Thank you, Callie, for helping me stay on my toes and helping me be the best. I consider you like a little sister. As a senior, I would like to remind all students, my students, Oiggo East, Oiggo High School, and all the schools around, you can make a change. You can make an impact. If your voice is not heard, make it heard. If there's no opportunity, make one. If there's no leadership, be that leader. You don't need to wait to make a change because change is not change unless something changes. [Applause] Thank you so much, Mommy. I know you're watching on live. Thank you for believing me and correcting me after every board meeting, giving me advice. Thank you so much. That was great. [Applause] You should let me go. You should have let me go first. J. All right. As I sit here for the final time in this seat, I'm filled with immense gratitude for this opportunity to serve, for the trust that was placed in me, and for the divine guidance that has led me to this calling.
Well, good evening everyone. And that is a uh tough act to follow. Fantastic job by Quinn. So I I do I think we're the last school to present our SIP plan tonight and staying in line with the district plan. Um we're all here to present. I'd just like to introduce the team real quick. We have Sarah Deas, our associate principal, and our assistant principles, uh Sam Madden, and Mark Hayes. And we're going to present to you our four focus areas.
And uh you know both I want to give credit to both faculties who are trying um to really clamp down on the use of cell phones throughout the day and access to cell phones and and like I said things have really improved. Um, that being said, you know, who knows in the next legislative session. I think that this ship miss slipped past out of town for this session, but you know, there has been talk about outright cell phone bans in school. Um, which as you might recall from our surveys that we did of parents may not be super well received, but especially at the high school level. So, who knows? I think it took time for uh public sentiment to turn on smoking and other things that we know aren't really great for kids or even adults. So maybe that'll change too. I'll tell you this is u good timing.
Um most of them with two students. Um, but we do have some families that have three students, um, 9, 10, and 12 or 9, 11, and 12. Off to the side, we also ask what their students participate in outside of district 99. You can see sports um, specifically over the summer um, is a huge getter. Also, for sports that are cut sports, you will see those kind of hitting the top of the list. Um, baseball um is something that was uh pretty popular. Um, also the number of students who are involved in youth groups, scouting also makes a strong push and also performing arts programming. Uh, whether or not that be it like Ghost Light Theater in town or if that's private music lessons um that comes up quite a bit. Also we ask students um do you feel there's enough part uh activities to participate in and is school a place where you feel like you belong?
When I decided to run for the school board, I knew it wasn't just a civic decision. It was a divine assignment. I believed then and I still believe now. This is what I was called to do for such a time as this. I ran on a platform grounded in four guiding principles. Not because they were trendy, but because they were needed. As I look back over these past four years, I am humbled to say we've made real progress. Not per not perfect, but purposeful. My four pillars were one, number one, a positive culture, creating welcoming and inclusive learning environments and community. When I began, it was clear that while excellence in academics was always the goal, not every student felt like they belonged. So, we committed to cultivate spaces that were safe for every student regardless of race, background, ability, or identity. They needed to feel welcomed, valued, and again, safe.
And when it's over, um we certainly welcome feedback and any questions. So, I'm going to get out of the way and Sarah's going to take over with focus area one teaching and learning. Sarah, good evening everybody. What's up? My notes in the parking lot tonight. Um, so we did really tried to align this uh best we could with the Dart uh the district improvement plan and our first area of our first focus area. Guess I should move this for you. There you go. is that to ensure the vertical and horizontal alignment of the curriculum and instructional practices um that really align with Dartmouth's portrait of a learner. This year we rolled out um a new curriculum in science and Spanish the or world language specifically Spanish. Um we did one unit in each grade level of the open sed and we expect to do at least one and two in each grade level next year and it was not without its challenges.
So I know your staff and teachers just did some AI training. Yep. And I recently took some AI training and it blew my mind. It's insane as to what you can do with this now with with if you just have an AI prompt, you know, and to the kind of work that you can do, never mind if you had a laptop. And so I I think that's worth discussing too. And you know, um I guess shameless promo here. Mark Benigny and the people in central office in Meridan and I just wrote a book on like social media. Uh and Mark has real strong feelings that phones should be put into school, give them to all the kids and teach them how to use it responsibility responsibly. I don't share that perspective necessarily, so it's pretty interesting to hear us debate each other on this fact.
Again over 90 uh to 95% of the students are uh indicating a three four five and then also we wanted to know why they might not be participating. Uh it is in percentage order. Some of them they're not going to change, right? Students who are focused on academics that may fluctuate for a year. Um, a lot of our ninth grade students selected focused on academic academics because they're getting into their school year. There was also a surge in that with our juniors. Um, but then also lack of motivation. Our senior class indicated lack of motivation um several times. Um and then transportation did come up not in the top five, but um sometimes the length of the activity bus going home can be um an obstacle for some of our students uh who don't have uh personal transportation either uh with their parents or with a friend to drive home with.
We expanded social emotional learning initiatives. We advocated for DEI and rightful presence training. And we supported district-wide events that celebrated cultural cultural heritage and inclusion. Schools began to reflect not just diversity and demographics, but in dignity. This was the foundation of a truly positive culture. And I believe our community is even more unified today than it was four years ago. Number two was student voice. It was always asked what's what's in the best interest for our students. This simple but profound question became the lens through which I approached every single policy and every single vote. We prioritized mental health support and gave access to wellness to wellness resources. We again advocated for the streamlined processes of academic and in interventions minimizing the chance that students would fall through the crack. We worked hard to keep students at the center of every single conversation that often revolved only around adults because our why was and always has been our students.
It was very difficult. Um a lot of the teachers were going in with limited PD but they were very willing to try it. Again it was not uh it was not easy. It took a lot of time and a lot of effort. It requires a great deal of collaboration across all three grade levels and within the grade levels. But I think they do see the value in the long-term goals and adopting it and the philosophies behind it and truly making students um work and learn in the same way a real scientist does. Um the Spanish classes adopted the SOMOS curriculum along with Dartmouth High School. And all three of our teachers are are really enthusiastic with the increase in collaboration that they've had with Dartmouth High, particularly this year, and um looking forward to working with them next year and adopting more and more of the lessons that align with the new standards.
But I will acknowledge that the AI technology is rapidly advancing what our and has to be what part of what we consider um when we're educating kids to be successful at the next level. But when we talk to our staff, and the more I use it, it's much better leveraged when you have a strong background knowledge of what you're doing to be able to c catch mistakes and adjust things because there are hallucinations there. There is bad info that gets cranked out of AI, even the most advanced today that we have. And of course that's going to evolve and get better. But you know, you can't introduce it too early is my point. If you don't know or you and I if I I asked it once to write a letter to a parent that had a legal subject matter and I didn't give the details of the individual or anything like that, but I I detailed the circumstances because I was knowledgeable about that.
Finally, in our uh our regular survey, we also ask staff about participation. Do they uh feel like we provide adequate uh resources for our students to participate? And also do you see a positive uh school climate because of participation? About 90% of the staff again threes, fours or fives. So from the activities and athletics range, it's all pretty consistent with 90 to 95% which we're really happy about. Um and we followed up with that. um checking on students who weren't involved. It's nice to know that the students who are involved and the families who are involved are happy with that involvement, but we also wanted to do a little bit deeper dive into why might students not be involved. So, we did run an activity and access for students who are not involved. We it involved uh the access teachers speaking with students about their involvement.
Number three was about positive impact by being better stewards of our time, our talent, and our resources. Accountability matters. Accountability matters. Good stewardship matters. So, we didn't just pass budgets. We assessed how every dollar aligned with student outcomes. We conducted program audits. We reduced the inefficiencies and we invested in our people. Whether it was through negotiating union contracts that honored our teachers and our staff. We started to hire the right staff through professional development of our staff, new technology and curriculums for our path for our classrooms and a career pathway for all of our students. We created dashboards to improve transparency and we raised the bar for what was good govern what for what good governance looks like. And then number four was innovative strategies strengthening partnerships with our community and our local government. One of the most meaningful shifts during our term was the intentional efforts to strengthen our relationships with other taxing bodies and local government partners.
Uh Ross and the lead teachers at the high school as well as the coaches at the middle school have um pretty well established ELA and math teams at this point, vertical teams. I think they've really been mutually beneficial for you know 7 through 12. Um I would say math has been meeting for a little over a year now and ELA we're coming up on a on a year. Additionally, we have several staff members that have joined the recently uh put together curriculum uh team that's going to be meeting after school. And the goal at this point moving forward will to continue in that uh realm with the elementary level. So that it's it is going to eventually be K through 12. The and I had mentioned as well that the world language teams are also meeting with the high school levels and and that's going quite well.
And I said, "Write a letter to a parent and give me the legal citations." And I read it and I was like, "Wow, this is amazing. This is so good." And then you look up the case. And then I gave it to Floyd. He's like, "Yeah, letter looks great, but where the heck did you get those legal references?" Cuz they're all wrong. It doesn't work. So it doesn't work as well. The point is even adults even adults like if you don't have a strong knowledge of the content you're to evaluate the quality of what gets pumped out you're dealing garbage in garbage out and and so I think we really need to make sure kids are well educated in the content to best be able to leverage the AI but we also need them especially juniors and seniors to learn how to best leverage AI but but fifth graders you use AI Yeah.
Why might they not be involved? You can see the interview kind of questions that we have up there. Um, and then when we did the interview at South, we did not have an extra question that some of our teachers at North felt like we should add. Do you feel a sense of belonging at DGN? That was something that we asked because we wanted to see if there was still a consistent tie between participating and not participating and their sense of belonging. And so we were able to dig into that a little bit. The result of this work drives our indicators and measures which the activities and athletics team are in charge of. And so since we are talking about participation rather than separating it out with the other indicators and measures presentation that I'll be giving later um we put that here some of the data before I turn it over my to my team.
We knew that if we wanted to serve student and families holistically, we needed to collaborate more effectively with city officials, with park districts, libraries, and county leaders. Over the years, we broke down silos, we opened up communication, and we found common ground. Together, together, we have coordinated shared services, aligned long-term planning efforts, and built intergovernmental trust that hasn't existed before, or at least in a very long time. By working together, we modeled what true community stewardship looks like. Thinking beyond boundaries and choosing what's best for the people that we all serve. So, in closing, I leave this board today confident that we planted seeds that will continue to grow. Yes. Seeds of equity, seeds of excellence, and seeds of innovation. It doesn't I didn't just sit here in a seat. I wanted to stand in the gap. Yes. Yes. And I hope and pray that I've done that.
Um, I just wanted to touch on our common assessments. That's something that we work very hard on for both pre and post tests. Um, we have them in all four subcontent areas as well as our world language uh program. The ELA math worked um hard this year and so they have sort of a home for all of the assessments that are easily accessible in one document which is in addition to our regular scope and sequence. with the changes in science, they're working on new uh assessments. We did find that with the new curriculum, the assessment piece is a is something that we feel we can improve on. So, that'll be part of that process. Um, and we do a spend a lot of time during our CPTs really reviewing the data that comes from the preassessments, the post assessments, and discussing what we may need to do to revise them.
Oh, go ahead. No, go ahead. Oh, no. Because what I learned by just using it in the class I took is that the more good information you can give it while you're formulating its task, the better the product you'll get, right? You know, and that way and the more you know, then you can verify and then you're like, "Wow, that's really good." Or, "No, it's not." You know? Yeah. But like I consider myself an expert on Jeff Solen. And it I asked it to write me something about Jeff Solen before like before I really knew anything. This is probably going back a year about prompts and things like that. And wow, it sounded great, but it was so superficial, right? And so not really great details. And the a lot of the details it gave were wrong. Like it it had me as a hockey player, but I was a black guy from Canada.
Um I just wanted to let you know how many students we interviewed. So at North we had about 515 students who were not currently on a roster for an activity or sport and at South it was 881. After we did the interview we found that 60 students reported their uh active outside as um as south as 102. But more importantly we discovered about 110 students at North who were unreed. So, they were participating in an activity, but they weren't on the roster yet. And about 81 students at South, most of those students, I'd probably say about 75% of them were spring sports. They hadn't finished uh tryyous for baseball yet. Track was just starting up. Kids were still in transition. The others just did not actually finish the registration process. And so, we were able to do that with them to get them um registered.