't sit back and wait for people to come to us we do that and then we use the data that we gathered in that leadership profile to screen all the applicants we use that as our rubric and you will use it as your room to evaluate them in terms of what you do and and then after we've screened those applicants we then vet the top ones because we don't want to make we want to know what's happening in their lives what's available in social media in other places and we don't want to provide you with any surprises and then we will present a slate of as many as six usually a four to six candidacy usually five um to six um and and and we'll present them to you usually in an executive session and talk to you about them and why we believe they are the people you should talk to and we're asking for your support at that level and then afterwards we'll conduct a board Workshop to prepare you for your job of how to work and and sort this out we'll teach you how to use those things and then and step eight and nine that's when you do the work these interviews are will prepare you you'll feel comfortable we'll be ready for those things and we suggest two rounds um one where you you interview the Slate of candidates and then you narrow it down from one to three candidates to come back and talk to you further and we think that's a really good process and and during that process you begin to bond and develop that camaraderie and consensus that happens and then we'll support you as you begin employing a superintendent in Step nine thank you Steve it's one of the topics that was mentioned was the diversity of candidates and Omar is going to talk to you about that process you can see some of the topics here or some of the things I've already been mentioned but I'll cover since 2016 we have presented just over a hundred underrepresented or women candidates for boards to consider me being one of them that was presented to my board as dad mentioned we have placed 46 women and minority superintendents in the past five years our Consultants we have we contact uh diverse candidates that we know or that we have met through this process and so we we already have a network of people across the country to be able to recruit and once we find out you know what you're looking for in your next leader we will be able to uh go out there and start begin recruiting for um this position the uh some of some of us are members of the National Alliance of black School uh Educators as Deb mentioned uh I'm also an active member of the association of Latino administrators and superintendents so we already have a circle of colleagues and friends that you know might be interested in uh the position and those uh those contacts that we have are important when trying to find the next superintendent for any school district thank you Omar next we'll turn to the fees with that and we tried to look at your questions so we really zeroed in on that the consultant fees would be twenty eight thousand five hundred that includes administrative and office expenses stakeholder focus groups engagement that Steve talked about with you the electronic survey would be in English and Spanish if you like other languages we can talk about how to do that the verification of credentials of candidates credentials the due diligence and electronic checks as well we also give the assessment made by Gallup called strength finders 2.0 assessment which is done to identify strengths of each of the candidates for that for the expenses we think it'll be around six hundred dollars so that not to exceed amount you'd asked us to do would be a total of 29 100 all in with that other potential costs that the board would make the decision on would be advertisement where you'd like to do that that would be in the planning meeting that Steve mentioned to you the candid travel if there were a candid who was coming from the outside that would be paid by the school district we would give them a form to fill out and work with your business office on doing that and then lastly if you would like to have a deep dive we do use a private Company Baker and Eubanks and they will actually do for an additional cost to Deep dive on candidates as well for that let's go to the last page and talk about why should you choose bwp hopefully we've emphasized you tonight our record of search success and we've given you some data on that our combined group here we've done well over a hundred searches over 40 years experiences superintendents probably about 70 years of also teachers principals Etc the process is very important it's going to be very clear and transparent to you and we'll be communicating with you so you can put that on your website as well we will also work with the engagements to make sure they're very skillfully done we'll collaborate with the board all the time throughout this process you'll have our cell phone numbers so you'll be able to get a hold of us wherever your contact person would be and lastly we're here to serve you and we're committed to you to do that at that I think our time is up and we'll open it up for any questions that you may have or if you have any clarification that you would like us to do for that um Jennifer Johnson's on the phone Jennifer do you have any questions we'll come back to her Jennifer we'll come back to her okay Ally Eugene no she he should go said no okay hold on hold on hold on um I was trying to keep my questions the same so we have kind of a tumultuous community and a big online presence that is maybe just a little bit more tumultuous than some other districts um so I guess I'm looking for someone with experience in that how would you deal with that how do you how do you manage expectations how do you first of all you're not the only District that has 20 dishes but I am particularly in right uh I'm going to if Deb doesn't mind turn this over to her she can give you just a little bit about some of the we call it challenges that we have there and we're very Adept on doing that first of all with regards to the technology and communication we believe it's very important that people know where you are what you're doing and what's going to happen one of the key things that we start with is letting the community know what their role is if everybody stays in their Lane then we can have a successful search the board the board is responsible for the hiring of the school superintendent that's one of your most important jobs the community is responsible for providing you with feedback and input and so by clarifying and making those elements known up front here's how the information will be disseminated here's when you're going to get it you're going to need to be flexible in terms of the calendar because if something happens if we have a snowstorm or something and we're planning having a meeting we have to move things back but one of the things that we found have been successful with with communities is giving them all the information and recognizing the transparency of the process and providing them with the data I think one of the things that happens then when you ask people to take a survey people get very frustrated when they don't know what the survey results ended up being so why did I do that because um nobody told me what the results were so when we do the surveys we end up having both qualitative and quantitative data to put together this leadership profile the leadership profile is then presented to the board discussed at an open meeting so that the community can hear what we discerned during our search during our research from those um surveys and from our interviews and from our focus groups and from the community forum and we look at the agreement that's reached by the community at about an 80 percent level so then we come up with this list of strengths that about 80 percent of the people agreed with so you have people on both ends of the spectrum having had an opportunity to present their case but you really are looking at where are the commonalities and more often than not once you begin to do that people see that there have a lot more things in common than they thought they did so that helps a lot with some of the different groups who have their own perspective so I I like your perspective I think a little bit more what I'm questioning is how candidates perceive US based on we have some pretty polarizing groups in the general Community online yeah how do you navigate yeah how do you navigate what the candidates are seeing of us and what is their perception of us and how do we how do we um I'm gonna say two words and then Phil says he has this okay and Again part of it is we everybody knowing what's on the table the candidates as well that's one of the reasons that we do the leadership profile and that we do the audit so that they will know that um this might be an issue that will come up by a certain group so candidates don't walk into it blind you also want candidates that have done their homework because they should not apply for this position if they have not had experience with X Y and Z which may be one of your concerns so again it's the transparency piece on both sides both for the candidate as well as for the board and the community thanks Deb I would just add to that as you're right social media is very powerful and has large tentacles that are out there and that's one of the reasons we do the strength and challenges so we know exactly what is out there so we can tell the story behind whatever is going on with social media also with social media we'll be using that with your communications director to make sure that we get a variety of stakeholders who involved again on doing the survey also are very much involved on doing the community engagement groups as Deb mentioned to you we're willing to do those in person but also do them in hybrid as well we'll do some as well uh with that and have had a really good turnout of doing that virtually lastly we're very skilled too if there's a community engagement going on we've had situations where there'll be a person there who has their own agenda hopefully I said that very diplomatically and we are very skilled on redirecting that and going back to here's the reason why we are here with that Allison does that help with that yeah yeah um we did some searches last year that were pretty high profile in communities and Phil and I worked directly on those and I know Deb worked at Chicago which can't get much more high profile than anything and and one of the things we we would also say is that um while people look and see what's going on in the community they also watch what boards are doing and how they handle that and how they listen and involve people but but keep true to where they are as as a board in their mission and governance and and those are big important things to keep in mind as well um for those of us in education we're fully aware that our particular election has garnered State attention so if we get to a point where you're you're not seeing the pool that you want will you approach us and tell us okay well that's fine yeah or you can add that in will you will you approach us and say hey we're having we're having some issues you you may want to consider X Y and Z that's a great question Jared that the key to us is ongoing communication with whoever's going to be the contact person on the board so that you're continually uh kept a date what's going on and we're going to be very transparent with you very direct with you so you know exactly what's going on at every moment we're not going to try to slant things or anything of that nature so you know exactly where we stand with that too and then Deb was going to also add we work for you we work for the Board of Education and we will tell you the Good The Bad and The Ugly and consequently if there is if we don't find a pool we're not just trying to hire a person we're trying to make the best match in the best fit and we can come back to you and say we've looked at this pool of candidates this we don't find anybody that meets that 80 threshold this is what we recommend that you do which is why I talked earlier about flexibility in terms of the calendar because we may have to go back out and search again and see what was missing in the candidates that we had that we now have to pressure and and push a little harder for to get the right candidate so from that perspective um we again work for you flexible calendar we know you'd like to have someone start at the beginning of the school year but if we don't find that person we keep working at it until we do don't know if I asked this part you've had have you had to do this before like have you had experience in that realm before uh yes I'm sure but not not often but we have had you know instances where uh the board uh ended up not being able to reach consensus because we really expect and encourage the board to have a consensus vote on the candidate you cannot have someone who comes in on a five on a three 4-3 vote when that their first part of their job is going to be trying to get those other people that didn't like them on board that means that they're not attentive to what you've hired them to do and so again we try to encourage the board and to use all of the support mechanisms to have that happen that includes the community so I'm going to tell one quick story the community does not get to vote that's not their role so if you have three candidates that you are bringing forward and you determine because we've determined this at the beginning of the planning session that you want the community to provide some feedback and some input we don't recommend that the community get to see all three candidates we recommend they get to see one they're using the leadership profile they're providing you with feedback about how they feel that that candidate matches that profile so then you have three candidates you have three separate sets of community feedback on the individual candidates so you don't have a group that's pushing for one person over another that becomes really critical again in terms of the success of the superintendent and being focused on the job that you're hiring them to do rather than focusing on trying to get individuals on board who did not vote for them because they're not voted Lord oh I would just add one thing debit talked about the consensus process which is real key as Steve had mentioned to you when we do the session with you talking about interview questions we'll give you an interview guide if you'd like to use that we'll also spend time based on our experiences and expertise how to develop that consensus there are some key steps on how to do that to avoid having something where it's a popularity contest that makes sense to you just want to add that to that who had the next question for us Lori Lori my first question and that is how often do you find that the compensation package the salary the annuities things like that that your candidates um come in with a different set of salary expectations and compensation expectations than what the district has in mind it doesn't happen and that's because we would like to have a conversation with you about some parameters up front um and so when someone says well I'm making you know a million dollars here and we'd say gosh I'd like to get that job um we kind of say that's not where we're this this community is at and that's not yet where the board is going and so what we try to to be upfront about is say you know is to be be realistic with them as well as uh and that's based on the feedback we get from you as well as what you're looking at in terms of the compensation package we asked your finalists your your three your two or three or your one person to give us just a little overview of what their expectations are so that when you begin that conversation you already know well they're expecting um health benefits full of family health benefits and our health benefits are really only for the individual so you kick off that conversation already having some preconception about what they're what they're looking for as well as our having spoken with you to say particularly as well as far as salary is concerned and we'd be happy to work with your business people to give you the information about well what is the going salary uh for people with their with specific experience besides districts that we have all of those things so that we bring in all of that data and information into the conversation from the very beginning so as Steve says we very rarely have a dissonance between the candidates that you're looking at because we will tell people upfront you're looking for 500 000 it's not going to happen here so keep looking okay thank you so we have two more questions we'll run a little short on time and I'm not going to short you but after Dominic then we'll get Jen who's um coming back to the phone now this is our relatively simple you said a deep dive you know into their background can you just do a little more detail of what a deep dive is you gotta be happy to with the firm that we've used in the past that's all they do that's their job and that's contracted out separately with this we work with you and we'll broker that with you in the district any employee that you hire the second one though is very important and that talks about social media news articles blogs um anything of that nature is also done with that and you would get a full report in writing on that as well we have a few districts who use that we also do our own search with that as well as far as we just don't call the references on the list because everyone's going to put good people on there we know a lot of people we also have another person who is very good on doing virtual and Google searches for us and she will give us a report as well so there's a lot of different levels in that planning meeting we would talk about how would you like to do that and then we'll talk more in depth on it when we get down to who are the final candidates to see what options are available for you and that'd be up to the board of how you'd like to have us handle that thank you all right Jennifer are you there yes uh thank you all very not very much for being here tonight I know that a few of you mentioned that you have been in the merger greater such as Bowling Brook I would like each of you if you could answer if you have any direct connections to our Oswego School District um our village of Oswego any of our greater government entities the fire department the police department or if you have family members living directly in our school district I'll start off and I'll give it to Deb on that debit I talked about that driving out here I have been into Page County I lived in Saint Charles I've been to a couple of fundraising for Charities here at play at your golf course at and have known some of the Oswego administrators over the years for that Deb can talk to you about some connections she has my grandson's girlfriend yeah has cousins here and I asked her just by happenstance last week if she could babysit with our 15 month old puppy who just had was neutered and so has to be watched uh for the next few days and then saying that I said because I'm going to Oswego to do a presentation and she said oh I got could go I'm gonna call and check and make sure that they're reading and looking and checking to see because she knows that this is what I do so that is my connection so she's anxiously awaiting what I think of and what I thought of Oswego when I get home to relieve her of nurse scratchy duties with the puppy all right thank you my own relationship is not with any of the organized groups I I am guilty of stealing one of your principles to come work for us as a middle school principal a dozen years ago seven years ago the other thing uh you've been forgiven Steve she's really good by the way the other thing I would just say is that when we talk about focus groups we would ask you what are some of those focus groups that you would like if you'd like to have something governmental agencies the youth serving agencies will reach out to them along with your Communications person person to make sure that we involve them in the process as well foreign because I'm uh you know spend time in Bolingbrook as mentioned I do have friends in Oswego and and I do spend some uh time over here at Gatherings uh you know with some old friends but not no other connections but that's my I I know people are going to ask so I'm going to say this that I know I know Omar uh but I never worked directly with him uh Omar was at lucancic I did interview for a job at Luke hansik but I I did not get to I did not get the job so I never worked directly for Omar um I was at Jane Adams so and Omar was that um uh lukehancic so if anybody wants to know we worked in the same district however um I never worked worked uh for um steel I never had the honor that that actually just just a quick follow-up on that only because our our outgoing superintendent came from Valley View and our associate superintendent also came from Valley View did you work with either of those individuals Dr sparlin okay thank you all right I'm sorry can you repeat that who did you work with uh with John sparlin John sparler was a principal at one of the other middle schools when I was a middle school principal there Faith was the persistent superintendent of Elementary education when you were what did you have any direct reporting relations with relationships with them no right yeah thank you okay okay that was a long time ago yes yeah how many years was that that was uh 13 years ago you can't see him but he has a little more gray hair now so I do is there anything else that we can answer for you at this time I think we have and answered all of our questions and we thank you very much for your time you're very welcome we asked this one question what's your uh timeline just so we would know that yep our board meeting is on February 6th and we will have a decision then okay thank you very much thank you I'm sorry sorry I apologize so thank you no thank you good to see you again take care take care thank you yeah thank you thank you okay does anyone have any comments regarding this process you want to say we're on 4.1 board member comments you won't want to say anything okay so I think the process is going to look like this do we have any public comments no no public comment nope so um oh want to provide your total scores to Ursula oh well wait no no do we we don't need to provide them because on Monday on Monday we're going to have the conversation and people can talk about it then and then we're going to vote on Monday is everybody good with that if you want to fill out your rubric so that everything's clean and I mean clear and fresh and you know what you're doing and yeah that's fine we're when are we gonna have the discussion about making sure that we're communicating timeline process to the community well well um so first of all so on the website is is um our information portal I understand that but I but I do think that we need to make sure that we're reiterating at every chance we get that that we are that well I think we are clear are we all clear that what Jared is is referencing I would imagine is that the next um superintendent will not be selected by this group but will be selected when the new um candidate come in are we I don't think we I don't think we did right I don't know that we've decided that so that's my that's the heart of my question is is that going to come Monday also or are we I think that'd be a good time to have it happen then let's have that then okay fair enough okay so um can I have a motion nope I can I can read it or you want to read it um I make a motion to enter closed session under statute five ilcs 120 slash two c one the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of certain employees and individuals second Miss simulton aye Miss Swanson aye Mr ploger aye Miss Doyle aye Miss Johnson Mr
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so that way they can really see like is this the results attributed to Danbury public schools or did the student come later and so for this purpose those students are the only ones to count it in this as well for growth you had to take the test at a at a point in the spring and then again with us the followings right so the progress towards English proficiency is how students do a literacy oral on their lost links um and then our chronic absence and that has been an area that we've seen tremendous growth and are above the state average um for our students who are considered multilingual learners chronic absenteeism truly is an area where everyone has struggled in the state of Connecticut we were below this state chronic absenteeism rate overall when you looked at our attendance for the previous year the College and Career Readiness and then present passing exams um clearly there's there's some work to do right and and looking at how we're supporting um some of those students are on track to high school graduation at 77.3 all these to our graduation rates for all students this is now the 20 2021 cohort so the four year is just graduated then and then the sixth year grad graduation hiding students it was the students who could have graduated in 2019 if we gave them six years to graduate they stayed retained how what did our graduation look like for particularly our ID students um post-secondary entrance was at 78.7 and physical fitness at 54.5 that number also includes our participation rate and our Arts access at 89.1 which is also about the state average if you take into account all of our percentage of points earned our accountability index is a yellow Sal at the bottom at 66.8 slightly under the state percentage of 102.
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so just I know it's a lot but it what it helps to do is compare kind of our pre-pandemic um our pre-pandemic scores to our post-pandemic scores and so I highlighted these areas of where we went down and stayed the same as a side arrow and is where we need Kings um clearly the Green Arrow is kind of highlighting where we went up so we know we have work to do a proficiency everyone does as a part of the pandemic and and the learning loss and associated with that as well as places that were kind of exacerbated from the pandemic but the way we get there is by accelerating growth and showing that we've gone up and growth as well as our schools of Distinction is really tracking our growth towards proficiency that's that's kind of how we'll get there including our last place growth growth for students who are multilingual I just had a quick question so in terms of of how do you measure progress check um so if someone's uh let's take it someone's out of one but they should be out of four if you bring them to a two or three that's that's how you measure progress right sorry right so it's not you're not getting into where they're supposed to be but there is some growth within within that number right so with the ELA and math in particular as well as last links depending on what your score is it's identified how many points you need to grow one for a full Year's worth of growth beyond that to close the gap you have to accelerate that growth really so so that's what they're tracking is how far students are getting to their target and what's the average Target chief for everyone so yeah so you have to accelerate Beyond a Year's worth of growth to move a one as soon as a one to proficiency a lot of places when you look at a one if you hit your viewers worth of growth over three to four years you can you can close that Gap so it really depends on where they fall on the scale score of these yeah you have to accelerate the growth to get proficiently so as a result you can see that like a lot of places that that did go up or around growth as well as the percent of students taking collagen career Readiness courses um as well as our high school graduation accountability index score went up in our sixth year um as well as the Arts access so um just a lot of times we're kind of looking like what's our data point free pandemic to where we are um finally as a result of the accountability index a couple more things are tracked um with the uh with the district and that's including that includes district and school scores um they track an achievement Gap as well as a graduation Gap so that's if if our Gap is substantially different than the average Statewide Gap if we're considered an outlier then it will be identified on our accountability and index so this is kind of where it's tracked for Danbury public schools you have the ELA performance for you compare now before we had all students versus the bucket of just timing students this is non-high need students I'm not free we're just lunch I do not I am not classified that I have a disability and I am not a multilingual learner that is the students in the first comma High needs rate is right next to it which we explained before and that shows you the size of the Gap so Ela performance there's a 15.1 gap between those two groups and then you see the state Gap next to it we're not considered an outlier that's the same for Math and Science but we do track those closely especially at the school level to make sure that principles and and teachers are focused on that as well and how students are performing in their class that um we do our we do have an outlier when it comes to our graduation rate Gap so our students who are non-high needs and the 2019 cohort that's a six-year graduation it was 94 or non-high needs and our honey is rate was 83.6 the size of our Gap was template for the state is 10.2 were considered an outline if we move to our schools of Distinction kind of where I identified on the report card of where we were identified with um with a change in the higher levels of growth these are the schools that are our highest performing in the district it can be identified as a school of Distinction if you're in the top 10 percent for your overall accountability score so our one that was highlighted in yellow at the bottom schools get those as well so if you're in the top 10 percent of the state or if you're in the top 10 percent of the state for high growth either for all students or high needs students so these schools I put their Distinction on there so that you would have an idea of why they received the award um if a student if there's a school that is not tracked with their growth they can also receive a school of Distinction award if um there if they were their overall accountability index growth the big score at the bottom was in the top 10 of the city so these particular schools were in the top 10 first set of the state around the smarter balances as a response to this I I have to say we work very closely with the principles to really Target what's happening in their schools that are contributing these scores there are so many pieces that go into this that are not just about the summative assessments that you see at the end of the year student work how we're tracking cohorting kids at the high school when we at least graduation we experience our amounts of legal Learners and their services so there are so many cases that really lead to the holistic experience of the student and so we have a lot of responses that we make a strategic priority in order to kind of Target of how to increase and and really Target Improvement at each level foreign thanks Kara all of the things that you see listed on this slide are really reflective of a lot of the work in the Strategic plan that's ongoing over time so it can be working several years to continue to get better at assessing and diagnosing areas for targeted academic intervention one of the things that's common with all of the different content areas up there is the use of more robust ability to to assess we create a heavy investment in the i-Ready system which has been really well received there's been a tremendous amount of feedback on that and teachers feel like it really has provided a flashlight in terms of areas for growth for students and their ability to address instruction and planning so we're really happy with that in addition to that we've made a lot of space in in this in in the course of the of the week for teachers to have some additional planning time that's very intentional around their professional practice understanding data and being able to change course if needed especially with what we're seeing coming out of the pandemic with the needs of the students and having to really differentiate across a wide variety of levels so overall really this diagnostic process that people have engaged in but also deepening understanding of practice with our standards and I got to say Carowinds there's been absolutely instrumental in being that flashlight going into schools and getting folks to look at their data across all groups of kids to really understand what their needs are and to kind of put some things on the table of consideration so we do appreciate that work and our schools have made who are our distinguished schools won't be the first to say that they work very closely with Kara and attribute a lot of these success in their understanding to some of the work that they've done around the data so I do want to say thank you for that so the next piece is really around questions um I know it's a lot to kind of digest at once so it looks like that Foods your proportion of present things about data I appreciate it let me also say a good person special person that concludes so that leaves or just the everybody sees that the budget um intense budget is on for information and in honor of Rachel I have about 15 things for my board chairperson's report actually I know I just wanted to make sure everybody got the um invitation to the um groundbreaking ceremony groundbreaking ceremony but there's graduation this is Friday at six o'clock um yeah Grace Molina sent it out to Canada I asked carius of it out to the whole award if that's did anybody get that um [Music] thank you that's uh at this point pretty much that's all I have but I just wanted to ask important Communications and comments I know some people been visiting physics um Michelle and I have been going and visiting schools we've been doing about four a week um it's really enlightening and I'm truly enjoying it I think you are too correct um and if you get the chance to do it talk to Tara from no and just see if you can set that up it's it's the schools are really welcoming and budding you get a different view of what's Happening clears up some things and it's just it's just great it's fulfilling everything to go in there and see what they're doing and get a tour of the building talk to the principals and they're really open and honest and just kind of lay it all out on the table for you and it's just really a great thing to do I know Ralph does it too but it's great so you get the opportunity please I had I had a wonderful experience and it just brings everything we're doing here and on that screen in in view you know like we actually get to discuss it we see how excited they are and about the actual growth that we're seeing in the i-Ready program and just checking out on certain things on sites and Facilities or curriculum that you know it really just I've been learning a lot from them and how they have the ability to maneuver and have the freedom to actually work with the curriculum and these new programs so it was kind of exciting actually I always recommending I don't recommend more than two people going at once because that could be a little remaining but um you know it's and it's good to let the staff know that and see and you know we're there for them too I mean it is all about the kids said earlier but you know it's good to let them know that they have someone to reach out to if they think uh I think and also one of the things it really back in 2013 when we first heard about the um you know the growth and how big the high school was and stuff like that it's pretty impressive when go there and it's in between periods and class comes out and you're up against the it's just it's it's good to see um for yourself actually what kids go through staff goes through um and it made it for me and just on a personal note made it easier to make decisions in here after being out there you know because if Beaver broke everything's great always you know they're going to be here for a bubble everything's fantastic but it's good to go out and see the you know the actual buildings and stuff but um and last thing for me actually is just want to thank Al Kate and the rest of the finance committee and John everybody uh really uh I said everybody been playing this game if you're a chair or vice chairman you get mentioned wow oh I'm sorry um so I just want to say thank you you guys have done a great job and I think that there has been a lot more questions asked and answered this year than there has been in years in the past and I think that that's good I think it helps when you can really those questions answer so thank you and that that's it for me can I get a motion to adjourn good um [Music] number one could we schedule a housekeeping uh Workshop or whatever you want to call it you know what matters in March six seven I got three dates you know we can think about those March 6 7 or 13.
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and we can do what they can do it with a pay someone from the case [Music] and hopefully by then we will have a new person that's home that can participate right and I think that would be an excellent thing to do so um I'm asking you are you would you like to set it up or would you like me to meet for that communication or or soon [Music] any specific day what do we got March give me a couple minutes the board [Music] you brought it up you wanted 5 30 like to 6 30. on the day before can we do that now I don't know about that I'm sorry can we do that in an hour it all depends on who got to have it um [Music] because we're going to do it you can't do it zoom and then get over here by the time so do we think and and hours enough well we'll do 5 30 you got 6 30.
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I always you know we're going to take care as much as we can take care of as a board and then we can invite him back at another front but we leave something like that he's getting very important because I think you really need to understand really speak our roles a little bit more parliamentary procedures and how we're conduct ourselves so I think an hour an hour or so do you want so we'll do um so let's do five five thirty on the 8th now who's March 8th what would you reach out to from game I'll find out [Music] care of people well you know um he was addicted and they have a couple other guys you can also ask him if he's not available for about 14 years and uh in the schools so either are they mentors vacuum schools since covet so the doors are back open for mentors to go into the school I can't be sorry I said the doors are open for mentors to be back and supposed to work with kids I don't know if the dsabc is still in remote or or if they're working directly with students and actually on the board but I didn't think to ask that question so they so they are they're they're back in the schools the mentors are doing you know in-person visits with the students and they're growing until they're just lacking mentors okay they have wait lists in every school almost every school in the district I believe is involved um I think Ellsworth just it was kind of just added um just joined dsabc but the problem is they just don't have enough mentors so that's what we mean right now for the bsnbc mentors and thank you for because I really didn't know that yeah thank you absolutely thank you excuse me Lord do you know the requirements for mentoring um I can send you I can send you the information for the lady in charge and then perfect thank you anyone else got a motion to return exactly by June all's in favor um
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oh absolutely Heather could you help us take the role uh and just remind folks that uh and there has been a request do we have transcript recording uh by the way I just saw that pop up I just turned that on yeah so I don't know if really other people can view it unless you join in on Zoom I think you can access it I don't think you see it over CTN but um for those who are may we don't have any guests here but if anybody joins us by Zoom then they I think they can access this okay all right um well uh if you could help us take the role and just a reminder for everyone to uh note where they are located which municipality all right so Eric Briggs is absent uh Stephen boardster of absent Jennifer Cornell is absent Mr dehoney absent Alan Haber Ellen you are muted my friend sorry yes here I am in the municipality of the old west side and armor and Sarah Hammerschmidt is absent Jeffrey Henning uh I'm here in Ann Arbor right Rita Mitchell you're in Ann Arbor that's great Alice Ralph you're in Ann Arbor Frank Wilhelm what wonderful place are you in Ventura California I'm Adam zenke you're an Ann Arbor thank you heather um and uh with that uh if we could have an approval of the agenda agendas posted through legislar it's just a no special items it's our usual agenda this evening um we have a motion to approve the agenda move by Frank seconded by Rita uh all in favor uh say aye aye aye any opposed all right excellent thank you uh approval the minutes the minutes are listed in the agenda there's two uh series of minutes and unless there's any objections we can do them together I think one is from the December 1st meeting and then one is from the special meeting we had on December 21st um to review the recommendations of a prose plan was the second one so uh any uh do we want to move to and then if there's discussion we'll have that yep so motion to move both minutes uh has been made second uh second by Frank uh is there any discussion around either of the minutes before we move them both okay uh hearing none then we'll call uh for the approval uh all in favor say aye all right all right any opposed okay motion carries minutes are approved um Heather do we have any members of the public joining us this evening don't usually we do but not tonight all right must be one of those nights um okay so uh let's get right into the agenda we have uh the two working groups uh as the main meat of our agenda item and just updates today uh and so I'll go first with the future space Design This was sort of the blanket term that we adopted for the RFP and fundraising planning Etc and uh so um we've been working on progressing on that um a few of us have been starting to take what uh Heather had helped us work with with the RFI uh and do some offline work uh around the scope this is to follow up on previous discussions with the uh parks department around writing the RFP it's just some preliminary work there and then I think we're going to try and you know Pare down a little bit what we had and um then engage Heather and I think she is going to be the one who is working more directly with uh Park staff as we get into that phase um We are continuing to actually have an announce that so I've taken a position at the Housing Commission which I'll be right over to um yeah so it probably won't be me but it would be Michelle Bennett likely who is a new community engagement specialist so I'll introduce you to her at some point but um she would be likely the one to to take on the role of of um managing Community engagement on that process all right do you mean also coordination with Parks or or is that yet to be true for the design process yeah yeah Michelle is a planner that's her background so similar background so she would she has a lot of experience and and running planning processes okay so you're are you changing your department are you going to leave us or you're just leaving this RFP where are we yeah what's happening I'm going over to the Housing Commission so I'll be working with Jennifer Hall over there so it's very exciting it's congratulations great it's Mission based so it's near and dear to my heart and I'm very excited I'm also a bit terrified because it's a it's a lot of work there's a lot of work to be done so um but I think you know I really believe in the in the cause so I think that'll keep me fueled and going but I'm sure we'll be intersecting in various ways related to that and I look forward to that excellent so this person you mentioned Michelle is she gonna be at our next meeting where you are right now we don't know yet he will be taking on that role it might be Michelle it might be somebody else okay all right well congratulations thank you I'm sorry to drop that on you suddenly that's okay the first chance that I've had to mention it and of course to have a perspective definitely so uh so uh we will uh keep moving along with uh the scope for the RFP and working on that we're also been working um on fundraising as well um and uh have uh been continuing to pursue uh some uh ideation around grants and private one-on-one fundraising so that part is moving along uh as well and Heather I want to thank you for getting that document ready for us and everything I very much appreciate that um so that's that's sort of where we're at on feature space design sort of chugging along as we have been and I think we're getting very close we do need a couple of uh things to break our way in terms of the fundraising piece but then um then it will happen quickly I think so um happy to entertain any questions uh on that element otherwise I'll turn it over to Rita how does input get to the uh staff that is uh right in the uh the former boilerplate which is pretty much given but the scope of the work how does input get to that from the community or from us or from the initiating committee or from um yeah that's like a question I think it could go a variety of different ways one the new staff liaison could take your input and record it and give it to staff or that that staff could work directly with this group um to gather that input yeah Alan if you would like to talk you know I know we met yesterday but if you'd like to talk uh offline um I can definitely do that because I've sort of been the one coordinating the right yeah yeah I just want to get it out there thank you you're totally you're getting it all together I appreciate it oh we'll we'll we will see okay you know and I should mention that I'll be passing along all the documentation so far of the input that we've received so everything that we talked about related to the RFI that RFI itself and then I I keep all of the emails that you send um so all of that is documented and recorded and will be passed along okay all right thank you that is does that uh I mean I guess the documents that are on our web page are also available to anyone to come follow you such as the original re original RFP or RFI or whatever that was correct and the task force report would be yeah yeah that'll stay up there the task force report and all of the appendices which have a lot of information included in that appendix that'll stay up there excellent Frank your hand up yeah I just had a question uh Heather do you have an official start date for this new appointment that's to be determined so it's either going to be at the end of February or the middle of March uh so if it's the middle of March you might be seeing me again but just in case okay I might know yeah I wanted to let you know before then yeah no problem well it's a huge opportunity so and there's some very cool stuff going on at the house yeah thanks for what you've been doing for us yeah absolutely yes well thank you um okay any other questions around the future space design okay well let's go to activation Rita do you want to give us a little bit of an update as to how things are progressing um yeah at this point um I'm working on uh potential connections with community members and organizations who may wish to be using the space during the coming warmer seasons and looking into how that process gets how they get engaged with that process and also working and and so it is kind of like that two-step thing so it's like who and then how and that's that's really kind of the the place where I am right now and just getting it outlined and um I think there could be some really great things and I've got some um positive responses from number of people so I'm looking forward to moving it forward excellent and I think oh go ahead sorry I didn't mean if you have any questions go ahead I would just like to say too I think uh you know Ben uh doing this in in uh sort of a smaller working group uh with a couple of folks and I think Rita's got a lot of detail that she's putting in to these recommendations and I think we'll probably have an update for the group in terms of a I don't know if I'd call it a report but some type of you know document um at the next meeting and so um I think we're it's there's a lot there's a lot of detail that's going into it so very good I I heard a report that uh Maura Thompson from DDA had to come to look kindly on sharing the storage space in the alley and propose making a division of that half of which would be available to the commons and half remain therefore City or parking structure storage whatever and now that gives a place for donated tables and so on but for Earth Day we will again need tables and uh if there could be inquiry as if about whether from you to uh yeah the parks people are the uh uh yeah sonic boom sonic once whether the materials that the the city has how they could be made available for programs on the commons such as for Earth Day you know otherwise you know we always get in our own stuff that'll be very nice if in the activation for Earth Day or for any other thing that people want to do or party or uh free market or something to know what tables and chairs are sort of close at hand rather than having to be scrounged from here and there right that is totally understandable and uh what I can say is we're working on it so details later there couldn't be a better person working on it I'm sure and I know I I know that uh there was a conversation with the DDA about um those spaces as well and so and I and Alan I'm glad you brought that up because I had forgotten about that conversation briefly or that part of the conversations uh and I do remember they actually mentioned they spoke with you so yeah are you talk Adam are you talking about the car spaces or the storage space storage spaces so yeah I have I have that documented so um the storage issues so yep that's part of what's going on all right any uh any other um any other uh questions at all for Rita okay um so uh with that we'll work uh we'll round out the working groups and uh we're on track to be our fastest meeting ever tonight wow yeah and uh so uh the next agenda items is the item on the next on the agenda ironically um and uh I think that you know the the the only thing I don't think I'd like to add anything to this uh for the next meme but certainly um you know I think we'll have some uh pretty strong updates around uh where we're at with the RFP previous conversations um had yielded that February sort of a key month now that the pros plan is done to start working on that and then also um we're in a really good spot with all Rita's hard work um around the activation uh planning and so um I think we're gonna start to see some of the fruits of that labor and so I would just like to say I'm not sure that amounts to any new agenda items but uh certainly I think the next meeting will have some really robust updates and um I think that'll be great so Adam are there any related potential recommendations to counsel ahead of us um I I think that the uh you know the the one thing might be around the activation plan and technically we may have to make a recommendation around the RFP I'm not sure we'll have to touch base um about that um but um but um you know certainly we we will uh we'll have to we'll have to check in actually read it or Alice I'm not certain if those are recommendations to council certainly the the activation plan could be in line with uh the charge that uh that uh Council passed uh as part of the resolution in the fall to investigate the uh the activation of the space um but I'm not sure if that requires us to do more recommendations or just sort of fill in and supplement um information so we're thinking about I mean not not only need tables and chairs on but we need off to yeah definitely so and I know Rita is covering all of that in terms of usable furniture and things like that in the in the plan but may I just say that it's not like I have them they are in writing yeah not in physical form right yeah okay other items for next agenda items at all otherwise well I I have uh a couple of things on my mind I would like the Council of the Commons in our spirit of activation to be a sponsor or supporter or something like that of the earth day that will be the first most likely the first big activation and it would be good if we could all be behind that and let it be as best we can a plane out of how we are and on the activation plan for an event and what other people could learn from that about how they could also have events because I think everything is sort of to uh and recruit the next thing and to spread the the web of inclusiveness so I'll bring that up and uh and we'll have a clearer sense of exactly what the program is and and there can be some talk or expression from the you know smiling Adam or Alice to represent the Council of accountants from presumably we will have a state the other thing I want to bring up we have two vacancies as I understand I would like to see a Native American person added into our conversation I think that would give us a added perspective on the sense of what is a Commons and what is what is in perpetuity and uh I think we would probably have a window to more than we generally know and the other addition I've been very uh engaged with the United Nations decade for people of African descent and it began in 2015 it concludes in 2024 simultaneous with our bicentennial and I've been promoting in relation to the bicentennial that we see a liaison with the work going on all over the country on reparations and writing the unrated wrongs of racism and so on these questions all over the country in this whole experience we share and it's somebody who would be a liaison with that work going on all over the country and relevant to us in terms of the African-American Community the descendants of people from Africa slavery all that and I think that would uh be beneficial so if people could think about that and we could maybe have a discussion how we would actually add people and who we might add and people's talks about that [Music] yeah I think that's a very good thing to think about Ellen and I think that you're you're uh inclusivity um uh with um uh adding somebody of Native American descent and African uh American descent I think is a really good idea um and so um I I think certainly if any members of the public are interested in applying you should certainly do so and you know obviously but if there are other folks that folks have in mind too um you know please encourage them to apply go ahead and Alan in terms of the Earth Day uh celebration why don't we work on drafting something for the next agenda and you can uh see about getting something on the uh next to Jenna for a discussion item specific to that event right okay um all right in that case we close out that agenda item and we will go into public comment um Heather do we have any members of the public wishing to speak tonight foreign person that joined us but uh no hands raised but somebody that joined by phone so that is star nine if she did want to raise your hand and join okay well I'd like to make one comment uh and I don't know I don't want to do this out of order or anything but can I make a commentary in public comment [Laughter] yeah sure so I'd like to just sort of make a a comment you know there have been um in the last uh 30 days or so we've started to learn about some things being said uh maybe a social media and seeing some things social media and made in the in the public sphere um that uh as well as some um uh I don't want to use the word threats because I think that might be uh that's a little strong of a term but some real nastiness uh being said about both members of the commission and also members of of the public who have been engaged in any activity around the space and um I would just like to indicate that I don't think that is appropriate at all it's not civil and it does not promote Community engagement in any activity um and I'd like to compliment the folks who have been part of the commission and those who have volunteered in different activities on the space for their work and uh and I certainly do not condone any of the comments that are made um in the in the public sphere uh in negative light I think it's really disgusting frankly um so I'm not going to get into any specifics but I wanted to make that comment because these have all sort of surface themselves we've learned more about them I have learned more about them at least in the last 30 days since our last meeting and um and so I wanted to acknowledge that because I don't think that any um local or other type of board members deserve that type of treatment and certainly not any Community engaged members who assist in activities as completely inappropriate so um no one should be subject to that type of um of uh commentary about them so I would just like to put that on the record because I think that's very important that we do not allow that type of um Behavior to permeate Frank do you have a question well I guess I'd like to Second your the comments you just made uh I think it's uh very appropriate to to make that comment and and in the spirit of positive comment I'd like to underscore uh the great work that uh Rita has done on this activation document it's and I know it's still in draft form but it represents a tremendous amount of work and effort and just like to publicly thank Rita for that thank you I think especially as we move closer to the wanted Bicentennial is it bicentennial um it's important to create a culture of kindness and understanding and um certainly I appreciate Adams recognition that there are some people who are failing to use that look at kindness and understanding and none of us condone that kind of the negativities working together for the common goal and um with the Positive attitudes oh I appreciate Adam's comment and I support Rita's word and Frank and all everyone that's uh that's uh building this new idea center of our town there's a comment I always remembered from my days in the legislature and that is you could disagree without being disagreeable that's right that's always stuck with me and um certainly we have our debates uh around here uh and uh elsewhere but um but keeping things civil and productive uh allows for anyone who's a member of the public to feel they can be engaged that is very important regardless of your opinion so it's um the person that joined us from the public has that they're hand raised if he wanted to go back to publication absolutely we're still in public comments so please feel free uh Heather if you want to advance them uh all right you're allowed to talk person on the phone ending in 464 um oh can you hear me now yes oh hi so this is Linda burrower I've been listening and I wasn't going to say anything but after Adam's um comment I wanted to I just wanted to express my appreciation to him for taking some leadership and expressing that publicly and publicly supporting the other members of The Commons and um and just voicing the opinion that that kind of kind of toxic dialogue isn't helpful I I really so much appreciate you taking that leadership Adam um I have a couple other things I'd like to say as long as I'm talking and that is I I am afraid that if you guys have only realized all this bubbling up in the community in the last month you've really been out of touch it's really scary if you've been that out of touch because it has been going on for a long time it's the first time it became official through a proclamation public proclamation to council and an actual email with a draft resolution to council but it has been perking up for a long time and I am worried and what's even more worrisome to me is that it's not only and I don't want it spread the pan you know push the panic button but I guess I am a little panicked because it's been it's been so many years since the resolution and I don't blame any of you um that things haven't progressed more quickly but I do think that we need to put our heads together and figure out why it has progressed so slowly and try to find some strategies to make it go a little bit faster and I know that there's been a lot of resistance and counsel or by some council members but you are an advisory body to the council and I think you could be more proactive in reaching out to council and actually submitting resolutions of things that you recommend I'm only aware of one that you've set um a long time ago about getting food trucks on um I just think I don't know like Adam you've been in Lansing you know you know how politics works I was chair of the parks advisory commission so I know a little bit but not as much as anybody who's been in Lansing it's a political thing and and you guys need to um I think you need to develop some strategy to communicate better with Council and here's another example I think you've got two open seats for months ever since Jen Cornell got appointed as the official Council liaison her seat is open and then Camilla zundia I think left a few months ago you've got two open seats you should be lobbying Council to get a couple new members um you know things like that just simple things um and and you know try to get members that are very supportive of the concept of the Council of the commons and I don't know that you need to okay when you when you develop some suggestions and you like a resolution and you want to vote on it I don't think it has to be however many people you have voting members I think there's 12 voting members you don't need every 12 all the 12 people to sign up on us on it you need a majority you know hopefully you can get more than the majority of super majority but I I don't know these are just some suggestions because the um the Rumblings in the community are just going to get stronger about undoing this and and I'm worried and um I just I just think nobody should have their heads buried in the sand anymore that's all I I'm I'm sorry I hope I don't sound too negative I just it's kind of like just a wake-up warning because I'm concerned and the supporters are getting concerned that's really concerning you know what I mean so thank you for listening thank you so much and thank you Adam yeah thank you again for I wouldn't even talked if you hadn't had the courage to to just say what you did so thank you well I appreciate the concern in terms of the progress Linda and there are a number of pieces that uh we'll talk about at a future meeting here but I think that the point that I was getting at is there have been some unique um extraordinarily um uh just you know frankly disgusting comments that have been made and some real intimidation factors that have started to come to light uh and that there's a difference between uh sort of pace and um and disagreement versus uh downright nastiness and uh that that's the reason I'm making the comment uh this evening so but we'll certainly talk about the resolutions and Council and things like that so else go ahead I just want to assure Linda and others who may be listening that we are aware of all of this having taken and it's nothing new um and um I can personally vouch for at least a decade of awareness of the um of positives and the negatives um we've had a you know we've had a lot of support even through a ballot initiative and now we're in that new era of organized and regulated activity in the establishment of the commission and we are making progress um after I mean we did have a pandemic in there and that slowed things down a little bit but um I think that um the there will may not be very more months left to approach the bicentennial celebration and you have this uh have something to show for our work at that point so we have many things to do and I think there's a lot of progress being made in recent months and maybe it's the new year let's look at it that way excellent okay well I thought that was important to say and sort of acknowledge this evening um Rita I just want to add my thanks to your leadership Alan and um just say that I appreciate working with all of you and look forward to continuing and making some really solid and fun changes I would agree I think that uh I do think that the the two work stream process that we adopted in the fall will yield uh some um good fruits uh as we as we chug into the warmer months of 2023 um and uh you know frankly in terms of just the structure of the Council of the commons I think that is sort of a um unique structure for the type of activity that we've been charged to do um and I I have to say I don't know that I would have um uh created the structure had I uh engaged in a blank sheet of paper at the start of this process but we are here and we're going to kick off this RFP and we're going to kick off an activation process for the for the spaces and that is part of our charge and those things are in process right now and will happen and so I feel good about those activities and I'd like to just clear the air that as we continue the nastiness I will need to stop and that's not directed anybody here obviously but but more in defensive folks here and defense of others who have engaged in our assist some okay 30 minutes late and I missed a lot oh we'll catch up after um and uh Sarah it's good to have you this evening sorry I was late you're good well I don't know what's going on but let me know are there any other members of the public uh wish to speak there is not no okay all right uh in that case I think uh the only other other I closed out the agenda in the midst of that so I was I think the next item is just a motion to adjourn am I correct on that Heather yeah okay well Heather I have to say I hope this is not your last meeting um even though we wish you well uh and we'll all have to get together in person and um and uh you know say uh good luck uh before you officially take off so yeah thank you yeah it would be nice to maybe have a social Gathering I don't know if we have to notify um we'll have a little mini or mini meetings so with that can we have a motion to adjourn I so move second by Frank all in favor say aye aye okay all right thank you all right see you guys for two minutes
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thank you February is the worst month of the year all right good morning Wildcats it's Friday we're gonna try and have some fun but winter is here the groundhog saw his shadow he suggest uh he says uh that uh that he uh so we got six more weeks of winner so we're just really getting into the heart of it we got to talk to our students find out how they're going to survive these winter months how they gonna stay warm in that walk from Kerr McGee and any tips that they have for making the best of the next six weeks might be on Friday fun day talk about how to stay warm you got a great scarf all right Wildcats I'm here with dungeon Grace what you're in school are you guys I'm a freshman I'm a junior junior all right it's uh winner the groundhog saw a shadow so we got six more weeks of it how you feel about that so great so great all right happy about that how should these Wildcats be staying warm over the next six weeks what do we gotta do we're a coat you actually wore a coach today a lot of students choose not to but you wore one Grace how about any advice yeah wear a coat and put your hood up she's modeling the behavior she's wearing her hood on her way into school way to go all right wild cats I'm here with Bella what year in school are you about I'm a freshman freshman how's freshman year ago it's going great good to hear good to hear it's Groundhog Day groundhog saw Shadows having six more weeks of winter are you ready for the rest of winter yeah yeah do you like winter I do okay good yeah I mean you're not even wearing a coat so you're pretty tough any tips to stay warm the rest the next six weeks I don't know drink warm stuff carbohydrates are big this time of year also lotions because everybody is itchy and tired and irritable morning Wildcats I'm here with Anna Anna what you're in school are you a junior the groundhog saw a shadow so we got six more weeks of winter how you feel about that um I'm ready for summer Unforgettable summer of dinner [Music] how was the walk over from Carnegie this morning it was good it's the kind of warm out today so sun shining you know it's almost 20.
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[Music] I'm like ready all right um all right so it is 6 32 according to my um official clock here and we'll start the meeting let's start with the Pledge of Allegiance 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 all right I will pause meeting to order 33 and we will begin [Music] do we have any modifications to the agenda no right and we have an opportunity for recognition of visitors and comments from the audience and we have some more pieces of paper over here for people to tell us who you are and what you uh what you say or get the opportunity to speak is there anybody here who wishes to do that nope okay we'll move on um we have a presentation tonight from this caterpillar and I'm just going to talk to us about be able and the world of work yes I'll go right ahead okay hey all right so um I think I believe it's a k to eight program so middle school has it as well Elementary aspect of it but it's really exciting um so the kids go in and it's it's computerized and they go in and they learn their riospet code and so I'm going to teach you about writers real quick so um write that code um it's a widely adopted career interest framework and it's based on the work of John Holly so some of you may have heard of the Holland code before it's based off of that and so every letter stands for something so R is realistic I investigated a is Artistic as the social he is enterprising and C is conventional when you get your when you start looking at the code so are the realistic those people are the ghost kids or adults are the doers they like to use their hands they like to um build things they like to work with animals operate Machinery there's a whole list of um activities that you can that a realistic person likes to do investigated those are your thinkers um the science the math the research the why I think very deeply the artistic they like to sketch draw paint um play musical instruments um like to write um culinary kids now that we're going to be um s is social and it's funny I told the kids at school they were asking my clothes and they're like oh social yeah it was so funny um these are people though that it's not like social talk all the time it's more like helping people volunteer work teaching and training taking care of others um then we have e the enterprising that's your persuaders they like to debate persuade people start businesses Market um sell things and we have to speak conventional they're the organizers they like to find patterns in data to Texas and County and County at all um follow us that plan that I've done so when the kids go into vehicle they take their code so kindergarten first grade are not online second group to group eight are online so um in kindergarten and first grade the teachers do it with them um what I want here to get the coach so they've all they go through this the exact same test it's just read to them oh so what it is it's an inventory it's a list of activities there are 30 activities you rate each activity on a five-point scale ranging from strongly you strongly like it to you strongly dislike it there's no right or wrong answers you've just already checked out based on how much you think you'd like doing it and at the end you get a coat of two or three things some of my kids I think had four because they tied on some of the things so it looks like this and then you're gonna have a little bit um so when you go in and take take this um take this test the inventory It'll ask you things like do you like to build build kitchen cabinets like I said yes because I like to work with my hands and I love doing things outside so you know when we talk to the kids you like to do these things so they could agree disagree um what's the next one develop a new medicine choose what they how they feel about that right books in place so it goes through a list of listen don't even find this online and do it on your own you don't have to be in this program because I found it online because I've been having my kids do it so my community um so anyway you can do it online and it's really cool to see to see where you come out um there's a read aloud tool in it what I love about this program not only are they learning about careers but they're reading and they get to read at their level it's an Adaptive program so it adapts to the reader so they're struggling it comes down if they're doing well it goes up but it's all about that career so it doesn't matter if they vote if the career they chose was a if you chose the chef and I told you chef and my let's ship and My Lexile is really low and yours is really high we're still gonna read about that but at our own level I I love it um there's also a dictionary so if you're not sure what a word is you can use the dictionary on the page um there's a translation tool if we needed it this is what it looks like do you guys have yeah okay so the interest inventory will come up and it'll show um where you where you ranked and then it's going to give it so it gives you a summary of your results in the areas and then when you're finished you tap explore careers and find careers that match your interests this is also something that you don't just take one time one time because I have a little girl saying I really like to do because I have a big bulletin board and choose point to the orange like I really like to do that's okay you can still do that just because of code and you don't have an R it doesn't mean you can't do it it's just that that's what the majority of those people that have that interest like to do I'm just like oh and I said and your code's Gonna Change it's not going to stay the same for the most part um from there they build out a list of careers much code interest to you and this then they start the career exploration part of it so they learn more about each career by clicking on learn more button and then they can select three and then they start tracking their Lexile growth so their Lexile is their reading level so the Brown County we use autism panel to Benchmark for kids and so is one letter A to Z Lexile matches to it so I we have a conversion chart that shows the Lexile and also the letter so that we can see that and check in for the most part what we found is it's it's on it's on track just to give it a little bit off but not too bad so there's so there's where we get our interest inventory find out what we want to do and we're going to go to Reynolds yeah I'll show you mine um sorry the cool thing the cool thing the kids will have is they have an avatar and I get to build an avatar so they're in this little world they build their Avatar and they get in order to change their Avatar like to give it a new shirt or cool sunglasses or a hatch or whatever it might be just that kids do on their video games the more you read the more viewable bucks you get so then you use your vehicle bucks to buy those items which is so cool because kids are reading like crazy and the growth we've seen in them is amazing so here's my so I go to my profile all right it's it's not showing your screen it's a different but I do have a video so did you just unplug the port and plug it back into your computer maybe that'll reset it is perfect okay I want that video and then I'll talk about so the Avatar so like I said the kids are reading they're reading a lot more they're reading about different careers I have kids and you'll see in this video that are talking about jobs that I never like when I was a kid and you're little you know I want to be a teacher I want to be a doctor I want to be a vet like those are the main you know jobs and careers that kids talk about now they want to be I want to be a chef I want to be an aeronautical engineer I want to be um oh gosh what if I had I've had a waitress I have a singer I have um so many doctors veterinarians still paleontologists policemen somebody wants to work for the SWAT team because you've read about it um and I'll show you guys these um it's ready okay so this is a video that we made of the kids talk [Music] hello my name is Jackson and I'm a fifth grade student at elmsbury elementary it stands for realistic social conventional one thing I love about vehicle is that if you read articles it actually gives you rewards like evil bucks and PowerPoints for reading articles instead of websites there's courses to read and you can also choose your careers attention [Music] foreign is that you can't like you get there's like the main menu in this city yeah I think that that may be made me a little cool and I like how yeah like how you can get jobs [Music] thank you hi my name is um and conventional [Music] when I write about people is that you can read about animals that you have never seen before and you can change your avatar my earnings and answering questions activities myself hi my name is [Music] because I get to use um [Music] technology 3.5 requested oh doctors Ias investigating artists artistic and social one thing I like about being able is that tonight we could just have it my favorite you know I love that they're learning from all kinds of different careers making memories um anyway lots of different careers they're reading a ton because they can get the vehicle box and um work on their Avatar um so everybody's doing the same same thing and it's just even the degree level's not the same so every kid in our building has um I'm passing this around it's a little interest um display it displays the child it tells their code so when you walk into the building outside everybody's classroom you will see these so you can look at a child and say look at the full child like what are the what are their grows what are their blows what do they want to be when they grow up um what do they what do they love to do and um what else I think that's it it's just really it's really a great program I love that the kids are um excited about it and using them so yeah I've done it like have they done it just one time this year I mean they just don't know they're gonna test one time or or do they do it once a year or what's the Frequency they've only done it once so far I'm not sure I'm I'm just now learning because we started I think when we did it in November Maybe and so we're really just hitting it hard since we got back I'm not sure I know they take it again and I know there's a Time language there but I honestly don't know I just wanted because I think about kids changing like I I you know I I know so many people who say you know when they're six years old I'm gonna do this and then they change all right so I'm gonna get stuck in that and like I guess I'd really curious to see how it changes by the time eighth grade in high school it will be fun to track that like we have so we're keeping we're keeping track of their codes and we have a sheet that's also that we're all using it's a goal setting sheet we're putting in our portfolios that talks about their code and um what their career is now their Lexile is and so we're going to keep these to move along with it so it will be interesting I just found that the phone yeah what's your code all right which is really exciting because in s one of the job categories is going therapy all right all three of them all three of them said Health Services so it's kind of funny I remember mine in the seventh grade so we we did the same time and it reminds me a lot of Myers-Briggs um which has the same you know for letters that you get yeah it's been really fun so any other questions yes please because I'm sure I no they did such a great job um I will add that this this work really came along in alignment with that 3E Grant um if you remember um Chrissy and the team worked really really hard to get um and that Grant is all about work-based learning and career exposure and um trying to align that Continuum of career connected learning across the entire PK to adult system um we realized that Brown County schools that um quite a bit of Engagement and experience within the middle school and the high school and what we were really missing was this Elementary piece and um it's just been really exciting to see a platform for for young kids to be able to be exposed to these careers like that kiddo said like they learned the pay they learn skills required to do this job um and it's beyond the I want to be a teacher I want to be a doctor um so and we're talking to kids when we go on like if you want to go on a field trip great but how are you going to connect that to a career like I want to know you know if you go to Wagner prom what are all the jobs at wagglers so kids can see all of that and so if you go to the children's museum curator exactly yes it really is moving the needle Beyond defining personality and it really is allowing kids to become aware of what their strengths and their interests are so they can learn about it so so like you said that they can take this survey as many times throughout any and it could change and you know what it's a thousand percent okay because it's just going to open up more exposure to careers for them so yeah we're good about telling kids like that doesn't Define you like you can do anything in any of these things thank you all right um moving on um discussion number six approval of the session minutes for January 19 2023 is there a motion to approve those minutes it's been moving second in any discussion all right let's vote Yes Carol yes Vicky yes Stephanie yes yes all right that's just actually needed items uh we have a recommendation to approve the following students to attend an out-of-state conference they are going to present at the National superintendence Conference which is very exciting February 16 to 19 2023 in San Antonio Texas and those staff members are Emily Tracy Trent Austin Chris Townsend Dean kefaber and Joey Dennis sorry Joseph Dennis um is there a recommendation um to approve that so a discussion you said students yeah yes um who love the other names I recognized about it yeah um this is this this event has turned out um gosh I think last spring they always call for the proposals for the national superintendent's conference and um I thought you know what we're just gonna put this out there for a whim and it's something that would be really incredible to put on a national stage if we can do it um sure enough we wrote a good enough proposal that they accepted it um and we got a good conference day it's not like the last day of the conference on a Saturday at 9 00 a.m so um I'm so proud of the work um I'm proud of this team I'm proud of the expansion that is almost complete um and then to it's one thing when teachers get to go be on a national stage but when we get to put a kiddo out there and and so he could share his experiences and his outcomes as he's back from this program um that really is moving the needle and in public education so I um am grateful for support from the board to be able to take this team out there and and do it so that's great but I'm glad we're sharing Eco Manufacturing as a as a model one of the places that's great any other discussion comments all right let's go ahead and vote Amy yes Carol yes Vicky yes Stephanie yes and uh yes all right um number two there is a recommendation to improve an anonymous donation of 202.36 to go towards open lunch balances myself sick it's or any discussion thank you you are I greatly appreciate this as well I think we are over um since lunch is not um free anymore um to every kid if we are about seven thousand dollars um in debt with unpaid student lunches so any donations that are received is greatly appreciated I know I've had people ask me how can I help the school and that's the first thing go to any of the elementary high schools the junior high and donate money for lunches yep yeah I don't know if people know that for two years right all lunches for all kids regardless of them come free and then we've now gone back to painting and I expensively oh God and we don't turn away from from any kids so um it's not a local decision to free or not um that is governed by by the state of Indiana or federal however it is up to a local decision if a kiddo is x amount of dollars in the hole and they come up for a lunch we have the choice to give bread and peanut butter to a kiss and not a regular hot lunch like every other student gets and we have made that local decision to not do that to any student no matter what the deficit is in the account so um kids get to eat and it seems to me has it been more restrictive on the free and reduced lunch um I can't speak to being more restricted it's really really challenging to get families to fill out the application it has to be done online and it has to be filled out um so it's no matter how many phone calls we make or visits or emails or whatever different ways we try to contact families for whatever reason that piece has been really really challenging for us so we think some of these families then are wouldn't have they used to reinforce the fact that this information is not public information right so a lot of times have families don't want to do that because they don't want to acknowledged in that way but it's not it's just like other in student information that I wouldn't say hit but it's not it's thank you so anyway yeah so I mean you know like you said we get out there and try to reach to him but and being called let me make sure I'm right about this you qualify for real and reduced lunch it also affects things that happen here at the school including or fees and other things so it really could be a substantial sentence I'm sorry professional relations to spend with check and how how can the information they can either go to contact the building principal um or secretary in any one of the buildings or they can come to central office phone me email me I'll get into the right spot the right way and it's not directed to any students so this just oh yeah goes towards the balance right um district-wide yes sends it then my other question is uh if there are enough families that qualify for free and produce lunch would that put us at a federal level where we could get free lunches again right now I think we're under just under 50 for the district um is that right yeah um so that does not qualify for us to be able to get it we have free breakfast for every kiddo in the district and there's some there was some red tape we had to cut through to be able to get that everywhere but we did get that um underway this year but the lunch is um we're not quite close we get more families to fill out those forms to fill out that free and reduced yeah um That's the Silver Bullet right um we'll we'll take Solutions on that I mean we make personal phone calls at registration um we invite them in we'll do it for them if they're standing right there with us um we've offered all of that out so again it's um can't do it for them foreign approached it where that message is coming from Food Service that message has been coming from the building principal secretary teacher superintendent like we've tried messaging each of those Avenues also so it's definitely an obstacle for us I think it always has been but it's just an annual because it has to be a new day every year yes it's not a one right so folks have to fill it out every year all right any other discussion all right yes Carol yes Vicky yes Stephanie yes yes and number three is also a recommendation to approve a second Anonymous donation in the amount of 200 to high school um any uh um a recommendation to approve them I'll second any discussion yes all right moving on to a consent agenda items um we have no separations okay um and we have two appointments um including Colton samples for assistant varsity boys track coach and they can Kincaid as a UCS athletic trainer and no transfers is there a motion to approve those percent agenda items I'll second yeah well uh any discussion I really really glad that we were able to they can do on board as the athletic trainer since her company decided to stop providing services for our kids yeah so we contracted those Services out for a number of years um I believe Brown County schools has been dropped by every hospital that is surrounding us um probably for a couple different reasons they have to come into the county to be able to service and and it's it's more money more worth the value when they've got Columbus about new schools Bloomington and Brown County Schools just hasn't been worth it for them to keep so we recently were contacting through ATI they contacted us um just before Christmas I believe and and said that they were going to up the price for that um by 90 000 um and that even when we were paying 60 and the trainer was not receiving even half of that as salary and no benefits so um our trainer Megan is absolutely incredible with all of our kids kids and our staff and our families and she wants to be in Brown County Schools we want to have Megan in Brown County Schools our kids deserve to have an athletic trainer take care of them and to me this is a win-win for the corporation and this is less than we were Contracting out paying to a company um so very very proud that we were able to do this as well and she I thought her resume was very impressive she has done a lot of that but various aspects so that's great so any other comments all right let's go maybe yes Carol yes Vicky yes definitely yes and uh yes all right superintendent support thank you um I just want to reiterate um and thank Kelly Bruner and her entire team at Helmsworth for their hard work and commitment to the world of work for our students um be able literally translate to being able and and that's what we're trying to bring awareness and teach our kids um it is absolutely incredible work that I have been able to be a part of um for the previous five years um and Incredibly proud to now be in a position that I can help Empower it here at Brown County Schools it it is great work they are leading our students on a path to happy gainful employment um and they're learning about their strengths and interests and in being exposed to so many of different careers at such a young age for what it's worth my code is enterprising artistic and social which fits me to achieve so and thank everybody for that work there at home sport we held our first e-learning day last week um after speaking with the teachers and the staff at most of the buildings it's evident that our students and families knew what to do even when we had Technologies and Technology challenges across the county that they were able to communicate those and get credit I just wanted to be able to remind everybody that we only have two e-learning days remaining for the school year and we have two more built-in weather makeup days before we have to tap on at the very very end leading up to graduation and those two built-in days are Monday February 20th and Friday April 7th I want to congratulate freshman Jackson Reed for advancing to the wrestling regional um he gets to wrestle this Saturday morning in Jeffersonville I think last year we had four wrestlers um and this year our wrestling coach Justice Herrera has been able to more than double our wrestling team and it's very exciting for us to get to have to have freshman Advanced imagination so um I want to congratulate him and excited for that I also want to congratulate our girls varsity basketball team they're advancing the second round of sectional play meeting South Vermillion last week our girls played tomorrow night against Northfield we reached Schindler's while they're playing Northview but the game is played at a window uh We've successfully reached the 100th day of school last Tuesday which is always a big deal in our Elementary's um it was really cool to see our little uh Dressed a little older talking a little wiser and at being absolutely adorable so if you haven't gotten to see the pictures from the 100th day of school you need to go check out the elementary schools um world read-aloud day was yesterday and so grateful I got the opportunity to read one of my favorite books to Mrs Thomas's kindergarten class um they were great listeners and uh even asked if they could have schools on Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays and Fridays one of my favorite book um band viewer and Wildcats Science World team they ended up winning State runner-up in the science Bowl competition last week so very proud of the team and the kids and their hard work there and then finally um our quarterly magazine called The Eagle Eye I have a copy for each of the board members it's in print um take one you may pass it down um this is our first prototype um our vision for this is to be able to publish a magazine like this quarterly throughout the year um to be able to have a few copies at each of our facilities so our visitors can browse through it um of course website parent Square social media um the visitors bureau is going to push it out on on their access list um hope to have it at maybe the Democrat or Community Foundation or YMCA to have public front desk just so people can can view it it's just one of our pieces towards our goals of school family and Community engagement um and just really excited to be able to highlight and tell our stories so it's great I love it nice very nice so those are your copies they will get published there's a few things we have to change sometimes you have to see it in actual print um to catch a few things but tomorrow it will get published digitally everywhere and then we should have copies so by next week and then we'll start working on our our summer issue so if people have story ideas you can they send them to you absolutely um um no it is definitely a collaborative effort so it comedy Lewis um has helped incredibly with the design and putting it together um our entire District leadership team helps with the content that goes um yeah and it's it's just a very collaborative effort across we also um by next week should have our building um blogs that are up on the website so the the principles of each of the building are working on putting a communication needs together that will house on the website and then we'll have a monthly District blog that that looks like it too so trying to get stuff out weekly monthly and then quarterly out to the community so that's all I know anything else um all those in favor say hi hi I lost them already
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all right bring the meeting to order roll call Maria Gary president Amanda president Rick here I'm here um Rick can you do this in the pledge sure please join me [Music] congratulations to the flag of the United States one nation under God thank you thank you Kylie do we have any public comments um not pertaining to closed session okay I'm gonna go through what we're gonna do in closed session pupil Personnel expulsion case exp 11 22-23 stip number three 22-23 and annual review AR number 9 22-23 and AR number 10 22-23 conference on litigation government code section 54956.9 current litigation eight cases covid 1907-172 the cibds 201183 civds 20229956 cibds cibsb2113003 cibsb 2209 8019 CIB SB 220 303 cibsb 221-8676 government code section 54 954.5 and 54.956.9 and E one anticipated litigation seven cases 2o20 2021 2208 2021 2213 -2022 23 through 05 2022 23-06 2022 2307-2022-3208 public employees discipline dismissal release reassignment transfer leave title certificated and classified employees Public Employee appointment reassignment retirement reduction and certificated and classified employees conference with labor negotiator agency negotiator Dustin Conrad employee organization Apple Valley teachers Union conference with labor negotiator agent negotiator Dustin Conrad employee organization California School Employees and the conference on with real property negotiator government code 549-56.8 negotiating parties Matthew Schulenburg Apple Valley Unified and number eight superintendent evaluation and I have a motion to go into closed session second all in favor all right in closed session thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign foreign foreign foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign foreign thank you foreign thank you very much thank you very much foreign thank you very much thank you very much thank you foreign thank you very much thank you foreign thank you very much thank you foreign thank you very much thank you ready to order at this time we'd like to have a the moment of silence to remember Apple Valley students unions School District students jamala Adams and Blaine Bachmann thank you desert Knowles we have Aubry where and Ariane Hagen representing desert Knolls [Applause] it's cool good evening board members cabinet and members of the public I'm Ariane Hagen and this is Aubry Weir we are sixth grade students at Desert Hills Elementary School and we are headed to tell you some of the things that we have been doing our dozen notes this year let me start by saying how exciting it has been to stutter before and after school programs we have been having so much fun doing Esports art Spanish gardening and so much more we have built birdhouses and made tasty treats and learned how to work as a team my favorite thing so far has been Esports these classes have a great addition to our school day and they are so much fun over the last few weeks we have been working on these gifts for the board we hope you enjoy them this is my first year in student council and I am so excited to be representing our school student council and booster club have been working hard to keep us excited about coming to school in October we were busy with spirit days for Red Ribbon Week and we ended with our fall festival it was so much fun and there were so many exciting things to do in December we had another spirit week and our kindergarten classes had a Christmas concert last week we're participated in kindness week we had a spirit day for each day and every grade level Contin contributed to kindness around our campus in class we have been working hard to build our stamina and use strategies to solve real world problems we are improving our reading skills as we learn about the world around us and investigate the science in the world we live in most importantly we are working on being part of our school Community showing respect and consideration for others thank you for all your time and all you did to help our school have a great night [Applause] High Desert Premier Academy Daniel good evening president Bender board members and cabinet I'm honored to stand before you all once again to inform you of the accomplishments and upcoming events of high desert Premiere Academy and honored to bring you all a token of our appreciation we hope you like them on our shirts we have embedded our logo of the three R's respect responsibility and recover we hope you wear them with pride before I start telling you about the wonderful things we have going on this month I wanted to let you know how much we have grown this year we are now a four hour Nation with 210 students on our campus and we have so many new students learning and involving themselves daily this leadership Club is in full effect after the student advisory meeting with superintendent Nelson we were able to create a leadership club that meets to discuss the student voice and open conversations about what students meet on campus and we are looking forward to meeting weekly to discuss improvements on campus and how we can bring students together thank you for hearing us out with Nelson this month our Esports team is participating in play verses we have five team members that will be competing with other schools on Wednesday in knockout rounds good luck owls another thing we're excited about sharing are the upcoming field trips we have planned our art classes and some of the independent study students will go to the Cheech Marine Museum and some of the independent studies will be going to the culture of Riverside Art Museum they will also have the opportunity to see an aspect of Chicano art from multiple perspectives our students will will have the opportunity to go to the Museum of Tolerance and learn about the history of the Holocaust in effects on many through interactive exhibits and this month is Black History Month you know power to the people I'd like to acknowledge that not even a hundred years ago people of color were going unnoticed for the accomplishments that they had for centuries it wasn't until 1926 when negro history week was established and was later expanded in 1976 as Black History Month I'm so thankful that we are allowed to express ourselves and a lot of the things that we have accomplished are being noticed because it went unnoticed for so long and I'd just like to thank you all for letting me come and talk to you tonight I would also like to take time to recognize some of our own and she was raised in San Bernardino County and her name was Dorothy Ingram and she was the first black school teacher in San Bernardino County her brother Howard was also the first black physician and they both paved ways that many young African-American youth would be allowed to follow thank you all for your time and support and I look forward to speaking to you all again next month thank you Granite Hills High School Ashley Guzman good evening board members superintendent Nelson and attendees my name is Ashley Guzman Garnet Hills GC president and student representative and I'm joined by my vice president Itza Favela starting off with kindness week wrap up Administration has encouraged many of our students to participate in kindness challenges throughout the school and said Administration could even nominate students and shown that have shown kindness in order to win prizes although it is the shortest month of of the 12th February will be very busy yeah exciting month for us though we still have quite a way to go to the end of the year and graduation planning for next school year has already begun this week Abbott has began hosting Avid Shadow Days where current 8th grade average students will be visiting from our theater schools every Wednesday this month this is a great opportunity to see their future high school campus build connection with Granite Hills High School Avid students and teachers and sit in on classes with upperclassmen counselors have been meeting with students to choose their classes for next year and providing many opportunities for students and families to learn more about our programs available to them such as CCAP and AP Fair next week and skate a night on February 16th we also had some of our students participate in skills USA and they all did amazing other events happening on campus are the superintendent student advisory council meeting on the 9th black history months we're having a spirit week for Black History Month on from the 14th through the 17th cougars United on the 22nd Black History Month presentation on the 23rd where we will be having a guest speaker and parent Wellness meeting on the 27th staff and students are working hard to promote positive School culture on campus through building relationships and engaging activities campus life has been radiating positivity as the weather begins to warm up and spring sports are starting to begin golf has had informational meetings Boys Tennis is also still recruiting and setting up for their first game on the 15th and track is also recruiting for their team as well with the beginning of sports does come in end of winter sports just as the just these past weeks ASB has been busy helping out make posters and banners for all the senior nights we just had our seniors have played their lastly games yet some are now on to cifs which we are very excited for all teams have hosted beautiful nights for their seniors and lots of love as they say goodbye I hope you all have a safe rest of your night and always remember maroon and gray lead the way [Applause] High Cheyenne Valentine good evening to the members of the board and attendees my name is Cheyenne Valentine the Apple Valley High School line president I just want to give a shout out to Desert Knowles for doing such an amazing job at speaking now to start off our semester is at such a good start off even though it's only one month in and I'm so excited to tell you about everything that we've done so far last month we started the year off with the bang we had we held our annual green week Greek week sorry with four teams competing in Greek week is where students and staff compete with multiple games throughout the week in a final dodgeball tournament we also held a winter sports pep rally to celebrate all of those words that are currently competing and encourage students to support them in their final weeks skillsusa has begun for CTE classes and they're wrapping up their Regional competitions this week we're very proud of every student competing this year in um and we wish them luck this weekend we have also started planning Mr Sun level prom for this year and next year we're in our formal and buff and tough ASB line has held sign ups meetings and we're starting practices this upcoming week for Mr Sun level ASB Junior and senior class have both visited their prom venues last month and speaking of dances our winner formal dance is this Saturday so we're very excited to see students have an amazing time senior class has also started planning buff and tough which is where Junior and senior boys have a chance to play volleyball taking a look into our plans for this month we will continue to work on moon reformal and Beth and tough we also have our annual Color Run later this month which always has such an impact on our community and gets everyone involved seniors have an exciting few weeks ahead of them with the senior meeting that discusses events like grad night and graduation and prom which we're so excited for we're also going to be revealing our prom venue and um oh my gosh and theme which has been held a secret for the past two years and we're so excited uh we're also going to continue to plan other events and work towards achieving our goals for the rest of the semester such as every 15 minutes more winter formal from graduation and other senior activities the color on cultural Affair Mr Sandoval Renaissance skills USA and just making sure that every student can stay involved in campus by re-chartering clubs and creating new clubs our winter sports pep rallies are coming to an end not pep rallies just winter sports um and we're so proud of all of our student athletes for representing Apple Valley high school so well and having that true Sun Devil pride in them even though the official seasons are coming to an end we hope that some of our teams will continue to compete in CIF we already have had and are still having senior nights for the 12th grade athletes to recognize your dedication to their Sports we're also very excited to see what our spring Season Sports have in season for this year to wrap things up I want to say how grateful AVH is for all of your support throughout the year if your encouragement inspires us students to do our best inside and outside of the classroom we're off to a strong sport strong start for the spring semester and we're looking forward to see what else you can accomplish in the next four months and as always Sandoval pride is contagious [Applause] and reports California School Employees Association Apple Valley Unified Teachers Association good evening superintendent Nelson board members assistant superintendents and audience the difference between ordinary and extraordinary is a little extra I would like to congratulate Miss akpara for your dvl honoree award for doing that extra for our community I'm sorry I was not able to attend as Helen Keller stated keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow I may not have adopted a word for the new year but I have chosen to always look at the positive although one of the busiest months that I have faced in this position January was filled with many positives I would like to thank Mr Raleigh Miss Buchanan and Mr RC for attending the CTA School Board luncheon with me it was exciting to see all the high desert presidents and school board members enjoying an afternoon of good food and great conversation Leslie and I were able to attend the governor's budget workshop and two follow-up CTA workshops where we learned that they are projecting a cola of over eight percent funding for implementation of universal TK as well as the Arts and the governor is Con is committed to continuing his support of Education even when the state faces a budget a possible budget shortfall the presidents of the high desert region were also able to bring all of the negotiation teams together for a day of collaboration and networking at the Hesperia CTA office it was interesting to hear what our neighboring districts are working toward that was the first time ever that we've done that so it was it was really good avuda was also able to participate in our first meeting with Burnham to hear about our health care options we are hopeful to bring more health care options to our members we also have two of our except board members that have um put in their candidacy for a state position to represent not only our local but our state at the national level if elected to those positions um out of the meeting with Burnham as well I was able to have a great a couple of great conversations with Nick the CSEA president abuta hopes to continue to build the relationship between us and csca I attended more inspiring meetings with principals and sight reps finally I was able to visit Miss Kurt's dance class Mr Churchill's choir class and attend Granite Hills play Shakespeare's much to do about nothing I was amazed at the great talent at Granite I was beyond impressed with the talent of the actors and actresses in the play I look forward to seeing the sunshine of February even though the groundhog says that's not going to happen but remember I don't see shadows in solidarity Karen now we're going to have some comments from our superintendent afternoon there we go it wasn't going to come on I do want to commend all of the students for their presentations we learn something every time you show up here to tell us about your schools and so much appreciated and um Angelique we always wait for the lesson of what it's going to be about this month so um I appreciate that too Monday several of us attended the San Bernardino County School Board Association meeting where they were honoring Mr so for his achievement and support and service in the association and scsva delegate um 29 years in our system and I loved watching Mrs Buchanan and Mr para flank him for a photo with arms um around each other which absolutely shows the the value of dignity and community and so I think you know as you go for election as an elected official and you can see these people stand next to each other after competing for a position and still care about each other and celebrate each other that's huge and so I just um it was one of those powerful moments when I looked at it and thought look at this that wouldn't happen a lot of places but that happens in Apple Valley um we had a wonderful presentation at the greater High Desert chamber yesterday that involved many staff members within the district that present under CTE so our Career Technical education it was all wrapped around our jpa called The Mountain Desert or Mountain Desert career Pathways so they presented to the business Community about how kids come out of our education system prepared for work and all the things the pathways that kids have access to um along with the collaboration with BBC and all of the students that are gaining college credit as they are going through High School likewise dreamers Visionaries and leaders presentation to Ms okparo was wonderful even after quite a delay because of rain we were there at Victor Valley College to a packed house watching um three incredible people be recognized and although Maria had a wonderful recognition I think we were all paused by a 100 year old woman who was receiving an award for the Arts in our community and she walked up on stage up a set of stairs and we all thought that's where we want to be when we're 100 years old um mock trial has concluded our students went down the hill to Ontario those that could make it I will tell you that Mr Goodrow went over Crestline Miss Burke took her team over the crest over Crestline in a van I got turned around after an hour and 45 minutes trying to get there through a different pathway and and they got Awards and we were thrilled that they made it down I don't think that Granite was quite so lucky with all the students but we had our students recognize and that's always wonderful Apple Valley High School placed in the mountain desert region and we know that it's always a building process but when if you've never seen mock trial in action you ought to take it in because it's pretty cool to watch these kids defend and look at the law and give all of the reasons why they believe their case should be heard the way it is last week we held the state of the district and we were appreciative of the ability to share the goals and happenings within the district with our community likewise the district advisory parents committee was here earlier this week and we did the beginning of the cycle of data and goal review with the stakeholders every school was represented every school has a parent group along with our District English learner Advisory Group next week we have the student advisories as was mentioned and we're looking forward to that it's always eye opening we're excited about what was the outcome at both Apple Valley high school and at High Desert Premiere both had plans and took leadership roles and presented those to their administrative teams on how to improve things going on on their campuses and so your voice does matter and sometimes asking just one question changes the dynamic of what you're doing on your campus so thank you for your involvement and then um apparently Angelique didn't School me up on the fact that last month with School Board member appreciation month and since we're super close to that date um I'm going to tell you that we will do better but we will appreciate you along with all staff in may as well next week is national school counselor appreciation week and as you know there's probably some national appreciation going on in in our system that we could recognize pretty much every week but we do like to recognize those things so if you see a school counselor next week tell them thank you thank you Mr Bender okay board comments Rick sure thank you a couple shout outs tonight I want to thank uh desert Knowles High Desert Premiere granite and Apple Valley you guys really do a good job of speaking and uh Angelique Daniel you keep stepping it up every time you're going to be a very good public speaker so you should maybe look into a future in maybe politics it's a really good job I really appreciate the things that you say and you say it with such passion thank you and then I want to shout out to to Maria for her award um you know I follow you on Facebook and you were kind of getting after me in closed session though I look at Facebook too much but I I see what you're up to all the time you are everywhere so keep it up you did a good job so that's all I have tonight Amanda okay thank you um yeah I wanted to reiterate to Maria your award um just thank you so much for you know allowing me to come and cheer you on um they did this wonderful video uh presentation on her and it was just it was very powerful so I'm really glad I could be there um and it was it was so packed like you could not walk through the lobby because it was just shoulder to shoulder and but everybody was having a great time so while we waited because there was some rain delays um I had the opportunity to go to one of uh granite's soccer games and those girls man are out there in shorts and it was I screenshotted it it was like 43 degrees when I left and I don't know how they do it but they did it and smile on their face and it was it was great and you guys ended up was it League Champs but yes okay let's say I think I saw that so congratulations um and then I also had the opportunity of going to the Shakespeare play Much Ado About Nothing and yeah Shakespeare's hard um anybody who's ever read Shakespeare knows Shakespeare's heart and just to watch these kids get on stage and really take on the role um they had the audience we were we were rolling a few times it was great um and then the Sia or the l c uh s b c [Music] BSA yes San Bernardino County School Board Association meeting um on Monday night uh yeah Mr so came in and he sat right next to me in between Marie and I and it was a very nice evening and I was really glad I could be there to watch um I mean he's a legend everybody in that room walked around they knew who he was they wanted to take pictures and shake his hand and um I was very blessed to be able to sit next to him and have him tell me lots of stories um from his tenure sitting up here and then finally uh yesterday evening I got to go to the district's spelling bee which was so awesome um so the kids were grades one through eight and there were some words that I could not have spelled and I'm an English teacher but they just every kid should be so proud of themselves and it was so fantastic to see the teachers and the principals cheering them on and talking beforehand and um I don't know who it was somebody made him spell the word awesome in the audience and I was like that's fantastic for right before they start so I just I I'm excited to see everything else that's going on um in the district but I would say that the staff and the students keep it up you guys are really rocking it out there that was it sorry I'm done that's good okay Gary I would just Echo kind of those same sentiments especially with regard to the to the Shakespeare play here and here at Granite it really was impressive just just first of all for the kids to to memorize so many so many lines but so many lines of Shakespeare it was it was quite impressive so so really congratulations to the to the students to the to the teachers uh to the parents too because I know the parents spent a lot of time building the sets and that type of thing and it's just uh what we said the Excellence that we saw in in that play is really just a microcosm of what happens throughout the entire District in terms of extracurricular activities in terms of band in terms of Athletics and then of course in terms of academics so and and again another congratulations to you student Representatives that's that's kind of the highlight of our board meeting we always enjoy you know hearing uh you guys come up and and just just share with us the Fantastic things which is going on on your campuses which is really a testament to you and to your parents and and to your teacher so just like Amanda said that thank you for all the hard work that you're doing it really shows and let's keep on going thank you Maria um uh it's so hard to take all of this in um especially when um I do things not because I want somebody to acknowledge but I do things because it is the right thing to do um I'm going to start by thanking all of the parents who have had a hand in all of these young people that came and spoke to us today uh sometimes we tend to forget that they they do things but they're the ones that stay up at night they're the ones that make sure that the homework is and they're the ones that make sure their kids go to school with a full belly and they go to bed with their full bedding um I thank you so much uh for what you do as parents and I am so proud of you the students for doing the great things that you do to Showcase your different schools um you know we could have come to see you in other places but you come to see us and we make sure that we give you our time uh secondly I would like to thank the teachers um for encouraging these students to be the best they could be um and I've always maintained that you should never be satisfied to be on the ground the ground is not your final destination you should always looked up and see how far you can go once your feet hits the ground and to start the trajectory yes I got the recognition by dvl it took me forever to figure out what D was I knew every other word the the other part of the acronym but the D was a hard one for me to remember and I was very reluctant to participate because it is hard to talk about yourself I I prefer to talk about everything else but myself but I was forced to talk about myself so I was forced to tell my story and everybody here has a story and I hope you never forget that story because it is that story that makes you who you are down the road when you go back and look at where you came from so I am so proud to say it's the month of Black History Month and and I always say I am black 365 days in a year and so I'm now black just in February so I have the 365 days in a year that I celebrate who I am and I'm proud to say who I am and I hope each and every one of you is proud of who you are and never have somebody have to change it for you uh over the weekend I had an opportunity to go to a presentation that was called the black empowerment committee committee or committee and and I have to use this opportunity to thank one of Apple Valley High School students who came out and did not have to be there but she came so she can take pictures and her name is Samantha pulido I had never met her but she came up to me to introduce herself to me and I thought how proud could I possibly be that I'm sitting in this large crowd I'm one person from Apple Valley is here showcasing the best that we have and I have to say thank you to Samantha uh she did not know I was going to recognize her today but she managed to give me her name so I took it down I figured I'll share it yes we went down into San Bernardino to celebrate Mr so I've always been proud of Mr so because he is all about the children it's all about what is best for our kids so and he's taught me quite a bit so to go and hear from everybody else in the in the county celebrating this one man that sat next to me for four years was the best gift he could have left me so I have that I carry that in my heart uh so I thank you all um for recognizing uh Who We Are what we stand for and um and just remember that if you are walking into a place and and you are going to a river and there is no water in it then you have missed the boat you need a river with that somebody is in and the only way you can look at it is how do you pay attention to your elders so listen to your elders and make sure you learn as much as you can because you don't want that River to be empty when the when the elders are gone thank you very much for your time thank you I just like to ditto everything they said but but especially I'd like to congratulate you young people I mean what you're doing believe me you ask an adult the biggest phobia they have is speaking in front of other people you're starting out at a young age and you got a million dollar smile so you can buy your way through it but I'm serious it's something that you carry with you and you might have to just talk on your feet with no prep and that's the way it is so we'll call it a that end right here you guys can all go home and have a snack enjoy your evening thank you [Applause] yeah all right the clerk will read out any action taken in closed session in closed session the Board of Trustees took action in support of the following recommendation from the superintendent Public Employee discipline dismissal release reassignment transfer on a motion by Mr RC seconded by Mr Raleigh the Board of Trustees approved the following approve the compromise and release agreement between the Apple Valley Unified School District and employee number 0550 on a vote of five zero in closed session the Board of Trustees took action in support of the following recommendation from the superintendent on a motion by Mr Raleigh seconded by Mr Bender a vote of 5-0 the Board of Trustees approved the following appoints Kimberly Calvin as Transportation supervisor ranked 48 column 1 on the non-exempt classified supervisory and confidential salary schedule 256 paid days effective February 6 2023.
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any tips to stay warm you know for these next six weeks I just steal my brother's coats steal siblings coats that's all you got to do all right we got a bus getting off here let's see if these kids are dressed appropriately we got some coats all right these kids are wearing coats we got a hoodie a couple hoodies some non-coat wearers another hoodie coat coat hoodie a hat all right well cats I'm here with Jayden Jayden what you're in school are you huh what year in school are you you're a senior all right you think it's cold out I mean not really not too bad I mean I usually have my like window open when I like go to sleep so they actually say that's good for you I heard that once you don't even have a codon today it's like less than 20 degrees you don't need a coat I mean to me this is a coat to him the coat is like that what he's wearing but like Mr Johnny's our cameraman has a park on she's looking at her phone acting like she doesn't hear me she's acting like she doesn't the groundhog saw his Shadows who got six more weeks of winter did you guys walk over from curve again no you got a cult you just have a hoodie what goes into that decision making of to wear a coat not wear a coat it really depends on what shirt I'm wearing because if I'm wearing a hoodie that means that I'm not probably not going to take it off so if I can just wear whatever shirt but if I'm wearing a coat then normally I'm going to take off the coat so it has to be like a decent shirt I mean that's the best answer I think we've ever gotten more Wildcats I'm here with Jessica Ballmer Jessica what you're in school area I'm a sophomore do you know what Groundhog Day is kind of kind of you've heard of it yeah have you seen the early 90s movie with Bill Murray yes I hope you enjoy the festivities there's talk of a blizzard do you ever have Deja Vu Mrs Lancaster I don't think so but I could check with the kitchen great movie we got six more weeks of winter so we're looking at mid-march at least before it gets nice how do you recommend to the Wildcats stay warm get out there and run get outside and run she says we'll keep you join join Wildcat track there you go we got a little promo for Wildcat track joint track stay warm Wildcats I'm here with Mark savinger Mark what you're in school area I'm a senior it's cold out we're under a wind chill advisory how do you recommend to stay warm you look pretty warm today I always stay strapped up with the shiesty it keeps the nose warm the mouth warm you can't get the nose cold I've heard that one's gloves help out with the fingers and the coat too coat he's wearing a coat we've seen a lot of hoodies just coming in he's going with the coat what makes you decide to go with the goat there's no shame in wearing layers you know kids like oh you're wearing gloves You're So Soft hey I don't like cold fingers you know my father used to have a saying that if you can live through February you'll live another year all right Martin Wildcats I'm here with Lucas guy Lucas swear you're in school I almost saw more it's freezing out but you have shorts on what went into that decision today I don't know I've kind of just like been doing it all year round it's kind of like I think for me that's your thing you wear shorts you wear a Hilton Head Island sweatshirt you just feel warm right yeah as long as my top is warm then my legs are just like fine all right way to go he's tougher than I am all right Wildcats don't let this cold weather get you down stay warm wear a coat find your locker put the coat in your locker uh have a great weekend Wildcat see you next week
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Mr para she's at the back of the room congratulations sorry foreign thank you um in closed session the Board of Trustees took action in support of the following recommendation from the superintendent on an emotion by Mr RC seconded by Mr Raleigh the Board of Trustees approved the following they approved the memorandum of under understanding with the California School Employees Association chapter number 828 dated January 31st 2023 regarding an increase of hours effective February 1 2023 pending ratification by CSEA on a vote of five zero that's it [Music] adoption of the agenda may I have a motion second all right all in favor all right all right there's no recognition presentation tonight information on the governor's budget proposal Mr Schulenburg yes thank you Mr Bender um the Morton you do have a paper copy of the presentation at your seats and if I can figure out this new operating system to get my presentation up on thank you on the screens and put my glasses on so I can see it all right thank you so I had the opportunity to attend the school Services budget workshop with the with Karen and her crew and I'm I'm going to summarize what was about a three hour Workshop down to hopefully about just a few minutes um I I the first disclaimer you will notice the school Services logo on this particular slide these are all slides produced by school Services um with a couple slightly modified to reflect the impact to Apple Valley Unified but they produce this and this is an excerpt of their larger presentation so first off the themes for the budget as Karen said the governor has really dedicated a lot of resources to education to keep education whole or as whole as he possibly could through this budget cycle um California of course is a little bit better prepared but on this this slide I'd just like to point out that last bullet um as Bare Bones as it is the governor did balance his budget using some one-time funding for ongoing expenditures and in the School District budget world that's a No-No um one-time money only it comes to you once and if that expenditure is ongoing the next year that expenditure is going to be there and that revenue is not going to be there to support it so um he's got some things going on in the budget of course this was just his initial proposal so things will certainly change of the state budget of course um they're they are projecting a fairly I think the governor used the term modest 22 and a half billion dollar deficit I don't consider that too modest myself but uh he did find a way to uh to cut some programs and and save education um and the bullet point there through some funding delays reductions and pullbacks and fund shifts and that's what uh happens a lot at the state level they move some things around they get fancy with our prop 98 funding um so what the governor did do in his um in his proposal he's kind of a accounting for an economic slowdown not calling anything a recession even though there are some economists talking about a recession maybe end of 23 into 24 but the governor and the legislative analyst office in the Department of Finance up in Sacramento none of them are considering a recession in any of the short-term multi-year budget forecasts so prop 98 just some points that prop 98 is a portion of the state budget that flows to education um and like uh like Miss Sabers said he did maintain the purchasing power of the local control funding formula our largest funding source pledging to fully fund the cost of living adjustment the the cola it's currently projected to be a little over eight percent um there are still a couple data points that need to come in to refine that and we'll probably get the uh a closer number at the May Revision in the next budget cycle he did remain very committed to Universal transitional kindergarten and also um I'll talk about it a little bit later he introduced the concept of what's called an equity multiplier within the lcff um to address some learning and achievement gaps for our most needy students but the one thing that he did he did propose that's kind of controversial is in in our current budget year we received the Arts education and music block grant funding it's a pool of one-time money that flowed to school districts across the state we have several years to spend it and he has proposed pulling some of that funding back that school districts have already budgeted either this or in the out years in their budget Cycles so he proposed to pull some of that back and is using that to fund the lcff that's that one-time money that he shifted over to lcff so again this is all subject to negotiation and much of it will change or or uh kind of evolve as we get into the May revise and the approved budget one great thing he didn't come up with a lot of new categorical programs this year because he doesn't have a lot of extra money anytime the state has a lot of extra money they create some programs for us with strings attached foreign just a quick Slide the blue there is the legislative legislative analysts office they're a non-partisan kind of a budget Advisory Group up in Sacramento that's their fiscal Outlook compared to the governor's budget Outlook you see the governor's budget Outlook is a little more optimistic than the Lao and typically what happens is it ends up being somewhere in between those two as we move forward so that's just a quick little picture he's a little more optimistic than um than the Lao with the lcff again he did propose to fully fund the statutory Cola I mentioned that the equity multiplier no categorical programs no new categorical programs but he is proposing the cost of living adjustment on some of our existing categorical programs which has not been um consistent throughout the year sometimes they get the cola sometimes they don't the equity multiplier the equity multiplier is in response to a bill that was introduced within the last couple years to really Target some of our lowest performing student groups on our lowest performing schools in the state to get a little more funding into those schools that particular Bill did not come through in its true form but the governor did propose this he dedicated about 300 million dollars that's 300 million dollars across the entire state to the lowest performing schools and in order to qualify for this money at an elementary school you have to have 90 of your students qualify for free lunch not free and reduced but free lunch and at your high schools you have to have 85 percent of your students qualify for free lunch well last Friday I got to attend a little workshop with school services and they've been running some numbers throughout the state and within Apple Valley Unified we would not currently have any schools that would qualify for any of this funding under the equity multiplier we do not have we don't have students Meeting those thresholds that qualify for free meals free and reduced we would have a couple sites but you'd have to take out those reduced the kids that only qualify for the reduced meals so and this is another thing that will probably change greatly between now and budget adoption quick snapshot of the lcff funding Factor so you can see it's different for each grade span TK is kind of the same as K3 but there's an additional add-on for the additional Staffing requirements under transitional kindergarten and that's just a snapshot but what that all boils down to is really important on this slide this slide really is our projected lcff Revenue now that's not all the revenue we get we have some other categorical programs we have Federal revenues but that's our largest revenue from the state and currently with our projected Ada next year and the projected the proposed lcff funding at this point we would get about 179 million dollars that's an increase over the current year of course um some of the pressures to our budget retirement contributions for our employee groups that's something that you've seen you see in the last 10 years it's increased from 8.25 percent up to 19.1 percent so that's uh more than doubled over the last 10 years on the calstrs side calstrs doesn't have the same power as Calpers does to make adjustments to that rate they're a little more legislated and right now it's frozen at 19.1 but School services does believe that there will be some legislation introduced in the near future to give calstrs a little more flexibility as Calpers does so Calpers the current rate this year is 25.37 and you'll see on the right hand side it's projected to continue to rise over the next few years and that's really due to some investment losses that they've experienced over the last couple of years in their investment portfolios this is just a little slide to remind us all that the governor is taking some of this money back this is that art music and our art music and instructional material block grant that was proposed funding reduction um you'll see it was it was proportioned out half the money has been to portioned to schools already and the other half is scheduled to be apportioned in May of 2023 now that apportionment is going to occur before the state adopts their final budget so if this occurs if this is a part of the adopted budget we're already going to have all that money so they're going to reduce other apportionments in kind to make up for the money that they gave us under this particular block program so it's going to be a little cash shell game at the state level ultimately we would probably lose about 1.2 million dollars out of this block grant if this if this does go through and Universal transitional kindergarten he is very very dedicated to the utk and early childhood education this is just a slide to remind us that we are in year two of a four-year implementation process or actually you're maybe we're in year three of a five year I can't remember it's been a couple years already but uh um in 2526 you'll see that we will be offering we will be required to offer transitional kindergarten to all four-year-olds whose fourth birthday occurs by September 1st so when we start school in August we will have some three-year-olds joining us in our transitional kindergarten classrooms just before their fourth birthday thank you prop 28 the voters in California approved proposition 28 in the last general election which sets aside about a billion dollars Statewide non-prof 98 money to support Arts Music Arts music in schools so I haven't seen a lot of details on how much this means to us yet but again this is that voter proposition which will provide some more specific funding for arts and music education to further supplement the programs we already have in place and just a couple slides here on some federal funding they did approve the Consolidated Appropriations act which does uh Supply Federal funding through September of 2023 so just some summary slides you have those copies I don't think I'm going to read the details on there but it's it's good news for education in terms of title one and special education support from the federal level and that concludes I hope that wasn't more than a few minutes well done thank you a boot does reopen your articles for negotiation Dustin Conrad so who knows I'm sorry thank you [Music] okay good evening members of the board superintendent Nelson and the rest of the cabinet up there my name is Leslie mcninley and I'm currently serving as the bargaining chair for abuta as you'll recall we settled our three-year contract last fall and it's now time to reopen some of our articles for year two of the contract we surveyed our members about what their concerns were and the vast majority of our the input related to being able to serve our students better in the folders you've received as excuse me are our initial proposals to reopen articles 13 which pertains to hours in adjunct duties and 17 which pertains to class size as background for our request with Article 13 at the beginning of each year we have two work days before the first student day but one of those days is reserved for our administrators meetings or trainings the district provides one paid day for teachers to work in their classrooms to prepare for the new year many of our teachers invest a week or even more of their summer to prepare for their classes and at some sites some teachers have not been allowed to enter their classrooms prior to the weekend before students start which is increa which increases their stress level in a big way regarding article 17 I'm sure it comes as no surprise that we're still recovering from the impact that the pandemic has had on our schools we're dealing with learning loss and to complicate matters we have higher than normal attendance issues as well as increased socio-emotional and behavioral issues our current large class sizes make it more difficult to reach our academic goals we're looking for some help in that area we appreciate the willingness of the school board to work with us as you did last fall and are hopeful that we can work together again to overcome some of these obstacles thank you for your time thank you very much [Applause] Dustin you have the Bluetooth reopener I have I have abusds the um I apologize for the the name there that I put there to mix up earlier I didn't want to speak on Leslie's behalf that's too intimidating and and you can tell with the prep work that you know they've demonstrated so I appreciate that Leslie thank you um one quick note I I know the negotiation season is upon us with a Buddha and you know Leslie and I have discussed some things and we've we've really got and Karen as well um we've established some um I think some relationships that will allow us to move forward this season with a little bit more on the interest-based side of of collaboration throughout the processes but uh all that to say you know we we have also opened to articles article 13.
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um 13 for us is the uh consideration of just uh cleaning up some language we have mous out there that haven't been totally married into the contract we look to do that and offer some clarity on language as well uh we also opened Article 15 which is our leaves article and really what we are looking for there is something that we believe currently in our system barriers exist for some of our you know our best employees out there those that um a crew time have time and yet contract doesn't quite let them reach out and grab some of that time uh so we're looking to you know have honest and open conversation with the Buddha and perhaps come to some agreement that allows our teachers uh and well all of our certificated staff to have access to time they've earned that currently is Out Of Reach for them and we again could bring details to the table and kind of discuss what that looks like um how that's handled and bring it forward to them so those are the two areas that we're looking to open and negotiate and I think we'll have a great time all right thank you Kylie do we have any public comments we have four cards this evening foreign our public comment card speakers are required to limit the comments to a maximum of three minutes if more than one person wishes to speak on the same topic subsequent speakers should limit their remarks to new information only public comments shall be limited to a Max of 20 minutes per item first is Kathy the Baron all right thank you good evening good evening board members and Sabrina Nelson I'm not as prepared as everybody else is so um thank you for your time um I'm a parent of a first grader over at Rio Vista and um Rick I guess I'm I'm gonna have to ask for some time with you at some point I hear that that you're the one that's in charge over there um so um what's happened is in about two weeks ago they sent out a uh correspondence to the parents there and said for those of us that lived on the north side of the school area we are to no longer park over in the main area and come and pick up our children from the cafeteria and instead they are going to move all of our children that would normally come out of the cafeteria all of our young children to the bike gate the bike gate empties out onto yakaloma yakaloma as everybody probably knows is almost like a highway and I walked over there and I looked at it and I watched all of the kids walk out of there and there's no Proctors there's one Proctor that stands down at where the the crosswalk is and all of the kids come running out and they all run across the street and I'm going okay the the road is going to be opening up here pretty soon and this is asking for these children to get hit there's there's no safety there and I'm not willing to have my first grader do that so I went into the office and I talked to them I said I am absolutely not going to have you do that I'm not going to allow my child to come out of the the bike gate and they said well then you have to go into the line and I said I don't have time I am in a I'm an executive I don't have time to go into this line I need to walk up and pick up my son well you can't do that either okay let me talk to somebody the administrator will not doesn't want to talk to me either I've talked to her it we're I'm not getting anywhere so I'm here now to please talk to you guys about we need to have some safety here in our schools there are these children need to not be coming out onto a very busy and I I'll I'll just put this in quotations Highway because it is going to become a highway it is not there yet it's going to be opening and and that road is very dangerous I cross that road with my car all the time where you know the the light will change and people go through it just because we're in the high desert and a stoplight I'm sorry is just a suggestion I'm I'm sure you've all gone through a light and had somebody Zing right through that light just because you know they don't care they don't care around here because there's not a lot of cops God love them um so please I implore your please help us with the safety of our children all right thanks for your input Mr schulenburger look into this yeah man we'll have somebody from the superintendent's office contact you yeah and I'd be willing to meet with you as well Jackie Maryland more Jackie Moore I was here before regarding Vanguard school and it's not gotten any better now there's legal things going on there's lawyers there's investigations there's no transparency example all the parents wanted to work on the turtle sanctuary and fix it it's vanguards Turtle sanctuary and we keep asking and asking and asking and the principal will never answer the question she will never tell us anything about it what she's doing oh I'm looking into it now I find out the students from the high school are coming to change and fix that Sanctuary why it's not theirs it's ours that's just one little way she does things now I'm really here because I signed a paper for my daughter to go and I can't get anywhere until Jeremiah talked to me today I found out today on the 17th my daughter I signed a paper for her to go on a field trip and I let her go much as I didn't want to down the hill and in the fog and in the weather but she went and then I couldn't find her and then I find out at the beginning of the year I had a meeting with all the teachers my daughter's teachers principal and set the rules down and said she must my daughter must abide by with you do what you is expected of you learn from them because they went to school respect them and I put it down hard and I said but here's one thing I'm telling you I don't do computers I barely do cell phones I have a landline you may use my landline and you may use my cell phone at any time well when I couldn't find my daughter didn't know what was going on I found out they didn't go to Banning to a camp they went someplace else and Jeremiah told me today that they went to Yucaipa to uh Augusta a Girl Scout camp but who gave them permission to take my daughter someplace else without my consent and the principal over and over and over on a phone conversation to me told me seven times to nine times well you were given notice on Airy portal or Parent Portal I said I don't do it and you know it your secretaries know it your office knows it and the teachers know it I didn't know where the heck my daughter was and if there'd have been an accident in Yucaipa where she was I wouldn't have worried because my daughter was in Banning but she wasn't and I didn't give anybody permission to take my child there and I didn't get a phone call can you imagine my fear I shook for hours trying to figure out what was going on I don't like it there is no transparency and again I'm telling you I'm warning you there's a lot of trouble coming at Vanguard you need to find out that it doesn't fit now the one thing I can say is we have a principle here I saw Miss Benavides she's awesome she was my daughter's principal at the other school but I told you the other principle Vanguard doesn't do anything Miss Benavides is out there every day every day I admire her with the kids rain wind snow anything she's out there every day letting the kids out of the cars and putting them in every day I admired it at our school we have nothing we have nothing no these kids at all talked about what was going on their school we have nothing there's nothing positive teachers are going out on on stress they want transfers and it's a mess and I'm really upset about what happened with my daughter and I want someone to look into it and tell me why and don't tell me that you got notified on Erie portal because I had two phones so I filed a formal complaint because I'm very upset about it and I imagine you would too with your children thank you thank you for your time appreciate it Leah Dan hunsel thank you Liam my name is Leah tenholz and I have two children that attend Vanguard Preparatory I'm not very well spoken I'm slightly so thank you so as I said my name is Leah tinholz and I have two children at Vanguard Preparatory on January 24th there was an incident regarding my youngest daughter who is five years old and in kindergarten it had to do with a proctor and it is currently under investigation this what I'm bringing right now doesn't necessarily have to do with that but with the dealings of the principle there and her lack of ability and so I did prepare a statement I am calling for the immediate resignation and removal of principal Jeanette Martinez throughout the time I've been at Vanguard I've witnessed and been told of Miss Martinez lack of Competency and dereliction of Duties as a principal of this school she is unable to resolve conflict which is evident through her lack of effort and ability to proper properly handle situations as we just previously heard and what I spoke about with my daughter she denies the content of verbal conversations claims that she does not receive emails and if she does that they are blank she is spoken disparagingly about the parents and School Employees who have brought up issues stating that there were that the issues brought up were rumors even to the point to where when you are trying to tell her about an eyewitness account that you yourself saw she tells you to your face that it's rumors that for instance the women at the front desk have big mouths and that they don't like her which is not the case it so parents who are trying to report concerns whether abuse or safety issues that they were eyewitness to on more than one occasion she has pulled parents into her office and told them not to report or speak about things that they have seen on campus upon my reply to her to an email that conversation back and forth concerning the investigation that is ongoing at this point um she responded with responded in a way that was misleading by in in the fact that she made it seem as if she had no recollection of what she was talking to although at the time we had already had I had sent her an in-depth email had spoken to her face to face and she had called me so she was privy to the issues and concerns that I had Miss Miss Martinez actions have been misleading and deceitful she will skirt her responsibilities including student safety and throw anyone under the bus to remain secure in her current position since this is not an isolated event and she has repeatedly taken measures to deceive students parent staff and this board it's obvious that her conduct and actions cannot be corrected with training this is an issue of Integrity Ms Martinez has lost the trust and confidence of the parents and students a long time ago and now is the time to give our children a safe environment to soar and the issue that is being investigated at this time it does have to do with a proctor being physical with my daughter however her lack of handling of this situation is leading to a bigger issue the fact that she is incapable of resolving something in the correct way I need to know that my children can go to that school and be safe that I'm not having to worry about someone outside but someone within that I'm not that my kids aren't safe and that I can't trust her judgment or lack thereof thank you [Applause] the last one is Leslie McNeely excuse me all right we're all done we appreciate your comments any other comments um superintendent just that I see Ella Houseman out in the audience and we realize that you have moved on to bigger and better things but I can't sit here and see you out there and not rec let the board know that you're sitting there must be doing a college class is that correct Nathan you too yeah good good to see you again all right thank you any other comments from the board Rick no did this gentleman there did you have a comment card do you put in you came in at five and you're filling a card up so yeah I did some research okay I just I just saw you there and I I knew you were talking to Kylie earlier I'm gonna miss you Amanda any other comments no I'm good Gary uh just a comment on a later item on the consent agenda uh item number 10 on the consent agenda deals with the adoption of the the math foundation for Granite Hills High School and I just want to congratulate and commend the staff and the administration of uh to put put together that document we hear a lot about the deficiencies that our students have because of learning loss and that type of thing and I just want to say that I was I was very impressed in reading through that document because that proposed course for Granite Hills is exactly what our students need in terms of increasing their math scores if we were to take a survey here in this room I know there that every hand would go up that math was your favorite class uh in in school when you were in school but uh that's that's not necessarily the case now and and I I was just like to say I was very impressed and very pleased to see that teachers and administrators uh in in conjunction with uh with uh Pat put together this course because I think it's exactly what our what uh Granite needs I think it's exactly what what the rest of our district needs is very proactive Forward Thinking planning to actually address learning deficiencies so I just just like to congratulate Mr slosher uh the students and staff at Granite Hills I think that's a fantastic idea and hopefully we'll be seeing more of that in the future thank you all right Maria um I have I'm going to start by thanking High Desert Premier Academy and Vanguard for finally sending me an invitation to come um finally um and and secondly it would be really good for the schools too I don't have any more kids in the schools so I don't know when you have your events until after you announce it at a board meeting uh but if you can put out a calendar of your events so that we can at least show up for those of us who don't have kids anymore in the district but would like to come in and support your students and support your programs that's thank you all right good to extract the meeting I'm not going to say anything conduct a public hearing on a Brutus reopener articles for negotiation with avusd is there a time we're going to open up at uh 58 808 .
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we have to have this open for one minute that's the law is there anyone president wishes to provide uh comments on the boot to reopeners that looks like a minute if there are no oral comments I will knowledge yeah at 809. all right we need to conduct a public hearing on a Buddha's reopener articles for negotiation with avouta okay we're going to open the meeting the time is going to be 110. 8 10. I think it's still eight hours all right does anyone have any comments on this because we have to be open for us I'll admit it foreign well if there are no oral comments I will now declare the public hearing closed and the time will be 8 11.
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all right so we'll move on here approve the certificated and classified Personnel articles as listed do I have a motion any discussion I'll second the motion okay all in favor all right approve the recommendations for requested leaves as noted to have a motion [Music] all right all in favor aye 5-0 approve the district contract for reopeners for a negotiation between the Apple Valley Unified School District and Apple Valley Unified Teachers Association all right all in favor aye approved the recommendation of the administrative hearing chairperson effective on expulsion case number 11 2022-23 I'll second it all in favor aye expulsion case stipulated number three 2023-23 second second all in favor aye aye annual review AR number 9 2022-23 second a second okay all in favor aye aye aye and the review AR number 10 2022-23 emotion second I'll second all right all in favor aye acknowledge receipt and review of the 2021-22 audit report as prepared by Nigro and I grow PC motion second oh I have some discussion if that's okay Mr Bender before you take a vote on this just in case I'll take a quick minute first off I want to acknowledge there was an error on page 60 in the audit it incorrectly Illustrated the ends of the terms for you Mr bender and Mr Raleigh it will be corrected in that particular error error is not material to the content of the audit report but my apologies so this audit is basically it's an independent auditor they give our they give their independent opinion of our financial statements and determine compliance with state and federal programs um the copy of the audit was attached to the board packet I apologize I do not have the bound copies from the auditor um to hand out tonight but I will have those in the near future um some page numbers are referenced here if you if you look through those the they're a summary of the report is on pages one through three and they gave us an unmodified opinion which is a good thing uh it's a clean audit a clean opinion as to our financial statements and our compliance with federal and state standards there's a management discussion and analysis on the next seven pages four through ten and it's really kind of a it's a readable summary of kind of our financial statements and uh I would if you have the opportunity to look at the budget I would point you to table A3 on page seven that's a comparison of current year and previous year fund balances and you'll see the difference year over year and they have a little discussion on the 2223 budget cycle in there as from the auditor's perspective our government-wide financial statements cover pages 11 through 50.
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