and what's the problem ptosis is the taxes [Music] why is it they're the berlin education foundation for that oh i'm sorry they're supposed to be they're supposed to say oh thanks one two maybe they have one well i'm like there's two bes and one and that would be an easy thing sorry that's um so comments because would this be useful the way this is set up a reasonable approach to to because we don't accept the goal is this is worth discussing this if we don't accept the goal and the discussion is just out there i think this will help us i like decide i think it's good for the school committee to know what's going on in these little groups i'm on the boylston education foundation but i have no idea what's going on with pto or special education or stuff going on in the selectmen and the high school so i i just think it it would serve two purposes it would get us involved in the community it's also good for learning the problem i think might be time for some people because we're already going to so many meetings so it's like to add i mean i i know that i'm already on bef so i can easily take that because i have to go to those meetings anyway so there's killing two birds in one snow but i don't know that there's too many people in here that are part of some of these other groups so this might be another huge time commitment for people unless we're talking like one meeting or two meetings a year or something like that that's what it says actually um on the second to last full and attend at least two of the group's meetings or activities oh or activities yeah exactly so does any of this so this is all just outreach to these groups not necessarily the community only the community that's part of these groups uh the purpose of this goal is to promote two-way our community communications coordinating our members with each other to and communicate with established groups that's this particular goal there are other goals in the school both if you look at the f2 document i don't know why um for resources for a great goal how we choose to meet that goal and um as opposed to how much would you get tactics and things we're going to do yeah i don't know if they do in the same way like for instance the election subcommittee is that says to bring strategies to the school committee um somebody's don't involve that but number one says to um that there'll be a coordination so that has to be defined somehow right so this uh correct do we have a document similar to f2 goal one b one c two three a and two first goal is to be done one b also yeah but collaborations we have covered the data dashboard all right any other comments on the f2 document outreach goal okay all right so we're going to move on to the third item which is the code dashboard and so i think the discussion on the table right now is uh whether we think the dashboard would be beneficial that was one conversation that came up last time um and if so which information would be beneficial and then if the committee will assume responsibility for updating the dashboard on a weekly basis so again uh this is on the agenda tonight so um i just want to have a little more discussion about that before we come to a vote and just air some ideas about this so we need to talk about um how would you find this on the side of things um so if it was up to me i would say we should do any participant that entered test and stay during that week if but i think it should just be how many have entered into the program not how many are currently in how many started so we could just use the word started or began because it's too hard to track how long some kids are in and what if someone has positive end i mean it's just too we can't we want to keep it as simple you know what i mean so that way you can see how many kids during that week had to do tests and stay at least one day and you might get kids i mean i'm sure it's happening kindergarten first grade they get squabble one day and they lose it i'm telling you my son this is going to be my son and then mom and dad say hi forget it you're home from there uh i don't care you're missing a week in school so they're out of testing today it's just these numbers to these numbers and i think sometimes i think too much information is you know not a great thing yeah is there a certain information here that you feel like would it be beneficial um no i would i'm gonna say i don't think any of this right [Music] yes i mean i think we need to start tracking vaccination rates we we have no idea how many people i know a lot of people that are getting their kids vaccinated right now i mean to come january or february quarters vaccination rate the des i think that the vaccination rates are going to be important data for the community and that information has been collected from elementary too as the vaccinations build mode jeff you know [Music] did start they sent an email out and they requested that when your child in nurse anna sent is there anybody here that would like to argue that uh tracking the positive cases occurring in the schools is definitely beneficial i think it will become beneficial i think it's beneficial too because i've had multiple people ask me that staff or student we still only know oh there's a positive case i can see julie's point of you because there are definitely people that are gonna cause a ruckus but i think there's a lot of quiet parents out there that are trying to make decisions for their own family that might use this data to decide you know do i keep my child home do i send my child to school do i send a child to sports right which one do your best right is is most of the school vaccinated you know i okay but the vaccine is different than right now we're talking about the positive cases let's get jumped out that's what's my answer we keep getting positive cases [Music] but anyways that's mine i agree maybe that intestines stay stuck too convoluted but i like the positive cases and i think the vaccination rates become very important um jeff i just i do want to say just to speak to what you would say we did try a couple times last year to um publish the uh the number of positive cases it didn't work the reason it didn't work because people were always compared to the statements and because you can never really get a sequence with [Music] in practice that's what happens and so i would ask that if you do have something like this you put something on the bottom that says any questions please contact making videos [Music] last year and um does anyone else want to speak to the tracking their cases for their cases and putting them on eventually i'm sorry just because we've been we keep track of the test and stay every day you know we've been getting this up and going now and i think there's different kinds of data so you have to be really really clear when people say the number of i want to test the number of positive cases for testing said that is a small portion of the positive cases in our schools the positive cases often happen on the begins and parents give us a call and say my son positive he hasn't been there for two days because we weren't sure and so there are many more that happen that way so i think the number you're putting up to the community no matter how you put it out is deceiving it's not about how many kids are really positive i guess as you're thinking about doing this think about really what what you want to get from this if you want parents to know how many positive kids of a community there's not a good mechanism to do that accurately if there's something else that you want to get out and you can kind of dig down and see what would be the best way to get that information that's great thank you [Music] after that information about the parents as deposit cases and the whole thing right i think that beyond that today and i think a month ago i would have wanted to know a lot about how much to intestine say at this point because we were facing challenges in terms of staffing tests and stay as well those challenges seem to keep it there at this point so i'm less concerned about knowing how many students are intense and stay or how many teachers are positive i think john ace had been providing [Music] so like i could certainly see us taking a different approach to this dab than what we really thought when at the time you were here and all of a sudden there were 30 close contacts and there's 23 close contacts here and we didn't have a solution [Music] but as we start thinking about you know start with what was happening with this kind of data you know it was clear to us that it could cause an issue with people thinking that would um that would not align with the state because they checked that you know so i don't want to make more problems for us when you say not in line with the state what do you mean isn't that the point we're trying to get to are we worse off better off more vaccinated less vaccinated positive you're talking about what the state says we have for coping cases in harlem the impression those numbers that chrissie put out last year were the town numbers from the states was that the town would be the school so going for a girl and it will be the school so the numbers that came out an email every week last year on thursdays last year was the town that was just students tried to people had asked for any time we tried to do it it was a problem because it didn't line up with that it didn't line up with state data we recorded the state i'm sorry it wasn't mine enough and very difficult to get in line with their their reporting schedule so the numbers that you reported as student cases were not the same as with the state proportions these [Music] um [Music] which data is accurate which is the data that i should believe right so that's a big question so our statement would be saying believe our data is that can you link directly to the state's data for our community like directly one link and it goes to the state's data and says this is dvr right so if you can do that maybe the solution years just send that link out every week on the newsletter regardless if we have the link that we're even doing a comparison if parents are seeing positives they don't scrap so you're not saying do this you're saying scratch that and just my last comment you're correct yes originally i said that yes sorry [Music] so whether um are students or staff in the schools that were positive new positive cases okay and that's what one's the right thing before i do it as i get them so i want to switch over to whether there are equally challenging issues with the vaccination rates and the vaccination rates more reliable as numbers to put out to the community although we'd be consistent with the state will the state have the same vaccination database that they'll be of the same issues will be different so the state system only the nurses have access to so jeff and i can't look that up and share that information with you and so we're getting to the point where we have steady nurses in place and they'll have access to that um and at that point they can they can look up their numbers for their school i mean anna's been here for a while she knows what her numbers are in her school and those but across the district may take us until after thanksgiving to be able to do that till after thanksgiving and those come straight straight out of the state database they're from a state um website yeah after thanksgiving okay do we have enough information but the other [Music] but the districts that have reported their vaccinations for settings have never been approved by the state to revisit the masked question those districts are looking at that fund part of the state to determine do you not necessarily have to tabulate look up all 600 students and figure out what it okay sounds like is good work right and apparently it's not my discussions but it's not separated by schools they have to go through the database which and it's like a can by hand and every time you record it it's the same about work we actually are looking we were talking just today about looking at a new program that we can use with the nurses that will take us some time to get in but we'll do it a little more seamlessly of course and the nurses won't have to be swimming you know two new nurses actually have a good working knowledge of the immune system so and the state it it has the guideline that if you reach 80 percent you can change your mass well you're not i think the fish is a stable question once you achieve 80 fascination so um so there may be some interest in knowing the vaccination rates just for that preschool after thanksgiving we can start to pull it once we have the nurses [Music] go through the business items is for someone to make a motion regarding the uh what you want to see happen with this data dashboard so just to think about what the motion will be um and if you want i'm just going to give a minute so you can jot down some thoughts or suggest language for them we're going to move on to the business items [Music] we should be seeing motions and seconds and both pretty smoothly for quite a number of items and maybe some more uh discussion on some proposals so uh item a do we have a motion to approve mrs janelle fitzpatrick as the people personnel director contract effective upon mrs martin's retirement in january 2022.
It don't make sense. There's still hope for that dome. Number two, give the teachers at the middle school the classroom space they need. First thing tomorrow morning, you need to make a commitment about that. They need the space. They have to have the space in order to create the environment that's conducive to learning. Every teacher knows that. And number three, Ketta Scott King Magnet School has earned the right to have a new building. They deserve it. They've always performed academically. And that's what our school district is known for, academic excellence. I know because I got three children and two of them graduated from this district and both of them are doing exceptionally well. So I know what we're capable of doing. Ketta Scott King Magnet School has earned that right. The middle school has earned that right to have the what they need. Thank you.
unanimous motion to extend we have a motion to extend the appointment of superintendent signing to the ancient valley collaborative board of directors until november of 2022. mike ii julie uh discussion so i just want to point out uh two things one that this is an item to help align the appointments and roles with the election to try to get all of these things on cycle for november 2022 and second is the assabet valley collaborative is not the same as aspen valley book tech school and i want to make sure that you are aware of that okay all right um any other discussion just a request um if we can try to not use in some of these agendas in the future that would be really helpful um [Music] any other comments okay all in favor of the permission say opposed okay that passes unanimously on the board until november to approve the regional school committee election timeline adam said mike seconded uh discussion questions all in favor say aye i opposed it passes unanimously that will be shared with the berlin selectmen on monday uh to be a motion to approve the observation d motion to extend the committee's roles and appointments this was a first read and prior meeting to extend our own rules and appointments made i'm going to say since september so that includes the district clerk appointment and other appointments um by two months to the november 2022 elections glory second seven julie any discussion questions on favor i opposed okay passes unanimously everybody's on in their spot still remember a motion to accept the school community protocols this is one where someone needs to put a motion [Music] on the floor here the other emotion had set scorpion further second discussion i was ready to write my prior comments around feeling like this is perhaps unnecessary but also included our policy manual um so in so just to clarify if people agreed with your perspective they would hold nay on this proposal [Music] those opposed [Music] just take that um prior conversation and take the battery policy something came out of chair was that vote one um one in eight or five against or was it two seconds uh f motion to accept the full set of school committee goals for 2021-22 this is this is um is that right yes yes in the provost's folder uh you can see the edits that were made so adam had suggested last time that the items and the goals being rewarded to flow in sort of sequential order from the most immediate to the longer term goals so that's they've been reordered the blue text was added because we weren't sure what was going to happen to difficult database and the bottom um goal i scratched based on the conversation that sort of suggested that maybe this was not a priority for them at this time after the committee at this time so there would be three three goals approved with the amendments shown i mean the language shown in building support we're referring building support within the community buildings for those titles those uh tags came from the masc self-assessment headings so they relate to specific items okay uh all in favor of accepting the school committee goals as presented here i suppose yeah that's unanimous that we now have official school community goals and that means that the conversation about the number one a will go forward or next in december g motion to accept the copic data dashboard proposal um and again um so this is to collaborate with the district to provide a data dashboard to be updated weekly by the speaking username and um so a motion to can i make a motion at the table until december 14th when hopefully we'll have some vaccination data so first we have to move the motion all right i mean we'll move this so is there a motion to accept the golden data dashboard proposal so glory second okay discussion so i'll i'll just comment and say that i think we need to add something there around the vaccination right i have some likely to suggest as part of the name of this motion um is that the district will publicly report that's initiated by december 10th 2021 in advance of this unfortunately i'd like you to read that again solely and then i'm going to ask christy to capture this place yeah to add the vaccination rate of the condo by december 10th 2020 in advance so that it's available in advance of the meeting of the 14th okay so we're going to vote on just the amendment that adam has proposed is there a let's see that's the motion give me a second oh if that's what i think it is i can hear you um discussion of the amendment so i would just ask and give the forward to jeff or karen make sure i was okay with you guys as a date out there i mean i said you know tentatively and kept tom said again we gotta get the nurses i think our priority is to get them up and running and make sure their offices are running so i don't want to hit them with something that i really don't know how much work this is going to take to pull this down i know it's not just there and easily accessible so i think it's a great tentative date it gives us a goal to shoot for as long as there's an understanding that we may have to come back and say we just couldn't get it to you this time we'll give you an [Music] and decided so the current language is to amend this so the district will push push the data out by december 10th do you want do you want to say for a tentative date of december 10th there's one habit of hard and fast december 10.
Those are my comments. Thank you. Okay. Next public comment um is from Micah B uh regarding um just as public comment uh to the board. I've been watching as the board has voted to borrow tens of millions of dollars, including to demolish the dome without giving people a chance to vote on it after the referendum failed. I am excited to get my friends out in the street starting November 17 to get signatures because the board should not be able to spend our money for so long without giving the people a chance to vote, especially after the referendum failed in 2021. A backdoor referendum is coming and thank you for that. So that's it for public comment tonight. Uh with that, I will turn it over to Dr. Kagwanise. Yes. Thank you, President Albert. Uh this evening we have um three presentations that we would like to present to you.
[Music] has [Music] with the all right so right now we're just voting on that amendment language of the descending channel okay um so all in favor of that adding that amendment like with that language say i i opposed to that language um all right so um that that amendment passes and now we'll vote on the following uh statement to collaborate with the district a motion to accept the kobe data dashboard proposal to collaborate with the district provide a data dashboard i guess the right would be by december 10th i'm sorry so we have that motion open and uh seconded another discussion about that whole the whole um motion now i'm sorry restated with the amendment yep the motion is to accept the code data dashboard proposal with the additional um with the addition of the vaccination rates at sahaja by 1210 so it is available in advance of the 12 14 meeting i thought we would decide we did not want to test and stay stuff in there so as it is now it includes just gonna say so maybe we have to add so i think i thought what we kind of landed on and you do the governance language and i'll just say layman's terms i thought what we landed on was we're going to report vaccinations as of or we're [Music] a motion so you're you're saying to uh if i understand the right to delete the uh test and post contacts information yes that whole table and to leave the co-contestant and another event just show positive cases the intestines stay with the caveat that just said at the bottom at the bottom that said due to timing differences this one may not match the state website so we have an amendment to delete the close contacts table and add statement below the copic case table [Music] stating what this statement of positive cases may differ from amounts reported on state when numbers recorded on reporting um this amendment is to delete the close contacts table and every statement below the copic case table stating data may differ from the state website due to timing differences does that sound right to you yeah so there'll be two amendments to this because this is one amendment but it includes both and it will also include vaccinations we already have that all right so then this is the second one okay okay all right and we're making this and i heard you said a second to them all right okay discussion just to clarify the information we report the identity that is important [Music] what we're talking about earlier i'm not sure so we've got a table here that shows positive cases by school that remains in the motion right now to only remove the close contact does that get reported as a positive case high school no we get a call from parents sometimes a lot of the time normal report but you don't report that on this so that's where the data gets tricky because if parents are looking at this and saying you know okay wow bernal has 15 positive cases as well how many of those kids are in school or making it all happen during a halloween party these kids were never even in school but that's where data you know it's really tricky and we're not you know we're not data analysts we don't study how to collect this data and put it in there and you know that's right and i can tell you intestines day we have had five positive my concern is not that i don't want to be transparent because transparency is extremely important and people want to know my concern is is christie and jeffrey they're gonna get emails and phone calls because people are gonna say the numbers aren't lining up and then they're gonna have to go through and explain this even no matter how many you know aspects you put on there and explain i'm just worried that we're creating something um that might put more work on other people even though we want to do it ourselves we don't have access to that information the only time that would happen would be in the parents if the kid tested positive and it was reported through the state and that parents had their kids school and didn't call school or just call their weekend numbers on on there yes they are they have to break christie so some let's say somebody is at baseball this weekend and somebody tests positive and they call the school and they say hey my kid's not going to explode you're sending that to me that's in there yeah right that's fine but it's the fact that they bought it baseball not at school which i think is what julie is saying okay but they there still is a positive case in the school so i get it you're that's how you're interpreting that everyone's going to interpret it differently right but the data is being reported in isolation those are positive in case that students were not in school because they're in isolation because they had coping remember that absolutely just just positive cases i don't know where they all are right but they're just positive okay yeah okay so the of course if you could again read the motion on the table okay um the whole thing or just one amendment so we're going to delete the close contacts table and add a statement below the covet case table stating the data may differ from the state website due to timing okay um may not have been transferred in school i mean i now that i understand that i'm just concerned that people are going to look at like when you look at the number of cases that come on halloween party on the weekend um i think that's my concern is that is the still interpreted as spread right because oh my goodness we gotta lock everything down because the school's on fire everybody's catching but it might be something on the weekend yeah most of the cases that's what the most context numbers would but the point is that this this hasn't been put out there the reason why we're not seeing an uproar is because these numbers have not been put out there it's one it's when the data gets put out there that you have to just be it's how it's which was the point of this just to know how many kids are missing school when we started this was because test the state wasn't in place tesla's days in place i kind of agree you don't necessarily need the close contact information because if a kid's missing school now is their choice so it's their parents choice not to participate in that program do you want to see cases by school don't understand what level we have with code in schools which parents might want to say you know it's getting higher home anyway it's not high what the hell we're doing that was the point of knowing this information to give so uh i'm in favor of the motion to remove the table and amend as we put on the table but i i could also see supporting um a bigger thing so this is not report any others but instead to look for the administration when we start to look at that vaccination percentage and decide how we might want to change our mass policy based on that can present to us over the last two months what did that data look like and that's the kind of subject we're going to make decisions on more than the week two week whether there's one days for two cases of gps which seems to be around what we're seeing test and stay positive which may not necessarily mean that those five students caught it from the student who happened in school here but they didn't see five problem cases through test and stay in that case that can be information that would inform how i would consider making future decisions going to cultivate policy that's why i'm in favor of changing the disease [Music] so the amendment on the table is to delete the close contact table statement under the copy case table there are causing cases from [Music] that language to the motion you say i i have an opposed nay two and it moves in two two said nay so um [Music] i think i would say [Music] bye so that motion passes so amendment language is added to this so the fulmin the full motion [Music] i mean i can paraphrase it but i don't know okay so let's see the cougar data dashboard proposal adding the vaccination rated to haunted by 12 10 so it's available in advance of the 12-14 meeting and deleting the coast contacts table and adding a statement below the code case table stating the data may differ from state the state website due to timing so that's the motion on the table right now any further discussion okay all in favor of that motion of opposed [Music] thank you for hacking through that that's a tough one um let's move on um so we have more to do tonight so we're at the item age a motion to accept the proposal to create a volleyball club uh we have a motion so glory second ah julius second any discussion this one could be easier say aye aye opposed okay that's enough of a volleyball club that's fun uh motion to approve help do we have motion to approve policy lbv partnerships with other schools any discussion on that all in favor say aye aye opposed if that passes and uh this last item i just want to officially appoint a glory to the voice and master plan committee uh that sort of just took place accidentally behind the scenes when she goes to that so i want to officially point it to that and invite her to give us updates [Music] all right and the rest of the items are first reads does anybody have any questions or things they want to discuss on those first reads i think i already have an opportunity for them okay all right so um within motion to go into executive session to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining with the rural employees and education association the executive session is necessary to protect the committee's bargaining position we will be joined by legal counsel and april steward whilst in town administrator and municipal representative we will not reconvene an open session adam second julie okay so we're going to do a roll call vote on this please laurie hi mike julie i adam megan i and i or me uh so now we will reconvene in an executive session clear some of these people out yeah [Music] nice to meet you just making sure
One in particular uh I wanted to update the board on our district discipline presentation. We wanted to take a look at all of our school data. We've been working very hard. As you remember the board put a lot of resources in for our students coming back. We did anticipate some additional emotional and social emotional issues that would be coming back um after being um you know hybrid and remote for so long. So we have been uh working with our data working with our uh staff in order to give support to our students and tonight I've asked that uh Miss Riley who's our director of behavior intervention programs pull that data together and share that with you this evening. So, Miss Riley. Okay. To the board of education, the superintendent, to our community, and our colleagues. Good evening. Good evening. I am um Kiana Riley. I am the director of behavior intervention programs and I just wanted to uh briefly speak with you all to get you up to date as to the discipline data in our district.
Okay, first I want to give thanks to the staff even though they're not here. Um the work that we're doing is very challenging because we're still working in a pandemic. um and and it takes a village to do this work. And so I'm very thankful to all that has had an impact in helping our students. So what's the issue at hand when it comes to school discipline? It's not a cre thing. It's actually a a national issue that we have right now. And there were a lot of reports that went out prior to the beginning of the school year and during the school year. We've have reports, one in particular, uh, came out in June of 2021 regarding the impact that CO 19 has had on our students and what they assumed was going to be an impact when the students come back and they were correct.
A big issue that we have is schools in our district and across the nation are experiencing an increase and aggressive student behavior. Now, why is this happening? Well, they were in a pandemic. you have things that happen outside of the school and we're trying to reaclimate our students back into the building and teach them again the expectations that's needed. Recent data suggests that students who are newly returning to the buildings, they are experiencing higher levels of anxiety and lack of necessary coping skills, but it's just not the students because the pandemic impacted all of us. So you you're dealing with staff that have their own traumatic experience that they they're dealing with. Sorry, it's not that as well as our students. So, it really does take all of us to collectively come up with a solution to help our students. Some contributing factors, students are returning to school with high anxiety, aggressive behaviors, lack of coping skills, and lack of conflict resolution skills and strategies.
45% of our students in the entire district are either new to school itself or new to the building in which they actually go to school. What do I mean by this? If you have a kindergarten and a first grader, they're pretty much one and the same right now because we were either on hybrid or remote for the last what one and a half, two years. So those those babies, they're learning how to uh be in a structured environment. Sixth and seventh graders, a seventh grader is much like a sixth grader. They're new to their building. They don't understand or know the expectations of the middle school. So, they're learning them because the last place that they were pre- pandemic was where? In the elementary buildings. Same for the ninth and the tth graders. A 10th grader is pretty much the same as a nth grader in terms of being acclimated to the building because they were not there prior to.
So, we're dealing with 45% of our students overall from K through 12th that's new to the environment. and we're working very hard to ensure that we either retach our expectations to them or introduce our expectations and teach them one or the other. And how are we doing this? We're doing this by rebuilding our climate and our culture. So, the great thing about working in central office and working with administrators across the district is we have a chance to chat with one another and problem solve, of course. And so we we had an idea of what was to come down the line for this school year and we were very proactive. What we did was we ensured that the SEAL supports that we actually enhance them a little bit more than what we did in the past because we already had supports but we wanted to make sure that we we enhance them.
So for 202122 school year the office of behavior intervention programs has implemented the following core competencies to enhance social emotional learning for students. So SEAL strategies or competencies, there's five. Self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship building, and responsible decision-m these are things that we already were teaching. We just needed a little bit more to enhance the strategies that we already had in place. SEAL within itself can actually be incorporated into the things that we already are doing. For instance, trauma-informed practices. I just finished saying we we're still in a pandemic and our babies are just getting back as well as our staff back acclimated to the building. There's something called adverse childhood um experiences that does impact the social skills of our students. And there are some studies out there. But one in particular is from the International Journal of Environment Research and Public Health that speaks to a student who have high ACES scores show more biased social information processing patterns which causes lower childhood social skills.
So our job in addition in addition to teaching the academic skills is to make sure those students with those high uh ASUS scores that we're actually also teaching social skills. How do we do that? We do that through restorative practices. We're teaching them decision- making. We're teaching them self-awareness, accountability. All those pieces again are what? SEAL competencies, positive behavior supports. We have in place our um our cool tools that we teach. Within our cool tools, we make sure that SEAL strategies are in place. We uh teach in the IB uh learning profile. They incorporate PBIS with the IB learning uh profile because a lot of those still go hand in hand together. We have truency support. We have two new truency um um staff members. They've been working very diligently to make sure that the students that we have not seen come back so that we can actually support them and help them.
And then we have our wonderful therapy program um with Biscuit and uh therapy dog program with Biscuit and Lucy which also helps with the traumainformed practices. It teaches the students how to cope better. It teaches them how to have some self-esteem. It helps them deescalate. So, we have all these different things that we some of them we already had in place and some that we actually just enhanced. I wanted to take time to highlight the newest members of our district support team. So, we have Don Sanders. Even though she's not here, I just want to go through this right quick. Don Sanders, she's the tryy specialist um of the overall district. She replaced Anthony Holmes. We have AJ Walker, which is our culture and climate liaison that's housed at the high school. We have Eric Green, which is our newest try uh officer. We have Bridget Tucker, who is our student advocate counselor at the middle school.
Jennifer Barnes, some of you may have known her in her former role. Now she is also a student advocate at the high school. We have Michelle Cresto. Her position is called at promise facilitator, but in layman's terms, she's a restorative justice coordinator. So what she does is uh provide restorative practices to staff and students, staff and staff or student to student. Okay. She also goes into classrooms, helps with community circles. She uh does one-on-one uh mediation, whatever is needed restorative practices wise. Michelle Cresto is our go-to for the high school. Mrs. Sarah Gruber recently in October had an interview that she did with WBEZ in regards to the work that we're actually doing in the district. She's our student advocate at the high school. she has a um a lot of experience working in counseling of that for um such. So, she did a wonderful job with highlighting all of the work that we're doing.
Then, of course, you have Lucy and Biscuit over there are some of our faves in terms of um helping the students and staff. Okay. So, top actions districtwide. So I took data from August of this year all the way through October for this year and the last four years following that. So because I wanted to take time to review and see where we were. So top actions district w August through October five-year review. If you notice the uh restorative practices and mediation um has increased at least doubled since 2019, 2018, 2017, 2020. You know, we really wasn't here. So, um, the data even though there's something there, it wasn't much to go off of. So, we have definitely improved and increased on our restorative practices. Our ID of school suspension rate is somewhat consistent overall across the border. Our detention overall has, if you noticed, everything for the most part is consistent in terms of not going higher than what it was previously.
results for top offenses districtwide. I want to um have you all look at the defiance category. Defiance is a very subjective um action or offense. In 2011, the de the dear colleague letter, if you're familiar with that, it's been 10 years now. Um underneath the Obama administration, um took light of the disparities where they made note of the disparities of discipline across the nation. And one thing that they've noticed is a trend of defiance where defiance can be very confusing and biased at times. If you look at our d our data for the 2021 school year, you note that our defiance category has went down significantly. And I would like to think that one reason why that defiance category has decreased is because of the work that Dr. Carrie did when she first got here. Um to ensure that we have cultural uh cultural competencies training and that's needed when when you're dealing with students and trying to understand why they do what they do, how they do what they do.
There sometimes is um a confusion or misunderstanding as to what the students are doing. So I think due to our cultural competency training, I think the administrators and the staff, the teachers have done an excellent job at ensuring that they really truly understand if a student is acting out, what does that mean to act out versus something else that could be happening. So overall I would like to just point out that if you notice across the board our discipline collectively has decreased from 2020 20 um 2019 2018 and 2017 our staff is working really hard with these students and also if you as the other um slide showed with restorative practices doubling that may be also another reason as to why our discipline data is decreasing rather than increasing. all the discip discipline practices that we do in this district. Our goal is to make sure they're teachable moments for our students.
We want to make sure that whatever the offense is that we're trying to prevent reoccurrences from happening. When we're looking at the student itself, we want to make sure we look at the whole child. We want to make sure we look at the student's age and maturity, the nature and severity, and the scope of the behavior itself because discipline is not one-sizefitit all. So you have to take the time to really figure out what is happening with the student. We look at circumstances and context in which the conduct occurred, frequency and duration, student record, previous records, also whether or not they um have received specialized services and the students like I said the students prior record. That's all of encompasses of what we do with discipline. I like to think of the action steps that we take for this district that we're doing it not top down but bottom up because the all the magic really truly happens in the buildings because those are the individuals that's working with our students.
So what do we do? Continuous review of data trends at the building level. We have our PBIS teams. We have our support teams. We have our administrators. We look at the professional development and training that's needed for our staff overall to make sure they get the supports they need so that they can support our students. I hold building administration meetings quarterly. As a matter of fact, today I held uh a meeting with the AP and deans to go over the discipline data in the district as well as to do some problem solving and figure out what supports I can give them so that they can further help our students. And it's just a good way to speak with one another to make sure we know what's happening across the district. Right. And then we have the discipline review committee which we have two board members a part of that committee.
Mr. Brown and Mrs. Walters who sits on the committee. Hello. And what we do there? Yes. And what we're doing is we look at the overall trends to make sure that there are no inconsistencies and if there are any policies that need updating. That is the current work that we're doing and I am so excited to see where we go with this because it's it's not easy, you know, but together we can make it happen. Magic.